The Sabrina Zohar Show - 138: Why You’re Obsessed with People Who Hurt You (And How to Finally Stop) With Nicole Vignola

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Are you tired of replaying the same scenarios in your head, checking their socials, and wondering why you can’t let go—even when you know they’re wrong for you? In this episode of The Sabrina Zohar Show, neuroscientist and author Nicole Vignola breaks down exactly what’s happening in your brain when you’re stuck on someone who isn’t right for you. From the dopamine loops that keep you addicted to the anticipation of a text to the childhood patterns shaping your attachment style, we dig into the neuroscience of obsession and how to actually break the cycle. You’ll learn why your brain seeks intermittent rewards, how to interrupt obsessive loops, what the default mode network has to do with emotional spirals, and the role of self-compassion in rewiring your brain. Nicole also shares tools like cognitive reframing, dopamine redirection, and the physiological sigh to help regulate your nervous system and regain control. If you're stuck in a spiral post-breakup or can’t stop thinking about someone who isn’t showing up for you, this episode is your science-backed roadmap to let go for good. Want to dive deeper into this? Check out Nicole’s book Rewire, and don’t forget to subscribe to The Sabrina Zohar Show for more brain-based dating and relationship tools. MERCH IS NOW AVAILABLE! Stuck After the Podcast? Master Implementation in 8 Weeks with Sabrina's Foundation Course HERE! Do you feel like your emotions run the show and react in ways you can’t control? Join the Nervous System 101: Navigating the Unknowns In Early Dating from Sabrina and Masha Kay HERE! Struggling with a breakup? Join the Make It Make Sense: Getting Through a Breakup course from Sabrina and Britt Frank HERE! Get Ad free HERE! Want to work with Sabrina? HERE! Don't forget to follow Sabrina and The Sabrina Zohar Show on Instagram and Sabrina on TikTok! Video now available on YOUTUBE! Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formally known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A.Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, girl. Thank you. Oh, my God. I'm so excited to have you back. I'm back. Yeah. I'm so excited. And again, you came just for me. I did. But still, you came to America just for me. Yes, I did. Oh, technically. I technically did. Okay, well, not that delusional. Yeah, no, no, I literally came for your party. No, it didn't happen. Go fires. You know, I'm still here. And I'm so excited. I'm a girl. Oh, dude. Okay. Could you introduce yourself a little bit in your brilliance and who you are because some of our audience knows you and some of them don't yet. So if you don't know me, my name's Nicole Vignola. I am a neuroscientist and author. And just all around your girl to know what's going on in your brain. The thing that I do the most, I think, is explain patterns or what's going on. So like the everyday stuff. And I'm like, it's not you as your brain. You're not crazy. The amount of times I say that's why I'm excited because today, you know, I've talked about limerance. I've talked about like, oh, why you can't get over people. But there is so much more to the brain than even, I mean, obviously, when I know, I didn't study this specifically. But even when I talk to you, you'll like pull out all these terms and I'm like, I don't know what that means.

So for today, we're going to really talk about like why your brain gets obsessed with the wrong people and how to stop it. Because I've been guilty of it. I know a lot of people have. And I know that like, yep, thank you. I was going to say, do you have any personal experience where you have just been... Could have you read a whole book. Great. That's another one.

Because I remember, I mean, for me, the amount of times, sometimes it wasn't necessarily limerence, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't that I didn't know who these people were and it was just me creating narratives. Sometimes I was really enamored with people that just weren't treating me the way that I should be. And I would see them a lot. Like, you know what I mean?

Like, there was a relationship or I couldn't move on from them or I couldn't get over them because I'm human. But I kind of wanted to just like dive on in. And guys, just so you know, we are going to be answering your Instagram questions as we go along. So tune until the end. And you never know. One of your questions might be answered. And look out for the question box on Instagram moving forward in case you guys want to ask.

But let's start off with like, what is happening in your brain when you obsess over someone? Yeah. So one of the first things that I'd like to say is that your brain is a predictive machine. So when you operate through life, you're figuring out where you're supposed to be in the future, and you're doing this consciously slash subconsciously. So the problem is, is that when we start to obsess over somebody, we have created an expectation of what we wanted this person to be or how we wanted the relationship to go. When that doesn't work out, it gives us a level of cognitive dissonance because it doesn't match the idea or the blueprint that we created in our minds about where we wanted it to go. And that's what's really important to make sure that when you are assigning some kind of future with somebody, which is completely normal and part of a relationship, that you're being open and realistic about it and not just tunnel visioning down where you want things to go without the possibility that things might not go your way. What is cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance is when your beliefs or your actions don't match your core beliefs. So there's a bias and there's a mismatch in how the actions show up with what you believe to be. be true. Okay, I have definitely been there. Or like, an example be like, you think someone's super into you and that like you perceive the situation one way and then you speak to the other person. They're like, hey, that's not what that was. Exactly. And that would be cognitive dissonance.

It's even worse if you don't have self-awareness to accept that that is what's actually going on. You might then continue to try and skewer it or fit the narrative to your needs. And I'm curious now, like if we go a little deeper because I think I talk a lot about dove moon reward systems and like, you know, intermittent reinforcement, things like that, like almost like a slot machine, right? Like,

we are wired in the same way. But could you explain a little bit more about dopamine, intermittent reinforcement and just like reward pathways? Like our brain, I know, it loves shortcuts. It loves going from like here to here. It doesn't want to have to think more or do more. But if you could explain a little bit more specifically on dopamine, because I think a lot of the content we see is like misusing it, dopamine, oxytocin, all the neurotransmitters, but how does it actually work? Dopamine is the molecule that puts you in anticipation drive for the reward. So, you people think that it's responsible for the actual reward. So dopamine is released under two conditions. When you have an anticipated reward, it will be released in anticipation of it. So you're working on a long-term

goal and it releases in attempt to get you to that place. It then drops when you receive the reward. Anticlimactic. Yes, anticlimatic. It is also released when there's an unexpected reward. So you get notification, the guy you like texting. You're like, oh, okay, reward. The problem is that both of them can be quite addictive, especially the one that's unexpected. To me, that makes sense because I know, oh, God, it was addicting, right? Like, when I'd wait for the text, like, I remember, God, when I was in my fucking heyday of, like, just the anxiety being so high, right? Because it's like, we have two parts to this. There's, like, this psychological, like, oh, you have childhood and you have the core bleed, but then you do have the brain that, like, when cortisol is spiked and your

neurotransmitters are being depleted and you're like, I'll take anything, right? Like, give me the high. And I remember, like, the waiting for a text was literally a fix. Like I would bring my phone into the bathroom and keep clicking the screen waiting to see or you know what I would do? I was the queen of this. I wouldn't save their phone number so that when I'd look on the phone and I'd see the number, it would give me this jolt of energy. I'm probably not the only person. No, no, no, no. I'm laughing with you. Not at you. I'm like, that sounds like you for video. Right? Because it was, it was exciting. When I'd see that number, it was, I knew it wasn't someone that was in my phone. I knew it wasn't like my mom or my sister. It was,

is exciting, but then like you said, it would drop off immediately. Or like, I have a goal, then you reach it and you're like, now what, right? What's next? And so I'm wondering, like, how do the reward pathways play into this kind of like, just cycle? Yes. So dopamine is a reward-based learning mechanism that told you what you did to get to that particular feeding. The problem is, is that you can go into withdrawal. So for example, when you don't get the text, you start to, the dopamine's lowered. So you might feel irritable and you might start feeling like, like a craving, almost like a drug craving or, you know, a slop machine craving like you said, and it's upsetting when you don't get what you want. And that could be quite sort of drastic for the

brain. And it's why it's really important to check ourselves that we're not feeding into this reward-seeking behavior. Because even though the brain likes to take shortcuts, we can train ourselves to choose long-term reward. So every single time you have a quick hits of dopamine or a quick reward or something that gives you an instant gratification, the more you choose it, dopamine is a reward-based learning mechanism, the better you will become a going for that. And a question about the neurotransmitters, like if we're talking about specifically dopamine, because I know that that's kind of plays so heavily into this, is your body, I'm curious,

does your body ever, like, get used to it? Like, do you need more and more and more or is your body just like, hey, I love this, I'll take it all day? Like how, because like with drugs, right? You would need more because you start to get used to it. Exactly. So when you have a high dopamine spike, it will then drop a little bit below baseline while there's a refractory period. So that's that time that normally dopamine stores will be replenished. If you then go and seek a reward shortly after, you're going to need more dopamine to get that same feeling. And so that's why at the end of the day, you're unconsciously scrolling on your phone, refreshing your feed every five seconds because you're looking for something that's going to make you feel just as good. Oh, God. And it can get very dangerous with text. because they're limited. And they have no tone

and you're creating this narrative. There's so much to it. And I mean, I've noticed like the meme of like, oh, cool, I'm glad I exed out of this just to open the same app like three seconds later. Yeah. It's so automatic. Like sometimes I'll be sitting on the couch

and I'll, without the self-awareness like we were talking about, if I don't notice it, next thing I know, my shoulders are super tense. My heart is palpitating. I'm starting to just like constantly and like all bop around to different things to be like, where's this?

Where's this? because I need more, right? Okay, this didn't grow as much as I want. Let me go to this platform. Let me see what's happening here. It feels safer to me to constantly chase something versus when I put my phone down, you're like, I don't like this.

I need something. And it's like, how long does that? Oh, I have so much to say about this. Please. So simultaneous dopamine release, we also have noropenephrine release. So norophenephrin is responsible for focus. It's responsible for stress as well.

But if you were focusing on your computer or on your phone, you need that noroponephrine to be a little bit higher because you're focusing on something. So what that does is it creates a little bit of tunnel vision. So you can get kind of quite literally warped into the phone. And if you don't step away from that or snap out of it, you'll end up just going down a rabbit hole quite literally. Right. So you're like, I need this text. I need, you know, it can get quite obsessive.

And you can snap out of that by even just simply stepping outside. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at autotrater.ca, Canada's car marketplace.

The second part of what I want to say is that the unfortunate thing is that to read balance your dopamine stores, you need to sit with that discomfort. That feeling of I want more. And there's another layer to it. If you have been repeating this pattern for a long time, your neuroplasticity, the way that your brain has changed in accordance to your behaviors and habits, is going to have an ingrained pathway that says grab the phone with automaticity. So automaticity, meaning you do it without thinking. Every time. Yes. So you need to sever that connection. And it's going to take a little bit of time. It's going to take a little bit of retraining. I've definitely over the years got so much better.

And you know, it's a really interesting. Something I really want to talk about is that feeling that, yes, we're talking about that immediate reward and the immediate feeling of being on your phone, but sometimes someone not texting you can affect you throughout a day or two. So you start, let's say it's Monday. Monday, you guys chat. You guys don't really text a lot because it's a healthy personally, I think it's a healthy way to do things. I'm not the only one who says. I'm no, yeah, no, I personally, so I'm kind of dating texting this guy and see sort of seeing each other and we don't text a lot and it's so it's because when we do then it means something and he picks up the phone and he calls me for two hours at a time so brilliant

and just back to what I was going to say that's just a little side note my dating life humanizes yeah and it just kind of for me personally it works better to not text as much and I did you talk about that a lot and I think personally it's just a healthy way to do it because texting doesn't have tone it's very addictive it's like you can also end up saying things that you don't really mean. And reading into things, right? Oh my God, totally. I remember even like, if you asked me right now when I was talking to this guy, like the worst part is, is I remember my mom was in town and I'm like, I didn't lift my head. I remember reshopping her being like, hey, like, what do you like this and me just being on my phone the whole time? And then you get home and you're like,

what did I do all day? I don't know. I was texting somebody. Yeah. Yes, a tunnel vision. Everything else becomes unimportant. But that feeling can also sustain for a few days. So let's say it's Monday. You guys talk on Monday. Choose it you don't talk. You don't text loads. Wednesday you start to feel a particular way and your moods dropped and you're like, oh, I'm a bit irritable today. So yes, it's very important to talk about the stuff that's happening immediately, but this can also show up over a period of a few days. And it's important to take a note because I know what I'm doing and I understand the brain and it still happens to me sometimes. I'll get a text and I'm like, absolutely fine. All dandy. What a wonderful day. Oh, I've been, my sister has seen me and she's

like, that guy text you. And I'm like, what? She's like, your mood shifted. And it's like, oh, fuck, I was that predictable. Yeah. And it's normal. Look, I don't want to try and say that you not need to not care because it's what makes us human. You know, it's just the way that it is. You like, somebody they text you, you're going to feel good. But it's about paying attention to it. When I'm irritable, I'm like, am I irritable because I'm actually irritable? I'm irritable because it's day three of not talking to the person that I want to speak to all the single time. Right. And I'm not doing that. Which makes a lot of sense. Well, because I think like, The brain's craving for familiarity, even if it's not healthy, right?

Like, we, especially for me, like, if I grew up with, talk about intermittent reinforcement, where like one minute you were doing a great job to my dad and then seconds later he was hitting you or telling you you weren't. And it was like going back and forth. So you're like, I'm constantly on this loop to be like, when do I get the next hit? When do I get the next? When are you going to tell me I'm a good girl? And that becomes addicting in it of itself.

And now I was going to ask, because somebody asked, what was somebody asked, why do we fixate on people who are emotionally unavailable or inconsistent? And I feel like we kind of just touched on this, but can we talk about the unpredictability as a dopamine trigger? Exactly. So you don't know if you're going to get the reward. And so you stay stuck like a slop machine. You don't know if you're going to get the – I don't actually know what you get on slop machines to win. Well, that's the thing.

It's like you just have to keep going and at one point you might win. Exactly. And that's exactly how it is when you're dating someone that's unpredictable or – Do you say unpredictable or not – Emotional and available in giving you what you want because you know at some point you will. They're going to give you that breadcrum. me like, oh, I got something. And the brain's like, oh, that feels really good.

Let's continue to do this because that's what we do to get the outcome that we want, except it's fake. Yeah. It's not sustainable. And I am such a big believer in slowness in relationships as well, to a degree. I mean, I also like to jump the gun, you know, that I called you last week. And I was like, because you're a human. Because I'm a human and I have my own anxious attachments, my own avoidance attachments as well.

But it's important to check ourselves. Because it's a responsibility for us to take ownership of our behaviors, of your anxious attachment, of whatever obsessive thinking you've got. We were talking about earlier saying that is obsessive thinking normal? Yeah, because someone asks that. Like, is being obsessed always a bad sign, especially when as an anxiously attached person, it's like, I don't remember ever hearing that anything positive comes from being obsessed or something, right?

Exactly. The pendulum swings too far to the left, too far to the right. Yes. And it's like to find that balance. And I understand. I'm like there is, because I was going to ask you, like, the connection between attachment wounds and the neural pathway, right? Because like, obviously our brain is neural, but neuroplastic, right? You can create. But if you had years of your parents treating you a specific way, you're going to create those neural pathways. You're then going to get, right? So I'm curious, like, what is the difficulty, I think, in your opinion of why we can't move on? I'm going to add salt to that state. Please, wound me. Yeah, it's going to burn. Yes, we have these neural pathways that have created for. our childhood, about attachments, they also affect your genetics. Go on. And epigenetics. Go on. Basically means that the way that you respond to stress may be hypersensitive

because you have got more receptors or whatever's going on because of your childhood upbringing. So the brain has developed in a particular way. Now, not all is lost. What I want to say is that it was a coping mechanism that served you at one point. So no attachment style, obviously secure attachment is your most preferable. But, you know, does anyone have a secure attachment? I mean, I'd love to read somebody that's like fully got their act together. I know one. Literally one woman. I was very good friend with her in New York. She had to have been like, she was a unicorn. She came from the most beautiful family, like the most supportive family. They were all like best friend. And I have never seen anybody who was so, I mean, she was a model.

She was beautiful. She was just really confident. Like if a guy didn't call her, she'd be like, whatever, I'm going to go out and, like, would go out with her friends. Every guy wanted her. And she wasn't, she never played game. She had her boyfriend. She had really beautiful relationships. They were very healthy. And I remember once she took an exam. It was something crazy. And she came to me and and she goes, wait, I felt anxiety for the first time ever. How do you live with this? And I was like, go fuck yourself. Like, what do you mean? I live with this. I know. I was like, but to your point. So like, Amir Levine, the author of Attach, he actually came out and said, I wildly miss. First of all, he was that I was way too harsh on the avoidant. Like I gave them not enough credit. And he

said, I said 50% of the population was secure. He was like, not even close. Yeah. So he's even acknowledged that. And I think that's the unicorn, right? The like, I want to get to this utopia of being secure. And it's like, but here's the reality. And I don't know that anyone's going to like it. Earned secure is a beautiful place to be, but you still have your shit. Well, that's it. And I think that that's a beautiful thing because I also think that your attachment style change in different relationships. And I would say that with my ex, I was definitely more secure attached. But because I nurtured a relationship where I could be, And I think that you can grow into somebody that is secure. And it also depends on which part the other person is mirroring or reciprocating towards. So if you have an anxious attachment and they're avoiding or they play games or they're proclaiming you, of course your anxiety is going to go through the roof. And to me, what I want to like, I really like to exemplify the difference here is a normalizing. Having anxiety in dating is very normal. Right. Like even what you're experiencing when you're like, I don't know right. I don't.

have the clarity. Then you talk, you have a conversation to move on with your life. But there is so much normalcy. Like, I will never bullshit and say when Ryan and I'm at, I didn't have any anxiety. It's like, yes, I did. I was still anxious. I was still because I didn't know what was happening. I don't know how much to give, how much to show, right? There's a difference between a normal amount of anxiety because you're human versus when you're an anxious attacher and you're like, every narrative is about me. I'm a piece of shit. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. Right. You need to reassure me. I didn't hear from you for 20 minutes. I'm automatically assuming the worst. I think the pendulum swings too severely when we go left or right.

And to me, what I see there, and I'd love your thoughts on this is like, I think there's obviously patterns and familiarity. And like this person asked, if you keep going after emotionally and available and consistent people, you're staying on that loop. Yes and, right? Then there's also the, if you're not self-aware, if you don't see the pattern, if you don't understand what's happening in your body, you're just going along with the right. And you can keep repeating the same patterns because the brain doesn't know the difference

between right and wrong. It just knows what's been repeated. We have a moral compass in our frontal cortex, but if left up to our neuroplasticity, you're just going to repeat the same thing day in and day out until you pay attention to it. And that's exactly how neuroplasticity works. We need acetylcholine, which is responsible for creating a spotlight of attention on something, and norophenephrin, which brings focus in. So, acetylcholine works as like a spotlight in the sense that you're paying attention to my words now,

but if Kobe were to be barking outside, you could shift your focus to zone in on that frequency of sound. Okay? So that's the Cetal coding. What that means for us to make changes is that we have to make intentional and attentional changes to whatever pattern we're trying to change. So you can't go, yeah, I'm going to change that and then never work on it. You have to consistently do it.

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From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. The other prerequisite for neuroplasticity is repetition. Yeah. So that's what I'm doing at the moment. And, you know, I am changing the way that I'm showing up in relationships and the way that I expect someone else to show up for me in relationships. and it's a wonderful thing. And it's actually an opportunity, and I've been talking about this on podcast,

I'm re-scafolding my life a little bit. And so it's a wonderful opportunity for me to go, actually, I've done things like this in the past. I want this to go different this way. So I need to accept different things and maybe sit with them, recalibrate, speak to the person that I'm dating, speak to the person that I'm speaking to, to make sure that I'm navigating this thing effectively with somebody else as well

because I want something different for my life. this time around in this relationship. The funny thing is that's how you're going to get it, is when you sit in it specifically for you've already for your situation, absolutely, because when you face it and you talk and you're like, oh, oh, so scared of this. I know. We did it, right?

I always say mixed messages create bad situations. Anyone that's heard me on the last three podcasts that have come out, they're going to be like, okay, we get it. But I can't reiterate that enough. Mixed messages create bad situations. Just talk it out. But that's a skill to be able to talk without getting angry, to talk without getting emotional to a certain degree because emotions are always going to be there. I want people to be like,

oh, you have to be unemotional when talking. Right. But to not let your fight or flight or form, you know, take over. To be able to regulate, or to me, I'm always like, I don't want you to get rid of your emotions, but I want you to learn to respond, not react, right? Like your, how do you respond to your emotions? Like, for me, I was guilty of that. Like, if a guy ended it, obviously, heterosexual woman, speaking in those norms, please fill in that blank with whatever feels comfortable to you. When I was dating a guy and they like something, it would end, right? It's like I could choose, what I would forget often was that I did have a choice and I might not have liked the choice, right? Like, that's the thing about regulating and coming back. It might not be that I love the

decision that I have to make. But when my prefrontal cortex is offline and I go back here, what did I learn? My father used to be irate and scream. So I would just be like, okay, scream louder, right? Get their attention. Do whatever you need to do. But when I put space, which took practice, right? I had to learn how to like literally sit there. I'd be like gripping the chair. And then I'd say, okay, it's been a minute, right? And then I'd be like, I could do two minutes. I could do three minutes.

I can do this by putting the space. It allowed me to say like, wait a minute, do I want to autopilot and just go that knee-jerk reaction and just go right into what I always do? Or do I want to make a conscious choice to be able to say I'm going to handle this differently? Yeah. And that's literally the crux of my book. I talk about this so much, that space where you feel like it's never going to happen. And eventually that space gets bigger.

So we also have error detection areas in our brain. So when you do the thing, when you do the knee-jerk reaction, we have the ability to go back and realize that we did something wrong and that we need to re-diver. So if you feel like you're failing, quote-unquote, at changing, just continue to pay attention to it because that space will get bigger. And in that space, you insert the decision to divert those pathways into something different. And I love that because what you're also saying is like have some compassion, right?

Like you are human, it's going to grow. And if we can learn to have compassion for ourselves, we can also learn to have compassion for other people. Because like, I'm not going to air your dirty laundry, but I'll air mine though. But like with your situation, both of you could have gone back to knee-jerk reaction and I'm like, don't want to do that. Same with me and Ryan. Like, we have so many times. I have these super avoidant parts from. I'm like, it's just easy if I stay at home with my dogs. Yeah. And I remember Ryan called you and even said, he goes, I know that that's easier for you, but do what's harder for you right now, which is for you. And I see him every day. He'll sit there and he's like, I know this is really tough, but I have to be honest with you, and he'll say it. That is how we create, because then what happened is like normally in the past, at least for us, with Ryan, it was like, most of the women he dated, it was like, oh, he'd get met with a ton of emotion and these people would like, then he would shut down, right? Then he would come and barrage him and attack and, you know, put him down.

It seems to be really common, especially if the avoidant. And then we see the avoidant just shuts down because they're like, cool, I do nothing right. I'm rejected. Like, just shut your mouth and just take it. Where, so when we first started to date, he went back and. And so when we first started to date, he went back. And he. to that. And for me, it was really important to be like, hey, what's coming up for you? By doing that consistently, now he, exactly, he learned, this is safe. I can express myself. My partner supports me. Even the other day, I said something. And he was like, thank you so much for actually supporting me and not judging me. I was like, of course you're a human. You guys. Thank you. Because when you can have compassion for yourself, for me, I'm like, I have my anxiety. I have my shit, right? Yeah. But it doesn't define me. It's the same with your partner. If we can learn that like avoidance are not bad people, anxious people are not bad people. We are coming from default. Yes, from something that you've learned that served you as a

safety mechanism, which worked at the time when it developed. I'm going to blow your mind a little bit. Do it. When we're compassionate with ourselves, we've released dopamine. Shut the fire. When we berate ourselves, we don't. What did I say in the beginning of this podcast? Dopamine is a reward-based learning mechanism that tells you what you did right and what you should do to get to that point again. So when you go, hey girl, you did good there, it's going to be like, let's continue to do this. how many times you berated yourself for doing something, drinking, smoking, eating the cookie, texting the guy, and how many times did it work? Oh, I always think that. I'm like, if I screamed at you, would that change you? No, if I said I totally understand, you'd be like, okay, thanks. Exactly, that makes you feel good, but Lisa's day for me and so you're like, ooh, yeah, yeah, that's good, I want to keep doing that.

Oh, fuck it. So little congratulatory steps, small wins, appreciate them all. There are some days where I'm like, you're quite out of bed. Yeah, literally. And I congratulate myself for that. I went through a really hard time last year. 100% well that's kind of like whenever time I say like you know moving on from someone take them off the pedestal and I get like well that's easier said than done and I'm like for some people getting on a bed is hard you choose your heart right when you do it and you're like holy shit I did this I'm here now then it shows you I can keep doing it I can keep doing it confidence isn't built because you know what to do. Confidence is built when you've done it, you succeed and you're like, or you don't die, right? Like, it's a good, but it's a positive. And you realize, like, I can do it again.

Yes. But I did want to ask you because, like, I think a lot of people have been asking, like, the emotional versus the logic, right? The two sides, right, the two, if you will, two sides of the brain. Why can't we just move on? But I wanted to talk about kind of the battle between the limbic system and, like, the emotional and the prefrontal cortex, that logic part. Do they connect?

Do they communicate? Like, what is the disconnect? I love this question. So I think we have a twisted in the center. We think that those two parts of the brain should not communicate or they don't. They do. And the better you become at regulating your emotions or accepting that you are feeling a particular way, the better you become at regulating and strengthening the frontal cortex.

So it's not that you don't feel the emotion is that you can bounce back quicker. And what we see over time is you can actually change the functional connectivity between those two brain areas. So the white matter tracks, which carry fast. conducting information actually becomes thicker between the frontal cortex and the limbic system. So what that means is you've got a highway between the two. So you feel a particular way. You're annoyed because the guy you like, or girl, you insert whatever suits you, doesn't text you. And you go, hey, let's just check ourselves real quickly here because this is the little emotional brain that wants to take you down a particular narrative. Frontal cortex is like, no, we're not doing that.

That's emotional regulation, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, whatever you want to call. on it. And you can practice that and you get better and better and better every time. So those little blips still come up. You just don't linger in them. Because what you don't want is to become obsessive where this goes on for days and days and days where you then end up in this reward-seeking behavior where you're stalking them. You're stalking their ex. Now you know their mom's name. It's just, it becomes a whole thing. I mean, I've been there. Oh, yeah, been there. I've stalked this girl so hard ones. My ex-ex's new girlfriend, which they're not together anymore. You're not going to know that? See what I did that?

proved her point. I stork her so hard. And then I swear if I bumped her in the street, I would have been like, oh my God, you're a celebrity. How was your trip to Bali last year? Your royalty to me right now. Yeah, that pink dress is great color in you. Yeah, because I built this idea in my head.

To the point when they broke up, I was still in a habit of checking up on her because that's the automaticity. Pick up the phone, go and check. I can't even remember her name. Thank goodness. Thank God for that. And I would just do it out of habit.

And again, it's proof that those pathways get repeated. it. So the more you repeat something, the more you do it without thought. Question on, the prefrontal cortex, obviously, the logic part is the limbic system like the amygdala and like, is it a specific part of the brain? It's a network of brain area. So you've got like the interior single cortex, a whole bunch of stuff in sort of this inner area of the brain. So the emotional part of the brain is important. I don't want people to think, oh, I'm too emotional because I'm quite emotional. Like I'm, it is who I am. It's the reason I. I am, who I am. It's the reason why your podcast does so well, because you just say things the way they are. And I'm like, she's speaking from the heart. Just say it, right? But you have good emotional regulation where if shit comes up in your life, you're like, uh-uh, we're going to check this right now, pay attention to it instead of spiraling. Yeah. Because if left unchecked, you were going to catastrophizing where you create this whole ideology of what is going on in your head that is not

necessarily true. What that does is it changes the connectivity between the default mode network. So the network of brain areas responsible for your idle thinking. You know, you're not thinking of anything. You're going through life, you're cruising, you're driving, you're washing the dishes, you're not doing anything so you can't distract yourself. That's your internal mind wondering. If it is connected with parts of the brain that communicates threat, that could be upregulated in a way that then becomes ruminative, negative. It's a space that you don't want to be in because of the way that you have essentially wired this part of the brain. And what do you have any tools or things that people can do. I know your book is full of them, but things that come to

the top of like, if anybody's listening right now being like, okay, I do that, right? Where do they start? Is it something as simple as like, name it, right? Or what can we do if you don't necessarily have the self-awareness? Yeah. Naming your emotions is one of the biggest tools because what we've seen is that it actually reactivates the ventral media prefrontal cortex, part of the brain for logic, and it quietens down the amygdala. Then you can actually process the thoughts and emotions as well without their fear perception involved. Because the problem is that once that amygda is active or heightened, it's going to start detecting threats in your environment until it quietens down. So all of a sudden, everything becomes exacerbated.

I was talking to Scott, I think, and we were talking about the snake or stick theory. So you're walking in the desert and you see a stick, which looks like a snake. It's not a snake, it's a stick. But now all of a sudden you're hypervigilant and all you're doing is scanning for snakes. Yeah. Okay, but you wouldn't have done unless you had. accidentally thought that that was a snake. Yeah, I know what you mean. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's how the amygdala works. So if you perceive something to be maybe threatening,

like somebody hasn't text you or whatever, you get an email, now your amygdala's active, which to be very, that happened to me, like, or you get an email and you assume the worst. And then for like 45 minutes, I'm like on edge and I'm like constantly rereading, going back. And I'm like, actually, that wasn't anything. I reread the email and there wasn't an issue. Yes. And that can skewer your bias as well. That can skewer your perception of what you're actually seeing. And you know that, because you can reread a text when you're relaxed and go, I definitely did that one wrong. That wasn't the tone I had put for them or like, oh, wow, they actually didn't say anything that bad.

It was just pretty direct, yes. And the thing is, the body needs to communicate with the brain that the threat has been removed. So the snake is not there. And that takes some time. We can also fast forward that mechanism by doing something like the physiological sigh or some kind of slow breathing where you're exacerbating the out breath. So four, six breathing. What that does is it reinstate activity in the parasympathetic nervous system.

The amygdala goes, okay, there's no threats yet. Let's quieten down. If you don't quieten down that amygdala, it can become a trigger-stack and event where by the end of the day, you're like, whoa, everything's out to get me. Yeah. God, I flip that up every time I'm like parasympathetic, sympathetic, and I always mess it up. I don't know why it's like, you know, there's certain things in your brain. And so I was going to just conclude to say that all of these things increase your emotional intelligence, awareness, and create that connection between. the emotional and the logical brain.

So that over time you still perceive the stick to be a snake accidentally or you still get triggered by the text, but you're able to regulate from it a lot quicker so it doesn't ruin the rest of your day. Well, someone had asked, why can't our emotions kiss up with our logic? You know the facts, but it still hurts. Because I think we know that. Cognitively, right?

I'm intellectualizing. I understand it mentally, right? Like, okay, they're not good for me. But yet, all of a sudden, I'm spiraling and I'm noodling and I'm canoodling onto it. But I understand, like, there are emotional memories, right? And logical reasoning might not necessarily be accessible. But at least I know for me, like, from when I try to intellectualize, like, why questions, why, why, we're just stuck on, like, our brain not wanting to feel the feelings. But I'm curious, like, what do you hear when I say that?

So I was going to talk about the illusionary truth effect, does it? That's what I was looking up. Get on in there. Yeah. So the illusionary truth effect is the effect that if you hear something repeatedly over and over and over again, even if it is wrong, you will ingrain that. thought in your brain. So you can start to believe your negative thought. So over time, you start to believe the lies that you tell yourself because thoughts can be spontaneous, they can be triggered by anything. But if you repeat them long enough, you start to believe that they are true, even if you

consciously know that they're not. Yeah. So someone had asked, why do I spiral when I feel my needs aren't being met? Hmm. So you might have had some unmet childhood needs, which now tell you that you need to act a particular way to get the information that you need because you weren't helped as a child when you needed something. So now you've learned that you have to overcompensate. Especially like if you had a caregiver for me, my caregivers made it very clear that my needs were too much because they didn't have the bandwidth in order to satisfy them. So now when somebody didn't, it triggered me to be like, oh my God, that's my parents, right? That's my dad. And I spiral because it was easier for me to blame and shame myself because as a little frittata baby who had her brain that was like a fourth developed,

I just assumed and put it in there, okay, your needs are too much. So if this person can't satisfy it, there's something wrong with you. Yes. And that to me just sounds like automatic, right? Like that conditioning, we go right back into what we've always known. And then I feel like rejection sensitivity is something that's been coming up a lot. And I'd love to know, like, obviously we talked about obsession being a coping mechanism, right? Like when you have low self-esteem, it becomes safer.

But like, I also want to know the fear of rejection activating survival instincts. Like, how does, what happens there? And that rejection sensitivity can be heightened again if you were rejected as a child. So over time, your fear of rejection, you've learned a particular pattern that you get rejected. So now you're hypervigilant to rejection. So you're anticipating, as I said earlier, your brain is an anticipation machine, or a predictive machine that kind of knows what's going to happen. So you start to think, I'm going to get rejected anyway.

Or I don't want to do this because I'm going to get rejected. Right. And you become hypersensitive because you don't put yourself in the places where you can gain evidence that you can do it. So it's a double whammy there. You've got this rejection sensitivity and you don't put yourself out of this, so now you're not gaining any evidence

to tell you that you are wrong and that you can do it. Because we gain confidence by going to places where we have none and then gaining evidence that we can do it. But if you don't do it, you don't gain that evidence and that heightened sensitivity of rejection becomes hyper-exacitated. And somebody had asked the question right after was, I assume I'm ugly and men leave me due to my looks. How do I stop obsessing over my appearance

after a breakup. And I think you were really just describing that. Here's the thing, if you grew up that your looks were not accepted by your caregivers, or like I've had clients that will say, like, my parents were all about- Being as well. Which one? Children? Bullying. Bullying, exactly. Or like, I've had people who are like, my mother, you know, it was obsessed with being pretty or you always had to look put together. Well, then that's, to me, what I see is if you're feeling in the blanks, right? Someone breaks up with you and you're automatically assuming it's because I'm not pretty. It's like, that's projecting onto them how we feel. Because I feel like that must be the reason you don't like me when I might have nothing to do with that. Well, exactly. You know what I love about the internet is that we have an insight to other people. So you see people of all calibers pretty ugly, whatever, which is subjective, by the way.

And beauty literally is in the eye of the beholder because you could actually find someone very attractive that is maybe not necessarily quote unquote attractive on paper, but their personality is what, you know, changes everything. And it scovers your perception of what they look like. And it shows that beauty is really like deeper than just physical surface level. And you can also have someone equally that's so beautiful and have a horrible personality. If you have a horrible personality, you might like that. But if you have a nice personality, you're going to be repulsed by that, regardless of what they look like. And so what I love about the internet is that you can look anyway and you're always going to find love. It's like the halo effect, right?

Like, oh, well, they're pretty. They must be amazing. And you're like, oh, my goodness. Right? Just because they have one aspect does not make them that every. thing means that they're amazing. Or vice versa, right? Oh, I don't like this one thing, so they must not be good. And it's like to me, I see that's rigidity, black and white, good or bad. Well, that's what I was going to say. It gives me kind of like a fixed mindset type thinking. And that's what's so important about Genusian thinking is that two things can coexist at the same time and neither cancels the

other one out. So it's the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in mind. Okay, maybe you're not, quote, and quote, pretty on paper, but it doesn't mean that you're unworthy or unlovable because of your looks. Right. There's not the automatic. Right. It's not mutually exclusive of like they broke up with you because you're ugly. Exactly. Maybe they just didn't think they were compatible with you. Well, exactly. And I think, you know, what, women have it hard as well. I think men have it hard. You know, I think we won't have it hard. Everybody has it hard. But it's a doggy dog-dog world. We put too much emphasis on what people look like. But I think that's shifting. And that's what I love about podcasts like yours because we're getting deeper into the roots of what is going on in our brains and our minds that we can better ourselves to be better looking because we're working from the inside out.

I love that. Can we talk about now, like kind of end this by, how do we stop obsessing, right? Because we know why, right? We understand the cognitive. And for anybody who's listening, anytime you ask why, we could give you the why. I could tell you all day, well, this is what's happening in your brain, but that's not what's actually happening, right? What we need to look at is what's internal. So I was curious because someone had asked, how do I stop or reduce 24-7 obsessive thoughts over my ex, even a year after the breakup? And I wanted to talk about, do we have any cognitive reframing techniques or anything that you like that could help to break the loops. Well, one thing that I'm getting from that is that it's a repeated pattern that has been

reinforced by continuously checking up on them. I'm going to bet my bottom dollar that this person is checking up on their ex and then reinforcing that obsessive behavior through the slot machine. You're getting that reward and dopamine says let's continue to do this. And so you continue to do it. So obsession is a thing that happens, but it's also a choice. Yeah. You know, that's the ugly truth. It lies in your choices for sure. Because the more you give into it, the more it's going to just reciprocate and strengthen

those pathways. So when you feel the urge to check up or to go back and check on them, delete all the photos, sever all contact. The fundamentals of neuroplasticity are that if two neurons, it's called spike-time independent and plasticity. If two neurons simultaneously activate within a specific time frame with enough strength, they will merge. And so the opposite is true as well. If they don't sink, so neurons that fail to sink, fail to link. So if they don't communicate, so you get that urge, check up on them, think about them, go and look at photos, listen to a sad song and you go, I'm going to add that space

in there, over time, you will sever the automatic connection, the neurons that find sequence that lead you down a trajectory of rabbit hole. Yeah. You know, Alison Wonderland and I, and you go. Oh, yeah. You can choose to not go there. This is the other thing. Like, people have so much more strength, mental strength, than they get themselves credit

for. You're better than that. You're bigger than that. I know that it's not where you want to hear. And you're like, no, I need the tool. You are the tool. Yeah. You can stop it.

And as somebody who did that, like, you're not wrong, right? It was, it's the same as, again, like, I always use the gym analogy because it just, It just fits. It's like when you first walk in, you're like a bull in a china shop. You don't know what you're doing. But the more you do it, the more you start to understand what is going on. And for me, look, I used to because someone had asked, how do you not become obsessed with a guy when you start showing interest? That right there is, first of all, why Masha and I created the nervous system course. It's like regulating your nervous system is just even understanding it. Okay, what happens right before they show you interest, right? Are you anticipating? Are you judging yourself? Are you hoping that they're going to validate you, right? Like, how do you view yourself, how do you view them? Are you putting them on a pedestal? That just even cognitive awareness. But then even to me, how do I stop the obsession? It's like, it's understanding what it looks like, right? If I don't, how do I know how to stop it if I don't know what I do? Yeah. And the other thing is, you've got that motivation drive to go and check. You're in reward-seeking behavior. So your dopamine is spiked. Use it for something else. Go to the gym.

You may capitalize on this dopamine because it's there and it doesn't really have morals. so you might as well, okay, well, I actually want to check on them. But you know what? I actually didn't get that email done. So I'm going to dive out. I'm going to use it for something else. I'm going to use it for something more positive, like, I don't know, doing that hobby. I've learned guitar a year ago, and it's honestly been my saving grace.

Anyone that is listening, if you don't have a hobby, learn something new, pick up a new thing, dive out into something that's going to give you fulfillment, because checking up on them, obsessing over them is just a repeated pattern that is smoking mirrors? fake? I'm getting this kind of like smoke emoji coming up in my mind. It's not true. It's not true. And you've created that fake reality of what's going on. I remember doing that with a guy I dated right before Ryan. Like, I was obsessive. I just kept checking up and I created a narrative. I created that he must be so much happier now without me and all of this. Sure enough, Homeboy reached out to me like six months ago to admit that like he wasn't doing very well. And like now he's in a better place. But I had to

even stop and be like, you filled in the blanks. You filled in the blanks because him not choosing you meant what? There's something wrong with you. He's happier without you, right? That's my core belief I'm projecting onto this guy. That doesn't mean that that's the actual scenario. So for me, it was what you said, unfollowed, no longer looked, focused on my relationship. I, because I had meant Ryan and we started to progress. And the one thing that I really want to clarify, anytime they come into your mind, you don't have to say, oh, my God, get rid of them. I don't want to do it. It's like you're allowed to acknowledge, oh, they're in my mind. Okay. Do you know what I do? Someone in my Instagram called it a mental bitch fest, which I absolutely

love. So I schedule a mental bitch fest. So I just had a scenario in my personal life, which I shared with you, very juicy. And what I do is I go, okay, you have six minutes. Yeah. To just go, all in. Yeah. And I'm like, that bitch, man, and then the timer goes off. I'm like, get on to the next. And I go back to the walk. I do that with crying. I'll be like, this is it. You put a sad song on and you're like, feel it. And then when the song is over, I'm like, and we're done. Yeah, literally. Because you have so much more control than you think.

Now, just back to what you were saying, when we're going through a breakup, part of the brain that are responsible for autobiographical memories are heightened. Call the anterior cingle cortex. So what will happen is you'll start to reminisce on all the things you could have done differently to change the outcome that you cannot change, by the way. We don't have a time machine. So you might as well use that information for future occurrences. So you're putting yourself in a place of empowerment.

So you're saying, okay, instead of changing the past, what do I want different for the future? Because a lot of the times we also think, oh, what if they don't like me? What if you don't like them? Right. Did you ever consider that? Did you ever consider that maybe you are the one that might not actually end up wanting them, but you're so focused on what they want that you end up falling into this trap. It's the reason why I take my time sometimes with things and I'm like, I need to sit on it,

I need to sleep on it to make sure that I'm coming from a place of logic, intuitive thinking, and not just responding because someone is reciprocating. Because I have the tendency to do that. I'm like, they like me. And I'm like, no, hang on a second. Let's just make sure we're making the right decision here that comes from the heart, comes from the intuitive brain, the mind, which is you choosing yourself and not waiting for someone else to choose you.

Because then you self-abandoned, right? And that's why I think when the person asked of like, how do you not become obsessed? It's like ground yourself, right? Every time you start to fantasize, be like, wait, what facts do I have to back this? up, right? I don't. I don't know this person. Fact or fiction. Factor fiction all the time. Is it fact or is it fiction? Right? And like for me, I couldn't access that until I had started to understand where I had learned the opposite, right? And so I think that's also it. There are layers to this. Like if you're somebody that you literally cannot sit still with a text message, it's like,

well, then trying to sit and be like, you know, let me be logical. It's like, that's probably not going to happen right now. But you know what could? Go for a walk. Yeah. What could is that you could get some sunshine in your eyes and- I can snap you out of that tunnel like thinking that I was talking about in the beginning. Because when you're on your phone, you will end up going down a rabbit hole. And you know that feeling, right? Oh, yeah. You're like getting sucked in. So just snap out of it. Go and step outside. What you're also doing when you're walking is you're deactivating the amygdala. So now you can process thoughts and emotions without that fear perception involved. So when you come back, you're like, oh, maybe I over exacerbated that thing in my head. You can think about things more

logically. I like the bilateral movements of walking too. It just helps. Or sometimes I'll even ground myself of like five things I can see, four things I can touch, three things I can take. whatever. There are three things I can smell, whatever, whatever, and it just helps to be like, oh, I'm here right now. I'm not a child who's in my parents living room. I am not a kid who is beholden to what other people say. And like you said, I don't have to look and see if you're choosing me. I can also say if I'm choosing you. And here's the other side. I know what if it doesn't work out. What if they leave me? What, what, what if it does work out? Yeah. Right. Are you ready for that too? I talk about this all the time. You break your own heart twice

by thinking that what if it doesn't work out. And you know what? We're just, we're losing touch with dating, and I get it, the dating market is just crazy right now. But it's supposed to be fun as well. You know, in a way, it's like those games that you play where you're both reciprocating and you're both giving and taking, and it's a bit of a game. It can be fun as long as both parties are playing. A hundred and a ten. Dude, what a fun.

I'm so stoked we got to do this. I hope this was beneficial for you guys. I hope that you could learn a little bit more of just even the why, right? Understanding the why and learning a few get Nicole's book rewire. There are so many different hacks in there. different tools, different modalities. But at the end of the day... I have a whole breakup chapter as well.

Yep. Or, you know, there's courses. Like, you got something for everybody. Get the book, join a course. But at the end of the day, just know how do you stop doing it? You take control of your fucking life. You start to come home to yourself and you start to realize that you do have a lot more power than you give yourself.

And our mindsets, I mean, I talk about mindsets in the book extensively. The way that you perceive yourself has a huge impact on how your physiology then reacts. You know, they've done research where they looked at individuals that believe the stress was good for them versus ones that were told their stress was bad for them. The ones that thought that stress was good, actually their blood pressure didn't come up as high. And they recovered from the stress a lot quicker. So your central nervous system is now more adaptive

because of what you believe stress to be. And this is why I talk a lot about mindsets. And I'm like, dating is fun. Let's reframe this. Do you even want to date them? Your mindset is going to change how your body shows up. I love that. Thank you so much for coming on.

And guys, we'll link everything for Nicole's socials and the book in the notes. Guys, don't forget to subscribe. Follow along on the socials. Follow Nicole. Follow me. And thank you guys for spending another week with us.