Heather Berlin

For the benefit of us all, exactly.

They're the ones who are gonna taste that fruit and see if it's poison or not.

Absolutely.

So something that I kind of prescribe to patients, especially people who are risk-averse as well, so they kind of are avoiding things too much, is to kind of take these micro risks where your brain is just making predictions all the time about what it expects.

And you have to kind of change this algorithm.

And you do that by training it, by actually being a little uncomfortable, letting yourself do it where it's not overwhelming, where you're flooding.

It's called flooding, where it's just too much.

But you feel a little uncomfortable and your brain starts, and then nothing bad happens.

Your brain starts to learn, okay, you know, discomfort doesn't mean danger.

Right.

Let's say you're afraid of taking elevators.

Maybe you just... I say, okay, you're going to take just the elevator one floor and get off.

I know it's going to be uncomfortable.

You're going to feel... But after that, you're like, oh, nothing bad happened.

The brain starts to change its prediction and that alarm response, the amygdala, it starts to go down.

And that's how you gradually train yourself.

And if you take someone like rock climbing or free soloing where...

you don't just start out climbing El Capitan.

You're doing it little micro risks over and over where every time you do it, you feel a little bit safer and a little bit safer.

And then you build up to these things where- So you expand the comfort zone.