Lizard TAIL Sighting!

We interrupt this lizard tale program to bring you lizard tails: ignorance masquerading as wisdom. What do you think?

I decided to take a little risk and post what I see as lizard tails (my first post explains this simile in more detail). I recently scrolled past a video on a different platform that got me stirred up, so I’m sharing it with you all to see what you think. First, I’ll mention that this creator has half a million followers. So, something they’re saying is resonating. For me, though, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. I feel a lot of different emotions in reaction to what amounts to be empty, banal information that seems to connect with folks.

This makes me feel sad and angsty that folks may be desperate for any encouragement as long as it’s said in an inspirational way. I also feel hesitation at the idea of challenging the veracity of claims and potentially undermining content that helps people microdose hope. At the same time, I’m not sure if it’s ok to say inaccurate things, even if people feel good hearing it.

I’ll share some snippets, followed by my concern, and you can let me know if the ends justify the means. In discussing anger, the creator states:

“Being pissed off feels powerful, but it’s frying your brain: Chronic anger floods your system with cortisol, and that shrinks your hippocampus, and that messes with your memory and tanks your impulse control.”

Who is the audience here? Is it violent individuals who experience anger combined with a penchant for violence? Then by all means, throw every possible resource at them for the sake of their victims. Or if, as I expect, it is aimed at regular folks for whom anger is a reasonable response to threats in their world, then I think it’s a problem to say such things.

Lizards and Tails

1. Cortisol is released when angry, which is a form of stress, stimulating various nervous system functions. In moderate amounts over brief periods, it is highly adaptive. The dose and duration matter, but there is not a known amount or duration that is toxic to everyone in the same ways.

2. Enough stress, over a long enough period, wears on these systems. Stress, like cortisol, is dose-dependent and is modulated via perception.

3. One of these systems is indeed memory, and a key structure involved in memory is the hippocampus. The hippocampus has been identified as one of the most “plastic” brain regions, meaning it experiences higher than average potential for neurogenesis than other regions. But plasticity is also a two-edged sword, such that the hippocampus is also vulnerable to cortisol.

4. Being “pissed off” can feel not only powerful but also like weakness, depending on the person. Typically, anger is a threat response, so it’s often more useful to reflect on what the threat is that’s fueling anger.

5. There is no “frying” going on in the brain in response to being angry. This implies that people are self-inflicting brain damage because they got angry. It completely ignores the resilience and adaptability properties of the nervous system.

6. Neurotransmitters and hormones (like the glucocorticoid cortisol) don’t “flood”; they are released, and often it is the sustained presence that causes harm more than the volume.

7. Getting angry does NOT “tank” your impulse control. Anger itself is rarely the problem; it is the behavior that immediately follows. The folks I’ve worked with over my career fit the classic externalizing and internalizing of emotion-based action patterns. Externalizers seek an object upon which they can aim their emotion-based behaviors, whereas Internalizers turn their emotions and subsequent behaviors inward, on themselves. The majority of folks tend to be internalizers.

“Most people think that anger is a natural release… it isn’t; it’s not release, it’s rehearsal.”

“Every time you replay the story, you replay the same brain loop, and neurons that first together, wire together; that’s Hebb’s Law. You’re literally practicing rage.”

Lizards and Tails

1. Alliterations can feel exciting but are empty calories. Anger is a natural, neurobiologically wired-in response to threats but is a poor moniker. What we term anger is a call to action for self-protection, especially related to a boundary crossing.

2. “Brain loops” is another example of figurative language with limited empirical support. Anger and rage should not be conflated; they are different.

3. Rehearsal is indeed a limited thinking pattern that can aggravate certain emotions. It’s better to quickly write down what happened, listing the facts (that any reasonable observer would see) and then the feeling associated with that fact. Later, you can evaluate how factual your “facts” were.

4. In the video, the creator emphasizes “law” in Hebb’s Law. Hebb’s Rule is a thing; it’s also far more complex than this truism implies. It also underpins both habit formation AND change, because Hebb also said that neurons that fire apart, wire apart. By the way, neuroplasticity is at work in almost everything in our lives at every moment as we respond to our behaviors and environments.

“The real reason you stay pissed off gives you a hit of certainty in a world that feels unpredictable”. “But that hit costs you focus, sleep, and long-term brain health”

Lizards and Tails

1. Predictability only enters the system through behaviors, including thinking.

2. “Being” and staying” “pissed off” should not be conflated.

3. No one knows the effects of anger on long-term brain health, as we live in a multi-causal world.

“What you need is a U-turn. Here’s the method:”

Incoming Lizard Tail Warning: a 3-step method to fix yourself. Those 9 words are indeed priming our nervous system to experience a reward.

Step 1: Name the loop. Anger activates your amygdala, which is your brain’s alarm system. Labelling the emotion moves processing to your prefrontal cortex which is the part of your brain that thinks before it reacts…naming the feeling is your first act of power.

Lizard Tails everywhere!

1. Anger does not activate the amygdala – this is totally backward. We perceive a threat, mostly outside of our awareness, and the amygdala, as one component of the threat detection and response systems, activates bodily experiences that we label. Anger is simply one of those labels.

2. Labeling is a linguistic tool that can move us toward more cognitive processing. For all practical purposes, the prefrontal cortex is involved the whole time, evaluating the action plan developed by the basal ganglia, which is initiated by the HPA and SAM axes, of which the amygdala is one part. Labeling is only useful when it’s done accurately. In other words, “I feel angry” is indeed labeling, but the more meaningful step is to label what’s underneath (e.g., fear, sadness, vulnerability, loss, etc.).

Step 2: Breathe like you mean it. Long slow exhales signal your vagus nerve to downshift your nervous system. 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out. Repeat 3x

You’re not suppressing anger; you’re rebalancing brain chemistry

Lizard Tails

1. Half-truths may be my biggest concern: breathing can definitely help, but guess what the hardest thing to do is when perceiving a threat? If you cannot breathe or cannot remember to breathe, then what?

2. Ground yourself using something else: literally touch the ground, look for 10 red things in the room, or squat down or otherwise change your field of vision. This does not “rebalance” brain chemistry – it’s already doing exactly what it was intended to do. There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling this way. (More on homeostasis and allostasis later).

Step 3: Move the energy. Anger is adrenaline that needs somewhere to go. Physical movement burns cortisol and rewires your stress response faster than just thinking about it.

Lizard and Tails

1. Anger is not adrenaline. The threat response includes the release of adrenaline (SAM Axis; Sympatho-Adreno-Medullary Axis). Movement doesn’t “burn” cortisol; movement does provide an outlet for leftover energy, but that can only happen when the threat appraisal has started to clear; if not, then the behavior will be impulsive (hitting the wall versus doing 10 jumping jacks).

2. Movement does not “rewire” anything. The time to activate synaptogenesis is before the event; once it’s here, it is about minimizing harm to self (and others, of course). This is the hardest part: to practice new ways of being without the urgency of the moment.

Here’s the takeaway: you stop being pissed off by using biology not willpower. Name it. Breathe it. Move it. Done…

Lizard Tails: This makes no sense: biology versus willpower. And of course, here’s the pitch:

I have a manifestation program and an app, and inside there is a community, and we’re upspiraling our lives together.

The thing that drives me crazy in the social media space when it comes to therapy and neuroscience: Lizard→Lizard→Lizard→Maybe Lizard→Maybe Lizard→Ugh, Tail

I’m curious what you think?