Speaker 1: We can really contribute to the well being of other
Speaker 1: people in very profound ways, sometimes with very simple actions.
Speaker 1: But we can also really create a significant physiological burden
Speaker 1: for another person, really without trying very hard.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 2: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us. Our guest on this episode is doctor Lisa
Speaker 2: Feldman Barrett, who is among the top one percent most
Speaker 2: cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in
Speaker 2: psychology and neuroscience. She's a university Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University,
Speaker 2: with appointments at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Speaker 2: Doctor Barrett was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Neuroscience in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. She's the author of many books, including the
Speaker 2: one discussed on this episode, Seven and a Half Lessons
Speaker 2: about the Brain.
Speaker 3: Hi, Lisa, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having on your podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such a pleasure to have you back on.
Speaker 3: I did not look at the date from when we
Speaker 3: had you on, but it's been two or three years,
Speaker 3: probably at least, so very happy to have you back on.
Speaker 3: We're going to be discussing your latest book, which is
Speaker 3: called Seven and a half Lessons about the Brain. But
Speaker 3: before we do that, let's start like we always do
Speaker 3: with the parable. There is a grandmother talking with her
Speaker 3: grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 3: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 3: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 3: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 3: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 3: He looks up at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 3: which one wins, and the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: It means that you should always surround yourself by people
Speaker 1: who allow you to be your best self.
Speaker 3: That's fair, very straightforward, and yet so powerful.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things we'll talk about, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: is the fact that we have a predicting brain and
Speaker 1: that really as we cultivate experiences for ourselves in our lives,
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're constantly cultivating the past in
Speaker 1: order to have more control over who will be in
Speaker 1: the future. And so the parable has a very real
Speaker 1: life scientific meaning in that if you create experiences for yourself,
Speaker 1: or put yourself in situations, or create environments for yourself
Speaker 1: that allow you to be your best self, then that's
Speaker 1: what your brain will wire itself to and that's who
Speaker 1: you'll be in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have a line in the book that really
Speaker 3: struck me from less than five about talking how our
Speaker 3: brain really works secretly with other brains, right, how they correspond.
Speaker 3: You say, the best thing for your nervous system is
Speaker 3: another human. The worst thing for your nervous system is
Speaker 3: another human. And I was really struck by that and
Speaker 3: how powerful or how destructive our relations with other people
Speaker 3: can be.
Speaker 1: Well, we are social animals, and what that means is
Speaker 1: that we regulate each other's nervous systems. And we don't
Speaker 1: usually think about our interactions that way. We don't think
Speaker 1: about every hug we give or every insult we bear
Speaker 1: that way, but that is actually what's happening. And we
Speaker 1: regulate each other really automatically, typically not you know, deliberately
Speaker 1: or on purpose, but we do it in all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways, you know, with sights and sounds and smells
Speaker 1: and so on. Our brains are reacting to each other,
Speaker 1: or actually not so much reacting, but sort of taking
Speaker 1: account of each other in these various channels. But humans
Speaker 1: also regulate each other with words. And that's because the
Speaker 1: parts of our brain that are important for understanding language
Speaker 1: and speaking are the same parts that regulate the systems
Speaker 1: of our body, our heart and our lungs and our
Speaker 1: immune system and our metabolism and so on, And so
Speaker 1: we can really contribute to the well being of other
Speaker 1: people in very profound ways, sometimes with very simple actions.
Speaker 1: But we can also really create a significant biological physiological
Speaker 1: burden for another person, really without trying very hard. And
Speaker 1: so it's important to understand that you are, in some way,
Speaker 1: you know, the caretaker of the nervous systems of the
Speaker 1: people around you. Even if you don't think of yourself
Speaker 1: that way, or you don't really like that idea, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. That's just really how it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like that phrase, the caretaker of other
Speaker 3: people's nervous systems, you know. And it's obvious we want
Speaker 3: to be clear about where sort of, you know, our
Speaker 3: responsibility ends and others begins. But it is so clear
Speaker 3: how strongly we affect each other, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Eric, I think it's really important to say that
Speaker 1: nothing in the universe works in simple, single causes. The
Speaker 1: fact that you are more responsible for other people than
Speaker 1: you might like does not in any way mean that
Speaker 1: they are not responsible for themselves. It's not a zero
Speaker 1: sum game. I think that's really important to say. And
Speaker 1: you know, we live in a culture that privileges individual
Speaker 1: rights and freedoms, and that's great. I like living in
Speaker 1: that culture too, but it does present a particular quandary
Speaker 1: for us, because we are social animals and we can
Speaker 1: make each other healthier or sicker, and we might not
Speaker 1: like that, we might not believe it. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter what you believe, and it doesn't really matter whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not. It just actually is the case.
Speaker 1: So who do you want to be? What kind of
Speaker 1: a person do you want to be? If you think
Speaker 1: of yourself as somebody who has more responsibility for other people,
Speaker 1: for the fellows around you, it doesn't mean that you're
Speaker 1: letting them off the hook or that you're not expecting
Speaker 1: them to have personal responsibility for themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's really important and true. It's not
Speaker 3: a zero sum game. We are both responsible for others
Speaker 3: and responsible for ourselves. It makes me think of another
Speaker 3: line in the book that you say, you're talking about
Speaker 3: responsibility and you say sometimes we're responsible for things not
Speaker 3: because there are fault, but because we're the only ones
Speaker 3: who can change them. And you're talking about the impact.
Speaker 3: I believe at that point in the book that our
Speaker 3: early patterning has on us, the way that we are raised,
Speaker 3: what it does to us, and how prominent that is.
Speaker 3: But I love that idea because oftentimes when we say
Speaker 3: you're responsible for what happened, people think that the word
Speaker 3: that gets translated in mind is fault. It's my fault.
Speaker 3: And I love the way you say that we're not
Speaker 3: responsible for things, not because there are fault, but because
Speaker 3: we're the only ones who can change them. And that
Speaker 3: is really true. We're the only ones who can, and
Speaker 3: very often we're the only ones who will.
Speaker 1: There's a distinction that you can make between responsibility and culpability.
Speaker 1: You can be not culpable for something, meaning it's not
Speaker 1: your fault, but that doesn't really necessarily absolve you over
Speaker 1: the responsibility to change it. And sometimes we are responsible
Speaker 1: for things because we're really the only ones who can
Speaker 1: change it, even if we're not culpable for being in
Speaker 1: the situation that we're in. I first said this during
Speaker 1: a TED talk, and I wasn't really sure how it
Speaker 1: would go over, and millions of people literally have responded
Speaker 1: extremely well to this idea. I think it gives people
Speaker 1: hope and energy to maybe take a little more charge
Speaker 1: of their life circumstances, even if life has not dealt
Speaker 1: them an easy hand. People experience it as the way
Speaker 1: that I meant it, which was to be supportive, but
Speaker 1: also to sort of nudge people in the direction of
Speaker 1: trying to take more control in their own lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so much of my background is in
Speaker 3: the recovery community, addiction recovery, and it's absolutely true that
Speaker 3: one of the biggest predictors of addiction is having suffered
Speaker 3: trauma for which you are not at fault for. And
Speaker 3: yet it's also absolutely true that one of the pillars
Speaker 3: of recovery is suddenly going, I am responsible for changing
Speaker 3: my relationship to my substances, you know, And so both
Speaker 3: those things are true at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that trauma, you know, in adversity,
Speaker 1: particularly if it visits you as a child, you're victimized twice. Really,
Speaker 1: you're victimized the first time because of what happens to you,
Speaker 1: which is not your doing, and then you're victimized in
Speaker 1: a sense a second time because who's going to clean
Speaker 1: up the map? Yes, it's only you, my friend, And
Speaker 1: that feels unfair, and it is unfair, but it's just
Speaker 1: how it is. And once you realize that, there's a
Speaker 1: certain power, actually, there's a certain empowerment in realizing that.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, that's certainly been my experience. Let's circle
Speaker 3: back to some of the basics here of your work
Speaker 3: and some of these seven and a half lessons, And
Speaker 3: I want to start with really kind of where you start,
Speaker 3: which is what is the brain for? The typical idea
Speaker 3: we would have is the brain is for me to
Speaker 3: think and for me to learn things and for me
Speaker 3: to figure things out. And you're starting in a very
Speaker 3: different place than that. Why do I have a brain?
Speaker 3: Some people might argue that I don't, but let's assume
Speaker 3: I do. Let's go with the assumption I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the why question is really hard to answer, But
Speaker 1: I think the better question, or maybe the better question
Speaker 1: for a scientist is really what is your brain's most
Speaker 1: important job? And you know, for that we can look
Speaker 1: back to an evolutionary time, to a time when the
Speaker 1: creature's really in the ocean didn't have brains. But like you,
Speaker 1: I was really interested. I actually what partly got me
Speaker 1: started was the question of why do we even have
Speaker 1: a brain? Brains are really expensive organs. So your brain
Speaker 1: costs you something like twenty percent of your metabolic budget
Speaker 1: every day. That's the most expensive organ you have. And
Speaker 1: so what is a brain good for? Exactly? And why
Speaker 1: do we have it? And you know where did it
Speaker 1: come from? So those are the kinds of questions that
Speaker 1: it were really intriguing me. And the answer is both,
Speaker 1: I think, really surprising and then also mundane at the
Speaker 1: same time, which is that your brain's most important job
Speaker 1: is not thinking, it's not feeling, it's not even seeing
Speaker 1: or hearing. Your brain's most important job is running the
Speaker 1: systems of your body. So right now, as we're talking
Speaker 1: to each other and as our listeners are listening to us,
Speaker 1: inside each of us is a whole drama unfolding inside
Speaker 1: our bodies, and you can't really, I mean, I hope
Speaker 1: you can't access it. If you do, you have my sympathies.
Speaker 1: But the way that I talk about it, the metaphor
Speaker 1: that I use, is that your brain is running a
Speaker 1: budget for your body. It's not budgeting money, it's budgeting
Speaker 1: glucose and salt and water and oxygen and other chemicals
Speaker 1: and nutrients that your body needs to stay alive and
Speaker 1: keep well. And you can think about your actions as withdrawals.
Speaker 1: So when you learn something new, or when you exercise,
Speaker 1: when you move your body in any way, those are
Speaker 1: withdrawals from your body budget. And then you can make
Speaker 1: deposits into your body budget. You can you know, sleep
Speaker 1: and you can eat healthfily, and you can exercise, which
Speaker 1: is a withdrawal. It's like an investment in a future
Speaker 1: healthy brain and body, so you know, you can think
Speaker 1: of that as sort of an investment that you expect
Speaker 1: to get a return on. And being around other people
Speaker 1: can add a little tax to your body budget, or
Speaker 1: it can give you little savings in your body budget.
Speaker 1: It can make things a little cheaper to run, and
Speaker 1: you can think about addiction really or think about something
Speaker 1: simpler like having a cup of coffee. You can think
Speaker 1: about caffeine as borrowing energy from tomorrow to use today.
Speaker 1: And if you start to run a deficit in your
Speaker 1: body budget, you don't experience that directly as sensations in
Speaker 1: your body. You experience it as unpleasant feeling. So when
Speaker 1: you feel it crap, it's usually because you have expended
Speaker 1: energy that you haven't replaced yet. You've made a withdrawal
Speaker 1: that you haven't replenished yet. These simple feelings, which are
Speaker 1: not emotions, feeling pleasant, feeling unpleasant, feeling comfortable or uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: feeling worked up, or feeling calm, These are simple feelings
Speaker 1: that tell you something about the state of your body budget,
Speaker 1: and you can use them. They don't tell you what's wrong,
Speaker 1: but they do tell you something about you know, whether
Speaker 1: your body budget's running a deficit or whether you're flush
Speaker 1: and your body budget is solvent. And in this way,
Speaker 1: your brain is always budgeting for your body, and your
Speaker 1: body is always sending sense data back to your brain,
Speaker 1: and your brain is always experiencing this as these simple feelings,
Speaker 1: which you can call mood or scientists call affect. And
Speaker 1: this goes on really for your whole life. So you
Speaker 1: don't experience you are a brain regulating your body. Usually
Speaker 1: you don't experience your life as if that's your brain's
Speaker 1: most important job. But that actually is your brain's most
Speaker 1: important job. And so what you think and what you
Speaker 1: do and what you see even really is in the
Speaker 1: service of managing that body budget.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many things in what you just said
Speaker 3: that I could choose to go with. One that I'm
Speaker 3: going to go with is one of my favorite lines
Speaker 3: from your previous book, which has stuck with me. I
Speaker 3: do one of these a week, so it's hard for
Speaker 3: things to stick with me a lot of times. But
Speaker 3: You basically are saying, if your body budget gets out
Speaker 3: of whack, then you're going to feel crappy no matter
Speaker 3: what self help tips you follow. It's just a matter
Speaker 3: of which flavor of crap. And I love that, you know.
Speaker 3: I think it's so true that at a foundational level,
Speaker 3: there are these foundational things that we have to do
Speaker 3: to take care of ourselves or we're going to feel bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it really does sneak up on you. Eric.
Speaker 1: That's the funny thing too. What I would say is
Speaker 1: that think about when you exercise. I know when I exercise,
Speaker 1: I exercise every day, and you know, when I'm usually
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes in, as I'm hitting my ventilatory load
Speaker 1: and building up carbon dioxide, it's harder to keep pushing,
Speaker 1: you know, forward with the exercise. I start to feel
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable and I want to stop. And actually, this
Speaker 1: is the point at which a lot of people stop.
Speaker 1: But you shouldn't stop. You should keep going. But why
Speaker 1: is it that this happens. It happens because I need
Speaker 1: more oxygen. I'm not expelling enough carbon dioxide fast enough,
Speaker 1: and I'm burning through glucose and water and other nutrients.
Speaker 1: So I'm starting to feel like crap, basically to echo myself.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't necessarily mean something's wrong in the larger sense. Right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes we feel like crap because we're just working really
Speaker 1: hard at something, and then we can replenish. So when
Speaker 1: I'm done exercising, I might have a protein shake, or
Speaker 1: I might drink some water, or you know, I might
Speaker 1: make sure that I have to get enough sleep that night,
Speaker 1: what have you. When you're working really hard at something,
Speaker 1: when you're learning something really hard, when you have to
Speaker 1: really really make some kind of metabolic investment, it can
Speaker 1: feel really uncomfortable. But sometimes feeling bad isn't necessarily a
Speaker 1: sign that anything's wrong. It might be a sign that
Speaker 1: you're just burning through resources really quickly and you need
Speaker 1: to replenish. But I guess I should back up and say,
Speaker 1: what is stress? Stress is just your brain preparing you
Speaker 1: for a major metabolic outlay. You know, Cortisol is not
Speaker 1: a stress hormone. It's a hormone that gets glucose into
Speaker 1: your bloodstream quickly because your brain believes that you have
Speaker 1: a big metabolic outlay to make, whether it's getting out
Speaker 1: of bed in the morning or giving a talk to
Speaker 1: the members of your team, or taking a test, or
Speaker 1: even just talking to somebody on a pond. Right, maybe
Speaker 1: it's even listening to a podcast and listening to ideas
Speaker 1: that are really new and frankly counterintuitive to you. All
Speaker 1: of these things cost glucose and can make you feel unpleasant,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily mean that something's wrong. What it
Speaker 1: means is that you just need to replenish the energy.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, when you feel stressed, when you're
Speaker 1: in a stressful situation, so your brain is preparing you
Speaker 1: for battle, right and you don't need it, or you
Speaker 1: don't get enough sleep, you don't eat healthily, or you
Speaker 1: don't exercise on a regular basis, or you're on social
Speaker 1: media too much. Because one thing that's really expensive for
Speaker 1: a human brain is ambiguity and uncertainty. For example, COVID
Speaker 1: for the last year, Full of Uncertainty has been a
Speaker 1: real body budget drain for a lot of people. You
Speaker 1: see reports of people anxious and they're depressed and they're
Speaker 1: really struggling. Why is that. It's because we didn't even
Speaker 1: enter COVID with balanced body budgets to begin with. We
Speaker 1: live in a world of casual brutality. We do all
Speaker 1: kinds of things to tax our body budgets all the time.
Speaker 1: And then it was with this level of depletion that
Speaker 1: we entered into COVID, you know, which has been a
Speaker 1: year of uncertainty and real angst for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And so the point that I want to make here
Speaker 1: is that each time you spend too much, or you
Speaker 1: spend but you don't replenish, you pay a little metabolic tax.
Speaker 1: It's really really small, but each time you pay a
Speaker 1: little tax. And these taxes add up over time, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it can take years for them to add up.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's kind of like water dripping on
Speaker 1: a pipe. You know, the first drip isn't going to
Speaker 1: do anything, the second drip isn't going to do anything,
Speaker 1: but eventually, if it keeps going on, that water is
Speaker 1: going to bore a hole through that steel pipe. And
Speaker 1: your metabolism kind of works in the same way. And
Speaker 1: this is why adversity in childhood is a major predictor
Speaker 1: of physical illness in adulthood and middle age. You know,
Speaker 1: there were a number of studies done called viral challenge studies,
Speaker 1: which were done ten fifteen years ago where they took
Speaker 1: people volunteers, and they put them individually in hotel rooms,
Speaker 1: and they controlled what they ate and how they slept
Speaker 1: and so on, and then they put a virus exactly
Speaker 1: the same amount of viral load in every person's nose.
Speaker 1: And actually one of these studies actually used a coronavirus
Speaker 1: and only twenty to forty percent of people developed symptoms.
Speaker 1: That means sixty to eighty percent of people who were
Speaker 1: exposed to the virus didn't get sick. That means that
Speaker 1: a virus is not the sole cause of illness, because
Speaker 1: many people were exposed to the virus and didn't get sick.
Speaker 1: The other cause that's necessary but not sufficient, that you
Speaker 1: need in order to get sick is a compromised immune system.
Speaker 1: So your brain has to be in a particular state
Speaker 1: in order for you to get sick. And you know
Speaker 1: what was the biggest predictor of who got.
Speaker 3: Sick, adverse childhood experiences exactly yep.
Speaker 1: Now, why is that? It's because the seeds of metabolic
Speaker 1: inefficiency are planted really really early in life, and so
Speaker 1: your brain as a child wires itself to its world,
Speaker 1: and part of your brain's world is your body and
Speaker 1: the world that other people create for you. So if
Speaker 1: you have a brain that wires itself to adversity, to
Speaker 1: deal with adversity, you're paying an extra tax, and you
Speaker 1: just keep paying that tax and paying that tax, and
Speaker 1: that makes you more vulnerable to stressors later in life.
Speaker 3: I've often wondered about why exercise remains a challenging thing
Speaker 3: to do sometimes. And what I mean by that is,
Speaker 3: I think every single time I've exercised, and that's been
Speaker 3: thousands of times, at this point, when I'm done, I go,
Speaker 3: I'm really glad I did that. That was really wonderful.
Speaker 3: And yet you would think with that sort of consistent
Speaker 3: positive reinforcement, I would hop up and be ready to
Speaker 3: run to exercise. Is it just the fact that it's
Speaker 3: such a withdrawal that it sort of violates the principle
Speaker 3: of conserving energy, that there's just a natural resistance in there?
Speaker 3: Do you think that could be part of it? I
Speaker 3: just it's a phenomenon I don't fully understand, because again,
Speaker 3: I would think that the positive reinforcement being so strong
Speaker 3: would make it always something I want to do. And
Speaker 3: it's not that it's hard to do necessarily sometimes, but
Speaker 3: it's certainly harder than turning on the TV.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I don't think that conserving energy
Speaker 1: is really what nervous systems are about. I think nervous
Speaker 1: systems are really trying to optimize energy input and output.
Speaker 1: So many people love novelty. Some people love novelty more
Speaker 1: than others. But most people don't like to eat the
Speaker 1: same food every day, and they don't like to wear
Speaker 1: the same clothes every day, and they don't necessarily like
Speaker 1: to do the same things every day. So things that
Speaker 1: are predictable are much cheaper metabolically speaking than things that
Speaker 1: are novel or unpredictable. That being said, you know, we
Speaker 1: still like novelty. So why is that? And the answer is,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't just go sit in a dark
Speaker 1: room and baste away. And the answer is because for
Speaker 1: living creatures, I don't really think we're trying to not spend.
Speaker 1: I think we're trying to spend efficiently. And I think
Speaker 1: the question that you're asking is a really good question.
Speaker 1: And it's a question that plagues me, honestly, because every
Speaker 1: morning I drag my yass out of bed and I
Speaker 1: procrastinate to go exercise, even though I know I'm going
Speaker 1: to feel better at the end. But to get to
Speaker 1: that end, I get I have to go through some
Speaker 1: significant discomfort. And sometimes even when I'm in it, I'm
Speaker 1: happy to make the discomfort worse by peddling harder or
Speaker 1: lifting more or whatever. But it's just getting myself to
Speaker 1: that point. It's you know, and I've been doing this
Speaker 1: for more than twenty years at this point, and still,
Speaker 1: you know, every morning is a struggle. But I guess
Speaker 1: I would say obviously we have learned something because despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we know it's going to be pleasant,
Speaker 1: we still do it. We've talked about the last time
Speaker 1: you know that I was on your podcast, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll talk again that you know, brains predict they
Speaker 1: don't react to things, and so your brain is always
Speaker 1: predicting what it expects to happen next. And next can
Speaker 1: be in the next moment, or it can be in
Speaker 1: the next ten minutes, or it can be in an
Speaker 1: hour from now, after you've run a couple of miles
Speaker 1: and you're in the shower. What you're asking me is
Speaker 1: a really interesting question that I don't have an answer for,
Speaker 1: because I don't think we know the answer to how
Speaker 1: a brain makes decisions about what the immediate outcome is
Speaker 1: versus what the outcome is going to be in an
Speaker 1: hour from now or in a year or ten years
Speaker 1: from now, Because what you're asking me really is the
Speaker 1: same kind of question as how can I get myself
Speaker 1: to not spend money now and put it away in
Speaker 1: my retirement savings account so that I'll have money later
Speaker 1: when I retire in you know, X number of years.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know you need to do it, and
Speaker 1: you know you'll be happy if you have money at
Speaker 1: the end of your life where you can retire and
Speaker 1: live well, and you probably don't need the shiny new
Speaker 1: thing that you want, or you don't need to go
Speaker 1: out to a restaurant, or you don't need to do
Speaker 1: whatever it is you want to do in the moment
Speaker 1: to spend that money on. But yet it's still a struggle.
Speaker 1: You know, some people experience what's called the pain of
Speaker 1: paying This is a scientist at Carnegie Mellon came up
Speaker 1: with this phrase, which mean the discomfort that you feel
Speaker 1: after you've spent money and you know you really shouldn't have,
Speaker 1: but yet people still do it. So I don't have
Speaker 1: an answer for you. All I'm trying to say is
Speaker 1: it's a pervasive phenomenon. And it's a really interesting question
Speaker 1: that you know, economists have tried to answer in psychologists,
Speaker 1: but I don't really think there's a terrific answer to
Speaker 1: that question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I think that certainly, the further off the
Speaker 3: reward is from the act itself, the harder it becomes.
Speaker 3: I know, for me, exercise became a lot easier to
Speaker 3: do when I realized, like, the payoff for me is
Speaker 3: in twenty minutes or thirty minutes, because it's in how
Speaker 3: I feel versus trying to go. Well, the payoff is
Speaker 3: in three months when I look better, or twenty five
Speaker 3: years when I don't have heart disease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair, But I have to tell you that
Speaker 1: the payoff for me sometimes is an hour later when
Speaker 1: I'm in the shower, but sometimes it isn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember when I gave birth to my daughter, and
Speaker 1: you know, people tell you all these things about how
Speaker 1: beautiful and wonderful it's going to be when you nurse
Speaker 1: your daughter or your child or whatever. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you something, it hurts a lot for many, many, many months,
Speaker 1: and yet women do it, And so why do they
Speaker 1: do it? You're not even doing it for yourself. You're
Speaker 1: doing it for this other little creature which is like
Speaker 1: completely dependent on you. I mean eventually it stops hurting,
Speaker 1: you know, after four months or something. But it's actually
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable at first. And I mean uncomfortable. I don't
Speaker 1: mean psychologically uncomfortable, I mean physically uncomfortable. But yet you
Speaker 1: do it, and you do it willingly, and you do
Speaker 1: it happily. So it's really hard to answer the question
Speaker 1: of how this works. But what I will say is
Speaker 1: that when your brain is predicting, part of what it's
Speaker 1: doing is it's not some abstract thing. Your brain is
Speaker 1: actually changing the firing of its own neurons to anticipate
Speaker 1: what the sensory consequences will be in a moment from
Speaker 1: now of whatever your brain is preparing you to do. So,
Speaker 1: if your brain's gonna stand you up, it's gonna also
Speaker 1: raise your blood pressure so that you don't faint, because
Speaker 1: that would be metabolically costly. You have mechanisms basically that
Speaker 1: will raise your blood pressure as you stand so that
Speaker 1: oxygen can get to your head. At the same time,
Speaker 1: certain parts of your brain are preparing other parts to
Speaker 1: have the sensory feeling of standing up, having your feet
Speaker 1: against the floor and you're backstraightened, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. Now, if you've ever had a song going
Speaker 1: through your head that you cannot get out of your head,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like that. Or you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll ask people to imagine an apple in their head.
Speaker 1: You know, can you imagine a red Macintosh apple? You know,
Speaker 1: in your mind's eye. Can you imagine grasping that apple
Speaker 1: in your hand? Can you imagine taking a bite out
Speaker 1: of that apple, sinking your teeth into the apple, and
Speaker 1: hearing the crunch of the apple and tasting the apple.
Speaker 1: Many people can do this, you know. They have a
Speaker 1: ghostly image of an apple, they can hear the crunch,
Speaker 1: they can taste the apple, they start to salivate. Sometimes
Speaker 1: this is literally your brain changing the firing of its
Speaker 1: own neurons to be prepared to taste an apple and
Speaker 1: see an apple, and hear an apple and feel an
Speaker 1: apple even though there is no apple there. And this
Speaker 1: is what your brain is doing all the time. But
Speaker 1: but when your brain is trying to predict something in
Speaker 1: the longer term future, it's harder to simulate, which is
Speaker 1: what this is called. This changing the firing of your
Speaker 1: own neurons to prepare for the sensory changes in the
Speaker 1: next moment. Your brain just has a harder time doing that.
Speaker 1: So I can tell you that if you turn up
Speaker 1: the heat a little more, or you turn up the
Speaker 1: air conditioning a little more so that you're a little
Speaker 1: more comfortable, now, that's going to have a cost in
Speaker 1: terms of climate change later which will make you much
Speaker 1: more uncomfortable. It's harder to simulate that change later on,
Speaker 1: and so it's less potent of an experience to control
Speaker 1: your actions.
Speaker 3: So let's go into this brain prediction piece a little bit.
Speaker 3: And I'm about to wander into territory I have no
Speaker 3: business wandering into, but I'm going to do it anyway,
Speaker 3: which is, how do we know that our brains are
Speaker 3: doing this sort of prediction. So, just for listeners to
Speaker 3: be clear, what neuroscientists are saying now is that our
Speaker 3: brain is predicting what's going to happen. And so if
Speaker 3: I'm looking out the window, there's actual sense data coming
Speaker 3: back to me, but my brain is also predicting and
Speaker 3: correct me anything I'm going to get something wrong here,
Speaker 3: But my brain is also predicting what it expects it's
Speaker 3: going to see out there, and if those two things
Speaker 3: match up, then that sense data doesn't even necessarily ever
Speaker 3: reach different levels of the brain, right, it just gets
Speaker 3: discarded because it's like, well, prediction matched. Now, if there's
Speaker 3: a difference in the sense data and what my brain predicts,
Speaker 3: there's a couple different things my brain can do, and
Speaker 3: we can talk about that. But from reading your book
Speaker 3: and other books, it sounds like this is what the
Speaker 3: brain is doing all the time, and very predominantly, And
Speaker 3: I don't understand how we know that. And again I'm
Speaker 3: wandering into a whole realm of not knowing how we know.
Speaker 3: But I know. Is that a question you can answer succinctly.
Speaker 1: That's assuming I can answer any questions succinctly, and that's
Speaker 1: a that's a big assumption. Well, when you say how
Speaker 1: do we know, I guess I can say how scientists know.
Speaker 1: Scientists know because there's just an overwhelming amount of evidence
Speaker 1: that this is the case. So we know because of
Speaker 1: how brains are structured, that parts of your brain that
Speaker 1: are supposed to be sensory parts that are supposed to
Speaker 1: be taking in information from the world, like primary sensory
Speaker 1: region in your cerebral cortex called primary visual cortex, which
Speaker 1: is supposed to be the part of your cerebral cortex
Speaker 1: that receives visual sense data from your eye. You know,
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of the neurons that connect to primary
Speaker 1: visual cortex come from other parts of your brain and
Speaker 1: not from the part that is bringing the sense data
Speaker 1: from your eye. So that's one way we know. Another
Speaker 1: way we know is that we can study animals, non
Speaker 1: human animals, and we can look and see watch the
Speaker 1: flow of information from neuron to neuron. And actually we
Speaker 1: can now do this even in some humans who are hospitalized,
Speaker 1: and we can measure the changes in neurons when they're
Speaker 1: in the hospital. We can do experiments to see at
Speaker 1: this point, probably over one thousand papers that have been
Speaker 1: peer reviewed, you know, measuring neurons either directly or measuring
Speaker 1: brain imaging. You know, for humans, when we brain image humans,
Speaker 1: we don't directly measure neural activity. We're measuring blood flow
Speaker 1: changes which are related to neural activity. But there are
Speaker 1: many many studies that directly show the prediction signals in action.
Speaker 1: There are you know, anatomical studies which provide the same evidence.
Speaker 1: Actually what ended up convincing me that this was a
Speaker 1: really viable hypothesis is that at the same time, I
Speaker 1: was reading work on electrical signal processing, because neurons are
Speaker 1: electrical units, they function with electricity. Actually that's partly how
Speaker 1: they communicate with each other. And I was reading that literature,
Speaker 1: and I was reading an anatomical like anatomy brain anatomy,
Speaker 1: and I was reading some work on experiments with non
Speaker 1: human animals, and all of them were pointing to exactly
Speaker 1: the same hypothesis. But these literatures don't speak to each other.
Speaker 1: They were just all converging on the same idea. But
Speaker 1: I would say, what usually convinces people is not data,
Speaker 1: it's their own experience. And so I'll just say, for example,
Speaker 1: have you ever had the experience that you are really
Speaker 1: thirsty and you drink a big, tall glass of water
Speaker 1: and then your thirst is quenched immediately.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: But it's like a mundane thing that we do every day,
Speaker 1: except it's really really fascinating because it actually takes twenty
Speaker 1: minutes for any water that you ingest to make it
Speaker 1: into your bloodstream to get back to your brain to
Speaker 1: tell your brain that there's enough water in your system.
Speaker 1: Now so how is it that your thirst is quenched
Speaker 1: immediately even though it takes twenty minutes for that information
Speaker 1: to make its way to the brain.
Speaker 3: And the answer is, I assumed it was prediction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's prediction. What's your favorite food?
Speaker 3: Eric, pizza?
Speaker 1: Pizza? You know, I'm having pizza for dinner. Actually, what
Speaker 1: is your favorite pizza?
Speaker 3: I'm kind of a plane cheese kind of guy.
Speaker 1: We're having margarita. Okay, yeah, margarita pizza with fresh mazzarella,
Speaker 1: thin crust.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And so when you think about your simulate your favorite pizza,
Speaker 1: do you start to salivate? No? Yep, yeah right. And
Speaker 1: in fact, sometimes when you sit down for dinner or
Speaker 1: for lunch, you might even start salivating a little bit beforehand.
Speaker 1: But why is that happening. That's prediction. Your brain is
Speaker 1: actually preparing you to ingest food because it's metabolically efficient
Speaker 1: to predict and correct, it's not at all metabolically efficient
Speaker 1: to react to things. For example, if you're a coffee
Speaker 1: drinker and you have coffee every day at the same time,
Speaker 1: and then one day you just don't have coffee at
Speaker 1: that time, you get a headache. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have this experience. Why do you have a headache. Why
Speaker 1: do you get a headache? The answer is because your
Speaker 1: brain basically has learned that every day, at a certain
Speaker 1: time you are going to drink coffee, and caffeine will
Speaker 1: cause vascular constriction in the blood vessels of your head,
Speaker 1: and your brain really needs constant blood flow. That doesn't change.
Speaker 1: So what it does is it dilates its blood vessels
Speaker 1: right around the time when you're supposed to be drinking coffee,
Speaker 1: because the coffee's going to come and it's going to
Speaker 1: constrict those blood vessels. So the net result will be
Speaker 1: no change. But if one day you don't drink coffee,
Speaker 1: your blood vessels dilate and you have a headache. Prediction
Speaker 1: is why people become addicted to drugs. Because your brain
Speaker 1: starts to predict that those chemicals will be there, it
Speaker 1: adjusts the chemicals it makes to keep that level constant.
Speaker 1: I could keep going baseball. You know, there is no
Speaker 1: sport that would exist that involves any precision with bats
Speaker 1: and balls and stuff like that, sticks and pucks if
Speaker 1: people did not have a predicting brain, those games just
Speaker 1: wouldn't exist at all because they're all predicated on prediction.
Speaker 3: Let's change our direction a little bit here. Boy, there's
Speaker 3: so many great things that we're just not going to
Speaker 3: get to. I feel like we've covered like two out
Speaker 3: of seven and a half lessons. But what I'd like
Speaker 3: to get to is kind of ground us here at
Speaker 3: the end in some practicality of what some of your
Speaker 3: research bears out. And again I highly recommend this book
Speaker 3: the previous book. There is a lot of really fascinating
Speaker 3: science about how our brains actually work to create our experience.
Speaker 3: But I'd like to end a little bit with what
Speaker 3: are some things that we can do. Knowing the predictive
Speaker 3: nature of the brain, knowing the way that emotions are constructed,
Speaker 3: which is a real big part of your earlier book.
Speaker 3: Knowing these things, what does that tell us about some
Speaker 3: things that we can actually do to make the quality
Speaker 3: of our day to day lives a little bit better,
Speaker 3: to make us feel better.
Speaker 1: Well, there are a couple of things I think that
Speaker 1: are pretty basic. One is that we haven't really said
Speaker 1: where these predictions come from. So when your brain is
Speaker 1: making a prediction, so if we stop time, we just
Speaker 1: full time constant what's happening. Your brain has taken stock
Speaker 1: of what's happening in your body, what's happening in the world,
Speaker 1: And it's going to predict what's going to happen next,
Speaker 1: and how's it making that prediction? Because it's using your
Speaker 1: past experience, it's basically asking itself figuratively speaking, the last
Speaker 1: time I was in a situation like this where I
Speaker 1: was experiencing these things and I just did these things
Speaker 1: like what happened next? What caused it? What did I
Speaker 1: do about it? That's really what it's asking itself. So
Speaker 1: it's using your past experience. So what this means, as
Speaker 1: I said before, is that in a sense, you're always
Speaker 1: cultivating your past that your brain is going to use
Speaker 1: later to make predictions. So one thing that you can
Speaker 1: do is you can cultivate new experiences for yourself. You
Speaker 1: can curate new opportunities. These are kind of expensive, like
Speaker 1: they take effort because you know, anything which is unexpected
Speaker 1: is going to be more expensive. So that's why learning
Speaker 1: anything new is exhilarating. There can be arousal there. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you construct it into anxiety, but you could just as
Speaker 1: easily construct it into exhilaration or determination. You know, get
Speaker 1: your butterflies flying. Information, so you can think of it
Speaker 1: a little bit like exercise. You're making an investment in
Speaker 1: a healthier brain, only this time instead of physical exercise.
Speaker 1: Maybe what you're doing is you're exposing yourself to a
Speaker 1: movie that you have ever seen before that might be
Speaker 1: really different. Or you might meet someone new who's really
Speaker 1: different from you and has different really views on life.
Speaker 1: Or you might, you know, one day when we could
Speaker 1: travel again, go to a place that's really different from yours,
Speaker 1: where the norms and customs are really really different. Like
Speaker 1: really challenge yourself. You can learn a new language, you
Speaker 1: can learn a new skill. There are all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that you can do that will cost in the moment,
Speaker 1: but you can think of that cost like an investment
Speaker 1: that you're making in a healthier brain. And the really
Speaker 1: cool thing is that most skills like this are like driving.
Speaker 1: If you practice making the experience over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, you get kind of automatic at it. Right, So,
Speaker 1: just like driving, at first, it's really hard, but then
Speaker 1: eventually you get really good at it. So one example
Speaker 1: I'll give you is when I was preparing to write
Speaker 1: How Emotions Are Made. I have a colleague who studies
Speaker 1: positive emotions. You know, I was kind of skeptical, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, sure, you know, AWE, AWE supposedly like really
Speaker 1: good for you. Right yeah, okay, okay, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: verily skeptical. I'm just by nature, really skeptical. It was like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, okay, I'm going to try it, so
Speaker 1: let's see what happens. So I'm going to every day
Speaker 1: for five minutes, I'm going to experience aw I'm going
Speaker 1: to find something. I'm going to feel like a spec
Speaker 1: I'm gonna you know, cultivate a sense of wonder and admiration.
Speaker 1: It's something larger than myself. And so I practiced every day.
Speaker 1: So it might be a little a crack in the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and like an ugly little weed became a wondrous
Speaker 1: example of the power of nature and you know, humanity's
Speaker 1: inability to constrain it and control it right, Or it
Speaker 1: might be you know, so just things like this. It
Speaker 1: might have been the color of a particular flower or
Speaker 1: taking like a dandelion. You could see it as a
Speaker 1: weed that's going to just like destroy your lawn. But
Speaker 1: also it's actually quite beautiful actually if you look at
Speaker 1: the structure. So I practice this day and day and
Speaker 1: day in and day out for five minutes, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: whenever things are super stressful, I can take a break
Speaker 1: just without moving, I can take a break. I can
Speaker 1: just shift my attention and cultivate awe in the moment,
Speaker 1: and for a moment, I'm a spec and that means
Speaker 1: my problems are a speck just for a moment. It
Speaker 1: just gives my nervous system a break, and it allows
Speaker 1: me to take some dipty breaths, which is a way
Speaker 1: of resetting your autonomic nervous system and kind of changing
Speaker 1: the trajectory of the moment, which is sometimes all you need.
Speaker 1: So I'm not trying to say that you can just
Speaker 1: snap your fingers and form a couple of little mind
Speaker 1: tricks and then you'll feel better. But I do think
Speaker 1: that this is one useful thing that you can do.
Speaker 1: Another useful thing that you can do, which is going
Speaker 1: to sound really like I'm being a mother, and I
Speaker 1: am a mother, and my daughter hates it when I
Speaker 1: say this, but it is I'm actually speaking to us
Speaker 1: an euroscientist. Get enough sleep, get enough sleep, eat healthfully,
Speaker 1: get enough exercise, and don't be around people who are
Speaker 1: a drain on your body budget unless you can replenish.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people say like, what's the one thing I can
Speaker 1: do to improve my life? And I'm like, get enough sleep. Seriously,
Speaker 1: it's not just that it makes you feel better. Your
Speaker 1: brain doesn't run properly and your body doesn't run properly
Speaker 1: if you don't get enough sleep. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you're caring for someone who's sick, or you're caring for
Speaker 1: a little kid, that's a major drain on your body budget.
Speaker 1: So be aware of that, make plans accordingly. The thing
Speaker 1: I like to reinforce is that you know, not everybody
Speaker 1: can control everything, but everyone can control at least one thing.
Speaker 1: Everybody has more control over their environment than they think.
Speaker 1: Most of us just don't have as much control as
Speaker 1: we would like. But that's not the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: And I would say it's not a zero sum game.
Speaker 3: And not a zero sum game as we were talking
Speaker 3: about before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this idea in evolutionary biology. I'll use the
Speaker 1: fancy term. It's called niche construction. What is niche construction?
Speaker 1: Niche construction is the idea your niche is the part
Speaker 1: of your surroundings that matter to you, and so animals
Speaker 1: actively construct their niche. So when I say you're the
Speaker 1: architect of your experience. Part of what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: engage in niche construction. What does that mean for a human, Well,
Speaker 1: it probably means some boring things like don't keep potato
Speaker 1: chips in your house, and don't drink too much caffeine
Speaker 1: and maybe make sure you walk and stretch enough, and
Speaker 1: don't keep painkillers in the house, or you know whatever.
Speaker 1: But it also means things like, don't be around people
Speaker 1: who are constantly making withdrawals, unless, of course you're responsible
Speaker 1: for them and you've deliberately chosen that rule. Don't be
Speaker 1: around people who are a drain on your body budget.
Speaker 1: Engage in random acts of kindness. You know, I would say,
Speaker 1: make sure you get a hug every day, but that's
Speaker 1: tricky because of COVID, and it's also tricky now because
Speaker 1: we have to be respectful of each other's bodies and boundaries.
Speaker 1: But the truth is that physical touch is actually really
Speaker 1: important to humans. We have opioid receptors in our skins.
Speaker 1: It's important to be touched. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: can't afford to get a massage and it's safe for
Speaker 1: you to do that, do it. If you can't buy
Speaker 1: a soft sweater or a soft blanket, use the stuffed animal.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are lots of ways that you can
Speaker 1: get that stimulation. And I don't mean to trivialize it,
Speaker 1: but it is really important, you know, being outside, for example,
Speaker 1: in the sun. You know, make sure you wear sunscreen,
Speaker 1: but being in the sun is really restorative. Each of
Speaker 1: these things, again, like none of them is going to
Speaker 1: have a huge effect, but they're all gonna sort of
Speaker 1: nudge you in the right direction, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one of my favorite phrases is little by little,
Speaker 3: a little becomes a lot. You know, these things they
Speaker 3: all add up. One of the other things that you
Speaker 3: have talked a fair amount about, which I think is
Speaker 3: a really important one also, and maybe this is where
Speaker 3: we'll wrap up, is really increasing your uh. I think
Speaker 3: the term you use is emotional granularity. Talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about what does that mean to increase our emotional
Speaker 3: granularity and what are some practical ways to do it.
Speaker 1: If you think about what your brain is doing all
Speaker 1: the time, your brain is basically making sense of the
Speaker 1: sense data that come from the world and from your body.
Speaker 1: So when you hear a loud bang, what is that
Speaker 1: loud bang, What caused it? And what do you need
Speaker 1: to do about it? Is it a car door slamming?
Speaker 1: Is it a car backfiring? Is did somebody drop a box?
Speaker 1: Is it a gunshot? You know what your brain understands
Speaker 1: the cause to be will determine what actions your brain takes. Right. Similarly,
Speaker 1: if you have a tug in your chest, you know,
Speaker 1: your brain will ask what is it? What caused it?
Speaker 1: You know? Is it anxiety? Is it heartburn from eating
Speaker 1: too much food? Is it the beginnings of a heart attack?
Speaker 1: This example actually is not trivial, because when people go
Speaker 1: to the hospital with tightness in their chest, whether they
Speaker 1: and the emergency room physician make sense of that tug
Speaker 1: as anxiety or as the beginnings of a heart attack
Speaker 1: can determine whether or not that person to the next day.
Speaker 1: There are accountable number of mistakes that are made in
Speaker 1: that regard. I know at least three people who lost
Speaker 1: their mothers because the mothers went to the hospital and
Speaker 1: were told they'd had anxiety and they should go home,
Speaker 1: and they did go home and then promptly died of
Speaker 1: a heart attack. And in fact, this happened to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who's man, and they didn't send him
Speaker 1: home at a time when they would have normally sent
Speaker 1: a woman home, and he had a heart attack right
Speaker 1: in the emergency room. And in fact, he had what's
Speaker 1: called a widow maker heart attack, meaning that if the
Speaker 1: cardiologists hadn't been right there standing in front of him,
Speaker 1: he would have been dead. And you know why he
Speaker 1: went to the hospital. He had been feeling had a
Speaker 1: tight chest all week. He went to the doctor. The
Speaker 1: doctor did a bunch of tests, said, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with you. It's just anxiety. It's just anxiety. And then
Speaker 1: he went home and he laid down and as he
Speaker 1: was lying there, he remembered that he and I had
Speaker 1: had a converse because I was on his podcast and
Speaker 1: he read how motions were made and we were talking
Speaker 1: about this, and I was telling him this story, and
Speaker 1: he thought, I'm just going to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: And he went to the hospital and they did tests
Speaker 1: on him and they said, no, you're fine, you know,
Speaker 1: you can go home. And he said, but I'm not fine.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling worse. And I'm feeling worse. It's getting more
Speaker 1: painful and more painful, and the tightness is getting more
Speaker 1: and more and more. And they were like, okay, just
Speaker 1: wait here, we'll get the cardiologist, and then he did,
Speaker 1: and then basically he had a heart attack right there.
Speaker 1: Your brain is always making sense of the sensations, and
Speaker 1: the way that your brain makes sense of sensations is predictively,
Speaker 1: as we discussed. So it's not like the information comes
Speaker 1: in and your brain goes, ooh, what's that. It's that
Speaker 1: your brain is making a guess about what the sensations
Speaker 1: will be in a moment from now, and part of
Speaker 1: that guess is not just what will they be, but
Speaker 1: also what caused it. Now, if you can make many guesses,
Speaker 1: if there are many possible guess is that your brain
Speaker 1: can make, and it can try to fit a guess
Speaker 1: to the situation, then your brain is going to have
Speaker 1: a better chance of making the right guess. But if
Speaker 1: your brain can only make one or two guesses, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of options, it's just one or two,
Speaker 1: then the likelihood that your brain will make the wrong
Speaker 1: guess is higher. Granularity just means that your brain can
Speaker 1: make many guesses right, so that a tug in your
Speaker 1: chest or a bang that you hear could be many, many,
Speaker 1: many different things, each one with its own situational context.
Speaker 1: And if your brain learns to make sense of sense
Speaker 1: data in many different ways, each one in a specific situation,
Speaker 1: then you have lots of options to know how to respond.
Speaker 1: So I guess another way to say it would be,
Speaker 1: let's say your body budget is running a deficit and
Speaker 1: you feel crappy. Well, what caused the crappy feeling and
Speaker 1: what should you do about it? I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: know because many things work to add together to make
Speaker 1: that crappy feeling, and it's hard to know what to
Speaker 1: do about it. But if your brain can make meaning
Speaker 1: of the sense data as more than just a crappy feeling,
Speaker 1: but specifically, you know, is it irritation or is it fatigue?
Speaker 1: Or is it I'm dehydrated, or is it I'm anxious.
Speaker 1: It could be emotional, it might be something purely physical.
Speaker 1: It might be, you know, feeling crappy because I'm really
Speaker 1: determined to learn this thing, and I'm really tenacious and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to let it go until I've learned it.
Speaker 1: The more options you give your brain basically, or the
Speaker 1: more options your brain gives itself, the more you learn,
Speaker 1: and the more options you learn, the more flexibility you
Speaker 1: have and flexibility is the key to resilience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's well said. And the example that
Speaker 3: I use in my own life of that is that
Speaker 3: I think for a lot of years I got in
Speaker 3: the habit of labeling a host of things as depression.
Speaker 3: There's not a lot of granularity in that. It's just
Speaker 3: like something crappy is happening inside and I go, I'm depressed.
Speaker 3: Not only does that not allow my brain to make
Speaker 3: a better decision about what's actually happening and make a
Speaker 3: better decision, it reinforces a conception of what's happening with me,
Speaker 3: which is this thing. And I've really been paying a
Speaker 3: lot of attention over the last six months to what
Speaker 3: I would call depression and how often it's tiredness.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, absolute, hundred percent. I'll just tell you this
Speaker 1: one story and then we'll wrap up. A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I went to the doctor, new doctor, right,
Speaker 1: So my doctor retired, So now I have a new doctor,
Speaker 1: and I go the doctor and I say the doctor,
Speaker 1: I'm really really really tired. I'm so fatigued. And he says,
Speaker 1: maybe you're depressed, and I say, no, I'm not depressed.
Speaker 1: I'm just really, really really tired. And he says, well,
Speaker 1: do you have any stress in your life? And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, yes, I run a lab. It's
Speaker 1: a large lab, and you know, of course i have
Speaker 1: stress in my life. But I've always had stress in
Speaker 1: my life. And I'm really, really, really tired. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you're depressed and you just don't know it. And
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe you don't know the DSM criteria.
Speaker 1: You know their criteria for depressions. So let's think about
Speaker 1: what those criteria are. Do I have any of those criteria?
Speaker 1: You know? No, I'm not depressed. I'm tired. Okay. As
Speaker 1: I'm leaving, thinking I'm never coming back to this doctor again,
Speaker 1: the nurse says to me, honey, are you perimenopausal? Because,
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to me, hormones like estrogen and testosterone are metabolic regulators, dopamine, serotonin,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're all metabolic regulators. They all have something
Speaker 1: to do with metabolism. So if you start losing your hormones,
Speaker 1: you know, men lose testausone slowly over their adult life.
Speaker 1: Women lose their estrogen, you know, over a couple of years.
Speaker 1: You know, she says to me, maybe you're tired because
Speaker 1: you're going through menopause. Here's a book. Read this book,
Speaker 1: you know. She gives me the title of a self
Speaker 1: help book. So I read the self help book and
Speaker 1: then I go get you know, twenty five articles and
Speaker 1: start reading them. And sure enough, what is one of
Speaker 1: the major signs of menopause. It's fatigue because you're losing
Speaker 1: your estrogen. Now, the point that I want to make
Speaker 1: is that physition, unbeknownst to him, was attempting to construct
Speaker 1: my experience for me as depression. And what if I
Speaker 1: had accepted that and really felt it. Well, the first
Speaker 1: thing that would have happened is I would have started
Speaker 1: taking antidepressants, which actually could have had the effect of
Speaker 1: driving my body budget into a deficit position, even though
Speaker 1: you know it was in that position because I was
Speaker 1: losing estrogen. Second of all, I'd start wondering what it
Speaker 1: is in my life I have to make changes about
Speaker 1: because clearly something is wrong, like in a big way
Speaker 1: because I'm depressed. I mean, it would have really been
Speaker 1: a trajectory shift for me, and not necessarily a good one,
Speaker 1: I would say. So I think, you know, I have
Speaker 1: been depressed once in my life and It's not an
Speaker 1: experience that I'm eager to repeat. Let's just say it's
Speaker 1: agonizing to be depressed. But there is a way in
Speaker 1: which you can also understand depression as a bankrupt body budget,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm not saying that you can cure
Speaker 1: depression by just like sleeping more and like, you know,
Speaker 1: getting little exos, but I do want to point out
Speaker 1: that depression is a metabolic illness. It is many things
Speaker 1: that there's I meanological problems, but all of these problems,
Speaker 1: including the really negative mood, results from basic metabolic problem.
Speaker 1: You are bankrupt. Basically, what do you do when you're
Speaker 1: bankrupt in your bank account? You stop spending. What does
Speaker 1: a brain do when it's body budget is bankrupt? It
Speaker 1: stops moving your body, and it stops you learning. So
Speaker 1: you are trapped in your head. Basically, context insensitive, You're
Speaker 1: just trapped in your head. Those are two major symptoms
Speaker 1: of depression. So it helps to know a little bit
Speaker 1: I think about not just how to make sense of
Speaker 1: not just how to make fifty shades of crap, you know,
Speaker 1: crappy feelings of all different you know, but it helps
Speaker 1: to also understand something about the biological basis of the
Speaker 1: moods that you experience, because that actually adds to your
Speaker 1: granularity because it allows you to have different action plans
Speaker 1: that you can take again flexibility and resilience.
Speaker 3: I could riff on that for another hour because there
Speaker 3: were so many good points in that.
Speaker 1: But my pizza is getting cold.
Speaker 3: So your pizza is getting cold, and we are way long,
Speaker 3: so and I don't want pizza to get cold. That
Speaker 3: is a tragedy. So thanks so much Lisa for coming
Speaker 3: back on. I have really enjoyed talking with you again.
Speaker 3: It's always such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me back, and hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll have a chance to again.
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