Latest / Art of the Question / The Secret to a Quiet Mind - Prof. Doug Mennin - #43
Transcript
- Julius Moorman: How long have you been interested in studying rumination and worry? And why do you think it's such an interesting topic? Yeah, thanks. It's really great to be here today, Julius. Thanks for having me on. I've been studying this for over twenty-five years, so long time. and I I think it's a very interesting topic. It was it it's sort of a topic that vexed clinical psychologists and mental health professionals for a long time. ⁓ people can get caught in their worry and rumination. It wasn't as responsive to our efficacious treatments, things like cognitive behavioral therapy. Just was ⁓ something that was a little more difficult to get at. ⁓ and we could talk more about why that is, but has a lot to do with its purpose, what why people go to it and how it can kind of help people in immediately, but also make it harder as as people move on in their mind. Right. So that's a long time. Have you seen any changes into how people ruminate now compared to twenty years ago? Because one of the things that we'll I'm sure we'll get into is the the role of the modern society, always having to stay connected, social media, expectations, email and all of that, ⁓ which of course existed in some way twenty, twenty-five years ago, but much more so so now. So have you seem to feel change at all and the things people ruminate about? Yeah. I mean, you know, so these processes are as old as time, so they've been around. In fact they they they refer to they they have their ⁓ sort of origins and words that had to do with sort of turning things over in the external environment. So rumination itself is what cows do when they move things around in in their multiple stomachs. So and worry, you know, came from ⁓ worrying a bone. sort of dog biting into a bone. So we we somehow in introjected those those pieces. We took them into our own minds. And people had have done that for for eons, but there's no question that there's an increase in ⁓ anxiety and depression and sort of turning those things over, turning things over in one's mind. ⁓ there have been cohort studies that show that younger cohorts now are experiencing a lot more worry and rumination. And some of that from a modern society stance has to do with more uncertainty, more uncertainty in in future activities, but also more preparation for around uncertainty where where there's less you know play and less ⁓ focus on the present moment. And it's probably a good idea for us to also just at least define worry and rummation the way that I see it. And I'm sure you can get other people on saying different things. But ⁓ I tend to think about rumination as, you know, getting ⁓ getting caught in your mind about past losses and worry is sort of getting focused in your mind about future threats. So they both kind of reflect the same kind of process. And we can do the same thing even when we kind of criticize ourselves. All those things are are similar processes with different f you know, different foci, you know, ⁓ but they kind of serve the same purpose. And they're kind of things we do. around feeling uncertain. And since the world does feel more uncertain now, people are turning to them more. And of course, as you mentioned, there's a larger social media presence and people can learn to do that just by learning about others and sort of seeing how others are coping and then seeing ways that are some standards that they might want to ⁓ you know, reflect and then get caught on those standards. So everything is intensified for sure. Right. And it's easy to see the ev evolutionary benefits of both worrying and rumination, right? I mean, if we're talking about rumination specifically, it is a type of reflection that allows us to think about the past in a way that perhaps makes us that perhaps inspires certain changes and and differs our or maybe changes our future behavior so we won't be able to to so we won't make those those same mistakes again and we are able to kind of ⁓ yeah do something better in the future and similar in similar fashion worrying about things is Probably a good way to survive in nature, right? I mean, if you're never worried about something, you'll you'll likely die, right? So I get where these are coming from, but I feel like these are primal mechanisms that aren't calibrated to modern society anymore. wha why do we ruminate? Is that is that is that true or Yeah, so that's exactly right. You know, we ⁓ humans are gifted with the ability to reflect on the past, see what's gone wrong, you know, ⁓ think about what was lost and alter it exactly as you said. And we also are gifted with the ability to kind of prognosticate the future and think what what are the best ways to move ahead based on those ⁓ those prior experiences. It's it's a process of active inference that the brain is well set to do. ⁓ to to activate on, you know, force as you said, force survival. And even things like self-criticism, where we don't enjoy that, that when we kind of tell ourselves, ⁓ no, we I we seem almost like we're a a fly on the wall speaking to us. But that also is a way for us to ⁓ have a sense of our audience. Social threats in modern times become bigger than physical threats, often. Not always, but often at least as big in certain contexts. And so our sense of monitoring ourselves and altering ourselves, all these things have purpose in the modern world and they work very well, up to a point. You know, up to a point. So ⁓ it it and we can see though that we were all already the way that we're speaking about these processes is that in a sense they're like a tool. They're not like a tool like someone grabs in their toolbox and takes out, you know, it's not that kind of tool. We we can't and and anything to do with emotions, and that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about uncertainty around ⁓ around what we're gonna feel around different events or occurrences. And an anything has to do with emotions, it doesn't have a light switch. You know, it we can't turn on and off. And that's good, as you said, for survival. Because we if we could override that, we wouldn't survive very long. If we thought, ⁓ well, the ship is is on fire but I I'm I'm enjoying, you know, sitting in the sun, you know, we that would be end of the cruise so for us. So, you know, we that there's a way that we have an override. And so what humans have done is knowing that they they've They've used their best asset, which is their mind, to try to find ways to make predictability. And that can go awry when, first off, things are unpredictable, and when there are sort of when the cost of doing that is worse to reflect on the in this way than it is just to live your life, as opposed to when you really do need to problem solve. And so, you know, one of those distinctions ⁓ is the relationship of that tool to what we feel and how we utilize it to what we feel. So it's worth talking more about that too. Yeah, for sure. And and and we will one of the differences I'm I'm very curious about is the difference between introspection and rumination, right? Because ⁓ rumination kind of ha has a negative connotation to it. It feels kind of heavy and and and sad in a way. Whereas introspection seems wise and ⁓ it seems more analytical and it seems ⁓ more business like in a sense. You you see what's what's wrong. But are they just two sides of the same coin? Are they different from each other or bec and and where does ⁓ introspection end and where does rumination begin? Yeah, and so it's a great question, and it you know. The healthiness of an introspective process has to do, again, with its function or purpose. What you know, if many when we when we're introspecting, we're often trying to, you know, and we might intrust on our own emotions. And there are healthy ways to do that. We might put on some sad music and think about what went wrong and, you know, kind of get clarity about that. And that's an important process, even in in a momentary sense of getting a sense of your emotions, introspecting, seeing what I feel. These are important, but for action, for movement. And one of the differences is that when we're introspecting, we're reflecting and problem solving effectively. We're doing something that's called problem orientation. We're sort of generating what's going on, why is it an issue? What do I think about it? And how am I gonna how am I gonna activate around the uncertainty of things that matter to us that are producing emotions? Hard to do when you have strong emotions about something, about things that matter. So worry limination are looped in they're loops of that problem orientation stage. And the reason why we get looped in that is because their purpose is not so much to take that action, it's to reduce the un the aversity of the experience of the emotions that have to do with uncertainty and unpredictability. So they get reinforced. So similar to the idea that when when someone is afraid of flying and they take a pill. To not f you know, to to because they're scared of flying and the plane doesn't crash, the brain has a way of learning, ⁓ wow, the plane didn't crash because I took this pill. Now of course that's not logical, but there's a way because it's it doesn't deal in that kind of logic. It's the that type of association. And strangely, our ⁓ parts of our mind can operate the same way. So when we worry about something and the negative thing doesn't happen, we thought we think, we don't even we might not even logically think this, but our brain learns, good, I'm glad I I reflected and turned it around like this because the bad threat didn't happen. Or I'm glad I turned this over so much that I don't feel the same kind of sense of loss. This this works for me. I can keep, I can figure it out. And so a person's getting caught in that first stage of orienting rather than action. Learning what I what I'm feeling in order to take the most effective action. Right. That's so interesting. And there's some pretty solid science behind that humans. Prefer ⁓ thinking about a worst case scenario rather than just the uncertainty is what kills us, right? There's some I believe there's some studies that people prefer like more pain as long as it's like s guaranteed more pain rather than uncertainty between a range of pain stimuli. That's right. They'll take ⁓ a harsher pain that is predictable than an uncertain pain that isn't. ⁓ and that there's good evidence of that. Yeah, which is pretty irrational if you think about it, but it's apparently how our mind works. And it just goes to show I think how strong ⁓ our desire for certainty is and it immediately also ⁓ exposes the the these mechanisms. So how how can we recognize this in ourselves? What what is happening and how can we w when when we start to ruminate, catch it early, if you will. Yeah, so it the trick is in really what comes before worrying rumination. ⁓ not so much, I mean, developmentally, although it certainly there are ways to to to teach people at an earlier age and there's work being done to do that. But I really mean in moments. Because at any point we can do something different with our with what comes before those worry that that worrying and ruminating, which are our emotions. And often w you know, in ⁓ the approach that we use, we talk about ⁓ an emotional experience at a moment like a snowball. And at the top of the hill, the snowball s is soft and ⁓ fluffy, and as it rolls down the hill, it picks up sticks and rocks and ice and dirt. And that's sort of like the wording and ruminating. Often, ⁓ in our practices, working with psychotherapy clients, we we often work with people whose snowball is rolled For a while and it's kinda under a dumpster with some garbage on it. So it's hard for them to sort of you know get there. And it's hard for all of us to get there because we have to kind of catch ourselves and catch that snowball earlier. Mm-hmm. But the work is really be able to catch and understand what the impetus is and make different choices around it with our minds and our and our bodies in action. So we don't get caught in the same loop. ⁓ and so that takes practice like anything else to change what is habitual in worry and limiting for many people. Yeah. And and you've also spoken about the the chronically busy mind. How does that tie into ⁓ rumination and and worrying? So that's my term for all of these things. Worrying, ruminating, self-criticizing, getting caught in nostalgia, getting, you know, ⁓ guilt, ⁓ even when we're lonely, our sense of a awareness of our loneliness. ⁓ it's just the way that that we that we use that that process to try to get out of a bad state. Now, we know that stress is the way that the environment impinges on our minds. And what happens for many people is that even after the impingement of of the environment, we take we take that that baton and and run with it. We kind of roll around our heads and that's chronic distress. That's internal distress. That's where we get stuck. And a big part of that is Is this chronic chronically busy mind? We first part of it is having just stronger emotions. And that can happen. Some people have, you know, genetic differences, some of developmental experiences that account for that, trauma. And some people are in uncertain environments and uncertain health contexts as having a health condition or having a lovely health condition. All these increase that sense of uncertainty and increase emotionality in the f in the f in the face of it. But then they also increase our best. tool. They increase the n the use or the the salience of our best tool, worrying and riminating. And that's that chronically busy mind. And as you pointed out, we live in an age of the chronically busy mind. We have so much information that is that we're being offered with so many contingencies from it, with so so much seeming import that ⁓ that if we we can produce that distress quite easily, or if the world has a way of offering it to us and we we're distressed, now we're in our minds, now we're going back to that tool. Over and over. So the chronically busy mind is just all of that together, a way we're getting caught in that, whether it's from your context, your personhood, or your experiences, or all of it. Yeah. And it's pretty frightening sometimes when I'm extremely busy at work and ⁓ just ⁓ when I have too much things going on, the the the busyness is almost an escape for For your thoughts, right? Because when I go for a walk and I have to listen to music or I have to put on a podcast or whatever. And and whenever I turn off everything, that's when the thoughts come flooding in, but it can be kind of overwhelming. So it's it's it's so interesting that when I read that term, it's like the chronically busy mind. It's almost it's probably the reason for worrying and and rumination, but it kind of also sometimes is. ⁓ yeah, some something that you want to drown out just by by introducing even more media into your life, which is and you're getting at a a a a really important component of it, which is attentional constraint. You know, it it like we get into this thing where we overfocus on the one thing. So we overfocus on the threat, but we overfocus on the distraction from the threat because we don't want to go there. And the that has a way of of boomeranging, 'cause, you know, like if we Do whatever we can. We say we let's not think of a pink elephant. Don't imagine a pink elephant. The first thing that pops in our mind is a pink elephant. And again, that's that process that the the the you know the brain is multifaceted. It's been generated over eons of evolution. So so it it it has a way of overriding effectively. But when we try to do that, we try to we try to beat that, then it has a way of reminding us of the other things. So we'll talk more about ways you can work on with that, but it's very natural for for us to try to find a way out and then get caught in it. Or dive in and get too caught in it that way. But those become the two choices and they're of course not the only two choices, but they're the they're the go-tos. And they they get stuck in this process. Yeah. And before we start discussing what we can do to to ruminate less worry less ⁓ perhaps live in the moment more or or be able to recognize it early and and stop ourselves from from staying in this this loop why is worrying and and ruminating so bad and i other than the fact that it just doesn't feel good because I think that's important to establish because it has very significant effects to our to our mind and body right that's correct well In and I think it's important to think about timescale. In the moment, actually, it is it is better than the alternative. That's why we go to it. The alternative is is activation, right? When we're when we're in contact with something lost, it's quite difficult. We feel like this drop. We feel, you know, ⁓ a great sadness or a a abolition and un a lack of interest in kind of moving or doing things. When we're scared, we feel you know, very activated, very hyped up. We might feel ⁓ our muscles being tense, we might feel a closure in our throat or at rapid heartbeat. All those feel quite ⁓ uncomfortable because they're meant to mobilize us or demobilize us. ⁓ and those are those are ⁓ important emotional signals. But especially when we when there's when those are about an uncertain aspect, something that we can't control, it going to worry and rumination in that first bit feels a little like it it feels less Now it doesn't take away that. When you measure people in worrying and ruminating, they're not now totally chill and fine. They but they don't look, you know, they don't have that sympathetic activation or deactivation. They're in this sort of pre preparatory state. They're in that that you if you look at physiological indices, things like heart rate variability, and vagal tone, you see this sort of stereotyped heart, you know, heart rate response. And that means predictability. It means sort of similar to a cat on its hind legs waiting, you know, to pounce. We have this sort of preparedness orientation, and that's not comfortable, but it's better than the sort of un discomfort of that. So so in the first bit it it it it f it doesn't feel good, but it it feels like it's helping in some way. And that's where we get where it gets reinforced. And but you're right, over a longer period of time, these things really do dig in. Because a cat on its hind legs or an animal, you know, waiting to sort of run away or or pounce, that was meant to be a good ten, twenty seconds. But we've had a way of carrying that forward. You know, so like when, you know, we do the same thing when we're waiting for our boss to tell us something about our job, we have the same muscle tension, we're in the same pounce position, but we might do that for two or three days. So we now carry forward this this orientation state that was never meant to be so prolonged. And it and the bodily effects of that are quite clear. in ⁓ chronic inflammation, inc increased cardiovascular ⁓ problems, gastrointentional distress, and even things like neural neuroinflammation, which are, you know, so brain health and and and and and the like. So there are ⁓ absolute impacts of it and then just impacts like we're spending our time rolling our mind around and we're not taking a walk, you know, we're not exercising, things that we know would be helpful. Or we might not sleep and then we eat poorly. So the you know, as a result. So there are all these sort of downstream effects as well of it. Yeah. That's that's that's crazy. And I mean it it it tracks, you know. I mean, i if if I've had per ⁓ periods where I was worrying and all you you can you can really feel it throughout the body. So it doesn't surprise me. Before we start looking at solutions, I had this thought about how the amount of worrying we do and also the the amount of rumination that sometimes occurs also really exposes our negativity bias because it's usually it's it's never focused on on beautiful things and even if you have like a nostalgia is is usually related to a more positive view of the future, but it is also always tied with some sort of Sadness. There's always ⁓ also a kind of a feeling of loss, like hey, that era was beautiful, but we don't have it anymore. That's right. Rem remember remember the good old days. Yes, they were the good old days, which indicates now are not the good old days. ⁓ exactly. Yeah. So it's it's it's yeah, we are tied for focusing on on on negative things a lot of the times. Which makes sense again in the evolutionary sense. It's much harder for us to hold on to positive things than negative things. Negative things have had a a a longer run in for us in an evolution. They're also much more costly if we miss You know, so there are good reasons for it. So it takes work. And of course there are people have individual differences. Sure you know optimists and pessimists and but it makes sense. But absolutely, when your your mind is on mitigating bad things a lot, you're gonna be spending a lot of time seeing bad things. And you're gonna interpret things that are ambiguous as bad or threatening or something that's gonna lead to loss. So it and that also is a reinforcing process, right? Because you're you're you're even in that attentional thing we talked about, you might have some really good positive things around, but you're focusing only on that negative piece of it. Because you because that's the part that feels unpredictable. Yeah, and I think also the the maybe one of the worst things about either ruminating or worrying is that you're not living in the moment. You're you're losing the moment because life is happening now, but we spend so much time thinking about the future or or the past, which I I think is is a shame. It's why I enjoy doing activities That really force me to stay in the now, such as ⁓ an excruciating workout or a good conversation like this, for example. all these activities that really don't allow you to, yeah, let your thoughts flow and and and go to the future or the past too much, which I mean can be helpful again. But if we look, we've established, I I think that Why this happens, ⁓ I think we've established ⁓ the the cost of it, why ⁓ we wanna limit the amount of of rumination and ⁓ worrying ⁓ we do as much as we can. So how do we do that? What's the secret? Yeah, and as I mentioned at that the the top of our discussion, it's not easy. You know, these are things that You know, w i if someone is afraid of a party or gets socially anxious, you can kind of bring them to the party. If someone's afraid of that flight, you can get ⁓ on the plane without taking that medication to see what see see how that anxiety dissipates. There are a lot of ways to bring people to to things. Even when people panic, we can recreate the experience of that ⁓ different activities. Worrying and ruminating sort of happen in the mind, as we mentioned, as an effect of something else in the mind. So they're s they're a little more slippery. But but there are good ways to do it. Now you mentioned a few of them. You know, one of the the the the best ways to get out of your mind is to get into your body. So exercise is a fantastic, you know, way to manage that state. And so for low level worrying and ruminating, exercise is quite an effective intervention, as is yoga, and that's been shown as well. ⁓ as and as is of course ⁓ meditation. And meditation, that's been one of the, you know, the incorporation of meditation into ⁓ psychotherapies and other types of intervention has been powerful for this busy mind for the exact reason that you said. It draws people into the present and does that by getting more comfortable in the present with those uncertain past and future thoughts. So one is training a muscle of being okay with their presence while staying in the present moment and engaging with what the present present moment is. And the present moment offers alternatives to that. So it offers some of those positive experiences, some of those more adaptive experiences. It offers possibility. So the opposite of that is something like curiosity, ⁓ you know, having compassion for others, ⁓ you know, having courage to take actions, even though we don't. So there are just ways that people can can engage. But then, you know, sometimes, again, given uncertain situations, given people who've had difficult paths and may just have stronger nervous systems, it's not so easy just to do that to get rid of it. And so ⁓ what we've done ⁓ in so we've developed a therapy called emotion regulation therapy that's that's you know ⁓ geared towards helping people with chronically busy minds. We work with people to try to identify to get more comfortable in those moments, to kind of be able to identify an emotional moment and sort of interrupt that bridge between the emotionality and the response in war animation. That sort of stimulus response effect is very quick. So it takes, you know, a little bit of training to sort of understand the cues in your body and the environment and what kind of emotions do they produce. And the first thing that we do is get is increase people's ability to have more clarity. In order to take better action, to slow down that process. And we will talk about different emotions that that people have. But what we try to do is is convert that emotion into ⁓ more the discussion how ways that people want to protect themselves and ways they want to advance and sense of their fears and wants, because that's at the base of of all the worry and ruminating is understanding that how much somebody is pay attention to fears and wants safety. Pay pay attention to wants. And rewards and wants that that that gratification. And from that, we people can make choices around what they want to do with that. And they can bring certain skills in. And ⁓ you know, our skills, some of our skills have to do more with, like we talked about, more intentional skills that are really about that pliancy of mind. ⁓ you know, trying to open trying to see what's there, what's in my body, what's in the environment. Can I go further in the environment? And can I open up? To all that's there and allow it to be there, not shifting, but actually allowing contrast. And we know that the brain is paying attention a lot to conflict. So can we allow conflict of things that seem like they're not possible to be there and yet hold them in our in our mind space? And then we can can we gain more perspective on those things and see them in our mind more and tell tell ourselves things about it that have more perspective taking, that have more possibility. So those are some of the things that that and I'm happy more about them that we can do that provide skills to do something different in those moments. And over time, especially around things that are important to people, people make different choices to gain clarity and gain gain a greater sense of agency around their actions and less of a need to go to that tools, ⁓ to those those tools and find other tools to use. Yeah, l lots of unpack there. first of all, I I was is part of it also making it more concrete because I feel like many of our fears ⁓ live in the vague, right? If we ⁓ think if we worry about something, it's usually about something that is vague, un undefined. Because ⁓ I find that most of the time when I'm worried about something. I have this practice where I start to like go through all the steps. Okay, what am I worried about? Okay, it's the speech. Okay, the speech is tomorrow. ⁓ what if I mess it up? Well, what happens then? Okay, it might be slightly embarrassing, but okay, ⁓ is it the end of the world? No. ⁓ w w who are in the room. Okay, well and and and as long as you make it the more concrete you make it, the less fear you have. It's w i if you make it hyper specific and you go l logically throughout all the steps, usually for me I find that it it subsides a little bit. And same would work for rumination, I suppose, because you're thinking about the past and it's it's this vague, messy thing. So is is making it like concrete a part of ⁓ of the therapy as well? Yeah, absolutely. Because you you're you're you're tapping into ⁓ an aspect of these processes that ⁓ is difficult but also has utility, which is abstraction. When we can abstract something, we take away the immediacy of it, becomes more ⁓ you know, more abstract. And and so the example would be the difference between saying the soldiers fell on the battlefield versus showing you a picture of a a of a a you know, a post battle battlefield with with death on it. That would be much more of course, seeing the picture is much more emotionally evocative. Talking about it in that verbal way is sort of abstract. So these processes do work and it's a l a lot like when you start like the ticker tape running on of news down the bottom of a of a news channel, right? You know, it's just sort of this it's informational and it's not as intense. And what you're doing when you're making things concrete is you're bringing it back to the to the experience, the actual experience of what that's like. It's actually for some people It's uncomfortable because when you do that, you start then meet your body in that you're saying if you think about the the the talk, given the talk tomorrow, public speaking is very common anxiety for people, but half people in the world are afraid to publicly speak again because social threat is we've has become quite real in in a modern society. It feels like physical threat, like everyone's gonna throw at you know, throw apples at you or something or tomatoes. And, you know, ⁓ As a result, people have, when they imagine it, it is more evocative, but they start also saying, ⁓ well, I'll talk about this. And they they feel their body in action. And that is what we call exposure. And that's a big part of all treatments, all effective treatments for anxiety. And you mentioned in elimination, similarly, people abstract their pasts and they have what's called overgeneralized memory. So they sort of say everything's always bad or this is how the whole this is how everything went. And they lose episodic memory. They lose the specific memories of what happened. Most of our experiences are complex. They involve good and bad things. But when we're in a certain way of seeing things, and in order to be predictable, have things be predictable, we have a an easier story that's kind of overgeneralized. So when we make things more concrete, we're able to remember, ⁓ yeah, this one was like that and this one was like that. And it creates variability and flexibility. And that reduces rumination too. So absolutely the ability to identify and make choices around those emotions, but what want to do with them becomes a big part of that. And that does at first increase a bit of a discomfort, but it lowers the discomfort overall in time. So people have to give a little bit of discomfort to get rid of it. Yeah, and it also ties into the un uncertainty we we discussed because ⁓ w on the vagueness. comes with uncertainty, but if we follow all the steps that I mean some it may go round wrong, it may go right, but still there are there is more certainty, at least there's more clarity. So I think that is also part of the reason why it's such an e effective method to ⁓ yeah to to to deal with these types of situations. I you mentioned ⁓ sports there as well, as well as meditation. I was wondering, sports does feel like a temporary solution. Like if I it's a good solution. but meditation I I wish I did it more. I've I've tried getting into it a bunch of times. I wanna do it more. ⁓ it's very difficult for me to to get into it. Something that is on my ⁓ yeah, one of my goals to get better at it. ⁓ but I from what I've heard is that being good at meditation, if you will, ⁓ or being a practiced ⁓ being practiced at meditating, ⁓ that does translate more into ⁓ day to day life and how you deal with ⁓ worrying and and perhaps room rumination as well. Is that true? That's absolutely true. You know, there are many forms of meditation. So sure, if someone is a, you know, a lifelong meditator and and sits, ⁓ there's great evidence to show that that they're able, quite able to stay in the moment more, not let their mind follow that track towards an uncertain future or reflect on a a lost past. They're able to be in the moment more. But meditation is many things. Even in in pr in in those types of deep meditative practices. There are many types. Some focus more on the attentional aspect, some focus on more what you say to yourself, some focus more on the actions while you're walking, while you do it. But there are many ways we can we can draw in mindfulness, you know, a sense of being with our minds in the present moment without a lot of judgment. And that can be that can be done in short ways on a ⁓ as I mentioned on a walk. It can be done during that exercise. It can be done sitting. It can be done also with guided types of meditation. And we, you know, i our the skills I mentioned earlier that we teach, we call them mindful regulation skills. So they have they have a bit of that. That you you we do have practices that we offer that are guided meditations, but the key really is what you do with yourself in those moments. It's really the in the moment, on the spot practice of something. So it you know, that can be done very briefly. And that can be quite effective. I think a lot of what scares people about any kind of meditative practice is the sense like and you hear that a lot, I'm not good at it. But you the question is what is good? So the good you think is no it's the idea somehow that I don't I clear my mind. Clarity is clearing. Clarity isn't clearing though. Clarity is choice making around around all the junk. And it's the the muscle of coming back to your mind when your mind throws you it either throws it away and pushes again to that distraction. Or puts it right here, that ability to kind of move it and see those parts of your mind and gain a clarity of choice, that's that's the act. So the aversion of meditation itself, again, it's an exposure in itself. So people are feeling that exposure and they think, I'm bad at this, I would put it away. And so I suggest, you know, if if you try this, you try it for a minute or two, you know, and it's, you know, you can do things like with an anchor, like a breath anchor. Count to your breath, or you can just hold on to something physical and that has, you know, tactile sense and just pay attention to that and and come back to that as your mind wanders. So that's a basic meditative practice. What we do it in our first skill is an observing skill. And where we can use the breath as anchor. Some people's breath is very difficult, and especially people who've had traumatic experiences, focusing on the breath can actually feel very uncomfortable. So again, tactile senses. Grounding in a chair, grounding on feet. It doesn't have to be breath. But it is an attentional practice. You can notice your body, what's screaming in your body, what's actually not talking to you your body, and what's in your immediate environment. What do you hear or see? And then go a little further. I'm in New York, so I'm hearing my air conditioner, but now I'm hearing honking because I'm in New York. So then I'm coming back and I'm noticing my body again. So that's an observing and orienting practice. Where you can see everything around. So that's a quick that takes five seconds. We could I could do it while I'm talking to you. You wouldn't even know I'm doing it. And that opens things up. That's a first that's a first step. You know, another one is a sense of allowance. Can we allow those things to be there? Even when they're really rough. You know, so one of the things that we do with some clients is we ask people to ⁓ imagine a beautiful scene with rolling hills and you know meadows and blue skies and trees and a stream running and next to that stream is a rock and on that rock there's a dead bunny with its guts hanging out and blood everywhere. ⁓ God. So so when I said that, where'd your mind go? ⁓ Well I was in a good place ⁓ until until you went to bad place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That that that that turnaround quickly, yeah. Yeah. So often people Right. So we know that good places can go bad and that's what that's often why people worry to make sure that it doesn't happen, right? And so I threw that at ya. But some people focus only on the bunny, or some people only focus on the blue sky. And so the next step in that example is that we ask you to imagine like a like a painting at a museum or as at a movie theater, your favorite movie, and you're seeing all of it. The blue skies, the trees, the rolling hills. The stream and the dead bunny all together. So that's the work of my of that's the kind of mindful attention work that we're talking about. Because what we're doing now is already a step towards something different that we're in rumination or trying to do. We're trying to open up to those things in order to gain that clarity, in order to take that action, rather than trying to rid ourselves of it. And ironically, that deintensifies the power of that in our body. And in a sense, we're integrating those parts of. the mind and brain. We're integrating that that planful self and these sort of unbidden emotional responses that are trying to protect us. So that's these are kind of some of the skills that we would practice in attentionally to kind of improve for more flexible and playing attention. Right. It's super interesting. And one of the thoughts that came up is if you live in the now and you're completely focused on what is happening currently. And you've had to mention something negative about yourself. But you are not allowed to look into the past and you are also not allowed to look into the future. You are only allowed to base your opinion on the very exact moment, on the now. You wouldn't be able to do it. I mean, it's very difficult. It's very difficult. So so you bring up an important point. I I you know I There's been a lot of focus on the present and you you see this because mindfulness is sort of in our in our popular nomenclature now. It's be in the present, being the present. Well, you just point out it's impossible. There's no way to only be in the present. But what's interesting is the past and the future that people do in the war and nation isn't the past and the future. It actually is in the now. It's just a certain way of being with the now. Because even you mentioned nostalgia, but people use nostalgia much more about the now that's absent, about something that's lost. Complicated grief is the same. People would prefer to be with the lost object, the lost person in its absence because of positive things that are that they remember about them than be something, be in something now that doesn't feel as positive or as good or as possible. And that it in that, people are using the now, using the past and the future as a tool to do something different with the now. So it's how we go into the past and how we go into the future. We're gonna we're gonna go into our past, we're gonna go into future. Can we can we do that with the emotions? Can we feel the sadness? Can we feel the drop in our stomach? Can we feel the anxiety of of giving the talk tomorrow a little bit to have clarity about what we're gonna say and take action? Can we have clarity about, hey, this is what was so great about that person who's gone? And I I what does that say about what I want in my life? And how do I cultivate that in that in my actions when I go to a party or meet people? It's not like it's not yet we're not trying to become present moment creatures that have no past and future. If we did that, we of course would lose modernity in society and all the good things about it. You know? So it's really how we do it, as opposed to just, you know, only trying to to be in the moment. It's how we're in the present, in the past and future in the present moment. Yeah, and how you describe it is I I feel like there's an analogy to be made there that being In the present while accepting these emotions may be difficult, but it is the right skill to learn. And I compare it to having to make a difficult phone call, for example. We can have a decision to just to just pick up the phone, call the person, say what we what we feel, and get it over with, right? That would be the right decision. But what what do we do? Usually we'll say, ⁓ tomorrow it will probably be better because the timing is better and then all throughout the day we think about that phone call and then tomorrow comes and we think, nah, t maybe it's his birthday tomorrow and I don't wanna interrupt him. So but then it's very and that was so close to his birthday, so I'll I'll wait a week and then it might be better and then Throughout the entire week we've had a terrible week because we've constantly thought about it whether if we just ripped off the band-aid and and made the phone call immediately, it would have been over with. And this is kind of similar, I feel like. Absolutely. The pa well, you're describing the power of action. So action does a lot. Action does a lot. And that's why, you know, when you talk about exercise, it can be useful because it's the the evidence shows that it engages motoric, you know, gives it you know motor ⁓ motor cordise. ⁓ the motor cortex and engages the actual body so it can be but it you know part what you're describing though is purposeful action action that's important to us when we when we're thinking of purposeful action we call that being proactive in our approach and in that we can make choices about how to be with with that phone call. So you know there's sort of the just do it attitude. And you know, you know, that might work if you kind of just make yourself do it, but often people don't, right? And It's no question that when you do just do it, it often is not as bad as you thought it was gonna be. But sometimes people need a little bit of prep work. And what I would say is they need to be able to bring the those voices of with them to that act. And we talked to I talked earlier about kind of stilling things down to w to those wants and fears. The ways we w with those fears we want safety and the ways that we want some sort of advancement. And that's that's on that phone call. That phone call has something to do with something you don't want to happen and something you do want to have happen. So we can we can create little we can create re little symbols, little characters of that. It's like the I don't know if you've seen the movie Inside Out, the children's movie. You know, it's a it's a cart it's a cartoon movie in in that's po that's been popular in America with kids where where a a child can has all their emotions in their mind, you know, and they talk to them. But we all have this in a way. We all have a way of of of personifying those pieces. So one thing we might do is can you imagine what is your fear of this call look like and what is your excitement to get something done or to achieve something look like, can you put them on your shoulder? Almost like a devil and angel, but no one's right. This is like a peace accord. It's that everyone has everyone, you know, everyone has the value here. So it's more like two angels or two devils, how you want to do it. And you put them on your shoulder and you remember that's what they're saying. That that that safety one is sort of saying, you know, we got to do this in a way that it's not going to harm us. The other one's saying, well yeah, we're doing this for a reason. So let's let's do that. Let's try it out. And if you can do that, that might make it easier because you're bringing along those feelings rather than trying to get rid of them. The reason why you're putting it off is you keep trying to think, well, maybe tomorrow I won't feel these things. But of course you will. Right. And in many ways you feel it worse. So you're actually more dug in. So there's a way to do it, even to look proactively, you know, at at something you have to do and orient yourself differently and have it the experience be different. Right. And what about w ⁓ writing and journaling? Because ⁓ I don't know if you're familiar with Alex Hermosi. He's a very successful, ⁓ very famous entrepreneur, ⁓ but he's also very wise, I would say. He has incredible insights and one of the things I recently heard him say was when he has to make a difficult decision that he feels like is taking up a lot of emotional bandwidth. He's constantly going back to what should I do? What should I have done? These are usually also decisions that when you make them, you still think about whether it was the right decision. So you worry about making the decision and then you ruminate about the decision. Right. So it's like the the worst possible scenario because you're you're you're hitting them both. So because they matter. It's a big decision, right? It's the thing that mappers in your life. So it's gonna pull for both those systems that the the yeah. Exactly. And they probably have ups and downs, and it's just not not an easy decision. So what he does is he goes through when he's made the decision, he writes it down. So he writes exactly the entire thought process as detailed as possible. So he goes, step one, this is what happens with them, this is the other scenario. And then it just goes through it almost like an AI, you know, like how the chain of thought reasoning that they've recently implemented. That's what he does. And then every time when he notices after he made the decision, whether he's questioning when he's like kind of ruminating about it, he goes back to his notes and then he's able to physically see his thoughts on paper. And he said like after I do it like twice, third time I just stop the ruminating stops the the I I never think about it again. Just the act of of writing it down on a piece of paper seems to be very ⁓ powerful because you can kind of hold yourself accountable and there's no ambiguity there. ⁓ that's why you did it. So ⁓ where does w long story short, where does writing and journaling come into play here? It's it's huge and there's a lot of great evidence for ⁓ writing therapy. and so even the act of journaling, writing things down, as you mentioned, can be very powerful. I think his method sounds like he's creating concreteness in his thought process. So he's able to say, How did I get here? He's reminding himself. Yes. People can do that in free writing too. You can sort of say, you know, I I I'm gonna I'm gonna look at what happened in this relationship and this job and this experience, and I'm gonna look at all of it. I'm gonna write down all of I'm gonna write down the The dead bunnies and the blue skies and all the pieces of it. And they're in that sense you're creating the concreteness of it's an exposure. It's exposure therapy in itself because you're writing those things out and you're doing it for a certain period of time where it becomes a narrative. And it's a full narrative. So it's your narrative, it's your story, or you know, it's then and it has all the characters in it. Imagine if we took all the if we took our favorite stories and took all the bad characters out, just had the good characters, it'd be kind of boring. So so the best story is have all have all that tension and all that release and that's what we're doing. We're writing our own story. And ⁓ you know, so I think that's a and there's a lot of ways to do that. And his way sounds really, really, you know, ⁓ compelling. one thing we do is that we ask people to write about what's valuable to them, what's important. Who are they in that role in that situation? Who are they when they if they had the best relationship, who would they be? Who who would they be? You know Coming back to the intrinsic aspects, tell us about, you know, who we who you are. And when you write about that, that can create an anchor to what's most important in that particular life role. And then in our approach, we'll ask people like on the left margin, write all those fears. Like when you're writing this thing, like, ⁓ I would, you know, if I had the best job, I would, you know, I would, I, I would be a person who would want to be a problem solver, I would want to be creative. And then this that voice comes up and says, Yeah, you can't do that. You're not, you know, the one when no way would work. Or remember that time, I you know, ⁓ on maybe on the right side we might put down the the rewards, the things that are exciting, or the things that feel blocked, like, ⁓ I would be so excited to do that, but ⁓ there are no jobs like that here. I can't leave this sitting there. So we've just put those what we call polls on the side. So you can write this and find a place for those those ⁓ you know, for those voices because they're a part of it. That's the integration. So I think in any way that somebody does it. Can they find a way to kind of integrate the parts? I think that's important, the parts of mind that in any time we're trying to problem solve. One example we we do is ⁓ think of like a boardroom and you're the CEO and half the s one side of the table is saying, Let's let's buy, and then one's saying let's sell. You know, like how do you come together and make a choice? We get the whole we hear all the pieces, but you're the CEO, you're the executive, and you've taken all the advisors considerations, but you're making taking an action. But you're not ignoring one side. So I think that that's an in any we can do this in any kind of visual space, any kind of characterization where where someone is making a story that then that then leads to action. Cause it seems like in the example you gave, he he was talking about an action. So at some point he kind of went over it, you know, he did it before, which maybe addressed his worry. He did it after, which just his rumination. And then he's implementing something. So he's taking action. And then as you climb the mountain, there's a new there's a new difficult part, but you've gotten farther up. So so I think a lot of it in the end is about that that preparation for action and taking action. And writing helps one do that. Yeah, I I feel like I'm I'm ⁓ I have less ⁓ problems with ⁓ writing. ⁓ as I mentioned, I wanna become a more frequent meditator. I have started to journal ⁓ quite a lot this year, actually. I've been doing it I think for almost a year now. And I feel like that's it's it's a nice process for me. I but I like to write, so I might be ⁓ biased ⁓ here. But that's it's not it's it's a preference. You know, if works, you know, then you know i if there's if s if it doesn't, there might be a piece that's missing to something, right? If someone you know if someone is you ⁓ I think mental activities, ironically, some mental activities are, you know, good good alternatives to these negative mental activities. We can do a different mental activity that can be helpful, which is sort of what meditation is in itself, a sitting meditation at least. But then there's ⁓ something that's completely different, like an activity, you know, where s where you are exercising, but people can exercise and they can move without dealing with the other parts. So when they stop moving, then it comes back. So, you know, it's we we want to address all parts of experience. So if you if writing is helpful to you and you gain clarity and then you take action from that clarity, then you're taking the action. So all the parts are there. So, really, it been what matters is that you're kinda gauging all parts of your experience. We'll go back to the conversation in just a second, but first I have an important announcement to make. If you've made it this far, I'm going to assume that you're enjoying the show. If you want to support the show, you can do so by leaving a like or a comment if you're watching on YouTube, or by rating the episode if you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. However, the single biggest thing you can do to support the show is by sharing it with someone you think might enjoy this episode. This could be a friend, it could be a family member, it could be a colleague. It doesn't really matter. If everyone who's currently listening to this episode would share it with just one person, the show would blow up in no time. Which also means that I could go full time. That means more episodes, it means better episodes, and it also means a happy host. So Please consider sharing the episode. It really helps me a lot. And I thank you. Now let's get back to talking. Right. And there's there's this trend going on on social media. I won't say the the exact term that they use for it here in this conversation, but ⁓ basically what it says is we've been overthinking everything, nothing matters, we should just live in the moment and we should be very almost impossible. Impulsive, if you will. So whatever comes up, if you want to quit your job, quit your job. Don't care about what anyone thinks of you and just live in the now. And it's basically the opposite of of rumination. It's the opposite of worrying. It's the opposite of of of introspection. which sounds good on paper. I mean it sounds pretty good, but we've we've spoken about why these why we have these mechanisms in the first place. What are some of the dangers if we overshoot in in the lack of worry and and the lack of rumination? So like all popular, you know, things that that that ⁓ that get the attention like that, they have a kernel of of truth to them. And there's a kernel of truth that that, you know, we we've talked about this sort of snowball idea. And so in a sense, if you follow if you just do your imp your impulse, you're not gonna get caught in your mind. Right. But a couple of problems with that. First The impulse i the first impulse, if we go with that, it's not always the best impulse. Part of the importance of pausing is to gain clarity around it. If my first impulse is anger, because I I'm frustrated, I wanted this thing, I was supposed to get, you know, ⁓ you know, carrots on my salad and I didn't, and then my first impulse is to get angry and yell, that's not so effective or kind, you know, or advanced. So if my first thing is to avoid because I mean first thing is to feel fear and follow the impulse. I just won't go to the party. Forget it. I don't I don't feel like it. I don't want it. My impulse says don't go. Now I'm cutting myself off from a possible social experience that could be beneficial to me. So impulse is the first impulse is not always great. But paying attention to that impulse is important. So but all of them, not just the one that's most salient, pay attention to the whole scene. So pausing is important. But if we ignore all deliberate reflection and deliberation, then we're losing you know, the importance of of the outside that moment, right? We've developed a whole learning history about what it means, why that j kind of job isn't good or is good. So we do have to do some deliberation. But if the deliberation is not about ridding us of those of those feelings, then we can do both things. Pay attention to our emotions, deliberate on them, and take action without getting caught in i in that in i in in that process, but also without just taking the first impulse that comes along. So a nice idea, I think it's trying to counter, but maybe not the whole story. No, I I completely I completely agree, but I just thought it was funny to to to bring up here and relevant as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I I I've been f ⁓ thinking about ⁓ continuous ⁓ learning and about things that you have to learn once in order to understand them. So Usually factual information, ⁓ what's the capital of of France, Paris, okay, you hear it once, maybe you have to hear it a couple of times, but after you've heard it, you know it. And it's also it doesn't change, right? But there are things that you need to continuously work on and continuously remind yourself of ⁓ in order to apply them. F a analogy here is going to the gym. It's not like You go to the gym, you get a six pack, and then you stop. It's like, no, no. That's that that's that's where it starts almost. Like it's it's maintaining the the the the the physical ability, maintaining the diet, maintaining healthy. And I think that goes for our mind as well, and it goes for n for knowledge like this as well. We know, okay. We we know how to solve it or we know what we can do in order to to do it better, but we need to continuously ⁓ work on it. ⁓ do you do you agree and how can we make sure that we ⁓ keep doing this? ⁓ absolutely like you know anytime you know success happens, and we can see that if people are paying attention to the soccer games of the World Cup right now, that you know, you can be on top one moment. And then not the next moment. And we we are not, you know, we are not robots and we cannot just maintain the adaptive perfect state. But remember, all these things have purpose. So sometimes there's a reason why we we falter, because we have something to learn in the faltering. But one thing I would say is in even when someone develops the muscle to do something different, is that it's not an or, it's an and. So when people hear about these other things, Habits are hard to change. And if you've worried and ruminated a lot of your life, they're not going to pop away easily. And even if you have a good period where you shift away from them, the idea that somehow that's gone now. Or what they were, you know, when it when they work, when you're when the alternatives work better, you maybe you feel less, you know, unsure, less anxious, less down. So it feels like that's going to go away, but it's not going to go away. It will come back, and so will the worry and rumination, because it'll be a first response, because it's it can be habitual. So The and in that is try to do both. Don't try to rid yourself of worry and rumination. Just try to do some of the other stuff too. Your mind can do a lot of things in a difficult moment. And if some of them are worrying and ruminating, that's okay. Try shifting. And that's it gets us back to that ⁓ that meditation idea, right? Where think, I'll just have a clear mind and it doesn't work. It's not a clear mind. It's a scattered mind. Moving back to it, having the ability to move your mind is important. If you if you're If you're in a tough spot, the first thing you do is starting you're on the you get a a a unclear health diagnosis, and now you're back on the the internet looking on AI and finding out all about it, you could stop yourself and notice, okay, I'm in a worry process right now. What else can I do? How can I hold some of that fear and look at something else too? Again, trying not to rid ourselves of that. One way to get over those bit ⁓ those habits is to is to let them be there as we develop the new habit. And in time, it as we Strengthen the new habit in different contexts. So let me try it out here, let me try it out here. It's less about ridding the bad ones, developing these new these new learning habits. We've learned that that kind of learning strengthen the new thing in the face of the old thing in all different places with different people. That will strengthen that that will strengthen it in time and the other thing will won't be as strong. As long as we welcome the times when sometimes it comes back, which it will. And we'll have to do it again. And that's five. Yeah, no, that's very true. I if I just look at my own journal and I see I I really try to force myself to also write in my journal on on good weeks, in good weeks, on positive days, when everything is going my way. I really try to force myself in a journal. But if you were to analyze my my journal, which I hope people won't, but you see that the the frequency of writing greatly ⁓ goes up when I'm not feeling too well. Whenever I am not in a good place. I I I write every day, sometimes even twice a day. And then I have a go period and I'm in an upward flow. I'm very happy. And then you every message start with I should have I should have written earlier. I should have written more. ⁓ it's been a week. It's been two weeks. so that's ⁓ that's like It's difficult to to to force yourself to keep doing these habits that that really help ⁓ during the bad times, but it it will be good to yeah, it ⁓ you should always do them because I feel like if you keep practicing it, ⁓ it really helps you to ⁓ to to cover those moments when when you're feeling not as good as you usually ⁓ would. Yeah, that's a great point about like holding these processes in positive times. People are like, Great, I'm feeling good. All this stuff should go out, you know, I'm gonna put that in the closet, I'm gonna just gonna do live my life in an unbidden way because it's much because it's exhausting to do these things. Anything that anytime you're regulating, it takes effort and effort is exhausting. So we we try to push it away. But your point about ⁓ bringing things in even when they're not negative, is this sense of what we call equanimity, which is that, you know, being able to to be present in your mind even when things are positive, just the way you would have you w we you know, would have paid attention when they're negative and That having awe, noticing awe when you're excited about some when you're in something that's exciting, sense of of gratitude for things, being in in the presence of of salient positive things and be able to write about them exactly. So one thing you can do is put reminder on your phone, you know, write about all everything today, good and bad, you know, and remind yourself to kind of keep doing that. Yeah, and it's yet yet another analogy I can make here is that I I always have a shoulder injury on my right shoulder. And what I do in order to get rid of that injury is I d start that hanging. So I just hang at a bar for five minutes a day, and whenever I do it for a couple weeks, the injury just immediately goes away. And what I used to do is just like only hang when the injury comes about. But now I've started doing it every single day, injury or not. And now guess what? I never have the injury anymore. So I think yeah, that can be applied to ⁓ to this as well. ⁓ yeah, I I want to make sure, Doug, that we covered everything that you would like to talk about regarding the emotion ⁓ regulation therapy. Is there some of ⁓ the aspects of it that we haven't covered yet? Well, I think we've covered a lot of it. Yeah. So again, just saying that. That ⁓ in the therapy, we b both deal with mom difficult moments in the first part of it. And we teach people abilities to get clearer around their emotions and the and the impetus of those emotions, their motivations. And we also teach them skills to do something different with that clarity. and we do that with our mind in attention and in perspective taking. And then we also help people sort of think about what they want in their lives differently, what they value and how to be more proactive and take those pro those those proactive staff, those actions with those conflicts in toe. And we'll even one thing I did talk about is we'll even have those conf those parts of that conflict talk to each other. So that devil and the angel or the two angels, we have them kind of talk it out before we take the action. So it's not so when we're going to take the action, it's familiar. And there's a softening when that happens. And I mentioned a peace accord before because really that's what it is. Peace accords, no one's ever gets their way. And really there's it's just enough to get the thing to work so people can live side by side. So when we have the part of us that doesn't doesn't want to make the the that call you mentioned, doesn't want to take the call, doesn't doesn't want to do that, and one that does, can they both show up? Can we have them kind of work it out so they can show up at a level that makes it workable and you can make the call. So we work with that too. And we have a certain way of of having internal dialoguing that makes it a little easier. And then you take those voices with you to take the step. And that's another piece of the therapy. ⁓ that we use. Incredible. Well, this has been ⁓ been very ⁓ very interesting and dog. Is there is there anything I I've heard so many interesting things. ⁓ is there is there anything apart from ⁓ the the ERT that ⁓ you would like to emphasize or or touch on? So absolutely. There are a lot of, you know, ⁓ again, exercise, meditation, yoga all have ⁓ have been shown to be helpful. You mentioned writing, that's excellent. There are also other therapies like cognitive ability therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and mindfulness based therapies that also can do very good things with worry and rumination. So there are many ways to to get help when when things feel too hard. Yeah. Well, ⁓ that's that's ⁓ at least it's it's hopeful. And ⁓ yeah, I think all of these practices combined, ⁓ what you said about having a preference is is good. I mean, I I will still want to meditate more, ⁓ but ⁓ at least I don't have to feel bad that my preference is with ⁓ writing. As long as something ⁓ works, ⁓ works for you, then it works for you. Where ⁓ where can where can people go, dog, if they wanna keep up with ⁓ your work, your research, ⁓ perhaps ⁓ they wanna follow you across some ⁓ of these ⁓ social media channels, ⁓ website perhaps, ⁓ book. Yeah. So they can go just to emotion regulation therapy dot com. Mm-hmm. and that's a good place to sort of get ⁓ links and ⁓ to other sources as well. ⁓ as well learn as learn more about our approach. Awesome. Well I'll make sure to to put it in the in the show notes. Thank you so much for for coming on the show. This was so incredibly interesting and ⁓ yeah, I had a great time ⁓ talking dog. So I ⁓ I really appreciate it. Absolutely. This has been a lot of fun to talk to you today. Yeah, likewise. All right. Speak soon. Okay. Sounds good. Take care.