June 1, 2025 • 15 mins
Your brain has a remarkable ability to filter and remember important experiences while discarding the less significant ones. It does so by comparing new experiences with past ones and using emotional reactions to determine their importance.
Let's look at how we can train it!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Richard (00:02):
And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls
podcast, the personaldevelopment podcast series
that's here to help inspire,educate, and motivate you to be
the best you can be.
I'm psychotherapist RichardNicholls, and this episode is
called Brain Training andAnxiety.
(00:24):
And if you are ready, we'llstart the show.
Hello there you.
Today I'm all about braintraining and how our experiences
change, not just how we feelabout ourselves and the world,
but actually physically changesour brain with every experience
(00:48):
we have.
And this is helpful if you wantto understand anxiety a bit
more.
So if you do the maths by thetime we're 16 years old, which
is when we are sort of gettingready to learn more about
ourselves, we've already hadalmost 11 years worth of waking
experiences.
(01:08):
Nearly 4,000 days, 96,000 hoursor thereabouts, 6 million
minutes of experiencing theworld.
And of course, we are not goingto remember much of that, are
we?
'cause our brain can't do that.
So we only remember theimportant bits.
Everything we experience givesour brain the chance to see if
(01:29):
it's important or not.
It compares it to previousexperiences and chooses whether
or not it needs to be deleted orstored, and our brain uses the
meaning behind the experience todo that because the meaning
behind everything gives us anemotional reaction.
(01:50):
And that emotional reaction,whether good or bad, gives our
brain the information it needsto say whether it needs to
influence the next similarexperience or not.
Back in the day, we only neededto survive one tiger experience
to then have an emotionalreaction to every single rustle
(02:12):
that we heard in the bushesthat's behind us.
'cause our brain has latchedonto the meaning behind the
tiger.
But also stuck it onto a smallbird flapping its wings as it
takes off from a bush behind us.
Which is better to be safe thansorry, isn't it?
Because at least now we'realive.
But is it, is it really betterto be safe than sorry?
(02:36):
And I ask this because on thewhole nowadays, probably not.
Because the last time I lookedthere were no tigers wandering
about.
I live in a fairly rural area.
There are a few woods aroundhere.
There's plenty of flappingbirds, but I'm yet to see a
tiger.
But for somebody with anxiety,every time we survive the
(02:57):
startling noise, Our brainreacts as if we've just survived
yet another tiger experience.
A behaviourist would say toovercome it you need to actually
have some startling experiencesand train the brain that you are
safe.
And yeah, that works.
But, you need to feel safe whenyou do it.
(03:20):
Otherwise, all the brain learnsis that tigers are everywhere.
And being on the lookout fordanger is vital'cause it's
always the meaning behind theexperience that makes it
important to us.
It's the same reason why peopleare desperate to show their
friends pictures of theirchildren and grandchildren and
holidays.
(03:41):
I love my friends.
Hello, if any of you arelistening.
But let's be honest, we allpolitely smile at people's
holiday photos, but the realemotional connection comes from
our own experience of thatmoment.
I might be interested in you,and you might be interested in
me, but a huge majority of thethings that you associate with
(04:04):
feeling good.
They won't make me feel anythingat all.
And vice versa.
'cause it wasn't, in that case,it wasn't me that had the
experience, so I'm not gonnafeel anything.
But because we associate thepictures with the memories and
the memories with the emotions,those pictures feel more
important to you than theyactually are to anybody else.
(04:27):
Not just consciously.
'cause this is also going on inour unconscious mind as well,
because your brain doesn't evenstart clearing away the
unimportant stuff until weteenagers.
Which is why teenagers need somuch more sleep.
Anybody who's a parent of ateenager recognises that.
My son doesn't live with usanymore.
(04:48):
He is at university, but when hewas little, he'd get us outta
bed every weekend as soon as thesun was up.
Well get me up anyway, my wife'squite a good sleeper.
Could be half six in themorning, but he's ready to
bounce on a trampoline and thatstopped as soon as he became a
teenager.
If you've got teenage kids,you're lucky to see them before
11 o'clock in the morning ifit's left to their own devices.
(05:10):
'cause their brain is busypruning away all the unimportant
memories.
The neurological matter that canbe better used elsewhere within
the brain.
Now that it's got enoughexperiences to decide what is
important and what's not,rightly or wrongly.
'cause it could have mademistakes in those 16 years and
(05:31):
it holds onto all theneurological matter that it
associates with emotion.
Because memories aren't reallylike video recordings.
It can't keep the details.
It just keeps the general gistof it, if you know what I mean.
Instead of our memories beinglike a film recording, a movie,
it doesn't store the filmitself.
(05:52):
It doesn't store the story.
It stores the genre.
And for some people theirmemories are made up of
comedies.
But for others they're made upof dramas.
Or even horror films.
Now, the films might getdeleted.
Even the little experiences thatwe've had in our life, they get
deleted even if they'reunpleasant, but the genres
(06:13):
don't.
So we can get hardwired intocertain feelings, even though
the reasons behind them beingcreated are long gone.
It's why if somebody has somesort of brain damage through
dementia or injury, and theirmemories are shot, the things
that spark emotions in them likemusic, they give them better
(06:33):
access to memories that weren'tdeleted because everyone's brain
is triggered not by knowledge,not by facts, but by the meaning
in our memories.
And I think this is importantfor us all to understand.
Not just in ourselves, but ineverybody as well.
'cause it's why some people aregonna react differently to other
(06:55):
people.
Why the flapping of a bird couldspoil one person's walk, but it
might improve yours because youmight associate the flapping of
a bird's wings, the sound of itwith nature and a sense of awe.
But they associate it withadrenaline and a sense of panic.
(07:15):
And one thing I think would bereally useful to do to prevent
our brain from holding onto thestuff that feeds anxiety and
instead hold onto the goodstuff, is related to sleep.
Priming ourselves with somedaydreams before we fall asleep,
to encourage the brain to pruneaway the correct emotions.
(07:36):
'cause it's whilst we sleep thatour brain is consolidating the
memories.
And deciding which neurologicalwiring to prune and which ones
to strengthen.
It's done during the REM stageof sleep, REM, sleep, dream
sleep, which is why if wehaven't slept well, it can make
us on edge the next day or moresensitive to emotion.
(08:00):
'cause even the unimportantemotional reactions, the minor
pokes and sadnesses, theyweren't pruned and they're all
connected to the big ones aswell that probably never get
pruned.
So firing off the lesssignificant feeling, also fires
off the big ones as well, andsleeping pills will do this as
(08:22):
well actually.
'cause they reduce REM State,unfortunately, like alcohol
does.
So we do need to tread carefullyif we have emotional sensitivity
and we're also trying to getmore sleep.
'cause it can sometimes createmore problems and it solves,
you've gotta do what works foryou.
Now the best way of doing thisis to do better things, quite
(08:47):
simply, with our brain whilst weare awake.
I have a phrase I use a lot.
You might have heard me say itone or 2000 times.
The brain doesn't know thedifference between fact and
fiction.
And if we can focus more on theexperiences we had in the day
that are worth remembering, westand a far better chance that
(09:08):
the other stuff can get prunedwhilst we sleep?
It's called neuroplasticity.
Which is not a new concept, theidea that the brain can rewire
itself, but it completelyrevolutionised stroke
rehabilitation.
'Cause years ago, if one side ofyour body was out of action
'cause of a stroke, the rehabwas all about learning how to
(09:32):
use the other side tocompensate.
But not anymore.
'cause nowadays you find thegood arm, for example, would be
strapped up for a while to stopyou from using it.
To force the brain to begin toreconnect up the neurons for
using the damaged area.
And these ideas have beenkicking around since the mid
(09:54):
nineties when AlvaroPascual-Leone was studying how
imagining playing the piano hada physical effect on which
neurons ended up gettingconnected together.
And this was just a daydream ofplaying the piano.
It was a one handed five fingerexercise on the piano that
(10:14):
people had to practice for twohours a day for five days
keeping to a metronomes 60 beatsa minute.
They already knew that the morethat we do something, the more
our brain devotes space to beingable to do it.
But using TMS, which istranscranial magnetic
stimulation, you can see exactlyby how much.
(10:37):
Simple experiment really.
As long as you've got a TMSmachine, of course it's simple.
If you don't, then of courseit's not.
But you just get some people topractice it in their imagination
by listening to the music andonly imagining moving their
fingers.
And that didn't have as much ofan effect as those doing it for
real, but it was significantlymore than those that weren't
(11:00):
practicing anything at all, andthey just improvised on the
piano for two hours.
Literally, like with manythings, it's the thought that
counts.
So if we want our brain to holdonto certain functions and make
them effortless, automatic,unconscious, we need to give it
(11:21):
some direction.
And so before you go to bed, Iwant you to ask yourself this
question.
Out of all the things I'veexperienced today, what are the
things I'd want to remember thistime next week?
What are the things I'd want toremember this time next year?
(11:42):
Basic gratitude stuff, I guess,but simpler.
Just go through your day lookingfor the things that are worth
remembering, no matter howsimple.
What did you have for breakfast?
Who was the first person in yourday that you had a positive
interaction with?
Doesn't matter how small orseemingly ordinary the
(12:04):
experiences were.
If at the time you were usingneurons in the brain for This is
good, this is safe, then youwant to remember how that feels,
because your brain can pruneaway the other stuff whilst you
sleep then you see.
(12:24):
Just spend 10 minutes or sobefore you sleep, just going
through your day.
I say 10 minutes.
'Cause our brain does go off ontangents, and as long as those
tangents are safe, then that'sokay.
When you notice that you'vemoved off the day and you're
onto the theme tune to Ulysses31 or something, just bring your
(12:45):
attention back to your day.
If you haven't fallen asleep.
But if your attention has goneoff onto something unpleasant,
then you need to stop that assoon as you can.
As soon as you notice that yourmind has wandered off, use your
imagination to freeze frame it.
Pause it, shrink it down intothe corner of your imagination,
(13:07):
let it disappear with a littlepop gone.
And then you go back to somethings worth remembering again.
And I'll reiterate, it doesn'tmatter how simple.
Like I say, it could be thedifferent people you spoke with
or saw or simply hovered over onsocial media.
As long as it's worthremembering, then make a mental
(13:30):
note of it.
And then all the magic happenswhilst you sleep.
Even if you did need medicationand you don't get much rapid eye
movement sleep, you'll still getsome.
And this very simple exercisereally is gonna help you make
the most of it.
And I know that some days aregonna be easier than other days.
(13:51):
Some days there's a lot ofthings to be grateful for.
And there might be other dayswhere the only thing with
remembering is that you had ashower.
Well, replay the shower in yourmind, but it's really important
to avoid negativity.
And I know that that seemsobvious based on what I've just
been saying for the lastflipping 14 minutes.
(14:13):
But it's really easy to make asimple, simple mistake, and
that's in thinking thatsomething good is the absence of
something bad, and that's notquite the same thing.
Because there is a bigdifference between, I felt calm
when I walked through the parktoday and I didn't feel anxious
(14:36):
when I went through the parktoday.
This is neurological remember,and we don't want the brain to
mark the existence of anxiety assomething to hold onto.
We want to weaken theneurological strings for danger
and strengthen the ones forfeeling safe.
For feeling loved, for feelingvalued and appreciated and
worthy and all the good stuff.
(14:57):
So you go and do that, and I'llleave you for another couple of
days.
I'll be back on Friday with mystandard bonus episode, and I'm
here on Patreon every singleMonday.
If you want to sign up, link isin the show notes, come and find
me on Patreon and we'll see ifwe can get your mental health
boosting even further.
(15:18):
Have a good day.
Speak to you soon.
And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls
podcast, the personaldevelopment podcast series
that's here to help inspire,educate, and motivate you to be
the best you can be.
I'm psychotherapist RichardNicholls, and this episode is
called Brain Training andAnxiety.
(00:24):
And if you are ready, we'llstart the show.
Hello there you.
Today I'm all about braintraining and how our experiences
change, not just how we feelabout ourselves and the world,
but actually physically changesour brain with every experience
(00:48):
we have.
And this is helpful if you wantto understand anxiety a bit
more.
So if you do the maths by thetime we're 16 years old, which
is when we are sort of gettingready to learn more about
ourselves, we've already hadalmost 11 years worth of waking
experiences.
(01:08):
Nearly 4,000 days, 96,000 hoursor thereabouts, 6 million
minutes of experiencing theworld.
And of course, we are not goingto remember much of that, are
we?
'cause our brain can't do that.
So we only remember theimportant bits.
Everything we experience givesour brain the chance to see if
(01:29):
it's important or not.
It compares it to previousexperiences and chooses whether
or not it needs to be deleted orstored, and our brain uses the
meaning behind the experience todo that because the meaning
behind everything gives us anemotional reaction.
(01:50):
And that emotional reaction,whether good or bad, gives our
brain the information it needsto say whether it needs to
influence the next similarexperience or not.
Back in the day, we only neededto survive one tiger experience
to then have an emotionalreaction to every single rustle
(02:12):
that we heard in the bushesthat's behind us.
'cause our brain has latchedonto the meaning behind the
tiger.
But also stuck it onto a smallbird flapping its wings as it
takes off from a bush behind us.
Which is better to be safe thansorry, isn't it?
Because at least now we'realive.
But is it, is it really betterto be safe than sorry?
(02:36):
And I ask this because on thewhole nowadays, probably not.
Because the last time I lookedthere were no tigers wandering
about.
I live in a fairly rural area.
There are a few woods aroundhere.
There's plenty of flappingbirds, but I'm yet to see a
tiger.
But for somebody with anxiety,every time we survive the
(02:57):
startling noise, Our brainreacts as if we've just survived
yet another tiger experience.
A behaviourist would say toovercome it you need to actually
have some startling experiencesand train the brain that you are
safe.
And yeah, that works.
But, you need to feel safe whenyou do it.
(03:20):
Otherwise, all the brain learnsis that tigers are everywhere.
And being on the lookout fordanger is vital'cause it's
always the meaning behind theexperience that makes it
important to us.
It's the same reason why peopleare desperate to show their
friends pictures of theirchildren and grandchildren and
holidays.
(03:41):
I love my friends.
Hello, if any of you arelistening.
But let's be honest, we allpolitely smile at people's
holiday photos, but the realemotional connection comes from
our own experience of thatmoment.
I might be interested in you,and you might be interested in
me, but a huge majority of thethings that you associate with
(04:04):
feeling good.
They won't make me feel anythingat all.
And vice versa.
'cause it wasn't, in that case,it wasn't me that had the
experience, so I'm not gonnafeel anything.
But because we associate thepictures with the memories and
the memories with the emotions,those pictures feel more
important to you than theyactually are to anybody else.
(04:27):
Not just consciously.
'cause this is also going on inour unconscious mind as well,
because your brain doesn't evenstart clearing away the
unimportant stuff until weteenagers.
Which is why teenagers need somuch more sleep.
Anybody who's a parent of ateenager recognises that.
My son doesn't live with usanymore.
(04:48):
He is at university, but when hewas little, he'd get us outta
bed every weekend as soon as thesun was up.
Well get me up anyway, my wife'squite a good sleeper.
Could be half six in themorning, but he's ready to
bounce on a trampoline and thatstopped as soon as he became a
teenager.
If you've got teenage kids,you're lucky to see them before
11 o'clock in the morning ifit's left to their own devices.
(05:10):
'cause their brain is busypruning away all the unimportant
memories.
The neurological matter that canbe better used elsewhere within
the brain.
Now that it's got enoughexperiences to decide what is
important and what's not,rightly or wrongly.
'cause it could have mademistakes in those 16 years and
(05:31):
it holds onto all theneurological matter that it
associates with emotion.
Because memories aren't reallylike video recordings.
It can't keep the details.
It just keeps the general gistof it, if you know what I mean.
Instead of our memories beinglike a film recording, a movie,
it doesn't store the filmitself.
(05:52):
It doesn't store the story.
It stores the genre.
And for some people theirmemories are made up of
comedies.
But for others they're made upof dramas.
Or even horror films.
Now, the films might getdeleted.
Even the little experiences thatwe've had in our life, they get
deleted even if they'reunpleasant, but the genres
(06:13):
don't.
So we can get hardwired intocertain feelings, even though
the reasons behind them beingcreated are long gone.
It's why if somebody has somesort of brain damage through
dementia or injury, and theirmemories are shot, the things
that spark emotions in them likemusic, they give them better
(06:33):
access to memories that weren'tdeleted because everyone's brain
is triggered not by knowledge,not by facts, but by the meaning
in our memories.
And I think this is importantfor us all to understand.
Not just in ourselves, but ineverybody as well.
'cause it's why some people aregonna react differently to other
(06:55):
people.
Why the flapping of a bird couldspoil one person's walk, but it
might improve yours because youmight associate the flapping of
a bird's wings, the sound of itwith nature and a sense of awe.
But they associate it withadrenaline and a sense of panic.
(07:15):
And one thing I think would bereally useful to do to prevent
our brain from holding onto thestuff that feeds anxiety and
instead hold onto the goodstuff, is related to sleep.
Priming ourselves with somedaydreams before we fall asleep,
to encourage the brain to pruneaway the correct emotions.
(07:36):
'cause it's whilst we sleep thatour brain is consolidating the
memories.
And deciding which neurologicalwiring to prune and which ones
to strengthen.
It's done during the REM stageof sleep, REM, sleep, dream
sleep, which is why if wehaven't slept well, it can make
us on edge the next day or moresensitive to emotion.
(08:00):
'cause even the unimportantemotional reactions, the minor
pokes and sadnesses, theyweren't pruned and they're all
connected to the big ones aswell that probably never get
pruned.
So firing off the lesssignificant feeling, also fires
off the big ones as well, andsleeping pills will do this as
(08:22):
well actually.
'cause they reduce REM State,unfortunately, like alcohol
does.
So we do need to tread carefullyif we have emotional sensitivity
and we're also trying to getmore sleep.
'cause it can sometimes createmore problems and it solves,
you've gotta do what works foryou.
Now the best way of doing thisis to do better things, quite
(08:47):
simply, with our brain whilst weare awake.
I have a phrase I use a lot.
You might have heard me say itone or 2000 times.
The brain doesn't know thedifference between fact and
fiction.
And if we can focus more on theexperiences we had in the day
that are worth remembering, westand a far better chance that
(09:08):
the other stuff can get prunedwhilst we sleep?
It's called neuroplasticity.
Which is not a new concept, theidea that the brain can rewire
itself, but it completelyrevolutionised stroke
rehabilitation.
'Cause years ago, if one side ofyour body was out of action
'cause of a stroke, the rehabwas all about learning how to
(09:32):
use the other side tocompensate.
But not anymore.
'cause nowadays you find thegood arm, for example, would be
strapped up for a while to stopyou from using it.
To force the brain to begin toreconnect up the neurons for
using the damaged area.
And these ideas have beenkicking around since the mid
(09:54):
nineties when AlvaroPascual-Leone was studying how
imagining playing the piano hada physical effect on which
neurons ended up gettingconnected together.
And this was just a daydream ofplaying the piano.
It was a one handed five fingerexercise on the piano that
(10:14):
people had to practice for twohours a day for five days
keeping to a metronomes 60 beatsa minute.
They already knew that the morethat we do something, the more
our brain devotes space to beingable to do it.
But using TMS, which istranscranial magnetic
stimulation, you can see exactlyby how much.
(10:37):
Simple experiment really.
As long as you've got a TMSmachine, of course it's simple.
If you don't, then of courseit's not.
But you just get some people topractice it in their imagination
by listening to the music andonly imagining moving their
fingers.
And that didn't have as much ofan effect as those doing it for
real, but it was significantlymore than those that weren't
(11:00):
practicing anything at all, andthey just improvised on the
piano for two hours.
Literally, like with manythings, it's the thought that
counts.
So if we want our brain to holdonto certain functions and make
them effortless, automatic,unconscious, we need to give it
(11:21):
some direction.
And so before you go to bed, Iwant you to ask yourself this
question.
Out of all the things I'veexperienced today, what are the
things I'd want to remember thistime next week?
What are the things I'd want toremember this time next year?
(11:42):
Basic gratitude stuff, I guess,but simpler.
Just go through your day lookingfor the things that are worth
remembering, no matter howsimple.
What did you have for breakfast?
Who was the first person in yourday that you had a positive
interaction with?
Doesn't matter how small orseemingly ordinary the
(12:04):
experiences were.
If at the time you were usingneurons in the brain for This is
good, this is safe, then youwant to remember how that feels,
because your brain can pruneaway the other stuff whilst you
sleep then you see.
(12:24):
Just spend 10 minutes or sobefore you sleep, just going
through your day.
I say 10 minutes.
'Cause our brain does go off ontangents, and as long as those
tangents are safe, then that'sokay.
When you notice that you'vemoved off the day and you're
onto the theme tune to Ulysses31 or something, just bring your
(12:45):
attention back to your day.
If you haven't fallen asleep.
But if your attention has goneoff onto something unpleasant,
then you need to stop that assoon as you can.
As soon as you notice that yourmind has wandered off, use your
imagination to freeze frame it.
Pause it, shrink it down intothe corner of your imagination,
(13:07):
let it disappear with a littlepop gone.
And then you go back to somethings worth remembering again.
And I'll reiterate, it doesn'tmatter how simple.
Like I say, it could be thedifferent people you spoke with
or saw or simply hovered over onsocial media.
As long as it's worthremembering, then make a mental
(13:30):
note of it.
And then all the magic happenswhilst you sleep.
Even if you did need medicationand you don't get much rapid eye
movement sleep, you'll still getsome.
And this very simple exercisereally is gonna help you make
the most of it.
And I know that some days aregonna be easier than other days.
(13:51):
Some days there's a lot ofthings to be grateful for.
And there might be other dayswhere the only thing with
remembering is that you had ashower.
Well, replay the shower in yourmind, but it's really important
to avoid negativity.
And I know that that seemsobvious based on what I've just
been saying for the lastflipping 14 minutes.
(14:13):
But it's really easy to make asimple, simple mistake, and
that's in thinking thatsomething good is the absence of
something bad, and that's notquite the same thing.
Because there is a bigdifference between, I felt calm
when I walked through the parktoday and I didn't feel anxious
(14:36):
when I went through the parktoday.
This is neurological remember,and we don't want the brain to
mark the existence of anxiety assomething to hold onto.
We want to weaken theneurological strings for danger
and strengthen the ones forfeeling safe.
For feeling loved, for feelingvalued and appreciated and
worthy and all the good stuff.
(14:57):
So you go and do that, and I'llleave you for another couple of
days.
I'll be back on Friday with mystandard bonus episode, and I'm
here on Patreon every singleMonday.
If you want to sign up, link isin the show notes, come and find
me on Patreon and we'll see ifwe can get your mental health
boosting even further.
(15:18):
Have a good day.
Speak to you soon.
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