Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome back to Joy Lab.
Aimee Prasek: And I'm Aimee Prasek. So, we are in our Element of Curiosity, and today we are talking about uncertainty and anxiety, really. Maybe more specifically how we might struggle with uncertainty and how that can ramp up anxiety. So to get us started, I wanna talk about another of my favorite scientific studies.
Aimee Prasek: But to do it, we're going to kind of reimagine [00:01:00] it as if we're actually in the study. So actual participants, this is research from Berker and colleagues. I wanna change the methods a bit just to like liven it up. I think it's super lively without changing a thing, but we're gonna, we're gonna get even more in depth in here so we can really kinda get the main takeaways. Read the full study if you want the more accurate details though. Okay. Let's imagine that we are sitting on the ground comfortably, and I'm gonna carry over what looks like a plank of wood with four small buckets on it. Each one is upside down. The goal is for you to choose one of the buckets and lift it up and hopefully find nothing underneath it. Because I'm going to place snakes under some of the buckets.
Henry: Oh, great.
Aimee Prasek: So I have a fear snake... snakes. So we'll play this three times, or three rounds, [00:02:00] and I'll let you know how many of those four buckets will have a snake under it before we start, okay, before each round. One more thing. Imagine that I stick a big patch on your arm before we start. And with that patch, I'm going to shock you
Henry: Oh.
Aimee Prasek: through it whenever you pick up a bucket that has a snake under it, so not only do you get a snake, but you get a shock.
Henry: Just the snake alone isn't bad enough? Is...
Aimee Prasek: I love this research. Anything with a shock just gets me just like, yeah, per, I don't know why researchers and, and shocking folks... but it, it interests me. So, and don't worry, this is not a crazy shock. This is more like a shock after you rub your socks along the carpet and then you turn on a light switch, so it'll shock you.
Aimee Prasek: It'll wake you up, but it won't hurt you. Okay. Ready? Everyone? Yeah. All right. Let's...
Henry: ...yeah.
Aimee Prasek: All right, I'm gonna walk over with the plank of wood, [00:03:00] let's imagine this, four upside down buckets on it, and you've got the shock patch on your arm. For this first round, there is one snake under one of these four buckets.
Aimee Prasek: So just imagine how you feel as you look at the buckets and try to decide which to pick. Notice the sensations in your body, the thoughts going through your head. There's one snake under one of these buckets. Whatever you can notice, let's imagine that you pick an empty bucket. No shock. Great job. Okay, round two, shake it off.
Aimee Prasek: Okay, I'm gonna reset the plank and the four buckets are upside down again. Now this time there are two buckets with a snake under. So two of the four buckets have a snake under them. And imagine how you feel as you look at the buckets and try to decide which bucket to pick. [00:04:00] How do you feel in the situation?
Aimee Prasek: What's going through your thoughts? And then let's imagine that you pick an empty bucket. No snake, no shock.
Aimee Prasek: Shake it off. I don't wanna freak anybody out. Let's just go with a, an empty bucket. All right. Round three. The four upside down buckets again, are ready for you to choose from. Now, imagine three of the buckets, have a snake under them, and just imagine how you feel as you look at the buckets and try to decide which to pick.
Aimee Prasek: How do you feel in that situation? What are you thinking? What thoughts come up? And you choose a bucket and there's no snake again, no shock. Shake it off. Okay, so I hope you were able to kind of get into this, in your mind. Did you notice for you, which [00:05:00] scenario did you feel was the most stressful? Henry, do you wanna just like as you were doing this?
Henry: I thought the first one
Aimee Prasek: Oh,
Henry: the most stressful and maybe 'cause it's the, was the, my first time imagining.
Henry: That's
Henry: Yeah. I thought,
Aimee Prasek: a great point.
Henry: Come on. I gotta, I gotta get it. I gotta get it right.
Aimee Prasek: I love that. So maybe some of you agreed. I think three snakes, there's just more snakes, freaks me out. So for me,
Henry: instance, I felt more resignation, I would say.
Aimee Prasek: I'm not gonna choose a bucket. Yeah. So good point. So yeah, that might, that might have been strong and it rose up. So I'm gonna come back to the study, kind of tie it in. For this study, what was most stressful for these participants was that second one when there were two snakes of four. [00:06:00] So, so it's when participants had just as much of a chance of finding no snake or snake, so like a 50/50.
Aimee Prasek: So I wanna get into this a little bit more because this is, I think this is so interesting. Okay, so let's bring this back to everyday life. I just like get rid of the snakes 'cause I'm still tense. But we actually deal with these types of situations daily, just as I kind of noted no snakes probably, or at least literally, but experiences with uncertainty and really what I think of as two kinds or two kinds that are also noted in the research.
Aimee Prasek: The first is situations where we can reduce uncertainty and our stress by gaining more information, and that's called estimation uncertainty. So this is what was at play in the first and third rounds of the game. In the first one I told you there was only one snake. So you could kind of calculate and think like, oh, [00:07:00] well I got a better chance of getting no snake,
Aimee Prasek: you know, if only one of the four, has a snake under it. The third round with three snakes, you knew you had a pretty good chance of getting a snake, and, and a shock. So that's also estimation uncertainty. A little calculation, a little figuring, and you can actually have something to plan for that can reduce your uncertainty.
Aimee Prasek: The second scenario, where there's a two in four chance is random, it's 50/50. I gave you no piece of information that could change that for you. That is called irreducible uncertainty. And again, this study showed that it is more stressful than scenarios with estimation uncertainty. And that can seem counterintuitive at first.
Aimee Prasek: I know it did to me. But you know, so the, the idea here is that not knowing an outcome [00:08:00] can be worse from a stress perspective than knowing a bad outcome is more likely.
Henry: Mm-hmm.
Aimee Prasek: So why, why is this the case? I think it's important to know that our system is trying to help us out, right? Our system wants to make a calculation, good or bad. We want to feel like we have some kind of idea of what might be coming ahead. And how we can prepare for it. When it comes to irreducible uncertainty, our system stays amped up sort of perpetually looking for more information to help guide a next action.
Aimee Prasek: And that can be stressful if you're stuck there. And when it comes to our daily lives, both are present. Estimation and irreducible uncertainty, probably 50 50, maybe half the situations we're in, we can make some predictionsthat can help us kind of reduce a little bit of [00:09:00] that uncertainty, we can make an educated, sort of decision, an understanding.
Aimee Prasek: And the other 50% are just random, maybe more, right? Where we just have no idea which way it could go. And with that in mind, it doesn't mean that we need to be caught in these perpetual stress cycles. We can practice some skills to be more aware of what kind of uncertainty we're in. And then we can use some strategies to help us navigate out of a stress cycle more quickly.
Aimee Prasek: And, and we're focusing on that awareness in this episode, I think a little bit more today because it is essential. It's like the prerequisite for the strategies and we'll get into some more strategies throughout the month, um, around this relationship of uncertainty and anxiety and stress. And some strategies that we can use to decrease the uncertainty or at least decrease that stress activation.
Aimee Prasek: So, Henry, do you wanna say more about [00:10:00] this phenomenon? You know, like why uncertainty and stress get wrapped up?
Henry: I do, but I, I also wanna say more about this study.
Aimee Prasek: Oh my god, yes.
Henry: actual human beings in the study. Am I, am I right?
Aimee Prasek: Yes. You know, I should have noted one detail. Yes. These are humans. They were not real snakes. the act,
Henry: know? Did the hu the, the subjects know that they weren't real
Aimee Prasek: the actual study is like a simulation. It was done on a computer. So, but probably, you know, probably like Oregan Trail kind of graphics here. So maybe not as scary as we were imagining in our head. But
Henry: Okay.
Aimee Prasek: it's kind of the same thing, you know, they're imagining this.
Henry: to, yeah.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. And it's scary.
Aimee Prasek: They were
Henry: doing it like us, except they had more visual detail to.
Aimee Prasek: Exactly. but they did have a shock pad on them, so the shock was real for them,
Henry: that.
Aimee Prasek: which just cracks me up.
Henry: I don't get it.
Aimee Prasek: I love it.
Henry: Okay. Well, so if I'm, [00:11:00] if I'm hearing this right, what they found is that it is more stressful not knowing when you have a 50/50 chance of uncovering a snake than it, than it was if you had a, either a low chance or a high chance
Aimee Prasek: Yes.
Henry: finding a snake. Right.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: I think that's fascinating actually. And you know what it brings to mind to me is, is phenomenon called anticipatory anxiety, which everybody is familiar with 'cause we've all
Aimee Prasek: experienced it.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: And that is this phenomenon where the most anxiety provoking part of an experience is before it actually happens waiting for something to happen.
Aimee Prasek: Yes.
Henry: You know, oftentimes that is worse than when the thing you, you've been dreading actually does happen. Seems weird,
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: but, you know, it's a, it's a very common phenomenon that I am sure we've all experienced at one time or another. So I, I [00:12:00] kind of wonder if that's related to this experiment where it is the uncertainty before the event that's more stressful than the fearful event itself. Or maybe uncertainty is more stressful than being pretty certain even that something bad is about to happen.
Aimee Prasek: Right.
Henry: Which again seems counterintuitive.
Aimee Prasek: Yes.
Henry: So, I really love the way you framed it, Aimee, and I think that the researchers framed it in a similar way that the stress of uncertainty is actually a good thing. It's adaptive.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: Because it activates our brain to do these really complex calculations in the moment. The brain is kinda working in the background try to guide us to make the best possible choice in a, a series of bad choices.
Henry: So, Yeah. if I read this correctly, folks who are more [00:13:00] sensitive to this, this type of stress actually learned better than those who were less sensitive to it because the, they were that sensitivity, you know, which does make you uncomfortable, but it also is very motivating and it makes you
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: more attentive to what's happening in the moment.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: And as you know, Aimee, I love this way of thinking about stress and anxiety that they are meant to be adaptive, unless of course they go too far and just kinda ramps us up all the way out of control, you know, beyond discomfort. And we've said this I think several times in previous podcasts, that stress itself is not a bad thing. Sometimes it's a very good thing, up to a point. It is built in for a reason, and I think in this case that the study is looking at, it's a really good reason because the choice we [00:14:00] make with the information we have just help us to survive, you know, a series of bad options.
Aimee: Yeah, I'm re-, I'm remembering this hike I took in Arizona with a friend of mine. And before we started the hike, she said, just look out for stuff. 'cause everything in the desert can kill you, which is great way to start a hike. And so I was looking for everything, snakes, big bugs, and I found them all. I had no, I didn't look up or see any of the hike, but I found every concerning creature.
Aimee: Which I think is, is kind of what we're getting into here. Like, that's great. If you come with me on a hike in the desert, I will keep you safe. But if we're just hiking around my house, I don't need to look out for snakes, scorpions, or other concerning creatures. Right? So when can we dial it back down and sort of have a little bit more[00:15:00] specificity around that alarm system or just know when I walk out the house, okay I probably, no, there's no snakes, there's no scorpions. Maybe deer ticks, but,
Aimee: Yeah,
Aimee Prasek: can't see that.
Henry: which in the long run might be, might be worse.
Aimee Prasek: I know, right. So anyway, I think this is so important. This, yeah, the way you framed it, Henry, this adaptive evolutionary, and as the researchers framed it as well, like we are not broken. This is not a glitch in our system, but the dial might be up too high, you know? Are you looking for scorpions when you're just sitting at the park?
Aimee Prasek: You know? Yeah. So,
Aimee Prasek: Not
Henry: only is it not, is it not a glitch, it's a, it's, it's an advantage.
Aimee Prasek: Yes.
Henry: If it doesn't get dialed up too much.
Aimee Prasek: Right. So we can adjust it. We don't need to reject it or make it go away. We can work with these responses so that they aren't overactive or depleting us. Yes, that's what [00:16:00] we do here. Let me add one more negative layer to this. 'Cause that's my job, because that's, well, that's what I see. Here's one more scorpion that I wanna call out, and then you can talk me down here, Henry. But it's something called volatility. So there was a reason why that patch was shocking people and that I brought it up when we were imagining this study. Because when you were picking up a bucket, and I shocked you, you knew it was coming, right?
Aimee Prasek: If you're gonna pick up a bucket and there's a snake under it, you're like, oh, a snake and I'm gonna get shocked. You just knew that was happening. Now, what if all of a sudden I changed the rules? What if I started shocking you sometimes when you found an empty bucket but didn't tell you, and then maybe I just started shocking you sometimes when you were sitting there because I wanted to. So that's volatility.
Aimee Prasek: I'm taking away [00:17:00] stability, predictability. How do you think that impacts stress?
Henry: Hmm.
Aimee Prasek: It impacts it in a big way and not in a very good way. And I think this is really important to call out because life is uncertain and that can be hard. That's what we're talking about now. But when things are volatile on top of that, then it can make things way worse if we're not aware of it.
Aimee Prasek: You know, particularly if we haven't practiced working with uncertainty like we're doing now. In the research volatility is often thought of actually as this third type of uncertainty. So we've got estimation uncertainty, irreducible anxiety or uncertainty rather, and then we've got volatility.
Aimee Prasek: So it's a kind of uncertainty that makes sense, but to me it almost feels deeper. The kind of, it's this kind of irreducible uncertainty almost that just comes out of nowhere. It kind of shocks you and shakes your stability. And that's where we are [00:18:00] in modern life I think in a lot of ways we have a lot of complexity in our lives.
Aimee Prasek: Stuff we just don't have control over. And it is to our advantage, those things, to have them be as stable as possible. You know that they're not volatile and that's just not always the case. Like take work for example. There's lots of reasons why a business might close or we lose our jobs, stuff we can't control, but, but that we can kind of work with, whether it's estimation or irreducible uncertainty.
Aimee Prasek: We could kind of practice it. But imagine that maybe a brand new boss and it's like the old boss's kid who's a real jerk and had nothing to do with the company yesterday. And he just comes in randomly and then he fires a third of the people there just off with their heads. No reasoning, nothing thoughtful.
Aimee Prasek: Just so he can attend Fyre Fest or something, and not manage so many people. Like, it's absolutely... doesn't make any [00:19:00] sense. It comes out of nowhere. That's volatility. And it can be really hard to navigate because it just, it takes uncertainty up a level, right? It's just like another layer on top of our irreducible uncertainty.
Aimee Prasek: Or even our estimation uncertainty. So I think that's something we need to pay attention to and we can prepare for. We can practice the awareness and strategies and we'll work on that as well. Do you wanna say more there?
Henry: I think what you're talking about now, Aimee, is just so relevant to the time that we're living through right now.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry (2): And I, I just hear this over and over from the clients who I see as well as virtually everybody, everyone else I talk to. you know, 'cause we're seeing this kind of uncertainty and volatility play out in the big picture of world events .
Henry (2): Yes.
Henry (2): I think it's just really challenging folks resilience right now.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: The volatility you described, whether it's in the lab or the [00:20:00] real world, it can have such strong consequences. I, I remember some of the famous old studies on lab rats. I'm sure you remember this, you're familiar with this, Aimee, where they there were given shocks that were random after a some period of time, eventually they'd fall into a state that was called learned helplessness, where it just felt, you know, to the researchers that the, that they had kind of given up, there was nothing they could do to change whether or not they received a shock, and so they just sort of you know, gave up
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: closed down, and that was one of the early models for depression. You know, where there are people who reach that point of feeling, "What's the use? There's nothing I can do that changes things, so why, why bother to keep trying?"
Aimee Prasek: Hmm.
Henry: I don't think that's has held up as, you know, the model for depression. But it is one way of, of thinking about it. And I just want to add that in, in humans living in the real [00:21:00] world, not true that there's no use, that
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: I can do, but it might seem to be true and that can have the same effect of kind of shutting us down as what, even if it, if it were, were something that was more true.
Aimee Prasek: Hmm. I don't, I, I think we have talked a little bit about kind of the learned helplessness research. We should do more of that because what's so interesting is-- we will get into this in a later episode-- but the learned optimism research kind of came out of that as well, and applications there, which I just, I mean these terrible studies that happen with these animals, this idea that, like you said, why bother, I think is so interesting that that thought was a bit of a seed for this new research with learned optimism that we have something to say about this and we can move out of that state.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: That it wasn't really, it, it wasn't the end of the story learned helplessness [00:22:00] is not the end of the story.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. So, "why bother?" That's the feeling. I, I get that.
Aimee Prasek: I, I think we've all been there and probably even recently with being sort of bombarded by all of this volatility. And we can't change a lot of those things perhaps externally, but we have something to say about the feeling kind of long way of me talking about the learned optimism as well in here and what we're doing right now with working on tolerating uncertainty, navigating it.
Aimee Prasek: So I'll quote some wisdom here from Voltaire, I think to emphasize this, he wrote, "Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one." Right?
Henry: I love that.
Aimee Prasek: So yeah, we can't know it all. We can't control it all. We can't be a hundred percent certain. That's like all, that's probably the only three things I know [00:23:00] for sure in this life.
Aimee Prasek: That's the first thing that we kind of need to start working with. Being okay with those facts. We can't know it all. We can't control it all. Can't be a hundred percent certain. And knowing that we can handle uncomfortable. It's okay to feel uncomfortable.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: And when we continue to practice acceptance of uncertainty, then I think we're more able to approach the situation and determine what's going on when this kind of stress rises up.
Aimee Prasek: Is it estimation uncertainty? Is it irreducible uncertainty? Is it just volatility? Is it all? Is it everything at once? We can just start to notice what's happening and acknowledge that our system, when it's feeling stressed like this is just trying to help us get a bit more clear on what to do next.
Henry: Yeah. I think it's worth pointing out too that this, this research is what, what they're looking at is something that is automatic. It's a like a built-in [00:24:00] reflex.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: So, it's, in other words, you might think of it as being hardwired, and when that's, when that's the case, it is there for a reason it's for some good reason because evolution has put it there. It makes, it makes the person more likely to survive.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: So it's part of our biology, but we are not our biology. We are to an extent, but we're not only our biology.
Henry: Yeah.
Henry: We don't want to suppress these natural built-in mechanisms, but we also don't want them to run our lives. You know, they're there for, they have their purpose, but they're not. They're to make the big decisions, let's say.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: That's where consciousness comes in. That's where mindful awareness comes in to give us a choice and if we can use it well, we can decide, do I let this high speed [00:25:00] computer of a brain keep calculating the risks, or do I step aside from that and, and just allow my stress system to stand down?
Henry: It sounds simplistic when I say it that way, but it is something we can learn to do. It's amazing to me that we have the capacity to let our brain be the finely tuned, high level engine that it is,
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: automatically calculating, you know, what gives us the best odds here,
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: And that we also have the capacity to go to a higher level and to be the one who can observe this phenomenon with conscious intention. And then make a wise decision. Yes, you're factoring in all the variables, but including variables, you know what's best for me and what's best for those around me.
Henry: The thing is we don't have to be one or the other. We can be both.[00:26:00]
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, yeah. We can be both. We don't have to fight against ourselves. we can navigate this. So we'll, we'll talk more about this, these strategies, how we can be both this month as we dig into our element of curiosity even more, and working with uncertainty. So to close us, I wanna share some wisdom from Pema Chödrön.
Aimee Prasek: I think it offers a bit of motivation, positive motivation here, and some comfort to do this work. Here's what she wrote:
Aimee Prasek: " To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no man's land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again."
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