WEBVTT - Ep152 "How do you survive your own thoughts?" with Jewel 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.920 What do you do when your own mind stops feeling safe? 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:08.520 How does a person sing on stage while panicking inside? 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:12.640 How do you learn to catch your thoughts before they 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:17.520 catch you? And can creativity become a survival tool. Today 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:22.040 we're talking with singer songwriter Jewel about mental health, the 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:25.720 battles that she has lived, the wisdom she's earned, and 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:32.920 the lives she's helping to shape. Welcome to Inner Cosmos 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.680 with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and author at 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.040 Stanford and in these episodes we sail deeply into our 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:43.240 three pound universe to understand why and how our lives 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:44.200 look the way they do. 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:58.400 May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Every year. 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.600 We're reminded this month to look directly at what is 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:07.839 typically hidden. A broken arm is obvious, a fever is obvious, 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:12.160 But a troubled mind can stay incognito, often for a 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.720 very long time. As we talk about here every week, 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:20.440 the brain locked inside the skull builds our reality and 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:25.759 interprets our social world and generates the private weather that 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:30.679 we live inside. And when that internal weather turns dark 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:35.360 and stormy, that struggle can remain invisible even to the 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:41.000 person sitting one chair away. Mental Health Awareness Month exists 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:45.720 because that sort of invisibility carries a cost. This month 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.600 asks us to bring these struggles into the light, and 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:53.440 by doing so, to reduce stigma and to widen the 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:57.120 pathways to care. This matters to everyone on the planet. 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:58.880 But today I'm going to zoom in a little to 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:03.280 talk about mental health health struggles for young people. Adolescence 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:07.640 and early adulthood are years when the brain is tuning 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:12.720 itself in public. You have your identity under construction, and 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:18.000 the notion of belonging matters with an unusual amount of force. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.919 That wasn't true before, and it's not as potent later. 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:26.000 So social feedback lands with intensity, and the numbers tell 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:30.480 us something urgent about the state of that inner landscape. 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:34.799 The CDC reports that forty percent of US high school 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:40.400 students have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and twenty 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:45.600 percent seriously consider attempting suicide, and almost one in ten 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:50.959 actually attempt suicide. So what we're looking at is classrooms 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:56.560 full of young people carrying invisible storms. This issue matters 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:59.920 to me deeply because, like many people, I have known 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.560 and loved people who have taken their lives, So where 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:06.360 can young people turn well happily. 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:08.000 There are many options. 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.040 They can turn to friends and families and teachers and communities, 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:12.919 and now that we're in the second half of the 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.320 twenty first century, there are also new digital options available. 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.760 In a Stanford study of college students using chat GPT, 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.280 some fraction of the participants reported that the AI companion 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.920 halted their suicidal ideation. So that kind of signal points 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:33.840 toward a future in which support can be available at 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.960 two in the morning, in moments when a person feels 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:42.600 stranded inside their own mind and beyond, the digital organizations 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:48.320 matter enormously here. An organization can create continuity and culture 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:51.640 and a place where a person can return on the 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:55.800 hard days. They create rituals and language, and accountability and 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.800 mentorship and the rare feeling that somebody has built a 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.840 structure with you and mind. There are many organizations doing 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:06.520 extraordinary work in the mental health space, and one that 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:10.480 I want to highlight today is the Inspiring Children Foundation, 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:14.000 which is an organization built by my friend Ryan Wolfington 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.159 with the help of singer songwriter Jewel and some others. 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:22.000 And the goal with this organization is a whole human 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.440 approach to mental health that includes the physical, and the 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.080 social and the emotional, and that brings us to today's 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:34.120 guest singer songwriter. Jewel has lived several public lives at once. 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:38.440 Her music became part of the emotional architecture of the 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:42.880 nineteen nineties and beyond. She's a four time Grammy nominated artist, 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.280 and she has sold more than thirty million albums worldwide. 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:51.400 She's also an author and a visual artist, and she's 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:55.160 a forceful advocate in the mental health space. A lot 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.520 of people know Jewel's voice and songs and the success 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.599 that she had, but presumably most people don't know about 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:06.760 her interior origin story. Today's conversation feels so important to 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.280 me because it opens a window onto mental health from 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:14.680 the inside. It's one thing to speak clinically about anxiety 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.480 or trauma or self regulation, but it's another thing to 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:22.400 hear someone describe how that all cashes out in real life. 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.440 What does panic feel like when it takes hold? How 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:30.880 do you begin to build a gap between stimulus and response. 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:35.080 How do you learn a new emotional language when nobody 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.400 has handed you a textbook? These are questions that matter 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:42.520 to millions of people, especially young people. So here is 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:50.440 my conversation with Jewel. Okay, so, Jewel, you've been very 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:52.960 open about struggles that you had when you were a 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:55.919 young person, So let's start there, if you don't mind, 0:05:55.960 --> 0:06:00.159 what was life like for you on the inside. 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.600 Yeah, So just a little context in case people don't 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.400 know my story. I was raised in Alaska. My family 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.800 were homesteaders and kind of pioneers in Alaska. My parents 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.200 got divorced when I was eight, and my dad took 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:14.640 over raising us and we moved to Homer, to the 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:18.719 homestead where my dad was raised. My dad started drinking 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:22.200 then after the divorce, my dad, I mean today we'd 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.480 use the word trauma triggering, those words didn't really exist 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:31.760 back then. You know, my dad's childhood was so traumatic 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:34.479 that when when he went to Vietnam, it was the 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:38.000 first time he relaxed, Oh, it'sn't that wild. Like. The 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:42.000 amount of yeah, just trauma and abuse that he had 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:46.160 during his childhood was so intense. So after the divorce, 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:48.880 he began what we would now call trauma triggering, and 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:51.520 he began to drink to try to manage that, and 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:53.880 he started to be physically abusive at that age, and 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:57.159 it went rather predictably. I was also singing in bars 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:59.240 at the time. He and I became a duet. So 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:03.040 we were touring, like you know, lumberjack joints and fisherman 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:06.680 haunts and biker bars. And what I really noticed is 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.880 that everybody was in pain, and everybody was managing it 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:14.040 in different ways. You know, we were singing for career alcoholics, 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:18.120 career drug addicts. You'd see people I was in a 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.040 lot of pain, and so I was just very acutely 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:24.400 aware of it, and I realized nobody outruns it. And 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:27.680 I would watch people use PCP or anger or sex 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:31.480 and it never worked. And so because I'm a really 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.240 visual person, to me, I saw like this original wound 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:36.320 or pain, and then you would try to bury it 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:43.160 with whatever drugs, alcohol, toxic relationships, and it you still 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:44.680 would have to, like if you wanted to heal, you 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:46.240 still have to get rid of all these layers and 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:47.480 then still deal with this. 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:49.360 And how old were you at this time that you 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:49.920 were starting. 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:51.480 Probably nine ten in there? 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:54.320 Oh were you? And you were starting to realize that. 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.160 Yeah, oh wow, okay. 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.200 And I had just learned that the buffalo was the 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:03.400 only animal that went into a storm, and that the 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:06.240 quickest way was through, and it just changed my life. 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:08.280 Like learning that, I was like, you have to be 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.400 the buffalo. Like the quickest way is through, and you 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:13.440 move toward it, you don't move away from it. 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:14.280 Wow. 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:16.320 And so I made myself a promise that when I 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:18.440 was in pain, I would go closer to it, I 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:20.600 would look at it. And I was already journaling a 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.760 lot at this point, and I realized that when I wrote, 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:27.280 that was taking me toward it. My curiosity was taking 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.120 me toward it. And it did relieve the pain a 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.880 little bit and didn't cure everything, but it took enough 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:37.080 of pressure off, like a pressure valve, that it became manageable. 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.880 And I learned things, and that was fascinating to me. 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.160 So I once sartainly say something that you made a 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:44.640 shift from you realized that you could either be bitter 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.000 about something or curious about it. 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.520 Is this the same sort of thing about moving into 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:50.040 the storm. 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:52.680 Yeah, I don't think bitterness had kind of like entered 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:53.880 my consciousness quite yet. 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.679 For whatever reason. It was just when something. 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.520 Hurts, look at it, get toward it, don't move away 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.080 from it. Okay, the quickest way is through. 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:04.480 And so what does that mean in terms of the 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:08.160 tools that you took on the earliest tools that you 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:10.560 took on to manage with your mental health. 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.480 That was definitely writing. So like journaling was the way 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:16.680 that I went towards something. So when something hurt, instead 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:18.920 of doing an I mean, I didn't have these word 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:22.200 avoidant behavior, So I'm using words now that obviously I 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.040 didn't have them. But when I was in pain, instead 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.880 of avoiding it, I would sit down, get quiet, and 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:31.679 journal and that would let me move toward it. And 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.600 then I realized when I journaled, I saw patterns. I 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.120 saw things in the day I didn't realize. I saw 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:39.800 there was a wise part of me that showed up 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:43.680 that I could access and I found that, Yeah, very interesting. 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:45.880 Can you give an example of the type of pattern 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:47.240 you might see at the end of the day. 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:49.960 Yeah, I would notice, like if it was, you know, 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.679 maybe a conflict with my dad, I noticed what was 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.520 going on for him that day that I didn't notice. 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:58.600 I just noticed he got mad, you know, or yelled 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:01.640 at me. But I I would sort of see the 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:03.760 things that led up to it. Not that that makes 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:08.560 abusive behavior okay, but it brought understanding, which in itself 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:09.920 can be very helpful. 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:14.800 Yeah, and so you started realizing that you could do 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:18.720 things actively in terms of dealing with mental health in 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:19.959 an active way. 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:20.640 Is that right? 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:23.040 Yeah, it really turned a corner when I moved out. 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:25.559 I wanted to move out at fifteen, but I knew 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.439 that statistically that wasn't a great idea. Typically abused kids 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:31.880 don't move out at fifteen and have the movie and better. 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:36.120 And so I would only let myself move out if 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:41.960 I had, you know, a hope, a real reason to 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:45.080 think I might do better. And I had been studying 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.520 philosophy for quite a while at that point and. 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:50.520 Just so familiar just reading things. 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:53.520 Yeah, and in school I had a philosophy I was 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.840 deeply dyslexic, and I had a teacher take an interest 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.440 and just sort of learn. I was so in in 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.920 philosophy that I was very dedicated to like figure out 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.319 like why can't I read well? Like what's going on? 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:08.679 Because in those days I just wasn't a lot known 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:13.000 about dyslexia. And so I experimented. And what I did 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:14.880 is I took a blank piece of paper and I 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:18.600 used an exactoblade to cut a sentence window out and 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:21.560 then I would limit my visual field, so all I 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:23.880 saw was one sentence at a time that I was reading, 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:27.040 and then I would paraphrase whatever I was reading. And 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:28.840 so I had a whole separate book of the book 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.200 of the book in my words. And that caused me 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:36.240 to have a really deep understanding and retention of the text. 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:39.120 And so this teacher just taking an interest in me 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.000 and my own kind of fascination with the concepts or ideas, 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:45.320 he let me teach my own class. I got to 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.920 teach like high school teachers about philosophy. 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.679 And run seminars and it was really empowering. 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:53.120 It was when you were fourteen years Wow. Amazing. 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:54.960 Yeah, it was just one of those great teachers that 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.800 change your life and you know, just empowering. And so 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.000 when I did decide will I move out, I sat 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:03.560 down with it and just looked at it sort of 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:06.240 like a problem, and how do you solve this problem? 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:10.080 And I we was just just learning about like genetic inheritances, 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.640 how you know I might have a predisposition to diabetes 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.120 or heart disease. And when I thought about my emotional life, 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.800 I was like, I have an emotional inheritance. I saw 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.840 it like a Milky Way, like you're in this huge 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.960 system that has a that goes way far back and 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:30.120 it gets projected into the future and it's like a 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:34.280 family system. It's an emotional language. And I realized I 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:36.880 had already been taught this language. I was already done. 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.679 It was done, like I learned this emotional way of 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:43.040 relating to the world. And so I realized my job 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:47.160 was could I learn a new emotional language like learning Spanish? 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.720 But there was no school to go learn emotional Spanish, 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:53.559 you know, And so if if I wanted to learn 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:56.120 a different emotional way of relating to the world, how 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.520 would I do that? And that was so interesting to 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:00.880 me that I felt like at a really clear goal, 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:05.040 a really clear objective. And that's why I let myself 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:09.800 move out, which is very stressful taking on that responsibility 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.600 and then making it trackable, like how was I doing? 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:17.520 What were the metrics around it? And it was exciting. 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:19.000 Yeah, oh that's great. 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:22.720 Yeah, it's interesting because we think about ourselves as being 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.400 free agents in the world, but in fact we're made 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:29.680 up of our genetic inheritance and all of our childhood 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:33.000 experiences which shape our brain. This is brain plasticity, and 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:35.440 we don't have choice about either of those things, and 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.720 so at some point we come to realize that we 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.360 have to be the sculptors of our own brains. Yeah, 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.360 and I think you've used the term rewiring. You're thinking 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:47.120 you figured out along. 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:47.640 The way how to do this. 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:49.679 Do you feel like you were already figuring that out 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:51.920 of fifteen when he left home, or you figured it 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:53.840 out subsequently, or are still. 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:54.280 Figuring it out? 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:56.960 Yeah, I mean it was something I started at fifteen. 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:01.600 I'd say the next huge phase of development was for 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:03.719 me when I was eighteen. I ended up homeless. I 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.079 wouldn't have sex with a boss. I was in San Diego. 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:09.200 He wouldn't give me my paycheck. I couldn't pay my rent. 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:11.400 I started living in my car, and then my car 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.360 got stolen and I was shoplifting. I was having panic attacks. 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.240 I was agoraphobic. If I left my little street corner, 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:21.320 this little tree I liked to sleep under, I thought 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.120 that I would, you know, get terribly ill. I was 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:26.840 sick a lot. I had bad kidneys. I was having 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:30.840 constant like almost died of sepsis. An emergency room wouldn't 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:34.040 see me because I didn't insurance. Like it was definitely 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:37.640 very rough, and I realized, especially with the shoplifting, that 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:39.440 I would end up in jail or dead if I 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:41.760 didn't do something. And it was really an eye opening 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.040 experience because three short years later I had this lofty 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:47.560 goal of like, I'm not going to be a statistic, 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:49.960 I'm going to learn a new emotional language. And here 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.400 I was three years later, and I was a statistic. 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:55.960 I was homeless and stealing, and so I remembered, I 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.520 want to say, it was a stoic quote, happiness doesn't 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:00.640 depend on who you are or or what you have. 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:03.400 It depends on what you think. And I was like, 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.680 I don't have anything left but my thoughts, and so 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.440 can I really change my life one thought at a time? 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.160 And I took it sincerely and like earnestly, like I'm 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:14.160 going to try, and I. 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:16.200 Think I can change my life one thought at a time. 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:18.080 And so I left. 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:20.080 I had been stealing something and I was in a 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.840 dressing room where I had this like epiphany. So I 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:25.480 leave and I'm like, all right, I realized I don't 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:27.600 know what I'm thinking in real time. If you're going 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:29.280 to change your life one thought at a time, you 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.080 better be aware of what you're thinking. And now I 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:36.240 know the word disassociative, but I was so disassociative. I 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.480 had no ability to track my thoughts in real time. 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:41.680 I called it waking up after I would kind of 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.240 wake up after I stole. I would wake up after 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.160 these big events, you know, I would wake up in 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.200 the middle of a panic attack. I don't know what 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:54.600 led to the panic attack. And so what I I 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:58.200 was like, if you can't witness your thought in real time, 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:04.880 your actions, our thoughts slowed down into things you do. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.000 So maybe I could reverse engineer into what I was 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:11.040 thinking by watching what I was doing. So my huge 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:13.200 life plan was I'm going to watch my hands for 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:13.680 two weeks. 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:14.800 I gave myself two weeks. 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:18.200 I'm going to watch everything I do, and that's going 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.480 to tell me something about my thoughts. So I had 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:23.720 a journal and I was like, I opened a door 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:27.120 at eight fifty seven am, I washed my hands at 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:27.920 whatever time. 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:29.360 I didn't know what I was looking for. 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.520 I literally just wrote down everything my hands did for 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:34.760 two weeks, and at the end of it, I sit 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:35.520 down and I'm like. 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:37.360 Okay, what does this tell me about myself? 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.160 Like what am I thinking? And it dawned on me. 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:42.440 I hadn't had a panic attack that whole two weeks. 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.240 I'd never gone two weeks without a panic attack in years. 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:50.440 It was like stumbling on the most random side effect, 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:52.400 and I was like, what has caused me not to 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:57.240 have panic attacks? What I stumbled on was being radically present? Ah, 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:02.400 forcing myself to watch my hands. I was so presently 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.560 engaged I was. I was feeling my hand on the door, 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.439 I was feeling my hand shake somebody's hand. I was 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:12.040 so radically present that I didn't have time to worry 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.480 about a future that didn't happen. And that's when I realized, like, 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:19.480 fear is a thief. It robs you of the present 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:22.280 moment to try and solve for a future that hasn't 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:22.960 even happened. 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:23.800 Ah. 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.119 So you know, so brains are prediction machines. We're constantly 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:29.880 simulating possible futures, and when people have had trauma, they 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:34.040 tend to simulate dangerous futures. It sounds like you were 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.840 able to get yourself off of that path with some 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:41.080 intentionality there, or it sounds like it happened accidentally first, yes, 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.119 but then what did you learn from that about how 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.760 you could keep yourself from constantly simulating fear. 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:50.520 Yeah, for me, it was you know, Descartes said, I think, 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.800 therefore I am. I realized in that period of time 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:59.400 it's not what I think. Therefore I am. I perceive 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.639 what I think. Therefore I am, and that I'm the 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.879 observer of my thoughts. I'm actually not my thoughts. And 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:10.399 that was very powerful because there's something in me that 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.560 can observe my thoughts. There's something in me that can 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:18.080 observe my actions. So if I was a car, you know, 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:21.600 my brain isn't the driver. My brain is a steering 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:24.879 wheel the observer. I call it capital o, like the 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.760 observer is the driver. And I realized I needed to 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.760 cultivate a relationship with my observer, so I didn't over 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:35.320 identify with my thoughts because and so I called it 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:39.600 my gap method. But like you perceive something, you have 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.800 a stimulus, a really intense emotional or intellectual reaction, and 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.480 then you act and so power like to get off 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:51.159 of autopilot. If I was a car, I'd already been trained, 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:55.960 right I was. I had maps downloaded neurologically genetically, and 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.879 so I had predictable ways. 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:00.000 Of responding to stimulus. 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:02.520 And I realized that if I put a gap in it, 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:05.520 then I could change the course of my life. Then 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:08.760 I could go somewhere different. So if somebody you know, 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.920 did X, I stopped. I created a gap, and then 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.119 that got me off autopilot, so I could have my 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:19.080 own thoughtful response instead of just a knee jerk reaction. 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:21.760 And once I realized that I knew I was on, 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:25.280 that was powerful. I know, I just became very powerful. 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:26.440 So this is cool. 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.040 One of the things that I mean, the thing that 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.080 distinguishes humans from our nearest neighbors in the animal kingdom 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:34.719 is that we have a lot more cortex that wrinkly 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:38.119 outer three millimeters. And it turns out that because of 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:40.640 the massive expansion of the cortex, one of the things 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:43.679 we got was a lot more real estate in between 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.280 the input and the output. So if you throw some 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:48.119 food in front of a cat, it's going to eat 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:49.520 the food. Me you throw food in front of human 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:51.879 to human says I'm on a diet, I won't eat it. 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:52.080 Now. 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:53.200 Whatever, We've got. 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.159 All these pathways that we can take through the system, 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:57.720 but we typically don't. We take the path of least 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:00.080 resistance most of the time, so it sounds like, wait, what. 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:02.239 You got there was? 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:05.000 Hey, there are different paths I can take here, given 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:08.520 the stimulus, given somebody being mean to me or doing something, 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:11.719 whatever the thing is, I don't have to react right 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:14.600 away in the way that is the path at least resistance. 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:17.160 Yeah, or just the most familiar. I mean when cook 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:19.399 comes to shove, we do the familiar thing, and it 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:22.200 is hard to do the unfamiliar thing because it's invention. 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:25.800 I've never done it before. I've never related to the 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:27.119 world that way, you know. 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:39.000 So it sounds to me like you figured out a 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.640 lot of stuff the hard way on your own. If 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:47.159 you were advising somebody now with depression or anxiety, what 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:49.560 is the first lever that they can pull on? 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:53.479 People do need to learn to be present because until 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.359 your present, you can't make different choices, and so that 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:00.320 has to be the number one requisite thing. And to 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:04.840 be present is a learned skill, and it's hard to 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.240 be present. You learn to do it for longer and 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:11.639 longer periods of time. And so what meditation is is 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:14.880 teaching people to be present. I think what people don't 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.280 realize about meditation and why a lot of people quit, 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:19.320 is because there's. 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:20.280 A withdrawal symptom. 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:22.760 You know, when you start being present, your mind is 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:25.480 prompting you to be distracted. You think about all these 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.719