[0:00]Hello, I'm Dr. Caroline Leaf and welcome to my podcast, Cleaning Up the Mental Mess. In this podcast, I discuss a lot of different things to do with mental health and I want to share a particular focus today based on a recent randomized controlled trial that our research unit published and that I've been discussing on my social media. I often discuss that we are not our brain, and this is something that's really important for people to understand because the current narrative often tries to reduce us to just our brain, and it's something that really limits us in our ability to manage our mind and therefore manage our life and our physical health. So I want to talk a little bit today about how we are not our brain, but we use our brain to think, feel, and choose. And the implications for mental health when you actually embrace that concept. So let's dive in. Before we dive into this podcast, I just want to remind you that I have a free neurocycle app. This is a daily guide thinking with five simple steps to help you overcome anxiety, depression, toxic thoughts, and trauma. It's based on 38 years of clinical research and it's a very simple practice that you can do every day that takes around 15 to 45 minutes to help you improve your mental health. I'm sure you're going to love it. Download it on the App Store or Google Play or visit neurocycle.app. The mind and the brain, this is such a fascinating topic, and I have spent 38 years studying it. My PhD and my masters were in neuroscience and my whole career and my clinical practice has been based around how to take what we know about the mind and the brain and actually apply it into our daily lives. And it's such an exciting topic because we have so much control. And I love sharing with you and encouraging you to embrace your control because the current narrative that we often hear in the media, in society, in the medical world is that we don't have control. We are our brain, and we are at the mercy of our brain and our genetics and our environment and our circumstances. And there is a level of truth in that, but it's not the ultimate truth. And it's a truth that often makes people feel very disempowered, and it has actually created an epidemic of mental health issues. I'm not saying it's the only cause, but it is definitely one of the biggest causes because when you are disempowered, you don't feel like you have control, you don't use your mind to manage your brain. And that then puts you at the mercy of circumstances and genetics and all those kinds of things. Whereas if you are empowered and you understand that you are not your brain, but you use your brain to think, feel, and choose, which is something that I've been saying for 38 years, you then actually embrace your control. And you then understand that you can actually direct your thinking and your mind and your choices to manage your brain so that your brain is serving you in the best way possible. Because the brain is phenomenal, it's such a magnificent organ. And it does so many wonderful things, but it's not you. And this is such an important distinction. So what does it mean to say we are not our brain, but we use our brain to think, feel, and choose. I'm actually referring to the mind, and the mind is an immaterial aspect of who we are as humans. So we are body, mind, and brain, all connected, all integrate beautifully, but distinct in definition and in function. So we have our physical body, which includes the brain, and that's the physical part. We have our mind, which is our ability to think, feel, and choose. We are thinking, feeling, choosing beings, and that's an immaterial aspect of who we are as human beings. Now, the two come together, our mind uses our brain to express itself in the physical.