Dr. Caroline Leaf is the author of How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess: A Guide to Building Resilience and Managing Mental Health. “Dr. Leaf provides a clear and effective five-step plan to teach your child how to manage their mind and become emotionally healthy. With deep understanding and compassion, Dr. Leaf offers simple, easy-to-use strategies for caretakers to help children to recognize feelings and respond in a healthy way—replacing toxic thoughts with brain-building practices and developing resilience that will serve them throughout their lives.” This is a fascinating conversation that I invite you to share with other parents.

*This is a podcast interview for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to be medical or mental health advice. Seek out your trusted provider for care for yourself or your child.

While on the show notes page, I’d love for you to join our newsletter. You’ll receive more inspiration and tips to love yourself and live your best midlife. You’ll also get a FREE copy of Michele’s Book, Design a Life You Love (available for a limited time).

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

1. Why Dr. Leaf wrote this book now to help parents help their children manage their mental health.
2. Why we need to embrace the “mess” and not let children feel like their brains are broken.
3. What the Neurocycle is, the specific steps, and how to implement it.
4. What are ‘Thought Trees’ and how can they help kids understand how experiences impact their brains and bodies.
5. How can we fix the youth mental health crisis and what role her book plays in helping the next generation.
6. ‘Brain-ee,’ a cartoon superhero and how parents can use this character to help children understand the journey of mental health, and much more!

RESOURCES MENTIONED

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Website: Dr. Leaf’s Book Website

Dr. Leaf’s Website

Dr. Leaf on IG

Book: How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess: A Guide to Building Resilience and Managing Mental Health

Neurocycle App on App store

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist, audiologist, clinical and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, 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. 

During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the USA, she developed her theory (called the Geodesic Information Processing theory) of how we think, build memory, and learn, into tools and processes that have 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 ill-health issues like anxiety and depression. She has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university, and the workplace.

Dr. Leaf is also the bestselling author of Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, and many more. She teaches at academic, medical and neuroscience conferences, and to various audiences around the world. 

Dr. Leaf is currently conducting clinical trials using the 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.

Thank you for listening to the show!