Grand Slam Journey

64. Loretta Breuning: Why You’re Unhappy: Biology vs Politics

• Klara Jagosova • Season 2

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Unlock the mysteries of your mind with  Loretta Breuning Ph.D. as we explore the biological roots of unhappiness and the societal structures that sway our emotions. Our riveting chat strips away the veneer of societal expectations to reveal how our primal instincts for protection and social hierarchy affect our feelings and actions. Loretta Breuning, with her profound insights from "Why You're Unhappy: Biology vs Politics," challenges the misconception that feeling down is a disorder, encouraging us to perceive it as a natural biological function.

Prepare to reshape your understanding of neural plasticity as we examine the power that lies within to rewire our brains. The episodes weave through the courage required to question medical and psychological standards to the societal tug-of-war between fitting in and expressing our true selves. We traverse the complex social dynamics that influence our sense of belonging and status and how these are imprinted upon us from our earliest experiences.

As we conclude our journey, we delve into the importance of self-awareness on the path toward personal growth and the enriching lessons cross-cultural experiences offer on perceptions of happiness. Loretta's perspectives promise to not just enlighten but also inspire you to harness the knowledge of biology and politics in your quest for a more fulfilling life. Share in the dialogue and extend the conversation with friends, as the quest for understanding happiness and unhappiness is a journey best traveled together.

Resources:
Why You’re Unhappy: Biology vs Politics
The Happy Brain Podcast
Inner Mammal Institute
Reading List
Episode #56 on Apple Podcasts
Episode #56 on Spotify

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Loretta:

But what the book is explaining is that the core animal impulses are first, this feeling that we call in the modern world fitting in is really the animal urge for protection. Every animal wants protection and fitting in is this idea that I have a herd around me and therefore I'm safe. And in the animal world you have to pay a high price for being in a group, and I go into detail of explaining really in all of my books. It is the high price, so there's a cost, but modern culture has given us the idea that other people fitting effortlessly and they get it for free and we are somehow unjustly deprived of this sense that we're calling fitting it. That's the oxytocin feeling that we want.

Loretta:

Along with that, every time you are in a group. That doesn't mean you're blissfully happy, because then you notice that there are certain people in your group are getting more attention and respect than others. If I were in a knitting club when I would see that certain people in the knitting club get all the attention, and why should I be in this club if all the attention is going to those people? So everybody feels that way about the groups that they're in and the alliances that they identify with, because mammals have this natural urge to rise in the social hierarchy that they identify with, because in the animal world that spreads your genes it brings reproductive success in the terms of biology and this was just an established public information in the field of evolutionary biology in the late 20th century.

Klara:

And yet it disappears.

Klara:

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Grand Slam Journey Podcast, where we discuss various topics related to finding our passion and purpose, maximizing our potential sports, life after sports and transitioning from one chapter of our lives to the next, growing our skills and leadership, and whatever we decide to put our minds into. For my guest today, Loretta Breuning helping to understand humans' emotions through evolutionary biology If the name sounds familiar to you, it is because Loretta Bruning was already on my podcast. We had a conversation later last year during episode number 56, and we talked about the evolutionary science of our mammalian brain and how to decode emotions and behavior. We discussed one of her previous books Habits of a Happy Brain Retrain your Brain to Boost your Sertanin, dopamine, oxytocin and Endorphin Levels. If you want to go back to episode number 56, it might be a great way for you to understand some of these basic chemicals and how they drive our emotions and the reasons behind them, based on evolutionary biology.

Klara:

Today we discuss Loretta's new book Why You' re Unhappy Biology vs Politics that is now available on Amazon. I believe this is a must read and very timely given what has been going on around the world. In this book, loretta writes that unhappiness is a natural brain function, but we are taught to see it as a disorder, they say. The science proves this, so it's hard to question. Her new book shows that unhappiness is natural biology and politics has transformed it into a disease. You can find out more how politics has shaped your understanding of your emotions in the book. I suggest you to check out the link in the episode notes and grab your copy.

Klara:

Loretta Breuning is the founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, a professor of management, a parent, author of 9 books and a fellow podcaster. Her podcast is called the Happy Brain and you can also find a link in the episode notes. If you enjoyed this episode, I want to ask you to please share with someone you believe may enjoy it as well. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast and Spotify, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This is your host, clara Evochova. Thank you for tuning in, and now I bring you Loretta Breuning. Loretta Breuning, thank you so much for joining me on the Grants and Journey podcast again for session number two. How are you Great.

Loretta:

It's a pleasure to be here.

Klara:

And I'm so thrilled to talk about your new book Nice book, actually that you've written Coherulations, why you Aren't Happy, biology vs Politics, and what a Read it's Been. Thank you so much. I look forward to diving into many questions that I have kind of written down as I've been reading through it. But before we dive in, I know you had a fantastic introduction last time, but anything you want to mention for listeners why this book and why now?

Loretta:

Well, I wrote the first book in this series in 2011, and I was the first person to start talking about what I call quote unquote happy chemicals. I self-published the first books and I'm self-publishing this book, but in between, I've had various commercial publishers and since I introduced this idea of talking about dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphin as the driver's happiness, that meme has been picked up, but the content of my work has been just ignored and it's been discussed in the most superficial way possible that people want to condense into hacks that could be explained in 60 seconds, and so first I want to thank you for not being superficial in that way, and that was one of the big drivers behind the new book is to correct the misconceptions that have arisen from these concept of hacks.

Klara:

I love it and studying my life and my past decisions and habits, I conquered that your research and the way biology works makes total sense to me. So hopefully any skeptics or anybody who's skeptical still now gives us a chance and goes through this podcast and perhaps reflect on their own habits and what dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins and perhaps cortisol mean. Maybe just to summarize, because I've been kind of reading through this and I wanted to frame this and I would like your correction if my summary is incorrect or addition to it. So for anyone who hasn't listened to the episode number 56 of my podcast, I again highly suggest them to go back.

Klara:

You have written several books, you have podcasts about this as well, as founded the Inner Mumble Institute. That is based on biology and science and evolution and the fact that nature builds on the previous. It doesn't start from scratch, and so the way we perceive the world and the way we create habits and feel emotions is based on our wiring and the neuro pathways that we have created ever since we were born. And so we are born with this amazing brain, a huge brain, probably the biggest brain on this planet in the animal kingdom which also comes with its own complexities that we have to train this brain, or sometimes it sort of trains itself, whether we want it or not, based on our observations and experience, and that then drives our fears, happiness and unhappiness based on these chemicals. And so the beauty that I've uncovered reading your books and listening and reading through your content is the beautiful variants that each of us bring into this life, because how we have seen and perceived this world and the experiences around us Is that accurate? Anything you want to add Correct.

Loretta:

Sure, I'll add one tiny thing that you're exactly right when you say that our brain is formed by our observations and experiences at a young age. That's the important thing is that neuroplasticity is very high when you're young. But we're born with almost no connections between our neurons. And those connections build from experience and, as you said, observation which comes from mirror neurons rather than conscious observation, and as a result we build this neural network that goes to like the on switch of your chemicals without the conscious verbal thought, and that's why in adult life we're like surprised, why am I happy about this and unhappy about that?

Loretta:

And your conscious verbal brain is really a separate unit, a separate operating system that tries to make sense of these responses, and so it comes up with explanations that make you look good, because why not? That's how your brain works, is it seeks rewards. So you're not going to give an explanation that makes you look bad. But the explanations we come up with are not necessarily accurate and that's why we do things that mystify ourselves. And when we understand the circuits we've built from early experience, then we can accept the true reasons for our actions and then build new pathways. But this early neuroplasticity is not conscious and that's why it's the big challenge.

Klara:

Mm-hmm, thank you, that's a great framing. And just to add, also in your book and in this book you've given readers some manuals and tips on how to create new neural pathways. So I guess the empowerment in it is even though we are wired a certain way through this young years, in our upbringing, we always have the power to change how we perceive things. It just requires more effort later on in life, and so the sooner we start, the better. So anyone who's listening start today. If you want to make any changes because the longer you wait the harder it is you can create your own feelings and create your own new habits. You just have to look a little bit deeper into how you're wired and then start taking action towards the new feeling or new habits you want to create.

Loretta:

Yes, perfect. And what I'm trying to offer in all of my books, and especially this one, is to make this new rewiring project sound like fun and sound doable, because so often it sounds, I understand, painful, and the most familiar example would be like rehab, when people go to some kind of treatment to start changing an unwanted habit. And because it's so hard, people have this illusion and dream that someone else can fix you. And if that doesn't work, then they think, oh well, that person messed up, I got to find someone else who can fix me. The bottom line is you have to do it yourself. It's harder than you think. I use the analogy it's as hard as learning a foreign language, and everyone knows that learning a foreign language is possible and yet most people don't. But I'm trying to present it in a way that makes it sound like a fun project and absolutely doable.

Klara:

And I would argue from my experiences maybe someone who likes foreign languages I think learning a foreign language is almost easier than rewiring your own brain, and it is so worth it. And so if you want to change your own mindset or how you think about things, I again encourage you to dive into it today and try putting in the effort, and you may see, perhaps, what new paths may open up for you. You know, actually, do you want to go back to what you answered even previously and maybe just ties into one of the chemicals? I believe it's. Is it oxytocin, the one that builds social alliances, and the importance for us to kind of be recognized in a hierarchy?

Loretta:

So there are two different social chemicals. Oxytocin is that urge to build social alliances so that you feel safe and protected, but serotonin is so that you feel like you're rising in the hierarchy of the alliance of your choice.

Klara:

That's a great addition. Thank you, maybe it's the serotonin. I wanted to ask you about your courage because, based on what I read in the book, you know you're very courageous. You dive into the politics of medicine, the politics of academic psychology, the politics of helping profession or the media, and you're not afraid to speak perhaps some of the things that are now become vitally popular. That takes a lot of courage and that could make you look like an outsider in the big scheme of the social construct that is now popular. So I'm curious if you could even share a little bit more of where does this courage come from? Or it seems like you really have this deep drive to wanting to bring this to light and help people see a different path than the one that's being served by many of the pillars and verticals of the society. Thank you, yes.

Loretta:

So you could call it courage and I could explain where I got the courage from. But I want to distinguish between saying the truth as I see it, and oppositionalism, because I'm not in favor of oppositionalism, which is sort of that habit that many people have of like I'm just going to say the opposite of whatever is possible and pride themselves on being a rebel. So I don't identify with that at all and that's not at all the message of the book because, as we know, that has now become a cultural default norm and everybody thinks they're a rebel and then they just, in a conformist way, are just saying whatever is officially designated as the opposition view, which has of course become the consensus dominant view, even though people have the illusion that they're being rebels. So one fact of this is that I'm an older retired person. I don't have unlimited amount of time to say what I think is true. So the reward value to me of going along and repeating things that everybody else is saying that seem false to me like what would be the reward of having more of that versus the reward of saying, wow, it's a privilege for me to be able to say things that a person with a boss and a mortgage could not say so. That's part of it. But frankly, I am just repeating my childhood, just like everyone else is repeating their childhood.

Loretta:

So I was rather an outsider as a child. Now I know that everybody thinks they were an outsider as a child and I was just reading this analysis of Harry Potter. So in the book I talk about, like how could everyone have been an outsider? It's not statistically possible, you know. And yet everyone perceives themselves as an outsider because everyone is a mammal that perceives that here's this group and other people are in the group, and for me it's an effort to go with the group. So I explained that for every animal it's an effort to be with the group and so we're choosing in every moment whether we want to make the effort or whether we'd rather just go our own way, and each one has rewards. And it's not a problem or a crisis because every animal, in every moment, is choosing whether to go with the group or whether to pursue resources with their own steps.

Loretta:

And when I say I was an outsider as a group, my mother had two children very close together, so I was rather neglected and abused when I was young. I mean, I don't want to make it a big cliche, but I didn't learn to depend on a group or on others, and so I have this irrational fear of like if you follow the group, they're just going to go over a cliff. And other people have, like, a fear of being without the group, that they trust the judgment of the group more than they trust themselves and they have to build their own trust. And I have to do the opposite. I have to work on having some trust in the group, because it's not healthy to not trust the group at all.

Klara:

Thank you for sharing that and I couldn't but resonate 100% with what you shared, which kind of makes me think how many of us feel this way Because we can actually at a friend's Christmas party, and so I wonder how much of it is what our own brain tells us versus what sort of the reality is.

Klara:

Because I never felt like I fit in anywhere, and even now in a group of women maybe because I don't have kids most of the time I don't have the traditional things to talk about that women typically talk about, like their kids and raising kids and families, and I think that's why I had a really weird attack.

Klara:

So I had a rather weird upbringing that doesn't resonate with many people of my age in America because of the communist era. It shifted the development of the country, so I feel like my upbringing more resonates with people in the US that perhaps are decade or two older than me and I fell into you as an immigrant and obviously my English is never perfect and it never will be, and I'm forgetting my native Czech language because I've been here for almost 20 years. So by the default I feel like I fit in nowhere and then the group never felt like I was really big part of. So perhaps early on in my childhood I had to learn that what you can do is follow what you think is right for you, because maybe seeking the satisfaction of being part of the crowd wasn't what I found rewarding. So it seems like in many ways you had very similar every year. It's always me thinking can we do some statistics to see how many people in the world actually feel the same way?

Loretta:

Yes, exactly. However, while all of that is true, if you go to the people that you think fit in like oh well, those women have children, so they fit in you go to each of them and they will each be thinking that they don't fit in because they have certain unique characteristics that they don't feel are widely shared or respected or acknowledged. So what the book is explaining is that the core animal impulses are first, this feeling that we call, in the modern world, fitting in is really the animal urge for protection. Every animal wants protection, and fitting in is this idea that I have a herd around me and therefore I'm safe. And in the animal world you have to pay a high price for being in a group, and I go into detail of explaining, really in all of my books, what is the high price. So there's a cost, but modern culture has given us the idea that other people fit in effortlessly and they get it for free, and we are somehow unjustly deprived of this sense that we're calling fitting it. But along with that, that's the oxytocin feeling that we want Every time you are in a group.

Loretta:

That doesn't mean you're blissfully happy, because then you notice that there are certain people in your group are getting more attention and respect than others, and I could totally sympathize, like if you're in a communist country and you're like well, what's the good of being in this group if all it gives me is having to slavishly obey?

Loretta:

And yet every one of us can see that in the group we're in. If I were in a knitting club, you know, and I would see that certain people in the knitting club get all the attention, and why should I be in this club if all the attention is going to those people? So everybody feels that way about the groups that they're in and the alliances that they identify with. Because mammals have this natural urge to rise in the social hierarchy that they identify with. Because in the animal world that spreads your genes it brings reproductive success in the terms of biology. And this was just an established public information in the field of evolutionary biology in the late 20th century, and yet it disappeared, like it's just not even acknowledged anymore, for reasons that the book explains in detail.

Klara:

Even in the last episode we talked about the hierarchy that we're driven towards. It's everywhere in the animal kingdom. Hierarchies have existed ever since the history or the books, right, and we can remember to all the way here, and my partner and I actually always discuss that power and money drives the world in many ways. So money is, I was going to say, new evolution of power. It's been around for a long time, right, and whatever shape or form money manifested itself in. But obviously now if you have money, you have power and sort of power and influence and money often goes together and also status, which actually you may enjoy this.

Klara:

I've been recently watching a show on HBO. It's called the Gilded Age and it was perfect complement to your book because it's about sort of the early ages of America and kind of the classes of the bureaucrats and how, if you had money, all the things you had to do that went with it versus if you didn't, and sort of the social classes and construct and the power games that people play in society and hierarchies. And you can, I think, replicate that to nowadays. They're just slightly evolved, but the principle is the same pretty much. So if you haven't watched the show, I actually suggested and I'm curious what your opinion on it is. Given all the research you have done, I think you would find it quite entertaining Anything you wanted to add to lower it down that topic, yeah.

Loretta:

So it is entertaining. However, if you make yourself miserable about the fact that someone else has more money or power than you, then you're always going to be miserable because someone else. Even if you were the richest person in the world, you would know that you're going to be dethroned someday by someone with more. And in addition to and this is the topic of my book Status Games, there are so many different status hierarchy. So, for example, physical attractiveness. So if you were the richest person in the world, but someone else would be more attractive than you, someone would have more athletic ability than you. So there are so many different modes of social comparison, and if you focus on your weaknesses and the strengths of others, you'll constantly make yourself miserable.

Loretta:

Yet we have a brain that does that, that goes there, and the point of this book is that we'll all be unhappy all the time if we do that. So happiness is a skill to understand these mammalian impulses that we've inherited and then to find healthy ways to stimulate our happy chemicals, despite the fact that our brain naturally defaults to unhappy chemicals. And so the big question is instead of learning those skills, why are the quote experts reinforcing this unhappy mindset and constantly telling you that your life is bad Despite. If you knew how bad life was in previous centuries and millennia, then you could appreciate the good life you have, but instead you could focus on some little thing that somebody has that you don't have. Why are they teaching us to do this and why are we accepting this? So that's the topic of the book.

Klara:

Yeah, thank you. I love that and I had so many thoughts even just about happiness, maybe to drive deeper into it. I don't know if I truly believe in happiness and you actually write about it because it's so fleeting. The feeling of happiness I find like true happiness is these little sparks, you know, here and there of like enthusiasm and kind of joy. I don't know if I can even describe it, but we all know that it lasts few seconds, minutes maybe if we're lucky, you probably know more, but I doubt that ever lasts even more than an hour.

Klara:

And so how do you feel about that? And if like the feeling of equilibrium which you actually write about, mindfulness, and maybe it's more of a mindfulness perception and you write about some of the negative side effects or your skepticism about mindfulness, but I wonder if a lot of our life, if your status quo is stable, you can then change your mindset to feeling content and feeling grateful. So I think that state alone should be enough for a majority of our life, right, unless you're like suffering. I think that should be sort of the equilibrium of almost what we strive towards, because if we constantly looking for this elevated feeling of joy, I feel like it's just a rat race, almost like a wheel. You always try to do more and more and you wrote even in your other books and the one I read why it's not productive. And we discussed being a former athlete and looking for those will just drive you to exhaustion.

Loretta:

Yes, exactly. So. This idea of chasing joy doesn't necessarily bring more good feelings in the long run. And in addition to that, there's this concept of virtue that has come along with it. Chasing virtue will make you happy is also a very popular view today. So when I say that happiness is a release of a chemical, many people are offended by that because they think it should be virtue and they're getting it from virtue. Really, they're getting a chemical from the perception that their virtue is higher than someone else's virtue, because being higher in a social hierarchy is what the mammal brain naturally seeks and because it has become taboo to feel superior about your strength or financial position. So everyone is rushing toward feeling superior about their ethics and that's how they're triggering their serotonin.

Loretta:

But first thing, you're absolutely correct that these chemical releases are brief, because that's how they're designed to work. They're designed to motivate action in a specific context where action would help an animal meet its survival needs. They're a reward for action and if they were on all the time, they couldn't do their job of provoking action in the appropriate context. So once you accept that they're not designed to be on all the time and nobody else is getting them all the time, then I find that very relaxing. It's like I'm not missing out on anything, nothing's wrong with me. I don't have to label it as a disease. So that's one half of the story.

Loretta:

Other half of the story is what you raise, the topic of the distress chemicals. Now, this distress chemical cortisol has a higher priority in our brain because the risk of harm can kill you quicker than the lack of reward can kill you. So, for example, a predator is a higher priority than hunger. So if you perceive a predator, you're gonna stop looking for food. So finding food is a good feeling, but relieving the risk of harm is an even better feeling. So how do we learn to manage that perceived threat of harm? However, you learn to manage it in your teen years. That's how you're wired to manage it today. So how do teens learn to manage bad feelings? Unfortunately, chasing highs is what many teens learn, and that's unfortunate. Now, how do teens learn it? Many learn it from their peers, many learn it from observing their parents. But the tragedy and the focus of this book is that experts in quotes are reinforcing this unhealthy approach to try to distract and chase away bad feelings by chasing joy in quotes.

Klara:

I agree and actually it seems like your book is very timely. I don't know if you wrote it because you've seen this timing and I've been pondering, in probably many of us, the past, even year or year and a half, the rise of the mental health crisis, the burnout epidemic. I keep wondering what is triggering this. Is it a group thing? How? If you start hearing things all the time and you actually read in this book, I strongly believe that we always find what we're looking for and so, even if the reality is not true, but your brain constantly hears it and perceives it, this is going on. You start creating, even if they're not true, but you're starting seeing the pattern and thinking that you have this problem as well, or you're struggling with burnout as well, because it seems like this message is almost everywhere. So I'm wondering how do we even distill what really is reality? Because, when it comes to our brain, I think one of the problems is and you even write in the book this right, it's, if you have something wrong with your arm, let's say, you go to a doctor, you broken arm. It's very visible. They sort of know what to do. Yeah, it's broken, you need to put in a cast or your shoulder, you torn, your tendon, they fix it.

Klara:

But when it comes to our brain and the way we feel, I feel like feelings are really hard to describe and only you can know them, and sometimes, even looking at my own journey and how I had felt, it's really sometimes hard finding the right word what that feeling is, and so if somebody starts forcing other words onto you, I feel like it's much easier to accept them than continue to look deeper into what is it I'm feeling and perhaps why, and I sometimes wonder why I can and cannot be helpful. I've done my own searches for why, but I think, instead of searching for why and uncovering why, I think sometimes it's helpful to well, what now? And how do I get myself out of the situation Right, instead of digging deeper into the layers of why they can get you into a spiraling tunnel. What are your thoughts on that? I think it's all about expectations.

Loretta:

Our brain runs on expectations. So, for example, let's say you are our distant ancestors and you're hungry and you see a mountain and you think, oh, I think there's food on the other side of the mountain. So you're very excited as you climb the mountain because finally I'm gonna get food. So when you then do all that effort of climbing the mountain and there's no lush paradise of food on the other side, you're very disappointed. But maybe if there's a little bit of food where you are, that's maybe not very satisfying because you were expecting this huge reward on the other side of the mountain and you invested a lot of effort for it. So our brain is always running on expectations and our dopamine, which is the feeling of joy and excitement, is you get a big surge when a reward is more than you expect. You get a little drip when a reward is about what you expect and you get cortisol when a reward is less than you expect. And these expectations are rarely conscious because they're wired in by experience. Much of your experience is wired in from your early years, but much of your experience is the yakety yak that you hear around you both in person and the internet. Yakety yak Now, the concept of burnout today is rooted in the expectation, as I explained in this book, that life should be easy and we should feel good all the time.

Loretta:

And society is the cause of your bad feelings. And in a good society you would feel happy every minute of every day, effortlessly. And in a fair society, like other people are feeling good effortlessly and you are somehow deprived of that good feeling, and society owes it to you to fix you so that you should feel good effortlessly. Once you're trained in that expectation, then your whole life is a disappointment. So I'm really raising the idea of why are they training us in this unrealistic expectation and I'm tracing it back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau who, almost 300 years ago, introduced this idea that in the state of nature, happiness was effortless and constant and all unhappiness is caused by our society.

Loretta:

And you have been taught to believe that so consistently and so seamlessly that you don't realize it's a belief. You just assume that it's a fact. And what I focus on in the book is that you're taught that it's the science. So if you question it, you're considered an anti-science nut. And so that's why I dig into the science to show that this is just pure belief. And everyone's repeating it, because everyone else is repeating it and it's not science at all. So the reality is life is hard, meaning your survival needs is hard. Being happy is a skill and you can build the skill if you make the effort. But if you expect life to be just sit on the couch and feel good, you're gonna be unhappy all the time.

Klara:

I mean, I agree, but I wanna kind of pinpoint Jean-Jacques Rousseau happened a long time ago. You know, even reflecting on my upbringing, it wasn't like that and maybe this goes back. I think most of us, perhaps statistically, if we were asked about our childhood, ever upbringing, would say it was one of the hardest times of our life. I would actually never wanna go through my teenagers again. Right finding yourself and who you are is one of the most difficult parts. So I think there's challenges with that alone.

Klara:

Do you see this message? It seems like you see it more prominent now than ever before, maybe because, again, I don't have kids, so I can reflect on the upbringing only here. What some of the newsletters write, which seems like there is a bit more entitlement with the younger generations. But then I also wonder how much is it just different views? Because it seems like, generationally, that's what I believe is also a message that keeps kind of repeating. If I look at my grandmother and what she had to go through, I'm sure she would say and rightly so my life has been much better than hers, yes. And so I wonder how we get out of this spinning wheel, and is it truly a perception, or maybe there's these new challenges that we don't even understand from a generational perspective, that the next generations have to deal with, and because we see it with a different lens of upbringing, we just judge it differently.

Loretta:

Yes. So everyone sees the world through the lens of their time period. So everyone thinks that the turning point in history was whenever they were in their 20s, because that's sort of where their conscious memory goes back to. So when you listen to anyone explain any topic, they will say it in some way where whatever was going on in their 20s was the turning point in history, because that's when they got to actively participate, so that's when they could remember everything that happened before that and everything that happened after that Now.

Loretta:

I agree that, as much as I loathe the cultural conversation today, my personal hobby is reading biographies, and I explain in the book that this helps me understand in a very vivid way how truly awful life was in the past and how there is not another time or place I would want to jump into in a time machine. And then I ask myself how could it be that the same thought loops keep getting recreated, just with different verbiage, and in fact they really are less horrible today In terms of really physical violence and physical suffering. And so very, very slowly we learn slightly less cruel ways of acting on this mammalian operating system, or we learn slightly better ways of managing, restraining and redirecting this mammalian operating system we've inherited so that we could spark our happy chemicals in less cruel ways. So then the question you're saying for the individual how can I feel good with this weird operating system that I've inherited? And the answer is first to understand the reality of it is inside you and to stop blaming society. Because whenever you're blaming society, you're feeling powerless because you can't control society. And that powerless feeling is what people are suffering from and they're being encouraged to blame society and us to feel powerless, which the experts every time I say the experts in the book, I'm saying the medical world, the academic world, the media world and the therapy world. So you can redirect your mammalian operating system to spark your good feelings more often. But the one thing that I want to add that's so central you talk about your teen years and the pain of that, and everyone could go on forever about that. And then once you have kids and you see your own kids go through it, so let's talk about why that's so painful.

Loretta:

Reproductive success is a term that biologists have created and no one consciously with their verbal brain goes around saying reproductive success is what makes me happy.

Loretta:

But if you pick up a textbook on evolutionary biology, you're like, wow, that's why we all drive ourselves crazy over reproductive success, and I learned this from watching nature videos and that helped put it in a little more upbeat way that I could learn to laugh at a little bit. I was amazed that animals try themselves crazy about I want this mate and not that mate and how popular I am in the mating market is what animals invest all of their attention in, and so that's what teenagers are doing, but nobody is consciously acknowledging that. So we're all finding alternative society blaming explanations for this insanity about the mating market and the way people dealt with it. In the past was very different, because birth control didn't exist and something had to be done to make sure that people didn't have children that they couldn't take care of. And now that we have birth control, all of these decisions like middle school kids are being encouraged to have sex and all of that huge, insane, preposterous focus on how I rank in the mating market is being dumped on middle school kids.

Klara:

You have a really good explanation of it and makes me think about I'm glad I played tennis and never cared in my teenage years about the boys at that point. That was my escape. That helped me, probably not needing to navigate this whole women hierarchy which I struggled with on trying to find out where I fit in, something that you actually mentioned before, and this could be very courageous topic for you and me probably as well. Just this it's almost like concept of life is suffering, or most of life is suffering, and we need to learn how to handle stress, which I would argue stress nowadays is way overplayed. It seems like when we mention stress, people automatically associate with negative connotation and thoughts, and I believe there is a purpose for stress and learning how to handle stress and maybe I come from the athletic background because for me, working out is stress and there's positive and negative stress and how to handle stress and small doses versus how to have too much stress for a long period of time, which is then not productive, and perhaps you need some other manipulation around. But it also makes me think of being too careful and not being able to say the right things openly because people perceive it unsafe and it's more of this extreme left and political correctness which, again just to tie it back to my upbringing and maybe Jordan Peterson, that people are and maybe aren't fan of. It seems like he has more enemies nowadays than he has people who would agree with him.

Klara:

But in the communist era you had this restriction of a free speech where you couldn't write songs and read books that had a specific anti-communist agenda.

Klara:

So I think that was perceived by the Communist Party to be as wrong, has been banned and is wrong.

Klara:

So I actually see this now happening more and more in the US, which is on the opposite side, and I find it crazy because I feel like, well, this is like the same trend it's just now happening on the extreme left, and historically I would argue with Jordan Peterson that in the past, if you look at human history, we just haven't been on the side of extreme left. We've always typically been on the side of extreme right and the Nazi, neo-nazi, like the communist era, the restrictive era. But it seems that we're now leaning towards a different side of free speech and really being almost too worried that what we say is going to hurt somebody else's feeling, and so that's where I feel this society is doing this to us or blaming the others, instead of trying to figure out internally. Well, why does the sentence make me feel bad? Is this something that I may have lived through and try to kind of see a different side of it? What are your thoughts on this, dr. Loretta so?

Loretta:

what is going on now is unpleasant and I can understand how anyone could perceive it as stressful, and I certainly feel stressed when I dip my toe into it and that's why I have to keep pulling back and saying I chose to dip my toe into it because I was expecting a reward and I am capable of choosing to pull my toe out and not participate in that cultural meme. So if I pull out then I lose the potential reward of participating. So all through human history there has been a very unpleasant competition for rewards and that competition has played out in many different ways. If you read about what went on 1,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago, there was constant warfare over neighboring tribes that were constantly over and usually there were some resource involved. And if you look at chimpanzees, they are constantly warring with neighboring groups. Because there is what I explained in the book as much as we imagine that nature has an abundance of food, that during the dry season there's very little food and there's, let's say, a certain tree that has food during the dry season and that is the most important resource and that's always at the boundary of two tribes of chimps and they fight over it constantly.

Loretta:

Now, during the communist era in communist countries, as unpleasant as it was to have the banning of reality, which was quite extreme and unpleasant even worse, there was prison, torture and real hunger. And so the unpleasantness we have right now is bad, but at least we don't have that for the most part political prison for the most part, and hunger and torture. Now people say, oh yes, but you're torturing me, I know. So the bottom line is it's hard for us to understand how much worse things were the people who play the game. Now, in many cases they get huge rewards. So if you play the game and you say all the right things, you have a chance of getting a job that pays a huge amount of money, that has huge status and very little effort and that feels good. So that motivates a lot of people to play the game, everyone who plays the game. Now there's going to be a lot of cruelty and at some point you may lose that position that you have. And so then, when you read about early human tribes that had priests and kings and human sacrifice, that this was like universal cannibalism, all of this was real and that the cruelty that went on over resources had a lot more physical violence and torture, whereas today we're doing it verbally and it feels horrible because we're managing it with the same stress, chemicals and the same operating system inherited from ancestors that did it with a lot more physical violence.

Loretta:

So, as unpleasant as it is, the way I manage is I keep saying OK, I'm a primate, my fellow human is a primate and I'm constantly making decisions. How much do I want to play the game with my fellow primate? And if I choose to play the game, it's because I'm seeking rewards and I have chosen to play the game. And when it's unpleasant, I can choose not to play the game, in which case then I lose access to certain rewards and that's unpleasant. So all I can fall back on is that I'm making the choice and I'm making this cost-benefit analysis, and my brain actually evolved for the purpose of making that very cost-benefit analysis and as hard as it is, that's the gift of being alive.

Klara:

And, if I can reflect on what I understood you said, is this human cruelty, or I would say animal cruelty in this one-up position that animal kingdom that humans are part of has been wired in us and we've been looking for, has existed ever since the history of our time, which is dealing with it now slightly different and perhaps what some would argue, more civilized way, although you have this conflict in Middle East that you could still argue is probably the same or worse as it had been 100 or 200 years ago. So there's still this way of murdering people and raping people that has existed ever since the history of, again, humankind and wars and, I guess, animal kingdom. Can we make Civilization Act any better? Do you think we can ever shake off this power dynamics and greed that in some ways, is part of our biology?

Loretta:

So first is to appreciate how far we've come, which you will not get that if you watch cable news all the time. True, so how far we've come. If I had to wear a burqa and constantly cover myself up, it's because there's a presumption that any time I show my face I will get raped. That rape is the norm, and so all those seamstresses have no way of stabbing us. No, nothing's going on. The fact is that I travel all over the world without wearing a covering and have not been raped. So while there are unfortunate examples and cable news covers them and a lot of finger pointing, the bottom line is that that's the exception rather than the norm, and we don't realize how much work it has been to wire each generation to withhold that natural impulse. So it all starts with understanding how bad our natural impulses are, and that's the problem, the way I see it, is that nobody's telling us the truth about how bad our natural impulses are. Instead, we're given this idealized view that animals are altruistic and cooperative, and all of the vicious cruelty in the animal world and in human history and early humans is being covered up by quote, unquote the experts. And that's what I explain in great detail, but hopefully in an entertaining way in this book, so that you can have some positivity about how things have gotten better. But then in the final chapter, I do address this question that everyone else is yes, but how can we perfect human beings so that we don't have any of this anymore? So a simple answer is, first, that when you ask this question, you really want to perfect other people. You see what's wrong with other people and you don't want to look into yourself. So 11th, 12th of the book is to see how you're creating your own stress so that you can redirect it toward more happy chemicals. But then there is the 12th chapter about how to quote unquote fix other people, which is what we want to do, and to accept that complexity of how to fix it.

Loretta:

And again the answer is that every generation has to be wired to restrain these natural impulses.

Loretta:

And if you blame society, then it's like thinking that children are born perfect and all we have to do is water them like a potted plant and let them do whatever they want and then they'll all be perfect. And if that doesn't work, then blame society with a lot of verbiage and it's just wrong and it doesn't work. And in fact it's quite tragic because then all of that accumulated wisdom about how each generation can wire in the self-restraint that's necessary to manage our natural impulses is not learned during the period of neuroplasticity. So a child reaches their 20s when their neuroplasticity is over and they've already learned that it's okay to just have what I use in the nicest term possible is toddler tantrums, and a whole generation can learn that toddler tantrums are not only acceptable but an effective way of meeting your survival needs. This is not healthy at all. So it all starts with learning the truth about animal operating system we've inherited, which expresses itself as toddler tantrums that we must learn to manage during our years of neuroplasticity.

Klara:

Yeah. So I think your encouragement and all the writing and books I've read so far and podcasts I've listened to is really encourage everyone to look inside and if we start with ourselves instead of trying to change others, but really digging in on what we're feeling and how we wired and how we're reacting to certain things, it's kind of the way to make a change. Is that accurate? That's sort of what I've kind of read through it and your inspiration for everyone to kind of explore of their upbringing perhaps and how they reacted to happy and unhappy events or what they felt as happy emotions and unhappy emotions, is probably a pathway to uncovering more truth about themselves and then starting to figure out how they can change and make a different action to what I would call a state of equilibrium, because striving for happiness is not always sustainable.

Loretta:

Yeah. So when you talk about this, change so first, many people would say well, why should I change when the fault is with them? Using them in the way that each individual clearly like in every listener has their them. Who's clearly at fault, right? So the simple answer to that question is that we are creating so much of our unhappiness internally, and every moment that we're blaming them, we're feeling powerless. And the experts have taught us to blame them for our unhappiness, and that adds to our powerlessness. And so so many people have their whole neural network shaped around this idea that changing other people is the path in life. Changing other people is your source of happiness and your source of status and social affiliation, and they have no other lens on life. But changing the world is the religion, effectively, that they've learned. So it's just seeing that as a learned thing.

Loretta:

And if you don't want to change yourself, fine. I'm not even saying you need to change. I'm saying you need to understand how you've created your own unhappiness, and then other people can choose to understand how they've created their own unhappiness. You may not be able to force them to learn how they've created their own unhappiness, and that's part of your reality. I always have to chew on. That is to say, well, all these unhappy people around me. I wish they would think differently, but chances are they won't. So how can I make myself happiness in a world where other people will always choose to be mammals?

Loretta:

But another way of saying that is to say I want to be special. I have to accept that I have inherited a brain that wants to be special, that feels good when it's special. But the world has 8 billion other people who want to be special as much as I do, and that's the just inevitable fact of life. And it's a conundrum that you could really just laugh at when you accept it and you can call that equilibrium. And another word that I would use for all of this is safety, that we all want a feeling of safety.

Loretta:

We've inherited a brain that says if I'm not special, I'm not safe because we're all born with. That's the reality. A baby can't need its own needs. A baby has to be special in order to survive. If a baby cries and nobody comes, that really is a survival threat. So the foundational circuit in every one of our brains is if I'm not special, I'm going to die. So imagine like 8 billion people running around with this idea like if I'm not special, I'm going to die. You got to just laugh at that right, yes, I agree.

Klara:

And makes me think of also what you read about the politics of medicine and you know, the shortcuts that I would argue are also in animal kingdom, because, observing my dog, she will do the least amount of work she needs to get the reward. So I think this is prewired in us humans, right? We always want the fastest and simplest and easiest path to success which sort of pharma offers. So if you're feeling, you know, sad or unhappy, just take this pill and it will alleviate your feeling of sadness, to kind of get you to a better state. But then you know, you get addicted to these pills that I think have their own side effects. So I think as a humanity and many people kind of again cling to this shortcut.

Klara:

You also talk about the politics of helping professions, and this is another thing I've been thinking about deeply and I've been seeing perhaps because I don't know if this is again the circumstance of you know my podcast, I'm sure you as well as me, you get interest of a lot of coaches who may want to be on your podcast and seems like this coaching profession has been rising and there's more and more coaches that are trying to help people in some shape or form every day and want to take on this profession. So what do you think about that? I know you wrote even about your own therapy that you had therapists, and so how does this work? Or doesn't work for people to kind of uncover how their own brains and experience had wired them and why they feel the way they feel?

Loretta:

So first, before all of the coaches and therapists listening have a heart attack. I'm not blaming them, but I'm looking at this shortcut concept for each of these quote expert institutions medicine, academia, therapy and the media and each of them are selling a variety of shortcuts the therapeutic, helping professions. The shortcut they're selling is in these two words get help, and you don't even have to blame therapists, you could blame the media and medicine and academia if you want. For these two words People have gotten the idea, and the idea has been pushed on many people that the solution to all your problems is to quote unquote accept help. It has a very passive sound All I have to do is accept help and then I'll be better.

Loretta:

The reality of that has left us with many people who have been through, let's say, rehab, addiction recovery programs five times and there's still addicts, as some of them famously in the news at this moment. So that concept of getting help is a shortcut that may lead people astray. A similar example of that is this diseaseification of unhappiness that you have to get quote unquote the right diagnosis, that if I could only get the right diagnosis then I'll get the right cure, without looking at how our animal brain naturally creates unhappiness and how it naturally releases moments of happy chemicals. If you don't know that, then you see your unhappiness as a disease and you think I could cure it if only I get the right diagnosis. So these frames of understanding our brain haven't really made us much happier, but we're highly invested in them because in today's culture you're treated as a nut or an evil person if you even question these frames.

Klara:

So actually in your book you also have some tips or, I would say, guideline, a manual how you can explore your frames and mindset and help you get to feeling happier. I know we even talked last time during our podcast. One of the things you enjoy is reward yourself with traveling, which is also one of mine. I love to travel and exploring new worlds, and you recently came back from a trip from Asia, so I'm actually wondering one how was that trip and what have you uncovered? I'm even curious how you look at different cultures and the experiences you have there and observe, even through this mindset, of biology and any other tips you want to share. Obviously, people can get the book and hopefully they will to learn some of those tips, but in a high level view, what would you suggest?

Loretta:

them when you mentioned in your adolescence that you put all of your energy into tennis and that has a hierarchy and you managed to be quite effective in that hierarchy. So I think everyone has gravitated toward something that created a hierarchy, that gave them a sense of effectiveness. Even a person who's a drug addict is like they thought they were cool, like that drug addiction made you cool. So in my teen years I put all of my effort into earning money so I could travel. Long story short. So now, full disclosure. So I just had my 70th birthday and what could I do to ease the pain of that? Reality was like my brain is going to turn to travel and yet I've been almost everywhere. So in a conscious level, I'm like, well, that I shouldn't really do that, and yet, of course, that's what I'm going to do. So I came up with this round the world trip long story short, and I have to say that a person from Czechoslovakia was very helpful in making this happen for me. So I just want to give you credit there, and the reason I say Czechoslovakia is because he's from Slovakia. So I, of course, I know the history. I had such a great time, it was very fun and I think of it as almost a miracle that such a complex trip was able to happen without a hitch. Really, I mean, there were plenty of frustrations. I was really happy that I managed to not panic when things went wrong, and part of me thinks, oh good, well, that's something I've learned. And then part of me thinks, probably I'm just too tired and worn out to have the ability to panic anymore. I don't know, but one thing that I observed, both for better and worse, is that in the farthest reaches of the world I ended up hearing the same conversational memes that I was sort of running from at home, and so, for better and for worse, the internet has wired people with the same lens, beliefs, thought loops everywhere. So on one level it's held me like you can't run from it, the sort of the simplistic shortcuts that people use. And to see the positive side of it is isn't it a miracle that people all over the world can just jump into a conversation, because sort of the default cultural programming around the world is so similar today, like sort of programmed by Netflix or something, and everybody is watching stuff on Netflix and everyone has the same programming. So there's a bad side, but there's also sort of the miraculous good side. And also I want to mention that I did meet readers in every country and that was such a pleasure and I'm looking forward to meeting you someday in person. And I guess people may be curious also where I went, so maybe I'll just explain.

Loretta:

The goal at first was to see my grandchildren in Miami before I left for Thanksgiving, and the big goal was to go to tea plantations in India, and I don't know if people have seen them, you could just Google it. But in southern India there's this area with tea plantations. It's like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It's sort of like places I've been to that have rice paddies planted, which are beautiful, and they're even more beautiful and even bigger. It's like it goes on forever, like in every direction these rolling hills covered with tea plantations and they have this just beautiful geometric look. They're like puffy or something. It's just very beautiful.

Loretta:

And I also drink a lot of tea, although I did learn that it's really the low quality tea that was made in these places. So the goal was to get from Miami to southern India without any flights that are over 10 hours, because I can't stand a flight that's over 10 hours. So I went from Miami to Portugal, portugal to Dubai, dubai to southern India, and then on the way home from there, I had a reader in Mumbai invited me to a speaking event that he created and got to speak to a group in Mumbai, and then I met another reader in Tokyo, and when I came home, Wow, that sounds like a fantastic trip.

Klara:

I've been to India myself, haven't been to SAV, which is one thing I regret, and so I look forward to going there once. So through your travel, it seems like you've done quite share of a bed, and what I'm hearing, the underlining frame, is sort of that, in the big scheme of things, civilizations and cultures are focused on kind of the same problems, is kind of what I'm hearing from you. That seems like the theme is almost the same, and so I would argue, even from reading your books and obviously our own experience, we all want to feel better than we did yesterday and so this dopamine effect are always wanting more. It's a vicious cycle. Any other tips you would want to share with the listeners that they perhaps are hesitant and feeling it's not possible. As you said, I'm grumpy and I'm feeling grumpy all the time. What would you like them to explore?

Loretta:

So in one word, self acceptance.

Loretta:

And maybe half the readers may be feeling grumpy, as you said, but the other half, of which I run into a lot of, is people who think they're not grumpy because of this virtue mindset that has become very popular, that what you referred to as this chasing of happiness, that there's become this virtue mindset where you think you shouldn't chase happiness and it's wrong to chase happiness, and people think I'm not chasing anything because that's wrong and we shouldn't think that.

Loretta:

But what I explain in the book is that we do chase it and even if you think you're not chasing it, you may end up either bitter or depressed if you refuse to chase it, because the way our brain works is it only releases happy chemicals in small drips, and so I'm not saying that you should never chase them, because then you'll never be happy, but I'm not saying you should chase huge spurts of them and you should not expect endless spurts of them.

Loretta:

So the truth is, somewhere in the middle is to know that you can get small spurts and you can design habits that allow you to get small spurts in ways that are healthier than certain other ways that may not be good for you, and that's all layered on a foundation of self-acceptance. To say this is the brain we've inherited, it's not society's fault and there's not going to be some kind of technological fix that's going to make it go away, there's not going to be some guru that's going to make it go away, and I think it's really accepting that this is our reality is, I think, very valuable.

Klara:

I agree and I certainly recommend listeners to reach out for the book. It is available on January 9th. I'll add a link to the episode notes so once they listen to it, they can quickly go and order it Again. It's called why you Are Unhappy Biology vs Politics and, as 2024 is kicking off January, perhaps people are thinking about habits. What would you want to inspire them to be doing more of, or less of, in 2024?

Loretta:

That's a great question, if I can say something on top of what we've already said, which is focus on self-acceptance and the fact that our brain is looking for this sense of safety. Our brain is very good looking for threats, so unhappiness is our core default state, and if you have a good life, your brain is going to just work harder to find something that threatens to take away your good life. Because our brain is inherited from ancestors who never knew where their next meal was coming from and we're always hungry and thirsty and cold and always had to do something to relieve that threat. And so you inherited a brain that's constantly looking for ways to relieve threats. So if you want to not feel threatened, you have to accept that you're creating this sense of threat yourself, despite the fact that it's so easy to say I didn't create this sense of threat, that I'm being threatened by this one and this one and this one.

Loretta:

So it's so rewarding to blame your sense of threat on others when you live in a culture where, if you agree on what the threat is, then you have your best friends or people who agree with you on what the threat is. So you risk all of your friendships, all of your social alliances, all of your support network, because that's how we bond, by agreeing on who the enemy is. So as soon as you take responsibility for your own sense of threat, then you're no longer focused on the enemy and you're no longer one of the club, and that's a very hard thing to do. And yet, being one of the club, you've got to be as miserable as everyone else in the club and it's a very unpleasant choice to have to make. And you think it shouldn't be this way, but it is that way. So that's what I keep coming back to.

Loretta:

You may think it shouldn't be this way, and when it is this way, not in your verbal brain, which is just running to try to make sense of all of this, it is this way in your limbic brain, which is running on chemicals, and the chemicals are what make you feel good and bad. And so, like I always go back to watch all of the David Attenborough nature videos, so you see how animals drive themselves crazy in these ways. But watch David Attenborough's early nature series. His earliest ones a little harder to find because his newer ones have the Russoian view of animals, where they're cooperative and caring and sharing, which I explain in the book how this myth got created, but his earlier series just help you relax into this view of like. I'm lucky to be alive and I've inherited this brain from people who managed to survive, from primates who managed to survive, and this brain only releases good feelings when I do something that helps me survive in a way that makes sense. To an animal who was wired in my particular childhood.

Klara:

Thank you and again I'll add the resources that episode notes so I know people can find you through your website, your podcast. Obviously, many different books dive into this one, but if you feel like you want to try a different one, you have eight other options. Any other way. What's the best way to reach out to Dr Loretta if there's fans or anybody is curious and wants to follow you? What's your favorite network or ways?

Loretta:

to reach out. My website is InterMammalInstituteorg and at the footer of every page there's an opportunity to sign up for my newsletter and you get a free five-day happy chemical jumpstart where you get one email a day for five days with a simple introduction to each of the chemicals. If you click contact on my website, it goes to me, and I'm always happy to hear people's experiences with their rewiring efforts, and I'm not so thrilled to hear people's moral superiority over their guru is better than my guru or something. But I welcome everyone to have the belief system that they already have, and I've learned that everyone interprets the facts that I present through the lens of the belief system that they've already created, and that's fine. And also, I do have a course InterMammalInstituteorg slash course that gives you a step-by-step approach to creating the new pathways that you'd like, and when I say the new pathways that you like, I'm not necessarily focused on diet and exercise you could use it for that but I help you understand the limitless wealth of alternative opportunities.

Klara:

If you enjoyed this episode, I want to ask you to please do two things that would help me greatly. One, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting platform that you use to listen to this episode. Two, please share this podcast with a friend who you believe might enjoy it as well. It is a great way to remind someone you care about them by sharing a conversation they might be interested in. Thank you for listening.