How to Open a Closed Mind

Summary

Bewildered: "How to Open a Closed Mind"

Hosts: Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Date: June 17, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers around an essential question from a listener: how can we truly connect and communicate with others when strong emotions and social conditioning threaten to close our minds? Martha and Rowan explore why our nervous systems react so instinctively to perceived threats, how these reactions block discernment, and what practices can help us return to openness and calm—even (or especially) in a world overwhelmed by cultural anxiety. True to form, their banter brings humor and practical wisdom to the challenge of "reopening" closed minds, both in ourselves and others.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Listener Question: The "Be Wild Files" Returns

[15:00]

• Jason's Question:
  • Jason writes in, inspired by Martha and Rowan’s work on integrity and the nervous system. He asks:

    "Do you think discernment is less about what we’re thinking and more about whether our nervous system feels safe enough to think at all? And if so, how do we create that sense of safety both in ourselves and in conversation with others?"

• Both hosts express admiration for the depth and compassion of the question.
  • Martha: "It's really true. There are a number of juicy tidbits, but the central question is does discernment come from... is it whether our nervous system feels safe enough to think at all?" [16:44]
• Framing: The question opens up a discussion on why it’s so hard to stay open-minded, especially when our identities feel threatened in conversation.

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2. The Amygdala & the Threat Cascade

[19:00–24:00]

• Martha explains: Most of our defensive reactions are not cognitive but instinctual—powered by the amygdala, the ancient brain structure that decides, instantly, whether something is a threat.
  • "The amygdala... is reacting thousands of times faster than any kind of cognitive process. If it's connected with something scary, even tangentially, it goes immediately into a defense cascade." [19:30]
• Example: Even an innocuous word linked to a past trauma (“disappointed”) can trigger intense reactions.
• Rowan points out this gets amplified online, where written words lack soothing nonverbal cues.
  • "On the Internet, there's no other signals... no little smile, nothing to calm you down. Everything can be exaggerated." [21:21]

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3. The Cultural Anxiety Spiral

[30:00–35:00]

• The Internet and modern culture exploit this wiring.
  • Martha: "You see something innocuous—say someone says 'all the girls will love this flan recipe'—but if your amygdala is set up to feel attacked, just that will make you go." [30:10]
• This launches the "anxiety spiral"—amygdala triggers neocortex, which spins a defensive story, and the amygdala believes it as reality—screeching feedback loop.
  • "It's a feedback screech in a microphone... within a few seconds you get this unbearably loud shrieking noise." [34:02] (Martha’s analogy)
• Negativity bias: Our brains evolved to err on the side of assuming threat; culture weaponizes it.
• Rowan: "No wonder we can't tell the difference between a flan recipe and a boa constrictor." [35:11]

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4. Nature vs. Culture: Regulation & Belonging

[40:00–44:00]

• Key Insight: Regulation and openness are virtually impossible if we stay stuck in social/cultural anxiety.
• "Culture is coming to consensus; nature is coming to our senses." [40:00]
• Real nervous system regulation happens in nature, away from cultural triggers.
  • Martha: "We evolved to be calmed by [nature] almost all the time." [41:06]
• Even a houseplant, sound of water, or photo of a landscape aids in healing anxiety.
  • Rowan cites research: "The people who got the houseplants recovered faster, had fewer doctor visits afterward, less pain." [44:14]
• Profound disconnection from nature is a root of modern stress.

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5. Connection & The Village

[49:59–55:00]

• Communal coping:
  • The hosts argue that the skills of tolerating differences and handling discomfort are atrophying because we're losing the "village" dynamic—where you simply have to deal with everyone, even the annoying people.
  • Rowan: "We're losing our tolerance for people who are a little bit different from us." [52:05]
• In villages or in crisis ("bodega fire"), identity differences melt away in favor of shared goals.
  • Martha: "Intimacy increases as a function of shared endeavor." [55:23]

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6. How to Practically Create Safety & Openness

A. Practice Self-Regulation

[57:45–63:53]

• Step 1: Practice calming before you're actually in conflict.
  • "It's almost impossible to do it once we're in that conversation... we've got to take it back to the bunny hill and practice." [38:03]
• Go to nature, care for a plant, meditate, listen to running water, attend to your body.
• Try Martha’s visualization:
  • "For the next two minutes, you do not have to have any identity at all. You just get to be." [61:10]
  • As simple as taking a deep, slow breath—regulate first, then engage.

B. The Power of Creativity

Creativity as an “opener” for the closed mind

• Neuroscience insight:
  • Left hemisphere = anxiety spiral;
  • Right hemisphere = curiosity spiral (rubbernecking at accidents is about curiosity, not just prurience).
• Making things (crafts, painting, poetry, even folding paper) shifts your brain out of defensive mode into openness and play.
  • Martha: "Make something. The more complicated the better, actually... The moment I actually get into the construction of a thing, I’m in what you call my art coma—a state of such well-being." [66:19]
• Rowan: "When we begin to make something, we start identifying as a verb... an entirely different way of being human." [67:41]

C. In-The-Moment Tools

• If you do get triggered:
  • Breathe. Long, slow breath with pursed lips, slow exhale.
    • "If I take and then blow out a very slow, deep breath... that will re-regulate your brain stem." [79:12]
  • Remember you’re just in a body, not under existential threat.
  • If possible, recall a creative project or visualization; touch into “maker” mode or self soothe.
  • "There's such power in stopping making it about them and just taking responsibility a thousand percent in that moment." [80:58]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Media and Modern Triggers:

  • Rowan: "No wonder we can't tell the difference between a flan recipe and a boa constrictor." [35:11]

• On Handling Triggers in Conversation:

  • Martha: "You can always... pick up what they're saying if you're watching your breath than if you're trying to track what they're saying, because you will not be tracking what they're saying. You'll be feeling a threat and composing an attack in response." [77:40]

• On the Healing Power of Nature:

  • Martha: "I don't think you can even build a foundation [for openness] unless you access some level of connection to nature." [41:06]

• On Creativity vs. Anxiety:

  • Martha: "They've known for a long time that if you're given a creative task and they create any kind of stress, immediately your creativity goes absolutely flatline. But start to create, and your anxiety flatlines." [65:34]
  • Rowan: "When we begin to make something, we start identifying as a verb... and that is an entirely different way of being human." [67:41]

• Humor:

  • Martha: "I try to pee very near you every morning. Audibly." [47:31]
  • Rowan: "Get ready to poop. Look out for lightning." [83:16]

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Highlighted Segment Timestamps

• [15:01] Listener Jason’s question sets the theme.
• [19:00–24:00] Amygdala, triggers, and the ancient brain.
• [30:00–35:00] The online anxiety spiral and cultural amplification.
• [40:00] Nature vs. Culture—the calming effect of the wild.
• [57:45–66:19] Practical tools for regulating and reopening closed minds.
• [72:43–80:58] Regulating during conflict; specific breathing and in-the-moment strategies.

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Episode Takeaways

• Discernment and open-mindedness aren’t “rational”—they’re embodied states that depend on nervous system safety.
• Triggers and overreactions are ancient responses, easily stoked by modern culture but not unsolvable.
• Authentic regulation happens in connection with nature and through creativity—not more argument.
• Preparing for difficult conversations means practicing calm and creative “openness” before you need it.
• During conflict, the best tools remain: breathe, connect to your senses, let go of rigid identity, and—if you can—make or imagine making something.

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This episode is packed with both laughter and deeply practical insights for anyone longing to find calm and communion in a polarized world. If you're trying to open your closed mind, or help someone else do the same, Martha and Rowan suggest: go outside, breathe, make (anything!), and remember we're all navigating this wild, beautiful mess together.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[B]

And I'm Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people like her, trying to figure it out. Yep, and we got a good one today.

[A]

We have a thing that we haven't done for ages called To Be Wild files.

[B]

Yeah, we have a question from a listener. Really good question.

[A]

Really good question.

[B]

And it's all about when we get triggered and we can't really hear what other people are doing saying to us, and they're not hearing us because they're triggered, and how can we ever really find common ground?

[A]

And I think we can, but you're going to have to listen to know how.

[B]

Hope you enjoy it. On Bewildered, we have a lot of conversations about finding our own true nature, and we enjoy that a lot. But talking ultimately can't compare with the lived experience of sharing space and time with kindred spirits and actually doing it. Every year, Mari and I bring Bewildered to the Costa Rican jungle for our pure wild self retreats. We call them a culture cleanse where you can wash off all the shoulds, learn directly from Martha how to hear that wise voice of your true nature. And we laugh and play and eat amazing food and make lifelong friends. If this sounds like something your soul longs for, listen to it. You can learn [e-mail] hope to see you in the jungle.

[A]

So, Rowie. Yes. What are you trying to figure out?

[B]

Well, Marty, I had a pretty strong story, like Locked and Loaded ready to go for today's podcast of something I was trying to figure out about your son, my stepson, Adam Beck, a favorite of the listeners. Who doesn't love an Adam Beck story, But. But I'm gonna have to shelve that due to some, like, pretty pressing business that you and I have at this moment. Something happened shortly before we began recording this podcast, and I wish to address it.

[A]

It's best to do these things in public.

[B]

So I won't say it was, like, actual violence that you did to me, but, like, it was, like, adjacent to something like that.

[A]

I'm too weak.

[B]

Well, you. You found a way. Life finds a way.

[A]

Okay, how did I find a way?

[B]

I left my bag in the car. Important context for the listener. So I. I came into the studio in a really, really fraught position that never happens. I never let this happen. I had no lip balm on me,

[A]

but I had lip balm.

[B]

Or so I thought. You're like, fear not. I have something that does that. And. And let's just be very clear, what is Lip balm supposed to do? It's supposed to, like, slightly moisten your lips.

[A]

Balm your lips.

[B]

Yeah, it's a balm.

[A]

Balm.

[B]

It's a bomb.

[A]

Not a balm, A balm.

[B]

A bomb

[A]

lip balm would be painful.

[B]

It's a burn. But a balm implies soothing. Yes, that's right. And what you gave me was first. Like, the first red flag was that what you handed me literally had the words on it, medical grade.

[A]

Now, Marty, we live in a cold climate now. We need medical grade lip balm.

[B]

But what does it even mean?

[A]

It means.

[B]

It means that there's something wrong with my lips that you think needs curing by medical. And that's not. First of all, that's a big judgment for you to be making. Second of all, I put this shit on my face and it hurts. It has made my lips go a different color. And I don't know if I'm having a severe allergic reaction or if this is what it was going for. And either way, medical grade lip balm should not exist. I think.

[A]

I think that it's happening on your lips the way it was meant to, but it doesn't affect me that way. I think I'm the one with the abnormal, like, genotype here, because they told me that if you just put this on, you won't need lipstick and it will plump up your lips. And I was like, okay. And I. It doesn't at all for me, so it's just lip balm for me. Plump that.

[B]

Yet they're swollen because I'm having a medical episode from the medical grade gunk that you just so freely gave me to smear on my face.

[A]

It doesn't do a thing to me. And I'm. I have allergic reactions to. To my hair. I have. I am allergic to my own skin cells. And nothing. Nothing happened in here.

[B]

Just.

[A]

But you have these delightfully plump, naturally shaded lips.

[B]

Say plump.

[A]

They're not fat. I don't. And even if they were, that would be.

[B]

I don't mind if they're fat. I don't want them to be plump. Plump. I don't like that word.

[A]

I like the word plump.

[B]

I feel like there's. It's a verb.

[A]

It's better than two messes.

[B]

Something like you plump a pillow.

[A]

Okay, they're too messive. Intelligent. Let's go on. Let's go on.

[B]

All I'm saying is if Burt's Bees wants to become a bewildered sponsor, I will very joyfully be part of that, and I will never trust you, ever.

[A]

Again, Wipe it off.

[B]

No. What are you trying to figure out?

[A]

Oh, goodness. I just, you know, I know that AI is going to take over the world and become our overlord and kill us all or whatever. Like, I've read the. I've read the headlines, but I really enjoy watching it flap around, trying to be an obsequious, like, sycophantic servant to the. To the humans. And mine. It's. I don't know why this happens, but, like, why? I search for something in Google. It doesn't say search, it says buscar, which means search Espanol. Not that I speak Espanol beyond. If really religious listeners will remember that. Like one of our very first podcasts, I talked about how I had just started doing Spanish duolingo and I was worried about Luis because all he would say was, por favor, no. Which really, to me signals some grave distress.

[B]

He'd probably tried medical grade lip balm.

[A]

No.

[B]

Madre de Dios.

[A]

Anyway, for some reason, because I look at Spanish duolingo for two minutes a day, my phone believes that I fully want to speak Spanish. I probably should be doing Spanish, but. So today I ask. I don't use AI very often, but today I wanted to ask what I should do with these little saplings that I'm growing. I don't know. And I said, I have two very small saplings, and this is. I, a y ay ay, have two very small sapiens in American porcelain. Tres de inventade. It just goes on the gibberish of Spanish. And that's what I seem to put in. And wait, wait for it. This is what.

[B]

Hang on, hang on. Like, I literally don't know what you're talking about.

[A]

I was talking into my phone. I was saying, I have these two very small trees. They're in a dark space. They've been overwintering, they've been dormant. Now they're getting leaf buds. I need to know what to do for them. And it did. It created an absolute hodgepodge.

[B]

Aye yai yai, aye yai yai.

[A]

Like heavily drugged Spanish or something. Anyway, that didn't make me laugh, that just annoyed me.

[B]

Good.

[A]

What made me laugh was ChatGPT's desperate attempt to be polite about it and what it thought that I may be talking about. It said, I'm not quite able to understand what you're asking here. Could you please rephrase for me? For example, are you asking about a cell phone plan or offer inventing or writing something? Dark winter, Dark winter. Water in a room or Salon or something happening this week. This is groping around all the things that I think about or talk about. And I thought, okay, this is my, like, my Rorschach block test of what my AI thinks I'm thinking, and I can't figure out what to do about it.

[B]

So it's like your keyboard or something is set to Spanish, so when it listens to you, it tries to Spanish ifyour.

[A]

And I keep sending it back to English, but no, it goes to Spanish every time. And by the way, when Siri talks to me, she's Australian. I can't stop her from being Australian. I'm like. I'm trying to get, like, I would love a Jamaican Siri or somebody. But no, it's always, I can't do that. And I can't do that. I can't do that. And not only what the fuck are you talking about is it has some attitude along with it, because you really can't speak Australian without being a little sad, messy, if not downright belligerent. Like, there's some.

[B]

Certainly salty.

[A]

So weird. Because there's the very. The very proper Australian thing where you can't have any. Like, your mom. Where you don't. No profanity, no nothing.

[B]

Like your mom.

[A]

Like your mom. And then you get the rest of Australia, which is basically. Sorry. Which basically. Yeah, even Siri sounds rude when she talks to me, but funny and delightful.

[B]

Just give me another lip balm, moth bag. It's right through the heart this time.

[A]

Medical grade. I just love this, though. There is a woman. She's speaking randomly. Is she talking about a cell phone offer or plan, inventing or writing something? Dark winter. Water in a salon or something happening this week?

[B]

Water in a salon or dark winter. You know what I'd like to imagine is happening is that you have so deeply confused it that it's just like, I'm just gonna grab from things people talk to me about. Dark winter. Yeah, that's where the emo crowd are, like, talking to me this week. A cell phone plan. That's what the tech pros are everybody

[A]

thinking about inventing or writing something. Something like. It cast a pretty wide net. But it didn't. It has nothing about the saplings and whatnot.

[B]

No.

[A]

So, yeah.

[B]

Oh, we're gonna get so much mail about this.

[A]

About the saplings or about.

[B]

About using. About using ChatGPT about naming ChatGPT about.

[A]

Oh, should I be blipping this out?

[B]

You should. No, no. I mean, you've outed yourself.

[A]

Scott can go, boop.

[B]

Yeah. No, Scott, don't go boob. Go ahead. The people deserve to know. They deserve to know.

[A]

I just read a novel that is very, like, condemnatory of American fast food things, and the guy uses real brand names all the way through, and I think that was very brave of him.

[B]

Okay, should we do a podcast?

[A]

Oh, maybe. Or Dark Winter.

[B]

Cell phone player.

[A]

Something happening this week. Oh, I had a bear.

[B]

Well, you have to save the bear. You've wasted it all on ChatGPT. Look what's happened to your humanity and to nature.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Gone. Gone into AI vortex of doom.

[A]

Can I just say? Yes. Lips look amazing. They feel really weird.

[B]

Hi there. I'm Ro and I'll be your podcaster for today. Do you know how to tip your podcaster? It's actually pretty easy. You can rate our pod with lots of stars, all your stars. You can review it with your best superlatives. You can even subscribe or follow Bewildered, so you'll never miss an episode. Then, of course, if you're ready to go, all in. Our paid online community is called Wilder, A Sanctuary for the Bewildered. And I can honestly say it's one of the few true sanctuaries online. You can go to wildercommunity.com to check it out. Rate, review, subscribe, join, and you all

[A]

have a great day now. So we talk a lot on the podcast about coming to our senses, which sounds like you could do it by yourself, but weirdly, it isn't.

[B]

No, you actually can't do it alone. And I think especially right now when everything out there feels very polarized and overwhelming and noisy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People really often don't have a place where they can just go and be completely themselves.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So.

[A]

And that's why we started Wilder, which is our online community. And it's for people who really want kindness and connection and belonging without the strident, divisive argument that seems to be everywhere these days.

[B]

Yeah. In Wilder, we explore a new theme every month to help us stay in touch with our true nature. And there are all these live events on Zoom that are so fun. Fun from like, body doubling, co working,

[A]

parties, meditations, teaches meditations and classes.

[B]

Marty does Earth School, which is brilliant. And frequent meditations that we do together. And it is just a group of people who are the best. So if you've ever listened to this podcast and thought, I wish I could go deeper with this, or I wish I could talk to more people about these kinds of ideas, or Wilder is where that happens.

[A]

It really is. So if you want to come join [e-mail] we would love to see you there.

[B]

So back in the very early days of Bewildered, we used to have a thing. We did.

[A]

Yes. What was it?

[B]

Well, it's actually fallen by the wayside quite dramatically in recent times, but maybe we should bring it back. And I refer to a convention called the Bewild Files.

[A]

Oh, yes.

[B]

Remember those?

[A]

Yes. Wonderful questions. People would send in.

[B]

People would send in questions about what they were trying to figure out, and we, in the role of kind of dotty old lesbian advice columnists or something, would try to say something about it.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

And guess what? We got one.

[A]

Oh, we. We fielded a question.

[B]

We fielded a question from Jason.

[A]

So exciting.

[B]

And Jason has a wonderful question, and he has put it in writing, which is a little bit of a departure from the Be Wild Files, like convention. But, hey, I. I don't want to be culture, okay. I want to be nature. I'm gonna roll with it. And to show you how nature I am, I'll read it off my cell phone. All right, so Jason says, your work, and I'm gonna be really generous and assume he means your work. Your work has been shaping how I think about integrity and the nervous system, especially around why people struggle to stay open when something challenges their identity. I've been noticing a pattern in my own conversations. It's not that people resist truth itself. They seem to resist the internal threat response that comes with it. When that response is lowered, something shifts. People don't just agree. They start thinking for themselves in a more open way. And he says, my question is, do you think discernment is less about what we're thinking and more about whether our nervous system feels safe enough to think at all? And if so, how do we practically create that sense of safety both in ourselves and in conversations with others? It feels like this could change how we approach everything from conflict to growth, but I'm still trying to understand it more clearly. Jason, freaking great question.

[A]

That is a beautiful question.

[B]

Very well written.

[A]

Yes, indeed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Comes from a place of wisdom and compassion. I think we're done here.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, the answer's in the question, mate.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's really true. I mean, there is the question. I mean, there are a number of wonderful, juicy tidbits in there, but the central question is, does discernment come from. Say it again for me. Yeah.

[B]

So his question was, do you think discernment is less about what we're thinking and more about whether our nervous system feels safe enough to think at all? And if so, how do we practically create that sense of safety both in ourselves and in conversations with others? So I feel like, like the, the context of the question is, is as important as the question itself. So you're imagining two people in conversation with each other, for instance, and something that one person says produces some sort of challenge to the other person's sense of identity in some way, whether it's actually about their personal identity or maybe just something that kind of acts as a bit of a sacred cow in their worldview. Right. That, that we then like feel like it is our identity. You're attacking me because I think this. Yeah. And that, I mean this is just me freestyling off how I'm understanding the question.

[A]

Right.

[B]

If we took a sec in those moments and actually worked on regulating the nervous system of the animal that we're living inside at the time, that we would be a long way towards a genuine opportunity for relationship, for mutual understanding, for saving the world.

[A]

Right.

[B]

World peace.

[A]

Yeah. Because stuff like that, once something has been seen as a threat to identity, the all bets like there is nothing is going to happen except conflict. Because if somebody feels like they're being attacked as an ego state or whatever, they immediately come back in a very defensive posture which leads to the other person. Like aggression, not defense. So then that person becomes defensive, which reads as aggression. And you've got two people in violent aggression who actually may never have disagreed at all. It's just all perception. So Jason is saying, is it what we're thinking and saying that is the problem or is it whether our nervous systems feel safe enough to think at all? And, and so discernment, it's like there are two levels. So that before you can discern something at the level I think he's talking about, like figure out what someone's saying. There's already a choice that's been made in the brain and that is something unfamiliar has come up or something that may be related to other categories of things that are seen as threat. Like if you use a word that someone's grandpa father uses. Like I remember I knew someone whose word was disappointed. If you said the word disappointed, prepare for a full on like World War Three. And it was just an innocuous little word anyway. So there's this little part of the brain called the amygdala that's ancient, ancient, ancient. And its whole job is to decide whether something is a threat or not, friend or foe. And the thing is, it's very, very, very, very ancient. It's in every vertebrate. Right. And it's reacting thousands of times faster than any kind of cognitive process. And if something is one, like if it's connected with something scary to the person, even if it's not just tangentially connected, the amygdala at a very deep level is going to go fight, fight, run, run. Like it goes immediately into a defense cascade. You'd think I'd prepared for this question, but no. I just wrote a book about things so I knew this defense cascade work

[B]

that was very impressive. Most things you have written a book about. Can I interrupt with a question please?

[A]

Because I could go on forever.

[B]

Well. And I hope you will. So you say the brain has made a choice to interpret that. But of course what I'm imagining you mean is not that our conscious mind goes should I totally overreact and assume this person means me harm or should I give them the benefit of the doubt? No. Right. It happens too fast.

[A]

It's way before cognitive thought.

[B]

And what's more, it's probably happening like on the Internet where any. I mean not necessarily, but like it just strikes me that if it's also happening on the Internet where there's no other signals that, you know, like a little smile or a. You know, to calm you down to know that it's. It's not a threat. So. So that can raise it up and. But what interests me is that what it could be. Like you mentioned the grandfather and the disappointed. But I feel like something that I see around in the culture is a tendency to make taboo many things.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That for other people are built into the way that their brain processes language. So there are certain words that become trigger words. Not because that it has been decided that that's how you have to talk about these things. And I feel like. And I only mention that because. Feel like in a lot of the echo chamber forms that our converse like or media where our conversations take place, everything is. Has the capacity to be exaggerated.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we have the capacity to fly so far off the handle. Is that the word? Is that the. That it's all way more complex than it would be if it was all just us. And I could just sit there and say she probably means. Well.

[A]

No, you're absolutely right. There is a huge. There is this massive boiling pot of. I'll say overreaction at the risk of people who are overreacting getting extremely reactive against being called overreactive. Because this is what happens once the amygdala gets triggered and it will be triggered. There's something called a negativity bias which Just means that if there's anything threatening to you or even potentially threatening that you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, understand, you know, associate with anything, your brain will immediately say that's dangerous because you don't want to. It could be just an electrical cord, not a snake. But if it is a snake, you're better off like checking to see if it's a snake than just assuming everything's fine. So the brain is very, very much more likely to go into fight or flight than anything else.

[B]

Because also the like if you haven't. I'm just thinking about training dogs, obviously, and how when you're training your dog and you have it as quite a young puppy, it's really important that that dog has walked between parked cars or seen a woman in a long skirt or someone holding an umbrella, because otherwise. And so it's like this absolutely bizarre set of expectations and obviously have triggered other dogs in the past.

[A]

So they're like, oh, the old two parked cars thing. Oh my goodness. We had a dog named Bjorn whom you came in. Oh, when he was old and very lumpy. Yeah, I remember you house sat for us before, before we all got together. Karen and I left and you were house sitting and you, you said you were caring for Bjorn, like caressing his

[B]

lumps, just caressed his lumps from time to time. He seemed to appreciate it.

[A]

And I remember thinking when Karen read me that email, I like that Rowan mingle. She's a lump.

[B]

Caresses lumps.

[A]

That's the kind of woman, that's a

[B]

skill set I admire.

[A]

See now if my amygdala had gone off in the wrong direction, that could have been very frightening to me.

[B]

Not caress any of my lumps.

[A]

Anyway, Bjorn as a puppy, we were trying to house train him by taking him out when he started like circling and acting like. Do you know why they sn. They snorkel.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

They sniff and circle. Do you know why they're circling? Because most of the time they only want to poop facing north.

[B]

Same here.

[A]

And foxes are successful in their hunting in the winter when they're hunting under this, they're hunting things that are under the snow. They're successful more than 80% of the time if they're jumping due north, but not otherwise. Yeah, I love.

[B]

The thing that I love most is just how good we are at staying on point.

[A]

Add my add. Okay, back, back to it. Bjorn was a puppy. I was taking him out at night when he snorkeled. He was snorkeling. One day I took him out and it was in Phoenix. And we were sitting there, you know, in our little desert lot, and we had these gargantuan summer storms, the monsoon, and it was dramatic. And Bjorn snorkeled and snorkeled and snorkeled. Finally found north, I assume because he was like, settling in for the act itself. And lightning struck. Bam.

[B]

Sorry, Scott. Sorry about her noises.

[A]

It was louder than that. It was louder than that. It was deafening. Bjorn did not poop outside for a year and a half. We tried to get him to do it and he just looked at us like we were completely insane. Do you know what happens when I do that? I have a power beyond your human understanding. So we just sat there and grew lumps. All of which is just to say, yes, I see you're training a puppy thing. And go back to the point where if the puppy sees anything unusual, it's likely to freak out.

[B]

Yeah, assume it's a snake.

[A]

Assume it's a snake.

[B]

Don't assume.

[A]

Here we are back at the human amygdala. See how we did that? Just down the street and back, right? Just like. It's nothing.

[B]

Just a quick little detour.

[A]

This is how I keep my life interesting inside my own head. Doo doo doo. And penguins. Ooh. Yes.

[B]

We watched a TV show where a brilliant lawyer took advantage of another brilliant lawyer's intense ADHD by at the crucial moment when an objection was called for dropping a brochure about penguins on the desk of the defense attorney and then

[A]

launching into their attack.

[B]

And the attorney's like, penguins.

[A]

It was brilliant. I so identified with that.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Anywho. All right, here's the thing. Once the amygdala is activated and it's looking for snakes, it can interpret an entire environment as being dangerous. So if you're in a jungle at night, as we've been in the jungle at night in Costa Rica and we've been told you don't want to know what's crawling around the trees there. Not at night. In the daytime it's fine.

[B]

But please come to our pure wild self retreat in Costa Rica.

[A]

They're great.

[B]

Not dangerous.

[A]

Super not dangerous. No. I've never actually seen anything scary there, but when I'm walking in the dark from one of the cabins to another or whatever, I'm like hyper aware that there are creepy crawlies and potential jaguars. I don't know, just in case. No, there are no jaguars. Come to our pure wild self retreat. It's amazing. You'll love it. I'm sorry, I just thought of a Whole lot of inappropriate things I've said about things that I'm trying to promote. Anyway, the environment matters and what happens to people on the Internet, not even the Internet, but it's like the apex. Because our entire culture, if you look at modern, westernized, colonial, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah culture, it's very, very sort of devoted to or based upon the perceptions of the left hemisphere of the brain. And like all these straight lines and right angles, they don't really appear in nature. They appear in the left hemisphere of the human brain which loves them. And once you're in your left hemisphere, that's where you're going to have this little reaction where the amygdala sends out this little ah, like there are scary things around. I'm not sure what, but something talk

[B]

about this loop because it's so interesting.

[A]

I call this an anxiety spiral. So you go online, you see something, somebody has a recipe for flan, okay? So you're like, oh, a nice recipe for flan. And then they go in and they say something like, all you girls will love to make flan. And you're like a feminist. So you're like, all us girls, like what? Or you're a man and you're like, oh, you're only talking to women. So if your amygdala is set up to feel attacked, just that will make you go. And once you're in a state of even slight anxiety, what happens is the amygdala, which is completely non verbal, it goes all the way back to flatworms or whatever. The amygdala sends a signal that says afraid, afraid to the neocortex, which knows how to talk. And it immediately the neocortex tells a story explaining why you're afraid.

[B]

Because that's what it has to do. Because it's like, I'm getting a danger signal. It must be because of the thing.

[A]

Yeah, this is the reason. So yeah, the left side of the brain wants to defend the sense of being afraid. And so it explains, well, that person wrote that thing about flan and all the girls. Because that person just hates women and thinks they're all infantilized into children. Or that person is just a man hating lesbian, whatever phrase comes to mind

[B]

from their particular sort of worldview biases of their experience.

[A]

Exactly. And so what happens then? And this is the tricky part with humans, the amygdala does not just get a message from the neocortex and say, let me read this. That's one opinion. It actually treats the story coming back from the neocortex, as if that is reality. And so it looks at the story and goes, oh, my God, this is worse than I thought. And it sends out an even bigger distress signal, which is then interpreted by infantilized women. Exactly. And then the social part of this is that people run for defense to other social primates, us being social primates. And they're like, can you believe this person? He put this thing about girls in his flan recipe. And, you know, the other people are like, oh, my God, let me get you some tea. Can you believe this? And they sit down and say, this is war. Right. I can't believe this is happening. We're the only species where you can get a group of people in a room, or even just two people, and have them contemplate a subject and come out of that room more terrified and appalled and angry than, you know, a thousand times more terrified and appalled and angry than they were when they went into the room. Nothing has happened at all.

[B]

Yeah, but someone's getting canceled.

[A]

Someone's getting canceled and the rage is inflamed. And. Yeah, and it's crazy because there is real harm being done. You know, there are horrifying things online, and then there are things like somebody's flan recipe, and they're getting the same kind of reaction.

[B]

Yeah. Because the amygdala is. And the amygdala is expecting to have to encounter, like, three things in a day.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Not a scrolling.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Endless parade of outrage, which is what the culture is feeding us. And if you ever want to read a really good book, check out Beyond Anxiety by Martha Beck. It's a hell of a read. And, like, one of the things that you talk about in the book is the fact that once this spiral is underway. Right. Like amygdala, neocortex. Amygdala, neocortex. There's other bits. I don't pay attention to those. And there's no reverse on that.

[A]

Yeah. It's like a feedback screech in a microphone, which is. If you're at a concert and it goes. It's because the amplified sound from the microphone is going into the speaker, but then the speaker's feeding back into the microphone, which amplifies it, and then it sends it to the speaker which amplifies the amplified sound goes back into the microphone, and within a few seconds, you get this unbearably loud shrieking noise.

[B]

And so what we're living in is in this. This. These brains that, God love them, like, they're trying their hardest but they are not really equipped for the attention economy. That's like, if you haven't watched 15, you know, this video will not be seen if they haven't watched it for 15 seconds. And the first. So you, you'd better, in those first 15 seconds, tell them that if they don't watch then they're, you know, something really bad is going to happen to the people they love. And so, and that's what we're fed. And so the, the, the culture is feeding us. Exactly. What ramps up to the fever pitch.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Of the anxiety spiral. And I really think that, like, it's worth underlining that in that environment. No wonder we can't tell the difference between a flan recipe and a like boa constrictor.

[A]

Yeah. It's as if we're in the most terrifying environment in the world and there are people all around us running around screaming, we're in danger. We're in danger. There are enemies everywhere. We must attack, we must run away. We must, you know, hide in a bunker. And people are literally saying these things. I'm not even exaggerating, but I think Jason's question is very well put. Is that even thinking. Yeah, I don't think it is.

[B]

And I love the fact that like implied in the question is, so given this, given this environment, given this situation where how can we communicate with each other in such a way that we can experience each other's perspectives truly. Yeah. If we're so fucking triggered at every moment thanks to our inner, you know, architecture and outer situation of our society, given that, like, what can we do? And to me, the lovely opportunity in that is to say, okay, so whenever I'm greeted by a situation where I'm, I don't think I can make a choice, but there's, there's some lizard brain back here that is, is making that choice. For me just to kind of step into taking responsibility for. Wait a second, maybe there is a choice. Yeah, maybe I can use some other part of my brain that's somewhere else to be the grown up in the moment and take a breath and take a beat and get regulated, however, whatever that looks like for us.

[A]

Well, it's interesting because basically we live the culture, nature breakdown of this is that we're actually encouraged to be very hypersensitive and terrified. If you, if you show that kind of calm and, you know, sort of settling back into peace, a lot of people who are highly activated will increase the, their own anxiety. You, you, you're not paying attention. You don't care about me. Like, there's a lot of pressure to go into that inflamed state because everybody else is already in it.

[B]

Yeah. Because it's. And then you've got the horde of masked crusaders who are, like, running after. After people on the Internet.

[A]

Yeah. However, even.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So I think there is the opportunity to take a breath and, like, settle into the part of the brain that can make a decision. But I think it's almost impossible to do it once we're in that conversation. I think we have to start it way before we even go into the arena, because once the amygdala gets triggered, it's very, very difficult if you haven't practiced bringing it down. It's like learning to ski on a black diamond, like, off piste run. You're going. You're going to ski along a cliff. If you've never been on the bunny hill, we've got to take it back to the bunny hill and practice not getting activated before we even have to face someone.

[B]

Right. But the reality is, if you ever turn on the radio or listen to a podcast or whatever, we're probably triggering the shit out of a bunch of people right now.

[A]

Undoubtedly.

[B]

You know, great. If you're. If you're, like, really mad at us right now, great opportunity to practice because it's definitely more activating when you're face to face with someone. Right. So if, you know, in terms of this being a skill to build, which I think is a really brilliant, like, growth edge for me, based on. On Jason's question, I'm super excited about it to be like, okay, I'm going to, like, remind myself to take a beat at those times, you know, when I'm. And I agree with you, like, not in the moment when someone's screaming in my face.

[A]

Right. Or not even. So let me. Let me put something out there and you can decide whether I'm attacking you or not. Okay. So there's. The whole culture is coming to consensus. The consensus is everything's on fire. Run screaming, or nobody will or everybody will think you're apathetic.

[B]

Yeah. And by the way, people are espousing versions of that point of view in every country, in every part of the political spectrum in it, you know, like this. The story is greater than the words being used in it.

[A]

Yeah. So. And then the other side of that that we always want to think about is nature. So culture is coming to consensus. Nature is coming to our senses. And it's so funny because I'm talking about in the jungle, you're Afraid. And so your whole system's activated. But the truth of it is the reason we go to the jungle, the reason we go to Londolosi in South Africa, out there in the bushveld where there are animals running around that could, in Africa that could easily just munch you. In Costa Rica, creepy crawlies, no big deal, but still a little scary. People are afraid to go to those environments. But when you're there, if you're in nature and you come to your senses, there is this deep calming of the nervous system that comes from getting out of the brouhaha of human interaction and just into the land, into the creatures.

[B]

So that's like the accelerated course is if you want to accelerate getting this skill set, go outside, go somewhere quiet.

[A]

I actually think it's not even accelerating. I think it's a foundation. I don't think you can even build a foundation. We did not evolve to lack the foundation of connection to the natural world, to water and wind and stone and creatures. We evolved to be calmed by those things almost all the time. When we're in Africa or when we're in Costa Rica, we almost never go inside. We're in comfortable places under roofs, but there are no walls. You know, like we are with nature and everybody. There are people who are like, oh, I'm really afraid of lions and leopards or whatever, or, oh, I'm really afraid of, I don't know, sloths. In Costa Rica.

[B]

Then there was the, famously, the woman on the Star whose greatest fear while she was out in the Bushfeld was that someone would break into her house in la. So that was her fight or flight. Checking her security cameras, room after room after room after.

[A]

Yeah, and there were elephants around us and she's like, so I don't think it's. Oh, you can accelerate your skills by going to nature. I think it's like you. And I could tell, I can show you huge mountains of evidence if you even want to get calmed down in the first place. You have to access some level of connection to nature that we evolved to experience. Even if that's just a painting or a photograph of something in nature, even

[B]

if it's just as simple as a five day luxury retreat in the beautiful Imoloa Institute in Costa Rica. Even if it's just that, yeah, it,

[A]

that's a good way to start. Anyone who's on the Internet, that's what you need.

[B]

No, I think that's really good to point out though, because it's like the photo or the, or the houseplant. Like the houseplant is the ultimate thing. You can do a deep mindfulness meditation with a houseplant. And I do.

[A]

Yeah. Especially if the houseplant is something you smoke.

[B]

Oh, well, yeah.

[A]

I mean, I've never grown that.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I think there's a study where people who are recovering from an illness got either a teddy bear or a plant. And the teddy bear recipient. I mean, teddy bears are awesome. Right? And they're bears. Well, I wasn't gonna tell my bear story on another episode, but.

[B]

But it is interesting to think about the fact that we give one of the few predators we have left on Earth representations of them to baby.

[A]

This will help you feel better. Be with an omnivorous predator. Yeah. Because. Because, you know, the ironic fact of it, it works. It works to clutch a little animal, even if it is a carnivorous predator or an omnivorous predator. Anyway, the people who got the houseplants recovered faster, had fewer doctor visits afterward, less pain. All these different indices of their well being, they were significantly better than the people who'd received a teddy bear. So you're right. Even just one plant, which is. That's so. That's so sad to think that we are so devoid of nature, so divorced that some people don't even have a plant.

[B]

Marty, Marty, Marty. Now we need to do a whole episode on this, but I really, I need to just put in at this point that all the studies that are coming out about how your plants, if

[A]

you water your plants, they know when you just.

[B]

Coming home. When you're in within two miles, they change the song that they sing because

[A]

they know you're coming home. We've got to get one of those, those little synthesizers that you put on a plant. They're. They're pricey, but you could be an influencer and like go out and flog them and then we'd earn one. Flog, as in sell, not whip.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because they. Yes. They interact with us.

[B]

Yeah. Even. And trees. And trees feed their babies differently from how they feed the other trees. When they. When they send sugar. Sugar like treats they give their own saplings. Something that's a little bit better than other people around.

[A]

Around the mother tree. The saplings will grow and then the mother tree is older, so the mother tree dies first. But the saplings will feed sugar even to the stump of the mother tree.

[B]

Stump of the mother tree. Also a good band name, Stump of the Mother Tree.

[A]

I had an album I bought in mainland China in 1983 that was called Our Motherly Rubber Estate.

[B]

I think you Broke through. When we break through, we know it's gonna be a good day.

[A]

Yeah. One of the main songs was folk songs are lovely to sing but are forbidden anyway. They were trying to up their production of rubber in China at the time.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

All of which is to say we

[B]

need plants, we do, we need them, they need us. We have got to make that connection with nature.

[A]

And I'm telling you because I wrote a book about anxiety and because I was very much observing my own state as I read all these studies and everything. I'm very sensitive to where my amygdala, where I feel like I'm living a dangerous, difficult life and where I feel like, ah, life is taking care of me. You or Karen bought me a fantastic humidifier.

[B]

The one thing about having two partners is you can never remember which you told one thing to or which one.

[A]

Y' all got me a humidifier.

[B]

This guy. You're welcome.

[A]

Good one. And man, it ran out of water night before last. Oh man, it ran right out of water. It did. I need to be afraid. But I woke up in the morning and I was like, why is the world so sad today? And it's because the humidifier trickles. He goes, it's just this little trickling sound of running water which is one of the most regulating things for a human nervous system because obviously we need water every few hours. So the sound of trickling water says, oh, fresh water nearby. And it had an incredible difference in the way I felt waking up in the morning.

[B]

That's why I love it when the first thing I hear in the morning is you peeing.

[A]

I know. And I try to pee very near you every morning.

[B]

It's lovely.

[A]

Audibly. Yeah. And I hum. I gently hum how I do it.

[B]

You know, I bet there's a market for ASMR based on this.

[A]

Yes. I'm not altogether sure. I'm not amsr. Amsr. Autonomic Medial Sensory reaction.

[B]

I think I've talked about this before, but Marty, sometimes with clients has to. Has to sign non disclosure agreements and she calls them her dnr. Do not Resuscitate.

[A]

Yeah, I can't tell you anything because

[B]

I've got a DNR

[A]

anyway. Yes, I hum and I pee and I do everything I can to help

[B]

you and I garden and it's the same thing. It's the like it really is get. There's something that our nervous systems need to attune to. To the natural environment.

[A]

Yeah. Obviously pets, but small things that you really wouldn't think would have a Vast impact on your ability to self regulate. So it's by setting that up around yourself. It's a kind of self mothering. And I do use the word mother advisedly. I know fathers are wonderful parents too, but sometimes mother is a verb, it's not just a noun. And so I'm using it in the sense of bringing something into life which is very specific thing, the nurturing of life. You need living things around you and interacting with you long before you go on the Internet in the morning, like from the very first moment. And when we go off with people for five days into Africa or Costa Rica, it's because culture is three days deep. The famous Terrence McKenna quote. After three days without the clash and bustle and scream of Internet and everything, everyone just feels completely different. And people leave those retreats looking sometimes almost unrecognizable, younger, joyful. Their tension is gone, their postures are better. And I'd love to say we're doing it all and I think we help, but really if it weren't mostly the environment, we wouldn't be going all that way.

[B]

It's the environment. And another kind of key piece of this, it's also the experience of being with other people outside of culture who are a self selected group of people who we have a kind of contract, unspoken contract with, of. I mean you. Well, you know, I, I come with in good faith to, to treat. To give you the benefit of the doubt. And I believe that you're going to give me the benefit of the doubt.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because we're doing wellness.

[A]

Yes. So we starting out with the, the actual like elements. Stone, water, sloth. Sloth, the occasional leopard. Yes. And then going to village. Right. Because humans in a state of nature actually it's very hard to survive by yourself. So being connected is another thing that we desperately need. But being connected by going to an Internet where people are already screaming at you is not going to do you very many favors.

[B]

Well, and it's something too worth noting that there are skills in the village that we're that like as a culture where are atrophying in individuals.

[A]

Say more.

[B]

I'm planning to.

[A]

Please do.

[B]

If you like, say you live in a village with 65 people.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Or you know, half a dozen families or something. And it's just a little hamlets, a little pod. There are going to be people that you don't really enjoy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In that group. Right. But you live in the village with them. So you figure it out.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, and, and maybe that's some humoring.

[A]

Them.

[B]

Maybe that's some avoiding them. Maybe that's some, like, speaking truth to power moments, but you're still having to do life around them. And I feel like some of our masked crusaders and keyboard warriors and everything

[A]

are

[B]

like, it's like a really, It's a sad thing if you think about. We're losing our tolerance for people who are a little bit different from us.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You know, everyone has to use the same terminology and, you know, feel the same way about all these things and that if they don't, if someone doesn't, then that does become, in Jason's word, like an attack on your identity.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Not some. An interesting conversational topic up here to discuss.

[A]

Now you're after me. You are existential threat to my very being.

[B]

Yeah. And so, like, I'm really trying to focus on just for apocalypse reasons, not for this podcast reason, just trying to focus on getting to know our neighbors and spending time and all that. And it does make me reflect on the fact that, I mean, our neighbors are lovely.

[A]

The only reason I even talk to them is the apocalypse. I don't want them coming for the food in the basement.

[B]

But I, I, I notice that my, in myself, the unwillingness to. And the not in intolerance. Like, you have an intolerance to a certain type of food. You know, like, it's an intolerance that is just like, this is hard.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

Like, everyone texts, so it's hard to make a phone call all of a sudden, whereas in the past, we just did it. You know, it's like that. I feel like there's lots of ways that we're becoming so sensitized that we're giving our amygdalas so much opportunity to freak out.

[A]

And here's the thing. In a village, you wouldn't just have to deal with someone because you'd walk past them several times because There were only 65 people in the village. It's a phenomenon like the Office, the sitcom, the Office, or anybody who's worked in an office. It's this thing of a bunch of strangers thrown together, and they're in each other's physical space, and they have to interact in. And they pass each other and they sit in the break room, and they're both there. All of them are there together, and there are these different personalities, and they all have to cope with each other, and it's jolly because it's ridiculous and it's difficult. Here's the thing, though. If you're in a village that is in nature, everyone literally has to do some work together or you won't survive

[B]

death. Problem.

[A]

Yes. So in our culture, one of the things that I've heard, like, I read this thing online about a woman who lives in a very politically divided neighborhood. There's, like, one side of the street is liberal, the other is conservative or whatever. And there was a fire in a bodega, little shop, and it was threatening to spread to the other buildings around there, and everyone from both sides of the street came running with buckets and ladders and anything they could to help with the fire, and they were completely united in putting out the fire. No political differences whatsoever. I remember When I was 13, 13 row, I was sitting in US history class, and I wrote in my notebook, intimacy increases as a function of shared endeavor. This is why I got beaten up almost every day.

[B]

Yes, I see.

[A]

But I noticed how the people who were beating me up got much closer to each other.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

The. The point is, if you have to work together for the good of the whole group, and everyone knows we've got to get this well dug or we've got to deal with the elephants or whatever it is, there's not nearly as much room for. Wait, you have a different shaped fingernail than I do. You're threatening my identity.

[B]

But, yeah. And it's also that identity becomes a much more meaningful category because identity politics is kind of off the table because the bodega's on fire. And for as long as that lasts, the things that feel so deeply rooted become hypothetical. Not hypothetical, but, like, a little bit abstracted, because, really, not burning to death and not starving to death and not drowning. And all these things, like, are, like, I would now, don't at me. Don't at me for this. More important, then. Oh, boy.

[A]

They're gonna at us.

[B]

They're gonna at us.

[A]

At us to death. We're under threat right now. They're threatening our very existence.

[B]

Jason, your question is so brilliant. It's so brilliant. And I feel like, yes, we, like, totally agree that we can't think in those moments which you're sort of proposing and you're spot on. I also think that we're kind of getting to the the how, then. Yeah, you've got it. You've got to build the muscle.

[A]

I'm so tempted.

[B]

Go on, then. Be a fucking life coach.

[A]

All right, should we do a break? Like, we'll be right back after this

[B]

break with Martha being a life coach. We are at the how do we come to our senses portion of the episode, and I would love to Say that. To return to Jason's amazing question, how do we practically create the sense of safety both in ourselves and in conversation with others?

[A]

And I, as previously mentioned, gave a lot of thought to this and wrote a book about it, and I came to a very unexpected conclusion. Is that right? At least I didn't expect it. It's really fun when you're doing research and you find something you didn't expect. Because I talked earlier about the anxiety spiral that's on the left hemisphere of the brain. Yeah, yeah. If you look at the right hemisphere

[B]

of the brain, and I do, that

[A]

is where a lot of creativity takes place. And it actually has the same kind of spiral form where you have an amygdala reaction. And at first it's like, oh, just like on the left side. But the left side takes it into, oh, no, I should be afraid. The right side takes it into, oh, I should be curious. And one of the ways everybody feels this is rubbernecking at an accident.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You slow down and there is an almost ineluctable desire to see what happened. Yep. And you could be horrified. Like, if you see that something went wrong, you're genuinely horrified. And people feel bad, like they're being prurient or something, looking at it. But don't be too hard on yourself because you evolved that. Because if something bad does happen, you can learn from that experience, but only if you observe it very carefully. Which is why we're so freaking obsessed with murder mysteries. There are no robbery mystery movies being made. Mm. Mm.

[B]

Oh, well, Ocean's Eleven.

[A]

That's true, but that's. It's a different kind of.

[B]

That's a.

[A]

How do they get away with it? Yeah, yeah. It's a. It's solving a puzzle of sorts in a different way. But the murder mystery thing is so obsessive because that's. If a person being killed by another person is the maximum situation where we can learn something that could help us be safe in the future. Right. Because the greatest threat from any mammal to any human is another human.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I wanted to say humans are the animal that is most dangerous, but it turns out to be the mosquito.

[B]

Fuck those guys.

[A]

I know, right? Anyway, they're not going back to nature to make you happy anyway. So you get curious, and if you're curious about something and you go toward it and you find out, oh, it's not a snake, it's an electrical cord, but what does it do? And you start to. The natural result of that impulse in a child or in a baby monkey is to, like, play with it and try to figure something out. And as you play with something and learn what it can do, you start to make things with it. And I called this the creativity spiral. And I was expecting to write a whole book about calming ourselves down. And I did write a third of a book about calming ourselves down. I wrote a third of a book about why we get so anxious and why it's just gone absolutely wildfire ape shit in this day and age. And then I wrote a third of a book about calming down. Because you do have to regulate your nervous system. And almost everyone is dysregulated almost all the time in this culture. Even if you think you're not terrified, if you imagine. Okay, can I do a little for the peeps? I wish you would. Okay, for the next two minutes, okay? Wherever you are listening to this, I'm

[B]

just across the table.

[A]

For the next two minutes, you are. Okay, good. I feel safer now. Wherever you are, listener, for the next two minutes, you do not have to have any identity at all. You don't have to identify as anyone's mother, daughter, sister, friend, father, brother, nothing. You don't have to identify with an occupation. You just get to be. For the next two minutes, okay? And you get to take deep breaths and you get to, like, stretch your arms or whatever, you know, like rose gone into.

[B]

I identify as a lump.

[A]

A rest coma. Oh, I identify as a lump. Caresser. Look out. Watch yourself.

[B]

I love your face.

[A]

When you decided to make that joke, you were like,

[B]

Back to the visualization.

[A]

Back to the visualization. So all you have to do is just like, sit like a lump, maybe stretch out. If you're tired, you're tired. If you're angry, you're angry. Let it happen. Let it all be exactly as it is. Don't try. Okay, So I did not actually mean to take a deep breath, but it happened naturally. Just because when your nervous system is re regulating back to peace and relaxation, that's one of the things that signals it the most. You can do it deliberately. But even if you aren't doing it deliberately, if you relax in other ways, if you mentally let yourself off the hook for something, if you plug into something that is true for you, there's this natural. And it's so interesting because I watch my breath so much that now I notice that even if I'm breathing in, when the thought comes to let go, there's like a deeper level of breathing in that takes over and I feel like something else is breathing me. And it's delicious. It's just like, oh, everything feels better. So there are all those ways and a zillion wonderful books and people and yoga and all the things great. The whole wellness industry is like soothe Enya.

[B]

La la la la la la la. Anya lives alone in a castle with her cats and she's my hero.

[A]

She doesn't have to do anything except sing those songs that make us all feel so much better inside the spa. If you've never been to a spa, just get some Anya and listen to her. She's fabulous because she lives along with her cats. If you can get your nervous system out of the usual of the culture.

[B]

Technical term.

[A]

Technical term. The next step is really simple and it's really hard, but it's really, really effective. Make something. Make something, make anything. The more complicated the better, actually. Make something you like making. Make something you wish you had.

[B]

Daisy chain, Lego Death Star,

[A]

map of your own intestines.

[B]

Wow, that would be hard.

[A]

Yeah. Make a paper airplane, Make a joke. Make a song. Make it like literally the minute you start thinking and it's hard Right at the beginning there's this self regulating thing. You don't have to do or be anything. And then I say, make something and people are like, you're such an angry bitch, why don't you like me anymore? And then. But if you can get yourself past the make something threshold. I literally just like folding things. Paper mainly. Just fold something for a while. The moment I actually get into the physical construction of a thing with my hands because I. For some reason, most people, your hands are really well connected to the ability to self regulate when you're moving something around. Some people it's more verbal or like you do you write poetry, you write songs?

[B]

Yeah, but I use my hand. I like, I still stim with my

[A]

hands and make bracelets and.

[B]

Yeah, right. Yeah, okay.

[A]

And let me just finish and then I'll stop pontificating.

[B]

I love this. Keep going.

[A]

As you start to make something. They've known for a long time that if you're given a creative task to do and they create any kind of stress, immediately your creativity goes absolutely flatline. And there's so much research on this. And then I went and looked for research that said when you start to create, does your anxiety flatline? And there was really no research done on it because the whole left hemisphere brain, which dominates academia, says, yeah, go find the thing that puts you into a panic and we're done.

[B]

It's. It's academia rubbernecking its own car accident.

[A]

But yeah, don't it doesn't matter if creativity can shut down. Anxiety, we like the anxiety. We don't want to shut that shit down.

[B]

Focus on the anxiety.

[A]

So I started forcing myself to do creative things. And this was during the pandemic. And it was like, oh my God, within five minutes, like I've been working on this painting and ah, this is so frustrating. It's not working and everything. The second I'm actually putting paint on the canvas, I'm in another. I'm in what you call my art coma. A state of such well being.

[B]

I have a thing, which is that. And I don't. I haven't. This is a. This is a new thought. So it may not make any sense yet, but I feel like when we're being keyboard warriors and we're out there, kind of our amygdala is just like doing fireworks over everything that we see. The identity piece is when we are identifying as a noun. Right. I am a thing. And any adjacent thing either affirms me or confronts me. And I feel like when we begin to make something, we start identifying as a verb and that that is an entirely different way of being human, you know, and it is so separate from all the judgment postures of social interaction.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And. And what a delight to actually have those art comas where we just get a relief. I mean, it's kind of like what you're trying to create with the visualization of don't identify as anything is like almost an artificial way to try and create the state that you create when you're making.

[A]

I love that. I love using language to trick the. Its own left hemisphere thinking. Because in poetry, jokes and songs, the right hemisphere comes in to use language. So. And you're a poet and a songster, so you're more likely to turn language against itself and by saying make a noun a verb. That's why I said this earlier, that I'm talking about mother, not as a noun, but as a verb. And that thought came to me when someone. I heard years ago, someone say, many people mother all their lives without ever giving birth. And others give birth and raise children, but never mother them. So like, it's as the moment you say do this, you know, you are. You are a garden. Like garden to garden, it's a garden. But when you're out there, you're gardening.

[B]

Yes. You know, that's it.

[A]

As soon as you can.

[B]

And then I'm at what? I'm one with the activity.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so it matters a lot less.

[A]

You're going out to garden. You're going to the object and you're going to the verb. Maybe any place. I've never thought of this. Now I need to go back and rewrite part of my book,

[B]

steal my material.

[A]

Where else can we. So I immediately want to make something out of that. Where can we find a list of nouns that we could turn into verbs and then we'd be happy all the time. That's my question.

[B]

Yeah, And I hate that. I love that, because I want the identifying as a verb to be the end. To be the. I identify as a verb in the sense of I stop being a lump and I become a wisp of smoke. Like, don't.

[A]

Can I still caress you?

[B]

Don't. Yeah, but it's gonna be kind of wafty. It's gonna be. It's gonna be a little unsatisfying, but it's like, to me, I feel like a list of nouns that can be verbs to just jump into a book that we're reading at the moment called the Alphabet versus the Goddess.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You know, you are trying to bring this sort of slightly right hemisphere linguistic whim of mine and. And fully left hemisphere with a list, one word after the other, that you can. I know it's a kind of. But it's.

[A]

It is. Because for me, it's a fun game to find nouns that can be verbs. And you know what one is?

[B]

What?

[A]

Caress. It's a caress. Or it is. I can caress. I can. You may not think I can, but I can. So what else?

[B]

No, no, I like. No, I want. No, I want. Stop it.

[A]

This is.

[B]

Oh, she's so annoying. You should see her when she plays the. On the New York Times games and she starts the spelling bee, and she's

[A]

like, I'm doing really well on this today.

[B]

There's really good letters. And then she'll just quietly be like, I don't know, like, you know, if I came up with something like, mystify.

[A]

Let's face it. We all do that. I solved.

[B]

I solved the wordle in three.

[A]

Yeah, I solved the wordle in two once. I actually have solved it in two.

[B]

We need those people to come. Actually, you know what? The connections is a little bit of a left of a right hemisphere.

[A]

It is one. So it also, though, makes me very angry sometimes. So did I. Anyway, what were we back to Jason and Jason's question. Are we answering it at all?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How do we get ourselves in a state where we actually can be calm in the. In the wildness and the craziness of culture as we must encounter it these days. So I. I like, okay, so soothe yourself and then make shit.

[B]

Yeah, and then. And then what he said was, then bring it into conversation with others. So how do we take that new skill set and be ready to deploy it in conversation? Because you were saying we can't do it initially because. Right.

[A]

In the black diamond.

[B]

Right. But let's say we went to nature, we became a wisp of smoke. We did the connections and, you know, whatever we made and we made and. And we took a deep breath and we stopped identifying as ourselves. And then. So we've practiced and then we're back in conversation. What do you do at the moment that your amygdala flares?

[A]

You know what I really, really, genuinely do?

[B]

No.

[A]

I am always working on a painting. I literally am always working on a painting. And I am in situations fairly frequently where people get exercised and they'll go right at me and everything because I'm coaching them. And, you know, that means that everything. Every time I glance at them, they feel like it's a thunderbolt. Right. Because they put me on some plinth, which I don't deserve at all. A plinth is like a. I know

[B]

what a plinth is, but I just got a really. Every time you glance at them, it's a thunderbolt. And it was a callback to Bjorn trying to shit in the desert with the lightning.

[A]

And I was just like, this is so complicated. It weirds me out anyway that people see me as being in any way influential, but they've read a book by me and that means that I'm a. Somehow words have more impact coming from me, even though they shouldn't. So people will get quite anxious and they'll identify me with authority figures in their lives. And then I'll say, like. I'll say the word disappoint and somebody just goes off like I pulled a gun on them. Right. And I know it's because they've parentified me and whatnot. So what I do when that happens to stay completely regulated is I go to the. Whatever I'm drawing or painting and I just keep working on it, but in my head. Alternatively, you could write a poem or

[B]

there was a young woman from Quebec who fatally injured her neck.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

She went on all fours and was kicked out the door and then changed her name to Martha Beckham.

[A]

That was phenomenal. You are on a plinth in my mind. Pedestal is too calming.

[B]

You are on a plinth to me.

[A]

Okay. And apparently I was fatally wounded in the neck. I believe you because my neck hurts a lot. But honest to God, if I don't have a project I'm working on, I can't regulate myself like that. But if I do, I'm like, almost bulletproof.

[B]

I spent a lot of time staring out the window and like, picturing stuff in the garden. So I think I understand that for the first time.

[A]

You're always thinking. I see that same look in your eyes. You're like looking at me and we're talking and you're thinking, that's south facing, but it slopes a bit.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I know, I can see it written in your eyeballs. And it doesn't bother me because I know you're super regulated in there. And it's a bit of a juggling act to be really aware what somebody's saying while you're thinking about, let's see if I Would India Inc. Work on that? No, it seeps through. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I think that, like, I, I get what you're saying and I think it could be a good, like a good touch point to return to. But if I want to be genuinely in conversation and, and have the in internal fortitude to be able to have a conversation with someone that has, you know, some level of disagreement built into it without it being the end of the world, I don't actually want to be thinking too intently about my garden. I want to be present with the person. And so, like, to me, everything you're saying is, is right. And as so often is the. In the. Is the case with these kind of questions. I circle back around to the, the question of how do you make yourself remember in the moment? Because it's actually so much of it is about, okay, step back. I need to get regulated. I need to take a deep breath and I need to remember that we're all just like fucking stardust flipping, you know, through on a little wind eddy for a second in an, you know, endless universe.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So maybe it's not that big a deal. And, and so it's almost like for me always. And I know for sure I've talked about this before, but it's. And it's such a frustrating thing in my mind is how do you trigger that? The little reminder, the little haptic on your watch that goes. It looks like you should be standing up, you lazy.

[A]

I know person. You don't know me. Australian. Siri.

[B]

Like, that's what I need. I need a haptic on my watch to go off and just do a little like, you know, take a deep breath and go into parasympathetic nervous system. And if. If I could reliably have that. Just that reminder so that I don't lose myself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In the amygdala's panic.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I do not like the feeling of my heart starting to accelerate and my back getting stiffer. And like, this kind of. That comes when I feel somebody's attacking me. And that's my trigger as soon as that happens. Actually, there is one thing I do as I start breathing very, very slowly and deeply, and I just sit there and I'll just watch my breath while they yell for a while. And you can always. It's actually, you're more likely to pick up what they're saying if you're watching your breath than if you're trying to track what they're saying, because you will not be tracking what they're saying. You'll be feeling a threat and composing an attack in response.

[B]

So I think remembering that we're in a body can just be the most incredible, you know, sort of medicine against freaking out and losing the ability to hear what's being said to us.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is just remember I'm in a body that would prefer to be loose than tight, that would prefer to have oxygen than not, you know, and am I comfortable? Can I. Can I comfy myself up a bit in this?

[A]

Yeah, it's actually, it's. You know, given the choice in that moment when the amygdala is feeling attacked, I would go with fear and response a hundred percent of the time. I can't actually say I prefer to be relaxed in that moment. I have to say just breathe first. Okay. I want to. I want to defend or attack or run away or. I am having a defense cascade because it's more than fight or flight. There are all these other responses, like getting floppy or fawning on someone.

[B]

Mine is a really good combination of flop and flight. And so I kind of, like, lurch off. Like, I run away, flopping all over

[A]

like a fish and fall down and just wriggle.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So I. When that happens, I would choose the defense cascade because it is very, very convincing, saying, you need me to be safe. All I know is that it feels awful. And if I take and then blow out a very slow, deep breath, not like. Not that kind of breath. Like, really. It can be a deep end, but it has to be a long, slow exhale. And it's better if you purse your lips a little, so your diaphragm has to push to get the breath out that will re regulate your brain stem, which is like the only thing more primitive and anxious than the anxious ancient than the amygdala. So is actually the single first best step.

[B]

So what's the context where we usually hear breathe? It's like when you're having a panic attack or something when you're having a baby. And so it's like take that and, and just widen the usage of the. Okay, take a breath to when you suddenly feel like someone has it in for you in this and they're coming at you. And let that be one of the situations where you go, take a breath. And I feel like there's such power in stopping making it about them and just taking responsibility thousand percent in that moment. Because there is nothing you can do about the other person. Even if they are coming at you,

[A]

Even if they're dead wrong and you have them dead to rights.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can't do anything about it.

[B]

No. But you can get regulated and that will like that does ripple out.

[A]

You know what? This is one reason I'm glad I've done. I haven't done a ton of meditation, but I've done more than a lot of people get a chance to. And what. And I just watched my breath. I literally, my mantra is breathing in, breathing out most of the time. And, and I've sat there and watched myself have skirmishes with people online while I'm sitting absolutely still, not moving and then regulating my breathing. I've had to practice. My anxiety is so strong and so hair trigger that it has taken 10,000 hours of just looking at what happens inside me when I think about someone who's been threatening or wait for it may potentially at some point be upsetting to me. And watching that and going, okay, now I've been in hysterics for half an hour. It is very uncomfortable to be in hysterics sitting alone in a room, not moving, not writing anything into your phone, not just sitting there with the hysterics. And how do I get out? Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. Nothing is happening here.

[B]

Nothing is happening here. Which makes me realize, like to sort of wrap it up, that that's the beauty of nature, is that. And, and is that not much is happening. And that's what we crave because in the culture, in the, you know, scrolling in the keyboard warriors, in the attack, attack, it's all the left hemisphere making everything so complicated. This is a conspiracy and this is happening. And these people want me, you know, to, to be whatever and I'm not

[A]

sure of this, but this is how it could go, don't you think?

[B]

And actually I'm very convinced by that. And now I'm pretty sure that is. Yeah. But nothing much is happening. Just breathe in, breathe out.

[A]

Watch the trees, sit in the forest, sit with a house plant and face north.

[B]

Get ready to poop. Look out for lightning.

[A]

That's right. Wait for the lightning. And when, when you've survived the lightning and you've learned to regulate yourself and you've learned that you don't does not strike every time you poop, you'll then you'll be ready when someone comes to just caress your lumps.

[B]

And that's how we stay wild. We hope you're enjoying Bewildered. If you're in the us, say and want to be notified when a new episode comes out. Text the word wild to 570873-0144. We're also on Instagram. Our handle is Bewildered podcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the Brilliant team at mbi. And remember, remember, if you're having fun, please rate and review and stay wild.

[A]

Hello the lovely peoples. This is Marty Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called Five Paths to youo Purpose. Probably the most common question I get from people is, how do I find my purpose? Why don't I feel that I'm on purpose? Well, it turns out there are certain things you have to do to find your purpose, and I broke them down into five and I made a little masterclass about it. So if you'd like to see it, just go to marthaveck.compurpose and you will will be able to watch it without any charge at all.