Ep 3: Mind Morphology

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Rachel: “It’s not like I’m asking my boyfriend to learn how to echolocate. I just want him to make a few simple changes in daily interactional habits with me.”

Kayla: “Are you talking about the research done by Patrice Voss?” Evidence for both compensatory plastic and disuse atrophy-related neuroanatomical changes in the blind.

Yes I am! That’s the one

Music Intro

Hey everyone, my name is Kayla!

And this is Rachel with Dating Hypothesis, thank you so much for joining us today!
We’ve all had “that partner” who would not change to save his life. We watch our relationships deteriorate while we refuse to fix bad habits or form good habits. Brains change and adapt in extraordinary ways. …yet we won’t change in little helpful ways for our partners.

How long does change take? What are the steps needed to change and better ourselves for our partners? Hey audience “what habit of your partner do you wish they would change”.

We should be willing to make ourselves better which means we need to continuously monitor our behavior and be willing to make ourselves a better person so that other people enjoy our company.

Add “Two Beats”

* Begin conversation: “Brain Plasticity. What is it? What causes the changes?”

Brain plasticity is learning

It’s also memory, addiction, maturity, and recovery from injury.

Any time you get a new motor skill such as repetitive pipetting into a well in the lab or learning to braid your own hair, there are changes happening in the structure of your cells, the muscles of your hands are morphing to the task, your brain is mapping new spatial and touch sensitive concepts, and that is what is allowing the new motor skill and the changes in your neurons.

That is brain plasticity.

It’s something we are born with. It’s something we retain until we die.

Most people have this indoctrination…”once you reach a certain age. You are stuck in the rut. An old dog can’t learn new tricks” and that’s just simply not true. We are finding that the human brain is extremely adaptable and malleable up until we die. We have stem cells that come in and take the place of damaged neurons and form new pathways. Exercise and sex create new brain cells.

Yes they do.

If you are stressed out…you have diminished cell reproduction. So reduce your stress and let your body do it’s thing. Neurogenesis is normal and natural if you let your brain do its job. Get enough sleep. Let your body regenerate.

And have sex

The way society functions today is not healthy for your brain. We give ourselves screen addiction and short attention spans on purpose. Then, we wonder why we are foggy and unhappy. We do this to our brains.

We are interested in the fake lives of fake tv characters. We need to know the intimate details of their lives (and we can’t wait to see what they do next) when we live in a world filled with real people. My boyfriend can tell you about tv characters for hours on end, but he couldn’t tell you one thing about my day or week. He knows almost nothing about my childhood. When I am in love “I want to tell my partner every detail about me and I want to know every detail about him”. But he watches 4-8 hours of tv or plays video games. There’s no time for me. There’s no time for him “to tell me about himself”.

We program our brains to crave passive entertainment. We push aside our loved ones for screen time. We also create rusty brains by thinking the same thoughts every day for 20 years, eating the same foods, hanging around the same people. When you do this, you stabilize the pathways in your brain making it harder to even take in change.

And yet, we are always malleable. The moment you decide to make a change, your brain changes with you. It is always possible to expand your mind, change your perspective on the world, and allow new ideas in.

Let me give you an example. Monocular deprivation. If you sew one eye shut in a mouse, the brain map that used to be connected to that eye is going to navigate over to the open eye. Or to other senses. The minute your brain realizes the eye is not going to open, the neurons seek out new stimuli. Your brain will create a new brain map with those neurons. Later, when you’re done with your experiment you can open that eye back up and those neurons are going to navigate back to the open eye. If a particular sense does not stimulate its designated neurons those neurons get bored and look for stimuli from someplace else. We were born for stimulation.

Our entire body is designed to take in stimulus. Walking barefoot on uneven ground is so much healthier for your brain than walking in shoes on concrete. I often wonder about the “whys” around “being in nature is good for you”. Is it the air? Is it the quiet?

Or is it the brain map finally getting new information? Our ankles are capable of so much rotation. We have muscles that go years without being used.

Which means we have stimulus capability that is going unused for years at a time. Leaving areas of our brain meant to be used…Unused.

Our brain is capable of detecting so much motion, color, and depth and we do not put it to use. We follow the same route to work everyday, shop at the same store. Our lives are pretty boring for being a massive sensory detector. When we go camping, hiking, or on vacation our brain is getting to map new input from all of our senses.

I want to solidify this idea in your mind. Let’s talk about monkey fingers. Instead of letting all five of them be free and having a brain map of all five fingers you can sew or tape together two fingers and the neurons dedicated to the five fingers will create a new brain map. A brain map allocated to less fingers. You can see this happening. It’s the same with anything in your life. If you stop being compassionate, that dedicated space is going to seek out other things to be. It’s important to use every aspect of your brain the way it was designed.

I mean unless you have something that’s broken or isn’t working properly. That’s when brain plasticity kicks in to compensate.

Emotionally, we should always be as emotionally full as we can… because if we are not …you are literally not using sections in your head designated for that; and that emotional ability will atrophy and that section of your brain’s neurons will wire up to other stimuli, or behavior patterns.

Our brains have a spiritual section for meditation, prayer, worship, and spirituality. If you don’t use it that way your ability to be spiritual will atrophy and find something else to focus on. If you decide to become spiritual, study spirituality, and open your senses to such things…you will become more and more spiritual.

You will feel things you’ve never felt before. It will release chemical combinations unknown and unfelt to you before. I laugh heartily at people who knock it before they’ve even tried it. Too many people are willing to make claims about something they’ve never even tried. Unspiritual scientists are no better than all the women on the planet that have never had an orgasm. Too many people are unaware of the possibilities of what their own bodies can do.

One of the most difficult things in life is “convincing someone of something they can’t conceive”. I know every sighted person listening knows what it is like to have their eyes open. I know everyone knows what it is like to close their eyes. When your eyes are closed you can see the red/dark/blank/darkness…of behind your eyelids. Right. I don’t have to convince you.

I am going to ask everyone listening to do something with me right now. Close both of your eyes and look at the back of your eyelids. Now open both your eyes. Now close one eye. Find the back of the eyelid of your closed eye. Go on. Find it. You can’t. Switch eyes. Find the back of your other closed eyelid. You can’t. When a person is trying to describe an activity you have never engaged in…instead of dismissing the thing you have never even tried…maybe…believe they have experienced something tangible and real. Just because you haven’t doesn’t mean they didn’t.

Brain plasticity is always happening. The actual physical structural changes happen instantaneously. Those instantaneous changes can have long term effects or short term effects. And it all depends on you, your daily activities, and your daily thoughts. 

I can think myself to orgasm. Zero touching. Just thinking and clenching the muscle structure inside my reproductive area. The more often I do this the easier it is to accomplish. Brain plasticity at its best.

And what is brain plasticity at its worst?

Men get a syndrome called “death grip”. They masterbate too often with their big burly hands at a rhythm and strength only they can provide to the thoughts inside their own heads. When a delicate handed woman comes along and tries to be sexual with him he can’t control the way she fits around him or the way she touches him. His concrete neural structures are held in place and only understand his heavy hand.

So how can men counter “death grip”?

It takes weeks to build a partner into your brain map. You have to give it a chance. Most guys don’t. That elusive slappy jacky pop off is more important to them than experiencing the intimate wonders of two bodies getting to know one another and releasing a chemical surprise only the two of you can cultivate after allowing the brain to map the territory you both create together. 

When you break up with somebody the brain map you had of them takes weeks to slowly disappear.

Sometimes months if you have been together for a year.

Or a year if you have been together for 10 years. When you start dating someone new, you slowly start building a brain map of that new person. Those kinds of physical neuronal changes take time.

Mapping in someone new or unmapping someone takes time.

Brain plasticity isn’t just physical changes either. You can change your thoughts. The only way to know if somebody has changed the way they’re thinking…is to talk to them. We can’t talk to animals to find out if their perspective on life has changed suddenly. We don’t know if our lab rat saw the light and is born again christian during our religion experiment. You have to be able to have that conversation. Brain plasticity is one of two things: new pathways forming to help your new skill. Or new thought patterns.

Brains around the world are formed by their surroundings. Each culture manifests unique brain mappings. Cultures around the world perceive time, space, lines, language, and relationships differently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBap_Lp-0oc&ab_channel=Veritasium

Here in the States we hurry and stress without taking time to relax. We hurry up to wait in line or arrive early to wait for an appointment.

We like to think we will be rich someday and that focus on impending wealth affects the way we spend our time – making each minute working seem more important than exploring the world and its people. Caucasians in general tend to equate life with the passing of time. Wealthy people feel driven to work more hours. Time feels like a sentient being whom we obey.

Other cultures…view themselves as more important than something as silly as forcing timed events. Time is not something that rules you. Time is an immaterial concept that can be useful, but not something to adhere to strictly. If something is happening right now, where you are, then be present. What was planned will happen eventually. Flowing with the moment is polite and healthy.

Costa Rica: when I was there…

Westerners are tricked by certain optical illusions.

Our crowded cities, filled with skyscrapers, affect the way we see lines and space. Eyeballs around the world see optical illusions the same; but culture can determine if a person is tricked by the lines they are viewing.

Nasal passages around the world smell the same scent. The memories associated with each scent will look very different because of the individual’s history and their unique relationship to that scent. Brain plasticity allows brains around the world to have different memories for different smells, sounds, and tastes.

When differing cultures mingle in the dating world what unique relationship strains does it bring about?

Our brains continuously adjust to our surroundings and environment including the people we associate with. Our experiences shape how our neurons connect. Do our own thoughts shape how our neurons connect?

Mice have been trained to control their own dopamine levels. They have been taught how to spike the dopamine levels in their own brains.

There is something called One-Shot Learning. If you put a mouse in a box and fill the box with a scent like lemon then shock the mouse, the mouse will instantly learn to fear lemon scent. I’ve often equated abusers to one-shot learning

Yeah, abusers know all the tricks of psychology don’t they! They know who needs a subtle easing into it and who will respond better to the crack of a whip. Abusers have a special knack for controlling certain personalities in each situation, be it their own or others…they know which personalities to avoid.

The daema seen (Damascene) conversion is like one-shot learning. That instantaneous change to your entire being and outlook. Paul the apostle had an epiphany. People become “born again” and that’s a wave of emotion, a wave of perception that just hits them. It’s a spiritual moment that changes them instantly. It happened to my brother. It blew me away. Especially because it was this particular brother. I couldn’t believe it. It took me a month to fully process that he wasn’t faking it and I was like “what the hell is happening”?

Religion changes your brain, it can be a negative or positive change. It has nothing to do with the religion, it’s not the religion itself making the changes in your brain. It’s the social setting, the leader’s words, and the environment you are immersed in.

Some people bar hop. I love to church hop. I’ve spent most of my life going to a different congregation every month. I love listening to all the different perspectives. I love people watching. I love people listening. I am not a religious person but I’m fascinated by what is possible. What people believe. What they are saying, teaching, and preaching. Going once doesn’t give you a very good idea of the belief niche of a particular congregation. I mean if you only attend once you never know what you are walking into that particular day, right, like what did they have planned for that day? It’s best to go three or four times to really get a full sense of how they think and feel. But don’t go back too many times or your brain will start feeling comfortable there. It will find things it agrees with and you will settle in and make friends.

How long does brain plasticity take? If you realize your spouse wants you to start helping with the dishes, you could set an alarm everyday to remind you to do the dishes. You should only have to use the alarm for 12 weeks. After that your brain, body, muscle memory is going to reach for those dishes at that exact time that the alarm used to go off.

Subjects undergoing a standard mindful course had brain images taken before the experiments and throughout the research. They found it’s around 8-10 weeks to create “permanent” changes. I want to reiterate that changes can take place anytime you wish to make a change in yourself. If you want to keep a habit, then keep up the behavior. When you drop a habit, your body and mind change with that new routine you keep. The instant you no longer want to have a habit…just make the change and keep it up for 12 weeks consistently. Your brain will change.

My son did an exchange year in Thailand and then college in Finland, Germany, and Romania. He learned German in high school. While he was in Thailand he learned Thai. He said being immersed is the way to learn. Within 3 weeks of living in Thailand he was dreaming in the new language and he would have to struggle to find an English word he was seeking, the Thai word would come faster. 

Language plasticity is interesting. We can learn different human languages so why can’t we learn dolphin or cat languages?

I had a friend who moved here from Mexico, she’s been in the states for 20 years and keeps herself immersed in her culture. The neighborhood she chooses to live in, is hispanic. She doesn’t have a lot of English conversations. So, even after 20 years of being in the States she still struggles to speak English. I was married to somebody born and raised in Mexico City, who has been in the states for 20 years. He knows English quite well but never got rid of his accent. He has that distinct hispanic/english accent and i asked him “why he chose not to get rid of that” specifically because he wished to have a job talking on phones. I kept telling him “if you just take a couple of weeks to get rid of that accent somebodies going to hire you for the job you want and you’re going to make a lot more money than you’re making now” and he was like “well, I don’t understand how you think I can lose my accent, it’s a part of me” and I was like “but, it’s not”, because I also dated somebody who had was born and raised in Morocco. He was in the states for eight years and wanted to have a job at a bank. He made sure he lost his accent. I called him at work a few times and he sounded white as fuck. Zero accent. But when he was at home he had a thick accent. I dated somebody born and raised in Italy, he had been in the states for seven years…zero accent. My best friend’s only been here for three years. She was born in Saudi. She has no accent. The people who want to sound naitive to the States, sound naitive. Set your focus. Make the accent disappear. It’s a matter of desire.

What about those dating advice sites that teach men how to be more attractive? Or the pick-up-artist dating sites that teach how to approach and interact with women? There was one particular site that mentioned “if you have an irritating voice…or tone quality to your baseline vocal chords…change how you speak…adjust and monitor your vocal tone and quality.” You may not be able to brain plastisize yourself 5 inches taller but you can definitely make yourself more attractive. Other sites walk men through the practice needed to build confidence, desensitize them from rejection, and morph them into men willing to make the first move or “shoot their shot” despite the looming potential lack of a woman’s interest. So, practice can and will remove the sharpness of fear, anxiety, and embarrassment.

Not just in asking women out on dates either. This is true in the business world with things like sales. Getting your kids to sell door-to-door in Boy or Girl Scouts. If you are in performances like dance, Cheer, or theater you will lose the intense fear of being on stage. The brain gets used to it.

When I decided to attend college for the first time it had been 27 years since I had graduated high school. (And I barely graduated high school, flunking all my math classes.) Here I was wanting to do a neuroscience degree which would require a lot of math and I hated math. I know immersion helps when you are learning a new language. So I signed up for two GED math classes along with my college pre algebra. I was doing math for six hours a day. And it worked. I got an A. When your brain does math all day long for a year, it gets easier. For me, it got fun. I actually enjoy math now.

Yes, they say it’s easier to learn when you are young. Why is that? Because you are not a cranky old bastard yet. I could not learn math or biology when I was young. I had zero interest. Here I am an old bastard and I am having fun learning. I don’t think age matters. I think passion matters.

We all eventually reach an age where we are fine with who we are. And maybe we shouldn’t be? If you want to make changes to your brain what are the necessary steps involved? 1.) reflect consciously on the task you are learning. Really think about it in as many contexts as you can. 2.) Repeat it. Repetition is essential for muscle memory, brain mapping, and getting it to autopilot. 3.) No distractions. Keep it up until the pathways in your brain are automatic from use.

I want to ask everyone listening if they noticed themselves getting smarter after sex? Do you notice any new neurons? If sewing monkey fingers together changes it’s brain map, what happened to you where you had to build a new brain map? Is there anyone out there that had a religious epiphany? Have you used a dating advice site? What passion made learning something easy? Have you experienced one-shot learning? How and what? Tell us about it. Write to us on facebook, twitter, or Instagram.

– Let’s take a quick Commercial break, we will be right back. (wait 3 seconds) And we are back.

Commercial spot one: (26:19)

Add “Two Beats”

** Resume conversation: What is possible through brain plasticity?

Well, if you put yourself…or your child, through an abusive regiment long enough you can become great at anything. Self made genius: Laszlo Polgar presented the theory “great performers are made, not born”. He believed he could raise a chess genius. In 1965, he approached women, until he found Klara who agreed to be part of the experiment. In 1969, Klara and Laszlo had a girl, Susan. They taught her chess. Susan attained the title grandmaster in 1991. She became the first woman in history to win the Chess triple crown.

Serena and Venus Williams: Richard had no interest in tennis, until he learned the prize money for the french open was $40,000. The sisters started at 4 years old, hardly ever left the courts, practiced at 6 a.m. resumed after school was out till dark. They had to return 500 volleys to earn a break.

So what we are seeing is repetition creates strong pathways. Does being good at one thing mean you can’t be okay at everything? What is better? Excel at one thing? Or be Meh in all areas? Strengthening pathways inherently ignores other pathways.

Humans can learn to echolocate. Daniel Kish was born blind and he is so good at echolocating he can ride a bike. The echoes contain information about the size, shape, location, and material properties of objects. The visual cortex registers echolocation sounds as vision.

Can we create new senses for humans?

Ask David Eagleman. He will tell you all about sensory substitution. So what is it? 

The average person doesn’t realize “Your brain does not hear or see”. Your brain is locked in a vault of silence and darkness inside your skull. All it ever sees are electrochemical signals that come in along different data cables, nothing more. The brain is really good at taking in these signals and extracting patterns and assigning meaning. Your brain doesn’t know, and it doesn’t care where the data comes from. It takes everything in. It figures out what to do with it.

David Eagleman has a plan to input a modern cockpit “the gauges and plane instrument data” into a person’s body using electrical stimulation on a pilot’s skin. Instead of trying to read the whole thing, you feel it. This is the strange concept of sensory substitution. We can digitize microphone signals and send them directly into the inner ear bypassing broken ear functions. We can create artificial vision using retinal implants, with a camera digitizing signals to an electrode grid directly into the optic nerve.

Somebody was born blind and later in life received an operation that gave them sight. It only took a couple of days for their brain to adjust to the new stimulus. They went from seeing black and white to seeing actual images. When we ask “how long does brain plasticity take”?, sometimes it’s instantaneous. Sometimes it’s a day or two. Sometimes it can take a year.

A while back a man named Pedro Backerita recovered after a severe stroke, it took him a year to recover. That is brain plasticity in action. His offspring realized the brain is happy and willing to adjust. They came up with an interesting device to help blind people. It was a dentist’s chair that a blind person would sit in, there was a camera hooked up to electrodes which lead to the subject’s back, the electrodes would stimulate the back in a pattern formulated by what a camera was seeing. If a mug was in front of the camera, electrodes would stimulate the person’s back in a pattern their brain learned to decipher. It was a quick learning process. The brain craves stimuli. It doesn’t care how you give it that stimulation it will figure out how to use that data. They took that process; reinvented it, packaged the electrodes into a tiny pad put in the mouth on the tongue. A camera is then mounted on the person’s forehead. With this device a blind person can walk down the street and the information going into the camera stimulates the tongue so the blind person can see as they are walking.

So, what you are saying is if one sense is lost, the areas of the brain normally devoted to handling that sensory information do not go unused, they get rewired and put to work processing other senses?

Yes!

– I want to ask our listeners “have you or someone you know immersed themselves so deeply into something that they were able to master it”? Do you know someone with a child that was sculpted into a genius? What was their process? If you could use a new technology to give your brain stimuli would you choose something sexual, romantic, or otherwise? If the brain is capable of learning anything we dedicate ourselves to “then why are so many men incapable of giving women an orgasm”- Or why are so many women unwilling to leave behind their fantasies about love making long enough to enjoy the real moments with a partner? Tell us your stories. We have Tic Tok and Youtube.

– We are going to take a Commercial break, we will be right back. (wait 3 seconds) And we are back.

Commercial spot two: (32:18)

Add “Two Beats”

*** Finish conversation: So maybe you think this all sounds great and  want to change? How can you kick start that?

Ketamine 

Rachel, are you going to start talking about drugs?

Antidepressants do not alleviate depression quickly. But Ketamine can. Antidepressants require over a month of daily doses before patients see improvements while patients taking ketamine saw positive results in four hours. In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal-spray formulation of esketamine, a chemical cousin of ketamine for people with severe, treatment-resistant depression.

Remind me to call my Dr. about that stuff. So brain plasticity isn’t just about learning new skills. It is also about rewiring yourself emotionally.

My son had an IT job. He told clients to “unplug it and plug back in” researchers found that ketamine does the same thing to our brains. Within two minutes of administering the drug, the brain activity of five of the six subjects stopped completely, one of them for several minutes.

This pause in brain activity may be the ‘K-hole’.

Rachel, is a K-hole a real thing or are you just trying to come up with a new pet name for me?

A k-hole is

Psychedelic drugs seem to take apart parts of the brain that are wired incorrectly and rebuild connections in a healthier way leading to different thoughts and emotional reactions.

They also seem to reduce negative symptoms for longer periods with only a single dose. Unfortunately most of these have been outlawed for decades. There have been unprecedented insights into how psychedelics reset the brain.

107 people with PTSD underwent psychotherapy with MDMA. A year later 67% compared to 23% of the control group, no longer had PTSD. Psilocybin, is a genuinely effective, long-lasting treatment for depression. In subjects with no mental health problems, fourteen months after taking Psilocybin at Griffiths’s lab, 22 of the 36 participants said the experience improved their well-being or life satisfaction, and rated it as one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives.

Another way to kick start changes would be to try Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Put your brain on a magnet. Science finds all the fun ways to manipulate the brain. This magnet can turn up or down neurons. It causes a variety of reactions like increased or decreased religious belief, increased or decreased prejudice, decrease in major depression, mania, panic disorder, PTSD, OCD.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation produces a powerful but brief magnetic field that passes through the skin, soft tissue, and skull. In some of the experiments the results were better than traditional medication or electroconvulsive therapy.

Antidepressant effects can be maintained for months in half the patients and longer in others. Researchers used the magnets in areas of the brain that respond to threats to measure its effect on beliefs and prejudices. We have no idea why religious beliefs and ethnocentric attitudes can be manipulated this way.

And don’t forget about Hypnosis yet another kick in the pants to get you thinking differently. “(audience: do you believe in hypnosis?)”

We spoke earlier about One-shot learning. Every once in a while, something happens and we immediately learn to associate that stimulus with a result. You can do this in yourself. You can manipulate your own learning or your own thought process. You can kick your brain in the butt and make learning quicker.

Switch On your own “One-Shot” Learning. And that folks is the fun list of “how to quick start your very own brain plasticity. 

Maybe you believed the news when they said “we don’t grow new neurons”? That was false. Turns out we can and do. Two types actually. Endogenous neural stem cells, and pluripotent stem cells. These both form neural cells. These are found in the olfactory area which processes scent, and the hippocampus, which deals with cognitive processing. You can activate these stem cells by your own behavior or with drugs. These stem cells migrate on their own to damaged areas of the brain.

Neural-stem-cells are similar to a blank sheet of paper’s ability to become any origami animal, these blank cells can become different types of specialized cells. Neural stem cells will travel through the brain tissue right to a site of injury.

So how do you Grow New Brain Cells?

Blueberries, dark chocolate, engage-with-learning or just engage your brain at all with your surroundings and other people, 

omega-3 fatty acids, exercise, turmeric, sex, green tea, sunlight, intermittent fasting, walking.

Doing anything new to stimulate your brain mapping control centers. Go somewhere different. Eat new things, read, have your body move in ways you did not move last week. Walk barefoot.

Touch things you have never touched before. Introduce new ideas to your cobwebbed, moldy, old deteriorating mind. Our brains can generate 1,500 new neurons every day.

Madaline Lancaster grows new neurons everyday.

Alright, I have to interpret that joke for some people in the audience who have no idea you just cracked a joke. Folks…what she just said is a scientist in the UK grows humanoid brains in a lab for a living. We will dive deep into lab grown mini brain organelles in episode 18: “Replace his Brain”.

So let’s wrap up this episode! and finish with “why you should invest in brain plasticity yourself”. Maybe you are not just old and bitter? Maybe you had real abuses in your past? Have you spent your life coping? Do you rely on mechanisms that don’t work? Like The competitive way you deal with people? Are you hostile, negative, sarcastic, or cynical towards life? Do you spit out Bitter angry comments about life?

Do you have uncontrollable anger, rage, or generalized hatred?

Life is better when you don’t live it coping. Tear down the walls you’ve built. Stop challenging people who are drawn to you. You don’t need to test everyone’s loyalty, sincerity, or credibility when they show the slightest interest, concern, or support.

If you engage in “Self-Medicating Behaviors” there are better ways to go through life. Anesthetizing the pain, hurt, shame, suffering, or emptiness you have experienced in your life is a good short-term fix. It’s not healthy for your mental, spiritual, or physical health to cope this way long-term.

It’s not healthy for your relationships either. This includes alcohol or drug abuse, sexual addiction, compulsive overeating, shopping, or gambling. These accelerate and create new problems.Once you identify which survival behaviors you are currently engaged in, identify what the negative consequences are so you can motivate yourself to change.

Now, it’s time to grow and take your life back.

Along the lines of “doing better”, I want to emphasize passive aggressive behaviors and daily miscommunications.

Ah, yes, daily “miscommunication”. If it’s daily then something is out of place. Brain plasticity also allows us to adapt to each other so there shouldn’t be daily miscommunication. I want to bring up bad habits and what they communicate? When can these be considered abuse? What does it take for us to stop and analyze our own behavior and how it affects our loved ones?

Dr. Daniel Amens: The Brain in Love

As a child I was devastated by the abuse and lies I received from a variety of people in my life. Nine years old I started observing the world. What could people be? What could they believe? How do they act? How do they treat each other? What do they say to each other? I started looking for mentors, people I actually wanted to be like. When I was 19 I did the same thing with relationships and love. I watched other relationships. Watched the interactions to see what caused pain, hurt, jealousy, revenge. I sought out what caused joy, relief, security, reciprocation. If you want to learn these things it is as easy as paying attention and applying brain plasticity.

Share Audience stories/ideas

I would like to introduce next week’s episode. Synthetic DNA. We can build DNA with 8 letters that can reproduce, we have machines on the moon and mars, but we cannot build healthy relationships.

We want you guys to submit your ideas/stories/and questions pertaining to next week’s topic. You can email us. Or, join our patreon. We want to hear from you. And if you got anything out of today’s episode give us some love, subscribe, and rate us.

Thank you so much everyone for listening. We love you. See you next week on Dating Hypothesis!!!

Music ends show