We need to try not to overdraw our body budget

Recently I've been writing about a book that I'm enjoying a lot more than I thought I would, Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.

It's dawned on me that in the course of sharing ideas from various chapters I found compelling, I've largely neglected to make clear the importance of a key concept in the book: that of our body budget.

This was a new notion to me, and I don't claim to fully understand it even after reading Barrett's description of it. But here's some quotes from her book that give a good overview of what the body budget is all about.

Your body-budgeting regions play a vital role in keeping you alive. Each time your brain moves any part of your body, inside or out, it spends some of its energy resources: the stuff it uses to run your organs, your metabolism, and your immune system.

You replenish your body's spending by eating, drinking, and sleeping, and you reduce your body's spending by relaxing with loved ones, even having sex. To manage all of this spending and replenishing, your brain must constantly predict your body's energy needs, like a budget for your body.

...Your body-budgeting regions make predictions to estimate the resources to keep you alive and flourishing, using past experience as a guide.

...Whenever your brain predicts a movement, whether it's getting out of bed in the morning or taking a sip of coffee, your body-budgeting regions adjust your budget. When your brain predicts that your body will need a quick burst of energy, these regions instruct the adrenal gland in your kidneys to release the hormone cortisol.

...Withdrawals from your body's budget don't require actual physical movement. Suppose you see your boss, teacher, or baseball coach walking toward you. You believe that she judges everything you say and do. Even though no physical movement seems calls for, your brain predicts that your body needs energy and makes a budget withdrawal, releasing cortisol and flooding glucose into your bloodstream.

...Stop and think about this for a moment. Someone merely walks toward you while you are standing still, and your brain predicts that you need fuel! In this manner, any event that significantly impacts your body budget becomes personally meaningful to you. 

...To perturb your budget, you don't even require another person or object to be present. You can just imagine your boss, teacher, coach, or anything else relevant to you. Every simulation, whether it becomes an emotion or not, impacts your body budget.

As it turns out, people spend at least half their waking hours simulating rather than paying attention to the world around them, and this pure simulation strongly drives their feelings.

I'm finding this body-budget concept to be useful in my own life. It fits with the metaphor used for the title of a book, Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, which I wrote about in "No lions? Then relax. Especially if you're a zebra."

If a lion starts chasing a herd of zebras, their body budget predicts that they're going to need a release of energy for running away. But if zebras remained in this state of heightened arousal, with such a large withdrawal from their body budget, they'd be in bad shape. 

So zebras quickly go back to grazing on grass after a lion attack, because they need to replenish their body budget. Lucky them. We humans, on the other hand, often fret and worry about a stressful event for a long time after the event has passed.

If this happens repeatedly, we can find ourselves in a chronic state of anxiety or depression, which Barrett says is the result of prediction errors.

When we're anxious, we're predicting that bad things are going to happen even though there is little or no actual evidence of this. Thus we can get into a state akin to zebras imagining lions about to pounce even when no lions are around. This leads to excessive withdrawals from our body budget.

When we're depressed, we try to reduce the need for a deposit into our body budget by remaining still, cutting way down on our activities, staying at home, ignoring friends and family, which leads to a feeling of fatigue.

Everyday language echoes the notion of a body budget. "I feel drained." "I'm overflowing with joy." "I'm running on empty." "Your words filled me with hope." 

This evening I watched results of the runoff election in Georgia between incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker. 

Being a political junkie, and knowing the importance of this election for confirming judges, conducting investigations, and doing other business in the Senate for the next two years (a Warnock win would give Democrats a 51-49 majority), I found my mood rising and falling as the results were reported by MSNBC over the span of three or four hours.

At first Warnock was way ahead, since Georgia counts early and absentee voting first, methods favored by Democrats. I felt great! Then Walker -- an absolutely horribly unqualified candidate -- moved ahead as conservative counties released their vote tallies. I felt awful!

Finally, the liberal-leaning urban areas around Atlanta finished counting their same day votes and Warnock was declared the victor. I felt really great! So my body budget was rising and falling even though I was doing just about nothing physically. My mind was predicting how I'd feel if I had to watch Walker blunder his way as a Senator for the next six years, versus how wonderful I'd feel if Warnock won.

The human mind is a marvelous result of evolution.

However, that marvel has resulted in mental abilities that can easily go awry. For our modern malady isn't being chased by predators on the African grasslands, but having to cope with psychological stresses caused by our ability to remember problems from the past that we worry will recur, and imagine problems in the future that we worry will occur. 

Which is why I've taken up the habit of saying to myself, "No lions," when I find myself fretting unduly in the absence of clear reasons to do so.

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

These last few posts were very interesting. Lots of food for thought in here.

Two questions popped up in my mind as I read through this, that perhaps you could clarify ---- provided Lisa Barrett's touched on them elsewhere in the book, I mean to say.

(1) Is that actually true, the zebra thing, and that more general argument? Is it actually true that animals don't suffer stress like we humans do? I kind of doubt that. In entirely different contexts, for instance when it comes to animals "farmed" in inhuman conditions, I vaguely remember reading that they often die simply of heart attacks induced by stress.

Two qualifications as far as that example: first, it's vaguely remembered, and I may have misremembered parts of it; and second, given that the inhuman treatment is a constant, while actual lion attacks are occasional even if lion threats are constant, therefore the analogy isn't a perfect one.

Still, those qualifications notwithstanding, I think the overall argument/question holds ---- is it actually fact that animals don't feel stress the way we humans do, that is to say stress not directly when something bad's happening, but even afterwards, or maybe in anticipation? I don't think we can default to that assumption, absent actual resarch and evidence. Just because we see the zebras are grazing right after fleeing lions, doesn't mean that their hearts aren't thumping away inside of them. After all, it isn't as if human beings don't sit down to "graze" at the dining table even when generally stressed.

Not saying she's wrong, but wondering if she's actually right about that, about the Zen Zebras.

(2) The "No lions" would be apposite in a largely stress-free environment, but few are blest with such. Even if one isn't necessarily under constant threat of bombs hurled by crazy megalomaniac dictators, like the Ukrainians are, still, people often are faced with a host of other kinds of lions. Stressful situations at work, or at home, in their neighborhoods, whatever, I mean actual threats and challenges not just those manufactured by a neuoritc mind. The cortisol response would be quite apposite in those situations, which I'd say is the lot of most folks, even if it is unhealthy for the body.

So that for most people the what-to-do thing would be twofold: first, change your circumstances such that the cortisol thing is no longer necessary at all times (and not everyone can do it, no matter how self-aware they may be); and second, and once that first is achieved, then, sure, as you say, do the "No lions" mantra thing, to keep an overactive neurotic mind from unnecessarily shooting cortisol all over the place.

What I'm saying is, you can't skip the first step and jump directly to the second, not as a general prescription.

[Kranvir]

There is this one man, gurinder Singh dhillon who is the leader of a satanic cult, named RSSB, who has an insatiable body budget in the form of an over inflated ego of himself. He loves power, he loves to control and he truly loves himself and his own sons, and no one else. Why else has he siphoned billions from his own blood nephew's and his family are living life as a king and a God while the rest suffer. Why else is he overly aggressive to neighboring farmers, instructing his own RSSB sevadar to beat them up in India. Nothing will stand in the way from him and his massive ego as he even murdered his own wife so he could be pardoned from court cases - a kind of ritualistic sacrifice for the benefit of saving his image and the RSSB empire. Gurinder vessel is controlled by none other than kaal, jot niranjan who uses him to create a physical empire and humans untold suffering. Your days are numbered gurinder Singh dhillon, you will face your time in prison sooner than you think - you are a king of sex demons.

[Not complaining]

@Kranvir

I can’t even remember the five names (thank God!!!). 😂

This body budget discussion is fascinating on so many levels. I have MS and am constantly concerned with how to most effectively use the energy I have been given in a day. That said, I’m grateful that I don’t suffer as much nerve pain as many MS patients report. Also, and almost bizarrely so, I find I am a much better steward of my daily energy/body budget now that I fully appreciate its finite nature.

“I’m sleeping in a comfortable bed. I’m surrounded by loved ones. I am blessed. I am grateful.”

That mindset seems to almost always provide me with even more energy.

[Not complaining]

J
O
R
S
S

(I think those are the first letters of the “Five Names”).

The mysterious “Five Names” (like they should make a mocumentary series about them).
🤣 🤣 🤣

So bizarre how superstitious human nature can be. 😅

[Ron E.]

What I appreciate about Barrett's' work is how she points out that where it is assumed that there is some discarnate entity within 'running he show', the various mental processes (that produce emotions, mind, self etc.) are the result of the brains' neural networking.

Here Barrett points out, that we use up our body-budget merely thinking about a situation and causing the brain to predict that the body needs energy – just as though the situation was a physical threat. She mentions: - “As it turns out, people spend at least half their waking hours simulating rather than paying attention to the world around them, and this pure simulation strongly drives their feelings”.

Indeed, we do seem to spend a lot of mental energy dwelling on irrelevances – it is a habit and one that can be addressed. Whether its feelings, emotions, thoughts etc., or maintaining a 'self' structure, deconstructing the self through the practice of meditation awareness with the effect it has on the brain could help. (Brian's previous blog and deconstructing the self).

I'd guess that most animals do have stress, though it is more likely to be physiological whereas we humans (along with physiological stress) have a great deal of psychological stress. Stress is the body's method of reacting to a condition such as a threat, challenge or physical and psychological barrier. Stress is primarily a physical response. When stressed, the body thinks it is under attack and switches to ‘fight or flight’ mode,

[PascalsPager]

Speaking of our evolution from the African Grasslands, our ancestors weren't eating grass. They were meat eaters. Hominids have been mainly meat eaters for the past 5 million years. And therefore, no conversation about our body and brain evolution must neglect the topic of our ancestral diet.

And yet, we do neglect it, definitely so.

Let's take Gurinder Singh. Whatever you think about Gurinder the Guru you must admit he's a very smart guy. And yet, smart as Gurinder is, he follows a vegetarian diet that has given him diabetes.
In a recent video, Gurinder remarked that he must eat 3 times a day or he'll "get sick" from diabetic consequences. Were Gurinder to give up his veg diet (most of which converts to sugar) he'd have avoided diabetes and could heal himself of this disease. But he chooses to ignore what we know about human ancestral diet and keeps eating the grains and vegetable oils that have crippled millions of people throughout India with diabetes and other ailments.

In another video, Gurinder replied to a question about the sufficiency of the vegetarian diet by saying "look at hippos, they don't eat meat and look how strong they are." An absolutely ludicrous comparison of the human system with that of a completely different mammal. But how many satsangis and other yoga people who follow veg diets agree with Gurinder's notions of nutritional science? Probably most of them!

Anyone who is familiar with any school of Sant mat knows that the #1 moral rule of that religion is the vegetarian diet. Everything else can be qualified, but not eating meat is a moral must. And yet, to put it plainly, vegetarianism is not our natural diet, and vegetarianism is the cause of major health problems -- not least of which is dementia brought on by a diet rich in sugars and low in protein.