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Leading Neuroscientist: Stress Leaks Through Skin, Is Contagious, Gives You Belly Fat! Dr Tara Swart

If you enjoy hearing about neuroscience and the power of the brain, I recommend listening to my conversation with Dr. Tali Sharot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DZK1nawEXQ 0:00 Dr Tara Swart - Neuroscientist on how your brain influences your health, relationships and well-being. 02:06 💼 How to improve my brain health? 13:04 🩸 How to lose stomach fat 16:03 👥 The affect stress has on women 24:00 🛌 How to improve memory 25:52 🧠 How to prevent Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s 30:28 👩‍❤️‍👨 Key things for a better relationship 38:04 🧠 How does intuition works & why you should always follow it 44:11 🧠 How did the pandemic affect our stress levels & mental health? 46:32 🌿 Why nature is really important for your health 47:13 🤝 How to find your purpose & why its vital for your mental health 01:00:01 🧠 What is neuroplasticity & why you should learn everything about it 01:07:04 🧠 How to stop my bad habits 01:10:11 🧬 How do I cope with trauma? 01:16:02 🤰 Can stress affect pregnancy? 01:23:45 🧠 How does neuroplasticity works? 01:27:12 🏋️‍♂️ How do I improve my memory? 01:30:01 🍇 What is the best diet? 01:30:55 🧠 What is the importance of neuroplasticity? 01:34:15 💬 How does what I say affect my brain? 01:39:12 👫 Qualities to look for in a partner 01:44:23 🧠 How is ADHD and autism diagnosed? 01:53:20 🗣️ How does what I say affect my behaviour? 01:58:32 🙏 How does visualisation work? You can purchase Tara’s book, ‘The Source’, here: https://amzn.to/461TDRS Follow Tara: Instagram: https://bit.ly/48hJ1k2 Twitter: https://bit.ly/46gqYZI My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now: https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGq-a57w-aPwyi3pW7XLiHw/join Follow me: Instagram: http://bit.ly/3nIkGAZ Twitter: http://bit.ly/3ztHuHm Linkedin: https://bit.ly/41Fl95Q Telegram: http://bit.ly/3nJYxST Sponsors: https://www.eightsleep.com/uk/steven/ CODE: STEVEN (save $150 on the Pod Cover) Huel: https://g2ul0.app.link/G4RjcdKNKsb

Dr Tara SwartguestSteven Bartletthost
Sep 25, 20232h 4mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:06

    Dr Tara Swart - Neuroscientist on how your brain influences your health, relationships and well-being.

    1. TS

      Did you know, there's a really fascinating experiment done on weightlifters? They lifted no weights for two weeks. They just sat there and they visualized themselves lifting weights. They had a 13% increase in muscle mass. People should realize how much potential they have in their brains.

    2. SB

      Dr. Tara Swart.

    3. TS

      She's a neuroscientist. Medical doctor. Executive advisor. And best-selling author. She's here to teach us on how to build mental resilience. To overcome our biggest challenges.

    4. SB

      Is stress contagious?

    5. TS

      Mm-hmm. So cortisol is the main stress hormone, and it will leak out of our sweat about this far around us, go into the skin of everybody else, and it's gonna impact them.

    6. SB

      How ...

    7. TS

      And as a survival mechanism, it will help you to store fat around your abdomen.

    8. SB

      So stress causes belly fat?

    9. TS

      Belly fat that's really hard to shift. There's another rabbit hole you could go down about social contagion. So there are statistics that show that you meet people who are at a similar psychological level to you. For example, if someone gets divorced, you're more likely to get divorced in the next year. Your own brain can play tricks on you.

    10. SB

      So what can I do about that?

    11. TS

      The brain is actively growing and changing till we're about 25. But from 25 to 65, if you do things that are intense enough to force your brain to change, you will actually improve the highest functions of the brain. Things like regulate your emotions better, solve complex problems, think flexibly, override any unconscious biases that you may have.

    12. SB

      It begs the question then, where do I start? (dramatic music) Dr. Tara Swart. What are the sort of existing ideas that your work and what you speak about is confronting? The, like, unhelpful existing preconceptions about the brain, human potential-

    13. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SB

      ... that your work is confronting head-on?

    15. TS

      So the first thing I came up against, 'cause this was around the time of the financial crisis, was the lack of understanding of the brain-body connection.

  2. 2:06 – 13:04

    💼 How to improve my brain health?

    1. TS

      So these high performing executives were kind of acting like their body was just the vehicle that was moving their brain around from meeting to meeting. And both disrespecting their bo- their physical health, but also not understanding that what they were actually really being paid for was to use their brain, and they weren't creating the best conditions for that brain to operate in. Um, and I'm talking about really basic things like sleep and a good diet and hydration and not being sedentary, managing your stress, et cetera. So, you know, this tiny organ, if it's not in an environment that is giving it the best chance of doing its job, it's not going to and a crack's going to appear somewhere. Um, and the first time I really kind of had a big confrontation with a bank was when people were dropping dead on the trading floor of heart attacks. And they asked me to work more in my capacity as a former medical doctor to help with the physical stuff, and I said, "I can't do that if we don't address the mental and emotional piece, because that's what's causing this." And they just could- could not get that.

    2. SB

      What did you want to do with those people in a specific and practical sense? What, if you could have, you know, been in charge of preventing them from dropping dead on the trading floor-

    3. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    4. SB

      ... where would you have started?

    5. TS

      The understanding that stress, so everything that you're experiencing mentally and emotionally that's challenging, and things like a lot of travel, which is challenging of your body, that that raises levels of the hormone cortisol, which comes from your adrenal glands. And that cortisol courses around your blood through your entire body and brain, and the brain has receptors for understanding what's going on in terms of threat to your survival. So in a 24-hour cycle, depending on your age and your gender, there's a normal range for cortisol. So it can go up and down like this. You know, if something challenging happens, we need to adapt and rise to meet that challenge. But when that level is above the top range all the time, these receptors in your brain basically think that there's an imminent threat to your survival. So there's this whole cascade of hormones, and they, basically, cortisol causes inflammation in the body.

    6. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. TS

      So inflammation of your vascular system, inflammation around your heart, and everything else, gut, and you know, other things. But particularly around that time, we were seeing a lot of heart attacks caused by stress. This was in the absence of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking. It was all stress.

    8. SB

      I read a, I read a study and I was watching a TED Talk that seemed to make the case that stress was somewhat subjective, i.e. it's an interpretation of- of events.

    9. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    10. SB

      So one can be in a situation where, um, they feel very stressed. You can put a different person in that situation and they wouldn't experience it as stress.

    11. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    12. SB

      Also, there was, I think there's quite a famous TED Talk that makes the case that stress only has physiological consequences in the form of disease and inflammation and the heart attacks you're describing if we believe that stress is gonna have that effect on us. If we believe stress is bad.

    13. TS

      Is bad, yeah. I get that.

    14. SB

      Is that true?

    15. TS

      Um, so I would define stress as when the load that you perceive on you physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually is too much for you to bear. So yes, it is subjective. Um, when I moved into business and leadership, people would use the terms good stress and bad stress, and I found that really difficult, having been a psychiatrist and seeing people actually break down, to think that there's any such thing as good stress. But what I have, you know, h- the way that I've adapted that over the last 10 or 15 years is that...... there's an adaptive response, which is a healthy response to a challenge. And we have that for a reason. We need that, and that can be a good thing. But that should be a spike. It should go up and it should go back down again. If it stays high all the time, that's not good.

    16. SB

      My second question now is about the contagion of stress. Once upon a time, I Googled, um, 'cause I had a th- thesis, I Googled, "Is stress contagious?"

    17. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    18. SB

      And it came up and it said it was contagious. Well, is it contagious? In what circumstances do we need to be aware of that contagion? And more importantly, how and why is it contagious?

    19. TS

      Okay. I will tell you the answer to that, but I'm gonna ask you a question first. Have you ever walked into a room with someone and by the time you've left that meeting with them-

    20. SB

      Yes.

    21. TS

      ... you just feel so drained? (laughs)

    22. SB

      (laughs)

    23. TS

      Okay. So you know-

    24. SB

      Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

    25. TS

      Yeah. You know, so you know the feeling.

    26. SB

      Yeah.

    27. TS

      So I'll t- I'll tell you how it works physiologically. Um, I'm gonna start with something else to, like, build you up to this story. So did you know that women who live together or work closely together will synchronize their menstrual periods within two or three months?

    28. SB

      Yeah. J- I found this out many years ago, and it has completely changed my perception on so many things. So many things. Because, I have to be honest, I'm, I'm a very sort of logical, I need, like, science and evidence, and so I always thought about ph- I don't know, physic- physi- physical things, like, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist.

    29. TS

      Yeah.

    30. SB

      It's kinda been my, my, like, framework for thinking about life.

  3. 13:04 – 16:03

    🩸 How to lose stomach fat

    1. SB

      about stress and the contagion of stress.

    2. TS

      So we started by setting the scene with the fact that women who interact with each other physically closely, they synchronize their menstrual cycles. And so whenever I want to explain something that's complex or I don't actually know the current neuroscience, I always take it back to what happened in ancient times. So when we were living in the cave, the men hunted and gathered and lived quite nomadically. So sometimes they would go away for months at a time, and actually, if they went far enough away and were closer to another cave of the same tribe, they would actually just stay there and never return to the original tribe, original cave. But mostly, they would leave for weeks or months and then return to the original cave. And in those days, the most fundamental, important thing for the survival of the human species was that the alpha male must pass on his genes. So if he was gonna be away for months and he couldn't, you know, the, there weren't men there to defend the women from predators, maybe there was gonna be a spell of the Ice Age and they would all freeze to death or they wouldn't have food, um, he needed to make sure that at least five women were impregnated with his sperm at the same time, so that if there was a food shortage or there was, like, stillbirth or miscarriage or whatever, at least one out of five would survive. So to be able to do that, they had to be fertile at the same time. So that's why that mechanism exists. Now, we don't need that mechanism now, but it's still wired into the way that we operate. So those sex steroid hormones, like estrogen and progesterone, they leak out of our sweat about this far around us. And that's why, if you're living with another woman or if, you know, you're sitting across the desk every day, then particles of hormone from my sweat would go into the s- through the skin of the other woman.

    3. SB

      If she's within what distance?

    4. TS

      I mean, it's not... You wouldn't have to be sitting next to each other. If you lived together, then that means you're interacting enough that it would happen.

    5. SB

      Okay.

    6. TS

      So particles-

    7. SB

      But, but not, not if you work together?

    8. TS

      If you work together and you sit right next to each other every day, then it does happen too. So, you know, in a, a small office that's got, like, six girls in it, that, that, the menstrual synchronization will happen. Interestingly, it's led by the alpha female. So, yeah. (laughs) So you can, you can work out, if you don't know already, who the alpha female, well, if you, you know. Basically, let's say my cycles don't change and everyone says, "Oh, I got my period early," or, "I haven't had my period yet, but now it's started," then that would mean that probably I was the alpha female.

    9. SB

      How does the body know who the alpha female is?

    10. TS

      That will be to do with levels of testosterone.

    11. SB

      Why, why did the body... Why does that matter who the alpha female is? Why does it matter that they sync up with her?

    12. TS

      I, uh, I don't, I don't know if it really matters. I think it's just a case of physiology. So it's a little bit like in the, um,

  4. 16:03 – 24:00

    👥 The affect stress has on women

    1. TS

      troops of gorillas, the stress levels of the silverback gorilla affect the other gorillas more than gorillas who are peers to each other. So there is... We have a natural hierarchy, and it must be related to survival as well.

    2. SB

      So she was probably the person who the alpha male was going to impregnate first?

    3. TS

      Probably.

    4. SB

      So everyone needs to kind of fall in line, 'cause when she starts having sex, they need to be ready?

    5. TS

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      Okay.

    7. TS

      And also, it'll probably be to do with things like, you know, survival genes. So it'll be the, the people with the hardiest genes, 'cause that's what you'll want to pass on as well.

    8. SB

      Mm-hmm. Okay, makes sense. Most resilient, okay.

    9. TS

      Okay, so where were we?

    10. SB

      Stress and contagion.

    11. TS

      (laughs)

    12. SB

      (laughs) We've done all the hormones and the menstrual cycle stuff.

    13. TS

      So basically, cortisol is a hormone that works in that same way. So cortisol is the main stress hormone, and this one doesn't matter if you're male or female, but it does matter where you are in the hierarchy of the organization, as I just mentioned. So usually, in that c- conversation that I mentioned to you where you go into a room and you just feel completely drained afterwards, usually the person that comes out feeling drained is less senior than the person that's had that effect on them. And that's why this is so crucial to leadership, because your stress levels as a leader, as a CEO, are going to have more impact on everybody else than the rest of the people, um, put together, basically. So managing your stress is obviously important for you, but it's important in terms of what happens to other people. And the first issue I came up against was CEOs and CFOs that said, "Well, I won't show them that I'm stressed. I won't, I won't tell them what's happening with the numbers. I won't display emotions in front of them." And I said, "They're still gonna know, physiologically. It's gonna impact them." So now you really have to do something about it. Um, and the other thing about cortisol, which is quite funny, well, (laughs) one of the side effects that's quite funny, is that as a survival mechanism, it will help you to store fat around your abdomen.So, you know, again, in the cave, if you were potentially going to, like, not find food for a month, then if you had extra fat around your abdomen, you could digest that and survive till you could find food. So with my clients in financial services, it got to a point where as soon as I walked into the room, they'd just lift their T-shirt up and say, "Now you know how I've been in the last month." And then I had a really, really funny incident when I was speaking at a bank and the CEO's PA was there in the audience, and I was explaining that, you know, leadership stress leaks down, that that stress can lead to abdominal fat that you can't shift. And she shouted out, "So he's the reason that I'm fat."

    14. SB

      (laughs)

    15. TS

      (laughs) But Steve, no one laughed.

    16. SB

      Really?

    17. TS

      Yeah. And that's when I knew that, okay, he obviously is, like, really stressing everyone out. (laughs)

    18. SB

      Oh gosh, no one laughed?

    19. TS

      No.

    20. SB

      Through fear or something? Or just 'cause they all just thought it was true?

    21. TS

      (laughs) It wasn't funny, (laughs) it was true.

    22. SB

      Jesus. So stress causes belly fat?

    23. TS

      Mm.

    24. SB

      Hmm.

    25. TS

      Belly fat that's really hard to shift. So again, what I would see with people is that they would say, "Oh, I've put on a bit of weight round the middle, you know, had to loosen the belt a bit, so I've started eating less, I've started, like, exercising more, and I still can't shift it." And again, that's when I would explain this is the impact of cortisol. As long as you're still leaking out extra cortisol, nothing's gonna change, so... A- a- and like I said, even exercising more or eating better, less, or differently, whatever it is, wouldn't shift that fat. You had to get to the root cause, you had to reduce the cortisol.

    26. SB

      It also made me think about when you consider promoting someone in your organization-

    27. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    28. SB

      ... you have to be very careful that if you put a particularly stressed, cortisol-leaking individual high in the organization, there's gonna be a significant impact for everyone below them.

    29. TS

      Yeah. Yeah.

    30. SB

      Is that accurate? Is that an accurate observation?

  5. 24:00 – 25:52

    🛌 How to improve memory

    1. SB

      the brain and also y- you know, we were talking about stress there, but for-

    2. TS

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      ... con- containing our stress levels?

    4. TS

      It's so important, I can't stop going on about it. And I do understand that for some people, it's not a choice, that they just don't sleep well or they ha- their sleep gets interrupted 'cause they've got young kids or they do shift work. So I'm not particularly talking about the people where...... there's a reason that you can't sleep in this way. I, I'm mostly directing i- this, uh, if you have a choice, this is the way that you need to sleep and this is why. If you don't have a choice, there are some things that you can do to mitigate it as well. I mean, obviously I have done shift work as a junior doctor in the NHS, and I travel a lot, so I'm like jet lagged half the time.

    5. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    6. TS

      But I try to do everything I can to make that as, as good as possible. And the reason is, we've always known that when you sleep, you lay down your memories and new learning, you process your emotions, the cells in the body regenerate themselves. We've, we've known that for a long time. That's never really been enough for these very driven CE level people to want to give up eight hours a night to sleep. You know, it's ... If they feel they can get by on four or five, then they'll rather do that because they've got so much to do. The ideal is eight hours and 15 minutes in population norm studies. So that doesn't mean it's for everyone, but for most people, that's the ideal. Actually, sleeping more than that can be depressogenic, so it can start to lower your mood. So you don't want to really be sleeping for nine plus hours, but you ideally need to be in bed for nine hours to get that amount of sleep. And so there was some award-winning research around 2012 to 2014 when we were beginning to understand how important the cleaning of the brain is overnight. So this entirely new system that we didn't know existed, which is called the glymphatic system,

  6. 25:52 – 30:28

    🧠 How to prevent Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s

    1. TS

      it's like the lymphatic system in your body, but it's to do with glial cells, so it was named the glymphatic system. That system is a very active kind of waterway channel cleansing system of the brain. We used to think that the fluid around the brain, and there's ventricles which are like lakes, and then there's just like trickling areas, that that sort of passively dripped through the brain overnight. We did not expect to see like jets of fluid flushing out toxins from the brain. So the exact things that we see in the pathology of dementing diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, like tau proteins and amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (laughs) -

    2. SB

      How do you say that in English?

    3. TS

      (laughs)

    4. SB

      (laughs)

    5. TS

      Those things are being flushed out of the brain very actively overnight, and that process takes seven to eight hours to complete the cleaning. That's why you need to be in bed for eight to nine hours.

    6. SB

      So it takes seven or eight hours to, of restorative sleep, or just being in bed?

    7. TS

      Just sleep. Not in bed. If you're in bed awake, you're not asleep. You know, you have to be asleep. But you'll go through the different sleep cycles every 90 minutes. This isn't in time with that. This is just taking seven or eight hours to flush this stuff out of your brain. So one of the things I do say to people who, who don't sleep well is, "If you find yourself awake at night and you're not lying on your side, turn yourself onto your side, 'cause that's the best position for this cleansing process." I actually have a special pillow that makes me sleep on my side, 'cause I wasn't naturally a side sleeper. So it doesn't matter if it's the left or the right, but that is a better position in terms of the veins in your neck, um, than sleeping on your back or your front. So that's one thing you can do. Oh, you woke up, you know, your sleep was disturbed, at least turn yourself onto your side.

    8. SB

      What is this special pillow?

    9. TS

      Um-

    10. SB

      You just, you just bragged about it and then moved on, I feel like. (laughs)

    11. TS

      (laughs) It's, it's a memory foam pillow. Am I allowed to mention the brand?

    12. SB

      Of course, yeah.

    13. TS

      Yeah. Nice.

    14. SB

      We'll, we'll make sure they sponsor it before then. (laughs)

    15. TS

      (laughs) It's a memory foam pillow. This, my one is by Tempur UK.

    16. SB

      Yeah.

    17. TS

      Um, and they actually, they gifted it to me because I was talking about side sleeping. (laughs)

    18. SB

      Oh, really?

    19. TS

      So, yeah, it's great.

    20. SB

      Okay. I'm a side sleeper. My girlfriend's a back sleeper. But I can't sleep on my back. I, I, it's funny, 'cause I start on my front.

    21. TS

      Mm.

    22. SB

      That lasts for 15 minutes 'cause I get bad back at the bottom of my back.

    23. TS

      Yeah.

    24. SB

      I roll onto my side.

    25. TS

      Yeah.

    26. SB

      But I, I've always wondered if there was, um, g- when you look at tribes and our ancestors, how they would sleep, would they sleep in groups, would they sleep alone, would they sleep on their side, their back? Do you know the answers to any of that?

    27. TS

      Um, I know that co-sleeping is definitely how we evolved from co-sleeping, so in groups. And what was, wha- what I find interesting is that you needed to huddle together like that for physical warmth in the cave, but it also, because of that proximity and, and, and interaction, you got more of the bonding hormone oxytocin, so you also experienced the warmth of being part of a tribe. Um, and I think they slept on their side because they would have to be ready for an attack, uh, from a predator, so you'd need to keep your dominant arm, um, ready to, you know, grab something. And most likely they slept on their left because they would've been protecting their most vital organs, the heart. Um ...

    28. SB

      Just thinking then about this bonding chemical and how it comes out when we're in close proximity, a lot of couples, a lot of people, me sometimes as well, sleep in the spare room because I have work commitments, but that'll mean that I'm up early, or my partner has work commitments and that means she's up early. But even some of my friends who are in the early stages of parenthood-

    29. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    30. SB

      ... have separated-

  7. 30:28 – 38:04

    👩‍❤️‍👨 Key things for a better relationship

    1. TS

      to our survival. I mean-

    2. SB

      What do you mean by co-sleeping, just to clarify?

    3. TS

      Sleeping together.So, mostly in, you know, in our society, that's as a couple. But a lot of other cultures, the whole family sleeps together.

    4. SB

      Why would you never do it? You, you seemed quite passionate about that.

    5. TS

      Because I ... It's so good for you. The bonding, the physical warmth, the skin-to-skin contact. The love, the trust, you know. I mean, I'll put up... If some- if somebody's waking up early and I don't have to wake up at that time, I'll, I'll even put up with that.

    6. SB

      So you'll have less quality sleep?

    7. TS

      It won't be less quality sleep. I've worn HRV monitors and shown that even at the time, if my husband woke up at 5:00 and I wouldn't wake up any, like, at all before 8:00, and he gave me a kiss goodbye, I got a spike of resilience at that time.

    8. SB

      Resilience?

    9. TS

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      How, how do you measure that?

    11. TS

      So I was using that Finnish technology, um, where you wear the HRV monitor with a gel pad on your chest. Um, and so it's color-coded for whether you're doing light exercise, heavy exercise, whether you're stressed, or whether you're recouping resilience. And mostly people recoup resilience overnight. But, um, you know, you could clearly see with people with young children, you could see when they were woken up overnight because it would go into stress. Some people recoup resilience during the day if, you know, let's say you're like with your partner or your sibling and you're just sitting together and it's super relaxed, or if you love your job, you know, that you can see that happening during the day as well. But because I am so obsessed with my sleep, I wouldn't normally welcome any sleep disturbance. But the power of sleeping together and cuddling all night is so neuro-protective that I would encourage everybody to do it if they can. I also know some people who say, "Oh, I sleep better if I sleep on my own." Um, but we were not meant to survive on our own. We are meant to survive as part of a tribe. And I think now, you know, since the pandemic, people are more lost and lonely and disconnected than ever. If you've got somebody that you can (laughs) actually sleep with overnight, I strongly suggest that you do it.

    12. SB

      So, t- I wanna go in that direction because I'm super compelled by that.

    13. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SB

      The, the change in the world and the lost, the lonely, the disconnected.

    15. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    16. SB

      But just to pause for a second on this word resilience you're using linked to heart rate variability.

    17. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    18. SB

      You, you're talking about like a physiological resilience, like a, the body being more resilient, versus the kinda... When we talk about resilience, we, we, we say it in m- more of a psychological context of like, I can withstand greater stress or pressure.

    19. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    20. SB

      But your ... You used a heart rate var- um, variability monitor that measures the distance between heartbeats, and saw that when your husband gave you a kiss, your heart rate variability increased, which means that your body was more physiologically resilient.

    21. TS

      It actually measures both.

    22. SB

      Okay.

    23. TS

      Because it compares your heart rate variability to your heart rate.

    24. SB

      Okay.

    25. TS

      So it knows if you're exercising because your heart rate has gone up. But if your heart rate is at, like, base level, then the ... So the ... Then, then the var- the change in variability can either mean that you're stressed or you're recouping resilience. If your heart rate is high, then it's obviously ph- physical. Um, but it, it's a f- it's a factor of both. So it's not just looking at physical resilient. It's, it is looking... When, when it's in this turquoise zone, that is actually more about recouping psychological resilience. But those two things, you know, they feed into each other, but it can tell the difference 'cause of your heart rate. So obviously I was asleep, so my heart rate was low. Um-

    26. SB

      And you saw what on the monitor when he gave you a kiss?

    27. TS

      I literally saw a sp- But... 'Cause it can... Does it by every 15 minutes as well. And I saw the highest spike of turquoise at that exact time.

    28. SB

      It's funny 'cause my, um, girlfriend a couple, about a month ago or two months ago, I left the house quite early in the morning, maybe about this, a similar time, 6:00 AM in the morning, when she was still in bed. And I came up to her and gave her like a big kiss. I basically kissed all around her f- This is so soppy.

    29. TS

      (laughs)

    30. SB

      I kissed all around her face and on her nose and just gave her a big, big hug and stuff and I walked away. Like got on a, got o- got in a taxi and left, whatever. And she said to me, the same day or the day after, she went, "I don't know what happened there, but it unlocked something in me." And, you know. Then my girlfriend went on to say she had, um, had a, some challenges with her menstrual cycle and it, and she came (fingers snap) on her period.

  8. 38:04 – 44:11

    🧠 How does intuition works & why you should always follow it

    1. TS

      but, you know, somewhere in the neural architecture and, and, you know, in the gut neurons as well, that information is stored 'cause you have experienced it. So maybe you would say that you understand that wisdom and experience is the product of patterns that you've seen repeating in your life that are conscious to you. Intuition is the lessons that you've picked up along the way that you're not conscious of, but they're still stored in your nervous system. And so, the less conscious you are of them, the deeper they're pushed into the nervous system. So there's a process called Hebbian learning, named after the neuroscientist Donald Hebb, and that is... Ch- it's basically, you know, neurons that fire together, wire together. But it's that the things that you've learnt today, like things that you've learnt by speaking with me, that's gonna be very front of mind, and kind of just in, like, little pathways that are just kind of connecting up with each other. But stuff that you learnt when you were five, like when you put your hand in a fire and it burnt you, and you never, ever want to do that again, that's deep down. You're not really conscious of that, but, you know... And, and other things, maybe, that you don't recall. So we believe that your, that wisdom gets pushed from the outer cortex into the limbic system, which is the m- emotional system of the brain, into the brain stem, into the spinal cord, and into the gut neurons. And that's why they sometimes call it gut instinct, because it's that feeling of knowing something, but not knowing why you know it. Um, but it's actually to do with the fact that you have wisdom and experience that is... It's in, it's, it's embodied in you, but you're not conscious of it necessarily.

    2. SB

      (clicks tongue) It's quite surprising to hear that those memories, that wisdom, could be in the gut.

    3. TS

      Mm.

    4. SB

      People think of... You know, I think, I'm certainly someone who always thought that my cognition, my memories, and my (clicks tongue) all of the intelligence exists just in my brain.

    5. TS

      Your memories and your cognition and your IQ are in your brain, but your intuition is in your brain and your gut.

    6. SB

      This sounds super stupid, but I don't care. I should just be, I should just be honest about my stupidity. Where in my gut? (laughs) I'm, like... I thought that was, like, my stomach. That's where I put the food.

    7. TS

      Yeah. So, you know, you've got your stomach, you've got your small intestine, you've got your large intestine.

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. TS

      You have other organs, your liver, your spleen, your kidneys. And they're all innervated, which means they've all got nerves going into them. So does your heart. So, you know, we could, we could have a similar conversation like this about your heart as well, because your heart only knows how to beat because of the nerves that, that penetrate it. So, you know, this round brain in here and the spinal cord that goes down the center of your back, that gives rise to all of the neurons that go out to your arms, your legs, all of your organs, your skin, which is your largest organ. And so that's, that's how that works, because every single part of your body has nerve, uh, nerve cells, or, you know, nerve pathways in them, so that's the connection. That's brings us back to what, you know, what, what I was saying about the brain-body connection, that they're intimately connected and it's a bidirectional thing. It's, they can't exist without each other. And the more you understand that there's that constant feedback going back and forth, the more you can tap into that kind of thing, the more you can know days before you're gonna get sick. I bet your girlfriend knows days before she's gonna get a cold or flu.

    10. SB

      Yes, she does.

    11. TS

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      All the time.

    13. TS

      And my clients never know, and as soon as they go on holiday, they're sick the whole week.

    14. SB

      Why, why when they go on holiday?

    15. TS

      Because they suppress it to be able to do their job.

    16. SB

      And you can suppress illness, or you can just not, uh, not, not acknowledge it?

    17. TS

      It's all, it's, it's not necessarily that they had a cold virus that they suppressed, but it's that their body is... You know, the immune system is being run down by the cortisol, and so as soon as it gets a break, that's when it kind of succumbs. Um, and there was a time, after the financial crisis, when I had people saying, "I've had, th- you know, I've had this cold for, like, four weeks now, or six weeks, but everybody's got it." And I was like, "I'm sorry, but do you actually think that's normal? Do you think it's normal to have a cold for more than a week?" And...... you know, then it- it's- it takes a challenge like that because also the other thing that happens in, you know, with group think, whether it's at work or in your social circle, is that we don't challenge each other enough on those sort of things. So if a friend said, "Oh, I've had this cold for six weeks," I might say, "Oh, poor you," but if- I- I wouldn't, but someone might (laughs) . But, um, you know, it's also about saying, "Is there something else wrong?" Because that's not- that's not usual, um, and for me, that would absolutely lead back to cortisol.

    18. SB

      A second ago, we were gonna go down the pathway of the looming crisis that you speak about. What is the looming crisis that you're concerned about?

    19. TS

      Stephen, I- I saw this looming at the beginning of the pandemic. It's not looming anymore, it is we are in crisis. So, you know, all of the health anxiety and the uncertainty and the fear and the loss that we experienced, um, during the pandemic was bad enough, you know, it caused a- a level of stress that no one who's alive today has experienced before. Um, but we've come out of it, you know, we're relatively, I don't know if I could say back to normal or in the new normal, and we have not paid any attention to the consequences of what happened to us. And when I say "us", I mean everyone from the babies that were born at that time that never saw anyone but their immediate family, the teenagers that... Interestingly, boys did better than girls because they play video games on the internet so they stayed connected.

  9. 44:11 – 46:32

    🧠 How did the pandemic affect our stress levels & mental health?

    1. TS

      You know, the older people that were isolated, the people that, like, lost loved ones, etc. Like, there's so many things, I could say more things than that. We- we haven't really acknowledged that that's what happened and what we went through. We... Most people are not really understanding what's changed for them or what's going on for them at the moment as a result of that, and we certainly haven't made any plan for the future. Um, you know I'm really into, like, indig- indigenous wisdom at the moment, and one of the things I've learned about the first Americans is that when they make a big decision for their community, they imagine the impact of that decision seven generations into the future. We don't even think about one generation into the future. We just think about, like, what's going on right now. W- w- we don't even really think about our own future, like, some of the time. I remember thinking, like literally in March of 2020, "This is gonna be a mental health crisis, like, whatever happens physically." A- and as time went on, more so I thought, "Mental health crisis, mental health crisis." And then I started to think, "Okay, what else could it be?" And I had time, of course, to indulge in some of the other areas of interest that I couldn't when I was, like, traveling and working full-on, so I, you know, started reading more about spirituality and ancient cultures and stuff. And I thought, "This could be a spiritual revolution."

    2. SB

      When you say spiritual revolution, it's a very big, broad term.

    3. TS

      Mm.

    4. SB

      What do you mean?

    5. TS

      If I look back, and- and you've, you know, you've led a very nice story of- of my- my journey since I changed career, is that it started off with that physical piece, you know. For me, where I was working there was stress but people were having heart attacks. Then I spent many years working on mental resilience with people, um, and emotional regulation was part of that, and that became important again in the pandemic because we were in, like, close quarters with people and, you know, a- and it was just very different and it was hard and there was homeschooling and working and everything. Um, what I've seen as a... Some of the good things that I've seen as a result of the pandemic is that we've definitely appreciated again the importance

  10. 46:32 – 47:13

    🌿 Why nature is really important for your health

    1. TS

      of our time in nature. Um, so I think most of us felt that, that, you know, being able to get out and be somewhere green was really important. And because there was, like, no planes and no traffic, you know, we could see the stars in the sky again, we saw amazing sunsets, we... People began to appreciate birdsong. And n- now the studies are showing that time spent in nature actually has a really positive impact on your physical health, your mental health, and your longevity. So, you know, that's one good thing that's come out of it. But are we all still, you know, making time for that or are we just going back to kind of our old ways? The other thing- things of interest that have come out is that having a purpose that transcends

  11. 47:13 – 1:00:01

    🤝 How to find your purpose & why its vital for your mental health

    1. TS

      yourself is really important to your, um, mental health particularly, but it will have knock-on effects. So, you know, you could say, "Well, I do my podcast and I love doing my podcast and I get to meet interesting people and I, you know, I share that knowledge with others." A lot of that is still to do with self-satisfaction. So having something that doesn't necessarily do anything for you but gives you purpose in life is really important.

    2. SB

      And what could that be? That could be...

    3. TS

      That could be volunteering, it could be, um, you know, f- for... You know, for me, like, I- I give out a lot of free information on Instagram that... And- and not for to try to get work or anything like that. Um, it could be... So, you know, when I say volunteering, that sounds quite big, but it could be, like, asking your elderly neighbor if you can do their groceries for them when you go to the supermarket. Um, it could be calling up a friend and checking that they're okay. Just something that makes you feel like life is worth living, but doesn't necessarily earn you money or directly improve your life.

    4. SB

      I've spoken to a lot of therapists who talk about the fact that we... Two of the things we never want to feel is like we're, A, different, and B, we're not enough. And I was thinking about that through the lens of our tribes. In a- in the context of a tribe, if I was different, there was a risk of me being kicked off the tribe. And if I w- didn't feel like I was enough, I- I...... again, would have a risk of being kicked out of the tribe because I'm not valuable to the tribe-

    5. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SB

      ... and in the context of what you were saying about serving others, is that, again, sort of like a prehistoric desire to, um, feel like we're adding value and we are of use to the tribe by serving the greater good of the, of our tribe? Is that where that instinct comes from in us?

    7. TS

      I love what you've done, which is exactly what I said, which is when I, when I'm not sure of the answer, I'll go back to evolution-

    8. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. TS

      ... and-

    10. SB

      I always do that (0:20:31) in traffic.

    11. TS

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      Yeah.

    13. TS

      I love that. I think I hadn't thought of it like that, exactly like that before, but I think it's true. Uh, you know, a tribe, sadly, could not afford to carry dead weight. So if you weren't enough, you know, if you were injured, if you were immobile, if you were elderly, if you weren't contributing, then you might get left behind. And then there's this, um, really interesting new area of research called neuroesthetics or neuroarts, which is about having some kind of creative activity in your regular schedule. So, um, there's, there's lots of research that shows that if you're not doing something creative once a week, and that could be dance, music, painting, drawing, going to the theater, reading a novel, so really quite broad, time and nature actually is included in it, then because nature is the palette that we all love. You know, you could have different taste in art or music to me, but all humans love nature 'cause we've always been in that, that beauty. So the impact of that on your mental health and your physical health and your longevity is huge as well. But even just like every morning, I actually thought of this this morning 'cause I, I wanted to mention this, but I had zested a lemon last night when I was cooking, and so this morning, when I went to get the milk out of the fridge, I, I smelt it 'cause it was in the fridge and I just thought, "That is so (laughs) beautiful." And so they say things like, you know, if you've put like a bunch of flowers on your bedside table and it smells nice and that's the first thing you smell in the morning and then you, like, look at the beautiful flowers, if you've got objects of beauty in your house, if you listen to birdsong in the morning, that, that's all neuroesthetics. It's living a life that is aesthetically pleasing to your brain, and that's good for your health.

    14. SB

      Why?

    15. TS

      Um, should we go back to evolution?

    16. SB

      Yeah.

    17. TS

      Shall I make a guess for you?

    18. SB

      Please. That's my f- favorite thing to do.

    19. TS

      (laughs) I think it's to do with safety. So if you are able to spare your mental resources to appreciate beauty, that must mean that you're safe. That must mean that you're not just trying to survive. So it's actually ... I mean, we do appreciate beauty, so s- seeing, smelling, h- you know, hearing, tasting nice things, it's gonna make us feel better. But also, we're only gonna be doing that if we have the luxury of being able to do that, but then it can be such small things. But also what it signals to your brain is, "I'm safe because I have time to read a novel," or, "I have time to crank the music up and dance around my living room."

    20. SB

      Through the frame of this idea that pathways that fire together wire together, I was also thinking about every time I've seen a tree, I've been safe. So is there an association that trees are safety? You know what I mean? Every time I've been out in nature-

    21. TS

      Yeah.

    22. SB

      ... I've been physiologically, psychologically safe. So is it now the case that because there's that neurological association, the pathways have wired and fired together, if I ... You know, you talk about the brain-body response. If I put myself in that situation again-

    23. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    24. SB

      ... it will signal to my body that I'm safe.

    25. TS

      Yeah. It will. It ... That's neuroplasticity. It's the, it's repeating that and giving yourself the message that, "Every time I'm around trees, I'm safe. I feel safe." It won't be the same for everyone. I would imagine that, again, when we lived in the cave, that we naturally did things like looked at the stars in the sky at night, danced around the fire, did cave paintings, um, so that's very wired into our, our psyche as well. Um, you know, they would adorn themselves a lot more than we do. So that appreciation of aesthetics has always been there, not ... and not just from nature, from some of our rituals and ceremonies as well. And really, the conclusion that I've come to with this whole spiritual crisis and, and then the potential revolution is that all the things that we need to go through that revolution have always been in the world as long as we've existed. And that, to me, is beautiful because it's not like we have to do some crazy, new, different things that we've never thought of before. We can ... The way that I put it is, we know about generational trauma and intergenerational trauma and epigenetics and how all these bad things can, like, come down the line, but there's also a lot of beauty and wisdom that's there that we can have access to. It's, it's ... We don't have to, like, reinvent the wheel at all. We can just go back to doing the things that we did when we were at peace.

    26. SB

      It's interesting. But it ... but that's not gonna ... that's not easy to do in the world we live in 'cause we've built a society and a world where-

    27. TS

      Yeah.

    28. SB

      ... uh, we live in these, like, white, four white walls in cities alone.

    29. TS

      Yeah.

    30. SB

      We're more lonely than ever before. We order our food using glass screens. We use pornography as a replacement for intimacy and, and connection.

  12. 1:00:01 – 1:07:04

    🧠 What is neuroplasticity & why you should learn everything about it

    1. SB

      realized the importance and the possibilities that neuroplasticity presented.

    2. TS

      Well, we have to start by saying that when I was at medical school and doing my PhD in neuroscience, we did not know about neuroplasticity. So we absolutely thought that when you physically stopped growing, that everything in your brain was set for the rest of your life, that you couldn't change your intelligence, you couldn't learn to manage your emotions differently, um, that it would be much harder to learn new things. What we know now is that the brain is actively growing and changing till we're about 25. And-

    3. SB

      Fuck.

    4. TS

      (laughs)

    5. SB

      I missed it.

    6. TS

      (laughs) No, you didn't. You didn't miss it. (laughs) You didn't miss it.

    7. SB

      I'm 31. I know I look 24, but... (laughs)

    8. TS

      You didn't miss, you didn't miss it. So from 25 to 65, and I would say even beyond now, if you don't do anything to change your brain, it will tend to plateau. So, you know, if you're in a job where you do the same thing every day and you're pretty good at it, you could stay like that for the rest of your life. And that is fine for some people.... if you do things to, that are intense enough to force your brain to change, then you can basically, you know, learn lots of new things, but also get what we call global benefits in your brain. So let's say you decided to learn a new language. Maybe you'd learn Portuguese or French.

    9. SB

      Have you spoken to her?

    10. TS

      (laughs)

    11. SB

      Have you spoken to her?

    12. TS

      No. (laughs)

    13. SB

      That just felt very... It feels like, you know, when someone says something to you and it feels like they've already had a conversation behind your back 'cause it's so (laughs) on the money? No, I actually have a deal with her this year that I'd learn Portuguese by the end of the year, and we're in September now.

    14. TS

      (laughs)

    15. SB

      And I know six words, so that just felt a little bit close to home. So, um, let's move on.

    16. TS

      So, so, that's great. So you have actually a reason to learn one or two languages. If you do that, your brain will not only get the benefits of being able to speak French or Portuguese, but you will actually improve your executive functions. Now, these are the highest functions of the brain, things like, um, being able to regulate your emotions better, solve complex problems, think flexibly, think creatively, override any conscious or unconscious biases that you may have. These are great benefits to get from actually just doing something like learning a language or a musical instrument. Um, and it can be smaller things like travel, interacting with people who've had a different life to you, cooking something new, taking a different route to work, reading a newspaper or a magazine that's very different to what you normally read.

    17. SB

      Doing a podcast?

    18. TS

      (laughs) Well, you do this every day.

    19. SB

      Yeah, exactly.

    20. TS

      Yeah, so it's not inducing neuroplasticity in your brain. Although, you're learning new things.

    21. SB

      But I'm meeting different people.

    22. TS

      Yeah, you're meeting different people, you're learning new things. But it's probably not what we would call attention intense enough-

    23. SB

      Really?

    24. TS

      ... to actually be shifting pathways in your brain.

    25. SB

      Oh. So having all these conversations isn't, like, expanding my...

    26. TS

      It is in terms of your, like, the facts that you're learning.

    27. SB

      Yeah.

    28. TS

      But your actual process of, you know, finding a person, doing a bit of research into them, meeting them, having a conversation with them, being good at asking them certain questions, that's a very natural pathway for you. So you, you're, you know, you're, you're getting better and better at it, but that's not a new, big change in your brain.

    29. SB

      So what... Okay, right. So I think when people hear about neuroplasticity, when I first heard about th- that it was even a thing, it was a revelation that a- we could do things to change our brains. What is, what is it that people typically want from neuroplasticity? They wanna be someone else in other ways. They want new habits. They want new ways of thinking. They wanna stop being a negative thinker or an over-thinker in-

    30. TS

      Yeah.

  13. 1:07:04 – 1:10:11

    🧠 How to stop my bad habits

    1. TS

      and she would say something that, that she's conscious of thinking, I would want to dig below that and, and ask what it is that she believes about herself that makes her think that. So that's quite an important part of the raised awareness, is getting below the thought into the belief. Next step is, well, certainly if, if she's got a history of this, is, you know, maybe in journaling, acknowledging, writing down, "Okay. This time that I went out with someone that was, you know, kind of engaged in a relationship with someone else," or, "This time I had an affair with a married man. What happened?" Like, that decision-making process, the point from which you agreed to get into that, what was the consequence? So really, that's the focused attention, marrying together that decision with the consequence. You know, one of the things I say is, "You are basically the sum of every decision that you've made in your life. That's who you are." So once there's a bit more understanding and attention around, like, what causes that and how it happens, the next stage is deliberate practice. So the first challenge is going to be the next time she meets a man who's not available, and she may not yet be able to say no to that. She may have to make another mistake, but she'll make it armed with all the knowledge that she's got now, and she'll see it for what it is. Or she will be able to say no to that man this time. So the next step is deliberate practice, which is where you say, "Okay. I used to behave like this. Uh, this is the, the new me that I want to be is somebody who says no to every man that's married, who, um, you know, replaces every negative thought with a positive thought," or whatever it is that you're working on. You then look for scenarios to practice this new behavior. And at first, it will be hard because you have a pathway there that may have been set since childhood that is used to doing a certain thing, and the brain is a very energy-hungry organ, so it's, it's always trying to use the path of least resistance. Let's say I'm an over-thinker, okay, and you're asking me these questions, and I've got this voice in the back of my head saying, "Why is Stephen asking me that? What's he trying to get to? Is he trying to trick me?" What I would, what I would try to do is silence that voice in my head and say, "Okay. In this podcast with Stephen, I'm gonna focus on him. I'm gonna take his questions for what they are, and I'm gonna speak from my area of expertise. I'm not gonna worry about that other stuff that, you know, can go on in my head." And let's say this time I manage to do that 50% of the time, and then I go and do another podcast next week and I manage to do it 75% of the time, and you know, and so on. Eventually, this new pathway that I've been building will become stronger than the one that I had before, and then every time I turn up for a podcast, I'll just be completely present and attentive, and I'll get to the end of it and that's the new me now.

    2. SB

      So behaviors that we repeat. So let's start- starting at the beginning of those three steps, the first step is becoming aware of the pattern in our lives, the second step is becoming really cognizant of the pain or the consequences of that pattern-

    3. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    4. SB

      ... and the third step is kind of like setting an in- an intention for who we wanna become-

    5. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SB

      ... and the goals we have,

  14. 1:10:11 – 1:16:02

    🧬 How do I cope with trauma?

    1. SB

      and then practicing it as much as possible.

    2. TS

      Yeah.

    3. SB

      And that is the three steps to-

    4. TS

      The fourth s-

    5. SB

      Well, there's a fourth. Okay.

    6. TS

      It's not a step, but the fourth factor is accountability-

    7. SB

      Okay.

    8. TS

      ... because most people, left to their own devices, will give up on that process when it ge- feels too hard.

    9. SB

      That's step three.

    10. TS

      Yeah. Um, so, you know, with years of practice and journaling, I have become better at holding myself accountable, but for most people, there's gotta be some external, so it could be a friend. Um, one of the reasons I'm a big fan of doing these action boards is that there's a very tangible thing in front of you that with images of what you said you wanted to achieve this year, which you can clearly, and your friends and family can see, at the end of the year whether you did or you didn't. Um, and you know, of course, you can have an actual, like, professional person that is there, like your language teacher, to hold you accountable too. (laughs)

    11. SB

      We're gonna have to edit this out 'cause you really are pushing this. (laughs)

    12. TS

      (laughs)

    13. SB

      You've got an agenda here. (laughs) I, I've been really... You s- talked earlier about, just a second ago, about how when you're trying to create a new pathway-

    14. TS

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      ... if there's an existing one-

    16. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    17. SB

      ... that is very well-established from your childhood-

    18. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    19. SB

      ... it's increasingly harder. So I've always been unorganized. I lived- I grew up in a home that was- looked like an atomic bomb had hit it.

    20. TS

      Yeah.

    21. SB

      It was just a shit show inside. It was an absolute mess. So that habit of just being messy is quite well-established, the pathway in my brain of being messy is well-established.

    22. TS

      Yeah.

    23. SB

      But more broadly, I'm thinking here about trauma-

    24. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    25. SB

      ... and how trauma looks in the brain-

    26. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    27. SB

      ... when we've had really traumatic early experiences in our life, or in the context of my friend, we might have learned that we're not deserving of someone, or we- we're not worthy, or we, you know, we're not enough, or we're different.

    28. TS

      Hmm.

    29. SB

      That might be a really well-established pathway.

    30. TS

      Hmm.

  15. 1:16:02 – 1:23:45

    🤰 Can stress affect pregnancy?

    1. TS

      of your baby expressing genes that will be more helpful for them in life than if you didn't know about all of this stuff.

    2. SB

      So, if you had a particularly stressful pregnancy, let's say. You're a woman who was really under stress when you were, um, s- eight months pregnant. How does that impact the baby? And what, what, what symptoms are you like to, likely to see in that baby that it wouldn't have had otherwise?

    3. TS

      Okay. So I'm gonna give you a really, like, tangible answer before I take it back to the, um... something we were talking about before. Imagine the mother's a heroin addict.

    4. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. TS

      That is affecting the baby, right?

    6. SB

      Yeah. Yeah.

    7. TS

      And that's because they share the same blood supply.

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. TS

      So, if the mother is stressed and she's got high levels of cortisol, then that cortisol is going through the placenta into the baby's blood supply. And basically, being stressed from in utero could switch on genes for not being resilient to stress or being more, um, liable to anxiety or mood disorder. Um, and it's already starting off, you know, i- inflammation in this, like, tiny baby that hasn't even been born yet. I know that sounds terrible, and I really don't want this to come across like all moms have to be completely zen and never get stressed, 'cause that's just not reality. But, you know, everything that you can do, of course, to manage your stress during pregnancy is helpful. But then, completely understanding that if your child then starts to show any, like, symptoms of anxiety or, you know, ina- inability to manage their emotions after an age where they should be kind of able to do that, you can introduce them to meditation. You can sit with them and talk to them about their emotions and how they're feeling. There are lots of really, like, great books and videos that you can use to, like, educate children about that kind of thing. Um, I always say knowledge is power. And unfortunately, difficult things can happen to people in life, but every time something like that's happened to me, I've gone down a rabbit hole of, "Okay, what can I find that can help me to overcome this and, and be better?"

    10. SB

      I was just thinking about, as you were talking about grief and the brain, the relationship between... You know, what happens in the brain when we're experiencing grief and stuff, so thinking about grief and heartbreak, is strong emotions. So many of us, including one of my best friends who's reason- is recently grieving a relationship he's lost, and I've got another friend that's lost someone in their life-

    11. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    12. SB

      ... who's passed away, and it's such an all-consuming force-

    13. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SB

      ... that seems to be resistant to advice. I just wondered if, through your work, you'd learned anything about grief and the brain and heartbreak and the brain?

    15. TS

      Yeah. So, I think there's so many, uh, versions of grief that we've seen, particularly in the last few years, which is loss of sense of self, loss of someone through a relationship breakdown, and loss of someone through actual death. Um, and it's interesting, uh, to hear you say, as a, you know, caring onlooker, that it's something that's so overwhelming and resistant to advice. I strongly believe that to ever heal from grief, you have to go to the bottom of the hole, and however you do that-... is not something that anyone else can comment on. I think if you are doing things like throwing yourself back into work or like partying too much to avoid it, that's not right. But if somebody has to go somewhere emotionally to deal with grief, they've got to be supported and allowed to do that, and, and then maybe at times gently nudged in terms of like, "How are you doing?" You know, as if kind of, "Are you feeling any sort of like healing or resolution or understanding or acceptance?" I do think particularly with grief that if we haven't been through something ourselves, it's- it's- it's really hard to imagine how bad it is, even though you might, you know, care very deeply.

Episode duration: 2:04:33

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