What we know from science now is that when you change what you think about,
your brain literally makes structural changes,
like the shape of your brain and the function of your brain changes.
So it's not a self-help trick,
but you actually have the power using God's design
to change how your brain works.
You're not stuck with the old brain that you thought was broken.
You can actually make a new brain using the mind of Christ to help you rewrite it and take command of that.
So you could be incredible hope, like you're not ever stuck.
You've never been stuck. You just need to think different thoughts.
Well, I love it because we don't have to be a slave to negative thinking or negative feeling.
We can live with hope.
It's something that the Holy Spirit, He had started showing me the power of our thoughts.
How we view our reality can shape how we walk into our future.
So this really is imperative.
Absolutely.
It's imperative to take command of your thoughts and feelings, because that'll change your life.
Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast.
I'm very excited about our guests today.
We have Dr. Lee Warren here.
Thank you for being on the show with us today.
Thank you, it's great to be with you.
We're gonna be talking about,
I'm looking at his book right here,
The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery.
There's a lot of people talking about the brain,
the power of our thoughts in secular spaces,
in Christian spaces, it's definitely a hot topic.
But I felt like with you going through your material
and talking to you,
you put it in a way for me that was so easy to understand
and integrating scripture and the science together
and seeing how God the creator has made us
and that our brains can heal.
So I just want to say thank you for this material.
I was telling me and Jonathan,
we're like, we're going to get this book and bring it home
because it's really helpful stuff.
So I'm really excited.
to be talking about this, but I do want to talk a little bit about your story and how the things
that you went through kind of led to you having this really helpful material to help other people
with their mental health. I think that's important to talk about. You know, we talk about experts,
but we're all people. And so in my case, I've spent my whole career learning about the brain,
studying neuroscience and all that. But I'm also a guy who lost his little boy and
went to war and had trauma and went through a divorce
and had a lot of things in my life that were hard.
And so-
I had to figure out how science and my Christian faith
and the things I was going through kind of worked together
to keep myself from going crazy, right?
So, came home from the war and I had PTSD
and it took years to deal with that.
And then our son died, as we talked about earlier.
And after you lose a child, your brain is kind of scrambled
because you believe that that's gonna define
your whole future, this darkness and sadness and heaviness
and all the thoughts that you think.
And as a mental health professional, I worked in this space where I understood that the things we think aren't always true, but they really feel true.
And so I started trying to understand how science and faith can work together to help us find our way forward.
And science really is designed, it's not an enemy of faith.
It was designed, the people who organized it really was designed as a way to show what God had done and explain what God has done.
And so if you understand that God has designed us in a way
to heal and not to be broken,
and that science is now starting to show us
that your mind and your brain are not the same thing,
which I think we'll unpack and talk about here.
Then you can start to take command
of what's happening inside your head
instead of being a victim of it.
And I think a lot of what's happening in our society today
We're teaching people that when they think and feel
something that it's always true
and that they should honor that,
or they should get other people to support them
in what they think and feel.
And we're knowing, we're learning now from science
that about 80% of what we think and feel is false.
And so the things that pop into your head
that feel so real in the moment
are really just your brain's way of trying to make sense
of what's happening around you.
And so after we lost Mitch
and I was experiencing a lot of those things,
those dark thoughts and anxious feelings,
I had to figure out a way to,
integrate what I knew to be true,
which is that not everything you think and feel is real,
with what I was really feeling,
which is so big and powerful and immediate.
And once I figured that out,
it was really like learning how to do surgery on my own brain.
Yeah, so you've walked through this process yourself
with what you went through with the war
and being a neurosurgeon.
there, and then also what you went through losing your son at the age of, his age of 19.
I just love this topic. I wish someone 20 years ago would have looked me in the eyes and been
like, not all your thoughts and feelings are real. It would have helped me. I think I did,
but it was like eight years ago. No, literally it started with you. It would have helped me
tremendously. And you actually hit on a very important point, which is I really, our society
is teaching.
young people that to form all like belief system
and realities based off their feelings.
Even like the gender identity stuff.
That's what I was thinking.
I was thinking like, you know,
when kids start thinking these thoughts
and they don't know,
if they don't have somebody guiding them or coaching them,
they're actually reinforcing these negative thought patterns.
That's how they end up as thinking that they're cats or they're dogs or they're the other sex.
You said something earlier.
You said that we have secular stuff and we have spiritual stuff,
and everybody kind of thinks that they're supposed to be separate.
And if you understand that what the secular worldview is teaching kids, especially now,
is teaching you, follow your heart.
believe your feelings, like camp out on what you're feeling
and people need to validate that.
And that's terrible advice scripturally
because the Bible says the hardest deceitful beyond all
who can trust it.
But it's also not true scientifically.
Like in the 21st century,
especially a lot of the things that we used to think were true
are no longer verifiably true.
You can put somebody in a scanner
and we can look at what their brain is doing
when they're thinking.
And we can see that a huge majority of the things
that are happening in your brain
are not true.
They're just chemical events.
That's why in the book,
I talk about the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery.
And one of them is feelings aren't facts.
They're chemical events in my brain.
If you can teach your kids,
especially I keep bringing kids up
because they're so vulnerable to adults
validating them or instructing them.
And your job as a parent is to instruct them primarily.
don't validate feelings that are gonna harm your children
when most of them aren't true.
And so understand that your brain tells you
all kinds of things that are lies
and you have to use your mind,
which God gave you, the eternal part of you,
that's designed to be in charge of your brain.
You have to use your mind to take command of your thoughts.
That's 2 Corinthians 10, five, take every thought captive.
And so you get on top of what your brain is doing,
don't be a victim of it.
Because if you start making decisions
based on what your brain is telling you,
two things happen that are bad.
One is you're living in response
to things that are mostly not true,
which never ends well, right?
How many times have you reacted to a lie
and it had it turn out good for you, right?
But the other thing is your brain gets better
at what you repeatedly think about and do.
The more you think about your feelings,
the bigger your feelings get
and the more true and real they seem.
So if you tell your kids to follow their hearts,
pretty soon their hearts are gonna be leading them
into all kinds of trouble.
So science is on your side
that not everything you think and feel is true
and scripture's on your side
that your brain will come under the command of your mind
if you put it where it's supposed to be.
And that's what the Holy Spirit's job is to you.
Jesus said, the Holy Spirit reminds us
of all things that are true.
But don't spend your time in your life
following things that aren't true.
Listen to truth and let the Lord lead you into that
and you'll start having better outcomes.
Provide a definition of brain versus mind, right?
Critically important to understand this.
So most of us think,
and when you said the word secular a while ago,
all secular neuroscience and psychology, pretty much.
Even Christians who are therapists,
if they're not careful,
they're trained in this worldview
that says that everything about you
is a result of what things that your brain does.
So your personality, your memory,
your hopes, your dreams, your skills,
your abilities all come from brain function.
The truth is your brain is waiting for you to instruct it
as to what it's supposed to do
and what it's supposed to become like.
And we know there's a thing called neuroplasticity,
which basically means that your brain changes its structure
in response to what you think about.
So that means if you're thinking
about the same things all the time,
so I told you earlier that about 80% of the things we think
and feel are false.
There's also really good research to say that most people,
about 90% of the time,
think the same set of things every day.
So if we know that our brain rewires itself
in response to what we're thinking about,
and a lot of what we're thinking about is false,
and most of what we're thinking about
is the same stuff we thought about the day before,
and it's no wonder why we start feeling
like we can't change and we're just the way that we are.
Because your brain just keeps doing
what you tell it to do.
So you keep recreating the same thoughts and feelings
and they get bigger and better and stronger
over time, but they're never true.
So that means if you understand that your mind
is not the same thing as your brain, when your body dies,
and all Christians will think this,
if you take a second to think about it,
when your body dies and your brain's in the grave,
You're still alive if you believe
that you get to go to heaven, right?
What part of you is that?
That's your mind, your soul.
And your soul and your mind are the part of you
that's not made of flesh, the part that's not gonna die.
And so your mind, the Bible says,
"'When you renew your mind, your body will follow.'"
It's Romans chapter 12.
So you get your mind to tell your brain what to do
and your brain will obey
rather than you listening to your brain
giving you these thoughts and feelings
that were not usually true.
So instead of being a slave to your feelings and your negative thoughts that are not rooted in truth, you can get dominion over your brain with your mind by renewing your mind with the truth of God's word and being led by the Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of truth.
That's right, that's Ephesians 4 in a nutshell, okay?
So in the book, the 10th commandment of self-reinforced,
I give you this thing that thoughts become things.
Thoughts become things means that when you think stuff,
it turns into everything that's real in your life.
Like everything that's real in your life
started with things you were thinking about.
And Ephesians 4 says, Paul talks about in verse 17,
how the Gentiles and the people who aren't saved,
all the stuff that they're doing,
the adultery, the debauchery, the lies,
all that stuff, drunkenness,
is a result of what he calls futile thinking.
So it starts with what you think about.
The things that you do begin in your mind
with the things that you think about,
and then your brain turns them
into real things in the world.
And so that's incredibly important to understand
that the rest of that chapter goes on to say,
no, you're not like that.
You've been bought, you've been redeemed.
You're supposed to be renewed
in the attitudes of your mind
because when you get your mind right,
your brain will get right
and then your body and your life become right.
So you don't let your brain lead you around
and boss you around.
You tell your mind, you renew your mind,
let the Holy Spirit teach you to think better thoughts.
That's Philippians 4, right?
Whatever is true and lovely and noble and good
and trustworthy and praiseworthy and all that stuff,
think on these things.
And then there's a promise on the back end of that.
And then the peace of God will guard your hearts
and your minds.
We know now, for example,
that the part of your brain that makes you anxious,
the amygdala,
can't do that thing of making you anxious
when you think things that you're grateful for.
So you can't be anxious and grateful at the same time.
Which again, the first part of Philippians 4 says,
be anxious for nothing,
but in everything with thanksgiving,
present your request to God
and that's when that peace comes.
So you can't be anxious and grateful at the same time.
So if you start feeling anxious,
the super hijack for that,
the practical little self-brain surgery thing
is to make yourself think of something
you're glad about or thankful for.
Even if it's just,
I can take a breath.
I can activate my parasympathetic nervous system
and slow my heart rate down.
I can take a second and not let this anxiety wash over me.
You get into that gratitude space, guess what happens?
Your prefrontal cortex comes online
and that anxious part of your brain goes offline
and you start thinking and making better decisions.
And so all of a sudden now you've taken command
of that process, which is exactly what you're designed to do.
You're designed to put your mind in charge of your brain.
So what is the prefrontal cortex?
Is that something that is dictating
The rest of the brain?
So the prefrontal cortex is like the CEO.
Okay.
It's the boss who can make rational decisions.
The amygdala is the fear center.
It's afraid.
Its job is to keep you alive.
That's what tells you when you're on top of like a skyscraper, don't jump.
Right.
Or if a, you know, if a, yeah, exactly.
Don't jump.
The frontal cortex is telling you that.
But if a bear, you know, crashes into your living room, you're supposed to run away.
You're not supposed to sit there and ponder it.
You know, you're supposed to run away.
That's amygdala.
So amygdala puts you into fight or flight.
But amygdala is a terrible decision maker
because when you're scared and when you're anxious
and you're running away, you can't make good decisions, right?
And that's because the prefrontal cortex goes offline
when you're in a survival mode.
When you're in a thought mode, a rational, reasonable decision-making mode, your frontal cortex takes over.
And that's the part of your brain that's good at decision-making.
So if you want to train your kids, for example, again, to be good decision-makers and not emotional decision-makers,
you have to teach them to take a second, get in a place where you're not afraid.
That's where prayer is going to help you.
The peace of God will guard your hearts and mind.
Prayer and thanksgiving keep going back to Philippians 4.
Your frontal cortex will come online and you'll enable the best part of your brain to help you make decisions that are going to lead to better outcomes.
So for people who, because one of the things that trauma does with PTSD is it's your brain's way of trying to help you survive.
But it can be very inconvenient because it will have you be afraid of things that you really shouldn't be afraid of.
And you'll be in fight or flight mode.
You'll have anxiety.
That's right.
And in your, you know, but it's the situation that you actually are safe.
That's right.
What is a way to hack that and correct that so your brain is not freaking out over things that are not actually a real threat?
That's right, again, it's this immediate questioning
and getting curious about what you're feeling.
So don't, and I had it too, after the war,
I would hear a car backfire
and I'd think I was getting mortared.
Like I would get into a panic state.
Yeah.
You have to remind yourself,
look around, take a second, take a breath,
Look at the scenario that you're in and remind yourself that you're not in danger.
So my brain's telling me I'm in danger, but my eyes, I can look around and see that I'm not in danger.
So that means that what I'm feeling isn't accurate and I don't have to react to things that are inaccurate.
Right.
So you can, again, get curious about what you're thinking rather than reactive to it.
Knowing that if you remind yourself that most of what you think and feel is not immediately true,
Then you can take that second and get that executive function back online to say, hey, I know I feel this, but feelings aren't facts.
Feelings are chemical events.
They're neurotransmitters in my brain.
So I can remind myself of that truth and then take a second to get myself back in a command position where I'm letting the CEO make a decision instead of the fear center.
That was really interesting how you're talking about because it's like how all 80% of what we think and feel is not.
true and that our brains are trying to kind of create a story.
And that's what's powerful is that you can believe a lie and then you have a story in
your brain that's not true.
And so it's so important to create a story and a narrative via the word of God and truth
of God.
That's right.
That is true and hopeful so that you're not making...
Because that's going to affect your decision-making and everything.
The brain doesn't have an ability to discern between something that's real and something you're just imagining.
That's why the Bible says don't worry about anything.
Because worry is an imagined scenario that your brain is obligated to create a physiological response to.
So your brain doesn't know you're not actually in trouble or that you're not actually getting in danger.
Your brain's just listening to you tell it that you're worried or that you're afraid
and you're just going to create the physiology to go with that.
That's why if you go to your mailbox and pull out an envelope and it says IRS, right?
You might think, oh, I'm getting audited.
And you start to be afraid and your hair stands up and your heart quickens
and your breath speeds up and all that.
Or if you've been expecting your tax refund, you might be excited, right?
You might say, oh, wow, I'm getting this money.
I need to make my house payment.
And what do you feel when you're excited?
Your hair stands up, your heart rate quickens, your breath gets faster.
The same physiological response is happening in two situations.
Exactly the same chemical things are happening.
What makes one fear and one excitement is the story you're telling yourself about what you're feeling.
not the feelings themselves.
Feelings aren't facts, they're just chemical events.
And so if you remember that what you decide something means
is what makes it real, not the actual thing.
And then I look at that envelope again
and you realize it was your neighbors,
they put it in the wrong mailbox.
It was never even true in the first place,
but you were having a physiologic reaction to it
that you made a story up about it was exciting
or it was scary, right?
And it wasn't even for you.
And that's the thing the enemy does.
He puts a lot of stuff in our life that's never for us.
is God has a different story for you.
And so you take a second to tell yourself
that the story you're hearing isn't necessarily true.
And then let God help you get back to truth.
Use scripture to replace automatic false thinking,
and you'll find yourself on the right path.
Yeah, it's that false prophecy where it's like God gives us the prophecy and the truth of his word
and like the hope of a good future and the enemy speaks the opposite.
He wants us to believe the worst.
He wants us to worry.
He speaks lies to us.
So that's crazy just seeing it all in this context play out.
You gave a hack for anxiety and you have a lot of hacks for different things in the book.
I saw one for suffering.
Can you speak to that one?
So I call it the suffering substitution.
substitution.
This sense when you're suffering,
This is
like after I lost my son,
it begins to tell you a story
that what you're feeling now
is what you're always going to feel.
And again, your brain doesn't really process what's,
it doesn't present to you what's actually true.
It presents to you information to support the story
that you're telling it.
And so if you begin to ruminate on what you're feeling,
like after you lose the child,
you're projecting the darkness that you feel now
into the future as if it's the only thing you'll ever feel.
And then your brain begins to filter out anything
that might also be hopeful or a future
that might look different than that.
And it's just gonna show you the pain
and the anguish and the suffering.
So what you have to do then is you have to substitute
something for the immediate story that you're telling.
And for me, it was this ability to understand
that I had lost my son,
but I hadn't lost the life that I had with him.
And so we had all this joy and all this humor
and all these fun things that he had brought into our lives.
And also I found that when I started telling other people
and writing books and doing podcasts
about how I was finding hope,
my family and I were finding hope again,
that we found other parents that didn't have that ability
to articulate those things that we're starting to write in
and say, wow, I was so dark until I heard
that you were finding hope again and now maybe I can too.
So what we did is we substituted the loss of our son
for the legacy of our son.
And so that starts to tell your brain
that the suffering that you're feeling
can now have a purpose behind it.
And Viktor Frankl,
when he was in the concentration camps wrote
that man's suffering stops feeling like suffering
when it has purpose.
And so if you can give your suffering a purpose,
I say, okay, I don't understand why these things happen,
but I can see that there's a future that I can build
where my son's loss becomes a legacy and I can honor him.
Every time I do a podcast like this and I talk about him,
I'm now using the loss of him to help other people.
And that means his life didn't end
on August 20th of 2013.
His life is continuing to matter now and into the future.
And I know that someday he's now part
of that great cloud of witnesses where he's out there.
Yeah, dad, you did a good job on that podcast.
So I've got a purpose for that.
So if you can substitute something that's real and true
and still matters and gives you purpose
for the thing that is causing you suffering,
then the suffering will lessen and the purpose will build.
It makes me think of that verse where Paul says,
our present sufferings are nothing compared to the weight of the glory that is in store.
That's right.
And so, and that's one of the beautiful things about our faith is that
when we are living our lives with God and in accordance to His ways and His purposes
and step with Him, that our suffering does have a purpose.
That's right.
And that it's not for nothing.
And that we have an eternity to look forward to.
And so it's reframing everything.
You know, you were talking about how important it is,
the stories that our brains believe
and what we are putting into our thought life.
And I was thinking...
not only importance of disciplining our mind, but also the content that we consume.
That's right.
Because it could almost rewrite—
because you're talking about like how we live our lives, that like thoughts become things.
So I'm just thinking if you're filling your mind up with garbage,
That's right.
stuff that's sinful or stuff that's depressing or things like that,
it's going to accumulate into things.
Can you speak to that?
Yeah, so there's a verse in Romans
that talks about how the mindset on the flesh is death.
And I think most of us hear that
and we think we're thinking about sinful things.
It just really means if you're thinking about your body
and your life more than you're thinking
about the spiritual things,
then what happens is your brain begins to filter
and only look for more things
that support what you're feeling.
So if you're worried about your anxiety
or you're filling yourself up with short form content
that hijacks the parts of your brain
that allow you to make good rational decisions,
then you're teaching your brain to focus
on needing more of that path to getting your dopamine
or needing more of that to feel a certain thing.
and your brain starts to create a reality
where that's the only thing that you can use
to keep yourself feeling validated or hopeful,
then you're giving yourself the wrong substrate
for the ability to think and process
and feel things that matter.
So what the Bible says is the mindset on the spirit
is life and peace.
So you keep chasing what you think
is gonna give you peace or satisfaction
through content that never has the ability to do that.
because you're driving your brain in the wrong direction to begin with.
So I think what's happening is we're chasing the wrong things,
which is typical of humans, right?
Chasing the wrong stuff because we have an enemy that wants to remind us
to keep chasing those things.
But that path never leads to life.
So if you set your mind on things above, the Bible said,
then you have this ability to find peace,
and then you can put everything else in the proper context.
So what you're saying is there's scientific evidence
that TikTok reels are not good?
Absolutely.
Anything that gives you quick access to dopamine that doesn't have purpose behind it will hijack your life and you'll become addicted to it.
So any way that you can get dopamine, because people think dopamine is about reward, but it's really about motivation.
Mm-hmm.
And so what dopamine does then is it motivates you
to keep doing more of that thing.
And that's how substance addictions happen.
But it's also what hijacks your brain
to keep chasing the next thing.
And by the way, this isn't an accident.
These algorithms are designed to keep you scrolling
and chasing that dopamine
because that's how they can present more advertising to you.
So there are really smart people in Silicon Valley
who are designing these apps to keep your children
and all of us scrolling and doing that thing.
So what you're doing is you're creating a brain that's chasing dopamine
in ways that dopamine wasn't designed to give you long-lasting pleasure.
So short-form dopamine hits will create more and more addictive behavior over time.
So short-form content is really dangerous.
Would a good form of dopamine be like walking or going backpacking?
Absolutely.
So moving gives you a reward of dopamine and brain-derived neurotrophic properties.
which is another neurotransmitter related to feeling good.
Those two things, movement generates those two neurotransmitters
in a way that is also making your body physically more healthy.
So when you get dopamine like that,
it's encouraging you to do something that's good for your body, right?
So now you're moving, you're not scrolling.
Now you're moving your body, you're getting physically fit, and you're getting muscle mass,
which is key to longevity and overall health. And you're not just sitting and scrolling and
rotting your brain away and hijacking your dopamine reward system.
Also, another thing that they talked about is, and I've thought about this on Instagram,
for me, especially the way that algorithm is set up for me, is you have such a wide range of like,
you were never designed to experience something extremely happy and then something horrible.
That's right.
are very sad and then scary, you know?
And it's like, you're getting all of these things.
There's a lot of fear-based stuff.
And I'm like, there's just that,
just experiencing that wide range is not healthy or normal
because in your day-to-day life,
you're not going to experience these super highs
and super lows, but all of this stuff is kind of on.
That's right.
And you also don't have an ability to shield your kids
or even yourself from things that you shouldn't ever
be focusing on or thinking about
because they're getting presented to you
in such a quick way.
We saw that the week that Charlie Kirk
and the young Ukrainian woman died
and there was a school shooting the same week.
And all of a sudden, normal people
in the middle of their normal day
were seeing people violently murdered in front of them.
Like the video, yeah.
But what's happening is because it's in that context
and in that format,
you're getting that dopamine release from it,
which is then wiring you to not be as shocked
and actually your brain to think you're being rewarded
by seeing that horrific content.
And so now you're creating a circuit in your brain
that says I need progressively more shocking things
to activate that dopamine system.
And you're not even processing that consciously,
but now you're looking for more content to shock you
and make you keep scrolling.
And the algorithm will begin to feed you that
because that's how they wired it.
Like whatever you're clicking on
is gonna be presented to you more.
So before you know it,
you need to see things that are fairly alarming
to get that same neurotransmitter reward.
That's why the Bible says so carefully,
guard your heart,
be careful what you put your eyes on.
Jesus said several times,
like the eyes are the lamp to the soul.
Like if you're getting darkness
and you think it's light,
it's gonna lead you into all kinds of trouble.
And he said, be very careful how you listen.
Like the things that you put your ears on
and your eyes on,
Because attention we know now is really the scalpel of how your brain becomes what it is.
Like things you pay attention to and the amount of attention you pay to them is what becomes real in your world.
So be very careful what you're allowing to see, to show your eyes and your brain with that algorithm.
What are some other good ways to get dopamine in like a healthy way?
So, again.
Probably sex.
What's that?
Sex.
Sex is a powerful releaser of neurochemicals.
See, I worked that in there.
Yeah.
Before you say anything else, I wanted to put mine in there.
So, really, so dopamine is about motivation, right?
So, it's designed to keep you chasing things that are supposed to be good for you.
But, again, your brain doesn't know the difference between what's good and what you're pondering and what's bad.
It just does what you tell it to do.
So you want to get your neurochemical release from things that are actually helpful to you.
And so as Christians, we want to make sure that we're setting our minds on things that are going to reward us for things that we should actually be pursuing.
So exercise, activity, human interaction, is that oxytocin, serotonin release?
I get mine with...
being playful with you and the kids.
Face to face.
You know, after work, before work,
I get mine with working out.
During work, I get mine through walking.
Are those correct?
Going outside.
Absolutely.
There's one little caveat too, though,
is that you shouldn't be a person who just tells yourself
that you're going to do certain things,
especially when you tell your wife,
I'm gonna go work out.
You get a little bit of dopamine release
when you say something you intend to do.
Why?
Because your brain is always listening
and preparing you to become what you say
you're going to become.
So you get a little bit of dopamine reward.
And for some of us, that's enough.
We just get that little feel good.
Oh, I had all these great plans.
And you start feeling good
and you never actually do it, right?
And so just make sure that you train your brain
that you're going to be a person who follows through
on your intentions as well
and not just talking about things all the time.
So for a few years now, there's been warnings of screens for our children.
Now they're coming out saying that the distracted parent on the screen
is actually even worse than even the screens for our kids.
And I'm just thinking about being addicted to short-form content,
zoning out and getting dopamine hits on the phone.
And it's like I'm just feeling so convicted to just put our phones away.
The whole time where, I know we've talked about this, with our kids because they're calling it like tech, I think internet orphans or technology orphans or something.
Where it's like these kids are losing these moments with us and it's not enough to like look and then look at them and look back.
That's right.
There's a really good study recently that looked at that.
They looked at kids who had aggressive behavior patterns.
And everybody thought it was because the kids were on screens.
And what it turned out to be was that their parents were on screen.
So the kids were angry and upset that they couldn't get their parents' attention.
You go to a restaurant and you watch, it's tragic.
You have a kid trying to get mom and dad's attention and both parents are...
scrolling away because they're in that dopamine loop.
And so your kids are wanting interaction with you
more than they want what's on the screen.
So don't use it as a substitute babysitter,
but also don't use it to check out away from them.
They need your presence.
I mean, God gave you those kids.
And if you've lost one like I have,
like you don't know how much time
you have left with your kids.
Don't spend it all scrolling on Instagram.
I implore you, like not only is it bad for your brain,
it's bad for their brains,
but you don't know how much time you have with them.
What would your advice be?
Is it just better to just cut it out completely?
Or is there a way that you can balance it where you give yourself a little bit each day?
I think balance is a good thing in any context.
But the idea is that you shouldn't, especially late at night,
like right before you go to sleep is the worst time for you to be scrolling
because you're giving your brain.
What's going on here?
I'm looking at you too.
Well, think about it.
So you're giving your brain stimulus when you need to be getting your brain into relaxation mode.
And that's why you struggle to fall asleep.
Exactly.
And then when you do sleep, you don't sleep well because you're still in this ruminating
mode of all this neurochemistry that's got bouncing around your brain.
So it's the same reason alcohol before bedtime is a terrible slope because you think it relaxes
you and it does transiently, but it wrecks your sleep.
It gets your blood sugar all spiked up and gets your brain chemistry out of whack for
the next 72 hours.
And so you fall asleep, but you don't sleep well.
And the next day you're paying a tax.
In the book, we talk about something called the tomorrow tax, like you're
You're paying a tax tomorrow for something you did today
because you didn't want to think about something
that you needed to deal with today.
Jesus says every day has got enough trouble of its own.
So don't be dragging today's troubles into tomorrow
because you anesthetize yourself today.
So you can anesthetize yourself with alcohol,
but you can also do it with your Instagram or with your phone
Yes.
What's your nighttime ritual for optimal sleep?
Wait, I got to say one thing to this and then we'll do the nighttime ritual.
You say your thing.
The problem is, and I've done this before in the past to cope,
really just putting myself on blast in this episode,
is get on, when I would have a thought that was worrying me and I was afraid,
I would get on Instagram because I didn't know how to cope with that thought.
The problem is, is that the moment you're off of it, it's still there.
That's right.
That's self anesthesia.
I mean, you're numbing yourself
for whatever it is that you don't wanna process.
And I'm not a perfect practitioner of this either,
but the method that would work the best
was to be at least for the last half hour of your day
to get off the screen,
read a physical book or journal
or spend some time in prayer,
turn the screens off, including your television,
Like you don't wanna get all that flashing light
and all those triggering of neurochemistry
going in your brain.
You wanna be getting your brain into this mode
of getting prepared for deep rest.
And so getting away from screens and blue lights
and all that stuff and getting your brain
into this rest mode is really a helpful practice
that will produce better sleep for you.
And when you sleep better,
your chemistry is better the next day,
which means you're gonna start the day.
And I think that morning quiet time
is really important too.
Start the day.
being in command of your mind and your brain.
Yeah.
One of the things, and you're talking about that blue light,
one of the things I was learning about with circadian rhythm,
the natural flow when the sun comes up and the sun comes down.
And, you know, like a hundred years ago,
there would be no way to have any kind of,
these screens are really hijacking the natural rhythm of life.
And it's just throwing us completely off and our sleep is jacked up.
When you make that connection, you can have a more peaceful.
And I know that getting a good night's sleep is one of the best.
I mean, that's when I feel the best.
Even when I go to the gym in the morning, because I go at 5 a.m.,
so it's still dark outside.
And when I walk in and the lights are so bright,
my body is literally like it's too, it's not correct.
Literally today specifically when I walked in.
Did you feel it?
Yeah, like my body was just like turned around.
Yeah.
Because it's throwing your rhythm off.
It was, you know, because it's just, it goes from,
it's still dark outside, but inside it's just so bright.
And they're blasting music.
So it's a big jarring to the system.
And then I was doing the opposite.
I didn't even tell you that I didn't sleep good last night.
And part of the issue was because I was on my phone.
And I was like, you're just...
It literally makes your brain think, oh, you're not tired.
But then I had to get up and get something from the kitchen.
And when I got up and it was pitch black in the house, I was like, oh, I'm so tired.
And so we really need to shut those off and give your brain some time to calm down.
What for people, because this is so common, if someone has a thought in their mind,
because this happens a lot of times before you go to sleep,
and you have something pressing on your mind and you're struggling to calm down and sleep,
do you have any kind of hack for that?
There's a little tool you can use.
I call it the thought biopsy,
because I'm a surgeon, so we're always biopsying things
to try to figure out what they are
before we take action on them.
So again, remind yourself that about 80% of the things
that you automatically think and feel aren't true.
So the first test is, is this true?
Is it like Daniel Amen says,
is it 100% true all the time?
So ask yourself if it's true.
And then there's a little trick.
I think the enemy does this.
He'll present something to you that is true on one level.
And so then you'll let your guard down
because if the test is, is it true or not?
And if it's true, then I can worry about it.
Then you have to remember what the Bible says,
don't worry about anything, right?
So put it in context.
If it's true, then ask some additional questions.
And one of them is,
is it something I need to deal with right now?
or that I can have any type of control over right now?
And if the answer to those two is not yes,
then you need to set it aside and pray through it
or read a scripture to remind yourself
to think of something different.
And your brain can't really multitask conscious things.
So that means that you can't really think
about two things at once.
So if you can just divert your attention long enough,
read some scripture, pray through it,
let that thought die off,
and not be so immediate in your mind,
then you can go to sleep in command
of what you're thinking about, right?
So is it true?
And if it is true, is it necessary,
compassionate, helpful, within my control?
Is it something I really must address right now?
And if it's not, the house isn't on fire.
You don't need to deal with it right now
about something that you may need to deal with
in the future.
And then if you can put it off until the future,
You may be in a better position with your brain to deal with it in an effective way tomorrow
a lot more than you are right now where you need to sleep.
If you can divert your attention to something that's definitely true
and you definitely need to address right now something God's got on your heart to deal with,
that's a better technique than to just sit there and ruminate on it until you finally fall asleep.
And then it would give your body time to calm down and it'd be easier to transition into sleep.
That's right.
Do you have anything that you...
The last thing I want to talk about is the anxious one.
I think there's so many people that
deal with anxious thoughts, anxious feelings,
or things that throughout their day
might provide anxiety.
Talking back about the CEO of the brain,
the prefrontal cortex, what are the practical tips or hacks
that you provide in the book?
So the first thing I wanna remind people,
anxiety is getting a bad rap
because everybody thinks that anxiety
automatically is a bad thing.
Yeah.
But anxiety is a survival tool that God gave us.
And the way to look at it
is just to be curious about what you're feeling.
Again, that story I told you earlier
about how the things we feel,
we really tell ourself stories about them
that turns them into something true.
So when you start to feel anxious,
The first thing you should not do is focus on feeling anxious,
because if you do, then your brain is going to amplify it,
and you're going to feel more anxious.
So if you say, well, drill in on your anxiety
and try to figure out why you're anxious and investigate it and focus on it,
you're just going to get more anxious if you do that.
So instead, get curious about it.
Like, what story is my brain trying to tell me right now?
And is that a true story?
And is it something that's actually happening or something I'm just imagining?
So just...
think about it for a second and get curious.
We call it metacognition,
where you can think about what you're thinking and feeling
rather than just reacting to it.
But then if you understand that anxiety
is not necessarily a bad thing,
that it's designed to be telling you something
and you're in charge of deciding what it means.
That's the first thing.
Secondly, there's a part of your brain
called the hippocampus in your temporal lobe.
And the hippocampus, among many other things,
is designed to sort of make sense of the environment
that you're in and then decide
the most appropriate response.
But many of us have trained our hippocampus
to automatically trigger that amygdala to fire
and for us to go into fight or flight.
So if you get into that loop,
where something that feels anxious creates fight or flight for you,
then you need to realize the way to hack that is to use gratitude or to use diversion.
So if you can't think of something to be grateful for,
because I told you earlier that the hippocampus is a switch
that switches anxiety to frontal lobe function,
and you can get more rational over being afraid.
If you can't do that,
if you can't think of something to be grateful for,
just think of anything else.
Like literally, if you can get some other part
of your brain to come online,
and there's a technique called 5-4-3-2-1
that a lot of therapists use,
which is what are five things I can see right now?
I can see your jacket, I can see your watch.
Make yourself see five things.
And what you're doing is you're taking blood flow
from your amygdala,
to your visual cortex, a different part of your brain
that's not involved in anxiety.
And you're making yourself consciously process things visually,
which is stealing blood flow from that amygdala
and that anxious reaction.
And then what are four things I can touch?
I can touch this chair.
I can touch this microphone.
Okay.
Now you're using your tactile, your parietal, your sensory cortex.
You're diverting blood away to a different part of your brain that's not involved in anxiety.
And then you do three things you can taste or two things you can smell or one thing you can hear.
It's different things.
And what you're doing is you're letting that anxious moment pass.
Okay.
because it's not going to stay there forever, right?
Remember, nothing stays there forever.
And you're getting other parts of your brain to come online
that are going to get your attention diverted from that anxious feeling.
And you can just train yourself to go into that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 sort of exercise
anytime you start to feel anxious.
And before long, that'll just fade away.
That's a great tool, especially for kids.
I mean, us too, but it would be a great thing to have for kids.
What would you say for someone if they're living their life
and then they kind of feel some feelings of depression?
What is a good hack for that?
So depression is complex because it involves a lot of different neurochemicals.
But I think that the most important piece is,
well, first I would say,
if you're really struggling with depression
and you're stuck,
you might need some professional help there.
Depression is tricky sometimes.
But if it's just that you're sort of feeling down, okay?
Remind yourself that two things can be true
at the same time, that I can be down about something,
but I can also find something to be happy about.
There's always another story I can tell myself.
And if you can get yourself into a different story mode,
and stop focusing on what you're feeling.
Because again, the more you focus on what you feel,
the more you're going, that feeling's gonna amplify.
If you start thinking, I feel down, I'm always down,
nothing ever works out for me,
you're gonna amplify that.
And before you know it,
you might actually be depressed, right?
So you can divert yourself to some other story
that could also be equally true
of other things that you're thankful for,
other blessings that you have,
people that do love you,
or ways that you're not always getting hosed or whatever.
divert your attention and allow that neurochemistry to come online,
then you can get your brain producing a different set of chemicals and you'll feel better.
But just remind yourself, not every story I hear in my head is true.
Not everything I feel has to be amplified.
And the more I focus on what I feel, the more I'm going to feel that thing.
So ask yourself a question.
Is me going down the road of making this feeling bigger going to help me or is it going to hurt me?
If you want to think like a surgeon, like I always want to do what's in the best interest of my patient.
I don't want to commit malpractice against my patient.
And if you're doing self-brain surgery, you're your own patient, right?
So don't commit malpractice against yourself by making feelings that aren't going to help you bigger.
So choose a different story and make that one bigger.
I love that.
I do too.
If you made it this far into the podcast,
go into the comment section,
write down something that you're grateful for
so that we can go back and read these things.
Because I liked what you said earlier too
about how you can't be anxious and grateful at the same time.
It's such a simple way to take captive whatever's going on,
whatever circumstance that's making you feel that way,
focus on gratitude.
Like he said, that's a verse in the Bible where it's like, be anxious about nothing, pray about everything.
And it talks about gratitude in that verse as well.
And so it's literally in the Bible.
And everything give thanks.
Yeah, and everything give thanks.
And it's showing that roadmap.
So God knew that and put that in his word.
And that's what I love is that science really can highlight.
I feel like science now more than ever is actually pointing to the existence of God and actually a very—
geniusly created and crafted world
to be so intricately working together.
I mean, it had to come from someone,
a genius that created all this.
It couldn't just happen by chance.
It's too intricate.
That's right.
Yeah.
I think one thing I would like to make sure we get
is that I think because of self-help culture,
therapy culture,
I think a lot of people think
that these are just sort of things to think about
that are sort of metaphors.
But what we know from science now
is that when you change what you think about,
your brain literally makes structural changes,
like the shape of your brain
and the function of your brain changes.
So it's not a self-help trick.
It's not just sort of a way of thinking about things,
but you actually have the power using God's design
to change how your brain works.
You're not stuck with the old brain
that you thought was broken.
You can actually make a new brain
using the mind of Christ to help you rewrite it
and take command of that.
So you give you incredible hope,
like you're not ever stuck.
You've never been stuck.
You just need to think different thoughts.
Well, I love it because we don't have to be a slave to negative thinking or negative feelings
and that we can live with hope and that we can really—
and it's something that the Holy Spirit—I talked to you about this.
He had started showing me and leading me to content like this
and kind of showing me the power of our thoughts
and how we view our reality can shape how we walk into our future
based off decisions and everything.
So this really is imperative, you would say?
Yeah.
Absolutely. It's imperative to take command of your thoughts and feelings because that'll change your life.
I just want to say thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you so much. Really helpful.
Taking this book home. Seriously, so amazing. The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. Where can people get this?
Everywhere books are sold in the world. There's Audible, there's Kindle version, anywhere.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, doctor.
Thank you. Thank you both.