How to Control Your Inner Voice & Increase Your Resilience | Dr. Ethan Kross

1. 0:00 – 2:45

   Dr. Ethan Kross

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine, and I'm wearing these red lens wind-down Roka glasses because we are recording this late at night, which is unusual for us and bright light, in particular short wavelength bright light in the blue and green part of the spectrum, quashes melatonin and makes it hard to sleep, and I want to sleep tonight. These red lens glasses filter out the green and blue short wavelengths that would otherwise disrupt my sleep. My guest today is Dr. Ethan Kross. Dr. Ethan Kross is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, and the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory. He is also the author of the best-selling book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It. Today's discussion is a really special one because we discuss something that each and all of us have, which is a voice in our head that is our voice, and that voice can range from encouraging to discouraging. It can be repetitive in ways that can be very intrusive, and it has a profound effect on our emotional state, our confidence, our levels of anxiety, and indeed what we are capable of achieving in life. Dr. Ethan Kross's laboratory has done groundbreaking research to understand what is the origin of this voice in our heads, and can and should we control it? And indeed the answer is yes. Today's discussion gets into many things that people struggle with and many things that you can do to improve your life, such as how to regulate the chatter in your head, how to overcome ruminations and intrusive thoughts, and we also discuss what to do with your actual voice. For instance, data pointing to the fact that venting your negative emotions to others is actually bad. It tends to amplify bad emotions. We talk about that research. We also talk about other forms of outward speech and inward speech, that inner voice that you can partake in in order to improve your emotional state and shift your emotional state. So today's discussion really centers around common questions and common scenarios and common challenges that everybody grapples with, and of course, we all have a voice in our head. Today you're going to learn to listen to it, to regulate it, and indeed to steer it in the direction of mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm also excited to tell you that Dr. Ethan Kross soon has another book coming out entitled, Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You, and I tremendously enjoyed Chatter, his first book, and I very much look forward to reading Shift when it comes out. We provide links to the work in Dr. Ethan Kross's laboratory as well as links to his previous and forthcoming book in the show note captions.

2. 2:45 – 5:38

   Sponsors: ExpressVPN & Eight Sleep

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:45

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network that keeps your data secure and private. It does that by routing your internet activity through their servers and encrypting it so that no one can see or sell your data. Now, I'm personally familiar with the effects of not securing my data well enough. Several years ago, I had one of my bank accounts hacked, and it was a terrible amount of work to try and have that reversed and the account secured. So after that happened, I talked to my friends in the tech community, and they told me that even though you may think your internet connection is secure, oftentimes it is not, especially if you're using wifi networks such as those on planes and hotels, at coffee shops, and other public areas. In fact, even when you're on the internet at home, your data may not be as secure as you think. The great thing about ExpressVPN is that I don't even notice that it's running since the connection it provides is so fast. I have it on my computer and on my phone, and I just keep it on whenever I'm connected to the internet. If you want to start protecting your internet activity using ExpressVPN, you can go to expressvpn.com/huberman and you can get an extra three months free. Again, that's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N .com/huberman to get an extra three months free. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep every single night is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment, and that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees, and in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to program the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now, and it has completely improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation pod cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to access their Black Friday offer right now. With this Black Friday discount, you can save up to $600 off on their Pod 4 Ultra. This is Eight Sleep's biggest sale of the year. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Ethan Kross.

3. 5:38 – 10:33

   Inner Voice & Benefits

   1. AHAndrew Huberman5:38

      Dr. Ethan Kross, welcome.

   2. EKDr. Ethan Kross5:40

      Great to be here.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman5:41

      Right before we went hot mics, as they say, uh, we were talking about interrupting one another, um, and the fact that you're from New York. I'm going to try not to interrupt you because the audience doesn't like that. However, I am very interested in what, um, you're going to tell us about emotion regulation, but especially this thing that you call chatter, the voice in our heads, and-Prior to learning about your work, I always thought that chatter and the voice in our heads was, you know, overwhelmingly negative, that's what we hear, how do you combat that negative voice in one's head, but you have some very interesting ideas about the utility of chatter, like maybe how it even arose and what it's for, so maybe we start there.

   4. EKDr. Ethan Kross6:22

      Yeah, so I think this is a- a great question because, um, the inner voice is something that we carry with us wherever we go, but we don't tend to learn what it is, right? And actually, sometimes I- I get up there and speak to people and, um, they often wonder, like, "What is a purported serious scientist doing talking about a squishy topic like the voice inside our heads?" And it turns out that this is a remarkable tool of the human mind. So, when I use the term inner voice what I'm talking about is our ability to silently use language to reflect on things in our lives, and it turns out that's a- a type of Swiss army knife that we possess. It lets us do many different things. So, just from the outset, let me distinguish chatter from other inner voice operations. I think of chatter as a dark side of the inner voice, and we'll get to that in a little bit. But having the ability to silently use language, that is a boon to the human condition. So, I'll give you a couple of benefits that it serves. What's your favorite sports team?

   5. AHAndrew Huberman7:30

      Um, the Harlem Globetrotters because they're undefeated, as I understand.

   6. EKDr. Ethan Kross7:34

      Oh.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman7:34

      Yeah, the best record in- in any sport. I- I don't think they've ever lost a game.

   8. EKDr. Ethan Kross7:38

      Do they ever play against other teams?

   9. AHAndrew Huberman7:39

      The- the Washington Generals.

   10. EKDr. Ethan Kross7:41

       Okay. Sorry for the Washington Generals. Um, so if you were to go to a, uh, game and root for them, what would you say?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman7:49

       Um, go, Globetrotters.

   12. EKDr. Ethan Kross7:51

       Go, Globetrotters.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman7:51

       Yeah.

   14. EKDr. Ethan Kross7:52

       Okay. Can you repeat that phrase silently three times in your head right now?

   15. AHAndrew Huberman7:59

       Yes. Done.

   16. EKDr. Ethan Kross8:00

       Okay. You- you've just used your inner voice. So, your inner voice is part of what we call our verbal working memory system, basic system of the human mind that lets us do something that I think is both extraordinary, but totally ordinary also. Your verbal working memory system, it's a mouthful, lets you keep information active for short periods of time. So, before we had cell phones, how did you memorize phone numbers? Like, what would you do? Repeat it in your head.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman8:30

       Yeah, and it had sort of a song to it.

   18. EKDr. Ethan Kross8:33

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman8:33

       Right? I can remember my childhood phone number still even though that number is long since gone.

   20. EKDr. Ethan Kross8:38

       Long since gone.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman8:39

       Yeah. Even the whole area code's gone, in fact.

   22. EKDr. Ethan Kross8:42

       Really?

   23. AHAndrew Huberman8:42

       Well, the- it sh- the number is probably still there but under a different area code. I know 'cause I tried calling it every once in a while.

   24. EKDr. Ethan Kross8:47

       Interesting.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman8:47

       Yeah.

   26. EKDr. Ethan Kross8:47

       Well, it's funny when I- when I, uh, go through this content, I give talks or workshops, I often say, "209-05-01, repeat that in your head three times." That's my childhood phone number. I'm like, "Go give it a shot. Give them a call." So, for all I know, that person may be getting lots of phone calls. It's not- it's not my phone number. Um, but that's your verbal working memory system. You go to the grocery store and you try to remember what you were supposed to get. Most people don't do that out loud, like, "Oh, crap, what was I supposed to get?" Milk, cheese, eggs. You repeat that silently in your head. So, that's one thing your inner voice allows you to do, keep information active, verbal information. Your inner voice also helps you simulate and plan. So, before presentations or interviews, a lot of people report going over what they're going to say before that event. Do you ever, ever do this?

   27. AHAndrew Huberman9:41

       Yeah. My- my mode of preparation for things like solo podcasts and talks is, um, it's not scripted out line by line in advance, but I have a structure in my mind, and it's more like remembering the first line of each paragraph in my head, and then the rest just kind of falls out.

   28. EKDr. Ethan Kross10:01

       Yeah. We have a very similar- similar style. I will- I will bullet out what the key ideas are, and as long as I could bullet that out, I am good to go.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman10:10

       Mm-hmm.

   30. EKDr. Ethan Kross10:10

       But I will also rehearse those bullets in my head, A, B, C, D. So, uh, that's you using your inner voice as well. Now, before a big presentation like a live event, I will go over the opening to my presentation and sometimes just carry that dialogue through when I'm going for a walk around the hotel before the event.

4. 10:33 – 15:09

   Music & Emotions

   1. AHAndrew Huberman10:33

      May I ask about the walk? Um, when I prepare for live events or solo podcasts, and long before I was involved in either of those activities, um, for lectures of any kind or classroom discussions where I had to stand up in front of the class, I would find that walking and listening to a song would, maybe simultaneously, maybe separately, would dramatically shape the kind of cadence and energy of the delivery of the- the talk.

   2. EKDr. Ethan Kross11:03

      Yeah. I- I love the fact that you brought up songs there. So, if you wanna take a little detour here, um, so in- in- in my new book, Shift, we talk about, or I talk about how the different shifters that exist to push your emotions around, and sensation, sensory experiences are one powerful, and I would argue often overlooked modality for shifting our emotions. So, if you ask people, "Why do you listen to music?" What do you think most people say?

   3. AHAndrew Huberman11:29

      "It makes me feel good."

   4. EKDr. Ethan Kross11:30

      Feel, right? It's about emotions, feel good. So, one study the- the number was around like 95, 96% of participants who were asked said, exactly gave the answer that you just gave. But then if you look at, in other studies, "Hey, the last time you felt anxious or angry or sad, what did you do to push your emotions around?" The number of people who report using music to modulate their experience drops way down 10 to 30%. Music is a really powerful tool for modulating our emotions. I actually, um, uh, an unintentional parenting victory for me was when my youngest daughter was around five or six and I was coaching soccer, I lived for these...... soccer games on the weekend. I wasn't one of these overbearing coaches who would, you know, go crazy on the sidelines. It was just such joy to just watch these, these kids play, and typically, my daughter was really excited to go to the game. But one morning, she was just, like, not into it at all. She was bum- like, she was bummed out, it was bumming me out, I was, you know, catching her emotions, we can talk about emotional contagion later, and, um, got into the car and it just so happened that my, my cell phone was connected and the next song on the playlist happened to be Journey's Don't Stop Believing. So, you know the song, I presume. Uh, don't judge me for having this on my playlist, please. The song comes on and, you know, I start jamming out to it, you know, singing out loud like an embarrassing dad, and then I look in the back seat and I find her bopping her head, and then the chorus comes, we get really excited, and then I pull up to the soccer field and she just bursts out of the car and is, like, invigorated. That is the power of music to impact us. So, I will often also have songs on prior to big talks that I'm, I'm getting ready to, you know, get in that mental frame of mind, and I don't think it's a coincidence that many athletes do this as well. They've stumbled onto this tool that is quite powerful for pointing our emotional experience, our, our emotional trajectory in the direction we want it to, to point, so...

   5. AHAndrew Huberman13:54

      It's interesting, I, I was thinking about music in reference to, um, shifting emotion, as you just gave an example of.

   6. EKDr. Ethan Kross14:01

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman14:02

      You know, feeling, like, amotivated and then your daughter's motivated by the-

   8. EKDr. Ethan Kross14:05

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman14:06

      ... Don't Stop, right? Yeah, okay, I'm not gonna sing it.

   10. EKDr. Ethan Kross14:08

       Keep going.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman14:08

       Um, no, no, no.

   12. EKDr. Ethan Kross14:09

       We'll, we'll do it together.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman14:10

       I will not do that.

   14. EKDr. Ethan Kross14:10

       And then-

   15. AHAndrew Huberman14:11

       Someone will cut the clip-

   16. EKDr. Ethan Kross14:12

       ... no one will ever listen. (laughs)

   17. AHAndrew Huberman14:12

       ... and they'll run it out, uh, they'll spool it out and then, no, I have a truly terrible singing voice. But, um, I wonder, has the study ever been done, or something similar to this, where, um, people who are feeling pretty good or very good are exposed to sadder music, uh, and vice versa?

   18. EKDr. Ethan Kross14:30

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman14:30

       People who are feeling sad are exposed to, um, to sort of, um, ecstatic music, or, or positive lyrics? Um, because I've often wondered whether or not humans like or dislike when things or people try and shift their state. You know, I know in myself when, you know, I'm, like, feeling upset about something, I don't want to feel upset, I don't think anyone wants to feel upset, but if I hear a song, y- there's, like, that's positive, there's a, there's a moment where I'm like, I can feel it kind of pulling on me. A- and you sort of know, like, I could follow that trajectory and probably get out of this, and sometimes one does and sometimes one doesn't. You know, we're, and this gets to, uh,

5. 15:09 – 20:25

   Shifting Emotions, Emotional Congruency, Facial Expressions

   1. AHAndrew Huberman15:09

      I think a more fundamental issue which is why I'm asking, uh, which is, are we supposed to feel our emotions as a way to, you know, sort of dissolve them when we don't want them, kind of the cathartic approach? Or would listening to sad music when we're sad just amplify the sadness?

   2. EKDr. Ethan Kross15:24

      These are great questions, and, um, I have a couple of, they touch on a couple of amazingly important issues that we need to get into, so let's just do them serially. So, number one, has the, the study been done when you expose people to different kinds of emotio- um, music, sad versus arousing, you know, happy music, do you see that push people's emotions around? Yes. In fact, sensory tools like music or visual images are one of the most powerful tools that we have in our arsenal for pushing people's emotions around in the context of experiments. So, we want to induce a particular kind of state, we can play certain kinds of music or show people images that are designed to elicit positive or, um, negative emotional experiences. So, images being another sensory modality, vision. So, so that's number one. Number two, there's this very interesting phenomenon where when we are in a particular emotional state, let's say we're feeling sad, we often don't reflexively seek out the happy music. We don't go to Journey, instead we go to Adele, right? We're going to Chicago, I'm giving you my age bracket here, right? Like, the music that has sad associations for me. So, there's this mood congruency. If I'm feeling a certain way, I'm gonna go deeper into that state and have the music facilitate me. Why on earth would we do that? Are we all masochistic? Do we just wanna feel even worse? This gets at, I think, a critically important point that is not always talked about, which is, all emotions are functional when they are experienced in the right proportions, not too intensely and not too long. So, sadness, as an example, is an emotion we experience when we've experienced some loss that we can't, we can't rectify right away, right? Something has happened and you, and you can't fix that, so you've lost someone, and so what does this emotion do? Well, it, it, it hijacks the way we are thinking, feeling, and our bodies are responding, so it motivates us to introspect, to turn our attention inward, to reflect on this situation, to now try to make sense of it, right? Something really important in my life has happened, I now have to change the way I'm thinking about my life so I can find meaning and move on. My physiology is slowing down so I can engage in that slow introspection, but what's also really interesting about sadness is, it's also impacting my facial display, giving a sign to all of the people in my environment to say, "Hey, maybe we should check up on that person, that guy, 'cause he looks like he's on his own in a corner." Right? So, can you detect when someone is sad, if you see, like, a sad facial expression?

   3. AHAndrew Huberman18:20

      Yes. Um, when I used to teach the summer courses at Cold Spring Harbor on the North Shore of Long Island, the students would come in from all over the world, and, um-

   4. EKDr. Ethan Kross18:27

      I've been there.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman18:28

      Oh, it's a great place.

   6. EKDr. Ethan Kross18:29

      Yeah, it's awesome.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman18:29

      Summer camp for scientists-

   8. EKDr. Ethan Kross18:30

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman18:30

      ... all of their laboratories, all year. And, um, my, uh... I eventually was director of a course there, and my co-director and I used to have this, um, debrief at the end of the first day or two where we would talk to one another, and we would, you know, go over the list of names. And we'd say, um... and she was remarkably good at this, just s- uh, extraordinary, like a superpower at saying, "You know, I think everyone's settling in well, but I noticed that so-and-so was kinda, like, might not be adjusted to the jet lag or might not be a-acclimating so well." And it's a very tight-knit group, and the course is quite long for a course like that. But it's important that everybody kinda feel engaged early on.

   10. EKDr. Ethan Kross19:10

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman19:11

       Um, and people have a tendency to dominate in those intellectually, you know, competitive environments, and, and she could just pinpoint who it was that was feeling a little bit outside the group. We knew how to ameliorate that really quickly. And from her, I learned a bit of how to recognize the signs, and it was rarely, um, just facial expression-

   12. EKDr. Ethan Kross19:30

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman19:30

       ... included that and some other cues that she just seemed to have a unconscious or conscious genius around. Um, so, uh, for me, I learned some of that from her. I like to think I got better at it, but I think some people are, are just extraordinarily good at that detection.

   14. EKDr. Ethan Kross19:45

       And it enhances social interactions, and so some people are really good at detecting it. Others are really good at displaying it. I'm gonna go back to my, my, my daughter. So, you know, if something happens where she feels sad, she exhibits this exaggerated response, like she'll stick out her lower lip. And even if I'm kind of upset at her, like, it is amazing the power that that has on me.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman20:09

       Melted.

   16. EKDr. Ethan Kross20:09

       I have to ov-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman20:10

       Melted. (laughs)

   18. EKDr. Ethan Kross20:11

       I- it is so, so beautifully manipula- manipulative, you know, m- no, man- manipulative, and, um, it- it's- it's a testament to the power that these displays can have on us.

6. 20:25 – 27:16

   Resistance to Shifting Emotion; Tool: Invisible Support, Affectionate Touch

   1. EKDr. Ethan Kross20:25

      So, I wanna go back to one other, um, question you raised in your last comment, and then we'll go back to the inner voice and its functionality. Um, you raised the question about being shifted by others, other people, and perhaps either just our surroundings, music, or spaces. Sometimes you don't want to have your emotions be shifted, and in fact, when other people try to do that, it can elicit what we call reactance, like you get defensive because, "I don't want you pushing me in the particular direction." I think that's a really important point that we need to be aware of as people living and working in these social environments where we're often well-intentioned, but sometimes our well-intentioned behaviors can backfire. And so there's this, this beautiful research which shows that if you see someone suffering, and you volunteer to help them, and they haven't asked you to help them, that can blow up in your face. Because that, what it does is it often communicates to people that you are thinking that they're not capable of handling their own circumstances, and most of us, like, we're motivated to think that we're capable of handling ourselves. And so there are still ways you can help people in those circumstances. It's called providing invisible support, which involves providing support to the person who can genuinely benefit from it but not shining a spotlight on the fact that that is what you are doing. So, how might this transpire? There's some really simple things you could do. So, let's say my wife is, um, really overwhelmed with stuff, and she hasn't asked me for help, but I know she is at her wits' end, work and, uh, uh, kids and other kinds of stuff that are on her plate. I can, I can proactively do things to lessen her burden. If it's her turn to pick up the dry cleaning and the groceries, I'm doing that voluntarily. I'm doing that, and I'm not coming home and saying, "Hey, sweetie, look what I did today. I did all these things. You know, can I have a pat on my back?" That's not what we're talking about. It's about your group, your, your, your lab is working under a deadline, right, to submit a grant application, and they don't have time to eat, and you proactively have pizza delivered to the lab. It's those little things that can help. Give you two more examples. Let's say that, um, someone on your team is really struggling with their, their ability to translate their work for, for popular audiences, and that's something they're motivated to do. Really important skill for a scientist to be able to translate what they do for others to consume. Before you pull them aside and say, "Hey, you know, I noticed that you're stumbling on a few different issues, and here are a couple of things I think you can do better," before you do that direct intervention, you might have a team meeting where you share out best practices. "Hey, what are the two things that I've learned that really have benefited my ability to communicate with different audiences?" What you're doing there is you're getting people the, the resources they can benefit from, but you're not shining a spotlight on the fact that you are directing it to them. So, it's kind of a backdoor way of, of helping or of shifting. The last, uh, the last tool I'll mention brings it back to sensation. One of the most powerful ways we can shift other people is, is through touch, tactile sensation. Um, you know, what's the first thing that you do with a child to soothe them when they are born?

   2. AHAndrew Huberman24:10

      Hold them.

   3. EKDr. Ethan Kross24:10

      Hold them. Skin-to-skin contact. I remember, uh, both times my, my kids were born, I was like, you know, I, I wanna get in on that, like... you know, 'cause my wife got first, first dibs with, with both of our daughters. Like, "I want some of that," you know, skin-to-skin contact. Uh-... that doesn't end after we leave the womb. The, the comfort that we experience, the release of stress-fighting chemicals that occurs when affectionate embraces are registered, uh, that continues throughout the lifespan. So, if my daughters, who don't particularly like dad to volunteer advice to them on most things nowadays, uh, if I know they're having a bad day, like, I'll go over and, you know, I'll rub their back in a totally un-creepy way. That is an important caveat we should give to everyone who's listening. What we're talking about here is affectionate, but not creepy or unwanted touch. It is touch that is mutually desired, and there is some research which shows actually that when it is not desired, you don't get these benefits and in fact you get the opposite. Plus, usually, like, lawsuits as well.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman25:17

      Yeah. Sure. No, I, I, um, I definitely believe that as a primate species, which we are, we are old, old world primates, um, I think they call it allopathic grooming.

   5. EKDr. Ethan Kross25:31

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman25:31

      Like, you'll see these images of these-

   7. EKDr. Ethan Kross25:33

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman25:33

      ... uh, monkeys and, uh, uh, lots of different species of, of primates, um, you know, just sitting nearby one another where one just has its, even just its, um... I said its hand. I almost said-

   9. EKDr. Ethan Kross25:44

      Yeah. (laughs)

   10. AHAndrew Huberman25:44

       (laughs) Its paw.

   11. EKDr. Ethan Kross25:44

       Paw.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman25:45

       Its hand.

   13. EKDr. Ethan Kross25:45

       Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman25:45

       Oh, its paw, on the, on the one next to it, and they'll just sit like that for long periods of time.

   15. EKDr. Ethan Kross25:51

       Yeah.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman25:51

       And then sometimes they're doing, like, an active grooming of, of removing-

   17. EKDr. Ethan Kross25:55

       Yeah.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman25:55

       ... you know, parasite. This is very important in, in, uh, the primate world, uh, as we know. But, you know, grooming and, and, and, uh, you know, picking and these kinds of things, you see it in couples. It's actually can be kind of endearing. I suppose at its extremes it's kind of gross, but, you know, k- it's, it's rather endearing to see, um, somebody kind of like remove a piece of lint off somebo- somebody-

   19. EKDr. Ethan Kross26:17

       Yeah.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman26:17

       ... you know, their partner's, uh, jacket, or, you know, just, or even just touch that is ... it's n- it doesn't look like it's geared towards any specific outcome.

   21. EKDr. Ethan Kross26:26

       Yeah.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman26:26

       Right? It's, uh ... and it doesn't necessarily appear romantic or that it's grooming, so maybe the lint example isn't the best as- one, but where you just see people that are just, like ... actually on the flight down this morning, 'cause I had to fly in early, it was, I was sitting, uh, on the aisle seat. In the middle was a, a boy, he was probably f- 14, 15, and his mom was at the window seat, and I went up to y- uh, to use the restroom, came back, and he had fallen asleep on his mom's shoulder, and I, I took a loo- ... it was a- a very endearing moment. And then when we landed, I said, "You know, the ability to sleep anywhere is a superpower." And he said, "I an- I learned it from my dad." And he said ... and it was a moment where I just thought it was just a very pleasant thing to see them-

   23. EKDr. Ethan Kross27:05

       Yeah.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman27:06

       ... in this ... touch on, on the plane, he clearly felt comfortable enough to do that. I remember thinking like, "Yeah, h- humans, we're a lot like the oth- we're a lo- a lot like the other primates."

   25. EKDr. Ethan Kross27:14

       Yeah. There's, there's a beauty to it,

7. 27:16 – 30:41

   Tool: Expressive Writing; Sensory Shifters

   1. EKDr. Ethan Kross27:16

      and, you know, it is, it is a tool, it is one kind of shifter that has to be obviously used in the appropriate context. All of our sensory modalities are powerful tools for, I would argue, relatively effortlessly shifting our emotions, and I think that's really important because people often think that regulating our emotions is hard work, to the extent that they believe you can regulate your emotions at all. We'll talk about that a little bit too, I'm sure. But, but it a- ... you know, self-control, emotion regulation, like, let me, like, roll up my sleeves and really kinda get in there, yes, it can at times be extraordinarily difficult to manage our emotions, and some of the tools that we have are effortful. One example would be expressive writing, this wonderful tool for working through problematic experiences. You sit down, just let yourself go for 15 to 20 minutes a day for one to three days.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman28:12

      This is the Pennebaker.

   3. EKDr. Ethan Kross28:13

      This is the Pennebaker writing effect. This is, this is a, a, a just a remarkably wonderful, um, side-effect-free, you could argue, intervention for helping you deal with curveballs that life throws at you.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman28:25

      We have vast amounts of data supporting the practice you just, you described.

   5. EKDr. Ethan Kross28:28

      Vast amounts of data.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman28:29

      Yeah. Pennebaker really deserves, in my opinion, a, uh, if not a, a, uh, y- the psychology equivalent of a Nobel Prize, I don't know what that is, but, um, it deserves real deep praise for, um, developing that method, because it's essentially zero cost, takes a little bit of time, and there's just, what, hundreds of studies now-

   7. EKDr. Ethan Kross28:49

      Hundreds of studies. That's right.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman28:49

      ... showing that these 15, 10 to 15 minute c- you know, cathartic writing, just free associative writing, usually with, I, as I understand, with a, with a writing utensil-

   9. EKDr. Ethan Kross28:57

      Usually, it's, yeah-

   10. AHAndrew Huberman28:57

       ... is probably better. Um, we did an episode where I, I talked about this and, and received a note from, um, from him, and, um, was f- grateful that, uh, we didn't get anything badly wrong. In fact, he was pleased with it. I think that, um, he deserves a lot of credit.

   11. EKDr. Ethan Kross29:14

       Well, we-

   12. AHAndrew Huberman29:14

       A powerful tool for self-healing.

   13. EKDr. Ethan Kross29:16

       We, we actually just re-, um, restarted a, a prestigious speaker series at Michigan, the Katz-Newcomb Speaker Series, which is, um, designed to honor luminaries in the field, and we actually kicked it off with Jamie coming to speak about his extraordinary work. Um, because this is really a gift, I think, not just to the field, but humanity. And the but though here is that it's an effortful tool. It takes 15 minutes to use. There is nothing wrong with that. Lots of things that we do in life are effortful. But we also know that we don't like exerting effort as a species. We like to conserve our resources as much as possible. So if there are easy things you could do as well, it's good to know about what those are, and these sensory shifters, music, um, you know, looking at images, right? These are modali- ... taste, touch. These are ways of pushing your emotions around pretty effectively for short periods of time, that in a pinch, like when your, your daughter's not in a great mood or when you want to get pumped up before an important event, can be quite useful. And we often just go through our lives not recognizing how we can strategically harness them. So, that's my plug for, uh, for sen- for sensory shifters.

8. 30:41 – 33:27

   Sponsors: AG1 & Joovv

   1. AHAndrew Huberman30:41

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that includes prebiotics and adaptogens. I've been drinking AG1 since 2012, and I started doing it at a time when my budget was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat whole foods and unprocessed foods, it's very difficult to get enough vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from diet alone in order to make sure that I'm at my best, meaning have enough energy for all the activities I participate in from morning until night, sleeping well at night, and keeping my immune system strong. When I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, my performance, recovery from exercise, all of those improve. And I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take my AG1, and I certainly felt the difference. I also noticed, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1 that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, November 2024, AG1 is giving away a free one-month supply of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil in addition to their usual welcome kit of five free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3K2. As I've discussed many times before on this podcast, omega-3 fatty acids are critical for brain health, mood, cognition, and more. Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by Joovv. Joovv makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I've consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving vision itself. Now, what sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy devices is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use specific wavelengths of red light and near-infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Joovv, you can go to Joovv, spelled J-0-0-V v.com/huberman. Joovv is offering Black Friday discounts of up to $1,300 now through December 2nd, 2024. Again, that's Joovv, J-0-0-V v.com/huberman to get up to $1,300 off select Joovv products.

9. 33:27 – 44:01

   Inner Voice Benefits, Thinking vs. Writing, Tool: Journaling

   1. AHAndrew Huberman33:27

   2. EKDr. Ethan Kross33:27

      Let's go back to, um, just close the loop on the inner voice and the benefits that it provides. So we talked about two. Verbal working memory, right? Keeping in- verbal information active for short periods of time. And we talked about simulating and planning things, like going over what you're going to say before an interview or, um, an important presentation. Let's turn to self-control and motivation. So you exercise because you've talked about exercising.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman34:02

      Yeah.

   4. EKDr. Ethan Kross34:02

      Right?

   5. AHAndrew Huberman34:02

      I try, try to exercise, um, six days a week, although some are short workouts, some are longer.

   6. EKDr. Ethan Kross34:07

      Yeah. You ever talk to yourself when you exercise?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman34:09

      Oh, all the time.

   8. EKDr. Ethan Kross34:10

      So let's hear it. The world wants to know, Andrew, what do you say-

   9. AHAndrew Huberman34:15

      (laughs)

   10. EKDr. Ethan Kross34:15

       ... to yourself when you exercise?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman34:17

       Depends on how well rested I am, how motivated I am. Um, I'll give two examples at the opposite poles of, uh, the motivational scale. I was traveling two weeks ago, and I, um, was doing some exercises for the... There's a muscle in the back of the shoulder, the rear deltoid. It's, um, n- I don't think anyone's favorite muscle to train, but it's a very important one for-

   12. EKDr. Ethan Kross34:38

       That's when you do this one.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman34:39

       Right. Yeah. You're right. For shoulder, posture, and stability, and, uh, got train th- that was, uh, that muscle group because otherwise people tend to get this inward rotating, like, you know, thumbs pointing toward belly button-

   14. EKDr. Ethan Kross34:51

       Yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman34:51

       ... and shoulders rolling forward thing. And there are a number of reasons why it's important.

   16. EKDr. Ethan Kross34:54

       Sure.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman34:54

       So, yeah, you got to do the rear delt thing, and I sat down to do the first work set after a couple warmups, and I remember thinking like, "I love training." I love training. I have since I started training when I was 16. And I thought to myself, "For some reason, I don't want to do this this morning." And then I thought, "Okay, David Goggins would probably start swearing at himself in his head," so I started that a little bit, and that didn't really work for me. Sorry, David. Um, and then I thought, "I'm going to go through every possible inner voice I can think of." So I heard Jocko Willink's voice. I'm friends with Jocko, and her just saying like, "Yeah, whatever, you're just weak," you know, or just, uh, like, do it anyway kind of mentality. And I just started cycling through all, all of them, and I made a deal with myself that when I ran out of voices to use, that's when I would stop the set, and I probably tripled the number of repetitions that I would normally get with that weight.

   18. EKDr. Ethan Kross35:42

       Amazing.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman35:42

       So it was s- it was, like, one part motivation, one part distraction, one part frustration, and I was just pulling from the, um, catalog of possible voices of, um, kind of coach-like voices-

   20. EKDr. Ethan Kross35:55

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman35:55

       ... and, uh, worked out pretty well.

   22. EKDr. Ethan Kross35:56

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman35:57

       And then at the other extreme, I can recall many times because I put effort into it where I'm well rested, I'm hydrated, get appropriate amounts of caffeine in my system, which I love, and sit down to train, and I absolutely love to train under those conditions. The sun is shining, music's playing, and I just remember this was during a set. This was a leg day, always the hardest day, set of heavy hack squats and just thinking, "I love this," but I have this inner voice where every time I, I start a repetition, I go through thing where I brace my midsection so I don't hurt my back, and I always look directly at the ceiling, and I think about my bulldog, Costello.

   24. EKDr. Ethan Kross36:36

       Mm-Hmm.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman36:36

       And I think, "I'm gonna do this one for you. I'm gonna do this one for you." And I know at those moments, my inner voice goes to he would probably just be sitting there like, "Why are you working this hard?"

   26. EKDr. Ethan Kross36:44

       (laughs)

   27. AHAndrew Huberman36:45

       Bulldogs don't like to work. Um, so I- I'm not really in a complete sentence generation inner voice kind of thing. Um, s-

   28. EKDr. Ethan Kross36:53

       But you have very rich inner world, right? You, you are... Your, your, you know, um, verbal working memory stream is filled with, with words when you are working out.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman37:04

       Yeah. And I'll tell you this. I was gonna ask you this later in the episode, but...... um, maybe it's relevant now, I think it is. When I was a kid, after my parents would tuck me in to go to sleep at night, I used to lie in bed and rehearse voices that I had heard throughout the day-

   30. EKDr. Ethan Kross37:19

       Hmm.
10. 44:01 – 50:24

    Decision Making, Individualization; Tool: Exercise

    1. AHAndrew Huberman44:01

       ask another question about movement that falls on the other end of the spectrum to what we're talking about now, which is structuring one's thoughts in the form of writing in order to parse an idea or work through an emotional state. In 2015, I ... By the way, I use these anecdotes not because, um, I wanna focus on me, but just as, as generalizable anecdotes. Okay, the specifics here don't matter, but I think probably most people are familiar with having an important decision where they have to weigh, um, you know, path A versus path B.

    2. EKDr. Ethan Kross44:31

       Oh, yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman44:31

       And I was in that place. I was, I was actually choosing between a job at one s- one institution and another institution, each of which had tremendous advantages. Neither had any, you know, l- like, striking disadvantages, but it was a really hard decision, and those close to me at that time will tell you that it was just brutal. I-

    4. EKDr. Ethan Kross44:48

       Been there.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman44:48

       Yeah, I made everybody around me suffer tremendously to the point where people were just like, "Flip a coin." Now, I'm not an indecisive person. I think, um, you know, it's one of these things where big decisions, I think, deserve a l- time and attention, and, and it was a time-constrained thing. So I was poring over this pro/cons list, I was l- watching YouTube videos trying to figure out best ways for decision-making. I was trying to... I actually, um-

    6. EKDr. Ethan Kross45:12

       Isn't, isn't it amazing, by the way, when we're in those situations, and I know exactly what you're talking about, because I was pretty sure I was in exactly the same position. The things you do in those circumstances to get some insight are, are wacky. Like, I'm sure you were googling things that you had no business googling, these kinds of decision trees and ...

    7. AHAndrew Huberman45:31

       Oh, yeah.

    8. EKDr. Ethan Kross45:32

       Right? I mean, it's-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman45:32

       It turns out-

    10. EKDr. Ethan Kross45:33

        ... it's wild.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman45:33

        ... they're, they're mathematical models-

    12. EKDr. Ethan Kross45:34

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman45:34

        ... that, um ... Like, there's the, the, the, the, um ... Actually, my colleague at, uh, NYU, Tony Movshon. I forget the name of the model, but there's a model about how many, um, towns you should evaluate. It's an o- old, kind of old example of it. Towns you should, um, evaluate in terms of where to start a business. Like, is it two? Is it three? And i- and there's an optimal-

    14. EKDr. Ethan Kross45:53

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman45:53

        ... strategy there. In any event, most of it wasn't helping, and I do believe that at some point you don't want too many committee members, 'cause it just gets-

    16. EKDr. Ethan Kross46:00

        Absolutely.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman46:01

        ... confusing. So the, the two best pieces of im- uh, of information came from the following practices. One was a colleague said, "Forget all the superficial pro/con stuff." And I, I actually think this has proved to be very useful in all domains of life for me. He said, "Take yourself through a typical weekday in one place versus the other. Wake up, where are you gonna go, how are you gonna travel? T- take yourself through the practicals of the day, because everything else falls away once you're at a place, or you're in a type of relationship. Take yourself through a given day."

    18. EKDr. Ethan Kross46:33

        Sure.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman46:33

        "Don't think about the relationship or the institution that you're gonna work for, or the school you're gonna go to. That's important, but take yourself through the entire day." So I did that, and then he said, "Also do it on a weekend," because, you know-

    20. EKDr. Ethan Kross46:46

        Mm-hmm.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman46:47

        ... well, in our profession, uh, we tend to work all the time, but occasionally you take a day off. And so that was very useful. The other thing that was very useful, which was completely surprising to me, was ... At that time, um, I was training in a boxing gym, and I was doing some speed bag work, and de- uh, decent at it. You know, you get into a rhythm, and ... And what's so great about speed bag work is that you get into a rhythm where you forget that you're trying to do the movement in a particular way.

    22. EKDr. Ethan Kross47:12

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman47:13

        These, um, central pattern generators, as we call them in neuroscience, take over, and you're just kinda, you know, turning your hands over in a way, and you're, you're ... Like, every once in a while you can think, okay, you need to put a little more hip swivel into this or a little more head movement and practice my slips or something. But it's largely unconscious-

    24. EKDr. Ethan Kross47:30

        Mm-hmm.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman47:30

        ... after a certain point, and I was doing that, and all of a sudden, boom, a thought just geysered to the surface, and I made my decision. And that was my final decision.

    26. EKDr. Ethan Kross47:41

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman47:42

        And I never went back from that decision. And so it was in the act of not trying to parse things-

    28. EKDr. Ethan Kross47:47

        Yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman47:47

        ... through words that words sprung up from my, whatever, unconscious, somewhere in my brain, cortical or subcortical, I don't know, and it was like, "That's it." And, and I, I, I was overwhelmed by that. And again, I don't share all that because I, I think it's speed bags or it's the example I gave before that's gonna solve it for everybody, but that, that these answers to hard problems seem to come from very diametrically opposed approaches. Verbal construction of complete sentences with paper or deliberately like Deisseroth does, and then also, like, not trying to get an answer at all. Boom, and the answer shows up. What in the world is that?

    30. EKDr. Ethan Kross48:23

        So it speaks to this idea that, first of all, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to addressing many of the big kinds of problems and decisions we have to face. So there are different modalities to self-discovery and insight, and yes, you can think very rationally and work it through and write about it and have conversations with other people. And then you can also allow your unconscious problem-solving machinery to, to do its thing. We don't understand completely how this works, but we do know that your experience is not infrequent. Many people report having moments of insight when they are e- when they are not otherwise engaged, and, and, you know, one line of thinking is that we are doing problem-solving behind the scenes that we're not aware of, and the, and the solutions are bubbling up to awareness. So I actually ... This may be the wrong usage of terms, but I weaponize this process for myself. So, uh, before I exercise, before I get on the treadmill or row or do whatever I'm gonna do, I will load up ...... the particular issue that I'm trying to find a solution for. Sometimes, it's how to word a, a paragraph. It might be, if I'm working on a book, how to find the right kind of story. If it's a, a, an interpersonal issue that I've got to smooth over, I load that up. And then I just get on the device, it's usually an aerobic exercise that I'm doing, and I just, I just, I don't really har- think about it in any fixed way, but inevitably, the ideas, the potential solutions bubble up into awareness. That is a real valuable tool that I possess that I think allows me to h- to have success in various areas of my life. It also identifies one of the reasons why chatter can be so unbelievably pernicious. So,

11. 50:24 – 54:37

    “Chatter,” Trauma, Depression, Anxiety

    1. EKDr. Ethan Kross50:24

       we didn't get to all of the benefits of the ... There's one more benefit of the inner voice that I wanna get to, but I'm gonna take a detour here for a second, because I think this is really important. If we think of chatter as the dark side of your inner voice, you're basically continuing to loop over the same problem in your head without making any progress. "What if this happens? Why did this happen? I'm such a imbecile." You're just continually going over that negative phenomenon or experience. You're not making any, any headway. One of the things that that does is it consumes our attentional resources. It acts like a sponge that soaks up those limited resources. And so what that means is when I get on the treadmill or rowing machine, and that's typically the time that I spend innovating, right? Coming up with solutions that allow me to progress personally and professionally, I don't have, my mind's not working to solve those problems. Instead it is stuck dealing with this other muck where I'm not getting anywhere. And, and so we actually see, if you g- look at the literature, that one of the ways that chatter undermines people is it interferes with their ability to, to focus and solve problems. And that's a, that's just one way it undermines people, but that is a huge, huge liability.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman51:43

       Is there an association between trauma and elevated levels of internal chatter?

    3. EKDr. Ethan Kross51:49

       Uh, I would say even more than an association. So, we often think of chatter as, uh, what we call it is a, a transdiagnostic mechanism, so it's a mouthful, that predicts various kinds of mood disorders. So, what that means is chatter refers to a process, a process of looping, turning the same material over and over in your head. The content of that looping can take many different forms. You could inject some sad cognitions in there. "I'm a shit. Such a shit." Is it okay to say shit? Should I say the shit?

    4. AHAndrew Huberman52:24

       Sure. People have, I mean, David Goggins was on this podcast.

    5. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:27

       Okay, so -

    6. AHAndrew Huberman52:27

       So, yeah.

    7. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:28

       ... you know.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman52:28

       I mean, pretty much anything goes. Typically, we don't swear at each other, but I'm pretty-

    9. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:31

       Okay. Well, I should hope not.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman52:32

        I'm pretty thick-skinned, if you need to, you know ... I've been called way worse than anything you could come up with here.

    11. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:36

        You've been boxing. I, I actually boxed in high school, so.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman52:38

        I don't recommend people box-

    13. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:39

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman52:39

        ... unless they're-

    15. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:40

        Yeah.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman52:40

        ... you know, they're professional, and even then ... I mean, y- I must say, as a neuroscientist-

    17. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:45

        It's a lot of fun.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman52:46

        Y- yeah, and on Wednes- Wednesday nights I'd spar a little bit, but I will say this. It's, um, there are other sports where you can go level 10 out of 10-

    19. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:55

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman52:56

        ... s- more safely, much more-

    21. EKDr. Ethan Kross52:58

        Yeah.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman52:58

        ... safely for the brain, like Brazilian jiu-jitsu and-

    23. EKDr. Ethan Kross53:00

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman53:00

        ... things like that, you know, where-

    25. EKDr. Ethan Kross53:01

        You typically don't want-

    26. AHAndrew Huberman53:02

        ... yeah.

    27. EKDr. Ethan Kross53:02

        ... to insult the brain.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman53:03

        Y- yeah. I, I, as a neuroscientist, I can't encourage-

    29. EKDr. Ethan Kross53:06

        I, I, I, I-

    30. AHAndrew Huberman53:06

        ... people to box, but ... (laughs)
12. 54:37 – 56:25

    Sponsor: Function

    1. EKDr. Ethan Kross54:37

    2. AHAndrew Huberman54:37

       I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers, key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had too high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test. Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC, N-acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels. Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive. I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the tests done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to Function.If

13. 56:25 – 1:04:30

    Tool: Combating Chatter, Mental Distancing; Distraction & Social Media

    1. AHAndrew Huberman56:25

       you had to highlight for now, and we'll get back to others in a moment, the best maybe one or two ways to combat chatter-

    2. EKDr. Ethan Kross56:35

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman56:36

       ... what would those be?

    4. EKDr. Ethan Kross56:38

       Well, that's, um, let me tell you about a couple of things that I do personally because like s- like as we, we try to regulate lots of different emotional experiences, different tools work for different people in different situations. There are, you know, upwards of two dozen or more science-based tools that, that I, that I covered when I wrote Chatter, when I got into Shift, the broader terrain of regulating your emotions. There are even more tools out there. So, I don't want to presume that the tools that work for me are gonna work for everyone. Uh, w- my, my first line of defense when it comes to chatter are two distancing tools. So, when I'm using the term distancing, what I'm talking about is not avoidance per se. We should talk about avoidance later. But what I'm talking about when I say distancing is the ability to step back and view myself from a, uh, a slightly more objective perspective, and it turns out there are many different tactics that exist for doing this. One tactic that I find very powerful is, is language. So, I can manipulate the words I use to refer to myself. So, I will often use my name and the second person pronoun you to try to think through a problem. "Ethan, how are you gonna manage this situation?" If you think about when we use words like you, they are the verbal equivalent of pointing a finger at someone else, and what, when you use your name and you to work through a problem, it's automatically switching your perspective. It's getting you to relate to yourself like, like you're giving advice to someone else. And it turns out that's a really powerful tool because one of the things we know about human beings is we are much better at giving advice to others than we are taking that advice ourselves. Have you ever experienced this, Andrew?

    5. AHAndrew Huberman58:28

       Gosh, no. Yes, of course. (laughs) Absolutely. I mean, our, our optics are just much clearer when we're, um, in observation than when we're internally. Unless I find, um, that I dedicate some real minutes or hours, basically a sort of meditation, not unlike the complete sentence construction exploration that we were talking about before of just going inward and really saying, "Okay, let's ha- let's have a conversation about this, Ethan-

    6. EKDr. Ethan Kross58:57

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman58:58

       ... and having a conversation with myself in there." And that always leads to an obvious truth.

    8. EKDr. Ethan Kross59:02

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman59:03

       Or sometimes a decision node that isn't clear to me yet, but it leads someplace that feels like forward.

    10. EKDr. Ethan Kross59:11

        Yeah. Um, but you're taking special steps to be able to, to, to align yourself with the advice that you would give to someone else. Like reflexively, sometimes we stumble, right?

    11. AHAndrew Huberman59:24

        Oh, absolutely. I mean, I... And, and the number of different ways that we can distract ourselves, this is what I was gonna ask in a few moments, but I'll take the opportunity now. I, I am wondering as we're talking about this today if one of the more powerful hooks of social media is the scroll aspect-

    12. EKDr. Ethan Kross59:43

        Mm-hmm.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman59:43

        ... that with essentially zero effort, we can pick up a device and scroll through images and movies and it, it will update us according to, update the, uh, the imagery and topics, of course, according to what it senses as our dwell times on certain pages. And all of a sudden, we don't have to think about what's in our head.

    14. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:00:03

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:04

        Uh, my dad used to refer to, um, surfing the internet, 'cause at that time it was that, and scrolling social media as kind of a, a cognitive chewing gum.

    16. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:00:12

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:12

        It keeps us busy, but it doesn't provide any real nutrition.

    18. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:00:15

        Well, you know, it's interesting. If you go back to, um, when Facebook first came on the scene, one of the early prompts that it would use to get people to contribute textual information to... Do you remember what this was? "What is on your mind?"

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:32

        Oh, no. Really?

    20. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:00:32

        So you would be-

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:33

        Yeah.

    22. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:00:33

        ... cued to share what is on your mind. And, you know, it, it, in some ways, you could think of s- various forms of social media as providing people with a giant megaphone for their inner voice. It's literally asking you, or it did, "What is on your mind right now?"

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:51

        So, that's in terms of posting.

    24. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:00:53

        Posting, exactly. Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:53

        Like, what's on your mind. But in terms of consuming information-

    26. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:00:56

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:56

        ... which I think most people on social media seem to be consumers more than creators-

    28. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:01:00

        Absolutely.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:01

        Um, I mean, it's remarkable to me how I can, you know, pick up the phone, and I, I have a specific phone with Instagram and X on it, and it's, those apps are not on any other phones-

    30. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:01:11

        Mm-hmm.
14. 1:04:30 – 1:13:41

    Tools: 2 AM Chatter Strategy, Mental Time Travel; Venting

    1. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:04:30

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:30

       I've been told that, by people in my life, that one of the main reasons they get onto their phone in the middle of the night if they happen to wake up is that it allows a very, um, soothing distraction compared to trying to wrestle with the, you know, uh, fire hose of thoughts in their head.

    3. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:04:49

       Yeah.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:50

       And that, yeah, it's kind of like the way you described these funny videos that you won't disclose to us.

    5. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:04:56

       (laughs)

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:56

       That sounds like, um, you know-

    7. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:04:58

       They typically involve pranks.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:00

       Oh, okay.

    9. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:05:01

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:01

        Noted. Um, we used to hear, um, that people, um, you know, would have a drink after work to just kind of like, you know, take the edge off or something like that.

    11. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:05:09

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:09

        I feel like social media is doing that for a lot of people.

    13. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:05:11

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:12

        Uh, the way you describe it fits with that idea, and that I, I certainly believe that from everything we know about the circadian health literature that you want to avoid looking at your phone, um, between the hours of 11:00 PM and 4:00 AM most nights.

    15. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:05:25

        Sure.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:25

        Nobody's perfect. But that if you wake up in the middle of the night, one of the worst things you can do is get on your phone and start scrolling social media. But I'm guessing people do it because it feels even worse to just sit there with your thoughts in the dark.

    17. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:05:37

        It's a shifter. But this is a perfect, um, segue back to, you know, you asking about the tools that you recommend for fighting chatter and I'm telling you about the ones I use. So there's a second tool that I will use automatically when I s- I detect the chatter brewing and I call it my 2:00 AM chatter strategy. And I call it my 2:00 AM chatter strategy because every, uh, seemingly like four to six weeks, I will go to bed happy and content and then I'll wake up at 2:00 AM and, like, it is all going to hell really fast.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:11

        What time do you typically go to sleep?

    19. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:06:13

        Uh, usually around 11:00, 11:30.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:16

        Interesting. Yeah, th- this is a common problem for a lot of people and there are some tools like long exhale breathing and things-

    21. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:06:22

        Yeah.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:22

        ... that, that clearly work. I, I long ago made a decision, I refuse to believe any thought that occurs between the hours of 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM. I just refuse. I don't believe it. It's, it's as if somebody's lying to me in my head.

    23. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:06:36

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:37

        And one could argue, well, maybe that's where the truth is coming out because your forebrain is not so good at suppressing these, you know, unconscious, uh, thoughts. And sure, all good, but as you point out, they are rarely the kind of thoughts that one can work with, positive or negative.

    25. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:06:51

        So the tool that I use actually, um, implicitly activates an idea like the one you are describing. So at 2:00 AM when the chatter strikes, and by the way, you say like, oh, this is common. This is more than common. When I present to audiences and, you know, thousands and thousands of people over, over the years and I ask, "Hey, you ever, you ever get 2:00 AM chatter? Maybe 2:30 AM?" All the hands go up. This is a, I don't want to say universal affliction, but it is an incredibly common problem that people struggle with, like the chatter at night. So what I do is I use something called mental time travel, mental time travel into the future, and what I do is I, I ask myself, and I typically use my own name to do it so I'm blending another distancing tool, distance self-talk. I say, "Ethan, how are you gonna feel about this tomorrow morning?" No matter how bad the chatter ever is at 2:00 AM, to your point, when I wake up the next morning and my, my brain is fully, fully awake and I have access to my, my prefrontal cortex and I can think constructively about things, it is never as bad that next morning as it is in the middle of the night. We, of course, have learned that over time because how many, how many mornings have we woken up in our lives? We could do the math. If I was more sophisticated, I'd do it on the fly. I can't, right? But like many, many mornings, we have experienced this, like chatter at 2:00 AM. At 7:00 AM...... not so bad. So when you jump into this mental time travel machine and you ask yourself, "How am I going to feel about this tomorrow morning? Next week? Next year? 10 years from now?" What that does is it activates this understanding that what you are going through, as bad as it may seem, it is temporary. It will eventually subside. And that does something very powerful for a mind that is consumed with chatter. It turns the volume down on it, which for me, is often all I have to do to get back to bed. So the official name for this tool is not mental time travel, it is called temporal distancing, and it's a flexible tool. You can, you can ask yourself, if you're struggling with a problem, how you're gonna feel about it tomorrow, next week, 10 years from now, and it's another way of, of broadening your perspective. It's another kind of distancing tool that has a lot of science behind it. So those are the, those are two, the two of a cognitive things that I do on my own, and that nips a significant chunk of the chatter that I experience in the bud when it happens. And I should add that because I know about what chatter is and I know about how these tools work, I am exceptionally strategic in utilizing those tools the moment I detect the chatter brewing. So people will often ask, "Hey, do you ever, um, do you ever experience chatter?" Like, "Yeah. Of course. Pinch me, I'm a living, breathing human being, I do at times." But I'm really good at detecting it and then implementing tools in an almost automatic manner. If this happens, if the chatter strikes, then I'm gonna coach myself through the problem using my O, NAE, MU and I'm gonna jump into the mental time travel machine and ask myself how am I gonna feel about this in the future. If that's not sufficient, then I'll go to, like, the level two response, which consists of, if weather permits, I'll go for a walk in a, in a safe, natural setting. I always feel the, the, the need to give the caveat about safe and natural because where I grow u- grew up, in Brooklyn, like, the, the natural settings were the place you got mugged, so they were not safe. But, you know, a park I, I find restorative and there's a ton of work highlighting the restorative features of green spaces. But then what I'll also do is I will, um, I'll, I'll, I'll dial up the, the chatter advisory board. So I have a couple of people that I have carefully thought about what these people do for me when I have a problem, and they, importantly, don't just let me vent my emotions or, or cathect, you used that term before, just, I don't just get it out. A lot of people think that the key to feeling better is to vent your emotions. There's research on this. Venting is good for strengthening bonds between people. It's good to know that, you know, we're buddies now, I could call you up if I'm struggling, you're gonna listen to me and empathize with me, that's great for our relationship. But if all you do is just validate what I'm going through and you don't take the next step to additionally help me look at that bigger picture and problem solve, I leave the conversation feeling really good about my relationship with you, but the problem is still there. So just venting ends up leading to what we call co-rumination, which can be pretty harmful. The people on my chatter advisory board, they know to first validate, empathize with me, learn about what I'm going through. They've got my back, they communicate that powerfully. But then once they do that, they start working with me to broaden the perspective, to try to think through that problem, which I'm having difficulty doing sometimes when the chatter is really, really loud. And, you know, typically when I get to that stage, um, I'm in pretty good shape.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:09

        I love your examples of how you deal with chatter. Your example of going to sleep, and the reason I asked when you go to sleep at about 11:00 PM and waking up at 2:00 or 3:00, and that being a very common issue, is, as far as I understand, reflective of the fact that early in the night, our sleep is dominated by slow wave, deep sleep-

    27. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:12:28

        Mm-hmm.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:29

        ... with less rapid eye movement sleep. And then somewhere right about that transition time, it's not necessarily 2:00 or 3:00 AM per se, but given that you were asleep for about three, four hours, after about three, four hours of sleep, the proportion of our sleep that is rapid eye movement sleep relative to deep slow wave sleep shifts dramatically, the intensity of our dreams shifts dramatically, they become more emotionally laden, and that whole process of having those rapid eye movement, um, sleep associated dreams is strongly associated with the removal of an emotional load in the morning when we wake. We know this because if you selectively deprive people of early-

    29. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:13:06

        Mm-hmm.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:06

        ... night versus late night sleep and so on. The reason I mention this is that, um, one tool that I certainly have found useful is that, well, two tools really, if people just understand that one of the reasons they'll wake up suddenly at 2:00 or 3:00 AM is that they're undergoing this transition from a one, kind of one form of sleep to another, it's almost like a different beast altogether. And that heart racing, emotionally laden thoughts is characteristic of where they're supposed to be in the sleep architecture-
15. 1:13:41 – 1:18:01

    Time, Chatter & Flow

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:41

       The other is that, um, the tool that you provided of, of getting into this mental time travel, I, I'd like to just double click on this, um, notion of time perception. In sleep and dreaming, I mean, time is very fluid, you can be in one environment then another, it seems compressed, a lot happens in a short amount of time.

    2. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:13:58

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:58

       When we are in chatter in the daytime, to what extent does it alter our perception of time? Um, and I have a very specific reason for asking this, because I believe that one of the main, uh, uh, unifying features among the tools for dealing with depression, anxiety, et cetera, when I survey the research, is almost all of them, journaling, meditation, even some of the medications for that matter, involve taking people into a different sort of, um, time perception mode. And, uh, it's a kind of an abstract idea, but I, I think, um, this may, this may resonate with some of the issues-

    4. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:14:33

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:33

       ... related to chatter, that when we're in a mental frame that's not...... healthy for where we want to be at that moment, awake when we need sleep, you know, anxious when we want to be calm, and so forth, that ch- changing our time perception seems to be the most useful thing that we can do, or at least among the most useful. So, what's the relationship between chatter and time perception?

    6. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:14:52

       And tell- tell me more about what you mean by time perception.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:55

       Uh, uh, how broadly or finely we are binning time. So, we know that as autonomic arousal, let's call it stress-

    8. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:02

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:02

       ... but wakefulness and autonomic arousal goes up, we're fine-slicing time.

    10. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:05

        I see.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:06

        In fact, the pupils get bigger. We actually see-

    12. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:08

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:08

        ... you know, depth of field changes.

    14. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:09

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:09

        We get higher resolution image of much less.

    16. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:12

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:12

        This is, it makes every bit of evolutionary sense. You know, we can deal with fewer things better.

    18. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:17

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:17

        And typically, it's the thing that we're fixated or ruminating on.

    20. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:19

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:20

        When we're relaxed, think about, like, sitting back on a beach and you're watching the clouds go by, it's almost like your frame rate-

    22. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:26

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:26

        ... is slower. So, your, you know, higher frame rate is like slow motion. This is why people who experience trauma often feel like things are, or a car crash, they, like, see it in slow motion. Well, it's not in slow motion. You're fine-slicing time.

    24. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:38

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:38

        It's kind of a remarkable thing, right?

    26. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:40

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:40

        This is also how athletes learn to play with their levels of autonomic arousal. Fighters can see punches coming in at, it's almost like slow motion-

    28. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:48

        Yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:48

        ... but they can react with full speed. Likewise with tennis players who will describe this.

    30. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:15:51

        Yeah.
16. 1:18:01 – 1:22:49

    Focusing on Present, Mental Time Travel

    1. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:18:01

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:01

       How often do you think people, and I do believe this is related to chatter, but if it's not, we can set this aside, uh, for another day. Uh, how often do you think people are in kind of negative or positive fantasy? Like, as they move through their day, uh, I'm sure a study's been done asking people what they're thinking about. I mean, how often is it actually tied to what they're doing or they're supposed to be doing, or are they thinking about, like, what they're gonna do this weekend, or maybe even constructing entire narratives of things that are, like, nonexistent that they would like to exist? Or, you know, occasionally, we'll see this person, I think we've all seen this person, kind of mumbling to themselves, and it doesn't look like they're mumbling pleasant things. Um-

    3. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:18:41

       Yeah, it's because they've just been rejected by a journal editor.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:44

       (laughs)

    5. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:18:44

       Their article.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:45

       The experience of every scientist. Um, and it's, of course, always reviewer number two's fault.

    7. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:18:49

       It is. It's always-

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:49

       They didn't read the paper carefully enough, of course. And none of us have ever been reviewer number two.

    9. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:18:54

       Never.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:54

        I'm being sarcastic, by the way. We've all been reviewer number two. Um, little academic inside, inside ball humor there. Um, you know, you'll see somebody mumbling to themselves, mmm... and it-

    11. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:19:04

        So-

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:04

        ... and it doesn't, it doesn't look like they're mumbling pleasant things.

    13. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:19:07

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:07

        We don't know what they're saying to themselves-

    15. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:19:09

        Yeah.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:09

        ... but I'm guessing if we tapped them and said, "Hey, what were you m- mumbling?" I, I would guess that more than 50% of the time, it was, um, kind of frustration with stuff. You kind of see this, like, the frustrated person. It's, it's a hard thing to observe, actually.

    17. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:19:22

        Yeah. So, so, um, people have looked at this, and my memory of this wonderful paper, I think it was published in Science. I thi- I think the title was A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:34

        Mm.

    19. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:19:34

        And, um, basically, the take-home from the article was that people spend between... Well, if you look at this paper and lots of others like it, what, what we can deduce is that people spend between one-half and one-third of their waking hours not focused on the present. So, between one-half and one-third of the time, we're drifting away and we're thinking about other things. And this one particular paper linked that process with thinking about things that cause you to feel worse. I think there's huge levels of variability there, though. Um, I think a l- like, being lost in thought can be a wonderful experience. I love, love, love, love mind-wandering. I think it's one of my strengths. It is the source of idea generation for me. It is also the source of emotion regulation. I will, one of, you know, m- my sleeping pill, metaphorically speaking, is mental time travel. It's getting away from the present. It is fantasizing about the future, right? Thinking about the good things that could happen, the potentialities, or going into the past and savoring some of the, the positive things that happen. I'm thinking about, you know, the, the, the soccer game where my kids scored goals, or something good happened to someone I know or to me. And, and, and that, to me, is a wonderful way...... of going to bed. That is mental time travel, it is not being in the moment. Which actually raises another, I th- really important point that I wanna get in there, and I'd love to get your take on this because in popular culture we often hear that it's really important to be in the moment, this has emerged as a, a type of cultural maxim. Like, be in the now. And, and this idea's often conveyed so strongly that if you're not in the moment, we sometimes think there's something wrong with us. Like, oh, we gotta train our attention to bring it back to the present. Being in the present can be very useful in many contexts and certainly when we experience chatter, we start worrying about the future or ruminating about the past, refocusing on the present, our breath, a mantra, yes, lots of data support the utility of that. But I always like to remind people that the human mind evolved to be able to travel in time, and lots of amazing things accompany that process. If I can't go into the past, not only am I not savoring positive experiences which add joy and vitality to my life, I'm also not learning from my screw-ups, which sadly happen to me on a somewhat regular basis. Right? I'm learning from my mistakes by revisiting the past, and if I'm not going into the future, then I'm not, I'm not planning, I'm not simulating, I'm not fantasizing. So, we wanna be... we don't wanna shut down mental time travel. I think what we wanna learn how to do is how to travel in time in our minds more effectively without that time travel machine breaking down in the past, which is what happens when we get stuck on an experience, or in the future when we just find ourselves fixating on something that we're anxious about. So, um, so being in the moment can be good, but it is not the end point I think we always want to strive for.

17. 1:22:49 – 1:28:31

    Texting, Social Media, Sharing Emotions

    1. EKDr. Ethan Kross1:22:49

Episode duration: 3:09:01