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The Science and Psychology of Emotions: Insights from Experts

Discover the fascinating connection between emotions and the body in this episode! Dr. Jayatri Das, chief bioscientist at The Franklin Institute, shares her Body of Knowledge insights on the physiological aspects of feeling. Plus, social worker Brie Wildau provides a psychological perspective on understanding emotions.

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Transcript
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Hello, hello, and welcome to So Curious, presented by the Franklin Institute.

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I'm Kirsten Michelle Cills

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And I am The Bul Bey, we're your hosts.

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And this season of So C urious is all about the science behind mental health.

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Later on, we're chatting with a social

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worker to to learn more about how we deal with everyday emotions.

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But first, we're going to sit down with Dr.

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Jayatri Das to talk about the biology behind emotions.

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What is happening in our bodies when we feel things.

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But real quick, Kirsten, how are you feeling right now, right this second?

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Oh, okay.

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I'm feeling hungry, and my stomach hurts,

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but I'm so full, and I'm also feeling super sleepy, but I'm

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honestly in a pretty good mood as of the last, like, maybe ten minutes.

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How are you feeling, Bey?

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A little buzzed, but

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had a couple of drinks before.

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No. Energy buzz!

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Energy buzz. Buzzed on life.

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Buzzed on life. I'm high on life.

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Okay.

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All right, well, then let's transition

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into our favorite segment, Body of Knowledge.

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We are joined by Dr.

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Jayatri Das, chief bioscientist at the Franklin Institute.

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And so we are going to pick her brain a little bit.

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This is my favorite segment because I

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never mind asking Jayatri the really stupid question.

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I love that. It's always good to be back with you guys.

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You made me feel comfortable enough to not feel like my questions are stupid.

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So let's start off with Jayatri.

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Why do we feel feelings?

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It's so funny that you start with that

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question because you both know that my background is in evolutionary biology.

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And so in biology, whenever we ask why, my first instinct is to think about

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evolution, like, what do we know from the history of life, from looking at other

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animals, other organisms, to help us understand what we see today?

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And, man, that's really hard when it comes

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to emotions and feelings because we can't ask other animals how they feel.

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You could don't know what kind of results

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you'll get, but I'm sure a lot of us ask our cats.

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Yeah.

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Well, let me ask you, what is the Rube Goldberg machine thing happening inside of

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us that makes us have these physical things happening, like getting sweaty or

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turning red when we have these strong emotions?

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What's happening inside of us?

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Yeah, it's a good way to think about that

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as kind of this chain reaction thing, right?

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Because when we think about what are emotions, we often define them as these

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brain circuits that actually help us respond to our environment.

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So what are these external stimuli that we're getting from the world around us,

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and how do they activate what we call action programs inside our body?

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So when you think about emotions like disgust or fear or sadness or joy, we can

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think about something outside of us as activating that particular emotion.

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And then, Kirsten, to get back to your

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original question is, like, why do we feel feelings?

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Scientists define feelings as these mental experiences of those body states.

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And so being able to capture that mental state allows us to actually learn when

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things are out of balance and how to fix it.

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Right.

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By characterizing each of these states, our bodies learn.

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Oh, okay, well, when I feel fear,

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this is this set of body responses that I start to sense.

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And your action program.

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Your action program.

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Exactly.

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And this is what I do to bring that back under control.

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There's a fancy word called homeostasis.

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Love it.

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I like that already 50 cent word for the

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day, which is this idea of your kind of baseline state of balance in your body.

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And so whenever you're kind of knocked out

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of that homeostasis, you have to respond to figure out how to get back.

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And so by characterizing these feelings

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and thinking about how they're associated with certain stimuli, then it's an easy

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way for your body to say, okay, this happened.

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I feel this. This is how I get back.

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Yeah, it is like interesting to me how

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there's I don't know if they have different terms, but there's like when you

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have an emotion and then it gives you a physical reaction.

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And then the inverse when something

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physically happens to your body and it gives you I'm hungry and suddenly I am the

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angriest person, or the first day, it's been nice out and so long and I'm suddenly

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in an amazing mood, my body doesn't feel freezing cold, whatever.

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And it's like they go both ways.

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And I love what you brought up earlier about evolution and focusing on that.

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Is emotions a part of our survival toolkit?

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Is that how we survive as humans? Absolutely.

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So when we think about this relationship between your brain and the body,

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scientists can look at brain structures in other animals.

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So even though we can't ask them how you're feeling, we can look at areas of

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the brain that occur across different types of animals.

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And so when you look at things like the

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brain stem that's part of your brain that controls some of your basic physiological

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functions, like your breathing, things like that.

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And so you see that part of the brain occurring in lots of different animals.

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Especially when you think about some of

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these survival mechanisms, like you're referring to Bay, of like fear and stress.

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That's where some of that function is regulated.

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But then in humans and primates in

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general, but humans in particular, we have this whole outer surface of the brain

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called a cerebral cortex that also has this level of processing that kind of

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helps us modulate kind of what's going on at that more primal level.

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And so that's kind of this when we think about fight or flight, for instance, you

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have that initial reaction and then you have this higher level of processing that

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says, no, that's just your neighbor's dog barking at you.

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It's not a wild animal jumping out of the trees.

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And so let's calm down again, get back to that homeostasis.

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And so even within the brain, you have these different systems that are kind of

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helping you regulate that relationship between your brain and your body.

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But even things like sadness, right.

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There are physiological symptoms of sadness, like higher blood pressure or

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thinking about your heart rhythm getting out of whack.

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Even the idea of crying, like shedding tears.

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Right. That's a biological response.

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Yeah. I never think about it like that.

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No. In this moment, I'm like, wow, the

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Philadelphia Eagles have taken me through such emotion.

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I know I've done all of this.

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Watching the emotional relationship we have with them gobarts.

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But that's a good point, though, because you also just bring that up in terms of

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the cultural context in which we feel emotions.

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Right.

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And this is something that scientists study a lot in how our culture influences

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both how we perceive and how we express emotions.

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Yeah. One of my most common physiological

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responses that I notice is I know the Phillies were in the World Series.

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This was a huge I'm a huge Philly sports

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fan, and I noticed more in those couple of days, getting the chills on my arms when

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we would have a crazy home run and the whole stadiums losing it.

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And I'm like, I'm not even there.

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Why do I have the chills?

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And it's that feeling you get from being like, oh, that was exciting.

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Why do just my arms feel that?

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Where does that come from?

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And even just the difference in response from different people.

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Right. I wanted to ask, before we get out of

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here, what is the landscape right now in emotional corrective drugs?

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And what are some of the research being conducted in that area?

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Well, one of the fascinating things is that when you think about the chemical

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functions in our brain, it's really hard to study them because we don't really have

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a good way of knowing when those things are happening.

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Right. Because we don't have instantaneous

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abilities to monitor how the chemicals in our brain are changing.

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And in the past, when we look at

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electrical stimulation of our brain, because our brain uses both electrical and

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chemical signaling, the problem with looking at the electrical stimulation is

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that we couldn't figure out where it was happening.

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Right.

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So we didn't really have the perfect way to look at it.

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And so, more recently, there's been a new

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technique called optogenetics that's been developed.

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And it really I love these terms action program, optogenetics.

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We're getting all sciency here, right?

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I just need, like, a guitar riff.

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Turner well, let's break it down. Right.

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Opto reminds you of, like, Optic, right?

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So light and genetics, and it's this technology where you can use light to turn

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on and off genes and brain activity in very specific brain cells.

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Caveat this is only in mice. Wow.

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No one is hooking this up to humans right now.

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Firing light in your brain.

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But what we can learn from doing this in

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animals is now we can activate both where and when.

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Right? Because you can use genetics to make sure

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that this light is only sensitized in certain areas of the brain.

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So that's the where.

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And because you are actively shining light

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on the brain and looking at the response, you get this millisecond level accuracy.

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So this is finally getting us to the where and when of brain responses.

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And so this is giving us a new

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understanding of how emotions actually work in the brain.

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And so, using this kind of technique,

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we're starting to learn exactly what are the brain circuits that are involved in

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things like fear or aggression or reward and things like that.

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So this is really helping us understand

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where and when and how we feel emotions in the brain.

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And the idea is that hopefully this will

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lead to more specific treatments for mental disorders.

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And so, earlier this year, there was some

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really exciting research coming out of Stanford that really combined electrical

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stimulation with neuroimaging that help the scientists apply that electrical

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stimulation to an individual, patient's specific brain areas.

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So it's not just one size fits all anymore.

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Being able to experiment with at that level of personalization and being able to

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adjust dosage in real time is starting to give us some really promising results.

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So we're learning, like, I mean, I guess

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we already knew this to a certain extent, but you feel different emotions,

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literally, in different areas of your brain.

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Yeah. It's complicated.

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It's not like this is the fear station.

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This is the joy station. Right.

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You have these circuits because I'm thinking about, like, psychology class in

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high school and learning about the frontal lobe phineas gauge, I think it was.

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Right. And we learned that the frontal lobe was

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impulse control and anger or whatever, and yeah, I guess it makes sense that every

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other emotion has to live somewhere, right?

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Yeah. And luckily, now that we have this new

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technology, and we're not only relying on these case studies, we don't need.

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A hot rod to go through somewhere.

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We're learning that these networks are

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complicated, and there's some overlap between different emotions, but then there

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are other regions that seem to be associated with one emotion over another.

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The short answer it's a lot more complicated than we thought.

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Yeah. Sounds complicated.

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Yeah. So, hopefully, science will have the

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ability that we can talk to our animals soon and find out what they're feeling.

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That's what I really want to know.

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Talk to your pets.

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I already do that.

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Thanks so much to Jayatri for being here.

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Is there literally any better moment in

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this recording studio than any time Jayatri comes in?

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Oh, no. She's the best.

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I honestly feel bad for the fact that this is only on audio and that we don't film

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these yet because the audience doesn't get to see what a badass.

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Jayatri is she has a strut.

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She strolls in. I'm here.

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If they came to me and they were like, we

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love you, Kirsten, but we're going to replace you as the host.

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It's going to be Jayatri. I'd be like, I get it.

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That's fair.

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So let's take a look at the emotional side of emotions.

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Our next guest is a former clinical social worker, Brie Wildow.

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Welcome to so curious.

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Can you introduce yourself, Brie, and tell us a little bit about what you do?

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So I think how I landed here is that I am a licensed clinical social worker.

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I train in and practice modern psychoanalysis.

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And that said, I don't have a clinical career at this time.

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I spent many years running social services in a psychiatric hospital.

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Well, with your background in social work, that position can be such a broad term.

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Can you define your role in some of the things that you do on a day to day?

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I do experience design.

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That means for anyone who produces a product or service or experience, I help

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them to figure out what it should be or help them create it.

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So sometimes that looks like workshopping

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or prototyping or researching or testing that work.

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I think I learned how to do that work as a social worker.

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When I was in the hospital, I was managing

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thousands of patients coming into and out of the hospital, and that meant a very

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rapid and very thorough 360 degree assessment of them and whatever brought

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them into the hospital, then identifying how we would offer treatment and creating

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a plan and then managing a team on that plan.

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When you say clinical, what would be the work of clinical?

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Like you said, you're on the floor, essentially, right?

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I was, yeah.

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So in that context, it was a freestanding psychiatric hospital where I worked.

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So all of the patients were going to be admitted for inpatient.

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Nobody came for therapy and went home the

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same day, and there were no patients there with any physical concerns.

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It was all psychiatric.

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So anyone who's going to be in that hospital needs to be at a level of acuity

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where they cannot safely be outside of the hospital.

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So it's a really high level of security, oversight and protection slash imposition

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to freedom of movement in a situation like a psychiatric hospital.

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For inpatient treatment like this, the

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goal is to get the patient out of the hospital as quickly as possible, because

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we want to stabilize whatever brought them in and then get them back out to a life

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and connect them with somebody who's going to be their treatment team.

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Ongoing. Let's switch into motions a little bit.

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Right. Like, we all have them, we all feel them.

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Why can it be so hard for us to maybe express them and identify them?

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It has to do with whether we've practiced it and whether it's been role modeled.

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So no one is born able to express or

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identify anything and that which they become good at.

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Expressing and identifying has a lot to do

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with the culture and climate and influences around them.

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And not everybody is teaching that or role modeling that.

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Is emotional intelligence like an actual

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real term, or is that something that we just throw around a lot?

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Can you talk about that whole connectivity

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between identifying and then it translating into real world space?

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Is that emotional intelligence?

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What I think you're describing I want to talk about is emotional self regulation,

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the ability to coexist with the feeling sensations that are coming up.

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Some people are more sensitive than others.

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Some people are more practiced at self regulation than others.

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So those are a couple of ingredients like how easily are you activated and then how

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well do you tolerate activation and what do you do in the face of activation?

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So that is the thing that I think can be

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taught or trained practicing tolerating discomfort and practicing coexisting with

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it role modeling the message that emotional or psychic discomfort is normal

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and common and difficult to tolerate for everyone, and it's everywhere.

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Language and conversations have evolved around our emotions.

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Would you say our language is evolving in a more positive and healthy space?

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Absolutely, yes. Our languages and our cognizance of this

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as a topic, I think becoming more open to this as a topic is relatively new.

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So we know, for example, statistics, like

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more people say their employers are sensitive to mental health, or more people

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say their employers are offering mental health resources.

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I don't think we're yet at a place of

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knowing which of those resources being offered are the most impactful or really

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if it's doing any good things certainly point to there is more conversation, there

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are more products and services and mental health days and health care things.

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One of the things that's come along with increased discussion about wellness and

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mental health is this idea that distress is bad and you shouldn't feel distressed.

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And I am all for supporting people who are

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experiencing impairment and distress, particularly when their level of something

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like, say, anxiety or depression or low mood or fill in the blank when someone's

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experience of suffering is causing impairment.

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I'm all for offering support.

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I don't love pathologizing.

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The idea that someone is responding emotionally to something or anxious or

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depressed or any one of those things that we want to go treat.

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There's sort of this idea in therapy that

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if you offer someone a tissue too quickly when they start crying, you subtly give

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them the message that you shouldn't be doing that and clean that right up.

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And I don't care for that type of messaging.

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Okay.

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I have been in therapy since I was like seven or eight years old.

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I have never heard that before.

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That's so interesting.

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Yeah, it sends like a subtle message like, here, take this.

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You're you're a mess right now. Like stop.

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It kind of has the same hand motion almost like totally.

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Exactly. It can have that.

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So this is not to say don't have tissues.

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Yeah, get the CleanX.

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Your point about body language, I guess we're not visible, but is spot on.

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The attitude or the milieu from which the offering of tissue comes kind of matters.

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And something I think that's interesting

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about that in a conversation about the conversation about mental health is that

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that's sort of like a cultural and climactic factor.

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That that type of climactic factor can

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create a vibe that doesn't necessarily get to the level of clinical mental illness.

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But a culture of wellness and tolerance for sensitivity wants to involve

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cognizance of the way you're being perceived.

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When you do something like gesture, dismissively or ask someone to tidy up

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what they're doing so it doesn't sell your wow.

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No, I love that. Thank you for offering that.

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You mentioned therapy a couple of times.

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So what exactly or can you break down the functionality of therapy?

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And why do we go to therapists to work through some emotions?

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Because people need people to hold space for them and witness their experience of

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emotions, discomfort, the daily, blah, blah, blah, fill in the blade.

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What it is is not important.

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So much is that the functionality and mechanism of being beheld by another

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tolerated and in a safe space to have all the feelings.

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The therapeutic relationship is not like a friend.

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And a very important way that it's not is that it has a frame and a definition that

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is devoted only to the clinical hour and it's not reciprocal.

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And the patient is the center.

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And the other baggage and expectations

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that come with a friendship aren't a factor that matters tremendously.

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So I know that nowadays, like you said, you work with businesses.

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I'm curious because I hear this all the

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time now all over, like TikTok and Instagram, people talking about how their

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companies are always pushing, like our culture, our company culture.

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We're doing things for you, which is like, amazing that's what you want in a company.

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Then I also hear pushback when sometimes there are little irrelevant things.

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When you hear people being like, oh, we

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asked for a raise and they gave us a vending machine that has Sushi in it.

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Hey, that's cool too. That's good.

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I like sushi too. But in your experience, how do you think

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that businesses can become more emotionally conscious with their culture?

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I think it takes time and presence and resources and role modeling.

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The problem with Sushi when you're not

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getting enough money is that you can't pay your rent with Sushi.

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And also that if somebody offers you Sushi

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when you need to pay rent, it feels like you're not being listened to.

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That is dehumanizing.

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And so there is no statement that someone can make that they're going after caring

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for you if they then mismatch what they offer.

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There needs to be time and role modeling

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put into figuring out what people need, listening, responding.

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And then I think in places where there isn't a culture already lent to emotional

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intelligence, for example, if that's a thing that a company wants to go after,

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there needs to be regular, ongoing training and practica with the people in

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leadership who are going to let it trickle down.

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It's not the kind of thing that can be

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sort of installed in a seminar and then now you've had the education and now and

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you go off and you're supposed to institute it.

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There needs to be mirroring and reinforced enacting of these behaviors in the culture

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from on high as a practice so that they become second nature.

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And I think often a lot of what you're

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hearing they say they're offering us additional resources is that they came up

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with the first intervention they could throw at people.

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I really can't speak to the process but as I said earlier, we are early on in

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figuring out the best way for companies to support folks and you're giving examples

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of ways that people are not hitting a mark.

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It always makes me laugh when I see all

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these memes and posts about company culture.

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Some of them using that term for good and

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some of them using that term because it's like a blanket.

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Like if we say culture, it makes us seem like we are going back.

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To the language, right? Like people kind of throw things around.

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Which is why I was hoping that you can clarify certain things just because we say

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so many different things and just toss words around quite a bit.

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I want to ask you if holding space for other people's emotions and feelings and

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beholding them, can that help with one's own or would you advise?

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No, that's a really nice question and I don't think that there's a one size fits

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all answer because the way in which you might experience somebody processing aloud

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with you is not the same as another person would.

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And depending on your relationship with

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them or the stuff they're talking about, it could be very triggering to you.

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And if you can't tolerate it or if it's going to blow you up or damage you or it's

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not going to work, I would never advise that you should do it.

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On the other hand, if you have the

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capacity and or you find that it gets you out of your own head to be there for

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someone else, it can be great for them and for you.

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I mean, to answer that I would look for

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how is it impacting me thinking about doing it or actually doing it?

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Check in with your own experience and

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figure out whether you can tolerate it, right?

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First time I heard one of my.

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Therapists say that they had a therapist.

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And I was like, so therapists have therapists.

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It's an innately human thing to need to talk, right?

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No, matter how much you've learned about mental health.

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Yeah.

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And I recently ran into the concept of a therapist not being good for you.

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Like, in my mind, if you talk to a

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therapist, you're good, you're golden, they're awesome.

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Just talk to a therapist, anyone?

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But, yeah, some therapy may not be the best for you.

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Can you talk more about that?

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Like the kind of interacting with emotions that may not be the best?

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I think therapy is better than no therapy in most cases as a blanket statement.

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That said, there are different types of approaches to therapy, and not everybody

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is well suited for either a type of approach or for an individual.

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I can imagine a situation with certain

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types of therapeutic relationships where a poking or an uncomfortable moment

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happened, and then there's an opportunity to talk about it and have sort of a

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corrective emotional experience, but that doesn't always happen.

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And as far as advice around this, everybody's going to have different needs.

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So I think it's really important if you're thinking about therapy, talk to some

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people, test out how it feels, test out a few.

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Ask them things that you want to ask.

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Even to suggest that you should ask about

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X, Y, or Z isn't necessarily going to scratch your itches.

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And I think it's important to be able to

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voice your concerns and, like, get into a comfortable space and relationship for

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therapy in order for any of the follow on work to happen.

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Any final thoughts for the people listening?

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A personal belief that I have that I think

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I want to leave with is that all the feelings are okay.

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All of the behaviors may have follow on

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effect, but I think what I feel is most important in beholding another person or

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giving space for someone is that space is given for whatever they bring in.

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And I hope that wherever possible, that is a component of therapy.

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Spaces and relationships, we will do.

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Thank you so much for coming on a Socurious podcast.

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We appreciate you. Thank you, Brie.

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It was great to meet you. It's great to meet you.

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Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.

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All right, well, let's do another check in.

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We're talking about the emotional side of emotional emotions.

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Bay, how are you feeling now that we've talked with Jayatri and Brie?

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I'm feeling a little bit more settled into the idea of experiencing emotions.

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Emotions can sometimes pop up on you. You don't know where you come from.

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It can be a little while.

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So I just feel a little bit more thoughtful about it.

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And I understand that we're talking about our nervous system.

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We're talking about signals being sent from a nerve ending to another.

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That's a good one.

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I feel very grateful after this

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conversation with Brie, and I'm also super excited for the rest of the season.

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I'm super excited about the season as well.

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So many good insights and fun people that we're going to be talking to about stress,

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anxiety, depression, and so on and so forth.

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All the fun stuff.

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It's really just therapy for Bay and I, and you all just get to listen.

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We need it.

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Well, next week we're going to be looking

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at how identity and mental health intersect with black men.

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I think we kind of deal with that inadvertent pressure on ourselves, right?

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This podcast is made in partnership with Radio Kismet.

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Radio Kismet is Philadelphia's premier podcast production studio.

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This podcast is produced by Amy Carson and Emily Cherish of Radio Kismet.

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This podcast is also produced by Joy

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Montefusco, Jayatri Das and Aaron Armstrong of the Franklin Institute.

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Head of operations is Christopher Plant.

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Our assistant producer is Seneca White.

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Our mix engineer is Justin Burger and our audio editor is Lauren DeLuca.

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Our graphic designer is Emma Seeker. I'm the Bull Bay.

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And I'm Kirsten. Michelle sils.

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See you next week. Go birds.

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