129. Jennifer Fraser, PhD, The Bullied Brain

Welcome to this soul-stirring episode of "Limitless Healing with Colette," where Colette speaks with Jennifer Fraser PhD on the profound journey of healing and empowerment. 

Jennifer shares her deeply moving narrative and groundbreaking insights into brain health. In this episode, Jennifer delves into her personal ordeal with trauma, recounting the challenges she faced and the strides she's made in reconnecting with her past to foster a healthier, more integrated self. 

Jennifer and Colette explore the disturbing dynamic of how adults, unwittingly or not, protect abusers, and how perpetrators exploit empathy to serve their own ends.

Jennifer brings her expertise in neuroscience to the table, discussing how genetics, environment, and epigenetics play into abusive behaviors and the hope that lies in rehabilitating "hurt brains."

Episode Highlights:

02:20 Jennifer's brother's learning disability experience shapes her brain interest

06:06 Jennifer turned to science to understand abuse

10:30 Jennifer's trauma memories were triggered when she uncovered her son's abuse

12:40 Questioning behavior when child abuse allegations arise

17:33 Genetics play a role, but environment factors are very influential

19:46 Internalized negativity can trap us in helplessness

22:01 Neuroscience reveals brain's reaction to split personality

31:32 Difficult for kids to recognize adult abuse

34:02 Be vigilent as abusers can appear kind and smart

37:46 How to identify abusers, through questioning, asking for evidence and sharing with others

40:39 You can heal a hurt brain: Neuroscience confirms benefits of exercise and mindfulness

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bulliedbrain/

Website: https://bulliedbrain.com/

Book: The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=THE+BULLIED+BRAIN

Brain Training: Brain HQ: https://www.brainhq.com/

______________________________________

Connect with Colette:

Instagram: @wellnessbycolette

Website: Wellness by Colette

Thank you for listening to the Limitless Healing podcast with Colette Brown! It would mean the world if you would take one minute to follow, leave a 5 star review and share with those you love!

In Health,
Colette

Transcript

Colette Brown [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Limitless healing podcast where everyone is welcome to take a front row seat and listen in on inspiring conversations, stories of healing and action steps to help you live your best life. My name is Colette Brown and I am passionate about all things wellness, mind, body, soul. Inspired by my own personal transformation from unwell and not knowing where to turn to thriving and flourishing, and motivated to help you do the same. I share this platform with medical doctors, wellness practitioners, chronic illness survivors, meditation and mindfulness gurus, innovators of products from food to technology and more. Think of it as a one stop shop for wellness resources where you can listen to professionals from around the world to help you thrive. Join me Mondays and Wednesdays while sipping a cup of tea or making your favorite meal as we explore the world of wellness together. This is the Limitless healing podcast. Today's guest has explored the power of the brain, the impact of trauma, and the potential for healing through cutting edge science and from her heart as she shares her own personal stories around bullying and abuse.

Colette Brown [00:01:26]:
She has a PhD in comparative literature and is an advocate for educational and neurological transformation. She will share with us about challenging the status quo and how to find hope for profound change. Mother, author and extraordinary Human Welcome, Jennifer Frazier Welcome, Jennifer hi.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:01:48]:
Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be here.

Colette Brown [00:01:51]:
Colette, it's a pleasure to have you. I'm honored to have you. I finished reading your book and it was so impactful for me and just relating it to life because we all have traumas and I want to dive into that. But first I want to take you back to childhood. Tell us maybe a favorite memory, a dream that you had as a child or situation that led you to where you're at today.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:02:19]:
I think one of the greatest influences on me as a child was watching my brother struggle with an undiagnosed learning disability, which of course is a brain function. And this is 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they didn't have any concept that someone might have dyslexia or they might have, which is what my brother has, is he's an auditory learner and he has dysgraphia. Likely when you have dysgraphia, all it means is you have all this brilliance in your head, all this knowledge, but you can't translate it from the language and knowledge in your head onto paper. And really, a quick remedy for children that suffer from this condition is just, they just need a computer and then they can get up to speed and they don't have to worry about their handwriting and the difficulty of making the hand follow the movements that the brain is dictating. So watching him suffer and watching teachers not understand that he was this brilliant kid, they kept telling him he wasn't trying and he was lazy and this and that, because he was the smartest kid when it came to class discussion. But then it looked like he didn't study for the test because he just couldn't write it down, and he couldn't write it down in time. So this is where I became really sensitized, I think, to how important our brains are. I have a PhD in comparative literature, and I went that route because I am much more about storytelling and how shared language and experience and turning our lives into narratives and journaling, these kinds of things speak profoundly to me.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:03:46]:
But the reason I turned to the science was because I couldn't get answers that were satisfying from my society. And as a trained researcher, I wanted to know what the experts in brain science and in health said about what I was seeing happening, which was bullying and abuse. I was like, what do they say? What do they know? And the wonderful thing about this is, and all parents out there will relate to this, really what drives my book is the panic of a parent. And what happened was, this is the fourth book I've written, and I'm very accustomed to taking different discourses, putting them into the arena, and seeing how the dialogue changes or the conversation changes. But in this case, it was life and death for me, because I was watching my son. I was watching his brain essentially be brutally impacted by what was being done to him. And so I did a really deep dive, ten years of deep dive into the neuroscience. And at the end of all this, one of the world's greatest neuroscientists, who lives in California, he's one of the most highly awarded neuroscientists alive today, Dr.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:04:46]:
Michael Merznick. He said that the bullied brain is the most completely scientifically thorough treatment of the subject on planet Earth. And that is because I was a very worried mother.

Colette Brown [00:04:59]:
Yeah, there's nothing like the worry of a mother to dive in and figure something out, whatever that is, and protecting our kids and helping them and understanding it better. And you also had trauma in your life. It makes me so sad to reading the stories and things that happen to your brother, to you, to your son. And I also think, what a gift that you turned this into, because people have trauma, and they'll turn to drugs, to substance, to other addictions, to repeating the behavior, and it just progresses. And you pulled the reins back and said, no, this needs to stop. And you show it all throughout your book. And I'm so thankful for it. And I have been telling everyone, and I will continue to do so to please get the book.

Colette Brown [00:05:55]:
I'm going to hold it up, the bullied brain, and I've tabbed it, I've highlighted, and it's so profound to know that, okay, we have trauma and we can acknowledge, and we know scientifically that it scars the brain. And we also know that with a lot of hard work, it can be healed. And thanks to you, you're getting that latter part out to the world of, okay, you've had the trauma. Let's acknowledge it, let's validate it, and let's also start the healing process. You had this childhood with your brother. You go to college. Tell us how the events that happened to you, when did that start manifesting in your life? And I want people to read the book, but tell us a little glimpse into what that was about and how it impacted you and how that kind of maybe started snowballing and led you to different choices of even education.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:07:02]:
Yeah, so that's an interesting question. It's funny because at this stage of my life now, after having written the book, after having done the science, and after, it's almost like the universe wouldn't let me off the hook until I faced what had been done to me. But I couldn't face it because I had either to use the language either. I had repressed it so deeply, like what you're talking about, people have all these strategies. They self medicate, they repeat what was done. They do anything they can to try and survive it. And these are all very unconscious, kind of panicky responses. And for me, what I did was just.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:07:41]:
I made the abuse done to me absolutely disappear. And again, to use the proper language, I dissociated. So it was like the abuse had happened to somebody else. That's how much I didn't acknowledge it. I couldn't even see it for what it was. And that's because I wasn't ready. You have to be compassionate to yourself and careful as you go down this journey, because sometimes we're not ready to take on this material because it's so traumatizing. It makes you feel like you're going to just splinter off into pieces and it's going to shatter your worldview and you're going to lose trust and you're going to believe that there's a malevolent force out there and you're going to self medicate more.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:08:19]:
So the universe allowed me to keep all this material at bay. And then when I saw what was happening to my son, it started to make me remember. And then this whole experience became much more intensified. My son was emotionally and physically abused along with a group of other students, many other students. And then I resigned in protest from the school where that was happening and they were covering up. I went to another school, and at that other school, a student reported to me she was being sexually harassed by an educator. And that brought up more memories for me. And so basically, I had to come face to face with the grooming that started when I was 13 years old, that then blossomed into full physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:09:04]:
And I walked away, and it was at the hands of teachers. I walked away from these people at 17 and I shut the door like an iron clad. Nothing's going to move this door ever again. And I just made the whole thing disappear. I saw psychiatrists, I saw psychologists for eating disorders and self harm. I never said a word about what had happened to me because I couldn't, because I didn't know that it was even me. It wasn't a part of who I was. And I created this Persona of health and happiness and high performance.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:09:33]:
But inside I was very unwell. And as a wellness expert, you would know that kind of dichotomy you probably see in people. So ultimately, I'm deeply thankful to my son and to these brave young people, these teenagers that allowed me to reconnect back to my teenage self. And I read through all the court documents, I read all the information from the teachers union, everything that happened. It was like reading your own life, a biography of your own life. Because I had been one of those victims. I just had shut it off. And I feel more whole.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:10:06]:
I feel more myself. I feel healthier than ever by just allowing it to come back. And I'm very clear from the book that what they did to me was their own mental illness. And it has nothing to do with me. I just was a random victim.

Colette Brown [00:10:20]:
Yeah, you were there. I have a question about the perpetrators. And you brought up in there how they're protected. Like adults protect the perpetrators because they don't want to believe maybe that this child, maybe the child's upset and they're making up stories, but parents or adults will rally around the abuser. And can you tell us a little more about what is that about if there is abuse going on? Like, my first instinct is to, obviously you want to get the details and protect your child. That's my instinct. And I would never rally around an abuser. And so what is it? Is it me or the way I think differently, or is it just I haven't been in the right storm, the perfect storm of a situation where I'm like, oh, my gosh, maybe the kid is not telling the truth.

Colette Brown [00:11:20]:
How does that look?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:11:21]:
First of all, they know in the research that children will tell a falsehood about abuse. It's 0.1%. It's the most unlikely thing in the world. Does it happen? It happens very rarely. And because it's a child or a young person, it's usually so unsophisticated that it's easy to recognize as not true. So there's that. In answer to the perfect storm, though, that's the best term, I think, to use for this. And really, this is the beauty of starting to understand the brain and how the brain works.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:11:52]:
And I write a regular series called bullied brain for psychology today. And I just wrote about this because I think it's so important to understand individuals who are abusive. You might diagnose them if you are a professional, a medical health professional, as having borderline personality disorder. When you have borderline personality disorder, and you can see how this applies to the perpetrator. And then ultimately, I was just describing that phenomenon as a victim, where I put on a really brave face, a high performing, healthy, perfect face when I was outside in the world. And when I came home, I was full of self loathing, I was full of distress. I was full of toxic memories, essentially, and trauma. So that's like a split personality.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:12:33]:
The abuser has a split personality. So what they do is they groom the adults, the parents. So you would have gotten groomed if your child was a target, and this person would become your best friend, and you would believe that they were advancing your child's athletic career or educational career or in the church, whatever. They are highly adept at manipulating. They manipulate the parent, they manipulate the community, their colleagues, and especially the higher ups. And they find they're very adept at bringing in information about your vulnerabilities, for example. And they ultimately collect information. They never forget it.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:13:08]:
They're very advanced. So what they find in the brain science is when you look at somebody like this, you find that they have very intact cognitive empathy, and that means they can read you like a book. They know what you intend, they know what you feel. They know what you think. They know your vulnerabilities. They get you to tell you your secrets. It's amazing. So they have excellent cognitive empathy.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:13:33]:
They're very strategic and manipulative. On the flip side, if you look at their brain and they have ways that they test this and so on, they don't have effective empathy. Effective empathy is feelings. They don't have any feelings. So they don't feel guilt, they don't feel remorse. They go into instant denial if they're confronted. They're always the victim in their own mind. They have no sense of responsibility.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:13:57]:
They sleep like an angel every single night. They have no reaction to the harm they cause. This is a very dysregulated brain, but this is how it happens. You look at how does it happen that Harvey Weinstein's abusing people all over the place for 30 years? Dr. Larry Nassar, Jerry Sandusky, all of these guys had amazing Personas. They were beloved parts of the community. They were talented, they were this, they were that. But they also were repeatedly targeting people in the same way over and over again, like an obsessive compulsive disorder, saying the same words, doing the same acts, et cetera.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:14:33]:
It's an illness, a very profound illness, but they are extremely good at covering it up.

Colette Brown [00:14:42]:
So you're saying somebody that is an abuser, are they reacting to an experience that they had as a child and or a behavior that they learned? Because I think you're saying all this can be changed if you've been abused or you're an abuser, but you have to really be intentional about it. And how much is it heart genetic of who you are, or, like, the levels of the generational transfer of DNA? How does that play into it?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:15:13]:
There's a great deal of complex research in answer to that question. Genetics do play a role. Sometimes a child will start to present as psychopathic quite early on. Genetics is a smaller part of the picture, though. A much larger part of the picture is environment and epigenetics. So we have the DNA, but then we also now know that certain behaviors and certain illnesses and so on get triggered or not triggered, depending on our environment. So there's genetics, there's epigenetics, and there's mostly the most influential component of this is indeed environment. Now, when somebody gets to the point where they're highly abusive and they have zero, they're called negative zero.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:15:56]:
If you have negative zero affective empathy, that's going to be extremely difficult to resurrect. Those people are very ill. It's a deep illness. Now, the rest of us who have hurt brains, and many of us do, all of us can get better. That's like when you get out of shape and you want to get back into fitness. That's what our brains are like, and they can absolutely be rehabilitated, and they can be strengthened and made more flexible. And there's tons of research that backs that. And I put it all in the book.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:16:27]:
But when you have somebody who's really highly abusive, like these people, and you've let them, especially if you've let it go on and on for years and years, decades, then the resurrection of their neural networks is quite possible. Like, it's possible that you could never do that.

Colette Brown [00:16:43]:
That's amazing. This is all just really fascinating. There was an excerpt that I highlighted that I wanted to bring up, and you said, instead of beating yourself up when you've made mistakes, why don't you try being intrigued by them? So I think that is probably one of the steps of healing the brain and not continuing on the self inflicted abuse of maybe you feel guilty about something that happened. Maybe you were sexually abused and your adults didn't believe you, and so you internalize that or you didn't tell anyone, and you keep thinking these thoughts. Tell us more about that statement.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:17:26]:
Yeah. In the book, I decided to call what happens to us the mind bully, where just, as you say, we internalize all of this negativity and these put downs and these self loathing and the guilt and all these different negative feelings, and we get trapped in that world. And in the research, they refer to it as a perception of inescapability, or the more common one, learned helplessness. If you think of somebody who's trapped in a domestic abuse situation, for example, and everybody's so shocked, why do you keep going back? Why won't you stand up for yourself in court? All these sorts of things. The research shows that you're too traumatized, plain and simple. Your brain is so afraid, it is lost in terms of self belief that it can't get itself out. You need a huge amount of support and protection to get yourself out of these destructive situations. And that's the most intense form of coercion and control that you see in smaller or not smaller, but in other abuse scenarios that aren't quite as life threatening.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:18:29]:
But that would be a good example of it. And I think it's really important that you brought up that idea that if you haven't been believed, that's when you start to do the internalizing. And that's why it's so dangerous for adults to rally around and circle the wagons around the perpetrator. And it's another brain malfunction. Actually, that we could talk about in that regard, that helps people understand, because the reason why you're so protective of the perpetrator is because they're like you. You imagine yourself in their shoes. You're using your natural, innate empathy to relate to them. And you're thinking, I've never seen so and so do anything horrible.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:19:08]:
They're a good friend of mine. I've been friends with them for 20 years. I have dinner with them and their husband. They would never do something wrong. My brain says, no, that's because they've never shown you again. They're very adept at showing a certain Persona, the pillar of the community, the most charismatic, the cult following. They're masters at it behind closed doors. It's a different Persona that comes forward, a very abusive one.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:19:32]:
And so your empathy is natural, and you're saying, gosh, they're going to lose their job. I have to protect them.

Colette Brown [00:19:38]:
What if that was me being falsely accused?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:19:41]:
Exactly what you say to yourself, and it's natural. And then what? The neuroscience is really interesting on this, because when your brain can't understand something and it really struggles to understand the split personality, so your brain can't understand it, so it starts to generate counterfacts. That's the term they use. So a counterfact is, maybe the child's not telling the truth. Maybe the child misunderstood. Maybe the young adult was the one that seduced them into having a relationship with them, the coach and the athlete or the student and the teacher. Maybe it was him that did it and not the teacher. We can come up with a million rationalizations for abuse, but the second you hear from more than one, and it's always, there's always more than one.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:20:27]:
Or if you have text messages, or if you have emails, or if you have any of this type of evidence, you've got to just tell your brain, yes, this is very confusing. It's a dual presentation, but that's how they operate. I need to do the right thing, even though it's hard.

Colette Brown [00:20:42]:
And I guess to your earlier point, some of these personality disorders, when they're confronted with it, because they don't have that emotional connection, they'll just lie to your face. Right? They're pathological, and so they're pathological liars. So when you're trusting and you believe that somebody tells you the truth when they're asked and they're standing adamantly, oh, no, that's not me, I didn't do that. And yeah, your brain is trying to weigh out this information. And if it's not your child. You might second guess because you don't know somebody else's child. And if they are telling the truth, I think that might also be a way that some of these perpetrators are able to. The wagons are circled and they're protected.

Colette Brown [00:21:30]:
And especially in organizations like sports or religion, this happens a lot.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:21:37]:
Absolutely. It happens. In the workplace. It happens. Politics. We see it in politics all the time because it's because the person has power as soon as somebody is invested with power. And a teacher to a child is a massive power imbalance in the adult world. It has to be something more significant, like wealth or prestige or political power.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:21:58]:
And my next book is on gaslighting because I'm so fascinated by the fact that people believe what right, they know it's not true. It can be proven that it's not true. It can be fact checked. The evidence can show you it's not true. But because of the power and the prestige and the credibility oftentimes of the position, so think of a religious leader. They still believe. So it's really interesting to me what's going on in the brain when we are believing things that are manipulating us and we do it, all of us do it, we fall for stuff.

Colette Brown [00:22:31]:
Yeah, I'm just thinking of. It's bringing up a memory for me. When I was back in my corporate days and I was getting sexual advances by a fellow employee that actually controlled some of my. I was in sales, so controlled some of the order processes and it wasn't taken seriously when I went to HR, it was a joke. And so I chose to walk away and give up my large book of business that I had built and start over in a different department because I wasn't being heard. But I'm also a very tenacious, strong person. And I just said, I'm not going to be working in a hostile environment. Doesn't matter what I'm getting paid.

Colette Brown [00:23:14]:
And if no one's going to do something, I'll do it for myself. And I did. And so that's kind of me, but I know that's not the average person. So if you're in a school and you're not being believed, or if you are in a work situation, and then there's those too, that do make stuff up, right? They want to hurt somebody and they'll say lies about them. And I think they're probably evil, just like a person with the other personality disorder, the borderline where they're trying to intentionally hurt somebody. So it is confusing for the brain to weed through and say who do I believe? Who do I not believe?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:23:52]:
I think that's such an important point. And really, that's what I want to do in the gas lighting book, is help people understand the brain. Mechanisms for how we actually create. How our brain creates reality is very interesting, and there's a whole bunch of different mechanisms that happen. Lightning speed simultaneously. We don't even know they're happening. A lot of them are unconscious. And that's where I think we can strengthen our brain's capacity.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:24:18]:
How many times have you believed, just right off the bat, something someone told you just because you assume they're telling the truth? My biggest downfall is with my administrators and colleagues. Me, too. My administrators and colleagues and so on. I just assumed that I'd known them for eight years, and I thought the world of them all. And really, what we have to understand, too, is these people aren't abusive sometimes who will lie, basically? I mean, I was the subject of a full on smear campaign because I was speaking up and I was doing my legal duty to report, and they were trying to cover up. And really, when you looked at them, they were just desperate is what they were. They're not really bad people, but they were people that were negligent. They hadn't protected these students from abuse, and they had known about it for at least a year.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:25:04]:
They had had repeat reports that abuse was occurring, and they hadn't done anything to protect the students or inform the parents. So we, unwitting parents, put our children into a full on abuse situation, and they knew, but they didn't tell us. So it was a really big betrayal. But what's fascinating to me is, and this is why I just want to see proper investigative journalism protected at all costs in our world. Social media is wonderful, and it's great, and it has its place, but we still need well funded, proper investigative journalism because my story ended up going into national news, into a television investigative journalism program, and front page of the largest, most widely read newspaper in our country, in Canada. And when it came to the people that were so full of all the commentary behind the scenes, like the headmaster at the school and the government officials and the lawyers that wrote these bogus reports, all of them said no comment. And when people say no comment in public, it is a red flag that what they are saying behind closed doors is not true, because if it was true, they would have no problem saying it publicly to the whole country and to their community. So I just think that's a helpful technique as we try to navigate this world of what's true? What's a half truth? What's a lie? What's a manipulation?

Colette Brown [00:26:19]:
Yeah, that'll be a fascinating book. I'll be your first buyer of that one. It's so interesting. And what's the best way to talk to your children, your teen and bringing up, because I've always said it's never okay for somebody to touch you or to speak to you in a certain way. And I think those kids, that just when they're in the heat of the moment or they're being told by the perpetrator, don't tell anyone, or I'll hurt your family or whatever threats they're going to make, they won't believe you. Do you role play those situations with your kids or what's the best way to empower them to know how to get out of a situation like that?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:27:01]:
Yeah, that's arguably the most important question. I did not do a good job of that prior to writing the book and going through that traumatizing experience that I did at the school. And I said to my son, and it's just funny how your mind works. So my son is an exceptional athlete. He's 64 and he's just nothing but pure muscle. And he towers over these teachers at the school, these coaches. So I think that I just somehow I didn't see him as a target or a victim or vulnerable. I made the mistake of thinking that because he looked like this powerful adult, he was a powerful adult, and that's wrong.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:27:41]:
We know that teenagers brains aren't mature. They're not fully mature even until they're 24 or 25. So they're vulnerable. Our young people are very much at risk until that age. Not only lack of experience, but they also just don't have the brain development to really understand or to make good decisions. Another thing. So I said to my son, when this all blew up, I said, why didn't you tell me? And he looked at me and he said, and he's a very kind child. So he looked at me and he said, I did tell you.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:28:10]:
And it's one of the worst things I've ever heard in my life. And then he repeated two phrases. He said, I hate those guys. Then he said, they're freaks. And so you see, that's teenager language.

Colette Brown [00:28:23]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:28:24]:
He's not going to come to me because I never taught him the words. He's not going to come to me and my husband and say, I'm being emotionally and physically abused daily. The COVID up is basketball practices, but in actual fact, they're just using the practice as a way to do public humiliation. They're yelling in our faces, they're berating us. They're using homophobic slurs. They're swearing. If you make a brilliant move, you get punished for it. They've got favorites on the one side and targets on the other.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:28:53]:
They're dividing us as a team. We've never played worse. It's miserable. And if we try to get away from this berating, yelling, putdowns in the face, they grab us and hold us in for more. That's a full on assault. But he didn't have the language. He didn't report any of that. And we make our kids think of what you and I have just talked about, where we're like.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:29:12]:
It's very confusing for us to understand that an adult that we trusted actually is abusive. That's really hard for our brains. Imagine the brain of a teenager or a 20 something who's being told from the age of four years old to respect and obey their teachers and their coaches and the minister at the church and the neighborhood parents. Kids are told that adults are to be trusted and to be obeyed, and especially the ones that are empowered by society, like teachers and coaches and ministers and doctors and dentists, to have full and complete obedience and compliance by the child. So when you hit 16, you're not going to suddenly say, you're not going to go home to your parents and say, all of this brain training that I've had throughout my educational years is incorrect. I've come across somebody who I think is dangerous, and I'm going to tell you about it as a society. It's one of our big failings. We need to start teaching kids the right vocabulary and laying out for them on a regular basis.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:30:12]:
As much as we want them to learn math and soccer, we need them to be learning safety and learning how manipulative brains can groom them, seduce them into behaviors, can emotionally abuse them so that they're too ashamed to report, et cetera. Got to teach them all about abuse, just like we need to teach them sex education. We know it keeps them safer. We might be uncomfortable doing it, but it keeps our kids healthier and safer and stops unwanted teen pregnancies. We have to do the same for abusers. It's just sad, but we have to do it.

Colette Brown [00:30:41]:
Yeah. This topic, I think, touches every single person. I don't care how insulated you think you are, you're going to at least that seven layers. You're going to know somebody who has been a victim or worse like a perpetrator that you don't even know that could be in your circle. So I think there's a balance, too, which is probably a whole nother topic of trust. And how do you trust? Who do you trust, and at what level do you bring them into your circle, especially if you have young children, and as an adult, you can do a little bit better job of protecting yourself. But there's that balance, too. And you think if you're in a religious organization, that everybody there is going to be a participant, and they abide by the Ten Commandments or whatever.

Colette Brown [00:31:33]:
But that is not the case, unfortunately. It's just not. So where do you find that balance is? And what advice do you give for people on that?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:31:42]:
It's counterintuitive, because, again, our brain expects that if someone is dangerous and harmful, we'll recognize it. But it's the absolute opposite. When you're dealing with highly abusive people, they are able to, as we've discussed, put on the Persona, a pillar of the community, and they often are. The thing that shocked me with my colleagues was, and I was quoted in the news saying this, I've known these people for eight years, and I've never seen them be anything other than smart and kind and hardworking. And so it's very hard to understand that individual is really abusive when they're in power over a group of kids. It just so goes against the way we try to understand our world. So what I think is a good way to approach these things in order to be safe and keep our kids and all kids safe is you have to think, this is a neuroscience term, but basically, we create emotion concepts. So just to give you a quick example of this, we all understand this idea.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:32:49]:
If you see a glass and it's half full of you because you're wellness by Colette, you look at that and you go, oh, that's fabulous. I'm excited by that. That's going to quench my thirst. And I'm so lucky that I've got that half glass of water. I, on the other hand, have been. I come from a place of scarcity and risk and threat and injustice. I look at the glass, and I'm like, it's only half full. Oh, my God, what am I going to do? I'm going to die of thirst.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:33:14]:
I feel all kinds of anxiety. So my emotion, concept and response to the half full glass is anxiety. Your response to the half full glass is gratitude. The reality is, whatever happened to us as we grew up and our circumstances and environment, they're going to shape how we react, but really it's our choice. So let's say that I'm one of your clients and you teach me. You know what? We know that the health and wellness are greatly improved. When we feel more gratitude, I want you to practice, and here is your mantra. And when you see the half glass, I want you to be thankful for the gift of water.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:33:47]:
And so I start to practice this, and I release in my brain dopamine. When I look at the glass, I get dopamine, and the dopamine tells me to work hard to find more water and to be able to share that water with others. And it's really healthy for my brain. Now, if I was looking at the glass and I'm seeing half empty, then I'm activating the cortisol in my brain and my body. Cortisol is a stress hormone. It's a very wonderful, healthy, good thing. But you only want to really release it when you're facing something dangerous, like a predator. You don't want to feel it in your brain and body for the half glass or for financial trouble or for public speaking.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:34:23]:
You can't have cortisol in your system all the time like that. It's really bad for your health. I say to people, when you get to the heart of the matter, this is what I say in the gaslighting book. One of the things about it is, I say, you have to develop, and this is hard to do. It's a hard exercise. You have to develop a double emotion concept for situations where you could be in the presence of an abusive individual or a manipulator or anyone, really. So it's like a Trojan horse thing. You remember from ancient myth that the Trojan horse was brought as a big gift and it was given to the Trojans, and they were in a war of attrition with the Greeks.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:34:59]:
And the Trojans were like, wow, this has got to be a gift because it's a big, beautiful wooden horse. I don't know why our enemies are giving us a big gift, but they certainly are. So they opened up the doors, they brought in the Trojan horse. They closed up the doors and thought they were safe. Of course, the Trojan horse was full of greek warriors who slaughtered the Trojans in their sleep. Horrible story in a sense, but you have to understand that. You know that expression, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. That's not true.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:35:26]:
Look a gift horse in the mouth. Constantly keep your reserves about you. Constantly question, be skeptical, ask for the evidence. If someone tells you something, just say, really? Do you have evidence for that? Or if someone tells you something behind closed doors, say, just say to them, if we went out of your office, would you say that to everybody, or is that just for me? Because if you can't say it to everybody, then I'm really concerned about why you're saying it just to me behind closed doors. And that could be any type of thing, like gossip, or it could be sexual harassment or any type of information that sounds awfully suspect. Just do a check with them and help them, even if they don't mean it maliciously, just make them check themselves. Do they really want to be saying that, yes or no? So, yeah, I think having two emotion concepts, one that's not very trusting and the other that is loving and trusting, we have to be that way, too, is probably a healthy balance. Just until you're sure.

Colette Brown [00:36:20]:
This is great. I could just keep asking you question after question. Fascinating. Is there anything that you wanted to share that we haven't talked about today?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:36:29]:
I would love to end on just a note of empowerment and encouragement for everybody because I really had, going into all this, a pretty damaged brain. High functioning on the outside, but pretty damaged. And all of us, no matter what's being done to us, we're wired to repair and recover. And so the book is full of all kinds of evidence based practices. They're inexpensive. They really are just practices. But if you put in that, it's like getting in shape. If you put in the time and effort, I can promise you in anywhere from three to six months, you're going to see significant differences.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:37:05]:
And you just have to feel excited about that. All of us can get better, and we can change how we operate as a society to be less abusive and less bullying and less harassing and much more brain protective and brain honoring of one another. So my final thing I would just say is that I think it's a lovely image for people to understand that. The neuroscientists were rather startled to find out that the brain has 86 billion neurons. And the only thing that they could find out in our world to try and convey the magnitude of that was the galaxy. So all of us are walking around with a galaxy in our heads. 86 billion brain cells. 86 billion neurons.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:37:48]:
We have been given the gift of all gifts, and I just think we should love seeing that in each other. We should work hard to develop this gift we've been given, and that it's really just a hopeful thing for all of us going forward. The science is amazing.

Colette Brown [00:38:03]:
Yeah. And can you just give the listeners maybe three quick tips on, if you've experienced something, what is the path to healing? What are three things they could start doing today to start that healing journey, besides getting your book and reading five times?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:38:19]:
This is the beauty of neuroscience, because what it does is it confirms things that we already deeply know in ourselves and in our history. So, for example, they have found that aerobic exercise, this would be a pillar in your life. Aerobic exercise is one of the best ways to heal damage to the brain, to repair damage to the brain, and to make it resistant to toxic stress going forward. So aerobic exercise, in whatever form you love to do it, it's so good for you and it's so good for your brain. Mindfulness. 2000 years of eastern practice has told us that mindfulness is really good for you. And the neuroscientist says, yeah, those guys were right, it's really good for you. And then finally, an exciting, more contemporary opportunity is to go to the brain gym and to pursue brain fitness.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:39:03]:
And this is Dr. Michael Merzanik. He was the neuroscientist I was talking about at the beginning, who's taken the book on as kind of a passion project. He's a very generous man, but he and a team of international neuroscientists have designed a program called Brain HQ. And if you want to strengthen your brain and you want to become more flexible and you want to keep it super healthy, put in half an hour a day, five days a week, to brain HQ. Think of it as brain headquarters. Brain HQ. It's an online gamified program, but it's got neuroscientists behind it.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:39:31]:
And those would be three amazing things as a start that all of us can do to keep our brains at their high performance and happy and healthy.

Colette Brown [00:39:40]:
I love those are all actionable items I think everyone could find time to do. And in closing, one question I ask all my guests is, if this was the last message that you had to broadcast out to the world, what would it be?

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:39:54]:
It would be that hurt. Brains hurt. They hurt inside, they hurt other people, and that hurt shouldn't be happening to them. And we would be a much happier, healthier society if when kids were born, we poured all our resources and energy into ensuring their brains didn't get hurt.

Colette Brown [00:40:13]:
That's a beautiful thing. And we have such great responsibility as adults, caretakers, stewards. And I want to just say big gratitude from my heart of you diving in to do the research, to take the reins, and to guide yourself, your children and now the world in how we can function better, and you've given us the science behind it, and it's all there. And like you said, you're a mom on a mission. Ten years. You did the research, and you continue to do so. Jennifer, it's an absolute honor to know you, to be able to share you with the world, and thank you so much.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:41:00]:
Thank you so much. That is an absolutely beautiful tribute. And a lot of that journey that I was on was extremely painful. So your words are like a lovely bomb that makes it feel worthwhile, the suffering and. Yeah, just sharing it with people that get it and understand and want that. Loving parent energy, educator energy. Let's get this information into the world so we can all be together healthier and happier and more high performing.

Colette Brown [00:41:27]:
Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Jennifer. I appreciate you.

Jennifer Fraser PhD [00:41:31]:
Thank you, Colette, it's been lovely talking to you.

Colette Brown [00:41:34]:
It's been wonderful. And everyone else, until next time, be well. You just finished another episode of Limitless Healing where we dive into all things wellness. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you would share it with your friends and family. Together, we can plant seeds of hope that leads to transformation in our lives and the lives of those we love. Let's get healthy together.