Our world today has certainly become far more chaotic than we had anticipated. As such, it becomes challenging to avoid toxic threatening thoughts and downstream manifestations like depression or anxiety. As our guest today makes clear, we don’t have to settle into this mental mess as if it is just our “new normal.” There is hope and there is help available to us, and the road to healthier thoughts and more happiness may actually be shorter than we think. Today on our program we will spend time with my good friend Dr. Caroline Leaf, author of the new book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess – Five Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reducing Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking. Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and from the University of Cape Town and the University of Pretoria in South Africa, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s, she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input. Dr. Leaf is currently conducting clinical trials using her 5 step program she developed while in private practice to further demonstrate the effectiveness of mind-directed techniques to help relieve mental ill-health problems such as anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts. The primary aim of these trials is to make mental health care more affordable, applicable, and accessible worldwide, and to reduce the stigma around mental health. Her work has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias, and mental health issues like anxiety and depression. For more from Dr. Leaf, you can follow here on her website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.