Wilson Phillips Singer Chynna Phillips on Self-Harm, Stress and Feeling "Stuck"

Hey, so nice to finally meet you. Oh, I'm so excited. I'm excited to I'm a little nervous, but I know that's normal probably right. No excited to see your brain. I don't know. Should I be excited to see my brain? Absolutely. I should have the audience. I have. Oh, no. Oh gosh. Okay. Let's go. Let's do that. We're gonna make it better. So I read your

history. Yes. You and I chatted. I've looked at your scans. I've looked at your testing. I have a really good idea. Really? Why are you here? Oh my gosh. But I want to hear from you. Yeah. Just need my brain opened up. It feels like it's closed. It feels like it's shut down. It just feels like I am not able to access my brain the way

I used to. And it's really frustrating because I can't seem to like recall the word or when I'm speaking. Sometimes I realize that there's these pauses and it's because I'm continuously trying to make sure that the words are flowing and making sense. And I never used to have this issue before. I would just speak and I would talk to people and it just wouldn't be an

issue. And now I catch myself going, oh shoot. I don't know exactly how I'm going to articulate what I'm trying to say. And never had that issue before. In the history, I sort of read through it and like, so what are the big things? Is you feel fragile? Yes. And that's not normal. Right. In the last five years or yes. Chronic stress. Bess friend dying, sun

having cancer. In general family stress. Yeah. Lots of it. And you just feel stuck. Are you? There's been some cell phone. Yes. Tell me more about it. So I used to not understand self-harming at all. You know, I used to look at people and when they would talk about cutting themselves at the children, cutting themselves. I used to just be quite honestly a little freaked out

by it because who wants to. Who would want to cut themselves? Like I just like that just never made sense to me. But when the accumulation of traumas just seemed to pile one on top of the other, I didn't know how to process everything that was happening to me. And I felt like almost like a rat caught an amaze. I just didn't know how to get

out. I think my brain finally just shut down. Snack. I mean, you're the doctor, but that's how it felt. It felt like my brain just said, that's it. I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. I've always prided myself on being able to get myself out of the maze. And when I wasn't able to get myself out of the maze, I started to feel very frustrated, very

angry and very scared. And so. And also, I was so confused because my core beliefs about my marriage or all threatened. I got to a point where I literally just would hit myself and I would hit myself across the face. I would slap myself across the face. Hard. But it gave me comfort because it was a member share in moon struck when she would just like

step out of it. You know, it was kind of like for me that gave me the feeling of control again. Like I hit myself. I was like, okay, I can I can do this now. I get would just calm me down. It would just take me from level two. I'm 10 to level three. When you feel pain like that, your body releases endorphins. Yeah. Endorphins settle

down. Yeah. And that's why kids cut. They get a payoff. They don't know they're doing it because then their brain produces its own sort of natural morphing. Yeah. But the more they do it, the more they actually get addicted anxious since childhood. Oh yeah. About this existential anxiety. Tell me about your child. Yeah. My parents divorced when I was two and I lived my mom. I

didn't see so much of my dad. He had a notorious heroin addiction. When I did see my dad the few times, he had a cardiac arrest in front of me. I saw him shooting up. I saw. I was having syringe water fights with my brother. I mean, we weren't using the needles, but we were using the actual cartridges. You know, and so we were having these

water fights with each other. I knew that was wrong. It was blood scattered all over the walls from when they were using drugs. And I I just knew that wasn't right. And so I went home and I said, um, can drugs kill you? And she was like, that's it. You're not seeing your father anymore. I was already estranged from my dad, basically. Are they still performing?

No, no, no. No, by the time I was born, the mom was in the pop. It's had already disbanded. Tell me about your mom. My mom obviously is very beautiful, very creative, very warm-hearted individual. Really loved me. And I knew that. And she was very committed to making sure she fought hard to make sure we had a roof over our head. And you know, I had

food on the table and good education. She met this man named Bob and Bob and my mom got married. I loved Bob. Bob became like a father to me. And then unfortunately, that marriage didn't work out. And it was devastating for me because I really did feel like finally I had a dad that I could trust and that would show up for me and that actually

enjoyed spending time with me. And then when my mom and Bob divorced and she wouldn't allow me to see him, it was just devastating for me that I couldn't see Bob because he really was my dad. And I was like, I'm sorry. We have now, you know, reunited and we see each other now from time to time. But that was a painful loss for me. So

I guess at the fair to say there was a lot of chaos. Tons. A lot of sort of unpredictability. Complete unpredictability. So I was so good at your scale. I mean, this is a lot of things. Because why people come to see me. We did a study called SPACT. SPACT looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And it basically shows

us three things. Good activity, too little or too much. And then my job is to bounce. So if it's low, raise it. If it's too high, we want to calm it down. So here we're looking underneath the brain. It's just be full, even, and symmetric. Blue is average activity. Red is the top 15% white is the top 8% and it should be here in the back.

Part of the brain, this is called the cerebellum, has half or more of the brain's neurons. And in the study, we do it lights up. Everything else should be reasonably quiet. We look at your scan. It's a little bumpy. This is it showing age. And this is why you're losing words. You see this little scoop. It's why you're like, okay, I know this word. I know

this word. And it really irritates when you cause. Where does that look like a 70 year old brain to you? Don't scare me. It's not healthy. We want it to be healthy. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're scaring me. You're here because you're not right. Yes, right? So it's only good news because you have what you have. And if I can make it better, we get excited about

that. Okay. But does it look like the onset of dementia? No. Oh, they caught it. And I can tell 20 years ahead of time. If you're going that way, but it doesn't look healthy. Now when you concentrate, you see this hole. Yeah. If you're front alone, judgment, impulse control, organization, landing, when you try your brain shits down. So what does that mean? It means the harder

you try the worse it gets. The whole is that everyone has that little hole? No. What? No. So this is rest. When you concentrate, your brain betrays you. Sort of like the harder you try the worse it gets. So to me, I'm going to have been doing this at one time. That shows me you have ABD. And if we do the right things, if you trust

me, and we follow through, we'll figure it out. Okay. And your brain will then get healthier. Okay. So again, Lewis Avrojectivity, red, it's the top 15% white is the top 8%. We go back to healthy, want the cerebellum to be full and symmetrical. And everything else sort of quiet. For you, here's your cerebellum. It looks pretty good. That's pretty good. Okay. But when you concentrate, watch

how it drops. Yeah. Harder you try the worse it gets. Yeah. Initially, when women find this out, they like, oh, man, make so much sense. My life begins to make sense. But then a couple of weeks later, they can get depressed. Because they can go, oh my God, if I knew this, when I was 20, my life would be completely different. Right. And I just want

you to notice that and shift to only 54. Okay. At like 40 more years. Right. I'm going to go with more focus. So this is one of the anxiety centers in your brain. It's really busy. Can you see a brain that's like bipolar? Can you tell when somebody is bipolar or it's somebody is like in the spectrum? It would be much busier. Okay. bipolar spectrum. Front

part of the brain really busy. Cerebellum really low in activity. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So if I was going to go the medicine route, this is what I would do. Saffron has been shown to be helpful for mood. Yeah, I've heard about that. Also shown to be helpful for focus. Boost sexual functioning. Which is why I get interested in it. I'm like, all the SSRIs mess it up.

Yeah. And that makes me unhappy for my patients. Yeah. Yeah. Body powermax. It's really, it's my repair formula. It's like how do I get brains that are struggling to be bigger, fuller, fatter. It's multiple vitamin, fish oil, and a brain boost all in two packets a day. Okay. That would help. Yeah. I take a multivitamin everyday and fish oils, but if you want me to try.

Thank you.