The Secret Life Of Emotions - Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett

1. 0:00 – 5:19

   Are Our Emotional Experiences Unique?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      How unique is the way that we all experience emotions? Is your experience of anxiety or anger or joy the same as mine, or different?

   2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett0:12

      Well, I think the proper question to start with is, your experience of joy on one occasion exactly the same as your experience of joy on another occasion? And I think what we know is the answer is no, it isn't. That joy or anger or any other word for emotion really refers to a population of instances that are variable. Not infinitely variable, but variable and tied to the situation that you're in. So sometimes anger is pleasant and sometimes it's unpleasant. Sometimes it's, you know, you're full of energy during anger, and other times you're not. Sometimes your blood pressure goes up, sometimes it goes down, sometimes it stays the same, depending on what actions you're taking. And your actions differ in anger, right? People scowl in anger about 35% of the time, which is more than chance. But that means 65% of the time people express anger in this culture, in Western cultures, actually I should say in urban cultures, because it's in the East and the West, um, that this is, um, meta-analytic evidence, um, 65% of the time you're doing something else with your face in anger. You know, you might smile in anger, you might cry in anger, you might sit silently and plot the demise of your enemy in anger. And half the time when you scowl, you're not angry. You're feeling something else. So the point being that, you know, all this variation is not random, but it's not, um, but it's not... You know, anger isn't one thing, joy isn't one thing. So when you ask the question, "Is your experience of joy the same as mine?" I think what you mean is, to say, is, um, your vocabulary of joy the same as mine? Is your distribution of joy, is your population of instances the same as mine? And, um, probably not. But there, there has to be enough overlap that we can communicate about it or else we wouldn't be communicating. Right?

   3. CWChris Williamson2:13

      That suggests that the breadth of language that you have to be able to describe the things that you're feeling unlocks, in some way, or enables you to have a deeper or richer emotional experience.

   4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett2:28

      Yeah, I think the, the, you know, the focus on words, on language is there, but it's, language isn't really the point. The point is your ability to, um, h- your concepts or your knowledge. So that tends to be linked to words. But words aren't really necessary. I think this is a constant confusion that people have, that if you just label your experience differently, you know, you'll have a richer experience. And that's not true at all. Um, but it does tend to be the case that words are invitations to learn concepts, they're invitations for knowledge. That's how they work. And the more vocab, the larger your vocabulary is, the more concepts you probably have, and that's what's going to lead to a richer emotional life.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:18

      What's a better way to think about emotional richness beyond just the words?

   6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett3:23

      Well, really what's happening under the hood is that your brain is receiving signals from the sensory surfaces of your body, from your eyes, from your ears, from your nose, and all the surfaces inside your body for glucose and oxygen and, you know, s- the stretching of muscles or the contraction of muscles and so on. So your brain is being flooded really with these signals, and it has to make sense of these signals. And the way that it does is by calling on instances or reinstating instances from the past that are similar to the present. A group of things which are similar to one another is called a category, and a representation of a category is a concept. So basically, your brain is making meaning out of signals. Your brain doesn't know what an increase in heart rate means in some, there is no objective meaning, psychologically speaking, of a raise, of a increase in heart rate. Your brain has to make sense of that. And the more varied experiences you have in the past, the more words or concepts that you, the more words you know, the more concepts you've learned, gives you more flexibility for making meaning. So in the same way that, um, you know, a basket can be something to carry vegetables in or it could be a weapon or it could be a door prop or, you know, you could use it as a chair if you needed to, that is the structure, you could make meaning of it in a lot of different ways by acting on it in different ways, in different situations, to suit your goals. The same is true for an increase in heart rate, (laughs) right? Or a flash of light or a loud sound. You have some, you don't have infinite flexibility, but you have some flexibility in how you create meaning, and that is ultimately what your emotional life derives from.

2. 5:19 – 10:46

   What is the Role of Meaning in Emotion?

   1. CWChris Williamson5:19

      What's the role of meaning here? How, how does that slot in, in amongst sensation, emotion, story? W- w- w- where does it fit?

   2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett5:29

      Well, you know, well, I think the, the way to understand this is, it's a little counterintuitive, but basically your brain is trapped inside a dark, silent box called your skull. And it's receiving these sensory signals which are the outcomes or the effects of some set of causes in the world or in your own body. But your brain doesn't have access to the causes. It only has access to the outcomes, to the effects. This is what philosophers call an inverse problem. You have to guess...... at what the- what caused some outcome. You only know what the outcome is, you don't know what the cause is. So for example, you hear a loud bang. That loud bang could be a door slamming, or it could be thunder, or it could be a gunshot. What- how you make sense of it is first and foremost by preparing an action. You'll do different things if it's windy or if it's about to rain, um, or if you, or if there's, you know, somebody's firing a gun n- near you. Um, your brain first makes a plan for action, and the literal copies of those signals become your brain's guesses for what your, what you will hear n-next, what you will see next, what you will feel next. So sensation (clears throat) doesn't lead to action. Preparation for action leads to sensation, right? You don't, you don't rea- you don't detect things in the world and then react to them. Your brain is making a guess about what's gonna happen next. It, that guess begins as an action, as a preparation for motor movements in your body to support the movements of your skeletal motor system, your arms, your legs, your eyes, you know? And the copies, the electrical copies of those signals, as literally neurons are going down to the body to s- bring motor signals and the cop- and then collaterals off those axons, other sig- they are sent to the other, different parts of your brain to, um, prepare for those incoming signals from the body and from the sensory services of the body. So meaning, it means, i- is really about what you take the signalscape that is around you to mean. What it, what does it, what does it demand of you, um, metabolically? What does it demand of you in terms of action? That's what determines your experience, uh, your lived experience of yourself in the world.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:22

      Okay, so things happen, black box detects what has occurred to us from those things that are happening.

   4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett8:30

      Well, your, your brain isn't a black box. It's in a dark box. Your brain is, has intrinsic signaling going on all the time.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:38

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett8:38

      It's, yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson8:40

      Brain inside a black box.

   8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett8:41

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson8:41

      Uh, we have experiences from the past. Because of those experiences, we use those to say, "Hey, this kind of thing happened previously. Therefore, I can infer, I can predict that looking forward, it also means this thing. The last time that that thing happened, the last-

   10. LBLisa Feldman Barrett8:58

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson8:58

       ... time that a big dog came up to me, uh, I got bit. Therefore, this is the appropriate sort of response."

   12. LBLisa Feldman Barrett9:06

       Yes, and you prepare. So you're predicting that the, that the dog might bite you, so y- you prepare for a set of changes inside your body to support the movements of your body, and you also prepare, your s- your brain starts to prepare the experience that corresponded to those actions last time. Every action that you take, every experience that you have is a combination of what's in your head, the remembered past that we, you know, our prediction signals basically, and the sensory present, the signals that are, um, informing you about the state of the, of your own body and the state of the world. Every experience is a combination of the remembered past and the sensory present. And in an in, in a, in an instance, it could be a little more of one or a little more of the other or a lot of one (laughs) or a lot of the other. Um, but the point is that the remembered past, what's happened to you in the past, is fundamentally what your brain is using, your experiences from the past to make sense of, to predict the future, which will become your immediate present.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:22

       Well, if our brain is constantly predicting, how much of our life is actually experienced versus just anticipated?

   14. LBLisa Feldman Barrett10:29

       Well, you're making a distinction. I'll sort of pick at the premise of your question there, which is that there's a distinction between anticipating and experiencing. And all experience is partly anticipation.

   15. CWChris Williamson10:44

       That's a good... Okay, may- maybe I could put it a different

3. 10:46 – 19:26

   Lisa’s Views on Objective Perception

   1. CWChris Williamson10:46

      way. Is there any such thing as sort of true objective perception then? D- do we, are we always seeing things-

   2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett10:54

      Well, you really get right to the point, yeah, like that's like, usually people, you know, they ease into that. That's a big, uh, metaphysical question. They kind of ease into it, right? So, um, well, are you asking me for- (clears throat) my opinion or are you asking me for what I think the brain, what neuroscience says? Or do you want me to lay out the whole metaphysical, like, landscape for you?

   3. CWChris Williamson11:17

      No, your, your opinion. We've, I think, I think the, the obvious place that people arrive at at the moment is, "Wow, I, I really sort of molest the present moment a lot between it happening and then me, i- i- it being a part of me."

   4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett11:33

      For sure.

   5. CWChris Williamson11:34

      Um, I thought, I thought that I saw things the way they were. I thought that I felt things that were appropriate given the situation that I'm in. And this doctor lady, uh, has said that doesn't seem to really be the case. So I wonder if that's

   6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett11:47

      Oh, well, I think, I think people definitely feel things that are appropriate to the situation that they're in. But the assumption, therefore, is that you're making or that somebody might make, maybe not you, but you're just, you know, you're the, you're the messenger, right?

   7. CWChris Williamson12:01

      Avatar.

   8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett12:01

      Yeah. Um, the assumption that, therefore, it's, there's some objective accuracy, I think that's where things break down. So in the history of philosophy...... and also pundits, and I don't know, people who consider themselves to be, you know, public intellectuals. There's a debate, you know, that it's gone on for really thousands of years. Like, is reality out there objective, separate from you, and you just perceive it and react to it? Or is reality like all in your head? Um, you know, I, this is called idealism. That, that the, um, other view is, uh, what I would call a traditional, traditional realism. That, that you know, there's an objective reality out there. Um, and that's been the debate for thousands of years, and I think that when a debate goes on for thousands of years, it's probably somebody's asking the wrong question. And so the way I think of it is the following. Reality is relational, meaning there is a reality, but the reality is partly... You're involved in creating that reality, right? So you know, this object is solid because we have the kind of bodies that we have, and if we were subatomic creatures, this would not be solid. It would be mostly empty space. And there are other, I think, more compelling... That one's a, that was, that's a hard one to, to kind of wrap your head around. Like, are you telling me that the world, you know, that, that like a desk isn't solid? Well, it is solid. It's solid for you and for other, you know, animals like you that have the kind of body that you have. But there conceivably could be other sorts of animals or other organisms or creatures that don't have those features, and therefore their reality would be different. And so again, it, it doesn't mean that... Well I'm saying, is there a reality out there separate from you? No. Is that, is... Does objectivity exist in that way? Not as far as I can tell. That's not what the neuroscience would suggest. But does it mean it's all in your head? No. Because you need those sensory signals to wire your brain in the first place. They just don't have an inherent meaning. So what this means for you, and, uh, I mean, there are some really fun things that it could mean which we could talk about, but in the practical sense, what does it mean? It means that when somebody scowls at you, you aren't reading anger. You're guessing that that is an expression of anger, but that movement could have multiple meanings, and the meaning is not inherent in the signal. It's relational, right? I, I think that's the... So, uh, uh, uh, this, here's the example I think that's the best, that sort of really usually communicates the point well. So I don't know. Let's hope. Usually, the, you know, the, your retina has different kinds of receptors in it, in your eye. Different kinds of receptors in it. And there are... You need three kinds of receptors in order to, for a wavelength of light which will hit your retina and travel the, the wavelength of light gets translated into electrical signals, then it goes up to your brain. You need three kinds of receptors in your eye in order for you to experience a wavelength of light around 620 nanometers as red. Most humans, neurotypically, have three neurotrans- have three cones, three types of receptors. So we say that s- that light at that wavelength is red. The rose is red. The, the sports car is red. The lipstick is red. The shoes are red. But red is not really a property of an object. It's not in the wavelength of light. Red is a property of the relation between that wavelength and what's in your eye and what's in your brain. We say, well, somebody who only has two cones, they can't, they don't see that wavelength of light as red. They see it as kind of a greenish-brown. So we say, "Oh, that person is color-blind." Because it implies that the l- the light is objectively red.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:37

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   10. LBLisa Feldman Barrett16:38

       But that's only because humans have three cones, three receptors, neurotypically. There are humans who have four cones, four types of receptors, and they don't see that light as red either. They see it as a different color. And if all humans had four cones, then objectively that wavelength of light would not be red. It would be some other color, and those of us with three cones would be color-blind to that color. So the point being that what we call objective is really, we are elevating a human consent- We're elevating the, you know, uh, certain experiences of certain humans as to be objective and other peoples to be something else. And so we're prioritizing our own, ourselves, our own biology essentially, and we're calling it objective. And that's pretty much what we do, on a large scale. Like, as humans. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson17:40

       Y- y- yeah. I, I think functionally we need some way, could be a- i- if it was, "There's a scowl over there," well, that could mean one of 50,000 different things. It would take a long time to get through my day. You know, I, I, I, I-

   12. LBLisa Feldman Barrett17:53

       But it doesn't. But it doesn't. That's the ama- that's the amazing thing about the brain, is it, is this is the business problem. The business problem is there's a lot of variation, and your brain has to make sense of it. Your brain has to figure out which signals mean something, which signals are noise, can be ignored, and your brain isn't just taking in a scowl. It's taking in an entire ensemble of signals, and it's making sense of those based on patterns from the past. So the really amazing thing is that...... we are equipped to deal with that kind of variation. And it's just that we categorize so automatically, we make meaning so automatically, that we think the meaning is inherent in the world-

   13. CWChris Williamson18:36

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   14. LBLisa Feldman Barrett18:36

       ... that the categories are in the world. But they're not in the world. They're also not only in our heads. They are relationally real. And no matter how confident you are, like, you know, I'm- I am also someone who's pretty confident about my p- you know, I- but I am tempered by the fact that the neuroscience is very clear. We don't read people. Movements aren't- you know, can't be read. The emotional meaning of them can't be read like words on a page. No matter how confident you are, your feeling of confidence is not an indicator of the validity of your perception.

   15. CWChris Williamson19:18

       (laughs) Yeah, that's great. It's a really lovely way to sort of bring that in to land, I think. Um, the-

4. 19:26 – 23:16

   Our Emotional Experiences Shouldn’t Control Our Agency

   1. CWChris Williamson19:26

      it, it means a couple of things, at least to me. Uh, one would be, wow, I can- I really have a good bit of agency over how I see the world, what things mean to me, um, the way that an experience can be interpreted and encoded by myself.

   2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett19:47

      The way that a si- the way that signals can be experienced. It's not that you're interpreting your experience. I mean, you- we may do that also, but the formation of experience out of these, these signals that we- that we're constantly, um, processing.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:07

      The other thing it makes me think is how often are people who are in a bad mood mistaking their bad mood for- uh, or, uh, m- mistaking dehydration, or low blood sugar, or a lack of sleep, or, or... I remember you saying some story about you, you got a stomach bug on a first date-

   4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett20:26

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson20:27

      ... and, and, and, and mistook-

   6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett20:28

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson20:28

      ... mistook (laughs) , um, like butterflies for something else that was happening in your stomach. And, um-

   8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett20:35

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson20:36

      ... I-

   10. LBLisa Feldman Barrett20:36

       I wish, I wish that were not true, I wish I just made that story up, but unfortunately, I didn't. It- it actually happened. I, I was surprised, and I thought, "Well, I must be really lusting after this person," when really what I had was the beginnings of the flu.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:53

       (laughs) But yeah, it- it- it- we are, um, at the mercy of the signals, right? Both internal and external, and in some-

   12. LBLisa Feldman Barrett21:06

       Mm...

   13. CWChris Williamson21:06

       ... not at the mercy?

   14. LBLisa Feldman Barrett21:08

       Well, yes and no. I think i- this is why I think it's really useful to know something about how brains work. Listen, when I'm at the end of the day and I have no spoons left and I'm exhausted, and to me it feels like the world is ending, and it really does happen sometimes where I feel like the world is ending, like I just can't deal with one more thing and everything is awful, I just have to grab ahold of myself and say, "Okay, you're metabolically depleted. Go to bed. Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day." But it doesn't feel like that. It's not like I can- I mean, I- it's- I feel like, you know, everything is horrible. And, um, but, but I- I'm aware of the evidence, right? The evidence is that everything that you experience is partly, um... every- the way that you experience the outside world is partly due to what's going on in your body as it is relayed to your brain. And, and so because I'm aware of that, I do have more agency, um, than I would otherwise. It still automatically happens that I will feel like shit sometimes.

   15. CWChris Williamson22:31

       Mm-hmm.

   16. LBLisa Feldman Barrett22:32

       Um, more often than I would like to, uh-

   17. CWChris Williamson22:35

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LBLisa Feldman Barrett22:35

       ... admit, maybe. Um, but, but I'm also aware... The agency, I think, looks different than, than what we imagine agency to be like, you know? It- it- getting control over your, um, your experience doesn't look exactly the way we imagine it to. It's much harder to do than we would like, um, it takes a lot longer, a lot more practice than anybody would wish. Some people have more options than others, but everybody has the opportunity for a little more agency. That begins with understanding a little bit about, um, what's happening under the hood.

5. 23:16 – 30:21

   The Relationship Between Our Internal Conversation and Our Emotions

   1. CWChris Williamson23:16

      How do you come to think about that relationship between the experiencing self and the one that steps in? The wh- the- uh, how do you think about the difference between apocalyptic Lisa at the end of the day-

   2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett23:30

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson23:31

      ... and, uh, gently reassuring Lisa saying, "You probably just need to have a cup of tea and go to bed." What- what is that relationship?

   4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett23:44

      What is it about tea that is so soothing?

   5. CWChris Williamson23:46

      Well, I'm British, so...

   6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett23:48

      No, but I'm- well, I'm Canadian, and so maybe that we have tea in common. But I do actually find a cup of tea just... I don't know what it is about tea, but it could just be the whole mythology around tea, like, and all the- all of the paraphernalia of tea.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:02

      The story that you tell yourself. It-

   8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett24:04

      Yeah, I- I don't know. But there is... Yeah, I mean, I'm tempted to say there is something objective about tea. But maybe it's only in relation to, you know-

   9. CWChris Williamson24:12

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LBLisa Feldman Barrett24:13

       ... into our- uh, based on our experience.

   11. CWChris Williamson24:14

       Bifurcate that away from the sacred ritual of making the tea and smelling it brew.

   12. LBLisa Feldman Barrett24:19

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and pulling out your favorite mug and whatever, yeah. So, um, I- but- what I would say is you don't have multiple selves, you know? You have one brain.... and your brain in conversation constantly with your body, and the sig- you know, I mean, we like to say with the world too, but you only know the world through the sensory surfaces of your body. So your brain is really modeling your body. That constant conversation, which is informing the brain also on the conditions of the world, that is your mind. That's, that is the manifestation of, that is your mind. So, we, you know, we have a, um, like I use a Cartesian cru- uh, crutch, you know, like, uh, Descartes famously was a philosopher who famously, um, bifurcated, you know, the body and the mind, and, um, uh, you know, the physical and the mental as if they're separate things, and they're really not separate things. Every feeling you have, every perception, every, every mental thing that occurs has some physical basis. But there, it's a useful device linguistically to talk about the things that your brain does automatically as happening in your brain and the things that your brain does with volition, (laughs) e- as happening in your mind. So, I will sometimes say, "Well, your brain does this," versus, "You have control." But really, it's all your brain. So, why does your brain make itself aware of some things and not others? Nobody knows the answer to that question.

   13. CWChris Williamson26:00

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LBLisa Feldman Barrett26:01

       And, uh, there are lots of ideas, like, uh, how is it that this automatic stuff can go on, but yet sometimes we can sometimes use attention to kind of shift, um, the signaling? Nobody understands h- they under- might understand a little bit about how it happens, but nobody understands why it's happening that way. So, um, it's not like I have, uh, an apocalyptic self and a, um... My son, my husband sometimes will, when I'm, you know, I'll just be like, "I, I need to complain to you. I need to complain about this." Or sometimes I won't even ask, I'll just start to complain, and he'll be like, "Are there any other dwarves visiting you? Like, you've got sleepy, and grumpy, and, you know, hungry and, you know, chilly." You know, just like, "Is there any, are there any other dwarves visi- (laughs) visiting you?"

   15. CWChris Williamson26:51

       Yep, yep.

   16. LBLisa Feldman Barrett26:52

       You know? The thing is, it's all you, in, in the same way that, um, you know, right now, um, you know, Chris, I can focus on your face or I can focus on that pink light that's kind of in the background, or I could focus on, I can hear the air conditioning blowing a little bit in the background here. That is, I'm foreground- with attention, I'm foregrounding certain features and I'm backgrounding other features. And so, at any given moment, you, you can do that. You can practice doing that. And for a human, those features aren't always in the moment. They can also be f- features that you predict will be occurring later, right? So, I may feel exhausted now and it may feel like the world is ending now or that everything is terrible now. But I'm aware of the fact, I can focus on the fact that probably tomorrow morning, based on my long history of experience, if I just g- get some sleep, uh, have a hot bath, have a good, nice cup of tea, get some sleep, uh, I won't feel this way in the morning. And I think the thing that's really, to me, profound about this is, I know this to be true. I mean, I know this. As a s- as a neuroscientist, I know that my experience in the moment is a combination of what's in here and, you know-

   17. CWChris Williamson28:16

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LBLisa Feldman Barrett28:16

       ... what's out here. But that doesn't change my experience of everything feeling like the wor- like the world is closing in on me. And it, it really does feel that way, and it requires... I can pretty automatically now remember that i- it's just, it, it, you know, this is a construction of the sensory present and the remembered past, and that there are other possible experiences in the moment that I could be having. And that's why I think, like, I can't remember the person who said this, but it's, this is not my quote. It's actually in my, the, I think in the footer of my email, but, um, my, my email signature, but, um, like, hope is a practice, you know? Hope is a practice. What does that mean? It means that if meaning ultimately is grounded in metabolism and movement, you always begin a prediction, the brain begins with predicting a, a set of behaviors, a, a set of actions that then gives rise to your lived experience. Then you can practice, you can deliberately engage in experiences, you can deliberately cultivate experiences for yourself in the present with effort that, if you do it frequently enough, become automatic and available. They become available automatically for your brain to use as predictions in the future.

   19. CWChris Williamson29:46

       Uh-huh. Yeah.

   20. LBLisa Feldman Barrett29:47

       So if you wanna change your, if you wanna change who you are, you can- you can't really go back into the past and change what happened. I mean, you could try. That's what therapy is for, in part. But, um, but what you can do is change the present, which will equip the brain, your brain to predict differently in the future. And as a consequence, you will ex- do different things and experience yourself differently in the world, and that's where the real agency is, I think.

6. 30:21 – 39:13

   Should We Be Looking Back or Investing in the Future?

   1. LBLisa Feldman Barrett30:21

   2. CWChris Williamson30:21

      Which do you think is a more powerful practice between the two? Going back to try and change your retrospective story, meaning of the past, revisiting things that have occurred, or...... creating this new investment to then be, uh, paid down, a memory dividend for you to withdraw from in future by changing what you're doing right now?

   3. LBLisa Feldman Barrett30:42

      Well, maybe every therapist will hate me for saying this, but, um, I don't, I think that there's varied success with going back into your past and trying to change the meaning of what's happened. It's not futile, but it's, I think, much harder than investing in the present. You know, it's like exercise. You, your exercise, you invest, literally invest energy in the present. Sometimes you make yourself really uncomfortable in the present in order to equip yourself to be better in the future. You know, you're building a better, healthier, you know, future you. And that's a little bit like what I'm saying, uh, you can do it not just with, you know, building bigger muscles or, you know, a, a more robust cardiovascular system, but you can also do it, it, it also works with the brain, that you can... So I think that probably both are useful, but investing in experiences now, changing your situation, for example, you can, you can literally get up and move, go for a walk, like, j- literally move your body. That will change your lived experience. But you can also, um, just change what you're focusing on in you can not even move, um, a muscle, uh, uh, and stay put in the present room. Um, but, um, but change what features you're focusing on, and that can, that is functionally like a change in environment that can change your experience.

   4. CWChris Williamson32:36

      Mm.

   5. LBLisa Feldman Barrett32:37

      Um, and so what is useful, I think, is the flexibility to, um, to equip yourself with the flexibility to have a choice later about how you experience things. I, so I don't think one is necessarily better than the other, but I think they both probably have a role to play. But I think the utility, I think we... I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm r- I'm hesitant, as you can see, to say that trying to tell a different story about your past is not useful, because I do think it has a, uh, it does have a, a role to play, I think.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:20

      You're being diplomatic, which I think is, is fair. Uh, I have to assume, because we'll have a recency bias, everybody's got one, um, that experiences that you had... Oh, this, this gets an interesting question. Um, attachment theory, uh, the, the, the way that your nervous system has encoded what this means to be close to someone or far away, for them to, uh, this person to approach you in a dark alley or not, for you to be in a closed space or whatever. Um, I would've assumed that newer experiences would've overwritten older experiences, that this thing that we've done a couple of times most recently, I've been in a small space and it was okay. Uh, why does that not get rid of claustrophobia, let's say, that I had previously?

   7. LBLisa Feldman Barrett34:03

      Yeah, so surprisingly, that's not how it works, and, uh, um, the evidence suggests that, um, the original meaning and the new meaning are both there, but you never lose the old meaning.

   8. CWChris Williamson34:19

      Wow.

   9. LBLisa Feldman Barrett34:19

      And it can, and it can be reinstated really easily. So, um, the only way to get rid of an old meaning is to lose the neurons that, that manifest it. Um, you know, there's a, an interesting scientific, I think that's an interesting scientific kind of story about this, that, um, a number of years ago, like decades, maybe, I don't know, 40, 50 years ago, might be more now, some guy in Rockefeller University in New York was studying why it is that songbirds ch- the size of the, um, clusters of neurons in their, um, brains called, um, the song nuclei. The, uh, like so a nucleus is just like a clump of neurons that, um, work together. The, in, in songbirds, they, these nuclei grow in size. (laughs) They, they, like, new, new neurons are there at some parts of the year, and then they get smaller at other parts of the year. And this scientist was, like, super interested, and like, "How does, what is this, what is this about?" This was the birth of the science of plasticity. He discovered that brains can birth new neurons, and then it was discovered that other animals can do it, and even humans can do it. But humans can only do it in some parts of the brain, in, in exactly I think one part, mm, there's some evidence maybe two, but one part of the brain called the hippocampus can birth new neuron- new neurons. And then people start asking the question, "Well, why... How did this happen that, you know, um, the hippocampus can, can, can birth new neurons?" But they were asking the wrong question, because it turns out that in vertebrate brains, most animals, w- most vertebrates can, they, they birth new neurons all over the brain. Humans have lost that capacity. We've only retained it in one part of the brain, but it's been lost everywhere else. And, like, why would that be? And the one potential answer that scientists think about is that we are long-lived.... and when, if you replace one neuron with another neuron, you've lost the memories that that neuron participated in. Or you lose part of the memory that the neuron particip- What is a memory? A memory isn't like a file. It's a pattern of electrical and chemical and maybe magnetic, we don't know, but definitely electrical and chemical activity that is remanifesting itself. So memories aren't, you know, retrieved, even though that's the word we use. The- they're not really retrieved like you would retrieve a file from a file drawer. They are reconstituted, reimplemented. They are constructed, reconstructed, um, patterns of electrical activity, w- or electrical, electrochemical activity, and if you lose the neurons that are part of the... I mean, a given memory doesn't just have one neuron. It doesn't just have one, um, you know, one assembly of neurons. There are neurons that are constantly switching out to maintain the memory, um, w- um, you know, like, like, um, I don't know, like players on a baseball team or something, you know? Like, they're, they're constantly switching out. But if you lose some of those, m- (clears throat) the memory is, is lost. So we don't lose our memories. We remember things for 50, 60, 70, 80, s- 90 years, right? So we, and we have a limited capacity for memory, meaning at some point, and this is something that, you know, scientists now talk about, like, maybe our inability to remember things as we get much older is because, like, we're, we're getting filled up. (laughs) Because we don't have new neurons. There's no place for those memories to, to, to go, essentially. Like, there's no, there's n- s- there's no new neurons that are, like, freed up. The, you know, so one neuron doesn't participate in one memory. It can participate in hundreds or thousands of memory because it's, it's in an ensem- a larger ensemble that create the memory. But our, the limited nature of our m- of our memories, or, well, let's put it this way. The expansive nature of our memories comes from the fact that we keep our neurons for a really long time and we don't birth new ones in most places in the brain. But that also puts a limit on what we can remember as we age.

7. 39:13 – 49:21

   Can Memories Be Lost?

   1. LBLisa Feldman Barrett39:13

   2. CWChris Williamson39:13

      I remember seeing something written a- a while ago about there is no such thing as sort of getting rid of myelin sheaths that have been laid down. You can simply lay down ones that are more easy to access, more commonly accessed over the top. So basically, there's no such thing as not driving a habit. There is simply choosing between which habit you want to drive here or which one you want to encode.

   3. LBLisa Feldman Barrett39:42

      Yeah, I mean, yes-

   4. CWChris Williamson39:43

      How much, how much truth is in that?

   5. LBLisa Feldman Barrett39:44

      Well, yeah, I mean, uh, eh, there is some truth in what you're saying, but it's the devil's in the details, right? So first of all, a myelin sheath is the fatty sheath that goes around the axon. It's not responsible for content of your experience, it's responsible for transmission speed. So if you have an axon that is well wrapped, so an axon, ev- do- does everyone who, I mean, you don't know what everyone who listens to this knows, but, you know, an axon is a, i- is, um, uh, like a, a protrusion from the cell body of a neuron that carries an electrical signal that is part of how neurons talk to each other and create, you know, your movements and your lived experience. The speed with which the electrical signal moves down the axon is directly related to the thickness of the neuron and the amount of myelin on the neuron that wraps it for, like, conductive purposes. It's also im- there are other things which affect transmission speed too that aren't, aren't the myelin, like there are glial cells, other cells, eh, uh, that wrap themselves around the junctures between where neurons talk to each other called the synapse. And that also affects the transmission speed of signaling. But the point being that you can, you can lose myelin. There, that happens, um, for example, in intractable depression. You, your, um, the myelin starts to, to, um, eh, ins- on certain tracks in your brain, certain, um, certain groups of axons lose some of their myelination, and when you do deep brain stimulation, that grows the myelin back. That's partly why that treatment is really useful. But, um... But i- it is the case that once you have a memory, if you've, if you've consolidated that memory, which means that your neurons have grown new little receptors, n- um, that are important for making an ensemble of signals, that is the memory. If you've consolidated that memory, you will have a hard time unremembering it unless there is physical change to your neurons.

   6. CWChris Williamson42:34

      What would that be?

   7. LBLisa Feldman Barrett42:36

      Dementia. Like, you lose-

   8. CWChris Williamson42:38

      Right, right.

   9. LBLisa Feldman Barrett42:38

      ... you lose neurons.

   10. CWChris Williamson42:39

       Spike through the head.

   11. LBLisa Feldman Barrett42:41

       Spike through the head, (laughs) yeah. However-... if you can prevent research sug- I think that's accurate, what I just said. I'm pretty sure that's accurate. I don't know of any other way that you would... I guess you might have a hard time remembering something, you know, like you have tip of the tongue or something like that. If the, um, if you get, if you're getting old like me, um, or you haven't used memory in a while, um, then some of the... There could be s- s- you know.

   12. CWChris Williamson43:14

       But there's no sort of real pruning going on, or, like, atrophy to this sort of stuff?

   13. LBLisa Feldman Barrett43:19

       Well, there is pruning, but I don't think... I mean, pruning, it hap- if you don't use it, you lose it, I mean, for sure. Pruning happens very intensely in children's brains. It happens also in adult brains, but s- slower. Everything happens slower (laughs) . You know, all the tuning and pruning happens much sl- more slowly in adult brains, but... And, and much slower the older you get. But I don't think that there's pruning for really intense memories or memories that have, um, we would call them stressful, maybe, or threatening, or what have you. But I would say, you know, they have a strong metabolic demand, um, that they require, you know, that they are, um, they're... They have a strong impact on your metabolic state. Those memories typically are not pruned, as far as I know. What, what you can, what can be done though is certain chemicals... You can take certain drugs that will prevent you from consolidating the memory in the first place. And I think, I think there is research going on that attempts to prevent certain memories from really taking hold physically, um-

   14. CWChris Williamson44:46

       Oh, so it's-

   15. LBLisa Feldman Barrett44:46

       ... for certain exp- experiences taking hold physically in the brain.

   16. CWChris Williamson44:50

       Is this like the equivalent of taking Narcan for an overdose on a traumatic experience?

   17. LBLisa Feldman Barrett44:55

       A little bit. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit.

   18. CWChris Williamson44:57

       Like, you've had something bad happen to you. Let's hit you with this whatever, like anticholinergic or t- good, some, some something, and, uh-

   19. LBLisa Feldman Barrett45:05

       Right. I mean, the thing is, it's a very complex process, right, that involves like hundreds of chemicals. And so if you knock out a couple of the chemicals, you know, the likelihood is that you'll have a harder time consolidating the memory. Um, and therefore, you, it, you won't, you won't be able to remember.

   20. CWChris Williamson45:22

       So fascinating. That's so fascinating that you can have like an-

   21. LBLisa Feldman Barrett45:24

       But I, I don't... But... Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson45:26

       Just that you can have an acute intervention for, for something that happens. I've heard that women, uh, post-childbirth are given a flood of hormone or a flood of neurochemicals that give them a, a sort of, uh, retrospective pain amnesia about the discomfort that they went through.

   23. LBLisa Feldman Barrett45:47

       That is such... That is like a myth.

   24. CWChris Williamson45:51

       Oh. My friend Daniel Sloss put it in his standup special. I'm gonna have to tell him.

   25. LBLisa Feldman Barrett45:55

       That is a myth. I c- listen, I can remember-

   26. CWChris Williamson45:59

       Scientific myth or personal myth?

   27. LBLisa Feldman Barrett46:02

       Well, I'm telling you that I can remember how painful it was.

   28. CWChris Williamson46:05

       (laughs)

   29. LBLisa Feldman Barrett46:05

       And my husband can confirm that I can remember how painful it was. But, but what I would say is, um, what's interesting about pain, right, is that if I said to you, "Chris, I want you to keep your eyes open. And in your mind's eye, I want you to imagine a red Macintosh apple of the sort that you would eat." Can you see the ghost of a red apple in your mind's eye?

   30. CWChris Williamson46:37

       Kind of.
8. 49:21 – 1:05:56

   What Drives Anxiety?

   1. CWChris Williamson49:21

      tool.

   2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett49:21

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson49:21

      Um, I wanna talk about, I wanna talk about anxiety. Eh, sort of emotion du jour of the modern world, it seems. What do you wish more people knew about anxiety and how it works?

   4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett49:36

      Well, I don't think there's one cause of anxiety exactly, but I do think that, you know, your brain is making sense of signals, and there are other ways to make sense of those signals. So, mm, anxiety usually is a sit- you know, it's usually occurring in situations where there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of arousal, meaning there's a lot of chemicals, um, eh, uh, there's a more, a higher concentration of chemicals that, um, are involved in your brain attempting to learn that has taken new, uh, taken signals because it's not predicting particularly well. There's a lot of... That's what it means when there's a lot of uncertainty. Your brain can't prepare one motor plan. It's preparing many, and it doesn't know which one is the one, the right one to choose.

   5. CWChris Williamson50:20

      That's such a great definition. That's such a lovely way to, to think about it, especially what we've said previously about the importance of prediction for future events.

   6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett50:29

      Yeah. So, um, the go-to meaning doesn't have to be anxiety. I- if you, if you experience heightened arousal as uncertainty, you do different things than if you experience it as anxiety. And you're not just labeling. It's not labeling. It's you're embodying a different meaning. And, um, you know, what do you do when you're uncertain about something? You, you forage for (laughs) for, for information. You try to-

   7. CWChris Williamson50:59

      You could get curious. You could be interested.

   8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett51:01

      Yeah, yeah. Um, what do you do, you know, when you're anxious? You usually withdraw. Um, and sometimes there's probably utility in, um, in experiencing a high arousal unpleasant state as uncertainty. There's research, not my research, but research by, um, a guy named Jeremy Jameson who, um, trained people to re-categorize or make meaning of their, um, high arousal states as, um, determination. And, uh, he was able to, in these studies, train people to overcome their test anxiety by dissolving it basically. Their high arousal states remained high, but, um, they experienced it differently because they made a different meaning of it. And there's great utility to getting rid of test anxiety. Um, it can be the difference between, mean the difference between hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime in earning capacity.

   9. CWChris Williamson52:12

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LBLisa Feldman Barrett52:13

       Um, eh, my personal ex- you know, example that I love, that I've used in my book and I talk about it sometimes because I love this example, it's e- an example of my daughter when she was 12. When my daughter was 12, she was barely five feet tall, and she was testing for her black belt in karate. Her sensei was a 10th degree black belt, so this guy, you know, could break a board by looking at it, right? He was just, like, really massively strong guy. And she had to spar these, like, 15, 16, 17-year-old boys who were, like, a foot taller than her, um, in order to, um, over two days (laughs) to, to achieve this black belt. And her, her sensei, you know, kind of saunters up to her, and he just says, "Get your butterflies flying in formation." And I was like, "Oh my God. That is amazing." He didn't say, "Calm down, little girl," because actually calming down would be the wrong thing to do. When you are in a motivated performance situation, you don't want to be calm. You want that arousal. But if you experience it as anxiety, the motor plans that come with that are very different than if you experience it as determination or as getting your butterflies in formation. And I personally have used that particular concept multiple times in my life when I've been faced in a motivat- like before I gave my TED Talk, you know? When I, before I gave my TED Talk in front of 1,000 people, I could feel my heartbeats in my fingertips. Like, that's how much arousal was in my body. I was like... If somebody brought a flame near me, I probably would've combusted. Like, I was just wired. But, you know, I just... And I had to say to myself, like, out loud, (laughs) you know, "This is not anxiety. Get your butterflies flying in formation." Because under those circumstances, what comes to you i- is the really, is the thing that has been ingrained in you, the most automatic thing. And in our culture, the most automatic thing is to make sense of those experiences as arou- as, um, anxiety. But you do have choices, you know? You do have choices.

   11. CWChris Williamson54:46

       I'm thinking about that uncertainty and ambiguity point. I'm wondering what it is about the modern world which is providing us with such potent fuel for anxiety to-... to come through?

   12. LBLisa Feldman Barrett55:00

       You mean such potent fuel for uncert- yeah, so I would say what is w- I would say there's a lot of uncertainty. And, um...

   13. CWChris Williamson55:13

       Well, there's a lot of anxiety.

   14. LBLisa Feldman Barrett55:15

       Well-

   15. CWChris Williamson55:15

       Where is the, where is the uncertainty, ambiguity w- w- how is that being borne through if that's one of the key drivers of that emotion?

   16. LBLisa Feldman Barrett55:23

       Yeah. So what I would say is there's a lot of uncertainty, and there's a lot of metabolic, um, deman- uh, there's a lot of, well, I mean, we haven't talked about, you know, your brain's most important job is regulating your body, and, and all of that. But, you know, people are walking around basically metabolically encumbered all the time, and partly that's the case because there's so much uncertainty. Uncertainty's very expensive for a nervous system to manage, and as a consequence, there's a lot of arousal and, and people are on the go-to kind of knee-jerk, uh, way of making sense of that and experiencing it as anxiety.

   17. CWChris Williamson56:00

       Mm.

   18. LBLisa Feldman Barrett56:00

       So I think that we've, you know, engineered for ourselves, like, the perfect environment basically to bankrupt a human (laughs) nervous system.

   19. CWChris Williamson56:13

       Mm.

   20. LBLisa Feldman Barrett56:13

       And, um, I think that... I wrote about this in my book, and I continue to, to think that this is the case, you know, that, um, that if you think about all of the moments where in... all of the things that could be potentially demanding, um, you know, making it hard for you to predict well, it... you could just start to enumerate them, you know? I mean, most people don't get a sufficient amount of sleep. We actually... now, uh, you know, there's a lot of discussion now about getting enough sleep, but still we have, um... modern life is not designed really for sleeping well. We have computers. We have phones. We have a lot of screens. Those screens have, um, you know, light in them that stimulates our re- ganglion cells in our retina that screws up our circadian rhythm. Um, that's not trivial actually. That's a really substantially important thing. Um, we, um, you know, we, we eat pseudo-food that isn't really, you know, like, isn't necessarily really healthy and can really screw up your predictions, y- you know, if you're eating something with or drinking soda or eating things with, like, artificial sweeteners. The taste no longer is a good predictor of the, of the, um, glucose concentration. Um, w- uh, you know? Um, we have social media where... I mean, human... the biggest... one of the biggest sources of uncertainty for humans is other humans. (laughs) You know, the best thing for your nervous system is another human. The worst thing for your nervous system is also another human.

   21. CWChris Williamson58:04

       (laughs)

   22. LBLisa Feldman Barrett58:04

       And, um, we, um, you know, our ways of interacting with each other now, you k- uh, you know, are also s- uh, somewhat uncertain, you know, like, somebody walks up to you and goes, "Hey, bitch," like, well, is that, "Hi, nice to see you," or is that s- you know, like, somebody calling you a not, um, not nice name? Like, what... you know? And then there's also economic uncertainty. There's, um, climate change. And you wouldn't think climate change, you know, you wouldn't think that that really necessarily... I mean, it doesn't matter whether you believe in climate change or not. The thing is that climate change, climate change is happening, and, um, you can not believe it, but the impact of the change will still impact your nervous system whether you believe it or not. It... climate change means that one of the consequences is that there are small changes in carbon dioxide concentrations in the air, and very, very small changes in carbon dioxide concentrations actually have a profound i- impact on vertebrate nervous systems. Actually, I think it may also impact the non-vertebrate nervous systems too.

   23. CWChris Williamson59:10

       Okay, so you're saying that the parts per million increase is maybe as much of a concern for our emotional system as our climate system?

   24. LBLisa Feldman Barrett59:19

       Well, you don't have an emotional system, but I would-

   25. CWChris Williamson59:21

       All right, okay.

   26. LBLisa Feldman Barrett59:21

       ... say it's a- it's as much of a... no, well, you know-

   27. CWChris Williamson59:26

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. LBLisa Feldman Barrett59:27

       ... listen-

   29. CWChris Williamson59:27

       Uh, our, our mental system, should we say?

   30. LBLisa Feldman Barrett59:29

       No, for your brain.
9. 1:05:56 – 1:10:54

   What is the Impact of Toxic Relationships on Our Health?

   1. CWChris Williamson1:05:56

      It seems to me i- it's an interesting point to bring up how other people can impact us. There's a lot of conversation at the moment about the impact of loneliness, too much ... It's not even necessarily solitude. It's people feeling like they don't have anyone around them. The most c- common answer to the question how many friends can you call on an emergency is zero. It's not the mean, but it is the most

   2. NANarrator1:06:18

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson1:06:18

      ... co- etc., blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm interested in what the impact is of toxic relationships on our health, that as you said there, the best thing for our nervous system is another human, but the worst thing for our nervous system is that too. What, what is the impact of toxic relationships on our health?

   4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:06:35

      Well, I think ... You know, the evidence, I think, um, on loneliness and feeling alone and so on, I think the evidence is clearer there, um, just probably because more research has been done on that topic. But I mean, all things being equal, you will live years ... You will lose years off your life if you are really alone.... not if you're by yourself and you're fine being by yourself, but if you're lonely, if you really, if you're, if you don't have a connected social, you know, if you don't even have one person that you can call on, that you feel that you could rely on. I think it's important to understand that we are, um, we are social animals, and what that means is we don't just, we are the caretakers of each other's nervous systems, whether we like it or not. Doesn't matter, again, what your politics are. It doesn't, it's irrelevant what you believe. The fact is that we aren't built, we didn't evolve as creatures to regulate our own nervous systems by ourselves. We need help. We need other people to d- to help, to bear that burden. The problem, I think, is, um, that, um, as I said before, that other people are also the largest source of (laughs) uncertainty in our lives. And, um, you know, I think there's pretty good evidence to suggest that, um... Well, there's definitely evidence to suggest that if you're in a relationship that is physically harmful to you or sexually harmful to you, um, where, where, where adverse circumst- adverse events are happening, that will take a toll on not just your emotional health, but your physical health. And if you're a child or an adolescent and this is happening, it will actually, there's almost a parametric relationship between your e- experience of those events and the likelihood that you will develop metabolic illness of some sort in, in adulthood or middle age. So it's, it's really pernicious. That being said, there is also evidence that, um... But I don't think, this is not really evidence about a toxic relationship. So there's evidence that if adverse circumstances happen to you, like a one-sho- a big one-shot thing-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:09:08

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:09:08

      ... your way of making meaning of that can have a really big effect on its imp- how it impacts your biology.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:09:15

      It's very different to a, a chronic stress situation, though.

   8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:09:19

      Yes, it is. And I think, I think we would probably think of a toxic relationship more like a chronic stress situation. I mean, stress is just, the definition of stress, really, in our lab, the way we think about it is, um, stress is, um, your brain predicting the need for a big metabolic outlay. And that could be for any number of reasons. Um, but if it happens chronically, um, and you're mispredicting it all-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:09:53

      Mm.

   10. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:09:54

       ... um, then y- what happens is the, your, the mechanisms, the healthy mechanisms that occur that the, that are engaged to prepare for that metabolic outlay become dysregulated and then ev- you know, you're basically you have this m- pervasive metabolic dysregulation that occurs. And that's the problem with chronic stress. The problem is that, um, you know, you're basically you've drained your gas tank and, um, it's kind of damaged the mechanisms in the process kind of thing. But I, I think probably, probably there's research on longer, the effects of longer term adverse relationships. I'm just not-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:10:50

       Mm.

   12. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:10:51

       ... I don't, I don't know that literature super

10. 1:10:54 – 1:16:17

    What Does Chronic Stress Look Like?

    1. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:10:54

       well.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:10:54

       What, what are the, um, mechanisms that are turned on in chronic stress? You mentioned certain things get damaged, certain things are sort of always on, you can't switch them off, gas tank is empty. What, what does chronic stress look like metabolically? What does it do to the brain?

    3. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:11:11

       Well, what happens in... So if we think about stress as just any time your brain is predicting a big metabolic outlay. So when you drag your ass out of bed in the morning, your brain, before, as you're waking up, your brain is, um, uh, you know, signaling the need for cortisol, uh, because cortisol is not a stress hormone, it's a hormone that gets glucose and, you know, it, it basically makes your s- it ma- it, it allows your cells to metabolize glucose more easily, (laughs) basically. Um, and so standing up is metabolically costly. Like, the most expensive thing that your brain can do is move your body, learn something new, deal with persistent uncertainty, and deal with an, an immune system that is, um, chronically active, meaning, um, that you have some metabolic w- um, some i- immune, um, dysfunction, like an au- you know, which would lead to a, like a, like say an autoimmune illness or something. So, like, elevated-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:12:16

       Persistent infection.

    5. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:12:18

       Right. Yeah. Exactly. Um, so when you wake up, if you go to exercise, you have a cortisol surge because your brain is predicting a big metabolic outlay. But what happens often, like, let's say, mm, when you're sitting in a boardroom, in a business meeting, or you're, you know, you have to talk to your frenemy or you're worried about, you know, getting into a fight with your girlfriend or whatever it is, your brain is preparing for a big metabolic outlay, and then you don't need the, you don't need that gl- so you're flushed with glucose and you don't need the gluco- you don't need the extra glucose.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:12:56

       Mm.

    7. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:12:56

       That's like a false alarm. If that happens frequently enough, your cells become insensitive to cortisol.... which means that they can't utilize that signal anymore, when they, when you actually need it. So cortisol dysregulation is an example of, um, what happens in chronic stress.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:13:24

       But that sounds good. Oh, I'm not so sensitive to cortisol anymore. I can handle the cortisol more effectively.

    9. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:13:30

       Mm-mm. What it means is that your cells won't ... When cortisol is in the blood, the cells can't utilize it anymore. They're, they ignore it, because it's a signal that doesn't have any meaning anymore. It's always there.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:13:46

        Mm.

    11. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:13:46

        So when you go to drag your ass out of bed in the morning, there's a cortisol increase, but your cells can't utilize it. And so how do you feel?

    12. CWChris Williamson1:13:53

        Slowly.

    13. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:13:54

        You feel ex- you feel s- you feel exhausted, like you can't move.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:13:58

        Mm.

    15. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:13:59

        Right? Or, you know, when you, you have to prepare for a big meeting, and you need that cortisol to, you need your cells to be able to utilize that cortisol. Well, now it can't, so how do you feel? Well, you feel fuzzy-headed. Cortisol is one chemical of thousands of chemicals that work like this, right? So what happens is there's a dysregulation of the normal, um, mechanisms for regulating the body, and eventually, um, this results in vulnerability to illness. Not the first time, not the 10th time, but eventually. And what's interesting about this is that, you know, research shows that a single interaction that is unple- socially unpleasant, like where somebody, you know, yells at you or, especially if you're a kid or an adolescent, but even in adulthood, where somebody's rude to you or whatever, you see a, an effect. Now, that effect isn't gonna persist necessarily, 'cause it's just once, right? It, these are like little effects that take a long time to add up until they become a problem.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:15:19

        Mm-hmm.

    17. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:15:19

        But eventually they will become a problem.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:15:22

        How does chronic stress impact memory, our ability to encode things, recall them?

    19. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:15:30

        Well, the, it's a complicated relationship. Um, the evidence suggests that, um, there's an optimum level. If something doesn't matter to you at all, like it has no, your brain is predicting it will have no metabolic impact, you won't even pay attention to it. (laughs) Like, you won't remember it, you wo- i- it's like noise. It's just like, you won't remember it. If your stress level is too high, meaning that there's, um, that there's too much demand on the system, you also probably won't remember well. There's an optimum level of s- of stress, actually. It's like a, an inverted U. That's what the research suggests.

11. 1:16:17 – 1:20:39

    How to Rebuild After a Period of Stress

    1. CWChris Williamson1:16:17

       How would you advise someone to rebuild their function after a period of, of prolonged stress? Someone's had a rough period, they've been sort of getting through it and they think, "Wow, that, that sort of tired but wired thing, that really sounds like me," or, "I wake up on a morning and I feel sluggish, and that does actually correlate with a period where I was kind of eating it a little bit emotionally, and that thing, had to deal with mum and had to deal with work and had to deal with the c-" W- what is a, a good way for that person to bring themselves back into a state of normality?

    2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:16:52

       Well, a s- I would say a state of, of optimal, optimal metabolism or optimal, um, ener- optimal energy, um, efficiency. I would say, first of all, your mood is a pretty good clue to, you know, like a, like a very simple summary or, like, a very simple barometer of your metabolic state. So if you're feeling okay, f- you have enough energy, you know, you perceive enough energy, you feel pretty good, probably everything is going pretty well, metabolically speaking. And if you're feeling really distressed or really dragged out, probably there's some metabolic demand. And I would say emo- I mean, it's so boring, Chris, what I have to say about this, is like, here she goes, she's gonna be a mother, eat healthfully, get enough sleep, whatever that means for you. Like, eight hours isn't for everybody. You just have to get enough sleep that you eventually will wake up feeling rested. And even, even just resting, (laughs) like, I learned this, I couldn't believe this actually, I, I, um, I r- I y- you know, used to do yoga quite a bit. I had back surgery a couple years ago, and so it's curbed my ability to do yoga a little bit. But I used to do yoga every, like a lot, like three times a week. And, but Savasana was always like the hardest thing for me, like where you're laying flat, you know? And some yoga teachers-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:18:17

       Relaxing and chill out.

    4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:18:18

       ... yoga tr- yoga instructors were always like, "Oh, this is my favorite part." And I'd be like, "This is a living hell for me to lie here s- like, for s- six minutes," whatever. It turns out there's actually evidence that it's really good for you (laughs) to just lie down and have a rest for a minute.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:18:34

       Ooh, interesting question on that. W- what does it mean then that there's good evidence lying down and having a rest for a minute is good for you, but your experience of it was one of stress?

    6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:18:44

       Well, it wasn't good for me. I mean, like, (laughs) you have to actually tune out the, you know, ru- oh, I've gotta, you know, like tune out the, you know, your inner troll. Like, oh, I've gotta do this and I've gotta do that, and I've got it the minute I, as soon as I'm allowed to get out of here, I've gotta ... You know. No, you have to actually rest. Rest means, you know, your mind isn't racing at 100 miles an hour. Um, so, but I mean, rest is good. Eating healthily, exercising, even if it means just going for a walk, even if it's just a walk around the block, it's a start. You know? So these things actually are like 50% of the, I don't know if it's 50, but it's a, like a lot of the equation here. Um, and I would say-... you know, be a little gentler with yourself. Um, if you're recovering from an illness or, uh, or you've lived in a real- you're live- you're just coming out of a really stressful period, you, you have to remember that you're just not as resilient, and you are not, you, you just, you're not as resilient as you will be once you're ... So, you just have to, really, I think, take care to, um, uh, get enough rest, and really do your best to not make more out of it than that.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:20:03

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:20:04

       Right? If you have the flu, what do you do? You lie down, you watch TV, you drink chicken soup. You take, you know, maybe, you know, s- Tylenol or whatever. You don't berate yourself for being a horrible person. You have the flu. The symptoms of prolonged stress are very similar to the flu. Maybe no nausea, but definitely, you know, the fatigue and the ... You know, and so you just have to be a little more patient and, um, gentle with yourself, um, as you recover.

12. 1:20:39 – 1:25:23

    What Can't We Control About Our Emotional State?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:20:39

       You've said today our brains, uh, are pretty flexible. We have more of a control over our emotional, uh, state than we might think. That we do, that we are able to, to step in. What's the limit? What, what can't we rewire ourselves to do? What's the upper bound of our ability to step into our s- our own brains?

    2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:20:59

       Well, I think it's different for different people. Um, it depends on a lot of different factors. But, I mean, you can't snap your fingers and change your mood, for example. You, if you feel like shit, you can change the flavor of the shit that you're experiencing, but you can't actually turn it off, um, the way you would flip off a light switch. It just doesn't work like that. You have to tolerate it. You have might- you might tell yourself, "This is noise." You know, you might experience it as not relevant, um, you know, kind of like chatter, in a way. I mean, normally when we feel unpleasant about something, the first thing we do is look to the world, like, "What's wrong with the world?" You know, this is a clue. And- or we might look to ourselves, and, "What's wrong with me?" But it could just be that you're metabolically kind of, like, depleted. And so, I think how you make sense of things matters to a point. But you can't ... If you're feeling distressed or fatigued, you can't just, you know, do a couple of Jedi mind tricks and talk yourself out of it. It doesn't work like that.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:22:12

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:22:13

       And if you're really ruminating, meaning that you have intrusive thoughts or thoughts that are ... You're going over and over and over it, you know, that are, are just churning around, churning around in your mind, it's very hard to turn those off. I mean, you need to try. It's really not healthy for you. But you're just, you're just giving those thoughts, essentially, you're, you're sort of juicing them up to be more easily, uh, reinstated later. But it's very hard to do that. And sometimes, you know, you have to literally change your context in order ... You have to think of them like mental habits, in a sense. And the way to change a habit is not willpower. The way to change a habit is to change your context. Because a habit is nothing more than automatic behavior that is governed by predictions which are influenced, shaped by the context that you're in. If you change your context, you make it easier, um, to shift into a different set of predictions.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:23:16

       What would context consist of in the rumination example? What would that look like?

    6. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:23:20

       It depends on, it depends ... I mean, I can't give you a specific recipe, because the conditions of human life are so varied. But it could literally mean go out for a walk. Immerse yourself in something. Get outside your head. Um, you know, for me, honestly, one thing that helps me a lot, it's not gonna help everybody but it helps me, I do neuroanatomy. I, oh, I'll crack open a neuroanatomy book and, you know, there are a couple of anatomical problems I've been working on for a while, and I'll just read some neuroanatomy. It absorbs me-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:23:59

       Slightly niche solution, yeah.

    8. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:24:01

       Yeah.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:24:01

       Uh, but-

    10. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:24:01

        Or, but I also could do something like I might watch television or watch a movie. Well, I don't really watch television, but, like, I might watch a movie or a serial or something and knit.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:24:12

        Mm-hmm.

    12. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:24:12

        Right? Or, I might go for a walk, and I might bird watch, or I might work in the garden.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:24:21

        Seems like you're trying to engage yourself. Yeah.

    14. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:24:24

        You're trying to engage your brain in a different set of automatic predictions. Willpower, like the kind of willpower that you might use that we understand, we understand this, you know, like, um, "Ah, I really wanna eat that second piece of chocolate cake, and I have to tell myself not to eat it." That's what we think of as control. That kind of control rarely works, and it's, it's, it's infrequent compared to the other sources of control that are automatically going on inside your brain, and you just have to figure out how to harness those. So, find something that you find immersive and that isn't about you, and that's a good recipe for, um, trying to control these things that are really, you know, really kinda hard to control, actually.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:25:22

        Mm-hmm.

13. 1:25:23 – 1:28:11

    We are the Architects of Our Experiences

    1. CWChris Williamson1:25:23

       The thing that's, I guess, interesting, reassuring, and a little bit daunting that I've taken away from this...... is the amount of responsibility that we all can take over sort of what's happening to us. Although it's very disempowering to think, "Well, you know, these emotions are just happening and I'm, I'm along for the ride," it's not that... doesn't feel particularly great. But in some ways, it kind of relinquishes you of any of the responsibility of having to step in and, and... "Well, there's nothing I could do. There's nothing I can do about my anxiety. There's nothing that I can do about my chronic stre-- there's nothing I can do about my rumination."

    2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:26:01

       Mm-hmm. Well, wel- welcome to the quandary of, of, uh, modern life. I mean, I think the idea that you're not responsible for your emotions and, and, or, or better said, that you're not responsible for your behavior when you're under the influence of an emotion, that... You've just described, um, a large part of, um, Western, um, legal theory. (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson1:26:25

       (laughs)

    4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:26:25

       You know, I mean... So, um, but, but I think that you've put your, you put your finger on exactly the quandary. You know, the very thing that gives a lot of people hope is the thing that, I- is the thing that mean, i- what it means is that you, you know, you have more responsibility for, for how you act and how you feel than you might think you do. And I think the important thing, and I, I'm really, really... I, you know, this is an important thing to say. Sometimes we're responsible for things not because we're to blame for them, but because we're the only ones who can change them. So you just have to figure out what you want in your life and w- how m- how hard you're willing to work for it. And everybody always n- everyone needs a little help sometimes. That help can be another person. That help could be a medication. That help could be, um, it could come in many different forms. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do everything yourself, but you are the architect of your life. Not everybody has the same options. It's a lot harder, as I said before, to sort of, to take, take the reins, you know, than we would like. It's, it's not as... It's, it's harder, it takes more time, it's not always as effective as we would like, but everybody can have more control over their experience and their actions, uh, than they think they can, and that means everybody has a little more responsibility than they might realize.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:28:03

       Mm. And that's pressure. There is a degree of pressure, but there's also a kind of liberation that comes along with it, so it's a, it's an interesting blend.

14. 1:28:11 – 1:28:52

    Find Out More About Lisa

    1. CWChris Williamson1:28:11

       Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, ladies and gentlemen. You're fantastic, Lisa. I think you're wonderful. I, I really enjoy your work. Uh, where should people go if they're gonna want to, uh, check out everything you've got going on?

    2. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:28:21

       LisaFeldmanBarrett.com.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:28:24

       Easy as that. Two books that everybody should read, including one that's, like, the perfect holiday, "I don't want to just do true crime, romance fiction stuff," and is, uh, an easy read, and then something else which is deeper too. Uh, Lisa, I appreciate you very much. Thank you.

    4. LBLisa Feldman Barrett1:28:40

       Thank you so much. (instrumental music)

    5. CWChris Williamson1:28:42

       Congratulations. You made it to the end of the episode, and if you want more, well, why don't you press right here? Come on.

Episode duration: 1:28:52