Overcoming Negative Self-Talk – Part I

Human beings have an “inner voice.” It’s the radio station to which our brains attune when not engaged actively in other matters. Its objects of attention are overwhelmingly me, myself, and I. When healthy, it provides a lot of useful services. For instance:

  • It serves as a holding tank for information and helps us make sense of the world.
  • It reflects on decisions we’ve made and how they impact our lives.
  • It provides a means to control our baser instincts and emotions as a function of our upbringing and cultural conditioning.
  • It reminisces about the past, considers alternate futures, and bends the imagination toward unlived lives.
  • It keeps track of goals and encourages us to stay the course.
  • It maintains a personal narrative that undergirds our sense of identity.
  • It helps us discern our values and desires.

In Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, Dr. Ethan Kross suggests that this capability confers a survival advantage. We learn, change, and improve through self-reflection. We consider options before proceeding with a course of action. And we are alert to obstacles and dangers that could impede forward progress. Unfortunately, our inner dialogue can also devolve into a cyclical pattern of negative thoughts and emotions that impede performance, decision making, relationships, health, and happiness. For example:

“Who did I think I was taking on all of this responsibility? I’ll never be able to complete the project on time.”

“It has been 6 months since the accident, and I still can’t get over what happened. I keep reliving the experience over and over and thinking about what I should have done.”

“My boss is a real jerk. He never appreciates the time and effort that I put into each assignment. He doesn’t say a word when my work is picture perfect. He only comments when he finds a tiny mistake. I hate my job.”

When chatter hijacks our inner voice, Kross says “we zoom in close on something, inflaming our emotions to the exclusion of all the alternative ways of thinking about the issue that might cool us down.” This loss in perspective hogs neural capacity and interferes with normal executive functioning. We may falter in decision-making and wallow in paralysis by analysis. Automatic, learned skills on which we rely may break down. And the stress of it all may impact gene expression in a way that impacts our health.

Kross serves up several proven strategies to help us disrupt our ruminations and restore clarity of thought. They help us “zoom out” and put some distance between the thinker and the vexing thoughts so that a new conversation can take place. His recommendations:

  • Change the subject in the inner dialog from the first person to the second or third person. Instead of “I feel anxious,” try “[Your Name] is feeling anxious” or “one feels anxious in this circumstance.” The alternate language instantly puts the inner voice into a totally different frame. Moreover, use of neutral subjects (“you” or “one”) normalizes the speaker’s experience – i.e., everyone feels that way sometimes. (“If they got through it, so can I!”) Kross reports that “distanced self-talk allows people to make better first impressions, improves performance on stressful problem-solving tasks, and facilitates wise reasoning.” Moreover, it’s a fast and highly effective life hack!
  • Imagine that the circumstance is happening to a close friend. Talk to yourself as if you were comforting and advising that person.
  • Consider looking at the scenario as if you were a fly on the wall and reporting findings to third parties. Acknowledge multiple viewpoints and see if you can reconcile opposing positions.
  • Broaden your perspective. Rather than getting mired in the issue at hand, consider how this episode fits within the grand narrative of your life. Let it just be a moment that will pass.
  • Reframe the experience as a challenge and not a threat. Remind yourself that you have the wherewithal to overcome obstacles. Narrate your body’s stress response as being in a high state of readiness for the task at hand.
  • Do a little mental time travel. Consider how you’ll recall this episode in a year, 5 years, or 10 years. Again, let it just be a moment in time.
  • Try journaling in the style of an investigative reporter. Write about the experience from the perspective of a dispassionate narrator.
  • Use ritual to your advantage. A ritual can be any sequence of behaviors that are infused with meaning. You can draw from your cultural conditioning, or create ones specific to a habitual challenge. Rituals can clear the mind of useless chatter and help prepare for what comes next. Famous athletes leverage this tactic to ease tension, calm their nerves, and focus their attention.

If working from the inside out doesn’t float your boat, try working from the outside in. By creating order in your environment, you can increase your sense of control. Self-efficacy is a proven strategy to relieve anxiety. Alternatively, take a walk in nature. The sights, sounds, and smells of your surroundings captivates the mind and draws attention away from the nagging issue. The more awe-inspiring the vista, the greater the benefit. Stuck with an urban landscape? No worries. Breathless imagery and nature documentaries can do the trick.

How Self-Justification Works

Have you ever had the experience of looking at family members, friends, or colleagues and thinking: How could these intelligent, thoughtful, sane persons believe in [name that topic] despite all the evidence to the contrary? You may even try to influence their perspectives with facts only to find that they double down on their positions. Guess what? It’s not about them. It’s human nature. And we all have blind spots. Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson explore this terrain in Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad decisions, and Hurtful Acts.

self-justificationTavris and Aronson claim that the engine that drives this phenomenon is cognitive dissonance. It’s a state of being when we hold true two disparate concepts in our minds at the same time. It makes us really, really uncomfortable, so we’ll go to great lengths to quell the contradiction. As a case in point, we can’t reconcile a self-image that says “I am a sensible, competent person” with the notion that “I’ve advocated a belief that is categorically wrong.” So, we’ll let in all of the arguments that continue to reinforce our belief and find ways to discount that which contradicts it.

Tavris and Aronson use a pyramid as a representation of how we form (and stick to) beliefs. When we’re sitting at the top of the pyramid, we’re open to seeing all of its facades. If we start heading south on one of its sides, we can still climb back up to the top if we catch ourselves early in the descent. But the further we traverse down that side, the greater the commitment to sticking with it. When we get to the bottom, it’s the only perspective that we can support. Moreover:

“The more costly a decision in terms of time, money, effort, or inconvenience and the more irrevocable its consequences, the greater the dissonance and the greater the need to reduce it by overemphasizing the good things about the choice made.”

The source of much dissonance lies in our beliefs that we are smarter, nicer, more ethical, more competent, more reasonable, more humble, etc. than average. We go to great pains to preserve these self-concepts and filter our daily experience through them. We may not even be aware consciously of all the little lies we tell ourselves and blind eyes we turn to prevent the acknowledgement that we’ve made mistakes and foolish decisions, or committed harmful acts. To do so would threaten our sense of self. Moreover, our neuro-wiring comes with a predisposition to distort memory in ways that cause us to forget discrepant and discomforting information.

The book explores case studies of self-justification in relationships, psychotherapy, academia, business, politics, the judiciary, science, and medicine. It exposes the dark side of prejudice and how our we/they sensibilities can cause us to justify mistreatment of those we perceive as different/inferior. It provides ample evidence of self-justification’s universality and the great harm it causes when left unchecked.

Knowing how dissonance works will not make us immune to its effects. We all have psychological blinds spots. However, we can strive to bring them into awareness and catch ourselves before getting into trouble. Some tips:

  • Acknowledge the fact that we believe our judgements to be less biased and more independent than others and that our dialog partners feel the same way. Make an effort to be attentive, respectful, and curious about their perspectives. Ask questions. Explore. Give them the benefit of the doubt. You’re more likely to preserve relationship and just may learn something!
  • Check memories with independent accounts to increase the likelihood that you’ll approach the truth rather than your brain’s sanitized perspective.
  • Beware of culturally entrenched convictions – e.g., venting anger makes you feel better. (It doesn’t. It escalates anger.) Look for objective data from controlled experiments funded by neutral parties to guide your thinking.
  • Discuss major decisions with persons who (like you) are still in the process of making them. Don’t rely on testimonials as these witnesses will be steeped in self-justification.
  • When feeling hostility toward a person or group, do a generous deed in their behalf. You’ll start to see them in a warmer light. It’ll also encourage generosity toward others (“virtuous circle”).

At the end of the day, the authors tell us:

“Our greatest hope of self-correction lies in making sure we are not operating in a hall of mirrors in which all we see are distorted reflections of our own desires and convictions. We need a few trusted naysayers in our lives, critics who are willing to puncture our protective bubble of self-justifications and yank us back to reality if we veer too far off.”

Have a Safe and Happy Holiday Season

Years ago, when working as a hospital chaplain, I met a young woman whose mother had fallen off a ladder while putting up her holiday lights. Mom didn’t think anything serious had happened and simply went to her room to lie down for a spell. The daughter became concerned when her mother ceased to be responsive and took her to the emergency room. To her horror, she found out that mom had a brain bleed that caused fatal brain damage. It was devastating news and a painful reminder that holidays are not so happy for everyone.

According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the last two months of the year bring some form of calamity to thousands of holiday decorators. Fractures represent the most commonly reported injury of which half are caused by falls from ladders. While many of us like to save money doing things ourselves, we’re advised to call the professionals to address our roofline decorating and gutter cleaning especially if we’re not in tip top physical or cognitive shape. If we still want to proceed on our own, the American Ladder Institute offers free training for ladder safety.

Fire safety needs to be on the radar during the holiday seasons. USA Fire Protection offers the following tips to mitigate fire risk:

  • Toss strings of lights with broken or worn cords, or loose bulb connections. Unplug strings when replacing bulbs.
  • Use fire resistant decorations especially when placed near an open flame or fireplace.
  • advent wreathIf you use candles, place them on stable surfaces away from other decorations. Do not leave them unattended. Better yet, replace these decorative elements with ones that use tiny lights.
  • If using a live tree, keep it watered. Live trees become a fire hazard when dried out.
  • Do not leave stove-top cooking unattended even when tempted to be a good host or hostess to holiday guests. Have someone else in the house assume that responsibility, or invite your guests to keep you company while you cook.

Though we might wish it otherwise, COVID-19, RSV, and the flu have all made their presence known this season. As of 12/4/2022, the 7-day average deaths from COVID-19 neared 400 persons in the US. Given a preponderance of social gatherings during the holidays, we increase our risk of contracting and spreading disease. Vaccination remains a solid line of defense as does physical distancing and mask use. It’s also a good idea to wash hands regularly and make judicious use of hand sanitizer.

Food and drink can get us into trouble during the holidays. After all, ‘tis the season to be jolly! But there are a few things we can do to keep ourselves from harm:

  • Beware of undercooked turkeys and the stuffing that absorbs its juices. They’re among the Top 10 foods that make people sick during the holidays.
  • Take a pass on the meat tray if it has been sitting on the hors d’oeuvre table for too long.
  • Likewise, beware of eggnog that has spent too long outside the refrigerator or made with raw eggs. It may contain salmonella bacteria.
  • Travel with a designated driver if you plan to drink. If imbibing, try alternating alcoholic drinks with nonalcoholic drinks. You’ll signal to your host that you’ve taken care of your beverage needs and minimize the risk of a hangover the following day.
  • Stay hydrated!

Stress also rears its ugly head during the holidays. Some of us may feel pressure to be the perfect home decorator, host or hostess, gourmet, gift giver, and party attendee in addition to all of our other day-to-day responsibilities. We may start burning the candle at both ends and then wonder why we seem to get sick every year at this time. Let the best holiday gift you give this year be to yourself. Say NO to some things, find short cuts for others, and give yourself permission to find the joy of the season. And, as always, do your best to eat healthfully, get some exercise, and log adequate sleep.

Break Up With Your Phone

In last week’s post, I talked about how and why our brains are wired for distraction and interruption. That facility keeps us alert to threats when our attention is focused on other matters. It works wonders in primitive environments that are rife with peril but doesn’t serve us terribly well in our twenty-first century technology-laden lives.

break up with your phoneAccording to statistica.com, 85% of American adults owned Smartphones as of February 2021. Half claim to use them 5-6 hours per day; another 22% copped to 3-4 hours of daily usage. It’s hardly surprising. They’re key communications devices (calls, email, text) with integrated cameras, Internet access, and a mind-boggling warehouse of downloadable apps. Author Catherine Price acknowledges their utility but explores their deleterious effects in her 2018 book How to Break Up with Your Phone. In particular:

  1. They feed our thirst for novelty with an everchanging media stream (and get us addicted to it).
  2. With an array of configurable alerts and easy access to the associated apps, they’re designed to get us to use them. Every time we hear a “ding,” our distractible brains note the intrusion; curiosity (and Fear of Missing Out) compels our attention. We lose our train of thought on the task at hand and become far less efficient completing it.
  3. A sustained pattern of distraction overloads working memory. We don’t process incoming data and register it effectively across multiple schema in long term memory. This deficiency inhibits our capacity for creativity and complex thought.
  4. They stimulate the pleasure sensors in our brains. We tune in to see if there something good to consume or to relieve boredom or anxiety. Once they’ve captured our attention, they provide no cues to get us to stop. We just numb out.
  5. They provide the illusion of human connection through social media and give us the means to be “liked.” Yet studies have shown that the more we use social media, the less happy we are. We get caught up comparing ourselves to others and fixated on who is (or is not) paying attention to us. We’re also subject to context-specific gleaned from our browser history.
  6. The blue light radiating from Smartphones inhibits sleep by delaying the proper release of melatonin. And to the extent that we encounter something unpleasant during these late-night episodes, we may ruminate on it long past lights out.

In short, despite all their utility, Smartphones can have a negative impact on physical, cognitive, and emotional health. A bit of restraint may improve our lives without impinging on all the great things these devices can do. Here are some suggestions:

  • Pay attention to the habit loops that feed phone addiction. Do your reach for it as soon as you get out of bed? Do you take action whenever you hear an alert? Do you mindless surf the phone while watching TV? Then ask yourself: What’s driving the behavior? Habit? Anxiety? Boredom? Is there a healthier response?
  • Turn off alerts on all but essential applications. Customize the latter to minimize unwanted disruptions.
  • Schedule times for uninterrupted work; turn off the phone and leave it in another room. Enroll family, friends, and colleagues in respecting your privacy during this time.
  • Make it more difficult to check social media by getting rid of the custom apps on the phone. Use the Internet browser for access with the associated inconvenience of logging in. If that seems too extreme, set an alarm on the phone when connecting to apps to limit time spent there.
  • Resist the temptation to look at the phone first thing in the morning or within an hour of bedtime. There are plenty of other hours in the day to plug in!

Feeling the need for a more structured intervention? Grab a copy of Catherine’s book and follow her “30-day plan to take back your life.”

The Distracted Mind

With a looming deadline for a project, I like to clear my calendar, shut off the phones, and hide out in my office until the job is done. It’s my way of creating space for concentrated attention. Yet despite good intentions, I’m not always successful:

  • A random noise can wiggle into my ear and prompt me to investigate its source.
  • I might catch my name and wander what is being said.
  • My mind may wander or start fussing about something completely unrelated to the work at hand.
  • I may start thinking about the email or text messages that I’m missing and grab my phone to satisfy my curiosity.
  • Someone may interrupt my work to deal with an important matter.

With each interruption, I lose my train of thought and have to spend a bit of time getting back on track. It forces me to spend more time on task than I’d budgeted and may affect the quality of my work. Drs. Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen explore this all-too-common human foible in The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World.

As documented in prior posts, human cognition has evolved across the millennia to keep us alive. It allocates our finite processing capacity efficiently and effectively:

  • Amidst an ocean of stimuli, we can focus our attention like a spotlight. We determine which senses, spaces, or objects merit perception and action and which ones to ignore. Suppressing irrelevant data yields higher quality representations of the areas of focus.
  • We’re equipped with working memory to hold information active for brief periods of time. It serves as a bridge between current perceptions and future actions and functions best when unencumbered by distraction.
  • We can engage in task switching to manage multiple goals at the same time. Though we may harbor the illusion of parallel processing, our human brains only operate on one thing at a time even when competing tasks do not demand use of the same cognitive controls.

Our prefrontal cortex manages cognitive capacity in service of goal setting and enactment. It excels in evaluation, reasoning, decision making, organization, and planning. Once a direction has been set, it manages our attention, working memory, and task management systems to reach the destination. Extensive connections between the prefrontal cortex and all other brain regions enable continuous processing of sensory, emotional, and motor functions.

Sleep deprivation, stress, and intoxication downregulate our capacity for focused attention. We also lose this facility as we age. While we retain the capacity to direct our cognitive “spotlights,” we’re slow on the draw to weed out distractions. We give them leave to generate internal interference and mess with our working memory. We’re also less effective at task switching.

While distractions and interruptions get in the way of forward progress at any age, both evolved as essential survivalist instincts. When wandering the jungles seeking food or shelter, our ancestors needed to be alert to environmental changes that might signal a threat – the hissing or rattling of a poisonous snake, or the rustling of bushes as a predator nears. Those who were adept at sensing and reacting to new information moved quickly to protect themselves; the others likely perished. The Darwinian victors were also attuned to input that might lead to food, water, or other forms of gratification.

Unfortunately, the jungle in which we find ourselves today presents a gaggle of distractions that have no material bearing on our survival. Email, text, social media, and news alerts constantly vie for our attention. Seventy-five percent of us operate within 5 feet of our phones day and night; 80% of us reach for our phones upon awakening. Forty-one percent of us respond to email and 71% to text ASAP. We expect rapid respond and feel rebuffed when it is not forthcoming. It should come as no surprise that young adults task switch 27x per hour; older adults task switch 17x per hour. This elevated distractibility increases working hours, stress, frustration, time pressure, and effort. So why do we do it?

The human brain craves novelty; we’re driven to seek new information. When consigned to a single task, we may grow bored with what we’re doing and look for something to entertain us. We may get anxious to move on and start thinking about the next thing. We may experience FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and grab our phones to check on the latest news. We may tell ourselves that we have to respond to every alert. All such distractions and interruptions make us far less effective at managing our lives and the goals to which we have committed.

Recognizing the cost of unwanted distraction, the authors provide a bevy of behavioral adjustments to minimize them.

  • Focus on one project at a time in a distraction-free environment. Put away nonessential work materials – i.e., clear your desk! Limit yourself to one screen and close irrelevant apps.
  • Eliminate email, text, news, and other alerts. Set expectations for response times with family, friends, and colleagues.
  • Interleave periods of standing and sitting while working on the project.
  • Schedule brief breaks every 45-90 minutes to relieve boredom. Options include: exercise, work in the garden, daydream, take a power nap, have a snack, read a chapter of your book, laugh.

Beyond the foregoing behavioral modifications, the authors also provide recommendations for enhancing cognitive control:

  • Meditation trains the mind in focused attention and open monitoring of thoughts and feelings. Practitioners learn to acknowledge the latter and dismiss them rapidly. Meditation has been shown to improve sustained attention, processing speed, and working memory.
  • Computerized cognitive exercises adaptively challenge specific areas of cognitive capacity causing them to become stronger over time. As a case in point, Akili Interactive offers digital therapeutics to improve cognitive function. Their offerings were developing in collaboration with world renowned neuroscientists.
  • Judicial use of video games can also have a positive impact on attentional capacity, distributed attention, and speed of attentional processing. They’re demanding, adaptive, and fun!
  • Exercise! A steady diet of aerobics and strength training increases brain volume, nerve growth factors, blood flow, functional and structural connections, and neurogenesis.

My Home Gym

As noted in an earlier post, my exercise habit took a hit when we all went into COVID-19 lockdown. I got back on the wagon though the purchase of an inexpensive mini-stepper device, resistance bands, and some good advice from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. I’ve since made a substantive addition to my home gym.

PelotonMy husband and I purchased a Peloton exercise cycle a year ago with money from my mother’s estate. The unit was installed on her birthday, and I think about her every time I use it! My nephew got us excited about Peloton through the witness of he experience with it. He lost 40 pounds and got in the best shape of his life! Cycling classes are available from a variety of instructors for all skill levels. If those classes don’t float your boat, you can take virtual cycling rides all over the world while listening to music. In both cases, the rider sets the amount of time for the workout. I can also use my monthly membership for strength training, pilates, stretching, yoga, meditation, and other classes.

resistance bandsI’ve had great success with resistance bands for strength training. (I’d been concerned that they wouldn’t be all that effective.) I’ve got the perfect door jambs in which to anchor the bands when doing upper and lower body strength training. The bands enable me to add resistance flexibly when a particular exercise becomes too easy. Friends and family have taken note of the positive changes in my body. And it all came with a very modest investment and the convenience of working out at home.

I still miss the gym – the range of equipment offered and the fellowship of classmates. But I’ve come to really appreciate the value of my home gym.

For one thing, it’s much easier to combat the loud and persistent voice inside my head that doesn’t feel like working out. I hear it every single day. And every single day I have to tell it to be quiet and just get on with the day’s fitness routine. Once I get going, it pretty much shuts up absent the occasional thought: “Do we really have to do all of the exercises? Having a home gym makes things easier. I don’t have the added hurdle of driving to a gym, thereby taking a weapon away from the devil on my shoulder. Everything is right here. I just have to do it.

I can choose the time of day when I exercise without worrying about how busy the gym might be or how much traffic there might be getting there. And it’s easy to break up an hour long strength training set into two pieces if my schedule makes it convenient to do so. Sometimes, it’s what I do to appease the part of me that doesn’t want to do it: “Just get half done now and we’ll do the rest later!”

I have several options at the house to keep me entertained while doing my workout. The lively music and commentary on the Peloton spin classes make the time go fast. But if I’m not in the mood, I can just ride while reading a book in my delightfully quiet exercise room. For stretch and strength training, I generally listen to music on my Echo Dot or stream a podcast. My favorite podcasts these days include The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, Choiceology with Dr. Katy Milkman, and A Slight Change of Plans with Dr. Maya Shankar.

I’ve still got my little stepper in case I feel like staying a bit active while watching TV. It’s really handy when I’m feeling a little sleepy and need a short workout to get the juices flowing.

Skeletal Alignment Matters

I have a cranky right knee. I’ve had it for years. On occasion, the left knee gets in on the pain action, but it pales in comparison to the right. My right shoulder gets a little cranky now and then, too. In times past, when the pain reached a level that impaired normal activities, I’d head to the doctor or physical therapist to get some help. I’d pursue the recommended course of action until the pain subsided and then go back to business as usual.

Though I’ve tried to exercise throughout my adult life, time spent sitting at a desk or conference room table and watching TV or reading at day’s end far outpaced time spent in motion. The temptation to veg out after a hard day often won out over the better angels encouraging a trip to the gym. I wasn’t alone. The CDC estimates that fewer than 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 18 meets the Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity. Along with other health-related maladies, a general lack of activity combined with poor posture can cause the body’s skeletal frame to get out of alignment.

skeletal alignmentThe spine and joints provide the infrastructure on which soft tissues hang. They also enable us to perform a range of motion – bending, twisting, turning to the right or left, lifting legs and arms, etc. The optimal frame envisions a spine that stands perpendicular to the ground and shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle joints parallel to the ground. It also contemplates flexible joints that support a full range of motion. Our Western lifestyles renders many of us bent out of shape:

  • Shoulders and/or hips hitched forward
  • Back swayed with belly forward
  • Twisted with one shoulder and/or hip forward and lower than the other
  • Stiff jointed

My brother put me on to The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion by Pete Egoscue. As an anatomical functionalist, Pete conducted the research and developed the exercises to transform our “bent and broken” bodies back to their natural state of health. He says:

“We must learn to recognize that the pain we feel, the stiffness, lack of energy, the poor balance, the erratic concentration, or the inability to hit the long ball or short putt aren’t caused by the passing years, a second-rate golf club, or a bad day at the office. These are symptoms of dysfunction brought on by lack of motion.”

To that end, his book provides a brief education on skeletal alignment, discusses the common ways in which we become unhinged, and provides exercises to ameliorate our maladies. It also provides a testimonial by famed golfer Jack Nicklaus.

After reading the book, I opted to get a detailed evaluation by an Egoscue Specialist 6 years ago. He took photos of my front, back, and sides and overlaid markers showing what optimal alignment looks like. I was shocked by how twisty my frame had become! We also discovered that my joints were quite stiff. My right hip was especially troublesome which explained the extra force placed on my right knee. He sent me home with an array of exercises that worked on my whole body, not just the parts that were achy.

We worked together for nearly three years as I gradually got my good old bones back into alignment. Visits were frequent at the start and tapered off as I got into better and better shape. I was also able to add aerobic and strength training activities without fear of pain or pulling my frame out of shape again. It has made a world of difference. I rarely miss my daily Egoscue exercises. My success prompted my husband to get on board with similarly good results.

I still have vulnerable body parts that are the product of nonreversible wear and tear. But I rarely have moments where pain intrudes on the activities I’ve planned. And, as I’ll cover in a later post, I make sure to incorporate lots of movement in my daily activities!

No Regrets?

In late 1960, famed French chanteuse Edith Piaf introduced the world to a signature song “Non, je ne regrette rien” (translated “No, I do not regret anything”). NYT best-selling author Daniel H. Pink takes this sentiment to task in The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Takes Us Forward.

regretRegret is a common human emotion. The World Regret Survey found that 82% of participants felt regret at least occasionally; only 1% said they never felt it. Regret relies upon our ability to travel back in time cognitively, reimage our pasts and a different unfolding of events, and take on blame for having acted or failing to act. Regret is overwhelmingly associated with an expectation of better outcomes.

Pink identifies four themes into which most of our regrets fall:

  • Foundation regrets reflect a failure to be responsible, conscientious, or prudent in a way that has jeopardized our life’s stability. Common foundation regrets revolve around education (e.g., “I should have gone to college.”), finances (“I should have saved more money.”), and health (“I should have taken better care of myself or gotten treatment sooner.”) They often arise because we overvalue now and undervalue later.
  • Boldness regrets entail a failure to act in a way that would have led to a richer life. They may erupt in a single moment (e.g., “If only I’d taken that chance.”) or be an accumulation of choices that unfolded over time (e.g., “If only I’d made choices to reflect who I truly am instead of what people expected me to be.”) Career, romance, travel, and adventure prove to be fertile ground for missed opportunities.
  • Moral regrets arise when we make choices that are out of alignment with our conscience (e.g., “If only I’d done the right thing.”) These regrets cause us the most grief and revolve around causing harm, cheating, being disloyal, subverting authority, and/or desecrating treasured values, persons, or institutions. They assault our sense of our own goodness.
  • Connection regrets occur because we have taken action (e.g., “If only I’d kept my big mouth shut.”) or left something undone (e.g., “If only I’d reached out and stayed in touch.”) that has  harmed relationship. While rifts are more dramatic, drifts are more common. Both prove problematic. According to Harvard’s long-standing Study of Adult Development, close relationships promote health and happiness far more than money or fame.

These four core regrets are the photo negative of the good life. When we know what people most regret, we can reverse the image and see what they most value. Studies show that we regret inaction more than action by a three-to-one margin. Inaction regrets increase with age.

Viewed properly, Pink argues that regret offers three important benefits:

  • They provide the impetus for making better decisions in the future and help us avoid “trap doors.”
  • We perform better today so as not to fall short this time. We are more attentive and persistent in our work.
  • When we think counterfactually about past events, we endow those moments with greater meaning because we know how the stories unfolded. We can use these reflections to course correct now.

We realize these benefits when we place regret in the proper context and avoid unproductive rumination. Here are three strategies to do just that:

  • Self-Disclosure: Name the regret aloud to yourself, in a written or audio journal, or to a close family member or friend. Denial is taxing and keeps you stuck in inaction. Putting it out there relieves that burden and gives us the means to organize and integrate our thoughts. It moves us from the realm of emotion to the realm of cognition. Feeling gives rise to thinking which gives rise to action.
  • Self-Compassion: Extend yourself the same care and attention that you would offer a dear friend. It doesn’t abrogate responsibility but offers a kind and protective means for confronting difficulties and moving forward.
  • Self-Distancing: Zoom out and look at the situation from the perspective of a detached observer and/or subject matter expert. Then analyze and strategize. This perspective strengthens thinking, enhances problem solving skills, and deepens wisdom. If the event or decision just occurred, one may fast forward 5 or 10 years in the future and consider strategies and options from that point of view.

Where possible, take action. As the Chinese proverb suggests: “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.” Seize upon what you can control and let the rest go. Find a redemptive narrative that allows for silver linings.

The Primacy of Human Connection

lonelinessAt the onset of his tenure at the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy expected to tackle pressing health issues facing the nation, notably obesity, tobacco-related disease, mental health, and vaccine-preventable illness. To ensure that his focus reflected the needs to the people, he spent the first few months on the job touring the country and asking people, “How can we help?” A surprising theme emerged in those discussions – i.e., a pervasive experience of loneliness for which there are profound implications for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. He chronicled his findings in Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.

Human beings are wired for connection; it is our key to survival. Cooperative social groups pool their resources, gain efficiencies through a division of labor, incubate creative solutions to challenging problems, and provide for the security of the collective. We seek relationship on three levels:

  • Intimate partners, family members, and close friends who know and care for us deeply
  • Relational allies who form our core social group and provide social supports
  • Collective affiliations with people who provide a sense of belonging based on shared interests and values

According to reports issued by Kaiser, Cigna, and AARP, at least 20% of US adults feel persistently lonely. That figure skews upwards as a function of age. According to a large longitudinal study by Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, poor social networks carry health risks akin to smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Chronically lonely people show increased rates of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, dementia, depression, anxiety, poor sleep quality, immune dysfunction, and impaired judgment. Low self-worth and shame conspire to keep the condition hidden. An elevated stress response in social contexts wreaks havoc on the body and makes it difficult to forge relationship.

The curse of loneliness extends beyond long-term risks to health. The sensory fibers that register physical and emotional pain coexist in our brains. The experience of loneliness, loss, and disappointment can be as agonizing as a physical blow or a gaping wound (as evidenced by fMRI scans). It’s why so many reach for alcohol and opioids to dull the pain.

How did we get into this predicament?

Our cultural bias toward individual freedom and rugged self-reliance thwarts our ability admit that we need people. We’re afraid to show weakness and put ourselves at a disadvantage in a highly competitive world. We’ve also moved away from our extended families while experiencing a gradual erosion in social networks and norms – e.g., religious participation, community clubs, dinner parties. We’ve lost casual social interaction as a function of telecommuting, home-based entertainment, home shopping, and grocery delivery. And many of us spend a great deal of time using social media rather than invest in the deep work of relationship building. To be sure, the latter can keep families spread across distances in touch and provide a forum for finding like-minded souls. But it can also foster false images of ourselves, unhealthy comparisons with others, and preoccupation with “likes” and followers.

So, what advice does Dr. Murthy offer?

Take time to connect with our truest self. Spend time reflecting on the interests, passions, and values that give life purpose and meaning. Rediscover self-worth and value to others. Find the wellspring of compassion and generosity toward ourselves and others. Follow the inner compass to be our most natural and authentic selves. A firm inner connection creates the foundation for establishing relationship with others.

Spend time each day with those you love. Suspend screen time and other distractions; be present, attentive, and caring. Listen as much as you talk. Mirror each other’s human value. Let the comfort, calm, and emotional energy we serve up strengthen our emotional core and give us more capacity to be present for others.

Create communities of people who lift each other up. Surround yourself with people who seek meaning and purpose based on positive, forwarding values. Demonstrate your interest and commitment by learning names and interesting anecdotes about them. Share meals. Cultivate mutuality and a sense of belonging. Promote two-way communication in response to thoughtful questions. Be particularly attentive to creating close neighbors if you have faraway relatives or live alone. Build intentional villages.

Model kindness especially in this climate of rancor and distrust. Focus on shared humanity. Set aside anger, fear, or hatred; be mindful of the fact that each person manifests a spark of the divine. Listen attentively with the goal of understanding. Speak from the heart. Stay in dialog. Be a giver and receiver of service. Be kind. Engage with strangers. You never know who may be struggling and benefit from your acts of kindness, smile, and encouraging word. (You’ll feel better, too!)

In sum: Build people-centered lives in a people-centered world.

Placebos, Nocebos, and Hypnosis

“A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator.” – Daniel Dennett, AI pioneer

In 1978, a young couple faced a crisis of conscience. As practicing Christian Scientists, they believed in the power of faith healing and eschewed modern medicine, but their infant son was gravely ill. With his life in the balance, the mother considered taking him to the hospital. Her Christian Science healer reminded her of God’s love for the boy and encouraged her to hold fast to her faith. Moments later, the boy’s condition turned around.

That young lad (Erik Vance) heard the story of his miraculous salvation many, many times during his formative years in the Christian Science community. Faith healing was the only form of medicine that he knew, and he witnessed its beneficial effects time and again. Though he eventually fell away from the church, his fascination with the practice stayed with him. He became a science writer and traveled the world to understand the physiological underpinnings of this seemingly magical phenomenon. He captured his findings in Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal.

As noted in prior posts, our minds are not computers rooted in logic and facts. They are survival machines geared toward keeping us alive as efficiently and effectively as possible. Expectation serves as a primal survival skill – i.e., anticipating what lies in the immediate future and mounting a swift reaction. Experience guides our expectations. When missing information, we fill in the gaps and move forward, sometimes outside of conscious awareness.

placebo, noceboExpectation plays a substantive role in the body’s capacity for healing. When ill or injured, most of us have been trained to trust in medical professionals to make us well. In the Western world, we visit clinics where caregivers in scrubs and/or white lab coats discuss our ailments and then prescribe drugs, shots, or procedures to make us well. But it turns out that for certain conditions, we can generate the same degree of healing with sham medications and procedures. Scientists refer to that phenomenon as the placebo effect. So, why does it work?

Our brains are adept at pattern recognition; it feeds our “expectation-generator.” Famed neuroscientist Ivan Pavlov explored this capacity in canines by ringing a bell every time he offered them food. Pretty soon, the dogs would salivate whenever they heard the bell. Humans also experience conditioned responses. In one experiment, test subjects were given an immunosuppressant drug in a sweet drink to lower their immune response. After a few iterations, their bodies produced the same reduction in immune response with out the drug even though participants were told in advance that their drinks contained no pharmaceuticals!

Our brains can induce a gaggle of physiological responses without prescription drugs. We’re walking pharmacies with the capacity to produce effective treatments for certain conditions – notably, pain, anxiety, depression, irritable bowel, addiction, nausea, insomnia, and Parkinson’s disease. But several factors influence this healing effect:

  • We need conditioning, a credible backstory, and appropriate environmental cues to engender a belief in the treatment. [Note: Placebo injections prove more effective than placebo pills because we believe that they are more powerful. Likewise, sham surgeries work better than sham pills.]
  • We need a favorable emotional response to our circumstances. Hope yields positive results; despair exaggerates suffering.
  • Social pressure can lessen symptoms or speed recovery – e.g., “If it works for millions of people, it’ll probably work for me.” In fact, the peer pressure placebo effect is twice as strong as an individual placebo response. It feeds into our primal need to go along with the herd.
  • Our genetic maps may make us more (or less) susceptible to placebo responses. As a case in point, folks with the met/met variation of COMT (which, among other things, sweeps up excess dopamine) are far more placebo sensitive than those with the val/val or val/met variations.

Unfortunately, a susceptible brain can make bad things occur without cause – a.k.a., the nocebo effect. One’s mental state can cause physiological suffering. It’s generally driven by fear and can be initiated with a few well-placed words – a report of a contagious disease, a belief that one’s misdeeds will engender cosmic revenge, a curse levied by a supernatural being. A wise person blocks all aggressive suggestions that could cause harm.

Hypnosis represents another form of suggestibility that can drive real physiological change. Its efficacy relies upon the skill of the hypnotist in painting a picture of the magical place that relaxes the participant and opens the door to suggestion, using appropriate pacing and tone of voice to sustain the “trance,” and implanting a credible story that sticks. Roughly 10% of the population responds strongly to hypnosis. Early evidence suggests these folks have naturally higher theta and alpha brain waves than their busy-minded beta and gamma brain-waved counterparts. The latter benefit from meditation to calm their “monkey minds.”

So, what should we make of all of this?

Vance asserts that expectation and suggestibility are a part of all forms of healing. As he says; “Everyone’s door to expectation has a different key, and everyone is suggestible in a slightly different way. But once the door is unlocked, we have amazing power to heal ourselves.” His guideposts for leveraging this capability:

  • Don’t endanger yourself. While some maladies may respond to self-healing, take advantage of modern medicine when you need it.
  • Don’t go broke. Be sensible and follow the evidence before emptying your wallet.
  • Don’t send any creature to extinction no matter how compelling the backstory. They have a right to live, and their sacrifice may do no material good.
  • Know thyself. “For most, suggestibility is a cocktail of genetics, personal beliefs, experience, and personality.” Figure out which pathways hold the most promise for you and be open to the power they hold