The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness
Rating
3/5
Date Started
4/28/2023
Date Completed
5/15/2023
Five Powerful Quotes from the Book
Quote 1
“Your brain is the hardware of your soul. It is the hardware of your very essence as a human being. You cannot be who you really want to be unless your brain works right. How your brain works determines how happy you are, how effective you feel, and how well you interact with others. Your brain patterns help you (or hurt you) with your marriage, parenting skills, work, and religious beliefs, along with your experiences of pleasure and pain. If you are anxious, depressed, obsessive-compulsive, prone to anger, or easily distracted, you probably believe these problems are “all in your head.” In other words, you believe your problem is purely psychological. However, research that I and others have done shows that the problems are related to the physiology of the brain – and the good news is that we have proof that you can change that physiology. You can fix what’s wrong for many problems…
“The brain is the seat of feelings and behavior. Your brain creates your world – a radical statement about ordinary thinking. Yet it is your brain that perceives and experiences. Everything begins and ends in the brain. How our brains work determines the very quality of our lives: how happy we will be, how well we’ll get along with others, how successful we will be in our profession. The brain likely influences how close or how distant we feel from God. The patterns of our brain predispose what kind of husband or wife we will be, whether we will fail in school, be irritable with our children, or have the ambition to strive toward our goals…
“I was raised in a strong Catholic family. I was taught to believe that if you live a clean life and work hard, you will be successful. I believed that there was something the matter with the character of people who were drug addicts, murderers, child abusers, and even those who took their own lives. After being involved with about five thousand brain SPECT studies my mind has changed completely. I now believe that it is essential to evaluate the brain when behavior is out of bounds. The brain is an organ that dramatically influences behavior, thoughts, and feelings. These cases and many like them are yet further examples to me to press on studying the brains of people with abnormal behavior. What we need is more knowledge, more understanding, and less judgment.”
Pithy Summary
Quote 2
“Whenever you notice these automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs, you need to crush them or they’ll ruin your relationships, your self-esteem, and your personal power. One way to crush these ANTs is to write them down and talk back to them. For example, if you catch yourself thinking, “My husband never listens to me,” write it down. Then write down a rational response, something like “He’s not listening to me now, maybe he’s distracted by something else. He often listens to me.” When you write down negative thoughts and talk back to them, you take away their power and help yourself feel better…
“Here are nine different ways that your thoughts lie to you to make situations seem worse than they really are. Think of these nine ways as different species or types of ANTs. When you can identify the type of ANT, you begin to take away the power it has over you…
- “‘Always/never’ thinking: thinking in words like always, never, no one, everyone, every time, everything
- “Focusing on the negative: seeing only the bad in a situation
- “Fortune-telling: predicting the worst possible outcome to a situation
- “Mind reading: believing that you know what others are thinking, even though they haven’t told you
- “Thinking with your feelings: believing negative feelings without ever questioning them
- “Guilt beating: thinking in words like should, must, ought, or have to
- “Labeling: attaching a negative label to yourself or to someone else
- “Personalizing: investing innocuous events with personal meaning
- “Blaming: blaming someone else for your own problems…
“Here are some examples of ways to kill these ANTs. I call this my triple column technique – where in the first column you write out the ANT (the automatic negative thought), in the second column you write down the species or type of ANT it is, and in the third column you kill the ANT by talking back to it.”
Pithy Summary
Quote 3
“Here is an exercise that I’ve found extremely powerful in improving the quality of time you have with your child. The exercise is called “special time.” Special time works. It will improve the quality of your relationship with your child in a very short period of time. Here are the directions for special time:
- “Spend twenty minutes a day with the child doing something that he or she would like to do. It’s important to approach the child in a positive way and say something like “I feel we have not had enough time together and you’re important to me. Let’s spend some special time together every day. What would you like to do?” It’s important to remember that the purpose of this time is to build the limbic bond and relationship with your child. Keep is as positive as possible.
- “During special time there are to be no parental commands, no questions, and no directions. This is very important. This is a time to build the relationship, not discipline difficult behavior. If, for example, you’re playing a game and the child starts to cheat, you can reframe her behavior. You can say something like “I see you’ve changed the rules of the game, and I’ll play by your rules.” Remember, the goal of special time is to improve the relationship between you and your child, not to teach. Of course, at other times, if the child cheats it is important to deal straightforwardly with it.
- “Notice as many positive behaviors as you can. Noticing the good is much more effective in shaping behavior than noticing the bad.
- “Do much more listening than talking.”
Pithy Summary
Quote 4
“When my son was seven years old, I took him to a marine life educational and entertainment park for the day. We went to the killer whale show, the dolphin show, and finally the penguin show. The penguin’s name was Fat Freddie. He did amazing things: He jumped off a twenty-foot diving board; he bowled with his nose; he counted with his flippers; he even jumped through a hoop of fire. I had my arm around my son, enjoying the show, when the trainer asked Freddie to get something. Freddie went and got it, and he brought it right back. I thought, “Whoa, I ask this kid to get something for me, and he wants to have a discussion with me for twenty minutes, and then he doesn’t want to do it!” I knew my son was smarter than this penguin.
“I went up to the trainer afterward and asked, “How did you get Freddie to do all these really neat things?” The trainer looked at my son, and then she looked at me and said, “Unlike parents, whenever Freddie does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him! I give him a hug, and I give him a fish.” The light went on in my head.
“Whenever my son did what I wanted him to do, I paid little attention to him, because I was a busy guy, like my own father. However, when he didn’t do what I wanted him to do, I gave him a lot of attention because I didn’t want to raise a bad kid! I was inadvertently teaching him to be a little monster in order to get my attention. Since that day, I have tried hard to notice my son’s good acts and fair attempts (although I don’t toss him a fish, since he doesn’t care for them) and to downplay his mistakes. We’re both better people for it.
“I collect penguins as a way to remind myself to notice the good things about the people in my life a lot more than the bad things. This has been so helpful for me as well as for many of my patients. It is often necessary to have something that reminds us of this prescription. It’s not natural for most of us to notice what we like about our life or what we like about others, especially if we unconsciously use turmoil to stimulate our prefrontal cortex.”
Pithy Summary
Quote 5
“Parents cannot allow oppositional behavior to prevail. If they do, it only reinforces the oppositional behavior, which could ruin a child’s life. Permissive parents don’t teach their children to deal with authority, and those kids have trouble socially and in school. Authoritative, firm parents tend to raise the most effective children. Just as when people who have OCD give in to their obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors those behaviors become stronger and harder to fight, when you give in to oppositional children and allow them to oppose you and disobey their oppositional behavior only becomes worse. The earlier you train oppositional children out of this behavior, the better off everyone will be. To that end, I have developed a set of parenting rules that is the first step in dealing with these children. It is important to clearly spell out the rules and make sure the child knows you are going to back them up. Here are two of the rules that deal with oppositional behavior:
- “Do what Mom and Dad say the first time.
- “No arguing with parents.
“These rules spell out that you have authority as parents and will not allow your child to argue with you. If you make it a rule for children to comply the first time, then they know that is what is expected of them. You must also quickly intervene if they do not comply the first time. Do not tell a child to do something eight times. Your chance of abusing the child verbally or physically goes up dramatically if you repetitively tell him or her to do things and don’t intervene early. For example, if you tell a child to do something and he or she refuses to do it or doesn’t do it within a reasonable period of time, very quickly say, “You have a choice. You can do it now, or you can take a time-out and then you can do it. I don’t care, it’s up to you.” If the child doesn’t move quickly to do what you asked, then put him or her in time-out. Repeat as necessary. Deal with misbehavior quickly, firmly, and unemotionally. The more emotional you get, the more these kids tend to misbehave. Consistency is essential here.
“The second rule, “No arguing with parents,” is very important for oppositional children. If you allow the child to argue with you, then you are only reinforcing and strengthening his or her cingulate resistance. Of course, you want to hear your child’s opinion. But draw the line between stating one’s opinion and arguing. You might want to tell your child, “As your parents, we want to hear your opinion, but arguing means you have made your point more than two times.””
Pithy Summary
About the Book
Original Date Published
August 1996
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness – Audiobook | Ebook | Hardcover – “In his pioneering new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Dr. Amen explains how you can “optimize” your brain to achieve your fullest potential. Using state-of-the-art brain imaging technology, Dr. Amen has spent the last decade helping thousands of patients understand how the way their brains are wired can affect their thoughts and emotions. He explains which brain systems are associated with particular problems, gives detailed checklists to help you pinpoint your problems, and offers specific yet simple “brain prescriptions” (cognitive exercises, nutrition, medication, and more) to help actually enhance brain function and heal each problem. Many of the difficulties associated with anxiety, depression, excessive worrying, anger, and distraction are related to five specific systems in the brain. Dr. Amen explains how these systems work and how malfunctions can affect your behavior.”
About the Author
Daniel G. Amen, M.D. – “Dr. Daniel Amen’s mission is end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. He is dedicated to providing the education, products, and services to accomplish this goal. Dr. Amen is a physician, adult and child psychiatrist, and founder of Amen Clinics with 11 locations across the U.S. Amen Clinics has the world’s largest database of brain scans for psychiatry totaling more than 225,000 SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries. He is the founder of BrainMD, a fast growing, science-based nutraceutical company, and Amen University, which has trained thousands of medical and mental health professionals on the methods he has developed.”
Additional Resources
- Scan My Brain YouTube Channel
Tags
Health & Fitness | Nonfiction | Psychology