Speaker 1: I won't let my body out me out wait everything
Speaker 1: that I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
Speaker 2: I'm learning love who I am again, strong, I feel free.
Speaker 2: I know everybod of me it is beautiful.
Speaker 1: And that will always out way if.
Speaker 2: You feel it.
Speaker 1: But you.
Speaker 2: She'll some love to the HT there take you day
Speaker 2: and did you and die out way?
Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, outweigh. We are back with doctor Lee Warren
Speaker 1: for our neuro series. Last week, if you missed it,
Speaker 1: we talked all about the thoughts and how to think
Speaker 1: about your thinking and really become a self surgeon so
Speaker 1: that you can take radical ownership of your thoughts. And
Speaker 1: this week we are going to be talking about feelings. Okay,
Speaker 1: and so this idea that your brain is multiple switch
Speaker 1: up a ball anytime if you have gotten stuck in
Speaker 1: a loop of your feelings or feel like maybe you've
Speaker 1: gotten downward spirals, we're going to dive into that. So
Speaker 1: before we get into some of the cause and effect
Speaker 1: of it, when you talk about self brain surgery, what
Speaker 1: do you share with your listeners about the feeling side
Speaker 1: of it, Because obviously we can take ownership of our brain,
Speaker 1: So where do the feeling side of this come into
Speaker 1: play because I think there's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: feel like they're almost a victim to their emotions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're exactly right, Lee, And so the big thing,
Speaker 2: as we teach is feelings aren't facts. They're chemical events
Speaker 2: in your brain. So that's not to say that feelings
Speaker 2: are bad, but the problem is that the human brain
Speaker 2: has a limited palette of neurotransmitters, and those seven or
Speaker 2: eight neurotransmitters generate all the things that are possible for
Speaker 2: a human to feel. And so what that means is
Speaker 2: there's no discernible difference between what you feel internally, mentally,
Speaker 2: or physiologically when there's a real threat to your life.
Speaker 2: Say you know, a bear runs into your living room
Speaker 2: and trust to eat you, or you wake up in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night and wonder if you're going
Speaker 2: to get fired the next day at your job, and
Speaker 2: you get afraid, the same set of feelings right, the
Speaker 2: hair stands up, your heart races, you feel cold. All
Speaker 2: that stuff happens because physiology is triggered by feeling. Feeling
Speaker 2: is a chemical event in your brain. So the most
Speaker 2: important thing to realize is that the things that I
Speaker 2: feel do not automatically deserve to have credibility as representing
Speaker 2: actual current events that are actually happening. Most people don't
Speaker 2: recognize that. In our society right now, we're inundated with
Speaker 2: this idea that what you got to follow your feelings
Speaker 2: and follow your heart and you fight for your feelings
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. And I'm just telling you from
Speaker 2: a compassionate physician standpoint, that's a terrible way to live
Speaker 2: your life because if you try to believe every feeling
Speaker 2: that you have as if it's tied to something that's real,
Speaker 2: what you're going to find is you're pursuing a lot
Speaker 2: of things that don't pan out to be helpful to you.
Speaker 2: And that's that's just a fact. So the way you
Speaker 2: deal with it, the way we deal with it anyway,
Speaker 2: and teach people to deal with it, is to say
Speaker 2: understand that the way your brain is wired, feelings jumble
Speaker 2: up with thoughts in an area of your brain called
Speaker 2: the basal ganglia, and it's like putting a fuel injector
Speaker 2: in your car and adding an additive to the gas. Like,
Speaker 2: once they mix up, you can't unmix them. So feelings
Speaker 2: and thoughts tie together and you can't separate them, and
Speaker 2: you have a part of your brain called the hippocampus
Speaker 2: that ties in all these different areas that attach meaning
Speaker 2: to the raw chemical signal of what you feel. So
Speaker 2: basically you have a feeling like anxiety. For example, something
Speaker 2: starts to physiologically make you feel like you're anxious, and
Speaker 2: you basically pull in a memory and attach a meaning
Speaker 2: to that chemical trigger, and you tell yourself you hear
Speaker 2: an internal thought. And we already covered last week and
Speaker 2: the idea that thoughts aren't always true. So you tie
Speaker 2: in a previous experience with a similar feeling and you
Speaker 2: attach a meaning to it as if it's the current experience.
Speaker 2: And so basically what you're doing is you're not careful
Speaker 2: and discerning about it is you'll start to think that
Speaker 2: every time the hair goes up on the back of
Speaker 2: my neck it means I'm about to be abused, or
Speaker 2: it means I'm about to have this problem occur again,
Speaker 2: because that's what it meant the first time I felt it.
Speaker 2: And so if you're not careful to say, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: there's a real difference. And I know there's a difference
Speaker 2: because intellectually, if you get your fronel lobes involved. You know,
Speaker 2: let me give you a scenario. You feel you're heart racing,
Speaker 2: you feel a little bit tingly, the hair stands up
Speaker 2: on the back of your neck. You find your mouth
Speaker 2: drying out. And it could be that you're about to
Speaker 2: open a love letter from somebody that you hoped was
Speaker 2: going to fall in love with you and find out
Speaker 2: that your life's dream is about to come true, that
Speaker 2: this person's going to marry you. Because that's a feeling
Speaker 2: and a bunch of physiology that happens when you're anticipating
Speaker 2: something wonderful, it could also mean that you're about to
Speaker 2: find out that you're having a heart attack. Right, the
Speaker 2: same set of chemical physiological things make you feel two
Speaker 2: different things. It's the meaning that you attach to them
Speaker 2: that tells the truth of what's happening, or that could
Speaker 2: potentially tell the truth about what's happening. So the important
Speaker 2: thing to learn is that physiology is triggered by the
Speaker 2: parts of our brain that generate feeling, and we attach
Speaker 2: meaning to them based on prior experience. And the discernment
Speaker 2: piece is where we have to say, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this feeling right now and this particular circumstance doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: mean that that previous bad thing is going to happen again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is so relevant to people that are
Speaker 1: struggling with a fired and wired experience alongside food of like,
Speaker 1: when I feel sad, food will make me feel better,
Speaker 1: or when I need comfort, food is what I need.
Speaker 1: And part of it is there's got to be that
Speaker 1: pattern interrupt. It's funny because there's an inside joke with
Speaker 1: my clients and I made up a word one time
Speaker 1: called excited because of how similar anxiety and excitement feel.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm just excited because again, my nervous system
Speaker 1: really couldn't tell the difference between the two. I was
Speaker 1: experiencing them very similarly physiologically. But that's what happens too
Speaker 1: when we think we're in danger, if we've fired and wired,
Speaker 1: you know, food, sugar, Netflix, whatever it is online shopping
Speaker 1: wine to be the thing that fills those voids of
Speaker 1: those feelings. Again, that hippocampus, I've heard it described as
Speaker 1: the elephant that never forgets right until we change the picture,
Speaker 1: until we change that fired and wired experience. So can
Speaker 1: you just talk a little bit about that. So if
Speaker 1: somebody has felt something for so long, and their brain
Speaker 1: goes into a threat and they believe, they truly believe,
Speaker 1: and again coming back to the thoughts that they're believing
Speaker 1: that food and sugar is the only thing that will
Speaker 1: make them feel better. You know, can you just kind
Speaker 1: of tell us a little bit about what that looks
Speaker 1: like to break that pattern through your eyes?
Speaker 2: There's kind of three things we talk about, firing and wiring.
Speaker 2: You're referencing something called Hebb's law, which is a principle
Speaker 2: of neuroscience that says that neurons that fire together in
Speaker 2: a particular pattern frequently begin to be wired synaptically so
Speaker 2: that they automate that thing. So your brain's really good
Speaker 2: at making things that you do a lot automated, so
Speaker 2: you don't have to think about them to make them happen.
Speaker 2: It's like when you drive to work. The first time,
Speaker 2: you have to think about every turn that you make,
Speaker 2: But after you've done it a few times, you can
Speaker 2: make that drive almost in your sleep because you've synaptically
Speaker 2: wired the steps that you need to take to get
Speaker 2: that drive done. So that's Heab's law. But the way
Speaker 2: that synapsis can be broken and retrained and repurposed to
Speaker 2: make new ones. To make new feelings and new connections
Speaker 2: between those feelings is to apply two other elements, and
Speaker 2: one is called attention density and one is called the
Speaker 2: quantum Zeno effects. These are big words, but basically in
Speaker 2: quantum physics, there's a principle that the more you look
Speaker 2: at something from a particular point of view, the more
Speaker 2: it stays fixed in that state. And so what we
Speaker 2: know is it's like having one of those cameras with
Speaker 2: a really fast shutter speed. You can take a picture
Speaker 2: of a hummingbird or something that looks like it's in
Speaker 2: slow motion. Right, the more you look at something, am
Speaker 2: I still going to be pleased by this food choice?
Speaker 2: Am I still going to be comforted by this alcohol?
Speaker 2: And if I do this and feel this and recreate
Speaker 2: that thing, is it going to make me feel that
Speaker 2: comfort that it always does. The more you look at
Speaker 2: it from that point of the more true it will stay. Right. So,
Speaker 2: then when you fix that thing in a state of
Speaker 2: being true, and then you wire it with Hebb's law
Speaker 2: into this idea that I'm going to make a synapse
Speaker 2: where now the next time I feel that anxiety, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to eat the thing and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to process it mentally. I'm just going to find myself
Speaker 2: with the bag of Cheetos and the red stuff all
Speaker 2: over my fingertips, and I don't even remember it happening,
Speaker 2: but it happened because I wired that in because of
Speaker 2: quantum zeno effective attending to it over and over and
Speaker 2: Hebb's law, I've now wired that into a synapse. And
Speaker 2: the third one is this thing called attention density, which
Speaker 2: means the more you pay attention to something from a
Speaker 2: particular point of view, the more you can't stop paying
Speaker 2: attention to it consciously all the time. So basically, when
Speaker 2: you think about something so much that it becomes the
Speaker 2: thing that you think you have to think about, then
Speaker 2: your front lope says, Okay, I guess it's my job
Speaker 2: to think about this all the time. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to think about when do I get the next meal.
Speaker 2: I'm going to think about when do I satisfy my
Speaker 2: craving again. I'm going to think about when this person
Speaker 2: lets me down inevitably or stock up on the thing
Speaker 2: that I eat or drink or Netflix or whatever it
Speaker 2: is that I do to make myself feel better about that,
Speaker 2: convince myself that that's a better way to feel. So
Speaker 2: you've taken these three scientific principles and you've turned them
Speaker 2: into ways to harm yourself. We talked last time about
Speaker 2: self malpractice, and the way to fix it is the
Speaker 2: very same process. Is we stop believing the automatic thought
Speaker 2: that this action is going to produce a better feeling
Speaker 2: for me, because I can see that it's harming me.
Speaker 2: So now I'm going to have to really get some
Speaker 2: attention density working on my side. Now I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to choose to pay attention to the new thing
Speaker 2: that I want to create significantly over and over and
Speaker 2: pay attention to it and wire it together so that
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, I'll start finding that I've got
Speaker 2: a better habit, i start finding that I've finally overcome
Speaker 2: a little bit. And the problem with synapses is they're
Speaker 2: like ruts in a wagon trail. Like it's really hard
Speaker 2: once the tires get down in that rut, it's hard
Speaker 2: to get them out, and it's easy for them to
Speaker 2: fall back in. The ruts don't go away really fast.
Speaker 2: So we've got to really diligently make ourselves create these
Speaker 2: new thought pathways that will eventually wire and create new
Speaker 2: synapses and well over time will deepen those ruts and
Speaker 2: make new wagon trails that are better than the old ones.
Speaker 2: And then the neat thing is there's something called microglia,
Speaker 2: these little cells in your brain that chew up synapses basically,
Speaker 2: so that over time, if you create a new habit
Speaker 2: and stop the old one, you will start to break
Speaker 2: down those old wagon trails, and those those ruts will
Speaker 2: get shallower, and it'll be harder and harder to fall
Speaker 2: back into that old habit, and you'll literally recreate your
Speaker 2: brain in a healthier way by learning how to harness
Speaker 2: that helps law for your benefit.
Speaker 1: And that's why a lot of this food and body
Speaker 1: stuff can be kind of sneaky and insidious because a
Speaker 1: lot of times it's very unconscious. People aren't consciously saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sad, so therefore food will make me feel better
Speaker 1: like you said, they're just looking down and they have
Speaker 1: orange cheetoh fingerprints, right. And then it's also not a
Speaker 1: lot of the mainstream is like, oh, we'll just stop
Speaker 1: thinking about it. But you're giving it attention and density
Speaker 1: still right by thinking. You're saying don't think about it,
Speaker 1: don't think about it, instead of like you were talking
Speaker 1: about giving it a new way of thinking. I call
Speaker 1: it air attention intention repetition, because you need to have
Speaker 1: a new way of thinking to replace it with. And
Speaker 1: you just spelled that out so beautifully, and I really
Speaker 1: feel like anybody who's listening can see that picture. I
Speaker 1: can see those grooves in the wheel. But what you
Speaker 1: just spoke to is really the importance of if you
Speaker 1: missed last week, go back and listen to the concept
Speaker 1: of paying attention to what you're paying attention to and
Speaker 1: thinking about your thoughts because it all revolves around that
Speaker 1: making the unconscious conscious. And we're going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that when we get to the
Speaker 1: neuro beliefs side of it next week, But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: first of all, thank you so much for being back here.
Speaker 1: You are just such a wealth of information. And I
Speaker 1: love how you speak to us in you're a neurosurgeon,
Speaker 1: but I love how you also break it down in
Speaker 1: an are you smarter than a fifth grader kind of
Speaker 1: science kind of way. That's how I love it. So
Speaker 1: I'm just so I feel so grateful that you're here.
Speaker 1: Where can people find you? Where can they google? Stock?
Speaker 1: You? You have podcasts, you have books. You have a weekly
Speaker 1: newsletter that you send out, so where can they find you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we do the self Brain Surgery newsletter every
Speaker 2: week on Substack. It's doctor Lee Warren dot substack dot
Speaker 2: com and my website is doctor Lee Warren dot com.
Speaker 2: Have podcasts Doctor Lee Warren Podcast. Everything's my name, so
Speaker 2: it's easy to find and anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2: And my books are all on my website or on
Speaker 2: Amazon anywhere books are sold, so all over the place,
Speaker 2: easy to find. I'd love to meet new people.
Speaker 1: Well, we will link that all in the show notes.
Speaker 1: We are going to be back next week to talk
Speaker 1: about neuro beliefs. Thank you again for being here, doctor Warren,
Speaker 1: and we are out for this week. See you next Saturday.
Speaker 1: Out way bye