Podcast Episodes 10-11 A conversation with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor on parenting, kids, teens, brains and screens

These are some excerpts from a recent podcast interview with my special guest Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. If you’d like to hear the whole interview (and you should!), go here for episodes 10-11 of the Unplug & Plug In show.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is profoundly gifted at taking complex scientific information and boiling it down into ideas that stick and are helpful in understanding humans and the way our brains work. 

Drop me a note – what was your a-ha moment from this episode? I had so many!

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Dr. Jill is: 

I remember watching her on the Oprah Winfrey Show and hearing her say those words for the first time. I got goosebumps, the kind that happen when you hear a truth so elegantly that it catches your heart.

Wouldn’t the world be a kinder, safer place if everyone were responsible for their own energy?

Dr. Jill is well known as both a Harvard trained and published neuroscientist and a person who had a stroke at a very young age and spent eight years recovering. Her memoir, "My Stroke of Insight”, documents her experience with stroke and the recovery process and has been on the New York Times bestseller list for years and her second book, "Whole Brain Living: the Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters that Drive our Life" helped me understand my brain in new ways. 

Lisa: So what else should parents know about your background before we dive into the brain and all things that we’re here to talk about? 

Dr. Jill: I am a neuroanatomist, a brain anatomist and I am a cellular anatomist.

The brain is this magnificent collection of cells, and then the cells communicate with one another in circuits with the chemicals. Every ability we have, we have because we have brain cells that perform that function. 

Lisa: Let's start with something from your book "Whole Brain Living".

Can we talk about the four areas of the brain that you've identified and what each area is good at and maybe not so good at? 

The four areas of the human brain

Dr. Jill: As we think about how the human brain has developed, think about the reptiles. We have a brain stem structure with our spinal cord, then the brain stem at the top, and these are pretty much on, off switches.

I'm hungry. I eat, I'm done. I'm thirsty. I drink, I'm done, et cetera. That’s the reptile brain.

And then new tissue gets added on top of that brain stem and it's bilateral. So there's two blobs. One that ultimately will be emotion of the right hemisphere and the other will be emotion of the left hemisphere. And that is the difference between a reptile and a mammal is the addition of this emotional limbic tissue.

And then the difference between a typical mammal and the human is thinking added on top. So then we have thinking tissue in the right hemisphere and thinking tissue in the left hemisphere. 

So we as human beings, we end up having two emotional systems, one in the right one in the left and two thinking modules of cells, one in the right one in the left and then our right hemisphere and our left hemispheres are different from one another. 

So what's the fundamental difference? Well, the fundamental difference is that the right hemisphere is all about right here, right now, present moment. And the left hemisphere has linearity across time, so our past experience and our future experience is going to be in the left hemisphere.

To get all the details on the four major groups of cells Dr. Jill calls “the four characters”, listen to the whole interview now!

When we get to know each of our four characters in the brain, we understand ourselves at a whole different level. Whatever conflict there might be inside of ourselves or dissatisfaction in how we're living our lives, it’s because we're being skewed to certain character profiles that we don't want to spend all our time doing. 

I don’t want to always be responsible. I want to go play again, you know? 

Once we recognize the brain’s four characters inside of ourselves, then we start seeing those characters in the people we love. Our teenage kids are going to have all four of these characters and they're going to be bouncing in and out of those four characters every two seconds. 

Understanding these four brain characters and how to manage them in relationship with others is the key to creating successful, healthy relationships. 

Connecting neurons and choosing for the future

We are born as biological creatures with about twice as many brain cells as we would ever need. We are designed for abundance!

Then based on the stimulation and the environment coming in, cells make connections and they start creating these loops and the cells that don't fit in, they die. They don't receive the stimulation and they die off. What this means is we need to exercise the cells we want to keep.

But before puberty, during those first years,  everything is all about me connecting my neurons up. I'm being wired for life. 

And then about two years before I'm going to go through a physical puberty, I go through a cognitive pruning back. I go through this exuberance of connection, potential connection, between the neurons. 

We're trying on new identities. Why? Because I have this exuberance of possibility at a cellular level. And so now all of a sudden, I'm not all about what I used to like, my sports or about my crafts, because now I'm starting to look outside of myself. Oh my God. There are other people on this planet and I have to actually have a relationship with them.

And so now my new possibilities are open. This is why it is so important that parents pay attention to the choices kids are making at this level, because they are setting themselves up for their future. 

Kids are planting the garden of what their future is going to be with the choices they make today. Their brain will prune 50% of the connections inside, based on what’s getting used right now.

If kids want to be good musicians when they're in their twenties, they need to be good musicians during their teens or that circuitry is going to die back.

So literally this period of exuberance is where the neurons are saying, “all possibilities are wide open, who am I going to be? What am I going to do? I gotta try it all on. I gotta act like this. Well, how'd that work? Well, that didn't work well. Or, or how did I do this? Well, so and so really liked that. But do I really want to be with that crowd?” 

We're trying everything on. 

Then puberty begins. We get this major physiological shift where our bodies grow and we become sexually reproductively capable, and our brains are literally pruning back. Now, literally 50% of the connections inside of the brain die.

It is traumatic. We are actually going through a cellular trauma now. So, which 50% gets cut back? Well, the 50% we're not using. 

So, if I'm a child and I want to sing when I'm older, I need to sing now, in order to have that be 50% of the connections keep going. If I want to be good at sports, I need to continue to be good during those teenage years so that remains part of the 50% of the connect that I keep.

Technology, addiction and diversity

The thing about technology is it's instant gratification and who doesn't love instant gratification?

I get a ping notification. Ooh. It's text! Oh, it's someone I care about! Ooh, dopamine! Ooh, little pleasure! Right? 

We have an addictive type of brain. So we have to be really careful about what we allow ourselves to be addicted to. 

I would rather my child becomes addicted to movement and the need to do sports, than technology

“Not all addiction is bad. The question is - What am I allowing myself to become addicted to? ”

Instead of saying, all addiction is bad, what if I allowed myself to be addicted to good stuff, like healthy foods and moving my body?

I think that that's a shift in perspective for parents. What are you addicted to? How about your children? 

We're all addicted to something. So pick some healthy addictions, you know, pick, pick your addiction to healthy food, as opposed to the Big Mac.

Extreme addiction is generally not healthy. 

The message here is pay attention to what are you doing. What circuits are you running? How are you spending your time?

Go for diversity in what you’re doing. 

I enjoy social media, so I spend X amount of time on social media, but I really pay attention to it and I pay attention to my “need” for it.

I want peace of heart and peace of mind. So how do I engage in that? I like to meditate and I'm physically active. So how much time am I doing that? 

My quote, “please take responsibility for the energy you bring into this room” could be said another way - “Please take responsibility for the circuitry you're running in your brain.” 

Pay attention to it. Don't be afraid of it, but really ask yourself, “who do I want to be and how do I want to grow up to be a balanced person?” 

And as a parent, same thing. Ask - Where's my energy? How diverse am I? 

We have the power to choose who and how we want to be instead of simply running on automatic. 

Unfortunately, many of us don't realize we have that power. If I don’t realize it, I'm just running on automatic and life is chasing me by the tail. 

Empower yourself, empower your child

Teenagers love to know themselves. They want to understand why they feel, what they feel, why they think, what they think they want to understand their brain. 

So how do we empower them and help them balance? By helping them see they have some power in the world.

Power in the human brain is our ability to inhibit ourselves, not our ability to excite ourselves. Non-stop excitement leads to chaos. Inhibiting ourselves leads to intentional actions. Because I can come in and I can say, oh yeah, I want to do all kinds of things, but there’s no power there. That’s chaos. That’s out of control. 

The power in the human brain is our ability to inhibit and to make reasonable, rational choices. 

I can show up for myself. 

It's really a matter of asking young people: Who do you want to be?

So if your child says, I want to grow up and be a dancer – fuel their dancing! Even if they're never going to be the best dancer on the planet, fuel their dancing. This is positive energy. 

The teenage years are for a healthy exploration of “Who do I want to grow up to be?”

So always ask when you're looking at your children, helping them figure out what are they saying “yes” to? And try to encourage them with your yes, not just always coming in with a no. 

Lisa: That's a powerful idea. If you become that “no” person, they're not going to come to you with questions or ideas anymore. They're going to assume they know the answer (no) and you've lost them. 

Dr. Jill: You're no longer a participant in shaping their future.

And let’s go back to technology - Every time I get a text, it says, oh, ping, dopamine. Somebody's talking to me. 

And when mom says “yes”, I get a ping of dopamine. Mom's going to encourage me to do sports! Ping!

Dr. Jill: Parenting with a lot of “no’s” is really counterproductive at so many different levels, including the brain. It’s important to really figure out how to communicate with a teenage brain that’s all over the place.

Lisa: Instead of saying “no”, try saying "yes, when..." "Yes, when this happens. Yes".

So my teen asks "Can I go hang out with friends?" 

I say, "Yes, when your room is clean. Yes, absolutely." 

Dr. Jill: Absolutely! "No, you can’t go! You haven't cleaned your room". Who wants that energy? 

You're saying, "Yes, I want you to go play with your friends after you clean your room."

Your child gets a double ping!

So, I'm going to get the clean room because that'll make mom happy. And then I get the ping of my friends. 

The brain is all about "Where do I get my satisfaction from? My ‘ping’ from?" 

We should be encouraging a level of diversity in our actions, so that all the power doesn't just hook into that addiction circuitry which can then routinize itself into something that is unhealthy as a lifestyle. 

It’s healthy to be diverse. 

Lisa: In "Whole Brain Living" you talk about the negative and positive feedback systems. This is really an important conversation about our brains and technology in general, and screen time and social media.

We have both feedback systems.

Dr. Jill: We're talking not emotionally positive or negative feedback systems. We are talking about how cells communicate with cells. 

An example of the negative feedback system is a cell says "I'm hungry". I feel hunger. I eat food. And that system then tells my cells, "satiation". I have eaten. Turn off the loop. 

So, in the negative feedback system, I have a desire, I satisfy the desire and then I walk away from the desire because now it is satisfied. All done.

An example of the positive feedback system is where I'm on my technology and I get a ping and I go to the ping and I get this hit of "oh, excitement, satisfaction, that's good". And then I want more. I'm not satisfied. I want more.

I put up a post and oh, I gotta click. Oh, I gotta click. Oh, I gotta click. Oh, I gotta like, oh, and then I want more, I want more, I'm not satisfied with what I have. 

Pay attention to the things in your life, the loops in your life, that are essentially negative feedback, not being negative "bad", but negative as in “I’m satisfied”. 

That's a healthy loop.

When we hook into the addiction of more, I want more, I want more, I'm never satisfied, that’s a positive feedback loop and that can be dangerous. And boy, technology was specifically designed to do that

The last TED Talk I went to was a few years ago before the pandemic and I sat down with one of these social media creators and I said," what are you doing now?" And he said, "you know my colleagues and I, we've created a monster and now I have children, now I'm watching how my children, we all have been so hooked into the addiction circuitry of the brain. That’s because of us and what we have created. They've made billions of dollars but they have compromised the sanity of our society.

Now they feel bad about that. And so now they're working on other tools that they can use to try to help the technological addiction that they created. 

It's very interesting as humanity, their brain went ping! Money, ping! Money, ping! Money, it didn't matter what we were doing to society.

It didn't matter how we were training the human brain toward more addiction. But now that they're older, they're realizing, look at the negative thing that we did and how do we catch that monster and bring it back into the cage and calm it down? And they don't know how to do that.

Technology has changed our brains

In "Whole Brain Living" I have a whole chapter on our relationship with technology and how technology over the last hundred years has shaped the anatomy of how we learn. And the boomer brain was much more left brain based and our society is skewed to the left, but the right brain became more prevalent as soon as our children's very first relationship was with technology.

The learning tools of technology is actually training our right brain instead of our left brain. Adults’ brains actually are neuroanatomically different from our childrens’ brain and how they've learned. And what that means is how they think, how they relate to the external world, how they relate to their own peers, how they relate to the older population – it’s different.

There's always been a generational gap, but this is a neuro anatomical generational gap and it’s new in the last a hundred years because of technology. 

So if any of your audience is interested in that level of conversation they really ought to pick up "Whole Brain Living”. 

We are actually at that cellular level, very different from our millennial children and then our generation Z and then the little alpha's coming in.

Lisa: Last question is always the same on the podcast, and that is: what are you consciously unplugging from right now? And what are you plugging into?

Dr. Jill: I live on a boat half the year out in the middle of a beautiful lake out in the middle of nowhere. So I have pretty much unplugged from the chaotic world that we live in. However, I do plug in through the computer, So I am very conscious about how much time I spend with technology versus how much time I spend doing my balance, which is nature.

So I live a very unique life. Literally six months of the year, I am out here in glory. Most of the week, I don't see another human being and unless it's through technology. And I'm very careful about my schedule and how much time on technology, because I know this, you know, this is big energy suck for me.

So I say yes to you, but what I'm saying yes to next is I will unplug completely and go soak my head in the lake and play. 

I have built this life for myself and I think that we have much more power over who and how we want to be in the world than we think we do.

I am living the life that resonates with my soul. And I think that ultimately that's the question: What are you saying “yes” to that resonates with your soul? Go live your life with your “yes”! 

Lisa: You're living with intention. You've created a life that supports the different characters in your brain and gives you pieces of what you want. 

Thank you Dr. Jill and everybody listening. 

Take care.

So many mic drop moments, right??? Go listen to the whole podcast interview now!