Simple Brain FACTS That Create The Brain Healing Journey

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

That’s a great question because, you know, as you started is we really don’t think about our brain health in the context of performance and high performance. It’s not a topic of discussion and it’s really fundamental, isn’t it? Because our brains run everything and when we don’t take that into account, we don’t even really take it into account from a mental health perspective. It’s kind of never really mentioned. That is our brains that actually tend to be in trouble or our system of our body is in trouble when it comes to performing optimally or performing okay in the first instance. So the way that we look at it is to look at it through the lens of the five pillars of brain health and we remember that by the pneumonic facts and I’m military. So we love harmonics because it makes it really easy to remember, which is why it’s so super simple to apply in everyday life. So fact stands for feelings, our actions, our connect actions and those are the connections to ourselves and to other people, our thoughts and the thoughts that were really listening to and our surroundings. 

That’s feelings, actions, connections, thoughts and surroundings and that makes up the pneumonic facts and the reason it is so important is that’s kind of like the fundamentals of our brain health. And it starts with feelings because our feelings strive everything. Our emotions are like our our signal and they signal us to either move towards something because it’s going to give us pleasure or to move away from something because it’s going to cause us pain. But we never we rarely rarely take the time to check in with our emotions with how we’re feeling. We might think about how I want to feel, which is which is great in the context of performance. But actually we first of all need to check in with how we really are feeling and what is it with what emotions are driving, our behaviors are driving our actions are driving how we connect with others and what lies behind those emotions in the context of the thought patterns that we’re having and also the context of the history that we have in our life that have shaped our emotional triggers and the emotions that will typically exhibit. So that’s the first thing, 

Cheng Ruan, MD

You know, that seems simple. But I think especially the f in fact the feelings right? I think in our society and especially in my culture, I’m a hybrid. So I was born in china has been shot out there and I came to the U. S. And accumulated here. And so the this hybrid sort of immigrant mentality that I have moved from from china to the U. S. And you know my family who came from a place in the country where there was not necessarily the best surroundings, the s. Right? The surroundings. Um we’re kind of taught to to stifle the f. Stifle the feelings right? And when were taught to stay feelings that are sort of our primitive like fight or flight survival. And I thought that a high performance individual doesn’t have any feelings started right? Um how do you feel about that? What do you say to someone who really has the idea in there? And like 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

So I mean we grow up in different cultures and different cultures have different expectations placed upon us and you know importantly we do what’s necessary for survival and then we do what’s necessary to thrive So completely understandable in certain cultures where you may have your feelings suppressed. It doesn’t have to be a culture. Could be just a family dynamic, whatever you know whatever surroundings you are in you will do what’s right for you to to survive. That’s the first thing. So it’s okay if someone has told you to suppress your feelings because that’s what you were expected to do at the time. Is does it constitute high performance? Not really because when we suppress our feelings, what we’re not doing is leveraging the power of our emotions to propel us forward or to propel us away from things. So emotions carry powers. It’s like energy in motion emotion. So when we when we focus on accessing those feelings from a performance perspective, we have that emotional drive to really get to that next level in life. So, I’ll give you a classic in kayaking. I’m a kayak instructor. If you ask somebody to sit in a kayak and and stop themselves from falling in on natural response that we have encoded from a childhood is to put a hand out, because that’s what we do. If we’re going to fall over doesn’t work when you’re in a kayak because the water isn’t so and you fall in. So we have a really strong emotional attachment to learn something different. 

So we don’t fall in, get cold or ultimately drown. So, it’s very easy to teach people how to retrain their autonomic response from going automatic response, from going from putting your hand out to using a paddle to engage. And the same applies with high performance when your when your emotion driven to win the race, if you were really driven to win it, you will do whatever it takes to win it. But if we don’t have that emotional attachment, we don’t leverage that power that we have inside ourselves to really perform at that next level. So, emotions are so, so important and we we often don’t realize the power that they hold and the power that when we suppress our emotions, we suppress our own power ultimately, because we are giving away our power and actually even worse from a from research that’s been done, is we are pushing those emotions to be expressed somehow in our body and not necessarily in a constructive way. And those emotions will come out often in chronic disease later on in life. Because what happens is our mind isn’t listening. So our body starts shouting louder and it shouts to the point that we express it physically, it often destructively. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

And we can see this in people’s faces. You know, and see the dark circles around the eyes. We call that history the up regulation we can see in the skin. Um you can see the color in the entire bodies color in their eyes. You know, there’s a glaze over. So there is a physical manifestation to the feeling, suppression of the feelings and that if we were talking like this three years ago, I don’t think I would be even be able to speak to you on this topic because it’s sort of a traumatic thing for me to even discuss. But now this is all I talked about, especially with patients as well. So it’s kinda it’s kinda nice and I’m sure there’s a lot of listening to this and the things that you’re saying that they’re starting to tear up a little bit, which is something that’s totally understandable

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

And that’s okay.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah. 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

I want to bring out on that as well. Is that it’s totally okay to cry. And when you suppress your emotions when you’re told to put a lid on it is often the expression put a lid on it which is exactly what you actually have to do is you don’t empty to your pot of emotion. It just keeps filling and filling and filling. And so what happens is eventually the lid is like a pressure pot. It blows off at some point because it because your pot becomes full. So people you know recent events that we’ve had when we’ve lost Queen Elizabeth the second here in the U. K. People were welling up because it triggered emotions that they did didn’t realize they had that were connected to either her or connected to her core values. He believes her the actions that she performed go back through the five pillars. The feelings that she induced on people how she made them feel The things that she did for us. The actions the connections that she made for the country. The thoughts that she incited us and the and the surroundings. You know that the the way in which she engaged in the surroundings and the world and everything else. People didn’t realize that they had this connection to her across all of those five pillars And that’s what makes us well up and when we don’t take the time to check in with our emotions and we’ve been told to suppress it for so long. 

It’s really hard to control them because we’ve never had any emotional control you know, gifted to us because we’ve been told not to have any emotion. So there’s no ability to control it. So that so the way I like to think of our emotions is like we are all in and sailing on an ocean of emotion. And those that often get told to suppress it, of those that get told to go deep into the ship and ignore the waves. So they’re no longer at the tiller, they’re no longer sailing their ship. But then you become at the mercy of your emotions. So you get thrown around by them and at some point you might get capsized and then you have to come up for f and you’re like what’s going, what’s going on? So it’s really important that we do take the time to come up on deck and to read the ocean, read the waves and learn how to sail it and use the waves to our advantage, learn which ones we want to ride that will propel us forward and learn which ones we want to to navigate our way around. But be aware that they are there and that’s so important. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

You know, I was reading a book and they actually call this the and frank effect is because when you’re hiding to avoid death and then you cry or you peep or you say something that results in imminent death that happens in a lot of generations who are coming from war torn countries. Um and that’s sort of the natural effect of sort of protection mechanism. You know, and you know, my own family came through sort of the cultural revolution in china where there was a lot of things that were targeted against multiple members of much older generations than myself. And I see a lot of those effects kind of trickling down. Um but and you know, it was really until a few years ago that I realized that that that didn’t serve me. In fact, it was actually creating a lot of harm portion of life, professional life, business building, etcetera, etcetera. Made some really interesting decisions kind of based on that physiology, you know? And so that’s how I connected with sort of feelings and emotions and brain performance. But let’s talk about like, you know, let’s talk about each of the five pillars effects. Um and we spend enough time on the f the feelings, which is great. Well yeah, let’s go to the other ones because how does that manifest in humans and how does that relate to brain performance? 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Right. Sure. So let’s go with a is for action. So these are the actions that we do everything that we do, including including the job that we have, the sport, the sleep, all of the normal the actions that we have, the behaviors that we have, how we how we perform from a day to day perspective, the nutritional the nutrition that we have and the these actions are driven by our feelings. So our emotions drive our actions and they’re driven by a learning experience as well. Our behaviors are generally repetitive actions that have become embedded as a sort of automated response. Often driven by our emotions and when we take the time to check back in with what is it I’m doing, what actions am I taking? And then ask ourselves the question are those actions serving me? Are they helping or hurting my brain? 

Then we have got that ability to step away from from us and just on autopilot, which is often what we are on most of most of the time, we’ve got the ability to step away and engage our prefrontal quarters and go, okay, let’s look at things logically, let’s let’s look at what I’m doing that’s helping me, let’s look at what I’m doing that’s hurting me and take back some control. And often when people think about actions, they just think about the things that they do in their day to day life. They don’t think about the behaviors that they have in the context of sleep hygiene, in the context of their nutrition, in the context of their drinking, in the context of automated responses that we might have. How did I react to that situation and taking the time to understand those is really, really important because then we can start to peel back the onion layers and work out? Okay, this is the way I am behaving, how do I want to behave and what do I need to do to change that in the context of the five pillars continue on in a minute to help serve me better and perform better rather than deplete my performance.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And as a parent of three daughters, this is like ringing true, because I can sort of the behavioral aspects of my Children reflecting all of the stuff that that they were brought up with, right? So I assume Children can kind of utilize this framework. 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Absolutely. And I teach this to Children, you know, my teacher, even to my daughter who’s three, because you can say, okay that emotion led to that action. So it’s easy to relate it, relate the pillars to each other, so that Children can understand how can they look at the facts, behind the situation or behind something that’s happened, an event that’s happened or how they behaved. And then and then start to look at all of those pillars associated with that event and work out what they could do differently. So for example, my daughter, sometimes she gets really low blood sugar and after swimming, she’ll go into what I call it a brain wobble, she’ll have a brain wobble and she’ll start to lose it because she’s she’s she’s hungry and so letting you know, we got, you know, we talk about the emotion and then we talk about the action. So next time we go swim, let’s make sure straight after swimming before we do anything else, you have something to eat, right, You know, so it’s easy to bring it into the conversation with Children and you don’t have to be any age is to make that connection between the pillars.

Cheng Ruan, MD

That’s definitely something that we’re going to use, you know, got 16 and eight year old. So it’s definitely a good time. 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

The next pillar is connections. And this is like the most social connection is the number one predictor of happiness. And we’re not just talking about connection to others. Were also talking about connection to ourselves because connection with ourselves, we’re the longest relationship will ever have is the one we have with ourselves. So it’s really important that we take the time to connect with who we are and who we want to be. So when we’re talking about connection to ourselves, we’re looking at our core values and our belief systems and our core values are like the moral compass that guides us in life, what’s really important to us and then also the connection to a higher power so that we don’t put ourselves on a pedestal, but we realize that we are part of a much larger ecosystem and we’ve we rarely talk about this in the context of health, but we are all connected to something bigger than us. You know, we’re not separate to the planet. We depend on the planet and the planet depends on the actions that we take to make sure that it survives effect effectively and that we ensure survival. So, but first of all it’s connection to ourselves and you can consider spiritual power as part of that connection and then connection to others. So how we connect with ourselves, whether that’s positive or negative will influence how effectively we connect with other people. So if we don’t take the time to learn, okay, how is it that I’m showing up for myself and and do I value myself? What what am I what relationship do I have with myself? 

We won’t really truly get the benefit of connection with other people. And this can be really obvious in the context of the care setting where people don’t take the time to care for themselves. They put all of their attention into caring for other people and actually it comes back and bites them because then put the oxygen mask on first that they run out of. They run out of energy and that then results in often a breakdown of some sort, maybe it’s called burn out or they maybe get chronically ill or sick because I haven’t taken the time to connect with themselves and listen listening to the warning signals that are coming up. So connection to ourselves and then connection to others all falls under that pillar. And that’s a really again an easy topic of conversation to have with Children is looking at how they can connect with others. So we can connect loads of different ways, not just talking with people. We connect and connect physically. We can connect mentally, we can connect emotionally and we can connect spiritually. So it’s taking the time to look at what is it from your connection perspective you want out of a relationship with someone else and how can you strength strengthen that by looking at the other pillars. 

So that connection and it’s really taking the time to stop, pause and reflect. Look at your relationship with yourself, understand your values. Am I clear about my values and beliefs and are they serving me and am I using my network to help me grow? So I collect connecting with people that are like growth friends, I call them. So if you think you’ve got a garden of friendship in your life, you want to be taking the time to connect with people that help your garden grow rather than connecting with the weeds in the garden or all the all the bugs that that you are, the flowers that are beautiful, make sure that you’re putting your attention into connecting with people that are going to serve you and help you perform better rather than actually deplete you and suck energy out of you. Um that stops you from performing as well. So that’s really, really important and we can reflect historically on our connections as well and how that may have shaped our behaviors, our actions and how that may have shaped our emotions or absence of emotional expression based on the connections that we’ve had historically. And that includes the connect historically we’ve had with ourselves. So that’s really, really important to one and often not looked into enough depth, particularly in the context of how we connect with ourselves and the relationship we have with ourselves.

Cheng Ruan, MD

You know, all these are also really important, you know, from a business perspective for for building a great company culture, scaling execution from a family perspective, also teasing out things in the family before it becomes a problem. Right? And not stifling the feelings, nurturing the connections. Right? And, and I’ve seen the other side of these things um, pretty dramatically in chronic health issues, chronic neurodegenerative diseases. So, um, and there’s statistics that support it, right? And so, um, and we can label people in different diseases and disorders like PTSD or whatever it is. Right? But all these, all these um, can benefit from the foundation of the facts. The feelings and actions and connections. So, all right, let’s go to the next letter. What’s next?

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

So, the next one is thoughts and we have thousands upon thousands. The jury is out how many thoughts we have some literature mentions up to 90,000 thoughts a day, but ultimately we rarely check in with our thoughts. So, our thoughts often drive our automatic responses that we have. They drive our emotions that we may not be checking in with any point in our day? And those thoughts are fundamental to how we are operating? It’s like our operating system. So you might consider this as your mindset in the context of your brain’s software. And our emotions form part of our mindset as well. So it’s really important that we take the time to connect in with the thoughts that we’re having and the thoughts that we are subconsciously listening to but we don’t realize they’re actually going on. So this is about writing it down. The most important thing is to write it down to get it out of your head and onto paper. Because also with your emotions as well because then you can start getting curious not furious with your thoughts and unravel. Where is that thought coming from? And it was also really important in the context of people that have often A. D. D. Attention deficit disorder struggle with extracting the thoughts out of their head and putting them onto paper. So they they just have this constant thought process running around around around in their mind. 

Also people who have overactive and serious, singular gyrus it’s my way or the highway thought pro patterns that keep going on the like on the hamster wheel of the same thoughts and if somebody’s not not saying what they’re thinking they’re not gonna listen in. So it’s taking the time to understand the types of thoughts that you’re having? Where are those thoughts coming from? Have they got any order or structure to them? And how are those thoughts actually facilitating or impinges on your performance? And you know we have so many people in this world A. D. D. Whether they’ve been diagnosed or not and often people with A. D. D. Like to run towards danger because that that’s what stimulates their brain. But they can often find it really difficult to think strategically because taking the time out to pause and stop and think is it can be considered boring and it actually turns their brain off. So it’s really important to really understand what thoughts am I having and how am I able to structure them and process them so that I can compartmentalize the ones that are serving me and use them to the best effect. And then I can start squashing the automatic negative thoughts or the ants that aren’t serving me and are slowing me down. 

And often the automatic negative thoughts or ants come from our past, our past experiences and the cultures that we’ve grown up in, the people that we’ve connected with what people have told us and what thoughts we’ve listened to from other people and how that shaped our belief system. So it’s really important not only to understand what is going on but also to take back control of your thoughts. So to break that cycle. And and the best way to do that is to write them down or to say them out loud to someone else so that someone else can facilitate the challenge of those thoughts. And also the question is that true? And then you can start to take back control of them. So it’s really, really important. And often one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the context of performance is that people aren’t taking the time to check in with the thoughts that are running in the background is the background operating system and they’re not taking the time to weed out the the bugs that are in there to clean up the program to make it run more effectively.

Cheng Ruan, MD

You know, the most fascinating thing about what you just said is that we have the technology to look at those things now. You know, you have the facts, scans of the brain at the clinic, we have quantitative EEG es sometimes, you know, it’s sort of a running joke in the office now because I can look at a particular series of E. G. S. And quantity of EKGs on the brain and have a pretty good prediction of for them to have the ants that, like you said, the Autumn Autumn, automatic negative thoughts and I look at sort of that a D. D. Type of pattern. And so when I kind of go into kind of dive right into the thought process and the feelings and emotions and we live in such a spectacular time for us to have the technology to look at that. So it really validates, you know, from something that’s traditionally a psychiatric diagnosis. I know this is this is the brain, this is what your brain is doing, and here’s what we can do about it. So it’s such a powerful, powerful thing.

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Yeah, and you know, even people with asperger’s, you know, who or who are on the autism spectrum is obviously so I can show you that the extent of inflammation that occurs in their brain, which which puts all of the systems of the brain on high alert. And so the more systems you have on high alert, the much harder is to engage the logical thinking part of your brain, because when you’ve got, when the way our brain has evolved is we’ve evolved our reptilian brain which is the amygdala and the deep limbic system evolved first because it was essential to survival. And then the human part of our brain, the logical thinking part for much, much later. Um and so if you, if you’ve got an overactive deep limbic system, Overactive Basal Ganglia is the deeper regions of your brain as hard as you try. It’s really difficult to turn on the logical thinking part because your emotional brain is ultimately in control, and the only way you can start to turn it on is to take that time to pause, take 10 seconds and take the time to write everything down so that you’re giving yourself that permission to check in with your operating system in your brain and then taking the time to weed out the the unhelpful programs.

Cheng Ruan, MD

What a powerful thing we can we have this brain right? And not only are we looking at the sort of subconscious patterns, the generational patterns, we can actually do something about it, and that’s that’s the most amazing thing about the brain. 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Yeah. And you know, and just be clear, I have a really active basal ganglia, so emotional part of my brain is over for active and my thinking, my automatic negative thoughts that I had were really overactive. So I could be also really easily distracted so often. Previously before I went and had my brain scan, I would I would be thinking about something else when I was talking to people because I was just, my brain was just running all the time and I needed to learn how how to calm it down and control it and and just slow it down a little bit so that I get that opportunity to better connect with people. So, you know, we all have different types of brains and I might have Q E G which I think is just totally fascinating to look at what’s going on inside your mind. But it’s really important that we use those tools that are available to us to image and better understand our brain to know how what areas are overactive and how we can really take back control and not only take back control but optimize the brains that we have? This isn’t about turning off really brilliant skill sets that perhaps people on the autism spectrum have, this is about enabling them to better function in societies that don’t necessarily accommodate their different brain type. So

Cheng Ruan, MD

That’s amazing. So let’s jump into the last one. Just surroundings. I’m most curious one, I want to hear your take on it because this is sort of a big one for me as well. So let’s go to the s the surroundings. 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Yeah, so the surroundings is a huge one and I agree with illness. This is this is goes everything to the room that you’re in, to the toxins that are present in the atmosphere that you may be exposed to, whether that’s ingested or touched or breathed in and also the surroundings in the context of your culture, the surroundings in the context of the people that you engage in with, the surroundings in the context of the wider environment that you connect with. Whether that’s an urban or a rural environment and how you connect with nature as a whole. If indeed that’s something that you like to do. And it also goes back to the surroundings that you grew up in in in the context of your past history and how that influenced you, including the surroundings that you’re exposed to in the context of growing in the womb as well? So what did your, did your mother have a very calm pregnancy experience? Was she, was she emotionally stressed during that time? Did she experience stresses or trauma during the pregnancy? Did you have trauma in the womb? Maybe loss of a twin or traumatic birthing experience all influence all part of your surroundings and influence your brain health from pre birth all the way through your, through your life. 

So it’s important that we take the time to check in with how everything extended to our human system affecting us in the context of our performance. And, you know, for me personally, what got me into brain power and performance was a horrendous situation in the workplace, I suffered a miscarriage very unexpectedly and then got immediately put on a performance review and told by the firm I was working for, I know my National Intelligence, which was just absolutely knocked me for six, but ultimately transpired that the surroundings that I was working in, which is so toxic, it was such a toxic culture that it didn’t matter what I did physically did For me personally, those surroundings were never going to serve me and help me perform at my best. So ultimately I left the workplace and went and did something else. But I mean, our surroundings cannon for us in so many different ways, so we could be in the same type of surroundings, but our past experience will shape how we perceive them. 

So if I, I’m just going to take something from my day to day. So as a ski instructor, I might take people on the on the hill, which is what I did when I was leaving the workplace, I was in, I went and took people skiing separately and the surroundings were really, really challenging. It was white out conditions. People found it really hard, but for me I was okay with it because I knew what was within my control and what I could do about it. But for people on my, within my team that I was teaching, obviously it was a very different experience for them and that would have laid a very different foundation in their brain in the context of how they found it emotionally, how they found it physically, how they found it mentally because it can be mentally taxing and how they found it in terms of the kind of spiritual experience and their connection to their core values and beliefs. So our surroundings, you can put two people in exactly the same surroundings, but they have completely and utterly different experiences depending on their past life experiences, what they’ve learned and so on.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Put a little additional spin on that because you talked about in utero surroundings as well, Lives in O. B. G. Y. N. And so we talked about this quite a bit is there’s a lot of trauma that’s surrounding birth and pre birth and pregnancy and even pre pregnancy as well. For example, we know that those people who suffer a lot of chronic anxieties and traumas and domestic violence and abuse. They tend to have lower amniotic fluid productions surrounding the baby, that there’s less placental blood flow per minute to the baby. That and also the toxin exchange between what the placenta was supposed to be protecting, nurturing the baby actually that decreases as well um with the with thought and with with anxiety and all these different things like that. And so it certainly makes sense for that to occur. And also that also causes, you know, preterm labor, preterm rupture membranes and all sorts of different things that surround the birthing process. And so so it’s not surprising that the surroundings in utero really affects the way that our brains triggered developed. We also know that the baby’s cortisol levels are signal significantly elevated and spiked whenever there’s um decrease the amniotic fluid. 

And so these are all studies that have been done on on the vitality of the child. So the environment really, really kind of sets in there. And so, you know, I just want people to understand this is what we’re talking about is not just a psychological thing. This is there’s a huge physical manifestation that affects multiple multiple generations. Now, if this baby in this low amniotic fluid environment, maybe preterm labor preterm birth becomes an adult that automatic ism right of this high cortisol spikes. High stress spikes gets transferred from a behavioral aspect to the next generation and the next generation. Higher good of developing the same actual physical manifestations is surrounding birth. And then you have like multi, multi, multi generational trauma, not just psychological trauma, but actually like surrounding the birth itself. And so um and so that’s something that I think that every person should know and that if you know these people listening to this that want to conceive, maybe we have fertility issues, may have, maybe they have they’ve had miscarriages as well. Is that part of this whole healing process? Start with the facts, as you say, as part of this part of this journey to become that wonderful person and then stop the inherited generational traumas that’s causing physical physical manifestation in our Children and many generations down. So that’s such a powerful thought process. 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Yeah, I I completely agree. And, you know, going back to Children and the birthing experience, you know, my daughter was born by C section and so her birthing experience was very unnatural. It was very traumatic because it was over a 48 hour window of me being pumped full of chemicals to try and start the birthing birthing process. And ultimately, when she was born, she didn’t have the natural microbiome that she would have had if she was born through the birthing canal. And so actually the surroundings in terms of how she was born and the way in which she was born, influenced her house, that she was really poorly beginning of her, you know off her life because she didn’t have that microbiome smother that she would have been given as part of that experience. And so it was really important for me to take the time to strengthen her microbiome in which unfortunately new through advice from a nutritional expert and now she takes probiotics to ensure she really gets ill. I mean obviously we have C0V!D so it’s kind of difficult to to do a correlation but but she’s she’s really ill now by providing her with the right environment and the right nutrition to to help improve her performance level. And also she was environment was a hugely important role in the context of how she functioned initially as a baby because she had nightmares from birth. She had birthing experience nightmares. And it wasn’t until I was able to haven her using haven ng while she was having a nightmare in her sleep that I was able to get rid of the nightmares that she was having and she was able to sleep through the night. So we really need to not ignore how traumatic coming into this world can be for Children and not to be dismissive of some of the traumas that are experienced, including how Children are delivered, you know, through four sets and the volunteers and so on. How that delivery experience can influence physically influence their brain function, particularly if it’s through with forceps and so on and steps that are really important for parents to take. And medical professionals to advise parents need to take to help give that child the best start state in life that will elevate their brain function from the get go. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

So true and it’s hard, right? Because I feel a lot of parents have sort of that guilt that surround the old my child was C section and etcetera etcetera. We can build so much resiliency in New York. I was C section C section right. Still build resilience there as well. And the other thing, you know, there are sometimes that doctors like my wife sometimes there are necessary things to save the child and the mother section. Right? And so it’s either like, you know, it’s either like, you know, have a child or not right? And those are the things that I want people to kind of at least their guilt from some of the stuff that’s completely medically necessary to save someone’s life, right?

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Absolutely. And inclusive the mother as well. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so and so there’s so post partum especially postpartum follow up, there is a lot of guilt surrounding aspects around the burning process, especially traumatic, oh, what did I do wrong? Did I eat something wrong? Did I not sleep enough? You know, did I did I did I did I read so much that I watch tv too much and stuff like that. And preservative thought Those are also automatic negative thoughts. It’s not going to serve anyone because we have to do is focus on the price. We have to look to the future, right? Get the facts right literally, and proceed down the path of that healing process. So glad we get to mention this on the summit. 

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

But I think also, you know, part of it is accepting that it happened. So the first, the first step to making changes is to accept where you’re at. And if this comes back to when we first started talking about emotions, when we accept we have emotions and that we’re entitled to express them, then we’ve got the power to do something about how we choose to express them, but we need to take the time to accept, you know, this is what happened, it wasn’t, you know, wasn’t my idea, it wasn’t optimal for me at the time, you know, I had a huge birth, you know, throw up and throw out the window. Um, but ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, I I’ve been fortunate enough, I’ve got, I’ve got a beautiful baby, and so it’s it’s, you know, and, you know, when I had a miscarriage as well, so I understand, you know, how difficult is when you don’t have the opportunity to have a beautiful baby, but it’s it’s understanding how can I get meaning from that, which goes back to connection with ourselves, is to understand the purpose and the meaning that we can derive from that experience that will help us move forward in life because every stumbling block in the road we can learn a lesson from, we can, we can take energy from it in a positive way and use it to help either help ourselves or to help others and it’s finding a way to do that that’s positive and constructive and not destructive. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

It’s amazing. Well, this is the most fascinating discussion. So it’s something that I really want to work on with my family, my team members at work, my other companies advise for and something to work within myself as well. This is a perpetual never ending journey um, when it comes to brain health and it’s supposed to be and it’s supposed to be. So how do people find you? How do they find your podcast by the way? Because I was honest.

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

So they can go to my website, ruthmaryallan .com R U T H M A R Y A L L A N.com. And then if you put forward slash show you get you get access to all the podcasting episodes and you were on there too. So go and check those out and if you want to find more about the academy and what the academy does, including the live event that we’re going to be hosting in the summer of 2023 then just go to well being warrior Academy dot com and you’ll find information about it all

Cheng Ruan, MD

That amazing. Thank you so much for being on. What? What a pleasantly surprisingly awesome topic. That’s what we’re going to end up talking about childbirth and my wife. But I think those are really important things to hit on and appreciate you for taking time out of your very busy schedule for coming on.

Ruth Mary Allan, PhD

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure and I hope people take something away from this.