Well with Arielle Lorre - 129: How to Master Your Mind with Dr. Caroline Leaf

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

In this episode I’m talking to Dr. Caroline Leaf about the mind-brain connection, how to clean up our mental mess and how to rewire our brains for resiliency. We discuss how experiences form roots and get built into our bodies; how to uncover those roots and deconstruct to reconstruct our thought patterns; how to use things like depression and anxiety as clues and become thought detectives; practical tips to start implementing today for anxiety and so much more.    www.JustThriveHealth.com with code Blonde for 15% off their award-winning Probiotic. www.Grove.com/BLONDE to get a free starter set with your first order. www.FXChocolate.com with code BLONDEFILES for 20% off your first order. www.Talkspace.com with code BLONDE for $100 off your first month.   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Auto-hue with Sunny Cars feels as if the children Not me be seen. Tisel stramble Sandvorda. Act is forcare, verdwine, vacancy can chaotic

be chaotic. But who'sorgloos an auto-hurt says, One no stress. No, no risk. No, unverwashed to costs,

always forlendigured. So, would auto-hue without your reiseadviseur or sunnycars. combe. The following podcast is

a dear media production. Hey, Welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. Today, I have a really fascinating episode. I am talking to Dr. Caroline Leith, she is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a master's

and PhD in communication pathology. She specializes in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. And since the early 80s, she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. And I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with her. She has a big online presence. She has many books. She has a podcast. She has an app. And she is currently conducting clinical trials using the five-step program. She developed while in private practice to further demonstrate the effectiveness of mind-directed techniques to help relieve mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts. And the primary aim of these trials is to make mental health care more affordable, applicable, and accessible worldwide. And to,

reduce the stigma around mental health. And we get into a lot of topics today. We talk about the root of some of these issues like anxiety and depression and how to manage our mental mess. She has a new book called Cleaning Up the Mental Mess. And so we talk a lot about that. And it's a really, really interesting conversation. She has a bit of a different approach from a lot of other experts in the field that you may have heard. And so it's really just interesting to hear. different people's perspectives and different people's takes on mental health. So without further ado, Dr. Caroline Leif. Okay, welcome, Dr. Leif. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. So I was reading your book last night. I had read it a while ago, but I was preparing for this

interview and thinking about the angle that I wanted to take, given that there's so much content in there, and we're condensing it down into a 30-minute podcast. But what really is, struck me was actually something that you say in the preface, which is that if our minds are messy, we mess up our lifestyles. And when our lifestyles are messed up, our mental and physical health suffer. And it's really this trickle down effect. And this is a lifestyle and wellness podcast. So I wanted to just have you expand on that. I mean, you do kind of continue in the book and talk about how people are dying younger from preventable lifestyle diseases. And so could you talk about that a little about. Absolutely, and that's a great place to start because in today's current climate of not only

the pandemic, but the wellness trends movement, which has been great because it's teaching people how to take control of their own lives, but it's also created that thing of, oh gosh, if I don't do these X things, there's something wrong with me, why it's eye changing? So it's to help people to get a balance, first of all, to understand that taking charge of your mental health is a process. It's complicated and there's no same journey for anyone. And that's why we have. to really go and find out as much as we can. It's a podcast like this is so important to make people, help people realize they've got to keep searching to find there's no one elixir.

It's of truthful. That works for everyone. It's got to, you've got to find your own combination. That's the one side. The other side is my work over 38 years as a clinical neuroscientist and communication pathologist and researcher is to understand and help people understand the importance of mind.

And mind is one of those elusive areas that's not researched enough. it has been, but it's been really relegated to the world of philosophy and sort of spirituality. Meanwhile, it is the thing that's doing everything. So when we talk about a messy mind messing up the rest of your life, what that means is that mind is very powerful. So what is mind? Mind is basically our aliveness. So you and I have been able to have this conversation to see each other through this technology,

to process what we're saying, the listeners and viewers to do the same. We're alive. we can do that. If you're dead, you couldn't do that. So what is the difference between a dead person and an alive person? You couldn't ask a more basic question. It's this aliveness. It's this ability to respond to the experiences of life, whether it's listening to this

podcast, whether it's having a meal with a loved one, whether it's going for a workout, whether it's thinking about the business plan or kids, whatever it may be. Every moment, every day that we are awake, we are processing life through our mind, into the brain and the body and the brain and the body are responding so the mind shows up in the brain and the body in order for you to be you and for me to be me.

So without me being alive, my brain and body would just disintegrate. So our mind is keeping the brain and body alive. So the mind and brain are not the same thing, even though in the current narrative it's very often spoken about mind brain, it's like the same thing, but they're not. They're separate, but inseparable.

So the mind is the driving force, shows up in the brain and then shows up in the body and then the brain and the body respond. So if we have a healthy discussion like we have now, which is positive and constructive, it's it's, we're diving deep into our sort of deep thinking and intuition to deal with these concepts. This is a very healthy conversation. So there's healthy sound waves and light waves and gravitational fields and your mind grabs all of that. And your mind uniquely on a psychological level thinks and feels and chooses, think you'll choose, to make sense of what we're saying and pushes that all into the brain,

uses the brain to kind of like unpack it. The brain responds electromagneticly chemically and genetically. For those of you that are listening, I'm holding up the brain, not a real one. And that creates a neuroplastic change in the brain. So our discussion now is a bunch of sound waves and light waves being grabbed by your mind, pushed into your brain, your brain is responding, responding and I stress responding, not causing mind. It's responding to mind by doing this electrochemical, magnetic, genetic response and a

thought tree is busy growing. And I hold up a green plant to talk about the concept of a thought tree to show the importance and we're going to get this messiness concept again in a moment. But basically this is product of mind. So every experience that you have in a day is built into one of these in your brain. And as we can see with any tree, it has a root system, it has branches and it has lots of roots and lots of branches. So a thought, like a tree is made up of lots of roots and branches, a thought is made up of lots of root memories and branch memories. The root memories would be, for example, in this case,

the source is what I'm saying and what I'm doing and what the information I'm giving you, in an abusive situation, it could be the bullying at work, whatever, whatever the experience is, goes in the root system, and then your interpretation, because everyone's unique. So everyone interprets based on their own uniqueness, the unique way that they think, fill and choose, the unique way the mind works, as well as the experiences that you've had. All of that come together to influence how you interpret what you're hearing, what you're experiencing. And that's these branches. So you build, you receive and build, and you interpret and build at the same time. And so at the end of this conversation, we will have maybe a thousand,

two thousand routes and interpretation branches. And as you talk about this, more read more about this, or read the book, or do the app, or whatever, you're going to keep growing this. So it keeps growing, whatever you're thinking about grows. Now this is all great. This is all clean and tidy and whatever, but what happens if the situation is abusive? If you're in an abusive relationship, abusive marriage, you've been a relationship with someone who's got strong narcissistic tendencies

or have you been abused or you've gone through the isolation of the pandemic. And whatever, this could be any multitude. We should be torment informed. Trauma is on a scale of severity. You get very complex trauma. So, for example, rape or abuse or war or grief of, a loss of a loved one, et cetera, to the slightly small, you know, to smaller ones like a terrible, horrible comment on social media or someone fighting with you in an argument

or something like that. So all of those are trauma and trauma's on a scale of severity. So how I simplify this whole thing is that this creates a mental mess. And if this is not managed, this is then going into the brain and the body as I have explained. So here's a model of the brain and the body. And we see from the neuroscience and the psychoreobiological research that the design of the way the brain and body are built and the way that the mind works in terms of gravitational fields and electromagnetic light forces and quantum physics and all that stuff, it's all designed for survival. We talk about it being wired for love. We wired for love, which is a nice way of putting it. And that's all about survival. So like the COVID threatens our

survival and the immune system fights it, a toxic experience also threatens our survival. So Whenever we're in a toxic state and it's built into our brain, it also gets built into our body. So this conversation now is healthy. We're building it into our brain and our brain is immediately sending signals to every cell of our body. And it's been built in the body as well. So it's a whole brain, body, mind experience. And that's not messy because this is healthy, but this is a mess. So this would be messy in the brain, messy in the body.

And like in my most recent research and I talk about that in the book, I show how, for example, at the level of our DNA, our telomeres get messed up. immediately if we don't manage these toxic thoughts. Our homocysteine and cortisol levels will increase, which increases inflammation and the stress response or toxic stress response, not the healthy stress response, and that's not good. But if we manage our mind,

this is messy, it messes up the brain and body, but because our mind and brain are literally plastic, and because you're making a million new cells every second, if we manage our mind and drive our mind in the right direction, we can drive the neuroplasticity of the brain and the body, and we can change that. So the narrative of mental health that I bring to the table is one of it's okay to be a mess.

If you're a human and alive, life is full with challenges, big and small. And those are adverse circumstances. They basically trauma. We process them in and we process it in like this that makes a mess. And that's okay. We can actually handle that if we manage the mess. If we don't manage the mess, it stays there, gets suppressed. And that leads to increased levels of severity of anxiety and depression, which are not illnesses.

They signals burn out, et cetera, et cetera, which you can do. dive into more depths, but essentially if we don't manage the mess, then we increase our vulnerability to disease in our brain and our body over time. It accumulates, but by 35 to 75% over time. So it's not a matter of one toxic thought and you've got cancer. It doesn't work like that. And one positive thought now goes away. It doesn't work like that. It is a situation of it accumulating. As over time, as we don't deal with our big and small traumas, these things accumulate and weaken the body globally across the body and that thing feeds back into the brain, et cetera.

So we have this mess that we need to then clean up. So I am an advocate of accepting the mess, giving yourself permission, and then managing it. It's okay to be messy, but what are you going to do about it? And that's where my work comes in, how to understand the mess and how to manage the mace. I am so happy that this episode of The Blonde Files is sponsored in part by FX Chocolate. You guys, I have talked about it before, but I feel like somebody went into my dreams and created this product out of that. It is chocolate.

And it's also a supplement. So FX chocolate is a supplement company that's founded on the idea that good for you shouldn't be hard to do. So you can close your pill drawer, skip the daily dredge of gulping down pills, and upgrade your routine with FX chocolate. They have six different supplement variations. They have exhale, focus, thrive, defend, superfood, dream, and zen. dream and zen are my favorites. And they have a new addition, Sunshine, which is a vitamin D formulation.

And each one lends targeted support to a specific need. So they have nutraceutical ingredients like Ashwaganda, Rishi mushrooms, CBD, Gabba, L. Theanine, my fave, melatonin, and more. And it's all expertly packed into a handcrafted square of sugar-free, keto-friendly, dark chocolate. This is important because I love my chocolate before I go to bed, but usually it keeps me up. And this one, really doesn't, I think in part because it's sugar-free and also because of the added nutraceutical ingredients. Like I said, I love dream and zen. They're amazing. I put it on a date with a little bit of almond butter and it is chef's kiss. So chocolate is not only a more enjoyable way to enjoy your supplements, but it also increases your body's ability to absorb supplements, making it more

effective. So FX chocolate is offering you guys 20% off your first order. Just use you the promo code blonde files at checkout to get 20% off. That's F as in Frank, X as in X-ray, chocolate.com, and the promo code is blonde files, B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-S for 20% off your first order. Going back out into the world during this time can be very overwhelming, a little bit of an emotional roller coaster. I know that I have found myself dealing with new challenges and anxieties, and it's so important to prioritize our mental health during this time. and deal with these things as they come up so that they don't accumulate. And I know for me, it's helpful to confide in friends,

but sometimes you just don't get the clarity and direction that you need and don't really get the practical advice. And I know that I had taken a little bit of a break from therapy. And then I returned and it's been so, so helpful. I'm so glad that I did because I was really starting to get into a lot of negative thought loops and was trying to deal with things on my own that I really just needed some professional guidance on. So if you are struggling right now, I think you will really love Talkspace. Talkspace is such an incredible app. It makes it super easy to connect with a licensed therapist on your schedule without having

to wait weeks before your next appointment and you can go anywhere and take your therapist with you. So Talkspace offers individual and couples therapy. They also offer medication prescriptive. services. You can set goals with your therapist and they can help to make sure you're really progressing and they can help you develop tools to cope in difficult times and they have thousands of licensed therapists that are available for you to match with and they have experts and dozens of specialties including anxiety, depression, relationships and more to help you start feeling better. So you can start feeling better with a single message. You will match with a licensed therapist when you go to talkspace.com and they're offering my listeners 100.

dollars off your first month with the promo code blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E. That is such an amazing deal and really money well spent to start dealing with anything that you have been struggling with. So again, that's talkspace.com and the promo code is blonde for $100 off. Hi, I'm Dom Roberts, a designer, creative, and activist living in Los Angeles. This is The Uncomfortable Podcast, a show where I speak with new friends, fellow activists, guests all united and passionate about different injustices. We're just generally uncomfortable topics. It's time to dig deep into the human experience and that's on period. It's all of. Let's get uncomfortable. Something that you said and something that I've heard you talk about before that really

stood out and we'll focus on the anxiety portion today just for the sake of time. But you've said anxiety depression, these are signals. I've heard you say that anxiety is a response. And as somebody who struggles with anxiety periodically, that really should. shifted something because I think a lot of people just feel anxiety, experience anxiety and say, I'm anxious, I have anxiety. And then it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least in my experience. Can you talk a little bit about that and expand on that? Absolutely. So important. Okay, so first, that shifted because what I'm about to tell is very helpful, very hopeful. First of all, anxiety is a completely helpful, normal emotion.

It is our brain and body and mind working together to help us survive, just like I've been explaining. The more severe the anxiety, the more the severe the root. So what we have to do is become thought detectives and say, okay, let's start at the beginning. Go back to ground zero. Ground zero is, I'm a phenomenal human being. You and I are phenomenal. Humans are phenomenal. You're so incredible that there's something that you can do that no one else in this world can do.

So by your unique way that you process information, it's producing unique thoughts in your brain, which enables you to produce a unique response, which then brings something to the world that only enhances the world. So that's who you are. That's your core. That's your identity. And everything in the world is attacking that. So we have to be very solid in our identity.

So I teach a lot about that as well. So that's this wide for love thing. So now then life happens, adverse circumstances. And that identity then gets shifted. So around this core of what I call the wise mind. So all these, like I'm going to hold up a couple of them. I've got a few trees on my table. I can hold up a whole bunch.

But at the core of who we are is this wisdom, this intuition, this knowing that I can do this. That's what we've always got to remind ourselves. So when we have patterns in our life of anxiety, we need to say, okay, this is not who I am. This is simply me showing up. And I need to look at that in a way because of something. There's something going on or series of. things going on or have been going on or an accumulation that's been triggered by. It's a completely unique situation each time.

So what we have to do is shift from, I am unbelievable. I am at my core. I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm speaking as a scientist. You start from there and the impore kindness on ourselves, which totally shifts on neurophysiology. I've done a whole podcast and teaching on kindness, which is really worth listening to. And that changes in your neurophysiology and you kindly say to yourself, okay, I can't have anxiety.

You can have cancer, but anxiety is not a thing. noise depression. They are emotional responses coming from your mind, brain, body, your psycho, neuropsychological connection that is protecting you, telling you that something in you that you're experiencing that has become quite solidified and stabilized is affecting your ability to function, it's threatening your physical and mental health. And if we put on our thought detective hats and say,

okay, if ground zero is, I am amazing and I'm showing up with this pattern of anxiety, I can't have anxiety. I'm experiencing it as a warning signal. It's telling me something. So I see it as a clue as opposed to an illness or a brain disease, which is a narrative that has been basically pushed for the last 40 years. And it's been very unsuccessful. It's led to has not helped a situation.

It's actually made a worse situation. The research shows that people with a mental health diagnosis, you can literally chop 25 years of your life. I mean, I'm not saying that that's what the research shows. You can stop that. It doesn't mean it's inevitable. but if we keep in that mode, that's what the research is showing. And that's not healthy at all.

So what we need to, because a lot of this is prevented. We don't have to die 20 years from lifestyle disease, 20 years earlier than from lifestyle diseases if they're preventable. So how do we prevent this sort of thing happening? We have to understand how to manage your mind and recognize anxiety for what it is. So anxiety is not a disease. You can't have anxiety. It's not an it.

Having a diagnosis of clinical anxiety is like getting an empty gift. So there's a beautiful package. And at first you think, oh, wow, thank God, now I know what's going on. But then you open it and now what? Whereas if you say, okay, I embrace the anxiety as a helpful messenger. It really is a gift. And as I take off that lid of the gift, I see that there's a whole lot of hard work to do. But there's a reason.

So I'm not crazy because I've got rare genes. We've got a messed up brain. I've got some weird disease in my brain. I actually am a normal person responding to a severe situation on the scale of severity, and it's an appropriate response. Let me now unpack that and reconstruct it. So you've got to embrace to reconstruct, to deconstruct and reconstruct. It's like a garden of weeds.

These are like weeds, toxic, very powerful. If you just chop the head off by just taking a medication or just doing a technique that's going to go back. What we have to do is you have to go through the painful hard work, which takes cycles of 63 days. I've done a lot of work around the timing of how to rewire. But you have to do the hard work of being a thought detective to look at the signals that this is generating in your mind, brain and body, and then find out how you're interpreting yourself.

What are your interpretations of what's going on? What is the distorted processing that you went through? What is the root cause? And all with no judgment, all with no condemnation. This is really just your coping mechanism and your, to the situation. So you've got to always come from that angle. And when you do that, you then uproot this and you can reconstruct it into a healthy new thought. Now, notice how small it is.

It takes about 21 days to uproot and reconstruct into this. So it doesn't mean that you change your story. What's happened to you, you can never change, but you are changing what's in you. So it takes 21 days more or less to do that of about 15 to 45 minutes a day and you use the system of the neuropsychle to do that. But this is not strong enough to be there for you when you need it. So when you trigger it again, this is not strong enough because it's competing. with millions of other experiences that you've had that are also thawed trees. So it's competing with something that's bigger.

So you have to stabilize and grow this. So you have to go for another at least 42 days, another six weeks. So the total cycle is about nine weeks. And in that you are basically spending also around about five minutes a day. So the first 21 days you're spending about 15 to 45 minutes. That's where the big work is done. And then the second 42 days, same five steps of the neural cycle, but you're only spending around about five minutes a day.

And in doing that, you take this little thing, and by day 42, it's grown into something that's much more stable. So you've got more energy, more insight, more coping mechanisms, more branches, more understanding, more depth. And then by day 63, it's now big. And when it's big like that, now when you're in a situation, like maybe you're abuses of child and you're battling with shame and you can't stick in a relationship or don't believe you valued worthy, that's the old one. Now, at 21 days, you know that that's not the narrative, but you still feel it because there's a conflict between the story still being so strong and this new way that's the truth, but it's not strong enough here. By day 63, this is now strong.

And the truth is, yes, that happened, but this is I am worthy. I'm not shame. And then that is then what you would draw on and start using in your life. Because whatever you do is based on what you're built in your brain and your body and your mind. Does that make sense? It's quite complicated, but that's why I use the trees. Just think of trees growing. and then it helps through that concept.

I know that everybody is trying to be more eco-conscious, earth-friendly, especially seeing everything that's happening around the world and in our country. So I'm very excited to share that this podcast is sponsored in part by Grove Collaborative. They are the online marketplace that delivers healthy home, beauty, and personal care products directly to you. They craft and curate earth-changing products for your home so you can shop sustainably easily. So this is your one-stop shop. where you know that everything you're getting is, like I said, eco-friendly, earth-friendly. Did you know that companies around the world actually produce 2 billion pounds of new plastic every day?

And yet, no matter how much we put in our recycling bin, just 9% of plastic actually gets recycled. Grove Collaborative believes it's time to stop making single-use plastic, and you can rest assured that every product they sell is guaranteed to be healthy, effective, eco-friendly, and affordable. You can shop with confidence knowing everything you buy from them is good for you, good for your family, good for your home, and for the planet. So they have such an incredible selection of everything from household to laundry to beauty to personal care to baby to pet products. They have their own line and they also have some of the clean and natural lines that you love. And they have a really convenient app. It's very affordable. And it just makes shopping really convenient and easy. It's also

really great to buy things that you normally buy in bulk like me. So I like to get laundry detergent. They actually have a laundry detergent that is the only one that I've found that doesn't irritate my skin. So I was finding that everything was kind of giving me a rash, breaking me out, and this one doesn't. So definitely check that out. And I've also been introduced to some great brands that I didn't know about. So I guarantee you guys will find so many things that you love through them. Choosing products that are better for you and the planet has never been easier. For a limited time, when you guys go to grove.com slash blonde, you will get to choose a free starter set with your first order. Again, that's grove.com slash blonde, g-r-o-ve-e dot com slash

B-L-O-N-D-E to get your exclusive offer. Again, that's grove.com slash blonde. I'm sure you're all familiar with how important gut health is to our overall health, and I have done many interviews with top experts discussing just how vital this is and how everything is interconnected and also how an imbalance in the gut can cause so many other issues. So paramount in maintaining a healthy gut is maintaining a balance of good bacteria and just thrive probiotics help to do just that. So their proprietary strains have been third party clinically tested and proven to arrive 100% alive in your gut, which is a big problem with other probiotics and even probiotic rich foods. So they're proven to be super effective. I've been taking them all year and I can

attest to this. They were such a game changer for me. And they work really quickly. And in a study, the strain and just thrive probiotic was shown to address leaky gut in as little as 30 days. And also it can help your immune system since we know 70 to 80 percent of your immune system lives in your gut. And they can even make your skin more beautiful, support your sleep and even help your mood. So for me, they helped my bloating and digestion, like in the first few weeks that I took them. I really love them. And I have not had success with other brands in the past. So it's a testament to their proprietary strains that they use. And their strain actually has an armor-like shell that protects it from harsh environments like the super harsh stomach acid. And another thing that I

love about Just Thrive is that their products contain more clinical research than any other products out there, which is very important to me. So I did an episode with Tina Anderson. She is the co-founder. We recorded that back in April, so you can go check that out if you want to learn more about them. It's episode 106. And they're also offering you guys, my listeners, 15% off site-wide. So give your body the important immune support that it needs to feel your absolute best and get your gut in order with Just Thrive probiotics. All you have to do is go to justthrivedhealth.com and use the promo code blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E for 15% off sitewide. Again, that's just thrivehealth.com and the code is blonde for 15% off.

I can relate to that concept a lot because I've been sober for a while now, seven and a half years. Wow, congratulations. Thank you. But when I was in my active addiction, you know, I thought, and I think people on the outside thought the drugs and the alcohol are the problem. If you take away the drugs or the alcohol, the problem goes away. But what I learned is that the drugs and the alcohol are a symptom of the problem.

And the problem really was in my thinking, my perception, exactly. Like there was a root, a lot of roots to the problem. So I see a lot of parallels in that concept. Well, I'm so glad you said that because addiction would be one of the signals. So like we see, look at depression, anxiety, addiction is a signal. As you know yourself, having gone through what you've gone through, I love how you said you take the drugs and the alcohol away and the problem is still there. It doesn't fix it.

you've got to fix the problem. So you were using the drugs and the alcohol as a coping mechanism. You had a relationship with those to help you to cope with the pain. But once you got to the point where you could say, okay, let me put that numbing relationship aside and let me become a thought detective. You may not have used those words and actually embrace the anxiety and realize the anxiety is coming from. So the addiction was how you cope with the anxiety and anxiety and it would have been

it's never just one. There's always a whole lot of. And then you could have been doing the work then of the. of deconstructing and reconstructing. Now, I say 63 days, but I mean, I've had patients who've taken two years, which is then that's, you look at 63 days over two years, that's multiple cycles, one year, whatever. So in other words, it's not just one cycle that fixes things.

It's going to be one cycle that starts the process. It's just that people don't push through the reason I keep talking about the timing thing is that our brain rewires in these cycles. And the brain doesn't rewire on its own, as I said, if you did, it does nothing. It's your mind. So you've got to be very deliberate and intentional and systematic and organize and limit the amount of time you spend on this because it's exhausting. As you know, going through any kind of healing work is exhausting.

And that's why I say 50 to 45 minutes and then you don't work on it the rest of the day. You basically just live and do everything else. And as you go through these phases of the 63 days, you start then getting to the cause of why there was that addiction in the first place. And then you see, as you said yourself, gosh, there's maybe at the end of 62 days, you only find one part of one root and you realize you need to do a lot more work to find out all this insidious ways that that trauma, the root cause inflicts its changes inside of your brain and your body and your mind and therefore your behavior. So it takes time to change that.

I think the difference between the example with drugs and alcohol and something like anxiety or depression is that the drugs and alcohol were the signals, right? And the anxiety, depression is the signal. With the drugs and alcohol, you can remove that. completely. You don't live with it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So with your mind, you're constantly with it. So exactly. What are some, I mean, all of this is in your book, your apps, all of that. But do you have some practical takeaway tips that if somebody is listening and they're really struggling with anxiety, something that they can start doing today to help clean that up? Yeah. Absolutely. Well, first of all, just quickly want to emphasize what you said there,

that the addiction is a signal, but it's a signal, as you said, it's something that we're using to numb. So it could be addiction to exercise. It could be addiction to anything where we're doing anything to accept face the signal. So that in itself is a signal. So it's a type of signal of how we're coping with the other signals. So from that signal, you go to the other signals and then you unpack. And so if you're battling with things like anxiety, see anxiety not as a disease. That's the first thing that is so helpful.

Don't see anxiety as a disease. See anxiety as a response, a warning signal that is helping you. See it as a helpful messenger. see it as a clue. So make yourself a detective and be very kind to yourself and say, hey, we're going to work this out. And I cannot stress how important what I'm saying is in terms of anxiety. Give yourself permission to feel the anxiety.

Be kind to yourself. Tell yourself, it's not who you are. There's something that you can do that no one else can do. That that mindset is absolutely first step critical in managing anxiety. So it's be kind. That's not who you are. This is a response. It's a warning signal.

It's a clue. You're going to be a thought detective. you're showing up like this because of, there's a reason behind this, it's okay, it's a normal human response, that kind of languaging is not affirmations. It is real hardcore, scientific, factual evidence that you need to say to yourself repeatedly. As you are saying to yourself, you are actually building that into your brain. So it may take 63 days for you to actually believe yourself. So you may have to start your anxiety work by just telling yourself that this is not you I am. I'm not anxiety. I can't be anxiety. You can't be depression. They're not

it's, they are warning signals. I'm a thought detective. I'm this at my core. So that is a really good place to start with that philosophy, that mindset of identity, et cetera, and being kind. And then maybe take 63 days just to every day, go through five steps, the five steps to actually help you to make, to build that wiring into your brain.

And then you create like an insurance policy. And that insurance policy is, okay, now I can actually start diving in and getting to the point because things get worse before they get better. And I don't have you experienced this area, but I know this has happened to me, it's happened to my patients, that when we start doing the hard work of seeing, okay, anxiety is a warning signal. It's not a disease.

It's not who I am. And you start seeing, I'm interpreting myself in this way. I'm like full with shame. I'm seeing myself with whatever. And then, oh my gosh, that is, and you go back to the inner child and you see as a child, there was whatever happened. That is, maybe you've suppressed that for years

or maybe you never fully processed that. And when you dive in in this way, when you face this full on, it can be very hard. So what I found is in the first 21 days, you get what we call the treatment effect where things do get worse before they get better. So that's another point I just want to make

is that if you feel worse before you get better, that's a sign of progress. But you've just got to keep pushing through. And that's why this time factor with anxiety is so vital that you go through the cycles of 63 days knowing that, okay, each step I'm wiring my brain, it does get worse, it gets better, but these changes are happening all the way along.

And that's for someone who battles with anxiety that, let me say that again, everyone battles with anxiety. There isn't a human who doesn't have anxiety. Anxiety can be made to work for you. It can be a very positive emotional warning signal because it's alerting. But when it becomes, when it starts slipping down the severity scale, let's take from zero to minus 10 on the one side and from zero to plus 10 on the other side. And if you do a bell curve over that, just visualize this or do it, as I'm saying it,

in any one day, we'll have normal levels of anxiety. So the minus one, two, three, four would be sort of average, the takeaway the word normal, that's terrible word, average that people experience, if we can kind of cope with. And plus four, that's the anxiety is positive, where you're happy and helpful and useful, et cetera. But sometimes things accumulate and there's just too much going on. You're not resting enough. For whatever reason, there's a multiplicity of things that go hit you at once, which happens. Then you shift down minus five, minus six, minus seven. So the anxiety now has becoming an extreme signal, yelling at you. And that's really important that you take the time. to then dig deep and dive in and dig deep. So there's some, and in summary, therefore, you can't control events and circumstances, but you can control your responses. You can't change what's happened to you, but you can change what's in you. And you do that through being kind yourself and through working through these systematized ways to break deconstruct and reconstruct.

Amazing. Well, I know that we are out of time, but Dr. Leaf, you are probably the best person to pack as much as you can into 30 minutes. I mean, so much value in there. I really, really appreciate you coming on. And where can everybody find you and find your books and your app and all of that? Absolutely. Dr. Caroline Leaf is my social media handle.

From there, you can find everything. Web page is Dr.leaf.com. I've got lots of books. My most recent one is cleaning up the mental mess available wherever books are sold. Also on our website. And my app is called Neuropsychel. That's available with iTunes and Google Play. And I have a podcast called Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess

where I teach lots of these, all these concepts. Well, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there. or over on my personal page at Area Lurie.