May 21, 2026 • 54 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with science writer Donna Jackson Nakazawa about her new book "Mind Drama: The Science of Rumination and How to Outwit Your Inner Defeatist."
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today I have a special interview
to present you with. I recorded this last week and
it is going to be a discussion of mind drama,
the Science of rumination, or how to Outwit your Inner
Defeatist by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. I'm going to hold the
book up here for folks who are joining us on
(00:35):
video on Netflix. You can find this book wherever you
get your books right now, and as you'll see, I
highly recommend it. I thought this was a terrific read
and it is a very important topic. Donna Jackson Nakazawa
is the author of five books that explore the intersection
of neuroscience, stress and emotion, including Girls on the Brink,
(00:56):
which was named one of the best health books of
the Year by The Washington Post, The Angel and the
Assassin named one of the best books of the Year
by Wired magazine, and Childhood Disrupted, a finalist for the
Books for a Better Life Award. Her work has appeared
in Wired, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Health Affairs,
stat Psychology Today, and psychotherapy networker. She has appeared on
(01:19):
Today in NPR and is a regular speaker at universities
and organizations including the Childmind Institute, Harvard Science, UCA Health,
and Rutger's Health. It was a real honor to chat
with Donna Jackson Donkazawa. Without further ado, let's jump right
into the interview. Hi, donad Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Thanks for having me, Rob and looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
The new book is Mind Drama, The Science of Rumination
and How to Outwit your Inner Defeatist. And when I
saw the title of this book, when I saw who
had written it, I knew that we had to have
you on the show. This is something that I struggle
with a fair amount in my life, and according to
your book, whole lot of us do. So to start off,
would you mind just defining what rumination is?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Absolutely so, Rumination is kind of an interesting word, because
if we think of it in the common vernacular, right,
it's those thoughts spirally and those thought loops that we
get stuck in and they feel so terrible, sounds like
you know what I'm talking about, and we can't get
out of them. We load the same reels over and
over again, and we want to get out, but our
(02:26):
brain is really terrible at helping us exit them. But
when you look at the word rumination itself, something I
love about it as a writer is that it has
two meanings. There are a few words that have two
meanings in the dictionary, like cleave. You can cleave too something,
or you can cleave it and cut it away. Rumination
(02:47):
is very similar. It can be and most often is
for us as humans negative recursive, brooding, overthinking, replaying, rehashing,
future judging, self criticizing, and judging others. But it also
means to ponder, to muse, to id, to inspire, and
(03:12):
so really I wanted to dig into that.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So what's actually happening in our brains when we are ruminating,
when we're caught.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
In this loop, Well it's pretty bad. And problematically, one
third of us don't even know what the word rumination means,
and yet science shows we're doing it more than we
ever have before, probably not a surprise to any of us,
because we're experiencing it in real time, and that's really
a problem because you cannot solve a problem you've never named. Meanwhile,
(03:43):
science has been plunging ahead, which is one of the
things I love about writing about science, right, because you
get to close that gap between what neuroscientists are doing
in the lab and what we're able to use in
our living rooms. So when scientists have been looking into
where room nation happens in the brain, it happens in
(04:03):
this one area known as the default mode network. Now,
probably a lot of your listeners have heard about the
default mode network. It used to be thought of as
kind of this nothing burger in the brain that it
really didn't do very much. It was just kind of
think of your car idling in the driveway, not really
in gear. Not true. fMRI scans show that the seat
(04:27):
of our ruminating thoughts is the default mode network. And
as the word implies, or the same the title implies,
it's a network of three areas. One is in the
front of your brain, one is in the side, and
one is in the back. When you're a ruminating rob
this area, this network is a blocked circuit. It closes down,
(04:51):
It spins and spins like a top. That's really what
it feels like, right. And one area is serving up
a lot of mental imagery, one area is serving up
a lot out of intense emotion, and one area is
serving up that clutch, sort of contracted feeling that we
get when we're caught in our icky, sticky little thought loops.
And the problem is that this is a survival response
(05:14):
gone rogue. Your brain's trying to protect you. It just
doesn't know how to stop, and we have to actually
use tools to intervene and get out of it. Our
brain is terrible at it alone.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So it's kind of like a cycle and a dryer,
except it's not actually going to ever finish the load. Right.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I love that I'm going to steal that one. I
think of it as like an airport on lockdown, and
the planes can tax you around and around, but nothing
can fly in and nothing can play out. And that's
really not healthy for us because rumination and the degree
to which we get stuck in those thought loops is
the biggest pre diagnostic factor or risk factor for everything
(06:00):
we don't want to have in life, depression, anxiety, cognitive decline,
lack of focus, forgetfulness, substance use, eating disorders. And that
work has been done in clinical populations for a long time.
What's new is that we can see where it's happening
in the brain. We can see how the brain. This
(06:20):
area of the brain becomes locked down and unable to
interface with two hundred and sixty seven other areas of
the brain that we need for the kind of creativity
you bring to this show, for the rapid thinking that
we have to bring two important conversations to the ideation
for what do I want to do next with my life?
To like what do I need to say to my
(06:41):
teenager or my girlfriend or my spouse about this tricky
thing that we're going through. Those areas are offline and
we know it, right, don't you know it? When you're
ruminating kit you feel it like I can't get there.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It begins to it feels like a cage. You know,
it doesn't feel like a productive process. But that's one
of the things that I thought was so amazing in
the book, was like really like defining it as what
it is, this this loop that you're stuck on, and
then on some level you still keep engaging with it
(07:13):
because it feels like you're solving a problem. Right.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, it's a false what researchers call effort, false effort
full control, right, Like it's a seductive thing. I mean
sometimes it's almost like chewing on a tooth right they
got pulled out yesterday. It's like you keep going there
in your mouth because it's like, wait, you know, I'm
sure that if I just keep looking there, I'll be
(07:37):
able to get this to heal. But in fact, the
very opposite happens. We're exerting control over our environment by
thinking about it. We never get to a solution because
we've literally shut down the solution task positive areas of
our brain, and we're seduced over and over into thinking that,
you know, another hour on the couch, another half hour
(08:00):
in the rabbit hole, will be drived to go pick
up our kids, or you know, do the laundry. We're
going to get somewhere, but the relief never comes. We
actually just fill our body with these terrible hormones and
chemicals that are really bad for us over time and
keep us locked in the stress response, and we do
(08:21):
something else, We throw down more neural tracks so that
we're likely to fall back into the same thought loops
tomorrow and the next day, like a bowling ball going down.
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So, yeah, so everyone struggles with this, or I guess
the better way to ask this question is what is
it like to not struggle? With rumination at least on
some level. Are there people out there conceivably that.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Do not well. We don't really know the answer to that.
What we do know is that we're doing it more
than we ever have before. On fMRI scan, neuroscientists can
show that these areas the brain are active in an
unhealthy way more of the time and also correlate to
(09:10):
the higher levels of distress that we're feeling and that
show up on all the epidemiological studies that are being
done about our current state of well being. And it
kind of makes sense, right because we're just out there
being blasted with this fire hose of fear and outrage
all the time. More of our lives are online, even
at work, like things are on Slack or email, and
(09:33):
we don't get the human context for what's really happening here.
So I do just for a second, I want to
talk about evolutionary biology. It's a little nerdy, but there's
a reason why this is a survival response gone wrong,
and we have to kind of step way way way
back in time through evolutionary biology. So a long time ago,
(09:54):
when we were sitting around the communal fire, if people
were poking fun at you or rolling their eyes that
you wrot elbowing each other and giggling. This was like
a really dangerous proposition because it meant that you, and
not only you, but your gene pool, which we care
a lot about, could be set at the edge of
the tribe. We could be not the first to get
(10:16):
the good tubers or meet on the fire. If you're
set all the way outside the tribe because you've been
socially or emotionally ostracized, you are in big trouble. You'll
be picked off by you know, a predator or a
marauding tribe, or at the mercy of the elements, the snow,
of the ray and the sun, you and your gene
pool are gone. So here's the thing, and I love
(10:40):
this about evolutionary biology. Our immune systems evolved over time
to see the most threatening type of interaction as one
in which we are socially or emotionally dismissed or dissed
or disregarded, or given a sense that we do not
(11:01):
matter and we do not belong to the people who
matter to us. As soon as we get those signals,
our immune system goes into overdrive to fight and to
prepare for physical harm. That's why when you get caught
in your thought loops, do you feel like, oh I
(11:24):
am getting more contracted? Like do you feel the attention
in your body?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Absolutely, that's why because we are primed to go into
this survival response. And you probably know from interviewing so
many interesting people, we are really good humans, are really
really good at going into threat responses. What are we
terrible at? We are just terrible at getting out of them.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Now, I want to come back to something you mentioned
earlier about how we're ruminating more now than ever, And
to be clear, like you're when you say that, you
mean not just like oh in our mind an age,
but likest like in the last few years, correct, like
fairly recently, we've seen this uptick.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah, that's right. And so people started looking at the
default mode network more closely, sort of before and then
during and then after the pandemic, and people were looking
for rumination, they were looking for to stress levels, right,
because this is a real public health crisis but also
a terrible mental health crisis. We saw people's mental health
(12:29):
really deteriorate across all age groups in our population and globally,
so researchers were looking at this and one of the
by products that they found was that they were seeing
notable alterations in the function of the default mode network
over this five to six year span, and so that
(12:53):
other researchers were running studies to see if this over
activation of the default mode network was tied to rumination,
and the answer was yes, it was also tied to
poorer mental health outcomes and higher levels of reported distress.
So it makes sense, like, look around us, right, we
(13:15):
are facing climate change, school shootings, like I said, political
you know, political chaos, online outrage, and you spend a
lot of your time online. I have to spend a
lot of my time online. It's literally rigged to make
us feel this sense of social and emotional threat and fear.
(13:38):
So it's reavying us up into a state of rumination
while we remove the face to face time that helps
to reassure us and tell us neurobiologically that we are
safe and connected. So it's really no surprise that we're
in this state. It's just I mean, look at one
(13:59):
of the things I looked at when I was researching
the book was road rage. Road Rage is a sign
of rumination, Like what's that asshole doing over there in
that lane and not being able to let go of it.
Traffic fatalities are at their highest rate in twenty years,
so we see signs of this everywhere. And I really
argue in the book what a different world it would
(14:21):
be if we weren't stuck in our thought loobs, if
we weren't stuck in the same storylines, and we could
come out of that reomen of state and go into
the upside of rumination, which were that creativity and connectedness
that we all long for.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, in the book, you you, of course walk us
through a number of different techniques and different methods physical
and internalized to help deal with this, to spiral out
of it, as you put it. And I know that
you yourself are a yoga practitioner and your practice meditation.
(15:08):
Like one thing that I was thinking about, especially when
reading the earlier portions of the book, was more, you
know about sort of outlying the problem I was thinking about,
like when I go into a yoga class, you know,
when I'm get away from a screen, and you know,
getting away from news feeds and getting into this place
that I see as a safe space among you people
(15:29):
that I feel comfortable with, and yet I'll spend like
maybe half the practice turning things off like it's it's
like it's still sort of like the loop is still
cycling down for like half the class, and it almost
always the class is almost always effective in calming things
down and clearing the mind. But it can be like
(15:51):
looking back on it, it's like it really, I guess
speaks to the strength of rumination that it takes so
much effort at times to just actually it off.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Well, that makes all the sense in the world, because
you're trying to apply a skill through your body to
get into a place non ruminative, or to use the
language I use in the book instead of spiraling down
to viral up right, and you're using your body to
do that. But one of the things that I found
(16:21):
in researching rumination is we need to use our brain
and our body together. So it's kind of like when
the body and the brain agree that we're safe, that
is a much easier way to escape our thought loops.
But the other thing I found is that, well, a
couple things I want to say, Rumination is not a
(16:42):
character flaw. It is truly a part of the human condition.
It separates us from other animals. It is the higher
order brain that can do threat detection, but unfortunately in
humans get lost in it and unable to escape. So
I also found that about a third of us are
kind of ashamed of it, like we and most of us,
(17:05):
the majority of us, do not talk about it with anyone.
You don't stand in the kitchen making dinner with your
partner or your friend going like you know what. I like,
six hours got sucked out of my day to day
because I could not stop thinking. You might say, this
is bugging me, but we don't walk around admitting to
(17:28):
the enormity of the problem. So it makes perfect sense
that it would take you twenty five minutes of a
fifty minute yoga class to bring it down. We don't
have tools. First, you have to go through kind of
like the layer of self criticism about doing it in
the first place, Like, oh my god, here I am
(17:49):
in my yoga class and I'm still thinking about what
so and so said at dinner last night. We can
drop that because everyone in the class is doing it right.
Every one around us is doing the same thing, and
we're all ruminating about the same thing. Robin, this is
the tender thing beneath all the noise and between all
(18:09):
the you know, beneath the writing and the book publishing.
This is the thing that struck me over and over.
We all ruminate about the same thing, whether we matter
and belong to the people and places that matter to us.
And our ruminations are begging us not to just cut
(18:31):
them off and feel bad about them. Our ruminations, our
signal fires from the past. They are asking us to
see them, accept them, name them, and to tend to
those stories that are coming up for us over and
over again, because we have not fully emotionally processed something
(18:59):
that's come up for us. So what I found is
that you load the same reels and the same stories
over and over again, you think you're getting somewhere right.
We talked about that earlier, But rumination is actually a
form of avoidance. We are trying to exert control over
situation or interaction or relationship or work issue, or a
(19:23):
sense of status or esteem or belonging without ever allowing
ourselves to feel the emotions beneath the story. And so
of course I had to develop a technique for that.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, let's get into some of the techniques. You cover
a number of these different exercises and exercises and methods
to overcome or work through rumination to some degree. You know,
we obviously can't roll through all of them here the
listeners should pick up the book, but I know you
also deal with these in workshops. I was wondering, what
(20:01):
are maybe a couple of your favorites that you would
like to share with listeners that you think can easily
be shared through audio.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
So I think that the most useful and helpful technique
that I found working with audiences and individuals is the
missed framework, which is based on our new understanding of
how the default mode network generates these three distinct experiences
(20:30):
when it gives rise to our most recursive and bothersome
thought reels. And so are you ever willing to be
a guinea pig on your own show?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Okay, excellent, I thought so. So I wanted to check,
all right, So I guess what I want to ask
you is is there something and you don't have to
share the details, but you're welcome to that's totally up
to you. Is there something that's just been really sticky
and a thought reel that just keeps loading up for
(21:02):
you a lot in the last day or week or months.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Oh? Absolutely, I'll keep it to myself.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Okay, you're so human. Yes, welcome to the human race.
This means you are not a cow. So all right,
So it's going through your head. And what we're going
to do is we're going to practice the mis framework.
So I mentioned earlier that the default mode network gives
rise to our ruminations, and one area gives rise to
(21:32):
our mental movies and mental images. One gives rise to
our intense interior emotions. One gives rise to our somatic sensations.
And what we're going to do is we're going to
go through the misframework, which I called MISS because of course,
when we're ruminating and we're lost in a fog and
we want to get out, we desperately want to get out,
(21:53):
and also because it works really well as an acronym,
and writers love acronym. So m is obviously for mental movies,
eyes for intense emotions, as is for somatic sensations, and
tea is for tying it all together. Now, I want
to start with your mental movies, your mental imagery. Usually
these are reels, as we said, we've loaded many times
(22:14):
across a lifetime, and they start to echo the same
thing for most of us, and usually these mental movies
tell us a little bit of a story about ourselves.
It's usually believes or stories in which we're not coming
out on top right, And so generally that the easiest
way to get into the misframework is to start with
(22:35):
mental imagery and kind of start with a sentence like,
here're the familiar reels I've been playing a thousand times
and naming them in this way, here's my old story
of how and it can be anything, And let me
tell you this. I can give you examples that I
will do, but the language that comes from your brain,
(22:56):
rob is the language that your brain will pay attention
to to exit rumination. So it could start with here
is my old story of how people dismiss me, or
here's my old story of how my voice isn't heard,
or here's my old story of how no one listens
to what I have to say, or how I always
screw it up or how I miss it or get
it wrong. Does it matter what I say? It only
(23:18):
matters what you say. So can you start with them
for mental movies?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Okay? Yeah, and do I say it out loud or
I just say it out loud.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
I'm sorry, but no one will know what you're ruminating about,
and I guarantee you that you're going to sound just
like everyone else who's ruminating and give them a lot
of relief, honestly.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Okay, so yeah, I'm mentally picturing it right now. I'm
pitmentally picturing the some of the images that have been
playing through my head recently.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And so start with here's my story of how people
X and that is the best way to start the
MYS framework. Here's my old story of how people.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Okay, yeah, here is my old story of how yeah,
people people view me.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yes, okay, all right, that's a story probably not true,
but this is what our brains do to us. So
here's my old story of how people view me, which
makes me feel. Now we're going to eye for intense emotion,
and if you want, it can be very helpful for
your brain to actually name how you think people view you.
(24:32):
And you might not want to do that in a
public forum, right, so we'll skip over that. But if
you're doing it at a home in your own time, if
I were doing it, I might say something like, here's
my old story of how people view me, that my
voice doesn't matter or something like that. So you want
to be really specific because that granular specificity is going
(24:56):
to really help your brain know that you're seeing the story,
and that's very important here. So now let's go to
intense emotions. So for you, here's a my old story
of how people view me, which is X for you,
which makes me feel and it can be a shame, scared, isolated, rageful, angry.
(25:19):
So start from the top, here's my old story of
how people view me, and then add in the emotion
and if you want, add in how it feels to
be viewed, the way that you feel you're viewed.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Okay, yeah, here is the story of how people view me,
or how I think people view me, and it makes
me feel anxious.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yes, excellent, And now we're going to add an S
for somatic sensations, so you're rolling the reels and you're
acknowledging the anxiety. So now you're going to go here's
a mild story of how people view me, and there's
a story in there. Make sure that you privately acknowledge
that story. Whatever it is I suck or whatever which
(26:01):
makes me feel anxious, and my what part of your
body do you feel it in? You can start this
by like scanning down from the top of your heads.
Some people feel it in the back of their head,
their shoulders, their solar plexus, their gut churning, their heart pounding,
their whole body contracting.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
You can feel it in your whole body, okay, And
I just identify where I feel it, yep, And you're
to start from the top.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Here's my old story.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Here's my old story about how people view me. It
makes me feel anxious, and I feel this kind of
in the space between my stomach and my heart.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Absolutely excellent. You just did the missed framework and you
tied it together. So I want to ask you, and
without any details, how old is this story?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
This? Oh, this version of I guess you know, like
a lot of these things, we have different versions.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
We have a punrative these, but you're applying it to
something that happened recently or that is kind of haunting
you and our ruminating stories, says haunt us kind of
like little small ghosts the trail after us and you're
trying to turn around and kind of hug the ghost.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Right, Yeah, I'd say this this is about a year old.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Ghost, okay, a year old ghost okay, And having done
the miss framework, does it feel like it's a little
less spinning inside the center of your brain and just
maybe even two inches outside of you.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It really does like it really kind of it. You know,
now I'm thinking of it as a ghost, so kind
now I'm kind of adding that extra layer of visualization
to it. But I do kind of feel like it
was in here and now, yeah, it's just a little
bit outside. You know, it may snap back in, but
I'm a little bit removed from it.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And you know, I saw you smile at the end
of the miss framework. You went from anxious face, which
is normal when we're trying to like thinking, you know,
what is this inside me that I'm carrying and have
carried for so long into you smiled at the end,
and that is your brain. And what happened inside your brain.
(28:08):
This isn't just like motivational you know, fluff people. This
is neuroscience. What happened in your brain on fMRI scans
is that you stopped the closed circuit. You stopped the storyline,
and your brain literally stopped its closed circuit. It's lockdown loop.
(28:30):
And now your brain is lighting up and interfacing with
what we call the connectome of the brain, which is
two hundred and sixty seven areas that allow you to
go into ideation and creativity and awareness, and you went, wait,
I see this. I see this as a story I've
been carrying. And maybe, if we're lucky, when we practice
(28:52):
the misframework, we not only exit the mind drama set
it outside of us just a little bit, but we
also kind of go like, wait a minute, this is
a story that maybe I don't want anymore. Maybe it's
not mine to carry. Maybe it came to me externally
at a time when I didn't have the flexibility to
(29:12):
question it or take it on, especially if it started
when you were a child, as it does for many
of us, And we get a moment where we get
to hear how we truly feel. And from there, what
I've seen in so many individuals is a kind of
tender awareness, a sort of emotionable compassion for ourselves and
(29:36):
what we've been putting ourselves through. And when we practice
this over time, in different situations with different individuals or
tricky people in our lives, what happens is we start
to find our own voice. And I did not know
this going into the book, but what I found in
working with people for two years is that people who
(29:56):
had not been able to voice themselves in these difficul
called interactions are in difficult relationships. They started to hear like, Okay,
what do I need? Like what am I not tending to?
What am I exiling here? What am I afraid to say?
What am I afraid to do? And relationships got better.
Some fell across the wayside because this process made it
(30:21):
clear that they were returning to the same hurtful dynamic
over and over and it couldn't be changed. But ninety
nine percent of a time, relationships got better because people
found voice. And that is something I want people to remember.
When you are in your thought loops, when you load
the same reels over and over, you lose agency, you
(30:43):
lose your voice, you lose your inner knowing of what
it is that you really need.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Wow. Yeah, there was one of the lists of questions
that you knew outline in the book, one of them
that really caught my attention when I was going through
the book, and you know, part of it. I'm going
through the book to you know, to make sure I
have questions in mind and so forth, and then I'm
prepared for the interview. But one of them was like
do I want to feel like this all the time,
(31:10):
which is like just on its own, isolated, is such
a an empowering little nugget, you know that kind of
like wakes you out and makes you realize, oh yeah,
maybe I don't and oh yeah, maybe I do have
agency over this. I don't have to just be stuck
in this particular thought loop.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yeah, and maybe there's something that when I'm stuck in
this thought loop, I'm actually repressing or avoiding about the
agency that I do have. Like maybe this is going
to be hard to one woman and I interviewed for
across a long period of time because it's important to
follow people so you can see how things help and
(31:50):
change them and what works and what doesn't work. Her
husband was incredibly picky in the kitchen. He just look,
you know, you're cutting the carrots the wrong way. No,
you know, you put the noodles in the water too soon.
Such a minute little thing. But for her, after many
years of marriage, it was just very you know, it
was the proverbial water on the rock, right. And she
(32:14):
was scared, not because he was a scary person. He wasn't.
He was a good man, good person, but she just
couldn't find the voice due to her own very old
stories from her own growing up childhood, how she'd been
conditioned as a woman across her life to just say
(32:34):
you cut the carrots like that was scary. Now, I
watched her over time be able to articulate things about
what she needed that were met by her partner with
such grace. Sometimes the people around us are waiting for
(32:55):
us to have agency, and when we have it, they
grow as well. But when we're both ruminating in our
separate corners people, it can't happen, and nor can connection,
and nor can growth.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
That's very well. But one thing that came to mind
when I was reading the book and sort of reflecting
to on other exercises that I've been exposed to or
you know, that I had come up in therapy and
(33:32):
so forth, was that. And I imagine you've even counted
this as well as like where someone is introduced to
as a particular technique and just being introduced to the
technique without necessarily doing it, it kind of gives you
a momentary relief from the issue, almost like you recognize
(33:53):
that there's an off ramp and then you're like, oh,
I can feel a certain amount of relief, there's an
off ramp, but then you don't do the practice or
you don't do the work, and then you'll wind up
in the same loop again.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
So what you're talking about is locus of control. So
there is research where just talking about wanting to go
to therapy and calling a therapist even if you never go,
shows some appreciable change in individuals who say, hey, mom, dad,
(34:23):
I want to see a therapist, or to their wife
like hey Sally, I think I need some help, and
making a phone call but never making an appointment makes
some change. And the thinking is and I'm sure there's
a lot of thinking about this, and I'm sure people
listening know more about it than I do. But one
of the areas of thought about this is locus of controls.
(34:46):
So we have a lot of good research that depression
is often related to a loss of locus of control.
So what you're talking about is like, oh, there is
this method that I can use that gave me this
enormous Really, I don't know that we spent more than
ninety seconds. We were taking our time. Maybe we spent
two minutes. But if you do it yourself, you can
(35:09):
do it in sixty seconds. I do it all the
time for myself to catch myself, and we will avoid
doing it even though we know it gives us a
locus of control. We might even go like, I could
be doing that, but I really just feel so seduced
by wanting to go into my old neural trap. And
(35:31):
there's a reason for that, because we have laid these
neural networks over a lifetime and we have good evidence
of that. So researchers will take kids and they'll divide
them into two groups. Which two groups? How are they
dividing them up? Kids who are having more difficulty with
(35:52):
family dysfunction or family tension, or more distress for any reason.
It might not be their parents home, versus kids who
have very low levels of family tension or psychological distress
or family you know, they have high family connection. And
they'll separate them into two groups. And by the age
of twelve to fifteen, the default mode network behaves very
(36:17):
differently in these two different groups of kids. In kids
who are experiencing more family tension or bullying, maybe not
at home, but at school, any kind of situation in
which they have had to question their mattering or their belonging,
Versus kids who haven't had to question that, And the
(36:39):
kids who have the default mode network goes into what's
called spontaneous rumination because kids have had to lay down
these neural tracks as children, because that is a survival technique.
Oh if I just don't do X, but I do
more of why, I will matter more, I will belong more,
(37:02):
I won't feel that I you know, I'm not making
my parents happy. Right. It goes all the way back
to the drama of the gifted child. It's that idea
of needing to perform for love or shape ourselves in
order to belong and we get really, really good at it.
It shows up in the brain. So in these two
groups of kids, the kids who had this family tension
(37:28):
or dysfunction, their brains not only went into spontaneous rumination
very quickly while doing simple, simple tasks. Oh what if
I do this wrong? Oh what are they going to
think of me?
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (37:40):
I screw up? Oh I mess up. They showed the
distress also in questionnaires about how they were feeling. They
perform more poorly on the task at hand. And here's
what blew my mind. They ruminated not just about the
task at hand, but they went into global rumination where
(38:00):
every fear they'd ever had, everything they ever ruminated about,
whether their friend at school like them, whether their mom
was mad at them, whether they were good enough on
the soccer field, how they were doing in school, all
came in very quickly. We don't want that. We don't
want that for our kids, we don't want that for ourselves.
(38:21):
But many of us are still living that way as adults.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
In the book, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the many recommendations
that comes up is of course walking in nature, which
it's one of those things that we've I think at
this point we've all heard it a million times, and
maybe we're hearing it more and more often because of
the sort of world we've built for ourselves. You know,
the number of the different techniques that you focus on
(38:48):
have to do with shifting sensory focus, and so does
a lot of it kind of come down to the
idea that, like walking, just walking in nature is kind
of more in line with what we evolved to do
versus all of these other sort of distractions.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Absolutely, and our brain is really really good at hooking
us up to nature very very quickly, because obviously, in
evolutionary time, it's only one billionth of a millisecond that
we've had all these screens and digital devices, and our
brains are changing to wire up to that and to
interface with that in a way that isn't healthy for us.
(39:25):
But our brains have had a lot longer to interface
with the world around us, and it can. It's so again,
you know, it's almost terrible to write about nature as
an answer because it's just really a reminder. We've heard
it so many times. But we can see this in
the brain. So we can see the default mode network
(39:45):
starts to go very quickly into its interconnected state with
the rest of the brain. It happens for us now.
So there are lots of little tricks, not tricks, but
things we can do even better than walking in nature.
Sure is lying down on the grass and what does
that do? Well? It opens up all of our sensory
(40:07):
portals very very quickly. But it does something else, and
you could actually do it right now in your studio
after we get off this wonderful podcast. Lie on the floor.
It breaks the default mode networks locked perspective. You're sending
your brain this signal like what is happening here? You're
looking at the ceiling you're looking at the the sprinklers
(40:28):
and the lights and the ceiling, and you're in an
unusual position. We ruminate in the same places our bed,
our chair, our kitchen, our car. We change the place
even better if you're lying on the grass. There are
lots of other quick things we can do. I talk
about something called ballistic interruption, and we talked about how
(40:49):
we lay down these neural tracks over and over, which
makes it more much more easy for our brain to
slip into the old reels. We have to interrupt our
entrench neural wak wiring and here again. And it sounds
kind of hokey, so it's kind of hard for me
to write about it, but we see it on fMRI scans.
Language here too is our portal to escape. We can
(41:11):
literally get in on our thinking. Do the miss framework,
and then your brain can tell your brain to cut
off the neural loop. I don't listen to these fear
based thoughts. Nope, not doing this, not today, No thaggs.
And it sounds so silly, but this way of thinking's
(41:32):
no longer welcome here. Forget about it. I'm closing the
door on this. We're not going there. If you do
the missed framework, and you allow yourself to kind of
tenderly hold the emotions that you have not been allowing
yourself to feel and acknowledge them and name them. And
then you ballistically interrupt so that your brain doesn't slip
(41:54):
slide back into that pattern. You're getting even a little
bit further outside. And then, as I say in the book,
you've got to get your body to agree. Right, you
can get your brain all online you talked about earlier,
Rob like, oh, I can feel like you know, my
brain wants to go right back there, like I got
a little ghost outside of me, but my brain is
(42:15):
going like, but we could go back, you know. And
that's because your body hasn't yet agreed. And so that's why.
And minddrop, I have a lot of mind body practices
that we can do again in like sixty seconds or
less to try to get not only the right language
happening and the right awareness and acceptance, but we have
(42:37):
to bring our somatic state into agreement that we're safe.
And Okay, there's.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
One that you outlined that I actually tried out right
before the interview here with that I forget the name
of it. I'm sorry, but okay, it involves like raising
your hands here.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeaheah, the body safe breaker.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yes, yes, that's the one.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah, I mean I'm happy if we have time to
walk people through it. It's up to you. Sure, yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Think folks would take that. Don't do it while you're driving.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Please, don't do it while you're driving and holding a knife. Okay,
So really what you want to do, and this is
based on science around what's called cyclical sighing, which is
a type of sighing that literally helps bring our cortisol
levels down and establishes more positive emotions and a sense
of safety. So I'm sitting down, you're sitting down. I'm
(43:31):
going to do it. You're not going to be able
to really see me do it because it's you know,
it's audio. But I'm going to do it just because
I can't just talk it. I have to feel it.
So basically it's better if you stand up, but I'm
sitting so I'm going to just do it. So you're
just going to take like a full slow in hell
as you raise your arms up overhead and head. I
love Rob he's doing it with me, and keep your
(43:54):
arms up and like make tight fis and squeeze your
hands and close and open your fists and vigorously, vigorously
shake out your hands. So you taking this big breath,
fist shake your hands, let the breath out, but keep
your arms overhead, keep your arms up inhale again pause,
(44:17):
take in a second breath, and now let it fill
your whole quality and your chest into your collarbone. And
now let your arms come down your sidhe all the way. Oh,
let them fall. Feel better.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
That's good, Yes, absolutely, so I.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Sort of took little science and added a few little
neuroscience beats to it. Another really quick thing you could
do and add on at the end of that, which
is pretty lovely, is you could take your arms, cross
them over your body, and our arms on our hands
and arms are just full of neurow scepters that signal safety.
(44:59):
Think about it. It's the first thing that you did
as a child when you needed something. You raised your
arms to be picked up. So if you take your
opposite hands put them on the top of your arms.
Think of something that you really wish that someone who
loved you would say to you. You don't have to
say it out loud, but maybe it's like you're safe
you're loved, use you or your name, because when you
(45:21):
use you or your name, your brain pays more attention.
And I would just go, like smooth my hands down
my arms and just keep going, Donna, You're safe, You're okay, Safe,
You're okay. And if you do that at the end
of the body state Breaker, you're going to add a
(45:44):
whole other layer of neuroceptor relief. If you do the
miss framework, ballistic interruption and just that one exercise, and
they're like one hundred more in the book, And you've
got to grab what works for you, right Rob, Like
you know, if it resonates, I can see on your
face like that. Like for some things, we're going to
try them and it's gonna be like there's a lot
(46:05):
of different visualization techniques in the book. They could work
for some people, but they won't for others. Make your menu,
make what works, and and stack it into your day
because you're going to ruminate less and you're going to
get back a lot of precious hours of your life.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Excellent. Yeah, and so many of the I guess some
of the techniques that involve language, you know, it's on
one level like having having grown up, you know, I
was a child in the nineties and I ended up
watching Saturday Night Live and there would be these these
segments with Stuart Smiley where they're making fun of like
positive affirmations and so like, on one level, it kind
(46:44):
of made me think for a very long time, like
not even consciously that like there's something silly about positive happening,
but but but really like like that speaks to the
power of language. You know that that so many of
these techniques do involve some level of like talking to
ourselfs like you said, using our own name, saying it
(47:05):
in a language that resonates with us. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Absolutely. Do you remember the Bob Newhart segment where I
forget who the SNL actor was, came in and she's like,
I have these terrible problems. He's like, I'm going to
fix you in sixty seconds. She's like really really and
he just goes stop it. It doesn't really work that way,
(47:28):
but I know what you mean. And I say in
the book some of these techniques, I thought, let me
look at the science here, because sure, that sounds really great,
but you know, I'm a science journalist. I don't know
that I feel silly. I feel silly using some of these,
but they work for me, and so I'm going to
keep doing them. I do want to talk about the
(47:51):
power of visualization because for some people it feels too
silly to talk to yourself, and we just grew up
with that same kind of coding that you did that
this is nonsense, so it just it might not work
because we feel that way. But visualization. I use a
visualization technique in the book that is so powerful and
(48:11):
we see in the brain when you can skip the
talking to yourself is what I'm trying to say, you
can go right to visualization because what we see on
fMRI scans is that visualization lights up even more areas
of the brain than using language. And it makes sense
because your pulling in images. So I talk about something
(48:34):
called the two Roads technique, and it involves your physical body,
but it also involves almost like creating your own internal
computer game in which you can choose a right path
and shift your body in that direction, or a left
handed path or the right handed path. You are going
to build out the most beautiful world, kind of like
on a computer game of all the best experiences that
(48:58):
have ever happened to all the things you wish, what
happened to you. Maybe people you loved who've died, you can.
My dad died when I was twelve, So I'll put
my hands on his face and hug him and keep walking.
I'll see my kids, the hikes we've taken, and the tetons,
and keep going and all the most beautiful moments, the
first time my children were laid on my chest, things
(49:21):
my husband and I have done together, and keep going,
even into things you dream in the future and hope for.
But your brain is going to keep taking you to
the left handed path. It's that neural slide back onto
the left handed path. There you bring in the bad music.
You go, oh, I know it's raining, it's cloudy, it's horrible,
(49:42):
it's a bad neighborhood to be in. I know I
don't want to be on this path. And you go ahead.
Let it populate with the thing that's the stuff that
you don't want. Turn your body back to the right
and go down the right neural path and keep building
it out. Make the flowers grow, the trees, go, bring
in the music, the birds, see the people that you
(50:05):
long for, and that lights up your brain like nobody's business.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
We touched on this a little bit already for sure,
But can you expand a little bit about how on
one hand, you know the default mode network is tied
up with this negative rumination, But then if we spin
in the other direction, if we spiral up, this can
also be an engine of creativity as well.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Right, one hundred percent. So we talked about how the
word rumination itself has two sides. It can have this dark, brooding,
recursive negative thinking, and it can also mean musing an ideation.
What's interesting to me is the fault mode network kind
of echoes and mirrors this duality. So it is the
(51:06):
seat it does give rise to. It does generate this
horrible self referential thinking, what do they think about me?
What did I do wrong? What did I say wrong?
How did I flop that up? Which is really bad
for our mental health, But it also when we get
it to interface with the entire brain, it is also
the seat of our most creative imaginings, our most creative ideas.
(51:30):
It interfaces with the prefrontal cortex and other task positive
areas that give us the insight those glorious lit moments
of experience that we all long for in life, where
we have the big idea or we think as we
look at our child across the kitchen table, gosh, I
(51:52):
love this person so much, and a thousand stories split
through our heads. It is the seat of both the
darkest and the most transformative experiences that we have. So
the idea is to use all that we have, with
the best of neuroscience and the best of our love
for ourselves to flip that switch, and we can do it.
(52:15):
I followed a lot of people over two years, and
it gets the more you try, the easier it.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Guess well, that is inspiring, as is the book. I
want to thank you for coming on the show. Here
I'm going to hold the book up for folks on
video for anyone listening to the podcast on Netflix. But yes,
the book again is Mind Drama, The Science of Rumination
and How to Outwit your Inner Defeatist, by Dona Jackson Nagazawa.
(52:42):
By the time this episode is out, it should be
available wherever you get your books.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
Thanks so much for having me, Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
The show, Thank you, Thanks, thanks once more to Donna
Jackson Nagazawa for taking time out of her day to
discuss this fabulous new book, Mine Drama, The Science of Rumination.
You can find this wherever you get your books, and
again I highly recommend it. Thanks as always to the
talented and excellent JJ Possway for producing this episode. As always,
(53:12):
if you want to reach out with questions, feedback, or
if you have suggestions for future interview episodes, Folks, authors,
scientists that you think I should have on the show,
just write in I would love to hear from you.
That email address is contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Have the pot
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today I have a special interview
to present you with. I recorded this last week and
it is going to be a discussion of mind drama,
the Science of rumination, or how to Outwit your Inner
Defeatist by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. I'm going to hold the
book up here for folks who are joining us on
(00:35):
video on Netflix. You can find this book wherever you
get your books right now, and as you'll see, I
highly recommend it. I thought this was a terrific read
and it is a very important topic. Donna Jackson Nakazawa
is the author of five books that explore the intersection
of neuroscience, stress and emotion, including Girls on the Brink,
(00:56):
which was named one of the best health books of
the Year by The Washington Post, The Angel and the
Assassin named one of the best books of the Year
by Wired magazine, and Childhood Disrupted, a finalist for the
Books for a Better Life Award. Her work has appeared
in Wired, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Health Affairs,
stat Psychology Today, and psychotherapy networker. She has appeared on
(01:19):
Today in NPR and is a regular speaker at universities
and organizations including the Childmind Institute, Harvard Science, UCA Health,
and Rutger's Health. It was a real honor to chat
with Donna Jackson Donkazawa. Without further ado, let's jump right
into the interview. Hi, donad Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Thanks for having me, Rob and looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
The new book is Mind Drama, The Science of Rumination
and How to Outwit your Inner Defeatist. And when I
saw the title of this book, when I saw who
had written it, I knew that we had to have
you on the show. This is something that I struggle
with a fair amount in my life, and according to
your book, whole lot of us do. So to start off,
would you mind just defining what rumination is?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Absolutely so, Rumination is kind of an interesting word, because
if we think of it in the common vernacular, right,
it's those thoughts spirally and those thought loops that we
get stuck in and they feel so terrible, sounds like
you know what I'm talking about, and we can't get
out of them. We load the same reels over and
over again, and we want to get out, but our
(02:26):
brain is really terrible at helping us exit them. But
when you look at the word rumination itself, something I
love about it as a writer is that it has
two meanings. There are a few words that have two
meanings in the dictionary, like cleave. You can cleave too something,
or you can cleave it and cut it away. Rumination
(02:47):
is very similar. It can be and most often is
for us as humans negative recursive, brooding, overthinking, replaying, rehashing,
future judging, self criticizing, and judging others. But it also
means to ponder, to muse, to id, to inspire, and
(03:12):
so really I wanted to dig into that.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
So what's actually happening in our brains when we are ruminating,
when we're caught.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
In this loop, Well it's pretty bad. And problematically, one
third of us don't even know what the word rumination means,
and yet science shows we're doing it more than we
ever have before, probably not a surprise to any of us,
because we're experiencing it in real time, and that's really
a problem because you cannot solve a problem you've never named. Meanwhile,
(03:43):
science has been plunging ahead, which is one of the
things I love about writing about science, right, because you
get to close that gap between what neuroscientists are doing
in the lab and what we're able to use in
our living rooms. So when scientists have been looking into
where room nation happens in the brain, it happens in
(04:03):
this one area known as the default mode network. Now,
probably a lot of your listeners have heard about the
default mode network. It used to be thought of as
kind of this nothing burger in the brain that it
really didn't do very much. It was just kind of
think of your car idling in the driveway, not really
in gear. Not true. fMRI scans show that the seat
(04:27):
of our ruminating thoughts is the default mode network. And
as the word implies, or the same the title implies,
it's a network of three areas. One is in the
front of your brain, one is in the side, and
one is in the back. When you're a ruminating rob
this area, this network is a blocked circuit. It closes down,
(04:51):
It spins and spins like a top. That's really what
it feels like, right. And one area is serving up
a lot of mental imagery, one area is serving up
a lot out of intense emotion, and one area is
serving up that clutch, sort of contracted feeling that we
get when we're caught in our icky, sticky little thought loops.
And the problem is that this is a survival response
(05:14):
gone rogue. Your brain's trying to protect you. It just
doesn't know how to stop, and we have to actually
use tools to intervene and get out of it. Our
brain is terrible at it alone.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So it's kind of like a cycle and a dryer,
except it's not actually going to ever finish the load. Right.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I love that I'm going to steal that one. I
think of it as like an airport on lockdown, and
the planes can tax you around and around, but nothing
can fly in and nothing can play out. And that's
really not healthy for us because rumination and the degree
to which we get stuck in those thought loops is
the biggest pre diagnostic factor or risk factor for everything
(06:00):
we don't want to have in life, depression, anxiety, cognitive decline,
lack of focus, forgetfulness, substance use, eating disorders. And that
work has been done in clinical populations for a long time.
What's new is that we can see where it's happening
in the brain. We can see how the brain. This
(06:20):
area of the brain becomes locked down and unable to
interface with two hundred and sixty seven other areas of
the brain that we need for the kind of creativity
you bring to this show, for the rapid thinking that
we have to bring two important conversations to the ideation
for what do I want to do next with my life?
To like what do I need to say to my
(06:41):
teenager or my girlfriend or my spouse about this tricky
thing that we're going through. Those areas are offline and
we know it, right, don't you know it? When you're
ruminating kit you feel it like I can't get there.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It begins to it feels like a cage. You know,
it doesn't feel like a productive process. But that's one
of the things that I thought was so amazing in
the book, was like really like defining it as what
it is, this this loop that you're stuck on, and
then on some level you still keep engaging with it
(07:13):
because it feels like you're solving a problem. Right.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, it's a false what researchers call effort, false effort
full control, right, Like it's a seductive thing. I mean
sometimes it's almost like chewing on a tooth right they
got pulled out yesterday. It's like you keep going there
in your mouth because it's like, wait, you know, I'm
sure that if I just keep looking there, I'll be
(07:37):
able to get this to heal. But in fact, the
very opposite happens. We're exerting control over our environment by
thinking about it. We never get to a solution because
we've literally shut down the solution task positive areas of
our brain, and we're seduced over and over into thinking that,
you know, another hour on the couch, another half hour
(08:00):
in the rabbit hole, will be drived to go pick
up our kids, or you know, do the laundry. We're
going to get somewhere, but the relief never comes. We
actually just fill our body with these terrible hormones and
chemicals that are really bad for us over time and
keep us locked in the stress response, and we do
(08:21):
something else, We throw down more neural tracks so that
we're likely to fall back into the same thought loops
tomorrow and the next day, like a bowling ball going down.
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So, yeah, so everyone struggles with this, or I guess
the better way to ask this question is what is
it like to not struggle? With rumination at least on
some level. Are there people out there conceivably that.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Do not well. We don't really know the answer to that.
What we do know is that we're doing it more
than we ever have before. On fMRI scan, neuroscientists can
show that these areas the brain are active in an
unhealthy way more of the time and also correlate to
(09:10):
the higher levels of distress that we're feeling and that
show up on all the epidemiological studies that are being
done about our current state of well being. And it
kind of makes sense, right because we're just out there
being blasted with this fire hose of fear and outrage
all the time. More of our lives are online, even
at work, like things are on Slack or email, and
(09:33):
we don't get the human context for what's really happening here.
So I do just for a second, I want to
talk about evolutionary biology. It's a little nerdy, but there's
a reason why this is a survival response gone wrong,
and we have to kind of step way way way
back in time through evolutionary biology. So a long time ago,
(09:54):
when we were sitting around the communal fire, if people
were poking fun at you or rolling their eyes that
you wrot elbowing each other and giggling. This was like
a really dangerous proposition because it meant that you, and
not only you, but your gene pool, which we care
a lot about, could be set at the edge of
the tribe. We could be not the first to get
(10:16):
the good tubers or meet on the fire. If you're
set all the way outside the tribe because you've been
socially or emotionally ostracized, you are in big trouble. You'll
be picked off by you know, a predator or a
marauding tribe, or at the mercy of the elements, the snow,
of the ray and the sun, you and your gene
pool are gone. So here's the thing, and I love
(10:40):
this about evolutionary biology. Our immune systems evolved over time
to see the most threatening type of interaction as one
in which we are socially or emotionally dismissed or dissed
or disregarded, or given a sense that we do not
(11:01):
matter and we do not belong to the people who
matter to us. As soon as we get those signals,
our immune system goes into overdrive to fight and to
prepare for physical harm. That's why when you get caught
in your thought loops, do you feel like, oh I
(11:24):
am getting more contracted? Like do you feel the attention
in your body?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Absolutely, that's why because we are primed to go into
this survival response. And you probably know from interviewing so
many interesting people, we are really good humans, are really
really good at going into threat responses. What are we
terrible at? We are just terrible at getting out of them.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Now, I want to come back to something you mentioned
earlier about how we're ruminating more now than ever, And
to be clear, like you're when you say that, you
mean not just like oh in our mind an age,
but likest like in the last few years, correct, like
fairly recently, we've seen this uptick.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah, that's right. And so people started looking at the
default mode network more closely, sort of before and then
during and then after the pandemic, and people were looking
for rumination, they were looking for to stress levels, right,
because this is a real public health crisis but also
a terrible mental health crisis. We saw people's mental health
(12:29):
really deteriorate across all age groups in our population and globally,
so researchers were looking at this and one of the
by products that they found was that they were seeing
notable alterations in the function of the default mode network
over this five to six year span, and so that
(12:53):
other researchers were running studies to see if this over
activation of the default mode network was tied to rumination,
and the answer was yes, it was also tied to
poorer mental health outcomes and higher levels of reported distress.
So it makes sense, like, look around us, right, we
(13:15):
are facing climate change, school shootings, like I said, political
you know, political chaos, online outrage, and you spend a
lot of your time online. I have to spend a
lot of my time online. It's literally rigged to make
us feel this sense of social and emotional threat and fear.
(13:38):
So it's reavying us up into a state of rumination
while we remove the face to face time that helps
to reassure us and tell us neurobiologically that we are
safe and connected. So it's really no surprise that we're
in this state. It's just I mean, look at one
(13:59):
of the things I looked at when I was researching
the book was road rage. Road Rage is a sign
of rumination, Like what's that asshole doing over there in
that lane and not being able to let go of it.
Traffic fatalities are at their highest rate in twenty years,
so we see signs of this everywhere. And I really
argue in the book what a different world it would
(14:21):
be if we weren't stuck in our thought loobs, if
we weren't stuck in the same storylines, and we could
come out of that reomen of state and go into
the upside of rumination, which were that creativity and connectedness
that we all long for.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah, in the book, you you, of course walk us
through a number of different techniques and different methods physical
and internalized to help deal with this, to spiral out
of it, as you put it. And I know that
you yourself are a yoga practitioner and your practice meditation.
(15:08):
Like one thing that I was thinking about, especially when
reading the earlier portions of the book, was more, you
know about sort of outlying the problem I was thinking about,
like when I go into a yoga class, you know,
when I'm get away from a screen, and you know,
getting away from news feeds and getting into this place
that I see as a safe space among you people
(15:29):
that I feel comfortable with, and yet I'll spend like
maybe half the practice turning things off like it's it's
like it's still sort of like the loop is still
cycling down for like half the class, and it almost
always the class is almost always effective in calming things
down and clearing the mind. But it can be like
(15:51):
looking back on it, it's like it really, I guess
speaks to the strength of rumination that it takes so
much effort at times to just actually it off.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Well, that makes all the sense in the world, because
you're trying to apply a skill through your body to
get into a place non ruminative, or to use the
language I use in the book instead of spiraling down
to viral up right, and you're using your body to
do that. But one of the things that I found
(16:21):
in researching rumination is we need to use our brain
and our body together. So it's kind of like when
the body and the brain agree that we're safe, that
is a much easier way to escape our thought loops.
But the other thing I found is that, well, a
couple things I want to say, Rumination is not a
(16:42):
character flaw. It is truly a part of the human condition.
It separates us from other animals. It is the higher
order brain that can do threat detection, but unfortunately in
humans get lost in it and unable to escape. So
I also found that about a third of us are
kind of ashamed of it, like we and most of us,
(17:05):
the majority of us, do not talk about it with anyone.
You don't stand in the kitchen making dinner with your
partner or your friend going like you know what. I like,
six hours got sucked out of my day to day
because I could not stop thinking. You might say, this
is bugging me, but we don't walk around admitting to
(17:28):
the enormity of the problem. So it makes perfect sense
that it would take you twenty five minutes of a
fifty minute yoga class to bring it down. We don't
have tools. First, you have to go through kind of
like the layer of self criticism about doing it in
the first place, Like, oh my god, here I am
(17:49):
in my yoga class and I'm still thinking about what
so and so said at dinner last night. We can
drop that because everyone in the class is doing it right.
Every one around us is doing the same thing, and
we're all ruminating about the same thing. Robin, this is
the tender thing beneath all the noise and between all
(18:09):
the you know, beneath the writing and the book publishing.
This is the thing that struck me over and over.
We all ruminate about the same thing, whether we matter
and belong to the people and places that matter to us.
And our ruminations are begging us not to just cut
(18:31):
them off and feel bad about them. Our ruminations, our
signal fires from the past. They are asking us to
see them, accept them, name them, and to tend to
those stories that are coming up for us over and
over again, because we have not fully emotionally processed something
(18:59):
that's come up for us. So what I found is
that you load the same reels and the same stories
over and over again, you think you're getting somewhere right.
We talked about that earlier, But rumination is actually a
form of avoidance. We are trying to exert control over
situation or interaction or relationship or work issue, or a
(19:23):
sense of status or esteem or belonging without ever allowing
ourselves to feel the emotions beneath the story. And so
of course I had to develop a technique for that.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, let's get into some of the techniques. You cover
a number of these different exercises and exercises and methods
to overcome or work through rumination to some degree. You know,
we obviously can't roll through all of them here the
listeners should pick up the book, but I know you
also deal with these in workshops. I was wondering, what
(20:01):
are maybe a couple of your favorites that you would
like to share with listeners that you think can easily
be shared through audio.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
So I think that the most useful and helpful technique
that I found working with audiences and individuals is the
missed framework, which is based on our new understanding of
how the default mode network generates these three distinct experiences
(20:30):
when it gives rise to our most recursive and bothersome
thought reels. And so are you ever willing to be
a guinea pig on your own show?
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Okay, excellent, I thought so. So I wanted to check,
all right, So I guess what I want to ask
you is is there something and you don't have to
share the details, but you're welcome to that's totally up
to you. Is there something that's just been really sticky
and a thought reel that just keeps loading up for
(21:02):
you a lot in the last day or week or months.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Oh? Absolutely, I'll keep it to myself.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Okay, you're so human. Yes, welcome to the human race.
This means you are not a cow. So all right,
So it's going through your head. And what we're going
to do is we're going to practice the mis framework.
So I mentioned earlier that the default mode network gives
rise to our ruminations, and one area gives rise to
(21:32):
our mental movies and mental images. One gives rise to
our intense interior emotions. One gives rise to our somatic sensations.
And what we're going to do is we're going to
go through the misframework, which I called MISS because of course,
when we're ruminating and we're lost in a fog and
we want to get out, we desperately want to get out,
(21:53):
and also because it works really well as an acronym,
and writers love acronym. So m is obviously for mental movies,
eyes for intense emotions, as is for somatic sensations, and
tea is for tying it all together. Now, I want
to start with your mental movies, your mental imagery. Usually
these are reels, as we said, we've loaded many times
(22:14):
across a lifetime, and they start to echo the same
thing for most of us, and usually these mental movies
tell us a little bit of a story about ourselves.
It's usually believes or stories in which we're not coming
out on top right, And so generally that the easiest
way to get into the misframework is to start with
(22:35):
mental imagery and kind of start with a sentence like,
here're the familiar reels I've been playing a thousand times
and naming them in this way, here's my old story
of how and it can be anything, And let me
tell you this. I can give you examples that I
will do, but the language that comes from your brain,
(22:56):
rob is the language that your brain will pay attention
to to exit rumination. So it could start with here
is my old story of how people dismiss me, or
here's my old story of how my voice isn't heard,
or here's my old story of how no one listens
to what I have to say, or how I always
screw it up or how I miss it or get
it wrong. Does it matter what I say? It only
(23:18):
matters what you say. So can you start with them
for mental movies?
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Okay? Yeah, and do I say it out loud or
I just say it out loud.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
I'm sorry, but no one will know what you're ruminating about,
and I guarantee you that you're going to sound just
like everyone else who's ruminating and give them a lot
of relief, honestly.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Okay, so yeah, I'm mentally picturing it right now. I'm
pitmentally picturing the some of the images that have been
playing through my head recently.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And so start with here's my story of how people
X and that is the best way to start the
MYS framework. Here's my old story of how people.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Okay, yeah, here is my old story of how yeah,
people people view me.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yes, okay, all right, that's a story probably not true,
but this is what our brains do to us. So
here's my old story of how people view me, which
makes me feel. Now we're going to eye for intense emotion,
and if you want, it can be very helpful for
your brain to actually name how you think people view you.
(24:32):
And you might not want to do that in a
public forum, right, so we'll skip over that. But if
you're doing it at a home in your own time, if
I were doing it, I might say something like, here's
my old story of how people view me, that my
voice doesn't matter or something like that. So you want
to be really specific because that granular specificity is going
(24:56):
to really help your brain know that you're seeing the story,
and that's very important here. So now let's go to
intense emotions. So for you, here's a my old story
of how people view me, which is X for you,
which makes me feel and it can be a shame, scared, isolated, rageful, angry.
(25:19):
So start from the top, here's my old story of
how people view me, and then add in the emotion
and if you want, add in how it feels to
be viewed, the way that you feel you're viewed.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Okay, yeah, here is the story of how people view me,
or how I think people view me, and it makes
me feel anxious.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yes, excellent, And now we're going to add an S
for somatic sensations, so you're rolling the reels and you're
acknowledging the anxiety. So now you're going to go here's
a mild story of how people view me, and there's
a story in there. Make sure that you privately acknowledge
that story. Whatever it is I suck or whatever which
(26:01):
makes me feel anxious, and my what part of your
body do you feel it in? You can start this
by like scanning down from the top of your heads.
Some people feel it in the back of their head,
their shoulders, their solar plexus, their gut churning, their heart pounding,
their whole body contracting.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
You can feel it in your whole body, okay, And
I just identify where I feel it, yep, And you're
to start from the top.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Here's my old story.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Here's my old story about how people view me. It
makes me feel anxious, and I feel this kind of
in the space between my stomach and my heart.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Absolutely excellent. You just did the missed framework and you
tied it together. So I want to ask you, and
without any details, how old is this story?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
This? Oh, this version of I guess you know, like
a lot of these things, we have different versions.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
We have a punrative these, but you're applying it to
something that happened recently or that is kind of haunting
you and our ruminating stories, says haunt us kind of
like little small ghosts the trail after us and you're
trying to turn around and kind of hug the ghost.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Right, Yeah, I'd say this this is about a year old.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Ghost, okay, a year old ghost okay, And having done
the miss framework, does it feel like it's a little
less spinning inside the center of your brain and just
maybe even two inches outside of you.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It really does like it really kind of it. You know,
now I'm thinking of it as a ghost, so kind
now I'm kind of adding that extra layer of visualization
to it. But I do kind of feel like it
was in here and now, yeah, it's just a little
bit outside. You know, it may snap back in, but
I'm a little bit removed from it.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And you know, I saw you smile at the end
of the miss framework. You went from anxious face, which
is normal when we're trying to like thinking, you know,
what is this inside me that I'm carrying and have
carried for so long into you smiled at the end,
and that is your brain. And what happened inside your brain.
(28:08):
This isn't just like motivational you know, fluff people. This
is neuroscience. What happened in your brain on fMRI scans
is that you stopped the closed circuit. You stopped the storyline,
and your brain literally stopped its closed circuit. It's lockdown loop.
(28:30):
And now your brain is lighting up and interfacing with
what we call the connectome of the brain, which is
two hundred and sixty seven areas that allow you to
go into ideation and creativity and awareness, and you went, wait,
I see this. I see this as a story I've
been carrying. And maybe, if we're lucky, when we practice
(28:52):
the misframework, we not only exit the mind drama set
it outside of us just a little bit, but we
also kind of go like, wait a minute, this is
a story that maybe I don't want anymore. Maybe it's
not mine to carry. Maybe it came to me externally
at a time when I didn't have the flexibility to
(29:12):
question it or take it on, especially if it started
when you were a child, as it does for many
of us, And we get a moment where we get
to hear how we truly feel. And from there, what
I've seen in so many individuals is a kind of
tender awareness, a sort of emotionable compassion for ourselves and
(29:36):
what we've been putting ourselves through. And when we practice
this over time, in different situations with different individuals or
tricky people in our lives, what happens is we start
to find our own voice. And I did not know
this going into the book, but what I found in
working with people for two years is that people who
(29:56):
had not been able to voice themselves in these difficul
called interactions are in difficult relationships. They started to hear like, Okay,
what do I need? Like what am I not tending to?
What am I exiling here? What am I afraid to say?
What am I afraid to do? And relationships got better.
Some fell across the wayside because this process made it
(30:21):
clear that they were returning to the same hurtful dynamic
over and over and it couldn't be changed. But ninety
nine percent of a time, relationships got better because people
found voice. And that is something I want people to remember.
When you are in your thought loops, when you load
the same reels over and over, you lose agency, you
(30:43):
lose your voice, you lose your inner knowing of what
it is that you really need.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Wow. Yeah, there was one of the lists of questions
that you knew outline in the book, one of them
that really caught my attention when I was going through
the book, and you know, part of it. I'm going
through the book to you know, to make sure I
have questions in mind and so forth, and then I'm
prepared for the interview. But one of them was like
do I want to feel like this all the time,
(31:10):
which is like just on its own, isolated, is such
a an empowering little nugget, you know that kind of
like wakes you out and makes you realize, oh yeah,
maybe I don't and oh yeah, maybe I do have
agency over this. I don't have to just be stuck
in this particular thought loop.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yeah, and maybe there's something that when I'm stuck in
this thought loop, I'm actually repressing or avoiding about the
agency that I do have. Like maybe this is going
to be hard to one woman and I interviewed for
across a long period of time because it's important to
follow people so you can see how things help and
(31:50):
change them and what works and what doesn't work. Her
husband was incredibly picky in the kitchen. He just look,
you know, you're cutting the carrots the wrong way. No,
you know, you put the noodles in the water too soon.
Such a minute little thing. But for her, after many
years of marriage, it was just very you know, it
was the proverbial water on the rock, right. And she
(32:14):
was scared, not because he was a scary person. He wasn't.
He was a good man, good person, but she just
couldn't find the voice due to her own very old
stories from her own growing up childhood, how she'd been
conditioned as a woman across her life to just say
(32:34):
you cut the carrots like that was scary. Now, I
watched her over time be able to articulate things about
what she needed that were met by her partner with
such grace. Sometimes the people around us are waiting for
(32:55):
us to have agency, and when we have it, they
grow as well. But when we're both ruminating in our
separate corners people, it can't happen, and nor can connection,
and nor can growth.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
That's very well. But one thing that came to mind
when I was reading the book and sort of reflecting
to on other exercises that I've been exposed to or
you know, that I had come up in therapy and
(33:32):
so forth, was that. And I imagine you've even counted
this as well as like where someone is introduced to
as a particular technique and just being introduced to the
technique without necessarily doing it, it kind of gives you
a momentary relief from the issue, almost like you recognize
(33:53):
that there's an off ramp and then you're like, oh,
I can feel a certain amount of relief, there's an
off ramp, but then you don't do the practice or
you don't do the work, and then you'll wind up
in the same loop again.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
So what you're talking about is locus of control. So
there is research where just talking about wanting to go
to therapy and calling a therapist even if you never go,
shows some appreciable change in individuals who say, hey, mom, dad,
(34:23):
I want to see a therapist, or to their wife
like hey Sally, I think I need some help, and
making a phone call but never making an appointment makes
some change. And the thinking is and I'm sure there's
a lot of thinking about this, and I'm sure people
listening know more about it than I do. But one
of the areas of thought about this is locus of controls.
(34:46):
So we have a lot of good research that depression
is often related to a loss of locus of control.
So what you're talking about is like, oh, there is
this method that I can use that gave me this
enormous Really, I don't know that we spent more than
ninety seconds. We were taking our time. Maybe we spent
two minutes. But if you do it yourself, you can
(35:09):
do it in sixty seconds. I do it all the
time for myself to catch myself, and we will avoid
doing it even though we know it gives us a
locus of control. We might even go like, I could
be doing that, but I really just feel so seduced
by wanting to go into my old neural trap. And
(35:31):
there's a reason for that, because we have laid these
neural networks over a lifetime and we have good evidence
of that. So researchers will take kids and they'll divide
them into two groups. Which two groups? How are they
dividing them up? Kids who are having more difficulty with
(35:52):
family dysfunction or family tension, or more distress for any reason.
It might not be their parents home, versus kids who
have very low levels of family tension or psychological distress
or family you know, they have high family connection. And
they'll separate them into two groups. And by the age
of twelve to fifteen, the default mode network behaves very
(36:17):
differently in these two different groups of kids. In kids
who are experiencing more family tension or bullying, maybe not
at home, but at school, any kind of situation in
which they have had to question their mattering or their belonging,
Versus kids who haven't had to question that, And the
(36:39):
kids who have the default mode network goes into what's
called spontaneous rumination because kids have had to lay down
these neural tracks as children, because that is a survival technique.
Oh if I just don't do X, but I do
more of why, I will matter more, I will belong more,
(37:02):
I won't feel that I you know, I'm not making
my parents happy. Right. It goes all the way back
to the drama of the gifted child. It's that idea
of needing to perform for love or shape ourselves in
order to belong and we get really, really good at it.
It shows up in the brain. So in these two
groups of kids, the kids who had this family tension
(37:28):
or dysfunction, their brains not only went into spontaneous rumination
very quickly while doing simple, simple tasks. Oh what if
I do this wrong? Oh what are they going to
think of me?
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (37:40):
I screw up? Oh I mess up. They showed the
distress also in questionnaires about how they were feeling. They
perform more poorly on the task at hand. And here's
what blew my mind. They ruminated not just about the
task at hand, but they went into global rumination where
(38:00):
every fear they'd ever had, everything they ever ruminated about,
whether their friend at school like them, whether their mom
was mad at them, whether they were good enough on
the soccer field, how they were doing in school, all
came in very quickly. We don't want that. We don't
want that for our kids, we don't want that for ourselves.
(38:21):
But many of us are still living that way as adults.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
In the book, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the many recommendations
that comes up is of course walking in nature, which
it's one of those things that we've I think at
this point we've all heard it a million times, and
maybe we're hearing it more and more often because of
the sort of world we've built for ourselves. You know,
the number of the different techniques that you focus on
(38:48):
have to do with shifting sensory focus, and so does
a lot of it kind of come down to the
idea that, like walking, just walking in nature is kind
of more in line with what we evolved to do
versus all of these other sort of distractions.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Absolutely, and our brain is really really good at hooking
us up to nature very very quickly, because obviously, in
evolutionary time, it's only one billionth of a millisecond that
we've had all these screens and digital devices, and our
brains are changing to wire up to that and to
interface with that in a way that isn't healthy for us.
(39:25):
But our brains have had a lot longer to interface
with the world around us, and it can. It's so again,
you know, it's almost terrible to write about nature as
an answer because it's just really a reminder. We've heard
it so many times. But we can see this in
the brain. So we can see the default mode network
(39:45):
starts to go very quickly into its interconnected state with
the rest of the brain. It happens for us now.
So there are lots of little tricks, not tricks, but
things we can do even better than walking in nature.
Sure is lying down on the grass and what does
that do? Well? It opens up all of our sensory
(40:07):
portals very very quickly. But it does something else, and
you could actually do it right now in your studio
after we get off this wonderful podcast. Lie on the floor.
It breaks the default mode networks locked perspective. You're sending
your brain this signal like what is happening here? You're
looking at the ceiling you're looking at the the sprinklers
(40:28):
and the lights and the ceiling, and you're in an
unusual position. We ruminate in the same places our bed,
our chair, our kitchen, our car. We change the place
even better if you're lying on the grass. There are
lots of other quick things we can do. I talk
about something called ballistic interruption, and we talked about how
(40:49):
we lay down these neural tracks over and over, which
makes it more much more easy for our brain to
slip into the old reels. We have to interrupt our
entrench neural wak wiring and here again. And it sounds
kind of hokey, so it's kind of hard for me
to write about it, but we see it on fMRI scans.
Language here too is our portal to escape. We can
(41:11):
literally get in on our thinking. Do the miss framework,
and then your brain can tell your brain to cut
off the neural loop. I don't listen to these fear
based thoughts. Nope, not doing this, not today, No thaggs.
And it sounds so silly, but this way of thinking's
(41:32):
no longer welcome here. Forget about it. I'm closing the
door on this. We're not going there. If you do
the missed framework, and you allow yourself to kind of
tenderly hold the emotions that you have not been allowing
yourself to feel and acknowledge them and name them. And
then you ballistically interrupt so that your brain doesn't slip
(41:54):
slide back into that pattern. You're getting even a little
bit further outside. And then, as I say in the book,
you've got to get your body to agree. Right, you
can get your brain all online you talked about earlier,
Rob like, oh, I can feel like you know, my
brain wants to go right back there, like I got
a little ghost outside of me, but my brain is
(42:15):
going like, but we could go back, you know. And
that's because your body hasn't yet agreed. And so that's why.
And minddrop, I have a lot of mind body practices
that we can do again in like sixty seconds or
less to try to get not only the right language
happening and the right awareness and acceptance, but we have
(42:37):
to bring our somatic state into agreement that we're safe.
And Okay, there's.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
One that you outlined that I actually tried out right
before the interview here with that I forget the name
of it. I'm sorry, but okay, it involves like raising
your hands here.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeaheah, the body safe breaker.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yes, yes, that's the one.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Yeah, I mean I'm happy if we have time to
walk people through it. It's up to you. Sure, yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Think folks would take that. Don't do it while you're driving.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Please, don't do it while you're driving and holding a knife. Okay,
So really what you want to do, and this is
based on science around what's called cyclical sighing, which is
a type of sighing that literally helps bring our cortisol
levels down and establishes more positive emotions and a sense
of safety. So I'm sitting down, you're sitting down. I'm
(43:31):
going to do it. You're not going to be able
to really see me do it because it's you know,
it's audio. But I'm going to do it just because
I can't just talk it. I have to feel it.
So basically it's better if you stand up, but I'm
sitting so I'm going to just do it. So you're
just going to take like a full slow in hell
as you raise your arms up overhead and head. I
love Rob he's doing it with me, and keep your
(43:54):
arms up and like make tight fis and squeeze your
hands and close and open your fists and vigorously, vigorously
shake out your hands. So you taking this big breath,
fist shake your hands, let the breath out, but keep
your arms overhead, keep your arms up inhale again pause,
(44:17):
take in a second breath, and now let it fill
your whole quality and your chest into your collarbone. And
now let your arms come down your sidhe all the way. Oh,
let them fall. Feel better.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
That's good, Yes, absolutely, so I.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Sort of took little science and added a few little
neuroscience beats to it. Another really quick thing you could
do and add on at the end of that, which
is pretty lovely, is you could take your arms, cross
them over your body, and our arms on our hands
and arms are just full of neurow scepters that signal safety.
(44:59):
Think about it. It's the first thing that you did
as a child when you needed something. You raised your
arms to be picked up. So if you take your
opposite hands put them on the top of your arms.
Think of something that you really wish that someone who
loved you would say to you. You don't have to
say it out loud, but maybe it's like you're safe
you're loved, use you or your name, because when you
(45:21):
use you or your name, your brain pays more attention.
And I would just go, like smooth my hands down
my arms and just keep going, Donna, You're safe, You're okay, Safe,
You're okay. And if you do that at the end
of the body state Breaker, you're going to add a
(45:44):
whole other layer of neuroceptor relief. If you do the
miss framework, ballistic interruption and just that one exercise, and
they're like one hundred more in the book, And you've
got to grab what works for you, right Rob, Like
you know, if it resonates, I can see on your
face like that. Like for some things, we're going to
try them and it's gonna be like there's a lot
(46:05):
of different visualization techniques in the book. They could work
for some people, but they won't for others. Make your menu,
make what works, and and stack it into your day
because you're going to ruminate less and you're going to
get back a lot of precious hours of your life.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Excellent. Yeah, and so many of the I guess some
of the techniques that involve language, you know, it's on
one level like having having grown up, you know, I
was a child in the nineties and I ended up
watching Saturday Night Live and there would be these these
segments with Stuart Smiley where they're making fun of like
positive affirmations and so like, on one level, it kind
(46:44):
of made me think for a very long time, like
not even consciously that like there's something silly about positive happening,
but but but really like like that speaks to the
power of language. You know that that so many of
these techniques do involve some level of like talking to
ourselfs like you said, using our own name, saying it
(47:05):
in a language that resonates with us. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Absolutely. Do you remember the Bob Newhart segment where I
forget who the SNL actor was, came in and she's like,
I have these terrible problems. He's like, I'm going to
fix you in sixty seconds. She's like really really and
he just goes stop it. It doesn't really work that way,
(47:28):
but I know what you mean. And I say in
the book some of these techniques, I thought, let me
look at the science here, because sure, that sounds really great,
but you know, I'm a science journalist. I don't know
that I feel silly. I feel silly using some of these,
but they work for me, and so I'm going to
keep doing them. I do want to talk about the
(47:51):
power of visualization because for some people it feels too
silly to talk to yourself, and we just grew up
with that same kind of coding that you did that
this is nonsense, so it just it might not work
because we feel that way. But visualization. I use a
visualization technique in the book that is so powerful and
(48:11):
we see in the brain when you can skip the
talking to yourself is what I'm trying to say, you
can go right to visualization because what we see on
fMRI scans is that visualization lights up even more areas
of the brain than using language. And it makes sense
because your pulling in images. So I talk about something
(48:34):
called the two Roads technique, and it involves your physical body,
but it also involves almost like creating your own internal
computer game in which you can choose a right path
and shift your body in that direction, or a left
handed path or the right handed path. You are going
to build out the most beautiful world, kind of like
on a computer game of all the best experiences that
(48:58):
have ever happened to all the things you wish, what
happened to you. Maybe people you loved who've died, you can.
My dad died when I was twelve, So I'll put
my hands on his face and hug him and keep walking.
I'll see my kids, the hikes we've taken, and the tetons,
and keep going and all the most beautiful moments, the
first time my children were laid on my chest, things
(49:21):
my husband and I have done together, and keep going,
even into things you dream in the future and hope for.
But your brain is going to keep taking you to
the left handed path. It's that neural slide back onto
the left handed path. There you bring in the bad music.
You go, oh, I know it's raining, it's cloudy, it's horrible,
(49:42):
it's a bad neighborhood to be in. I know I
don't want to be on this path. And you go ahead.
Let it populate with the thing that's the stuff that
you don't want. Turn your body back to the right
and go down the right neural path and keep building
it out. Make the flowers grow, the trees, go, bring
in the music, the birds, see the people that you
(50:05):
long for, and that lights up your brain like nobody's business.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
We touched on this a little bit already for sure,
But can you expand a little bit about how on
one hand, you know the default mode network is tied
up with this negative rumination, But then if we spin
in the other direction, if we spiral up, this can
also be an engine of creativity as well.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Right, one hundred percent. So we talked about how the
word rumination itself has two sides. It can have this dark, brooding,
recursive negative thinking, and it can also mean musing an ideation.
What's interesting to me is the fault mode network kind
of echoes and mirrors this duality. So it is the
(51:06):
seat it does give rise to. It does generate this
horrible self referential thinking, what do they think about me?
What did I do wrong? What did I say wrong?
How did I flop that up? Which is really bad
for our mental health, But it also when we get
it to interface with the entire brain, it is also
the seat of our most creative imaginings, our most creative ideas.
(51:30):
It interfaces with the prefrontal cortex and other task positive
areas that give us the insight those glorious lit moments
of experience that we all long for in life, where
we have the big idea or we think as we
look at our child across the kitchen table, gosh, I
(51:52):
love this person so much, and a thousand stories split
through our heads. It is the seat of both the
darkest and the most transformative experiences that we have. So
the idea is to use all that we have, with
the best of neuroscience and the best of our love
for ourselves to flip that switch, and we can do it.
(52:15):
I followed a lot of people over two years, and
it gets the more you try, the easier it.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Guess well, that is inspiring, as is the book. I
want to thank you for coming on the show. Here
I'm going to hold the book up for folks on
video for anyone listening to the podcast on Netflix. But yes,
the book again is Mind Drama, The Science of Rumination
and How to Outwit your Inner Defeatist, by Dona Jackson Nagazawa.
(52:42):
By the time this episode is out, it should be
available wherever you get your books.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
Thanks so much for having me, Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
The show, Thank you, Thanks, thanks once more to Donna
Jackson Nagazawa for taking time out of her day to
discuss this fabulous new book, Mine Drama, The Science of Rumination.
You can find this wherever you get your books, and
again I highly recommend it. Thanks as always to the
talented and excellent JJ Possway for producing this episode. As always,
(53:12):
if you want to reach out with questions, feedback, or
if you have suggestions for future interview episodes, Folks, authors,
scientists that you think I should have on the show,
just write in I would love to hear from you.
That email address is contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Have the pot
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