Are Your Coping Mechanisms Healthy? | Andrew Miki | TED

what do you think is a connection between a pigeon's ability to count and human mental health the answer has to do with learned behaviors when I was on the path to becoming a clinical psychologist my career veered in the direction of animal cognition and Neuroscience I found myself teaching pigeons to count using a process called shaping you start by giving it some food every time it looks at a touchscreen this creates Connections in its brain that become stronger over time even as the rules become more complex so just like teaching a dog to stay I

eventually trained the pigeon to Peck at a red square when it saw two flashes of light and a green square when it saw three I now had a pigeon that could count this process happens gradually day after day until that learned behavior becomes comes a habit I've worked in mental health over 25 years and I've learned that just like the pigeon our brains reinforce certain habits or coping mechanisms that help us feel better in the moment I've seen thousands of Educators healthcare workers and First Responders rely on coping mechanisms like procrastination overusing their smartphones or

working harder through a tough time this can backfire and train them to become anxious and depressed for example do you scroll endlessly on social media instead of getting to that task that fills you with anxiety or dread or late at night you get a dopamine hit when you click on the next episode button procrastination can feel good at the time but oh the next day is going to be a real grind these coping mechanisms help us feel feel better in the moment so it is not crazy that we do them but if we kept repeating

them and wonder why we're still stressed or anxious or burnt out then what we're doing might be insane insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different response now we might not be aware of our own insane patterns but chances are we all have them myself included the good news is that if we understand our unhelpful coping mechanisms we can all unlearn them to improve our mental health now I'd like to share with you what I've learned from being a father my awesome daughter in Italia is now a teenager but

luckily for her having a psychologist as a father means that I've worked hard to shape the connections in her brain so she understands that the '90s Grunge music is the absolute peak of all music ever my goal is for Natalia to be self-confident because I've never had a patient with clinical anxiety or depression also have high self-confidence at the same time anxiety erodes confidence we tend to overestimate the amount of danger that we're in and underestimate our ability to cope with depression we end up beating ourselves up to the point that we feel worthless and

hopeless but as people overcome depression and anxiety their self-confidence grows they begin to talk to themselves like a coach instead of a Critic to see how threats can become opportunities about 5 years ago Natalia desperately wanted a smartphone but I saw this as a threat to her self-confidence while she would plead her case over dinner I'd lean over to her and say hey do you generally feel pretty good about yourself and she'd say yeah are you anxious no not compared to some of the people I know well all of the research shows that the more

kids are on a smartphone the more anxious and depressed they become so do you want to be less confident and more anxious then i' watch her face change from that youthful optimism to the cold reality that it just wasn't going to happen once Natalia finally got her smartphone I could see how she was becoming like many of us who use it as a coping mechanism to seek reassurance for example imagine you're meeting a friend for dinner at 700 p.m. and they haven't arrived you start to worry am I in the right place did they forget

are they okay as the uncertainty increases you start to feel anxious you fidget you feel butterflies maybe a little uncomfortable eventually you pull out your phone to get reassurance by texting your friend where are you when they respond just pared your worry and anxiety is washed away and you feel better now if you set that with that discomfort and uncertainty you'd strengthen your resilience to anxiety there's a network in our brains that's like a muscle it gets a workout every time we sit with anxious Sensations and worrisome thoughts but most of us don't sit with

it instead we look for reassurance and instant relief by texting so just like the pigeon that learned account our smartphones can train us to become more anxious every time we use them to seek reassurance the danger of our coping mechanisms is that they make sense at the time but they go undetected until we hit a perfect storm a time in our lives when it seems like everything is going wrong and the energy in our internal batteries becomes depleted for example let's say over the past 6 months Natalia's friends have treated her horribly she got cut

from her soccer team and our family dog died this perfect storm depletes her internal battery to 40% and she no longer feels like herself when she gets a bad report card Natalia will revert to another coping mechanism to work harder through a tough time this has helped her succeed in the past but with a depleted battery she just can't get things back on track this reinforces negative thoughts what's wrong with me oh nothing is working I'm such a [Music] loser every time Natalia has these thoughts the self-critical muscles in her brain become stronger her self-confidence

crashes and her depression grows if Natalia is like most of us what can we do to break these patterns and improve our self-confidence well if it was physical fitness we'd all have to start moving more the mental Fitness equivalent is to talk more the issue is that there's still a lot of stigma attached to mental health we tend to keep our struggles to ourselves because we're afraid that we'll be seen as weak or incapable we need to change this narrative by talking more about the issues in our lives by talking we UNC cover are in

helpful coping mechanisms and that awareness is the first step to unlearning them now here's the sobering truth mental health is complicated and nuanced you are all unique and your behaviors have been shaped over a long time so I can't tell you what's best for you in your situation without knowing more about you instead I hope to inspire you to take the time right now to learn more about yourself and you can start by asking yourself these two questions first what do you do when you feel stressed anxious or sad and second have these feelings gotten

better or worse over time if the answer is worse then you're relying on an unhelpful coping mechanism just like the pigeon that learned to count our brains have an amazing capacity to build new connections and unlearn unhelpful Habits by trying something new it could be learning new strategies like sitting with your anxiety breathe to take the edge off or my favorite balance your thoughts to become more self-confident it all starts with us talking more about our own patterns of insanity and admitting that we all have them even us '90s grunge psychologists thank you