Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Jud Brewer on Breaking Anxiety Shackles and Rewiring Habits EP 339

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Are you ready to break free from anxiety's grip and pave your way to a life of resilience and purpose? Join us in this captivating episode of Passion Struck, where host John R. Miles dives deep into the labyrinth of the human mind alongside the brilliant Dr. Jud Brewer, Head of Behavioral Health at Sharecare and the author of "Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind." Want to learn the 12 philosophies that the most successful people use to create a limitless life? Pre-order John R. Miles’s new book, Passion Struck, which will be released on February 6, 2024. Full show notes and resources can be found here:  https://passionstruck.com/dr-jud-brewer-on-breaking-anxiety-shackles/  Dr. Jud Brewer's Method: Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety-Driven Behaviors Do you want to break free from the never-ending cycle of anxiety and finally find relief? Dr. Jud Brewer has the solution you've been searching for. He will reveal the key to developing mindful habits that can help you achieve a sense of calm and peace, breaking the chains that anxiety has held you in. Say goodbye to anxiety-driven behaviors and hello to a life filled with mindfulness and emotional well-being. Brought to you by Netsuite by Oracle. Download NetSuite’s popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance at https://www.netsuite.com/passionstruck. Brought to you by Indeed: Claim your SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR CREDIT now at Indeed dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. Brought to you by Lifeforce: Join me and thousands of others who have transformed their lives through Lifeforce's proactive and personalized approach to healthcare. Visit MyLifeforce.com today to start your membership and receive an exclusive $200 off. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/BP06ppqU5gI  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf on Parenting or a Healthy and Confident Mind. Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the Brushwood Media Network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for "Brushwood Media” Network  

coming up next on passion struck both fear and planning are helpful. But there may be this evolutionary bottleneck where we bring the present and the future together. So present being fear future being planning where we get fear of the future or the fear of the future is basically anxiety, right? That's been shown over and over and over to actually make it harder to think in plan. The far end of the anxiety spectrum is panic, which includes in its definition wildly

unthinking behavior. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators,

scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 339 of PassionStruck, consistently ranked by Apple as one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts and the number one alternative health podcast. And thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. PassionStruck is now on syndicated radio on the Brushwood Media Network, Catch Us Monday and Friday on your evening commute from 5-6pm Eastern Time. Links will be in the show notes.

If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, we now have episode Sturder Packs, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes, that we organize in convenient categories that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to passionstruck.com, slash stutterpacks, or Spotify to get started. In case you missed it, earlier this week, I interviewed visionary nature filmmaker and cinematographer Louis Swartzberg.

Louis breath- breathtaking films from fantastic fungi to his latest masterpiece, Gratitude Revealed, Heaven-Chanted Audiences Worldwide, opening their eyes to the awe-inspiring beauty of the natural world. And Gratitude Revealed, Louis takes us on a transformational cinematic journey, exploring how gratitude can lead to a more meaningful life. Please check it out, and I also want to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews. If you love today's episode, we would appreciate you giving it a 5-star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Now let's talk about today's episode in the midst

of one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history, where the weight of global events and personal struggles converge, anxiety has become an unwelcome companion for many, whether it's the unease of a world in flux where the daily battles fought within our own minds, the experience of being overwhelmed and out of control is all too familiar for so many of us. But fear not, for there is hope on the horizon, join me for an insightful and enlightening conversation, as I delve into the heart of anxiety in its roots with none other than Dr. Judd Brewer.

As the world grapples with unprecedented challenges, Dr. Brewer's timely advice provides a guiding light through the maze of anxiety, offer and brain-based techniques and accessible hacks that empower anyone to take control. Anxiety is we've come to understand where's many nests. From the most subtle, unease to paralyzing panic, it's the driving force behind our most entrenched habits and addictive behaviors, manifesting and stress-eating procrastination and the endless scroll of social media. Remarkably, anxiety resides within the depths of our brain that resist the usual tools

of rational thought. It ensnares us in habit loops that elude easy escape or share willpower. Drong upon over two decades of research and hands-on experience, including his work with Olympic athletes, government officials, and business leaders, Dr. Judd unveils a transformative program that holds the key, deliberation from anxiety's grasp. In this episode, we'll explore how his innovative approach maps the landscapes of our brains, pinpointing triggers and disarming them through the simple but profound practice of curiosity. By weaving mindfulness, habit formation, and scientifically proven techniques and

do-is-teachings, he offers a roadmap to harness the power of our minds, breaking free from the shackles of anxiety-driven behaviors. In his best-selling book on winding anxiety, which we will discuss in today's podcast, He Envils a Blueprint, the map our brains triggers to fuse them through the the power of curiosity, and mold our minds with mindfulness practices, and approach grounded in scientific rigor. Beyond his role as a thought leader and a New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Judd Don's Many Hats, a psychiatrist, an associate professor at Brown University's School of Public Health and School of Medicine, the director of research and innovation at Brown University's

Mindfulness Center, and the executive medical director of Behavioral Health at ShareCare. So whether you're wrestling with the demons of anxiety, we're simply curious about unraveling the intricacies of your mind. This episode is your guide to unlocking a life of resilience, purpose, and self-mastery. Join us as we delve into the world of anxiety, habit change, the boundless potential of the human brain, with the one and only Dr. Chad Brewer. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled and honored to have the one and only Dr. Judd Brewer on Passion Struck.

Welcome Dr. Judd. Thanks for having me. I like to start out these episodes by giving the audience a chance to get to know the guest and case I don't know who you are. But Judd, you have a very unique educational background. It's one of the few people I've met who pursued a dual MDPHD, which if I understand it correctly, takes between eight to 10 years to complete. What led you to study both of them at the same time? And how did you end up discovering your passion for psychiatry? Yeah, it's interesting. I never thought I would be a psychiatrist.

And when I went to college, I got very excited about chemistry and the molecules of life, like seeing these molecules that would lead to thinking and certain molecules make up certain smells and things like that. So I thought I got really interested in basic science and a bunch of basic science researchers and undergrad. And then thought maybe I'll get a PhD in chemistry and keep going here, but then realize that it's not always a direct path from scientific discovery

to helping people. And my junior year of college, I realized, wait a minute, I don't want to page in home myself and only be doing basic science research. And at the time, my girlfriend said, hey, there's this thing called an MD-PhD program. And I was like, what's that? And she said, you can do research that's

related to medicine and where you can, you can learn to be a physician at the same time. And at the same time, if you choose, and some people choose to do this and some people don't after this type of training, you can choose to become practicing physician as well. And so I thought, well, that sounds like a good path. And in certain programs, it's paid for. So that was even nicer to give me some freedom, or not some financial burden. And so long story short, I went through my MD PhD program, just really excited about learning how to do medical research and doing clinically relevant research.

And at the same time, I'd started meditating, actually my first day medical school. Same girlfriend and meditating, actually my first day of medical school. Same girlfriend and I broke up right before we started medical school. And I was pretty stressed out at the time. So I started meditating my first day of medical school, seemed like a good transition period thought I'd try something new.

And so during my eight years of my MDPHT program, I was really just thinking, well, this is nice I can learn something about my own mind, but I'm really excited thinking, well, this is nice. I can learn something about my own mind, but I'm really excited about this research that I'm doing. So the way it works is you do a couple of years in medical school, then you do your PhD for long enough to forget everything you've learned in medical school, and then you go back on the wards and you're expected to pick things right back up. So I did my psychiatry rotation as my first rotation thinking I'm never going to become a psychiatrist and really loved it and ended up seeing how that linked with a lot of my own meditation training around how the mind works and helping people understand their minds.

And so around that time decided to become a psychiatrist and then shifted my career from doing basic science in molecular biology research into neuroscience, studying other mind works, and also studying pragmatic ways to help people train their own minds, which is very relevant to psychiatry. Thank you for bringing up the mindfulness aspect of this, because I first learned about you as you and I discussed before you came on through our mutual friends,

David Vago and Jeff Walker. And I saw that you and David discussed before you came on through our mutual friends, David Vago and Jeff Walker. And I saw that you and David wrote a research paper with a few of your other peers examining the impact of mindfulness on behavior change. And mindfulness seems like it's tied closely to conscious choices. Can you explain the connection between mindfulness and our conscious and subconscious mind? I'd be happy to. So this spoiler alert here is that we probably think that we have a lot more control of our conscious choices than we actually have. The way that this works is our brain was really set up to help us survive.

And the way to most efficiently move to the world is to learn what things are helpful from a survival standpoint and what things are anti-survival. And so we've set up these basic mechanisms called positive and negative reinforcement that help us remember to do things that move us forward and help us to avoid things that kind of get in the way of us moving forward.

And the most basic processes, for example, are remembering where food is. Back in the day our ancient ancestors didn't have refrigerators, had to remember where food was. So we had this mechanism that got set up to help us remember where food is. So they'd be foraging, they'd find some food. They would lay down this memory when they ate the food that through the dopamine system that says, remember what you ate and where you found it. So they'd remember where to go back and find food. Same thing for danger.

If they see some danger in a certain part of the Savannah, they remember to avoid that in the future. So that process gets set up as habit formation where we form habits around eating certain foods and not eating poison, for example. And that has translated into modern day for all of our habits from learning how to walk. We don't have to remember how to walk, putting on our clothes, making breakfast, et cetera, et cetera. So that makes our lives efficient so that we can do these habits that help us do routine things throughout the day. And then it frees up our brain space to learn

new things as we go through our constantly changing and evolving lives of the world. So that's the basic premise in terms of conscious choice, often when we're presented with a choice between two things, for example, if, oh, hey, would you like to try something new? Well, we can try something new and see how much we like it. And then our brain evaluates how much we like that or not. And then that gets laid down so that our brain says, OK, in the future, that's a good thing to do it again. Where this conscious choice comes in

is that our brain sets up this reward hierarchy with all of these different things that we've done. So for example, if my brain has set up a roar to hierarchy around, say broccoli versus no chocolate versus dark chocolate, dark chocolate is high on the list for me. And so when given a choice, so would you like some broccoli or some chocolate, my brain's going to say, hey, dark chocolate,

especially if it's got some cayenne or some sea salt or something like that. That helps us quickly and efficiently make decisions. And those can often become habitual, which is where the unconscious comes in, where we're not even habit by definition is unconscious behavior, which is doing things, routinely without even paying needing to pay attention. We can then pay attention to things and then see, oh, is this actually as rewarding as it used to be? And we can talk about this later if it's helpful, but this is where we can actually form new habits and actually start to learn to let go of unhealthy habits.

And since you wrote that paper, have you developed more of a close tie between mindfulness and behavior change and that there's a distinct relationship between the two. Well, actually, my lab has been studying that relationship for the last two decades. So even way before we published that paper, my lab had been doing a lot of research starting with alcohol and cocaine use disorder with smoking, seeing if we can help people break really unhealthy habits. For example, we did a randomized controlled trial over 20 years ago now, I think. It gets money. No, about 20 years ago now with smoking cessation, and we published this in around 2011, where we ask this basic question, can helping people pay attention when they smoke?

Can it help them quit smoking? And are you ready for this? So in our study, we got five times the quit rates of gold standard treatment by helping people bring that smoking into conscious awareness. In subsequent years, we've done brain research on this, we've done a bunch of clinical trials, we've even developed apps to help people quit smoking and stop overeating and even work with anxiety where we've gotten a bunch of clinical trials, we've even developed apps to help people quit smoking

and stop overeating and even work with anxiety where we've gotten huge reductions. So for example, our unwinding anxiety, I've gotten a 67% reduction in anxiety. So we can do the research to see what works and how it works. And the interesting thing about mindfulness is that it works not through willpower, it's an anti-willpower mechanism.

It really works through awareness helping our brain see very clearly how rewarding or unrewarding a certain behavior is, even if it's a bitch, well, we can bring it into conscious awareness and start really asking ourselves, what am I getting from this? For example, patients who came in, who wanted to quit smoking in my clinic, and he'd been smoking about 40 years. So he had reinforced this habit loop about 293,000 times. A lot of repetition there. So it was very habitual for him. So I sent him home, not with the instruction, thou shall quit smoking because it'd be great if will power works like that. But it doesn't. And so not really how our brains work.

The instruction I sent him home with was, hey, pay attention as you smoke. See what you get from this and what he and many of my other patients and even our folks in our craving a quid app find is that smoking really tastes like crap, but they're not paying attention. And when they pay attention, it makes it much easier for them to put the habit down because their brain says, oh, this is not as rewarding as I remember. Well, I know a lot of people are familiar with your work, James Clear's work, B.J. Fox work, but maybe just a primer for the listener.

Can you just go into the basics of what a habit is? That's three components and the concept of a habit loop. I'd be happy to. what a habit is, that's three components and the concept of a habit loop. I'd be happy to. So a habit, and these habits all get set up through positive and negative reinforcement, it really has the three key elements, like you mentioned. So one is a trigger or a cue.

The second is the behavior itself, and then the third is the result of the behavior. And often people think, oh, the trigger is the most important aspect of things. It's not. The triggers are the least important aspects of this equation. It's actually the behavior and the result of the behavior that are really critical. And the way that this works is, let's take, well, we can use smoking or let's use overeating as an example. So if somebody habitually overeats, by definition, because it's a habit, they're overeating

without awareness. It's on autopilot, whether it's the clean plate club that they learned as a kid, that's one thing that I learned or whether it's just that they habitually eat way beyond fullness, they're not paying attention to what their body cues are telling them, which is, hey, you've had enough. Let's use that as an example. Behavior is overeating. So the trigger might simply be seeing food on one's plates or seeing that there's more ice cream in the carton to be eaten. The result of the behavior, so the trigger, see the ice cream, behavior is eat ice cream even when you're not hungry. And then the result from a brain standpoint, we think of this as the reward. The result is that's, oh, ice cream tastes good.

And so that is enough to feed back and drive future behavior. So see more ice cream, eat more ice cream, and then, oh, it tastes good. But if we're not paying attention, if we look at that reward, if we double click on that, actually can be toggle two ways. So at first, especially for hungry, let's say we eat some ice cream, it tastes good, everything's going well. But if we just keep eating and keep eating, our body and our brain are going to say, Hey, that's enough. You've eaten more than you need. But if we don't pay attention, if it's our habit to finish the carton or to eat all three groups of the ice cream or whatever it is, we're not going to actually see the anti reward where our body is

saying, hey, this isn't rewarding. I think of this as a pleasure plateau, actually have a book coming out in January that that highlights all the research that we've done over the last decade around this. And so it's as we eat our body is saying, okay, that's good. Now it's not as good. Now it's not as good. And we hit this plateau where it saying, okay, that's good. Now it's not as good. Now it's not as good. And we hit this plateau where it says, okay, that's enough. But if we're on habit mode, we're not paying attention. And we go over that cliff of over indulgence where we wake up

out of our food coma and we're like, wow, boy, I really shouldn't have eaten all that ice cream. I feel terrible. Now that is our body saying to us, Hey, I told you, I gave you the cues, you just weren't paying attention. So any habit is driven through this process, a trigger, a behavior and a result. And if we're not paying attention to the relationship between the behavior and the result, we're going to just keep doing that habit over and over. Because at some point, we learned, okay, see ice cream, eat ice cream.

Probably when all the birthday parties that we went to is kids. That's where we lay that down. Does that make sense? It makes sense. And just recently I rediscovered my quesanart ice cream maker and broke that thing out for the first time this weekend. And I can tell you ever since I visualized making that ice cream, made the ice cream, tasted the ice cream, I now have this craving as you were

describing to make more ice cream in that ice cream maker. So definitely understand the correlation firsthand. I want to go into now the relationship between habits and anxiety. And I'm going to get there in a couple questions, but I'm going to start off with in your latest book, you mentioned you have one coming out in January, but your latest book is titled Unwinding Anxiety. And for the listeners, it's a New York Times bestseller that came out a few years ago. But in the beginning of the book, you delve into the birth of anxiety. What is the link between our brains prefrontal cortex and anxiety? It's a really good question. And the short answer is there's an anti-link. If you hear

your brain's prefrontal cortex and anxiety. What I mean by that is that when our prefrontal cortex is involved in thinking and planning. And so think of it as if our prefrontal cortex is working properly, we're making good decisions, we're planning for the future. Where anxiety comes in is where think of it as planning is helpful. Also, in the present moment, fear is helpful. So if we hear a loud noise,

we get scared, we figure out what that noise is to see if there's danger and we need to do something about that. So both fear and planning are helpful, but there may be this evolutionary bottleneck where we bring the present and the future together. So present being fear, future being planning, where we get fear of the future. And that has been shown over and over and the fear of the future is basically anxiety, right? That's been shown over and over to actually make it harder to think in plan. The far end of the anxiety spectrum is panic, which includes in its definition, wildly unthinking behavior. We fall back to our instincts.

This is where herd mentality comes in. We're freaked out and everybody's running in certain direction. We're gonna follow the herd. It's compared to saying, hey, is that a good direction? Which to run? So anxiety and the prefrontal cortex

tends to be when one's online, the other's not. And anxiety because it is more of this primal thing than thinking and planning. The prefrontal cortex is the youngest and the weakest part of the brain from an evolutionary perspective. So anxiety tends to win out over the prefrontal cortex until we learn to work with our anxiety. Yeah, and I think something that you rightly bring up in the book is that anxiety in the book is that anxiety is everywhere and it's not something that's new. In fact, as you mentioned, it's been talked about for centuries. But what is new is the pace of change that's going around in the world that we live in today. And how is that rate of change, especially over the last 20 years, actually leading,

as you write in the book to our brains and bodies, not keeping up, and even perhaps killing us in some ways? Yeah, that's a good question. So if you think about food being a critical survival mechanism, we've got to get calories in, we can think of information functioning in a similar manner. We've got to get information in to help us survive. So in the immediate moment, if we hear a lot of noise, our brain says, hey, go figure out what that is, get that information so you can use that information to survive.

And if you look at not just the rate of change, but if you look at the amount of information that's available, our brain is not designed or is not involved to be able to take in so much information at the same time. Think about our ancient ancestors again. They didn't have the internet. They didn't have ready access to all the information that they could have access to around the world. What's in my immediate environment is important to me right now because that's what I can pay attention to.

And then so they can say, oh, my safe and my not safe, basically. So now our brains are still following that mechanism of, hey, more information is good, but we've got not only a fire hose, we've got like an ocean amount of information that we're trying to drink in. And not only is that a huge amount that is just overwhelming for us, but on top of that, we're now drinking from the ocean of misinformation and even purposeful disinformation, which wasn't the case for ancient ancestors. If you saw saber too tiger, you didn't have to think, oh, is that a deep fake? Is that a hologram?

No, you ran. That's okay, that's a real deal. So now it's like the water is tainted with salt and we're getting thirsty or thirsty or because it's hard to tell what information is accurate, what information is non-accurate. On top of just the seed of information that's out there. And all of that becomes overwhelming for the mind, just frankly overwhelming.

Yeah, I mean, it's so easy to see everywhere. And one of the greatest culprits I have witnessed is the impact that it's had on both my kids as they've been growing up and they're now 25 and 19. I think another thing that's impacting kids today is this toxic culture of constant achievement that we're also forcing on top of them. And then in addition to that, they see everything through social media influencers and how life is supposed to be. How do you think those things combined with the anxiety that's already growing are impacting this new generation of kids that's growing up?

I'd like to bring that up because I think that is also a, probably a build in mechanism for us to be comparing ourselves, whether we compare ourselves to ourselves in the past, whether we compare ourselves to others in the present moment even. So here influencers are showing the stylized, idealized life, even though that's only what we see on a 30-second TikTok clip. We're not seeing the other 23-hour 59 minutes and 30 seconds of their lives. And we're just seeing that little clip and we're thinking, oh, they nailed it.

And then we start thinking, oh, I haven't nailed it. And we start comparing ourselves. To them, we compare ourselves to what we could be and all of these things. And that comparison can be pretty toxic, not only for teenagers, but for adults as well. But I think in particular teenagers are really challenging. We're already trying to individuate, figure out our individual identities. And at the same time, getting all this pressure

to be the best. Who can go viral when you and I were kids? There was no such term as going viral because there weren't these pressures of the internet where somebody is 30 second TikTok video gets viewed by 10 million people. Nobody's ever stepped back to ask the question, who cares? Okay, TikTok video was viewed by 10 million people. Wow. How does that substantially change my life by watching somebody else's TikTok video that got watched by 10 million other people? There's that exciting quality to it that we don't go back and examine and ask, does this really matter?

And that in the short, it only matters. At least start thinking, oh, I could do that too. Because that starts influencing our lives in a way that probably isn't so helpful for us. We are absolutely right about that and there was an interesting book that just came out by Jennifer Wallace where she examines this whole thing. It's called Never Enough. And she is really exploring the concept of mattering and how the fact today that for so many adults, they are losing significance in their own lives. And because they are losing significance,

that whole idea of mattering is then impacting the way that they're parenting the kids. And when the kids don't feel like they have significance in their lives, and then they're pushed to have this extreme, extrinsic desire to perform all the time. She thinks it's creating this endless loop of kids now facing mental illness and other things. So an interesting take on it. Well, very interesting. One thing I'm very curious about there is the concept of meaning. What is meaningful in our lives, trying to go viral on TikTok,

probably not that meaningful, but having a really good conversation or having a close connection or a close relationship with family member, very helpful, very meaningful. And if we look at this, I don't see any evidence that social media is actually helping families be closer, it's probably doing the opposite. Yeah, I just explored this whole concept yesterday with Arthur Brooks and we were talking about what he calls are the four things that bring meaning and it was faith, friends, family and the way that you're articulating your career. And in his opinion, when you, those things are out of line,

and faith doesn't have to be organized religion faith, it could be faith in a greater being, it could be Buddhist faith, it could be lots of different things. But when you don't have those ingredients in your life, then significance, when you look at this as a stool, starts to sputter on one leg to the next. Yes. Well, I'm going to go back to the book because you discovered a profound link between anxiety and habits.

Can you elaborate on how these two seemingly distinct concepts are intricately intertwined and why understanding this connection is crucial for personal growth and well-being. I'd be happy to and I would say my 20-year scientific and also clinical career, this was probably the most important and impactful realization that I had, both from a clinical standpoint and a research standpoint. And the way this came about was that my lab, we'd been developing and studying these app-based trainings for helping people quit smoking, helping people stop over eating. And I'll pause here for a second. We now, enough research that our eat right now app is, you know, certified by the CDC as a diabetes prevention program.

It's recognized as a diabetes prevention program. So we had gotten enough evidence that by addressing habit change in a different way by helping people pay attention to their behavior it was helpful. And somebody when we were creating the E-Rite Now program, somebody said to me, hey, I'm mapping out these eating habit loops.

And it seems that anxiety is driving me to eat and stress eating, overeating, procrastinating, eating types of things. First, I actually blew that comment off. I was thinking, Well, because the person was asking me to make an app for anxiety. And I was thinking, well, I prescribed medications for anxiety. I'm a psychiatrist. This is what I was trained to do in medical school and residency. But I put a bug in my ear because even the best medications for anxiety help about one in five people.

It's called number needed to treat and it's 5.2, meaning one in five is going to significantly, is going to show a significant reduction in symptoms when they take this medication. So I was basically playing the medication lottery with my patients and my clinic, and then also not sure what to do with the other 80% of people that weren't showing that reduction that we were both opening to see. So I went back and looked at the literature and found that way back in the 1980s, back when the pro-Zach was first introduced into the world, ironically, there was a guy Thomas Borkovick that suggested

that anxiety could be driven through negative reinforcement. So just like you and I've been talking about, we can form all sorts of habits, stress eating, smoking, etc. I'd never put anxiety in the category of hamlet formation before, but he was suggesting this and his research was largely ignored. I think people were excited about the SSRIs and thinking that we're going to have these medications that are going to steer the world. A lot of people took the medications, but then end up finding out that,

oh, it's not that helpful for them. Some people, medications can be helpful for majority of people. Unfortunately, they're not as good as we'd like. So I started thinking, wow, I never realized, never occurred to me that anxiety could be driven like I have it. And the way that works is if we go back to that three element thing, the trigger is the feeling of anxiety.

The behavior is worrying. And so I often thought of behaviors as eating or smoking or whatever, but I never really thought about, oh yeah, thinking, worrying in particular, worrying could be a really strong behavior And that's actually what drives future anxiety and it drives it because people feel like they're in control or they're avoiding the feeling of anxiety And that feeling of control, even though people don't have more control when they're worrying about the future than if they're not worrying about the future, then if they're not worrying about the future, it makes them feel like they're doing something, and it can feel better to be doing something rather than nothing. So that reward of feeling like they're in control

or doing something is rewarding enough to their brain that feeds back and says, hey, next time you're anxious, you should worry. And we become this worried world, where not only do we get all, have access to vast amounts of information, if that information is in good, we can start worrying about what's going to happen in the future, not just what's right in front of us, but about our state, our country, our world. And then all this anxiety just compounds. So anxiety can actually be driven like a habit, something I never realized.

But when I learned that, it shifted my entire world view on how to treat anxiety. And so we created this unwinding anxiety app and started testing it immediately to see how well it worked. And long story short, we did a study with people with generalized anxiety disorder, the worst of the worst. And when we compared adding in our app to general regular clinical care, we got a 67% reduction in anxiety. And if you look at that number needed to treat, instead of 5.2, it was only 1.6. So we're getting much better efficacy than traditionally has shown with medications. And this is basically just helping people see how their mind works and then critically helping

them learn how to work with their mind and even put their mind to work for them. Well, I love that and I also like how you describe that anxiety often hides in our habits. And this whole podcast is really about the power of choice and the intentional decisions that we make on a daily basis. What role do our daily choices play in breaking free from these cycles that you were just talking about of anxiety and how it hides in our habits. It's critical. Our daily choices are critical in determining how our next day, our next moment is even going to go. So, if we're making daily choices, we could be making these habitually where we're not even paying attention to the results of these behaviors. If we're just going about our day making these choices, not paying attention, we're not going to see very clearly what the results are.

And the results might be that they're actually driving more anxiety, especially for making choices based on being anxious for anxious. We may not be able to think that clearly because our prefrontal cortex isn't working properly because we're worried prefrontal cortex is offline. So we're going to go to these quick fixes whether it's eating food, procrastinating, worrying as a behavior. We can choose to worry about something or we can choose not to worry about something. If we don't look at the results of those behaviors like worrying, we're not going to see that the worrying isn't actually helping us. And we're not going to see that the worrying is doing worse than that. It's driving us to be more anxious and to worry more, getting a stuck in a vicious loop. what you just said because almost that exact thing came up in an interview I was doing with Chris Carr where she actually brought you and your science up and we were talking about fear and worry and the link between those and anxiety. So I think you just did a great recap of what

she also was bringing up with how she tries to deal with fear in her own life, especially from the time that she was dealing with her cancer diagnosis to how she lives with it today and how she doesn't allow the fear of the unknown to stop her and what she wants to do. So thank you for bringing that up. I did want to go into some of your experience working with Olympic athletes, go into some of your experience working with Olympic athletes, the government officials, to business leaders. What common patterns have you observed across all of them and how anxiety manifests in different contexts? That's a great question. So I would say one of the things that comes up immediately is it doesn't matter how externally successful someone is

to the world. Oh, several time Olympic gold medalist or oh, minister in a government, in a very high position in a government. It's amazing how the common denominator is that there's this self-talk and that self-talk often is not great about ourselves. Oh, I could be doing better. What happens if I don't do this or what happens if I fail? So there are a lot of common denominators around people living with insecurity and anxiety

no matter where they are, what they have achieved according to the world's standards. Well, I think that is really interesting. And another interesting thing that I saw that you did a lot of work on was research using FMRI. When you have examined this and you've looked at people with addiction or anxiety. What does it show on the FMRI? This is not just my research, but standing on the shoulders of giants, a lot of folks have looked at what happens in the brain when somebody's anxious, for example.

And there was one study in particular published about 10 years ago, showing that there's a network of brain regions called the default non-network. And we can talk about why it's called that in a minute. But this network gets activated when people worry. The more they worry, the more there are several hubs of this default non-network, they get really active.

And these hubs, it turns out we had shown probably about three years before that. When we started studying experienced meditators and looking at their brains when in the scanner, we found that this exact network of brain regions was deactivated in experienced meditators relative to novice meditators who were just taught to meditate that day before the scan. So there seems to be this network that gets active when we worry and when somebody's meditating, it gets deactivated. And we went on to do a bunch of studies where we could give people feedback from their own brains in real time as they were meditating or as they were worrying or whatever,

where we could confirm that link between their subjective experience and their brain activity. And the way I think of this is it's not limited to worry. In particular, there's a part of the brain called the posterior singulate cortex that gets activated when we worry, it gets activated when we ruminate about things, it gets activated when we crave things, ranging from cigarettes to chocolate to cocaine to even gambling and things like that. And so it's like when we get caught up in our experience, this network of brain regions seems to get activated. And what we found was that mindfulness training

in particular helps people not get caught up in their experience. And so the correlate was that this brain region would quiet down. And we even had Anderson Cooper, who's doing a piece on meditation for 60 minutes a while ago now, he came into our lab and we hooked him up where we could give him feedback from that brain region in real time.

And folks can find this on YouTube. But basically when he got really anxious, this brain went off the charts, it was actually above our typical limited detection. He was really good at getting anxious. And at the same time, we had him to start dropping into a meditative practice, paying attention to his breath. And when he did that, you could watch this brain region going from off the charts to just really quiet. So it seems that this network gets it gets active when people are worrying can get really quiet and we might be able to train ourselves

To not get caught up in our experience so that we can live more With our experience instead of fighting against our experience in fact I give a TEDx talk a while ago now on flow flow is basically where we are so Emmerced in what we're doing we're not even consciously aware of ourselves. The guy that discovered his name is Mihai Chikzema Hay. He described flow as the selfless, effortless, joyful experience. And from Olympic athletes to somebody, simply, somebody could be in flow cleaning their house if they're truly immersed in the experience. We actually had somebody who got into flow in the skater while

we were getting our post-series single acquired tax. And you could, I showed the video of this in the TED Talk where you watch this brain region get extremely quiet while somebody is getting into flow. And so whether it's meditation, whether it's flow, the common denominator there is that we're getting out of our own way. We're really immersed and forgetting in thinking of it as self-forgetting, in some Buddhist practices they talk about, self-forgetting. We're forgetting about the self. And if we forget that there's a self and we're just truly immersed in our experience, how can no one be anxious in the sense that we're so much lost a sense of who we are? The anxiety is the farthest thing from our mind as anything because there's not even a sense of

self. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought up flow because that whole zone of optimal anxiety is something that really fascinates me. And I was interviewing a NASCAR driver last year who put it in one of the best perspectives I've ever heard his name is Jesse Ouigi and he was saying that to me flow is being on the edge without going over the edge. It's driving the car to the maximum I can take it without wrecking it. And finding that balance that I am there not only for a moment, but for a sustained period of time. And then constantly practicing how do I keep myself in that zone for a longer period of time. And I've had Stephen Kotler on the show as well. And love his recent book and how he was learning how to park ski using his flow principles as well. So very interesting topic. Just to add something there, I think because often the flow can be this mystical concept of people chicks him high. It was pretty clear about finding a

activity that can be cleaning the house, right? It doesn't have to be any crazy activity like driving a car at 200 miles an hour, where there's this zone, where if something is too easy, it's hard to be in flow. And if something is too hard, it's hard to be in flow. So for example, most of us, probably 99.9% of us, if we got in a stock car and with a gas, we would not be in flow, right? It would be a pretty challenging thing just to keep that car in the track at 200 miles an hour. Whereas somebody that is training themselves to do that, it's not too challenging

for them to do that. But if it weren't easy, if they're just driving laps and they're not trying not to wreck into their other drivers and not trying to win the race. It was too easy. They're also out of flow. So what happens when we're not below that level of challenge? It's often our minds wander. Our minds are like, I know how to drive this car. And then we start thinking about, well, I'm going to have for lunch or dinner or whatever.

That's not flow because we're thinking about ourselves. That's why this default mode network gets activated because it's a self-referential network. It's a, I think of it as the me network. And at the same time, if something's too hard, we start worrying, oh no, I'm gonna get in an accident, I'm gonna get in a wreck. There's the self-online as well.

So the self gets online, whether we're, something's really easy because we are mine search wandering. And it goes online when we start worrying. Hence all the anxiety stuff that we've been talking about. So there's this sweet spot between the two, where there's a task that keeps us engaged, where the mind is not wandering

and the mind is not freaking out. And what I would suggest is that we can actually train ourselves, and Stephen and I've had numerous conversations about this, we actually train ourselves to get into that sweet spot. He has a certain methodology that he likes. But if you go back to the, they did Buddhist psychologists, they describe this without anything fancy.

What they described turned out to be tapping into the most basic of our learning processes, which is, hey, see, they call it cause and effect. What conditions lead to flow? And how does it feel when you're in flow? And that's necessary and sufficient to train the mind to be constantly finding that spot in everyday life. We don't need crazy, the more complex you make it, the more likely we are to miss it. As compared to really saying, okay, when I'm anxious, how does that feel? Not so good. So we can train our brains to not be as anxious, right? Through letting go of the worrying.

And at the same time, when we're bored or something like that, we can ask ourselves, what am I doing? I'm going on social media or whatever. And how is that leading me with the result of that? Well, I'm just comparing myself to others or et cetera. That's not flow either. We actually have everything that we need in our everyday lives just through these basic principles of reinforcement learning where we can actually all train ourselves to be more and more along that flow continuum.

Yeah, one of the most interesting examples of this that I've heard about as I was talking to my friend Mark Devine, who's a former seal. And before he went into buds, he got really into mindfulness training and martial arts. And so as he was going through his buds training, he applied this whole concept of flow to what he was doing, but not only did he apply it himself and he became the honor graduate of his class, he applied it to the entire boat crew who he was leading. And it became the first time, I think, in the history of Buds where the entire boat crew not a single person dropped out and they all made it through. And it was because

he was constantly working with them using his own technique of getting into flow to make sure they were getting into flow so that all the other extraneous things that were hitting them that would drive a lot of people to want to ring the bell. They were staying in the zone of, we're going to complete this and we're going to do it as a team. So so interesting when you can perfect this. I love it. Love it. So one of the things I have to ask you about is we hear all the time, it takes this amount of time to change a habit, it takes this amount of weeks, et cetera. And this is something that you explore in chapter 14. So I was hoping for the listeners, you could go into,

how long does it actually take to change a habit? And then how do we deal, especially with the self-judgment habit loops that so many of us have? Yeah, I love that question. So first, I'll say, if anybody watching or listening, ask yourself, what answer have I heard or read on the internet? And the most common one I would guess is 21 days, right?

That seems to be the meme that is risen to the top of the internet. And short answer, don't believe everything you read on the internet. So this goes back, if you trace the history of this 21 days, it goes back to the 1960s when a plastic surgeon wrote a book about how long it took his patients basically to get used to their new nose jobs.

He said, you know, it's basically saying, how it takes about three weeks for them to get used to what their new nose looks like. And that mimefied on the internet at some point to, oh, it takes 21 days to change to hemip. But if you look at the actual research, the answer is, well, it's complicated and it depends, right? Nobody likes ambiguous answers. We like concrete answers. How many views do my video get? How many likes did in my picture get? Are brains like quantitative stuff because they know exactly where they stand? And so 21 days is just so seductive. It's, oh,

I know the number, whether it's true or not, and it's quantifiable. And I would say on top of that, no, three weeks. All right, I could do three weeks. There's no science behind that at all. There haven't been that many studies done. And what people have found is that it really depending on the habit, depending on the person, depending on the situation, all of those factors, all of those variables are going to determine how long it takes. The one thing I can say from some of the research that my lab has done is that if you tap into this reinforcement learning process, you increase the likelihood of that happening faster.

So for example, we did a study where we looked at our e-right now app and checked people, checked in with folks who are overeating, and we specifically have them pay attention as they overeate, so we could have them really dial into that reward value aspect of things. And the idea is, if something's still rewarding, you can keep doing it. If it stops being rewarding, you're going to stop doing it. Or you're going to be less likely to do it. So we train them to pay attention as they over eight and two. Then we can measure that reward value and see how it changed over time.

Are you ready for this? It only took 10 to 15 times of somebody over eating and paying attention as they over eight for that reward value to drop below zero. Below zero. So it's not rewarding anymore and they're shifting their behavior. So this is just one example of people using a particular app in a particular situation. So I'm not saying 10 to 15 applies to everybody for everything. There's situations I'm not saying 10 to 15 applies to everybody for everything. But what it shows is that our brains are tremendously plastic. And if we pay attention, that power of awareness is like dynamite for helping us blow up our old habits, but also helping us solidify new habits, right?

We can use that same principle to help us unwind anxiety. This is where we've, you know, gotten this 67% reduction in anxiety, but we can also use it when we're trying to form new habits like eating healthy food, exercising in my new book, The Hunger Habits. I talk a lot about how we can actually leverage our brains to not only let go of some of my focus on food here, but we can use an eating and eating habits, but we can use this principle for anything. We can start to see, oh, what am I doing? What am I getting from this? And when we can see the result, that changes the reward value. If it's not helping us,

that reward value drops. If it's helping us, that reward value goes up and we're more likely to do it in the future. After we exercise, for example, we can ask ourselves, helping, is that reward value goes up and we're more likely to do it in the future. After we exercise, for example, we can ask ourselves, well, how that feel? Generally feels pretty good after we exercise. And we can remember that helps solidify us doing that behavior in the future. Well, thank you so much for that explanation.

And a topic I can't leave the show without going into is curiosity because you have a chapter on how curiosity is our superpower. And it's something this year that I've tried to do a number of different episodes on because I don't think we're using our natural curiosity, adult play, creativity in itself, as the superpower that we possess. So I was hoping you could explain the

connection between awareness, curiosity, and behavior change, and how can listeners cultivate these qualities in their daily lives? I'd be happy to. It's a great one to end on. So if we go back to these basic principles, let's say anxiety, right? So if we're feeling anxious, there's the trigger, we're worrying there's behavior. And the result is that we're feeling like we're in control, they're doing something that's enough to drive the behavior. Curiosity is really about turning toward our experience, not forcing ourselves to pay attention, but really getting curious

about what's actually happening in this moment. but really getting curious about what's actually happening in this moment. So, for example, with anxiety, if we feel anxious and we worry that tends to manifest in our brain as, oh no, is this going to happen? Is that going to happen? And that oh no, tends to be more close down, more contracted, we're caught up in our experience, like we talked about at the default in my network. With curiosity, instead of worrying about what might happen in the future, instead step back, ask, oh, what's actually happening right now? What does anxiety feel like?

And there, we shift the paradigm in several ways. One, is we're shifting from the future to the present moment. Two, we're shifting from the future to the present moment. Two, we're shifting from worrying, from closing down, from contracting, getting all wound up, to opening to our experience instead of going, oh no, we're going, oh, what is this? And even that, oh, pragmatically helps us awaken that curiosity, that superpower that we have, and start to turn toward, oh, what does this actually feel like? So for example, when I was in residency, I used to get panic attacks, wake up in the middle of the night, full blown panic attack, I turned toward it, oh,

instead of going, oh, no, what is this? And we've had tons of people on our on mining anxiety program use this as well, where they can use that curiosity instead of running away from the panic or worrying that might have another panic attack. It can turn toward and go, oh, what is this? And they see these are physical sensations. They might be unpleasant. Certainly the thoughts I was having on dying were not pleasant. But if I get curious about them, I can note those. Oh, there's a thought as compared to I'm dying, right? Very different. Oh, that's a thought versus I'm dying. And I can notice those thoughts. I can notice the physical sensations. I can write out the panic attack. Importantly, I would also get the confidence that I could use that curiosity to not worry about having another panic attack because I knew I could live through this one. It might not be pleasant, but I could be with this. And this is where all of us can start to learn to awaken that curiosity.

And the way that works is from a reward standpoint, well, which one feels better worrying or being curious. It's to our brains. It's a no brainer. So we have folks that come in and they learn to cultivate curiosity as the new habit as their superpower when they have panic attacks when they're anxious when they're worried when they're overeating or whatever. And that helps not only break out of the old habits but bust into the new habit of being curious itself because curiosity feels great. And then they don't have to wait until they

have a panic attack to be curious again. They're like, wow, that worked pretty well. How about when I'm in a meeting instead of jumping in with a preconceived notion, why don't I get curious? Oh, what about this idea? It's going to burn. Oh, no, that's not going to work. Well, I love it. And for the audience, this is a book that I highly recommend. It's divided into three parts. The first part is mapping your mind, second goes into updating your brain's reward value, and then the third part gets into the third gear or finding the bigger, better offer for your brain. So I highly encourage

you to go check this out and also consider pre-purchasing Dr. Judd's new book, which is coming out in January. Dr. Judd, new book, which is coming out in January. Dr. Judd, if listener wants to learn more about you, the app that you've mentioned several times, etc. Where's the best place for them to go? I think I just go to my website. It's just Dr. Judd, drjud.com. And it lists the hunger habit, the new book, the other books, as well as our apps like

unwinding anxiety. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was even better than I had hoped this interview would be. So such an honor to have you. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Judd Brewer. And I wanted to thank Judd, happy Arnold, and Penguin Random House for the honor and privilege of having him appear on today's show. Links to all things Dr. Judd will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show.

Videos are on YouTube at both John Armyles and PassionStruck Clips. You can catch us now on syndicated radio on the Brushwood Media Network Monday and Friday during your evening commute from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern time. new book, Passion Struck, where I go through the science of living an intentional life is also now available for pre-order. Links will be in the show notes. Advertiser deals on this cancodes are one convenient place at PassionStruck.com slash deals. You can catch me on LinkedIn where you can sign up for my weekly newsletter or at JohnRMiles on all the other social platforms where I post daily bits of inspiration. And if you want to know how I book amazing guests like Dr. Brewer, it's because of my network,

go out there and build yours before you need it. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStrike podcast interview I did with Todd Rogers, a behavioral scientist and professor of public policy at Harvard University. Todd, along with Jessica Lasky-Fink, has spent over three decades studying the science of writing, and together they have authored the groundbreaking book, Writing for Busy Readers, how to communicate more effectively in the real world. Often when we start writing,

we think we know what we're writing about. Literally, it could even be a text message, and we think we know what we're writing. And as we write, it becomes clearer exactly what we're trying to accomplish. And it ends with a conclusion. That's the real key point. And we end with it. So writing to be fantastic for clarifying the way we think, that helping us understand our own goals and what we want to accomplish with our writing. Sometimes we confuse that for the final

stage of writing. That is the end. It is not the end. That actually helps you realize what the point of writing activity was in the first place, which we then should rewrite everything through the lens of now that I know what my goal was. Remember that we rise by lifting others, so please share the show with those you love. And if you know someone who would like to hear more about how you use habits, the overcoming anxiety, then definitely share today's episode with them. Because the greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those you love. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Now go out there and become Ash and Struck. you