The Cost of Filtering our Conversations | Dr. Melissa Hughes

Bounce Back in Business & Life Podcast - Special Episode

Guest: Renowned neuroscientist, keynote speaker, and author Dr. Melissa Hughes

Are you exhausted by the constant negativity… and tired of biting your tongue at family dinners, business meetings, or social gatherings?

In this powerful special episode, Dr. Melissa Hughes helps us connect the dots between our nervous system and the chaotic, high-stimulation environment we’re living in. We unpack what’s really happening when people “check out,” shut down, or avoid hard conversations—and why that silence can come with a cost.

What you’ll learn in this episode

• The neuroscience behind psychic numbing (emotional overload + the brain “turning down the volume” to keep you functioning)
• Why moral disengagement is different, and how it becomes a choice to distance yourself
• How “go along to get along” culture shows up at work, in families, and in friendships
• The “exhaustion of reason” and why facts don’t land when identity feels threatened
• Practical ways to build healthy boundaries without becoming disconnected or complicit

🎁 Free Resource: Complaint Fatigue Guide (from Dr. Hughes)

If you lead teams, or you’re in a customer-facing role, this is gold.

Complaint Fatigue (Free Guide): https://www.melissahughes.rocks/complaint-fatigue-guide

Designed for leaders and frontline professionals across hospitality, travel, tourism, restaurants, hotels, and customer service, this guide helps you spot complaint fatigue early and gives practical strategies to protect energy, professionalism, and performance.

📩 Connect with Dr. Melissa Hughes

• Website: melissahhughes.rocks
• Newsletter: Sign up for her NeuroNugget (sent every Friday) via her website

#BounceBackPodcast #DrMelissaHughes #Neuroscience #Leadership #Communication #EmotionalIntelligence #PsychologicalSafety #Resilience #MentalHealth #WorkplaceCulture #ConflictResolution #CriticalThinking #Mindset #Burnout #NervousSystemRegulation #CustomerExperience #HospitalityLeadership #TeamPerformance #PersonalGrowth #Relationships #WalkingOnWater

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever felt stuck in pain, loss, or failure? Wondering how to rise when life knocks you down again? Then Bounce Back is for you. So gather your resilience, hold tight to hope, and get ready to reimagine what's possible in your life. So here's your host, Frank Sakari.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Welcome to Bounce Back in Business and Life. Now, folks, there's a cost of filtering our conversations. We pay a price when we do that. Let me ask you three questions. Are you tired of this daily bombardment of negativity? Are you getting tired of it? Have you stopped watching the news? Do you have to bite your tongue at family or business or social gatherings when you hear a statement that just makes your blood boil? What might appear to be indifference may actually just be mental exhaustion. And there's a neuroscience reason behind this, behind the difference between feeling of indifference and fatigue. Today we have a renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Melissa Hughes, and she's going to help us connect the dots between our nervous system and the chaotic environment that we're living in. Let me tell you something about Dr. Hughes. She's a neuroscientist, keynote speaker, author. She translates brain science into practical strategies that help leaders build healthier cultures, improve performance, and evaluate customer experience. 25 years of experience. She's worked in Fortune 1000 organization, and she's known for her high-energy story-rich sessions that turn complex brain issues into tools that people can use in media. She's the author of Happy Hour with Einstein and Happier Hour with Einstein, Another Round, and Backstage Pass. Dr. Hughes, I am a big fan of yours. I'm excited to have you on Bounce Back in Business in Life. Thank you so much. I am so happy to be here. You wrote a Substack article that I saw that just sort of blew me away. And you said it was titled Psychic Numbing, which really intrigued me. How did we get here? How did we get to this mess?

SPEAKER_02 2:16

I want to start with where I learned about psychic numbing. Do you remember the image of the four-year-old boy who was washed up on the beach? He had drowned and he had washed up on the beach. I think it was in Mexico. And I remember seeing that thinking, what is that? Like, what's going on? And I remember digging into why that there was so much death and there was so much devastation and there was so much tragedy before that that never kind of raised an eyebrow. I mean, we had gotten to the point where we were just, eh, yeah, another tragedy. And then that little boy kind of woke people up. And I remember that image created this awareness of what was happening. And then people started to pay attention. And that's where I learned about psychic numbing. And it's this idea that the brain protects us. The brain's first job is not to be brilliant and it's not to solve problems and it's not to make people laugh. The brain's first job is to keep us alive. And one of the mechanisms by which the brain keeps us alive is this construct called psychic numbing. And when we get to this place where we can't take one more piece of bad news, then the brain kind of gets numb. Brain kind of starts to create these boundaries. And I don't know about you, Frank, but boy, I have seen a whole lot of bad news in the last couple years.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

When I sat down to write this most recent Substack, I was thinking about that concept of psychic numbing. And I thought it wasn't sitting right in my brain. And I kept thinking, but but this is different. This isn't, this isn't people being so exhausted that they can't take one more thing. This place that we find ourselves in now is overflowing of, I don't know what to do with this emotion that's in my heart, or I don't know what to do with this emotion that's in my head. And that piece is psychic numbing. Then there's this other piece that where you look around and you go, no, people, I live in Southwest Florida and I see people going through their day like there's nothing happening out there, and everything is great. And gosh, look, the economy's great, and you know, everything's wonderful. And I look at them and I think, how can you not feel all the hardships that so many of our friends and neighbors and brothers and sisters across this country are feeling? And that is not psychic numbing, that is moral disengagement. When I wrote this piece for Substack, I was like, okay, you know, I need to be clear on what the difference is. And I know really good people who are feeling really upset about what's pick a topic, it doesn't matter, there's a whole bunch out there. You can, I don't have to tell you one. That people are very upset about it. And yet they just are like, I just can't. I just can't watch the news anymore. I just can't talk about it anymore. And that is psychic numbing. That's a capacity issue. But then there are other people that are like, what's the big deal? I choose not to look at the bad things that are happening. That's moral disengagement. And I think the difference between those two things is where a lot of people are finding themselves right now and struggling with how do I navigate the differences that we find with one another, knowing that some people have just completely disengaged. How do we navigate that? That was the premise of the article.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Wow, that's uh I love this term moral disengagement. This numbing, one of the things you said was that in in your article was the numbing is not our values are weakened, but our nervous system is just saturated. You can't stay in that heightened awareness status continuously. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Absolutely. I mean, psychic numbing is kind of the brain's neural response to emotional overload. And it's the nervous system saying, if I feel all of this all at once, I won't be able to function. I won't be able to be there at work, I won't be able to be there for my family, I won't be able to be there for my community, and I just won't be able to fulfill the responsibilities of daily life. And so psychic numbing says, okay, but I want you to be able to do all those things. We're gonna just lower the volume. It doesn't go away because you know it's out there. I mean, you can't just magically make the bad things go away, but it lowers the volume of the emotional intensity and it gives you an opportunity to kind of exhale and shift your focus. Because I don't know, Frank, like I see things happening and I become consumed with it. Like I want to do something, like that's so wrong. I want to help. Like, what can I do? And and then you know, you get in that place which activism is good and agency is good, and all those things are good, but they're exhausting, right? I think there's a difference between kind of the emotional exhaustion and that construct of psychic numbing, which is really a neural mechanism to protect us.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Now, is moral disengagement a coping mechanism for folks, or they just don't care?

SPEAKER_02 8:01

I hesitate to use to classify people as people who don't care because I get myself into trouble when I make assumptions that just because someone's out there having a great life, they don't care about the people who aren't having a great life.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

I I'm working on my own judgment construct there. But I think where psychic numbing is really an automatic thing. We don't think about that. Psychic numbing happens because that's the brain's mechanism to keep us safe. Moral disengagement is a choice. That is kind of our mental set of maneuvers that say, I'm gonna distance myself from whatever is happening over there because I want to protect my relationships, because I want to protect my job, because I'm gonna play pickleball with these people next weekend, and then it'll be awkward. So it isn't that they don't care, but the disengagement piece is a cognitive choice. Psychic numbing says, I can't feel all of this. Moral disengagement says I don't want to feel all of this. So there's a difference there, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah, absolutely. And I see it all the time. The moral disengagement is it's almost like whistling past the graveyard. And I see this in in social circles, even in family gatherings. It's okay, I can't say this because they're gonna be upset, and I can't talk about that because it's grigger this, and and it's and it's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. I'm making this moral disengagement choice not to engage with something that's driving me absolutely out of my mind.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

I think many of us have been for several years now. I mean, I think the political landscape has been so divisive and so polarizing that I think so many of us have said, you know, if I want to get through Thanksgiving, I'm gonna have to keep my mouth shut on that because I don't want Uncle Joe to like storm out, or I don't want Aunt Sally to, you know, cry at the table or whatever it is, right? I think where I am finding myself is we're at a place where we can look back in history and say, we were here before when people didn't want to speak up. We were here in this place that we're in right now, and people turned their heads, people said, I don't want to see what's going on over there, or I don't want to acknowledge that's happening in that town or with that group of people. And then it was too late. We had it was just tragic. And so I think we are at that place where we have to stop and ask ourselves, am I creating healthy boundaries or am I creating distance from something that really matters to me? And I think if you can swap out your friend, your family member, your colleague in the place of someone who's experiencing that bad thing that you just don't want to think about. That's when you can truly ask yourself am I allowing myself to be moved by the humanity of others or by the inhumanity? The humanity of others. I think now that's where kind of where this piece came from. This this whole idea of silence is complicit. Because there is a risk now of being too comfortable with distance and with being too comfortable with that silence, because at some point that silence says, yeah, that's okay if you do that over there. What do I care?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Exactly. I mean, Dr. Kane, I'm gonna paraphrase it. I'm not gonna get it right. It says something about it's not the the noise or the statements of the of your enemies, but the silence of your friends. Okay. When you don't engage, as you said, silence becomes complicit. Nobody's arguing. I was doing a board meeting uh for a company that had brought me in, and the CEO is up there and he's talking to me and basically dictating this, this, this, this, this, this. That makes sense. What are you gonna say? No, that's a dumb idea. And so the meeting's over. And he looks at me and he says, See, I don't have a problem here. Nobody objected, right? And I said, You didn't allow anybody to object. You didn't allow it. You could have said something like, Did I miss anything? That may have opened up a door for conversation. But when you have this dictatorial constantly being jammed down your throat constantly, it's just go along to get along.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Also, I think that there are people who I think there are times where silence, where no response is a response.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Right. And I know folks that I simply won't have the conversation with them because they're not in it for a conversation, they're in it for a performance.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

And to me, I'm tired of those. I don't want to have those anymore. You want to have a conversation, you want to have a discussion, you want to really talk about things that matter to both of us. I'm happy to do that, even if we don't agree. I mean, that's the only way we're going to get through this, but I'm not going to spend very precious mental resources having a conversation with someone who is only doing it for the performance of it all.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Exactly. Exactly. It's exhausting. And you mentioned something in your article about the exhaustion of reason.

unknown 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Explain that.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

So, you know, we all have that person. I don't care what I'm on. We all have that argument. We all have that thing that we feel very strongly about. We are very passionate about whatever that issue is. And we have that person that we try so hard to make them see our point of view. And you've done it over and over and over again. And every time they come back with, yeah, but yeah, but what about, yeah, but, and then you just get to the point. Many times as you try to present evidence, every time they are more and more entrenched in their position. And facts don't matter, and evidence doesn't matter. And psychologically, I know why. Psychologically, we don't like for our identities to be tested. We don't want someone to say your identity's wrong. So we try so hard to protect that. And when we talk about things like abortion and gun rights and religion, and I mean, these are you know woven into the fabric of our being. They're very, very important to our identity and our worldviews. So when someone says threatens that worldview, we our first response, our kind of our first thought is to, I got to protect this no matter what, even at the expense of facts and evidence and examples. And I think you know, I've talked about intellectual humility before. I mean, intellectual humility is the ability to say, Frank, this is I want to talk about this thing, and I want you to tell me why I'm wrong. I really want to know what I'm missing. I really want to know where the potholes in my belief system, in my argument. And that is a tough thing to do, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah, absolutely. That's incredible. One of the things that listening to you talk was how do you avoid getting sucked into all these propaganda things? Because every day something new. And you mentioned uh I'm paraphrasing here, pick your battles. Sometimes you just have to back up and let someone else carry the flag. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Absolutely. You know, when Alex Predi was shot in Minneapolis, my nephew, who is 27, lives in downtown Minneapolis. And the day before they had that monster protest in the streets of Minneapolis, and I wasn't sure how close he was to all of that. So I reached out to him and said, Hey, like, where are you in all this? And he said, It's right there. Like he was three blocks away, and he had never really been political before. And this was kind of his first exposure to taking a stand for something that was really meaningful to him. And the reason was because he saw friends and neighbors get caught up in this whole thing, in the ice thing. And so he decided that he wanted to participate. And then the very next day is when Alex Predi was shot. And so I reached out to him again and I was like, Are you being safe? Are you being smart? Like, what are you doing? Like, and also you're one person, and you have to give yourself a time to rest and recover and renew and all of those things. And he told me about this kind of brigade, this community brigade that he was part of that kind of got them together and anybody who wanted to participate. And the number one rule was be peaceful, do not take the bait, no matter what. And also, you got to learn to tag team. So when you are out there and it takes a lot of energy to do what we're doing, you have to recognize when your body and your mind need a rest, and you have to trust that there's somebody else in your place going in there. So think of it like a tag team. And I think that has been kind of tough for me because I'm a very much in the minority in my community. And so I don't see a whole lot of people that I can tag team with. And so I have to look broader than my community and go, yeah, but they're out there.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

They're out there. And I think that's why Substack has been so good for me because I get feedback on Substack. I get a lot of people saying, Yep, I know exactly what you mean. And just that feeling that you're not alone, gosh, that helps.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

That's right. That's right. You can't push the rock up the mountain by yourself. And you have to be able to shut down, not completely shut down, but to step back. Step back, exactly charge. I had one um psychologist say to me one time, when saber-tooth tiger is chasing you back in the Niagara, you needed that rush. But then when the tiger was gone or away and you were safe, then you were able to relax and refresh and refrain. We don't seem to have that now with the this constant bombardment of information and negativity.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Yeah, that's such a good point. And you know, when you think about the brain is always seeking homeostasis. You know, when you think about pleasure and pain, they're on opposite ends of the of the experiential seesaw, if you will, right? When you reach that pleasure pinnacle, what happens is all the good chemicals kind of stop or they start to decrease. And part of that is because we're not built to stay up here forever. And so homeostasis says go back to baseline. The same happens when we're down in a valley, you know, we're not built to be under constant stress or constant depression or constant fear or anxiety. And so our brain is gonna try to find homeostasis, but we have sometimes we have to help it. And sometimes we do, and we we don't even know that we're doing that. You know, when you reach out to a friend and say, Man, I'm in a funk, I just can't get out of this funk, you know, that's your brain telling you you need homeostasis. Go find your happy place, right? And we all have that.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Exactly. You talk about the emotional regulation and numbness. Is there a difference there?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

I think numbness happens automatically. We don't see that happening, we don't know that's happening. And remember, when we're in the weeds emotionally, we're not using our best thinking brain. So it's really hard when we're in the weeds to go, oh, I know exactly what's happening here. Many of us, and I include me in this, can look back and say, oh man, that was cortisol overload. I was, you know, that was fear and anxiety and threat and all the feels, all the negative feels all wrapped up into one, but I don't know it. I can't actually recognize it so much in the moment. So I think that that's the psychic numbing saying, I'll recognize that for you. You can't do this all by yourself.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

You can't do it anymore. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

But the emotional regulation is being able to say, okay, I've been spinning in this kind of vortex of negativity for the last 30 minutes. What's going on with me? And I don't know how to fix it, but I know that sitting here continuing to spin is not going to fix it. And so maybe that's when I take a walk to the mailbox or you know, anything to just change your physical presence scenery, change your space. That is probably one of the best ways to say, okay, whatever's happening in here, I need to mix it up a little bit and I'm gonna do that with a change of scenery. And I mean, this is like if you're trying to solve a really hard problem and you're sitting there trying to grind through it, grind through it, grind through it. And when does it come to you? It comes to you when you're in the shower or when you're walking the dog.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

So find that change of scenery. So the emotional regulation piece is I'm out of alignment up here, I'm not in homeostasis, and I've got to figure out how to get there. And that we can be conscious of. It takes practice, and I'm sure she's great at it, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

It's an effort. Now you have a free complaint fatigue guide that you've talked to me about and I've read about. Well, tell us about this. What is it? So I do a lot. How do people get it?

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Okay, so I do a lot of work with hospitality groups, and when I say hospitality, I mean the big umbrella of hospitality that is hotel. Hotels, restaurant, travel tourism, customer service. Basically, if your organization works with people and you're trying to create a guest experience, that's the hospitality I'm talking about. And the complaint fatigue guide is you never, you know, the old saying, you can't you can never make everybody happy. That's true in life, that's true in hospitality. But I think there are times in hospitality. And I I live in Southwest Florida, and right now it's high season. You know, we've got long lines and you can't get in everywhere, and you know, reservations are tough, and just people are everywhere. And so people are often short and they're not very nice sometimes to the server or to the hostess or whatever. So complaint fatigue really takes a toll because every time you have to regulate that is the emotional regulation that hospitality folks are really good at. You want to make a good impression on them. You want to deliver a great guest impression. And so I think a lot of people are not, they're trained how to deal with complaints, but they're not trained how to deal with complaint fatigue. And that's what this guide is about.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

And you can get this, and we're going to put this in the uh the world. Here's how you can get this by one to your site. Now, Dr. Hughes, you've accomplished a great deal in your life. What makes you the proudest?

SPEAKER_02 24:23

What makes me the proudest? I started my career in education and I and I left after about 10 years. And don't do the math because I don't want you to. But I about 2016, I decided that I wanted to be a guardian ad lightum, which is a court-appointed special advocate for kids who have been abused or neglected in foster care. And I went through the training, and the thing that stood out to me the most is when you look at that piece of our society where these kids, the people who are supposed to protect them, people that are supposed to keep them safe and love them, often they it's not because they don't love them, it's not because they don't want to take care of them, but for a variety of reasons, they simply can't. And those kids are removed from that home. They are in this really dark place. And they often get a revolving door of social workers because social workers have a really tough time and they're underpaid and underappreciated many times. But also the judges change because judges in children's dependency court, that's a tough job. They go in day after day after day and they listen to these horrible stories about how kids have been endangered and let down. And so the thing I learned was the one person who is the constant in this terrible chapter of their lives is the Guardian Ed Lightham. And the Guardian Ed Lightham's job is to make sure you have everything you need. Have you been to the dentist? Do you need a new pair of shoes? We go in and we make sure that the foster family or the foster, and many times it's a group home, is meeting their needs. But also sometimes we're just like, hey, kid, I'm proud of you. Because the person who typically says I'm proud of you is not around.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

And you know, because their life is so turned upside down, they're probably not getting a whole lot of I'm proud of you at school, right? Because homework, math homework is not on the top of the list of their priorities. So sometimes it's just I'm proud of you, or you know, tell me what's on your mind, or whatever it is. And I was named volunteer of the year. And I think that in my entire career and my entire life, I think that's my proudest moment.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

That's so exciting. That's excellent. What last thoughts you want to leave with the listeners around the world today, Dr. Hughes?

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Well, I'll circle back to you know this idea of psychic numbing and moral disengagement. And I think I'd like to tell folks that are feeling either, give yourself some grace. These have been very difficult times. And maybe your brain is just doing what it's supposed to do and keeping you safe and protecting you from overload, but also stay aware and stay inquisitive. Like don't stop asking the questions. And our individual psychology doesn't happen in a vortex. We are wired to connect and we pick up from other people and we give out emotional states to other people. And I think the biggest thing is in the heavy emotional times that you face, our humanity is not revealed because we don't feel everything. Our humanity is revealed by resisting that urge to not feel anything at all. And sometimes that's a lot easier. Yes. But that's the part about staying aware and being inquisitive, like keep asking the questions because somebody out there, maybe your sister, maybe your mother, maybe your friend, maybe your cousin, somebody out there is gonna feel the trickle-down effect of what's happening at some point.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Exactly. Yeah, right. How do people get a hold of you? Because they're gonna want to talk to you and connect with you after this.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Yes. Would love to. So my website is melissahues.rocks, R-O-C-K-S. And on uh on my site, I have a sign-up for my neuro nugget, which I send out every Friday. And it is some fascinating brain factoid that I think you can't live without because I just find it so wickedly exciting that I want to share it with you. But I send that out every Friday. Sometimes I send a Sunday out. But really, a lot of it is hospitality focus, a lot of it is just how do we make our brains work better? And I found that a lot of people they want to know how to make their brains work better.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Absolutely. I agree. Well, folks, we're just about out of time. I want to thank my guest again, Dr. Melissa Hughes, who showed us that by focusing our energy on things that matter and not engaging in the rhetoric and the propaganda, we can at least avoid, we can avoid or at least control the exhaustion that most of us are experiencing today. But let me leave you with this: none of us are in this alone. And the secret to walking in water is to know where the rocks are. And today, Dr. Hughes showed us where many of those rocks are. And together, through this podcast, we're gonna find more rocks and we're gonna bounce back better than ever. Share this with a friend. Please subscribe. And again, Dr. Hughes, thank you so much for this enlightening conversation.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

Thank you, Frank. I want to come back.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Let's do this again. You will. Okay. So that's it for today's episode of Bounce Back. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a ten thousand dollar private VIP day with Frank himself. Be sure to head on over to bouncebackpodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Frank's gift. And join us on the next episode.