Dr. Greg Siegle is director of the Programme in Cognitive A'ffective Neuroscience (PICAN) at the University of Pittsburgh. Last month, June 2019, he was also awarded the Honorary Chair in Cognitive Science at the University of Amsterdam. He’s devoted to understanding interactions of cognition and emotion, particularly their associations with mental disorder and recovery such as depression and anxiety.

**Shownotes **

1:00 Lecture at the University of Amsterdam: “what if freaking out and shutting down are completely normal?"
2:50 Most interventions in mental health is to decrease emotions
4:10 “Healthy” people dissociate every day
4:57 Freaking out and shutting down are both part of the process (e.g. spider-phobia)
6:11 Dissociation is stigmatized in mental health field
7:33 There’s a continuum from compartmentalization to total dissociation.
8:26 Detachment in mindfulness share a lot with dissociation
9:02 Pre-frontal cortex lets us put the choice back to our hands
10:02 We’re already doing emotional regulation unconsciously all the time
10:15 Naked card experiment
12:13 Emotions at the workplace - can you cry and completely disengage like a zombie?
13:10 Performance suffers when emotions are suppressed
14:00 Not preventing a person from using the coping mechanism that helped them survive
14:44 Greg’s lab policy - What if doctors and nurses, not just patients, are also allowed to have emotions?
15:30 A real-life example in Greg’s workplace
18:50 Including “allowing emotions” during the interviewing process
19:54 Some Asian employees do not feel like expressing emotions, which is also okay
21:00 Communicating and checking in as the new normal
23:00 Black employees feel less safe to express emotions
24:58 Allowing people to shut down makes it safer for them to come back when they’re ready
25:24 Orgasmic meditation - when the environment is safe, women having sexual abuse histories do not have problems to have arousal
26:52 It’s the lack of safety that prolongs shutting down
28:28 Set and setting are made explicit in psychology and psychiarity
29:20 Lab may not be the ideal place for either stimulation or intervention
31:26 What does it mean by “leaning in” to the emotions?
33:03 To allow the regulatory mechanisms to shut off
33:50 Chinese saying “wuwei”
34:26 What if you don’t work too hard? Allow the process to play out
35:12 Not regulating emotions might work as well
35:40 Depression: leaning in to the rumination; take the power back
38:11 Give anxiety a “worry time”
42:05 “Play time” - Does the world end if I ruminate right now? People actually ruminate less if it’s made explicitly as a process.
44:20 “Surfing” high emotions, even enjoying it
44:47 People like BDSM and haunted house playing with high arousal
46:00 Why is it hard to play with emotions in daily life?
47:42 Not just individual efforts to regulate emotions, but also power relations
48:25 Women are more stigmatized to show emotions at workplace
50:00 What if workplace training includes “really hearing the content and saying I hear you when someone’s expressing emotionally”?
51:15 Shutting down in relationships
52:45 Emotions are stored in the body
53.45 The somatic marker hypothesis, formulated by Antonio Damasio
55:21 “Where are you feeling emotions in your body”
56:01 Body awareness can be double-edged
57:31 Our relationship with pain - what’s it telling me?
59:40 Arousal is arousal - why not playing with that
61:01 One story about arousal may not be more valid than other ones
62:58 The time course of arousal is slow; make use of it
64:24 Make-up sex can be a valid re-direction of arousal
65:30 Artists using their hard emotions to create
66:38 Vibration can lead to vigilance that’s neither positive nor positive
67:30 Meditation is not just about distancing
68:20 Philippe Goldin, laughter meditation
69:30 Detaching as spiritual bypassing
72:05 First learn to swim and surf, and then dive into the extraordinary state of mind
72:35 What does neuroscience say about when to surf, and when to dive?
73:51 Allowing the dark side as part of every day - it’s all one person
74:03 Use your “darkness” as a great resource, as a superpower
75:25 The middle way
76:40 Not stigmatizing the reactions is healing
77:55 Embodied dissociation
78:25 Not just regulating individual patient’s emotions, but change their environments as well
80:23 Better environment for depression - not isolating, but also ok to want to stay alone
81:20 Interpersonal therapy
82:01 Depressive realism
82:20 What about the socio-political cause for depression - fetishizing productivity?
85:16 Both personal an structural changes needed
85:50 Local changes can make a difference - have hard conversations, reclaim power
87:25 **Be your own scientist, play with emotions, do not be scared of them **

11 Dr. Greg Siegle: What if Freaking Out and Shutting Down are Perfectly Normal?

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