The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Quirk and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) (Interview)

Episode Date: May 10, 2019

We're talking with Evan Conrad — for most of Evan's life he has suffered from severe panic attacks, often twice per week. Eventually he stumbled upon a therapy method called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT for short, and saw positive results. This led him to create Quirk, an open source iOS app which allows its users to practice one of the most common formats of CBT. On the show we mentioned a new podcast we're launching called Brain Science — it's hosted by Adam Stacoviak and Mireille Reece, a Doctor of Clinical Psychology. Brain Science is a podcast for the curious that explores the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and the human condition. It's Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to better our lives. Stay tuned after the show for a special preview of Brain Science. If you haven't yet, right now would be a great time to subscribe to Master at changelog.com/master. It's one feed to rule them all, plus some extras that only hit the master feed.

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I'm Adam Stachowiak, Editor-in-Chief here at ChangeLog. Today, we're talking with Evan Conrad. And for most of Evan's life, he's suffered from severe panic attacks, often twice per week. Eventually, he stumbled upon a therapy method called cognitive behavioral therapy or cbt for short and saw positive results which led him to create an app called quark it's open source and it allows its users to practice one of the most common formats of cbt we also mentioned a podcast we're launching in the next few weeks called brain science which is hosted by myself adams dicoviac and my good friend meryl reese a doctor in clinical psychology It's a podcast for the curious that explores the inner workings of the human brain to understand

behavior change, headband formation, mental health, and the human condition. It's brain science applied, not just how does the brain work, but what do we know about the brain that can better our lives? Make sure you stay tuned after the show for a special preview of brain science. And if you haven't yet, now would be a great time to subscribe to our master feed at changelog.com slash master. It's one feed to rule them all, plus some extras that only hit the master feed. So Evan, we first met via email back in October. You were trying to solve some podcaster problems and you emailed me recently and it seems like you've been busy solving some of your own problems since then yeah you have this app called quirk which is for cbt cognitive

behavioral therapy we'll get all into that but first tell us about yourself and what you've been up to with work cool uh so for the good portion of my life i've had uh pretty severe panic attacks um so about like twice a week I would have an attack and it would be like about an hour to two hours. And if you've ever like almost been in a car accident and you've like swerved around and then you get this huge rush of adrenaline and like in your chest and like your whole body feels like really warm and then you start to feel like kind of like you're like afraid but it's like this extreme physical sensation. If you mix that with the same feeling that you would get after watching a horror movie

where like you think that everybody behind you is like about to murder you because you've just watched a horror movie. If you mix those two things together and then you like stretch that out for an hour, that's like basically what a panic attack is, or at least it kind of feels like. And so like I would have these like every two weeks or so sorry i'd have these like twice a week would they be triggered by things or is it just happen on a schedule i'm not sure how this works so sometimes they're random sometimes they just happen and then sometimes they're like specifically related to disease and vomiting that's kind of the thing that triggers them generally okay so the panic is typically like afraid of being somehow like deathly ill or being like about

to vomit or some particular thing related to that. And so most of my life I've been like cycling through different thing after different thing of like different types of treatments. And so like for a while I was like on SSRIs, which are a medication you can take for it and like seeing different doctors about it and trying to figure out ways to do it. And then in about 2018, I went and I saw like a real therapist that I hadn't really actually seen before. I've typically been more on like the medical side. And I tried this thing called cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. It's based on the premise that depression and anxiety and panic aren't like a physical thing that you're born

with. It's more like instead of it being like a hardware problem, aren't like a physical thing that you're born with. It's more like instead of it being like a hardware problem, it's like a software problem and it's something you can fix. And so what cognitive behavioral therapy has you do is it has you record thoughts that you're having and then find effectively logical fallacies with them and then write down like a challenge to that thought and then change the thought into something else. So for example, if you're like just got out of an interview and you think, oh God, I took too long to answer that question. That means that I'm going to fail this interview. And if I fail this

interview, I'll never get a job anywhere. And if I never got a job anywhere, I must be like really bad at this programmer thing. And if I'm really bad at this programmer thing, I must have like wasted all this time, like learning all of this. And that means I'm dumb. And if you think this way, it's called like a negative automatic thought. So it's something that's happening that your brain is just cycling from thing to thing. And each individual step feels really logical at the time but it's illogical in the first step and like each step is kind of this like logical leap to the next thing and so what

cognitive behavioral therapy has you do is it has you record these and like write these down and then like individually challenge them and say like is it actually true that if you took too long to answer a question in an interview that you would actually fail that like, is it actually true that if you took too long to answer a question in an interview, that you would actually fail that interview? And is it actually true that if you fail this interview, you'll fail all the other ones? Because surely, like, if you're failing one whiteboard question, like, that gives you practice. And so then you can do better in all the other whiteboarding sessions. And like, over time, you'll get better at interviews. And even if you're, like, not going to get a job anywhere, is it like really true that

like it's so absolutely important that you must be a programmer? Like lots of people aren't programmers and it's actually okay to not be a programmer. And there's all of these like steps that you can take in each thought that checks whether or not it's actually true. And then when you do this enough, your brain kind of just does this for you. But one of the things about this is it requires a lot of like writing. And so typically the way like a regular therapist might do this is they give you like a workbook. And it's like, like a printout copy of a bunch of different worksheets that you're supposed to fill out

on the fly. And if you're filling out these things on the fly, what happens is people don't actually do it because people will have this thought and they'll be in public and then they won't like take out their workbook and then like a piece of paper and a pen and actually fill out all the columns in the thing. And so a lot of people try this and then it doesn't actually work for them because it's this big bulky thing that you have to do all the place, all over the place. And so like some people solve this with like some apps there's some apps that you can use and quirk is basically one of those but its main goal is to be like the best and the freest i mean a lot of them a lot of them are free i like that freest the openest sourcest

the openest sourcest so it's an open source version it's also like truly free and like by truly free i mean like it doesn't have any in-app purchases it doesn't have source version it's also like truly free and like by truly free i mean like it doesn't have any in-app purchases it doesn't have any ads it doesn't like collect your data and sell it somewhere it's like truly free not free as in like free but it has a 200 in-app purchase or something it's like really free no cost right premium and it's doing well it's helping people there's some things that you mentioned there that I think are kind of interesting. The fact that you were talking about essentially the way you remap truth, essentially, right? Yeah. And there's this term in psychology that essentially is neurons that fire together, wire together.

And what that means is where your attention and your energy and the things you think about, essentially, what you feed is whatever you focus on. That's going to eventually become some sort of truth to you oh absolutely and that's kind of interesting in the fact that you know like the more you dwell on negativity the more negative you become not because you're a negative person but because the way the brain works is that the things you totally focus on the truth you start to essentially determine becomes true, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. Like one of the problems with a lot of sort of negative thoughts that people tell themselves, and this is something that cognitive behavioral therapy like specifically tries to treat, is that a lot of the things you tell yourself become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Yeah. So if you're concerned that like you're not going to pass these interviews and then you don't do anything about it because you feel so bad about it, you might end up not passing these interviews. And if you're caught up so much in the fear of something, it becomes a large portion of you. Yeah. Like at the moment, I don't have panic attacks anymore.

Like it's been three months since my last one, and three months since the one before that. And I used to have them every two weeks. So it's been three months since my last one and three months since the one before that. And I used to have them every two weeks. So it's pretty great. But the thing that's like most different is the amount of your life that you get back. My gosh, yes. And I think I didn't expect that. So let me identify with you real quick, because Jared mentioned to me in behind the scenes

here in our Slack, we have a DM going on pretty much forever. He reminded me and i i'm aware of this as well but you know i've had similar public concerns it was agoraphobia it was or a variation of it a very light level of it where i i couldn't be in a theater i love movies jared you know i love movies i know and i love going to the theater and bad movies even bad movies yes sir and you know i i was always at home in a theater but it was after some trauma it was after a family member passed away unexpectedly i had started to get similar things that you're talking about like little panic attacks that would happen the first one happened

at church at the end of church i was like i am literally like sweating bullets here i'm super hot i don't know what's going on yeah i thought i was just like hungry or my sugar levels were off but out of nowhere nothing triggered it And then it started to happen in like large crowds. I couldn't take being in large crowds. I couldn't go to my, my wife loves Broadway. And you know, I don't know if you've ever been in like vaulted ceiling or vaulted seats and in Broadway, but they're, they're pretty tight. You want to pack a lot of people in. And so I, I just, I would get in there and i would think like where's the exit i would have a strategy for like i know i'm gonna feel panicked the entire time oh we went and saw something and i couldn't even pay attention she's

enjoying herself she said right next to me enjoying herself and i can't for the life of me at all even think about anything besides getting out of there the whole time. It's only like an hour and a half plus intermission. Right. And it's terrible. It's terrible. Yeah. And what I found was similar. I didn't go through CBD or CBD.

I'm on a different wavelength here. That might actually play some role here at some point. That could help too. Yeah, that could help. That is a common joke. I live in California. CBD is very legal. I mean, I guess it's legal in lots of different places. I live in California. CBD is very legal. I mean, I guess it's legal in lots of different places.

It is. Yeah. It's been legalized. CBD oil by itself, aside from THC, is legal. Right. Yeah. So they're actually using it a lot in different therapies and stuff like that. But the thing I was trying to drive home to was that my truth had become that when I'm in these scenarios that had been where I struggled, I would essentially tell

myself some sort of lie, like I'm going to die or I'm going to like feel a certain way and it would become true. And so we're all struggling. We're all trying to seek out some sort of truth. So my, my method, which was not exactly going through cognitive behavioral therapy, it's probably my own variation of it was, was this thing. It's admit the struggle because we all struggle, identify the lie and seek the truth. Right. So if every time you're in these scenarios, like there's something you're struggling with,

there's some sort of lie you've told yourself and you're believing it. So identify that lie. What is that line? That's probably what you're doing with this application to this process of CBT. And then you got to seek the truth, which is not having panic attacks, not feeling like you're going to die in a theater or something like that yeah your comments on always being afraid of

the panic attack and that like ends up fueling the panic itself it's so so absolutely true yeah self-fulfilling for sure yeah it's self-fulfilling it's it's what keeps people in a cycle of panic and a cycle of anxiety. The thing itself becomes the thing that you're afraid of. Yeah, no, I remember I did that all the time. So true. It would even happen to me. I can remember two occasions when I was driving.

So my wife had to go out of town and I had to drive her down to the, we have two airports here in Houston, the IAH International Airport and Hobby, which is in South Houston. And so Hobby is like an hour away from us. So I knew I had a long drive. I knew we were running late. I knew she was frantic trying to get out on time. And right as I started to drive, I had one of these panic attacks, right? And so the entire time I'm driving, all I can think of, and I'm in traffic, all I can think of is like, how can I get out of here? Like it's, it's almost like being trapped. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how I felt. I felt trapped. I'm like, I've got to drive

my wife safely to this airport. I've got to be there on time. I got all this stress. And the moment I dropped her off, I was able to calm down and it all resolved itself. Right. But for that hour, man, I was like in a coffin. It felt like, and it was terrible. Right. and it all resolved itself right but for that hour man i was like in a coffin it felt like and it was terrible right and it's because like you're just about to do something and this would be the most inopportune time for it to happen right and that makes it worse yeah it's terrible like don't don't happen now yeah like don't happen now like this is the worst time for it to happen which then makes it the time that happens. Do you think this is similar to habit formation though?

Oh, absolutely. Cause that's kind of where I started to resolve some of my issues. Like I started to determine, you know, what was cuing these things was apparent whenever I was in public or certain scenarios that this thing could potentially cue itself up. Right.

And there was a natural response was, which was either so fulfilling, like we didn't talk about, or it was natural. Like it really was the truth truth i was going to have some sort of attack right and then obviously it would play itself out do you think it's like habit formation and change or do you think it's like considering you've been through cognitive behavioral therapy is it similar to habit formation and change yeah i mean psychologists call it cognitive restructuring which is basically where your brain kind of rewires itself. It's similar to what you were talking about before. The neurons, the fire together, you mean?

Yeah. A lot of what you can do and what really helps is taking the moment where you feel like you're having some sort of stress or anxiety and then using that as the cue for why your stress and anxiety is illogical and wrong. So if you can use that as like the trigger for your habit formation, it's like really effective. At least that's what helped me a lot is that anytime I felt that like flush of adrenaline and that like immediate fear, that was like a good sign that whatever I was worried about was probably wrong because like 99% of the time that I ever had that, I just like, there wasn't physically anything wrong.

And so before like your habit would be, you get that cue, which is like the immediate fear. And then you think like, oh crap, like this is such a bad time for this. I can't have this right now. And that makes it worse. And so what you're doing is like you're you're taking that fear and then you're using that as the trigger and then your like response to that trigger is the more fear it's the like buying into it you're like agreeing with it and if you can take

that fear and then like use that as the trigger to disagree with it that's like that's where you like at least what unlocked a lot of change for me. Your experience sounds so similar to mine though. I think it's the experience of a lot of people. If you're comfortable sharing this, do you have, or have you identified anything else that's wrong with you? Like you're, we're talking about mental health, a mental concern, something that's in the brain, but what we forget or what we don't know because, hey, we all have brains, but we don't know what they are, how they work, or they call it brain science.

But you know, it gets, it gets really geeky and you're like, well, I don't need what they are how they work or they call it brain science but you know it gets really geeky and you're like well i don't need to know about that i'm not a doctor i don't even know about how my brain works but what we don't realize is our brain is connected to so many other things in our body our gut our heart you know obviously our nervous system doesn't just begin with the brainstem and go up to our brain it's other things so for me i learned that my problems that i face with what i've shared here were not just simply mental health problems you know they weren't believing this lie it was connected to uh my thyroid connected to my diet connected to other things so it wasn't just simply hey i got a broken brain and that's just it. What was it for you? I don't know. I don't think I ever found anything particularly physically wrong.

And that's the thing that's the craziest about it. You have a good diet? Yeah. I mean, I have a perfectly fine diet. I do run a lot, but I ran a lot beforehand too. So it's honestly just breaking that cycle and recognizing when particular thoughts are causing your moods and then using that to break the cycle i'm fortunate enough that i haven't suffered from this circumstance i've definitely had thoughts that would begin to unravel it sounds like what you're describing is where you're you're basically building a straw man right like you're you you have one conclusion which may be truth-ish right it may have some grounds in reality full on

doug crawford truthy yeah truthy yeah there you go and then you build on top of that the next like you conclude on top of an assumption and maybe that assumption has some grounding in reality but then but the one you concluded on top of it had less grounding right and then the next one has less and less until you are panicking over something like you said it's not it's falsy yeah and it sounds like this cbt this process that you go through is a way of short-circuiting that pattern like you're you're cutting it off before you get to the stage at which you know it starts to take over yeah yeah is that a fair uh characterization of what you're saying yeah and i wouldn't say that uh like one of the things i'm realizing from quirk is that you don't

need to be like diagnosed with a mental health issue for cbt to be effective for you in fact like a lot of the problems in the tech industry of like people having imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome is like a great example of where this is just a common thing that happens to people where they get some thought in their brain and it may not be correct or logical, but it spirals and they start to think about it all the time. And they start to think like, ah, I'm not good in this particular point or like, I can't do this thing. And like, that makes me bad here. And you don't need to be like having severe panic attacks to be benefited from like cognitive behavioral therapy. This episode is brought to you by GoCD.

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track and visualize deployments on kubernetes learn more and get started at go cd.org slash kubernetes again go cd.org slash kubernetes so evan like you said you don't have to be diagnosed with anything to try cbt it may benefit lots of different people yeah so help to understand what that looks like maybe i'm interested in giving this a try even just to stop some of my thoughts that tend to unravel what does try cbt look? How do you do it? So you have a couple options. Like if you just want to do the sort of easiest version, there's a book that you can get that's kind of the book that popularized CBT.

And it's by David Burns. It's called Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy. And it seems really self-helpy, but it's actually the book that popularized cbt and it was like written in like 1980s and it still holds up as quite a good book for just if you want a good overview and understand how to do it and if you want to like actually implement it and like try it you can try quirk and quirk is kind of designed to give you a little introduction of how you do it and it's got a help screen and teaches you how to do it. And then if you're really dealing with

something that's either life-threatening or dangerous, or just you really feel like you need actual help, I would definitely recommend going and seeing a therapist or a psychiatrist or just anybody in your area. Like, absolutely. Some bullet points from the publisher's summary, at least on audible.com is pretty interesting for this book so recognize what causes your mood swings nip negative feelings in the bud deal with guilt handle hostility

and criticism overcome addiction to love and approval build self-esteem feel good every day it's just some takeaways some anticipations of what you may encounter as you read or listen to that book. I should also mention that CBT is like this de facto standard.

It's not like some sort of wishy-washy self-help mantra, which is sort of what I had assumed it was beforehand. But this is an extremely evidence-based tool and it has been like one of the most effective treatments for depression and anxiety for like 30 40 years and it's not like it's just an effective treatment it's like the gold standard treatment like there's literally a study that calls it the gold standard after it's like a meta study that reviews like 200 other studies. If you've gone into any therapist, it's almost certainly what they tried. Just the first thing out of the gate. They might have called it a couple of different other things.

Sometimes they call it like the three column technique or catch it, check it, change it. I think it's the other term. This is like, this is the first thing you should try. If you're really suffering with something or if you're just dealing with your own issues. Yeah. This is the first thing you should try if you're really suffering with something or if you're just dealing with your own issues yeah this is the first thing you should try well the good thing is it's self-initiated yeah and what i what i've found at least as uh as i've dug into this like either it's so i kind of got into this stuff this interesting uh perspective of brain science and behavioral therapy by way of being really interested in

user experience which i would jared the the ms show is like right up our alley for that reason so it's like you know behavioral economics behavioral therapy true brain science neuroplasticity neuroscience those are all really interesting things but what you end up finding is that at least just general people they they feel like like it's not their territory right like just because it deals with therapy or their brain or something very scientific sounding that they can't be accountable to themselves they need some sort of professional to solve all their problems and it's true too to get over certain humps you definitely need to go see professional help and this is not an advocate of saying hey you can solve all these problems on your own but the point point is, is that there's a lot of

this that's very approachable to everybody, you know? And the first step really is just admitting that there's a struggle and start to identify, which is what CBT does, is identify the things that you're struggling with and how you feel about those things. And then that's how you begin to remap your brain, so to speak. Yeah, absolutely. I think if you dig into it, almost everybody will find a place where this is useful for them because the experience of being human for most people is just dealing with the way our brains kind of lie to us and the way you can kind of cycle on some thought. And that's just normal. That's what everybody feels to varying

extent and like that can get really out of hand in which case you should definitely see a professional but it's also just common what's interesting too that you mentioned there is not sure how you worded it but essentially that what it made me think of was was whether or not we can trust our memory and jared you can maybe help me out here if there's ever been a time where you've recalled something one way and your wife and or friend brother sister whatever recalled it a different way and so you were both there during the experience whatever it might be but how often can we truly trust our brain's memory because it's so it requires so much stuff like your autobiographical memory being able to understand that you're in the present past or future for

example and all these different factors that you know begin to weigh in on whether or not our memories are truly true, meaning that's how they actually worked out. You can see in the courtroom where it's incredibly difficult to get two eyewitnesses to agree on something that happened. Even take apart the side like one person saw it from their perspective. Take perspective out of it just on the facts of what happened. Just the memory aspect of remembering exactly something that happened is incredible. It's so difficult that you can't get two people to agree. And in fact, we have jokes like if they

do agree completely 100% on everything, they're probably lying, you know, because that's how hard it is. Yeah. How, how weak our memories are to the details of things. Yeah. So let's talk about Quirk a little bit i'm looking at the the ui on the home page quirk.fyi if you're interested in the app right now of course in the show notes if you want to just click on a link and the ui for this that you have displaying in the in the animated gif here or the video is basically you have a thought which is a text area what's going on this is where you type in the thought that you are having this is your i assume's the catch it. You're catching your thought right there and then you're checking it. So that underneath that you have the cognitive distortion. So you're going to attach one or more

cognitive distortions to that thought. So this is really the process by which you're judging it, right? You're saying is this thought, what kind of a thought is this that I'm having? And there's a whole bunch of these distortions. Could you help us out a little bit on some of these? Because there's all or nothing thinking, there's catastrophizing, there's emotional reasoning, there's fortune telling. I'm assuming these are like official CBT terms,

labeling, mind reading, and so on. Yeah. Do any of these need further explanations for somebody who's downloaded the app? Or maybe this is described in the app and just not on this page right here. But how do I know what's what? What's other blaming? What's overgeneralization, etc.?

So they're definitely described within the app. There's like a help screen that you can go through and check through that. And I definitely recommend to anybody who's trying it out to do that. But all of these distortions, they're effectively logical fallacies. And one of the problems that I had when I was making this is that people kind of forget which ones are which, but they are like a set of things that psychiatrists have determined that these are the ones that most likely cause people's problems. And it's often that people don't realize when they have this sort of logical fallacy or

cognitive distortion in their thoughts that's causing that problem. And so one of the things Quirk tries to do is it's like very intentional about the branding of cognitive distortions. So like every cognitive distortion has an emoji and every emoji is like the same emoji for wherever you go on the website. There's like that emoji follows every usage of the term of any like cognitive distortion. So like catastrophizing is the head exploding emoji. And on the app, it's the same way. In every header, it's the same way.

And it's there to try and give you like a visual understanding of it and to try and make sure that you remember it. Because that's like one of the biggest problems with cognitive behavioral therapy, at least in Quirk, that people kind of don't realize this. And there's a lot of like terminology and stuff that you have to do to kind of get into this and to understand it. But it's all this stuff that you have to do at the same time that you're like going to the app with like a serious issue. Your brain power is already at its maximum capacity because by definition, you're using this app at a really difficult time. So part of the app's job is to get you to the place where you need to be to understand just enough so that you can record your thought and kind of get to a more mentally healthy spot. But it has to do that at the same time that it's competing with like other parts of your brain power. And so Quirk has like a really big focus on being very lightweight

because if it's too heavy and like tries to do too much, you won't record anything. And it'll have the same problem that like worksheets have, which is people pull them out and then don't actually do anything or they don't pull them out at all because it's like very a thing that you have to do. Imagine people will have these kind of thoughts while driving maybe when out with friends especially driving i would think it's probably very difficult we all know the texting while driving problems that are causing crashes are around the world please don't quirk while

driving yeah don't quirk while driving pull over the side of the road i mean what's the advice there maybe you need a dictation. Maybe it's built into the OS or something, but I could see where that would be difficult. I think you can do it with the OS, but definitely don't quirk while driving. Yeah. Quirks kind of go in a lot of the design of it.

This topic is so like wildly serious and like really important for so many people's lives. And it's like a very important, serious topic. And yet the branding and design of Quirk is very like derpy and like really kind of silly. And that's like on purpose. Well, even the word is kind of a funny, lighthearted word. Something quirky, you know? Yeah, it's the Quirk.

Quirk is called Quirk because it's kind of like a little silly. And Quirk's little mascot is these like three little cute looking derpy things. And that's, look how important and medical I am and look how serious I am. And it's coming to you at this point where you're thinking these really awful thoughts. And those thoughts are like what you consider at the time to be the most important and most serious thing. But part of cognitive behavioral therapy is recognizing that the thoughts you're thinking aren't as serious and aren't as weighty and important as you think of them at the time. Because the reason why they're causing you so much distress is because you're putting so much emphasis on it. And so Quirk's job is to kind of try and bring that emphasis down a little bit and make you

realize that like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on this thing. You're wildly freaking out over this like thing. You're quite panicking over. That's not as serious as you think it is, but at the same time, like it is very serious because we built this whole app just for this. And this is like a real big problem that like you pay to go see like a therapist about and like causes people very significant portions of their life. But you pay to go see like a therapist about and like causes people very significant portions of their life. But you have to reconcile that with the fact that the way to get better is to realize that it's not as serious as you think it is.

And that's really tricky. It's kind of like talking somebody off a ledge and the ledge may not be the true ledge, just more or less like this, you know, in the brain ledge that, you know, you're taking the serious things, so to speak,

as you just mentioned. And it's, it's, it's almost like the first line, like if you, if you lack another human being near you to have a relationship with, and to remind you of your truth, which is a huge part of relationship,

you know, because what you believe, Evan, and what I believe about what you believe may not be the same, as we just kind of mentioned about how we trust even our brain's memory. You know, your perspective on the scenario

and my perspective on the scenario, you may be in freak out mode. And I'm like, dude, chill out. You know, like you're catastrophizing or you're fortune telling or whatever the application is. So a human might do that. And what you're asking,

what you seem to be doing with this application is to supplant a piece of technology that has potentially human characteristics that says hey you're not actually on a ledge or you know yeah you're labeling or you're mind reading yeah it's it's exactly that it's exactly that it's the it's replacing a little bit of the human touch yeah no that's a really good point this leads me into a direction a potential direction for quirk that could be catastrophizing it could be terrible but it might be kind of great so i'll throw this out there and see what you guys think which is you're kind of removing the human element you're kind of replacing what would be a therapist helping you identify what's wrong with this thought or a friend or a family member and i'm thinking what if there was community like what if it wasn't so cold yeah and you had some

sort of way of like anonymously submitting your thoughts to the community because over time i think sounds like cbt you get better and better at it and you get probably pretty good everybody's more objective with somebody else's thought than with their own because inherently subjective right you're the subject of the thought what if you could submit it for other people to apply their idea they could identify the cognitive distortions in the thought and you get some sort of like real-time feedback from others that is interesting that is not a bad idea that's quite interesting interesting. All right. I thought you were going to say that's a terrible idea. No.

Most ideas Jared has are not generally terrible. Oh, thanks, Adam. I'll take that as a compliment. You're welcome. It's a very nice compliment. Yeah, it was meant to be a funny compliment. Yeah. It was very careful. Generally. Good ideas. They're good. They could have some backfires, but if you built it well and if you had because it's to a certain degree i wonder if you could get better because

cbt is such a trained thing i wonder you could actually train your own thought process by judging other people's thoughts just like you could your own thought not to get a psychologist answer that one uh well something to tee that up real quick uh behind the scenes, we do have a plan for a show in the very near future called Brain Science. You may have heard the previews at the end of our shows recently. Yes. And may have even emailed us about it with some exclamation points after seeing Brain Science in the subject line. Super cool. But something that Meryl Reese, the doctor I'm working with of clinical psychology, something she says often is you have to put your lid on, which means your frontal lobe. That's what makes us humans.

Like mammals have the mammalian brain, the brain stem. Then there's a different portion of the brain. But this front part, you know, the behind the forehead area is where you kind of carry most of your cognitive load. That's where really a lot of your human behaviors human thoughts come into play and what often happens probably in these scenarios where somebody is in these deep fears is that they can't they're not thinking with their full brain their frontal lobe so to speak they're thinking sort of just brainstem only very survival mechanisms like don't die scenarios you know they can't put their full lid on. That's something she says.

Yeah. So the purpose, though, of this application is to change somebody's thought, right? You say here at the end, finally, we get to the entire point of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is changing your thoughts. So not only is it to supplant potentially a relationship in a scenario, Jared, your idea of actually putting some anonymous humans behind this is pretty interesting. But the point is, is to sort of identify the lie and then help you seek some sort of truth that changes the thought portion of it. How are you determining? When you put this text in, this example, I believe, is like of distortion options, catastrophizing, fortune telling, for example, in a way that enables those using this to change their thoughts? future soon, is that it says that there's like core beliefs that are causing your problem.

So you might have something like, I failed that interview and that's really bad. And you might think that like, ah, the problem that you're trying to, or the thing that you need to change is the, I failed the interview problem. But that's not necessarily true because the reason you have failed the interview or the reason you think that you failed the interview and that you're worried that's so bad is because you've connected yourself to this career success. And so like one way you can kind of tell and figure out what is like your deep problem that's causing this is you can ask a what if true. So like, let's say you failed that interview or you think that you failed that interview. And then you say, like, what if true? What if I failed that interview? And then you might think like, well, if I failed that interview, then I won't get any other interviews. And then

if I fail, won't get any other interviews, then like, I won't, you know, I won't ever get a job in this industry. And like, if that's the thing, whatever you end up with, that's the thought that you need to change because that's the thing that's driving everything else. And so if you can get to that thought, then you can like challenge it and say like, okay, this isn't actually true and it doesn't need to cause me the stress that I'm giving it. And then at the end, you can write a different thought to this situation and you can acknowledge what's true because you shouldn't lie to yourself because that's not helping yourself anyway. So you can acknowledge that like maybe you didn't do as well as you wanted to in that interview. And that maybe that means that like you can acknowledge that it's true as important as you think it is to like be a successful programmer or something. Like you don't need to be that to be

like happy because lots of people aren't programmers and lots of people aren't like this thing. But it also doesn't mean that you have to like give up being a programmer because lots of people are just like fine like they're like average level programmers and they're quite happy and perfectly fine. This episode is brought to you by Git Prime. Git Prime helps software teams accelerate their velocity and release products faster by turning historical Git data into easy-to-understand insights and reports. Because past performance predicts future performance,

Git Prime can examine your Git data to identify bottlenecks, compare sprints and releases over time, and enable data-driven discussions about engineering and product development. Shift faster because you know more, not because you're rushing. Get started at gitprime.com slash changelog. That's G-I-T-P-R-I-M-E.com slash changelog. Again, getprime.com slash changelog. So Evan, one of our hopes, I guess, coming out of this show is that people listening to this, that maybe identify with the struggles that we've mentioned, or even relate any little bit to the

things we've been talking about. If CBT is truly, you know, self-administering, at least based on Quirk, you know, the next logical step might be to try the app. What's the first step? How do you actually try the app? Do you go into the app store, download it? What's the first step? So it's available on Android and iOS. But what I would recommend

is if you're interested in this, go to Quirk.fyi and read the description that's there first, because it'll give you an overview of how to actually do this. And I think that little bit of education is particularly useful for it to be helpful for you. So I would definitely recommend that.

And then there's a download link at the bottom. That makes it easy. Yeah. Download it in the App Store, download it on Google Play. Fairly easy to get. I mean, there's some education behind it, like what is fortune telling and things like that. But that's a good first step. Yeah. In terms of, you know, plus also if you're a software developer,

if you're listening to this, you're probably a software developer. And if you're not, hey, welcome. We talk about software here and open source if you didn't know about that, but it is also open source, which means that if you desire to, you can also give some feedback. But what I understand too, that there's a second component to to that that you actually want to talk to people engaging in mental health so professionals out there that are wanting to take part the cool thing about open sources you can actually influence quirk and you know share some ideas with evan what do you think evan yeah so there's actually two things so if you're like a mental health professional if you're a therapist or you're a psychiatrist and you want to help the app, like send me an email. My email is ejc at quirk.fyi. And if you're a mental health professional or a therapist or a psychiatrist, and you're interested in helping this project, please send me an email because I do not have a mental health background. Like I don't have a degree. So I'm

definitely looking for professional help if anybody is interested. And secondly, if you're a researcher and you're looking to study cognitive behavioral therapy or you're looking to study the app, one of the things Quark is trying to do is be both private and public. So by private, I mean that the thought records, the things you store in the app, the thoughts, they're never shared anywhere. They store on the device. They don't go anywhere. All your private information is not collected. But all the usage

statistics, which would be collected by the App Store or your OS is shared publicly. So anonymous usage statistics, like how many people are using this app, like how often are people using this app, stuff like that, that's shared in a CSV file, which you can get. And if you're interested in doing research on Quirk, this is just open for you. It's actually open for anybody. But like specifically, if you're trying to find the effectiveness of this app, especially when compared to like worksheets or other forms of collecting thought records, this is for you.

Those kind of people that are looking for this, they know they're looking for this. I mean, I'm not sure how often mental health professionals cross over to the software world, but that seems pretty interesting to me, especially when it comes to data. I mean, what is your awareness of like data pools or data leaks or anything data related when it comes to this kind of thing and those who are professionals in the mental health field? What do you mean by that? Meaning like, where do they go to get their data? Like, do they just simply rely upon research this isn't exactly research but it is data and it's true yeah um i mean people set up studies so that's one option a lot of the stuff is done on paper so in the past it's been particularly difficult to do real studies on it and there are

a couple like technological solutions for cognitive behavioral therapy and therapy in general. But as far as I know, a lot of them are very proprietary and don't really share their information and they might commission their own studies of it, but there's not a really solid third party impartial studies that I've seen. And typically when I was doing research and looking at what outside people are doing research on mental health apps, they're typically like going to the app store and collecting the amount of ratings on the app. And they frequently don't even know the amount of downloads that the app is getting. So the actual data out there isn't super great, which is part of the reason why Quark is public

with its information. So if you're trying to figure out whether or not this stuff works, here you go. This is the tool. Is there ever a point that data, you know, since given this concern of anonymity or very private concerns for your users or whatnot, is there ever a point that data is not anonymous? Like, are you getting the data and then anonymizing it? Or is it always anonymous to you? It's always anonymous. I'm not recording like, recording like well for one thing quirk doesn't have user accounts and we have no way to connect it to you so it's stored as like an anonymous id which is basically just a uuid that's associated with you um and that's it that's all we we have we do collect uh the phone that you're using and

the language you're using on but the information that will be shared won't have the anonymous ID, I think. Yeah, I don't remember whether or not that's a thing yet. Basically, my goal is to not share any personally identifiable information and not to collect it. And the thoughts themselves, especially like the most private information is just never even collected. So it's just parsed in the real time. Given some of these responses to sort of parse through and whatnot. it's never stored. Yeah. And the code is also open source. So if I'm doing this wrong or somebody disagrees

or would like to audit it, feel free. It's all collected very openly. So if there's something that I'm doing wrong, please let me know. One thing to mention, too, is that you mentioned languages being something you collect. And one interesting fact here is when it launched on Hacker News, it was translated in two days into seven different languages. Can you kind of share the backstory on that?

Yeah. So I remember when it first launched, there were a number of people who made a GitHub issue that said, I would like this app in whatever language. And I was very skeptical. I couldn't imagine that anybody would actually be willing to spend the time to go and translate this. And then I had a friend who had like done some localization work before. Um, and so he went through and, uh, like set up the process of localization. So it

basically moved all the string files over into like a Jason blob and then people just translated it. And it was incredible. That's awesome. Because like people didn't just translate it. They like went and looked up like the research of what cognitive distortions are called in their own language. So they didn't like do a literal translation. They did like real research. And that's amazing. It's absolutely amazing.

And it's 10 languages now. So like seven in the first two days, but now it's like 10. And there was one this morning. Which languages? Uh, I'm not going to get all of them, but let's see. Uh, there is a Chinese localization. There's a, uh, Russian. I want to say there's a Polish, there's a Spanish, there's a Portuguese, there's a Norwegian this morning. And I'm definitely forgetting. I'm forgetting forgetting I know there's 10 but I don't remember all of them off the top of my head where's the list of the languages that way

if someone's listening and saying hey is my language listed if not I want to help you can go to github and it's on that under the contributors list I have a list of all the translators I think the Norwegian and the Portuguese isn't updated yet but there is Norwegian and Portuguese there you go right in the readme.

Great place for it. Yep. So if you speak another language other than English and you are interested in translating it, there's a whole like readme file that's a translations.md. You can click on that. There's a whole explanation of how to translate it. Even if you're like not super familiar with Git, if you are comfortable using the GitHub user interface, you can translate it just from the GitHub user interface.

Yeah, or even open up an issue and say, hey, I want to help translate, but I could use some guidance or some help. Yeah, I'm happy to help. I'm absolutely happy to help. And if you do translate it, there's stickers in it. I will mail you a sticker. Oh, gosh.

Because absolutely amazing. That's enough right there. I mean, most people would like fight somebody for a sticker. Oh, yeah. That's right. What about you, Jared? Have you fought anybody for a sticker before? Not today.

Not today. What about resources, Evan? Like what got you to, I mean, obviously we started the call by talking about your personal perspective. So this is a scratch your own age kind of scenario here. So it would make sense. But, you know, not only did you go through the process of identifying that you've got some mental health challenges that you needed to go and seek either self-help or professional help, but then you got educated enough to actually make something that was useful for other people, yourself included in that, in that useful people. Yeah. What were some of the resources you used to learn about CBT?

Was it just simply therapy or did you read books? What'd you do? So I did read the book, It's Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy by David Burns, which is like the pinnacle book on it. Definitely the right thing to read. But to be honest, the amount of resources available for cognitive behavioral therapy are kind of slim.

And that's one of the things I would like to try and do is to create like open source resources for cognitive behavioral therapy, which is why Quirk is Quirk.FYI. And I would recommend that if you're in a particularly bad situation, you should go see a therapist because they will be the best resource for you. There'll be somebody you can ask about questions for and they're the right person i love the uh dot fyi domain by the way when uh jared i wasn't aware i didn't even look up the site it's terrible uh in mid-show i'm like looking up the site quirk.fyi when you mentioned the url and that's the best in my opinion like i

love the fact that you it's like we said before it's serious but you want to approach it in a way that sort of like you know calms things down you know doesn't make in a way that sort of like, you know, calms things down, you know, doesn't make it so serious that, you know, it's like a medical app, it's blue or a certain color that identifies with medical, for example, you know, you're sort of like, you know, I can identify back with me and this isn't exactly totally appropriate. So I'll use the acronym. And I had an acronym that whenever I was in my scenarios that I would say to myself, CTFO. And if you're smart enough, you may be able to decrypt that, chill the out, whatever. You know, that's what I would have to tell myself because I would have to like identify with this.

You know, this is crazy. And in that case, it was whimsical, it was, you know, quirky, so to speak. You know, so you need to sort of like take this serious thing, but not make it so serious. So.fyi is an amazing. I didn't even know.fyi was available to even use. I got so many speak. So you need to sort of take this serious thing, but not make it so serious. So.fy isn't amazing. I didn't even know.fy was available to even use. I got so many ideas in my hair for some stuff. We'll have to do some fun stuff with .fy. It's a good domain.

Lots of stuff available for it. I think a long time ago, I was really interested in game design. And there's this concept in game design called juice, which is anytime something wobbles or spins or buzzes. and it's the things that make games feel fun intrinsically and that was like the reason it's a reason for a lot of decisions in quark like if you open up the app and you go to the settings there's a little like asterisk in

the top and then each setting has a little asterisk in the like header like subheader and it's part of like trying to be a little bit interesting and trying to be a little bit juicy in the like header, like subheader. And it's part of like trying to be a little bit interesting and trying to be a little bit juicy in the game design terminology, which is just like little bit of fun that you can have with the user interface. And so like on the website, if you click on Quirk.FYI and then you go to about or you go to app, it will change it to be FYI about the app or FYI about Quirk. It's like little changes, but unique enough. It could be animation.

It could be tweening. It could be just simply title changes. Anything that sort of like change to make it slightly more satisfactory or more fun or that kind of stuff. Yeah. Interesting. It's a little extra bits. Is this new to you, Jared? This juicing, this concept of juice game

design i've never heard it called juice oh yes yeah it's sometimes also called game feel as they consider these aspects of game design yeah i'm over here thinking is there a dot btw tld because that's what i want yes honestly yes is there really that's good that's right up there i don't know but i mean fyi if there's an fyi, there's got to be a BTW. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of my most commonly used acronyms. This is why we need to grab like $100,000 and get a TLD or however much they cost to make. That's right. We just become a registrar.

We can have our own BTW. Yeah. So we've talked about the open sourceness. We talked about the translations, which is awesome. Love seeing that getting this into more people's hands in different languages. And it seems like the kind of app where the specific words are so necessary, but it's not like there's a lot of text from what I've seen. So it seems like it's reasonable to do a translation relatively quickly. If you are well familiar with the language that you're translating into, you talked about the metrics and how those are going to be open or are open to those. What

else is looking down the road for Quirk besides my amazing, awesome community features, which Adam loves? Aside from that, what else are you looking to do with this? Is it kind of done? Has it done its job? We know it's helped you out a bit, but what else do you see down the road for Quirk? I want to help people find therapists because a lot of people who are using Quirk aren't seeing a therapist. And that's like a good opportunity to get a whole bunch of folks who probably need a little bit of extra help. And they're in like the front door because I think there's like a lot of things that

keep people from seeing a therapist because I went many, many years without ever seeing a therapist. And part of that is stigma. Part of it is because it's not like a medicine you take. You think that it might not work or that it's not like as evidence-based or effective. And so at the moment, a lot of the people that use Quirk are kind of in the front door in that they've stuck their head in. They're like, hey, what is this thing? And a lot of those folks could probably benefit from seeing a therapist, but Quirk has no way to direct them there at the moment. And because

Quirk is made by me, who's just like some programmer dude, there's a responsibility to make sure that they can see somebody professionally. And so one next step for Quirk will be to help people find therapists or at least to help them find like cognitive behavioral therapists, people who are like very specific about this. So if you are a cognitive behavioral therapist and you would like to be listed on Quirk's website, let me know because I will probably have a listing somewhere and probably that is in process. Or if you have ideas about good ways of implementing that in the application, on the website, etc.

It seems like there's lots of opportunities for involvement and help and definitely going towards something that's helping people as it says at the bottom of the page really feel better i love that you really can feel better it seems like it's uh doing that for you and it's doing that for others and it sounds like the more languages the more features etc it can reach a lot of people on, you said and you emphasized how free it is both free as an open source and free as in beer, as in like free, no cost. That seems like something that's very important to you. Do you want to expand on why that is? I mean, this is obviously a place where it's providing a real value, you could probably make some cash with it.

So originally, it actually was paid. Like when I when I first released it, I charged like $2 for it and made a couple thousand dollars off it, which is cool. You know, there's people coming in, right? But at a certain point, there wasn't as much I don't think it is useful to trap something that is so incredibly helpful for people behind like a $2 paywall and a $2 paywall is like nothing like it's not that much people spend, you know, more than that on their coffee. But if that $2 paywall. And a $2 paywall is like nothing. Like it's not that much people spend, you know, more than that on their coffee. But if that $2 paywall is the thing that keeps you from finding something that like actually helps you, because for me, like this was the thing that made me go from having two panic attacks a week to not having one for three months and then not having another

one for three months before that. And like, if it's going to be a $2 paywall, that's going to keep you from getting there, then like, why is there a paywall? Like, let's just get rid of that. It's so much more beneficial. The value created for everybody is so much better than like the thousand dollars that thousand dollars spread over like several months, which just, it isn't that important. It's not as important as just like helping people that actually need it. Yeah. Helping people like I were. So I think the application is like the tip of the iceberg and there's so much

beneath the surface that, you know, the true value is the open door. Yeah. That the application brings. And I agree with you on the, I mean, to some people,

$2 isn't much, but when you multiply it by, let's say half a million or a million it starts to get to a larger number if that could ever be the potential of it so and it's not even the affordance is the fact that it's a roadblock between actually trying something and not and we are used to especially on app stores on mobile phones the commoditization of apps has brought the price down to zero yeah Yeah. And so any price people will turn their nose up, even if this could help make them actually feel better in their lives. It's almost like a trust builder even, you know? Yeah, for sure.

Because if you're paying for it, it's like, why are they, why two bucks for this? Is that their motive? What is their motive? And so by pulling this $2 off the table, you're sort of opening yourself up to a question of what your true motive and your true motive is to help yeah in a lot of cases people in these scenarios they need hope hope of change is so significant to actually enabling change like if you have no hope you're hopeless yeah and you tend to be more negative and i think that you're right the two bucks is such a barrier to pull off of to enable hope yeah and i wouldn't say that i'm against

people taking money to help people like sure like if you go see a therapist a therapist is going to charge you for their services and i'm not saying that like a therapist should do that for free financial motivations aren't inherently like bad because people still need to eat but if like the relative amount of money that you can make from having a paid app on the app store versus the overall amount of value that you can do, at least in the case of like quirks, the app, I just didn't think that was as useful, that there's more value. That's why I really like the idea of you adding, you know, a cadre of mental health professionals behind this at some point or, you know, being open to that.

I think that's, you know, if we're talking, you know, forecasting some financial opportunities here, you know, some ways, then that's a way you could get there. Because the open door and invitation, I agree, I think is better off and has more value being free yeah in all senses of the word not just simply at cost but as we describe what free means yeah but you know I think there's an opportunity in other ways that still you can provide that value but in ways that lead people to change and lead people to solving some of these problems and the base application itself of what it is remains to be the way it is which is free yeah i i agree with that i agree with that like if i was talkspace talkspace is like an online therapy company i would release something like quirk and give it to everybody because one um it helps people tremendously and two like it would it would like

both be useful for the people who are currently seeing therapists because it's useful if you're seeing a therapist. And it's also like a front door. It's like, hello, this is the thing that you can do. And it actually is effective. Right. You know, given what you've shared here, what's some variation of the future you'd like to see?

Have you thought about that? Where are you at with where things are going? To be honest, I go where people tell me to. Everything that Quark has built so far is just people using it and then asking for things. So I don't plan too far ahead. I just kind of go where what people have asked for. And so recently people have asked for translations and so made sure that it is translated in a bunch of different languages. And like another thing people have asked for is like a lock screen because these are really private information. And like sometimes other people are using your phone and like you don't want to necessarily have somebody like open up the app because it's got a cute icon.

And then all of a sudden see your deepest, darkest secrets. So that's something that's coming down the line. And the other thing is stuff that you guys were mentioning that like there's a lot of stuff you have to learn. And so improving the education experience is better. Like the thing that stresses me out the most is that a lot of people don't look at the help within the app, or don't realize it's there. Like from people I've talked to, they just didn't realize there was a help screen in the app, which probably is my fault, and something that needs to be a little bit better and noticeable because I think it's harder to get the value out of it without

like having the education behind it. So education, probably another big piece. Well, Evan, thank you so much for sharing one, your personal perspective. For sure. I mean, I really appreciate you being open about, and I guess maybe even thanking me too. Hey, yeah. Yeah, you did too.

That was great. Because I was, I never share that kind of stuff. You know, like this, Jared and I, you know, on this show, we're less the talkers and more the facilitators, you know, and so I, you know, it's not often I get to share personal attributes about me in those, in that realm. So no, I think you should. It's good. Anyways, I'm done patting myself on the back.

Thank you, Evan, for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate that. We need people to be vulnerable in those ways, in environments where they can be vulnerable and not be judged or berated or told they're wrong or whatever. Thank you. You know, so. Yeah.

And also, thank you for the freeness of this, in all senses of the word, the openness of this, because I think the things we just shared here is super crucial to some change in people's lives and providing that level of hope. I love what you've done here and I'm glad you reached out to us to share this with the community. Thanks. Anything in closing you want to share with the community? Any, any core takeaways, any, any calls to action, anything left on the table we haven't put on?

Basically, if you are a mental health professional and you want to help, reach out to me. And if you're a developer and you want to help, there's definitely some features and bugs that need fixed. And if you are a translator or somebody who speaks another language and you'd like to translate it into a language that it doesn't exist in, also reach out

because this project needs all the help it can get. Thank you so much. We'll put your email in the show notes, but remind us again, what your email address is. EJC at quirk. F Y I. And if for some reason you're listening to that and you're driving or

anything where you would be dangerously trying to type, remember that check the show notes. It's there. Don't worry. We have pretty good show notes. And Hey, by the way, speaking of open source, if you want to help us improve our show notes and or the translations, the transcripts, not translations, like a neat little edit link there that takes you to GitHub. This does assume you have some GitHub knowledge, but if for some reason you don't and you want to reach out, we're pretty easy to get ahold of as well.

Editors at changelog.com. And we are happy to invite anyone into this community and happy to help anybody that comes along. So thank you for listening, Evan. Thank you for sharing and we really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks so much. All right.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Changelog. Hey, guess what? We have discussions on every single episode now. So head to changelog.com to discuss this episode. And if you want to help us grow this show, reach more listeners and influence more developers, do us a favor and give us a rating or review in iTunes or Apple Podcasts. If you use Overcast, give us a star. If you tweet, tweet a link.

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subscribe to our master feed at changelog.com slash master, or go into your podcast app and search for changelog master. You'll find it. Thank you for tuning in this week. We'll see you again soon. All right, because you've stuck in to the end of the show, as promised, here's a preview of Brain Science, our upcoming podcast coming out very soon. The easiest way to subscribe is to subscribe to our master feed at the changelog.com slash master. Get all of our podcasts in one single feed, plus some extras that only hit the master feed, including brain science. Brain science is a podcast for the curious. We're exploring the inner workings of the human brain so we can understand things like behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and this thing we call the human condition. It's hosted by myself, Adam Stachowiak, and Meryl

Reese, a doctor in clinical psychology. It's brain science applied, not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to better our lives? Here we go. I think that's the most interesting thing I find with this subject is I've lived most of my life. Well, I've lived all my life with the brain for one, but I've lived most of my life not even knowing or thinking about how I how it operates. And so my curiosity comes from, OK, now that I'm I'm aware that the brain is the most important organ in my body without it, nothing else exists in terms of like being able to operate. It's the primary source of all things that makes our body our body, I begin to think, okay, well now how does it actually work? You know, so that I can understand different things about my life, my personality, why I love, why I hate, why I like, why I dislike, you know, all these different things, habits,

drive, you know, willpower, all these different things play into that. And I begin to think like, okay okay how can I know more about my brain and when you mention these worn paths and these grooves that means like whenever I'm mulling over a thought or having anxiety the thing that I'm mulling over or having anxiety about becomes more and more true or more and more real as my neurons fire together based on what you said here with the power of thoughts

is that if I keep thinking that way, it becomes more true to me than maybe somebody else because I've worn the path. Is that accurate to say? You're spot on. If I'm to draw an analogy, it would really be that our thoughts are the lens through which we see our world and make sense of it, which is how people can have such varied perspectives.

The thoughts we have are really that powerful. If you can imagine them creating the fabric of so much of your world. And like I mentioned earlier about, you know, sort of filing things according to our feelings because we're more apt to remember things according to feelings. And so we want to be aware of the sort of circular nature of my thoughts and my feelings and that like, how I feel creates certain thoughts, and certain thoughts create certain feelings. And so if I want to feel different, I really need to do different and I need to think different. Because all of this is energy, right? I mean, you ever walk into a room or an interaction with an individual and it just sort of feels off and you're thinking like, what did I miss? Or like, I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was off because there's feelings and you catch vibes because emotions are energy

and thoughts, just like the neurons that fire together, that's electricity in our brain. It's certainly a deep subject, which I'm just barely familiar with. But basically, our brain is, everything is electricity, as you're saying. It's our brain being able to somehow miraculously be able to process this electricity into thoughts, memories, recall, autobiographical, understanding time, past, present, future, all this different stuff. And somehow these electrical charges throughout our entire body at the cellular level as well as the brain level power us. And like you're saying, it truly is literally energy. It is. I mean, so one of the things that is important to know when it comes to neurons is they abide by the all or nothing rule. And what I mean by that is that they either fire or they don't.

So sort of like that thing at the carnival with the hammer and you smack the weighted plate and it either goes to the top to ding or it doesn't. So sort of like that thing at the carnival with the hammer and you smack the weighted plate and it either goes to the top to ding or it doesn't. That's how neurons are. They get to a sort of threshold of excitement and then they fire or they don't. And so being able to be aware of the thoughts I think, for example, if I am having a really rough day, like maybe I pay attention to what I'm thinking about. Like, am I thinking about a loss that I went through? Am I thinking about a really challenging problem that I don't know how to overcome? Or maybe it's a relationship that I wanted to go differently. And then I don't feel very good. And maybe my stomach starts to hurt. And then I maybe start to get a headache.

You know, all of our thoughts contribute to our own internal systems. And they shape who we are, too. You know, like I said earlier, if I'm mulling over something or if I'm anxious about something, I just can't stop thinking about it. It, to some degree, can even reshape my personality because I think that's what we might call moods. If I'm in a bad mood, it might be because I have an experience going on in my brain or my thoughts that I can't seem to shake away that's bringing me into a negative state. My perspective in that scenario is that I can't get these bad thoughts out of my brain or I can't stop being anxious or having anxiety about something. And therefore I yell at my wife or I'm not so nice to my son because my mood is changed by my thought patterns. Yeah, you're spot on. And this is what I think it's so important that we can understand that it's really possible to change these.

Because if you can recognize like, oh, I'm not really upset with my wife or my son. I'm feeling bad. Then again, I can put my lid on and go, what other options do I have available to me? Like maybe I need to go work out. Maybe I need to go write down some of what is in my mind so that I can change some of those thoughts. Or maybe I need to do some meditation or talk to a friend. This is how we cope with some of those negative thoughts and negative feelings as well.

That's a preview of Brain Science. If you love where we're going with this, send us an email to get on the list to be notified the very moment this show gets released. Email us at editors at changelog.com. In the subject line, put in all caps, Brain Science with a couple bangs if you're really excited. You can also subscribe to our master feed to get all of our shows in one single feed. Head to changelog.com slash master or search in your podcast app for ChangeLog Master. You'll find it. Subscribe, get all of our shows and even those that only hit the master feed. Again, changelog.comportable.com.