Why do you think it's so difficult to break the habit of
obsessive thinking? What if rumination is difficult to kick
because we evolved to be ruminators?
If you think back to our ancestors millions of years ago,
it becomes clear to you that they couldn't exactly afford to
just be happy with what they had.
They had to constantly be on the lookout for more of what
they wanted and less of what they didn't want. So it would
make sense that over time, natural selection would favor the
genes for rumination. But we also know that life today is
is drastically different from life millions of years ago
and many of the issues we face today, luckily, are not existential.
By existential,
I mean literally a matter of life or death.
I know it's not something that's at the forefront of our
minds as we navigate our everyday lives... to think about the
issues in our lives as fundamentally not existential (or not
as existential as we believe them to be). But certainly in the
context of how far we have come as a species,
it becomes clear to us. Now,
unfortunately, in an era of liquor stores making a killing and
prescription meds for anxiety being given out like hotcakes,
we can't exactly afford to wait for our genes to come around.
You know, I know —anybody who's struggled with wanting
to turn off their mind knows that one of our biggest issues today
is ourselves.
So I want to make this video today.
And in this video, I want to talk about rumination. What goes
on in our brain when we ruminate and what can we do to
stop it? Spoiler alert.
I'm going to be singing the praises of meditation but not
before I paint a compelling case for it.
Hopefully by the end of this video, if you're not already
a regular meditator, you're going to walk away with some
inspiration to pick up the practice.
That's going to be my goal.
You can let me know how well I do.
Did you know that scientists used to believe that the brain
is only active when a person is engaged in a focused activity?
When psychiatrist Hans Berger (the inventor of EEG) first
proposed that the brain is constantly busy, his ideas weren't
taken seriously.
It wasn't until PET scans were invented that scientists
could measure metabolic changes in the brain. As it turns
out, the metabolism of the brain doesn't change all that much
when a person goes from a state of rest to being engaged
in a focused mental task.
This observation is further validated by neurologist Marcus
Raichle in the mid-1990s.
He conducted experiments that revealed that the energy consumption
of the brain at work is only about 5% greater than that
of the brain at rest. In other words, even at rest, the
brain is constantly highly active. Anybody who's struggled with
anxiety knows this,
okay?
We don't need a study to tell us that. Raichle's discovery
at the time, though, was pretty big. In 2001,
he coined the term "default mode" to describe the circuitry
of the brain at rest. Since then, research interest in the "default
mode network" has skyrocketed with particular attention being
paid to the relationship between the default mode network
and psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety. When
a person is engaged in rumination, their default mode network
is said to be over-activated or hyper-connected.
This makes sense
when you consider what the default mode network actually
is. It's a network of brain regions that get activated together
when a person is ruminating; when their mind is at rest or when
they're not focusing on anything in particular.
So what are these regions? For one, there is the anterior medial
prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex.
These are two hubs that facilitate self-referential
processing, like thinking about your emotional state or remembering
events of the past. Second is the dorsal medial prefrontal
cortex subsystem, which plays an important role in the processing
of information about other people and inferring what their
intentions are.
Finally,
there's the medial temporal lobe subsystem, which is involved
whenever you make a projection about yourself in the future.
What do thoughts about your sense of self or your sense
of others in relation to yourself have in common?
These are all ego-based thoughts. In psychology, your ego
simply refers to your sense of self.
This is not to say that all ego-based thoughts are bad.
It could just be a matter of moderation.
Have you ever noticed, though, that the thoughts that tend
to keep you up at night are the ones that are centered around
your sense of self? You're not exactly losing sleep over the
fact that your favorite football team
just lost a regular season game.
(At least,
I hope you're not.) The default mode network is negatively
correlated with another type of network in the brain. This
network is called a "task positive network" and it gets activated
whenever your attention to your external world is increased.
This means that by paying attention to the here and now, you
can decrease the level of activity in your default mode network.
This is how you find relief from rumination. It's kind
of what the hype of mindfulness meditation is all about.
The objective of mindfulness is to simply notice the contents
of consciousness.
This means noticing the makeup of your external environment,
from the sounds that you hear to the sensations that you
feel. It also
means catching yourself when you drift off into thought and
covering those thoughts with your awareness. And somehow, almost
like magic, watching them drift away.
Like the clouds of a weather pattern. Meditation is awesome
and it can give you some immediate relief. Even more remarkably,
over time, meditation can also change the wiring and makeup
of your brain.
I want to share a quote with you by Dr.
Rick Hanson of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
According to him, "When neurons fire together, they
wire together.
Mental activity actually creates new neural structures. What
flows through your mind, sculpts your brain. Thus, you can use your
mind to change your brain for the better.
This is why Dr.
Hanson refers to meditation as "self-directed neuroplasticity."
This means that the benefits of meditation can extend far
beyond the practice itself.
We see in, seasoned meditators, a reduced level of activity
in their default mode network, even when they're not meditating.
We also see structural changes in the brain like an enlargement
of the prefrontal cortex, which plays a critical role in emotional
regulation and rational decision-making. A shrinking of the
amygdala, which is regarded as the fear center of the brain.
A thickening of the hippocampus, which is key for learning
and memory. So all good things. But here's the catch: to truly
get the benefits of meditation,
you have to make a regular practice out of it.
It's one thing to do 10 push-ups every time you feel like
you've eaten too much bread. It's another to actually
go to the gym two to three times a week. One session of meditation
can certainly make you feel good for a short period of time,
but it's not going to give you the mental pecs that
you're looking for. I know saying this isn't sexy, because
after all, we live in a society that would much rather take
diet pills over eating right and exercising. But going back
to a point that was mentioned earlier about how sometimes,
the things that are good for us
can sometimes feel like they're unnatural. Just imagine describing
the concept of working out at the gym to somebody at the
turn of the 20th century... somebody who works in a factory
as a laborer.
They would have looked at you
like you're crazy. Similarly,
if you were to talk about meditation to people today, you're
probably going to get some reactions along the lines of "I
can hardly keep up with everything that I have to do on my
to do list.
You're asking me to take 20 minutes out of my day to do
nothing?!" I feel very strongly that the culture is going to
eventually come around and one day we're going to see that
meditation is just as core to our well-being as brushing
our teeth
or going to the gym. In the meantime, in an era where the
liquor store is making a killing and so are prescription
meds for anxiety, clearly there's a desire to turn off our minds
sometimes. So why not
meditate if you don't already meditate regularly?
Now that you've made it to the end of the video, let me know
how I did. Did I paint a compelling enough case for you?
If I didn't, what did I miss?
Thanks for joining me for another video.
Give this video a like and comment down below and I will
see you guys next time.