Caring for a Parent, Healing Yourself: EBT for Family Caregivers with Laurel Mellin - Episode 113
Are you a family caregiver feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or stuck in a relentless cycle of stress? Do you ever feel like you're losing yourself while trying to care for a loved one? If so, you're not alone, and this episode of the Caregiver Relief Podcast is for you. ❤️
Host Diane Carbo sits down with Dr. Laurel Mellin, a health psychologist and the founder of Emotional Brain Training (EBT), to discuss a revolutionary, science-based approach to managing caregiver stress. Dr. Mellin, who cared for her own father for nine years, shares how EBT can help you move from a state of stress overload to genuine joy, often in just a few minutes.
This isn't just about managing stress—it's about rewiring your brain for resilience and healing yourself in the process.
What You'll Discover in This Episode:
In this profound conversation, Diane and Dr. Mellin dive deep into the tools you need to thrive, not just survive, as a caregiver.
🧠 The "Silent Health Crisis": Learn why the unique stress of caregiving, rooted in love and our biological drive to protect loved ones, can be so damaging to our health.
💡 What is Emotional Brain Training (EBT)?: Discover how EBT differs from traditional methods like mindfulness and positive thinking. It’s not about changing your thoughts; it’s about rewiring the "stress circuits" in your emotional brain that get stuck in the "on" position.
⚡ The 5 Brain States: Dr. Mellin explains the five levels of stress in the brain. Once you cross the line into higher stress levels (3, 4, or 5), the thinking brain goes offline, and traditional stress management fails. That’s when you need a new tool.
📱 The EBT App in Action: Learn how the EBT app guides you to process emotions in a specific sequence (protest, anger, sadness, fear, and guilt) to shut off a stress circuit and activate a "joy circuit" in under five minutes.
🫂 Overcoming Guilt & Shame: EBT provides a powerful framework for processing difficult emotions like guilt, grief, and resentment without shame. Dr. Mellin explains the crucial difference: shame says "I'm a bad person," while guilt asks, "What was my part in this?" turning it into a tool for empowerment.
🗣️ Setting Healthy Boundaries: Discover the "EBT Sandwich," a brain-science-based technique for making requests and setting boundaries effectively, fostering intimacy in your relationships rather than resentment.
✨ The Power of Community: Find out why connecting with peers in "Spiral Up" groups is so vital. The emotional brain is the social brain, and these connections can become a true lifeline for caregivers.
Memorable Quotes from Dr. Mellin
"The circuits that make you overgive and then have a backlash of behaving in ways that you wish you had not are in your unconscious mind. They were put there through no fault of your own. So there is no shame."
"When you're at Brain State five... you open that tight fist of over control... And you say to the spiritual, however you define it, 'Here to be of service'... something magical happens in that moment."
"If you're not in joy, if you're not at brain state one, you need to exercise. You need to exercise your arm, and you need to reach for your app."
About Our Guest
Dr. Laurel Mellin is a health psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of Emotional Brain Training (EBT). For over four decades, she served as an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, researching the neuroscience of stress and resilience. Her mission is to provide everyone with the tools to take charge of their emotional brain and live a life of joy.
Learn more and get the app at ebt.org.
You are the most important part of the caregiving equation. This episode is a must-listen for any caregiver who is ready to find relief, reclaim their peace, and build a more resilient, joyful life.
Podcast Episode Transcript
Diane: Welcome to the Caregiver Relief Podcast, where we shine a light on the challenges and solutions facing today's family caregivers. I'm your host Diane Carbo, a registered nurse with over 50 years of experience helping families navigate the complexities of aging and caregiving.
Diane: Today we're diving into a topic that's deeply personal and profoundly transformative, caring for a parent, healing yourself, EBT Emotional Brain training for family caregivers.
My guest is Dr. Laurel Mellin. She is a health psychologist and the founder of Emotional Brain Training or EBT. She served as an associate professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco for over four decades. She is an a New York Times bestselling author of The Pathway and has written 12 books on EBT.
Her work has been recognized by the American Medical Association as exemplary, and she has trained thousands of health professionals in the neuroscience of stress, resilience, trauma, and chronic disease. Dr. Mellin knows firsthand the challenges of caregiving. She cared for her own father for nine years after her mom passed away.
Through EBT, she offers caregivers a science-based process to quickly move from stress overload to joy, often in just five to 10 minutes by rewiring the brain's resilience pathways. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, burned out, or stuck in a cycle of stress while caring for someone you love, today's conversation could change everything.
Dr. Mellin, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really excited to share this information because it's gonna ring true to so many of my family caregivers.
Laurel: Diane, I'm so part, I'm so happy to be part of what you're doing here because my heart goes out to anyone who is caretaking because I've been there and I understand the, what happens in your body, what happens in your life when you're trying to take care of a loved one, and it's so challenging and,I just wanna get this message out to as many people as possible.
Diane: I'm excited because caregiver stress is often called the silent health crisis. In fact, as I told you at the beginning, before we started the podcast, 63% of our family caregivers become seriously ill or die before the person they're caring for. So I'm really excited because, from your research and experience, I wanna know what makes it so uniquely damaging to our health, this caregiver stress that we have.
Laurel: it's called love really. it's, if the fact is we will go further for that other person than we go for ourselves. And when we go really far for them, tolerating the intolerable, just the amount of physical work. Sometimes the emotional pain and also just not knowing how, what can we do and how are we falling short?
And when is too much? Too much. It's just extremely difficult because of the bonds of love. we are mammals. And what mammals do is mammals take care of each other, and as a consequence, it's much harder to find that boundary. If someone is a professional care provider, they stop and they don't do as much, and yet just.
Biologically, genetically we are programmed to over give to those that we most love, and so it becomes much harder for us as well. These relationships that we have. I had with my father, my mother died in 2007. I took care of my father until 2016 when he passed away. Yeah, but I went to all sorts of extremes in that because of shame, of guilt of feeling.
I'm not enough of he, he would call and my whole body would when he would need more and my whole body would feel that stress. And then, what happens is our whole relationship with this person is relived. In our caretaking, some of the frustrations and angers and disappointments we have in that person, as well as some of the blessed moments of rapture.
So it's just firmly packed with so much energy and conflict that we oftentimes over give. And then we pay for it. I will tell you that in all my years at the University of California, San Francisco, in developing EBT and developing the app, that actually switches off that stress response, what I learned was that caretakers are identified as the most stressful role that anyone can take.
In fact, the studies that were done on psychological stress to prove that people. Who our caretakers will die earlier and will have more, health problems, was done on this population because it's recognized as the hardest thing any human can do.
Diane: And it's definitely,a challenge for everybody involved.
In fact, you say that caregiving stress often stirs up those present, not just present day challenges, but old emotional wires from our past. And I see that constantly where the. You could be, have lived away from home for 20 years, 30 years, and you're coming home or going to help out with, the caregiving of your loved one, a elderly parent or family member.
And all of a sudden those old roles we played when we were young in the family dynamic, start over again. Yeah. That is in that is so challenging and so many family caregivers do it alone and they have. Uninvolved siblings and, uninvolved, extended family members who are judgmental and dismissive and sometimes abusive to the person who's providing that care.
And it's very frustrating. So for those that who were new to it, what exactly is emotional brain training and how does it work? And tell us about your app and how that works with this.
Laurel: Wonderful. The idea is, we're, most people are used to thinking about, their stress or their emotional states, based on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
And in, in about the year 2000, there was enough evidence to show that was ridiculous. Most therapists are not certified in EBT. That's why we're aggressively trying to reach any therapist we can and train them in EBT because it's almost like being in the pre-computer age and then having the internet uhhuh, because in the pre-computer age you would just, you'd go to your library and you'd go to an encyclopedia and you'd look things up and then the internet comes and all of a sudden you say, it's completely different.
it's on the screen and I can learn anything. when you've been working with changing thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, that is not the way the brain works. The brain works, the emo first of all, it's not the neocortex, the thinking brain. That's a problem. We know what we should do. We know how should we, we're very rational in the rest of our lives.
But it's in the emotional brain, the unconscious mind that actually, encode circuits early in life. Like our roles, like I was the caretaker. I was the good girl. I was the reliable one. Yep. and. Also, it encodes all of the emotional clutter, all of the disappointments, the trauma memories, all that.
But it also packages them very conveniently into what's called circuits. Wow. And we two kinds of circuits in our brain. It's incredibly simple. If we're running the good kind of circuit. It's called homeostatic or health promoting. It's called a joy circuit. 'cause when you're in that state you do hard things and afterwards you feel this glow in your body.
'cause your chemicals are at their best. You're fine. But that's not what happens to caretakers. Somehow you cross the line and there's too much stress, and you have the other kind of circuit that's called a stress circuit. The stress circuit is a whole different animal. What it does is once it gets triggered, it gets stuck on.
And it takes you way high, everything's fine when it's not. It takes you to numbness where you have no feelings anyway, or it plummets you down to a big low. But either way, you're disconnected from your actual accurate emotions in the moment and your biochemistry. Is completely dysregulated. And because these circuits get stuck on it means that's why we have mental health problems and chronic diseases. Yeah. And pre premature a death and accelerated aging. Okay. So the problem is no longer, oh, I have a diagnosis, or I have bad thoughts, or My behaviors are bad because the circuits include emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, all in one big swoop.
And so if you clear your stress circuits, you're gonna get back to that positive state, that healthy state, that joy state naturally what's been missing in the medical. Framework is a way to be, to activate those stress circuits. 'cause they get activated without our permission, right? We're going along, we're doing fine, and all of a sudden we're numb or we're really low, or we've, we've completely crossed that boundary and done so much for someone that we have resentments and hatreds and we're sick and then we have stomach aches and we just can't do it anymore.
what these tools do is they. Essentially erase the stress circuits and encode the joy circuits. In order to do that, you can't think your way to erasing those circuits because they're emotional wires. You have to process emotions. In about two minutes. And when you process emotions with a burst of a protest against feeling bad and then sadness, fear and guilt, it unlocks that circuit.
And this is the really amazing thing. This is why I believe in the spiritual nature of our brains. Because when you feel bad and you get out the. You complain to the app about five sentences about what's going on, and then you say, what I'm really stressed about is, and you say a couple of words, he's too demanding, or I can't take it anymore.
just something really simple.
Your brain. Finds and unlocks and readies for erasure. The precise circuit in your brain that is amplifying your stress. The precise one, you can't even do that with a brain scan. There's no brain scan that'll do it. There's no medication that will do it if you complain.
And instead of thinking your way through it, get out the app. Drop into your feelings, which you've experienced in your body. protest it with a little bit of anger, sadness, fear, guilt. The brain opens up like a flower. And it tells you exactly the false belief, like I have to be perfect, or the false expectation, like I get my survival from draining every ounce of energy out of my body to the point that I am miserable from helping this person from all pain.
It raises that up to your conscious level. And once you know what your unconscious mind is telling you, because the unconscious mind is the boss, it is definitely the what determines what we do, not our conscious mind. You can flip it over to something positive and boom, you weaken the circuit and you shut it off and you are in joy.[00:13:00]
It's that straightforward.
Diane: That's exciting to me. And interesting. I know we. Caregivers out there, try everything. We try stress management or mindfulness approaches. So you have a different way of handling things through your EBT app. How is that different from what we normally do? The first thing I do is take a deep breath and go slow down.
Think.
Laurel: And if you're not very stressed, that's enough. Yeah. if you're, there's five levels of stress in the brain. There's level one is joy. And that's the lowest stress. The thinking brain's in charge. Two, the thinking brain's still in charge. You don't feel quite as good. You feel good.
You're running those joy circuits there. So you're okay. and that's the illusion is when you use mindfulness or positive thinking or deep breathing, it will help you if you're not that bad off.
Diane: Yeah,
Laurel: if you're only just a little bit stressed, once you cross that line in your brain, which is about where your cheekbone is, the brain will put a lower, more extreme area of the brain, more primitive area in the brain in charge.
When you have higher stress levels and these circuits are the stress circuits, totally different animals. They disconnect you. So the thinking doesn't work anymore. The mindfulness is out the window, the deep breathing is nothing compared to what's going on, and then they activate these incredibly nasty circuits that are, with stuck emotions.
And,and toxic emotions that start flowing. It's biochemical. It's not just psychological. So you have these fight or flight, stresses going on, chemicals going on, and all the memories from times when you were stressed before, when you weren't thinking that well appear real. So you are not able.
Yeah, to find your best self. It's not you. It's not me. It's everyone in that state. And that's three feeling a little stressed. Four, definitely stressed. And then the reptilian brains takes charge at five. And then just, we're just blotto. We are sure. There's no hope. There's never a tomorrow. No matter what I do, it won't work out.
This will never end. And that's where all of the we're. We're being self-abusive and we don't even know what it is. Amplified. By the circuits. What you do when you're in the 3, 4, 5 is you reach for your EBT app. And you understand that. Thinking is not gonna solve the problem. Thoughts don't get through to these circuits.
Being aware is like spitting in the wind. You need to take the toxic emotions in those circuits and unravel them. And just by using this tool to protest an anger, sadness, fear, and guilt for really, like a minute or two, something like that, what happens is that circuit gets shut down. And then that joy circuit or that resilience circuit takes over and before you know it, you're back to brain state one where your chemicals have stopped harming, you stopped creating mental health problems and chronic diseases.
And that there is a light in the in at the end of the tunnel, and you really take care of yourself as well as the other individual.
Diane: So that's your spiraling up to joy? Yes. That you talk about that occurs in just minutes. Wow.
Laurel: and what's so important is most health professionals don't even know this.
this was developed at the University of California San Francisco, the epicenter for stress, resilience, and neuroplasticity. But it goes against everything that therapists tell us to do,
Diane: and
Laurel: they tell us to. Be aware of our feelings. if you're at Brain State one or two with running those resilient joy circuits, fine.
Once you cross that line, and everyone whose caretaker has long since crossed that line, thi asking yourself how you feel. She said, what do you mean? I would feel I'm overwhelmed. I'm lost. I'm confused. I feel furious. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm hopeless. I'm depressed. That doesn't really help you at all.
Nope. So in other words, we're rewriting the rule book on psychotherapy and we're also rewriting the rule book on medicine because although it's important to take the medicines you need for whatever the health problem is, heart disease, cancer, whatever that is. Because those conditions increase your stress.
Diane: Yes.
Laurel: But the fact of the matter is, the root cause of it all are the stress circuits in your brain. And what we're trying to support for all health professionals, if you're gonna give medications, you're gonna give them a dose of EBT two to get rid of the stress circuits that are actually making them sick.
If you're gonna go to a therapist, you can talk your way around the street. But until they rewire the circuits that are causing those mental health problems, they're not gonna really get alleviation. And also, it shouldn't be about the doctor or the therapist. It should be about us because these are tools that anyone can learn, anyone can reach for the app.
Yeah. And when you reach for the app, you get a biochemical change on the spot. Everyone needs to know that. Wow.
Diane: Can you talk us through a real life example of how a caregiver family caregiver might use EBT tools in the middle of a stressful moment?
Laurel: A special moment. let me share some of mine. Okay.
Thank you. Okay. I love my father and I was also a single parent raising three children. Worked full-time at the university and was doing research and development on EBT. So I was a busy individual and my father had all sorts of problems. he had heart attack, he had dementia, he had,
he had terrible nausea and he also got one health. He was a little bit of a hypochondriac. He was always finding something wrong. So we were always going to the hospital and we were always going to the doctor and his nausea would come up and he would just sit there and just his, just look. For Lorne.
And so I'm always going up there to where he is. He had a place he took care of with, but my brother and I were going up almost every day and ta he was just beloved to both of us.
Diane: Yes.
Laurel: And one day I was going in and it was after I'd just seen a whole bunch of patients. I was exhausted. I walked in, I was about to walk into his room and I knew I was not running Joy circuits?
Yes. Okay. Yes. And I thought. I'm not gonna do that.
I'm not gonna go in there and be a false, I have a false happiness on my face and fake it. Yeah. Because we, what do we all really need? but honesty and authenticity and intimacy. So I reached for my app and I spiraled up to, to, to Joy and I was really proud of myself because my reward was, I wanted to have an authentic relationship with my father, and I walked into the room feeling.
Whole instead of fake. Oh, that's beautiful. And so I listened to him and I also told him about some of the things going on with me, which showed him respect. Yes. There was an intimate connection there, so I didn't fake it. that's one, I'll tell you a worse one. Do you wanna hear a worse one? it gets really bad.
And for those of your listeners who are. Having a hard time, believe me. What happens is it piles up and on good days you're okay, but on the bad days you can hit a real low. Yes. And I remember going up to take care of my father, the, it seemed like the thousandth time that week, and I came home and I was, I actually hated him.
I. And I, I felt hatred toward him. I hated him because he was so needy, so dependent, so demanding, and I knew I was at Brain State five. That I truly loved my father, but my stress level was such, at such a high that the fight or flight chemicals were causing the extreme emotions. Now, I could have gone numb, or I could have gone to a false high.
Oh, that's okay. But my brain. That day was going to an extreme low, and I really felt threatened because psych, it's important to know that psychological stress in the human brain is treated like physical stress. So when you are feeling attacked psychologically and you say, why can't I get over that?
Oh, it's not so bad. It's not about you psychologically. It's about you biochemically. And what's happening in your brain is that your brain is telling you're being eaten alive by a lion. And it is spurting out all of those stress chemicals, because it is telling you're going to die. And when you're going to die.
If you were up against, let's say, a lion who was coming, at you, you wouldn't say, that's okay. don't worry about it. biologically we are programmed to protest with strong negative emotions. And so what I allowed myself to do is use one of the tools in EBT, which is called Damage Control Tool, and I love damage, I love that name tool.
Yeah. And so I would repeat it to myself. And first of all, I allowed myself to be angry. Yeah. Knowing oh that I was at Brain State five and I need to, I needed to express my anger and I need to cry. Yeah. And what happens is that those, the willingness to be open to really socially unacceptable emotions comes from knowing how the brain works.
And then I used damage control and I actually brought myself up to a spiritual high where I felt in love with life. I loved my father and I also love myself enough to give myself a break.
Diane: That's fascinating to me. Now, you recommend caregivers join a spiral up group,
Laurel: right?
Diane: It happens in those groups. And why is that peer connection so important?
Laurel: first of all, everyone needs the app. If you can afford nothing else but the app. Get the app. Yeah. But there's also upgrades to be in community. And the reason for that is that the emotional brain is the social brain. And when we get with other people using these tools, the depth of the effect on us.
Escalates, but also that we are not alone. And with EBT we've set up. The ebt.org website is also called EBT connect.net website with all sorts of choices. But everyone. Who moves just beyond having the app to have you the social support. every single day of the year, there's a group there. Yeah. And you just call in anonymously to the group.
And there'll be this wonderful EBT provider who greets you and says, hello, welcome. And then one person will say, she says, I need a volunteer to spiral up. And someone will volunteer and then she'll guide them through the whole EBT process of spiraling up, but much more deeply. And help teach other people how to actually do this.
And what happens is that person goes from being very stressed all the way up to joy. And because the thinking brain has no walls, even if you come into the session feeling it, brain state five, like you're totally overwhelmed their energy. It goes into your emotional brain, activates your joy circuits, and by the time you leave a half an hour later.
You're in joy and you don't even know why. 'cause we're all connected and the process of going from stress to joy is the same for all individuals. So it's very catching. And also, if you get into a private group, then you have seven other people that you can connect with throughout the week. And it's different.
if you have a friend, you're gonna talk to your friend and at some point your friend's gonna get really tired of listening. Yes. And also you're gonna probably talk on and on and say, now what did I say? And did I, should I have really said that? Yeah. With EBT, the calls are li limited to five, no more than 10 minutes.
And when you call someone in your group, a buddy in your group It goes through, nobody knows each other's last names or their phone numbers is all protected. So it's very private and it could be someone from Alaska or someone from Connecticut or wherever, you know their first name. But you. Or become bosom buddies with them in your group because you've connected with each other over time.
Most people stay about a year in the method, and what happens is one person says, do you have time to connect? And the person says yes or no. And if they have time, then they say, who do you wanna spiral up? Or do you want me to? They decide. And then one person spirals up using the tools and the other one listens.
Both people end up in joy. They don't even remember that they have problems and they're closer in their connection with each other. So our research has shown that these connections really help people deepen their work with EBT and become really a lifeline. And it is different than having AI companion where they just mouth back to you what they said.
I am trying to say, oh, you have no reason to feel that way. You should feel good about yourself. It's so vacuous.
Diane: Yes. Yes. For real
Laurel: people where you deepen your relationship with someone and you both bring each other up and you both learn from each other.
Diane: Yes. Yes. Now for caregivers dealing with grief, guilt, or even resentment, how can EBT help them through the process with those emotions without shame, because that's a big one.
Caregivers, have a hard time forgiving themselves. Their hard on themselves, and they so often feel shame if they ask for support or help from anybody, or they feel judged.
Laurel: Great. there's two ways. First of all, you can get relief right now 'cause I'm gonna tell you something really important. Okay?
And secondly, the tools themselves are set up to prevent shame and to pro promote empowerment. So the first is that, when you have one of these circuits come up that makes you feel bad. there, there should be no shame because the circuits in your brain that are stress circuits. 'cause clearly if you were not taking care of that person, that was a relative.
you probably wouldn't push yourself so far, and you probably wouldn't get to the point that you're really abusing or neglecting yourself.
Diane: Yes.
Laurel: So the reason that you're going so far, or even feeling that shame is the programming in the stress circuits from early in life. Yeah, okay. Those beliefs, like mine was I have to be perfect.
I have to keep everyone happy. I have to be the good girl. I have to rescue everyone. So all of those circuits are not conscious. You can think about them, but the drivers to actually act based on them are in the circuits, and the circuits have to be erased. So they were put into my brain and your brain without our conscious awareness.
So the fact that we have the circuits that make us feel so bad is not our fault because they happen during times of stress, when the thinking brain's offline and the emotional brain, just whatever we experience it, stores without review. So really stupid things like I have to Be Perfect, are stored there, and then we believe them as if they were.
The Bible, you know this is, yes. This is just the holy grail right there. Yes. Okay. So anything that you're doing that makes you feel bad or that you did do, let's say you struck the person, or let's say that you had negative feelings toward them, like I was having hatred toward my father, or let's say you neglected them at times.
Yes. That's coming because you have circuits in your brain that make you over give. And when you overgive, the price you pay is the brain never forgets it and it lashes back in. Ineffective ways that you later really regret what you said. So the circuits that make you overgive and then have a backlash of behaving in ways that you wish you had not are in your unconscious mind.
They were put there through no fault of your own. So there is no shame. We act based on our circuits. And who told you that you could rewire your circuits until you're listening to me now? Because the technology and the science hadn't been developed Yes. Until 10 years. Secondly, the circuit, this. The tool you use, the major tool you'll use, we call it Spiraling up in EBT, it's called the Cycle Tool.
Built into it is prevention of shame. And I'm gonna tell you the formula right now. Oh, that's amazing. the difference between shame and guilt is huge. Yes. Shame was, I'm a bad person.
Diane: Yes.
Laurel: On that day that I can, I still remember where I was on my bed. I was just saying, I hate my father, I hate my father, I hate my father.
And then being rageful and then crying. Yep. That, that, that I did not shame myself because I'm an e. Bt. Yeah, I didn't shame myself, but I have a friend, a dear friend, a, a friend that is the one of the nicest people I've ever met. I can't tell you what a wonderful human being she is, and she took care.
She lives in a trailer and she is a single person. Has two dogs, and she lived with her mother taking care of her mother for 14 years. Her mother was very small, very demanding. The sisters were always criticizing what she was doing, but she was giving up her life for this. She had to change her diapers.
She had to, on and on It went. Yes, and toward the end of her mother's life, there were a couple things that my friend did that she regrets. that we're, to me, thinking very minor, but for her, she's haunted by it. Yes. 'cause she's shaming herself. Yeah. Saying I'm a bad person. Yep. So all she needs to do, and she has to do it.
Number of times it doesn't happen just once because she has to retrain her brain out of shame. Exactly. But the basic formula in EBT is to complain, which mom told us not to do. Yes. Because that activates the circuit that's making us overstressed and shame ourselves. But the first, the of the four feelings.
Angry, sad, afraid and guilty. And the protests, why am I doing this or whatever. One sadness, one fear, one guilt. We encourage you to be angry at the person. Just get it out. I feel angry. she, when I'm putting myself in my friend's position. I feel angry that all she does is one and one and never stop.
And I feel angry that, I hate that. I hated that. I, you just get it out. Okay. And then what happens is just one sentence. I feel sad that happened. I feel afraid that it really hurt her. But the other really major feeling is guilt, because guilt is power. And so I asked my friend, I said, as you look back on it now, with that thing you did that you regret, what was your part of it?
What would you do differently? I feel guilty that I didn't ask for more help or whatever that would be. Yes, I feel guilty that I don't appreciate how stressed I was. I feel guilty that I overgive to the point that I, my fight or flight drive was having a problem. So within that, by being able to be really angry, then you give yourself room to find you, you stop the hostility.
And you have room to get rid of shame and to just say, Hey, everybody. My part of it was, and interestingly enough, our genes don't really free us from these memories of horrible thing until we figure out what we contributed to it so that we can change. So the next time we're caretaking or the next time we're in that situation, we don't harm ourselves as much.
Yeah. we don't self-inflict these wounds.
Diane: I was a very young, girl. I was 16, 17 years old and my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer, and this is in the, sixties, early seventies. And, I took care of her. I was angry with her 'cause she coughed so much and I was the oldest of four. My dad couldn't deal with it and it was, I was shamed into taking care of her even though I was so young and didn't know what I was doing.
So when you say what you're telling me. It really resonates with me. My mom had a thoracotomy, which is an incision into her thorax for my listeners out there, and gallons of fluid would come from her lungs, and I could remember just being so tired and I've carried this guilt and shame with me my entire life.
Here I am 72 years old. Yeah. And I still. I'm still, feeling the trauma of being a caregiver at such an early age. The helplessness, the, and I did, I loved my mom. Oh, my love. I lord, I love my mom, the expectations for me to provide care for her. the coughing, every time she coughed, I just felt stressed.
So I wished I had known about this then. Yeah, because it's impacted my
Laurel: whole life. Okay. I have some things I can help you with right now. Oh, get on ebt.org, get a membership. Okay. And the two major skills you would learn. Yeah. And one of them is, you just have to unpack the suppressed emotions.
Diane: Yes.
Laurel: And because of what the emotions, if they're not unpacked effectively as they are with EBT uhhuh,they get stuck there and cause health problems and cause ruminating and always thinking about it. And it cause you to feel like you're sitting on. Dynamite. and you never can quite get off of it.
Yes. And they have to. And it's called this the, the instant boost. And with that tool, you go onto the app and you press number one, and you move through angry, sad, afraid guilty, and then moves to grateful, happy, secure, proud. You express those eight feelings over and over again. You might have to do a hundred of those.
Because you pack, but it takes literally two minutes. Okay. To unpack all that. the other is if there's any, is there any shame left or regrets? Do you have any shame or regrets?
Diane: you know what, I do have shame. I, and I do have regrets. My mom was told she beat lung cancer and I was just a freshman in nursing school.
She came across, she was on her way to tell me she beat cancer. we were gonna have a great Christmas, and on the elevator on the way down, she threw a pulmonary embolism and went to intensive care and died that evening. There is so many complex emotions that have impacted me my entire life.
Exactly. That. I've always been a caretaker, caregiver, but I can tell you right now, I honestly keep many people at bay because I don't want anybody to expect more from me than I'm able to give.
Laurel: Okay. So there's two ideas there. And all of this is in basic EBT training.
Uhhuh. It takes about three months to get the basics down and then after that you continue to raise your set point or the habit of your brain Uhhuh. but. one thing is that at the time, if you have any regrets about what you did in any occasion in the caretaking process with your mother. Yeah.
Appreciate that. The circuits that you have in your brain now are different than the ones you had back then. Yes. And for all of us, just biologically, we want to be there for the good.
And so for the circuits you had at that young age You did the best you could and there is no room for shame.
Interesting. Okay. And secondly, once you've cleared, we first talked about clearing the situational stress. And now the circuits that are getting in the way that could still be there, that have shame or of boundaries and such. The other is, there's certain life skills that you learn in EBT to set boundaries.
So you would learn the skill so that you could be, you would rewire your distancing circuit. Without, strengthening your merged circuit. So in stress, we either get overly close and lose ourselves, Uhhuh, because the brain can only focus on how other people feel and what they need. Yes. Or the brain gets stuck and just knowing, wanting to know how we feel and what we need and which is cause distancing.
Yes, this is true for all humans. It's, it is all healthy humans. When we're at brain state, four or five, we'll either merge and lose ourselves or distance and lose relationship. Okay, so you would rewire your merging circuit uhhuh. there's part of you that may be left over still having unmet needs for loving connection, where you may be overly giving to people that me the distancing.
So the di distance in merging circuit, you can get rid of those in the first few months of EBT. And then you will also learn how to actually give an, make an effective request that's based on brain science. So when someone asks something of you, you pause and say, I'll get back to you. You go use your EBT app and you get to brain state one.
It's only in brain state one that you can really see your true feelings and needs and have room to consider another person's feelings and needs and come out of it with intimacy, not with overgiving or under giving. So you get to that clarity state. Wow. And then you do something called an EBT sandwich.
It's a technique. It's, it really should be licensed because it's a technique where you actually make a request that people can never refuse because you first give them empathy. And then tell them how you feel and what you need. You make your requests and you give them more empathy. And what happens is when you do that, you not only create boundaries and make effective requests, but you get more of your needs met and the relationship is more intimate.
Diane: I love that. 'cause one of the biggest problems most caregivers have is setting boundaries and knowing their limitations. I'm guilty of that in the past as well. I just am, I know. I did it with my mom, I did it with my dad. I did it with my son, that I cared for. so yes, I understand that very.
So I'm going to absolutely sign up for this. I definitely wanna learn about it because I think I'm stuck at 72 years old. I'm still stuck, Dr. Laurel,
Laurel: you know what, and that's all of us because we have this society that is telling us that we're all about our thinking brain. And if we just thought positive thoughts and we ticked off what we did on our list of to do everything would be fine.
It's malarkey because the circuits in our emotional brain, the stress circuits that are, were encoded through no fault of our own rule us, and we can't find that sweet spot of connection until we clear the circuit. So what you're gonna do going forward, Uhhuh, and welcome to the EBT community, is that we, when you hit a situation that's difficult, you stop and you ask yourself, am I in joy?
Am I at Brain State one Uhhuh. And if you're not clear that you are, you say, yeah, and I'll get back to you. You go to your EBT app, you get to Joy, where you have clarity, where you all your wise decisions and you go at that point and not tell so. If you're not at brain State one, remember one is the joy state all the way down where you're thinking brain really is clear and in charge and all your wise memories are activated all the way down to five.
You just pause and give them, some kind of an answer so you don't have to say anything. You get to one, and you'll be really surprised at how wise you are because we're controlled by the stress circuits and when they get turned off and our resiliency, joy circuits turn on. It is no problem. It's so clear to us.
And we set those boundaries that keep us healthy and also, maintain the relationship, like with my father. Maintaining the relationship with him that was respectful and dignified. I didn't feel like frankly I've been dragged through the streets and otherwise I would be. Because it is just hard to set boundaries and no limits.
When your brain is in stress overload. It just can't happen even to the wisest person. we're ruled by our stress chemicals and that's what we can shift, switch off with the EBT app.
Diane: I can, I could see using this a hundred times a day, especially for, as a caregiver. One of, my son was a veteran and, or actually he was an active military when he developed a severe pain condition.
And, he had eight years, he had, a suicide attempt in the va, hospital, madic, and Army Medical Center. this was. 15, 20 16 years ago, and then eight years later he successfully committed suicide. And, it just was overwhelming. And I have so much sadness and grief and anger at him for not reaching out to me more, not leaning on me more.
And I just, I can see that this could have made him and myself a different person.
Laurel: Ab, absolutely. But you can be a different person now. Oh yes. Yes. So you can be a different person now in his life. If we could get EBT into the military, and I'm doing podcasts for the military for that reason, because they are suffering.
And they're suffering so badly and they're teaching them things like deep breathing and mindfulness that we know from science do not get into the stress circuits. They just keep you in limbo. Yeah. and so we want people to get to the root cause. These stress circuits are vile creatures and they make us have su suicide ideation or even act on that.
And they make us shame ourselves, and they make us stay in limbo. Like we can never really resolve it. I did something really bad in my life, which I won't go into, but there's something I did in my life that I really regret.
And it was when I was at Brain State five and I was in a lot of stress and I made a mistake and for years after that I thought, I'm never gonna recover from this.
I'm never gonna feel like a whole person because I did that. I can't believe I did that and my life is ruined. Yes. And then I applied EBT to it. 'cause remember I'm 76 now and, I was maybe 30 at the time. A long time ago. I didn't have EBT and I just went back and this is what I really recommend.
Is what you do is appreciate that when you have a memory of something happening, you're actually activating the circuit of that time. Yes, it's real. It is not a, it is not like a psychological thing. You're actually activating a neural circuit from that experience, and so what you do is you heal yourself.
What I did, and I did this a number of times and I probably did hundreds of cycles on it, but I reached peace. And the way that you do that is you appreciate that we all act in certain ways based on whatever circuit is activated at the time. And so I go back and just tell the story, write it out.
Tell the story. At this age I was doing this and this, and then this happened. You hit something that you really regret, right? And instead of going into the stratosphere of shame and blame, yeah. You then process your emotions back to coherence and sensibility with EBT. Wow.
You will at that point appreciate that for who you were in that moment. You actually relive the moment. As you were at that time and you realized given your circuit, that was the best you could do. And you also find if the circuit that made you do it Is still in your brain. Find that circuit and you erase it and you know that you'll never behave that way again.
Okay. And as you march through, 'cause there might be two or three or more things where you regret each time you pay the price. Yes. you have to take your emotions that are toxic and spiral up so that the toxic the feelings are health promoting. You unlock the brain and you find out what was your unreasonable expectation.
That was in that circuit that made it perfectly reasonable to behave the way you did. And then not only do you find that circuit, but you. Crush the circuit. you destroy the circuit. You obliterate the circuit until it's gone. And you know in your heart that if this thing happened today, there is no way on earth you would do what you did before.
And it's only when you found the circuits and erase them, that you can be at peace.
Diane: That's fascinating. I haven't been at peace or comfortable since my mom died. And then it's all just cumulative after caring for so many other people. so I'm really, that's, I find this fascinating. I just really do.
Now you've been teaching this method for over 40 years. Yeah. Damn. I wished I knew this.
Laurel: No. in all honesty, I was a young person at age 28. When I discovered the cognitive and behavioral methods were bogus. And I went back in the literature and this little lady from a psychiatrist from Baylor College of Medicine, in Baylor, had discovered that what was going on with children that were distressed was lack of emotional connection.
And as a young 28-year-old, new faculty member said. Not a problem. I think I'm going to develop tools of emotional connection. And that was because I was not a problem. and so because I was in a university where was a number one, one of the top research universities in the world, you always have to do research.
And so we did the research and it showed, oh my gosh, it worked. But mainly what influenced me was one person. A mother of one of these kids that was so distressed, came to me and said, what did you do to my daughter? She used to be so depressed and she was using food and whatever. She said, now he just goes outside and wants to play.
She's a different person. And by the way, I want what she has and at that moment. I was a young woman. I hadn't even had my, I had one baby that died when I was 23, but I was told I couldn't have children and that's why I went back into school. But, I ended up having three more children after that who ended up being healthy.
what I knew is that I would be a bad person. If we discovered something that important, and I didn't follow it, but it would take me 25 more years before the science, that informed us why it was working would come out. And then I got involved in it, neuroscientists and neurophysiologists, that helped me move it to this level.
So it's been definitely a community effort over time, and it wasn't really till the last 10 years that the app began to be magical. Where we could see that we could rewire trauma, we could, rewire little things that were going on. We had medium things and then the trauma things we could do, and it was all universal and could be put into something as simple as an app.
Diane: With the mental health situation in our country right now after COVID, I can just see. This is amazing and every high school and grade school should be teaching this, from what I see. And here because we really have a really, a public health crisis in, in. Country right now, probably all over the world because of COVID.
and it's de deeply impacted, negatively impacted our youth so much. I'm hearing so many sad things about our youth. but then, again, it's our, the caregivers. that's my challenge is my family caregivers because they need so much help and they don't know where to get it and what to do and find something that works for them.
absolutely. Now you've got this method for over 40 years. It's evolved. what excites you about most about its future?
Laurel: Oh, the future is that I really believe it was a spiritual gift. I don't think I put this together because every time I hit a wall, which there's been many walls and much rejection, because anytime you have something that's a new paradigm, everybody's scared of it.
Diane: Yes. Yes. And
Laurel: and I believe that just, I had incidents that were so scary, that felt heaven sent. I'll tell you an example about my father is that, he had passed away by that time, and I had given some national conferences to social workers on EBT and the ratings were exceptional.
So they invited me back for a big talk. And during the middle of the night before the big talk, it was gonna be on Zoom. It was during COVID. I woke up in the middle of the night and I heard this voice and I felt like there was wood around me or something weird. I just, I was very uncomfortable.
I don't normally wake up like that. And I heard this, I'm getting chills just saying it. This big voice, this big booming voice. It was my father's voice. And he said, do not quit. Oh wow. And then, and I thought, that's crazy. Right now I'm about to go and speak in the morning. When I wake up, I'm gonna have to take a shower and get dressed and I'm gonna give a talk on Zoom, just 800 people.
And then I pause and he says, and be proud of yourself. Oh wow, that's, oh, I wake up the next morning, all prepared thinking, what was that about? I must have had too much,popcorn NAS night or something like that. What was wrong with me? And I go to give the talk and the woman comes into the room and she says, we have some bad news for you because the accrediting agency for your work.
And remember, this is coming from the University of California, San Francisco. It's built on solid science, and our current methods are not built on science, solid science. They have decided to reject your continuing education credit. There won't be 300 people here, there will be eight people here. And all I can think about is now I know why I was visited there.
Yeah. But each step of the way, and I want you as a caretaker, if you're listening to this, understand that you are being guided and all you really need to do is to, when you feel terrible when you're at Brain State, five. In that moment, you use the EBT tool that's called the Transcendence tool, and in that moment you open that tight fist of over control.
You release the over control about getting what you want when you want it.
And you say to the spiritual, however you define it.
Here to be of service. And when you make that shift from having it the way you want it, when you want it, uhhuh, opening your heart to the greater good knowing you have to release over control and tolerate not knowing something magical happens in that moment.
And then once that magic is occurred, all you do is you ask for help. And I recommend that you do what I do. You ask for the exact help you need. The exact help you need because you're now functioning on a different plane. In the emotional brain is the seed of survival and disease and connection, and the seed of the soul.
And when you say that with either immediately, immediately or within one day, you will get exactly what you need a hundred percent of the time. So the overall idea is that EBT is so powerful because we as a society have been ignoring our emotional brain, which is the powerhouse of everything that matters.
Once people get this app. Start seeing that they can control the circuitry and the connection and the rewards and the meaningfulness of life by taking charge of their emotional brain with these admittedly simple tools.
Diane: Yeah,
Laurel: it's gonna go like lightning.
Diane: That's amazing. I wanna thank you so much for sharing this really valuable information.
Dr. Melman, could you, tell my listeners how they can find you? The
Laurel: best way to find me is go to e bt.org. It's like food stamps EBT, but it's a.org and there are lots of books on EBT. I don't recommend them because I'd much rather have you start getting the app. And get the app and get as much additional support memberships as you want.
But just get that app and start using it. And what'll happen is you'll say, my gosh, what's going on? So I just really recommend one thing. Get the app, go to ebt.org. It's also called EBT connect.net. Also, please all of your health professionals go to them and say, are you certified in EBT? And if not, I'm using it.
And it would be great if you got certified because these health professionals are locked into their old way of thinking. Yes. and it's, who's gonna really make the difference with EBT people Demanding better? Yes. Yes. People saying it's about the emotional brain. There are tools that are scientific and validated, let's start using them.
And the therapists that we have are trained in EBT are magical and they love it for themselves as well as for their patients.
Diane: that's awesome. one of the things I love that you have an app because the first thing a caregiver can train themselves to do is grab their phone with the app on it and just look at it, which is something that a lot of people, they can train themselves so they don't get overwhelmed and over and, miss an opportunity to get to joy.
Laurel: Exactly. I'm up to Joy. What I think of it as is that I tell my patients, 'cause I have tele group, we have telephone groups, we have, we'd have, it's all about loving support and community. Yes. But, what I say to you, if you're not in joy, if you're not at brain state, one, you need to exercise. You need to exercise your arm, and you need to reach for your app.
Put it in front of your face. Anything you do on that app is gonna help you. Yes. And there's so many different ways to get to, to joy on that app. You are set, you are playing with a full deck of cards and raise that brain state that you have, raise, clear those chemicals, and there's no looking back.
So exercise your arm, reach for the app in two or three minutes, one to three minutes. You'll feel like a different person. Because you will be, you'll be running a different circuit and your biochemistry will be healthy and help you stay alive and stay. Stay giving, and receiving love for longer.
Diane: thank you so much and to my family caregivers out there, you are the most important part of the caregiving equation.
Without you, it all falls apart. So please practice self-care every day. Learn to be gentle with yourself, and I'm telling you right now, you better get the EBT app, because you're all worth it and you have to realize you're worth it.
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