How To Stop Feeling Negative Emotions All The Time - Dr Ethan Kross

1. 0:00 – 4:25

   What Is The Definition Of Emotions?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      ... the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan. What's that mean?

   2. EKEthan Kross0:08

      Well, what that means is we get to ask two kinds of questions, uh, in my lab. So number one, we, we try to understand how do people work when it comes to managing their emotions? And we really care about getting in there to understand the mechanics that underlie what we call emotion regulation. And then the second kind of question we tackle is, how can we use this understanding of the nuts and bolts that explain how people can manage their emotions to actually help them do a better job of that in their daily lives outside the lab? And so, um, trying to address those two big picture issues is something that keeps us really busy and is something that is, uh, really fun, a fun way to spend your, your life.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:52

      Mm-hmm. Uh, from your time, decades looking at them, what, what are emotions from a definitional perspective? How do you come to actually define them?

   4. EKEthan Kross1:01

      (inhales deeply) It's a great question, and, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's funny. I often, um, when I'm speaking about this topic to folks, I, I often ask people, "Hey, who, who here feels comfortable coming up to the front and, uh, just telling us what, what it means to have an emotion? What is an emotion?" It's kind of wild. We experience emotions... According to this one study that I cite in my book, about 90% of the time that we're, we're awake, we're experiencing some type of emotional response. We, we are truly an emotional species. And yet if you ask people, as I often do in presentations or when I'm teaching, "What's an emotion?" people often just stop and they have trouble answering that question. So let me, let me pose it to you actually before I go give you the, give you my definition. What do you think an emotion is? And don't worry about being right or wrong.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:50

      Yeah. Uh, a state in the brain that informs us of, uh, what is going on in the rest of our body.

   6. EKEthan Kross2:01

      So, um, not bad, not bad. So I, I, I define emotions as, uh, responses we have to events in our lives that we deem meaningful, i.e. they capture our attention in some way. And these could be situations that happen to us as we're navigating the world outside or even situations we imagine in our minds. And when we encounter those circumstances, it's almost like a software program that gets loaded up to help us manage that circumstance, and that software program has a few different pieces, few different components. So emotions activate what we call a loosely coordinated set of responses. So what do I mean by that? Well, when we experience emotion, there's, there's often a physiological component. So if I experience a little bit of anxiety, I often feel that in my stomach. It, it kind of feels like the stomach is, is wringing, I've got to go to the toilet right away. Uh, depending on how potent a response it is, that predicts the strength of that impulse. Um, our emotions are also capturing our cognition, how we're thinking about our circumstances. So anxiety will kind of zoom us in on the potential threat in front of us. Um, and then, and then there are motor responses and facial displays that often come along with our emotions. So can you tell when someone is angry at you sometimes-

   7. CWChris Williamson3:27

      Yeah, of course.

   8. EKEthan Kross3:27

      ... by looking at their face? Right, like-

   9. CWChris Williamson3:28

      Frowns, frowns, leaning forwards, yeah.

   10. EKEthan Kross3:29

       ... frowns. There you go. Yeah, sa- give me the sad look. What does that look like?

   11. CWChris Williamson3:33

       Bottom lip comes down, yeah.

   12. EKEthan Kross3:33

       There you go. There you go. My daughters are super skilled at that facial expression whenever I'm disciplining them, as I sometimes have to do. And it elicits a response. So I say loosely coordinated because these different facets of our emotional experience often cohere, but sometimes they don't. In other words, sometimes I could be super angry during a meeting at something that's happened, but I maintain my poker face.

   13. CWChris Williamson3:59

       Mm-hmm.

   14. EKEthan Kross3:59

       Sometimes I'll even smile. So there's some flexibility there, but the point is it's this coordinated response that is designed to help us deal with a situation at hand. Um, and so I'm a proponent of the b- of the belief that all of our emotions, even the ones we call bad, are useful when they're experienced in the right proportions. Not too intense, not o- or not too long. Um,

2. 4:25 – 6:45

   Difference Between An Emotion And A Feeling

   1. EKEthan Kross4:25

      there's one other, one other little tidbit let me throw in there 'cause I think it's important for just kinda clearing up the space here. The difference between an emotion and a feeling. We often use those terms synonymously, but, but scientifically, scientists actually draw a distinction. So you, you could think of an emotion as a, as this umbrella term. It captures a lot of things that are happening within you, within your brain, within your body, your behaviors. Feelings are the conscious component of an emotional response. They're the part of an emotional response that we're aware of. It's a lot like when you are sick. When you get the flu, there are tons of things happening inside your body. You have no awareness of how the, you know, the composition of your, your blood is changing and your organs may be functioning differently and so forth and so on. What you do have awareness of are the fever and chills that you're experiencing, right? That's the, like the sweats, so to speak. So feelings are the part, the facet of our emotional experiences that we're aware of.

   2. CWChris Williamson5:33

      Oh, that's interesting. And you mentioned there was this really interesting element at the beginning, uh, things that we determine as meaningful or things that are meaningful-

   3. EKEthan Kross5:43

      That's right.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:43

      ... th- things that are meaningful to us, which is why, um, there's a plant there, like a fake plant that we didn't use as a backdrop that I need to put away. Uh, I have no story that really comes along with that. I can look at it and there's no salient emotional affect that comes up. The pen, that pen. Unless that pen was a pen that your daughter said is her favorite pen or something like that, you got it to sign your most recent book deal with, um, presumably that pen is just, meh, it's not meaningful to me. Um...

   5. EKEthan Kross6:11

      That's right.

   6. CWChris Williamson6:12

      So-

   7. EKEthan Kross6:12

      That's right now, but it, it, it does get interesting, right? Like, if, if this were...... a, a pink pen and I had a fear of cancer, for example, the pink might activate the thoughts about that cancer-

   8. CWChris Williamson6:27

      Wow.

   9. EKEthan Kross6:28

      ... and elicit an emotional response. If I have a fear of blood, red color. So, we could generalize-

   10. CWChris Williamson6:34

       Mm-hmm.

   11. EKEthan Kross6:34

       ... or make associations. But right now, like, I'm free as a bird when I'm looking at this pen.

   12. CWChris Williamson6:37

       Uh, there's people with fears, there's people with fears of blood all over the internet, turning away at the moment, "Oh my God, you... My heart rate's going up."

   13. EKEthan Kross6:42

       Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to trigger you. Yeah.

3. 6:45 – 11:56

   What Is The Point Of Emotions?

   1. EKEthan Kross6:45

   2. CWChris Williamson6:45

      Um, just before we get on, from a, let's take a sort of adaptive evolutionary lens, why do we feel anything? Like, what's the point of emotions? Why have we got them?

   3. EKEthan Kross6:56

      Because they give us an edge, because they, um, they mobilize us to respond optimally to the situations that we find ourselves in. It's a great question, I'm so glad you asked it. So like, let's run through a couple of negative emotions that we often describe or hear them described as, as toxic. Um, anger, for example. Anger's an emotion we experience when we, when our, our understanding of right and wrong, of how things should be is violated, and there's an opportunity for us to correct the record, right? We could, we could actually fix things. So, um, you know, my favorite example of this is my daughter rides her bicycle without her helmet. This is not the way things work in the Cross household, right? We care about brain safety and I, I see this, she knows better, I get angry. I ex- what does that angry, anger do? It zooms me in on the transgression, it motivates me to approach the situation, it is conveying facial expressions to her to say, "Not good." All of this with the intent of making sure she doesn't do this again, so that she doesn't injure herself. Um, take another example. Sadness. Like, what, how on earth could being sad be functional? Well, we experience sadness when our, our understanding of the world and who we are is challenged in some way, by something that happens that we cannot fix. So, we're fired, we're rejected, we lose someone we love. Now, we are faced with the task of having to reframe how we think about the world and ourselves in it. And so that takes some, some energy, right? So, what does sadness motivate us to do? It motivates us to kind of slow down physiologically, turn our attention inward to try to reflect on what's happening, to s- to try to do that hard cognitive work. But, and this I find so fascinating, we're a social species, right? And like, going away and into a corner to now just brood on this heavy stuff, that could be dangerous. We might wanna throw some, some lifelines out to the community to make sure they check up on us. And indeed we do. And the way that sadness allows us to do that is by doing what? Give it to me.

   4. CWChris Williamson9:24

      M- making the, the bottom right goes up.

   5. EKEthan Kross9:26

      There you go. There you go. We're, we're jamming now, right? Right? Like, that is so powerful a cue to pull us in. Um, you know, this conversation here about evolutionary significance, uh, touches on this topic of like, toxic positivity, which I talk about in the book as something that, uh, I'm not a huge fan of, because we often hear that the goal in life should be to maximize positivity and try to avoid negative emotional experiences.

   6. CWChris Williamson9:56

      No bad vibes.

   7. EKEthan Kross9:57

      No bad vibes. Good vibes only. If that's your goal, number one, good luck. You're giving people an unattainable goal. We have the capacity to experience these responses for a reason. M- when I think back to like, performances that I have given where I've not experienced an, experienced any anxiety, those are the ones that I've tended to fall flat, 'cause there was no cue inside me that motivated me to energize and prepare. I mean, is this true, true for you? Have you ever found that a little bit of anxiety can be your friend?

   8. CWChris Williamson10:33

      Yeah, almost always. It focuses attention, it makes you feel excited, it, it stops you from being distracted by other stuff. And, but it, as you say, uh, intensity and duration are devils in the details, the dosage.

   9. EKEthan Kross10:44

      Devils in the details. Look, no one is saying that negative emotions don't blow up and metastasize. This is why I got into this business in the first place, because these emotions that we have, these negative emotions, they're tools, but they are unwieldy tools. If we use a metaphor of a hammer, hammer in the right hand, my grandfather was a carpenter, built beautiful homes. Hammer in the wrong hand, my hand, a hammer, source of massive destruction.

   10. CWChris Williamson11:15

       Yeah.

   11. EKEthan Kross11:15

       Same is true of our emotions. And so, what I find so interesting is on the one hand, we're born into this world with this capacity to experience this wild range of emotions, positive and negative, and they serve us well. They're tools, but they're really unwieldy, so guess what? We also evolve the capacity to reign these tools in through these regulatory, um, techniques that we all possess. But, they don't come with a user's manual and that, in a certain sense, is what I and lots of other scientists have been doing for many decades now, is trying to build that user's manual to help people manage their emotions.

4. 11:56 – 18:56

   Why Do We Struggle To Control Our Emotions?

   1. EKEthan Kross11:56

   2. CWChris Williamson11:56

      Why do we struggle to control our emotions? Why is there no user manual? If, if I'm so capable of accessing my anger or my depression or my anxiety or my resentment or my fear, and then I'm so capable at m- m- managing to perpetuate that over time, w- wha- why can't I also get in and stop it? Surely that would be adaptive too.

   3. EKEthan Kross12:18

      Oh, w- well, you can. Um, the just, the question is, um, how can you do it better? So there's huge variability, number one, in the degree to which people are capable of managing their emotions, and I would argue that there's room for improvement regardless of where you are right now. You're really not great at it or you're really good. Understanding how this works, that in and of itself I think is enormously empowering. I, I find it really useful to draw a distinction to, to physical fitness. Um, so like, you're gonna get people who vary in their level of, of, of physical fitness, right? Um, they could all benefit though from learning how to optimize that facet of their lives. Like some people are, are physically fit just because of the way genetics has endowed them with, with natural physical aptitudes. You know, maybe they're really active. They walk places and so forth and so on. But teaching them like how to do different exercises, engage in different routines, is gonna benefit them. It's also gonna benefit those people who aren't very predisposed to be physically fit. I think the same is true when it comes to mental fitness. Like, we don't open up the gym to folks to explain, "Here are the different tools. Here's how they work. Okay, now the task for you, now that you understand how these 12 machines work, now I want you to figure out how to optimally fit those different exercises into your life to help you meet your specific goals." That's really where we are.

   4. CWChris Williamson13:57

      What are you, what are you looking at with regards to the sort of set point that people have? How m- how much room is there? We're talking about heritability here, a bit of behavioral genetics perhaps. Um, uh, you know, the difference between me and Usain Bolt when it comes to running speed is, is pretty high. Uh, have we got even more variability when it comes to the set point of people that are naturally Usain Bolt runners but managing their own emotions?

   5. EKEthan Kross14:25

      Yeah. That, that's a great question that I wish I could answer, but I can't. And, um, uh, lemme give you one reason why. So, what we have done a pretty good job of in the sciences is identifying specific tools and profiling how they work. What we have not yet done, what we're doing right now, which is super exciting from the research point of view, is beginning to see how different tools optimally combine-

   6. CWChris Williamson14:51

      Mm.

   7. EKEthan Kross14:52

      ... to help people manage their emotions. We're just beginning to do that. The reason I bring this up is I think that the key to really moving the needle on emotion regulation is understanding the, the combinations of tools that work well for different people in different situations. And that scientific basis, that knowledge base, it just isn't there. We just, uh, published a, a study or a paper I should say. It was a couple of studies that looked at how people managed their anxiety during the COVID pandemic. And what we found in that s- in those studies was really interesting. Every day, we f- tracked people over time, and every day we asked them, "Which of these, I believe it was 18 different tools, did you use?" And the tools varied in terms of their level of healthiness according to experts. And then we measured their anxiety each day. And what we wanted to see is, well, what tool is moving the needle on people's anxiety from one day to the next? First key insight, people seldom used just one tool. Which is interesting for me because I'm often asked like, "Hey, what's the one thing people should do right now to manage bleep?" On average, it was like between three and four different tools were, were used on any given day. Second, there was enormous variability in the tools that people used that actually helped them-

   8. CWChris Williamson16:12

      Mm.

   9. EKEthan Kross16:12

      ... manage their emotions. So the three or four things that I benefited from on one day were different from the three or four things that you benefited from on the same day, and you, you varied from day to day.

   10. CWChris Williamson16:23

       Mm-hmm.

   11. EKEthan Kross16:23

       Some combinations of tools worked for you on one day and different ones worked for you on the next. We don't yet understand how to predict that variability, and that is what we are doing now. So the invitation I'd love to give people is, I can give you the tools, right? And that's what my book is all about. Here are the tools. And then I could give you the challenge to start self-experimenting to figure out what are the tools that work best for you, right? If a tool works, keep using it. Layer on another one. See what added benefit you get. If it doesn't, move on to something else. Not unlike the way we figure out what are the physical fitness routines that work best for us. Like, the stuff that I benefit from, quite different from not just my wife-

   12. CWChris Williamson17:07

       Mm-hmm.

   13. EKEthan Kross17:07

       ... but my best friends as well. And it changes too depending on what my, my goals are. And so, so that's a long-winded way of not answering your question. (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson17:17

       No. (laughs) It d- it, it, it really does. The reason I've become particularly interested in this, I did, uh, about a year of twice weekly psychotherapy, um, up until about six months ago. I've just started doing CBT. Um, and I also did a very, very comprehensive 100-page DNA analysis, uh, that takes down all of the different alleles and obviously polymorphisms. Like, there is no one gene for X or Y, but there are certain things that say you clear dopamine less quickly or you clear adrenaline less quickly or you do this with oxytocin or you do that with serotonin. And, um, combining all of that together, I can't wait for AI to get its hands on the work that you've done and be able to feed in people's genetic data and then be able to say, "Based on other cases like mine and what you know about me, please give me the most likely best course of action that will allow me to regulate my very particular idiosyncratic c- cocktail of hormones."

   15. EKEthan Kross18:14

       I mean, this is in, in a v- in a, a very scaled down way, this is the work that we are currently doing in my lab.... which is to say we are trying to identify the patterns that characterize people's optimal regulation across different situations. W- we're doing it in a way that, for the literature, is super complex. But relative to what you just articulated, which is the dream, like, quite simplified. And I think we will get there, um, over the next several years, but we, we first have to do the work before we can give the actual answer. So-

   16. CWChris Williamson18:52

       Yes. Yeah. There's, uh, a little bit of a few steps to get there first.

5. 18:56 – 25:45

   Why Is The Modern World Environment Causing Anxiety?

   1. CWChris Williamson18:56

      Um, I guess one thing, even before we get into looking at the techniques, you've mentioned it a bunch of times, the emotion du jour of the modern world, anxiety-

   2. EKEthan Kross19:08

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:08

      ... the bogeyman of modern times.

   4. EKEthan Kross19:11

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:11

      What is it about anxiety and our experience of the modern world that has made it such a front and center emotion? What is it that's causing that particular... It could be anything. Everybody could be angry all the time-

   6. EKEthan Kross19:25

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson19:25

      ... or everybody could be depressed all the time. Everybody could be elated and joyful all the time. Have you thought about what it is that modern world environment causing anxiety so much?

   8. EKEthan Kross19:36

      Well, you know, this is a, this is such an interesting question and it comes up so much. And, um, on the one hand, it, it is very clear that if you look at the statistics surrounding the experience of anxiety, as well as a host of other negative experiences like loneliness, you know, they're all moving in the wrong direction in the sense that things seem to be getting worse. Um, on the other hand, you know, one of my favorite little detours while researching my book was to dive back into history to look at how we've thought about emotion regulation through the centuries. And it, it was really striking. Um, we have been grappling with our emotions for likely as long as we've been roaming the planet in our present form. So I'll just give you a few pieces of, of evidence to, um, you know, sink your teeth into. So, first surgical technique ever developed, or what we think is the first surgical technique ever invented, it's called trepanation, carving holes in people's skulls while they were still awake. What was one of the reasons why this technique was believed to be used? That's a cue up. What do you think?

   9. CWChris Williamson20:44

      Pressure, pressure in the brain, I think. Pressure in the head.

   10. EKEthan Kross20:49

       Yeah. Likely, but what else perhaps more germane to our conversation right now? Give you a little hint.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:56

       Uh, people felt anxious and the pain distracted-

   12. EKEthan Kross20:59

       Big-

   13. CWChris Williamson20:59

       ... them from it. (laughs)

   14. EKEthan Kross21:00

       Big dysregulated emotions, right? Like, you know, imagine you are just totally overcome with an emotion, and our, our theories of what might be causing that response were quite different back then than they are now. Maybe it had to do with some, you know, spiritual, demonic possession. Let's let it out, let the emotions out. You know, fast forward a couple of centuries, we used bloodletting to drain the toxic, you know, humors or the, the, the substance that was, that were causing these negative emotions. Um, you know, best-selling book of all time, the Bible, one of the most famous stories in that book, story of Adam and Eve, it's a story of emotion dysregulation. We've been grappling with this stuff for a really long time. So back to, like, what's going on right now. Look, the world is extremely turbulent. Um, technology is upending things in ways that we are still trying to make sense of. Um, it's likely multifactorial. But I think there's another point that we ought to consider, which is that our norms for talking about this have changed quite a bit, and technology likely has played a role in that too. So what do I mean by that? Um, when I was growing up, no one talked about... You know, you just mentioned, like, that you had gone to, uh, a course of psychotherapy for a while. Um, I, I'm not sure how old, how old you are, but-

   15. CWChris Williamson22:28

       36.

   16. EKEthan Kross22:28

       ... I'm curious. 36. Okay, so, um, so my guess is, like, when you were growing up in school, is that something that you would have just come out and blurted out?

   17. CWChris Williamson22:37

       Uh, probably not. I mean, I don't think I knew of anybody who was in therapy. Therapy, I think was for, you know, people that tried to throw themselves off a bridge or something.

   18. EKEthan Kross22:46

       So, so the norms here have powerfully, powerfully changed. I remember when my parents got divorced when I was, um, when I was 12 years old. My mom insisted that I, I go to see a social worker to talk about it. We went, I don't know, two or three times. And, you know, I went, but, you know, I, I remember saying to her, "If you tell anyone-"

   19. CWChris Williamson23:07

       (laughs)

   20. EKEthan Kross23:08

       "... that we have gone here, anyone..."

   21. CWChris Williamson23:10

       All the kids at school are gonna make fun of me. Yeah.

   22. EKEthan Kross23:11

       Right? Like, I was petrified. So I think because of the work that we have pushed to, like, de-stigmatize this, which is a really good thing, to be clear, we talk about this more openly. We maybe endorse having these experiences more openly than we did before. And I think that's another piece of, piece of the puzzle. So, um, you know, here's what I can say with confidence. Um, there's a lot of suffering right now. Uh, people are struggling with their emotions. I think people have always been struggling with their emotions. What fills me with hope is that we've got some science-based tools that we could share with people to, to actually help them. And these are, for the most part, or, you know, at least the ones that I talk about, they're... these are non-invasive tools. Here's another little tidbit that blows my mind, to use that technical phrase. Um, 1949, I believe it was, a Portuguese physician invents an emotion regulation intervention that wins him the Nobel Prize in Medicine. It is viewed as such an amazing advance that it wins the grandest prize in all of science and medicine.It is the frontal lobotomy.

   23. CWChris Williamson24:28

       (laughs)

   24. EKEthan Kross24:30

       I mean, doesn't... Isn't that... Isn't... Yeah, isn't that wild? Now clearly, these were for extreme cases of emotion dysregulation, not just, uh, the curveballs of life, which I hope it wasn't used too much for that purpose, but we've come a long way. Like, our- our understanding of what emotions are and how they work and how you can push them around, amplify, diminish them, extend them, pro- make them, you know, more constrained, like, vastly improved. That is something that is super exciting. But we don't, we don't teach people about this. So, you know, that's the other, the other question, um, that you gestured towards, like, why is it that we struggle so badly with this? Like, if we have these emotions, like, why aren't we actually reining them in more effectively? I never had a class in this growing up. Um, some of the things that I was actually taught growing up turns out are not correct. Like, I was taught to always, always approach my emotions immediately the moment they are elicited, dive in, try to fix them. Works in some cases. In other cases, taking some time away and then coming back can be really useful. So- so I think a big opportunity here is, like, let's give people the tools. See what that does

6. 25:45 – 34:51

   Ways We Can Control Our Emotions

   1. EKEthan Kross25:45

      to them.

   2. CWChris Williamson25:45

      I think, uh, you know, to go back to your analogy of, um, somebody who's not in shape or wants to start going to the gym, and you know that by going to the gym, there's gonna be these improvements that are made to you. It's funny how... And I find myself sometimes thinking in this way as well. My right arm doesn't move itself on its own. Like, uh, it's exclusively my volition. I'm moving this up and down. For the people that are listening, I'm waving at you, like, I'm- that's me. I'm choosing to do it. My mind doesn't feel like the same sort of place. My mind moves itself up and down and makes gestures in manners that-

   3. EKEthan Kross26:20

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson26:20

      ... I don't feel like the originator of.

   5. EKEthan Kross26:23

      Do you see what I just did? Sorry, I c- I- I cr- I was about to say, but my wife always tells me, "Don't point your finger!" It's just excitement. I'm just getting excited.

   6. CWChris Williamson26:32

      Yeah.

   7. EKEthan Kross26:33

      Um, thank you for that. Let's- let's address this. Um, um, I think this fundamentally has to do with, uh, whether we think we can actually control our minds or not, control our emotions or not. Are they under our control or are they in the driver's seat? And, you know, several years ago, I came across this study that just floored me. Approximately 40% of, in this case, I believe it was adolescents, when asked, "Can you control your emotions?" said, "No, you can't." I mean, you- you gave everyone who's listening or watching the name of my lab, The Emotion and Self-Control Lab. Like, viewing this finding was... I interpret it as like an- an existential threat.

   8. CWChris Williamson27:19

      Personal insult, yeah.

   9. EKEthan Kross27:20

      Yeah, it's like, what have I chosen to do with my life?

   10. CWChris Williamson27:22

       My life has been a lie. Yeah.

   11. EKEthan Kross27:24

       Yes, that's like, what i- what is happening here? I'm too young for the midlife crisis, right?

   12. CWChris Williamson27:29

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

   13. EKEthan Kross27:29

       And, um, and so I really kind of, um... You know, my advisor was a- a s- very wise, wise psychologist. I remember him always saying, like, "Listen to the data." And so I did. Like, what i- what could this possibly be capturing? And I spend a chapter talking about this in the book. There are facets of our emotional lives that we cannot control, and I now believe that with every iota of- of being that I am. Um, let me give you a couple examples. You ever brush up against someone who doesn't smell very good?

   14. CWChris Williamson28:07

       Yes.

   15. EKEthan Kross28:08

       Yeah? Do you have an automatic reaction when that occurs?

   16. CWChris Williamson28:12

       For me, I'm so, like, olfactory-pilled. If someone... Uh, this was, like, super common in, uh, fighting, Thai boxing, kickboxing. If someone just got their sweaty kit, threw it in their bag, and then put it back on again, it hadn't been aired, that sort of feisty, like, mildew kind of thing. I c- I mean, you might as well just knock me out if we're sparring in the ring, because I'm more concerned-

   17. EKEthan Kross28:33

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson28:33

       I'm way more concerned about your smell than I am about the- the gloves that you've got on.

   19. EKEthan Kross28:37

       Well, you know, it's not, it's not just you. This is a pretty, you know, automatic response that most of us have when we, when we encounter that kind of noxious response.

   20. CWChris Williamson28:46

       Disgust response.

   21. EKEthan Kross28:46

       And the- the inverse is true as well. Like, I just got back from overseas, and I- I w- was walking through the international terminal, and I walked through this store that I have relabeled the Emotion Regulation Emporium. Why have I relabeled it? 'Cause, like, all they s- sell are these sprays that we spritz all over us to manage how other people feel about us and how we feel about ourselves. Perfume and cologne, right? Like, you just get a whiff of that stuff and, ah. Let's go, let's go a little bit darker, though. That's, so that's one category of automatic responses. Like, I cannot control when I'm gonna encounter some, have some experience, a sensory experience-

   22. CWChris Williamson29:27

       Mm-hmm.

   23. EKEthan Kross29:28

       ... that pushes my emotions around. No control over that. What about, um... Or, I mean, I- I guess I could choose to evade certain people that might smell a certain way, but inevitably, I'm gonna come across someone. Um, let's talk about dark thoughts for a second. So, have you ever experienced a thought, it just popped up in your head just seemingly randomly. You have no idea why. But it's a dark thought of sorts. It's something that you wouldn't want to readily admit to someone else. You're kind of embarrassed by it. Ever happened to you?

   24. CWChris Williamson30:01

       If you could see the, if you could see the inner texture of my mind, Ethan, you would know how familiar I am with that, yeah.

   25. EKEthan Kross30:05

       (laughs) Well, you know, you are not alone. So, there's research on this that describes this as- as close to a universal experience. We have these thoughts that just pop up in our heads. We don't always know why. Sometimes, we could come up with explanations for it. I'll give you a fun example to stick with the, uh, physical fitness, um, example or, uh, comparison. So, when I'm in the gym-I will often have a thought when I'm carrying an exceptionally heavy dumbbell. It's, like, really heavy, just to be clear. When I'm carrying that dumbbell from one side of the gym to the next, I'll often imagine dropping it on a person's face that lies near my path. Like, that's a dark thought, right? Why am I thinking about dropping a dumbbell on someone else's face? It's probably adaptive, like I don't want to drop it on their face, so this is a thought that's cuing me into the possibility of what might happen if I do, so it leads me to switch arms. I don't have control. I'm not purposefully thinking about that, right? Other kinds of thoughts like that pop up all the time in all of our minds. I'll do an exercise when I'm teaching about this topic to my students, and I'll set up this, um, like Google form that will allow them... I'll, I'll ask them the same question I posed to you. "In the last couple of weeks, have you ever experienced a thought just popped up, you wouldn't want to tell someone else about it?" And, you know, it just comes up and you're... Write it into the field, and it's anonymous, and I can then see what the thoughts are. This is some, some dark stuff that we see coming up. So we don't have control always over the thoughts and feelings that arise spontaneously, but what we do have control over is how we engage with those thoughts and feelings once they are activated. That's the playground of emotion regulation.

   26. CWChris Williamson32:02

       Mm.

   27. EKEthan Kross32:03

       And so there is room for both of these interpretations, right? You tell me before, like, you don't feel. Like, you can move your... You can move your arm up and down pretty easily, it's under your control, but your emotions are not. Well, maybe it's the case that you can't control the feeling of anger or the emotional experience of anger or anxiety that... When it's elicited, but once it's activated, I assure you there are things that you could do to push that experience around, and that's the part to really home in on.

   28. CWChris Williamson32:33

       Yeah, I had a... I had this insight that I talked about in my live show last year which was you don't necessarily control the first order emotion, I called it, but this infinite regress of feeling bitter at your anxiousness, and then feeling resentment about your bitterness about your anxiousness, and then feeling anger about your resentment about your bitterness about your anxiousness. You know, this sort of d- d- t- t- t, it just keeps on going up and up and up. That is something you have to step into.

   29. EKEthan Kross33:01

       And I, I cannot tell you, I'm speaking... I'll, I'll give you a personal example and then I'll, I'll give you, uh, um, one from one of my kids actually. It is bleeping liberating, liberating, to know that, huh, I just felt a certain way. There's nothing wrong with me, right? This is just how human beings work, right? Like, I'm gonna experience a dark thought every now and then. I'm gonna experience some anxiety every now and again. I don't feel bad about myself when I find myself getting anxious about something. Instead I think, "Oh, this is, this is my, my mind giving me an edge here, and that allows me to channel that experience productively." So, um, couple years ago, my, my daughter switched over to a new school. It was more academically demanding. And I go into her bedroom and, and I notice she's, like, visibly distraught. And I could... I'm like, "What, what's going on?" So I... And so, (sighs) you know, she's, she's kind of like, "I don't know what's happening. Like, I feel it in my body and, like, I, I don't know what this is." And she was... It was basically an anxiety reaction, totally normal. She had a test the next day. This is her body and mind doing what it's supposed to be doing.

   30. CWChris Williamson34:17

       Mm.
7. 34:51 – 40:10

   How We Can Influence Our Internal State

   1. EKEthan Kross34:51

   2. CWChris Williamson34:51

      Yeah, I think, uh, just to continue the gym analogy, um, everybody knows that if you go to the gym and you work out, you will get fitter. Everybody knows, uh, and a lot of people believe, "I can influence my career, my trajectory," but inside of my head, that's kind of... Uh, for some reason, the only thing we do have direct control over, like literally our brain, uh, is outside of the purview of our ability to influence it, that kind of we're along for the ride and then we'll hopefully wrangle this unwieldy thing between our ears to get us to do what we want it to do. So let's say that somebody feels at the mercy of their emotions. How can you convince them that they can actually influence their internal state? What's the most compelling story and evidence that you can give them?

   3. EKEthan Kross35:36

      Well, let's... I mean, I would, I would take them through a few different, um, a few different shifters. Um, uh, and we could give plenty of examples if these aren't convincing. So, um, so let's start with one of my favorite shifters. I call the shifters these little, like, tools you can use to push emotion around. Let's start with sensation. Uh, you listen to music?

   4. CWChris Williamson35:57

      Of course.

   5. EKEthan Kross35:58

      Why?

   6. CWChris Williamson36:00

      Uh, it makes me feel good.

   7. EKEthan Kross36:02

      Okay.

   8. CWChris Williamson36:02

      Or sad, or better.

   9. EKEthan Kross36:03

      Okay. Okay. Okay, lo- stop, y- let's just stop with it makes you feel. You ask people this question of why we listen to music, close to 100% will say they listen to music 'cause they like the way it makes them feel. If you then ask people though, in other studies as we've done, "Last time you were anxious or angry or sad, what did you do to try to manage that emotion?" Only between 10 and 30% will say they've used music. Music is a powerful, powerful emotional shifter.... you get effects within seconds. They don't necessarily are, they're not necessarily long-lasting, but have you ever listened to, to music to, like, pump you up-

   10. CWChris Williamson36:40

       Mm-hmm.

   11. EKEthan Kross36:40

       ... when you're a little distressed? Did it work?

   12. CWChris Williamson36:42

       Yeah.

   13. EKEthan Kross36:43

       Like, it's like magic almost, how ef- how powerful it can be. So, you know, if you have doubts as to your ability to shift your emotions, I would do a little experiment where I would identify in advance a few pump-me-up happy songs and try listening to those when you're not feeling that way and want to feel that way. And observe what impact that has on you. That would be one, one thing you could try. Just to explain to folks, like, why this works, um, this is not, by the way, this effect that music has on our emotions is not exclusive to, to hearing. It's, it's a product of sensation. So sensation is, is how we bring in information about the world and make sense of it. Sensation perception. And, uh, I like to think of sensation as, like, imagine you had satellite dishes mounted all over your body and their sole job is to help you bring in information about your surroundings to give you the best chance of optimally navigating the world around you. And a big part of that is making sure you go where it's safe and not where it's dangerous. And so one of the ways that sensation works is it is tightly linked with emotion in the sense that when you encounter something that might be approach-oriented or might be threatening, it's activating the corresponding sets of emotions. All of our senses follow this property. So hearing, music, you know, like, look back in history, there are bands that accompany, um, militaries through battle. Like, that's kind of interesting if you think about it, right?

   14. CWChris Williamson38:27

       Mm-hmm.

   15. EKEthan Kross38:27

       You've got these, like, this is, uh, threatening. Doesn't get much more threatening than this, playing the music, right? Channeling our emotions. Um, you should, uh, you try, um... I don't know if people can do this quite easily, but if you ever, like, strip away the, the kind of soundtrack to films.

   16. CWChris Williamson38:47

       Mm.

   17. EKEthan Kross38:47

       We sometimes do this in studies. Like, it is wild.

   18. CWChris Williamson38:51

       Just to hear dialogue?

   19. EKEthan Kross38:53

       Yeah. Like, imagine Jaws without doo, doo, doo, doo, uh, you know-

   20. CWChris Williamson38:57

       (laughs)

   21. EKEthan Kross38:57

       ... I'm not go- I'll, I'll stop doing it right there. Or imagine, like, watching a sitcom without the laugh track. You don't, doesn't have the same punch. Um, taste. We don't probably need to spend too much time on taste, right? Think of something that tastes great. It's an emotional experience. Something that tastes foul, opposite direction. What about touch? Touch is a powerful tool. I call it, like, the, the, the technique of touch that I'm f- particularly fond of is, uh, affectionate but not creepy touch, which is to say when, when an, when an affectionate embrace is wanted between partners, parents and kids, there's a lot of research which shows that this could be a powerful tool for regulating your emotions very, very quickly. A creepy touch, of course, pushes us in the opposite direction. We gotta give people a disclaimer. So, you know, that's one set of examples that I would ask people to, to consider. Um, but we could keep going deeper and deeper, uh, through the toolbox to give more, um, instances in which there are things you could do to manage your emotions. Am I convincing you at all?

   22. CWChris Williamson40:09

       Absolutely.

8. 40:10 – 47:11

   Studies Into People Managing Their Emotions

   1. CWChris Williamson40:10

      Yeah. I think, um, another hammer to, uh, drive a nail into the coffin of why you should care about this and why you should believe, what studies have been done or what have you found about the differences in life outcomes between people who are good at managing emotions and people who are bad at managing emotions? Like, what is... But, yeah, 'cause, look, I, um, I saw this sentence the other day. Uh, I am unusually adept at living in a, uh, emotion calorie-controlled environment that, uh, my capacity for dealing with misery is greater than most people's, uh, uh, than, uh, it should be. And I think a lot of people almost wear that as a badge of honor. It's like, "Life is difficult, and I'm going to overcome it." And there's no, beyond the moment-to-moment sense of there not being that much joy, life outcomes don't really change all that much. In fact, in many ways, there's this sort of Protestant work ethic, like, sense of superior, "Well, look at all of the things that I'm overcoming." So I'm interested about what the differences are in life outcomes from people who are good at managing emotions and ones who are less good.

   2. EKEthan Kross41:15

      So, um, all right, let's get into that in a second. But I wanna just, um, frame why the motivational bit is so important here, or this belief that you can do it is so ultra, ultra important. It's the reason I started off this tools section of my book with this question of, can you really control your emotions? The reason why genuinely believing that there are facets to your emotional experience that are under your control is because if we zoom out, I think of managing one's emotions, there are two ingredients to the recipe for how to do that well. One is motivation and the other is ability. Let's start with motivation. If you're not motivated to manage your emotions, why would you take any efforts to even try to do so? It wouldn't make much sense. It's not logical, right? If there's nothing I can do to lose weight, why should I do this hard stuff of, like, lifting weights and going to the gym and paying for a membership? It just, you shouldn't and you likely won't, right? So step one is you need to have the motivation, the belief that you can manage your emotions. That's the first piece to this equation, and it's what our conversation is getting at right now. But that alone-... is not in and of itself sufficient because I can think, to go back to physical fitness, that, yeah, I can do stuff to get in shape. And then I go to the gym, and if I've never gone to the gym-

   3. CWChris Williamson42:50

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   4. EKEthan Kross42:51

      ... you know, I can start doing crazy things in there that actually cause more harm than good.

   5. CWChris Williamson42:55

      Mm-hmm.

   6. EKEthan Kross42:55

      So, you also need to understand what are the tools that you can use to then achieve that goal. And if you have both of those pieces, the motivation, "Hell yeah, I can do this," and you know how to do it, now we're talking business. So, done and done, so this gets to the other part of the question, right? So, okay, but... So, help me believe, Ethan, that it makes sense that we should care about this. If you look at, um, this one classic study, um, so this was a study done in New Zealand, and it was be-... it began in the early '70s, and what the researchers started doing is tracking this, um, this group of, of babies from the time they were just born. Every few years, they would profile these kids' ability to manage their emotions, and they would profile them in a very rigorous way. They would put the kids through different self-control tests. They would get their teachers and, and, and other people in their lives to report on how good they manage their emotions, and they'd get, like, really fine-grained assessments of how good these kids were. And then they would... Then they basically waited over time to see what does the capacity to manage your emotions in childhood and adolescence, what does it predict later on? When you fast-forward, what you find is it predicts pretty much most of the things that we care about in our lives. The kids who are good at managing their emotions, they're performing better at school, they're performing better at work. They're, they're healthier, too. Their organs are aging more slowly, right, than the people who are less good at self-control. And if you look at the mirror image, the kids who are not good at self-control, they're doing pretty poorly at work and in school. Their relation-... They're experiencing relationship difficulties, and their health is impoverished as well. Now, the other really thing that came out of that study that I find to be the most exciting finding, and it's actually not the finding that got the most attention, is that you might come away from that study thinking, "Well, either you got it or you don't."

   7. CWChris Williamson45:03

      Mm-hmm.

   8. EKEthan Kross45:04

      "Either you're good at managing your emotions..." It's, it's a choice.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:06

      Behavioral genetics all the way down.

   10. EKEthan Kross45:08

       Right. That's it. Like, "So why bother?"

   11. CWChris Williamson45:11

       Yep.

   12. EKEthan Kross45:11

       Well, what they al-... What the researchers also saw is that some kids changed over time in their ability to manage self-... Th- themselves. Some kids got better. Some kids got worse over time. The kids who got better, they fared better on all of these different metrics over time. The kids who got worse, they, their performance declined. So, what we learned from that study, number one, is that this really matters a great deal. Like, your ability to manage your emotions, it's e-... It, it's relevant to your ability to think and perform optimally at work. This is what's allowing you to divert your attention, to hunker down, to learn from critical feedback. It's impacting your relationships because... I don't know about you, but last time I came in, in, in contact with someone who wasn't very good at managing their emotions, like, they didn't have very good relationships with their friends and partners.

   13. CWChris Williamson46:01

       Mm-hmm.

   14. EKEthan Kross46:01

       They weren't great parents. And it's also impacting our health and well-being. The links between the inability to manage your emotions and all manner of psychological disturbances, as well as physical problems like cardiovascular disease, problems of inflammation, even certain forms of cancer.

   15. CWChris Williamson46:20

       Hmm.

   16. EKEthan Kross46:21

       All of those findings exist, but there's something you could do about it. Now, you mentioned you've been in, uh... You, you just completed a course of psychotherapy, right?

   17. CWChris Williamson46:31

       Correct. Correct.

   18. EKEthan Kross46:31

       And you're, and you're doing psycho-... You're doing CBT.

   19. CWChris Williamson46:33

       Correct.

   20. EKEthan Kross46:34

       I mean, th- these are, these are interventions that have a ton of evidence behind them. You could think about those activities as emotion regulation boot camp that have been tested over and over and over to show they have benefits for folks. Now, they don't work for everyone, as you probably well know.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:55

       Mm-hmm.

   22. EKEthan Kross46:55

       Right? They work for some people. And the hope that I have is that by giving people not just one category of tools, but by giving them the entire toolbox, we can expand the scope of people who these tools actually can benefit.

9. 47:11 – 52:49

   Balancing Our Emotions Through Life

   1. EKEthan Kross47:11

   2. CWChris Williamson47:11

      Yeah, I just want to kind of drill on that point. This is something I've been fascinated by. I think psychotherapy kind of put me on this trajectory, but your entire life's body of work has kind of been an obsession of mine for the last year or so. I think psychotherapy was part of that trajectory. Um, understanding feelings, I, I, I don't think that I was fully connected with the things that I was feeling in life, um, with my emotions, with sort of the felt sense of stuff. I'd be able to explain it rationally, but I don't think I was necessarily actually embodying it and, and tapping into it. And, um, one of the, I guess, s-... like, odd quirks of certain people's psychology, one of which is mine, is that if I hear you say you get... you're gonna live longer, and you're going to have happy relationships, and you're gonna have all of the rest of this stuff, like, the sort of, uh, external outcomes, those are compelling to me. But I do think that it's worth lingering just for a moment on the fact that your moment-to-moment experience of your life is almost exclusively determined by the emotions that you're feeling. 90% of the time, you're feeling an emotion, and if that is something which when intensity and duration is too high and something that shouldn't be there or has been there before or isn't serving you, um-... that this isn't a dress rehearsal. Like, this is it. You know, this is the one life that you're going to get. And to be honest, nobody is going to congratulate you on your deathbed for saying, "He suffered in silence." No one is going to give you that. This is the one shot that you've got to actually have some fucking fun, find some enjoyment in the biggest and smallest things that you do. And I just think that that point is one that often gets overlooked, because people are so used to negotiating with the world and its difficulties, uh, and, and building up resilience and discipline and all of those things. Like, hooray, great, good, good for that. You're gonna be less at the mercy of bad stuff. But, like, you also should be enjoying this, because it's gonna end pretty soon.

   3. EKEthan Kross49:32

      Oh, well, hopefully not that soon. But, um, but completely agree with this notion that our emotions are, are what makes life worth living, you know? We are this emotional species, and they are just fundamental to who we are on a moment-to-moment basis. Um, you know, when I think about the most salient experiences in my life, like, they're all emotional experiences. And so, look, I think there are reasons sometimes where we need to learn how to, um, endure difficult things, right? Delay immediate gratification in order to achieve bigger long-term goals. But we wanna balance that, right? We don't wanna find ourselves overcome with negativity all the time, too big, too long. This, this, this detracts from the experience of being human, and I think that's what you're getting at here, right?

   4. CWChris Williamson50:36

      Mm-hmm.

   5. EKEthan Kross50:37

      Like, we, we want... If, like, if we find ourselves, um, living emotional lives that we don't want to be living, then that is a cue to intervene, and I think most of us have that experience at times. So, like, I, I just got back from, from talking about this book for, like, two weeks all over the country, and, like, probably the most salient take-home point, people are suffering. People are struggling. Like, you name it. Whether it's, like, wildfires or infidelity or per- parental stress or loneliness, like, lots of different curveballs that life is throwing us, you know? It's like this batting machine that keeps on firing away curveballs and, and it just doesn't stop, and we've gotta figure out how to, how to hit them. Like, we've gotta figure out how to deal with those barrage, that barrage of insults, and there are things that you can do. Like, I get asked all the time, "Do I ever struggle with my emotions?" Yes, I am a human being. Like, last time I checked, of course I do. But what I am really good at is the moment I get triggered in some way, anxiety, sadness, rejection, whatever, envy, I have tools that I go to immediately. I don't have to stop and think, "Uh, what should I do?" And at other points in my life, I did stumble through it all, didn't quite know what to do. But now, because I understand how these work, I go right to them. They don't work every single time. 60% of the time, the first plan, the first three tools that I'll automatically implement, they get the job done. What about the other 40%? Well, I go deeper into the toolbox. I go to layer on a few other tools, that, that may nudge me up to 80%. What about the other 20%? You know, well, there's always room for, like, prayer. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm kidding, but-

   6. CWChris Williamson52:30

      (laughs)

   7. EKEthan Kross52:30

      ... but-

   8. CWChris Williamson52:30

      Yeah.

   9. EKEthan Kross52:30

      ... but, like, it's not foolproof, but it's, it's pretty good.

   10. CWChris Williamson52:34

       Mm-hmm.

   11. EKEthan Kross52:34

       Right? Like, because I have plans, I know what to actually do, and, um, and that's just not something that I think a lot of people have, and I think that's the, that's the opportunity here for really having impact.

10. 52:49 – 1:02:09

    Recognising And Utilising Our Sensory Shifters

    1. EKEthan Kross52:49

    2. CWChris Williamson52:49

       I think that was, uh, that's the point I was trying to make earlier on that my hand doesn't move itself on its own, but the thoughts and my inner voice do. Uh, and it's that sense of helplessness, right? That not only did I not... I, I don't feel like I architected this thought. Like, tell, tell me what the next thought that's going to pop into your head is going to be. "You can't do it." "You don't know what it's going to be." And then, on top of that... So, first off, I didn't originate this thing, although I kind of did, and then I identify with it, and it's me, but it's also not me, 'cause it came from somewhere that wasn't me. And then, I don't know how to get rid of it. So I'm like, "Hey, I'm, like, the, the, uh, fucking prisoner and the prison guard of this same issue." Um, so look, we've, we've done an entire hour hopefully convincing people, uh, emotions are important. You can change them, and there are going to be some tools. Second hour, let's get into some of the shifters that you talk about. So first one, sensory shifters. What about them?

    3. EKEthan Kross53:48

       Okay, so sensory shifters focus on the senses, um, hearing, sight, sound, touch. Uh, those, those are some... Smell. Those are some of the, the big ones. Um, these are all levers that you can strategically pull to push your emotions in another direction. We talked a little bit about how music can do it. Um, uh, you know, uh, in terms of just blindness, I, I will say I was totally blind to the power of sensation prior to doing some research in this space. And now that I know it, it, it just changes the way I operate on a daily basis. Like, here's, uh, my little emotion regulation machine that I keep in my pocket. It is loaded up with playlists to push my emotions in different directions. I have been listening to music since I'm five years old. Um, uh, I've, I've said this on previous, during previous interviews, so I don't know if you've heard this or not, but do you wanna guess, if you don't know, what my first-... tape was. This was a cassette record, a ca- uh, a cassette. Profile me, it's fine. What do you think?

    4. CWChris Williamson54:54

       Ah, pfft, pfft, pfft. Stevie Ray Vaughan.

    5. EKEthan Kross54:58

       MC Hammer, you guessed.

    6. CWChris Williamson55:01

       (laughs)

    7. EKEthan Kross55:01

       (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson55:02

       Oh my God, and it all went downhill from there.

    9. EKEthan Kross55:05

       Well, but I've always been, uh, uh, very eclectic, 'cause, uh, after that it was Madonna's Immaculate Collection and, and I, and I'm all over the place. I, I, I, I like, love lots of music. But I've been listening to music all my life and I never thought to use it strategically as a tool to push my emotions around until I had this experience with my daughter. Um, I'm coaching soccer several years ago, I look forward to this every weekend. It's like my release. Not because I'm obno- I'm an obnoxious soccer dad, mind you, it's just very different from my day job. And, uh, and this one morning she's just in a... I think I can say it without hurting her feelings, she'd admit that, she's in a foul mood, right? She just doesn't wanna go play. She's moping around. I do everything I can to break her out of this funk, unsuccessfully. I succumb. I'm like, "All right, this is gonna be a long morning." We get in the car, as we're driving on the way to the soccer field one of my favorite songs comes on the radio, Journey's Don't Stop Believin'. I start jamming out. I'm, like, bopping my head, um, I'm leaning into the song and normally when I do this she will look at me with disdain because I'm embarrassing her. But I look at her in the rearview mirror and I see she is, she's kinda getting into it as well. This song had rerouted our collective experience in that vehicle. She went on to score a ton of goals. It was a great day. Since that moment, this is one of the first things I will do if I find myself moving in a direction I don't wanna be moving. Now, what's really interesting to me about music, we often, we often use this tool to regulate ourselves but in a way that is not consistent with our goals. And what do I mean by that? You ever get sad and find yourself, rather than listening to Journey, you go to... Well, Journey's Don't Stop Believin', you go to another one of their, their so- their songs, like, or you go to Adele or some other music to just kind of bring you down a little bit more?

    10. CWChris Williamson57:09

        Lewis Capaldi is my go-to, yeah.

    11. EKEthan Kross57:12

        Okay, so now we talked earlier about there being a functionality to sadness. And if your goal is to stay in that emotional state because it's serving you well, it's helping you reframe things in ways that are ultimately productive, great, keep listening to that music. But if your goal is to not feel sad, don't go listen to that song; go in the opposite direction. So, you know, that's a little insight into how sensation can work. But all of the sensory channels can be leveraged to shift your emotions. You don't want to abuse them 'cause they are so powerful, we often reflexively go to them. Um, there are obviously some, um, unhealthy forms of sensory experiences that we can engage in that, that can push us in the wrong direction, uh, emotional overeating as an example.

    12. CWChris Williamson58:06

        Mm.

    13. EKEthan Kross58:06

        Um, so you wanna be aware that this is a tool and you wanna wield it carefully. Probably the easiest low-effort tool that exists in our toolbox are the sensory shifters, and that's just one category. Um, should we shift to another one? Should I keep it-

    14. CWChris Williamson58:24

        Uh, shift.

    15. EKEthan Kross58:25

        Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson58:25

        Um, I just... Give me, for, uh, touch, taste, and smell, um, give me your favorite non-invasive, usually makes people feel better ideas.

    17. EKEthan Kross58:41

        So touch, you know, if it's someone at work, I do one of those, I do a fist bump. I mean, it just, it, it signals that there's someone there who's on your team, right? And I've not gotten any HR complaints from doing that, um, just yet. But, like, you know, an innocuous fist bump, it's just like a, it's like shaking a hand almost, right, um, without the concern about transmission of germs. Um, but, but certainly where is touch used, um, most in my life? It's, it's with my loved ones, my friends. Like, if I see my wife is, um, dealing with some stuff, like, I'll go over to her and I'll just kinda rub her back, and I'll do the same for my kids. Um, and I value when they do that for me. Uh-

    18. CWChris Williamson59:26

        Is putting on a, like, a particularly comfortable blanket or a piece of clothing, would that count as one as well?

    19. EKEthan Kross59:31

        Yeah, there's some, there's some, there's some work suggesting that, like, s- um, soothing sensory experiences of the sort that you're describing can have benefit, benefit as well.

    20. CWChris Williamson59:41

        More powerful to do it with another person though, I'm going to guess.

    21. EKEthan Kross59:45

        That, I don't know that they... I don't know of studies that have compared the different kinds of sensory experiences but if you ask me for my professional opinion, yes, I would think so.

    22. CWChris Williamson59:51

        Get me on the journal, get me on the journal, Ethan. Let's, let's fucking-

    23. EKEthan Kross59:54

        Yes.

    24. CWChris Williamson59:54

        ... let's run, let's run this up together is my idea.

    25. EKEthan Kross59:56

        We've, we've, we've gotta g- we've gotta get you in a, in the PhD program

    26. NANarrator59:59

        ... you certainly have, Ethan.

    27. CWChris Williamson59:59

        I'm doing a, I'm doing my first ever... I, I will be authored on my first ever study. I came up with an idea, um, talking about how I thought fit people would have more of an aversion to Ozempic users than plus size people, uh, because it derogates the fitness signals that they achieved with hard work, uh-

    28. EKEthan Kross1:00:19

        Ah.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:00:19

        ... and gives people a, an easy route. And, um, I'm gonna do that with, uh, Candice Blake and Macken Murphy over in Australia. So I'm, I'm legitimate.

    30. EKEthan Kross1:00:27

        Ah, fascinating.
11. 1:02:09 – 1:09:47

    Benefits And Dangers Of Avoidance

    1. CWChris Williamson1:02:09

       when you've got stuff to do, yeah. Uh-

    2. EKEthan Kross1:02:10

       I was thinking more about eating pizza at 10:00 PM but, um, if, but, you know, uh, the bath is, is better.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:15

       In the bath for three an a half hours.

    4. EKEthan Kross1:02:16

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:02:16

       Uh- (laughs)

    6. EKEthan Kross1:02:16

       There's, there's some feedback mechanisms that prevent that from happening in the bath.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:02:20

       (laughs)

    8. EKEthan Kross1:02:20

       It's called pruning. You may be aware. (laughs)

    9. CWChris Williamson1:02:23

       Yeah.

    10. EKEthan Kross1:02:23

        Um-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:02:23

        Yeah, yeah, it's called the kids needing to be put to bed. Okay, next one.

    12. EKEthan Kross1:02:26

        That too.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:02:26

        Attention shifters.

    14. EKEthan Kross1:02:28

        Okay. So here's, here's the deal with the attention. Here's the, here's the, the high level, I think, critically important take home. Many of us, myself included, off- are often taught when you have a problem, you dive in, you deal with it immediately. You don't run away, you approach. We often, we also hear that chronically avoiding problems, not good, gets you into all sorts of trouble. It is absolutely true that chronic avoidance, and what I mean by that is if a problem arises, your coping tactic, your strategy is just like bury it, move on, deny, suppress, and just keep going, lots of data showing that that does not work out so well for folks, um, predicts all sorts of negative outcomes over time. What we have done though is we have over-generalized from that observation that chronic avoidance is bad to assume that all avoidance is bad, and that is not true. Being strategic between how we engage with things that are troubling us, approaching and avoiding, going back and forth can be a really, really useful approach to managing difficult circumstances. You don't have to actually choose between approaching or avoiding. You can do both. Now, there are lots of very, very simple examples, simple illustrations, I think, of the value of this. So have you ever benefited from, like, getting an email that just pissed you off and not responding right away, but, like, you took some time away, couple of hours or a couple of days, you come back to it and one of two things happens? Either, "Huh, what was the big deal in the first place? Like, who cares?" Or you can look at it from a different perspective, right? You've got some, the, the, the psychological distance-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:04:22

        Mm-hmm.

    16. EKEthan Kross1:04:22

        ... that taking some time away has provided you with allows you to approach this a little bit more objectively. I'm guessing both of those have probably been true for you, right?

    17. CWChris Williamson1:04:31

        Yeah. One of the things that's been really interesting around that is if a, a clip from an old episode or a tweet that I sent a long time ago, if somebody gets ahold of that and takes offense to it, I don't know why, but it feels way less, uh, emotionally aggravating if it was something from two years ago than if it's something that I tweeted today. And-

    18. EKEthan Kross1:04:56

        Right.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:04:56

        ... there's ju- and so that's kind of not too dissimilar to what you're talking about.

    20. EKEthan Kross1:04:58

        Yeah, absolutely.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:05:00

        It's like why, why, 'cause that's still me, right? I still said it. But there's some amount of distance that, that's gone away from it-

    22. EKEthan Kross1:05:07

        That's right.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:05:07

        ... that makes it feel less strong, less powerful.

    24. EKEthan Kross1:05:10

        Yeah. So, so as you get distance, um, you've got psychological distance from those experiences. The passage of time gives you that psychological distance. It gives you that mental space.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:05:24

        On that point, that sounds great. But what if you're just spending the next two days ruminating about that fucking email and that fucking guy that sent that fucking email, and you're like, "Well, I, I, it's great that I've given myself this psychological distance-"

    26. EKEthan Kross1:05:38

        Well, and-

    27. CWChris Williamson1:05:38

        "... but all I've done is been in two days of turmoil."

    28. EKEthan Kross1:05:41

        And, and, and this is why we don't just have attention as a shifter, but we also have sensation, perspective-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:05:49

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    30. EKEthan Kross1:05:49

        We have people shifters, we have space shifters, and culture shifters. So you don't have to choose between just either avoiding or approaching, but you also don't have to choose between just doing one of those-
12. 1:09:47 – 1:21:36

    Tactics For Psychological Distancing

    1. EKEthan Kross1:09:47

       cool thing here is that there are many different tactics that exist for reflecting on ourself and our circumstances from a distance. They don't come with a user's guide, but once you know it, like, these are my go-to, I call them my psychological jujitsu moves. So, all right, mental time travel. "I'm struggling right now, I'm really feeling whatever," fill in the blanks, "How am I gonna feel about this next week, next month, next year?" All of our experiences follow an, um, not all, nearly all of our emotional experiences follow a nat- uh, the same time course, temporal trajectory if you wanna geek out with me. Here's what happens. Something happens, boom, emotions go up, and as time goes on, the emotion fades. Depending on the experience, some go way up, some a little bit, some take longer, some recover more quickly, but nearly all of them follow that trajectory. We lose sight of that when we're in the midst of it. When we're in the cauldron, we zoom in on the awfulness, we forget that as time passes things will settle down a bit. When you jump into the time travel machine, "How am I gonna think about this? How am I gonna feel tomorrow, next week, next month, 10 years from now?" it speeds up. You don't have to wait for time to pass because you get to the, "Oh, it's five years from now, what am I gonna think about this argument I just had?" What that does is it highlights the fact that what you're going through is, is temporary, it's unstable.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:11:16

       Mm-hmm.

    3. EKEthan Kross1:11:16

       It will eventually fade. That turns the volume down on our emotions, right? So that's time travel into the future. Go into the past, you could do this, it works a little bit differently. I find it to be equally effective. So shit hits the fan, things aren't going well, mental time travel machine, 1943, Eastern Poland. Get out, I spend some time with my grandparents, like, evading the Nazis in the frozen Polish woods. Like, I don't have to spend much time with them back then to realize that what I'm going through now, come on, this pales in comparison to what they had to endure. It's a powerful, powerful way of putting my adversity in, in perspective. Now, to be clear, these little jujitsu moves, these are not taking a negative experience and turning it into a tea party. What they are doing is they're turning the volume down on the negativity, allowing me to reengage, be objective, and get on with things. Those are two distancing tactics. I'm gonna throw, um, two more at you really quick 'cause these are just very tactical moves here. Um, one of my favorite tools, distant self-talk. Coach yourself through a problem silently, very important, silently, using your name and you. "All right, Ethan, how are you gonna deal with this? Here's what you're gonna do." We are much better at giving advice to other people than we are giving advice to ourselves. We are all giant hypocrites at some level. Uh, this is not just me who says this, right? I mean, think about the phrase, "Do as I say, not as I..."

    4. CWChris Williamson1:12:52

       Do.

    5. EKEthan Kross1:12:53

       Right? Like, w- we're all familiar with that phrase. When you use the word you and your name to coach yourself through a problem, you're using language to shift your perspective. Most of the time we use the word you-

    6. NANarrator1:13:08

       I. When we, so when we think about and refer to someone else, right? Yeah. I is when we think about ourself. You is someone else. So when I'm talking to myself with you, it's putting me in this advice coaching mode, if you will. Mm. This is how I talk to someone else. I'm really good at giving advice to other people. Not so good about giving advice to myself. So distant self-talk. And, um, and the last tool I'll mention here, the last distancing tool, uh, it's not the only one, but the last one that I'm fond of. Um, it's a bit of a, how can I... It's, um, it's a bespoke tool. Um, do you speak any second languages? Just British English and American English. That's it. Okay. I don't know if this will, if this will work for you, but, um, many people who speak a second language that is totally distinct from their main, and I wouldn't say British and English are, find that cursing in a second language doesn't quite have the same level of indignity and inappropriateness. So it's a lot easier... You know, you, you, you can, you can cr- uh, Spanish is my, is my second language, as you know very well from our last, our last conversation. Um, it's easy for me to curse in Spanish, and there's nothing, there's nothing, doesn't seem as, as bad... Mm-hmm. ... as when I, I curse in my native tongue, which I'm reluctant to do. Um, so what research shows is that when you think through emotional problems in a second language, you have some mental space from the emotions. You've got some distance from them. Oh, that's so interesting. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah, that's great. I was reading a study, uh, recently looking at, um, patients who have had some sort of brain trauma, and their primary or secondary language had been impacted, but their secondary or primary language hadn't. Mm. Uh, sort of showing that different languages can exist in sort of different portion- Yeah. ... portions of the brain. And, um, it kind of makes sense with regards to this, that we're just activating... And I've, I've got to assume that the primary language is going to be the one that's going to have the greatest sort of s- sense of self-authorship, "This is me." That's right. You got it. "It's part of my sense of self." You're learning your em- you're learning about your emotions. You're having these emotional experiences in your native language, not your secondary. So when- This is the best justification for learning Spanish that I've ever heard. (laughs) Really? W- not, not my ability to skillfully walk you through the conundrum you faced in Guatemala? I, uh, we together as a team navigated a very, how do you say, a very forthcoming, very keen maid in the hotel. (laughs) Uh, who came and put water next to me. (laughs) So I, I, I think I tried to say, like, uh, "Una hora," like, "One hour," and she said, "Agua? Sí." (laughs) And he came over, and I'm like, "No! It fucking water w-" Nevermind. We left it in the episode. Um- Point. ... just before we finish up on the attention thing, what was that NASA astronaut training thing? Oh, so, so, um, so one of the stories I tell is of, um, of this astronaut/cosmonaut. Um, so this is someone who, um, is an American, became an astronaut, but then also tranged with... uh, not changed. Also trained with the Russian cosmonauts because he lived on the, the Mir Space Station for, for several months. And while he was on the space station, he, he had to deal with one of the worst space fires in history, and this fire just happened out of nowhere. And one of the things he reported doing as he was trying to navigate this terrifying moment where, like, this fire is raging, and you know, might spell the end of him and his fellow, uh, cosmonauts, is he starts coaching himself through the problem using, using his name and you. So he starts using distant self-talk in, in a moment of heightened stress. And there are lots of illustrations of this. Um, few Wimbledons ago, uh, Djokovic when he was, um, early on during the tournament was getting, uh, getting beat pretty badly by, um, by an opponent. He takes a break, goes to the bathroom, and comes out of the bathroom, and he's just, like, a bat out of hell, and he, like, demolishes his opponent, wins. I think he went on to win the entire tournament after that. And after the, after the match, someone asked him, "Hey," you know, like, "What happened in the bathroom, um, when you took a break?" And he's like, "I, I gave, I coached myself through the problem. I gave myself advice. I said, 'You can do it. The match isn't over. You got this.'" It was like textbook case of using this tool to coach himself through the problem. Tons of examples of this. Malala Yousafzai talking about dealing with the threat of the Taliban, reported doing this too. I had a, the first live tour that I did year and a half ago, the Manchester show was the biggest one of the, of the tour. It was the biggest crowd that I'd ever been in front of. The, uh, venue was brighter, and it had a higher ceiling, and sound wasn't quite so great. And it had all of my friends there. It was the closest one to the city that I was from in the UK. So Mom and Dad were there, and my business, ex-business partner was there and all of these people and all of this stuff. And, uh, I, I just wasn't happy with how the first half went, and there's an interval for 15 minutes. And, um, uh, without having read your book, because it was before it was even written, um, I went and had, m- had a word with myself, uh, for five minutes in the mirror. I was like, "Look, if you're not having fun now, like what the fuck are you doing? You've got people here that love you. Everybody wants to see you succeed. They're not an adversary. There's nothing to fear. This can't go wrong. It, you're already, you've already done the thing. You've sold out this venue on your f-" but, you know, a lot of sort of positive reinforcement. "Think about all of the prep that you've done. Think about how meaningful these ideas are to you. Go out there and enjoy it." And, uh, in some ways it kind of feels a bit silly, because I don't know, it's just w- it, there's a, a certain amount of pitifulness, I think, when you're talking to yourself and you're like, "God, I wish that this was somebody else," or whatever, and you go, "Hey man-"

    7. CWChris Williamson1:19:18

       ... fucking no one else is coming to do this. Uh, it- it's one of those unique challenges that is exclusively yours to bear and nobody will care if you don't do it. It's just on you. And, uh, that was a- that was a moment that came to mind for me.

    8. EKEthan Kross1:19:32

       Well, I- well, I love that. It's a perfect illustration, and it does seem, on the one hand, yeah, but w- we're talking to ourself, but, like, let's think about, for a moment, the things we sometimes say to ourself when we're struggling. We say things to ourself, we think things about ourself that we would never dare offer to another human being, let alone someone we want to succeed. My buddy comes to me, my daughters come to me, my wife comes to me with a problem, like, I'm giving them the most constructive advice I possibly can. Doesn't mean I'm always being unrealistic with them and telling them ... But I'm- I'm- I'm trying to always support them to the best extent possible.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:20:13

       As opposed to, "This always happens with you, you're useless. Look at the last time Yeah. "You, you, useless, you suck."

    10. NANarrator1:20:18

        "You suck."

    11. CWChris Williamson1:20:18

        Yep.

    12. EKEthan Kross1:20:18

        You- there's no way you've ... I- I would- I would never do that. Yet, oftentimes, lots of people default to doing that with themself, and so, by- by switching the pronouns that we're using to refer to ourself and using our name even, it's- it's- it's automatically putting us into this more constructive advice giving mode, and it's- it's a simple thing to do. It's what I love about so many of these tools. If- if you know what they are, boom. I mean, how long does it take me to- to think of, "All right, Ethan, how are you gonna do, how are you gonna feel about this next week?" Kind of guiding.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:20:54

        Oh, nice, nice little combination. I like that.

    14. EKEthan Kross1:20:56

        And I- and that's a blend. We don't know enough about blends either, but I blend the two together.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:21:01

        Mm-hmm.

    16. EKEthan Kross1:21:01

        Quite- quite frequently. So- so we just covered, like, the three what I call internal shifters; sensation, attention, and perspective, and there are lots of tactics within those. These are things that you could do. Wherever you are, you have those tools within you. But then here's the beauty of the human condition. We also have th- these shifters around us in our relationships with other people, in our physical environments, and in our cultures, and those are even more places that you could find resources to help yourself.

13. 1:21:36 – 1:26:55

    Can These Tools Help Provide A Change On Our Outlook?

    1. EKEthan Kross1:21:36

    2. CWChris Williamson1:21:36

       Yeah. I wanted to sort of interject there and, uh, maybe front run a potential concern or criticism that some of the more, uh, diligent I-can't-change-my-emotions, uh, holdouts might have. A lot of this, so far, feels like sort of a top-down dictation, uh, which doesn't change the way that we feel, but it changes the story that we tell ourself about how we're feeling. I- is there anything about sort of getting a little deeper, about, um, actually sort of tapping into the- the feeling, or are you- is it just surprising when you deploy these tactics about how much of a, um, how permeable you are, uh, when you start to do this sort of stuff?

    3. EKEthan Kross1:22:19

       You know, I- I think you do get deep change, um, with some of these tools. Um, you know, and I think, um, it obviously varies person to person and by circumstances, but the sensory experiences, I think you get really deep, deep shifts. They may not be long-lasting, those sensory shifts, but sometimes a temporary reprieve is what we need to then either use another tool or get back on track. Um, you know, just think about the- the- the sweaty Muay Thai fighter. I mean, like, that's a po- that's a deep experience, emotional experience, I'm guessing, you had or you've had when that occurs.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:22:59

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    5. EKEthan Kross1:23:00

       Um, you know, likewise with- with attention, right? Like, being able to divert your attention away from something that's bothering you onto a really immersive alternative experience. It- you can think of attention, it's your mental spotlight, like, what are you looking at, right? If you change what you're looking at from something that is causing distress to something that is causing maybe the opposite, this is gonna change that emotional experience. Perspective, in some ways, that's- I think that's the shifter that lends itself most vulnerable to the critique that you just offered.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:23:41

       Yeah.

    7. EKEthan Kross1:23:41

       But let's not misinterpret that vulnerability as an indictment as to the power of that tool. In many ways, it might be one of our most precious tools. So, when we gotta look at something really hard and now reframe it, right? It's very hard to take something that is a giant negative and make it a giant positive.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:24:06

       Mm-hmm.

    9. EKEthan Kross1:24:06

       We don't see that happening very often. What we do see happening is taking something that is negative and reframing it to make it more manageable. Being able to do that, that is not ... Like, the fact that we don't take it to be a super positive, like the loss of a loved one or an immense rejection, um, I think that's impractical. And I think there are probably good reasons why you wouldn't want to be able to do that. I- I- I- I have come across certain people in my life, and I'm speaking f- speaking from anecdote here, who are exceptionally adept, almost pathologically so, at reframing a really, really bad thing just totally positive, and as a result-

Episode duration: 2:06:43