The Suffering Substitution (S13E51)

One of the hardest and holiest parts of this work that I do here, these conversations that we have,

one of the most difficult parts, but most important parts, is interacting with other

bereaved parents. When you've lost a child, you frequently find yourself later after you've

managed to survive somehow. Find yourself around other people who are going through the same thing,

but are earlier in the process. And you don't know what to do, you don't know what to say to them,

but you find everybody looking at you saying, hey, how did you make it through? How can we

know that tomorrow we're going to be able to get out of bed and move forward again? How did you do it?

And earlier on in the process, you don't really know how you did it. You just sort of kept going.

And it's like that conversation you have when you're a freshman in high school and you see the seniors

and they seem like they've got everything figured out, but four years earlier, they were just

freshmen like you. They didn't know anything either. They just showed up every day and somehow made

it through. And that's kind of how you feel. But when you start podcasting and writing books and

doing blogs and writing newsletters and you put yourself out there as somebody who's processed

this and is processing it, then all of a sudden you find people writing these letters and asking

you questions and it becomes part of your world to share and help and acknowledge and recognize and

be there for and be part of a community that you never wanted to sign up for a club that you never

intended to be part of. And it's holy and it's hard to steward that well. And today I want to talk

to you about an email that I got from another one of those brief parents, somebody who lost a child

to drowning, devastating loss of a young boy. And that person when she wrote in, she mentioned

the scripture that I love that I think is important. And she mentioned this process where she's having

to pivot and start to comfort other people in the same way that she was comforted and help other

people navigate the same difficult ground that she's had to navigate. That's what we're going to

talk about today. This understanding of how we suffer, how we can help other people suffer,

how we can find purpose in our suffering and an operation that we call the suffering substitution

in my new book, the life changing art of self brain surgery. That's what we're going today.

It's a hard and holy conversation about suffering. It'll help you. It'll help people you love.

And it'll help people who are going through hard things around you. Let's get after it.

Hey, it's your friend Dr. Lee Warren. I'm so grateful to be here with you for some more

self brain surgery today. I'll give you a fist bump and say congratulations. I'm proud of you.

Pat yourself on the back. You're doing this hard work. You're showing up, doing it,

learning, growing, changing. You're not just sitting with whatever's going on in your life. You're

not just covering it up with Netflix or alcohol or Cheetos or whatever. You're here to do the work

to really get after the idea that you can change your mind and you can change your life. That's

what self brain surgery is all about because you can't actually get that life change business done

until you start changing your mind. And that's what gets your brain under control. That's what

gets your body back online. That's how you make it happen. Today, we're going to talk about one

of my favorite scriptures. Second Corinthians, one, three through four. And if you're not a Bible

person, it's okay. Just let these words be comforting to you. Even if you don't think there's

really a guide out there that these words really mean anything other than just comforting words,

use them like you might use stoic philosophy or wise words from any type of other writer.

Even if you don't believe there's something to it, just stick with me. Just get used to this

language that we talk about here and taste and see. See if it works. Be a good scientist and

apply these ideas and just see if it helps you. And if it does, that might be enough for you right

now. But just stick with us. This is a self brain surgery verse. Second Corinthians, one,

three through four. It's about how God comforts us in our afflictions and our troubles so that we

can help other people. We're going to tie in some neuroscience from my book. We're going to talk

about turning loss into legacy. We're going to do the hard and holy work of stewarding our suffering

well and how we harvest joy from those tears that we sow when we're weeping, but we're working

anyway. This episode was inspired as I said earlier by an email I got from a listener who's

walking through the deep grief and pain of losing a child and is now beginning because of that

faithfulness, because of that working that's sowing those tearful seas. Now they're starting to

see the purpose that God's weaving into all that pain. So that's what we're going to talk about

today. And if you've been listening for a while, you know that I believe that the Bible isn't

just ancient wisdom. It's a blueprint for higher brains or wired. And this second Corinthians,

one, three through four says this, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the Father of Mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions.

Affliction is suffering, right? So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction

with the comfort that we ourselves are comforted by through God. That's the English standard version

of that scripture. This isn't fluffy theology. It's a call to action. It's self brain surgery. It's

rewiring our neural pathways to turn pain into purpose. And today we're going to explore this

through this listener email that I got that really hit me hard reminded me that suffering isn't

random. It's an invitation to partner with God in something bigger. We're going to break that

down step by step. We're going to blend scripture with science because that my friend is how we heal.

Let me read you this email. I edited out the identifying details because I didn't get her

permission to share it, but I'm giving you the heart of the email. I'm not changing any of the

structure or substance of it and just some of the details that might identify the person.

So it's a powerful testimony of how God can turn tragedy into connection. She said this,

hello, Dr. Warren, I came across your YouTube video on retraining the brain after trauma.

Ironically, or maybe by God's design, 10 years ago, we lost one of our young sons in a drowning

accident. I'm so sorry about the loss of your son, Mitch. As I know, it's a life altering

suffering and pain. The irony is, she writes, when I was in deep grief about two months after

our son's death, I fully committed my life to the Lord for the remaining children that I have.

And I asked him that he would answer some specific questions I had regarding a drowning death.

And after I asked that of God, my mother decided to go back to church. And on the very first day

that she went back, the pastor at the church was introducing a book release with the testimony

that gave a play-by-play account of someone who drowned but survived it in great detail,

including how the person felt. And it answered every question that I had asked God, like a checklist.

And then she goes on to say, fast forward 10 years, we were at the exact place where our son had died.

And someone told us about a flood in Texas and a tragedy that involved a bunch of young people

at a camp. And a few months after that, a family member asked if I would be willing to reach out

to a friend of theirs who lost one of their daughters in that Texas flood to comfort them as we had

been comforted. And in that group, there was one family from our area who had lost their daughter

at that camp. And over time, we became friends through our shared suffering. And that led me to your

YouTube videos. She says, I'm not a doctor. So when I saw your amazing biblical and scientific

remedy to heal the brain after trauma, I knew it would help her. So I listened and sent it on to

her a few weeks ago. And during the last few weeks, my college freshman son has started to have

what seems to be delayed PTSD. We try to take our boys to counseling, but we had a bad experience

that halted them. And they got stuck as young children in the grief of losing their brother.

But today, 10 years after the trauma, my son is finally ready to get help. And when I pulled up

your podcast info, I remembered that you said you had done MRI research about how the brain handles

trauma. And I couldn't believe it because you're close to where we live. So all that to say, I for one

can see how God is weaving all things together for our good friend. Doesn't that just grab you?

The listener's story is a living example of second Corinthians one three and four. God didn't

erase her pain, but he's using it to create chains of comfort that connect her to others and

even led her to my work. That's the beauty. Our afflictions become our assignments. And that might

not sound very fun, but I can tell you some of the most rewarding work I've ever done in my entire

life is not in the operating room. It's here talking to you. It's getting emails and answering

them from people who are suffering. And I can help them in some way because of what we've been through.

Let's unpack this verse. Paul calls God the father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

That word all comfort in the Greek. It's a word I can't pronounce, but the idea is that it calls

alongside like the Holy Spirit does. It's not about removing the affliction. It's about God coming

alongside you in it and then equipping you to do the same for others. It's a self brain surgery

because we don't deny the hurt. We reframe it as part of a bigger story. And as the listeners

showed, one tragedy opened doors to comfort others in their tragedies. And there's this ripple

effect of help that's going 10 years after she lost her son and is now even involving my work

helping other people that wouldn't have found it without her. Now let's bring in the science. In my

book, the life-changing art of self brain surgery, I gave you an operation called the suffering

substitution. It's in the appendix and it's a practical, tactical operation you can use if

you're suffering. It's rooted in neuroplasticity. We know that pain is inevitable. The brain's alarm

system is firing in areas like the anterior singular cortex when we experience loss. You're going to

have pain and it's going to do things to your brain that feel crazy and out of control. But suffering

is optional because suffering is amplified by what we think and the stories we tell ourselves

about the painful things we've gone through. There's a guy named Haruki Morakami that famously said

pain is inevitable but suffering is optional and neuroscience is backing this up. Our brains rehearse

what we repeat. If we fixate on why me or why did God let this happen or this is going to ruin my

life, then guess what's going to happen? You're going to strengthen neural circuits that are related

to despair. You're going to release stress hormones like cortisol that will damage your hippocampus

and impair your cognitive processing and impair your memory and hurt your brain over time,

and you'll become progressively more stuck in that story of suffering. But the operation,

the suffering substitution flips it. We biopsy those thoughts, we examine them, we take them captive

as second Corinthians 10 and 5 says and we substitute true things for the things that are not exactly

true. Like instead of my loss is going to define the rest of my life, we say this loss is painful

and it's devastating but God is comforting me so that I can comfort others in the future.

That God is going to work this out in a way that gives it purpose. He's not going to let it be

meaningless forever. That's going to rewire the synapses in your brain via Hebs law, neurons that

fire together, wire together, the studies from places like UCLA that show clearly that cognitive

reframing, that twisting around a thought and making it work in a different direction. It reduces

the fear activity in your amygdala and it boosts the activity of your prefrontal cortex. So you're

part of your brain that helps you make good decisions and process things rationally,

gets more active when you're willing to investigate, get curious about what you're feeling and

thinking and spin it around and look at it and biopsy it and redefine it and make sure it's true

before you react to it. In the listener's story, she substituted questions and grief for commitment

to God and he answered her in ways that built new pathways of hope. That's hard work but it's

holy work because we're training our brain to see God's hand in the hurt and that leads us to

another operation that I give you in the book called the Lost to Legacy Shift. We've done a podcast

about that. That's the self brain surgery operation that is incredibly powerful when you're going

through something hard because grief traps us in the posterior singular cortex of your brain.

It replays what was lost. It reminds you of how much you lost, how stuck you are, how you'll

never be able to move on. It keeps you ruminating and yearning for the thing that you've lost

and begins to define your future as more of that yearning and ruminating. But this lost to legacy

shift is deliberate. You're going to move from morning to the absence to honoring the legacy. Every

time I do a podcast, every time I write a book, every time I write a newsletter, every time I

give an interview, I am honoring my son. I do it intentionally, prayerfully. I say,

Mitch, your loss matters. It counts. Your life still matters. You're changing lives now. This work

is for you. It gives it legacy. Victor Frankl said, when you give suffering purpose, it stops being

suffering and neuroscience shows that focusing on positive memories activates the reward system.

Dopamine release helps you rebuild. In faith terms, it's like Romans 8.28. God works all

together for good, for those that love the Lord. For me, after losing Mitch, Lisa and I shifted

instead of rehearsing and remoralizing the pain over and over, we built a legacy of helping others

through writing and podcasting books and all the stuff that we do here. The YouTube channel

came directly out of that work as a legacy to Mitch. So his life continues to matter now. The

listener did the same thing. Her loss connected her to others who were suffering, turned her isolation

into community. It's not about bypassing grief. It's about building around it. The science from

grief researchers like Mary Francis O'Connor, her amazing book, The Grieving Brain, shows this

meaning making that it reduces prolonged grief disorder by more than 50%. God wired you

for this kind of transformation. Mary Francis O'Connor's book, The Grieving Brain that I mentioned

a minute ago, it talks about meaning making how you can take something hard that doesn't seem to

understandable, definable reason, and you can find some meaning in it. And this is not about finding

a silver lining, but it's about the cognitive and neurological processes of updating the brain's

internal map to accept the absence of the loved one, but then to form the future in the context of

them having shaped your life into the good parts of what it is now. It's a form of learning to live

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And key aspects of her approach to meaning make it include things like grief as learning,

because your brain is wired for attachment. It constantly predicts the presence of a loved one,

so you'll be yearning and looking for them to show up. And honestly, 13 years almost since

Mitch died, it still happens to me more often than I would like to admit. It happened yesterday.

I walk into a room and I'll see a shadow or some movement, and my brain will say,

oh, there's Mitch over there. It happened just yesterday in my house in Nebraska, and he was never

here. Okay, he died when we lived in Alabama, but I see him not in like a ghost or a hallucination way.

My brain just, he's still part of my world. And so sometimes I'll just, it'll be as if I see him,

or I'll see his contact on my phone, and I'll think I missed a call from him. That's prediction

that my brain is predicting that presence that was there for so long. But meaning making

is the slow process of updating those deep-seated habitual neural networks to recognize

that the person is gone. And when I have that experience now, I have to remind myself,

no, no, no, that wasn't Mitch. He's gone. He's he's out there. I get to see him again someday,

but he's not here right now. I have to remind myself, I'm making the meaning out of what's true

and what's real. I'm telling my brain, who's boss. And she also talks about reconstructing life.

It involves actively figuring out how to live in the world again without the person that you lost

without the thing that you that you went through, which may include stuff like establishing new habits

and rituals and finding ways to maintain an internal bond with the deceased person while navigating

their physical absence. That's the work that I do now. I'm maintaining a relationship,

a bond with Mitch, to make it matter that he was here instead of just how devastating it is

that he's not here anymore. And she talks about bridging cognition and emotion. So meaning making

bridges that emotional pain of loss with the cognitive restructuring of helping individuals move

from the intense initial and disorganized grief into a new sense of normal. It's not just getting

over it. It's not about just returning to how you were before and getting over it and moving past

it. It's not any of that. My daughter, Kaelin, shortly after Mitch, when she had to go back to school,

she was a junior in high school. She said to his picture, I overheard her looking at her brother's

picture and she said, Mitch, I got to go back to school. And I'm not moving on. I won't ever be

able to move on, but I have to carry on. She was so wise as a 17 year old, 16, 17 year old kid.

She was like, I can't ever move on past you having been in my life, but I have to carry on with

my life. That's meaning making. Okay. It's not about just getting back to normal. It's about

integrating the loss into a new understanding of life and what it is now. Conner's research

emphasizes that this process takes time. And it's a necessary step to stop the brain from constantly

seeking the person who is no longer there. This has to do with your default mode network. Okay. We

talk about that a lot on this show. It's your brain system that includes the media prefrontal cortex,

the posterior cingulate cortex, and others that activates when you're not actively thinking about

anything else, when you're introspective, when you're thinking about yourself, and when you're

having these self referential thoughts, what's my life going to be now? How messed up is my life,

how sad my life is, all that stuff is baseline default activity. And it facilitates the default

mode network facilitates meaning making by connecting memories, simulating future scenarios,

and constructing personal narratives that acts as your brain's autopilot to make sense of your

experiences. And the key aspects of default mode network and meaning making are self referential

thoughts. Okay. The default mode network is crucial for reflecting on yourself these autobiographical

memories and processing your own life story. And so if you can learn to tell the story in a different

way, then this ruminating story about how much it's affecting you and your future and how bad

your past was and how everything's not going to work out now. If you can tell yourself a different

and truer story that can come true in the future and not just that it used to be true in the past,

then you can start constructing a new narrative that helps weave your individual experiences into a

coherent narrative and find meaning in the events of your life now, even though you're missing

somebody. It gives you this ability to mentally simulate this sort of mental time travel and you can

go into the future and you can simulate potential future scenarios and evaluate past outcomes,

but instead of it all being negative, you can start restoring that and training your default

mode network to look for hope instead of pain instead of rehearsing all that you've lost. You can

have this value based meaning where research shows that the default mode network is more active

when you engage with stories or concepts that are linked to your core values. So you think about

who you are, who you want to be, and the values that you hold dear and how that person you lost

enabled you to be that kind of person and they still do. That's important. This contextual

understanding of integrating incoming information with prior knowledge to create context dependent

and embodied models of situations. So you can think about how your life is now in the context of what

you've lost and how you want your life to be in the future and how that person's influence on you

can make you more successful in the future instead of just the pain of their loss defining your

future. Does that make sense? So let's just think one more thing about the default mode network

and meaning making and how it relates to your well-being. I want you to think about whether it's

productive or detrimental to me. While the default mode network helps you create meaning,

if it's overactive or if you allow it to become overly self-referential and overly focused on

what you've lost, that's linked to excessive rumination and mental health issues, depression,

anxiety, prolonged grief. So you got to be careful that you're not just rehearsing the pain

but that you're conversing about the future and what it can be and how you can be a person

future that honors their life and their life matters to you now instead of just being this big black

hole and void. So practices like mindfulness, prayer, meditation, they help calm your default

mode network. They reduce the negative rumination. They foster a cognitive edit that. They foster a

more balanced, productive, internal dialogue. That's what we want. We want to learn how to cope

with our loss in a way that helps us make meaning of our future and doesn't keep us stuck

in the pain of complex prolonged grief. Our default mode network can come under our control

and we can train it to help us instead of hurt us. That's what we're all about. Donald Miller

is one of my favorite writers and he talks about Joseph Campbell who wrote this book a long time

ago called The Hero's Journey. Donald Miller created a whole company called Storybrand that

advises companies on how to build a story around their brand and he based all of that work off of

Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, which is a seven-part marketing framework that he uses for

his company. I just want to point out that the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell wrote about and

that Donald Miller is making millions of dollars now teaching to companies, it's the basis of every

story you've ever read, every movie you've ever watched, if it's a movie that you like, that moves

you emotionally, that progresses through some challenge and ends up with a victory or a loss that

matters. Those stories all come from Joseph Campbell's hero's journey and let me break it down for

you. Once you see this, you'll never be able to watch a movie again without seeing this formula

in action but it's also going to help you in the context of what we're talking about here today.

So here's the story is Donald Miller broke it down from Joseph Campbell's work. Every great story

has a sequence that happens and here it is. A character has a problem and then meets a guide who

helps them understand the problem and shows them the way to get through the problem and then calls

them to action and then the character carries out the action and that either results in victory

or defeat but they change and grow through the process of either winning or losing and whether

it's a comedy or a tragedy, whether it's a love story or an action movie that ends in defeat or

ends in victory is determined by whether the character wins or loses but they always grow and

they always change and here's the thing in your life, you're the character, you're the hero.

The guide is not the hero. Think about Star Wars. Luke Skywalker is the hero. Obi-Wan Kenobi is not

the hero. He's the guide, okay? And here's what I want you to know. Self-brain surgery is the guide.

I'm your guide teaching you self-brain surgery but you're the hero in your own story.

You're the one who has to carry the ring. You're the one who has to destroy the death star.

You're the one who must hear well done my good and faithful servant for your own life someday.

You're the one who must take your lost friend and turn it into a legacy. You're the one who

must perform the suffering substitution. You're the one who must perform the loss to legacy shift.

I can be your guide. I can teach you self-brain surgery. I can call you to action like I always do when

I say the things that I say on this podcast but you my friend are the hero of your own story

and that's why I always say this is hard work. I'm very real about that with you. Luke 1248

is a verse that Lisa and I stumble upon that changed our whole look at what we were going through

after we lost Mitch. Luke 1248 says this to whom much is given much will be required and to whom much

has been entrusted much more will be asked for in that applies to your victories to your

to your blessings to your money to your finances to your marriage to your kids everything but it also

this is what changed us. It also applies to the hard things that you've been given because God gave

you a nervous system that will get more resilient when you go through hard things. God gave you a

brain that will respond to you taking your thoughts captive and transforming your mind and renewing

your mind. God gave you an ability to process pain and turn it into purpose and he expects you

to find your way forward to do that to do the hard and holy work to whom much is given much is

required. You're called to steward even the difficult things are afflictions they are entrusted

to you friend. Stewardship means active management and the neuroscience is clear if you don't actively

manage your hardship you will get stuck in it and so you will operate your nervous system or it

will operate you you will operate your grief or it will operate you in brain terms it's like

pruning synapses you cut out the harmful ones you nurture the hopeful ones it's holy work because

you are partnering with God that listener who wrote the email she stewarded her grief well she

reached out she turned the much is given part the pain part into much is demanded the comforting

others part she's not wasting her wounds and I don't want you to either steward them friend for

the kingdom for your own life for your legacy that you're leaving for your family okay finally

the harvest let's talk about this there's this passage in Psalm 126 5 and 6 that makes this

weird promise those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy those who go out weeping carrying

seeds to sow will return with songs of joy carrying sheaves with them listen tears aren't wasted

their seeds if you can plant the seeds of your tears they will produce a crop of joy for you later

this is a hard teaching but I'm telling you 13 years on the other side of losing my son it is

absolutely true and it becomes the thing that saves you in the end the neuroscience is clear

persistent effort in reframing your suffering builds resilience studies show it increases the

gray matter and your prefrontal cortex the listener that wrote that email she sowed tears for 10

years and now she's reaping joy with connections and healing for her family keep sowing my friend keep

shedding those tears and planting them while you do the work the hard and holy work of healing

and hope and higher performance because joy comes in the morning my friend that's our time today okay

remember God comforts you to make you into a comforter instead of just a sufferer he gives you a

purpose in your pain and if that's all there is to it if all you can do is learn how to show up

and let other people see that you're putting one foot in front of the other if that's all you can do

that's a holy work if it resonates with you friend I want you to share it be part of that chain

of comfort instead of this this long silo of suffering that we're all stacked up in if we don't

get in the game and do this work okay please check out my new book the life changing art of

self-brain surgery if you haven't read it yet it will help you learn these operations it will help

you take command of your nervous system it will help you overcome any type of hardship or massive

thing and it will help you transform your life I promise you this book will make a difference in

your life and if you want to go deeper go to school.wliwarnmd.com start with the book I get a lot

of emails where should I start start with the book the life changing art of self-brain surgery after

that if you want more keep showing up here on the podcast the newsletter but if you want to go

deeper and really take this into something practical in your life as an operating system for the rest

of your life go to school.wliwarnmd.com there's free resources there there's a free course called

you can change your life and there's a paid course called transformation training that will take

what you learn in the book and take it to an even deeper more tactical level it will help you

friend I promise you it will make a difference for you check it out school.wliwarnmd.com hit that

subscribe button wherever you listen hit that bell icon if you're watching on YouTube so you get

notified about new episodes I'm your friend Dr. Lee Warren and I'm always here to remind you

that you can't change your life until you change your mind and the very good news is you can start

today God bless you