The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - 113. Restructure your BRAIN using your THOUGHTS ｜ Dr. Caroline Leaf

00:00:00.000 massive series of studies was done where they found that for decades we've been living longer

00:00:04.600 obviously because of advances in medicine and technology but that reversed started reversing

00:00:09.260 in 96 by 2014 it was an established reversal it's called deaths of just categorizes deaths of

00:00:14.620 despair so essentially people are dying eight to 25 years younger than they should now in this

00:00:21.240 modern age it's two years added to this with the pandemic from preventable lifestyle issues so

00:00:28.740 people are dying younger and gen z is the most medicated generation ever in history and they

00:00:34.520 are the most risk of dying eight to 25 years younger which is terrible and it's awful as

00:00:38.940 adults as as leaders as whatever because our generation has adopted the last 40 years has

00:00:44.320 totally messed us up welcome to the michaela peterson podcast episode 113 with dr caroline

00:00:54.440 leaf this was one of my favorite podcasts on brain plasticity caroline is brilliant i managed to get

00:01:02.680 off of psych meds myself and heal with diet but part of what i did was change my response to

00:01:08.220 stimuli that happened somewhat naturally due to dietary change but dr leaf a communication

00:01:13.880 pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist actually explained what happened to me when i healed from

00:01:19.380 major depressive disorder she helps people understand their minds and change their lives

00:01:23.740 for the better. Dr. Leaf is the best-selling author of Switch on Your Brain, Think, Learn,

00:01:28.720 Succeed, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, and her most recent, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess,

00:01:33.920 Five Simple Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking.

00:01:39.960 This stuff works. She has papers and brain scans showing how to reduce anxiety and toxic brain

00:01:45.440 pathways and grow new ways of thinking. Cutting edge, crazy interesting stuff. Enjoy this episode.

00:01:50.940 If you like it, remember to hit subscribe.

00:01:53.740 dr caroline leaf welcome to my podcast thank you so good to be with you mikayla

00:02:06.180 i'm really looking forward to this i've been following you work for a while i've been very

00:02:11.020 interested in trauma and how to get rid of it and what the state of your mind can do to your

00:02:18.380 overall health and you cover that a lot in your recent book yeah so I guess well we should just

00:02:30.560 start with for anyone who doesn't know you can you give a bit of a brief background about who

00:02:35.200 you are and what it is you do absolutely well I'm a cognitive and clinical neuroscientist and

00:02:40.480 communication pathologist and that's a big mouthful for someone who works with the mind brain body

00:02:46.160 connection. So I've been trained in a very interesting way. I've done all the psychology

00:02:49.300 and I've done medicine, sort of a mixture of psychology, medicine, neuropsychology,

00:02:53.740 neuroscience, communication. It was a specialized degree that they did for a period of time. And

00:02:59.040 I tell you this to say that my training was very unique. And when I was doing it, I thought,

00:03:04.860 gosh, why am I doing this? Because it was so hard. But I'm so glad because it forced me to

00:03:09.080 understand an area that is one of the most badly researched areas, in my opinion, in the world of

00:03:15.080 science and we see the impact today in the current medical the psychiatric movement which you and I

00:03:20.180 were briefly discussing in the just before we started so basically what I do is I look at

00:03:24.640 people's how they're functioning how they're showing up what what are they saying what are

00:03:28.420 they doing what are the behaviors what are the emotions what are their mindsets what's happening

00:03:32.220 there because that's not who they are that's evidence that there's something going on in their

00:03:36.460 life and that's that principle then it teaches you to be what I'd call a thought detective

00:03:41.860 where you can actually say, okay, these are my patterns and why am I doing this?

00:03:46.840 And because that's not actually how I'm wired because we literally are wired,

00:03:50.220 our psychoneurobiology is wired for love, literally for survival.

00:03:54.540 And then to track back and find out the thoughts behind that

00:03:57.520 and then the thinking process that built the thought in the first place

00:04:00.740 right down to the root or the origin.

00:04:03.000 So if someone's showing up with major emotional things like depression

00:04:06.820 and can't form a relationship and whatever,

00:04:08.600 you track that back from that pattern all the way back down to the root which could be traumatic

00:04:14.820 child abuse or some kind of trauma in childhood or early early adulthood or whatever so everything

00:04:20.760 has a root and what we see from brain science is that you can't just slap a band-aid on a bullet

00:04:26.740 wound you can't just suppress something or do a few techniques or a bit of meditation or a bit

00:04:31.940 of breathing which are all important but all they do is prepare the brain they don't rewire the brain

00:04:37.800 and they don't change the brain so i wanted to understand the principle of rewiring the brain

00:04:43.300 which is neuroplasticity and how long it takes and what do you do and what is doing the rewiring

00:04:48.720 and that's the mind so the i did a lot of work on the mind brain separation what are the differences

00:04:53.720 between the mind and the brain and how can we control the brain and how can we direct the

00:04:57.620 neuroplasticity in the brain so that's kind of a summary and i started off in the world very

00:05:01.900 therapeutic world of working with traumatic brain injury and alzheimer's and traumas and

00:05:06.860 So, you know, hectic traumas, war trauma, sexual trauma, learning disabilities, autism, that sort of thing.

00:05:12.220 And then very soon saw that I needed to develop systems that would help people to, you know, manage their minds to change their brain.

00:05:18.340 Because people were just kind of doing therapy and getting stuck, you know, not really moving forward.

00:05:22.540 And I wanted to change that.

00:05:23.900 And then that's why I developed theories and systems.

00:05:26.280 And I've continued over these years to do clinical research and make this available to everyone.

00:05:31.420 Because we all have a mind, we all have a brain, and we all need to manage it daily.

00:05:35.180 So that's kind of a big picture overview of what I did.

00:05:39.300 I don't practice anymore.

00:05:40.860 I practiced for 25 years as a clinical neuroscientist.

00:05:43.860 Now what I do is I continue my research and everything I do and have learned,

00:05:47.560 I put into books and materials and I have an app and that kind of thing

00:05:50.580 to try and help people manage their mind.

00:05:54.300 Okay.

00:05:54.920 So let me see.

00:05:56.760 Where do I want to start?

00:05:57.460 That was a lot of information.

00:05:58.660 It was.

00:05:59.760 That was good, though.

00:06:00.620 i i think well might as well start where i want to which is how long does it take to change your

00:06:06.620 brain that's an excellent question so if i may preface that with um with just the mind brain

00:06:12.880 separation and then we can talk to the time because i think that's quite important we live

00:06:17.240 in a day in an age where the mind and the brain are used interchangeably so i've got i've got a

00:06:21.240 couple of props so for those that are listening i'm holding up a model brain in in a skull and

00:06:26.200 We've advanced dramatically since the mid-90s to now about understanding the neuroscience of the brain, which is amazing.

00:06:33.180 But on the negative side, it's made the philosophy of mind very neurocentric.

00:06:38.420 So people are all about brain, brain, brain.

00:06:40.140 So it's my brain made me do it.

00:06:41.400 My brain's broken. 0.99

00:06:42.280 My brain's diseased. 0.96

00:06:43.580 I'm depressed because I've got a brain disease.

00:06:45.600 You're familiar with that language.

00:06:47.440 Yes.

00:06:48.700 And it's very unfortunate because 38 years ago, when I started in this field, mind and brain were seen as separate but interchangeable.

00:06:55.860 so mind drove brain brain was physical mind is this force that drives the brain it's your ability to

00:07:00.640 to think feel and choose and when you did you don't think feel and choose and so your brain

00:07:05.880 doesn't do anything but they didn't believe the brain could change in the early 80s so i did some

00:07:10.080 of the first that's interesting super interesting so they understood mind brain but they didn't

00:07:14.260 believe the brain could change so i challenged that and did some of the first neuroplasticity

00:07:18.220 research in the early 90s showing that people with traumatic brain injuries can if they use

00:07:22.660 their mind which they can then change their brain and I showed that I showed the 35 to 75 percent

00:07:27.880 improvements in cognitive emotional social function changes in the brain everything

00:07:31.780 and that kind of launched me on my into my career that I've that I've been in for the last

00:07:35.820 from traumatic brain injury from that and learning disabilities and emotional traumas and Alzheimer's

00:07:41.080 dementia we are still Alzheimer's and dementia I worked with those as well and autism and

00:07:45.540 all those things so essentially mind is how you mind is what we're using now to be able to talk

00:07:52.200 to each other it's your ability to listen to me process what i'm saying think feel and choose

00:07:56.720 you're pushing that in your brain and you make you're growing you're converting what i'm saying

00:08:00.900 into little trees in your brain that literally look like like this you're building thought trees

00:08:05.880 in your brain and that enables you to then process what i'm saying i will apply and then talk about

00:08:10.660 it that's what we're doing all day long so mind is the force it's the first cause if you did if

00:08:16.500 you and i were dead we couldn't have this conversation we wouldn't see any changes in

00:08:19.700 the brain but because we are talking i linked you and i up to various different types of brain

00:08:24.560 technology that i use in my research we would see massive activity in your brain we'd see growth and

00:08:29.280 change and so on so mind is the force that creates the change mind is the force that drives the

00:08:34.460 neuroplasticity and mind is you you and me your ability to think feel and choose your ability to

00:08:39.640 be human to experience life to process life that's the psychological and then on a physics level

00:08:45.240 it's gravitational fields and electromagnetic forces and so if I put a QEEG on your brain

00:08:51.140 right now we would see a lot of energy response but if I put it on a dead brain we would see no

00:08:56.760 energy response so the mind is taking what we're saying it's all psychology stuff of understanding

00:09:02.420 what we're saying things we'll choose but there's also this force that gets pushed through the brain

00:09:06.420 mind gets pushed through the brain the brain responds electromagnetically and chemically and

00:09:10.840 builds thoughts. So that's the basic fundamental process. That's neuroplasticity. It's driven by

00:09:15.540 mind. It's happening all the time. Your mind never stops. You can go three weeks without food,

00:09:20.680 three days without water, three minutes without oxygen, but you can't even go three seconds

00:09:24.980 without your mind stopping. Your mind never stops. So your mind is awake when you're awake. It's

00:09:29.660 awake when you're asleep. It just never stops. It's what you eat with. It drives your digestive

00:09:34.200 system. It drives your dreams. Every single thing is mind driven. So essentially our mind is kind of

00:09:39.800 messy because we don't really be constantly hypothesizing we like little scientists we don't

00:09:44.940 know what's going up the events the circum so sometimes we you know we respond well sometimes

00:09:49.340 we don't respond well so it's a whole hit and miss situation and we that's okay our psycho

00:09:54.720 neurobiology of mind brain body can handle that what we can't handle is not managing the mess

00:10:01.600 so when we make a mess like let's say we get irritated because someone cuts in front of us

00:10:05.980 in traffic or something that's okay it's frustrating and that's okay to be messy and to

00:10:11.040 get irritated and maybe shout scream swear whatever but you don't want to stay there

00:10:14.660 because the disruption and dysregulation that that creates this is a very simple example and

00:10:19.340 i'll take it to a more complex one in a moment but that dysregulation creates a pattern in the

00:10:24.620 brain that if you don't stabilize it um it will then get become a toxic something toxic and so

00:10:30.680 the protein structures change and you get this downstream effect into your body you know the

00:10:34.880 mind brain body connection we actually sorry and i really don't mean to interrupt no no no you

00:10:39.760 actually get into that a little bit maybe after like what happens when you're in like a chronic

00:10:44.820 stress or something okay i'm gonna do that i'll explain that with some really simple examples and

00:10:48.920 and then we'll and i'll talk quickly about should i quickly finish about this and then the 60 yeah

00:10:52.480 yeah and then we'll come back but that's a really it's an excellent example and i'm glad we're gonna

00:10:56.160 go there um so essentially that dysregulation happens and if we don't manage that mess

00:11:01.260 and it accumulates and you keep getting messy and you just stay messy the whole day and your whole

00:11:05.280 life and you know you just just keep complaining and angry and frustrated eventually it just

00:11:09.540 accumulates and you have a lot of toxicity in your brain and instead of building a healthy thought

00:11:14.360 which is the green tree i'm holding up you actually build a toxic thought so if you don't

00:11:18.840 manage your mess this toxic thought becomes established and when it becomes established

00:11:23.340 it's an actual physical protein structure much like the covid virus or any bacteria which are

00:11:27.940 physical viruses which are physical things in your brain and this creates terrible disturbance in the

00:11:33.120 brain and the body the immune system wants to fight it and all kinds of stuff so this how do

00:11:37.200 you know i'm sorry to interrupt again but how do you know that it isn't that that's causing the

00:11:42.400 behavior how do you know that it's this it is this so so therefore there's two okay so there's two

00:11:47.120 parts here so to the excellent question so here and extra we in here we are in life we drive in

00:11:54.240 the car the irritation happens there's a response it wasn't there before you have the response you

00:11:59.140 get irritated yeah this builds in the brain if you manage it it goes away and it's gone and it's done

00:12:05.380 and you you've got through you say okay well i got irritated it's okay i'm going to calm down i'm

00:12:08.820 going to keep driving let that person cut in whatever whatever you do to just get yourself

00:12:12.780 and that's a simple example but let's say now that you in childhood you got abused or you're

00:12:18.700 bullied at school or you're in the workplace and you're being bullied or whatever the millions of

00:12:22.580 things that can go wrong in life which do each of those is experience of you in life you're

00:12:28.720 processing that experience through your mind into your brain and you're growing these trees now for

00:12:33.660 those of you that are watching or listening i'm holding up a toxic tree any tree has roots so if

00:12:39.520 you plant a tree it's got a seed and then there's roots and then there's a tree trunk and then

00:12:42.980 there's branches that's exactly what happens with the thought so if you have an established

00:12:46.920 trauma things that are going wrong or cumulatively going wrong over life every experience grows like

00:12:52.100 this it's as the experience starts that's the seed then as this as this experience is happening

00:12:57.300 the emotions the physical whatever whatever all the detail of the experience the email the toxic

00:13:02.760 words the toxic people what's being said what's being done all of that is building into the root

00:13:07.240 system that's the origin now that immediately gets processed there's a tree trunk and it's all

00:13:12.520 distorted and twisted so because this is distorted incoming information the interpretation we make

00:13:18.880 is distorted so we think feel and choose about that in a distorted way then we build these

00:13:23.100 branches which is above the ground the branches are then our coping mechanism the trauma responses

00:13:28.220 the think feel choose details emotions that kind of stuff of what we've experienced so when that

00:13:35.020 happens this thing is a whole thought structure it's protein it's got energy it's generating

00:13:40.120 energy this then produces our behaviors and this comes full circle back to what i said in the

00:13:45.060 beginning i trained people to be thought detectives to look at and this answers your question your

00:13:50.060 patterns and behaviors are here what you're doing saying feeling etc and from those those didn't

00:13:55.880 come from fresh air they've come from these so these produce the behaviors so when you look at

00:14:01.360 our patterns and if there's existing patterns and we get triggered so we don't deal with the stuff

00:14:05.880 it goes back down in our unconscious even stronger than before you get into a situation someone says

00:14:10.340 something boom that's triggered now there's it's triggered and now what's happening is added to the

00:14:15.140 roots and to the system and then it's reinforced it gets even stronger and the behavior that this

00:14:20.860 produces um is going to be even more toxic and then you suppress it you don't deal with it and

00:14:25.740 so the thing goes on eventually these are like volcanoes they explode and that explodes in your

00:14:30.980 mind your brain your body and in a multitude of different ways we're all unique there's no cookie

00:14:36.220 cutter if this happens that happens it's just a whole bunch of stuff that happens and we then we've

00:14:41.460 got to kind of deal with that and you can i mean you can rewire that too because we have volcanoes

00:14:46.160 all the time happening it's just the nature of life what i'm trying to teach people to do is

00:14:50.160 understand the process and recognize it's okay to have a volcano it's not the best thing but it's

00:14:55.360 okay you can still repair a volcano and when the volcano stops firing eventually the grass that

00:15:00.160 grows over the area of the volcano is healthier than before because of the minerals from the

00:15:04.240 volcano so you can transform this so you can't change what's happened to you but you can change

00:15:09.960 what's in you and that's the process of neuroplasticity and your question about how long

00:15:14.520 that takes how long does it take to find the pattern find the thinking the thought find the

00:15:19.360 thinking pattern find the route deconstruct reconstruct into a healthy version that process

00:15:25.360 takes cycles of 63 days so and it works in groups of 21 so there's been a lot of misinformation out

00:15:32.980 that it takes 21 days to form a habit. It doesn't take 21. It takes 63. We have changes happening

00:15:40.080 every 21. The first 21 is generally where we become aware of our patterns and we start becoming

00:15:45.740 a thought detective and we start seeing the data, the emotions and the how you think, feel and choose

00:15:51.800 about yourself, the coping mechanisms, the trauma responses, and you start seeing the roots. So it

00:15:56.060 takes about 21 days to do that kind of deconstruction. But by the end of 21 days, you have

00:16:01.580 built a reconceptualized new thought it's changed i'm holding up the green tree and i'm going to

00:16:06.200 pull a little piece of the green tree out there's a teeny little piece so this ugly toxic tree

00:16:10.280 has now been changed deconstructed and reconstructed into what you want it's still

00:16:15.000 part of you you're still sad it still happened but you've changed how it's playing out into your

00:16:19.000 future so yes that happened but but at 20 that takes about 21 days around about then this is

00:16:25.760 still tiny and here's where the other two cycles come in this is where people get stuck people

00:16:30.780 stop people get okay i've done the work i know why i'm traumatized i know why i did this in my

00:16:35.620 life i know where the depression is coming from or whatever but then they get stuck here because

00:16:39.920 they haven't stabilized a new pattern of thinking so that takes another 42 days to change behavior

00:16:46.680 to have the feeling that i know what to do but i can't do it or i'm stuck or i'm going you know

00:16:51.500 i can't do this and i feel even more guilty to stop and avoid that and to make the strong think

00:16:55.960 of it as a teeny little plant that you have to water and make it nice and strong that takes

00:17:00.060 another two cycles of 21 days of daily consistently practicing the new way of thinking and as you're

00:17:06.820 practicing that in a simple little five-minute process you get tremendous insight so you gain

00:17:11.900 every few days you gain tremendous insight and as each time you get insight you are changing the

00:17:17.920 structure of this little tree the thought tree is becoming stronger and stronger and stronger

00:17:21.640 and eventually you'll be in a situation where you're triggered but this comes up not the old

00:17:26.580 pattern and you remember oh i used to do that but now i'm doing this doesn't mean you're not going

00:17:31.340 to have depression and anxiety because those aren't illnesses those are totally normal human

00:17:35.260 responses they're warning signals they're not brain diseases like we've been told they're not

00:17:40.040 brain disease you can't be depressed you can't be depression you can't as much as you can't be

00:17:44.220 anger as much as you can't be frustration anger depression frustration they're all the same

00:17:48.760 category of warning signals telling us there's something going on there's a reason why and

00:17:55.160 That's so freeing.

00:17:56.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:56.680 It's so freeing to help people understand.

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00:19:03.960 unpack we can talk about the man body would you want to unpack anything i've just said yeah so

00:19:08.780 so one thing you said um well no just just a question after that is if you're stuck in a

00:19:15.640 let's say a depressed way of thinking where you get triggered by something and you you're you

00:19:20.080 immediately have a flood of negative thoughts how are you supposed to start like not thinking that

00:19:26.300 way because it sounds like a be more positive or definitely not or something so glad you asked

00:19:32.380 that question because this is definitely not positive thinking i am not a proponent of positive

00:19:36.240 psychology i think there's some good elements but it's done a lot of damage because people think

00:19:40.960 that i can just step on a positive affirmation i've got to the ideal is not to have those emotions

00:19:46.180 what I say is that it's totally okay to be depressed in fact it's a totally okay to be

00:19:52.040 anxious it's totally okay to experience any of those give yourself permission yeah look at them

00:19:56.320 differently shift your perspective and it's not a matter of I mustn't think like that it's the

00:20:00.640 whiteberry effect you tell yourself not so we're not talking about that at all this is a process

00:20:04.940 of embracing embrace as a messenger what my research showed my most recent clinical trials

00:20:10.120 which are in that book plus there was a super interesting study that came out of Tokyo and

00:20:14.580 texas funnily enough um just about a year ago talking about if we um in the in the west we

00:20:20.860 tend to look at emotions like depression as bad things but that's not what they are they're

00:20:26.600 actually incredibly helpful messengers so if you look at them differently if you say okay

00:20:30.600 i am depressed i don't like being depressed i'm feeling awful i can't get out of bed this is

00:20:34.380 terrible i'm anxious i'm having whatever it's acknowledge that it's horrible but don't be

00:20:39.120 scared of it don't think this is bad or this is who i am or i've got a broken brain or i'm stuck

00:20:44.040 rather say okay this makes me feel horrible but this is not who i am it's a helpful messenger

00:20:49.820 what is it telling me the minute you do that you shift 1400 neurophysiological responses in your

00:20:56.380 brain and your body to work for you not against you now this is what people aren't being told

00:21:00.700 wait it's like sorry before yeah okay 1400 how did that research come up these are how do they

00:21:08.660 know that that's not my i've done a bit of that research so collectively over the years there's

00:21:13.560 been a lot of research and this goes to the question the mind brain body connection there's

00:21:18.580 about 150 years of research in the modern scientific method of trying to understand

00:21:24.560 if we think in a certain way why does it impact our body and how does it impact our body and as

00:21:29.800 our techniques have advanced so we have been able to see that if you are totally not managing your

00:21:36.500 stress your cortisol levels will rise your homocysteine levels all those things we hear

00:21:40.000 about so there's a direct link that's been established very established biomarkers for

00:21:44.540 the mind brain body connection i've done work on quite a few of those and then also on things like

00:21:49.840 telomeres which are in your dna and that kind of stuff and we see a very um i showed my research

00:21:54.800 this has also been very it's pretty established research that you can you literally within seconds

00:21:59.820 of you um the way you perceive a situation is going to impact your these certain biomarkers

00:22:06.260 your DNA and if you understand that by shifting how you're you can shift into two minds at once

00:22:12.540 we literally can have two mindsets happening at the same time one is the messy mind that's in that

00:22:16.980 depression or whatever and the other is the wise mind that stands back and observes your own

00:22:21.020 thinking we can shift into two we have the skill and when we do that we get different kind of firing

00:22:26.520 in our brain and different interaction between the different parts of the brain and we move into high

00:22:30.420 levels of intelligence extremely high levels of intelligence and so literally we can stand back

00:22:35.840 can observe our own thinking feeling and choosing in that state and so what we want to do is say

00:22:40.780 okay I am depressed so wise mind is literally talking to messy mind saying okay you're depressed

00:22:45.400 that's fine that's okay it's what you're going through it's how you're showing up it's all right

00:22:49.900 we're going to find a reason there is a reason and when you talk to yourself like that we're not

00:22:53.520 denying the situation which is the worst thing you can do you're finding the reason exactly you're

00:22:57.920 not saying oh gosh think positive thoughts that's the worst thing you can do too because you're

00:23:02.020 putting a bandaid on a bullet wound, it's not going to work. What you're doing is you are

00:23:06.060 basically acknowledging and embracing. Now we know from neuroscience, the minute that you

00:23:10.120 acknowledge and embrace this toxic thought that is creating the sense of depression or whatever

00:23:16.020 it is, panic attacks, pain in your body, perspective, I hate life, whatever the different

00:23:20.200 signals which we can talk about, that as soon as you say, okay, it's fine, then this toxic tree

00:23:28.300 becomes it moves into the conscious mind and the little branches that are holding all the data

00:23:33.600 become weakened and when something's weakened it's malleable it's changeable so alongside that which

00:23:39.660 is a whole lot of physiological responses that changes the chemical response in the brain so we

00:23:45.100 now have an increase of dopamine and an increase of anandamide and increases and so on that then

00:23:49.880 changes the whole hormone system that then changes the endocrine system that then changes how the

00:23:54.940 heart's functioning so I can go on so if you add it all up it's around about 1400 neurophysiological

00:24:01.120 brain body responses that will occur in a moment that will then shift you into resilience as

00:24:06.320 opposed to breakdown mode and when you're in resilience mode you can be sobbing screaming

00:24:10.780 crying broken lying on the floor but in in that moment by saying to yourself this is okay it's

00:24:16.560 okay get it out it's fine yeah shifting your physiology which then gives you the strength to

00:24:21.240 then start climbing up and doing the deconstruction reconstruction process and that's the part of it

00:24:26.700 it's not easy but that's what you can that's what you can train yourself to do because that's what

00:24:31.120 you actually um how your physiology works okay that is fascinating so um just just a brief

00:24:38.700 background on like what i went through i was on antidepressants really high dosage of um ciprolex

00:24:44.120 for like 12 years or 13 years. And yeah, me too. And I fixed my diet and my depression went away

00:24:53.340 and I stopped taking my antidepressants over a period of two weeks because I didn't realize

00:24:57.460 with dual date, I didn't realize that was a thing. And then for about two and a half years,

00:25:02.300 I had like horrible, um, depression, but I was aware that it had something to do with the

00:25:08.920 medication. Cause I was like, this is so awful. It can't be real. So one of the things I did during

00:25:13.280 that time was when i had these they were triggered by like carby carby or foods and the withdrawal

00:25:19.520 would get worse which is something i now know looking back on it but um i'd separate and think

00:25:25.160 okay this is happening to me but it's so awful it can't be me so like it's a reaction that's

00:25:30.500 happening yes but um but it's but it's got to go away because it's so crazily bad that i must

00:25:36.920 be able to heal from this right and that's kind of what i thought and and eventually i healed and

00:25:41.320 it's gone wow so that's kind of crazy to hear because it's i didn't realize you actually did

00:25:47.180 the science you actually applied instinctively what i've been teaching what i've just explained

00:25:52.080 to you and what i've been researching all these years you you are one of the few that's managed

00:25:56.000 to actually do that because it's not many people i mean there's more than a million survivor sites

00:25:59.400 of people that have got off antidepressants and if you've kind of gone the journey that you've

00:26:03.440 gone and i mean it's as you and i both said before like this shouldn't even be happening

00:26:06.900 in the first place but it is um but yeah you so you what you quite right the withdrawal when you

00:26:11.940 take an antidepressant it basically changes the structures of your brain and you probably know

00:26:16.400 this but at the point where these things the trees that you build they all connected to each other

00:26:21.740 and at the point of connection all the little branches where they connect to me they touch

00:26:25.580 other neurons um it's called a synapse we get a little little doorways and the doorways increase

00:26:32.480 and they're abnormal increases so you're putting too many doors little doorways in your brain so

00:26:36.880 that disrupts balance and flow and so the thing that antidepressant even the word is is scary to

00:26:43.160 use because it's not correct it implies that it's like an antibiotic fixing getting rid of bacteria

00:26:47.880 it's not fixing anything all it's doing is numbing those doorways create a numbing effect in the brain

00:26:52.980 but the problem is that it's an abnormal structure so then the brain starts battling with that so it

00:26:57.480 has all those side effects and i'm sure you know about them but there's just so many bad side

00:27:01.740 effects fortunately for neuroplasticity you your brain is healing so yes your brain did get damaged

00:27:08.260 but you through your diet exercise your your mindset you've not used that first cause of mind

00:27:15.140 to actually drive healing into your brain and you know so yours is this great story that you've come

00:27:19.760 out the other side and you've managed to survive with the withdrawal and that kind of thing but

00:27:23.620 that's where withdrawal people need to taper if people make the decision you've got to taper and

00:27:28.880 And you've got to do diet and exercise, but you also have to do mind.

00:27:32.740 Because you can taper and do diet and exercise.

00:27:34.460 But if you don't get your mind right, if you don't have a way of managing your mind,

00:27:38.380 that will throw you off because mind is the biggest force.

00:27:40.940 Mind drives everything.

00:27:41.760 Without mind, there's nothing.

00:27:43.020 The diet doesn't.

00:27:43.820 Mind drives diet.

00:27:45.000 I mean, to the point, Michaela, I don't know if you're aware of this,

00:27:46.700 but if you're eating and you're eating a super healthy diet,

00:27:49.840 which I know you're very into eating healthy,

00:27:51.860 but if your mind is like all worked up and worried about something in the moment of eating,

00:27:55.960 you lose up to 86% of the nutrition.

00:27:58.660 So, I mean, our mind is driving that digestive system,

00:28:00.800 the assimilation of nutrients, the pancreas, the gallbladder.

00:28:03.360 All of it's been driven by our mind.

00:28:05.340 So we don't realize that mind being first course,

00:28:08.180 we should be teaching mind to our kids in schools as lessons.

00:28:11.080 I did this when I was working in education systems and when I do still.

00:28:14.860 Lessons, there should be lessons at school.

00:28:16.520 We should be teaching our kids from babies.

00:28:17.960 We should never stop learning about how to manage our mind

00:28:21.080 because messy mind, messy brain, messy body, messy life,

00:28:24.920 no matter how many books you read or how many podcasts you listen to it's still it's a it's

00:28:30.220 mind management okay so how do you like you must come across people who've been in science for a

00:28:39.200 long time and who are saying this isn't real there's so how do you how do you start how do

00:28:45.240 you convince somebody that mind or anything like mindset actually makes a difference because even

00:28:50.980 I didn't believe that right I started the diet and then it just I just I had that mindset it

00:28:56.960 wasn't something I worked on it just popped in thank goodness uh so it wasn't something it was

00:29:02.700 something I kind of took for granted I didn't realize how powerful it could be until I started

00:29:06.880 having some meals where I was horribly stressed like serious family illness horribly stressed

00:29:12.540 and I'd get kind of sick after and I was like how it's the same thing I was eating before

00:29:17.280 i was like really like oh no how much of this is in my head which is good actually because if

00:29:22.960 because it means you can control it but exactly exactly how do you talk to somebody about that

00:29:29.540 and convince them that that actually matters well let's put it this way some of the main science

00:29:37.300 top in top universities across the globe are and have been not it had not not just but have for a

00:29:43.740 long time been showing this evidence of mind brain and the impact of our thought life on our

00:29:48.600 physical body so when someone says it's not real if a scientist is not real they really aren't up

00:29:53.480 to date with research that's the first thing i wouldn't say that to them because they would get

00:29:56.820 you know it's an aggressive kind of statement but just for you and i to know that some of the top

00:30:01.260 scientists are you know you'll get top scientists at harvard and mit and you know all the the ivy

00:30:06.800 leagues that aren't they won't even talk about um psychotropics i'll say that those are dangerous

00:30:11.400 say that you don't use them that's just it's you never you that mind brain connection is real you

00:30:16.060 know that's one side the other side is is the language that's used so like scientists that say

00:30:21.540 that the brain does everything look at their research and i'll give you a synopsis where

00:30:26.360 they'll take people they'll put them into a lab they'll tell them to do something or think about

00:30:30.180 something or they'll show them pictures in other words they're taking an alive person and they're

00:30:34.320 making them think about something i say okay think of a sad story or look at the sad picture or so

00:30:39.420 they tell them to do something in other words they get them thinking and feeling and choosing

00:30:43.460 and then they measure their brain or they look at their brain it's using fmri or they do various

00:30:47.620 different things to test it so so they're saying that the brain produces the depression meanwhile

00:30:53.140 they ask the person to do something that made them have a depression response and they measure

00:30:57.440 the response in the brain so it's language it's how they're looking at it does that make sense

00:31:01.200 they are saying the person in the lab is depressed because their brain is broken they're looking for

00:31:06.580 the neurobiological correlate but they didn't just put the person in the in the lab they gave

00:31:11.380 the person something to think about first the first was mind in action then was response in

00:31:16.180 brain so they looked at the response in the brain to the person thinking even if they didn't tell

00:31:20.260 the person to think of anything just being in a lab with an fmri on you you're going to going to

00:31:25.360 an fmri you're going to be anxious so they're going to pick up anxiety in the anxiety response

00:31:30.040 in the brain in other words take a daily person stick them in the fmri machine you won't get

00:31:34.100 response so that's one of my first things i'll say to them the other thing is there is such a

00:31:38.120 body of literature i've done i mentioned earlier on i've done work in um looking at let's talk

00:31:43.800 let's talk about telomeres it's probably one of the most convincing ways of telling helping people

00:31:47.700 yeah that would be good and telomeres there's been a lot of research on telomeres in relation

00:31:52.880 to food and diet and exercise and lifestyle but not a huge amount on um on the directly on mind

00:31:58.600 mind drives lifestyle i mean you know yourself you had to use your mind you had to make a decision

00:32:02.600 to change your diet. You used your mind in all your descriptions earlier on. You said,

00:32:07.280 I recognize that I was eating a meal made me feel sick. This couldn't be right because this food

00:32:11.520 didn't make me sick before. I recognize I was in a stressful situation. All of that, you were using

00:32:16.060 your mind. You were thinking, feeling, and choosing about your situation. So you used your

00:32:20.260 mind to analyze the mind-brain response. So you looked at your own body and you looked at your

00:32:25.580 mental state. You put two and two together. Oh, boom, it's my mind. So you did that very,

00:32:31.300 you did research without even knowing you were doing research and you came to the conclusion

00:32:34.960 and changed it was all mind driven okay so here's the telomere thing telomeres are the if you think

00:32:42.400 of a chromosome a chromosome you think of the dna strand everyone can visualize that and if you pull

00:32:47.380 out a chromosome it looks like an x so i'm going to cross my fingers so anyone listening watching

00:32:51.840 they can cross their fingers or whatever and my fingernails which are conveniently painted pink

00:32:56.180 at the moment are let's pretend they're telomeres. Telomeres are the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres

00:33:01.720 do a lot of stuff. Nothing in the body works in isolation. Everything works together. But we're

00:33:06.760 going to just talk about in terms of one of the main functions at the moment. Telomeres are a

00:33:10.900 proxy for mind health. So how you are actually managing your mind in the moment. So in other

00:33:17.400 words, if you are going through a stressful situation, you eat that meal, in that moment,

00:33:23.440 your mind would have been affecting your telomeres this is how significant it is we make about a

00:33:28.460 million new cells every second the quality of those those cells then make up your digestive

00:33:34.260 system your brain your body so over time we are rebuilding every system of our body with our mind

00:33:40.740 driving the cells so if you think you're making about a million cells plus every second the quality

00:33:46.480 of those cells is determined by the quality of your mind management in the moment and that hits

00:33:52.860 your telomere so the telomere is involved in helping to make the cells the telomeres are

00:33:58.160 reliant on the energy from the mind which comes with an electromagnetic force and a neurochemical

00:34:02.420 force which then impacts the telomeres and activates the telomeres then make the cells

00:34:07.580 sorry i'm i've got this weird combination of being extremely open and extremely skeptical

00:34:13.940 when i got from the skepticisms from my dad the openness is from my mom but it's very good

00:34:19.360 how do they know that the mind i believe it but no but how do they know it how do they know that

00:34:25.660 the mind is impacting the telomere like length yes so what i showed in my study and i can tell

00:34:31.820 you directly from my study and i actually have got graphs in the book and things so the telomere

00:34:36.740 um the the strength of the telomere they can they can pray like a shoelace so if you and they've done

00:34:42.920 a lot of research showing that people with very poor diets they've got very weak in telomere so

00:34:46.920 they do blood work you take a blood sample and you then they've got these incredible ways of

00:34:50.960 analyzing the functionality of the of the telomere so they look at telomere length they look at

00:34:55.380 telomere percent there's different ways that they can you can look at the telomeres and then from

00:34:59.860 there what you've obviously got um we know that if it's a healthy cell the telomeres is you want

00:35:05.160 an ideal sort of length an ideal sort of strength so that when it when when you they and they keep

00:35:09.800 staying like a long strong fingernail for example but if your fingernails keep breaking and peeling

00:35:14.340 and chipping and getting worse and worse.

00:35:16.840 Over time, you may not even have a nail eventually.

00:35:19.740 So they've been able to, through blood work and through studying the telomeres

00:35:23.820 in different circumstances, they can track and see.

00:35:26.960 So people that have had extremely bad diets, exercise, lifestyle, and stress,

00:35:31.080 because when someone has a poor lifestyle, they're not managing their stress either.

00:35:34.700 So they always say stress is one of, but stress is the mind is driving all of it.

00:35:38.920 Mind is driving the choice of what you eat, how to exercise,

00:35:41.360 and also how you are dealing with the day-to-day stuff plus the big stuff in your life that you

00:35:45.960 haven't dealt with the traumas the past issues etc etc so they see and i saw this in my research i

00:35:51.560 had for example some subjects that came into into this we did a double blind study by the way so

00:35:55.900 random control double blind all that all the good stuff all the gold standard and some of the

00:36:00.780 subjects came in well they all came in a wreck everyone's pretty much all of us all mess all the

00:36:05.260 time but we just got a man it's how we're managing our mess and that's totally okay that's it's okay

00:36:09.320 to be a mess that's really fundamental to my teaching it's be a mess just manage it um so

00:36:14.600 for example one of the case studies was a more or less 30 year old and mid-30s millennial and

00:36:20.820 came in saying i am depression i and the narrative was just like a mess their blood work was a mess

00:36:27.180 high cortisol high homocysteine yeah the the whole these all the psychological tools were

00:36:33.340 terrible and the narrative the most important thing was their story what is going on in your

00:36:38.040 like what's happening it was like a mess the telomere length and that particular person was

00:36:42.580 really bad and telomere length is interesting because it tells you about the cells and cells

00:36:48.800 group to form the body and so it tells us you tells us about the health of your biology of

00:36:53.900 your actual body so from a telomere you can you can make a judgment on a person's biological age

00:37:00.520 and so if this particular person's biological age was 35 plus years older than the actual

00:37:07.820 chronological age and it was a sickly older so if you're in your 30s and you have a body of a sickly

00:37:13.440 65 year old your vulnerability to disease has increased by a factor of up to 60 70 percent

00:37:20.200 if not more and if it doesn't get treated you're going to constantly because it aggregates and

00:37:25.460 accumulates so the research explains it like from the research we can say this that if we don't

00:37:31.340 manage our minds and therefore manage how we're dealing with the triggers and things in our life

00:37:36.200 and the traumas, we are increasing our vulnerability to disease

00:37:40.800 by these factors that accumulate over time.

00:37:43.740 So it's not, I think a bad thought, I get cancer. 0.96

00:37:45.680 That's ridiculous.

00:37:46.420 It's not, I think a good thought, the cancer goes away, 0.98

00:37:48.080 which is as ridiculous, which is, you know,

00:37:50.060 the law of attraction, positive thinking.

00:37:51.600 You've got to be so careful of those things

00:37:53.060 because that in itself can bring tremendous guilt to people.

00:37:56.040 It's cycles of 63 days.

00:37:57.480 I've had some patients that went through two years of cycles of 63 days

00:38:01.860 because there were so many elements to their trauma

00:38:03.780 that they didn't fix it in one cycle.

00:38:06.200 But every time that you are fixing a cycle, every time you are managing your mind, as you recognize this food is affecting me in this way, you were shifting the energy that was the energy flow, the electromagnetic flow through your brain, through your body, through your blood, the neurochemistry, the flow.

00:38:21.960 All of that was shifting, which then influenced your telomeres.

00:38:24.860 So your telomeres started being able to heal.

00:38:27.980 So the cells, not in one day, but over time, over the two-year, three-year, four-year period, have been getting stronger and stronger.

00:38:34.680 so your health has been coming back you know the same thing will happen with your dad too and with

00:38:39.260 anyone who is in under any kind of eventually over time and not everything and not saying everything

00:38:44.020 is going to get fixed and go away we're going to be often we sit with collateral damage many

00:38:48.160 sometimes it's so different Michaela for everyone there is no cookie cutter if you do this all I

00:38:53.460 know is that we saw within nine weeks three cycles of that 63 days three cycles of 21 days

00:39:00.320 that the subjects in our control, in our experimental group that got the treatment,

00:39:04.680 that did the mind management, their telomeres lengthened and strengthened. So by the nine

00:39:09.700 week point, that person that I described in the beginning, that 30 year old, their chronological

00:39:14.840 and biological age matched. In other words, they were no longer sitting after nine weeks with a

00:39:20.740 65 year old sickly body. They were sitting with a body that was actually closer in age to their

00:39:24.820 chronological age. Their cortisol had dropped, their homocysteine levels had dropped, which

00:39:28.520 meant the inflammation in their brain and body had significantly dropped which meant that their

00:39:32.560 heart and brain were no longer at extreme risk for various different things to go wrong i mean

00:39:37.800 that's just a couple of things so yeah there's more and more research being done in this area

00:39:43.160 and the reason i do when i do research i look at the psychological and the narrative and the blood

00:39:48.860 and the dna and the brain i look at so many elements which is kind of unusual because

00:39:52.840 research normally looks at just an fmri or just cortisol i put them together because you've got

00:39:57.480 to look at people holistically and you've got to see what what is the whole pattern that's going

00:40:01.700 on in the person's life you know and and there you can see that they're driving for so that

00:40:06.640 particular person which really kind of sums this whole thing up in day one they were saying i am

00:40:12.720 depression their identity was depression their mind and body were a mess homocysteine up

00:40:18.500 inflammation chalk telomeres biological all the things i've described by day 21 they were saying

00:40:25.080 i'm not depression can't be depression it's not my identity i feel depressed because of radical

00:40:31.760 difference but i feel then they also said and this always fascinated me they said i feel i

00:40:37.800 actually feel more depressed and more anxious but it's different it's actually helpful i'm seeing

00:40:43.340 i'm feeling more depressed because now this person had had terrible abuse as a child and had never

00:40:47.660 faced it it had been suppressed and this um treatment that then you're entering into the

00:40:52.880 protocol into the clinical study had given her the subject a way of unpacking. And so the sadness

00:41:00.300 and depression came from, oh my gosh, that happened to me. When you start seeing stuff that happened to

00:41:04.720 you as a child, I mean, it's traumatic. So there was another level of trauma, but by day 63,

00:41:10.280 this person was saying, okay, I accepted this happened to me. I can't change that it happened,

00:41:14.900 but I can change how I manage it. It's not going to control me the rest of my life. I'm going to

00:41:18.840 get back their life and that's i mean that's a big summary of the whole thing obviously the detail i

00:41:23.400 don't share but the big picture i do that particular subject is in this book as a case study

00:41:28.000 which gives people so much hope and that's why i do this research because i want people to see

00:41:32.760 that yes every thought you think is having an impact you're always thinking and and you can

00:41:38.400 either stay messy which is just going to make you really frustrated or you can own your mess

00:41:43.240 and change and change it because if you through mess we can repair and we can grow it's so okay

00:41:48.840 to be messy as long as we're managing it so that's kind of the philosophy that's insane

00:41:54.020 so through through mind management you measured people's telomeres length and you could

00:42:00.000 increase it that is insane and was anything else was anything else changed like did you also change

00:42:06.340 diet did you incorporate exercise or what it was just yes okay that is one variable so because

00:42:12.400 there's so much work done on exercise and i do i mean i talk about that all the time i write books

00:42:15.740 about it it's so important but i can put you on a great diet if i don't get your mind help you get

00:42:20.380 your mind right you're not going to get the same benefit so we didn't touch that in the study we

00:42:23.960 do more studies and we'll we'll bring that but i wanted to get the mind manage i wanted to show

00:42:27.680 people it's your mind mind is first course so we can get a handle on that and give ourselves

00:42:32.260 permission to be sad and depressed and angry and frustrated and and and get it out if it doesn't

00:42:36.720 go out it goes in if we can do that and then recognize okay i've got to go beyond just

00:42:40.620 awareness i've got to get it out i've got to be aware i've got to go beyond what we're doing

00:42:44.740 currently in this current day and age and i'm just talking very generally but in the wellness

00:42:48.660 industry and you're very well versed in this area is that and it's not wrong but people are okay

00:42:53.300 let's meditate let's breathe yes let's do that but that only prepares your brain so you'll see

00:42:57.800 in the systems that i've developed you do brain preparation and then you go beyond so you do brain

00:43:02.460 preparation is your breathing your meditation your havening all those beautiful things that

00:43:07.280 are vital to get neurochemistry and stuff under control but they're not enough the research shows

00:43:12.280 if i just create awareness in you it's going to make you worse and and i showed that in my control

00:43:16.640 group because we had a control group yeah we had a control group and i've got that study in here too

00:43:21.680 of the one of the case studies and one of the subjects who same sort of age as the one i just

00:43:27.160 described but they didn't get the treatment but they got all the testing so they were super aware

00:43:30.980 of all the issues because they keep getting asked all these questions and having contact with people

00:43:35.640 but they got worse and worse and worse and eventually got what we call a red brain which

00:43:39.260 was such high levels of anxiety that they were in a dangerous position obviously we gave them

00:43:42.820 the treatment ethically we did with all of the subjects in the control group they all got the

00:43:46.600 treatment because it was randomized um and and there was a change almost immediately i mean

00:43:51.640 it was phenomenal so awareness alone and this is what we're seeing in the literature too that

00:43:56.840 people that if you just meditate you bring stuff up but what are you going to do with it you have

00:44:01.500 to deconstruct it so people meditate stuff comes up and then they shove it down you can't breathe

00:44:06.000 it away you can't meditate it away you meditate and breathe to get resilience in your brain and

00:44:11.540 your body to help get your alpha levels going so you can connect an unconscious and conscious

00:44:15.620 but now you've got to do work this ugly thing has to be deconstructed you have to find the

00:44:21.200 root and you have to change it and make it work for you and not against you okay so how do you do

00:44:27.420 that? I knew that question was coming. Good question. Okay. So I wanted to know how to do

00:44:32.120 this 38 years ago, because I was told as a therapist, just teach your brain patients to

00:44:36.260 compensate, teach them techniques. I thought techniques are not going to work. They're going

00:44:40.500 to work. Yes. In the right place. The CBT, ACT, all these, you know, there's a million techniques

00:44:46.020 out there that therapists have and that you can see and you can Google and find them and find

00:44:49.800 books. But techniques alone don't solve the problem. So I wanted to get to the basics. Okay.

00:44:55.180 how does a thought form how do these thoughts form what are memories what what am i doing to

00:45:00.280 grow this and then if i grow how do i get rid of it yeah yeah that's what i wanted to know

00:45:05.480 yeah so i wanted and i wanted to also know how do i find them how do i know when i've got these

00:45:10.260 yeah what do they look like what are the signs that i've got this and how do i deal with it

00:45:14.660 because in anyone i mean you and i could just brainstorm now and actually i'll come up with

00:45:19.040 at least 10 things i need to work on that of that are that are upsetting me at the moment and

00:45:22.980 definitely if i don't manage will impair my functioning i'm sure you could so and that's

00:45:27.380 normal that's good yeah that's good that's really being human that's great but what we need to do is

00:45:33.240 say okay well these are the things happening let's be thought detectives and let's say okay

00:45:37.000 which is the top one that's number one that's my priority this thing's really affecting i'll

00:45:41.400 deal with those later so you select your top priority and then you start analyzing so you

00:45:45.800 start with so this is the top choose to make a list choose the top one i'm just giving you a

00:45:51.220 quick right now let's in detail in here and i also have an app i don't know if you're aware

00:45:54.660 i have an app we should talk about the app too the neuropsycho app which walks you through it's

00:45:57.900 like me giving you therapy literally okay so first of all um you make the decision to look at your

00:46:02.800 patterns choose the top one then what you do is you start second thing is you start then saying

00:46:07.900 okay what let me break my pattern down first of all what are my emotions what are my behaviors

00:46:13.840 what are my body symptoms and what are what about what is my perspective the way the easiest way to

00:46:19.980 do this there's many ways but one of the ways i would do with my patients is i would say get two

00:46:24.140 chairs and use it in one and you're also in the other one in the one that you physically are that's

00:46:29.160 the messy mind or whatever and then the other one is the wise mind what is the wise mind the wise

00:46:35.000 mind is what we see in neurobiology is that you have no wiring in your brain and body for

00:46:41.080 anything toxic so we don't have depression in here wired waiting to jump out we don't have

00:46:47.720 anger we don't have anything we don't have none of that's in the brain the brain people still

00:46:52.240 believe that though right they have a deficiency a serotonin deficiency or they have something

00:46:56.960 yeah some kind of brain disease because that's the language that's used that's what people are

00:47:01.380 told take the drugs you've got a brain disease it'll fix your drug don't get people stigmatized

00:47:06.420 meanwhile the research has shown that that stigmatized people more and i don't know if

00:47:10.020 you're aware of this research and i put it in my book too but that approach has increased people's

00:47:14.960 death, shorten people's life, lifespan. So between 1996 and 2014, a massive series of studies was

00:47:22.540 done where they found that for decades we've been living longer, obviously because of advances in

00:47:27.020 medicine and technology, but that reversed, started reversing in 96. By 2014, it was an

00:47:32.140 established reversal. It's called deaths of, categorized as deaths of despair. So essentially

00:47:37.240 people are dying eight to 25 years younger and they should now in this modern age, it's two years

00:47:44.760 added to this with the pandemic from preventable lifestyle issues so people are dying younger and

00:47:50.880 gen z is the most medicated generation ever in history and they are the most risk of dying eight

00:47:57.200 to 25 years younger which is terrible and it's awful as adults as as leaders as whatever because 0.99

00:48:02.980 our generation has adopted the last 40 years has totally messed us up we're sitting not with a

00:48:07.800 pandemic in mental health we're sitting with a pandemic result of mismanagement of mental health 0.93

00:48:12.580 we've had total mismanagement and your story your dad's story and the millions of stories that

00:48:17.200 i read and i get thousands of emails a week of people that have had the same story and that's

00:48:22.840 why i'm so passionate about getting this out there so essentially what the first thing i want people

00:48:27.320 to do is to say please give yourself permission it's okay whatever you've experienced and whatever

00:48:32.420 you're experiencing you at your core are wired for love you're amazing and that's not just me

00:48:37.160 being motivational i'm not a motivational speaker i'm a realist i'm a scientist your neurobiology

00:48:42.380 is phenomenal you have all these systems in place to fight like if you have the covid virus your

00:48:46.800 immune system goes crazy and tries to fight it if you have a toxic trauma in your life as i mentioned

00:48:51.320 earlier your immune system will do the same thing it will also send out t lymphocytes and b lymphocytes

00:48:56.260 macrophages to go eat this thing to go get rid of it but if you if the source is not if the source

00:49:01.680 keeps it there which is your mind your mind is the source um it keeps it there then then no amount of

00:49:08.160 immune help is going it's just going to become extreme flamed and you're going to get an auto

00:49:11.640 immune response and a bodily response there. So what we want to do is we want to listen to the

00:49:17.880 signals of the immune system, which will affect how our body's functioning. And we want to listen

00:49:23.480 to the signals of our, so the somatic sensations in our body. We want to listen to the signals of

00:49:28.600 our emotions and the signals of our behaviors. So having said all of that, start with the core

00:49:35.720 premise that you're amazing, that you're brilliant, that you're wired for love. And however you're

00:49:39.640 showing up is because of adverse circumstances that have aggregated and accumulated and you've

00:49:44.980 slid down the scale. I always use a scale 0 to 10 and 0 to minus 10. And the average is minus 40,

00:49:51.380 plus 4. And in any one day, we have good and bad stuff happening. But generally, we can kind of

00:49:54.880 manage it. And that's all cool. So it's totally fine. It's when it aggregates and we start sitting

00:49:59.140 around the minus 4 area and then it shifts down minus 5, minus 6, and so on into extreme states.

00:50:05.460 And that's when people get completely stuck. And that's when people get labeled with all these

00:50:08.820 labels now the research shows that as soon as you get a label you've just chopped off up to another

00:50:13.240 that's the 25 year end without a label you're in the eight year end of dying earlier with a label

00:50:18.700 a mental health label you've just pushed yourself into the potential 25 year younger death so you

00:50:24.440 die maybe 65 instead of 85 or something like that and it's preventable so i'm so hot on not telling

00:50:29.540 people this so people can get out of that because you can you can get out of that you don't have to

00:50:33.240 be stuck in that it's not a death sentence so we get away we move on okay so let's give yourself

00:50:37.920 permission so it's basically look at the pattern with those four areas which is the emotions

00:50:42.480 behaviors what am i feeling depression what am i what are my behaviors i'm more withdrawn than

00:50:47.580 normal crying more than normal nothing wrong with crying but if your crying pattern has changed if

00:50:51.580 anything's changed that's what you're looking at body what's going on in your body there's so much

00:50:56.000 about body and how trauma stored in the body it is stored in the body you've got to look at your

00:51:00.380 body you're listening to me now you're not only building a healthy thought in your brain of the

00:51:05.080 stuff but you also as soon as it's in your brain your brain sends a message to every cell of your

00:51:09.160 body you've got 37 to 100 trillion and you've changed your dna so your genes are building this

00:51:14.500 this memories in your brain as a tree and it's in your body in your genes in every single cell

00:51:19.580 of your body your memories form it's not mind-blowing to think of so it's in your body

00:51:23.660 that's what people experience trauma in their body and we emdr and those kind of things put it out of

00:51:28.480 the body into the brain into the mind there's the third place that memories or thoughts are stored

00:51:33.940 with their memories is in the mind.

00:51:36.220 Now think of this podcast.

00:51:37.380 If you look at the little bars at the bottom,

00:51:38.960 you'll see little bars running

00:51:40.080 if you're watching a podcast.

00:51:41.720 Do you know the little bars I'm talking about?

00:51:44.900 That's a visual for mind.

00:51:46.200 Mind is a gravitational field around you and through you.

00:51:48.580 It's an electromagnetic field.

00:51:50.280 So memory is also stored all around you.

00:51:52.320 You've got your memories in these fields

00:51:53.800 and in your brain is a tree and in your body.

00:51:56.440 So it's in three places.

00:51:57.840 So that's why it's such a holistic experience

00:51:59.580 when we have a trauma and we recall it

00:52:01.220 and you go through a traumatic event

00:52:02.960 and you're building all of that into you.

00:52:05.040 So you're experiencing it with all of you.

00:52:07.140 So we have to address all of you.

00:52:09.280 So you have to then say, okay, what is going on?

00:52:11.800 Let me be the thought detective.

00:52:13.020 Let me look at my body.

00:52:14.880 Increased GI issues, increased maybe heart palpitations, whatever.

00:52:20.600 What are the body signs?

00:52:22.520 What are the, as I said, emotions?

00:52:24.000 What are the behavior changes?

00:52:25.180 And then perspective, that's massive.

00:52:26.980 How am I looking at life? 0.98

00:52:28.660 Am I seeing that life sucks? 0.92

00:52:30.360 Or am I thinking this always happens to me,

00:52:32.120 but your overarching perspective that is activated when you think of this particular pattern is very

00:52:37.700 important because it's the it's it'll lead you to your trauma response your coping mechanism

00:52:42.360 the type of trauma are you in flight flight freeze yeah i mean it leads to those kind of things so

00:52:47.820 you look at those and i walk you through this whole process in depth in my app called mirror

00:52:51.780 cycle and in the book then you start then you then you literally say okay i've got the pattern i've

00:52:58.400 started seeing these different areas now i'm going to start unpacking them but before you do that

00:53:03.880 you now just need to give yourself a little bit of brain boosting resilience and that's where

00:53:08.000 you can meditate you can breathe you can i know your dad did one more i've interviewed him too

00:53:13.300 and he didn't like that and a lot of people battle when you breathe and get into meditative states

00:53:17.580 if you've got trauma it can make you freak out so you can do your eyes opening you can do havening

00:53:22.320 and tapping so i recommend my highly traumatized patients i used to just do let's just do some

00:53:26.580 tapping because then you keep your eyes open don't you know anything just to lower the

00:53:30.620 neurochemistry what does that do it's um since a um when you tap like that or give yourself a hug

00:53:37.020 that creates a um it seems as a a very strong sense of it's basically like an alpha wave

00:53:43.720 through your brain and your body up into your amygdala and then um your amygdala is a library

00:53:49.500 and like libraries have got books with information there's books with good information about i can do

00:53:55.780 this and there's books with this is terrible life sucks yeah and if we if our amygdala is stimulated

00:54:00.740 incorrectly the life sucks books hit you on the head but if you tap or breathe or any one of those 0.84

00:54:06.140 brain preparation you actually close that part of the library and you open the other part that says

00:54:10.280 oh maybe i can do this so that's a simple explanation does a bunch of other stuff too

00:54:14.220 but it sends a very calming wave to the amygdala which enables us to get that neurochemistry and

00:54:18.840 that um that you don't want the high beta flowing through the amygdala and it will when we're in a

00:54:24.940 panic state so you want to just get the beta down so what i do in brain preparation is you choose

00:54:29.900 whatever technique and in the app i have a three minute little technique every day and you can try

00:54:34.020 that or try your own and we're building a whole lot more into the app so you can just choose

00:54:37.400 whatever you want to do then you start with the actual neural cycle so the neural cycle was

00:54:42.340 developed i developed it 38 years ago with my tbi patients and my alzheimer's dementia all those

00:54:47.220 patients learning disability i've developed a theory so this is very scientific and then i

00:54:52.140 wanted a practical application because patients aren't interested in theories they're interested

00:54:56.200 in what do I do and so I wanted to find the actual steps so all the stuff I'm talking about all these

00:55:01.080 thoughts brain how the thoughts form all of it I wanted to work out if I do this what's happening

00:55:06.900 in the brain if I do this what's happening in the brain so in the book I've got a chart where I

00:55:10.940 explain the five steps in detail with what's happening in the mind brain and body but you've

00:55:15.300 got to set the neurocycle app which I've just explained acceptance look at the pattern do the

00:55:20.560 breathing or tapping or whatever and then you start the neuropsycho before i explain the five

00:55:25.240 steps you do it for a limited amount of time if you're working on a hectic trauma or a really

00:55:29.440 the thing that is hard for you in your life you spend 15 to 45 minutes max okay yeah that's so

00:55:37.380 important so you can do this in as quick as seven minutes because it's five steps the brain

00:55:41.640 preparation i always recommend like a one two three minutes or so so if you can block off 15

00:55:47.440 to 45 minutes once a day for 63 days i know it sounds a lot but here's my argument your mind's

00:55:53.020 a mess anyway so if you all you're doing is using your mind i'm not saying you i'm saying all of us

00:55:57.660 if you've got a trauma your mind's working anyway so you may as well work it in the direction you

00:56:02.820 want this is direct neuroplasticity so it's an organized technique that you do for 15 to 45

00:56:07.960 minutes for 21 days the second phase of 42 days the other two cycles of 21 you only take five

00:56:13.940 minutes so it's not a lot to do and when you get into this it's so life-saving that pattern that's

00:56:21.140 that's dominating your functioning at the moment is certainly not going to be dominating your

00:56:25.600 functioning because you're allocating a 15 to 45 minute block once a day to deal with it so the

00:56:30.280 rest of the day you can actually be set free from that because you're not going to think of it the

00:56:33.660 rest of the day you're going to work on it tomorrow morning or whenever you choose your time so and

00:56:39.220 then that process one of the biggest problems was therapy and intervention and counseling and

00:56:43.540 coaching is what we call carry over carry over is you're great in therapy with your therapist but

00:56:48.560 like when you leave therapy it's kind of hard to always apply that so carry over is always a big

00:56:52.940 challenge and so i wanted to bring that in i did a lot of research in how do you train someone to

00:56:58.280 do something help them in therapy or help them on their own but they carry that over into the day

00:57:02.360 so the neuro cycle is a way of thinking that you can use in this very almost self-therapy sense

00:57:07.580 you can use in therapy i have a lot of therapists that use it via the coaching course and everything

00:57:12.240 and you can use on your own because if you're not you're not with your therapist every day you're

00:57:16.980 with your therapist maybe once or twice a week or counsel or coach you live with yourself you're

00:57:20.820 waking up with yourself at night and your mind's going crazy you need mind management 24 7 so this

00:57:26.220 neurocycle provides you with a way of doing therapy a way of doing your daily therapy with

00:57:31.540 yourself the serious stuff and then it's also a way of catching yourself when you have chaos during

00:57:35.800 the day and you mentioned that early on what happens if all these thoughts are like this

00:57:38.680 What do I do? You neurocycle. So it's a way of catching stuff and then unpacking it,

00:57:44.460 getting it in order and getting control. And you're using your wise mind, your neurobiology

00:57:49.440 that's wired for survival. Your survival mind kicks in as soon as you say, okay, this is okay.

00:57:55.220 I'm aware of this. I'm going to gather. So as soon as you do the thing I've just said,

00:57:59.460 your wise mind takes over, your neurobiology changes, those 1400 neurophysiological responses

00:58:03.980 kick in and you start being able to get control you get agency and as the more you do this the

00:58:09.240 more you get empowered so over time i showed in a nine week period my patients my subjects in my

00:58:14.840 clinical trial this has happened for years because i've been working on this for years

00:58:18.220 it was an 81 ability to increase 81 agency increased by 81 which meant that my mind's

00:58:26.480 chaos i can't do this i've got 81 more power to get this under control versus zero power or 10

00:58:32.660 percent power which is my day's a mess and it just gets worse does that make sense that that kind of

00:58:38.700 that is that's insane that is so cool like that is so cool yeah i've been i just finished um i've

00:58:47.900 been writing a book and i've been writing a book for since i was like in grade one because that

00:58:53.020 was part of the way i handled bad things that were happening because i wrote them down so i've turned

00:58:57.940 it into a book i finally finished the book but um it was horrible it was absolutely horrible to

00:59:03.920 write because everything i was writing was just i had to relive it it made me cry but then i felt

00:59:09.960 better after but i did that you deconstructed it yeah and i do i do exercise first so i was

00:59:16.520 able to write and then i'd work and i'd only work for up to 45 minutes because i couldn't tolerate

00:59:24.580 i couldn't tolerate more i noticed if i did like two hours i was just wiped for three or four days

00:59:29.240 and i'd like cry a bunch the whole time it got easier but at the beginning it was just like

00:59:34.660 sobbing so and then i'd finish it's so hard but yeah that's it's so interesting to learn some of

00:59:40.260 the actual science behind what these things are doing because i was just like i don't know why

00:59:44.760 this is making me feel better but it's working there you go you you describe what that subject

00:59:49.460 described where they said they got worse they were more depressed and sad but it was different

00:59:53.460 because they were seeing the pain so you were processing through the pain it's a treatment

00:59:56.820 effect we would always see i always warn my patients you get worse before you get better

01:00:00.300 you know that's just inevitable but people aren't always prepared for that because people think if

01:00:04.400 people can go into feel it it's bad yeah people can go from extreme anxiety non-functional

01:00:09.760 functional and then into deep depression as they start seeing and then people think you've gone

01:00:14.820 backwards you haven't gone backwards that's progress because that deep depression is evidence

01:00:19.360 of you just trying to manage what you found so you're crying your tears that was your your just

01:00:24.260 sadness and getting it out and it's been there for so many years and processing and getting it out

01:00:29.460 so that's so and we've got it that's what we've got to do we've got to level the playing fields

01:00:32.660 so you actually went through all these processes i've just taken what we are you see you prove

01:00:37.880 wired for love you prove that we have an optimism bias you prove that mind is first cause everything

01:00:42.660 you've gone through all i've done is the science of behind what you've actually experienced so this

01:00:47.500 is i'm talking about the science of basic human philosophy how we function and um basically

01:00:54.320 putting it into system so that the neuropsycho you pretty much did as you sat down and wrote

01:00:58.840 you first gathered awareness of your thoughts for the day and you would have got there was

01:01:03.440 you know the pattern all those things you may not have distinctly done the behavior emotion in that

01:01:08.100 order but you would well actually here's here's where it gets weirder okay so that was finishing

01:01:12.940 my book my book was like that was more recent that's when i'm doing my i'm much healthier it

01:01:18.120 was a lot easier it was still emotional but it was easier when i was actually in the healing period

01:01:22.200 when i was when i'd stopped taking the medications and i was in ssri withdrawal i spent time each day

01:01:27.900 monitoring how i was like studying myself because it was the only way i stayed sane i was like what

01:01:33.680 are my digestive symptoms what's my mood i had a scale from zero to ten zero being the worst yeah

01:01:40.120 yeah that's so weird but mine was zero to 10 so not negative 10 plus 10 and I put down all my I

01:01:47.020 put down like every symptom I could think of three times a day for like two and a half years so that

01:01:52.580 I could monitor the patterns wow that's phenomenal you I mean you did a whole research study there

01:01:58.460 you should put that in your book too I mean that's really brilliant because that is what

01:02:02.620 that's mind management you've just demonstrated the principles of mind management because the

01:02:07.000 If neuropsychals literally gather awareness, then reflect on them,

01:02:10.140 which is ask, answer, discuss, write them down.

01:02:12.240 I've developed a technique called metacogging,

01:02:14.220 which is something you'd love when you learn how to do it.

01:02:16.400 It's in the book and the app.

01:02:18.120 And it's a way of writing that forces the two sides of the brain to work

01:02:21.360 together and it digs deep into your, get your intuitive skills like boosted.

01:02:25.340 So you can take into your, into your non-conscious, like, oh,

01:02:28.500 I used to do this with a lot with my patients that were battling with,

01:02:31.840 you know, schizophrenic symptoms and like multiple personalities and like

01:02:35.840 severe trauma where they were non-functional i would actually teach them to learn using the

01:02:40.160 neurocycle so they would learn educational stuff because that builds resilience and then i'd work

01:02:44.180 on the heavy stuff and because it got the brain set up for um for being able to and deal with the

01:02:51.280 the shock of trauma and the emotions and that kind of thing and we would i would using the

01:02:55.880 metacog within the neurocycle because it's step three of the neurocycle i would help them they

01:03:00.260 would basically be writing all over this paper and they would be at second tell me how you're

01:03:05.120 feeling or something or what's going on or what's what's this and they would have five different

01:03:09.260 versions but they'd never seen that then they suddenly saw it in this format and they said oh

01:03:14.420 five different personalities and each one came from a level of trauma going back to the inner

01:03:18.920 child and all that stuff so i'm saying this this neuropsycho that i'm talking about this is like

01:03:22.980 it's come from heavy heavy research and application and it's so i've simplified it so much that anyone

01:03:28.580 a child can do this but it's doing the most phenomenal stuff in your brain and then the

01:03:33.000 fourth step is also where you the that writing step that third step is kind of chaos it's just

01:03:37.520 like you're you're kind of dragging all this stuff out of the nun just and dumping it and

01:03:41.540 then recheck is where you go and like sort it out what are the patterns and triggers and antidotes

01:03:46.420 and you reconceptualize and reconceptualizing is accepting that okay this happened but it doesn't

01:03:53.080 I can change this I can see it differently so instead of for example oh everyone always leaves

01:03:57.340 me I can't keep a relationship going it's not no everyone's always leaving you reconceptualize

01:04:02.060 that is that you're always trying to make it work so you always try and stay because you're trying

01:04:05.920 to make it work that's a reconceptualization it's another perspective and it's only when we start

01:04:10.720 reconceptualizing which takes the first few steps to get to that point that you can start shifting

01:04:15.220 and moving forward and then the fourth step the fifth step is a little action that you do to keep

01:04:19.740 you in a safe space during the day that's got various components to it i mean that's just a

01:04:23.780 very brief overview and it's like super clear in the book and in the app where i literally walk

01:04:27.880 you through it. And the app we're growing all the time. And we're building in a neuropsychal lab

01:04:32.080 where people can bring their problems and we can talk through and work through how to do it. So

01:04:36.360 yeah, lots of things happening. That is so cool. I've been working on an app with my dad for

01:04:42.280 resilience, where it helps you identify factors in your life that you're upset with, and then

01:04:47.560 identify what exactly you're upset with. And then this is simplified, but basically make to-do lists

01:04:53.580 in order to slowly chip away at the problems in your life wonderful hopefully that'll help people

01:04:58.920 okay our time is up i cannot recommend this enough that was absolutely brilliant i'm

01:05:06.120 a bit shocked that's so cool i didn't realize that there was actual research out on this stuff

01:05:13.640 because it's so complicated like suggesting that the mind is separate from the brain even that's

01:05:19.020 not how i was brought up at all no that's not what i learned uh so that's incredible and i hopefully

01:05:25.140 that gives people a lot of hope so thank you very much if people aren't following you um where can

01:05:33.440 they find you online dr caroline leaf my social media handle so they can find me and then from as

01:05:38.400 you know from instagram you can find everything my web page i have a podcast called cleaning up

01:05:42.620 the mental mess i need to have you on we need to talk through your what you did so mental mess yes

01:05:47.440 yeah no we need mine too no but just the way you describe it it'll be very helpful for people but

01:05:52.120 yeah people can find out that what tons of information there to caroline is probably the

01:05:55.740 best place to go first because from there as i said you get to everything okay great thank you

01:06:00.660 very much for coming on oh thank you i enjoyed it thank you it's great questions

01:06:17.440 Thank you.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - September 14, 2021

113. Restructure your BRAIN using your THOUGHTS ｜ Dr. Caroline Leaf

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