It's your friend Mel Robbins, and I am here with the remarkable Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Her new book is The New Menopause, and she is an expert in women's hormones health. So you've now got this estrogen deficiency.

Well, not zero. Menopause is zero.

But still, it's a lot lower. But I'm saying it's so I want you to pay attention to what Dr. Haver is about to explain to you, because your body has been experiencing mild symptoms of this for your entire life. You just probably thought it was whatever. But this is the symptoms of a drop of estrogen. How is estrogen helping your body and your organ system run in the most optimal way?

Efficient manner. Okay. The first half of our cycle, so you have a period, the first day you bleed is day one of your cycle. That's your shedding and starting over. So in those first 14 days, we call that the follicular phase. So that's when our follicles, which are the little sacs that our eggs sit in, start saying, Okay, one of us is going to win. So 100, 200 of them are like, It's a race. The hormones are starting to, Okay, the brain's like, Our estrogen's low. Let's go, let's go. Estrogen starts to rise, and then that lining starts to thicken up again, getting ready for a potential baby. Then we hit about day 14-ish, depending on the cycle, and then the estrogen level is at its highest. The brain is like, Okay, we need to ovulate. The LH surges, and that's the thing that makes the egg pop, and that one or two eggs come out.

And then when the egg pops, the popping also creates a little surge of estrogen.

It's just a little bit more. And then progesterone starts being produced where that egg came out from. That's a really efficient factory for creating progesterone. Then that progesterone starts rising in that second half, you're very slight, but it's there, mimicking what's to come when we totally lose our estrogen.

And so in the second half of this month and this cycle, as the estrogen starts to decline, what happens in your body?

Some women suffer horribly from it, but we have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, PMDD, bloating, swelling. Now, we think the bloating and swelling is from the really high progesterone levels. That drop of estrogen, our mental mental health changes.

How does it change our mental health when you have a decline in estrogen?

There's a lot of research going on right now, but we know that tons of estrogen receptors in the brain and our serotonin is affected.

How does estrogen and serotonin play?

It looks like when your estrogen levels are optimal at a nice healthy level, we have really efficient serotonin and norepinephrine. Those are two key hormones that we see in depression. They're It's low in women who are depressed. For women who are sensitive to it, that we're seeing the PMS, the PMDD, those women tend to do okay on a SSRI for a short term. They only take it two weeks out of the month, or some of them like to take it every month. But it really is from that estrogen decline. We see menstrual migraine headaches. Some women with a declining estrogen, the blood vessels will slightly squeeze in certain areas of the brain, which will trigger a migraine headache.

Wait Wait a minute. Migraine headaches.

There's menstrual migraines.

You also can feel a slump in terms of depressive symptoms or anxious symptoms because of the decrease in estrogen? That's what we think. I would imagine brain fog, ADHD, all of these other neurodivergent issues that people might have also then see an impact from the decline in estrogen?

There's a definite pickup worsening with people with known ADHD through the menopause transition, perimenopause into menopause. We don't really know if it's a new diagnosis of ADHD or she was making it until perimenopause. Because it's a spectrum. Then all of a sudden, her resilience against this has stopped because she's lost her estrogen, her testosterone, however that fits in for her. All of a sudden, she's now so symptomatic. At the time in her life that she needs those facilities to be functioning at all levels. Career women are having to leave their jobs. We're seeing massive economic impact from this in the workforce.

What I love about the fact that people are researching this is that knowing that it's a neurodivergent condition and that there are estrogen receptors in the brain, whether you're talking about the second half of the monthly cycle or you're talking about the period in your life where estrogen declines, that of course-Your executive functioning tanks. Yes. Of course it makes sense. And now the system is going haywire and inflamed. It's not got the firepower to help you focus on the thing that you need to do right now. Wow, that makes so much sense. I didn't understand the fact that when estrogen declines at all of the symptoms that I was feeling, that that has to do with hormone fluctuation. What's interesting is if you were to start tracking your cycle, which everybody should do, you would probably, over the course of several months, start to notice correlation, if not a direct connection between that halfway marker of the month and when you start to feel a little foggier, when you start to feel more irritable, when you start to feel more bloated, you might notice more headaches, you might notice, which then allows you to be more compassionate with yourself.

Because I think knowing this, it will probably put symptoms in the context of how estrogen helps you feel better and what it feels like when your health is more optimal versus these symptoms that come up. Because when you feel the symptoms, you think, something's very wrong with me.

So estrogen is an anti-inflammatory hormone.

When you doctors say anti-inflammatory, I really don't know what you mean. Sure. It seems like everything is inflammatory these days. You have such a freaking unbelievably cool way of explaining things. How would you describe anti-inflammatory/inflammatory? Sure.

It's easiest to think about it in terms of acute and chronic inflammation. Acute inflammation, everybody knows. You got a virus, you twisted your ankle, You stepped on a nail. I don't know what that means. Body's response to an acute injury. What happens? You breach some barrier in your body. A virus breaches it, a nail, you twist your ankle, you have some orthopedic injury, break a bone. Immediately, your immune system goes on alert. Okay. Make this stop. We need to fix it. It rushes blood flow so things get red and swollen. It pumps fluid in the area to try to wall off whatever this invader is. Your white blood cells, which are infection fighters and inflammation, those are all in pro-inflammatory cells in our body.

Is inflammation a code word in medicine for your body is in an alarm state trying to address something? Yes. Okay, I think I got it.

It's all the little biological processes that make that happen. That's acute inflammation. Got it. We need that to stay alive.

Break a bone, boom, get to work. Inflame, go, go, go.

It hurts for a while, but then you're healed. Okay. Chronic inflammation is when that system gets turned on a little bit, it's something's not right, but it won't shut off. You You have this chronic state of things being chewed up and laid down. And estrogen calms that process down.

I think I just got this. Let me see if I can explain this back to you. So chronic inflammation, which you said is just like, something's a little off, is that feeling where you're just like, something's not right in my body. I just don't feel comfortable in my body, but I don't know what it is.

And it can affect a joint, your whole body, your Your gut, your head, your whatever. Autoimmune disease is basically nonstop chronic and acute inflammation, and it can calm down a little bit. But what that inflammatory process does is chips away at our organ systems.

Well, what I'm also wondering is if the female body and intelligent design of the month is designed based on cycles of estrogen in particular, and estrogen gets removed either because of menopause or PCOS or changing issues or surgery or whatever, that something to your body's natural process every month is wrong.

Of shutting down that inflammation?

And now your whole body is like, something's wrong. We need some estrogen down there, and the body doesn't respond. The ovaries can't do it again.

They're done.

It's like your whole body is like, whoa, broken bone. Something's wrong. What are we doing? And it races everywhere.

So in the joints, we see the Arthralgia. Just this. What's that? Arthralgia is pain in the joint.

That sounds like an ugly version of arthritis. Arthralgia. It sounds like something that you would get in one of these fantasy novels. The Arthralgia comes over the hill.

So in the heart, let's talk about the heart. When we get to this hyperinflammatory state, we see palpitations. That's sinoatrial node. There's a little node, there's a little part of the heart where it sends out a signal to control our heartbeat. It's called the SA node, sinoatrial node. That thing is super responsive to estrogen and likes estrogen and likes it, keeps it calm and beating in a night. You take estrogen away, all of a sudden, some women will start having palpitations out of nowhere.

Wow.

And they go to the cardiologist, they get their million dollar workup, and they're like, Hmm, don't know what's going on? We're not training the cardiologist to say this might be part of her menopausal picture.

And you want to know something else that I'm just like, actually, as my brain is churning and all this is starting to go click, click, click, is that if there's not comprehensive training. If there's not advocacy for what these symptoms are, then there's also no health insurance code to cover the cost of a lot of the diagnostic stuff that actually points to what is causing this.

Medicare does not pay for a menopause visit.

That's insane. What?

Yeah. Your well-women exam. That is devolved into screening for breast and cervical cancer. That's it. That 15 minutes with your legs and stirrups is not the time to do a comprehensive menopause visit. You need to schedule another visit, go in with your arm with questions. Go in with your family history and all the symptoms.

It sounds like, don't call it a menopause visit. Say, I'm having lots of symptoms, but don't call it so it gets covered.

Exactly.

Wow. Okay, so the heart, the lungs, how does estrogen impact your-Azma, inflammatory disease.

We see an increase in asthma. Actually, asthma that doesn't respond as well to the typical bronchodilators.

Well, that makes sense because it's like an internal system functioning thing Where the oil and the gas is no longer in the engine. Yeah. Wow. What about your digestive tract?

The gut health changes dramatically. And when the gut health changes and the gut microbiome changes, how we reprocess our estrogen changes a bit as well, the metabolism part of it. So lots of research going on in that area right now. Our bones, we've known forever osteoporosis. Now, what your listeners may not realize is that osteoporosis is completely preventable for most women, and they don't know how. We're not diagnosing osteoporosis, usually until you have a fracture. And 50% of women, before they die, will have an osteoporotic fracture.

So Just for somebody who's listening that doesn't know what that word means, is that fragile bones, bones density?

What does that mean? Our bones density maxes out how thick and strong our bones are. The thicker, the stronger, the more resilient to fracture they are, in general. And we're constantly remodeling our bones, which is why when we... And I'll explain that in a minute, which is why when we break them, they fix themselves if you line them up.

Interesting.

So we are constantly chewing up bone like Pac-Man and then pooping out new bone behind it.

Really? Yes.

And so we're always... The bones you were born with were not the bones you had at 10 or not the bones you have at 20. We have totally chewed up and laid down all new bone. What happens in menopause or in women with chronic suppression of ovulation, chronic low postpartum, multiple babies, we start chewing up more bone faster than we can lay it down. And that accelerates in menopause. So we end up with this porous bone with holes in it, basically. That is a lot easier to fracture. Now, if you fracture your hip, so if you're 65 plus, and that is 10 years away from us, and we fall, climbing up a ladder, chasing a grand baby, hopefully, maybe one day, no pressure to my children. We trip and we take out a hip. Even with surgical repair, we have a 29% chance of death in that first year.

If we survive- Hold on. I need everybody to hear that. This is really serious. She's basically saying bone density starts to decrease based on the decrease in estrogen- And aging. And aging. And that makes you more fragile and prone to having a broken bone. And she is also saying this is preventable. For most women. For most women. But if you fall and break a hip at the age of 65, 29% of you will die.

In the first year?

In the first year.

With surgery. Without surgery, it's like 79%. So they're all getting surgery. Yeah. Wow. So say you survive, the rest of your life is marked with chronic disability, not being able to take care of yourself, which My patients don't come in saying, I want to rock a bikini. They're looking at their mothers, they're looking at their aunts, and they're like, Get me off of this path. I don't want this. Or they're looking at a really healthy mom who's running around and is not for real, not decrepating She's taking care of herself. And they're like, Make sure I stay on this path. And that's where the work begins.

Wow. All right, we've covered bones. What else?

Genital urinary syndrome of menopause. Okay, what is that? So that's a big mouthful. It used to be called senile vagina. That was a medical term.Cenile.

Vagina?cenile.

Vagina.

Was a medical term? Yeah. It sounds like a bunch of guys got around, got really wasted.

Welcome to Western Modern medicine. Wow. In the 1950s. Then they changed it because it was so offensive to atrophic vaginitis. Again, doesn't sound much better.

No.

Our genital urinary system, the bladder, the vagina, the vulva, that whole space from your pubic bone to the end of your tailbone, just all of that area, is highly sensitive and highly estrogenized. When that estrogen level drops, we lose elasticity, we lose stretchability of the vagina, which be helpful on occasion.

Is that why sex is painful?

For most women, they have atrophic area, so they've lost their elasticity, they can't make mucus anymore. The tissue is thin. If you look at a biopsy, a premenopausal vagina, it's this thick, velvety, elastic, beautiful. Like, bring it, baby. And then this postmenopausal woman who's never been treated, it looks like the Sahara Desert. You've lost layers and layers and layers of tissue. It's very dry. It's very small. And she's just gritting her teeth through And that is because that entire- And it's horribly uncomfortable.

I'm a hiker.

And so I've got to use... Even with systemic estrogen, if I don't make sure that area is well moisturized, things might... Also, the architecture changes a little bit, so things are hanging at different levels. And so I love to hike. And so I'm going to have some chafing in things that I never had before. I need to make sure I'm getting lubrication in that area. So I can hike comfortably besides everything else I want to do in that area. And this Is... Preventable. Preventable. Yeah. Now, let's talk about how it can kill you. Recurrent UTIs. The bladder health, the urethra health, besides incontinence, the number one treatment for current UTIs in a postmenopausal woman, the most effective treatment is vaginal estrogen, not chronic antibiotics. I'm going to save someone's life by this podcast because I'm going to keep someone from dying from Eurocepsis because she got vaginal estrogen after listening to this podcast.

This is amazing. Yeah. Here's what I love about it. It makes so much sense. I love how you have explained this to us. I also love the fact that because you've explained it this way and because we've put it in the context of the month, and we've put it in the context of your intelligent design and the way that you've always been running, and we've all had periods where it hasn't been running optimally, that you can also take the information that you're learning right now, where we're focused on menopause, but you can also go, Oh, I can take this information. I can share it with my sister, my girlfriend, my roommates, so that they understand that the second half of their cycle, you're starting to experience baby symptoms, or maybe they're bigger symptoms, but that this is all the same-Might be a precursor to what the bigger picture is coming.

Yes.

I am going to send this episode to every single woman I know. I am sending this to my daughters. So as we take a quick pause, hear a word from our sponsors, take a moment and share this to people, because I want this information out to absolutely everyone, because every single woman on the planet, every girl, needs to understand what is going on in her body and the role that estrogen plays in her overall health. You never know. You could truly not only improve somebody's life, you might actually save somebody's life. In my incredible year course, which we did in January, you're so fit in just your A sports bra. Did I actually wear a sports bra while teaching a class? Was that a thing? Jesus, Mel. That is like, maybe I just posted a video about something. I don't know. And I happened to be in a sports bra. What do you do to look so good? I want to know your secrets. Well, it's funny that you're asking me about this right now because I had surgery 26 days ago. So I have not exercised in 26 days, and I'm so happy because I hate exercising.

So it has been wonderful to have a surgery to be able to blame my procrastination and lack of desire for exercising on. So first of all, I'm 52 years old, everybody, and I have never looked better. I've never been healthier. And so age is just a number. It doesn't matter how unhealthy you've been or how many times you've gone up or down, or you've been in a good routine or not in a good routine. What's so cool about your mind and your body is that it is... You can change it. And all of the science shows that your mind is like a living network, and you can plow new neural pathways in your brain, and so you can change your attitude about things. And you absolutely can change your body. So a couple of things about secrets for me. Number one, I think the best secret to having a healthy life is being a happy person. So So my attitude about life, my gratitude, my optimism, my positive nature, that is a huge factor for why I'm such a healthy person. In fact, when I got my surgery at the beginning of March, it was like a five hour surgery, and my outcome was incredible, and I healed super quickly.

The doctor said, it is a thousand % because of your attitude. So the mind-body connection in terms of health is super important. Second thing, my husband has a saying, I'm sure he heard it from somewhere else. Your abs are made in the kitchen. Your strength is made in the kitchen. If you're putting shit in your body, it doesn't matter how much you work out at the gym. Seriously. So take a look at what you're eating. Are the foods that you're eating something that are really working for you? Because you know what it feels like after you've exercised or after you've had a really clean, healthy meal versus what it feels like after you've had a double at Five Guys, and the large fries, and the shake. It feels great going down. It feels like once it's in you. And so I like to think about health the way I think about my car. I would not put sand and gravel in my car's fuel tank. And when you eat like crap, you're putting sand and gravel in your own fuel tank, and your body's got to process that stuff. So clean eating, super important. And I'm one of these people where I'm everything in moderation.

So I'm not gluten-free, I'm not dairy-free. I just do organic when we can, locally sourced whenever we can. And I always just have a salad, I have a protein, and I have a vegetable. The other thing is exercise. When I am healthy, I do move my body every day, whether it's an hour long yoga class that I stream online or taking the dog for a walk outside. I always try to move my body every day, and I do that because I have a commitment to wanting to live a really long and healthy life. And I think the final thing is that the healthier and happier I am, the more boring I am. I don't go out a lot. Maybe it's because I'm never invited anywhere, but I don't go out a lot. I don't go to parties a lot. I love my life. I'm a homebody. I love getting a good night's sleep. The main thing, though, is happiness, and it's making a decision to be healthy with your habits. That's what it takes, a commitment to yourself. We started this episode by talking about self-love. I think one of the ways that you show that you love yourself is by making healthy choices, because change doesn't happen by chance.

You're not going to get healthy as a side effect of something. You're going to get healthy, and you're going to change because you choose to. And yeah, it is going to require you to create new habits and have a little bit of discipline, and maybe not down a pint of Ben and Jerry's while you're sitting in front of the TV. But what's on the other side of that is waking up every day and feeling good in your body and feeling proud of yourself and having the energy and the vibrancy in your body that carries you through a vibrant and energetic life. What can we do to improve our memory, Dr. Amen?

Well, improve your brain. It's the most important thing. It's 50 %. I mean, think about this, Mel. 50 % of people, 85 and older, will be diagnosed with dementia. Those are odds I am not okay with. And if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And I know we don't have time to go in it, but the mnemonic I have is bright mind. So for example, maybe the most important thing, B, is for blood flow. Whatever you can do to increase blood flow, to to your brain, you're going to be happier, your memory is going to be better, and you're going to be more sexual because whatever is good for your brain, good for your heart, is good for your genital.

So is that the brisk walking?

So you want to avoid things that steal blood flow, caffeine, nicotine, being sedentary, having any form of heart disease. And then you want to do things that enhance blood flow. So walking, raw cacao, beets, the supplement Gingo. These things all increase blood flow. Cinnamon, oregano, Wow.

Okay. I want to hear the R, though. Bright mind. I know that there's 11, but give me two or three of them.

The R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. So constantly engage in new learning. The I is inflammation. But the one maybe to talk about more is the T. It's toxins. And we live in a toxic society. Here I am in Florida. I just talked about all the fish on the Coast in Florida. On average, they have seven pharmaceuticals in their tissues. But just the products you put on your body. I have all of my patients download the app, Think Dirty. It allows you to scan all of your personal products, and it'll tell you on a scale of 1-10 how quickly they're killing you. Oh, my God. We saw this year that the FDA took off a number of sunscreens off the market because they were associated with cancer. How horrifying is that? You're thinking you're protecting yourself from cancer. The toxic products are giving you cancer. So think dirty. But also we have to stop thinking of alcohol as a health food. It's not. It's toxic to your brain. Or marijuana is innocuous. It's not. It damages your brain. And it's these little lies in our society that is really promoting the disease we are just flooded with.

So you've been a psychiatrist for 40 years. What are five things you'd never do because it's bad for your mental health and your brain health?

Well, I never believe every stupid thing I think. And I think that's really important to know, I'm going to I have these crazy, stupid, awful thoughts, and I know how to manage and dismiss them. I would never say everything, I think. Some people come to me and say, Oh, Dr. Amen, I'm brutally honest. And I'm like, Well, that's usually not helpful. Relationships require... I would never purposely stay up late and screw up my sleep. I would never eat everything I want. And I would never take medicine just based on symptom clusters. Like, I'm depressed, so take an antidepressant. So I think that's all insane. I always want to look at the brain and then target whatever treatment I need to have somebody's brain's emotional.

Yeah. The one thing I forgot to ask you because right now, as you and I are talking, we've just turned the clocks back. But this This time of year, when it gets darker earlier and it's colder, I notice my mood drops and I feel sad. What do you do, whether it's because of the time of year or because of chronic stress, you feel this languishing or heaviness set in? What are three things that you would recommend that somebody do to boost their mood?

So morning bright light. I think that can be really helpful. So a bright light therapy lamp for 20 or 30 minutes in the morning. Exercise, don't overdo the caffeine. And it's really important. We haven't talked about this yet. Turn off blue light when the sun goes down.

What is blue light?

Constantly constantly flooded with blue light. And in the morning, it's fine. But after dark, it's not because it decreases the production of melatonin. So you get it from your laptop, or you get it from your phone, or you get it from whatever gadgets. You you might be looking at. And so after dark, either put blue light blockers on your gadgets or just turn them off and go read a book.

Okay, great. And I also didn't ask you this, how do you know if your dopamine levels are low?

If you're tired, if you're unmotivated, if you can't concentrate, and you find yourself more impulsive than it's good for you.

And finally, let's bottom line, because you are the master at Elite Brain Training. Training. If you could leave everyone with just one thing that you would like them to start doing today to create better brain health, what would it be?

It's that mother tiny habit. It's whenever you come to a decision point in your day, just ask yourself, and what I'm doing, good for my brain or bad for it. And if you can answer that with information and love, I'm serious about this, love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason you're on Earth, you're going to start making good decisions for your brain, and then everything in your life will be better.

Dr. Hyman, you just said something that really struck me, which is that every single one of us, our bodies, has an intelligence Intelligent healing system built into it. And I immediately thought about the fact that we all know instinctively that if you cut your hand, your body knows how to heal itself. Exactly.

You don't have to go to the doctor to get a prescription to heal your hand. It just knows what to do.

Yeah. And so can you just expand upon that for somebody who has never considered that concept, that your body is designed, when you know how to take care of it, to heal itself, what the hell does that even mean?

It's really incredible. I mean, I literally get to be the witness to miracles every day. And people who are either wanting to just optimize their health and live a long, healthy life, or people who have end-stage diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, dementia, whatever it is, ADD, depression. When you know how the body works, you can learn how to optimize its function, which is what we call it functional medicine. Then you get rid of the stuff that's impairing our ability to function properly, and you put in the stuff that the body needs to thrive. You take out the impediments to health, you put in the ingredients to health. The body knows what to do. That's what happened. Why is there no more asthma in that story we just heard? Why is there no more pain? Why is her life totally transformed? She said, I didn't know if food had anything to do with what I was feeling. Well, most people don't connect the dots between what they're doing in their life, whether it's what they're eating or the toxins they're exposed to or the stress they're under, the lack of sleep they're getting, or the fact that they may not move their bodies or learn how to...

All these things, they don't know how that's impacting them. They don't know how close they are to feeling good. We're literally only a few days, not weeks or months, from feeling better.

Okay, hold on. We're only a few days away from feeling better.

Yes, it's really remarkable. I take people all over the world. I put them in these groups. We do these programs around in the world, and longevity programs, detox programs. And we change our diet. We move them a little bit, a little bit of yoga. Not like running a marathon, but just gentle exercise, some simple body practices. And within six days, the average person reduces their symptoms from all diseases by 70 %.

Wait, what?

Yeah. I've done this so many times, and I'm like, I even shock myself because whether you have migraines, or irritable bowel, or depression, or insomnie, or joint pain, or fatigue, or brain fog, whatever the stuff you're feeling. And I call it the FLC syndrome, which means-What's FLC? When you feel like crap. There's a more serious version of that called FLS.

Feel like shit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know what's interesting is that I think about... We're constantly looking at what people DM us and what they fill out in the forms at melrobbins. Com. And I've started to wonder If part of the problem is that so many of us are used to feeling like shit.

Yeah, we don't know how better we can feel. We don't have any insight because we've never... It's like you have an elephant standing in your foot your whole life. You don't know what it feels like when the element gets off until it gets off. Then people have the insight. I've written many books about how to do this. In my new book, Young Forever, I explain how to do this. I've written a book called The 10-Day Detox Diet, which is really what I used in my patients to help reset autoimmune disease, reset the gut, turn off inflammation, get rid of asthma, migrate, whatever it is. People are suffering from depression because we know now depression is inflammation in the brain.

Okay, I'm going to stop you right there because I want to go point by point because I can feel... Can you just hear Dr. Hyman winding up? I'm just winding up. He is so excited. This is a 63-year-old man with a six-pack for abs in the best shape of his life who has just written, Young Forever: The Secrets to Living your Longest Healthiest Life. And this is a book not about living to 170. This is a book about truly maximizing the years that you do have. Being energetic, being strong, being vital, having your presence of mind, being able to tap into the full opportunity of your life. And so I want to back up a couple steps because we were talking about the fact that your work in functional medicine As a medical doctor, decades of work with patients, of research, the books that you've written. We are going to link to all of this, everybody. So I know people are like, What was that 10 day detox? It will be in the show notes. Don't you worry, we got you covered. But I want to back up a minute because you talked about the fact that our bodies are designed to heal.

And so I want to give people a metaphor to start to think about because you've already started talking about food and that we don't stop and think about the The fact that the environment that we live in and the things that we stick in our mouth and put into our body and the stress that we endure are all things that we can change for the better that have a material demonstrated impact on the quality of your health to the point where if you take this seriously within six days, you will feel better.

What's so amazing, Mel, is that every cell in your body, your DNA, your microbiome, which are the bugs that live in your gut, your immune system. Everything is listening to your thoughts. Everything is responding to your environment in real-time. We call it the exposome. Your life is not predetermined by some genetic destiny. It's the life and the exposome, which is all the sum total of all the experiences you've had, all the toxins, all the thoughts, all the relationships, all the food you eat, everything, washing over your biology, creating the expression of who you are in this moment. That's a very empowering idea because it's just something that just didn't happen to you. You can actually be empowered to understand what those things are and change them and radically reverse your biological age, your health problems, your mental health, because the body has this incredible healing system, as we said.

Wow. Okay. So what a good metaphor, and maybe you have a better one, but I keep thinking about, if you think about the fact that a car, brand new car is designed to drive. It needs fuel, though. So So if you want to take care of your car, you put in the fuel that doesn't have a bunch of crap in it, or you plug your car in, and you drive one of these electric cars. I think a lot about food as the fuel. And if your car drives best on electricity or gas, you would never put sand in your gas tank because it would clog it up. And so is that a metaphor to get you thinking about how-It's even more exciting. What is it?

It's more exciting than that because, yes, food is fuel. It's energy. You need it to run your body. But there's all this other stuff in food that we've ignored besides calories. And it's the informational molecules in food. Because food is not just calories, it's information, it's instructions, it's code that upregulates your biology or downregulates it every single bite. It changes your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome. Literally everything is changed in real time by what you're eating. It's the informational molecules, the medicinal molecules in food that are speaking to us and changing everything about how we feel. Most people don't connect their food and their mood or their food and their asthma, or their food and their irritable bowel, or their food and their migraines, or their food and their depression, or their food and depression. I have a great story of a patient who was having horrible panic attacks. Yes. And this was a guy who was He's chubby, had a big belly. So I knew right away he was insulin resistant, prediabetic, and probably had big swings of blood sugar and insulin.

Okay, stop. So are you talking about that pregnant belly that dudes get? Yeah. Okay, so when I see a dude with a big solid basketball, I'm like, beer gut. But what do you see?

Well, it's beer because it's sugar or it could be sugar or bread or pasta or potatoes or rice or anything that's starchy and sugary will cause that belly fat.

So is that like, you know how when you put yeast in bread and it ferment and it starts to rise? Not quite.

It's actually fat.

That's actually fat. It's not just gas. Okay.

And so this guy was telling me how he would have these horrible panic attacks. He felt like he was dying. Part was palpitating, he was sweating, he couldn't breathe, he felt anxious. Where I was going, I said, Wow, what happens after that? He said, Well, I drink a can of Coke and it goes away. I'm like, Oh, you have hypoglycemia, right? Your blood sugar was crashing. When that does. So you get into a life-threatening emergency. Your body doesn't know that you can go to the grocery store and get something, you think you got to go get food immediately. So it's really anxiety and panic attacks can be caused by many things, but one of them is huge fluctuations in blood sugar. And we see this all the time.

I could listen to you all day because you know what? It makes so much sense. It does seem complicated when you're in the thick of it, but the way you explain it, it does seem so simple.

In one way, it's overwhelmingly complicated science. I get it. But in another way, if you really understand that science, it leads to really simple, obvious, concrete solutions.

Because our audience is so hungry, tell me what to do. Dr. Palmer, tell me what to do. And I know ever since your work has become public and the institute at Harvard and McClane has been announced and you've been appearing on podcasts, I know that People from around the world are calling and begging you to work with them, and you are under an avalanche of people who just want your help. I understand why, because you are offering You are offering something that feels accessible. You are offering stories of hope. I realize that this is not medical advice, but given that you've got thousands of people that call you every week begging you for medical advice, is it possible for you to give a broad stroke recommendation for people to follow for one month, for 21 days?

For people who are suffering from mild to moderate disorders, Their safety is not in danger. They have not been suicidal. They haven't tried to hurt themselves or anyone else. They're not hallucinating or delusional. If I had to give generic advice, what What's the highest bang for the buck? I would say, Try a ketogenic diet for three months, and then we'll see how it goes. We actually have a tremendous amount of science on the ketogenic diet. Most people know the keto diet is a fad diet, a weight loss diet, a dangerous diet. Unbeknownst to most people, the ketogenic diet was developed over 100 years ago by a physician for It was one and only one purpose. It was not weight loss. It was to actually stop seizures. The ketogenic diet is now an evidence-based treatment. We have lots of randomized, controlled trials. We have gold standard meta-analyses in the medical literature proving that this is effective, it is reputable, it is legitimate. The ketogenic diet Diet is an evidence-based treatment for treatment-resistant epilepsy. What that means is that if somebody has seizures and medications don't stop their seizures, or even brain surgery doesn't stop their seizures, the ketogenic diet can often work in a way that medications and even brain surgery may not have worked for those people.

Why?

That's the beautiful thing for my research. We have decades decades of research looking at the ketogenic diet, trying to figure out how on earth does this diet stop seizures when our great pills didn't? What is going on here? And so we know that the ketogenic diet is changing, is having profound effects on the brain function. It's changing neurotransmitters, it changes gene expression, it decreases brain inflammation and body inflammation as well. Central to In my thesis, it actually improves mitochondrial function, which in a nutshell means it's improving metabolism, and in particular, brain metabolism. One of the great things about the ketogenic diet Diet, when it's used for epilepsy, is that people don't have to do it for life. Most often people only need to do it for 2-5 years.

That actually, quote, unquote- That sounds like a long time, honestly. Two to five I'm not going to say this, but what is it? Because you guys say keto this, keto that, keto ketosis, or whatever the hell the words are. What is the keto? What am I eating? Walk me through a day of being on the keto diet.

So the keto diet in a That shell is very low in carbohydrates, moderate in protein, and high in fat. So what you would eat if you were doing a ketogenic diet, again, I want to even set the stage. There are vegan Vegetarian versions of a ketogenic diet, vegetarian versions, omnivore versions, where you're eating both animal-sourced and plant-sourced food, and even carnivore versions of this diet, where all you're eating is meat and eggs and stuff like that.

So this is very inclusive, everybody. But let's just say you and I are going to breakfast, lunch, and dinner today. What are we ordering?

So what I might eat if I were eating a ketogenic diet, I am an omnivore. I eat both animal-sourced and plant-sourced foods. I would wake up and I might have eggs eggs, and bacon or sausage or some meat.

Let's go. Sounds like Sunday brunch, Dr. Palmer.

I might add extra butter. If I need more fat, I might add extra butter to the eggs. So some people might look at me making my eggs thinking, Why are you putting all that butter in your scramble eggs? And I would say, Because I need the extra fat. For lunch and dinner, similar meals, I would I would probably have a protein source. So that could be steak, chicken, salmon, poultry. And I would have low carb vegetables. So that could include broccoli, spinach, any lettuces, cauliflower, cucumber, pickles, things like that. I would take my pick. When I prepared those vegetables, I would I put extra sources of fat on those vegetables. So I would put olive oil and plain vinegar, so that might be my serving. I might emphasize nuts and avocados because those are very high in fat and typically thought of as healthy sources of fat.

So how long would you suggest that somebody, if they're going to start with the ketogenic diet, how long should you try it? And what would you look out for Dr. Palmer, to know that it's actually impacting you in a positive way?

I would recommend getting some information on a well-formulated ketogenic diet. So you want to do it right. You want to include enough healthy types of foods. People sometimes need extra electrolytes, like sodium, potassium, magnesium, when they get started on the diet. And nonetheless, there's this thing called It's a keto adaptation phase or keto flu. So the first week or two in particular can be very rough. I'm just going to let people know. People can feel weak, hungry, hungry, dizzy, irritable, other things. Really? Why? Because they're basically withdrawing from sugar or carbohydrates. More importantly, their body is trying to do this shift from burning primarily on to running on a combination of carbohydrates and fats as fuel sources. And for some people, that can be an easier transition. For others, it can be a more difficult transition.

So let's just say you get the keto flu. We're now on the other side of the keto flu. We're starting to perk up, what are you going to feel, and how do you know if it's working?

The first thing that most people will start to feel is an antidepressant effect. And so they will start to notice that they just feel lighter. They have a little more energy. Their brain starts working a little better. Some people might notice that their sleep is feeling more restorative. So if there's somebody who usually has to use an alarm, push the snooze button several times, they might start to notice that it's easier to wake up in the morning. They get going faster than normal. Some people will notice, if you're a power lifter, for instance, or a weight lifter, you will notice a decline in your ability to lift weights for about two months, and it will come back. For people using this for mental health, it's usually not a lifelong diet. What? A lot of people will do it for one to five years. They actually reinvigorate their metabolism, or most importantly, what that means to me is that they're improving their mitochondrial health. And that actually can then persist so that you've actually done some healing work on your body. And so that if you go back to a wholefood, still a healthy diet, I'm not encouraging people to go back to a junk food diet with a lot of processed foods.

But if they go If they start adding back carbohydrates, even complex carbohydrates, whole grains or potatoes and other things, they may do extraordinarily well. And again, I want to be clear, I don't necessarily I'm in the ketogenic diet for everyone. Not everybody needs it. Some people can just get rid of the junk food and the processed foods. Some people can just get rid of the extra sugar in their diet and do spectacularly well. So they might do on a paleo diet or- Whole30. A Wholefood Whole30 or a vegetarian or vegan, whole food plant-based diet. There are lots of options.

Okay, great. So eating healthy. What's the next step in your brain energy protocol?

Try to exercise a little more than you're currently doing.

Is that all I have to do? If I'm doing zero, are you talking one day of resistance training is enough, or would you want to see me out three days?

If you're doing zero, do anything. So if you did one day of resistance training a week, but you did most of your major muscle groups, and you did it to the point of failure, that would be more than enough. I love it. But you've got to go to failure. If you're only going to work out once a week, you've got to go to failure. We need to build those muscles, which means you're not just going to lift it a couple of times and say, I'm tired. You're going to go until you can't go anymore. Just one set, but you're going to go until you can't go anymore. But it could be just taking a walk after dinner every night. If you can do it every night, it doesn't have to be a long walk. It could be a 10-minute walk Whatever. Just get out of the house. Get away from a screen. Walk around the block. The third thing, I want you to prioritize sleep.

How much do I need?

You need at least seven or eight hours. The ideal The way to know if you're getting adequate sleep is, are you able to get out of bed reasonably okay? Or are you pushing the snooze button? Are you exhausted? Are you dragging yourself out of bed. If you're dragging yourself out of bed, you're not getting enough sleep. You should be able to wake up and get out of bed, and it should not be torture. If it's torture, you're not getting enough sleep. Your body's begging you to stay You want to stay in bed. Well, you need more sleep. Go to bed earlier. That's the solution. You're probably waking up for a reason because you have to be somewhere, like work or school at a certain time. That means you need I decided to go to bed an hour or two hours or whatever earlier that night, the night before. So get your ass in bed. Turn off the television, the computer, whatever. Go to bed. Try to get more sleep. Reduce your use of harmful substances. That means alcohol. If you're really struggling with a mental health condition, give me three months off alcohol. I'm not asking I'm not asking for a lifetime.

I'm not asking for forever. Three months off alcohol because we're trying to give your brain a chance. If you were a professional athlete training for a marathon, your coach would tell you no alcohol, none, zero, zero tolerance. If you were training for the Olympics, your coach would tell you, Zero alcohol. I don't want to hear it. Guess what else? No marijuana, no CPD, no smoking, no vaping. None. Period. End of story. Don't argue. Don't talk back. Just don't do it. Don't do those things. Why? Because they're all negatively impacting your brain metabolism. Your brain metabolism is begging for help. We see it in the symptoms that you're exhibiting. We want to give you a fighting chance. You can introduce these things again in the future when you're healthy, when you're healthier and more resilient and you can tolerate a drink every now and then. Great. But for now, while we're trying to help you heal and recover, we're going to give your brain a fighting chance. We're going to do those things. We're going to give it three months, and then we're going to see how it's going. My honest guess is if people could really do that.

It's a lot to ask, I know. People may not be able to do it all at once.

But isn't your mental health and your happiness and the vitality that you feel and the peace that you feel worth it? I mean, it's 90 measly days. The ketogenic diet, get a good night's sleep, stop drinking and smoking for 90 measly days, and take a walk every night after dinner. That's what you're asking. You're saying, based on 30 years as a Harvard psychiatrist and the world's leading expert in the brain energy theory which you created and metabolic health, This should remarkably improve the way that you feel.

It will. I'm hearing from thousands of people around the world who are doing that alone, and they feel I feel remarkably better. If it's helpful, I just want to say this. When people are really severely depressed and down and out, they will say and they will think, Why should I be alive at all? Now you're going to ask me to give up the one thing that gives me comfort, which is food or alcohol or vaping? I don't even want to be alive anyway. The only thing that gives me any bit of comfort for even 5 or 10 minutes are those things. I can't give those up. What I say, I I work with people like that all the time. What I say to those people is, I'm only asking for 90 days. I'm not asking for a lifetime. I'm saying, Do you want to try to feel better? Would you like to get out of this living hell that you are in right now? And is it worth a 90-day experiment? Almost always, I can convince people to do it. Again, they may not be able to do it all at once. So maybe we have to work on diet first and then add in some exercise and then add in, let's get you off the vaping, and then add in the sleep.

But start with the diet.

So I would start with the diet because the diet The ketogenic diet can have profound effects on mood and energy. When people just start to notice that little bit of improvement after the first or second week, that then gives them the energy to then give up the alcohol or the vaping or to start walking when they felt like they couldn't walk before. It gives them that little bit of hope. And then they add those other interventions. Nine times out of 10, when I start people on the intervention, they will say, I'm definitely stopping all this crap in 90 days. Fine, Dr. Palmer. I'll do it for 90 days, but then I'm stopping. If I get them to 90 days and they are dramatically better, they will say, There's no way in hell I can go back to that living hell that I was just in. A few of them have gotten mad at me. You tricked You tricked me. Now I'm stuck on this diet. Now I'm stuck on giving up alcohol or vaping. You tricked me. This wasn't the plan. And I'm like, But you feel better. And they're like, yes, I feel like a new person.

I can't believe I feel so good. And I'm like, Well, maybe a few years, and then you'll have more resilience, and you'll be able to add those things back. More often than not, what people find is that they feel so much better that they don't want to add those things back anymore because they realize, those things are going to make me go backwards, and I'm moving forward, finally, and I'm feeling better.

Thank you for saying that, because I know that when you're really in a dark hole and you don't think You can get better. You're being asked, for Chris, it was hitting the vape pen every day or hitting the weed pen every day or drinking bourbon, just to numb out. I didn't even realize the extent of it until the diagnosis came in, the thought of facing it without those things was terrifying. What's interesting, as I was listening to you, is I was thinking, you're not giving up weed or alcohol, you're giving up depression. Dr. Palmer, you are offering the hope, and more importantly, the medically proven results that it can work.

It can.

Any final thing you want to say? Because there's a lot of people that are going to forward this to somebody in their life who has crippling anxiety or depression, and having been in that place myself and having been married to somebody who is struggling, I'll tell you what, when you're in a dark place, you are a stubborn son of a gun. Could you speak directly to that person right now who isn't listening to their family, doesn't want to hear it, has given up hope as a Harvard psychiatrist with 30 years under your belt, having worked with thousands and thousands of people and even cured major mental illnesses with this approach? What would you say?

I think I would actually want to speak to them, not as the Harvard psychiatrist with all of those credentials that you just list, and not with all the scientific knowledge that I have that envolvents me to know that what I'm saying to you is true, that I would want to speak to that person as somebody who's been there myself, somebody who suffered relentlessly for years from crippling depression. I couldn't get out of I wanted to kill myself. I tried to kill myself several times. I could not imagine a future for myself. I really assumed that I would be dead before I turned 20. That was really all but certain in my mind, that there's no way I will be alive when I'm 20. What I would say to people is if I can get I went through that, because I really did believe that I would be dead, that I could not possibly live like this for the rest of my life. It had been going on for years since I was a young child. If I can get better, so can you. You just have to believe. If you're a skeptic, if you're doubting any of this, there's so much science to back it up.

The reality is you really can do it for 90 days, for three months. You can do it. I have patients with horrible crippling schizophrenia who can do it. I I have patients with bipolar disorder who can do it. I have patients with alcoholism and other diagnosis that can do it. If they can do it, so can you.

Dr Chris Palmer. Change in the world.Thank you.Thank you. Do you believe that the majority of breakdowns or mental health issues that we face as adults go back to the issue stress, trauma, hypervigilance that you experience during childhood?

Absolutely. And that also is to include, however, the structural brain neurological changes. This is where we can, I think, as a field, get caught in a little bit of the chicken or the egg. Because again, because stress does imprint on us biologically, genetically, a lot of us do then see or are born with even structural changes in our brain, in balances, in neurotransmitters. Again, the field is still the psychology field that is, and the medical field, if I'm being perfectly honest, is still learning, is still evolving, is still growing. It took until Within the past decade, for us to realize that one of the number one things, I'm sure maybe some listeners have heard of neurotransmitters. This idea that when you're diagnosed with a mental illness, whatever it might be, your neurotransmitters are off, a hormone in your body impacts our mood. While that is absolutely part of the story for a very long time, we located the neurotransmitter production and maintenance in our brain. Now we understand that it isn't just our brain that creates and produces and uses neurotransmitters, it is our gut. Now we have another whole part of the body that is impacted by decisions that we're making, food we're eating, pollutants that are in, toxins that are in the food that we're eating, habits around eating the food that, again, we're passed through generations.

To simply answer your question, we can't localize it to just one exact factor, in my opinion, which is why I'm such a proponent, and I shifted the way that I work and think and practice and teach into a more holistic model because it's all of it. The reality of it is there are structural changes. There are imbalances in our nervous system. There's dysregulation in our nervous system and imbalances in our neurotransmitter, I should say, that are creating then the symptoms that that are resulting in diagnosis. My hope is to take the whole picture into account and to give people the opportunity to explore the deeper underlying causes, because that's the area where we can begin to intervene by making new choices, by creating a different internal environment for ourselves, by creating a different external environment for us to live into, can then help us resolve some of those long-standing symptoms.

I'm going to give a personal example, okay? Because I think it will help people start to process where we're going to go with this conversation by thinking about this example. And I will be the, I will be the emotionally immature parent in the example, okay? So we have a daughter who has just started to talk openly about the fact that she feels very stuck in life. In her words, that she does not feel alive, that there are very few experiences happening in her day-to-day life where she feels truly alive. And the other thing, and this is a little joke, is that we say, We love you because you don't take yourself that seriously. She's really, really funny. But you take everything else seriously. So she is the typical hyper vigilant on top of everything, stressed out, got to get everything right. And when I apply your work to this situation, knowing that she's talking to a therapist, I say that as her mother, when she was born, I had severe postpartum depression. I had an incredibly traumatic birth, and I was, in your words, emotionally immature, which means I, personally, as a new mom, and just as a human being at the age of 29 or 30, I could not handle my emotions.

I screamed, I vented, I was very unpredictable. And on top of it, for the first eight weeks of her life, because the postpartum depression was so severe, Dr. Nicole, and I was so heavily medicated because it was dangerous situation, psychologically and physically for me, I couldn't take care of her. And she has, now that she's an adult and in therapy, and she just did some really interesting guided psychedelic therapies, has had now a memory of that period of her life as an infant and really being in distress wanting me to come, and just remembering my husband coming and one of our close friends that would sit with me while my husband was at work, while I was very sick. She also has had this experience in therapy of realizing that I really wanted to be there. But that core experience very much cemented a experience of the world for her. I, of course, was just passing down the lineage of stressed out, volatile, intense, not that warm behavior that I grew up around. When I look all the way through my lineage of immigrant working in coal mines, domestic servants, farmers, work, work, hard. And I look at her, and as she's talking about a job, and she's talking about doing this, and I'm thinking, actually, this is about you healing?

I I hate to say it this way, so please correct me, but I feel like the damage I fucking did to you because I didn't know any better.

I want to commend a couple of things here, Mel. First, your honesty in sharing these experiences and also the environment that you've since created, it sounds like to the extent that your daughter is able to begin to share these realities, these conscious awarenesses that she's having, because that is a gift, to be able to communicate honestly with those closest to us, especially those that might have been a participant in whatever the circumstances that we lived in our past, in our earliest life. That is such a gift because few families, I think, have at any time, and I know my family in particular now, we're just recently starting to be able to share things with each other in honesty, share what our different realities I have two other siblings are and allow that to be the case. So that is absolutely something to celebrate. And the reality of it is when we don't have the resources to take care of ourselves and when we're stuck in this dysregulation that we're talking about in our nervous system, we're stuck in a survival mode in and of itself of our own. And so my heart, I actually felt myself welling up in emotion hearing you share that story for not only your daughter, for you as well.

You were sharing the awareness that she had of you wanting to be present. I think postpartum depression is one of those rarely talked about experiences that is so, I think a lot of times it's highlighted on how it is for the child of that disconnection, though, how painful it is for the parent who in their heart wants to be. I think this is the case with all of us, with all parents, is there's a lot of well-meaning, well-intentioned individuals that are of two minds within themselves, if they're even aware of it or not, of wanting to show up in whatever in a way, in a tuned, in a connected, in a loving way, oftentimes wanting to reverse patterns that they know didn't serve them from their own childhood, yet not being able to. Because the reality, and I use the term survival mode to really highlight the reality that when we're in survival mode, and this is all just driven by our nervous system, so it's not anything logical, our survival is our priority, which means that a child, a loved one, a partner, isn't where our attention and our resources need to be allocated at that moment.

It's quite literally in us getting through the next few moments of life. And this might sound dire, which is why, again, I'm just offering that this is all driven by our ability to survive, by our evolution as a human. So this is, again, where we are of two minds, where we might desperately want to show up, to connect, to be attuned to our child, and our body might not be prioritizing that child at all. It might be prioritizing us and our our survival and us making it through the next moment, however difficult that moment is. And so, again, I just want to thank you for your honesty in shining the light on a topic as this, because I've spoken and worked with, in my past practice, a lot of women who were so shameful about the experience of having that deep rooted depression, even of this is another controversial, I think, thing to admit, of maybe being of two minds about how it is to actually be a mother. There might be a very well intentioned part that does want to show up and does want to be in care of a child. And the reality of needing to be in care of someone else for 24 hours a day is very difficult.

It's very challenging, and there might be then conflicts in and of itself. So again, I want to commend you for your honesty, and I want to commend the environment that's being created in your home where these things can be talked about. Because I think the more we're able to, again, be non-judgmentally honest with ourselves and with other people to relieve ourselves, It's like you're even sharing. When I look back in time, I see the same patterns, just like I experience with my mom. When I look back at her family experience, it's cold, it's disconnection. She literally had a father who came home from work. He was the financial support of the household. Cold, put up his newspaper, and quite literally ignored the children. So it's not surprising that the mother then, emotionally, that I was born into, didn't have the tools to emotionally connect, no matter how much she wanted to do different and knew that that was a painful experience for herself, she was locked in her own survival mode and was just simply unable to.

Yeah, I agree. And in sharing the story, it actually is somewhat liberating for me because I don't want to pass down that generational cycle or trauma of being in survival mode and having a conflicted relationship with giving and receiving love. And what I can so profoundly see is that since I'm catching this in myself at 47, and I'm still working on it, my kids probably, I'd say at least six or seven times a week, go, Watch your tone, Mom. Watch your tone of voice for me is when my emotional immaturity kicks in, when my inability to tolerate something. You know Mel Robbins is now her eight-year-old self because her tone of voice goes nasty, just like I heard in my household, the tone of voice in the adults around me go nasty when I was eight years old. And so I want to make it very clear as a takeaway for people that if you are resonating with this idea of being in breakdown, or feeling stuck, or feeling disconnected in your adult life. First of all, we all go through it, if not a lot, a couple of times, A couple of big breakdowns everyone goes through.

So it's normal, but it's good news because you're awakening that your current way of living on autopilot or being shut down, or in the words of my daughter, not feeling alive, that's not how you're wired or meant to live. And so this moment of consciousness is an opportunity. And I will also highlight that through my own example, the first place I want to look is I want you to look at Dr. Nicole's work, because what she's saying is the first place to look is in your childhood and how you have gotten to a point as an adult where your ability to tolerate discomfort emotionally is no longer serving the life you want to live. And I'm willing to say, through experiences I did not mean to create for my daughter, I taught her hypervigilance. She had to become the adult. I wasn't even able to be present. And I feel terrible about that. Do I wish I could go back and wave a magic wand? Absolutely. And I know for both of us, there's this huge opening present for both of our healing, not to mention our ability to have a mature, loving relationship relationship on our own terms versus being in a relationship that is driven by the patterns of our lineage and what we were taught when we were children.

Does that make sense?

Oh, 100 %. I'm shaking my head very ravenous Honestly, over here because I also think it's important for me to state as well is I still have moments where for me, my reactivity comes out as passive-aggressive, snarky, underhanded comments where I'm not able to directly say it is how I feel to another person. Again, because without that attunement in child or without that safety, I learned the act of suppressing it, of going away on my spaceship and not ever saying what was really wrong. I also have a habit of disconnecting from my loved ones, my relationships, of literally going and walling myself off in my bedroom and then holding them responsible for not coming in and not being connected and not supporting me when I need it. I like to use this visual. It's as if I have my hand held out in front of me And I'm demanding, sometimes even with daggers on the end of it, and then demanding someone come and give me a hug. And again, all of this for me, you said something really beautiful that I think is important to touch on. All of this goes back to, for me, the inability to be emotionally connected, to give and receive love in my childhood.

And counterintuitive as that sounds, especially for all of us in relationship, many of us, few of us, I should say, in adulthood, actually have had that lived experience of giving and receiving love for being who we are, for just sharing how it is for us, what we think, what we feel with another individual. So while we might, and this was so much of my life for so long, all I desperately wanted was to be connected. I would leave partners because you weren't able to connect with me. I didn't feel close to you. And it took until the awakening that began in my early 30s, because it was several years of time before I was able to see myself as holding those daggers out, see all of the ways I was disconnected from my own authentic emotions, not sharing them with other people. So how am I going to be deeply and authentically known to someone else? I never gave anyone the opportunity because for me, it felt so scary, so vulnerable, so threatened Meaning that having those daggers out and blaming you for not coming closer was that safe zone. It was just a replication of that early experience, again, that was created in my household with all of my family members, but namely around my own mom, who wasn't equipped, didn't understand, probably had a deep-rooted desire, like I was sharing earlier, to be emotionally connected, but didn't know how herself.

Yeah. I mean, we only can do what we've been trained to do until we wake the hell up and heal ourselves and teach ourselves to do something different. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.