Rewiring Your Heart and Mind, Part Two – Dr. Lee Warren

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Rewiring Your Heart and Mind, Part Two

Guests:Ron Deal and Dr. Lee Warren

From the series:Rewiring Your Heart and Mind (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:March 7, 2025

Dr. Warren:The mindset that we carry, the things that we dwell on, the thoughts that we think, structurally change the anatomy of our brain, and they chemically and electrochemically affect the bodies and behaviors of the people around us.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:So here’s something that’s fascinating to a witness. People can go through the same hardship or trial and respond totally opposite. Some go through and almost end up better and others bitter. You’ve heard me say that before, better or bitter, but it’s like the same trial, the same hardship, and it could be horrific or traumatic, but some people navigate it pretty well and some don’t.

Ann:We’ve experienced that in our marriage, in our relationship, in our life, and I think everybody does. It’s easy to judge the other person too. And did you know that how you respond to trials and difficulties can set up your listen to this, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren to have more or less stress in their lives, even if they aren’t born yet? How does that even happen?

Dave:Well, today you’re going to find out. Yesterday we started listening to Ron Deal’s conversation with Dr. Lee Warren on the FamilyLife Blended podcast. And let me tell you right now, if you missed yesterday, go back and listen to it—fascinating, powerful, insightful, and today’s part two of that conversation. We’re going to be listening to the power of the mind to tell your brain how to respond to life difficulties. You hear that?

Ann:Yes.

Dave:Power of your mind to tell your brain; they’re both in there somehow. They’re all mixed together. Dr. Warren’s the author of three books, including the award-winning book, Hope is the First Dose. He’s a brain surgeon, an Iraq war veteran, and he hosts the Dr. Lee Warren podcast and lives with his family in Nebraska where we used to live.

Ann:So as we pick up the conversation today, Dr. Warren has been talking about the research of a professor, about the mind and the brain. So let’s pick up the dialogue right there.

[Recorded Message]

Dr. Warren:Jeffrey Schwartz is a famous psychiatrist from UCLA who probably has made the most impact in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder of anybody. If you haven’t read him, if you have trouble with obsessive-compulsive disorder, you should read his books. He’s tremendous.

But he wrote a book called The Mind and the Brain, and the most important thing that Schwartz talks about is that you can inspect your thinking, and he calls it revaluing and relabeling things that you think. Something from your past marriage pops up and you’re not even aware of it, but you’re giving your spouse a hard time about something and it’s not their fault. You’re actually arguing with your former spouse. You’re actually afraid of something that happened in your former marriage. You’re actually carrying out a program that you wrote, and you’ve been running for 20 years, even though the new partner has nothing to do with it. Your blended family kids weren’t responsible for that thought pattern or behavior that you’re experiencing, but you’re running that program.

So Schwartz says, timeout, think about what you’re thinking, biopsy it. I call it biopsy because I’m a brain surgeon. Biopsy that thought and look at it and say, “Wait a minute, this feels like this thing that was happening in my former marriage, but it’s not that thing.” I need to relabel that. I need to say, “Wait, this is an old thing that I’m responding to and now I’m going to revalue it.” So it doesn’t have to mean or feel the same now as it did then, because I can revalue it and recognize that I’m behaving, I’m running a program that’s not appropriate for this current environment.

Ron:So essentially, I think the New Testament would call that the truth. You’re running this thought by the truth and you’re examining it in light of what God says is true, not necessarily what you feel is true or what experience, what your brain has come to believe as true. And that’s a discipline. I mean, this is a hard thing to do. It takes a lot of self-reflection. I think it takes a certain humility to look in the mirror and say, “Is this about me?” I really want it to be about you. I mean, from an interpersonal standpoint, that’s one of the things we tackle in The Mindful Marriage, is when you get into that rut, and you don’t even realize the program’s running, number one, but number two, where that takes you is to the thought of, “Yeah, and you’re the one who’s causing me pain, and so I’ve got to get you to change.” Now, I’ve got an agenda, and I’m trying to create change in you, rather than look in the mirror and create the change in me.

Dr. Warren:It sounds like a hard teaching at what we’re getting at here, but it’s really important to know some unalterable facts. I would call them universal laws of neurosciences, that you cannot change anybody else. You cannot change anybody else’s habits or behaviors, and nobody can change yours either except God. I mean obviously God can do that, but you have to give consent to it. I can take you to surgery and fix your back pain sometimes, but not without your consent. You’ve got to say, “Okay, let’s do this thing.” and you’ve got to give me permission to operate on you in that way.

But nobody else can change your mind for you and nobody else can change enough to make you happy unless you change what makes you happy, right? Nobody can, and so you’re going to have an endless series of heartaches and heartbreaks if you don’t learn that nobody else can be responsible for your happiness except you.

Ron:That is so very profound because I think most of us spend our adult marriage life and our adult family life trying to get other people to change something about them, so our pain goes away and we get more happy. And what you just said is you can’t do that. They cannot change that part of you. It’s something you have to.

And of course, the New Testament is replete with this notion. It’s not just Romans 12; it’s Philippians 4. It’s Ephesians 4 and 5. It’s Galatians 5 and 6, Colossians 3—take off this old self, put on the new self; stop thinking about those things, start thinking about these things. I mean, that is a pattern of the New Testament that’s all about moving into the reality that God has already made us a new creation. We just now have to begin to live out of that new created spirit. It means actively looking at what is still lingering from the past within us.

Dr. Warren:When you go back to that idea that we talked about a while ago of this determinism thing, it’s so pervasive. I would challenge if there’s counselors and therapists out there, I would challenge you to look really hard at your worldview and at the way that you were trained and any techniques that you use with your clients.

Look really hard for places where that sort of idea of determinism might have snuck in there where we are stuck with how we’re born. It’s not really our fault because our parents gave us these genes, or this thing happened to us and that changed us in a certain way and we can’t really fix it, so people need to accommodate our frailties and those sorts of things. There’s some truth to some of that, but the truth of this is you can change just about any type of response that you have to trauma or tragedy or massive things or marital situations.

You can change your response and that’s where the hope lies, Ron. You can learn a new way of responding when somebody triggers you. You can learn a new way of responding when a memory flashes back, or you have PTSD, or something occurs. You can learn a new response and that’s where the hope lies and that’s what the Bible’s talking about when it says, renew your mind, change your thinking, transform your life, all those things.

And it even says we have the mind of Christ. If you accepted Jesus as your Savior, He’s already changed your mind. The problem is we live in this fallen world and this brain that reminds us of things, and we don’t recognize that we’re repeating these thought patterns, and we don’t have to live that way. Friend, you can change your mind.

[Studio]

Ann:You’re listening to FamilyLife Today and we’re listening to a portion of the FamilyLife Blended podcast with Ron Deal and guest Dr. Lee Warren.

Dave:I love what he was just saying because I think we know as Christians, we are new creatures. We have a new life. We can dig out of hard ruts in our life and live a new life, but we often just get stuck. It’s like, how does the resurrection of Christ really live in us? And I think Dr. Lee is reminding us, it comes back to how we think. We’ve got to renew our minds, and we can.

Ann:I’m going to have to listen to this several times because this is deep. It’s good. And if you want to hear Ron’s entire conversation with Dr. Warren, pull up the FamilyLife Blended podcast and listen to episode number 144, Hope is What the Doctor Ordered. Okay, let’s get back to their conversation.

[Recorded Message]

Ron:I’ll never forget the first time it dawned on me that neuroplasticity says that you can change your mind. And not just thoughts as in conscious thought, but you can change how your brain is actually wired when you, by practice, put into practice the things that are good and right and noble and praiseworthy, and begin to live based upon God’s truth. That that actually begins to physiologically change the wiring of your brain. That just blows me away to think that God’s prescription to renew your mind is not just ethereal, something above you; it’s actually in you.

Dr. Warren:That’s exactly right. We had an amazing experience, Lisa and I, when we lived in Alabama. Our office was on the top floor of the MRI Research Center at Auburn University, and they had one of the, at the time, only three or four, what’s called a 7-Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanner. When you go get your back scanned or you hurt your knee and you go get an MRI, most of the commercial units in the country are 1.5 Tesla or weaker. Tesla is a measure of magnetic field strength and so the stronger the magnet, the more detailed the imaging they can do.

And at the time, they had a 7-Tesla magnet, which could image things like the beating heart. It was so powerful of a magnet that when they did small animal studies, it would levitate the birds or the rabbits off the field. It would pick their whole body up. But the first time we got to go down there and watch them do some functional imaging research.

So basically when you get an MRI of your knee or your brain, it’s a static picture. It’s just a picture of the organ, a picture of the thing, but functional imaging allows us to see what the organ is actually doing physiologically. So we got to go down and watch. They put these research subjects, these people, in the scanner, and they would inject them with a tracer and say, “Hey, Ron, think about the saddest thing you’ve ever been through. Think about how you felt right then.”

And they can watch in real time the blood flow and chemical changes in the brain. The colors change on the screen of what’s happening in your brain and the networks that are getting involved and things that are happening. And then a few minutes later they can say, “Hey, think about the best thing that’s ever happened. Think about the happiest moment you’ve ever had, when your wife said yes or whatever. Think about the best feeling you’ve ever felt in your whole life.” And instantly in the screen, the colors change, and different parts of the brain begin to light up. And you can see functionally the fact that thinking can change the structural behavior of your brain.

That’s how minded brain are separate by the way. It is impossible. It was easy in the 50s and 40s and 30s for people to say, “Mind’s an artifact of brain,” but now we can prove it. Now we can show you a picture of how you think changing the structure of your brain. So that’s why it’s so important. It’s kind of scary, but it’s also very hopeful that you have co-creative power with God to functionally change how your brain is working and your brain changes everything about how your body works.

Even another layer, which is fascinating, is that our brains and our minds and our brains affect the people around us electrochemically. This already in one level, it sounds funny to say it, but when Debbie Downer comes in the room, right, somebody’s in really bad mood, somebody’s really angry or really upset, you instantly feel a bunch of physiological stuff from them way faster than could be explained by the activity of the chemical synapses and neurons. It happens instantly, and it happens instantly because it’s electromagnetic. It happens at the speed of light.

Your emotional state resonates with mine. The psychologists call that limbic resonance; how our systems align with one another. And you have this whole system in your brain of things called mirror neurons that basically mirror the facial expressions and the emotional output of another person and then trigger the same things in their brains to happen. And that’s how you have what we call empathy with other people.

So you already know that your electromagnetic state affects those people around you. And that’s why when your wife walks in the room, you feel happier just because she’s happy; or you instantly know you did something wrong and you’re in trouble and you start to feel all that.

But here’s what you might not know. They’ve done some really fascinating research where they put people in rooms next to each other that they couldn’t see each other. And one person’s really mad and their heart rate goes up and the other person’s heart rate will go up too because they’re electromagnetically connected. And so that means that if you are careful with your emotional state, you are affecting the emotional state of those around you and it’s important.

It’s a responsibility for marriages, for husbands, for wives, for parents. You have a responsibility not just to say the right things and do the right things, but to think the right things too. That’s why the psalmist says, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you” because the things you think about create realities around you for other people that have lasting impacts on their bodies.

Ron:Let’s make a leap based on what you just said. And let’s think about parents and stepparents listening right now. They’ve heard me say before, the most important thing for a dysregulated child is a self-regulating parent.

Dr. Warren:That’s right.

Ron:And I think that’s hitting on what you just talked about. Who I am and how I carry myself does have some impact. It doesn’t change; it doesn’t dictate, but it does have some impact on the people around me. Children, stepchildren, whoever it might be, former spouse, whatever that interaction is in your homes, take seriously. I think what I hear you saying is take seriously how you carry yourself and letting your mind be renewed in toward good things can make a difference in the mood and feelings of others in your home.

Dr. Warren:That’s absolutely true, and I want to make this crystal clear. It’s just super important. This is not just self-help talk. It’s not just therapy tricks that we’re talking about. The things that we’re discussing, the mindset that we carry, the things that we dwell on, the thoughts that we think, structurally change the anatomy of our brain, and they chemically and electrochemically affect the bodies and behaviors of the people around us. And then on another level, which is even almost more terrifying, is that you can change the switching on and switching off of genes in your body and propagate those to generations after you by changing how you think.

Now, let me give you an example of that. In the Bible, there’s something called generational curses.

There’s a passage in Deuteronomy and I think another place in Chronicles maybe where it says that God visits the sins of the father on the third and fourth generation of the offspring. And that sounds horrible. It sounds like God’s going to punish your great grandkids for something that you do, but that’s not what he’s saying. It’s not a threat; it’s a warning.

It’s a prophecy to say, “Hey, Ron, the things that you do in your life are going to predict the things that your great grandkids are going to do in their lives.” And that’s why we see things like alcoholism and abuse perpetuate for several generations. What happens now, we understand the genetics of it. Your behavior doesn’t change the genes that your kids inherit, but it changes whether they’re switched on or switched off when they’re born.

Ron:Yeah, it creates a sensitivity or an activity.

Dr. Warren:That’s the science of epigenetics. The things that happen around us change the expression of our genes. So you get the same set of DNA that you got from your great grandpa, but you might be born with a different set of them switched on or switched off.

Somebody, a pastor once joked, Jesus might be in your heart, but grandpa’s in your bones. You inherit the things from your family, right? But it’s not the bad news of genetic determinism that we thought from before. It’s the very good news that those things can be changed with changing the way that we think and therefore how we live.

They did some studies in PTSD victims from Vietnam, and they did some similar research in Holocaust survivors from the second war. They found that up to four generations after people survived concentration camps and up to three generations of Vietnam, PTSD survivors or patients, children are born with abnormal cortisol responses at baseline when they’re born. Which means you are born sometimes being afraid of some stuff that happened to your great grandparents but didn’t actually happen to you.

Ron:Wow.

Dr. Warren:That’s powerful. The good news is those responses can be normalized within one generation by learning how to think differently; by cognitive behavioral therapy is the specific research they did there.

Ron:We have said there’s research that shows that children who grow up in strong, stable, healthy stepfamilies have a greater likelihood as adults of choosing one partner for life, breaking the generational cycle of divorce, and having a stronger mental health than kids who have been through an original biological family that by death or divorce was fractured, and then living in a difficult single parent and blended family situation that may have also added more fracturing to their heart and their life. But a blended family done well is redemptive for the next generation. Wow. If there’s not motivation for us to say, “Yeah, I got to work on me.”

Dr. Warren:That’s right.

Ron:“I got to work on me.” Whatever it is that brought you to the family that you’re in now, listener, whatever that backstory is, does not have to be the future.

Dr. Warren:The most important part about that, I think that blended family success, is that you choose who your family is. I mean, you don’t have to be born with DNA that’s similar. In fact, I heard Tara-Leigh Cobble say on the Bible recap podcast, she said, “God’s family is not made up of people with the same DNA. It’s made up of people with redeemed hearts.”

And that’s exactly what’s true for a blended family. If you want to make your future good for your offspring and your future generations, you break the chain of that past trauma and cycle of abuse and repetitive programs that you run that aren’t based on this current marriage. You decide that it’s going to be better for you in the future and you can make that come true.

Well, I think the thing that worked as a metaphor for me, a mental picture for me, is that if you go outside in the middle of the darkest night you can imagine, it doesn’t matter how much you scream into the void or yell or be mad, it’s not going to come dawn any sooner than the Earth’s rotation is going to make it come dawn. But you also know that no matter how hard you wish that the day would not come, it’s going to come. The sun’s going to rise again in the east at a certain time every day. That’s just how God made the world.

And so no matter what situation you’re in, you know that there’s a set of physiological things happening in you that grief defines and predicts and that are going to happen. And there’s a process that your body and your mind are going to go through, and nothing that you do can make that stuff not happen. And if you try to make it not happen, you’re going to hurt yourself. If you try to abort your grieving process temporarily or make it stop or make it go faster, or you try to not feel it with alcohol or something else, it’s going to hurt you.

So you need to let that process unfold. But you can take confidence that your body will begin to send you signals that it’s time to move forward. And the Lord will send people; that’s Psalm 34:18. It says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” and He will send people around you to gently nudge you at the right time to say, “Hey, it’s time to start opening your eyes and to see that there’s still light out there.” And you don’t have to do anything in particular to make the daylight come. It’s going to come. All you have to do is stay alive and it’s going to happen. Dawn is going to occur, and the light will come back on.

And you just have to say, “I know that my mental processes are capable of handling this, and I’m going to find whatever resources I need to get through this grieving process, and I’m going to look for the light. I’m going to keep pressing until it comes.” And know it’s going to come because it will. He will keep that promise and the dawn will come again, my friend.

Ann:We’ve been listening to a portion of the FamilyLife Blended podcast with Ron Deal, the host of that podcast, and he now joins us in the studio. Welcome, Ron.

Ron:Hey, guys, good to be back with you again.

Dave:Alright, I don’t even know where to start. Quantum entanglement, never put those two words together—

Ron:I know.

Dave:—in my life. So tell us, Ron, I mean of all the things he said, what really hit you and what applies to our families that are listening?

Ron:Well, at the top, you guys were talking about how our choices and decisions and how we live our lives can impact to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. That whole discussion where he pointed out how we turn on and off genes by how we respond to certain things and the decisions that we make; that’s sobering. Oh my goodness, what choices have I made? How am I living my life in such a way that’s going to produce anxiety in my great-grandchildren? But yet, the hope in what he was talking about was very clear. God redeems; God restores. He has the pathway out of all of this trouble if as we renew our minds, as we obey Him. I think there’s a connection there I don’t want to lose.

We talk a lot about renewing our minds in church, but obedience is the thing that embeds that, embodies that in our brain and in our body, and in our soul. We’re not just renewing our mind, but we’re actually renewing our brain and our neuro pathways. And that is a concept that’s really important.

So one of the ways, here’s what I’m trying to say. One of the ways we renew our mind is by obedience. Because it kind of works in both directions in terms of renewing our actual physical bodies, and that makes a difference to the third and fourth generation, and there’s so much hope in that.

Ann:Hope and scary. I’m like, oh, what am I passing down? I need to get rid of the junk that’s inside of me. How do I do that? Is it my brain? Is it my mind? It’s so good though.

Ron:Yeah.

Dave:Yeah. And also, I mean, it raises in my mind, it raises the stakes because you think this struggle, or this victory I’m having is just for me, and it’s bigger than that. This choice I’m making, even with what I choose to do with my mind is going to impact my kids, grandkids and even great grandchildren. It matters what I do in this moment with my obedience.

Ron:And you guys know that we believe at FamilyLife Blended, that blended families can be redemptive organisms when they’re done well. When they’re not done well, it can just add a whole lot more pain, kind of like our conversation around genes.

So I’m excited that Blended and Blessed is happening in one month. This is our worldwide livestream where you can sit at home and join us for the entire day for less than 20 bucks as your cost. Your church can host it for a bunch of couples. You can put them in the room; you can experience the day together.

We actually have all of these previous years. Every year is different. And this year, Nan and I are going to be flushing out some of our principles from our new book, The Mindful Marriage, but we’re going to be applying them specifically to blended family situations and so we’re excited for people to join us. Wherever you are listening right now, you can be a part of this event Saturday, April 5th, Blended and Blessed.

Dave:Yeah, you don’t want to miss it. Ron, thanks. This is great stuff. And again, if you didn’t listen to them, go back and listen to the whole program, the FamilyLife Blended podcast, episode 144.

Ann:We would love to pray for you. I would personally love to pray for you, and we even have a team at FamilyLife that can pray for you. Just go to FamilyLife.com/Prayforme.

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