Feel It to Heal It (Frontal Lobe Friday)

Hey, Lisa. Hey, Lee. It's good to see you today.

It's good to see you too. Will you help me with something? Of course.

I can't remember what day it is. It's Frontal Lobe Friday.

Good morning, my friend. I hope you're doing well. Dr. Lee Warren here with you.

And it is Frontal Lobe Friday, which is the day of the week that we talk about

the incredible gift that humans have.

God gave us this incredible ability to switch from one train of thought to another. other.

That sounds so simple, but we're really the only things that God created,

the only part of his creation that he gave an ability to function at a higher

level than just instinct.

So animals, our dogs, Harvey and Lewis, who died last year, they could not switch

their train of thought from one thing to another.

If they got on a rabbit or a squirrel or a deer, they weren't going to stop

until they got what they were after unless we intervened in some way,

shocked them, caught them, did something to change their minds.

Humans, though, you, my friend, have the spiritual gift of selective attention.

You can change what you think about, and that's the basis of self-brain surgery on the decision side.

You have a choice in what you think about. Now, we know from quantum physics

and we know from 21st century neuroscience that the way that you pay attention to things matters.

The perspective that you bring to things turns the reality of those things around,

that how How we choose to attend to the world helps the world be co-created

with us as God intended and as He told us in Genesis.

You have a choice and your life matters. Your decisions matter.

And today we're going to talk about something that happens in our lives when we're hurting.

We go through trauma or tragedy or drama or massive things or maybe just the

slow, dull ache of life if we don't find purpose and meaning and we're buried

up in hard circumstances.

Sometimes we choose behaviors and make decisions to help us not think about

certain things. We call those numbing behaviors.

We engage in drinking or gambling or pornography or sex or something,

gambling, shopping, lots of different things that we can use to distract us.

They're not all bad things. They're not all necessarily sinful things.

But we use, anytime that we use something to distract us from the feeling of, you know.

Or processing of things that we need to do to find healing, then that can be an issue.

So today we're going to talk about numbing behaviors and how that can affect

our ability to engage that selective attention that the frontal lobes give us

and how that can really harm us and violate the first commandment of cell brain surgery.

I will relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. We're going to talk

about numbing behaviors.

We're going to talk about how that impacts our ability to

impact the world around us and define what we're really

after which is healing hope meaning purpose

witness and maybe even

happiness before we get started with any of

that i have a question for you hey are you ready to change your life if the

answer is yes there's only one rule you have to change your mind first and my

friend there's a place where the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes

together with faith and everything starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired,

take control of our thinking, and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.

This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

All right, let's get after it. Hey, here's the deal.

When I do surgery, I depend on the services of an outstanding group of professionals

called anesthesia providers.

I'm really fortunate and blessed to work with some tremendous people at Great

Plains Health here in Nebraska.

We've got an MD anesthesiologist, Dr.

Mack, and a whole host of CRNAs, certified registered nurse anesthetists,

a bunch of them who are just outstanding at what they do.

And I could not perform my job as a neurosurgeon without the anesthesia providers.

They get the patient to sleep. They relax their muscles.

They make sure that they're safely anesthetized so that they can handle the

surgical trauma that we're going to give them and that the pain is manageable

and that they're comfortable for the procedure.

And that is just absolutely vital to my work.

Without anesthesia, I couldn't do brain surgery or back surgery,

couldn't intervene in your problem, couldn't help you.

Anesthesia is a vital and completely necessary part of my job.

There's multiple different types of anesthesia. We can do spinal anesthesia

where they put a needle in your back and just numb your spinal cord basically

so that you can't feel anything from there down.

It's a great option occasionally for some types of back surgery,

but more commonly used in obstetrics like having C-sections so you can be awake

and enjoy the birth of your child but not have to feel the pain.

It's commonly used in orthopedic procedures, knee surgeries, hip surgeries, etc.

Spinal anesthesia is a great choice. And that's a type of what we call regional anesthesia.

So you can do a block of an arm and make the entire arm numb so that we can

do carpal tunnel surgery or ulnar nerve surgery or some type of reconstructive

procedure on your elbow or wrist.

Regional anesthesia is very helpful. You can also do what we call local anesthesia,

where we just inject some lidocaine or xylocaine or some type of long-acting

local anesthetic so that we could, orthopedic surgeon could release a trigger finger,

dermatologist could remove a mole or a skin cancer.

We could do some small procedures in a localized area of the body and just numb

up that little spot. but dentists use local anesthesia all the time.

It's tremendous technology, tremendous gift to be able to develop and implement

regional and local and spinal anesthesia.

And then there's another one called general anesthesia.

General anesthesia is where we put you all the way out. This is breathing tube

on a ventilator, and that's what we have to do for most types of brain surgery,

most types of spine surgery.

If I'm going to put you to sleep and cut your back open and put a bunch of hardware

in your body, then you're going to need a general anesthetic to handle that for the most part.

If I'm going to remove a big brain tumor or general surgeon is going to take

out your colon, you got to have general anesthesia for that.

If you're going to have heart surgery and go on bypass, you've got to be asleep for that.

So general anesthesia is when we put the whole brain, whole body offline,

basically knock you out completely and you're asleep for the entire procedure.

You have no idea what's happening and we take care of it, do the best job that we can for you.

And then the anesthetist or anesthesiologist wakes you up and recovers you from general anesthesia.

And a host of things have happened outside of your awareness that were all designed to help you.

Now, remember, we talked earlier about the first commandment of self-brain surgery.

I will relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise.

I had a great hour-long talk yesterday with my friend Susie Larson for her show.

Susie Larson Live. It'll come out sometime in June.

And Susie's just always a great time talking to her brilliant woman who loves

the Lord. where Lisa and I are really fond of Susie and love her books.

Fully Alive is probably my favorite, by the way. If you want to read a first

Susie Larson book, Fully Alive, another one of hers is one of my favorites.

It's Waking Up to the Goodness of God.

Tremendous book. Anyway, Susie

asked me a question about the first commandment of self-brain service.

She said, what's the deal about relentlessly refusing to participate in your

own demise? What's that all about?

And we had a long conversation, and we ended up having this conversation about

what are some ways that we can participate in our own demise.

If you say that you shouldn't participate in your own demise,

what are some ways that people do?

And that led me to this conversation about numbing behaviors.

Unfortunately, when we suffer traumas and tragedies and massive things,

we often get to this place where

we just feel like we're under so much pressure. We can't stop hurting.

We can't stop grieving. We can't stop thinking about it. We can't stop blaming

ourselves. self. We can't stop projecting into the future what it's going to look like now.

You know, we've undergone this big problem, right?

And so we want to stop thinking about it. We want to stop feeling it.

Sometimes it's not even a big, massive thing. Sometimes it's,

especially with addicts and alcoholics, it's just, you begin to think that just

the normal pressure of your day at work is enough that you're so stressed that

you need to turn your brain off and stop thinking.

So we turn on the television or we open a bottle of wine or we do both.

We eat a whole bag of Cheetos.

I have to mention Cheetos. That's one of my favorite numbing behaviors.

Although Lisa has helped me stop that. I haven't had Cheetos in a long time,

to be fully honest with you.

But you do something to stop thinking or feeling one thing, not have to feel

or think about anything.

And it just dawned on me that the thing about self-brain surgery is of all the

types of surgery that I perform, self-brain surgery is the only one where anesthesia is not appropriate.

Let me say that again. Self-brain surgery is the only type of surgery that you

can undergo or perform where anesthesia is not helpful to you. And here's why.

When we're dealing with our thinking, we're dealing with the traumas and tragedies

and dramas and massive things and the hardships that we go through and the pressures

that we're under and the ways that we have to process all that, then we have a choice.

We either deal with it now or we're going to deal with it later, right?

We talked about the commandment of loving tomorrow more than we hate what we're

feeling right now, about not paying the tomorrow taxes.

All these commandments come into play when we're talking about how do we handle

the bad feeling that we have right now so that we can heal from it and move

forward in our lives and not have to just push it down the road another day.

Because what happens if you numb yourself is you can't deal with what's actually

causing you trouble, you just delay dealing with it for another day.

Now, if you're an addict or if you develop a habit of a particular type of numbing

behavior, then you can actually just stay stuck in that unhealed place and you

can just numb yourself every day from it.

At a certain time of day, in a certain place, in a certain way,

you open that bag of Cheetos or uncork that bottle of wine or turn on the television

or go on the internet or text that person or go see that person or do that thing

that you use to shut your brain off and not have to feel or heal or deal with

the thing that's really bothering you.

And you can just do that every day. And the thing about that is your whole life

will be about the next time you can turn on the numbing machine,

turn on the anesthesia machine, turn on the gas and go to sleep. But here's the problem.

Numbing behaviors don't allow you to make progress in your life.

They keep you stuck in a place of just pushing the ball down the field a little bit.

And dealing with something tomorrow, paying a tomorrow tax, having the same

problems plus the day's trouble that will be inevitable tomorrow,

as Jesus said. Don't worry about tomorrow.

Every day's got enough trouble of its own. Well, the corollary would be,

don't drag today's troubles into tomorrow because tomorrow's going to have its own set.

You need to deal with today's while it's today.

So this is a very short episode, just to say that Susie and I were talking,

something occurred to me, and it's this big idea. It turns out to be a really big idea.

Anesthesia is not appropriate.

If we want to be good self-brain surgeons, because there is no local or regional option.

You can't just numb the one thing. If I'm going to operate on your hand.

Amy or Abe or Alex or one of the amazing CRNAs that I work with can put your

arm to sleep, but your brain and the rest of your body can be awake and dealing

with whatever needs to be dealt with.

I can do surgery on your arm and the rest of you is fine, but that's not how

it works with numbing behaviors, alcohol in particular, and drugs.

They turn your frontal lobe switch off. They depress your brain's ability to interact with mind.

That's why the Bible says so clearly, just crystal clear, don't be drunk with

wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.

That's Ephesians 5.18. Here's why.

It's not that drinking wine or drinking alcohol or taking hydrocodone,

if you have pain or any of those things, are inherently simple.

It's not that. We've discussed this numerous times. There's numerous scriptures

that talk about wine and Jesus made wine at the wedding and all that stuff.

It's not that the alcohol is inherently sinful.

It's that using it to the level of turning your brain off for the purpose of

avoiding feeling something or thinking something or dealing with something disconnects

you from the source of the actual ability that you have to heal from that.

It disconnects you from the spirit. This is a one-way switch here.

Just like anxiety and gratefulness, anxiety and thanksgiving are two different

directions in the same brain.

You can't have both at the same time. We've talked about that before.

Being drunk or being anesthetized is the contrary position to being filled with the spirit.

The spirit cannot communicate with your mind if your mind is switched off.

If he says, hey, I'm the healer, I'm the source,

I'm the great physician, I'm the one that's going to tell you to do this and

don't do that, think this and not that, let me help you heal from this,

let me help you process this, let me help you bring attention to bear,

let me help you switch your train of thought,

you can't do any of that if you can't hear or connect with him because you've turned your brain off.

There's no regional anesthesia, okay?

There's only general anesthesia. So the choice, and that leaves us here on Frontal

Lobe Friday, is if we want to heal, we have to feel the things that are hurting us.

I talked to Susie yesterday about leprosy.

The problem with leprosy is that the bacteria destroys nerve endings and over

time leads you to not be able to feel your feet and your fingers.

So these people have all these little injuries that accumulate,

and ultimately they lose limbs. It's the same problem with diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

People can't feel their feet, so they get a sore on their foot.

They get a splinter, a sticker, a stub toe.

They don't feel it. It turns into an open sore. It turns into an ulcer.

It turns into an amputation, all because they couldn't feel something. thing.

Okay. So what happens in our lives then is if we don't let ourselves feel and

think and deal and then ultimately process and ultimately find a way to heal,

if we don't let ourselves do that, then we stay stuck.

So the question for you and for me today here on Frontal Lobe Friday is,

do you want to be stuck repeating the same numbing behavior every day and anesthetizing

yourself over and over like somebody having surgery every day instead of going

to heal and going to rehab and going to get stronger and going to deal with

their problems in a way that will lead them ultimately to a new place in life that's better?

Or do you want to just turn it off every day? Do you want to just get to a certain

place and re-engage in the numbing behavior and not be able to communicate with

your spirit and not be able to have mind help brain rewire and get stronger?

What's your choice? There's no regional or local anesthesia in self-brain surgery.

And general anesthesia produces an inability to heal and move forward in your life.

If you want to heal it, my friend, you've got to feel it.

Anesthesia is not an option. Numbing is dumbing, if we will say it that way.

You need to feel it in order to heal it. And that's the decision that you can make today.

If you've got a habit or an addiction, you can decide to get help.

If you have a numbing behavior that's not necessarily a sinful problem and not

necessarily hurting your body if it's just keeping you stuck you need help with

that you need to change that behavior and here's the good news.

The way your brain is wired is built to heal and built to improve,

but you have to use your mind to communicate with brain in a way that changes how you proceed.

You want to sever six synapses, take out old things that are harmful to you, and make new ones.

And you do that by the bringing to bear of intentional thought,

directed mental force, as Jeffrey Schwartz calls it, and making that quantum

brain that God gave you respond to your thinking, respond to your perspective change.

Your perspective changes from, this is how I handle my bad feelings to this

is a new way of thinking that will make my feelings better over time.

Instead of covering them up and dealing with them again tomorrow,

I'm going to begin to uncover them, operate on them, and get God,

the great physician, to help me heal them and move forward.

Remember that we're not created by our history, as the quantum physicists have hold us.

We create history by how we choose to observe our past and the direction that

we choose to orient for our future.

If you want to get unstuck, the first move is to stop looking at your problems

from the same perspective all the time.

And the second step is to stop anesthetizing yourself so that you can't feel or think about them.

And then therefore you can begin to heal and move forward to the brave new world

that does involve feeling all

those hard things, but also allows you to feel all the good things too.

Because when you're anesthetized, we might be having a grand old time all around

you. There might be wonderful things happening and beautiful conversations and

some laughter and some good things happening in the world.

But if you're anesthetized and knocked out, guess what?

Yes, you're not feeling the hard stuff, but you're missing out on everything else too.

And friend, God has, sure, a world where there's trouble, but he's overcome them. John 16, 33.

Yes, the enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy, but he's come that you might

have life and have it abundantly.

John 10, 10. At the same time.

And you can't have one without the other. There are troubles,

there are trials, there are hardships, there are things that hurt,

but there's also a whole world full of beauty and meaning and purpose.

And there's other people, by the way, who need you. They need you to show up.

They need you to be engaged.

They need you to show them that you can hurt and still move forward.

You can hurt and still try to heal, that you can live a life that's brave enough

to feel everything so you can heal it.

There's no regional anesthesia. There's no local anesthesia.

There's only general anesthesia. If you numb yourself from one thing,

you numb yourself to everything.

And for self-brain surgeons, we want to operate with no anesthesia at all because

we can't heal it unless we're willing to feel it.

And that's a mental switch that you can make today with your incredible frontal lobes.

Right here on Frontal Lobe Friday, you can change your mind and you can change

your life and you can bring your mind into the renewed state that God intends for it to be in.

That he paid the price for you to be able to live that way, to change your mind and change your life.

And the very good news, my friend, is that you can start today.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering

from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold. and I narrated the audio books.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

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self-brain surgery every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states

and 60 plus countries around the world. I'm Dr.

Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your

life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.

Music.