Speaker 1: A sense of purpose can also just be this action
Speaker 1: that I'm taking that is engaging something that's greater than myself.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Alishah Goldstein, co founder of the Center for Mindful Living
Speaker 1: in West Los Angeles and creator of the six month
Speaker 1: coaching and mentorship program, A Course and Mindful Living. Elisha
Speaker 1: is a psychologist and international speaker and mindfulness educator. His
Speaker 1: books include Uncovering Happiness and The Now Effect. He's also
Speaker 1: co author of a mindfulness based stress reduction workbook and
Speaker 1: m B s R every Day. Hi, Alisha, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Oh, it's really great to be here. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. It's a pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about your book Uncovering Happiness, Overcoming
Speaker 1: Depression with Mindfulness and self compassion, as well as some
Speaker 1: of the other projects that you're involved in. Shortly, but
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do, with the parable. There
Speaker 1: is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. What is a good wolf which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well. To me, that basically, that parable
Speaker 1: says what you practice and repeat is what you get so.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you practice listening to self critical
Speaker 1: thoughts UM negativity, or paying attention to those things over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, that's what you'll see. If
Speaker 1: you practice being aware of what's good, you know, a
Speaker 1: sense of attitude in life, some of the more positive
Speaker 1: psychology elements of life. UM, you'll see more of that.
Speaker 1: And that's just a matter of memory. In other words,
Speaker 1: when you are remembering something or having experiences of something,
Speaker 1: your brain stores that in short term memory, and that's
Speaker 1: what used to reference how you're going to perceive the
Speaker 1: next moment. So if you're feeding, you know, one wolf
Speaker 1: versus the other, you're creating more memories to be referenced
Speaker 1: to influence your perception of the moments to follow. That's
Speaker 1: really good. I really like the way you put that
Speaker 1: in the book. There was something I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about because you really brought out an idea that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about lately. And you refer to
Speaker 1: them as either depression triggers or depression cures, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in a second, but I've really been
Speaker 1: thinking about this idea of how they're these you break
Speaker 1: them into four things that UM seem to show up
Speaker 1: very often for us as one thing, one undifferentiated thing,
Speaker 1: and and you're you're breaking it into four categories, and
Speaker 1: those categories or thoughts, emotions, sensations, and behaviors, And I
Speaker 1: thought maybe we could start by talking about how to
Speaker 1: how those interact with each other, and also that idea
Speaker 1: of how if we're not being mindful or if we're
Speaker 1: not aware, it's often those four things, at least for me,
Speaker 1: just show up is like one big glob. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know this fits it back into the parable. So
Speaker 1: in any given moment, we're experiencing what's called in the
Speaker 1: field of mindfulness, this triangle of awareness, thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
Speaker 1: You can check it out right now even as you're
Speaker 1: listening to this UM. You know what you're experiencing right
Speaker 1: now is there's likely some thoughts, something interpreting UM what
Speaker 1: I'm saying or having a judgment about it. There's sensations
Speaker 1: and your body, your body is having physical sensations. That's
Speaker 1: what that's comes from your nerves. And there is also
Speaker 1: an emotional state you're having right now. It could be
Speaker 1: a comfortable and comfortable or neutral one. What follows is
Speaker 1: some kind of action, and that's the behavior. So what
Speaker 1: the brain does is it it makes We're wired to
Speaker 1: make things routine. So you practice and repeat something, just
Speaker 1: like we were talking about with the wolf parable and
Speaker 1: that creates a thought, emotions, sensation, and then you follow
Speaker 1: with a behavior. And what that does is it makes it.
Speaker 1: What we do is we make that automatic. You practice
Speaker 1: and repeat something that starts to become automatic, and that's
Speaker 1: called procedural memory. Our brain is memorizing procedures so we
Speaker 1: can handle more complex things. And so UM. When something
Speaker 1: happens in your environment, you see something, it brings it
Speaker 1: top of mind. So for example, if you and this
Speaker 1: has been studied, if you're someone who likes McDonald's, it's
Speaker 1: not that you'll always be walking around thinking McDonald's all
Speaker 1: day long, but when you see a sign of the
Speaker 1: golden arches, you automatically will have a thought maybe that
Speaker 1: looks maybe I'm I'm hungry, a sensation rumbling in your belly,
Speaker 1: and an emotions such as excitement, um, and the behavior
Speaker 1: is I want to go get it now. If you
Speaker 1: look at if you look at the neuroscience of that,
Speaker 1: what you'll see is dopamine, which is the chemical in
Speaker 1: our brain that's like, go get it, go get it,
Speaker 1: go get it. You'll see a surge of that happening
Speaker 1: just by the sight of the golden arches. So there's
Speaker 1: this conditioned reaction that happens over time as we practice
Speaker 1: and repeat something of thoughts, emotions, sensations and behaviors, and
Speaker 1: it happens automatically, so we don't have to think about
Speaker 1: it anymore. And that affects everything we do in life,
Speaker 1: from our positive habits to our more unhealthy habits. And
Speaker 1: unless we can begin to name it, so with that,
Speaker 1: what we call what I call that in the and
Speaker 1: then the book is the depression loop. But you can
Speaker 1: think of it as a stress loop and anxiety loop,
Speaker 1: a habit loop UM. And the conditioned reaction of that,
Speaker 1: the unknown patterning of it that we all have in
Speaker 1: different areas of our lives, affects um how we live
Speaker 1: our lives in a day to day basis. And is
Speaker 1: this philosopher and he was also a Rabbi peace activist
Speaker 1: that marsh with Martin Luther King, It's got Abraham Joshua
Speaker 1: Heschel said life is routine, and routine is resistance to wonder.
Speaker 1: So as our brain is created to make things routine.
Speaker 1: We lose out and we miss out all the wonders
Speaker 1: around us, and those wonders are feeding uh the Let's
Speaker 1: say that one wolf, if we could pay attention to
Speaker 1: more of those wonders and create more memories of those wonders,
Speaker 1: what impact might that have on our perceptions moment to
Speaker 1: moment and on our happiness. Our level of happiness moment
Speaker 1: to moment, and our level of happiness, by the way,
Speaker 1: is completely uh correlated with our level of resiliency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that Heschel quote. I think it is such
Speaker 1: a good one. Let's explore this a little bit more. So.
Speaker 1: You're just referring to these is habit loops in general,
Speaker 1: and like you said, that could be a depressive habit
Speaker 1: loop and anxiety habit loop. And you make the analogy
Speaker 1: with a habit loop that it's a lot like entering
Speaker 1: a traffic circle, and that these loops have four entrance
Speaker 1: points that we just talked about. You can get into
Speaker 1: this loop from a thought, from a feeling, from a sensation,
Speaker 1: or from a behavior. That's right, So it's a conditioned loop.
Speaker 1: I live in California, so we don't have as many
Speaker 1: traffic circles. So so for some people who are more
Speaker 1: versed in them, like going up to traffic circles, no
Speaker 1: big deal. But for me, going up to a traffic circle,
Speaker 1: I'm like wondering, like where do I enter exactly? And
Speaker 1: where do I exit? And world cars around me. So
Speaker 1: so anxiety starts to build just kind of knowing this
Speaker 1: traffic circles in front of me. So what happens is
Speaker 1: once you have that conditioned reaction of the thoughts, emotions,
Speaker 1: sensations and behaviors around whatever you are. So let's let's
Speaker 1: use this as an example. Let's use depression as an example,
Speaker 1: or anxiety. They go together oftentimes. But you have the
Speaker 1: thought of, yeah, I don't want to get out of
Speaker 1: bed today. Um, you have this sensation of heaviness in
Speaker 1: your body. The emotion is maybe fear, and the behavior
Speaker 1: is staying in bed. Once that happened, and you know,
Speaker 1: once the feeling of depression is so or anxiety is
Speaker 1: so averse. So it's such an uncomfortable feeling in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways that the very idea that it might
Speaker 1: come on again, um, is something our brain wants to
Speaker 1: stay away from. Let's say uh, and get to say
Speaker 1: a panic attack as another example. So all we need
Speaker 1: is one of those things, a thought, emotions, sensation, or
Speaker 1: behavior that's associated with that. Let's say panic um to
Speaker 1: come up, such as rapid heart rate, and so our
Speaker 1: body gets a rapid heart rate and our brain says,
Speaker 1: oh no, this is associated a brain is a bunch
Speaker 1: of associations. This is associated with panic. So I might
Speaker 1: have a panic attack, which makes us catastrophies and worry,
Speaker 1: which gets our nervous system pumped up, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it creates the self fulfilling prophecy of a
Speaker 1: panic attack. So all we need is one of these
Speaker 1: a thought, emotions, sensation, and behavior to alert our brain
Speaker 1: that this thing might be coming and inevitably creates a
Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, I really relate a lot with that.
Speaker 1: How any one of those things can set it off.
Speaker 1: In thinking about this with myself and looking back at
Speaker 1: my own struggles with depression, I think that heaviness or
Speaker 1: tired feeling doesn't do it now so much, but it
Speaker 1: used to be just the beginning of that would make
Speaker 1: me think, oh no, here it comes exactly. And we
Speaker 1: wonder sometimes like why do people wake up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night with panic attacks, and people always
Speaker 1: wondered that, like, why do I wake up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the panic attack. I wasn't even doing anything, um,
Speaker 1: And it's just because you might have been having a
Speaker 1: dream where it was raising your heart rate. Raised heart
Speaker 1: rate was associated with panic, and so your mind started
Speaker 1: really worrying about that, and that up to your nervous system,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, it's made you more nervous
Speaker 1: and you had you had a panic attack. Same thing
Speaker 1: with depression, as you were mentioning, Yeah, that heaviness, that
Speaker 1: worry from the heaviness is layering stress onto your current circumstance,
Speaker 1: and depression is the epitome of a completely overwhelmed nervous system.
Speaker 1: And the typical or not always, but typical behavior that
Speaker 1: comes with depression is avoidance. And we're avoiding naturally because
Speaker 1: the world seems overwhelming in that moment, and so we
Speaker 1: move towards avoidance. Unfortunately, that avoidance only goes on to
Speaker 1: give fuel to the depression. I do some coaching work
Speaker 1: with people where avoidance has been coming up lately, and
Speaker 1: I've just been thinking about how damaging avoidance really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's psychologically damaging because we reinforce the fear
Speaker 1: of the thing we're avoiding. And then it's just damaging
Speaker 1: in our lives because we're not doing the things that
Speaker 1: matter to us, So we start to feel worse. And
Speaker 1: it's talk about that idea of a spiral, right, it's
Speaker 1: a downward spiral. Avoidance can really feed a downward spiral. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I love this book The War of Art
Speaker 1: by Stephen Pressfield, not the Art of War, but the
Speaker 1: War of Art um, where the whole book is about resist,
Speaker 1: stance and um. And what's what's magical to me about
Speaker 1: that is he really talks he kind of through his
Speaker 1: idea of resistance to writing in particular, was his situation
Speaker 1: he wrote the book The Legends of Bagger Vans and
Speaker 1: eventually became a movie, And was this idea of naming
Speaker 1: the resistance allowed me to get space from it so
Speaker 1: that I can then choose how I want to respond
Speaker 1: in that situation. So in other words, when we're in
Speaker 1: the avoidance, we're wearing the contact lenses of avoidance. That's
Speaker 1: what we see. But the moment we're able to name it, ah,
Speaker 1: this is avoidance. I've gotten a little bit of space
Speaker 1: from it, and space gives us perspective and allows us
Speaker 1: to open up to the potential choices that are around us.
Speaker 1: So with the loop that we were just to bring
Speaker 1: this back to the loop that we were talking about,
Speaker 1: the conditioned reaction. What's been so powerful for so many
Speaker 1: people about the about understanding how that loop works of thoughts, emotions, sensations,
Speaker 1: and behave of yours and being able to map out
Speaker 1: whatever UM routine or pattern their time trying to break.
Speaker 1: To be able to map out that various thoughts, emotions, sensations,
Speaker 1: and behaviors associated with that pattern, whether it's eating in
Speaker 1: an unhealthy way, or depression or anxiety or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. UM allows them to be able to name
Speaker 1: it in that moment. What happens when you name something
Speaker 1: is you bring blood flow to your prefrontal cortex, which
Speaker 1: is involved with emotion regulation and perspective, and you're not
Speaker 1: so flooded within the amygdalo, which is the emotional center
Speaker 1: of the brain, which is just reacting from your emotions,
Speaker 1: you know, in that moment, so you get a little
Speaker 1: more perspective. And that was a study that came out
Speaker 1: and I think two thousand seven now by Matthew Lieberman
Speaker 1: at the University at u C l A, where he
Speaker 1: put people in front of some images of a man
Speaker 1: and a woman and the woman what had this like
Speaker 1: really fearful face and the man had this, um, you know,
Speaker 1: really angry face, and underneath their pictures that said Dick
Speaker 1: and Jane. They were hooked up to brain scanning machines
Speaker 1: at the time and UM, and what you saw was
Speaker 1: you saw a lot of activity and they make a
Speaker 1: lot of the emotional center of the brain. And then
Speaker 1: you saw the same two pictures and uh. And this
Speaker 1: time it didn't have anything underneath, any names underneath. And
Speaker 1: the researchers asked them what what are they feeling? And
Speaker 1: people said, oh, she's feeling fear and he's feeling anger.
Speaker 1: And you saw more activity going on in the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1: And so that showed us that when you name something,
Speaker 1: and so this is what neuroscience does. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: All it does is kind of tell us things we
Speaker 1: already know, um to some extent, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: when you name something, you step outside of it and
Speaker 1: you get perspective. When you get space from anything, you
Speaker 1: get perspective. When we're on a plane, you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of feet above the air, we have perspective of the land.
Speaker 1: When you get away from a painting, you get perspective
Speaker 1: of the painting when you get when you when you're
Speaker 1: able to create space from your loop that you're in,
Speaker 1: your depression and loop, your anxious loop, your habit loop,
Speaker 1: when you're able to get space from it and name it,
Speaker 1: you're actually changing the activity in your brain. You're shifting
Speaker 1: the activity in your brain to give you more perspective
Speaker 1: and the wherewithal to regulate your emotions and be able
Speaker 1: to choose a healthier response. What are some ways to
Speaker 1: gather that perspective? What are some perspective making tools? So
Speaker 1: I would say that if we take that loop as
Speaker 1: an example, and again just people who kind of read
Speaker 1: about that loop just have this huge ah and to
Speaker 1: be able to kind of um, ask yourself the question, Okay,
Speaker 1: what am I trying to change in my life? What
Speaker 1: kind of pattern? What pattern do I see as unhealthy?
Speaker 1: Let's say, um, and let me ask myself what thoughts
Speaker 1: are correlated with that, what emotions are correlated, What emotions
Speaker 1: do I feel with that? What sensations go on in
Speaker 1: my body? And maybe that's a little harder for some
Speaker 1: people because we're depending on what your ages. For most
Speaker 1: of us, we didn't grow up with much emotional like
Speaker 1: with any training and emotional intelligence. Um. Nowadays in elementary
Speaker 1: schools is starting to shift a little bit in certain
Speaker 1: areas of the country. Um, but uh, we didn't grow
Speaker 1: up knowing our bodies. Especially what we were really trained
Speaker 1: in is just staying in our heads and prizing thinking
Speaker 1: over this barometer that we have called a body that's
Speaker 1: really telling us how we're feeling moment to moment and
Speaker 1: giving us insight. So um, so it takes a little
Speaker 1: bit to kind of map out noticing sensations. So for
Speaker 1: some people who really have a hard time feeling their bodies,
Speaker 1: which are actually quite a number of people, I often
Speaker 1: recommend doing a body scan meditation practice, and you can
Speaker 1: find one on my website for absolutely free under the
Speaker 1: video section of Elishah Goldstein dot com if you just
Speaker 1: need something to practice with, because it's it's really kind
Speaker 1: of training your mind to be aware of sensations and
Speaker 1: emotions are sensations, so you can be able to name
Speaker 1: emotions better and get more perspective so you map out
Speaker 1: thoughts emotions, sensations, and what are the behaviors that typically follow.
Speaker 1: What journaling that does typically is it objectifies your experience.
Speaker 1: So let's say, as an example one of the um
Speaker 1: let's use depression as examples. Since we're on that topic,
Speaker 1: Let's say I'm able to map out my depression loop,
Speaker 1: and then I can ask myself the question, Okay, so, um,
Speaker 1: when I noticed this happening tiredness in my body and
Speaker 1: my mind says, oh my god, am I falling? Am
Speaker 1: I getting depressed? Right now? Is this happening? I can
Speaker 1: recognize that I'm in this loop right now because I've
Speaker 1: mapped it out already. It's almost like you're you're allowing
Speaker 1: your mind to plan for it, and you're seeing what
Speaker 1: your cues are and you're able to kind of name
Speaker 1: it to get space. Then in that space, you're kind
Speaker 1: of also asking yourself what is it that I really
Speaker 1: need right now? So I'm kind of caught in this loop.
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling well. It just it happens so automatically.
Speaker 1: It's not that you can like kind of catch There
Speaker 1: goes a thought, and there goes an emotion, and I
Speaker 1: almost got it. There's a sensation, it just kind of
Speaker 1: all happens at once because it's so fat, and so
Speaker 1: you can just say, like, I'm in that loop right now,
Speaker 1: I'm caught in them. By naming it, you can also
Speaker 1: ask yourself, what do I need right now? Okay, so
Speaker 1: it's I got a little bit of a cold right now,
Speaker 1: sort of an emotional cold. Um, it's not quite a
Speaker 1: full blown flu yet, but I'm I'm kind of here.
Speaker 1: What am I needing? I'm really needing to rest. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm needing to um, you know, write my journal. I'm
Speaker 1: mean to go outside and let sunshine splash my face.
Speaker 1: I really need to call a friend right now. You know,
Speaker 1: there's all these kind of little remedies, natural antidepressant remedies
Speaker 1: that you kind of build in so you can begin
Speaker 1: to engage those things once you've noticed the loop before
Speaker 1: it's gone too far. And that's how you that's how
Speaker 1: you begin to learn to get better and better at
Speaker 1: shifting sooner and become more more resilient around things like anxiety, depression,
Speaker 1: unhealthy eating, getting caught into unhealthy habits by mapping out
Speaker 1: that loop first and coming up with the remedies that
Speaker 1: are going to support you, which you're needing to pay
Speaker 1: attention to once you're able to step into that space
Speaker 1: between stimulus and response where your perspective and choice lies.
Speaker 1: So you just led us into another area I wanted
Speaker 1: to cover, and you brought up the term natural antidepressants.
Speaker 1: So many of us think of, uh, the antidepressants that
Speaker 1: are the medicine you take. And you know, listeners will
Speaker 1: know that I've certainly shared how those have been very
Speaker 1: helpful to me, and I know that you are a
Speaker 1: believer where necessary that those are helpful. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about naturally antidepressants. What are what are some of the
Speaker 1: things that you found our natural antidepressants that can help
Speaker 1: us with this? You know what led me to, let's say,
Speaker 1: even writing this, Buck is looking at some of the
Speaker 1: neuroscience around depression because I was curious about, like what
Speaker 1: happens in the brain when we're experiencing chronic depression over
Speaker 1: time or just depression in general. Because if we can
Speaker 1: see what's happening in the brain, maybe we can learn
Speaker 1: about what actions we can take that shift activity in
Speaker 1: the brain or alter activity in the brain that seems
Speaker 1: to do a one um and kind of move it
Speaker 1: towards what a brain looks like when it's in a
Speaker 1: more balanced, healthier state. What we found was that in
Speaker 1: a brain that's been depressed over time or has had
Speaker 1: chronic depression over time. There's an area behind our foreheads
Speaker 1: that's called the prefrontal cortex, which I mentioned earlier. Um,
Speaker 1: that's involved again with emotion regulation and um uh having
Speaker 1: such a perspective and a lot more. But um there's
Speaker 1: a left and the right side to it, and the
Speaker 1: left side of the prefrontal cortex, which lies again right
Speaker 1: behind your forehead, is involved with positive emotions and approaching
Speaker 1: things in life. You see that area light up when
Speaker 1: you're experiencing positive emotions and when you're experiencing a sense
Speaker 1: of approaching things in life. And so the right side
Speaker 1: is more associated with what i'll call negative emotions. They
Speaker 1: don't doesn't mean they're negative. Sometimes they're uncomfortable. It's really hard.
Speaker 1: The English language isn't the best at describing you know,
Speaker 1: emotions always and so UM, I just use those so
Speaker 1: we have a general agreement on what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: But um, but with uncomfortable feelings pretty much that you'll
Speaker 1: see a right side activation of the prefrontal area. And
Speaker 1: then also with avoiding things in life. So that's one
Speaker 1: thing we found out about the experience of depression. So
Speaker 1: another area of the brain that I mentioned earlier, which
Speaker 1: was the amygdala, which you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: consider to be sort of the emotional center of the brain.
Speaker 1: You see a really active amygdala, or you see actually
Speaker 1: and enlarged amygdala UM. And so that just means that, wow,
Speaker 1: that that part of the brain has got gets a
Speaker 1: lot of activity or has a lot of strength. UM.
Speaker 1: And then an area that's right kind of beneath that
Speaker 1: is this hippocampus, which is involved with learning, memory and
Speaker 1: putting things in context, which you see a lot of
Speaker 1: attrition in that part of the brain, which means that
Speaker 1: you'll see the dendrites sort of retracting and UM. What's
Speaker 1: important about that is that when you look at the
Speaker 1: brain of people who have experienced post traumatic stress disorder UM,
Speaker 1: which is just like an extremely high level of stress
Speaker 1: over time, UM, you see the exact same conditions. And
Speaker 1: so what's interesting about that to me is that said, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that is why the experience of depression is a trauma.
Speaker 1: The brain perceives depression as a trauma. So then I
Speaker 1: thought is there anything we can do to create right
Speaker 1: left prefrontal activation? Can there are there things we can
Speaker 1: do to kind of calm the amygdala to train that,
Speaker 1: and are things we can do to impact the hippocampus
Speaker 1: in a positive way. And so this is where I
Speaker 1: came up with the idea of natural antidepressants because what
Speaker 1: we found the literature and our experience is that, um,
Speaker 1: the experience of mind fullness as an example, let's say
Speaker 1: mindfulness just meaning kind of awareness or intentionally attending to
Speaker 1: something with a sense of engaged curiosity really kind of
Speaker 1: the opposite of what we experience in depression, which is
Speaker 1: kind of disengaged apathy. So an engaged curiosity. So you're
Speaker 1: practicing this, Remember what we practice and repeat is what
Speaker 1: we get. Goes back to that wolf bearable that we started, right,
Speaker 1: and so we found with mindfulness is that mindfulness actually
Speaker 1: does a lot of this stuff, which is you see
Speaker 1: left prefrontal activation sorry with with mindfulness. With practice of mindfulness, um,
Speaker 1: you see a reduction of activity in the big len
Speaker 1: that we found with mindfulness also is that you can
Speaker 1: uh sort of repair or regrow neural connections in the
Speaker 1: hippocampus UM. And again that's not to say it's a panaceans.
Speaker 1: Certainly for somebody who is in the throes of depression,
Speaker 1: mindfulness is a typically the wrong approach, UM. But this
Speaker 1: is when there's already some level of ability. And that's
Speaker 1: where you were talking about how maybe Western medication can
Speaker 1: be helpful sometimes and allowing someone to even do these
Speaker 1: types of practices. But then we found other and also
Speaker 1: in compassion practices, UM, which is the connecting to your
Speaker 1: heart and wishing yourself well or wishing other people well,
Speaker 1: or um, you know, recognizing the difficulty or struggle of
Speaker 1: somebody else with the inclination to want to support them,
Speaker 1: or recognizing your own suffering with the inclination to want
Speaker 1: to support yourself, otherwise known as self compassion. With compassion practices,
Speaker 1: we also see that left prefrontal activation. I can listen
Speaker 1: a whole lot of other neurobiology around this, but I
Speaker 1: think that that we won't go necessarily too deep. We
Speaker 1: can go, you know, as we go. But I found
Speaker 1: that to be really fascinating. So I wondered if we
Speaker 1: can begin to integrate mindfulness and self compassion practices as
Speaker 1: a beginning, UM, can that have a natural antidepressant effect,
Speaker 1: and so I was teaching at the time this eight
Speaker 1: week program called Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy, very popular program
Speaker 1: all over the world now UM created by Zendel Siegel
Speaker 1: and Mark Williamson and John Teasdale, and that was a
Speaker 1: program that was created to help relapse prevention and depression.
Speaker 1: What I found was in teaching that program, which is
Speaker 1: around using mindfulness to help people relate to their experience differently,
Speaker 1: and in other words, what they end up doing is
Speaker 1: it's just like pain to depression is like pain, we
Speaker 1: turn the volume down of our self critical thinking. Is
Speaker 1: that What to me was missing was the direct teaching
Speaker 1: around self compassion because when you look at the research
Speaker 1: studies of depression, the create of self compassion is inversely
Speaker 1: correlated Oh sorry, yeah, is inversely correlated with the experience
Speaker 1: of depression. Meaning the more depressed nobody is, the less
Speaker 1: self compassion they have. So UM. So I began to
Speaker 1: kind of integrate that myself direct self compassion in these classes.
Speaker 1: And also um the direct experience of play. So play
Speaker 1: is engaged, flexible, UM, it's it's spontaneous, it's non judgmental. Um.
Speaker 1: When you look at two kids playing or you're playing
Speaker 1: around anything yourself. As an adult, UM, you experience these
Speaker 1: traits which are gonna exactly the opposite thing of depression. UM.
Speaker 1: And there's a variety of studies that show that play
Speaker 1: and let's say animals in particular, um ah create really
Speaker 1: healthy UM some healthy neural plasticity, positive neural plasticity in
Speaker 1: the brain, and um improve cognitive processing, meaning even in
Speaker 1: large are our cortex, which is involved with cognitive processing.
Speaker 1: But that was done with mice. But mice I actually
Speaker 1: have brains that are similar to ours, as it turns out.
Speaker 1: So mindfulness, self, compassion, play and compassion UM. I decided
Speaker 1: to kind of work with people more directly on to
Speaker 1: see are these natural antidepressants, and my experience showed in
Speaker 1: my own life and another people's life that they are
Speaker 1: in the neuroscience seems to correlate with it. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: So that's three out of five natural antidepressants you list.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned mindfulness, self, compassion, and play. There's two
Speaker 1: others that are in your list, and maybe we could
Speaker 1: just hit those two real quick before we maybe go
Speaker 1: deeper on any individual one. And those were purpose and mastery, right,
Speaker 1: So purpose is another way of saying, purpose to me
Speaker 1: is really around compassion. Purpose of the recognition of me
Speaker 1: engaging life with and concert with something greater than myself,
Speaker 1: which typically with the act of compassion, we have that
Speaker 1: we have that type of experience because we're going outside
Speaker 1: of ourselves and recognizing something outside of ourselves, uh, that
Speaker 1: that's struggling with the inclination to want to support them,
Speaker 1: to support that person or that group or something like that.
Speaker 1: So the action of compassion helps create a sense of purpose,
Speaker 1: but a sense of purpose can also just be this
Speaker 1: this action that I'm taking that is engaging something that's
Speaker 1: greater than myself UM, and that gives us a sense
Speaker 1: of maybe our common humanity, the collective of humanity UM
Speaker 1: and I often talk about how, you know, understanding like
Speaker 1: maybe what our gifts are, our talents, or what resources
Speaker 1: we come into this world with UM can be something
Speaker 1: that we can begin to utilize. Let's say, whether I
Speaker 1: have money, or whether I'm naturally gifted em path or
Speaker 1: whether I am uh somebody who knows a lot of
Speaker 1: people or something like that. You know, these are all
Speaker 1: just different gifts or talents that we have resources that
Speaker 1: we can begin to utilize to do something that makes
Speaker 1: this world a better place, that gives us a sense
Speaker 1: of purpose, or maybe if it's connected with a higher
Speaker 1: power or being in line with the values of my
Speaker 1: religion or something like that or spiritual tradition, UM, that
Speaker 1: could be give a sense of purpose. So mastery is
Speaker 1: the other one is also a natural antidepressant, as when
Speaker 1: we're feeling depression, we tend to have a mindset that's
Speaker 1: more telling us what we can and can't do. UM
Speaker 1: and Carol Dweck talks about this quite a bit that says,
Speaker 1: we have kind of two mindsets here. We have a
Speaker 1: we have a growth mindset, and we have a fixed mindset,
Speaker 1: and only one of them leads to mastery. And so
Speaker 1: the fixed mindset says, whatever I do, if I fall short, UM,
Speaker 1: that's just reinforcement of what I can't do and what's
Speaker 1: not possible for me. The growth mindset says that I
Speaker 1: can practice and repeat things over time and just learn
Speaker 1: to get better and better at them. So if I
Speaker 1: fail at something, I can learn from it and I
Speaker 1: could build upon it. And what we found is that
Speaker 1: people who have depression over time, we tend to have
Speaker 1: more fixed mindsets. And so if we can't begin to
Speaker 1: build in this what I call maybe a learning mindset,
Speaker 1: which is that life is about learning. Um, There's definitely
Speaker 1: always going to be obstacles along the path, and when
Speaker 1: I run into an obstacle, I can make sure I
Speaker 1: pick something up when I fall down. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's something that's been talked about over time. It's
Speaker 1: almost like it's almost not new. But but looking at
Speaker 1: it as a natural antidepressant, This idea of a growth
Speaker 1: the mindset, you know, helps us understand the kind of
Speaker 1: way we want to be thinking that goes against the
Speaker 1: stream and flow of the way our brain works when
Speaker 1: we're feeling depressed. The fixed or growth mindset is such
Speaker 1: an important piece. We've had Carol on the show. It's
Speaker 1: something I find myself coming back to over and over again.
Speaker 1: In the book, you list some ways that we might
Speaker 1: be able to get ourselves into more of a growth mindset.
Speaker 1: Can you give us some strategy because sometimes it's easy
Speaker 1: to understand, like, yes, I should have more of a
Speaker 1: growth mindset, but boy, I just don't feel that way
Speaker 1: right now. So what are some ways to get ourselves
Speaker 1: perhaps closer to the growth mindset than the fixed mindset?
Speaker 1: One of the key attitudes we want to begin practicing
Speaker 1: and adopting is curiosity. It's at the epicenter of mindfulness.
Speaker 1: Mindfulness Again, the definition that I use anyways is you're
Speaker 1: engaged with something in the moment with a sense of curiosity.
Speaker 1: That's that's kind of what it is. And with a
Speaker 1: growth mindset is you know, one of the ways to
Speaker 1: kind of get into that is just to be practicing
Speaker 1: practice being curious in your life. Um. Again, it's the
Speaker 1: same to go back to the parable at the beginning
Speaker 1: of our time together. Uh, you know which wolf am
Speaker 1: I going to feed? You know, the one that is curious.
Speaker 1: I want to feed that one because if I can
Speaker 1: get learned to get better and better at being curious,
Speaker 1: then even at the moments I fall, it's not what
Speaker 1: what what's implicitly a ry is It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be that. See I knew I couldn't do it. I
Speaker 1: never could do this. No one can help me, and
Speaker 1: I can't help myself. Um, and nothing's ever going to change.
Speaker 1: It can be like, oh, look look what I did,
Speaker 1: and look what didn't work. Let me look at this
Speaker 1: obstacle and be curious about it and see what I
Speaker 1: might do differently next time, I might spend a little
Speaker 1: bit more time on it. So to me, one of
Speaker 1: the core ways if I'm to look at you know,
Speaker 1: from a list like really, but one of the core
Speaker 1: ways to really grow a growth mindset is to practice
Speaker 1: being curious in your life. And again I'll say that,
Speaker 1: you know, the way our brain works is with practice
Speaker 1: and repetition, it creates automaticity and so m and which
Speaker 1: makes it implicit automatic. The same reason we can type
Speaker 1: on a keyboard. If I if I said to your type,
Speaker 1: I am home, and you typed I am home, And
Speaker 1: I said, how difficult was that? And you'd say that
Speaker 1: was pretty easy to do. And I said, well, now
Speaker 1: recite to me the middle row of the keyboard, and
Speaker 1: you'd say, I don't really know it most people. There's
Speaker 1: always like some people who know it, but you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know. But it's interesting that our hands no
Speaker 1: exactly where to go. It's embodied. It's a habit, but
Speaker 1: our brain doesn't. And that once they our brain. But
Speaker 1: to be able to recall that um factual memory, UM,
Speaker 1: that explicit memory is harder to do. So we want
Speaker 1: to make it a habit. Basically, we want to make curiosity,
Speaker 1: a habit being curious about things, being curious about our obstacles,
Speaker 1: being curious about really anything in life. UM. To make
Speaker 1: that more automatic for us so that when we fall,
Speaker 1: when we come across the obstacle that's there, UM, we
Speaker 1: have more of an automatic learning based mindset UM otherwise
Speaker 1: know as a growth mindset to naturally fall into that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love how you're correlating a learning mindset with a
Speaker 1: growth mindset. I think that's such a great connection and
Speaker 1: that idea of curiosity of really the question I work
Speaker 1: so often with people on is ask yourself, what could
Speaker 1: you have done differently? But in a completely non judgmental
Speaker 1: and totally curious way, like really, truly what could you
Speaker 1: have done differently? Like to really engage that question is
Speaker 1: so powerful if it's done in a curious, non judgmental way,
Speaker 1: that that there's so much that can come from that.
Speaker 1: Another way of getting us into that mode is um
Speaker 1: by imagining we're a scientist, or if we're a group
Speaker 1: where a team of scientists coming together to study our experience,
Speaker 1: and the scientist is more interested in the kind of
Speaker 1: objective facts like what happened here, what happened there, we're
Speaker 1: kind of mapping it out. And so once, let's say
Speaker 1: something when we go astray in some way we might
Speaker 1: be curious about as a scientist, like how did we
Speaker 1: get astray? What was the steps to getting astray or
Speaker 1: falling down or whatever we might we want to say
Speaker 1: what was the obstacle? And then what would mean what
Speaker 1: might we have implemented? What are some ideas of what
Speaker 1: we might have implemented to kind of go in a
Speaker 1: different direction. And so it's like it's like we're not
Speaker 1: looking for a specific outcome necessarily, We're just curious about
Speaker 1: what might lead to this or that. UM So I
Speaker 1: think that automatically a ROW is that learning based mindset.
Speaker 1: That is a great idea. So we're nearing the end
Speaker 1: of our time here. You and I are going to
Speaker 1: have a post show conversation where we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a few more strategies that we can use to
Speaker 1: deal with depression listeners. You can get access to that
Speaker 1: by going to when you feed dot net slash support.
Speaker 1: But before we start that post show conversation, I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you to maybe say a little bit more
Speaker 1: about play. This is one that I have found myself
Speaker 1: really only in the last year sort of it sounds
Speaker 1: funny to say getting serious about play UM, which I
Speaker 1: have to watch for turning playing into something else that
Speaker 1: I have to do. But I've really recognized how like
Speaker 1: I need to do something just because it's fun. So
Speaker 1: talk to me about the importance of play. And some
Speaker 1: things that you found are good for adults. If you
Speaker 1: look at the body language of somebody's experiencing anxiety or depression.
Speaker 1: When you look at the body language and an animal
Speaker 1: or human being who's playing UM, it looks like exactly,
Speaker 1: it looks like the opposite and so and again when
Speaker 1: you look at some of the neuroscience around it, uh,
Speaker 1: you you see some really important shifts in the brain
Speaker 1: that that look like they're the opposite of what's happening
Speaker 1: with depression and so UM with play. And I teach
Speaker 1: this all, you know, it's it's interesting when I when
Speaker 1: I began to integrate this into my programs UM with
Speaker 1: groups of people who are experiencing depression, it was almost
Speaker 1: like there was this depth of thirst that was there
Speaker 1: for this experience UM of just being UM more flexible, open,
Speaker 1: spontaneous UM, and the moment kind of more using UM
Speaker 1: improv almost you know at times that's there. But so
Speaker 1: when I ask people, typical practice, UM that I asked
Speaker 1: people to do is to go back into their childhood
Speaker 1: and just think about, um, what some of the ways
Speaker 1: that they played were. It's always with a caveat of
Speaker 1: if you think you didn't experiencing any play in your childhood,
Speaker 1: because that that that's certainly some people's narrative. Um that
Speaker 1: you just fast forward to some experience in the future
Speaker 1: that was your earliest recognition of any kind of play
Speaker 1: in your life. And the intention of that, of asking
Speaker 1: them to do that is to just begin to warm
Speaker 1: the coals that are there. Um. We always have thoughts
Speaker 1: in our minds or memories in our minds, but they're
Speaker 1: just not top of mind. And uh, and marketers know this,
Speaker 1: you know very well that they try to put advertising
Speaker 1: out there all the time to help just bring top
Speaker 1: of mind something so that you buy it. Um, it's
Speaker 1: there always, but bring a top mind. So in this way,
Speaker 1: this is kind of bringing it top of mind. And
Speaker 1: then I asked them, and typically people have experiences where
Speaker 1: I asked them to just really kind of focus on
Speaker 1: the qualities like were you outside, where you inside, where
Speaker 1: you um, playing where you were you playing with other kids,
Speaker 1: where you buy yourself or using your iagination? Um, you know,
Speaker 1: what were you doing? And then being able The next
Speaker 1: step was to help people understand, you know, maybe how
Speaker 1: these qualities that they're doing, the qualities not that you
Speaker 1: were playing, um, you know, on your BMX as a
Speaker 1: kid and now you're you know, on a BMX as
Speaker 1: an adult or something, you know, something like that. So
Speaker 1: but it's more like I was outside and I was active,
Speaker 1: I was on a bike, you know, maybe that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So how does that how do those qualities
Speaker 1: translate to you as an adult today? And what's interesting
Speaker 1: is a couple of things happen in that beginning of
Speaker 1: that exercise, which is there's always a fraction of people
Speaker 1: who recognize that they always thought their childhood was so terrible,
Speaker 1: but now they realized that there was actually quite a
Speaker 1: bit of play in their childhood, and it immediately switches
Speaker 1: their narrative literally about fifteen every single time I do this,
Speaker 1: no matter how large the group is that I'm working with,
Speaker 1: there's this immediate shift of narrative within a small percentage
Speaker 1: of people, which I I'm always an that and think
Speaker 1: is so incredibly powerful to be able to shift that
Speaker 1: narrative for everyone else. What I'm what I what we're
Speaker 1: asking is what we start to do is recognize that
Speaker 1: actually there are some things that I'm doing right now
Speaker 1: that I'm not even labeling as play. But what happens
Speaker 1: when I do label it as play? So when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I was outside and taking walks out
Speaker 1: in nature. Um, nowadays I go on a hype, but
Speaker 1: I kind of do it for exercise. Um, what would
Speaker 1: happen if, you know, for for me and my experience,
Speaker 1: What would happen if I began to go outside and
Speaker 1: be in nature but just say, you know, this is
Speaker 1: me playing. How does that shift my perception in that moment?
Speaker 1: How does that shift my experience in that moment for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, including myself? Um, it immediately makes
Speaker 1: it a little bit lighter. There's there's more value in
Speaker 1: the experience that's there. And we're probably if I'm you know,
Speaker 1: who knows, I know, no one's doing this type of neuroscience,
Speaker 1: we might be activating more the left prefrontal cortex, which
Speaker 1: is more of associate with positive emotion. You know, that's
Speaker 1: they're not just the door friends, from during the walk
Speaker 1: but a sense of playing right Um. Then we kind
Speaker 1: of move on to say, Okay, why don't you make
Speaker 1: a list of things that you're not doing right now
Speaker 1: that you might consider to be play that correlate with
Speaker 1: these qualities that you did as a kid, um, And
Speaker 1: so we start making a list of other activities that
Speaker 1: are there. And so then we start looking at our
Speaker 1: our lives and we start saying, where can I either
Speaker 1: name something as play that I wasn't naming before um
Speaker 1: as play, or where can I begin to integrate some
Speaker 1: of these other things that I haven't been allowing myself
Speaker 1: to do, because play again is the complete opposite When
Speaker 1: we're playing, it's completely opposite of the experience we have
Speaker 1: and we're feeling really anxious or depressed, and so the
Speaker 1: experiences it's a natural antidepressant, both physiologically, neurologically and psychologically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's great, and I've been exploring more of
Speaker 1: it myself, as I mentioned. For sure, Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to come on. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned, you and I will talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more in the post show conversation, but it's been such
Speaker 1: a pleasure having you on and I've really enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ericus. Wonderful all right bye. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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