Bullying as a Brain Injury: Why a Medical Lens is Crucial

Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, it's Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them all. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite listening tool. Today's conversation is going to tackle a topic which really shapes people's mental health and also their identity and nervous system regulation across a lifetime. And it's not one that's limited to experiences in childhood, but really happens to us throughout our lives. And continues to affect us which is bullying and abuse and how they transform our brain but also our nervous system as a whole and can have a lot of physical expressions which we don't recognize right away. For the chat I'm joined by Dr. Jennifer Fraser who's an international expert on bullying and abuse and is founder of the

Jennifer Fraser: The bully brain.

Richard Zwicky: Hold on. This thing just We're going to start again. It says we're going to be removed from the call and it's going to start again. So I might just pause this and nice thing with Google. We're going to start that over. I don't know. It's never done that to me before.

Jennifer Fraser: That's fine. I have a bad dynamic that scramles technology. You just should know.

Richard Zwicky: It's your aura.

Jennifer Fraser: It's Laura. It's true. You wouldn't believe it, but

Richard Zwicky: All right. So, let's start that again. Worst case will be that the whole show doesn't record and we're going to have to do this again a third time. So, hi everyone, it's Richard Wiki with High and Unhealthy, the show where we know. Hi everyone, it's Richard's Wiki with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them all. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite listening tool. And today's discussion, we're actually going to have a two-part session. So, it's going to be two shows. Because the guest and I had the chance to sit down for coffee, which is a rarity that I'm in the same town as one of our guests. We had a chance to sit down for coffee yesterday and the discussion was so broading and fascinating. There's so much to cover. We're going to end up with two shows out of this. The conversation is going to be about mental health identity and how those get affected by bullying and abuse and how it really is not just a childhood issue but a lifetime issue that is ongoing and really can be curbed and directly affects the quality of our lives as a whole. And for today's show and the next show, we're joined by Dr. Jennifer Fraser, who's an international expert on bullying and abuse and the author of The Bully Brain and recently released The Gastlet Brain. Welcome aboard the show, Jennifer. It's great to have you on at our,

Jennifer Fraser: Thanks so much for having me I'm really glad to be here.

Richard Zwicky: I hope we can recapture 10% of what we talked about yesterday in today's conversation. Because it truly was fascinating and we don't really think of the bullying as a brain injury. We think of it as bad behavior and don't really look at the long-term consequences when we're thinking about it in general. But you've actually really identified it and had to deal with it on so many levels that we're the word bullying means so much more than just hurt feelings. Can you describe how it really is a brain altering experience?

Jennifer Fraser: What I discovered in looking at the neuroscientific research, so looked at psychology, then I did a deep dive into the neuroscience and it really startled me because I feel that our society has not at all integrated this knowledge into how we operate. So just as you said a lot of people think about bullying as a childhood issue and they think about bullying as a ethical issue. So what I do in my work and especially in the last two books the bully brain gas brain what I really try to do is look at it through a medical lens. So, I look at what does bullying, what does gaslighting, what do they do to the brain very specifically. And there is extensive replicated research that shows all forms of bullying and abuse, regardless of whether or not they touch the body, can do physical damage to brain architecture. And that physical damage can be seen on brain scans. And it's really, really serious damage. So, imagine you've got people that are being bullied in the workplace. They're walking around and they don't even know they have a brain injury.

Richard Zwicky: That's fascinating on a few levels because one of the things we often talk about on the show is, when you go to the doctor and you've broken your arm, they can look at the bones and they can see and what's gone on and they can set it. But when you're a victim of abuse or

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Richard Zwicky: Trauma or bullying being one of those, you don't really see it. You don't describe it to people. But you're talking about being able to see some of the effects on a brain scan. What does that look like?

Jennifer Fraser: It's a perfect question for me because in the bully brain, I use the X-ray as technological innovation that's noninvasive that completely changed the way we understood cancer. So we had used it for bro broken b but a society when I was growing up, and you were growing up where we were told that smoking was actually good for your health and it was sophisticated. Everybody in Hollywood did it and it made you independent and rugged and tough. So the Marboro man was really sold to us heavily as children and adults and it was absolutely normal to smoke. Everybody smoked. It wasn't that they were evil, they just thought it was an okay thing to do. So that is one of our brain issues that we have is habituation. So if you're a kid growing up in a society where everybody and your parents, your doctor, and your teachers are all smoking, you automatically wire your brain to believe that smoking is okay. But then they started to x-ray lungs that they saw that smoking blackened lungs and caused cancerous tumors. And society and certainly the laws radically changed. As we all know, you can't smoke anywhere anymore publicly. So I think we are on a tipping point into a new scientific revolution and it's brain scans that are the non-invasive technology that is going to change our understanding of our health. So what you can see on a brain scan of somebody who is being targeted for all kinds of bullying and abuse that's very normalized in our culture. I mean when you just turn on the internet and you can see bullying from top leaders in the world.

Richard Zwicky: You can watch the state of the union address and bullying rights and

Jennifer Fraser: It's everywhere. It happens with impunity. It's remarkable we saw all those people clapping hands. It was like wow that's amazing. So what you see in a brain scan is I'll give you three examples. So the bundle of fibers that's between the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of the brain which They have a different lens on the world. We have brain lateralization. You really want those two hemispheres to talk to each other. The corpus colosum is the way they do that. And it's a bundle of fibers that connects them. And when somebody is being exposed to repeat abuse that bundle of fibers can be deminated. And that means that the insulation around the corpus colosum is eroded. And that means the two brain hemispheres can't talk to each other very efficiently, quickly or effectively. It really impacts you. Another example would be if you look at the brain of someone who's exposed to this kind of repeat abuse you will see that their hippocampus which is the seat of learning and memory and I mean it's involved in many things but it really is an integral part of learning in the brain and the way you organize your narrative and yourself and you tag your memories with emotions and your memory as we all know is everything and you will see a hippocampus that will be shriveled and shrunk by cortisol when it should be plush and healthy So imagine you're looking at a grape. That's what the hippoc campus should look like. If someone is exposed to this repeat bathing of cortisol due to the fact that their stress levels are through the roof, it will be shrunken and shriveled like a raisin. And when I say raisin, That is directly from neuroscience. So should be a grape.

Richard Zwicky: As an analogy you say a raisin. What should it be normally?

Jennifer Fraser: Should be plush and full and healthy. So that's one, two, and here's the third one. If you are repeatedly exposed to toxic environments, to people who are untrustworthy, unpredictable, they put you down, they yell, it's full of microaggressions, they keep saying, " it was just a joke." But you're like, "No, that's really hurtful." These kinds of dynamics, they threaten you, they take your work. I mean, think of the myriad of ways they isolate and ostracize you, they neglect you. All these ways that humans hurt other humans. You will see an enlarged amygdala oftentimes and the amydala is like the threat detection center of the brain and it will get enlarged because lots of brain resources are going to threat detection because you don't trust your colleagues, you don't trust your politicians, you don't trust anybody right now. And so you're on hyper vigilance, high alert. And so the amygdala enlarges and that means that brain resources that should go to creativity and innovation and problem solving and productivity that they aren't going there.

Richard Zwicky: And there's so much to talk about in that one area but one thing that comes up is right into my mind is you're a student in a class. There's some snide comments being made. The teacher standing there, they may laugh because they think the comment's funny in the moment, but it isn't appropriate. Or they deny or minimize its effect. What does that do to the individual? And it's not just the teacher in the classroom. That happens the boss in your co-workers in the workplace and

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Richard Zwicky: So What happens to you as the individual when that's denied or minimized? And what happens to the person who made the comment?

Jennifer Fraser: So the person who makes the comment is hurting their brain at the same time as they're hurting the brain of the observers quite possibly and hurting the brain of the target quite possibly. And so the bully's brain what's happening for them is they are eroding affective and your affective empathy is your superpower. Basically, if you look at jobs that people are seeking and comp competing for in the workforce, one of the number one qualities that organizations will ask for is empathy. They want people with empathy. And why is that? If you can walk in the shoes of your clients, if you can feel the pain of your customers, if you can actually work with your colleagues with this really advanced sense of who they are and how they feel, what they think, and what they intend, you're a superstar at work. In fact, it's a fabulous leadership trait. So, obviously, it's highly sought after. The person who's hurting other people around them, their peers in some way, shape, or form, they are eroding their affective empathy, which is really not good. And often times what's really tragic is and this is why I like the medical lens more than the moral. The person who's doing that it's not by accident. Those individuals who act that way are oftenimes coming from a place of abuse and harm in their lives and they don't know how to process and they're not able to deal with it or get it treated in any sense and it's certainly not treated as a brain injury. They get disciplined for it. So just as you're talking about the target in the classroom, it gets minimized and dismissed. That's so hurtful and harmful to them, at the same time as the bully is likely going through the same thing. They get sent to the principal's office and the principal's like, "You said this bad word and now you're going to be punished in this way. You're going to have a detention or we're going to suspend you." you would never do that if a kid had a broken leg and you could see on a x-ray that the kid's leg was broken. You'd shower them with compassion and get them the right medical treatment they need. That's what we need to do for brains.

Richard Zwicky: And the people who are surrounding this like you said if it was a broken arm people would give compassion they don't give that same empathy towards people who have been insulted or in any way shape or form and abused I mean ins insults are a form of abuse I mean sometimes s people think they're being playful, but there's lines that get crossed far too easily. This affects your productivity. This affects your ability to learn. It affects everybody in the organization and it, oddly enough, also diminishes the figure of authority because you no longer respect them. So, it affects the organization as a whole. What when you're speaking with organizations do they recognize it or is it often a moment of awareness when they come into realization that this is affecting us in ways we never foresaw Mhm. Right.

Jennifer Fraser: If you're an organization that's courageous if you've got a leader who actually really cares about the organization and not just about their own salary and their own legacy and opportunities for other work, they really care about their people and they really care about the organization. They will have to courageously look at the data. If they're losing talent, that's a red flag that they have a problem. Because oftenimes people who bully and abuse they hone right in on the talent because the talented person most threatens them. They will hone in on the people that have integrity because they're a threat to what the abuser likes to do which is to manipulate people. So you're starting to lose talent and integrity. It's like whoa that's a problem. You're having to lose people and rehire and they don't stay long. You're struggling to recruit because you don't have that reputation of being a fabulous company that everyone wants to work for. I mean, it's hitting you in a million different ways. What's really interesting to me is which I have a lot of it in the gaslet brain. There's 15 years of extens so there's extensive 15 years of data that shows if you are an organization a leader that respects your whistleblower your truth teller even if it's really awful stuff that you don't want to hear your favorite person at work has been embezzling funds or your most trusted advisor actually behind closed doors is harassing and bullying and abusing people. You don't want to hear it. It's really bad information for you. At the same time as you protect your truth teller, you protect them and you respect them and you listen to them and you act on it. Those companies are more productive and more profitable. And of course they are. Just as you and I have discussed, we talked for 10 minutes to show that if you have an abuse culture at work, you're not going to be compet highly competitive. You're not going to do well.

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Richard Zwicky: And sometimes when you start talking to them, I find when I start talking to people about this, they acknowledge it, but they don't understand the bottom line effect. And for many people in business, these things they matter, but they don't matter as much as the bottom line. And then you point out to them, 40% of people leave their workplace voluntarily leave due to stress and stress is communications related. And the communications issues are toxicity. The effect of that on most businesses because it costs you as much to replace somebody as you were paying them before. So it actually cost you a year worth of salary when somebody leaves not in payout cost loss of productivity. For most businesses the turnover is the same value as their profit and people ignore it and wash over it. When that's a business and you can make that case for the business easily and understand it. On the other side, we have the educational institutions where they don't look at things the same way. They look at, the students rolling through and don't understand that impact. How do you help them understand it?

Jennifer Fraser: I am sorry to report that I have found the education system to be it's just so entrenched in its own mythology and a 19th century model and to make any kind of inroads into education is not worth my time. So I don't spend a lot of time in educational groups anymore because you just cannot make them, is a great neuroscience phrase that I think everyone benefits from. We have had it hammered into us that seeing is believing. And so we all think it's true, but when you look at the neuroscience, it's the flip. And you see this in education. Believing is seeing. So you see what your brain is wired to see. You are not seeing what's actually out there, And we think that we have a relationship to an objective reality. We absolutely do not. And what's so interesting is really what we do is we create reality with other people. And so the second you're creating reality with other people, we could also say create your health with other people. So, as you and I have talked about, no matter how much you're doing and how long you're running and how many laps you swim and how much you eat the Mediterranean diet, if you're going to a toxic workplace or a toxic home or you're living in a country where toxic politics is ruling the day, a dictatorship, let's say, you are in big trouble because you create reality and create health with these other individuals. And so group dynamic, organizational psychology, all these kinds of things are vital not only to the bottom line, but think of how the bottom line is impacted by the health and being of the employees. How much, stress leave do you want to pay? How much replacement cost of all the churn that you have with your employees? And the most interesting example of this right now is for my work anyway it's the medical So the medical world should be at the forefront of understanding that bullying and the toxicity from bullying and abuse and harassment in all forms is one of the greatest threats to health and wellbeing. But they are not applying that to themselves. As I've had doctors tell me what they actually experience in the education that they get and then the interpersonal relationships with other doctors they describe as intergenerational trauma. The older doctors are they completely bully the younger doctors. When the younger doctors become the old doctors they do the same pattern. And guess what? We have never seen such high suicide rates in our doctors. We've never seen hospitals be less profitable. And we've never had less doctors able to care for us and help us. It is a massive crisis and it costs a million dollars to replace a doctor and doctors are retiring early because they cannot stand their work.

Richard Zwicky: And the governments are busy trying to recruit doctors from around the world to come to locations but not improving the system to retain them and keep them not just happy but healthy. Longer, which is tragic. And that's a whole issue probably could spend another show on. But when we're dealing with this, let's go back to the level of one individual in a workplace, a boss or a teacher in a classroom, and there are allegations of bullying or there's just behavior that is off that we're able to see with, and a person steps forward is a truth teller.

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Richard Zwicky: Too often when they step up and they go to the person who is in charge in the position of authority who they should be able to turn to for help that person turns around and protects the reputation of the aggressor instead of the victim. Why is that? And why are systems actually constructed to support the aggressors and not the victims?

Jennifer Fraser: That was the question that most perplexed me and completely drove me in writing the gaslet brain. I could understand the perpetrator. That made perfect sense to me. Somebody comes from abuse and neglect. Maybe there's some genetics thrown in. That makes a lot of sense. I understand the target. It really makes a lot of sense to me that you se neurological blows when someone maltreats you that way. What I could not understand is exactly what you just described, Richard, which is why in heaven's name would any leader carefully coddle and protect the destructive element at the core of their organization and enable them to keep hurting people. So I mean, let us look at Dr. Larry Nassar talking 30 years that doctor abused people, hundreds of victims. Let's look at Harvey Weinstein, same thing. 30 years, hundreds of victims or Jerry Sanduski, same thing. There's a million of them that we could rattle off, but the bottom line is those individuals all had complaints. The complaints were year after year after year and action was not taken. In fact, just as you described, the perpetrator was protected. So, why does that happen? There's a really fabulous thinker on this. Her name is Dr. Jennifer Frra. And Dr. Jennifer Freigh has come up with this way to identify if you are caught in this kind of abuse culture model which is really surprisingly common and she calls it Darvo. I don't know if you've talked about this before on your show. So Darvo is an abuse culture like it gives you instant insight. I would just write it down if I was listening to this. The D stands for and this will happen to you. You're a trutht teller or you're a victim or you've observed or witnessed. You go and report to the leadership and the next thing you know you're in a Darvo situation which is very difficult for your brain. Doesn't make any sense. D stands for deny. So the first thing the leader says to you is I cannot believe that and so would ever do this. I've never seen him or her behave that way. This is a real shock to me. I'm going to have to do some kind of inquiry and investigation. I'm going to take care of this because we really don't tolerate bullying and abuse. But I just find this unbelievable. Okay. So, The next thing that happens to you is attack. I've spoken to and she says that this is a witch hunt. And you're like, wait, What do you mean? And how is that possible? And in fact, she says that you're the issue. You're the problem. You're the one that has caused this. You are out of control. You're hysterical. You're deranged. You're a lunatic. They'll come up with all kinds of things. There's where the gaslighting comes in. The person that's reporting is unstable and untrustworthy very quickly. And really what happens to you is you're so shocked by this that you start to look at yourself and go, "Wait a second. Maybe I am crazy. How come nobody else has seen this? Why am I reporting?" And nobody else is reporting because they really are careful to keep you in a silo. The last thing they're going to tell you is they've heard five years of reports about and so. They won't tell you that. And then here's the trick that happens that's so shocking. So, Darvo, attack, reverse, offender and victim. Darvo. So, the next thing you know, the victim becomes the offender. And so, you say to yourself, just as you did right now, and this is what I did in the gas brain, I was like, why? And when you look at the neuroscience, which we don't have time to go into a deep dive, but trust me, it's there. The neuroscience shows that what happens is the leader actually has been very likely made complicit already. The person who's abusive is very good at grooming targets and grooming colleagues in HR and everybody loves they're always the life of the party. They've got a cult following. They're usually very smart. They're charismatic. Those are the abusers. We tend to think that they're like these monstrous figures but you look for the life of the party. The guy that goes to church on Sunday, the person who has the ideal family, who's friends with everyone, and is best friends with the leader. It's just that behind closed doors, one or two people a year or more, they destroy. That's just who they are. And so the leader has already been groomed. And what has happened is the first time abuse reports came in, the leader was like, that's not possible. The second time reports came in, the leader started to get a bit nervous. But still, benefit of the doubt, and so, I need you to do anger management. I need you to go to a course on boundaries. You can't touch people like that. You can't say those words. That's year number two.

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Jennifer Fraser: Year number three, the report comes in, the leader twigs and goes, "I'm complicit. I'm negligent. This is happening on my watch. I have to shut every person down who comes forward for the next 30 years." And that's what they do because they're protecting their own serious allegations of fiduciary duty failed. And so rather than that, like any human being, they save their own skin.

Richard Zwicky: And when they do that they do devastating damage to the organization and the people involved. And the damage is to the victim. It's also to the offender who could be healed. And that was one of the points that you brought up in our conversation yesterday was recovery is possible for everyone. But how do you rebuild that safety and trust and agency on both sides?

Jennifer Fraser: Imagine if you were a highly abusive person in your 20s. Imagine you're Harvey Weinstein. You're this brilliant guy. I mean, you really are brilliant. It's just that you have this major problem. If our society stepped outside the ethical model, the shame model, if we said to Harvey Weinstein, your proclivity to maltreat someone this way, it's got to be shut down. So, you know what, Harvey, you're super talented, but you can't hurt people. You just can't. So, we're sending you off on this sixmonth intensive training program. You are going to go into rehab. It's called the rehab for abusers and it's the same thing as rehab for drugs or rehab for alcohol. It's very tailored to your issue. But the bottom line is we're investing in you because you're that brilliant. But the bottom line is and insurance will cover it because you really need that help. Why send all the victims off on stress leave all the time and not send the perpetrators off on rehabilitation so that they don't keep causing stress to people year after year after year. Just as you said, it's the crulest thing to coddle and enable these highly destructive people at the core of an organization. It really is. But our society it's so anti-dolivian when it comes to this stuff. It makes a Harvey Weinstein so ashamed that he never will admit that he does that he really wants to hurt someone. He can't admit it because it's too shameful. And so the second we get into that dynamic of cover up and hide and behind closed doors, which is where abusers do their work, you've lost them already.

Richard Zwicky: You have and It keeps it normalized within society unfortunately. And the change in attitude won't happen just by individuals stepping up and saying this is wrong. It actually requires the people and the institutions to move from compliant to having systems in place that either gen generally protect people or provide a framework so that people can shift the behavior. If you could change one belief about bullying and abuse, what would it be?

Jennifer Fraser: I think the like what I love is to distill it down to three words. It's a phrase. It is the cornerstone to the whole way in which the system needs to change and it's not a huge change. The system could do this. This is very practical, applicable and doable if you use an brain informed way of doing it. All anyone needs to do is put at the core of their organization and then build out from there the phrase brains So if you are so hurt brains hurt,

Richard Zwicky: Hurt brains hurt. That's an excellent Let's take a pause on that for a second to think about it because it actually is a great way of thinking, but it forces you to reflect at the same time as you actively decry for change. We've all done that,

Jennifer Fraser: They hurt on the inside. If you're hurting other people, your brain doesn't feel good. I can tell you that for a fact. So if your brain has been hurt, of course. Of course. All it takes is stress for us to act in a non-empathic way. All it takes is alcohol for someone to act in a non-empathic way that just makes them mortified in the morning. They would literally die to hear that they've hurt X, Y, and Z in such a so yeah, our empathy can go offline, but what's really interesting is the people who are highly abusive, their empathy doesn't go offline and come back. Their empathy is offline and remains there. They don't have that wake up morning

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Jennifer Fraser: Where they are making a phone call and an apology going into their kids and saying, "I'm sorry, I yelled. I lost my cool. Wasn't okay. I'm going to make it up to you." They don't ever have that. They just are in a perpetual non-empathic state.

Richard Zwicky: I hate that phrase. I'll make it up to you. As a having had a father who did abuse in many ways and always said, I'll make it up to you, it became the warning sign that something else is going to come. Yeah.

Jennifer Fraser: That was a lie. When a parent who's healthy says that, they really do mean, "I'm going to try harder next time." But what is horrendous about that cycle is it's setting the child up for care and then denying that care and being abusive, which is a very destructive cycle, needless to say.

Richard Zwicky: And it sets your expectations of people's behavior when you hear something along those lines to immediately be defensive which is challenging. But, that's abuse. When you're going through it, you don't know how to deal with it until much later. Jennifer, we do have to take a break here and what we're going to do is break into our second segment. So we're going to be back again with everybody soon on High on Healthy for part two with Jennifer Fraser all about the bully brain and the gas lit brain. I'll be back. I'm Richard's Wiki with High on Healthy and we'll see you again soon. Did you need a coffee or glass of water before we go into part two? Okay, I'm gonna see what Good. Hi everyone, it's Richard Vicki with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them all. And today we're going to continue with part two with Dr. Jennifer Fraser talking about bullying and how it affects us at home, in the workplace, and throughout our lives. Jennifer, we had an amazing chat in the first section of the show part one about institutions and how it affects people. And at the very end, we talked a little bit about how do we move from, compliant behavior in an organization to genuine protection. But many people don't label their experiences as bullying because it doesn't look overt. I got teased today or I got this or I got, these things happen. But they compound over time. What are the most common subliminal or socially acceptable forms of bullying that people overlook but really should reflect on sometimes to see am I doing this or how is affecting me so that I don't allow it to affect me?

Jennifer Fraser: That question speaks powerfully to the case studies in the gas lit brain. So in the gaslit brain, I chose international high-f flyers. I wanted to choose people that we would assume to be untouchable in the workplace. So they were sort of senior people counterterrorism expert in the UK police force a law professor in Canada or honor of Canada award that just an absolute amazing and then the third person was an executive at Nike who had just earned the promotion to head of basketball of North America. She was VP. All of those three people were brutalized by a bully in the workplace or a number of them. All of them lost their careers, their stellar, beautiful, amazing careers and they were all devoted to their profession. They became very much at risk for serious self harm and it was very difficult for their brains to recover. What's really interesting to me is it's exactly as you describe. These highf flyers did not have even the vocabulary. They didn't know the word gaslighting. They did not put two and two together to say I am being bullied. And it's the Nike executive who said, "I didn't even know I was being bullied until I was in counseling." And the psychologist said, "You've been bullied." And in the minute that she said it, I felt less crazy. And so I mean that notice the childish language. This is the VP of basketball for Nike. She's reverted to very childish language in the sense that we are not trained with a nuanced sophisticated vocabulary to understand abuse culture. And this is why it blindsides us and we believe a ton of myths about it which is the worst part. So the counterterrorism expert who he spends his day reporting to MI5 in the home office he did not really understand that he was dealing with com a fullon sabotage of himself at work and when you think about it the human brain really doesn't have the capacity to be a counterterrorism expert that is also supposed to be aware that the people around

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Jennifer Fraser: Them might also be terrorists. We can't do that. We don't have enough brain power. You have to trust. So if you go back to the idea of environment, we need to really understand that our brains can only function when the environment around them is trustworthy and safe. So you just shared a story from childhood where when someone says something meaningful and caring compassionate "I'm going to make this up to you. Richard, I failed I'm going to make this up to you. You hear it as a threat and that's because your brain is being wired from childhood trauma to do that. So imagine the complexity of all that with all the people who come from abuse of one form or another. They get into the workplace or they get onto their team or they're in their class at school, let's say grad school or whatever. If you don't have trust, you cannot function. And so this is where this idea that your health and your reality are very created it needs to change for us. We need to know about that and approach our health and our well-being and our relationships with a fuller understanding of that.

Richard Zwicky: And when we look at society around us. We look to people in leadership roles to guide us. And if we look and let's not we can avoid the policies but if we look at we ted it earlier in the first segment about made a comment about the state of the union address. We have an individual who is the president of the United States and whether you're on the right or the left people acknowledge he's a bully. The people on the right who are his supporters excuse it because they say, "Yeah, but he's doing this for us." It's become systemic and it's forget the fact we no longer have conversations about the value of policy. We just have personal attacks to get what we want. When that bullying becomes systemic and it is embedded in our culture and our politics and our leadership styles, how do we break that cycle? Because the only way to pull the bully down that people understand is by bullying others. You look at Gavin Newsome standing up. He's effectively using the same tactics to attack Trump because nothing else seems to work. How does society deal with this? Because now people are being led to believe this is acceptable. This is how we get ahead.

Jennifer Fraser: It makes me think of the Michelle Obama when they go low we go high. And we saw that was a tactic that did not work. And I was using that. I mean, that's another question I really posed for myself in the gasollet brain. So I took a look at the Indian court system because I was trying to say let's look at a space where the entire system hinges on what words you choose right that's what is our law system is he said it's like however you best represent yourself using vocabulary in the courtroom is going to make you go to prison or not. So it's really everything about words. So I wanted a really contained space like that. So I was looking at the Indian courtroom in particular because one of the high court figures the highest judge in India had written this handbook and it was to make recommendations. It wasn't rules, it was recommendations. And he was recommending that it's inappropriate for judges in India to use the phrase when a rape victim comes forward, they're not allowed to call her or He says they should not call her an Eve teaser. So, we've seen in North America as well and in Europe that, there's a long history of, if you're a rape victim, it's a classic Darvo. First of all it's denied. Then You can be under attack the entire time and then all of a sudden it's your fault. The victim somehow become the offender and people are asking you why you why you went to that club, why you drank alcohol, why did you go to his house, why did you go back and see him again. It's like you are under extreme scrutiny for the fact that you got raped. It's like wait what? And your brain is spinning. This is still a very powerful dynamic in India.

00:40:00

Jennifer Fraser: So they call women who report rape Eve teasers. So as we all know, which is so fascinating to me. So it comes, the biblical Eve, she is the one that brought the downfall upon all of us. We'd still all be in the Garden of Eden and connected to God if it wasn't for Eve. So you've got this mythological dynamic being used in the courts in India for rape. So in the book I said the only way you can push back or fight back against how completely abusive that bullying dynamic essentially is to match it. So I said really what we should be doing is asking questions about the male rapist and say he's a Tarius teaser. So you say to yourself, "Wait, What is that? I've never heard of that. Tarius is a mythological figure. He's a nice match to Eve. He's a Greek mythology. She's, Old Testament. Doesn't matter. They're both mythological figures. If we're going to use one for women, let's use one for men. And let's see how it logically plays out. Tarius ended up raping a woman. It was his sister-in-law. In fact, he raped her and then he sliced her tongue out so that she couldn't speak about the rape. And I was like, that's a much closer approximation to a rapist who's trying to go through the court system with his victim versus a woman who she really has nothing connected to Eve at all. Downfall of humanity in the garden of Eden, gets seduced by Satan. It's the same thing. So, what do we do? I honestly think that the law should have stepped up a long time ago. In my humble opinion, it should make gaslighting absolutely criminal. We should not have politicians who try to make us think that what we're seeing isn't reality. It's alternative facts and that's acceptable. That should never be happening. That should be against the law. As a teacher, if I went in front of my class and said the Holocaust did not happen, residential schools, that's a lie. It's not true. Didn't happen. Those people are trying to get tax breaks. I would be fired instantly. So, I don't understand why the law does not apply anymore to people in positions of extreme power. They should not be allowed to gaslight. That should be The other thing that I would make criminal and people would change the way they behave and how they learn and how they act very quickly would be to make enablers of abuse. Those people who cover it up as we've discussed, those people need to be in as much criminal trouble as the abuser him or herself.

Richard Zwicky: They should be enablers It's just like if you drive the getaway car in a murder, you still get tried, right? You are associated with you did participate in some way you should be held responsible. I absolutely agree and let's take people allow this to continue right you look at the system the system is the people who are in the positions where they could force some change are allowing it to continue and they do so for various reasons long-term this shows up biologically it's going to show up in all the kids going through school today seeing this and deeming it to be acceptable. They see it Everybody who works for government who doesn't know my job coming or This is going to show up in burnout, autoimmune symptoms, anxiety, cognitive failure. What happens? How it is also going to affect how we teach in schools because we have the antifacts out there.

Jennifer Fraser: One of our problems is out of the world, we have entrenched systems. So, our entrenched systems are glaringly obvious as being utterly It is unjust for men to be able to rape women and it's the woman's fault. That's just unjust. It's absolutely unjust that someone like George Floyd because he's black and he's has a counterfeit $50 bill, he can lose his life, but you can be the president of the United States who has made a whole series of convicted financial crimes and you still can be running the country not in jail and certainly not at any kind of fear of losing your life because you're white.

Richard Zwicky: And that's true of both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. So, it's not party lines.

Jennifer Fraser: It's not party lines. It's that we accept these systems. So out in the world they're entrenched systems of misogyny and racism and Islamophobia and homophobia and we know them all. And the bottom line is really all of those systems are constructed on a bully model. They essentially are very elaborate entrenched historical systems, but all they are is built on the same bullying model that a child would use in a playground. And the bullying model is two essential lies. And they are lies and they're not even recognized that way. The lies are you are not worthy.

00:45:00

Jennifer Fraser: Woman, LGBTQ, black person, First Nations, whatever. You are not worthy. And then the second one is you do not belong. You'll see a child act that out on the playground. You'll see it in a boardroom. How they drive out talent all the time. It's what they do. Look at the people running the United States right now. It's not meritocracy. It's abuse culture glaring us all in the face and we just normalize it. So What people don't understand is abuse culture is very easy to construct and it's constructed on falsehoods. So abuse culture only takes four elements. Think about the display that we have on the geopolitical stage with the United States right now.

Richard Zwicky: Everything is Yep.

Jennifer Fraser: We've watched it go from being a pretty solid democracy, absolutely flawed, like everything else, but a solid democracy to being very close to succumbing, as everyone's talking about, into a dictatorship or fascism, whatever. All it takes is four elements. And you can see the president of the United States manifests these brilliantly. He's very good at it. He humiliates people all the time. It takes fear. Everyone all over the world. He has people terrified. I mean, he The rest of us do it in much smaller ways. He's got humiliation. He's got fear. He has favoritism. When you start to put people in positions that they did, they haven't earned it. It's not meritocracy. It's because they're your buddy and they look the other way when you do bad things and blah. You may and they are the most full of fear because they know they didn't earn that position. They're only in it if they lick the boots of the person that gave it to them. So imagine this in a small culture version or school for example all the way up to Fear, humiliation, favoritism. And the final one is retaliation. If someone dares to cross you, you make them an example. They become the po post pollster of girl, poster boy for what happens to anybody who dares to stand up and challenge me. And this is how even a whole nation can be lost.

Richard Zwicky: Within even simpler organizations when there's a recognition that this is a problem. How can organizations and management assuming that the management isn't the problem and it always is because it's allowed it to fester and come to place but assuming management recognizes it and says we need to make a change. How can they address bullying without retaliation without pulling the wool over everybody's eyes by actually being transparent and clear internally they don't have to broadcast to the world. They have to make it that everybody inside the organization actually has full transparency and without being performative, How can they actually do it that's effective? Because it's not just flip a switch.

Jennifer Fraser: It's very easy. You shift from an ethical model to a medical model. So leaders, imagine we have people that are running nations. They have access to nuclear codes and nobody did a brain scan before they got put into power. How is that even possible? You could see on a brain scan before you voted for someone whether or not they have em If they have eroded affective empathy, you are very likely dealing with a psychopath. Why would you put a psychopath in power over your country? And how is it possible that you're expected to vote without that information? Now, we do health checks on these individuals who we still are a world that gives the most insane amount of power to a single individual. So, if we're going to do that, I mean, it's really high stakes. A war. They can destroy an economy. They can have people killed. I mean, they can do whatever they want. So, why is it such a outlandish and outrageous thought to say we need to see their brain scan? It needs to be made public before we vote them in or not. And that should be the same in a leadership contest. It used to be, and I'm sure some companies still do, the psychological test. You sit down, you have to write the psychological test about yourself. If you're a psychopath, the one great skill you have is lying. You're really good. You're a pathological liar like the president of the United States. You're an incredible manipulator,

Richard Zwicky: But I know of a major law firm that spent six months recruiting a new general partner and

Jennifer Fraser: A con man like the president of the United States. These are the features of highly destructive people who can destroy the organization. Why would you put them in a leadership position? It doesn't make sense. The brain scan I truly believe will show you a great deal about the brain.

00:50:00

Richard Zwicky: They put them through apparently the cost was about $300,000 worth of exams. At the end of the day, they weren't the right fit. They had to leave within six or nine months. It's not just tests. How do we do it? Mhm.

Jennifer Fraser: So I think that's the biggest issue that happens with people. So if the law firm I mean I would be really interested to know that case study because what was the issue with the person? What was it that they weren't like? How did they not fit?

Richard Zwicky: I don't want to identify who it is and I might do so by describing too much. I'm happy to tell that to you in a private conversation. But it was, at the end of the day, they're so capable in some ways but they're incredibly arrogant in others. And that caused friction because all of the partners are incredibly talented. And one of the things that a lot of people when they get into positions of power, the British model is first among equals. But the reality in a prime minister, it means you're basically all ministers, but one is the final one who has the decision. But when I look at organizations, I always look at it in terms of I work for everybody who works for and with me because my job is to make sure everybody else has what they need to succeed. Some people get into those positions and they look at it in terms of what can you do for me. That difference in attitude for some it's this person's going to be driving a lot of success because they' what can you do for me? And the shareholders are looking at how do you make me the most money? How do we help people understand not just the short-term win but the long-term view? Because it affects you at home and at work.

Jennifer Fraser: It affects your health massively. So the arrogance of an individual like that for me would have been a red flag that they are psychopathic or narcissistic or machavelian. That's one of the top features of these individuals because what they do and again you could do an fMRI and see What they tend to do is they objectify other people. That's why they don't feel that you were their colleague or that they need to serve you or they're not curious about you. They don't ask you questions about you and your life and what makes you tick and why you feel the way you do or why you came to that conclusion. They're really not interested because they don't see you as a subject. They objectify. They also see people in categories. It's another brain function. They don't see people as holistic beings. Their brain is sorting them into she's a woman he is elderly like they don't see beyond these types of things and one of the things that's so interesting is you can look at left and right hemisphere again the lateralization of the brain and the left hemisphere I refer to in the gaslet brain I call it just for shortand to make it clear so we don't forget the left I call it the opportunist so when you describe that lawyer to me I go That guy's an opportunist, which is really unfortunate because it strikes me that he might not yet have good access to the right side of his brain. The right side of the brain is I call it the altruist, which you just described yourself as a servant leader. I serve the people everyone's a leader. That kind of whole mentality. That's very right brain. And the right side of the brain is It believes in community. It believes in the planet. It believes in connections and networks and It's the right part of our brain is really that feeling of brings tears to your eyes when you listen to a symphony. You feel That's right if the left brain has taken control then it is starting to do highly destructive things in how people think about themselves and how they behave. And you can identify it.

Richard Zwicky: And you can identify it. What's interesting is in a lot of organizations, some of these individuals, they're getting promoted because they're high performers, And the expectation is you become a higher and higher performer. You're able to manage and deal with stuff. But why is it that often the high performers and the conscientious employees also become the targets? And how do you differentiate between this is a high performer but a challenge versus a high performer who is the right fit? Because an HR team has to be able to do that objectively at a distance because they don't deal with them every day.

00:55:00

Jennifer Fraser: So again, if I was that law firm I knew this guy was a high performer and I was going to invest some money in really doing some proper tests. Him would have cost a lot less than $300,000. I would have put him in an fMRI scan and I would have put two or three other control lawyers as well that worked in the firm that we loved that were highly successful and were fabulous people and they were great fits. We use that as a shorthand for many things. And I would also put the new guy or new lady in and I would have shown them So I would show them images of let's say somebody being ignored someone being shoved, someone being crying like a whole series a kid being yelled at just someone being massively humiliated really kind of painful distressing imagery. Okay. So everybody gets to see it and the person watching the brain scans what's really fascinating is they can see how the brain is reacting and it's beyond your control. You can't manipulate this. As Dr. Michael Mznik says the brain scan does not lie. So even the liars can't lie in the brain So what's really fascinating is I can assure you that your control lawyers that are adored and loved in the firm high producers, but just adored, they would have had a reaction in the affective empathy neural network. Okay, it would have lit up because they can't stand to see images like that and

Richard Zwicky: Break. He plus pieces.

Jennifer Fraser: The emotional center of the brain would have they can't control it. It just would have happened. That's how people that have healthy brains respond to those sorts of images. Now, it sounds to me like the arrogant person, it is quite likely that their brain didn't light up in affective empathy because they don't put a lot of energy into how other people feel. They don't really care. They're not interested and they actually feel highly superior. And in fact, they see these other people as chess pieces.

Richard Zwicky: How do they get to the end? Right.

Jennifer Fraser: I can't remember what they're calling chess pieces and they objectify them. The other thing too is their emotional centers wouldn't have lit up. If you're a highly arrogant person, you really aren't a socially emotionally adept individual. You're just not like you're so full of yourself. It's so narcissistic, Self aggrandizing and it's oftenimes fueled by, concerns about the self. So you could see that on a brain scan. What you would also see and this is where the high performance piece comes in that's so interesting. You would see that instead of emotions and instead of affective empathy, this individual lights up in cognition, they're great thinkers and the language. They're great talkers. They are so good at talking and so good at thinking and so good oftentimes at manipulating in line. So, this is why you have a huge problem. And if I had seen that on a brain scan, I wouldn't have hired that person.

Richard Zwicky: So the change for that individual would have had to have happened. Sometimes people have moments of awareness. They recognize, I don't like how I am behaving in these ways. I want to make a change. And that's not especially true, but it's true of people who are abuse victims who recognize this happened to me and it wasn't right. But most people don't have that light bulb moment. Unfortunately, it's conditioning that takes a long time to unravel. But we can make those changes and help people come to make the right changes even if they don't see the abuse that happened in their trauma right off the bat. If we get to them in their youth during the school's ages, what would you add to school programs to increase empathy and empathetic awareness to teach people how to treat each other better? Because that's where we can make the biggest change.

Jennifer Fraser: I think schools that taught I mean we're actually developing a course right now on exactly this but it's for kids that are in the criminal justice system. So, we are taking kids in their teens, maybe early 20s. They don't yet have full brain development, which is the best time to catch them because they have very heightened neuroplasticity. So, you catch a kid at that time who comes from a ton of trauma and you teach them what's going on in their brain. I'm a really big believer in knowledge is empowering and it gives you the opportunity to make good decisions and to become highly aware of your own brain and how it might be confusing you or leading you down the wrong path or making a decision based in a stressed out environment. If you actually knew the mechanisms of how your brain constructs reality and connects with other people and makes decisions and the kinds of toxic environments that hurt your brain.

01:00:00

Jennifer Fraser: If you told a kid, you can go to school all day and it's full of asbestous. It's just packed full of it. You're going to be breathing it in all day. Good luck with that. Or you don't have to go. What do you think the kid's going to choose? It would take you one minute to say to the kid, asbestous is going to kill you. It's going to destroy your lungs. I'm going to give you a glass of water from lead pipes. I mean, we teach kids that. Don't do that. That's unsafe. If we gave them the brain mechanisms around, how in this classroom the way the teacher behaves is actually really damaging to your brain, the kid would not go into that classroom and their parents would insist the kid didn't go into their classroom. No matter what the leadership is trying to tell you is fine. When we started this conversation in part one, we started with bullying is about hurt feelings. We have come full circle to say no bullying is as toxic as anything else. If the teacher is smoking in the classroom and the children are expected to breathe in secondhand smoke that is a dangerous classroom. And we need to teach kids that they could make way better decisions about If they knew how to rebuild it after it had been hurt through trauma. If they knew how to make a really good informed decision, not a chaotic and impulsive and stressed out decision. It's just sky's the limit. If they understood dopamine and serotonin and what suicidal ideiation was that actually it's like having if your heart's not working, a kid should phone 9 Guess what? If your brain is telling you that it would be easier to just disappear, call 911. It's a problem with your brain. It's not you at all. It's a malfunctioning organ in your body. But we don't tell kids any of these things.

Richard Zwicky: And we leave students incredibly unprepared when they graduate from secondary school for the challenges they'll face in university. Especially for students who are first in their class and then go into a group of 100 where they're all first in the class. Somebody has to be 99th and unfortunately the self harm rates are horrific at that point which is terrible. And we can spend a whole other show on that. That's another day but we are running low on time but one thing that I did want to touch on as a last point is it's not just the students who can be rewired in their youth and one of the things you pointed out yesterday was especially as people are aging and the elderly to delay the onset of dementia and some of the other challenges which scare all of us in the future where we lose ourselves. There's exercises we can do that bring youth back to our brain, but they also allow us to rewire what's danger, what's right and wrong. Tell us a little bit about that? Because, we all deal with the effects of abuse. We all need to overcome them.

Jennifer Fraser: I mean there's almost nobody who's gone unscathed into adulthood. So this program is called Brain HQ. So, as in Brain Headquarters, Brain HQ, and I am absolutely obsessed with Brain HQ, and I am working double time on getting it actually into a form and to youth populations because right now it is geared towards the elderly. Brain HQ, it's gamified, it's online, it's half an hour a day. There was all kinds of news stories just in the last few days about it because they're able to show that people who did it 20 years ago. So imagine the length of the research 20 years ago they did 30 hours of brain HQ and

Richard Zwicky: Which is incredible.

Jennifer Fraser: They're seeing that now. So let's say these people were in their 50s at 70 and 80. All they did was 30 hours. 20 years ago it's giving them a 25% reduction in dementia it's incredible. Now imagine if they'd done it every day from 50 or 60 until 80. We don't even know what that would look like. And everyone can do it. We all have neuroplasticity. That is the capacity of our brain to strengthen and to change based on what we practice. And so brain HQ it's not a lot of fun. It's hard work. It's like going to the gym and repeated weightlifting. It's not super fascinating and exciting and stimulating. It's hard work and it's repetition and you have to just stick with it. I would highly recommend people going with a personal trainer. She's this little animated figure called Daily Sparks will put you through a program. She'll tell you when the 30 minutes are up and she will kind of keep track of the different areas and the strengthening that you're doing. But just think of it as brain fitness. It's going to the gym every day, 5 days a week if you can, four days a week for your brain. And keep track up to 30 hours because that alone is going to be so healthy and good for you. So the other thing I want to say though about which is relevant to you is that brain HQ and neuroplasticity the key thing to understand that many don't and it's really been what has fueled our conversation part one and part two is that we are good at understanding I need to go to the brain gym because what I practice is going to affect my neuroplasticity, my brain health and my longevity.

01:05:00

Jennifer Fraser: What people don't also understand is that neuroplasticity is affected by environment. So you can work as hard as you can at Brain HQ but if you are daily going into a toxic environment, you could be undoing all that good hard work you're doing. And it's a crime. It's a shame. And so yeah,

Richard Zwicky: It is a crime. Why? Right.

Jennifer Fraser: We are crime. Not Just leave it at that. It's a crime.

Richard Zwicky: And when somebody's an alcoholic they know not to drink and not to put themselves in an environment which is surrounded. Let's say walking into a bar saying, "I'm just gonna have a glass of water." Why would we do any different with our brains? Right, Jennifer, we have to end the show here. It's been fascinating. Thanks so much. And thanks everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy. Going to cut that and go back. Jennifer, we are going to have to end the show here, but for people who want to learn more about you find your book, and learn more about everything you're doing, how can they reach out.

Jennifer Fraser: I answer everybody as best I can. Even although it might take me a while, I can be reached at bulliedbrain.com and I write for Psychology Today, the bullied brain series and my books are widely available. So, just if you want to contact me for anything, you can reach me through the website bullybrain.com.

Richard Zwicky: Thanks so much for joining us today on High and Healthy and thanks to everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy and we'll be back again with you soon.

Jennifer Fraser: Thanks so much for having me.