Frontal Lobe Friday: Hope in the Hardest Moments

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

and we're here for some self-brain surgery on Frontal Lobe Friday.

We're still in the middle of the two-week hiatus on new episodes.

I'm giving you back a Frontal Lobe Friday episode from a few weeks ago that

really discusses the differences between self-brain surgery,

that you and I are doing, and cognitive behavioral therapy. What's similar?

What's different? and as we develop season 10 content, I just wanna have a few episodes.

There are a few things I want you to be thinking about as we get into season

10 to bring them back to mind.

I get emails all the time from people who ask a question and the answer was

in a podcast two or three days prior to the question.

So before we get into season 10, we're gonna go deep into your brain and your

mind and how those two things interact with each other and with your body and

with other people and how God interacts with your mind and you interact with

God and it's going to be the deepest dive into neuroscience and faith smashing

together that I've ever done.

And at the same time, we're going to be bringing you spiritual brain surgery

episodes and specific talks about what the word and the Lord can do in your life.

If you learn how to give them your mind, to really give them your mind.

And so I'm super excited about that. We have incredible guests coming up.

We've already recorded a conversation with several New York tons of best-selling

authors and some other incredible people who are going to help you get your

mind on straight so you can change your mind and change your life.

Before we do that, though, I want to make sure that we know the difference between

self-brain surgery, what we talk about when I say self-brain surgery,

and what other types of therapy are, and what other types of mind change or

self-help are and are not.

So today on Frontal Lobe Friday, we're going to have a little talk about cognitive

behavioral therapy. and the bottom line is we're trying to find hope in the

hardest moments of our lives.

We're trying to find how to land on hope and find faith and maybe even purpose

and meaning and happiness again after life brings us trauma and tragedy and massive things.

And I'm just, today I want you to go back and remember that there is a way to

find hope and the way you find it is by learning the treatment plan that I laid

out in my book, Hope is the First Dose.

There's a path, there's a treatment plan, There's a way that you can reliably

find hope in the hardest moments.

It takes a little self-brain surgery. It's not easy. Sometimes it's scary.

But the punchline is it's available. Hope is available, my friend.

And you can find it if you're willing to start today. 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'm Dr. Lee Warren, your host for today. We're doing a little self-brain surgery,

and I'm excited to be with you.

It's Frontal Lobe Friday, one of my favorite days of the week,

where we get to talk about the incredible ability that you have of using your

frontal lobes in a way to control the other systems of your brain.

Have executive function, or the ability to change what you think about to change

the way that your life plays out.

I got an email from a listener yesterday named Victoria.

She asked a really important question and said, basically, what's the difference

between self-brain surgery and cognitive behavioral therapy?

And I think that's a perfect thing to talk about on Frontal Lobe Friday.

We're going to get after that in just a minute. I want to send a shout-out to

several readers that wrote in yesterday with different questions.

And the first one, I want to shout-out to an area that we don't talk about enough,

enough, a group that we don't talk about enough.

And this is law enforcement and the significant challenges that they face,

especially in the last few years where law enforcement's come under a little

bit of an attack in our society.

But we are grateful for all those people, first responders, police officers,

firemen, EMTs, all those folks who run towards danger when everybody else is running away.

We got an email from Roy. Thank you, Roy, for reaching out. He says,

I'm a new listener to your podcast.

You talk about PTSD, and I want you to remember Remember the law enforcement community.

Cops go from whore to whore. They end the shift and go home and start over.

He said, for example, I had three child deaths and a murder in the same shift,

and the radio became my enemy.

But the next day it has to start all over.

Police PTSD is overlooked because we are hired on the job.

He retired after 28 years, and his faith in God gives him the strength that he needs.

Thank you, Roy, for that email. He says there are too many alcoholics,

too many antisocial retirees, too many broken marriages and suicides.

Thanks for self-brain surgery.

Listen, Roy, we are grateful for you. We're praying for you. And you're right.

We don't talk about that enough. We don't talk about the fact that we expect

people to do this incredibly difficult job.

We expect them to do it perfectly. perfectly we put them

on tv and on social media if they have a day

where they don't do it perfectly and we forget that this

job that you do so well carries with

it an incredible burden so we're grateful we just want to send a shout out to

you roy for the incredible work that you do and thank you for that and we're

not forgetting you and you're right ptsd among the law enforcement community

is an incredible problem and we're going to address some of that as we go forward

in some of these episodes so thank you roy for that we got additional emails

yesterday from from numerous people,

one of them from a woman named Victoria who wrote in and said,

hey, what's the difference between cognitive behavioral therapy and self-brain surgery?

That's what we're going to talk about today here on Frontal Lobe Friday.

It's going to be a great day. We've got two incredible interviews coming up

on the show that I'm going to be able to release to you in a few days.

And then I've got 3 o'clock today.

I'll be on Suzy Larson Live. So if you're listening to Suzy Larson out there, listen for Dr.

Lee Warren to show up today. day. I'm excited to be with my friend Susie again

and have a great conversation with her and that will show up on her podcast

available to you in a few days as well.

So thank you for that Susie and looking forward to speaking with her again this afternoon.

Listen friend, it's frontal lobe Friday. I'm always trying to remind you how

important it is to take every thought captive and learn how to take control

of your thinking and that leaves us.

With just one question. 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 you ready to get after it here we go okay so i got an email from a

woman in victoria And she said this,

draw heavily from cognitive behavioral therapy. I found CBT of some use,

but honestly, the benefit was much more limited than I expected.

For a client who had no idea, for example, of how to dispute one's negative

thoughts, it's instructive and helpful.

But it just so often failed to make lasting and meaningful changes for my clients.

I became very discouraged and frustrated with the results.

Am I missing some nuances or differences in the way you interpret self-brain

surgery versus cognitive behavioral therapy.

Perhaps I just hope for something more effective and longer lasting healing.

Again, as a therapist and as a human struggling with a number of traumas myself,

I'm investigating both healing prayer as practiced by Dr.

Carl Lehman and internal family systems as models of healing and growth.

I wondered if you have any experience with these modalities.

Thank you, Victoria, for that important question.

I'm really grateful that you brought it up because cell brain surgery is not

cognitive behavioral therapy.

Now, let me make something clear. Let me make something very clear to you,

friend. This is really important, okay?

I am a licensed neurosurgeon.

I am board certified in the practice of brain and spine surgery.

I am not a trained therapist.

Our daughter, Kaylin, has a master's degree in marriage and family therapy.

She's probably going to get her doctorate. She's in practice as a therapist, works with veterans.

She's a therapist. I'm a surgeon.

So the first thing I need you to understand is I am not ever going to take the

role as your therapist here on this podcast. cast. Okay.

I'm going to give you some tools and some ideas that you can use to improve

your thought life, take control of your thinking, change your mind and change your life.

And I'll give you some strategies and some self brain surgery operations that

you can use that will help you. Okay.

But what's the difference between that and a therapist? A therapist will interact

with you specifically about your life and your issues. Okay.

So for example, we get emails frequently, and people ask me very specific questions.

How do I X? How do I Y? I'm feeling suicidal. What do I do?

And I'll tell you, the response to those emails every time is going to be talk

to your doctor, talk to your therapist, talk to your counselor,

get some help, make a phone call.

I can't tell you how to handle your specific issue with your specific life because

I lack the the context of the ability to do that, and I like the training, okay?

So if you tell me that you're suicidal, for example, first of all,

please don't run in if you're in some kind of emotional crisis because we might

not see that email for two or three days, okay?

We might not. So if you're having significant trouble, as I always say,

as I've written in all my books, as I always say here, if you're having significant

trouble managing your life with depression, anxiety,

obsessive-compulsive behavior, whatever it is, If you're having significant

trouble with addiction or a relationship issue, you need some help,

some personal help in your life, whether that takes the form of doing things for yourself,

reading and studying, listening to podcasts and all that, or in a deeper level,

mental health professional,

counselor, therapist, priest.

Pastor, chaplain, whoever it is, but you need some help.

And it can't be waiting for a reply from an email from a neurosurgeon in Nebraska

if you've got a real serious immediate emergency.

And we'll pray for you. We'll help you. We'll point you towards resources.

And if you've done that before, if you've written in, you probably received a reply.

Sometimes we tell people about books or other podcasts or give you phone numbers to call.

But as the group grows of people out there listening, right,

120,000 downloads last month, as that group grows, it will become more and more

impossible for us to reply personally to everybody.

So don't expect me to be in the role of therapist for you. I can't, okay?

You've got to have a therapist or a helper, a professional, a physician,

somebody in your space, in your life who can help you.

So first thing is I'm not a therapist. So that's a long preamble to say.

Here's the difference between cognitive behavioral therapy and self-brain surgery.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a common type of talk therapy,

basically, psychotherapy.

You go and you sit and you work with a mental health counselor,

psychotherapist, therapist, psychiatrist, somebody, psychologist,

in a very structured and organized way.

And you have a limited number of sessions with them.

And it helps you become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking.

Thinking so that you can view challenging situations more clearly.

You can respond to these things that come up in life in a better way,

in a more effective and efficient way.

This is information that's widely available. The website I'm reading right now

is from Mayo Clinic and their description of cognitive behavioral therapy.

And they very honestly say it can be a useful tool either in alone or in combination

with other therapies in how you treat these issues in your life,

mental health disorders, depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders,

addictions, but not everyone.

Who benefits from cognitive behavioral therapy has to have a mental health condition.

You don't have to have a diagnosis to benefit from learning to think more appropriately.

It can be an effective tool to help anybody learn how to better manage stressful life situations.

That's a pretty good overview from Mayo Clinic on what cognitive behavioral therapy is.

But let me just give you a nuance here. OK, my work as a neurosurgeon is about

helping to change people's life, improve their quality of life by relieving pain,

dealing with cancers, treating injuries, managing things and teaching them how

to better and more effectively use their bodies and protect them in a healthy

way to try to improve their quality of life.

That's what I do as a neurosurgeon. A lot of my work has nothing to do with surgery,

but teaching people how to use posture and rehab and alternative ways to lift

and doing things that will prevent injury and help them promote healing,

to learn about the importance of not smoking, to prevent degenerative disc disease

and all kinds of other things,

to learn lifestyle choices and how the importance of lower BMI plays into having

a healthier cognitive function and preventing dementia and all those things,

and how to protect your back by moving more and weighing less and all those things.

We do all that kind of work that's not related directly to surgery, okay?

But I'm also a human being who's been through war and had PTSD and been through

a divorce and lost a child and found my way back to hope and health and happiness and faith again.

So the first thing you need to understand is this podcast is not aimed at being

therapy for a specific issue for you.

It's aimed at how we can together change our minds and engage our frontal lobes and say, wait a minute,

life is trying to tell me that all is lost and life is trying to throw this

set of problems at me and it becomes too much and I'm tired of everything being so hard.

I'm tired of being so tired. And I want some strategies to how I can start to

gain ground and make traction in moving forward in my life instead of ruminating

or being stuck in the past.

How I can change that massive thing from being the thing that defines my life

to being a thing that happens in my life or a series of things that happen in my life.

But how can I move from the hard of John 16, 33 to the hope and abundance of John 10, 10?

How can I live in a space where both of those things are true at the same time?

Now, that's what I'm aiming at with self-brain surgery here on the podcast.

So let me just give you this very simple definition, Victoria.

I would say cognitive behavioral therapy is a tool that

therapists use to help people understand that your thinking is negative at a

baseline and how to challenge some of those negative thoughts and look at them

more positively and try to have a more accurate worldview on what you're dealing

with so that you can be more efficient and effective at managing your life.

Okay, that's a pretty good summary of cognitive behavioral therapy.

But let me tell you what the difference is with cell brain surgery.

I want you to literally understand that when you choose to think about one thing

and not another, that you are making structural,

real-time epigenetic changes in your brain, your neurochemistry, your DNA expression,

your hormonal state, and the way that the organs and systems in your body work,

the way the electromagnetic field of your body works, the way that you interact

with other people, the way that you change your offspring.

Spring, if you haven't, if you're having children, the way that your future

generations relate to you and to the world.

And you are literally changing the structure and course of your life when you

learn how to have a 2 Corinthians 10 5 worldview, which is take captive every

thought and put it in submission to Christ.

If you understand that your brain is a hardware and your mind is the software

that operates your life and that the Holy Spirit interacts with you on the software level.

And He will help you to manage the hardware of your life.

In a more effective way. Then you can begin to understand that,

yes, there are many challenges in this life, and yes, it is very hard,

but yes, I have a set of tools, including an internal good physician who is

with me all the time, who wants to help me.

Then I can begin to take every thought captive and make my life better.

It doesn't mean every problem is solved. It doesn't mean I don't still need a therapist sometimes.

It doesn't mean there might not be a role for medications if I I have some serious problem.

It doesn't mean that I won't lose my son.

It means that I'm going to arm myself with a set of things that I'm preparing

for these hard situations.

I'm learning how to think about them in a healthier way.

And I'm preparing myself to gain resilience and to be better able to handle

whatever comes along in my life so that I am not wrecked when it does happen.

Now, there's an interesting passage in Deuteronomy chapter 6.

So self-brain surgery then, in summary, is a set of tools.

I'll give you operations, we call them, because I'm a surgeon. Biopsy your thought.

Critically examine it. If it's

not a true thought, eradicate it and replace it with one that is true.

If it is a true thought, is it helpful? Are the follow-on thoughts true?

Understand that you have 40,000 negative thoughts a day and that five to one

they're not true and they're not helpful.

So learning how to discern and be careful only to give mental attention and

energy to the thoughts that are true and then to direct yourself to take steps

towards managing the ones that are true in a way that resolves them or moves

them towards a positive outcome.

Okay, that's important. So self-brain surgery then is a lifestyle.

It's not a therapy session.

Every thought captive so that we can begin to overcome the hardships that we

have and learn how to move forward.

I talk all the time about putting books and scripture and good words and good

music in your heart as prehab so that we build that resilience and build that

floor of preparing our minds.

Here's a treatment plan. Here's what we're going to do. Here's how I use this

EpiPen of self-brain surgery.

Here's what I'm going to do with that packet of scripture I gave you in a neurobiology

conversation two days ago, how we're going to have stuff in our hearts ready

to go when it's time for that code, that trauma, that massive thing that's happening, okay?

Deuteronomy chapter six gives us this concept. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.

That's the Shema Yisrael. That's the prayer, okay?

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Verse five,

love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your your strength.

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.

And remember, in Bible times, heart and mind are similar, okay?

Put this stuff in your head, he's saying.

Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when

you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Why in the world where do you say all that stuff.

About writing it down and putting up signs and writing it on your forehead and

putting it on your hands for other people to see. Why? Write it on your doorframe. Why?

Because he wants you to remind yourself over and over and over and over that

you have some help. You are not alone.

There's a set of principles that will help you survive and be resilient.

And loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and

with all your strength is the foundation of all of that. that.

But why, if it's all about how you think, why then bother to write it down and

impress it on your children and talk about it all the time and write it on your

doorstep and put it on your forehead? Why?

Because he wants us to remember that we are connected.

And we know now from science, we're connected on a quantum level to other people.

You know this. We've been talking about how we influence each other's electromagnetic fields, right?

Debbie Downer comes in the room and she's in a bad mood and all of a sudden you're in a bad mood too.

It's not just because you see her her face and you decide to be in a bad mood.

It's because her electromagnetic field is influencing yours negatively.

Your electrons are entangled with other people and you are literally tied to

the emotional state of everybody around you, okay?

So the way we act together influences and affects our ultimate total emotional state in the group.

This is important, okay? So if you're supposed to to talk about these principles,

talk about these patterns, talk about these ideas that are good for you,

to remember what God's done, to have the muscle of hope flexing about memory

and movement in the past and in the future,

then that's because, as Dan Siegel says, the founder of interpersonal neurobiology,

we were supposed to inspire each other to rewire ourselves.

Neurons that fire together, wire together, Donald Hebb said, the famous Hebb's Law.

When you continue to make things happen over and over, by triggering the same

memory, thinking the same thought.

Engaging the thought engine, you will then synaptically create an easier time

having that same happen over and over, same thing happen over and over.

Because remember one of our principles, what you're doing, you're getting better at.

So if you're in despair, if you're giving into anxiety, if you're giving into

worst case scenario, if you're letting your thoughts spiral out of control,

then you are getting better at that and making it easier for yourself to continue

to be will wash in hopelessness and negativity.

But inspiring other people to rewire themselves helps you remember that there

is a process that you can engage in to get better.

There is a process that you can engage in to be more resilient.

And teaching other people to do that will help you too because when they're

better, you're better because you're entangled with them.

That's why God says, write it down. Put it on your forehead.

Inspire each other to rewire each other, okay? This is incredibly important.

So what's the difference? Self-brain surgery is a lifestyle.

It's not a therapy session.

It's not a technique that I use as a therapist because I'm not a therapist.

I'm a dad who misses his little boy with every beat of my heart.

I'm a guy who wakes up in the middle of the night when I hear a noise and I

think it's a rocket that's landed and I'm getting ready to have to do a bunch

of emergency brain surgery or I'm wondering if we just got blown up. I'm that guy.

But I'm also the neurosurgeon that says, gosh, I watch people just suffer their

whole lives because they can't change their behaviors.

They're stuck in these patterns, and they think that they're stuck with certain

diagnoses or labels that somebody's put on them. I can't help it.

It's just the way I am. My parents were this way too. and so

I want you as a fellow self-brain surgeon

and a fellow human who's dealing with this hard life

to remember that you have an incredible gift of

a frontal lobe that can switch from one thought process to another if you've

been listening lately you've heard us talk about labels a lot and life puts

labels on you this is what cognitive behavioral therapy is about like somebody

says I've got anxiety and the therapist says okay you're anxious let's let's

give you some tools to be less anxious.

I want you to reject the label. I want you to say, no, I don't have anxiety.

I'm feeling symptoms of anxiety, but feelings aren't facts.

One of the rules, one of the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery is feelings aren't facts.

Feelings are chemical events in your brain. And if you're having one set of

chemical events making you feel one thing over and over, you need to deal with

what's underneath that that's triggering that.

And you need to reframe it, biopsy it, challenge it, learn to think differently

about it, and start to deal with the anxiety by rejecting the idea that you're

just an anxious person and you're just an anxious person because your mom was

anxious and you inherited that from her.

Because we know now that you can change those epigenetic triggers of gene expression.

You don't have to live in the same fears and anxieties that your parents did.

And if something happened to you, if you experienced some kind of major trauma

or some kind of big problem in the past,

you can learn that trauma is not what happened to you,

that you're not stuck feeling that all the time and living in the reality of

the shadow of that event because trauma is what happens inside you in response

to those things and you can understand that and deal with it and unwind it.

And so what is self-brain surgery and how does it differ from cognitive behavioral therapy?

This is not a therapy session technique that you can go and engage in with your

therapist and talk through some things and walk away from.

There's a value in that and it's important. But I want you to grab 2 Corinthians

10.5 by the handles and say, I want to challenge every thought because what

I'm doing, I'm getting better at.

So I don't want to have five minutes of my day where I freak out about something.

I want to get that five minutes back under control.

I want to inspire the people around me to rewire their brains because neurons

that fire together wire together. together, okay?

I want to have the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery readily available

and in my heart and in my head all the time. What are they?

I want to, number one, relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise.

I want to stop giving in to the labels that people have put on me,

the diagnoses that somebody's given me, and say, I'm going to challenge that.

I'm going to let God help me change that over time, okay?

Now, can you change the fact that you have a glioblastoma? No,

not without help, and usually not.

But can you live in abundance even if you have a glioblastoma? Yes, you can.

How? Self-brain surgery, taking captive the thought, inspiring others to rewire,

being reminded constantly that you can change your destiny of your thought and

emotional life by taking thoughts captive, every one of them. Number two.

You have to believe that feelings aren't facts. Three, you have to believe that

thoughts aren't always true.

You have to love tomorrow more than you hate what you're feeling right now.

And that's when we stop using numbing behaviors.

That's when we stop using alcohol. That's when we stop making bad decisions

tonight so we can quit thinking for a minute.

And then we have to pay a tomorrow tax tomorrow and deal with the same problems

and the new problems that we made because we didn't love tomorrow more.

We have to learn not to treat bad feelings.

With bad operations, right? We have to stop making an operation out of everything.

We have to stop thinking that everything's a big disaster and a nightmare and

we're spinning off into worst case scenarios and trying to perform all these

gyrations to get back to some kind of baseline after we blow ourselves up again

because we made an operation out of it again.

Remember, sometimes you can let something slide.

You don't have to swing at every pitch, right?

We can get ourselves back under control by thinking about our thinking,

making, deciding that our frontal lobes can direct us to take this action and

not that action, and put that space in between stimulus and response,

and we will start paying much less trouble for those decisions that we make.

And we're going to not perpetuate generational curses or cause them.

We're going to grab that fact that epigenetics can be changed,

and we're not going to let our past, our ancestors, our experiences direct our

futures to the same extent anymore. more.

We're going to refuse to hurt our brains. We're going to care and love about

the organ of the hardware side of our mind-brain interface,

and we're going to have better nutritional decisions and better lifestyle decisions,

and we're going to wear helmets, and we're not going to smoke,

and we're not going to drink excessive amounts of alcohol or take drugs that

might harm our brains because we love our brains, and we want them to function

and serve us well for our whole life.

We're going to learn how to perform mental first aid. That's why I give you

this this whole toolkit of operations, and we packaged it in the treatment plan

in my new book, Hope is the First Dose.

I want you to have some tools available to you when life gets hard.

And finally, I want you to remember that thoughts become things.

Thoughts really literally trigger chemical and genetic changes in your brain.

Thoughts change your chemical environment, your hormonal environment,

your cell-switching environment, your gene expression environment.

Thoughts literally change the reality of the physical world around you.

And that's why, my friend, self-brain surgery is different than cognitive behavioral

therapy. This is a self-brain surgery lifestyle.

Take captive every thought. You do that with your frontal lobes,

which is why Victoria's question was a perfect one for Frontal Lobe Friday.

Because, my friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And sometimes that takes self-brain surgery.

But the good news is you can always 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 book if you're not already tired of hearing my voice.

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

available for free at tommywalkerministries.org. They are supplying worship

resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.

And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, 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.