Rebecca Gladding M.D., alongside Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., offers a roadmap to mental well-being in You Are Not Your Brain, The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life. Authors Gladding and Schwartz showcase a simple, effective four-step method to de-wiring the brain. By following their methods, readers learn how to tap into unharnessed potential, hone their attention on healthy patterns and embrace a new thinking way of life. Easy to read, thought provoking and encouraging, You Are Not Your Brain is the perfect guide for readers looking to discover the path of turning healthy thinking into dream-fulfilled being.
Gladding shares the four steps to rewiring your brain happy, what discover most surprised her while crafting the book and offers a look inside the detailed research she and Schwartz undertook.
PC: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
RG: I'd say it was a fairly even tie between veterinarian and photographer.
PC: Many people don’t realize that the way they think isn’t how they have to continue thinking. How important is understanding learned behavior?
RG: Great question! Understanding that many of our patterns of thought and automatic responses were engrained by watching the people around us - i.e. they were learned, often unconsciously - helps people realize that their current patterned responses are not necessarily representative of them or how they want to be. Realizing that many of our responses are based in the past (i.e. what we learned from others) actually becomes liberating because it frees us up to start thinking about how we want to act in the world, how we want to respond to situations and the kind of life we want to live. Realizing that we do not have to respond in the same unhealthy, unhelpful ways is critical to beginning to consciously change our behavior and perspective in positive and healthy ways.
PC: You have spent six years researching, crafting and outlining You Are Not Your Brain: The 4 Step Solution. Why was it so pivotal to take your time and delicately carve out this roadmap for people?
RG: Whenever you move from a specific disorder, like OCD, to general problems that anyone may face, you have to think carefully about the uniqueness of each of those situations and then ensure that you craft a method that speaks to all of them in a universal way. What we did not want to do is create several different versions of the Four Steps that were specific to only one kind of situation; rather, we wanted to develop a universal method that could be applied to a whole host of situations and then teach people how to personalize the Four Steps to work for them in their lives. It was especially important to me to shape the Four Steps in this way to avoid a frustration I often experienced in clinical practice when using cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with patients: if a patient had more than one problem, such as panic attacks and social anxiety, then he/she had to undergo two separate course of CBT, often buying two different workbooks, and progressing through each of those books/types of CBT separately. CBT, the way I was taught it, was not integrated in such a way that it looked at the whole person and the totality of his/her problems. Although it is highly effective, it felt like a piecemeal approach in many ways and I wanted to make sure the Four Steps did not end up being taught or applied in that way. I also wanted to truly integrate mindfulness, attachment theory and CBT into one method or approach.
The other reason the book took time is that science explaining how and why the Four Steps works so well was - and still is - evolving.
PC: What are the main symptoms of bad brain wiring?
RG: I think, more than anything, it's a feeling - a sense that you are being held hostage by something that is out of your control. You can experience it as anxiety, depression, stress, fatigue, being keyed up, feeling strong urges to do something that is not good for you (e.g, excessively drinking alcohol, smoking, over-eating, over-checking something, excessively texting, contacting someone who is not good to/for you) and so on. The primary symptom is one of distressing physical or emotional sensations, but it can come in many forms as I list above. You do not feel at ease or at peace when deceptive brain messages besiege you.
PC: So many people feel trapped. Caved in by negative thoughts and actions. What would you advise as their first step to removing the thorns and beginning to crawl out of their mental briar patch?
RG: The first step is to recognize that there's a problem and that what you have been are doing in response to the negative thoughts, urges and impulses is not working well for you. Once you do realize this and truly see the problems associated with blindly accepting and following the commands of deceptive brain messages, you can then start using the Four Steps to change how you see and deal with them: you begin by saying what is happening - "I am experiencing a deceptive brain message" - with Step 1: Relabel, then change your perception of the importance of these false brain messages with Step 2: Reframe, engage in a healthy, productive behavior with Step 3: Refocus and begin to see and experience the entire event as nothing more than the feeling of a deceptive brain message and not something that has to be taken seriously or followed with Step 4: Revalue.
PC: You Are Not Your Brain: The 4 Step Solution is easy to digest what was the process in writing the book? Did you go through a number of drafts, or did the language organically come together?
RG: A number of drafts would be an understatement! I think I rewrote each chapter several times in stages. Chapter 1 alone had three distinct versions (not just revisions to the same structure), as did Chapter 2. The science chapters definitely were the most challenging to write because I had to carefully review the science with Dr. Schwartz, decide what to include and then figure out user-friendly ways to describe the complex research in a manner that was accessible to readers of all backgrounds. I'd say the first five chapters were the most challenging to write, but all the chapters went through several revisions. That said, the writing style, tone and language fell in place quite organically and flowed quite nicely after I received some input from two great writing teachers/coaches.
PC: Is there anything you are more passionate about than helping others heal themselves?
RG: I love teaching and helping people, but I'd say the most important thing in my life is my family, friends and pets.
PC: How important are your readers to you?
RG: I've never had readers, but I can tell you I wrote this book with the hope that I could positively impact people's lives and help them change their lives for the better. To me, writing is teaching and there is no better feeling in the world than helping someone truly understand something for the first time. Being able to help someone enhance his/her life and future through knowledge and experience is the greatest reward I can think of.
PC: Being a psychiatrist and writer, you interact with people all over the world. You touch lives, even shaping destinies simply by offering words and new dreams into someone else’s life. Has anyone ever inadvertently shaped your destiny? A writer, story or book?
RG: Of course! There are so many people who have shaped my life, both purposefully and inadvertently. My guess is the one that is likely the most interesting to your readers is how my reading Dr. Schwartz's book Brain Lock after college changed my life and led me to writing this book with him.
As I mention on my website, after college, I felt lost and was anxious. We were in a tough economy and I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life. I loved science and helping people, but had an unfortunate tendency of getting quite anxious in medical situations. Thinking that there was no way I could go to medical school like that, I went to law school for a while and then became a health care consultant and researcher. Although interesting and important, I realized that I really wanted to be making a difference on the front lines with patients, not in the background. I felt stuck. How could I ever go to medical school given how nervous I got seeing people in pain, blood and the like? It was then that a good friend and mentor suggested I read Brain Lock. What was most important about Brain Lock was that it gave me hope that things could change - that I could work on this issue and overcome it with practice and a change in perspective. Although it wasn't always easy, using the Four Steps and combining it with CBT (I would make myself watch Trauma Life in the ER tapes) made all the difference. With a newfound confidence in my ability to deal with any anxiety that arose and the strength to shed any embarrassment I felt over having this automatic, unhelpful response, I went to medical school, survived - and even loved! - my surgery and ER rotations, and led a new life. A life that I had never imagined possible before reading and applying the wisdom in Brain Lock. Who would have ever thought that reading Brain Lock would have led to me attending medical school and eventually writing its successor with Dr. Schwartz!
PC: What is one thing you discovered in your research that most surprised you?
RG: When I reviewed the interviews our research assistant, Poorang Aurasteh, and I had completed, I was amazed to realize that the root cause of most people's problems is the same; it's just the way their symptoms manifest that is different. In other words, there are a few central deceptive brain messages - patterns of thinking or approaching one's self - that cause people to doubt themselves/their experiences and that prevent them from standing up for, or taking care of, themselves. For example, if two people prone to deceptive brain messages experienced the same upsetting event in which they were scolded by their boss, one might become highly anxious and over-think the situation in an attempt to fix it, whereas another person might become depressed and feel overwhelming tiredness/fatigue. This is why understanding, identifying and revaluing the deceptive brain messages is so important - if you can uncover and demystify them, you are on your way to sculpting a brain, and healthy responses, that work for you. This is also why I included Chapter 6 in the book, focusing on how people ignore, deny and minimize their true self, and how that leads to lifelong patterns of neglect or poor self-care.
I just found this - it's something I wrote for our Author Questionnaire that basically asked the same question:
When I reviewed the interviews, I was struck by how similar their underlying deceptive brain messages were despite the fact that the people interviewed were dealing with different primary issues. Some of them dealt mostly with anxiety, others with depression, others with eating problems and still others with addictions. What tied all of their seemingly disparate problems together were a set of deceptive brain messages. It confirmed for me just how important this book would be and prompted me to add sections on: 1) attachment/emotional bonding because disruptions in attachment bonds as children was the commonality that drove their respective deceptive brain messages and 2) how to tell the difference between a true emotion that should be expressed and nurtured from an unhealthy, destructive emotional sensation (i.e., feelings caused by deceptive brain messages) that should be handled with the Four Steps.
Be sure to pick up your copy of You Are Not Your Brain out June 9th, to reshape your mental landscape and embrace the happier side of thinking.
Comments