{"id":149903,"date":"2022-01-07T14:59:38","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T14:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/149903"},"modified":"2022-01-20T12:06:12","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T17:06:12","slug":"how-your-brain-can-turn-anxiety-into-calmness-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/149903","title":{"rendered":"How Your Brain Can Turn Anxiety into Calmness"},"content":{"rendered":"(whooshing) – [Narrator] This\r\nprogram is a presentation of UCTV for educational and\r\nnon-commercial use only. (upbeat music) – Marty is a delight to have here and a delight to introduce, especially to a room full of people who are interested in learning\r\nabout mind-body medicine. Marty Rossman has probably done more to bring integrative\r\nmedicine to where it’s at, especially regarding mind-body medicine than any other person I\r\nwill ever get to introduce or perhaps even get to shake hands with. Marty was very early on was one of the proponents\r\nof medical acupuncture. He was a founding board member of the American something or other. American Board of, American Academy of Medical\r\nAcupuncture, he tells me. He has been instrumental in\r\ndeveloping guided imagery to the robust field that it is today. He works as well a great\r\ndeal with hypnosis, with many different techniques to help calm us down to help us get\r\nto a point of relaxation.\r\n\r\nUsing hypnosis, health hypnosis,\r\nbiofeedback, bodywork, but especially guided imagery. He is a member of the advisory board for the Osher Center for\r\nIntegrative Medicine, and I was interested to\r\ndiscover he’s also a member of the advisory board\r\nfor the Rosenthal Center for Complementary Medicine at Colombia University in New york. I’ve known Marty for\r\na number of years now. I’ve been privileged\r\nto attend several talks that he’s given. I know that he’s a great speaker. – Well, thank you very much. That was very kind of you to say. Good evening, everybody. So how many of you have\r\never worried about anything? (audience laughing) Has anybody here ever\r\nworried about anything? Okay, good, that’s our topic tonight.\r\n\r\nAnd of course, everybody\r\nworries sometimes, and some people worry all the time. And if you’re one of those people who finds themselves worried all the time, I think that you might\r\nget something very useful. I hope that you get something very useful out of tonight’s talk. If you just worry intermittently, I hope you get something useful anyhow, but you don’t probably\r\ndon’t need it quite as much. So I’m calling my topic\r\ntonight Worrying Well, and I’m still looking for a subtitle, but tonight we’ll call\r\nit how to use your brain to relieve anxiety and stress and turn it into more desirable things like calmness and confidence. Worry, I think, gets a lot of bad press because we don’t use it very well, and so when I call it Worrying Well, it’s really about what is worry? How do we do it? What’s the purpose of it? Is it possible that worrying\r\nhas a positive function, which it does?\r\n\r\nWorry basically is an adaptive function. It’s something that allows us\r\nto go over and over something in our minds in an\r\nattempt to solve a problem or resolve a situation, so I think that that’s adaptive. We humans have been born\r\nwith faculties in our brain that as far as we know don’t belong to any other creature on Earth, and it has allowed us to come from being a pretty\r\nvulnerable prey animal on the African savanna to becoming the dominant\r\nthe creature on Earth.\r\n\r\nWe don’t have many tools for survival if you look at a human as an animal. We’re pretty vulnerable. We don’t run very fast. We don’t have big teeth. We don’t have big claws. We can swim a little\r\nbit but not very well. We can’t fly very well. So out there, without a lot of technology and on the African savanna,\r\nwe are meat basically. And we’ve got systems\r\nbuilt into our system that we inherited from the development of other prey animals that lead to things like fight and flight response, which are adaptive in some situations and maladaptive in others. But one of the things that are, that one of the qualities\r\nthat we’ve developed is, or one of the mental abilities\r\nand functions is imagination. I could really make a\r\nstrong case that imagination is one of the key things, and\r\nmaybe the key mental faculty that separates the human\r\nfrom all other forms of life.\r\n\r\nImagination lets us remember things from the past. It lets us project things into the future and think about how things\r\nwould be in the future if we did something this way or that way. And everything that exists on Earth that wasn’t made by God or nature, take your pick, or some\r\ncombination of the two. Everything else that exists, everything that humankind\u00a0has created started in somebody’s imagination. That’s where it made its\r\nfirst appearance on Earth, as somebody’s imagination. “Ooh, we could do that. “Could make it round, it’ll roll. “We could chip these.” They noticed that two rocks\r\nchipping together make fire and they figured out a way to do that. So imagination, you could make a case that outside of God or nature, the human imagination is the most powerful force on Earth. And the thing is, very few of us have ever really\r\nbeen taught how to use it. Most of our education, especially all the way\r\nthrough to higher education, is on using other mental faculties, which also have made us very powerful. The ability to analyze. The ability to calculate.\r\n\r\nLinear, logical, rational,\r\nscientific ways of thinking have also contributed to\r\nus being very powerful because they allow us to take the things that we imagine and make them real in a certain way, but a lot\r\nstarts in the imagination. Worry is a function of imagination. If you didn’t have an imagination,\r\nyou wouldn’t be worried. That’s what lobotomies are about. (audience laughing) And that’s what a lot of\r\ncertain medications are about. So we used to joke at our\r\nacademy for guided imagery that if we could find a simple, non-toxic way to do a vaginectomy, we could resolve everybody’s\r\nworry and stress problems. You just wouldn’t be very worried. You wouldn’t do much, either.\r\n\r\nYou wouldn’t be creative, but you wouldn’t be worried\r\nif we could do that. So I think rather than\r\ntaking the imagination out, what we wanna do is learn\r\nhow to use it better, and so a lot of what I’m gonna share with you about Worrying Well or worrying more effectively has to do with how you use your imagination. So worry and stress have\r\na lot of overlap, right? And we often use them interchangeably. I’m gonna spend a little time to differentiate these\r\nthings a little bit, but they do overlap quite a bit. And then anxiety also overlaps\r\nwith worry and stress. They’re all a little bit different, and they’re very interrelated. They share in a lot of\r\ndifferent kinds of ways. The reason this is important\r\nis that our consciousness and our ability to become self-conscious is potentially the\r\ngreatest tool that we have for improving our lives. And it also, if we don’t\r\nknow how to use it, can be something that can\r\nmake our life miserable.\r\n\r\nSo I like this Ashleigh Brilliant quote. “Due to circumstances beyond my control, “I am master of my fate\r\nand captain of my soul.” So you’re it. If you wanna do something about\r\nyour anxiety, your stress, the way that you think, the\r\nway that you create your life. You are the captain\r\nwhether you like it or not. So we might as well learn\r\nhow to use these capacities ’cause there’s really no going back.\r\n\r\nI think sometimes\r\nunconsciously we try to go back with other ways of\r\nmanaging anxiety and stress like drinking too much or taking drugs, medications, or eating too much. All the millions of ways we\r\nhave of going unconscious and kind of trying to just\r\nput our head in the sand and maybe it’ll go away,\r\nwhich it frequently does. So it’s not that it’s not a\r\ngood strategy in the short run, but as a total life plan,\r\nit’s kind of lacking, okay? It won’t take you where you want to go. So how are worry, stress,\r\nand anxiety different? So worry is a type of, this\r\nis how I think about it, and I can be argued with. I’m not sure that any of\r\nthis is actually true. I’m kind of throwing it out there. I’m writing a book on it. So if I’m wrong, please tell\r\nme before the book is written.\r\n\r\nBut it seems to me that worry\r\nis a type of thinking, okay? And our friend here Ziggy says, “The figments of my\r\nimagination are out to get me.” That’s kind of the most\r\ncommon use of the imagination is just letting your imagination kind of go to the worst scene scenarios, getting kind of entranced or\r\nhypnotized by your worries and letting your imagination scare you. ‘Cause I think in a sense, the most common unconscious\r\nuse of the imagination is to drive ourselves crazy\r\nor worry ourselves sick. So the bar is set pretty low. That’s the good news. We can learn to use it more on purpose and do better than that. So worry is a type of thinking. It’s a repetitive kind of thinking. Sometimes a rumination,\r\nit’s generally troubled. It often has to do with\r\nthings that are either in the past or in the future, okay? It’s the opposite of being here now.\r\n\r\nIt’s the opposite of the present center. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, and that doesn’t mean that\r\nit doesn’t have a function. But we’re in our brain, we’re\r\nthinking about something. We’re going over and over it. And again, I think that’s because of the adaptive function of worry, I always assume that something\r\nis there is an attempt by nature or by life to solve a problem or to give us an advantage.\r\n\r\nSo if you think about what\r\ncould the advantage be of being able to go over a\r\nproblem over and over in my mind? Well, I think it’s kind\r\nof like if you have a big, tangled ball of yarn or thread. And you’re trying to untangle\r\nit and you find a place that’s loose and you pull it for a while and you get some looseness, and then it gets stuck again\r\nso you turn the ball over and you find another loose place and you free up some more stuff, and you turn it over again and\r\nyou free up some more stuff. And if you keep doing that,\r\nturning it over and over, looking at it from different angles, finding the loose places, finding where things are knotted together. Excuse me, if you persevere\r\nwith it, more often than not, you’re gonna get that\r\nwhole thing untangled and then go on to the next\r\ntangled mess that you find, okay? But you are likely to\r\nget that one untangled, and I think that’s the function of worry.\r\n\r\nIt lets us, it makes our\r\nconcerns transportable so you can think about it at any time, and that can be an\r\nadvantage or a disadvantage. And I think that that depends on whether you’re using your brain or you’re being run by it. That your brain is an incredible organ. Your mind has something to do with it. And at least in certain circumstances, your mind can learn to use\r\nyour brain in better ways. That’s what this is about. So it’s very easy though\r\nfor this adaptive function of problem-solving and turning things over and over to become a habit or to become repetitive\r\nand to become ruminative and just kind of become its own thing.\r\n\r\nAnd I think there are a\r\ncouple of reasons for that. One is that worry can serve kind of a magical function. There’s a magical,\r\nunconscious function of worry. A couple of ’em actually. So one is that most things that you worry about never happen. Most things that you\r\nworry about never happen, and if you, that’s an old\r\nrubric that we’ve all heard and I found myself wondering, “Well, is that really true?” So I’ve been teaching\r\nthis as a six-week class, this Worrying Well class.\r\n\r\nI’ve taught it a few times now, and I’ve asked people at\r\nthe beginning of the class to list all the things\r\nthat they find themselves repetitively worrying about. And then sometime later on, we’ve just checked in\r\nwith the first class, which was about nine months ago, to see how many of those\r\nthings have happened, and not very many of them have happened. So I don’t know if anybody’s ever studied that really before, but you could do it yourself\r\nby writing them down and then checking it in\r\nabout six months or a year.\r\n\r\nNow the interesting thing about that, the way that the brain works is, at some unconscious level of the brain, the brain could conclude\r\nthat the thing didn’t happen because you worried about it, right?\r\n(audience laughing) That’s the function,\r\nand there’s an old story about a woman who walks around her house. She’s an old woman. She’s walking around her house every day. Mumbling, walking around her house. She walks around her house all day long until she’s curved a rut around her house, and that goes up to about\r\nthe middle of her thighs.\r\n\r\nAnd finally, one of their\r\nneighbors can’t take it anymore. He goes over and he says, “I hope you don’t mind if I ask you “why you walk around your\r\nhouse all the day, every day.” And she says, “Well, I’m\r\nkeeping it safe from tigers.” And he says, “Well, we’re in Indiana. “There aren’t any tigers here.” And she says, “See?” (audience laughing)\r\n(laughs) So it’s possible that we\r\nget rewarded for worrying because so many of those\r\nthings don’t happen, and at some magical,\r\nunconscious primitive level of thought those two things\r\ncould possibly be connected. The other thing that has been researched is that sometimes, worrying\r\nabout things distracts us from things that are\r\nactually bothering us.\r\n\r\nSo that worrying about\r\nlittle things and do-lists and so on and so forth, always\r\nfussing and always worrying and always having\r\nsomething to fuss up about and to worry about actually distracts us from something that might\r\nbe deeper and more emotional and actually be harder for us to take. So, and we know that that’s a function. That’s actually been studied. So that worry prevents deeper, richer, more emotional-laden thinking, which typically comes in images and comes in the quiet times. So if there’s a lot of feeling\r\nthere that’s hard to process or hard to feel or that’s unprocessed and that we’ve never dealt with, it’s in a sense useful to\r\nkeep the mind very busy.\r\n\r\nBecause if you get quiet,\r\nyour emotions will come up. And ultimately, we think\r\nthat that’s a good thing. Emotions are natural, they’re healthy. They have a wisdom to them that most of us have not also been educated in. But they can be hard to feel. Nobody, very few people have\r\nvery much trouble feeling joy. Although a lot of times we’re\r\nblocked from feeling joy because we are unable or\r\nunwilling to feel other emotions. When you start feeling one emotion, the others go, “Hey, the door’s open.” And they might wanna come up and be felt.\r\n\r\nSo there are functions of worry, and again, some of them\r\nunconscious, magical, maybe not in our best interest over time. Others adaptive, problem-solving,\r\ngo over the problem. So it behooves us to kind of learn what we’re doing with the worry, and that gives us choices in terms of what we’re doing with the rest, okay? So worry’s a thinking function, whereas anxiety, anxiety is\r\nan uncomfortable feeling.\r\n\r\nIt’s usually in the chest\r\nor the upper abdomen. Not always, but it’s most often up in this area or this area. It’s an uncomfortable feeling of fear or apprehension or dread. Dread is, it’s that feeling, “Oh my God, something bad is\r\ngoing to happen, I know it. “Something bad is going to happen.” You don’t know. It may be attached to something or it may be free-floating\r\nand not attached to anything. And anxiety often comes\r\nwith physical symptoms like rapid heartbeat, pain\r\nin the chest, sweating, shortness of breath.\r\n\r\nThere’s often a feeling of anxiety if anxiety is very strong,\r\nlike panic attacks. There’s often a very\r\ncharacteristic feeling that comes with panic attacks and the feeling is of impending doom. People with panic attacks\r\nfeel they’re about to die. And it’s often, again, since the symptoms are often\r\nin the chest or in the abdomen, we see these things in\r\nmedicine all the time. And you could really make\r\na case for one of the maybe the primary functions\r\nof a primary care doctor is seeing if there’s anything\r\nelse but anxiety going on because anxiety can cause so many symptoms in so many systems of the\r\nbody and make us afraid.\r\n\r\nA sense that something\r\nbad is gonna happen. Anxiety is a function\r\nof a part of the brain that is the emotional part of the brain. It’s called a limbic system\r\nor the emotional brain, so worry belongs to the\r\nthinking part of the brain. And there’s a lot of interaction, but worry belongs in the thinking part of the brain, the cortex. Anxiety typically comes from the limbic or emotional part of the brain, and I’ll show you what that looks like. And stress, which is the third leg of our uncomfortable stool here, is actually a physical\r\nresponse to a threat, real or imagined. And in modern life, most of the threats are either perceived or\r\nimagined, but they’re not.\r\n\r\nSo somebody’s probably told you the story of the saber-toothed tiger and the fight-or-flight\r\nresponse and so on. That this was a response we\r\nthink was designed by nature. So when you walked out of the cave and you ran into a big predator\r\nlike a saber-toothed tiger, part of your nervous system fires off and you get a big shot of adrenaline and your heart beats faster\r\nand your blood clots faster and your blood pressure goes up and your muscles get super charged and you’re ready to run, or run the fastest two miles\r\nyou’ve ever run in your life or fight the tiger to death.\r\n\r\nAnd then it super charges you. It’s that kind of thing we hear about when a mother moves a\r\ncar to save the baby. The thing is that this response can go off in response to threats\r\nthat are not predators. That are not, it can go off in response to stock market movements,\r\neconomic changes, thinking about aging, thinking about whether you can\r\nmeet your responsibilities. All kinds of stuff, and\r\nall kinds of stuff that is, that unless you know\r\nwhere the off button is on your television or your\r\nradio or your computer, that you can just literally\r\npump into your brain 24\/7 if you stay up. All the bad news of every bad thing that has happened around\r\nthe world to anybody, or if it’s a slow news day,\r\nwhat could happen, okay? Like the H1N1 flu, ’cause\r\nit’s not a terribly, doesn’t look like a terribly\r\ndangerous flu right now, but it could become really dangerous.\r\n\r\nAnd that’s what’s got everybody scared and everybody freaked\r\nout and standing line. What could happen, so. And yes, there’s a balance between, again, being able to predict the future and take measures to\r\nprevent things happening that don’t need to happen, and freaking out for\r\nmonths about something that probably will never happen. It’s a yin-yang kind of relationship. So stress is, the important\r\nthing here is that stress is a physical response. It’s not stuff that happens to you. It’s a physical response\r\nthat your body has to survive a short-term stress. And if you survive that short-term stress like fight like the saber-toothed tiger, you’ve either killed it or\r\nyou’ve run away from it. And run as fast as you can, climb the highest tree that you can.\r\n\r\nYou’ve burned up all\r\nthese stress chemicals, and when the tiger goes away, you kind of limp back to the cave and breathe a big sigh of relief and tell everybody about\r\nhow you killed the tiger or ran away from the tiger. And your body rested and\r\ncompensated and recharged itself and replaced all the\r\nchemicals that it used during that intense 20 to 30 minute fight. Or else the tiger has eaten you and you don’t have anymore stress.\r\n(audience laughing) But one way or another, it’s all over in about 20 or 30 minutes. (audience laughing)\r\nOkay? So there’s none of this years of stress that go on if you’re a good worrier, where you wake up in the morning and the first thing on your mind is, “Oh my God, what’s gonna happen with this? “Am I gonna be able to do this? “Am I gonna be able to beat that?” And so on and so forth.\r\n\r\nAnd of course, the really good worriers are not only doing it during the daytime. You’re up at night, too,\r\nbecause you can’t sleep, right? And so it’s taking your, and that takes your resilience away, and it becomes a real\r\nnegative, vicious cycle. So, to review. Worry is a type of\r\nrepetitive, circular thinking. Anxiety is an uncomfortable\r\nfeeling of fear or dread. Stress is a physical response that prepares you to meet challenges and so it’s interesting to look at. This is sort of a somewhat\r\ndated model of the brain. It’s called the Triune Brain, but it’s good enough for government work.\r\n\r\nWe can work with this model, okay? This is that, there is what’s\r\ncalled the cortical brain or the neo-cortex. The big, gray matter, wrinkled, big brain that we’re so proud of\r\nthat allows us to speak and add and calculate and\r\nreason and so on and so forth. And imagine, and do all\r\nthese things that again, as far as we know, no other\r\ncreature on Earth does, and that is really the most adaptive thing that’s helped us survive and dominate. Lower down, limbic\r\nsystem, mid-brain, okay. The basic brain, we call\r\nit the reptilian brain. That’s the brain we share with lizards and reptiles and amphibians. That’s the oldest part of the brain.\r\n\r\nThat part of the brain basically\r\nconcerned with survival. It basically sorts things\r\ninto two or three categories. “Can I eat this? “Can it eat me? “Can I mate with it?” That’s basically what\r\nit’s concerned with, okay? (audience laughing) It sorts down all the\r\ninformation that you receive into those three things, okay? And it acts like that. It acts reflexively and instantaneously. Just like if you come\r\nacross a lizard on the path and you make a move towards\r\nit, it’s gone like that. It doesn’t go inside. It doesn’t do a Woody Allen thing. “Should I move? “Should I not move? “Would it be better for me? “Is this dangerous? “Is it not dangerous? “How dangerous is it?” It doesn’t do any of it,\r\nit’s just gone, okay? If there’s any indication\r\nthat there’s a threat, it sets off the stress\r\nresponse and it’s gone.\r\n\r\nThe thing is, this\r\ndeveloped evolutionarily from the bottom up, okay? This was, this part of\r\nthe brain developed first. And then as animals developed, the limbic system pretty\r\nmuch developed in mammals, and other, in warm, furry creatures, who characteristically\r\nhave social relationships. And for mammals, for most\r\nmammals, not all mammals, social relationships like prides of lions and packs of wolves and families of people and things like that have adaptive value. We do better when we’re\r\nconnected to groups. We have more strength. We have more problem-solving ability. We have emotional support. We are social creatures, and our social positions mean a lot to us. And all that emotional\r\nprocessing happens mostly in this limbic system,\r\nand then on top of it, the big, smart, intellectual brain. Every layer added new\r\npossibilities and new complexity to our ability to understand our world and to navigate our world. And part of the problem when\r\nwe look at this whole issue is that the new guy is very\r\nentranced with himself, okay? The thinking brain thinks that nothing was important before he came along.\r\n\r\nAnd I saw he kind of deliberately. It could be she too, but it’s a kind of, it’s not that there\r\naren’t tremendously bright and intellectual women, but it’s kind of thinking analysis, logic, that kind of thinking on a yin-yang scale we typically characterize as a\r\nkind of a masculine thinking. Not that it doesn’t belong to women too. Whereas the feeling, the intuitive, tends to be a more kind\r\nof receptive, softer. It has its own logic,\r\nbut it’s not the same as the logic of mathematics\r\nand science, okay? So this brain is very good at, especially part of the brain, the part that’s suited for\r\nverbal and mathematical skills, which typically is in the\r\nleft hemisphere of the brain. And there’s some variation, but that typically is in the left brain, which is called the dominant hemisphere.\r\n\r\nSpeech capability, mathematical\r\ncapability and so on. Whereas in the right side of\r\nthe brain in the same area, lie areas of the brain that\r\nhave to do with the body image, with emotional recognition\r\nand facial expressions, and tone of voice, and\r\nthose kinds of skills. So they each have their place. I mean, logical skills have to do with building buildings\r\nlike this and building MRIs and doing the kind of incredible science that goes on in a\r\nuniversity setting like UCSF and looking through electron microscopes and doing chemical analysis. And these are tremendous\r\nfeats, don’t misunderstand me. They’re completely useless\r\nin a relationship, okay? It doesn’t matter how many\r\nNobel prizes you have. You may not be able to\r\nmaintain a marriage. Would be if that’s the only kind of intelligence you have, right? And you may not be able to maintain good\r\nrelationships with people.\r\n\r\nWhereas somebody who emotionally, and in terms of social networking and understanding and\r\ncompassion and empathy, may have a different kind of intelligence, as well as an intellectual\r\nkind of intelligence. So my point is that these are different kinds of intelligences that are useful in different situations. What has happened since the\r\nadvent of the age of reason and which is, and the\r\nadvent of discovering the immense power of our\r\nintellectual capabilities, I think has been a devaluing and ignoring of the earlier kind of\r\nintelligence that has to do with our relations with each other and with other living things\r\nand with our environment.\r\n\r\nAnd I think that a lot of\r\nthe crisis we’re seeing is we’re trying to come back to that and own those relationships while still maintaining our\r\nability to be technically creative and help solve\r\nthose problems that way. I think that these have\r\nbeen around a lot longer. This guy’s really fascinated with himself and sometimes thinks he’s\r\nthe only game in town. So the reason we used to say, when we’re talking about\r\nleft and right hemisphere, and I don’t wanna go into\r\nit too deeply tonight, but the reason that the left hemisphere is called the dominant hemisphere … Can anybody guess? It does dominate, but the main reason that it’s called the dominant hemisphere is that it’s the one that names things. It’s the verbal hemisphere. It’s the one that gives people, thinks, “I’m the dominant hemisphere, “and you’re the subdominant hemisphere. “I’m the major hemisphere,\r\nyou’re the minor hemisphere.” And it’s kind of a joke,\r\nbut I think it’s also true, and we have valued that.\r\n\r\nThink about your education. How many hours of emotional\r\neducation did you get? How many hours of education in using your imagination did you get? Or your intuition? So your education, and I’m\r\nnot saying that it was, hopefully, at least when I went to school, it was reading, writing, arithmetic. It was those left brain,\r\nanalytic, logical skills. Tremendously useful, but not all of us. And this other kind of intelligence, I think we need a lot more\r\neducation experience with it. Learn how to communicate with it, and that’s why in a little while I’m gonna talk about imagery,\r\nwhich is its coding language in a sense of this more\r\nemotional and intuitive brain. So here’s a kind of a picture of a real brain cut in half this way. And I don’t know how\r\nwell you can see this, but there’s the wrinkled\r\ncortex, neo-cortex. It goes all the way around. And then in the center,\r\nthis area here more or less is the limbic or emotional brain. And you can see that there’s an, and then this would be the reptilian, reflexive, survival brain. And you can see there’s lots\r\nof connections between the two, so that this brain could\r\nsend messages into this brain and create an emotional reaction, which would send messages\r\ndown to this part of the brain and sent it out to the\r\nbody and vice versa.\r\n\r\nLike for this guy. So this guy’s having a,\r\nhe’s not having a good day. He’s having a rage reaction, and without going through\r\nall of these things, just if you want to study this, you can, but something didn’t match up\r\nwith his expectations, okay? That’s where most anger comes from. He had an expectation. Something didn’t come up to it. It sent some kind of a message of danger or threat to this emotional brain. It’s signaled his lower brain\r\nthat to get ready for a fight, and this thing sends out, through all the cranial nerves\r\nand spinal cord and so on, messages to every organ in his body and your physiology\r\nchanges very dramatically. When you’re angry, when you’re frightened, when you’re sad, when you’re\r\nhappy, when you’re calm, you are physiologically\r\ndifferent than, okay. So there’s plenty of connections and this is basically just to show yes, there’s a real wiring diagram and a real chemical messaging system.\r\n\r\nSo anxiety, stress, and worry are interactive, they’re bidirectional. If you have a tendency to be anxious, that emotional brain is gonna be pumping out more\r\nmessages of, “Look out.” It may not know what it’s looking out for, but it’s gonna be more vigilant. It’s going to raise the, it’s gonna send more\r\nmessages to the cortex to be on guard for problems. And then the cortex is gonna be able to imagine all the problems\r\nthat there could be out there, and it’s gonna send messages back and they can get into a real, kind of a reverberating circuit.\r\n\r\nAll these parts of the brain\r\nare chemically sensitive, and of course in medicine, typically we try to chemically\r\nmanipulate these things if somebody’s got a real anxiety disorder. We’re not talking about anxiety disorders which where the anxiety\r\nlevel is just cranked up high in spite of the thinking here. But we try to manipulate\r\nthat with medications. Those of us who have studied\r\nnutritional medicine know that there are naturally\r\noccurring molecules. That there are molecules in our foods that can be used as nutraceuticals\r\nto modify how active or upregulated the nervous\r\nsystem is or downregulated, so we try to do it through\r\nmore natural molecules, but the other thing to know about this is that they’re also thought-sensitive.\r\n\r\nThat thoughts that become\r\nchemicals at a certain level and those chemicals stimulate\r\nthe physical mechanisms that underlie our reactions, so. And that’s gonna be our focus\r\ntonight, is about thinking. For any of you who have any\r\ndoubts that the mind and body are really connected\r\nand create physiology, just a real quick, this\r\nis biofeedback data. And to make it simple,\r\nthis is muscle tension. This is electrical response in the skin. This is fingertip temperature, which is a sign of either\r\nstress or relaxation. This nice, even white\r\nline here is respiration. So this guy is sitting in a\r\nbiofeedback therapist’s office with a bunch of sensors\r\nhooked up to his muscles and his fingertips to measure the way that his circulation responds to stress.\r\n\r\nAnd he’s got a belt around his chest, and he’s just breathing\r\nnice and around his abdomen, this is actually his abdomen. And he’s breathing nice\r\nand normally, even. He’s just sitting there relaxing. There’s not much going on, so. You won’t be able to read all this stuff. Just watch what happens here. So he’s a guy. This is an actual patient who has a phobia about driving over bridges and he lives here. (audience laughing)\r\nOkay. Bad combination, right? So he’s sitting, so he goes\r\nto the biofeedback therapist. Here he’s just sitting there relaxing. Then the biofeedback therapist\r\nasks him just to think about, just imagine approaching\r\nthe Golden Gate Bridge.\r\n\r\nAnd all of this goes\r\nin the same direction. There’s an immediate\r\nfight-or-flight response. Just goes off from imagining\r\ndriving across the bridge. You can see it best here,\r\nwhat happens to his breathing. It just goes to pod. It’s just very shallow, very irregular. Stops breathing into his abdomen. His skin temperature,\r\nactually this reversed. It should go decrease. His muscle tension goes up. He’s physiologically\r\nready to defend his life by imagining going to the bridge. Now, if he can learn to get his breathing under control again and his therapist can guide him to think about some other things\r\nthat are more relaxing. They typically break it down. “Just think about coming down the stairs “and seeing your car keys.” In a person who’s developed a phobia, that would be enough to\r\nstimulate a huge reaction. Now, if the person then can\r\nlearn to breathe more deeply and to induce a relaxation\r\nresponse, which most people can, while he’s imagining that, go\r\nback to the calm physiology. By the time he gets to the place where he can actually imagine driving across the bridge and staying calm, he’ll be able to go across that bridge.\r\n\r\nThat could take months to get to. There’s a lot of practice in here, but it’s a good example\r\nof a mind-body connection and how much we respond to\r\njust thinking about things. So there’s a lot, how many have heard the\r\nterm neuroplasticity? Has that been talked about here? So it doesn’t mean your\r\nbrain is made of plastic. It means that your brain is changeable, and there’s been a lot\r\nof literature lately about how changeable the\r\nadult human brain is.\r\n\r\nUp until very recently, the dictum was we have an\r\nadult brain, that’s it. Your cells die off, but that’s about it. And you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and all that kind of stuff. And we know now, how many of you have read\r\nthis book by Norman Doidge, “The Brain That Changes Itself?” It’s an astounding book on brain science. A couple of, an example,\r\nthere are researchers now that have developed techniques, sending, taking people who\r\nhave been blind since birth. Hooking up a little video\r\ncamera to an electric device that kind of draws a picture\r\non their back by poking ’em. Kind of a thing that puts\r\nmultiple little pokes and gives them a picture on their back, and they start to see.\r\n\r\nOkay, they can see so\r\nthat they can walk around. Now they have it where a\r\nlittle video camera and a glass goes to a little wafer on the tongue that sends out little electrical signals. And they start, and they are able to see. Probably not like most of us who are able to see naturally and normally, but they are able to see. They can walk around the room\r\nand not bump into objects and so on and so forth, okay? And what happens over time, what they found was, in these people, that watching a device\r\ncalled a functional MRI, which can show us what parts of the brain are active while people are thinking, that it was the part of the\r\nbrain in the occipital cortex that processes visual information, that took all of this data\r\nfrom their back or their tongue and started putting pictures together.\r\n\r\nSo the brain’s taking this data and putting pictures together\r\n’cause that’s what it does. Normally it gets the input from your eye, but if we can get it the\r\ninformation some other way, it can create new pathways\r\nthat create these abilities. Isn’t that astounding? So part of Jeffrey Schwartz at UCLA, his research has been with people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which has been traditionally a very difficult condition to treat, and finding very structured,\r\nrepetitive exercises, which fortunately,\r\nobsessive-compulsive people are very good at. (laughs)\r\n(audience laughing) By focusing their mind in a certain way, that they literally can change, not only their behavioral patterns, but that their brains change\r\nafter a decent period. We’re talking about months of practice so that you can actually\r\nlay new hard wiring down, as well as changing your mind.\r\n\r\nYou can change your mind in a nanosecond, but it seems to take weeks to\r\nmonths to change your brain. But when you change your brain, now you’ve got a new\r\ndefault position installed, and you don’t have to be the\r\nsame way that you were before. Louann Brizendine, who’s a professor of psychiatry here at UCSF, wrote this, how many have read this\r\nbook, “The Female Brain?” If you never read another\r\nbook in your life, and if you’re either male or female, (audience laughing) you should read this book. This is an astounding book. A really astounding book about the brain and how it’s organized and what different capabilities there are. Both genders have similar capabilities, but it’s a bit of a digression, but it was tremendously useful\r\nto me to learn from this book that all fetuses as they’re\r\ngrowing in the womb are female, are male at the beginning. And at eight weeks,\r\nyeah, they’re all female. They’re all female. At eight weeks, the fetus\r\nwith the Y chromosome gets a wash of testosterone, and do you know what that\r\ntestosterone does to the brain? You’re gonna love this.\r\n\r\n(audience laughing)\r\nIt explains so much. (audience laughing) It kills 80% of the\r\nneurons in the male brain that process emotional communication. (audience laughing) This is apparently brain science. And when they get it again\r\nwhen they’re 14 or 15, I don’t know how many of\r\nyou remember being 14 or 15, or if you have a 14 or\r\n15-year-old son who sits at the table like this\r\nand looks like a cretin and spends all of his time in\r\nhis room and is barely human, and he was a brilliant, loving little kid. He’s got testosterone poisoning, which is again, seriously,\r\n(audience laughing) is again, killing neurons in his brain that have to do with\r\nemotional communication. And increasing the parts of his brain that have to do with sexuality\r\nand aggressiveness, okay? While the female’s brain is\r\nstill maintaining this big part about four to five times\r\nas much brain area devoted to emotional communication.\r\n\r\nTo talking about sensing\r\nemotional nuances. Which is why in general you ladies are so much better at it than we are and you like to talk to each\r\nother about all that stuff. You like to talk to us about it. You don’t understand\r\nwhy we don’t understand. Okay, this would be like,\r\nand this is no offense.\r\n\r\nI need a better archetype, but this would be like my dog who has 20,000 times the smell neurons in his nose than I do. This would be like my dog asking me, “Why don’t you smell that\r\nJake was here earlier? “I’m sniffing his book. “Why don’t you, I’m living\r\nin a world of smell. “Smell is all around us.” It’s a world of smell to the dog, right? I don’t smell any of it. I don’t hear the high-pitched sounds ’cause his brain is tuned differently, so. This is has saved my marriage. (audience laughing)\r\nThis discover. And when you wonder, and when the guys, these are all overgeneralizations and I’m playing it up a little bit, but your guy may not be able\r\nto tell what you’re feeling as easily as you can\r\ntell what he’s feeling.\r\n\r\nIt’s a different world. He just may not, he’s just like, and this is what guys\r\nalways say to each other. “Why is she mad? (audience laughing) “I don’t get it. “Why is she mad? “I asked her out to lunch on Tuesday. “She got mad at me. “I don’t know why.” So one mystery not exactly solved, but the brains are organized differently. It’s really fascinating. That is a great read. All right, I’m gonna go ahead and go on before I get stoned here.\r\n\r\nThe brain changes throughout life and here’s the basis of my interest in thinking about how we think. Thinking about how we worry. That if the blind can learn to see, then the anxious should\r\nbe able to learn to relax. I would think it’s much\r\neasier to learn to relax than it is to see when\r\nyou’ve never seen before. I may be wrong, but this is\r\nkind of at the center of it.\r\n\r\nIf our brain is capable\r\nof that kind of learning, then what do we need to\r\ndo in order to teach it? And this is a great term that comes from Jeffrey Schwartz\r\nself-directed neuroplasticity, which is fascinating because\r\nyou’re using your own mind to change your own brain. Really an interesting concept. As one of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons that has to do with this, this is the ultimate self-help technique. And the guys here are reading these books, like “Do It By Instinct”\r\nand “Dare To Be Nocturnal.” (audience laughing) “Predator-Prey Relationships.” And the best one of course is “How to Avoid Natural Selection,” which is (mumbles).\r\n(audience laughing) So this is ultimately, I mean,\r\nour greatest self-care tool. So let’s talk about how\r\nwe can think about this, and this is how I’m thinking about it now. I’m thinking that there’s\r\ngood worry and bad worry.\r\n\r\nAnd by that, I mean good\r\nworry is functional worry. It’s worry that’s trying\r\nto solve a problem and that has some potential\r\nto solve a problem. And that, and if we separate our worries into good worries and bad\r\nor futile worries, okay, we can treat each one of\r\nthem in a different manner. We can use our brain in a different way. So good worry is, “I’m worried about this project. “I’m worried about where to go to school. “I’m worried about\r\nwhether I’m gonna be able “to pay for my kid’s education.” Real stuff to worry about. It’s not that there’s any lack\r\nof real stuff to worry about, but stuff that, if you asked\r\nyourself, “Is it likely “that I could actually\r\ndo something about this?” That you would say either yes or maybe? As opposed to, when you actually write out the stuff you’re worrying about, a lot of times you find out, you look at stuff and you say, “Well, “I can’t do much about that, ‘2012.’ “Gee, I’m worried that the\r\nworld’s gonna end in 2012.” What are you gonna do about that? Okay, are you likely to be\r\nable to do anything about that? You might wanna put that on\r\nyour bad worry list, okay? And just enjoy the movie as\r\na great roller coaster ride.\r\n\r\n
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