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I want to start with something that most people never stop to question. Why does fantasizing feel so normal now? Not extreme, not concerning, just expected. And I don't mean this in a moral way. This isn't about stopping your thoughts. It isn't about willpower or discipline. It's about context. Because when something feels normal at scale, it usually means that the environment trained it, not that it is inherently neutral. This episode is brought to you by my Harper Collins published book, Mind Over Explicit Matter. Learn how artificial stimulation miswires your brain and what you can do to to rewire it back to purpose, intimacy and connection. Go to drtrishleigh.com book I'm Dr. Trish Leigh. Welcome back to the Supernormal podcast with me, your hostess with the mostess. Here we dig into super normal stimuli from the screen and we talk about creating a super normal life instead. So let's think about this together. Okay? So you. You probably know that I grew up in a home of six kids. And then of course, I now have six children of my own, with my bonus son included. So chaos. Growing up and early in my life as a mom was normal. It was the norm. I didn't have one second of privacy. As a young person and a young adult, we grew up in a small home with one bathroom. That bathroom was six smack dab in the middle of the hall where basically everyone was outside the door and somebody was waiting at all times. So what was normal to me was chaos, stress, urgency. They felt totally normal. What I didn't know is that I grew up dysregulated because of my environment. I was always on red alert and I mostly was thinking about other people's needs. And I kept my needs very small so that I wouldn't be a problem. It never occurred to me that it could or should be another way. What feels ordinary often carries the most influence for us because we stop noticing it. In neuroscience, there's a concept known as supernormal stimuli. That's what we talk about here. It refers to artificial inputs that are intense, they're more efficient or more controllable than anything the brain evolved to encounter in nature. By efficient, I mean in training your brain. The brain didn't evolve in a fake engineered environment of endless novelty when it comes to human history. It didn't evolve for stimulation without friction. It didn't evolve for reward without delay. It didn't evolve with experience. That didn't include risk or reciprocity. But that's the online environment that most of us are surrounded by. Most of the time these days. So when the brain is immersed in inputs that that are easier, faster, more controllable than real life, it adapts, it maladapts automatically. The brain doesn't ask whether something is truly meaningful, it asks whether it's efficient. This is what I see in my clients brains all the time. Brains that have maladapted for high levels of pleasure without having having to work for it. And this is why fantasizing feels so normal to most people. It matches the logic of the modern world. Internal environment and internal stimulation becomes easier than the external real world. The unreality is more exciting than reality. Control feels safer than the uncertainty of your life. Stimulation replaces presence. Ease out competes engagement. Fantasizing requires no negotiation with reality. No other nervous system is involved. There is zero delay, no vulnerability. And from the brain's perspective, that's incredibly efficient. So of course the nervous system learns to default there if it has been trained. This is pretty much why chaos felt so good to me even as an adult. Because that was the environment that I was trained in. I trained myself when I was younger. I kept my life at the highest level of stimulation possible. I moved my family five times in just a few years. That's five kids. Five times. I went back to medical school even though I already had two doctoral degrees with my five children in tow. That story is in my book Mind Over Explicit Matter. But finally the moment came when I had the realization. It struck me dead almost that the chaos was coming from me, not happening to me. Boom. I woke up. And I want you to wake up to the chaos of supernormal stimulation. So just think about it like this. Listen to the way that we talk right now. I just need a break. I'm just going to check my phone for a second. I'll start after this. These aren't bad habits. These are the environmental mal adaptations. They're the language of a nervous system so trying to regulate itself in an incredibly high stimulation world. But when your life truly requires depth, presence and sustained engagement, those same maladaptations quietly begin to cost you. One client put it to me this way recently. This is what he said. He said it's like an out of body experience. I can't even explain how it happens. I go to sit down at my computer to do work and I automatically find that I open the tabs without even thinking about it and I'm sucked into the screen and I'm off purpose for 20, 30 minutes longer. Well, that my friend, is the hijacker at work. And this isn't A new concern. It's been a concern in the tech world for a while. It's just becoming more visible now. Thankfully. Neil Postman warned a while ago that we wouldn't lose our freedom through force, we would lose it through distraction. That entertainment would replace depth. Nicholas Carr showed how constant steam stimulation doesn't just distract attention, it reshapes it. Sustained presence becomes harder than ever. Internal engagement becomes easier than relationships and the outside world. Anna Lemke explains how pleasure and pain share the same balance system in the brain. What I refer to as as the pleasure pain paradox in my book Mind over explicit Matter. The more ease we rely on, the less tolerance we have for effort. Different authors, different lenses, same conclusion. The environment trained the brain quietly, maybe without you even noticing, hopefully, until you do. Now, why do I care? I care because this takes you away from your passion and your purpose, your innate inspiration that's in there. Your true self. It makes you feel anxious, restless, depressed. It gives you baseline arousal dysfunction in the brain. Strained brain, wired and tired, drained brain, totally unmotivated. These lead to sad sexual arousal dysfunction, which lead you back internally and away from your relationships. It affects every single fiber of your being. It keeps you stuck. Now, wildly high performers often feel this first, not because they're weaker, but because they basically demand more from their nervous systems. They've always demanded depth, presence, meaning focus, leadership, creativity. Then when the brain defaults to internal stimulation time and time again, real engagement feels heavier. And that's devastating if your work or your life requires presence. One of my clients who owns his own business is selling it because he can't run it anymore. Does he want to sell it? No, but he just can't keep going. I plan to change that. So just to be clear, this isn't about rejecting imagination or creativity or inner life. You know how important that is to me. It's about noticing when the brain prefers that internal stimulation over real world participation. The issue isn't fantasizing. It's when fantasizing replaces contact. What I'm talking about is not about going backwards. And it's not about sacrificing anything. It's about helping you move forward. Forward. Evolving. You know what I did as an adult and a mom? I found a home with private space for each of my children. Now, this required me to be a little inventive because that's eight people. But we did it. So now my family get to grow up with nervous systems that are at much greater ease because of the environment. They get to live regulated. And me, I now consider My own needs, and I try to put them first sometimes when it's necessary. And of course, I'm a work in progress, but I'm much better than I was in my younger years. That's what we're talking about, growth here. We grow again, my friend. Okay, so here's the question that I want to leave you with today. If your nervous system wasn't constantly pulled inward, what would your attention feel like? What would your desire feel like? Your work, Your relationships, your sense of meaning, your purpose, your passion? Your life? Because that question isn't about restriction. It's about expansion. When something feels normal, it's usually worth asking, who trained this? Supernormal environments don't make people broken. They make awareness essential. The next level of life isn't more stimulation. It's more presence. So if you want to know if your brain is using fantasy to avoid effort, if you want to understand how brains maladapt, please go over to Dr. Trishlead.com, take the quiz on fantasy, taking you away from effort. And at the same time, I have awesome new content on YouTube. So please go over to YouTube. You can join my briefings, where I have now made visual slides to help you understand understand the brain mechanisms that are at play here. I also have made a deeper dive motivation video that includes the brain hack. So go over to YouTube, Dr. Trish Leigh, check those videos out. Get the education, get the deep dive motivation and the brain hack to keep moving you forward. Screens are supernormal stimuli. They are taking you away from your super normal, normal life, the one that you want and the one that you deserve. So stay with me so we can get you out of the first and get you into the second. All right? Control your brain or it will control you. I'll see you next time.