- One of the most important mental health secrets
that people don't really discuss,
is this concept of growing your brain.
- I love the way you've separated the mind and the brain
because most people say, "What's the difference?
"There's a brain and a mind, aren't they the same?
"And what's the difference?" And the difference is huge.
But how could...?
What advice could you give our audience?
How could they use their mind to heal,
to grow,
to succeed in every area of their life?
What kind of tips could you give us,
very simple practical things that would help people
use their mind to heal and grow their brain to succeed?
- Okay, so the first part is that,
what you've said really well in your question is,
"What can they do to grow their brain?"
And that's absolutely key, you can grow your brain.
So one of the most important mental health secrets
that people don't really discuss
is this concept of growing your brain.
So your brain is a very, very hungry organ,
it wants to be constantly stimulated.
When it's dead, it doesn't need that
because it's disintegrating.
So your mind, once again, becomes the source
of the brain's desire to or the brains need
to be built. An alive person is now creating
this force in the brain and the brain wants to grow.
So when we talk about growing the brain,
I talk about "building" the brain.
We want to...
The brain constantly wants to have new knowledge.
So when you wake up in the morning,
you have lots and lots of new baby nerve cells;
that's neurogenesis.
And those new baby nerve cells need to be used
during the course of the day.
They're basically there
to be built into the networks of the brain,
to have other branches grown from them.
Because as we're thinking, feeling, and choosing,
we actually have this ability to grow new thoughts,
to make new proteins, as I've been saying,
you take the knowledge, and you convert it
into these structures, which are made of protein.
So "brain building" is an essential term,
and brain building is quite simplistically
spending at least 45 minutes to two hours in blocks;
you can spend a 15-minute block, whatever,
but to try and build into the course of your day
at least a 15-minute,
but if you can, ideally go for a two-hour,
sort of, over... either in one stop or broken up over the day,
but brain building.
So brain building is taking anything,
it could be taking a newspaper article,
it could take a video that you love watching
or something on YouTube that fascinates you.
It could be a fiction or non-fiction book, it could be anything.
And the concept is to take that knowledge
and to systematically go through that
and grow that as thoughts into your brain.
As you do that, you draw on those new baby nerve cells
and you create these lattices in your brain
that then help you to get the brain
into a very resilient state.
So as the stresses of the day
and as the undealt-with traumas of the past
and as the new traumas
of the current and future, which is going to happen,
come, your latticing is very strong in your brain.
So it's kind of a foundational thing.
So with my patients in our practice,
the first thing I would always do
is, obviously once we'd done the basic diagnostics and so on,
would be to build...
Part of the session would always be brain building.
And then I would go into the heavy stuff of the detoxing
and the sort of fixing part
so that you build strength in before that.
So that's one tip.
And then there's obviously a system
that I've got overarching all of these.
But then another basic tip
is when you wake up in the morning,
what's absolutely vital is
when you go to sleep at night,
the way that your chemicals move through your brain
and the way that the different parts
of your brain function shift.
So your mind almost makes your brain work
back to front at night and then during the day,
it's front to back sort of thing.
So things shift.
As you're waking up in the morning,
this shift from wakefulness, sleep to wakefulness,
is a very, very critical time
where we start the process
that we need to continue through the day as a tip,
and that is self-regulation.
To be very... I call it the "self-regulation,"
but there's a specific way you do it
where you employ this ability that we have as humans
to stand back and observe yourself.
So as you stand back and observe yourself,
we can do it right now as I'm talking,
you can watch yourself listening,
you can watch yourself, I mean,
I can watch myself, I know my hands are moving,
I'm aware of me watching you,
I'm aware of everything in my office,
I'm aware of my voice intonation,
simply because I said it.
So, in other words,
I am consciously and deliberately watching
how I am thinking, feeling, choosing,
and expressing myself, and the impact on others.
Now that is...
that skill will help us
to manage the messiness of our mind
in the morning as you wake up
and then set the tone for managing during the day.
So self-regulation starts as you wake up.
And if you catch yourself, for example,
complaining or very negative,
that causes brain damage literally immediately
and throws your brainwaves off
and your frequencies of your brain, et cetera.
And that sets you up for a bad day unless you catch it,
or just makes the day so much more tough.
So if you can immediately get into and observe that
and then shift and say, "Why am I feeling like this?
"Well, how can I reconstruct that?"
Just, I mean, that could take you a few seconds,
and there's a whole system that I've developed,
called the NeuroCycle,
that you can use to develop these... all these NeuroCycle things.
And then, during the course of the day, if you can,
once you start the day like that,
keeping in a self-regulated state,
keep in this multiple perspective advantage,
and keep doing your brain building,
and that's just a couple of tips.
And then there's obviously the whole system
that I've developed to do this, called the NeuroCycle,
which is based on the theory that you mentioned,
my geodesics theory,
plus all my research for the over the past 38 years,
and the clinical application.
- And what about your story, because I love stories.
What led you,
or when have you most needed to work on your own mindset?
Could you share some of your story with us?
- Yeah, I've got a podcast called 'Cleaning Up the Mental Mess,'
and people want to know lots about my story.
I often pop in, like, in depth
little things, like anecdotes, that happened in my own life.
So very early on in my research,
I saw that, "Hey, this is not just for my patients;
"this is for me."
I used to wake up complaining every day.
I used to wake up seeing the negative
and wondering why my day was so challenging
and why I was so exhausted at the end of the day.
So I started practicing using this system on myself first.
So that was one of the things, and I found that
that shifted my whole day and my whole sleep pattern,
so very early on.
Also, I have, like anyone,
we've all had our challenges in life.
I mean, my husband was an alcoholic for 11 years
and we've been married 35,
and dealing with that and having four babies
and trying to do research and PhDs,
there was a lot of challenges in my life,
and many times when we nearly got divorced,
but we pushed through.
And if I didn't have a system of recognizing this,
"I'm feeling this because of these reasons,
"and this is what I'm going to do
"and this is my action plan,"
and being able to actually talk it through,
I would have fallen apart.
So the key thing that really facilitated the process,
and I didn't actually go for therapy,
but because I had so many friends that were therapists
and I would talk this through
and I was training people all the time,
so I was always using my own story in lecturing,
training physicians, training therapists,
so my whole...
I think all the time I was giving myself therapy
and talking to these people and the feedback.
So, in other words, the constant, I didn't push it down,
but my story has been one of as something,
as I go through anything in the day,
as something hits me, I know how to recognize
and read my patterns.
So as soon as there's any kind of emotional pattern
that throws me, and I see it's consistent,
I know that I need to do a 63-day cycle,
that there's something that, if there's a pattern,
that means that I've got something that I haven't dealt with
and I will start working through.
I'm always working through a 63-day cycle
because there's always traumas from the past
that come up, get triggered,
these new traumas that we experience,
and that's just life, we should be [indistinct],
I'm sure you agree.
In terms of just how I apply the NeuroCycle,
in terms of my daily existence,
the challenges of running a business,
and four kids that are adults, and doing research,
like anyone, I'm busy, and things happen,
someone will put a terrible comment on an Instagram post,
or I'll get an email that throws you,
or there's a trauma in the family.
I honestly use the...
I've got my mind to a point where
I don't allow myself to get depressed,
I allow myself that anxiety,
I give myself permission,
because I don't see it as an illness,
I see it as, "It's okay to be a mess,"
and then I work in repairing it and growing.
And it's that permission, I'm kind to myself,
I allow myself, I get it out.
Sometimes, I'll lose my temper
and get mad and irritated about the most dumb things.
I don't get guilt about that.
I say, "Okay, gosh, that was wrong."
I use the guilt in a good way,
"Hey, that that hurt someone,"
and I catch it quickly.
So I'm 80% more efficient in seeing the mess,
catching the mess, repairing it, and growing.
And that's how I manage my stories,
is being very authentic, honest, open,
and not trying to be perfect.
It's recognizing that the fiction in me
is going to drive the messiness,
so I'm very good at owning the mess and cleaning the mess;
I don't stay in the mess.
That is one thing, I allow the mess to be expressed,
I'll get the irritation out,
but because I'm so self-regulated,
I'll pick it up quickly,
so I'll see, "Hey, that was really a nasty comment
"that I just said to my husband,"
or, "That was not a necessary way of thinking about someone
"who sent me an email," or something,
because that's not good for my brain and body.
It's going to give me brain damage.
It's, it's effecting my telomeres
and the million cells I'm making every second.
So I'm aware of that, and I use that,
and I give myself permission and I fix it,
and I repair and I grow.
- I love that.
What you're saying is, "I allow myself to be a flawed person,
"having flawed relationships with flawed people,"
because when you try to be perfect,
I mean, people often think that, "Therapists
"and doctors and scientists are perfect,
"all child psychologists have perfect children,
"all marriage counselors have perfect marriages,
"dietitians have perfect diets,"
they don't, because they're human.
And I love the fact that you say, "I let myself fail,
"I let myself mess up
"because I'm human." - Exactly.
- Is so refreshing because most people
are so busy trying to be perfect, which is not possible.
Just be a flawed human,
that's the best all of us can ever be.
- Exactly.