Episodes

What is moral injury, and how can we use it as a path to cognitive flexibility, sense of purpose and forgiveness? In this episode, we explore the following: - what is moral injury - what is morality and how it can be used to improve energy efficiency and resilience of the human species - how forgiveness and flexibility help us activate highly sophisticated and evolved neural mechanisms - that brain activations that are different in trauma compared with moral injury - how the human species ...

Attachment theory is not a 'theory'.. it's a part of our neurophysiological operating system Attachment is a way of seeking proximity to an attachment figure. It’s a biobehavioral adaptation that helps us regulate ourselves and explore new frontiers. This in... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 11 – The Neuroscience of Attachment and Emotion Regulation appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Have you ever had the experience of feeling like someone really ‘gets you’? This can take various forms - like being able to share what’s on our mind and the other person holding space for us to explain. It... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 10 – The Science of Feeling Understood appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Why do systems fall apart or become dysfunctional? A system can be a family, relationship, community, business, organization, society. The human mind-brain-body is also a system. One reason dysfunction can happen is related to hierarchy and ‘signal flow’. Hierarchies exist throughout nature and throughout human society. Hierarchies are best able to serve the system when there is efficient signal flow from subsystems to the higher levels and vice versa. We can see dysfunction happen when the...

In this podcast episode, I talk about something called ‘shifting the burden’. It’s about the topic of what we depend on ourselves for, and what we look to others to help us with. The balance of our dependence on ourselves and others - whether in adaptive maladaptive ways - is based on our first experiences with depending on someone. Many of us simply don’t know how deeply emotional of a subject this is. It is one of our most primitive, primal CORE-to-the-CORE experiences of being human… a battl...

Normal is based on historical data. It’s based on what has happened the most often in the past. Our past ‘normal’ can make it easy to not question if there is more that’s possible in terms of wellbeing and a deeper sense of meaning for our life. But what we really, truly, deeply need to understand is that the ‘normal mode’ of consuming and doing the same combination of movements day after day without challenging our brain-body to higher and higher levels of creation and exploration is not NATURA...

When we focus on trying to 'fix' dysregulation without acknowledging how it emerged, we are conveying a message that somehow the anxiety or overreaction just ‘appeared’ because of an imbalance in their brain and that distress, dysregulation and anxiety are... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 6 – Why are humans so anxious? and the dark side of mindfulness appeared first on StefanieFaye.

The formation of self-identity and group identity through the lens of hyper-coherent networks, key features of what makes a system resilient. (remember - your brain, your relationships and human society are all systems). To help systems become more flexible and innovative, we need to understand the mechanisms of change. A mindset or paradigm shift is one of those mechanisms. A level higher than that: being able to rise above paradigms altogether*. This is what can free our mind to experiment...

The human species has some pretty spectacular systems built into us to achieve mental, emotional and physiological states that most of us are not even really aware of. We also have systems and features within us that make us very vulnerable to being influenced and 'programmed' into behavior that is not reflective of our most evolved neural circuitry. Technology is interfering with and manipulating those systems. And the more we get to know how technology is interfering with those systems, the...

What do a viral video and a stampede of animals have in common? It's a mechanism that is also related to 'self-fulfilling prophecies', self-beliefs, anxiety and negative thinking in general. It has to do with something called 'positive feedback'.... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 3 – Feedback Loops appeared first on StefanieFaye.

One of the most complex adaptive systems we know of is the brain*. When we are trying to understand a complex system, one of the most important things for us to think about is its function. ... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 2- Your Brain’s Predictions and Paradigms appeared first on StefanieFaye.

This episode focuses on the idea of systems thinking, and how we can use this 'lens' or paradigm as a way of expanding our thinking so we can see new ideas for solving challenges in our life and in... READ MORE The post Season 2 Episode 1 – Systems Thinking appeared first on StefanieFaye.

“What matters is not how things are, but how they interact.“ – Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist, in his book, Reality is Not What It Seems ​​​​​Relationships are the key to building our most powerful mind. Our relationships with others build... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 12 – “Relational Minds” appeared first on StefanieFaye.

No two people ever experience reality in the same way: our senses and neural architecture are built up by our own lifetime of unique experiences. Our brain and senses are constantly narrowing down our world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 11 – This is what happens to your brain when you add diversity to your life appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Most growth mindset interventions don’t work because they focus on: changing ‘other people’s’ attitudes rather than on the mindset of the person who is teaching or leading catchphrases & posters rather than relationship & trust specific results, like improving standardized test scores* *this is literally the... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 10 – Can you make people ‘willing’ to change their mindset? appeared first on StefanieFaye.

In order to teach growth mindset, we need to be sure it’s coming from an authentic place. It seems that much growth mindset teaching is focused on changing the attitudes of others’, rather than looking at how we internalize and... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 9 – How to be more authentic when you teach growth mindset appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Have you ever had a misunderstanding over text? Maybe you texted someone and they didn’t reply right away.. or their answer left you feeling rejected or frustrated? Do you know why you feel the urge to put an exclamation mark... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 8 – Toxic Media: How social media impairs your brain, nervous system and relationship skills appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Earlier studies on fixed vs growth mindset reveal how we build bias and stereotypes. The original wording used by Carol Dweck and colleagues before they popularized ‘fixed versus growth mindset’ was ‘entity’ versus ‘incremental’ mindsets. Dweck’s research (included the idea... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 7 – How fixed mindset leads to bias, stereotype and prejudice appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Sound may be the most important sense we have for learning as well as for detecting others emotions. The human ability to hear ‘just noticeable differences’ is significantly more powerful than what our eyes are able to detect... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 6 – The importance of sound and how it affects our wellbeing appeared first on StefanieFaye.

“Feelings can annoy or delight us, but that is not what they are for […]. Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social condition of our lives.” -Antonio Damasio, The Strange Order of Things... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 5 – Self-Regulation: the remarkable skill that will make you a better human appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Summary: In this episode, we look at how neuroscience can help us explain: why so many people react to life unconsciously (not ‘on purpose’). Understanding this helps us get to the root of our issues, instead of repeating our reactions... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 4 – A Sense of Purpose appeared first on StefanieFaye.

There's a lot of 'old science' out there. Stuff we used to believe that has been de-bunked. Things like... 'humans are more complex than other species, which means we have more genes.' Before the Human Genome Project was completed in... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 3 – The science most people keep using is wrong appeared first on StefanieFaye.

"It's not merely that we can't be loving or creative when we're scared; we can't heal." -Stephen Porges In order for us to access our most evolved neural and behavioral resources, we must be in a state of physiological... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 2 – Psychological Safety, Resilience and the Vagus Nerve appeared first on StefanieFaye.

Listen on iTunes Old, outdated science said that the human brain basically stopped developing in childhood and there wasn't much we could do to change it. What we got was what we got. But we now know that that... READ MORE The post Season 1 Episode 1 – Neuroscience of Growth Mindset appeared first on StefanieFaye.