Losing Your Mind? Self-Brain Surgery for Anger

[00:00:00]You've had it happen a million times.

[00:00:02]Somebody says the wrong thing at the wrong time and you lose your mind. Some people are outward about it. They blow up. They lose their mind publicly. We punch walls or throw things or fight back or say something aggressive.

[00:00:18]Sometimes we wish we could take back.

[00:00:21]Some of us do it internally. We fume and we rage and we do passive aggressive things and we say, "Oh, nothing's wrong.

[00:00:26]Nothing. If you don't know what's wrong, I'm not going to tell you." That sort of thing. or we just internalize it all and then we take it on ourselves and we get sick from it and we burn inside but we never change our face and all of us when we do those things are dealing with anger. So what's a Christian supposed to do with anger and what's the neuroscience behind it? How do we handle it on a neuroscience level? Do we see anger as a good thing when properly applied or is it always a negative or is there some place in between? What do we do with that? Well, that's what we've been looking at this week. We talked about it on the newsletter on Sunday. If you're not getting the newsletter, make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter, friend. It's the best written content that we do every week.

[00:01:09]People all over the world are reading it. And for the paid subscribers on Substack, which is basically $100 a year, $10 a month. Those folks get an extra video training from me every Sunday as well. So, we take the newsletter content and go a little bit deeper. you get this one-on-one sort of video training that nobody else ever gets to see. And then in the podcast, we unpack that and go deeper, talk about the neuroscience, we have more scripture, we draw the the process out and make it more deep, more practical, more applicable. And then we try on these Fridays to do tactical things to give you new operations or some new way to look at it. Well, today because anger is such a big deal and such an important topic, I want to take the six principles that I gave you in the newsletter this week and I want to look you in the eye like a good doctor and just work through them. Give you another chance to work through these. I want you to make rapid progress in your ability to handle anger wisely because I want you to protect your most important relationships, reduce regret, and experience more peace. That's what we're all about here, friend, as selfrain surgeons. We want to go from people who are reactive, who live in brain management mode, to self-brain surgeons, who live in self-brain surgeon mode, who remember that our mind is in charge of our brain, our brain becomes what we focus on, and our lives turn in to what our thoughts look like and the decisions that we make about what we're going to do with our brains and our bodies and our lives.

[00:02:32]That's where we're going today. We want to move from brain management mode to selfrain surgeon mode about anger. Let's get after it.

[00:02:44]Hey, it's your friend Dr. Lee Warren.

[00:02:46]I'm so grateful to be back here with you. We're going to scrub in and do six quick little operations about anger. But take a second and scrub in with me just in case this is the first time the algorithm has ever put me in front of you. I'm a neurosurgeon. I spend the last 26 years operating on people's brains and spinal cords and peripheral nerves. But I'm also a trauma survivor.

[00:03:06]I went through PTSD from the Iraq War. I did 200 brain surgeries in a tent hospital in 2005 in the Iraq war. I survived a hundred mortar and rocket attacks and I came home pretty broken up. I went through a divorce and then right after I felt like I had everything going, Lisa and I met and got married, blended our families, had our business on track and then our son Mitchell was killed in 2013 and I fell apart again.

[00:03:29]And so I spent the last 13 years trying to put science and faith together in a way that could help me understand what my brain was doing when I was suffering and help other people do that as well.

[00:03:39]And we found some things that work. We put those together in my new book, The Life-Changing Art of Selfrain Surgery as the Ten Commandments of Selfrain Surgery. So make sure you get the book if you haven't read it. The Ten Commandments will really help you. And if you don't like to read or don't want the book, you can get the Ten Commandments by themselves in a PDF all for free. There's a link down below to school.w wlewarnmd.com.

[00:04:00]You can get our thought biopsy document for free. You can get my course. You can change your life for free, which is about an hour and a half of free training that I did for you. And then there's some paid stuff, some courses and other things that you can get as well if you want to go deep into the cell brain surgery ecosystem and take this to heart and become a person who doesn't have to live in brain management mode. And again, just in case you're new, what's brain management mode?

[00:04:23]That's where most people spend their lives. They everything that they think and feel, they believe. They react to it. They spend a lot of time apologizing, making up for, creating trouble with their mouths because they listened to their thoughts and feelings, which aren't always true. And then we want to get out of that brain management mode. We want to get on top of that by putting our mind in charge of our brain.

[00:04:44]And there's no better example of the kinds of things that get us in trouble than when we're angry. And so today, we're going to do six little operations.

[00:04:53]This came from the newsletter. They're based on my book. and we talked about them in the podcast. We're going to do six little operations real quickly here just together. I might give you some new little ways to look at these and I think they'll be helpful. Number one, anger is a signal, not a supervisor. Anger is powerful emotionally. It shows up fast.

[00:05:11]It changes your physiology. It tries to take over the wheel. But remember, anger is meant to be data, not the decision maker in your life. Self-brain surgeons remember that even when something feels wrong, when it feels unfair, when it feels threatening, feelings are not facts, there's story that you're telling about the physiology that you're feeling, but feelings don't get to decide what you do next. You get to decide that. The neuroscience is that anger activates the fight response in your sympathetic nervous system. It releases adrenaline and cortisol and temporarily reduces activity in the brain regions responsible for impulse control and empathy. That's why we say things like, "I flew off the handle. I couldn't control myself." But guess what? Self-brain surgeons can control themselves. So, the procedure that you need here is that when you feel anger rising, remind yourself this is anger.

[00:06:04]It's physiology. It's giving me important information, but I'm still in charge. what I'm feeling doesn't dictate what I have to do. And don't let it promote itself to supervisor. Now, this is again, this is not saying to suppress your feelings. It's saying to recognize that your feelings don't always point to you making the right decision about either what's happening or whether something is actually happening or what the best response would be. You want to get amydala calmed down, prefrontal cortex fired up. And that takes a few seconds. So, you need to take a breath.

[00:06:35]You need to think through it. You need to biopsy the thought and the feeling.

[00:06:38]and decide the best response. And sometimes that might be to turn the other cheek like the Bible says.

[00:06:44]Sometimes it might be that you need to get out of the situation. Sometimes if your life's in danger, maybe you do need to fight back. But anger is not the end of the story. You need to be in charge of your brain. The Bible says in your anger, do not sin. That's Ephesians 4:26. We all know [snorts] that scripture. We say, "Well, it says it's okay to be angry as long as you don't sin." But the rest of that verse says, "And do not let the sun go down on your wrath." So you can't take half of that verse and not the other half. So it's saying if you feel angry, don't sin, work through it, deal with it, and then go take care of it before the day is over so you don't drag it in to the next day. That'd be a great place to apply the tomorrow tax reminder from the sixth commandment of self-brain surgery. Don't drag stuff into tomorrow that needs to be dealt with today. Love tomorrow more than what you're hating about dealing with it right now. So don't drag to today's anger into tomorrow. Ephesians 4:26. You got to live both halves of that, my friend. The second one, create some space inside before you explode.

[00:07:46]The window between feeling anger and acting on it is where the power that you have lives. As a self brain surgeon, most regrettable things happen when we skip that window. When we react instantly, when we let our amydala push us around. The neuroscience is clear that taking just a short break from an anger trigger like walk away, move your body, take a deep breath, get yourself under control, allows your prefrontal cortex to regain control over that amydaladriven impulse to fight. The self brain surgery procedure is very simple.

[00:08:16]Use the 10-minute rule. When you feel yourself getting hot, working yourself up, just commit to waiting at least 10 minutes before you reply to that text message or take physical action or make a phone call or send an email. Take a few minutes, okay? Work through it before you respond. It's not saying that you don't need to respond all the time.

[00:08:37]Sometimes you do. Sometimes you actually need to respond. But when you respond, make it a frontal lobe response that's not going to make the problem worse, but it's going to lead to resolution or an appropriate outcome. Use that time to move your body, to breathe, to pray, to get God involved in your decision-m.

[00:08:55]Don't lash out because the result of amydala driven decisions is almost never good. Okay? Except when it's truly life or death and you need to get away. The scripture, whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty. That's Proverbs 16:32. It's better to be slow to anger than it is to be really strong and able to punch somebody out or break something. Okay. Number three, look underneath the anger. Do a little scientific investigation. Anger is rarely the primary emotion. It's usually protecting something a little more vulnerable, one of your soft spots, a hurt, a fear, a shame, a sense of injustice, a reminder of some other time when you were wounded. Neuroscience is clear here. Anger often serves as a secondary lid emotion that covers up more tender primary emotions. Sometimes our anger is hiding something else that we're not as willing to discuss. The self-brain surgery here when you're angry, ask yourself, what am I really feeling beneath this anger? Get curious instead of critical about it. In the scriptures, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Recognize what's happening here. There's a an understanding that David had, the psalmist here, that God can test the heart and the heart and the mind are different than our feelings.

[00:10:15]That we have a mind that can ponder these things and think through them. And our anxious thoughts aren't always the truth. There's a distinction here between mind and emotion. And you can get into that mind state by just taking a little pause and working through it.

[00:10:30]That's Psalm 139:23.

[00:10:33]Anger creates real physiological arousal. You need to calm it deliberately. Look, you don't have to discharge or vent anger by ramping up physical intensity. In fact, research shows that increasing the arousal state that you're in actually makes anger worse frequently rather than better. It increases your cortisol state, keeps you ruminating on the problem, and doesn't actually help. There was a big study in 2024. It was a metaanalysis of 154 research papers that found that high arousal activities like venting, shouting, intense physical expression while focused on the offense or rage room style things tend to increase anger and aggressive responding. They're sold as being a place where you can go work it out. It actually makes things worse.

[00:11:17]I put a link to that research below the bonus video for the paid subscribers in the newsletter this week. Those folks get a little bit of extra research and a video from me every week. sometimes an extra document or a PDF or some papers that I've been reading. So, if you're interested in going a little deeper and getting the citations and all that stuff, we do that work for you for the pay subscribers on substack. So, check that out. Activities that lower physiological arousal are what reliably reduce anger. That's the truth.

[00:11:44]Self-brain surgery procedure then is that when anger rises and you feel the physical charge in your body building up, deliberately lower your state instead of trying to vent it. Get your parasympathetics activated. Take a few deep breaths. Get that right hemisphere to come online. Get in touch with the great physician, that still small voice that you can't hear when your amydala and your lyic system are fired up and you're dealing with anger and fight and flight. You can get into slow intentional breathing.

[00:12:11]Inhale for four counts and exhale for six maybe while perhaps standing up or changing your posture or taking a calm walk and observing something that that's beautiful nature and awe and wonder get you into a parasympathetic relaxed state gets you in more of a right hemisphere state. And as you breathe mentally see yourself turning down that anger knob and turning up the reason or peace or forgiveness or whatever knob it is that you need to have more of. Now, this is important. While you're trying to calm your state, while you're taking a walk, while you're breathing, while you're journaling, whatever it is, do not ruminate on the offense. Don't tell yourself a story about how, look, I'm really being the big person and I'm forgiving even though they're such a big, terrible jerk and they did this horrible thing to me and I can't believe that this happened again. Like, don't go into that, okay? Because that's going to reactivate the loop. So, don't ruminate on the offense. Find something else that you can focus on or be grateful for or breathe through or notice that God is doing or journal about the thing and and find a new way to restore it. Do something to work through it. I'm not saying ignore the thing. I'm not saying pretend like it didn't happen. I'm not saying that you have to immediately move into repairing whatever it is that's gone on. I'm saying for your own self to get into the place where you can heal, where you can get your brain centered and working properly so you can actually get the executive part of your brain to come online and make good decisions in this so you don't end up making the situation worse. You need to get yourself into a better state. And the way to do that is not to vent, to explode, to go off on somebody, to scream and rage and drive off in a hurry and spin your tires and and all that stuff. Use the movement and breath to support regulation, not rehearsal of the thing that made you angry. And if you combine this with the thought biopsy, then you can name what you're feeling, examine the story that you're telling yourself, and choose a wiser response.

[00:14:07]Remember, the Bible says, "In your anger, do not sin." That's Ephesians 4:26. But the back half of that verse again is, "Do not let the sun go down while you're still angry." Remind yourself of the tomorrow tax, the sixth commandment of selfbrain surgery. You don't want to be dragging this into tomorrow. Why? It's bad for you. It doesn't help your relationships. It doesn't help you deal with God. It doesn't help you get closer to him. And it doesn't help you heal and get your body in a state where you can rest and relax and and rehearse things that are going to actually help you. So, deal with anger promptly by calming your body and renewing your mind rather than letting the arousal persist and grow overnight. Number five, choose your words when you're angry. Be careful here. The words you speak when you're angry have incredible power to wound.

[00:14:54]Okay? Or to heal. It's powerful when somebody knows you're angry and you still say a word that blesses them or moves the situation towards resolution or honors Christ in your words, in your choices. When you show yourself to be who you really are, that you have integrity even when your feelings are hurt. That's an important skill that self-brain surgeons learn to employ. You don't make [snorts] the situation worse.

[00:15:20]You don't make the relationship worse to make yourself feel temporarily better.

[00:15:25]You can be honest without being destructive. And that's how we get towards this idea of always becoming healthier and feeling better and being happier. How we adorn the gospel. If we have people in our lives that don't believe and they see us acting just like everybody else does when we're angry, that doesn't adorn the gospel. The neuroscience says that harsh words during anger activate threat centers in the other person's brain. Remember, selfrain surgery has a two-patient rule and that makes resolution harder. It makes the other person go into fight or flight. It makes it almost impossible to resolve anything. And before you know it, you're fighting, but neither one of you is fighting about the thing that you were actually upset about. Right? So self-praise surgeons do this. We use I statements and we speak about how we feel rather than attacking the other person's character. We tell them when you say that it makes me feel this way.

[00:16:15]Not you are a how dare you. How could you? Not that. But hey, let's let's be honest about what's happening here. When you did this, I felt this. Let's let's try to resolve that. I understand that I did this. That upset you. Whatever. like work it out with words that don't make the conflict worse and center us and ground us and work our parasympathetic nervous systems in to a centered state that's going to help us regain ourselves and not be so amydala driven fight all that stuff. The scripture says a gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger. That's Proverbs 15:1.

[00:16:52]And number six, repair is a part of healthy anger. Even when you handle anger well, you'll sometimes goof it up.

[00:16:59]The people who have the best relationships are not the ones who never get angry. They're the ones who repair quickly and sincerely. We have kind of a running joke in my operating room. I'll say something, somebody will goof something up or not have what I need.

[00:17:13]I'll be in a stressful moment in surgery and they might not have something and I'll say something like, you know, I'd really appreciate it if you would get this done differently next time. And they'll say, stop yelling at me, Dr. warrant and everybody will kind of chuckle and I'll say, "Yeah, that might be the closest I've ever come to yelling at anybody." I work really hard to make sure that my team knows that even if I'm upset, even if something isn't going well, even if there's a problem, that I'm going to treat them with respect.

[00:17:41]I'm going to honor who I say I am by how I treat them even when they're letting me down or something's going the wrong way. Why do I do that? because I want my team to know that in the worst moments, I'm still going to be safe for them. I'm going to demand of them performance and that they do their jobs well. And if they can't, then we're going to work through that or sometimes have to replace somebody on the team if they can't work in high stress environments.

[00:18:05]But I'm not going to belittle them or make the problem about something that it's not about. I'm not going to attack them. I'm not going to use my being afraid of a outcome situation or a problem in the patient to turn on another person to offload what I feel.

[00:18:20]I'm not going to do that. They're going to know that I'm always concerned about the relationship over my own feelings. The neuroscience says that repair after conflict activates bonding chemicals and builds trust over time. That's how you build strong families. That's how you build strong teams at work. Not that they're afraid of you and what you're going to do, but that they trust you and even when you're upset, you're going to be good to them and you're going to work towards resolution of the problem. Those people will take a bullet for me in my operating room because they know I'm going to take care of them even if I'm upset with them. I'm going to work to make them better so they're better at taking care of my patient and they will take a bullet for me too because they trust me. That's what you want. The self brain surgery is this. After you've been angry, after there's been conflict, go back as soon as you can. As soon as you're calm and you're ready to repair and say, "Hey, I was wrong for how I spoke to you. Okay? Will you forgive me for that? I I know I was angry and I know you did this thing that upset me, but I [snorts] didn't handle that well.

[00:19:18]I'm sorry. I should not have said what I said to you." And don't don't make one of those half apologies, one of those sort of fake apologies. Well, your behavior made me do what I did, but I shouldn't have done it the way I did it.

[00:19:30]not that, but rather hate. I know I was upset. I know we had this situation. I want to work through that. I want to get that resolved, but I also want to apologize for the words I used. I was incorrect. I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry. Be willing to repair even when you've been angry. The scripture says, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you." That's Ephesians 4:32. So, listen, this is selfbrain surgery for anger.

[00:19:56]This is something if you can get this under control, okay? not to suppress it and let it chew you up, but to really learn how to work through it and manage it and remember that feelings aren't facts and remember that there's more at play than your immediate emotional state in the middle of conflict. To remember that if you can get that under control, it becomes [snorts] a superpower for keeping you out of brain management mode and into selfrain surgeon mode. Now, don't misar me. If you're being abused, if you're in danger, let that physiological signal tell you to get out and be safe and take care of your family and do the things you need to do. Okay?

[00:20:30]I'm talking about the normal range of human interaction here, not the outliers where something's actually dangerous or somebody's being abusive. Okay? So, be careful with this advice. Make sure you apply it in the context of the normal scope of human endeavor. Okay? So, don't stay in a dangerous situation because you think Dr. Dr. Warren said it's not okay to be reactive to your fears or angers. Okay, I'm not saying that. Use your head. Be a good self brain surgeon.

[00:20:56]Keep yourself safe. Take care of your family. But this will solve a huge number of your relationship problems and your own internal state if you can learn to manage anger like a self-brain surgeon. That's the lesson for today, friend. Don't forget, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

[00:21:12]And the good news is you can start today. Make sure you hit subscribe. Make sure you're following along so you don't miss anything. Check out my book, The Life-Changing Art of Selfrain Surgery, and we'll see you Monday for the next podcast. God bless.

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