Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 600: Mayim Bialik On: Anxiety, Anger, Believing in Both Neuroscience and God, and the Pressures of Being a Teen TV Star

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Historically on this show, we want guests who either have skills that they can teach us (i.e. meditation teachers or happiness researchers) or we want people who are willing to get super personal about their interior lives—and today you're gonna meet a bold-faced name who happens to have both qualifications in spades.Mayim Bialik burst onto the scene in the 1990s as the star of the TV show Blossom. Then she stepped away, got a bachelor's and a PhD in neuroscience, and became a mom. She returned to TV with another sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. And now she has a very full plate as the co-host of Jeopardy! and the host of a podcast of her own called Mayim’s Breakdown. Oh, and she’s also written four books, including Girling Up: How to Be Strong, Smart, and Spectacular and Boying Up: How to Be Brave, Bold, and Brilliant. In this episode we talk about:The pressures of being a teen starMayim’s fascination with the brainHow she squares her scientific expertise with her religious beliefsWhy she half-jokingly says she was born “a mental health challenge” The difference between anxiety attacks and panic disorderWhy she's chosen to be so public about her complicated psychiatric historyWhether it's possible to be overdiagnosedThe tools she personally uses to stay afloatWhat’s behind her busyness, and what happened when she decided to stop working all the timeAnd why at age 47, she's now taking the time to learn how to express her anger in a healthy wayA note that there are some mentions of suicide and addiction in this episode. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/mayim-bialik-600 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Historically on this show, we have shied away from celebrity interviews largely because we want guests to either have some skills that they can teach us. We're talking about people like meditation teachers or happiness researchers, or we want people who are willing to get super personal about their interior lives. And with respect, these are qualifications that most famous people don't have. Today, though, you're going to meet a boldface name who happens to have both qualifications and in spades. Myambialic burst onto the scene in the 1990s as the star of the TV show Blossom. Then she stepped

away, got a bachelor's and a PhD in neuroscience and also became a mom. She returned to TV and another sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, and now she has a very full plate. She is the co-host of Jeopardy and she's the host of a podcast of her own called My Ambialics Breakdown. Oh, and she has written four books, including Girling Up, How to Be Strong, Spartan Spectacular, and Boying Up, How to Be Brave, Bold, and Brilliant. In this conversation, we talk about the pressures of being a teen star, her fascination with the brain, how she squares her scientific

expertise with her religious beliefs, why she half jokingly says she was born a mental health challenge, the difference between anxiety attacks and panic disorder, why she's chosen to be so public about her complicated psychiatric history, whether it's possible to be so public about her complicated psychiatric history, whether it's possible to be overdiagnosed, the tools she personally uses to stay afloat, what is behind her busyness and what happened when she decided to stop working all the time, and why at age 47 she's now taking the time to learn how to express her anger in a healthy way. Just a few notes here before we dive in.

Heads up. There are some mentions of suicide and addiction in this episode. Also just to say, this is the final installment in a series of celebrity interviews. We're running this month every Monday. We've been talking of big names who have the guts to spill their guts. If you missed it, go check out Michael and Peary Oli, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Mike D from the Beastie Boys. We're wrapping up here with my ambiolic. Please hit me up on Twitter or through the 10% happier website to tell me at us what you think.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us wanna live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier

instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher, Alexis Santos, to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% .com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress,

singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast. Maybe this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby This is Kiki Palmer

on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. My Imbialic, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. This is a good get for us. I'm very excited to have you on the show. Well, I'm hoping to, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. This is a good get for us. I'm very excited to have you on the show. Well, I'm hoping to get you for my podcast, so that would be a good get for us.

All right. So if you're up for it, I would love to start with a your life story because you made some very interesting decisions. You were, as everybody knows, like a huge star in the 90s and then you took a break for nine years. Actually, longer. Okay, so my facts are wrong.

How long was your break? Well, I think it's important to give you a tiny bit of backstory because I was a teen actor. I didn't start acting until I was in junior high school, which means I had a whole life of not being raised in the industry. And I was cast in a movie called Beaches when I was 12. It came out the week of my Bob Mitzvah when I was 13, and then I had a, my own TV show, which is as crazy as it sounds, it felt crazy

like to get my own TV show from 14 to 19. So while I did have that life, I was not raised in the industry, I wasn't raised expecting that everybody would love me and give me my own TV show. I was, you know, kind of a late bloomer as children are considered in the industry. So I left for 12 years.

I did my undergraduate degree and then my graduate degree right up next to it and that took 12 years. I did a couple acting things in there, but most notably I had my first son in grad school and I got pregnant with my second the week I filed my thesis. So I took my doctoral hood pregnant. Just to put a little meat on the bone there, your PhD is in neuroscience. Yeah, my undergrad as well.

I did neuroscience with a minor in Hebrew and Jewish studies. And then I studied psychonura endocrinology with my specialty in neuroscience at UCLA as well. And so this 12 year period was filled with some amazing but non-glamorous stuff, you know, getting a PhD in neuroscience. Oh, no, there was nothing glamorous about it. Yeah, having babies.

I think you also tutored Hebrew and piano and taught sex ed to high school students. So this was like, I don't want to say regular life, but it was pretty regular for a bull face name. Yeah, I mean, you know, people have a lot of assumptions about what my life must have been like after Blossom, you know, after being on a network sitcom, but that contract was written in 1989 when I was almost 14 years old. And girls at that time were not given the kind of clout that many people think. So I still budgeted IT aid, you know, all through grad school.

It supplemented my school tuition. Like, I had a normal, I mean, obviously very privileged and ivory tower of, you know, academia kind of experience. But yeah, I never had a nanny or a housekeeper or a chef. I took care of my kids. I actually left formal academia. I didn't do a postdoc because I wanted to be home with my kids

So I was that parent who was tutoring and my husband at the time were now divorced But he was also in grad school. He got a master's in polypsi with a specialty in theory So we were two grad students doing our best when you were being a teachers assistant Do you ever get students who like freaked out that Blossom was helping them with their neuroscience? Yeah. You know, it really depended on the age of the student because if you actually do the math, it had been a minute since Blossom was on by the time I got to grad school, meaning a lot of my students didn't know.

That wasn't part of their kind of cultural vernacular and depending on how they grew up, they may not have watched. It comes like that. My professors, obviously more kind of knew who I was and had definitely more than one professor kind of freaked out that I was in their class. One professor brought his, his children, like he took them out of junior high so they could come like meet me on a day of a final like those nuts. But yeah, I basically, you know, I walked off of your television and onto this campus,

you know, most of my, my, my fellow students knew actively who I was. So you got special attention from your fellow students because they had been wise? It wasn't always positive. Oh, really? Of course not. No, I mean, at that time, there were other celebrities who were going to college. I was also two years out of high school when I started. I was contracted at Lossom and you can't break a contract and say, I got into Harvard, I'd like to college. And I was also two years out of high school when I started. I was contracted at Blossom and you can't break a contract

and say, I got into Harvard, I'd like to go. So I actually was 19 when I started in college. And I was not a natural math or science student. I got interested in it when I was on Blossom in my teen years. But I had to do back then it was called affirmative action. It wasn't a dirty word. Students who were not up to par and certain subjects were given the opportunity to make up those classes.

I did, you know, we called it remedial calculus and remedial chemistry. So I had to do a bit of catch up. And yeah, there was definitely that feeling of, oh, we know what you came from. Like, oh, you think you're gonna do this now? I mean, people aren't always nice, you know. Really?

People aren't always nice, you know. Really? People aren't always nice. No. All right, so why neuroscience? Why did that interest you so much? So when I was a teenager, if you think back to the early 90s, the discussion of Nature versus Nurture was kind of a little bit hot in the news and it's kind of a cultural conversation, the notions of discussing homosexuality, you know, in meaningful ways. We it's kind of a cultural conversation, the notions of discussing homosexuality, in meaningful ways, we were just kind of learning more about AIDS and what that meant. And those were discussions that really interested me. And that was kind of my first basic interest,

was like nature versus nurture. And it was because I was behind in chemistry and calculus that I wasn't able to declare a major in my first semester. So one of the only classes available to me until I did my remedial classes was a class called psychobiology, which was basically taught by two professors, Professor Gragolva and Professor's Adele, who passed away recently, who was my mentor. And basically half the class was psychology, you know, Pavlovian stuff and the basics of Freudian psychology, things like that. But the second half was taught by Dr. Z. Del and it was the physiology of the neuron.

And I literally, like, this is my romantic moment, I saw the action potential up on a slide, you know, back then they used overhead slides still. And I had a feeling in me of, like, that's the level of understanding of the universe that I would like to have is the neuron. And so I studied the brain and nervous system. I had a special interest in human behavior, but you know, it was trained in molecular and all those other kinds of neuroscience that were trained in. I'm also a vegan person, so I knew I didn't want to do research on animals. So I ended up working in the field of mental retardation in the neuropsychiatric institute

and I studied obsessive-compulsive disorder in individuals with Prada-Willis syndrome, which is a genetic syndrome. So was the source of your interest, I'm sure the source of your interest was multifaceted, but were you driven by wanting to understand the universe at the level of the neuron, or was it a researches, me certs, like you were trying to understand something about yourself? was it a research as me, such like you were trying to understand something about yourself? I think my initial interest was I want to be immersed in a line of study that is understanding the world, the universe, and the human experience at this level. But, you know, for me, and I think for many people who enjoy college,

enjoy grad school, enjoy learning, I personally thrived in that environment of, you know, constantly being challenged academically, constantly needing to perform and be on top of things. My father of blessed memory was an English teacher. He taught in public school system for, I mean, him and my mom have like a combined 70 years in the public school system. Their New Yorkers born during World War II. So they were part of a generation of, you know, first generation American teachers. So I grew up with a love of learning, but you know, my parents were English people.

So, you know, like they were into poetry and literature. And here I was having the opportunity to use kind of the skills and the discipline that I had been taught and the passion that I saw them have, but I could apply it to something that really thrilled me, which was in this case, the brain and nervous system. For somebody like me who knows basically nothing about the brain, I've done some interviews about it,

but when you even say the word neuron, I mean, it's a word that I use sometimes, but realize I don't really know what I'm saying. Like, what could you, for the dumbest person you know, which in this moment is me, what can you say about the neuron or neuroscience that would help me understand why it's so fascinating? Oh, I mean, you don't have to agree with me, but you know, a neuron is a specialized cell of the brain and the entire nervous system. So cells have all the functions that you learn about from second grade on.

They have a nucleus and they have a power source and they, you know, have to get rid of trash and, you know, protect themselves from toxins from their little environment. But neurons are special in that they communicate with each other and they communicate through the release of ions, you know, things that you've heard about, potassium, sodium, all those kinds of ions, they exist in the milieu of the brain and nervous system. And the way that neurons communicate is through electrical impulses. And what happens is there's this elaborate and constantly occurring electrical storm that has to go on in your brain and nervous system, and it's

a chain reaction. So one touches the next, which touches the next. And you know, it's kind of this like rolling experience of electrical impulses that lead to literally the experience we're having right now. It leads to our consciousness. It leads to our emotional regulation. It leads to the ability for me to know that I exist and that I'm separate from you.

And those impulses and that transfer of information is the basis for love. It's the basis for how we taste touch, hear, smell, feel, think. You know, I believe in love as a romantic entity, but also I believe in the neurochemistry of every emotion that we have, which doesn't mean it's not gorgeous,

but for me, and I'm also a spiritual person, I'm a person with a religious faith, like to me that understanding is divine. I'm not saying God must have created it. That's not for me to say, but I know that the fact that that's how information gets transferred in your brain and nervous system, I think that's absolutely divine. So seeing the elementary particles of human experience. Yeah, and the basis for the fact that we can even have this conversation. Yeah, it's quite beautiful. The way you articulate it is really nice. You want to go back to school and maybe you want to become a nurse scientist.

No, I just want to create a new show called Nerding Out with Blossom. I'll sign on for that. So if you are practicing Jew, a new show called Nerding Out with Blossom. I'll sign on for that. So if you are practicing Jew, I'm a lapsed half Jew who had a barbed book, but as I often joke only for the money. So if you're practicing Jew and you believe in God, how could it be that God didn't create all the neurons that are the building blocks of the human experience? It's not really for me to place my concept of divinity on other peoples, which is why I kind of

caveat it that way. For me, the experience of our existence is credited in my life to something greater than me, meaning I didn't create it, and I have a tremendous amount of gratitude, and I guess some sort of structure and ritual around that. But I believe that God's hand or something divine is in all of the processes of evolution that we see and observe. So I don't spend a tremendous amount of time, you know, I went to school with Sam Harris. We were in the same neuroscience class.

So, you know, Sam and I have obviously had many conversations about this, and he's, you know, had an incredible career discussing this. For me, I don't feel a lot of anxiety around it. I know that I have a particular connection with a spiritual experience that allows for the processes of human thought, evolution, and also all of the destruction and terror that humans also bring into the universe. Just for anybody who hasn't heard of Sam Harris, we are not related to Sam and I, but we are good friends. He is awesome and quite a famous atheist writer and then he's also written about spirituality and meditation from a secular standpoint and has a great meditation app called waking up and also a podcast called Making Sense. Anyway, back to you. Tell me if I'm hearing this correctly. I'm making a leap here and perhaps inappropriately, but I'm going to take an attempt at summarizing how you simultaneously

hold Judaism and science, but probably handpicked at least. But I'm guess what I'm kind of hearing is like, yeah, maybe you don't believe that every word in Leviticus is literally true. But broadly speaking, you have this powerful intuition that there is a divine hand behind everything we see at a day-to-day level and at a molecular level. And you don't know exactly how that works. And it may not be exactly as it's described in the Bronze Age literature of the Old Testament, but it all feels to you on some intuitive level,

like there's something true there. Well, I mean, I was with you until feelings because I don't know if for me I think about it in terms of feelings. What I know is that I believe nature is true. I believe that gravity is going to be a working principle of my universe today, tomorrow. And I'm going to go ahead and say forever. So that faith that I have, that the sun will come up tomorrow, is just about the same faith as that of people who have a divine experience of the sun coming up.

So, my kids often tell me that I'm cheating by saying that I think that nature is God. And I said, there's no such thing as cheating. I either have faith that the sun's gonna come up or I don't, and I can call it what I want. And yeah, I do have a particular set of ritual that I don't believe is correct. I believe it's correct for the ethnic line that I come from.

And as for sort of, you know, the liturgy of the Old Testament, and actually all of our writings, you know, in Judaism, I don't know many people who do believe that every single word of the Old Testament is, quote, true. But what I do know is that for those who codified the Old Testament and all of our holy books, there's something special in that. You can call it divine if you'd like. But the Old Testament in particular is a book of all sorts of stories. There's legend, there's myth. I remember when I learned that the prophets were all either dreaming or hallucinating when they had their visions. I thought, well, someone should have told me that earlier.

Because for most of my life, I walked around thinking, those things couldn't happen. Like, I'm a scientist, I'm like a thinking person. And I also kind of wondered, like, why do we have a structure of religion where that's not what we lead with? You know, or instead, it's like, there's prophecy. And, you know, and it's like, they were either meditating

so heavily and deeply that they were experiencing a transcendental state, which we know can happen. You know, they often fasted, like, especially the Jewish mystics, we know there was a tremendous amount of body movement fasting, chanting, you know. Right. Right. Okay. So you can view the burning bush, etc. as poetic language.

Sure. And I also don't have to know if it's true for me to understand what that story tells, what it means and the ethical and mystical and historical implications of, let's say, the experience of Moshe of Moses. Well, I wonder then on some fundamental level, whether you and Sam may agree in that you're just using different words. I mean, he believes in nature. Correct.

That's why my kids say I'm cheating. Right. Right. But you're saying, I know you don't like the word feeling, but you're saying what feels right to you. Uh, sure. I mean, I do think of feelings a lot, you know, when I go to synagogue and I hear a particular set of chords and something is stirred in me that feels like I don't know where it comes from. I don't know that tune. I don't remember

that tune, but something in me feels deeply moved to have a spiritual experience. That's a feeling and that's very special and I'm grateful that, you know, the tradition that I was born into and the ethnic line that I am a part of has provided me that. It's not for everyone, and many Jews are Buddhists. And I don't believe that Judaism or any religion has the right way to do it. We're all trying to figure out how to manage

being hurled around through space with the human experience that we're having, which is largely complicated and often painful, but with enough moments of joy that we kind of keep at it. Well said. So back when I asked whether your interest in neuro science was me search as many researchers who come on the show often say, I got into whatever I study

because of something in my life. I was asking that because I know you have talked publicly about being neurodiverse. You've had some mental health challenges. And so I was curious. I was born a mental health challenge. So I think of it. I guess you could argue that being born in and of itself

is a mental health challenge. Yeah, I ended up studying obsessive-compulsive disorder, not really having a full acknowledgement honestly of the fact that I absolutely qualify for that diagnosis, not on a severe level, so not in the ways that many of us know. But yeah, there's many things about me that I gained tremendous insight into because I chose to study that. So there could be something serendipitous about that. You know, as I said, I don't come from scientists.

My parents were first-generation Americans who were English teachers and documentary filmmakers. The choice was either to go to med school or law school. If you had the money, which my grandparents didn't, or to become a public school teacher and fight for civil rights, which my parents did. So, you know, I was kind of always learning as I went about what to study and how,

but it would have been very natural for me not to study science, but honestly, I don't think I would have had the full experience as a human that I believe I was supposed to have had I not been a scientist. You say the OCD that you've dealt with is mild. How does it show up for you? I always had from the time I was a very young child, a lot of rituals, counting rituals, mental rituals, anxiety binding rituals, and these are all spectrums, so there's going to be a lot of overlap between children who are anxious and children who do things to

bind that anxiety. But I remember when I was first screened by a psychiatrist, and he started asking questions that no one had ever asked me before. And I was in my 20s and he said, do you have a favorite number? And I said, who doesn't? And he said, well, that's an interesting answer. Tell me about it. And I had, I have several special numbers and I proceeded to tell him all about them.

So once we sort of started putting together all of these pieces, we learned more about me. And I like to point out, you know, obsessive compulsive disorder involves obsessions and compulsions. A lot of people think like, I like my shoes straight. I'm so OCD. And people like me get very annoyed when people say, I'm so OCD or I've got PTSD from him telling me that he didn't like my hair, you know, whatever it is, which you may have post-traumatic stress disorder and someone making a comment about your hair can do it. But generally speaking, I'm careful with diagnoses and I like to point out that simply having thoughts

about wanting things perfect doesn't mean you have OCD. There's a set of externalizing behaviors also that are required for diagnosis. So that was when you were a kid, are you still struggling with these rituals now? I would say I don't know that I'm struggling with them. I sort of live with them. There are many ways to try and medicate out

of obsessive-pulsive disorder. I mean, I've likely met the diagnosis for generalized anxiety disorder. From the time I was very young, I had many years of pretty significant and life-changing depression. I like to say, name a DSM diagnosis and at some point I've fitted. I have a pretty complicated psychiatric history and I had proper panic attacks like the

kind where you think you're dying and need to go to the hospital in my late teens and early 20s and back then you were given medication for. You know becoming a woman as opposed to being a girl, is often met with being given the pill, which I and many, many women are given because there's a set of emotions and complexity that many doctors honestly don't know how to deal with. And I think we've come a bit of a way in trying to understand a larger bit of the psychiatric and psychological impacts of hormonal shifts and how to give teen girls in particular and young women proper support. And, you know, I'm now on the other side of it. I'm 47 and entered menopause quite early.

So, also, you know, spent a lot of my 40s, which I didn't anticipate, dealing with a whole new set of challenges. I'm kind of the whole kitten caboodle, you know, when it comes to diagnoses they've tried every medication on me in many, many different combinations and permutations. And I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that. The work that you do is very significant for many of us who believe that there are other ways to get at the parts of us that hurt.

Yeah. Just to fill out the picture in terms of you said that if it's in the DSM, you've had it. in terms of you said that if it's in the DSM you've had it, in reading about you, I've also seen you talk about ADHD, eating disorder, hoarding, HSP, or being a highly sensitive person. So this is... I didn't think needed a diagnosis. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the challenges

of being in therapy since you're young means you gain a tremendous sense of self-awareness. You know, the ability to self-diagnose, which I really try not to do. I struggle with a lot of things that my father, blessed memory, struggled with. I never thought that I would qualify for an ADHD diagnosis, to be honest, because I'm very, very highly functional. I mean, even as a depressed person, you know, work is my best drug, my best compensatory mechanism. But I have a tremendous amount of features

that honestly, I don't know that I would have even felt the need to say, I have ADHD. But on the podcast that I have, we get a lot of questions from people about features of themselves. And I've chosen to be honest that filling out forms is really, really hard for me in ways that I never realized with a lot of other features of me fit a particular criteria. And I'm an interesting genetic combination and an interesting environmental patient of

really complicated parents and post holocaust, anxiety and depression, which many of us experience. And yeah, I've come out of it with a smattering of really interesting features about me that, you know, from the generation that I'm from and that I think you're from, sometimes you were just quirky or weird or things were hard for you. And now there are a lot of labels, this generation, you know, my kids are 14 and 17, they really like labels. They want to know what is it and how do we fix it? Is it possible to be overdiagnosed? Sure.

It's super useful. I remember once 30, 40 years ago, I had really bad back pain. And I got an X-ray and you could see that one of my lower lumbar was out of trajectory. And I remember the doctor having nothing useful to say other than that, well, it's nice to know there's some pathology here. Dr. Sarno would disagree with. He would say many people have that pathology and no pain.

Right. Oh, which is anyway, but that's a different, but yes, it is sometimes nice to know there's pathology. My point being, it can be helpful to have some order placed on the universe by having a diagnosis. Something clicks into place and you understand, oh, this is why I'm doing this. So I can get that. And on the other hand, I just wonder, can you also have so many diagnoses that you're just pathologized within an inch of your life? Yeah.

And honestly, a lot of times that is what it feels like. And I think that's been part of the exploration of being open about the environment I was raised in, some of the challenges there, what it's like to be a human. I was particularly inspired by a friend of mine, Will Wheaton, who many people know, he's an actor and also an author. And he started doing advocacy work around mental health with an organization

that I had received services from when my father was hospitalized, when I was in my 20s, I realized that I had such admiration for someone who's literally speaking openly and in conjunction with an organization that I literally have used its services for, and that kind of inspired me to start, you know, wanting to talk about it. I tend to not resonate around my diagnoses per se or what I could qualify for in terms of what they can check off a box. I am more interested in how I function and how I don't function or how I function less well in certain arenas and better in others.

What I know and I think you know as well, is that there are certain fundamental and basic things that most of us were not taught to do, or ways that we were not taught to think, that make better all of the things that I have just mentioned, as all possible features of me. So yes, many people will turn to alcohol, some of us turn to food. Some of us turn to sex or an addiction with relationships or codependency. But all of those things are essentially outlets of a human that is basically saying,

I need help by missing something. So I tend to cringe when I have to personally talk about ADHD or even OCD. You know, and those things are so, you know, they're so real. But I think one of the amazing things about understanding that there's a spectrum is that everyone gets to jump on it. And the other thing about understanding a spectrum is that there are many ways that we can learn to cope better and function easier.

Being a public person means I'm choosing to have a microphone in front of me to talk about mental illness because I believe it's a human right for people to know. I can't tell you how many people think they're having panic attacks when it's an anxiety attack, which is treated differently. Another one of the dangers of typing in your symptoms and coming up with a diagnosis online. Well, I actually didn't know there was a difference between panic attack and because I have panic attacks, I also have a lot of anxiety. What's the difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack?

So an anxiety attack is usually a lot of the physiological things that we identify as anxiety become very heightened and you have that awareness of palpitations and sweating and things like that. Panic disorder and panic attack in particular takes on usually a dissociative component where you kind of lose touch with the reality of your physiology and in many cases you end up in the hospital thinking you're having a heart attack. The other distinction between panic attacks and anxiety attacks

is that fear of a panic attack can often cause a panic attack. That is not the case with anxiety attacks. So again, this is just a really pedantic thing that neuroscientists often get itchy about because we do tend to treat those things differently. They do have different mechanisms and treating the often kind of paranoia and self-stimulatory fear that comes with panic disorder is very different than what happens with anxiety attacks. But I would imagine there, at least for me, that comorbid, you know, like I have a lot of anxiety in my life, but I also have legit panic attacks and fear of having a panic attack can often bring one on.

Well, it sounds like you've got both congratulations, But a lot of people, you know, again, there's a real hyperbole also, and I think it's become exacerbated by, you know, a culture where you talk in six second snippets. And, you know, you need to get your point across very quickly. And so, I think the notion of panic attack is a way that a lot of people also want to emphasize how bad they're feeling with their anxiety.

And with the symptoms of an anxiety attack which are upsetting, disturbing, you know, very, very awful and bad. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but what you identified as sort of panic disorder, again, is treated differently and also often approached differently when we think about what the root causes are.

Coming up, Maya Bialik talks about her belief that most people can benefit from some form of introspection and whether it's possible from psychotherapeutic standpoint to be overdiagnosed. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai.

And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the

infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. So you've done some amazing work using your platform to be open about your own mental health

struggles as a way to normalize this and reduce the stigma that I take to the extent that I ever allow myself to feel good about anything I do, but I take some pride in having done just a little bit of that on my end as well. And yet, in preparing for this interview with you, I happened to read an article, it just came over the transom separate from my research into you that really started to get me to think a little bit differently about this. And so I just thought it would be interesting to read you a bit of this article and see what your response is. Are you open to that? I guess so.

You have no choice, right? Okay. That's what she's saying, ladies and gentlemen. So I can't remember where I saw this. I think it was in Semicore, but here's a quote. I'm going to read you a couple quotes. One is from a guy named Simon Wesley who is the first psychiatrist to become president of the UK's Royal Society of Medicine. And he writes, or says, every time we have a mental health awareness week, my spirits sink. We don't need people to be more aware. We can't deal with the ones who are already aware. And then Lucy Falks, I think that's the right way to pronounce it. She's an academic psychologist at Oxford

and she says that one possibility is that for the big seaming spikes in teenage mental health issues, she says one possibility is, and you're quoting, we repeatedly tell teenagers that they're in anxious generation, and that is making them more likely to think that mild symptoms are a genuine mental health problem. Her overall take is the decline in teen mental health is real, but not that straightforward. So anyway, all of this just got me thinking a little bit about how much value are we providing, or is it an unalloyed good for me and you to be doing the type of shit we're doing where we're being open about our mental health issues?

Yeah, I mean, I tend to appreciate both of those quotes that you just read. I think that for me, the main thrust of what I believe is that access to mental health support should not be for the rich, and right now it pretty much is. So for most people, it is cost prohibitive to even get the most basic counseling support. And I am one of those people who believes that most people can benefit from some form of introspection and some form of betterment. I also think that many of us were raised in generations where the kind of things we experienced that often in many cases revolve around alcoholism

or the family disease of alcoholism or people's addictions. We didn't know to flag those things. And the fact is, those do have an impact on people even who are not drinking, right? They say that alcoholism as a family disease kills those who don't even drink, right? So what my partner, Jonathan Cohen,

and I wanted to do was when we realized that, I mean, we started our podcast at the beginning of the pandemic, and I realized that the things about me that I still struggle with were getting harder to deal with. And I said, gosh things about me that I still struggle with were getting harder to deal with. And I said, gosh, I have a lifetime of therapy. All of the resources I need, if I want to go on medication, if I want to change medication, if I want to meditate, if I want to do yoga, I said, what about the people out there who don't have any of those resources or support? And they're walking around like what is going on

in the world, and why am I feeling this way? And I would hear from people who said, I'm having trouble sleeping, and I can't eat, and I feel nauseous all the time. What's going on? And I said, oh, my friend, you've never experienced anxiety. And so, you know, what Jonathan and I wanted to do was try and level the playing field really

of a set of vocabulary around what we know about how we react to scary things or difficult things. So, as I said, as the parent of a 14 and 17-year-old, I'm very, very aware and I try and stay aware of what especially social media looks like and especially what the mental health world looks like. And I would agree that we do have a really specific culture of self-diagnosis and in many cases overdiagnosis and overattachment to diagnoses as an excuse for thinking feeling and behaving.

And I mentor a variety of women, most of whom are younger than me. And oftentimes, they will say, well, my OCD is making me do this. And I make sure, just as a personal human, to say, hang on a second and really try and deconstruct that. And so I think what's missing is nuance. And I think nuance is missing really from our culture in general. We see that in how we talk about politics, how we talk about everything. And I think this is not an exception.

I also do know that as someone who has experienced more than one family member close to me, commit suicide, I also do pay special attention to trying to encourage people to get support and to have access to that. And I think that, you know, while I have a doctorate in neuroscience, I make sure to remind people like, I'm not that kind of doctor and I'm not your doctor. And so I think that's also a danger. But to your credit, I think what you are doing, and this isn't just me, I mean, you're

welcome to cut this out if you don't like people saying nice things about you. But what you are doing is you're placing a very, very simple but complicated task to people that really reminds us that the resources that we need are actually within us, with the proper education and resources. And that's really significant. Specifically, your work has changed the lives of so many people, many very close to me. And I do think that that is more where we need to be

rather than what I know people think when they hear of a celebrity who's like, I've got this, I've got that, which, you know, I would hope that if people do listen to my podcast, they get a little more of the nuance. But yeah, there's a rawness to my experience. And I made a movie called as they made us about the kind of family that I grew up in, that many people grow up in.

And it's not surprising that when you grow up with tension, violence, chaos, confusion, fighting, and fear that you are conditioned as a child and as a teenager to not feel like you can trust your own reality. And that's problematic. And you know, I heard someone say yesterday that all of the horrible things about us keep us alive long enough to get help so that we can do better for our kids. You know, and I do credit the work that I've done with allowing me to be a parent to my children that is doing it differently and hopefully raising children who are self-aware and respectful and know when they need help and know how to articulate it. And for me, that's what I hope for

people who listen to you or who listen to me, that they can do better than was done to them if that's what they need to heal from. And I do think that that, especially for young people, that is important to remember that we're all having a human experience. And there's, you know, Freud was right. There's something to getting it out. There's something to having someone hold space like that that is important. And in our culture, people now can witness that. You know? Yes.

I think it's largely to the good. And I also think, you know, use the word nuance. There are some nuances here. There are some downsides. And I think you articulated that all in ways that I very easily can co-sign on. I just want to say one more thing, like teenagers in particular don't like nuance.

They really don't, and many adults don't. And it has led me away from a lot of conversations in my life because we have lost the ability to tolerate people who think differently, feel differently, and especially I see it with my kids. Everything feels like an affront to them if they don't agree with it. And we need a generation that can exercise more patience

and it's really missing. Yeah, I just wonder if that's been ever thus, like one of the things we hate the most is uncertainty. And so cocooning, nestling into, burrowing into certainties is very comfortable for us. Well, I would argue that having a, you know, some sort of connection of something larger than yourself is an opening to understanding that. And I know many intolerant religious people don't get me wrong.

But the tradition I was raised in was a hagelian kind of dialectic of the sort of understanding two things can exist, you know, the Talmud teaches when you think you're right, you're wrong. Yes. You know, being able to live intention is the way that I was raised. Yes. You know, it's, you know, one of the sort of philosophies of modern orthodoxy was you can hold both things. And so that's something that, of course, I try and impart to my children, but I also, I am one of those people

who believes that the pace of the internet, the pace of social media, the attention shifting that we really are conditioned to have, does not lend itself to an opening for nuance in particular. That's just me being an old person. Yeah, I'm older than you and I tend to agree. I do want to get back to the movie you mentioned as they made us, which came out last year. And you've been very clear that it's not strictly an autobiography, but it was inspired

by some of your own childhood trauma. And I'm just wondering, you've referenced some difficulties in your own childhood obliquely during the course of this interview. Would you be willing to say a little bit more about these formative years for you? Yeah, I mean, I can even do it without DSM diagnoses. You know, my father of blessed memory was a wonderful charismatic creative artistic man.

But I grew up before there were names for what it was like, he would get really, really depressed to the point that I often didn't know what I would come home to. He also would have periods of staying up really late and thinking that he had powers and knowledge and information in a way to see the world that other people couldn't understand. And it made him very, he had a lot of anger,

you know, he had a lot of frustration. That is now called bipolar 2, meaning we didn't have a name for it. That's just like what my dad was like, you know, my dad sought to self-medicate, as many people do to try and control the swings that he had. He was very loving, he was awesome. We were very close. I was his little doppelganger and we did father-daughter road trips

where we would basically talk for 10, 12 hours a day and just drive the whole country. But my entire life was punctuated by a sense of unpredictability and uncertainty in my home. And my mom is still alive. So I'm also very careful about how I speak about her because I have you know a certain amount of boundaries surrounding that, but my mother did the best that she could balancing a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability and you know my dad struggled at work,

he struggled a lot of places and my mom did as well. Really, really complicated parents who also loved each other deeply. And you know, some might say they were both narcissists. I don't know, but what I know is that it's very unusual for two people with their personalities to get together. They both really felt a strong attachment to how they were perceived and how the world sort of revolved around their relationship and their love. And that also is complicated for children. I have a brother four years older.

As the movie talks about, people react differently to homes like that. And my brother took a very different path. He chose really not to engage. And I was the one brokering a lot of fights and making everybody get back together. And that essentially was my childhood. And that was before I even started acting. So if you want to add the complexity of what happens when a family like that, who, you know,

like my parents never owned a house, you know, we rented and it was, sometimes it didn't like had trouble making the rent, like, we then have a different lifestyle where there was money, there was the ability to buy more things and have, in many cases, that fill some of the emotional needs, I think, of the family. So, yeah, many people talk about the rooms they sit in. I will say that there are programs that follow the 12 steps based on the program of alcoholics and onomest that many of us

who grew up in those homes find very helpful. And I do choose to live my life according to those principles, you know, seeking to clean up my side of the street and behave as a woman of grace and dignity as much as I can. But yeah, I grew up in a lot of complexity that most kids don't know to tell anyone about, which is how it was, like sometimes the cops come. Like that's just what happens, you know. Because your parents are fighting. Mm-hmm. You're saying that some 12-step programs have been good for you. Yeah. Like, there are programs for people who grew up in homes like this. Many people use Alonon.

We like to say if you're only sitting in one room, you're in denial, which means chances are you're a desire to manage control someone else and feel that you're so powerful will often turn to other things. And for me, yeah, food was one of those places that I felt a really strong sense of control. And that didn't start till I was 40. Like I never thought I would grow and eating disorder at 40, but apparently you can.

It just kind of moves around. The God-shaped hole, as we say. It just kind of like moves around. So yeah. Coming up, Maya talks about the tools that she personally uses to say a float. What happened when she stopped working all the time and why at age 47 she is now taking the time to learn how to express her anger in a healthy way.

So you're 47 now. You've got two teenage boys. You are another side of a divorce and in a new relationship that at least from the outside seems pretty high functional. You've got this amazing project that you run together of this podcast. Yeah. I mean, we're both nuts, but we complement each other pretty nicely. And I think there's a lot of healing that has come from our intellectual connection and our artistic and creative connection as well.

So that gets to the question I was going to ask, which is like, how are you and what are the tools you use to stay afloat given all the challenges you've had in your life? Yeah, how am I? You know, one day at a time, I'm okay. And there are definitely things about me that are stubborn, meaning parts of me that I would like to see shift that are stubborn. I was introduced to proper meditation, which, you know, I'm a pretty slow learner, but I have progressed in that over the past.

I'd say the last kind of five years of my life have been a new set of learning for me. You know, I've done yoga since college, but didn't really understand yoga until the last five years or so as a meditative practice and as a way to actively really quiet the voices and the noise. You know, my best drug is work.

I am absolutely addicted to constantly moving, thinking, working. It's gotten better, but emotions cannot hit a moving target with sort of, you know, my motto for most of my life. And when you stop working that much, what happens is you start feeling your feelings. And that's sort of what I'm in the middle of now, you know? I've called a lot of parts of my life.

You know, I used to do speaking engagements and I've written four books, like I'm a person who's like always doing, but life's getting a lot quieter. And I credit Jonathan with helping me with that. You know, he basically had an intervention and said to me, you've done so much work on yourself. And the one thing that you will not release is your compulsion to work.

And, you know, part of its financial insecurity, I didn't grow up with money, and some of us just never get used to getting out of that mindset. I do believe in psychotherapy. I continue to go to psychotherapy, but I have also started doing, you know, mind body work. I have pain throughout my body that I, you know,

they'll move around. And I always was looking for the pathological reason and low and behold, meditation and proper sleep hygiene, like not watching TV right till I go to sleep, not eating right till I go to sleep, not working out 8.30 at night because it's something to do. Those are things that literally in the last year or so, Jonathan and I have been trying to keep me really honest with. So I wake up with a tremendous amount of gratitude for what I have. I know I'm in a position of privilege, you know, always to have the resources I have.

But I would be lying if I told you that everything's great and I feel like I'm the highest functioning human ever. I'm not. And I also don't want people to pity me. Like the worst thing is when I realize that people are like, you're rich, no one cares, which is also not fair because it's the same thing as saying to someone like, you're beautiful, no one cares. And we know that's not true as well. So my 17 year old has told me that I've given him a blessing and a curse in that he's a deep

thinker. He's very self-aware. And and he said he feels burdened by it a lot. And I think that's how I feel as a 47-year-old. I have a tremendous amount of angst, and I care very deeply about a lot of things that many people may not care about, but I cry when I see homeless people. That's my story. Like, I'm not telling you that

so that I sound like a good person. I am a person who is deeply moved emotionally when I see people with special needs. I am a person who is deeply moved emotionally when I see people with special needs. That's just how I function and I have most of my life been medicated for that. Right now, I'm in a very interesting experiment to see what it's like to feel my feelings and be like this. I'm closely monitored by all the people who take care of me. At 47, I realized I have no idea how to express anger in a healthy way. And I feel like that's something that I should explore. So that's, you know, some

of the work that I'm doing is learning what it feels like in my body when I get angry and why I don't know how to express that. So I'm a constantly growing evolving person. I'd like to say that I'm 10% happier. But I also, you know, I've stopped thinking there's a destination. And when I was a kid, I thought that there comes a point where like, you meet the man of your dreams and you get married and everything's amazing and you raise kids. And like, I always knew that life would be hard and there are challenges, but I did not know how much growth we have.

I really didn't. I didn't know how much growing there was still to be done through my 20s, through my 30s, into my 40s, and I'm assuming it's gonna keep going that way. From what I can tell, it does keep going. It seems to me, you're exploring a lot of edges at the same time, just based on what you just said. You stop taking the meds for HSP being a highly sensitive person,

and so you're really allowing yourself to do that. Well, the meds were for a lot of things, but again, it takes care of many things. Okay, but you're allowing yourself to feel these intense feelings that many of us feel, but on a less intense way, you're working on sleep hygiene, trying to get a little bit more deliberate about not working as much, which of course opens up space to feel more feelings. So that's just a lot of inner projects at once. Yeah. And when people ask, what are you doing your free time?

Like the God's honest truth is not much because I spend most of my downtime in some form of honestly, like self-care or therapy. I don't have a very active social life. I spend my time with my kids. And yeah, Icare or therapy. I don't have a very active social life. I spend my time with my kids. And yeah, I go to therapy and I have had periods of time where I'm like, what happens if I don't go? Not much good. You know, it feels like a little bit of a relief for a time, but I need to have active participation in meetings and contact with a sponsor to maintain emotional sobriety. Like that, I cannot give up.

That's the easiest way for me to lose my emotional sanity. But are all these meetings and therapy appointments is just another form of busyness? Well, the beautiful thing in being able to work less is that now there's room for more of it, meaning there's room for more rest. There's room for more downtime. I mean, what my life often feels like is working all day, going into therapy, working room for more of it. Meaning there's room for more rest. There's room for more downtime. I mean, what my life often feels like is like working all day, going into therapy, working out, and then going to sleep,

and wondering why I don't sleep well. So there's certainly a balance, and I don't want to say that I haven't gotten better. In so many ways, my life is more manageable. My relationships are healthier. When my father passed, I felt really clean. I've never had regret about the complexity of our relationship and what that was like.

So I'm not perfect. I know that. And we're all kind of works in progress, which is the most tri-thing to say. But for me, it is really finding that balance between not busying myself with self-care and getting to be a human being and not a human doing, you know, which is really how I was, how I was programmed to be. Totally. I mean, I relate to that a lot.

The financial fears I've said several times on the show, you know, I had a great grandfather on the Jewish side who put his head in the oven because he lost the family fortune and also was indicted as a crook. And so, you know, I feel his ghosts coursing through my veins a lot and taking on more than I should. And I know you said that you're calling your professional life, but like even just on paper now, I mean, you're one of the hosts of Jeopardy, you have a sitcom called Call Me Cat. You put out a movie last year, there's talk of a blossom reboot, you host the podcast, you've got two kids. There's a lot going on even

after whatever calling happened. Yeah, there is a lot going on. And the fact is, I don't know if we have a season four of Call Me Cat. The sitcom schedule is actually kind of the most time intensive portion of my life. You know, Jeopardy, especially because I split duties with Ken Jennings. Jeopardy is actually not many work days. We film a week in a day. We film five episodes a day. So that's actually a pretty interesting schedule. And podcasting is a much lighter lift. Like I don't need to be in here and makeup.

And I get to be myself and Jonathan and I are literally right here. So yeah, there's definitely still things I'm doing. And I'm a creative person. So part of that creative energy is there are there are lots of ideas and great things that I get to think of doing and also not everything happens at the same time just because you see it all at the same time. You know, a lot of my life is more spread out, but for sure I

am used to a different pace that I no longer keep. I need time. I need time to make decisions. I need time to not work and I'm happy to produce other people's things, and really do want to continue to show complicated characters, especially strong, interesting women characters who struggle in ways that are funny, entertaining, and interesting, but I can't be the center of a lot of aspects of that if I want to maintain my own health and sanity. What I hear, and we're just meeting each other

for the first time, and we're not even in person, what I hear is somebody who came into the world with a lot of challenges, probably hereditary stuff that a lot of Jews deal with, difficult parents. So there's nature and nurture adding to a kind of neurodiversity that sounds not easy to live with. Who's working hard on all of that, And also simultaneously aware of just how much luck and advantage has been conferred on you by the universe. And also don't forget that I also live my life

as a public person constantly being judged, ridiculed, mocked, or praised. And like there exists a public forum where people can talk about my body, like any body part and what's wrong with it, meaning like that's also the lens that actors, but in particular, actresses, you know, live under. So like, yes, all of that. And there's this kind of other layer of constantly not knowing who I trust or how, which is not helpful, you know, and there it is. It's just what it is. So, but I heard two things in there. There's one is just random people commenting on how you look,

which I've had a tiny taste of that as a news anchor, but it's so much harsher for women, so much harsher for women. Well, and also for non-traditional leading lady looking women. Yeah. Yes. You know, they used to call us ethnic. You know, I am. I'm an Eastern European conglomerate and I'm proud of that.

You know, I was raised with two dialects of Yiddish. That's how diverse my Eastern European heritage is. But yeah, our culture favors traditional looks for the most part. And especially when I started acting, no one looked like me on television. People thought I was nuts to want to be on television. But I heard a couple of things in there. There's the nitpicking about looks, which is I can only imagine how hard that is. And then you said something about not knowing who you can trust. And yeah, as a person who's curating as his highest yours, I mean, I can imagine that's a real tricky thing.

People lie to me all the time. That's literally part of their job description, you know, is like, don't tell her what's really going on or don't tell her this and I dislike that strongly and it's a constant struggle for me and with my new production executive, you know, we're just getting to know each other and she said, you know, I'm just taught, you can't tell the talent what's really going on and I said, I really want to know if there's something wrong with the way I said something or did something, you know, like I just want to know. Is there something I should have asked you but failed to ask?

Because there are a place you wanted to go here that I didn't let you go. No, not particularly. I mean, I think anything that you ask is what your listeners were probably wanting here. And I'm just, you know, really honored to get to talk to you at all. I'm honored to have you on the show.

And I really appreciate when somebody who has your kind of platform just is as open as you are, not withstanding the some of the nuance we discussed earlier. I think it's really powerful and helpful and just also plain interesting. And so, yeah, glad to get to know you a little bit. So thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. Really such an honor.

Before I really let you go, can you just please, I'm going to push you to plug your podcast and anything else you want listeners to know about? Yeah, my podcast is called My Ambiotics Breakdown. We like to say we break things down so that you don't have a breakdown. And it's available on Spotify or wherever you get podcasts and we're on Instagram at Biolic Breakdown. I do a lot of answering questions from people

about all sorts of science and mental health things. And that's kind of it. Yeah, I have other things that I do. I think as they made us as a movie that you may want to see, it stars Dustin Hoffman and Candace Bergen and Simon Helberg, who I worked with on Big Bang Theory and Diana Aigron. And it was my first screenplay and I directed it.

And you can get it, I think on Showtime and places that you get movies and grab a tissue. But I think especially with our conversation we just had, people might enjoy, you know, also that was a film that all the actors specifically chose that they wanted to do it for personal reasons. And it's not for me to tell what those are, but it was a real labor of mental health support love, I guess, that movie. Myambiallic, such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thanks again to myambiallic. Before you hit me up on Twitter about this, I will note there has been some minor controversy around some comments that my am made many years ago about vaccines. I did ask her about this. And she made clear that she and her kids are fully vaccinated. She also made a whole video where she explained her point of view. So instead of dwelling on that in the podcast, we're just going to put a link to her video in the show notes. 10% happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davy, Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson. DJ Cashmere is our senior producer, Marissa Schneidermann is our senior editor and Kimmy Regler is our executive producer,

scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of ultraviolet audio and Nick Thorburn of the band, Islands, Rhode Art Theme. We'll see you all on Wednesday for the second installment of Meditation Party, a little experiment we've been doing with a chatier format here on the show. So Meditation Party, part two is coming up with my pals at TPH fan favorites, Seven A. Salazzi and Jeff Warren. On Wednesday, one of the things we'll be talking about is what it's

like to be a meditation teacher with ADHD, but we talk about a lot of other stuff too, so we'll see you all on Wednesday for that. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1-3-dot-com-slash-survey. you