Breaking The Bonds of Abuse (with Jennifer Fraser)

Mark speaks with Jennifer Fraser, best-selling author, award-winning educator with a PhD in Comparative Literature. Through personal experience and extensive research, Jennifer uncovered how bullying affects the brain and how the brain can heal, which she details in her new book, The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health.

Today, Commander Divine speaks with Jennifer Fraser, best-selling author, award-winning educator with a PhD in Comparative Literature. In the episode, Jennifer shares how bullying affects the brain and how the brain can heal—detailed in her newest book, The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health.

Key Takeaways:

The brain science of abuse. A bullied brain is an unhealthy brain, displaying neurological changes whether the bullying is physical or emotional. We can analyze this on brain scans, brain mapping technology, and correlate it to psychological manifestations in the brain.

The psychology of bullying: the Victim and the Favored. Jennifer shares the psychology of the bully stories such as Larry Nassar, which feature bully normalization, co-opting parents into being complicit, and the extensive damage caused in athlete victims AND those witnessing the abuse.

Child abuse is indicative of later chronic illness. Child abuse comes in many forms (emotional, physical abuse and sexual, emotional, and physical neglect). Jennifer shares insights from Rolland Summit and Alice Miller’s work that discovered child abuse of all forms accounts for half of the main indicators of later midlife chronic illness. Astounding! You can train your brain out of abuse, like Tom Brady. He’s one of the first premier athletes to publicly share that he trains his brain as much as he trains his body, leveraging a platform called Brain HQ. As one of the best quarterbacks in history, it’s fair to say Tom knows a thing or two about being elite, with compassion and courage. There are solutions, and Brain HQ is one of many.