September 20, 2022 • 48 mins
It seems like we're all under more stress than ever before. This week Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson unpack Davidson's research about stress and the brain. They discuss our physiological reaction to stress and how meditation can help you develop lasting positive adaptations to these challenges.
Daniel Goleman talks about his Emotional Intelligence Courses, available at danielgolemanemotionalintelligence.com
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Episode Transcript
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Daniel Goleman (00:00):
Hello everyone, I'm here with my dear old friend
Richard Davidson. We all callhim Richie. We've known each
other since graduate school.
Richie now is a professor ofpsychology and psychiatry at the
University of Wisconsin atMadison, founder and chair of
the Center for Healthy Minds,and have a related nonprofit
called Healthy Mindsinnovations. I've known Ritchie
(00:20):
and followed his research careerfor decades, he's tracked the
study of emotions, he was one ofthe founders of the field of
Affective Neuroscience, and AI,his work has gone from what
upsets us to the positive rangeto compassion to well being. And
it's that range I'd like toexplore today with Richie, who
(00:42):
have not only founded AffectiveNeuroscience, he's one of the
first to study compassion from aneuroscience point of view. So
Richie, I'm doing this in thecontext of emotional balance,
which is one of the competenciesor capabilities of emotional
(01:03):
intelligence. That means keepingdisruptive emotions and impulses
in check to some extent so thatthey don't interfere with what
we're doing when we maintain oureffectiveness under stress or
even hostile conditions. Youknow, it's staying calm and
clear. So, I'd like to start atthe bottom of the spectrum,
(01:24):
which is the state of frazzle.
When people are, you know, Ijust gave a talk to people in
Ukraine. And I can't evenimagine the stress that they're
under and threats, there arereal you could die any minute
from a cruise missile, you know,exploding where you are. And I
(01:46):
can only imagine that peoplethere must be living in a state
of what neuro psychiatry hascalled frazzle. And could you
tell us what's going on in thebrain when we're absolutely at
our worst from that point ofview?
Richie Davidson (02:05):
Yeah, well, first, thank you for having me,
Dan, it's always good to be withyou. I share your just this
sense of of the unimaginablewith people in Ukraine and the
depth of, of being frazzled andfrazzled, may not be a
(02:31):
sufficiently strong adjective todescribe the challenges that
they face. But what I would sayfrom a neuroscientific
perspective is a few things.
First, is that the theamplitude, if you will, of the
systems involved in respondingto threat are extremely high,
Daniel Goleman (02:58):
just for us lay citizens at high amplitude means
what the volume
Richie Davidson (03:04):
is turned all the way up. And so yeah, so So
that's one element. But it's notthe only element. A second
element is that the systems thatare normally in place to turn
the volume down, once it'sturned up, are impaired. And so
(03:30):
from a neuroscientificperspective, we would say that
there is some impairment in thecapacity to regulate the emotion
once it is activated. And so youhave kind of the double whammy
of having high volume and beingunable to turn the volume down.
(03:51):
And and so we know that one ofthe key brain regions for
regulating emotion is theprefrontal cortex. And we know
that stress impairs thefunctioning of the prefrontal
cortex. And so it impairs thatcapacity to turn down the
(04:15):
volume.
Daniel Goleman (04:17):
Well, which is sorry to interrupt, but while
we're impaired, what does thisdo to our general mental
capacity, our ability to thinkclearly our ability to make
decisions, solve problems.
Richie Davidson (04:30):
So it will, yeah, it will impact all of
those things because ourresources are dedicated, if you
will, to this stress to thechallenge. And the difficulty
(04:55):
that we have in turning down thevolume is actually hogging a lot
of resources. And there is goingto be diminished capacity to
process anything else. And sothis will impact our decision
(05:15):
making, it will impact ourcapacity to actually detect
what's going on in theenvironment. One of the things
that we often say is that fearand threat quite literally
narrows the aperture ofawareness, so that you are less
(05:39):
attentive to the things that arein your immediate environment.
And in some sense, it'sadaptive, because all your
energy is focused on the threat.
But in certain cases, there islittle and in some cases,
nothing that we can do about thethreat. It's outside of our
(06:01):
control. And so the only thingthat we have the possibility of
controlling is our own mind. Andif we can't turn down the
volume, that is going to be areal challenge.
Daniel Goleman (06:19):
So you're saying that the brain is designed as it
were, for us to pay attention tofixate on what we perceive as a
threat, whether or not thethreat is real. We keep thinking
about it, or our mind goesthere. Is that right?
Richie Davidson (06:37):
Yes, absolutely. And of course, you
know, in the Ukraine, there arereal physical threats in in
other places that are safe. Themost of the threats in modern
society, come from our own mind,we create these threats.
Daniel Goleman (07:01):
So this is the thing that's always fascinated
me is that the biological systemthat reacts to threat was
designed for real physicalthreat, like in the Ukraine, you
could be bombed. But it elicitsthe same biological response, we
get flooded with stresshormones, cortisol, adrenaline,
even if it's an imagined threat.
And today, we live in such acomplex social reality, I think,
(07:25):
outside of a warzone, most ofthe friends react to might be
imaginary.
Richie Davidson (07:33):
Yeah. And, you know, one of the analogies that
is often used is with dreaming,there is research that shows
that if we have emotions in ourdreams, let's say something
fearful, there are real changesin the body, we can see changes
(07:56):
in our autonomic nervous system,our heart rate, we increase our
respiration gets faster. Stresshormones, as you were suggesting
earlier, can get released. Andyet, you know, in a dream, we
know that it's all in our mind,so to speak. And the amazing
thing that modern neuroscienceteaches us is that what we think
(08:19):
of as reality is also all in ourmind, it's just like a dream,
because we're creating thisreality in our mind all the
time, based on our owninterpretation of the world. So
it's the difference betweenwaking and dreaming is actually
not very great.
Daniel Goleman (08:41):
So tell me about the biological changes that
occur when we have an imaginedthreat. Like, she didn't invite
me to the party. And that meansshe doesn't like me, our
friendship has ended and I thatmight, I'm gonna lose that whole
circle of friends. You know? Somaybe the invitation comes a day
(09:02):
later, your mind doesn't treatit that way. It treats the
imagined social exclusion as areal deal. And then what happens
in the body when that goes on?
What happens when we're understress, essentially?
Richie Davidson (09:15):
Yeah. So when we have that kind of imagined
situation, as you weresuggesting earlier, the same
biology that evolution providedus with to deal with physical
threats is activated by ourimagined threats. And so this is
really one of the biggestproblems in, in modern society.
(09:42):
And, you know, humans have thisamazing capacity to anticipate
the future and to reflect on thepast. And this confers enormous
opportunity and advantage forus. But it also So is the source
(10:02):
of a huge amount of suffering,because we can anticipate
potential threats that webasically create in our mind.
And we respond to them as ifthey're real. So whether
Daniel Goleman (10:18):
it's a real threat or imagine what's going
on in the body and thecardiovascular system, the
immune system, can you just runthrough that checklist for us?
Richie Davidson (10:28):
Yeah, so absolutely. So we see in the
body and activation of the havebranches of the autonomic
nervous system, the autonomicnervous system is the system
that controls our visceralorgans like our heart, our lung,
(10:52):
our the sweating on our skin,our breathing. And there are two
major branches to the autonomicnervous system, there's the
sympathetic branch, and theparasympathetic branch and the
sympathetic branch is beencalled the flight or fight
(11:15):
response, it is what isactivated in under stress. And
what happens is that our heartrate elevates, we secrete
certain molecules that stimulateour heart rate that increase our
respiration, that increase theblood flow to our peripheral
(11:41):
muscles in case we need to actand run. They're also changes in
our inflammatory response,there's an increase that we see
in inflammation, we also see anincrease in stress hormones like
(12:07):
cortisol, which serve animportant role in generally
activating many differentsystems in the body. And so all
of this is occurring, they'reoccurring on different
timescales. But they all canhave fairly quick responses, the
(12:30):
changes that we see in theautonomic nervous system can be
very quick, the changes that wesee in these molecules may take
a few minutes to unfold. Butwithin five or 10 minutes, you
can see these changes. And soall of this is happening, and
(12:50):
can be happening as we werediscussing, to a completely
imagined threat. And in fact,there are things that we do in
the laboratory that involve a,quote, social stress, that is a
completely made up scenario. Andeveryone knows Amin,
(13:14):
participants are told the truththat it's not real. You know,
the way it's done is people areasked to give a little talk as
if it were a job interview, andto talk about characteristics of
themselves that are importantfor this hypothetical job. It's
all completely fiction. And yet90% of people show an elevation
(13:40):
of cortisol, in response tothis. And there is full
disclosure to people that thisis completely fictitious. It's
not a real job interview. Andyet, this is what happens
because this kind of machineryis so hardwired, in our brain,
(14:03):
because of the potential reallydeleterious and in certain
cases, lethal consequences ofreal physical threat.
Daniel Goleman (14:13):
Well, I'm thinking now of someone who's
under constant stress, you know,not in the Ukraine, where there
are real threats to life anddeath, but rather, someone who
works for a terrible boss, orwho has someone in their family
who is really abrasive and rudeand difficult to get along with,
(14:34):
or a nurse who works on a COVIDunit, and is in constant fear
even while treating patients ofherself or himself bringing that
home to their family. And youknow what's going on when a
person can't really recover whenthey're in constant sympathetic
(14:55):
nervous system fight or flightarousal, day after day after
day. A Yeah, so
Richie Davidson (15:01):
the cumulative impact is very significant and
quite deleterious. So one of Imean, there are many different
consequences. But one, forexample, is that when cortisol
is expressed chronically overtime, at high levels, it
(15:27):
actually has deleterious effectson the brain. And so cortisol is
a molecule that crosses theblood brain barrier. It gets
into the brain when it'sreleased by the adrenal glands
which sit over the kidney oneach side, and then of course,
is through the bloodstream. Andit has effects on their muscles
(15:52):
on our autonomic nervous system,it also has effects on the
brain. And when in the immediateeffects on the brain could be,
if they were a real physicalthreat, it could be positive,
because it can arouse certainsystems in the brain make you
more attentive to the threat,and help you deal with it. But
(16:13):
if it's day in and day out inthis chronic way, it's it can be
actually toxic, because it leadsto excited what we call
excitotoxicity. And whatexcitotoxicity is, is
stimulation of neurons in thebrain brain cells that are
(16:36):
stimulated constantly. And whenthey're stimulated constantly,
it actually leads to a toxicresponse where the cells
eventually die, because theyhave been stimulated
excessively. And so this is areally profoundly important
(16:57):
issue because it is one of thesources of early neuro
degeneration among people whohave been chronically stressed,
we know, for example, thatcaregivers of patients, medical
patients who often this has beenstudied in actually patients
(17:21):
with dementia, because acaregiver who is caring for a
patient with dementia familymember, it's a very challenging
kind of caregiving. And it'svery stressful. And research has
found that the cortisol levelsare initially very high, and
(17:44):
they give rise to changes in thebrain that actually lead to
volume shrinkage in certaincritical areas of the brain,
where there are receptors forthe for cortisol.
Daniel Goleman (17:58):
So what is it doing to other parts of the
body? I know there's a highrelationship positive
relationship between stress andheart disease, for example,
between stress and inflammatorydisorders generally, is
something akin to what youdescribed going on in the brain
happening in other parts of thebody and other systems.
Richie Davidson (18:17):
Yes, and it is, and one of the things that
happens is that the receptorsfor cortisol, so they, these
molecules have receptors, whichyou can think of it as a lock.
And a key, the key is thecortisol. And the lock into
(18:38):
which the key is inserted is areceptor. And that's how they
actually communicate and do thework that they do. And the
receptor becomes sensitized whenit is chronically exposed to
cortisol, and so it basicallystops working after a while it
(19:01):
becomes. And you can think of itin a way that is similar to
other kinds of habituation,where if you have the same thing
happening over and over again,you will be less responsive to
it. And so you're lessresponsive to it. And that
(19:22):
really messes up all thefeedback loops that are so
important in the regulation ofcortisol. So, cortisol
regulation becomesdysfunctional.
Daniel Goleman (19:33):
So how would that, for example, create high
blood pressure or asthma or anyof those? How would it feed into
that process? Yeah,
Richie Davidson (19:44):
I mean, those are really complicated questions
that don't have simple answers.
You know, we know that it's notjust cortisol. In those cases,
it's many other facts. Doctors,but in any situation where and
many chronic illnesses, in fact,most chronic diseases, physical
(20:09):
diseases involve an inflammatorycomponent where there is excess
inflammation and in part, thisis a consequence of a failure to
regulate inflammation in anacute challenge may actually be
very adaptive to have aninflammatory response. But if
(20:32):
it's persisting over time, itcan actually lead to all kinds
of disorders and complications.
And, and with asthma and certainkinds of cardiovascular disease,
it's really the, in many ways, afailure of the feedback
(20:58):
mechanisms that regulate theinflammation that have gone
awry. And it's due to either allof these conditions have some
genetic contribution, butthey're also major environmental
factors. And the environmentalfactors have to do with chronic
(21:18):
stress. One of them that'sactually being studied, more and
more now is poverty. You know,poverty gets under the skin, and
actually effects this wholestress neurobiology system to
impact the these regulatorycapacities. And it leads to this
(21:40):
kind of chronic inflammation,which then has, in turn
consequences for our physicalhealth. And so it is a really
pernicious negative feedbackloop that is created,
Daniel Goleman (22:00):
I assume the same thing would happen with
racial bias or ethnic bias ofany kind. Or where there's one
group is more powerful, and isprejudiced against another
group, anywhere in the world.
Richie Davidson (22:12):
Yes, absolutely. We just today, we
had our annual emotionsymposium, and one of the
speakers at this symposium wasan African American psychiatrist
from New York City, who works atMount Sinai. And he and his
family just recently moved andmoved to a new place. And they
(22:40):
were getting a bunch ofpackages, because they had just
moved. And, and some of themwere ordered from Amazon. And
one day, he was looking at allthe packages that had been
delivered to this apartmentbuilding. And a lady comes up to
him, who is a resident in thebuilding? And she said, Show me
(23:01):
your identification. Do you? Areyou you're not a resident here.
And, you know, she was justmaking the assumption, of
course, that he was not aresident because he's black.
And, you know, he gave that isan example of a kind of micro
aggression. You know, he's avery prominent psychiatrist. And
(23:26):
it's just the kind of thing thathe experiences on, you know, a
very frequent basis. And it'sthe kind of stuff that, you
know, I don't think you and Iexperienced very often.
Daniel Goleman (23:38):
So in other words, if there's a constant
source of stress, even microaggressions, as this guy is
talking about, I'm thinking ofsomeone who works for a manager,
say, who's subscribed to theschool of thought that
pressuring people with deadlinesand threats, is the best way to
get good work. What you'resaying seems to imply that
(24:01):
actually, Stress makes peoplestupid, not better and more
productive.
Richie Davidson (24:06):
Yeah, I mean, if what they're experiencing is
really stress, it will impairtheir capacity for effective
regulation, I think it'll impairtheir ability to have
cooperative interpersonalinteractions kind of be a good
(24:27):
team member because they won'tbe attentive to all of the cues
of the team. And their cognitiveresources will be harnessed to
deal with this stress. And sothey'll be less creative.
Daniel Goleman (24:43):
So they can't think as well or as nimbly, or
as agilely, as they mightotherwise. In fact, as their
manager wants them to. It's avery self defeating approach.
Richie, I should mention thatthe two of us Recently, co
authored a book on the benefitsof meditation called altered
(25:06):
traits, how the mind changesyour mind, brain and body. And
we looked at a host of data,really now decades of data on
the benefits of this one of themseems to be that meditation is
one of many methods that willhelp people handle stress
(25:27):
better. And I wonder if youcould talk a little bit about,
you know, the situation ofsomeone who has a high stress
life, where they're because oftheir work, or they're juggling
kids and work or, you know,you're part of a group that is
constantly experiencing bias, oryou've got a terrible boss,
(25:50):
whatever it may be? What areways that people in these dire
situations can help themselves?
Deal with it better?
Richie Davidson (26:01):
Yeah, well, there is a growing corpus of
evidence that suggests thatsimple forms of meditation and I
should say that researchindicates that it actually
doesn't take much to begin tochange, that these simple forms
(26:23):
of practice can really make adifference, particularly if they
are implemented on a regularbasis. And so one of the things
that we are excited about in ourown work is this framework for
understanding what we think ofas the plasticity of well being
(26:49):
that holds that there are fourpillars of well being. And this
framework is deeply informed byboth modern science but also the
meditation traditions. And weknow that each of these pillars
of well being which I'll name injust a moment, can be cultivated
through training. So the firstpillar we call awareness, which
(27:11):
is where mindfulness would be,and it includes our capacity to
regulate our attention to focussomething.
Daniel Goleman (27:20):
Well, right there, if I could, that before
you were talking about howstress fixates attention. So
this implies a kind of stressfree straight state, where we're
much more in control of whereour attention can go, is that
right?
Richie Davidson (27:35):
Yes, and one of the kinds of meditation that has
been studied, one that I know,you know, well, is the kind that
can train a person to have abroad focus of attention. So not
just really narrow, but to openup the attention to be more
(28:02):
panoramic ly aware, if you will,because we know that stress,
that fear really narrows theaperture of attention of
awareness. And there are certainforms of meditation that really
open it up. So that we can be,for example, we can be talking
to a person, we can beunderstanding the content of
what they're saying. But we canalso be noticing their facial
(28:23):
expressions, we can be attentiveto their tone of voice, we can
take in their posture, all ofwhich are important channels of
communication. And in order topay attention to all those, we
really have to open up thisaperture of awareness, so that
(28:46):
we can have a better likelihoodof noticing all of these things.
So that's the first pillar isawareness. And awareness, I
should say also includes oneother feature, which is super
important and worth calling out.
And that is a something thatscientists call meta awareness.
What is meta awareness, it'sknowing what our minds are
(29:10):
actually doing. And to someviewers, that may sound a little
strange, don't we always knowwhat our minds are doing. But
one of the examples that I oftengive is, and it's really helps,
because it's an example of notknowing what our mind is doing.
And that is, I think many of uscertainly I have had the
(29:30):
experience of reading a book,where you might be reading each
word on a page and you might gofrom one page to the next. And
after a few minutes, you realizeyou have no idea what you've
just read, your mind issomewhere else, you're lost. But
the moment you recognize thatthat's a moment of mental
awareness. And it turns outresearch shows that that can
(29:51):
actually be trained and that isa pivotal competence, we believe
for any kind of personaltransformation, because if
you're not aware of what yourmind is doing, then it's it's
very difficult to actually trainthe mind. And so this is really
an important capacity. We allhave it, but we have different
(30:17):
degrees. And the good news isthat we can improve it. So the
second pillar is connection. Andconnection is about qualities
that are important for healthysocial relationships. Some of
them are so simple, likeappreciation. You know, one of
the things that we often do,actually, we almost always do
(30:39):
before an important meeting inour center, is we do a little
practice. And it's often anappreciation practice where
we're invited to bring to mindpeople we work with, and just,
in our own minds, recognizesomething beneficial that
they've recently done. And just,it's kind of an elixir for the
(31:04):
soul, it warms the heart, and itcan really change the tenor of a
meeting. And it could be donefor 30 seconds before a meeting.
So that'sconnection. The third pillar of
wellbeing we call insight. Andinsight is about a kind of
curiosity driven self knowledge,and really knowledge of the
(31:29):
self. So all of us have anarrative that we carry around
the better selves. And this iswhat the human mind does. And we
know that on one extreme end ofa continuum, there are people
walking around, who have areally negative narrative, they
have negative self beliefs. Andthe unfortunate thing is that
they actually believe thosebeliefs, they hold those beliefs
(31:53):
to be a true description of whothey are. And of course, that we
know is a prescription fordepression. And what is
important for well being is notso much changing the narrative,
but it's changing ourrelationship to the narrative,
so that we can really see thenarrative for what it is, which
is, basically it's a bunch ofthoughts. And that can give us
(32:16):
some leverage, because we canreally experientially appreciate
how our narrative literallyshapes the way we see the world.
And we can even do a little, youknow, we often do this to a
little exercise, to imagine adifferent narrative. And imagine
(32:37):
how we would approach asituation if we had a different
narrative. And again, it's justsubstituting one set of thoughts
for another set of thoughts. Soin the final pillar of, of well
being or flourishing, we callpurpose. And purpose is about
identifying our sort of sense ofdirection, in life, our true
(33:01):
north. And here, again, it's notso much about changing what we
do to do something, quote, morepurposeful, but rather, how can
we derive meaning and purpose inthat which we are already doing,
including from activities thatmany people might regard as
pedestrian sort of dailyroutines? Can you envision that
(33:25):
taking out the garbage isactually connected to your sense
of purpose? And the answer is,yes, yes, you can you everything
could be part of your sense ofpurpose.
Daniel Goleman (33:39):
Well, here, I wonder is there you know, when
we talk about purpose, we tendto think of some big deal
purpose. Is there an everyday isthere big purpose and little
purpose? Can we have multiplepurposes?
Richie Davidson (33:51):
Yeah, I mean, you know, one purpose may be
being kind to people beinghelpful to people. And, you
know, and you can do that aperson at any station, sort of
in the social hierarchy can dothat. And, and so it's really
(34:16):
tapping into our core values,that is really important and
connecting our values to theactivities in which we engage
you one of the things we did isdo this kind of training during
COVID, with different groups,and one of the groups we did it
with is public school teachers,a group that has really been
(34:39):
challenged during the pandemic.
And this was done during thefirst year, the pandemic, before
there was a vaccine. And whenalmost all public school
teachers were required to teachonline, and we're quite
stressed. And one of the thingsthat we did is did some simple
practices to help connect theseteachers to their The purpose in
becoming teachers in the firstplace, and tissue reported that
(35:02):
of all the things that we didthat was the most meaningful,
and they really just got so muchvitality, from reconnecting to
their sense of purpose.
Daniel Goleman (35:20):
So, Richie, in terms of that stress state we're
talking about at the beginningof our conversation. And this
sense of well being, it seemsthat we're tracking a spectrum
of experience that goes from I'mreally upset, I'm disturbed, I'm
stressed out to feeling at yourbest, really, you're talking
(35:40):
about some kind of optimal statewith well being, you call it
flourishing. I want to circleback to something that I know
from your career that happenedin between your early work on
emotions and your work on wellbeing. You did a book called The
emotional life of the brain, Ithink, was that the right title?
(36:02):
Yeah. Yeah. And you talked aboutseveral dimensions that would
help people understand howstressed they are, how not
stressed they are. One had to dowith how often you triggered
another was how intensely youfelt being upset when you were
upset. And the third wasresilience was how quickly you
(36:24):
recovered? Could you tell usabout each of those?
Richie Davidson (36:28):
Yeah, so thank you for asking. In that book, I
talked about six specificemotional styles, if you will.
And one of them is you point outis resilience and resilience. We
define from a scientificperspective, in a simple way,
(36:51):
but one that can really bemeasured rigorously. And that is
the rapidity with which yourecover from adversity. And so a
person who recovers quickly,
Daniel Goleman (37:02):
wait, wait, wait, let's adversity, you're
measuring adversity in the body,you say can be measured very
precisely. How do you trackadversity? Like I could say,
well, you know, and experience alot of adversity. But how do you
do it in the lab?
Richie Davidson (37:19):
Well, so that's a great question. And what we
can do in the lab is we canethically challenge a person. So
you know, when you go to acardiologist, you often will do
a cardiac stress test, where youwill challenge the heart. And in
(37:40):
response to the challenge, thephysician will be able to
examine your cardiovascularfunction. And we want to do the
same thing, we want to challengethe mind and the brain in order
to probe for resilience. And sowe can use safe, ethical, but
(38:00):
challenging procedure. So one ofthem is one that I mentioned
very briefly earlier, a giving aspeech to an audience, that it
where you're presumably beingevaluated. For most people,
that's a stressor, and howquickly you recover after that
(38:22):
turns out to be incrediblymeaningful. And so two people
may show the same amplitude ofresponse to the same, the volume
is turned up to the same level,but they recover at very
different rates. One personrecovers immediately after the
speech is over, the other personis still stressed an hour later.
(38:46):
That's very different. And yetthey both have the same volume.
Daniel Goleman (38:51):
What do you see in the brain of those two types
of people, the recovery personin the slow recovery person.
Richie Davidson (38:59):
So the circuitry for regulation is very
different in those two groups ofpeople. The fast recovery people
who we consider to be resilientare people that have a an intact
regulatory system. And Ofparticular note here is
(39:22):
connections between theprefrontal cortex and the
amygdala and other limbic areasthat are important for emotion.
And that connection, both thefunctional connection and even
the structural connection, whichyou can measure through modern
imaging methods differs inpeople who are resilient
(39:49):
compared to those who are not.
And so this is really animportant issue. And and those
are the ways that I was alludingTo earlier that we can measure
that really precisely in thebrain and in the body. So we can
measure how long it takes forcortisol to come back to
baseline, we can also measurehow long it takes the amygdala
(40:11):
to recover from a period ofactivation.
Daniel Goleman (40:16):
As I recall, at least you want to told me that
people who recover quicklycompared to those who recover
very slowly have about 30 timesmore activity insert circuitry,
I think, on the left side of theprefrontal cortex versus the
right, is that held up? Or did Iget that right?
Richie Davidson (40:34):
Well, the I don't know. But the 30 times the
the, the work on laddermorality, and the motion is work
that I devoted my career to, formany years, using EEG methods to
look at the the activation ofthe left and right prefrontal
(40:58):
areas of the brain. And one ofthe ways that we did that, the
principal way we did that is tomeasure this activity, while a
person is not given any specifictask, just while they're, quote,
resting kind of their default,if you will. And it turns out
that using all kinds of rigorousprocedures, we established that
(41:20):
this is actually quiteconsistent in people so that if
a person if I brought a personin today, in the laboratory, and
then I brought them in a monthfrom now, and I measured these
parameters of pre frontal brainactivity, they wouldn't be very
similar. I mean, unlesssomething, you know, major
(41:41):
happened in the interim, butassuming that their life was
essentially going on, as theyusually, as it usually happens,
the measurement a month from nowwill be very similar to the
measurement that we got today.
So it's a very stablecharacteristic. And it turns out
that people who have more leftprefrontal activation have a
(42:01):
more resilient profile. Now, youknow, the, the magnitude of it
depends on the extremity of theprefrontal activation. And so
there are a lot of variables inhere. So I think it's important
that we not get stuck on asoundbite of how, you know, many
(42:22):
times more a person is resilientto is showing this pattern,
because people can vary in thedegree to which they show this.
But
Daniel Goleman (42:33):
can people go through a training to get better
at this to be quickly recoveredfrom stress?
Richie Davidson (42:41):
Yeah, absolutely, they can. And it
turns out that we've shown thatsimple forms of mindfulness or
awareness, meditation canimprove a person's ability to
recover more quickly. And sothis is something that research
shows can occur. And there thedata also suggests that there
(43:10):
are the least to some extent,this scales with practice time.
So the more practice you have,the better you get at this.
Daniel Goleman (43:21):
Are there other things that can do this? Is
there like a quick way to toshift to get out of being all
stressed out and activated?
Richie Davidson (43:32):
There might be and so I think there are a
number of things that are reallyare promising. So there are
certain kinds of interventionsthat we think of as micro
interventions. And a microintervention is kind of what it
sounds like, it's really short.
And one of the things that weknow is that a person's mind set
(43:53):
is a really importantdeterminant of how resilient
they are people who believe thattheir minds are fixed and can't
be changed. And to have aprofile of low resilience are
going to it's going to be verydifficult to move them. But if a
(44:16):
person who has low resiliencebut is induced in some way to
have a more what we say a growthmindset. A person who is
receives training to changetheir beliefs about the extent
(44:39):
to which their mind ismalleable. That can have an it
doesn't take much that can havea potentially really powerful
effect. And research showsenduring impact of those kinds
of mindset shifts.
Daniel Goleman (45:00):
So the change in mindset might be from I'm always
going to be like this, too. Ican I can get better, I can
recover more quickly. Is itsomething like that?
Richie Davidson (45:12):
Yeah. And often it's just the taste of an
alternative way of being toconvince a person that Yeah,
wow, it actually is possible forme to relax a little bit more.
And, you know, I just did it.
And it doesn't take that much.
And so it's giving them thatexperiential glimpse
Daniel Goleman (45:35):
is the same true of those other two indicators
I've mentioned of stressreactivity, one being that you
get triggered a lot. And theother that when you are
triggered, you feel it reallyintensely? Can those shifts to
being less triggered and feelingit less intensely?
Richie Davidson (45:53):
Yes, I believe they can. But I also hasten to
add that there's a lot that wedon't know about how much it
would take and what the optimaltraining might be. And one of
the things I often say, whichI'm more and more convinced is
(46:14):
true, is that one size does notfit all. And what works best for
one person may not be what'soptimal for another person. And
this is an area where modernresearch can play a really
important role and bepragmatically very helpful
Daniel Goleman (46:34):
in finding what works for what kind of person
Richie Davidson (46:37):
exactly what works best for whom and when.
Those are the big questions. Andthe you know, the most honest
answers to those questions arewe don't know, but they are
empirically tractable. That isit's possible to get the
answers.
Daniel Goleman (46:53):
On that note, I want to thank you, Richie for
joining us. And I look forwardto further findings in the
field. It sounds like there'slots of questions and also some
answers so far. Thanks again.
Hello everyone, I'm here with my dear old friend
Richard Davidson. We all callhim Richie. We've known each
other since graduate school.
Richie now is a professor ofpsychology and psychiatry at the
University of Wisconsin atMadison, founder and chair of
the Center for Healthy Minds,and have a related nonprofit
called Healthy Mindsinnovations. I've known Ritchie
(00:20):
and followed his research careerfor decades, he's tracked the
study of emotions, he was one ofthe founders of the field of
Affective Neuroscience, and AI,his work has gone from what
upsets us to the positive rangeto compassion to well being. And
it's that range I'd like toexplore today with Richie, who
(00:42):
have not only founded AffectiveNeuroscience, he's one of the
first to study compassion from aneuroscience point of view. So
Richie, I'm doing this in thecontext of emotional balance,
which is one of the competenciesor capabilities of emotional
(01:03):
intelligence. That means keepingdisruptive emotions and impulses
in check to some extent so thatthey don't interfere with what
we're doing when we maintain oureffectiveness under stress or
even hostile conditions. Youknow, it's staying calm and
clear. So, I'd like to start atthe bottom of the spectrum,
(01:24):
which is the state of frazzle.
When people are, you know, Ijust gave a talk to people in
Ukraine. And I can't evenimagine the stress that they're
under and threats, there arereal you could die any minute
from a cruise missile, you know,exploding where you are. And I
(01:46):
can only imagine that peoplethere must be living in a state
of what neuro psychiatry hascalled frazzle. And could you
tell us what's going on in thebrain when we're absolutely at
our worst from that point ofview?
Richie Davidson (02:05):
Yeah, well, first, thank you for having me,
Dan, it's always good to be withyou. I share your just this
sense of of the unimaginablewith people in Ukraine and the
depth of, of being frazzled andfrazzled, may not be a
(02:31):
sufficiently strong adjective todescribe the challenges that
they face. But what I would sayfrom a neuroscientific
perspective is a few things.
First, is that the theamplitude, if you will, of the
systems involved in respondingto threat are extremely high,
Daniel Goleman (02:58):
just for us lay citizens at high amplitude means
what the volume
Richie Davidson (03:04):
is turned all the way up. And so yeah, so So
that's one element. But it's notthe only element. A second
element is that the systems thatare normally in place to turn
the volume down, once it'sturned up, are impaired. And so
(03:30):
from a neuroscientificperspective, we would say that
there is some impairment in thecapacity to regulate the emotion
once it is activated. And so youhave kind of the double whammy
of having high volume and beingunable to turn the volume down.
(03:51):
And and so we know that one ofthe key brain regions for
regulating emotion is theprefrontal cortex. And we know
that stress impairs thefunctioning of the prefrontal
cortex. And so it impairs thatcapacity to turn down the
(04:15):
volume.
Daniel Goleman (04:17):
Well, which is sorry to interrupt, but while
we're impaired, what does thisdo to our general mental
capacity, our ability to thinkclearly our ability to make
decisions, solve problems.
Richie Davidson (04:30):
So it will, yeah, it will impact all of
those things because ourresources are dedicated, if you
will, to this stress to thechallenge. And the difficulty
(04:55):
that we have in turning down thevolume is actually hogging a lot
of resources. And there is goingto be diminished capacity to
process anything else. And sothis will impact our decision
(05:15):
making, it will impact ourcapacity to actually detect
what's going on in theenvironment. One of the things
that we often say is that fearand threat quite literally
narrows the aperture ofawareness, so that you are less
(05:39):
attentive to the things that arein your immediate environment.
And in some sense, it'sadaptive, because all your
energy is focused on the threat.
But in certain cases, there islittle and in some cases,
nothing that we can do about thethreat. It's outside of our
(06:01):
control. And so the only thingthat we have the possibility of
controlling is our own mind. Andif we can't turn down the
volume, that is going to be areal challenge.
Daniel Goleman (06:19):
So you're saying that the brain is designed as it
were, for us to pay attention tofixate on what we perceive as a
threat, whether or not thethreat is real. We keep thinking
about it, or our mind goesthere. Is that right?
Richie Davidson (06:37):
Yes, absolutely. And of course, you
know, in the Ukraine, there arereal physical threats in in
other places that are safe. Themost of the threats in modern
society, come from our own mind,we create these threats.
Daniel Goleman (07:01):
So this is the thing that's always fascinated
me is that the biological systemthat reacts to threat was
designed for real physicalthreat, like in the Ukraine, you
could be bombed. But it elicitsthe same biological response, we
get flooded with stresshormones, cortisol, adrenaline,
even if it's an imagined threat.
And today, we live in such acomplex social reality, I think,
(07:25):
outside of a warzone, most ofthe friends react to might be
imaginary.
Richie Davidson (07:33):
Yeah. And, you know, one of the analogies that
is often used is with dreaming,there is research that shows
that if we have emotions in ourdreams, let's say something
fearful, there are real changesin the body, we can see changes
(07:56):
in our autonomic nervous system,our heart rate, we increase our
respiration gets faster. Stresshormones, as you were suggesting
earlier, can get released. Andyet, you know, in a dream, we
know that it's all in our mind,so to speak. And the amazing
thing that modern neuroscienceteaches us is that what we think
(08:19):
of as reality is also all in ourmind, it's just like a dream,
because we're creating thisreality in our mind all the
time, based on our owninterpretation of the world. So
it's the difference betweenwaking and dreaming is actually
not very great.
Daniel Goleman (08:41):
So tell me about the biological changes that
occur when we have an imaginedthreat. Like, she didn't invite
me to the party. And that meansshe doesn't like me, our
friendship has ended and I thatmight, I'm gonna lose that whole
circle of friends. You know? Somaybe the invitation comes a day
(09:02):
later, your mind doesn't treatit that way. It treats the
imagined social exclusion as areal deal. And then what happens
in the body when that goes on?
What happens when we're understress, essentially?
Richie Davidson (09:15):
Yeah. So when we have that kind of imagined
situation, as you weresuggesting earlier, the same
biology that evolution providedus with to deal with physical
threats is activated by ourimagined threats. And so this is
really one of the biggestproblems in, in modern society.
(09:42):
And, you know, humans have thisamazing capacity to anticipate
the future and to reflect on thepast. And this confers enormous
opportunity and advantage forus. But it also So is the source
(10:02):
of a huge amount of suffering,because we can anticipate
potential threats that webasically create in our mind.
And we respond to them as ifthey're real. So whether
Daniel Goleman (10:18):
it's a real threat or imagine what's going
on in the body and thecardiovascular system, the
immune system, can you just runthrough that checklist for us?
Richie Davidson (10:28):
Yeah, so absolutely. So we see in the
body and activation of the havebranches of the autonomic
nervous system, the autonomicnervous system is the system
that controls our visceralorgans like our heart, our lung,
(10:52):
our the sweating on our skin,our breathing. And there are two
major branches to the autonomicnervous system, there's the
sympathetic branch, and theparasympathetic branch and the
sympathetic branch is beencalled the flight or fight
(11:15):
response, it is what isactivated in under stress. And
what happens is that our heartrate elevates, we secrete
certain molecules that stimulateour heart rate that increase our
respiration, that increase theblood flow to our peripheral
(11:41):
muscles in case we need to actand run. They're also changes in
our inflammatory response,there's an increase that we see
in inflammation, we also see anincrease in stress hormones like
(12:07):
cortisol, which serve animportant role in generally
activating many differentsystems in the body. And so all
of this is occurring, they'reoccurring on different
timescales. But they all canhave fairly quick responses, the
(12:30):
changes that we see in theautonomic nervous system can be
very quick, the changes that wesee in these molecules may take
a few minutes to unfold. Butwithin five or 10 minutes, you
can see these changes. And soall of this is happening, and
(12:50):
can be happening as we werediscussing, to a completely
imagined threat. And in fact,there are things that we do in
the laboratory that involve a,quote, social stress, that is a
completely made up scenario. Andeveryone knows Amin,
(13:14):
participants are told the truththat it's not real. You know,
the way it's done is people areasked to give a little talk as
if it were a job interview, andto talk about characteristics of
themselves that are importantfor this hypothetical job. It's
all completely fiction. And yet90% of people show an elevation
(13:40):
of cortisol, in response tothis. And there is full
disclosure to people that thisis completely fictitious. It's
not a real job interview. Andyet, this is what happens
because this kind of machineryis so hardwired, in our brain,
(14:03):
because of the potential reallydeleterious and in certain
cases, lethal consequences ofreal physical threat.
Daniel Goleman (14:13):
Well, I'm thinking now of someone who's
under constant stress, you know,not in the Ukraine, where there
are real threats to life anddeath, but rather, someone who
works for a terrible boss, orwho has someone in their family
who is really abrasive and rudeand difficult to get along with,
(14:34):
or a nurse who works on a COVIDunit, and is in constant fear
even while treating patients ofherself or himself bringing that
home to their family. And youknow what's going on when a
person can't really recover whenthey're in constant sympathetic
(14:55):
nervous system fight or flightarousal, day after day after
day. A Yeah, so
Richie Davidson (15:01):
the cumulative impact is very significant and
quite deleterious. So one of Imean, there are many different
consequences. But one, forexample, is that when cortisol
is expressed chronically overtime, at high levels, it
(15:27):
actually has deleterious effectson the brain. And so cortisol is
a molecule that crosses theblood brain barrier. It gets
into the brain when it'sreleased by the adrenal glands
which sit over the kidney oneach side, and then of course,
is through the bloodstream. Andit has effects on their muscles
(15:52):
on our autonomic nervous system,it also has effects on the
brain. And when in the immediateeffects on the brain could be,
if they were a real physicalthreat, it could be positive,
because it can arouse certainsystems in the brain make you
more attentive to the threat,and help you deal with it. But
(16:13):
if it's day in and day out inthis chronic way, it's it can be
actually toxic, because it leadsto excited what we call
excitotoxicity. And whatexcitotoxicity is, is
stimulation of neurons in thebrain brain cells that are
(16:36):
stimulated constantly. And whenthey're stimulated constantly,
it actually leads to a toxicresponse where the cells
eventually die, because theyhave been stimulated
excessively. And so this is areally profoundly important
(16:57):
issue because it is one of thesources of early neuro
degeneration among people whohave been chronically stressed,
we know, for example, thatcaregivers of patients, medical
patients who often this has beenstudied in actually patients
(17:21):
with dementia, because acaregiver who is caring for a
patient with dementia familymember, it's a very challenging
kind of caregiving. And it'svery stressful. And research has
found that the cortisol levelsare initially very high, and
(17:44):
they give rise to changes in thebrain that actually lead to
volume shrinkage in certaincritical areas of the brain,
where there are receptors forthe for cortisol.
Daniel Goleman (17:58):
So what is it doing to other parts of the
body? I know there's a highrelationship positive
relationship between stress andheart disease, for example,
between stress and inflammatorydisorders generally, is
something akin to what youdescribed going on in the brain
happening in other parts of thebody and other systems.
Richie Davidson (18:17):
Yes, and it is, and one of the things that
happens is that the receptorsfor cortisol, so they, these
molecules have receptors, whichyou can think of it as a lock.
And a key, the key is thecortisol. And the lock into
(18:38):
which the key is inserted is areceptor. And that's how they
actually communicate and do thework that they do. And the
receptor becomes sensitized whenit is chronically exposed to
cortisol, and so it basicallystops working after a while it
(19:01):
becomes. And you can think of itin a way that is similar to
other kinds of habituation,where if you have the same thing
happening over and over again,you will be less responsive to
it. And so you're lessresponsive to it. And that
(19:22):
really messes up all thefeedback loops that are so
important in the regulation ofcortisol. So, cortisol
regulation becomesdysfunctional.
Daniel Goleman (19:33):
So how would that, for example, create high
blood pressure or asthma or anyof those? How would it feed into
that process? Yeah,
Richie Davidson (19:44):
I mean, those are really complicated questions
that don't have simple answers.
You know, we know that it's notjust cortisol. In those cases,
it's many other facts. Doctors,but in any situation where and
many chronic illnesses, in fact,most chronic diseases, physical
(20:09):
diseases involve an inflammatorycomponent where there is excess
inflammation and in part, thisis a consequence of a failure to
regulate inflammation in anacute challenge may actually be
very adaptive to have aninflammatory response. But if
(20:32):
it's persisting over time, itcan actually lead to all kinds
of disorders and complications.
And, and with asthma and certainkinds of cardiovascular disease,
it's really the, in many ways, afailure of the feedback
(20:58):
mechanisms that regulate theinflammation that have gone
awry. And it's due to either allof these conditions have some
genetic contribution, butthey're also major environmental
factors. And the environmentalfactors have to do with chronic
(21:18):
stress. One of them that'sactually being studied, more and
more now is poverty. You know,poverty gets under the skin, and
actually effects this wholestress neurobiology system to
impact the these regulatorycapacities. And it leads to this
(21:40):
kind of chronic inflammation,which then has, in turn
consequences for our physicalhealth. And so it is a really
pernicious negative feedbackloop that is created,
Daniel Goleman (22:00):
I assume the same thing would happen with
racial bias or ethnic bias ofany kind. Or where there's one
group is more powerful, and isprejudiced against another
group, anywhere in the world.
Richie Davidson (22:12):
Yes, absolutely. We just today, we
had our annual emotionsymposium, and one of the
speakers at this symposium wasan African American psychiatrist
from New York City, who works atMount Sinai. And he and his
family just recently moved andmoved to a new place. And they
(22:40):
were getting a bunch ofpackages, because they had just
moved. And, and some of themwere ordered from Amazon. And
one day, he was looking at allthe packages that had been
delivered to this apartmentbuilding. And a lady comes up to
him, who is a resident in thebuilding? And she said, Show me
(23:01):
your identification. Do you? Areyou you're not a resident here.
And, you know, she was justmaking the assumption, of
course, that he was not aresident because he's black.
And, you know, he gave that isan example of a kind of micro
aggression. You know, he's avery prominent psychiatrist. And
(23:26):
it's just the kind of thing thathe experiences on, you know, a
very frequent basis. And it'sthe kind of stuff that, you
know, I don't think you and Iexperienced very often.
Daniel Goleman (23:38):
So in other words, if there's a constant
source of stress, even microaggressions, as this guy is
talking about, I'm thinking ofsomeone who works for a manager,
say, who's subscribed to theschool of thought that
pressuring people with deadlinesand threats, is the best way to
get good work. What you'resaying seems to imply that
(24:01):
actually, Stress makes peoplestupid, not better and more
productive.
Richie Davidson (24:06):
Yeah, I mean, if what they're experiencing is
really stress, it will impairtheir capacity for effective
regulation, I think it'll impairtheir ability to have
cooperative interpersonalinteractions kind of be a good
(24:27):
team member because they won'tbe attentive to all of the cues
of the team. And their cognitiveresources will be harnessed to
deal with this stress. And sothey'll be less creative.
Daniel Goleman (24:43):
So they can't think as well or as nimbly, or
as agilely, as they mightotherwise. In fact, as their
manager wants them to. It's avery self defeating approach.
Richie, I should mention thatthe two of us Recently, co
authored a book on the benefitsof meditation called altered
(25:06):
traits, how the mind changesyour mind, brain and body. And
we looked at a host of data,really now decades of data on
the benefits of this one of themseems to be that meditation is
one of many methods that willhelp people handle stress
(25:27):
better. And I wonder if youcould talk a little bit about,
you know, the situation ofsomeone who has a high stress
life, where they're because oftheir work, or they're juggling
kids and work or, you know,you're part of a group that is
constantly experiencing bias, oryou've got a terrible boss,
(25:50):
whatever it may be? What areways that people in these dire
situations can help themselves?
Deal with it better?
Richie Davidson (26:01):
Yeah, well, there is a growing corpus of
evidence that suggests thatsimple forms of meditation and I
should say that researchindicates that it actually
doesn't take much to begin tochange, that these simple forms
(26:23):
of practice can really make adifference, particularly if they
are implemented on a regularbasis. And so one of the things
that we are excited about in ourown work is this framework for
understanding what we think ofas the plasticity of well being
(26:49):
that holds that there are fourpillars of well being. And this
framework is deeply informed byboth modern science but also the
meditation traditions. And weknow that each of these pillars
of well being which I'll name injust a moment, can be cultivated
through training. So the firstpillar we call awareness, which
(27:11):
is where mindfulness would be,and it includes our capacity to
regulate our attention to focussomething.
Daniel Goleman (27:20):
Well, right there, if I could, that before
you were talking about howstress fixates attention. So
this implies a kind of stressfree straight state, where we're
much more in control of whereour attention can go, is that
right?
Richie Davidson (27:35):
Yes, and one of the kinds of meditation that has
been studied, one that I know,you know, well, is the kind that
can train a person to have abroad focus of attention. So not
just really narrow, but to openup the attention to be more
(28:02):
panoramic ly aware, if you will,because we know that stress,
that fear really narrows theaperture of attention of
awareness. And there are certainforms of meditation that really
open it up. So that we can be,for example, we can be talking
to a person, we can beunderstanding the content of
what they're saying. But we canalso be noticing their facial
(28:23):
expressions, we can be attentiveto their tone of voice, we can
take in their posture, all ofwhich are important channels of
communication. And in order topay attention to all those, we
really have to open up thisaperture of awareness, so that
(28:46):
we can have a better likelihoodof noticing all of these things.
So that's the first pillar isawareness. And awareness, I
should say also includes oneother feature, which is super
important and worth calling out.
And that is a something thatscientists call meta awareness.
What is meta awareness, it'sknowing what our minds are
(29:10):
actually doing. And to someviewers, that may sound a little
strange, don't we always knowwhat our minds are doing. But
one of the examples that I oftengive is, and it's really helps,
because it's an example of notknowing what our mind is doing.
And that is, I think many of uscertainly I have had the
(29:30):
experience of reading a book,where you might be reading each
word on a page and you might gofrom one page to the next. And
after a few minutes, you realizeyou have no idea what you've
just read, your mind issomewhere else, you're lost. But
the moment you recognize thatthat's a moment of mental
awareness. And it turns outresearch shows that that can
(29:51):
actually be trained and that isa pivotal competence, we believe
for any kind of personaltransformation, because if
you're not aware of what yourmind is doing, then it's it's
very difficult to actually trainthe mind. And so this is really
an important capacity. We allhave it, but we have different
(30:17):
degrees. And the good news isthat we can improve it. So the
second pillar is connection. Andconnection is about qualities
that are important for healthysocial relationships. Some of
them are so simple, likeappreciation. You know, one of
the things that we often do,actually, we almost always do
(30:39):
before an important meeting inour center, is we do a little
practice. And it's often anappreciation practice where
we're invited to bring to mindpeople we work with, and just,
in our own minds, recognizesomething beneficial that
they've recently done. And just,it's kind of an elixir for the
(31:04):
soul, it warms the heart, and itcan really change the tenor of a
meeting. And it could be donefor 30 seconds before a meeting.
So that'sconnection. The third pillar of
wellbeing we call insight. Andinsight is about a kind of
curiosity driven self knowledge,and really knowledge of the
(31:29):
self. So all of us have anarrative that we carry around
the better selves. And this iswhat the human mind does. And we
know that on one extreme end ofa continuum, there are people
walking around, who have areally negative narrative, they
have negative self beliefs. Andthe unfortunate thing is that
they actually believe thosebeliefs, they hold those beliefs
(31:53):
to be a true description of whothey are. And of course, that we
know is a prescription fordepression. And what is
important for well being is notso much changing the narrative,
but it's changing ourrelationship to the narrative,
so that we can really see thenarrative for what it is, which
is, basically it's a bunch ofthoughts. And that can give us
(32:16):
some leverage, because we canreally experientially appreciate
how our narrative literallyshapes the way we see the world.
And we can even do a little, youknow, we often do this to a
little exercise, to imagine adifferent narrative. And imagine
(32:37):
how we would approach asituation if we had a different
narrative. And again, it's justsubstituting one set of thoughts
for another set of thoughts. Soin the final pillar of, of well
being or flourishing, we callpurpose. And purpose is about
identifying our sort of sense ofdirection, in life, our true
(33:01):
north. And here, again, it's notso much about changing what we
do to do something, quote, morepurposeful, but rather, how can
we derive meaning and purpose inthat which we are already doing,
including from activities thatmany people might regard as
pedestrian sort of dailyroutines? Can you envision that
(33:25):
taking out the garbage isactually connected to your sense
of purpose? And the answer is,yes, yes, you can you everything
could be part of your sense ofpurpose.
Daniel Goleman (33:39):
Well, here, I wonder is there you know, when
we talk about purpose, we tendto think of some big deal
purpose. Is there an everyday isthere big purpose and little
purpose? Can we have multiplepurposes?
Richie Davidson (33:51):
Yeah, I mean, you know, one purpose may be
being kind to people beinghelpful to people. And, you
know, and you can do that aperson at any station, sort of
in the social hierarchy can dothat. And, and so it's really
(34:16):
tapping into our core values,that is really important and
connecting our values to theactivities in which we engage
you one of the things we did isdo this kind of training during
COVID, with different groups,and one of the groups we did it
with is public school teachers,a group that has really been
(34:39):
challenged during the pandemic.
And this was done during thefirst year, the pandemic, before
there was a vaccine. And whenalmost all public school
teachers were required to teachonline, and we're quite
stressed. And one of the thingsthat we did is did some simple
practices to help connect theseteachers to their The purpose in
becoming teachers in the firstplace, and tissue reported that
(35:02):
of all the things that we didthat was the most meaningful,
and they really just got so muchvitality, from reconnecting to
their sense of purpose.
Daniel Goleman (35:20):
So, Richie, in terms of that stress state we're
talking about at the beginningof our conversation. And this
sense of well being, it seemsthat we're tracking a spectrum
of experience that goes from I'mreally upset, I'm disturbed, I'm
stressed out to feeling at yourbest, really, you're talking
(35:40):
about some kind of optimal statewith well being, you call it
flourishing. I want to circleback to something that I know
from your career that happenedin between your early work on
emotions and your work on wellbeing. You did a book called The
emotional life of the brain, Ithink, was that the right title?
(36:02):
Yeah. Yeah. And you talked aboutseveral dimensions that would
help people understand howstressed they are, how not
stressed they are. One had to dowith how often you triggered
another was how intensely youfelt being upset when you were
upset. And the third wasresilience was how quickly you
(36:24):
recovered? Could you tell usabout each of those?
Richie Davidson (36:28):
Yeah, so thank you for asking. In that book, I
talked about six specificemotional styles, if you will.
And one of them is you point outis resilience and resilience. We
define from a scientificperspective, in a simple way,
(36:51):
but one that can really bemeasured rigorously. And that is
the rapidity with which yourecover from adversity. And so a
person who recovers quickly,
Daniel Goleman (37:02):
wait, wait, wait, let's adversity, you're
measuring adversity in the body,you say can be measured very
precisely. How do you trackadversity? Like I could say,
well, you know, and experience alot of adversity. But how do you
do it in the lab?
Richie Davidson (37:19):
Well, so that's a great question. And what we
can do in the lab is we canethically challenge a person. So
you know, when you go to acardiologist, you often will do
a cardiac stress test, where youwill challenge the heart. And in
(37:40):
response to the challenge, thephysician will be able to
examine your cardiovascularfunction. And we want to do the
same thing, we want to challengethe mind and the brain in order
to probe for resilience. And sowe can use safe, ethical, but
(38:00):
challenging procedure. So one ofthem is one that I mentioned
very briefly earlier, a giving aspeech to an audience, that it
where you're presumably beingevaluated. For most people,
that's a stressor, and howquickly you recover after that
(38:22):
turns out to be incrediblymeaningful. And so two people
may show the same amplitude ofresponse to the same, the volume
is turned up to the same level,but they recover at very
different rates. One personrecovers immediately after the
speech is over, the other personis still stressed an hour later.
(38:46):
That's very different. And yetthey both have the same volume.
Daniel Goleman (38:51):
What do you see in the brain of those two types
of people, the recovery personin the slow recovery person.
Richie Davidson (38:59):
So the circuitry for regulation is very
different in those two groups ofpeople. The fast recovery people
who we consider to be resilientare people that have a an intact
regulatory system. And Ofparticular note here is
(39:22):
connections between theprefrontal cortex and the
amygdala and other limbic areasthat are important for emotion.
And that connection, both thefunctional connection and even
the structural connection, whichyou can measure through modern
imaging methods differs inpeople who are resilient
(39:49):
compared to those who are not.
And so this is really animportant issue. And and those
are the ways that I was alludingTo earlier that we can measure
that really precisely in thebrain and in the body. So we can
measure how long it takes forcortisol to come back to
baseline, we can also measurehow long it takes the amygdala
(40:11):
to recover from a period ofactivation.
Daniel Goleman (40:16):
As I recall, at least you want to told me that
people who recover quicklycompared to those who recover
very slowly have about 30 timesmore activity insert circuitry,
I think, on the left side of theprefrontal cortex versus the
right, is that held up? Or did Iget that right?
Richie Davidson (40:34):
Well, the I don't know. But the 30 times the
the, the work on laddermorality, and the motion is work
that I devoted my career to, formany years, using EEG methods to
look at the the activation ofthe left and right prefrontal
(40:58):
areas of the brain. And one ofthe ways that we did that, the
principal way we did that is tomeasure this activity, while a
person is not given any specifictask, just while they're, quote,
resting kind of their default,if you will. And it turns out
that using all kinds of rigorousprocedures, we established that
(41:20):
this is actually quiteconsistent in people so that if
a person if I brought a personin today, in the laboratory, and
then I brought them in a monthfrom now, and I measured these
parameters of pre frontal brainactivity, they wouldn't be very
similar. I mean, unlesssomething, you know, major
(41:41):
happened in the interim, butassuming that their life was
essentially going on, as theyusually, as it usually happens,
the measurement a month from nowwill be very similar to the
measurement that we got today.
So it's a very stablecharacteristic. And it turns out
that people who have more leftprefrontal activation have a
(42:01):
more resilient profile. Now, youknow, the, the magnitude of it
depends on the extremity of theprefrontal activation. And so
there are a lot of variables inhere. So I think it's important
that we not get stuck on asoundbite of how, you know, many
(42:22):
times more a person is resilientto is showing this pattern,
because people can vary in thedegree to which they show this.
But
Daniel Goleman (42:33):
can people go through a training to get better
at this to be quickly recoveredfrom stress?
Richie Davidson (42:41):
Yeah, absolutely, they can. And it
turns out that we've shown thatsimple forms of mindfulness or
awareness, meditation canimprove a person's ability to
recover more quickly. And sothis is something that research
shows can occur. And there thedata also suggests that there
(43:10):
are the least to some extent,this scales with practice time.
So the more practice you have,the better you get at this.
Daniel Goleman (43:21):
Are there other things that can do this? Is
there like a quick way to toshift to get out of being all
stressed out and activated?
Richie Davidson (43:32):
There might be and so I think there are a
number of things that are reallyare promising. So there are
certain kinds of interventionsthat we think of as micro
interventions. And a microintervention is kind of what it
sounds like, it's really short.
And one of the things that weknow is that a person's mind set
(43:53):
is a really importantdeterminant of how resilient
they are people who believe thattheir minds are fixed and can't
be changed. And to have aprofile of low resilience are
going to it's going to be verydifficult to move them. But if a
(44:16):
person who has low resiliencebut is induced in some way to
have a more what we say a growthmindset. A person who is
receives training to changetheir beliefs about the extent
(44:39):
to which their mind ismalleable. That can have an it
doesn't take much that can havea potentially really powerful
effect. And research showsenduring impact of those kinds
of mindset shifts.
Daniel Goleman (45:00):
So the change in mindset might be from I'm always
going to be like this, too. Ican I can get better, I can
recover more quickly. Is itsomething like that?
Richie Davidson (45:12):
Yeah. And often it's just the taste of an
alternative way of being toconvince a person that Yeah,
wow, it actually is possible forme to relax a little bit more.
And, you know, I just did it.
And it doesn't take that much.
And so it's giving them thatexperiential glimpse
Daniel Goleman (45:35):
is the same true of those other two indicators
I've mentioned of stressreactivity, one being that you
get triggered a lot. And theother that when you are
triggered, you feel it reallyintensely? Can those shifts to
being less triggered and feelingit less intensely?
Richie Davidson (45:53):
Yes, I believe they can. But I also hasten to
add that there's a lot that wedon't know about how much it
would take and what the optimaltraining might be. And one of
the things I often say, whichI'm more and more convinced is
(46:14):
true, is that one size does notfit all. And what works best for
one person may not be what'soptimal for another person. And
this is an area where modernresearch can play a really
important role and bepragmatically very helpful
Daniel Goleman (46:34):
in finding what works for what kind of person
Richie Davidson (46:37):
exactly what works best for whom and when.
Those are the big questions. Andthe you know, the most honest
answers to those questions arewe don't know, but they are
empirically tractable. That isit's possible to get the
answers.
Daniel Goleman (46:53):
On that note, I want to thank you, Richie for
joining us. And I look forwardto further findings in the
field. It sounds like there'slots of questions and also some
answers so far. Thanks again.
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