HealthyGamerGG - Is Meditation a Placebo Effect?

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Dr. K talks about the effects of meditation, how they work at different stages of time, and how they work on different levels. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're like, okay, when do I start seeing human beings is fundamentally compassionate? When do I start to love myself? Sure, I have, like, reduced my symptoms of depression. I've reduced my symptoms of anxiety, but I still don't have this, like, self-worth that, like, these meditators seem to have. When do I get that? All right. This is kind of, like, I personally wanted to talk about this.

Hopefully it'll be helpful. It'll be kind of interesting. So let's take a quick look at understanding. understanding what meditation actually is and how it works. So I've been meditating only for several weeks, but I see temporary results every time I meditate. Is this placebo effect? My laziness is gone. I feel more myself.

I become more sensitive to sounds. I feel more independent, so to speak. This lasts for probably an hour. Am I the only one feeling this? Is this a placebo effect? In related, I meditated one hour per day for 365 days, and here's why I stopped after a year. I was thinking about improving my, how to improve my character in general. I had nothing in mind that I wanted to change about myself.

I knew basically nothing about meditation and reckoned it was something, some sort of superpower of the mind. So rather spontaneously, I committed to meditate one hour a day for a year, the remarkable effects on my life. Meditation sessions began to be enjoyable, beautiful parts of my day. The peace of mind and clarity I experienced were priceless. In social interactions, I felt much calmer. All of a sudden, I was recognizing consciously so many social cues that people give all the time. I surely reacted to those cues before having started meditation, but now it became conscious. The reason I stopped.

In some sense, my initial motivation of learning meditation as a superpower of the mind was satisfied. I got to see how my perception and scope of consciousness expanded. However, meditation alone will not make you a good person. It's not a one type fits all solution. And for me, personally, it felt like I should focus on other things. Very glad I did this deep dive because now I know the power of this tool. And whenever I should need it in my life, I can return to daily practice. So that's kind of weird, right?

So like, how does this work? Because here's this person who's sort of saying, my laziness is gone. I feel more like myself. This person is saying, okay, my social interactions are better. it's sort of a superpower of the mind. So what does meditation do? And how does it work? Because a lot of times the challenge is that you'll read posts like this, right?

You'll see like, oh, wow, like this person was more like calm and social interactions. This person, like their laziness is gone. Like, that's awesome. Oh, my God. You'll also hear people say like, oh, like I transform. Like, I'm a completely different person after I started meditating. Meditation has changed my life, has revolutionized who I am as a person. I gained so much perspective.

Other people will talk about, oh, meditation, like, helped me overcome my anxiety. So if you're there just kind of scratching your head and you're like, how does this meditation stuff work? What does this mean? Like, we don't talk about enlightenment, right? It's like, what is it? We stop talking about it. Like, people just stop talking about it at some point. But that's like sort of like in the background.

Like, I've heard of this thing. I know that's sort of what Buddha was about. But like, everyone's like, yeah, I'm kind of like, I'm spiritually Buddhist. Oh, like, do you know what enlightenment? No. mindfulness. Well, like, no one knows. Like, what the hell is the deal with meditation?

Is it a treatment for anxiety? Is it some way to transform your personality? Is it a way to get rid of laziness for an hour? Like, what happens? Like, what's the deal here? Okay? So let's try to understand this. So the way that I'd explain this is meditation works on three different levels.

It works on the eight-minute level, the eight-week level. the eight-week level, and the eight-month level. And then arguably eight years, if you want to go that far. Okay. So the first thing that we know that meditation does is on the eight-minute level. So people will say, when I meditate, I feel good for the duration of the meditation or soon afterward. So what effects in the physiology and neuroscience function on the level of eight minutes? So this is where we sort of get autonomic nervous system.

So meditation will do things like adjust our respiratory rate. Generally speaking, we'll lower our pulse. We'll lower our blood pressure. Generally speaking, we'll reduce cortisol and adrenaline and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is usually what it does for people. but it can also activate the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn will lead to things like reduced laziness,

more motivation, and this in turn will do things like decrease anxiety, decrease insomnia, right? It'll help us sleep, it'll help us chill out. So this is physiologic in nature. So we know that when we meditate, on the order of minutes, your physiology will change.

Things like hormone balances will change. Your sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system will switch. And there's also what's confusing for some people. Some people will say it improves my anxiety. Some people will say it improves my laziness. How can it do both? It kind of wakes me up.

It kind of calms me down. That's the cool thing about meditation. It tends to balance your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system. Now, over the course of eight weeks, what starts to happen? We start to seek clinical benefits. So what's going on here?

So eight weeks is where we also start to see neuroscience changes. So for example, when we reduce our cortisol, cortisol is a stress hormone, is a stress hormone that acts for about four to 24 hours. And it's kind of like a steroidal hormone, which means that it alters, it travels into our cells and alters gene transcription. So it like builds cellular machinery. So what that sort of does is it like, I don't know how to say this, it's not just a temporary effect. It constructs the machinery that our cells will use over the next day, two days, three days. So when we meditate on a consistent basis, our cells literally start to function in like a

different way. And as they start to function in a different way, we'll start to see neuroplastic changes. So over the course of eight weeks, we'll see. strengthening of the frontal lobes? Okay? So what does this mean? Our frontal lobes are the brakes of the brain. So what they do is they'll like calm down our emotions.

Inhibition. So they allow us to like behave less reactively. You know, when we sort of say like take a step back, like I got caught up in this and I wasn't able to take a step back or I was able to take a step back. Or the frontal lobes also do things like reduce impulsivity. and people with ADHD, we sort of know that people with ADHD have poor frontal lobe control on other parts of their brain. So people with ADHD, for example, get more emotionally dysregulated more easily. And they're unable to control their impulses.

So what we start to see is that essentially we start becoming, let's say, like, let's just use the example of emotional reactivity. So we know that in eight weeks of meditation, we can see clinical benefits. in anxiety. And what does that mean? So generally speaking, we'll look at, like, for example, GAD generalized anxiety disorder. So that means that human beings are less impacted by their anxiety. So if I have a clinical anxiety disorder, my anxiety keeps me from doing things like going to a party or when I go to a party, the anxiety becomes so strong that it takes control of me.

And then I react to the emotion. Either I rush out the door or I don't go in the first place or I feel overwhelmed or whatever. So our emotional reactivity is high in a case of a generalized anxiety disorder. And when we meditate, this decreases. And how does that decrease? It's because our frontal lobes are getting stronger at inhibiting our emotions. Okay. So what does this mean?

This means that I can go to parties. If I'm less emotionally reactive, it also adjusts social things. Now, this is the piece where things, I think people sort of lose sight of how does meditation transform, your life over the course of eight months or eight years. How does it cause you to be a different person? This stuff we understand really well scientifically. Now, if you behave less emotionally reactively, imagine what that does for, let's say, a romantic relationship.

So let's say your partner doesn't text you or doesn't respond to your text in 24 hours. And you really need their help. if you behave, if you give in and you have a high amount of emotional reactivity, you feel really upset. You yell at your partner. You're like, I can't believe, like, you were, I'm always there for you. I always respond to your texts. You don't respond to my texts. You don't care.

Right. So as you, as you increase your emotional reactivity, it negatively impacts the relationship. And then what happens is eventually if the, the, let's assume that the emotional reactivity is so bad. You attack them for not responding to you. You say, you don't care about me. I'm always there for you. You're never there for me. This leads to a breakup. Three months later, you're dating someone else. Romance number two. You still have this emotional reactivity. They don't respond to your texts within 24 hours. You say the same thing. I'm there. I always answer my texts. You know, anytime you need me, I'm there for you. But when I need you, you, you. You know,

you're not there for me, negatively impacts the relationship. Because you start attacking them. Because it's not just necessarily your fault, right? So even if they did, they forgot to pick you up at the airport, let's say. Let's say they actually made a mistake that we can all agree on. But then what happens is like you react to them so emotionally, like what happens when other people attack you? You get defensive.

You attack back. You hit back. Right? So emotional reactivity is like not healthy, generally speaking, in relationships. And so as this happens a third time and a fourth time, you start, all these get put together, and then you start to form beliefs. So this is where in CBT we talk about core beliefs or schemas, right? And generally speaking, like human beings will have repeated experiences.

And as we form, as we have repeated experiences, we start to formulate conclusions about the world. And so what this person will conclude is, I'm there for people, but they are never there for me. They'll conclude things like people are untrustworthy. They'll conclude these kinds of things. Then they'll go living their life over the next one year,

two years, three years, with this belief. as they live with this belief plus the emotional reactivity, romantic relationship number five, six, and seven are screwed. Because now you're going into the relationship fundamentally believing that people are untrustworthy. Plus the emotional reactivity. Oh, there it is again. I knew it. I knew it.

It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And this is what happens in people's life, right? We tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. We feel trapped by our circumstances. circumstances. So a good example of this is like, I believe that my partner is cheating on me. And then I ask them, hey, are you cheating on me? No. I check their phone because I don't believe them because people are cheaters. As I check their phone, I get away with the first time. Don't get away with it. Get away with the second time, third time, fourth time. Then they find out

that I'm snooping. Damages the trust. And then like eventually like I emotionally drive them away. they start connecting to someone else on an emotional level. I knew it. They're having an emotional affair. We break up three months later. They're dating that damn. I knew that. I knew it.

It's true all along. It becomes a self-fulhilling prophecy. And this is what happens in our life, right? So like people don't make new mistakes every single day. We tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. These are mistakes around self-work. like I'm, you know, I don't care about myself. I don't know how to love myself. I have difficulty overcoming my anxiety. I procrastinate. We tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over

again. So this shapes our life, right? On the order of magnet, like we're talking about the time, this is eight months or even eight years. And if you look at people who are like narcissistic, for example, like this is a classic example of they emotionally react to things as people get upset with them for their emotional reactions, what they'll start to do is, like, form narcissistic belief structures. Their narcissistic belief structures drive people away, and then they form these conclusions. Like, no, I can't, no one in the world loves me. Like, I'm always the victim.

No one cares about me as a person. Y'all get that? So, what does meditation have to do with this? Let's go back to eight weeks. So if I reduce emotional reactivity, if I strengthen my frontal lobes, right? Because that's how long it takes to make these kind of neuroscientific changes. And specifically what we're talking about is the frontal lobe being able to inhibit the amygdala. So this is not like a personality change.

This is literally like being able to take a step back from your emotions and not letting them control you in the matter of minutes. So for a five-minute time span, when your emotions would have taken control, you prevent them from taking control. And you remain calm and collected. What impact does that have on your relationships? What impact does that have if you don't lash out, hey, and you can communicate with people more calmly? Relationship number one, they didn't answer your text. Hey, by the way, I texted you a day ago. And, like, you know, I texted you a couple other times and you didn't get back to me.

like, what's going on? Is everything okay? Instead of immediately jumping to some kind of emotional hurt, which is like this person doesn't care about me, what's going on? Is something going on? By the way, I know it's kind of like a little frustrating thing that I'm working on, but I'm like really sensitive to when people don't get back to me on text. So like, I don't know if you've noticed, but I always make it a point to try to respond to your text if you ask me anything. And I'm like particularly sensitive to this, I'm going to do my best working on it. And thank you for letting me know that you were actually completely stressed out and that like this other crap was going on in your life.

I had no idea. And I understand now why you didn't text me. Because you approach the conversation calmly. You don't react emotionally. You foster communication, right? And so if you do all these things and you listen to them and you like are open minded, they're going to be open-minded as well. So instead of going on the attack and them sort of becoming defensive,

you're kind of like looking at things more calmly, right? You're coming across as more reasonable. You guys problem-solved together. And then what does that change? So how does that alter the course of your relationship? Right? So then suddenly, no breakup. I'm oversimplifying here for a minute.

But it's like, oh, wow, like people actually like acknowledge that I have needs and stuff like that. and they're able to like try to accommodate those. And so over time, let's say that eventually you do break up. And then you enter relationship two. And the same thing happens. There's conflict. You reduce your emotions or your emotional reactivity.

It's not just reducing the experience of emotions. You're not numbing them. You're not reacting to them. So you're still feeling them. You're acknowledging them. You're noticing them. And you're keeping them in control. And then what happens is you communicate.

communicate. But then somewhere along the way, if we look at this like, you know, the beliefs that people are forming, that you're forming over here, as relationship two happens, as relationship three happens, as relationship four happens, the beliefs that you're forming based on these interactions are actually different. Because as you have these calm interactions with people, you can start to like assign different reasons. It's not that people are untrustworthy. It's that sometimes, people want different things, right? And break up two happens. And break up three happens. And then you conclude people change. So the kinds of beliefs that you start to form once you stop reacting to people emotionally change. Right? So the way that you communicate with this person, you don't like stick them in a corner. And I don't know if you guys like have friends who will put you in a corner through their behavior. Like I don't know if that sort of makes sense, but I'm kind of envisioning like there's some people, for example, in relationship dynamics that will like love to bear their cross. And they'll always play the victim. And like if you're always like if you have someone in your life who's always playing the victim, they kind of force you into being the bad guy.

And the more that they force you into being the bad guy, they keep you in the relationship through guilt. but they don't actually build a healthy relationship. And then eventually you pull away because you can't deal with that crap anymore. And then that person gets their beliefs reinforced. Oh, people like, people abandon me. And then they drive the next person crazy until they abandon them.

And they drive the next person crazy until they abandon them. And then they end up with this core belief that people are always going to abandon me. What they don't realize is that they have a hand in it. What they don't realize is that they have control over it. And so when you end up with this conclusion that the world is an unwinnable place, I'm playing an unwinnable game, that's devastating and leads to hopelessness. And you lose

perspective on life and life sucks. And then when you do something as simple as meditate, at the eight-week mark, you can control your emotional reactivity a little bit better. As you control your emotional reactivity, as you become aware of your internal emotional state, and you vocalize that in a way that's calm and not emotionally reactive, It alters the dynamic of your relationships. As it alters the dynamic of relationships, the lessons that you learn from those relationships start to be different. This, in turn, alters your worldview.

Alters your core beliefs. I am a good person. I am lovable. If someone leaves me, it's not because I'm fundamentally broken. People can have all kinds of reasons to leave or leave. relationship with me. You all get that? And so now we get to the eight-month mark. So this, too, is a neuroscience change because we know that core beliefs and schemas are represented in the brain somewhere, right? It doesn't map onto a perfect circuit, but like somewhere in our association

cortices, you know, like we know that personality is ensconced in the brain and that core beliefs are ensconced in the brain somewhere. And so we start to see these kinds of things. And then if you do this for eight years, then suddenly, like, you see the world differently. Like, you have hope, right? Because people don't fundamentally abandon you because you're a bad person. You don't believe that. And so then what it does is alters your outlook on life. So then you're not a doomer anymore.

You're someone who has hope. You're someone who's, like, compassionate. And why are you compassionate? Because you have empathy. Why do you have empathy? Because over 10 relationships, you've learned how to not be emotionally reactive, communicate with the other person in a healthy way, and have been able to see the positive humanity in them.

Right? And then you become like a different human being because you just see the world in a completely different way. And this is what's so confusing because when people talk about stuff like this, like I can say meditation transformed my life. I can say that a big part of Dr. K was born after. seven years of meditating and like studying in different ashtrums in India. And then you're kind of sitting there scratching your head because when you meditate for eight minutes

and you're seeing this change, you're like, where the hell is the personality change? Like, and then you do it for a month. But you haven't hit the eight-week mark. And so then, you know, you haven't seen a clinical benefit. Like I'm doing this for the sake of anxiety and my anxiety is good for like the 15 minutes that I meditate. but after one month, I'm not seeing the neuroplasticity that we need for a clinical benefit. Well, yeah, that's because that takes a little bit more time. And even if you see the clinical change in your anxiety, you'll kind of see this as well.

We even saw this in this post where this person is kind of like, okay, I understand the superpower of the mind that was satisfied. But this person hasn't made the personality changes yet, right? Like they've seen like the eight-month changes, but they haven't seen like the lifelong changes. because they're not even looking for those. They're working on self-development through other ways. Believe me, this person will come back to meditation, almost guaranteed. And so this is how meditation works. And this is what's so confusing for people is because we don't...

People hear about meditation. They hear about these benefits, but no one sort of like explains like how the benefits of meditation happen in what order they happen. And essentially, what meditation does is works on three, to four different levels. The first, it works on a physiologic level and calms you down only while you're meditating. And so this is why we can say, okay, take deep breaths. If you're panicking, like take three deep breaths.

It works for all human beings. Because it's physiologic. It's like literally the way that our body is built. And then people will get that benefit, but they're like, where's the reduction in anxiety? Where's the reduction in depression? That takes eight weeks. And then if you meditate for eight weeks and you start to see those clinical benefits, like, you're like, okay, when do I start seeing human beings is fundamentally compassionate?

When do I start to love myself? Sure, I have like reduced my symptoms of depression. I've reduced my symptoms of anxiety, but I still don't have this like self-worth that like these meditators seem to have. When do I get that? And then we see something really, really important. I think this is what's really missed is that when we reduce our emotional reactivity and we start to see clinical benefits, that all.

alters are individual interactions with the rest of the world. When I get dumped, instead of getting resentful, I meditate a little bit, I calm down a little bit. I'm still bummed out, but I can acknowledge the sadness without giving into it. Right. So I cultivate that observing self, which is able to notice the sadness and still grieve and then still sort of like sit with it. And everyone's like, how do I sit with it? And as you learn how to sit with sadness, it doesn't eat you away from the inside. and then like once you do that time and time and time again, over the course of eight months, a year, two years, three years, and you start to alter the way that you perceive the world,

it shapes your interactions, as it shapes your interactions because you're not emotionally reactive and you're not attacking people all the time, then what that does is like shapes your belief in humanity. And as your belief in humanity improves, your hope improves. Because now, like, we don't have to give up on humanity. like most human beings are decent people that are struggling and sometimes make mistakes. Imagine if you believe that in your core of being as opposed to most human beings fundamentally can't be trusted and will abandon me at some point.

How will that transform your day-to-day interactions, the way that you wake up in the morning and what you think about? Every time you meet a new person, is it, oh, crap, not this again? Or is it, wow, like, look at this person, this person is pretty cool? and then as you start to live your life with those core beliefs fundamentally changed, like then the world sort of gets almost like a positive bias, where you acknowledge that some people still struggle, but oh, like, that's not, it's not personal, it's just this person must be having a hard day.

And then it starts to shape your life in a different direction. And as you shape your life in a different direction, it actually helps you do things like set boundaries. Have compassion for your parents who are like bigoted and don't want to accept you. And as you start to acknowledge, okay, wow, like this is like, you know, they're never going to accept me for who I am. And that's sad and I can mourn that, but I don't have to hate them. They're a product of their environment. And even though they're a product of their environment, like, I don't have to let them into my life if they're not willing to give me like what I need. This is what I need from them. And so you can set about, you get a spine.

Right? You set boundaries with people and you're able to tolerate their negativity instead of giving into their negativity and appeasing them. And as you do that, you start to build healthier relationships. And you cut out the negative people in your life. Because you don't need that crap. And you feel some amount of guilt. You acknowledge the guilt. So be it. Adios.

Right? And then like your life is different because now you have a different set of peers. You have a different relationship. Your view of a human being is fundamentally different. And as you start to act in accordance with that, you become one step closer to Buddha. as you become one step closer to Buddha, like people respond to you differently. You start to attract, like, different kinds of people. Right?

People start treating you with respect. And that's pretty cool. And so then, like, that's what happens at the eight-year mark. It's like your life is completely different. And it gets tracked all the way back to your physiology. And so that's what confuses people is like, you know, they look at some people who are meditating. They're like, yeah, meditation is a bit. My life would be completely different.

And they're like, I don't get it. because I've been doing this for a month and I can barely get my mind to sit still. And it's like, that's completely normal. Don't worry about it. This is how meditation changes you. This is how it alters your life, fundamentally.