Why Your ”Identity” is Preventing Your Physical Healing

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The pattern of the world causes you to care what other people think, try to keep up appearances. You become susceptible to peer pressure. When we oppose patterns intentionally, we move into the prefrontal cortex. So you're shifting yourself out of that emotional response, which is why one of the many reasons I think reading the Bible and prayer is so powerful.

A lot of people are living with shame, with guilt. They're beating themselves up. You have to fix those identity issues. Or your thoughts never change, right?

Let's go to Romans 12:2. Do not be conformed to the pattern of the world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

What if your brain, the very thing you're relying on to to tell you what to eat, what to say to somebody, how to live your life was lying to you on a daily basis? Well, today I've brought in Bizzy Gold, and today we're gonna be talking about how your brain and thoughts actually start lying to you, and this causes major issues, especially with mental health, everything from anxiety to depression to just unhealthy thoughts about yourself, and this can lead to cortisol spikes, insulin issues, infertility, PCOS, hormone imbalance in many different ways, in chronic health conditions, even cancer. And today we're gonna be talking about how to renew and heal your mind in order to heal your body physically. Bizzy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Well, I'm really excited to have you on because I think this idea of the, the, the mind-body connection is really so important. And one of the things I talk about on the show a lot is our spiritual health, our mental health, and how these greatly impact our physical health. In fact, one of my biggest lessons in taking care of tens of thousands of patients is the single greatest, greatest thing impacting our physical health today is not diet. That's number two.

Agree.

The single biggest thing is our thoughts affecting us on a regular basis. And you wrote a great book that says Your Brain Is a Filthy Liar. And so talk to me about sort of this discovery about this idea that our brain and our thoughts are lying to us on a regular basis, and that's actually what's creating disease and dysfunction in our lives.

When I first started this work, I truly believe that it was when I was a child. I had a mom that was struggling with borderline personality disorder. And when you grow up in a situation like that, you're faced with a choice, either believe the mentally ill narrative and kind of buy into the gaslighting, or to dig your heels in, start to build really good pattern recognition, and figure out what the heck is really going on. So from a very young age, thankfully, I had great pattern recognition. I could see that 2 2 was really not equaling 4 around me. And when I was about 13 years old, and I talk about this in the beginning of my book, I watched the movie Fight Club. Have you seen that movie before?

Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

And it was only in the very last scene when all the buildings are blowing up and you, Sorry, spoiler alert, I'm about to ruin the plotline. You realize that the two main characters are actually one person.

Yeah.

And it was only in that one moment that I was able to find empathy for my mom, understanding for my mom, and compassion for my mom. But more importantly, it was just this little spark on my journey of, I have to figure out what could cause somebody to be in such deep self-deception that they could live a life like those two main characters, that they'd have no idea. And it gave me, like I said, this empathy and compassion for my mom. But I just set out on this journey to try to understand what the root of self-deception is and how hopefully we can start to help people recognize it, but more importantly, really cut it with truth so that we can get out of it. Because I really don't believe that we are called to be broken and unhealed. I think we are fully capable of living a healed, emotionally and mentally free state. And sadly, I think the society we live in today has tricked us into accepting and coping and no longer believing that we can get out of it.

Yeah. I mean, I have so many women patients I've cared for over the years. I'm also thinking about my mom and others, and they start to believe lies about themselves. And some of it goes all the way back to childhood. Of course, you know this. And maybe they had a schoolmate say something. Maybe it was a parent that was critical. Maybe it was a coach or teacher, but something happened. And then they start believing this lie about themselves, about others, about the world, about God. And they live with the lie. There's a famed author, and I've read a couple of his books, and they're great. His name is— his last name is Dostoevsky. And he says this quote that's so good. I'm summarizing, but he says the worst type of lie is a lie to yourself.

That's powerful.

And I'd love to hear from you why that's true, why you feel like the worst lie is a lie to yourself.

Because the average human being can't tell that it's a lie. I think that's why it's the worst lie that you can tell, right? If somebody is consciously or actively lying, there's a part of them that has moderately weighed the consequences. When self-deception is active, that person is reasonably unaware of the consequences. That's kind of the whole problem. The way I like to look at this is best looked at in a large circle with a smaller circle inside of it. So kind of not the overlapping Venn diagram, but a big circle with a small circle on the inside. So imagine in this big circle, these are all of your possible choices. And I know that this is graphic, but example, let's say I was a mentally unhinged person and you said something that made me mad. I could grab this beautiful manukora honey, and I could throw it at you, right? Because I could be so enraged that I would throw anything that was in my hands. Have you ever met somebody that likes to throw things when they're mad?

I got a 2-year-old, so I don't know if maybe that's—

I've had experience with adults that throw things, but I work in the mental health space.

Yeah.

And I'll say my mom growing up taught special needs. And so I remember my mom coming home with bite marks and bruises and things. And so Yeah, it's different having my 2-year-old throw something versus a grown adult.

Absolutely. But I think the point is, and even if I go back to my mom, I remember growing up, my mom, whatever she was holding, she would throw if she got really mad. So back when we had the phones like this, so many shattered phones in my kitchen. So in this big circle of all possibilities, right? I can technically, I can choose to do something illegal right now. I could choose to do something rude. I could choose to throw this honey at you. Those are all in my possible choices of how I'm going to handle if you say something mad or something that makes me mad. But I am going to be constrained in my thinking by the rules that I've learned from my childhood about how to handle people, how to handle stress. Am I a self-regulated person or am I a co-regulated type of person? So because my circle's really small and my circle taught me to be more of a fawn, fawn response or people pleaser, my brain would never think throw a glass jar of honey at somebody. It would not be in my awareness. So what we see here is that we now are taking all possibilities, which technically, when I'm driving around traffic, I don't know if you've ever had thoughts like this, sometimes I'm stunned at deep down how well we actually control ourselves as humankind. Yeah. Because if you think about just one split second of wanting to like veer your car off or do something dumb, like technically we all kind of function in this little Tetris and most of us make mostly decent decisions to not harm one another. Obviously, there are, of course, people who—

I deal with this frustration daily. I grew up in the north where people know how to drive. Now I'm in the south. Same. And so it's very challenging. Listen, everyone from the south, mostly in the rain and snow, in the elements. But it's—

What part of the north are you from?

I'm from Ohio. Okay. Yeah, I'm now in Tennessee here.

So a little bit different. Different people, different climate. So this idea that we actually reasonably do control ourselves in these small micro moments, right? Somehow we function in this relatively symbiotic core. But when we look at how these choices affect us, technically we could do anything at any point in time. But what happens to us as children and with repetition causes us to constrain the choices that we perceive in any given moment. So what happens is that, of course, for me, this turns out well because I don't become a violent criminal. But What about when we're talking about somebody who chooses or sees only the behaviors that have negative outcomes? What about choosing to use heroin, choosing to be angry or to be physically abusive? We want to expand the choices that they perceive in any given moment, but right now, because of self-deception, their brain filters those out. So then comes the question, how do we start to make somebody aware of something that their brain has intentionally hidden from their perception? And this is where in my book I try to make sure to really drive the point home. To me, I think the word trauma has been grossly misused, especially in the last 10 years. And I think that that can be on both sides, right? Like, everybody has trauma, and then trauma ends up getting thrown around so much that then we kind of lose touch with what the real definition is. And one of the things I try to drive home to people is when you come in as a brand new baby, you are innocent, You haven't yet learned the rules of how to function in the world. You're not yet jaded, you're not hardened, right? You don't, you can't compare and contrast. Well, mom's not as mad today as she was yesterday. So you're innocent. You have an unending capacity for love. You haven't learned to shut off yet. And hopefully you're able to be curious because a child has to poke and prod their world to try to understand what's really going on. So anything sadly that counteracts love, innocence, and curiosity registers as trauma inside of the body. And when we think about it in that sort of nuanced context, then really everybody has trauma. And the goal is to try to figure out what inputs specifically counteracted love, innocence, and curiosity, because that is what has distorted their perception of reality and caused them to act out these repetitive patterns that often they can't see. Going back to the lie that you tell yourself, they can't see anything else because their brain has become so good at justifying, rationalizing, and excusing.

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Yeah, let me ask this. Okay, so you said love, you said innocence, and you said curiosity. Now, to me, I don't— I'm interested to kind of hear your thoughts on this because and those very, very younger years, those are more of the feminine qualities of really nourishing. Okay. You then have more of the masculine qualities around discipline and around wisdom and around guidance of, hey, we can't do this or there's this sort of consequence. So talk to me about where those live, because obviously those are important. The Bible talks about them. They're critical. That's kind of— there's the love of God, there's the fear of God. They're both talked about frequently in the Bible. But talk to me about sort of where, where those live. I mean, are those considered trauma, or are those considered part of the necessary development that's beneficial for a child?

So what's interesting is, let's take discipline and structure. Discipline and structure are neutral. It's how you discipline and create structure that could potentially cause trauma of some kind. Right. So example would be, structure is absolutely necessary. Discipline is absolutely necessary. One of the things that we've done in my body of work is we have scanned over 15,000 brain patterns to determine what I talk about in the book as the brain pattern spectrum. So in essence, we can take 200 historical data points, and it takes somebody about 20 minutes to go through it. And these are non-narrative-based questions. So not how did that make you feel, or what did you think about your mom? Because as we know, if self-deception is kind of one of those core filters that even our own story passes through, that information's not necessarily data-driven, right? It's our subjective opinion of what we think, but it's not necessarily what happened. So we take these 200 200 historical data points, and the aggregate score of these and how they kind of fan out on the matrix helps us determine which of the 5 brain pattern types that you are. Each of these 5 brain pattern types had very specific childhood inputs, and many of the things that we track have to do with discipline style, structure, how the parents actually presented, either emotionally or unemotionally. So we're looking at this very specific matrix across these 200 data points. Which we have found accurately predict patterns of thought, behavior, and decision-making with 98.3% accuracy. So when we look at it this way, what we have found is self-efficacy, self-trust, and I was talking to one of your staff members about this morning, an impulsive commitment style where you're just like, sounds like a bad idea. Sure, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to go for it. These are the 3 strongest correlators with an adult who reports the highest possible outcome. Somebody who loves their life, loves their relationships, they feel like they're on purpose, they love their career, right? Somebody who is just like, I love my life, I don't really have any setbacks. Self-efficacy, self-trust, and an impulsive risk-seeking commitment style. So now if you reverse engineer those, we need to look at what parenting inputs create that. And there, there's a variety of different ways to spit that out, right? It's like a recipe. You could do a little, you could do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. They're each going to bake a slightly different tasting cake. When we look at structure and for example, right, we both have little kids. You have to teach your kid, here's the boundary. But the ideal scenario is that you teach your kid, here's the boundary and this is the consequence. And if you push this boundary, there's going to be a consequence. But I'm going to deliver it to you in a way that is not emotional. I'm not emotionally dysregulated as I am sharing with you what the consequence is. That's number one. Number two, you better follow through on the consequence. Because if you say there's a consequence and then they push and they test, which of course, as you know, they will, and you back down on the consequence, the child has now learned that consequences aren't real. Yeah, right. But the key is delivering it in a way that is emotionally regulated, which a lot of parents don't do. And I don't fault parents for that. Right. A lot of us are tired.

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things— so we talked about trauma. And there's trauma, but a bigger part of some of what I'm hearing is, but then there's also training, right? And so part of what's happening is, as a parent, if you're saying, hey, you know what, here's the line, and if you do this, you're going to sit in timeout, or you're not going to have dessert later, I don't know, something, and you don't follow through, you're training them that there's no consequences. And think about what that means later on in life, that you feel like, hey, I can steal, I can cheat, I can, and there's no repercussions there. Or it's 50/50. I'm gambling. Sometimes there's a repercussion, sometimes there's not a repercussion. And so it's really interesting. And then there's an element there of, and this is where I think Dostoevsky, the worst lies, a lie to yourself. Because in a way, if you were taught that and then you believe that and then you pass that on to your kids, it's not only affecting you, Now it's affecting your kids. It's affecting everyone around you. If you believe in a way, well, sometimes we need to enforce consequences, sometimes we don't. It just depends on how I'm feeling today.

The interesting thing about that also is maybe for you, you're making yourself believe it's flexibility or adaptability, right? Why you're not giving the same consequence or enforcing the same consequence each time. You run the risk of having that input that you're giving them cause them to lose trust in you. Mm-hmm. Because actually, yeah, when you give the same reaction or the same response, or you follow through in a consequence in a repeated fashion, even if the child doesn't like it, you know, emotionally they, they don't find it enjoyable, it actually causes them to trust you. So one of the things that I have shown on the brain pattern spectrum is when you fundamentally trust your primary caregivers, and this doesn't mean you trust your primary caregivers to be loving and sweet and enjoyable, but you fundamentally trust that they're going to do what they say. And there's structure and there's a repeated way to try to understand your world, you typically end up on the right side of the brain pattern spectrum. There's 3 patterns on the right and there's 2 patterns on the left. There are subsets within these 5 primary that start to split off what that child's protection style is, right? Whether it's more engaging or whether it's more isolating, whether they're more conflict-prone or more people-pleasing. On the left-hand side, these are kids that did not trust their primary caregivers., and as a result, they end up typically developing great pattern recognition. They typically become very situationally aware, and they tend to have high levels of self-trust. So as people are listening to this, they're probably thinking like, but wait, don't we wanna create a childhood environment where our kids trust us and we create structure and we make the kids believe that they are safe? This is where I think the biblical conversation comes back in. I think, especially in the Old Testament, there's a very specific protocol for parenting. That is intended to prevent your child from overly trusting anyone other than God. Of course, you're supposed to respect your parents, right? You're supposed to— there's supposed to be boundaries, of course, all of that. But what I have found is that parents who don't let their kids intentionally struggle, right? And not in a way where you're putting your kid at risk. We have to let our kids struggle, and we can't be there to pick things up all the time. We can't always be nice. We can't— essentially lead them to believe that they live in a world that they don't actually live in. Yeah. Right? If you give your kids this perfect cookie-cutter childhood, what's gonna happen? They grow up, they become an adult, and they're gonna be a victim of their circumstance. The whole world is gonna be out to get them, but it really will be because you created a false sense of security in an environment that isn't like the world.

Yeah, that's so good.

And if you look at it from the biblical perspective, right, let's go to Romans 12:2. Do not be conformed to the pattern of the world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The pattern of the world causes you to care what other people think, try to keep up appearances, you become susceptible to peer pressure. So I think one of the things I've been the most frustrated about, I was raised Jewish, so my whole journey to Jesus is like a whole bizarre, I would say happenstance, but it was definitely divine appointment. But it's given me this unique perspective 'cause I didn't grow up in the church. So now sometimes when I see what the modern church looks like, I'm like, huh? This is so confusing. Because I didn't ever have it filtered through anybody until I became an adult, right? So when I look at a lot of what happens in the modern church, there is very much this keeping up appearances. We need people to think this, we wanna hide this, sweep this under the rug. I think we're kind of fundamentally seeing this in a lot of different walks of life on social media right now., and these are all direct byproducts of parenting choices in childhood. And I think a lot of the modern church can start to perpetuate this instead of, you know, example would be like, if you're really going to be bold and walk with Holy Spirit, can you really care what everybody thinks and care about keeping up appearances? Or are you likely going to not yield to the Holy Spirit 'cause you're gonna be afraid of how it looks? I don't know if you've ever had any experiences like this in your life? Are you a risk taker?

Uh, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think you could have built what you've built if you weren't.

Yeah. My, you know, my dad used to tell me, like, my, my dad— this is actually even starting draxe.com and the supplement company and things like that. He, uh, he was like, well, you know, just go to school, get in practice, and then pretty much don't leave practice. Like, my, my parents— so my grandparents, they did the same job. They worked at Goodyear Tires from when they graduated high school at 19 to when they retired at 65. My dad worked at the same company his entire life, the same thing. And, but then I had another grandparent who like at 40 was like, I don't wanna do this anymore. And went and started like a kid's swim camp in Ohio. And so I kind of had both this inside of my family and then I got into practice and then I just had this passion for education and writing articles and creating videos and podcasts. And I'm like, I'm going to go all in on that. And my dad, you know, causing my dad anxiety at the time, is like, I don't think that's the best idea. So anyways, yeah, myself and my wife Chelsea, we're definitely, you know, we try to take smart risks, of course.

Calculated risks.

Yeah, calculated risks. But yeah.

And I think calculated risks is great. There's going to be a threshold. And I think on the brain pattern spectrum, and maybe it would be a good idea for me to kind of walk people through so that they can conceptually understand what makes it a spectrum, right? A spectrum. Is a spectrum because there's certain qualities that go up or down depending on which way you go on it. Right. So there are these clusters that are important to note. So if we start in the center and we go to the left, every hash mark that you would move to the left, your self-trust is going to go up. Your situational awareness is going to go up. Self-efficacy is going to go up. Hyper-independence is going to go up, right, where you don't look to others to even kind of come on the ride with you. Everything's just you know, you do it yourself, which, as you know, I'm certainly not suggesting that all these qualities are inherently good. Everything can get out of balance.

Yeah.

And we also see that a drive toward purpose and career goes up as you move to the left. So what can happen is that if you, let's say, top all those things out, 'cause there's a terminating point, if you have self-trust at the very maximum, you have situational awareness at the very maximum, and you have essentially isolated yourself because of your hyper-independence on overdrive, you can eventually become paranoid because you're taking in so much from your external world that feels urgent. You wouldn't know what to take action on anymore, and you would have isolated yourself from anyone who could have been like, hey, you sure that's a good idea? Do you want to rethink that? Because you're a lone wolf, right? So there's, of course, that's part of what makes it a spectrum. There are specific points that tend to have better outcomes as adults. What's interesting about true, I think, biblical parenting principles they are intended to spit you out on the middle left, which interestingly enough, that is where the top 1% of all performers in every sort of organization, company, entrepreneurship, even within a C-suite structure, all of the best of the best, 'cause I've scanned a lot of people, they all cluster right in the center left. So I think God was onto something when it was decided these, these are the inputs that create an output that makes sense because there's this sweet spot. You naturally on the left don't really care what other people think. In essence, if you were raised properly and you do have faith, you care what God thinks, but virtually everybody else, you know, does it, does it really matter? And because you're somewhat of a lone wolf balanced, you can still collaborate. You still let people around you. And typically when you're in that center left, because you're self-contained, You show up as a leader, right? So you're not alone because people want to follow you. And a person that's kind of in that center-left, they're also typically not skewing toward protective anger or being aggressive. They typically know how to be balanced and diplomatic. So there is this sweet spot. And when I do this work for corporations, those are usually places that we're actively trying to hire in recruiting.

And slight left, some of this is connected to being more right-left brain in terms of, you know, you're able to be analytical, you're able to think in terms of structures and patterns and some of those things that I think are really, really important. I, I wanna, I wanna kind of weave this now into how this impacts our health. And I'm thinking about this with, with, with patients and everybody listening in terms of, you know, one of the things that happens oftentimes is people— some people really follow through and some people don't follow through, right? So some people they start a habit and they keep with it. And a lot of people start and then they stop 4 days in or 2 weeks in. They, they're not able to keep up with it. What are some of those things that people can do in order to create healthy habits and stick with them? And ultimately, why do healthy habits fail with, with so many people?

In brain pattern mapping, we track 9 markers to determine how that client perceives reality. So in essence, how their perception is distorted. In my work, I call it the neurocognitive funnel. If we look at the interplay between emotion, behavior, and perception, I look at it as perception being upstream of emotional response.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And then emotional response being upstream of behavior. Right. And I think a lot of times in the traditional mental health field, you're talking about behavior around behavior. Right. You're trying to mitigate the behavior by telling them to do another behavior, which I think is fundamentally flawed. Because they're not acknowledging really, if we can correct the perception that's actually initiating that sort of biochemical response of emotion, the client's going to potentially have different choices available to them. Remember, going back to that circle. So what you're talking about are 3 markers that we look at for emotion and 4 markers that we look at for chronological behavior.

But let me mention this as an example so I think people can get this. So when my mom was diagnosed with cancer, For many years, she felt like a victim. And later on, over time, and spending time in God's word and just sort of meditating on it, she was able to shift her perspective to, you know what? I'm grateful I had cancer. I have a better relationship with my husband. I've learned to cherish every moment of the day. I saw God work a miracle in my life. I'm grateful to be alive. And so she had this really perspective shift, and literally I can see how it changed everything about her. And her sticking with things and her hat and everything. And so to your point, there's a lot of people out there who are still seeing themselves in victim mode. They've put a label on themself. And to your point, that's the highest upstream. It's like you have to fix those identity issues or your thoughts never change.

It's so accurate. And there are a couple interesting things about what you just shared about Mom. Number one, when you're praying and you're in the word, we actually know that you're moving yourself into your prefrontal cortex. So she's actually getting herself out of whatever sort of amygdala reactive response she's having. Woe is me.

Why do things like this always happen to me?

That is what's functionally happening when you are both praying and reading the word, right? You're shifting yourself out of that emotional response, which is why one of the many reasons I think reading the Bible and prayer is so powerful, especially when it comes to emotional responses like anxiety and depression. The other thing that's happening is if she's kind of naturally more oriented toward victim mindset, which typically those on the right-hand side of the brain pattern spectrum are, she's also opposing her pattern, which ultimately we all have the ability to do. But many people don't know how to strategically oppose their patterns. They end up staying the same or wildly justifying a pendulum swing that causes a whole other set of problems. But I think the whole body of my work is that there's a very specific pattern opposition that helps you rewire and come out of the state that you were in. And it sounds like what she was able to do is effectively push against often when people are on the right side of the spectrum and they have that more kind of victim-centric perspective, they tend to also be somewhat lacking in their sense of purpose or like what their identity and function is in the world. And that can sometimes cause a bit of friction in your spiritual walk, right? Like, Lord, who am I? What do you want me to do? Right?

Yeah.

Right? So then like you end up being a victim even of trying to understand your identity in God too. Right. So in a way, this pattern opposition of like not really having a choice when you're faced with something like that, it kind of— the stakes are higher and it actually sometimes pushes people to oppose those patterns. When we oppose patterns intentionally, we move into the resistance that typically our brain through lying would convince us not to do. We're actually activating the anterior midcingulate cortex. And when we do that, our sense of purpose, actually, it's feelings-based. We're like, Whoa, I feel something. And when you do that, it grows. And then our ability to continue to oppose patterns grows. So really, I mean, obviously, God designs all things for our good. That situation obviously helped your mom, I'm sure, pop out of probably a victim-rooted identity that she might have experienced since childhood. So that's typically how it happens.

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Something I know that a lot of people are dealing with today, and there's, there's, there's a secondary question I want to get into after this one, but is a lot of people are living with shame, with guilt. They're beating themselves up. They had one parent maybe that was highly critical of everything they did, and so they're trying to be a perfectionist or a people pleaser. Going back, I'm a big believer in let's find the root. When did this start? What was the memory? Is it true? Is it not true? And going and finding that and pulling it out. But I know one of the things I've heard you talk about as well is both finding that personally, but also finding that in humanity when it started. Talk to me about that a little bit.

Between 0 and 5 are where these patterns become hardwired. So kind of going back on the hypothesis, anything that counters love, innocence, curiosity, right, it starts to chip away. And the way I always try to visualize it is to imagine that a little kid comes into the world like an uncarved block of wood, right? Just like a soft, easily carved block of wood.

Anything—

and this doesn't mean that the parents are intentionally doing harm or anything like that— but anything that the child perceives with any sort of negative skew just starts to take a little bit of a carving out. Eventually you become 5, and you've experienced enough by 5 that you have a shape. You are a sculpture that is unique to exactly what you experienced, right? So those are all the nurture pieces. Fundamentally, now inside of that wood block, put this little light, you know, a little light right in the center. That's your spirit. That's who God called you to be that has a unique destiny that he designed for you specifically. There's a purpose in there, but this little light is inside of this carved wood block. We're always going to have a piece of ourselves that comes from who God called us to be. But nurture, sadly, really overwhelms a lot of that. So think of it almost like this clouded filter. If you put a little light inside of a wooden block, how much light is going to be emitted from the wood block? Probably none. None. Right? Yeah. It still doesn't mean it's not in there. It's still in there. But as you're moving through life, what ends up happening, and I really do believe this is why we are called to renew our mind, we have to be able to learn how to take off this sort of wooden block that is preventing us from being who God called us to be. That is the pattern of the world. I do believe that is exactly what happened to us as a consequence of the fall in Genesis when Eve eats the apple, right? It's like this little—

We see shame. This is really when this, you know, really started.

And yeah. So that, and that is the first introduction of fear and shame. And I think something that's really interesting, 'cause it kind of going back to, the role discipline and structure plays in this. What does God say? You can do anything you want, just not this one thing, right? It's the introduction of a boundary. All of this, you can do anything you want, free will, just don't do this one thing. And what does Satan do? Are you sure? Like, I think maybe he's lying to you, right? So it's this introduction of, can you really trust God? Why would he just give you that one boundary? And what does she do? She pushes against it. She tests the boundary much like a child might test the boundary. If you're like, don't knock over that glass of milk. And they're like, why not? Don't do it. Don't do it.

Boop. Yeah.

And what happens as a result is we now have the introduction of fear and shame and we have the introduction of self-deception. At that point, they were naked and they had no idea. Now all of a sudden she eats the apple. Oh my God, who told you you were naked? Because he realizes, okay, now I know what you've done because now you are overwhelmed By self-deception, seeing in the third dimension, right? Now you know you're naked. Before that, they were just probably in a higher spiritual realm. They didn't know that they were naked 'cause they weren't seeing their physical body, and then they fell. So if we look at that architecture, that's much what we experience, right? Where we know where the edge is, and there's a part of us that likes to kind of poke the edge and see how far we can push things. Yeah. And of course, that's more so in childhood.

Yeah, kind of going one step now beyond this is in terms of like people a lot of times are driven by guilt, shame, people pleasing. I need to look perfect on the outside. And so those things start to crop up. And well, I guess my next question before I get into the other is how do we remedy that? Give me very, very practically what people can do to start to fix that.

Number 1, be better at observing your own thoughts. So instead of being the one that is just speaking, this is the introduction of metacognition, which some people on the brain pattern spectrum have developed naturally, but all people benefit from learning how to do this.

Yeah.

And it can be a little disrupting for a moment because it's, it's challenging to both be the one talking and also observing yourself. Talk and in essence be strategically critical, right? Not negative, not perfectionist, like, oh, you didn't say that right, but aware of what I'm doing at all times at a higher level, right? At a higher dimension. That's number one. Number two, we need to get better at listening to the language that our brain is using because our brain really functions off of language. I always attribute this like your car runs on gasoline. Our brain functions on language. Anywhere I look, whether I'm really actively acknowledging or not, my brain's like, plant, Dr. Josh Axe, light, TV screen. It's, it's trying to define using language. And if you and I were to go walk into a room, let's say we were to build a business together and we were gonna go interview candidates based on your childhood versus my childhood. If we had two totally different input systems and we have two totally different brain pattern types and we both get a selection sheet of who we like and who we, we think is gonna be the best candidate, we might walk out of there having both experienced objectively the same exact thing. And your sheet could say one thing and my sheet could say something totally different. Yeah. So when we're thinking about that, we need a person to also go back and understand, as I'm perceiving, what language am I generating? Because perception generates language. Mad, happy, sad, egotistical, confident. I might see something as confident and you might see the same exact thing as egotistical. If you label it as egotistical, you're maybe not going to hire that person. If I label it as confident, I'm going to give them a job offer.

Right.

What's really true? Right. It starts to make you really question reality a bit.

And here's the reality. There is a truth. I totally agree. There is a truth. And that's so important. And that's why the more time you spend in the Bible and reading God's word, and the more time you spend around people that are high character and Christlike, the more you're able to discern what true is. I mean, it's just so important because we don't know. We're born not knowing. I mean, you have to be crafted into understanding what's true. We have to retrain our minds on a regular basis. And I love that your work really includes this, and it's just so critically important. And so to your point, we have to take every thought captive. This is just critically important. Make sure, hey, does this align? This narrative I have, these words, these things, does this align with the will of God? And it's important. Another thing I see along with shame and guilt, people pleasing, perfectionism, there is busyness. Now, this is the thing I would say that I'm most guilty of, or one of the things I'm most guilty of is I want to accomplish and achieve a lot. And I don't think wanting to accomplish things in and of itself is unhealthy, but I wrote about, I wrote a book a couple years ago called Think This, Not That. And the book, a big part of it was, don't focus on what you can accomplish, focus on who you can become. I mean, the Bible doesn't say you need to accomplish these big things. It says, no, you need to become Christ-like. And so I'd love to hear from you, like, what do you feel like the root is and how do people start to fix this excess. Because here's the stake of a lot of people listening. Let's say it's a mom or dad, and maybe they even have older kids or something, but they are working. They're working, and then they are taking care of kids at school and then doing soccer practice. So most of the time it's like, hey, they're waking up at whatever, 6:00 AM, they're going to bed at 10:00 PM, and they literally have something scheduled every single moment of the day, every day.

Interestingly, this whole urgency, overstacking your schedule, striving, they directly counter both patience and peace, which are fruits of the Spirit. Oh, wow. Additionally, so what's interesting, so let's look at the fruits of the Spirit, right?

Yeah, so you can look those up in Galatians.

Absolutely. So then we also have the 7 primary sins, and I think there's this interesting reciprocal relationship because I think often what happens is in trying to not exhibit sloth, what do we do? We pendulum swing. We stay always busy. We're always doing all this stuff. And I think this is kind of— it goes back to this soul idea of most of us pendulum swing when there's actually a very specific middle ground that we are called to walk.

Yeah.

And I think the average person, they don't know how to recalibrate and find that line. And that is much of what we teach because there's— if we know exactly precisely what those 9 markers are for you, We know what balance absolutely is for you at each of those 9 points. So then it, it becomes a little bit more strategic rather than trying to do some guesswork. And I think this kind of goes back to a question that you brought up earlier, which has to do like, why do certain people not follow through? Right. And the, the follow-through happens with some of the behavior markers. So we track behavior markers that unfold chronologically. So early stage, right? When you first get into a fear state of, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Some people immediately rush toward the fear stimulus, right? Like, I'm one of those people that just, if something bad happens, I become creative, strategic. I go right toward the danger and I'm like, I'm gonna figure it out. Yeah. Right. Because I've got strong self-efficacy. I would imagine to some extent you do as well. Yeah. Because that's what makes someone an entrepreneur, right? You, you can't sit back and be like, I don't know. I have to know everything if I'm gonna take one, one next step.

No, I'm, I'm, I'm rushing in to help.

Yeah, for sure. Same, right? Yeah. But also to an extent at the, at the expense of busyness and overdoing it and overloading your plate, right?

Yeah, and obviously, I mean, the one of the two of the biggest sacrifices, which you never wanna sacrifice for that, is time with God and time with your family, you know, being there present for that.

Yeah. So going with this idea that you and I, for example, our pattern behaviorally is to rush in, right? Let's say that you start to rush in on lots of different things. Do you ever get yourself to a place where you realize, I have no more bandwidth left to give, and one of these is going to have to drop today.

I literally, I've used this word several times this week in texts, actually, 2 hours ago. I do not have the bandwidth for that right now.

Right. And that's a, I'm glad you learned that. I've had to learn that the hard way.

No, I mean, any of my friends will tell you I'm really good at saying no. No, I'm very clear. This is what's precious.

I can't say, have you always been that way, or did you have to learn that as a form of rewiring?

I lean that way, but even leaning that way, I had to learn to do it. I mean, yeah, I absolutely still, even though I would lean that way probably more naturally than other, it's like, you understand this, if you're naturally a good swimmer, Michael Phelps was naturally a good swimmer. He had to still train a lot to become a great swimmer. So it's just, yeah.

One of the things I think also might get you is we've found that the behavior marker that tells us what your initial early stage commitment style looks like also corresponds with loyalty. So let's say you get yourself in a situation where you're loyal to all these people that you've committed to. That's where it's going to potentially be harder to be like, oh, I know, I know this edge. I know I have to protect my family, but it's going to be, it's going to be harder to grapple with because you are naturally likely going to be very loyal. Yeah. So going with this sort of hypothesis, this marker, what we've found is that there are certain people that have pattern oscillation. So it's like they'll start one way, and then something causes them to almost flip the switch and go the other way. This is what tends to lead to poor follow-through. Mm-hmm. So somebody who maybe says, yes, I'm gonna do that diet, and they last for 2 days, maybe they last for 3 hours, and the next thing you know, they're getting a pack of peanut M&Ms, right? We can see that in the brain pattern markers, and that comes typically through parenting inputs. So here's an example, and I don't know how you feel about this, but we're, I'm really strict about this in our household. Our son decided that he wanted to do a travel baseball team and he hadn't had a ton of baseball experience, but he wanted to do this travel team and probably a week or two into it, he realized very quickly, I am the worst player on the team. And I think he cares what people— he didn't want to be the worst. He's a great athlete, but I think just when you level up like that, it can be hard. And what do you think he did? Mom, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to quit. I'm the worst player. Do you think I let him quit?

No, he had to finish out the season.

Of course you have to finish out the season. I'm not going to make you do another season because believe me, I don't want to do all the driving for the baseball team. But also, even if it's putting pressure on me and I don't want to do the driving, now I'm having to drive you while you're sulking also, I'm not letting you back down because when your parents let you quit things or let you kind of push and get away with it, what do you learn? Well, whenever I am not getting out of this what I want, I'm going to quit. And guess what? With a diet, do you get results in the first 2 hours?

No.

No. And then you're going to be like, oh, in your head, self-deception. This isn't even going to work. What if I stay fat forever? I'm just going to go get peanut M&M's. Right?

Right.

Which then maybe gets you to this last stage of your emotional addiction cycle, which perhaps this person actually ultimately is trying to walk themselves into a shame trap so they can go into the shame and futility of like, I'm never going to change this. I'm going to be like this forever, which then goes back into that victim mindset. So all of these little breadcrumbs all work together. Imagine like little puppet strings basically to try to ruin your life. So if you want to stop ruining your life, you have to figure out how your brain is weaponizing all these little things to make it seem totally justified. You should go buy those peanut M&M's. They're going to taste so good. You're never going to lose the weight anyways. Just go do it. Go buy them. The gas station's like right down the block.

Yeah.

Deception. And just self-deception.

Yeah.

It's not going to be that bad. No, I mean, let's say that you had your partner trying to hold you accountable. You can finish this bag of M&M's before they get back. You can throw the wrapper in the trash can, right?

Yeah. I mean, these types of self-rationalization, like, well, they did this, so it's okay for me to do this. And this is where, again, to me, it's creating healthy habits, especially those that we know that the church and, uh, and people of virtue practice regularly in order to combat these, these, these thoughts and the lies that the world's teaching us, that we're, we're telling ourselves. And so what, what are, what are some of the most powerful habits people can implement in their lives in order to start to create a healthy mind?

Number one, going back to the idea of language being weaponized against us, is learning how to ask yourself the right strategic questions to poke holes in your self-deceptive argument. Right. And it's an art form. It's something that we absolutely teach in Break Method. It's a challenge. But I think also this is very biblical, right? It's the sword of truth. It's the word. Does the message that you are telling yourself right now, does this stack up against what God has called you to do? Does this stack up against the fruits of the Spirit? So you have these kind of, these sort of measurement thresholds where it should be easy for you to be like, no, it doesn't. This is not what God's called me to do, right? God's called me to be brave, faithful. One of the things I try to remind people if they're feeling down, remember that the disciples were on the boat with Jesus. They had already seen him perform miracles. And what did they do when he was sleeping and they were in the storm?

I mean, they were freaking out to just be quite—

Freaked out, right? Yeah. Lord, Lord.

Lord, Lord.

Yeah. They think of like, how could you be sleeping right now? We're going to die. We're going to perish. And essentially he's like, listen, peasants, have I taught you nothing? Obviously, clearly jokingly paraphrasing here. But I think at that point he was probably pretty frustrated. Like, you've seen me perform miracles. You've been by my side teaching. You really think I would be sleeping right now if you were actually in peril. Right. Self-deception, right? They're overwhelmed with the way the seas look, the way the wind looks. They go into fear and anxiety. Oh my God, we're gonna die. It's like he literally, God in the flesh is sleeping and we're gonna die.

Yeah.

So if that happens to the disciples, give yourself a little bit of a break, right? 'Cause we haven't seen those things. Yeah. We haven't walked side by side with Jesus watching all these things. So, Self-deception feels so real, but there are very specific linguistic arguments that you can use to literally cut right through it. And in my book, that's one of the things that once you— it's all based on brain pattern type, and it gives you exactly what questions and arguments to ask yourself to cut through that.

And this is why the Bible uses the word faith so often is faith is the evidence of things not seen. And for us today, it's like, well, if I— evidence has to be— most people feel like it has to be physical. If I can't see it, it doesn't exist. But the Bible's really clear. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So it's evidence that you don't even see. And so really it's learning to believe and trust with your spirit in these things that are unseen versus even things that are seen. Because to your point, they're actually seeing a storm. They're experiencing, they're feeling wind, they're feeling rain, they're getting cold. There's this physiological experience happening. And Jesus is like, trust in me, trust in God. Yeah.

Rise above, see higher, up higher. This is not what's really happening.

And it's so hard.

It is so hard. And it's so hard for people physically when they're thinking, I just got my blood markers back and it says I have Hashimoto's. My TPO antibodies are high and my T3 levels are off and my hormones are off and I've gained 20 pounds and I'm looking at my body and I don't feel like myself. And versus knowing, you know what, I'm going to be healed. God's got a plan. I know when I start doing the right things, it's going to start, you know, I will heal. And so anyways, I love, I love your methods of being able to get to what is the root here? What's the true problem? Let's identify it and then let's create these healthy patterns of retraining our mind in order to heal. Last couple of questions for you. If somebody's thinking right now, okay, how do I get started in this? Well, one, I want to encourage everybody to check out Bizzy's book. It's called Your Brain Is a Filthy Liar. You can get it on amazon.com. It's in a lot of bookstores all over the place here, but your— the brain is a filthy liar. And she really walks you through in so much more, in more depth, a lot of what we started to have the conversation about today. But also, if somebody's saying to themselves, Hey, where do I start? Where should somebody start right now in terms of making a change in their mind to make a change in their body?

To not be so quick to believe your version, right? Be willing to hit the pause button and say, I know it felt like that, but maybe is there something more to the story? So really, just even— it sounds trite, but just being able to stop yourself and just start that process of asking questions. I'm married, you're married. There are a lot of times that you're in a fight with somebody and they're saying that you said something and I'm like, I really didn't say that. I'm pretty sure. God, can we get a replay? I'm pretty sure I didn't say that. But think about how many people immediately go into defense. I didn't say that. Why would you say that I said that? Right? What if you hit the pause? Something that will come off completely differently is, honey, I really do not have a recollection of saying that. If I did, I apologize. What can we do to get to the other side of this argument? That's very different than literally throwing another darts and you're like, dart, dart, dart, dart, dart. Just pause, ask yourself a question, create a space in between a, a conversation that allows someone else's perspective to exist because somewhere in between the two, is what actually happened, and we need to learn how to co-reconcile reality.

Well, yeah, I want to give an example of this because this happens. This is a typical sort of like, especially husband and wife thing, where a lot of times, to your point, and this is why I love that you get into this because I think it's so true, a lot of times it starts with our perception. So Chelsea says, Josh, will you bring out the trash? Yes, I will bring out the trash. In my head, I will finish what I'm doing, And then I will do it. In her mind, it means you will do it, get up, stop what you're doing, do it right now. I'm just giving examples. Perfect example. Yeah.

Because then it's interpretation, right? Who's right? Well, no one's technically. You both just interpreted it differently.

Yeah. The right way to go about it is open conversation when you're not being defensive and giving somebody the benefit of the doubt as well, I think, is such an important part of that. And one of the things you really got into earlier too is just this importance of self-awareness, which is a form of emotional intelligence. It's more important than your IQ, your EQ is. And so I love that. And so one of the things you were talking about is just being able to stop, say, did I say that? What did I mean? And then having the open conversation. But I think there's so much wisdom there.

What you just got to, I think, is also really important, learning how to check your motive. Because a lot of times self-deception tricks us into thinking that we did something for this really justified reason. But if you really pause and you're like, am I actually trying to control and manipulate this person? Yeah. Like, I know for a moment it felt really justified, but am I actually afraid of what they're going to do next? And really, even though technically I'm being extra nice, it's because I actually want something from them an hour later. Right. Being able to ask yourself that question.

Yeah.

But I think also going back to even the scenario with the trash, a lot of us don't take the time to ask clarifying questions like, hey, honey, did you mean that you wanted me to take it right now, or is it okay if I finish this other other thing before I take it, right? That could have changed everything. That's right. So I think people don't take the time to make sure everyone's interpreting things in a way that is unified, because oftentimes people don't— we don't want to fight with each other, we don't want to constantly have conflicts, but we don't know how to pause and ask the right questions to get on the same page.

Well, and part of this has to do with— I mean, you're better over-communicating than under— almost nobody over-communicates, or at least guys have never over-communicated ever. And so And part of this is like, that's how you build a relationship with somebody. That's what prayer is. It's a communication between you and God. That's the greatest way you're going to grow closer to God. And a very similar thing, how do you grow close with somebody? You create great communication back and forth. And part of it starts with how are you communicating and become aware yourself of what you're saying to yourself on a regular basis, which is just at the root of so much of what you taught. Well, Bizzy, I want to say thanks for coming on. I want to encourage everybody again, check out Bizzy's book. Your Brain Is a Filthy Liar. She does such an amazing job in here of getting to the root of issues. And if you're a person that's dealing with, you know, you know, you know, you're an achiever, you know, you're a people pleaser, you're a perfectionist, you have sort of these thoughts, you know, maybe it's shame, maybe it's guilt, but you're dealing with something and you know that your mind and spirit are keeping you from reaching your optimal physical health. Again, I wanna encourage you to check out her book. It's absolutely incredible. Check out her work. She's got a great podcast herself that you can check out. What's your podcast?

Podcast is Decoded, and then Renew Your Mind is the very specific biblical program, and that you can get on my Instagram. And then Break Method is just the overall program that we do with individuals, couples, and families.

Perfect. So make sure to check out Bizzy, all the incredible things she has to offer. I want to say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Where each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually, and take your health and your life to the next level.

Hey, do me a favor. Subscribe.

It's the number one thing you can do to support me, to support the show and help spread this message of health and healing, and also sharing this as well. Thanks so much for watching and listening. We'll see you on the next episode.

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