← Change Your Brain Every Day
Change Your Brain Every Day
When Faith Meets Grief: Losing His Son, Finding Hope with Dr. Lee Warren
00:35:48
Loading summary
Transcript142 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Lee Warren
Most people think that suffering is a downside to life. But what we've learned from neuroscience, suffering is actually designed to make us stronger and to give us the resilience to face whatever comes along in the future. People that have resilient and healthy brains are usually folks that have gone through hard things in the past. That tends to make us stronger.
- [00:18]
Daniel Amen
Dr. Lee Warren is an award winning.
- [00:19]
Dr. Lee Warren
Neurosurgeon, podcaster and author who integrates neuroscience and faith.
- [00:23]
Daniel Amen
He helps people navigate trauma and achieve.
- [00:25]
Tanner
Radical life transformation through his books and global podcast.
- [00:29]
Dr. Lee Warren
Life doesn't have to be what it has been. If you're struggling with negative thoughts or anxiety or depression or trauma or you lose a child, the trauma itself doesn't get the opportunity to write the story unless you descend into those thoughts and let that become the future for you.
- [00:41]
Daniel Amen
People who have low hope have low frontal lobe activity. But what's really interesting is the insular cortex on both sides really low. When hope goes low, hope is tomorrow can be better and I have a role in it. Where did you find hope after your son was murdered?
- [01:01]
Dr. Lee Warren
So for us it was.
- [01:07]
Daniel Amen
Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Your brain is your most valuable asset. It controls everything from your focus and memory to your mood and energy. That's why I created Brain MD to give you science backed supplements that support your brain so you can feel and perform your best every day. If you haven't tried them yet, go to brainmd.com and use the code PODCAST20 for 20% off. Because when your brain works better, you work better.
- [02:00]
Tanner
Welcome to the Change youe Brain Every Day podcast. I am very excited about our guest today. W. Lee Warren, MD, is a neurosurgeon, an award winning author, an Iraq War veteran and the host of the Dr. Lee Warren podcast. He teaches the art of connecting neuroscience, faith and daily practices for leading a healthier, better and happier life. Important things to know about Lee he discusses how the brain responds to trauma, how to recover from trauma in a healthy way. The Theology of suffering. Love that. The relationship between our limbic system and our prefrontal cortex and other things related to the brain, body and the trials of life. He was in Iraq and when he came home, battled PTSD himself. His son Mitch died unexpectedly at 19 years old. He got divorced and his family went through really hard times. So he understands a little bit about this and his new book out February 3, 2026 the life changing Art of self, brain connecting neuroscience and faith to radically transform your life. I cannot wait to hear more about this. Welcome, Dr. Warren. I'm so excited.
- [03:10]
Dr. Lee Warren
Thank you so much. It's great to be here, Tanner. Thank you. Daniel. Good to see you again.
- [03:13]
Daniel Amen
Well, it's such a great book. In fact, I wrote the foreword.
- [03:16]
Dr. Lee Warren
You did? Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [03:20]
Daniel Amen
The Science of Suffering. Why don't we start there?
- [03:23]
Tanner
I love that.
- [03:24]
Dr. Lee Warren
I think most people think that suffering is a downside to life, and it seems like it should be. But what we've learned from neuroscience, and I think what scripture said all along, and certainly in my journey, I can say is that suffering is actually designed to make us stronger and to give us the resilience to face whatever comes along in the future. And so, as we know from neuroscience now, people that have resilient and healthy brains are usually folks that have gone through hard things in the past. That tends to make us stronger. And so I think people shouldn't see suffering necessarily as the end of their story, but as part of how their story becomes even more bright in the future.
- [04:05]
Tanner
So then the obvious question is, why do some people get stronger and some people seem to break?
- [04:10]
Dr. Lee Warren
I think it depends on how you understand your role in the story. If you think that your circumstances have to define whether you can be happy or not, if you think your circumstances define what your entire life looks like, then you're going to be disappointed, because all of us have hardship. All of us encounter things that are difficult. But when you go through something hard and you learn that God is there for you, that you learn that your brain will be there for you if you communicate to it the right way, and that other people will come around you and help you navigate those waters and find that the future can be better because of the suffering that you've gone through.
- [04:49]
Tanner
Interesting.
- [04:49]
Daniel Amen
So you're a neurosurgeon. She was a neurosurgical ICU nurse. And what do you always say about neurosurgeons?
- [04:56]
Tanner
No, why are you bringing that up now? I'm sure you've heard the joke. I'm different, though. What's the difference between God and neurosurgeons? So God knows who's not aurosurgeon? Yeah, actually, most of them were very, very nice. The cardiothoracic surgeons were the ones I thought. No, I'm kidd. No, it's a joke. Actually, I worked at Loma Linda, and Faith was a big part of our training there because it was a Christian hospital. And so that for. I thought that was A really important part of my training, and I think it makes a difference in the care you give. What do you. How much did faith play a role in not only for you as a doctor, but also in your own journey?
- [05:39]
Dr. Lee Warren
Do you think so? I think faith underscores everything that I do, but as a neurosurgeon especially, I've seen so many situations where I just don't know how people could ever find hope again if they didn't have something solid to lean on in their life. And although I used to prescribe that for people, I didn't understand it until I went through those hardships myself, you know, coming home from the Iraq war and didn't have context to put the things I went through and saw there. I had to have something to lean on. And my faith was always the bedrock of that. And then understanding that science and faith have never really been supposed to be enemies, even though most people think that they're two different things, that false dichotomy really is something that I try to help people understand. Science has always been about trying to show us what God is and what he can do and what he has done. And so for me, unifying all those things has been the thing that got me through all the hardships that I've been through in my life.
- [06:30]
Daniel Amen
People ask me all the time, you know, as a neuroscientist, how can you believe in God? And my response is, how can you not believe in me? To think you and I are here by random chance, that the second law of physics is entropy. Things go from order to disorder. And it just makes complete sense to me why self brain surgery in the title. When I read the book, I really understood it. But explain it to our audience.
- [07:07]
Dr. Lee Warren
Well, explain it on a high level, and then I'll give you a story to show you how it came to me, if that's okay. The reason I chose the title is that we know now about neuroplasticity and the fact that there is a process that's happening in everybody's brains all the time, where we used to think that the brain was sort of a rigid structure. You got all the brain that you're going to have, and you better take care of it. Now we know since especially the late 90s and with functional imaging and people like you that have led the way there, we know that the brain is constantly changing. It does make new cells, and it makes new connections between those cells all the time. And so this process is already happening from moment to moment and thought to thought. And we Know that thinking the way that we think drives a lot of that structural change, right? So I think where people thought they were stuck with the brain that they have. And now we know that you're actually constantly changing your brain. And now we know that most of what changes the brain is what you think about. And since most people think a lot of things that aren't true most of the time, as you've done a lot of work on, and that most of us think about the same things every day over and over, we wonder why we're stuck. And it's because we keep driving the engine of change in the same direction all the time. And for me, it came because I'm a little bit hard headed. I think God gave me an ability to see it. And that. Shortly after our son Mitch died, Lisa and I were practicing in Alabama on the Auburn University campus. At the time, our office was on the third floor of the functional MRI research building where they had a 7 Tesla scanner, which at the time was one of only three of these really world class MRI scanners. At the time there were only three in the United States. Functional imaging, as you know, is where you can not just take a picture of the organ, but what the organ is doing. And so about a week after we went back to work, Lisa was running our practice and we were invited to go down to the research center and watch some research happening. And they had a woman in the scanner with headphones so they could communicate with her. And they said, Mrs. Johnson, think about the worst thing you've ever felt in your life. And we pretty quickly saw what her brain did in response to that thought. The amygdala lit up and the fear centers got involved. And then shortly after she thought about something and her brain did something, we saw her physiology changing. So the blood pressure monitor went up and the heart rate went up. And her body responded to the thought that she was having in response to what her brain did after she thought that. And then they said, okay, Mrs. Johnson, stop thinking about that hard moment and now think about your favorite memory of your whole life, the best day of your life. And she furrowed her brow and thought about something. And then her brain began to calm down and the prefrontal cortex came online and nucleus accumulates and all those areas started getting increased blood flow. And then we saw her physiology improve. Her heart rate came down, her blood pressure came down. We saw in real time that thoughts turn into brain activity that turn into body activity. And Lisa made this connection in the. In real time. She said, that reminds me of Philippians chapter 4 in the Bible, which you know, of course, don't be anxious, be grateful instead, and think about all these other things, and you won't feel as bad. It's pretty much my translation of what Philippians 4 says, and just as clear as if you were speaking it to me in my ear. Daniel I heard this connection between what I do in surgery and what I was seeing on those monitors. And the connection was, when I go to surgery to do brain surgery on someone, I'm intentionally making a structural change in their brain for the purpose of them becoming healthier or feeling better or surviving what they're going through. And when you change the substrate of what you're thinking about, you're intentionally making a change in the structure of your brain for the purpose of helping your life in some way or for harming it. And so that's surgery as real as what I do in the operating room. People need to understand that when you decide to think better things, your brain becomes a better brain. It's not a metaphor, it's real. It's just as real as I pick up the scalpel and make an incision in somebody's scalp. And so we have tremendous agency, which then gives us hope that life doesn't have to be what it has been. If you're struggling with negative thoughts or anxiety or depression or trauma, or you lose a child, the trauma itself doesn't get the opportunity to write the story unless you descend into those thoughts and let that become the future for you.
- [11:13]
Tanner
So I love that. And I think I've experienced this myself, and I think a lot of people who practiced it have experienced it. But I do want to bring a point up is that I know some people who. They try this once and it doesn't work. And I'm like, it's not a feeling. This is something you have to do. And you have to do it every day. Like you go to the gym every day. I mean, for me, at least, I don't wait for the feeling to come. I think of love. I think of happiness as sort of actions, things I do. I don't always feel love. I do love. And then the feeling is there, if that makes sense. So when I started doing this, when I was going through grief, I intentionally began to do different things because I didn't want that. I knew that when my mother died, I knew that the things she did not want. Her biggest fear, she was not afraid to die. She was. Had tons of faith. And her biggest fear was, I don't want to Leave my family, my daughter and my granddaughter, and have them not be okay. So why am I going to make that true for her? Why do I want to, like, wallow in my grief and make that true for her? But it was hard. And so I made it a daily practice that when I started to go down that road, what am I going to do to change that so that I don't make that true for her?
- [12:25]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [12:26]
Tanner
That's my biggest fear for my family. Right. So it's daily. I guess the point I'm making is it's a daily practice. It's not just a feeling you wake up with. You have to do it for it to work.
- [12:37]
Dr. Lee Warren
And those changes in your brain that you make when you change what you think about, neuroplasticity continues to work, whether you continue to do it on your own behalf or not.
- [12:46]
Daniel Amen
And it goes both ways. That's a really important point. I have a new book out on pain, and it's like neuroplasticity. If you're reinforcing hopelessness, well, it makes those tracks stronger.
- [13:01]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [13:03]
Daniel Amen
I don't think I've told you this. We just submitted a paper on Hope, so on 6,408 patients, we gave them a hope questionnaire. And people who have low hope have. Have low frontal lobe activity. But what's really interesting is the insular cortex on both sides, really low. When hope goes low. The thought was fascinating. And hope is tomorrow can be better. And I have a role in it. And I have roads to it, not a road that's right to it.
- [13:45]
Dr. Lee Warren
Where.
- [13:45]
Daniel Amen
Where did you find hope after your son was murdered?
- [13:50]
Dr. Lee Warren
So for us, it was dark and hopeless. And you have all this doubt, and you question God and you question your future and all those things. And when we saw, literally in that scanner that day, when we saw those people changing what their brains were doing, I thought my response to this is what's making me feel what I feel, not the loss. Because I know in the past, losses that we've been through have shown that we. Not only have we seen that we can survive them, but we found our way forward and found ourselves to be stronger and more resilient on the other side of them. And so that can be true this time, too. Like, we can. We can find a future and a hope. And then I remembered that scripture, Jeremiah 29:11. It says, I have a plan for you. Plan to prosper you and not to harm you. A plan to give you hope and a future. And so I found that My faith and the science at the same time were kind of swirling around in my. In my eyes and in my heart that day. That we can get through this because we've gotten through hard things before and God was faithful and he says he will be again. And because I know the science is on my side, that my brain doesn't have to become this dark thing that it has been in the last few weeks, my future doesn't have to be that story. If I can tell myself continually that hope is possible.
- [15:04]
Tanner
Wow. So I have several friends who have lost children, and I can imagine it's. I mean, I think it's the number one thing that parents fear. So you talking about that and how you got through that and that you did and that you moved forward is just, I think, such an important and critical thing. It makes me want to cry just hearing it. But it's just so important because I think so many people do let it take them down. That is one thing that is just so hard for people to move forward from and not understand.
- [15:33]
Daniel Amen
Well, you remember the story of Chris who lost her daughter to bone cancer. I was given a lecture and she came up afterwards and she started to cry. And she said, two years before, her daughter died of bone cancer, and she had no idea what the grief would do to her. And she went to bed and ate bad food and drank alcohol and ballooned up. And on the two year anniversary of her daughter's death, she was planning to kill herself. And then she saw me on TV and had a book, Change youe Brain, Change youe Body. She said, I'm gonna get that book. And if it's a bad book, I'll kill myself tomor.
- [16:12]
Dr. Lee Warren
She said.
- [16:13]
Daniel Amen
She said, but I loved it. It was helpful. And I stopped drinking, I stopped eating bad food. I started walking and. And she said, never tell the people you help. Never let grief be their excuse to hurt themselves.
- [16:27]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [16:28]
Tanner
And their family.
- [16:29]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right. We saw this. We came to this moment where we said, what would Mitch want our lives to look like in the future? And what he certainly wouldn't want us to do is to have our lives in the future defined by the loss of him and have his life be that one thing that we lost him. And so we saw this. I call it a loss to legacy shift that happened. Like, can we make our lives going forward kind of a legacy to who he was and what he meant to us, rather than this sort of memorial of what we've lost and the pain and the hopelessness and all that. And I think if you can. I think Viktor Frankl said something similar, like, if you can give suffering purpose, it stops feeling like suffering.
- [17:11]
Tanner
It's my favorite.
- [17:12]
Dr. Lee Warren
Right. And so it became for us, like, how do we honor Mitch and how do we make our lives going forward? Which is really. That's when I started writing. It's when I started podcasting. All the things that I did was, how do I help other parents and other people who have been through hard things? My practice is all full of patients with terminal brain cancer and their families and all kinds of people who are suffering. And so how can we. How can we honor Mitch and honor all the people that we've taken care of in a way that makes our lives going forward kind of a memorial to what they mean and not what they have meant?
- [17:42]
Tanner
That's exactly what I did with my mom. And it changed everything. It changed everything when I stopped just suffering in the moment. What I lost versus. She worked so hard to leave this legacy. Now I'm going to carry that torch for her. And it just. It was. It's not that I didn't feel sadness. I did, but I now had new. I had a new lens I was looking through. I changed my glasses.
- [18:06]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [18:07]
Tanner
So.
- [18:07]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [18:08]
Tanner
Yeah.
- [18:10]
Daniel Amen
Over 50 million Americans live with chronic pain. And too many are told there's no hope beyond pills or surgery. My new book, Change youe Brain, Change youe Pain, gives you proven practical skills, steps from the latest neuroscience to calm your brain, heal your mind, and finally feel better physically and emotionally. Pre order now to receive bonus gifts@changeyourbrain changeyourpainbook.com what are some of the practical takeaways from the life changing art of self brain surgery?
- [18:55]
Dr. Lee Warren
I think one of the things I did is I took the last 12 years since we lost Mitch, of the things I've studied in neuroscience and neurosurgery and understanding the mind and the brain and how they work together and all the things I've learned from my faith journey and as a bereaved parent and I came up with what I call the 10 Commandments of Self Brain Surgery, which really are the 10 best lessons I've learned. And the first one is that on your first day of medical school, if you remember, and probably in nursing school, you take an oath like, I won't harm my patient. Right. Permanent, not necessary. First, no harm. And so the first thing we do if we're going to practice self brain surgery is commit to not committing malpractice against ourselves. So don't harm yourself with your brain, with your thoughts, with your life, with your behaviors. Don't harm yourself. And then I tend to.
- [19:39]
Tanner
That's huge.
- [19:40]
Daniel Amen
Don't let grief be your excuse.
- [19:43]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's to hurt yourself.
- [19:44]
Tanner
I love that. But most people don't even think that way.
- [19:46]
Dr. Lee Warren
They don't.
- [19:46]
Daniel Amen
Malpractice against yourself. Malpractice.
- [19:49]
Dr. Lee Warren
Don't commit. Self love. Practice. It's the easiest thing, right? It's the easiest thing to understand.
- [19:53]
Tanner
Simple. But I think most people don't even really.
- [19:55]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [19:55]
Tanner
Yeah.
- [19:56]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's one thing. And then I think you've written a lot about feelings not being facts and thoughts not all being true. The idea that about 80% of what we think about automatically turns out to be false and overwhelmingly negative nonsense. And so if you can just learn a process, I call it the thought biopsy. Being a surgeon and procedures. So a process to separate feeling and thinking your thoughts and reacting to them as if they're true to thinking about them. Get into this kind of metacognitive state and recognizing that the vast majority of what we think automatically is untrue, then you can develop a little space between feelings and thoughts and your reaction or response to them. And if you can just get on the right side of that, you'll have a much better life than constantly reacting to things that turn out not to be true.
- [20:41]
Tanner
I don't know if I think this is so cool just because I'm a nurse, but I just like this, like, sort of metaphor that you're using, right? It's really, it's simple. I like it.
- [20:49]
Dr. Lee Warren
And I think, speaking of metaphors, I think the other, the other really practical one, I think the most important of those ten commandments is this idea of self. Brain surgery is not a metaphor. Like, it's. It's literally, if you want to know what your brain does, your brain listens for you to tell its stuff. As you've written, your brain's always listening. Your brain is listening for you to tell it what to focus on, what to filter for, what kind of reality to show you. And when people understand, and I've seen it in my own patients, as I've counseled them, and in our own lives as we live this out. Once you understand that reality is not really what's really out there, it's what your brain's filtering to show you. Like, if you want to have a bad day, you tell your brain it's going to be a bad day and you're going to have one. But if you want to say, is there hope out there? Your brain will start showing you that there always has been. And a good example for us is on the day we buried Mitch, our first granddaughter was born. And she was born in San Antonio. We were in Alabama having a funeral for our son, and our daughter couldn't be there because she was delivering our first granddaughter. We were supposed to be in Texas. And so, interestingly, we were having these horrible moments of saying goodbye to our son, but we were getting text messages of our first granddaughter being born. And. And it was just a little bit of light sprinkled into all that darkness. And so our brain was being allowed to see that two things can be true at once. Like, there can be desperation and hopelessness and despair, and there can also be life and renewal and hope, and God's still there. And so I think if people can just zoom out a little bit and see that it doesn't have to be daily practice.
- [22:14]
Daniel Amen
It's a daily practice for all of my patients. Today is going to be a great day.
- [22:19]
Dr. Lee Warren
Yeah.
- [22:19]
Daniel Amen
And what. And at bedtime, what went well today and the day my father died, Stam. Five and a half years ago, almost six years ago, I went to bed and I went. I went, well, today. And sort of the supervisor in my head goes, really? We're going to do that today. This is like the worst day of my adult life.
- [22:41]
Dr. Lee Warren
Yeah.
- [22:42]
Daniel Amen
But when I. Because it's a practice, just like you said earlier, automatically I went to three memories that day that were so special. And it's. It's training.
- [22:54]
Tanner
They're micro. I call them micro miracles.
- [22:55]
Dr. Lee Warren
Right.
- [22:56]
Daniel Amen
Just Microsoft training your brain to look for what's right, even when things are terrible.
- [23:03]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [23:04]
Tanner
And not overlooking, I think, a lot of people, because we get, you know, we're inundated with so much information in this age. And so I've. I've started trying to train my brain to look for those micro miracles, because sometimes they're tiny things that you just pass by, but they're not that tiny if you really pay attention, you know. And so I try to, like, stop and notice that. And I know he's like Pollyanna. Like, everything is just. He's just happy all the time. It's his favorite movie. And I'm not naturally that way. I grew up in a very different environment. Safety was an issue. So I'm always looking, you know, around the corner. But I. So for me, it's really important. Like, I have to make that a part of my day. But when I do, it Matters like it changes everything and I do it. Part of why I do it is for him, because if I don't, I see the world through a more negative lens, but if I do it, I see it through a more positive lens. And that affects my marriage. It affects everything.
- [23:54]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right. And as a good scientist, you know, you see good results from a process, from a practice, then you say, I need to do more of that so I get more good results. Right. So we don't feel that.
- [24:04]
Tanner
You feel it almost instantly.
- [24:06]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right. That's right.
- [24:08]
Daniel Amen
How do you think your medical training as a neurosurgeon shaped the way you understand your own ptsd?
- [24:15]
Dr. Lee Warren
You know, one thing is it gave me something to be thankful for, which is always important because I had this really acute realization I was home from the war. I'd done 200 brain surgeries in a 10 hospital and survived 100 mortar attacks and just seen horrific things that you don't see in American trauma hospitals. And I had this acute realization when I started struggling with those flashbacks, that I was a board certified neurological surgeon with 14 years of training and understanding how the mind and brain works. So I had this amazing amount of gratitude that I understood what was happening to me even as I couldn't control it. And I said, all those kids I was deployed with, the 18, 19 year old airmen, they don't have that training, they don't know what's happening. And so I was grateful. So my, my training gave me that gift of insight to understand my brain is telling me some stuff that isn't true. So when I have these flashbacks and I have these feelings, I don't need to go drink myself into a coma and I don't need to kill myself because I know this isn't real that's happening and I can figure out a way to manage it. So I had that, that gift and insight from my training. And so I think that's something I'm profoundly grateful for. And it also gave me the ability to say and the really mission to say I need to help other people understand what's happening to them when they go through this, because they don't have that background and they don't have that gift of insight to see what, what's happening to them.
- [25:36]
Daniel Amen
So why do traumatic memories feel so vivid and intrusive compared to normal memories?
- [25:44]
Dr. Lee Warren
Well, I think there's an emotional component because you did go through something in the past that, that was real and hard for you to process. But the second thing is our brains don't have this inherent ability to discern between something that's really happening and something that we're just imagining or remembering. Right. We don't have. Or to your brain, you react and feel the same things physiologically as if they were really happening. And so if you're unaware of that, then you feel like you're in danger, even though there's not the bomb going off again. I had. I had those feelings that fireworks are still uncomfortable for me, you know, 20 years after I was in Iraq, because when the mortars are going off and people are, you know, potentially getting blown up, like, that's a real danger. And then when you hear sounds and feel those sonic booms in your chest that feel the same as they felt when they were really bombs.
- [26:30]
Tanner
Yeah.
- [26:30]
Dr. Lee Warren
Like your brain doesn't but discern that difference. And so I think that's it. I think it's. There's an emotional component and there's this lack of brain ability to say, hey, by the way, this isn't really happening. You're just feeling something.
- [26:41]
Tanner
Is it. Is it any different for kids that grow up in trauma versus soldiers that come back from war? Is it very similar?
- [26:47]
Dr. Lee Warren
I bet it's harder for kids because, again, their brains are not as developed. They don't have as much experience.
- [26:53]
Daniel Amen
Yeah. Did you do EMDR as part of your healing?
- [26:57]
Dr. Lee Warren
I did it, actually. I was one of the. To my shame, one of the people that didn't go get therapy and didn't. Didn't get the kind of help. And it took me a long time to work through it because. Longer than it would have taken otherwise because I was, you know, I knew everything. Right. I was a nurse. I don't need help.
- [27:14]
Daniel Amen
Yeah, doctors are hard.
- [27:15]
Dr. Lee Warren
Right. It was my wife, actually, that said, you know, you need to. You need to write some things down.
- [27:20]
Daniel Amen
Guys are harder than women because they generally say, help me before and doctors even harder. But I bet it could even get rid of the firework response.
- [27:33]
Tanner
Embr was so helpful for me.
- [27:34]
Daniel Amen
I love it so much. It's just so helpful to take the triggers and purposefully go into them while you get your eyes.
- [27:46]
Tanner
I have no idea why it works.
- [27:47]
Daniel Amen
But it just integrates left and right hemisphere together. So you end up having words for things you didn't have words for and just more awareness.
- [27:58]
Tanner
Like, it just. There are things that used to really bother me and I was not fully aware of why just didn't full. Like, I knew I know what my past was, but I couldn't fully integrate why certain things bothered me. And once I did emdr, it's like, oh, I'm fully aware now. And now I can sort of, like, give it new meaning.
- [28:15]
Daniel Amen
So, yeah, in fact, I love triggers. I teach my patients to love their triggers because it's like, wonder where that comes from and often. My first published paper, 1983. It was a long time ago. Was post Vietnam stress disorder a metaphor for current and past life events. And so people who develop PTSD was often on a foundation of trauma.
- [28:46]
Tanner
But we believe in post traumatic growth also. And it sounds like you do as well.
- [28:50]
Daniel Amen
Well, that's what you did absolutely. With this is post traumatic growth. What's your hope for the book?
- [28:56]
Dr. Lee Warren
I hope that people understand that, as you said, hope is defined as sort of agency and opportunity rather than an opportunity to do something and a path to do it. I want people to have a practical and tactical ability to do something about the things that they're thinking and feeling and do something about the things that they've been through in a way that makes them feel empowered and hopeful. And I think I've given a map to how that worked for us.
- [29:21]
Tanner
Anyway, I love the idea of the Ten Commandments. I just think that's really cool. I'm looking forward to reading that.
- [29:26]
Daniel Amen
And as a believer, did you feel pressure to just have more faith instead of acknowledging the pain you were suffering?
- [29:36]
Dr. Lee Warren
Yes. And again, I think, fortunately, I dealt with that in Iraq, so I didn't feel it as much this time. I felt actually more anger at God, I think, after we lost Mitch than I did from dealing with Iraq.
- [29:47]
Tanner
But, you know, I think God can handle it, don't you?
- [29:49]
Dr. Lee Warren
Yeah, he can. He wants us, right? I mean, a third of the psalms are laments or that people yelling at God about stuff. And I think we're. We're supposed to do that. He wants to hear that like. Like you as a parent, want to have your kids know what they're dealing with. But I didn't feel pressure to just have more faith. I felt like I was being called to understand the real thing that faith can do for you when you're suffering. And it's to give you a path to know that somebody's there with you while you're dealing with it, but also that the future isn't darker because of what you're going through, but can be more resilient. There's this verse that meant a lot to me, Romans, chapter five, three through five, that says suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And now we knew all this neuroscience about the anterior cingulate cortex. And when you go. When you make yourself go through something hard, your cingulate gyrus gets more resilient and helps you overcome resistance and inertia. So your willpower gets stronger because. Not in spite of hardship, but because of it.
- [30:46]
Tanner
It's like going to the gym, Right?
- [30:47]
Dr. Lee Warren
So we're neurologically wired to get better. The face of hardship, just like the Bible said.
- [30:52]
Tanner
You said something that I think is really important, that everyone's going to experience trauma at some point in their life. So I think we forget that as, as a society or as people.
- [31:03]
Daniel Amen
It's like, oh, the, the big traumas that all.
- [31:08]
Dr. Lee Warren
Massive things. I'm sorry, the massive things.
- [31:09]
Daniel Amen
The massive.
- [31:10]
Tanner
But everyone's going to have it. So it's important to know at some point. We all feel it, we all have it.
- [31:16]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right. That's right. Everybody's going to go through something hard. And I think it's important to say, too, not everybody loses a child or has a parent that dies unexpectedly. Not everybody goes through that. But every loss and everything that's hard that an individual goes through is relative to them, the hardest thing they've ever been through. And so you need to be equipped to deal with whatever it is that goes along in your life that's difficult and have a process to manage that and also a hope that you're wired for it. Like, I think people kind of think they're inherently fragile. Right. Especially in the culture today, people think that they're easily broken. So we need to protect ourselves from hardship. But the truth is the human brain is wired to improve in response to hardship. And if we. If we communicate with it right and give it the right instructions, it's actually, you're designed to heal. That's where there's a lot of hope. You're actually designed to heal and get better over time, not to get worse over time.
- [32:09]
Daniel Amen
That's how God designed us.
- [32:10]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [32:11]
Daniel Amen
Designed us to heal.
- [32:13]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [32:13]
Daniel Amen
When we're not, it's. So what's getting in the way?
- [32:17]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [32:17]
Tanner
Yeah. Diagnose it.
- [32:18]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right. I'm sorry.
- [32:19]
Tanner
Diagnose it. Figure it out.
- [32:21]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right.
- [32:22]
Daniel Amen
Well, and it's. I teach my patients every day. You win or you learn. It sounds like there are lots of lessons. Is there? What's your favorite story in this book?
- [32:34]
Dr. Lee Warren
Oh, I think the one I opened the book with because it was the first time I saw somebody being a patient and a doctor at the same time. And I think that the secret to this, my idea of self brain surgery, is everybody is a patient dealing with something, but we also have this inherent ability to operate on the problem ourselves. And in 1961, there was a Soviet general surgeon named Leonid Rogozov, who was a young doctor who was deployed to Antarctica with the Soviet team to explore the Antarctica. And he was the team doctor, the only medical, medically trained person on the team. So they get to Antarctica and they get dropped off for the winter and the ship leaves and the ocean freezes and they're going to be there until the thaw in the spring because there's no hope of him getting out of there. And a few days after they got there, Rogozov got sick. It turned out he had appendicitis. So he's the doctor on the team now, has appendicitis. And as you know, if you have appendicitis and you don't have surgery, you're going to die. And so he was hopeless and in despair and hurting and had a fever and a high white count, white blood cell count. And he basically had to say, I am going to have to be resigned to the fact that I'm dying because I'm the only doctor here and nobody can take care of me. And then he had this insight. Wait a minute. I'm trained to take appendices out and I'm capable and I have the skill set. I know what I'm doing. So he trained a mechanic to hold a mirror up for him. And he trained a truck driver to hand him instruments and to slap him in case he passed out and he took his own appendix out.
- [33:59]
Tanner
He did not.
- [33:59]
Dr. Lee Warren
He did and he survived. But the reason he was able to do that is because he changed his perspective from patient to doctor. Like, I'm not helpless, I'm not hopeless. I can do something about my problem. And when I had that, when I heard that story, I said, that's what everybody needs to know.
- [34:16]
Tanner
Okay, you can be extreme.
- [34:18]
Dr. Lee Warren
You can stop being your own patient and you can start being your own surgeon.
- [34:21]
Tanner
I like that.
- [34:22]
Dr. Lee Warren
And operate this system because the nervous system is going to operate you if you don't operate it.
- [34:25]
Tanner
I like that. Okay, that's good.
- [34:27]
Dr. Lee Warren
So get after.
- [34:28]
Tanner
The nervous system is going to operate you if you don't operate it.
- [34:31]
Dr. Lee Warren
That's right. So you need to be the driver, be the surgeon.
- [34:35]
Tanner
I like that.
- [34:37]
Daniel Amen
Which was agency. He had agency. And subsequently.
- [34:42]
Dr. Lee Warren
Hope you just need some training. Yeah.
- [34:44]
Tanner
That's so crazy.
- [34:45]
Daniel Amen
I love this book so much.
- [34:47]
Tanner
I'M so excited that I wrote the Forward. Yeah.
- [34:49]
Daniel Amen
The Life Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery. Connecting neuroscience and faith to radically transform your life. People come to amen clinics from all over the world for answers. With 11 clinics in major hubs Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, DC, LA, Miami, NY, Orange County, Seattle, San Francisco, and Scottsdale. Expert brain care is closer than you think. Visit amenclinics.com Dr. Lee Warren My friend, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you.
- [35:26]
Dr. Lee Warren
Thank you, Tim.
- [35:27]
Daniel Amen
It's awesome you're listening to Change youe Brain every day. Leave us a Comment Question Review subscribe We're so grateful that you're on this road with us.