This is Your Brain on Stress

Comfort food. We all know it as a band-aid for stress. Sweet, creamy ice cream. A warm, gooey chocolate chip cookie. That perfect bowl of mac and cheese. But here's the question: why do we reach for these things, especially when we're stressed? Is it just a habit? A lack of willpower? Or something wired deep inside us? Well, striking new neuroscience reveals how stress rewires our our brains to make us magnets for comfort food. And it's not just about food. It's about why stress can push us into any bad habit, from doomscrolling to drinking to gambling and so on. So in this video, we're going to crack open our skulls and see what's happening inside your brain when life gets hard. And more importantly, we're going to figure out how understanding this fascinating neuroscience can help you take back control. Let's get into it. Stress literally neurobiologically zaps our power away from us. What happens when this shift in balance occurs? One-two punch to the brain. Stress shuts down flexible, goal-directed thinking. But there's good news too. This leads to us repeating behaviors without thinking, even if they're not helpful. It pushes us into rigid, automatic habits. This new study published in Nature, it explores how chronic stress rewires the brain. It shows in a nutshell that stress shuts down flexible, goal-directed thinking and pushes us into rigid automatic habits. I'll start by breaking down the study and how it works, and then show you how to use this knowledge to stay in control, especially when life gets messy. So let's start by talking about the hub of willpower in the brain. It's called the dorsal medial striatum or DMS. It's a brain region that plays a central role in action outcome learning in goal-directed behavior. For simplicity, you can think of the DMS as the brain's hub for agency and willpower. Obviously, it's more complex than that, but for our purposes here, that will suffice. In fact, when the DMS activity is suppressed, people tend to lose a sense of control and fall into these inflexible, often unhelpful habits. But the DMS sits at a crossroad of two pathways: the learning pathway, which leads to flexible, thoughtful behaviors, and the habit pathway. That one's kind of obvious. So let's break down each of these. The learning pathway. It comes from the basolateral amygdala, or BLA for short, that activates the DMS, supporting action-outcome learning and goal-directed SMART decision-making. Versus the habit pathway comes from a different region of the amygdala, the central amygdala, and this sends inhibitory signals to the DMS promoting automatic rigid habit formation. So to summarize, the BLA-DMS circuit is for learning and flexibility. Think BL brain learning. And the central amygdala DMS, CEA-DMS pathway is for habits and rigidity. Think CE craving enforcer. The researchers found that chronic stress weakens the learning pathway and strengthens the habit pathway. So what happens when this shift in balance occurs? Well, in their study, mice exposed to mild unpredictable stressors like a tilted cage, damp bedding, or mild foot shock, they started falling into ingrained habits. For example, they'd press a lever for food even after they were satiated, just because that's what they were used to doing. Sound familiar? The human equivalent is exactly what I'm sure you've experienced from time to time. I know I have. When we're under chronic stress, that goal-oriented learning pathway, the BLA to DMS pathway, it gets dialed down, making it harder for us to connect our actions with their results. And at the same time, stress activates the habit pathway from the central amygdala to the DMS, and this leads to us repeating behaviors without thinking, even if they're not helpful. So it's a one-two punch to the brain. And this all means less agency and more, why did I just eat a tub of ice cream while watching Harry Potter at 1 AM again? Those kind of moments. In short, stress doesn't just make us tired and create a magnet for comfort, which is I think how a lot of us think about it. It literally— stress literally neurobiologically zaps our willpower away from us and drives unhealthy habits to the forefront of our minds. Kind of crazy, right? But there's good news too. Once you understand this, once you have insight into these mechanisms, you can start to take the wheel back. So in the rest of this video, I'm gonna briefly share 4 science-backed strategies to take back control when stress hits like a confundus charm. But I also want to make sure you know I have a newsletter that you should check out that I previously released on this topic. I treat these newsletters like living documents. I often return to them when I get additional ideas or become aware of new data. And this often happens from audience input. So after you watch this video, drop a comment here in the newsletter. Give me ideas about other strategies that I didn't mention. Don't be shy. Tell me what works for you. But with that, let's get to our 4 strategies. Number 1, practice strategic pausing. This is kind of a prefrontal override. So before reacting, before reaching for a snack, snapping at someone, or skipping sleep, take 10 slow breaths. Even short intentional pauses engage the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain really responsible for thoughtful, Goal-directed behaviors in collaboration with the DMS. While we don't know yet exactly how the prefrontal cortex interacts with these two pathways I just discussed because this is brand new data, these new data in Nature, there's almost certainly some direct or indirect input that allows you to consciously modulate the two pathways we just discussed to your advantage. That said, speaking practically, I know this trick is easier said than reliably implemented. So here's another layer. Use habit to your advantage by implementing a trigger action. This means create a contract with yourself such that anytime you do X behavior, you must take those 10 slow breaths and engage the prefrontal cortex override. So for example, I tend to clench my jaw when I'm really angry or upset. And that clenching could be my trigger to take that strategic pause, as I know the habit of jaw clenching suggests I'm stressed and primed to make impulsive habit-based decisions against my own interests. Make sense? All right, moving on. 2. Create barriers to unhealthy habit loops with just tiny tweaks to your environment. Another way to build in time to catch yourself is to create these physical or logistic barriers to unhealthy choices. For example, if you're a stress eater, remove indulgences from the premises so you have to literally go out and get your indulgence food if you need it or want it, you never really need it. And if this isn't possible, try say putting those indulgence foods on a different floor or even a high shelf that requires you to get a stepping stool in order to get it. The aim, to be clear, the aim is not to frustrate you or deprive you in a moment of perceived emotional need. But to create obstacles that force you to engage higher-level processing, even just grabbing a stepping stool to acquire the target item. These are the very high-level processes that are the ones that can exert control and give you back control. Anyway, moving on. 3, reframe the reward. Name that win. So after you resist an old habit or make a better choice, say out loud, literally if you can, that felt good. It sounds silly, but it activates your brain's reward systems and strengthens new neural pathways. Eventually, these pathways become habits in and of themselves. So reward yourself with verbal feedback. And 4, shock your body. Consider this: the reason you even have a brain is to respond to physical stimuli and move throughout the world. Emotions and self-awareness are nice, But they're only adaptations that exist to help us better carry out these fundamental abilities. You can think about that for a moment, but not too hard. It gets really trippy really fast. Anyway, to that end, you can reset, so to speak, by giving your system a physical shock. This can come in the form of a cold shower or 25 jumping jacks or 10 push-ups. I won't pretend I know the precise circuitry that permits the reset in the brain, but it does work. And if you want a "I must not tell lies" example that is also an embarrassing story, you can see the newsletter or pause the video here and have a read about how I inadvertently used this hack in college to save myself the metabolic damage of spending a full summer eating cookies as pre-meal to pizza. But ultimately what this all boils down to is simple but powerful. When stress takes over, your brain will default to whatever's easiest, the path of least resistance. So try one strategy. Build in a pause, change your environment, reframe your win, or shock your body physically. Do something today that your future stressed-out self will thank you for. Because the goal is not to never fall into habits. The goal is to make sure that the habits you do fall into are the ones that lift you up. Now please tell me, was this insight into your mind and the working of your brain helpful? And what willpower power-up tips did I miss? Share something great and I'll add it to the letter for community benefit. Thank you for learning with me. Stay curious. Bye. Why do we reach for these things? Oh shit, I made a mess.