podcast

Hi everybody. Welcome to the podcast again today. Glad to have you with me. We're gonna talk some more, as we've been doing all along, about secrets to helping your unconscious emotion generation processes to switch, to change. If you are a person who has a tendency toward anxiety, then that probably means that your brain has a default mode where it tends to create perspectives and stories about your situations that frame it in terms of, I can't handle this, these demands are too much for my resources. And we talked last week briefly about the iceberg image, about how our emotions are generated through processes that are largely under the water, or largely unconscious and largely not directly controlled by our conscious brain. But that if we want to learn to rewire our anxious brains toward a different default that is more connective, that is more toward challenge rather than threat, then we have to learn to understand how to work with that unconscious brain. We compared it to having a pet and not directly controlling your dog, but that you can learn how your dog operates. And in understanding our unconscious brains, then we can use our conscious brains to indirectly influence in this way, to train our unconscious brains toward a different default. And we talked last week about a really, kind of non-intuitive strategy of learning your family stories and how this helps your unconscious appraisals, your unconscious brain to have a less anxious outlook on life. Well, we're gonna talk about another strategy today, which is maybe equally surprising. But all of these strategies that I bring up in this podcast are, are based on scientific studies. They are research based. These are not just things that have worked for me, but they work for people. It has been shown in scientific studies that they work in general, and so that's why I'm bringing them up. I need to give you this introduction because otherwise if I just start in on this strategy, you might think, that's ridiculous. Why would that help my anxiety? And it might even be a strategy which initially you would feel like there's no way you would want to do. But I wanna tell you about it because there is a lot of research behind this strategy, okay?
All right, here we go. It is the strategy of speaking to strangers. Or speaking to people that you have weak ties with. So we might consider weak ties as people that you know, that you see often, maybe in your commute, maybe at work, maybe at the grocery store, but that you don't, you don't really know. You just are familiar with their face 'cause you see them a lot. So studies actually show that people that make an effort to interact with strangers or people that they have weak ties with, and when I say interact, I mean, speaking with, or maybe even just making eye contact with, or smiling at, some kind of interaction, that people that do this, they end up having a greater sense of wellbeing, more happiness. They feel less lonely, they feel more belonging. They feel more inclusion.
Now before you say, Hey, that's not for me, I'm an introvert, these studies show that it doesn't matter if you're an introvert or an extrovert. It helps everybody. And they also show for you introverts out there that don't like to do this, and I include myself, I am an introvert, I don't like to do this naturally, these studies show that the more you do it, the easier it gets. That a lot of our reluctance to interact with strangers is based on different fears and predictions that we have about how this interaction will go, how uncomfortable it will be, how, how willing the person will be to engage with us. And the studies show that usually we overestimate how badly it will go. It usually goes much better than we think. And so the more we do it, the more this teaches our, our brains that this is a pleasant thing. This, this is a good thing. But the most important part of it is that it has this robust relationship to making people feel happier and more wellbeing, basically, making them feel like they belong in the world and the world is a safe place to connect in.
So let me just tell a little story about an introvert friend of mine. She's someone who, during Covid, was actually really happy to be in lockdown. She didn't wanna have to go out and talk to people. She was happy to just be at home with her family and not have to go out and interact with strangers. But this particular friend, after Covid was over, she ended up in a job where she needed to be in an, in a work environment, an office work environment, it was actually a laboratory, every day, and she interacted with several coworkers. She didn't know them well, they weren't close friends, but being there and working with them kind of necessitated these interactions that she had with them. And she commented to me that she noticed that she felt better. It made her feel better to just have to go to work and interact with some people, even though they weren't close friends. And these weren't deep interactions. They were superficial interactions, but they were interactions. And that this made a difference. She noticed that it made a difference in her wellbeing, and I remember when she commented on this that it surprised me because this was the same person who had been so happy to be in lockdown and had had a hard time initially to come out of lockdown. But then once she got back into that routine and was going to work and interacting with people, she noticed that she felt better. This is the key. A lot of us don't always notice how it affects our emotions because of the same thing that we go back to with the iceberg image, that so much of it is unconscious. We're usually only conscious of just this little sliver of our emotions that's above the surface of the water when you look at an iceberg. But she noticed, and that is a big key, she noticed that she enjoyed this, that this helped her to feel better overall.
Now, where do I fit into all of this? Yeah, I've told you I'm an introvert, but I, I'm an introvert who has been at times painfully averse to talking to anyone that I didn't know. When I was in high school, I walked to school a lot of the time. It was about a 30 minute walk. And my walk took me through a college campus. And so it was an area where I was gonna run into a lot of people. And I remember having this internal goal to not make eye con, eye contact with, or speak with a single person on my walk. And I would purposefully look down and not acknowledge anyone that I came across because I just liked this feeling of being insulated as if I was walking inside a bubble and I didn't have to interact with anyone and I was just safe in my own little self. I always tried to have that be what happened, both on the way to and from school, to not have to talk to anyone., this is the type of behavior that carried over into my adulthood for a few decades after high school where I just don't, I didn't want to speak to strangers. I wouldn't interact, I wouldn't look at them. And I think maybe part of this stemmed from training that I got in elementary school from well-meaning teachers and leaders who were trying to teach kids to not interact with strangers, that we shouldn't talk to strangers, that we shouldn't accept gifts from strangers, that strangers can be dangerous. They can be trying to kidnap you. And so I think there was a part of my anxious brain that felt like strangers are dangerous. The world is dangerous. It's better not to interact. And so I just cut myself off from interactions with strangers altogether as much as was possible. But then what happened? I moved to Brazil 15 years ago, and in Brazil there's just a different social standard, and if you don't greet people when you meet them, then you are rude and you are giving offense. Of course, there are grades of this, right? I mean, in a big city environment like Sao Paulo, you don't greet everyone that you see on the on the street. But in any kind of a somewhat smaller environment, either you're in a smaller community or you're in a, a school environment or a church environment where there's a smaller group of people, you are expected to greet everyone. And a lot of times you are expected to not only say hello to them, not only shake their hand, but if you're a woman, you're expected to give them a kiss on the cheek. And let me tell you, this was a hard one for me. I did not like having to do this, but I had to do it because I was gonna give offense to people if I didn't. And so over time, I had to learn to interact with people that I didn't know well, and say hello to them and even kiss them on the cheek. And last January, for example, I've been here for 15 years, I was out on a hike with an American friend who was visiting me here in Brazil, and I just noticed as we were hiking along, every single person that we would pass on the trail ,and there were quite a few because it was summertime, there were a lot of tourists, I would just say hello. I would say good morning or good afternoon, and I would sometimes say, how are you? Or sometimes. Some other comment like, you're almost there. And I was interacting with all of these people on the trail. And I noticed that my friend never did, never said hello. And then it occurred to me, wow, that's the way I used to be. It's kind of a more American way. I, I mean, I hate to make generalizations 'cause they're a part of the United States where people tend to be more friendly with strangers. For example, when I lived in Texas for a little while, complete strangers would more often just strike up a conversation. But anyway, the, there are large parts of the US where you just don't really interact with strangers. And I realized that this friend of mine had that culture, and didn't have the culture that I had acquired from living in Brazil. And I started to compare, wow the, the me now with the me in high school that just kept my head down and didn't even wanna look at anyone. And I realized that I had become comfortable with speaking to complete strangers on a hiking trail and enjoyed interacting with people and enjoyed getting to, to an exchange a few words and some encouragement. It was fun for me. And I, I started to compare, to notice, noticing is always the key, right? You've gotta do these strategies, and then you've gotta notice your effect on your emotions. But I started to notice that I felt a lot better in the world. I felt a lot more comfortable in interactions with strangers, in situations where I would be, in places where people were, that, I don't know. I felt a loss, a lot less anxiety and threat than I used to feel. And I really credit it partly to this habit that Brazilians made me acquire of being able to speak to, to strangers and greet them. I go out on the, on the beach almost every morning and walk. I like to go out at Sunrise. . But there are always certain people that are out there. Over time, I've found that there, there are just, there's a handful of people that always go out there at this time of day. And over time we've started to say hello to each other and good morning and exchange a few words and maybe tell each other our names. And, and I had one woman one day who I have seen out there for years, and I've always said hello to her. She came up to me and she started talking to me and she said, you just look like such a peaceful person. I, I'd like to understand what makes you so peaceful. And it was such a, a nice conversation opener. And I started to talk to her and, and then I ended up getting to know other friends that she has met in the same way, just by going up to them on the beach and talking to them. And so now we have this group of beach buddies that we just talk in the morning. We, we often are out there at the same time. We don't really know that much about each other. We don't interact, interact with each other much off the beach. But we are friends on the beach. And I, I noticed one day coming home from interacting with four of these ladies that I would talk with on the beach, and sometimes we would jump in the ocean together, I noticed how good it felt to have these connections in this country where I, I come from a different culture. A lot of times I feel like an outsider. And when I first got to Brazil, I had a lot of anxiety about being an outsider and not having my family around me, my extended family, and not understanding everything about how things work in this culture. And, and I, I just noticed with these acquaintances that I have met and become comfortable talking to, that it has changed the way that I, my comfort level in this unfamiliar place, in this place where I don't, where I am an outsider, where I don't feel like I'm from.
So this is a cool strategy. It's, you know, it's not something that we would think of, but it's something that you can do. It's a behavior that your conscious brain can choose, that can tr train your unconscious brain to have a different view on things. And we talked last week about how your brain generates these stories about your situations, and that's what organizes your emotions, your anxieties coming from stories that your brain is creating. But these stories are so automatic. They're like your eyes adjusting when the light changes. It's not something we think about. And so it can be difficult to access the source of these stories, you know, after they come out. Sometimes we can manipulate the, our emotions, the way that they feel after we already recognize that we're in anxiety. But if we want to get to the root of those emotions and get to where they don't come up in the first place, then we have to change our brain's default settings in the way that it tends to view our situations and our demands and our resources. And it's really amazing that research shows that this technique of speaking to strangers and speaking to people that you don't know well, your weak ties, that this rewires those unconscious parts of your emotion generation process to the extent that it significantly changes your emotions and it brings them more into the challenge zone, right? It helps us, instead of feeling threatened by the world, to feel like approaching instead of avoiding, to feel like connecting with people instead of protecting ourselves from the world. It helps us to feel that the world isn't made up of a bunch of enemies and dangerous strangers. And at first it's hard. It's difficult. It really was hard for me, especially in this, in the initial transition to moving toward Brazil and having to learn to greet people and talk to strangers. But studies show, and, you know, my own experience, I can also say that it, it works like any other exposure to an anxiety. The more you do it, the less unfamiliar it seems, and the more pleasant it seems, just because it's not so unfamiliar anymore. It, it gets easier the more you do it. So it's a good thing to start small with if, you can't just go out and say, okay, now I'm gonna talk to every stranger cause it might overwhelm you with anxious feelings. But studies also show that it helps to make it like a game and try and decide how many strangers am I gonna talk to? How am I gonna interact with these strangers today? And give yourself points for different types of interactions. Have a certain goal for the number of people that you're gonna try and say hi to this week. Maybe it's only three. Maybe you're only gonna try and look at three people in the eye and give them some kind of a pleasant look. You're gonna start small, small, but you can build it up little by little. Make a game out of it. Give yourself points for different things. But you can know that it gets easier the more you do it and that it works. It's a behavior you can choose consciously that will make a big difference in the way that your brain relates to the world, and reduce your anxiety, increase your happiness, increase your wellbeing, increase your sense of belonging and inclusion. Isn't it great that there's a behavior we can choose that can do this even if it doesn't seem like something we initially wanna do or seems like it would work? You can just rely on these studies. I'll link them up in the, in the show notes so you can look at them in more depth if you want to. Just rely on these studies and see it really does make a difference in your anxiety. So that's my little suggestion for you today. I, now stay tuned for our kindness narrative, because gratitude practice is another one of those behaviors that your conscious brain can choose that will over time, if you practice, it will rewire your default settings in your unconscious emotion generation process. So stay tuned and remember, if you haven't contributed your own kindness narrative, consider doing it because this will have an even bigger impact on those unconscious parts of your emotion generation. Thanks and stay tuned.
This kindness narrative was shared with me by a generous listener by email, so I'm going to read it to you.
I have been the recipient of many acts of kindness throughout my life, but nothing compares to the overwhelming kindness and generosity that was shown towards our family when my daughter had a rare medical event. On a typical Sunday morning three years ago, my otherwise healthy 18-year-old daughter experienced an unusual pain in her left arm and neck. The pain and numbness slowly spread to both arms, and within two hours, she lost the use of both her arms. She couldn't even raise them off the bed. The pain in her neck worsened and fearing that the paralysis would spread to her lungs, we rushed her to the emergency room. She was immediately admitted to the neurology floor of the hospital and was treated for what the doctors thought was transverse myelitis, a rare type of autoimmune disease. We learned later that she actually experienced something even more rare, a spinal cord stroke. She lost the use of both her arms, experienced severe neck pain, and had abnormal sensation to pain and temperature from the neck down. My daughter was two weeks away from moving into an apartment and starting college, all of which had to be delayed indefinitely. This was the beginning of two weeks of intense medical testing and treatments that included placing a central line into her jugular vein. My husband is a doctor and I'm a nurse, and we took shifts staying with our daughter 24- 7 at the hospital. She required assistance to eat, bathe, use the bathroom, and even to wipe her tears, of which there were many. The experience was incredibly scary and full of uncertainty. While my husband and I were focused on our shifts at the hospital, we had a daughter at home that was full of anxiety and starting high school that very week, and it was difficult to manage her needs along with taking care of other responsibilities at home. As the word spread about our daughter's hospitalization, family, friends, and neighbors, immediately engaged to provide us with anything and everything we could possibly need. We received an overwhelming amount of service and acts of kindness in the form of meals, gifts, flowers, mowing our lawn, visits, cards, phone calls, and driving our younger daughter to doctor's appointments. We felt sustained, supported, and loved through one of the most difficult experiences of our lives. Fortunately, after months of rehabilitation and recovery, our daughter recovered the use of her arms, but still struggles with some deficits from the stroke. We will be forever grateful to the kind souls who gave so freely to care for our family during such a time of great need