How to Regulate Your Emotions and Mental Chatter When Bad Things Happen | Maya Shankar
Dan Harris and cognitive scientist Maya Shankar discuss navigating adversity and change. They explore tools like anchoring identity to one's 'why,' self-affirmation, challenging beliefs, and techniques to get unstuck from rumination, offering a survival guide for life's curveballs.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction to Navigating Adversity and Catastrophic Thinking
Maya Shankar's Foundational Experiences with Change
Building Robust and Expansive Self-Identities
The Power of Gratitude and Self-Affirmation
Cognitive Bias: The Illusion of Control
Cognitive Bias: The End of History Illusion
Change as Revelation and Unlocking Freedom
Practical Ways to Challenge Self-Limiting Beliefs
Understanding and Addressing Rumination
Techniques for Reducing Negative Emotional Intensity
The Surprising Utility of Distraction and Denial
Psychological Distancing and Cognitive Reappraisal
The Role of Community in Overcoming Rumination
Evolution of Maya's Perspective on Motherhood and Possible Selves
8 Key Concepts
Expansive Identities
This is a way to anchor your self-identity not just to 'what' you do, but to 'why' you do that thing. By identifying with your core motivations (e.g., emotional connection, helping others), you build a more robust self that is resilient even if the 'what' is taken away.
Self-Affirmation Exercise
A technique where you list identities that bring you value and meaning, and are not threatened by the change you're experiencing. This helps to zoom out and see a rich, multifaceted identity, reducing the acute feeling of loss and making one less prone to denial.
Illusion of Control
The common belief that we have far more control over how things turn out for us than we actually do. While adaptive in everyday life, this illusion shatters when unexpected negative changes occur, forcing us to confront the limits of our genuine control and increasing feelings of uncertainty.
End of History Illusion
A cognitive bias where we acknowledge significant past changes in ourselves but believe we are done changing in the future. This bias overlooks that big life disruptions can accelerate internal changes, leading us to become different, often better, people on the 'other side' of change.
Affect Labeling
A technique for managing negative emotions by identifying and naming them (e.g., frustration, despair, envy). This process fosters psychological distance, shifting perception from 'being' the emotion to 'having' the emotion, which can reduce its intensity.
Mental Time Travel
The brain's ability to travel forward and backward in time to contextualize present challenges. Traveling backward can reveal past resilience or historical precedents for overcoming crises, while traveling forward helps to recognize the transient nature of current difficulties and their diminished future significance.
Awe
The feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our current understanding of the world, such as nature, art, or moral beauty. Experiencing awe creates 'earthquakes in our minds' that revise assumptions, diminish self-focus, and connect us to a larger whole, reducing individual anxieties.
Cognitive Reappraisal
A strategy that involves interpreting a situation differently to alter its emotional impact. By reframing a negative event or personal trait (e.g., seeing panic as an evolutionary survival mechanism rather than a flaw), one can reduce shame and take more productive steps forward.
8 Questions Answered
Change is disorienting because it often threatens our sense of self and identity, making us feel unmoored when something core to who we are is lost or altered.
To build a more resilient self, anchor your identity not just to 'what' you do, but to 'why' you do it. Your core motivations can serve as a stable compass even when external circumstances change.
Gratitude, when genuinely practiced, can help you zoom out on your life and see a rich, multifaceted identity beyond the immediate loss or challenge, providing a powerful antidote to despair by reminding you of what is still intact.
The 'end of history illusion' is the bias of believing you are done changing in the future, despite acknowledging past changes. Understanding this helps manage future anxieties by reminding you that you will likely change, grow, and adapt to whatever challenges arise, becoming a new person on the other side.
To challenge self-limiting beliefs, treat them as hypotheses to be tested by actively seeking contradictory data, staying curious, and not tying your beliefs to your self-identity. Reflect on how beliefs were formed and what evidence would persuade you to change your mind.
Research suggests distraction can be a productive and helpful tool after a negative event, and for some individuals, it leads to positive long-term outcomes without constant resurfacing of negative emotions. It's not always mere suppression, and individual differences play a significant role.
Yes, denial can be useful in the short term as a psychological immune response, allowing the mind to process harrowing events gradually by letting in only as much as one can handle. Patients with higher short-term denial, for example, have shown better initial outcomes in some studies.
Being in community with others can be a powerful antidote to the belief that one's particular struggles are exceptional or unique. Seeing that others have faced similar experiences can help you zoom out, feel less isolated, and learn from shared human experiences.
25 Actionable Insights
1. Anchor Identity to Your Why
Build a more robust and expansive identity by anchoring it to why you do things, rather than just what you do, as your fundamental ‘why’ remains stable even if your ‘what’ is taken away, guiding your next steps.
2. Discover and Use Your Core Why
Ask yourself what truly lights you up—whether it’s helping people, learning, or improving—and use this core ‘why’ as your North Star to anchor your identity, providing purpose and clarity, especially during times of change.
3. Prepare for Future Change
Arm yourself with skills, questions, thought experiments, and tools before major life changes occur, as this preparation can help you deal with future adversity and minimize anxiety about hypothetical future events.
4. Embrace Future Self-Transformation
When facing daunting changes, remember that you will become a different person on the other side, as the pressure of change unlocks new perspectives, values, and abilities, leading to a better version of yourself.
5. Test Your Beliefs as Hypotheses
Treat your beliefs as hypotheses to be tested by actively seeking contradictory data, staying curious and humble, and constantly questioning assumptions, without tying beliefs to your self-identity to avoid feeling threatened when challenging them.
6. Conduct a Belief System Taxonomy
Perform a taxonomy of your beliefs about yourself and the world, similar to a personality audit, to identify and understand your belief systems, which are deeply entangled with your well-being and how you interpret new information.
7. Identify Evidence to Change Your Mind
Ask yourself what evidence would theoretically persuade you to change your mind, as this exercise presupposes a willingness to adapt beliefs based on evidence and reveals the inherent flexibility in your thinking.
8. Revisit Unfounded Unhappy Beliefs
Don’t opportunistically choose beliefs, but actively revisit unfounded beliefs that are making you unhappy, as facts, data, and evidence matter, and challenging these can significantly improve your well-being.
9. Challenge Externally Imposed Dreams
Interrogate your dreams to discern if they are intrinsically generated or externally imposed by societal or cultural norms, as challenging externally generated dreams can prevent anchoring your self-worth to irrelevant goals.
10. Re-evaluate Dreams by Their Why
When a dream is cut short or a future imagined for yourself is taken away, ask yourself what was driving your interest in it and why it was a dream, as this can help you identify underlying values that can be pursued in other ways.
11. Perform Self-Affirmation Exercise
Dedicate five to ten minutes to jot down every identity that brings you value, meaning, or purpose and is not threatened by current changes, which helps diminish denial and makes you feel less acutely the loss of change.
12. Practice Gratitude for Perspective
Engage in gratitude exercises, such as listing things you’re grateful for, to zoom out on your life, gain perspective, and recognize the richness and multifaceted aspects of your identity beyond a single focus.
13. Seek Awe-Inspiring Experiences
Actively seek out awe-inspiring experiences, such as nature, art, music, or moral beauty (others’ kindness), as awe diminishes self-focus, prompts revision of assumptions, and helps you internalize being part of a larger whole, reducing individual anxieties.
14. Utilize Distraction Productively
Don’t feel guilty about using distraction (e.g., watching TV, hobbies) as a productive and helpful tool after a negative event, especially if direct confrontation of emotions isn’t your preferred or most effective approach, as research supports its long-term benefits for some individuals.
15. Allow Short-Term Denial
If you or others exhibit short-term denial during a harrowing change, allow it without guilt, as it can be a healthy psychological immune response, letting in only as much as the mind can handle and providing necessary processing time.
16. Practice Affect Labeling
When ruminating, take a step back and identify specific negative emotions (e.g., frustration, despair), as labeling them reduces their intensity by fostering psychological distance and shifting your perception from being the emotion to having it.
17. Engage in Mental Time Travel (Future)
Practice mental time travel by asking how you’ll feel about a current preoccupation in five hours, five days, or five years, to remind yourself that the situation is transient and will likely hold less significance over time, breaking you out of mental prisons.
18. Engage in Mental Time Travel (Past)
Use mental time travel to look back at human history for examples of overcoming existential crises or to mine your personal history for instances of unexpected resilience and courage, contextualizing present challenges and drawing strength.
19. Replay Events as Third-Party Observer
To gain psychological distance from a tense event, replay it in your mind from the perspective of a third-party observer (a ‘fly on the wall’), which helps poke holes in your self-narrative and achieve a more balanced perspective for accountability and constructive solutions.
20. Counsel Yourself as a Friend
When self-critical, imagine you are counseling a friend who made the same mistake; this fosters self-compassion, leading to a more productive response than self-recrimination.
21. Use Third-Person Self-Talk
To gain psychological distance, talk to yourself in the third person (e.g., ‘Maya, you need to get a grip’ instead of ‘I need to get a grip’), as this is an effective technique to distance yourself from emotions and contextualize problems as common.
22. Practice Cognitive Reappraisal
Interpret situations differently to alter their emotional impact; for example, reframe a panic attack not as a sign of being broken, but as an evolutionary survival mechanism, which can free you from shame and enable productive steps forward.
23. Find Community for Shared Experience
Combat feelings of exceptionalism in your suffering by finding community with others who have faced similar experiences, as this can provide a powerful antidote to mental spirals and offer new perspectives.
24. Imagine Different Origins for Beliefs
Engage in a thought experiment: imagine being born in a different time, place, culture, or family, and consider if you’d hold the same beliefs, which highlights the contingent nature of your current worldview.
25. Conjure New Possible Selves
When circumstances change, actively conjure up new ‘possible selves’ using evidence-based techniques to crack open your imagination beyond prior experiences and societal stereotypes, recognizing the full landscape of what is actually available to you.
8 Key Quotes
Sometimes we don't know how much something has defined us, how core it is to our self-identity and our sense of self-worth and value until we lose it.
Maya Shankar
Your why is still stable and very much present and can be a compass that guides you towards your next steps.
Maya Shankar
We would rather be certain that a negative event is going to happen than to have to grapple with any uncertainty, any ambiguity.
Maya Shankar
People regard the present moment as a watershed moment in which a person has finally become the person they're going to be for the rest of their lives.
Maya Shankar
Change can upend us, but it can also reveal really important things to us about who we are.
Maya Shankar
Apocalypse... comes from the Greek word apocalypsis which means revelation.
Maya Shankar
Distraction gets a really bad rap, but actually research shows it can be a very productive and helpful tool after a negative event.
Maya Shankar
Denial... is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.
Maya Shankar
5 Protocols
Building Robust, Expansive Identities
Maya Shankar- Ask yourself: 'What was it that made me love [the thing I lost/am losing]?'
- Identify the core 'why' behind your attachment (e.g., emotional connection, helping people, learning, improving).
- Anchor your self-identity to this 'why' (e.g., 'I am the type of person who loves improving, loves giving back, loves caring for people').
- Use this 'why' as a compass to guide your next steps when the 'what' is taken away from you.
Self-Affirmation Exercise
Maya Shankar- Take five to ten minutes.
- Jot down every identity that brings you value or meaning and gives your life purpose, that is not threatened by the change you're going through.
Challenging Self-Limiting Beliefs
Maya Shankar- Treat your beliefs as hypotheses that should be tested, actively seeking out data that might contradict your views.
- Stay curious and humble, constantly questioning your assumptions.
- Avoid tying your beliefs to your self-identity, as this makes challenging them feel like a threat to self.
- Ask yourself: 'How did I actually get from point A to point B in my thinking?' to understand the origin of a belief.
- Ask: 'Based on what existing beliefs did I form this new belief?' to uncover foundational, potentially problematic beliefs.
- Ask: 'In theory, what evidence would persuade me to change my mind?' to presuppose a willingness to adapt your views.
- Engage in the thought experiment: Imagine being born in a different time, place, culture, or family; would you have the same beliefs you have now?
Psychological Distancing for Rumination
Maya Shankar- Replay a past event (e.g., a tense exchange) in your mind from the point of view of a third-party observer (a 'fly on the wall') to find a more balanced perspective.
- Imagine you are counseling a friend who is experiencing the same problem, applying the compassion and less critical language you would use for them to yourself.
- Talk to yourself in the third person (e.g., 'Maya, you need to get a grip' instead of 'I need to get a grip') to create emotional distance and contextualize the problem as a universal human experience.
Cognitive Reappraisal
Maya Shankar- Interpret a situation differently to alter its emotional impact on you.
- Seek new perspectives or reframes that challenge initial negative assessments (e.g., viewing panic as an evolutionary survival mechanism rather than a sign of being broken) to free yourself from shame and enable productive steps forward.