The podcast discusses coping skills and strategies for managing emotions and struggles. They talk about SMART goals, the concept of HALT, and various emotional coping strategies like grounding, deep breathing, meditation, visualization, and more. They also explore the positive impact of marathons, shifting focus from outcomes to rewarding effort, coping with overwhelming emotions, and strategies for dealing with emotional charges and irrational thoughts.

Dive into the fascinating world of habits! Discover the habit loop and how cues from your environment trigger behaviors. Explore willpower as a resource and learn about the dopamine connection. Mireille and Adam reveal strategies for effective behavior change, highlighting social influences and accountability. Gain insights on treating yourself like a scientist to better understand your habits. Plus, find out how nurturing personal strengths can contribute to long-lasting change!

Mireille and Adam explore the importance of relationships and the concept of attachment. We often think of ourselves as individuals, but our lives are spent embedded within the context of social relationships. These relationships influence and shape our brains, which deeply influences who we are. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedInAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:We’re designed to be attached to others. Mammalian brains care about their connections. What’s the difference between a lizard or a turtle and a dog or a bat? Dogs and bats feed their young with milk and invest in their oversight until they’re mature and capable enough to manage their own lives. We often think of ourselves as individuals, but our lives are spent embedded within the context of social relationships. These relationships influence and shape our brains, which deeply influences who we are. Research shows that relationships can reactivate neuroplastic processes and actually alter the structures and biochemistry of the brain (Neuroscience of human relationships). Individual brains do not exist in nature. Without mutually stimulating interactions, people and neurons wither and die. Early nurturing of the prefrontal cortex through relationships has us to think well of ourselves, trust others, regulate emotions, maintain positive expectations, and utilize emotional intelligence in a moment-to-moment problem solving (Cozolino). Research shows that right brains tend to develop more in the first years of life. This helps us be more flexible and learn how to adapt — it really is survival of the fittest. Mind Field from Vsauce Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

In this inaugural episode, Mireille and Adam explore what it means to be human at the most basic level. Our goal is to explore the inner-workings of the human brain to better understand our humanity. What are we capable of? What are the common experiences of life we all share? We start by asking the question, “what are the fundamentals of being human?” Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedInAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:Designed to feel As humans, we are fundamentally designed to feel. Feelings aren’t facts but they are feedback. When we can consider our feelings in conjunction with other data, we’re apt to make wiser decisions. Whether our feelings or they don’t, they’re still feedback. We have a complex brain, a mind, and relationships (brainstem: the Reptile brain + limbic system: the mammalian brain and the neocortex: the Human brain. We have emotions. We are energy-based beings (electrical current makes us tick). Neurons that fire together, wire together. a. Where attention, energy flows—we feed whatever it is we focus on. Happiness/changes in how feel can be modified in part by what we choose to focus on. Example - getting a job. b. Dan Siegel says it like this “Where attention goes, neuro firing flows, and neuro connections grow.” Designed to connect As humans, we are fundamentally designed to connect and be connected with others. When we don’t have a community wherein we can be our authentic selves, we’re apt to struggle more than we would without them. Is connection or touch with other humans required? Attachment is 100% learned - it is not genetically determined. That brings hope because we can modify our relationship as we, too, change. We all struggle As humans, we do not get the option to opt out the struggle. We may not be able to pick our struggles, but, nonetheless we all struggle. Adam says “Admit the struggle. Identify the lie. Seek the truth.” As it relates to coping, the value of naming our struggles is so important. It involves more aspects of the brain when we put words to our struggles so that we’re better able to cope. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!