The Brain in Love: 12 Lessons to Enhance Your Love Life (30 page)

In my work I have seen many things that hurt how the brain functions, ruining your chances for love; and many things that help brain function, improving your chances for love. In this chapter I will explore behaviors that make your brain look old, ugly, shriveled, and damaged as well as those things that enhance and beautify the brain. Once you know what helps and hurts the brain, you will have a clearer choice on how healthy you want your brain to be, and subsequently how effective you will be.

Hurtful Brain Behaviors

Brain Trauma

One of the most important lessons I have learned from looking at 35,000 scans these last sixteen years is that mild traumatic brain injuries change people’s whole lives and virtually nobody knows about it. Virtually no marital counselor on the planet thinks about evaluating brain trauma as part of why people struggle in their
relationships. Even what many professionals would consider mild trauma can be harmful. The brain is the consistency of soft butter or tofu, somewhere between egg whites and Jell-O. It is housed in a really hard skull that has many ridges.

I recently scanned a nineteen-year-old man who had a skateboarding accident which caused him to be unconscious for about half an hour. Most physicians would consider that a mild traumatic brain injury. Yet on his scan it literally wiped out 25 percent of the front part of his brain; so the part of his brain that is involved with judgment, forethought, impulse control, organization, and planning is dead, from what professionals consider a minor brain injury. Protecting the brains of our children, our loved ones, and ourselves should be a top priority because brain damage affects us in a very serious way. A high percentage of people in prison have had brain injuries. There is a higher incident of children who struggle in school after a brain injury. There is a higher incident of depression and substance abuse after brain injuries.

I treat a couple in which the woman had a diving accident when she was eighteen years old, again something that was considered a mild traumatic brain injury as she was unconscious for only a short period of time. She was dating her soon-to-be husband at the time, and he noticed a big change in her behavior over the next six months. She went from being loving, attentive, sweet, consistent, and reliable to someone who was more emotional, depressed, disorganized, and temperamental. He felt committed to her and hoped she would change back to the person she used to be. Unfortunately, she struggled with her mood and her temper for thirty years, until she came to see me. When I scanned her, she was missing the function of about 30 percent of her left prefrontal cortex, which is the happy side of the brain. The left side of the brain has been reported by researchers to be the happy side, while the right side is associated with more anxiety and negativity. When you hurt the happy side of the brain, the more anxious, negative right side has more dominance in your life. This injury seriously affected this couple’s happiness.

I have discovered that you have to ask people five to ten times whether or not they have had brain trauma. People just forget, even serious injuries. I have a friend who has financial problems that have affected his marriage. His ability to have sex suffers due to his financial problems. His wife is anxious about money and she feels insecure about their future. He is an amazing, sweet man, but struggles to make good financial decisions. Before I scanned him, I asked him seven or eight times whether or not he had had a head injury, which is common in people who struggle with finances. He said no, no, no, no, no, no. When I scanned him, I saw a large dent in the function of the front part of his brain. The only thing that I could figure is that he had a head injury that he forgot. So I asked him again and he said no. I asked him again and was very specific, “Have you ever been in a car accident?”

“No,” he said.

And then, and it always happens this way, his faced changed, he got this “Aha” look on his face, and said, “I am so sorry. I lied to you. When I was fifteen years old I was in the front passenger seat of a car when we got in a head-on collision. I wasn’t wearing my seat belt and my head broke the windshield. I lost my eyesight for four days. I can’t believe I forgot that incident.” He hurt a significant portion of the judgment center in his brain. He’s still a wonderful, sweet, loving man, but when it comes to money, he would make bad decisions that increased his wife’s anxiety and decreased her libido.

Having a head injury can really ruin your chances for great sex. Protect your brain. I work with many couples who have experienced domestic violence. The incidence of head injuries in violent individuals is rampant and very few people know it. If you have serious problems with your temper and the police come to your house, the first thing the courts and mental health professionals recommend is anger-management classes. If a head injury is part of the cause of the trouble, anger-management classes are like trying software programs to fix hardware problems. Not very effective.

I once treated a man from Normal, Illinois, who was referred to
me by his psychologist after I gave a lecture at the university there. What a fun visit for this California boy. I went to the Normal grocery store, was interviewed on the Normal radio station, and even had the opportunity to meet Normal women—not many normal women in California. … The patient had been arrested for felony domestic violence. He had broken his wife’s arm. When I met this man, he truly hated himself. He hated his temper and his inability to control the rage he felt inside. He was suicidal at our first visit. His SPECT scan showed a dent in the left-front side of his brain and he had very poor function in the part of his brain called the left temporal lobe, an area that we have associated with violence. I had already asked him six times if he had had a head injury, to which he replied no, but when I had evidence on the scan of a head injury and asked if he had ever fallen out of a tree, fallen off a fence, or dived into a shallow pool, an “Aha” look came over his face and he said, “When I was six years old I was standing on top of the railing on our porch, it was raining, and I slipped and fell six feet head first into a pile of bricks. My parents told me I was only unconscious for a little bit. Do you think that could cause this problem?” I said it could and asked when the temper problems began. He said he had always had them. I then asked him to ask his mom if he had them before he was in kindergarten. It turned out that his temper problems started when he was in first grade. He had problems nearly his whole life, probably secondary to a brain injury nobody knew about. He and his wife had been to multiple relationship counselors with no benefit. If you never look at the brain, you may miss very important pieces of information. The combination of the right medication changed his life. The other interesting thing is that it changed his wife’s life as well because rather than seeing him as a bad person, she saw him as somebody who was sick, that potentially with the right treatment could get much better.

Emotional Trauma

In a similar way, emotional trauma can change the brain negatively and make it harder for you to get the love that you want.
Whenever people have been physically, emotionally, or sexually abused, brain changes take place. Being in a fire, car accident, earthquake, or flood can also change the brain. In our imaging work we have seen specific scan patterns associated with emotional trauma. The limbic or emotional centers of the brain tend to become overactive, making people vulnerable to obsessions, anxiety, and depression, all things that interfere with our ability to connect with others in a loving way. It has been well documented that adverse childhood events affect people throughout their life. These experiences disrupt the child’s ability to form secure attachments to their parents. This may lead to their inability to form secure attachments later in life. These people have multiple partners and are promiscuous in their sexuality.

As with brain injuries, many people forget they have had emotional trauma. When we see the scan pattern associated with trauma, we ask about it multiple times. I have been surprised many times by people who said they never had trauma, later to remember being sexually molested, in a fire, robbed at knife point, raped, or even attacked by animals.

One of our patients, who saw a colleague of mine at the clinic, had the scan pattern of emotional trauma. She initially denied any past trauma. When given more specific examples, such as being in a fire, robbed, or raped, she said no, no, no. Then after a long hesitation she said that there was this one time when she was ten years old and went to a friend’s house in the high desert of California. Her friend’s father was an actor who collected unusual animals. They had a lion at home and the day she was at her friend’s house, the lion got loose and chased her, pinned her, and actually had her head in his mouth before they got him off of her.

Emotional trauma can impact the brain and wreak havoc in your love life. Getting the emotional trauma treated can actually rebalance the brain and improve your chances for love. Many researchers have seen that early abuse survivors have overlapping psychiatric disorders. Therefore, they may suffer from major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. Emotional trauma, like abuse or exposure to domestic
violence, at early ages has been studied extensively and has shown that negative behaviors have resulted later in life. Depression, suicide, and drug abuse in later life are often associated with trauma early in life.

Drug and Alcohol Abuse

Drugs and alcohol clearly damage the brain. They prematurely age and lower overall function in the brain. Alcohol is toxic to the brain if you drink more than a couple of drinks a week. A study from Johns Hopkins University reported that people who drink every day have smaller brains. When it comes to the brain,
size really does matter
. Alcohol kills cells in the cerebellum, the back bottom part of the brain that is involved with coordination, learning, and orgasmic pleasure.

Many people drink and use drugs as a way to medicate negative feelings. If you have experienced emotional trauma, you are more likely to drink. In fact, up to 30 percent of people with alcohol abuse or drug abuse have emotional trauma in their backgrounds. As many as 60 percent of women who are substance abusers have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is associated with nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbing, anxiety, insomnia. When they stop their drug or alcohol abuse, their PTSD often gets worse. People also medicate social anxiety with marijuana, painkillers, or alcohol. They feel better in social situations, less inhibited. The problem with using substances for self-medication is that they actually damage brain function and subsequently damage the parts of the brain involved in forethought, judgment, impulse control, organization, and planning—all things important for healthy sexual behavior.

I once saw a woman from Maine who had problems with obsession and anxiety. Her husband came along and got scanned, in his mind, just to support his wife. I looked at her brain and saw the trouble we expected and prescribed a course of treatment. When I looked at his fifty-six-year-old brain, his brain looked like he was eighty. I asked him what he was doing to hurt his brain.

“Nothing, Dr. Amen,” he said.

I said, “Really? How much do you drink?”

“Oh, not very much,” he replied.

“What’s not very much?”

“Oh, maybe I have three or four drinks a day.”

“Every day?” I said.

“Yeah, every day. But it’s never a problem. I never get drunk. I have never gotten into trouble with it,” he said with anxiety.

I said, “Why do you drink every day?”

“Since my son went off to college, I have this empty-nest thing going on. I just get great enjoyment out of going to the bar, seeing my friends. It’s a social time, kind of like the show
Cheers.”

I said, “Well, you are poisoning yourself. You’re fifty-six and you’re brain looks like it’s eighty. If you keep this up, pretty soon a lot of your brain is going to be dead.”

It shocked him that his brain looked as bad as it did. Then he developed this concept I call brain envy. After learning about the brain, he wanted a better one. I helped him develop a brain-healthy plan that included abstinence from alcohol, regular exercise, mental exercise, vitamins, and fish oil. Four months later he wrote me back saying that he mentally felt like he was twenty. His energy and memory were better, he felt smarter, more articulate. His work as a writer had also improved.

Lisa, forty-two, drank three to four glasses of wine nearly every day. She rarely got drunk, but felt uncomfortable when she didn’t drink. Her husband noticed over the past few years that she was not herself. She was more forgetful and more irritable. She started to have high blood pressure and was much less sexual and less sexually responsive. I saw her out of concern for her memory problems. Her SPECT scan showed overall decreased activity. She had a toxic brain. The alcohol was damaging her brain, affecting her memory and moods, and even her sexuality. High blood pressure is a common side effect of too much alcohol. With high blood pressure, blood flow to vital organs, such as the brain and genitals, is impaired, so there will be trouble having an orgasm and trouble thinking, a bad combination.

Sometimes small amounts of alcohol can calm anxiety and help people be more receptive to social and sexual interactions. Small amounts of alcohol have been found useful for a number of issues, including heart health. But small amounts mean one or two glasses a week, not a day as most people think. A little bit of alcohol is not my concern in this section.

My favorite definition of an alcoholic or drug addict is anyone who has gotten into trouble (legal, relational, or work related) while drinking or using drugs, then continues to use them. They did not learn from the previous experience. A rational person would realize that he or she has trouble handling the alcohol or drugs and stay away from them. Unfortunately, many people with these problems have to experience repeated failures because of the substance use, and thus hit “rock bottom” before treatment is sought.