It's also probably like your brain has learned certain pathways to avoid certain kinds of pain and even when those pain points have gone away your like pathway has been structured in Just a way that you don't think oh, I could be taking a shortcut here Hi, I'm Tiffia. Hi, I'm Kahran and this is thinking on thinking So when I started thinking about pain I was thinking about
So do you know about the concept of like you stress and distress? No, okay So the parts of our brain that are sensitive to pain are also the parts which are close to making new memories So quite literally we learn through pain interesting Now in the current world we just have one word that we use to denote pain which is stress But in psychology, I don't know where the origin is but I'm quite sure that
It would be somewhere in the Greek and Roman philosophers. They must have come up with this stuff There is the concept of you stress which is like good stress and there's a concept of distress Which is basically like when you're over loading the system. It's distress But you stress is required for the system to progress or move forward interesting
But what does it mean to move forward in that context? So like to learn anything new for your brain to form any new circuits, right? So like your brain will form new circuits in both cases But let me put it like this our brain would love to stay in a comfortable position if it can forever It's lazy and evolutionarily adapted towards just to stay wherever it is
But it's only through sort of some amount of introduced You stress that we can grow even as you were talking about like for example, you are seeing Your nephew learning how to walk or learning how to operate in the world or doing things He's definitely experiencing some amount of stress From not being able to do the thing that's interesting. Yeah
We were actually talking about something kind of similar to that right that like it's interesting how When he like falls down if he doesn't know that he was supposed to be sad Unless you react in a way that you're like, oh my god, right? Yeah, he doesn't know that that's like that's the reaction It was really interesting the how we have formed these kind of Understandings of like, oh, I have this sensation this sensation means this I should then react in this way
And how you kind of group different things together, right? Like it's something that actually comes up when I'm working out like both when I was in India with my trainer there And then also here is like the difference between different things, right? Like are you in pain? Are you sore? Are you like right? And I think like it's very easy to kind of group that all together and be like, oh This is you know net unpleasant. Yeah
Do you feel like that culturally there is more of a distinction in some places? We feel like everyone has just kind of gone to this notion of like being under stress is painful We don't want to be under stress or at least grouping all that together I think that if you're in a underprivileged society or you belong to an underprivileged group You're more again like I don't have data to back it up. I think that you'd be much more sensitive
to pain and much more likely to group things under Distress so like for example in India also I feel this that people are a lot less adventurous in groups or like, you know in areas where there is more Just overall the level of distress in society is much higher
If the overall level of distress in society is higher than people are way more likely to feel like any sign of distress is Distress or rather they will try to protect themselves rather than trying to grow from it It's basically a little bit like, you know, if you overload a system the system will shut down So in a weird way people who are like, you know, chronically under distress They're very good at being bare level functioning, but they're not very like thrive
Again, there are like too many concepts getting mixed up maybe but there is like the difference between thriving and surviving and you know, there is even that Thing about how your brain functions differently when you are in survival mode versus when you are in thriving mode, right? And I think that in survival mode, you're not trying to learn deep lessons about growth You're just trying to learn lessons about what can harm and if you're primed towards that you're much more likely
Or at least that's what I'm hypothesizing That if you're primed towards that you would be much more likely to just break in Your experience in that fashion Interesting. Yeah Do you feel like understanding the distinction is an important part of being in a thrive state?
Like understanding the distinction between different kinds of stress or different kinds of pain. I think so So this is interesting because I remember like when I had first started working out a few years back I used to be like wow, I am in pain all the time. How is this better? But over time I realized no, no, no, this is definitely better Like and not just because it's long term. It's gonna be better for me
But this is a very different kind of pain. I just didn't have that resolution initially Yeah That's interesting that reminds me I trained with this guy in India and and he said it really interestingly because I Chronic pain in my hip and and he was kind of saying if we can recast it to be a signal versus to be something you're fighting against
Then it can be helpful to just then it's a signal for you Yeah, and then so then his kind of point was have a goal, right? Like have a goal that's not just being pain-free but have a different goal And then you can use this the pain as a signal against that goal It was very interesting and it is kind of edit. I mean since then it just has generally gone better and continued to get better
Is it interesting way of thinking about it? This is very interesting because that's like overall I don't know if this is Newer but I've heard this concept in a few different places that like think of your emotions as signals And even for me when I started thinking about that Discomfort just became okay. Something is wrong here Yeah, instead of it being like
Everything's falling apart. We need to close this shop down destroy everything and run away. I Usually have a feeling that things are not going to work Like desperately not going to work right before they do work which is kind of an interesting Like even as we were selecting this topic for a moment. I was like, oh my god, this is gonna be very boring We're not gonna be able to figure out anything to talk about how we
And I was like, oh, maybe this is a good topic That's Interesting to understand like yeah, how do you react to certain things and then how can you? Which kind of kind of brings me to the thing I was talking to you about last night, right? Which is like
How do you start to understand yourself and the way you react in different situations? And then how do you like like now for example, like I know that this about myself, right? That I will tend to kind of fear feel this fear fear of failure really intensely right before the start of something now Understanding when because that that as I am more cognizant of it
It's likely that will become less strong right or it might become more accurate Yeah, and then like making sure that your compensation has not led to you completely Disregarding or at least not interpreting in the best way possible Because your signaling may be coming from a different point As as you're kind of the way you treat your inputs that shifted over time
Mm-hmm. It makes sense But it makes me think of like Ford had this famous code that if I asked people what they wanted They would have said a faster horse Yeah, yeah, right So the general wisdom in design especially in user experience communities is that the user knows when there is a problem
They just don't know what the solution is and I think that like that's similar to the emotion part of your brain It's like very good at figuring out when there is a problem like the rational part of your brain is very good at rationalizing of a problems Right like the emotional part of you is a child. It's gonna throw a tantrum every single time. It's like ah Everything's wrong great. Everything's great. It's perfect
And like the rational part of you is gonna try to tamper from both like make it a little less intense from both sides, but I Think that just understanding that when there is a signal It needs to be processed to through at least like that is what I think I do Especially as somebody who is I mean, I don't feel like many symptoms anymore But I guess someone who was bipolar like had episodes quite frequently. It was very
Important protect other people from my emotions that way and it's like I can laugh about it right now But when you're in the middle of the thing you have to really really think about okay Is the signal like how much of it is noise? How much of it is false amplification? And because a lot of times you also start to run into like remembered pain, you know or or just like like carried baggage Which then can be difficult to parse as well, right?
Like because where are you where are you reacting because you've you put it into a box that you understand, right? We're like, oh, I know what this is and sometimes it happens subconsciously, right? Like oh, I know what this is this is this and then it's like well was it this or did it just seem like it was this? Yeah Gaurav my husband was scolding me a little bit last night when we were at dinner
But he was like, you know, I feel like you're I think he said you're very quick to conclude things about your mother's intentions And I was like that's interesting that that you say that Because I think that's just something I do it right like you like you spend a lot of time with your close family members, right? And you're like, oh, you're saying this. I know why you're saying this. I know you Then you immediately start playing the script in your head that may or may not be true. Yeah
Interesting it also stops like Have you ever experienced this that when you are around, you know, let's say friends from school You go back to a certain period of time and when you are around friends from college You go back to that period of time, right? Oh, you mean in the way you one acts Yeah, or feels like even your own feeling of yourself
Like it changes when you are with your family like it becomes slightly different Like there is a period of your time where your brain just goes back to Wonder what's gonna happen for me at my wedding But I think you're exactly right I was just thinking about it, right? Especially for me because there's certain people because I moved a lot
So I haven't like hung out as much with my high school friends since I was a teenager And then there was like people that yeah, just you know, there's I lived in New York in my early 20s, right? So there's like just this people I knew from that period and you behaved in a certain way. Yeah I always find it very interesting that your brain will try to sort of drag you back in that space So it's not even like while Gaurav is right that you just play the script for your mother
But honestly like you also play the script for yourself Like you also get like it's not just other people who get stuck in that script You also get stuck in that script because she's gonna say something then you're gonna behave the way that in your brain You have all these we hate you have assumed her intentions as well as your intentions Which is like both of them are untrue. I do you feel like it's easy at least for me that it's it can be very contextual
Okay, right like I think we behave differently with each other at home or particularly in like this house Then like when we are like traveling or I don't know I was I was just thinking about how like when so Gaurav and I moved back to Seattle in December and I feel like I have made different Routines than I used to have when I lived in Seattle, but I think it's because I live in a different place
So it was easier for me to not whereas otherwise when I was working in India and I would travel back to Seattle I would generally just follow the same routines that I've always had right which is like I Would probably spend like two hours in my room or in my bed before I would get up in the morning Like did not exercise very much and like I just had a certain kind of like lifestyle That was very similar to like the life I had when I was a teenager
And I think now not being not coming back to like my childhood bedroom and like being here You know with my husband or soon-to-be husband Well, just be interesting Yeah, I'm sorry. It is interesting. It's interesting because it's been so much easier to create different just ways of interacting with the world and ways of interacting with myself
It's also probably like Your brain has learned certain pathways to avoid certain kinds of pain and even when those pain points have gone away your like pathway has been structured in Just a way that you don't think oh, I could be taking a shortcut here Yeah, yeah, it's because I really don't like people asking me questions in the morning
For a while and so I know when I was younger right like I would come down and then people had been awake for a while So they would just be full of questions about like what are you doing today? Where you go? Like That's interesting Yeah, I think that was hard for me Like even when I went back to swimming it was hard because for so long something had been something that I was like forced to do
And so it was hard for me to see or find the parts of it that I liked like there was so much where I was like Oh, like I just didn't yeah, there's something or I'm like, oh, I don't want to go to the pool Do you feel like psychological pain is different from emotional pain is different from physical pain? How does it feel for you? I think that one tends to manifest the other a Lot of times interesting say more right
It's interesting part of what attracted me to doing yoga and like improving my flexibilities I felt like it would like that I would become more settled in my I mean obviously This is what yoga teachers always tell you right like you're finding balance both for your body and your mind And I think part of that is true But I also think I don't know there's like there's a certain branch a yoga that started by this woman named Anna forest
and it's called forest yoga and She really feels like or there's other people who believe this kind of like ideas run, but but really feels that Pain gets stored in the body right so that especially trauma will get stored in the body And that as you are able to to kind of like like unlock these these areas like you may experience that trauma in some ways, right? and
I think that that is kind of what I was thinking about just there right that I do think that you Have associations of pain for lack of a better word right and I think that have you talked about this book The body keeps the score you mentioned it when you were reading it, but we didn't I don't think we talked about it too much so the author of this book was one of the key researchers around PTSD and complex PTSD his research is literally around
Trauma and how it shows up in your body and Like how can you I mean like it's a very very technical book in terms of just The intended audience is other psychologists and psychiatrists It's not necessary like a layperson can understand it, but it's not necessarily
Written for a layperson. So like people can can get triggered by it also Yeah, incidences in the book. Okay, this is very heavy But it was very interesting how they talked about like the things that worked Sometimes they wouldn't even know why it worked or why it didn't work like for example, they had this Technique which was almost like rapid eye movement technique and when they were researching this
That time sleep researchers had not yet figured out too much about REM sleep and Like so there is like an entire chapter in that book where they go more into depth about how they came around the fact that oh There's something to do with the rapid movement of your eyes that helps you process information There's we don't know why it happens But if you recall a traumatic memory and you like you know
It has to be a trained person who is conducting the session, but it can really help people Move past their trauma and it was just really interesting how peoples Autoimmune disorders change or their Like gut disorders change based on like when how they process their trauma
So it was a very interesting treat like when you were talking about, you know pain gets stored in your body again, I don't There is no way to non-hokily say it in short form But there is some like research happening in that direction. It's almost like, you know five years ago That's Your brain and if your gut is improved your depression can go away and it's like this is five years ago research
We have been eating food since we have been like, you know, since there has been life I'm sure that there is like, you know a lot there. Yeah, that is interesting You reminded me while you were talking of this book. I read a while ago called in the realm of hungry ghosts Have I told you about this? It's a book about addiction It's it's really it's very interesting again
It's kind of not not so much written for the lay person, but it's just it's very dense, but it's Psychiatrist who is working with patients who are living on the streets who have various addictions and What he kind of explores is how people kind of substitute addictions It's really interesting how it's not necessarily like it's even though we have a big focus on substance and substance dependency And helping people break substance dependency in overcoming their addiction a lot of times that that is not enough because there's some underlying reason that has led to them having an addiction and
That they can easily it's very easy for you to just substitute something else and then socially there's certain things that we feel like are acceptable Addictions right people who work obsessively people who exercise obsessively we've decided that those are socially acceptable But you know other ones are bad, you know, you shouldn't drink too much coffee or like you shouldn't I don't know I guess those ones also have substance dependencies But you know it's it's fitness also in a lot of ways is a substance dependency because you are creating material
You're creating a certain reaction in your body Actually, my brother-in-law was talking a few days ago about how his grandmother who lived like be 94 never exercised a day in her life Right like she never went out for a run or something like that She just did exercise through living and she looked to be 94 Right like like this notion that kind of like, you know, we have to go out and do 20 or 30 minutes of exercise every day
It's just an interesting notion Who were we're creating a pathway for people to do I guess to deal with their addiction, but necessarily I Don't know I guess to manage I would say more than to actually like understand where where it's this behavior coming from Do you know about the rat study on addiction? No, okay, so I don't remember when it was but there was a
Study done on rats by the way, I'm quoting so many random neurological and psychological stuff as if I know too much about it, but So there's the study done on rats. So basically they gave cocaine access to one group and Like basically they can press a button and they would be like, you know, whatever would come out would have cocaine on it
And those rats would eat They just had too much cocaine just like press the button something would come out They would eat it they would press the button again that would happen And then there was a different cage where they could get access to cocaine or they could go and play with other rats and those just went and played with the
interesting and Like this was very preliminary study on basically We're making a personal problem out of something which is more systemic and social in nature like addiction is a remnant of your social Circuitry is not satisfied. I mean like this is over simplification of the research, of course There are multiple factors. They could be this was a rat study not necessarily a human study back
You can think about it also in other Correlatory ways like how in heterosexual relationships when men lose their partner in later ages their life expectancy reduces By a lot well for women it slightly increases and it's because like men generally especially straight men generally tend to have like their social net as Their female partner. That's the only person who they have an emotional intimacy with while for women
They have a network in most cases Interesting, you know, that's that funny thing about golf courses, right? That like the world has to suffer through all these millions of acres being devoted to golf just because men can't ask other men to go for a walk That's dark Wow
Do you feel like it's true? Oh, yeah, like it's it's not socially especially in like like kind of I don't know Western Influenced cultures. I can't remember Like it was a big thing when walking meetings were like info like 10 years ago because it was like oh We're gonna go for a walking meeting. Oh wow
This is incredible because now that you're making me think when I was in college I used to go on walks with my friends so often But the guy friends would never go on walks with each other per se They especially like one on like a walk meant you're hanging out one-on-one with your friend. Yeah, and like in a Public social but personal situation
But like guys would do that with each other in India It's like I think it's a big smoking culture that people use for it, right? It's like, oh, let's go get like some cigarettes and then yeah, people just right even if they don't smoke They will just go for getting the cigarettes and then standing outside the people It was very interesting when I started working in India because I eventually like started socially smoking because I was like well
This is one way to like hang out with people. Luckily. I didn't continue smoking That's interesting. Hmm. I feel like we didn't close anything today But all of these are like really interesting notions, right? Because there's also this aspect of social pain, which is like neither like it is slightly emotional and it's slightly psychological, but it is something that I
Don't even know if we have the vocabulary for it as a culture. Yeah, I don't know if I know exactly what you're thinking What do you mean when you say that? You know when people feel loneliness They're missing something like it's a signal for something is missing in your life But we don't have enough definition on what is missing Interesting, right? Like sometimes people would be like, yeah, I have people in my life and I still feel lonely and
There there are people who absolutely enjoy solitude The same person could feel lonely in a group of friends and they could be perfectly fine if they are alone Like there are so many complex Like emotional things around that Because we started talking about addiction and from there my brain went into oh, there's like this aspect of social pain
But isn't that Like at least in the three categories you were giving earlier, I feel like that's psychological pain, right? psychological emotional physical, I Mean, of course you could put into that But I don't know if like that would capture all of the aspects of it because there is this interpersonal or like, you know
Relational aspect to this. It's really interesting It's like wanting to fit in with the group it's that drive that we have yeah or with someone in particular You know like you must have done this also Sometimes you meet a friend of yours and it's a very satisfying interaction and sometimes you meet the same friend And it's a very dissatisfying interaction
Yeah, and sometimes it's so bad that it has eroded away some of the capital that you had built together Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I don't know if I didn't know exactly what That is you're right. It is something it's not it is kind of a pain in itself But it usually something you don't really think about and you're just like oh, you know That was not the best and then you change your behavior slightly because yeah, you'll point it in the future
Maybe we can discuss more about this next time because I have like this as you were saying I got reminded of this like amazing episode from video lab about How words help you think more Interesting but next time we'll talk about that. Okay, fine. We'll discuss that next time Awesome. Good job. Good. Bye. Bye
Thanks for listening to this episode of thinking on thinking our theme music is by Steve Gomes And you can find a link to it in the show notes