Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Find Joy In An Anxious World Sara Bareilles And Dacher Keltner

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

A conversation with singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles and psychologist Dacher Keltner, recorded at the New York Times Well Festival, moderated by Dan. All three of them have dealt with anxiety and continue to work with it, and they discuss the ways they look for joy and sustainable wellness.  Related Episodes: Sara Bareilles: Anxiety, Anger, and Art The Evolutionary Case for Kindness | Dacher Keltner This Scientist Says One Emotion May Be the Key to Happiness. Can You Guess What It Is? | Dacher Keltner   Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025.   Join Dan's online community here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing? Sometimes I get invited to do some cool shit out in the world, and today we're going to bring some of that cool shit to you. The New York Times, as you may know, has a whole vertical called Well that's about health, not just physical health, but also mental health. And the editor of Well is a very smart woman named Lori Leibovich, who was actually my girlfriend, in eighth grade at Charles Brown Middle School of Junior High in Newton, Massachusetts. Anyway, Lori recently organized the first ever Well Festival in New York City back on May 7th, which featured a number of great speakers, including many of the people who've been on this show,

longevity expert Peter Atira, the writer Seleka Jawad, the happiness researcher, Dr. Robert Waldinger, to name just a few. And Lori asked me, and this is, I don't know if it qualifies as nepotism per se, but something close to that. Lori asked me to take part in this amazing day-long event, and I posted and contributed to a session called How to Find Joy in an Anxious World with two people who've also been past guests on this show, the singer and writer Sarah Borellis and the psychologist and academic Dacker Keltner. Sarah, Dacker, and I talked about panic attacks, different things that we've all tried to manage our own anxiety, how being outside in nature can be helpful, and how

meditation does not have to look the same way for everybody. It was a lot of fun, very interesting, and I am now very happy to share with you, said conversation. If you want to see video of the conversation along with everything else that happened at the festival, that is all available over at New Yorktimes.com slash well. You can also read all of the well coverage and subscribe to the well newsletter, which is free. All of that stuff is available, New York Times.com slash well. Before we get started, just to very quickly remind you that we've got some very cool stuff going on in the 10% happier universe over the last couple of months, we've been putting out these bespoke companion meditations that go along with our Monday and Wednesday podcast episodes. Those are available to paying subscribers over at Dan Harris.com. We've got a whole new batch of meditations coming out this month.

Our teacher of the month is Kyra Jule Lingo. If you want to become a paid subscriber, head over to Dan Harris.com. you can join the party. Speaking of Kyra, we're going to do a special little episode on Sunday. We call these our Meet the Teacher episode. You'll get to hear from Kyra on Sunday, and then her first companion meditation will air,

along with Monday's episode on August 4th. Okay, enough plugging. We'll play you my conversation with Sarah and Dacker at the New York Times Well Festival right after this. Hey, everybody. Really nice to be here with you today. Thank you to the New York Times for having us. I want to introduce my co-panelists, Dacker Keltner, who is a professor at the University of Berkeley and the author of many, many books, including his most recent book, which I highly recommend called A-W-E.

And Sarah Borellis, who I was teasing backstage as being the ultimate multi-hyphenate, which is become an overused phrase. Holly math, please. Olly Math, she requested. Singer, song, writer, actor, and soon-to-be honorary doctorate holder. Am I right about that? Yeah. All right, so we're talking about anxiety. What is your experience personally with anxiety? I've always been a warrior, but my first real acute experience of anxiety happened after I graduated college

when I started having my first dissociative experiences and feeling a sense of dread that was unsustainable and unholdable, didn't know what to do. And now I find that I go. through. I actually just had another kind of cycle of anxiety over the winter of this last year. That was as bad, if not worse, than that. So I'm doing really well, Dan. Well, I was lucky enough to sit next to you at dinner recently and we were talking about this down cycle for you. And it was, if memory serves, precipitated by a loss in your personal life. you comfortable talking a little bit about that? Yes, I had a very dear friend who passed away at the end of September last year.

But I, you know, have spent the last couple of years post-pandemic when my anxiety, which is when you and I met is during the pandemic when I guested on your podcast. And I started medication for the first time for my anxiety. And I had been so resistant to that for such a long time. And it was such a life changer for my Alexa pro friends out. there. I'm so fucking grateful. But I had stopped medication. I'd been on it for two years, and I was doing really well, and I lost my dear friend, and I was grieving, and I was present, and I was feeling really well-adjusted and devastated, of course. But then out of nowhere,

the bottom dropped out, and I couldn't find the surface again. So I'm back on my meds and doing much better now, with the help of other tools as well. I'm really glad to hear you. you're doing better. And I just want to say I'm a little biased because I know you and like you a lot. But I think it is not only incredibly brave, but it's a real public service for somebody with your platform to get up and talk about what you've dealt with and to say that you're on Lexapro and all that stuff. And I know you made it funny, but it's also, it is really valuable. So, Bravo. Thank you. I have more questions for you in a second. But, Dr. Let me just ask you, you're a, you're this eminent researcher, psychological research.

a avatar of the human capacity to grow and learn and feel whole and to feel compassion and awe. And yet you're no stranger to anxiety. Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, it's wonderful to hear your story. My students, 500 a semester at Berkeley, you know, when I tell them that I come from a family of deeply anxious, obsessive people. It runs in our genetics. It's a real opening to insight.

for the students. Yeah, I think I grew up in a poor, rural area for part of my life when anxiety really hit when I was 13. Sleep disruption, a lot of ideation about the devil, for example, the exorcists had come out, food disruption, and then, and I didn't know what it was. It felt strange, and I worked through it. And then when I turned 30 and got my first job that took me to Madison, Wisconsin, I literally was at dinner, and people raised. their glasses. Congratulations, you're going to Wisconsin. I had my first panic attack. Didn't know what it was. And I had probably a bit a hundred full-blown panic attacks in a few years, entering airplanes, giving lectures, meeting senior colleagues. And I think a lot of it had to do with being away

from home. And I didn't intervene quickly enough, but it taught me a lot about the real struggles of anxiety. It's one of the hardest conditions to overcome and not talked about that much. So I'm glad we're having this conversation. I'm in a funny position where my job is to moderate, but also Lori wants me to talk a little bit. So I'll just add on top of your stories and say that I used to work at ABC News. I was there for 21 years and probably the thing I did that is best remembered is have a Coke-fueled panic attack on Good Morning America. And the backstory is that I spent a lot of time in war zones after 9-11 as an ambitious young reporter. It came home and I got depressed. And I did this incredibly stupid thing, which is I started to self-medicate with recreational drugs, including

cocaine. And that produced, if you Google panic attack on television, you can see it for yourself. It's the number one result, which is great for me and my mom. That produced this panic attack. And really got me for the first time of my life to wrestle with the anxiety that I've been experiencing since I was a little boy. You talked about The Exorcist. For me, it was the day after, which was the TV show about nuclear war, the TV movie that sent me into therapy when I was quite young. And then E.T. My parents said that I had to go back to therapy after E.T. went home and the little boy had to take goodbye to him. So I am no stranger to this myself. So let's turn it to, And I would say to be a little critical,

I think it's great that the culture is more open about anxiety. But one of my critiques is that we, especially in social media, tend to wallow in the suffering and without making the pivot that we will make now to the many, many things you can do about it. So let me start with you, Sarah. You mentioned Lexa Pro.

What else do you do to manage your anxiety? I love what you're saying about making that pivot because that is what I see so often is that like we start to wear the anxiety as a kind of identity. It's like a place to collude with other people. It's a place to connect. It starts being like the bonding is that oh man we're just so anxious without any kind of forward motion into either understanding the source of it, which I do agree with you. I think some of it actually is genetic. carrying, you know, cellular anxiety from generations before. I think there is, there's real

effect of that. And there is so much support. I'm thinking about before I got a medication, because I was so anti-medication. I'm a songwriter. I'm really sensitive. I love that I'm so sensitive. I wanted to protect that I'm so sensitive. And I had a shitty therapist who told me that I would probably suppress something that I needed to be in touch with if I got on medication. So I was always super afraid of getting on meds. So before I got on medication, I was like, you know what, I'll try an MDMA journey. That should be helpful. I don't do drugs.

I'm not like someone who's had like I didn't party like that. So I went, because I was so afraid of being on medication, I did an MDMA journey with the hopes of understanding my anxiety. So I had what turned into what I call like an eight-hour intimate conversation with fear, which was awful. People talk about MDA. They're like, oh, Molly, we go dancing. It's so fun. I'm like, fuck, no, that was the worst night of my life. But also one of the most helpful experiences I've ever had because I sat with this experience of fear for like eight hours. And the relief that I felt when I sort of came back to my consciousness was so tremendous. And I got one piece of wisdom out of that trip that has stayed with me so much is that there is so much fear and there is so much support. There is so

much support from people, my therapist, I got a good one now. To answer your question, how I cope is therapy, meditation, exercise, lots and lots and lots of connect. Human connection, I find to be the single most helpful offering you can make towards yourself in a time of hardship. I just think people are ready to surprise you and to show up for you when you need. How do you find human connection if you're not a globally renowned celebrity? Funnily enough, I think the opportunity to connect is there for everyone. if we're just a little bit willing to share vulnerability. Vulnerability for me is the medicine that has always brought the most precious gifts into my life. It has brought the most precious people into my

life, the most precious artistic offerings into my life, the most precious collaborations into my life. It's like if you can be brave enough to face what is difficult and what is just true, whether you want it to be true or it's not. If it's just true and you can name it and sit with it and let it allow it to be, you know, it brings you to, I got to be on your podcast, I got to make friends through meditation. I got, I have deeper, closer relationships with friends than I ever could have imagined than my parents have because they don't, they don't share in the same way. So I really highly recommend the soul vomit. I'm going to name my next book that.

That's fantastic. Yes. What do you recommend? Well, I guess two-part question, do you use to manage your anxiety? Are you panicking still? And beyond that, what would you recommend as the only person who would qualify,

or even come close to a mental health professional on the stage right now? Yeah, I get waves of anxiety. You know, you and I have talked about this, Dan, on your podcast when my younger brother passed away. It was two years of panic and grief, and grief is anxiety and deep and panicky. You know, I think the science is really helpful here. Anxiety has a particular cortisol-based profile. So we look to the nervous system to think about what is the opposite of that pattern,

regions of the brain, oxytocin release, and vagus nerve activation, which I study in the lab, which calms the body down. And we in the social sciences have noticed that we've lost a lot of the ways in which we can hold the anxieties of the human condition by moving away from community, more time alone in church. And what I now know is I found things that have those elements. I played pickup basketball all the time. And that was my church in my community and people. I became fascinated with a particular vein of music, minimalism of Steve Reich, John Adams, Spionino, et cetera, just to calm me down. The single best thing you can do outside of social connection is get outdoors. And we now know there are 21 pathways by which clouds and sky and light

and the sound of water and the smell of spring get into your nervous system and calm it all down. So getting outdoors. And this is why you and I are in conversation, I was lucky that my parents were saying, read Lao Tzu, read Buddhism. Just think about the first noble truth is life is hard, right? And that got me out of my panic was to know life is hard. I think there's another element here, too, which is, especially with panic, I think you can think of panic as kind of anxiety on steroids. So I think this is true for anxiety, but also for panic.

It's the incredible move that you made in your ill-fated MDMA trip. I've never had a bad at MDMA trip, so I don't understand that. But anyway, just having some memories. You're getting a little nostalgic. Yeah, getting nostalgic, yeah. You sat and had a conversation with your fear for eight hours. I still get panic attacks, and particularly in the last couple of years, on planes and elevators, and have really been struggling a lot with it.

And I have started to get quite deliberate and aggressive about exposure therapy. The theory of exposure therapy is that the only way out of fear is through it. You need to be exposed yourself to the thing you're worried about. So my shrink, Paul Green, great dude, 75-year-old Jewish man right up my alley. He and I go around New York City and try to find the most diabolically small elevators and we ride it together. And on Saturday, he and I are taking a... plane trip just back and forth to D.C. And I haven't taken an unmedicated flight in three years. And so I'm quite nervous about it. But we've been working our way up. And I do think there's something

about understanding that anxiety or even panic is a set of physical sensations and mental activity that I've had thousands of times before and I'm still alive and I can sit with it. And this is one of the great lessons of meditation. Yep. Our mutual teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to say to people, it's okay, by which it does not mean everything's fine. He means it's okay to feel whatever you're trying to push away. Let it in.

I have a lot of cats. And these motherfuckers will bang at the door for hours and claws coming under the door. And like, then sometimes I just open the door, they come in, sniff around and leave. That's your emotions. Let them in. they won't do nearly as much damage. They're not nearly as scary if you stop resisting them. And so I would add to this excellent list of what you can do to just be okay with the feeling

because the pushing it away makes it persist. Do you buy what I'm saying here as somebody who studies this stuff? No. Yes. Yeah, no. I mean, cognitive behavioral therapy works. That's a great triumph of Western medicine in some sense. sense. And then, you know, if you survey the literature on meditation and contemplation,

breathing, body scans, loving kindness, the hard data are real. It helps calm down the amygdala, the threat center of the brain, lowers cortisol, affects, slows down the aging process of the body, which is very good news, Alyssa Eppel, and has a lot of benefits for anxiety in people facing the hardest kinds of anxiety. That you can go to the bank with. And, you know, know, we have to return to these contemplative practices you find in spirituality or meditation or Quaker circles or what have you and pursue them with gusto. So I teach it with full confidence and faith. We've mentioned meditation a bunch. I know you're a pretty active meditator. What is the mechanism by which meditation can help you with anxiety and panic? Is it as simple

as I was just describing, just learning the ability to sit with it or is it more? I think what I love about the practice is that the whole point is that there's nothing to fix. There's nothing to change. There's nothing to improve upon or make better. It's just to build relationship with what is. And I think you're being, I have had better periods in my life where I was meditating more often. It's a practice that I struggle with having regularity in. but the fundamental teachings make so much sense for me

in the way I think. Do you feel the same way? Yeah, I mean, I think that the Upanishads and the sutras of Buddhism are some of the great statements of the mind. And I think not only are the, and for all of you, some of you will have a practice, you'll study with teachers.

That's a wonderful thing. But the field is also moving towards things that have meditative qualities and effects on your nervous system that we've forgotten, like listening to Sarah sing. Who has found calmness and perspective listening to Sarah, right? You must all raise your hands now. Indeed. Well, that's grounded in, you know, music's been with us for 100,000 years, 200,000 years,

and part of it is to give us wisdom and perspective in facing hardship. So I think not only should we be meditating, we should be thinking about music and visual arts. The New York Times has the great 10-minute look at a painting. Have you guys done that? There's Van Gogh's Starry Night. I just did it yesterday morning, was tearing up. There are many ways to meditate.

We should be bringing to our awareness. Let's also talk about therapy as a modality for anxiety. You said something before that triggered something for me, which is that your panic attacks in Wisconsin were because you were away from home. Yeah. I have done alongside my exposure therapy for my current bout of panic have been doing a non-trivial amount of therapy. And a memory surfaced from when I was two years old, which is apparently too early to have a memory. But I have a very clear memory.

And I have a spatial sense of what was happening. It was my mother's first day back to work when I was two. And I was standing at the front door watching her walk to her car. and wailing and slamming at the door. And I look back in the kitchen, I could see our new nanny and my younger brother, who was six months old,

in a bassinet on the table. And I can see all of that. And at first, I was like, what relationship would this have to panic? But actually, there's something about powerlessness, feeling adrift on moored alone in the universe

that connects to panic. I haven't figured all of this out, so I'm throwing it at you to see if you can figure it out. But am I onto something here? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the really exciting new literatures and it's related to music as well is one of the challenges of the human mind is to put all of our scenes of our life into a story. And you've got to go back far as great stories do and put it into this narrative. Jamie Pennebaker, expressive writing practices, for those of you who journal, really good for. for anxiety and depression. And he would say, and I think the field would say,

that's what you're doing. You're starting the story of your family as a way to explore why you panic when you're heading into a plane and feeling removed from family or whatever it is. Yeah, it's a primordial fear. A lonely human on the Savannah was likely a dead human. So if you're feeling cut off,

I mean, this is deep in our DNA. This actually ties right back to Sarah's point about social connection as, medicine for anxiety, depression, and many other things. We are wired for connection. And if you're not getting it, the system goes haywire. We do have a little time for Q&A from the audience. So I would love to see if anybody has a question. You're welcome to stand up and hurl it at us. This one over here. Go ahead. Stand up. And there's a mic coming to you. What's your name? Carrie. Hi.

Yeah, hi. So Sarah, I know they've talked a lot today about anxiety. So have your experiences with anxiety or did your experiences with anxiety inspire the song Brave? Not exactly, but certainly they're woven in there. The song Brave was actually written as a love letter to a friend who was dealing with an incredible amount of anxiety. So it was a little bit more about their anxiety versus. mine, but it has been a great teacher, that song for me. In fact, I, so I recorded that song, love letter to a friend. The song sort of took on this life of its own, and I realized I couldn't

sing it live because it was just right on a break in my voice. So I'd gotten through it in the recording studio, and then when it came to sing it live, I was really shitting the bed, as they say. So it was a really incredible teacher, the relationship with the performance of that song, and then what that song ended up doing and becoming for other people and their stories. But it's what I love about music is that it takes on all of these different sort of meanings. But I think speaking to the human connection, it was like working with someone else's anxiety actually helped me towards some other kind of medicine. and I didn't even know I was needing.

And so, yeah, anxiety's been with me the whole time. So she's in there with all of it. Thank you. Thanks, Carrie. Okay, we've got somebody in the back. You all spoke of your anxiety as being triggered by airplanes or elevators or whatever. But our children are really affected more and more by existential threats like climate change. Have you learned any tips?

for how we can guide them through these sort of panicky situations once they see a fire, earthquake, or flood or something. Yeah, climate dread, I think, is now in the DSM, whatever it is, five, the Diagnostic Statistics Manual, and I think that's the next frontier of therapy. And it's not a surprise that this younger generation is turning to meditation and yoga and outdoors activities and music with a force we haven't seen before. and I think hopefully those will prove to be some of our approaches to find it dread. Let me add something to that.

This is not an expression I coined, but I like it to use it a lot. Action absorbs anxiety. Do something. It doesn't even have to be related to the issue. I get a lot of questions about people who are worried about the political scene right now. And I often advise, like, up your utility quotient in your life. It doesn't have to be related to politics. It doesn't have to be related to climate.

If you pay attention, when you hold the door open for somebody, you will notice it feels good. And that feeling is infinitely scalable. There are so many bugs in the human operating system, but there's this incredible feature, which is that when we do good, we feel good. And if salvation is on offer for the species, I suspect it lies in that direction. But even if you set aside the species, Just for you as an individual, there's salvation on offer in being useful. Again, it doesn't have to be related to the issue at hand.

You can join a food pantry or an animal shelter or call your mom or be there for friends who are suffering, write a song for them. There are lots of ways. The world for better or worse is a target-rich environment for being helpful and take advantage of it because it will redound to your benefit and the benefit of the world. We've got a question right up front here. Congratulations to the panelist. Excellent topic.

And also, I'm Felicitas court. I'm an expert in behavioral and cognitive therapy, a clinical psychologist. You want to ride an elevator with me? Yes, 100. This is one of my main specialties. I do that a lot. You should go to the, you know, the Vanderbilt building also. We went to the top of the rock the other day.

I don't recommend it. I recommend the Vanderbilt Building, but in regard to panic attacks, which is very misunderstood, even in the emergency words, cognition doesn't come into place. The most important thing when you have a panic attack is to breathe and just breathe

and not even talk to the person, start diaphragmating with breathing and learn how to do that in every single moment when it starts. So we are behavioral therapy is very reductionistic. So we go to the specifics and just work with that. Nothing else, no cognition, no inner thoughts, nothing just breathing, physiology, plain physiology. Good luck in your trip to Washington.

Thank you. I appreciate that. There is a lot, too, this idea of, getting beneath the swirling stories of the mind, getting out of the discursive mind and into your body, which is always in the present moment and is generally safe and is a great antidote not only to panic, but also anxiety or anything else that's ailing you.

I think we have time for at least one more question. Somebody right here. Hi, I just want to quickly say, I'm such a big fan of your music, Sarah. I am a therapist and someone who more recently has begun her own more committed meditative practice. So I come to this with kind of like an appreciation of how Western psychological science has co-opted those Eastern traditions, but hasn't practiced it myself until recently. And I appreciate it more now than ever. And I also find that not everybody,

it's something people feel they should do, but not necessarily, you know, are ready to do or want to do, or know how. And I'm not a meditation teacher, right? And I sense that there's a readiness that needs to exist in people that maybe I can't impart, right? It happened to me. So I'm curious with your extensive experience in meditation for mental health and maybe otherwise, is there something that's useful for those who are trying to figure out that process, maybe for mental health providers who are trying to encourage but not make it a to do-do list item,

which I think is antithetical? to meditative practice. Well, I totally agree that you don't want to make it, it should not be something that you're wagging your finger at, people about. And if you're trying to alleviate or mitigate stress, adding a stressful item to your to-do list seems counterproductive. I'm a dogmatic, non-dogmatist.

I really believe that people should do what works for them. And so I'm certainly not a meditation fundamentalist. I think it's one tool among many. And if you're interested in meditation, what we know from the literature around human behavior change is that starting small for any habit, but particularly meditation is great and can be a really winning strategy,

starting small and also being flexible. So I often recommend that people start with one minute and have a policy of daily-ish because if you tell yourself you're going to do it every day, inevitably you will miss a day, and then you tell yourself a story about how you're a failure and do this is you're done. So I think starting small, being flexible,

and then in terms of getting some beginning teaching, there are lots of great apps out there, just do a little taste testing of the app that speaks to you and go in that direction. Also, if you're in a major city like New York City, there are great Buddhist centers that I think are also great places. That's perhaps the most powerful way to learn is in person. Did you want to add to something on that one, Sarah?

No, I just love what you say about like see for yourself. You always say that. You're like, don't take my word for it. See for yourself. There is real evidence just in your own willingness to be curious about, is there anything of benefit here? And so I think I have a hard time imagining it's going to make you feel worse, you know what I mean? So I just love that you always invite people to check it out.

See. Dacre and Sarah, always a pleasure to be with both of you. Thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. Thank you to Sarah Borellis and Dr. Keltner. Just a reminder, you can see video of the conversation along with everything else that happened at the festival at New Yorktimes.com slash well. You can also read all of the Well coverage. They do excellent stuff every day. You can subscribe to the Well Newsletter, which is great. So go check that out. And a big thank you to our friends over at the New York Times for inviting me and sharing this audio with us. Don't forget to check out Dan Harris.com to become a paid subscriber. You can get all of the new

companion meditations that we'll be sending out starting on Monday with our Teacher of the Month for August, friend of the show, Kyra Jewel Lingo. And on Sunday, we'll do a little get-to-know-you with Kyra-Jule just to tee up the month, just to say this again. This is the Friday episode, Sunday, I'll get-to-know-you with Kyra-Jule. Monday, we'll do a regular episode, and there will be a companion meditation that comes with that. And again, only available to paying subscribers at Danharris.com. So go check it out.