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1:16

In this episode of Insights at

1:18

the Edge, my guest

1:21

is Dr. Judson Brewer.

1:23

Dr. Jud, as he's called.

1:26

Dr. Jud is an

1:29

internationally renowned addiction psychiatrist,

1:31

neuroscientist, habit change expert

1:34

and author. He's

1:36

a professor in the School of Public Health

1:39

and the Medical School at Brown

1:41

University. His 2016

1:43

TED Talk, A Simple

1:45

Way to Break a Bad Habit,

1:47

has been viewed more than 19

1:49

million times. He's

1:53

the author of several books,

1:55

including The Craving Mind, the

1:58

New York Times bestseller Unwanted. Unwinding

2:00

Anxiety and a new book.

2:02

It's coming out on February 20th, 2024. It's

2:06

called The Hunger Habit. Why

2:09

we eat when we're not hungry

2:11

and how to stop. Dr. Judd, welcome.

2:14

Thanks for having me. Okay,

2:16

I want to start with

2:19

something that I learned from reading

2:21

your book, Unwinding Anxiety,

2:23

that I would say is one

2:25

of those, what? Really?

2:28

Could this be true? Which

2:30

is that anxiety, in your

2:32

view, from your perspective, is

2:35

a quote-unquote

2:37

bad habit that we

2:40

can break. And as

2:42

somebody who has worked with my

2:44

own anxiety my whole life, I

2:47

never thought of it as

2:49

a habit. I always thought of it as a condition.

2:53

And so I'd like to understand and

2:55

have our listeners track with us how

2:57

you came to this discovery. I realize

2:59

it's a big opening question here

3:02

that anxiety could

3:04

be looked at as a

3:06

quote-unquote bad habit. Well,

3:09

it actually started with me struggling.

3:13

So I certainly had my own run-ins

3:17

with anxiety used to get panic

3:19

attacks during residency. But

3:21

I was getting anxious with trying to

3:23

help my own patients with anxiety because

3:26

prescribing medications, you know, the best ones

3:28

out there, it's about one in five

3:30

that show a significant reduction in symptoms.

3:32

The term is called number needed to

3:35

treat and it's 5.2, meaning,

3:37

you know, it's about one in five. So basically,

3:40

I was playing the medication lottery. I

3:42

didn't know which of the next five

3:44

patients that came in was going to

3:46

benefit and what to do with the other four. And

3:50

I started wondering, you know, what the heck

3:52

I could do to help my patients besides

3:55

prescribe medications. And my lab

3:58

at the time had been studying habit change.

4:00

And I bring that

4:02

in because I started looking

4:04

at the scientific literature, and it turns out

4:07

that back in the 1980s, ironically,

4:10

around the same time that Prozac

4:12

was first released, there

4:14

was a psychologist named Thomas

4:16

Porcovec who suggested that anxiety

4:18

could be driven through a

4:20

process called negative reinforcement. And

4:23

when I read that, I had

4:25

this aha moment because negative

4:27

reinforcement is what I've been

4:30

studying in terms of habit formation

4:32

and habit change. And

4:34

I never thought to apply

4:36

that mechanistic

4:40

perspective to

4:42

anxiety itself. And the

4:45

way it works is that the feeling of

4:47

anxiety tends to drive

4:49

the mental behavior of worrying. And

4:51

that was the big connection that

4:53

I hadn't seen before until

4:57

I read about it. And then I saw it

4:59

all the time in patients in my clinic, where

5:02

it's like the feeling of anxiety

5:04

drives this mental behavior of worrying.

5:07

And what the research had shown was that

5:09

it's rewarding enough that worrying because people

5:11

feel like they're in control, even if

5:14

it doesn't give them any more control

5:16

than they had before, it

5:18

makes them feel like they're in control

5:20

or at least doing something. And from

5:22

a brain perspective, that's enough of

5:25

a reward for our brain to say,

5:27

hey, remember that behavior, do

5:29

it again the next time you feel

5:31

anxious. Okay,

5:34

I think I'm with you in

5:36

terms of I feel the sensations

5:38

of anxiety, and now I'm gonna

5:41

start worrying. Okay.

5:45

I have control over

5:47

whether or not I continue worrying

5:49

or I don't continue worrying. Well,

5:52

any behavior can be learned. And

5:55

any behavior can be unlearned if it can

5:57

be learned. And so we have...

6:00

some level of control and we also don't

6:02

have, we may not have control and where

6:04

we can gain control is by learning how

6:07

the system works as

6:09

compared to trying to force the system.

6:11

So I'm sure there are plenty of

6:13

people that have noticed that worry isn't

6:15

that helpful in their life and they

6:17

just try to stop worrying and if

6:20

they've tried that they've probably also

6:22

noticed that just trying to apply

6:24

willpower doesn't work so well. And

6:27

so here I would say we have

6:29

control once we know how the controller

6:31

works. Tell

6:33

me more. Yeah well

6:37

I will I'll start by saying and

6:40

we can double click on this later

6:42

if it's helpful but the willpower piece

6:45

seems to be where most

6:47

people have been focused whether it's

6:49

anxiety or overeating or anything

6:52

you know in terms of changing any

6:54

behavior. But from a

6:56

neuroscience standpoint, will powers not

6:58

even in the equations when it

7:01

comes to habit formation and habit

7:03

change. That

7:07

makes really good sense to me

7:09

and has also been my instinct

7:11

as someone who has a really

7:13

strong will. I have not found

7:15

it helpful when the worrying train

7:17

is off into the races. So

7:20

here you know what we've found

7:23

over the years is that just

7:25

understanding how the process works is

7:27

a really helpful start for people.

7:30

And our brains are set up to

7:33

not like uncertainty.

7:35

So uncertainty is a driver for us

7:37

to do something you know if you

7:40

think of our ancestors and they heard

7:42

some rustling out in the bushes outside

7:44

of the cave or the you know

7:46

or whatever. They couldn't just roll over

7:48

and go to sleep and say oh

7:50

it's probably nothing you know because it

7:53

probably could be something that's gonna eat them. And

7:56

so our brains are set up

7:59

to really try to

8:01

minimize uncertainty. And

8:03

what that does is give us

8:06

this mechanism so that

8:08

we will go and get information.

8:11

Now that's all well and good from a

8:13

survival standpoint, but in modern day, when we

8:15

take that uncertainty and

8:18

we apply it to future experiences

8:20

where we don't actually have control

8:22

or we can't actually get information,

8:26

that's where we get this evolutionary

8:28

bottleneck where, you know, think

8:30

of the uncertainty piece, that's what drives

8:32

fear often, and fear is a very

8:34

helpful survival mechanism. But

8:36

when you apply fear to the

8:38

future, then we tend

8:42

not to do so well from a

8:44

survival standpoint. Now, just

8:46

to be clear, planning and thinking

8:48

about the future is one thing

8:50

that can actually be helpful, and

8:52

that's more recent evolutionary mechanism that

8:55

humans have. But when

8:57

you take that and you mix it together

8:59

with fear, when it becomes fear of the

9:01

future as compared to planning of the future,

9:03

that's when we start to get stuck in

9:05

these worry loops. And what's been

9:08

shown is that when we worry, we actually

9:10

have more trouble planning and thinking

9:12

into the future, and we just

9:14

feel pretty bad right now. All

9:18

right, Dr. Judd. Here I

9:20

think most people are tracking with you, and they're

9:22

saying that a lot of the things

9:25

I worry about are very uncertain. There

9:30

are no answers. If I could find answers, my

9:32

worry, I don't know, go look this up, go do

9:34

this, go do that, find

9:37

the answer from this person. How are they

9:39

really feeling about you? Get more certainty about

9:41

economics, about future weather patterns,

9:43

about the political situation,

9:45

all kinds of things, uncertain, uncertain,

9:48

uncertain. So that's the information that

9:50

comes back. We're left

9:52

with our worry that isn't

9:54

being productive. Now what?

9:57

So this is where we can start to map out. when

10:00

we are getting stuck in a worry habit loop.

10:04

And so there are three elements for any

10:06

habit loop to form. The

10:08

first element's a trigger, the second's a behavior,

10:11

and the third is a reward from a

10:13

neuroscience standpoint. I like to think of it

10:15

pragmatically as a result. And

10:17

so if we map this out with regard to

10:20

anxiety, the feeling

10:22

of anxiety is the trigger

10:25

for the mental behavior of

10:27

worrying. And that mental

10:29

behavior of worrying results in this feeling

10:31

of control, which then feeds back through

10:33

this negative reinforcement loop to say, hey,

10:36

next time you feel anxious, you should

10:38

worry. And so there

10:40

we can just start to map out

10:42

these processes. I can give

10:44

an example if it's helpful like with a clinic

10:46

patient. So I am thinking

10:49

of a patient who was referred to me

10:52

for anxiety, uncertainty, I

10:54

have no idea what anxiety was

10:56

related to. And when

10:58

he walked in my office door, he looked

11:01

pretty anxious. And so when I started taking

11:03

his history, he was describing how he had

11:06

been anxious, he was about 40 years of age when

11:08

he came to see me, and

11:10

he had severe anxiety

11:13

for the last 30 years since he was

11:15

about 10. He used to

11:17

get pretty severe panic attacks, and his panic was

11:20

getting so bad that he was getting panic attacks

11:22

when driving on the highway, and then he was

11:24

avoiding driving on the highway. And so I just

11:27

sat down after taking his history, sat down with

11:29

him and just pulled out a sticky note, like

11:32

a five by seven yellow sticky

11:34

note, and I wrote on their trigger behavior

11:36

result. And I said, let me see if

11:38

I've got this right. These thoughts that

11:40

you might get in the car accidents trigger

11:43

you to avoid driving on the highway, which

11:45

results in you not having a panic attack.

11:47

And he said, yeah, that's right. And then

11:49

I drew arrows between those three and showed

11:52

that that's actually a loop. And

11:54

his eyes got really wide, and

11:56

he said, I never knew that my

11:58

brain worked that way. And

12:00

so for me, I find it very helpful

12:03

as a good place to start is just to

12:05

help people map out some of these loops that

12:08

they might be stuck in and help them understand

12:10

that this is a survival mechanism

12:12

that just might have gotten a little mis-wired

12:14

in modern day. Can

12:16

you share with us from your

12:18

own experience a loop that you

12:20

were able to identify and then

12:22

how you broke that repetitive pattern?

12:26

Sure. I'll

12:28

think of one. Fortunately,

12:31

I'm thinking I haven't had a severe

12:33

panic attack in a while, but I'm

12:35

thinking of

12:38

a time when I was in the

12:41

ocean and was not

12:43

too long ago and was kind of

12:45

caught in the middle of some wave sets that were kind

12:47

of coming down on my head. And

12:50

so, you know, starting

12:52

to panic a little bit because, you know,

12:55

not so helpful if you can't breathe. And

12:58

I noticed that that panic was

13:00

coming up. And, you know,

13:02

I've been at this point, I've been practicing

13:04

mindfulness for about 25 years.

13:06

And so I could start to notice those thoughts

13:09

and I could start to notice the feeling of

13:11

panic. And by noting

13:13

those, I could also see that

13:15

that wasn't going to actually help me in that moment.

13:17

It was actually going to make things worse. Panicking was

13:19

going to use up my energy and not help me,

13:21

you know, do what I needed to do.

13:24

And so just noting those and being

13:26

aware of them helped

13:29

me, you know, not get caught up in

13:31

that, you know, in getting into a panic

13:33

cycle and then, you know, go back up

13:35

for air and do what I needed to

13:37

do. And then, you know, obviously I made

13:39

it through that. When

13:42

it comes to generalized anxiety,

13:44

sometimes I think it's hard

13:46

to know what the trigger is. Like,

13:49

you know, it's the end of the day. Oh,

13:52

now I'm not working anymore. I have a chance

13:54

to just sort of be with myself. And

13:56

I'm not even sure what I'm feeling anxious

13:59

about what happened. Was it what I said

14:01

during XYZ conversation? I could have done this

14:03

or why? Is it what this other person's

14:05

thinking? Is it, who knows? So

14:07

do we need to know what the trigger

14:10

is to start to break and

14:12

unwind, as you say, anxiety?

14:15

I'm glad you bring that forward because that is

14:18

often what the logical brain thinks. It's like, oh,

14:20

if I can just figure that, find the triggers,

14:22

I could deal with them, I could avoid them,

14:24

I could work with them, I could change them.

14:28

When you look at it from

14:30

a neuroscience perspective, the triggers are

14:32

only the thing that sets the

14:34

wheel in motion, but

14:36

they're not what strengthens it or

14:38

weakens it. And so from

14:42

a reinforcement learning standpoint, this is called reward-based

14:44

learning for a reason because if something's rewarding,

14:46

we're gonna keep doing it. And

14:49

if it's not rewarding, we're gonna stop

14:51

doing it. And so here, the triggers

14:54

are actually the least important part of

14:56

the equation. And with generalized

14:58

anxiety, for example, people

15:00

often wake up in the morning and

15:02

just feel anxious first upon

15:05

waking, and then they start to

15:07

worry and then spiral out throughout

15:09

the entire day. So

15:12

more often than not, most often, I

15:14

would say, they can't actually find specific

15:16

triggers and it just drives

15:19

the cycle even more. So

15:22

often just that feeling of anxiety

15:24

triggers the mental behavior of worrying.

15:27

And when we can zoom in on

15:29

the worrying itself, we

15:31

can work and see that it's a cycle.

15:33

We can not only help to kind of

15:36

unwind the behavior of worrying, but we can

15:38

also learn to change our

15:40

relationship to the feeling of anxiety itself.

15:43

Let's talk about that because I think

15:45

it's one thing to interrupt the

15:48

pattern of worry, that mental addiction,

15:50

if you will. Okay, this isn't

15:52

helping. But now I

15:54

have all these feelings in my body.

15:57

They're very uncomfortable. They're very uncomfortable, I

15:59

feel. You know, people could

16:01

use different words. I feel dysregulated. I

16:03

feel butterflies in my stomach. I feel a

16:06

shakiness inside, wobbliness

16:08

inside, whatever the

16:11

language might be to describe this

16:14

feeling of, you know, I'm

16:16

not solid inside. Oh my, what do I

16:18

do with all of that? All of those

16:20

sensations. Well, the

16:23

first thing that can be helpful is just

16:25

to understand what our survival brain's going to

16:27

want us to do. And

16:29

so, and it's going to try

16:31

to drive us in a certain direction. So anything

16:34

that's unpleasant is by

16:36

nature going to drive our brain

16:38

to say, hey, do something to

16:40

make this unpleasant thing go away.

16:42

You know, that's the basis of

16:44

negative reinforcement. And so

16:46

just knowing that helps us start to understand

16:48

and map out the process. So

16:51

once we've been able to recognize that and

16:53

map that out, we can then start to

16:55

see what our habitual

16:57

reactions are to that unpleasantness.

17:00

And typically, you know, especially

17:02

in these days, I see

17:04

a lot of people distract themselves, you know, so

17:07

I love the term that Cornel

17:09

West gave our smartphones. He calls

17:12

them these weapons of mass distraction.

17:14

Where? You

17:16

know, so often we have a

17:18

distraction tool right at our fingertips.

17:22

And so whether it's, you know, checking

17:24

our social media, our email, checking the

17:26

news feed, doing whatever, there's something out

17:28

there that can certainly distract us for

17:30

a few moments. So just

17:32

recognizing what some of these old habits

17:34

are and how well they serve us

17:36

is a good help is a helpful

17:38

start. Because if we

17:41

can see that they're actually just serving

17:43

to give us this brief distraction,

17:46

but actually not helping us change

17:49

our relationship to these unpleasant

17:51

sensations, they're just going to keep

17:53

us stuck in that cycle. And at

17:55

the same time, we're not going to

17:57

learn what I think is a critical...

18:00

survival tool in modern day which

18:02

is distress tolerance meaning if there's

18:05

something unpleasant, we

18:07

can actually learn to be with

18:09

things that are unpleasant like emotionally

18:12

unpleasant, unpleasant thoughts, etc. But

18:14

in modern day, more and more and more,

18:16

we're being trained in

18:19

very subtle ways to not

18:21

tolerate any type of distress whether it's

18:23

a little bit of physical pain, it'll

18:26

quick take some, you know, take a

18:28

painkiller whether it's emotional pain,

18:30

quick distract yourself or eat some

18:32

food or something like that as compared

18:34

to saying, hey, you know, discomfort, that's

18:37

actually, you know, part of life, not

18:39

that we should, you know, look to

18:41

make our lives, you

18:44

know, to kind of wallow in

18:46

suffering. But just to see that

18:48

this is a natural part of life and that we don't

18:50

have to run from it all the time. Now,

18:53

I want to talk more about growing

18:55

our distress tolerance but before we do,

18:57

let's talk more about distraction. It

19:00

works, it seems, for a few,

19:02

it seems like if I

19:04

watch a movie, you know, if

19:06

I scroll on my phone, if I

19:08

do that for a period of time, I notice,

19:11

I kind of feel better afterwards, like

19:13

I'm, and I think, huh, did I

19:15

waste a couple hours or did I

19:17

somehow self-medicate, quote unquote,

19:20

in a way that didn't, it didn't actually cause

19:22

any harm? Nothing bad happened. I didn't go to

19:24

open the refrigerator and, you know, eat a bunch

19:27

of stuff or smoke a bunch of stuff or

19:29

say mean things. I just, you

19:32

know, played with my weapon of

19:34

mass distraction and I feel kind of better.

19:37

So why do I feel better when I'm

19:39

distracted and what's so bad about that? Yeah.

19:42

So this isn't to say that

19:44

there's something terrible about distraction and

19:46

sometimes that's the only mechanism

19:49

that some people have at their fingertips,

19:51

you know, in the moment, right? What

19:55

it doesn't help us

19:57

with is learning to develop that.

19:59

distress tolerance. And the other thing

20:01

that it can develop

20:04

is our dependence upon

20:06

distraction. And

20:08

so there are

20:10

a couple of things there that we can

20:12

all explore in our own experience. One is

20:14

that we become our brains

20:16

are set up to habituate

20:19

to different behaviors. And

20:21

so, you know, if my distraction

20:24

tool is to look at cute pictures

20:26

of puppies on Instagram, for example, over

20:30

time, my brain's gonna, you know, if I

20:32

go to Instagram, every time I feel anxious,

20:35

my brain is gonna say, okay, show me the cute

20:37

puppies. And then it's gonna say, okay, I need cuter

20:39

puppies, because these are not cute enough

20:41

anymore. And then it says, okay, puppies and

20:43

kittens, you know, puppies, kittens and babies, and

20:45

you get the idea, which

20:48

is very similar to somebody starting to

20:50

drink alcohol as a way to try

20:52

to distract themselves from anxiety, then they

20:54

have to drink more and they become

20:56

tolerant, etc. So it's the same mechanism.

20:58

It's just slightly different from a chemical

21:00

standpoint, because alcohol

21:02

is directly affecting the dopamine system.

21:05

Whereas these, you

21:07

know, these behaviors are affecting the dopamine

21:09

system, but not,

21:11

you know, not specifically hitting the

21:13

benzodiazepine receptors, for example. So

21:15

I don't know if that gives you a little bit of a

21:18

sense for, you know, how distraction can be

21:20

helpful in the moment, but

21:22

might not be a long term solution. You know,

21:24

I think of it as, you know, if we

21:26

have poison ivy, and it itches,

21:28

and we scratch it, it might feel better in

21:31

the moment, but it's actually going to keep that

21:33

rash around for a while longer. Well,

21:36

the reason I'm bringing this up, and

21:38

I'm going to stick with it just

21:41

for another moment is in unwinding anxiety,

21:43

you talk about the importance of the

21:45

disenchantment process, when we

21:47

become disenchanted with whatever, this is

21:49

my language now, whatever coping strategy

21:52

we have to

21:54

not feel quite so terrible, to deal

21:56

with our distress. And you

21:58

know, it's one thing I can understand getting Disenchanted,

22:00

you use the example right now of

22:03

scratching the poison ivy. It's

22:05

easy to get for me to see

22:07

getting disenchanted with that because the poison

22:09

ivy spreads and the red thing gets

22:11

much worse and it's all over my

22:13

arm and face now. And that's, you

22:15

know, I don't want to do that.

22:17

And even with worrying, I can see

22:19

I'm getting so upset and I'm just,

22:21

you know, becoming like a dark mess.

22:23

I don't want to do that. I'm

22:25

getting disenchanted. But when I'm distracting myself,

22:27

I'm kind of going kind of

22:30

quiet in a way. Help

22:32

me get disenchanted with distraction, Dr.

22:35

Jeff. Well, and

22:38

I think you're bringing up a really good point, which is,

22:41

you know, if it's helpful and

22:44

we don't see the downsides to it,

22:46

we're probably not going to get disenchanted

22:48

with distraction. On the other

22:50

hand, if there are moments

22:52

where we try to distract ourselves and it

22:55

doesn't work or we don't

22:57

have our tools of distraction, whether, you

22:59

know, maybe you don't have our phone

23:02

or maybe, you know, there's some reason that

23:04

we can't distract ourselves, then

23:06

our brain really goes nuts and

23:08

says, hey, I need my

23:10

distraction. You know, where is it? What are you going

23:13

to do for me? And things can actually get worse.

23:16

So there we get to learn

23:18

about our dependence on these distraction

23:20

tools. And then we can

23:22

start asking, well, is there a better way?

23:26

And that's where we start to become disenchanted with,

23:28

you know, things, you know, if something doesn't work

23:30

all the time, I'm going to be less excited

23:33

about it than if it worked all the time.

23:36

And so here, I think the disenchantment

23:38

comes when we can find something

23:41

that is more reliable and

23:43

at the same time helps

23:45

us live a better

23:48

life, live a happier, healthier life. And I

23:50

would suggest that learning how

23:52

our mind works and learning how to work with our

23:54

mind helps us not only

23:57

be able to tolerate

23:59

unpleasant. pleasantness more and so it

24:02

empowers us, but also

24:04

helps us develop wisdom so we can

24:06

generalize some of these learnings to other

24:08

aspects of our life. Okay,

24:11

help us develop our distress

24:13

tolerance. For those of us

24:15

now who are, we're willing,

24:17

we're interested, we get it, that

24:20

distraction isn't really the

24:23

best we can do. We're inspired.

24:26

Well, our research has shown that

24:30

the first, well, there

24:32

are a couple of steps. So I think of

24:34

this as a three-step process. The first

24:36

step is just mapping out whatever the

24:38

issue is. So let's call, let's say anxiety

24:40

and worry because we've been talking about that.

24:43

So if we're able to map out that

24:45

when we feel anxious, we start to worry, or

24:48

then we can also use distraction as well,

24:52

we can start to ask ourselves a

24:54

question which moves us into the next

24:56

step, which is, what am

24:58

I getting from this? And

25:01

here, it's really interesting because we

25:03

can look at modern psychology and

25:05

say, well, why is this an

25:07

important question? We can

25:09

look at modern neuroscience, which actually

25:11

highlights these, their actual

25:13

equations of behavior change, which

25:16

focus very much on what's

25:20

called changing the reward value of a

25:22

behavior. And we can also look as

25:24

far back as Buddhist psychology, where the

25:27

Buddha is reported to have said

25:31

karma is based on cause and effect. And

25:33

so if you look at cause and effect,

25:35

it's actually a very nice description of

25:38

modern day psychology in terms of reinforcement

25:40

learning. And what I mean by that is

25:42

if we

25:44

do a behavior and it's rewarding, we're

25:47

going to keep doing it. If we

25:49

do the behavior and we pay attention

25:51

and it's not rewarding, we're going to

25:53

become disenchanted with it and stop doing

25:55

it. And there are actually explicit passages

25:58

in the polycanon about this where I'll

26:00

summarize where the Buddha talks

26:02

about exploring gratification to its

26:04

end. And

26:06

he said that that wasn't until I

26:09

explored gratification to its end that knowledge and

26:11

vision arose. So that sounds

26:13

kind of important. And

26:16

so we said, well, can we apply that to

26:18

modern day? How does that work? And

26:20

it's actually pretty simple. So for

26:22

example, when my patients come

26:24

in and they want to quit smoking,

26:27

instead of telling them to stop smoking, which they've

26:30

all tried, you know, they tried their willpower and

26:32

it hasn't worked, otherwise they wouldn't need to see

26:34

me. Instead I

26:37

say, hey, pay attention as you

26:39

smoke that cigarette and tell me

26:41

just how good it is. And

26:44

so I send them home and they come

26:46

back and they come back often with this

26:48

wild eyed look and they say, how did

26:50

I not notice this before? And

26:52

they describe how cigarettes taste crappy.

26:54

It feels like burning going into their

26:56

lungs. It smelled really bad. As

26:59

one patient put it, he said, all

27:01

the cigarettes I smoked today were disgusting.

27:05

He wasn't telling himself that they were discussing.

27:07

He simply paid attention. And

27:10

so there's a great example of

27:12

exploring gratification to its end where

27:15

he just paid attention as he smoked

27:17

and he realized that cigarettes were actually

27:19

pretty crappy. And that helped him become

27:21

disenchanted with the cigarettes. We

27:23

see the same thing with worrying. If we

27:25

really look at worrying and ask, what am

27:28

I getting from this? You know, it's not

27:30

keeping my family member safe. It's not helping

27:32

me solve a problem. Whatever

27:34

our brain has told us that worrying is going

27:36

to help us with, when

27:38

we really look at it and see that it's

27:40

not doing that, then we

27:43

become disenchanted with it. We've even

27:45

seen this with eating and overeating

27:47

where we have people pay attention

27:49

as they overeat and it only

27:51

takes 10 or 15 times for that

27:53

reward value to drop below zero and

27:55

for them to shift their behavior. So

27:58

that's the second step. that is

28:00

a critical step for

28:03

helping people step out of these habit loops.

28:07

Now in your new book, The Hunger

28:09

Habit, I was curious to see that

28:11

you had a chapter on trauma and

28:14

I'm bringing that up at

28:16

this point because when I,

28:19

when I hear you talk about anxiety, I

28:22

think of the nervous system

28:24

being stuck in the

28:26

past, somehow stuck in the past.

28:28

So I'm telling myself worrying doesn't

28:31

work. I'm definitely disenchanted with

28:33

it. It doesn't work. It makes me

28:35

feel terrible, but it seems like this

28:38

deep body based nervous system thing is doing

28:41

its own thing.

28:45

And that's once again, I'm coming back

28:47

to my very original question. Is this

28:49

a condition or is it a addiction

28:51

that I have a choice over that

28:53

I can change?

28:55

And so I was interested to see

28:58

how you now are writing about trauma

29:00

and if that impacts your

29:02

views at all on habit change. It

29:05

does. Absolutely. And so here I,

29:10

the best analogy that I've come up with

29:12

is that it's kind of,

29:15

our brain's kind of like a smoke

29:17

detector in the kitchen and when it's

29:19

calibrated, when the smoke

29:21

detector is calibrated correctly,

29:24

it's going to help us detect when

29:26

there's a fire on the stove versus

29:29

boiling water in its steam, right? Now,

29:32

if that is not, if it's miscalibrated,

29:34

it's going to go off and give

29:37

us false alarms when there's actually no

29:39

danger. And that's what I

29:41

see with conditions like, and I'm not a

29:43

huge fan of terms like conditions, the

29:46

only condition I think that we really have is the human

29:49

condition, but they're, you know, all these things that, that

29:51

they use in psychiatry. So bear with

29:53

me there. So when somebody

29:55

has had a traumatic history, let's

29:58

say their, their brain is, brain is

30:00

often miscalibrated in the sense

30:02

that they've had

30:05

something very traumatic happen to

30:07

them. And I say, you know, my heart

30:09

goes out to anybody that's had a

30:11

traumatic experience where they've kind of gotten,

30:13

their brain has kind of gotten locked

30:15

in this danger signal where

30:18

their brain is registering in modern

30:20

day, danger, danger, danger, when there

30:22

might not actually be danger. And

30:25

that causes two problems. One is it's

30:27

harder for them to see when there

30:29

is actual danger because

30:32

their brain is constantly saying this is dangerous, this

30:34

is dangerous, this is dangerous. And

30:36

it's also, you know, putting

30:38

them in this heightened state

30:40

of arousal that's just not

30:43

only unpleasant but can, you know, is

30:45

not great for flourishing. Let me just

30:47

put it that way. And

30:49

so the way I think about trauma is

30:52

that just understanding how this works

30:54

on the neurobiologic level can

30:57

help us start to find

30:59

ways that can help us

31:01

recalibrate that system. And

31:04

one thing that I found helpful as

31:06

a tool to work with some of

31:08

my patients is to kind of

31:11

help them see how that

31:13

danger signal can actually be

31:15

somewhat habitual, right, because their

31:18

brain is signaling danger when it's

31:20

triggered by something that's not actually

31:22

dangerous. When they see

31:24

that, they can also take a moment

31:27

to honor their past self, which

31:30

often, you know, it came up with a

31:32

strategy in the moment to keep them safe,

31:35

and then it kept that strategy going forward,

31:37

and that strategy may not be as helpful

31:39

for them now. And the way

31:41

I think of that is it's kind of like a

31:43

pair of shoes that somebody put on and they fit

31:45

at the time and it helped them not

31:48

damage their feet, but

31:50

now they may have outgrown those shoes, and

31:52

those shoes may actually be hurting them in

31:54

that sense. And so being

31:57

able to honor our past selves and,

31:59

you know, and really give

32:01

that place in life it's due and

32:05

say, I did the best that I could in those times,

32:08

gives us the opportunity to open to

32:10

the present moment and ask, hey, is

32:13

this helping me now? And

32:16

if it's not, I'm open

32:19

to being able to change the

32:22

habitual behavior that comes with that

32:24

hyperarrel. I'm not saying it's easy,

32:27

but that can help us start to explore

32:29

that as compared to just being stuck in

32:31

it. Okay, just

32:33

say a bit more about this

32:35

and maybe you could give an example

32:37

of someone that you've worked with who

32:40

had a trauma history and it could

32:42

be inherited family trauma or early

32:45

childhood trauma. And they

32:47

say, I understand conceptually what you're

32:49

saying about honoring this old pair

32:51

of shoes that

32:54

I don't wanna wear anymore. It does not

32:56

fit, I don't want it. But

32:59

my nervous system biology still

33:01

has this wiring in it

33:05

and I haven't yet developed the

33:07

distress tolerance you're talking about, I

33:09

want to. So I wanna hear

33:11

more about that. But there's a

33:13

lot of distress here that feels

33:15

outside of my ability to

33:17

work with it. It just

33:19

goes off, it's unconscious. The

33:21

calibration is so far off. Yeah,

33:24

absolutely, absolutely. So I'm thinking of

33:28

just a representative of many

33:30

people. So a patient

33:32

that, I think

33:34

it was in his 60s when

33:37

we started talking about this and he had

33:39

had early childhood trauma and

33:41

his only, as a kid, his

33:46

only, the only thing he had control over was

33:48

his own mind. And so

33:50

he started worrying as his coping

33:53

mechanism because that was

33:55

what made him feel like he had

33:57

some semblance of control. And

34:00

he had carried this forward with him for five,

34:04

six decades. And

34:07

when we started talking about this, this

34:12

is where this shoes analogy came up. It was

34:14

actually working with him. And

34:17

he realized that

34:19

it was actually holding him back.

34:23

And so what I do with

34:25

anybody that's struggling in this way is

34:28

first find ways that they can ground

34:30

themselves in those moments, right? And there

34:32

are lots of wonderful

34:34

techniques that can

34:37

help people ground, whether

34:39

it's bringing awareness

34:41

externally. I

34:44

sometimes have people just use

34:47

this mantra, feel my feet. I learned

34:49

that from somebody years ago, whereas just

34:51

like, you know, our feet tend

34:53

to be a pretty safe place and they can help

34:55

ground us. And so just bringing awareness to our

34:57

feet for a few moments or

35:00

taking some grounding breaths, or

35:02

you may be familiar with the five finger

35:05

breathing exercise where as we breathe in, we

35:07

trace up the outside of our pinky. As

35:09

we breathe out, we trace down. And in

35:12

the course of five breaths, we can trace each

35:14

finger. We can do that again, you know, pinky

35:16

to thumb, thumb back to pinky over a course

35:18

of 10 breaths. But something that

35:21

helps us ground enough so we can

35:23

ask a simple question, which

35:26

is, am I actually

35:28

in danger right now? And

35:30

it's an important question, not just

35:32

to ask conceptually, but to ask

35:34

experientially. Look around

35:37

and really show our brains

35:41

what's actually happening. So

35:43

that our brain, which is saying danger, danger,

35:45

danger, can see, I

35:47

mean, if there is danger there, or if we're about

35:49

to walk into a busy street or something, we can

35:52

take appropriate action. But if there's

35:54

no danger there, it helps

35:56

our brain see very, very clearly

35:58

that... this

36:01

is a miscue. And

36:03

when we're grounded a little bit, we can start

36:05

to separate

36:07

and kind of unwind

36:10

that learned association between

36:12

whatever the trigger was

36:14

and this hyperarousal in our

36:17

autonomic nervous system. And

36:19

over time, that's where we can

36:22

start to unwind it. So there

36:24

are lots of techniques like EMDR

36:26

and other practices that help people

36:28

do this type of dissociations, not

36:30

the right word, unlearning.

36:34

And in these even simple practices,

36:36

simple grounding and simple mindfulness practices

36:39

can be helpful here as well.

36:41

But I find pairing that in

36:44

the environment with that simple question

36:47

is also really helpful for the

36:49

rewiring piece. Okay,

36:51

I'm going to ask you a

36:54

really direct question, Dr. Judd. Do

36:56

you think that anxiety is a

36:58

mental addiction? Not

37:03

necessarily. So the feeling of anxiety,

37:06

I wouldn't say that

37:09

feeling itself is just the

37:11

feeling, right? If you

37:13

you the definition that

37:15

I learned in residency of

37:17

addiction is continued use despite

37:19

adverse consequences. And so

37:22

here, I would look at

37:24

the mental behavior of worrying. And

37:27

for some people, they

37:29

would swear that they are addicted to

37:31

worrying. And so, you

37:33

know, if you put the definition in

37:36

continue use despite adverse consequences, you know,

37:38

the consequences might not be terribly adverse,

37:40

like we think about with, you know,

37:42

some chemical substances, but they can be

37:44

pretty adverse for someone, you know, somebody's

37:48

worrying all the time to the point where

37:50

it's interfering with their life. So

37:52

I would say there's a spectrum. And

37:55

for some people, they are so I

37:58

would say they worry so much. and it's

38:00

interfering with their life so much, it might

38:02

fit that definition, but not

38:04

the feeling of anxiety itself. Okay, good. I

38:06

think that's a good, helpful distinction.

38:10

So in terms of being

38:13

with, being

38:16

with the distress of the feeling

38:19

of anxiety, being with it, is

38:22

it your experience working

38:24

people that the more we're able

38:26

to be with it, that

38:30

that creates some kind of natural

38:33

resolution? Being

38:36

with it, being curious about it,

38:39

feeling it, questioning it, wondering

38:41

about it, dropping our attention

38:43

into this feeling. What

38:46

comes from that? My experience sometimes

38:48

is that I

38:50

can spend a lot of time in that

38:53

state. It doesn't necessarily just like,

38:56

oh, and now it's turned into something else.

38:58

It's like, oh, wow, okay, spending a lot

39:00

of time here. Yeah,

39:03

yeah, that's a really good question. So

39:05

here, here

39:08

I'm gonna actually go back to

39:10

some of the ancient Buddhist psychology, because

39:13

I think it's really interesting, some of

39:15

the overlaps that we've seen between that

39:17

and the modern psychology. And

39:20

there's a concept that's described as dependent

39:26

origination, and the details aren't important,

39:29

but what it describes

39:31

is what's called

39:33

a cycle of samsara, this endless

39:35

wandering. And in that cycle,

39:37

there are a bunch of links, but

39:39

there are a couple that are really important. One is,

39:42

they describe these unpleasant or

39:44

even pleasant feeling tones lead

39:46

to craving, because if something's

39:49

pleasant, we crave more of it. If it's unpleasant,

39:51

we have aversion, we crave less of it. But

39:54

that leads to, but

39:57

some can be translated

39:59

as clinging but also

40:01

can be the word is upadana,

40:03

I'm probably not pronouncing it correctly,

40:06

but it can also be translated as

40:09

fuel or sustenance and

40:12

that is really important because

40:14

if we think of a

40:16

fire burning and often these

40:18

are these cycles

40:21

are described using the

40:23

analogy of a fire. When

40:25

a fire is burning, what keeps

40:29

the fire burning is fuel or

40:31

sustenance and so

40:33

when we have anxiety, think of

40:35

anxiety as a fire, if

40:38

we worry that is like adding

40:40

fuel to the fire and so

40:44

we can say okay how do I let

40:46

this fire burn down and that's through

40:52

not adding more fuel to the

40:54

fire and so

40:56

here to get at your

40:58

question there are two

41:00

ways that we can learn to work

41:03

with the anxiety. One is to see

41:05

if we're fueling it, right?

41:07

Are we fueling it through distraction or are

41:09

we feeling it through worrying and

41:12

if we are those are behaviors that we

41:14

have control over, we can explore those, we

41:16

can become disenchanted with them and we can

41:19

see what it's like not to distract ourselves

41:22

and on top of that we can kind of add

41:24

in maybe think of it as digging

41:26

a fire line around the fire so

41:28

it doesn't spread where

41:31

we learn to I think

41:34

of this as bringing in

41:38

curiosity as a superpower, I'll put it

41:40

that way and what I mean

41:42

by that is that often

41:44

when we feel anxious we have this oh

41:46

no reaction, oh no here's anxiety I need

41:48

to make it go away and that's where

41:50

we do something which actually just you know

41:52

it's like blowing on the fire it makes

41:54

it worse. Instead what

41:57

if we flip that and we say And

42:01

this is where, you know, phrases

42:03

like the obstacle becomes the way

42:05

or this stoic term,

42:08

kind of words that was attributed to

42:10

Marcus Aurelius, you know, what stands in

42:12

the way becomes the way. And

42:15

what, what those makes this interesting is

42:17

that we can look at anxiety and

42:20

we can, instead of running away

42:22

from it, we can ask ourselves, what

42:24

happens if I turn toward it? And

42:27

if we turn toward the experience and what helps

42:29

us turn, we don't try to force ourselves to

42:31

turn toward it, but we use

42:33

that curiosity as that guiding hand that says,

42:36

oh, what does anxiety feel

42:38

like? Is it tightness? Is it burning?

42:40

Where is it in my body? What

42:43

happens when I actually turn toward it?

42:46

We start to learn something

42:48

really interesting and really important,

42:50

which is that these feelings

42:53

make up the concept of anxiety. And

42:56

when we look at each element by itself,

42:59

it's not nearly as scary as this

43:01

big, bad concept of anxiety. And

43:04

on top of that, we start

43:06

to notice that these sensations are

43:09

constantly changing. So

43:11

often we think, oh, no, anxiety, it's going to be

43:13

here forever. But when we really

43:15

turn and go, oh, well,

43:17

is this sensation, what

43:19

happens when I look at it, these things start to

43:22

change and they're constantly changing. We

43:24

can notice that change. And

43:26

with that, we can start to learn,

43:28

oh, this isn't as bad

43:30

as I thought I can actually learn to

43:33

be with this. And this is where the

43:35

ability to develop distress tolerance comes in. It

43:38

comes from learning to just

43:40

lean in instead

43:42

of run away. And

43:46

when we lean in, that fear

43:48

starts to dissolve somewhat because we

43:50

can see what things actually are,

43:52

right? They reduce the uncertainty. And

43:55

we can also see that these things aren't permanent.

43:57

They change on their own without us having to

43:59

do anything. Okay,

44:01

I like this fire metaphor. So if it's okay,

44:03

I want to make sure that I fully get

44:05

it because I understand

44:08

the notion that if you add worry fuel

44:10

in the form of worry logs, the fire

44:12

is going to get bigger. I have a

44:14

fireplace here where I have natural logs and

44:16

so I like to sit in front of

44:18

it. So I get it. If I don't

44:20

put the worry logs on, it's not going

44:22

to, it's going to go out. Now

44:24

you said distraction also is a way

44:26

that we feed the fire. And that's where

44:28

I had a moment of thinking, I don't

44:31

understand that. How does distraction feed the fire?

44:34

It's a good question. So I'm just

44:39

trying to think how that would fit

44:41

with the analogy because I think worry

44:43

fits pretty well. Yeah. Distraction might be

44:45

not paying attention. And so

44:48

when, when we don't pay attention, when we

44:50

don't tend the fire, it's going

44:52

to be more likely to spread if

44:54

there is fuel around it. Okay.

44:58

So I don't know if that fits for

45:00

you. Okay, that helps. Yeah. So I would

45:02

say when we distract ourselves, there might be

45:04

other tinder in the box that's

45:07

going to catch fire because we don't know

45:09

how to manage it. And

45:12

then we're curious about it where you

45:14

could say that's a form of just

45:16

sort of watching it change

45:19

and go out on its own

45:22

accord. And that's what happens that

45:24

our, our curiosity is just, just

45:26

that. Yes, absolutely.

45:29

And what I found from my

45:31

own experience with anxiety is that

45:33

when there is

45:35

less fear around it, you

45:38

know, certainly anxiety still comes up. I

45:40

still get anxiety, but I,

45:42

I'm okay with it. It's like, okay,

45:45

here, this is pretty unpleasant. It's

45:47

going to be here for a while. I don't know how long it's going to

45:49

be here, but as long as I don't

45:52

resist it, you know,

45:54

there's the saying what we resist persists. As long

45:56

as I don't resist it, it's going to go

45:58

on its own accord. I don't

46:00

have to do anything and it may not stick

46:02

around as long. Your

46:05

new book, The Hunger Habit, looks at

46:08

how we can look at this whole

46:10

question of what's driving

46:12

our cravings and our

46:15

desires around food. In

46:17

terms of the conversation we've had about

46:19

anxiety, would you say this part

46:21

of the conversation translates really well

46:24

to issues of eating and

46:26

food cravings, overeating, et cetera?

46:29

And this part maybe doesn't map on quite

46:31

so well. Or it's all the same inner

46:33

mechanisms. How do you look at it? Well,

46:36

what our research has shown is that the

46:38

mechanisms are pretty similar. So the

46:40

reinforcement learning piece is actually based

46:43

on these ancient survival mechanisms

46:46

around eating. We

46:48

had to remember where food was and

46:51

so we learned where to

46:53

find food through the mechanism of positive reinforcement,

46:55

the triggers we see food, the behaviors we

46:57

eat it, and then our stomach sends this

47:00

dopamine signal to our brain that says, remember

47:02

what you ate and where you found it.

47:05

And then this negative reinforcement piece where

47:07

we learn to avoid danger comes

47:10

into play in modern day. Actually both of

47:12

these come into play in modern day where

47:14

we learn to associate food with, for

47:17

example, with celebration. So

47:19

how many times have we eaten food when we

47:21

aren't hungry? That's not

47:24

a survival mechanism per se because our

47:27

body is saying, hey, not really hungry,

47:29

but we're like, hey, this is a

47:31

party. Let's eat. And

47:33

on top of that, we learn to eat

47:35

food to comfort ourselves. That's where the term

47:37

comfort food comes from or stress eating where

47:40

if we're bored, angry, sad, think

47:42

of all the different emotions that

47:45

we've learned to associate with eating

47:47

as a distraction. And then

47:49

we learn through negative reinforcement, oh, if I

47:51

eat this food, I'm going to comfort myself.

47:54

I'm going to feel better. So both of

47:56

those are at play so much in modern

47:58

day that there's a term. that has

48:00

been, I don't know when the term

48:02

came about, but recently there's

48:04

a term called the hedonic hunger that's

48:07

used in scientific studies. It's

48:09

a misnomer because we're not

48:11

actually hungry, but it's highlighting

48:14

moments when we're eating in the

48:16

absence of hunger driven by emotion,

48:19

hence the hedonic hunger. That's

48:21

in contrast to homeostatic hunger, which is

48:23

the survival mechanism that says, hey, my

48:25

stomach's empty. Let's fill that up. Can

48:29

you give us an example of someone you

48:32

worked with who had a comfort eating habit

48:34

and how your work was able

48:36

to help them break the habit? Sure.

48:39

Actually we can go back to my

48:42

patients that I talked about before that

48:44

had panic disorder because the thing I

48:46

didn't mention about him was

48:48

that he, when he first came to see me,

48:50

he was 400 pounds. He was

48:52

at a very unhealthy weight and

48:55

his weight was causing health

48:58

issues for him. He had a fatty

49:00

liver, he had hypertension, he had

49:03

obstructive sleep apnea, and all of

49:05

these were related to how much

49:07

he weighed. He

49:11

had, as I

49:13

mentioned before, he had started getting panic attacks when

49:15

he was about 10. Early

49:18

in life, he had started eating food

49:20

as a way to try to cope

49:23

with his panic because he couldn't figure out a

49:25

way to help it. He

49:28

was, as I said, 40 years before he

49:31

was 40 years old, he was addicted

49:33

to fast food. He

49:35

would eat fast food as a way to

49:37

cope with his anxiety. In

49:40

his first visit, we just mapped out these anxiety habit

49:42

loops and I sent him home and had

49:46

him start mapping out these anxiety habit loops.

49:48

Two weeks later at his first follow-up, he

49:51

came back and he said, hey, doc,

49:53

I lost 14 pounds.

49:57

I looked at him because I didn't think that

49:59

we had actually talked about his

50:02

weight at that point. We

50:04

were just focusing on anxiety and he said, yeah, yeah,

50:07

we didn't talk about this, but I was

50:09

mapping out my anxiety habit lifts and

50:11

I realized that anxiety was triggering me to

50:13

eat fast food. And

50:16

the fast food was actually just making

50:18

my health anxiety worse. So

50:20

I stopped doing that, in his words. And

50:23

so the way I would put that is

50:26

that he became disenchanted with

50:28

eating fast food, right? It

50:30

was no longer rewarding for

50:32

him. It was actually anti-rewarding, if we can

50:34

put it that way. And

50:37

by becoming disenchanted, it was much easier

50:39

for him to break that habit of

50:41

eating as a way to cope with

50:44

his anxiety. He went on

50:46

to lose over 100 pounds over the next year

50:48

and said it was

50:50

the easiest weight loss he'd ever had because he'd

50:52

tried everything before. But once

50:54

he had learned how his mind worked, he

50:57

could learn that he actually felt much

50:59

better when he didn't eat fast food.

51:03

And as he gradually lost weight, it

51:05

was getting him into a

51:07

healthier range where his high blood

51:11

pressure went away, he was sleeping better, his

51:14

hypertension went down, it was actually helping

51:17

him be healthier physically as well.

51:20

Okay, now Dr. Jeddah, I want to make

51:22

sure that the people who are joining us

51:24

and are listening who are thinking, okay, I

51:26

want to apply this in some way. I

51:29

have this habit of eating, I

51:31

don't know, just come up with

51:34

something, potato chips. Seems

51:37

like, you know, I haven't had, you know, I'm hungry,

51:39

I drive to the, you know, okay, I'll just pick

51:41

them up on my way out of

51:43

the convenience store, whatever it might

51:45

be. I know that

51:47

I don't feel well afterwards, so I

51:50

get that, I can map that out and

51:52

then I feel bad about myself, I

51:54

get all that. How is Dr.

51:57

Jeddah's break a bad habit

51:59

method here? are gonna help me. What

52:01

am I gonna do? How am I gonna

52:03

work this on my own? Yeah, well, I'll

52:06

illustrate this with an example and then walk

52:08

through how we can apply this. So

52:10

I had a patient who used the

52:12

entire bag of large bag

52:14

of potato chips every night while

52:17

watching television with her daughter. And

52:20

what I had her do was just start

52:22

paying attention as she ate the potato chips.

52:24

And I said, just see how many you

52:26

need to

52:29

satisfy, scratch that itch of

52:31

craving. And for her,

52:33

you guess

52:35

how many it took? I

52:39

don't know. 20 chips? Yeah, it

52:41

was actually two. And

52:44

for her, that was

52:46

enough salt and fat when she truly paid

52:48

attention. She was like, okay, that's enough for

52:51

10 days. And

52:54

what that highlights, for many people,

52:56

it's probably not two. And so

52:58

she's, I remember her because it

53:01

was a pretty striking, I never

53:03

imagined that she'd come back and say, yeah, it was just two,

53:05

Doc, that was it. But

53:08

what we can all notice is

53:10

where we hit what I think of

53:12

as our pleasure plateau. So

53:16

what that means is with each bite, we

53:18

can pay attention and ask ourselves, is this

53:20

better than, worse than, or the same as

53:22

the last bite? And what

53:24

that helps us do is,

53:27

and I wanna highlight, this is not

53:29

about thinking, oh, I should only eat

53:32

two bites of cookie or two potato chips,

53:34

but this is really feeling, we have to

53:36

feel into this. Our

53:38

feeling body is much stronger and

53:40

wiser than our thinking brain. And

53:43

so here, we just feel

53:45

into the experience when we eat the potato

53:47

chip. And we can

53:49

really feel, I'm just imagining this now,

53:51

last time I had a potato chip.

53:53

For me, potato chips are pretty salty.

53:56

I haven't found a potato chip that's

53:58

not salty. And

54:00

so within a couple of potato chips,

54:02

especially if I'm not hungry, my

54:05

body's like, whoa, okay, you've hit

54:07

yourself quotient for, you know, for

54:09

now. And it's

54:11

much easier to put them down by

54:14

imagining what it would be like to eat the

54:16

next one. And

54:18

so here, we can

54:20

really just leverage this power of

54:22

awareness, this power of curiosity, so

54:26

that we can really see

54:28

how much is enough. And

54:31

we can do that in the moment with potato chips.

54:34

And then we can also look back. For

54:36

example, if we haven't paid attention and we've

54:38

eaten a whole bag, we

54:40

can look at it afterwards and ask the question,

54:42

what did I get from this? And

54:45

here, you know, we even did a study where we

54:48

have this app called Eat Right Now, and we

54:50

have basically an awareness

54:52

and we're eating exercise as part

54:54

of that, where we

54:56

can use that to calculate the change

54:59

in reward value in somebody's experience, so

55:01

that when that reward value drops below

55:03

zero, they shift behavior. And

55:06

it only takes about 10 to 15

55:08

times as somebody really paying attention, for

55:10

example, as they overeat for

55:12

that reward value to drop below zero and

55:14

for them to shift behavior. So

55:17

pragmatically speaking, really the

55:19

key thing to do or the key

55:21

ingredient for behavior change is awareness. We

55:24

become aware of the habit loop. We

55:26

become aware as we're eating and

55:28

we ask this simple question, whether it's

55:30

how much is enough or what am

55:32

I getting from this, so

55:35

that we can really feel into our body

55:37

and have our body tell us when we've

55:39

had too much or whether it's a food

55:41

that we're really just not as excited about

55:43

now as we might have been before. Well,

55:47

a couple things here. One is in

55:49

the example you gave, you have to really slow down.

55:52

I mean, we're talking about eating those

55:54

two potato chips. You

55:57

know, you're not just like shoving

55:59

a bunch of... them in your mouth kind of thing and

56:01

then saying I wonder how this feels.

56:03

It's a serious slow eating

56:07

with awareness process, yes? So

56:10

I would, yes, and I

56:12

would say we

56:14

don't have to spend 30 minutes eating

56:17

a single potato chip, right? That's

56:19

good. Yeah. So it doesn't take that long

56:21

to eat a potato chip. And so as

56:23

long as we pay careful attention, we're not

56:25

distracted, we're not shoveling a bunch down, we

56:29

can get the picture pretty quickly. One

56:32

thing I'll add to that is if we're

56:34

hungry, it's important to note

56:36

that it takes about 15 to 20

56:38

minutes for our bodies to register satiety.

56:41

And so if we're really hungry, there's,

56:44

you know, our body's going to say whatever

56:46

the food is, it's going to say, hey,

56:48

get more calories in. And if we eat

56:50

those really quickly and we don't give ourselves

56:52

15 or 20 minutes to register whether we've

56:54

had enough, we're going to be more likely

56:57

to eat beyond satiety. Now,

57:00

you said curiosity is our superpower. And,

57:02

you know, it seems like curiosity is

57:04

sort of the the kale of our

57:06

time, meaning I hear people talking about

57:09

curiosity all the time. And

57:11

I wonder how much it lands. Like,

57:13

do people understand what that means exactly?

57:15

Like, what does it mean? I'm going

57:17

to use this superpower

57:19

of curiosity to

57:22

change my bad habits. Really?

57:25

What does it actually mean? Yeah. So

57:27

first, well, let me ask you,

57:29

did you know that there are two different types

57:31

of curiosity? Only because

57:33

I read unwinding anxiety. Do I

57:36

know this? OK. So

57:38

had you not read the book? I did

57:40

not know that. OK. So

57:43

I bring that forward because it's

57:45

a great way to highlight the

57:47

contrast between the two types. And

57:49

so for anybody that doesn't know

57:51

that there are two types, what

57:54

does it, you know, I'll just ask people

57:56

to explore in their own experience. What does

57:59

it feel like? not to know. And

58:02

that not knowing is

58:04

actually one type of curiosity called

58:06

deprivation curiosity, which in a nutshell

58:09

means we're deprived of information. As

58:12

I said earlier, our brains don't like

58:14

uncertainty. And that is

58:16

the mechanism that gets us to go

58:19

and do something to find that piece of

58:22

information. And so that itch of

58:24

what is that? I don't know, I need

58:26

to go find that out. That's

58:29

deprivation curiosity. And

58:31

I mentioned that because that's not the

58:33

curiosity that I'm talking about here. Certainly

58:35

deprivation curiosity, very helpful for survival. But

58:38

the curiosity that I think of as

58:40

a superpower is the other type, which

58:43

is called interest curiosity. And

58:45

interest curiosity, I like

58:47

to think of these as deprivation is like

58:50

a destination. When you get

58:52

that piece of information, you're at your destination,

58:54

you're there, you're back to baseline.

58:56

And so you're deprived, when

58:59

you get to the destination, you're not deprived

59:01

anymore. Interest curiosity, on

59:03

the other hand, is more like

59:05

the journey. It's the joy of

59:08

discovery as we go along life.

59:10

So we're not looking for any

59:12

particular answer. We're just

59:15

enjoying the learning process.

59:18

And pragmatically, I don't

59:21

assume that anybody knows

59:24

exactly what curiosity is. But

59:26

I like to have people really

59:28

explore it in the moment. And

59:31

let's use worry and anxiety

59:33

as the examples where we

59:35

can use the contrast. So

59:38

if somebody feels anxious, the

59:40

mind tends to go into have

59:42

this, let's say

59:44

mental tone of voice that

59:47

says, Oh, no, right? Oh, no, I'm anxious.

59:49

How long is this gonna last? What's gonna

59:51

happen? Where we start to worry. And

59:54

that Oh, no, tends to feel

59:56

more closed down and contracted. In

1:00:00

contrast, interest curiosity is

1:00:02

more of that, oh,

1:00:05

what's this? And

1:00:07

so we're not – we're just exploring.

1:00:09

And when we go, oh, what's this? We

1:00:11

tend to lean in and we

1:00:14

tend to open to our experience.

1:00:18

And so we can look at that as

1:00:21

a marker, that opening as

1:00:23

a marker for tapping

1:00:25

into this natural capacity that

1:00:27

we all have of interest

1:00:29

curiosity. And so

1:00:31

that's something we can all explore

1:00:34

ourselves. I like to have people

1:00:36

play with one of two mantras, whichever

1:00:38

works best for them. One is that, oh,

1:00:41

when we're feeling, oh, no, we can go,

1:00:43

oh, what's that? Or another is,

1:00:45

hmm, what's

1:00:47

this? And that gets

1:00:49

us out of our heads and into our

1:00:51

direct experience. Really

1:00:54

is a way to kind of

1:00:58

tap into that natural interest

1:01:01

curiosity. Is that – does

1:01:03

that describe it enough? Yeah, I have a

1:01:05

question though, which is – so let's

1:01:07

say I'm experiencing, because I

1:01:09

am, deprivation curiosity about

1:01:12

solving anxiety forever as an

1:01:15

issue. I feel deprived of

1:01:17

that answer. And that makes me very

1:01:19

curious. And what's wrong with that?

1:01:21

Why is that a problem? That's a type of curiosity.

1:01:23

I want to get to the bottom of something. I

1:01:25

feel deprived of the answer. Yeah. So

1:01:28

again, deprivation curiosity, very helpful.

1:01:31

And we can certainly look for answers. And

1:01:35

if we find the answers, great. It's

1:01:37

been very helpful. For

1:01:39

something like anxiety, we

1:01:41

can be looking our entire

1:01:43

lives and not find it.

1:01:47

And ironically, deprivation

1:01:50

curiosity, when we're not getting the

1:01:52

answer, can make us more anxious.

1:01:55

Hmm. Hmm. No,

1:01:57

I'm not going to say

1:01:59

that. I

1:02:02

mean that excited hum I think is

1:02:04

it feels a little far-fetched to me

1:02:06

in some situations but the

1:02:08

more subdued hum I think

1:02:11

I might be able to get there that's interesting

1:02:13

like hmm that's interesting I

1:02:16

want to know more about that yeah and

1:02:18

is that an interest curiosity absolutely

1:02:21

I want to know more yeah so I

1:02:23

think of it as a scale it's not

1:02:25

like it has to be off the charts

1:02:28

you know rainbows and unicorns wow amazing you

1:02:30

know like we're in awe like oh wow

1:02:32

isn't it amazing I have anxiety but

1:02:36

we can start wherever we are and

1:02:38

one thing that I have found helpful when

1:02:41

somebody's like I have no idea what you're

1:02:43

talking about when it comes to curiosity we

1:02:46

just do this little exploration which is what's

1:02:49

it feel like not to be curious and

1:02:54

with that you know we have

1:02:56

them explore hmm I don't

1:02:59

know what does it feel like and they're

1:03:01

actually starting to tap into at least

1:03:03

a little bit of curiosity in that

1:03:05

moment okay two more questions

1:03:07

about unwinding anxiety one this

1:03:10

hmm you

1:03:13

mentioned in the book unwinding anxiety

1:03:15

that we can use this hmm

1:03:18

as a kind of mantra and actually

1:03:21

bring the sound into our body

1:03:23

in some way and I found

1:03:25

that I was very interested my

1:03:27

interest curiosity peaked highly at that

1:03:29

point and I wonder if you can share

1:03:31

with our listeners how we do that yes

1:03:34

well it's as so there are a

1:03:36

couple of ways we can do that

1:03:38

I like the auditory hmm where

1:03:40

we just you know it's kind of like

1:03:43

warming up you know vocal exercises so

1:03:46

we can warm up our curiosity just

1:03:48

by going hmm what's it like

1:03:50

to hmm or oh I

1:03:52

wonder what it's like how do I feel

1:03:54

when I go oh you know it's kind

1:03:57

of like me me la la la you

1:03:59

know that type of thing. And

1:04:01

the other thing that's so fascinating, I

1:04:04

love science, there's so many interesting things

1:04:06

about learning about our world.

1:04:09

This actually goes back, I

1:04:12

want to say that even Darwin

1:04:14

wrote about this, but I may be wrong. So

1:04:17

if we look at our eyes, our

1:04:20

eyes can be a big tell, not only

1:04:22

in poker, but in life.

1:04:25

And what I mean by that is we

1:04:28

can look to see what our eyes are

1:04:30

doing and how we've learned to associate different

1:04:34

eye patterns with different emotions. So

1:04:37

for example, when we

1:04:39

are angry, anger

1:04:42

tends to be associated with focused behavior because

1:04:44

it says, I don't like this,

1:04:46

I'm going to make this change. And

1:04:48

we can all think, you know,

1:04:51

what's it like when we are angry?

1:04:53

What are our eyes do? Well, our

1:04:55

eyes tend to narrow down because we're

1:04:57

not taking in information at that time,

1:04:59

we're focused on action. In

1:05:01

contrast to that, when we're really

1:05:03

curious, what do our eyes do? They tend to

1:05:05

open really wide. Oh, you know,

1:05:08

our eyes open because they're taking in

1:05:10

information. And so we

1:05:12

can actually hack what's called somatic

1:05:14

memory, right, where we've learned to

1:05:16

associate different eye patterns

1:05:19

with different emotions. When

1:05:21

we're not feeling that anxious, or when we're

1:05:23

not feeling that curious, we can actually open

1:05:25

our eyes really wide and

1:05:27

see if they actually help kickstart that

1:05:29

process. It's kind of like, you

1:05:32

know, throwing a car in

1:05:34

second gear, you know, as you roll down a hill

1:05:36

to jumpstart it. And

1:05:39

I'm going to open my eyes really

1:05:41

wide. I'm

1:05:44

curious about the title,

1:05:46

unwinding, unwinding,

1:05:49

and I read that was your wife's idea.

1:05:51

But tell me about this

1:05:53

image of unwinding. Well,

1:05:56

with anxiety, we feel all

1:05:58

wound up, we feel slows down,

1:06:00

we feel contracted. And

1:06:03

so when we bring curiosity in,

1:06:06

we naturally let that

1:06:08

spring, you know, when

1:06:10

we're all wound up, springs are not, they're

1:06:13

not, you know, from an

1:06:15

entropic standpoint, springs want to

1:06:17

naturally springs,

1:06:20

you know, they want to become sprung or whatever the

1:06:22

burb is for that. And

1:06:24

our bodies are not

1:06:27

naturally prone to getting all contracted

1:06:29

and wound up. We do that to ourselves.

1:06:31

We add energy to the system and wind

1:06:33

ourselves up. And so

1:06:35

here, by bringing curiosity in,

1:06:37

for example, and bringing kindness

1:06:39

to ourselves, we can

1:06:41

naturally let that unwind. And I

1:06:44

think, you know, that my wife's

1:06:46

title for that was just a

1:06:48

beautiful portrayal of what naturally happens

1:06:51

when we bring in, you know,

1:06:53

curiosity and kindness to ourselves. I've

1:06:57

been talking to Dr. Judson Brewer.

1:06:59

He's the author of The New

1:07:01

York Times bestseller, Unwinding Anxiety and

1:07:03

a new book. It's

1:07:05

out on February 20th, 2024. It's

1:07:08

called The Hunger Habit, Why We

1:07:11

Eat When We're Not Hungry and How

1:07:13

to Stop. And I just want to

1:07:15

thank you, Dr. Judd, because, you know,

1:07:17

sometimes when I've spoken to people

1:07:19

who are habit change experts, I

1:07:22

don't feel the level of

1:07:25

compassion and respect for early

1:07:27

trauma and the kind

1:07:29

of field of love

1:07:31

that you're bringing to the topic.

1:07:33

And I so appreciate that. And

1:07:35

it makes me feel really welcomed

1:07:38

into the conversation and

1:07:42

optimistically curious about what

1:07:44

will come from practicing your approach.

1:07:46

So thank you so much. Well,

1:07:48

thank you. And if you'd like to

1:07:50

watch Insights at the Edge on

1:07:53

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1:07:55

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