Why You Feel So Out of Control w/ Dr. Catherine Pittman EP: 38

[00:00:00] Shanenn Bryant: Welcome Catherine Pittman. Thank you so much for joining me. 

[00:00:03] Catherine Pittman: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. I love talking about the brain and how the different processes in the brain can be understood. So I'm so excited to talk about jealousy in the brain.

[00:00:16] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, me too. I mentioned to you that I'm fascinated with the brain, always have been. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation and you have some amazing books out there that relate to this and how they may help the listener of this podcast so let's talk about them.

[00:00:32] Catherine Pittman: Well, my book that's really taken off and has been translated into 14 languages, which is amazing. Um, is Rewiring Your Anxious Brain, and that kind of gives the basics of how anxiety is produced in the brain. We're gonna talk about that in more detail, but the one that probably, if people are really wanting more of a workbook kind, I have a book called Taming Your Amygdala.

[00:00:58] Catherine Pittman: And all these books you could find on Amazon. Taming Your Amygdala is more of a workbook to help. Once you understand how the amygdala operates, it really helps to know how you can take more control of it, because it isn't, you can't talk to it, you can't reason with it. You have to know other approaches.

[00:01:17] Catherine Pittman: And then, if you have people here that are concerned about doubtsthey have and they feel like they need certainty and they really think and think about whether you know a partner's cheating on them or whether they can trust their partner or how they can tell if this is the right relationship, worry and constant worries and it feels like they're in a loop and they spend lots of time on it, then that could very well be an obsessing going on, and if you're talking about obsessional kind of jealousy where it takes a lot of your time of your day, then the book that I wrote that probably be most helpful is Rewire Your O C D Brain.

[00:02:00] Catherine Pittman: Because OC D is a special obsessing, a special kind of process in the brain. You really need to understand it, to know how to combat it. And so it's not just the amygdala you need to worry about, but you really need to focus on the cortex in the brain. We'll talk about these different parts of the brain, but those are the books that I would say would be most relevant.

[00:02:23] Shanenn Bryant: So one of the books, you mentioned Taming Your Amygdala. I wondered how jealousy is related to anxiety and the amygdala because I feel like there's a connection there. So can you talk about that?

[00:02:38] Catherine Pittman: Yes. Okay. So when we talk about the amygdala, this is a part of our brain that we are not aware of it's functioning, but it's very influential. We could say it's in the unconscious part of our brain, and so much is in your unconscious part of your brain. You know, like you're keeping your balance, your brain is helping you digest food. All kinds of processes are going on. The amygdala is among those things, and it's constantly monitoring your environment for things that are relevant. Relevant in good ways and relevant in bad ways. So it notices when there's, you know, the smell of chocolate chip cookies and move stoward that.

[00:03:19] Catherine Pittman: But it also notices if somebody's frowning at you and you think Uhoh, avoid whatever is happening, avoid that person. Avoid what you said. Don't say that again. Um, so it's really looking for things that are relevant in your environment that may pose a threat. It also, as I said, does focus on positive things, but no one comes to me complaining about the positives in their life. 

[00:03:43] Catherine Pittman: They come to me worrying about the threats. So the part of the amygdala we're worried about is really, the part that focuses on threats and tries to protect us from them. Now, the way it detects threats, and we'll go into more detail about this, but is by scanning your environment and it actually is listening and watching. And the way your brain is set up, this is kind of spooky in a way, your amygdala has access to information before you do. That's because the information coming from your eyes or your ears before it even gets processed in your cortex, the amygdala gets to do a quick glance at it, a quick evaluation of it before it's completely processed.

[00:04:31] Catherine Pittman: Now I'm gonna give you a little example here that might help put this into perspective. Let's say you're in your shower and you see a little brown kind of thing that you know, it looks like it has maybe little hairy things sticking out from it or something. You're not sure what that is. What happens is your amygdala is going to see that before you process it completely in your cortex.

[00:04:56] Catherine Pittman: And when the amygdala sees that, the amygdala. gets the raw information, the unprocessed information. But you know what? That little brown thing looks enough like a spider, that the amygdala starts to react because you are in the shower with a spider. And so the amygdala will increase your heart rate, it'll make your muscles tense. It will produce a reaction in your body. 

[00:05:20] Catherine Pittman: Now, when it produces this reaction in your body, It involves all kinds of changes, and I wanna really call it the fight or flight response is really what it's producing. Something that's gonna help you get away from a danger. And so you prepare to fight or you prepare to flee and you also can just freeze up.

[00:05:42] Catherine Pittman: And those are the three things the amygdala really has the ability to put into action quickly. Now notice though that in a just a fraction of a second more, the information is gonna go, it takes a little time cause it has to go from your eyeballs back to the back of your head, your occipital lobes where it's processed.

[00:05:59] Catherine Pittman: Right? I know you love the brain stuff, so I'm telling you this. What I want you to know though, is when it gets back there to your cortex, your cortex can process things in more detail. So your cortex sees very clearly that that is a little wad of hair that is left there in the bathtub from the last time you showered, and it does not pose a threat to you.

[00:06:21] Catherine Pittman: Now, immediately when your cortex gets that information, the amygdala has access to it too now, the way that that happens, I don't wanna go into too much detail about the brain, but it's basically the amygdala monitors the cortex. It's like the amygdala watches cortex television. Right? The amygdala is kinda seeing what's happening up there in the cortex.

[00:06:42] Catherine Pittman: What are the thoughts going? What are you seeing? What are you hearing? And there's that delay feature, right? So at first, the amygdala has been able to see something, identify it as a potential threat, and react before you can even know what you saw. 

[00:06:59] Catherine Pittman: Because it lets you know you are not in complete control of your feelings.

[00:07:04] Catherine Pittman: There is a part of you that creates your feelings before you are really online in the process, and that applies to jealousy too,

[00:07:13] Catherine Pittman: That with an emotion to something you see, hear, smell, you know, anything sensory and even thoughts bit, but you can react to those things before you are even able to be in control of thinking.

[00:07:31] Shanenn Bryant: Okay. I want to stop right there for a second, because this is so important for jealousy suffers to make this connection. And one thing I want to say and how I know this to be true is I have actually experienced this in my life before. So about 20 years ago, my son was very young. I was in a robbery leaving a gas station. There were people running down the sidewalk towards me. 

[00:07:55] Shanenn Bryant: They were in all black, running down the sidewalk towards me as I was exiting the gas station. And it was the strangest thing because before I could even process what was going on, it was like, as you were saying, my brain already knew that hey, something's not right here. There is a thread, something doesn't feel right. There's something wrong. 

[00:08:21] Shanenn Bryant: And my body was already in motion, doing things that I felt like I had no control over. Like my body had just taken over and I was trying to hurry up and get out of the door. And when we went back and looked at the video, cause we went back to the gas station after it happened. And we looked at the video with the store manager and you can see that I jerked my arm away from them twice as they have a gun pushed against my forehead. I had jerked my arm away from them trying to continue out the door to get to my car. And so I know that that's the amygdala at work because there's no way consciously I would have ever done that. Like I would not have just made the decision to fight back or to pull away. That was something that was completely out of my control 

[00:09:14] Catherine Pittman: So you activated a flea response and also I bet you felt an emotion too. 

[00:09:20] Shanenn Bryant: Yes. 

[00:09:21] Catherine Pittman: You don't have control over your amygdala and your amygdala if it detects a threat, it will create all these changes in your body that you have no control over. Just in the way you don't have any control over what's happening exactly in your brain. When information gets carried from your eyeballs to the back of your head, you don't do anything.

[00:09:42] Catherine Pittman: You don't know what's happening, but it's happening. And so, your blood pressure changes, your muscle tension changes. I mean, there's even changes in insulin and blood sugar because your muscles are going to need blood. There's just so many things, and I don't need to go into all of it, but I just want you to know you're not in control of that.

[00:10:02] Catherine Pittman: You can't control how there's an emotional reaction. But here's the thing, it's so important. Remember that story I told you about that little piece of hair in your shower and how you can react with terror to that. And you can even jump out of the bathtub before you really know what it is. And that may be helpful in some situations, but in many situations, this is key, your amygdala is wrong. In other words, there's not a threat. Now, the situation you're talking about, there is a very real threat. And so, jealousy can happen when you feel that there is some kind of threat in a relationship when a person or a situation is causing a threat. And it doesn't have to be that there is a threat, it's just the amygdala just has to think that there is, and there's various ways that the amygdala determines whether something's a threat.

[00:11:04] Catherine Pittman: One of the things is, our amygdala is so useful to us because it learns things from our past and tries to protect us from those kind of dangers in the future. So if something has happened to you, like for example, you've touched an oven, then when you come near to an oven and you've once been burned by it, your amygdala sees ovens as dangerous.

[00:11:30] Catherine Pittman: And it might see an oven that's dangerous, whether or not it's hot, right? Same thing. IF you are in a car and you're in an accident and you're in the passenger seat, then the amygdala will often if you just get into the passenger seat of a car, it will produce an emotional and a physical reaction where you become tense and your heart pounds and things happen and it's not you doing it and you can't control it.

[00:11:57] Catherine Pittman: And you know what, when you get into the driver's seat, you might not experience that at all. You might be saying, I'm fine if I'm driving, if I'm holding the wheel. And if you had the accident and you were in the driver's seat, then you might be okay in the passenger seat, but not in the driver's seat.

[00:12:13] Catherine Pittman: The amygdala is basically learning this situation. Or it can be a sound or it could be a smell, or it could be a sight. Right? So for example, just take this, for example. Let's say you had someone who cheated on you. And one thing that was part of that was texting with another lover or something. So what could happen is when you see someone you're dating now texting, all of your emotions become uncontrolled.

[00:12:43] Catherine Pittman: And it's because your amygdala is saying, danger, danger, danger, danger. And it's not just saying it to you, but it's putting your body in a position, and this is what's so frustrating for us, it's putting our body in a position where we're ready to run, fight, hit somebody, or we just freeze up and we're like, uh, I can't really think very well.

[00:13:04] Catherine Pittman: Which is part of that where, you know, rabbits who stay very still in my backyard when my dog comes out for his potty break, those rabbits are more likely to survive than rabbits who run away. Sometimes freezing is your better option, even in our lives now. Like if you feel like hitting your boss and instead you freeze up and you can't think, that's probably gonna save your job you know, as opposed to hitting your boss. So we have freezing, fighting, fleeing, and actually we were talking about that. 

[00:13:36] Catherine Pittman: I have a little, a little brief survey that you can even take to see are you more of a fleer? Are you more of a freezer? Are you more of a fighter? Right. And I have one daughter who is a more of a fighter and one that's more of a fleer, you know. And so you just need to kind of understand that this is all built into us from centuries ago, and it's designed to help us in a world we don't live in anymore. So understanding the way that it operates here is the key thing. So many times people feel like, because I'm having such a strong feeling, my fear must be correct.

[00:14:15] Catherine Pittman: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Your amygdala can be completely wrong and that's why it's good to know there is a an amygdala. That's why it's good to know these feelings of threat come from my amygdala. And that you shouldn't assume your amygdala is some kind of fortune teller and knows the future because it doesn't.

[00:14:35] Catherine Pittman: What it's doing is it's trying to protect you from a danger and it just believes, you know, let's say you're walking down a path and there's a curvy brown thing in the path, and you jump away from it because the amygdala says that looks like a snake. Well, maybe it's not a snake. Maybe it's a branch or a vine.

[00:14:54] Catherine Pittman: But you know, the amygdala's approach is better to jump away from something that isn't dangerous, than to fail to jump away from something that is.

[00:15:04] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. So we're programmed to say, hey, we're just going to look at this as a threat until I know for sure that it's not a threat. And so that's why I always say that first thought that comes to your head, that first thing that you want to say or think is usually wrong. 

[00:15:25] Shanenn Bryant: ' Because it's like, we're just going to consider this a threat and something we need to be concerned about. 

[00:15:32] Catherine Pittman: What you're saying too,I wanna be really clear, the amygdala doesn't produce thoughts so much as it produce feelings and like you were saying, it's very bodily focused so that you felt changes in your body. You feel emotions. And if you were to say, what do you feel, you can translate it into a thought like, you feel I need to get the hell outta here, or something is terribly wrong, or something bad's about to happen, or I'm going to, I'm furious and I need to hit this person.

[00:16:01] Catherine Pittman: Or there's urges and you translate it into thoughts. And then, like I said, sometimes the thoughts you have are very wrong. Like for example, just the thought there's a spider Is a wrong interpretation. There's not a spider, but you may react as if it's a spider before you have the correct information. But knowing your amygdala can be wrong and knowing that it can be wrong and you can feel terrible danger, and the feeling is very real. And that's something that confuses people. They'll say, how can you say, I'm not having this feeling? You are having this feeling. You are. It's definitely a real feeling, right? 

[00:16:41] Catherine Pittman: But the problem is that the feeling could be unnecessary or unneeded, you know, because it's all based in the fight or flight response and it doesn't feel good.

No, it doesn't feel good. And you mentioned, some people are fight. Some people are flight and some people are freeze and you have a wonderful survey called the, Do You Flee survey? 

I will connect that in the show notes for people to figure out which one they are to help have a little bit more information, but when we talk about the fight one, one of the things I hear all the time and I certainly experienced it myself, is that in the moment. It was almost like I was a different person. I get so angry and the things that I said and things that I did were just so nasty and I would never say those things normally. And never say those things or do those things to anyone else but my partner. 

And so then you feel really guilty and bad about it and it feels a bit you know, abusive to the person because you're just so nasty with them in the moment, in that jealousy moment, because of it. I assume then that's that fight piece that you're talking about

[00:18:16] Catherine Pittman: I wanna say about that, what's happened to you is your brain has been hijacked by the amygdala, and we're designed for this to happen. It's not that you allow it to happen, it just happens, and here's what it is. It's probably saved your life in certain situations. Let me give an example.

[00:18:38] Catherine Pittman: If you're driving down the road and something comes in front of your car, another vehicle or an animal or something, and suddenly you are in danger or that person or other car is in danger. So what ends up happening though is, remember your amygdala sees the situation and process it just a fraction of a section second before you do, and so when you see that situation, you have already missed things the amygdalas already put into action, right? 

[00:19:13] Catherine Pittman: So often what we end up experiencing is something comes into your lane and you might hit the brake, you might actually hit the gas and turn the wheel fast and avoid something. Um, you may do something completely bizarre that you hadn't thought of, you know, like lean on your horn or you know, whatever. And so what happens is something happens and very often it's a helpful something. And then if you think about this, you kind of have to go back in your head and say, what just happened and who did it? Because you did not do it. You did not tell yourself to do it.

[00:19:49] Catherine Pittman: You were not rationally saying go to the left here, hit the brake, you know, um, hit the horn. You know what you did? No, you acted so fast. So here's the thing. Your brain got hijacked right and it saved your life.

[00:20:05] Shanenn Bryant: Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:07] Catherine Pittman: You're cleaning your closet and all of a sudden you hear a weird noise above your head and you jump back not knowing what it is, and all of a sudden a bowling ball falls on the ground.

[00:20:15] Catherine Pittman: You know, you're like, oh my God, thank God I jumped back. How did I know You didn't know, honey. Your amygdala was like, something's coming. You know, move. And so here's what you're saying. When you do these things and you say, I feel like I'm abusing this person, you wanna say, you know, I understand this is a part of my brain, this emotional part of my brain that is designed to protect me.

[00:20:37] Catherine Pittman: It just went into fight mode to protect me from a danger. And I can't control that. I'm so sorry. I look back at it, I know that isn't me. So how do you control it? You know? How do you control it? 

[00:20:53] Catherine Pittman: First of all, isn't it great to even know there's a part there doing something? Because how would we even know, you know? 

[00:20:59] Shanenn Bryant: Yes, because I think people feel like there's something really wrong with them. When they experienced that when they experienced the intensity of it. And so having an explanation and you're doing such a beautiful job of explaining it to us. Then that means hopefully for people they realize, okay, then. I can be aware of this. And know that this is what's going on and it makes it feel a little bit more manageable.

[00:21:31] Catherine Pittman: You don't have control in the moment at all. And actually once it's kind of released in you and, um, the amygdala causes feelings of dread, it causes, panic attacks, it causes rage, it causes dissociation, like just freezing up and not being able to think. Um, and it causes someone to literally push and run out of a situation when other people are trying to hold them and explain. This is okay. You know, one time I was having my daughter watch a movie, a beautiful movie called It's A Wonderful Life for Christmas, and there was a scary part of it for her. It was the scary part when the drugstore owner hit George the boy, and I'm trying to hold her and say, wait, wait just a minute.

[00:22:25] Catherine Pittman: Cause just a minute. He's gonna say, I'm sorry, George, you know, and tell him I shouldn't have done that. But she's like, no. You said this was a good movie. And she's like did not want to see that having, and she runs away, And so we do these things and we're not in control. It's the amygdala trying to save us from a bad situation, and knowing that can really help and you understand what's going on.

[00:22:49] Catherine Pittman: So first of all, you can be completely acting in error, and it's not your fault because you're not relying on thinking processes. The amygdala has several ways that it detects a threat. So let's talk about some of those. Okay. One way it detects a threat is on the basis of its past experience, which is your past experience.

[00:23:10] Catherine Pittman: So if you have had experiences, say, where you had someone cheat on you and there was texting involved, or where you had someone cheat on you and turning up late for a date was involved, or, the name of someone who someone cheated on you with can trigger for you. Right now what this is, is the amygdala looks for any kind of cues that were as, and it doesn't have to be cause and effect associated with it, it just goes with it. Like for example, you being in the passenger seat versus the driver's seat, didn't probably, you know, relate to the accident. You can have an accident in either situation, right? But the amygdala pays attention to those little things. And it doesn't have to be exact. It can be something that sounds like it.

[00:24:03] Catherine Pittman: For example, a friend of mine who was in the, Gulf War, one time we were in a hotel room and, all of a sudden she started talking about her war experiences and it was really weird. I said, where does this all come from? And she was really tense and talking about things.

[00:24:18] Catherine Pittman: And I said, where did this come from? And she just stopped and she said, you hear that refrigerator sound? And I said, what? And I listened and there was kind of like a ooh sound that was coming from the refrigerator, the little, small refrigerator. And she said, that sounds like an air raid siren in the Gulf War when you're far away from it. That's what it sounds like. And that just clicked her into tenseness memories, started flooding back and she was aware of the memories. But you see, you might not be aware of the memories and you don't have to remember why is this triggering me?

[00:24:57] Catherine Pittman: But what the amygdala does is the amygdala creates triggers in our memory. It stores things that were associated, and they don't have to be causally associated. Let's say a woman was sexually assaulted during, a Beatles song. When that Beatles song plays she goes into a panic attack.

[00:25:18] Catherine Pittman: Now, that Beatles song didn't have anything to do with what was happening to her. It does. It's just the association, right? 

[00:25:27] Catherine Pittman: It can be a phrase a person says, like, get over it and boom, you are triggered because that is just puts you back in an emotional state because someone used to say that to you. Right? Um, or, it might be a song or it might be a, a particular vehicle or, um, going to a certain venue, it might be somebody that looks like someone.

[00:25:56] Catherine Pittman: All of these things the amygdala relies on because, let's say if our amygdala was designed to only be afraid of the certain dog, or the certain wolf or the certain bear, you know, that hurt you or that's frightened you. Wouldn't it be better if it was afraid of all furry things of that size?

[00:26:14] Catherine Pittman: Whether it was exactly right. So it's designed to kind of generalize to something that's similar to something to, so even though that that might not be a snake in the path, it kind of looks like a snake. It's the same thing, you know, you can have a partner who's not really acting like a snake, but there's something of a snake.

[00:26:37] Catherine Pittman: And so what we're talking about is it's not logical and so if somebody says to you, this is not logical, you wanna say, my amygdala is not logical. I can be logical, but my amygdala is not logical and this is what happens to me. I get triggered, you know, and trying to help yourself understand that.

[00:26:57] Catherine Pittman: So one way that the amygdala reacts to things is on the basis of past experiences that form certain triggers that the amygdala stores in memory. And when that trigger is experienced, whether it's a song or a sound or a smell. Or whatever it is. One of my clients, when she sat in a circle of people, she got panicky and it didn't make any sense to her cuz it could be around the Thanksgiving table or at a shower for a good friend of hers.

[00:27:27] Catherine Pittman: And it all went back to an experience in her second grade classroom, you know, where the kids were sitting in a circle. And it doesn't make sense unless you understand the language of the amygdala, which is a language of association, meaning that this was present in a situation where something bad happened to me, and so now it's a trigger for me to feel I'm in danger.

[00:27:51] Catherine Pittman: The thing we were saying is that the amygdala watches Cortex television. You can be completely safe and the amygdala can be saying, I see nothing here to worry about. But then you start thinking, Then you start logically saying, does it make sense that he was late three times and it was always Thursdays?

[00:28:15] Catherine Pittman: What is that? And then you start thinking that that could mean he's cheating. Well, guess what? I wanna tell you something that's kinda sad. Again, remember I told you the amygdala can be wrong ? Your cortex can be wrong too. And we are kind of prone sometimes to jumping to conclusions on those kind of things.

[00:28:33] Catherine Pittman: But also if the cortex is wrong, the amygdala has no way to detect that. Here's the amygdala. The amygdala figures if the cortex is thinking something, the amygdala better go with that becasue sometimes the cortex knows things that the amygdala doesn't know. But here's the thing, the amygdala is gonna believe those thoughts. We have not found any place in the brain where the amygdala is given information like this is just something I'm imagining versus this is something I'm actually seeing. So for example, you imagining your partner with someone else, the amygdala can react as if you're seeing your partner with someone else.

[00:29:19] Catherine Pittman: Ah. That means your thoughts matter. And if you go on, a little worry spree, as I say, sometimes, remember like the Cortex television. I say if you're on the worry channel and you're just generating all these thoughts about what could be happening, you have no evidence for this. You are scaring your amygdala.

[00:29:38] Catherine Pittman: You are scaring your amygda. And so another way that the amygdala can get activated is by you thinking that someone's cheating or you are thinking that this person doesn't love you, or you are thinking you're being played. When actually it's not true at all, but your amygdala is relying on, and once again, let me say, let me give you a little story I like to use, like imagine if there's a woman who, her husband has gone on a fishing trip with his friends and he's gone in Canada and she's home alone. But she loves her husband. She wants him to have a good time, but this is not her idea of a fun time being alone for a week. 

[00:30:23] Catherine Pittman: So during this time, she's alone she hears a sound while she's alone in her house and it's a sound that actually is a very familiar sound. Do you know what the sound is? It's a sound of the door from the garage into the kitchen opening up, and the amygdala has heard this sound over and over and over. This does not make the amygdala react in any way cuz it's a familiar sound. Someone coming from the garage into the house. She hears her husband do that a lot. Visitors like her kids or whatever, they come in and so she's not gonna have a reaction rise in her amygdala.

[00:31:02] Catherine Pittman: But when she hears that sound, just a fraction of a second later, remember, her amygdala has processed it, but it gets to this place in her cortex, in the temporal lobe where the cortex says that sound is the door from the garage opening. Who would be coming in? Frank is thousands of miles away. No one should be coming in the garage right now. And the minute she thinks that thought and starts to think who could be in the house, and she maybe comes up with even an image of a burglar, an image of someone with a knife, you know, an image of someone who's coming to rob her and thinks, cause Frank's car is gone, that the house is empty.

[00:31:40] Catherine Pittman: She has all these thoughts. Well, once she has these thoughts, what's the amygdala gonna do? The amygdalas gonna say, oh my God, this is terrible. There's this person in the house and it's gonna react to those thoughts. And so she might run out the front door in a panic. Her heart pounding, completely tense, feeling nauseous, maybe.

[00:31:59] Catherine Pittman: A terrible experience, just a panic. Runs out the front door. Now I'm just asking you, is that good for her? Is that bad for her? That could be very good. Right? So the amygdala is once again, probably playing its cards right to say if the cortex, on the basis of its logic and its information which is greater than mine, says there's a danger, I'm gonna react as though there's a danger.

[00:32:22] Catherine Pittman: But the problem is, you know, if that woman is in bed at night and she hears a scratching on her screen window and she thinks to herself, that is a robber with an exacto knife and he's cutting the screen. He is gonna climb in and assault me. That is probably not what she's hearing, you know? But the amygdala's gonna react as if it is, and she's gonna panic and she might end up calling the police over something like that.

[00:32:51] Catherine Pittman: And the police might say, lady, there's a branch that's scratching your window. You know it's nothing. But you know what? She still is gonna feel all those same feelings and we're wired this way. So here, going back to jealousy, you may not have a reason for jealousy or you may have a reason for jealousy and as you're thinking about it and as you're on the jealousy channel and you're thinking about this stuff, you can activate your amygdala. 

[00:33:19] Catherine Pittman: So you may end up with an amygdala that's completely furious and ready to just pummel someone. You may end up with an amygdala that wants you to run the hell away from the situation and you may just be completely locked up and not know what to do because you're freezing.

[00:33:34] Catherine Pittman: But you do have, the wiring in your brain that you can be completely safe and on the basis of your imagination and those out there who are creative, imaginative to people, you're so good at this, you can just come up with it and then you can use your logic to think about it and argue yourself when you have a doubt.

[00:33:56] Shanenn Bryant: Maybe I'm making this up. Then you can even say, now, wait a minute. And you can find patterns that may not even exist. You know, you can come up with all kinds of ideas. I think this one is so key for people who experience this extreme and intense jealousy where it's something that's affecting them on a daily basis. 

[00:34:16] Shanenn Bryant: And a lot of that saying, "Be careful what you think." is because of this, right? If I start imagining that my partner is having lunch with someone. I'm starting that jealousy channel, as you say and headed down that path. You know, Who's there at lunch. Did they ride together? 

[00:34:36] Shanenn Bryant: I bet he's having lunch with that female or I bet she's having lunch with that guy. And you can start that train and have those exact same feelings as you talked about like the cortex is giving the amygdala incorrect information but we're still feeling it as if it's actually happening.

[00:34:55] Catherine Pittman: This is good to know because you have more control of your cortex. I'm not saying it's easy, like you just click your fingers and, oh, I'm gonna stop thinking about that. But you do have control over your thoughts in a way that you do not have control over the amygdala. So, If you can keep your amygdala from being activated by being on the jealousy channel, by thinking about things, by allowing yourself to just imagine and worry you can really say to yourself, don't scare your amygdala, because, well, people argue with me, they'll say, but it could be happening. I don't know for sure. 

[00:35:37] Catherine Pittman: And I said, you don't know for sure either way. Well, here's what I wanna say. Do you wanna go through all the emotions you're putting yourself through because you're the one that's starting this? You know? Cuz what starts in the cortex doesn't stay in the cortex. Now you got the amygdala involved and it's miserable.

[00:35:55] Catherine Pittman: You're suffering. And I find that people will respond to when they understand I'm, I am affecting the amygdala. I understand. And. I'm making myself miserable. I'm making myself furious. I'm starting to lose control. But it all started with me thinking. Now that's different when something triggers you, like something the person said, or you suddenly, maybe you see something like your partner touched somebody in a certain way, like putting his hand on someone's back or something like that.

[00:36:32] Catherine Pittman: And this triggers you. That is more starting in the amygdala. So one of the things about Rewire Your Anxious Brain is I kind of say is your problem. And it's both. It's not like, oh my, it mine always starts in the amygdala, you know? Nope. Um, Sometimes that the problem starts in the cortex and sometimes it starts in the amygdala.

[00:36:59] Catherine Pittman: And so to address it, you need to know, am I trying to deal with my amygdala here or am I trying to deal with my cortex? Cortex is easier because you can say, and remember I didn't say easy I said easier, that's just because the amygdala is so hard, the cortex, you can say, I need to think about something else.

[00:37:17] Catherine Pittman: And I'm gonna tell you a little trick here just to save you a lot of trouble. If you say "stop thinking he's interested in her." "Stop thinking that" is not stopping thinking he's interested in her, that is staying on that channel. You know you have to change the channel. You can't turn off your cortex. You have to put it on a different channel.

[00:37:37] Catherine Pittman: So what you have to do is say, "What my grocery list?" I need to start focusing on what I need from the store. Or you have to say, "I'm gonna call a friend" and you're not gonna talk about this. You're gonna talk about what's happening in your life. You know? Has your little boy started walking yet and getting on a different channel.

[00:37:56] Catherine Pittman: That works in your brain. If I tell you to stop thinking about pink elephants, you are gonna think about pink elephants for the first time today and maybe this week and maybe this month because I told you not tonthink about pink elephants. You got the image of a pink elephant. Same thing if you tell yourself, don't think about what he's doing at lunch.

[00:38:15] Catherine Pittman: Don't think about that. No, you have to say what you're going to think about and you need to throw yourself into that. And all that does is keep you off the jealousy channel so that you don't get your amygdala wound up. And remember, you are not getting your amygdala wound up, not for him or her or whatever.

[00:38:31] Catherine Pittman: You are not getting it because you don't wanna deal with that. You're like, I don't wanna activate that. It's a mess. But there's sometimes when your amygdala starts on its own, when it is triggered by a memory and it's irrational, and that is part of us too.

[00:38:50] Shanenn Bryant: So important what you're saying, because this is where that decision piece comes in. Right? We talk about our amygdala is triggered, our body's already responding and we're doing things that we don't want to do. We're feeling things that we don't want to feel. 

[00:39:07] Shanenn Bryant: We can't control that, but then, we hit the cortex and this is where the decision comes in to either continue down that path and I'm going to keep thinking about it. And I'm going to think additional thoughts about it, and I'm going to play out these images in my head, or I'm going to decide to change the channel. I'm gonna go for a run or I'm going to work on something that I want to accomplish, or I am going to call that girlfriend. 

[00:39:35] Shanenn Bryant: What we often do though, then is talk about our experience and we're telling them a story and trying to get them on board with us. So then we just get right back on that jealousy channel, as you say.

[00:39:49] Shanenn Bryant: So changing the channel that's important. Like not muteing it a little bit, not turning it down, a hundred percent changing the channel. And doing something else. Talking about something else .Getting your mind completely off of what your thoughts were. 

[00:40:07] Catherine Pittman: Images too ,that'll really get the amygdala going.

[00:40:12] Catherine Pittman: I'll tell you a separate layer here. If a person says, but I can't be sure and I need certainty, I need a hundred percent certainty and I can't let go, then that's more we get into some. OC D related things and where a person is saying, I need to be a hundred percent confident, because the truth is we can never be a hundred percent confident that nothing bad is gonna go wrong in a relationship.

[00:40:40] Catherine Pittman: Now sometimes, you have to sort out the risks you're taking. And sometimes there are risks and sometimes this a person that you really should not be doubting, but you are. And I can't tell from a certain situation we're thinking of for sure. But one thing, you know, if the person is not trusting a trustworthy person or if the person has a good indication that this person is not trustworthy, that's something where what I'm talking about is even when there's a part of you that knows you should be able to trust this person and you know that it's the doubts you have, and sometimes they're more about past experiences or sometimes they're more about you needing certainty.

[00:41:28] Catherine Pittman: Like, I can't tolerate uncertainty. I need to know my plans. I need to know, and you'll see it in other parts of your life sometimes. So that's when it's gone beyond just jealousy. And we have obsessive jealousy that's really part of O C D, the romantic OCD, you know, relationship O C D. And that is a struggle.

[00:41:48] Catherine Pittman: But I wanna tell you that's a cortex problem. And it's easier to deal with than say people who've been through trauma. Because when you've been through trauma and your amygdala is reacting as if you're not safe, we have to teach the amygdala that it is safe, and that's a process. That's a process of being in scary situations and learning it all worked out. It's okay. 

[00:42:17] Catherine Pittman: And the amygdala can learn, but it involves taking some risks, sometimes being in a relationship or letting things happen and saying, you know, I told him I didn't want him to go to any more lunches, and I realized that's gonna hurt his career chances so I have to let him go to these lunches.

[00:42:38] Catherine Pittman: And sometimes you need to put yourself through situations like being in a situation where there's an ex there and trying to handle that situation and realizing these two people are not gonna get back together. That's my amygdala being triggered. It's from another situation, not this relationship.

[00:43:03] Catherine Pittman: Because we have these two channels to jealousy, the two pathways, I should say, to jealousy. We have the amygdala pathway that's based on triggers, and that's based on directly experiencing something that makes the amygdala say danger, danger, danger. And then we have the other pathway that the amygdala is sitting there chilling out and everything's going all right.

[00:43:29] Catherine Pittman: And then the cortex says, what if this, what if that? This could be the situation and the amygdala's like, Ah. Oh no. And then you got the amygdala triggered where it was willing to just look around and go, everything looks cool. Everything's good.

[00:43:43] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah.

[00:43:43] Catherine Pittman: You scared your amygdala.

[00:43:45] Catherine Pittman: And so knowing these different pathways, now notice that we're talking about giving you control over your jealous feelings and your jealous thoughts. And it's not a simple process, but you do have the ability, once you know the operating pieces, and people will say they can't believe how stupid their amygdala is.

[00:44:07] Catherine Pittman: Sometimes when they really think about it, they're like, my amygdala reacts to this and I, rationally in another part of my brain, I know he is never gonna get back with her. You know, I should not be upset that he's in this wedding and they're not even walking down the aisle together, you know? But just the fact that she's in the wedding, he's in the wedding, and I'm like, ah, this is really upsetting me.

[00:44:29] Catherine Pittman: You know? I. have to recognize where that comes from and work with myself. And if you know the operating pieces that create these emotions, how they work, you are armed to take on the situation. But a the vast majority of people don't even know they have an amygdala.

[00:44:52] Shanenn Bryant: YEah. They're not understanding the two different parts that you have so beautifully explained today. I think that is definitely going to help people that are suffering with jealousy to even just the beginning of starting to separate these two things of was this a trigger for me from something that, from my past or did I just create this? And I think that's where, as I said, where the confusion sometimes comes in where people are like, well, I don't understand because I have such strong feelings and I can't tell if this is right or if this is wrong. I think just understanding the two things that may be going on.

[00:45:33] Catherine Pittman: Right. And understanding that you can have a feeling that you are in complete danger. At the same time, you are perfectly safe. That it's a feeling and it's not a prediction that the relationship is gonna go down in flames. You know, it's a feeling. So there's another thing I wanna do, and that this is the thing that a lot of people just, they don't get it at all.

[00:45:54] Catherine Pittman: They're like, okay. But if you know how important your amygdala is in this process, one thing you wanna know are there ways I can calm my amygdala down? Are there ways it can be calmed down? And I wanna tell you nothing I have said today, nothing you can say to your amygdala affects the amygdala. You cannot logically discuss it.

[00:46:19] Catherine Pittman: You cannot reason with your amygdala, none of that. Right? So here are some things that you're gonna, you say, but how do I talk to the amygdala? Right? Well, one of the ways that you can do now, and this is the thing that people often don't get. The amygdala calms down by having the experience in your body, yes, of calmness. If you calm your body down with deep, slow breathing, if you relax your muscles and your jaw and your arms and your legs, you're just relax. If you relax, this sends a message to the amygdala better than you saying, calm down, calm down. Everything's all right. He's never gonna cheat on me.

[00:47:12] Catherine Pittman: That does nothing with the amygdala, and this is the thing that I've been taught to teach relaxation skills to people for, 30 years. But until we had FMRI scans that actually I could tell people when you are in one of those FMRI scans and we show you scary pictures that usually activate the amygdala and we ask you to do this kind of breathing, this deep, slow breathing, five breaths a minute, where you're in and out is one breath.

[00:47:40] Catherine Pittman: So really long inhales really. Long exhale. And the exhale seems to be more important. That is a way that we can, if you're lying in an FMRI machine, we can see the amygdala calm down. Isn't that crazy? And people are like, breathing, seriously? Come on. But you know what, this is language of the amygdala.

[00:48:02] Catherine Pittman: Understand. You need to speak the language of the amygdala. You know what else it understands. You know how it likes you to fight or flee. You know what you can do? Sometimes you can flee. You can go for a run and come back and your amigdala is like, yeah, problem solved. You're like, no, I didn't solve it. But it turns it off, you know, exercise.

[00:48:24] Catherine Pittman: And so here's the thing just to tell you, if you get into a regular exercise program, it just takes your amygdala down a notch and calms your amygdala down, and it doesn't make any sense. Because nothing could have changed in your relationship whatsoever. And yet you feel calmer, right? And so exercise, calm your amygdala and it results in a calmer amygdala.

[00:48:50] Catherine Pittman: And here's the thing, you may notice that you see a pattern in your rages or your reactions, your panics. If you notice that they happen when you've been sleep deprived, because it's another thing that messes with the amygdala. The amygdala needs lots of REM sleep, which is rapid eye movement sleep, which comes late in the evening in your late sleep cycles mostly.

[00:49:16] Catherine Pittman: So if you don't get seven, eight hours of sleep, you get less REM and you often have a kind of hyperreactive amygdala where you're tense and irritable and that kind of, um, you snap at people and you'll say to yourself, I didn't get enough sleep. I know I'm just really irritable. Uh, amygdala people, amygdala.

[00:49:42] Catherine Pittman: I've had people who say, I never thought the sleep was important until you told me. And then I started making sure I get enough sleep and I'm amazed how much a better temper I have. I didn't know it was my amygdala, you know, I didn't know. So exercise and sleep and deep, slow breathing. And also if you are doing, say if you're getting on a good sleep schedule where you get seven or eight hours of sleep, becasue that last hour of sleep, getting to that eighth hour,gives you a whole new band, a whole new period of REM sleep and the amygdala does well with that. 

[00:50:21] Catherine Pittman: Whereas if you get shorted in that, the amygdala can be, if we put someone in FMRI machine and we say stay up all night and come lay down on our machine, and then we say, make sure you get a good night's sleep, their amygdalas look completely different because of your sleep.

[00:50:36] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Well, I think we hear all the time, We know 

[00:50:40] Shanenn Bryant: sleep, exercise, 

[00:50:43] Shanenn Bryant: breathing 

[00:50:44] Catherine Pittman: it affected jealousy or rage.

[00:50:46] Shanenn Bryant: yeah, we know it's important, but to know here's what it does and 

[00:50:51] Shanenn Bryant: here's why

[00:50:52] Catherine Pittman: It affects a part of your brain that is very hard to control. And the other thing is that deep breathing and getting good sleep often doesn't really cost monetarily much. Exercise. Just going for a brisk walk. 

[00:51:08] Shanenn Bryant: 

[00:51:09] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for being here. You have shared many, many good things. And I know that we are going to work together in the future and do more work here. So, thank you so much for your time and wonderful expertise, Catherine Pittman. Thank you. 

[00:51:29] Catherine Pittman: It was wonderful talking with you.