Transform Your Anxiety Into Your Greatest Strength | Dr. Wendy Suzuki

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90% of the population identifies as suffering from anxiety.

Okay, so 90% are affected by anxiety.

Yeah.

Is it possible for us to change the way we think about anxiety and, and start to heal our brain, heal our mindset around the topic of anxiety so that it doesn't affect us or consume us in our life?

Is that possible?

Absolutely, it is possible. And I think the first step is to realize that anxiety and our stress response, which is causing all those negative feelings, evolutionarily that is a protective mechanism. It is necessary for our survival. It was and it is necessary. So it was evolved so that if there is a lion coming at us or a dangerous situation that you're in, that you automatically have that increased heart rate, that increased respiration, all the blood goes to your muscles so you can run away. Our problem is that in this day and time there's not a lot of lions coming at us, but there's all the worry that we see every single day when we look in the newspaper and look at our Instagram feeds. And that worry of a possible terrible thing that might happen, that also activates our stress and anxiety systems. So, but it is there for protection. How do we harness that and bring it back into Submission so it can help us in the way that it was developed or evolved to help us, that is to put us into action. I want to use that energy to go into action to try and check off all those things. I have this— I don't know when your anxiety hits you, but it always hits me right before I'm going to go to sleep. It's like, oh, right there, and then bing, you know, what if this happens tomorrow? Did I do that? What if that happens? What if that happens? And so that action, the way I use it is I say, "That's okay. That is going to be my to-do list for tomorrow. I'm going to take action." And knowing that I can and will take action helps me go back to sleep because it still happens.

It used to be extremely difficult for me to sleep until I hit about 30, 31 years old. And I would sit in bed for probably an hour to an hour and a half almost every night anxious, worrying, thinking, judging myself, whatever it may be, stressing about something I haven't done yet, or really just kind of beating myself up. Yeah, emotionally. And what I've learned— there's two things that I've learned, what were the three things that I've learned that helped me go to sleep extremely fast in the last eight years? Okay, that has been like an automatic switch for me.

Uh-huh.

One is going through a transition of fully sharing and starting to heal the process of my shame from the past. So talk, like finding a therapist and talking about what I'm shameful about, you know, and really revealing the parts of myself that I never wanted anyone to know about me. There were so many things that I didn't like about myself that I was ashamed of or felt insecure around, and it made me feel like a prisoner to my own thoughts because I felt like I was, in a sense, hiding myself to the world and to the people closest to me. Like, certain people didn't even know who I was. So I felt like an imposter at times. I was still a loving, fun, generous human, but I felt like there was a few things that people didn't know about me. And when I started to open up about those things, I felt inner peace. It didn't all go away, but I felt like, you know, a lot more peace. Number 2 was I started to focus on everything at night, what I was grateful for from the day. I was like, okay, if there was anything good today, what was it? Even if it was all bad, there had to be something. I'm alive, you know, I'm healthy, or whatever it may be. I have a roof. So just focusing on anything, and I do that every night where I think about 3 things to be grateful for. That brings me like another level of peace. And then I think about what am I gonna do tomorrow to help people? How am I gonna serve? So it's like, you know, healing the shame, focusing on gratitude, and thinking about how am I gonna serve? Not just what do I need for me, but how can I show up for other people? That kind of 3-part combination, gives me so much peace before I go to bed.

Oh, that's so beautiful.

And it's a practice, you know, it's like a constant practice. It's not always perfect, but it's a practice.

Yeah, I love the thinking about something you're gonna do for somebody else tomorrow coming from this practice of healing your own shame. One of the superpowers in good anxiety that comes from your own anxiety— this is a beautiful example that you just told me— is The superpower of empathy.

So for yourself or others?

For first, for yourself and recognizing it in yourself and then giving it out to others. Because just as you described your journey, a lot of our own anxieties have been with us since we were little. Same anxiety. Oh, they stay for decades, for your lifetime sometimes.

What was yours?

So I have many, but the one that I talk about here is shyness and kind of social anxiety. And I've learned, because I'm a teacher and because I want to become an author, I've learned the skills not to have those kinds of anxieties. But I was painfully shy as a young girl, and even into college I found myself in social situations and wanting to join and not, you know, feeling comfortable, or even in class. And so I realized that that has become my superpower as a teacher, because I know when I'm standing at the front of the class Your shyness is a superpower. My shyness.

Why is that?

Because when I'm standing at the front of the classroom, there are always those students that say, "Oh, I know the answer, I know the answer." And I know that there's many more that want to talk to me, that want to show me what they know, want to have that interaction, but can't do that. And so what do I do? I make sure that I am there 15 minutes before. I stand there, I talk to the students before, I stay after class. Anybody that wants to come up, for a casual conversation where you don't have to be the one raising your hand. And I didn't even realize it until I wrote this book that that is a superpower of in-class empathy. And I have that particular form of empathy because of my particular form of anxiety, my social anxiety. And so imagine the 90% of people that have their particular form of anxiety. They know what it feels like. They know what's going through many others of our minds. And what if you turn that around and you do what you do and say, how can I help somebody else in this way that I know I've struggled, but I also know what can help?

Sure, sure.

Right?

Okay.

So that's one of my favorite superpowers.

How do we know how to turn anxiety into something good? Like if 90% of the— is this the US or the world feels anxiety?

I think the actual study was about the US.

The US. 90% of the US claims that they have anxiety on some level, right?

Yes, exactly.

And what does anxiety do for us when we don't have attacks coming our way? Like, if we're constantly in a state of anxiety, what does it do to the brain, and what does it do to our immune system and to our body and our emotions?

Yeah, so that's a great question. The answer is long-term anxiety will have terrible effects on all of the physiological systems that are being activated. So what's happening when you have a stress response? Your heart rate is going up. Your respiration is going up. So long-term effects of anxiety and stress are heart disease. The other thing that's happening when you're in a constant state of stress is that blood is being shunted from your digestive and reproductive systems to your muscles because you're supposed to be running away from the lion and you're sitting there worrying about your taxes instead, or whatever, the Delta variant instead. And so long-term effects, ulcers, reproductive problems, long-term reproductive problems with long-term anxiety. And that's just the body. So now we get to my favorite body area, the brain. And so long-term stress will literally start to first kill off the dendrites of your neurons, the input structures of your brain cells, in two key brain areas. The hippocampus, critical for long-term memory, in the temporal lobe, and the prefrontal cortex, critical for decision-making, focus, and attention. And so, for example, PTSD, if you have PTSD, classic example of long-term stress, your whole temporal lobe gets smaller. Why? Because you first start to degrade the size of your individual brain cells, and then you start to kill them off. And so that is not memory problems. Ensue. So it is not—

is long-term also the same as chronic?

Is that— yes.

So long-term stress, long-term anxiety is chronic anxiety and stress?

Exactly. Which, which—

what's the, the definition of chronic? Does that just mean something that's consistent over, over months?

Over months and, and years. And, um, and of course there's different levels of intensity. Also, I should say that this book, Good Anxiety, is not addressing clinical anxiety. That is a different animal. For clinical anxiety, just as you would do if you had a broken leg, you need medical treatment. This is not a medical treatment for somebody that has chronic anxiety. This is the 90% of people that say, yeah, I have some anxiety every day. I call it everyday anxiety. So these are some of the approaches and mindsets that you can use to start to shift that negative effect of anxiety and shift it into the basic brain activation that it is and start to help motivate yourself to address the things that you are afraid of.

What are the common things that most people have on a daily anxiety basis, I guess? What is it? Fear of what?

Generally, and this is before the pandemic, fear of public speaking is one of the most common. Fear of money, fears, another big one. I'm just thinking about all my own anxieties that I talked about in the book. Let's see, early on, social anxiety is, you know, they mirror the clinical levels of anxiety. One is general anxiety disorder, is just kind of life and situations and interacting with anything come to my, start to produce anxiety, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders. One can start to worry obsessively about whatever that thing is that, that worries you. And of course, the thing that is on everybody's mind right now is the uncertainty around the coronavirus and everything that's happened in the future. We can't predict, we don't know what's going to happen, and in the fall with schools, or work for that matter. And that uncertainty is the key driver for a lot of anxiety.

So uncertainty in general is uncertainty about my money, uncertainty if I go to this social event, am I gonna fit in? It's just kind of the uncertainty of life around different topics. It's uncertainty about my parents, are they gonna stay healthy? Just the uncertainty of life. That sounds like it's one of the main causes of daily everyday anxiety.

Yes, absolutely.

How do we get comfortable with uncertainty so it doesn't consume us?

Yeah, that's a great question.

How do we embrace it and enjoy uncertainty and have fun and play and connect with it in a different relationship?

Yeah, yeah. So that is a great question, and the answer that I provide in the book is a multi-spoke kind of strategy. And one strategy that's easy to understand is how do you create more joy in your life to kind of counteract all of these negative things coming, coming out? And so one of my favorite— this is in the toolbox part of the book where I go through immediate, medium-term, and long-term tools that you can use to flip your anxiety from bad to good. And my favorite, one of my favorite ones is called Joy conditioning. Joy conditioning is mining your own memory banks for those joyous, funny, pick your favorite positive emotion events in your life and consciously bringing them back up and revivifying them and bringing up those emotions. And my little trick for that is try and find a memory that you love that has an olfactory component to it.

A what component?

Olfactory, so a particular smell associated with it. Why? Because smells are really evocative of memories. It's very easy to bring up everything associated with that memory if it has a smell. It's okay if it doesn't, but the one that I use is— I love this one because everybody might have an example of this. I remember a particular yoga class I went to in New York City and I was doing so well. I was, you know, up dog, down dog. I flipped my dog. It's like, yeah, I did really well. And then I was doing my— the pose that I do the best, which is shavasana. So I was in shavasana.

Is that the one where you just lay down?

Yeah, I do that really well.

You just lay on your back and you're like child's pose.

Exactly. I know I do that even better than child's pose. It's like I lay on my back. And I was feeling really good about myself, had this great class, and then on top of all of that, the teacher came around and she put some lavender lotion on her hand and she waved it under my nose and she gave me the most luscious 5-second neck massage that I've ever had in my life. Because, you know, I worked out hard, I was feeling really good about myself, and so I literally— in my purse out there is a little vial of lavender essence. And when I need a little pick-me-up of remember the time I just felt so good, it was just this relaxing feel-good moment, I smell that lavender and that memory, that is my joy conditioning. I'm joy conditioning myself with that memory. But you can do that with whatever memory you want.

Joy conditioning.

Joy conditioning.

Is that a scientific term?

That is Wendy, Dr. Professor Wendy Suzuki's term, and it's based on my 25 years of studying how memory works, and applying all of my knowledge to addressing anxiety. And it's really a direct antidote to fear conditioning, which we all experience automatically. So that's my ex— my example is my apartment in Washington, D.C. was robbed, and I walked around the corner. My door was the only one around the corner, and I still remember walking around the corner and seeing my door crowbarred open, hanging open when it was supposed to be locked. It's like, what's happened? And I walked in, which was not the smartest thing to do. Nobody was there. But every time I walked around that corner for months and months, I felt that. That is fear conditioning. How do you flip it? So that didn't go away. You had to move. Yeah, I did have to move. It went down slowly. But I, you know, to counteract that with something like joy conditioning is, you know, invite friends over, create wonderful memories, wonderful safe events in that same space. It never went away, and I'll tell you why. Because that is a safety mechanism. You don't want to, you know, the brain doesn't allow us to obliterate anything. This isn't like that movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yes. So we can't do that, but we can counteract that very protective mechanism. Actually, I don't want to eliminate that. I want to be wary of areas and situations that were really, really bad for me.

That is— you don't want to eliminate it.

I don't want to eliminate it.

What if it's been something traumatic though, or someone breaking in, or a sexual assault against you, or something traumatic? How do we learn to to heal the memory and the emotion of that fear, of that trauma? To live with ourselves or to live in the environment of a home that we can't leave yet, or how do we? Is it just more joy conditioning? Are there other things?

Yeah, so this is where we get to that boundary between clinical levels and what this addresses. So I'm really not addressing, you know, I went to Afghanistan, I have terrible PTSD. That's not this. This can help a little bit, But it does not substitute for— you need to go to a therapist. And absolutely, so yeah, that is not a substitute. However, you can use these in addition to your, you know, therapy approaches.

Any tool, I think, is a good tool to try. Yes, any tool is a good tool to try. What's another tool we can use in order to quiet some of the negative anxiety that keeps us from joy that keeps us from feeling good about ourselves. What's another tool you like?

Yeah, I mean, we already said this, but I think this is one that so many people can use, and it was really inspired by a really good lawyer that I happened to meet at a party one day, and I told her I'm writing this book about anxiety, and she said, I am the lawyer that I am today because of my anxiety. And I said, oh, tell me about that. And she said, you know, I use my anxiety for all the different arguments that the other side is going to put up against me or all the things the judge might say. That becomes my to-do list. Like, what if the judge says that? What if the other side brings this up, that up? And I turn that into actionable items. And so because I do that on a systematic basis, and I've gotten really good at that, I plug all the holes. In my case. And I think you could apply that to anything, anything in your life. And I love it because it is an act of turning the energy of just worrying, oh, what if this, what if this, into an action. That is really at the core of this book. Can you turn that inner turmoil into an action that is positive? And this is one example that's easy to understand how I do that. Even if you get to the top 3 things on your list and do something about that, there is a satisfaction that comes from that. And it— you can feel that anxiety coming down with every checkmark that you do.

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If people don't turn their anxiety into a positive action, what happens if they stay in it consistently?

What happens?

Well, then we go back to what are the chronic effects of anxiety, heart disease, long-term stress, right? And they stay in this, in this negative emotional state. They stay in the state of pure worry, no action. And that is difficult to maintain and it starts to interfere.

It's exhausting. It's exhausting. It's got to be emotionally draining to be in a constant state of stress, anxiety, and worry. Yes, it is.

Draining.

It's got to make you look older, feel tired. I mean, I'm not sure what the research says about longevity if someone has a lot of stress and worry and anxiety, but I'm assuming you don't live long. Yeah, you probably die younger than you should.

Yes.

What have you studied anything about the Blue Zones, about the people that live in the Blue Zones? Yeah, live the longest in the world. About how they manage anxiety, or if they have anxiety? Yeah. And is there some benefit to having some anxiety, or is it better to just have this kind of worry-free— yeah, life— yeah, happy-go-lucky, I'm not gonna let anything bother me, I forgive everyone, you know, it doesn't matter what you do? I'm just a happy human being. Is there some benefit to that or no?

Yeah, so I think that— I think about anxiety now and all that worry and anger and all these other things that come with anxiety. I really think of it as kind of the wind in my sails. That is the little fire under my backside that gets me to do things, gets me excited, gets me to go towards the fear and get through it because I know there's something good on the other side. And without it, I mean, that is— I think there's certain perhaps times in your life if you are retired and, you know, aren't in this situation where you're dealing with the world, that that could be great. That is the, you know, the happy-go-lucky, no worries. But for most of us I think it is very beneficial to learn how to take that fear that is depleting us, it is exhausting us, it's making us look older, and turn that into something that makes you feel better about yourself. It decreases the overall stress in your life, and frankly, it is more practical to say, look, I'm not going to be happy-go-lucky all the time. Nobody's happy go-lucky all the time, but I'm going to use that bad stuff that is inevitably going to come in and I am going to learn from it. I'm going to use it to my best advantage. And one thing we haven't talked about yet, I'm going to learn about myself through thinking about my anxiety rather than just trying to say, "Oh, I hate it. Go away." What is it tell us about ourselves. And like, for me, my social anxiety told me how much I love and I appreciate deep friendships because I didn't have them because I was too scared to start them. You're so shy. I was so shy, and it kept me isolated. And there's something wrong about that. I mean, that, that contributed to the isolation in the first place. And so The realization— and because part of the time it's like, I'm a lone wolf, I like being alone, you know, it's okay. But actually the truth was I love being with people. It motivates me. So I had to get through that shyness to get that joy on the other side. And so that was a learning that I went through.

When someone says they like being a lone wolf, What is that? I mean, no one likes to be alone, really. I mean, we like to be alone in moments, but no one wants to be alone and not have close friendships, right?

Yeah.

What is that really— what are we really saying when we say, you know what, I just want to be alone, or I want to be a lone wolf? Is that we don't— we've been embarrassed in the past by social settings where people have made fun of us? Or what does that mean kind of in general, do you think?

You know, I, I think—

I don't trust people.

Yeah. Um, I, I'm it's difficult to deal with reading the cues and it's just confusing or overwhelming. A criticism of the monk lifestyle and they're alone all the time, they don't have to deal with, you know, what if I don't like the other monk? I'll just go off to my cave and I'll be all alone and then you don't have to deal with it. The real test comes when you do have to deal with that and disagreements. What if somebody doesn't disagree with— somebody disagrees with you? That brings up all of these things that humans were evolved to do. We are social animals and I think that, you know, there are social butterflies. I was never a social butterfly. I will never be a social butterfly. But it is not true what I told myself, that, you know, I just love to be alone and I, you know, I'm better on my own. No, I'm much better with people. So I think there's— it is that difficulty, social interactions. We were evolved to be social, but it is scary, and some of us have that fear.

And so I think it can be terrifying if you don't know how to handle the emotions of it, if you haven't learned the tools, yeah, on how to navigate when someone lets you down, or when someone, uh, talks behind your back, or when someone lies to you, or when someone breaks their commitment, or whatever it is. It's like, it's hard to learn these things.

It is.

And we could wall ourselves up, we can protect ourselves, but I think that creates more stress and anxiety. It's like being— feeling alone and feeling disconnected to people, yeah, I think is even harder.

Yeah.

But that's It seems safer in the moment.

It does, it does. And I do believe that, you know, you give, you get what you give. And so, you know, put out there— I could tell by your evening ritual that you like to put out there, what can I give to other people? And the more you do that— it's not to say that nobody will ever turn around and try and, you know, go behind your back about something.

Of course, they do, yeah.

But you you are building so much goodwill in the people that do appreciate it. It is like this protective cocoon. So the more you do go out there and give to people, the more protected— and that is going back to vulnerability— the more vulnerable you are. And say, you know, I like you, I want to help you, here's what I can do, this would make me feel good. That's a very vulnerable thing to do and to offer. And I think that that— but that pays, even though sometimes it's hard and, and, and it's scary to reach out.

Absolutely. Yeah, Adam Grant talks about that in his book, I think Give and Take, I think it's called, which like there's givers and takers and you want to, you want to learn not to just constantly give to the takers but make sure there's give and take in relationships and stuff like that. I love you said that the worry you feel should get you— should help you move towards your fear. So if you're worried about being in social settings, you should think about it and say, okay, what can I do to help me overcome this? Yeah, exactly. How can I— I really like to create exercises and kind of games when I'm afraid. Yeah. And I say, okay, I used to be— when I was a teenager, I was afraid to talk to girls. I think like most teenage boys. I don't know, maybe I was the only one, but I was afraid to talk to girls. And I remember I was— I've told this on on my show many times, but I, I was sick and tired of being— having so much anxiety getting rejected. Yeah. By just saying hello at 16. And I said, okay, for this summer, I am going to— every time I feel butterflies when I see a girl, yeah, I'm going to go right up to her and have a conversation. And I need to go up to her. I can't, I can't walk away. I have to put myself through this. Yeah. And the first couple weeks was horrible. It was terrifying because I got rejected. I was stuttering, I was stumbling over myself, I was like, girls were running away, like the whole thing. But then eventually you gain more and more confidence. You, you get a little win. Okay, she talked to me for 10 seconds, you know, so you build your confidence. And I think if you create a game or an experiment for yourself and say, you know, I'm just going to do a social experiment around this— I did this with public speaking as well for a year. I went every week and it was terrifying. I went to a public speaking class Wow. Yeah, I was like, I'm gonna do this as an experiment and see what I can prove every week. Yeah, I think if you do that, it becomes more— we go back to joy. How do you create joy around the anxiety? Yeah, how can you make it a fun game? Not something that's like this terrible fearful thing, but how can I make a game out of this?

Yeah, yeah.

For me, that has worked wonders by creating experiments, games.

Yes.

And trying to throw some joy in there even when it's so stressful.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that idea. I love that idea. And bringing friends in to help you. Absolutely. Because you were saying that you shared these parts of yourself, presumably with close friends, and I had that same thing, you know. I wanted to project. I was that 10% that said, "I'm not anxious." Really? "I am happy all the time." You know, I—

Smile on your face, yeah.

And the truth wasn't that. That I wasn't. And it was fear of, well, if they saw the real me, then they would never want to, and I'd be, you know, with fewer friends than I have right now, and that's terrible. But you have to learn how to share your authentic self, or else you get inauthentic friends.

That's true.

I learned.

Gosh, why is it you said that? We both said this, you know, if people actually knew this about me, then they wouldn't love me, they wouldn't like me, or I'd be alone, or they wouldn't want to spend time with me.

Me.

Is that something you think is a fear for a lot of people? If people actually knew this about me, yeah, what I was most afraid of, what I'm most ashamed of, yeah, what I'm most insecure about, if they actually knew this is how I felt, yeah, they wouldn't love me. Do you think that's a common theme in the world?

I think every single person, I think that same 90% that are suffering from anxiety has that about something in, in their life because it's hard to share even the most I'm sure Oprah even has things that, you know, although she's obviously shared a lot. Yes. Very difficult to do, and yeah, I'm sure everybody has something like that, and I have this vision that people are just searching for the right configuration of friends where they feel comfortable, or family members, where they do feel comfortable enough to let that guard down and, you know, let it slip out. It's like, you know, what's gonna happen if that really comes out? And, and it's, it's a yearning that, that gets suppressed, I think.

Yes. Yeah, it's funny, when I started to reveal the things I didn't like about myself, I wasn't proud about myself, about 8 years ago and started to really incorporate that on a more consistent basis in my life. And I have this platform where I'm always talking about my insecurities and doubts, so my audience knows, uh, all my, my, my darkness. Um, it gives me— it's funny, the more I started— before I did it, I had so much anxiety and worry and stress. Yeah. Thinking about sharing things. Yeah, yeah. To close friends, family members, And then eventually I started opening up more on my, my podcast here. But it's since I've done that, it's like the worry and stress goes away because I'm like, oh, I'm still alive. Yeah, people like me. Yeah, I have friendships. Yeah, you know, my family didn't abandon me.

Yeah.

And in fact, it brought me closer to people. Yeah, it strengthened the bonds and connections with my friends, family. It created new relationships I didn't have because people trusted me more, they could see me better. Yeah, they could understand and empathize with me. They could, you know, they just felt like I was more real, whatever it might be.

Yeah.

And I think that also allows me to sleep better at night, knowing, okay, I am being 100% authentic to who I am. Yeah, yeah. Revealing myself, opening up, being vulnerable in conversations. Yeah, it feels great, you know. I feel like— and people still like— I have great friendships. Yeah, yeah. So what do I need to worry about? Yeah, people know all my stuff that I don't like about me. Yeah, and they still like me, you know. It's like, they're my friend, you know. And the people that don't like me, okay, they weren't meant for me.

Yeah, exactly.

It feels more peace. Yeah, it's—

I don't know, it's— I, I know exactly what you're feeling, it— what you're saying. It, it really opens up this new kind of communication route. When you are vulnerable and honest, and it gives permission to the other person to be vulnerable, honest, or just be there to listen, because that's also very, very powerful. One of the experiments that I did in my lab this last year was trying to find the most— the easiest, shortest is there any intervention that we can do with students that would decrease their very high levels of anxiety? What was that? And so we tested many things, just a walk outside, chair yoga, all these things they can do online. This was all virtual. But one of the things that was very effective that I was so excited about is a mindful conversation. So what we did is, We didn't go deep. We didn't want to have them reveal some, you know, deep dark secret. But what we did is my student researchers had a script. They shared a real story about a favorite vacation, why it was favorite. It was real. They were really trying to share this experience with them and then invited the student who they didn't know, who was our experimentee, to share the same thing. And in that year where everything was virtual and it was, you know, professors just said, okay, now learn these 5 chapters, go ahead, go do it. And to have somebody there listening to their story, listening deeply and asking real questions because they were, it was only 10 minutes, completely decreased their anxiety.

Really? By them sharing and someone listening or by them also listening to someone else's story?

You know, I think it was really The sharing and have somebody else listening, because the first part, my students always went first. They didn't know what exactly was going to happen, so that was just to lay the groundwork. And I think the interaction and the good feeling started to develop when they started to open up, sharing the story and seeing, "Oh my God, somebody is really listening to me. They're asking me a question." question about this event that meant something to them. And that just shows how powerful social interactions are. And even this short 10-minute thing between— we thought about, should we get two friends to try and have a conversation? That was too hard to control. But I could control, we could control exactly the protocol of this stranger student and the kind of interaction they had.

Yeah. Do you— is there any research on if men or women are more anxious? Is there any research around this? Like, um, I know men have more anxiety or stress, or women have more anxiety or stress.

I think the stat— I should know this—

are we all— are we just all messed up equally?

I think we're all messed up equally. There's more women with depression. Depression and anxiety are, are related, but, but, you know, have different symptoms. Um, but I think it's pretty equal.

Okay.

For anxiety, the reason I was— I'm curious is because when I was studying about masculinity years ago, I wrote a book called The Mask of Masculinity, which is kind of the mask that men wear to project and protect themselves from showing emotion and showing, uh, revealing themselves. Um, and when I was on tour talking about it, I would always ask in every city, and about 50% men and women would show up. And I would always ask, like, okay, for the ladies here, raise your hand if you have a girlfriend or girlfriends that you talk to once a week about your stress, your worry, your challenges in life, your work issues, your body issues, whatever it might be dealing with, that you have someone, one or multiple girlfriends you speak with on a weekly basis. And pretty much the entire room of women raised their hand and said yes. Every week I have at least one person, and I said, keep your hands up if you do this every day. You call a girlfriend on the phone, you have lunch, you're just talking about something for a few minutes. Yeah. And I go, how does it make you feel to be able to talk about these things? And like, it feels great. Yeah. To be able to share.

Yes. This.

Yeah. And say, okay, for the men in the room, raise your hand if once a month you get together with a guy friend and you talk about your vulnerabilities, your insecurities, your body issues, your your challenges at work, and you really open up to this other male friend. Yeah, maybe one or two guys out of hundreds would raise their hand. Yeah. And then I was like, and I would say, you guys are part of a church group, right, where you meet once a month and it's like for an hour and you do these things?

Yes.

Yeah. And I say, okay, I go back to the ladies in the room, I say, ladies, imagine not being able to do this once a month, only doing this once a month. How would it make you feel? They're like, I feel more anxiety, more stress. And I go, imagine these men who never do this in the room. They never share these things. I'm not saying all men, but a lot of men don't feel like they have one guy friend they can open up and reveal to. And I feel like maybe there's another symptom. Maybe it's just like they just wall themselves up and don't share emotion, and there's other internal factors or physical ailments that they're caused from that stress. But I think it's, yeah, either way, I think it's important for everyone to learn how to share these things. And based on that study you did, I think it's when we share, right, whatever it is, yeah, even if it's 5, 10 minutes, it decreases, yeah, the stress and the anxiety. It seems like it goes down. Yeah. And I feel like if we got to create better friendships or relationships or therapists or whatever that we can connect to and have that consistent communication stream, yeah, because otherwise when we trap, when we hold on to it just bad things happen.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what— how does that work? What is the— what is the change that we need in raising boys and talking to boys?

This is a whole— I mean, this is a dynamic. I mean, I grew up in the '80s and '90s. I was born in '83, and, uh, it was just not accepted to show emotion in elementary school, middle school, high school. It wasn't acceptable especially as an athlete growing up in Ohio. It just wasn't— maybe in some, you know, part of Beverly Hills in LA, you know, or some like posh school in New York City, I don't know, maybe in pockets there's some more acceptability of younger boys showing this type of emotion. Yeah, I don't know what it's like in 2021, but I just know that you were laughed at, you were made fun of if you cried, if you showed emotion. Yeah. And so you learn in order to fit in to wall yourself or to, or to not share, yeah, the things that people won't like about you. And I'm not saying that's okay, and I'm— and we all have our responsibilities, yeah. But as young boys growing up, when we're conditioned that way, it was hard to break that for me personally, yeah. And it took me a long time until I realized, like, wow, this isn't working for me. Yeah, I have more stress and anxiety. It was really decades of stress and anxiety and not being able to sleep at night. That was the thing, the catalyst that you talked about that was like, enough is enough. Maybe for you it was the social anxiety, but finally as a teacher, like, okay, I've gotta show up differently to not stress all the time. And so 8+ years ago, I finally started to reveal myself. I was just like, okay, I can't live like this anymore. So everyone can know everything about all my shame, 'Cause I'd rather that happen and be alone 'cause I feel so much stress all the time. And then it gave me a lot of peace. And then I learned the process of healing and therapy work and workshops and all that stuff, but, and just healthier relationships in general. I don't know the solution. I don't know the solution, but I know I'm trying to be a better model for other men to witness. I'm trying to bring other men on and have these types of conversations. So that younger men could see like, okay, here's someone that maybe I like what he does or what he's wearing. He's an athlete and I can understand and relate to that. Yeah. Hopefully I can start to do this with my own life or maybe with my girlfriend or my guy friends. Yeah. Try to have some of these conversations, but I just think it's challenging in general. Yeah. It's challenging when you're younger and you're trying to have a few friends and they don't accept it. Yeah, exactly.

That's tough. Yeah, yeah.

Because no kid wants to be alone.

No, no.

They want to just hang out and go on the playground and just be with their buddies. Yeah. So it's, it's really challenging. Yeah. The perpetual pen tapper, the arbitrary fridge reorganizer, the holiday party planner that starts in May. Principal knows your star employees have their work quirks. Principal also knows how much these employees mean to your business.

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Do you have kids?

No, I don't.

Yeah, I don't have— I don't have a solution to that. But I think as a, you know, I don't have kids either, but if I was a parent, I would just encourage showing emotion with my, with my sons or daughters. And be the example, be vulnerability with them. Yeah. Allow myself to feel, allow myself to cry if I'm watching a movie or something happens in my life and I'm feeling it. Yeah. To not wall up but to allow myself. Yeah. This is— I mean, we're going off another topic. Yeah, we're going up another topic here for another conversation. But as an academic, as a neuroscientist and a study of psychology and the brain and all these things, you come from a very academic approach to your research. But a year ago, you unfortunately lost your father and your brother. Yeah, around the same time. Yeah. And while you were writing the book, and so you had to kind of shift some of the stuff writing the book because you were experiencing on an emotional level what you were kind of researching.

Yeah, yeah.

Can you share more the biggest lessons you learned from these types of losses for yourself, how you emotionally had to navigate it when maybe you didn't have the answers?

Yeah.

And what did you learn from those—

that experience? Yeah, so it really was the week that I was about to dive in and start writing the real chapters of this book, Good Anxiety, and, and that was when my younger brother passed away completely unexpectedly. Younger brother? My younger brother, just 3 months after our father. Had passed away. So we were just healing, still raw from losing my father, our father, and then he had an unexpected heart attack. And so first, just that pain and grief that I was experiencing is not the same as anxiety. It shares some of those negative emotions. This was just loss, grief, sadness. It was It was so painful, like, how could this happen? It feels like a different reality. Everything looked the same, but it just felt so different, and it forced me to explore these feelings that I'd have had inklings of in the past, but never to this extent and kind of in this wave of first my dad and then my brother. And I slowly came back from it, and I used some of the tools that I talk about in the book that were already in place for me. Morning meditation. So I do a morning tea meditation, tea meditation, which I describe in the book, which is a meditation over brewing and drinking tea. For me, that was, that was the magic bullet for meditation because there's a sequence for brewing tea. You boil the water, you put it in the tea leaves, you let it seep, and then you pour it out and you drink it. And that kind of sequence kept my meditation going. I always had something to do. I was waiting, I was waiting for the tea to brew. I get to drink the tea now. I get to be mindful about how does the tea feel, how does it— how hot is it, how does it taste. And I really I really came to appreciate that there is this moment, and yes, everything on the outside of my meditation feels like it's different, but this moment still feels like every other moment that I enjoyed my tea meditation. So that helped me come back to, I am alive. I'm so lucky to be alive.

Yes, perspective.

Yeah, so lucky to have the family that's still with me. Yes, yes. And exercise— my first book, Healthy Brain, Happy Life, was all about the transformative effects of exercise on the brain. So after I meditate, I do my workout in the morning. And it was really one day I was doing my workout, it's a video workout, and the trainer said— it was a hard workout— and she said, you know, in working out, with great pain comes great wisdom.

Ooh, I love that.

And I was like, oh my God, that is what I need to hear, not just for working out. I have just gone through the worst pain in my whole life, and I do have more wisdom. That wisdom is based in the love that was left behind. Yes. And not just left behind, that sounds like it's leftovers. The love that that is here. Yes, you know, that's still here from, from my brother and my father. And that's when I started to think about this book, Good Anxiety, in a different way, because anxiety is an everyday kind of pain and suffering that we all go through. And what if that leads to wisdom? What What does that look like? And I needed as much wisdom and power that I needed, and so the book became searching for the power and the wisdom in everyday anxiety. It never would have been that if I hadn't had this event happen. And so that's where the 6 superpowers or gifts of anxiety came from. I needed them to be superpowers. We ended up calling them gifts. Yes, but same thing. And yeah, so that, that is the, the real origin story of this book.

That's crazy. I always talk about the importance of experiencing some type of structured pain on a daily basis, and that, for me, that's just a workout, you know. It's like something that makes you uncomfortable. Yes. That's like, "Oh, I don't want to do this and I don't want to push a little harder." But when we do that, I feel like everyday healthy pain is going to help you long-term. Yes, absolutely. Make you happier, healthier.

Exactly.

What are the positive effects on the brain when we deal with physical healthy pain?

Yeah, so physical activity, and we know the most about aerobic activity, any activity that gets your heart rate up. The best way I know how to convey this is that every single time you move your body, it's like you're giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals. Really? Yes. Those neurochemicals include dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, growth factors. And the dopamine and serotonin, what does that do? It makes you feel good. It makes you feel rewarded. That's why just going out for a walk outside when you're, you know, things your emotions are going up to here and you can't handle it anymore, it immediately makes you feel better. The growth factors that get released in your brain with every workout doesn't necessarily do something immediately, but it leads to one of the biggest wows that I have to this day about the effects of exercise on the brain. So growth factors that you are releasing every time you work out It helps brand new brain cells grow in your hippocampus. Did you know that all those workouts that I know you've done all your lifetime is actually growing you a big, fat, fluffy hippocampus? Hippocampus, not a brain, but a hippocampus. And there's only two brain areas where new brain cells are born in adulthood. One is the olfactory bulb that helps with smell, and that doesn't grow with more exercise. But the second is the hippocampus, critical for your long-term memory function. That grows, new cells grow with more growth factors that come with exercise. And it's not going to cure aging, it's not going to cure neurodegenerative disease states like Alzheimer's, but it'll give you the biggest, fattest hippocampus that you could have when you get get to that age where the neurodegeneration might start happening if it's in your genes. So it'll take longer for enough brain cells to—

Interesting. Okay. So working out how many times a week helps you with the hippocampus growth? How many is there?

Yeah. So here's what I've found in my lab. So for low-fit people that haven't started their regular workout, I low-fit people and I found significant improvements in mood, in their prefrontal function and hippocampal function with just 2 to 3 aerobic workouts a week. It's not nothing. It will make you sweat and especially if you're just starting, that is a challenge. But that is the minimum that I found that will give you the more long-term improvement in your hippocampal function. Let's say you're somebody like you. You work out, I'm sure, very, very regularly. And so what we found is, first thing to know, your regular workouts have improved your brain. You have a bigger prefrontal cortex, you have a bigger hippocampus. The prefrontal cortex is bigger because the synapses, there's more connections, not because there's more cells. And your circulatory system, you're actually stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in your brain with every workout. And that is fantastic because the brain uses— is the number one user of oxygen in the entire body. The brain is? The brain is.

Overall muscles, the heart, and everything, right? Way, way more.

Blood? The brain is the number one user of oxygen and the blood, you know, brings oxygen. And so I want my brain to have as much oxygen as possible so it works the best. And so that's That's what you're doing.

So working out brings more oxygen to the brain.

Working out will stimulate new blood vessels that, yes, bring more oxygenated blood to the brain.

And if we don't work out on a consistent basis, what does that do to our brain?

Yeah. So you don't get any of those benefits. You don't get the burst of good feeling from serotonin and dopamine. You don't get the big hippocampus. The blood vessels. And then the next question that everybody asks me is, how long a vacation can I take, you know, without working out so that I don't lose it? And, you know, what comes up goes down. It's true in the brain, true in muscles. You know, how long do I don't lift those weights so that my bicep goes down? There is, there's a time frame. We don't have the exact amount of time. We know that it takes between 3 and 9 months for these new hippocampal cells to grow with regular workouts. And yeah, if you go on a 2-year vacation, it's gonna be hard.

What are some of these— so there's 6 superpowers, is that right? Yeah. Can you explain these superpowers? We've already talked about a couple of them, but can you explain the rest of them?

Sure, sure. The first one is resilience. Yes, and that really comes— I started the Superpower book with that origin story, that we being resilient, being resilient, because that is, that is one of the first things that I realized came from that, that terrible experience. Yeah, that I had to, I had to write and give a eulogy for my brother. My brother is the social butterfly of our family. There were 200 people and more that wanted to come. We had to keep down his celebration to just celebration of life to just 200. Not that, I mean, I speak to large audiences, but it was, it was his eulogy. It made me definitely anxious to, to know that all his friends and our family were there.

And where did the anxiety stem from? You didn't, you don't want to mess it up. You don't want, you want to make sure you did him justice with his life.

I wanted to make sure that I did him justice. And there was a lot of guilt there because it's like, I wasn't a good enough sister. How come I didn't, how come I didn't visit him more? How come I didn't, how come I didn't talk to him on a more regular basis? And talking about vulnerable conversations, the vulnerable conversation that I had with my parents being Japanese American, third generation immigrants, you know, I call us kind of the Japanese-American version of Downton Abbey. Very proper, you know, not a lot of hugging. We don't do a lot of, you know, exuberant kissing.

Yes, and the— not affectionate.

Not affectionate. And the truth is, even though my brother and I knew that my parents loved us, we never said "I love you" to each other.

Isn't that interesting? I think a lot of people have experienced that as well.

Yeah.

And I at some point my father had developed dementia and I thought, you know, I feel like I really want to say this, but it was— I got stuck. It's like, I don't know if I could actually just start saying it out of nowhere to my parents.

That would be—

after you never said it? Never said it as an adult. Never.

Wow. So you said as a child but not as an adult?

I think I said it as a child. I mean, we got kissed goodnight and stuff, but I don't exactly remember. You know, it had been so long. It's But I had this desire to say this to both of my parents, and so I decided I had to ask them permission to say, "I love you." And so I—

How did that work?

Well, I'll tell you. I was living in New York, they live in California, and I spoke to them every Sunday. And I decided, I built up my courage and said, "This Sunday is going to be the big day." You asked them? I asked them whether I can say, "I love you." Oh my goodness. To them. And I know how this happens. My mom always answered the phone and I tell her about my week and then she passes it to my dad and I tell him about all the same stories. And then that's how the telephone call went every Sunday. And so, you know, I called, my mom answered, I told her about my week. And then somewhere in the middle there, I said, "Hey, Mom, you know how we never say 'I love you' at the end of these telephone calls?" What do you say if we start to say that? Silence.

Silence. Is this FaceTime?

No, no, no. This is just a regular cell phone call to my mom. Silence. Silence for a long, long, long time. I can't tell how long it was because I felt like forever. It felt like forever. And then she said, I think that's a great idea. And I'm like, whew. I was trying to keep it light. No big deal. And I said, oh great.

Oh, I've never said I love you before, but yeah, I can get my sister to say it.

Yeah, so I said, oh great, Mom, let's do that. Okay, so we finished off our conversations, but then the moment comes. But then, yeah, we both are realizing that, oh my God, it's the end of the conversation. We're actually going to have to say it. And so it was clearly, it was like I felt like there were two lions circling each other. What's gonna happen? Who's gonna go first? And I, well, I asked, so I thought I need to initiate this. And so I still, I get nervous when I tell the story because I remember the fear. And I said, because my theme was keep it light, I said, okay, I love you. Like big Disney, I love you. I love you. And my mom said, I live in I love you too. And then she went to go get my dad. Dad, Wendy's on the phone. And so it's over. She wanted to get it over. We were both secretly thinking, oh my God, thank God that's over. That was so hard. And then I talked to my dad and I explained it to him. It was easier. It was harder with my mom for some reason. I knew my dad would say yes. And so he said yes. We said our awkward I love yous. And then we hung up and I started crying, you know, at the end of that call because—

That's beautiful.

Yeah. I had never said—

That's beautiful.

I love you to my parents before. So it felt really good. Wow. My father had dementia. The next week I called back and I said, I love you to my mother slightly less awkwardly. And, you know, at this point my father really, he couldn't tell whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas that I was visiting at. So I was, I was prepared to remind him that we had made this agreement, but he said, "I love you," first. Oh, that's beautiful.

He remembered it. That's beautiful. Yeah. He had dementia at the time.

He had dementia at the time. He remembered it.

He remembered it. Oh man, that's beautiful.

Because, you know, emotional resonance, we remember the happiest and the saddest events of our life. Yeah. His daughter had never asked him—

wow, my goodness—

whether she could say I love you. And he remembered, and he remembered every single week through his entire— including the last time I spoke to him.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, so that was really beautiful. But I never said I love you to my brother, going back to the eulogy. And, you know, that was a big source of grief, of guilt. It's like, how come I didn't do it? I should have done it. I knew. But it was weird because he was not my parents, he was my brother. And same thing, he's a bro kind of guy. Not that I'm sure he would have said it, but it was really hard to have that conversation with him. So yeah, lots of, lots of things like that going through my mind when I was preparing and getting ready to give this But I got, I got through it, and it had funny parts in it. It had parts that I made everybody cry, including myself. And I was very proud that I was able to get through it. And that I really, really felt for the first time in my life, if I could get through that, I could get through anything. So that most horrible thing really gave me the most resilience that I've ever felt personally in my whole life. And again, that's the origin story. And, and every single time we're able to get through that anxiety, even if we get through and we don't feel so good, you've gotten through. You made it to the next time, and that can help you build your resilience. Yes, little by little. And that was part of the gift of— and I know that grief wasn't anxiety, but going through these hard times, that anxiety kind of gives us a little bit of a gift of— it gives us lots of challenges to get through. That is what ultimately builds up our resilience.

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At feedingamerica.org. Well, anxiety gives us the ability to experience courage. Yeah.

Right. Exactly.

Because if you didn't have that fear and anxiety, you wouldn't have to bring the courage out. Yes. To, to prepare, to show up, to know like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cry at some point.

Yeah.

In front of 200 people. Yeah. And I'm a shy person. I don't like people seeing me this way.

Yeah.

It gives you the courage to become something you've never become before.

Yeah.

And step into a different version of yourself. Yeah, yeah. Or step into who you truly are that you've been holding back. Yeah, that's true. So, you know, it's not fun, but it allows us to access certain characteristics and skills that maybe we don't utilize.

Yeah. And that courage is, is a skill that is so beautiful. And, you know, people say, how do I get more courage? How do I do it? And it really is going back to that action. That anxiety and that activation was designed and evolved to put us into action, including to act in that courageous way. That phone call to my parents to say I love you was a very courageous act. Huge. It was huge.

How many years were you thinking about that?

Many months, because it was during the development of my father's dementia that it's like It was building up, building up. It's, "Oh no, I don't want to deal with that. That's too hard." And I can't tell you the number of people that have come up to me that said, "Oh my God, I don't say I love you to my parents, and you gave me the courage to do it." And a lot of Asian people, because it comes from our culture, but also lots of other cultures don't have that in their natural way of talking to each other, but it taps our social element and our need to express what we truly feel, which is love.

Where does— so that's the first superpower. I want to talk about love though for a second. Where does love play into overcoming stress, worry, and anxiety? If we have more love in our life, Yeah. With the people connected to us and love for ourselves, does anxiety, stress, and worry diminish?

Absolutely. I think that is one of the things that we can help balance this anxiety that has gone up significantly since the start of the pandemic is one way is to work on those events that cause you anxiety, which is a great thing to do. And the other thing is to build up the positive emotions to counter anxiety. So we talked about joy conditioning, bringing more love into your life through social interactions. The number one predictor of a long life is the number of positive social connections that you have. Really? Yes. And I thought it's going to be exercise, it's going to be exercise on top. Because of my first book, but no, exercise is, I don't know, 3 or 4 or 5. It is social connections, and it doesn't have to be that, you know, girlfriend that you've had since 3rd grade. It can be positive interactions that you have with the barista at your coffee shop, having that positive banter, giving them, you know, giving them a little punch in the arm and they get to give it back to you. That counts, which I love thinking about that. So that, that happiness and joy that you can bring, it costs nothing for you, and it is giving you a longer life.

Absolutely interesting. So, so, but love in general, is there research or science behind what love does for— yeah, happy, like a happy brain, a happy, a healthy heart?

Like, so love is a natural counteraction to the stress that you were talking about. And in fact, so the part of the nervous system that is controlling all of those stress responses that we talked about, the blood going to the muscles, the high heart rate, the high respiration, is called the sympathetic nervous system. Luckily, we have an equal and opposite part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system, not stimulating love specifically, but it helps calm everything down. It decreases the heart rate, it decreases respiration, it brings blood back into our digestive and reproductive systems. It's called the rest and digest nervous system. Yes, parasympathetic.

Parasympathetic.

Rest and digest. Parasympathetic, rest and digest. Sympathetic, fight or flight. Okay. Okay.

And so we want to be more in the parasympathetic.

Yes. Yeah. You want to be able to control.

Yes. Be in that state. Yes. So that when we need to take on something scary, we lean into the sympathetic, but we're not staying in the sympathetic all day long.

Right, right. And the best way to lean into parasympathetic when you start to feel that really bad anxiety come on is deep breathing. Yes. Deep breathing, because that is the only thing in that list that I gave you that we have conscious control over. I can't make my heart rate go down. I can't bring blood into my digestive tract, but I can breathe deep and long. And people would be— if you haven't tried this before, just deep 4-part breath where you breathe in for 4 counts, hold it for 4 counts, breathe out for 4 counts, hold it out for 4 counts. Easiest way to bring some of that calm back in because you are actively stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. Absolutely.

Yeah.

So, but love can also stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system in the sense that it decreases your heart rate, but mainly it's kind of a different animal. My most popular lecture of all the lectures that I've ever given in my entire 23-year career at NYU It's called The Neurobiology of Love.

It's like, ooh, I wanna know.

I wanna know about the neurobiology of love.

Is this online also, a video?

Yes, actually it is.

Well, tell me about it.

If you go to the website, all my lectures for my brain and behavior class were videotaped. And so I get to tell the intriguing story in my Neurobiology of Love lecture about the prairie voles.

Have you ever heard of prairie voles?

Voles. Prairie voles.

Don't know what that is.

Prairie voles are these little rodent-like animals that live in the Midwest.

I think they're from Ohio. Yeah, yeah, I've probably seen them.

You've probably seen them, but they're one of the—

prairie dog or something?

No, different from prairie dog. These are prairie voles, and prairie voles are one of the few mammals that form lifelong pair bonds. Really? And the way they form it is is fascinating. So they live in large multigenerational family units. And so all the prairie voles have a particular area, a territory. And a pair bond forms when an almost mature female prairie vole that isn't pair bonded yet is walking down the trail and she smells the urine of a male prairie vole not in her family unit. Well, that is like love potion number 9 to her, that urine. And if that depositor of the urine is around, they mate for 40 hours straight. It's pretty impressive. Wow.

That's a lot of energy.

Yeah, it's a lot of energy. They have that small body, high metabolism. They need it. 40 hours is amazing. And what happens in that 40 hours? In the female prairie voles, oxytocin, that hormone of love and connection, gets released like a tidal wave in their brain. And in the males, it's vasopressin that gets released as a tidal wave in their brain. And you can show in the lab if you artificially mate them that if you block oxytocin during this mating period, they will not form the pair bond. In the females. And if you block vasopressin, you won't form the pair bond. So is it the case that, you know, what if I mate for 40 hours, will I form a lifelong pair bond? Doesn't quite work that way. But it identified these key hormones that are those connecting bonds that we know something's happening, right, when we're forming that first connection that keeps us that, you know, finds us a partner. And so that was the start of the real neurobiological study of love and connection because before that it's like, oh, that's too mushy. We can't study that, right? But now they had a hormone and they can look at the genes behind that hormone. They can delete the hormone and they could image people when they were— one of my favorite studies was they imaged a group of people that had just fallen in love. They were in that honeymoon phase of falling in love and they identified a set, a complex set of structures. Of course, it wasn't just one that lit up when they were in love, but reward systems, dopamine systems were very highly activated in love. And interestingly After, then what happens after you're together for 5 years? Does that disappear?

Then what happens? How— yeah, have you seen the research that shows you can sustain that for decades?

It evolves, it evolves. And what happens is that those people that are still in love, that still have a strong relationship, the pattern of activation is different.

It's not the same activation as in that honeymoon phase, which is more What, the sexual attraction, chemistry, the chemicals of the attraction?

It's, you know, in the modality that was measured, it was brain activation. So we were just looking, they were just looking at the networks that were activated. But what it comes to evolve into is that kind of activation that you see in parent and child. So that strong family connection, you not only see it in parent and child but between long-term partners. And it makes sense. Our relationships evolve. I think it would be hard to sustain that honeymoon feeling for years and years, 20, 30 years down the line, but it evolves. Evolves into a different kind of social connection that has a different brain signature. And they've shown that that brain signature is similar across cultures, which is interesting. You know, is it only in the United States? Or they've done these studies in China, throughout Europe, and it's the same patterns that are quite unique in the early throes of love and it evolves into something. Different later on if you stay together.

Have you studied a lot of, I guess, the brain science around relationships and love and intimacy long-term?

You know, that area of research is still pretty new, and so I always keep an eye on it because I know it's my most popular lecture, and I want to update the students.

Is there anything you could share around what to look for in a relationship around the neuroscience of a partner, like meeting a partner? Is there certain questions you could ask to see if they have the right brain chemistry? I don't know. Is there anything else you think we could look for from research or studies or examples that you've seen around understanding, like, is this a potential good partner?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have one warning from an experience that I had, which was I did an event with the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, the acting school, and we were talking about the neurobiology of emotion and the neurobiology of love, and we were doing it with the graduate acting class. And these are the students that are going to go on to be the Meryl Streep of our time. And they said, okay, we're gonna do an exercise. Everybody come up. And for some reason, I went up on stage to do it with them. So I got partnered up with one of the—

an actor—

one of the actors, students, one of the student actors. And they basically took us through, you know, those 36 questions that you ask a stranger to get to see if you like fall in love or something, where you like stare in their eyes and ask the question. Yeah, but no, no, cut No words. They led us through exercises like that, and they led us through things like, now you have a choice. You can step closer to your partner, or you can step away. I didn't know this guy. It's like, oh my God, it became so critical. What is he going to do when it was his turn to make these choices? And I kind of fell in love with this person.

Wow. You know, 10 minutes or something?

Yeah, it was 10 minutes. And it made me realize that kind of the system can be hacked. Was this random student the love of my life? No. I had enough prefrontal cortex to know that that wasn't going to—

This 21-year-old is probably not right for you.

Exactly, no. But it was such a powerful, powerful experience. I had wondered about doing those 31 questions like, yeah, you know what, I'm not going to do that because I need to have those questions come up organically to test out other things because—

You can almost trick the brain to feel chemically connected.

Exactly. When there's no connection there. So that's my lesson. You can quickly have those or I quickly developed Very powerful feelings in minutes.

Yes, with a stranger.

With a stranger.

But it could have— there could have been other red flags or values or something that maybe wasn't aligned to you long term, right? But our brains can create such connection, right? Well, our bodies and emotion, like everything combined.

Yes.

What happens with when someone is sexually connected early on? Yeah, say within the first week you have sex with someone. Yeah. What does that do to the same type of brain chemistry? Is it more powerful than these kind of 31 questions of intimacy and love?

That would be an interesting experiment, right? To compare and contrast.

But what does that do when you sexually bond with someone, whether you've known them for a day, a week, a month? How does that accelerate the feeling of love and like we're supposed to be together?

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's where we can turn back to the studies of the prairie voles. We know that while we don't have exactly the same brain chemistry or brain response, there is release of those love hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, and that does give you that feeling of bonding. The more sex you have, the more kind of physical connection that you have. So, you know, I think our goal is to step back and think, do I need more physical connection or do I need to get to know this person a little better? See what their values are, have more verbal conversations before I get myself bonded to this person.

Um, because it's hard to unbond.

It's hard to unbond.

You feel more and more connected. Yeah. And you might oversee certain behaviors or actions because you feel the connection.

Exactly.

Yeah, I think that's where a lot of problems relate. Not that we're relationship experts here, but no, no, definitely not here. But, but it's just curious to know the neuroscience and the psychology behind intimacy, whether you're having a dyad in front of someone talking about vulnerable things or answering vulnerable questions, right? You created intimacy and connection quickly, and also sexual connection that bonds people. Yeah, that's interesting. So, wow, you got to be, you got to be careful what type of questions you ask someone.

You got to be careful, and it It really heightens the importance of your prefrontal cortex, which is that decision-making brain area. You don't want it clouded. And two things we've talked about today can cloud the prefrontal cortex. High levels of anxiety literally shut it down. We know the neurochemistry and the molecular biology of that. That absolutely happens. And so when you have too high of levels of anxiety, it depletes your decision-making process and you default to the automatic. Just whatever is most common I do in my body, that's what I do because I've lost my ability to evaluate. And similarly, that connection that could happen through sexual encounters can also block off your decision-making processes. I think that lots of people have— it's like, yeah, I think I wasn't making the best decisions there sometimes, right?

We've all done that.

Yeah, so preserve your prefrontal cortex. Use that part of your brain, and that is the antidote to my warning there. I think that is a powerful tool in relationships.

And another superpower is about opening the door to flow. What does that mean? Enhancing your performance and open the door to flow.

Yeah, so I wanted to talk about flow because one of the things that anxiety does beautifully well is it shuts flow down. So flow—

you can't get into flow when you're stressed.

No, exactly.

You got to be fully in the moment and feel freedom. Yeah, essentially, right? You've got to feel free.

Yes, exactly. And so first of all, I was depressed because I read the definition of flow and it's, you know, you have to be this world leader and then you have to be at the height. It's like, what, I can never have flow in my life? And then I get stressed about that and then it goes even further, which is why in the book I coined another term, which is microflow. Look, I may not have the flow that Yo-Yo Ma or Serena Williams gets in that beautiful moment right before they're gonna, you know, win the prize. However, I can tell you that I do enjoy flow in my life. Going back to my joy conditioning, I have micro flow when I'm in shavasana at the end of a yoga class. I felt really sweaty, all that sweat is drying, I feel so good.

That is flow. For one minute.

For one minute, it is flow. And, you know, we were talking about building up those positive events in your life. And just the realization that we have many moments of microflow that might flip by, we didn't even recognize them. Recognize them. That is like, oh, I love microflow of having a wonderful cup of tea right before I need it or at the end of the day. It is that appreciation, it is the Savoring, learning how to savor is a wonderful antidote to anxiety.

So many, so many moments in the last 3 months I just stop and I say, man, what a beautiful moment. Yeah, what a beautiful moment. I look, I'm just being more aware of my surroundings and the people I'm with and just little moments. I'm just like, what a beautiful moment. Yeah, when I savor these multiple times throughout the day. Yeah, I just feel better. Yeah. And I think that's important you're saying that, because a lot of times we're just on to the next, on the next. Yeah, exactly. We're not thinking about this moment. But let me look in the sky and just be like, oh, you ever imagine, like, we are in the middle of a— we're dust of sand. Yeah. Floating around in an infinite universe. This is unbelievable. Yeah. You know, just the awe of what this is. Yeah. Is amazing.

It is. Yeah, that's a moment of microflow, right? Just that appreciation. And I found myself— I'm not a good picture taker, but it messes up my microflow if I try and take a picture of it. I just went— I'm staying with friends, and we took the little girl to her very first day of kindergarten— no, first grade, sorry, first grade today. And it was so sweet to see her. She found a little friend, and so she went skipping down with the— holding the hand of her little friend. And I almost cried. And I was trying, and then I was too late to take a picture. But I got that moment of— that is such a beautiful thing to witness. She's excited to go to first day of first grade. She's never going to have this day again. Never this moment again.

That's cool. That's really cool. The microflow. I love that. The next thing is nurture an activist mindset.

What does that mean? Yeah, so this is really about the power of mindset, and we've been talking about it all along. Is this an experience that's going to batter me down because anxiety is out to get me, or is it a challenge that I can do an experiment, as you were talking about, to see whether I can do it? And it really doesn't matter if I fail, I win or lose. I learn so much from the failure. Okay, I'm not going to do that again. And I do it the next time. And that shift of mindset, I just have to remind myself. And there's so many things that can put you into that bad anxiety. If I'm hungry, if I'm hangry, you know, all those things, it's harder to pull myself out. But reminding myself of what a positive mindset can do, it not only shifts your brain networks. It shifts your whole physiology. It decreases cortisol. It— the beautiful experiments that the psychologist Alia Crum at Stanford has done has shown that all you have to do is tell hotel workers that their level of physical activity in changing the bedsheets, the Surgeon General said, is actually above average. You are getting a good workout when they said, "No, I don't work out at all. I don't have time. I'm too busy. I'm too tired." That changed their mindset. It made them lose more weight than the controls that were not told that they were working out, and it increased their job satisfaction. And so that one belief— what is that belief, that idea that will change your day? That is a wonderful thing to ask yourself every day that you go into a difficult situation or just your regular situation.

That is beautiful. And what about— we talked about love and helping you, I guess, eliminate some of the stress and anxiety.

Yeah.

What about purpose and having a meaningful purpose in your life?

Yeah.

How does that— if you know that you're on a mission to— for a purpose, whether it be 3 months, a year, or you're, you know, decades you're on this same mission.

Yeah.

How does that help decrease anxiety and stress?

Yeah, for me, I, I, I feel like when you think about your purpose, it, it's like this tunnel vision. All of these things, all of those obstacles go away. And I feel personally I was meant to do that. I know I'm going towards that, so let's just see how I get there. And, you know, you can throw anything at me. I got through my brother's eulogy, so I got through that. I can get through anything. And that is a wonderful reminder, and finding your purpose and really sticking to it and being playful with your purpose. So despite the fact that I was I was always a very shy young girl. I always had this secret desire that I knew would never happen of being a Broadway star. So I wanted to be Julie Andrews, I wanted to be Shirley Jones, I watched all the Hollywood musicals, I dreamed of myself, you know, on stage doing that big number. And it turns out that, That secret feeling that I harbored all through my shyness comes out when I teach in front of the classroom, which by the way is on Broadway. So in fact, I am performing on Broadway. And I am a secret performer, and I've used that, and I feel like that is part of my purpose. Like, I I ended up doing neuroscience and I have all that science and I can explain science to people so that they understand it. But I also have this kind of performer's secret desire to break out into song. And it absolutely comes when I get in front of large audiences and the bigger the audience, the bigger the secret diva comes out.

Really? You're like this ultimate performer.

Yeah. Yeah, something weird happens, and I've discovered it since I did the first book and did more talks and bigger talks. It's like, wow, that is part of the purpose. It is part of the skill set that I know that I have that is bringing me towards that purpose. It is that ability, my way of communicating, and part of it is a science, and part of it is that secret Broadway The performance. The performance and that love of the talent. I always had this huge appreciation of the talent that it takes to act and sing and dance.

Such a talent.

Such a talent.

So hard.

Ah, I wish, I wish if I could only sing, I would have, you know, gone out for the Broadway plays, but sadly I can't sing.

You had to heal the people's Hearts and Brains instead. Exactly. To help people heal. So yeah, what about alter ego? Have you studied the alter egos and how they support overcoming anxiety, stress, and worry, especially being in a performance setting or speaking at a eulogy or speaking on stage or performing at a big event or performing in athletics or speaking in front of a class? Yeah. Have you done any research on alter ego? —no— and developing it for the brain?

No, I haven't, but I think that would be a fascinating study. Somebody asked me once, how do you give, how do you give your talks? You know, what is your process? And for me, it goes back to my science training. Science, it turns out, is all about the story. What is that story that you're going to tell in this science experiment that you did? And I had a very great speaker and a great scientist that was my early mentor that encouraged me to think about that story. What is the story you're going to tell the audience? Because they don't want to hear all those boring details. They want to hear what the origin is, how you got through it, what is that hero's journey, and then what is your conclusion? And so I got hooked on telling the best the best science story. And then it takes a while to get the next story because you have to do all these experiments and it's really, really hard. But I got really excited about building that next— what is that story going to be and how am I going to tell it? And that has informed— it turns out that that's what storytellers do and that's what actors do to get through their thing. So I came at it in a very different way. But I was always about trying to get people that, like, I know you may not be interested in this part of science, but let me try and pull you in and tell you why this is so cool, because I really have something cool to tell you that's based on science. Yeah, so alter egos— is that an alter ego? That is my, my strategy, and, and I guess it's, it's kind of my secret Energizer Bunny that maybe it comes from my people-pleasing natural disposition. It's like, I want you to be as fascinated as I am with this. Let me show you how fascinating it is because it is so fascinating. Just give me a second. Let me explain it to you. And that's how I always approached my teaching. And that's what evolved into my speaking that I do now.

Yeah, the cool. I think there's a, you know, I love studying athletes who have an alter ego. Beyoncé has an alter ego. I think it's Sasha Fierce. When she steps on stage, she becomes this persona, allows her to kind of overcome maybe the stress or fear. Maybe she doesn't have that anymore, but when she was rising in fame, that'd be an interesting study to do alter egos and see how that supports people in overcoming overcoming anxiety if they believed they were another person, if they believed they stepped into something that they had that helped them overcome that anxiety. I'm curious.

Yeah, and how it evolves over time because she does not have the same fear that she had that I'm sure drove her to create that and to have that energy. She's Beyoncé now. Right, exactly.

So it means a new alter ego. Yeah, you just become Beyoncé. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, there's so many other questions I want to ask you, but this has been an amazing, uh, couple of hours here. And I want to ask you the final few questions, but before I do, I want to make sure people get the book and go pick it up. It's called Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion. Make sure you guys pick up a couple copies and give them to your friends. I see you've got my friend Daniel Amen on here as well, who we've had on here. Lisa Billiards on here as well. So lots of great people have endorsed this book. Make sure you guys pick up a couple copies. I feel like this is one of the biggest challenges today is anxiety. People dealing with stress, anxiety around many things. The uncertainty of the future, their own identity in life, why we're here, Relationships, money, career. Yeah, just so much anxiety that people are consumed by. It's one of the things that I appreciated about how I was raised. My father wouldn't allow me to watch the news or commercials because he didn't want me to be consumed by negative programming of, okay, you're gonna get sick, you're gonna be unwell, so you're gonna need this drug, you didn't need this thing, you didn't need the solution, like always selling something that I don't need. So smart. And he would mute the commercials or turn them off, and he wouldn't let us watch the news because it was always based around fear and conditioning. Yeah, that there's more and more and more anxiety and fear in the world that I need to be consuming. And I am a happier, healthier person. Yeah. When I don't consume storytelling of the worst of moments and that are happening in life. Yeah, like it's happening everywhere. You know, it might be happening somewhere, yeah, but it doesn't mean it's happening next door to me, yeah, or when I walk across the street. And so learning to find these moments of joy, learning to find these moments of beauty like you talked about, and being in the moment, learning to create the social fabric of great connections with friends, yeah, and staying in a positive environment, for me has been really helpful. And you've got 40 other strategies for making anxiety work for you in this book. So make sure you guys pick up a few copies of this, give them to friends, by Dr. Wendy Suzuki. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the 3 truths question. So hypothetical scenario, imagine it's your very last day on earth, many years away from now. You get to, you know, live as long as you want, but eventually it's the last day. Yeah, you've accomplished all of your dreams, you've done all the research, the science, you've had all the fun, the joy, everything you wanted to do, you've done on it. Yeah. But for whatever reason, your work that you've created in the world is no longer in the world. It goes with you to the next place, or it goes somewhere else, but we don't have access to your information anymore. Your speeches, your videos, this content is gone. Yeah. But you get to leave behind 3 lessons to the world, 3 things that you know to be true from all of your experiences. Yeah. And this is all we would have to remember you by, are these 3 lessons or 3 truths. Yeah. What would you say would be those 3 truths for you?

For me, it would be that we were evolved to move our bodies, and so learn how to bring movement into your life on a regular basis so that it's not hard, it's automatic, and your life will benefit from that. Absolutely. Number 2 is that your brain is the most complex structure. It is so unique. It is the most amazing thing in the universe. And so use its powers to make your life better. Use that mindset to make your life and the world a better place. And the third is that social interactions and love is the most important thing to make our lives both longer and happier. So use that statistic for yourself.

I think that's so true. I mean, I was interviewing a, a doctor who— he had mentioned that there were a couple moments in his life where he was going through a depressed state. It's a couple of years of depression or some sickness and some poor health that was happening in his life, different decades apart. I said, how'd you get out of that? Yeah. And he said, love. He said, I met someone and it created like this journey for me of like feeling better, of love healing myself. Yeah. And love was the anchor that supported the healing, the growth, the peace of mind. Yeah. And he's like, both times it was love that helped him heal. So I think that's fascinating. It's the love we have with our friendships and our family, the love, the intimate love we have, and those connections I think are extremely invaluable. I want to acknowledge you, Wendy, for, for the commitment you've had to this for, what, 3 decades now you've been doing this work, and, and putting your life's mission into creating practical, inspiring tools for us to improve the quality of our life. I think it's so valuable that there are people like you in the world who make this your mission, because it can seem daunting to overcome anxiety and stress and worry. It can seem like there's no way out for a lot of people. The statistics of people going through deep depression and, and suicides and just hurting themselves, addictions are rising. And so for you to make this your mission and to be able to teach it in a way that we can understand it is, is very inspiring. So I really acknowledge you for your work, for your efforts, and for the growth that you've had to experience in the last few years to put these things into practice, unfortunately. But I think it makes you an even better teacher of these things and more empathetic to the world. So I really acknowledge you for that. And where can we connect with you online? Where do you spend the most time? I guess social, social, social media, your website?

Where can we— yeah, my website, www.wendy KathySuzuki.com. You can go there to participate in the great Good Anxiety social experiment. So you can go and do— test your own anxiety and test the effects of different tools, including the ones in the toolbox, on your anxiety.

So you can take a quiz essentially? Yeah.

You can take—

To see how anxious you are.

A stress and anxiety experiment. A survey before and after different interventions that we're, we're testing, and you get back the immediate effects, the tools on how to implement.

Yes. Oh, that's cool. So you can see kind of where in your life you're the most anxious and then which tool to implement for that right now. Yes. I like it. And that's on your website, right? Yes. Okay, exactly. And what social media are you on the most?

I'm on Facebook and Instagram.

Okay, Facebook and Instagram. Wendy. @suzukioninstagram, and then Wendy Suzuki, you'll find yours as well there on Facebook. Anything else we can do to support you besides the book, the quiz, social media? Anything else we can go to?

Gosh, that is— you can see your videos online. Yeah, videos online. I'm so excited because that, that story that I told you about saying I love you to my, to my parents was a Moth Talk.

So I did—

oh, that's cool. Yeah, so, so that, that was such a joy to be able to, to share with people. But I'm doing another one on good anxiety, and it will be out in December. Okay, cool. So, um, that— stay tuned for the origin story of good anxiety.

Love it. I'm excited. Okay, cool. Um, this is the final question. It's what's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is using your unique brain to its full potential, whatever that means. That is great. And great is so many different things in so many different people, and everybody has a beautiful and different brain. So that's my definition.

Love it. Wendy, thank you so much for being here.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Lewis.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.

Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

I really We love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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