Do You Feel Loved?

Hey there.

Before we start today's episode, I wanted to share something I'm really excited about. Hidden Brain is now on YouTube. We just dropped an episode exploring a strategy that can help us to solve problems and save time, but it's a strategy almost all of us overlook. I hope you'll check it out. You can find us at youtube.com/@hiddenbrain or just follow the link in today's show notes. Okay, here's today's show. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, Portia is a beautiful, wealthy woman, and she is looking for the right man to marry. Her father has decreed that a successful suitor must pass a test. Each of Portia's admirers is presented with 3 caskets made of gold, silver, and lead. Portia's portrait is inside one. Suitors have to pick the right casket. The gold casket is inscribed with the words, who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire. The Prince of Morocco selects it and discovers it's the wrong choice. On the silver casket are the words, who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves. The Prince of Aragon opts for this casket. He, too, loses out. Finally, the noble Bassanio takes a turn. He picks the lead casket, which bears the sobering warning, who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. It turns out to be the right choice. Having picked correctly, Bassanio gets to marry Portia. In Shakespeare's time, tests like these may have seemed odd but charming. But if you set up tests of devotion like this today, it would strike your suitors as puzzling, even preposterous. But that doesn't mean many of us don't devise our own tests of love. We hold off texting someone we met, hoping they will reach out first. We drop hints about what we want for a birthday present to see if our partner notices.

We act distant in the hope it will prompt another person to come closer.

Just like the tests in The Merchant of Venice, our tests of love can easily be seen as manipulation. If finding love is about connection and intimacy, tests create distance and suspicion. What is the hunger inside us that drives us to test the devotion of others? What are we really looking for when we hope our partner selects the ideal anniversary gift? What do we really want when we dream of the perfect proposal? New psychological research suggests that many of us do not really understand our own needs. How surprising can it be that we reach for the wrong strategies? What we truly want from our intimate relationships and how to get it, this week on Hidden Brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Planet Visionaries. Professional climber and environmental advocate Alex Honnold hosts Planet Visionaries, a podcast spotlighting the people tackling climate challenges with real hopeful solutions. Throughout season 6, Alex brings together extraordinary changemakers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, This is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

Quick question. Do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, This is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. We all want to be loved. It's one of our deepest longings, a need so fundamental that we are willing to twist ourselves in knots to satisfy it. Yet psychologists say that many of the strategies we rely on to obtain love are either ineffective or counterproductive. Instead of bringing us closer to the warmth we seek, we often end up pushing it away. At the University of California, Riverside, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky studies what we do to feel loved and what we ought to be doing. Sonja Lyubomirsky, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Such a pleasure to be here.

Sonja, you're a fan of the TV program Couples Therapy. I haven't watched the show. Can you describe it for me and tell me about some of the patterns you've noticed?

Such a great show, right? So, these are real couples in New York. They kind of forget that they're on camera, and they have major problems. They're all very diverse. And I just feel like over the years, so much resentment and so much disappointment has built up.

It's very hard for me.

And what I love about the show, it actually makes me feel very smart because you hear them talking, and it's like the wife is saying, oh, you never bring me to the gym. You don't do this. You don't do this. Or the husband's saying, oh, you haven't done this for me. And then you see, like, they're fighting, Fighting over here on this level, but really underneath it, it seems so obvious that they don't feel loved. That, like, no matter what the guy does, she still doesn't feel loved. No matter what she does, he doesn't feel loved. But I really feel like at the heart of a lot of problems in relationships, or even breakups, it's a lack of feeling loved. No matter what the other person does, you still don't feel loved by them.

I understand, Sonia, that you've recently separated. And not long ago, you went on a date with a man who tried to win your affections. I understand he spoke a lot about his car.

It was really funny. So he had just bought this really brand new, high-end, like the highest-end Tesla. And so the whole ride to the restaurant we were going to, he was showing off the car, and it was actually really cool. Like, he's showing off all these features of the Tesla. It was like all this self-driving stuff and like really cool features that I had not seen before. And I enjoyed it. And at the end of the drive, I said, you know, I'll just call him Patrick, not his real name. I said, Patrick, you've persuaded me. I'm gonna date your Tesla. Like, I'm impressed. And he actually, he's a funny guy. He actually said, well, you know, in a few years you probably can. But he was trying to impress me the whole time with how great his car was.

And did you think he noticed that he was doing so? Do you think he was doing so consciously, deliberately? Had he given some thought to this?

Maybe after thinking about it, he might have been aware of it. But he's a smart guy. I feel like he should have been aware of it. But I feel like it's so human. It's such part of our human nature to want to impress others. It's evolutionarily adaptive for us to impress a new potential date or a new business partner or a new friend. And so when we talk to each other, especially towards the beginning of relationships, we want the other person to think that we're kind and interesting and intelligent and funny. And we might succeed in impressing the other person, but what it doesn't do is it doesn't really forge a connection, right?

Mm-hmm.

So you don't really leave that interaction feeling like, ah, I really am connected with that person.

I understand that another date turned into a full-fledged relationship, but this one had something of a fatal flaw. Tell me what happened.

I had a relationship with someone who really did love me, who I knew loved me, but I actually broke it off. And it's going to sound almost crazy about what the main reason was that I broke it off. And the main reason was he just didn't text me, like, often enough or kind of speedily enough. You know, he took so long to respond to my messages. And, you know, I I often think that the texting is like the currency of modern relationships, right? That's what a lot of us are doing in relationships is texting. And I realized later, it's just the lack of texting, that lack of responsiveness did not make me feel loved. And that was at the heart of it.

What did you hear when he did not text you quickly enough, Sonia? What went through your head?

It's like, I don't care enough. Yeah, the worst interpretation is something like, I don't care enough about your feelings. I know you're waiting. And it's like this thing, this idea that he's like, if you really loved me, you would care. You would know how important it is to respond right away. And you still are not doing it. And so that's what's going on in my head.

Did you have a breakup conversation where you actually told him the reason you were breaking up with him?

Yes. And we actually have had that texting conversation repeatedly before the breakup. And, you know, and he would apologize and he would sort of do better for a little while. And he would explain all the ways that he did show love to me, just not through texting. And just in the end, it just wasn't enough.

One last story, Sonia.

You have 4 kids, the oldest of whom is in her 20s.

You've seen the same patterns we've been discussing when it comes to your relationships with your kids. Can you say more?

So I realized one day that I just wasn't feeling as loved as I wanted to by my adult daughter. She doesn't sort of share that much with me. And I just realized that I just wasn't feeling as loved as I wanted to be. I think it's a fairly common situation.

I'm wondering how this perception came about when you felt like you were not being loved by your oldest daughter. What was she doing specifically that made you feel this way, or what was she not doing that made you feel this way?

What she was not doing is she wasn't sharing very much about herself. She wasn't showing sort of as much affection, physical affection, as much as I like, because I'm a very physical person. So I was sort of focused on what she was not doing enough, or thinking, like, what should I be doing to try to get her to be more responsive to me?

Hmm.

Kind of what was wrong with me that I wasn't feeling this love coming from her.

In some ways, it's a variation of what happened with the guy who wasn't texting back quickly enough. It was sort of a lack of responsiveness in some ways that you were perceiving as a lack of love.

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's so interesting, you know, because we often don't feel loved for a variety of reasons. And sometimes the person really, really does love us, and they might even show love and different ways, but that it somehow isn't registering with us for a variety of reasons. Maybe because that's not, quote, our love language, or maybe because we don't sort of even see it, or we don't think of it as being very, very authentic, or we don't think it doesn't apply to us. So it's this very interesting problem.

Whether it's our children, our friends, or our partners, What we want most from relationships is to feel cared for and appreciated, to feel loved. But achieving this is much harder than it looks. When we come back, how we go about trying to feel loved in all the wrong ways. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Quick question: Do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

Support for Hidden Brain comes from Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on those iced lattes you love. Switch to Progressive and see if you could save. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We all want to be loved. We want to feel cared for and appreciated by our friends and by our partners. We want our parents and our kids to tell us how much we mean to them. But many of us walk around with what you might call a love deficit. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky says we don't realize there's a difference between being loved and feeling loved. Sonja, let's start there. I think most of us assume that being loved and feeling loved are the same thing. Aren't they?

I think often they are. But I think that the interesting case, you know, for me as a psychologist are the times when We are loved, but we don't feel loved. And it could be that we're not even seeing whatever the other person is doing to make us feel loved. We're not perceiving it. We're not somehow taking it in. We're not internalizing it. That love isn't being felt.

How common do you think it is, this discrepancy between being loved and feeling loved? Do you think it happens a lot?

I think it happens a lot. Harry Reis, my co-author, and I did a survey where we asked people, are there relationships in your life that you sometimes don't feel as loved as you would like to be, or as frequently as you'd like to be? And something, I think, like 70% said that, yes, there's at least one relationship in which I don't feel as loved as I want to be. I actually think that number is an understatement. I actually think it's a lot higher than that. But 70% is a lot. And so maybe it's your colleague, it's your romantic partner, your mom, your child, your friend. I think it's very common.

People also told you in the survey— this was a large survey with almost 2,000 individuals— that they didn't feel loved by their communities. So it wasn't just the intimate relationships in people's lives. It was the larger social settings that they found themselves in.

Absolutely. And, you know, there's sort of this lack of feeling— you can also call it a lack of feeling of belonging, which I think is very much related to feeling love. Loneliness is very much related. You could argue that being lonely really is basically not feeling loved by your community, friends. You know, some people argue this is an epidemic. But this really raises an important point, which is that most people, when they think of love, they think of romantic love or passionate love. They think of love between romantic partners. But, you know, there's love in the workplace. And by the way, I think the word love is not used often enough at work. You know, I think we should bring it back to the workplace. Love among friends, neighbors. My friends and I often say, I love you, to each other. And people are confused. Like, I'll be on the phone and I'll say, I love you so much, and I hang up the phone. My kids are like, who are you talking to? And I'm like, that's my friend, because I love my friends very much. So we define love very broadly.

I understand that one of the areas that had the largest gaps between being loved and feeling loved was romantic relationships. So there are lots of people in romantic relationships, these are people who ostensibly are loved because they're in a romantic relationship, who feel like they're not.

That's exactly right. It is very common to not feel loved, at least, I mean, it may be even during a period of time during a romantic relationship. It may be in a particular domain of that relationship, maybe certain activities you do together that you sort of don't feel loved by your partner. Maybe when they don't do chores in the house, you don't feel loved by them, or they don't respond to your texts, you don't feel loved by them. So I do think it's extremely common.

You asked respondents to describe moments when they did not feel loved. Can you give me some of the examples that they shared with you, Sonja?

Often, it's not being invited. Actually, that was a very common one, not being invited to something, sort of not being included to maybe a social event, not remembering something important to you. I think feeling loved comes— is very highly related to sort of feeling understood. And so when people feel like, I'm not really seen, I'm not understood, that this person never asks me about this passion of mine. Forgetting a birthday. Often it's those kinds of events that really drive it home, like, I don't feel loved.

And also when people were suffering or sick, I mean, you really want people to check in on you when you're suffering or sick, and some people reported that wasn't Exactly.

So it's like the kind of like the time that you really, really needed, that's when you sort of learn who your true friends are is when during periods of sort of illness or adversity, like who are the people who are coming in and helping you and bringing you food or driving you to the airport or to the doctor's office? Yeah. So those are kind of events that really sort of, as I said, kind of illuminate or are telling, but not feeling loved can come at any kind of moments during the day. So it doesn't have to be only during sort of important events of our lives.

Hmm.

You found that the ways people go about trying to feel more loved are often misguided and sometimes counterproductive. One thing we do is try and manage or manipulate the other person into saying or doing what we want them to do. I want to play you a clip from the movie The Breakup. Jennifer Aniston plays a woman named Brooke. And Brooke is involved with Gary, played by Vince Vaughn. Now in this scene, Brooke talks to Gary as he plays a car-themed video game.

Well, I'm gonna go do the dishes.

Cool.

It'd be nice if you helped me. Damn it.

No problem.

Uh, we'll get them a little bit later.

I'm just gonna hit the streets here for a little bit.

Gary, come on.

I don't want to do them later. Let's just do them now. Take 15 minutes.

Oh, honey, I am so exhausted.

I I just honestly want to relax for a little bit.

If I could just sit here and we will, you know, we can clean the dishes tomorrow.

You know I don't like waking up to a dirty kitchen.

Who cares?

I care, all right?

I care.

I busted my ass all day cleaning this house and then cooking that meal, and I worked today. It would be nice if you said thank you and helped me with the dishes.

Fine, I'll help you do the damn dishes.

Oh, come on. You know what?

No, that's—

see, that's not what I want.

You just said that you want me to help you do the dishes.

I want you to want to do the dishes.

Why would I want to do dishes?

Why?

See, that's my whole point.

Sonia, what do you hear when you listen to that exchange?

First of all, I've so been in that situation, mostly as Brooke, but I think maybe on both sides. This is so similar to that show Couples Therapy, except it's fiction. So it's like Brooke is not feeling loved. Because he's not seeing her. He's not seeing how important it is for her to sort of get the dishes done, and so then they can really go about their evening. And then to her, it just seems like this is so easy. It's just 15 minutes of your time. And so it's like she's not feeling loved by his response.

And of course, what Brooke is really asking in this case is actually not help with the dishes. She's actually asking for something else altogether.

She's asking really to be seen and heard. She needs him to kind of, yes, make her feel loved is the word.

As she memorably says, she doesn't want him to do the dishes. She wants him to want to do the dishes.

And I've totally been in that situation where I'll complain, like, why? And like my husband used to say, and he's like, look, I'm helping you do the dishes, like literally with the dishes, like, or I'm doing it. Like, I don't need to be happy doing it, was his response. And I'm like, no, but I want you to be happy doing it. Which is really the same kind of thing.

Another way that we go about trying to make others love us is by making ourselves as physically attractive as possible. We think that looking good will win us the love that we seek. Talk about this strategy and whether it's effective.

Right, and I'd like to broaden it, not just physical attractiveness, but sort of other characteristics where we think, like, if only I were more physically attractive, then I'd be more loved. If only I were more successful, I would feel more loved. These are called extrinsic goals, right, which is like beauty, fame, power, money, popularity, right? If only I had those things, I would feel more loved, or I would get more love. And then we try to show that off, right? Sort of broadcast those positive qualities. And it doesn't work. It might work to impress a person, but it doesn't work to actually make us feel more loved. And if you're kind of broadcasting this, if it's all about physical attractiveness for you or about your accomplishments, it doesn't really show the person you're kind of True self, if you will. It's just showing them this sort of outside little positive shiny part that isn't really you.

And this is the guy who's telling you all about his Tesla car.

Exactly. And actually, I had another date where the guy just went on and on. And he's a story— he's actually a storyteller by profession. So he's a great storyteller. And he went on and on telling all these funny stories. And after 45 minutes, And it impressed me. It did impress me. I thought, oh, he's funny, he's smart, he's charming, he's witty. I did think that was true, but I really didn't feel a connection with him. And after 45 minutes, I stopped him and I said, do you realize that for the last 45 minutes, you have not asked me a single question?

I remember one of our previous guests on Hidden Brain talked about how we know about IQ, and some of us know about EQ, which is emotional intelligence. But there's also what they call ZQ, which is the person who asks zero questions. And so where are you on the ZQ scale? Are you somebody who asks zero questions or a lot?

Well, I think question asking is one of the most sort of underestimated social skill. In fact, I tell my kids, you know, like, if you want to make friends, ask people questions about themselves, especially questions about things that they, you know, that their friends care about.

Yeah.

And so, and in fact, Nick Epley, who's a professor at University of Chicago, has done these studies that show that people think that, like, if they ask personal questions, that they are going to be perceived as kind of intrusive or too probing, too personal. But actually, on average, we crave to be asked, like, we We want to be asked about our lives, our inner lives, what we really think about something, what our childhood was like.

So not only do we try and present ourselves as very beautiful or try and talk up our accomplishments or our skills or our talents, we also go to some lengths to hide parts of ourselves that are unappealing or might be unlovable. Talk about this strategy. We often hide our blemishes in order to feel more loved. But does that work?

Right, because we think that that person wouldn't love me anymore if they kind of knew about this weakness of mine, this fault of mine, or this bad deed that I made. And we're not always wrong, right? I mean, sometimes people really do dislike others for certain traits or behaviors. But we do it, we sort of overdo it. We do it too much. And one of the keys to feeling loved is being known to the other. And if you're hiding your vulnerabilities, your contradictions, your sort of messy insides from the other person, you won't feel loved because you'll always wonder, if they really knew me, then they wouldn't love me.

Hmm.

And it turns out that we often, when we disclose or show some of those contradictions or blemishes, At the right pace, we don't sort of dump them all at once. When the person already knows us a little bit, we're often actually better liked. There's this famous case when JFK, after the Bay of Pigs, admitted to making a mistake, and his approval ratings shot up. So sometimes admitting failures can actually increase people's liking of us.

And of course, in interpersonal settings, Sonia, I want you to like me not just for my accomplishments and my talents, but I need the love in the places where I'm actually vulnerable. And if I'm not actually sharing the places where I'm vulnerable or where I have blemishes, then, as you say, all I experience is that you're admiring me for my talents and my qualities, not for what makes me me.

So you feel admired. You feel, yeah, like you're impressed. You're impressed at the other person, but you don't actually feel loved. When you think about the definition of unconditional love, I mean, that's basically what unconditional love is, is that we're loved despite our blemishes.

Talk about the idea that a lot of what we're doing when we are engaged in relationships really falls under the realm of performance rather than connection. Because when you talk about all the different strategies that you're describing here, talking up our money, our cars, our wealth, our talents, our abilities, how well we tell stories, how well we can tell jokes, all of this is performance.

Yeah, it's performance. And it's very human. We all do it. And maybe that's part of the kind of social lubricant that is part of a conversation. But really, by the way, and I think conversations are really the key to feeling loved. When you think about a relationship, it's really a series of conversations. So changing those conversations is the key to make them a little bit less performative and more about deeper connection, really having deeper conversations. It's really the the deeper conversations that make you— make the other person feel loved. When I show genuine interest in you, Shankar, and ask you about, you know, maybe some— has anything been worrying you, you know, the last few weeks? What's been on your mind? You know, what's, uh, you know, tell me about a relationship, a family member that you are worried about or that you're really happy about.

You know, those are the kinds of questions that make us feel more connected to each other, you know, not just trying to impress each I'm wondering what role social media might play in these habits and preferences, Sonia, because now increasingly, people talk to one another across these digital mediums, and they're presenting a face to other people. You're presenting yourself. I'm someone who likes this kind of music. I'm someone who basically goes on these kinds of vacations. I'm someone who wears these kinds of clothes. I would imagine that in some ways, Social media is amplifying our drive to perform.

Absolutely. Absolutely. People are posting their most positive moments in their lives, right? This is me on my vacation looking really great. They're not posting so much about the fullness of their life. But feeling loved requires really kind of a dance. And I'd like to think of it in terms of 2 people talking, although it could be more than 2 people, but it's just easier to think about a dyad where you're really reading the room. You're really reading the other person and asking them just the right level of deep question where they feel like they're really seen and heard, where I— and I'm showing them I really care. You can't do that on social media. It doesn't come off. So that's why if a friend shares a really funny joke on social media, I might appreciate it. But what I really appreciate is if they email me or they text me with that joke because I feel like they're thinking about me. They think that I would really appreciate that. And that's that forges a connection between us.

Dropping hints and fishing for compliments, trying to look good and appear impressive, striving to present a polished and perfect image— we think such strategies will bring us the love we seek. When they don't, we double down. We try to come across as even more perfect, be ever more impressive, hide the tiniest flaws When we come back, how to feel loved for real. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Quick question: Do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's Part-Time MBA in Rosslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden.virginia.edu/ptmba.

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What I mean by this is that we think that to feel more loved, we need to change ourselves, sort of make ourselves more lovable, and also show how lovable we are, hide our blemishes. Or maybe we change the other person. Maybe we try to get them to love us more, to somehow see our positive qualities more. But actually, it's good news. The conclusion that Harry and I reached is it's actually good news, which is that you don't have to change yourself. You don't have to change the other person. What you have to change is the conversation. And a relationship, again, is like a series of conversations. And it's a lot less overwhelming to think about it that way. And actually, another huge insight that we had writing the book is that if I want to make myself feel loved, The first step is try to make the other person feel loved. That's really what comes first. And it's counterintuitive because we think, like, again, we're focusing on ourselves. It's very, again, it's evolutionarily adaptive for us when there's a problem to focus on ourselves, figure out what's wrong. But here's a situation where really the focus needs to be on the other person, is to get the other person to feel loved by getting to know them better.

So let's unpack some of these things, but let's start with the basic idea. You argue that by demonstrating interest in others, that is one way, in some ways, of eliciting interest from others, that there is a norm of reciprocity that is at work here.

Exactly.

And the reciprocity norm or reciprocity principle is really one of the strongest principles of human social behavior. It's very, very powerful. This is why if I want you to do me a favor, I do you a favor, right? It's very, very hard for us not to reciprocate, not to return the favor.

Right.

And so we're talking here in the context of conversation that when I show genuine curiosity to you, Shankar, and I really listen, really listen to your answers, and I'm asking you questions that show that I'm listening, that take what you said maybe to a new level, it's gonna be very compelling for you. to return that favor and to sort of direct that attention back to me and then ask me questions about my life, my inner life, and listen to me. And so it's kind of a— it's a dance or sort of a dynamic that goes back and forth.

Now, of course, a lot of people are going to say, you know, Sonja and Harry are telling me that at precisely the point that I feel unloved, at precisely the point that I feel like this other person is is dropping the ball, they are telling me I need to pay attention to that person instead of demanding that that person pay attention to me. You and Harry came up with a metaphor to explain your idea that you call the relationship seesaw. First, explain the term seesaw. You have an interesting spelling for the term and how this metaphor works.

Yes. But I want to also— I'm going to do that, but I also want to sort of validate that, yes, it seems so counterintuitive kind of at the lowest point where you really want to feel loved to sort of advise people to show interest in the other person. But that's exactly what is needed. And to really ask the person, why is it that they are responding the way they are? It's showing curiosity in them. And by the way, and I do also want to add a caveat, which is that once in a while, it's not going to work. It's going to fail. The other person is not going to respond. They're not going to reciprocate. That is going to happen once in a while. And maybe that means that you need to walk away, or you need to pause, or you need to try something different, or you accept the fact that that's how it's going to be. And so I don't want— I'm not a Pollyanna, and I don't think that it's going to work 100% of the time, but I think it's very, very powerful what we're talking about. So the seesaw, we spell sea like underwater. And the reason we spell it this way is this idea that there's a seesaw underwater, and we're sort of partially submerged and sort of say you and I are sitting on opposite ends of the seesaw. So most of us are submerged, but maybe the top of our heads or the top of ourselves are showing. And that's what's going on in most of the world. We're showing just like a little tip of ourselves to one another, just kind of maybe the shiny parts, maybe the positive qualities, right? Most of us, it's kind of the iceberg, right? It's under the water. We're not really showing to each other. And then the idea is that, again, we're sitting on the seesaw. And then when I show genuine curiosity and interest in you, and I ask you a question, what has been on your mind lately? And I show warmth and acceptance. You feel a sense of warmth and trust and safety. And it's as though I'm pressing down on the seesaw, and it lifts you up a little bit. It lifts you up a little bit, so you're able to show a little bit more of yourself to me, right? You're able to reveal a little bit more of your inner self, a little more of your full self, maybe some vulnerabilities. And then as you do that, as you talk about maybe your childhood and how difficult it was, I listen really well to you. I'm really listening. I'm asking questions. And that makes you even more— You're feeling even more safe and trusting and even more comfortable, lifting more of yourself out of the water. And then reciprocation happens, right? And then you ideally then reciprocate and then show interest and curiosity in myself and lift me out of the water. So it's kind of a process of I lift you and then you lift me in this lifting and being lifted.

And I love the metaphor of the seesaw because initially, when you are lifting effectively the other person out of the water, you're actually doing more to submerge yourself. You're putting more of yourself under the water so that the other person can be lifted out. But of course, if you think about the natural movement of a seesaw, yes, it goes up on one side, but then it goes up on the other side. And that's what happens. It goes back and forth.

When you show genuine interest and warmth and listening towards the other person, it helps them be comfortable and helps them open up. It helps us to know each other better. And then they reciprocate.

In your book, you describe a very talented listener named Marco. Tell me what Marco does and how it really shows the power of listening in helping the other person raise themselves out of the ocean.

So Marco was the best listener I've ever met in my life. And I don't know how he became such a great listener, if it's just genetic. I do think we can learn to be better listeners. But he also had a great memory, too. So most of us listen to respond, right? So we're kind of like, while we're listening, ostensibly, we're really rehearsing what we're going to say next, right?

Right.

And we're kind of waiting for the mic to be given back to us. When you think about it, So this guy, Marco, was not doing this. He was listening to learn. And listening to learn is listening like there's going to be a quiz tomorrow, right?

Mm-hmm.

And he would remember everything. And he would say, oh, Sonia, remember that time you were telling me about your mom, and this happened, and you were wearing that red dress, and you were sitting over there? It's so incredibly compelling, right? Because you feel like, wow, he really cares about me. He's very thoughtful. He's paying attention, right? Now, by the way, when we're— I don't have that kind of memory. So when we can't remember the red dress, that doesn't mean that we're not a good person. But this guy really was a prodigy at listening.

I can't remember who told us this story, but someone told us a story on Hidden Brain some time ago about former President Bill Clinton, who famously was able to make every person in a room feel like they had his full attention. But they told us this wonderful story about Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas visiting, I think, a middle school. and talking to the various kids there and asking, what do you want to be when you grow up? One of the kids who was a little cheeky said, I want to be you when I grow up. This is a middle schooler. Everyone has a good laugh and then Clinton leaves the governorship of Arkansas. He becomes president of the United States. At one point, he goes back to the South during a natural disaster and there are thousands of people who are waiting to see him and there's a rope line with like— he's greeting thousands of people and shaking hands. After doing 2 hours of this, he's at an intersection And he looks over the intersection 3 rows back, and he reaches out and shakes this guy's hand who's now 8 years or 10 years older than he was in middle school. And Clinton asks him, do you still want to be me?

That is such a moving story. Oh my God, I love that story so much. And I've heard that too, right? Like, he'll remember, like, your cousin's wedding happened, and how did that go? And, you know, most of us don't have that kind of memory, so we don't feel— I don't think we need to feel bad if we don't. But charismatic people like Bill Clinton, he's really like a prodigy. They make you feel like you're the only person in the room, like you're the only person in the world when you're talking to them. You know, there's a story, and again, I may not even get it right, and it may be apocryphal, but it's a story about when Gladstone was running for Prime Minister against Disraeli, and a woman sat next to each of them in sort of consecutive fundraising nights.

Hmm.

And after she sat next to Gladstone, She was asked, so how was your dinner? And she said, oh, it was such a lovely dinner. I had such a lovely time I had with him. He's just the cleverest man in all of England. And then the next night she sits next to Disraeli and the same question. And they ask her, how was your night? And she said, oh, that was such a wonderful time with him. I feel like I'm the cleverest woman in all of England.

Right?

And that's exactly what Bill Clinton and charismatic people do. Instead of making them feel good about themselves, they make you feel good about yourself. And again, it's curiosity and listening. They ask you questions about yourself, and they draw out your wit or your kindness or your interestingness, your intelligence. That's the key.

You also say it's important to genuinely keep our hearts open to the other person. In other words, it's not just how we look, what we say, how we listen, but inside, where the other person can't see us at all, to actually keep our heart open to the other person. Describe what you mean by this, Sonia.

You know, and this is, in some ways, this is actually the most common attribute of relationships is, you know, most of us in relationships that are sort of intact, whether it's a friendship or romantic relationship or collegial relationship, you know, we tend to have an open heart toward the other person, which means we have warmth towards them. We wish them well. We want them to be happy. We're kind to them. We care about them. So actually, it's pretty common to have that open heart. But it's important to maintain that, because that sense of warmth, it helps the other person, as we talked about, to open up, right? When we're really warm and kind and our eyes show— sometimes, I mean, I have friends, they look at me with loving eyes is really one way to think about it.

Mm-hmm.

It's so wonderful. And that warmth gives us a sense of safety and trust and helps us to open up and become more known and sort of we can become— and then to feel more loved.

I think many of us look at people who are good communicators, good listeners, and we say, okay, I need to do these 4 different things. I need to look the other person in the eye. I need to ask them questions. I need to show interest. I need to ask follow-up questions. And yes, you can do all of those things, but at some level, if you're not actually interested in the other person, We are very good at picking up fakery, very good at picking up people who are not sincere. And in some ways, when you talk about keeping an open heart to someone, what you're saying is it's not just what you're showing on the outside that matters. You actually have to, at some level, feel it on the inside.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And actually, the definition of what's called high-quality listening is kind of the psychological term for really good listening is, Basically, you're paying attention. I'm paying attention to your words. I'm understanding your words. And also, I care about what you're saying, right? And that last part is really important. Like, I actually care, right? And so that warmth, that kindness, yeah, it's so critical. It's kind of a symptom, right, that the other person really cares. And as you said, we can tell. You can't fake it. It's good.

It's evolutionarily adaptive, again, for us to be good inauthenticity.

Yeah.

authenticity detectors, right? Because those are maybe people that we don't want to invest a lot of time with.

I understand that when you and Harry were writing your book, you spent some time in a coffee shop talking about this notion of keeping your heart open. And other patrons in the coffee shop overheard your conversation and came over on their own volition to share ideas with you. Describe for me what happened.

It was actually incredible. So this was in January, last January, in Brooklyn, New York. of a dark, cold day. And so— and this has never really happened anytime, because I'm often in coffee shops talking to people, but I've never been sort of approached so consistently by others. So we were sort of brainstorming ideas for our book, and I would say at least 3 different people just came up to us and started talking to us. And some of them were— one of them was really shy and said, I'm really sorry to interrupt, but I want to tell you. So they heard what we were talking about, feeling And so they gave us different stories from their lives. And sort of one woman, maybe 28 or something, her boyfriend, I think, lives in Mexico, she said. And so it's really hard for them to sort of maintain that relationship. It's long distance. And so she mentioned how they have this shared Spotify list. And so on a regular basis, they will add songs to the shared list that are meaningful to them.

Hmm.

And that makes them feel loved. Hmm.

Yeah.

Another person said that he and his partner have a picture frame that has a picture of the two of them, and it lights up kind of randomly throughout the day. And when it lights up, they send each other a word, just one word that sort of expresses their feelings. And it could be love, it could be yearning, it could be curiosity, it could be loneliness, right? Sort of lonely. And that makes them feel loved, to feel like that they really feel connected. To the other person. And it was so beautiful. It was so beautiful that people kept, like, they wanted to share, which made us think that, like, wow, this is really hitting a nerve. People really think a lot about this, about feeling loved, not feeling loved, what maintains feeling loved, what gets people to fall out of that feeling loved. It's really on people's minds a lot.

One of the things that I think happens in long-term relationships, especially, Sonia, is that we start to forget how complicated people are and how much they change. Can you talk a moment about how being open to another person means sort of accepting that they are complex people and that they're not fixed in stone? So just because someone goes out to a party doesn't mean that they're an extrovert. They could have different sides to them.

Totally.

Talk about this idea that our embracing of complexity, both our own complexity and the complexity of other people, helps us forge closer relationships.

Yeah, I think this is so important. And we've been talking about the importance of sharing and listening and getting known and being known. Well, some of that might involve me telling you a story that might involve some sort of a contradiction or something that's maybe not so positive about me, or something that, like, you don't really understand. Why did she do this? And so I think it's important for us to respond with, I guess you would say, with acceptance, that you really accept the other person, that the idea that we're all a quilt or a tapestry of many, many, many qualities. And I have this trauma, yes, but it doesn't define me. Sometimes I'm kind, but you know what? Sometimes I'm selfish. And sometimes I'm loyal. Sometimes I'm a little narcissistic. And we all have that. We all have that. And how do we sort of turn off that sort of judgmental tendency is when we hear someone's story that sort of doesn't quite make sense, you know, how do we respond to that? And I think that's actually one of the most challenging things to do.

You told me that there were times when you didn't feel loved by your daughter, even though Even though you knew that she did love you, I'm wondering whether your research has informed how you went about seeking love from her.

You know, when I didn't feel loved by my daughter, I thought, like, maybe I should talk to her and ask her, you know, what is it? And somehow I thought that— I don't know, like, I could change something about myself or about her. But what the research behind the book taught me is to start with showing interest in her and showing interest in her inner life. and sort of what makes her tick and start to ask questions about the things that are really exciting to her, which may not be exciting to me, at least not initially. And so I started to spend more time with her. I started to ask her more questions and sort of to listen more and then to follow up too, right? So maybe follow up maybe a week later or a month later, say, hey, I remember when you told me you were interested in that. What is happening there? Sort of to follow up because then she sees that I remember the things that Did that work?

Did it change her behavior?

Yeah, it did. Now, it didn't have some kind of immediate miraculous result, but it led her to open up a little bit more to me. It led her to ask me more questions about me, which is not as common. Children often don't ask their parents a lot of questions. It made me think, like, oh, I should go call my mom and ask her more questions. Maybe we should all do this. After this episode, call your parents and ask them questions about their inner lives or about their childhoods, about what really matters to them. And also, it sort of led us to be more affectionate with each other. I'm a huge fan of physical touch. It's like I just feel so loved when we're cuddling. And so we've been cuddling a lot more lately.

As Sonja Lyubomirsky notes, when we don't feel loved, our thoughts often turn inwards.

We ask ourselves, what is it about me that others don't like?

When a classmate in school doesn't want to be our friend, we may tell ourselves we're not cool enough. When a potential employer doesn't hire us, we may us, think we're not good enough.

When we're rejected, we may think we're not good enough.

we fear it's because we're not smart enough. How do we prevent these sorts of thought patterns from becoming self-fulfilling prophecies?

Recently, the psychologist Greg Walton told me a story. He works at Stanford University and also went to school there. At an alumni event, a woman approached him with an anecdote of perseverance.

She said when she was a kid, she loved soccer. And she told her father that she was going to try out, do a walk-on to the Stanford women's soccer team, which is a very good team.

Walking onto a college sports team is never easy.

Most of the players are recruited by coaches. The process is highly competitive with lucrative scholarships on the line. Joining the team as a walk-on would require a ton of hard work.

The woman's father And her father said, you're not going to go there 3 weeks early and, like, get up every morning at whatever hour. Like, I don't believe you. And she told me that she did do that.

After the woman received negative feedback from her father, she could have let it stop her.

She could have believed that she wasn't good enough or dedicated enough. Instead, she chose to focus on a positive compliment she'd received years earlier.

And the reason she did that was because when she was a kid playing on a youth soccer team, she overheard the parent— a parent on a different team saying, hey, like that number 23, which was her number, she's really good. And she held that in her heart and in her mind as she, as she came to Stanford, as she walked onto Stanford's women's team, and as she made the team and made a career out of the soccer business.

When we consider our own abilities, how do we keep fears and doubts from turning into beliefs? After the break, Greg Walton answers listener questions and comments about the science of self-fulfilling prophecies and how to avoid negative thought spirals. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. When we realize that we failed at something, it's hard to focus on anything else. Our minds tell us over and over again, over, that we are weak, we're lazy, we're stupid. This negative train of thought can lead to painful questions. Why am I not good enough? Do others hate me? One fear bleeds into another. Soon we don't even remember where the negativity started. Down we descend into a vortex of doom. How do we find our way out of such negative thought spirals? At Stanford University, psychologist Greg Walton studies how our minds can entrap us and what we can do to avoid these traps. Greg is the author of Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts. He joined us on a recent episode of Hidden Brain titled You 2.0: Stop Spiraling. Today, he's back on the show to respond to your questions and comments about that episode. Greg Walton, welcome back to Hidden Brain.

Thank you for having me.

Greg, I'm going to start by playing you a story of a listener who called in. Her name is Sherry, and she shared how she struggled with negative thought spirals as a young woman.

It really escalated quite a bit as I grew out of my teens and into my 20s. That it started to become so bad, you know, all of these thoughts about how I wasn't living up to who I should be, that was stupid, you shouldn't have said that, why did you do that, regrets about the past, these kinds of terrible looping thoughts that at some point had me thinking about suicide quite a bit because I just didn't think that there was a way I'm going to come back at the end of the show, Greg, with more of Sheri's story.

Sheri tells us how she got out of her doom loop. But for now, can you start by talking about Sheri's experience of spiraling? What she went through is hardly unique, is it?

No, of course not at all. So that experience of having one bad thought kind of prime the next thought. So I did something bad. I'm bad. I did something else bad. I'm really bad. That vortex, as you describe it, makes a lot of sense. And I think it's something that everybody can relate to.

Hmm. You talk about some of the reasons we might spiral. We heard from a listener named Lucia who writes, our 16-year-old son is in a downward spiral because of a hiccup on his schedule this year. He's a junior in high school. He's given up on school. He thinks his life is ruined. He has a very fixed mindset, and it is very difficult for him to get unstuck. We are having a hard time supporting him through this and would love some insight. We talked, Greg, in our previous conversation about how people often overreact to setbacks in their lives. We blow small pieces of information out of proportion. You talked about the idea of something called a tiff bit. Can you remind us what a tiff bit is?

Sure, of course. A tiff-bit is a tiny fact that you, you have a big theory about, and then you react to it in a big way. So the teacher maybe says something unkind, and you think, she thinks I'm dumb, I'm checking out, I'm not participating in this class anymore. That would be an example of a tiff-bit.

So when it comes to a young person, somebody who is in high school, I mean, it's hard to imagine the kind of setback this person could have that could justify them feeling like their life is ruined when they're a junior in high school. And yet this must happen all the time. People in high school must constantly feel, my God, whatever happened this past week in school, it's so huge that it must mean the rest of my life has no future.

Yeah.

Well, I think the thing to think about there is we're talking about adolescents who are in the process of developing from being children into the adults they'll be. So, you know, suppose you're a kid, you're 15 years old, and you want to join— maybe it's the newspaper club— and maybe you get excluded from that. You're— in your mind, you might be thinking, now I can't be the newspaper journalist that I wanted to become. You might not have that thought fully consciously, but the rejection from the club might feel like a rejection from the future self that you are aspiring Lucia writes that her son has a fixed mindset.

What are fixed mindsets, and how do they lead to these kinds of thought spirals?

Yeah, a fixed mindset is the idea that you have a certain amount of intelligence. That's what you have, and you're either smart or you're not smart, and there's not much you can do to increase that. And if you have that fixed mindset and you approach a learning situation, Maybe you take a math test. If you don't do very well, that fixed mindset tells you, you're not good at this. You're not a math person. You shouldn't try at this. And it leads people to become unresilient when they're faced with learning challenges.

You've done research looking at how students can avoid spirals and cultivate what's called a growth mindset. So for a parent like Lucia, who is basically Dealing with the 16-year-old son who feels like his life is over, how would you recommend she deploy this idea of a growth mindset to help her son, Greg?

Yeah. So I think one thing to say is that Lucia's role is one important role as a parent. And there's other people around that child too, including all of the educators around them who are playing important roles. And all of the peers around that child as well. And what all of those actors want to be able to do in that circumstance is really talk about the value of learning and growth and the opportunity for learning and growth. So when you make a mistake, it's not a sign that you're dumb. That would be a tiff bit. It's a sign that you haven't gotten something yet. You know, just in the same way that a toddler who falls down as they're learning to walk They're not a non-walker, right? They're just a child who hasn't yet gotten the competency of walking. So in math class, if you fail a test, that means you don't understand that material yet. And the parent's role and the teacher's role and the peer's role is all to come together to support that learning process, to play their roles well. And for the parent, that might be about encouragement. For the teacher, it might be saying, I'm going to be with you every step of the way as you work on this material, and it's hard, and I'm going to give you the right materials, and we're When you ask a question, that's helping me become a better teacher because you're helping me understand what it is you don't know yet and how I can respond to you in ways that will support that learning growth that you're on.

We heard from another parent named Melissa who writes, I've noticed that young kids these days, including my own, seem to treat every small bump in the road as a large catastrophe. I try to talk to my kids and encourage them not to see it like this. Now, as we've discussed, Greg, adolescence is a dramatic time in our lives. Do you know if teenagers are more prone to negative spirals than younger kids or older adults?

I don't know of data that has asked that question directly. I would not be surprised, though. You know, I had an opportunity this past fall to do a couple of different events for Stanford alum, talking about people's experiences in the transition to college. And in these events, I talked about how it's very common to worry about whether you belong when you come to college. And when you have an initial difficulty, maybe a conflict with a roommate, that can sometimes seem, if you're 18 years old, like maybe that's a sign that people like me don't belong here. And what was so interesting in doing these events with alum, people who are now in their 40s and their 50s and their 60s and their 70s, is they all recalled back to that time and said, absolutely, yes. When I was 18, it felt like the world was riding on that. Like the world was riding on, you know, whether I was gonna have a good relationship with my roommate, or what did my professor say to me when I asked a question in class, or did I get a, you know, a B+ or an A- on that chemistry test, right? From the perspective of a 45-year-old, that's in the distant past, right? And nothing is really riding on that now, but they could recall back to what that was like and how important it was. Hmm.

Sometimes negative thought spirals can be triggered by what we think is happening in the minds of other people. We got a message about this from a listener named Linda. She writes, when I worked as a nurse, there was an on-call administrator I needed to call maybe once a month. Whenever he'd answer, he sounded negative and perturbed. I always felt like he didn't like me because his tone seemed like he was saying, Great, it's you again bothering me. One day, I was standing within earshot when his phone rang. I heard him answer in the exact same tone he'd been answering when I had called. This is when I realized that it wasn't me, that that was simply how he answered his phone. So Greg, in previous episodes of the show, we've explored the errors we make when we try to read the minds of other people. Talk for a moment about how These faulty assumptions can shape our tendency to spiral?

Yeah, right? So the listener is learning that this person she's interacting with is actually just a grump, right? So it's actually about him, it's not about her. All of us kind of look out at the world from a kind of self-perspective, like you're reading the world from the perspective of yourself, and so you're asking the question kind of, you know, what does this have to do with how I'm seen? What does this have to do with me? What does it have to do with my abilities? What does this have to do with how they're evaluating me or what my prospects might be? And sometimes we can neglect the fact that it might be about them. It might be about their, their own stuff that's going on inside of them.

Hmm.

And then when something negative happens, like a brusque interpersonal experience, you can think very easily, they don't like me, they don't believe in me, they don't respect me. And that can kick off a downward spiral.

I'm wondering if this is also magnified when we are dealing with people who in some ways have power over us. So if you're thinking about a small child interacting with her parents, for example, or a kid in a classroom interacting with a professor, You know, it's understandable that we pay a lot of attention now to the affect and behavior of this other person because this other person has power over us. And now perhaps we are even more likely to overinterpret their moods, their attitudes, the way they speak as being somehow referential to us.

Yeah, absolutely. Right. So I'm reminded of an older French movie called The Class. In which there's a teacher who's teaching a group of students, many of whom are immigrants, and there's an African immigrant student in the class. And the African immigrant student finds out that the teacher who he believes most in, who he thinks believes in him, has said something about him. And there's this classroom confrontation that elicits what that thing is that that teacher had said about that student. And what the word is that the teacher had was limited. And the student, the immigrant student, hears that this is the word that his favorite teacher has said about him, and he physically deflates. He collapses into his chair. And then maybe 30 seconds later in the film, he erupts in, in an incredible display of anger. And you can feel how devastating that is, how absolutely devastating that is when someone you look up to you, someone who has power over you, someone who might know something that you don't know, foresees for you a future that is limited, sees in you a lack of capacity. It is absolutely devastating.

Hmm.

And the inverse is also incredibly true and incredibly powerful. So there is, I don't think, anything more powerful or more special Then when you're struggling, when you don't know which way to go, when you're lost or you're confused or you're getting into conflicts, and somebody believes in you and they see in you the good and the successful person that you can become, and they share that image for you, hmm, and they play their part to help you realize that image, I think that is—

that's bringing When we come back, how our framing of negative events causes us to spiral downwards or upwards. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At times it feels like bad things come in 3s, 4s, even 10s. One setback leads to another and another. And soon this destructive snowball has gathered so much momentum it feels like it will crush us. At Stanford University, psychologist Greg Walton studies how these avalanches grow and how we can stop them. Today, he joins us to answer your questions about his work. Greg, we heard from a listener named Suzanne. She says she has struggled with spiraling almost her whole life. It started when she was very young.

When I was 19, my sister was 21, she choked to death. And so, of course, now I have a fear of choking. If I come down late at night and my husband is sitting in front of the TV eating peanuts, I start worrying that he's going to choke on the peanut and I'm going to come down in the morning and find him dead. And it's something that I get a little bug in my mind about it initially, and then it starts to play out and it gets darker and darker and darker. Until I find myself literally in an absolute panic situation. That jump to disaster thinking has become so automatic that sometimes I don't even realize it's happened until I'm in it. But it's a lifelong process for me, and I love your program. Thank you so much.

So Greg, we talked about tidbits, how we can sometimes blow small bits of information out of proportion. But in some cases, Terrible things can and do happen to us. When our spirals are caused by real events, not by our imaginations, what can we do about them? It's no longer enough to say, stop and look at reality accurately.

Yeah, I really appreciate Suzanne's question. And I want to just share a story from my own experience. So when I first moved back to Stanford as a professor, I was bicycling home one night through a dark street. And it was dark and I was going too fast, and all of a sudden there was a car right in front of me. This is a residential street, and the car had a bike rack on it, and I rear-ended this parked car, and the bike rack sliced open my face. Shankar, I don't know if you can see, I have a scar here. And I, um, it was terrible. I, I got myself home. I, um, there was a lot of blood. You know, I didn't ride a bike, uh, for maybe 6 months after that.

Hmm.

And, um, I walked every day. And, um, then when I did start to ride a bike, I did it very slowly, and I did it very carefully. So, you know, one thing I want to say is just how normal and reasonable, uh, Suzanne's response is to, to remember the, the trauma of the experience with her sister, and to see that replayed in her mind when she's looking at another person that she loves, loves, to value the process of growth. And that might be a very slow, very step-by-step process. And then the last thing I want to say about that is that, you know, when we have the most terrible things happen to us, it can be very easy to have a kind of sort of purely deficit-based lens for understanding that experience, to understand it as essentially a disability, a limitation, a weakness in And it's very healthy if you can ask the question, even if that was a difficult experience and maybe causes me difficulty sometimes, maybe it makes me upset sometimes, are there also strengths or goodnesses that come from that experience?

Hmm.

Maybe a sensitivity to others, an awareness of situations. And what the strength for Suzanne might be, what the strength for a different person might be, might be different. be different things. But I think it's a very important question to ask ourselves to understand those strengths alongside the challenges that an experience like that poses.

We received a note from a listener named Abby who called in about a time when she was an undergraduate in college.

I was a biology major. I was thinking I wanted to maybe go into medicine, and I remember really struggling in organic chemistry. And it was rough. I was thinking I wasn't gonna pass the course. And I remember going home for Thanksgiving break, and I was talking with one of my uncles who I'm not particularly close with, but he's a surgeon, and I figured he knew, he knew what this was like. And I remember him starting to explain his experience, you know, with organic chemistry, going to an Ivy League school, finding it very hard in the class. He kind of turned it around and said, you know, but I dug in my heels and I just worked really hard and I was failing at the midterm, but by the final I got the highest score in the class on the final exam. And I remember just coming away from that conversation feeling kind of demoralized. I think I had already in my head anticipated the ending of the story as he was telling it. You know, he was going to tell me that, you know, Abby, I failed organic chemistry, but it's okay. I took it again. Look how successful I am. It's okay. I guess my question is, why is it that sometimes we want a failure story to help us get over a struggle? And why is it that sometimes we want to hear about extraordinary people defying odds.

I think this is a fascinating question, Greg. Sometimes when we're sad, all we want is to wallow in our sadness and listen to sad songs. Other times we desperately want hope and inspiration. From the point of view of trying to help someone else who is feeling down, how do we know whether they need a mirror to reflect what they're feeling so we can tell them that they're not alone? And when do they need us to throw them a lifeline and pull them out of the water?

Yeah, I think the best stories are actually both. That is, they are stories that connect with the real difficulty that people are having, the depth of that challenge. And they're not stories of achievement, of success. They're stories of process and growth. They're stories of how you build from darkness towards a trajectory that is right for you and right for how you want to become.

Hmm.

And it sounds like with Abby's story that the conversation with her uncle turned into a story of triumph and success and achievement more so than a story of growth. So there's work, for example, on role models and what kind of role model stories are most effective for people. And the best kinds of role model The best stories are stories of growth over time, of change. They're not stories of success. It's not the success stories alone that are the best stories. It's the stories that are stories of change and growth. And for those stories to work, you have to really begin at that dark place, at that failure place. Maybe it's failing organic chemistry.

We also received a story from a listener named Chris. I met Chris, who wanted to talk about some big changes in his life. About 4 years ago, Chris moved with his wife and 2 kids from the United States to Denmark.

My wife had a job opportunity, and we put our kids in Danish school, and they became fluent. And we really like living here. However, my job in the US, you know, the company was bought. I was laid off, and now I'm struggling mightily to build a new career here. I struggle with feelings of self-loathing. I can't give up because I know that the damage that would do to my family is worse than anything I would, you know, be relieving myself of. But I'm in the middle of it right now, and as much as, you know, these stories I hear stories of things are great and look how I turned it around. I feel like I'm the person that your most recent podcast was geared towards.

So Greg, I really hear the pain in Chris's voice here. He lost his job and now can't seem to find his way out of this professional downward spiral. What advice would you have for Chris?

Yeah, I absolutely hear the pain in Chris's voice. I, I hear, um, also his commitment to his family. You know, I think the, the beginning of a process, um, for Chris is, um, just calling in like he's done, right? I think what's important is for him to be able to, um, uh, understand and articulate the experience that he's having, which he is doing, and then to be able to, having done start to think about what it is he wants to do with the time that he has in Denmark.

Mm-hmm.

There's an older intervention in psychology developed by Jamie Pennebaker called expressive writing interventions. And what this is, is really just taking the time to write about the deepest thoughts and feelings that you have, especially thoughts and feelings that aren't yet processed. And it's helpful because it helps people to tell stories of challenges that have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and to kind of stop that ruminative cycle that, uh, that I could hear Chris worrying about, and that the caller at the beginning, um, Sherry, I think, was describing as well, that kind of ruminative thought cycle. Because if you write it down, it's ridiculous to write something down like, I'm bad, I did something bad, I'm bad, I did something bad, I'm bad. I did something bad. Like, that's a boring— that's, that's not going to work. So when you write it down, you can, um, tell a story that has an end and kind of put a pin on it. And then once you've put a pin on it, you can start to do the second part of the work and to think about what you want to do with the time that you have in the circumstance that you're in, what would be of meaning to you, what would be of value to you. Um, but you kind of have to do that first work first.

You've sometimes said that the focus of your work is about this idea of becoming. Can you unpack that idea for me, Greg?

Yeah. What we do is we think about where we are and where it is that we want to go, who you want to become, what you want to do with the circumstance that you're in, given whatever that circumstance is. And part of that involves your identity, you know, what's valuable to you, what's important to you, the things that matter most to you. And that informs the kind of goals that you have, the aspirations you have to, to do this or to be in this space or to explore that, to climb this mountain, whatever it might be. It might involve the communities that you want to join. I think that's why belonging in school is so important, because school is a vehicle for becoming. Like, school is how we become the people that we want to become. It's our opportunity to build skills and build relationships that help us get to the kind of person that we want to become. And the barriers that come up along the way, the psychological barriers, things like fixed mindsets of intelligence— like, if you take that organic chemistry class and you see that as the vehicle to become the doctor you want to be, and you fail that organic chemistry class and you think that That means I'm dumb at organic chemistry. That means I can't be a doctor. That's a threat to your becoming. Or questions like, I don't belong here. People don't value me here. I'm not contributing here. That's a threat to your becoming within that space.

And really what I'm hearing you say then is that when we experience these spirals, what we're really experiencing are threats to our hopes and our dreams of the kind of people that we could become.

That's where the fear and the anxiety that's where it comes from.

Exactly. I shared earlier that I had the opportunity to do some events with alum this past fall. And I want to just tell one story from that. I had asked a group of alum in Orange County to talk about a time when somebody saw in them the good and successful person that they could become, maybe even when they weren't there yet. And one of the people there, he told a story. He'd started work at a company he long admired, a company he greatly admired. respected, a company he was proud to be at, but he felt he was floundering. He didn't feel he understood his job well. He thought he was not doing well, and he was worried he might get laid off. He was in the probationary period. And the company was— his office was in Orange County, but the company had headquarters on the East Coast. And the boss of his boss came in one day from the East Coast. And so his boss and his boss of his boss are standing near his his desk talking, but not to him. And then his boss comes to his desk and puts his hand on his shoulder, and he says, this is going to be one of our stars. This is going to be one of our people. And the, the boss boss then introduces himself and shows, uh, the person a great deal of respect. And he, he told this story, and he said that that was the moment That he realized that he could become the kind of worker at this company that he wanted to become. And that was the ordinary magic for him.

When we come back, listeners share their advice on how to get out of a spiral. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. At Stanford University, Greg Walton studies how we end up in downward spirals. He's the author of Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts. Today, he's responding to listener questions and comments in our latest segment of Your Questions Answered. One of the tricky parts of confronting bad news is that we tend to ask ourselves, What does this mean for my future? These worries can overwhelm us and lead to a lot of anxiety. A listener named Carolyn called in with her experience.

I lost my job at the ripe age of 66 and was basically thrown into retirement.

I don't know how people manage, but step by step, I signed up for Medicare and all the other Social Security stuff, looked for a part-time job, found a new place to live. It was pretty tumultuous, but I had to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. That's the only way you can survive.

So Carolyn tried to take things step by step, Greg, solve one problem at a time. I actually think that this is psychologically very wise. Instead of getting overwhelmed by the big picture, she focused She focused just on one step that was right in front of her. What do you think of this approach?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's— we call this proximal goals. And this was an idea that was researched in the '80s by my colleague, Al Bandura, studying originally kids who were really struggling in math. So these were elementary school kids who were way behind in math. And in one of the studies that he did, he gave kids a bunch of math workbooks. Worksheets. And in one condition, he said, do as many as you can. And in the other condition, he said, do 6 pages per day. And it's the same thing, but the 6 pages per day breaks it down and says, here's what my goal is, I'm going to do 6 pages per day. And that increased kids' confidence in their ability to do math, and it increased their performance in math. And the psychology of it is It's really that when you break it down into manageable bits and you work on each bit and you accomplish each bit, you feel a little bit better. You feel a little bit more confident. You feel a little bit of progress. And that at the end of the day, then you maybe have climbed the mountaintop.

A listener named Estelle called in with her experience of a downward spiral and how she got out of it.

The year 2012 was special because a lot of really crappy things happened. relationship instability and lost 3 jobs. So how did I get out of this? I set a somewhat simple question for myself. I said, in 6 months from now— I just started a new job— in 6 months, I'm going to ask myself honestly, do I love it here? Is this where I want to be? And 6 months go by and I didn't lose that job, but when I asked myself honestly, At the 6-month checkpoint, is this how I want to feel? The answer was no. I didn't enjoy what I was doing. I didn't want to keep doing what I was doing for the rest of my life. I started figuring out what my exit plan was going to be, and I decided I was going to go back to school and I was going to completely change my career. I still use this strategy now. I set checkpoints for myself and I give myself reasonable metrics that I can keep track of and check in with myself at some later point and see if something is still working for me or if it's not. And if it's not, then I can change it.

So Greg, one thing I love about Estelle's strategy is that she sets a point where she checks in with herself about a decision. And that means she no longer has to think about the decision every day. She doesn't have to constantly ask herself, am I happy? Am I unhappy? Is this job going to turn out like all the others? By having these predefined checkpoints, in some ways, she takes the pressure off the daily questions that can lead to negative spirals.

Yeah, I love it. It reminds me a little bit of the kind of unhelpfulness of the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like, it's just like too big of a question. Like, my whole life? Like, I always think it's much more useful, like when I'm talking with undergraduates, for example, to ask a question like, what do you want to do for a couple years? You know, what would you like to try And then, exactly as Estelle is saying, check in with yourself. How do you like that? Is that working for you? Are you seeing the paths of growth that are inspiring for you? And are you becoming the kind of person that you want to be, or maybe not? And so sort of breaking it down into manageable bits and then checking in with yourself as those manageable bits come up, it's very helpful.

And to the extent that our worries are prompted again by our concerns that we're not becoming the people we want to be, as you said, there's a tendency to want to worry about those questions all the time. And what I like about what Estelle is doing is she's basically saying, those are important questions. I'm going to get to them. But that doesn't mean I have to think about them all the time.

Right. So if you're asking the question, do I want to be an X, at every single day that you're trying to do the X, you're not actually doing the X. You're not actually interacting with the people in that work environment. You're not trying to build the skills of that environment. You're not joshing around with the people or going to happy hours or experiencing that space the way that it would be in that space. You're distracted the whole time by the meta question.

Hmm. We received a question from a listener named Mark who realized that he needed the help of others to escape his downward spiral.

After my wife died in April 2025, I went through a very deep downward spiral. I thought my life was over, and I thought I could never be happy again. What I realized was I needed to use people who love me to help me get out of this spiral. I went to the East Coast for 14 days and saw friends. I went to China for a month where my daughter and granddaughter live with their wonderful family. When I came back, I was I was ready to start life again. I shed most of my addictive behaviours and met a woman soon after that who helped me go on this upward spiral. She exercises every day, eats healthy, and has lots of fun. Just what I needed after this difficult experience.

Greg, what role do other people in our life play when it comes to dealing with a downward spiral?

Yeah, I mean, they're essential. We are a social animal, and we do not do any of this work by ourselves. We always do it with other people. Um, Mark's story is a beautiful story, a beautiful story of self-insight and of leaning on others and of, um, you know, when you're in a very dark space, like if you've lost, uh, a spouse, for example, who you loved very much, and I could hear that in Mark's, uh, voice, the world can seem very dark. And then if you can interact with people who aren't in that headspace, and people who care about you, and people who can share with you other ways of viewing the world, opportunities, uh, things that are of interest, those opportunities and things that are of interest can come into your way of seeing as well. And I think that that's part of the story that Mark is telling us there. And it's a lesson for all of us.

Speaking of loved ones, Greg, let's end where we started with the experience of Sherry. I told you as a young woman, she considered suicide because of her negative spirals. I'll let her pick up the story from here.

These kinds of terrible looping thoughts that at some point had me thinking about suicide quite a bit because I just didn't think that there was a way out of all of that. Something dropped into me one day to make a list of reasons why I loved my mom. And when I started to make this list of reasons why I love my mother, I realized— maybe not quite right at that exact moment, But down the road, I realized looking back that when I was immersed in thinking about why I love someone, that those other looping negative spiraling voices didn't have space. They weren't there. This became a lifelong practice for me. This, this was 30-some years ago that I made that very first list. I now, I call them love lists. And it's a tool that I use as a combination of a gratitude tool, a personal development tool, a meditation tool, and it's a gift, a gift we can give to someone else that I think will help them with their own spiraling, looping negative thoughts because now they have a list of beautiful things about themselves.

Greg, what do you make of Sheri's idea of love lists? Can gratitude help us get out of these negative spirals?

Yeah, I mean, Sherry, what a beautiful story and what a beautiful, wise intervention. You know, I think there's nothing more important for us than other people and the relationships that we have, the real, authentic, close relationships where you're seen and you're valued. And when you can get back in contact with that, the negativity can just fall away, as you describe in your experience. It's beautiful, and thank you for sharing that.

I'm wondering, Greg, whether this is something that you do as well. How do you get yourself out of negative spirals?

Yeah, I mean, I think definitely the kind of, you know, 3 AM anxiety experience, like anxiety peaks, you know, early in the morning, you can't sleep, you wake up. I think one thing that helps is to just write down the things that you're anxious about, right? So that's something I've definitely done. I think another thing that helps me is just the kind of meta-awareness that this is— it's almost a mindfulness— is that this is a thought, this is a, a time of anxiety, and things will look a little bit different at a different time, maybe from a different, different, um, perspective, maybe just at 10 in the morning in light of a conversation with somebody I care about or somebody who cares about me. So that meta-awareness is also also helpful. And I think that the surfacing is really important, to be able to say, to say what it is and then to kind of diagnose it. Like, where is it that that is coming from? Uh, why is it that I'm having this anxiety at this time? There's a reason for that. I might not know the reason for that, but there's a reason for that. And if I could figure out that reason, it's almost like understanding the root cause, and then I can actually work on thing that actually matters, not the tiff-bit manifestation of it.

Greg Walton is a psychologist at Stanford University. He's the author of Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts. Greg, thank you so much for joining me again today on Hidden Brain.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

It's been a pleasure.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Quirrell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please consider sharing it with your friends. Put out word of it on social media or your office Slack channel. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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