Latest / The TalkBlock Show's Podcast / How to Erase Emotional Triggers with Brain Science | Dr. Brian DesRoches

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How to Erase Emotional Triggers with Brain Science | Dr. Brian DesRoches · The TalkBlock Show's Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: If the brain detects a mismatch between what it's predicting and experiences that you consciously bring in.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's kind of like Bluetooth.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, getting down on oneself is also a self-protective mechanism.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: Self-deprecating talk.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm no good, what's wrong with me?
0:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm just Yeah, people, uh, no wonder they don't like me.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: That's self-protection.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: You begin to say, now, wait a minute.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: If this is something my brain is doing, because of its survival bias, you begin to realize, one, you're not your brain.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Vadim, you're not your brain.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm not my brain.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: And look at what is really the pain that is driving all of this.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: It's always in the past.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: It's always buried in the unconscious.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: And it always is used by the brain to protect if it's going to happen again today, given a stimulus coming in at the brain right here.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Those are all protective behaviors.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: The brain uses those behaviors to protect us from something it learned a long time ago.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: That we're not aware that we learned, but it's it's it's unconscious emotional learning in the stuff that we just have.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: And well and what is really true, the vast majority of symptoms and problems of people in psychotherapy, including anxiety disorders and stuff called avoidance, not speaking up, amen.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone, this is uh Dogboxho.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: My name is Vadeev, and today our guest is a psychotherapist, an author with over 30 years of experience, of clinical experience.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: He special uh specializes in modern brain science and emotional healing.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: He helps people stop self-defeating patterns and overcome anxiety.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: He is an author of the new book, Living Trigger Free Life.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Please welcome Dr.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Brian Dero.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Hello, Doctor.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: Joy and a pleasure to be joining you.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, nice to meet you.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: Good to meet you too.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we can uh start from the first uh question.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: Today, uh so you worked as a as a therapist for for a decade.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: And then in um 2015 everything uh changed for you.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh like what made you realize that traditional therapy methods were not enough?
2:50
SPEAKER_01: Like what's what was that what happened that day, that year?
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, um I was at a workshop on a process called memory reconsolidation based on the new uh the rec recent neuroscience research on on uh and and I I went there with the intent of not only learning but also working on something that had been bothering me for 10 years, and that was a toxic procrastination.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: I'd written a couple of books in the 90s and they did well, but when I wrote my second one, Your Boss is not your mother, the author, the the publisher wanted to redo the book.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: They liked the content, but they wanted to redo the format.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: It made a great idea.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: What I happened when we were doing it with a professional writer was um I felt ashamed.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: I felt inadequate.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: I felt, what's wrong with me?
3:49
SPEAKER_00: There must be something.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: What I'm not enough.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: I went through all that stuff that we go through when we have shame attacks.
3:56
unknown: Yeah.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: What I didn't realize, and I realized in 2015, was that my brain was associating writing with shame and self-deprecating talk.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: So they became linked.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: It was it's called emotional learning.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: But that also I hearkened back to several learning experiences of my childhood also.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Inadequacy, not enough, ashamed, those kinds of things.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: But we don't know we're learning something.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: So in 2015, guess who was the uh the guinea pig for the process?
4:32
SPEAKER_00: It was me in front of like 80 people.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: And I got to work on my procrastination.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: And what happened in that process is the facilitator helped me to really get underneath, not focus on the problem, procrastination, or focus on bad thoughts, or focus on conflict, my conflict problems, or withdrawal, or my Mr.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Nice guy.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Not focus on any of the problems or symptoms.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: But what is the underlying cause of these symptoms?
5:03
SPEAKER_00: And that was the unconscious emotional learning.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that my brain had learned writing creates pain.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: So when I went to write, and which I learned that, when I went to, do you even imagine writing?
5:17
SPEAKER_00: I would start getting anxious.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: Because the emotional brain doesn't know time.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: And so for the emotional brain, it was back 10 years prior or 15 years when I suffered the shame with the rewrite.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: So I was able to articulate that in words, which I put in my book.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: And for example, if I write another book, I will be shamed and I will be rejected for being inadequate and incompetent.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: My way of dealing with this feeling was to become anxious and withdraw through procrastination.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: I was dealing with the cause of the procrastination, not the symptom.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: And for years, I had spent years, the dominant paradigm has been fix the symptom, fix the problem, you know, get relief, take an antidepressant, calm yourself, breathing.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: All these things are good, but they don't solve the problem.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: That even when I got home to Seattle on Monday morning, I started writing again.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: And it was weird.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: It was like I had a little bit of anxiety, but I I couldn't, what was happening?
6:24
SPEAKER_00: It was like I was anxiety free.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: I was trigger-free, in other words, from thinking about writing.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: And I began to write again.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm writing another book now.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: That opened my eyes to the fact that the way I've been working with people in my own 17 years of psychotherapy, yeah, I got relief.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: I got insight, I got understanding.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: But none of that ever led to really, really updating the learning that caused the original distress to begin with.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: And that's been my mission, if you will, is to bring that awareness to people.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: It's called memory reconsolidation.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: It's well researched.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: A number of therapists around the country are doing it.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: It's extremely effective.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: So that was my 2015 experience.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And it's not only changed the way I work with people, it changed my life.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: The way I experience myself, my knowing I am not a victim of the past.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: I can change and update all the learnings that I didn't know I learned about the world and myself and free myself from that tyranny.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: So, in a summary, that's what happened.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: And uh in your own story, Doctor, you describe being like a Mr.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: Nice Guy, as I remember.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: You yeah, you practice speaking up in in front of uh a mirror all weekend, but on on Monday morning midnight, yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: You you completely froze up.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: So why did your willpower just fail like that?
8:03
SPEAKER_01: And uh what was happening inside of your brain?
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Like what's yeah, I how could I describe it?
8:10
SPEAKER_00: I did take a two-day assertiveness, three-part message assertiveness course.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: So Sunday night I practiced my assertive message.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna tell, I was a hospital administrator at that point in time.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I was going to tell the director of finance, who would put me down in administrative meetings.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna tell him, hey, you know, I don't like it when you do that.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: I want you to stop.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Good three-part assertiveness message.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: And I practiced and boy, I walked, and I really come Monday morning, 9 30.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: It was going to be high noon.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: He was walking towards me, and I walked towards him, and I had my and I just froze.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: I just froze.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: And I just said, good morning, kind of wimpishly, turned away, and of course he did what he usually does in the meetings.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: He kind of like, you don't know what you're doing, look at the cost of food here, but I was like, and I just kind of wimped out, if you will.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't like that term, but that's what it was like.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: That's how I judge myself.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: What happened in the brain was if I had learned as a child not to speak up for myself because it was, quotes, dangerous, if you will.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: And so, and risk rejection, risk being shamed.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: And so my brain had learned if I express myself, then I will suffer the shame and embarrassment of rejection.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: I will be the I'll be pushed away.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: That's my brain learned that.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know it'd learn that.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: And so when I went to express myself, my brain, because it is a learning, predicting, and adapting process, it takes all information in, whether from inside or outside, and it puts it through a filter.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: And that filter looks at is this a threatening ext, is this going to be threatening because of its survival bias?
10:01
SPEAKER_00: It went back, it went, it registered my early learning as a child, and then it predicted, because it predicts all the time, it predicted I was going to suffer if I spoke up.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Because that threat was still in me.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: The fact that I did the assertive course did nothing.
10:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: It just made me more painful.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't make the change.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: It activated the threat.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: If I speak up, I will be rejected, I will be ashamed.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: It caused me to shut down, and that was my Mr.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Nice guy all the time, accommodating, placating.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Anything to avoid conflict.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Anything to avoid rejection.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like some kind of brain protection protection.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: It's self-protection or something.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: And well, and Vene, what is really true, the vast majority of symptoms and problems that people bring to psychotherapy, including anxiety disorders and some forms of depression, withdrawal, avoidance, not speaking up, you name it.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Those are all protective behaviors.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: The brain uses those behaviors to protect us from something it learned a long time ago that we're not aware that we learned, but it sits as unconscious emotional learning in the subcortical regions of our right hemisphere.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: We can now update those learnings, literally update them.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Before the new research, it was thought that those learnings were indelible.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: You you could have insight, understanding, but you couldn't change them.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: You could not change it, you could not open it up.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Now we know with memory reconsolidation, you can unlock, you can unwire the neural networks of learning back there, bring it into conscious awareness, and actually update it.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And that is a new paradigm.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: That's the new paradigm.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: It's very powerful.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: Sounds like that.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Now a little bit about invisible emotional learnings.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: So can you explain what implicit emotional learning really means for us?
12:09
SPEAKER_01: Like how do small incidents from our past create invisible emotional uh rules that controls like us today?
12:20
SPEAKER_00: One of the primary things when you come into the world and you're born as a little mammal, particularly the first seven years, you have to learn to adapt to your environment to survive.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: And the brain, because it is a survival bias mechanism, it learns from experience what causes pleasure and what causes pain.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: It's a learning that happens, but you don't know what's happening.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: It's not like you know that you're learning that if I express myself, or if I tug on my mommy's skirt, or if I do this, say I really need, you know, that I'm you don't know that you're learning when you do that, you get rejected, or that my brother gets more attention than me, and I feel neglected, and so I must not be important.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: You don't know you're learning that, but your your emotions, you have emotional experiences.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: That's the first seven years, let's say.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: That learning is unconscious to us because you don't know you're learning it.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: It's not like going out and learning how to improve your golf game or do fish better or cook a steak.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: You know you that's very conscious.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: This is unconscious or implicit emotional learning.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's unique about that is that's the cause of all the problems.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: And when you uncover or bring to conscious awareness the threat, if I write another book, if I express myself, if I say you you can't do that anymore, stop, there's a threat there to me.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: When I put those words to that, I am actually bringing it to conscious awareness.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And Vadim, it will feel true, it'll be totally irrational, but it'll feel like the truth.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, it you know, I'm a competent, capable man, I can express myself, but if I learned if I do, something bad could happen to me, I'm not gonna do it.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: And when I make that conscious, actually write out the statement.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: I just did that with a client just before we met.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: We wrote out a statement, and and and I won't give you his name, but it was something like if I express myself and my observations, then people will judge my appearance and they will ignore me, have no interest in me, I will become invisible.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: His way of dealing with that, he was shrinks down, withdraws, even wants to say he says he shrinks.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: He shrinks.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: He's a big guy.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: He shrinks to not be vis so that's his protective mechanism to protect him from something he learned a long time ago.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: That those emotional learnings are what would cause the vast majority of the problems that people have in their lives.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: The vast majority.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And so we don't fix the problems.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Let's fix let's deal with the cause is something I learned.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: And and that and I feel obviously you could tell I feel very passionate about this because it affects so much of our lives and our world.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Our world.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: I would suggest to you even this, Vladimir.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: What is happening in our world is a direct result of unconscious emotional learnings that have kept that that people don't know are driving their behaviors.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: And and I know that to be true.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: But it seems like a stretch, but I know that to be true.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: Agree, I agree.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: Also, um, Doctor, you talk about um the feeling of what will happen.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: So why does our brain predict future emotional pain based on old memories?
16:10
SPEAKER_01: Why does that fear feel so real now?
16:14
SPEAKER_00: It's a really it's really good, yeah.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: You and I know time.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: We know days and we know what time it is.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: We look at our clock and our watch, it's all it's uh five to six or whatever.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: We know that with our intellect, and we know that with our neocortex, we know how to gauge time.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: The emotional brain does not know time.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: It just knows experience.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: So when a stimulus, such as me wanting to express myself, or somebody paying someone a compliment and they shrink away and they can't take it, or somebody saying something and I blow up explosively, and I don't want to do that, but I just do, it's because that stimulus, either internal, I want to do this or external, somebody says or does something, or the look on somebody's face, or my wife telling me I cut the onions wrong, that used to really bother me because it meant I was inadequate and incompetent and couldn't do things right.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: But it felt true.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: So what happens is when that information comes in and the brain does its threat assessment and it lands on an early learning that is similar to what the input is.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you want to express yourself?
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: The reason it feels true and it's right now is the emotional brain does not know time.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: And because it doesn't know time, the past feels like the present, or the present feels like the past.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: It feels like it's happening right now.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: When it could have happened 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: But it feels like it's right now, like post-traumatic stress disorder.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: It feels like it's happening right now, but it's not, but it feels like it is, and so the brain reacts to that.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: That's what's basically happening.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: It feels like the truth, like it's real right now.
18:19
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: It's not, but it feels that way.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: And that that you know, it we've all had that experience of this doesn't make any sense, but we feel it's true, we go with the feeling because that is a that's a powerful driver of behavior, not just the thinking part.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Not just the thinking part.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons why the old paradigm is you try to control it with thinking, but you've got this powerful evolutionary force in here that says, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: That's the feeling of what will happen.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: The brain is a prediction machine, it's constantly predicting in the interest of your survival.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: And it takes what comes in, makes a prediction of what it learned in the past about what's coming in, and boy, there you have it.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: It activates anxiety, and we're stuck in the past.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: And we repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: We self-sabotage that way.
19:21
unknown: Yeah.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: But it's it's not always bad, right?
19:27
SPEAKER_01: Because uh we also learn from our past, like uh to not do something which can be dangerous for us, right?
19:33
SPEAKER_01: To not to cross the road on a red light or something like that.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: You know, you little if your child's running across the street, you're not gonna say, hey, it's not a good, you're gonna grab that child and you're gonna protect them.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: You have to do that.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: And we learn, yeah.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know when I learned that if I touch a hot stove, I'm gonna get burnt.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: I just know I learned it.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: So naturally, I avoid hot stoves.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't put my hand on it.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: But I may, I I want to do something, I want to express myself, I want to say my voice in a meeting.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: I want, I want to be in an intimate relationship, but when I get close, I start getting anxious because my brain learned a long time ago, when people get close to me, they hurt me.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Or when people get close to me, they take over, they engulf me.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: So I my brain learned if I get close to people, they're going to engulf me, they're gonna hurt me.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: And so I may get close, but when I get too close, my brain goes back away.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: We see that pattern of intimacy that happens so much.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Really sad, but it it that's what's happening.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's how it protection.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's protection, yeah.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we we used to think emotional memories were permanent, uh, but now neuroscience speak about uh memory uh reconciliation, as you said.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: And um how does this process actually erase all triggers instead of just just copying yes I would say it doesn't erase them, but it updates them.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, uh there may be a sport you like.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: I have friends who like pickleball, and so they'll have a they have a p pickleball coach and they go to the coach and say, hey, how can I prove my serve or whatever?
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And or I like golf, and so I sometimes get coaching.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: I want to improve, intentionally learn to improve my game.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: That's an intentional learning process.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: The same thing happens in the brain with emotional learnings.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: If the brain detects a mismatch between what it's predicting and experiences that you consciously bring in, in other words, it's kind of like Bluetooth, you know.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: We use Bluetooth so I can match my phone to my speaker.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: They get on the same frequency.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: And they connect and voila, I have music.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: It's wonderful.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like that with memory consolidation.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: The first thing you do is you activate the threat.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: You've got words to put if I do this and this will happen.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: If people ignore me, then it means I'm not important and I might as well a lot of things.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: So first I activate, I want to feel it.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: I want to activate that learning that's back here in the brain.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And then when it's activated, I want to bring in information that contradicts.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: It's a mismatch to what's here.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: And like the person earlier I was talking to, I asked him, I said, Do you have experiences when you spoke up and nobody rejected you and people were?
22:55
SPEAKER_00: He said, Yeah.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: But he's never taken those experiences and merged them with the learning that happened 30 or 40 years ago.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: They've never been brought together.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: When you bring them together, the brain recognizes the mismatch.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: It says, Oh, what I learned needs an update because of its survival bias, it naturally wants to update itself.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: So we're optimizing evolution now instead of fighting it, trying to overcome and battle our demons.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: We're optimizing evolution in the brain.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: So when you put them together, the brain recognizes the difference.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And then what it does, Vadim, it unwires, literally unlocks, which was not thought could happen in the prior old paradigm.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: It unwires that neural network.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: It stays unwired or open for five hours.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: And during that five hours, you can continue to update it with experiences.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Then it reconsolidates.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: So we have a consolidated network of learning.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: It deconsolidates.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: That means it gets activated.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: But then it really opens up when you introduce the mismatch.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: And then it reconsolidates or closes back down when you've actually included the new information.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: You're not erasing it, you're updating it.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: So the next time that input comes in, the brain goes, oh, no big deal.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even, you know.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: I still get little mild triggers every now and then around things.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I know what to do.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: I know how to change, transform my brain.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: The five steps that I outline, I know how to do that now.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to be a victim of my past any longer.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: I can create an experience, I can be present in the present.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's basically the process.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: It's optimizing the brain's evolutionary bias or survival bias.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Heck, it works, you know?
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: That's the and that's what I outlined in the book with diagrams and and the all the steps.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: It's a very different way of thinking because typically we want to overcome and we want to battle, we want to fight, we want to get over.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: That's never worked.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: That's never worked.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: There's an old saying in neuroscience.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: What you persist, what you resist, persist.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: What you focus on, you strengthen.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to strengthen all these protective mechanisms anymore.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: No, I don't.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: No.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: And uh I assume in your book you describe some some tricks, some uh some how how how to how to do that, some exercises.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: I do.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: I go through the with a there's a it's a five-step process, it's well well documented.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of examples, a lot of stories, uh, an appendix people can access on my website, which goes much deeper into seven primary themes uh that people experience.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: The threat of being a disappointment is a huge one.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: I'll disappoint someone, and we don't do things as a result, I'll be a disappointment.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: The threat of saying no when you feel the pressure, you've got to do something you don't want to do, but you can't say no because it's too threatening.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Those kinds of things that so limit us, they so limit us, and we sabotage ourselves and our dreams and our hopes, and really get in the way of our own destiny, I believe, in that way.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: Yep, I understood.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: So, Doctor, as you as you know, many many people nowadays feel like they have one food on the gas pedal and one food on the brake pedal, like at the same time, right?
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably many of us.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: So, why why does trying harder never never seem to fix this uh internal conflict?
26:51
SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate that question, the way you put it.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: So, when we want to do, let's say, let's say I have a tendency to get explosive, I get really angry easily, okay?
27:03
SPEAKER_00: And I want to be calm.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: So, my protective behavior is my anger.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: I like this, I go into conflict right away.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: That's not it's losing friends, people don't lie, it's it's not how I want to be, but it happens.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: So it's bang, it just happens.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: And I want to be calm.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: So let's say I feel it, I become aware that I do the anger because it protects me from being seen and being visible.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: That way, people don't really see what I'm hiding inside of me.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: And I feel safer that way, even though there's no safety in it, it's just the it's a it's a push away.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm pushing away that person that's causing me this distress.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And let's say instead I want to make calm and I want to engage.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: So I think to myself, I get very clear, okay, I'm gonna really stay calm.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: And somebody triggers something in me, my learning that causes it.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: And I want to stay calm, so I put my foot on the gas, uh, take it off, I take it off the gas.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: I want to get it off because I'm gonna pull it off.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: But then another part of me goes, no, no, no, no, no.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: No, you can't do that.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: You cannot, you must keep it down on the gas, and that way there is no break.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Now let's imagine I'm in a conflict, somebody starts verbally abusing me, putting me down, and I want to say, stop, that's it.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not gonna tolerate that.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: I respect myself, and I'm not gonna do that.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: But you can't do that.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: That's your foot is now on the gas brake.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: You want to put your foot on the gas.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I want to say no, stop.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: I will not tolerate that.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: But you learn that if you do that, you're in great danger.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: Great danger.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And so your foot goes, your brain learned that, if foot goes on the brake.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: That's by the way, is very hard on the engine when you have your foot on the brake while you have your foot on the gas.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: Not only hard on the engine, it's hard on your body.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: It enormous amount of distress it causes.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: It affects you your inflammatory system, your immune system, it causes high blood.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it I could go through the list of chronic ailments related to this, but I gotta do this.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: In other words, putting my foot on the gas while simultaneously putting my foot on the brake.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: That process right there is hard on the engine that we call the body.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: And the way to free yourself from that is to understand what's the brake all about?
29:35
SPEAKER_00: What is it that is threatening about doing this and bringing that to awareness and updating that learning and updating that learning?
29:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yep.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: Also, um people use like many people use, I assume, uh the breathing exercises uh to manage their anxiety.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: So, why do these methods only manage symptoms, but instead of fixing the root cause?
30:04
SPEAKER_01: Like violent symptoms.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Those are all of those techniques of like of managing symptoms, they're important.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: They're not to be diminished.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: They're you know, breathing techniques, relaxing, thinking positive thoughts, uh uh distracting yourself.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: These are all ways of taking care of yourself.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Or afterwards, you got a lot of stress, you go and do a workout.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't recommend drinking bourbon, but you go and do a workout.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: And and and many people do, they turn to alcohol as a way to do that.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: So all of that gets relief.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: You get relief.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: But it's like getting insight and understanding.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: But that's all you're doing is getting relief.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: The cause of the problem still lies deep within your brain, and unless you deal with that, it will continue to be a source of act, you'll continue to get you'll get triggered.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: And so you have to keep doing these relaxation and which are once again not to be ignored, but real clear, they don't change anything, you just get relief.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's all.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: It's like I get a headache, I take an aspirin.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: Then you go, you take an aspirin, you get a relief, and then you go bang your head against a wall.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it's like, what?
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you stop banging your head against a wall?
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Nah, I'd better take an aspirin.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, yeah, it's a strange metaphor, but it's kind of what it is.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: Also, um often uh people do blame themselves for um that people pleasing or what it calls people imposter syndrome.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: So, how does it help when we view this behavior as a protection rather than uh like personal flaws?
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: I know that self-blame and self-deprecating process well because I did it for many years.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: When I couldn't make the changes I wanted to make, it must be my problem.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Something's wrong with everybody else's.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: I didn't it's me.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: The problem is me.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm have a character flaw.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: So when you become aware of that, there's a it you begin to see, now wait a minute.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: If this is something my brain is doing because of its survival bias, you begin to realize one, you're not your brain.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Vadim, you're not your brain, I'm not my brain, like I'm not my heart.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: I have a heart, I have a gut, I am, you know, I have a pancreas, but I'm not those things, and I'm not my brain.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: So I can change my brain, but I have to be aware of it.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: So getting down on oneself is also a self-protective mechanism.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Self-deprecating talk.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm no good, what's wrong with me?
33:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm just this, yeah, people, yeah, no wonder they don't like me.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: That's self-protection.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: We're actually, it's strange as it may sound, that language is a self-protective process.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: And when people become aware of it and look at what is really the pain that is driving all of this, it's always in the past, it's always buried in the unconscious, and it always is used by the brain to protect it's going to happen again today, given a stimulus coming in that the brain registers.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: It's just fascinating that way.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: And we, I mean, I do hear, I mean, I in practice a long time, and I do hear the painful stories.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: I know them myself from my own experience and my own inner.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: To know that I can free myself by updating learnings in the past that I didn't know I learned and I sure didn't do it voluntarily is true freedom.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: It it it's I don't know how to describe it, but it's like I feel a sense of control of my own destiny as much as one can control anything.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: At least I can do something about my experience of the world.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to be a victim of it.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: I can express the freedom of being my deeper self rather than the protective self that I've lived with for so long.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: And it's still there, it's not gonna go away.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: But I know what it's about and I can free myself from it in its grip.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:42
SPEAKER_03: Um in your book, um one second, yeah.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: So um in your book uh Living a Trigger Free Life, you outline a five-step transformation process.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: And uh the question is what makes this approach different from uh standard self-help?
35:06
SPEAKER_01: What can a person expect when when starting it?
35:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Standard self-help, there's a lot to be said first.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: There's thousands of books written, and they do provide a benefit in the sense of helping people understand themselves.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Um there's a big thing about re reprogramming the subconscious.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And yes, you can reprogram your subconscious, but what's really driving all the problems and symptoms is the unconscious.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: And then and the difference here is we're two things.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: One is that you go into that which you fear, that which you don't want to feel, you don't avoid the feeling, you go into the feeling, you experience it in a safe way, you know, but you experience the feeling, and then you allow what that feeling means in terms of a threat.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: If I do this, then this is going to happen to me.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And I found five primary threats rejection, abandonment, engulfment, people taking over, betrayal, and physical in endanger.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: I'll be hit, I'll be physically abused if I do this.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: When people really get down to that.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: So it's not just talking about it, it's actually experiencing it.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: And then articulating the threat.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: Actually writing it down.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: I just finished writing down the threat for the gentle for the person I just talked to you about.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: I wrote he wrote down the threat.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna observe it for two weeks in real time and validate its emotional resonance.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: It felt true to him, and let's see what you do when it comes up.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Because he withdraws, he procrastinates, he avoids standard protective mechanisms.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: The second thing is that you create a prediction correction statement.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: You look at your life and say, wait a minute, like he did.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Wait, wait a minute.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: I've done this many times.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: I've accepted compliments from people, and no one has judged me or turned their back on me.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: I've said no, and people didn't.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: I've told my friends what I want, and they didn't laugh at me or judge me or say, Who do you think you are?
37:35
SPEAKER_00: I didn't do that.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: And so you the second thing you do is you do the blue-tail that I talked about.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: You pair the anxiety, you actually activate it, the threat, with them, and that this is what is unique about what is called memory reconsolidation, is the pairing of the mismatch so that the brain has to update itself.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: So, first it isn't avoiding a feeling, it's yielding to the feeling, it's saying, Oh, I'm feeling this pain, and this is what this pain means.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: And then you can trust evolution that if you bring in the contradiction statement, the information, then the brain will update itself, and then you can receive the benefits of that, which is uh updating that learning and the freedom from its tyranny that's been affecting your life.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the those are two big differences.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: We don't avoid the feeling, we engage it.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: You you are with it, and then you bring this in simultaneously at the same time.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: But you make it conscious.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: Make it conscious, yeah.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and Dr.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: The question, you you you found your five uh that five uh five-step uh transformation process.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: Um uh you found it out of your experience.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: You're uh it's everything from your from your clients and uh everything from my clients.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: I I did learn it, uh a modification of it in a book called by Bruce Ecker called Unlocking the Emotional Brain.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: It's a very really good book for therapists, and also at the weekend, but also my own experience in translating clinical language into everyday language for people.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: Here's the five steps you can do.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And so simplifying it with examples, that was my primary focus.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: It's the same outcome, same process, but I just laid out five steps that this, this, this, this, and this is what you do.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: Plus, when people start doing this, the world stays, they've changed.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: The world looks different to them.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: And people may even comment, and I've had people say this to me.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: Their friends will say, You seem different.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
39:58
SPEAKER_00: Or family members will say, gee, you never were so clear.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: Boy, what's what's wrong with you?
40:04
SPEAKER_00: In other words, people become uncomfortable because they're used to you being a certain way.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, you ain't that way anymore.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: You're more expressive, you're more open.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're more quiet, you're not as explosive, maybe you're more patient.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: And they're used to being just the opposite, being in your protective mode.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: And they go, What's wrong with you?
40:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm fighting me to people ask me, What's wrong with me?
40:29
SPEAKER_00: You're not, you're you're not the same person.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: And I, in the book, I give ideas on how you deal with that pattern shift in relationships.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: It's really important to deal with it, to to to acknowledge it and just that to strengthen it in that way.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: So that's the that's the funniest thing.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's the other part is different about self-help.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Self-help books don't tell you what to do after you make the change and the impact on the pattern shift that's going to happen in your relationships.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: It can be very disorienting for people.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:01
unknown: Right.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: And it means you've changed.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: When it happens, it means you're making a change.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that wonderful?
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: So oh yeah, 100%.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Doctor.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for so much of information.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: So much of the question.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: So well for me.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: Great questions.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: Really.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: And the last uh question for today uh where can uh people uh go to buy your new book and uh where can they learn more about uh your work online or yeah, I'm uh my website www.brinderoche.com.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh if they buy the book, it's you can get it.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: Most bookstores can order it from uh uh Ingrid Sparks, but you can order online from Amazon in digital information format.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't have an audit auditory audio version of it because it's just too complex.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: And I had drawings in it about what's happening in the brain so that the schematics kind of lay it out for those people that like to see drawings and not just words.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Um so those that's where they can get it.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: And um, there's an appendix with it that made the book too thick.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Seven really extensive clientic stories.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: That's an appendix to it that I give the link in the book, and they can just go to the link and download those stories.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh the stories that are the most common for all of us, and how these people resolve them for themselves.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: So good, good.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay, guys, Dr.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: Brian DeRoche was with us today.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Doctor, so much for your time today and everybody.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: Yep, everybody.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: Bye bye.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: Bye bye.