The Happiness Myth: Why Your Brain is Designed for Ups and Downs

Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, it's Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we look at them all. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so on Apple podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast listening resource. Today, we're challenging one of the biggest myths in culture which is that happiness should be constant. And to discuss that, we've got Loretta Gratziano Bruning, who is a founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and author of Habits of a Happy Brain. Welcome aboard the show, Loretta.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: Hi, thanks so much for being here and I really agree with all that stuff you said.

Richard Zwicky: Thank your work examines how dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins evolved in animals and why our brains are designed for emotional ups and downs rather than permanent happiness. And we've had a few shows where we've talked about aspects around that. And one of the things that really comes through is people confuse happiness and joy and expect they should be that way every single day as opposed to we should figure out what makes us content and enjoy the highs and survive the lows as we go through the rest. How did you start on this approach?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: So I stumbled on books about apes and the books are mostly about observing the social behavior and interactions of apes. But one book would have one little mention of one little chemical and another book would have another little mention of another chemical and no one had put it together. And then unbeknownst to me, there was a complete stop in ape research in the late 20th century. And so all of this valuable information was getting lost. And fortunately for me, I retired from teaching just around then. So that's how I came to focus on it.

Richard Zwicky: And I'm not familiar. I'm not a biologist and I'm definitely not scientifically trained, but I did note when you'd mentioned in your documentation about dopamine, serotonin, on so forth. In animals, the mamillian systems are generally quite similar to our own and the issue with serotonin is personal to me

Loretta Graziano Breuning: I don't really look at that

Richard Zwicky: Because with long co I lost the ability to extract tryptophan from my food. So I have to supplement it or else I can't manufacture serotonin in my body nor can I make melatonin which is key and then a bunch of other compounds. When you look at these issues, how do you look at the relationship between the different base compounds, amino acids, and our brains up and downs? Right.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: Because I mean yeah I don't have that background either but my interest is in the association between the chemical and the need that an animal is trying to meet and as I mentioned I just stumbled on this in apes and once I got interested then I looked in monkeys and then once I found that in monkeys it's whoa it's in rats and cows and goats and so as you said the core of animals is there. And the biggest insight for me, you may have heard of the guy, now I'm going to forget the name as soon as I look for it. The guy who discovered cortisol a hundred years ago, he was at Harvard Business School. And cortisol, people know, we call it the chemical today. And we often externalize stress by blaming it on something else. But what he noticed in animals is that cortisol affects every system in the body. And he said, "How could one chemical affect every system?" And it was because they're all useful with one specific survival need, which with cortisol is escaping danger. And so with the happy chemicals, I'm applying the same principle that each one of them although it has a lot of processes involved, it's all focused on meeting a specific need. And when we understand that, it helps us understand our ups and downs.

Richard Zwicky: And modern culture Happiness is a baseline that we should try and maintain. But the brain was never built for that. And we've evolved our thinking, but our brains haven't kept up from a structural perspective. In fact, when we look at animals as a whole they're very much in the moment. Whereas, we become incredibly introspective and retrospective, which s What did evolution actually design our emotional system to do?

00:05:00

Loretta Graziano Breuning: It did design us to keep us. It designed us to anticipate threats so that we can act fast to prevent the threat. And needless to say, people go around anticipating threats all the time. But it's not really a conscious process. It's a neural pathway. So if you think about the chemicals as paving on your neural pathways that wire you to identify bad things faster and identify good things faster so that you could act to meet your needs and you're not consciously thinking this. The conscious part is once the chemical turns on and I want to get that good thing or run from that bad thing is processing the details to get toward it which is really the last step. And so that's why it's so valuable to become aware of the prior steps.

Richard Zwicky: And that awareness that awareness of, why do short bursts of positive feeling make more biological sense than sustained? How can we find that Is it really just the survival instinct or is it what is it?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: The simple way I explain it is you're not meant to have a peak experience every minute of every day. It wouldn't be a peak experience. It couldn't be a peak experience all the time. And yet, the complication of life is that we're wired by peak We're wired to seek peak experiences. And the classic example would be let's say I'm a teenager and I go to a gambling casino and I win. That joy of winning builds a neural pathway. And the next time I feel stressed or just bored, I look for a way to meet my needs, which to a teenager is like, I want the excitement of moving forward, the dopamine. So what triggered my dopamine in the past? I'll go gambling. That is a big pathway in your brain because it was built by a big reward. So, that's the point of dopamine and big pathways is to get your attention to anything that was rewarding in your myelin years. And for our ancestors, you could see that helped them find food and water. And for us, it helps us repeat whatever it is we were doing in our myelin years, which is mostly our puberty and before age 8.

Richard Zwicky: Dopamine is from what you're describing, it's heavily connected to it's that rush that we get. I've got enough to make the next step. That's the core value. And I've succeeded, but I've survived. That accomplished, right?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: There's two ways to think about it. So that I've survived would be like if I am dying of thirst in the desert and I'm looking and looking for water but I see an oasis in the distance. So it's that first moment when you see that something that could meet a need. It's more intense if you're actually having a big need, like you're dying of thirst in the desert. But if you're sitting on the couch in your parents' basement and you have no survival demands on you at all, which is how we are in the modern world in our formative years, whatever it is that sparks that first moment of this is what I need. So for a lot of kids is like, " I've already reached a higher level in a video game, but here's a new video game.

Richard Zwicky: And building that motivation, that ability to trigger motivation in ourselves is really key to success because we have biological drivers to succeed but we need to know what does that mean to us and positive ways. How do you approach that with people who have to develop it or need to develop it better skills around it?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: First I have to say that I'm not in clinical practice. So I'm writing philosophically. I'm trying to make this information available. My belief, of course, is that everyone should learn this when they're a teenager so that they build that power over their brain to say what it takes to take that action is dopamine. But our dopamine doesn't make logical sense because it's by whatever triggered dopamine in your past. And your past is never a good prediction of what would be an effective step in the adult world. This made sense when you met your survival needs by foraging and you were foraging in the same forest that your parents were foraging in. So they taught you how to forage. So today it's hard to meet your needs in the adult world. But anytime you say that will work that's an effective step then you have the good feeling of mine. So we have to build the skill of managing our dopamine RA and today we're really building the skill of just blaming externals like it's the economy, it's my ADD,

00:10:00

Loretta Graziano Breuning: There's no good opportunities anymore rather than what the real answer is a small step. What I call jackpot dopamine is I'm going to go back to that casino where I won the pot. Only unhealthy things give you jackpot dopamine. So when you understand this, you could say, I'm going to take a small step, which excuse me, is studying is an example of a small step that moves you forward that gives you a small bit of dopamine but you could always take another small step and get more dopamine.

Richard Zwicky: And when we look at you mentioned about people on video games and the like, but of course since the pandemic, there's been always a distance between people, but we've also had the complete change in how people date and online dating. And one important bump part of dating is the oxytocin rush we get when we meet somebody when we b start bonding with them. When you're online dating, you don't get that through pictures on a screen. And you also have that because you people communicate through text and not in person as much as they used to. It also changes how that bond forms and continues. How do you look at that with regards to happiness? Because those rushes can feel powerful, but then because relationships move to text, they are harder to sustain and that affects relationships as a whole.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: Fear of rejection is really the topic I'd like to start with because the brain always prioritizes the threat over the reward. So you want that reward so much, but you want to avoid the threat even more because cortisol threat is a bigger threat bigger survival obstacle than not passing on your genes because in the state of nature if you avoid threats then you could always live to pass on your genes in the next day. So there's so much rejection involved in the way this online dating is conducted today.

Richard Zwicky: What?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: And once a person so personally for example I had tremendous rejection in my early years in real life. And so every one of us when we get rejected, it could be dating or it could be job applications or it could be, influencer marketing, whatever you're trying to do, you get rejected and that triggers the cortisol pathways that were paved by the rejections of your youth. And that triggers cortisol so fast and so much that it feels like a real emergency. So what's really important is to learn that okay this is my cortisol response. It's not the world. It's not a real emergency or a modern way of saying it is I'm going to get rejected and I don't have to overanalyze the modern brain that intelligent brain wants to analyze why did they reject me blah then you build all those pathways where you think of all of the potential targets as they and I have to tell you personally I've been with the same person for 28 years but we met from online dating so we were the first generation and

Richard Zwicky: You were yep.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: And I'm just saying that so people know that it's possible

Richard Zwicky: It is possible. I have friends who've met on through online dating and been married and, very successful. I find it a very challenging medium, but it doesn't mean it's the wrong one. I think it's harder to find the right person.

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Loretta Graziano Breuning: No, I don't think it's harder. So, part of it is modern idea of the right person.

Richard Zwicky: Mh Yeah. Truth.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: So, in my book, I explain that romantic love triggers all four happy chemicals. And that's why it's so powerful because natural selection builds a brain that really only cares about passing on its genes. People have maybe heard this from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology. So even though we're not consciously trying to reproduce and perhaps the opposite, the bottom line is that anything linked to reproduction which includes having a bad hair day or a new wrinkle that triggers the same chemistry. So a romantic opportunity that triggers all four chemicals is really gets your attention that builds big pathways that builds big expectations. So my opinion is that expectations are very elevated and we could blame that on the app but remember that there was the movies and before movies there was the novels. When paperback novels were first invented, in Jane Austin's time, and people said, " this is ruined dating because everybody's getting these false ideas." And before that, you had somebody forced on you by your parents. And be in Jane Austin's time, if you had a crush on someone and they rejected you, you were considered ruined on the market for life. So, it was never easy. And by the way,

Richard Zwicky: No. And easy is the wrong ter term, right? Yeah.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: Never found love. I'm sorry. Jane Austin never found anybody.

Richard Zwicky: It's a shame, but it's true. And I think it's hard because everybody's expectations so wildly different and it goes back to that cortisol and the oxtocin surges we get. People aren't introducing and getting to know each others organically and simply as natural. It's hard to chat. Not trying to pick anybody up, but you're in the grocery store and you ask somebody about something and they immediately become weary of you as opposed to there's a conversation. And so all of that's changed and that modern society not just the pandemic but technology and the way we've become disassociated. It's trained people not to understand those emotional dips as healthy and that those steps are all highs and

Loretta Graziano Breuning: Good question.

Richard Zwicky: Lows or progress. How do we individually and as a group change that

Loretta Graziano Breuning: So first I want to say something that you might have impossibility to say is that feminism has created a lot of obstacles because this whole idea of viewing men as predators I think is very unfair and I really feel that for men. So that's something that needs to be said. Now the idea that we have a sense of safety. Oxytocin is the safety that comes from protection by being with another human being. And this is such a huge benefit that I think we need to keep that benefit in mind. Okay. So when we're with another person, after so many years of dating, you're so aware of all the things that can go wrong. And there's this cliche of red flags that I was recently writing about when you read books about all these red flags, there's endless negativity about dating and things that could go wrong. But the positivity is that tremendous benefit of having another person there in the house with you. And I just keep focused on my partner wants that too. My partner is so grateful to me for having that benefit of being in his life. And so when you date someone instead of focusing on the negative to focus on this person would be so grateful to have me in their life because humans want someone else in our life. So to just Yes.

Richard Zwicky: But we have to balance that with narcissism because some people will not view themselves as appropriately.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: That's also you may want not want to say this so I'll say The therapeutic culture has fueled unrealistic expectations because when you go to the therapist and you complain about prior partners and the therapist always takes your side in order to bond with you and then you bond with your friends that way by always saying that this partner was a jerk and

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Loretta Graziano Breuning: It's always their fault. This has built a lot of unrealistic expectations. And then again, this is fueled by feminism is I'd rather be alone than be with a jerk. But your mindset is defining everyone as a jerk without seeing that you may be the jerk by treating them in a narcissistic way. Yeah, this is and then to make that more complicated is that when people are dating, they're on their best behavior and then you don't see the real thing until later on and yeah that's a really big risk. So having said that in the modern world we have a lot of flexibility you can have a relationship without 100% commitment from a financial perspective that was not possible in the past and it's not really so possible when children are involved and later in life we could always look at the benefit of the positive things that we can do rather RA than just the negatives.

Richard Zwicky: And so in habits of the happy brain, you describe rewiring the emotional pathways. What does that look like?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: The bad word is repetition is what it looks like is repetition because the early pathways we built were paved by a substance called myelin which builds the biggest pathways in the brain which are known as white matter. And these big pathways are so efficient that we use them for the rest of our lives whether or not. That's if we go back to the gambler, why does the gambler keep gambling when they've lost and they're about to lose everything? Because the early pathways the white matter are so efficient that we keep using them. So every one of us has these early habits and we say Why do I keep thinking that way, feeling acting that way? Because those old pathways are so powerful. So, we can build new pathways, but once our mile and years are over, it's going to be like digging a dirt road compared to having this nice paved highway. So, you can dig the dirt road but it's unfun. So I talk about rewarding yourself and

Richard Zwicky: And that goes to the point back

Loretta Graziano Breuning: I learned this from animal training. So how do they train an animal for a new behavior? They give it a treat over and over and over. And the animal is not consciously deciding I want to change. But the animal just takes a tiny step toward the new behavior and gets a treat and repeats the tiny step and gets another treat. And that's really what works with our nonverbal brain.

Richard Zwicky: Where we started at one point. We're mammals. We're animals. How can people recognize that and work with their inner animal instead of fighting it?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: So the first thing is to accept which is so hard to accept. Why is our talking brain not so powerful as our animal brain? So all of my work explain this in detail. Our emotions are controlled by the lyic system we've inherited from earlier animals. And it's hard to believe that our talking brain does not control the chemicals that create our emotions. And these emotional chemicals are so powerful. They give us the shift mechanism in a car to go forward or to reverse and that's the ultimate action in life. So the talking tries to influence but doesn't control the shift forward or backwards. Now we have all this coaching that tells us you should overcome your emotions or don't let your emotions control you. But the bottom line is that your emotions are the chemicals that control your body. So if you think of it, so you have the talking brain on top, the emotional chemical brain in the middle and

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Loretta Graziano Breuning: Which is the physical signal to put your body into action is your reptile brain. Just when you accept that your talking brain has less power than you think, then you have to look for other ways to influence your animal brain. And I've been to a few literal animal training classes. Anyone could go to a YouTube video of animal training and it's just sort of like, wow, so the animal learned that without thinking,

Richard Zwicky: And we often talk about the fact we have a constant narrative running in our mind which is secondguessing and questioning ourselves and asking why are you doing this or what are you doing? There's our outward facing which is our conversations and what we have and what we present which some people are more honest about themselves and that's different things and it's reflects that what you've gone through but there's our subconscious voice which we don't hear but we react to and it's the one that is really we have to learn how to retrain but can we retrain it how do we retrain it mindfully so that we understand our Social lows and highs are normal and should both be embraced because that makes us stronger.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: I agree but the focus of my work is at this core level that we're not going to retrain. So, let's start there. So, we are told that we should not be selfish I don't care about myself. I only want to help others. So then whenever we have a selfish impulse, we say, " we have to retrain that." But it keeps coming back because the animal brain is selfish. It cares about its own survival. So I think we're better off starting with some honesty about our own core selfish survival impulse because that gives us more the power to notice the impulse and then we can redirect it. If we deny that it exists, then it's harder to redirect. When I say survival in the modern world, usually our survival is not at stake. And that makes it easy for a person to dismiss what I'm saying. But in the animal world, your survival once you have enough food and water, it's your status that is the next thing that affects the survival of your genes. And modern humans in the talking brain, we're trained to say, I don't care about my status." But this core emotional brain cares desperately about your status. And that's why we drive ourselves crazy. And we do things that may not be good for us in other ways because we care so much either about raising our status or not losing status. And the simple example we talk about dating maybe someone could be a possible opportunity but they don't raise your status so you have a negative feeling about them or maybe you're gambling everything you have for an opportunity to raise your status. So first being honest about this impulse is the first step in my opinion. So,

Richard Zwicky: So we are running out of time for today but where can listeners download hap habits of a happy brain and also where can they go to learn more about your work in general?

Loretta Graziano Breuning: Innermal Institute is all of my resources, innermalinstitute.org. And, when you said download my book, Habits of a Happy Brain, so it's sold on Amazon and it's sold everywhere. But it's not free to download. You can Yeah. Yeah. However,

Richard Zwicky: I somehow threw a term in there. Okay.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: But I have lots and lots of free resources. So you can get it for example orgnewsletters intermalinsjumpstart is my free 5-day happy chemical jumpstart. You get one email a day for five days explaining each of five chemicals, four happy chemicals and one stress chemical. So that's the best place to start.

Richard Zwicky: Fantastic. Thanks for joining us today on High on Healthy, Loretta.

Loretta Graziano Breuning: Thanks so much for the great questions.

Richard Zwicky: Thank you. And thanks to everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy and we'll be back again with you soon.