Old Memories and Psychobiology

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

and we are going to get after some self-brain surgery today.

We are in the middle of a two-week hiatus, and I'm bringing you back an episode from early in Season 9.

And I'm doing a new intro for it because I just wanted you to hear my voice

and tell you this episode is about the psychobiology of old memories, and it's important.

If you've been through trauma or tragedy or some kind of massive thing,

this episode, I want you to get your mind on what happens in your brain when

you spend time in the past, when you time travel back to the past.

It's important to understand the neurobiology of what happens when you live

in a moment that happened in the past and what that has to do with the future

and why it's so important to recognize how your brain handles old memories.

So this is an important one. And I just wanted to tell you, Lisa and I are working

hard, getting ready for season 10.

And I've been hearing from some folks that have been confused by the fact that

I've been releasing old episodes and they show up in your podcast player as

already having been played. So you're not getting notified that there's new episodes.

So I'm doing this intro just so it'll release as if it were a new episode and

it'll pop up to make sure you don't miss it.

But to say that, I want to be sure that you go back over the last few days since

we've been on hiatus and make sure that you, I want you to go back and listen

to the episodes we've been playing over the last few days, because all of them

are going to be necessary.

I want them on top of your mind as we get into season 10.

So we have all this information from neuroscience and from scripture and how

we smash faith and science together to get our minds ready so we can change

our minds and change our lives and overcome trauma, tragedy,

and massive things and really get after the business of finding hope again.

And to do that, we need to spend a little bit of time understanding how memory

works. We're going to do that today with the psychobiology of old memories,

and we are working hard to make sure season 10 and the new Spiritual Brain Surgery

Podcast are super helpful for you.

One final announcement. I said this to the paid subscribers the other day,

but if you were a paid subscriber on Substack prior to September of last year

when Substack basically blew up and the podcast wasn't getting distributed and...

That's what led to moving the newsletter over to MailerLite,

and that's what led to moving the podcast over to Transistor,

and all that stuff happened because Substack had a distribution problem.

But basically I paused the paid subscriber program in September and stopped the billing.

So everybody that was a paid subscriber prior to September on Substack,

you basically continued to have access to all that content, but you weren't having to pay anymore.

And now that we finally got everything sort of squared away again,

we relaunched the paid subscriber program in Substack, Some people also signed

up or can sign up through MailerLite.

I think if you're going to sign up as a paid subscriber, you should do it through

Substack because everything is in one place over there.

If you sign up through MailerLite, I'll make sure you get all the content through

Substack too, but it's a little bit more work for me.

But the point is this. If you were a paid subscriber prior to September of last

year, you are going to not have access to the paid content anymore now that

we're up and running again. in.

So you'll have to go back in and sign back up as a paid subscriber.

So if you're missing that paid content, that's what happened when,

when Substack shut down in September,

I didn't want you to get billed for something that wasn't out there.

So I stopped all that. And it's one more step for you.

But if you want to continue to support the podcast and have access to the archives

and all the extra stuff that the paid subscribers get, we would love for you

to go back and sign back up.

We hope that you continue with us on this journey.

That said today, we're going to bring this Psychobiology of Old Memories episode back to you.

Lisa and I miss you. We're ready to bring you all kinds of exciting new content.

I did an interview yesterday with the New York Times bestselling writer.

That's going to be amazing. You'll get a little bit later.

In, well, it's going to be in early February. You'll get it in February.

We have incredible guests, incredible content, great new stuff coming.

We're starting to write the next book and continue to pray for us.

We're praying for you. Don't forget about the prayer wall.

And let's take a look at what happens when you spend time in the past.

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

Lee Warren here with you for another episode of the Self-Brain Surgery Podcast.

Listen, we're going to get after something today. It's going to be Thursday,

and normally on Thursday, I don't give you something new.

Normally, I go back in the archive from the past and mine something that's helpful

and bring back something for Throwback Thursday.

It gives me one day of the week where I don't have to be quite as busy,

and I can create something from the past that's helpful, that's already worked,

that's already been done, and bring it to you.

But today, I have something just building up in my heart, a piece of information

that I think will be helpful to you.

I'm thinking about grieving, thinking about people that are hurting,

people that are suffering over something that's happened in the past.

And I just feel like you need some information that I've got for you today.

And we're going to talk a little bit about an old John Prine song.

We're going to talk about rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory cascades in your body.

We're going to talk about gene expression, the psychobiology of behavior state-related

genes, and how in the world are we going to tie all that together in a way that's

going to help somebody who's grieving.

Well, to understand that, you're going to have to understand about time travel

and an old John Prine song called Paradise.

And we're going to do all that in about 15 minutes.

But before we get started, I have one 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.

I hope you're having a good day. Thursday, we're going to be in the operating

room today, and I am excited about having the opportunity to minister to and

take care of some people in my practice as a neurosurgeon, and the whole team

will be ready to go today. But I just have something on my heart.

I've been following along. Jill and Brad Sullivan have this incredible podcast

that I was honored to be a guest on recently called While We're Waiting,

and they had lost a child to cancer and went through this horrifying thing of

being bereaved parents like Lisa and I.

Know all too well, but they've built this incredible community of people who

have gone through the loss of a child.

And just reading some of those comments yesterday on one of Jill's posts and

actually one of Brad's posts yesterday on Facebook.

And if you've been through something hard like that, they'd be great people for you to follow.

And they do these workshops and support groups all around the country,

even around the world now.

And they're just really leaders in the bereavement space. And they've done a

lot of beautiful work to help people.

And I was reading a comment that somebody was just talking about how they just

can't seem to stop thinking about what happened in the past and thinking of

all the different ways that something could have been different than it was.

And then last night as we were going to bed, Lisa was looking at something on

Instagram and somebody posted this incredibly beautiful little girl and she was playing.

You could tell she didn't feel very well. And then the caption came up and it

said, this is the day. hey, this was the chance that we could have had to save

her, but the doctor missed something and our child died of meningitis the next day.

And they took her to the doctor three days in a row.

The doctors just couldn't figure out what was wrong with this little girl.

And then, boom, all of a sudden she was so sick and she didn't survive.

It was just a beautiful little toddler, died of meningitis.

So don't forget, check your kids for meningitis if they're acting sick,

okay, especially if they have neck pain or fever.

Make sure the doctor thinks about that diagnosis. But I saw this,

and it was just devastating.

And what's going to happen for the rest of those people's lives,

if they're not careful, is they're going to go back and they're going to find

different ways to blame themselves for not figuring out what happened before

it was too late for their daughter. And that's not reasonable.

I'll tell you why it's not reasonable in a minute. But it's something that's going to happen.

So when you lose somebody, when you go through something really hard,

when you look back in the past and you can't stop thinking back in the past about what happened,

why didn't I think this thing, why didn't I show up in this way,

why did I do this or why didn't I do that, almost inevitable that we beat ourselves up.

I want to give you just some information today and some tools and some thought

processes, and I think it might be helpful.

There's an old song from John Prine called Paradise,

and in the song Paradise, he had a line that he said, When I was a child,

my family would travel down by the green river where Paradise lay, an old town in Kentucky.

It was a backwards old town.

Music.

He thinks about this time in his life so often that the memories are worn.

Like he can think of them as a rock that he pulls out of his pocket and just

kind of tumbles around and rubs on.

And over time, it affects the

shape of the rock, right? He wears down the memory by thinking about it.

And that's an interesting thought picture and metaphor and beautiful old song

that John Prine sang. saying.

But I want to give you that idea that it is actually possible to wear down and

change the structure of your memories if you think about them in the wrong way.

And what in the world does that mean? Well, let's switch gears for a minute.

I want to talk to you for a moment about an enzyme in your body called prostaglandin

endoperoxide synthase 2.

That's a big word, prostaglandin an endoperoxide synthase 2.

It is often known as cyclooxygenase 2 or COX-2 for short. Easier to say COX-2.

This is an enzyme in humans that is encoded for by a gene, PTGS2,

and that gene basically is one of two cyclooxygenases in your body.

And these are genes that relate to the the expression of a protein called prostaglandin

H2, which is a precursor of a protein called prostacyclin, which triggers an

inflammatory cascade in your body.

So prostacyclin turns out to be the chemical that erupts inflammatory processes

in your body, in things like rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.

And when you have a knee ache, the thing that gets inflamed,

the reason that inflammation happens is triggered by this protein called prostacyclin.

That protein's production is controlled by the enzyme COX-2,

prostaglandin endoperoxide synthase 2.

When you take Advil or Aleve or ibuprofen or all these anti-inflammatory drugs,

including steroids, their primary effect is to inhibit the COX-2 gene from being.

Turned on, from being triggered, from being activated. COX-2 inhibitors prevent

inflammation or reduce inflammation.

I prescribe them all the time. I take them all the time. I run,

my knee hurts, I take Advil.

I'm inhibiting the expression of the COX-2 gene. Well, let me tell you something interesting.

There is a whole system of genes in your body called behavior state activated genes.

Behavior state activated genes. These are genes that get turned on and off,

get expressed or not, by your behavioral state, by the things that you're feeling and thinking.

Isn't that interesting? There's been some interesting research in people with

rheumatoid arthritis that have really gnarled up hands.

And when some of these people are put into meditative states and they get their

thinking differently, they can all of a sudden open and close their hand without

pain during that session when they get their brainwaves in the right order.

And there's been research to suggest that they are actually able to modulate

the expression of the COX-2 gene by changing their thought processes and their behavioral state.

Now that's fascinating. That means that you can literally turn on and off gene

expression that produces a response in the bone and joint system in your body

in real time that reduces pain and reduces inflammation and improves function.

So now that sounds kind of crazy, right? Well, you've heard of psychosomatic illnesses, right?

You have no doubt that there are some people and sometimes maybe even you that

can, for example, make your stomach ache by worrying about something.

You can get your mind on a particular thing, and you can have changes in your body in real time.

You get scared about something, your heart rate speeds up, right?

Those are psychosomatic. Basically, soma refers to the body,

psycho refers to the brain.

So these are things that happen in your body as a result of your brain.

So if you already understand and widely accept the idea that what you think

about can make you sick, then why wouldn't you also accept the opposite idea

that what you think about can make you well?

Or make you better. You can. You can change, by psychobiology,

you can change behavioral state-related gene expression.

It's been shown clearly now with COX-2. That's just one example.

So why am I talking about all that stuff? Well, I'm talking about it because

I want you to have some compassion for yourself as it relates to grief and bereavement.

And one of our Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery, okay?

We'll do a recap episode. So to go back in here, the Ten Commandments to Self-Pray

and Serve, if you haven't listened to it, but we'll do a recap soon.

The very first one, relentlessly refuse to participate in your own demise.

Relentlessly refuse to participate in your own demise.

And one of the corollaries of the Ten Commandments is this idea that what we

are doing, we are getting better at.

What we're doing, we're getting better at. We don't think about that very often.

We think about, obviously, if I go to the gym and I work out, I'm getting stronger.

I'm getting better at working out. If I run, I'm getting faster.

If I practice something, I'm getting better at it.

We don't apply that to our thought life very much because the negative side

of that is also true, and we need to acknowledge it and think about it.

When I ruminate, when I overfocus on something in the past, when I make those

memories where, like John Prine's Memory of Paradise, paradise,

that he thinks of so many times that the memories are worn, when we do that.

We are actually becoming better at remembering that thing in that particular way, okay?

So if we want to relentlessly refuse to participate in our own demise,

and we want to understand that what we do, we're getting better at,

and if we know that it's inevitable that when we've lost someone or when we've

gone through something really hard in the past, that we're We're going to have

some habits of going back to think about it. That's inevitable.

Then we want to make sure that when we go back and think about those things,

that we do it in a way that is accurate and compassionate and helps us.

Now, let me bring up Mary Frances O'Connor's incredible book, The Grieving Brain.

I had her scheduled to be on the podcast, and we had a power outage,

and now she's busy for the rest of the year. So I pray that I get to have her

on the podcast sometime.

But The Grieving Brain is probably the best book on grief I've ever read.

It talks about the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, what happens in your brain

based on her long career using functional imaging and what's happening when

people get stuck in grief.

In Chapter 8 of that book, she calls spending time in the past.

And this is where we're going to go. Just a short thought today that I want to give you.

Let me just read you a passage from Mary Frances O'Connor. Psychologists call

our thoughts about what could have happened counterfactual thinking.

Counterfactual thinking often involves our real or imagined role in contributing

to the death or the suffering of our loved one.

It is the million what-ifs that roll through our mind.

This is going to resonate with you. It does with me as a bereaved father.

Here's the million what-ifs. If I had done this, he never would have died.

If I had not done that, he never would have died.

If the doctor had done this, if the train had not been late,

if he had not had that last drink, the number of possible counterfactuals is infinite.

Their infinite nature gives us endless thoughts to focus on,

to consider and to reconsider, turning the scene around and around in our mind.

Imagine you've got that rock in your pocket, it and you can pick it up and rub it with your thumb.

Every time you're thinking about something over time, you wear out the spot

that you like to rub and you smooth it out and it changes and wears over time

like John Prine's memory, right?

And that, my friend, is what happens when you ruminate on something with all

the what-ifs of counterfactual thinking.

Here's what Mary Frances O'Connor says. The irony is that this type of thinking

creating the myriad situations that could have happened is both illogical and

unhelpful in adapting to what has actually happened.

Our brain may be still doing it for a reason, however. Some would say,

Mary Frances says, that the reason is to try to figure out how to avoid deaths

in the future, but it may be simpler than that.

Our brain, by focusing constantly on the limitless number of alternatives to

reality, is numbed or distracted from the actual painful reality that the person is never coming back.

This is important, friend, okay? When you focus on all the what-ifs,

what you're actually doing is you're substituting guilt from grief.

You're getting better at feeling guilty.

You're getting better at beating yourself up. You're getting better at the despair

part of the equation, and you're not getting better at healing because you can't multitask.

Your brain can only do the one thing at a time, and you're creating synaptic

pathways that makes it easier for you to slip back into that well-worn memory

pattern of counterfactual thinking. And Mary Frances goes on to say.

In other words, I would rather think about all the different ways that I might

have been able to contribute to Mitch's not dying, or I might have thought something

different or I might have done something wrong that led to him dying.

I would rather think about that than allow myself to think that he's not ever coming back.

That's hard to admit, isn't it? Or mulling over these counterfactuals,

Mary Frances O'Connor says, can become a habit, a knee-jerk way of responding to pangs of grief. Why?

Because what you're doing, you're getting better at. You're making synapses.

You're making it more automatic that you'll slip into that guilt mode so that you can avoid grief.

O'Connor goes on, although we are trading painful guilt for equally painful

grief, at least guilt means we had some control over the situation.

Believing we had control, even though we failed to use it, means the world is

not completely unpredictable.

It feels better to have bad outcomes in a predictable world old in which we

failed than to have bad outcomes for no discernible reason.

Ultimately, my friend, when you lose a child, you will be left with the unavoidable truth.

Or when your husband dies, or when your wife strays, or when your world drops

out, or you lose your dream, whatever it is, this massive thing you're having,

ultimately, you have to admit that sometimes things just happen.

Then we're in a broken world, and you can't control everything.

And so you turn from admitting that and having to accept with faith that Jesus

is going to have to come along and bear this cross for you because it's too

much for you to bear yourself,

or you're going to have to try to spin that memory around and take control of

it and go through this counterfactual thing somehow.

And I just want you to understand that the psychobiology of what's happening

is when you ruminate and when you allow yourself to beat yourself up and when

you allow yourself to do synaptic creation that leads to this over and over

rumination that drives you down this path of taking control of something that

you really can't control.

Inevitably you are engaging behavioral state-related genes that are going to hurt your body.

You're going to express things that are going to lead to inflammation inflammation

and anxiety and acid production in your gut and possibly heart disease and cancers

and all kinds of other things that go along with negative behavior-related gene

expression in the body. We know that hurts us.

You already know it. You already know that cyclosomatic illnesses are real.

You already know that after I lost my son, I've been honest about it.

I got gray hair. I broke my molars. I developed shingles.

You already know that you can hurt yourself.

Now, let me give you the compassion piece of it, okay?

From a neuroscience point of view, we all think that we can go back in time

and visit our loved one that we've lost or visit that situation that we regret or visit that.

What if I had told somebody that my uncle was doing that thing?

And maybe he would have stopped. What if I had said he was saying inappropriate things to me?

If I'd said that, then maybe he wouldn't have gone on to do the thing he did

that ruined my life. Whatever it it is that's in the past.

We all think that we can go back there and deal with it and ration it out and

reason with it and come to understand it and somehow manage it.

But the fact is it's not true. You can't. And here's why.

This is the piece I need you to have compassion about. And this is the reason

we're doing this today on Thursday instead of giving you something old.

I just want to give you this one idea that I think will be compassionate for you. Okay.

Because you're You're bearing a load that you're not meant to bear.

Jesus said his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and you need to cast your

cares on him. And here's one that I want you to cast today, okay?

When you go back in time, you really aren't going back in time because you are in the present.

You are in the here and now. And what you're doing when you relive those old

memories is you are bringing an old event into your current state of what you

know and understand and believe and experience and feel and can process now.

And you're not the same person that you were yesterday or 10 years ago or 30

years ago or whenever it was that this happened.

Here's the truth. truth. Now you've been listening to podcasts and now you've

read a bunch of books and now you've been through therapy and now you've gotten

with your wife and you've learned how to have a new life.

And, and now your kids are all grown and they've all come in different ways.

And this has happened to us. And they've all said, you know,

we don't think that Mitch did this or that.

We don't, we no longer think that, that this would have happened differently

if we had changed. You're not the same person now.

You're not in the same world now that you were then.

And so it is It is not possible for you to go back and have an intellectually

honest and accurate thought process about what could have been then by thinking

about what you know and who you are now.

Because you didn't have that experience and that insight and that knowledge

and all of that education and all those conversations and all those years to mull it over.

You didn't have that when you were back there, back then.

Okay? OK, there's a woman who writes in who lost a

son to drowning and she's now gone on to have this incredible impact in her

state of water safety and legislation has changed and all these things that

she's done that have that have changed the way that state interacts with people

who are swimming and to make people aware of how easy it is to drown,

even if you're a good swimmer. But you know what?

If she goes back in time and blames herself for not having armed her child with

that information back then, that's not reasonable because before her child died,

she was not an expert on water safety.

Before her child died, she didn't know all those things.

She didn't know that the state hadn't made people aware and hadn't prepared

and that there was so much danger. She didn't know that then.

So it wouldn't be reasonable then for her to go back in time and blame herself

now for something she could not possibly have known then.

And so the piece of compassion that I'm giving you today,

my friend, is don't take your current self back in time and try to relate to

your prior trauma or your prior loss or your prior failure or your prior victimization

in the context of who you are now and try to think that you should have been

that person then because it's impossible.

It is counterfactual thinking, and it will lead to harmful behavioral state

gene expression, and you will be participating in your own demise if you allow

yourself to get better at that thing that you should not try to be better at.

Instead, compassionately go back and allow yourself to grieve.

Trade that guilt for grief and let people like Jill and Brad Sullivan.

If you need a guide, go check out While We're Waiting and get into some healthy

patterns of learning how to grieve properly, okay?

Get into some therapy. Get into some books. Get into some scripture.

Get into something that can help you get your head on straight about the way

that you need to try to move forward and eliminate.

Eliminate, let's do a self-brain surgery operation and sever the sick synapse

that leads us down to the what-ifs and the counterfactual thinking and the wearing

those memories out by mulling them over and over and over again so many times

that the memories are worn.

Born let's instead honor those memories of who

those people were or what we were like before or what

we are like now and all the different ways that God has grown

us and changed us and stretched us after these

events have happened these massive things and let's praise God for the fact

that he does keep his promises and Romans 8 28 does turn out to be true there

are some good things that come in our lives again even after we've been through

these massive things let's don't forget. Let's be grateful.

And let's find a way to take that grief and learn to use it as we heal,

but not go down that pathway to guilt anymore. Can we do that?

I think you need to change your mind about the past.

I think you need to understand that you can turn jeans on and off with your thinking.

And I think you can learn to be healthier and feel better and be happier again,

in spite of all those things that have happened.

But if you're going to do that, my friend, The good news is 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 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.