Brendon Burchard talks with Dr. Nicole Cain about moving past reactive emotions to build lasting mood stability. She describes a gut-brain inflammation loop that locks in negative states, and explains how to break it by combining mental work like visualization with bottom-up body signals and gut health.
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That's so good. That's so good. We were talking about the difference earlier of like emotions, feelings and moods. What have you seen that help people move into a longer term positive mood? You know, some of what you and I've been talking about is kind of like acute. It's kind of like, okay, you've got this anxious, you've got this pack, you know, this, this panic. And now we're talking about reprogramming. I love the metaphor, by the way of choosing the paintings and whether or not they still fit the wall or still fit your home or whether or not they're somebody else's, in terms of establishing a long term, more positive mood where people just feel like more alive and better about life, because I don't know how you sense it, but sometimes in the world right now, a lot of people are very morose or numb or maybe sometimes they're discouraged. And those aren't necessarily bad things, but they're certainly not the positive range. People want to feel that sense of enthusiasm, love, passion, aliveness, vibrancy. And that's harder to move into. That requires more of like a longer term view. Moving into moods that stick around a little bit more, that are more of the positive range. What are some things that you've recommended or help people put together a plan so that their enduring mood is better than, you know, it has been, even if they have those acute, you know, negative emotions or responses, but their overall mood improves. Do you have strategies for that?
Absolutely. The what's coming to mind as you're saying, that is the way we wire it, is the way we'll fire it. And so that's back to the programming, right? And so if you've been programming your mind, your body, your nervous system and your other systems to be morose, then that's what your body is going to continue to produce. And I could go down a whole rabbit hole. I'll just do a little peek into the rabbit hole of Alice's rabbit hole, if you will, and then we'll come back to that. Because what I want us to attain, and I truly, from the depths of my soul believe that you can, all of us, all of us have the potential and you have to create the bullseye. So my very first session when I teach my clients is you create the bullseye. What does it look like? And, and I want you to have freedom where you are living in your mind, your body, your nervous system and your spirit in such attunement that you can use that vessel that you live in to Reach your loftiest goals of potential, that you can live and exist in such a way that obliges wonderment from those who look on and they can say, how did you do that? What is the formula? How can I live like that? That's freedom. And we can do that by taking a whole person approach. And so when we understand and we get really concrete with it, it's about being really empowered and educated and informed. And this is what I love about your work, is that you teach people this, you bring on these brilliant guests that teach people this, and then we take ownership. And it's like the story I was telling at the very beginning about how I was relinquishing my control to the authorities and then I ended up becoming the authority. But rather you, you taking back your authority, right, and learning about what your mind, your body, your nervous system says. Because you know, we think about Susie, who we were just talking about, and she was hyper vigilant in some ways. And so her body produces stress, right? So we have cortisol, cortisol suppresses inflammation. Suppressed inflammation changes the gut. And then now you have less of an immune system surveillance in the gut. And then you have pathogens can take over like yeast and dysbiotic bugs. And now we have inflammation in the gut, causes leaky fenestrations. So it's kind of like gaps, right? So then all these particles and inflammatory cells and things that aren't supposed to be escaping out of the gut, that shouldn't be there to begin with, are now in the bloodstream. And they say leaky gut, leaky brain. And so now the brain is being exposed to these things and then we get inflammation in the brain and inflammation triggers the amygdala to say, oh my goodness, we're in danger. And then when the amygdala does that, now our hormones are changing and our melatonin is changing and our gut bugs are changing. And as you see, it's this whole domino effect. And so when we're talking about long term longevity and joy and wonderment is we're talking about what can I do as a whole person to promote healing? And is this life giving or is this something that may be a detour from life giving? And so this is about how you think, this is about your belief systems. This is that top down model. This is my thoughts, my beliefs, my self talk, my, my visualizations, but it's also bottom up. And that's that process of listening to the body. I'm noticing that I have gut anxiety, I have churning and butterflies in my gut. So let's do some gut work. Let's pay attention to the gut. And then what we'll see is step by step, sequential change. I really appreciate the 10% happier podcast because sometimes I see this a lot with my clients is that sometimes when we're improving, that if I'm not anxiety or panic free, then I'm failing and it's not working and I can't get better.
