Why Your Brain Rewards You for Avoiding Your Boss, with Dr. Joel Salinas

29:06Like, what are the thoughts that I'm having in my head? How difficult is it for me? Because then that allows you the space to be in to plan it out or think about really interesting what it is that's driving it. Because there can be a lot there. One of the things that we describe is this thing called mirror work, chair work, and table work. But I think at its core, kind of at a neurological level, a lot of what that is, is trying to gain an awareness of these different loops that exist in the brain. There's a part of me that wants to be really authentic and wants to live life the way that I want to.

29:38There's also a side of me that wants to be a good son and wants to be doing things that are in favor with the family. That's its own conflict that I need to mediate, but it's helpful to at least give voice to both those things. In the job-raised situation, one voice could be like, I want to be somebody who is a really great worker and is considered a team player. And I also have this other voice in me that wants to self-advocate and wants to say that I need a raise. And actually, just giving voice in the dialogue to those voices can be really helpful because it helps to start to attenuate the intensity of the emotional experience with it.

30:21So that can look like engaging a conversation just like this and saying these types of conversations are just to give a heads up are really awkward for me and very uncomfortable. And there's a part of me that wants to be a good team player and preserve the budget of the business. And there's a part of me that knows that I've been putting in a lot of work. I have big projects over the next year and I feel like I may be overdue for a raise and I want to advocate for myself. And so I just wanted to start the conversation by letting you know that I might need a little bit of time in doing this because it is so uncomfortable for me.

30:58You mentioned that when you were avoiding the conversation about coming out, you eventually created a situation in which you could not avoid it anymore. Is that something at an unconscious level? Is that something that you recognized would be an effective way to go about doing this? At an unconscious level, was there some part of you that recognized, let's create a forcing function? It can be helpful. The challenge there is that if you aren't ready to have that conversation, if you haven't done a lot of the work in it, you're just more prone to do things that are, we would call them unskilled or less skilled, which is that you may respond with yelling or a lot of anger.

31:43You might not be able to manage whatever emotions that come up, or you may not know exactly kind of what messaging you have. For example, for myself in situations where I've done the forcing function, I don't necessarily trigger a forcing function until I know like what's at the core of what's important to me in that conversation. And that oftentimes can be your values. In the thorniest situations, I find it really helpful to just go back to what are my values here and why that's so important. Because no matter how uncomfortable the situation is, I can always go back to this core, the centered piece of just saying, being authentic and being honest to you is really important to me.

32:28And this is why I'm having this really hard conversation. and you have every right to be upset and disappointed. But I also have a right to live authentically and honest with myself and be honest with you. And that kind of messaging or these types of things don't really come up unless you have that grounding around like a central value. And this is why when we talk about how to prepare for these conversations, you wanna make sure that you've got the right environment for it, that the timing is right. Like you don't wanna engage in a conversation that's really challenging when you're tired, you're overworked, you're stressed, you're hungry, you're sick, or the other person is distracted, and that you've had an opportunity to really articulate for yourself what it is that's important for this.

33:13And so we talk about this thing about understanding what the purposes of the dialogue or the situation are. The more clear you are on the purposes, the more clear your BBO, your bigger, better offer is. And that can help to make the situation just a little bit easier to navigate, especially when inevitably a curveball will come that you're like, oh, like I really feel the discomfort rising in me right now. You can come back to that kind of central value or messaging or set of voices that you have for yourself. You talked earlier about training the dog inside your head. Yeah. And what I like about that analogy is that when you're training a dog, you can observe the dog's behavior and you can see how reward mechanisms play a role in shaping a dog's behavior.

33:57At the risk of asking a very large question, what is the difference between a dog's brain and a human's brain? Does a dog have a prefrontal cortex? Yeah, so I think there's differences in size. There is a difference in the kind of surface area of the cortex itself. So I think the neocortex is one of these areas of the human brain that is most unique to us. The number of involutions that we have and the types of kind of networks that we have already kind of programmed in are part of the complexity of what it is to be human. Very social animals tend to get closer and closer towards that human brain.

34:36In addition to this fortune telling process, the brain is really helpful for us in terms of forming groups and socializing and very social animals tend to have more, I don't want to say develop, But brains that resemble a human brain a little bit more. And I think that that's also seen, again, in primate brains, is the more complex the social relationships, the more complex the social relationships have to keep track of. And the more like theory of mind type of things that they have to do, like thinking what the other person's thinking and how that person's thinking about how I'm thinking, may require more of that additional processing power.

35:11And it presumably leads to some of that evolution within the brain. But I think there's a lot of things that are quite similar with the dog brain as well. We talked about kind of the limbic system, and some people refer to these systems as kind of like the lizard part of the brain. I think what's core to understanding these deeper parts of the brain is less that they are maybe reptilian, but more that they are areas of the brain that are tied to very core reflexes and networks that are just like reactions or reflexes that came from evolution and survival as the outermost kind of part of the brain that neocortex degenerates in diseases like Alzheimer's disease, which is the work that I do a lot in, more of these deeper reflexes start to come up until we start to have essentially an emergence of these primitive or what we call kind of almost like neonatal reflexes.

35:59The reflexes you have as a baby, like sucking reflex or rooting reflex in the countries you moved your head towards it, or there's this more real reflex where with a certain kind of a movement or touch, you're going to spread your arms out. These are all deeply ingrained, almost very evolutionary systems that protect us when we're very, very, very young, like babies, just newborns. Imagine being in a tree, you fall, it's helpful to spread your arms out and your legs out to protect yourself. It can be really helpful to have a reflex to find your mother so that way you can nourish yourself. And these deeper parts of the brain are always there.

36:37They're always active. They're involved in all these processes. I don't want to say that there's this kind of tug of war between these higher order processes and these deeper parts of the brain. I think they work together, but it's really about how much you're able to allow these higher order areas of the brain to become more online. And that's where things like taking a pause, that very thoughtful breathing. This is where kind of mindfulness meditation is really helpful. Their metacognition can be really helpful. It's basically giving an opportunity for other parts of your brain to sort through the situation, which creates space in your mental headspace to be able to make a better call about what to do as opposed to act on an impulse.

37:23Can we map the brain a little bit just so we know where everything is that we're talking about? So what is the neocortex and where is it? And what are the attributes of the neocortex that differentiate it from other areas of the brain? Yeah, I love this. So if we think about the brain, I can just give you like a model here of the brain. So let's say this is the right side of my brain. This is the left side of my brain. So let's just focus on one hemisphere here. So this outer portion here, that is that neocortex. So we often just call it kind of the cortical areas of the brain, cortical regions.

37:58They are essentially networks of lots of neurons that have different configurations in terms of how the axons and the genderites connect to each other. But there's layers of connectivity within that that allow for greater processing within those areas. There's areas that are called unimodal and multimodal because of how much information or the types of information they're processing. So like if we go back to the occipital lobe, which is important for vision. So this is the front of the face. This is the back of the head. So this is this part of the head here. Yeah. Occipital lobe is really important for vision.

38:33Yeah. For those of you who are listening via audio, I encourage you to come check this out on YouTube so that you can see the visual. Yeah. So the occipital lobe, which is for vision, that's very unimodal. That's processing light that's being filtered through the eyes, through the optic nerves that goes to the back there. And then it's being filtered to progressively more and more complex filters that then allow us to recognize not just light versus dark, but also shape of lines to getting more complex shape of a number or a letter, like a grapheme, the shape of a face, what a face looks like.

39:07And that, as it moves more forward, starts to get into areas of the brain, like the temporal lobes and the parietal lobes, which are becoming more multimodal, more different senses involved that are helping us to understand what is that thing that I'm seeing. And so this is kind of memories and labeling. And the labeling also involves some degree of language, like ideas that we put onto the thing that we're seeing. So, for example, what a chair is, where the chair is in relation to my body, where my body is in space, when we're kind of parietal, visual, spatial. And then the further we go, the more we get into the frontal lobe, which is we often call kind of like the captain of the ship or this part of the brain that is very deliberative, is really focused on judgment, planning, self-regulation.

39:51that one of the things that we've learned in the last couple of decades is that it doesn't act kind of on its own. It works a lot with a parietal lobe. So it's actually more accurate to call it frontal parietal networks. That helps to coordinate all of this sensory information together. And it's not as simplistic as things kind of like moving through a flow of processes, because we have networks that are in parallel and in connection with each other. So actually, we're almost experiencing everything about the thing all all at once so like a chair i see the chair but also in my head parts of my brain are feeling what i think that chair feels like and hearing what that kind of chair could sound like if i were to sit in it but it's just below the conscious level and then this is kind of what brings the brainstem and these what we often call kind of these more primitive parts of the brain or the lizard brain but there's the the brainstem and these like limbic and paralimbic systems, which are really there to help to detect new things, like new information.

40:54And it's not necessarily driving emotion. They are a part of what we ultimately label as an emotion, but they're really there for the salience, the valence, and getting these reflexive behaviors to act in the case of something really dangerous. And then we've got one other area that doesn't get enough attention, which is the cerebellum, which is important for coordination of movements and error correction. But it's not just movements, but it's thoughts and feelings as well. Where is that part? It's so here's the brain, the brainstem. Maybe I'll do this here so it's a little bit clearer. Right.

41:27And then it sits right here behind. Oh, that was not where I guessed it would be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's that little kind of like bundle that if you see like a brain model, that's there coordinating things. And it's not in isolation because if we're thinking about what constitutes the motherboard of reality, we're missing out the whole nervous system that is in your whole body. So your body is in constant conversation with your brain. If you are feeling sick, like if you have the flu, you're feeling hungry, that is sending a signal to your brain, which is then coloring all the information that you're processing.

42:04So you may be more likely to have a conversation with somebody, but if you're like hungry and kind of irritable where you're having that conversation, you may actually register that that person is being irritating or upsetting to you. But really, you just need to eat something. And it might change the whole emotional color of that conversation. So don't ask your boss for a raise right before lunch. Yeah, exactly. There's actually been some study looking at judges granting parole. You might have heard of this. Yeah. Yeah. That they're more likely to grant parole after lunch. Yeah. Although the study also showed if it's too late in the day, they get tired.

42:40It's energy waning as it gets towards the afternoon. So early in the morning, they're fresh. Energy is high. And so they actually tend to be more generous. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. That's just really just how the body is kind of informing how you're perceiving the world around you. Right. So is the amygdala part of the limbic system? And the amygdala as part of the limbic system is kind of in that center part of the brain, so it's behind the thinking and the decision-making arena? It's kind of enveloped by that blanket of the cortex. It's sitting in there kind of connecting to different regions, but in particular to temporal lobe, frontal lobe areas, coordinating between there, as well as these reflexive body areas, like the brainstem.

43:28These limbic systems, it's important for them to also have some degree of what we call interoception, which is kind of feeling yourself, feeling what's going on inside your body. That specific area is called the insula, which has close ties to the amygdala, which is people often think of the amygdala as like the seat of fear or this area of fear. But actually, a more nuanced way of thinking about it is it is there to detect new information, especially potentially threatening information. But it's there for things that are new and different and unexpected, which is helping your brain to become better at fortune telling.

44:01Oh, would it then be accurate to say that if you go on vacation, the amygdala is firing? Yeah, I mean, the amygdala could be firing the more you're engaging in things that are unexpected. Yeah, I meant go on vacation to a brand new and novel place. Like, you're in a foreign country, you're encountering language and culture and even the shape of a toilet, right? Maybe you're encountering a squat toilet for the first time. Yeah, and in that situation, it might be more a sense of comfort that it's actually linking to, which is the physical feelings that are linked to it. And if your brain is registering those situations as something of security or safety, less threat, then it's all going to be more in that positive valence side.

44:43You might even be a little bit calmer in that level of arousal, like high arousal versus low arousal. Whereas if new environments or change can feel really threatening to you, being in that new environment, it's going to have the, yes, it's going to still have the amygdala firing, but it's also going to be firing in tandem with these other areas that link to more these negative feelings. And some of that relates to the anterior cingulate part of the brain, but that in and of itself is more linked to areas of the brain that become active with just physical pain. I think that's one of the things that's really enlightening and also really humbling about the brain is that things that are abstract or perceptual, like a disagreement, can activate parts of the brain that are the same, the exact same parts of the brain that are involved in perceiving physical pain.

45:29Oh, and which parts of the brain are those? So there's the physical feeling parts of the brain. Those are the somatosensory strips that are a little bit going back to the brain. It's like right around this area here between the parietal lobe and the frontal lobe. It's very much focused on sensory and the anterior cingulate and the insula that relates to the body, you're feeling yourself. plus these anterior cingulates kind of a way that processes or relays information that can often be associated with like negative valence. I'm just going to keep asking a bunch of, I'm sure, or probably some beginner questions.

46:06I love these questions. What is the difference between the limbic and the paralimbic system? Limbic system is this collection of several areas that are in that kind of deeper part that include the amygdala, includes the hippocampus as well. But paralimbic is just the areas that are just tied to it, just outside of it. In addition to the hippocampus, there's also things like the mammillary bodies. There's this pape circuit. There's like these lots of other kind of cortical areas that all relate to these salience and valence areas of the brain. And where you draw the line between limbic and paralimbic ends up being more of a neuroanatomical question.

46:41But at the end of the day, these are all kind of areas that are tied to these feeling novelty detection, threat detection areas. Why is the cerebellum so far away from all of this? It seems far away from it, but it's actually in a pretty great real estate area. It's pretty central because it has connections to the brainstem. And a lot of information across the whole brain itself is coming into the cerebellum and back out to the body. and information from the body is coming up through the cerebellum and back out to the rest of the brain. So is the cerebellum the messenger to the body? It's helping with like error detection and kind of coordination.

47:20And it's really good at being able to sort through what's coming from the high up in the brain and what's coming from like the low down kind of processes of the body itself. There is a hub element to it, but more than anything, it's just coordinating all these different messages, which is why if you have an injury to the cerebellum, it can be really hard to put my finger on my nose and then touch this flower here exactly on the tip. People who don't have a working cerebellum or have an injury to cerebellum, it will look more like this as they're trying to reach it. And there's been work done by this one neurologist named Dr.

47:59Jeremy Schmaman, who has found that there's this thing called a cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome, But basically, it's going beyond thinking of the cerebellum just for these motor movements, which is easy to appreciate, but also how it coordinates thoughts and feelings as well in kind of bizarre ways that you wouldn't anticipate because it's more this error correction part of the brain that is out of whack.

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50:03Zooming out, one thing that I've learned from the last 20 minutes of conversation is I had always, I guess, erroneously assumed that a lot of our thoughts and feelings, and particularly our fortune telling, our assessment of decision making, really lived in that front part of the brain, you know, the frontal cortex. Yeah. But it seems as though it's a whole brain activity. It is a whole brain activity. Yeah. There's this term called degeneracy, which is kind of an unfortunate term, but it relates to different parts of the brain being used for multiple things or multiple functions. I think it's easier to just think that you have lots of networks and systems and loops, and they're all working in concert with each other.

50:44Or maybe it's a little bit more like an orchestra, like a really huge orchestra with billions of people where they're all coordinating with each other in some way, as opposed to just thinking it's just the woodwinds or just the percussionists. It's how they all come together that leads to the whole piece that we call like consciousness or like the symphony. At the risk of asking, I won't even disclaim this question. Go for it. What is the area of the brain that gives us the capacity to wonder? Some people might say that this mind wandering is this ability to wonder, part of wonder. I mean, there are people that actually dedicate their whole careers to just like the experience of wonder.

51:29Some of it is this mind wandering, which relates to what's called the default mode network, which is different areas of the brain that typically come online when we're just at rest. But there is, for true wonder, this feeling of awe or being a part of something bigger or feeling very small in a positive way can involve more of these emotional -related systems to create this kind of positive valence with a bit of a sense of calm, maybe a little bit of arousal in it. If we look at the example of people who have temporal lobe seizures, the temporal lobe, this part here of the brain, if you go more inside of the temporal lobe, you get into the hippocampus and the medial temporal lobe in there, the medial temporal region.

52:21But areas that are very active there, people who have these profound temporal lobe seizures can have profound religious experiences too. Some people can think about it as like a moment of ecstasy or can have these big religious experiences. And I think there's some activity going on in these deeper parts of the temporal lobe, which are very closely linked to these limbic systems. And so it's a combination of kind of the positive feeling that comes from it, but also there's like probably a deeper breakdown of the different types of wonder. But what I would say is there's this sense of diffusing your sense of self, we'll call like the ego.

53:00And that also relates to less attention to kind of your boundaries within space and more into kind of a connection with things around you. Wow. One of the things I've come to appreciate from being an neurologist and just really falling in love with the brain is how much of our existence is just one great big hallucination. Yeah. I have a sense of what you're saying, but can you elaborate on that? It's so much of what we experience and register and recall and kind of predict what's going to happen. It's all being conjured in our brain. There's just expressions like all we will ever know is our nervous system.

53:38All we will ever know is kind of what this nervous system that we have is registering around us and how it's perceiving and constructing and predicting the world in front of us. I mean, even now as we're having this conversation, our field of attention is really focused on this area right here in front of us. But there's this whole other world that our brain is filling in the gaps with whatever it decides to fill in the gaps with. It's usually a pretty good estimate based off of kind of what light has entered the brain and like what it's registered as colors. But it's not necessarily 100 % accurate with what's really out there.

54:17So it is kind of like a hallucination. It's conjured out of all these cells kind of sitting in our skull. You've mentioned now, because you just mentioned light and color. And I noticed this is the second time in this conversation that you've mentioned something of the visual field. Because earlier you also mentioned that the optical area of our back of our brain. It strikes me that humans are particularly visual animals. Whereas back to you talked about the dog, like training your inner dog. Dogs really navigate the world through smell. And a lot of other animals navigate the world through smell.

54:55Now, why is it that we experience the world so visually while not every animal shares that experience? That might have to do with just the process of evolution in itself and how much of our brain was dedicated to that particular sense in terms of how it led us to be more likely to survive. So with dogs, for example, so much of their brain is dedicated to these olfactory bulbs, olfaction, its connections to things. I mean, that's not to say that humans also aren't involving some of that. It's just so much of our brain has been dedicated to vision. I mean, we evolved to have two eyes that are centered in front to give us more binocular vision so we have better depth perception.

55:41And it might have been really advantageous to us, let's say, out on an open savannah to be able to detect threats that were very, very far away, as opposed to having to be close to be able to smell the potential threat. It's more a factor of our evolution than anything. But even in people who are born blind, that area of the brain gets used for all sorts of other things. It's not like their occipital lobe isn't active. It just other activities of brain functioning kind of begin to flow over and relate with that part of the brain as well. I realize we've wandered far from how do you ask your boss for a raise, but this is, it's fascinating.

56:25The reason why I think it's so important to bring the brain into the conversation is because how could you not have a conversation about who we are and all these things that are important without bringing in the motherboard of reality, the brain? it's just core to the I and I am and the you and you are and we have to appreciate the complexity of all that is and all of the wonderful ways that it helps us out and how it evolved to protect us but also all the tricky ways that the brain can fool us and hijack situations against what we really want and how all those same things that are going on in your brain are also going on in the brain in front of you, as well as all the brains that person's interacting with as well.

57:11It's the more aware we are of how our brain plays a role in everything that we do, the more empowered we are to make decisions that fulfill who we want to be. You said something just now that you mentioned your brain might hijack you from the thing that we really want, right? Your brain might hijack you from the thing you really want. So what you really want is to get a raise, but you know that the moment that you walk into your boss's office, you're either going to clam up and not ask for it, or you're going to fly off the handle and behave inappropriately and probably get yourself fired, right?

57:53So there's the part of you that wants a thing. And then there's the part of you that has behaviors. And both of these parts live in the same brain. We've talked a bit by now about the thoughts and feelings and behaviors live, but where does the wanting live? Like the desire, the motivation toward the thing. Yeah, the direction towards wanting to take on an action. Some of that really is more frontal, that orbital frontal cortex that I mentioned, where those rewards are, where the weight of the reward is. But it's also the reward and reinforcement pathways, which are deeper in the brain which have learned to do X thing because it makes us feel more positive or less negative and helps us to potentially survive or hopefully survive.

58:42But these areas of the brain, they may not necessarily have the full context of the situation. So for example, there is such a thing as too many French fries. But our brain, that part of our brain can say it feels really good to have two, three, four, five, 20 French fries. And so there is this negotiation that you have to do internally between these different voices of kind of your brain in terms of where the desire comes in and what and how that relates to the desire helping your future self. This is why those exercises around how to best manage expenses and saving for yourself for the future can be helpful when you visualize that future version of yourself because you have this like short-term, there's all that work about like fast and slow thinking.

59:35And I think that kind of relates a bit to that as well, which is you're having to negotiate between parts of you that want that quick reward and the parts of you that want the longer-term reward. The parts of you that want that longer-term reward, is long-term live in the same areas as motivation? I guess where I'm going with this is you're planning out 20 years into the future. You want to set yourself up for the long term. Yet the day-to-day motivation of what it takes to achieve that can sometimes not be, again, what you want it to be. It's even hard to structure the questions because it seems as though there are multiple yous in here.

1:00:16Yeah, it can be helpful to think about it, there being multiple yous. I can go a little deeper on that specific thing, but I'll get to it. But I would say that just thinking of the future self, that might not be as vivid as the physical feeling that you have right now sitting in this chair and the positive feeling of having kind of that bit of chocolate or making that really luxurious purchase or deciding not to talk to your boss about something difficult. And so it can be helpful, again, going back to this BBO, this bigger, better offer, do whatever you can to articulate and crystallize that as much as possible for yourself.

1:00:55And really engage your senses. Some people are very sensory. So thinking about like visually, what will your life look like better by engaging in this? What are the smells? How does it feel to be in a new office? How will it, like, what are the things that people will say to you when you've had that raise, that promotion? And that helps to then shift the conversation going on in your brain to begin to move away from that behavioral loop that's really well ingrained of just avoiding or any of the behaviors like fawning or resenting the festering to doing the really brave thing of taking a risk and having that conversation that's uncomfortable.

1:01:38Now, to the point about kind of like who we are, the multiple selves. So one of the things that really interested me in the brain earlier on when I was in medical school was the work of Stephen Savish around something called the single neuron theory of consciousness. And when I first heard it, I couldn't quite grasp it. But when I did, I was just really like humbled, just like, if this is really true, what is reality? And the idea there is, if you think about this split brain experience that happened, I want to say back in the 60s, where people had really bad epilepsy on part of the brain, they would have a surgery, would split the corpus callosum, which is, if we go back to the brain, it's the part that connects the two hemispheres together.

1:02:19When they split that apart, people who had that surgery done would have, there would be things that they could perceive, but not articulate and things that only one hemisphere could really recognize, but not the other. And it kind of begs this question, are there by doing that surgery, are there two consciousnesses? Are there two people now living in that same body? And if you take that idea even further to think about what brain networks are, it's one brain cell kind of activating or inhibiting other brain cells. In that kind of flurry of activity within the brain, there's even of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, there might be a moment where there's just one neuron that's really dictating most of the activity that's going on for all the other neurons, the other brain cells.

1:03:09could that single cell be what represents you in that moment, in that split moment? So is that like the queen bee of neurons? Well, I wouldn't call it the queen bee of neurons. I would call it more a transient kind of position where the who you are can, the consciousness of who you are can be very, very fleeting where you are within that fraction of a fraction of a second, the who you are because of being dictated by the activity is that one neuron very briefly is kind of coming into existence and coming out of existence just in less time than it takes to blink. So there were constantly existing and unexisting.

1:03:53And so we're kind of painting this kind of story or telling ourselves this narrative about who we are when who we are is just this very fleeting, this fleeting moment over time. Why is the neuron transient? What? Just the activity within that cell comes through it and then it becomes less active. So it's just whatever we call it like potentiation of the electrochemical signal. So it's just like when it comes on and then it comes off. Oh, I see. It's not fully off. That's a simplification of it. But the idea there is that active kind of neuron that's very brief and potentially could be at the crux of who you are within like a very fraction of a second.

1:04:32Oh, I see. So it's almost as though it's flowing through. Yeah, it's a very transient moment where so much of who you are is represented by a cell. And it's a wild idea, but I always find it really humbling and also helped me to appreciate just how important it is to understand the brain, not just as islands that kind of coordinate. that's actually it's this like really complex network or symphony, which is like a big system that's in constant conversation with itself and the world around you. It strikes me that the brain can study itself and that the brain is in awe of itself. And also that the brain still has so many questions about itself.

1:05:13The brain, and one of the love affairs that I've had with the brain is just thinking about how the brain can improve that which does the improving. That's partly what led me to be so passionate about brain health and led me into the field of neurology and to be really focused on helping to diagnose, treat, and manage conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Because the better we are at helping to preserve our brain functioning for as long as possible, the better we are being able to improve our own situation, but also as a whole, collectively, as a society. It's been an ongoing passion of mine. One of the ways I really want to have an impact on the world is just helping to improve the health of all of our brains.

1:06:00On that topic, what are the things that we should be doing for improved brain health, assuming the average listener who's a relatively healthy adult? Yeah, there's a lot of behaviors that we can do day to day that can help to improve our brain health. And one core one that the minute I say it, everyone's going to roll their eyes, which is exercise. So exercise, very physical experience, but does so much for our circulatory system, for stress levels, for the different types of molecules that exist in our brain and in our body. I would say if you can increase your level of physical activity and keep up that level of physical activity over the long term, that will be huge already.

1:06:43Another one is engaging in a brain healthy diet. So there's something I mean, I would say something close to the Mediterranean diet is pretty good. There's a specific diet called the mind diet, which is a combination of the Mediterranean plus dietary approaches for helping to manage high blood pressure. This thing called the DASH diet. But essentially, it's eating meats that are lean, green leafy vegetables, olive oils, nuts that are high in omega-3 fatty acids like walnuts, and then dark fruits like blackberries, blueberries, strawberries. And then there's a lot of research coming out now around ultra-processed foods and what world they play.

1:07:22But I always like to focus on what to eat as opposed to what not to eat. Then sleep is another big one. just making sure that you're getting enough sleep. And for every person, that amount of sleep is different from person to person. Just making sure that you're treating any sleep disorders. So for example, like sleep apnea, if you snore a lot, making sure you're getting that checked out because it's treatable and it can help to kind of improve that brain health. Social connections, I've done a lot of research on social connections and its impact on brain health. And I think the key thing there is making sure that you're really sustaining supportive social connections, that you're not just the one providing the support.

1:07:57that support is coming back to you, especially if that support is in the form of emotional support, or even just having somebody available to listen to you. And then another one is just constantly engaging in new and challenging mentally stimulating activities. And very deliberate in terms of the words that I use there, because it's new topics, new skills are really helpful, and they would ideally be challenging. So that requires effort to do it, which is more likely to form new brain cell connections. So that way, even if you develop injury down the road, you have a lot of spare pathways for information to get to where it needs to get to.

1:08:33Speaking of pathways, because I often hear the analogy of pathways forming in the brain, is there a maximum number of pathways that can form? I'm envisioning it as undeveloped real estate, and then you can build some roads on it, but it can either be sparsely populated or densely populated. Is that the right analogy? I don't know that there's like, mathematically, there is a limit to what can happen within a bit of mass or matter. But I think the thing that we know about the brain is this kind of expression that really summarizes it nicely is that neurons that fire together, wire together. So this kind of kindling effect that happens with neurons, the more these brain cells are in contact with each other, that they connect with each other, they're in similar pathways, the more likely the air to grow those connections and form stronger connections with each other, and then become part of essentially an interlocking network on itself.

1:09:31We can develop new pathways whenever we learn something new. It's one of the beautiful things about the brain. We call it plastic. It changes based off of the environment they're in. Even in this conversation we're having right now, we're shaping each other's brain because we won't be who we were at the beginning of this conversation as who we are at the end of it. The transient you. Yeah, exactly. Is it true that we lose that plasticity with age? So there is a critical window at a very young age where our brain is highly plastic, where it's just very prone to making those connections. And this is kind of in the early months of life.

1:10:10That window starts to close as a couple of years go by. So we've seen that with studies looking at kids around like 10 to 12 months old, where they start to form, they begin to lose the ability to detect differences in speech, specific accents start to form in language as well. So like the difference between the ba and the va sound in like Spanish culture can get lost after that. Or like in Japanese cultures, the difference between the la and the da sound can get lost during that time. That's why it's also really, kids are really amazing at learning kind of like languages and skills and that's like the environment around them.

1:10:44But as we get older, things do get harder to create, but it's not impossible. So there are things that we can do to help to increase some of that plasticity. And some of that is doing things that are keeping that plasticity active, kind of keeping the molecular kind of environment, like very prone to performing connections. There's this thing called brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF, which some people call it miracle grow for the brain. But that increases with physical activity and also like learning and social engagement. We tend to see more of that molecule around so you're more prone to make those connections.

1:11:18There's also some research around certain medications making people more prone to open up that window. But I think in general, it's about the physical activity and engaging in the new and challenging mentally stimulating activities. As we get older, we do lose some of our cognitive functions, but the typical situation is not a sharp decline where we lose our ability to function. It's really just a slight decline. I mean, some things like working memory, some of these kind of trickier brain functions actually peak in our early 20s and then start to go down very slowly. But there are some areas of brain function that continue to improve over time.

1:11:58Vocabulary, some people call it like theory of mind or perspective taking or like wisdom. These things continue to get better over time. But even then once we get into our 90s, some of those functions also will begin to decline as well. But they can improve even in our 70s or 80s? As long as you're able to learn, you can reopen that window of plasticity. I mean, it's constantly happening. It's just part of our brain. It's just the propensity for which it happens is not as great compared to how immense that capacity is when we're toddlers. Right. But at least as adults, it's heartening to know that those things can improve even in our 70s and 80s.

1:12:38Yeah. I mean, it may take a little bit more effort sometimes. I think going back to like conflict resilience, like unlearning some past behaviors can take a little bit more effort because those pathways are so ingrained. But it is something that can happen. I mean, another big process that happens in the brain is what we call myelination. It's like white matter kind of tracks that basically are creating efficiencies in the brain. So we prune some of our connections to increase efficiency. So it's like getting rid of a lot of side rows to make room for highways. And that is another part of this process of learning and really forming those really strong connections that happen over time.

1:13:16And that's something that can definitely happen as we get much older. I've heard the theory that we have fluid intelligence when we're in our 20s and 30s, that high compute power that allows us to do very, very difficult mathematical equations when we're 30. That's harder to focus on at the age of 50. And that as we get into our 50s and 60s, we have crystallized intelligence, that wisdom across multiple domains. Is there actually a neurological basis for that? The concepts of fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence is one way that we can think about intelligence that gained a lot of attention in the last several decades.

1:13:57Essentially, when we think about fluid intelligence, more of that problem solving, kind of novelty thinking, double thinking, and then the crystallized images of knowledge, facts, procedures, processes that are well-worn. None of those really go away. You may lean on more of one than the other, but it's still there to some degree. and the brain areas that are involved in each of those, there's a lot of overlap between them as well. But if you're much older and you're not really focused on trying to challenge yourself and learn something new or learn a new experience or something, you may just be relying on facts and kind of past experiences and say like, in this situation, I just do this no matter what, regardless of what the outcome is.

1:14:37But someone who's a little bit more fluid might think, I can try this. And if that's not the right way to do it, the way that I want it to end up, I can make an adjustment. What is the impact of trauma on the brain? Trauma is really complicated and it involves these past experiences of actual or perceived threat of violence or potential loss of life that becomes very deeply ingrained in our memory, so much so that we can be prone to developing post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, where we have intrusive thoughts of the past or being in situations where we are reminded, our brain is reminded of that past threat will set off all sorts of warning bells and alarms, and it derails your ability to function in a lot of places.

1:15:32When we are thinking about conflict resilience, we are definitely making sure that that we are making a distinction, that we don't want people to tolerate a very traumatic situation where you are at risk of being harmed or somebody else being harmed. We want people to know that this is really meant to help us with more of the discomfort of disagreements and conflict across things like lines of difference or difference of opinion or difference of decisions about how you want to do things. But if you're in a situation that is actively going to harm you or is a threat of harming you, that a big decision has to happen at that point for yourself, whether to stay or to go.

1:16:13And that's something that we talk at length. And we try to navigate kind of the complexities of that by sharing a little bit of research around kind of this trigger warnings and how trigger warnings may actually not be as helpful as we think that they can be. Because a trigger warning may actually increase a person's, when it can sensitize them more, They can also increase your own self, how you identify with the trauma. It can actually increase the amount of distress around the situations. So there's a little bit of a navigating that has to happen about how much and when do you expose yourself to some of that discomfort.

1:16:50Some people can use a system of just giving yourself a rating of how distressing something is from like a zero to 10, 10 being the most distressed, zero being no distress at all to gauge for yourself what level of distress is the situation. Putting me in, if you are at a 10, maybe pause, step away or ask yourself, is this the right time or the engagement for me? And then maybe you want to practice with things that are more on the one to two range. Usually just like lifting weights, right? You want to work with weights that you can lift and keep your form before you start to increase the weight because it's all the things that you learned with good form that allow you to actually lift those heavier weights without hurting yourself.

1:17:28Right. And so finding situations where your distress level is more in that like one to two, three range. And then really bringing in these different skills can be really, really helpful. So that way, eventually you can work your way up to what would have been in the past, a four or five. But certainly jumping to a 9 or 10 is actually just going to be potentially traumatizing and kind of reinforce this idea that conflict is bad. Just with the idea of conflict in and of itself, one of the things we want to make sure that comes across is that conflict is something that we should expect and accept.

1:18:03And the more we see it as a sign of opportunity, creativity, innovation, connection, vibrancy, the more likely it is that we will want to engage in some of these more uncomfortable conflict situations if we know that there's that BBO at the end of the discomfort. The bigger, better offer. The raise that you get when you finally go into your boss's office. Exactly. And ask for one. What would you do if, let's say that there was something, you talked about the distress rankings. Let's say that there was something that in the past created a level 10 distress. And now there are things that are objectively benign, but that remind you of it.

1:18:48Let's just say the color yellow, right? The color yellow is objectively benign, but it reminds you of something from your past that had a level 10 distress. How do you manage that? Yeah, how do you manage that? I mean, one thing that we also try to highlight is there are some situations where it would be helpful to work with a therapist, to work with a trained mental health professional who can help you navigate these really tricky experiences. because if the distress is very high, it would be helpful to have an external person kind of coaching you through it and walking you through kind of how to navigate those feelings that are coming up and not just avoiding them altogether.

1:19:31There's one type of therapy that is often used in situations. It sounds like a specific phobia, and specific phobia is oftentimes the treatment that's used is something called exposure response therapy. But essentially, it's gradually introducing that thing that is really scary. in those lighter levels, and then helping you bring in strategies and tools so that way you're able to manage that distress that comes up, whether it's through breathing, through it, through kind of reminding yourself through this thing called response prevention messaging. So it's like kind of things that you can tell yourself that can help to ease the discomfort.

1:20:09So for example, if the yellow reminds you of a situation like, let's say a yellow school bus hit you. And ever since then, that yellow above the school bus just drives you into panic. Working with other shades of yellow and starting with that, even if it gives you like that one or two level. So finding that thing that leads back to that one to two to three so you can navigate it. And then reminding yourself and using that response for prevention messaging around this color yellow reminds me of something that happened, but this yellow here isn't going to harm me right now. And we might never know whether, you know, this yellow is a sign of something really bad, because it could be something good, it could be something bad.

1:20:52It could be something, it could be nothing. It's less about kind of downplaying things, and more about giving you a fuller picture of what's possible, as opposed to being very certain that something bad's going to happen from it, opening up with that kind of new layer of imagination around that also nothing might happen or something really positive might happen too. And we don't know. Right. We don't have the information. Right. And that's where the imagination of possibility comes in. Exactly. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they would like to learn more?

1:21:29Yeah. If people would like to learn more about the book, Conflict Resilience, they can go to conflictresiliencebook.com. And if they want to learn more about myself, you can go to joellesalinasmd.com and all social media platforms. I'm joellesalinasmd.

1:21:47Thank you to Dr. Joelle Salinas. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, your brain's avoidance loop makes asking for raises harder. Your brain actually rewards you for avoiding difficult conversations. which creates a cycle that makes future conversations even more uncomfortable. Breaking this pattern requires deliberately practicing discomfort. And it requires focusing on the long-term benefits rather than the short-term relief, which is easier said than done. As we are doing a behavior that can decrease the negative experience, we use the term valence, like there's positive and negative valence.

1:22:35the less negative or the more positive the experience, the more likely you are to get a release of dopamine or serotonin, which then activates these reward and reinforcement pathways. These are really there to help us learn. And in that learning process, what's really being registered is not only what was the thing that I did that made me feel a little bit better, but also how big that reward was. And the bigger the reward, the bigger the relief, the more likely it's going to get ingrained in these behavioral pathways. Your brain's avoidance loop reinforces itself, continually making asking for raises or doing anything else that's uncomfortable harder.

1:23:16That's the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two. The bigger, better offer technique can help you ask for that raise. When you're preparing to request a promotion or a raise, first, identify the compelling long-term rewards that outweigh the temporary discomfort. And that should be a duh. What's the long-term reward of making an extra$10 ,000 a year to do exactly the same thing that you're doing right now? The long-term reward speaks for itself, but you can actually take it a step further and get visual with it. All right, what would you do with that extra$10 ,000? Would that put you on a shorter timeline towards financial independence, which means that you would then be able to move into your true calling, would that allow you to pay off your student loans and feel the relief of being debt-free?

1:24:08Would it allow you to move into a larger apartment as your family grows? I mean, identifying those long-term rewards and being as specific and as visual as you can be, that will help shift your brain's reward system towards supporting your career advancement goals. This BBO, the idea here is if you're able to be aware of the situation, pause, and then reflect on what is the reward that'll come to you from taking on that big, scary action or that thing that you're not usually inclined to do that is bigger than doing the counter to it, the more likely it is that your brain's reward and reinforcement pathways are going to start to align with what you want to happen or what is in your best interest.

1:24:58So that is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. Conflict is actually a sign of connection, not failure. Reframing how you view workplace disagreements can transform your ability to have those hard but productive conversations about compensation, about advancement, about benefits, about having a better working environment, all of those tough but necessary conversations that force growth. Conflict isn't something to fear, but rather a really necessary part of having authentic, long-lasting professional relationships. Conflict oftentimes gets thought of as a source of failure or weakness or pain or a sign that things aren't working.

1:25:48But actually, conflict is a sign of connection. and you cannot have connection without conflict. It's how people can be most authentic with themselves and live the lives that they really want to live. The more I avoided that conversation with my parents, the more painful that distress was in my head. And so it became harder and harder until eventually I had to create a situation where I couldn't avoid it. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Dr. Joel Salinas. He is the co-author of the book, conflict resilience, along with Bob Bourdone, who you heard from earlier this week, which covers negotiation and conflict both from a tactical perspective as well as from the neurological perspective.

1:26:35Thank you for tuning in. I am so grateful that you are part of the Afforder community. This is the Afford Anything Podcast. I'm Paula Pant, and I'll meet you in the next episode.