How to Stop Intrusive Voices | Dr. Ethan Kross & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - One of the most common questions I've received

00:00:04.400 | over the years is on YouTube in particular,

00:00:07.760 | is how to stop intrusive voices.

00:00:11.520 | And occasionally when people ask these questions,

00:00:14.460 | they'll highlight that some parent or an ex

00:00:19.460 | or something will kind of a judge voice in there.

00:00:24.800 | And they don't know if it's their voice

00:00:26.360 | or the other person's voice, but it's in their head

00:00:28.240 | and it's very unpleasant.

00:00:29.900 | Presumably this circles back to childhood traumas

00:00:33.560 | or other forms of traumas,

00:00:34.560 | but irrespective of the origins,

00:00:37.960 | are there any tools specifically

00:00:40.400 | to deal with intrusive thoughts and thought patterns,

00:00:44.080 | maybe even OCD like thought patterns?

00:00:46.200 | - So a couple of responses to that.

00:00:48.840 | So first of all, I think step one is recognizing

00:00:52.860 | that if you are hearing another voice,

00:00:55.800 | like if you can hear your dad's voice in your head,

00:00:59.360 | it's not your dad who is in your head,

00:01:01.400 | that is a simulation that you are engaging in

00:01:03.760 | that your brain is capable of producing.

00:01:07.240 | And so that I think can be informative

00:01:10.560 | for people who are curious about these inner worlds.

00:01:13.280 | - I'm not referring to auditory hallucinations.

00:01:15.680 | I'm referring to the language of somebody,

00:01:19.620 | maybe not in that person's voice,

00:01:22.280 | but they're hearing like, maybe not you're a bad person,

00:01:25.040 | but like you're never good.

00:01:27.280 | You're not good enough.

00:01:28.120 | Like it's not enough, or just feeling like,

00:01:30.660 | so they can't enjoy the good things in life

00:01:33.880 | because of these intrusive negative voices.

00:01:36.040 | - Here's something that I hope listeners and viewers

00:01:39.280 | will find exceptionally liberating,

00:01:42.100 | as I have found liberating from just knowing the science.

00:01:44.920 | So actually I talk about these intrusive thoughts in "Shift."

00:01:48.360 | They are incredibly normative.

00:01:52.320 | And so there's research which looks at like,

00:01:53.920 | how frequently have you experienced an intrusive thought

00:01:56.520 | over the past week or a month or two months?

00:01:58.760 | The proportion of people who experience these dark thoughts

00:02:01.960 | is exceptionally high.

00:02:04.680 | I don't remember the exact percentage,

00:02:06.580 | but it is in my book and it is like near ceiling.

00:02:10.400 | I will do an exercise with my classes,

00:02:13.000 | my undergraduate classes,

00:02:14.480 | where I will ask them to anonymously describe

00:02:19.080 | whether they've experienced like a dark thought

00:02:21.000 | over the past week.

00:02:22.100 | Almost all of them are capable of generating them.

00:02:25.200 | And some of these thoughts are really, really dark.

00:02:29.080 | I will often experience a very dark intrusive thought

00:02:33.520 | when I'm exercising at the gym.

00:02:35.560 | You're looking at me with curiosity

00:02:37.040 | and a bit of concern right now.

00:02:38.200 | - No, I'm not concerned, I'm just fascinated.

00:02:40.720 | You know, I have ideas about why this may be,

00:02:42.520 | but I'm just fascinated.

00:02:44.000 | I don't know that I've had dark thoughts in the gym,

00:02:46.160 | but it's interesting.

00:02:47.520 | - Here's my dark thought.

00:02:48.440 | Watch out if you see me in the gym from here on.

00:02:51.200 | So if I'm carrying like a heavy dumbbell

00:02:55.460 | from a bench to a rack,

00:02:57.720 | I will sometimes have a thought of dropping it

00:03:00.800 | on the face of another person on a mat.

00:03:04.400 | - Oh my goodness.

00:03:05.240 | - It's terribly dark.

00:03:06.640 | It's a terrible, terrible thought.

00:03:08.440 | So why am I experiencing that?

00:03:10.780 | It is most likely the brain's simulating worst case scenarios

00:03:15.780 | to prevent me from doing it.

00:03:17.160 | Of course, I don't want to drop a dumbbell on someone

00:03:19.880 | I never have.

00:03:20.840 | And so that's one explanation for why this is so normative.

00:03:24.600 | It's your brain's way of constantly,

00:03:27.940 | there's a theory that we're constantly simulating

00:03:31.080 | all sorts of possibilities for what could happen.

00:03:34.520 | And most of these simulations,

00:03:36.020 | the probability of them coming to fruition

00:03:37.840 | are exceptionally low, infinitesimally small.

00:03:41.480 | But on occasion, some of the wacky ones

00:03:43.200 | do escape into awareness.

00:03:45.400 | And that's when we get the dark thought

00:03:47.120 | about harming someone or doing something illegal

00:03:50.640 | in a pretty aggressive, you know, egregious way,

00:03:52.520 | or in my case, dropping the dumbbell on, you know,

00:03:55.720 | the person stretching on their face.

00:03:58.040 | And so here's what I find liberating.

00:04:00.980 | Me understanding that this is just how my brain works.

00:04:05.980 | Well, that doesn't mean now

00:04:09.640 | that I'm something wrong with me as a human being, right?

00:04:13.160 | That I'm morally corrupt in any way.

00:04:16.080 | My brain's gonna sometimes produce

00:04:17.480 | these kinds of dark thoughts.

00:04:19.080 | I'm not gonna act on them.

00:04:20.680 | And as long as I'm not acting on them, it's all good.

00:04:24.080 | It's almost like when people learn

00:04:26.200 | about the physiological response to anxiety,

00:04:30.440 | before they know what is happening,

00:04:33.720 | that can often be an incredibly distressing experience.

00:04:36.480 | Like all of a sudden your stomach is churning,

00:04:39.000 | your palms are sweating.

00:04:41.160 | But in research, which shows like if you,

00:04:43.860 | if you communicate to people,

00:04:46.000 | "Hey, this is just your body preparing yourselves

00:04:49.920 | to adaptively respond to this uncertain circumstance

00:04:53.800 | you face."

00:04:55.080 | All of a sudden you are totally flipping the frame.

00:04:57.720 | And now this is, I'm a Lamborghini, right?

00:05:02.000 | I am rising to the occasion.

00:05:03.440 | My body's doing what it should be doing

00:05:05.760 | to allow me to excel here.

00:05:07.780 | That's the kind of flip that I think

00:05:09.880 | understanding the frequency and origins

00:05:13.240 | of intrusive thoughts can have for folks.

00:05:15.320 | So step one is just recognizing

00:05:17.320 | if you experience intrusive thoughts at times,

00:05:19.120 | again, welcome to the human condition.

00:05:21.120 | It's a little blip in how our brain operates.

00:05:24.720 | But a lot of these tools have also been shown to be useful

00:05:27.360 | for nipping repetitive thinking in the bud.

00:05:31.200 | So when you're curtailing chatter,

00:05:34.240 | you are also curtailing the likelihood of perseverating.

00:05:38.360 | The reason why we often perseverate

00:05:41.040 | on problems we're experiencing is we are,

00:05:43.880 | we're highly motivated to make sense of these circumstances

00:05:47.880 | so we can move on with our lives.

00:05:49.600 | And our brain, this wonderful problem-solving organ

00:05:51.960 | that we possess,

00:05:52.840 | it just keeps churning until we've solved that problem.

00:05:55.360 | And that's surfacing all sorts of related thoughts

00:05:58.680 | here and there until you get there.

00:06:00.520 | And so when you solve the problem,

00:06:02.720 | those thoughts tend to subside too.

00:06:05.280 | - I have two points,

00:06:08.080 | both of which are essentially questions.

00:06:10.080 | I think it's relatively common for people

00:06:14.400 | when they go to a bridge or a dam

00:06:16.240 | or something like something very high

00:06:19.000 | with the potential for essentially a fatal fall,

00:06:22.480 | were they to jump off, to have the thought,

00:06:25.240 | what keeps me from jumping off

00:06:27.040 | when in fact they absolutely don't want to jump off.

00:06:29.400 | And it seems like it's another example of like,

00:06:31.480 | it's registering the danger

00:06:32.920 | and the severity of the consequences.

00:06:34.840 | It also, I realize helps us understand the level of risk.

00:06:38.160 | - That's right.

00:06:39.000 | - You know, I think Alex Honnold,

00:06:40.600 | who famously did "Free Solo" to El Cap,

00:06:45.080 | a remarkable movie, by the way,

00:06:46.400 | just along the lines of what we're talking about,

00:06:49.480 | the way the movie is constructed,

00:06:51.440 | and I think Jimmy Chin and colleagues who made that movie

00:06:54.040 | did such an incredible job,

00:06:55.480 | not just with the cinematography,

00:06:56.720 | but you know he survives

00:06:58.400 | from the very beginning of the movie,

00:06:59.760 | and yet it's terrifying to watch the whole thing.

00:07:01.960 | And it's kind of a hour, 45 minute expedition

00:07:06.800 | of exactly what we're talking about.

00:07:09.360 | In that movie, as I recall,

00:07:10.440 | Alex spells out the assessment of risk and consequence,

00:07:14.800 | right, you know, level of risk, level of consequence,

00:07:17.960 | and how those are key parameters to evaluate.

00:07:20.800 | And he's obviously done that for himself and he succeeded.

00:07:23.320 | And I hope he never does it again,

00:07:25.640 | only because he seems like a really delightful person

00:07:28.800 | when it'd be nice to keep him around.

00:07:30.640 | And he's doing other important work now.

00:07:32.600 | But the point being that I think it's a very natural thing

00:07:36.880 | to evaluate risk and consequence

00:07:39.400 | in a way that quote unquote feels dark,

00:07:42.240 | but it's actually highly adaptive

00:07:44.400 | through the lens that we're talking about it.

00:07:46.980 | So that's one point.

00:07:48.480 | - Well, just to that point, if I can interject.

00:07:50.680 | So just to normalize this further for folks,

00:07:54.240 | so my family is very special to me as it is to most people.

00:08:00.160 | When my first daughter was born,

00:08:02.480 | we used to live in this house that had this,

00:08:04.640 | on the second floor, there was a,

00:08:06.680 | I don't know if you'd describe it as an overpass,

00:08:08.560 | but it was open to the floor beneath.

00:08:10.880 | And I remember having these intrusive thoughts of at night

00:08:14.080 | when we'd have to bring my daughter into the bedroom

00:08:16.160 | to feed her or change her diaper, whatever,

00:08:19.000 | I would have these thoughts of carrying her

00:08:20.960 | and then dropping her over into the, you know,

00:08:25.160 | and splat, like not pleasant thoughts to experience

00:08:28.940 | in the middle of the night.

00:08:30.320 | It speaks to this point that you are raising

00:08:32.880 | that was likely my mind's way of homing in

00:08:36.440 | on a really, really important issue in my life

00:08:39.280 | that I wanna make sure never, ever, ever happens.

00:08:42.480 | It is not an indication that I'm morally corrupt

00:08:45.520 | or incredibly dark person.

00:08:47.800 | It's how my brain is operating, so.

00:08:50.480 | - Yeah, you're assessing risk and consequence

00:08:52.660 | in an adaptive way.

00:08:55.960 | Yeah, it's fascinating to think about.

00:08:59.260 | The second comment slash question

00:09:02.100 | that I'd love your thoughts on is, you know,

00:09:06.060 | I had this bulldog, I talk about him all the time,

00:09:08.320 | this bulldog Mastiff, and he had one default behavior

00:09:12.780 | that if he couldn't engage in it,

00:09:15.380 | would create anxiety in him.

00:09:16.660 | And that was, he liked to chew, right?

00:09:19.060 | He liked to gnaw on things.

00:09:20.020 | As a puppy, he actually would teeth on bricks

00:09:22.260 | in the backyard.

00:09:23.260 | I was like, oh my goodness, it looks so painful to me.

00:09:25.620 | And sometimes he'd bite through a lip.

00:09:27.900 | You know, the bulldog part of their phenotype

00:09:29.920 | is that a lot of the pain receptors

00:09:31.200 | have been bred out of their face.

00:09:32.320 | And so they, and I just think, oh my goodness,

00:09:34.040 | I go out there and I, you know, I was like distraught

00:09:36.180 | at how much pain he must be causing himself.

00:09:37.720 | It was obviously less than I perceived.

00:09:40.200 | But nonetheless, this gnawing behavior was what was,

00:09:44.160 | you could just see it.

00:09:45.000 | It gave him such pleasure, right?

00:09:46.820 | You give him something to chew on,

00:09:47.660 | and it just, you could just see the anxiety

00:09:49.840 | like dissolve out of him.

00:09:51.620 | I've known a number of people

00:09:54.520 | that are fairly high intensity in terms of,

00:09:56.480 | they speak fast, high density of thought,

00:09:58.720 | information, et cetera, at least outwardly,

00:10:01.040 | who claim that they have got sort of a high RPM internally.

00:10:04.560 | And I vary, and depending on time of day

00:10:08.000 | and time of year on this,

00:10:09.320 | but I'd place myself more or less into that category.

00:10:12.600 | Engaging in an activity that harnesses my full attention,

00:10:16.160 | perhaps we could call it flow,

00:10:19.120 | but nonetheless, engaging in an activity

00:10:21.640 | that harnesses my full attention,

00:10:24.260 | feels to me so unbelievably satisfying.

00:10:28.380 | - Yeah.

00:10:29.580 | - So unbelievably satisfying.

00:10:31.060 | I think it's for two reasons.

00:10:32.180 | One is the benefits of doing those activities,

00:10:34.660 | studying, learning, podcasting, doing research,

00:10:37.740 | connecting with someone in a really directed way,

00:10:39.580 | like getting into that tunnel with them,

00:10:42.120 | as we're doing now, there's a positive feature.

00:10:45.580 | And then there's also the removal of a negative,

00:10:47.620 | like that those RPM are not humming in the background.

00:10:51.420 | And I think for a lot of people,

00:10:53.420 | like ultra runners, and I know a lot of former addicts

00:10:58.420 | that start running marathons and get sober and stay sober.

00:11:01.460 | - Yeah.

00:11:02.820 | - It's remarkable how physical activity

00:11:05.340 | or cognitive activity can kind of take us

00:11:07.800 | into that plane of focus that both makes us productive,

00:11:11.740 | makes us fitter, but also relieves this inner voice.

00:11:14.820 | It kind of like lets the tension out the same way

00:11:16.760 | that I observed Costello letting the tension out

00:11:19.180 | through gnawing on these bricks or rawhides

00:11:21.380 | or whatever it was.

00:11:23.220 | And so my question is, is there, as I'm assuming,

00:11:28.220 | a relationship between the physical and the mental?

00:11:31.460 | Do we basically have a certain amount of energy in us

00:11:34.460 | and it varies between people and we need to harness

00:11:37.300 | and/or adjust that level of energy

00:11:39.660 | and to do that in ways that hopefully make us a living

00:11:42.220 | or bring our social relationships more closely together?

00:11:45.260 | - Well, it certainly plays out in physical context

00:11:48.180 | as you're describing, but it also, as you alluded to,

00:11:50.700 | plays out in cognitive contexts.

00:11:52.940 | When there is this match, this sweet spot

00:11:56.140 | between the demands, like you're in a situation

00:12:00.140 | that is actually challenging,

00:12:02.780 | either physically or cognitively,

00:12:05.400 | and the resources that you bring to that situation

00:12:09.440 | perfectly match the demands.

00:12:12.500 | So it's a taxing situation,

00:12:14.020 | but you are able to engage with it completely.

00:12:17.500 | That is the formula for getting, stuck is the wrong word,

00:12:21.580 | for getting immersed in these kinds of flow states,

00:12:24.700 | which are, for many people, the goal that they have

00:12:28.700 | in their lives, both recreationally and professionally.

00:12:31.580 | And so you, as someone who is ideally

00:12:34.300 | getting into these flow states with your guests,

00:12:36.940 | I would hope and imagine, and that's always the aspiration,

00:12:40.220 | that must feel really good.

00:12:42.360 | I mean, you talk for a long time with people.

00:12:46.020 | Does it feel like a long time

00:12:47.240 | when you're having those conversations?

00:12:48.540 | - No, time perception completely changes.

00:12:50.740 | When I do this for two or three hours a week,

00:12:52.380 | and then when we do a solo episode,

00:12:53.880 | sometimes the recording's longest ever yet

00:12:55.980 | is 11 hours edited down.

00:12:58.540 | But those can be anywhere from 90 minutes to four hours,

00:13:03.540 | or a live event.

00:13:06.580 | And I couldn't tell you.

00:13:08.760 | It just seems like time just passes.

00:13:10.540 | Time dissolves away.

00:13:11.700 | - And when, that is because you are so absorbed in the moment

00:13:16.220 | and meeting the challenges of that situation

00:13:19.540 | that all of your attention is commanded

00:13:22.020 | to that point in time, that moment.

00:13:26.620 | And that doesn't leave a whole lot of room

00:13:28.720 | for all of the chatter to percolate in the background.

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How to Stop Intrusive Voices | Dr. Ethan Kross & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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