The School of Greatness - Neuroscientist Reveals How Your Mind Blocks Love w/ Caroline Leaf EP 1481

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

The Summit of Greatness is back! Buy your tickets today – summitofgreatness.com – Born in South Africa, Dr. Caroline Leaf is the bestselling author of such books as Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, and Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. Since the 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 how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input.During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in South Africa and the USA, she developed her theory Geodesic Information Processing theory of how we think, build memory, and learn into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression.In this episode you will learn,How our brains are wired for love and its impact on attracting a healthy romantic partner.The influence of childhood trauma versus a solid foundation in shaping our ability to find love.Gender differences in how the male and female brains are wired for love.Exploring whether our current wiring for love is different from our innate nature.Strategies for healing ourselves before entering a relationship.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1481For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More relationship building advice from some of our favorite relationship experts:Esther Perel: https://link.chtbl.com/1291-podFaith Jenkins: https://link.chtbl.com/1221-podMatthew Hussey: lewishowes.com/944 

Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jaspreet Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to

dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials. So if you're ready to learn, heal and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends and I'll see you there. Everything that we do that is impacting us negatively is coming from something we've experienced everything so it's essential that we live lifestyles of mind management so that we can observe ourselves so if if i for example i've trained myself to do this if i start noticing a certain pattern in my behaviors and i notice that there's maybe some jealousy emerging or some envy.

I'm very quick to observe it. Now, I'm not saying I'm a saint at all, far from it. I'm just saying I've trained myself and I'm proud that I've trained myself. And I'm saying it because you can do this. 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. I'm excited about having you here

because I feel like people are struggling in relationships right now. There's a lot of confusion, and I feel like a lot of it has to do with the way we think and how our minds and our brains are wired around love. So I'm curious, can you start us off by talking about why and how we are wired for love as human beings and why it is so challenging for so many people to find and attract healthy love. Lewis, it's such an excellent question and such an important question and one that I've actually written about quite often. And there's actually a Nobel winning scientist who talks about the fact that we're wired for love. And so it's a good term. It's a really great way of explaining things. So

in a nutshell, I'm a psychooneurobiologist, as you know. So look at mind, brain, body connection. So what myself and other scientists have found is that your brain and body are basically wired for love and your mind because they're three separate things. So that means that every single cell, every single organ, every single system is wired for love, which means survival, which means that we are geared towards loving each other, connecting with each other, supporting each other, helping each other. You know, we are really made to make love and not war. You know, and that's really how we function.

But free will and choices in life happens and that can mess with that. And an interesting kind of way of understanding this also is if something bad happens, like politics or whatever, we're drawn to that, not because we have bad wiring in us or that we have a natural sort of evil wiring, which is what often people talk about, that we have this sort of dark side. It's we are daunted because of being wired for love. side it's we we are daunted because of being wired for love so if something is is toxic in whatever form we're drawn to that to fix it really it fascinates us because and it grabs us because it's throwing love off balance so if okay so let me write this down so if if we see someone that maybe has toxic tendencies or behaviors or thoughts or energy? Maybe not

all the time, but we see like something, a part of them is broken, right? Does that mean we're broken also and we're trying to fix them and us or we're not broken, but we're trying to fix someone else? We're drawn, not so much trying to fix each other. We're drawn to try and support return to balance. And so it could be that we are very drawn because it reflects our own brokenness and we can recognize the similarities. It could be for a multitude of reasons. There's going to be so many reasons why someone's broken. It could just be that you just love that person so much and you see them broken and it just touches you. So many reasons. Right. But we're drawn to try and restore the balance. And, you know, what's interesting is like if you take a political kind of situation

where people are drawn or conspiracy theories or the things that are happening in our country at the moment where there's so much divide and so much hate as opposed to love. And while people are so fascinated with that negative news and that kind of thing, very often it's pitched as because you've got this dark side, as I mentioned. But people are caught up in that because it's so, this is so not normal. Now, they don't know that sort of consciously people aren't talking about it like that, but that is part of our wiring. So essentially when people get sucked in and then they get down the rabbit hole of the

negative toxicity and really get caught up, what happens is that your brain will merge with your environment. So, but your brain will merge with your environment. So, but your brain is driven by your mind. So where your mind drives your brain, your brain and where you keep the focus, that's what your brain will merge with. So where people stay in and become more and more and more and more toxic is because their mind, they haven't managed their mind. So their mind is now kind of just messy minds, just kind of got into this pathway.

And then they've wired that functioning, that way of thinking into the brain and it's counter to our natural functioning. So Lewis, literally that wires in a toxic thought into the brain. And I know your audience has seen these trees when I did. Let's see it though, I love it. So that is in your brain and that toxic event or whatever that you're getting sucked into. Can you explain it? What's in the brain and that toxic event or whatever that you're getting sucked into. Can you explain it? What's in the brain? Absolutely.

So this does whatever we tell it to do. The brain can't do anything on its own. When you're dead, your brain just disintegrates. So the thing that's making the brain work is your mind. So your mind is your sentience, your aliveness, your ability to have this conversation, to appreciate a rainbow, to love Martha, to do all the different things that we do as a human. That's what our mind is. And it's actually a biofield that's in and around us that makes us work, makes your heart pump. It makes you see the meaning of a sunset, the meaning behind a painting.

It's all of those things. So to the basic biology of making your brain work, the energy waves and the chemicals and your heart pump, to us experiencing our humanity. To experiencing, feeling, perceiving these things. The mind allows us to perceive our environment. Exactly. And experience it. The experience of a conversation and enjoying each other. All of that.

No mind. You and I couldn't do this. We'd be dead and we'd have a disintegrating brain. So the brain's not doing any of that. No mind, you and I couldn't do this. We'd be dead and we'd have a disintegrating brain. So the brain's not doing any of that. So all of, because the nature of the brain, every part of the brain, right, and the body, right down to the level of, if you go with the structures down to the cells, down to inside the cells, everything's geared for survival. Everything's geared for, wired for love. So survival and wired for love are basically in the same pathway. So if you hate each other, it doesn't lead to survival. Hatred leads to death and dissension leads to death in stages and breakdown and disease and all that kind of stuff. So if, and in terms of ourselves, if people get caught up in hate, hating each other, envy, jealousy, dissension, that each of those experiences is becoming a physical

thing in the brain. So let's say that you are watching something on TV that's working you up and it's very negative and you get into conversations, you start fighting with family members and, you know, like the vaccine or the COVID, for example, I broke up family members. That experience is your mind is listening to all the stuff processing you with your mind and it lands up becoming a physical structural change in your brain. Really? So that energy goes into your brain.

Your brain responds electromagnetically, electrochemically, and genetically. And it's happening very fast. It's like waves of energy that you're putting in your brain. And they, like a wave, build, collapse, build, collapse. Every time you collapse, you make proteins. And those proteins hold that information as a vibration and those proteins

build together to grow these things. And what are these things? Thoughts. So this is the mind? This is thought? This is what the mind looks like in the brain.

Ah, gotcha. Does that make sense? So this is, so every experience that we have with our mind, which is life, is built into these thought trees

into the brain. And they are, they have the structure where there's a source, which is life, is built into these thought trees into the brain. And they are, they have this, the structure where there's a source, a root system, and then there's a processing,

how we uniquely process that experience, and then there's our interpretation of that experience as a unique human being. How we create meaning around it,

our interpretation of meaning. Exactly. That's what this is. Exactly. So those are in the brain, good and the bad. Hopefully more of these.

Now we're wired for these. This brings health to the brain. This is the bad. Hopefully more of these. Now we're wired for these. This brings health to the brain. This is the bad thoughts? That's the toxic thought. And they're very much alive, and that's the healthy thought. And that's the hot thought, okay. And that's very much what they look like. They look like these branch things, and the root's the source.

And so essentially, this is what we're wired for. This is wired for love and applies into our relationships. We want a beautiful garden. That's what we want. We want a forest, a garden, rainforest, all those things. Exactly.

And at the core of who we are, this wide full of nature that we see as these healthy trees in the brain, healthy functioning of all the cells and the organs and so on of the body

and also in the actual cells of the body right down into the depths of the cells, health and love and survival kind of all go together. Okay.

So as soon as something happens like a toxic relationship or a toxic focus of whatever, whatever it may be, is we build these instead of these. We build negative thoughts, toxic thoughts over healthy thoughts. Exactly. And the thought, you can see there's lots of branches and roots. So that thought is made of a lot of memories, memories of the data. So this is the whole conversation or the details is the data.

And the similar data classes together to form thoughts. So if you think of it, the data are the memories. So memories are the details of the thoughts. So thoughts are made of root memories and interpretation memories. Does that make sense?

Yes. Okay, so these then, this is what the brain is designed for. So if these go into the brain, the immune system of the brain says, hey, that's a pathogen. That's like a pathogen. That's like the COVID virus. That's toxic. It's toxic.

So it sends out immune factors in exactly the same ways if it was a COVID virus in your body or whatever, in any kind of virus or bacteria or something that's threatening your survival, your immune system kicks in. We all understand that and sends out immune factors that creates inflammation around that area. In the brain. In the brain and the body, depending on where it's at. If it's toxic, first in the brain. Good question. Let's reverse this. Here's the toxic experience. Lands up in the brain as this. In the mind, it's a field, but it's not a nice sine wave. It's a crazy, chaotic energy wave. And in the body, it's a change inside the actual structure of the cell in an area called a microtubule. And the microtubules inside the cell, and those microtubules are made of proteins and those proteins hold the vibrations of information.

They hold the memory. They hold the memory. Right. So you build the main memory in your brain and that works very closely with your mind and then as it builds

in your brain, your brain sends instruction and it builds in all other 37, 200 trillion cells or however many we have in your body. So it's a slightly different type of memory

but it builds into, the data is built into every cell of our body. That's why we have body memory. Okay, that's why we different type of memory, but it builds into, the data is built into every cell of our body. That's why we have body memory. Okay, that's how we can feel the pain, and not just in our mind, but in our body. And when we say I feel the pain in my mind, you are. Those waves will give you a headache. Those, the actual physical damage in your brain that this is causing, you feel it.

So what I'm hearing you say is the mind is an energy field. Yes. We call it a biofield. A biofield. And it's, how far does it expand from the body? Not sure, but... Like an arm's length maybe or a few feet? I think at this stage in science we're not sure,

but it's probably kind of our arm's depth. Yes. And so it's a biofield and energy fields. The mind is there. Yes. And it's embodied. of our armistice. And so it's a biofield and energy fields. The mind is there. Yes, and it's embodied. It goes around and through. Around and through you. Yes.

And when we experience something, we see an event, someone says something to us, we interpret it. It could be a bad thing, but we can interpret it good and it could have a positive effect or it could be a bad thing and we really hold on it good, and it could have a positive effect, or it could be a bad thing, and we really hold on to this negative thought, right?

We have one of the two. We build one of these kind of negative thought trees. Yes. When that happens, then it's not going to have a frequency in this biofield that is calm and peaceful. This harmonious frequency, it's going to be a chaotic frequency. It's going to be chaotic. And when we have a chaotic frequency in the mind or biofield, it will also penetrate the physical field. Exactly.

And it'll cause stress. It'll cause overwhelm. It'll cause fear, scarcity. Exactly. Lack, defensiveness, all these different things. All these different things. Got it. That's brilliant.

You did that brilliantly. No, that was brilliant. Thank you. You made it simpler than what I did. It was really good. So that also, what we, what this research, I mean there's mind-blowing research out there, but there's research that's been done that shows that

these thought trees, if you go inside, these are the dendrites, this is the neuron, if you go inside, that's where you find these what we call these microtubules that are made of these proteins that actually store the little memories, the vibration, the data. So it's basically inside, not the outside of the neuron. You go inside, you find these special proteins that roll up, they're like beads and they

roll up into these sheets. And inside there, you've got this vibration, which is like an aromatic ring. And that's what's the memory. And memory and this can constantly change they build and rebuild now they do this building and rebuilding in the brain in the body they're more like a railway track so they're kind of fixed and then they go through a different process of change i know i'm going into detail but they found resonance that is similar to music that these vibrations in the microtubules produce resonance like a harmonious resonance or non-harmonious resonance. So this would be a harmonious resonance unique to the individual, and this would be

a non-harmonious resonance. And what they've even found, and this is research that's like still pretty new, is that it kind of lines up with the universe in terms of planetary movement of stars. And I mean, they are drawing lines through. The frequencies, yeah. Sir Roger Penrose, for example, is a mathematician who's won Nobel prizes stars. I mean, they are drawing lines. The frequencies, yeah. So Roger Penrose, for example, is a mathematician who's won Nobel Prizes. And I mean, he's phenomenal. He's actually been doing, showing how this kind of works.

Sure. And whatever. So that's another whole. So if we have a lot of the toxic thoughts stored in our minds, our memories, and our cells from experiences, events, childhood, previous relationships that maybe didn't end well. And we have these memories that are these toxic thoughts. How can we heal those thoughts to attract healthy love moving forward?

Exactly. Perfect. So great question. So essentially what will happen is if these are unresolved issues from a toxic relationship, so let's say that you had a really bad marriage or you've had a really bad whatever, and all the experience is stored in this, so that's the source as it's happening and that's your interpretation. And there's a great strong chance that your interpretation of things like, I don't deserve love or I'll never have love or I can't trust that person. Is it too good to be true or is it, yeah. Looking for the shoe to drop, you know, and sort of, and then holding back and hesitating to commit and, you know, all those kinds of things. So that's what's in here because of that. And there's this distorted processing.

This not only is it affecting your actual relationship, but you are actually increasing the vulnerability of your brain and body to disease by 35 to 98%. Wow, really? Over time, yeah. It's cumulative over time. And I know you've interviewed Lisa Eppelsoh of Iron Her and I are communicating and going to be doing some work together hopefully in the future. And I've done work on telomeres as well based on her research and I've shown that with mind management,

you can actually grow telomeres and make them healthy within nine-week cycles. And an unhealthy telomere is what you're going to see in this kind of tree. A healthy telomere is what you can see in here. So if you've got a toxic issue you haven't dealt with, not only is it affecting the relationship, but it's shortening your telomeres. It's changing your inflammation. It's affecting your hypothalamic pituitary axis.

It's affecting everything so that over timeuitary axis. It's affecting everything. So that over time, the weakened telomeres make weakened cells, which make weakened systems, which make weakened bodies, vulnerability. So it's not something that, the point I'm making, Lewis, is that we can't actually sit with those issues. We've got to deal with them. Because we are shortening our telomeres. We are increasing our vulnerability to disease and illness over time. So, wow.

You know, how can we, I mean, if we don't manage these toxic thoughts and memories from previous relationships that have hurt us or caused us harm or frustration, and sometimes when we end a relationship, it can be devastating. It can take years to recover sometimes. If we don't learn to heal these toxic thoughts. You carry that into the relationship. Is it possible to create a healthy relationship in the next one? Yes, it is. So the thing. If we don't heal these thoughts. No, no, not if we don't

heal them. It's always going to stick. Sorry, I didn't listen. Yeah. So if we don't heal these toxic thoughts from previous relationship, is it possible to have a healthy relationship in the future if we don't heal them? No, that's a straight, it's going to affect us. So the person isn't going to change in front of us, the next person and be better than the previous? No, we've got to change yourself because what will happen is if we don't heal that, we're going to always look for that. We're going to externalize this and we're going to be looking for the lack that this has created in that person. And because it's not their issue, it's yours. They're never going to satisfy that.

So you're going to go from relationship to relationship looking for something that's missing in you. Wow. So you have to change your relationship with yourself before you can change your relationship with someone else. So you're not going to fix everything before a relationship because there's certain triggers in a relationship. That you have to process and go through. It'll be triggered. Mac and I have been married 35 years and we're still working through things.

And then we realize, hey, that's actually coming from, just the other day we talked, that issue has actually come from way back when. That's something that in his childhood, that kind of clash, you know what I'm saying? Sure. So we didn't heal everything before we got married, but we healed a lot before we got married.

And so the biggest issues that we will, obviously, the most obvious ones you'll work on first. But a lot of people don't even want to work on those. And a lot of people's coping mechanism is one of, you know what, it's not me, that's the problem. Right, it's the other person. Or they say, I need that from that person and I'm looking for that from that person. So that's why I say

if you go into a relationship like that, it's not going to work. It's going to be a very challenging, it may last, but it's never going to, you may even get married.

You may even find that you stay married but at some point things crash. But it may not be healthy. It may be toxic. Exactly. And then if you have kids

along the way, you know, they get more stressful. So why, you mentioned this in the beginning, that why do we attract certain people? You were saying like we tracked, what were you saying?

Like we attract someone that might have something broken inside of them so we can bring harmony or balance? What were you saying? So basically it's humans, humanity or the way we are because of a wide full of nature in the mind,

brain, and body. When something is off, we're drawn to that to restore balance. So that's why very often you will see, you may recognize

your brokenness, which is one of the comments you made in someone else and that could draw you to them. Or it could be that you just see something that you didn't really experience, but it could have triggered something or didn't trigger something.

But just the mere fact that you're human, there's a desire to help. That's what people go in. That's what people, look at what you've done with your life. You help people. Your whole biggest, one of your biggest features about you as a person is you have a desire to constantly help others. And that's very authentic and very real. People see that very clearly in you.

But when it happens, here's the interesting thing you hear this in uh sometimes you hear women who will try to find a guy who maybe has a deficiency or is broken or something's off right and they see the potential and they're like okay i'm going to go help this person overcome this challenge or this pain or the struggle and fix them. Um, and they struggle for them, that guy to change or transform or heal or grow. Or when they do transform, then there's nothing else to fix, or they try to reinvent new problems to fix in them. So what happens when a woman who is not healed finds a healthy man, a man who's working on himself, who wants to grow, who's doing it independently, but doesn't need like all this fixing? Why is she unable to be okay and happy in a healthy relationship?

Because there's brokenness in her and what she's trying to fix is herself, externalizing it. And you'll see that male to female, you'll see it in male to male relationship, female to female relationship, whatever. Really? It's the unique person. So first we must look at the person, see ourselves as a unique human being, and then we look at what our gender is. And that's really important because otherwise we're going to have this, unconsciously have this sort of sexist thing that, you know, that is done in one side or another kind of thing. And it's very, I mean, I'm not contradicting what you're saying. It's totally, I totally agree. It could be a female to whatever. It's both, it's all.

It could be a female, whatever. Well, that's all, yeah. So essentially, this brokenness is the first comment that you question that you make. We can be attracted to, and it's not the law of attraction. We are not talking about that. Absolutely not. Okay, that's not what I'm talking about. That's a whole different story and a whole different, very unscientific story too. But there's elements of truth in everything.

What we're talking about here is the essence of what I have missing in my relationship. I need to either see in someone else and want to fix, or I want to, because I'm trying to fix my own thing. What I have missing in my relationship to myself? Self, yes. I need to find in someone else that I can fix. Yes. And there's two key things over there. Instead of me fixing myself, I'm trying to fix someone else.

And you can't fix anyone else. The only person you can fix is yourself. All we can do is support other people. That's when it gets even more challenging in relationships when you're constantly trying to change someone. You're constantly trying to fix them or change them. I just feel like that's where a lot of stress and chaos happens. It's conflict. Because you're not accepting them. Exactly. You're not choosing them based on them. I just feel like that's where a lot of stress and chaos happens. It's conflict because you're not accepting them.

Exactly. You're not choosing them based on acceptance. Exactly. I can give you an example. Yes. I can give you an example of a relationship of people that have been married for quite a few years. And the male, I'm not obviously mentioning names, I'm going to protect people's identity,

but the male, the husband in the relationship was incredibly relationship used to get incredibly irritated with his wife and switch off and found her just demanding and always nagging. And they had just kind of got into this pattern of very unhealthy and it got to the point where the kids are out of home and all that kind of thing. And this person is basically at a point where this is like, do I carry on with this?

Which is very often what happens. After the kids are gone. Yeah, then you realize it. And this person started doing the neurocycle. I mean, they were sort of working through this process and started initially very skeptical because, and basically the neurocycle is just mind management.

It's the scientific way that you get your mind, messy mind to listen to a wise mind to change your neuroplasticity. So it's mind driven neuroplasticity. So it's the science of how do I find how I'm showing up and how can I change that? Which is your question you asked right in the beginning. Can we change this or do we have to live with all of this? Yes, we can change it.

So that person, that husband lived with that relationship for years, but you don't have to live for whatever, 40, 50 years of marriage. It was long that they were in. You don't have to live with it. You can train your kids to start looking at these things in yourself so that you can become healthy and pick up things quickly and change them. Long story short, after a period of initially being very skeptical, suddenly a connection was made around about three weeks into the process of, oh, I'm actually blocking off to my wife and she is just trying to get me to connect with her. That's what sounds like the nagging. And me seeing her as just wanting everything to be perfect all the time

and finding that really irritating is actually triggering my poor relationship with my dad. Wow. And my dad was one who required complete and utter perfectionism. Oh, my gosh. And used to constantly go. So as soon as it would sound similar. Someone's nagging me or criticizing me. I shut off.

I protect. Coping mechanism. And the realization has transformed and saved a marriage. I mean, I've left a lot of detail on it, but that's the essence of the story. Sure. coping mechanism and the realization has transformed and saved a marriage i mean i've left a lot of detail but that's the story sure so there's an incident of years of this growing this this is the initial incident as a child growing up but the parent that loved this the child but had a way of dealing that made that child feel not good enough. How much does our love as adults in relationships reflect based on what we witnessed our parents' love like as kids?

Huge, huge, Lewis. Really? It's really huge. Having said that, if you didn't witness a good relationship, it doesn't mean you can't have one. But it does mean you're going to have to overcome a lot of obstacles and that is definitely... It's harder. It's harder. It's definitely harder because it have to overcome a lot of obstacles. And that is definitely. It's harder.

It's harder. It's definitely harder because it generally leads to a lot of mistrust. As an adult in relationships. And what very often happens is that when you've seen that you haven't had a good model, you don't get into deep enough relationships and then you can get hurt very easily. Or you kind of end up maybe sort of almost using people without even consciously using people. And you meet people that are also broken. So you use each other.

It creates a lot of distrust and sort of fear and lack of commitment. And, you know, you look for any things will trigger you much more quickly and that kind of thing. So it's really important to, you know, you know what I always say when it comes to parenting, because I'm a parent of four kids, as you know, and awful for work with us, which is quite a miracle too, which is amazing if you think of it. But I always tell my kids this, I was someone's daughter and I have a mom and a dad and they were someone's daughter and son. And each person had baggage. So you cannot go into a marriage, a relationship, and parenting without baggage.

We know that. It's logical. So you've got all this come down. It's in these networks. And it plays out and it's triggered. And whatever isn't resolved will be triggered badly. And whatever is resolved, well, you'll handle it. You'll see, oh, I could be like that, but I'm like this.

Or my mom did that, but I'm not going to do that. And so in other words, that's where you've worked through something. going to do that. And so in other words, that's where you've worked through something. So what we need to do as daughters and sons going into relationships is to say, okay, I honor what my parents went through. They maybe didn't have a great relationship. I don't know the ins and outs. It's not really a child's responsibility to know all the intimate details of why a marriage broke down to certain, you know, there's a certain amount that they should know and a certain amount that they shouldn't know and recognize that, you know, there's a certain amount that they should know and a certain amount that they shouldn't know and recognize that, you know,

sometimes things don't work out. And to honor these stories, but at the same time, you have the right to honor the impact it had on your life. Right. So it's to kind of, so it's not... There could be good impact and bad impact at the same time. Yeah.

You can hold both in your hands. You can hold both in your hands at the same time. But very often what will either happen is you'll swing to suppressing the negative because you feel you've been disloyal to a parent or to the parents. Really? So, yeah, it very often happens. So you'll almost suppress it for years. And act like, what, it didn't happen or wasn't that bad or... Yes, that it wasn't...

Diminishing it. You deny it. You diminish, you suppress, and you don't deal. And then suddenly something will trigger you one day and this happened with the conversation that i had with someone in working in clinical practice where very successful person and parents went to a very traumatic marriage and um the parent the one parent said way too much to the child yeah yeah and it was it was there's got to be boundaries there's got to be an amount that you do say because otherwise the child will think it's their fault that's another thing we need to realize children will immediately if there's got to be boundaries. There's got to be an amount that you do say, because otherwise the child will think it's their fault.

That's another thing we need to realize. Children will immediately, if there's a broken marriage, a child will think it's their fault, that they're the cause. So it is important to say, hey, listen, this is not you. This is between us. If someone watching or listening has parents who have been divorced, whether it was traumatic or not traumatic as a child with their relationship, watching the relationship,

but they went through divorce. What are the percentages or how does that indicate how successful you will be in a marriage or in a relationship if you don't learn to create new healthy meaning around their model of love and relationship and their divorce? And if you don't heal and process that. What are we setting ourselves up for if we're not aware of it and make sure we really work on these things if our parents have been divorced?

You set yourself up for failure. And the reason I say that, and it sounds really harsh, but the other flip side of the coin is that once you do deal with it, you set yourself up for success. And that power is in your hands. And that's really why it's so important that we don't suppress stuff.

Because suppressing stuff, not only is it keeping the toxicity and increasing your vulnerability to disease, so physically you're suffering, and you will suffer more and more over time. Because it's your natural life or life and age being challenged. Your survival is being challenged. So your body is trying to find this thing. white for 11 ages being challenged, survival's being challenged, so your body's trying to find this thing. At the same time, you are going

to kind of boomerang from one bad relationship into the next because you haven't dealt with the core issue. But once you start dealing with it, the beauty of, you can have, look at this example, the first example I gave, you can have a 50-year marriage and 50 years of a toxic

pattern that really was problematic, and you can heal that and have the last however many years you've got left in a very healthy relationship. So the hope, Lewis, is in the fact that we can change, but there is work involved. There is no pull that's going to fix it. There is the work involved. What happens to the brain then when we see our parents that have harmony at home, they hold hands, they kiss, they dance, they love each other, they show affection versus what happens in the brain when we see distance, passive aggressive energy between our parents, yelling, screaming, slamming of doors, no affection between each other as a model. What happens to the brain

with those two instances? Such a good question. So basically observing your parents as a child, that's all. You're modeling that relationship. So your relationships are, that's your model. So you're wiring that in. So you're wiring in the fights, the slam doors, the silent treatment, the moaning, the upset, the crying, the tears, the confusion, the closed doors and all the noises and sounds. And maybe it even gets to the point where there's abuse. So that becomes your, you build it into your brain and your whole thing is you can't trust people. I can't trust someone else. I can't build a relationship. This is not safe. Is it I can't trust people in intimacy and in romantic relationships or I can't trust people in intimacy and in romantic relationships, or I can't trust friends, colleagues.

It could bleed over into, depending on how bad, depending on how you see it, depending on your perception, depending on the age, depending on the context, depending on how you're involved. All those factors will influence

how it's going to play out into your future. And that's, yeah, so it could, I mean, some people, it will just mean that they, it's everything. They just live a life of completely just, and that, sorry, quickly, just I know you've got a question. A lot of narcissistic type behavior, if you track back, it's complete distrust of all people. Wow.

And I'm not condoning it because it's very destructive behavior patterns that people really suffer from. But it's trying to control the uncontrollable that they have. So very often if you track back, you'll see that there's been a model that has been very bad at some point. And on the outside, their upbringing may have looked perfect, like they may have had money and good schools. Put together and dressed well. But the inside wasn't, the end of the person wasn't validated.

The ability to, hey, I came home, I was bullied today, I'm sad. They weren't allowed to process emotions. So their coping mechanism was one of, I'm going to control people. I don't trust anyone, so I am going to drive around the shots here, around the show, and that can lead to no narcissistic type behavior. So that's just a side note. And is there a certain attachment style that we will have in relationships based on the model we witness from our parents?

For sure. For sure. So attachment styles research has been done in a very limited, with a limited group of people, but its applicability is pretty good. And so what we, if you look in different cultures, it's quite interesting to see that most cultures where you've got sort of more solid relationships, it's not the child's brought up by the community. So it's not just the mom and dad, it's the whole community. So in the United States and westernized countries, it's very much,

you know, isolated, not enough of the of grand. And sometimes it's just, if it's a way that we've gone in this country and in a lot of ways, which is unfortunate because you do get a healthier model and you've got more balance. So if parents need alone time, they can get it more

because you've got the granny and the family and you've got the community. So a lot of pressure on parents that leads to arguments that could have been probably resolved if they had a bit more time alone. Could, you know, and that child maybe wouldn't have missed as much so we have got an involved we have got society now that has needs if we need to look at our society for our societal structures or work structures and that kind of thing that put that kind of pressure on families

it's definitely putting pressure that are been a pressure cooker that people are living in a little bit of a pressure cooker which i think think is leading toward problems in relationships that probably wouldn't have been there if they had more of a community. Right. So in terms of how, okay, there's so many questions going through my head now. So to bring us back to your question. Detachment styles was the current one. Yeah, attachment styles.

So in the community, we're going to have a slightly more balanced attachment style versus if it's just... If we're raised by a community or aunts and uncles and friends. It's more realistic. It's more like, okay, they're arguing. Give me some time. Let me go sit with granny. Because we're not needing the love and affection from one person. Is that right?

We get it from a community. But if you're in this very isolated, insular type environment, where does the parent explode safely? There's no safe environment for a child. Exactly. There's no safe environment. There's no safe environment for the parents. And you are going to explode. It's very normal to have those arguments. So that's the ideal. It's not what's happening. So what do we do now? How do we deal with that? You have to be honest with your kids. do now? How do we deal with that? You have to be honest with your kids. You have to, and what Mac and I tried this and we got it right and we got it wrong, but we got it right. I think a lot of the time was we do have very different opinions about a lot of things. And both of us are Italian and background and explosive. So we did have arguments. I mean, much of it's easy when kids are around and the pressures of raising kids and working. Yeah, four kids, that's a lot. It's a lot.

And both of us working and whatever, it's a lot. And both of us working and whatever. It's a lot. And we move countries with young kids. And so what we did from what we did right, we did it wrong. But what we did right was if we had an argument, we would never just leave it. We would go to the kids. We would apologize. We gave them permission to tell us when we were upsetting them.

So they would say, hey, listen, you know you're going to make up. Can you just resolve this? Or mom reading this or dad that. We gave them permission to actually you know, like from an outside point of view say, hey, you are impacting us. This is really upsetting us. And this is, you know, and reminding us that, hey, you do that. Okay, so let me go back a step. If you have an argument, you need to tell your kids, okay, we had an argument about X, obviously language, age appropriate, and also within boundaries. They don't need all the details. We had an argument, we disagreed on this.

I didn't like dad's reaction. Dad didn't like my reaction. I did this that bugged him. He did this that bugged me. This is how we resolved it, and this is what we're going to do. That's a neuro cycle. We went through all five steps of the neurocycle. Once we'd cooled down and calmed down and we used the neurocycle individually on ourselves

and then on each other, then we would, and I didn't call it the neurocycle then because that's a new name, but that process we applied and it was a God-saving thing. It was a life-saving thing in our marriage because it helped us to stand back, calm down, evaluate,

what am I really fighting about? What is the take momentum worry concept? What happens if both of us are dead tomorrow? One of us is dead. What would we do right now? And so we would resolve it and, you know, we would let our kids know. We still trying to resolve it. So there may still be a bit of argument or whatever, but this is where we're going.

This is our resolution. We still love each other. Kids need that. Even an adult child needs that. It isn't an argument. If Mac and I have an argument now, we still do it. We'll still say, Hey, you. We still love each other. Kids need that. Even an adult child needs that. It isn't an argument. If Mac and I have an argument now, we still do it. We'll still say, hey, you know, we love each other. Dad, you were telling me about this.

Sorry about that. Sorry. We tell them. So that's what we can do in our intimate environments that we live in in this day and age. We can go through that process of modeling to a child, listen, it's normal to have arguments. We have bad days. We are a mess. No one's perfect. We're not perfect. We are a mess. No one's perfect.

We're not perfect. We do not expect you to be perfect. But let's talk about a horrible argument. I'm so sorry. We should not have yelled. It was scary for you. Tell us how you feel. You know, get it out.

Don't, and go through the sequence. Don't just blurb it all out. Be ordered. The big thing, nurse, about healing in a relationship to have healthy future relationships is not just get the kids to talk about emotions or one, mix it all up, very organized. Let's talk about this is how I felt. This is one of my emotion was, this is what I said. This is what I did. Four categories of signals, very organized. I'm going to talk about how we felt our emotions, our behaviors, our bodily sensations, and our perspectives.

So we were both mad and irritated. We yelled and spoke too loudly and used ugly body language, or leaning in or whatever. Our perspective was that we were very irritated with each other, and our bodies were very tense. Our shoulders were raised. We spoke with loud voices. That's how analytical you get.

And then you say, why was we disagreed about this concept? Dad said something that I didn't like. He didn't listen to my answer. I don't, whatever, whatever it was. So we then, you know, with the why down, then what you should do is the third step is to then get that out on paper and write that out or visualize it or something. So it's a state where you, so once you've gathered awareness and reflected, gather awareness of all those signals, reflect on them, which is the why of those signals.

Very ordered. Your brain, your psychoneurobiology responds to order, sequence. You show it all at once, it's chaos. And that's what a lot of people do. And that's what a lot of us do in our relationships and arguments. But if you break things down and get in a very, you can get calm, you can get your neurophysiology under wraps and you can work through. Third thing is what Mac and I will do is if we have an argument is we'll write it down. We'll text each other. We'll get all those thoughts out. We'll do it on a piece of paper, depending on what we're solving, how big, how

small, whatever. But there's a writing phase where we're pouring our things out. Then there's a recheck phase. Okay, you said that, I said that, that was the whatever. But there's a writing phase where we're pouring our things out. Then there's a recheck phase. Okay, you said that, I said that, that was the trigger. This is what we did. How can we, this is the problem. How can we solve it in the future? What's our action? Okay, this is what we're going to practice.

And then we tell that to the kids and then we do it. So look, we're trying this. Okay, guys, this is what we need to do. If you see us not doing it, just remind us. So you give them empowerment to, okay, they'll resolve it. They'll get through this one. It's horrible. We don't like it, but we can end up quicker if we remind them of the act of reach, which is step five. And that sounds like a very idealized thing. And it's a skill that you're going to learn. You're in math.

You have to practice it. You have to try it. And it'll take you 63 days to set it up in your home system because it takes that long to form a habit. Not 21, not four days, not one year cycle. You're going to have to consistently practice for at least 63 to 66 days. And I've done a lot of research. I'm doing another big study at the moment, looking at the time and the pattern of habit, complex habit formation, not just the little things like drink your green juice or wash your hands or make sure you get to the gym, but the complex luck relationships. How long does it take to rewire a pattern so that you can have a change how it impacts your relationship? If someone's in a broken relationship right now, maybe they've

been arguing for years or fighting. Maybe they have good weeks and then there's a bad week and it's the cycle of good and bad up and down and it just feels like it's draining or exhausting. a bad week and it's this cycle of good and bad up and down and it just feels like it's draining or exhausting what can they do to start healing the relationship to start healing individually and the relationship to create harmony in the future what are those steps okay so first thing is if it's an abusive relationship then obviously just get safe that's priority as we all know but let's say that it's not an abuse you're just getting some bad habits.

Both of you are doing bad habits. There's a lot of love. Both of you are trying to fix the other person. Both of you are... But you're still together because there's love.

Yes. And there's a desire to be together. So that's the scenario. Okay. So the first thing to do is to get into some good practices

that will help calm your neurophysiology down. So I call that brain preparation. You're calming your nervous system or... Cal help calm your neurophysiology down. So I call that brain preparation. You're calming your nervous system or? Calming the entire neurophysiology. So that when you're mind, you've got a calm, wise mind that's always active and always on your side. Then we have our messy mind that's in the relationship.

It's in the moment. It's the in the moment messy mind. It's a reactive. Reactive, learning. It's very normal. It's like experimental. And it sometimes goes really messy and other times it kind of gets it right

and whatever. So it needs a lot of guidance. And that's our wide field of nature is our wise mind. So the first thing is that when we're in that messy mind state, that's sending all this messy energy through the brain

and it's triggering all kinds of, I mean, toxic thoughts. Just think of an argument. When you start, some stupid thing gets you going and then you end up arguing, what am I even talking about? Exactly. What's the point in the first place?

Exactly. Well, why did I even bring that stupid thing up? We resolved that years ago. You know, why am I bringing that up now? You know, that's what will happen if you don't calm down on neurophysiology. So it's get your neurophysiology calm first. And you can do that with meditation, breathing, with exercise, gym workout, with creating space that, okay, we're both too hot now. Let's just get some fresh air.

Let's resolve this at a later, let's create mental, physical space. I mean, just there's so many ways of doing that. There's so many great sort of meditative breathing. Find something that works for you. It may not be the same thing. find something that works for you it may not be the same thing mac and i like to just create space and i like to do um a seven a three ten breathe a three seven breathing thing that gets my neurophysiology under control so you breathe in for three and out for seven so and if you do that seven times you'll feel high but it's great because you push so much oxygen

to the front of your brain and it's a very good way of calming down your neurophysiology you can do that in in intensive i call it a 10 second pause you can do it for 60 to 90 seconds so it's 10 seconds that you do six to nine times great little formula for calming down neurophysiology that's great that's that's a fail safe we always use really good fail safe like we are a family-run business All of us are involved. It's very easy to argue with family. So when we all get hit up, which we do, because we're all very Italian, we do a 10 second pause

and we will go out the room, grab a cup of coffee and then come back and reconvene. Those simple things that I know we know, but are we doing them? Or are you trying to push through? I've got to solve this now. I used to be like that at the bed.

We've got to fix this now. And so I had to learn to, hey, no, you don't have to solve this now. I used to be like that at the beginning. We've got to fix this now. And so I had to learn to, hey, no, you don't have to fix it now because you cannot fix it. Take a pause and yeah. Okay. So that's first impression. Is it possible to fix something when you're in chaotic thoughts? You can, but it's more difficult and you have to, it's just going to be confusing and messy and harder and not very sustainable. And it's just, it's not a very peaceful way of doing it. It's exhausting.

Yeah. I wouldn't do it that way. Then the next thing that's very practical is you can focus on good stuff. So it may just be good stuff about yourself. So you can, part of what I work, part of mental health is not just detoxing stuff. It's also building healthy stuff. So I love talking to you. We have great conversations.

Every time I talk to you, and I think I do, I always have great memories of our conversations. So if I want to get myself into a good state, I can think of, I can recall a good moment, like maybe a conversation with you. I love my research.

We just published a paper. And I mean, I look at those results and I get, I get like high, literally. So get yourself. So this is two silly examples, but they're very powerful. So if you've now calmed down

in your physiology and you now go and focus on something that you know makes you feel great, that means you're pulling this up. When you pull this up, amazing things happen in your brain. You change all the delta, theta,

alpha, beta, gamma frequencies. You calm down. Think of the waves of the sea. You want, you know, they're bold, they're deep and big, and then they're bold on the beach, crash, make little waves, go back. Think of the waves of the sea. You want, you know, they're bold, they're deep and big, and then they're bold on the beach, crash, make little waves, go back. We want that kind of energy going through our brain, which activates good neurochemical

flow, the endocrine, all that stuff, immune system. So by the brain prep that I explained, the breathing, whatever, and then these, you have put yourself into a really good brain state. Mind, brain, body state. Not just brain state, but you've got a very good flow happening. Now you're still as irritated as, still would like to go and do

something physical, like, you know, whatever. I'm just joking. But I mean, you might want to throw a plate at the wall or you still, oh, I'm so mad about work. It's okay. It's okay to be messy. So third thing, tell yourself it's okay to be a mess. It's okay. I can be a mess. It's okay for us. It's normal. But how am I going to manage the mess? So give yourself permission to be the mess. Feel the mess. Analyze the mess. I'm frustrated. What's my emotion? What's my body feeling? What's my perspective in this moment? What am I doing? So you go through, it's okay to be a mess and do a little mini neurocycle, go through why am I feeling like this, write a few things down, do a recheck, okay, this

has happened, what can I do? Action, okay, I'm ready to talk. See what I've just done? So step one is brain prep. Step two is think of something good. This has activated our natural resilience. We are not fragile, we are resilient. We are much more resilient than we realize. But if we take on the current zeitgeist that we break and it will almost wreck us for life, we're going to become fragile, which we're not. We're going to mask our natural resilience. We are pretty amazing as humans. Look at the stories of people surviving and getting through stuff. You know, and then we need to go on that. We need to unmask our resilience. So these

steps, the brain prep, focusing on something about yourself, and then you could also add up to this, not just focusing on your own good stuff. You could think of something great about your partner. You could think, you know, whatever, think of a great memory, which is a really good addition. And that people hear before, but you know, I'm sure you've heard that before, but it's doing this great stuff in your brain. Then do a neuro cycle on yourself. You can do this in three minutes, in 10 minutes, in an hour, whatever, then reconvene. And say, okay, now we're going to do this as three minutes, in 10 minutes, in an hour, whatever. Then reconvene. Okay, now we're going to do this as a neurocycle.

I have a whole relationship podcast where I went to in detail of how to actually, what to say, the guidelines of what to say at each step. I mean, we can talk about some of those.

Right, right. I'm curious. I love all this. And the thing that came up for me is what happens if we want love, we want to be in a relationship, we want connection, we want intimacy,

but we don't believe we're deserving of love? What will happen then? Such a great, great question. And it just reminds me, as you're talking, you're just prompting all these clinical experiences I've had. I'm a very successful,

incredible person. And just could, what are those people that could get anything in their life? Okay. And just wonderful in every single way. Thank you. And, um, just could not keep a relationship going. Always start off well and everything. And at the end of the day, the core issue, once this person had worked through was that

they didn't deserve love. And it came, unfortunately, a lot of it comes from childhood. Really? And it's not everything because you can have

a great childhood and really trust in love and then go into a really bad first marriage or first relationship. How does that happen? And a person can break you.

Really? I can give you an example of that. So it could be you could have a great childhood, great parents, great model of love.

Total. But you get into a relationship, you fully trust and accept and love someone. Because that's what you've seen. You throw everything. And so you expect they're going to do the same for you and then it doesn't go your way. Exactly.

And then that could potentially set you up to think, I'm not deserving of love. Yes. Especially if it happens in your adolescent years. 12 to 18 is the most difficult part of the entire human life cycle. So,

and that's where we are interested in forming our relationships. That's where romantic relationships are what we desire. Up until then, it's more friendship based. You know,

it could be earlier, 10, 11, you can have little boyfriend, girlfriend things, but it's more just community connection, deep friendship, something starting.

But, in those years, and you you're at that age your relationship with your friends and um potential partners are more are not more important but are more important than your parenting wow they supersede in terms of relationships the formation of who i am wow so at So at that stage, that's, you know, so you can have this great foundation and then you- Amazing parents, no trauma. Yeah.

Fun all the time, peace, harmony, and home. Sorted it out, did the real thing, just great parents, had their own messed up lives, but took responsibility, said sorry,

did all that stuff. Right. And then you get into a relationship where someone who's broken is attracted to you and you're attracted to them and you swept off your feet either way

and their brokenness is put onto you in your informative years and you get told you're not good enough. Oh, what happens when we believe that? What's wrong with you? And at that stage where you are so like, you're forming yourself, you're forming your choice, your identity

in terms of others' relationships, me in the world, in terms of that relationships me in the world, you know in terms of that Drive for love. So if you told you know You never gonna get where you get rejected or you get dumped or you get cheated on as a teen How does that how does how does someone overcome that? Feeling of I'm not deserving of love. So that is is it one. So to start, all of it's hard. But it's to find the source.

So what you very often as an adult, and it's very often in the 20s and 30s where you start doing this work, and it can happen, I'm not saying always, I'm not generalizing, but very often because that's when you kind of get through school and whatever you do and you get into the workspace and you start actually really forming deeper relationships.

And then you start getting to the point where you're thinking, okay, well, why? Our friends are getting married. You know, everyone around me is in relationships and I'm the only one who's not in a relationship. I can't seem to keep a relationship. What's wrong with me? That's when you start seeing those signals, patterns. That's when you need to sit down and do the work over 63 days and multiple cycles of 63 days.

And then you could, you'll get to the point where you'll see, okay, what is the root? The root was either a childhood issue or an adolescent issue. Maybe it was you were the new kid in town and everyone laughed at you because you wore glasses and they just, you know, said you never, you know, you were mocked. So you were too scared to actually show that guy that or that girl that you liked them. And you were too scared because you were so quiet, whatever. And that was the source of the, these many reasons, you know, there was, I can tell a story of someone else who was one of four kids and it was the only girl, three boys, kind of almost like seemingly perfect. I mean, there's never any perfect, whatever.

Right. It kind of got it more or less okay. Yes. A bit of religious stuff going on there, but still, but the boys were very sporty and very, you know, and the father just, you know, like always, that was totally sports. It was like a big deal, but this was not a sporty little girl, but to get the father's recognition, this little girl had to be like one of the boys, or so she thought.

And so purposefully, like almost made herself a mirror with the hat on backwards and baggy clothes and didn't want to feminize and that kind of stuff. And didn't want to, not that there's anything wrong with that, but her objective was not a healthy one. It was trying to fit in to be accepted. And her perception, once we got to the root, was, well, I was never accepted. But I never accepted my mother. I thought that I had to be like a boy for my father to love me.

And that was a huge thing. But it was so interesting. What really triggered that, this kid was about five or six, already doing this, already reading the room and thinking this was the answer. And they were sitting, and some stranger came up. They were sitting at some restaurant, and this kid was dressed up like one of the boys. And someone said, oh, what a cute little boy. And that broke her. Wow, she remembered that. And she was so much information that that was, that she's not good enough as a female,

that even outside people are saying, oh, I accept you because you're a cute little girl. Wow. So that led to years of self-abuse, self-hurt, sexual promiscuity, brokenness, broken marriages. Yeah. Isn't it crazy that one thing we hear from a friend, a sibling, a parent, an outsider, a schoolmate, a teacher, it could stick with us for decades, forever.

Forever. Now, imagine, Lester, if that person could have, and this is what triggered me to write the current book that I have on children with all these stories that I can tell. That person, I remember saying to me, if only I had known how to say to my parents, am I only loved if I'm a boy?

I feel sad because you don't seem to love me unless I'm like a boy. Or that that man made me sad because that man made me say, I've got to be a boy. Well, Daddy, do you love me even though I'm a girl? That child didn't know how to say that, didn't have the language, didn't have the tools. So what I'm trying to create, and we know that the mental health situation is a multitude of reasons.

We're not the individualistic society, social media, AI. I mean, there's odd generations facing all problems. Every generation faces their issues. Every generation thinks what we were worse than the previous. No, we're not.

We're just facing our unique problems. What we need in this generation with our kids so that they have decent relationships is, and it starts with having a decent relationship with themselves, is we have to have a way of them being able to process and express their feelings. So that five-year-old needs to be able to say, hey, I feel sad, or have a point of contact,

something. So you can teach a child as young as two how to do this. My youngest patients in my practice were two and three years of age and you can teach them how to identify these signals, detox and to make it really easy. That's what I've done in the latest book, this one, how to help your child clean up their mental mess. But we created this character. I actually created this character 25 years ago.

I had a Disney artist create this character and we had it all updated. So the book, if you flip through, you'll see these multiple images of Brainy. This is a character we've created called Brainy. Brainy goes through all these different scenarios and it's how you understand how you can teach a child as young as two that there's trees in the brain and how you can change your brain and how to express and identify your signals. All these hard things that we battle with as adults, you can teach children very basically as a child. So we created a toy. So for example, let's say you have a two year old who is sitting at, let's say, let's take a five or six year old

and they're at school, daycare or whatever, I mean, at kindergarten and someone constantly comes up and knocks their toy tower over that building and then next they pull the heel on the playground. And there's a series of teasing going on. And that child most likely has, and I'm talking of another clinical case, has been abused at home by terrible, terrible physical abuse, but it's taking it out on the most vulnerable person in the playground. Then that child comes home and takes it out on the most vulnerable person in the family, which is the younger brother who's maybe two or three years of age. And so now we see a perfect home environment with all the love and dealing with all the issues and stuff.

But this child's now starting to bully the younger child quite badly, so that there's this terrible sibling rivalry. Where does bullying come from? Like, why do most people start to bully other kids? It's a coping mechanism from abuse. Really? Could it be verbal or emotional or sexual or physical abuse? Yes.

So it's coming from any level of 8, 9, 10 traumas. If you think of a scale of 1 to 10, 8, 9, 10 would be your extreme traumas. And persistent bullying that's breaking a person down would fall under that category. Any kind of abuse would fall under that sort of category. So when bullying is one behavior in amongst those four signals I keep talking about, that is energy that's built up, that's

self-hatred. And self-hatred therefore is now blasting out and they're repeating a pattern. So bully has been bullied. And so it's a persistent pattern that goes through generations. They don't know how to process their emotions in a healthy way so this is how they get it out. Exactly. That's how they're getting it out. So a bully has been abused in some way. Yes, and they've been bullied or have been bullied or are being bullied and so they're just taking it out. So you can't treat the bully by

punishing the bully. You've got to actually help resolve why the bully is doing the bullying in the first place. So you'd start with a child in your home that's bullying the little brother and find out, okay, well, let's now, you know, and this is key. You need to make a person feel validated because you need to say to that child, whether an adult,

this is not who you are. These behaviors that I'm seeing that are impacting us, the rest of the family, yourself, your friends or whatever, this is not who you are. I know that because I know you are. I know who you are. I love you because I know you are. I know who you are. I love you. So in other words, you divorce the behavior from the person. And that's really critical to create that safe space. So I'm going to help you work through this. This is no judgment,

but let's talk about this. Let's talk about how you can't hurt your brother or sister or whatever. But at the same time i recognize that this is not who you are so you're doing this for a reason so you've got to stop hurting and we've got to put boundaries in place for that but i'm also going to help you understand what's going on and you're going to help me understand and then you take them through a process of a neurocycle you have a contact point so i've created things like toys coloring books that character that if a child is not able to verbalize which they they're not until they're old enough to have the language, and even then they don't have the words often.

But if you have a key contact point or a point in your house where, you know, like you have a sitting room and you watch TV and that's your place of relaxation. You need a mind management place in your home. You've got a gym, you've got a whatever. You need a mind management center in your home, which could be a beautiful little couch that you were a little beanbag and makes a pretty plant something that you as a family create and choose and you feel safe whenever you go there there's no judgment there's only safety and if someone's sitting there that's they need they're needing support to creating that environment and then having you know like, like a toy like this. A young child, it's often easier to say, oh, shame, Brainy was bullied today and he's

so sad. And, you know, so they, I see that Brainy's angry. And so you transfer that over to the toy. Then the child can enact and carry it out and show you what's happening. And then it divorces it from them directly and it enables them to try and enact that without feeling threatened or scared or externalizing. And you can also model for yourself, oh, mommy feels sad today and this happened. And so you model and you actually walk through the five steps without saying them, but you do that

and you model. So that allows them to have the space. Oh, mommy also sometimes gets mad or dad also sometimes gets mad or uncle also, but you're in that space. Now that idea of creating a mind management space or a neuropsychal space, whatever you want, or a brainy space, whatever you want to call it, and I've got these examples in the book, came from a study done in Zimbabwe years ago where I was actually born, called Bench Therapy, and it was a granny on a bench in a tribe,

in a country that has no money for current modern mental health and actually has better mental health than any westernized country because our current model doesn't make things better, it actually makes things worse. And the science is there to prove that. And all that this granny did, Lewis, was sit on a beach and create a safe space for people to listen. It was so successful that King's University in Harvard did a study on it.

And I heard about this years ago when I was early in my research and I started adapting and applying it in my practice and working with families and sort of setting this up and whatever. And so now you don't have to have a bench. You can have anything. It could be a bench and the flowers, whatever. Create that space. As a family, find it. When you've got very young kids, you can get little boxes, fill them up with pictures that you cut out of all of emotions, behaviors, perspectives,

bodily sensations. So when a child comes from school and they can't verbalize or they're just so overwhelmed, they go to that corner, they pick up Brainy or other toys and they can act it out. It's safe. Doesn't matter what they do there, no judgment, that's a cry for help. Pull out the picture. They can use pictures to show. So you create a sense of communication.

So that little girl whose friend said, oh, what a cute little boy, could have gone to that neurocycle corner, whatever you want to call it, mind management, mental health, whatever you want to call it, picked up a toy and maybe demonstrated and made Brainy cry. And then mommy says, well, why is Brainy crying? You see what I'm saying? Sure, yeah. And you start there at two. And three, by the time you've got a 10-year-old, they're going to adolescence prepared for the terrors of adolescence. Right. And the challenges. Yeah, I just think learning to process emotions at an early age

can help you immensely as an adult. I never learned how to process emotions until I was 30. The emotions I processed was anger, right? And that came out in sports or physical contact or reactions. All your energy transferred. 100%. Yeah.

And once I lost the safe environment, sports, to do that, then it was just like, oh, what do I do with this? So I had to learn over the last decade how to process and really create a safe space for me to process with me and then with others. Or a relationship with yourself.

Exactly. If someone feels broken in an intimate relationship, are they usually more reactive to the partner if they're not feeling like the partner is helping fix them? Definitely could be. They can either be more reactive in that they are verbally more reactive and maybe make demands that seem crazy or they seem possessive or whatever, or they could withdraw. They could go silent and give you the silent treatment and withhold sort of sexual intimacy and all kinds of things to get some level of control. There's those aspects.

So yes, and as a partner, do you feel your partner has some kind of weird behaviors towards you? Well, that's time to talk and it's time to say, hey, listen, let's go to that safe space. And I noticed this, I know this is not you. Is there something I'm doing or saying, is there something that you have triggered?

Or is there something in your life? Maybe it's not me. Maybe something's happening at work or with your mom or your dad or your best friend, and you just don't feel that I'm here enough to listen to you. Yeah, we are not talking space or safe space or, oh, mind management corner, your cycle corner, whatever you want to call it. Let's, you know, let's, whatever you want to call it. Let's talk and I see you doing this.

Have I understood you correctly? So tell a person what you see lovingly, kindly in the safe space and say, am I correct? Have I read the situation correctly? Am I correct me if I'm wrong? I see you doing this and I know it's not you. So you always validate, always acknowledge,

always listen, always compassion, kindness in love. You talk about wild for love. We have got to immerse in love. Yes. And what about, where do you believe

that the root of insecurity or jealousy comes from in relationships? Is that a wound from the past that makes us insecure or jealous in our current relationship? Or where does that come from? Is that a wound from the past that makes us insecure or jealous in our current relationship? Or where does that come from? Everything that we do

that is impacting us negatively is coming from something we've experienced. Everything. And so we need to live lifestyles of managing by our reactions. So we are very capable of standing back

and observing ourselves 24 seven little, you're sleeping when you sleep at night, but then if you do this during the day or night time, when you sleep, our mind and brain are doing housekeeping. And so when we manage our mind well during the day, we get really good advice when we sleep, we get really good cleaning, a good cleaner. So it's essential that we live lifestyles of mind management so that we can observe ourselves.

So if I, for example, I've trained myself to do this, if I start noticing a certain pattern in my behaviors and I notice that there's maybe some jealousy emerging or some envy, I'm very quick to observe it. Now, I'm not saying I'm a saint at all, far from it. I'm just saying I've trained myself and I'm proud that I've trained myself and I'm saying it because you can do this. And it's not just me. There's millions of people now that we reach and I hear this all the time

and I saw this in my practice. So I'll observe myself. I watch maybe a snap at Matt because he does something that irritates me. And I've got so used to being around him because we're together 24 seven that I made this and I found myself getting irritated or being sarcastic and I'll catch myself and say I'm sorry I was sarcastic there you said something in a way I didn't really listen to you you didn't you know so you can train yourself to live lifestyle in other words if I did have felt that urge of jealousy I will let's say thought and interaction with someone else let's say maybe it's social

media and I see something going on the Or someone, a friend has, whatever. Jealousy comes wanting what someone else has got. We as humans, and I've got to get this right, we as humans, when I support you and I love you and I lift you up and I am building you and I'm excited, it seems to be genuinely excited for every element of your success. Without one moment of wishing I had that, I am going to function at my highest intellectual level. I'm going to be the healthiest I am. So loving and supporting and lifting you is actually increasing my own

intelligence and mind and brain health. However, we are in a zeitgeist of, what can I get out of you? And if you've got more than me, how did you get, I need that. They may not be saying that to you, but that's what's going on in their head. That is slowly creating toxic thoughts that are slowly creating a disruption of those microtubule things I spoke about and setting you up for disease and dementias. Wow. Big link between, and a sense of loneliness, which is pretty much a guarantee

for bleeding towards dementias and things. So envy, jealousy, bitterness, anger, those things eat you from the inside out. So lifting someone up makes you healthier, being jealous of someone else. So if you all have a twinge of jealousy, which is first thing, it's okay to be a mess. It's okay. Okay. I feel jealousy. So what?

Okay. I feel it. Now what? Why? And then go through the neurocycle, find the source and fix it. I love this. I feel like we can go on for a long time about this stuff. Is there anything else that you think people should know about

how to end toxic thoughts to get into healthy relationships or relationships in general? Any other? I think what's so important is that we try and reconnect as communities again and create create you know there's a big move and there has been for about 40 years saying that yeah it's great we're talking about mental health we're lifting the stigma but if you look at how we've done it we've this the research shows we created a more

worse stigma really and we've actually created environments where people are talking about mental health in a certain way that leads towards seeing it as an illness in other words seeing you as a broken person. Now, if I go to a dinner party and I walk in and say, oh, I've just had this another label, I'm now bipolar and this and schizophrenia and blah, blah, blah. Everyone at the dinner table is going to kind of be wary and you're not going to go into a job interview and say that.

But if you go to that dinner and you say, you know, I've just had such a rough few weeks and I've just seen these patterns in my life and I, you know, went through this whole sort of exploration and I found out, hey, these patterns are all coming from something and whatever, however you want to share, but now that you tell a story, everyone will lean in and everyone will say, hey, wow, you know, this happened to you and everyone will start sharing stories in this community and support and advice and interaction. That's healthy mental health talk, whether it's among an adult, a child, a baby, an adolescent, two years old, whatever we need.

That for me is huge that we need to create genuine safe spaces, not this. Oh, I haven't met. It's okay to say it's an illness like diabetes and that makes the stigma go away. And if we can talk about diabetes, no one criticizes you if you've got diabetes. Why do they criticize you if you've got bipolar? Bipolar doesn't even exist. And now please, I'm not dishonoring the fact that people have mood swings, but if I just say you have bipolar, all I've done is reduce something massive in your life that's absolutely huge, bigger than this room, into just a thing, a little thing. I totally

invalidated you. But if I say, okay tell me about this bipolar that you say you've got a diagnosis. What do you mean? And then you describe a set of behaviors. Then I would say, okay so what you're describing is that you have certain behaviors going on in your life with these emotions, stuff goes in your body. So if that's the case, what's going on? Let's find out why. What's your story? What has happened?

Then I've actually tuned in and I've listened to you. That's what I'm talking about. That's validating a person. That's recognizing that person who can't get out of bed for three weeks or four weeks or two years or listening to them. What I spoke about earlier on, that's the validation we need. So I'm in a nutshell saying that all these mental health labels reduce something that's massive into something that's not massive and put it into a disease label. That's not good.

We've got to come back to our humanity. We've got to see it's huge. If someone's in a panic attack or someone's depressed or someone's got these mood swings or someone's battling to focus or battling to function in, we need to listen to these stories. We need to sit down and connect and communicate and create safe spaces for extreme trauma, which has created extreme behavior changes that they can't really look back in society very well. They need a couple of weeks or months or whatever to just talk safely in a safe space. Talk it out, process it. Yeah.

Exactly. That for me would be critical. It'll lead to very healthy partnerships between people. Caroline, I love you. I love your message. I love everything you're doing to help people. If you've enjoyed this, make sure to leave a comment of the biggest moment takeaway on YouTube or over on audio as well. Leave us a comment there. If you want more about how to master your mind in relationships and intimacy, then leave a comment on YouTube that you want another part two of this episode. If you've got kids or you're about to have kids, make sure you get this book, How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, A Guide to Building Resilience and Managing Mental Health. This will be a game changer for the future of our humanity. And if you just feel like you want to

overcome stress, anxiety, or toxic thinking, then make sure to get this book as well, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, Five Simple Scientifically Proven proven steps to do those things. So make sure you get a copy of both of these. We'll have it linked up. Follow Caroline everywhere on social media, your podcast is amazing, your YouTube, all these different places that you have. Where can we best support and serve you? Is it drleaf.com or where should we all connect with you? My social media platform is Dr. Caroline Leith. And my podcast, as you mentioned, is the same name as the book, Cleaning Up the Mental Mist. So thank you.

I love you. I love your content. You're amazing. You spoke at our Summit of Greatness last year, and it was incredible. And you're just doing so much good for the world. So we're so grateful for you, your research, the science you do, everything that you're finding online, and really just giving it in practical terms that we can understand. So I always love the analogies. I love the props. I love everything that just shows us how to simplify the challenges, the stresses, the overwhelm that

we feel, whether it be in life or money or relationships. But again, if you guys enjoyed this, make sure to comment below if you want a part two on mastering your mind in relationships. I've asked you this question before, but I'm going to ask it again. It's a three truths question. See if it's got a different answer for you this time. Imagine it's your last day on earth many years away. And for whatever reason, you can't leave behind any content or this book or any message you've ever put out there.

It's got to go with you to the next place. And you only get to share three pieces of advice, three lessons that you would leave with the world. But none of this interview is gone. This book is gone, but you get to share three final things with the world. After all the success you have, what would you share with those three truths? I would share the same thing that I said a moment ago, is work, start maybe with the first one, accept that you can be a mess, and it's okay to work on your relationship

with yourself, be the kindest, compassionate to yourself, then give the same to others, listen to others, you know, work through that process of really listening and supporting,

and that's kind of, those two kind of wind into each other, into, I think those two kind of those two kind of wind into each other into i think those those two kind of encapsulate kind of everything yeah so that would then be to love so it's work on yourself and work on others and that leads to love yeah that's beautiful i want to acknowledge you caroline i always do you're you're so committed to service and i'm so grateful for you for how you show up. Uh, you know, you have a, it's, it's rare to find someone who has had a healthy long-term relationship, who's got four kids that are also working with them and, you know, have a healthy relationship with them and have a career in service to humanity the way you do. So I'm just grateful for you. And I know you're messy in all the areas,

but the way you show up consistently is beautiful, and I'm really grateful for you. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Thank you, Deuce. It's beautiful. Back at you, too. You're amazing.

And really, I have so much high regard for you. I appreciate it. And I love everything you do, and you touch all our lives. I appreciate it. In so many ways. I appreciate it. Again, final question. What's your definition

of greatness? I love this question. You always ask me someone who actually has a good relationship with himself. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life,

then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.