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- [00:00]
Dr. David Hanscom
Do I get attached to outcomes? Yes. But I become aware. So the number one word that I like to leave your audience with in 10 different ways is the word awareness. I keep become aware I'm attached. Become aware that I'm angry. Become aware that I'm anxious. So another strategy is no action in a reaction.
- [00:20]
Emmy Vadnais
Keep watching to learn more.
- [00:24]
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- [01:08]
Emmy Vadnais
New Thinking Allowed Dialogue Series Charles T. Tart 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology. Now available on Amazon.
- [01:26]
Dr. David Hanscom
Thinking Allowed Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
- [01:41]
Emmy Vadnais
Hello and welcome. I'm Emmy Vadnais, co host with Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we'll be exploring Thinking above the Lower Mind with my guest Dr. David Hanscom, who is an orthopedic spine surgeon who left his practice in 2019 to help people break free from chronic mental and physical pain with or without surgery. After overcoming 15 years of his own severe pain, he developed the Doc Direct yout Own Care Journey, a self directed program that guides others through the same healing process. He is author of Back in Control, A Surgeon's Roadmap out of Chronic Pain and Do you really need Spine surgery? Take control with a spine Surgeon's Advice. If you enjoy this program, please like subscribe, press the Bell icon and share. David is joining us from the San Francisco Bay Area. Now I'll switch over to the Internet video. Welcome David. It is a great joy to have you back with me on New Thinking Allowed today.
- [02:47]
Dr. David Hanscom
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
- [02:49]
Emmy Vadnais
We have had three previous conversations on New Thinking Allowed, very much in alignment with what we're discussing today. You have spent many years as a highly accomplished spine surgeon. You discovered that many of the spine surgeries you were doing didn't actually need surgery. In fact, over the years, through reading your books and having conversations with you, you've discovered that a lot of people are really dealing with stress and anxiety behind the pain and so you switch directions and also you had your own experiences with chronic pain. And I'm going to link to those interviews in the upper right corner of the screen. Today we're going to Talk about your fabulous article, Humans wake, Get our thinking brains online, where you share that our lower brains are really taking the human species down and that we spend much of our time with our rational brains offline. Can you share to get us started? What do you mean by that and what evidence do you see of this in everyday life?
- [03:58]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, I'm coming from the neuroscience part of it. So in everyday life, we do all sorts of things that we should know we shouldn't be doing. A lot of behavior is irrational. We do things to other people that are abusive. We, we have lots of rhetoric to cover it up. But in general, people behave in ways that aren't very pleasant and we know better. So why do we keep doing things that we know we should be doing? So a lot of times, if our kids act the way adults do, with lying, cheating, bullying, verbal viewing, slander, all these things, domestic abuse, for instance, why do we do that? So what happens is that when you are anxious and frustrated and angry, the blood supply to your thinking brain, called the prefrontal cortex gets down, regulated. It doesn't work correctly. So you have different parts of the neocortex. And so humans have consciousness in language. We have complex consciousness. My cat has consciousness, but she doesn't have language. So humans can think about thinking. A cat doesn't do that. We also can identify ourselves as a separate individual. You are different than I am and vice versa. A cat sees another cat, but it's not an individuation of this cat has these characteristics. This has that. There's obviously some thinking. I mean, animals are very smart. They do have a pretty deep level of consciousness, but they don't have language. So what happened is that humans develop an ego, which we. So you sort of think ego is a good thing, right? Healthy ego is a good thing?
- [05:44]
Emmy Vadnais
Well, it depends on your definition of ego identity. To have a healthy identity.
- [05:50]
Dr. David Hanscom
This is what's changed dramatically for me, is that this establishment of identity, in defending it, is actually the source of most human beings misery. So we are a very angry, reactive species compared to other species. I mean, other animals get angry to defend themselves, then lay down and take a nap. Humans get angry a lot and can stay angry for a long time. They could be angry about their mother's abuse 40 years ago. I can tell you my cat's not doing that. Humans have this link to the past through language, keeps us in a constant state of fight or flight. So what I want to explain is why do we have an ego? So first of all, I finally realized that I Thought self esteem was the problem. Self esteem is not the problem. It's the ego. So self esteem is how you feel about yourself. Do you like yourself? Are you nice to yourself? So that self esteem, whatever you are, you can like it or not, ego is this establishment of identity to feel better about yourself. And why do we need that? Well, first of all, most of us are raised with a lot of criticism. Shouldn't do this, shouldn't do that, shouldn't do that. So we're sort of taught by default what not to do. And we're taught what to do in a way. But most people are raised with an inordinate amount of criticism compared to praise. Is that a fair statement?
- [07:16]
Emmy Vadnais
I think that's probably fair, yeah. Or I would also add in they might be experiencing or have experienced various forms of neglect or abuse as well.
- [07:27]
Dr. David Hanscom
Right. So based on that, your self concept isn't very high. So we establish our own stories about ourselves to feel better about ourselves. So in the face of this onslaught of criticism and abuse, et cetera, we need to create some story about ourselves that we can defend and feel better about ourselves. The second reason is we're competitive species like every other creature. So we want to put out a front that's powerful to other people. So we're competing for resources, we want to look good, we want to compete, we want to be competent, et cetera. So we develop an ego to compete. The third reason is our survival reactions. We've talked about this before. When you're in Fight orf Flight, you feel anxious. Anxious is not a psychological construct. It's just the feeling generated when you're in Fight orf Flight. So somebody threatens you, real or perceived, you go into fight or flight, you feel anxious. If you can't solve the problem, then your body kicks in, a dopamine response becomes more aggressive, and you have anger. So when you take your survival impulses personally, they're disposed to be destructive, dark. They're survival reactions. You don't feel very good. So again, we create this ego to counteract your survival impulses. The problem with that is your survival reactions. Your body processes about 1 billion bits of information per second. Guess how much the conscious brain processes.
- [08:57]
Emmy Vadnais
You tell me.
- [08:58]
Dr. David Hanscom
20. Not 20,000, just 20. So you have this massive survival reaction that's intended to feel uncomfortable, is supposed to the species of creatures who do not pay attention to these impulses, they just did not survive. Now, the problem with ego is that ego is dependent on other people's approval. So you're using external circumstances to feel better about yourself. And so you're building the story, you still have the survival reactions. It's a mismatch of your thinking brain versus your survival brain. And so the harder you try to build an ego to defend yourself, the worse it gets. But the bottom line is I'm dependent on your approval from my ego, I'm dependent on my own approval for ego. And there's no end point. It doesn't stop. So a massive number of repetitive thoughts come into place to create an ego, to defend it, to uphold it. And they're just stories. Thoughts are just thoughts. There's nothing to them. What makes thoughts powerful is we react to them. First of all, your body responds first. In other words, if a bully walks into the room, your body has already reacted before your thinking brain thinks something dangerous about one to ten seconds later. So your body's keeping you alive is pulling in sensory input. You actually have a physiological reaction before you have consciousness. So the problem is we've now linked a thought to physiology. So it's that linkage that creates so much power to the thoughts. So then you just think about the bully or an unpleasant experience, prior abuse, et cetera, and your body reacts. So it's a bi directional process, but it's driven by the physiology. So physiology drives the thoughts, Your thoughts reflect your physiology. Then the thoughts themselves become input. They actually drive the physiology. And you cannot escape your thoughts. If you think the thoughts is a problem if you suppress the thought. It's been documented, suppressing your thoughts causes more damage to your brain than actually expressing them. It shrinks the memory center of your brain, it shrinks the myelin in the frontal lobe, and so sustained fight or flight damages your brain. So suppressing thoughts are a big problem.
- [11:23]
Emmy Vadnais
It's tricky because we have what's sometimes known as the biological imperative for survival, and we need each other for survival. So on one hand, we do need to know that others do accept us as well, right?
- [11:39]
Dr. David Hanscom
No, you need human interaction for survival. That's absolutely correct. Because this has oxytocin that is highly anti inflammatory. So social bonding is probably one of the definitive answers to chronic pain and also to the thoughts. But see, it's one thing to be with other people and to interact and to share life with. But if I need your approval, then I'm at the mercy of your approval. And then I'm also at the mercy of my approval. So as opposed to just being who I am, completely comfortable with who I am. So self esteem is how I feel, feel about myself. Ego is this whole Armor I put together to defend myself. So if I'm also constantly looking for approval, it's a problem. If I'm looking to be with other people, that's actually necessary.
- [12:28]
Emmy Vadnais
Well, that's more. I think what I meant is that, is that we want really love and connection within ourself and with others, and that there is a certain amount of social mores and acceptance that is involved on one level with that.
- [12:49]
Dr. David Hanscom
So let's jump to the physiology of anger for a second, because there's all these mores of how you're supposed to act. But look what humans do. We act abominably, we act terribly, we cheat in our taxes, we speed down the freeway, we cut other people off from societal level. We don't give ourselves less privileged people the safety they need. So safety is really critical. If you don't feel safe, you do whatever you can to protect yourself. I. E. Survival reactions. So the problem with thoughts is called cognitive fusion. Have you heard the phrase that you are not your thoughts?
- [13:29]
Emmy Vadnais
Yes, I have.
- [13:31]
Dr. David Hanscom
It's actually not true. So it's called cognitive fusion. So every time you react to an unpleasant thought or unwanted thought, you've actually created that link. So as you keep interacting with it, why, it becomes part of who you are. So your identity is this armor you put up to protect yourself against your thoughts. So in the wild, you know, a person, a given animal, usually has one predator at a time or group of predators, but just one situation at a time. With cognitive fusion, when you become your thoughts, in other words, you become your identity. If somebody attacks your identity, you might as well be being attacked by a tiger. So as opposed to the wild, where you have one opponent at a time, you don't have an infinite number of thoughts coming at you. And how do you fight those off? It's like going to war against an army with just a sword and a spear. So what we do, we build a shell called ego to protect ourselves from these thoughts, other people's opinions, et cetera. So we're competing on identity and thoughts as opposed to physical resources. So we're being bombarded by thoughts. Those thoughts are who we are. Again, it's called cognitive fusion. So how do you defend yourself against those thoughts? There's an infinite number of. It's like one person going against to war against a whole nation of soldiers. That also includes a nuclear bomb. We have no chance doing battle with your thoughts. What happens with ego, you put yourself into defensive mode. It's like building a little bomb shelter that becomes thicker and thicker as you get older, develop a tighter and tighter identity. In defending your identity, whether societal or individual, let's look at racism, for instance. You're this race, I'm this race. So we get this identity built about this race being this, this race being that. So it's called mental rigidity. The more you fight your unwanted thoughts, you develop this ego to defend yourself. And the ego, by the way, is basically a set of cognitive distortions. So the whole idea of labeling yourself as a good person is a cognitive distortion of labeling. So this identity is made up of thoughts which are nothing. They're not there to create this artificial identity. And, you know, historians throughout the centuries have called us a bunch of zombies bouncing off each other. So I have my identity, you have yours. My identity is bouncing off your identity. I don't know who you are. And then once you label somebody anything, you can't see anything, you block awareness. Connection means connecting with you as a person and also me as a person to myself. So if you're connected to your identity, which I was the king of, that, you create this Persona of being successful spine surgeon, personable, smart, athletic, whatever. That's my identity. That's not who I am. So when your test show tests your identity, you don't even know who you are. So we get these identities floating around. So if you insult me for some reason, I go into defensive mode. They're just words, and it's coming from somebody who maybe doesn't like me. So why would I put myself at the mercy of this person who doesn't like me? Right? We do this all the time. So we get these stories about each other. We defend them. The term is called mental rigidity. So identity and mental rigidity are pretty much the same thing. Mental rigidity crosses essentially every mental health diagnosis. So what happens? Defending your identity is the source of all these repetitive, unwanted thoughts. Turns out that maybe I need to learn this a little bit more is that we tend to treat symptoms. Anxiety, depression, and anger, et cetera. The driving force behind all this is probably ruminating thoughts. So we have all these thoughts coming at us. We're reacting, reacting, reacting. And this gets to the core of our conversation today, is that when you're reacting, you're either anxious or frustrated. In a survival reaction, the blood supply of your thinking brain drops down. So your behavior is based on a reaction, not on the current moment. We're working from the lower part of our brain. We have all these thoughts coming at us that we don't know what to do with. So we build up this really rigid, deep ego to defend ourselves, we get attached to our identity. Our actions are based on our identity, not on meeting your needs or other people's needs. So we go identity to identity instead of human to human. Let's take domestic abuse, for instance, which is really high. We know that. Why would you be abusive to somebody that is dependent on you for protection and safety? Why would you do this to somebody that you, quote, love? Well, I'll just use my personal example, is that the person who's being abusive, their thinking brain is simply not online. It's not working. When my mother went into her rages, was extremely abusive, physically, verbally, whatever. When she came out of those rages, which could last two, three, four, five days, she was incredibly remorseful every time. But then our thinking brain was back online. But again, look at nations. We put a label on a race of people or on a nation. And once you put that label on, you're reacting. I get to defend myself. As a society, our thinking brains aren't working correctly. So it's not that we talk about all men are created equal. We want world peace, we want love. But when you're reactive mode, the part of the brain that can connect to love and safety is offline. The answer is going to be teaching people collectively and also individually how to keep their brains online.
- [19:45]
Emmy Vadnais
So in that example of domestic abuse, it sounds like the person who is being the abuser is in a survival mode. And perhaps they also were abused or neglected growing up. Maybe somewhere they thought or learned that that was somehow okay, or they don't have other skills to rise above that.
- [20:13]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, that's been the problem. And that's why I think there's hope for the situation. Because most of us are, most of us are raised in an environment that's less than ideal. We tend to react to our environment to try to survive. And so, yes, that's why the Bible talks about how the sins of the fathers and mothers get passed on to generation to generation, because all of us go through this process. So the abuse begets abuse. And so that's all we know. So the tragedy to me is that it takes skills. In other words, positive thinking does do this. Look at the rhetoric. I mean, we have rhetoric that all men are created equal, right? What's all that about? We don't come close to doing that. You shouldn't gossip. In fact, in a lot of religions, gossip is considered a sin as equivalent to murder because you're taking away somebody's reputation. Do we run? Do we go by that no. Do we slander other people? Yes. Do we cheat? We do all sorts of stuff as adults that we know we're not supposed to do. So as far as all men are created equal, that is even close to happening. We want world peace. We don't do anything to actually achieve that. So the key issue is that the part of the brain we need to solve our problems is offline, under stress. So what we need to solve the problems is getting our brains back online, because there's plenty of creativity there to actually solve the problems with the essence of it being teaching people the skills against a skill set. Positive thinking does not work. There's another way of suppressing negative thinking.
- [21:49]
Emmy Vadnais
Well, thank you for sharing about your own personal identity, being a spine surgeon, a top one at that, athletic and so forth. If you are not all of that, then who have you found yourself to be?
- [22:06]
Dr. David Hanscom
I just enjoy my day. Yeah. Dr. David Burns wrote a book called Feeling Good, which is a very famous book on cognitive behavioral therapy. And he uses the word kill your ego. I think that's a little bit harsh, but I like to use that term anyway, is that he calls it the disarming technique. So let's say you insult me right now. Just say you know something. You don't know what you're talking about. You're really on the line. And his point is just agree. You're right, I'm out of line. So conversation's over. There's nothing else that you can do or say. So I've agreed with you. Yes, I'm not very smart and I don't know what I'm talking about. Have a nice day. It's not that I don't care about your opinion. I would rather be liked than not light. But why? But obviously for some reason you're angry at me. You're reacting. Why would he give up my quality of my day over to you? There's another dark side to identity, that often your identity becomes your monster. So with being a spine surgeon, a tremendous amount of energy is taken up by becoming a spine surgeon. It does become your identity. And when people attack it, you take it personally. And in medicine, there's a lot of reactivity to people challenging competency, challenging diagnoses, challenging the care. So it's a pretty reactive culture, like most cultures, and so it's all based on this identity. And so whether you're a supermodel, your identity is based on a beautiful body. You defend that. That's where a lot of times people that are just gorgeous end up with eating Disorders because you're defend this identity and you do become your profession. So your highest skill set often becomes your monster. Because you're always comparing yourself. There's always going to be somebody better. And even at the top of the field, why you worry about being taken down. It takes so much energy to maintain an ego, to create it, to defend it. It takes way too much energy. The problem I have, and I'll say this seriously, I don't get tired anymore. I used to get so tired, worked really hard work, was always agitated, frustrated. This wasn't right. That wasn't right. That doesn't happen. I just don't get tired like I used to.
- [24:32]
Emmy Vadnais
Do you find that you're less attached to outcomes, to people's responses to you. Like, what has changed? What have you done in your life that's changed for you to help you have more energy, which a lot of people listening, I would imagine feel fatigued throughout the days. And I mean, that's why there's so much coffee around.
- [24:55]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, if you're always on guard, you're always looking out for danger. 25% of your body's energy is used to run your brain. So if you're always on constant lookout, constantly trying to defend yourself, you're consuming a tremendous amount of energy. So if you're just being connected to the moment you're in, like right now, I have a to do list of 500 things to do 10 years ago. How do we think about thinking about the to do list instead of just enjoying talking to you? So one of the big answers is using simple tool to connect to the moment you're in. That's it. So this morning before I sat down, I did what's called expressive writing, which we've talked about multiple times. Write down my thoughts, the doubts and frustrations which are always there. So I don't want the world to think that I'm a saint, because I'm not. Do I get to suffer along with everybody else? Yes. Do I, do I get attached to outcomes? Yes. But I become aware. So the number one word that I like to leave your audience with in 10 different ways is the word awareness. Okay. Become aware. I'm attached. Become aware that I'm angry. Become aware that I'm anxious. So another strategy is no action and a reaction. So if I'm reacting, say something, did something that irritated me and I'm reacting. My thinking brain isn't working. It just isn't. So when you are aware that you're anxious and frustrated, you don't do anything no action in a reaction. So you do not want to suppress a reaction. Which actually what got me into trouble originally. So, for instance, I was attached to my ego, being this calm, cool, collected guy. My nickname in high school was the brick. So it turned out to be an extreme form of suppression, which really cranks up the immune system. And I got sick. I had 17 different physical and mental symptoms. So I had migraine, headaches, burning feet, skin rashes, anxiety, depression, ocd, bipolar, all this stuff. I had it all of those, by the way. Anxiety, depression, ocd, bipolar are actually inflammatory disorders, not psychological. So it turns out that mental pain and physical pain are the same entity. Also turns out that mental pain is less tolerated than physical pain, because with physical pain, there's a withdrawal response. It's automatic. With mental pain, there's no withdrawal response. The metaphor I use is out of your hand over a stove, that if your hands over a stove, you pull it away. If I forced you to hold your hand over the stove, what would happen.
- [27:28]
Emmy Vadnais
To your anxiety go through? Well, I would be screaming.
- [27:33]
Dr. David Hanscom
Right. What would be the next reaction?
- [27:35]
Emmy Vadnais
Well, of course I'd want to get my hand away from the stove.
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Dr. David Hanscom
Can't do it.
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Emmy Vadnais
Right. Then I'd get mad at you, probably.
- [27:42]
Dr. David Hanscom
You'd be angry.
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Emmy Vadnais
I'd be angry. Of course.
- [27:44]
Dr. David Hanscom
Right. It's a survival reaction.
- [27:45]
Emmy Vadnais
Yeah.
- [27:46]
Dr. David Hanscom
So with mental pain, your hand is stuck over the stove. You can't pull it away. So what we do in medicine, we give you medication, we do counseling, try to make the pain more tolerable. But the bottom line, you're still over the stove. So there's only one answer. And I'll make you guess it just for discussion's sake.
- [28:08]
Emmy Vadnais
Well, it's letting go.
- [28:10]
Dr. David Hanscom
Perhaps that is actually an answer. What I'm trying to my illustration at this point, you have to turn down the heat.
- [28:17]
Emmy Vadnais
Yeah.
- [28:18]
Dr. David Hanscom
It's the only answer is if your hand stuck over the stove, you have to turn off the heat. So that's how the thoughts drop down. That's how your body chemistry drops down. As you relax and get to thinking back online, you have much more creativity to solve the problems. So what's tragic about the human race is we have in each one of our brains the creative capacity to solve the problems that we're creating. But again, going to this bombardment of thoughts which are equal to a tiger, an infinite number of these things, we're in a defensive mode, and we're not. So we're acting from the primitive part of our brain. So that's my plea as Humans, let's get our brains back online. It's not that hard to do something that can be done in the schoolyard. And the number one word is awareness. See what awareness is. It breaks that link. In other words, I have a thought, reaction, reaction, thought. Such an instantly, anytime I'm anxious or frustrated, again, a physiological response, not psychological, I'm someplace else. Something today triggered something from the past that was dangerous. So I'm not even here.
- [29:31]
Emmy Vadnais
Yeah.
- [29:32]
Dr. David Hanscom
So how can I behave well if I'm not even aware of what's right in front of me right now?
- [29:39]
Emmy Vadnais
It seems that beliefs play a role as well in this. And also when you talked about people behaving poorly. And we can also think about addiction, substance use, all the different various forms, it seems that people are really wanting to find pleasure.
- [30:00]
Dr. David Hanscom
Can't do it. Pleasure. So here's the thing. As you turn down the heat, pleasure emerges. We all actually know how to have a good time. But as long as you're fighting anxiety and frustration, you can't really enjoy yourself. So the research shows you, if you're actually pursuing pleasure to outrun your pain, that's actually highly inflammatory. A hedonistic lifestyle is highly inflammatory. And we know all the superstars and stuff that have drug addiction problems, suicides, all sorts of stuff. By the way, there's a direct link between ruminations and suicide. In my ordeal, the ruminating thought patterns were extreme. And that's an almost committed suicide in 2002. So other animals do not commit suicide like humans do. Right. So again, the one common factor that's probably at the core of all physical and mental disease are repetitive thoughts.
- [30:54]
Emmy Vadnais
Okay, so you've mentioned a few ways of how we can get our thinking brains back online. Can we go ahead and go through them? Because I know you give several suggestions in your article.
- [31:07]
Dr. David Hanscom
So let me start with a metaphor of a hornet's nest. Where the nest is your brain and the hornets are your thoughts. And if somebody shakes the nest, what happens to the hornets?
- [31:18]
Emmy Vadnais
Yeah, they're going to get upset and yeah, fly around.
- [31:22]
Dr. David Hanscom
The hornets are the thoughts. So what we're doing is we're fighting the hornets outside the nest, which makes them more angry. Right. So we're out there fighting hornets. Talk therapy actually makes things worse because your attention's on the problem. So the real entry is quit shaking the nest. So as the brain calms down, so the brain, the nest is the brain. The thoughts are the hornets. So as you quit shaking the nest, the hornets will settle down, go back into the nest and do Their job. So the key issue is the physiology that drives all of this. And threat or fight or flight, physiology drives these thoughts. Thoughts drive the physiology. So there's four parts to healing, and they all occur simultaneously. It's a dynamic process. These are tools that you use every day. They become habitual. It's just a different way of living your life. So the first part is, we call it thought separation. And taking your survival reactions personally is the essence of the problem. So, yeah, there's pleasant thoughts and sensations. We fight them. And so what you want to do is separate from them. You can't control them. So there's several ways of separating. One of them is simple mindfulness. So instead of fighting thought, put your brain on a different sensation. It's a thought separation exercise. Expressive writing, as you know, is a big one. Cognitive behavioral therapy, where you recognize this is a cognitive distortion. I don't have to take this personally, just let it go. So the first step is, I call it thought separation. The second part, which is again, we call it dynamic healing, is calming the physiology. There's a bunch of ways of actually calming down your physiology, from fight or flight to safety. So the essence of healing is if you're in threat physiology, your body breaks down, especially if it's sustained. And as you go into safety, your body regenerates and heals. So we call it dynamic healing. There's ways of processing your stresses, there's ways of calming down the nervous system, there's ways of regulating the physiology. We call it dynamic healing. You can change the input, you can calm down the nervous system, you can change the output of physiology. Then the symptoms result. So the second step is calm the physiology. And that's things like the not discussing your pain. Forgiveness is a big one. Life perspective, play are all ways to calm and down the physiology. First step, thought separation. Number two, calm down the physiology. Number three, which is the reason why we're talking today, is you want to soften your ego again, kill your ego. Because establishing and defending your ego is a tremendous source of repetitive, unwanted thoughts.
- [34:11]
Emmy Vadnais
Or maybe from a mindfulness, which really could also be a heartfulness perspective. We love our ego, not that we want to build it up, but maybe have compassion for it so that it can soften.
- [34:21]
Dr. David Hanscom
Perhaps you just said the magic word there. So compassion is the opposite of ego. So compassion focused therapy is probably one of the more definitive answers for reps recover repetitive unpleasant thoughts. So ego means like depending on myself, depend on myself. Compassion is you just look at yourself and you learn to like yourself. No matter what. So compassion focused therapy is probably one of the more definitive answers for repetitive and pleasant thoughts. So you're absolutely right. So, but it's the opposite of ego, right? The ego says, I want stronger, eager to feel better about myself. Compassion is engendering compassion for yourself, no matter what your ego looks like. So it's a way of dissolving ego. So the main way you dissolve ego is awareness. Okay, so I have a cognitive distortion. This person should have done this. They didn't. That's should thinking or catastrophizing. So with awareness, you realize that you have a cognitive distortion. You separate from it, You've broken the link and you move on. So awareness is the key issue as far as breaking up the ego. And again, compassion is a big one. Then the final step is creativity and joy. But you can't do creativity and joy if you're anxious and frustrated because you cannot outrun those circuits. So what happens is that with neuroplasticity, you've separated from your survival reactions. You're training yourself to be less reactive to them. You can't get rid of them. So when you're less reactive, your thinking brain is back now online. And so playfulness, play, companionship, good food, good wine, good friends. Spirituality are part of creating the new nervous system. So if you're trying to fix all the problems from a neuroplastic standpoint, your brain actually develops in the direction of the problems. Definitive healing occurs with neuroplasticity. You literally reconstruct your brain.
- [36:24]
Emmy Vadnais
That's huge, what you just said, because you are a spine surgeon, you are trained to work with the central nervous system. And you just said that we can build essentially a new brain. Can you share more about that? What happens with that?
- [36:38]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, the keyword is awareness. So if you keep. So there's a real limit to personal development work because you're working with the same data, you're stirring the same pot. So keyword is awareness. Being open to new ideas. So as you bring in new data, you develop a new brain. So if you focus on peace, love, joy, good food, good wine, good friends, that's your brain's going to develop. That requires awareness. So awareness works at every different level. It brings a link to the past, but it also allows you to bring in new data in to create the new brain. So you get to create the brain that you want. As you create this brain, the need to fight these thoughts drops down dramatically because they're not circuits that are brain reinforced. When you're in pain, people understandably Become obsessed with the pain. They don't care what happens in life, they just want to get rid of the pain. But again, the mental pain is a much bigger problem than the physical pain. When I was in practice, I gave people the choice of getting rid of their physical pain with surgery and having to live with their anxiety or getting rid of their anxiety and living the physical pain. Almost everybody wanted to get rid of the anxiety. They can sort of deal with the physical pain. They thought if I got rid of the physical pain, my anxiety would drop. It's not true because there's so many other things that cause anxiety. Again, fight or flight. So what's ironic is you actually calm down the nervous system, your brain becomes less inflamed, the nerve conduction slows down, you change the pain threshold, and most of the time the physical pain also resolves. I mean, I didn't quit my practice to manage chronic pain. I quit my practice because I watched so many people completely resolve their pain.
- [38:31]
Emmy Vadnais
Well, we all deal with stress to some level, but a lot of people are. More and more people actually are dealing with anxiety, having a very difficult time coping. There's more higher rates of depression. I think I heard a rate, something from a psychologist, something like 60% of people in the United States are considered depressed right now. So what you're saying is you're really offering a lot of hope for people with these practices.
- [38:55]
Dr. David Hanscom
This is a different conversation, but it's all around anger. So when you're angry, you're in a victim mode. And so every time I go back into a depression of any level, it's always because I'm feeling sorry for myself, right? Poor me. The world's a mess, poor me. My spouse isn't acting correctly, poor me. And my kids are a mess, poor, poor me. My to do list is too long. So it's being in the victim mode that drives people into a depression. The problem with pain is a bi directional process. So yeah, I have these unpleasant thoughts, poor me, I'm bombarded by these thoughts. The reality is you are a victim of those thoughts. That's true victimhood. You're being assaulted by these thoughts and you can't escape them. So that's a whole history here, is that as you turn down the brain, turn down the physiology, the thoughts drop down. Their problem is the thoughts themselves fire up the brain. So that's where you have to go in a stepwise process, not stepwise, all four parts of it. Thought separation, calm physiology, softening the ego and then healing with neuroplasticity. And all of those happen every day, all the time. They become automatic. So then your life becomes independent of circumstances. Well, there's an ironic part of it that when you feel the pain and get angry, you feel more angry. And when you feel good, you feel better. But you go with the flow. You're not stuck in a negative mode, so you start living life more easily. And these are tools that should have been taught to us in grade school. These are not hard to do.
- [40:29]
Emmy Vadnais
Do you recommend that people practice this throughout their daily activities? Do they set aside time in their life and when do they get to actually see results from this and notice that their thoughts, their physical and emotional pain is coming down?
- [40:44]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, I say this tongue in cheek, but I'm sort of serious. I have a process called the Doc Journey. Direct your own care journey. And it's about learning skills. So if you're monitoring your pain, the pain's running the show. So as you're learning skills in all four of those areas, with repetition, they start becoming automatic. So, so you're doing this all day long, but it's automatic. It probably takes about three to six months to actually make this automatic. People see results within two to six weeks. But the real healing occurs after you start feeling better. Because remember, once you learn to live with your survival physiology and quit fighting it, you've just started the journey. Because the real healing occurs with neuroplasticity, that once you've quit fighting the survival circuits, then your brain keeps expanding and expanding and expanding. So people will often feel better and they stop. Whereas that's actually the beginning of the journey. So when people do the course, I recommend about 10 or 15 minutes a day, period. That's it. Learn a skill, get to practice all day, go back and forth, use it as a textbook. Just like any learned skill, playing the piano takes practice. You learn the scale, you learn more complicated things to do. Let's take gymnastics. You learn simple things, you get more and more complicated. So it takes repetition and time. And you literally reprogram your brain. Again, you cannot force your brain because that's positive thinking, which is a way of suppressing negative thinking. It's a disaster. Support's helpful, but talk therapy by itself, people think, just solve enough problems or understand this well enough. I'm going to heal well by trying to understand your problems. Where's your attention?
- [42:28]
Emmy Vadnais
I'm the problem, right?
- [42:30]
Dr. David Hanscom
So you get to separate from it and put your brain wherever you want to put it. So honestly, you can program in any brain that you want. There's still good days and bad days. And see, adversity isn't the problem. Every living creature has adversity in order to survive. It's your reaction to it. Stress isn't the problem. And so people get upset when they get stress or adversity. That's life. Navigating adversity is how you stay alive. So if people, they think they have a right to not have adversity, they're wrong. So adversity is the problem that always asks you to feel positive about the adversity. It's always adversity. Adversity by definition is unpleasant. It's your reaction to it. So then you have a reaction to the adversity. So now you're in a fight orf flight mode. Your thinking brain isn't working. So again, no action in a reaction because your brain's not working. So with awareness, you create that space, you calm down. So the second two words that we use, we call it flip the switch. Okay, I'm in a victim mode. I'm in a reaction. Let it pass. And then you decide to move on. So you make the decision to move on with the life that you want. That's where the healing occurs. As you live life on your terms on a given day. Not about just always being happy and playful all the time. It's a matter of being creative with whatever you're doing. This doing the dishes or doing your job or taking a hike or taking a walk. Life keeps coming at us. So as you learn to be less reactive to your stresses, that's how your brain and body heal.
- [44:05]
Emmy Vadnais
Well, this is great advice because what you're talking about also impacts through the inflammatory process, physical health conditions that can develop as people go on in life as well. So this is also, would you say, a form of preventative health care, for example?
- [44:23]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, again, mental pain and physical pain are the same thing. As the mental pain drops down, the physical symptoms drop. As the physical symptoms drop, the mental symptoms drop. So it's all an inflammatory metabolic disorder again. Anxiety, depression, bipolar, OCD are all inflammatory metabolic states. So as the mental symptoms drop, the physical symptoms also drop. Again, person has 17 different physical and mental symptoms. They are gone. They're just gone. And this happens all the time. So again, that's why I got my practice was because people healed at a level I didn't think was humanly possible. What is humanly possible? Because the human body knows how to heal. So you're just getting out of the way, allowing your own body to heal. So it's not Some magic David Hansen formula. It's just allowing, just following the science, letting your body physiology take care of you. And it will.
- [45:22]
Emmy Vadnais
What do you say to those who may be listening? Thinking, well, I work two jobs. I'm going to school, or I have to take care of my children or my parents or XYZ responsibilities. How can I begin to bring this and fold this into my life when people might feel like they don't have the time?
- [45:44]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, you don't have time to not do this. In other words, what are your choices? You can stay on this treadmill forever or not. It's about 10 or 15 minutes a day. That's it. As you practice the tools throughout the day, it doesn't add more time. So as you learn in practice, it doesn't take extra time. In fact, it creates a huge amount of time in your life because you're now creatively solving problems, problems, and you're creating more free time. So that's where it's intended to be. 10 or 15 minutes at a time. Ongoing learning, ongoing programming. So it becomes a different way of living your life. And as you wait, as you live your life differently, then your life actually changes and you have a tremendous amount of free time.
- [46:23]
Emmy Vadnais
Yeah, it's actually going to be beneficial for a person's life. And, and I like how you say it's just 15 minutes a day. And then you can weave it in through your daily activities. Can you share a little bit more about the term awareness? Because I think that term is tossed around quite a bit. But can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that? Because I think that that's something that people can bring into their daily activities. Right?
- [46:48]
Dr. David Hanscom
Yeah. Just become aware of everything other people's needs. You listen more carefully, listen to sensations, feel your body, watch symptoms come up. For instance, my left knee flares up. I may not feel anxious, but I don't be in fight or flight, so. And when you feel anxious or frustrated, you now become aware of that. Before I went through my own process, I had no idea I was angry at all. See, my identity was being Mr. Cole. So you start connecting to what is. And part of the reason why people don't do this process, because you also get to connect with very negative feelings. If you fight negative feelings, you've lost awareness. So allowing yourself to feel negativity is a huge part of actually being aware because it's what's real.
- [47:33]
Emmy Vadnais
So that awareness is essentially maybe stepping back from the ego, the thoughts, whatever quote the problem might be, and help Get a little bit of separation from it to get a different perspective.
- [47:46]
Dr. David Hanscom
Right. Just taking a little bit of space, creating awareness. You don't have to feel anything. It's not some magical feeling. You simply become aware. Okay, I'm in a victim mode. You don't have to even feel angry. Just say, okay, that was a victim move. The key word is awareness. As you learn and learn and it doesn't stop. I mean, I'm learning more in the last six weeks than I learned the last five years. So learning never stops. And as you can tell, there's a lot more concepts today than last time we talked. And I'm just getting warmed up.
- [48:17]
Emmy Vadnais
Yeah, that's awesome. One doesn't have to look too far in their environment, society, culture to see all the. Of course, there's many good things happening as well, but there's a lot of suffering and struggles and fear going on out there. What do you say to people who are listening, thinking, well, how can I practice this when here in the United States and around the world, authoritarianism, fascism, oligarchy is on the rise?
- [48:47]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, the world has always been this way. Nothing's changed. I mean, the dark ages weren't great, right? There's always been authoritarianism. And that's again, a topic of another day about how authoritarian people get control. As they take people's brains offline with chaos, then they have control, and then they make the changes that they do. So, yeah, the authoritarianism is, again, the first thing authoritarian people do is they take people's brains offline. Right? So now they're reacting and they have control. So the answer is that's what the tools do, allows you to enjoy your day regardless of your circumstances, period. And taking on the world of suffering is something that you can't control. It will put you in the hole, it will make you depressed, it's inflammatory. So you just train your brain to be less reactive to the stuff around you. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. You just get to enjoy your day. Because what the world needs each one of us to do is to heal. That's it.
- [49:50]
Emmy Vadnais
Yeah, absolutely. And what we do have control over is ourselves, right?
- [49:57]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well, we have control over reactions, over reactions. So we can't control our thoughts, we can't control our chemistry, but you can regulate it. It's a pretty big difference. So you have your reactions that are automatic. Anxiety and anger are automatic, hardwired. We have no control over those at all. So as you become aware that you're in a reaction, then you have a choice to use the skills to regulate it.
- [50:21]
Emmy Vadnais
The self critical voice is also related to a term called schadenfreude where people can take pleasure in other people's harm or misfortune. And I know you've also written an article about that and that's going to be our next comment conversation as well. I'm wondering if you want to touch on that today or we can save it for next time.
- [50:41]
Dr. David Hanscom
Well that's a huge topic that we probably should stay for next time. But in terms of that Sean Forda is getting pleasure from other people's suffering is also automatic. You can't control that either. So then you feel bad about it and so you all, you use all these rational means to actually counteract that feeling. The other thing that's automatic is envy survival reaction. Okay, it was called a sin by many religions, but envy is normal. So greed and taking action and stealing is a problem, but envy is a normal survival reaction. So when you take your survival reactions personally and try to suppress it with cognitive means, that's where the trouble arises.
- [51:24]
Emmy Vadnais
Dr. David Hanscom, it is such a pleasure to be in conversation with you once again. Thank you so much for being with me and I look forward to forward to our next conversation as well.
- [51:35]
Dr. David Hanscom
Yeah, thank you very much. I enjoyed this as usual.
- [51:38]
Emmy Vadnais
And for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us because you are the reason that we are here.
- [52:06]
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