How To Find Joy In an Anxious World | Sara Bareilles and Dacher Keltner

0:04This is the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:18Hello, everybody. How we doing? Sometimes I get invited to do some cool shit out in the world, And today we're going to bring some of that cool shit to you. The New York Times, as you may know, has a whole vertical called Well that's about health, not just physical health, but also mental health. And the editor of Well is a very smart woman named Lori Leibovich, who was actually my girlfriend in eighth grade at Charles Brown Middle School, junior high in Newton, Massachusetts. Anyway, Lori recently organized the first ever Well Festival in New York City back on May 7th, which featured a number of great speakers, including many of the people who've been on this show, longevity expert Peter Atiyah, the writer Suleika Jawad, the happiness researcher Dr.

1:04Robert Waldinger, to name just a few. And Lori asked me, and this is, I don't know if it qualifies as nepotism per se, but something close to that. Lori asked me to take part in this amazing day-long event, and I hosted and contributed to a session called How to Find Joy in an Anxious World with two people who've also been past guests on this show, the singer and writer, Sarah Bareilles, and the psychologist and academic, Dacher Keltner. Sarah, Dacker, and I talked about panic attacks, different things that we've all tried to manage our own anxiety, how being outside in nature can be helpful, and how meditation does not have to look the same way for everybody.

1:44It was a lot of fun, very interesting, and I am now very happy to share with you said conversation. If you want to see video of the conversation, along with everything else that happened at the festival, that is all available over at newyorktimes.com slash well. You can also read all of the Well coverage and subscribe to the Well newsletter, which is free. All that stuff is available at newyorktimes.com slash Well. Before we get started, just to very quickly remind you that we've got some very cool stuff going on in the 10 % Happier Universe. Over the last couple of months, we've been putting out these bespoke companion meditations that go along with our Monday and Wednesday podcast episodes.

2:22Those are available to paying subscribers over at danharris.com. We've got a whole new batch of meditations coming out this month. Our teacher of the month is Kyra Jewel Lingo. If you want to become a paid subscriber, head over to danharris.com. You can join the party. Speaking of Kyra, we're going to do a special little episode on Sunday. We call these our meet the teacher episode. You'll get to hear from Kyra on Sunday, and then her first companion meditation will air along with Monday's episode on August 4th. Okay, enough plugging. We'll play you my conversation with Sarah and Dacker at the New York Times Well Festival right after this.

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4:35Hey, it's Dan. I just want to tell you about something I'm really proud of, the new community we are building over on my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. Here's something I believe with no reservation. Taking care of your own mind is not selfish. It's actually essential if you want to show up for the world, if you want to deal with the various emergencies on the planet right now. There is, in fact, a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together. In other words, taking care of your own mind is good citizenship. I think about it like an upward spiral. You train your mind. That makes you happier and less reactive because you're steadier.

5:12That improves your relationships with everybody around you. And because relationships are crucial to human happiness, you get even happier, then your relationships get even better and up you go. Our mission over at this new app is to guide you through this process with a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers like Sabine Selassie and Joseph Goldstein and on and on. Also add free access to our full podcast archive, exclusive live stream events where we guide meditations and take your questions. We do those every week and much more. Head on over to DanHarris.com. You can try it for two weeks free.

5:45And if you cannot afford a subscription, we'll give you one. No questions asked. Hey, everybody. Really nice to be here with you today. Thank you to The New York Times for having us. I want to introduce my co-panelists, Dacher Keltner, who is a professor at the University of Berkeley and the author of many, many books, including his most recent book, which I highly recommend called AWE, A-W-E. And Sarah Bareilles, who I was teasing backstage as being the ultimate multi-hyphenate, which has become an overused phrase. Polly math, please. Polly math, she requested. Singer, songwriter, actor, and soon-to-be honorary doctorate holder.

6:24Am I right about that? Yeah. All right, so we're talking about anxiety. What is your experience personally with anxiety? I've always been a worrier, but my first real acute experience of anxiety happened after I graduated college. when I started having my first dissociative experiences and feeling a sense of dread that was unsustainable and unholdable, didn't know what to do. And now I find that I go through, I actually just had another kind of cycle of anxiety over the winter of this last year that was as bad, if not worse than that. So I'm doing really well, Dan.

7:11Well, I was lucky enough to sit next to you at dinner recently and we were talking about this down cycle for you. And it was, if memory serves, precipitated by a loss in your personal life. Are you comfortable talking a little bit about that? Yes, I had a very dear friend who passed away at the end of September last year. but I, you know, have spent the last couple of years post-pandemic when my anxiety, which is when you and I met is during the pandemic when I guested on your podcast. And I started medication for the first time for my anxiety. And I had been so resistant to that for such a long time.

7:51And it was such a life changer for my Lexapro friends out there. I'm so fucking grateful, but I had stopped medication. I'd been on it for two years and I was doing really well. and I lost my dear friend, and I was grieving, and I was present, and I was feeling really well-adjusted and devastated, of course. But then out of nowhere, the bottom dropped out, and I couldn't find the surface again. So I'm back on my meds and doing much better now, with the help of other tools as well. I'm really glad to hear you're doing better. And I just want to say I'm a little biased because I know you and like you a lot.

8:30But I think it is not only incredibly brave, but it's a real public service for somebody with your platform to get up and talk about what you've dealt with and to say that you're on Lexapro and all that stuff. And I know you made it funny, but it's also it is really valuable. So, bravo. Thank you. Thank you. I have more questions for you in a second. But, Doctor, let me just ask you, you're this eminent researcher, psychological researcher, avatar of the human capacity to grow and learn and feel whole and to feel compassion and awe. And yet, you're no stranger to anxiety. Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, it's wonderful to hear your story.

9:11My students, 500 a semester at Berkeley, you know, when I tell them that I come from a family of deeply anxious, obsessive people, it runs in our genetics. It's a real opening to insight for the students. Yeah, I think I grew up in a poor rural area for part of my life when anxiety really hit when I was 13. Sleep disruption, a lot of ideation about the devil, for example, the exorcist that come out, food disruption. And then, and I didn't know what it was. It felt strange and I worked through it. And then when I turned 30 and got my first job that took me to Madison, Wisconsin, I literally was at dinner and people raised their glasses.

9:55Congratulations, you're going to Wisconsin. I had my first panic attack. Didn't know what it was. And I had probably a bit 100 full-blown panic attacks in a few years, entering airplanes, giving lectures, meeting senior colleagues. And I think a lot of it had to do with being away from home. And I didn't intervene quickly enough, but it taught me a lot about the real struggles of anxiety. It's one of the hardest conditions to overcome and not talked about that much. So I'm glad we're having this conversation. I'm in a funny position where my job is to moderate, but also Lori wants me to talk a little bit.

10:38So I'll just add on top of your stories and say that I used to work at ABC News. I was there for 21 years and probably the thing I did that is best remembered is have a coke-fueled panic attack on Good Morning America. And the back story is that I spent a lot of time in war zones after 9-11 as an ambitious young reporter. I came home and I got depressed and I did this incredibly stupid thing, which is I started to self-medicate with recreational drugs, including cocaine. And that produced if you Google panic attack on television, you can see it for yourself. It's the number one result. It's great for me and my mom that produced this panic attack and really got me for the first time in my life to wrestle with the anxiety that I've been experiencing since I was a little boy.

11:24You talked about The Exorcist. For me, it was The Day After, which was the TV show about nuclear war, the TV movie that sent me into therapy when I was quite young. And then E.T., my parents said that I had to go back to therapy after E.T. went home and the little boy had to say goodbye to him. So I am no stranger to this myself. So let's turn it to, and I would say to be a little critical, I think it's great that the culture is more open about anxiety. But one of my critiques is that we, especially in social media, tend to wallow in the suffering and without making the pivot that we will make now to the many, many things you can do about it.

12:07So let me start with you, Sarah. You mentioned Lexapro. What else do you do to manage your anxiety? I love what you're saying about making that pivot because that is what I see so often is that like we start to wear the anxiety as a kind of identity. It's like a place to collude with other people. It's a place to connect. It starts being like the bonding is that, oh man, we're just so anxious without any kind of forward motion into either understanding the source of it, which I do agree with you. I think some of it actually is genetic. We are carrying cellular anxiety from generations before. I think there's real effect of that.

12:53And there is so much support. I'm thinking about before I got a medication because I was so anti-medication. I'm a songwriter. I'm really sensitive. I love that I'm so sensitive. I wanted to protect that I'm so sensitive. And I had a shitty therapist who told me that I would probably suppress something that I needed to be in touch with if I got on medication. So I was always super afraid of getting on meds. So before I got on medication, I was like, you know what, I'll try an MDMA journey. That should be helpful. I don't do drugs. I'm not like someone who's had like, I didn't party like that. So I went, because I was so afraid of being on medication, I did an MDMA journey with the hopes of understanding my anxiety.

13:42So I had what turned into what I call like an eight-hour intimate conversation with fear, which was awful. People talk about MDMA. They're like, oh, Molly, we go dancing. It's so fun. I'm like, fuck no. That was the worst night of my life. But also one of the most helpful experiences I've ever had because I sat with this experience of fear for like eight hours. And the relief that I felt when I sort of came back to my consciousness was so tremendous. And I got one piece of wisdom out of that trip that has stayed with me so much is that there is so much fear and there is so much support. There is so much support from people, my therapist.

14:29I got a good one now. So to answer your question, how I cope is therapy, meditation, exercise, lots and lots and lots of connection. Human connection, I find to be the single most helpful offering you can make towards yourself in a time of hardship. I just think people are ready to surprise you and to show up for you when you need. How do you find human connection if you're not a globally renowned celebrity? Funnily enough, I think the opportunity to connect is there for everyone if we're just a little bit willing to share vulnerability. Vulnerability for me is the medicine that has always brought the most precious gifts into my life.

15:21It has brought the most precious people into my life, the most precious artistic offerings into my life, the most precious collaborations into my life. It's like if you can be brave enough to face what is difficult and what is just true, whether you want it to be true or not, if it's just true and you can name it and sit with it and let it allow it to be, you know, it brings you to, I got to be on your podcast. I got to make friends through meditation. I have deeper, closer relationships with friends than I ever could have imagined, than my parents have. Because they don't share in the same way.

16:03So I really highly recommend the Soul Vomit. I'm going to name my next book that. That is fantastic. Soul Vomit? Yes. What do you recommend? Well, I guess a two-part question. And what do you use to manage your anxiety? Are you panicking still? And beyond that, what would you recommend as the only person who would qualify or even come close to a mental health professional on the stage right now? Yeah, I get waves of anxiety. You know, you and I have talked about this, Dan, on your podcast when my younger brother passed away. It was two years of panic and grief, and grief is anxiety and deep and panicky.

16:46You know, I think the science is really helpful here. Anxiety has a particular cortisol-based profile. So we look to the nervous system to think about what is the opposite of that pattern, regions of the brain, oxytocin release, and vagus nerve activation, which I study in the lab, which calms the body down. And we in the social sciences have noticed that we've lost a lot of the ways in which we can hold the anxieties of the human condition by moving away from community, more time alone in church. And what I now know is I found things that have those elements. I played pickup basketball all the time, and that was my church and my community and my people.

17:29I became fascinated with a particular vein of music, minimalism of Steve Reich, John Adams, Brian Nito, et cetera, just to calm me down. The single best thing you can do outside of social connection is get outdoors. And we now know there are 21 pathways by which clouds and sky and light and the sound of water and the smell of spring get into your nervous system and calm it all down. So getting outdoors. And this is why you and I are in conversation. I was lucky that my parents were saying, read Lao Tzu, read Buddhism, just think about the first noble truth is life is hard. And that got me out of my panic was to know life is hard.

18:11I think there's another element here, too, which is especially with panic. I think you can think of panic as kind of anxiety on steroids. So I think this is true for anxiety, but also for panic. it's the incredible move that you made in your ill-fated MDMA trip. I've never had a bad MDMA trip, so I don't understand that. But anyway, just having some memories. You're getting a little nostalgic. Yeah, getting nostalgic. Yeah. You sat and had a conversation with your fear for eight hours. I still get panic attacks, and particularly in the last couple of years on planes and elevators, and have really been struggling a lot with it.

18:51And I have started to get quite deliberate and aggressive about exposure therapy. The theory of exposure therapy is that the only way out of fear is through it. You need to be exposed yourself to the thing you're worried about. So my shrink, Paul Green, great dude, 75-year-old Jewish man right up my alley, he and I go around New York City and try to find the most diabolically small elevators and we ride it together. And on Saturday, he and I are taking a plane trip just back and forth to D.C. And I haven't taken an unmedicated flight in three years. And so I'm quite nervous about it. But we've been working our way up.

19:32And I do think there's something about understanding that anxiety or even panic is a set of physical sensations and mental activity that I've had thousands of times before and I'm still alive and I can sit with it. Yeah. And this is one of the great lessons of meditation. Yep. Our mutual teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to say to people, it's okay. By which he does not mean everything's fine. He means it's okay to feel whatever you're trying to push away. Yep. Let it in. Yep. I have a lot of cats and these motherfuckers will bang at the door for hours and claws coming under the door and like then sometimes I just open the door, they come in, sniff around and leave.

20:17That's your emotions. Let them in. They won't do nearly as much damage. They're not nearly as scary if you stop resisting them. And so I would add to this excellent list of what you can do to just be okay with the feeling because the pushing it away makes it persist. Do you buy what I'm saying here as somebody who, you know, studies this stuff? No. Yes. Yeah, no, I mean, cognitive behavioral therapy works. That's a great triumph of Western medicine in some sense. And then, you know, if you survey the literature on meditation and contemplation, breathing, body scans, loving kindness, the hard data are real.

21:03It helps calm down the amygdala, the threat center of the brain, lowers cortisol, slows down the aging process of the body, which is very good news, Alyssa Eppel, and has a lot of benefits for anxiety in people facing the hardest kinds of anxiety. That you can go to the bank with, and we have to return to these contemplative practices you find in spirituality or meditation or Quaker circles or what have you, and pursue them with gusto. So I teach it with full confidence and faith. We've mentioned meditation a bunch. I know you're a pretty active meditator. What is the mechanism by which meditation can help you with anxiety and panic?

21:45Is it as simple as I was just describing, just learning the ability to sit with it, or is it more? I think what I love about the practice is that the whole point is that there's nothing to fix. There's nothing to change. There's nothing to improve upon or make better. It's just to build relationship with what is. And I think you're being, I have had better periods in my life where I was meditating more often. It's a practice that I struggle with having regularity in. But the fundamental teachings make so much sense for me and the way I think. Do you feel the same way? Yeah, I mean, I think that the Upanishads and the Sutras of Buddhism are some of the great statements of the mind.

22:36And I think not only are the, and you know, for all of you, some of you will have a practice, you'll study with teachers, that's a wonderful thing. But the field is also moving towards things that have meditative qualities and effects on your nervous system that we've forgotten, like listening to Sarah sing. Who has found calmness and perspective listening to Sarah, right? You must all raise your hands now. Indeed. Well, that's grounded in, you know, music's been with us for 100 ,000 years, 200 ,000 years. And part of it is to give us wisdom and perspective in facing hardship. So I think not only should we be meditating, we should be thinking about music and visual arts.

23:20The New York Times has the great 10-minute look at a painting. Have you guys done that? There's Van Gogh's Starry Night. I just did it yesterday morning, was tearing up. There are many ways to meditate we should be bringing to our awareness. Let's also talk about therapy as a modality for anxiety. You said something before that triggered something for me, which is that your panic attacks in Wisconsin were because you were away from home. I have done, alongside my exposure therapy for my current bout of panic, have been doing a non-trivial amount of therapy. And a memory surfaced from when I was two years old, which is apparently too early to have a memory, but I have a very clear memory and I have a spatial sense of what was happening.

24:07It was my mother's first day back to work. when I was two, and I was standing at the front door watching her walk to her car and wailing and slamming at the door. And I look back in the kitchen, I could see our new nanny and my younger brother, who was six months old, in a bassinet on the table. And I can see all of that. And at first, I was like, well, what relationship would this have to panic? But actually, there's something about powerlessness, feeling adrift, unmoored, alone in the universe that connects to panic. I haven't figured all of this out, so I'm throwing it at you to see if you can figure it out.

24:48But am I onto something here? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the really exciting new literatures, and it's related to music as well, is one of the challenges of the human mind is to put all of our scenes of our life into a story. And you got to go back far, as great stories do, and put it into this narrative. Jamie Pennebaker, expressive writing practices, for those of you who journal, really good for anxiety and depression. And he would say, and I think the field would say, that's what you're doing. You're starting the story of your family as a way to explore why you panic when you're heading into a plane and feeling removed from family or whatever it is.

25:30Yeah, it's a primordial fear. A lonely human on the savannah was likely a dead human. Yeah. So if you're feeling cut off, I mean, this is deep in our DNA. This actually ties right back to Sarah's point about social connection as medicine for anxiety, depression, and many other things. We are wired for connection, and if you're not getting it, the system goes haywire. We do have a little time for Q &A from the audience. So I would love to see if anybody has a question. You're welcome to stand up and hurl it at us. Go ahead. Stand up. And there's a mic coming to you. What's your name? Carrie. Hi.

26:15Yeah. Hi. So, Sarah, I know that you've talked a lot today about anxiety. So have your experiences with anxiety or did your experiences with anxiety inspire the song Brave? Not exactly, but certainly they're woven in there. The song Brave was actually written as a love letter to a friend who was dealing with an incredible amount of anxiety. So it was a little bit more about their anxiety versus mine, but it has been a great teacher, that song, for me. In fact, so I recorded that song, Love Letter to a Friend. The song sort of took on this life of its own. And I realized I couldn't sing it live because it was just right on a break in my voice.

27:05So I'd gotten through it in the recording studio. And then when it came to sing it live, I was really shitting the bed, as they say. So it was a really incredible teacher, the relationship with the performance of that song and then what that song ended up doing and becoming for other people and their stories. But it's what I love about music is that it takes on all of these different sort of meanings. But I think speaking to the human connection, it was like working with someone else's anxiety actually helped me towards some other kind of medicine I didn't even know I was needing. And so, yeah, anxiety has been with me the whole time.