Breaking Self-Deception: How Your Brain Hides Your Authentic Self with Bizzie Gold

Dr. Mindy Pelz 00:02-05:07 On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I am bringing you Bizzie Gold. Let's have a chat before we dive in. This is a fascinating discussion about how our brains get wired. And if you've been following my podcast for a while, you know that my new book, Age Like a Girl is largely built around this idea that menopause is offering us an opportunity of rewirement, that we get a chance to let go of many of the beliefs that we held to so firmly. And I went on Bizzie's podcast for, she interviewed me for Age Like a Girl and fell in love with her, fell in love with her work, and so I brought her to you all. And this is the second piece of the conversation. And we're releasing these a little out of order. So you're going to have hers first, this interview with me, and then in December, my interview on her channel will come out. So please go listen to them both. But what Bizzie is offering us is a real serious new way to look at how our thoughts and behaviors get wired from our early childhood. So a little bit about Bizzie, and I love this, this is straight off her website. She calls herself the mental health industry's most dangerous outsider. Bizzie Gold eloquently questions the status quo equipped with data and strategy. So you will hear in here that she doesn't believe in traditional therapy, And she is a therapist, and she will tell you that she approaches behavior in a very different way. And what I also find really interesting is she strongly feels that between the ages of two and five, our behaviors, our thought patterns get wired. And that wirement happens largely because of the parents in our house or the situation in our house. And you'll hear my story about my upbringing that I brought forward to her that I'm realizing is impacting my behavior now, even at 55. So what Bizzie is doing is giving people a way of understanding what she calls their brain pattern, how this pattern got formed at these early ages. And once you understand your pattern, then she offers a solution on how you can start to rewire that pattern. So we dive into a large part of it, how patterns get formed and how they affect our behavior today. What we also dive into is what happens during menopause when our neurochemical armor shifts and our brain starts to rewire itself and we start to really see these patterns more clear. I use an example in the book or in the episode. And you guys have, if you've been following me, have heard me talk about the fact that I have two very loving parents and they're still alive. And yet I've come to realize, like many people do, that they wired some things into my brain I no longer wish to believe or to carry forward in the next phase of my life. And so you'll hear me talk about those and she'll hear her talk about how that set me up for certain brain patterns. So it's a fascinating discussion. This is one I would say, grab a pen and a pad of paper. You may want to listen to it a couple of times. It's so good at helping us all see that what she says that our brains are filthy liars. It's the name of her book. Your brain is a filthy liar. And what I've come to understand in my own post-menopausal journey is that many of the patterns that got instilled into me as a child, I no longer want to carry forward. And Bizzie gives us the answer on how to put those patterns down and start to shape your brain in a new way. It's such a cool conversation. So here you go, Bizzie Cold and learning to rewire your brain. I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved this conversation. Welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Well, first, Bizzie, I have to welcome you to my podcast. I feel like this is one of those moments where like you invited me over to your home for dinner, and now I'm returning the favor, inviting you over to my home. So welcome. I'm super happy for this discussion. Bizzie Gold 05:08-05:11 Me too. I can't wait to see what you're cooking up for dinner. I've been excited about it all Dr. Mindy Pelz 05:11-06:31 weekend. Thank you. Thank you. So just to fill everybody in, one of the hypotheses that I had really come up with in studying the brain changes that happen to women as they go through menopause is that there's sort of this moment in which we wake up and when we go through menopause and what we wake up to is all the ways our brain has been lying to us and I have used that thought as like a way to express to women that this is your freedom moment. This is your moment to get out of jail. It's like a get out of jail free card that menopause offers you a time to re-pattern your brain. Then you and I had a conversation and I really became even more fascinated by where brain patterns start from. So what I'd love to start this conversation with is how do we create the thoughts in our brain that we are thinking, like I'm 55 years old, like I'm thinking thoughts that were perhaps instilled in me at five years old. Tell me where these thoughts are coming from. Bizzie Gold 06:32-09:02 All of the research that we've done and the data that we've poured through over the last 12 years shows us that the majority of the repetitive inputs you experience in your early childhood environment between two and five are in essence what create the formula with which you perceive the world around you. So this is a great example. While you're 55, and maybe perhaps this is less true post-menopause, pre-menopause, there might've been a variety of ways that you saw your world like a three-year-old or like a four-year-old or responded to a husband like a six-year-old. But I love just piggybacking on our conversation on your book topic that there is this sort of moment when you go through menopause that you have this opportunity to rewire. The brain is ripe and ready to kind of learn from all of its previous mistakes, which was completely new information for me. But I can attest to all the clients that pour into my practice that there is a high concentration of women that are either about to go through menopause or currently going through menopause. that are ready and willing to do this work finally. So love the hypothesis, can see it come to life in my practice. So these early childhood years are so critical. And as a parent myself, I have four kids that range from three to almost 16. I think very often we're taught that toddler years are something that you just have to get through and that your kids are going to outgrow it, like, you know, buckle down, bat in the hatches. You just have to kind of, you know, survive it and then they're going to outgrow it. The data actually says the complete opposite. They won't outgrow it. They start to formulate ruts and these ruts get deeper and deeper. And perhaps based on your parenting style, they may adapt certain masks or coping mechanisms that hide it. But these ruts, once developed, they don't go away. They become crevasses. And then we have all of these sort of protective mechanisms and coping strategies that kind of pretend that they're not there, but they're very much still there and they very much still formulate the way that we see the world as a 40-year-old, as a 55-year-old. And I think one of the things we touched on a bit in your podcast was one of the sources of input that we have found is incredibly profound, is something that I just refer to as a gap in understanding, which if you go back to maybe perhaps your generation, I'm 15 years younger than you, but I certainly don't feel young in the context of young. I think sometimes people think I'm younger than them. And I don't feel old in the context of Dr. Mindy Pelz 09:02-09:07 old. So we're just humans. We're just humans. But I think it's funny, you know, when you're like in Bizzie Gold 09:07-09:43 your 20s, 40, at least for me in my head, felt like 40 was going to really feel different. And to be honest with you, it's one of the reasons I love the title of your book is I often look in the mirror and I'm like, am I ever going to actually stop feeling 17? Like I will feel perpetually 17 likely for the rest of my life. And when I see people that kind of, you know, are dressed fancy, pulling up in their nice cars at the pickup line, I'm like, does anyone take me seriously? Because I don't take myself seriously. So I love that. But these gaps in understanding. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, I was just gonna say it's funny you say that Dr. Mindy Pelz 09:44-11:02 because I'm very curious, you know, mom to mom, what happens when your children get to 17? Because I used to walk around saying that I felt like I was 25. And then when my daughter became 25, I was like, oh, wow. But it is interesting that the brain can have a different feeling of age than actually the numerical. Like, I'm sure, I mean, that's a whole nother conversation. But, you know, and that was a big part of Age Like a Girl was chosen because, not just because I had this brand called Like a Girl, but my desire was for women when they go through menopause to go back and start to nurture their little girl. And I really love the idea of you've seen that quote that or comment that you that when we get older, we get to be the person who protects our younger self. And I've been doing a lot of that in the metaphorical understanding of my little girl. So I just I just wanted to point out that it's interesting how the brain can feel at a very different age. And aging is a really, it is also a liar because you get to decide what the brain is going to latch onto and think it's capable of. I love that. And that quote immediately took Bizzie Gold 11:02-11:50 me to something that I teach in my work called the socioemotional paradox. In essence, in many ways, we are actually more emotionally mature when we are very, very young. And because of the that we receive and the rules that we inevitably have to learn about our parents or just adult other, anyone that's in charge, right, in air quotes, we end up developing these coping strategies or behavior mechanisms that actually put up more walls. They make vulnerability no longer safe to do. So one of the things that I try to teach in my work to kind of bring this concept to life is that every child comes into this world like an uncarved block of wood. So imagine some sort of, you know, soft block of wood that's easy to kind of whittle. I don't know if you ever did that with Speaker 3 11:50-11:54 sticks when you were little. I know that these days kids would never think of such things, but back Bizzie Gold 11:54-13:30 then, you know, that was something you did with the soft wood. So imagine that you come into the world, this soft block of wood. Children are inherently curious. It's one of those instincts that we were talking about from the episode that you were liking on my podcast, that it's part of our DNA. We are intended to be curious so that we can learn and explore and understand the world that surround us and the people in it. We are also innocent. We're not yet jaded by everything that has happened to us because nothing has happened to us yet, right? We're kind of this fresh blank slate. Because of that, there's an inherent softness. There's an inherent ability to be vulnerable because we haven't yet learned that that's not safer. We have to kind of clamp down. And we have this incredible capacity to seek love that, let's be honest, for most of us as adults, It goes away unless you scrape and dig and try and rewire and all these things to try to bring it back. That is something that we come into the world understanding fundamentally how to do. But then what happens? The sweet little uncarved block of wood is placed into XYZ family. And as parents, I'm sure you can attest to this, even the most intentional parent is still going to have times that they are stressed out, burnt out, fighting with a spouse. You can't ever be 100% on the ball all the time. So even the most intentional strategies in a family environment, you're going to start to chip away at that block of wood. And, you know, at worst, many families don't try to bring any sort of intentional strategy at all. Speaker 3 13:30-13:31 They're just trying to survive. Bizzie Gold 13:32-13:32 Right. Speaker 3 13:32-13:36 So everything that happens from that point are these shavings off the block of wood. Bizzie Gold 13:36-14:45 And then instead of being this unlimited potential, curious, innocent, wanting to experience love, to give love, and to receive love, Instead, now we're this new sculpture that has to go through this world that wasn't really what we intended. And that was what came to me when you were talking about this period of neuroplasticity around the time of menopause where we get to restore ourselves. We get to kind of go back to what our untapped potential was when we first flew out of the womb. And I think those are those two to five age ranges that we often societally overlook and just think they're going to outgrow this. but those are where the sculpture takes. And if we don't do the work to understand exactly how the sculpture was carved, we can't appropriately help that person learn to oppose their patterns, hopefully prior to 40. But if they haven't gotten to us before 40, of course, any time is better than no time. But we want to try to understand what carved that block of wood so that we can learn how to strategically oppose those patterns and bring that sculpture back into its full expression. Dr. Mindy Pelz 14:45-18:00 Yeah, and it's so interesting to me because my experience of my own menopausal journey mixed with our, you know, millions of people in our community mixed with what I saw in writing this book and the research is that when if, let's go with your idea that two to five is your, your, your, these, the block of wood is being formed into something that perhaps most likely you didn't want to create. I'm sure there's some good things that get formed in there too. But then at between like 11 and 13, estrogen comes in. And then I love, I had a friend said to me one day, she goes, oh, you mean when the day I got started to get drugged on estrogen? And I was like, oh my God, we were drugged on estrogen because estrogen brought all these neurochemicals that, and then you mix that with a society that taught us to just be a certain way so that we're worthy. Now you have a whole nother level to this block of wood. And then what we were talking about on your podcast was then estrogen goes away and it's like you get to see the original block of wood and what was formed before you went into puberty, which is so incredible if you know how to use the moment. And one of the things that I really resonated on your socials this week, and it just nailed me, and I've been doing a lot of work on myself, was this idea that if you grew up in a family where there was chaos and there was disarray, that some people learn to not add to that. So they become really bad at self-preservation. That is totally me. My sister just disrupted the whole family. My dad tried to control her. So there was just arguing all the time. And I learned to not speak up and say what my needs are because if I did, it would just add to the chaos. And then when my neurochemical armor came down through menopause, I was left, and we talked about this on your podcast, I was left with this question I didn't know how to answer, which is what do I want in my life? But from what I realized in talking to you and looking at this Instagram reel was, oh, the block, to use your analogy, that got morphed there was one of, your needs don't matter, don't create chaos. And it's like now at 55, I gotta figure out how to unwind that. And I have been doing that. So talk to me a little bit about what do we do when we have a wake up moment and all of a sudden, and this is what I'm seeing in menopause, this is why you have these do not care clubs that are forming. And it's because, and I think like what you're onto is so spectacular because I think what people are waking up to was how the block got formed. So what do we do? How do we decide if it came from then and how do we help it? It's really enlightening to me. Bizzie Gold 18:01-18:41 So what you were just talking about in my body of work splits into two distinct pattern variants. So within the total global population of 8 billion plus people, there are actually only five unique brain pattern types. So there's subtypes within the five, but there's only five total, and they're best understood by envisioning an XY axis spectrum. So you've got roughly two patterns on the left side, and then on the right side, you've got three patterns. Then there are, again, these kind of forks or subtypes off of these five primary. What you just described actually splits into two distinct patterns that I think we were starting to get to this when we Speaker 3 18:41-18:53 were on my show, where I was asking the question, you know, kind of around this idea, like, are are all women or majority of women inherently more people pleasing or caregiving or self-sacrificing? Bizzie Gold 18:53-19:15 And I think in my body of work, I've seen data that kind of confounds what we've been socially primed to think of as women. So it's made me think about it a bit differently. But what's interesting is from what you're sharing from my body of work, I actually think you do fit actually into one of these more masculine presenting patterns. So I love where we're going to go with Speaker 3 19:15-19:20 this because I think you're, you're going to, if I can, if I can stick the landing, I think you're Dr. Mindy Pelz 19:20-19:24 going to come along for the ride and it's going to be fun. Yeah. Yeah. So immediate, you shared Bizzie Gold 19:24-20:31 that that pot or that reel spoke to you. I think it's important to separate into two categories from the, the, the starting place of that reel. So my guess is from what you're sharing me, if I had to kind of go into Dr. Mindy's life as a child, I'm not allowed to have a need because if this need, it could ratchet up the chaos, which would then impact my safety. Like if you guys can't stay calm, then me sharing this is not valuable or worth sharing because it's only going to make this worse. That is a very different instinct than the other type, which is I can't share this because I want to be accepted and I want you to see me a specific way. So both types can start from the same sort of initial understanding of like, I can't share this, but the reason behind why is what's going to split them either left side spectrum or right side spectrum. So my understanding from everything from working with you on this last podcast, I would pretty much bet any amount of money that you split to the left, but I will send you the Dr. Mindy Pelz 20:31-20:38 brain pattern link and we can figure it out. So when you split to the left, this actually splits Bizzie Gold 20:38-20:54 you technically into a slightly more, you know, in the social construct form of gender, it splits you into a slightly more masculine form of presenting yourself. But what's interesting is there's this sort of like soft feminine counterpart of the same thing, kind of like Speaker 3 20:55-21:01 martyr, highly self-sacrificing, people-pleasing. But I think where the masculine side of it comes Bizzie Gold 21:01-21:18 through is also hyper-independence, incredibly motivated, driven, much more likely to be one of breadwinners in the family, unstoppable, tunnel vision, passion driven, emotional resilience, grit. So if you think about it, those are also all the qualities that would be a byproduct Speaker 3 21:18-21:22 of having to self-regulate because you're like, my family can't handle this because they're Bizzie Gold 21:23-22:52 dealing with my sister. So you have to learn to show up for yourself. You have to learn to be committed even if your parents aren't trying to push you because they're distracted with your sister, which by the way, I have the same exact childhood experience in my family, same, same. So you and I are probably very close to each other on the brain pattern spectrum. But to give an example of those who might resonate with what you're sharing but be on the right-hand side, this typically comes more from a sense of duty and responsibility. Example would be possibly cultural or religious. You're supposed to do X, Y, Z because that's how you are an upstanding member of our family, or that's how you're a good Christian, or this is how you represent our Indian culture, for example. On the right-hand side that would experience something like walking about with this reel, you see a very high representation of Indian culture. I work with many Indian women in my practice. Chinese, a lot of the more Muslim-oriented countries, they tend to intentionally, through both parenting, religion, and culture, kind of impress upon their children that you don't share these needs because that is the expectation based on some sort of cultural, moral, or religious standard. But the way you learned it was not that way. It was learned by having a high level of pattern recognition, high level of situational awareness and learning to read people. And in that snapshot moment, decide I have to keep this to myself because you can't handle this or you can't handle this. Yes. Does that explain? Yeah. Dr. Mindy Pelz 22:52-22:52 Oh, yeah. Bizzie Gold 22:53-22:53 It's spot on. Dr. Mindy Pelz 22:54-25:07 It's spot on. And it's funny because it's literally in the last two years that I went around most of my life thinking, oh, I had a great childhood. I have loving parents. They're still alive now. And then actually, it was my first psychedelic journey. I went into a journey and I came out of that and I'm like, wait a second, something, I saw my childhood differently. And I saw the imprint that it had made on my brain. And then I started to start to unwind that. And so the first thing I want to say, and I hope if people are responding to this, is what it does in the explanation of what you just gave is it gives me compassion for myself. Because even in today, I find that I don't always express negative emotions to people because I was taught, and in an early age, I was told, you're too emotional, Mindy, just sit down. And so I just learned to shove those emotions down. But what, and part of me taking my little girl back is literally getting to know who I was as my brain was forming and really thinking, spending a lot of time about who I was before all that imprint came in. And you keep bringing up a word that I really want to bring forward because I think it's happening to a lot of women, especially when they go through menopause, and the word is safety, that it's almost like I didn't feel safe as a child, so I came up with a brain pattern or I developed a brain pattern to feel safe. But then when I all of a sudden went through menopause and the neurochemical armor came down and the new neurons started to form, I realized my old strategies for safety were not ones I wanted to do anymore. And that is happening to so many women. How do you, I mean, and it left me without a tool. And I didn't, so yeah, I don't know what to do. I mean, I think a lot of women have that aha when they get on the other side, which is why your work is so brilliant. What do we do in that moment? One of the very first things that we go through in my body of work is helping Bizzie Gold 25:07-25:50 people redefine safety. And to the brain, safety only means known cause and effect, which I think for many people, this again, challenges maybe the paradigm that they've thought around safety, because I do think, especially with the rise of a lot of conversation around nervous system regulation and somatic practices, I've seen the word safety to, at least in my opinion, get kind of weaponized and not used correctly. So to your brain, safety just means known cause and which means that it has to kind of, again, through curiosity, kind of poke and prod and test things in its world. And one of the easiest examples would be to think of a very young child looking at a glass of milk on the table. Dr. Mindy Pelz 25:52-25:52 Okay. Bizzie Gold 25:52-26:35 And they think, I wonder what would happen if I push this glass of milk, right? Maybe the first time, they have no idea, right? Because they're just a tiny young scientist. They push the glass of milk over, it spills. But maybe now mom and dad are at the table and what are they going to do? Oh my God, don't spill the milk. why would you do that? Right. Maybe they're getting some sort of, you know, negative stimulus now. The next time, because a child's not going to stop at one experiment, right? Like no scientists would actually run one experiment and be like, this is officially conclusive. And this is part of why I kind of joke that socioemotional maturity is paradoxical in nature because we think that we're getting more mature, but in many ways we actually go the opposite direction. We start off kind of really understanding that we have to be a good scientist and we have to repeat these Speaker 3 26:35-26:39 experiments. Do mom and dad's eyebrows always go up like that? Do I always get yelled at? Bizzie Gold 26:40-27:28 Do I go to timeout this time, but then that time they laughed about it? What would make me go to timeout this time versus mom and dad laugh about it this time if I did the same thing? So now think for a moment how inconsistent some of our parents were. And that is one of the primary inputs that's going to split somebody onto the left side of the brain pattern spectrum. If your parents are inconsistent with how they are either consequencing or creating structure or a lack of structure, it's very likely to push you left. If your parents are very consistent, very structured, which now we can start to see why some of the cultural or religious inputs are going to push people to the right because they do tend to be much more black and white. Whereas I grew up a Jew on the East Coast, there was not a strong moral or religious compass at all in my household. Speaker 3 27:29-27:36 Everything was kind of a free-for-all as long as you go to an Ivy League school. That's essentially how I was raised. Like, don't mess around with your grades, be competitive in sports, otherwise, Bizzie Gold 27:36-27:46 whatever. You know, I was riding the subway on my own at very young ages and going to raves into all hours of the night. And I often think back, like, really? My parents were just letting me do that in Speaker 3 27:46-27:51 New York by myself. But I digress. I certainly wouldn't be the same. But, you know, we learn Bizzie Gold 27:51-30:49 lessons over the course of generations. So when we look at these sort of parenting inputs that can create instability. We go back to this sort of spilling of the milk experiment, which is something that, you know, whether it's Cheez-It crackers or Cheerios, every toddler has some version of this. So maybe now the child has run the experiment once the first time mom and dad kind of lunged forward and were like, oh my God, are you okay? Maybe they showed some sort of care and concern. Now, the next time the child's going to look at the milk, they're thinking like, I wonder if mom and dad are going to do the same thing that they did last time. But now that they're looking at the milk, the parents are now thinking like, haven't I already taught you not to spill the milk by way of my last reaction, but the kid's going to go for it anyways, must repeat the experiment. Maybe now this time there's an extra level of shame attached to it. I told you last time not to push the milk, but maybe now they're going to run it one third and final time, just, you know, just to make sure. And this time they lock eyes with their parent. And it's like one of those slow motion movements. And the parents are like, don't you dare. And the kid's like, oh yeah, I'm going to push this milk over there. Like, don't you do it. Right. Because everyone knows what's about to happen, including the child now, because now the child is doing it for one last lesson to really understand cause and effect. Now it's more about the parents than the milk, because the first two times my parents didn't react the same way. So now this milk is arbitrary. I'm now running this experiment to see like, can I even trust you people? They're looking, don't you do it. Don't you do it. So now this third time I spill, maybe now I actually start to realize, wow, now my parents actually lunged at me, or maybe they grabbed my wrist, or maybe they yanked me off the chair and put me into timeout. What have I really learned here other than my parents are inconsistent with their reactions? Probably, honestly, nothing. And if you think about how frequently parents are maybe exhausted, or they don't want to uphold that consequence, or this time they're trying to be nice, and maybe this time they're tired, those inconsistent inputs in how a child or how a parent is responding to the child, that ultimately is what shapes a child's pattern of safety or not. Because if I know what to expect, then even if what's on the other side is potentially full of shame or it's painful, to some unfortunate degree, you actually trust your parents, even if what's on the other end is abusive, even if what's on the other end is like shame and ridicule. When it's consistent, we can see in the data that the child actually keeps wanting to jump through these hoops, even if that means shame on the other side. When you go to the left, the child actually learns parents can't be trusted. It's every man for himself and you become hyper independent. But a really interesting factor that I've seen come out of my work is that actually, despite some of the perceived negatives there, these kids actually have the best reported outcomes when they become adults because you trust yourself. You have drive, Speaker 3 30:50-30:54 you have commitment. You're not waiting for somebody else to show you how to do it. But you Bizzie Gold 30:54-30:58 had to go through the gauntlet as a child of not really feeling like you could trust your parents Dr. Mindy Pelz 30:58-31:50 to get there. Yeah. Does the brain like certainty? Yes. And if it can't find certainty, it will try to fill in the blanks. Like, that's what I just learned from what you said is like, how smart of this little kid. By the way, there are moments that I wish I had little kids. Again, this is one of them. I'll have to do this with my grandchildren someday. But that idea that little children are scientists, that is just brilliant. They're just testing everything to see what life is all about. So if the brain is hardwired for certainty, and I'm living in an uncertain situation, then what I hear you saying is I'm just going to either have to keep testing that situation until I get certainty or I just peace out. I'll go find my certainty somewhere else. Bizzie Gold 31:52-34:03 So that is what would split you either far left or center left. Some children, if they can't find certainty through testing in their environment through parental inputs, this is someone that could potentially develop OCD, where if I can't get that repetition from you, I will create my own mechanisms to seek out cause and effect that I can control on my own. So you could see that become OCD. You could see that become pure OCD, where it happens in thoughts only, but not actually through acting out those mechanisms in the physical space. You can also see that come out in anxious attachment. But the center left, which I think is more closely aligned with where you are, and I know for a fact that it's where I am. Instead of that, you actually become much more go with the flow, maybe even at times trending on your own chaos because your brain decides what safety is. For me to be safe, I have to assume that I can't actually depend on anything and everything can be in flux at all times. So it's not a productive endeavor for me to try to control this. You actually relinquish control entirely. So that safety to you, you actually will thrive in chaos. And one of the things that somebody with that pattern has to learn eventually is there are times and places where structure, although it doesn't come naturally to you, is something that if you lean into it will just further fuel your engine of productivity. But you can either attract chaotic people, which is highly likely, frankly, or you live your life in such a way that you tend more to be that sort of like caricature type B person where like, you know, you've got it all together and you're going to be fine. But your friends, you know, might. I don't know if you've seen any of these type B memes, but I can certainly relate to some of them where it's like the person's in their pajamas. They clearly have just woken up and the girlfriends all show up at the door like, hey, you remember that it's brunch, right? And they're just sitting there like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm going to be out in like one minute. And they're like, you're not dressed. And to that person, they can literally just change on a dime and like pop on their outfit and leave the door. Whereas everybody else might have taken an hour. Speaker 3 34:03-34:06 They had to methodically curl their hair, put on their makeup. Bizzie Gold 34:06-34:21 Maybe even they picked out their outfit the night before. If you grow up in this unstable environment and you don't split to the far left left and you instead split more towards center left, you're much more likely to be so go with the flow that it would drive potentially your type A Speaker 3 34:21-34:25 friends or colleagues absolutely nuts. And they might think that you're just a walking disaster, Bizzie Gold 34:26-35:58 but you have more skewed positive self-deception. So that's another thing that happens is if you look at the brain pattern spectrum, equal left and right sides, the closer you are to the center on both left and right, you skew more toward positive self-deception. The further you go out to the flanks, the more you're going to skew toward negative self-deception. Negative self-deception is where your brain highlights the risks and really minimizes your ability to see the reward. If you go toward the center, the opposite is true. You focus on the reward and you are able to either go into complete denial over the risks or talk yourself through them that those risks are still worth the reward. And if you think about what we kind of started this little thread with about, I think the statement that I made in the reel was that the lack of self-preservation is actually a trauma response. And if you think about it in this sort of context, you have to be skewing positive self-deception in order to do that. You have to see that the reward of peace and safety out here is more important than the personal risk to myself. And then if you carry that into any facet of your life, whether it's career or parenting, you're much more likely to overgive, overextend, and even maybe minimize how long something will take because you're so excited about it. You're like, oh yeah, I can knock that out. You're way too quick to say yes to things. But then maybe simultaneously you look at laundry and you're like, I don't have time for that. That's going to take way too long. Right. So there's this sort of manipulation of the concept of time in your mind that's also likely to happen the closer you are to the center of the brain Dr. Mindy Pelz 35:59-36:14 pattern spectrum. And when you're talking about these brain centers, when you're using right and left, are you, is that just a term unique to your process? Or are you talking about right hemisphere, left hemisphere. So interestingly enough, it does somewhat map over to left and right hemisphere, Bizzie Gold 36:14-37:15 though that wasn't the original intention of the brain pattern spectrum itself. I think it might help all kind of explain what would make you, what qualities would go either up or down that actually build out the spectrum. So we described it as an X, Y axis, two primary patterns on the left, three primary on the right. If you start at the center and you kind of notch your way out to the left, there are certain qualities or mechanisms that would actually ratchet up. And then there would be things that go down. So every step that I take to the left, one of the things that will go up is situational awareness. The more I take that step to the left, the more I'm going to be highly aware of what's happening around me. Another way to look at this would be if you're in dead center, you've got an even balance of situational awareness and relational awareness, but neither one of them is very pronounced, which at times could make you very malleable and possibly a chameleon relationally. And it also could potentially make you look a bit naive in how you Speaker 3 37:15-37:18 walk about your everyday life, right? So another way to say this in kind of more of a colloquial Bizzie Gold 37:18-38:09 term would be maybe they're lacking street smarts. So as I step out to the left, right, street smarts, for lack of a better word, that's going to go up significantly. Another thing that's going to go up as you step to that left-hand side is hyper-independence. Maybe dead center, you're able to be reasonably linked with another person. You trust them. They trust you. You're able to give and take there. The further you go to the left, that's going to become less and less true. All the way out to the far left side where you might have completely isolated yourself away from other people because now it's not just hyper-independence. It's also a paranoia that you do not trust other people. So I'll ask you this in question form. If we're talking about somebody who's all the way to the farthest left side of the spectrum, and their situational awareness is topped out, and their hyper-awareness is topped out, and they've isolated themselves from the rest of society, what sort of life do you think they would Dr. Mindy Pelz 38:09-38:48 live? Oh, I think it's so funny, because I have a friend who will probably listen to this podcast who slants that way. And there's times I think it looks lonely. It looks lonely. I mean, I'm in awe of it, I'm not going to lie, like that hyper, hyper independence of like isolating yourself. And that's become actually a new strategy that I've been using in the postmenopausal years is I'm for the first time and am craving that time alone. But the younger version of me, the estrogen driven version of me, didn't understand people who would isolate themselves Bizzie Gold 38:48-40:11 to that degree. Absolutely. And one of the things that can happen here is, If your situational awareness tops out, you can start to become overwhelmed and paranoid because every single detail in your environment feels equally as important and can influence this sense of urgency. So if you're all the way at the far left side, I'll send you a picture of this that maybe you can put in with the show notes. There's a circle on the farthest left-hand side, and then there's a mirrored circle on the far right side. And in both presentations, you can start to see patterns that really are influenced by of paranoia start to take root. And what can end up happening if you think of, you know, kind of more of a classic veteran struggling with PTSD that perhaps has ended up homeless, right? Like kind of more of that caricature that you might see on a movie. That's the type of person that you could see on the very farthest left side where they've become paranoid. They don't trust anybody. Anyone's out to get them. And they've isolated themselves away from people because they don't trust anybody, but they also can't turn off this instinct to look for danger everywhere, right? So, you know, talking about safety issues, this person would be potentially presenting either with more of a schizophrenic-like presentation or like a PTSD sort of paranoia. So that would be that very far left side. But of course, on your way there, you know, step four steps back, you know, back a little bit toward the center, then you've got the top 1% and highest performing CEOs in the world. So Speaker 3 40:11-40:15 I think that's one of the things that I love the most about the brain pattern spectrum is Bizzie Gold 40:16-45:58 reminding people who have possibly been slapped with a mental health label that feels really disempowering that they're like three to four steps away from thriving. And if they just understood where they were and how to bridge some of those gaps, something that might be a weapon used against them could actually be their greatest gift to the world if they learn how to actually wield it appropriately. And it's one of the things that I love the most about understanding the brain pattern spectrum, when you run the test and you track the nine markers and you see very specifically where somebody is plotted, you can immediately know without talking to them at all what issues they have in their life. I can tell you historically what their pattern of decision making has been and how they've likely created harm or damage in their life, what the quality of their relationships is like, what issues they're going to struggle with as parents, because it cracks the code for us on their patterns of self-deception that drive their perception of reality. And I firmly believe that that is the key to overcoming mental illness. And I'm equal parts confused and upset why it's not a bigger conversation in the traditional mental health paradigm. And having been in rooms in one in particular at Johns Hopkins University, where I was talking about this topic, and I saw how it triggered some people that are in that sort of traditional paradigmatic entrenchment, I realize now why they don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. And I truly believe it's because if we truly land the plane, so to speak, on understanding self-deception as the root of mental illness, and instead of trying to comfort the client, we learn the best strategies to help them step into that truth and to see the distortion that it's creating for them. Essentially, many parts of big pharma and how they're connected to the mental health space will be irrelevant, honestly. And I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the faces turn red. I saw the anger. One of them literally looked like she was going to stand up and come over and deck me. It was very inappropriate. And actually in this session, somebody high up at NIH actually came over to me afterwards, gave me his card. And he's like, listen, we all thought that was terribly inappropriate. But what you said triggered her because what you have created will make her entire job obsolete. And she knows it. So he was like, don't water down your message. Don't stop. Here's my card. Do not back down for a second. You're one of the few people in this room that has a truly novel approach that could actually solve the mental health crisis. So when you're in rooms like that, it just kind of, it just furthers this understanding of, you know, like with anything, when you've like really get over that target zone, even in yourself, right? When you're like right over that target zone of where the real wound is, a lot of times that's where you're personally going to get the most triggered. The same is going to be true when you reflect that out onto the macro scale, right? If we're going to get triggered when we're over the target zone on a micro, the same is true when you look at, oh, what really, you know, what is the big issue here with mental health, why have we not been able to solve the mental health crisis? I truly believe it's because we've been looking in the wrong place. And the right place is what happens to us in those early childhood years, arguably between two and five, but for sure even earlier, that actually sets up the way that we fundamentally perceive reality. And that's something that doesn't go away. It becomes more deeply ingrained. A way that I look at this with clients is that puts on a glasses that you've been wearing since that age, but then eventually you go into this amnesia and you forget that you were wearing glasses. That just starts to feel like self. Not only this is how I see the world, but this is the truth. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that I see clients face. And I try to do my work with parents and families that we work with to get that front and center with kids earlier. We are virtually incapable of seeing objective truth. You can get there, but it's not without a lot of intentionality, a lot of emotional regulation work, and a lot of critical thinking because our brains are not fundamentally wired that way. In essence, we not only see what we want to see, but we start to see based on these sort of skewed science experiments that we run as children. And then we get to a place where because the brain also wants to be efficient, we're actually no longer really running the experiment that we think we're running anymore. We're not intentionally putting like this variable in. I'm going to run this with mom. Now we start to scan and we're like, you're similar enough to mom that I'm going to throw you into this formula. You're similar enough to dad. Then eventually it's not even dad. It's just man. And then maybe it's just like this facial expression. And our brain starts to kind of quicken these loops. And we start to put people into these formulas where maybe they don't belong at all. And then the whole formula was built on something that's no longer relevant, which I think comes back to what you're saying when, you know, you go through this sort of neuroplastic phase in your 40s, it's like, wait, why am I like, my husband loves me. My family's great. Why am I doing all these things acting like I'm not safe and I have to like placate and tiptoe around all these people anymore? And it literally is like waking up out of an illusion. I think the body of my work speaks to really anybody is capable of hopefully waking up out of that illusion earlier. And it's all I could think of when I'm listening to what you're sharing. Then what when you turn 40. Like, what if we got to these things earlier, then you hit 40? Like, I don't know, do you blast off into some sort of like outer stratosphere? Like, do you suddenly awaken psychic instincts? Like, that's what I want to see, you know? I actually, in the research I've done, Dr. Mindy Pelz 45:59-49:39 I do believe that when we transition out of our reproductive years, our nervous system becomes so finely in tune that we do have an incredible sensory radar. If you want to call it psychic, you can call it intuition, whatever it is, but it does change when you don't have a menstrual cycle. And I've heard a lot of women say that. I can tell you that I feel like an antenna. Like I walk in, I'm like, oh my God, I can feel the energy of the room. Or I walk up to somebody And there's like this initial hit of like, I don't want to talk to you. And then I move away. And from a neuroscience lens, from an evolutionary lens, I can understand why that happens at menopause. Because if we go back to the things we talked about on your podcast, the grandmother hypothesis says that we're meant to go be hunters now. We need to go forage for food. So we also need the instinct to make sure we know if a tiger's coming, if there's danger out there. Like the grandmothers became this badass version of a woman and her whole nervous system and brain rewired for that. So I do agree on that quite a bit. And this is why, you know, age like a girl is really a calling to women to step into who they want to be when they get on that other side, because you're more powerful than you've ever been. And to your point, what if you did your brain work through your work and figure out where those patterns came from, you know, then you wouldn't be presented with having to see them in real time like I have been, you know, it's like I really have come to this really interesting place with my father that he threatened to hit us. We talked about this on your podcast. He had all kinds of expectations. He was a, he was a, and he would literally, if I was on the couch resting, he'd be like, get up, go clean your room, go do this. And so I realized that as my neurochemical armor came down and I was like, A, I have a daddy complex. I just want to please every male authority figure in my life because I'm still trying to please my dad. and I just started to realize that so many of my behaviors came from wanting to not have the consequence that he would give me. So if I had learned that at 30, that would have been really helpful. And I do wonder if we go through the lens of neuroplasticity, my wake-up moment was a lot around my dad, but what if you didn't have as many wake-up moments then, but you had this neuroplastic brain that is rewiring it, what inputs could you give it if you had done the work prior? Which is why I told you, I'm like so excited to talk to a mental health expert about this because I really think that women wake up. I think there is like they were asleep and then they wake up in postmenopause and they're, you know, when they get on the other side and they're like, no more. And then they're left with a bucket of traumas. They're left with a bucket of brain patterns that they're like, I don't know how to do that. So maybe help us understand how do you rewire those patterns? Because this is going to provide longevity for women. It's going to save marriages. It's going to save people from killing themselves. I mean, you are meant to be your best version in your 60s, 70s, and 80s, but not if you're stuck with these brain patterns. Bizzie Gold 49:40-50:31 couldn't agree more. One of the things that's come up a few times that I think is probably worth mentioning is what creates our brain pattern are the repetitive childhood inputs. And often these are things that are completely under the radar. So what I have seen is people conflate these big crescendo moments like the day my dad left or the day my parents got divorced or this time that my boyfriend cheated on me as kind of the causality of why I am the way I am. And what brain pattern mapping has proved is that it actually, of course, happens much earlier than many of those things, but it's much more of these subtle, repetitive things that might be, for example, if I do X, mom takes a deep sigh and the look that she gives me makes me decide, right? I assume you're Speaker 3 50:31-50:36 disapproving of what I'm about to do. So a lot of these inputs that we're actually mapping with Bizzie Gold 50:36-51:37 brain pattern mapping, they're far more subtle and under the radar than most people would ever think. So this is why in the process that we do in break method, even therapists who have arguably spent years on this, they'll come to me and they're like, Bizzie, this is genius. I literally just got a map of exactly what went wrong. And these are things I never would have considered. And it all make sense now because we really are these very formulaic creatures. And once we can understand what inputs created, what outputs, then actually rewiring the system becomes really more a byproduct of commitment and time and kind of how willing you are to actually get in there and do the work. Yeah. So I think kind of this idea of in a lot of mental health containers, I think people effectively decide where their issues come from, which I think can actually delay the process of healing significantly, because then you're so focused on trying to kind of prove something that then you're going to have all this sort of confirmation bias along the way that hypothetically could be actually a red herring. Dr. Mindy Pelz 51:38-51:42 I don't know if you read Nancy Drew books when you were little, but I was like, I was Bizzie Gold 51:42-54:21 obsessed with Nancy Drew books. Totally did. And Little House on the Prairie. That was the other set I read. That was another good one. So I remember really like being so into Nancy Drew books, I'd go into like my, you know, school library and be kind of sitting in between the shelves reading through those. And one of the key features you learn in Nancy Drew book is that there's always a red herring, right? There's always something that's intended to be a distraction and you have to get good at spotting the distractions so that you can kind of follow the real detective story and not be led astray. I have found that this translates incredibly well into the field of mental health because there are a variety of red herrings and often the way people have already come into that sort of therapy or mental health space, deciding why they are the way they are is one of the most obvious red herrings. So that's something that I try to dispel initially when people are doing the work with me is that could be true, but let's put that off on the side and let's see what the data says. Because quite often, the data shows us something that if you're willing to be surprised could actually be the key to everything. And if we come in so certain of what the problem is, we're probably going to miss this huge picture. So an analogy I like to use for anyone that's trying to kind of grab this is I think many people go into therapy deciding in essence what their picture looks like, right? So now like this is the picture of what happened to me and why I struggle with X or Y or Z. Now take that picture and break it into puzzle pieces. So now they're basically taking this bag of puzzle pieces to therapy and they're like, here, help me assemble this picture. But they already know what the puzzle pieces are going to look like. So the whole thing is kind of a farce. What I have found to be true is that in break method, the picture that people think is the picture is not actually the picture at all. And if we get them to actually do the work, then they're given these jigsaw puzzle pieces, but they have no idea what the puzzle looks like. So then they're going through these steps where they're putting together, right? The module one, wow, this is the left corner. Module two, this is the middle center. Module three, oh my God, I can see it all come together. And then weren't able to influence what the picture was going to look like. And that is ultimately what makes it truth. And that's why I do think as much as we've kind of shied away from data in the realm of mental health, data actually, I truly think will be what saves our mental health crisis. And there is a place for it. It has to be used very intentionally and appropriately. But when you do it this way, people have this radical paradigm shifting aha moment because they realize, I never could have got to that picture any other way because I never could have dreamt that up on my own. Did that analogy make sense? Dr. Mindy Pelz 54:22-55:04 Yeah, no, that was perfect. That was perfect. So it leaves me to go, okay, well, what does the break method look like? Can you give us just sort of an overview? I also know you have a book that I love the title, Your Brain is a Filthy Liar. And can people find how to do this through the book? Because what I'm hoping people are gleaming from this conversation is you can rewire the way in which you think and behave. And for the people who haven't done the work or any work until now and they hit menopause, I personally, Bizzie, think that these are the women that can kill themselves. I think these are the women that are like peace out on their marriage because they- Bizzie Gold 55:04-55:07 Late stage addiction too. I see that a lot. Dr. Mindy Pelz 55:07-55:09 Okay, there you go. Yeah, we're like no addiction patterns whatsoever. Bizzie Gold 55:10-55:14 And then all of a sudden, empty nest. And then all of a sudden, it's a complete 180. I see that all the time. Dr. Mindy Pelz 55:15-55:29 It's like, go back to the red herring. It's almost like we were able to distract ourselves with other things, but you can't distract the brain once those hormones change. So you're left raw. And so what do you do? Which is why the break method is intriguing to me. Bizzie Gold 55:30-56:36 We see people all the time that fit exactly those parameters that you're just talking about. And I think perhaps to kind of tie this all up with a bow, I'll describe what happens on the right side of the brain pattern spectrum as well. The other thing that we didn't mention is as you go to the left, self-trust goes up, right? So you kind of have this sort of tracking where you trust yourself more and more because you're also more and more hyper-independent. We also see that people tend to be very purpose-focused as they move to the left, which can also trend toward workaholism. So kind of, you know, the further you go to the left, workaholism could be front and center. It's kind of more of a coping strategy. At least there's this desire to be productive, right, is kind of almost itself its own trauma response. Like, if I can't manage this relationship, at least I can have value by producing something. So because of that, there's this counterpart where those people can also very much struggle in intimate relationships. And that doesn't mean that they can't be in them and can't be a valuable partner, but they're much more likely to have the further you go to the left, either more that disorganized or avoidant attachment style. And ironically, I call it symbiotic dysfunction in my practice. Speaker 3 56:37-56:45 They're also highly likely to attract partners that are the exact opposite, that are actually much more needy, clingy, etc. So now let's go to the center. Bizzie Gold 56:45-57:17 And we're going to walk our way out to the right. So every time we step to the right, now self-trust is going to go down. So everything that just went up now is going down. This is what makes it a spectrum. So self-trust is going down. We also see that hyper-independence now becoming, maybe in the initial stages, more of a codependence or neediness. But if you go all the way to the far right, this has now moved to complete dependence. So if you're on the far right, these are people that may still live at home, still expect mom and dad to pay their bills when they're 50. I don't know if you've seen the movie Step Brothers. Dr. Mindy Pelz 57:17-57:19 Have you seen the movie Step Brothers? Yep, yep, yep. Bizzie Gold 57:19-57:19 Right? Speaker 3 57:19-57:22 So Brennan and Dale are for sure on the far right side of the spectrum. Bizzie Gold 57:23-57:23 Okay. Speaker 3 57:23-57:24 It's a good example. Bizzie Gold 57:24-57:46 Right. Where they're just like, we're, and, and this is honestly, I'm glad that this came up because this is a perfect example. Both parents placated their kids. They gave them everything, right? They were loving, they were sweet. They were affectionate. What happens? That's what happens. And I think our society right now is plagued with these generational pendulum swings of parenting Speaker 3 57:46-57:52 styles. And when you over give and you over nurture and you soften and you convince your kid Bizzie Gold 57:52-57:56 that everyone's a winner, no matter how much or how little effort they put in, Speaker 3 57:57-58:00 you end up with a Brennan and Dale, honestly, is where that's where we go. Bizzie Gold 58:01-01:00:37 So another thing that happens is you start to decrease your situational awareness. And in its place, you fixate on relational inputs. What do those eyebrows mean about me? Do you like me? Do you not like me? But what ends up happening is, you know, talking about perception of reality, that is incredibly subjective and gray, because I'm now having to scan you and assume what I think you're thinking. But we both know that that can be a projection of somebody's insecurity, which as you move to the right, it often is. So on the right-hand side of the spectrum, you have kind of this people-pleasing cluster, and then you have a conflict-prone cluster. Brennan and Dale were clearly in the conflict-prone cluster if you didn't put two and two together. Then you can go all the way to the furthest right side, which is a pattern that's more centered around chaos and futility, where they actually don't care what anybody thinks about them because at one point they cared too much. So now they actually try to piss people off. They really embrace counterculture. So those are all, and I think I mentioned that self-trust goes down. And what also can happen is there tends to be this really intense struggle around purpose, because as you know, purpose is something that piggybacks identity and confidence. So if you don't have any of these qualities, it's really challenging to figure out what you're going to be good at or what you want to do, because you're constantly trying to figure out what other people think to try to figure out what you want to do. So there's also a very strong lack of commitment or at least consistent commitment that's experienced on the right-hand side. So now if you kind of look at these left and right sides together, what you end up seeing, if you kind of zoom out, is really intense commitment, like all the way into workaholism, tunnel vision, to no commitment, you know, kind of waning commitment all the way to no commitment. Everything is futile. Nothing matters. Everyone can just take care of me. I'm not even going to try. There's no point. Then you have this spot on the center. So imagine you were to draw a perfect circle right in the left and the right side. So you have this small cluster left and right. I call this the circle of complacency. The circle of complacency, they typically have lives that are very consistent. They don't like a lot of change. They're the ones that are in the same marriage for like 50 years. Like we love each other. We're high school sweethearts. Or this is the person had the same job for 35, 40 years. They love that they've had the same job. And even if it wasn't, you know, it's not anything big, like perfect example. I had this one client who was a, I think when I had him, he was probably late sixties and he was in the process of retiring and he started to go through this identity crisis. I'm like, well, what do you do? He was a greeter at a museum for Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:00:37-01:00:52 like 35 years. Whoa. Right. Like, can you imagine that job? I always wonder how it, you know, it's funny. I said to a friend about a year ago, I was like, I wish I could be one of those people that nine to five job and then sat on the porch and drank beer and talked about when the next Bizzie Gold 01:00:52-01:01:04 football game was coming. He was that guy. Had a bunch of kids, loved his wife. Like just, you know, in essence, more content with simplicity than either left or right Speaker 3 01:01:04-01:01:05 side spectrum people would be. Bizzie Gold 01:01:06-01:01:27 So what ends up happening there is where maybe on the left side, we skew positive self-deception and we kind of maybe bite off more than we can chew or we're like constantly putting ourselves in risky situations so we can figure out what we're capable of. On the right-hand side, the further you go, there's actually a lot of avoidance and not stepping into any of those things because you're really focused on the risk. In this middle part, there's no real risk. There's no real reward. Speaker 3 01:01:27-01:01:30 Your life is kind of this cookie cutter. Bizzie Gold 01:01:31-01:02:03 So what ends up happening, and I think this is perfect because there may be some of these people that are coming to you and your community. And these are some of the people that for what it's worth, as soon as you mentioned the suicide, we were talking about kind of this late onset addiction in kind of the 40s around the menopause period. These are often those people where empty nest, suddenly getting laid off from a job they thought they were going to have forever, right? Something that actually rocked their foundation because to them, safety really was consistency. To you or I or somebody on the far right, Speaker 3 01:02:04-01:02:08 safety could mean something totally different. For example, safety to you or I could mean Bizzie Gold 01:02:08-01:02:36 how well can I read people and get ahead of this situation? Like as long as I can read people and I'm not blind, then I'm safe. So even if you're in a very unsafe situation, as long as you're aware and your senses aren't actually diminished, you're great. Like for me, I can't see without my glasses. And I notice immediately a nervous system uptick for me if I'm in big places because all of the things that I personally feel secure in are now taken from me. Speaker 3 01:02:37-01:02:40 I can't be situation where I can't even see detail in the room, you know? Bizzie Gold 01:02:40-01:03:01 So we'll go back to this gentleman who lost his job. That could be the thing. That's now this input that completely rocks your foundation. And now you go through this identity crisis where everything that you had built, everything that you knew about your life is suddenly untrue. And you don't know how to function. This can happen again if somebody's, you know, their last kid goes off to college Speaker 3 01:03:01-01:03:04 and then all of a sudden they're like, I don't know who I am. Bizzie Gold 01:03:04-01:03:24 I never built a career for myself. Now I'm going through all these changes and I'm feeling resentful to a husband that I've never expressed all these things to. So these are people that I see in my practice all the time. And they might historically have been more people-pleasing, consistent, overgiving. In many cases, slightly more right-side shifted. Speaker 3 01:03:24-01:03:26 So a stronger sense of duty and responsibility. Bizzie Gold 01:03:27-01:03:37 On the left center, you're probably still going to see some career women. the right center, you're going to see typical higher likelihood that we're going to have more Speaker 3 01:03:38-01:03:42 homemakers, like people that really made that their front and center duty. But at that point, Bizzie Gold 01:03:43-01:04:26 once those things get taken away from you, your entire core is rocked and you don't know who you are anymore. And all of the rules, your whole life that you've learned to keep yourself safe, no longer apply. And I think if we can, and I know that we have been able to in break method, help women and men understand how to kind of rebuild their role structure. And actually, in many of those cases, learn how to actually take more risk. Like, hey, you've lived this perfect buttoned up life. Like it's actually time to go be a little bit wild. I know this sounds silly, but for even some of those people starting off small with pattern opposition, depending on exactly what their pattern is, would be things like, hey, go out to a karaoke bar by yourself. and I'm challenging you to sing one song tonight, right? Speaker 3 01:04:26-01:04:28 Where it's just this like very intentional, Bizzie Gold 01:04:29-01:04:38 curated risk tolerance where you're just ratcheting up a little bit where, you know, maybe you have a bad voice. Great, even better. Like all I can think of is that movie, My Best Friend's Wedding. When, have you seen that? Speaker 3 01:04:38-01:04:41 You've seen that one, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's like thinking she's setting up for failure Bizzie Gold 01:04:42-01:04:47 and she's got a terrible voice and everyone's like, yeah, woo. She's like, what? That wasn't supposed to happen. Speaker 3 01:04:48-01:04:50 So just teaching people that are stuck in the center Bizzie Gold 01:04:50-01:05:05 what sort of risk tolerance we have to intentionally step into for you to learn who you are and figure out what you like and don't like because you never really did that. You don't know who you are. Everything's, you know, I often will joke like we need to turn you from vanilla into like at least Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:05:05-01:06:14 a Tahitian vanilla if not something else, you know. That's good. We've got to spice it up a little bit. You know what? Can I just say one thing on that? That actually maps with what I learned in writing age like a girl that estrogen stimulates dopamine. And so when estrogen levels decline, your dopamine levels can follow. And one of the recommendations that I make in the book, and I've seen work in my own life, I've seen work in fellow postmenopausal women, is you got to switch it up. And one of the recommendations I give in the book is like, change your routine. If you don't have kids at home, like this is something my husband and I did, we were eating dinner at like eight o'clock at night. And I because the kids would get home from all their events. And now I'm like, we could eat at five. Let's eat at five. It was so exciting. It was so exciting. And so like, it's just, it's funny how I love the way you're looking at that because you're mapping it from a different direction, which is you're trying to move them out of a safety center. And I'm my explanation is I'm trying to give you a little more neurotransmitter you may have lost, but they're both getting you to a really cool new spot in your brain. Bizzie Gold 01:06:14-01:08:03 It's so true. And interestingly enough, while those that are in that kind of circle of complacency space, when they're doing their pattern opposition work, they need to actually learn how to take more intentional risk and actually learn how to build up the ability to be committed, to maybe have more courage to get through something without immediately labeling it as a failure and instead to actually build some emotional resilience, some self-regulation tools. Because that was one thing that I didn't quite mention is the left side tends to be much more self-regulated. And if you look at it as a child, if you're, and this is an oversimplification, but in essence, if you can't trust your parents, I have to learn how to manage this on my own. So any hardship, it's not, your brain doesn't tell you that it's safe to go crying to mom or dad. You have to learn how to manage it on your own. On the right-hand side, because there is that inherent or implicit parental trust, you're much more likely to go bringing all of your problems to your parents. But then you actually learn that I can only navigate through something if I co-regulate. So then when your parents are gone, what happens? I mean, this is where people can get into relationships that they shouldn't be in. They can maybe find their dream guy or gal, and all of a sudden they're acting like maybe a stalker, which I've seen because as soon as they have a need or as soon as they're in any sort of turmoil, they have no ability to self-regulate. So they're acting out. Maybe they're texting their partner a hundred times and they're like, Hey, I was in a meeting. You have to learn to navigate through this. So that is what happens if you don't learn how to do that when you're a child is that that reflex is so strong that I, I, I, I'm in need. The people on the left, we either have dissociated from our needs, detached from our needs, right? To your point, the having a need is not productive and therefore not safe. Speaker 3 01:08:03-01:08:03 Yes, agreed. Bizzie Gold 01:08:03-01:08:51 So maybe personally more so than maybe the second cluster that I was telling you about on the right, we probably on the left are more aware technically of what we actually wanted, but we've kind of pushed that away or sectioned it off because it doesn't really get a chance to live or thrive right now. Whereas the people on the right that have kind of more that lack of self-preservation instinct, they don't even know what they ever needed because all they know how to do is think about what other people want them to do instead. Whereas on the left-hand side, we're aware of that need, but only in so much as we need them to kind of keep it together as a, like from our side as either a mediator or peacekeeper. So it's less that we care what they actually think, and more that we care that we can keep them de-escalated. Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:08:51-01:10:01 Yeah. Yeah. It fascinates me because I've witnessed my own rewiring with the loss of hormones. And it's literally like I feel like somebody shook me and said, hey, I want to show you why you do what you do. And it was really revealed. And I think many women, it's revealed through irritability. The number one sign or symptom of menopause is not hot flashes. It is irritability. And so where I got curious is, is the irritability because you don't want to keep believing these thoughts, you don't want to keep working this way. And yet I haven't found a solution for like, hey, this is what you do when that shows up. So talk a little bit about like, where did people I'm hoping people are understanding the genius of what you're bringing forward. And I'm also hoping they're going to figure out how to go do the break method learn how to heal themselves. So can you talk a little bit about if somebody is really resonating with this conversation, how do they dive deeper to rewire themselves for the better? Bizzie Gold 01:10:02-01:11:35 The first step is always brain pattern mapping. Brain pattern mapping takes about 20 minutes to do. You can do it in your own home. We map 200 historical data points and your aggregate responses from those 200 historical data points are what actually predict the brain pattern type. The brain pattern type is made up of nine markers. This is something that I know when we did the podcast swap, we talked about something that I refer to as the neurocognitive funnel. In essence, our perception of reality is going to influence our emotional state and our behavior. And you can't ever get around that, which is why I've always thought it was interesting that so much of therapy is trying to treat behavior at the level of behavior. It would be like telling somebody who's addicted to heroin, like, just don't go buy heroin. They're like, well, I mean, is it that simple? No, not really. So we have to understand fundamentally how the person's perceiving reality and that sort of distorted perspective or lens, because that's going to influence how they're actually defining their world. So when we look out at our world, really, it's just a bunch of pixels. And based on these scientific experiments, we've kind of jumped the gun and we're deciding what each of these pixels mean, which is why you and I, although I don't think we're the best example of this because we'd probably both like similar people, but let's say we pick someone on the far right side of the spectrum. We could go into a meeting and maybe you and I are sitting on one side of the table, they're on the other side and we're interviewing somebody. We could all leave that interview. You and I might love the person. their assertiveness and their passion, we were like, yes, I can get behind that. I resonate with Speaker 3 01:11:35-01:11:39 that. That doesn't intimidate me. I love those people. I know, same. That's why I was like, Bizzie Gold 01:11:39-01:12:29 this is going to fall apart really quickly because we're too similar. So the person on the right, let's say, right side of the brain pattern spectrum, they were sitting across from us. The meeting ends. We all sit down like, so what did everybody think? That person could actually have been triggered by the same exact qualities. So where we saw assertiveness, that person might have seen ego. Where we saw passion, that person might have seen narcissism. So that just shows us that really how we perceive reality is where we absolutely have to focus the bulk of the work because what do you do with something like that? Is one person telling the truth and one person's lying? No, the reality is there are certain qualities that if you just look at the data, like if you and I were just looking at it from a hiring perspective, even though it might have triggered the person on the right-hand side, objectively, our decision to hire that person Speaker 3 01:12:29-01:12:34 would have likely resulted in better performance. Whereas that person being triggered by that person Bizzie Gold 01:12:34-01:16:26 be like, I don't like them. We need to look for another candidate that actually could have impacted their bottom line. But a lot of people can't, they can't get past that self-deceptive lens. So the first two markers that we look at in brain pattern mapping, it shows us their unique pattern of distortion with how they see the world around them. And that those two primary markers are going to plot them on the brain pattern spectrum. Then we're going to be seeing three markers that show us how your emotional state changes based on early transitional and late stage behavior. Because what we perceive is going to dictate how we're defining and what we're defining is going to dictate how we respond emotionally. And there is this baton passing effect that happens. And we just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Somebody who's very anger prone doesn't all of a sudden magically become a people pleaser, although based on your body of work. Perhaps maybe they could at 40, but we will continue to dig through that one. Right. Exactly. You let me report back. Yeah, you report back. We will continue this conversation. I feel I feel a long term study coming on. So we'll I do too. I do too. Yeah. So in the context of let's think of, you know, someone's dad, for example, like I had a dad that had a temper that was very quick. He could, you know, accidentally not think of a stop sign was coming. And all of slam on his brakes. He's dad barring me and screaming at all of us where I'm like, we didn't even literally do anything. That was just a stop sign. That was all you, buddy. So some people are just their protective response is absolutely anger. Another way to look at this would be kind of like the fight, flight, fawn, freeze, flop. Some people fight, some people fawn. You and I are definitely more at the fawns, but there are also the flights. There are the flops. There are the freezes, right? So how your body is going to kind of act out biochemically or protective response, that is very patterned. And we often start one way and then move the other. So example would be some people fawn and then they fight, right? They have to get themselves trapped. Then they like feel in prison. They're like, no, do you even know who I am? And then they try to free themselves, right? That's kind of more my pattern historically. But then you have those that they fawn and then they freeze, right? They stay there and they stay stuck and they never try to save themselves. They never maybe experience anger, which is something that arguably when they hit menopause, all of a sudden that irritability might be their whole path to freedom. Yes, yes. So those three things that we track are the early stage transitional and late stage emotional responses. So that's tracking more of the biochemical domino effect, if you will, that's happening in the body. Then the last four markers are, again, early stage transitional and late stage behavior because behavior is going to flow downstream from emotion. Emotion is going to flow downstream from perception of reality. So when you actually pull this whole system together, which anyone that does brain pattern mapping will actually see a schematic when you meet with somebody on our team to go through it, it very much functions like a system, right? So kind of like planets in an orbit. We have kind of those top two markers, the three in the center and then the four in the bottom, and they all kind of do this like pendulum swing domino effect where one really is triggering the other and it's kind of moving through the system. that functions like a cycle. So with break method, that's always the first step. There's no way to get it wrong per se, right? Because a lot of the questions, they are based on historical data. So it's not like, so tell me how you feel about your mom, which for what it's worth, I think is one of the biggest misses in therapy right now that I think we're starting to bump up against is that because of this whole brain pattern problem, people aren't able to accurately self-report. So then you get yourself into a situation perhaps with couples where you're like, as a therapist, I mean which one's like which one's lying which one's telling the truth like if I buy into like if this person's telling the truth and this right so you get yourself into this sort of gray area where really I think therapists often can't actually get past their own brain pattern to Speaker 3 01:16:26-01:16:32 see that information objectively and I've seen so many marriages almost destroyed by couples therapy Bizzie Gold 01:16:32-01:16:47 come to break method where I really front and center try to save as many marriages as I can by being like, hey, listen, the data is going to tell us the story. If we follow the data, we're going to get to the other side. Many of you won't like what's going to happen along the way, Speaker 3 01:16:47-01:16:51 but we're all going to get to the other side together. I usually refer to break method as a Bizzie Gold 01:16:51-01:17:39 program as committing to being a rat put in a maze. Because in a traditional therapy setting, especially now in 2025, your preference somewhat gets to dictate where you go and where you don't go. You're allowed to say, I don't really want to talk about that today. That's a little bit triggering. That's a little too sensitive. Can we get back to that tomorrow? When you're doing break, the very opposite is going to be true. It's a set structure. Part of what makes it work is that you cannot change the structure. Your preference can't dictate, well, I don't want to do that step. I'll do this step. Because usually that step that you really don't want to do or that piece of it that you're really mad about is exactly, kind of talking earlier in our episode about that target zone, where you are most incited to rage or to run, that is exactly where your breakthrough is going to be if you have the right system to kind of walk you through Speaker 3 01:17:39-01:17:43 in a way that is supportive, but still tough loving, right? Bizzie Gold 01:17:43-01:18:01 Everything in break is very much this kind of like counterbalance of tough love and nurture because you need both. And I think sometimes the traditional mental health containers have skewed more toward nurture and affirming and kind of wanting to be in support of feelings rather than, hey, you're hurting, right? Speaker 3 01:18:01-01:18:05 you want to get to the other side of this okay great i'm gonna have to say i'm gonna have to say Bizzie Gold 01:18:05-01:18:10 some things to you that you're not gonna like but it happens to me it happens to you we all have Speaker 3 01:18:10-01:18:22 these things and kind of like i said earlier there might be two hash marks that separate somebody with bipolar from somebody who's living a totally normal life who's just masked it better right like Bizzie Gold 01:18:22-01:18:32 so this kind of i think takes down these walls and stigma of like they're all these labels they're that is, that's what they are. They're labels. They're not objective truth. They're not a life Speaker 3 01:18:33-01:18:36 sentence, but you have to be able to see the patterns of self-deception that are really like Bizzie Gold 01:18:36-01:18:41 a puppet master controlling these strings. And they're deceiving you. They're giving you blind Speaker 3 01:18:41-01:18:45 spots that if in the right container, you can see these things and you're equipped with the right Bizzie Gold 01:18:46-01:19:13 skills, then people like blaze through these things. Like it's nobody's business. So that brain pattern mapping is always the first step. And then, you know, to some extent you're agreeing to kind of be in the structure knowing full well, like full transparency. There are times that you're going to hate me. There are times they're going to want to quit and run, but here, here are all the things that we're going to do to support you through that. And because we know the person's brain pattern, we already know at what points in that structure, they are likely to try to run self-sabotage, Speaker 3 01:19:13-01:19:17 et cetera. So our program is already built with kind of these little love notes and hints, Bizzie Gold 01:19:17-01:19:23 if you will, for like, Hey, in case of X, do Y. So I love what you said about the get out of jail Speaker 3 01:19:23-01:19:27 free card because I use that all the time in my practice is like, here's a little get of jail free Bizzie Gold 01:19:27-01:19:37 card. One of the very first things they do in break method is they read something that I call a tough love letter. And, you know, speaking of the swear words, it's how to un-F yourself before Speaker 3 01:19:37-01:19:45 you've even started. That's on the very front. Amazing. I love it. I felt like it was too much for the book, but in my program, it's kind of front and center. So then you're moving through Bizzie Gold 01:19:46-01:20:06 a three module program that typically takes anywhere from 20 to 24 weeks. There are some people that have much more severe cases that are in it for nine months to a year. But anyone that's actually in it, they're committing to the time, they're blocking off the time, it's very reasonable that you can get through it in about 20 to 24 weeks. And it is a series of lecture videos. So Speaker 3 01:20:06-01:20:11 it's taught kind of more college style, because I think it's really important that people understand Bizzie Gold 01:20:12-01:20:29 fundamentally how to do what I do, because I want all of my work to be sustainable. So while, yes, that's asking a lot of people, I truly believe that's part of what makes the efficacy rate so high because people are fundamentally learning how to do this for themselves while also very much being supported on the one-on-one. Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:20:29-01:20:29 Is it self-guided? Bizzie Gold 01:20:30-01:20:45 Yeah, is it self-guided? It is somewhat self-guided, but you are having six one-on-one sessions. So there's always one-on-one sessions anchoring. But there's going to be, for example, maybe there's four videos that you're doing on your own with your work, and that's all in preparation for the session that you're going to have. Speaker 3 01:20:45-01:20:48 And every session is a very specific sequence. Bizzie Gold 01:20:48-01:21:02 So there's never open-ended, tell me about your day. How's your marriage going? Everything is about, you know, that initial brain pattern mapping is our hypothesis. Now we're going to turn over every single rock in your life to see if this hypothesis Speaker 3 01:21:02-01:21:06 holds true here, holds true here, holds true with spirituality, holds true with your sexual Bizzie Gold 01:21:06-01:21:29 fantasies, holds true with your relationship pattern. And as long as we have so many opportunities to break it, that if it wasn't right, which is why it's called break method, by the way, we're going to see the data slap us in the face that it was looking like this, but now it's very clear that there's something I call the mirror effect where it might be that their data looks like it's here, but it's actually that exact equal opposite on the right side. Speaker 3 01:21:29-01:21:31 And then we can figure out what inputs kind of shifted them to the opposite. Bizzie Gold 01:21:32-01:23:35 So there's all these opportunities to be faced with a conclusion no matter what, which is why I tell people there's no way to get it wrong because when you're following the data and you're doing it through the scientific method, there's no way that you're going to end up with something incorrect because there's so many fail safes to make sure that by the time we're actually doing your rewiring, we are a hundred percent conclusive. Because if I tell somebody, you know, based on these things, do these rewiring things, like we're going to address the language here. We're going to do this here, this strategy here. If the pattern's not right, the work won't work. So everything is in pursuit of making sure by the time we're engaging in that rewire sprint at the end for 30 days, I or whoever the behavior strategist is for that person is 100% conclusive that we have those nine markers exactly as they should be in the exact proper order. And we understand most importantly, which this could be a whole other episode in its own, so sorry to kind of drop this. It's not even a breadcrumb. It's a loaf. I feel like somehow loaves of bread keep coming back on our conversation. The brain, when we're talking about that neurocognitive funnel, when we are perceiving reality, our brain generates language that accompanies that perception. So you can think of that as a definition, right? You and I going back to that sort of interview scenario, we see something as confidence or assertiveness, or even like money, like that part, the way the person answered that is going to make me money. That is taking a perception, but it's actually turning it into a language structure. And our brain is generating language structures all the time. And to the point of like, how do we rewire this? You have to actually understand what language architectures the brain created in those early childhood years. And you have to actually dismantle those language systems to set a person free. And that is ultimately in all of module three. We are actually strategically attacking those language structures because the brain, remember, views safety as known cause and effect. So if we can actually help the brain see the error in its formulas, the brain often backs away and actually allows you to see a new choice that you have never seen before. Speaker 3 01:23:36-01:23:41 Because the brain actually opens and closes like an aperture based on the safety rules that we have. Bizzie Gold 01:23:41-01:23:47 I can't do this because you're not safe. Well, if we've strategically attacked that language and the brain realizes, oh, that whole thing is a farce, Speaker 3 01:23:47-01:23:54 all of a sudden you're like, oh, I can go give that person a hug even though they look mad. I'm just going to, you know, pop in a little joke with them and be like, I know you don't want me to hug you, Bizzie Gold 01:23:55-01:23:56 but we're hugging right now anyways. Get over it. Speaker 3 01:23:56-01:24:01 Yeah, it's beautiful. So the language structures is a huge piece of break method. Bizzie Gold 01:24:01-01:24:08 And, you know, all in all, I have worked with clients who are kind of tippy top high achievers, but I've also taught this in the prison system. Speaker 3 01:24:09-01:24:12 I've taught in a therapeutic residential school for at-risk teens. Bizzie Gold 01:24:13-01:24:29 And I've had a lot of specialty cases where they have essentially failed out of any other therapy container or psychiatric care facility where they're kind of coming to me as a last resort, last ditch effort. And I have seen time and time again, break method be the thing that pops everybody out of it. Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:24:30-01:25:18 Amazing. Amazing. Well, you have me highly curious. So I'm going to dive in and go into it and understand it. And I hope people do the same. Here's what I'd love to do. Where do people find you? And what would be really fun, Bizzie, is let me jump into your program, do it, and then we can come back and be like, and then through the postmenopausal lens, we could talk about it because I've done so much work on myself over the last 10 years, mostly in the last three years. I mean, I've had a no stone unturned philosophy towards my mental health of like, what else do I need to know about how I behave and why I think a certain way? So this offers me a whole new way of looking at things. And then we'll come back and we should chat about it. Speaker 3 01:25:18-01:25:20 Can't wait. Of course. It would be my honor. Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:25:20-01:25:26 So tell everybody like where they find you and how they can jump into maybe taking a test or Bizzie Gold 01:25:26-01:25:52 getting your book? Book can be on any outlet where books are sold online. I also have books going up on my website shortly, but for now, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any of the major retailers, Walmart, Target, and the book is called Your Brain is a Filthy Liar. It is not a short read. So just go into that. A couple of people on the ratings have been like, this is a textbook. It's not a textbook. There are a lot of narrative elements to it because I try to make it enjoyable and somewhat Speaker 3 01:25:52-01:25:56 funny, but it is 700 pages. So I'm just going to throw that out there. If you're thinking you're Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:25:56-01:26:05 getting like the book quick fix, it's not a quickie. See, now I love that. I love that. I'll be like, you know, highlighting it. Well, and that's how I am too. And a lot of my students have basically Bizzie Gold 01:26:05-01:26:34 jokingly referred to it as the break DSM because essentially what it does is it is built off of each of the pattern types and there is a QR code in the book where you can scan it to go do your brain pattern mapping so that you can kind of customize reading the book for your pattern. The caveat to that is we're always surrounded by people who have the other patterns. So I would encourage you to not just skip everybody else because you're going to learn so much about how to properly engage other people, have more empathy for other people, better collaboration. Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:26:34-01:26:39 Bizzie. I will dive into the program, take the test, and we'll come back and revisit this conversation. Bizzie Gold 01:26:39-01:26:41 Amazing. Can't wait to share it with you. Of course. Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:26:41-01:26:44 Thank you so much. This was so fun. This was great. Yeah. Bizzie Gold 01:26:44-01:26:44 Beautiful. Dr. Mindy Pelz 01:26:45-01:27:02 Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.