E178 | Our Idiot Brains, Happiness & Antidepressants (w/ Dr. Dean Burnett)

Today Dr. Alex is joined by neuroscientist and author Dr Dean Burnett for a wide-ranging conversation about the strange, flawed and fascinating human brain.

Dr Dean Burnett is the author of The Idiot Brain, The Happy Brain and several other books exploring neuroscience, psychology and the weird ways our brains shape our lives.

They discuss why the brain is not the perfect machine we often imagine it to be, why intrusive thoughts don’t define who you are, why anxiety and self-sabotage are often normal features of the mind, and why happiness is not something we are designed to feel all the time.

Dean also explains what we do and don’t know about depression, antidepressants, SSRIs, brain chemistry, neuroplasticity, withdrawal effects, and why mental health is far more complicated than simple slogans like “chemical imbalance” or “just think positive”.

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist.

Check out The Thinking Mind Blog on Substack: https://thinkingmindblog.substack.com/

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

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Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Today, I'm so pleased to be in conversation with Dr. Dean Burnett. Dr. Bennett is a neuroscientist, writer, recovering comedian, and longtime observer of the wonderfully illogical human brain. For the last decade, his books, talks, and writing have helped people understand why our brains misfire, backfire, panic, delight, overthink, and occasionally behave like badly wired machinery. Dean, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. What do you think is one of the biggest misconceptions people have about the way the brain works?

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I do try and encourage the idea that it's imperfect. I mean, like my first book, The Egypt Brain, I think resonated as well as it did because that is something people need to hear or like to hear. Because when I first got into writing about the brain and neuroscience and everything, I had read quite a few mainstream neuroscience books myself, and they were generally very good, but there was always can't think of a better word than reverence around the brain. It's because it's so complex. So the whole mythos around the brain, it's you know, we only use 10% of it, which is wrong, as we know, but that's that sort of stuff. It's just untapped, untapped potential uncharted waters. It's just beyond our understanding. It's powerful, it's amazing, it's miraculous, it's proof of god or deities or forces of all that sort of stuff, which and I get it, I get where that sort of comes from. It is incredibly baffling and the most complex thing in the known universe, but that sort of puts on a pedestal, this idea that it's so fantabulous we can't even begin to understand it. And that's not true, because we can. We have unpacked a lot of how it works and deciphered a lot of it, and this idea that it's some sort of you know remarkable creation. It's not it's an organ, it's a it's an evolved organ. So it is like a huge mishmash of eccentricities and logical processes, you know, evolution doesn't refine things to some sort of common goal. You say, Well, that works, let's stick with that. You know, it doesn't mean everything's brutally logical and efficient, because that's just not how nature does anything. So I think this idea that we have these perfect, complex brains in our head, and if they go wrong, that's the that's the indication of something terrible has happened. You know, it's atypical. But that's not true. No, the the brain is a huge mess, and we're affected by that in every walk of life, you know, the illogical behaviors we have, the ticks, the eccentricity, the emotional responses that don't make sense, the emotional responses which contradict other responses, which change over time, which you know, our pattern recognition, we see things which aren't there, like faces and conspiracies, and these are all just the end result of a normal functioning brain. And the same with like mental health issues, you know, like the idea, oh my god, I've experiencing so much anxiety. Yes, that's not good, but it's also there's nothing wrong with you per se, just you've succumbed to one of the glitches that the brain tends to have. So yeah, I do like to spread the idea that the brain, as great as it is, is very, very imperfect. And that's we we should all embrace that because uh when you let go of the idea that it's perfect, that if something goes wrong, there's a serious problem. No, something it goes wrong all the time, like on a daily basis, on a minute-by-minute basis, is always doing something wild or unhelpful, and accepting that, you know, be that being a default, and I can go what's up to now with that sort of approach. I think it takes a lot of the sting out of you know when things go wrong, makes it a lot less significant. And I do think that's a slightly healthier outlook, and I think one we could all stand to benefit from. So that's my general ethos in my communications and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

So it's almost like this pedestalizing of the brain, as you put it, as this wonderful, complex, almost perfect creation really fuels these expectations that we should be perfectly mentally balanced people and we should have wonderful lives. And pedestalizing the brain in this way puts a real sting in it in people when people feel like their lives aren't unfolding the way they should, or they feel like I do encounter difficulties, I can be irrational, I can self-sabotage. And what you're saying is actually hold up, yes, the brain is complex and wonderful in many ways, but we also have to understand that it's flawed and is not always maybe operating in the context it was designed in. And so it's totally normal to have strange experiences, difficult experiences, to unconsciously work against yourself.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, absolutely. That is exactly the case. And like the analogy I've always used, which seems to work, I think, is the well feel the way we regard the brain in society is similar to the whole uh the idea of falling in love with someone and living happily ever after. People have this very romanticized, very idealized idea of how a romantic relationship should work. But the problem with that is you enter a romantic relationship with another human who isn't perfect because nobody is. And like I compare my own journey into neuroscience with that sort of experience, like falling in love with someone. So got interest in the brain. I thought it was amazing, marvelous, fantastic. It's all sort of brilliant and complex and confounding and miraculous. And then you start studying it, and that's like moving in with someone you're in love with. You know, it's at first it's all wonderful and convenient, and harps and roses, and then week after week their their habits start to manifest, you know, like you and then you start to tell yourself that you know, oh no, look, they're in the bathroom for 40 minutes again, and they have made for work. But it's fine, it's don't worry about it, you know. And then oh look, the toilet seats are up again, and then it's like starts you, you know, fingernails a lot, and then you know, like you sort of you know, go, oh look, they've left the fridge open. What what are the odds? I mean, so the thing of I'm not gonna kill them, but I do think about it often, that sort of approach. And if you have this idealized how it's meant to be, that's unrealistic, you know. So like you compare in reality against a fantasy, and I do think the people fall into that trap with the brain as well. So it's this confoundingly miraculous thing, and the idea that it can go wrong is like, oh no, no, no, it doesn't do that. If it does go wrong, there's something serious, it's a serious, serious problem. But no, no, it's it's just how it is, you know. And then you accept the reality of your romantic partner as a human, and you accept the reality that your brain is a flawed, tangled mess of stuff. And I do think it took again, it leaves a much healthier, less stressful existence because you're not trying to constantly compare it to some impossible benchmark. And I do think that's a helpful way to go about things.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

It's a wonderful analogy, and I have to say, I do think it has to be one of the top five most pernicious ideas of all time. The idea that the problem with romantic relationships is finding the right person. And once you find the right person, the relationship will just take care of itself. And I really blame, I primarily blame movies for this. Oh, just absolutely that conditioning people decade after decade with this idea.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

It's always been a fictional thing, you know, like the happy ever after is a fairy tale thing, you know, but you know, that's still an unhelpful benchmark. Or like there's um as if Dr. Petra Boynton explained to me in modern Western society, at least we have this idea of the relationship escalator, and like every relationship has to follow a certain pattern. I imagine like so like you get together and then you you propose, then you get married, then you live together, or by the way around, and then you move to the countryside, then you have children, these steps which you always have to do. That's not really a thing. That's that's an entirely cultural construct, but no, it's it's a result of constant trial and error. But it you know, it's not it's not a rule, it's not a hard and vast law of nature. It's just something we've built up that we feel we have to follow, although we don't, because of circumstances, because of just personal differences, feel like you're doing something wrong. You're not, you're just not following the usual path, you're doing your own thing, and that's that's fine, but it doesn't feel fine because we've been taught you know the the different messages being reinforced. Same with the brain and being flawed in some way. It it is flawed, very that's fine. Don't worry about it, it's just it always has been.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Yeah, and with all of these things, with understanding your brain, choosing your career, as you mentioned, romantic relationships, you have an ideal in your head, and if you're too invested or identified with that ideal, when the harder reality hits you, I think the biggest danger is you fall into this trap of cynicism, which is something like, Oh, this isn't turning out the way I expected, therefore, it's not the whole project isn't worth it. And actually, what I found in my career, where I noticed this exact same pattern of idealism at the beginning and hard-hitting realities, what you have to do is really face that hard-hitting reality quite directly and work with it, almost like wrestling and battle with it and struggle with it, and then through that, there's there's light at the end of the tunnel. So, just like with a relationship, you fall in love, then there are friction, there's friction and difficulties in the relationship. There is the light at the end of the tunnel on the other side where you say, Okay, we can actually make this work despite the fact that there's difficulties and friction between us. And I bet the same is true for understanding the brain. If you can confront maybe some of the darker realities of how our brain works, ultimately that puts you in a position where you can have just have a better relationship with your mind.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah, absolutely. There's so much going on in our brain which is, like I say, unhelpful and not even necessarily dark, but sort of kind of it goes against what you think of yourself, like the whole like intrusive thoughts and things like that, or um the various studies which show that people tend to gravitate towards people of their own race or culture or gender and things because various reasons you can also explain that in very neutral terms. If you grow up around a certain type of person, because that's what your family looks like, then your brain has more practice identifying that person. They have more emotional connections with people who look like that, and therefore, people who don't look like that trigger a different response, and therefore you have something to suppress and overrule. And you know, these are all things which are just human nature. It doesn't mean you're inherently immoral or bad, but it can look like that if you don't understand how the brain really works. So people say like when you encounter someone from a different race, you have this instinctive, oh no, stranger, oh no, not one of my people reaction. And yeah, that's that's deeply buried, that's emotional, that's reactive, that's uh reflexive. But it's not you, it's not who you are. Uh it's just a small facet of your your thinking, your your your how your brain works. But it's a lot of oversimplification about the brain in the wider culture right now and the discourse, especially via social media where people have to summarize things quickly. One thing I've come across recently, I've actually wrote about this in my next book, which is coming out sometime soon. This idea that, you know, if drunk words are sober thoughts, yeah, basically when you're drunk, you are more honest. And that can happen. You know, it can be like your self-regulation, your self-awareness, your uh impulse control is compromised if you're got alcohol in your system, but it doesn't automatically mean the deeper things you're saying are purely pure honesty. Like I say, when I was like 18.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

But it's not necessarily pure expressions of who you are.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like when I was 18, I got very drunk when I first uh went to a student and I tried to eat the stick. That wasn't like go. I haven't been suppressing my stick, my stick-eating desires my whole life. I haven't eaten the stick since, because I'm not like go. I've just gotta be me. I've just got to sit in the woods just gnawing a tree. So it was just some sort of drunken stunt I wanted to do to show off. But no, that wasn't my deeper real, real self. That was just my drunken idiot self, which is also, you know, but it's also like the idea that the part of you which suppresses those urges is not a valid part of yourself. And I would argue it's more. Like the idea that you have, I have this thought that I want to say something or do something. I don't think I should do it. That part there, that is like that's the more human part. That's your prefrontal cortex telling you, don't do that. That you know that's wrong. You know, so like I do think the idea that the the more primal, instinctive, reflexive part of you is the real you is a unhelpful misconcept how the brain works. If anything, it's the other way around. That's the part you we try to get away from, and it's the human part which controls this or tries to regulate this, which is really us. Uh you know, it's a conscious decision rather than an emotional urge. So yeah, I do think that's an unhelpful take on the matter.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

And it's really part of, again, a very human tendency to over-identify with our thoughts, that if thoughts come up spontaneously, and of course, most of our thoughts aren't thoughts we actively think, they're thoughts which pop up spontaneously. Um, then we think they must be a reflection of the deeper aspects of ourselves or our soul. You see this a lot with obsessive-compulsive disorder where people might have intrusive thoughts that they're going to harm someone, or intrusive thoughts that they're a paedophile sometimes, which they don't identify with, but because they come up, it inspires a deep fear or anxiety that that means something about them or their morality or their ethics. But as you're saying, the the thought itself is not just an expression of who you are, there's also all the other stuff. The decision to act on a thought, the decision to express your thoughts are just as important, if not more important, expressions of who you are as a whole person.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Exactly that. Yeah, it's in like this idea that the the stuff we don't expect, the stuff we don't recognize as part of ourselves is actually the truer reflection. I can see where that comes from, I can see why that stance happens, but it's not how the brain works. The brain is, you know, it's constantly running simulations of what if, what if, as far as just know it's complex enough to simulate the world around us, and it explores all the options, and some of those options are not good. Like the whole intrusive thoughts thing. You stood by a train platform next to someone, you just have the thought, what if I push them? What if I push them in the tracks? What would happen? And then your brain goes, they'd be seriously hurt or die, you'd go to jail, you'd feel horrific forever. Don't do that. Exactly. Don't okay, yes. It's like um like someone exploring an island, uh, like approaching an electric fence, the feeling in the hum goes, oh, I'm gonna not touch that and back off, and that's you know, that's part where your brain's doing. Like, oh, there's a boundary, let's not go there. Just because you're going towards the electric fence doesn't mean you want to be electrocuted. You know, that's um that's it. You're just trying to find out the layer of the land, trying to see where the boundaries are. Your brain's always just trying to find that out. And with stuff like OCD, it's like the part your brain just goes, shuts that down. Okay, don't need that thought anymore. Some of the neuroscience evidence suggests that's the part which is compromised. You know, that part doesn't work so well in OCD. So rather than going, Am I a monster? No. Okay, move on. The part which goes, move on, it doesn't work. Am I though? Am I? Maybe I am. Am I? Maybe I'm not. But when you start thinking about it, obviously it gains more neurological significance, so it becomes a more prominent thought, and then you can't shut it down. You know, it's a you get a feedback loop and you're just racked with these terrible thoughts about stuff you've done or could do or will do, and you think that's who you are. It's not who you are, it's just the part the part which normally keeps that in place, as just another part bubbling underneath, is not as functional as it should be, and then you have to deal with it. But the fact that it bothers you, and you say, Oh my god, I can't believe I thought that. That's a reflection of who you are. That is like that's your brain going, okay, this this is a bad thought, right? This is really bad. And then that's you know, that's you. That's you saying that. It's the fact that this anomalous thought is there, which won't go away, is the problem. But that's not you. That is no, that is like uh that's the issue. Your response to it, your worry about it is a far better reflection of who you are and how you work than that one significant anomalous thought.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

I almost feel you know, people should be really encouraged to see themselves as this whole complex of phenomena. We're very complicated human beings, obviously. We are to some degree our thoughts, but we're also our perceptions, and we're also what we do. We are what we are our behavior. We're probably a lot more than those things, too. But for the sake of this line of arguments, we're we're a mixture of these different things, and importantly, it's very dynamic. So, one one misconception I observe a lot in people is we tend to see ourselves as very static, as stuck in one place. I've done this thing in the past, therefore I'm doing this thing now, and I'm always going to do this thing, or I've thought this in the past, I'm thinking this now, I'm going to be thinking this in the future. Whereas actually, there's tremendous with within all of these different facets of ourselves, there's much more capacity for flexibility and movement than we give ourselves credit for. Is that is that in line with kind of your thinking about this?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, absolutely. The human brain is an incredibly flexible organ, that's one of its superpowers, so it can change, it does change. This, um, I know obviously there's different ages, different levels of development. You know, when you're a child, you're far more neurocognitively flexible because it's still learning, your brain's still making all the connections it needs. Say when you're a teenager, it's going doing all the overhauls and refining itself to become an adult. And when you're an adult, it's a bit more, bit more static, but still quite flexible. You know, um, if you think of the brain as like building a house, the foundations are in, we've still got a lot of wiggle room with layout and in structures and kernels and furniture and stuff. So there's a lot of room for movement there. Yeah, but the brain's really powerful like that. We have like everyone has multiple personas, not in a sort of therapeutic sense, in a sort of just like day-to-day life sense.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I um like we act differently in different situations.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Totally. Yeah, you've experienced this. If you've ever been young and you see a teacher outside of school, it's no no no no no no, this is how do I behave right now? I'm with my parents, my teachers there. No, no, this is not you've got two clash-in personas in your head. You've got okay, what what's the what's the protocol here? And it's quite significant. Or like when you're out with your work friends, you behave differently, I'm guessing, to your close personal friends, and if those those parties overlap, then you're like, ah, oh, yes, you've you've got the sort of okay, who who am I meant to be right now? So we all have different personas anyway, but we do develop and evolve over time because in terms of motivation, some people describe the model of the current self, this is who you are right now, your ideal self, this is what I want to be, and your ought self. So if I'm me and I want to be that, I ought to be doing this sort of stuff. You know, so I'm me right now, I want to be that, which is like a professional athlete. Yeah, professional athlete. So we say, so I ought to be training, I ought to be on a diet, I ought to be in the gym around the clock. It's stereotypical example, but yeah, so we do we work to change ourselves all the time because we have this ideal self that we want to be, but that the the existence that acknowledges that we we know we can change and we want to change, and we fail to do that, that can be upsetting, depressing, it's gonna be quite uh dispiriting, but it's still there, we still have the potential, it just you know requires work to do it, and sometimes because the way the brain works, if we don't get immediate results, we tend to be put off. Like prefers tangible things.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. So, from a neuroscientific point of view, are there any principles people can use if they're feeling stuck on the way to their potential? They know they could get to a certain point, maybe they're stuck with a very particular problem or a very particular goal. What are some principles people can use to get there when they're feeling stuck?

SPEAKER_01 18:37

I think there's this idea that the brain likes tangible results, so it can be quite often to sort of put a lot of work in and not see any obvious benefits or any obvious consequences that you are looking for. So it can be why some of diet and exercise is such a sort of mentally challenging thing because it's a slow process. You know, you can you can spend a whole day eating just nothing but lettuce leaves and running laps around the local park, um, and you'll sort of be very tired and hungry at the end of it. And then next day you start again, you won't weigh much less, and you just you might feel worse. So that's like, oh, all that effort for nothing. The brain is very sensitive to wasted effort. There's a whole like circuit in the insula which maps out decisions you have, actions you can take, and what is constantly running the calculation, is this worth it? It's like I I call it is it worth it circuit. And you can see how that would have evolved. Because imagine if you're a primitive creature trying to find food and you spend seven hours chasing one mouse, you've just burned more calories than one tiny mouse can provide. Or it's only a nine-hour walk to the this bush full of grapes. Okay, that's great. I'm gonna go there and come back again. That's uh totally squandered, you know. So like it's very sensitive to like I cannot afford to waste effort in a survival situation, but that's still there. That's uh you know, most of the stuff in our brain is there from hundreds of thousands of millions of years ago, which, like you say, don't apply so much in the modern context. But when when food is available, touch of a button, you don't really care about calories so much, but you can't help it because it's part of our internal work, it's how we've evolved. So, yeah, it's it is off-putting to think, okay, I put all this work in, nothing's happened yet. But anyway, that's sort of just recognizing that that dissatisfaction is normal. It's just a part of your primitive brain going, I want it now. You can't have it now. That's not how physics and biology work. Boo. So, yes, you will have that, but it's not a it's not a logical, rational thing. It's just a sort of your primitive brain saying, Can we do something else? Is this worth it?

SPEAKER_02 20:34

There's this, yeah, it's worth it.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yeah, and it is worth it. It's just that if it's not immediately worth it, your brain doesn't really recognise that until later. Later on, you tend to have you know, when you have a use outcomes, then it feels much better. You know, people can humans are good at delay gratification. That's one of our key skills. We can say, I could have this now, it'll be nice, or I could do this now, which is not as nice, but have much better rewards later. Just like one of the higher functions we are capable of, and it's a good indicator of how we are different from your basic creatures. No, not all of them, obviously some plenty of species can do this, but it's it's a useful neurological talent to have, and something that should be embraced. Yes. General vice, you know, if it feels like you're not going anywhere, you are. It's just that feeling is like a it's like an evolutionary holdover for your brain going, oh, I don't want to do this, I'm not getting anything I want. So yeah, that's that's short-term thinking, which your instinctive brain is doing, and you just got to power through that, I think.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah, I work with people for behavior change coaching. So if people are stuck in a particular pattern that they want to change, uh, how can we change it? How can we accelerate that process? And I've never heard attempt the is it worth it circuit, but I'm definitely going to be using that from now on as a very helpful. Because one of the techniques I use is you know, if you're trying a new behavior, get a result as soon as possible because you can you can get results or you can create results. So, one of the easiest ways I find Is just to make the activity more of a micro activity or a micro goal. So if you instead of if you're not used to going to the gym, you might do five push-ups instead. And doing that arrives helps you arrive at the result, which might be like feeling good, feeling motivated because you did one unit of something quote unquote positive much faster. And therefore, that creates this sense of okay, I am now moving forward, I am creating some kind of momentum in terms of just uh, for example, sticking to a diet, you can actually just log, log how many days that you've eaten healthy and give yourself a nice tick. And it's shocking how sensitive we are to reward. That sounds silly. Would a tick really help you feel motivated? But actually, it does. People know this when they even use a simple to-do list. So finding a way to get some kind of result very quickly is very important because it very powerfully motivates you.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, exactly. I think it's the incremental stuff which is often overlooked, but it's really important. I see a personal trainer, don't laugh. I do actually see it, but it's uh it's always like um, no, if you're not going to do it right, or not if you're not gonna do like the full session you want to do, or you're not gonna do the full weekly stuff, do something. Something's always better than nothing. And I think that's uh often overlooked too. People like with depression, like I've got friends who've dealt with this and they their own tips are often along the lines of, yeah, if you just do something, like my friend Dan Mitchell, like he um he was struggling with his depression, and but he had a dog. He said, She's been really helpful because whatever else I feel, however, like down I feel, or however low I feel, or unmotivated, the dog has to be walked. Uh so I walk the dog when I've walked the dog, I have done something. I have left the house, I have had some low-level exercise. You know, it makes I can at least say to myself, I did that today. And you know, even like small things like showering, doing some dishes.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

It's a sense of progress.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah, progress. Your brain needs to have some if you give it a sense of control over anything, then it does tend to feel better. Autonomy and control of environment, your brain really reacts well to that. Because like even if it's again very slight, very minimal. Like I work on my latest book right now, and it can be quite dispiriting to keep right churning stuff out, no end in sight. But then if I go downstairs and make dinner for the family, I feel better because that's that's much much smaller scale, it's much much more short term, but it's a tangible result. Like I did something, we have something that is really helpful, really motivational. And I think that can apply to all manner of all walks of life. So yeah, your brain responds to that. Just doing something, even if it's incremental, is always better than doing nothing, or something to try to sabotage your goals in instinctive ways.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was actually antidepressants, especially from a neuroscientific point of view. We've talked about antidepressants a fair bit on the podcast, but not for a while. And we've had people on with various points of view. From your point of view, how much do we actually understand about how antidepressants work?

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Um it's either a lot more than people think or not as much as people think. It really depends who you're speaking to. So um, you know, there's a lot of uh you know, misinformation on antidepressants, and in a way, it's sort of encouraging because back in the very, very first days when I started writing about this sort of stuff or into this field, you still had the occasional mainstream media piece that depression itself wasn't real. You know, it's not a thing, it's just people being dramatic, people are showing off. And you don't get that now, apart from the extreme fringe clear places. So, like that that is progress of a sort. Uh, now you get arguments whether antidepressants are a real thing. I know, like depression's real, but you don't need these pills. So I think that's like the people who are you know stuck in their ways and opposed to any sort of mental health care or mental health acknowledgement, sort of retreated to attacking the medication rather than the condition itself. Yeah, you've got to take your wins where you can, I suppose, but it's a very sort of small one in that respect. But yeah, it's for a long time there was the mental sorry, the chemical imbalance idea of antidepressants, which you can understand because you know the main the more um typical antidepressants, you know, SSRIs and all the variations before then, they do tend to work by altering the imbalance or the levels of neurotransmitters in your brain. That's pretty much exactly what they do. They increase levels of uh you know, or adrenaline or serotonin mostly because of SSRIs via various interfering mechanisms with uh the typical transmission, and that's you know produces a mood change in result. So, but but that's when they first discovered, that's what that's what uh they would describe it. They just uh alter the chemical balance of your brain, and therefore you don't feel depressed anymore. But I do think that uh sort of bedded in too much because as we quickly found out, that it's a lot more to it than that, because if it if you know depression was simply a matter of insufficient levels of a certain neurotransmitter, your typical antidepressant increases those levels within minutes of taking them. So, like you know, if that was all that was at work here, you would expect to see very rapid improvement in mood. But as anyone who takes them knows, your average antidepressant takes two to three weeks to kick in if they do at all. So clearly there's a lot more gone than just the chemical imbalance or the chemical low levels. And no, now there's arguments that it's more to do with reduced neuroplasticity, that the lack of neurotransmitters, you know, I don't know if it's a cause or effect, but it's linked to certain neurons losing the ability to become, to change, to adapt, to respond to signals. They don't fire as much, they don't change around as much. And that sort of syncs up with the fact that, you know, one of the key points of depression isn't being sad, which is another main three misconception, it's and unchange in mood. Usually it's flat affect, you know, no emotions at all. Often it's just the deep feelings of despair. It can be anger, it can't be very angry, like volatile emotions, but it's staying in the same emotional state for weeks on end. That's the more atypical thing. People have periods of sadness, periods of anger, like normally, periods of not feeling much, but um it's the fact that you can't change, is like perhaps the bigger problem than anything. And there are some arguments now that when you take antidepressants, you sort of elevate the chemical transmission, chemical activity of these neurotransmitters, which affect the neurons which are static, stuck in place, and it sort of copes them back to life more more slowly, more gently, like like fertilizing a plant, which is wilt instead. So you put it in, it doesn't just go boom, it just goes, Okay, I've got more to work with, and it slowly comes back to life. And so there's like that argument. There's also like the inflammation argument that his neurons being inflamed, which causes them to uh become you know rigid or stuck in place, and therefore this is the inflammation response we should be looking at, but these aren't necessarily unrelated, and there's could be a lot of overlap between the two. We see a lot of um interesting developments in the sort of psychedelic depression antidepressants now, like ketamine and things, which work on the usually work on the glutamate neurons, which are far more widespread. Most antidepressants work on the monoamine system, which is very important and very widespread, but it's a very small percentage of the overall brain activity, like the veins through marble, you know, like it's there, it's not the whole thing, but you can see it everywhere, but it's you're just winding through it, whereas the glutamate system is far more um uh omnipresent. So by working on that, you get a much more rapid result, it seems. Mood changes relatively quickly, like within a day rather than two weeks, and so on and so on. But you know, we are we are talking about psychedelics here. These things are not toys and not to be trifled with, like you take those carefully, they have a lot of impact. So there's a lot of work on that right now, or like the transcranial magnetic stimulation, like directly stimulating the neurons with the powerful magnetic fields, not chemicals, and just trig bringing back to life that way. So there's lots of different models of depression at the moment, lots of different models of understanding. Some are you know more evidence-based than others, but some they all seem to have some degree of efficacy. But we are still uncovering stuff. Like it's only a few years ago that they discovered there are multiple serotonin networks of the brain, not just one homogeneous one. So it could be that they seem to have different activities. So it could be for some people, the SSRI stimulate one type of serotonin system more than the other, and that one's more responsible for uh bad emotions, negative emotions. Therefore, some people get a negative reaction to antidepressants, and that could be why, because in this particular person, for whatever reason, the other sort of serotonin system has been overstimulated, and that has that does that makes things worse, not better, and therefore, so you can see how we're unpacking this stuff slowly over time to sort of realize, okay, that's what's going on here. So that's a whistle stop to all the current understanding, as far as I'm aware.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

So, given that we are dealing with different arguments, different models, different theories, would it be fair to say we don't conclusively know at this point exactly how antidepressants can help with depression? And indeed, perhaps we could also say we don't really understand what's happening at a biological level with depression itself. We have some ideas, but it's still something very much that science is trying to figure out. Do you think that's right?

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Oh, yeah, it's absolutely the case. Yeah, we we still, you know, again, for all I said earlier on about the brain being a tangled mess of you know nonsense, but we are still unpacking a lot of what it how it works, and we still don't know the majority of it. I think well, some the confusion lies in we don't know everything about the brain, it's not the same as we know nothing about the brain. So like you say we don't know everything, no, but we know it can't do that, you know. I I've got psychic powers. You don't we don't know how the brain works, we know it doesn't do that. We know that we know we can prove it doesn't do that. That's not infeasible, but thank you for thank you for your contribution. But um so there's a mismatch between you know incomplete knowledge and no knowledge. I think that's something really important to keep in mind. But but yeah, but yeah, we we still don't know 100% uh correctly or accurately, or with the most robust evidence base exactly what's happening with depression. And you've got to look at the fact that you know depression itself as a sort of concept is medically slightly chaotic in that you can, you know, if there are sort of nine different criteria for depression, you've got to have like five for a physical diagnosis. And that's people would very much argue that's far too simple for something as complex as a mood sort of depression. I would totally agree, but you've got to start somewhere. But it does mean that you know, if you there are nine, you need five, then two people could have completely different systems, the symptoms is one minor overlap and both receive the same diagnosis. So like it could end up being the case that okay, so there's depression A, depression B, depression C, sound through depression Z, five, alpha three, nine, you know, it's we're talking about no human something experienced by a human by the human psyche, you know. That's there's so much variability there that the idea that this one particular depression that unifies everybody, it's a helpful way to think about things, a helpful model to use, but you know, over time we might find that's insufficient. We need to broaden it out further. So we're still at that stage really trying to unpack all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

I'm gonna ask you something, and I personally have my own conflicting feelings about it, so I don't have a clear necessarily position one way or the other. But do you think the word disease is a useful word to apply to depression as a disease?

SPEAKER_01 33:36

It's a tricky one because you know there was for years people adopted the disease model of mental health for mental illness when diagnosing people, and I know you can I think that was necessary because before then mental health problems weren't even recognized as a medical thing. So you have to sort of integrate them to the medical system. And I do think that's what happened. Like you sort of have a medical way of treating people with usually physical ailments, and you incorporate mental health problems into that, you still use the same system to deal with those. But yeah, there's a lot of problems with that because obviously a disease suggests that there is a root biological problem which can hopefully be fixed, and then the person will be cured. And you know, that's the sort of default assumption when you're treating something as a disease, and mental health problems typically don't work like that, and the medical ways of treating them don't work for mental health problems. So if someone came in with a disease, so let's say COVID, for example, but let's say we had an antiviral which cured it. So someone comes in and says, I've got this, these various symptoms. Ah, yes, you've got the this disease, you've got COVID. Okay, so here's the pills we take to cure COVID. Take these, come back and see me in two months or two weeks, whatever it is, and then we'll see if you've cured. If not, we'll try a different approach. And yes, you know, that's a fairly logical system, but the patient is very passive in that. They turn up and say, Here's my problems. Doctor says, I know what your problems are, here's how you deal with it, do as you're told, see you soon. And you can't really do that with mental health problems because you know the person, the individual, the patient is the one, is the only one who can experience them. Their contribution is far more important. You can't put someone in an x-ray machine as up, there's your anxiety, and we'll just take that out. That's that's not you know, it's it's far more uh you know uh intertwined with your very self, your very being. So you need to have far more of a discussant, uh discursive, discursive-based approach, you need to have a sort of a two-we dynamic, which is better now, but for a long time, that wasn't really taught in medicine. You have to be aloof, you have to be disengaged from your patient, unless you need to talk to them. But you know, these are you know old-fashioned ideas, but they were around for quite some time and you still get them occasionally. So yeah, I can see if the if the intention is to get people to take mental health problems seriously, like depression, and they don't, then saying it's like a disease, yes, that can be helpful. Same with like the usual thing of it's like a broken leg. Okay, you've got to treat it like it's a genuinely debilitating condition, which it is. But if you are trying to get people to sort of try to explain or work on how to treat mental health problems effectively in a way which benefits patients and medical community and those around them, saying it's like a disease can be unhelpful because that's not the approach you should be taking because they don't work like that. So, yeah, there are pros and cons to it. But I think if we're talking about you know pure scientific accuracy, it's not helpful to call it a disease. That would would be my stance on the matter.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

It can be quite complicated. One one thing that I think can be helpful to understand is not always, but I think often a mental health condition originates with some phenomena that's trying to help the person in some way. So, for example, one might experience a lot of social rejection, and that can cause sadness and retreat socially. And you can see how that could be advantageous. There's a reason we feel sad. So, sadness is an emotion that compels us to stop doing what we're doing, retreat, protect ourselves, ruminate, and maybe think what's going wrong, what am I losing out on in this situation? And potentially eventually, how things could how could things be better? And sadness in small doses like that can be very useful. But then if it goes too far, maybe you spend too much time alone, too much time disconnected from others, then sadness can become depression. And so, in that sense, maybe a disease way of thinking isn't super useful. However, if you then think about some other physical health conditions, they also operate in a diet with a dynamic like that. Take liver cirrhosis as a response to alcoholism, the the cirrhotic process that's the liver laying down scar tissue because of the alcohol exposure. So the liver is trying to protect itself, but if there's too much scar tissue, then you get cirrhosis, which is the scar tissue becomes the poison, the scar tissue becomes the thing that stops the liver from functioning. So is cirrhosis a disease or is it liver failure to adapt to alcohol syndrome? You could say the same thing about type 2 diabetes, where the pancreas pumps out insulin at a very rapid volume to try and deal with the huge amount of sugar someone can consume in a modern society, and eventually it fails. So this line between disease and non- and adaptation is actually maybe a lot more complex, even in the physical health realm.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Oh, absolutely. There's no sort of clear divide between these things. It's because of like the neuroscience, like personally, something that keeps up a lot is the whole physical health versus mental health, as if they're two distinct concepts, and they're not. Obviously, there's significant overlap. And the idea, obviously, you can argue it comes down to the whole brain and body, as if like those are two different things. They're not. Your brain is very much part of your body, and your body has significant impact on how your brain works, and I think it does, it's very much a two-way streak. It's not like the body is the horse and the brain is the jockey, you know, it's just that's the only thing that's in charge there. It's no, it's a far, far stronger overlapping system. Things like depression, it confuses some people, but they do have it does have like physical symptoms. You know, you get people experience suppressed immune system because when you're in a fight or flight state, your immune system is response, response is suppressed because you have if you're inflamed, you're like it hurts, you're incapacitated, so you can't afford to have that whilst you're dealing with a problem. So therefore, the evolutionary response to stress is to suppress the immune system, so you don't get a debilitated immune reaction. But then, if stress doesn't go away, then that obviously endures for long periods, and you're more prone to sickness, or you know, you gain weight more because you know your body thinks I'm going to be fighting something any moment. I need to retain as many calories as I can, and you could be, or you resort to stress eating because it's you know, I need some sort of comfort to offset this constant low-level anxiety, stress, depression. So, yeah, there's there's so much overlap between where one part of it ends and one another begins. And I think you can tell how um sort of nebulous these things are. Uh, because I wanted to write one of my previous books, I looked up like, oh, I need to sort of find um a definition of illness, because I was talking about this. I said, okay, look at the illness. The dictionary said um illness, a period of sickness. He's all right, fine. I went I went to sickness. The experience of being ill. All right. So just keep going back and forth. All right, so life sucks for a period of time. So it's really helpful. Thanks for that. Yes. Yeah, so um yeah, so you can sort of tell how like these things are far more uh blurry than the it would be much more helpful and people respond well to a clear set of systems, a little clear set of parameters. But you know, biology and nature just it hasn't been ever been like that. We are you know it's very messy down there when you get down to the nuts and bolts level of it all.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

In terms of antidepressants themselves, can you comment on what proportion of the time do they work? So, for example, if someone finds themselves depressed and they try an antidepressants for the first time, how likely is it that that antidepressant is going to help them significantly with their symptoms?

SPEAKER_01 41:20

From what I can tell, it is a good chance. Uh, because usually if you're first time presenting with depression symptoms, you go to the GP and they prescribe antidepressants, it will be an SSRI, but one of those those are the go-to's. One thing which people I don't think realize is they're not the go-tos because they are the best, most effective antidepressants. If anything, on paper, in terms of the their ability to treat depression, they're one of the worst. But that's because they also have the lowest likelihood of side effects. And that's obviously a huge consideration when it comes to taking a psychoactive substance, which is meant to alter your mood. Like a lot of the more powerful antidepressants, the MOIs and TCAs and stuff, they they can have more significant effects on your depression. But you know, we are actually altering the chemical levels of something in your brain which affects countless other systems too, and leads to anomalous activity in other parts of the body and brain, and therefore you get unpleasant consequences like digestive or like uh hypertension and physical problems, and like your moods go in a weird direction, so on and so on. So it's really hard to say for certain, but I think it's something like two out of three uh people who take an an SSRI will experience some benefit from it. Perhaps it might be a bit higher than that, I think. But it's also like they'll much less like to experience any side effects, too, which is like the main goal at first. So if you take it and after a few weeks it doesn't seem to be doing anything, okay, then you sort of okay, well let's try one of the more powerful ones. And because obviously you you've shown that the you can tolerate this one at least, but it's not having the therapeutic effect, so let's step it up again. So yeah, I think uh the ratios really depend on how you know what sort of date you're looking at. I just don't forget that you know depression, antidepressants are prescribed to a lot of non-depression cases. You know, they use off-label for things like anxiety disorders or people like with a lot of people with ADHD, gets misdiagnosed as the having depression. And therefore, when they get depressants, it doesn't really do what they should should be doing because it's treating the wrong thing. Yeah, so it's uh it's murky data, but they tend to be quite reliable, hence they've become like the default approach to depression. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Do you share the concerns that are starting to emerge quite a lot, especially in the past couple of years, in terms of antidepressant withdrawal effects and particularly delayed withdrawal effects that people can be coming off antidepressants and have quite severe side effects as a result? And sometimes those withdrawal effects can persist for months or even years.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

Yeah, well, obviously that's um something we really need to be um be aware of. keep an eye on. It's um I think it's sort of like uh you can sort of see that being um a sort of uh a stick to use to for the and the anti-pill arguments or the anti-medication arguments which are still quite rife um but you know it's a valid concern because you know if you have been taking a substance or drug for many many years it alters the chemical levels of your brain your brain will adapt to that your brain will learn to expect it to become dependent on it like works any any other sort of drug you know your brain chemistry your brain structure alters around the increased presence of an existing uh substance or an external substance if it's present often enough that's what you get like drug tolerance or alcohol tolerance or things like that and you it's it's not not not not necessarily a bad thing. So obviously if you are taking a lot of antipressants your brain's been stimulated to fix or like adjust the depression regulation system then that's good. That's like what you want to happen. But yeah but these things have lasting effects like people who have become addicted to something you know they say addiction is a lifelong thing you just have to be vigilant forever now because those those changes have happened in your brain they don't necessarily go away they might be suppressed or reduced but they're still there so they can be reactivated relatively easily and you can see how that might happen or probably does happen with antidepressants and things like that. So yeah it's definitely something to uh which obviously needs to be looked at looks to be worked on needs to be monitored and I I can imagine it's obviously become an increasing problem because of the prevalence of antidepressant use which like I say is very much the go-to almost default intervention for any sort of mood problem or mood disorder. And you I get people don't think that's good and I I agree that's not necessarily a good thing but I do think it's um you know people will start conspiracy like it's all the drug companies trying to freeze you or people trying to keep you quiet. But I do think it's just what you get when you have a chronically underfunded under resourced health system. So when people come to you say you're GP, you've got 10 minutes, say I've got I think I've got depression you put you on the waiting list for a counsellor that'll be like 18 months and you it might work or you can have a pack of pills now and that's you know it's it's an option we have which fills a lot of gaps but not necessarily the best option. That was the right option but you know if I think in an ideal world we'd have a a a range of choices but oftentimes we don't and that's where we end up with using a lot more antipressions than we otherwise should but you know it's um that's a structural problem I think not so much a conspirating one. And what do you think are some of the most dangerous views you've seen in the public sphere about on on the anti-medication side yeah I mean the anti-medication stance at all is pretty bad you know obviously you've got the anti-vax thing which is obviously really quite really quite dangerous genuinely dangerous. Like I've tried to explain this like talk earlier on about um behaviors versus you know things people say and stuff to the whole thing where a lot of people are virulently anti-vax ironically um because they think you should never let you know never let a pharmaceutical company put stuff in your body you don't even know what it is all right that's I don't agree but I can see the logic of that stance but I've not seen anyone who says that say the same thing about things like a Zempic or you know the weight loss jabs. Those are fine because because I don't know because obviously my yeah my kids' health isn't that important but my waistline I'll do anything for that and that's like that's sure that to me is inconsistent and you can see where that sort of falls down. But yeah the the idea that taking medication at all is just inherently badly mental medication you should go with the full natural approach or just do it yourself. I do think that smacks heavily of victim blaming of like you know your depression is your fault and you should handle it. You shouldn't rely on drugs as a crutch or it's just a you know just a failure in your part which I think is deeply unhelpful. I mean I'm prominent in that sort of world because I became like the figurehead for the pushback against uh Johan Hari's Lost Connections book where he published this excerpt which said you know antidepressants don't do anything nothing at all so you just throw them out and people were just literally stopping their antipressants cold turkey. I know that because like I had a few dozen emails contact me directly saying yeah my friend's just stopping antidepressants he's not doing well what do I do please don't do that that's really really bad and I published a rebuttal piece and they then sort of the the pushback against that sort of dangerous in uninformed anti-medication viewpoint which is very popular in the world with the world where natural is always good and the nature bias is a part of the the brain system and no anything anything where chemical is bad is you know that's a very prevalent and common viewpoint but it's deeply unhelpful and getting really dangerous when we have these medications which save people's lives so yes I'm quite active on that side of things. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

So it sounds like the sane attitude we should have about antidepressants ultimately is they are a tool amongst a number of other tools people can use to to help with depression and those could be biological tools psychological tools social tools and we just have to be aware of the pros and cons of every intervention and like everything else antidepressants are definitely not going to be a panacea but neither but also they can have utility in in a lot of cases so it's about using them intentionally knowing about the possible downsides. I think one thing I like to emphasize is using them in a time limited fashion. So if I prescribe them I might you know tell the patient we're gonna review this regularly. So one of the biggest problems I see with antidepressants is that people are left on them indefinitely. Whereas I think you can avoid a lot of the problems by being very intentional about the timeframe and just understanding it's an option nested within within other options.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Yeah absolutely I think all the evidence shows that the most effective ways of treating or dealing with mental health problems are is a combined approach so if you're antidepressants then having talking therapies alongside those and you can see how that works at the neurological level the antidepressants give your brain back some plasticity and those makes your brain capable of change again but the therapy allows uh takes that flexibility and allows you to work out new pathways new models of thinking which avoid the mentally unhealthy ones so like someone's built a bridge someone's got a map you know it's it's a combined approach which tends to be rather helpful. And it's that's usually how it goes with you all obviously all types of healthcare in that you know when you have a broken leg you might need a surgeon to fix it but also you need physios to help you walk again you need nurses to check your your your your vitals and keep you you know just do the actual hand-to-hand day-to-day labour which is important in healthcare so you know every so health problem has a multifaceted approach ideally and I think mental health care is particularly important in that regard so yeah so like antidepressants are one tool amongst many not a perfect tool not even a hundred percent reliable tool but a tool nonetheless and I think that's no you don't expect much of them don't expect much don't expect too much of them obviously people think I'll take this I won't be depressed tomorrow that's not how it works but no that's it's a start step right direction incremental gains yeah you wrote a book The Happy Brain about happiness I think ha happiness is interesting because I think it's the thing that everyone claims to want and yet not something that everyone's working constructively towards where do people go wrong do you think in their quests for happiness? There's lots of different problems with that I think it's that like with the early thing about relationships because of the culture we live in there are so many different things which we think will make us happy like lessons we absorb learning we expose to that we realize in that actually doesn't you know some people think like well I my parents were very high high flying career people and I meet that as well because I want to be like them that's like a model you've learned but that's not necessarily something that will make you happy you might be far more happy as an artist or a gardener or something that's entirely possible because that's just how you've grown how your brain works but because of these cultural lessons we've picked up almost accidentally or like the things that are reinforced the wider world you know we must always have loads of money or we must be really fit and beautiful and successful and that's like okay makes some people happy but not everyone and it's also you know we I think we mistake success for happiness sometimes or like success wealth and stakes accomplishment yeah it's very common now like people online saying here's my day I wake up at 4 a.m. I do 700 squat thrusts take six hours yeah that's my day actually yeah eat a handful of lentils and then I do 19 hours of emails and then I go cold shower back to bed. What are you doing with your day? Like well I'm not doing that. That's the idea that that is usually successful people saying here's how I'm successful is no you would do all that because you're successful by probably more luck-based means and now you're trying to rationalize why you're like this like you're trying to make sure it's your achievement and stuff. So I mean even when you are successful or have wealth and status people still aren't happy they sort of like that no I need to I need to have it be recognized for something I did not something I have I need people to recognize it was me. It was my response I did all myself and that's there's always something else you know there's no sort of one thing which makes everybody happy and I do think even if you sort of do find that you find something that does make you happy genuinely and you can stick with that the whole thing call it toxic positivity call it whatever you want to call it is a sort of mentality at the in the present where you have to be happy all the time or you're doing something wrong. Which like I say it's not how happiness works in the brain it's a reward state. It's okay the thing that is happening now is good. I want to enjoy this I want to experience this again I want to learn that this is worth doing so your brain makes you happy oh good thing happened let's celebrate if you're happy all the time it becomes like it defeats the whole point of happiness and not even like you know that's an unhealthy lesson just continue to happy people are happy all the time can be some of the most sort of no mentally disturbed people not necessarily like they're dangerous but you know that's that's an unhealthy episode. Yeah I guess it's an unhealthy way to be you know if you feel like you have to be happy all the time and you you actually aren't and then you're presenting an emotional state which is not one you feel and that's that can be very stressful. Like you ask anyone who works like a call centre you know you have to be really nice customers who are screaming at you shouting at you that sort of that's causes a lot of depression that causes a lot of mental health problems because your brain is experiencing emotions which you're not allowed to process or express so that's that's unhelpful too. Also the suppression of negative emotional states which obviously is what happens when you are happy all the time that's not healthy because those are vital parts of our ability to process the things that happen to us. No one has a life which is constant happiness all the time because it's not how life works and just statistically impossible. But when you suppress your ability your willingness to share and express negative emotions you lose the ability to deal with them. So when something bad does happen you tend to crumble quite quickly because I've never I don't know how to deal with this right now. It um the idea that it is a very big trend I think it might be less so now but the corporate world you must have happy employees not for any sort of benign beneficial uh beneficent reasons but it's just because statistics show that people who are happy at their work are like 20% more productive than people are unhappy. So if you have a hundred happy employees you get 120 employees worth of work you know just a mathematical thing. Which again you can see the logic of that but other research shows that yeah someone's happy at work all the time they're not necessarily the best employee they might be more productive on pure pure on paper and when something goes wrong they tend to fall apart instantly or they tend to be constant reinforcement re encouragement constant rewards because otherwise they don't be happy and yeah so it's like having just one emotional state is never the good a good plan. When you're unhappy all the time we call it depression and when it's happy all the time we say well done here's a meme about you that that's not really good either you know we should be both should be treated equally seriously yeah so I guess two really important things embedded in your answer the first thing is people aren't talking about the same thing when they're talking about happiness.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

So happiness might be like this basket of positive emotions so one person might mean inner peace one person may might mean like joy of connection another person might be hedonic pleasure of like getting things which are pleasurable another person might be mean the pride of accomplishment and status so when you say I would like to be happier what even do you mean or what combination of those things are you looking for because that's going to hugely inform you know what things you should actually do. And then the second thing I guess you mentioned which is really important is that negative emotions are just as important as positive emotions. You don't want to be stuck in negative emotions obviously that's depression or something else but negative emotions and at a healthy level are very very important tools that we're using to navigate life just as much as the positive ones.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

Yeah exactly that I mean the analogy I've used in my book I like to keep bringing up is if you're happy all the time it's the brain equivalent of going to the gym every day all day every day but only ever exercising your left leg. So after a couple of weeks you've got a really big left leg but then the rest of your body is all mismatched and imbalanced you're walking in circles you look strange. You wouldn't do that that's not a good thing when you go to the gym you exercise everything they have certain days for certain parts of the body and stuff and that's how you should be treating your emotion system too you should be like okay don't don't don't don't don't like do days like today I'll be sad. I'm saying like don't suppress that if you actually feel that you know a sad thing happened today you're allowed to be sad. You're allowed to be angry don't act on it to the point where you cause damage or destruction to yourself but you the feeling of anger is valid. It should be something you allow yourself to recognize and acknowledge because the parts the brain which produce emotions and process emotions are also the parts which show them. So when we actually suppress our emotional expression we are sort of stunting our brain's ability to deal with those emotions. Like they stay there but it doesn't sort of like they doesn't fade away this cause a bit of a backlog and therefore you sort of end up they go somewhere eventually and then you've got people with you know breakdowns or and really unhealthy coping behaviors and toxic stuff so yeah it's it's really not good to just suppress and deny all your emotional states other than happiness because this is not what we've evolved to do.

SPEAKER_02 58:54

And when you wrote the book about happiness what were your main source materials? Is there like a rich neuroscientific literature on happiness?

SPEAKER_01 59:02

Did you have to get a lot of stuff from the philosophical domain as well what's the combination of those things yeah there's you know obviously there's a lot of overlap with the philosophical world or like the introspective world and stuff but I wanted to focus on the science though because that's very much my my ballpark I do worry about overstepping into philosophical realms because I know some scientists go, eh look at you like I don't do that. I don't think that's I don't think that's very mature to be honest. I think that's a an unhealthy worldview but um but you know there's there's loads of literature in loads of out there about the the sort of fundamentals of happiness and like you said earlier on like there are multiple different forms of happiness and you can see those work at the neurological level sometimes it's not so much something being triggered it's like a suppression of the stress system. So you're not you know currently you've got nothing to be scared of and that's sort of like oh de breakers that's nice you know when the the the the the default level positivity is actually enough to be oh cool this is nice this is calm but and you have the extreme you know excitement or the extreme stimulation of pure joy pure pleasure and like like I say you can be relaxed and chill and that's a state of happiness. You can also be ecstatic and that's the state of happiness. Very rarely is is it rarely is anyone ecstatically relaxed. That does that doesn't that's not a thing is it's not ecstatically relaxed, right? Yeah you can want somebody in an arm chair like you with a cigar and a brandy go that's not that's that's that's weird. You know that's that's not something people do because those are incompatible neurological processes. So the intensity the stimulation of ecstasy does not correspond with the sort of the parasympathetic relaxed state it's they tend to sort of be incompatible you can have one or the other you can't have both at the same time. So you can see how neurologically there are distinct systems which lead to us experiencing a happiness state as we would classify it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

And and when you were writing the book what do you think is the most surprising or valuable thing you learned for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

Yeah it's an interesting one I mean there was a uh a time well like one part of the chapter was concerned relationships because obviously that's a big part of human happiness. This is under 18, this gets slightly slightly in that area but obviously relationships to humans feature a lot of sex and intimacy. There's a lot of literature about the human orgasm what what what that is what it does what it how it works and stuff obviously it's a you know it's a burst of extreme happiness should we say if nothing else but uh unlike most other studies I find in the science world pretty much all the subjects involved in orgasm studies were women but that's like you know it's not typical there's lots of archaic reasons why women don't feature as much in scientific research it's being corrected now but obviously there's a lot of it you know in in the archives um but I said this is like this is atypical so I delved a little deeper and um I found that the reason like if I I think it's approved now but uh for the longest time men weren't used in orgasm studies because the male orgasm doesn't last long enough for the scanning technology to to pick it up and scan it. So it's just like gone. Oh that's I thought that makes sense but then I thought oh someone in a lab summit had to find that out because that that oh no that poor guy in the tube that day like it's oh sorry Keith missed it again. Have you got a seventh one? Crying so yeah so like that was like oh dear that that's um that's unfortunate is there someone had to discover that so probably wasn't the answer you're expecting but it was something which really struck out as oh dear oh no somebody somewhere found that out and that's um that's unfortunate for all concerned.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

And are there any lessons from the book that you actually ended up using in your own personal life?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:45

Yeah it probably comes back to what I said about doing the idea of you have to be happy all the time or something is wrong, right? I never really preached that but I think I had absorbed the sort of the wider cultural impression that was the case. You know if you're not happy then you should work at being happy um or like you should be you know constantly striving for more happiness. And that isn't true.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

That's not how our brains work like in and it's just like like I said with the whole relationship SO could you say our brains weren't designed to be constantly happy or not designed to be maybe as joyous as advertisements perhaps with uh talk to portraying yeah our brains are not evolved to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:23

If you have you know if your happiness circuit is on all the time you then you could risk weighing out like just constantly revving a car like it's going to burn out eventually it's there for when it's needed. There are times and places where that's important to have it but if you just have it on all the time then that makes a mockery of the whole concept of happiness because you know if everything makes you happy logically nothing does because you know you wouldn't do anything. You just sort of like wake up in the morning I'm happy great just sit there 12 hours later back to bed.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

Hey happy back to bed so yeah it it's just not really a good way to live you know it's like how it's always uh sunny in Los Angeles but no one appreciates it whereas you know I live in London and when it's sunny everyone really really appreciates it because you know it's not something you can always take for granted.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Totally yeah well I live in Wales so like when it's not raining those three or four minutes a month then we really we really enjoy that and then yeah so you totally yeah it's like what you're used to yeah the brain's very good at habituation which it gets used to something quite quickly. I think that's why British weather has never been uh is always complained about because it's it's never consistent it's always just it's like it's constantly on shuffle. So the British people always talk about the weather we don't have a weather to rely on.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:33

As with most of my guests I feel we've only just scratched the surface of what we could talk about. That being the case I'd love to have you back on at some point in the future. In the meantime thank you so much Dr. Dean Bennett where can people find out more about your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Um I've got all the usual social media platforms but they're all linked to on my site deanbennett.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:54

Perfect Dean thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:56

Thank you Alex Pierce