Find extended show notes, timestamps, transcriptions, and the episode's YouTube video here!
Today I am joined by Dr. Caroline Leaf, a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s, she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input. Dr. Leaf is also the bestselling author of Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, and many more. She's also the host of Cleaning up the Mental Mess, a top-charts mental health podcast. (bio via drleaf.com)
Dr. Leaf's Website: https://drleaf.com/
Dr. Leaf's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarolineleaf/
Dr. Leaf's Podcast: https://drleaf.com/pages/podcasts
This week's DBT skill is turning the mind. Learn more here.
+ The difference between the mind and the brain and how this connects to neuroplasticity
+ How childhood traumas can manifest in both the brain and body but can be rewired with targeted neuroplasticity
+ The think-feel-choose process through which we interpret and internalize experiences
+ Why depression and anxiety aren't illnesses but rather emotional signals and how to effectively treat these from a non-illness perspective
+ The neurocycle approach to healing both your physical & mental health after experiencing ineffective and/or distressing patterns
+ Dr. Leaf's most recent book—Cleaning Up the Mental Mess
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Welcome to she persisted.
Sadie:I'm your host Sadie Sutton.
Sadie:Every Friday, I post interviews about mental health, dialectical
Sadie:behavioral therapy and teenage life.
Sadie:These episodes break down my mental health journey, teach skills to help you cope
Sadie:with life and showcase testimonials from individuals, including teens, just like
Sadie:you, whether you've struggled yourself or just want to improve your mental fitness.
Sadie:This podcast is your inspiration to live a life you love and keep.
Sadie:This week on to Persisted,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:what is depression and anxiety?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We told him today's narrative that they are illnesses, but they're not illnesses.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:There's no research to confirm that there's no neuro-biological
Dr. Caroline Leaf:current mix or in the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Chemical imbalance is a theory that has been disproved multiple times,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:no scientists and people in Harvard Kings all over the world in top.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Universities will tell you that that is not an acceptable view, but
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that's what the public are given.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And most doctors will tell me patients, oh, you have to keep a clean balance.
Sadie:You like, let's fix it with the medication,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:fix your broken arm.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're having broken.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Raymond's fix your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's the wrong messaging.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it's also, and the research shows it's actually make things worse this week.
Sadie:DBT scale is turning the mind.
Sadie:Turning the mind is like facing a fork in the road.
Sadie:You have to turn your mind towards the acceptance road in a way from
Sadie:the road of rejecting reality, you're choosing to accept.
Sadie:The choice you accept does not itself equal acceptance, but it puts you on
Sadie:the path towards acceptance rather than continuing towards rejecting reality.
Sadie:So here's the steps.
Sadie:First, you're going to observe the fact that you're currently not accepting.
Sadie:Look for the anger, bitterness, annoyance, avoiding emotions, those
Sadie:thought processes that are like, why me?
Sadie:Why is this happening?
Sadie:I can't stand this.
Sadie:It shouldn't be this way.
Sadie:You get the point next.
Sadie:You're going to go within yourself and make an inner commitment
Sadie:to accept reality as it.
Sadie:There, you're going to do it again over and over and over again.
Sadie:You're going to keep turning your mind to accept each time when you come to
Sadie:the fork in the road where you can reject reality or choose to accept it.
Sadie:Lastly, you're going to develop a plan of catching yourself in the future
Sadie:when you drift out of acceptance, whatever that means for you.
Sadie:This is not an easy skill.
Sadie:It's one that takes a really long time to master.
Sadie:And it's constantly something that you're continuously doing.
Sadie:It's not like you're doing deep breathing one time, and then you
Sadie:get out of that emotional state.
Sadie:You're revisiting, turning the mind every single time you feel
Sadie:yourself rejecting reality.
Sadie:So it's a great practice and tool to have in your toolbox, but it's
Sadie:again, an ongoing effort that you're making, but it can have a huge benefit.
Sadie:So with that, let's dive into the episode.
Sadie:Hello.
Sadie:Hello and welcome to she persisted.
Sadie:If you're new here, I'm so happy.
Sadie:You're here.
Sadie:Make sure you head over to Instagram at, @shepersistedpodcast.
Sadie:Send me a DM and say hi.
Sadie:If you are a returning listener, we'll come back.
Sadie:I have an amazing episode for you today, and I know you're going to love it.
Sadie:Today's guest is Dr.
Sadie:Caroline leaf, and this is one of literally my favorite
Sadie:interviews that I've ever done.
Sadie:She is just an absolute.
Sadie:Phenomenal clinician individual.
Sadie:She has her own podcast.
Sadie:We'll get more into her in a minute, but no matter where you are at in
Sadie:her journey or supporting someone on their journey, this episode is
Sadie:going to bring you so much value.
Sadie:And I can't wait.
Sadie:It is almost Thanksgiving.
Sadie:I'm recording this episode the night before it's going to go live.
Sadie:And I just wanted to put a little reminder in the intro to put your mental health.
Sadie:First this week, we can't help others unless we help ourselves first.
Sadie:And I think it goes for any interaction.
Sadie:If we're not taking care of our own mental health, we're not going
Sadie:to be able to validate others and offer support and resources.
Sadie:We're going to be irritable and it's just not going to go well.
Sadie:So especially for me this week with family time with going home, From college.
Sadie:That's something that I'm focusing on is making sure that my mental
Sadie:health is in check and place in its best spot so that I can show up as
Sadie:my best self and my relationships.
Sadie:So I wanted to give you that reminder to put your mental health first and
Sadie:prioritize what makes you feel good and show up as your best self that
Sadie:you can give that version of yourself to others this week, as things are
Sadie:more stressful during the holidays.
Sadie:So happy early Thanksgiving.
Sadie:I hope you have a wonderful week and let's get into this week's guest.
Sadie:Today.
Sadie:I am interviewing Dr.
Sadie:Caroline leaf.
Sadie:She is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with
Sadie:a master's and PhD in communication pathology, and she also has her
Sadie:bachelor's in science and logo poetics.
Sadie:So she specializes in cognitive and metacognitive neuro-psychology.
Sadie:And since the early 1980s she's researched the mind brain connection, the nature of
Sadie:mental health and the formation of memory.
Sadie:She was one of the first people in our field to study how the brain can change.
Sadie:Also known as neuro-plasticity, which we dive into in so much DAP.
Sadie:So if you're like, what the heck is that?
Sadie:Don't worry.
Sadie:I got you covered.
Sadie:We talk about what that is and then how it applies to things like
Sadie:depression and anxiety and trauma.
Sadie:So this is just a phenomenal episode.
Sadie:She is also the best-selling author of switch on your brain.
Sadie:Think, learn, succeed, and thinking, eat yourself smart
Sadie:as well as many other books.
Sadie:And you might remember her books from various guests on the podcasts
Sadie:that have said that they're some of their favorite reads and resources.
Sadie:So she's just an absolutely amazing author and clinician.
Sadie:The other way that you might recognize her is that she is the
Sadie:host of cleaning up the mental mass.
Sadie:It's a top charts, mental health podcast.
Sadie:It's an amazing resource in all of course, Lincoln in today's show notes.
Sadie:So if you enjoy this conversation, make sure that you head over to her podcast.
Sadie:So you can continue to consumer content, learn more about your
Sadie:mental health and cleaning up the mental mass, which we dive into in
Sadie:a really brief way in this episode.
Sadie:So all the ways that you can connect with Dr.
Sadie:Lee will be in today's show notes, but if you want to follow her
Sadie:on Instagram, her handles at Dr.
Sadie:Caroline leaf and her website is Dr.
Sadie:leaf.com.
Sadie:All of that will be linked in the show notes.
Sadie:Don't worry as well as her podcast, but if you want to give her a follow and
Sadie:connect, that's where you can do it.
Sadie:So with that being said, I hope you love this interview and learn so much from
Sadie:it just like I did in this conversation with her and let's dive into it.
Sadie:Thank you so much, Dr.
Sadie:Lee for joining me today on to persistent.
Sadie:I'm so excited to have you here and to dive into this amazing conversation.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Thank you, Sadie.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I'm very, very excited to join you and very impressive what you're doing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So thank you for what you're doing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's just so necessary.
Sadie:Same to you, same to you.
Sadie:So I want to start by setting a foundation for listeners and talking about what
Sadie:neuroplasticity is and your work there.
Sadie:I think it's difficult to kind of move into how we can shift behaviors
Sadie:and thoughts and all these things without talking about neuro-plasticity.
Sadie:So walk me through that and how that connects to mental
Dr. Caroline Leaf:health.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So in your plasticity is the ability of the mind to change the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So implicit in the, in the.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If the mission is the fact that the mind and the brain are secret, and that's not
Dr. Caroline Leaf:a conversation that many people have or here, because we are sold the concept
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that the mind is the brain, but it's not.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And as long as we understand that the current narrative, which says
Dr. Caroline Leaf:your mind is your brain and your brain basically makes you do it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's almost as though the message is that you've got this illness
Dr. Caroline Leaf:inside your brain and it's just waiting it's disease in waiting.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then life happens and the disease gets triggered and not manifest.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then you get a diagnosis and a label and a treatment and a cure.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But none of that actually works.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's been that philosophy I've just described has been going on for
Dr. Caroline Leaf:back 40 years, actually a hundred, but very strongly for the last 40 50 years.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the last 40 50 years has also been tracking research
Dr. Caroline Leaf:wise and it's been a disaster.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It hasn't worked.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's exacerbated the problem.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's made it worse and it's more suicides there's, it's actually made of.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I've just been writing a journal article on this this morning
Dr. Caroline Leaf:for based on my research.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So neuroplasticity is the ability to understand that with our mind,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:we can actually change the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the brain is never the same.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It always changes.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So right now it's changing at 400 billion actions per second, because of your mind,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:if I had a date person next to me, that person's brain wouldn't be doing it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But the fact that we were alive and having the conversation and these
Dr. Caroline Leaf:viewers and listeners, we, if I had to link you up to the technology I
Dr. Caroline Leaf:used to in your scientific technology, I use for my research, we would see
Dr. Caroline Leaf:massive changes have inside of your brain and response in your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So neuroplasticity means that our brain changes in response to our
Dr. Caroline Leaf:mind and you take that little deeper.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It means that what is our mind?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Can we control it?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the answer is yes.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And we'll talk about what mine is maybe in the next questions or whatever.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so we can actually direct neuroplasticity so
Dr. Caroline Leaf:we can direct the changes.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's so important because how our brain changes will manifest in our
Dr. Caroline Leaf:behaviors and our behaviors, our, our communication would be saying what we do.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So life happens.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:On mind processes into the brain, the brain changes, and the weekend, I can
Dr. Caroline Leaf:show you images and pops in, in a moment.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then what if the way our brain changes then basically
Dr. Caroline Leaf:producers our communication.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So if you've been abused maybe in childhood or had some severe trauma
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and that's effect is processed into the brain, changes the brain in the wrong
Dr. Caroline Leaf:way, also changes the body because the brain and the body work together.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then that manifests as basically toxic behavioral symptoms.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it doesn't mean that you're a bad person or that there is a brain disease.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It just means that there's something going on and you have.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Rewire it so neuroplasticity wonderful aspect that you can
Dr. Caroline Leaf:actually tune into your behaviors and this way to these four signals.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And we can talk about how to do that too, but you can tune into your patterns and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:your signals and become like a sort of detective literally, and change your brain
Dr. Caroline Leaf:back and re reorder it and rewire it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it obviously takes time, et cetera, but that's also part of the city.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's a great thing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's, it's
Sadie:crazy to think about it kind of hurts your brain.
Sadie:You'd be like, whoa, like the, the amount of change and how much potential there
Sadie:is there, but it's no one came to like, well, this situation is unchangeable
Sadie:or this experience, this depression anxiety, because that's not possible.
Sadie:Our brains are constantly changing.
Sadie:So I absolutely love that.
Sadie:Another thing that I want to clarify before we dive into specifically
Sadie:depression and anxiety and chasing the mind there is detoxing the brain.
Sadie:I know this is a huge part of your work and what you talk about.
Sadie:So what does that mean?
Sadie:To detox your brain or your mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So I talk a lot about cleaning up the mental
Dr. Caroline Leaf:mess, and I talk about the fact that we can clean it up because we
Dr. Caroline Leaf:are actually empowered to do that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And what that means is that we, when we are going to be toxic experiences,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:adverse experiences, whatever they are, whether it's persistent stuff happening
Dr. Caroline Leaf:in childhood, early adolescence, et cetera of the pandemic, whatever it is,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that is everything experience you have.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Good, good, bad, and ugly goes into.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Brain to the mind and basically anything that's toxic.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Why is it as a toxic change in the brain?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that thing changes brain functionality actually causes brain damage and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:stimulates the response from the immune system to try and fix that because
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the news a little about your survival and a toxic experience threatens to
Dr. Caroline Leaf:survival, and that then sets off a whole cascade of reactions through your body
Dr. Caroline Leaf:right down to the level of your DNA.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And basically detoxing is becoming a way of your firm as actually
Dr. Caroline Leaf:mentioned earlier on the phone from the patterns in your life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So maybe there's a persistent depression, which is just one part of the pattern.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So I actually.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The patients that a disease it's basically, it's a warning
Dr. Caroline Leaf:signal, but it will come along with behaviors and perspective.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It comes along in a package with three or four different types of signals.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the pattern to the signals that then comes from a change in your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so detoxing, your brain is the process of looking at
Dr. Caroline Leaf:what is the big pet in my life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm feeling excessively anxious or depressed, then actually looking deeper.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What is that?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And down to the, all the way down to the root cause.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's a process of embracing processing and reconceptualizing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So deconstructing and reconstructing, you can't change.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What's happened to, to you because it's happened, but you can change what's in
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you because whatever's happened to you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It gets wired into your brain and into the genes of every cell of the body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So not only is the experience going to go into your brain and it goes
Dr. Caroline Leaf:into your brain like a tree, and I've got a little plant over here.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's that would be a health experience.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And this would be a toxic experience.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So we need to provide detoxing the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We literally want to get rid of these and turn them into these.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So brain ever experienced looks like becomes a tree in your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is the change in your plasticity is changing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's growing these inside your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then they made of proteins detoxing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Finding what, finding these tuning into them and then getting them up.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Like they've got a route, you know, you've got to pull a route out
Dr. Caroline Leaf:of a weed out of the garden roots and all, otherwise it will grow.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's basically what it is.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So yeah, I've spent the last 38 years researching that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And funnily enough, Sadie, the back in the eighties, when I
Dr. Caroline Leaf:started my work, that they didn't believe the brain could change.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I was sitting in your science lecture and the neurologist who
Dr. Caroline Leaf:was taking, giving us at lecture said, oh, the brain can change.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And when people have had any kind of paramedic experience or traumatic brain
Dr. Caroline Leaf:injury or sports injury, you just got to teach your patients to compensate.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I immediately thought that cannot be right because.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We are always changing every moment of the day's different
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and our mind use our brains.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If our mind is changing, because experience is changing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That means our brains changing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I challenged that professor and some of the first neuroplasticity
Dr. Caroline Leaf:research back in the eighties.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:There's a Ted talk on.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I did a Ted talk on this, on the ridiculous question of neuroplasticity,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:but it's cool because what it does is it tells you an I and anyone who's
Dr. Caroline Leaf:battling and that's all of us, by the way, it isn't anyone who isn't battling.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Sometimes it gets worse in our life and sometimes it's not as bad, but
Dr. Caroline Leaf:it all battling with mental health.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's just, life is just very tough and this adverse senses, but it
Dr. Caroline Leaf:tells us that it's okay to be messy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And there is a way of managing the mess and cleaning up the mental mess.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So detoxing, the brain is this recognition.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's okay to make a mess.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's not here and it's coming because of let's find the because
Dr. Caroline Leaf:of, and it's reconstructed into something that actually works for me.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And not again,
Sadie:It's it's crazy how far we've come.
Sadie:I came from a psychology lecture, literally 20 minutes ago, and we were
Sadie:talking about neuroplasticity and how the brain is constantly changing.
Sadie:And during your critical period, it's so important for these connections
Sadie:because the brain changes, then you're less able to acquire languages easily.
Sadie:So it's, it's insane how much we're still learning about the brain and
Sadie:how things are changing and how far we've come from that belief that the
Sadie:brain is stagnant and unable to adapt.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That was as recently as the eighties, it's only since the,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:is with the advent of MRI technology that people have actually been able
Dr. Caroline Leaf:to see the changes in the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So I can feel them.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I mean, when I did my research in the late eighties, early nineties, it was
Dr. Caroline Leaf:totally new to talk about the city.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I had neurologist saying, oh, it was just lucky on your scientist.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And at that stage, neuroscience was in its infancy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Oh, well, that can't happen.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're just lucky.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And again, it's happened to thousands.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Thousands of people.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's not lucky.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's a medical miracle, is it?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I could say that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's the reality.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's how we are.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And to understand that you really have to understand mind and brain
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and the difference between the two and how they work together.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the other thing very quickly, you mentioned certain periods is
Dr. Caroline Leaf:a lot of teaching around that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And there's also been a lot of counter research showing that they, I don't know
Dr. Caroline Leaf:what they telling you, how they teach you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And hopefully they're giving you the most up-to-date research, but you,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you're not stuck in critical periods.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They are critical periods for development, but if you miss out on
Dr. Caroline Leaf:a certain period, it doesn't load it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Doesn't set up the rest of your life in a negative tone.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You can actually catch up your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Why it rewires.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It never stops.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's doing it at 400 billion actions all day long for the rest of your life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you'll always be changed.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Whatever's happened to you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Doesn't matter what age, what stage, how far you can change.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The brain can change itself.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You change the brain.
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Sadie:So when you are specifically getting rid of like bad trees, if
Sadie:we're using that metaphor again, is that rewiring a thought pattern?
Sadie:Is it changing a behavior?
Sadie:Are you working to shift emotions?
Sadie:What exactly are you doing?
Sadie:I'm going to
Dr. Caroline Leaf:explain what that is.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's where sometimes psychology can be very confusing cause it
Dr. Caroline Leaf:throws lots of words around.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So any breakdown, the whole process.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So he has a brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And in a skeleton, a real one for your listeners, I'm not holding a real brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's just a mind just pulled it off her desk off my desk.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You know, I did, I did used to have a real brain in a jar and everything,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:but this is a little easier to track.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So essentially this is natural mind and I have another model here.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It is.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then the model I'm holding up now is typically you would
Dr. Caroline Leaf:have seen this all over the place in doctor's offices and sign.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is a brain and a body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this is not your mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Neither of these are your mind, because if you were dead, as I already said,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:they would just be disintegrating.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But as you're sitting here, listening to me, your mind is Abe is
Dr. Caroline Leaf:stimulating these to actually respond.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you're alive.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Furnace is your mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So your mind is the driving force that actually makes
Dr. Caroline Leaf:your brain and your body work.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so therefore, if therefore that's the case.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If we have a messy mind, an unmanaged mind, we're going to send an
Dr. Caroline Leaf:unmanaged signals to the brain and the body, and that's going to create
Dr. Caroline Leaf:a mess in the brain and the body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So our conversation right now, we talking as we started out, as you would
Dr. Caroline Leaf:have set this up, you would have put in the show notes, you would have had
Dr. Caroline Leaf:a title that could be like the seat.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So we take a client and you think of, if you're growing a tree, you plant the seed.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the title of the.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I think of it as being the seat as we started speaking and all back and forth.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And as I'm answering your questions and explaining that is all electromagnetic
Dr. Caroline Leaf:sound waves, electromagnetic light waves that are coming at
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you, the visuals are holding up.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:All of that is coming at you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's coming from my mind through my brain, to you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're as electromagnetic light waves and Citra, your mind grabs that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Cause your mind is actually an electronic electromagnetic energy folks.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's a gravitational field and it's all around you and it's through you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:A data person doesn't have that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:For example, if I could acute EEG on you and I, now we would
Dr. Caroline Leaf:see energetic rootsy energy, the different frequencies of the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If we did a speak scam, you would see oxygen in MRI view.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you did an EKG and.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That we would see response, but if we did that on a dead
Dr. Caroline Leaf:person, wouldn't see response.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the mind is that alive, miss that response that we see.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this conversation, the seed was as the person read the title of the podcast.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I mean, as we speak in all these sound ways in grabbed by your mind,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and they been built into the root system of this, of the street.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the roots are the source.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Of the information or the experience.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then as soon as you build it, because this is happening at speeds of 10 to
Dr. Caroline Leaf:27, which is inconceivable in, on equal, on non-conscious mind, which is the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:unconscious, it's not the subconscious, it's the non-conscious inner in.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So all of that stuff has been root system.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Everything that I'm saying.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then immediately at the same time, you uniquely interpret what
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm saying and that's these punches.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the brunch is above the ground, all the interpretation of the source input.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Now your interpretation is different to your listeners, to
Dr. Caroline Leaf:every listener that you have.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So if you have 500 listeners to the show is 500 different interpretations
Dr. Caroline Leaf:of what I'm saying and all of them are correct, because all are
Dr. Caroline Leaf:your own unique interpretation.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this is what I've just described is a.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Tree a tree.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's the product of the mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So when we talk about neuroplasticity, which we did, and we talk about change
Dr. Caroline Leaf:in the brain, what we're doing is we're talking about the thought being both
Dr. Caroline Leaf:into the brain and the change is that you grow these trees, they grow on the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:neurons in the brain and they feed by the glial cells, which you would have all
Dr. Caroline Leaf:learned about in psychology to a growth.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this, this part, particularly the, this whole system over here is going to grow on
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the Dane drives so different that as the neurons connect, you have a signups in the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:brain and that's something memories grow.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's just where you have the initial contact, the initial and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:short-term phase of the memory.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But the actual about the cell body, you've got like branches.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So growing out of the head, if you think of a head and hair growing out of their
Dr. Caroline Leaf:head, that's where these are growing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So these are made of proteins.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the, and the neuroplasticity is that you take you taking my
Dr. Caroline Leaf:words and energy goes in the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:As soon as it shows up in the brain, the brain is then responding
Dr. Caroline Leaf:electromagnetically and candycane genetically and you make proteins.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you're actually growing proteins and those proteins
Dr. Caroline Leaf:arrange themselves into trees.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So these trees have quotes and a thought they'd of memories.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So thoughts are not the same as memories, as much as mine is not the same as brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So mine works through the brain and the body and bolts treats
Dr. Caroline Leaf:stimulates the building of trees.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So these are native proteins and they're growing on the Dane draft.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's what neuroplasticity looks like.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So a thought is the product of the mind and a thought contains memories.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So, so one thought can have, like at the end of this conversation,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you you're going to have built probably close to 2000 branches.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What I'm saying, interpretation, how you interpret it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's a lot of memory.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this particular tree of this conversation may have
Dr. Caroline Leaf:2000, 2000 memories in it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So then you bring this thought up into the conscious mind to the subconscious.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's not just going to bring up one thing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It brings up the concept, which is the name of the tree, and then
Dr. Caroline Leaf:all the details are coming up.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So how is the significant, that's a healthy tree?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:He hasn't toxic tree also branches also the roots and so same process.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Let's say, now that you get bullied at school, you have a terribly
Dr. Caroline Leaf:abusive childhood or whatever, this, all the different things that can
Dr. Caroline Leaf:happen to us, the adversity that is going to be received by them.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:All these energetic fields and everything, and psychologically the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:mind is how we think and feel and choose you're asking what the feeling is.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you think, and feel and choose to build these thoughts.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And these thoughts are built of what the product of thinking, feeling and choosing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So emotions are actually memory.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Emotional memory data.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So emotions are inside there and inside there, the source is what happened.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And this is the interpretation of what happened.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So totally
Sadie:makes you think of that scene inside out where all of the
Sadie:different memories are tagged with each emotion and then categorized
Sadie:and logged into the long-term memory.
Sadie:But you still remember what each emotion was and as each of their
Sadie:responsibilities to manage that because
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you have some, that's very good idea.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's a very good example, because if you think of it, there's a
Dr. Caroline Leaf:multitude of experiences that we have.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you have the same memory tags, like that will makes you sad, but
Dr. Caroline Leaf:there's a thousand things that connect.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You said the sad, it's not in its own.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's, it's, it's an emotion attached to data.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's where we have inside.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This will be the motion.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's it's an emotional data attached to the actual one.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's the, what happened?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And this is how you've processed, what happened?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this is kind of the coping.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So let's say that this is an abuse and it's repeated sexual abuse, for example,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:from maybe a family friend or something like that, or a parent or whatever that,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you know, whatever that processing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's going to be think, feel, choose.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're going to, as you experiencing that, you're going
Dr. Caroline Leaf:to be thinking, feeling choosing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So all that is built into here, the experience, and then you're
Dr. Caroline Leaf:thinking, feeling choosing is the interpretation of that too.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And interpretation of here, there's going to be memory.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Data is going to be all the things that happened.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the interpretation here says, oh, I'm a bed or I'm worthless, or
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I must have done something wrong.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Meanwhile, you totally innocent.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this and that's distorted.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's distorted.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's distorted.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And because that's counter to our natural wiring, which we, we
Dr. Caroline Leaf:actually wired for healthy, for love.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's what the scientists talk about.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Provide for these.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is distorted.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's not going to tell you the truth.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're not going to see the truth about yourself and that all that then
Dr. Caroline Leaf:produces what you say and what you do.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this will produce problems in relationships.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And if it's suppressed, it will produce excessive levels of depression
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and anxiety and withdrawing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I hate life and suicidal thoughts, et cetera, et cetera.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This produces that because this is.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Toxic.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so to summarize, that's the thought it's a product native proteins and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that's the neuroplasticity change.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We use our minds to experience and we take that experience.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We put it into the brain and we build these.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Our mind is how we think and feel and choose.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So as we think, feel, and choose to be bold or thinking, feeling, and choosing
Dr. Caroline Leaf:into these trees, this part is the source.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And this part is our interpretation.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So think, I think feeling and choosing in this case is distorted because those
Dr. Caroline Leaf:facts are distorted the whole toxic.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It is messy, whereas this would be, you know, more accurate.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:These would be healthy, healthy interpretation versus, okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's the thought made of the memories and the emotions
Dr. Caroline Leaf:are inside of yet attached to the data, the specifics of this memory.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So these would be all distorted emotions, anger, frustration,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:hatred, self hatred, and fear.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I mean there's thousands and thousands of emotions, and there would be
Dr. Caroline Leaf:attached to the data of what happened and the interpretation inside of it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Does that make.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah.
Sadie:So in practice, if you're experiencing a distortion, whether
Sadie:it's a thought that's not necessarily accurate, that you're not good
Sadie:enough, not loved all of these things.
Sadie:How exactly would you shift that?
Sadie:Because again, it is a distortion it's not accurate and it's
Sadie:impacting this whole process.
Sadie:What are you doing there to rewire
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Excellent question.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So here is the whole.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Can you have it now and maybe taking repeatedly and you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:don't always know the roots.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is very often because we suppress it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Sometimes it's just so bad.
Sadie:That was another one of my questions.
Sadie:It's like I would wake up and feel depressed, but being able
Sadie:to identify why was so difficult.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah, there we go.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's very often because you've had accumulated trauma over time
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and because it's so traumatic when you're a child and you trust your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:period, you know, you trust adults or whatever in your life that or whatever.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:However, there's so many different ways we can experience trauma, but your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:child, you trusting it's so distorted.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it doesn't, there's no sense to it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you're just trying to cope.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This part of the here is trying to make sense of this and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:then this becomes distorted.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the whole thing is distorted.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So very often it's suppressed and it comes out in early, early childhood
Dr. Caroline Leaf:trauma very often when it comes out in adolescence and over the years of bull.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it can start off with a child being more withdrawn and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:certain behavioral symptoms.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then very often kids are very good at masking for a period of time,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:but then adolescence and 18, 19 20, we see the most severe, the complex,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the trauma, and the more it's been suppressed by between 18 and 24.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's like your quantum brain just can't keep it in anymore.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It explodes.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And there are two major depression, major anxiety in a severe where
Dr. Caroline Leaf:it's still not an illness.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And we need to talk about that, but it's become so severe that it's debilitating.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And if you just treat that as though it's an illness, a symptom.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The illness.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You never going to find the root cause.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you need, you're not going to ever really manage it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's gonna give you managing you and then the drugs and I'm your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:brain and any subtypes your brains, you still are dealing with it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that doesn't help.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So these produce the behavior.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So what we want to do is to, to fix this is we have to look
Dr. Caroline Leaf:at the patterns in our life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I referred to this earlier on.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the most obvious pattern is those very strong emotions
Dr. Caroline Leaf:like depression and anxiety.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Now, what is depression and things.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We told him today's narrative that they are illnesses, but they're not illnesses.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:There's no research to confirm that there's no neuro-biological
Dr. Caroline Leaf:correlates or in the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Chemical imbalance is a theory that has been disproved multiple times, no
Dr. Caroline Leaf:scientists and top people in Harvard, Kings all over the world in top.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Universities will tell you that that is not an acceptable view, but that's
Dr. Caroline Leaf:what the most of the public are given.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And most of the doctors will tell me patients, oh, you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:have a chemical imbalance.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You like
Sadie:fix it with a medication,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:fix your broken arm.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're having broken brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's fixed your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's the wrong messaging.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it's also, and the research shows it's actually make things worse.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:As I mentioned as one in the beginning.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So what you're going to do is recognize that you can't actually have depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You experienced depression and because depression is not an
Dr. Caroline Leaf:illness, it is actually an emotional.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Warning signal.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Hey, so you need to become like a thought detective where you looking for clues.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you're a thought detective, you're an archeologist.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You become a brain surgeon and you're, you're trying to put all
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the pieces of your life together.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you're kind of drawing on all those skills and we all capable of doing that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So we, we step into what I call the wise mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And we've all got that because we see that in our psycho neurobiology,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:which is our mind, mind, body connection that the actually wired
Dr. Caroline Leaf:for love, which means you don't have any structures for toxicity for this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So as soon as we have these in the brain, the immune system rejects these
Dr. Caroline Leaf:like Virgin COVID virus or any virus.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So these give these stimulate an immune response.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Like I saw my research will get a high homocysteine levels, which
Dr. Caroline Leaf:shows inflammation, which shows that there's an immune response.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You've got T cells out there working.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the longer you keep the suppress the issue, the more T-cells, for
Dr. Caroline Leaf:example, you're having place in the more side, you'll get cytokine storms.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so all the things that you hear with the language of COVID, you get the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:same kind of thing happening with your thoughts, because there is real as COVID.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Made a proteins that in your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So they create a mess, but not only are they in your brain as these protein
Dr. Caroline Leaf:briefings, these thoughts of memories, they also in every cell of your body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So as you experienced something and now we're going to begin
Dr. Caroline Leaf:to get to the heart too.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But as you, as you experienced that toxicity and build it into
Dr. Caroline Leaf:your brain immediately, it is built into every cell of your body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's what we have body memory.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So medic memory, that's why things like EMDR work and we yoga.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And when we tune into our body, because it's in the.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it's in the body, in every cell.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So as you are hearing this part cost not talking, you are actually
Dr. Caroline Leaf:putting this information into every cell of your body in addition to rain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's building here and there's a genetic change in every third.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:There's 37 to a hundred trillion cells.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If we have an old brain and our body also storing this as a change in your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:gene code and it's invitational fields that are all around and through you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you think of like, when you look at the using Costa, you know, it's got the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:little lines that go, that's sort of a nice analogy to think of what the thought
Dr. Caroline Leaf:looks like in the brain and the mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Sorry.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So in the brain, it's a tree in the body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's a change in your DNA and in the, the, in the mind, it's those little
Dr. Caroline Leaf:like fields that even for health system.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's going to be back there to the brain, a good positive change
Dr. Caroline Leaf:in your gene code in every cell.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it's going to be a healthy flow in the little gravitational fields,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:electromagnetic fields of the mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But if it's toxic, it's the opposite.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So instead of ice floats and crazy, okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that energy is hitting the brain and the body and everything
Dr. Caroline Leaf:right down to the level of the DNA.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So, for example, you're telling me is, I don't know if you know what telomeres are.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you think of the DNA, the DNA strand, and you can pull chromosomes out of there.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And a chromosome looks like an X and my fingernails would be
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the, would be the telomeres.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So chromosome looks like an X and the ends of chromosomes
Dr. Caroline Leaf:have things called telomeres.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Now those telomeres are basically a proxy for how you are managing your mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so if you did nothing happens with your telomeres when you're alive,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you're telling me, or involved in making about a million new cells.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If we second, I mean over time, basically replacing our entire
Dr. Caroline Leaf:brain and body over time.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So if the telomeres are healthy and long and strong, you build healthy cells.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Healthy or wins, which means a healthy system.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But if you are a mess and not managing and suppress thoughts and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:not detoxing as telling me get very weak and that themes create cells
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that are unhealthy and therefore over time, cumulatively, your body becomes
Dr. Caroline Leaf:weak and vulnerable to disease.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you have, you have suppressed thoughts doing that at the DNA level,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and you have these things in your brain and your brain getting damaged
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and your immune system going crazy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And you know, all these things humiliated, and you've got this toxic
Dr. Caroline Leaf:energy moving from your mind through your body, that doesn't bode well.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's, if you think of it like that, that's very consuming.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's like mind that mind is driving the whole process and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:it's 99, 90 to 99% of who you are.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So when I say you can't have depression, Belittling it I'm making,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm making it as then, as I'm giving it the attention it deserves because
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that depression is your mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Brain and body is screaming at you to say, Hey, wake up, listen, tune in you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Aren't depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're depressed because of, so in other words, there's a message in the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:depression that oppression is your alarm bell going off saying, embracing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Embrace it and look deep inside.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I'm gonna explain how so don't see depression, anxiety, or any emotion as an
Dr. Caroline Leaf:illness, no emotions or illnesses, passion and depression are equally as important.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They're both telling you something.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The passion's telling you that you're on a track to some wonderful
Dr. Caroline Leaf:feeling and relationship, whatever the depression is saying that, Hey,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you've got something missing you up.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You need to pay attention.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And because of neuroplasticity, you can change where that's coming from
Dr. Caroline Leaf:because that depression is coming from.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:One of these.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this thing is sending signals from the non-conscious mind through the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:subconscious, which is a bridge between the unconscious, into the conscious mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And as soon as it hits the conscious mind and you pay attention to it, you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:said, okay, I'm feeling very depressed.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then you're going to, as soon as you do that, this thing starts coming
Dr. Caroline Leaf:from the unconscious to the conscious.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And we see from neuroscience that when you become aware of these, they
Dr. Caroline Leaf:start shaking and becoming malleable.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And when they become malleable, you can change them.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So here's how it works.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I've got an app called the neurosurgical in your assignment.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We are literally give you therapy, teaching you how to do this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So I'm going to give you the brief overview.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And now I've got, I don't know which book you've read, but
Dr. Caroline Leaf:this is my most recent book.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We are also explain everything you're talking about.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Adept super easy to follow.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The second half is that is the neuroscience neuroscience, which is
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the system I've developed for the city.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I use research and clinical application and patients and whatever.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I use it myself.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is not distributing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is for everyone.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Everyone's got a mind, not just if you're in extreme depression,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:To manage day to day stuff too.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's the big stuff and the small stuff.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the second half of that, book's got this exact how to, and then
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'll also have a podcast called cleaning up your mental mess, which I
Dr. Caroline Leaf:definitely want to invite you on to.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We, I explained all of these things as well, you know, subjects.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So what do you want to do?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What I showed from the research is that you are able with your mind to get from
Dr. Caroline Leaf:your messy mind, into your wise mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the easiest way is to tell my patients, get two chairs, put them next
Dr. Caroline Leaf:to each other and sit in both chairs.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But obviously you constantly both, but you, one of you is the Macy mine.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:One of you the wise mind, the wise mind is working with the missing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Right now, we get so caught up in our mess that we don't listen to her
Dr. Caroline Leaf:wisdom and the way the world works and all the social media, very often
Dr. Caroline Leaf:identity or wisdom, or in a call this wired for love nature it's shot.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's where suicidal ideations.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it comes in when you feel hopeless when you feel not valued, when
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you just, why is this happy to me?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It makes no sense.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Frightening.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And unfortunately gen Z, which you quite off is the most medicated
Dr. Caroline Leaf:generation and the generation that is primed to dive a youngest in, in
Dr. Caroline Leaf:years in decades, which is terrible.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the child, if you don't change the situation, gen Z is going to die younger.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Then you're going to die way younger than your grandparents, even, you know,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you're not going to predict sort of life span is maybe 60, 65 when you should.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah, like 25 years off, but the kind of thing that you're doing that
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm doing, having these discussions, podcasts, this is making people more
Dr. Caroline Leaf:awake because it doesn't have to be.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the reason people are dying younger is because of what I was saying earlier,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:these things mess up your health of your body, those telomeres things.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If your body is getting progressively weaker, then you're going to get sicker
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and your chance of dying younger exist.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So we had subjects and the good news is, and I put these in here or certain of
Dr. Caroline Leaf:my subjects in my clinical trial and in my patients of the year, They bought it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They were so depressed that the biology was like a sickly 60, 65 year old.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And there were only 30.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Now you can imagine if you, you 18, if your body was 30 years older, let's say
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that you had a 50 year old sick body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You wouldn't be feeling very great.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And you will, you know, you've kind of lost 30, 35 years or twenty-five years.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So if you don't catch that and he showed within nine weeks of my
Dr. Caroline Leaf:management using the neurosurgical and an app, I didn't give them therapy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They did it themselves on that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They didn't go to a therapist.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is all we have in us that you go to therapy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm not anti therapy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's fantastic.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But it's vitally important that you know how to manage your own money.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You don't just have to wait for the expert to tell you, that's why I have done this
Dr. Caroline Leaf:work with the books that, you know, got the app so that you can do the stuff.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So, and what is the staff to do?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's the neuro cycle.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What is the neuro cycle?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's a five-step system that you do daily for around 15 minutes
Dr. Caroline Leaf:to 45 max, where you test.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Pattern, whatever it is, and you are going to, you're going to basically
Dr. Caroline Leaf:recon, deconstruct and reconstruct it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you're going to find this thing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're going to pull it up and you're going to fold it into this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That doesn't mean that the toxic issue goes away, but it just means
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm going to use a little stone.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's the issue.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's now been reconceptualized into the, so it's now you now know
Dr. Caroline Leaf:what happened to you, but you've changed how it's playing out in you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the first thing to do is to look at what is the pattern in your life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So what is the dominant pattern in your life?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Are you consumed with depression?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Do you find it like it's just dominating everything or are you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:constantly anxious or are you with.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What are the emotional warning signals, the patient anxiety,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:frustration, irritation.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it's normally a bunch of them, but just maybe start with, you know,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:like, like what is the, what is the main sort of emotional sense from that?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Try and see if you can label, what is my pack I packing is that I'm so
Dr. Caroline Leaf:depressed that I'm betting schoolwork.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm betting to be motivated on there.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm just not happy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's the name of the tree.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So let's say that you're just like, like you just feel sad all the time.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's the name of the tree?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So to get to the tree, we have to go back to those signals.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the pattern is the constant sadness.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's the name of the tree?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Cause that's that sadness, that pattern isn't just randomly happening.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Everything you're saying is coming from one of these, but you can't
Dr. Caroline Leaf:see it straight away from the pack.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You've got to dig through some layers to get to this thing,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and then you've got to dig down.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you look at your pattern from your pack and you look at your four
Dr. Caroline Leaf:signals for signals of emotions.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The patient anxiety, whatever, being your behaviors.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So what are you doing?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Maybe more angry, more irritable, more drawn, more, what are you doing?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What are you, what are you, what is your communication?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What is so be quite specific.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Then the third thing is what's going on in your body?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What are you feeling?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Maybe you're getting these GI symptoms, or maybe you're getting high
Dr. Caroline Leaf:competitions, or maybe you're getting, you know, skin rashes or whatever.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What are you noticing?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's different in your physical symptoms?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Are you feeling this gut-wrenching adrenaline shootings through you?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Whatever.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So look at your body and then you look at your perspective,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:which is your attitude to life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:How are you looking at that?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What's your view of life?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Is it this view that life sucks.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I hate life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I can't do this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's just too much.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:No one understands it, whatever.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So those are the four signals.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So from the overarching pattern, you dive into the four signals and then
Dr. Caroline Leaf:from the four signals, which are coming out of here, And all of this,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:by the way, you deal with your, to chase your wise mind, the wise mind
Dr. Caroline Leaf:is telling you, Hey, say to your amazing, you wired for love is something
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you can do that no one else can do.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is not who you are.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is because of you looking for the cause of this is a symptom of you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:being sought, detective historian, brain surgeon, all the rest of it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So we better look at it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They use a lot of kindness when we do this, you're going
Dr. Caroline Leaf:to be very kind to yourself.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I hope podcasts on what kindness does in the brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I mean, it literally makes the two sides of the brain work together, increases
Dr. Caroline Leaf:oxygen and blood flow to the front of the brain and the thousand other things.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But if you, if you hard on yourself, that inner critic and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:then voice going on terrible, I'm used to some, a waste of time.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I can't do this and I'll never get this right.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That is going to reduce oxygen and blood flow to the front of the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:brain and created out of harmony.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the coherence between the two sides of the brain goes, and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you don't want also get highly.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Well, the high beta we'll get to tsunamis in your brain of energy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Really hard to think clearly when that happens.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the system of the nearest cycle, you prepare first, so that you prepare.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's why I said get to two chairs, be very kind to yourself, tell yourself
Dr. Caroline Leaf:things like this is not who I am.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is who I've become.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I'm showing up like this because of how are you showing up that pattern thing?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What are the signals all the time couched in wise, mind pouring love on to me,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:see mine and you keep telling us up.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's okay to be a mess.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Even one's a mess.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Everyone's a mess too.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And we keep making messes and then nieces are great because
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that's how we can repair and grow.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So when you work with our messy mind, we can repair.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So then from there you start at other papers and things you can do when you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:sit down to do an extra session and on your own, either on your own using the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:book or using the app, you want to do a little bit more brain preparation.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you set the scene, do the kindness and the chairs and finding the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:pattern and seeing those first 40.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:When you want to do maybe some brain preparation, because when you start
Dr. Caroline Leaf:looking at the status can make you feel a little anxious, it can increase your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:levels of anxiety and nets with things like breathing and meditation and Haven,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:which is basically using stimulation to stimulate the amygdala, to calm me down.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I mean, there's so many different things in the app.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I have a three minute brain flip that you always do everyday before
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you dive into the hard work.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that just calms down.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:First of all, your electrophysiology.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the electron make the energy part of you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Then, then the chemistry, because our came on your chemicals can go
Dr. Caroline Leaf:crazy or too much cortisol too much.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You won't have enough serotonin and you won't have enough
Dr. Caroline Leaf:dopamine you'll get shots.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You won't get enough.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Amanda, my there's all these different chemicals that sends a whole signal
Dr. Caroline Leaf:through your hormone system, your telomeres, everything is affected.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you want to prepare your brain.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then you dive into the five steps of the neuroscience, which
Dr. Caroline Leaf:is essentially a systematic way.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You work through all five systematically or.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that each step is making your brain work more and more correctly
Dr. Caroline Leaf:in the neuroplastic direction.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So in other words, you driving the neuroplasticity in the right direction.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That means you're breaking these down and you building replacement thoughts.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's kind of the system you do to have a 63 days.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And the reason I want to say why you do the reason you do it over 63 days and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:cycles of you may have to do multiple is because a lot of people think.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Or made in 21 days.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And you know, they think you have a habit, then you'll have a new
Dr. Caroline Leaf:behavior, but there aren't, you have major changes every moment.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And you'll have periods like four days as a major time period, seven and 14, 21
Dr. Caroline Leaf:is enough time to basically stop finding, going from the pattern to the signals, to
Dr. Caroline Leaf:what, how am I seeing myself down to start seeing the root so that you don't solve it
Dr. Caroline Leaf:in one day, you do a little bit each day.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So today I may just find I'm depressed.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm Sima.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I hate my, I hate myself.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I hate life.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm withdrawing and it's because of something that's maybe heave in your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:first five steps tomorrow and more.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So each day you get more and more layers, but 21 days, this thing would
Dr. Caroline Leaf:have been apprehended and energy is and lost in the brain and the body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You would have built this and let's says, okay, The priest all the time.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I thought I was depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm not depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm depressed because of that stuff.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's, that's making me very sad, but that's not how I want to be.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is how I want to be, but it's full.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So, and this thing is much bigger.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So this thing's got to compete with the, you haven't forgotten what's happened.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So, and you've also got all other things inside of you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you triggered, this is not strong enough to move into a conscious mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's not a habit you've got to grow this thing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you've got to still practice the five steps, which are driving the mind
Dr. Caroline Leaf:with little actions and everything.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's a whole process writing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's very systematized you by day 21.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's going to look.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so by day 21, it looks like this a day 42.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Can you see it's growing and it's 63, you've got this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so it takes around about nine weeks of the new behavior that you want in your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:life to grow to a point where when you triggered you remember, oh, I used to.
Sadie:Thank you for it to that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's now been changed into this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're a member how you were, but you've changed what's in you, which
Dr. Caroline Leaf:then changes how you communicate.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so, as you know, having gone through depression, yourself, and living, living
Dr. Caroline Leaf:with it, that depression is a signal.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And once you started diving into it, you started seeing other emotions and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:fears and body symptoms and perspective.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And as you started finding the cause, it's only when you find the course and you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:know, Tried to reconceptualize that will you start getting free and even then you
Dr. Caroline Leaf:still going to have depression because depression is not to have depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You're still going to express it and feel it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it's normal.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:There's nothing wrong with it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You must be scared of depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We have think of depression on a scale of one to 10.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What is that?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I feel a little bit depressed because someone put a really bad posts on my, on
Dr. Caroline Leaf:my social media, or someone says something ugly comments about a podcast that you,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that you would put out there and you put yourself out, then it can throw you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But that could be maybe a one or two or three in terms of depression.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You get yourself through it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then you can use in your cycle.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's when things accumulate and you don't deal with stuff and we just
Dr. Caroline Leaf:keep pushing it and then it grows.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then it becomes big.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:As soon as it starts hitting five and above it's now moving
Dr. Caroline Leaf:into an extreme response.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And because our mind is not 99% of who we are, it's very consuming.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So the big thing here is that it's not that depressions and illnesses.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's not a brain disease.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's not an illness in your brain, jumping out and being triggered
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and like a disease in waiting.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You don't have to get a maid in waiting.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And those it's not like that at all.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The brain will respond in your forties.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You know, sick and less staff, because there's an impact of Macy mind on your, on
Dr. Caroline Leaf:your brain and your body support for that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And I'm not talking psychotropics, I'm talking, you know, proper
Dr. Caroline Leaf:treatment if you've got heart issues and sign from that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But the big thing is that the course not in your brain, the causes in your life
Dr. Caroline Leaf:is something that's happened to you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You've experienced these adverse circumstances, and those are what's
Dr. Caroline Leaf:caused you to feel like that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you need to find those disconnect from them and reconceptualize it and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:being, you can move forward into a healthier pattern of functioning.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then the next thing comes up.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then the next day and the rest of your life, listen, I'm 58.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm still being this,
Sadie:you know, you've built the toolbox to be able to navigate these things.
Sadie:It's easier to upend the beliefs that you haven't built up over years,
Sadie:and you're able to maintain your
Dr. Caroline Leaf:mental health.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Exactly.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And this is something I've been teaching.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:My youngest patient was three, four adult children that they've grown up with us.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I, the schools that I worked in, we put this into teach,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:train into the school system.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So kids from young should be taught how to manage the emotions and understand.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You can show kids to say, I would have my simple language for three-year-old and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:an eight-year-old old and a 12 year old.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The whole thing is as adults, we need to allow children and adolescents
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and teenagers express themselves.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You need to understand, like if your mom comes home and like, if I come
Dr. Caroline Leaf:home and I'm really worked out for a hard day and I'm like withdrawn
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and snappy and irritable, I need to be able to model to my kids.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Okay.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is how I'm feeling.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's okay to feel this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I feel like this because of side two, the whole five-step process, expanding,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:giving a modeling how I'm managing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I feel like the speakers of this is what I'm going to do, but if you just
Dr. Caroline Leaf:come home irritable and screaming at your kids, so you come home and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you scream at your mom or whatever, and you just met her boyfriend.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They don't understand what's going on, but if you model a caffeine at this,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:because of this, I just need some space.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm going to get it under control, but I just need to get this up and deal with it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's what we shouldn't be doing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We should be teaching kids from young, but one in 12 kids are being missed in,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:in, in, in our, growing into adolescents and adults and young adulthood with
Dr. Caroline Leaf:all the stuff inside and net leads.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You get what you went through, you know, that kind of thing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Whereas, you know B I mean other adults in the house.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We've got to be thoughtful.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We should have been teaching this lobbying, trying to
Dr. Caroline Leaf:fight the system for 38 years.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So as I studied a lot, you wanted, you want to unpack any of that stuff?
Sadie:No, it's, it's so true.
Sadie:And it's so profound and every single time you bring up these different
Sadie:things, I can connect it to my treatment journey and what I did without realizing
Sadie:I was going through those steps.
Sadie:Like, I, I recall not even realizing I was depressed because I was so.
Sadie:Like avoiding what I was feeling and thinking until I was literally in the
Sadie:hospital and then everything blew up because I was so severely depressed.
Sadie:And then I was trying all of these different treatments, whether
Sadie:it was outpatient or inpatient and nothing was changing because
Sadie:I wasn't identifying the root.
Sadie:And it was only after I was in an intensive treatment and had
Sadie:taken a step back from my home life that I identified that I was.
Sadie:I very genuinely believe I don't deserve love and every single
Sadie:interaction I'm going through.
Sadie:Yeah.
Sadie:So every single interaction I'm going through, I'm looking at the
Sadie:world to support the belief that I don't deserve love, and that I'll
Sadie:never be good enough for my parents.
Sadie:So those interactions became deeply traumatic because I felt
Sadie:invalidated and disconnected.
Sadie:And so I became suicidally severely depressed, but it was only after I
Sadie:unpacked that and learn to do self-love and self-compassion and realized that
Sadie:I don't need any external cues to be deserving of love and care and great
Sadie:relationships that I was then able to shift my mood and emotions and
Sadie:thoughts and things still come up.
Sadie:They're still beliefs that you have to upend and rewire, but I've done
Sadie:that before, and I know how to do it, and I know how to navigate that.
Sadie:So it's just, it's so true.
Sadie:And so profound and universal.
Sadie:Anyone who is struggling.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's humans.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you're human, as I said, that you may be in a one to five most of your life,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:but then parts of your life in the 8, 9, 10 extremely manger of, of experience.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then it becomes an extreme response.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:We don't need it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Z's label to validate that we just need to, as humans, we just need to
Dr. Caroline Leaf:be constantly validating the fact that you have a story and you're
Dr. Caroline Leaf:showing up like X because, oh, which is what you're describing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So those weak emotions, thoughts, and you see that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So there's the thoughts, the emotions that are inside of that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And there's these thoughts with the emotions and the data, how we see
Dr. Caroline Leaf:ourselves interpretation data, or that the information, in other words, this is
Dr. Caroline Leaf:filled with information and emotion data, and that information and emotion data's
Dr. Caroline Leaf:come from how we think feel and choose it's both the thoughts and the sorts of
Dr. Caroline Leaf:then produce would be seen what we do.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So if you look at what we saying and what we doing and what we feeling and we're
Dr. Caroline Leaf:feeling in our body, which are those four signals in order to realize whatever I'm
Dr. Caroline Leaf:saying and doing, we need to say this just of, like you say, I'm feeling depressed.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I'm feeling like I don't want to live I'm suicidal because of, versus that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I am depressed.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I've got a brain disease.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you throw that out.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:When you say I'm depressed and suicidal because of it's not who I am because of.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then you have the process of tuning into those signals and doing all the,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you know, tuning in the rain and the five steps, which are basically the five steps
Dr. Caroline Leaf:are gathering, reflecting two steps in writing two very specific distinct steps.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then an action.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Now things like DBT and CBT, all the different techniques
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and things fit into step five.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you DBT and CBT in the wrong order, your brain won't rewind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you don't do it long enough, your brain will rewire.
Sadie:And why did DBT like six or seven times until it actually worked?
Sadie:It's true over time,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you have to do that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's what happened so much in therapy side is I'm so glad you brought that
Dr. Caroline Leaf:up with so many people that I interview and that I had come into my practice
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and they still send me emails, which is thousands I say, but I've been to therapy
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and it's going on for years and years.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:My.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Same therapy for cycles of 63 days.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And sometime maybe you would reevaluate optic every 63 days.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Do we need another cycle?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What's the progress?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Every six, every 63 days you moving forward.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So I had some patients that were so severely traumatized and it manifested
Dr. Caroline Leaf:as like learning disabilities and almost like traumatic brain injury type symptoms.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it took sometimes up to two years, but it was in cycles of 63
Dr. Caroline Leaf:days because what often happens in therapy is that people don't go
Dr. Caroline Leaf:through the proper five step system.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you don't, if you don't get that objectively, do not reflect.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you don't systematic gather, reflect, do the two labels of writing one,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:which is like a vomiting on the paper.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So are your thoughts on the other ones organizing and then ended with
Dr. Caroline Leaf:an action and do that little bit by little, but all you're going to do is
Dr. Caroline Leaf:bombard yourself, your mind, your body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And it's just becomes like overwhelming.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then therapy becomes a venting station as opposed to progress station
Dr. Caroline Leaf:because no one knows you except yourself.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So all his therapists were counselor.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Cultural period of support on can do, is LeBron can do, is to support us through
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that journey and give us some perspective.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And maybe if you, maybe you go to someone you say I'm seeing it like
Dr. Caroline Leaf:this, is there another way to see it.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's what a good therapist for say a year, maybe a bit like that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that is this way to see what you were saying.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The way you see things is coming from this part of the tree and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that's producing those behaviors.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So when you start the system correctly, then your cycle system, which you did
Dr. Caroline Leaf:without even realizing you basically are seeing you interpretation of yourself.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And where does that come from?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Because every one of these comes from.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And we distorted processing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And until you've gone from there, through there today, which is what the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:five steps do they take you through that you're going to get frustrated.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So what happened?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Yeah.
Sadie:No, my belief system was, there's no reason why I'm depressed.
Sadie:Therefore I might just be innately depressed.
Sadie:I understand that other people can work through that and are not depressed,
Sadie:but that's not possible for me because a, this is all I've ever known.
Sadie:And B there's no reason there is no giant trauma that I experienced.
Sadie:I just was suddenly the super depressed teenager.
Sadie:And so of course there was no progress that was being made because I didn't,
Sadie:I didn't believe that there was a cause I thought I was just innately,
Sadie:deserving being depressed forever.
Sadie:And
Dr. Caroline Leaf:that was the messaging that you didn't, these grownup things.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I used to lecture to schools and to adolescents and teenagers
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and the university of Chapin.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:20 years ago, peop people would understand there was a course.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Now people will.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The first thing I talked to a group
Sadie:of people, because there's these microtraumas, you can identify
Sadie:that X or Y happened over time.
Sadie:There's chronic invalidation or misunderstanding.
Sadie:You, you don't identify that these are leading to what you're feeling
Sadie:because they're accumulating so slowly
Dr. Caroline Leaf:over time, which is asset that they were saying, the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:telomeres that is the many, many tumors.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Causing many tumors in your telomeres causing many tumors in your body,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:which over time, many traumas in your mind crashing your body.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And in the whole of crashed again, you're exploding like a volcano
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and that you age with gen Z, even, even the millennials will.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And if I linked it to them now, the immediate thing is, oh,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:it's innate, it's biological.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I've got a chemical imbalance.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What drug prosthetic and therapy scene as well, kind of like a fancy side,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you know, sideshow kind of thing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's only for really big people.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Meanwhile, 10 years ago.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If I spoke about these people with emotional issues, they would immediately,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you know, issues, minor issues.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:People would immediately say, oh, what's the course.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So we've shifted in the last 40 years from looking at causes to it in the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:environment to looking at brain diseases.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's a disaster.
Sadie:And it's true.
Sadie:Well, because you're putting the blame on the person.
Sadie:You're like, what have you done wrong to be feeling okay.
Sadie:I'm so
Sadie:glad
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you said that.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Same.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:As I said, I was heading up scientific paper this morning and I was just
Dr. Caroline Leaf:talking with my research team just before that we do clinical trials for them.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:One of the things that I wrote in the introduction was you've got to stop saying
Dr. Caroline Leaf:to the patient, what is wrong with you?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's what has happened to you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:If you are you, are you in chronic and living in chronic racism
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and fear of getting in your car?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Cause someone might shoot you there at a traffic.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Are you in constantly bullied at school or you been con and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you talk about the micro tools.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They people think they aren't relevant, but if you believe in this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:A big family and your parents let you do the base, but you may feel
Dr. Caroline Leaf:like no one is more a personality that more is more demanding.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And so you quiet and you don't get enough attention.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Those are many tumors that your parents didn't intend, but that can
Dr. Caroline Leaf:bold and create accumulate over time.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:All of this has to be paid attention to, so we've got a hundred people think, oh,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:there's something wrong with me when I've got depression, absolutely not grab the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:depression and find the story, find the was off and, but do it systematically
Dr. Caroline Leaf:because of the one thing I do want to mention is that we can get therapy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:You mentioned to the DBT a few times and people will use CBT techniques over
Dr. Caroline Leaf:and over again in the off for years.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's all good, but if you don't use them after you've actually gone through
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the first four steps of the neuro cycle, which is, you know, gather
Dr. Caroline Leaf:weight, the whole thing of finding what the root is, those techniques
Dr. Caroline Leaf:use on their own, or just an action.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So here's the problem.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So you're putting a band-aid on a band-aid on and every single
Dr. Caroline Leaf:one of those things is brilliant.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:But at school you've actually, they're only work when you've actually
Dr. Caroline Leaf:worked at what is my tech, what am I, what am I thinking about myself?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What did I process?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What happened?
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And as you do that, then you can start, the action helps to take
Dr. Caroline Leaf:this and be constructed into this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that takes, I had patients that would come to me that
Dr. Caroline Leaf:had been in therapy for years.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And then.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:They they'd done sort of something like this, but this is, this
Dr. Caroline Leaf:was not completely formal.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This was only the status.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:This is easy to see visually small, but this is happening.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So I know that's what I can be.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I know I am, you know, all the things you were saying, I am with your blood.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:I am whatever, whatever, all those things, but you're still thinking, but I'm still
Dr. Caroline Leaf:acting as though I don't think I'm worthy.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's like a chasm between the truth that, you know, is the
Dr. Caroline Leaf:truth, but you can't get there.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's because it's time, you're rewiring takes cycles of 63 days, not 21.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It takes up to nine weeks and maybe multiple cycles of nine weeks.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:A lot of therapy goes around and around and around the first two days
Dr. Caroline Leaf:kind of, you know, weeks of the.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Beyond and that's progress Ford and
Sadie:it's a hundred percent.
Sadie:And I, when you were talking about putting a bandaid on these feelings,
Sadie:emotions, behaviors, whatever they are, and make me think so much of peers
Sadie:that I interacted with and met during my time and treatment, because I think
Sadie:especially in adolescent treatment, you're so often going through the
Sadie:actions because you're not the one that's deciding to go into treatment or therapy.
Sadie:You're not the one that is like admitting that you need support or help,
Sadie:oftentimes that autonomy is taken away.
Sadie:So the motivation to truly understand what the cause is and
Sadie:explore and want to get better.
Sadie:It's it's missing.
Sadie:So you're going Curry actions.
Sadie:You're doing the behaviors, you're making these shifts,
Sadie:but they're not long lasting.
Sadie:As soon as you leave treatment and aren't continually motivated
Sadie:to change and improve because you didn't have that foundation.
Sadie:It's just lost.
Sadie:And I think that's what happened for me the first couple times of DBT, because
Sadie:the huge difference that I looked back on and identified when I did intensive.
Sadie:Once I was sitting in this room during my intake appointment and they're
Sadie:like, why do you want to be here?
Sadie:And I was like, my parents said I had to, I'm not allowed to be at home.
Sadie:And they're like, well, that sucks because you can't be here
Sadie:unless you want to be here.
Sadie:And you believe this will work.
Sadie:It was only after I trusted them enough to help me, I let them help me.
Sadie:I believed that there was wisdom in DBT and I had enough self
Sadie:compassion to want to get better that all these shifts took place.
Sadie:And I was able to unpack what had happened and what led to me
Sadie:feeling depressed and then shift the behaviors and emotions and thoughts.
Sadie:So within the whole
Dr. Caroline Leaf:reconsider DIA factored, and, but you had to, but they
Dr. Caroline Leaf:were saying, choose what your pattern.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And they didn't say these words, but essentially it was what does
Dr. Caroline Leaf:pattern, what are the signals tune in to the Y and do the deconstruction.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that takes time.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It takes daily work.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's why, because you go for therapy, but not
Dr. Caroline Leaf:everyone can go to treatments.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Not everyone can afford it's.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So
Sadie:time-consuming as
Dr. Caroline Leaf:well.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:To me, it's expensive.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's not always viable.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So it's.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:People will go to them, but there's millions.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:There's the whole plan is betting with your mind.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So that's why we to have a daily mind management strategy,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:because your mind never stops.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It doesn't even stop when you're sleeping.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Your mind is always going.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And your mind, your current mind is influenced.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:The current moment is influenced by what you've think what's happened in the past.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So these things just get in your face and you look at last to this.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So anything that's in your face.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:What Ava's like, how you looking at it's toxic and it's tight.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's admit disturbing your peace.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:That's where you would start.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And that's why the dealer, that's how I went out of the therapy world
Dr. Caroline Leaf:of the 25 years and took all the knowledge and created this ethic.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And initially was in books and online.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Now you put it in at four, which is great because you can literally press play and
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you can listen 15 minutes and work through the five steps and whatever, you know,
Dr. Caroline Leaf:the whole preparation, Firestick whatever.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And you've got a system.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:And if everything you've learned in therapy or everything you've read
Dr. Caroline Leaf:about, or all the books are there, you can still do all of those, but you put
Dr. Caroline Leaf:them in the right place so that you can hundred percent, which is so amazing.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:So anyway, that's
Sadie:so amazing.
Sadie:Yeah, profound and university universally applicable, and I know
Sadie:this will help so many people.
Sadie:So thank you.
Sadie:Thank you.
Sadie:Thank
Dr. Caroline Leaf:you.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:It's my pleasure.
Dr. Caroline Leaf:Thank you for having me on
Sadie:if you enjoyed this week's episode, make sure that you send it to a friend
Sadie:or family member who you think would get some value from this interview.
Sadie:If you post about she persisted, be sure to tag me on Instagram
Sadie:so I can go ahead and repost.
Sadie:You, give you a little shout out and make sure that you're subscribed and
Sadie:have left a review so that you don't miss any future episodes of Sheba.
Sadie:Thanks for listening and I'll see you next Monday.