When You Feel Scared

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Hey, it's your friend Dr. Lee Warren.

[00:00:01]I'm so grateful to be with you. This is some self brain surgery. Today we're going to do a short little conversation about the second commandment of self brain surgery. I must believe that feelings are not facts.

[00:00:14]They are chemical events in my brain. I must believe that feelings are not facts. They are chemical events in my brain. Now, you should have the 10 Commandments handout. If you don't have it, go to school.wleewarrenmd.com and you can download the 10 Commandments for free. If you've read my book, The Life Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery, then you should have a good grasp on the 10 Commandments. But, today I just want to go through one scripture in that commandment and just give you an example of how you can use the commandments in practical ways in your life. And we're getting ready to launch a new course.

[00:00:47]It's called the Self Brain Surgery Foundations course. It'll be coming out pretty soon. And in that course, we're going to go through the 10 Commandments in a very dynamic way and I'm going to give you some ways to work through them and start to incorporate them in your daily life. And I think it's going to be really transformative for you. And that Foundations course is going to be a really good beginning point for you to move past what you've learned in the book, move past what you learn in the podcast, and really start to incorporate Self Brain Surgery as a daily practice as a sort of a character and being the kind of person who always operates from a mind down perspective. We want to get out of brain management mode and we want to live in Self Brain Surgery mode all the time. That's how we want to practice. So, today we're going to go through the second commandment of Self Brain Surgery. That's all we're going to do. I'm going to give you one scripture and a practical application and just give you an example of how you can operate with these commandments as a daily part of your life. That's where we're going today. Before we get started, like I always do, I just want to congratulate you and say nice job showing up today. I'm really proud of you. I'm giving you a high five or a fist bump or a little bro hug. And just let me Let me say to you, I know the work is hard. I know it's hard and holy, and I know it's not easy. There's all kinds of other things you could be doing. You could be avoiding this. You could be hiding from your feelings. You could be inebriating yourself or numbing yourself in some other way so you don't have to think about it, but you showed up, and I'm really grateful. Lisa and I pray for you all the time. And that's one of the things we always say, "Thank you for giving my friend the courage to do the hard and holy work and to keep showing up for self brain surgery." So, good job. Today, we're doing the second commandment. Let's get after it. The second commandment of self brain surgery is I must believe that feelings are not facts. They are chemical events in my brain. Feelings are not facts. They are chemical events in my brain. This is a countercultural message right now.

[00:02:43]Everybody's being encouraged to honor their truth, to live out their feelings, to follow their heart, and all that stuff.

[00:02:50]But, society is getting worse in terms of its mental health.

[00:02:55]If the answer was to honor your feelings all the time, to amplify them, to think about them, if that was the answer to our mental health, we'd be be getting better and not worse. I'm just here to tell you as a brain surgeon, a board-certified neuroscience expert, it's not the way it is.

[00:03:11]Like, feelings are not to be honored and evaluated and constantly thought about and worried about and fretted about and become identifying aspects of our lives.

[00:03:21]They are to be managed. They are to be recognized, called out, named. You need to name them, okay? We talked before about the way to get your frontal lobe active is to name what you're feeling.

[00:03:31]That's the way to turn your amygdala down and turn your frontal lobe up to get your cognitive self engaged so that you can use your mind to interact with your brain to make better decisions and work through what you're feeling and dealing with and get after the right way to respond to it so you're not being bossed around by your brain all the time. So, when we say feelings aren't facts, they're chemical events in your brain. The first thing I want to tell you is this is a countercultural message and it might you might get some pushback from people. When you start trying to help other people see this, they might say, "You know, you're not Who are you to tell me what to feel?" You're not trying to tell them what to feel. You're trying to tell them that what they feel isn't always true. And if they want a better outcome with their life, then they need to operate with their mind, putting their brain in its proper place, and operating on feelings rather than letting feelings operate on us. It's not to deny what we feel, it's just not to be bossed around by it, either. And to recognize that your brain can't tell the difference between something that's real and something that you're just imagining, something that's actually possible or happening and something you're just worrying about. And Freddy, your brain doesn't know the difference. So, when you feel something, it doesn't mean it's true. And we've talked a lot about that.

[00:04:43]So, today I want to give you one scripture. This is Psalm 94:18 and 19. I cried out, "I am slipping, but your unfailing love, oh Lord, supported me."

[00:04:54]You see that? He felt something, he felt like he was slipping, but God's love supported him. So, David is is recognizing that there's a difference between what he felt and what he said and what was actually true. Like he felt like he was falling, but God was there to support him. Listen to verse 19. When doubts filled my mind, your unfailing love gave me support and cheer.

[00:05:21]Do you see that? God's love supported him when he felt like he was slipping and they made him more cheerful. God God's attention and care and provision and kept promises made David's anxiety turn into cheer. That's self-brain surgery. David is acknowledging what he felt. He's not hiding it. He's not saying, "Oh, I don't ever feel afraid cuz I know God's going to take care of me." He doesn't say that. He said, "I cried out. I am slipping, but your love supported me."

[00:05:54]And that gave him hope and cheer. So, friend, the surgery here is to not ignore your feelings, but not to believe them blindly, either. And to be willing to say what it is that you feel, so your frontal lobe gets involved, and you say, "You know what? I wasn't actually falling. I was afraid, but I wasn't actually falling. I was scared, but I wasn't actually in danger.

[00:06:20]And I felt like I was going to fall, but God was right there to support me." And then he finishes the operation, okay? I want you to do this, too. I don't want you to just resolve the feeling and land on something else. I want you to finish the operation. And the way you finish the operation is to move to a different state, okay? We start the operation with the patient sick, we finish it with the patient well. We start the operation with a brain tumor patient's head, we finish it with the brain tumor out of the patient's head. We fix the problem, we deal with the situation, and then we go on to the next situation. We don't just do part of it. We finish the operation. So, here's how you finish.

[00:06:58]You do what David did. You say what you felt, you acknowledge that the truth was something different than that, and then you allow your emotional state to come back up to an a better altered state.

[00:07:13]You don't stay anxious and say you This has happened to me before, where something scary happens, and then I'm scared for the next 12 hours, even though it didn't actually happen. I just got scared. Somebody startled me, something happened that alarmed me. I stayed the rest of the night unable to sleep because I was alarmed. I was scared, right? It ruined my day because I was worried about something. That's not how you finish the operation.

[00:07:37]You finish the operation by resolving the emotional state back to something that's true. You felt scared, now you feel hopeful. Now you feel cheerful.

[00:07:46]That's what David said. David said, "Your unfailing love, your unfailing support gave me hope and cheer." In place of where he started, "I cried out, I am slipping." Started with anxiety, ended on hope. That's what self brain surgery will do for you, my friend.

[00:08:05]That's why we have the second commandment of self brain surgery. I must believe that feelings are not facts. They are chemical events in my brain. That's it for self brain surgery for today. Hit that subscribe button.

[00:08:17]Make sure you're following on the audio podcast players, too, so you don't miss anything. And friends, sign up for my newsletter. drleafwarren.com, you can get the newsletters, the courses, the thought biopsy, the free and the paid courses, the 10 commandments, the study guide for small groups that's free from the publisher. Got all kinds of great resources. The Foundations course is coming soon. I'd love to know if you're interested in that. Leave a comment here on YouTube. And let me know if that sounds good to you. I'm your friend, Dr. Leaf Warren. Don't forget, you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is, you can start today.

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