#92 Lisa Feldman Barrett: Balancing the Brain Budget

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/8f1c61718d720c0f

If you love something, you're reading something or you're hearing something and
You know.
on the news maybe or you're watching a YouTube thing or whatever, and you love it.
Whatever was just said
Validates
some deeply held belief that you have.
And whenever you hear something that you hate
That just violated probably some deeply held belief that you just had.
So stop.
And take a moment.
And think about it.
Try to
Jared, try to observe what's going on.
Yeah, if you take a moment
Before
The heat of the moment.
Has you in its grip.
You will make better decisions.
Welcome, I'm Shane Parish and you're listening to the Knowledge Project.
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This week I'm talking with Lisa Feldman-Barrett, a distinguished professor of psychology at Northeastern University. What first attracted me to Lisa's work was her book, How Emotions Are Made.
And while emotions feel automatic and uncontrollable, Lisa's theory is that emotion is constructed in the moment.
This conversation focuses on emotions. We'll dive into what they are and how they're made, and how this understanding helps us perform at our best, raise kids, and understand others.
It's time.
to listen and learn.
Can you tell me how you got interested in emotions? Where did that come from?
Wow.
Well
You know, who's not interested in emotions since we all have them, but
When I was a graduate student
I um when I went to graduate school, I did not go to graduate school to study emotions. I went to study
The self.
you know, your view of yourself and h why that matters.
And I was using some measures.
of emotion that were not behaving themselves.
They just weren't
working the way they were supposed to work.
So I
Thought, all right.
I'm going to use very objective measures of emotion. So I'm going to
Rather than asking people how they feel, which is what I was doing at the time
uh I thought, all right, I know that there are universal facial expressions. That's what every textbook says. So
I'll just learn how to
measure emotion in people's faces.
Uh and then I went to the scientific literature and I read and I realized
Actually there's even though people claim there's a lot of evidence for universal
facial expressions of emotion that everybody scowls when they're angry and are those the micro expressions that people talk about?
Well, these are actually not micro expressions, they're
the idea that there are micro expressions and the idea that there are full blown facial expressions of emotion, scowling in anger, smiling in happiness, pouting in sadness.
Come from the same
theoretical view.
And although there's a lot of claims that, you know
Everyone in the world scowls when they're angry and everyone in the world recognizes a scowl as anger.
Uh that's not actually what the data show.
And I was so I thought, Oh, okay, well, I guess I can't measure motion in the face. I'll
measure emotion in the body because everybody knows that, you know, there's one bodily pattern.
for anger and one for fear and one for sadness. You know, so your blood pressure goes up in in maybe you flush a bit, you know, in anger.
but your heart races in fear and so on.
And so again I went to the
Research literature and I
I read what the papers said and then I read
the data and they didn't match.
Uh in fact there is no
universal physical signature for any emotion that's ever been studied.
And I thought, Okay, well I
I guess I better l figure out uh how to
image the brain because, you know.
Everyone knows that there's gonna be one circuit for fear, one circuit for anger, one circuit for sadness. And everyone in the world has these circuits, are born with them, and maybe even some animals have them too.
And you know, what I found for uh the body and for the face is also what seemed to be emerging from evidence.
And I thought.
Wow. So
Many people believe that there are these
Diagnostic signs.
Objective signs for emotion.
But they they don't exist. But we feel emotions. I mean, I feel angry sometimes, I feel happy sometimes, I feel so.
And these feelings they feel
emotions feel like they happen to you, like they hijack you and
take you over and cause you to
you know, think and do and say sometimes things that you
Rather would not have.
So I thought this is a real mystery.
And I just abandoned the work that I was
working on and I completely switched my research program at that point.
'Cause it was a real puzzle.
And I'm
You know, here I am almost thirty years later, so
Let's start at the beginning. What are emotions?
That's not starting at the beginning. Where's the beginning?
Well, you know, here's the thing.
The linguist George Lakoff
Calls emotions.
Есенчили контести концепс.
Which means
We all think we know what emotions are, but no one can define them.
No one can agree on their definition. So for example
Scientists the way they typically define emotion is
A package
Uh
Thoughts and feelings and facial movements and bodily changes that are all coordinated with each other.
That's the way they define anger and sadness and fear.
But
The
Evidence from science tells us that those coordinated packages don't exist.
There isn't one coordinated package for anger that when you're angry
you always feel the same way and your body's always doing the same thing and your face is always doing the same thing.
All the pieces are coordinated, but they look different every single time.
Well, maybe not every single time, but they look different in different situations.
Um, and it's not easy to scientifically define what emotions are.
Uh er if I gave you a definition it
Yeah.
I don't think it would be meaningful to you or your listeners. So
The way I would define emotion is
The way I would define thinking, what a th what is a thought or what is a belief, what is a memory.
Your brain is conjuring all of these events in exactly the same way.
It's just using different information to make sense of
uh what's going on in the in the immediate moment.
So there are no telltale signs that you could see, even if you could see inside somebody, would you see that this is anger or is there something in our blood or physiology that no?
And it's not cultural either.
Well I
It's not completely a big random mess. I think the the way to think about it is this that
First I'll give it to you by analogy.
Uh and then
And then we'll say it by emotion. So
Before
Charles Darwin.
wrote his book on the origin of species.
People believed
That
a a category of animal, like a species of animal, like say a dog.
There was a
A particular
Perfect dog.
You know, there was a pr dog it's kind of like the dog show view of of dogs.
There was a perfect cocker spaniel.
There was a perfect
Dalmatian.
There is a perfect
Siberian Husky.
Every dog had some of the features of what
made that breed perfect.
Um, but there was a perfect animal with the perfect tail length and the perfect coat thickness and the perfect eye color.
And
all the individuals that you would see of that kind of dog varied from each other.
But that was just error.
It was just mistakes.
That really there was there's pl there was this perfect dog out there.
And um
Philosophers would say there was an essence, you know, an essence of cocker spanielness.
That was avail that was there, but what we saw in the world, all the cocker spaniels we saw.
You know, they had
varying features like
And so there was a lot of error in the mix.
And Charles Darwin came along and said
No, actually
What a species of an animal is, like a breed of cocker spaniel, is a collection of highly variable
Individuals.
That what's real and meaningful is that variation.
And our idea that there's this ideal car spaniel
Is actually
A myth. It's a fiction.
That doesn't really exist in nature.
So
Scientifically what Charles Darwin was saying was that
There aren't fixed types.
Of animals.
Each animal is a popul each uh category or class of animal is a population of highly variable individuals.
And the variation's really important because
Some animals will do well in
In one context, and some will do well.
in in another context, right? So so the
They'll and they'll differentially breed based on how well they're doing.
So you can look at any biological category that way.
like anger or sadness or fear.
There isn't a perfect example of anger.
With a perfect facial scowl.
And a perfect change in the body.
and um a one particular circuit firing or pattern the brain.
Instead
What your brain is doing is it's making
instances of anger that fit the situation that you're in.
So sometimes
When you're angry.
You might shout.
You might raise your voice. And sometimes when you're angry
You might laugh.
Sometimes when you're angry you might cry.
Sometimes when you're angry, you might sit
Uh quietly.
Sometimes
When you cultivate anger
It feels pleasant.
Actually.
And sometimes it feels unpleasant.
Wait, you say more about feeling pleasant.
Well have you never you've never felt aggressive and felt like it was really good to
to express that aggression.
Like when you're playing soccer or you're trying to beat somebody in cards or
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, so there are some people who
Um, for example when they're
About to debate.
Someone or negotiate
with someone or they're about to um enter a competition with someone
You know.
They get themselves.
Pretty worked up and angry.
So it feels good to be angry.
And
in and to express that anger and but at other times it doesn't.
And that's not error in the system, that's not stuff happening randomly.
That's not a bug.
That's a feature.
Of how
um the brain your brain works. It's a feature of how brains work. They
There is no essence of anger. There's no essence of sadness. Your brain is creating instances based on
what you learned in the past, it's creating instances that will work
In the present.
No, it's the same thing is true for fear. The same thing is true for
happiness and so on. So sometimes I'll
You know, when I say that people say, Really? When are you ever happy when you're afraid? And I'll be like, Well, have you ever been on a roller coaster?
Have you ever gone to a haunted house? I for thirteen years we had a haunted house in my basement on Halloween right before Halloween.
We did it as a charity.
all my graduate students and postdocs, we would get all dressed up. We or orchestrate the whole thing,'cause you know, we're really good at scaring the crap out of people in a lab, right? So we thought, well, hey, let's just do this for you know, we'll scare little kids in for money.
And then give all the money away to the Boston Food Bank, which is what we did for many years.
But we would all get together and we would
Scare the crap out of k people. Like little kids, you know.
Again and again and again, and they loved it.
And
They were really enjoying themselves.
One time I talk about this in my book.
Um I threw a
birthday party for my daughter.
And when she was 12, it was a disgust party. And so these I made these kids like exuberantly disgusted.
They were having the time of their lives and they were.
Totally grossed out.
So disgust is often unpleasant, but sometimes
It's really pleasant.
And
You know, you often when you're disgusted, you you withdraw.
From something, but sometimes you approach it.
Uh,'cause it's more interesting or it's fun, or it's
um you know a challenge
So I think the point
Is that
When it comes to emotion
Uh as
with almost everything in in biology.
Um
Variation is the norm.
There isn't one anger.
You have a whole population of angers that you can feel, and your brain doesn't conjure them randomly.
It conjures them according to your brain's best guess of what's gonna work in a particular situation.
Is there a difference between feelings and emotions, or are those interchangeable?
So again, you know, I have to give you the the um wishy washy science answer.
Which is that some
Scientists
Want to define emotions.
As
Actions
Behaviors.
Not his feelings.
Because
They uh would like to search for
a common physical basis of those actions in humans and in non human animals. Cause they want the pattern.
'Cause they want us they want to they're looking for the one pattern.
of that emotion. So for example
Oftentimes you'll hear about
You know, fear learning or fear.
And then you when you read the article in the newspaper where you
Hear it, you know.
on a podcast or whatever, it turns out that
that the scientists have studied a fly.
Or they've studied
A rat.
And what they're studying actually is freezing behavior.
That if you um create a situation where an animal freezes
uh because the animal is uncertain about whether or not a threat is present.
They call that fear.
And the assumption is that the circuitry
is very similar across all different species.
Well it turns out that the circuitry
It's a it's it's more complicated than that, but
But it turns out that you know in mammals, for example.
The circuitry for
uh freezing freezing behavior where you
You know.
Is
Somewhat similar.
across, you know, rats and monkeys and humans.
But the only way you can say that's a fear circuit is if you define fear as freezing.
What about all the other parts of
You know, what about when animals uh escape try to escape a situation, or what about
when they attack a predator, which happens often. So rats, for example, if they can't escape.
the situation they'll attack
they'll attack the predator, particularly if it's a mother and she has pups.
And in humans, like it can motivate us, right? Like sometimes fear drives us to do other i is that because it's a particular type of fear, or is that because you could say, Okay, well, instead of saying
I have this category that's highly with highly variable instances of population in the Darwinian sense. You say, No, okay, really
I just have to find types of
fear. I'm just gonna so I'm gonna take the category fear and I'm just gonna
Chop it up into smaller bits.
So'cause what you're trying to do is say, Okay, all the instances in
You know, this kind of fear.
Are the same.
But even no matter how small you make those
Those
Those boxes
There's still variation in the boxes. You just can't get rid of the variation because
It's
inherent in the phenomenon.
So there are some scientists who define emotions as
behaviors there are other scientists who define emotions as feelings
І ар кульчур
Colloquially
As people we tend to define emotions as feelings.
In other cultures emotions are
Um
action that's predicted in a particular situation and feelings don't really play into it at all.
It's in fact seen as kind of disrespectful to presume.
That you know how someone feels by how they act.
In our culture, we very much think that
We know how people feel and what they think by what they act. That's why words like microaggression
uh you know, or micro expression exists because
We make an inference.
The the brain your brain is automatically making inferences about the
Internal
thoughts and feelings of people based on their actions, but
We are
Blinded
to the fact that they're inferences, that they're guesses. We we think we're reading people when in fact really all our brain is doing is guessing.
Is there a way that we can check ourselves on that?
Yeah, ask. But how do you remember to do that in the moment, right? Because you just instinctively like somebody's acting like that. Do we learn that? Like somebody's acting like is that cultural? Like we we're taught that.
Yeah, you're taught that. And you're taught that in ways
It's
You know
When I say this, well, yeah, we've learned it. I think people
People need to understand a little bit.
What it means to say that something is learned.
They'll say, Oh, so it's not hardwired.
It's learned.
But
Actually anything
Which is learned is wired.
Into your brain.
If it wasn't wired into your brain.
It wouldn't be learned.
You wouldn't be learned. So
The question is, were you born with it?
Or was it
Bootstrapped into your wiring.
By experience.
So
One
Uh you know, I just uh I have a book coming out in in the fall.
Uh, it's called Seven and a Hal Lessons About the Brain.
And it
It covers some of these ideas because
I I think they're really fascinating, but also most people just don't know.
So most people don't know, for example, that
An infant brain
is not a miniature
Adult brain.
It's a brain.
That's
When human infants are born, they're born with unfinished brains.
And those brains are waiting for for wiring instructions from the world.
And little brains wire themselves.
To the world.
to the phys and to the social world.
So for example
The
Brain needs
Information from your eyes.
In order to finish wiring itself so you can see.
And if it doesn't receive that information after you're born
You will never see normally.
Similarly
So so it's
It's learned something. It's that's been wired into the brain. And um
If uh
I if you live in a culture like ours where there are
rooms with corners and
you know, buildings and square things with

you learn to see the world in one way, physical world in one way. And if you live in a culture where there's nothing square
And there are no corners, but
You learn to see the world in a different way, so much so that
Some things for us that are visual we have these like visual illusions where we
see something and you know, if you see two lines and they actually are the same, but
You know.

There are arrowheads pointing inwards.
And then on the other line and pointing outwards called the Mueller Lyer illusion. The one with the
ones pointing outwards look like a longer line than the ones with the arrow heads pointing inwards, but actually the same
So that illusion
doesn't happen to for some people in the world because they
D
They weren't exposed to buildings and
Boxes and
corners and things when when their brain was finished wiring itself for
To be able to see.
And so similarly
Everything you do, everything an infant experiences
Is um fair game.
For it to learn about and that becomes in
you know, shapes it's wiring.
Including
When you
label things for the child.
So or you speak
To someone else in the child's presence.
With words.
So for example, in our culture.
We do a lot of curating of
Objects.
uh for infants we'll say
you know, we'll hold up a dog and say, you know, like a
play a toy dog a doggy or like look a truck or look a
A train.
We do that kind of labeling.
Uh but then we also say to kids, you know
Oh, you're crying, don't be sad or
or you know, when the kid um, you know, uh throws uh you know, his Cheerios on the floor. Oh, don't be angry, or when he cries when, you know, someone takes his toy away.
Um
Those
Incidental things the
The child's brain is picking it all up.
And learning it.
Um, and so what it the what the brain is doing is it's learning patterns.
And then those patterns are in are are available for the brain to use later.
To make sense of
of what's happening.
That's really interesting. And like should we label emotions with kids?
Absolutely in this culture.
I mean in all culture I think that
Kids
have to learn they have to become culturally competent in the categories that are meaningful in their culture. Otherwise they can't
communicate with other people.
So remember
What a
what a word is referring to is a whole event that's occurring
That is how the child feels.
What's happening in the world around the child in that moment.
what's going on in the child's body in that moment and then
What actions are
happen next and what the consequences are.
For example, when you feel
Bad.
Do do you know what to do next to make yourself not feel bad?
Not really.
It's a kind of a crapshoot.
But if you know that you're sad or angry or
Afraid.
Well, there might not be one thing to do when you're sad, but then maybe there are two or three, and your brain can kind of make a pretty good guess based on the situation which one of those you should try.
And um
So in a sense, you know, emotions are
Ways of understanding what's happening in your own body.
in relation to what's happening in the world.
as a prediction for what to do next to make yourself
feel better or worse or get yourself into a state that
That your brain
it you know, it uh things would be a good uh state to be in.
And I I say it that way because
People don't consciously do it.
a lot of the time. It's just the that's just business as usual for how brains work.
And so there's research which shows really clearly that in
In Western
Cultural
Uh context.
Like ours.
Knowing a lot of emotion concepts and a lot of emotion words and and being able to
Use those
To create
very uh nuanced
precise emotional events
actually is really helpful. It's helpful
socially it's helpful in schools, those kids do better
They perform better in school.
It it is um
allows you to be resilient to um when bad things happen to you.
It helps you co
So
Kids who
um, what we call this emotional granularity, meaning your emotional life is
very precise and granular, you know, so one grain of sand is not the same as another grain of sand. So one instance of anger is not the the same as the other instance of anger.
Those kids, you know, tend to use uh alcohol less when they're stressed, that people even recover faster from physical illness.
Uh when they're more granular.
And
That sounds like magic, but it it actually isn't magic. If you understand how the brain works and and you understand kind of what's going on under the hood, when we don't understand everything, but we understand some things.
It makes complete sense that that these things would be true.
Do we unconsciously send the message that you shouldn't be feeling when we say don't be angry or don't be sad?
Well, I think that's really complicated.
I'm full of complicated questions today. Yeah.
So here's the thing.
You and I are not in the same physical space, right? You know, I'm in my office at home and you're in your studio.
But let's just say we were. Let's say we were
Both in the same studio, or maybe we were having a cup of coffee.
Even though we don't know each other.
If we like each other
If we're getting along pretty well.
If we trust each other in the moment.
our biological signals will start to synchronize.
Our heart rates will synchronize, our breathing will synchronize.
And if we know each other really well.
When I get a little worked up.
You might get a little worked up. Actually, we don't even have to know each other that well. We we just have to be around each other for a little bit of time. People call that emotional contagion.
But it's actually not emotional. What's happening really is that
Human nervous systems regulate each other.
We're social animals, we evolved that way.
So we are
We have lots of ways that we affect the nervous system of another person.
And
When I affect your nervous system in a way and you're not aware of it, your brain's just gonna try to make sense of it.
And so it makes sense of it sometimes as emotion.
So my my point is that when someone else gets worked up, you're more likely to get worked up too.
And if you don't want to be worked up, you don't want that person to be.
Worked out.
So a lot of times when people say, Don't be sad, don't be angry.
Really what they're saying is
I don't want to deal with you being angry or sad and I don't want to feel that way. So I want you to calm down.
Oh, that's fascinating. I'd never heard it explained that way before.
Yeah.
You know, I trained as a therapist a really long time ago, like in another life.
And one thing I learned
Is that
It's really hard.
To sit with someone else's distress.
And just let them
Be distressed. Be distressed. It's like one of the hardest things.
To learn to do.
Instead, your almost your knee jerk reaction
is to help them regulate.
Because really what you're doing.
is you're helping yourself regulate. You don't want them to be upset because you don't want to be upset.
It's not a it's not a completely selfish act.
It's just that part of the mechanism is part of the mechanism for you to have empathy
is to feel what what someone else feels.
And that can be a really challenging thing.
And often we don't even want to feel it in ourselves, let alone with somebody else, right? Like we we it seems like we suppress a lot of feelings. Talk to me about that. Like does that come back to bite us? Does it
Make them linger, does it cause
Other behaviors later on.
The the idea that that suppressing feelings is really bad for you
It's part of an old hydraulic model of emotion that you know
An emotion triggers
In your brain.
You need a
let off steam, ca have catharsis, kinda get it out.
And if you don't, something bad will happen.
That's not really true.
Here's
More the way it works.
You can think about your brain as
running a budget for your body.
You have cells those cells require energy.
You're thinking, What the hell? I just asked her a question about, you know, is it bad not to express emotion? She's talking about cells. I'll get there. But I mean, I think the problem is that the if you really want to understand it, you have to start Oh yeah, let's go into the weeds.
Yeah, you have to well, we're we're only gonna we're only gonna like briefly glimpse the weeds and then we'll get right back out. But
My point is that
What's your brain's
Most important job. Why do you even have a brain? Why did a brain evolve?
It didn't evolve for you to think or feel or see.
It evolved to regulate your body.
As brains get bigger, bodigger.
As bodies get bigger, brains get bigger.
What is your brain doing? Your brain is regulating
It's running a budget for your body.
Oxygen it's not budgeting money, it's budgeting oxygen and salt and water.
And sodium and all these hormones and all this stuff.
All this
Junk that you're
Body needs to function.
So in a sense you can think about your brain as kind of the financial office of a very large company that's like a multinational company.
It needs to try to get.
the resources where they need to be.
Before they're needed.
Just like if you're gonna spend a lot, you you wanna go buy something really expensive.
It's better to have the money in the bank.
and buy it than it is to buy it on your credit card and try to pay it back with interest, right?
And so that's how your brain basically tries to work.
So what's bad
Is
If you
make an expenditure. So let's say you buy a bunch of stuff on your credit card.
And you pay the bill really fast.
There's no tax. You haven't paid any interest. I mean, there's no additional tax, right? You've paid you there's no interest, you just pay the bill and it's paid.
That's like
Your brain preparing you
To do something.
Two
To yell, to talk, to breathe, to run on the treadmill, to um
Get into an argument with a friend, to have sex, to do something, to eat.
Right, your brain prepares, it makes an expenditure.
And it's preparing
to get something in return.
Like
The to have the bill paid.
But
Let's say that doesn't happen.
Well
Then your brain
is your body starts to run a bit of a deficit, right?
And then there's a little bit of interest.
And if that builds up over time.
That's very bad for you.
So the thing is that when
Your brain is about to make a big expenditure.
Those happen to be the moments
That we call emotions.
When your brain
is preparing your body to do something.
Or even thinking about it.
You have a big cortisol release and you're
bloodstream people think oh that's the stress hormone
No, it's not. It's a hormone.
That ha it's it's a hormone that is secreted in what we call stress.
But
Basically glu what what cortisol does is it gets glucose into your blood
really fast so that so that
Cells can use it really fast.
So when you get up in the morning, you have a cortisol surge. When you're running on the treadmill, you have a cortisol surge.
It basically means your brain is preparing to make a big expenditure.
And when you do that
And you don't
And and as a consequence
You know, there are sensory changes in your body. Your heart is pounding, you're starting to sweat.
Uh whatever it is.
And you feel that as
as uh emotion.
You feel that as emotion and
If
The expenditure doesn't come.
And the reward doesn't come. You don't you don't
Replenish.
That's actually really bad.
So if you're continually getting stressed over and over and over, you're getting mad over and over and over, or you're getting
Afraid over and over and over
And that um expenditure isn't paid back.
You're not sleeping enough, you don't eat.
uh healthfully, you're not getting hugs from your loved ones, you know, whatever
kind of ex you know, you're not um
Exercising sufficiently.
You will start to run a deficit.
And that what that translates into is illness.
It translates into depression, anxiety, heart disease, diabetes.
They're all metabolic illnesses that come from
A de running a deficit in your body budget.
What are the actions that we can take that might build up some of that um
account balance or prevent the deficit from accumulating, you sort of said sleep, exercise, sex, what else? Yeah. So you know, I think usually what I say uh when I talk like this, p you know, I don't sound like a neuroscientist. I sound like someone's mother.
And I and I am someone's mother, but I think
One of the really big changes in in neuroscience in the last decade is the realization of
Just how important sleep is.
So literally if there was only one thing that you could do in your life
Only one.
It would be sleep a decent amount every day, whatever that means for you. It's usually somewhere between seven and eight hours for most adults, and it's longer for kids and adolescents. So for example,
One reason.
that the rate of adolescent depression is so high
In this country
Is
uh because adolescents go to bed late, they're on their computers and their devices, which
has light at a particular frequency that stimulates their retinas to keep them awake.
So it's disrupting their circadian rhythm, which is the rhythm that helps your sleep wake cycle.
So they can't get to sleep.
And then they have to get up at a really early time in the morning to get to school.
So whereas an adolescent brain might need ten hours a night.
Most kids are getting five, six hours.
That's really bad.
Like it's not just bad because they won't learn well. I mean, they won't learn well.
It's not just bad because they'll be more impulsive.
It's not just bad because there'll be a complete pain in the ass.
Uh, you know, if you're their parent.
It's also bad because
There's this
small metabolic tax.
That's being charged every single time.
And those kids when they become adults
Middle aged will be more likely to develop
Diabetes, heart disease.
you know, metabolic illnesses, which by the way are also at record numbers.
uh in this country. Course it's not the only reason why.
But it's one reason. So I think
The issue isn't whet whether you express your emotions or not. The issue is
Don't get riled up.
With any emotion without
Paying the bill.
And part of paying the bill means getting enough sleep.
So are pe uh are some people actually more emotional than other people? Is that a thing? Or do they just have a bigger deficit?
than other people.
Yes.
Both.
So here's the thing. I I I sort of skipped over one piece because I'm already giving you all this
complicated science stuff, but I'll just
complicate things further and give you one other piece. So
When your brain is regulating your body
Your body is sending sense data back to your brain that your brain needs in order to
keep that regulation going.
And you don't experience those sensations typically.
In a very precise way.
So when your heart is beating and your lungs are expanding and
you know, everything else that's going on and that little internal drama that's like right now, for example, you're sitting there, you look like you're sitting quietly.
But you have a whole
You know, symphony if
physical changes going on in your body.
And your body is sending that sense data to your brain.
Can you sense?
Your liver functioning.
Can you sense the
Your heart beating.
Yeah. Even now?
No, you can't, exactly.
And we're not wired.
To be able to do that.
And there's a good reason why.
And that is
If you could
y you would never pay attention to anything outside your own skin ever again.
It's a big drama going on right now.
For example, if you've ever been in a like a
One of those deprivation tanks, you know, like a soaking tank where they
Block out all the
External sense data. So
It's completely dark.
You can't you have earphones that you can't hear anything, you're floating in in
you know, salted water so there's you can't feel any touch.
And then it's like this
symphony of internal sounds just emerges.
You can hear all this stuff going on inside your own body.
But you can't feel it.
'Cause we're not wired to feel it.
So instead what we feel is
Is um
Is a simple
physical feeling that scientists call affect or we call mood.
So you feel good or bad or pleasant or unpleasant or worked up or calm.
It's like a general barometer for how your body budget is doing.
And we make sense of those sensations.
As emotions sometimes.
But
Only when they get really intense, but
They're with us all the time'cause your brain is always regulating your body.
Yeah.
Body's always sending sense data to your brain.
So you're always affect is a property of consciousness, it's not
emotion
But it's an ingredient, it's a feature.
in emotion.
It's also there when you're
Having thoughts or perceptions, right? So you're driving on the highway, somebody kits you off, and you're like, your reaction is like, that guy's an asshole.
Well
That's a very affective perception.
You know, if you ask people, they'll be like, Well, no, I'm not mad. That guy's an asshole. Like assholeness is a property of that guy who just cut me off. And you might say,
Uh well, you're just angry and you don't know it.
Well how can you tell?
There's no uh objective
You know, marker for anger.
Who's right? And the answer is that's the that's a bad question. You're perceiving anger.
And that person is experiencing
Assholess.
In that driver.
And they're both actually valid.
perceptions.
So my my point is that
Do people differ in emotionality? Sure.
Why?
Because some because first of all, some people just differ in mood.
And they differ in mood because some people
Their brains prepare them to expend energy just more frequently than other people.
It's you know, something that in babies we call temperament.
You know, it's called arousability in babies.
Some babies are perturbed by every little thing.
You know, and others
Not so much. So there are some people
who react to you know, they
They sort of swim in a sea of drama.
Every little thing is meaningful to them. Every little thing
their brain is reacting to preparing the body.
For some expenditure and for other people.
You know, that's one end of the continuum and the other end of the continuum.
Yeah.
People are kind of like
Floating in a calm sea.
Right, of tranquility.
And occasionally
They might get
you know, perturbed, but
Mostly they're just sailing along.
And then there's everybody in between.
For example, my husband is one of these people who floats in a sea of tranquility.
Mostly I
I admire it. Occasionally it irritates the shit out of me, but mostly I admire it.
Uh, and I'm more I don't react to every little thing, but my nervous system is a little on the uh more on the other
You know, somewhere
on the other end, where I I react to more things.
The thing is that
You can take anybody.
Deprive them of sleep.
Maybe get
five or six hours a night instead of eight.
For a couple of nights.
And they just become more reactive.
It's just
um the nature of
uh the system for that to be true.
If you take
A person and you add some testosterone to their bloodstream.
they become more reactive.
And here's a contentious thing.
But I will say it.
If you take a woman who's
Still fertile.
And you
You start to withdraw
estrogen and add progesterone
Um, she will also be more reactive.
So it's not just women, men have it too.
For men
It's um
you know, runs on a daily cycle. Your testosterone goes up and down on the daily cycle. It might not be extreme enough that you can tell, but it it
It is observable by careful scientific means.
Um and you know, do women do they get
you know, uncontrollably emotional, you know, right before they get their period. No.
That's a myth.
Um, you know, are women, you know.
unable to make good sound decisions right before they get their period. No, that's a myth.
But is it the case that they are
Even minus in a minuscule way.
Their brains are more likely
to
Um prepare them.
For f to do something for challenge.
Uh
at for more things than at when they're at some other point in their cycle.
Yeah, on average that does that is true.
In my data at least it's true. I wanna something you said. So is the brain just
inter constantly interpreting the outside world and that that is the process of sort of like how we construct emotions.
The brain is constantly
interpreting the meaning of
Internal sensations
And external sensations. And it's making meaning. It's a meaning making machine.
It's a meaning making machine.
And sometimes
It makes meaning.
uh as uh thought and sometimes it makes meaning
as a perception and sometimes it makes meaning
uh as an emotion.
And I should say
That's our understanding in this culture.
Because we have
events that we experience as thoughts and feelings.
Or or as physical symptoms, right?
But um
Like a stomach ache.
But in other cultures
Some cultures don't make a distinction between thoughts and feelings. It's all one thing to them.
And
It's not that they're
They're wrong and we're right. It's that
Their brains have learned a way to make sense of
Of their sense data.
in relation to what's going on around them in their world
In a different, a fundamentally different way.
Than we do.
And ne either way's right or wrong. They're just different.
Right. And so let me give you an example of one way that we make sense of things that's really not helpful for us.
And that is
The idea of there being mental and physical illness.
You have a mental illness, you see a psychiatrist. You have a physical
You see an internist.
There's actually no fundamental difference biologically between a mental illness and a physical illness.
In depression
You have a metabolic problem.
And you also feel bad.
And those two things are related.
In heart disease
You have a metabolic problem.
And you feel bad.
And those two things are related.
So sometimes you'll hear people say, Well, the comorbidity of
Um
de depression and heart disease is about seventy percent, meaning seventy percent of the people who have heart disease also develop depression.
And they talk about depression.
causing heart disease or heart disease causing depression, but
Actually
There's probably a common metabolic problem.
That's causing both.
Both a problem with your heart and a problem with your mood.
Because they're related.
Or Alzheimer's disease, for example.
Alzheimer's disease.
Also is the result of a pervasive persistent metabolic.
Problem.
I I mean, I made this conjecture probably, I don't know, fifteen years ago, and now there's actually starting to be evidence for about what I'm about to say, which is
The most expensive organ you own is your brain.
Your brain costs you twenty percent of your metabolic budget.
That's a there's no other organ that comes close to being that expensive.
So neurons are really
expensive little
Cells.
To kip alive.
And there are certain cells.
in your brain, certain neurons that are much more expensive than others.
And so
When you
Are running a deficit in your budget.
In your bank budget.
What do you do? You stop spending.
So what does a brain do when it's running a deficit?
It's also stop spending. So what does that mean? Well, it might mean you're too tired and you don't move as much.
It might mean
that you stop learning about what's going on around you in the world because that's it turns out learning is
Is is expensive.
Metabolically speaking.
And so let's say you do that. You slow the body down, you make the body tired, you you stop moving so much, you
You stop
really paying a lot of attention to what's going on around you in the world.
You sort of just, you know, use what you've learned before to
you know, help you um make sense of everything.
And that's not enough.
What do you do?
Well
you start getting rid of some of the really expensive parts.
You start killing off neurons.
And that that's where these
These things start cropping up.
Yeah, so neurodegeneration.
That happens in Alzheimer's disease or even normal aging.
Is really about trimming your
Metabolic budget.
Oh that's super interesting. And so just to recap, the things that we can do to sort of like
make sure we have the money to spend is
Sleep.
His number one, sex, exercise. What are the other things that we can do to sort of like recharge?
Well
Um, there are lots of things you can do.
Uh you can
I mean having sex is good.
Who doesn't like that? But uh
But even just a hug.
Physical connection.
Physical connection is good. Any kind of
Social connection.
can help. It can also hurt, but
One thing we can do is
You can be kind to someone.
Actually that
That actually helps you metabolic budget.
It actually
Is helpful.
When you are
Kind to someone.
Um
It also, thankfully, increases the likelihood that that person will be kind to you.
And that also
Yeah.
diminishes the burden on your
on your budget. I mean
The degree of um animosity and um casual brutality that we see in the media and
So on people think of it as like this sort of decrease in civility.
As a social problem.
But it's actually a public health problem, too.
I mean I'm not saying
Mm.
become like milk toast and let people walk all over you.
I am saying though that
Treating other people with a certain degree of human dignity
And kindness and having them
you know, treat you in the same way is actually really helpful.
physically biologically helpful to you.
And I'm not saying this because I'm like a bleeding heart liberal academic. I'm saying it because I'm a neuroscientist and it just that's what the data show.
If you
Exercise and you expend a lot of
Um
Uh
Energy
You have to recuperate. You have to drink enough water. You have to eat something. You have to rest. You have to let your muscles rest.
So you have to recuperate.
And so
You know, a big argument with someone is sort of the same thing.
Uh it's it's not even sort of the same thing. I mean it's like
Pretty much the same thing from a metabolic standpoint.
I mean your heart rate will go up higher if you're running and uh probably and you know it'll
It the uh
expenditure will last for longer, but it's in principle the dynamics are the same.
So
You have to replenish yourself. And if you don't, and you're just sort of swimming in this sea of like icky conflict all the time.
It's actually not good for your physical health.
One thing we can do is
We can
We can sleep, we can eat healthfully, we can
You know
Um
Make good
social connections to other people where
who we like and who we trust and and
and who we value and who value us.
Um
And you know, we can generally um
Just be kinder to each other.
What do we do when our partner or our friends are are feeling something when they have anxiety or anger, or uh w what are the ways that we can be helpful in our response, or what are the most helpful ways, I guess, to respond in those situations? So I think
The first thing
that you have to do, which is actually a really, really hard thing.
To do.
is to figure out what they want.
So sometimes
What someone wants is just empathy.
And sometimes what they want is help. They want you to help them, instrumentally help them figure out
How to solve a problem.
If you offer your advice for how to solve a problem
to someone who in that moment really just wants a pat on the back or a hug.
Do you know what happens?
Not good things.
Not good things, right.
Anyone who's ever been in a relationship or had a kid knows exactly what we're talking about here.
So the first thing I do, the first thing that we do in my house is we say
Do you want empathy?
Or do you want a solution?
What do you want?
And and how does that skew? Is it fifty-fifty between empathy and solution, or is it mostly empathy? It depends on the person, you know. If you ask my daughter, who's twenty-one now, she will tell you almost a hundred percent of the time, I want empathy.
And if you asked her, she would say, And my mother is constantly trying to solve problems, and all I really want is just a little empathy. But if you ask
My husband, he would almost always say, I want a solution. I want you to help me find a solution to this. I want I want instrumental help is what we would call it as a scientist. And
I think I probably am more like him in that sense. I
I I certainly want to feel understood.
But I usually what I want is is um help with the a solution that actually makes me feel better. I don't need someone
To just
Give me a hug and pat me on the back.
It's not but occasionally that
That's very welcome. I I think it really varies.
From person to person, which is why
It's really helpful to ask.
W what's the next step? If that's the first step in your house, what what is the next sort of
Walk me through that whole tree.
Yeah, I think it really
It really depends. So for example
I mean it's it's a little hard in this culture at this particular moment in time to say, walk up and give somebody a hug because that can land you in jail.
But you know.
Sometimes
For someone
who you're close to and you have permission to do it.
Empathy what empathy can mean is
Really just giving someone a hug and um or patting their arm or just being there with them in that moment.
Just being with them in the moment and sitting with it. That's really hard. I agree with you. It's really hard. It's really hard. Sometimes it means letting them talk.
And
But then you have to
Reflect back what they said.
And not add anything.
Right, just
really let them know they've been heard.
And that they're understood.
And that again, that may sound like
you know, psychological mumbo jumbo, but there's like a real biological consequence.
to doing that.
Sometimes
Literally it means in my house it means
um doing some breathing exercises because
Breathing is really the only way.
That we know of
Biologically speaking.
That
It's the only way that you can
kind of deliberately get up get a handle on your nervous system.
You know, you've got this
nervous system in your body called the autonomic nervous system.
Um
You have a
The sympathetic
uh side and the parasympathetic side and
They work together in a complicated kind of dance.
It's called the autonomic nervous system because it's
It's automatic and you have no control over it.
But the only there is one way to get control.
A little bit of control.
And if you practice more more than a little bit.
Is or a little bit more, I would say, is um
Is is breathing.
For some people it's a seven
seven six second or seven second breath. For some people it's eight eight seconds, but if you breathe
regularly and deeply diaphragmatic breathing.
After a couple of minutes
You can slow your heart rate.
You can basically it sort of calms your
system down. Well let's do that right now. Let's walk me through how how we try this.
I mean a lot of people know how to do this e e they just don't realize it. So for example
You know how
When you cry, like you know, you have a big cry and then there are times when you just
Take a big breath.

Can you let it out?
And then you you know
Crying feels cathartic.
'Cause like everything is calming down. It's those breaths, actually.
That are calming you down, or in yoga.
For example, you know, when you're doing a yoga class.
Uh, even in something like hot yoga where you know you're
Just
you know, drenched in sweat.
Your breathe.
Pacing your breathing.
So I think people intuitively know
How to do it.
What I what I should say is
For some people d doing this is um causes them to hyperventilate. So Okay, you've been warned if you're listening to this or watching.
Put your hand on your
On your torso, on your tummy.
So you're not going to be breathing from your chest. You're going to be breathing from your diaphragm. When you breathe in, you don't want your
Just to expand, what you want is your stomach kind of to expand. So breathe in and have your stomach expand.
Yeah. So what's happening is you're actually taking in breath down to the bottom of your lungs.
instead of just the top. Right. And then so you breathe in on a count of like say three or four and
Out.
On a count of three or four.
So let's do that one breath, okay? Okay.
Okay, ready? Yeah.
You try to push all the air out.
Feels different, like to breathe that low in your is that how we're supposed to be breathing all the time?
Yeah.
So why why don't we breathe that way all the time? Like why are it's like uh we're lazy breathing almost.
If I could answer that question, I you know.
Hay
Um I think there are lots of reasons.
Here's one. I can't actually see how you're sitting right now because you're you have a black t shirt on and I can only see you from here. Right. But are you sitting straight up?
Or are you slouched over? I'm pretty close to straight up.
I mean this is like fully straight.
Right, okay. So for me I'm sitting fully straight right now. Right. But this is how I normally sit.
So I'm like pretty crunched up.
If I tried to expand my diaphragm right now.
I wouldn't get very far because I'm kind of hunched over.
I'm not supposed to sit like that. It's very bad for you to sit like that.
Um, but uh a lot of us do a lot of the time.
I actually really admire people who have great posture all the time. Yeah, me too. I also hate them in some way. I know I do too. Right, exactly. Um
So that's so that's one reason. I think another reason is that um
To be able to breathe like that.
For most of us.
requires r a lot of mind like we have to really pay attention. I mean
We can practice and practice and practice and then eventually.
We can breathe more like that.
But that's a really kind of a for lack of a better word, mindful breathing. It really requires a lot of attention.
And most of us have other things to do in the day.
It turns out that there is research which shows that if you
Breathe.
That way.
Say for five or five
five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night, you know, like so you take a period and you kind of do it, you know, a couple of times a day.
Over months.
Your resting heart rate will go down. You'll be able to calm yourself faster when you get really worked up.
It's a really useful strategy.
And so that's something we do in our in our house. We call it a yoga breath.
You know, let's do some yoga breaths.
Um just because when my daughter was a little girl, that's what I would
That's what I would call it when I wanted her to
Just to calm down and
And breathe a bit.
It's a it's a really, really helpful strategy. Yeah, breath is really interesting when it comes to emotion and feeling too, right? It it helps you center and helps you focus and sort of like
Not only that, there's the physiological like response of just breathing in a a deeper
Uh more connected with it also though helps you learn better.
I mean because if all of your brain's, you know, energy isn't tied up.
Here there's a lot more left over for learning stuff.
You know, taking some breaths actually
affects even how you learn.
In the moment.
What are the core emotions? Like are are there
Universal emotions? Are there like how many emotions are there? Are there millions? Are there
Four, or there five.
You know, some scientists will tell you that there are
Six.
And some will tell you that there are twenty two.
Or twenty four.
I mean, I think if you look at the evidence, there's not really good evidence for e either of those answers.
In fact, there's evidence against both of those answers.
I would say
Um, there are no core emotions.
And there is no set of universal emotions.
What's universal
is affect.
Your brain regulates your body.
Your body
Sends
sends data to your brain and you feel it is affect because that's how you're wired.
That's how everybody's wired.
You know, affect is like this kind of like general barometer.
That lets you know.
How your body budget's doing.
And that's true for everybody.
As far as we can tell
From all the cultures that have ever been studied.
That's universal.
But
More than that, how you make sense of
You know, for example there's one culture
We are
The prescription for what you're supposed to do when you're afraid.
Is go to sleep.
Interesting. Yeah, that's way different than what we do.
Right.
If we were to translate that into a western
Meaning making
The analogy would be play dead.
You know, so the threat doesn't
Doesn't take any interest in you.
go to sleep. Whereas that's not that's not typically what we
uh think of as the modal response to fear, the stereotypic response to fear in our culture. So
And if you don't
Understand that
That just means that you don't have that kind of mind that was
pickled in that kind of culture. You have a different kind of mind that was pickled in a different kind of culture.
In a neurotypical brain, everyone is equipped to run.
But when you run
How you run.
That's not universal.
Is love an emotion?
Well, I just
You know
Here's the thing.
To people who believe that there are different mechanisms for emotion and for
You know, for
for emotion and for cognition, for thinking, and for perceptions, for seeing and for thinking and whatever.
That's a really meaningful question to me.
Not meaningful at all. Not meaningful. It's all the mechanisms are all the same. It doesn't matter whether you're thinking or feeling or seeing or hearing or whatever. It's all the same mechanisms.
Your brain is taking in sense data from the body and from the world.
And it's using past experiences.
to make sense of what that means. So
Is love
Um an emotion. I
Mm.
We're labeling it that through through our brain almost.
Sometimes when people ask that question
They're asking
Yeah.
Because they're looking for evidence of something.
You know, so for example
Sometimes people ask that question, I'm guessing.
Because
There's this belief that we are less in control of our emotions than uh we are of our thoughts, which is uh really false, actually. So this is something I talk about in how emotions are made.
uh my uh book that is in print now and my new book
Um, this is something I talk about in both books, although
In a in a
in a bit of a different way.
The idea that
uh, you know, you're not in control of your emotions, the moments of emotion, and therefore you're less responsible for them.
Unless culpable for them.
Um
And so if we say that love is an emotion, then it means that you're sort of less
Responsible for what you do. Well, no, can't can't love be an emotion, but you're still responsible for what you do.
You you can, but I'm saying when people ask that question, that's usually why they're asking. It's like you can't help who you love.
Well
Okay.
Sure.
But uh
You can help who you put yourself in.
In proximity to
Um, you know, if I don't wanna eat potato chips, I don't put potato chips in my cupboard and then try really hard not to eat them. I just don't
Have them in my cupboard.
You can't help who you love, you can't help who you become attached to.
Is is sort of not true.
But what it means to be in control is
different than what people usually think.
They think they think about overcoming something in the moment.
as opposed to making good decisions to
architect your environment in such a way as to not let there's certain things happen. Right. I like the architecting environment angle. How d how do we
work to overcome or
You know, we still have to function, right? How do we make good decisions when we're feeling emotional? How do we
How do we architect an environment? Those are sort of like three separate questions. Yeah. Well, I think the first thing I would say is that
When you're in an emotional episode
You people often do make really good decisions.
The idea that emotions are foibbles that they kind of trip you up is a really old
View
It's not supported by the evidence.
Do emotions sometimes trip you up?
Yeah, does thinking sometimes trip you up?
Absolutely.
Right. So there are just times when you're
making good decisions and times when you're not, but it's not really aligned with whether or not you're emotional or whether or not you're
being, you know, rational or thinking.
I mean even the whole idea that
You know, your brain is a battleground between emotion and
Reason
You know.
battling it out for control of your behavior.
Is a very old
uh story
But it's a myth. That's not how your brain works. Your brain didn't evolve that way. It doesn't work that way. It's not structured that way. Talk to me about that, because we tend to think there's this continuum when we're making decisions between emotional brain and rational brain. And you you sort of like want to know where you are on that continuum and society sort of
seems to nudge us towards more rational and less emotional, as if they're they're sort of like less
Valuable in some way.
You have one brain.
You don't have
Two brains or three brains. You don't have an emotional brain. You don't have a
a rational brain there's no part of your brain that's devoted to emotion
That isn't used.
w when also in moments when you are being rational.
So
That's the first thing to understand.
There are certainly there are times when you feel more in control of your behavior and times when you feel less in control of your behavior.
Meaning
There are times when it feels when your behavior feels more automatic and there are times
when it feels more effortful.
Your actions feel more effortful.
There are times when
Affect is very you're feeling it very strongly.
Those are moments where the brain would typically be making emotions.
But
That can
That can trip you up. It can also lead to great it also occurs in in it it also occurs in great moments of heroism.
And great moments of valor.
We tend to think about
Emotional moments as hot.
And intense.
And rational moments as
Uh cool.
And not intense.
But that really just has more to do with
how much affect you're feeling in that moment. And in fact
You can have very rational
decision making w when there's a lot of affect going on.
Are there certain things that we can do to
make better decisions when we are feeling emotional.
This is what I say to my
Students too, actually.
Whenever you hear something or you see something and you
have this intense reaction of I love it. This is awesome.
Or
A really negative reaction, tense, intense negative reaction, like I hate this, that's stupid, or this is, you know, I hate that person, or whatever.
Those are the moments to just
Stop.
And you know, use the intensity of your affect.
As a cue.
To stop and interrogate what's going on.
If you love something, you're reading something or you're hearing something and
You know.
on the news, maybe, or you're watching a YouTube
thing or whatever and you love it.
That whatever was just said
Validates
some deeply held belief that you have.
And whenever you hear something that you hate
That just violated probably some deeply held belief that you just had.
So stop.
And take a moment.
And think about it.
Try to
Jared, try to observe what's going on.
You know, if you take a moment
Before
The heat of the moment.
Has you in its grip.
You will make better decisions.
But that's not about really um being emotional or being
um rational.
That's about using your
Affect is a Q.
As a
Using it as a
a barometer the way what it was designed by evolution to to be.
As a Q.
That
This might be a moment where you want to slow down for a minute.
And take stock.
What are the things that we can do environmentally? You mentioned sort of like not having the chips around. Are there other things that you've learned that we can increase our environment to nudge us toward or put us on the path to success?
A lot of the things that we know of that help
To put us on the path to success.
Are things that
Uh
Only easy for people to do.
who have enough privilege to have control.
over their environments.
So
Things like
You know, getting enough sleep.
I mean, you know, I said, Well that's the that's the one if you could only pick one thing, that would be the thing, but not everyone actually has that luxury.
you know, ambient noise is is um
uh like random kind of loud, you know, bangs and and kind of loud noise is
I mean what happens, for example, if you live in New York or whatever
You know, you eventually your brain stops
Hearing that noise.
It it just becomes background. But every time I go there, it's like holy cow, what is going on? Right. Right. It's really hard on your nervous system because your brain is it ha it it's
It's trying to figure out what is signal and what is noise. Like what do I need to pay attention to and learn and make sense of.
And spend on and what do I
What can I ignore?
That in and of itself, like the amount of uncertainty and is actually really hard on the nervous system. It's so weird. Like there'll be a fire truck that'll go by my bedroom with, you know, at night and I won't notice a thing. The window could even be open.
But if my kids cough
I'm like alerted right away to like what's going on. And you know, I often can't even go back to sleep because if they
If I wake up, I'm on like on high alert. It's not even like I wake up and this, it's like, what happened? Oh, they need me and
Oh, they don't need me at all. They're like back asleep and I'm wide awake and wired and
Yeah. This is the reason why when my daughter was like six weeks old
Uh, I told my husband she cannot sleep. She cannot continue to sleep in our room. I I will never get another night's sleep ever in my life while this kid is in my room. Like I because every little thing I would hear, every little thing.
And now we have a puppy and it's exactly the same thing.
Um
Talk to me more about sort of like the brain interpreting things, and it's almost like a reality distortion um feel. No, it's not a reality distortion. It's re it's a reality creator. Reality creator. Okay, so what can we do?
n understanding that, like I'm I'm thinking, is there anything that we can do to get closer to
truth or reality, like understanding that our brain is um sort of like stimulating and interpreting and sort of like making meaning. Is there anything we can do to make
to get closer to what's actually happening or closer to some sort of like objective truth, if you will. Like when that person cuts you off or
You're gonna make meaning out of it, make sense of it. Is there anything that we can do to to
get closer to the reality of the world.
versus the reality of our head.
Well, the reality of your head
Was wired by the reality of the world.
That's of some world that you grew up in.
So oftentimes
What happens is
That
The microwiring of your brain is
Is shape.
by one kind of world and then you
move to a different kind of world and
Then it's really expensive to re
Retool.
Your uh and uh some brains do do it well and and others don't.
And then
mistakes are made and things become very expensive and
In various ways. I'm and I'm gonna answer your question assuming that your question is valid, which is that we wanna be closer to reality. Right. Whatever that means, because sometimes I don't know that that's always really the right thing.
To do, but um
So here's an example. So somebody cuts me off.
And I'm really rushing.
To
Get some place and someone cuts me off.
But the initial meaning my brain is gonna make is from my own personal perspective, because of course
That's how we all see things.
You can
practice trying to see something from another person's point of view. So
Maybe that person
Just didn't see me.
Maybe that person's rushing somewhere. Maybe that person has a kid who's in the hospital. Maybe that person has a really important meeting to be at.
Or something really important to take care of.
There's this saying that comes from contemplative philosophy.
Which is that anger is a form of ignorance.
And what that means is
When you only see something from your own perspective
and you fail to acknowledge that there's another perspective, you are ignorant of something.
And what you're ignorant of is the fact that
You know, you exist.
In
a complicated network of connections to other people.
You just can't see something and then therefore you're ignorant and angry.
Yeah, but you can try, you can practice.
You can before
What it means to have control
Is not to then
Ріли трі хард.
To take that person's perspective in that moment.
'Cause that's really hard.
Вот і мінсь то в контрол.
is that you practice taking other people's perspective
Before that moment
So that when that moment comes, you can do it very automatically.
You know, it's like
If you need to build a skill, you don't wait until the exact second that you need the skill and then try it.
No.
What you do
Is you
Practice the skill in advance until you get really practice at it, really automatic at it, and then you can kind of do it without a lot of effort.
For example, taking somebody else's perspective
Is one way
to um
Get closer to reality.
Because
It dislodges you from the illusion.
That your way of seeing things is the only way.
А інфакт і саєнс
There's a wonderful book by this uh historian of science named her name is uh Naomi Oreskus.
And
The title of the book is called Why Trust Science.
And
Her argument, which is a a really intriguing argument, is that
The way that we know that
something is true in science, true with you know, scare words.
Is that
A group of scientists
Who come from diverse backgrounds.
Авдес.
And diverse values.
All come to consensus.
About what the evidence says.
Then you can
Have much more confidence.
uh to call that finding a scientific fact.
I mean scientists don't like to use the word fact.
And they don't like to use the word reality usually very much, but fact is a real no no. It's an F word we just don't use in science because.
Um
It's um
You know, it's always conditional, it's always probabilistic, you know.
Really, you know, there's a wonderful um phrase by Henry Gee.
Who is a paleontologist who works for the journal Um Nчі.
And he wrote
Science is the quantification of doubt.
It's not about
It's not about finding facts. It's about
How likely is this?
uh observation to be true.
In these circumstances.
And
If you get a group of scientists who all have different backgrounds and different assumptions and they come together
In consensus
You can be
much more sure.
That
What you're observing
Is uh very likely to be the case in this circumstance.
Right.
However
You have no diversity in science.
And you have really
you know, a bunch of people with the same background and the same history and
the same assumptions and they come together over consensus in consensus.
What you're likely there to have is bias.
Usually bias that upholds whatever advantage those people who are making the decision actually have.
And so but the same principle is useful in your own life, I think.
Um and that is that
You can choose
Two
Try to take somebody else's perspective.
Like right now.
You can
You can look around
You're the room.
You can
Listen.
If you pay attention to your body, there are some things that you can
Focus on that you weren't focusing on a moment ago.
And you can change your experience like right now.
What I'm about to say there's something that we're that you and I are both doing right now.
Yeah.
Our brains were not
tracking, well w our brains were tracking, but we weren't we weren't
We weren't really aware wasn't in the forefront of awareness.
Um
But the minute I say it, it will be in the forefront of your awareness.
And that is your legs pressing against the seat of your chair.
Or
You're back pressing against.
the um the back of your chair.
That sense data's always there.
But you mostly don't pay attention to it unless you're in discomfort in some way. Your focus determines where your
Your attention goes, yeah.
So here's an example of something that's similar that I do uh almost every day.
Not because I'm just I'm just trying to build a skill, like build a muscle, you know?
Every day.
I
You know, uh as I'm
Walking on the sidewalk, say.
I look for a weed.
I look for a moment where I can
Feel aware.
Over the power of nature.
That is just w will not be, you know, repressed, uh will not be contained by
uh by humans um need to try to control it.
And for me
For example is a weed. When I see a weed
Popping up through
The crack of a sidewalk.
I almost always
Now
practice trying to see that as a really wondrous beautiful thing.
Because it
It's a symbol of
Um the fact that
You know, nature is irrepressible.
And there's there are many things in life which are much bigger than you.
And when you cultivate those moments where you realize that the world that the natural world is much bigger than you.
Well, at least for me anyways. I don't
I don't experience that as an existential crisis. I experience that as an existential break.
Like
Okay, something's bigger than me.
Many things are bigger than me. That means my problems in the moment are really
small and conditional.
And
That
gives my nervous system a break for a minute.
You know, I I really try to cultivate every day at least one moment where I feel like a speck.
'Cause it puts everything into perspective.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And
I try to do this.
Whether I'm feeling
you know, stressed or not, whether my brain has been
busy trying to prepare me for
Expenditures or not.
Because
I'm trying to build a muscle.
And keep it.
fit for when I need it.
That's an excellent place to end this conversation, Lisa. I really want to thank you for your time. This has been phenomenal.
Oh, it's my pleasure. It was so much fun talking to you.
Mm.

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