The School of Greatness - Master Your MIND, Detox Your Brain & Own Your Identity w/Dr. Caroline Leaf (Part 1) EP 1127

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

“Toxic positivity is like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound.”Today's guest is Dr. Caroline Leaf. She is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study neuroplasticity and how the brain can change with directed mind input. She’s also a speaker, podcaster and the author of multiple best-selling books, with her latest being “Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess.” She’s also created an app called Neurocycle which has a 5 Step Process to help you take back control over your thoughts and life, with scientific research showing it reduces anxiety, depression, and toxic thoughts by up to 81%. As a warning, we do briefly go into the discussion around sexual abuse and healing from that. Our conversation was so powerful that I had to split it up into 2 episodes. Make sure to look out for the next episode coming out in a couple of days!In this episode Lewis and Dr. Caroline Leaf discuss how important food is when detoxing the brain, how to get your messy mind under control and what happens if you don’t, why you should do an identity check on yourself once a year, the link between unmanaged stress and the impact on our body, and I open up about some of my experiences overcoming trauma.For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1127Check out her earlier episode on The School of Greatness: www.lewishowes.com/1079Check out Dr. Caroline Leaf’s website: https://drleaf.com/ Read her new book: Cleaning Up Your Mental MessThe Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod

This is episode number 1,127 with New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Caroline Leaf. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Linda Poindexter said,

one small crack does not mean that you are broken. It means that you were put to the test and you didn't fall apart. And Dan Millman said, you don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you. My guest today is Dr. Caroline Leaf, and she is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early

1980s, she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study neuroplasticity and how the brain can change with directed mind input. She's also a speaker, podcaster, and the author of multiple best-selling books, with her latest being Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. She has also created an app called NeuroCycle, which has a five-step process to help you take back control over your thoughts and life with scientific research showing it reduces anxiety, depression, and toxic thoughts by up to 81%. And in this episode, we discuss how important food is when

detoxing the brain, how to get your messy mind under control, and what happens if you don't. Why you should do an identity check Check on Yourself Once a Year, and I loved her thoughts on this, the link between unmanaged stress and the impact on our body, and I open up about some of my experiences overcoming trauma as well. Our conversation was so powerful that I split it up into two episodes. So make sure to look out for the next episode coming in a couple days. And as a warning, we do briefly go into the discussion around sexual abuse and healing from that. If you're inspired by this, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be

inspired as well. You can copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this or just use the show notes link at lewishouse.com slash 1127 with all the information there. Again, I'm so excited about this. I hope you enjoy this as well. And in just a moment, I bring you the one and only Dr. Caroline Leaf. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest, Dr. Caroline Leaf is back on the show. Good to see you, Caroline. How are you doing? So good to see you, Lewis. I joined our conversation last time and it definitely didn't end. So I'm really, really excited to be back.

It didn't end. I wanted to go for like 10 more hours. Me too. We were just so into it. The comments, the engagement, the results people were getting from your strategies and tools have been mind-blowing. And I want to continue the conversation because I think there's a lot we could do to help people improve the quality of their mental health, improve the quality of understanding their minds, their body, their emotions, and their life. The first question I wanted to ask you is how important is food when we are looking to detox our brains in general?

How important is the foods we put in our body for our brains? I'm so glad you asked that question. And just quickly to pick up on, I was telling you just before we started, how people are still commenting weeks later, months later after the last podcast on how they love your show and how they loved our conversations.

So thank you for the opportunity. No, really, you're a great interviewer and it's just wonderful telling to you. Food is such an important thing. So basically we know that, but it does have a massive impact. What what's so much, so for me is so interesting about the food side is the fact that our mind controls the digestive system. So our mind is our aliveness. So the difference between you and I and a dead person is our mind. So for our gut to function and to be able to digest all the parts of our gut, to be able to digest food, our mind's actually running the show.

And most people don't actually think about it like that. But if you're eating a really healthy, organic, sustainable, farm-to-table, local, all the right, you know, the real food definition. Right, non-GMO, dairy. Non-GMO, the whole what, yeah. But you're in a mood or you're not dealing with something, you know, you're not dealing with an issue that's like a relationship issue. You're just in a bad state of mind as you're eating. You could lose up to 86% of that nutrition just by the state of your mind because your mind is driving, your mind is basically, whatever you're thinking about is activated in your mind in your brain and in your body and then your enteric nervous system that the whole thing is activated and your enteric nervous system which is the connection between the mind and the brain this feedback loop

is driving the whole process so being driven by your mind so it responds very very quickly there's a very quick direct link between mind brain gut very fast. It's throughout the whole body, but it's extremely fast to the gut. And the gut has as many neurons in as the spinal cord. So we have about 300,000 neurons in our gut, which is about the amount we have in our spinal cord. So you probably, I mean, you would have heard of it, the gut-brain connection. In the last 10 years, it's become a huge field of research in the microbiome and all that stuff and how that's very good, a lot to do with our intelligence and how serotonin 95 is in the gut and 90 of dopamine and so all these things

there's such a relationship but what we don't always think about is that that thought that you're thinking in your mind is actually activating and growing that whatever you're thinking about and whatever you're adding on changes are happening in the brain that's going to your gut and everything involved in the process of digestion including the pancreas and the gall bladder and the different parts of the intestine the stomach everything is being driven by these energy waves from the mind so if our thought is toxic you can for example let's just take one of the organs of the pancreas the pancreas secretes 20 different neuropeptides that are required for the assimilation of food and if you are in this mood or worried or anxious or not dealing with something or having a fight with someone those 20 neuropeptides won't be secreted properly or

maybe only a few of them and that's going to impact everything else and then you just don't digest the bloating people get the gut issues the, the sore stomachs, or leaky gut, constantly not dealing with our stuff, wears down the lining of the gut. I mean, it just creates inflammation. The gut bacteria get affected. Your good bacteria go into hiding, and it's like a million different things. So that is so important. So I like to talk to us about the mindset behind the meal

as opposed to just the meal. And we focus so much on the food and diet that I think we've forgotten the most important component, which is mind. So I think we should manage that first and then use that to manage the dietary aspects. So can you eat bad foods and still have a good mindset around it and process those foods in a healthy way. So you actually take the nutrients out of it or it doesn't affect you, your gut or you're, you know, building fat cells or whatever with this greasy fried, you know, sugary processed foods.

Could you still have a healthy body with the right mindset or do you also need the right nutrients and the right mindset you need you need both you need both eventually that junk food is going to accumulate in your body and you know we know that we are eventually going to create an environment because our brain and body are the environment for the mind to operate in so if the environment of the brain and the mind are affected physically by junk food. And as you said, the processed foods and things, it is going to wear the body down. Those excess chemicals, they cause leaky gut. They do all those things to the cardiovascular system. I mean, we know there's just so much research around that. So it's both. It's both. But what I'm hearing you say is you could have all the healthiest foods and be thinking toxic thoughts or abandoning yourself over and over or staying

in the wrong relationship or not speaking up for yourself or not forgiving something from your past and holding onto that. And it won't do much for you to have those healthy foods or it might create inflammation still or have leaky gut because of the mindset. Is that what I'm hearing? Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. And that's an aspect that people don't recognize. And it's not spoken about. It's not studied enough. We always talk about four pillars or three pillars. People talk about diet, exercise, managing stress as though they're three separate components. Meanwhile, the driving force is your mind because if you're dead, none of those other things matter anyway. So your mind is your aliveness and it drives all the others.

So we've got to focus on the mindset because you may be, how many times do we hear of people that they're in their early fifties and they've been exercising and they've been eating well, and they seem to have, they're always smiling and they seem to be fine and they drop down dead or they have a heart attack or something. Yeah. They have a heart attack. Will they, you know, they, yeah.

Something like that and think how, I mean, they're so healthy. So your, your mind overrides that benefit so you've got to think of mind creates the changes in the brain which then which and the changes in the body that are either strengthening strengthening the environment of brain and body or weakening and if you cumulatively don't manage the toxic issues in your life your your body slowly slowly but surely changing. The brain-body environment is slowly but surely changing in the wrong direction. So we move between this percentage of 35% to 98% increased invulnerability to disease the more we have an unmanaged mind. So I have two questions. The first one I ask is about what are the most important practices for first detoxing the brain?

And then I want to talk about the mind afterwards. But what are the actual practices for detoxing the brain? So the mind is going to do the detoxing. So the primary thing is that the mind detoxes. So the brain isn't self-generating. Like genes aren't, there's a fancy terminology for it, but basically it means that the genes can't switch themselves on, the brain can't change itself.

And we often hear the brain, we often hear in the media things like the brain can change itself. But if you did, give me a dead brain and show me a change and it doesn't change. But if I put QEGs and fMRIs on you and I right now, in this conversation, we'll see massive changes happening inside of our brain. So the first aspect is brain health is very reliant on mind health. And that is very primary. And so mind health is very much around keeping a messy mind managed. So I'm not sure if we spoke about this in the last interview,

we spoke about so much stuff. But what I explained it is that we've got a messy mind and a wise mind and that's like coming for and we can define each of those but basically your messy mind is it's experimental every moment is an experimental moment in the life of a human when you're awake because you don't know what's happening next to you we can't control people events or circumstances so everything is chance that's coming up in the next few moments we can predict to a certain level of accuracy what's coming up. And the more familiar you are with an environment and people, the more accurate your prediction. But it's still a prediction.

It's not an accurate fact. So based on that, we are very experimental. And that is okay. We have a psychoneurobiology. My brain body is very geared to experimentation. It's very geared to hypothesizing. So we live a very hypothesizing type lifestyle. It's all happening very fast on an unconscious level.

And so we hypothesize and experiment and we make mistakes, but that's okay because in a mistake, if you're managing it, you'll take the messiness and you'll repair it and you'll grow. So it's kind of experiment, mess, repair, grow, experiment, succeed, then you grow. And you're kind of experiment, mess, repair, grow, experiment, succeed, then you grow. And you're kind of doing this all day long in everything that you do, relationships, work, relaxation, sport, whatever. So that process is something that we are designed to go through.

The problem is that brain health is, and that'll bring brain health and that'll bring body health because it's mind, brain, body. But if we have a messy mind only and we don't manage it or we only manage it intermittently, it's because our mind's always working. It never switches off until you die. So working at night, you dream with your mind. You can even train yourself to dream differently. I mean, that's how powerful the mind is. And I'm about to do a research experiment on that where you can train your mind to train your brain to actually change things like nightmares and things like that which is

super interesting so it's really interesting so in other words messy mind messy brain messy body so that's really vital so that could be the first thing the second messy mind messy brain messy body yeah so it's you can't you can't detox the brain well, I guess you could detox the body a little bit by not by the physical environment, the substances you put in your body. But what I'm hearing you say is if you don't learn to detox the mind first, you won't get the optimal benefits of environmental substances. Exactly. So for example, if you go do a workout, but you're going to work out with an attitude of, I just got to get it over and done with, or I hate this

or I wish it was over. Never let yourself do that when you're working out because as soon as you do, you send a message to every DNA, every part of every cellular body to actually go into almost like a freeze mode. You know when people are starving and then their body hangs on to food?

If you send that message to your body that you don't want to be here while you're exercising, you actually reduce the DNA's functionality and it drops down, your benefit drops in the exercise routine. So you may be doing the most amazing workout, but your mind will determine the effectiveness and the benefit of the workout. So it's got to be mind, but we do have to eat properly. And I've written books thinking, eat yourself smart. I am an avid believer in eating healthy and, and we can talk about that real food and exercise every day.

I've just come out of hot yoga two hours ago and sauna, infrared saunas. I do it all. I do everything that I can do possibly because I am looking after the organs through which my mind works. So I'm trying to create a very compatible relationship between them because there's a magical relationship between them. Has there ever been a time where you, I mean, you've been studying this for decades.

38 years. Yeah, decades. I mean, when you were like six years old, you started studying this. So was there ever a time during your intense research where you knew this but you were practicing something different maybe you're eating clean and you're working out but you're like gosh i don't want to be here or i'm stressed out by this or my work or whatever it is and you you saw the negative effects of that and then was there a time when you switched it i'm assuming there was and you never went back and you started to see other benefits.

Definitely. It's been up and down. I've always been very driven. So I've always been very into exercise and throwing myself into everything. So everything I do, I throw myself into 100%. But as I've gone through life experiences, having four children and the adult children, that comes with its own incredible joys, but incredible challenges. And as you would know, own incredible joys but incredible challenges and as you would know and um so there's been times where you you know even like i've been married for 34 years and we have an incredible marriage but we've had our ups and downs so whenever there's been it's the relational stuff that's grabbed me the most really and it seems like relationships are the things that bring people the most joy and the most pain it's because we are enhanced by each other and that's something we should talk about enhancement versus competitive culture and the whole deep meaningful relationship

thing that is such a cool incredible concept and it goes beyond Darwin back to Lamarckian theory and that kind of stuff but it's really and it does impact so to answer it's a great thing to discuss so in terms of I mean also there's been like over the years business stuff and things but I think the thing that's affecting me the most, I find myself maybe working out at Orange Theory or something and something's happened in a relational situation. And I find myself so absorbed with that that I'm exhausted on the treadmill. I can't. So then I focus. You don't have energy.

Yeah. And I'm just not able to do what I could normally do. So then I immediately will switch back and say, okay, I'm here now for myself for this. I need to, I can't help others unless I'm actually building my own body up. And I discipline my mind, I catch it, push it back into that mode of totally focusing on what I'm doing. And it shifts completely. Suddenly I have all the energy in the world and there's a difference.

Is that part of getting rid of the messy mind? It's managing the messy mind. We never get rid of our messy mind. We need to be friends with our messy mind. It's a very nice concept. What is the messy mind? What does it feel like? The messy mind is the experimental mind, as I was mentioning. So basically, it feels like, I don't know what I'm doing or I'm not sure what I'm doing. I don't know if this is right, if this is okay. It's also things like someone says something to you and you react and you realize, oopsie, I said the wrong thing,

or I misheard or I made an assumption, or you see a pattern in your life where you keep on reacting to certain things or you see that you're waking up in the morning complaining all the time. And, you know, that's messy mind. It's where we find ourselves feeling discomfort, feeling like something's just not right, feeling ourselves irritable, worked up.

All those emotions, those are messy mind. And those are totally fine. Now here, this is so fascinating because those are fine if they're managed. So what we need to do is own them, give ourselves permission to experience them because you cannot grow unless you understand what they feel like.

So get irritated. I'm not saying choose to get irritated, but if you get irritated, own it and then say, okay, well, why did I do this? What can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? That's a managed mind. That's what our psychoneurobiology is designed to do. We're not designed to be these perfect toxic positivity creatures. We are very normal. We're not supposed to be these. It's okay to get, it's okay, it's way better

to actually get frustrated and say, I'm so sorry, I got frustrated because of, I'm not going to do it, I'm going to do it less next time or whatever. That's so normal.

What's the difference between toxic positivity and wise mind? Okay, so wise mind is the ability to recognize I don't have recognize I don't know everything. I need other people. I recognize I've hurt other people. I recognize it's okay to cry. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be depressed. I recognize that anxiety, depression, these are signals. And when my body aches, that's telling me something. It's the wisdom to stand back and see another

perspective. It's having deep discussions stand back and see another perspective. It's having deep discussions like this where you explore philosophy and explore. That's wise mind. It's if you asked me for advice on something or I asked you for advice on something and you gave me advice, wise mind. When you talk to your kids and your partners or your friends and you say, this happened, what do you think? And they give you advice, wise mind. So wise minds in all of us, but we don't tune into it sufficiently. And it's at the core of our being and we see this playing out in the neurobiology because we don't have any proteins or, right, let's take it from the organs to the cells, to the parts of the cell, down to the subatomic particles. We have nothing in our entire physique, physical body and brain that is for toxicity. What we have is for managing it.

So that's so different. So in other words, we have grace to make mistakes. And toxic positivity is all about that kind of almost putting a bandaid. It's like a bandaid on a wound. It's one of my friends says bandaid on a bullet wound. I mean, you it's like a band-aid on a wound it's it's one of my friends says band-aid on a bullet wound um you mean you can't put a band-aid on a bullet wound and that's what toxic positivity is doing and things like gratitude statements and affirmations if used incorrectly for but are very much tools of the toxic positivity movement but if you're

not dealing with your issue you can't just slap a positive affirmation on or a gratitude statement or practice. It's not going to do anything. You're kidding yourself. So should we use mantras and affirmations? Is there a way to use them in a positive way, an effective way, I should say? Oh, definitely. How do we use mantras, tools, affirmations, positive attitude without it being toxic positivity? The way that I explain that is you do it in step five of the neuro cycle.

So the system I've developed for over 38 years, which is basically a delivery system for how to, it's not a technique, it's a delivery, like Amazon. Amazon's a delivery system that works brilliantly. Even if you don't like Amazon, it works. The system works. It delivers anything, anywhere, anytime. The concept of the neurocycle is a system of how we can directly manage our mind,

get a wise mind talking to a messy mind to direct the neuroplasticity of our brain to be able to then move in the right direction and accept the ups and downs of life and get that sense of peace, which is not toxic positivity. It's actually a sense of peace. It's an acceptance of the uncertainties of life and so on. So what I have found from my research is that if you have an issue in your life and there's something that you're backing up, so maybe it's just that you wake up complaining every morning or something.

I'll take something like that because it was a discussion recently I had with someone. And something I used to do, I used to wake up like worked up in the morning and I got that under control it changed my life completely because it wrecks your brain totally wrecks your brain wrecks the day and you can chat about that too in more detail if you want but that's so what we what I what you've got to do is you've got to recognize that um if you are in um if you are if there's something you're trying to work on so let's say that there's a complaining thing just by by saying, okay, I'm going to wake up in the morning and I'm going to say 10 gratitude statements instead of 10 complaining statements,

that's going to work for a time. It will not be sustainable because all you're doing is slapping a Band-Aid on a bullet wound or you're chopping the head off the weed and it will grow back. As we know, if you go chop the head off the weed, they will grow back.

So it's not getting to the root of, why don't you just feel appreciation at all times, not try to act appreciation? That's it. It's not a being, it's a doing. And so you've got to find out why. Whatever you're doing is a reason because at your core,

your identity is this wired for love nature in our neurobiology and in our mind. We see that in the love waves of the physics of the mind and the gravitational fields and things. We see that in the, it literally the quantum physics has shown us that the immersing gravitational fields that are, and they change when there's negativity.

So when people are angry and fighting, it's different. When there's a lot of war, you can feel it. You can walk into a room and you can feel that stuff. So essentially our environment is very, it's all very, this is all very deep stuff and it's all very real stuff too and it's and it's not something that we can ignore because it's very we all experience this so um yeah you can't just go and say um 10 gratitude statements you have to find out why i am complaining there's i'm showing up for a reason there's a reason why I'm doing this.

At my core, I'm this wired, full of person. So if I'm waking up complaining, I'm always irritable in certain situations. This triggers me all the time. Or if I have certain patterns, there's a reason. Don't be hard on yourself. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself grace and just find the reason. And it's such an easier way, so much of an easier way to live, Lewis,

than beating yourself up or forcing yourself to be something else. Just say, okay, I wake up complaining. Why? And then go and solve it. And that's where you can then work through the process of solving it. And that's a very sequential time process. That's why there's five steps you do over time. And when you find the root, then you can do the positive affirmations. It becomes the step five. Then it works because you're actually doing it in the right place. What was the biggest challenge for you to overcome mentally with your messy mind that was holding you back? You know, something that took a long time

for you to finally like, okay, I know the science, I know the research, I've been teaching this, but I still haven't been able to do this myself. What's that been for you? Two things, the complaining in the morning, waking up very negative in the morning.

How long were you doing that for? Oh, for years. I remember from, I remember it was like all through the first few years of our marriage. And I remember at high school, I'd wake up in the morning on edge and anxious. And so for years. And I remember one day my husband saying to me, we've been married for about maybe 10 years or something. And he turned around and said to me, you are always so negative in the morning. And he wakes up bright and happy.

Go away, you're too happy for me in the morning. You know, it's like, it was, and he just said, you're always negative in the morning. And I didn't, until he pointed that out to me, I hadn't realized I was doing it. But it affected the first half of my day and would keep me in a kind of negative state. And he helped me with this brain research.

And as soon as I did the research, I'm like this, I would go into a high because it immediately, as soon as my work immediately um change things because it's brain building and that's really important for mental health brain building is something that we definitely need to explore in this discussion because it's phenomenal anyway so brain so that so complaining was set my because it basically creates neurochemical chaos now when you wake up in the morning as you're going from sleep to wakefulness, there's a massive shift in neurochemistry and brainwave activity. And literally things that were flowing this way now flow that way.

And the brainwaves all, that delta is very high. And now suddenly it drops down and theta will change and beta comes on board. And so there's a whole shifting pattern. And if you don't manage that moment, you can set yourself up for failure for the whole day or a miserable day. And everything just becomes so much harder. So it's just a matter of mind managing. And I trained myself. It took me multiple cycles of 63 days using the neuro cycle to train it.

But it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It actually took me, it honestly took me about, I think it was two cycles, if I can stand corrected, two cycles. So it's 18 weeks, which is not that long if you think I've been doing it for maybe 20 years. And the other thing that held me back, which I've been doing for my child as well, was if only. I used to say if only to everything. And I used to lose them. If only I would have got this opportunity. If only this wouldn't have happened to me.

If only whatever. If only I said it this way. If only I did it that way. If only we had this opportunity, if only this wouldn't have happened to me, if only whatever. If only I said it this way, if only I did it that way, if only we had this much more time on this holiday. And one day, one of my daughters, and I've got four kids and my second daughter, three of my daughters actually work for me. The one who's my producer, Dominique,

turned around to me and she said, mom, you are spoiling this holiday because I was going on about all the if-onlys as we were leaving the holiday. And it was, once again, it took a person in my, close to me to actually turn on and say, you know, we should stop. And it was a child. I was like, gosh, I'm having this impact on my child. And I went into a, and that took me much longer because I had been doing it for so long.

And that was, I, even now on my, I have an app called the NeuroCycle app and it's, it's on iTunes and Google play. And it's and it's literally me giving you therapy, taking you through the NeuroCycle. I use that every day. I mean, literally, I mean, I know the system off my heart, but I use that to reach reminders because you can type it in and every day, seven times a day, still, it pops up on my phone, remember your if-onlys. So, I no longer do it, but I still remind myself and I now now can just glance and remember, and I can catch myself like that. So I've become 81% more effective in managing something that was so toxic to my mental health that it has completely revolutionized my life.

I cannot tell you how that's changed my life. I can imagine. When we come from a place of if only, what is that saying about us and our life? Nothing will ever satisfy you. Nothing will ever give you peace. You will always be looking for the grass is greener on the other side. Man, that sounds exhausting. It's exhausting.

You constantly can't see what you've got because you're always thinking what you just lost. And how it would have been better. I think a level of, you know, once I did the work, it came from a desire to be perfect. Perfectionism, which comes from a very poor identity, basically. And me to prove myself. I was the youngest of four kids. I had a pretty. Okay.

So I had my two elder sisters. I mean, my family are amazing, but like any family, every family has crazy things going on, which is very normal too. That's something that we all need to kind of realize. Obviously not the extreme stuff. That's not normal. But my two older sisters were really battled a lot and they just, and I was the youngest and I was kind of had to prove myself, you know? And so I went out in every aspect from academics to sports and I was always the top academic and the top sports. And I drove myself to a point where it was just too much.

And I was always trying to please. And my mom was very British and very, you don't compliment children. You don't give them a big head. So I remember going up to her as a little child. And she knows the story, so she's good with it. We've talked this through and I have a great relationship with her. But I was maybe six or seven and I drew this picture. And I went up to her and I said, mommy, don't you love my picture?

And she said to me, that's vain. Don't ask me. Don't look for compliments. And it shattered me. And from that day- At six or seven, that's tough. Yeah, it shattered me completely. And she wasn't intending to shatter me, but it shattered me.

From that day, I never asked. I just proved and I drove myself and I was never good enough. Nothing was ever good enough because she never complimented me. Now as an 85-year-old, she never stops because she's changed and she's apologized and she said, I realized I didn't, because she started doing it to my kids and being hard on them. And I said, no, I said, because she said, you compliment your kids too much.

I said, you never complimented me enough. I said, my kids, when they do something that's great, I am going to be their biggest cheerleader. And she saw that and we had this whole discussion around that, but that's where it came from. And now it's sorted out. Now she makes a point of everything. It's like really sweet now.

She's trying to make up for it, which is great because you do. You can forgive and forget. You can't change what's happened to you, but you can change what's in you. But that's where it came from. And once I had made peace with that, it definitely, once my mom and i had that discussion um it freed me it was definitely a massive part of my healing wow how how impactful does perfectionism or how impactful is perfectionism on the brain in holding people back and how does someone let go of this idea to be perfect when they feel like maybe they had something similar with you, or they feel like that they need to be perfect to be loved

or accepted or get acknowledgement or attention or affection or whatever it is? What does perfectionism do to the brain? And how do we let go of it? That's really, that's an excellent question. It's very distorted because it goes against your natural white fellow of nature because when you are, and it's all to do with identity. So it's all to do with, and when we talk about identity, we've got to talk about it as a verb as opposed to a noun. It's something that's organic and growing. So you are Lewis, but you're constantly growing and changing from life experiences.

When you're growing into yourself and you're growing, and as we go through messiness and reprieve growth it's it's enhancing and growing and getting better and better all the time and perfectionism is is a sort of non-acceptance of that it's like I haven't had a chance to really see that my identity is good enough and so it's like you've got to always do something and there's something that's happened it's generally you can't you know everyone's got their own narrative but at some point in our lifetime we've had something that knocked us and I it seemed to be for me that that was where that knock happened and so that in growing up in that kind of environment when there was never any compliments and not even a child

needs that sort of thing so you you it affected my identity I always felt like I had to prove myself in every instance and it became a very big thing I was like living for approval until I could accept who I was so it's a perfectionism what it does no not totally and it's it's and I think a lot of us battle with that identity is one of those very I always recommend that people do regular identity checks that you go and at least once a year you do a full-on identity check and just find out that you haven't been because it's so easy to be shaped by experience and because we it's nature nurture and eye factor there's the nature part of identity that is you have your genetic makeup I have mine you have your own unique way that your proteins vibrate they don't vibrate the same way as mine

even though we have the same brain structures we have different protein vibrations and the way that our proteins fold i mean i held up this tree before the thoughts that you build the black trees the roots are the source but the branches are your interpretation so every listener listening to this now they're hearing the same source so the same roots that they grow in their brain but every single person is growing their own interpretation their own thoughts feelings and choices around the content we're talking about. And that's identity. So those are proteins and the vibrations are different. So our wiring is unique nature-wise. Nurturing we have our environment impacts us, whether we like it or not, culture, religion, where we live, the philosophies of the day,

all of that impacts us. But overriding both of those is the I factor. And that's your growing identity. The perception we have of ourselves. Yes. What we look like in the mirror. What we look like in the mirror and how we perceive the world. And that is very malleable. It's very strong, but it's very vulnerable too.

And it gets very strongly influenced by nature and nurture. And that's why it's so strong but it's very vulnerable too and it gets very influenced by very very strongly influenced by nature nurture and that's why it's so important that we build an identity so people that are confident people that seem to get like no matter what happens they just seem to bounce back even they will have identity issues but they've reached a point in their life where they they can bounce back quicker maybe than someone else who's got more identity issues who gets crushed. So for me that was when I was practicing, still practicing, I would spend a large portion of my work with my patients on identity because most of the time their first would be the first sort of thing that I'd work on and then I would do brain building and then I'd do emotional work. So it would be to first build the person, this you're amazing,

this is how we get resilience in your brain. And you asked earlier on about how do we bring brain health. Brain building is one of the most powerful ways of brain, using your mind to get brain health. And we never got to that point. So we need to do that too. We'll come back to that, yeah. You better keep a note of all these things.

I've got the notes here. I've got the notes here. I'm curious about the identity check then. What does an identity check look like? And how do we build our identity to become more confident, resilient, loving, energetic human beings? Absolutely. So when identity shatters, we start – you'll see a difference in the vibrations in the brain. You'll see a difference in the energy flow in the brain.

What's the common ways it shatters? Sorry to interrupt. No, no, no problem. A breakup. Yeah, no, environment, experience. something happens, a death in the family. Those will shatter, but it's more when you are told you're broken in some way, even if it's not direct. So it's like if someone tells you, you know, you've gone through an adverse circumstance and you're feeling depressed and someone tells you you've got a brain disease, that will shatter your identity because now your identity is, oh, I'm broken. I'm a broken brain. I'm'm a useless person or if someone feels

they're not valued so a statement is made that that the core of their humanity who they are is not valued they're not valuable enough um we see this a lot with gender gender issues people that um that aren't allowed to identify with what they believe their gender is tremendous tremendous attack on identity. That's why there's such an increase in suicides in that kind of environment. Generally, I've worked with a lot of suicide survivors and a lot of families of suicide victims who've experienced suicide in their family.

And the core is identity. Because if you don't feel you're valued, if you feel that what I can bring to the table isn't enough, no matter what, why should I even be alive? And that for me is so important. I did a whole podcast recently on identity and the importance of identity, and it looks different in the brain.

When your identity shatters, your energy, we can pick that up on the QEG. QEG technology doesn't read detail. It's very crude, but it does give you an idea of the level of anxiety it creates. So when you're not being yourself or you feel that you're not valued, we will see asymmetry, for example, in the brain.

We'll see a lot of low energy in the front of the brain, very, very low energy in the front of the brain. We see it with people that have been labeled the energy blood flow. It's asymmetrical and it's very low in this particularly this part of the brain and then we have 200 specializations across our brain that are unique to each of us so it's designed because your brain's only limited in size your skull's limited in size so you can't keep growing your brain so you can't do everything what can i so there's

something you can do that no one else can do and that's that's within these 200 specializations of our brain but it creates a need because there's see stuff you can do that I can't do. So therefore, I need you and you need me because that's enhancement. And when people think, okay, there isn't something I can contribute, the identity gets broken. So we see that in those changes. And when you get that change in the brain activity and inflammation and blood flow, we're going to see an increase in the immune system. Inflammation, the immune system will respond and react because now your survival is threatened.

So you're going to get inflammation. Then that has a downstream effect in your endocrine system. Then your telomeres and your chromosomes start getting shortened, which then ages your body. And I mean, I can go on and on. It goes on and on, yeah. The neurophysiological effects are enormous. So an identity check is critical because the only way you're going to bounce back from what is going to happen, because life is traumatic, no matter what we would love to know, we would

love the world to be perfect. The reality is no matter what you've had traumas, you will have trauma. That's just, it's inevitable. What does the identity check look like for you? You say you do it once a year? Yeah, I do it once a year whenever I feel that I'm out of sync, if I start feeling like,

a very quick recognition of identity check is if you're starting to feel envious and jealous of others. And if you're starting to feel that um something that you know that you're just not good enough imposter syndrome you know the typical those those are very key that hey i'm gonna stop and do an identity check so then i do it with a neurocycle i'll go and look for all the i'll i'll go and gather awareness of all the the signals that i'm starting to see like this okay there's a lot more imposter syndrome than normal because we all get a level of it so it's okay it's when it becomes an invasive pattern so you look for the invasive

pattern signals that are affecting who i feel about myself and so i recognize i know how to recognize the general unease and then you'll start working through from the signals and then start reflecting why what's happened you know ask answer discuss with yourself what's happened to get myself to this point and then i'll take time to write it down. The third and fourth step, it's describing the neuropsycho now. The third and fourth step we're writing. The third step you write in the form of a metacog. And a metacog is one of the most powerful things out there to get into your non-conscious mind and find out what's really going on,

to really tap into the wise mind. You want to get your conscious and non-conscious mind talking to each other. And if you go through these five steps that I'm describing, the neuroscience sequentially, you are training and forcing blood flow, those 200 areas of specialization, the different structures of the brain, the neurons, the neurochemistry, the endocrines, you are forcing it to actually work for you. You're kind of making all the ducks line up in a row, if that makes sense. And when you're in that state, you're much more intelligent, you're much wiser, you have more

clarity, you have more perspective. So that's the objective of the five steps to really give you that level of clarity that can help you dive down deep into an unconscious mind and find out, you know, find the toxic issue that's caused this identity issue, because it's going to affect everything. Your identity starts shattering. It affects your work, your relationships, your view of life, mood, energy, exercise, diet, everything. So step one is reflection of your identity is what it sounds like for a lot of these things. It's interesting you're saying this because when I was younger, I've said this on the show a few times, but when I was younger, probably like seven, eight, nine, I would get in elementary school, I would get in

trouble a lot. Or at least this is the stories I remember. I remember getting in trouble and being sent to the principal's office, maybe not that much, maybe, I don't know, half a dozen times or something in a couple of years for whatever reason, acting out or saying something. And I remember kind of being scolded or being told that I was doing something wrong by the principal. And I remember saying vividly, like, I wish I were dead.

Like, I just remember saying this as a kid over and over. Like, when I would get in trouble, I was like, I wish I were dead. And hearing you say this now, I feel like I just never felt valued. I'm sure people valued me, but I think I didn't know how to receive it or I didn't feel it. And I think, thankfully, I never said that after those years, and I don't feel that anymore. But I remember if I would have went down that path of never feeling valued for 5, 10, 20 more years, I don't know why I'd still be here. I don't know why I wouldn't.

I'd be building a case of what's the point of my life? Why should I be here? No one cares about me. No one values me. No one sees me. No one acknowledges me. I'm pointless. I'm worthless. I have no meaning, so I might as well end it. And so I have a lot of, I guess, compassion for people that feel that because you can kind of get sucked into it. And you could easily get sucked into it from a major breakdown or breakup or heartache or something. You can get kind of sucked into this, well, I don't matter if this person doesn't love me. And I don't matter if I'm not good enough for this job. And I don't matter. We can kind of get sucked in if we're not taking care of our mindset from what I'm hearing. That is, I'm so sorry that happened to you.

And you reflect so many people that have gone through that and you managed to kind of adjust. But the fact that you could actually recall that incident shows you that it's still, you know, maybe now there'll be more healing, but it impacted your life. And how many kids, yeah. and how many kids go through it. In fact, there was a post that I just happened to, I put up a couple of days ago and I just happened to scan through because you get so many comments. I try and read as many as I can, but I don't, but one caught my attention and it was literally what you're saying now.

It was someone saying how they were as a child told that, you know, you're not good enough and, you know, you have a bad attitude. And it was just like disciplining a child without, and what we don't realize is when you do that to a child, you actually breaking them. And I remember my mom saying to me, again, my mom comes up with this thing saying to me that when I would tell my kids, Hey, listen, that's not right, but you do this right.

This is the good, but this is what, and it's not you, but what you're doing. So it wasn't, and I was so emphatic on trying to, and I don't know if I did it every time and I'd have to go ask my kids,

but I really was conscious of not saying it's you that's bad. You're amazing. This action that you did, the behavior is not good, but- Yes,

there's a separation. Yeah, yeah. And I remember my mother watching me doing this one time and she said, why are you doing that? Why are you telling them if they've done something wrong that they're good? I said, because they are good. They're cool. They're just learning. They're just experimenting.

If you're constantly telling a child all the things they're doing wrong, they're going to believe they're wrong. Exactly. That's the perspective that they're building because you're the adult in their life. You're the caregiver. You're the person that they look up to the most, and you're shaping them. And so they're relying on you to model behavior. So if you are modeling back to them all the time that they are bad, instead of saying, okay, you're doing this, there's a reason why. And that's what I used to always do with the patients in my practice, when parents are not helping with behavior, because I worked with a lot of adolescents that were behavioral juvenile delinquents and that kind of thing. We would always look at, I'd always explain it like this.

The way you turn up or the way you are, what you're saying and what you're doing are simply signals of an underlying issue. It's not the person. You can't say little Johnny is a behavior problem. That's a terrible thing to say because you've shattered that child's image and they'll just think, oh, what's the point? I may as well live up to what they're telling me I am. You know, and more of that exactly so we've got to be so careful that maybe a person

oh you're always so aggressive you know when you say you always you never those you actually you're building an identity exactly you're shaping an identity and the person's becoming more of that identity and you're not giving them any skills to change. So that if you rather say to them, okay, what you've done is actually pretty aggressive. I know that's not who you are. Let's see why you did that. Because why you did, there's a reason why you did that. And honestly, Lewis, I cannot tell you how many times I've been saying this

recently. We've got to keep, give people grace. We've got to give ourself grace. If someone in your environment or your work environment or your family are being impossible or difficult or whatever, instead of getting mad at them, remove yourself, create a boundary, but change your perspective. There's a reason. There's a reason why they're like that. So get yourself in a safe place that you can actually process it and that you get your own mental health under control and then go back in and try and say, okay, look, that really hurts me the way you do this,

but I understand that this is not who you are. Can I help you get through this? Is there something that's going on? And that shifts things totally because you're immersing people in kindness, which is something I did a podcast on recently. It changes that kind of thing, changes the way that the brain functions immediately in both parties, and you can get to the core issue.

And that goes back to the child. You can do the same thing with a child. You don't have to then break the identity. So kids are growing into adulthood. There's so many bad behavioral issues that have come out of generations of bad parenting. And we do, I mean, I'm much older than you, I think. I don't know how old you are, but I'm 57. How old are you?

I'm 38. I'm 20 years almost older than you, I think. I don't know how old you are, but I'm 57. How old are you? I'm 38. I'm 20 years almost older than you. Okay, so my parents parented me in a very different way where it was very much, you know, head of ostrich in the sand mentality. Children are seen and not heard. You know, pull yourself together. Get up and keep going.

Hide your emotions. Don't show the emotions to the world. That's so hard when you're developing a child's brain that is developing. It's hard to manage your emotions. Exactly. So I'm part of the baby boomer generation and we grew up like this. And that's where you see a lot of issues in the baby boomer generation. And a lot of us have carried that on with our own kids.

And hopefully I didn't because I I recognize I'm doing the work. Thank God I'm doing what I'm doing so I could change that. But that has created a whole breed of people. And if we don't change that, we then impact the next generation and the next generation. So we have to. But yeah, you've got to be able to express yourself. And one of the things when I was working in therapy was doing a lot of family therapy. I would tell the parents that you've got to be authentic.

You've got to explain, hey, I'm sad today. Mom's sad. And it's okay to be sad. And this is why I think I'm sad. And I'm working on it. And I'll be better. So you've modeled now for a child that you said, that child, if you, a parent is sad or worked up or irritated or angry or snap you, and you don't explain to a child, the

child will immediately think, I'm bad. Their identity gets attacked. So if you don't explain to the child why, their identity is affected, and then they think, okay, that they only, adults are perfect. So adults, a sad adult means that I'm the bad person, the adult's the good person, and that's the worst lie out. All of us are a mess, no matter what age you are. Adult or child, you just happen to be an older

version of being a mess and there's hopefully some growth and what we should do is model authenticity and say i am sad today or i am depressed today or yes i yelled at you i'm sorry that was wrong it's my bad i did it because of this so then you model to the child that's oh okay it's okay if i get mad then they start start saying, mom, I'm mad because. Instead of I am mad is my identity. It's not mad is my identity. Mad is what I'm doing. So it's a doing, not a being. It's interesting because this morning I woke up and I was feeling a little sadness and I didn't know why.

And I remember thinking, okay, let me just sit with this for a minute. And I don't need to stay here, but I can be here and reflect on it. And I remember it was just kind of like chatting with a friend. I was like, yeah, I'm just kind of feeling sad. I don't really know why. Maybe I'm feeling like a little, you know, I went through a transition in a relationship lately. I'm like, maybe I'm, you know, a little bit of sadness from that and missing this experience. And I was like, okay, you know, but there's, there's a reason why the transition happened. And even though I'm grateful that, you know, for the lessons and the process of moving

on from this relationship, I can still be sad for the loss of something, something that's not there anymore that was there at one point. And so I just kind of sat with it for 20, 30 minutes. And I was like, okay, but I don't need to stay here because staying in sadness is not going to support my joy, my authenticity, my vision of helping people. So I want to make sure that I don't like reject these range of emotions, but I also, but I also don't want to stay in the negative, not a negative emotion, but the emotion that maybe will hold me back from helping people or having a positive attitude. So I think it's- That's so good.

You just did, sorry, I didn't- Go ahead, go ahead. You just did a neurocycle. You basically gathered- By switching the language. Yeah, you did. You gathered awareness of your sadness. You embraced it.

You were okay with it. You gave yourself permission. And it's so good because it's really okay to be sad it's so totally normal then you reflect it so you gathered awareness you then reflected on why you you maybe didn't do the writing steps but you visualized it so this i was talking with someone i was talking with someone about so you talk so you did so there we go so there's kind of the writing if um if it comes up again you could maybe try and do a metacog. And we didn't get to finishing that. But the different types of writing just can take you deep if you need to.

But you basically did that as a visual discussion. And then you got into it. You reconceptualized it. You said, okay, there's a reason you're sad. The breakup, you're moving on. And then it's okay to be sad because you're grieving the loss. And that's part of it. And now you're moving on.

And so your first step was you've accepted it, but you're moving on and you're quite right that so you've given that sadness you embrace processed and you reconceptualized so you turned what if you didn't if you pushed it down it would have grown because whatever you suppress will get bigger and then it's going to permeate other parts of your life and then there's confusion because you think why am I sad when all this is happening? And then why am I feeling this? And it ends like a little virus, you know, just starts spreading. And so you caught it there and you allowed yourself, but you're also limited. And it's so important with any emotion that is, no emotion is bad.

Every emotion is telling us a story, but there are certain emotions that make us tired. Our brain, body, and conscious mind are limited in energy the non-conscious mind is unlimited in energy so the non-conscious mind will keep driving us to just keep going so we have to discipline or we have to literally create a discipline almost like boundaries between the you know the conscious and the non-conscious so we have to tell so a wise mind is saying okay if i stay your wise mind said if i in sadness, I'm going to get drained. You instinctively recognize. Exhausted, drained, yeah. Exactly.

So that was your wise mind telling you. So you put a cap and you put a seal on it. And I always say that with the neuro cycle, when you're going through the process and you're working through a 63-day cycle, you sit for 15 to 45 minutes, not longer. And you limit and you have an active reach, which is then what you did. You reconceptualize and you said, okay, well, this is, I'm moving on. I'm just, I had a moment of sadness because I'm grieving what's happened and that's okay. So if you're during the course of the day, if you found yourself going back to sadness, you can, instead of allowing yourself to go and revisit the whole transition,

you can go to that statement and you can build on that statement of it's okay to be sad. I'm grieving a loss and that's part of it. And then you move on. So you're training your mind to discipline itself, not to stay in something that will drain you, but to see how you made it work for you because you can't change what's happened to you, but you just change what happens in you. So you just did that. So good job. Thank you. Yeah. You know, I just feel like so many years of my life where I would stay in sadness, anger, resentment, what if statements where I just ruminate on these emotions for days, weeks, months, years. And it only left me with a lack of sleep, with stress, frustration, overwhelm, never feeling good enough, asking why me, all these things. And I never felt peace when I stayed in the emotion and I allowed it to consume me as opposed to be a momentary or an hour thing as opposed to days, weeks, months thing. You literally had to rewire your brain because you because we get into patterns of allowing ourselves to do that ruminating and

i can honestly relate to what you're saying i did it too and you know as i've learned more and more and done more and more research in this area yes i've got an advantage because i'm seeing it directly with the research i'm doing but it's just so free you get so much mental peace when you sit, okay, I'm in that state. And yes, you can have a concern in your life. You can have a concern that is, I mean, you're not just going to not think about a transition

and a breakup. You know, there's going to be a lot of time that you spend on that because it's different processing, but it's how you do it. You know, each little moment, is it a rumination on a hamster wheel or is it a growth, a messy repair, messy repair, hypothesizing messy repair? Are you moving forward?

And that's what's so good because if you get stuck like in the if only, like you said, in those negative emotions, we're creating so much neurochemical chaos in our brain and our body and increasing inflammation, we're aging our body, we're aging, we're just doing everything we shouldn't be doing. And we don't have to. That's staying in the messy mind. The wise mind catches that and disciplines and trains it.

But it's also not going to happen overnight. And that's where people in this technological age think, okay, well, I've done it once. Why am I still doing it? No, you're going to have to. It's going to take you probably nine weeks. If you had to actually look at the time you spent to break that cycle, which meant that you rewired your brain, it's weeks. And if you have breaks in between- It may have probably taken months back in the day when I had to go through that. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Multiple cycles. And that's why- You know what's interesting? It was like eight years ago is when everything started to really shift for me when I turned 30. Because I don't know if I mentioned this in our last interview, but I've talked about it on the show a lot where I started to truly address and heal the root cause of a lot of my pain, anger, resentment from sexual trauma that I went through as a kid from other things that happened that I never expressed that I never brought to the surface that I always kept hidden with shame and insecurity

and frustration or anger. And when I started to process the root causes of a lot of my insecurity and shame, that's when everything started to rewire. So if I would have just said, okay, I'm going to process these things on a surface level for a certain amount of days, I don't think I would have ever found that ability to create that peace within because I was always holding on to some type of trauma that I was unwilling to talk about. Whether it was a big T or a little t, I was unwilling to talk about it out of shame. And when I started to share it, it was freeing. And I'm not saying everyone needs to share these things publicly or whatever, but just talking to a friend or a therapist or a coach, it was allowing me to start rewiring,

okay, I can process these heartbreaks or these tragedies or these moments in life that bring me stress and pain and grief and sadness. I now don't need to hold on to this pain from my whole life and add to it. I can process it and move on. That's beautiful. That's amazing that you did that. And it's interesting that you did that around your 30s and your 20s were really turbulent in terms of trying to suppress. My whole life was turbulent, but until 30, I mean, still my 30s, it's been some ups and downs, but I've been able to process and I've been able to emotionally have more tools to experience and process and not hold on to. And I think I'm still learning because, I mean, I'm going to be learning for a long time. Oh, yeah. It'll be your whole life.

I'm definitely not perfect because I still make a lot of mistakes and I still stay in things longer than I should and want to make sure I give it my all and all those things. But I think I've gotten to a place where I know when to walk away from scenarios as opposed to be the perfectionist, make sure I do whatever it takes to work. I'm like, okay, if this situation isn't supporting me or the other person, at some point we got to transition the got to transition the situation. So. That's incredible. And you've done so much incredible work. Then you've literally what's I can explain to you scientifically, if you're interested in what you've actually done, because I think what you,

you've, what you've gone through, the story you've gone through is, like, especially having the sexual trauma as a young, how old were you again? Five. Five. That's like, you think of it like this as a five year old you look at your caregivers your environment as your heroes as your people that look after you so the distortion is so is so absolutely it's just such a distortion so what's happened if i use my toxic tree and for those that are listening i'm holding up the wiry toxic tree that represents toxic thought as opposed to the healthy green tree. The roots over here, this whole thing is falling apart.

The root part over here is the source of the pain. So that's the source of the trauma. So that's the actual events, all the data, the emotions. The memories. Yes, the memories. So a thought is made of memories, root memories and branch memories. And so the memories are all the things that actually happened and all the emotions that went along with it, the full data.

As it's happening, simultaneously we interpret what's happening. And then if there's repeated patterns that happen, this part over here, the branches are your interpretation. So you said things like shame and what were the other words you used? Insecurity, shame, anger, resentful. And seeing yourself, your identity was broken because you didn't see yourself as having value, all those kinds of things because of that complete distortion. Now, as a five-year-old, you cannot process this.

So this was the way you cope. This always is the balance to that. And even though this is a distortion, you do this to balance that. I mean, it's healthy. It's all great. It works out because the Eunice comes out,

but here, this is all not the Eunice. So there, that would account for when you were at school, maybe you were called to the principal's office. A lot of those behaviors would have come from you not valuing yourself. And then if them come in heavy again, just added more fuel to that.

It was just another, it was just another layer added on. More anger, more frustration, more everything. Yeah. So instead of them looking at why Lewis is doing this, they just told you you were wrong and punished you, that would be the worst thing in your situation. And that would have just made it worse and worse. So then we push that down because we don't know what to do with it.

So you just keep going on and you just keep hoping for the best. And you keep, our kids just seem to be so resilient but this this is building and building so in your non-conscious mind this whole these thoughts that we have these experiences that we have are building through our mind into our brain and into our body and into our mind so this is not only a thought tree in your brain it's also in the dna of every set of your body and it's in the gravitational fields of your mind so it's in three places that's why it's this whole psycho neurobiological impact that's why it's this whole effect that it has on us it's a whole body experience so when you do things like um emdr

therapy did you ever do emdr therapy or i've heard great things about it i haven't tried that yet so when you do you mean you've done a bit of therapy over the years i've done a bunch of different therapies things to things emotional intelligence experiences and workshops and yeah which have helped to pull the stuff from your body to your brain into your mind so we work so we work both ways you get from body brain mind mind brain body and your net kind of all works back and forth but if these aren't dealt with they get suppressed they get suppressed they get suppressed and then maybe only when you 30 like you said then you started actually doing the work or maybe during your 20s. I don't know when you started first remembering the trauma. I'm not sure what age you were at when you started

facing that. I mean, every day I remembered the trauma. I thought about it, but it wasn't until 30 when I had the courage to start talking about it. Okay. So what you had was a situation of some people completely hearted and they don't even know what happened. Then it suddenly comes back. You were constantly living it all the time. Okay, so it was in your… Maybe not every day, but once a week I probably thought about it. Okay, so this was constantly moving from the non-conscious to the conscious.

So the awareness was increasing. So when we have increased awareness but no management and no processing, our anxiety increases. There's got to be a way to get it out somehow. Exactly. So it's coming up, but you're not processing. So it keeps coming up, down, up, down. Each time it goes back down stronger than before. And we see when you have increased awareness without processing, it increases anxiety in the brain.

So if we had to scan your brain at that time, we would have seen a lot of red pockets of high beta energy across your brain, which would have made you be quite edgy, looking for things to constantly keep you busy, distractions on the go, whatever. I don't know exactly what you did over that time, but you may have been just always trying to, you said perfectionism, always trying to achieve, trying to prove yourself in a way. Of course, constantly. I threw it into sports, so I was just playing sports all day, practicing, trying to get better and achieve my goals. And then that would have given you

a lot of release of adrenaline. Absolutely. Every anger, frustration, everything. You channeled into the energy. So it's almost like you use that to cope, almost like an addiction, but in a sense, it was a coping mechanism because addiction is not a disease.

It's purely a coping mechanism. It's a coping signal that you're trying to deal with this stuff. Of something that hasn't been healed yet. Exactly. That's exactly what it is because 86% to 95% of addicts get out of addiction through choice once they are ready to do the work to find the root cause. So you channel for a time into that energy. You also got things like anandamide being released in your brain, which would have given you some bliss hormone, would have given you a sense of excitement,

and you would have had dopamine rushes and all the things that were being drained. So this was draining all of that. So you're doing sport, you put it back, but eventually it explodes. It's like a volcano. If you think of a volcano. Well, then sport ended. So I was like, well, what if I channel my energy? And that's when everything started to come to the surface

where I was like, oh, I'm not liking my personality in these scenarios when I'm feeling triggered. And people aren't liking my personality around me. And it wasn't fun anymore to be around me for a year or two when I was like,

I don't know how to express myself. I know, happy and angry. I don't have a range of emotions. Like how do I learn how to express? And I think a lot, and I, and I empathize for a lot of, um, a lot of humans, but I mean, men in general who are kind of built and raised in the same type of dynamic. I'm like, it's, it's when you've never been taught how to express yourself without being shamed without being made wrong without being like don't don't do that that's not okay you can't show this emotion you're supposed to be a man or this or whatever it is toxic masculinity yeah for women as well like you need to be this this and this you can't do this um it's just a challenge because then

you're always suppressing something it's always suppressing and you have to go back and and that's volcanic in nature because like a volcano will bubble eventually explode and the lava will pour out that's what these eventually do they eventually and it did explode as you've just described it was exploding in your behavior where it was now becoming very in your face and in people's faces and that's and there's that was then signal so all of those behavior patterns the emotions the behaviors the perspective on life that you had, the physical sensations in your body, those were all warning signals that your body was trying to restore balance. So your non-conscious mind was trying to draw your attention to the fact

that you need to identify the source. Your immune system was sending out all kinds of signals to that, to this actual physical experience in your brain, this physical thought in your brain, this physical thought in your brain, your body, trying to get rid of it. So it's trying to eject and get rid of this thing that's causing the imbalance. And it comes out in our emotions and our behaviors. Well, it also comes out physically.

I mean, I was going through a challenging scenario where i knew a relationship that i was in needed to end but i was i was staying in this certain relationship for for longer than it needed to be and i knew and i started to get i never in my life have had this but i started to get like eczema breakouts on my skin in different parts of my body and i was like what is this and i was like never had this in my life i started doing all the allergy tests i had no allergies I was like, never had this in my life. I started doing all the allergy tests. I had no allergies. I was like, maybe I'm having too much almond butter or fricking, I don't know, gluten. What is it? Dairy? What is it? Yeah. Eliminating all these foods, nothing is changing. And I'm like, well, maybe it's just, I'm just going to live with this forever then. And okay.

And literally, I kid you not, once this, the dynamic of the relationship shifted and transitioned, my body, it's going away. And I was just like, this is crazy. Like the physical symptoms is gone. This eczema or outbreak or whatever, which I thought was going to keep spreading all over my body, is now gone. And it's crazy when, like you're saying, we need to be aware of the signals. We need to be aware of the emotions, the feelings, the frustrations, the thoughts, the sadness, the anger, and be aware of them. And we also need to be aware of our physical symptoms.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, am I drained? Am I emotionally tired? Am I frustrated and triggered all the time? Do I have eczema? Is my hair falling out? I don't know, whatever. Am I losing my vision? You know, something, am I getting heart palpitations? Like you've got to be noticing the physical symptoms as well from the emotional stress. Exactly. That, that is so important what you've said and fascinating that you've got, you know,

that you've highlighted a key psychoneurobiological link. And in my most recent book, The Clinic of the Mental Mass, that one that you told me about last time, I talk about some of the things, I didn't put my whole clinical trial, but I talk about some of those impacts. But there's so many, so many studies around the link between unmanaged mind and unmanaged stress and the impact on our body so it's directly like this you you were going through this relationship that was not good for you you hadn't dealt with these issues yet properly so that combination was you your mind was an unmanaged mess and that would generate a lot of basically toxic energy waves gravitational

fields electromagnetic fields literally through your brain and your body so therefore nothing you would have had high gamma high too much high gamma too much high beta probably not enough oxygen and blood in your brain down there and constricted blood vessels around your heart all things that you know the immune system would have been autoimmune because that's eczema is an autoimmune response. So you've all got genetic weaknesses and generally we're under toxic stress and it's come through the generations.

It just happens. It's mutations that happen through generations and they're dormant and they're activated and the mind is the activating factor. So it manifests in so many different ways. So definitely, you've kept the nail on the head. You go for the allergy test, it's not the allergies, because we immediately think purely physical,

but the physical is dominated by the mind. The physical, you don't have any, you can't have X-Men if you're dead. You can only have it if you're alive, and generally, if it's not a food allergy, there is a mind, an undelted. A mental allergy. Yeah, exactly. It's a mental allergy. There is a mind, an undelted. A mental allergy. Yeah, exactly. It's a mental allergy. Literally, literally mental allergies.

These are literally mental allergies and they threaten your survival. So that eczema was your body saying, hey, Lewis, please pay attention. There's something in your mind that you need to deal with. And it's interesting because I take full responsibility for my thoughts and staying and staying in something that I'm no, I'm not supposed to say in something, or for not speaking up or for abandoning myself, like, so as I reflect, and throughout the entire time, you know, I'm in no place to blame someone else, I take responsibility, I take responsibility for what am I doing to be a co-creator in this? What are my thoughts doing to manifest this physically?

And how am I responsible for choosing something different? And it might be a hard decision. It might be a courageous decision that I've been afraid to make, but that's the one my body is telling me you need to make. You need to shift something. You need to shift something within this relationship experience. You need to whatever it might be. And I think a lot of times people will blame others for their feelings,

their emotions, their physical manifestations of their mind. And maybe they are a part of that experience, but you can't blame someone else for the way you're thinking and you're feeling. Or can we? You've for the way you're thinking and you're feeling, or can we? You've hit the nail on the head. There's two parts to that answer. Our environment affects us. So when you were abused, you were a victim. There's no lesson to be learned in that victim, that what you went through as a victim. There's only healing that needs to take place. And so that's what you are responsible for is your healing.

And that's always sounds so hard when someone's been sexually abused to say that you're responsible for your healing. No one else can heal me. No, no people can support you. That's the difference. And that's the whole enhancement culture. We need each other.

So you need someone cheering you along. You need the therapy, the coaching, the counseling, whatever version of that, whatever combination of that, but you, you also need to know how to manage your own mind because at the end of the day, you're not in therapy 24-7. You're not in coaching 24-7. People go to sleep. You're awake at night. You wake up with your mind. You're sitting with your anxiety, your thoughts.

What do you do? So mind management becomes absolutely essential in us being able to cope with anything that we've gone through. And yes, that is our, we can't change, I keep saying it, we can't change what's happened to us, but we can change what's happened in us. So that abuse that you went through, there's never anything that can excuse that. And you are not, there's no lesson to be learned. And you were a victim and that person was wrong and needs to be, and person or persons, you know, they need to be punished. And that, those are facts, those are facts, but for you to be dis and person or persons, you know, they need to be punished. And those are facts. Those are facts. But for you to be disengaged from that is extremely important.

And the only way you can disengage from that is through embracing, processing, and reconceptualizing. So it's a deconstruction, reconstruction process. Otherwise, you keep this in your brain and this drives you and it controls you like it did for so many years. Every day, this was controlling controlling you coming up and controlling you so until you did the work which you did to start recognizing those signals the physical signals in your body the eczema whatever it was at that time that heart palpitations gut issues the emotional

signals depression anxiety panic frustration whatever worry the perspective signals how are you looking at life what is your general view of life? And then also looking at which one have I left out? The physical, emotional, there's four. Emotional, physical, perspective, and why am I blanking on the fourth one? There's four different areas that we look at. We'll come back in a moment. So once we gather awareness of those signals, then what we do is we can then start, once we've gathered awareness,

we can then start doing the reflection, the why. But you've got to do it very sequentially. You first got to pay attention. So the signals are warning signals. They're clues. So you become a detective in your own life. Why is this happening?

Okay, let me start doing some experiments. Exactly. Get some tests done and realize, okay, I'm eliminating this. I'm eliminating that. Then where's the root cause? Of that thing. So you've got to start there, but you've got to start where's the root cause? Of that thing. So you've got to start there, but you've got to start with your signal.

So these are the four, emotional, what you're doing, behavioral, physical, what's in your body, and perspective. Okay? So emotional, physical, behavioral, and perspective. And you've got to find those first. As soon as you're aware, you then pull this up and you change 1,400 neurophysiological responses in your brain and your body. You shift the resilience of your brain and you start now enabling yourself to be stronger

to face that stuff. And your mind, brain, and body know it's going to be hard. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you thought this was powerful, make sure to share this with a friend, post it on social media, make sure to tag me and Dr. Caroline Leaf as well. And part two is coming soon. So stay tuned for part two. And make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 1079 to check out our previous interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf that blew up all over the internet as well. And if you are here for the first time, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcast right now or Spotify and stay notified and up to date on the latest and greatest from

the School of Greatness. We'd love to have you a part of the community, so click that subscribe button right now. And I want to leave you with this quote from Abraham Maslow, who said, In any given moment, we've got two options, to step forward into growth or to step back into safety. I cannot emphasize this enough. The mind, the way you think, will dictate your behaviors, your actions, and your life. So we've got to be willing to learn how to master the mind. We've got to learn how to understand how the mind works and then use the strategies and the tools backed by science that

prove that you can increase the level of your life, the quality of your life, the quality of your thoughts, which will help dictate your behaviors and your actions and your life. Again, you were born to live in peace. You were born to live in harmony, to experience love, to experience fulfillment. And if you're feeling anxiety or stress or frustration or overwhelming your life, then please use these tools. Make sure to get the book, listen to these resources for free here on the podcast, and use these tools for the betterment of your life and spread this message to someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. We all need tools to help us increase the quality of our life. So I hope you enjoyed this. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately that you are so loved, you're so worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you. And you know

what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.