Mindset Neuroscience Podcast

By Stefanie FayeSociety & Culture Health & Fitness Mental Health Education Self-Improvement Relationships

Mindset Neuroscience Podcast episodes

December 22, 2021 Season 2 Episode 11 – The Neuroscience of Attachment and Emotion Regulation
Attachment theory is not a 'theory'.. it's a part of our neurophysiological operating system Attachment is a way of seeking proximity to an attachment figure. It’s a biobehavioral adaptation that helps us regulate ourselves and explore new frontiers. This in...
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1 hr 8 min
December 22, 2021 Moral Injury Part 1: Residue from the Past

“The residues of the past and the content of the future tend to be formulated, constructed, and reconstructed in terms of that [traumatic] experience” (Dowling, 1986)

Every aspect of our cellular design is to solve a problem.
And that problem - from a cellular-machinery level - is homeostasis, which includes maintaining our systems as fully functioning to keep us alive, and projecting us into the future.

Much of this system maintenance and future projection is tied to the efficient use of energy: we need to preserve the ‘flesh barrier’ so that our system does not need to continuously use energy for repair of organs or fighting off of foreign invaders. Damage to the molecular structure of our physical vehicle means that energy is not purely focused on regular maintenance and future projection.

Because of this, threats to the physical integrity of our system are one of the highest priorities for us to protect ourselves from.
The brain-body system devotes many of its resources and algorithms to ensuring this physical integrity. Damage to physical integrity can come in obvious forms, such as a solid object actually piercing through the tight clustering of molecules that represent our physical body, as well as lack of energy units entering the body (in the form of liquids, solids and gases that hold molecular structures needed for body-maintenance, ie., water, nutrients, oxygen, etc.)
Because energy-efficiency is so critical, the brain-body system also devotes much of its resources to protecting us against anything that could indirectly lead to a physical disintegration of the physical body. These dangers are not necessarily physical. They are related to the fact that our homeostasis and future projection are intimately tied to social mechanisms.

Our first experiences as infants require us to be dependent on an attachment figure in order to survive. So those experiences lay a foundation for predictive algorithms of what other humans can offer us as we enter into future relationships.

Beyond infancy, we continue to depend on certain social patterns for our system maintenance and future projection.
To be able to adapt to changing circumstances and environmental factors, we need some type of community, however small, to help offset the energy usage needed to survive and project into the future. In some eras and communities, this might look like having some members stand guard while others sleep or eat (and are vulnerable to predators), to something more advanced like outsourcing the building of roads and food sources to some members, while other members use time to innovate more efficient ways of using energy for survival.

Because social mechanisms are also related to energy-efficiency, the threat of losing social connections is a top priority for our system to protect us against.
This means that an interaction or event that relates to a social loss may take on a sense of danger that deeply impacts our brain-body functioning, mental health and behaviors.

So when we talk about harm, threat and danger, we must also include - in addition to physical harm - the concept of loss and injuries related to our social functions and needs.

Our sense of wellbeing increases when we feel safe.
Feeling safe allows for our brain-body resources to not be focused on vigilance and defensive mechanisms. This frees up energy units to be used for restoration and maintenance of organs, and the more energy-expensive tasks of problem solving, planning for the future and long-term decision-making.

A powerful component of feeling safe is our role within a social system.
If we feel valuable and needed by others in the group, this decreases the chances of us being replaced or disc...
1 hr 8 min
November 30, 2021 The science of habit change + my podcast interview with Heidi Sawyer

Many of us don’t realize how many of our behaviors are automated. We need a certain amount of this automation to free up cognitive processing energy to learn new things, try new behaviors and deal adaptively with new situations.

So habits and automations are not bad. The question is, are they aligning with our most desired way of experiencing life?

To find out, we need to bring these unconscious patterns into our awareness. From that vantage point we can take a more honest inventory of whether these habits enhance our life or deplete it.

The most helpful way to gain conscious access to unconscious patterns is to become a witness to them.

This is where meditation can be helpful, but another step you can take is to be a witness to your own body.

If you can watch how your own body moves, you are accessing neural circuits involved in self-observation and what Stanislave Dehaene relates to as ‘conscious access’. This helps you make the unconscious conscious.

One particular part of the body you can start to witness is your hands.

Our hands are one of the first tools we use in self-soothing. We use our hands generally to help us consume/ingest something, or to be in contact with another organism. This is for two reasons. From the time we are born (and even in the womb in terms of amniotic fluid), ingesting a substance activates the swallow reflects which engages the parasympathetic nervous system and thus helps soothe us. The pressure and heat from physical contact with another organism Is an infants main tool for knowing that it is not alone : this proximity to safety and protection help regulate its nervous system. We carry that need for proximity throughout our life.

So to take an inventory of your habits, observe or witness what your hands do throughout the day.

You’ll notice that much of this hand activity involves the above mentioned two things: grasping for some thing to ingest or consume; or seeking contact with another organism. This can be cuddling with a pet, gesturing for someone to interact with you or using technology to ‘ping’ a signal to someone so that they notice you and ping you back. All of these behaviors are ways we seek to know we are not alone, thus soothing our nervous system. (Ep 11 goes into this depth).

To assess whether these habits are truly serving you, it’s important to examine the effects after you’ve engaged in the activity.

This noticing of after-effects helps us separate what feels good in the moment compared with what is actually good for us in the longer trajectory of our life. Future projection and extrapolation involves the prefrontal cortex - an area of the brain that also helps with impulse control and inhibitory signaling - both of which will help you pause before you do some thing that may not actually be in your best interest.

Let’s say you want to assess if eating donuts is a habit that you want to stop. (in this example, you may already know that it is some thing you want to stop doing, but it’s helpful to go through this assessment process). Instead of putting all of your attention on how good the donut tastes as you’re eating it, you’ll need to also use your attention to notice the after-affects of eating it.

1 hr 8 min
October 19, 2021 Season 2 Episode 10 – The Science of Feeling Understood
Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone really ‘gets you’? This can take various forms - like being able to share what’s on our mind and the other person holding space for us to explain. It...
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46 min
August 04, 2021 Season 2 Episode 9 – Hierarchies and Signal Flow
Why do systems fall apart or become dysfunctional?
A system can be a family, relationship, community, business, organization, society. The human mind-brain-body is also a system.
One reason dysfunction can happen is related to hierarchy and ‘signal flow’.
Hierarchies exist throughout nature and throughout human society.
Hierarchies are best able to serve the system when there is efficient signal flow from subsystems to the higher levels and vice versa.
We can see dysfunction happen when the highest levels of a hierarchy are
-not serving the goals of the entire system
-have communication channels dominated by a specific subgroup/subsystem
-are blocking or suppressing efficient communication and signal flow from the subsystems
Optimal functioning of a system requires a state of signal flow where all members or nodes feel ‘understood’.
This experience of being understood is at the core of optimal system functioning within human systems. When we don’t feel understood, it means there is a block of signal flow.
This episode covers the idea of hierarchies and signal flow - and what happens when hierarchies don’t serve the goals of the entire system.
In upcoming articles, I’ll be bringing this concept back down to more personal and interpersonal levels.
The post Season 2 Episode 9 – Hierarchies and Signal Flow appeared first on StefanieFaye.
31 min
June 22, 2021 Season 2 Episode 8 – Shifting the Burden
In this podcast episode, I talk about something called ‘shifting the burden’. It’s about the topic of what we depend on ourselves for, and what we look to others to help us with. The balance of our dependence on ourselves and others - whether in adaptive maladaptive ways - is based on our first experiences with depending on someone.
Many of us simply don’t know how deeply emotional of a subject this is. It is one of our most primitive, primal CORE-to-the-CORE experiences of being human… a battle between wanting to be independent and self-sufficient, and yet also knowing that one of our deepest desires is to connect in authentic ways with others.
My reflection questions at the end of the episode are about your doubts, desires and dependencies - how they interplay on each other and how they’ve been formed over time - through your experiences with others.. and what they’ve doubted, desired and depended on in their own lives.
I hope you find something in this episode helpful.
The post Season 2 Episode 8 – Shifting the Burden appeared first on StefanieFaye.
33 min
April 20, 2021 Season 2 Episode 7 – Normal versus Natural
Normal is based on historical data. It’s based on what has happened the most often in the past. Our past ‘normal’ can make it easy to not question if there is more that’s possible in terms of wellbeing and a deeper sense of meaning for our life. But what we really, truly, deeply need to understand is that the ‘normal mode’ of consuming and doing the same combination of movements day after day without challenging our brain-body to higher and higher levels of creation and exploration is not NATURAL.
We are: COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS. Our NATURE is to adapt to ever-changing, increasingly difficult and complex situations that involve other complex systems so that our adaptive problem-solving faculties become more honed and finely tuned. Many of our behaviors and patterns are blocking us from tapping into our most natural abilities.
31 min
February 16, 2021 Season 2 Episode 6 – Why are humans so anxious? and the dark side of mindfulness
When we focus on trying to 'fix' dysregulation without acknowledging how it emerged, we are conveying a message that somehow the anxiety or overreaction just ‘appeared’ because of an imbalance in their brain and that distress, dysregulation and anxiety are an isolated problem about that individual.
Treating the brain in isolation not only sends a disempowering message to the person experiencing challenges, it's also neurologically inaccurate.
The ability to self-soothe is not genetically programmed to just ‘happen’ without the right conditions.
Our ability to self-regulate comes from social feedback systems that help us build our self-regulating circuitry.
32 min
December 15, 2020 Season 2 Episode 5 – Resilience, Stability and Hyper-Coherent Networks
The formation of self-identity and group identity through the lens of hyper-coherent networks, key features of what makes a system resilient. (remember - your brain, your relationships and human society are all systems).
To help systems become more flexible and innovative, we need to understand the mechanisms of change.
A mindset or paradigm shift is one of those mechanisms.
A level higher than that: being able to rise above paradigms altogether*.
This is what can free our mind to experiment with perspectives that are guided by our values - rather than only confirming a narrow field of vision based on our past, which is largely driven by our tribal identity.
The post Season 2 Episode 5 – Resilience, Stability and Hyper-Coherent Networks appeared first on StefanieFaye.
36 min
October 21, 2020 Season 2 Episode 4 – Tech Addiction and the Social Dilemna
The human species has some pretty spectacular systems built into us to achieve mental, emotional and physiological states that most of us are not even really aware of.
We also have systems and features within us that make us very vulnerable to being influenced and 'programmed' into behavior that is not reflective of our most evolved neural circuitry.
Technology is interfering with and manipulating those systems.
And the more we get to know how technology is interfering with those systems, the more we can get control over our internal state rather than let the tech companies (who do not have the best interests of the human brain and nervous system in mind) hack into our vulnerabilities.
38 min

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Science-based strategies to enhance resilience, self-regulation, learning and innovation by focusing on mindset, relationship, biofeedback and psychological safety.