The Next Breakthrough in Self Awareness with Caroline Williams

This week on The Evolving Leader is a double celebration – after more than 4 years and 190 episodes, we are thrilled to release our first in-person episode where co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender (usually sat thousands of miles apart) were together with guest, the renowned science writer Caroline Williams. Long term listeners will remember that we spoke to Caroline way back in season 2, and we are so pleased that Caroline agreed to come back and talk to us again, this time about her work around the science of interoception and her new book Inner Sense.

Reading from Caroline Williams:

Inner Sense: How the New Science of Interoception Can Transform Your Health

Move: How the New Science of Body Movement Can Set Your Mind Free

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:

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LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast

Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 4:21 Caroline's background and work
• 5:55 What is interoception?
• 7:05 We have a detached view between the brain and body. Is that still the case?
• 9:14 Why is it important that we understand what is happening in our body?
• 12:06 Interoception matters to us all.
• 14:37 Sensitivity to interoception varies from person to person.
• 17:08 The role that the vagus nerve plays in interoception.
• 20:01 Can we harness the signals to improve health?
• 21:02 The role of our brain’s predictions.
• 24:21 The connection between the vagus nerve and the insular cortex.
• 26:08 Strong interoception leads to improved judgement.
• 29:04 The role that emotion plays.
• 33:05 Can we combat tiredness?
• 36:46 Managing each other’s body budgets.
• 40:02 The influence of the micro biome.
• 42:07 Studies by Sarah Garfinkel and Hugo Critchley.
• 47:31 The consequences of not tuning into your body.
• 48:50 Rumination and the role that interoception plays in helping us to rethink that.
• 50:28 How can we improve our connection with interoception?
• 51:42 What would you do if you started to feel disconnected from your body?
• 53:39 Signals that we are not paying attention to our body.
• 58:00 What surprised you while writing Inner Sense?
• 1:01:32 What’s next in this field?
• 1:05:31 What have you change in your life as a result of your research?
• 1:07:18 Do men and women differ in how they react to their internal signals?
• 1:08:19 Do people who are more in tune with interoception act more on gut instinct?
• 1:11:34 Your research involving Dutch police officers.
• 1:14:10 Are there any commercially available biofeedback techniques?
• 1:14:45 What’s next for you?

Transcript

Scott Allender: 0:04

Hi friends. Welcome to The Evolving Leader. I'm Scott Allender. I'm here with Jean Gomes and Jean, I have been buzzing for a couple of weeks now, ever since we got to finally be together in person for the first I've been dreaming of this for four years, that we would sit down in person and have an in person guest as well. And we finally got to do it, and the conversation was so rich. But before we share that conversation with our listeners, I just want to check in with you

Jean Gomes: 0:43

Yeah. Well, like you, I'm feeling really great and see how you're feeling and also reflections you might have about about that day when we spent talking to some guests in had on the conversation, any contextualization you might want person for the first time, which was fantastic. I think you know, to do to set it up? what I'm feeling is this sense that of connection with the first time I started really deeply looking at the science of interoception, and I got this buzz when I when I started doing this, probably seven or eight years ago, really, when I kind of recognised that this was a really under appreciated source of of knowledge now, because there's ancient wisdom around that, around this idea, and it's been a perennial thing, but for the science to start talking to us about how this, in a sense, from our bodies, actually translates into better decision making, better rational processes, is quite counterintuitive. And also, then the slew of evidence around how interception can improve anything from, you know, kind of anxiety and autism and ADHD to, you know, judgement under stressful decision making just sets. Feels to me that this is an explosion of consciousness is about to happen because we all need in as rational people in business. We all need a scientific or a rational evidence base to finally believe what we've probably known intuitively for a long time. So to have Caroline on the show and doing some really brilliant research into this area amongst you know, the world specialists was was phenomenal, bringing all that together. How you feeling?

Scott Allender: 2:18

I mean, the conversation was so rich, and as you say, it's permeated so much of your work and mine as well, in the workshops I do with people and trying to help them make better sense of the decisions they make and how they frame situations. And so I just think this is such an important conversation for leaders everywhere to really lean into, because this isn't just some academic discussion without application. This is, you know, critical, if we want to maintain a sense of well being, pay attention to how we're actually really feeling, being able to pull apart physical sensations from Caroline, so good to be with you again. It's been like three emotional experience and understand how the two are years since we've spoken. How have you been since then,

Caroline Williams: 3:23

I have been okay. I've been spent well at least one of those three years locked away, typing frantically, related, as well as to pay better attention to what our a little bit of travelling as well. So yeah.

Jean Gomes: 3:33

So Caroline, welcome to the show. A crucial question for you. How are you feeling?

Caroline Williams: 3:37

Well, I'm feeling a lot of things at the moment. I'm feeling very excited to be able to talk interception teams are feeling and the sort of challenges we face in a world with people who actually are interested about it, because I've been on my own in this for a while, apart from the lovely scientists who've been telling me about it. But also it's I'm really passionate about how important it is within standing that's just moving faster and faster than ever before, with of the mind, and I feel this huge responsibility to get it across. And slightly nervous about doing the subject justice in a clear way. So I'm saying a lot of things. I think it's fair to say, excellent. Well, welcome in. This is our first in person, more ambiguity and just unknown. So yeah, I invite everybody to face to face interview we've done in four and a half years of evolving leaders. So we're so glad to have a favoured guest from season two. I think it was back in 2022 I think it was, yeah, yeah. Are you still so for our listeners that haven't heard listen in. Lean in. This is a really rich conversation, so your work yet or watched that episode, maybe just start with a little bit about your background, how you came to do the work that you do, and then we'll dive into your most recent work, which we're excited to talk with you about. Okay, so let's share it with them now. I'm a science journalist. I've been doing it now for like, 25 years, which is kind of scary. And the background, I came from a biology degree, and then I was one of those weird people at uni who actually enjoyed doing essays and writing stuff up. And so from there, I thought, Oh, I really like to do this for a living. Is there such a thing? It turns out, there is such a thing as being a science writer. I. And so slightly circuitous route, I kind of ended up doing that. So I've been an editor at new site, Feature Editor at New Scientist specialising in neuroscience initially, and for a lot of the time, I was covering neuroscience that involved looking at the head, the brain, and nothing else. And then gradually it started to shift towards thinking of the brain being part of a bigger system, the body. So that kind of took me to move, which is my book I spoke to you about in 2022 which is all about why moving our body can act as a hotline to our minds and change the way we think and feel in really important ways. And then that took me further into the body, brain, mind rabbit hole, and into interception, which is what we're talking about today, and why that matters for our minds and our mental health and our understanding of ourselves.

Scott Allender: 5:55

Well, we touched on interoception when we talked to you about move right, the interplay between the body and the mind. But let's just start with the definition, because I'm sure our listeners are many of them are saying intro what? What are you saying? Right? So let's just start. What is introception? Yeah,

Caroline Williams: 6:09

it's a kind of, it's not a great word for it, really. I've kind of spoke to all scientists over this process and say it does need a rebrand, doesn't it? Because you tend to say the word of people glaze over like it sounds like it's something that an accountant made up or something. But it's, it's quite simple, really. Interoception is, is a casual term for how we sense, perceive and interpret signals from inside our body. So the senses you want to learn about at school, which is, you know, sight, sound, all those, those are exteroceptive. They're, they're receiving the outside, the external world. Intraceptive sensation is anything that happens inside the body so it covers everything from heartbeat to stomach sensations to muscle tension to pain and more, sort of vege sort of sensations like how much energy you feel you have. Do you feel on edge, or do you feel confident? You know, these are all based on interoceptive changes sensations within the

Jean Gomes: 7:05

body. You start the book talking about the fact that we've got this kind of rather detached view, both in science and in wider kind of literature and on society, between the brain and the body. And that, you know, kind of goes back to people like Rene Deschamps, who kind of tried to separate that out. And so, where are we today in terms of that is, you know, is the Is that still the case? Or do you think we're making progress?

Caroline Williams: 7:32

Definitely making progress. But I think part that the difficulty is most obvious when the fact that we're talking about body, brain connections, the fact that we talk about the body and brains if they're two separate things, and that does go back to sort of Deschamps day, and you know, the idea that that the that the mind was something immeasurable and ethereal and not physical at all, and the body was a physical thing, and that these two things were totally separate. And then over the years, there have been some attempts to put the body and the mind back together. So William James, who's known as the father of psychology, and Carl Lange who so there's a theory that can't that the James Lang theory of emotion. So they were back in 1880s they put forward the idea that the our emotions are an interpretation of what's going on in the body. So we don't our heart doesn't beat because we feel scared. We feel scared because our heart is beating. So that was that was brought up a long time ago, but at the time, we didn't have the understanding. People pushed back on it and said, Well, hang on a minute. All these things are happening in the body that's far too slow and squelchy, and then nothing is exciting as what's going on in the brain. So it all kind of got shoved to us to a side, and it was only in the 90s that people picked this idea back up, and it's slowly becoming better known in neuroscience. But you know, we're still the case where, if you're interested in the mind, largely, you go into neuroscience and you study the brain. So there's work to do, but it's definitely it feels like there's a tipping point happening where neuroscientists are going all right? So our brains attached to the body and starting to look deeper,

Scott Allender: 9:15

talk more about why that matters. Because, you know, I think in the West, as you're saying, We hero the mind, right? It's the only intelligence that we care about, and we think it sits independent of everything, right? We've got, like, you know, heads on a stick that we could take our brains out of our in our heads, off our bodies, attach them to a robot, and it'll be the same. We'd have the same level of consciousness. All these kinds of things that really aren't true, are they? So why? Why is it important that we understand what's happening in our body that. Why is that? What does that matter?

Caroline Williams: 9:42

Yeah, well, I mean that the whole point that we have the brain, so the kind of the idea that the our bodies evolved and then the brain was kind of plunked on later as an afterthought, is just not the way evolution works. So we started off as you know, little blobs sort of move. Around, we're back in the primordial soup. And the basis, you know, the non negotiable for survival is to be able to withstand changes that happen in the outside world and buffer those changes and carry on and survive. So the way I put it in, in the book about, you know, this idea of homeostasis, being able to get back to some kind of a balance whatever's happening. You know, we think of Earth as being this kind of Mother Earth, but it's not as if Mother Earth cares whether we survive or not. You know, you're not the mother going. Are you okay, dear? Have you got enough to eat? Have you got a water bottle with you? Are you warm enough? You know life exists on earth because it found a way to buffer the outside world, change something on the inside and get on with it. And as bodies evolved to become more complicated, the nervous system came along to keep track of all that. And in our branch of the evolutionary tree, that ended up in a very complex brain that talks amongst itself, as well as taking all this information from the body. And so we've got this complex back and forth going on. Forth going on. So the idea that the mind is somehow not of the body doesn't make any sense. Because the whole point of these changes matter because what they're telling us, if our heart is beating faster, they're telling us that we our body is prepared for action if there's a change in how how concentrated our blood is, maybe we need to take him some water to drink. So these are motivating sensations, and the reason that we become aware of them is because we need to think about it, otherwise we're going to die. So they're the foundation of of our feelings about whether to do something, whether they're good or bad, you know, approach good things, get away from bad things, and also motivate our behaviours. Otherwise, we would probably just sit in a cave, you know, napping a flint thing, and just dive starvation, because you need the motivation to get out and and find ways to survive. So, so, yeah, so everything that we think, everything we feel the decisions we make is all built on these changes in our bodies that tell us what to do. And why? Yeah,

Jean Gomes: 12:07

I mean, I think this is really fascinating that you know, the the idea that the brain's principal mission is just to keep us alive, it's not to do all these higher orders of thinking. So it would be really helpful to try and get an understanding of how what, in terms of what you've learned about how interoception really informs the higher orders of thinking, and so that you know that our listeners can get a real understanding of why this matters to them in their everyday kind of

Caroline Williams: 12:32

work. Yeah, so the the kind of higher order stuff came along to to make us even better at working out what to do. So it's sort of taking, sort of two and two and putting it together to make five. So I mean, some of the these things sort of happened by accident, and we've kind of inherited them, so it's not like they were there for this reason, but so our brain cares a lot about what's going on in the heart. So things that happen on a heartbeat affect what we're likely to remember what we notice. So if something scary happens when your heart is contracting, you're more likely to notice it, and you're faster to move away from it. So and if your heart is beating faster, you're more likely to notice things in the environment that are threatening. So there's been some experiments looking at racial bias, where what are people likely to see someone with either a tool or a gun in their hand and assume it's a gun based on their their race, and if someone's heart beat is beating faster, they are much more likely to jump to the conclusion it's a bad thing. So racial biases are much stronger if somebody's agitated, which seems like something people should know in this in this day and age, also memory is affected by what's going on in your body. Motivation. If you're feeling anxious, then you're going to respond differently to to another way, and also how motivated you are depends on things like a body brain assessment of what it is you have to do, how much energy you have in the tank, how much it's going to cost you. Is it worth it? So there's this whole thing going on that affects whether you have it in you to do whatever you have to do. So there's ever, yeah, there's just being aware that you have this body that that is that is affecting the way you think and how you feel about things. I think is, in and of itself, kind of important. But

Scott Allender: 14:37

we're not often that conscious of it, are we right? So we think we're making a logical decision, you know, in a boardroom, perhaps, and we may be unaware that we're depleted right? Our bodies are sending a signal. So we feel that the idea before us is nonsense. It's the wrong thing to do. We're agitated, as you said, how? What did your research reveal, in terms of how the differences of people's sensitivity to their end? Reception and what we can do to develop more sensitivity.

Caroline Williams: 15:03

Yeah, so that's a really important point, because we all vary in how sensitive we are. And sometimes that can be just, you know, like genetic variation, where, like, you either have great eyesight or not good eyesight. And sometimes it can be as a response to life experience. So if you were brought up expecting the world to be a dangerous place you're going to be well, it might make you more sensitive to your intercepted signals. It might make you have been overwhelmed at some point and shut them down, and so you're totally unaware of what's going on. So we all vary for various reasons. But what's interesting is the research suggests that if you can learn to more precisely feel what's going on your body and interpret it and be curious about what it means and interpret it accurately. Then you can actually get better at that. And that can have all kinds of knock on effects about into your self regulation, your understanding yourself, your relationships with others, because empathy is based on physical changes in somebody else's body that you're picking up on, and then that sort of mirrors it in your own body. So you're physically feeling what other people are feeling to a lower extent. So it affects your sense of self, your relationship with others, how you think and how you cope with changes, and whether you know what's driving those feelings within your body. So one example I think of is, and it's happened to me, you can meet somebody and you can say, okay, they're giving me bad vibes. I just don't don't like this person. And it might be that your intuition is picking up on something really not nice about that person. You absolutely should go with your gut and not trust them. It could also be that they really remind you of someone who was a horrible teacher in your life, or someone who bullied you, or something like that, and you're reacting to that, and it's happened to me, and I've been laughing like that guy, and then turns out they're actually a lovely person, and you're what you're reacting to isn't appropriate. So having this kind of more granular sense of what you're feeling and what's causing that can be really sort of informative. There's a lot of kind of focus on the vagus nerve right now, and you see a lot of social media influencers talking about stimulating their vagus nerve and so on. Can you talk to us about the role that that plays in interoception, and why we should be thinking about it? Yeah, well, there are three main pathways, interoceptive pathways, and the vagus nerve is a really important one. So we think of that as the interoceptive superhighway. So the vagus nerve, it sort of comes out the bottom of the brain and it winds through the body. So vagus means wandering. It's the wandering nerve, and it so it doesn't go down the the spinal column with all the other sensory nerves. It kind of goes checks in with all the organs along the way. And the a lot of the attention about the vagus nerve has been in its role in the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite to the sympathetic nervous system. So sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, ready, self fraction parasympathetic, calm down. Everything's rest and digest chill. And so a lot of the talk about the vagus nerve has been about, okay, you can stimulate it, and that calms the body which is which is, all fine, but the parasympathetic arm of the nervous system takes up about 20% of the fibres in the vagus nerve, which is 100,000 nerves strong. It's a great big bundle of nerves, not just one nerve. The other 80% are sensory nerves. So if it interoceptive signals that run from the body to the brain, and we know a lot less about them. So there's one researcher, Steven liberlis, who's looking into this, and he calls it the, you know, the Dark Matter of the vagus nerve, because there's all this stuff. There's a lot of things that are being sensed by the vagus nerve that we don't even know what they're doing, weird things, like, there's some sensory nerves that detect light within our fat and, yeah, and just all kinds of weird stuff that they're finding. And a lot, yeah, a lot of it. And a lot still to know about what happens. We still hope for you. There's a lot, yeah, there's a lot going on in there. So, yeah, the vagus nerve is hugely, hugely important. And the reason it's, it's really interesting is because, if you can tweak those signals, so some signals come from the stomach fullness sensations, and some of the, you know, the gut brain interactions, they all run along the vagus nerve. So if you can get in there, and there's been some studies where there's been some stimulation by the stomach in the vagus nerve, can you affect appetite? Can I hate you to treat obesity? Can you change some of the sort of gut brain interactions that underlie things like IBS. You know that, because that's a very much an interceptive. You know, the brain affects the stomach. Stomach affects the brain. It's all back and forth. So there's a lot of interest in can we harness once we know exactly what these signals are and where they're going and what they're doing, can we then harness, harness them to improve health? In new ways. What's your your take on that, given what you've researched? Do you think that's viable? It's very early days, but they say the vagus nerve stimulation for appetite treating obesity, does seem to be kind of quite promising. So as an alternative, I mean, it's still invasive, obviously they have to go in, but it's less invasive than than a stomach, a gastric band, for example, so you're not having a whole part of your stomach taken out. But that does seem to be quite promising. There's trouble with the vagus nerve at the moment. We've got researchers who I went to see, who are trying to map all of these 100,000 fibres, and it's going to take them a little while, but they're they're on the way. Until then, it's very difficult, because you've got this bundle of 100,000 fibres. Some of them are going body to brain, some going to brain to body. How you target those is very tricky. So there's a lot of hype about Vegas vagus nerve stimulation, putting something on your ear, and that's going to calm me down, and that's going to make this and the other happen. I don't think we're there yet. What would

Scott Allender: 21:03

the role of the brain like the brain's predictions? Wouldn't that factor into whether or not the stimulating of the vagus nerve would have the impact that we'd want? Right? So if the right, because we've had Lisa Feldman Barrett on the show, we've talked about sort of the brain as a predictor and the disconnect between what the experiences. So I'm just curious to know more about what you're you're seeing there.

Caroline Williams: 21:25

Well, this is a thing. So I think the interventions that are being looked at, you know, see it very much as a loop. So you've got the brain predicting what's happening in the body, and then the body's the the incoming signals either back that up, and if they do, then not much really happens. And you're probably not aware of it. If they don't, there's a clash. And then something you become aware of it, something happens. But this is a, you know, very much, a back and forth. And so the idea is, can you intervene somewhere in that system and change the signal? So then, if you're changing the bottom up signal from the body, then that will feed in to the brain's predictions and then will that, you know, tip things in the right direction. So that's the idea, like, if you can find the right bit to intervene, but yeah, you're right. You need to change the whole thing. Because if the brain, and in some of the experiments that I took part in, one was looking at perception of the breath and because the sensation of having enough air to breathe is sort of a non negotiable for the brain. It's not if you if you don't feel like you've got enough air coming in, that's urgent and important so you know about it. But if that changes, how able are people to change the brain's predictions and update it based on the new information coming in. So this is relevant to things like post traumatic stress. So do you think, do you look around and go, actually, I'm objectively in a calm, safe environment here, and downgrade the panic signal? Or do you go with what you've learned the hard way, and it goes up. And so this experiment I took part in, I was actually really surprised. They primed either a hard breath or a easy breath through a snorkel tube. They primed it with a beep, so it was either a high pitched beep or a low pitch beep. There was a learning phase, and I pretty quickly just used that high pitched beep meant easy breath, low pitched not so nice. And then after a while, they switched it up, but I didn't know this, and they asked me to press a button. Did you feel it being a restricted breath? And did you expect that based on the beep? And after I'd learned that the high pitched was the easy breath, they switched it up, and I was very slow to relearn that that connection wasn't there anymore. And in fact, a third of the time I felt a difficult breath when there was not one there, and I felt an easy breath when they were restricting the oxygen. So my brain was predicting No, no, no, no. You've learned this the hard way. This is Yeah, and afterwards I was, I was as shocked as everybody else, because it should have been easy, but, yeah, but your predictions do play in and some people are better at shifting their allegiance back to what the body is saying, and other people sort of are more flexible. So being flexible to update what's going on inside your body outside the body, and so putting this all together is what we mean by by good interception. Yeah. When we talk about the connection that the vagus nerve has with the insular cortex and how, though, how that kind of affects our executive function and thought processes, because that's a very important relationship, yeah, so it's kind of the insulin is the most important bit of the brain that most people have never heard of, basically. So there's, so I talked about the vagus nerve. There's other inputs as well. You've got all the spinal nerves, which don't they go to the organs, but they also go throughout your whole body, through the muscles and fascia and everything else. And then you've got the the chemical, the chemical changes in the blood, the hormonal changes, the inflammation markers, all these kinds of things. And they all go to the same place. The first stop is the brain. Them, which, for some things we already know, and I think it's probably going to turn out a lot, there's like a dial in there where it kind of things either get escalated or or kind of regulated down again. So the brain stem first important part, and then it goes on to the thalamus, which is a kind of switchboard, and then on to the insula. So the insula is really important because it's where the bottom up signals come in, and the top down, signals, which is all the cognitive stuff, all the expectations and stuff and all the emotions and the sensory stuff from outside, they all get put together. And that's where the magic happens. And somehow, I guess, I think it's fair to say we don't know exactly how this is where this sort of sense, the inner sense of me here. Now, this is how I feel comes from. So it's kind of like the hub. So everything from a perception of time, how you feel, you know, all this is dealt with by the insulin the insula is connected to lots of parts all over the brain. So, and it's a really fascinating bit of the brain. So if you want to know where it is, it's kind of above your ear, if you were to go, pull your fingers really deep in, pull your brain apart, and the two folds, it's right down the bottom, one on each side. Fascinating bit. And there's some interesting research that shows that when people have the strong interoception, their judgement under stress starts to improve. What have you what have you seen there in the in the the work that you've been doing? So it's interesting that. So the these thing that's tempting to think is that we should all be more aware of our body signals, and that isn't necessarily a good thing. So for example, if somebody has a heart arrhythmia and they didn't know about it, and the doctor tells them they've got a heart rate, me, they can become too focused on their heart signals. Similarly, in eating disorders, people become hypersensitive to the sensation of food in their stomach, and it's horrible. And you know, so sometimes you don't want more sensitivity, sometimes you want less sensitivity. And researchers, Sara Garfinkel, who's one of the, you know, the big people in this area of research, and Yuvi, they found that what's important isn't necessarily how sensitive you are, it's how how much you think you are sensing signal and how much you are the difference between those two makes a difference. So if you think you're really sensitive and you're not, that can, like, relate to the accuracy of, yeah. So So you might think you're really sensitive and you're not. You might think you're not and you really are. And so bringing those two things together, and what Sara Garfinkel has done is some training where she's trained people to be more sensitive to their heartbeat. So it's quite simple, really, in many ways, you get people to raise a heartbeat doing a little bit of exercise, and then, so then almost everyone can feel their heartbeat, and then you get people to pay attention to it as it slows down. And in the studies, they give them a bit of feedback about how well they're doing. And over time, it's interesting, because they get better at detecting their own heartbeat, but they become less aware of it consciously. So these are people who had anxiety, and so when they felt their heart rate normally, it was like, oh my god, it's a bad thing. They became less aware of it, partly because that escalation to this is something important you need to do something about. It didn't happen at a lower, sort of unconscious level. It all been sort of regulated. So in some ways, you want, what you want is the equivalent of potty training. So you want to know, there's an issue. What the issue is, go and deal with it, get on with your day, and so you don't spend all day or, you know, so it's a kind of balance. You don't want to extreme. You don't want to be cut off to it, yeah, as Sara Garfinkel says, you know, it's not good to be two in your body. You want to be living in in the world, but you want to have access to it when you need it. Yeah. That's a good distinction to make, I think, and to be able to interpret it so if you if you know what it means, then it won't necessarily go out of control.

Scott Allender: 29:02

You can we talk a bit about the role of emotion and sort of delineating between the sort of physical sensation, you know, we've talked a lot about the body brain connection, but you mentioned anxiety, right? And so anxiety can, you know, produce all sorts of emotions, right? Because it's a physical, physiological thing happening, right? You're having this anxiety experience, and then you might feel all sorts of things about it, or emotions could be fueling it, right? So can you pull apart the importance of delineating between physical sensation and emotion? Yeah,

Caroline Williams: 29:35

I mean, this is lucife and Barrett's thing, isn't it? Like she would be the best person to talk about this, but I'll do my best. So the idea is that the intraceptive sensations, they are driving our feelings. They make us feel something. So the whole point of them is they make us feel something. They motivate us the emotion. This is Lisa Fauci and Barrett's idea. And a lot of people agree. Her is, is the interpretation of what those feelings mean. So the classic example is you feel like this. Are you excited or are you anxious? Like it could be either, and your interpretation of it is informed by your predictions, is informed by your situation. Are you about to go and give a big talk to some people, or are you about to go and do something really exciting? And sometimes it'd be different difficult to tell those two things apart when you're about to go on a roll coach, are you excited or are you terrified? I don't know, but I feel a lot. And so yeah, the emotions are the way we make sense of these feelings. The feelings are there, whatever and but in theory, you can interpret them differently. So what Lisa Feldman Barrett told me when I spoke to her was important things to be curious. You know, you notice these sensations. What might it mean? Am I? Am I feeling this because I'm in danger? Am I feeling galvanised? Am I feeling overconfident? Should I be feeling this confident, no, just to just not even be critical of what you're feeling, but at least and notice it and be open to the idea that maybe you're not feeling what you think you're feeling. Yeah, at least, at least give it some time to breathe before you decide that you desperately hate that person. Well, actually, they're just making me feel a bit nervous because they remind me of my science teacher, whatever.

Scott Allender: 31:23

I think that's so important. What you just said about curiosity, right? It's like that. That's a good anchoring point to come back instead of reacting to what's happening so quickly, making assumptions, just staying curious. Like, what is this physical sensation of my body? What is this emotion I'm feeling? What's the story behind that? All of those kinds of things? Exactly,

Caroline Williams: 31:39

I think in the world we live in at the moment, it's a really important skill to have because, you know, it just feels like the existential threats just keep coming at us. You know, pandemics and climate change and the world's going to help. You know, there's all 24 hour rolling news. We're bombarded with all this stuff, and most of it feels really scary, and so we're feeling all these things, and that can make us react in in all kinds of weird ways, whether it makes us withdrawn and feel hopeless, or whether it makes us feel galvanised to go out and do something about this. You know, when we see this sort of polarisation in society, but we're just emotionally activated and yelling at each other, and no one is, you know, really thinking about, why am I feeling this way? What exactly am I angry about here? And so one thing that's quite interesting to do is, if there's something just making you feel something from the news, look at it from different outlets with different political persuasions. You know, does that will make you feel angry? Does that will make you feel galvanised? Does this one make you feel hopeless? Like, what? Are you feeling about this, and what can you do about it? And the answer might be, actually, I can't do anything about it. I'm just kind of process that emotion and go, God, it feels scary to being a grown up in this day and age, you know, but, but just being aware that this is going on, because the risk is, if you're not tuned in with what's going on, you can be dragged around by your emotions very easily, and acting in ways that maybe doesn't align with how you really feel. One thing that we seem to be inevitably always feeling is exhausted and depleted. Is there anything in the work and interoception that can help us to kind of combat that or think about it differently? Yeah, because I think, you know, one in five people, according to various statistics, is complains of being tired all the time. And doctors see it all the time. They write T, A, T, T, you know, abbreviate it is so common. Can't even bother to write it down anymore, tired all the time. And we're talking about in otherwise healthy people, not talking about chronic fatigue, but but the research into the interoceptive basis of energy, or subjective vitality, is how it's sort of studied, could inform treatments for things like problematic fatigue. So it's just the idea of thinking of it as as a body brain assessment of what you've got in the tank. So this goes back to Lucille Feldman barracks, body budgeting. Body budgeting. Yeah, so which you all know about. So the brain is constantly trying to work out what you can afford to do, and if you can't afford to do what you need to do, or if it's really not worth it. And there's, you know, it's not, not worth depleting your energy. For what comes out of that assessment is a lack of motivation. You don't want to do it. You feel exhausted. So the idea we have, I think, you know, all the doctor can really off at the moment, oh, are you eating properly? Are you sleeping well, are you doing some exercise? And you might be doing all those things, but you might still get up in the morning and go, Oh, God, it's just too much. And that could be an outcome of a many, many things, and it can be a sort of a bottom up problem, is it that? So there's really interesting research looking to what the mitochondria are doing in the cells, releasing energy within the cells, and what that has to do with the energy that you feel that you have. And the answer is quite a lot. So study, studying people with mitochondrial diseases that affect how they can release energy shows that we do have a way of feeling when we are low on energy. Be physically and lots of things can contribute to that. It can be lack of exercise that we're not actually powering up our mitochondria. We haven't got really good, efficient mitochondria going on. There could be lots of reasons why you could be eating too much sugar, which overwhelms the mitochondria, and they end up checking out less energy, not more. I told you, stop eating so much sugar. Yeah, it really does. Really does backfire. It's a really miserable thing to say, you know, and then you want to reach the chocolate bar, but don't, I mean, do do it anyway, but notice that you're tired afterwards. Then you go to bed, yeah, then go to bed. Or it could be, you know, Emma, it could be that you'll you have to go and see somebody, and the thought of being in that meeting with someone who just drains you just know it's going to be hard. That prediction is actually draining your energy that you need to get through that situation. So seeing it is a kind of partially, sort of top down thing and a partial bottom up thing, you can you have a better chance of saying, Okay, what? What's going on here, and trying to find a way around it. So one interesting thing is, how do you feel when you're with people, people that make you feel energised, enthusiastic and like everything's worth doing. Spend more time with them if you possibly can, the people that drain you and you're just like you just feel like you cannot be bothered. You know, keep them at arm's length mentally, even though that can make a real difference to how energised you feel in everyday life. And you know, when you're feeling exhausted at the end of a day, oh, can I be bother to meet that brown for a drink? Maybe you can, because they will make you feel 10 times better when you when you've done it. So yeah, I think this idea of just thinking, Why am I so tired, having this idea that, well, it's partly my, it's partly brain, it's partly body, and it's the interaction between the two, at least, opens up the possibility that you might be able to do something about it, or at least not get too get too dragged down by the idea that you feel terrible and there's nothing you can do about it.

Scott Allender: 36:46

Let's stay within a minute longer in a sort of organisational context, right? Because you might not have the option to sort of say, I'm going to stay away from that person because they suck the life out of me, right? Yeah, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to power up, and I'm going to still have to have energy after that meeting. Somehow. I don't know if you've got any sort of Top of Mind suggestions, but I'd love to kind of stay with this in the sort of context of leadership.

Caroline Williams: 37:07

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm a freelancer. I walk on my own, so I'm I've only got myself to drag myself down and pound myself back up. Yeah, you're right. You can't always do that, but, but the but the knowledge that so, as Lisa Feldman Barrett describes it. You know, we might we help manage each other's body budgets so somebody else's expectations and demands depletes us because we're taking that their demands and needs into our own assessment. So even if you can sort of mentally put a barrier, like, Okay, I know that you're exhausting and sort of protect yourself a little bit. That's that's a good way to know that you have, they don't have to drain you. No, I'm taking from what you're saying. I mean, this is a source of knowledge and information exactly that we're getting, and if we tune it out, then it's not available to us. We could tell ourselves a different story, couldn't we? So, you know, yeah. Or you can just, you know, once you know the things that energise you, you can say, Okay, well, I've got to have this awful away day with this person. You can, you can sort of schedule in some time to rest and recharge in whatever way works for you. And obviously it's different for some. Some people want to go and lie in a flotation tank and, you know, close their eyes and, you know, go to bed, hide under a blanket, whatever. Other people want to go for a run. Other people want to hang out with their friends, you know, but knowing how to sort of get yourself back, put yourself back together afterwards, is kind of important. So just also being curious about that one, what makes me feel good? How can I fit more of our end? Being intentional? Yeah, absolutely. Well, the ability to understand your needs, I think, rather than wants, is so crucial for modern life, isn't it? And if you don't have that sensitivity for that information, it's not available to you. Really, is exactly and to be able to see, you know, to separate the wants from the needs. And that doesn't mean you you don't do the wants, you know. So for example, you could eat a meal. You can, you know, notice when your intercepted signals of fullness have kicked in. I don't need to eat any more of that. And you know, you you still have the urge to eat dessert. Okay? Is that because you want the pleasure doesn't mean you say, No. Pleasure is a an important feeling too, and it makes life worth living. So you say, Do you know what? I am full, but I fancy a chocolate mousse. Eat it for the pleasure. But like just just mindlessly going, Oh, I shouldn't. I'm gonna, yeah, then you have the guilt and the shame. That's a whole other load of feelings you don't need to have. So yeah, I have no shame eating chocolate moves neither. I think Jean tries to shame me when I eat it, but

Jean Gomes: 39:35

that's very unfair. I'm just, I'm just trying to help you

Scott Allender: 39:40

energise my my cells, cellular energy. I

Caroline Williams: 39:43

definitely still reach for chocolate biscuit when I'm stressed, and then an hour later when I'm on the surface, go, I don't feel good. I think, well, I knew I wouldn't. Doesn't mean in the moment, that's what I needed to get me through. Yeah?

Jean Gomes: 39:54

I just care about Scott's mitochondria. I mean, you know the technically, it's

Caroline Williams: 39:57

very, it's very kind of you. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, you're managing his body budget. What about

Scott Allender: 40:02

the microbiome? I was curious about that, because you write about that as well, right? The sort of role of the sort of gut microbiome and its influence on all this,

Caroline Williams: 40:11

yes, and what's really fascinating, so people know about the microbiome now it's been, you know, it's been a thing for a while, and we know that, you know, it affects mood. But I think What is less known is that things that are being secreted by the microbiome in your gut affect your cravings for food as as well as mood. So there's all kinds of stuff going on. There are direct there are cells within the gut that have a direct line via the vagus nerve up to the brain that are like, okay, you've had enough of this. Now you need to have some more of this. And, and the microbiome is very involved in that, in ways that we're just beginning to understand. And, and so that sometimes can can rewrite the pathways in ways that make us crave things against our will. So, yeah, they're really, really important. The kind of frustrating thing about the microbiome is everyone wants to know, okay, what should I be taking? What should I what five weird tricks should I do to get a great microbiome? And the answer really comes down to eat a diverse, varied diet, lots of fibre, because that's what gives you a nice, diverse microbiome. Ultra processed foods, you know, not so much you end up with a much less diverse microbiome. And the ones that should be eating the fibre that you're not eating start sucking into the mucus lining of the guts, and then that all causes all kinds of problems, inflammatory reactions, all these kind of thing. So, yeah, they're, they're really important and kind of emerging source, because they talk to each other. You know, you need to have these diverse ones, because they can, one makes something that the other one eats, and then it metabolises something that then tells you to do this. And, yeah, I kind of fascinated, because you think about, people talk about the gut as the second brain, but these microbiome you get, they're almost like the third, because they're calling the shots in ways that we don't even realise, making us feel things and want things. And it's kind of speaking, it's kind of

Jean Gomes: 41:52

interesting idea to imagine this kind of other being inside you doing all of that. Yeah, all they

Caroline Williams: 41:57

ask for is a bit of fibre and a nice fairy diet, and they'll be nice to you. So you mentioned Sara Garfinkel and Hugo crichley, and then they're incredibly important in this whole world of interception research, and they've kind of done so many pioneering studies. Can we talk about a few of those and why they're important. Yeah, so. So Sara gofinkel got into the idea of what does the body mean? Because she was studying PTSD in veterans in the US, and she was trying to study their anxiety levels. And she was like, Well, hang on a minute. You can't ignore these physical changes in their bodies. They're very much a part of the experience of racing hearts. Experience. They're racing heart, they're not being able to breathe. They kind of need to run away or fight. So she started looking into that, and became aware of Hugo crichley's work. So he was doing a lot of really interesting stuff, looking at what the brain takes from the heart beat, what the so he did the first neuro imaging studies that showed that the brain keeps tabs on the heart, and that affects how we think and how memory works, and how we perceive, especially fear. And so they started working together on this, and she's gone on to do all kinds of really fascinating things. So, yes, so as I said, the training studies that she did about you, can we she noticed that when she was trying out the equipment for heartbeat detection, asking people to try and tune into their heartbeat and count number of beats in 30 seconds, she was testing the equipment, she realised that she was actually getting better at it over time. Sure, maybe, maybe you can train that. And if you can train people to be better at heartbeat detection, what does that do to their anxiety levels and their ability to control that? And so that led down this really interesting path. So a lot of the work has been done because of that, beginning in the heartbeat detection. That's where interception really started making a splash, because obviously Anxiety disorders are rife, and, you know, telling people to think about things differently doesn't really help. We've still got massively rising levels, so maybe this body centric approach could really help. And it does seem really promising. There's some really interesting things in children with autism and helping them? Yeah, I think the study they did, the training study, was in adults with autism, and so training people to so anxiety is often a problem with autism, and low interceptive awareness as well, also in ADHD, and this can lead to a problem called alexithymia, which is, it's not a condition as such. It's a description of an inability to put names on your emotions. So you have a physical sensation, name on your physical sensations and fits to what they mean. So, you know, when you feel something in your body, can you say, I am scared, I am anxious, you know. And so that's a real problem in, you know, the. US conditions. And so the first study was with people with with autism and training them to be better at detecting their heartbeat. After a few sessions, I think it was 12 sessions, a lot of them were not qualifying for anxiety disorder diagnosis anymore, and they followed up with these people a year later, and they still had these, these amazing effects, and they were saying things like, oh yeah. Now I know when I feel my heart doing this, it's just this, and I don't let it escalate. And so people, they always be able to put these two things together and then not let it get carried away. And then they've moved on to another really interesting thing, which is hypermobility. So people who have hypermobile joints, so you think double jointed, you have more stretchy collagen in your joints, which is why you're bending so very common. One in five people, lot of not musicians, lot of ballet dancers, obviously gymnasts, if you have this stretchy collagen in your joints, you also have it in all of your blood vessels in your body. And so you have various reflexes, so that when you stand up, for example, or the blood goes to one area of your body, your blood vessels can contract to send that body, that blood back to your heart. And if you've got very stretchy blood vessels, that's not as efficient. So you stand up, your blood tends to rush to your feet, or if it's hot, the blood rushes to the surface of your skin. And what happens then? Because the body has to keep blood flow going around, it's non negotiable. You need to keep your brain going. You need to keep your body and your organs going. So the only way to get more blood flowing and to get blood flowing better is to increase heart rate. But if you're not interceptively aware of what's causing that, then that can cause anxiety, because there's no explanation for why your heart's suddenly beating faster. So a lot of people, you know, like one in five people, has hypermobile joints. A lot of people also have anxiety, and there's a huge crossover. So this is the work of Jessica Eccles, who works with Sara Garfinkel, and you go preachy. She's at Sussex as well. So they did this, the training study with people with hypermobility, the same thing. So I spoke to some of the people who are in the study, and they say, Oh yeah, yeah. It doesn't stop it happening, but it means I know what it is. And I think if I just sit down and do some some breathing, if I just wait for it to pass, it doesn't take over. So people were saying before they'd had these what seemed like totally random panic attacks out the blue. Now it's like, okay, maybe I just stood up too quick. Maybe I ate too much and all the bloods in my stomach, so having that extra level of explanation takes it away. Well, I think

Jean Gomes: 47:32

there's, there's a, there's a flip to all of this, which what's the consequences of, of not tuning into your body, of having, you know, sort of like just living in your brain and so on. And

Caroline Williams: 47:45

are we getting worse at it? Yeah, I try and make the case that we are. I mean, it's impossible to know, really, but I think, I think the fact that the outside was so attention grabbing that you so you can either pay attention to the outside world or the inside world. You can't do both at once, but the fact that the outside world is so like, yeah, there's interesting studies with the Hadza people in Tanzania that hunt together as they describe their emotions. This is a nice fell and Barrett study. Actually, they describe their emotions as my heart was pounding in my chest. I felt very hot, whereas an American comparison group were like, I was humiliated, and I was thinking this, you know, it was all very mental, yes,

Jean Gomes: 48:29

interpret it, yeah, immediately, yeah. And yeah.

Caroline Williams: 48:31

And the good thing about the sort of hats way of doing it is that you have that thing. You see the line you are, and then you leave it in the moment you go back, you go back to your fire. And, having a nice, yeah, you don't carry it with you as an option. You're not, you're not, yeah, you're not replaying it over and over. It's just like that was a feeling that was perfectly normal. I'm

Jean Gomes: 48:50

interested in the kind of relationship there with rumination. And, you know, a lot of people are suffering from this sense of, you know, like these ideas or thoughts or feelings keep on going through the head and they can't deal with it. Does inter reception play any part in helping us to rethink that?

Caroline Williams: 49:07

Yeah, I think rumination is, is the classic of just being in your head and the body's not even involved. And like this is, this is one of my I have two toxic stress strategies. One is hiding under a blanket and hoping all goes away, going to sleep, which I think is like a bankrupt body budget situation. It's just like, I can't cope, shut down. The other one is just, you know, is rumination. And, you know, this is not a new suggestion, because it's one. It's common thing in sort of anxiety therapy and thing, but really just deliberately going, okay, the classic one is Name five things you can see, five things you can hear, five things you can but also five things that you can feel in your own body. And I tried this myself the other day when I was out on a dog walk. And actually, from feeling very much behind my eyes and tents and like my head was going by the end of it, I was like. Okay, I can hear the bird song, I can feel my feet, I can feel my breathing, and suddenly it puts you back in your body, or in your whole, your whole being, without wanting to sound too out there, you know, you're a whole, one whole person. You're not a head that's going bonkers and a body that you're just dragging around you sort of, it puts you back, you know, who you are again. And, yeah, there's something really kind of powerful about that, that, yeah, it just makes the world make a bit more sense.

Jean Gomes: 50:28

Because one of the challenges, actually, that a lot of us feel is not whole. We feel the opposite to that. And I'm just wondering, what other because you've just given us a really nice little practical technique, is there other other things that we can be doing to get better connection with with interoception. Well, I

Caroline Williams: 50:44

mean, I hate to harp back to my previous book, but movement, you know, you can't move your body without changing the signals. So these signals are, you know, they're fluid, they're dynamic, they're changing all the time. And the easiest way to change them, I mean, obviously you can change your breathing, but you can also move your body. And so this is sort of what led me into interception, because there's all the fascinating research that if you increase the strength and flexibility of your body, that changes the sort of underlying interceptive signals that sort of builds to the self of who you are and what you can accomplish in the world. So you feel stronger, you feel more agile, and also, even if you're if you're, if you're feeling low energy, it might be that you're a bit lethargic. You've just been sitting around all day and, you know, been stuck in an airless room, doing meetings, even just a quick walk around the block. You know that that sets, you know, it changes the signals that are going in, and so that changes the way you feel. So that's one of the easiest ways to do it.

Jean Gomes: 51:40

Yeah, excellent. I mean, if you were, if you were locked away in a endless meeting, and you were starting to feel that, you know, disconnection with your body, what would you might, might you do in the moment? Do you think, um, I think

Caroline Williams: 51:52

turning your attention to what's going on. I mean, sometimes it might be important to not be thinking about your work what's going on in your own body, and to pay attention to what's going on in the room. But if you feel yourself zoning out, then you know any way of just feeling more present in your body, with a fidgeter, tap your feet. You know whatever, whatever gets you feeling a bit more alive and vital and in your own body, and not in your own head, will probably help you get through that experience. I mean, part of the problem with modern life, I think, especially in the workplace, is it's so distracting and it's so mental. We're sitting down, we're not moving. You've got the screen in front of you, and there's been some it was sort of study, not study in a lab, but done by an ex Microsoft professional who decided to just look, I wonder what happens if you measure how people are breathing when they're sitting at a deck, check desk, checking their emails, and they sort of forgot they were breathing, and they slowed down breathing, and they held their breath, and they weren't breathing effectively. And so that's that's something that we probably all do. Checking your emails are probably not doing some good breathing. So just even connecting with your breathing helps you get back into your body, and sort of sends a little bit of oxygen to your brain as well, which, yeah, she's gonna email apnea. Yes, exactly, exactly. And I don't know whether that's ever been followed up in a proper study, but we do know that the way you breathe really affects alertness. It affects how you says there's a sort of connection between the top of the nose and the way that your brain waves are working. So the sort of breathing into your nose entrains the kind of rhythm of your brain waves and so how your breathing really matters. So even if you can't do anything else you're stuck, what you can do is you can very subtly take control of your breathing.

Scott Allender: 53:39

I love this conversation so much because, you know, one of the ambitions of the show is to create, help people, create more human leadership, and that's predicated on developing awareness. And we have an awareness crisis, right? And there's lots of layers to that, right? What am I feeling? What are the frames I'm holding up to the world? But this part of the conversation is largely missing, like, what am I physically sensing, and how is that affecting my whole lived experience, my leadership, my impact, and all of that kind of stuff. And during a break when we were talking, you mentioned, as we're drawing attention to this important topic, we're getting worse at it, likely because the outer world is coming at us so fast and we're so connected to it on our devices that we're actually not paying attention as much. So what are some watch outs? Besides maybe the obvious, like, put the phone, put

Caroline Williams: 54:25

the phone down. Yeah. I mean, it's hard, isn't it? So I think it's become a thing that you're in a waiting room, you've got some time, first thing you do is check your phone. So, yeah, the world is coming at us. I mean, I think that because we are in a situation that's never been quite so, so much information coming out as now you've got the 24 hour news. You know, people turning off the news because they're feeling overwhelmed from it. You know you've got notifications coming at you on your wrist, and it's just, it's a lot. And you can either your attention is really important interception. So you can either put your attention on the outside world, or you can. Bit on the inside world is, you know, you have to flick back and forth between the two, but you can't feel and pay attention to both at once. So if there's all this stuff on the outside, we're going to be, by default, numb to the inside. So there's really interesting research on modern hunter gatherers in Africa, the Hadza people, and this was Lisa Feldman Barrett's work again, asking them to describe their their emotions or what they're feeling in certain stressful situations and other situations, and they tended to describe it in terms of physical sensation. So my heart was beating really fast. I felt really hot. I couldn't breathe, whatever, compared to an American comparison group who would talk about feeling overwhelmed and, you know, just awful, and I was anxious and I was they described it in very cognitive terms. And so the benefit of having in a in the physical term is that, like the potty training example, you feel that it serves its purpose, you go back to baseline, whereas, if we've got this kind of constant mental stress going on that we don't really feel deal with, it just can continue for longer. So I think it's probably safe to say, although without a time machine, we can't be sure, that this time, we are probably less tuned into our bodies than ever before.

Scott Allender: 56:16

Makes sense. I remember in your book from the way we're working isn't working, which was published 12 years ago. You cited some research about, I think, from Harvard psychologist who said we're the most over informed, under reflective civilization in history, and it's only gotten exponentially worse since then. Yeah, well,

Jean Gomes: 56:33

I mean, if I think about the moments in the week which I most regret is when I fall down the the the Doom scrolling thing, and you know, something lures

Caroline Williams: 56:46

you in, somebody sends

Jean Gomes: 56:48

you something, and it's really interesting. And then, you know, you have one moment of gratification, then half an hour has passed, and the guilt and shame that comes along with the fact that you've wasted all that time, thankfully, it's not too much, but I can feel like the gravitational pull into that and how disconnected you feel as a result your own body budget, yeah, yeah.

Caroline Williams: 57:09

So, and there's been studies done on that the people you know have fallen into the scroll hole. And when the searchers brought them back outfit and said, What were you reading about, how did it make you feel? They're like, I don't know, complete numbness. It's like, yeah, you just yeah, you're not even. And they

Jean Gomes: 57:24

also think, they think they've been there for five minutes, but they've been there for half an hour, or an hour or something. No idea.

Caroline Williams: 57:30

Yeah, that's really strong. I think the younger generation, I mean, possibly, because I have a teenager, I see this all the time. If there's any second where I he's not doing something, and I probably do this a bit as well. First thing you do, reach for the phone. Player, game scroll. No. It's like we don't ever take the time to reflect and sit back and go. How am I feeling? What do I need? Because that's always there as a kind of like, tide you over until the next thing you have to respond to.

Jean Gomes: 58:00

So in, you know, this book, which is absolutely brilliant and loved it, was there anything that really surprised you when you when you look back at it,

Caroline Williams: 58:09

I think the the amount of importance of connections between people and how that affects how you feel on the inside. So there's been some really interesting research about effective touch. So this is like stroking, gentle stroking, which doesn't sound like it's, yeah, in the wrong in the wrong situation. A bit creepy, but, you know,

Jean Gomes: 58:36

I'm being very anxious. Now, that's

Caroline Williams: 58:39

where your predictions come in. Like, what is it? Who's doing it, and why are they doing it? But that seems like something touch, seems like something that's exteroceptive. It's external. But we have these specific pathways in the skin that head to the insula, so they, you know, accounted as is interoceptive, because it's telling you something about the homeostatic situation that you're in and how well you're you're coping. And so there's we have these connections between our skin and the brain, and they exist. They only respond to slow, gentle stroking at a particular human body temperature at three to 10 centimetres per second. But you have to worry about because it turns out we're all just hardwired to know how to do it, you know. Oh, they're there, you know, that's how we do it. And these fire when we're being gently stroked by another human being, and they give us feelings of safety and warmth. And just that action can downgrade this pain so you can cope with more pain, you feel more supported, you feel loved, you feel warm, you know that that sort of thing can that can really help everything from addictions to pain to fatigue, so that the need for other people to help us feel things, I think was really, really surprising to me and. Um, and also in terms of loneliness, you know, we have this, this big loneliness crisis, how much we need other people to to help us, even for our energy levels as well just the presence of someone who cares about us, or even a dog, it turns out, in the room, if you like, dogs, can help people to exercise for longer before feeling exhausted, to dig deeper into their reserves to cope with more pain. Dogs, weirdly, in the pain experiment, were more reassuring and more supportive than a friend, possibly for the reason that if there's a friend there and you're in pain, you want to reassure them that they're okay because they're worried about you, whereas a dog, if they're just there to support you in you don't have to reassure them, but the but, yeah, but are. But this comes back to the predictive element of it. If you are aware that you've got backup, then you can dig deeper into your own resources. And this kind of escalation of these sensations doesn't have to happen quite so much because you're not on your own. And so the idea that interoception isn't just about getting know yourself on the inside, wisdom of your body from within. It's about people around you as well. I think

Scott Allender: 1:01:07

that's fascinating. Yeah? Well, that it's instinctive too. Like you said, we just kind of know how to do it to do Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caroline Williams: 1:01:14

So there are some people, I think it's quite fun that there are some researchers working on machines that you can structure, on wearables that sort of have this kind of soft, fluffy brush, and they stroke you at the right pace. And yeah, people say it's like having a lovely teddy bear, and people find it really calming and relaxing. What

Jean Gomes: 1:01:32

do you think's next in this field? What are the things that you're excited about that you think are coming? So I

Caroline Williams: 1:01:37

think the really exciting thing is that is the treatments that kind of come through for for these common body brain conditions that are so far really difficult to tackle, so everything from fatigue to IBS, anxiety, pain, all these things eating disorders, which is, you know, the most deadly mental health issue. But So I talk in a book about the emergence of something I called body mental health, which is, look at you rather than going, Okay. How can we therapy people out of this by getting to think differently. What can we do to change these signals in the back and forth? Whether that's by one thing I tried, which is very much in the research stages, is swallowing a vibrating capsule so that you can feel it vibrating in your stomach. How does that affect people's relationship with their stomach sensations, whether it's in eating disorders or whether it's in IBS? How can you then train people to be more or less sensitive to what's going on on their stomach in a way that might alleviate their symptoms? Flotation therapy for anxiety, for addictions, for for eating disorders, again, because that by default, if you're floating in the dark in a tank where your body is supported, it's at room temperature, you can't fit anything or sense anything from the outside world, you go inside. How does changing that, boosting that interceptive awareness, help people to get back in touch with their bodies, and then have another way to to regulate themselves so that they don't have these sort of maladaptive things going on, even maybe drugs to change heart rate might be useful in some situations. So there's also Hugo crichley has some really interesting research where teaching treating people with arachnophobia pictures of spiders coming up on the screen, if we timed the pictures to come up on the screen as the heart was contracting during a treatment. So exposure treatment that was more effective than just the than the standard exposure treatment. So you can get there faster, because you're, you're sort of giving your brain the signals when it's going to react most, and so you're you'll feel fast tracking. So all there's all these kinds of things.

Scott Allender: 1:03:44

Could I get over my fear of heights? Because I realised it's gotten worse as I went skiing the other day, and I didn't want to go up the bigger mountain because I didn't want to get on the ski lift that was steeper. Is there anything could I fix that, potentially? Yeah.

Caroline Williams: 1:03:56

I mean, I In theory, yes, anything because that that fear reaction is a visceral reaction. So changing a relationship with that visceral reaction could, in theory, yeah, do a lot more because, because clearly, going up on there and going, don't worry, it's fine. Don't worry, it's fine, isn't going to help. So maybe changing that. So

Jean Gomes: 1:04:13

we're going to get up the show this afternoon, and we just lean over a bit.

Caroline Williams: 1:04:19

Yes, yes. Lean against the wind,

Scott Allender: 1:04:20

I already feel myself activate, and I'm aware of it. My heart Yeah. My heart rhythms changed, yeah.

Caroline Williams: 1:04:25

And so one of the things is, so exposure therapy, if you can get people, you know, this is already a thing, or do exist, if you get people in that situation where they feel these heightened emotions, and they stay there for a while, and nothing happens that can help to you know, you get through that. And then equally, the other side of it is, can you get people so flotation therapy, you are more sensitive to your heartbeat, but you're physiologically in a in a very relaxed state. So they can do this outside of a fluctuation tank, you know, after yoga or whatever lion corpse pose, let your body really, really calm down, feel your heart if. You can become more tuned into your heart when it's calm and safe. And I find it really like just comforting, like an internal hug. If you can get that sensation, then you feel your heart in safety as well as in terror, then that can give you a safe home to come back to. So you know, you have a range of sensations to do with your heart that isn't just, ah, you know. So, so it's like experiencing it at that end and at that end, and ideally, having access to it in in between as

Jean Gomes: 1:05:31

well. What have you changed in your life as a result of what you've learned from this process? I

Caroline Williams: 1:05:36

have spent a lot more time in flotation tanks than ever I possibly can. Absolutely love that if I'm feeling really awful. But, I mean, it's not as accessible as it might be. I think I've just become much more aware. So now, so once I've done, when I did several flotation tank sessions as part of my research for this, I found what, you know, I came to look at my heartbeat happy place, you know, like, I know, I can just feel it. So I've got in the habit of, as I drop off to sleep, I just tune into my heart, and I find that just calms me right down and sends me off to sleep. But I also notice how things make me feel, how people make me feel, how, you know, stupid things, trying on something, a new outfit. Do I feel like good in it? Does it make me feel? Does it make me feel? Yeah, I'm a bit embarrassed, you know, just noticing that you have this, this thing. But I think one thing I really want to say, Arjun, I think is important for people to know, is there's a lot of talk in the wellness space about the wisdom of the body and tuning into and I watched apple cider vinegar recently, which kind of set my teeth on edge, because there was a lot of talk about there. I learned to listen to my body and the wisdom of our body from within. It's also important to realise that sometimes what's coming from within might not be in your best interests and might be wrong, just as your eyes can deceive you, so can your internal senses. So this curiosity is a really important piece, because you don't want to be saying, well, my body feels fine, so I don't need that treatment the doctor's giving me. I push away Western medicine? No, it's about having it as a factor that you consider in your life. Yeah, it doesn't take over, but it's there. And I think a lot of people meet as including me, before didn't ever factor it in, and now I am doing it's another it's another aspect to life. And would you say there's a difference between how men and women react to their internal signals. So there is some research into this, and I think women, I think I'm right in saying this, and women are less interceptively aware. So there's a researcher called Jenny Murphy who's doing research on this, and I think it very much depends, yeah, so I yeah, get Jenny Murphy on. She'll tell you all about it, but she's doing research. And she's also doing research, because the other thing about intraceptive signals is they change as your body changes, so changes in life, like puberty and menopause, and, you know, all these things affect these signals. And so I've always been fascinated as a woman as like, Why do hormones make you tearful and raging? What is, what's going on that, you know, that's a change in the intercept signals, but what that's going on, I'm not really sure. And so Jenny Murphy is doing a research into that to see what the gender differences are all about and what's behind them. So I think that's really fascinating place. Do

Scott Allender: 1:08:19

you know, if people who are maybe more in tune with their interoceptive signals are more likely to act on gut instinct?

Caroline Williams: 1:08:28

Well, yeah, there's a really interesting guy I met doing this called Chris White, who used to be a hostage negotiator, so he worked with the Metropolitan Police for many years. He used to be flown all over the world and parachuted in, probably, literally, I don't know, into crisis situations to try and sort things out. And you might think that that's a skill where you need to be cold, rational thinker. You don't let emotions get in the way. You just, you know, think about do the job. But when Sara Garfinkel tested his introductive awareness. He was off the chart. So average person is sort of like 60% score on this test, he was 100% and when I spoke to him, he said, I can feel my heartbeat and just sitting here now, he said, I'm not always aware it's there. If I need it, it's always there. And he says that he uses that as a source of information. So in a hostage negotiation situation, he will notice very subtle changes in his heart rate blood pressure, and use them as signals to know when to intervene. So as if you time it wrong, you've got somebody who's really hat up. If you time it wrong, they're going to shut down and they you know, the whole thing fails. But if you time it right, and you can tell you have this gut instinct about which way this is going to go. Then you can, you can get in, you can make a rapport with somebody. And you know this is relationship building again. You can, you can get things done. And so he then very strongly believes that his strong, interceptive abilities make him much better. At what he does that makes sense to me. Interestingly, though, he said, Well, never try and go for dinner with a bunch of hostage negotiators, because we cannot make a decision about where to eat, because they're also supposed to be, you know, and in everyday life, he's probably, you know, he's over sensitive. He thinks, if anything, but in that role, you need that. And also, there's been some research with trading, financial traders on the floor who are not quite like the hostage negotiator. They're like 80% on the on the test, at way above average, and they use their gut feelings to inform trades. So you know these trades are happening, you know lightning speed, and you have to make these decisions. And sometimes there's not time to think, Okay, that was going up, that was going down. It's just like, Okay, that's good, that's bad. Okay, boom, boom, boom, boom. And the people who were better at interceptive sensations, or more accurate or more aware were much better, no more successful on the trading floor, and they stayed in the job for longer, which is a high stress job. So there's, there is, there are advantages to to being highly tuned in

Sara Deschamps: 1:11:08

evolving leader. Friends. If you're curious to get more insights directly from our hosts, consider ordering Jean's book leading in a non linear world, which contains a wealth of research backed insights on how to see and solve our greatest challenges, as well as Scott's book The Enneagram of emotional intelligence, which can help you unlock the power of self awareness sustainably in every dimension of your life.

Scott Allender: 1:11:34

So let's come back to decision making and stressful situations and its impact. Because you did some research around Dutch police officers. I thought was fascinating. Yeah, so this is a really interesting one. So

Caroline Williams: 1:11:44

one. So there's some research in Holland with Dutch police officers. So one of the problems with police officers is it's a very obviously stressful environment, and what you're asking people to do is to go against all their instincts. So when you feel the fight or flight response kicking in. You know, you're going against that you approach the danger. And so it's a very stressful thing to do for people, and it's all very well saying to people, well, we need to work on well being for our officers, and they should all go and do mindfulness, but that's a very different thing. Being able to regulate yourself when you're already calm is different to being able to regulate your stress response when you're up against a rioting mob. So what this research tried to do, it's called the decisions under stress training dust. They worked at this virtual reality training game where you they were in the officers are in an immersive game in a darkened car park, and they've got a fake gun with them, and their job is to shoot the zombies. That's the zombies gonna come out of nowhere. You need to shoot them. And they're plugged into the game with their heart rate monitor, and it's measuring heart rate variability, which is a measure of your body's ability to cope with stress and regulate stress. So if your heart rate variability is high, you're regulating stress very well. If it's if it's low, then you're in fight or flight. And so this was like a biofeedback game. So if they were regulating their stress well and their heart rate variability was high, the game would get lighter and it was easier to shot the shoot the zombies, if they found themselves getting stressed and getting into fight or flight mode, it got darker, it got harder to shoot the zombies. So it was like a feedback. What you want to be is unstressed, regulating yourself and still being able to shoot the zombies. And it's, I think it's just really fascinating, because it seemed to it really helped the officers to learn to regulate their stress in a stressful environment, or a very good mimic of a stressful environment, so that they could then take that back into their job. And the officers loved it. And I think it's also really, possibly really good for for young males. You know, we've got this mental health crisis with young males, if they could learn to regulate themselves in an enjoyable, realistic situation that might be really, might be something really worth having. So, yeah, but you're also learning it sort of implicitly, without realising what's going on. Is

Jean Gomes: 1:14:10

there any kind of commercially available biofeedback techniques like that that you can get hold of? Do you

Caroline Williams: 1:14:16

think Not yet? Not yet. I did try and ask the researcher if I could borrow a version of this to try on my teenage son and get him to road test it. But no, not yet, but it is still very much in research. But there are people, say, Sara Garfinkel, they're working on an app to be available that what that can help you train heart rate detection. So things are starting to get to that stage. We're not quite there yet, but I think in the next few years we're going to see, we're going to see this really become a big thing. Yeah, well, this

Jean Gomes: 1:14:45

is all part of flagging that because, yeah, I think, you know, you're one of the voices at the the forefront of something that's going to become very big and significant. You know, can we build this for a long time? So it's great that your, your your public. So what else are you going to be up to in terms of taking your work in this book out into the world? Well,

Caroline Williams: 1:15:05

I will talk about it to anyone who will listen, and even if they don't, I'm just going to talk to it anyway. So I've been saying that all year, and actually, I'm hoping that people get it for how important it is and what a shift it is in the way we think. Because as soon as you get people thinking about it like, well, of course, I of course, your body is important. It's just like part of the issue is the name introception, once you get past that. But then, not so long ago, microbiome was a term that you only heard about if you were a science journalist or a science doing research, and that's come into more sort of public sphere, and everyone's talking about and understands what it means now. So I'm hoping that's where we're going to go with interception, because it really is important, I think, for for kind of regulating, just surviving in a world that's increasingly feeling a bit bonkers, I think you need to get back to being full humans, rather than a brain on legs, like it's kind of really important for us, absolutely. Well, I also think,

Jean Gomes: 1:15:57

you know, you're, you know, you benefit from from this as an individual. But you know, for what we can help our children to to learn this from an early age, might help them to overcome a number of, you know, fairly significant milestones, yes,

Caroline Williams: 1:16:10

and so there have been some studies with children teaching parents how to respond to their children and just simple things, like naming their emotions. Like, it looks like you're frustrated right now, I can see that you're angry, you know, just helping them to name their emotions, and then they make that connection in their body that's been shown to help with behaviour and with preventing mental health issues from coming along later. Because if they know what they're feeling, it's not going to be a horrible surprise when they get to be teenagers and they're being a lot. How to make sense of that and name it and get know that it will pass. That's a really important thing, and it helped the parents as well. The parents felt they had a better relationship with the children. The children felt better. They weren't acting out so much. Everyone benefits. So yeah, given

Jean Gomes: 1:16:55

we're in the kind of Age of anxiety, this would be a very powerful thing for everybody to learn. So it's timely. Caroline, thank you. Thank you very much. Conversation.

Scott Allender: 1:17:06

Yes, definitely order your copy right away. This is, this is a great book. It's timely and it's accessible, which is what I really loved about it as well. So thank you for writing it.

Caroline Williams: 1:17:15

Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for having me. You