Why We Fall in Love, Cheat, and Stay: A Neuroscience Breakdown

Dr. Rachel Taylor joins Headcase to unpack the neuroscience behind love, attachment, cheating, and modern relationships. She explains how dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin shape bonding, why the brain prioritizes survival over happiness, and how early childhood experiences form attachment blueprints before 18 months. The conversation explores why people stay in toxic relationships, how technology and social media disrupt attachment, and why modern culture may be weakening empathy and connection. They also discuss cheating psychology, rebuilding trust after betrayal, and how understanding attachment styles can improve communication and emotional resilience. The episode emphasizes that humans are wired for interdependence, not independence, and that meaningful relationships require presence, empathy, and intentional connection.

Highlights

•  Why emotional pain from breakups activates the same brain systems as physical pain 
•  How childhood attachment styles shape adult relationships and dating behavior 
•  The neuroscience behind cheating and why people justify betrayal 
•  How social media and isolation are weakening empathy and connection 
•  Why rebuilding trust requires creating a “new relationship contract”

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back to Headcase. I'm Stephanie Hoffman. This season, we're getting real about the messiest parts of being human. Let's dive in. Hi everyone. Today I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Rachel Taylor to Headcase. Dr. Rachel is a cognitive neuroscientist and well-being expert who dives deep into what makes us humans. From the chemicals sparking in our brains to the stories we tell ourselves. Based in the UK, she's the voice behind the Unbroken podcast, writes a fascinating Substack exploring everything from empathy to societal pressures. With her unique blend of science and storytelling, she's here to unpack the neuroscience of relationships, cheating, breakups, and makeups, helping us understand why we feel what we feel and how to navigate it all. Welcome, Dr. Rachel.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Oh, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Of course. So I'm just gonna dive right in and start asking questions because I have a lot of them. Um so, from a neuroscience perspective, what's happening in our brains when we fall in love or form a deep romantic connection? And how do neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin shape these experiences?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Well, it's a really fascinating subject area because the majority of what happens when we form attachments when we fall in love happens in the reward and motivation parts of the brain, and very little happens in the prefrontal cortex. So that should tell you a lot about why we need attachment. It's it's literally wired to our survival, um, you know, and who we are as human beings. Now, a lot of what happens in that part of the brain um is sort of underlined by dopamine reactions. So dopamine, um, and I'm gonna say this now. This is a disclaimer because I get so agitated. When people talk about dopamine as if it's like the pleasure neurotransmitter, we get good feelings because we are repeating behaviors, because we are reinforcing behaviors. We don't get good feelings just because that's what dopamine is all about. So we are going to get rewarded if we are forming attachments, forming relationships because we're actually wired for connection. That is why we are getting that dopamine reaction. We get oxytocin um that's released whenever we're doing any kind of bonding behavior. So anything when we're sort of eye-gazing, human touch, holding hands, laughing together, playing together, anything like that, oxytocin is used as sort of a reinforcer of that bond. Now, and again, um this goes a little bit beyond um what we are talking about now, but interestingly, if we have an excess of oxytocin, it makes us um very out-group um suspicious. So we don't want people to infiltrate our in-group, our little gang. Um, and you know, that that is sort of the dark side of that kind of um neurotransmitter. What we want to do as well is what underlines all of those, that what we're actually aiming for is not to have these sort of really quick, you know, very fleeting um romantic relationships. What we're actually aiming for is to have a long-term attachment because, again, that is what we are wired for. We need to have that stability, we need to have that certainty. You know, we work better in groups, and when we have that long-term sort of love and that respect and the value in a relationship, we'll start to get a new transmitter called vasopressine. Now, people who listen to your show, if they have studied any kind of biology, maybe um familiar with vasopressine, in that pre uh prairie voles are used a lot in research because they express a lot of vastopressine because they have monogamous relationships. And basically, quite a lot of what neuroscientists do is we use animal models to sort of see, particularly in parts of the brain where we all share similar mechanisms and similar networks, to how we should be behaving as a species and what that means for our functioning um and how we sort of perform within our group setting. So um it's really interesting because right now within the UK, there's this program that's being advertised on a network, and it's meant to be about um helping people to expand their romantic um experiences in more of a sexual way, and the they have somebody who advertises the program where it goes, you know, human beings, you know, are are wired not to be monogamous, and that's not technically true. And every time it comes on, I get I get a little bit twitchy if I see it and our audience. That's not technically true. In that we are wired to be part of a loving relationship. We are meant to have, you know, from a young age, have primary carers who take care of us, and then we grow up and we learn how to be with other people and become primary carers ourselves. That is how we love as human beings, and this is all underwired by chemical processes that are there to give us rewards for being loving and give us rewards for being loved. That that is how it works, you know, and that that is how it should work. However, we don't live in the perfect environment, do we not? Whereas we have all these mechanisms which work in a certain way, and then we actually have reality where we have narratives about how relationships work, we have discourse in, you know, what is acceptable and what isn't, and you're layering all that on, and then you have your personal experience, which if it's not doesn't fit into the general narrative or the the sort of public social conditioning makes us feel like there's something wrong with us, and then you introduce all that in, and it can really sort of affect how we are wired and how we connect with other people. That was a probably a very long answer to your question, and I apologize, but I I you know it's something I'm very passionate about because I probably say this more than once in this episode: human beings need other human beings. Ignore Beyonce et al, who says independence is a way to no, no, no, intradependence. People need people, that's what we want to promote.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Right, we need human connection. Okay, that's so interesting. Okay, my second question is um, can you explain how the brain's reward system responds differently in healthy versus unhealthy relationships? For example, if someone might stay in a toxic relationship despite knowing that it's toxic.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah, you know, basically the brain is the most energy expensive um part of our body. So it's always looking for ways in which to not be energy expensive, which is why our brain puts things into patterns, looks for patterns, looks for familiarity. It likes to be able to second guess what is going to happen next because that saves energy. It doesn't like uncertainty, it doesn't like different. Um, and this goes for all of life, not just in relationships, you know. So it it come, you know, it comes down to any kind of unhealthy behavior that we have. If we have had experience of it, if that has been our life, if that has been what the brain um has encountered every day, it's familiar. There is less energy expended when we are dealing with familiar, and there's there's also a little bit of identity wrapped up in there, in in that you know, it it becomes part of who we are. So to break away from that kind of pattern requires a lot more energy than perhaps our brain is willing to give. Um, and I think from on a sort of a psychological level and a personal level, is that we don't appreciate the level of intensity and energy that goes into being learning anything different or being new in any way, and this sort of the willpower, which is a brain function, it's not a personality trait, the willpower that takes to to change that. And I think the the one thing um that is I I'm noticing more and more in the in the public domain is there is a huge sort of exposure for pe for you know TV programs, films, um, newspaper articles where they're normalizing abuse. And what what happens with that as well is that people become desensitized to it, people be actually stop realizing how damaging it is. It becomes part of well, everybody's experiencing this, so this is just normal, so I should just accept it. And we only really start then reacting to the extremes where somebody gets murdered or somebody gets really badly hurt, you know, and then it it's like then it becomes something different to your everyday abuses that go on, it gets categorized as something different, and and that's not me either. So it's quite insidious, and I think um everybody really has to understand that, and this is this is really when I learned this, it actually made me very tearful, real really upset on a human level. So we learn all of our attachment processes, we learn uh how to relate to other people and how other people relate to us. Our brain lays down the blueprint for that before we are 18 months old. Before we even realize that we are separate from our caregiver, our brain has laid down proofprints that as in this is how your world functions, this is how people connect in your world, this is how people care for each other in your world. And for me, there'd be something pretty wrong with evolution if that's how we've evolved, and the majority of people's experiences is to be abusive or nasty or not caring or critical. And when I when I learned that, that we lay those blueprints down before we even realize that we're separate from our carers. I at that point I just thought, oh my goodness, this explains such a lot. But how sad is that? How sad that that's that's how it happens because there's a supposition by our sort of how our brain weighs together, the supposition there is that we are going to be cared for, we're going to be valued, we're going to be looked after, we're going to feel safe, we're going to feel secure, we're going to be able to grow up and then you know have a sort of a measure of how respect looks, how people function together. And what I see in general society now is the majority of people who don't know how to function together, who don't know how to respect each other, who don't know how to to love people. And that, you know, I'm I'm a different kind of scientist. I'm a very human scientist. It's, you know, I kind of laugh, you know, how I've evolved and how I've gone into to sort of where I how I work, in that I am I'm very interested in behavior, but I'm not a behavioral psychologist because they're very dry and their research is very controlled, and it's just like just X cause Y. Whereas I look at the environment, I look at the environment and I look and seeing how is this environment actually created the conditions in which people are functioning under and therefore the behaviors that come from that. So, you know, it's a I I use this a lot, these are interesting times for a neuroscientist.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, it's kind of like the sociology behind it and what shapes us, but um, in terms of attachment styles, it's I mean, it is such a big topic. I I read a book about it. Um, I just want people to kind of understand it a little bit more. Um, you you said that our childhood experiences shape our attachment styles. Can you give some examples of that so people can kind of get an idea?

SPEAKER_02 13:41

So what's really interesting is that often when we talk about attachment, we we generally see people who have poor attachment styles because of childhood abuse, childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences, uh, and and they were traditionally, you know, things you that did lead to attachment issues. Where, you know, so we have you know, the case of the child who lives in the extremely violent environment, you know, and is avoiding um has quite a lot of anxiety, isn't trusting of people around because lives in a climate of fear, you know, we might have children who have like very disorganized attachment because their caregivers, whoever they may be, might be very disorganized in how they care for that child. So one minute they might love them, the next minute they might be distracted, that kind of thing. What I'm seeing in in our times, and certainly since I would say since about 2005, you know, that's when it really started to hit home. We've we've got the kind of distracted parents now who are allowing their child to um be brought up by technology where um they are distracted, they want to distract the child, and and we're getting quite a lot of um for me, which are attachment issues, which are now manifesting themselves as neurological developmental um diagnoses, you know, ADHD, autism, that you know, and and another disclaimer, autism is one of my passion projects. Um I have a very keen interest in differences in the brain, atypical brains, it's one of my deep dive into research all the time. And children being labeled with that kind of diagnosis who are not autistic, who don't have any kind of neurodevelopmental differences, they just have had absent parenting, which leads to sort of attachment style. So traditionally, we we sort of, and I think the the public domain needs to sort of, you know, general public needs to catch up on this in that a child may have uh, you know, a house with you know clean bedding, clean clothes, have three meals a day, but they are still suffering in their attachment because they are not being valued, cared for, communicated with, treated as if they are important, um, given that one-to-one um, you know, sort of love and care and attention, you know, I um I am very much against smart technology, particularly within the home, because I see the damage that it does, and I see sort of um it's very difficult for me. My world has gone very small in many ways because it's very difficult for me to go out and see how much damage is being done with attachments in every walk of of life, and you know it's it's really interesting because my my partner my partner says to me, because at times I've I've actually I've had real tears, and he'll go, not your baby, not your problem. Yeah, and I'll I'll say, as a neuroscientist, when you see damage being done to the central nervous system, and you are not able to do anything about it, it it kind of becomes a problem that can't that you can't solve. So it's very damaging. And I I see sort of you know, we've we've we've kind of moved on. The the traditional attachment issues are still there, you know. We still get families where you might have a scapegoated child, or every child might be neglected, or you know, on on the traditional levels of neglect, like no food, no clean clothes, no access to learning, no access to education. But we also have this other insidious um neglect going on now where it's become socially acceptable for children's brains to be moulded by seven-second TikTok videos, and then you say you've not got ADHD, you just train them to want distraction every seven seconds. That's not ADHD, and also the part of the brain that gets addicted to stuff like that is the same part of the brain that a crack cocaine addict is addicted to that drug, right? You've addicted that you have caused an addiction, so when you remove that, you're going to get withdrawal, the same as somebody who's coming off any kind of drug or alcohol, and and that is affecting attachment, that's affecting love, that's affecting relationships. Um it's something that's you know, you might have noticed, Stephanie, that uh it's something that's very it's it actually it hits me hard in my heart. It does, which is, you know, considering considering the topic of the episode is quite, you know, quite the connection.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

I think it's important. I mean, I am grateful that I wasn't raised in a in a time where there was social media and iPads and things like that. Like we just had regular TV and we weren't, you know, inside all day, and your parents didn't put an iPad in front of you just to, you know, keep keep you busy while they were doing something or or things like that. And I, you know, my even my cousin, he just he has uh he has two kids and he never let he it's not that he doesn't let them watch TV, he he gives them all these other games and things to do outside and tasks that they're just not interested. And then I feel like it's if you just don't start them that way, they don't reach for it.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yeah, I I I think yeah, I I think it's so it's so important, like you know, we're talking attachment um and we're talking about you know childhood formations of this is how relationships form. It is not normal for anybody feeding a baby to be not concentrating on the baby but looking at a photo or an eye or any other tablet. We're not give Apple all the uh marketing here, we're not give Apple all the credit. Other forms of tablet are available. It's not normal to be holding a child and not focusing on that child. That's not normal. That is not that is so far away from normal. I cannot emphasize that enough. It's not normal to be sat at a table with someone who you want as a romantic partner and to be distracted by something and to be looking at that rather than looking at them, that isn't normal either. You are not getting dopamine from looking at your partner, you're getting dopamine from whatever you're looking at on a screen. That is not normal, and and we are seeing this sort of perpetuated. I sounded very stern then, didn't I? I sounded like I was very judging, and it's it's it's not it's not judgmentalising, oh shame on you, it's judging in that we have allowed a society where that is socially acceptable when it shouldn't be, it should be as socially unacceptable as somebody smoking a cigarette over a baby or you know, start abusing somebody in front of them. That's how that's how it affects us, that's how damaging it is to the brain and our mechanisms, it's on a similar plane. Um if we are serious about wanting um to lower incidences of mental illness and unwellness, and we really mean it when we're talking about increasing levels of well-being in society, making people feel valued, we really need to start looking at what is distracting distracting from all of that in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Right. It's kind of like these attachment styles are formed when you're a child. And you know, when you grow up and you enter adult relationships, you're kind of predisposed to act a certain way. So when someone calls you crazy or or whatever it is, it's really not your fault in some ways. But it's also if you continue that pattern of you know social media. I don't even know what the kids today, when they're adults, are gonna act like it's kind of scary. But um, I can't imagine people aren't really able to make proper connections if they're just constantly plugged in. In terms of attachment styles, can you explain a little bit about the different attachment styles and how they kind of affect people and their ability to cope or why they move in certain relationships the way they do? Like why an anxiously attached person may struggle more with like infidelity versus another type.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Yeah. I mean, the it's really quite interesting because you know, when we'll we'll start with with anxious avoiding, um, because you were sort of you know talking about that. And when we have anxieties around sort of our attachment processes, these anxieties can manifest themselves in many different ways, in that you can either want to be ultra connected so that the other person never has any space, or you're so anxious that you push people away because you don't want that person to have any power over you. So that the first time of trouble, what you do is push that person away. Um, and and this is also sort of um, you know, and I just want to mention as well is that anxiety gets a really bad press. You know, it really does. I think I think it gets a worse press in America in the US because it's big business, anxiety, and the medication associated with it. But I just want to say that anxiety, anxiety is an evolutionary benefit, that's why we have it, it's an early warning signal. So when we have anxiety within a relationship, it generally is warning us that actually the the brain's recognizing patterns here, the brain's recognizing that this is similar to what we've experienced before. And if we have had relationships with caregivers or other relationships where we've not been valued, we've not been respected, we haven't had stability, we haven't been cared for, we haven't um even on a very basic level been been um valued as a human being or respected as a human being, then we're going to get that anxiety response. And I just want to um just let your um you know your people know as well. When we when we get disrespected by anybody, we don't register this on a on a prefrontal cortex level initially. We register it on a very ancient part of the brain level on the basal ganglia. So before you've even registered it, your body knows that you've been disrespected, and your brain has sent out a stress response. And and we often override that because maybe we have different needs that we want to sort of address, or maybe we've been so used to being diminished, or um said, Oh no, that's not true, you're not feeling the right way, so we tend to ignore it. So, even though we have these attachment styles that you know we call you know, um anxious avoiding, insecure avoiding, everything like that. I just want to sort of say to people, these labels don't necessarily mean there's something wrong with you. What it actually says is that your experiences are such in that when you are within a relationship and your pattern has been this, then this is why you are behaving the way that you are doing. And to be why you're the brain takes a lot of work. So, so we have that anxiety, so that we might either like we want them to be really close, we want to control everything that they do, we don't trust them, so we want to look at the phone, we want to see what messages they get, we don't want them to talk to other people, we want to try and make us their world, but we're always gonna have that anxiety that that could be taken away from us at any moment in time, or I can say we might do the opposite, we might push people away. We yeah, we might um make it really difficult for people to get close. We might uh if I hear this, you know, I I hear this phrase, it says, Oh, you just need to pull down my walls. As if, as if there's like this, you know, it's like it's almost like the 12 tasks of Hercules, isn't it? Is that I'm gonna set you task after task after task after task after task, and when you've completed sufficient tasks, only then might I take a break, like a layer of this wall down, and I'm gonna make you work for it because you know I'm gonna place every single relationship breakdown, nastiness, unkindness. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna just gonna label it all at your door, and you might be decent, but I'm not I'm not even gonna let you do that because I've had this experience that I'm making you do this, and and I'm never I might never allow you in. That's a but I you know that is a you know chance you're gonna have to take to have that kind of reaction as well. Then we have like sort of the insecure people who have no ability to regulate themselves whatsoever, you know, so it their emotional world is out there, so when things are going good, things are going good, but they're always waiting for things to go bad, and it could just be why are you five minutes late? What does that mean? What have you been doing? And you know, the the whole validation you know process gets really out of hand. Um, and what's really interesting in you know, when we're talking about all the different attachment styles, is that um I was working with a client not so long ago, um, and the interesting thing was that he was labeling all of his behavior at that time as being avoidant. And I went, on this occasion, I don't think you are being avoidant. I said, I I don't. I think there's something there's something about recognising the difference between avoidant and self-preservation, you know. So I just wanted to sort of offer that in that that maybe we know people listening to it and thinking, oh my god, that's me. I've I've got some sort of attachment disorder. You know, one, right? It's not a disorder, it's just a pattern of behavior that you've learned from you know your dot. So let's stop thinking of it as a disorder. It might not be working for you anymore, but it's been your blueprint, so we just need to introduce a new blueprint. But also for some people, it might not be any kind of attachment issue other than actually at this moment in time, I need to preserve myself from somebody else's attachment issues who are trying to project it onto me. And and I think sometimes when we're talking about um relationships which are dysfunctional, it's about actually where did the dysfunction start? Have you got two people drawn together because they want to heal each other? You know, that's a very common story in that kind of issue, or is there somebody who is quite intelligent and high functioning with their attachment issues and who then generally tend to project it onto somebody else who doesn't quite understand about attachment issues and takes them on as their own, and that in itself is sort of an attachment dysfunction. Um, I don't believe that there is um a name for that, but it there is it is actually symptoms for of all the different attachment um types, you know. Um interesting. It it it is it's really interesting. Um, I I do I do some did some work, I should say. Uh I think I'm gonna do a bit more. I did some work with an organization who primarily work with people who have experience of the care system within the UK, and presuming you'll have similar things in the U.S. that they were putting to care, so for whatever reasons their parents abandoned them, or the system decided that their parents couldn't look after them anymore for whatever reason, so they found themselves part of the care system. And I do sort of an attachment program explaining things to them, and one of the first sessions, which is really difficult, is to go through all of the attachment styles, um not to say, Oh, which are you? If this, you know, this is not like a quiz, you know, like how many of these symptoms do you recognize? And but to actually help people to understand that from their experiences that they're then their relationships with anybody could end up having symptoms within it that are from these um categories, and the interesting thing is that most people relate to different symptoms from every single category, so that you know, from from my experience, there's no such thing as somebody who is completely um anxious avoidant or completely insecure anxious or completely insecure avoidant or completely dysfunctional. You know, it's it's like it's an amalgamation of everything, and um, you know, what we do within a relationship is if we don't feel valued or we don't feel respected, we tend to then go into coping mechanisms, and that's when we'll see the symptoms of what is an attachment disorder. That's so what we are actually labeling as symptoms actually tend to be coping strategies to deal with the fact that not only do we not care for ourselves like we should do, but we are sensing that whoever we are with isn't caring for us like we are told that people should care for us, and and that's sort of what it's it's often the um dis displaying or the enacting of coping strategies rather than this is who I am and I'm gonna do it regardless. We will only do it if we feel that we are not being cared for in the way that we are told we should be cared for. So, yeah, it's it's interesting stuff, and we'll repeat it because going back to the dopamine, it's reinforced, you know. Even when we are we you spoke before about why do people stay in abusive situations? It's wired into us, it's there that we get the dopamine. Oh, I've got it, everything's alright in the world. I know that I'm getting that, everything's alright. I'm in familiar tarot, I know I can cope with it. Well, you bring, I know that I can cope with this, so therefore, let's just keep going.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

It's like an episode of Love Island.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Yeah, oh I I love so I I what I I can't the these these programs, it's been so funny. Um, in that I I can't watch Love Island, that's like a step too far. Yeah, whether you watch, like I don't know whether you watch Married at First Sight, whether you have that in the US, yeah. And occasionally I'm I'm fascinating because like one, it's like the the experts. Wow, it's like are you just an ex are you just an expert in creating good TV or are you actually a relationship expert because maybe the two aren't compatible? Although I do think I make I I think I make good TV, but even in those scenarios, I like watching to to watch the psychology, but sometimes it gets so it's so toxic, I can't watch it because it's been allowed to air. And somebody who isn't a neuroscientist or doesn't have an understanding of psychology might think that that is normal because it's been allowed to air, and sure if it was so damaging, they wouldn't put it on TV. Yeah, uh yeah, they would because it's because that's why you're watching it, because it's good TV, and I can't watch it at that point, so yeah. So yeah, but I've never watched Love Island, never never ever have I watched Love Island.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Yeah, it would drive you nuts. I mean, it's basically the you know, my walls are up, it takes I'm a slow burn, it takes me a long time to you know get close to someone because of past trauma and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

You've got that much trauma. Why are you on TV? Why are you on TV in a manufactured setting if you are traumatized? It blows my mind.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

I know. I I don't understand it. It's obviously there's other motives involved because I'm like, why are you on a dating show if you're not open to dating? Uh yeah, yeah. But do you think if people actually understood attachment styles and understood other people's attachment styles, like recognized their own, even if it's you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and then understood their partners that they would be able to communicate better and then not have these issues with like cheating or or deception or just like clinginess or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Yeah, I I think um one of the one of the first things that's really interesting is to not to sort of relate it to yourself, but just start to to understand how the brain functions. And and I, you know, some another key takeaway that I want people to know is that the brain is not your friend, the brain is not you, the brain is a very complex, intricate organ that I both love and hate in equal amounts, but it isn't actually you, it has distinct functions that are there, and the the brain's job is to keep you alive, those functions are there to keep you alive, not to make sure you have a happy life. Your brain doesn't care if you're happy or not, the only thing the brain cares about is if you're alive, and it bases what how to keep you alive on that you're alive now. So, what if you've done before? So that you can you just need to keep on doing that because that means you're gonna be alive, you know. That's what that's how the brain functions. And I think just people understanding that and understanding how we do things, how we learn things, how we um how we are motivated, how we have willpower, where insight goes, what experiences do to the brain, um, how good nutrition makes our brain work better, how hydration is really important. If we're not hydrated, then the brain just starts to shut down. You know, how if we're in a constant state of hypervigilance or anxiety, then we're not going to make good decisions because that part of the brain doesn't get fed with nutrition because the body thinks don't need don't need memory-making stuff, we don't need to have good decision making, we just need to be able to get away from what we are scared of or fight it, right? So, I think if people understood that before they even applied it, well, what does that mean for me? People have been in a better position to understand, you know, how we make good relationships, and and something that um I I have a lot of deep thinking when I'm doing mundane medial menial tasks. I think I was unloading the dishwasher um before, and I was like, I was contemplating how the storylines and the narrative of soap operas has changed since I was a child. So when I was a child, I remember they were very much about this is how a family functions, this is how a street functions, this is um how people work together, this is a normal life in a backstreet pub. This is people come together after work, they have a drink, and then they go home. You know, a little bit like cheers in the US, you know, that was people's lives. Soapons now, how many times a year do people get murdered in the same village or town or city? How many high octane stunts are there where like there's like a car crash where people, multiple people die, or a car goes over a bridge, or you know, and I was like, so things are sensationalized over and over again, and that has a real impact on how people think that relationships function and how people function together and what is normal. So, whereas it was normal before, you know, if a family had a disagreement, everybody get round the table and we talk about it, we respect people. Now, if somebody has a disagreement, quite likely the week after there's somebody's hired a hitman to murder that person because their opinion is so heinous to that other person that they can't allow them to live anymore. And and this is you know, this has a very real effect on humanity because the brain doesn't recognize what is true and what isn't. So if you see it, right, the brain thinks it's happy and that it's true. So, and the reason why I sort of bring that up is that we've moved from times where the reinforcement of family values, of how we live together, how we love together has changed a lot to become this sensational, high octane, almost um, you know, I don't know, it's like a dystopian nightmare of human relationships, and yeah, it kind of for the brain. The brain likes sensation, the brain likes novelty, the brain, and this is why it's happening. That why would you want boring? Why would you want to settle for the same existence day in, day out? What was depicted 30 years ago, when yeah, it's an it's an emotional roller coaster, but the highs are so high that you don't mind when the lows are so low, and that really affects how we relate. And and if people don't understand that, and and this is why I was saying people understanding, and how that then relates to them, you're going to get relationships where it's perfectly acceptable for one minute somebody to be screaming because you were five minutes late and becoming so emotionally dysregulated that things are flying everywhere, it's not my fault, it's because I'm traumatized, and this has happened to me, that's happened to me, and you know that. So you shouldn't have been five minutes late, and then there's all these emotions, and then after the emotions uh have got because we cannot sustain that level of emotional dysregulation, you we we can manage 90 seconds is the longest that we can manage that kind of emotion, and then you get the aftermath, and then you get the honeymoon period, and then it all starts going, and we have this emotional roller coaster which is very addictive. And if people don't understand that, and that's what's being sort of replicated everywhere, then we don't stand a chance of having regulated, loving, functional. I'm not gonna, you know, because I hesitate to use the word normal because what is normal is you know, you know, I I pride myself on not being in the bell-shaped care. I'm an outlier for sure, and I'm really proud of that, you know. But also in that, actually, we love and care for each other as we should do, no matter what that looks like, you know, that we we respect each other, we don't harm each other, we don't insult each other, we are regulated, we um can have empathy, we can second position what that other person's going through. And actually, at some point, we might have to put their needs before our own because that is human nature. And I'm all right with that because I know that when I need you, you'll do the same for me, you know, and and I'm not seeing very much of that in society right now.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Yeah, I think we're watching these TV shows and seeing social media and all of the little clips that people make and like the content that we're ingesting makes us makes us think like people acting like that is normal and they turn it into comedic things and bits and things like that. And and I get it, and it's but it's not it's not normal to stay in a relationship like that. So my question is in terms of like that seeking behavior, I mean we're we're reward seeking behavior that we constantly need in this climate that we live in. Um do you think that when someone cheats on another person, they're using that, you know, like they're driven by their dopamine, or do you think there's like a deep ol deeper uh emotional or neurological factor going on there?

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, I I think that um For most people, um now this is a very strong narrative point as well in hashtag self-care. Yeah that's one of my particular things. Hashtag self-care. What it really means is hashtag let's be really selfish, let's just make let's just make sure our own needs are met. And narcissism comes on a on a spectrum like many things, you know, it's not oh I'm completely selfless, oh I'm a complete narcissist that's out to destroy everybody around me, you know, it's a it's a sliding scale, but what what somebody's actually doing when they're cheating on someone else is that what they're saying is that my needs far outweigh any other kind of um factor within this relationship, right? And um, whether that's the need to you know to have excitement, whether that's the need to be disrespectful and get away from it, get get away with it, whether that's a need to um be impulsive and compulsive, you know, whatever excuse that a cheater gives is you know that often is the sort of the key explanation of why they've done it. And most people do things because they think they're gonna get away with it, and most cheaters actually do because very few people actually believe that behavior the first time it happens because they don't want to believe it, and and the really interesting thing about um when women are cheated on is that you know the the women are expected to cure everything, heal everything, do everything. So if a woman's been cheated on, at some level there will be some sort of subconscious thinking that she was at fault in some way, yeah. That she's not met his needs, she's not been the best partner, that um she didn't recognize that you know maybe she wasn't giving him um as much attention as she should be. Somewhere along the line, it will be her fault, and she will take that on board, it was my fault. Um, and and the same goes for um people, women, particularly in abusive relationships, um, where they do believe that it wasn't, you know, that it was never the man's fault why that happened, you know. And they will be able to fix him because they've had this amazing honeymoon period at the beginning. He's not like their other partners, he's completely different until the day when he's not different, and that must be their fault because they did spot it. So he wasn't like this with others, so he's like that with me, so it must be my fault. Um and it's the same with like cheating behavior as well, in that you know, this is one of my other laments. Um, and uh, you know, I I'll be completely honest, I I'm kind of in a grieving process of humanity because I know how good people can be. I I know that we've got we've got the hardware for it, you know. We've got the mechanisms to be really good, we've got the mechanisms to love, we've got the mechanisms to support, we've got the mechanisms to innovate, to create, to be the best that we could possibly be. We have all of that. And right, do I see that being encouraged in society? Not one little bit. And what's really disappointing is that most people seem to think, well, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna show how bad I can be. I'm gonna show how easy it is to cheat on people who I'm meant to love. I'm gonna do all the bad things, and then I'm gonna turn around and say it wasn't my fault, it was your fault because you didn't meet my needs. And this hashtag self-care that has perpetuated it, that it leads this people to believe that the only person who can make sure that their needs are met are you, and it doesn't matter what the cost that actually I deserve that, so I'm gonna have it. I'm not going to think of any consequences because you know, do you know what, Stephanie? YOLO. So I can do whatever I want to do. You only wise, I'm gonna do what I do. And do you know what else I've got? I've got I've got my brain, my brain has FOMO. We have all of this nasty, awful social media library of excuses where it makes it perfectly okay for one human being to treat another human being in a horrific way, and we've made it all possible. We've given them this, we've given them the playbook, the playbook is there, and yeah, what makes me really sad is that other people perpetuate it instead of saying, Well, you know, uh, you know, particularly when people say, Well, I was I was a I had a childhood of trauma. I I saw lots of violence, I saw lots of abuse, or they'll say my partner was brought up in a you know a fearful way, his dad was really abusive. That's why he does. No, he chooses to do that, it's still a choice. You experience something and you are still choosing to do it, and then using that as an excuse. There are other other coping strategies are available, you don't have to revert back to 100% one that you know is destructive. You don't have there's nobody says that you have to do that. Yeah, that's what is familiar, yeah. That might be what easy is, but let me give everybody a little bit of news, Stephanie. Being a good person isn't easy, it takes hard work and dedication, but you know what? You get the best life from being the best person. That is, and you know, that's the best advice I can give. Work hard, be a good person, then you get the best life.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yeah, that's a hundred percent true. A hundred percent. Um, in terms of like feelings after doing something to hurt someone, like cheating or lying and things like that, how guilt also often follows that, um, or even initiating a breakdown. Like there's a lot of there's this guilt period. How does guilt manifest and why is it so overwhelming for people? And how do you manage it? I guess.

SPEAKER_02 50:39

Yeah, I mean, guilt guilt arises because we know we've done something that isn't really in keeping with um the social contract. Um because this despite um all of the sort of the narrative, the discourse, we we still have a moral compass, we still know what's right and what's wrong, we still know how we feel if we're treated bad. We still we can, you know, you treat somebody bad, you you can you can see the impact of that. And when we when because we've got a really cool system in the brain, the mirror neuron system. So if I see you in pain, my brain is in pain because it doesn't want me to experience what you've experienced, so let me understand what you're feeling. That's empathy caused by the mirror neuron system. So um there is, you know, very few people can say, Oh, I can't feel what you feel, despite this explosion, um, supposedly in autism. You know, right, people with autism, people with autism, true autism, feel more than neurotypicals, they have the ability to feel everything, they just don't have the ability to understand what to do with that feeling, you know.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

So I just want to dispel that myth that people with autism can't feel, you know, they're robots in some way. Right. Let's not perpetuate that myth. But you know, when we when we see pain, when we see somebody hurt, when we see somebody affected by something, we we recognize that. And then if we've caused it, we're going, we are going to feel that guilt because guess what? That's there to tell us not to do it again, you know, and uh shame shame is something completely different. Um, you know, shame is what we feel when when when we feel that we have not met the measure, when we have fell far short. Even if those standards that we were expected to attain were were never within our grasp, you know, our shame is when we we are not loved like everybody else is loved, because there must be something wrong with me. When we are not treated like everybody else because we're being who we are, and that's not who you want me to be either. You know, we get shame from not meeting any kind of standards, whether those standards are realistic or not, you know, that we feel shame from that, or we'll feel shame if we've behaved in a way um that's not consistent with our um integrity or principles or values, and we've done it because we've been coerced into it by somebody else. So it's it's really interesting because serial cheaters, I don't think, do feel guilt in the same way. I think they've they experience regret that they've been caught out. You know, I think you know they experience some sort of emotion because actually, whatever they were getting from that situation, they can't anymore because one of the people within the situation has found out that this is happening, you know. So that they've you know, whether it was excitement because you were being deceitful, or you wanted to have your cake eating, so you wanted the partner A to provide you with the food, the cleaning, the laundry, the mundane tasks, and you wanted partner B to service you with your um fantasies, the excitement, whatever, you know what, however you organize your life, that's going to stop. So you're going to feel bereft in some way because your life is going to change and you weren't in control of it. I think that's generally what happens in situations like that. Um, I'm not saying there can't be situations where there has been, you know, some sort of detachment because life throws hard things at people, cycling relationships, and if you're not communicating, if you're not working together, you are going to pull apart. And in that instance, you might go looking for validation in in somewhere else, and you know, things can be worked on, nothing, nothing is you know irreparable. If if it somebody does express true regret, and the other person understands how it happened and they can forgive and they can move on, and you can build something stronger, realizing the factors that made you break apart in the first place, you know, all of that can happen, but for that to happen, there needs to be honesty and communication, and there's very few people who can be both honest and communicate these days, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:34

And yeah, we need to get better at that. Totally. Um, I 100% agree with that. I was wondering in in terms of your substack, uh, your substack just discusses othering and empathy. How would like the lack of empathy in the brain contribute to cheating? And can empathy be something that we can strengthen to prevent like betraying people down the line or feeling betrayed, even yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

I mean, this this is something really interesting because empathy is something that we start to to learn as a child. Um, we you know, and again, people have this misconception that people um with neurological differences such as autism can't have empathy, and that's completely not true. They have an overabundance of emotional empathy, they feel everything. So we can train ourselves to have more empathy, but the the way that we train ourselves to have more empathy is to connect more, is to try to second position ourselves, is to if that happened to me, how would I feel? You know, if um right, you know, in any kind of situation, so it it's almost like we're we're only going to do get be able to understand empathy if and and strengthen empathy if we are actually more human in that when we see someone in pain, when we see somebody who, you know, and it's not doesn't just mean like we don't just need empathy for suffering, but um when we see somebody celebrating, when we see somebody happy, thinking, oh, what's made them happy? You know, how can I second position that? You know, being able to feel something and empathize is not just about um you know bad things happening, it's like some people don't like good things happening because it you they don't like the feeling after something good is finished because it's pretty bad, you know. Yeah, so they've tried to prevent that from happening. So when when we talk about how can we you know use experiences, you know, and how can we strengthen our own empathy? It it literally is let's second position, let's think if that was me, how would I feel? You know, if that was me, how would I want to be treated? How would I want to be treated? You know, right? If that situation was in my life, what would I want other people to do for me? Or how would how would I react so I can try and understand how you're reacting, you know? Right. We talk a lot about sort of emotional intelligence, and and we and people get it wrong, they think it's some sort of soft skill, you know, that that should be some sort of corporate training, emotional intelligence, and it's just like right. Well, just by thinking that you've got it all wrong, you know, yeah, totally emotional emotional intelligence is not about suppressing emotion, it's about yeah, being able to recognize it, name it, and decide how to express it in a way that you want to express it. That's emotional intelligence, so yeah, it's like regulation. Well, yeah, but regulation in in terms of like, okay, so you know, this is this is quite controversial, but what I say to people with emotional regulation is that if you feel something and your emotion is is so high because something so bad has happened to you, then you can match that with a response that is appropriate as long as you own it and take responsibility for it. You know, you can do whatever you want, but you need to own it and you need to own the consequences, and that's emotional intelligence. Totally. When you when you say, Yeah, do you know what? I totally agree. I did throw that cup at the wall because that's how much I felt, but I'm owning it, and it might not you now can make your decision based on me, knowing that in that in that moment I was so angry that had to throw that cup at that wall. But now you know that's who I am. You can now decide whether you want to be in my life or not.

SPEAKER_00 59:58

Yeah, we've all been there. Um, in terms of like uh, and by the way, I think people you know use maybe it's a sign of emotional intelligence, either they're throwing something at the wall or they're punching a punching bag, or they're going to the gym or something like that. Like, in some way, those are all ways of releasing that emotion. But um, yeah, I did have a question about um why when you are betrayed or hurt by someone you love or you're broken up with or whatever it is, um, why does the brain process this emotional betrayal similarly to physical pain? Like, how come it feels visceral sometimes? Because I've gone through breakups in my life where it's like feels like you lose a limb, and it's it obviously time heals all wounds, as they say, but it's interesting that it does feel that visceral.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:03

Well, it's kind of a really nice um arc that question right the way back to the beginning of this episode where I was kind of saying human beings need human beings, so we feel emotional pain in the same way that we feel physical pain, very similar parts of the brain, and we feel it because that's how dangerous it is for human beings to be alone. So we feel that pain to warn us that we might be being disrespected, we might be on danger of being ousted from the tribe, we might be in danger of being hurt in some way, and and we get that kind of pain. So the the amygdala, which basically filters everything in the environment, works very closely with a hippocampus where we store memories, and and the the memories that we need to remember most are the ones that actually are going to either enhance our survival or deplete our survival, so we get very um, you know, very heightened emotional responses to memory to experiences where we are in danger of losing something, and losing a human being is probably the the biggest loss, aside from losing our own life, but losing another human being is the biggest loss that we can encounter in life, and that's how our brain is wired. That's why we feel it. When we when we are threatened in any way of not having someone to rely on, someone to love us, someone to love, someone to build a future with, someone to be safe with, then we are going to get heightened emotions and we're going to get memories so that we don't forget how bad it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

Right. So, in terms of like the need for human connection, you you've talked about on your podcast how we connect like on a wavelength. And do you think that some people just connect on a wavelength more than others? And that's kind of why these relationships develop, like either romantic or friendships, just kind of getting each other without even trying in some cases.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:26

Yeah, I mean that that is like you know, the um the people who are really fortunate in that they know who they are, they know what they like, they know what they love. Um, but but it's it's like a bit bit more intricate than that because right, I will I will use myself and my partner as an example, right? He loves airplanes, he flies airplanes for a living. He's a pilot. Um I don't really care, I don't really care about planes. I don't really I've never had a any kind of desire to learn how to fly a plane. I don't believe it at all. But we connected because what I love is passion. What I love is someone who talks about something and it transports them and another person to a different place because of just the sheer beauty of you see someone transformed, that's that's me. So I have nothing in interest with him. You know, I'm a scientist, I know I know about engineering, I know, you know, about resistance, and I know a little bit about you know how planes stay in the air and stuff like that. But I'm that's not why I was drawn to him. I was drawn to how passionate he was about aviation and in particular about how he could make aviation safer for human beings. You know, he's he's all about the safety, he's all about how can we make this better for humans? And it was like, wow, that spoke volumes to me. So typically you'd say that we're not in the same wavelength, but but we want we both have that underlying value of that we want to make the world a better place, him from his direction, me from my direction. I think that people sometimes they they get lost in detail and they think, oh, we have nothing in common. So how is this going to progress? And it's like sometimes you have to just think, well, you know, what what what are my values? What really drives me and and how am I gonna find that in somebody else? You know, what am I gonna do? And I also want to um sort of you know just tell people that in my research, you know, I I love listening to people's stories. I you know, I um I base all my science in philosophy, which my old PhD supervisor used to, you know, why it was Portuguese, and he used to. And what's really interesting, Portugal, they don't they in Portuguese don't have any um word for the word joy, which I think is very interesting. Oh wow, but yeah, exactly. And he used to say, But you know, this is science. And I was like, science is always reaching them for why are we doing this? You know, what the why? Why is it important for us to know this? Why, where are we starting from? So I always start with philosophy and then it you know filters down into the science. And I think, yeah, you know, why why are we doing this? We we want to learn how to be a better human beings. So when we're with other people, we need to understand that we grow as people when we meet difference, when we meet somebody who's different to us, and and that should really make us feel not threatened, but actually invigorated and curious, and about what can I learn from this person? And it might be that that relationship is nothing more than, oh, I had this really interesting conversation once with a person, and you know, we're connected on that conversational level, and I learned this, this, and this. So it could be I met this person, we connected, I was really interested, I wanted to know more, and 25 years later, here we are. There, there, there's your dad, you know, or 50 years later, that's your granddad, you know, that kind of thing, and we and we don't do that, we're we're so restricted, and this is something else where social media doesn't help because how can you feel who somebody is through a screen? You can't do it, you know. I made a decision sort of um early this year that I I really only wanted to work with people face to face, yeah. Again, was I I hated the whole manufactured working with people through a screen, yeah, it's convenient, yeah, people can fit things in, but actually, when you're taking the time to really process what you've done with that person or really see, I'm really looking at I can see micro expressions and stuff, but people who are working with me won't. They need to be face to face, they need to feel it. So, and the same goes with human relationships, you're not going to meet somebody on Tinder. You know, for the one couple that has, we've got 100 million that haven't. And as a society, we say, Oh, it's worked once, so that must mean it works, and it's just not work for me because there's something wrong with me. Well, no, it's not work for you because hiding behind a screen doesn't work for anybody. Yeah, the one pair who have made a made a marriage, they are the exception that literally, you know, the random exception in the system to you know to keep you all captivated. The way that we actually create long-loving longevity in our relationships is by being human, and human beings need to be in front of other human beings, um, and we need to empathize, we need to stop listening to them and us, we need to stop thinking about um difference being bad. We need to start thinking about oh, that's really interesting. Um, something um for me as a neuroscientist, did you know that um people who develop schizophrenia in African tribes recover more efficiently, more quickly than people in the Western world? Wow, because they are ensconced by their tribal people and they are nurtured back into health, they have a far higher recovery rate and less less um psychotic incidents than people who suffer from schizophrenia in the West. That just that I mean you look at well, why is that? Yeah, exactly. Because they're not isolated, because they're accepted, because they're loved, they're cared for, because people pull together, not pull apart. And there's there's so many examples of looking at how other you know, people who probably would be deemed to live in a very different way than we do in in Western society actually get it more right than what we do, but it doesn't suit our culture to to do that. So, and if anybody, you know, wants to try and challenge how they view life, I I do that with myself all the time. I try to, when something um bothers me, I challenge myself to really look at why is that bothering me? You know, try and get inside it um to see whether I've got any confirmation bias myself, whether I'm um outgrouping things, whether I'm being an intellectual snob, can happen. You won't get many scientists admitted that that can happen. You know, I I have I have to be really careful that I don't label everything as stupid um just because I feel powerless in the face of it, you know, but I see something that really isn't, yeah. I have to, and I think because I feel so powerless at changing it, I think, well, just leave the stupids to carry on with it, and I have to stop myself doing that. So if anybody does want to start challenge their world viewpoint, it's like kind of see how other people do it. And you were talking about empathy before, you were talking about how do we strengthen that. Start viewing the world from somebody else's viewpoint. That's a really quick and easy way of improving empathy, but also by challenging your own viewpoint, and you might not change your opinion, it might validate and solidify, oh well, I'm doing it right, but you've got more evidence that you're doing it right. So when nobody else is doing what you're doing, you can comfort yourself in saying, But I've done my research, I know this is right for me, so I just have to wait because I know that if this is right for me and these and the messages and the signals I'm sending out, eventually the person or people or experience or situation that I want will arrive for me, you know, and and that is how we have to keep on doing things and move away from the conditioning. You said you said before about thank God I wasn't a child who was brought up with social media and and learn how to be bored, learn to have to wait, to learn that I couldn't be continually stimulated 24-7 because there were times when I just had to amuse myself with literally sticks and stones outside, you know, whatever you did, you know, when you have to do it. Because we have to remember that it's not normal to have bing, bing, bing of dopamine because we are feeding our brain with something that isn't real. You know, I I I hate the term dopamine detox. I hate that term because it's not about having a dopamine detox, it's about understanding why you are the way you are and how you got there. We don't need to detox dopamine, you know. Yeah, um, if you want to be if you want to be really pedantic, you you need to rewire your whole motivation and reward system. But I think that sounds pretty overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:23

Yeah, we're many people. I yeah, I won't even, I don't even like meeting with like a therapist over like a Zoom. I mean, I will if it's I've known them for a while and they've got to know me, but when I first see a therapist, I like to do see them in person. And it's kind of the same thing as when you're dating, like you can text, and some people are just great on text, like some sometimes they're witty, they really get it. And then when you're face to face with them, there's just this weird flat connection, there's just no spark, they're not they're maybe more shy and timid than they would be like that you expected. And I find that if you're constantly talking online for so long and then don't actually make the initiative to meet in person and like actually see if you connect, that's when one, you're wasting your time, and two, you just you you don't know how someone really is until you're with them in person. And I think a lot of times because of these dating apps and things, people are just kind of like emotionally stunted when it comes to they don't really know how to act. I don't know if it's some of it's from the pandemic or or what, but I think some people are just so uncomfortable being vulnerable.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:43

Yeah, I think without something. Yeah, I I think you know, for me, you know, the pandemic god so aside from whether it should or shouldn't have happened the way that it did do, what people have to understand of whether you've supported isolation or not, that doesn't really matter. What matters is that when we have isolation in any way, shape, or form, it changes the structure of the brain. And particularly when that isolation is reinforced by fear messaging that you don't know who's got it, you don't know if you've got it and can pass it to somebody else. And we have this kind of fear messaging, and then so what that does then without you even realizing it alters your behavior when you do come across with people, your brain has structurally changed, and at no time since there wasn't any ever an official end, there was a definite start, but there was never a definitive end, and there certainly wasn't the kind of marketing and advertising campaign to get people back together as there was to keep people separate and apart. So, unless you understand how messaging, you know, I call it Olymbic System hijack, unless you understand how that happens, and you don't have to be a neuroscientist for that, you know, it is about educating ourselves and understanding how you don't even need someone talking to you when we're walking through life. If we're having symbols, messaging, um, signs, our brains taking everything in, and we're going to be making decisions based on information that is taken in. So you don't need to be, you don't need to PhD in neuroscience to understand that. But what we do need to do is understand the impact of that on every single person, every single person. And if there's not as big a marketing and advertising campaign to say, actually, now we understand, you know, we told you this message then because we had that information, you know, and again, I'm not going to get into the rights or wrongs of that information, but you know, there wasn't something to say, but now we know the damage. We knew that it was going to cause you damage, but it was decided that that damage at that time was better damage than what could have happened to you. But now we're telling you that we need to reverse that damage because if we do not reverse that damage, your brain is always going to be structurally altered, and you are never going to connect with people like you did in 2019. Nobody said that. Yeah, I said it often, but unfortunately, I'm I'm not like um Tuffy Carlson or Joe Rogan, I've never been invited on the Joe Rogan show. Fancy that. You know, and I've never heard anybody say it as difficulty similar. We we have the conspiracy theorists, we have we have both, we have both sides of the argument, but there's nobody who's actually saying, well, for humanity's sake, doesn't really matter why that happened, it happened. And in order for people to be more human again, this is the message that needs to get out that you need to make an active choice to connect, you need to be more human. It's gonna be scary, your brain is not gonna want to do it, you can't hide behind the keyboard. You know, I remember speaking to somebody, a company that I work with, like right at the beginning, um, back in April, I think it was, and they I was saying you if you really want to care about the well-being of your um staff, you should really be focusing on people with autism whose only contact they got with humanity was the stuff they got in the office. And they're well, they're great, they're loving life, you know, they're loving life. Oh well, that should actually tell you how wrong thing how wrong you got things in the office because those people need human contact, and if they're feeling a sense of relief because they're no longer in the the office, then your office setup was wrong, but you still need to contact them because they need more contact now than ever. Don't just leave them to it, and and and people need to understand that kind of premise that your brain might be saying to you, Well, you're all right, hid behind a keyboard, you're alright sending a few pictures and doing witty repar tweets across a text message and then ghosting someone, yeah, but you've had your job being hit because it replied, and actually, no, you're actually setting yourself up for quite a lot of neurological difficulties when you're an adult. Really interestingly, there's some studies that are showing like Alzheimer's dementia, environmental factors really exacerbating, isolation, lack of um human contact, lack of human connection, lack of love really exacerbate all those kinds of um conditions. Wow, that's insane. It it's it's it's heart it's heartbreaking when all that needs to happen really is an as effective a campaign as it was to separate people saying, Yeah, we know we said that, however, we realize now that the damage that's being done to your brain function and how you are as a human being is so much that we have to try to reverse that, and we want to encourage you. You need eye contact, you need to talk to people face to face, you need to work your way up to actually being okay with getting it wrong on a date or meeting people and not knowing how to communicate. Everybody's in this boat, you know. It's um, you know, it's it's really interesting, and something else that in in our country, and I um I know that with your president at the minute, it probably won't happen in your country, but in our country they've got something they call the online safety bill, where they are dressing, they're dressing kind of um censorship up as keeping children safe. When right that's that kind of for me, the only way to keep children safe and to actually help them appear with beings and help them to communicate and help them to understand how to form relationships and how you function in a human society is to ban the sale of smart technology or the ownership of smart technology to anybody under the age of 18. That's the only way to keep them safe, right? But it's been dressed up with online safety. But because if what we're talking about is how can we encourage people to connect, you're gonna have to take away the comfort blanket, what they have been told is okay, because it is it's not it's not it's not okay, and it's not even so much as you know, in terms of connection, just being in the same room as a smartphone or other smart technology reduces your cognitive ability by 30%.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:57

Wow, so wild. That is so wild. I know, I know I feel like it's only gonna get worse because of AI. Um and I just think they're they're with AI coming on so strong, like there needs to be so much more regulation in terms of like the way people access these things because like the more now things are able to be done for us, it's like the less people will try to even talk, communicate. Some people will probably have AI relationships, which is pretty mind-blowing, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:31

Um, yeah, I think I think we actually read about I think we read about that in in one of our tabloid newspapers. I think that they had an article about somebody who was doing that. They also had articles about people who saying, like, don't pay for therapists, pay for AI, you know. Well, get AI because AI made my life so much better. And um, it's it's like I I think I think I'm coming to the realization that there will be people who listen to this episode and who can recognize and actually then have an understanding of why they are feeling the way that they are, and will actively think that's not for me. So I want to follow the advice, I want to do what they're saying, I want to really understand why I'm behaving the way I am. And sadly, that'll be that that minority, and you'll have other people who listen and say, Oh, that's really interesting, and then we'll switch it off, and then they'll be distracted by something else, and then there'll be other people who say, Oh, that's complete rubbish, I don't want to believe in that, I don't think that applies to me, and then you see like a literally a wake of destruction behind them, and I think that's as a society where we're heading, where I've had to come to terms with the fact that truth is really difficult to hear. Being a human being is not easy, there isn't a magic pill, despite everybody talking about magic pills. There isn't one, um, you know, and right to be to be the best human being and to be the best mother, the best father, the best partner, the best sister, the best brother, every kind of um, you know, social label that we have in society, to be the best at that means turning your back on the technology which is making us less human. And I fully agree. To say that truth, yeah, to say that truth isn't is not um it's not an it's not easy for people to hear, it's not easy for me to say, because I risk alienating a lot of people. Um, and it's really interesting because you you talk about everything that I've written is on Substack. I there's no paywall to it. I took it off and I stopped writing on Substack in November because at that point I came kind of came to it. It was almost like a dark night of the soul because the realization that I'm a very human being, and people most people don't want human beings, they want a quick fix, they want a hack, they want to read something and think, oh, if I do that, if I buy that, I'm gonna be a different person. They buy it, they're still not different. Whereas I work in a way I give so much of my research and my findings, my programs are free for people on Substat. There's no paywall, and yet I can probably name about 30 people who have reached out and said, by doing what you've said, I've changed my life. No, it's amazing. I think, but that's thirst, but it's free for everybody, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:01

I think like everyone is kind of giving clickbait online of like these are the things that will help your life, but subscribe and pay like this fee, and you'll learn all of it. It's everything's like for money, all of that. Um did have a couple more questions. Basically, I was wondering in your you you talk about overcoming the othering, and you also mentioned that everything is a choice. So when it comes to couples like getting back together after uh cheating or whatever it is, even if they break up and get back together um or get over some hard things, do you think how does how how does overcoming othering like play a role in recovering from a breakup or rebuilding these relationships?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:01

I I think I think it's always really interesting, you know, because um I think that the only way that people can get over a fundamental fracture within a relationship, and this is from both sides, is that there's that that level of honesty and the acceptance of what both partners need to do in order to learn, and it's not so much moving on, it's about creating a new foundation in order to create something else. Is that it's not about well, this happened and you did this, I forgive you, so I'm a better person. I'm a better person, I forgive you, let's just move on. It's not, it's about for me when I'm when I'm talking about anything from a neuroscience perspective, so you have the event, and people are really interested in the event. I'm more interested in what happened just prior to the event because that set the perfect environmental conditions for that to happen. So, what were the what were the factors that were in play before that event, before that happening? Um, from both perspectives. Um, and looking at motivations, why are you willing to carry on? Why do you want to move on with this person? Because it's really interesting from a brain perspective, is that you cannot what you cannot just move on and expect the brain to process that things are different. What you have to do is that's an ending, that is an ending, and now this is a beginning. So it's almost like um from a brain perspective, you've stopped that contract, and now you need to think what are what are the terms and conditions of this new contract, and you can't go back to the old contract, or you can't if you're wanting to form a new relationship and a new understanding, even though it's with the same person, it's it's kind of you have to let go, let go of that because your new terms and conditions, and your new terms and conditions, you can't then revert back and say, Ah, but this is why you broke the previous contract. It's like, no, you can't do that. You have to say, This is my expectations in this new relationship contract, and you work from that, not from the does that make sense because that's how the brain can process it, and yeah, and if you motivate that personally, so yeah, it means that it's it's like if you um you know your motivation has to be that you know you want to create something with longevity and learn from something, and you know, I asked I asked my partner today, I said to him, What do you think a teacher is? You tell me what your definition of a teacher is, and he said, Well, it's somebody who wants to um pass on their wisdom, pass on their knowledge, and you know, very much like sort of the child scenario of a teacher where what people need to start looking at is that everything that happens to us is a teacher, everything, because it's about how we respond to that. Um, and teachers, you know, I don't know about your experience at school, Stephanie, but teachers wouldn't always have wisdom, they weren't always wise, yeah, they didn't always have knowledge either, you know, and they certainly weren't benevolent, you know. So teachers are whatever and whoever we need to learn from. So if we are in this situation and we find ourselves wanting to revert back to sort of beat somebody else up about previous mistakes, despite us saying we want to move on, we want to start again, but we are always reverting back to that. What's that teaching? What's that teaching you is that actually you have resentment, you have um, you know, something underlying that's making you want to remind that other person of the hurt that they caused you. So you've you've not had any kind of completion on it, you've not processed it properly. So we have to think about all these things, and you know, as much as it, you know, grates me at times, you know, you know, because we are the products of our environment, so it's really difficult to, you know, to say to someone who's a product of an environment, take responsibility, because sometimes they then take responsibility for everything, not just what's themselves, yeah. So, you know, in that scenario, so we're taking responsibility for um, you know, wanting a new relationship, but actually you're not taking responsibility for the fact that you're still hurting and you need to process, and you should have done that before you agreed to go in a new relationship because you kind of dragged the old contract into the new, and that's gonna ruin that. So you didn't take responsibility for just how hurt you were. So, why was that what need was being over was overriding the the need for you to process how hurt you were, you know, that kind of thing. So we don't want to take responsibility for what that person did for us because they did that, they did that to us, but we need to take responsibility for how we process it, what we do with it, what's acceptable to us, you know, right, and and sort of using the abuse scenario, you know, and this is like um, you know, quite typical, particularly for people who are adults who have been abused as a child. No pain could ever be as bad as that, right? Right, nothing that you did to me as an adult could match what happened to me as a child is going on in someone's brain, so they are going to constantly compare their brain, is gonna compare what's happening now with that, or it's not that bad because it's not as bad as that, right? So they've not fought responsibility that they're now an adult and they don't have to have any abuse in their life whatsoever. They don't need to choose abuse, they might not have had a choice as a child. We have very little to choose from, so we need to take responsibility that as a child there was nothing we could do about it, nothing, it wasn't our fault. No child can be blamed for it. There's nothing that an adult can do to a child that the child can ever take responsibility for, you know, right on the nice stuff. We can't make an adult be nice to us, so we can't take it's not oh, I behaved in this way and that made somebody love me. We can't even take responsibility for that, but as an adult, we can say, I don't want to, I don't want to be in a situation where I'm saying, oh, that's not as bad as that, so I can just accept it. We need to be in like, what do I need to do to take responsibility? So as an adult, I don't have to choose any abuse whatsoever because that is not normal, you know, and that that's the kind of thing. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:39

Yeah, absolutely. I think also like it makes sense in the relating to you know, getting over a breakup or getting over something bad that's happened to you. Like sometimes people are just like, just get over it, and it's hard to do that. And I think some people do get over things maybe faster or perceivingly so you know, they seemingly get over things faster. Um I don't know if it's just their processing, like if you're able to process it long enough, it's easier to move on from there, whether you're back with your partner or you're moving on from the breakup. Um, but it is interesting that why is it that some people don't ever really get over things? Like even a breakup or or you know, an ex will come back and and you're like years later, and it's like so apologetic and wants you back, and all of this stuff. So I always find that really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:40

Well, this is the interesting thing as well. Um, and I'll talk about hope in a minute. I'm not a fan of hope. But the interesting thing about um, you know, sort of how we proceed in life, you know, you touched on it before, it's sort of the um the sort of credence, the salience that we give our emotional memories. So, how much we trust those memories, how much we validate those memories, um, our identity within those memories as well will matter a lot. And you know, we we talk about what we need, and as sort of touched it before, do we need to be with someone more than we need to be safe? Do we need to be validated? Do we need somebody to be part of our life more than we need to be respected? You know, um, do we accept some behavior because actually I'd rather accept that than accept being alone because we have such a negative connotation to being alone? And you know, I'll interestingly, I'm writing a book currently, um, and I'm including some of my processes as part of that because I was continually told as a as a child, no one will ever want you. That was that was a message repeated over and over again. So consequently, when somebody actually did show an interest and did want me, I forgave all sorts of other stuff because I thought, well, actually, the fact that you want me means that I have to give you a bit of slack here because you've actually done something that I was told that no one would ever do. And that's quite interesting to unpack. Yeah, but that realization that realization of um being, you know, having that underlying belief that even though you don't want it to be true, it must be true because someone who loves you, who's meant to love you, has told you that, so it must be true as a child, must be true, yeah. And um, you don't want me, and it must be because of me, egocentric childhood experience. All children think it's everything to do with them, you know, and and if the child is not given um help to grow, we grow as adults, but our child is still our child and still rules the sort of roof, kind of thing, you know. So we we have to understand that we might be um more likely to overlook damaging behaviors because actually to overlook that is better than for a belief to be reinforced. Does that make sense? So when we talk about processing, the the um processing is so you know, people do have different time scales for processing, and it's all dependent on how they can process it. So if they've got a really good guy, I I'm not really a fan of therapy per se, because some therapists, the power balance is completely wrong, and they might not have enough tools in their box to deal with that. Yet, business is business. So if you've got somebody who really understands how to guide you and facilitate a process, I think it's it's better. Um, and and this is something else as well is that not every person and every therapy is what every person needs. Some people have had never been listened to, so they might need to have at least 12 months of counseling where they've just got someone listening to their story before they're even ready to move on from it, you know, or you might have somebody who's like, Wow, I never saw that coming. That caused pain. I need to understand how I didn't see it coming, so I see it coming again. That can be a very quick process, you know. Yeah, that could just be a one-off, and it's like, oh, now I know, now I know how it got in, now I know how to see it in the future, you know, or it could be that it was something that was so fundamental to survival that the brain never ever wants you to forget how bad that felt. Right now, that kind of pain takes quite a long time, and I'm not sure whether that kind of pain ever fully leaves a person because it was so fundamental to it was a life and death situation, whether you know, literally it was, but metaphorically, for some it was a life and and the brain doesn't forget that, and you know, it's when people sort of I work with people on charm, we know from who have quite serious complex PTSD. And one of the things I say is that this is your baseline now for your nervous system when bad things happen, when you know, and you will come back to it, and the measure of recovery is not that you've come back to it, the measure of recovery is how quickly you see that you've come back to it and move back into a place of balance, yeah. So it's that rumination, yeah, and how you then that so it's not because sometimes our nervous system has had um such an experience in life that we have to adapt our expectations of life to that and know that if we are in a stress state for too long, if we have too many demands of ourselves, that our nervous system is gonna revert back to that, and then we need to take the medial states to get it back into, and it's just because of what we've experienced, not that we're broken, it's just that we have to just be aware that it, you know, it's the same as when we have any kind of alcoholic drink for the first time, we've changed the protein makeup in our brain and it'll never go back to how it was before, never ever. Even if you just have that one drink, you've changed the protein structure in your brain and it's never gonna go back to what it was. And it's kind of like that. That's some things that happen to us that we need to just be aware that we're never gonna be able to go back to yeah, dot. So we have to work with what we've got, and it's and it's like it's that kind of process with with that as well. So, um, you know, and it's always a learning process, you know, it's that if that we have to remember that everything that we do is a coping strategy, it's a learn behavior, you know, and we can't unlearn it, but it's still gonna be there, we're still gonna have the neural pathways where if this scenario hits us and we're not on awareness and it hits us, we might just dredge up a coping strategy from the past. Of it, where's that come from? We have to just always be aware of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:47

Totally. I think most people would be way better off honestly, just understanding their neurotransmitters, speaking to neuroscientists or reading books about it, and kind of like finding if they do choose therapy, finding therapist that kind of helps you understand your brain is you know, you don't you're not seeing things always the way it actually is. It's like reality isn't always your brain isn't really showing you the reality of things in some cases.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:21

So my last last message to people is like literally don't read these books, don't find this information with the knowledge that there's something wrong with you, because there's not. There's you have just you've ended up where you are because of experiences, because of your relationships with people, because you basically did the best, best you could do with what you had, you know, and it's only when we know and understand that we can actually make a change, and you know, and we have to realize that all of us, you know, I I'm on a constant, you know, evolving um sort of learning process. If I don't every day is a learning bit for me, and if I you know, I I've just accepted the more I know, the more I don't know, you know, and I think just the one thing that I just want people to be with themselves and with others is kind, and I think that you know, being kind is like it's a long-term strategy to actually achieve what you need. That's what kindness is, um, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:31

Well, thank you so much for sharing all that, it's so important, and I feel like um you're right, it's don't read these books and kind of self-diagnose because I think you can overdo it, and especially with all the things like people clickbait on social media, like people automatically are like, Oh, I have that, I have this, or almost, like you said, even therapy can be harmful in some ways, is if you like go to therapy too much or or unpack things too much to the point where you've caused problems that you didn't even have before. The name of the podcast episode is Be Guide. I'm hoping, hoping to have you on again in the future. And I would love to, if we're ever in the same place, get together face to face. Um, and yeah, I would encourage everyone to listen to your podcast, the Unbroken Podcast, and read your Substack, and I'll make sure to link everything as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:34

Oh, perfect. Thank you so much, Stephanie, and thank you so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:38

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