How to Overcome Uncertainty | Dr Hannah Critchlow

0:00So I think about hierarchy of needs, right, when I think about certainty and I think we need shelter and we need food and we need, you know, a place to live. We kind of think about as we go up, the job, which we mentioned at the beginning, is kind of one of those things to give us financial security and to make sure that we can have a house and things like that. One thing I find really interesting about the brain and uncertainty is breakups. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So that has a huge impact. and I was I was yeah I was gonna touch a touch on this next um so the way that my younger son handles uncertainty when we're traveling together for example that's a big situation when you know there's a lot of uncertainty because you're traveling from place to place visiting friends and family or going on holiday and so there's a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity in the environment there and a lot of change in structure yeah um and so what i make sure that i do to help support him um he doesn't seem to need a uniform for this although he does pick his own clothes he does change them so that's nice um but i touch him a lot so i hold hands with him uh and um i noticed that he says i love you mum quite a lot when we're moving environments and the familiarity is gone So he needs that extra kind of support.

1:24Yeah, yeah. And we actually do quite a lot of singing together because I think he finds that soothing and listening to music. So again, these are the types of things that you can really easily bring into your day-to-day life to help you to then cope with uncertainty when it inevitably will crop up in your environment. Another thing that I do that I find incredibly useful that you can easily translate into day-to-day life is box breathing so you know breathing in for four seconds breathing out for four seconds breathing in for four seconds and breathing out for four seconds in the shape of a box just go like a few times around the shape and it helps to calm down the nervous system it gives you a little bit of a pause time almost so that you can start to think okay your brain can catch up with this new information so that it can start to think how am I going to process this right because I've got to create a new way of processing this new information yeah I don't have to just use my existing template in my neural circuitry so when it comes to breakups then why is that such a big one because I think about all of these things but I think some of the biggest grossing episodes we've ever had on the show comes down to breakups I think it's a universal experience and I even know in your book it's kind of near the end chapter and you went to your doctor and were so stressed with finishing your PhD and you weren't sleeping and you were procrastinating and in the end she was like get rid of the unhelpful boyfriend eat well get some sleep and just focus on this and you were like it was sound advice and it worked yeah but interestingly when I was reading that I was thinking did she go through uncertainty with her breakup how is she feeling because i think it's a universal uncertainty that we all face because i think when we look at like socio-economic status we're all on different levels right everyone connects to different things within their life whether it's their job or the home but i think the one thing that we all feel connected to is a bad heartbreak yeah yeah so there's and the brain that is very uncertain right you go from being with one person to not how to talk to me about that and the brain so i did actually cover this in my uh prior book uh joined up thinking the science of collective intelligence and i am gonna sound like a little bit of a cold clinician i think it would be a polite way of putting it here buckling myself up hey guys i am very bad at asking for this but i wanted to stop for just one minute and ask a huge favour.

4:13If you want to hear more diverse conversations from female voices such as myself, I would love if you could hit subscribe. We work so hard on this show to bring you some of the best guests in the world. And having a female voice sometimes gives a different perspective. And I really want to elevate more of that on this channel. So please hit subscribe if that's important to you as it is to me. Oh God. So this is like, this is as an aside, emotional intelligence number one predictor for how satisfied you are with life and also your academic success right emotional intelligence so important fundamental skill for us humans to have so that we can connect with each other and medical students this is where my mind was kind of linking up medical students in America are actually being told that they have to do humanities subjects it's kind of obligatory for them to do humanities subjects so that they read fiction books so that they can actually exercise their emotional intelligence because then they have to kind of immerse themselves in someone else's character and go through a journey with them and it helps to develop their emotional intelligence and empathy skills which researchers are concerned that medical students might not have emotional intelligence or empathy skills unless they do actually exercise them and you can train them up anyway so yes I did in fact go to my GP when I was struggling to finish my PhD uh I was kind of feeling overwhelmed right there was a huge amount of uncertainty in whether I was going to pass my viva you know I should have had confidence in myself and it was all absolutely fine but also what was I going to do next right what was I going to do once I'd finished my viva where was I going to be so there was you know I kind of almost didn't want to finish because I didn't want to face that uncertainty so I went to the GP and I asked her for advice um I think she had a huge amount of emotional intelligence and she judged the situation very well she actually said to me um she was German she said in a very Germanic kind of way very like you know clear cut and on point and she said to me um are are you about to commit suicide, Hannah, this weekend?

6:27Because it's Friday today. Do you think that you are in such a state that, you know, you're going to take your own life? And I looked at her and I said, no, I don't think I am, thankfully. I don't feel like that. I don't feel that bad. And she was like, no, I don't get the impression that you are going to do that either. That's good. Okay, I'm not going to put you in for an emergency hospital visit then. She said, so what can you do, right, to help yourself, to help calm yourself down? she said I think your boyfriend is a bit of a distraction I think get rid of him and I think do some exercise to try and manage your stress and I think you then need to just work out a routine where you can focus and think clearly so that you can finish your book and so I actually shifted things around and started working into the night so doing exercise during the day and working a little bit later into the night so there was no distractions and that was sound advice from the GP I did dump my boyfriend this was a while ago right it was in the 20s in my 20s and I'd had a bit of a discussion with her about some of the problems with the relationship uh to be honest I'm not entirely sure I should have gone to my GP with this one but it was all linked anyway uh so which was a difficult decision because I'd actually been going out with him for a couple of years um and he was you know he's a nice guy uh but actually ultimately it was the right thing for both of us yeah he's very happy now in a very you know settled um position in life and i'm happy as well so it was the right decision um and i managed to finish my phd in great time and it was you know it was all a success and everything uh but what happens when you know we're going through a breakup and it's not because we have to ultimately because the relationship because we need to do something else um you know what happens within our nervous system when we're losing that closeness that we've experienced with someone else well there's this idea that um when you form a bond with someone else a close partner uh you're actually forming almost a transactive memory bank with them so there's a number of ways that you bond uh and it helps to calm it can help you to calm down your nervous system to help you feel connected to help you feel happy but also you kind of almost without even consciously being aware of it you're starting to rely on that other person for the brain benefits that they bring to the table right so they might be really good at finding places to go where you can have fun and then you might be really good at organizing the logistics behind it and together that makes great adventures had with minimal faff right and so you without even sometimes being fully aware of this you start to rely on each other for each other's skills that create this bigger better whole and then suddenly and there's been studies that have been done in the lab to prove this suddenly if you don't have that person around anymore you've got to actually start doing that cognitive work yourself you can't rely on them and so many neuroscientists believe that this is actually what in in part grief is you've lost almost uh an external hard drive you've lost a bit of cognitive power that previously you had and we've been driven to be this very sociable species that form bonds we form friendships with one another and we form partnerships with one another and if that friendship or is that if that partnership is broken up if it's severed through death or through the relationship breaking down your brain actually no longer has that resource that it was once relying on in order to create a better life right and it's not a bad thing that we rely on other people that we rely on and the brains it's you know it's all give and take right but when suddenly that is lost it can feel you know like it's literally loss you know you've lost that extra resource in a similar way you know if you have to go without your phone for a little bit you've you're you're losing that extra cognitive resource right and that can also make you feel a bit on edge um i mean you you don't get the same degree of grief perhaps you'd hope um but there's a similar feeling of a kind of like I've lost something where is my you know where is my calendar my my extra memory my extra resource yeah that helps me to achieve things in life you know that extra tool and I have just called a partner a tool there yeah well I guess you kind of are because you kind of create a household together and you work together and you i don't know i guess it's i think we are sociable creatures and i think when you that's why i think breakups can feel so difficult for so many people so like in that space what is it that as a neuroscientist when you look at this that you advise to replace that transactional memory because there's no point wiping it no because then that's very sad at the same time right you're like wiping all and all those things give you so much different experiences and different versions and also I make I guess like different reflections on yourself which is also I think really powerful but how do you get out of that flux of uncertainty or worry or the move forward yeah a friend gave me some incredible advice uh she said you know when I'd gone through uh I think I can't remember exactly what scenario it was but I was feeling particularly upset about something and um she said Hannah you know it's actually quite reasonable but it's quite rational for you to feel upset right now.

12:13I think just give yourself a particular time period that you think is sensible. Maybe it's a week, maybe it's three weeks, you know, and just say, I'm allowed to feel lost. I'm allowed to actually not perform as well as I usually expect myself to. I'm allowed to feel sad. That's a completely normal reaction. My emotions are telling me that I've lost something and that's okay, all right? So just sit with that and try to learn from it and give yourself that time period where it's okay to feel that grief. You don't need to justify yourself. You don't need to continue to achieve the things that you don't need to really achieve.

12:56So give yourself that period. And then, you know, in terms of moving forwards, make sure that your brain is in, you know, we talk about, we always talk about our bodies being in this. you know good physiological state right feeling fit and having muscles and having resilience in our bodies yeah so that our joints will keep working into our 60s right so that we've got enough muscle so that we can lift things or you know we can go on that beautiful hike in the holidays right we need to have that really good strength so that we can enjoy life and operate with life but the same thing is true of the brain right so what can we do to keep our brains agile and nimble able to do all of the this like mental gymnastics so that it can cope with uncertainty so it can cope with changes so it can cope with loss well you need to have that flexibility within the brain so again anything that you can do to help foster that the exercise in the morning making sure that you try to sleep at night as well because that helps to consolidate what you've learned during the day so that you can wake up with a almost a different framework