The Resilient Mind - You’re Not Hardwired: Rewriting Trauma, Memory, and the Mind - Dr. Rahul Jandial

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Rahul Jandial, MD, PhD, is a dual-trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope in Los Angeles, California. Before finding his calling in the operating room, Dr. Jandial was a college dropout and worked as a security guard. As a surgeon, he now provides complex surgical treatment to patients with cancer. As a scientist, his laboratory investigates the biology of the human brain. Throughout his career, he has authored 10 books and over 100 academic articles.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalSpecial thanks to Lewis Howes, subscribe to his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/lewishowesWatch the full interview on Lewis's page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYalx8bvEyg Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to You're Not Hardwired, rewriting trauma, memory, and the mind, with Dr. Rahul Jandiel. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. The simple answer is that the stories we've been told about what's going on in our skull, they're just wrong. Interesting.

Okay, so the first thing is there's no wires. they were not hardwired. There are no gears. So let's go backwards. Way back when, like, ancient Egypt, they thought it was just like flan or something. The soul was in the heart. And I could see that.

I've opened chest before for cardiac surgery, and it's fierce. And what they would do is stick a straw up the nose and slurp out the brain, just get rid of it. So for a while, I can understand the complete misunderstanding. Then when sort of like, you know, speak easy is an industrial revolution, all the pictures about the brain, you see them as gears.

But modern time we're starting to think about it as wired. I'm wired for this, I'm wired for that. You're not wired for anything. It's an ecosystem filled with throbbing 100 billion microscopic jellyfish, sparking electricity at each other, trying to approach each other, shaving down pruning, branching, arborizing.

So when I use those words like arborization pruning, those are neuroscience words in rigorous neuroscience journals. But it hasn't sort of made it to pop culture. So I think part of what keeps us stuck is that we think, oh, I'm wired this way or I have to rewire, and it's too on-off rather than flows, right? It's not freeway from A to B. It's the way you see a school of birds flow,

and they roll over each other, Aurora Borealis. That's how thoughts and that's how feelings flow through the ether of our minds. When you start to understand it like that, then you know every day something new is possible. Is it easy? No, but it's possible. Wow. So that's the real way to think of your brain, mind, and behavior,

that it's completely plastic in the sense that you're never the same person just from a moment ago since we've met. So the thing that shocked me was that we could actually remove parts of the brain. and people would go home a week later. I'm not saying there isn't some subtle neuropsychiatric issue, but for example, I had a guy come in, he's a framer, and, you know, they have the pneumatic, you know, it's not hammer and nails as many people conceive it to me, but poom, boom, boom, and a lot of times, when a real recoil back, they'll pop a nail through their orbit or nose into their frontal lobe.

This happened. And they drive in. With their nail in their brain? Right. So that's the first thing. I was like, wait, no, no, totally. I got pictures on my phone that we're not going to show anybody, but you can have a penetrating injury to certain parts of the brain. Of the brain, and you drive in.

Holy cow. So that's the first thing I realized was so there isn't a region in the brain for creativity. There isn't a region in the brain for this. So the first thing I had to realize was, no, this thing is working as an environment, as an ocean filled with like a kelp forest and jellyfish. So if you drop something into the ocean, you're not going to disrupt. There's no spot for something. And that ties back to what I want people to walk away with is that you have to think of your thoughts and feelings and the working of your flesh inside your skull as a garden, as an ecosystem. Just because you have one weed or one spike doesn't mean the harmony is disrupted.

So, for example, one frontal lobe, we can surgically remove, if needed, after trauma or tumor. and patients function. They drive, they talk on the phone. Again, you don't want this. One occipital lobe doesn't leave you blind. People think, oh, occipital lobe, no. If I take out a tumor from the right occipital lobe, I just can't trust my left rearview mirror when I drive.

It's a field cut. Your world goes from this to this. So when I first started seeing that, because I assumed you get any part of the brain, it's your dust. Because the rest of your brain can compensate. compensate. Now, let me give you, now, that's not true for the entire brain, so let me just go backwards a little bit, but those were the aha moments I had. I mean, I'd seen bowels, I'd taken care of patients, AIDS were, you know, going crazy in the 80s. It's seen a lot. The first time I saw

somebody do brain surgery, I was like, is that possible? Like, can you even remove the skull? And they're like, yeah. And then they were, you know, can you remove that tissue to get to the tumor? And they're like, yeah, you just have to understand how the whole thing works globally in harmony. Now, the way I think of the brain is like a mushroom. And so you've got the canopy. And all the magic and the thoughts spark from the top, the surface. And then they send things down to the stalk, which comes deep to your mouth and comes out of the bottom of your skull and then turns into your spinal cord. So if when I want to move my left hand, my right brain says, move your left hand, it sends down signals.

They come under my armpit. They come into this nerve. And that's what happens. Right? Now, the lower parts, there is some. You hit that, you lose something. Something down here. The reptilian brain, the spinal cord.

Every millimeter does something. Because it's a lot of, think of it as cables, even though it's not wires, but there are a lot of, we call them tracks, T-R-A-C-T-S. There are a lot of tracks that are communicating the things that the canopy thought of. And in that area, if there's a nail injury, you do get a certain deficit. but in your thinking, your feeling, your emotions, your love, your fear, it's not a fear spot or a love spot. It's sort of, again, the Aurora Borealis and the worlds of a school of birds is flowing in different energy, right?

Or a school of fish or something, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's fascinating. I want people to walk away with, okay, so what that leaves people with is the fear I have is real, but it's not fixed. It's not wired. It's not permanent. And through effort, through exposure therapy, through whatever it is, whatever your process is, that school of fish can flow in a different way. To me, that's infinitely powerful, that we are new every day. That also gives us the responsibility to hold on to our positive attributes. That we can spiral away every day, we can spiral downward, and we can spiral upward any day. Again, let me start

with a very sort of dramatic example to set the point to the larger takeaway. On occasion, for epilepsy that shuts down kids, we have to actually take away half of the brain. It's called the hemiserectomy. You have to take out half the brain. We remove, you got everybody can Google it. This is not like it's something we invented today.

It's been going on for decades, yet because a lot of the people, in this space are not actual brain surgeons, we're not getting a lot of those stories from there. But there's a tremendous story there that when there's a medical need and the parents ask for it and it helps the child, we can actually make a big incision and take away a frontal lobe, a parietal lobe, and occipital lobe that's sparking seizures. And when they wake up, that left side doesn't work. Three years later, when you see them, they're having. Yeah. This is not even sci-5. They can move, they can function fully again. So the remaining hemisphere can reorganize the linebacker can also be the defensive end and also be sometimes even on

offense. There are different roles those neurons play. Yeah. So and how do we know that? Because you've removed half the brain is still functioning. And we took a picture three years later and that half of brain was still gone. Still gone. Yeah, it didn't sprout back. It's not like the liver or he cut half of it off and the mind grows some back you take a chunk to me you put in the kid so that part is still missing gone that function has returned that's crazy so that's what i mean about different players on the team can cover for each other so i want people to know that that that's true plasticity and it's not rewiring it's not regrowing it's actually whatever you have is it repurposed and how do they do that well through the electrical flows

of the mind. There's... Wow. That's... So not the electrical flows of the brain. Right. The electrical flows of the mind.

Of the mind. So what does people are like, well, okay, now he's gone. Now he's selling crystals in Malibu. No, no, no, no. Stay with me. When you walked, you played, right?

And we talked about that briefly. I didn't know that about you. It's fascinating. I think there are a lot of parallels with surgeons and athletes. I think surgeons want to be athletes and became surgeons. Yes.

when you walk up to a stadium, there's every single, you know, so I was at SoFi. It's incredible. No, I've been there. It's unbelievable. I don't think people understand. It's the world's largest pit.

You come in near the top because of the LAX flight path. You come in and you look down. They dug deep. I know. It's amazing. It's good to be in my hometown. Yeah. When you walk up and you see,

well, you see the pieces, 70,000 fans. Think of those as neurons. We have 100 billion. those little magical sparks from the jellyfish that I described because they look like that. They're not squares. So you can talk, people are talking and moving. That's how people conceive or conceptualize the brain. But what happens when they roar together? That's what I mean about the electricity of the brain. There's an energy. Right, there's an energy. You feel it.

It's an epiphenomenal. Okay, now you, now let's build an engine. The parts are there. You fired up. And there's a hum, right? That's more than just the engine and the pistons. A symphony, you've got the musicians. I'm less familiar with this, but they create something bigger. That's what I mean about. The mind, that it's not a forward, backward, electricity zinging around on wires. It's that thing that happens when you have a hundred billion throbbing, growing, branching neurons.

And it's electricity-based. you can put a sticker on and light a small light bulb. Really? Yeah. And so that's how we measure for... Have we done this report? Oh, yeah. But this is decades old.

This isn't like... So what I want people to say is like, understand is when we remove the right hemisphere and the patient comes back three years later, kids, and they can function again, no new wire sprouted. Nothing was spliced. What remained created a new roar, created a new hum, created, you know, recovered the function. So it's not always easy for people on stamp, but that's the truth. And that's our current understanding of how the brain leads to the mind.

If you get knocked down a ring, you're not thinking. Right. And if we put electrodes, there's dampen electricity, but that stalk, remember I mentioned the mushroom, that can still keep you breathing and protect your airway and keep your heart still going. So the reptilian areas of the brain, the ones that we share with many animals, will function. will function without a mind, without that, if you will clean mind with consciousness, thought, love, emotion. Wow.

So it's like the Babushka dolls where you have. So it can function, but it's not, it's not, it's baseline function. It's keeping you a breathing. Not high-level cognitive function that we need. So the mind is really what's keeping everything activated. That's what, yeah, that's in concert. Right, right. The mind can think down.

the heart rate that the reptilian brain keeps going if you get knocked out. They're integrated, and so you put it nicely, the mind can keep things going. But if you have brain death, then there's no mind. There's no electricity. And it comes back to that we are electrical currents. We're not wires. We're not switches. We're not spots.

We're not gears. Electrical currents. Yeah, they flows. What is that? So like you go to a lake. and you drop a big you jump in there whatever right yeah yeah

there's a wave that moves through the lake but the water molecules didn't ride with it right right right so that's the the hum the symphony the roar the electrical global waves that are pulsating

through our brains and when people say they're in the zone or they're in a flow state or they're in a meditative state that global energy flow those waves, they're different. They can be measured and categorized. Really? Yeah.

So what does that mean when someone's in a flow state in terms of the mind-brain connection? What is happening? You would think that if somebody's about to hit a game-winning shot, their best performance is one. They're at a high level, meaning wild, frenetic. Actually, no. Whether it's super calm.

Somewhere in between. Okay. So not asleep, but not, hey, I'm on my third espresso just taking in stuff in the morning. But they're focused. focused but relaxed and there is a measured state for that and it usually has to do a sort of medium brain waves that's something I'm writing about right now and and whether you meditate or you're under that the two-minute drill in football or you're a ballerina and you have that that perfect you know

dance routine coming up or maneuver you are actually disengaging some of the things that would get in the way of you releasing a performance So you're not thinking the performance, you're getting out of the way. You're being, you're just, yeah. And that has a different measurable electrical flow state, you know, and it's not revved up. It's not hyperactive, it's somewhere in between. Above calm, but calm. It's not fifth year, it's not idle. They're at their best and they've seen that in athletes and different things.

What's the fastest way for a human being to get into a flow state? For that, in my opinion, there are a lot of my opinion. are no shortcuts because what it takes is a lot of practice and it takes as a lot of learning and then when you are performing and being confident in your abilities and yeah yeah but it's executing you know i don't think you can get into i might be wrong but when i see my kids i don't think you can get into a flow state just rolling through instagram right it's actually delivering a skill you've trained for so you have a craft that you've trained for and you're performing it at a high level So you see race car drivers talking about stuff like that.

So it is sort of your craft performed just at the edge of your comfort level. Like video games, if they're too hard, kids will check out. If they're too easy, they'll check out. So something about, it tends to be a physical maneuver. I always find that fascinating where, you know, I guess you could think yourself into one of those dates, but you see it a lot with people who do a physical task

that's challenging, rewarding, something they're engaged in and at the level of their performance. You know, it's a two-minute drill at the end of a football game. Of course, yeah. It's go time, man. Trauma, it's just these are my concepts. They're not, I'm not. Yes.

There's therapeutic trauma. And what I mean by that is resetting a bone after it's broken, the pain of a cancer surgery, but then you know that your cancer has been cut out. Like, that's good pain. Right. And we're just talking about physical trauma. Then there's emotional trauma if people are attacked that's also intimately connected to emotional trauma, right? So the people who don't have memory after certain injuries or operations, they're never at PTSD because they don't remember it.

So the emotional context and memories related to trauma, be it emotional, physical, or a combination requires memory. That's cool, right? I like to think about, like, as a concept. I don't have a solution for, hey, don't do these three things. You'll be better. Sort of not my approach, because when people did that with me, I was like, how do you know what I'm going through, man? You look at me, you think everything's good?

Are you sure? Are you sure I wasn't attacked last night? Are you sure I didn't find out that my patient didn't do well last night? Are you sure I didn't find out a loved one was diagnosed with something? You know, like, I just don't want to put people in boxes. In fact, I want people to know that they are new every day. I'm not even the same version of myself I was before the last few years. How can I be understood as a group of people, a man or a surgeon?

I just want people to think of each other as individuals and dynamic. That said, I never judge people's trauma to be better or worse. People are looking or stronger or justified. They're looking at everybody's going to have a traumatic event in their life. Whether it's a car crash or hearing. It's unavoidable. It's partly because we put ourselves out there. It's partly because the way we approach the world is to be completely adaptive, right?

If we're rigid, then there's less chances for trauma, but that's a life less well-lived. So when you put yourself out there, traumatic experiences are unavoidable. That said. So that said, yeah, you get a bruise. What I'm going to hear you say is that if we're going to say is that if we're not, we're We don't have the memory of the traumatic event. We don't have PTSD. We don't have a trauma tale.

Right. So that's the concept that I want people to walk away and say, memory is important. Memory is the thing that determines whether the event remains traumatic. Whether it's painful still for you. So let's get into that. So we just need to heal the memory of the trauma. This is exactly where I'm taking it.

Very good. So memories are not files in a cabinet. In the brain. How is memory categorized? Again, there are some regions that if we remove them, you would lose memory, but memory's not only there. It relies on pulling from memories of smell to new, like, for example, smell is very interesting. It's one of the five senses that we can't tamp down with our thinking. So the perfume or cologne, smell and smell.

memory are intimately intertwined. And so you're pulling from all different parts of the brain. Again, memory is a certain electrical flow in the brain. But it's not, it's malleable. It's moldable. Just because you have a certain memory today doesn't mean that that experience, good or bad, will remain good or bad. Our positive vibe right now can be made negative.

Our negative vibe right now can be made positive as we look back at our day to day. So when you see memory that way, then you say, okay, wait a second. I was attacked or I was hurt or something really traumatized me. And when I think of it, when I smell that smell, when I see that color, I'm traumatized again. I clench up. I have stress, a fear, anxiety. So the emotional context to a memory is what you can change. You don't want to, you don't want dementia.

You don't want to delete the memory because that's a different problem. Yeah. You don't want to block it. You don't want, yeah. But what you want to do is change the emotional context attached to that memory. So emotional context of memory for adults in the right setting with the right person through, you know, they have their techniques. You can actually work through the trauma of the memory and the experience by going to certain therapists who help you get back. better with that.

To process the memory. Yeah, just to take the emotional pain, right? The emotional trauma and dampen that so you can say, for example, yeah, I was, you know, and just bring examples from my world. Yeah, I mean, when I was diagnosed with cancer, that's a traumatic event. And then you see my, my patients, you see them over time through different ways. when they say, they say, I was diagnosed with cancer and I did this. Their face is different describing it later than it was immediately after receiving the diagnosis.

So that's a real life example, right? It doesn't have to be all the stuff related to violence and all that. Sure. The traumatic experience of a cancer diagnosis and how patients cope with that immediately, and then you see them months later, years later, because I'd be a mess, right? I'd be like, okay, this is, I wouldn't be able to cope. But surprisingly, not some of them, most of them cope.

They get dressed, they come in for their three-month scans, which to me would be a traumatic experience every time. Is this guy going to tell me it's back or it's bigger? I mean, think about it, like, getting that thing in your mail or email, I've got to go in for this news again. But somehow they cope. And that's where in life on a knife's edge, I learned so much from them that it's possible to cope with traumatic experiences.

I'm not saying you as an individual can. I'm not saying I can. But when you look at a group of cancer patients and most of them cope, live, move on from very traumatic emotional experiences as well as physical experience of cancer pain and cancer surgery, right? That's the lesson I want everybody to go through in their mind when they're dealing with their own challenge. But those that have coped well, they invariably say, I wish I would have lived my life the way I am now after cancer diagnosis. Oh, man.

Like, I wish I would have lived my life having seen the finish line relatively because it changes how they live. And they're not sad. It's a generalization. Like I said, some have suffered. many have suffered but they wish that they would have made quality of life a priority throughout life not after

the cancer diagnosis something about seeing the finish line on the horizon makes people go I don't like that guy I'm not going to see him much this is something I enjoy I want to they get after it they get to they get to the business of living

in the way they want to deep down inside but often have been encumbered by the weirdness of interpersonal relationship and career and society. Pressure and everything else. I can't say that I've always dealt well with it. The human stories were important,

but I was just, I was going for perfection of the craft. You were trying to be a precise surgeon, just trying to remove it and fix it. Yeah. And then... You weren't connected to the human stories. You were just like, let me... I wouldn't say I was disconnected, but...

Right. The second... From the fifth to the tenth year, approximately, when the craft became occupied less of my... my mind. Because it was more automatic. Obviously everyone's specific, but it's more automatic. I was in a rhythm.

Yeah. And actually enjoyed the challenge. And that's what you want as a cancer surgeon who's trying to be the best for you and be the best for them at this craft. That's an interesting intersection. They want me to be the best. They want me to have ambition at being the best surgeon,

which means tackling the biggest cancer and the people who chose me to perform their surgery have the fewest complications. Biggest mountain, fewest complications. That's a personal ambition that aligns with what the cancer patients wanted. So that was an interesting thing. You know, it drove me. And at the same time, I could see that since I take care

mostly of stage four cancer and there's no stage five. Really? Stage five means what? There is no stage five. That means death. Okay. So stage four is. the word terminal is not fair, but stage four is the most advanced cancer.

So all my patients live a few years, let's just say that. But that means, you know, after a while, you know, I was like, I've cared for like over a thousand people and they're no longer alive. Wow. And it started to mess with my head, man. Because stage four, there's no way to cure it, is what you're saying. Stage four, by definition, other than in blood cancers, is not curable. So the question is, can we get out of few years?

life, yes. And quality life during that time. Oh my gosh, man. Yeah, so after a while, I was like, man, I got a, I got a drawer full of invitations to funerals. Oh, my gosh. And I just stood back a little bit and I was having some struggles in my own life. And so the answer to your question is for those, for those who are involved in cancer care to

to make yourself vulnerable to actually sort of in piecemeal go on their difficult journey with them it can be hurtful, it was raw. The last five years, the last three years, I've been able to take that and write about it and see that, like,

I have been fortified by letting them teach me and the privilege of them saying, come along with me my difficult times, this airplane must crash. And you will ride with us. We choose you to ride with us, but you have the parachute at the end.

And after, I was to tell my kids that, man. I just feel like I'm crashing a lot of planes. And so it went from not noticing it to noticing it and having it mess with me to, wait a second, that might have been the biggest gift of my craft is to learn from the people in their most difficult times.

and how they remain optimistic in the face of calamity. Language can be confusing if it's used to casually. But let's take the cancer part out for now. Yes. But yeah, being in a better frame of mind, exercising, eating right, being calm, stress, all of that changes things physiologically that make your whole body better at fighting cancer. That we agree on.

That's measured. Now, let's go back to the brain as a garden. Yes. So can we cultivate that part of the garden or can we cultivate a garden that lean towards a positive mind frame? Yes. Because if bombs are falling, even the most optimistic garden will go into a threat response. Right. You don't only want to be chill.

You don't only want to be positive. You want to be aware. You want to be flexible. You want to be all these things. So let's say there is an external. stress around yet you're too jacked up you're too stressed that's the common ailment of city life at least here where we have safety this is really fascinating it's one of my favorite things that i that i love talking about uh you remember we talked about the reptilian brain uh-huh you get knocked

out and stay you stay away and then we talked about the mushroom canopy well there's another one in the middle called the limbic system but i call it the emotional brain categories are not that simple. But it's got it's a little anatomy. Like if there was a slice down the side of my head, you actually see the mushroom canopy, and you'd see some unique Star Wars looking structures in the middle, and then you'd see the reptilian brain. Like the stem. Yeah, the stem. The stem is the reptilian brain, and in the middle is the limbic system. And on top is the mushroom. Right. That's the cortical. We call it the cortical canopy. We used, we used like ecological terms to describe it in journals. Yeah.

So the cortable canopy and that emotional brain, the limbic system, they have branches towards each other, measurable. And so when somebody goes from age 16 to being wild to being 18 and more composed, let's say adolescents, the structure of the brain hasn't changed. It weighs the same. It looks the same on MRIs. But the person's totally different. Why?

Well, because of the cultivation of thought from the cordial. canopy, the mushroom cap, to the emotional brain. As they integrate more, you're able to say, hey, maybe don't run across that freeway or maybe wearing that seatbelt. So it's learning. But it's interacting with emotions. At the same time, you don't want to be emotionless. So emotion is making a push back to thought. Like, no, love is an emotion. This pain I'm feeling because mom is sick is an emotion. I don't want to be spock about it or tamp it down. So That cultivation of thought and emotion is what is the most lush way to live because then you're adaptive to stress. Like, hey, this is actually something dangerous going on.

Thought is coming in. Be aware. Emotions going on. But at the same time, you have this internal, what they call emotional regulation. Like, nothing's wrong. And you're just freaked out. And that's where those branches, thought, meditation, therapy, counseling. counseling,

hugging your puppy, it creates a better balance between thought and emotion. And that tone, not on off, thanks for asking this question. I love this. The tone is what life is about. You know,

you become a new parent. Let that emotion run rampant. Cry. You're about to go see your boss, and you know it's not going to go well, and you're starting to do things that you know it's emotion running rampant, then you use thought and breathing exercises.

Turn the volume down. Just set the tone a little different on that and then go and see your boss or your lover or some conflict situation you're in. That is what we're doing throughout life, and the example of it is adolescence where it happens for most of those automatically, but then we stop like we're grown-ups.

That tone is something you cultivate through the experiences of life, and then when you get older or when the next trauma comes, you're better braced in position for how to cope with this. A little more thought because I'm running hot on emotion

or like, man, I'm too cold about this right now. It is a raw situation. I need a safe place to let my emotions run wild. Right, a safe environment, yeah. That's the way I approach the intersection of thought and emotion. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.