OK, it's lovely, Jones here with some big news, the step by PopSugar is back for season two with yours truly as your host. The Step is a podcast for and about unstoppable women presented by Sarraf Footwear. And there's no one more unstoppable than a woman who wants to inspire change. I'm sitting down with six of those women this season to talk about what pushes them to step up for their communities, no matter how many times they're told to back down.

So get excited. Join me every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

For all you foodies out there, I'm unwrapping a McDonnel steak, egg and cheese bagel who look at this steak and the juice running down the side. Get a little bit on the wrapper here. And then a fluffy egg and real cheese folded over the side, looking just so good. Mm hmm. Grilled onions on about a bagel. Two thumbs up from McDonald's steak, egg and cheese bagel for breakfast. Love it.

Bah bah bah bah bah. I participate in McDonald's.

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Customize a piece that's made to order just for you with 15 percent off using code on purpose at Interior. Define dotcom. Everyone, welcome back to you on purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast in the world, thanks to each and every one of you today. Well, you're going to hear is a conversation between me and power couple Dr. Daniel Aimen and Tunner. Dr. Aymond, the director of Aimen Clinics, has worked in the world of psychiatry for 40 years.

His wife, Tana Aymen, is a world renowned wellness expert, a New York Times best selling author of the Omni Diet. Today, we have a conversation about the internal and external conditions that contribute to mental health as we all are confronted with internal and external stresses. This conversation with Dr. Ayman Antonoff. We'll give you another perspective on how to approach the healing process. Dr. Ayman Taiana and I had this conversation over Instagram live a few weeks back during my Mental Health Day series, and I'm really excited to share this conversation with you today and on purpose, share what you learned from it or any questions that came up for you and Dr.

Ayman Tanner and I on Instagram. Hey, how's it going? I j j I'm so happy to see you. Thank you so much for tuning in. How are you? Oh, thanks for having us.

We are awesome and happy to hang out with you. Yeah. I love having you here. And I'm so glad that my audience is going to get to tap into both of your geniuses and your mind today and all your great insight and advice. This is day three of our online mental health festival. And I want to hear from both of you about your incredible insights. And I want to start with you, Dr. Aymond. Based on something we talked about my podcast and I remember you redefining our challenge is not being mental health, but brain health.

And and when you shared this with me, this was truly unique, something I'd never had before. And I'd love for you to share that with everyone who's listening and watching today.

Well, thank you so much. In your book, The End of Mental Illness, where I argue, you know, I've been a psychiatrist almost 40 years and I've always hated the term mental illness because it shames people when you call someone mental. That's not a good thing. It's stigmatizing. And then about 30 years ago, I started looking at the brain and I realized most psychiatric problems are not mental health issues at all. Rather, they are brain health issues.

And this one idea just changes everything. Get your brain right and your mind will follow. And very few psychiatrists, psychologists ever talk about brain help you need to eat, right? You need to exercise. You need to take your supplements. Because if the hardware of your soul, your brain is not right, it won't run the software program. That's incredible to me, every time I hear you say that, I'm like, gosh, I need to stop focusing on my brain more.

So it's a great reminder for all of us. And I would encourage everyone to go and get a copy of the end of mental illness to get that beginning journey of where to start and any of Dr. Ammon's work. But you obviously just recently or about to release this incredible book called The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. And I haven't had an opportunity to sit with the book. And I'm excited. I know we're going to figure out how to get you on the podcast and have a conversation depth.

I'd love to do that. But this I love I love the title and I love the cover. I have it here. And every time I look at a cover, it's captivating. It's captivating because it just brings me into that feeling of being a scared child. And I think all of us are carrying around a scared child inside of us. So tell me what that title means to you and how that connects with mental health. So I grew up in a very chaotic environment, as did so many of us, very chaotic, very lots of trauma, lots of addiction, lots of mental illness or what we call mental challenges.

And as a result, out of my own survival, I learned to build walls, isolate, pull away from people, disconnect. And if you don't want to reconnect with people and you don't want to have or if you want to stay disconnected, here's just a little tip. Why I don't marry a psychiatrist to fix everybody. So Daniel's always nudged me to reconnect and be curious instead of curious. It's like, why did they behave that way? Maybe it's not all just about willpower.

Did they have a head injury? We look at we look at mental health through four circles. Biological know how is your body functioning, psychological, your mind spiritual, what is your meaning and purpose and social? Who are you connected to? Because people are contagious. And when I started thinking about my family through that lens, it was uncomfortable because because I really wanted to stay disconnected and distant from all that chaos. But then all of a sudden I felt this this level of responsibility.

And I love the word responsibility because it means the ability to respond doesn't mean taking blame. It means the ability to respond when writing. My story was one of the most powerful things I could do. It really was uncomfortable, but gave me the opportunity to see some of the chaos and some of the trauma through an adult lens and just heal and see that many of these people were doing the best they could with what they had because it was pretty crazy.

And it's it's not only beautifully written, it's fun. It's funny. It's disturbing. You know, to just talk about one of my favorite stories in the book is how she disconnected from her dad, who was a pastor who embezzled from the church and cheated on. I mean, it was just not good. And she had pushed him away. But when we first dated, he had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And I'm like, well, I have to see him.

And I'm like, no, this is like Jerry Springer material. We're not bringing him into my life. And I found through imaging that he didn't have Alzheimer's disease. He had something called pseudo dementia, which is severe depression that masquerades as Alzheimer's disease. And over the next six months, he went from being a recluse to someone who was giving all day seminars at the church. And even though he died five years later, it had nothing to do with his mind.

He died with a very clear mind in Tana's are with me praying for him. And I realized that moments. One of the big lessons in my book, one of the big overarching themes, is sometimes you're called to do something that you don't want to do and you don't realize that the help might be for someone else. But the healing is for you. So don't don't don't rob yourself of those opportunities to heal by helping someone else, even when it's uncomfortable.

That's a really interesting perspective. And I love that redefinition of the word responsibility. I've never, ever heard that. I've never thought of it like that. The ability to respond, not taking blame, not feeling guilty, not nothing. Now, I have to sort this out, but just saying, well, let let me find the ability to respond. I think that's incredible. And I don't train. And I know I was speaking to your team and they shared these incredible statistics with me from your work.

You know, this is this is what they shed every 14 minutes. Someone commits suicide in the United States. Every eight minutes, someone dies of a drug overdose. And according to a large epidemiological study, fifty one percent of the US population will struggle with a mental health issue at some point in their lives. Where do we start? Because I think looking at those stats, we all know someone or know of someone who's going through this right now, even if it's not ourselves.

Where do we start? One step one. And I'd love to hear from both of you and both of you. Unique of. Approaches as to how you think people need to stop? Well, the statistics are actually from before the pandemic. So before March, eight percent of the population struggled with significant depression, which has been creeping up over the last decades. In September was twenty seven percent just with depression. So the mental health challenges have skyrocketed.

I have never seen suicide at this level, the level of hopelessness. And when the pandemic started, it was actually March 10th, the end of mental illness had just come out. I had to be in special show in New York and that got canceled. And that night I wrote down, Mental hygiene is just as important as washing your hands. So where we all start, the end of mental illness will begin with a revolution in brain health that we see this organ in a new docu series with Justin Bieber called Seasons.

And he came out. I've been his doctor for a long time and and I love Justin. But like many celebrities, sometimes he'd do what I say and often they wouldn't. But he came into my office and he said, my brain is an organ, just like my heart is an organ. If you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you said. And that's how we need to start. The revolution is love, honor, take care of the brain.

And it's super simple. It's three strategies. Brain envy. You've got to care about it. Avoid things that hurt your brain, know the less and do things that help. And the little tiny habit. I talk about many tiny habits in the end of mental illness, but the one that's the most important as you go through your day, ask yourself whatever you're doing. Is this decision good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can start answering that with information and love, love, love yourself, love of your family, love of your mission, you're going to start feeling better from a mental health perspective because ultimately your brain creates your mental health.

How many of you spend most of your time browsing social media, looking at videos on tech, talk of finding memes to send your friends? I know it's so addictive. I'm guilty, too, but an app that definitely sparked my curiosity and keeps me off them is an app called Blankest and decided to spend my time more wisely on my phone. It's really important to continue to develop ourselves during these times and I can't emphasize that enough. Do you love learning but don't have a lot of time?

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It's a fantastic way to open up my mind to new authors and topics.

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Better help dot com forward slash on purpose. That's better LP and join the over one million people taking charge of their mental health on purpose. Listeners will get a special offer of ten percent of your first month at better help. Dot com forward slash on purpose. Ted, I'd love to hear your perspective, where do people start when you hear those statistics? I saw your reaction on your face immediately and now that we know that those stats were from before the pandemic and Dr.

Evans just told us that it's actually twenty seven percent. I mean, where do people stop? So, I mean, I agree with my husband a hundred percent. But for me, it's more personal as one of the things I write about in my book, it's my heart goes out to people who are struggling with this right now, because there was a point in my life where I wanted to be dead. I fortunately didn't have it within me to take my own life, but I kept praying that a truck would hit me or something would happen.

So it wasn't my fault because I was wasting oxygen on the planet. When I met my husband and I started learning about our work and looking at looking at mental health through that lens of the poor circles. Because I had cancer, I had all these things that happened in my life besides the trauma growing up that just devastated me. And it all crashed it at one time when I really understood those four circles, the biology, the psychology, the social circle, the spiritual circle.

And I realized how bankrupt I had become in all of the right side for tires on a car. If one goes flat, the car will drive for a while, not well, but it'll drive. If to go flat, you're probably going to crash. And I had crashed. I had four tires that went flat. So the car conflict. And so when I look at it through those circles, when I met my husband, I started to really look at it.

I'm a neurosurgical ICU nurse, so for me it was all biology. It was just like, get this person, you know, stop the bleeding. But when I really started to understand this, I was it was so freeing for me. It released the shame. And if I could tell people watching one thing, if you're struggling with this right now, I wanted to be dead and I'm not. It's the worst time in my life. It was a pain like nothing I've ever experienced.

I wanted to rip my skin off. Only I couldn't couldn't get away from the pain. It's not like a toothache where you can take a pill. It's something you can't escape. But what I couldn't know then that I know now is that that pain, all of that pain, all of that shame, all of everything I felt back then, there's no way I could know that that would be the thing going forward that would become my purpose in life.

So please, just hang on, get help, reach out. And one of the things you talk about in the book is about pain in a purpose which is just so important. And another thing I think that was really critical is learning how to not believe every stupid thing, discipline. You're a monk.

You know, this discipline, discipline in your mind is so important.

So whenever you are sad or whenever you're mad or whenever you're nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking and then just ask yourself, is it true? I have to believe every stupid thing you think? How many of your listeners were good at talking back to their parents when they were teenagers? I was excellent and my mom will totally verify that I was a pain when I was a teenager, but no one ever taught me to talk back to myself.

The thoughts are not real, right? It's sort of like the weather comes. It goes. It's not the thoughts you have that caused suffering. It's the thoughts you attach to. It's the ones you let. Stick around. And so, yes, get your brain right. But then you have to program properly. And where you bring your attention always determines how you feel. And so learning how to focus your mind on what's helpful rather than what's hurtful.

And during the pandemic, that actually did really well. I mean, she's an ICU nurse, but when the societal disruption came, she sort of lost her mind a little bit because I like my child. And it was one of the most important things she did was turn off the news, because when she watched the news, she'd start screaming at the TV and it wasn't helpful for her. And you know, Jay, the news is actually not the news anymore.

The news is about driving clicks. And what does the brain pay attention to? First, fear, negativity, negativity. And that's what they're doing. They're driving that which is increasing the incidence of mental illness. And in the end of mental illness, I have a writing device where I just imagined if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness around the world, what would I do? I create our new system. I'd create our food system.

I want to hear from you how you have the courage to use. Earlier, like the tip of the iceberg of some of the trauma and the challenges that you've been through in life, and I look forward to it to really going deep, but how did you have the courage to face that scared child? Well, to reconnect to that scared child, because I feel like for for so many people, it's so much easier to try and forget or get away.

And it's so much easier to try to hope that no one ever knows it happened. And we kind of ignore it. How do you how do you really confront that?

It was actually an epiphany. It wasn't necessarily my choice. I suppose you would say. Again, I'm nudged to do a lot of things by my partner sitting next to me. But I was the queen of building the facade, the wall, making people think I had it all together and inside. I wasn't I was feeling pretty broken. But I finally started the journey of healing. But I didn't realize how judgmental I was. I didn't realize how much I still was disconnected from my past, even though I felt like I was personally starting to heal some of the brokenness.

That was still a big issue. I was disconnected, didn't want to get involved with people from my past, and I was very judgmental and didn't even realize it. And I started to do a program at the Salvation Army with some of the some people with addiction, one of the largest inpatient addiction treatment centers that they have. It was one hundred and eighty six beds. I was asked to help transform their food. And so I thought, yeah, I can deal with the menu.

And then she said, no, I want you to work with the people. And I'm like, no, I can't work with the people. And I started wrestling with this. And Daniel like, why can't you do this? Me? And I'm like, God just called the wrong person this time. I'm sorry, I can't do this. And he looked at me and he said, God called the perfect person. And I was stunned and I started to cry.

And I realized in that moment how judgmental I was. And I'm standing on stage and I don't like these people. I just don't like them. But I've done a lot of work with Byron, Katie and at that point and really some work on myself about judge your neighbor. And I really it's it's really powerful. And all of a sudden it struck me that I was judging them, that I was literally looking down from the stage at these people and they were saying exactly what I wanted them to see, this perfect facade.

They weren't seeing me. They weren't seeing the truth. And it just was a moment that that mask was stripped away. And I felt this epiphany that if I can help one person in that room, that would be one less scared child in the world. If I it one less little girl that felt like an afterthought, one less little boy that felt like he had to hide because it felt safer. And it just struck me that at one point in our lives we were all the same.

At one point we were just all scared children and I don't know why. Some turned right in, some turned left. That's above my pay grade. All I know is that if I could help one person think differently, think differently at that proverbial fork in the road. It might change the next generation and the stories of transformation or spectacular of the people that she has the most powerful work I ever did. Being so another lesson is being authentic, telling your story, not having to be perfect connects you way more than having a perfect facade and pain shared.

Is pain divided? And right now, during this time when people are feeling isolated, this is so perfect. I mean, people are using social media in a positive way. I mean, we all know it's got negative effects, but it can be used as this tool because pain shared is pain divided and, you know, building that wall, keeping that facade up. That's that's just like a boiler building up. I hate I'm a nurse. Unfortunately, I use these gross examples, but it's like this boil building up pressure.

And once you lancet and let all that ugliness out, it has the opportunity to heal. And when you share your pain with someone else, suddenly you don't feel the shame. It's like it's this burden is shared and we can handle it.

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Because that the level like you said, I mean, you know, we went from eight to twenty seven percent feeling depression. We will all find this curveball. It was the unpredictable. It was completely, you know, unexplainable, like no one saw this coming. Do we have the ability to evolve fast enough to deal with the stress and pressure that's coming our way? And what's the one thing that we can do to to be ready and prepared for that?

I'd love to hear an answer from both of you and wherever you'd like to go with that. Well, that's why we survived as a species, because we can pivot and those people that will thrive during this time will not wish for the good old days. But they'll do is they'll see what are the opportunities going forward. And during this time, they will love and take care of their brains because that's what's going to get you to not only survive, but thrive.

So it's back to that one question. What I'm going to do today. Is it good for my brain or bad for so doing things that help you feel better fast, like alcohol, marijuana, bad food, being sedentary, being addicted to the news, all of those things are going to hurt your brain. But taking a multiple vitamin omega three fatty acids, optimizing your vitamin D level, getting out in the sun if you can, exercising, learning how to not believe every stupid thing, you think those things are great for your brain to go back to?

Is this good for my brain or bad for it will help you not only survive, but it will help you thrive doing this historic time.

So one thing that really because this this has been a stressful time. We've got teenagers in the house like everybody else. It's just it's stressful. So what helps me is looking at things from a thirty thousand foot perspective. So if I step back, I step out of the picture, take myself out of it and look at it from a distance or like you're watching a movie. And then for me, it's like what part of this is important? What part of it is not?

Who has our best interest, who does not? And then I ask myself, what can I control? Focus on the things I can control, not the things I can't, because so much of it we can't we can't control what people are saying on the news and the negativity. We just can't control that. But we can control our thinking. And I noticed that when I go in the backyard in the morning, walks through my grass with bare feet and watch the hummingbirds with green tea in my hand, nothing is wrong in the world.

It's not until I come back in the house, I start watching the news and listening to what's happening in the world that it all sounds like doom and gloom. So I focus on what I can control. And I always go back to those four circles and I really practice it. Nutrition, diet, meditation, prayer, all for me. I have to do all connection. I have to do all of it. I'm not a person who can do one thing.

It's amazing. Thank you so much, both of you, for doing this. If you want more information, please, please, please go and grab the books and of mental illness. You can see one of the other books I don't really like. I think. What are you on your twelfth book now, Dr. Lord? No, forty second book. But you have a ways to catch up. But I'm also much older than I'd ever catch up.

But change your brain. Change your life at the end. The mental illness was the last to that. We did on my podcast and found his new book is available for preorder. It's not out yet. It's the relentless coverage of a scared child. So does the names of the two books. I highly recommend them. Please, please, please go and preorder this book and you can go by. She has an event coming up for December 12 free so people can sign up for it.

The relentless courage dot com. Tell me the website that again, relentless courage dot com. Amazing.

I'm just putting that in the relentless kind of putting in the comments. Oh, thank you so much, Orridge dot com. OK, everyone, I'm just going to pin this to the top of the comment. Sorry, it's the bottom of the comment. You can see it, right. I come from and I'm trying to put our heads down endless corridors, dot com. It's right there. So go and click on and sign up. I mean, what date was that again?

Dr. Raven, can you remind us? December 12th grade, December 12th, relentless courage Dotcom's. You can go and sign up for a free event which is dedicated to the book. So please, please, please. Everyone is watching this, whether you're watching it live with us right now. What are you going to watch the replay check out relentless coverage dotcom. But thank you to both of you for doing this and joining our mental health festival at.

I can't wait to see you on after this, get my brain scanned finally. I know we've been talking about it since. It's life changing and you will fall in love with your brain more than ever before, and then you will treat it like it's your best friend because it is your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on how it works. So we love you were great. So great to be part of your community. Thank you so much, both of you.

Please go and follow both our incredible guests today, everyone, and grab a copy of this books and make sure you get discouraged to not miss out on that. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much, Doctor. Thanks.

Yeah, I'll see you soon. Thank you. Back at home. Share this. Thank you so much. Hey, everyone, thank you so much for listening to this conversation with Dr. Daniel Montana Aimen today. I really hope he gave you some ideas of how to view mental health from a physiological perspective and how one can employ strategies to heal from past traumas. Make sure you tag me, Dr. Ayman Antamina on Instagram with your thoughts on their approach to healing.

I thank you so much for being a part of the on purpose community. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe. And don't forget to look out for episodes next Monday and Friday. And in. This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions, our executive producer from Dust lt is Michelle Usif. Our senior producer is Julianna Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust like development and operations coordinator.

Well. Why, hello, it's your old pal, Sarah Silverman, and I have a podcast called the Sarah Silverman Podcast. Yeah, I could have been more creative with the title, but you never go. Hey, did you see last week tonight, Mel, you say did you catch John Oliver? So, yeah, I'm a dreamer, but I'm a realist. I talk about all kinds of stuff from politics to breakfast cereal and everything in between.

What are there like three to four things in between? I'm super smart. I'm super dumb. I have strong opinions, which I might change completely tomorrow. You're not always going to agree with me, but I don't know. I'm doing the best I can with what I've been given. If you don't like it, give me more.

We begin today's meditation with a few sipping exercises to remind us a little treat can go a long way.

So pick up your McCarthyist coffees, close your eyes and deep sip in.

And deep satisfaction out, I take a treat retreat at McDonald's right now, give him a coffee, iced coffee and any size and any flavor for just 99 cents until 11:00 a.m., price of participation may vary.