CBT & Neuroplasticity - 049

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalized, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. SPEAKER B Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Scientists have made the discovery that the brain is plastic. That is, to day, the brain has the ability to be shaped or formed by new activity, even into old age. Today we'll discover how CBT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help to shape it for the better. SPEAKER C Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER B Besides changing brain chemistry positively, cognitive Behavioral therapy has many other benefits. And perhaps a good place to start would be to define cognitive behavioural therapy. And who better to do that than my guest, Dr. Eddie Ramirez. Welcome, Eddie. SPEAKER D Thank you. SPEAKER B What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? SPEAKER D Cognitive Behavioral therapy, as its name says, is composed of three words. So we have the word therapy, which means treatment. We have the word behavioral, which has to do with your behavior. SPEAKER B I think we all know that one. SPEAKER D And cognitive is basically an exotic word for thoughts. SPEAKER B Okay? SPEAKER D So we can summarize this as the treatment of changing the thoughts in order to change the behavior. SPEAKER B Excellent. Very well explained. SPEAKER D And this is something essential. We have a depression program, extremely successful. 95% of the people that do our depression program will get better. Now what's that, 5%? I call it the disobedient patients. Those don't want to cooperate with the program, unfortunately, it's not going to work. But the 95% of the people that do those behaviors, they will improve their mental health. And one of the essential parts of this therapy is cognitive Behavioral therapy and basically is teaching the person to take responsibility for their thinking. Nobody else can think for you. You are responsible to control your own thoughts. And you know the way you think has an implication in your brain. And that's why the way you think can change your brain towards good or not so good. So the tools you're going to learn today are powerful because this is something you can start doing and you can start helping to change and make that brain plastic. SPEAKER B So that could be something a person could do without a therapist, necessarily. SPEAKER D That's right. You can do it with or without a therapist. There's many books that you have available to read about this and start applying that. As we tell our patients, look, this is not the way our brain works, but just for illustration purposes, we tell them, imagine that your brain has two sides. You have a positive side, which is beautiful grass field with flowers and sunlight and so forth. And you have the other side of your brain in which you have cloudiness and it's raining and it's muddy everywhere. And there are some people that like to drive their thoughts to the negative side of the brain. So they have driven so much through that mud that there's so much mud accumulated on that side of their head that they walk like this. Again, that's not the way the brain works but it's for illustration purposes. So what I want you to do is to start analyzing what you think. See our heads are like a television channel. You can change the thought, you can choose not to think about certain things. For example, I'm a physician that is very against abortion but as you think things is like a pregnancy so you keep on thinking certain things and that starts becoming like a little baby in your head and sooner or later those thoughts will give fruit to some action in the reality world. So again, this is the only type of abortion I promote which is to avoid the wrong types of thoughts. So if your thoughts are not correct start working with them, start stopping them and start replacing them with good thoughts. That's exactly what we're going to talk about today. SPEAKER B I think the replacement idea is very good because if you focus on what you don't want to think about you're actually thinking about it, isn't it? SPEAKER D That's right. Again, even if you catch yourself thinking about what you shouldn't be thinking you can say no I choose not to think about this, I want to think about something else. Again, I cannot force you to think this way or that way. I can. SPEAKER B Personal choice. SPEAKER D That's right. I need to choose that all the time. Not only once a day but every single time. And as you start changing those patterns of thought neuroplasticity start taking place and the old thoughts start to be thought less and less and the new thoughts more positive and so forth start to become more second nature. SPEAKER B Second nature? I like that term because it does it just becomes natural after a period of time. I mean I've changed some things in my life and things that I never thought I could and you just don't think about it anymore. It happens just that's right. It is second nature, literally. SPEAKER D And that's why CBT has been documented to be a powerful thing for change. We can see, for example on screen how CBT has such implications as effective as a drug therapy that's incredible. No side effects, makes you the probability to relapse to addictive behaviors and so forth much less likely. And it helps you because it changes the chemistry of the brain and that's why it can help with somebody with depression to change their outlook. As those thoughts are repeated, the other wrong thoughts are stopped then neuroplasticity takes place and the behavior changes on the person. SPEAKER B So this neuroplasticity is actually a physical thing that takes place in the brain. It is shaped brain, the chemistry brain. It's not just thoughts that seem to don't have any substance. It's actually a physical. And this has only recently been discovered fairly recently. Is that right? SPEAKER D Yeah, it's been documented recently. We have seen it many times. But it finally has been documented recently. And the thing is that the wrong types of thoughts will give you the wrong types of feeling. For example, some people feel that they're unfulfilled and they say, oh, I'm not successful, I'm not smart enough, I'm not attractive enough, I'm not this or that to feel happy and fulfill. Or sometimes you think that the negative feelings that you have are the guilt of somebody else. SPEAKER B Oh, the old see what you made me do? SPEAKER D Yes. So there's some truth that sometimes some bad things happen to us, but that doesn't mean that we can choose something else. See, and when we have this type of victim mentality, if we keep repeating that on our head, neuroplasticity takes place in a negative fashion. And then our self word, our vision for the future, our behavior changes in that negative fashion. That's why Solomon writes as a man thinketh on his heart. What? SPEAKER B So is he. SPEAKER D So is he. Your behavior changes when you change the way you think. SPEAKER B Somebody paraphrased that as you're not what you think you are, but what you think you are. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER B Yeah. It just sounds like a clever saying, but it's so true. SPEAKER D Now, somebody that has documented CBT in our modern world is Dr. Ellis. And Dr. Ellis documented how when somebody is depressed, he says, he writes, there is like rivers of negativity. And he was very against religiosity. Albert Ellis. He writes down how religious belief is equal with emotional disturbance. And the more you do it, the more committed you are, the worse you are regarding your mental health. That's what he wrote on his beginnings of his clinical practice. Now, he was not a theoretical writer. In other words, he was not just writing theory, but he was actually in the clinical practice. So as he started treating patients in the clinical world, he started observing something. There were some people that were actually being benefited by certain religious practices. So even though he writes very negative about religious beliefs, at the beginning of his career, he changed his thinking as he started seeing what was happening to the patients that had religious belief. And we can see in screen what he writes later on, he says, I can safely say that the Judeo Christian Bible is a self help book that has probably enabled more people to make more extensive and intensive personality and behavioral changes than all professional therapists combined. SPEAKER B Oh my goodness. All of them combined. That's quite a statement coming from the position that he originally from somebody negative. SPEAKER D That didn't want it to do anything with spirituality. He understood that those people that were having the Bible reading, praying type of behavior. He saw that that had a beneficial effect at the level of their thoughts that changed their behavior and that changed their outlook. That's how powerful the Bible is to change a life. And this is coming from somebody agnostic yes. SPEAKER B I gather he hadn't actually become a Christian, but he had understood the benefits. SPEAKER D So he is the one that started documenting this. SPEAKER B Maybe he's got another chapter to write. SPEAKER D That's right. He still has an opportunity to choose otherwise, and we hope he makes the right decision. So what is this? CBT we can summarize that in the following chart, the chart of the ABC, and we can see that on screen. See your emotional status at the moment. Your emotional consequence is not the result of an activating event. The A so everything happens because we have activating events all the time. Examples of activating events you got dressed and as soon as you were getting off to the car, you slip and you stain your clothes, you're cooking and you burn your food. SPEAKER B Never. SPEAKER D You come to your work after the weekend and the boss is ready there to rebuke you for this, on that, and suddenly everything changes, isn't it? So all the time we're getting activating events. You know who doesn't have activating events? Events. Dead people. I was just going to say dead people. No more activating events. If you're alive, you have activating events. Now think about this. You can have ten people seeing the same thing. How come the reaction is so different? In fact, my daughters were talking about this yesterday. How the other day something happened. Now couldn't care less about it. And my wife always making a big scandal about it. Why? Even though we saw the same thing, how come our behavior is so different? CBT ABC a activating event. We can see that on screen again. But between the activating event and the C emotional consequence, there is A-B-A belief system. So the belief system is actually what determines the emotional consequence. Let me give you an example. Suppose that I believe that nobody should ever call me after 10:00 p.m. At night on my cell phone. That's my belief system. Let me ask you this. What happens if my cell phone rings after 10:00 p.m.? SPEAKER B I think you might be annoyed. SPEAKER D Oh, I'm going to have joy and happiness. No, because the belief system is wrong, the emotional consequence will be wrong. So there are some people that try to run away from activating events, but this is a never ending job. What we need to do, we need to work and deal with our belief system. SPEAKER B And that just sort of cuts in there. And that's the separating thing. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER B Believe about it. SPEAKER D So by having those wrong belief systems, I'm going to have the wrong type of emotions, but not only of emotions, but also of actions. Therefore, we need to focus on identifying those belief systems. And helping them to change. So I want to share with the audience today an interesting example that Jesus leaves to us on how you can change those wrong belief systems and what tool and how did Jesus change that. Isn't that interesting? Yes. SPEAKER B Be very interested on an authority like that. SPEAKER D So let us go to look, if you have a Bible, go and get your Bible. And we're going to read Luke on the 24th chapter. And if you could read for us verses 13 and 15. But before you read, let me just tell you the context. The disciples have witnessed the crucifixion and there are a bunch of discouraged people, and we pick up the passage there on their way to AMAUs. SPEAKER B All right? So you're wanting verse 1313 to 15. All right? So it says now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was 7 miles from Jerusalem, and they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was while they conversed and reasoned that Jesus himself drew near and went with them. SPEAKER D That's something, a good news. When we are discouraged, Jesus is willing and happy to be with us, to help us. Let us observe the way that this change happens. So first of all, he comes to them and what happens? Verses 16 and 17, all right? SPEAKER B But their eyes were restrained so that they didn't know Him. And he said to them, what kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad? That's 17. SPEAKER D Okay, so what does he do? He starts to identify the wrong belief system. Now, isn't he omnisapient? Doesn't he knows everything? Yes, he does, but he wanted them to recognize, so that's why he asked the question. So let's read from 18 to 20. SPEAKER B Then one of those whose name was Cleopas answered and said to him, are you the only stranger in Jerusalem? And have you not known these things which happened there in these days? And he said to them, what things? So they said to him the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty indeed, and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed. Besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. You want me to go on there? SPEAKER D No. So you can see here, as you're reading this, you can actually identify the emotional state of these disciples. Do you think they were happy and joyfully saying these things? No, they were sad, they're complaining, they don't like it, they think it's horrible. And that's why when you complain, you actually affect those around you. It's not only affecting you, but then you start creating negative feelings on those around you. And then verse 21. SPEAKER B All right, 21. But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed. Besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. That was 21. SPEAKER D Okay, so he just told the key issue. We were hoping that he was going to fulfill this. And that we can see on the screen a little chart. Let us fill in that ABC. So we have A, which is the activating event. Jesus died, no question about it. Why did they had a C emotional consequence in the word sad, loss of hope, discouragement and so forth? Because the b was wrong. According to them, Jesus was going to be a powerful king. In fact, when Jesus was doing these miracles and creating food and so forth, man, in their heads, they were like, Woohoo. Here we're going to have this powerful army. Jesus is going to be our king. We're going to grab our swords. We're Going To Have food so We Can Go Forward And Battle Our enemies and we'll conquer Those Romans and All These People That Are afflicting us and So forth. Can you see where this is going? Yes, their belief system was wrong. That's why the fighting. Oh Jesus, who's going to be the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Education, I want to sit on your right hand and your left side and so forth, because they wanted to be part of that earthly government, even though Jesus over and over told him otherwise. So you can see here very clearly a activating event, c wrong emotional consequence, and as a result of that was because they had the wrong belief system. Now this is what is called an irrational belief. So what you need to do, you need to diagnose dispute, deal and that's exactly what Jesus does. He doesn't changes the activating event, but he changes the emotional consequence by changing the b. And that's exactly what we're going to read in a minute. Don't remove your finger from the Bible. A remedy that Jesus uses is the remedy of spirituality. So let us read about it. Let us go to verse 26 and 27. SPEAKER B All right. Can I go back to 25? Sure, go ahead. I think then he said to them, o foolish ones and slow of heart, to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. SPEAKER D So what did he do? He started from Moses which book in the Bible Moses writes he wrote the first five. The first five. So from the Genesis and he goes through the prophets because all these writers had documented with such detail what was going to be the ministry of Jesus, where Jesus was going to be born, what Jesus going to be doing in his ministry, what cup of debt he was going to have. And all these things had been prophesized thousands of years before Jesus came to Earth. SPEAKER B And he told them himself plainly. SPEAKER D And he over and over told him. But as we humans, sometimes they tell us something. The other one. So what he did, he used the Bible as an instrument to deliver cognitive behavioral therapy. Now he goes and has this Bible study with them. He's showing them all these prophecies. And what was the result of this Bible study? We can go to verse all the way to the end, 31 to 35 to see this. SPEAKER B All right. So 31 and then their eyes were opened. That's right, like that. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him, and he vanished from their side. You want me to go on there? SPEAKER D Keep going. Yes. SPEAKER B All right. And they said to one another, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road and while he opened the Scriptures to us? So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together saying, the Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. And they told about the things that had happened on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of bread. Now, do you want me to go on? SPEAKER D That's good there. SPEAKER B All right. SPEAKER D So as we can see, what happened with their emotions? Did they continue sad and discouraged? SPEAKER B No, I think they skipped eating their meal and came back in the dark. SPEAKER D Joyful, isn't it? SPEAKER B Couldn't wait to share the good news. SPEAKER D That's right. So you can see here is the future leaders of God's Church, bunch of discouraged people that they needed some cognitive behavioral therapy. Jesus comes to them, has this Bible study with them, and those negative emotions were transformed to a positive emotion. That's why there's hope. I know there's people at this moment that are listening to me. They may be discouraged, they may not see a good future ahead of them, and so forth. Use the same method as you read the Scriptures. You read about those experiences of how God has dealt with all kinds of problems from people that were doing harm to those that being harmed, and how he was able to help them and give them hope and so forth. So this is a powerful tool to change, not only temporary, but permanently. And even in our program, we have made little songs that we teach our patients to try to encourage them with that type of change. Like one little song that we teach them goes something like this I don't like it, I don't like it it's okay, it's okay I can stand it anyhow I can stand it anyhow I'm all right, I'm all right I'm glad. SPEAKER B You didn't ask me to sing. SPEAKER D So we had a patient that came to our program this is what happens. Many patients when they come to our program, they have many addictive behaviors. So as we start stopping the coffee and the cheese and the meat and these type of things, the reality is that the first days the patients don't feel good because it's like a smoker that stops smoking, they don't feel good. So we actually make them sign a paper that says if you quit, we won't return you a single penny because we know that they need to go through that stage in order to start getting better. But one of the patients felt horrible, so she said no, forget it, I'm going home. So she packed her bags and she was going on her way to the car and she saw a treadmill on the way out and she said you know, I pay some money for this, I better use some exercise before going home because in order to pay a little bit of what I paid. So she gets on the treadmill and in her head she starts running that little song and then she starts analyzing what she is think, what she is trying to sing and realize that it's her feelings that are taking her that direction that yes, she can stand it anyhow. So she goes on, packs her backs, finish the program and does fantastic at this. SPEAKER B Oh, isn't that wonderful story. Wonderful story to end on. And we hope that today's program has been helpful to you too. We look forward to having you join us next time for more secrets of healthy living. And remember, you can watch our programs on demand. Just visit 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the watch button. God bless. SPEAKER C You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.