Minding Your Amygdala - A Brain, Body, Behavior Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Join us for an enlightening conversation on Minding Your Amygdala: A Brain, Body, Behavior Podcast!  This season we'll approach the podcast with mental health in the context of current events.  We'll reflect on the powerful cultural money of the Bad Bunny Bowl, and how it highlighted how traumatic perceptions influence the way we each experienced it.  Then, we continue o...

Send us Fan Mail Join us for an enlightening conversation on Minding Your Amygdala: A Brain, Body, Behavior Podcast! In this episode, we take a closer look at what Bipolar Disorder can look like through the lens of Kanye West’s publicly shared experiences. Remember, this is for educational purposes only—but it can help spark a deeper understanding of mood disorders. We’ll walk through the DSM-5 cr...

Send us Fan Mail In this powerful episode of Minding Your Amygdala , we confront the last great frontier of human health: mental well-being. Despite monumental progress in social justice—challenging racism, gender inequality, and systemic abuse—mental health remains stigmatized, hidden behind layers of cultural, religious, and societal resistance. But why??! Join us as we explore the numbers behin...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Alauna discusses the mission of DA-TRI.org to offer mental health education and trauma recovery in the form of a Skills Over Pills approach to self healing AND why your support is so important !  For Giving Tuesday 2024 (and beyond), we offer the gift of mental health!   Today, we explore the new Trauma Toolbox: 7 Proven Tools for Coping with Trauma E-Book!  S...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Alauna reflects on America's most recent Presidential Debate between Former President Donald Trump and Current President Joe Biden on June 27, 2024.  The stakes for our country are extremely high, and watching this as a trauma psychiatrist, I realized that we HAVE to talk about the aging brain!  Both candidates have clearly observable challenges, but with...

Send us Fan Mail Have you noticed that society seems more divided than ever?  How can so many people be living in the same world, yet experiencing such different realities?  Enter our brain and biology!  While some have become aware of the importance of understanding implicit and explicit bias, I believe the strongest human bias is confirmation bias , the tendency to believe in our own "right...

Send us Fan Mail We are absorbing an INCREDIBLE amount of trauma lately.  From the very public medical emergency of Damar Hamlin, to the release of brutal footage of police beating Tyre Nichols, we find ourselves in the space to again, be a witness.  According to dictionary.com, to be a witness is to "be present, personally see or perceive a thing; a beholder, spectator, or eyewitness."...

Send us Fan Mail We are seeing the numbers of children struggling with emotions skyrocketing, and as a trauma psychiatrist, it makes sense to me.  Traumas create predictable patterns in our psychological and biological health.  The pandemic was/IS a shared, global trauma that all humans experienced, and if a large number of "adults" are struggling with "post-" traumatic mental...

Send us Fan Mail Why does it seem like humanity is gang-banging right now? How we achieve Unity in such a Divided Society?  We're called the "United States" but it seems we are more divided than ever.  I haven't heard anyone say that they think humans are doing OK. "Mass global mental health crisis" is a term we hear more and more. There aren't even enough mental...

Send us Fan Mail In October, we observed Mental Illness Awareness Week.  In that time I asked myself, as a society, Are we TRULY AWARE of mental illness? (Spoiler: NOOOOooo!) This month, we take the time to acknowledge and raise awareness of many different conditions we call “mental illness” like Depression, Schizophrenia, ADHD, PTSD, Dementia, Bipolar Disorder and more.  However, as I listen to s...

Send us Fan Mail Suicide, or intentionally taking one’s own life, is complex; it involves psychological, social, biological, cultural, and environmental factors.  Join us this week for an important conversation about one of the most preventable public health emergencies in our society today: suicide.  Talking about it can save a life. Some statistics about suicide: Globally, there is one suicide a...

Send us Fan Mail New Season Alert!!!  Minding Your Amygdala : A Brain, Body & Behavior Podcast is Back! Sex!  What a loaded word!  It can mean so many different things to so many people, yet it is one of the hardest things to talk about!  Which means our amygdalas have a LOT to do with the human experience of SEX! In this episode of Minding Your Amygdala, we will dive into some key elements of...

Send us Fan Mail Dear friend, I'm sorry to have to tell you, but we, human beings, allaus , unfortunately, are struggling with an addiction to violence.  It's not your fault, because of the way our global society has evolved,  now in 2022, we are all caught up in a devastating cycle of trauma and addiction, fueled by one important, powerful (but short lasting) pleasure chemical, Dopamine...

Send us Fan Mail Y'all...  I'm tired.  Are you tired?  I'm angry, hurt, frustrated and SICK of us ignoring the obvious impact of 2 core human issues:  Hate and Racism.  In this episode, I'm going to explain why racism is a delusional condition and hate absolutely IS a state of mind that should be classified as mental illness!  The sooner we begin to understand the underlying me...

Send us Fan Mail "Trauma hurts. Empathy heals."  Have you wondered lately, WTF is wrong with humans?  Everywhere you look, there are traumatic events and painful reminders that we are going through an emotional, spiritual and psychological crisis.  We want answers for how to stop mass killings, political division, addiction crises and beyond, yet those answers seem slow in arriving, as w...

Send us Fan Mail What is psychological trauma?  How do you know if you have experienced trauma?  What can you do about the traumas in your life?  In this episode, I break down my motto "Trauma hurts.  Empathy heals" and explain why I chose to lead with that statement.  As society begins to realize trauma as a core experience that all people share, it will help us to expand and update the...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever considered the anatomy of words? What are "words?"  How do these fragile yet impactful sounds affect the way we think, feel and act?  Can words be "violent?" Miscommunication is inherent in the human experience, and our current world is full of the trauma that comes from our careless use of words.  Whoever said, sticks and stones may break your bo...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Alauna breaks down the anatomy of the primitive brain, and the 7 parts of your brain that are critical to understanding your mental health.  Have you ever heard of your amygdala?  Did you know it does more than create FEAR responses?  When is the last time you thought about your Brain Reward System?  Did you know dopamine drives all addiction processes?  Do yo...

Send us Fan Mail It's time for Trauma Mythbusters!!!!  Now that we have explored the real world trauma of "The Slap," it's time to dive into the many myths and falsehoods we have been taught about mental health and psychological trauma.  "Only military people who go through combat and get injured have trauma." - NOPE, Errbody has experienced trauma.  Every human being...

Send us Fan Mail "Oh $h!ggidy! Did you see that?!" was the common refrain from the night of the Oscars 2022.  So many of us worldwide watched in shock as Will Smith, one of the main honorees of the event, slapped Chris Rock in response to a joke told about Jada Pinkett Smith's bald head, which is due to autoimmune alopecia.  This is just one of MANY examples that we have had lately...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Minding Your Amygdala! In this first episode, Dr. Alauna breaks down her journey through traditional psychiatry, her crash course in trauma as she navigated her own personal and professional life, and how this led to the creation of Empathy Skills Practice™ for Traumatized Humans.   We're all humans. We all have amygdalas, and we all have emotions. There is no sham...