Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. Today my guest is PhD neuroscientists Dr Lisa
Speaker 1: Feldman Barrett. Now, when I was posting about this podcast
Speaker 1: Anxiety Bites, the podcast in general before it premiered, I
Speaker 1: was saying, you know, I'm hosting this new podcast, and
Speaker 1: you know what I want to bring to the table
Speaker 1: with my background in comedy, is is maybe the conversations
Speaker 1: are irreverent, maybe sometimes funny, you know, which just brings
Speaker 1: a sense of levity to the notion of anxiety. And
Speaker 1: I'll be interviewing all kinds of people. And I mentioned
Speaker 1: that I would be interviewing neuroscientists, and of course somebody
Speaker 1: wront wants that's gonna be hard to make this podcast funny.
Speaker 1: Neuroscientists aren't funny. Excuse me commenter on the internet whose
Speaker 1: name I don't remember, but it's still stuck with me.
Speaker 1: Their comment months later, within the first five minutes of
Speaker 1: this interview, Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett and I are making
Speaker 1: jokes about sexual arousal. She's extremely funny and her latest
Speaker 1: book is known as the First Neuroscience Beach read seven
Speaker 1: and a half Lessons About the Brain is the title
Speaker 1: of her latest book. So it's a lot of fun
Speaker 1: talking to Dr Feldman Barrett. Now, just so that you
Speaker 1: know who we're dealing with, okay. She is among the
Speaker 1: top one percent most cited scientists in the world for
Speaker 1: her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a
Speaker 1: University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She also
Speaker 1: holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital,
Speaker 1: where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law,
Speaker 1: Brain and Behavior. She's also given a very popular TED
Speaker 1: talk that has over six million views. Now, all of
Speaker 1: this will be in the show notes. Dr Lisa Feldman
Speaker 1: Barrett's book that came out before Seven and a half
Speaker 1: Lessons about the Brain, is called How Emotions Are Made.
Speaker 1: But in this interview we do focus mainly on a
Speaker 1: lot of the concepts from her most recent book, Seven
Speaker 1: and a half Lessons about the Brain. And while that
Speaker 1: book isn't about anxiety per se, it answered so many
Speaker 1: questions about the brain that people often you know, answer
Speaker 1: so many questions about the brain, but put to rest
Speaker 1: so many myths that people often bring up about the brain.
Speaker 1: In regards to anxiety. You know, I'm sure you've heard
Speaker 1: people say that anxiety is your emotions, it's your lizard brain.
Speaker 1: Well that's not true. And the notion that we don't
Speaker 1: have this lizard brain and that the brain is not
Speaker 1: three parts has been proven to not be true for decades,
Speaker 1: but people are still quoting disproven things. It's, as Dr
Speaker 1: Feldman Barrett says, it's like if the flat earth theory
Speaker 1: was still being taken seriously. I talked to her about
Speaker 1: why this happens, Why people are not, you know, talking
Speaker 1: about what's in her book. I mean, not that they're not.
Speaker 1: That's I wasn't saying, why how come your book isn't popular?
Speaker 1: It's huge, That's not what I mean. But why aren't
Speaker 1: the other theories being put to rest? And she also
Speaker 1: takes us on a step by step of what to
Speaker 1: do during an onset of anxiety so that it doesn't
Speaker 1: turn into a full blown panic attack. And she explains
Speaker 1: exactly what our brain is doing in those moments, and no,
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with the brain thinking it's
Speaker 1: running away from a wooly mammoth. She helps us learn
Speaker 1: what to do so that are anxious feelings become uncomfortable feelings.
Speaker 1: That's right. The hope I offer you on this podcast
Speaker 1: is that one day you'll just be uncomfortable instead of
Speaker 1: so anxious. Anyway, I learned so much from reading her books,
Speaker 1: and obviously even more from chatting with her, and I
Speaker 1: hope you get as much out of my conversation with
Speaker 1: Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett as I did enjoy. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being here. Dr Barrett. I you know
Speaker 1: I'm reading and I read your new book Seven and
Speaker 1: a half Lessons about the Brain, and I know your
Speaker 1: book before that was How Emotions Are Made, and I
Speaker 1: think this interview will concentrate mostly on the book Seven
Speaker 1: and a half Lessons about the Brain. Um, of course
Speaker 1: we can talk about anything. But what I found so
Speaker 1: interesting about this book because this podcast is about anxiety,
Speaker 1: and I will direct every conversation back to anxiety. But
Speaker 1: something about this book, even though it's not your typical Hey,
Speaker 1: here's how you deal with anxiety. I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the best books that someone with anxiety could
Speaker 1: read that dismantles what a lot of other books are
Speaker 1: saying about the brain. Yes, Actlee, I'm so you just
Speaker 1: made my week. I mean because um, the idea behind
Speaker 1: this book was to make, you know, a little book
Speaker 1: of essays that would go down easy, that would you know,
Speaker 1: maybe have a tidbit of neuroscience that you could impress
Speaker 1: your friends with at a dinner party or something. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of jokes. I'm not actually the funny
Speaker 1: one in my family, so you know, I'm like the
Speaker 1: least funny of the of all of us. But you know,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of little singers in there that
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of that even now when I read them,
Speaker 1: I still it's not polite to laugh at your own jokes,
Speaker 1: but I do actually listen. I'm a comedian and you're
Speaker 1: allowed to. And I laughed so much throughout this book,
Speaker 1: Thank you. That means a lot. But the goal was
Speaker 1: to really invite people to think about human nature in
Speaker 1: a little bit of a different way, and to think
Speaker 1: about the kind of human you are or want to be,
Speaker 1: and to re evaluate maybe or reconsider some of the
Speaker 1: truths about yourself and your life that you hold really dear.
Speaker 1: Because even though the essays read quickly, the ideas lingered
Speaker 1: for a while. And I think that anxiety is one
Speaker 1: of the most misunderstood. It's probably right up there with depression.
Speaker 1: Anxiety and depression are very very misunderstood phenomena. I think, UM,
Speaker 1: and I'm really glad to hear that you um found
Speaker 1: something helpful. What did it help you understand differently about
Speaker 1: about anxiety in particular? Well, you know, for me, and
Speaker 1: everyone's different, but I've been dealing with anxiety and obsessed
Speaker 1: with you know, I had anxiety since I was eight.
Speaker 1: I'm forty six. It's been a long journey for me,
Speaker 1: and I enjoy uh, the notion that I'm not special,
Speaker 1: the notion that there is a reason for this, and
Speaker 1: the notion that you know, this is just how the
Speaker 1: brain works. It's due in its thing, and it really
Speaker 1: isn't this big emotional deal in a way that was
Speaker 1: new to me, that the kind of like what you said, UM,
Speaker 1: I wrote this down. I made a note on page
Speaker 1: seventy six, and to me, this was the most important thing.
Speaker 1: Whether I knew it somewhere deep inside me or not,
Speaker 1: I just I circled. Brains aren't wired for accuracy. They're
Speaker 1: wired to keep us alive. When you're predicting brain is right,
Speaker 1: it creates your reality. When it's wrong, it still creates
Speaker 1: your reality. So that, to me is like what everyone
Speaker 1: with anxiety needs to understand, that we are creating our
Speaker 1: own reality when we are getting anxious, because we're usually
Speaker 1: not anxious about actual threats. That's true. And I would
Speaker 1: actually even go further and say that, And I'm speaking
Speaker 1: as someone who also has dealt with anxiety her whole life,
Speaker 1: whose daughter has social anxiety. You know, like the anxiety
Speaker 1: is rampant in our culture. It's really a lot up
Speaker 1: there with depression, I think, as a kind of an emergency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but actually when you start to think about anxiety from
Speaker 1: the perspective of what is a brain and why do
Speaker 1: we even have brains? Like, brains are really expensive organs there.
Speaker 1: You know, that three pound blob of meat between your
Speaker 1: ears is the most expensive organ that you have. It
Speaker 1: costs give or take your metabolic budget. That's more than
Speaker 1: your heart, that's more than your lungs. That's more than
Speaker 1: any of your muscles. Um. You know, um, And so
Speaker 1: I mean individually worth it your muscles. So what's it for?
Speaker 1: And the answer is it's you know, there'sn't one answer really,
Speaker 1: but one important thing that your brain is for is
Speaker 1: regulating the systems of your body, and so everything that
Speaker 1: you feel, everything that you do, every you know, as
Speaker 1: I say in the book, you know, every hug you give,
Speaker 1: every insult you bear, every insult you give, you know
Speaker 1: is um related actually to intimately to the state of
Speaker 1: your own Audie. And so when you understand this, you
Speaker 1: start to look at anxiety a little bit differently, or
Speaker 1: at least I do. And I was giving an interview
Speaker 1: to um Uh David Sharia Mandri at The Guardian, and
Speaker 1: I was I was describing to him this experience that
Speaker 1: I had right before the COVID pandemic took hold um
Speaker 1: and and it will illustrate to you what I mean
Speaker 1: by this about you. You start to look at your
Speaker 1: own anxiety differently and maybe even deconstructed or dissolve it
Speaker 1: into its more basic parts, which then makes it much
Speaker 1: more manageable to deal with. So UM I was describing
Speaker 1: to him the situation where I was in New Zealand
Speaker 1: and um because every spring break I would accept speaking
Speaker 1: engagements at universities or for my books so that I
Speaker 1: could go somewhere nice with my daughter and take her
Speaker 1: with me on holiday for her spring break. And so
Speaker 1: I was in New Zealand, having done book fair and
Speaker 1: this and that. You know, I gotta I was very
Speaker 1: honored by a honorary degree at university and so on.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting in New Zealand. Wait, she's in the
Speaker 1: air now, right in the air flying. It's a very
Speaker 1: long flight, and I'm reading and listening to all of
Speaker 1: this stuff erupting around the world about about the covid
Speaker 1: Um virus. And I felt this increase in arousal that
Speaker 1: was very unpleasant. And if I was anybody other than me,
Speaker 1: I would have been anxious. I would have been anxious.
Speaker 1: And the way my brain would have made sense of
Speaker 1: that arousal would have dictated what I did next, what
Speaker 1: I felt next, and would have constructed in the blank
Speaker 1: and I anxiety and you know, um, all sorts of
Speaker 1: things would issue from that. Instead, though the way I
Speaker 1: interpreted it was Okay, I'm having trouble predicting what's going
Speaker 1: to happen next, And whenever I'm having trump whenever your
Speaker 1: brain has trouble predicting, there's an increase in arousal because
Speaker 1: your brain secretes chemicals that helps it attempt to learn
Speaker 1: something in the moment to help predict better later, but
Speaker 1: that arousal can feel like shit. But instead of anxiety,
Speaker 1: I felt high arousal that was unpleasant. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I got my sister in law on the phone and
Speaker 1: I said, I'm feeling very you know, high arousal, unpleasant,
Speaker 1: high arousal. And I because I don't know what to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: should I meet her at the airport and we should
Speaker 1: turn around and go home? Or should I you know,
Speaker 1: because it was this was we were still a few
Speaker 1: days out before the official Uh. Yeah. By the way,
Speaker 1: I just as a comedian, have to interrupt and say,
Speaker 1: I do love that your family knows you so well
Speaker 1: that you can call the same experiencing arousal and they
Speaker 1: know this isn't a creepy phone called it. I mean anxiety, exactly, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Arousal in our world doesn't mean sexual, rausical. It means like,
Speaker 1: you know, you feel jittery and like your mind is
Speaker 1: like flitting around, And you're right. But I think the
Speaker 1: thing to understand is that the way that your brain
Speaker 1: works is metabolically efficient, and that's hide directly to your
Speaker 1: health for the rest of your life. A metabolically efficient
Speaker 1: thing to do is for your brain to predict what's
Speaker 1: going to happen next based on past experience. And if
Speaker 1: your brain can't predict well for whatever reason, there are
Speaker 1: lots of reasons why a brain can't predict well. If
Speaker 1: there's a lot of uncertainty or ambiguity, there's an increase
Speaker 1: in arousal, which you often feel directly as feeling worked up,
Speaker 1: feeling jittery, feeling like you can't concentrate, and the go
Speaker 1: to way that your brain makes sense of that is anxiety,
Speaker 1: and that dictates your actions and also what you feel next. However,
Speaker 1: if you learn to make sense of those sensations differently,
Speaker 1: you will act differently, and then it becomes maybe an
Speaker 1: uncomfortable state, but it's not an anxiety. And I have
Speaker 1: to tell you Jan, this is not like bullshit you
Speaker 1: know Jedi ring games here, This is real well, I mean,
Speaker 1: Jedis aren't bullshit. No offense to any Star Wars please,
Speaker 1: we can't lose them. This is not like psychological mumbo jumbo.
Speaker 1: You know, your brain is always guessing at what sensations mean,
Speaker 1: and when you learn to guess differently, you are architecting
Speaker 1: your life that so that you will act differently and
Speaker 1: experience things differently, sometimes with very profound effects. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. This brings me What you just said brings
Speaker 1: me to the most mind blowing part of your book
Speaker 1: that made me literally want to run in the streets
Speaker 1: screaming why isn't anyone listening to this. I can go
Speaker 1: on a tangent with you in a minute about the
Speaker 1: sexism of it all, because I think there's some sexism here.
Speaker 1: But what you just said is when we are feeling
Speaker 1: those feelings of arousal, you know, the beginning of what
Speaker 1: could be, for some of us, a panic attack. What
Speaker 1: I was taught as a young twenty something, and I've
Speaker 1: still been taught it to this day, is that when
Speaker 1: that's happening, my body is just having some crazy reaction
Speaker 1: because I used to be a caveman and all these
Speaker 1: chemicals and my limbic brain and my lizard brain, and
Speaker 1: you know, I never found that to be of comfort,
Speaker 1: because what I used to say is so you're telling
Speaker 1: me my brain hasn't evolved at all, and that I'm
Speaker 1: just this victim of this limbic, this lizard. I don't
Speaker 1: like that at all. How the hell am I going
Speaker 1: to overcome this? So the way you just described it
Speaker 1: is actually what's happening in that moment is not a
Speaker 1: helpless victim situation. Your body is actually doing something in
Speaker 1: that moment to help you. It just needs a minute.
Speaker 1: But we don't have a minute when we're waiting for
Speaker 1: our feelings to show up. So it's it's it's scrambling
Speaker 1: to make sense of these feelings. Attach a story to
Speaker 1: it so we know if what we're feeling is whatever.
Speaker 1: And by that time, if we're not practiced like you, um,
Speaker 1: we're adding our own thoughts into it. Now it's just
Speaker 1: a jumble. Um, you know, we're telling ourselves a story
Speaker 1: while our brain is trying to make a story. I'm
Speaker 1: putting it very not scientifically, but basically what I ended
Speaker 1: up having to do to work on my anxiety is
Speaker 1: eventually get to where you started in your story, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, talk to myself during it to calm myself down.
Speaker 1: But the original thing positive to me was because lizard
Speaker 1: brain caveman limbiic blah blah, and reading your book that
Speaker 1: that is all bullshit, that we don't have three parts
Speaker 1: of our brain, and that this is all back from
Speaker 1: like men who worshiped Plato can you talk to me
Speaker 1: about I'm going to give you your quote. Bad behavior
Speaker 1: doesn't come from ancient and unbridled inner beasts. Good behavior
Speaker 1: is not the result of rationality, rationality and emotion or
Speaker 1: not at war. They do not even live in separate
Speaker 1: parts of the brain. The three layered brain was proposed
Speaker 1: by several scientists over the years. UM Paul McClean concluded
Speaker 1: that mammal brains had a collection of parts that reptile
Speaker 1: brains didn't, which he called the Olympic system. And now
Speaker 1: the human origin story is born. Please dissect that, dismantle
Speaker 1: it for me. Sure. So this idea that we have
Speaker 1: this ancient lizard brain, and then layered on top of
Speaker 1: that is this newer mammalian part called Olympic system, where
Speaker 1: limbic means um border, that is the tissue that borders
Speaker 1: you know, your lizard brain. And then on top of
Speaker 1: that evolved, um, your you know, big neo cortex, which
Speaker 1: is where rationality lives. And this idea UM has been
Speaker 1: around really since the beginning I would say, modern neuroscience
Speaker 1: in some ways. And when was that for for people
Speaker 1: who don't know, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, And actually I
Speaker 1: have a whole section in um how emotions are made?
Speaker 1: Where I dissect this history of like how did people
Speaker 1: come to take this an idea really that you can
Speaker 1: trace all the way back to Plato and tattooed onto
Speaker 1: the brain and then make that, you know, um, the
Speaker 1: origin story of human nature. Right, and and if you
Speaker 1: go back to the Plato story, it's really interesting story
Speaker 1: where he's he's in a number of places. You know,
Speaker 1: he talks about the human psyche, which isn't exactly the
Speaker 1: same as the modern human mind, but for present purposes
Speaker 1: will just use them equivalently. Now, human mind can be
Speaker 1: understood as two horses and a cherry tear. One horse
Speaker 1: is your instincts, um, like you know, hunger and thirst
Speaker 1: and sex drive and so on. Um that you know
Speaker 1: a neuroscience joke ready is uh? People call it the
Speaker 1: four fs, feeding, fleeing, fighting, and mating. Excuse me, doctor,
Speaker 1: Mating does not begin with an F. She she means
Speaker 1: to say fun exactly. So one horse is, you know, instincts.
Speaker 1: One horse represents emotions. And then there's the chariots here
Speaker 1: who's controlling the two beasts? Right? The human controlling the
Speaker 1: two beasts? This is actually a morality tale in Plato's hands.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a story of human morality, that
Speaker 1: you've got these inner urges that have to be controlled
Speaker 1: by your rational self. And in modern times we say,
Speaker 1: you know, when your rationality controls your your inner beast,
Speaker 1: you are mentally healthy and you're a moral person. When
Speaker 1: your inner beast gets the better of you, you are
Speaker 1: either immoral because you didn't try hard enough to control yourself,
Speaker 1: or you're sick because you can't control yourself. I mean.
Speaker 1: That's basically the um the narrative that you find embedded
Speaker 1: in a lot of modern writing um uh, scientific and
Speaker 1: popular writing about um right, that your mind and therefore
Speaker 1: your brain is a battle ground between your inner beast
Speaker 1: and your more rational self. The problem with this narrative
Speaker 1: is that it it completely The science doesn't doesn't at
Speaker 1: all back it up. That this reminds me of like
Speaker 1: the flat Earth of neuroscience, I mean, and the fact
Speaker 1: that it is in fact that it hasn't been laughed
Speaker 1: out of society is frightening. That's so funny that you
Speaker 1: said that, because the flat earth myth is something I
Speaker 1: talk about in How Emotions Are Made. I got okay,
Speaker 1: I read that book too. It must be in my brain.
Speaker 1: I I lifted from you in front of you. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, but the myth of the sort of the
Speaker 1: battle ground in your brain is really pervasive, and I
Speaker 1: think the the important thing to understand is that what
Speaker 1: you feel is not in your body, it's actually in
Speaker 1: your brain. You your brain or with your brain. You
Speaker 1: smell with your brain, if you take your pulse, you
Speaker 1: actually feel that pulse in your brain. Your brain is
Speaker 1: modeling your body in the world. Well wait one, it's
Speaker 1: like that could be very helpful. I'm going to mark
Speaker 1: that for my listeners. Where again, this is even until recently.
Speaker 1: If I'm having an anxiety attack, I look at it
Speaker 1: as a battle between my body and my brain. Right
Speaker 1: I will think, now my body is having a rapid
Speaker 1: heart rate and it's having a lien to that. Because
Speaker 1: you know, for me, if I'm having a panic attack
Speaker 1: these days, I always say that it's usually from very
Speaker 1: physical reasons. I didn't sleep enough, too much coffee, bloody blood.
Speaker 1: So I'll start to do that and I'll start to
Speaker 1: see my body and brain is two different things. And
Speaker 1: I might do a cognitive exercise like you did in
Speaker 1: New Zealand or on the way to New Zealand. But
Speaker 1: from now on I will stop thinking of it as
Speaker 1: body versus brain. It is. That's right. My body can't
Speaker 1: feel a damn thing or smell a damn thing if
Speaker 1: I'm brain dead. And so maybe this helps our listeners,
Speaker 1: who you know, I do want to go back to
Speaker 1: it in a second. I do think some people might
Speaker 1: not want to let go of the limbic lizard brain.
Speaker 1: It's fun and easy for them, but I want to
Speaker 1: empower people to say, um, you're not a victim of
Speaker 1: your own body. This isn't um something of to fight against.
Speaker 1: You just have to know more about it. So so
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry to interrupt. Continue what you were saying
Speaker 1: that you can't you smell with your brain? You you
Speaker 1: taste with your brain? Please feel feed interrupted, I'll probably
Speaker 1: just natter on, but I think it's really important that
Speaker 1: you have to understand that what your your brain is
Speaker 1: modeling your body to control your body. So hopefully your
Speaker 1: brain is accurate. Right, So your brain makes predictions about
Speaker 1: what's happening in your body. It actually prepares. So for example,
Speaker 1: if we were to hold time still, we just stopped time,
Speaker 1: we look into your brain. Your brain is representing what
Speaker 1: it believes to be occurring in your body and in
Speaker 1: your brain and I mean and world, And based on
Speaker 1: that it makes a set of predictions about what to
Speaker 1: do next. So it starts to prepare the signals to
Speaker 1: change your body so that you can do something that
Speaker 1: will be beneficial. And what you experience are the consequences
Speaker 1: of those motor and what we call visceral motor that is,
Speaker 1: the changing of the internal state of the body. Those
Speaker 1: motor signals actually give rise to what are called sensory predictions.
Speaker 1: So your brain asks itself figuratively, the last time I
Speaker 1: was in this physical state and I was about to
Speaker 1: change my body in this way, what did I see?
Speaker 1: What did I hear? What did I feel? And then
Speaker 1: it starts to construct those experiences to prepare for the
Speaker 1: sense data coming from the body and from the world,
Speaker 1: that is expecting when you're battling, you're anxious, when you're
Speaker 1: operating your less anxious. Yes. And I want to say
Speaker 1: two things about this. I'll say the first the first
Speaker 1: thing will follow up directly on what you said, And
Speaker 1: then I want to say this other thing about why
Speaker 1: does it matter that we understand how these things work?
Speaker 1: The first things that to your point, if your brain
Speaker 1: constructs anxiety, that is, it makes sense of since this
Speaker 1: high arousal state unpleasant state as anxiety, and it leads
Speaker 1: you to act in certain ways as opposed to other ways,
Speaker 1: and so that prolongs the arousal and so on. You
Speaker 1: suffer like you you you experience suffering, but you know
Speaker 1: there is a difference between suffering and discomfort. I agree.
Speaker 1: Can I say one quick thing that people know that
Speaker 1: I talk about anxiety and that I having this podcast
Speaker 1: come out and I will get emails from people saying
Speaker 1: I suffer from anxiety. And I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: woo woo, but I always say, if you keep saying
Speaker 1: you're suffering, you will be suffering. Ring you have anxiety, anxieties,
Speaker 1: your friend anxiety shows up. You're a human. But the
Speaker 1: more people keep with the dramatic narrative I'm suffering, you
Speaker 1: know you're not. You're uncomfortable. It sucks. It's scary. If
Speaker 1: you don't know what the hell is going on, it
Speaker 1: can feel like suffering, but you're not actually suffering. And
Speaker 1: I feel like I want that to be good news
Speaker 1: for people. But we like to hold on our story.
Speaker 1: So I know right now some people are you know,
Speaker 1: turning the channel as I say and going, no, she
Speaker 1: doesn't get it. But I agree, it's not suffering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So let me just say that I don't doubt for
Speaker 1: a minute that people, when they experience anxiety, crippling anxiety,
Speaker 1: that they suffer. They do suffer. The point is that,
Speaker 1: I mean we all everyone has had this experience um
Speaker 1: at least once and um. But what I and for
Speaker 1: some people much longer. But what I'm trying to say
Speaker 1: is that the suffering isn't obligatory, and that you have
Speaker 1: more control than you think you do. And when I
Speaker 1: say that you have more control than you think you too,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that you are therefore responsible for your
Speaker 1: anxiety and suffering. I'm not saying you're culpable in some
Speaker 1: like cosmic way. I am saying that you have more
Speaker 1: control than you think you do, and you have maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit more responsibility for your feelings than you
Speaker 1: think you do, not because you're to blame for them,
Speaker 1: but because you're the only one who can change them.
Speaker 1: This is a point where I made you know when
Speaker 1: I in my TED talk that I think people really
Speaker 1: resonated to that you know, if you're responsible sometimes for
Speaker 1: yourself and for the horrible, Like you know, if something
Speaker 1: horrible happens to you, you're not to blame for that,
Speaker 1: and you're also not to blame for all the ship
Speaker 1: that comes from it. Yeah, but you're the only one
Speaker 1: who can change it. And that means you are, in
Speaker 1: an unfortunate way kind of responsible. And that may feel
Speaker 1: to you like you're being victimized twice, and you are, maybe,
Speaker 1: But what other options do you have? You There isn't one,
Speaker 1: And so I think understanding that you can dissolve the suffering.
Speaker 1: You might not be able to get rid of the discomfort,
Speaker 1: you can dissolve the suffering into discomfort. That's actually a
Speaker 1: really powerful set of abilities that you should cherish, practice
Speaker 1: and cherish because you know what, when we exercise every day,
Speaker 1: we're uncomfortable, but we have that effort as like an
Speaker 1: investment in a healthier brain and body and a healthier
Speaker 1: you in the future. And the same thing is true. Um,
Speaker 1: anxiety is not your friend, but arousal is there for
Speaker 1: a reason. It's uncomfortable and it might feel like shit,
Speaker 1: but it's there for reason, and it's there actually, you know,
Speaker 1: in part because your brain believes something is important enough
Speaker 1: to learn or that you have to do something really hard,
Speaker 1: and so even if it's uncomfortable. And I also want
Speaker 1: to say that, you know, for example, research shows that
Speaker 1: in chronic pain, if you learn to deconstruct that chronic
Speaker 1: pain into um, discomfort, you can not only reduce your
Speaker 1: own suffering experience of suffering, but you can like reduce
Speaker 1: your dependence on opioids for example. Yeah, and I'm you
Speaker 1: know right now we're talking and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: am three months out from major back surgery, Like I
Speaker 1: had a open back surgery, a spinal fusion at three levels.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking to you as a scientist. I'm talking
Speaker 1: to you as someone who's sister in law suffers from
Speaker 1: terrible chronic pain from my algy and she uses how
Speaker 1: emotions are made actually as a little manual for her
Speaker 1: with her patients. I'm talking to you as someone who
Speaker 1: just had major back surgery. Yeah, and um, there's a
Speaker 1: guy named Eric Garland who's done a lot of research
Speaker 1: on meditation and other ways of learning to dissolve suffering
Speaker 1: into discomfort and the consequences for opioid use, for example.
Speaker 1: So and I could go on and on and on
Speaker 1: about this. I mean, there's an analogy I would say
Speaker 1: that a lot of people find really helpful. A while back,
Speaker 1: I was really interested to learn to paint, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I took some lessons from a painter and
Speaker 1: and and she explained to me, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: hold up a glass. Now, I'm holding up a glass
Speaker 1: full of water. She explained to me that if you
Speaker 1: try to take this glass and it's a three dimensional
Speaker 1: object and you want to render it on a two
Speaker 1: dimensional canvas, you could just look at the object and
Speaker 1: then try to draw it on the canvas, and you'll
Speaker 1: end up getting a pretty shitty looking drawing. Yeah. Or
Speaker 1: what you can do is do what classical painters do,
Speaker 1: which is they take the object and they deconstruct it
Speaker 1: into pieces of light. So you deconstruct this and you
Speaker 1: have to learn to kind of undo what your brain does. Naturally,
Speaker 1: your brain us to sort of teach itself to see differently.
Speaker 1: And you can see I don't know about you, but
Speaker 1: I can see like even though it's a clear glass, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see blues and black and gray, and there's actually
Speaker 1: some yellow like right there, like yellow. And then you
Speaker 1: paint the pieces of light on the canvas, and you
Speaker 1: get a pretty decent rendering of a three dimensional object
Speaker 1: on a two dimensional canvas. Unless you're meat. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: me too. Anxiety Bites will be right back after a
Speaker 1: quick little message from one of our sponsors. You know,
Speaker 1: most people I know who do not want to go
Speaker 1: to therapy, who do not want to work on their anxiety,
Speaker 1: they know somewhere, because you know, it's just in our culture,
Speaker 1: right that everything comes from somewhere. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, like if you find out, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm anxious because my parents were anxious and I learned
Speaker 1: this from them or whatever, it's like going back in
Speaker 1: time doesn't really solve what you have to do anyway,
Speaker 1: which is just learned skills you've never learned, like we
Speaker 1: talked about all the way to the beginning of this conversation.
Speaker 1: And so in that way, I feel like people are
Speaker 1: afraid to dive deep because they're like, what's not my fault?
Speaker 1: I have anxiety. It's not my fault. I was born
Speaker 1: during a climate crisis, not my fault. But but and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, it's not. But are we only taking
Speaker 1: care of ourselves when it's our fault. I mean, what
Speaker 1: you're pointing to is the difference between culpability and responsibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you could be responsible for something that you're not
Speaker 1: culpable for, meaning you're not to blame. Yeah, you are
Speaker 1: responsible for for dealing with it. I mean I didn't
Speaker 1: learn something. I'd say I'd probably got some rusty tools
Speaker 1: handed down to me from my parents and dealing with
Speaker 1: anxiety or even just knowing what anxiety was. So I
Speaker 1: had to get my own tools. But the way I
Speaker 1: look at it is great. I also had to get
Speaker 1: my own apartment. I to get my own clothes, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not so walking around in the clothes that I
Speaker 1: wore as a toddler going. So my fault I grew,
Speaker 1: you know, like, well, okay, but now you have to dress,
Speaker 1: you know, and it and that can actually be fun.
Speaker 1: You can actually differentiate yourself from where you came and
Speaker 1: it can be really empowering, which helps reduce anxiety in
Speaker 1: my humble opinion, for sure. I mean I will say
Speaker 1: that you aren't born knowing to construct anxiety out of
Speaker 1: out of arousal. You learned that. So this culture is,
Speaker 1: you know, the cultural practices that we have in some
Speaker 1: ways are the perfect recipe for creating anxiety disorders and depression. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's so much uncertainty, yeah, in in so many domains,
Speaker 1: and the go to meaning that everybody makes is anxiety,
Speaker 1: and that dictates your actions and it dictates, like physically,
Speaker 1: what happens next. But that isn't the only explanation, That
Speaker 1: isn't the only narrative that's available. And you can deconstruct
Speaker 1: that anxiety into unpleasant arousal and have a completely different
Speaker 1: trajectory for what happens next. Oh, I love that, Which
Speaker 1: is why it's important to understand how your brain is
Speaker 1: constructing emotions, how is it constructing anxiety. So the techniques
Speaker 1: of like deep breathing and yoga and like, you know,
Speaker 1: all these things are you know, reappraisal as it's called,
Speaker 1: or like you know, reconceptualizing making sense of things in
Speaker 1: a different way. All these um strategies work, but they
Speaker 1: don't work for the reasons that all the you know,
Speaker 1: self help books say why is that important? It's important
Speaker 1: because in one situation they might not work or they
Speaker 1: might stop working. And then if you understand the principle,
Speaker 1: you can figure out other strategies that you didn't read
Speaker 1: about that, follow that principle of brain funk shin. But
Speaker 1: if you are just following other people's recommendations and you
Speaker 1: don't understand how it works under the hood, then um,
Speaker 1: you're stuck. When those strategies stopped working for you, which
Speaker 1: they will in certain circumstances. Not it's not you know, reconceptualizing,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to make sense of things differently doesn't
Speaker 1: always work as a strategy, And so you need to
Speaker 1: have a tool, you know, a toolbox that's filled with
Speaker 1: other tools, or you might even need to make your
Speaker 1: own tools on the fly, you know. And that's really
Speaker 1: what seven and a half Lessons and the longer you
Speaker 1: Know and and How Motions Are Made, which is a
Speaker 1: much longer book. Yeah, it's really designed to to sort
Speaker 1: of impart well I And I love that because too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have so many people say to me, you know, um,
Speaker 1: I've tried everything for anxiety. Nothing works, and it's like, god,
Speaker 1: you know, I wonder what they're doing, and it's it's
Speaker 1: like you said, they're probably it's probably not the right
Speaker 1: tools for them, you know, or even the right way
Speaker 1: of understanding what's going on under the hood. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say also that you know those like the list
Speaker 1: of tools is is not a recipe, it's like a
Speaker 1: tasting menu, Like you've got to figure out what works
Speaker 1: for you and what doesn't in certain situations. Also, what
Speaker 1: does it mean to have something work exactly? It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you know that the arousal goes away. It
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that your discomfort goes away. And also
Speaker 1: it's not like flipping on an awful light switch. You
Speaker 1: have to think of in terms of a trajectory, which
Speaker 1: means you're nudging yourself, nudging yourself in a particular direction.
Speaker 1: You know, every new experience that we cultivate for ourselves
Speaker 1: in the moment with effort, you know, it's like an
Speaker 1: investment in a in a different future. Right. But every
Speaker 1: new experience we have, every new experience the brain makes,
Speaker 1: the brain learns to make it again in the future.
Speaker 1: And the more you practice it, the more this experience
Speaker 1: or the skill, the better you get at it, the
Speaker 1: more automatic you'll get it at like driving kind of
Speaker 1: So in a sense, what you're doing every moment of
Speaker 1: your life, you're really in a sense cultivating your past
Speaker 1: that will determine who you will be in the future,
Speaker 1: and by past you mean that moment you're driving will
Speaker 1: be the past someday when you're when your brain is
Speaker 1: predicting next week. Yeah, if you with a tremendous effort
Speaker 1: and maybe even great um you know, sense of disbelief,
Speaker 1: attempt to deconstruct your anxiety into unpleasant arousal. And it's
Speaker 1: really hard to do the first time you do it,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to do the second time you do it,
Speaker 1: and probably hard the thirtieth time you do it, and
Speaker 1: even after it gets automatic, it might be hard to
Speaker 1: do it occasionally. But it's hard to do. But the
Speaker 1: thing is that that every time you do it, you're
Speaker 1: training your brain is training itself. Yeah too, make meaning
Speaker 1: differently in the future. So the way that your brain
Speaker 1: works is it predicts what's going to happen next using
Speaker 1: your past. So every experience you have, everything that you
Speaker 1: do in the present is basically like your brain training itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like cultivating your past. Yeah, the past of the
Speaker 1: future that's come and you know, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: anything like I put a dollar in my savings account.
Speaker 1: I don't go, wow, you know, I've got no money.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, in twenty years that will be whatever dollars.
Speaker 1: And you know, same with working out, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's exactly the same. Yeah. Now, okay, So as
Speaker 1: we're wrapping up, I I want to go nitty gritty
Speaker 1: into this and and circle back to this notion of
Speaker 1: this myth about the brain. So if we don't have
Speaker 1: a three part brain with a lizard and a limbic
Speaker 1: and a caveman. Now I'm throwing the caveman and there.
Speaker 1: You didn't really say that, but I'm throwing it in there.
Speaker 1: I might be wrong, but it's almost like, is our
Speaker 1: brain smarter and more functional than these myths give it
Speaker 1: credit for? And and what is the brain if it's
Speaker 1: not this three part thing? Well yeah, yes, basically yes.
Speaker 1: But I would say the way I would think about
Speaker 1: it is that, um, this idea that anything about your
Speaker 1: body or your brain being you know the same as
Speaker 1: you know from caveman or you know from the place
Speaker 1: our placed to see ancestors, you know under gathers is
Speaker 1: is a bit of an overstatement because genes don't work
Speaker 1: like that. And so you know, this whole idea that
Speaker 1: we have this fixed human nature in the way that
Speaker 1: our brain is structured and works in the way that
Speaker 1: our bodies work, and that we have nurture. This kind
Speaker 1: of learning, which overlays or modifies this nature is wrong.
Speaker 1: It's just it's not even wrong. It's such a profound
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of how genes work. Um, you know, we have
Speaker 1: the kind of nature that requires nurture. We have the
Speaker 1: kind of genes that require learning in order for your
Speaker 1: brain to even finish wiring itself after Okay, love it, Okay.
Speaker 1: You know when you're born, your brain is not a
Speaker 1: miniature and dull brain. It's a brain that is unfinished,
Speaker 1: and it's waiting for wiring instructions from the world and
Speaker 1: from your own body. And part of that is, you know,
Speaker 1: your brain wires itself to the distance between your eyes,
Speaker 1: and it wires itself to the shape of your ear,
Speaker 1: and it wires itself to the amount of sunlight that
Speaker 1: you get and when you get it throughout the day,
Speaker 1: And it wires itself in all these physical ways. But
Speaker 1: it's also wiring itself to the social feedback that you get.
Speaker 1: For example, how much do your parents talk to you,
Speaker 1: how much do they make eye contact with you, how
Speaker 1: much do they use gaze to help you regulate what
Speaker 1: should you care about in the world and what can
Speaker 1: you ignore as noise? For example, if parents don't properly
Speaker 1: use gays with their infants, there's not like one way
Speaker 1: to do it. There are multiple ways. But basically with
Speaker 1: gays and with other things that we do, we're teaching
Speaker 1: our children are infants, these little developing brains. What do
Speaker 1: they have to care about in the world and what
Speaker 1: can they ignore as irrelevant? And if you don't do that,
Speaker 1: the child's brain will think that everything is potentially relevant.
Speaker 1: That my friend is vigilance. Yes, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people with you know, chaotic homes or whatever, right, they're
Speaker 1: super vigilant. They end up being kind of anywhere from
Speaker 1: like a codependent anxious right. Well, but remember if your
Speaker 1: brain can't predict, if it thinks every novel thing is
Speaker 1: potentially important, yeah, and there's gonna be a lot of arousal,
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety. And I will also say very
Speaker 1: metabolically costly, like every time you are vigilant and you
Speaker 1: don't need to be. Every time, when your brain prepares
Speaker 1: you for a big metabolic outlay and you don't need it,
Speaker 1: you pay a tiny little metabolic tax and those taxes
Speaker 1: add up over time. Another myth I think that's as
Speaker 1: big as the myth of the try and brain is
Speaker 1: the idea that like cortisol is a stress wormon, the
Speaker 1: cortisol is not a stress wormon. Cortisol is a hormone
Speaker 1: that your brain directs your adrenal glance to secrete when
Speaker 1: your brain believes that you have a big metabolic outlay coming,
Speaker 1: So it gets cortisol just gets glucose into your bloodstream
Speaker 1: really fast. So I love that part of your book
Speaker 1: where you say if you eat when you're stressed, that
Speaker 1: adds a hundred calories to what you're eating. And that's
Speaker 1: really the myth, the mythology right of the cortisol weight
Speaker 1: gain thing. It's like the mythology. But that's the explanation.
Speaker 1: That's one of the explanations. Basically, that's one of that's
Speaker 1: part of the explanation. I would say, But you know,
Speaker 1: before you wake up in the morning, you have a
Speaker 1: cortisol search because you're going in your brain is predicting,
Speaker 1: you know, based on past experience, that you're about to
Speaker 1: drag your ass out of bed. You need glue coast
Speaker 1: right and right before you exercise, and as you exercise,
Speaker 1: you have big portosul serge why because you need blue
Speaker 1: coast and your right But that secretion with when you
Speaker 1: don't actually need it, So your brain is being vigilant
Speaker 1: and UM doesn't know whether this novel thing or this
Speaker 1: ambiguous situation, whether you know this is um you know
Speaker 1: some kind of like coping response is required not it's
Speaker 1: kind of prepare just in case it's going to attempt
Speaker 1: to learn just in case. That's an expense. And the
Speaker 1: more you spend when you don't need it, the more, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you run, you drive your your body budget
Speaker 1: as as I that's the metaphor I use you bet
Speaker 1: your metabolism basically driving it into this like deficit state.
Speaker 1: And that's a very simplistic metaphor for a very complicated
Speaker 1: set of processes. But now the last I think it's
Speaker 1: a useful metaphor. Yeah, UM, to understand what's happening kind
Speaker 1: of under the hood. Anxiety bites will be right back
Speaker 1: after this message. Well, I'll let you go, but I
Speaker 1: want to end on UM. In your book, you do
Speaker 1: mention it UM, and I'm sorry I couldn't quite remember it,
Speaker 1: but you were saying something about even in the nineteen sixties, Um,
Speaker 1: science knew that there was this was a myth of
Speaker 1: the three part brain and the kind of male mythology
Speaker 1: of you know, the all that stuff we talked about,
Speaker 1: and yet no one's do you feel like in your community,
Speaker 1: you know, why is no one saying anything? Why isn't
Speaker 1: your book that just came out, like maybe it is?
Speaker 1: And I don't know what, like ending all these other myths,
Speaker 1: like why is this still allowed to persist at the
Speaker 1: same time as the truth? Like you said, the truth
Speaker 1: has been out there for decades. Yeah, So I think, Um,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of this is just speculation and
Speaker 1: mighty right, but a couple of reasons. I think one
Speaker 1: is that, you know, scientists don't like the afword. Fact
Speaker 1: that's scary, okays right, because it's it's always right, okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, and there might be it might be wrong,
Speaker 1: and you know, so we we concern ourselves with these
Speaker 1: probabilities and some one but I would say that the
Speaker 1: evidence that the trying brain is wrong. And I feel
Speaker 1: at this point like it's I'm not going to mince words.
Speaker 1: It was a metaphor and it's not useful because it's
Speaker 1: it actually has it's incorrect. The evidence was sequestered away
Speaker 1: in a literature that's very very hard for people to read,
Speaker 1: even other scientists to read if you're not an expert. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's in the literature that requires knowledge of um
Speaker 1: embryology for example, and deep knowledge of genetics. And I
Speaker 1: had to learn in fact Barb Finley, who's a a
Speaker 1: neurse scientist who I think, you know, she's The book
Speaker 1: is really dedicated to her and all the other nerth
Speaker 1: scientists who really trained me to be a neuroscientist after
Speaker 1: I was already professor of you know, psychology. I mean,
Speaker 1: she taught me how to read that literature. And she
Speaker 1: still meets with me. I meet with her for two
Speaker 1: hours every week. She still is sort of acting like
Speaker 1: a guide for me. Um. You know, for certain literatures
Speaker 1: that I'm just you know, not familiar with. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it was sequestered away and it still is
Speaker 1: to some extent siloed away. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know about it. UM and it there's no it
Speaker 1: doesn't have a cheering section, you know, like there are
Speaker 1: popular writers right who who um like science writers who
Speaker 1: popularize what they understand. And when you look at a
Speaker 1: brain and you look at these diagrams of brains, it
Speaker 1: looks like they have three layers, I mean using the
Speaker 1: naked eye. But the naked eye is not always the best. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't always give you all the information that we
Speaker 1: need to understand how something emerges and what its function is.
Speaker 1: It must be like looking at the Earth from the moon,
Speaker 1: where it looks like there's land and there's ocean, but
Speaker 1: really that's so interconnected. Yeah, well there's also land under
Speaker 1: the water, right right, Yeah, and you can't really see
Speaker 1: that with the naked eye. So we we really understand that.
Speaker 1: You know, we we develop tools as scientists that allow
Speaker 1: us to see things that we can't see with our
Speaker 1: naked eye. That we can hear things that we can't
Speaker 1: hear hear with our ears alone. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: we translate these other signals which we don't have sensory
Speaker 1: surfaces for that, we have no senses for these other signals,
Speaker 1: and we translate them into signals that we can that
Speaker 1: we can detect. And so molecular genetics, you know, the
Speaker 1: evidence from molecular genetics of how brains might have evolved,
Speaker 1: and the evidence the sort of anatomical evidence that uses
Speaker 1: that knowledge has been around for a long time, but
Speaker 1: it requires a lot of background knowledge to really read
Speaker 1: that stuff. And as a consequence, every time, you know,
Speaker 1: even even neuroscientists who aren't familiar with that literature still
Speaker 1: are using try and brain ish type uh interpretations. So
Speaker 1: every time you hear that your prefrontal cortex regulates your
Speaker 1: amygdala right there, that's just that's the sign that that
Speaker 1: person is making an assumption about the try and brain.
Speaker 1: Sometimes scientists who write for the public will rely on
Speaker 1: that you know, three layered structure idea of the sort
Speaker 1: of lizard limbic you know, neocortex because they understand that
Speaker 1: it's easier for the publick to to think that way. So,
Speaker 1: for example, yeah, Robert Sapolski in his book Behaved talks
Speaker 1: about the limbic system, and he knows there's no Olympics system,
Speaker 1: and he knows that that's you know, a myth, but
Speaker 1: but he uses it because it's easier for people too.
Speaker 1: It's an easier platform for people to start with, so
Speaker 1: that he can get to the material he wants them
Speaker 1: to get to. Whereas I'm directly more concerned with that
Speaker 1: material of like what is a brain? How is it structured?
Speaker 1: And why do you need to know? Yeah? And when
Speaker 1: you and you made it so easy. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I don't know if you like that people have said this,
Speaker 1: but um, people are calling it like a beach read
Speaker 1: about the brain, which I think is you know, their
Speaker 1: way of saying, it's digestible and fun to read it.
Speaker 1: I wrote it that, I mean, I read you wrote
Speaker 1: it on purpose, okay, like that way, because um, but
Speaker 1: it is so brilliant that you've just blown my mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm your biggest fan. I think you're genius.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much, Dr Barrett for chatting with
Speaker 1: us today. And I hope you've blown minds, changed minds,
Speaker 1: helped people. And uh, I'm going to change this podcast
Speaker 1: now to uncomfortable arousal bites, not anxiety. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same kind of like lyrical ring to it. No,
Speaker 1: but we'll get people there. But thank you again for
Speaker 1: being on the show. My pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I hope you loved my talk with Dr Lisa. Let's
Speaker 1: just go over some of the bigger takeaways from my
Speaker 1: talk with her. Anxiety is a very misunderstood phenomena, so
Speaker 1: don't worry if you don't fully understand it. The brain
Speaker 1: is for regulating systems of your body. Period. The function
Speaker 1: of your brain is to continue to predict so that
Speaker 1: it keeps you safe when it's having trouble predicting when
Speaker 1: it's not quite they are yet it hasn't come to
Speaker 1: its full conclusion. That's when there's an increase in arousal, which,
Speaker 1: as Dr Lisa says, feels like shit. But if you
Speaker 1: learn to make sense of these sensations when your brain
Speaker 1: is in arousal, you will begin to act differently and
Speaker 1: the state is reduced too simply an uncomfortable state. It
Speaker 1: is an absolute myth dating back to Plato, that rationality
Speaker 1: controls your inner beast, and if your inner beast gets
Speaker 1: the better of you, you're either immoral or you didn't
Speaker 1: try hard enough to control yourself. Suffering from anxiety and
Speaker 1: anxious sensations is not obligatory. Now, you're not to blame
Speaker 1: for the bad things that have happened to you, or
Speaker 1: for any of the wiring or nurture that you got
Speaker 1: that caused you to have you know, the habit of anxiety,
Speaker 1: but you are responsible for yourself. So unfortunately, you have
Speaker 1: no choice. If you want to get better, you do
Speaker 1: have to make a choice to work on this. Your
Speaker 1: brain has to teach self to see differently, and that's
Speaker 1: called reappraisal or reconceptualizing. It's basically just making sense of
Speaker 1: things in a different way. Don't forget there's lots of
Speaker 1: things you can do for anxiety, like you can do yoga,
Speaker 1: you can breathe, but don't just follow what someone else
Speaker 1: says works for them for their anxiety. You have to
Speaker 1: also understand the brain and the mind. And if you
Speaker 1: don't understand how that works, what's going on under the hood,
Speaker 1: then you're going to be stuck with strategies that eventually
Speaker 1: stop working in certain circumstances and you'll thank God, I've
Speaker 1: tried everything it doesn't work. Now, having a list of
Speaker 1: tools for anxiety like yoga, meditation, breathing, talk, therapy, counting,
Speaker 1: is not a recipe. Think of it more as a
Speaker 1: tasting menu. You're going to to your what word was that?
Speaker 1: Your gun too. You're going to figure out what works
Speaker 1: for you and what doesn't in certain situations. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what does it mean to have something work don't forget
Speaker 1: when Dr Lisa said, it means decreasing your arousal so
Speaker 1: that you're merely uncomfortable. I'm sorry, we're not really able
Speaker 1: to get rid of uncomfortable feelings, but I think you'll
Speaker 1: know once you get to that level, it's a hell
Speaker 1: of a lot better than anxious feelings. Now, it's really
Speaker 1: hard for the first time to um, you know, deconstruct
Speaker 1: your anxiety. Your first attempt at it, it's may still
Speaker 1: go into unpleasant arousal, but as Dr Lisa says, maybe
Speaker 1: by the thirtieth time you do it, you'll get there.
Speaker 1: It becomes automatic. Now, don't forget. Every experience you have
Speaker 1: is the brain training itself for the future. So it
Speaker 1: really behooves you to keep trying to deconstruct your anxiety
Speaker 1: from arousal unpleasant arousal too uncomfortable. And we have the
Speaker 1: kind of nature that does require nurture, so we have
Speaker 1: the kind of genes that require learning. In order for
Speaker 1: your brain to finish wiring itself. You can rewire your brain.
Speaker 1: Well that's it. I'm gonna get busy rewiring my brain,
Speaker 1: and I hope that you will all join me next time.
Speaker 1: Don't forget anxiety bites, but you're in control. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.