Exploring the Connection Between Mind, Emotions, and Effective Leadership

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Healthy, wealthy and Wise podcast with Dr William Choctaw, MD, JD. In this episode, Dr. Choctaw begins his Leadership Masterclass series by covering mental health matters. Dr Choctaw will discuss mental health issues and challenges and the differences between the two . He will also explore multiple topics, from depression to anxiety and many more. Question how can we help someone navigate mental health challenges or issues? What if that person is ourself? Well, these and other questions will be answered and addressed in this podcast episode. So let's get started.

0:41 Here's Dr William Choctaw, MD, JD. Speaker 2: Good morning. I'm Dr William T Choctaw and I will be your host today for the Leadership Masterclass. I want to welcome all of you. We have a very interesting topic, and our topic is mental health issues, and we want to go over that and hopefully, at the end of this session, you will have learned some things that maybe you did not know. I believe life is about being of service. I believe knowledge is power. I believe leaders can change the world. Let me start off with an outline, and I always like to give an outline whenever I'm going to make a presentation, and I do the outline for two reasons. One reason is I want you to know what I'm going to talk about, and the second reason is I want you to know what I'm just about done. I've always learned that your time is important, if not more important than my time, and so I want to make sure that we're in sync. We're going to start off by talking about brain anatomy, and we're going to go back to some of your biology maybe from high school, college or maybe even medical school for some of you and talk about the anatomy of the brain and all the mind. We're also going to talk about mental health disorders and mental health illnesses and try to make a distinction between the two to help us to avoid oversimplification. We're going to talk about symptoms and

2:14 treatments for at least one major type of mental illness And how that can be a benefit to you going forward in terms of taking care of different problems and taking care of different issues. And, finally, we'll conclude with me sharing with you some of my basic principles that, in my 50 years of medical practice and at least seven years of work as an executive in the hospital environment, just share with you some of the things that I have learned that you may find interesting and important. Well, let's take a look at the brain.

2:57 Let's start with the brain, and the brain is divided into multiple layers and multiple lobes. To be exact, there are six lobes of the brain and I'll just go over them very quickly with you. There's the frontal lobe, which, as the name implies , is in the front part of the head. The frontal lobe is, like the CEO of the brain, if you will, the chief executive officer, and it's involved with thinking, memory, behavior, movement. The temporal lobe is right under the frontal lobe. It's responsible for hearing, learning and feelings And we'll get to that feelings a little later. The parietal lobe is adjacent to the frontal lobe, on the top, and it's responsible for language and touch. Next to the parietal lobe is the occipital lobe, which is the back part of the head or the brain, and it is responsible for sight. Contiguous with the occipital lobe is the cerebrum. It's responsible for balance and coordination, and contiguous to the cerebrum is the brain stem.

4:03 The brain stem is responsible for breathing, heart rate and temperature. The brain stem is extraordinarily important, as you might imagine, because what it does is that when we are no longer conscious, when we're sleeping, we continue to breathe , our heart continues to beat and the temperature in our body is regulated. It doesn't get too hot or too cold, and all of that is because of the not a subconscious activity of our brain stem. As a position of 20 or 50 plus years, we still don't understand everything about the brain And it still remains to be a fascinating part of the body. Now, what I just went over was basically the hardware of the brain. If you will Think about the brain as a computer, and I just talked about the hardware, but there's also inside the brain, or networks and neurons and connections, and this is what we call software, and within that software is something called the mind, m, i, n, d, the mind. Sigmund Freud, who is felt to be by some to be the father of psychiatry, divided the mind up into three distinct areas. One was the ID, the ego, e, g, o And the super ego. The it is that part of the mind that's only interested in

5:35 the person, in the individual, the it knows what it wants and it doesn't care what it needs to do to get it. It's only about me, me, me. The ego is the rational part of the mind, the? it may say I want that ice cream in the store across the street. The ego may say, yes, i do want that, but I don't have any money, and so I can't get that ice cream across the street unless I have some money to buy it. Then there's the third part of the mind, called the super ego, and the super ego is right and wrong. So the? it says I want that ice cream, i'm going to go take it. The ego says, well, i'm not going to go take it because I don't have any money, and if you want something , you have to purchase it If you want to get it from the store.

6:28 And the ego is rationalized and being reasonable, and the super ego would say I want that ice cream but I'm not going to take it because it would be wrong. It would be wrong for me to take that ice cream without paying for it. So those are the three parts of the mind. So think about all of that as we think about the brain and the mind all inside the skull and how that all helps us as this extraordinarily complex human computer, as we are called. Man, or man and woman, as one looks at the brain, there's an important part, important structure in the brain that has to deal with feeling, or emotion . I call it the emotion center of the brain And that structure is called the amygdala. Amygdala , and you spell that a, y, a, m, y, g, d a, l a, the amygdala. The amygdala is a very small um, a P shaped structure that sits at the base of the brain, next to the hippocampus, but it is the emotion center of the brain.

7:47 It is where our feelings are, good feelings, bad feelings, in between. So the amygdala is the very, very important structure of the brain Because it affects how we feel about any particular situation, in a particular person in a particular experience And indeed one of the ways that that physicians are able to help individuals who may be, say, extremely depressed, or depressed to the point of suicide, is to do things in terms of hormone manipulation that affects the amygdala directly. So let's pause a bit now and let's talk about mental issues. Or let's talk about mental conditions and let's divide mental conditions into mile on the mountain and, being a mental issue, let's say in the middle area, a mental disorder, and on the more serious area of mental illness, all of us have mental issues, mental issues, the basic fears and anxiety.

8:58 Some people may be afraid of dogs, some people may be afraid of, some people may be afraid of water. Most of the times, those things, even though they call some discomfort with us, they do not affect our functionality significantly. Our functionality significantly and that's a word I want you to become familiar with as you try to evaluate, or as one evaluates, whether a mental issue is significant or is not significant, does it affect one's functionality? example I have a fear of heights . If I'm in a building, that's, and I'm on the 30th floor, i don't look out the window because it just makes me uncomfortable. Now, that's okay for me, because, number one, i'm not in buildings on the 30th floor a lot And even if I am, i don't have to look out the window. So it does not affect the functionality primarily in my life And I can do the things I need to do on a day by day basis and it does not concern me . On the other hand, i am a physician, not only my position, i'm a surgeon And let's say I had a fear of blood. Well, that would be a problem, because if I'm a surgeon and I get anxiety or fear every time I see blood, i probably would not be a very effective surgeon, right? So it gives you an idea about how you can compartmentalize or divide the different areas of mental

10:33 issues into a mental issue on one hand, and say mental illness on another hand. So a mental illness may be, let's say, schizophrenia. Let's say I go in and out in terms of reality, i'm not sure what the day is, i'm not sure where I am, who I am. Sometimes I'm in the real world and sometimes I'm not. Well, that's the problem, because if I have a job, i've got to be in the real world to function Again, that word functionality to take my car, to work or get on the bus or have someone take me to work. I've got to be able to do my work, i've got to be able to meet my obligations to those around me my co-workers or my family, and I've got to be able to take care of myself. So functionality is what I want you to remember, to allow you to evaluate mental conditions Again, issues on one end, disorders, and then, on the other, on the other, extreme illnesses, in terms of what is needed or required. Two areas that particularly stress mental health are, for one, relationships. If you are in a relationship, let's say, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, co-worker, a parent, child all of those types of relationships that involve other

12:03 people who are close to you or who you need, will put a stress or a strain on your ability to cope or your ability to function , if you will Again that word functionality. And many times, when things happen that may be of the mental nature, that may affect our mental health, it will be something that may have been precipitated by relationship. Example a divorce. Individuals have been married for a long period of time, or whatever the circumstances are, and they get a divorce. That clearly is a trauma And, depending on the individual and depending on the reason for that could very well send one into depression or into other types of ill health. From a mental perspective, if you lose your job, you've been working at a place for 10 years and you're a good worker and you love your work, but the company decides to downsize or to move to a different country And you lose your job, that clearly would affect your ability to cope and to feel good about yourself and may very well affect your functionality If you don't have the security of work and the feeling that that gives you to have something that's stable and allows you to do those things that make you feel good. And the other area that can many times have a strong impact on our mental health is change. And

13:34 again, actually the first example is a type of change, but say other types of change. Any major change Many times will affect us. Example many individuals doing the, the, the height of the COVID virus infection, significantly positions saw a spike in mental health issues or in the number of individuals with mental health issues. And that was because That was because, basically, that huge change individuals were not able to cope with. It was just too difficult, that was too much uncertainty, a lot of the things that we all rely on were removed from us The ability to go out to dinner, the ability to see loved ones, friends, the ability to go to work or to school or to send our kids to school. We had to adjust, on minor levels and on major levels . These are the types of things that affect our mental ability, our mental health, if you will, because they affect our ability to function. Whenever you want to evaluate a mental condition, look at functionality Again. On the light end, or the non-serious end would be a mental issue, afraid of something that's not significant . On the more serious end would

15:05 be mental illness, where it's an illness, meaning that it has affected your ability to function. Let's talk about mental illness. What is mental illness? Mental illness is basically a distress or problem in functioning in socially, work-wise or with family activities Pretty much what we've been saying. Mental illness is an illness that affects us mentally and prevents us from being able to function normally socially, with work and with family. Mental illness is not something to be ashamed of. It is something that can be treated. It is an illness that can be treated just like a physical illness. Mental illness can be treated just like heart disease. Heart illness can be treated along illness or any other type of illness. One of the things that's important to keep in mind is that now we have medication, because we understand a little more how mental illness works and why it works and where it works. Again, we talked about the brain and the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain, and we now have medications that can affect those areas. It's important to keep that in mind. If one takes nothing more from this presentation, remember that mental illness is treatable. It

16:40 is treatable. How does this all happen? What we believe affects how we think, what we think affects how we feel, and how we feel affects how we act. If you want a template to evaluate someone in terms of their mental health, start with what they believe. Do they believe they're seeing little green men on the street? Because then that's going to make them feel a certain way and it's going to make them think a certain way and it's going to make them act a certain way. Many times, you can get an idea or an insight into where that individual is coming from just by being able to discuss their beliefs, which is why it is so important in terms of all of us staying healthy mentally by many times reexamining our own beliefs, maybe when you were growing up and you had a bad experience in a certain neighborhood or in elementary school or junior high school that affected your belief about certain people or certain circumstances or certain situations. Maybe those beliefs are not true, but maybe you carried those beliefs all the way to your 40s and 50s and now you're in a relationship, either by people you work with or by individuals in your family, and

18:13 you find those old beliefs are now creeping into your ability to maintain good relationships with those individuals. So it's very important that we make sure that our beliefs all of us stay healthy. So one of the ways to make sure that we stay healthy mentally is to constantly you know we talk about physically how it's important to exercise and eat well. I'm going to submit that for mental health, it's important for us to review our beliefs on a regular basis. I call it having a conversation with the person in the mirror and I can tell you where they will show up, where the issues will show up Whenever you start getting upset or angry about something or feeling bad. Start examining that. Why is it? this bothers you, what is it that makes you so upset? And you'll be surprised that as you start peeling back that onion, you may find those beliefs that you can see are no longer tenable. There was something that you thought a long time ago that now you know better, but yet that's still been driving you subconsciously without you being aware of it. So just something to keep in mind. Well, how common is mental illness? Mental illness is common. About 19 percent of people adults in the United States can have it. It is , can be and serious mental illness can be about 4 percent serious in terms of requiring hospitalization or more serious

19:43 types of treatment. One can certainly in some respects place substance abuse as a strong contributing factor with some degrees of mental illness, depending on how severe that addiction is. I include in that alcohol or severe alcohol abuse. These are some of the corollaries that go along with that, because a lot of times what we do is when we do get depressed and when we do get down and when things do happen in our lives, we then try to comfort ourselves by doing things that make bad situations worse. So we have to be aware of that. When I'm talking about mental illnesses, i'm primarily talking about adults. Children also can have mental illness, but they're completely different from adults. What I mean by that is children are not little adults that we can't take what happened with maybe a member of the family who was an adult and say, well, xyz, work for so-and-so, so, my 15-year-old, i'm going to do the same thing with her, or make or suggest the same thing with her. That does not work. Children are not small adults. Children are unique and they have to be addressed in a unique manner in terms of being able to understand what their needs are. That's why they're pediatricians or physicians or child psychologists who built specifically for children. It's

21:19 important to keep that in mind. Another thing to keep in mind and some of you may remember this is men really are from Mars and women really are from Venus . My point about this is that we , men and women, are different. We are completely different, that we have different chromosomes. Men have more testosterone, women have more estrogen, on and on, and on and on and on. What's important is that there's nothing wrong with being different. That's okay. That's okay. So it's not important for us to assume well, if I like X, my wife should like X, or if I like Y, my husband should like Y. We are different and we should understand that difference and embrace that difference. So when it comes to how one deals with the situation, how one deals with trauma, it is not going to be the same. One side may cry a lot, the other side may say absolutely nothing. Many times as a physician, i've seen individuals who come to my office because they feel like that they're supposed to react a certain way When they get a certain diagnosis or this or that. What I communicate to them is you are uniquely you and you do what works for you. Whatever your reaction is, it's okay for you. In many times when we try to help others, we don't because we're trying to force them to

22:53 act a certain way, because that's way someone who we knew before acted, or maybe the way we acted, but have those individuals talk to someone who's a professional psychologist, psychologist, therapist to guide them if they need that, as compared to trying to force them to do something a certain way. It is important to be aware that certainly suicide is a serious problem in this country And it has probably been increasing, and many believe that certainly COVID was a part of that process, but it may well have been increasing in spite of COVID, particularly with increased drug use etc. Etc. So be aware of that If you come into a situation and certain of you live in LA County, there are suicide hotlines that are free and confidential. In English, it's 1-800-273-8255. In English it's 1-800-273-8255. In Spanish, in LA County, it's 1-888-628-9454. Spanish 1-888-628-9454. If you know someone or believe someone is in trouble, do not hesitate to intervene and try to get them some help, because you may very well be able to save a life. Well, let me conclude. If you remember what I said on my outline, when I get to my basic

24:24 principles, i'm just about done. My first principle is God is in charge. I believe that God has been extremely important in my life in terms of leading me and guiding me and directing me in the right path, and I certainly recommend that to you if that's your choice, but that has clearly been helpful for me. I decided many, many years ago that I would have no more bad days, and so I don't have bad days in my life. I have good days and I have great days. If it rains outside, some people say, oh, it's a terrible day, i'm going to get cold, i'm going to get sick. And others would say, oh, what a beautiful day.

25:04 It's going to clean all the leaves and the trees And it's going to make everything so bright and crisp. And so what I've learned is how my day is is completely up to me, 100%. And so I said if I have 100% control of this, then I don't want any more bad days, because I've had enough of them in my life. I recommend that philosophy to you . Thirdly, i don't sweat the small stuff, and most stuff is small. I have learned that many times when I get upset or I'm about to get upset, that whatever I'm upset about is probably not that big a deal. And I have learned to measure myself, take a deep breath, take a step back, think about it, because most of the times it's not worth it. Stress management one of the ways, one of the things that stresses us is trying to do everything for everybody else. It's okay to take care of yourself mentally I mean, i'm talking about stress now that can lead sometimes to mental issues which could lead to mental disorders, which could lead to mental illnesses in some people. And finally, my final basic principle is everything is a relationship, whether it's husband, wife, son, daughter, parent, child, working relationships, friendships, etc. Etc. And relationships are based on three things mutual respect, mutual trust, good communication. If you have those things, your relationship will thrive. It is important to our mental health

26:38 that we have good relationships. Finally, let me leave you with this thought The only impossible journey is the one you never believe that you never begin. The only impossible journey is the one you never begin. Be the change you want to see in the world. Have a great day.

27:25 Speaker 1: Take the next step of action and share it with your family, friends and or your co-workers. They'll be glad you did So. until the next time, live your best possible life the best possible way.