Joseph LeDoux | Stop Calling It Fear: It’s a Survival Reflex + A Story

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If you freeze to a snake at your feet, let's
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walking through a field on a height. All of a sudden,
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you find yourself freezing, and then you see there's a
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snake there. So you didn't freeze because you were afraid.
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You froze because you're amigdala detected danger, and then when
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you realize cognitively that you were in danger, you experience fear.
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That's the high road, taking information all the way to
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the prefrontal cortex where we cognitively assemble these states of
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fear and anxiety.
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For decades, doctor Joseph Liddeaux has been at the absolute
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forefront of neuroscience, fundamentally altering our understanding of how the
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brain navigates fear and anxiety. As the director of the
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Emotional Brain Institute at NYU. His landmark discovery of the
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auditory low road shortcut to the amiguala put him on
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the map worldwide, revealing that our brains are wired to
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detect and react a threat long before we ever consciously
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perceive it. In this conversation, we explore the deep evolutionary
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history of danger, the profound difference between a survival response
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and a felt emotion, and how understanding yourself as a
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narrative memory network gives you the ultimate power to rewrite
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your own story. My name is doctor Plee Mall, your
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co host for the session, and I'm thrilled to be
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here today with doctor Joseph Ludou.
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Welcome. Hi, Thank you very much.
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Oh it's great to have you. I was reading a
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bit about you in various sources and your whole history
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with music, having grown up in Louisiana with the Cajun
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Zydaco music and so forth.
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Oh yeah, that's that's my roots, not so much zydiko.
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I mean, I grew up in French. You know, the
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zydiko was the black music and the traditional Cajun music
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with the white music. But now it's all kind of
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blended together, and so there's a lot of zydiko and
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Cajun kind of influences across the board, and it's wonderful music.
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As a kid, I didn't love it because you know,
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it was kind of old man's music in a sense,
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and the Beatles had just arrived, so I was much
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more interested than that. But I've come to embrace it
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and love Cajun music. There wonderful.
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So your research has really been dedicated understanding your anxiety
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at the most basic level, and I'm wondering if there's
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any connection between that and your personal life, or if
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you've had moments of hearing anxiety that maybe influence your
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work in your career, or even just a basic question,
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what led you in the direction from your roots in
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Louisiana to becoming a neuroscientist.
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Okay, well, that may take our whole time, of the
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whole story, or to tell that story. You know, when
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you ask about a personal experience, so I always go
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back to one that happened when I was a very
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young child. My father ran a meat market and we
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lived above it, as in Unice, Louisiana BYU country, and
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a lot of values and you know, rivers and lakes
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around there, and one of the guys that worked in
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the market would sometimes take me fishing somewhere. And so
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I was probably like six or seven years old, and
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the guy took me to this value ledge to fish,
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and when we got there, the entire area of land
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or on that side of the body was covered with
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water moccasins, glithering snakes. In my juvenile mind, young mind,
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I think there must have been thousands there, maybe they
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were twenty, but it seemed like a thousand to me
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at the time, and I never got over that. If
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I had fear of snakes all my life, I mean,
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it's gotten better living in New York and I don't
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encounter many snakes. We have a house in upstate New York,
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and there are some snakes around there. But I kind
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of gotten over it over the years. But that is
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one thing that has stuck with me for a long time. Now.
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How did I get into neuroscience, But it was a
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perfectly reasonable pathway. I had an undergraduate degree in business
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administration from Louisiana State University. I then got a master's
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degree in marketing, and while taking the marketing class. This
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was late sixties and wasn't that cool to be involved
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in marketing, But I was interested in psychology because it
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seemed much more interesting than marketing itself and also relevant
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to marketing. So I signed up for a course call
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Learning and Motivation by filling named Robert Thompson. And it
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turns out that it had nothing to do with consumer behavior,
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nothing to do with humans. The guy was studying rat
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brains and memory, and I had no idea you could
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do that, And so I kind of just said, can
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I work in your lab? So I worked in his lab.
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I applied to graduate school, and remarkably I got in
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one graduate school, which is State University of New York
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at stony Brook, because somebody there knew the guy that
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I had spent a little time with at LSU. So
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I ended up at stony Brook and started working with
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Mike Zaniga on split brain patients. Mike had made splip
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brain patients famous in the sixties at Caltech, and we
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had a new group of patients. So I did my
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PhD studying consciousness in slip brain patients. So from within
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less than four years after leaving marketing, I had a
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PhD studying consciousness and split brain patients. And Michael I
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actually wrote a book on these patients that we'd studied,
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called The Integrated Mind. And one of the features of
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that book was the idea that we human womans are
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constantly explaining our behavior. This was based on a slip
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brain patient whose I don't know if you know what
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this is. It's a patient who's had epilepsy and the
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brain has been split in half to prevent the seizure
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from bouncing back and forth. You know it was a
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useful technique back then when medications were not so good.
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But this patient was very He revealed something to Mike
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and me. While we were doing these studies, we would
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present stimulate to one hemisphere or the other. At the
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bottom line is that the left hemisphere and a slip
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brain patient can talk to you because language is usually there.
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The right hemisphere can't talk. But the question is, you know,
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what could it do well? It was able to respond
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to stimulate that it saw the right hemisphere saw by
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the left hand pointing to the appropriate picture that matched it.
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And so we asked when we presented stimuli to the
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right hemisphere and it pointed to the thing itself, we
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asked the left hemisphere, why did you do that? And
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the left heimisphere would always make up an explanation. It
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would make sense. So like if there was a picture
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of an apple and the right hemisphere had been shown
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an apple, and the left hand points to the apple,
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and you asked the left hemisphere, why did you do that?
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Why did your body do that? He said, well, you know,
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I saw maybe you didn't have an apple, but kind
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of a ball. So I saw a round thing, so
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I pointed to the ball, so the left hemisphere is
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talking about what the left hand is doing, which is
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controlled by the right hemisphere. So the point was that
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he made up a story to make his behavior make
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sense to him mentally. He generated a narrative. And ever
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since that night and Vermont where we were testing this
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page and a camp or trailer which turned into a lab,
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ever since that night, I have been trying to understand
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how the mind consciously allows us to make sense of
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our laws. So I decided emotional behaviors might be the
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kinds of behaviors that might require these kind of dissonance
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reducing narratives to give us the sense of mental unity.
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So we do all kinds of things like I'm waving
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my hands here. We do all kinds of things unconsciously,
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non consciously that don't matter very much. But sometimes we
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see things that cause cognitive dissonance that we're doing unconsciously,
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and we have to generate a narrative to explain that
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to ourselves. So, for example, let's say you're having an
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argument with your partner and you see that awful thing
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is about to come out that you're going to say,
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you know it's coming, you know this is all happening
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in microsuckers. You know it's coming, and then you either
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stop it or it happens. If it happens, then you're
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you know, you've caused more trouble than you were in
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already from the argument. But the point is that the
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next day you then have to generate a new narrative
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and apologize. And so the idea was that these emotional
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behaviors are the kinds of things that might be that
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we might need these conscious explanations for. So I decided
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I was going to study emotions. And at the time,
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there wasn't a lot of research on emotion. This was
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in the late seventies early eighties, and I decided there
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were no good techniques for studying the human brain and
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studying emotions, no pet scans or moris or anything like that.
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You just had to do a neurological example the patient
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and judge what he was doing behaviorally to get anything done.
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So the bottom line is that the turn to studies
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of rodents because I assumed that the neural systems that
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control emotional behavior and rodents was very similar to what
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is controlling emotional behavior in us. You know, the idea
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of the Olympic system was popular. Then it's something I
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no longer really believe in or think is real. But
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that's a whole nother story. But anyway, that took me
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to that assumption that the human limbic areas and the
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rodent limbic areas would be very similar. I started studying
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rodents using a procedure called Pavlovian conditioning Pavlovian fear conditioning,
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where you give the rat of tone, pair it with
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a shock, and then the rat freezes and as the
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blood pressure and heart rate go up. Same thing happens
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to us if we encounter in danger. We've reasoned our
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blood pressure and heart rate go up. So you know,
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I wasn't interested in fear. I was interested in emotion
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in general, but the fear conditioning paradigm seemed like a
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good way to study that in an animal. So for
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the longest time, for several years, I never talked about
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it as fear conditioning so much as emotional conditioning. And
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at the time I had fortunately landed in a lad
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at Cornell Medical School in New York, where every technique
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known to neuroscience was available at that point in that lab,
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so I spent a year trying to learn some neuroanatomy
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to pursue these Pablovian fear conditioning circuits in the brain.
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I spent another year trying to learn the electrophysiological procedures
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for recording neuroactivity in the brain of a rodum. I
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spent some time trying to understand some elecular techniques for
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pursuing the cellular and molecular mechan underline this kind of learning. Now,
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fortunately for me, since I had no training at all
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really in any of this stuff, I just landed into
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a spot where I could get training on the job. Training.
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It was in a neurobiology lab, which meant that there
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wasn't a lot of research going on in these big
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fancy neurobiology labs on behavior. It was all about cellular
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and molecular mechanisms, and so many of the people studying behavior,
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especially like pablovin conditioning and so forth, had no access
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to any of these techniques. So here I am a
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total novice being handed all these techniques, and I was
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able to just like a neuroscience candy story, we just
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go to do with anything you wanted to do with
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there in that thing. So within a few short years
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I was able to map those pathways from the tone
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that is paired with the shocks. The tone goes into
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the ear, and it goes into the brain activate certain
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areas of the brain, and then you get these behavioral
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and physiology responses that flow out. So this became the
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work that I did, and one of the very first
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discoveries turned out to be very important. So the auditory
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system in the brain carries information from the ear to
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the cerebral cortex, where we had this part of the
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brain called the auditory cortex, and you know, we have
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a visual cortex. We have the cortex for every kind
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of sensory system, and so the lower level pathways from
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the sensory inputs like the eyes of the ears, takes
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that information to the cortex. So in the case of
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the auditory cortex and in the visual it was assumed
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that anything meaningful in life would have to be processed
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by the cortex in order for it to be a
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significant response, like an emotional response to atone would have
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to go through the auditory cortex and then go to
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some limbic area for example. But I wasn't looking for
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the limbic system or anything. It was just like, okay,
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I was going to follow the auditory stimulus all the
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way through the brain. So I made lesions in all
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of the auditory areas, just in different groups of animals.
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And the only lesion that had an effect, well, the
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lesions that had effect with the lower one. So it's
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coming in from the ear, going up to the thalamus,
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and from the thalamus to the cortex. When a lesioned
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the auditory cortex, it had no effect on conditioning. So
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the animals could indeed learn something significant without having to
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use the auditory cortext But how do they do that?
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If we lesion the auditory thalamus, they couldn't learn the
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conditioning anymore. And so we use these tracer techniques to
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put a chemical in the thalamus that would then tell
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us where are all the connections of the thalamus in
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the brain. Obviously there were connections to the auditory cortex
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from the auditory thalamus, but that's not the lesion study said,
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that's not what's causing the behavior. So we lesion the
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auditory thalamus, and we looked at the connections of the
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auditory and thalamis not just to the auditory cortex but
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also areas. And one of the areas that was innervated,
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in other words, had connections from the auditory dallas was
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the amygdala. Now I didn't know much about the amigdala
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back then. Yeah, it was a Olympic area so forth.
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But what it was telling me was that the sound
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was going into the brain through the auditory system, and
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it didn't have to go to the cortex and had
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to go to the dalamus and then directly to the amigdala.
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It also went to the cortex for a more complex
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kind of situation, but with a pure tone you could
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activate the amigdala directly. It took seven milliseconds as fast
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seven milliseconds to get from the ear to the amigdalant
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and then produce the response. So why was that important? Well,
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I did all this work at Cornell, as I said,
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and as a result of that I was offered a
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job at NYU, which is where I have been since
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nineteen eighty nine. And the week before I arrived at NYU,
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Daniel Goleman, who was known for his work on emotional
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intelligence and wrote the book Emotional Intelligence. I had been
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doing research for that book and stumbled across my finding
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that we could have this auditory shortcut to the amygdalum
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that would allow us to respond rapidly before we even
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consciously know with our cortext what it is we're responding to.
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And so he wrote an article in The New York
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Times called Brain's design emerges as a key to emotion.
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And so that really put me on the map, not
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just with other scientists but also with lay people, and
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it led to my book, The Emotional Brain. It also
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was a big part of Goldman's book Emotional Intelligence. I
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was all over the first three chapters of that book
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and his idea of an emotional hijack, and all of
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that all based on my work. You know, I sometimes
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say that I think it's true that my career would
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not be what it is without Goldmans, and Goldmans wouldn't
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have been what it was without my research.
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Interesting, actually, when I was preparing for this interview, I
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read his books a long time ago, but I hadn't
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made the connection. And I know Theannie Goldman, and I
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was wondering, was that is the amigula hijack idea from Goldman?
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Does that hold up? And the Dou's work, And I
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didn't realize that there are right internally connected. So what
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you're pointing to I think anyway, I know you've you've
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spoken written about this idea is kind of a low
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road of threat response with is this more direct route
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to the amigua? There's a higher road that involves more cognitive,
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more neurological, more cognitive processing, and involves more what we
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may be experienced as emotions. So I wonder, in terms
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of how we experience as humans experience threat, fear and anxiety,
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if you could make that distinction between maybe a threat
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response that's perhaps purely neurological, and then what we think
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of as more elaborated fear in anxiety. There is what
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we mostly tend to experience.
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Yeah, I mean fear in anxiety or as neurological as
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a threat response. It's all in the brain, right, It's
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not somewhere out there. But yeah, So my work, basically
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my work work with a couple other people. There weren't
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many people studying emotion at that time. I just have
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to say, And when I wrote my first grant for
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NIH on emotion, the grant was rejected because neuroscientists do
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not study emotions. It was like a kind of you know,
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like you can't do that in neuroscience. You know. But
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you know, I persisted and changed the title of the
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grant and ended up getting the grant. But all of
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this took me to the amygdala. And you know, everybody
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knows the amygdala now, but in nineteen eighty five, when
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I started doing this eighty four, whenever it was, the
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amygdala was not on the screen of most people. But
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it got on the screen. It became well known as
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the brain's fear center. And I'm partly responsible for that.
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So over the years I had to make amends for
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having kind of put that meme out into the culture.
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I mean, it wasn't just me, but my book The
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Emotional Brain had a big role in kind of introducing
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the whole idea of the amygdala fear center, and so
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I was, you know, I do feel kind of guilty
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about that because you know, from the Split Brain days,
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my idea was that the things we were doing unconsciously,
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like for example, if you freeze to a snake at
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your feet, it's walking through a field on the hike,
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all of a sudden you find yourself freezing and then
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you see there's a snake there. So that's the low
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road acting. You're freezing because your brain has automatically detected
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danger and causes you to freeze. That's an evolutionarily learned
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kind of response, and so the experience of fear is
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secondary to that. Right, you didn't freeze because you were afraid.
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You froze because you're amignally detected danger. And then when
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you realize cognitively that you were in danger, you experience fear.
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So that's the high road, taking information all the way
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to the prefrontal cortex, where we cognitively assemble these states
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of fear and anxiety.
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What a transformation isn't just about thinking differently, but feeling that.
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Science shows us that true change happens when we align
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00:18:03.799 --> 00:18:07.240
not just our minds, but also the neural networks in
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our hearts and guts. This heart mind connection is the
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If you're ready to step into a more heart centered,
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connected and conscious life, I invite you to join us.
350
00:19:09.400 --> 00:19:13.680
Click the link to learn more and start your journey today. Well,
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this low road of our brain picks up on a
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potential threat even before we're sort of consciously aware of it,
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I guess, and does that relate to what sometimes we
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hear about the notion of neuroception And has that happened
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through the five senses? Or is the nervous system itself
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able to sense or detect danger or fear in some
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way independent of a particular sense, or is there a
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combination of the five senses?
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Well, so, you know, it depends on the circumstances. Right,
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you're walking through a feel and you find yourself freezing.
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That is the sight of a shape on the ground
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that you know is snake like and so you're freezing,
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but it could also be a stick on the ground.
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And I've gotten many pictures by you know, talk about
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the snake and the stick, and many people have sent
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me pictures of where they have frozen and found themselves
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freezing to a stick and sent me pictures of the
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sticks they were freezing through. Like it's just kind of
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a curvy shape. It's kind of an evolutionarily wired thing,
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you know, so to speak. You know, I think that
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you know, our ancestors, our primate ancestors were predated upon
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by snakes, and they had built up some kind of
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feature detectors for snakes. So in that case, it's not
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a whole brain thing. It's a visual stimulus that's causing
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you to respond. Or it might be the sound of something.
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You're walking through a dark alley and all of a
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sudden you hear a noise and that sound causes you
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to freeze. It goes through your ear and goes to
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the amignal. It's all going through the imigdal and no
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matter what it is, you know, in terms of danger
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like that, but the amigdala is not fear the amigdala
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is threat detection. Now this goes back. You could say,
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why don't I call it fear? You know, well, if
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I wrote a book called The Deep History of Ourselves,
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the four billionaire Story of How we got conscious Brains,
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in which I decided to trace the evolutionary history of
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danger as far back as I could, And so I
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went back to the you know, all the ancestors vertebrate ancestors.
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We have fish and so forth. I respond to danger,
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their ancestors responded to danger. You got to go all
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the way back to six hundred and thirty million years ago.
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That's the branch where like insects and octopus and all
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those things that are not vertebrates evolved and the vertebrates
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evolved thirty million years ago is where they split. So
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that animal that gave rise to both of those lines
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was a flatworm, very simple thing that had a collection
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of neurons in the front of its brain in front
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of its head. That those neurons were its brain, and
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it was able to control its bodily movements with that brain.
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But that was very primitive. Now that creature from what
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is now present day jellyfish or that sort of fila
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of animal where there was no collection of neurons in
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the front of the head or anything. Because a jellyfish
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is circular. It doesn't have a front and the back.
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It doesn't have a left and a right. It's circular,
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and so it doesn't have a collection of neurons that
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protects it by being in the front. You know, if
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you put all your neurons in the front, and you're
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an animal that can run away, then it's okay to
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lose your tail as long as you don't lose your brain. Right,
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So if the predator chops off your tail, you're still
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going to be alive and functional and have a brain
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that's working. But if it chops off your head, there's
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nothing you can do about it. So the jellyfish didn't
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have that feature. Its neurons are just distributed all over. It's,
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you know, the kind of dome that the jellyfish has,
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But it was able to detect and respond to danger
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with that. Now, the ancestors of jellyfish, for like sponge
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like animals and all of these animals I've told you about,
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have what's called synaptic plasticity molecules. They have the ability
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to learn and to learn behaviors in a very primitive
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way like pablovin conditioning stimulus response learning, and they all
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use the same kinds of molecules enzymes in the brain
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that store memories. Now, the last group that I mentioned
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with sponges, so they have these molecules, but they don't
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have a nervous system. So what are they doing with
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synaptic plasticity molecules. Now, let's ask that one step back.
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So the ancestors of all animals from sponges on were
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single cell protozoa. These are things that go into your
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gut and give you all kinds of problems. There's good
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bacteria and bad. It's not a bacteria, it's a protozoa
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though it's the kind of thing that you get confections
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from and similar to bacteria, but it's not so. These
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protozoa also have these synaptic plasticity molecules. And protozoa is
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a single cell, so it doesn't have the nervous system,
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doesn't have any system, and it has one cell with
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a membrane around it that allows it to go into
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the water. And it's in the water. We go and
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move around in the water, detect danger and move away
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from it, detect nutrients and move towards it. Now, that
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goes back to two billion years ago, and before that
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we're bacteria, and that goes back to the beginning, So
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to the very beginning of life three point seven billion
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years ago. You have bacterial cells that learn that figure out.
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If they don't figure out, they evolve the capacity to
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do two things. One is to detect danger and the
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others to detect nutrients. So they have to you know,
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put it in human terms. They are hungry, so they
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have to eat, and they're fearful, so they have to
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respond to anger. But there's no hunger and there's no fear.
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This is a single cell, bacterial cell that lived, you know,
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three point seven billion years ago that they, through a
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series of accidental evolutionary steps, lived long enough to divide
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in half. And when it divided in half, then that
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was the beginning of all of life. From that one cell,
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every cell that has ever lived since then, that mother's house.
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That was it. So this idea about danger, it goes
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back to the beginning of life. As soon as there
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was life, there was danger. It's a quote from Ruff,
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although Emerson and he meant it in terms of a child,
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but it's true for all of life. So there's all
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these things that we talk about in terms of danger
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are in us because of those bacterial through cells three
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point seven million years ago had that capacity. So that's
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what that's why we freeze to the snake and jumped
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to the sound and so forth, Not because we're afraid.
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Fear is something we've added to that whole process.
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Very late in illusion and we know obviously just again
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you cample snake. Some people are fairly afraid of snakes.
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I used to play with them when I was a kid,
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but I think I've gotten older.
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Let's right, you were in the opposite direction.
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Yeah. I was lived in South America where there were
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require a few, so I developed a strong caution. But
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we know there are people that have literally almost no
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fear of snakes and can get snakes and so forth.
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So the fear is separate from the threat response in
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terms of this seems very important in terms of our summit,
479
00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:21.839
in terms of, you know, helping people navigate their experience
480
00:26:21.920 --> 00:26:23.599
of fear and anxiety and the ways in which that
481
00:26:23.720 --> 00:26:27.680
can become debilitating from anything. So as you're describing it,
482
00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:31.160
fear at least is really baked into the human condition
483
00:26:31.279 --> 00:26:34.519
at the cellular level, the response to danger, which is
484
00:26:34.519 --> 00:26:38.519
a survival response that's pretty much baked into the human.
485
00:26:38.319 --> 00:26:42.720
Condition, into life, all of life. In all of life,
486
00:26:42.759 --> 00:26:45.759
a tree has to you know, do things to protect itself.
487
00:26:45.839 --> 00:26:48.119
Not that it's it has a capacity to move fast,
488
00:26:48.440 --> 00:26:50.359
but the roots have to find, for you know, the
489
00:26:50.480 --> 00:26:54.599
right places to live and otherwise it's not protected.
490
00:26:55.039 --> 00:26:58.640
So where's the access point or many perhaps where this
491
00:26:58.920 --> 00:27:03.119
natural survival instinct as part of life that can then
492
00:27:03.319 --> 00:27:05.640
and maybe it's a complete separate thing, or maybe they're connected.
493
00:27:05.920 --> 00:27:09.000
Then can elaborate into the emotions of fear in anxiety,
494
00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:13.119
which can become habitual and conditioned and can become related
495
00:27:13.160 --> 00:27:16.720
to traumatic memories and become quite debilitating. But at the
496
00:27:16.759 --> 00:27:18.559
same time, it's not like we're ever going to be
497
00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:22.240
free of the survival response or for the hunger response.
498
00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:26.039
So how does that point to how we work with
499
00:27:26.079 --> 00:27:28.559
this just ourselves and you know, the normal way most
500
00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:30.759
human beings work with or how we work with it
501
00:27:30.839 --> 00:27:33.440
therapeutically where it's becomes debilitating for people.
502
00:27:33.759 --> 00:27:36.559
So you know, I guess the first point is that
503
00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:39.680
you know, we often hear that fear is and anxiety
504
00:27:39.720 --> 00:27:44.240
are useful things, right, But let's step back and let's
505
00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:47.079
see what's really useful. It's really useful or these innate
506
00:27:47.119 --> 00:27:50.799
survival responses that is not fear in anxiety, Fear and
507
00:27:50.880 --> 00:27:56.559
anxiety or conditions that we assembol in our brains. I'm
508
00:27:56.559 --> 00:27:58.359
going to jump ahead. I'm going to skip the whole
509
00:27:58.359 --> 00:28:02.000
evolutionary thing here and go into humans and I'm going
510
00:28:02.039 --> 00:28:04.880
to talk about let's just take the word fear, and
511
00:28:05.240 --> 00:28:10.480
we know that that word is present across perhaps probably
512
00:28:10.599 --> 00:28:14.880
all cultures that are alive, that have ever lived, because
513
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:17.960
danger is such a primitive aspect of life. And so
514
00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:21.319
if you're going to have an emotion, if you're going
515
00:28:21.359 --> 00:28:24.240
to construct an emotion, it's got to be about danger.
516
00:28:24.279 --> 00:28:26.319
It's got to be one of the primary danger. And
517
00:28:26.680 --> 00:28:30.480
also the ability to maintain metabolism. Those are the two
518
00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:33.799
heat things. You have to stay alive by detecting and
519
00:28:33.839 --> 00:28:36.519
responding to danger, and you have to stay alive by
520
00:28:36.839 --> 00:28:41.200
finding food and keeping metabolism going to keep your body alive.
521
00:28:41.640 --> 00:28:44.319
So those are two things that have to go together,
522
00:28:44.720 --> 00:28:47.599
but that has nothing to do with fears. These are
523
00:28:47.599 --> 00:28:52.000
the survival responses. Now we have that word fear, where
524
00:28:52.079 --> 00:28:55.799
you pick a culture and it's there in their language,
525
00:28:56.119 --> 00:29:00.440
and we assume, because the word is universal, that the
526
00:29:00.559 --> 00:29:03.640
emotion is universal, and that is wrong. Let's say your
527
00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:07.440
life in South America. Do you feel that there's a
528
00:29:07.480 --> 00:29:10.640
slightly different perspective on fear where you grew up as
529
00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:15.160
opposed to in say New York or the United States.
530
00:29:15.319 --> 00:29:15.559
Yeah?
531
00:29:15.599 --> 00:29:20.160
Sure, I mean we know that emotions vary a lot
532
00:29:20.200 --> 00:29:23.400
across cultures. A lot of our emotion all of our emotions,
533
00:29:23.400 --> 00:29:26.279
i would say, are based on schema that we've learned
534
00:29:26.359 --> 00:29:29.480
in the process of growing up in a culture. You know,
535
00:29:29.559 --> 00:29:32.119
schema is a body of bodies of knowledge that we
536
00:29:32.200 --> 00:29:35.440
acquire in the process of becoming who we are. And
537
00:29:35.799 --> 00:29:40.440
so the experiences you have with fear in the context
538
00:29:40.519 --> 00:29:43.440
of your family, in the context of the culture in
539
00:29:43.480 --> 00:29:45.200
which you grew up. In other words, there are lots
540
00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:51.839
of layers that are affecting what kind of understanding what
541
00:29:51.960 --> 00:29:56.000
fear is to you. Your fear is different from everybody
542
00:29:56.039 --> 00:29:58.440
else's fear because you're the only one who went through
543
00:29:58.480 --> 00:30:02.960
that schema learning process of your fear. But because we
544
00:30:03.039 --> 00:30:06.200
have that word, we think it's the same. And this
545
00:30:06.319 --> 00:30:09.359
is a problem. For example, at places like the UN
546
00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:16.119
where the translation is sent from one country to another
547
00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:20.079
while the talk is going on. But what the person
548
00:30:20.200 --> 00:30:24.000
is saying when put into English or put into Russian
549
00:30:24.119 --> 00:30:26.880
or whatever, it's not the same thing, right, because the
550
00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:31.440
subtlety of the nuance of the language is where all
551
00:30:31.480 --> 00:30:35.200
the important stuff that's happening at the UN is taking place.
552
00:30:35.640 --> 00:30:37.359
But that's not how you know. You have to have
553
00:30:37.400 --> 00:30:39.559
a really good translator, and I don't know how good
554
00:30:39.599 --> 00:30:43.160
they are, but it's hard to carry the nuance. So
555
00:30:43.200 --> 00:30:47.440
the point is that emotions are culturally within a culture.
556
00:30:47.480 --> 00:30:50.799
You acquire your emotions and within your family, and you
557
00:30:50.839 --> 00:30:53.559
may have multiple families that through the course of your life,
558
00:30:53.559 --> 00:30:56.160
maybe your parents divorced, so you've got different kinds of
559
00:30:56.519 --> 00:31:00.640
situations in which you are learning to be who you are.
560
00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:02.799
And I think that's true of all emotions. You know,
561
00:31:02.799 --> 00:31:06.160
you often hear about basic and social emotions, but I
562
00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:10.039
think all of them, there's no basic emotions. All emotions
563
00:31:10.079 --> 00:31:14.119
are cognitive interpretations of situations based on the schema that
564
00:31:14.160 --> 00:31:17.519
we've acquired in the process of learning what those emotions are.
565
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:20.640
So we have all these survival responses that we think
566
00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:23.480
of as emotions because they go together in our minds.
567
00:31:23.720 --> 00:31:26.559
When you're running from the bear, you're afraid. Therefore fear
568
00:31:26.640 --> 00:31:28.599
must be what caused you to run. But that's not true.
569
00:31:28.599 --> 00:31:32.000
The snake example shows that you don't freeze or run
570
00:31:32.200 --> 00:31:35.279
because you're afraid. You run. It's like what William James said,
571
00:31:35.319 --> 00:31:37.799
You know, we don't run from the bear because we're afraid,
572
00:31:37.839 --> 00:31:40.640
because we run. I don't they think that's exactly right,
573
00:31:40.799 --> 00:31:42.680
but it's very close to the point I'm making.
574
00:31:43.079 --> 00:31:45.680
You've also you've been quoted saying no self, no fear,
575
00:31:45.680 --> 00:31:49.200
and I'm curious about that. Events on how we describe self.
576
00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:52.480
But if we think of self as basically a construct,
577
00:31:52.599 --> 00:31:56.559
it's sort of a cognitive psychological construct that we create,
578
00:31:57.039 --> 00:31:59.920
and it doesn't have real existence, so it naturally might
579
00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:03.640
be the underpinnings of it might be some trepidation, some
580
00:32:03.720 --> 00:32:06.720
insecurity about relying our building our whole life around this
581
00:32:06.759 --> 00:32:09.720
stuff that's simply a construct. And in your most recent
582
00:32:09.759 --> 00:32:14.000
book you posited a different way of understanding ourselves and
583
00:32:14.079 --> 00:32:19.359
reality with these four realms of existence biological, neurological, cognitive,
584
00:32:19.759 --> 00:32:23.119
and just vit to one being a consciousness and which
585
00:32:23.200 --> 00:32:26.039
I'm curious about that as well, whether being a neuroscientist,
586
00:32:26.119 --> 00:32:28.279
and whether you're in you're dealing with the heart problem
587
00:32:28.319 --> 00:32:31.240
of consciousness here in your work. But there's a hard problem.
588
00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:35.319
And so does that model provide us with a different
589
00:32:35.720 --> 00:32:38.440
way of being that might make us less prone to
590
00:32:38.559 --> 00:32:40.839
some kind of almost existential anxiety?
591
00:32:41.839 --> 00:32:45.039
All right, Well, first, the motto there is yourself is
592
00:32:45.079 --> 00:32:48.039
a story. It's a story that you tell yourself. And
593
00:32:48.079 --> 00:32:51.519
I've just written my memoir which is all about that
594
00:32:51.599 --> 00:32:54.440
kind of stuff. But we'll say that for another day.
595
00:32:54.680 --> 00:32:57.759
It's not done yet days basically, so yeah, so in
596
00:32:58.440 --> 00:33:01.039
the deep History of ourselves, as said, no self, no fear.
597
00:33:01.079 --> 00:33:04.000
In other words, you know, my views change in every book,
598
00:33:04.359 --> 00:33:07.440
and that's you know, we change over time all the time.
599
00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:10.079
So I'm not ashamed to say that I've changed my mind.
600
00:33:10.240 --> 00:33:12.079
And that's what my memoir is all about. It's called
601
00:33:12.119 --> 00:33:14.920
starting over, Just how all the times I've changed my
602
00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:18.200
mind about something. And scientists often don't change their minds.
603
00:33:18.279 --> 00:33:21.720
It's like down to the matter. The reason I can
604
00:33:21.799 --> 00:33:25.160
change my mind in science is because it didn't grow
605
00:33:25.240 --> 00:33:29.319
up indoctrinated in science. I just learned it myself. In
606
00:33:29.359 --> 00:33:33.440
the process that the George Martin, the Beatles producer sort
607
00:33:33.480 --> 00:33:36.039
of said the same thing once. I saw recently saw
608
00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:39.279
a documentary about him, and he said that when he
609
00:33:39.359 --> 00:33:43.319
went to music school, he felt like an outsider because
610
00:33:43.359 --> 00:33:47.200
he had never been indoctrinated into the world, the proper
611
00:33:47.240 --> 00:33:49.519
world of music. And you know, he went on to
612
00:33:49.559 --> 00:33:52.400
be quite successful. And then I've had some success in
613
00:33:52.440 --> 00:33:54.559
my life. I really think it's because I didn't have
614
00:33:54.640 --> 00:33:58.599
the indoctrination that was driving. But anyway, where were you? Oh? Yeah,
615
00:33:58.640 --> 00:34:02.440
So the no No fear it was about fear of
616
00:34:02.519 --> 00:34:06.720
schema that would be required to fear and self scheme
617
00:34:06.759 --> 00:34:09.880
would be required to have that emotion, because if you're
618
00:34:09.920 --> 00:34:13.840
not involved, then there's no emotion. But by self I
619
00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:16.599
met a very narrow thing. Again, it was the narration
620
00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:19.880
of who you are. Then that wasn't necessarily that clearly
621
00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:21.960
in the book there was a lot about narration. But
622
00:34:22.440 --> 00:34:25.559
it's not just about the schema, the fear of schema.
623
00:34:25.679 --> 00:34:28.880
It's about your understanding of the fear of schema. The
624
00:34:28.920 --> 00:34:32.440
new book for Realms of Existence, the motto there of
625
00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:36.920
yourself is a story is I think our whole lives
626
00:34:37.079 --> 00:34:40.159
this is part of we're acquiring these schema and so
627
00:34:40.360 --> 00:34:43.559
the schema we acquire to find who we are. There
628
00:34:43.559 --> 00:34:46.000
are lots of other ways to talk about self, which
629
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:48.960
is what I tried to kind of put away in
630
00:34:49.079 --> 00:34:53.199
the book, because many philosophers and scientists say that no
631
00:34:53.199 --> 00:34:55.559
one has ever seen asself, no one. The self is
632
00:34:55.639 --> 00:34:58.679
a fiction. It's made up. It's true, it's our fiction,
633
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:02.280
but it's not a It's not something in there that
634
00:35:02.440 --> 00:35:07.320
is different from me. Yeah, myself is not some little
635
00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:12.519
person in there because I'm just me regardless, right, don't
636
00:35:12.599 --> 00:35:15.639
it's a layer that's been added that's unnecessary. It's who
637
00:35:15.719 --> 00:35:18.119
we are. And the only thing I think that's relevant
638
00:35:18.119 --> 00:35:21.679
about self is the narration. All the other stuff is important,
639
00:35:21.679 --> 00:35:25.679
it's useful, it's information about how the brain and mind work,
640
00:35:26.039 --> 00:35:28.559
but it's not really a self in there that's making
641
00:35:28.599 --> 00:35:31.599
you do. Yourself is not making you do things. If
642
00:35:31.639 --> 00:35:34.159
you're doing something, it's you that's doing it. You know,
643
00:35:34.199 --> 00:35:35.840
you got to own up to it and don't limit
644
00:35:35.880 --> 00:35:39.360
on yourself, yourself in the physical sense of something besides you.
645
00:35:40.679 --> 00:35:44.559
Yeah, how might this change so today? Yeah, I mean
646
00:35:44.599 --> 00:35:47.679
there's always been there's always been threats to our survival
647
00:35:48.039 --> 00:35:50.679
and there's you know, there's always been uncertainty in life.
648
00:35:51.119 --> 00:35:53.920
It seems like today a lot of people are experiencing
649
00:35:53.960 --> 00:35:59.480
a lot of uncertainty, political, economic uncertainty, climate anxiety, the
650
00:35:59.559 --> 00:36:03.400
past change of modern life AI coming on a lot
651
00:36:03.480 --> 00:36:04.880
of things. And there seems to be a lot of
652
00:36:04.920 --> 00:36:07.599
anxiety in the world, and a lot of attempts to
653
00:36:07.719 --> 00:36:10.480
self medicate it in all kinds of ways are psychiatrically
654
00:36:10.519 --> 00:36:15.000
medicated or so forth. So how would this understanding of
655
00:36:15.079 --> 00:36:21.320
the distinction between the basic neurological survival mechanism versus the
656
00:36:22.119 --> 00:36:26.039
more elaborative neurological and cognitive process of emotion and fear
657
00:36:26.119 --> 00:36:29.760
and anxiety, this distinction you may just made about self,
658
00:36:29.800 --> 00:36:34.119
How might these understandings or insights help us better navigate
659
00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:37.239
whatever level of anxiety fear we may be experiencing.
660
00:36:38.119 --> 00:36:40.400
Auden had to pull in the age of anxiety in
661
00:36:40.519 --> 00:36:43.119
nineteen forty nine, I think the year I was born,
662
00:36:43.360 --> 00:36:44.599
if that's the year I was born, But I think
663
00:36:44.639 --> 00:36:46.920
that's when this book came out too. And you know,
664
00:36:47.039 --> 00:36:50.320
students would always ask me, you know, say that, oh,
665
00:36:50.360 --> 00:36:53.719
our generation is the most anxiousness that well, every generation
666
00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:57.239
thinks it's the most anxious height. But now today I
667
00:36:57.280 --> 00:36:59.679
think there's no doubt that. Well, I don't know. We
668
00:36:59.760 --> 00:37:02.119
may not necessarily be the mode. We don't know how
669
00:37:02.119 --> 00:37:04.519
bad World War two was. At least we didn't live
670
00:37:04.599 --> 00:37:08.440
through it. But we're living through a hell right now,
671
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:11.400
I think, in my personal opinion, with all the stuff
672
00:37:11.440 --> 00:37:16.000
going on. And but to get to the question, you know,
673
00:37:16.599 --> 00:37:20.039
let's say that I'm correct that yourself is a narrative
674
00:37:20.639 --> 00:37:26.519
and that the things you learn as you go through
675
00:37:26.559 --> 00:37:31.320
life or become part of the narrative, right, and your
676
00:37:31.400 --> 00:37:34.320
narrative changes, right, it changes all the time. So the
677
00:37:34.360 --> 00:37:39.159
good news is if your anxiety problem, your problem with anxiety,
678
00:37:39.519 --> 00:37:44.639
reflects a narrative about yourself that you have constructed, then
679
00:37:45.039 --> 00:37:48.079
the good news is that if you have a narrative,
680
00:37:48.119 --> 00:37:51.280
you can change that narrative. And you know that's not
681
00:37:51.400 --> 00:37:54.239
and I don't mean to oversimplify this, someone who's been
682
00:37:54.280 --> 00:37:59.119
through some horrible you know, trauma didn't narrate that for themselves.
683
00:37:59.119 --> 00:38:01.519
It just you know, that's something that's been was thrown
684
00:38:01.639 --> 00:38:04.039
upon them. That's not their fault that happened. I mean,
685
00:38:04.039 --> 00:38:06.519
sometimes we do things that are our fault, and you
686
00:38:06.559 --> 00:38:08.719
know we have to deal with that as well. But
687
00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:11.519
I think the idea that we you know, your program
688
00:38:11.599 --> 00:38:13.840
is rewriting, right, And I think that's what we have
689
00:38:13.920 --> 00:38:16.559
to do. We have to rewrite the narrative. And doesn't
690
00:38:16.599 --> 00:38:19.400
mean it's easy, and I know therapists are probably trying
691
00:38:19.400 --> 00:38:22.599
to do that all the time, but I'm coming at
692
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:24.079
it from the point of the view of the brain.
693
00:38:24.199 --> 00:38:27.400
I'm trying to reinforce that idea that the narrative is
694
00:38:27.400 --> 00:38:31.079
so important because, you know, and one narrative that we
695
00:38:31.199 --> 00:38:35.880
have these days is that, you know, we are anxious,
696
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:41.039
we are schizophrenic, we are depressed, we are we have autism.
697
00:38:41.519 --> 00:38:46.360
Those labels give you, unfortunately, a preset narrative that you
698
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:49.599
automatically acquire and then you spend the rest of your
699
00:38:49.599 --> 00:38:53.480
life trying to, you know, unravel yourself under that narrative.
700
00:38:53.599 --> 00:38:56.920
But the real narrative is your narrative, not the one
701
00:38:56.920 --> 00:38:59.559
that's been given to you. Yes, you may feel anxious.
702
00:38:59.599 --> 00:39:03.000
I feel like it's just you know, I do some
703
00:39:03.119 --> 00:39:06.960
meditation with the therapists that no one liked very much.
704
00:39:07.239 --> 00:39:11.679
We also play guitar together, and everybody has some anxiety
705
00:39:11.719 --> 00:39:13.719
and it's just a matter of, you know, how far
706
00:39:13.760 --> 00:39:16.840
we go with it. But I think, you know, just
707
00:39:16.920 --> 00:39:19.360
I'm trying to highlight the importance of the narrative and
708
00:39:19.719 --> 00:39:20.760
the whole process.
709
00:39:20.960 --> 00:39:24.639
So what do we understand about the relationship between the narrative,
710
00:39:24.719 --> 00:39:28.440
whatever narrative we've constructed and been somewhat a result of
711
00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:31.800
our influences, our conditioning, and then our own whatever whichever
712
00:39:31.840 --> 00:39:35.119
direction we've gone with constructing that, the relationship between that
713
00:39:35.559 --> 00:39:38.119
and the neural architecture of our brain. And as we
714
00:39:38.239 --> 00:39:40.599
change an error through whatever process, with kind of some
715
00:39:40.760 --> 00:39:44.119
self introspective understanding of why they're changed in air, we
716
00:39:44.159 --> 00:39:46.280
realize we can change the narrative. So we start creating
717
00:39:46.320 --> 00:39:49.599
a more more adaptive narrative, or we do it therapeutically.
718
00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:52.119
For that to be then abiding, one would assume that
719
00:39:52.280 --> 00:39:54.960
there's a new narrative that's dominant, But is that actually
720
00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:58.079
reflected in the neural architecture and the neurological functioning of
721
00:39:58.119 --> 00:39:58.440
the brain.
722
00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:02.199
Then, well, the narrative is a memory. A memory is
723
00:40:02.239 --> 00:40:05.360
in neural network that's been formed as a result of
724
00:40:05.679 --> 00:40:10.320
some experience and that has been modified by syneptic plasticity
725
00:40:10.360 --> 00:40:12.440
and so forth. So yeah, it's all in the brain.
726
00:40:12.719 --> 00:40:15.000
You know, the mind is in the brain. I'm a
727
00:40:15.039 --> 00:40:18.119
physicalist when it comes to consciousness in the mind. Other
728
00:40:18.159 --> 00:40:22.719
people are you know, rugalists and have influences from other spheres.
729
00:40:22.719 --> 00:40:26.119
But it's not science, so I'm sticking with the scientific
730
00:40:26.519 --> 00:40:27.079
point of view.
731
00:40:27.280 --> 00:40:27.440
You know.
732
00:40:27.639 --> 00:40:30.280
The David Chalmer's hard problem. David is a colleague of
733
00:40:30.280 --> 00:40:32.119
mind in YU, but I'd like him, I know him,
734
00:40:32.440 --> 00:40:34.760
but I don't believe that the hard problem is. I
735
00:40:34.760 --> 00:40:38.039
think that was a bad choice of words, because the
736
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:40.599
stuff he calls the easy problem, it's just the you know,
737
00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:44.199
the basic neurobiological realm stuff that I talk about in
738
00:40:44.239 --> 00:40:46.920
the book. And the hard problem is just the perennial
739
00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:50.400
problem of consciousness. The easy problem has nothing to do
740
00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:54.280
with consciousness. It's all about these non conscious, unconscious processes.
741
00:40:54.599 --> 00:40:58.000
The heart problem is just the consciousness problem. It doesn't
742
00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:00.559
make it easy, but it's kind of a straw man
743
00:41:00.639 --> 00:41:02.519
that was created in this whole thing. And you know,
744
00:41:02.599 --> 00:41:05.800
David is a duellist, so he believes that you can't
745
00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:11.320
drill down into the brain and find these mechanisms of consciousness.
746
00:41:11.320 --> 00:41:15.400
But you know, I'm a monist scientist. I believe we can.
747
00:41:15.679 --> 00:41:17.119
We can find that kind of stuff.
748
00:41:18.039 --> 00:41:21.039
So then the title arthm rewiring peering anxiety, So you
749
00:41:21.079 --> 00:41:24.679
would say it's a valid analogy to talk about both
750
00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:27.480
changing the narrative and rewiring the band are reshaping our
751
00:41:27.519 --> 00:41:30.320
neural architecture. Those things are part and parcel. We're really
752
00:41:30.360 --> 00:41:32.239
talking about the same thing from different angles.
753
00:41:32.360 --> 00:41:35.159
Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to just say one thing. You know,
754
00:41:35.800 --> 00:41:38.119
at one point, I think it was in my book Anxious,
755
00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:41.119
or maybe as a result of the book, I came
756
00:41:41.199 --> 00:41:44.440
up with this, this three step program that no one
757
00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:48.719
has really fallen and attached to. But the basic idea
758
00:41:48.960 --> 00:41:50.639
I'm talking from the point of view of what I
759
00:41:50.679 --> 00:41:53.599
know about the brain. So the basic idea is that
760
00:41:53.920 --> 00:41:56.480
and every therapist does this, I'm sure in one way
761
00:41:56.519 --> 00:41:58.679
or another, but I'm proposing a sequence in which it
762
00:41:58.719 --> 00:42:02.280
needs to be done. Use three metaphors. One is the
763
00:42:02.280 --> 00:42:05.920
aenigdala metaphorm, one is the hippocampal metaphorm, and one is
764
00:42:05.960 --> 00:42:09.199
the preform of cortex metaphorm. So these are just an illustration.
765
00:42:09.599 --> 00:42:11.199
I think they have something to do with what I'm
766
00:42:11.239 --> 00:42:14.400
going to say, but it's not necessarily the answer is
767
00:42:14.440 --> 00:42:17.360
in those three metaphors, but because there's more to it.
768
00:42:17.719 --> 00:42:21.519
But the basic idea is that the step one is
769
00:42:21.800 --> 00:42:24.559
you need to tame the amigdalm if you're let's say,
770
00:42:24.559 --> 00:42:27.199
an anxious person. So the amigdala is going to be
771
00:42:27.719 --> 00:42:33.199
involved in controlling your physiological arousal, making U jittery, making
772
00:42:33.239 --> 00:42:35.760
you hyper aroused. In other words, it's going to be
773
00:42:35.880 --> 00:42:40.920
involved in your avoidance behaviors that prevent you from discovering
774
00:42:40.920 --> 00:42:43.880
whether you are still as afraid as you were when
775
00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:47.119
you started this song. But it's not going to change
776
00:42:48.039 --> 00:42:51.280
who you are and your feelings of fear. For that,
777
00:42:51.320 --> 00:42:54.039
we have to take another step. So the second step
778
00:42:54.519 --> 00:42:58.000
is to turn to the hippocampus. I have to say
779
00:42:58.360 --> 00:43:00.000
you have to do this. You don't do these things
780
00:43:00.159 --> 00:43:02.400
in the same session. Let's say you take a month
781
00:43:02.760 --> 00:43:06.960
on the amigdical. So now the person is less aroused
782
00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:10.440
and less tense and a little less avoidant, so they
783
00:43:10.480 --> 00:43:14.719
can approach the next step, which is taming the hippocampus,
784
00:43:14.760 --> 00:43:19.239
in other words, beginning to rewrite their memories, rethinking the
785
00:43:19.320 --> 00:43:24.679
narrative without being jittery and you know, tense. So if
786
00:43:24.719 --> 00:43:27.679
you contain the amigdala, one way to do that would
787
00:43:27.679 --> 00:43:31.000
be with CBT, but not CBT, with a lot of
788
00:43:31.440 --> 00:43:36.199
top down talking and stuff. Just like a rat extinction experiment.
789
00:43:36.519 --> 00:43:38.880
You repeat the stimulus over and over again, because if
790
00:43:38.920 --> 00:43:42.199
you start giving, if you have cognition interacting with all
791
00:43:42.239 --> 00:43:44.719
of that, the brain doesn't learn it as well. I
792
00:43:44.760 --> 00:43:47.639
think as if you just do a routine, just let
793
00:43:47.679 --> 00:43:49.800
the person think what they really want, but kind of
794
00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.119
be trying to tame the amignal with CBT, but also medications.
795
00:43:54.119 --> 00:43:58.199
That's where medications come in handy. They can change some
796
00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:01.840
of the behavior and physiological emptoms, but there's no way
797
00:44:01.840 --> 00:44:04.800
a pill and it's going to change your feeling of fear.
798
00:44:05.159 --> 00:44:07.800
Your sense of fear is a sense of who you are,
799
00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:09.719
and so you have to do that in this other
800
00:44:09.719 --> 00:44:12.159
way by going to the hippocampus for a month and
801
00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:14.760
rewiring and read narrating things.
802
00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:17.039
And that personal point, isn't it also research out and
803
00:44:17.119 --> 00:44:21.000
shaying that mindfulness practices over time can actually shrink the
804
00:44:21.039 --> 00:44:23.639
image of somewhat or having to be less hypersensitive.
805
00:44:24.039 --> 00:44:27.480
I would add that in the third step, where you
806
00:44:27.719 --> 00:44:31.840
then have to maintain right, none of this is going
807
00:44:31.880 --> 00:44:34.079
to happen in a short time and be done. You're
808
00:44:34.119 --> 00:44:36.840
not going to be fixed because there's nothing really broken.
809
00:44:37.000 --> 00:44:39.320
You're just trying to relearn who you are and who
810
00:44:39.360 --> 00:44:42.199
you want to be. And you know, I'm not a therapist,
811
00:44:42.239 --> 00:44:46.239
and I'm not saying this and promoting anything, but I
812
00:44:46.280 --> 00:44:50.039
think therapy is probably a lifelong process if you want
813
00:44:50.079 --> 00:44:52.000
to if you're going to go through this kind of
814
00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:55.000
program and maintain, If you have success on those first
815
00:44:55.039 --> 00:44:59.079
two steps and you then can maintain it, I think
816
00:44:59.119 --> 00:45:00.760
you're going to be better on then if it's all
817
00:45:00.760 --> 00:45:03.599
pushed together at one time. And you know, the brand
818
00:45:03.679 --> 00:45:07.559
is a little confused about and again I'm not a therapist,
819
00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:10.320
so just totally ignore what I'm saying.
820
00:45:10.320 --> 00:45:12.440
If you don't like it, let me ask you from
821
00:45:12.519 --> 00:45:16.400
your perspective as a brain researcher in neuroscientists, so I'm
822
00:45:16.440 --> 00:45:20.159
a psychologist by training and a meditation teacher is probably
823
00:45:20.400 --> 00:45:21.000
the heart.
824
00:45:20.760 --> 00:45:21.519
Of what I do.
825
00:45:21.599 --> 00:45:24.920
And I've developed what I call neurosomatic mindfulance meditation, which
826
00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:28.400
I consider to be neuroscience and forms and trauma informed
827
00:45:28.440 --> 00:45:31.960
and very deeply embodied at its basis and really designed
828
00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:36.679
to increase our access to introception or introceptive awareness. And
829
00:45:36.760 --> 00:45:42.079
so then by developing greater introceptive awareness of our bodily processes,
830
00:45:42.480 --> 00:45:45.800
do you feel like we can become a greater sort
831
00:45:45.800 --> 00:45:49.360
of consciousness of all these mechanisms you're talking about, both
832
00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:52.760
the low road and the high road, and therefore developed
833
00:45:52.840 --> 00:45:55.159
kind of a you know, in my sense, it's almost
834
00:45:55.159 --> 00:45:58.679
like we're accessing over time an internal neurobiofeedback loop, which
835
00:45:58.760 --> 00:46:01.840
is our nervous system. Is that learning how to self
836
00:46:02.039 --> 00:46:04.760
move from intentional self regulation into kind of almost a
837
00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:08.840
capacity for autoregulation just by by learning at this deeper
838
00:46:08.920 --> 00:46:11.559
level of embodiment. I'm just curious why your thoughts about
839
00:46:11.559 --> 00:46:12.360
that from your reeryes.
840
00:46:12.400 --> 00:46:15.320
So I would say that fits nicely in step one
841
00:46:16.239 --> 00:46:18.559
Step one. The imigma is not the only thing involved.
842
00:46:18.599 --> 00:46:23.599
So definitely, you know, the ability to introspect and know
843
00:46:23.719 --> 00:46:26.760
your body is a very important thing. I wish I
844
00:46:26.800 --> 00:46:29.239
did more of that myself. My body is always like
845
00:46:29.559 --> 00:46:32.320
doing things to me, probably about my age too, right.
846
00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:35.239
I mean the point is, I guess, yes, that is
847
00:46:35.679 --> 00:46:38.119
I'm giving you three things, but this is another thing
848
00:46:38.199 --> 00:46:41.000
that maybe can go in thing one or maybe separate,
849
00:46:41.119 --> 00:46:43.320
you know, but I think all of these are those
850
00:46:43.320 --> 00:46:46.320
are great ideas, and you know, I really appreciate the
851
00:46:46.360 --> 00:46:49.800
time you put into getting into the essence of what
852
00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:52.840
my books were about and being able to ask me legitimate,
853
00:46:53.039 --> 00:46:55.800
good questions about what we've been talking about, because that
854
00:46:55.880 --> 00:46:58.400
doesn't always work that in an interview if they haven't
855
00:46:58.440 --> 00:47:00.559
figured out what they're going to talk about and they
856
00:47:00.559 --> 00:47:03.079
don't understand where I'm coming from. So this has been great.
857
00:47:03.320 --> 00:47:05.280
Well, I really have appreciated it too, And we're kind
858
00:47:05.280 --> 00:47:07.000
of near the end of our time, but have one
859
00:47:07.159 --> 00:47:10.000
kind of vinal question, so we can I don't know
860
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:12.480
if you considered, but in terms of anxiety, we can
861
00:47:12.559 --> 00:47:16.039
kind of think of people experiencing sort of mental anxiety
862
00:47:16.079 --> 00:47:17.920
with a lot of looping thoughts and that kind of
863
00:47:18.559 --> 00:47:22.320
or what we think of as emotional anxiety. I mentioned before.
864
00:47:22.360 --> 00:47:24.960
I think there can almost be kind of an existential anxiety.
865
00:47:24.960 --> 00:47:27.119
And even when people get into deep states of meditation,
866
00:47:27.239 --> 00:47:31.039
there's this hum of but then people experience anxiety in
867
00:47:31.079 --> 00:47:33.920
the body. It's a bodily process. So sometimes this question,
868
00:47:34.079 --> 00:47:36.800
you know, if it's mostly the narrative, if it's our
869
00:47:36.960 --> 00:47:39.840
narrative and not our fault, and we're not saying it's
870
00:47:39.840 --> 00:47:42.719
our fault, but we've learned a narrative somehow we conditioned
871
00:47:42.719 --> 00:47:45.480
into an error. We've picked up a narrative from our family,
872
00:47:45.519 --> 00:47:49.400
from our culture, and that narrative is exacerbating the experience
873
00:47:49.440 --> 00:47:52.159
of anxiety. So in some ways saying that to a person,
874
00:47:52.719 --> 00:47:54.679
we're in some ways saying it's in your head and
875
00:47:54.679 --> 00:47:58.519
by I mean more cognitively biologically, and they're saying, no,
876
00:47:58.599 --> 00:48:00.800
you don't understand. I experienced this my body. It's in
877
00:48:00.920 --> 00:48:03.199
my body, you know, And they may feel like they're
878
00:48:03.239 --> 00:48:05.960
not being validated. So I'm just curious about your thoughts
879
00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:07.239
of how we're going to communicate that.
880
00:48:07.599 --> 00:48:09.639
So again I we go back to that's you know
881
00:48:09.639 --> 00:48:12.039
what's going on, and that's step one. Those are all
882
00:48:12.119 --> 00:48:16.760
these neurobiological processes that are not conscious but that can
883
00:48:16.800 --> 00:48:21.000
be consciously noticed. And so when you consciously notice these
884
00:48:21.039 --> 00:48:24.760
bodily processes, you are anxious about them if that's something
885
00:48:24.920 --> 00:48:27.360
that bothers you. If you like, let's say, have a
886
00:48:27.400 --> 00:48:31.079
family history of heart disease, and so every time there's
887
00:48:31.119 --> 00:48:34.920
a little something, you know, twitch of muscle in your chest,
888
00:48:35.280 --> 00:48:38.760
you become anxious because you have that history that you're
889
00:48:38.800 --> 00:48:42.920
interpreting on top of it. So the emotion is the interpretation.
890
00:48:43.480 --> 00:48:47.199
All of the body stuff are the underlying things that
891
00:48:47.400 --> 00:48:51.000
go back to you know, the ely or earlier ancestors,
892
00:48:51.039 --> 00:48:53.440
on and on back to the early bacteria that these
893
00:48:53.519 --> 00:48:58.440
survival responses that you know there there are normally survival responses,
894
00:48:58.760 --> 00:49:01.559
but they can get out of but a lot of
895
00:49:01.559 --> 00:49:04.119
our it's not the bodies. I mean, the body can
896
00:49:04.159 --> 00:49:08.559
be hyper aroused, right, but that's the amignalant periacroductor gray
897
00:49:08.639 --> 00:49:13.599
and brainstem driving those responses and response to triggers from
898
00:49:13.639 --> 00:49:17.400
the environment that are subcortical and non conscious that are
899
00:49:17.440 --> 00:49:21.000
causing those responses. And then consciously you're witnessing all of
900
00:49:21.039 --> 00:49:23.719
that and that's when you become emotional, is when you
901
00:49:24.119 --> 00:49:27.599
are experiencing what's going on. That's only one cause that
902
00:49:27.639 --> 00:49:29.880
the stuff in there is making you anxious, but you're
903
00:49:29.920 --> 00:49:33.039
anxious about it because you have a schema that tells
904
00:49:33.079 --> 00:49:35.840
you're an anxious person. Or if this isn't a worry,
905
00:49:35.920 --> 00:49:39.199
that twitch in your chest may be a heart symptom,
906
00:49:39.239 --> 00:49:39.480
you know.
907
00:49:40.480 --> 00:49:42.960
So this points back to your three step process that
908
00:49:43.519 --> 00:49:46.400
for ourselves therapeutically self help or whether we're working with
909
00:49:46.400 --> 00:49:50.079
a therapist, the important of beginning with the imigal as
910
00:49:50.119 --> 00:49:53.320
you said, there's some kind of self soothing or calming
911
00:49:53.719 --> 00:49:55.599
so that we can get to the point where we
912
00:49:55.679 --> 00:49:58.679
could work with the narrative, work in an introspective way
913
00:49:58.719 --> 00:50:01.159
or a therapeutic way, work on changing the narrative and
914
00:50:01.199 --> 00:50:04.079
developing greater understanding about that. But first we have to
915
00:50:04.119 --> 00:50:06.000
get to a place where we actually have the ability
916
00:50:06.079 --> 00:50:08.400
to do that. We need to lower the arousal with
917
00:50:08.559 --> 00:50:11.840
some kind of self soothing or calming behaviors or techniques,
918
00:50:11.880 --> 00:50:12.719
whatever those might be.
919
00:50:13.159 --> 00:50:15.159
Perfect. Can't said it better myself?
920
00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:18.760
Wonderful. Well, this has been really illuminating. Thank you so
921
00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:20.880
much for everything you do and for your work, and
922
00:50:20.920 --> 00:50:23.639
I'm looking forward to learning more about your work and
923
00:50:23.679 --> 00:50:24.239
your music.
924
00:50:24.440 --> 00:50:25.079
No, thank you.
925
00:50:25.360 --> 00:50:29.199
Taking radical responsibility for our lives means taking action, and
926
00:50:29.280 --> 00:50:32.039
today you can start by helping us grow this community.
927
00:50:32.320 --> 00:50:35.800
If these insights into healing and transformation have served you,
928
00:50:36.079 --> 00:50:40.119
please subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Apple Podcasts
929
00:50:40.320 --> 00:50:44.239
and Spotify. While you're there, leave us a review. It
930
00:50:44.280 --> 00:50:47.360
takes thirty seconds, but it's the most powerful way to
931
00:50:47.480 --> 00:50:51.360
help our message reach someone else seeking deeper self awareness.
932
00:50:51.719 --> 00:50:55.639
Thank you for being part of the journey towards lasting change.
933
00:50:56.079 --> 00:50:59.320
Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility podcast.
934
00:50:59.559 --> 00:51:02.400
Remember real Change happens when we commit to our growth,
935
00:51:02.440 --> 00:51:06.000
face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation.
936
00:51:06.199 --> 00:51:08.960
If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to
937
00:51:09.000 --> 00:51:11.880
subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and
938
00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:15.760
personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to you.
939
00:51:16.039 --> 00:51:16.519
Take care,