Episode 71 Cognitive Flexibility and Emotions
Confusion and Executive Functioning
In this episode of the Executive Function Brain Trainer Podcast, hosts Dr. Erica Warren and Darius Namdaran explore the relationship between cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation. They discuss the concept of cognitive flexibility as a critical executive function and its role in managing emotions. Through the metaphor of the caterpillar's transformation into a butterfly, they explore the idea of imaginal cells and how they symbolize the potential for growth and change within us. This conversation highlights the importance of being the executive of your own life and using cognitive flexibility to adapt to challenges and achieve personal transformation.
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Erica: Welcome to the Personal Brain Trainer podcast. I'm Dr Erica Warren.
Darius: And I'm Darius Namdaran. And we're your hosts. Join us on an adventure to translate scientific jargon and brain research into simple metaphors and explanations for everyday life. We explore executive function and learning strategies that help turbocharge the mind.
Erica: Come learn to steer around the invisible barriers so that you can achieve your goals. This podcast is ideal for parents, educators, and learners of all ages. This podcast is brought to you by goodsensorylearning.com, where you can find educational and occupational therapy lessons and remedial materials that bring delight to learning. Finally, you can find Dr Warren's many courses at, learningspecialistcourses.com. come check out our newest course on developing executive functions and study strategies.
Darius: This podcast is sponsored by dyslexiaproductivitycoaching.com. we give you a simple productivity system for your Apple devices that harnesses the creativity that comes with your dyslexia. Hi, Erika. What are we going to talk about today?
Erica: This is a really interesting topic, and it has emerged in the moment, and we're going to riff it out without any plan and see where we go, which is going to be really fun. And I would love to talk to you about cognitive flexibility and emotions.
Darius: Yeah. And I think it's a big, really useful area. Like, when your emotions get stirred up, how do you respond to that? And cognitive flexibility is one of those executive functions, one of the three that help you deal with that emotional side. So let's go into that. We understand emotions going on inside of us. Normally, when we're upset or dysregulated is probably what we're talking about. When your emotions get dysregulated, you're either angry, upset, paint the scene for us, and then how does cognitive flexibility come into play? Because it's not something that someone will think, oh, cognitive flexibility will help with my emotions. It's not, a, logical connection, is it? I mean, it is for you, it is for me, but it's not for a typical person. So explain the connection.
Erica: Yeah, well, it's interesting because, you know, we've got inhibitory control. We've talked about working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility and emotions. That is, emotional regulation is typically under the umbrella of inhibitory control.
Darius: You control your emotions, you inhibit certain things, you direct your emotions. It's not inhibition per se. It's more kind of like channeling and directing and. Yeah, okay, right.
Erica: So, I mean, typically there are a few things that are under that umbrella of inhibitory control, and that is attention. Metacognition is often placed under the umbrella, and then, of course, emotional regulation. But what I've really come to realize is that a really powerful tool to helping us manage emotions when we get triggered. You know, we're kind of that reptilian brain, the amygdala is fight, flight, freeze, or, you know, we're just going through a really hard time in life where just, like, nothing's quite working and we're just struggling. I've really come to find that cognitive flexibility is a wonderful tool to helping us get through difficult emotional times.
Darius: Okay, so why?
Erica: Well, we're using one of the executive functioning tools to help you with another executive functioning tool, so. Because I think that cognitive flexibility is all about looking at things from another angle. And if we can pull ourselves, actually, we're not even really pulling ourselves out of the emotion. What we're doing is we're observing the emotion. So we're observing, oh, I'm frustrated, oh, I'm angry, oh, I'm feeling hurt. As soon as we're doing that, we're observing it, and we're not necessarily in the emotion. When we're in the emotion, there's not a whole lot we can do because we're kind of lost. We're lost in that feeling. And as we're lost in that feeling, we are continuing to trigger more of that feeling. So Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, discovered
00:05:00
Erica: that emotions are simply chemicals that are released in our body, and those chemicals only last 90 seconds unless we feed the emotion. So anytime, if you're angry, anytime you talk about it, you're feeding that emotion and you're giving yourself a new chemical wash, which just keeps that emotion alive. But the interesting thing is, what I find is that if I'm struggling with something, dropping into my body gets me out of the emotion. Dropping into my heart space gets me out of the emotion. But what really helps me to soften up and to get through something without having to wait for time, because time will pull us through all problems, right? But if I really want to drop into my best self, I can try to take new perspectives. I can try to look at whatever I'm going through from a different angle. That's cognitive flexibility. Right? So, if we can look at our situation from a new angle, if we can try to find a solution from multiple points of view, then what it does is it gets us out of the emotion. It gets us to analyze what's going on. Behind it. But I'm really loving, the more I explore cognitive flexibility, how powerful it is in helping us to manage our emotional state, because we can always say, hm. One of my favorite things to do in my coaching sessions is to just say, I'm curious, what if we flipped it? Whatever the problem is, what if we flip it and just look at it from a completely different angle? What could we get out of that? And one of my favorite coaching exercises that I learned was to take a situation and look at it from the perspective of five different. And it could be anything. You could be looking at a situation from the perspective of a sibling. You could do it from the perspective of some kind of godly figure, looking down. You could do it from the perspective of a couch. I mean, you can get really creative on, what perspective you want to choose. But it's very interesting because it gets us more into that ability to step into the conductor seat, to drop into our, as ifs likes to refer self is really your best self. You know, it's when you're most together, when you're really shining. Right? And that self that we all have is benevolent and kind and generous, and we all love living in self-develop. But I find that really using cognitive flexibility as a way to soften, do.
Darius: You think you could flip the cognitive flexibility itself and talk about cognitive inflexibility? Because if you want to understand one thing, you often look at the opposite. And I think sometimes our emotions come out of being cognitively inflexible. So in a way, it's kind of like, oh, I thought things would be like this, things haven't matched up to that, and I am really upset. So there's a mismatch between what you expected to happen, what happened, and so there's, and if you internally are saying, no, no, no, this has to happen like this, this has to happen like that, then you maintain that tension between the two. And there's no flexibility that creates emotion, doesn't it?
Erica: That's such an interesting thing for you to say, and I really appreciate that. I love flipping it and saying, all right, let's look at cognitive inflexibility. Instead of emotional regulation, let's look at emotional dysregulation.
Darius: Yes. And it could be that I think different people have a propensity to have strengths in these three areas of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. So I would say of, myself that I have a great deal, I think cognitive flexibility, and in a way, to my disadvantage, sometimes too cognitively flexible, maybe it's kind of like if you've got really flexible limbs, but then you're hypermobile, sometimes it can really not be so good being hyper mobile. But then if you're really not flexible and really stiff and tense and so on in your
00:10:00
Darius: body, then that can cause other issues, you know, and there's this balance needs to happen within that. cognitive flexibility. But I'm certainly reasonably strong in those areas, but not so great with working memory and not so great with inhibitory control. These are areas I have to kind of externally work on, either with tools, techniques, or training to strengthen those. Whereas cognitive flexibility, I'm just naturally cognitively flexible.
Erica: What's so interesting about this is if you, and I agree with you, I think you are very cognitively flexible. And I have two things that I want to explore with you. One is I want to understand what it means to be too cognitively flexible. But I also am curious about how could you use your cognitive flexibility almost as a compensatory strategy to help you with inhibitory control?
Darius: All right, interesting. Okay, so cognitive flexibility, how can you be too cognitively flexible? Well, so I think cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt fundamentally. If we took these three functions of our executive function, working memory is about capture and filter information. Inhibitory control is about focus, and cognitive flexibility is about adapt. So it's like capture, focus, adapt. If you had to simplify it to just one functional word, those would be my three, capture, focus, and adapt. We need these abilities to capture, to focus, and to adapt. But if you're not very adaptable, that can be a strength in some settings. We know these people who are not very adaptable, not very cognitively flexible. They're inflexible, they're like, this is my view of things. This is what we agreed. This is how it's going to work. This is the system. This is what's happening. Do not get in my way. And sometimes you need that. Sometimes it's kind of like that person, just get stuff done. Give them a system, give them a process. Make them a manager. They'll get stuff done. You know, or maybe not even a manager. Make them a technician. So if you think about it in three levels of a business, in a business, you've got technician, you've got a manager, and you've got an entrepreneur. Okay? You need a mixture of all three. And the technician is that person is like, this is the right way to build this particular thing. I know the technical process. We're not going to negotiate on it unless there's a substantial change in circumstances or material or whatever.
Erica: Well, and they really actually don't change anything. They follow the rules. You don't want them to be.
Darius: You don't want them to, because you.
Erica: Want them just to produce what you want them to produce. It's so funny that you said that, because when you were talking about this, I was thinking about the industrial age, and I was thinking about people that were just making the same whatever car part. It needs to be the right car part. You can't be messing with that because the car won't work. So you need people that are going to follow the rules and just stick.
Darius: With it and also be more precise and to be more appreciative of that mindset, because it's got a place. And that, is not just following the rules, but to be following the principles of science or more fundamental principles. I'll give you an example. Okay. This weekend, I had to fix my boat, okay? There was a particular little wire that was holding up my mast, okay. And it was starting to fray, and I was turning a blind eye to it, and I was thinking, it's okay. It's just one of the 16 wires. I can live with 15 of the 16. It's overpowered. Anyway. It's fine, you know? And then I looked at it again, oh, another one's gone. Another one's gone. And then one day I looked at it, and I got, oh, my goodness. Twelve of the 16 wires are broken. And I then looked at it more clearly, and I realized, you cannot go sailing on this. I'm like, there's a part of me who's like, we'll be okay. It's all right. It's not that strong. Or I'll tie some extra rope to it to strengthen it. And then the grown-up part of me is like, no, no, you're going to go against the law's principles of gravity strength. This is not good. Okay, you've got to stop. So I stopped, and I fixed it, okay? But it wasn't as simple as that. When I was fixing it, I thought to myself, ah, I think I might just adapt this part of the sale because I need to. I could maybe get a bit more tension in it, and I'll. I'll increase the gap here. And I came up with this clever, cognitively flexible solution to my boat that.
Erica: Could possibly get you
00:15:00
Erica: into big trouble.
Darius: Well, to enhance it, I mean, it was a really great enhancement. You know, I put it up. I did it. I started to. I said, right, I'm going to test it. I tested it, and I was like, oh, my goodness. It's swirling around the middle bit, and there's one particular function that's not wrapping the sail around properly, and it's going to get all twisted up. And I was like, ah, I get why that person designed it like that. I need to go back to the original design. So there's an example of me being really cognitively flexible there.
Erica: Really adaptive, or is that just being impulsive?
Darius: Oh, no, no, it wasn't impulsive. There was. No.
Erica: But you were cognitively flexible enough to flex back when you realized.
Darius: Yes, it was. Yes, absolutely, I was.
Erica: I'm not sure I agree with you that you can be too cognitively flexible.
Darius: Okay, maybe. Okay. In some circumstance, I think you can be too much of anything.
Erica: Okay. And I hear your point, too, and I think you're right in the sense that means you could be. You're so flexible that you can't even get anything done because you're always changing your mind.
Darius: case Ara. Yeah, well, just to check, like, my team are often really annoyed with me, you know, because two weeks ago, we agreed this kind of plan and this process and so on, and the team knows, right? We've got process. We're doing like this, and so on. Then I come along, and I follow a different process, and they're like, oh, hold on a minute. What's happening here? And Darius is talking about this, that, and the next thing, and I've noticed that look in their face when that happens. Very polite. And then I go, have I just sort of changed a process or a system here without realizing it? And they're like, yeah, Darius, we agreed we'd do x, y, and z in this order and so on. If you want to change it, then that's on you, no problem. And I'm like, oh, gosh, I've completely forgot about that because I'm so cognitively flexible. Part of my dyslexia is that I don't remember processes and systems, so I rely very much on being adaptive and flexible and improvising, and so it can come across like I'm, changing things all over again. Whereas, actually, for me, it's just like I've completely forgotten the process before.
Erica: Well, your process has grown and adapted and changed due to your creativity, but. Right. You have this staff that.
Darius: It's terrible. It's terrible sometimes. Okay. It's terrible because.
Erica: But it's also wonderful.
Darius: It's wonderful, but terrible sometimes. Okay, so, take this scenario, and it's a big issue for people with dyslexia, I would say, and ADHD, it's a big issue because let's say you're a chef, okay, and you cook something and you just improvise, and you give it to someone, they eat it, and they go, oh, my goodness, that was amazing. What was the recipe? And they're like, I can't remember. I just kind of made it up on my own. Well, could you do it again? They do it again, and they're like, they give it to you, and, they go, oh, that was really nice. But it wasn't amazing. Like, that moment, there was something about it, and you keep doing it again, hoping to get it and so on and adapting. So there are times when you come across something and you go, this is a great process. This is a great system. This is a great recipe. And if you don't take that moment to capture it as a note, working memory, focus in on it and say, this is what I want, and capture it, and you just rely on being cognitively flexible and adapting next time. Oh, it's all right. I'll create something amazing next time, and so on, and you probably will make something pretty decent, but there are moments where you strike gold, and you need to capture that. And what tends to happen is you can end up recreating the wheel over and over again and not actually moving forward. So I meet a lot of people who feel like, I know I'm pretty good at this, but I feel like I'm in this kind of loop, and I'm not getting out of this loop. And I would say it's a cognitively flexible loop that needs to turn into a kind of spiral that moves forward with these other two elements of working memory and inhibitory control, working with cognitive flexibility to move you forward.
Erica: And I love that image of the spiral moving out. Darius is moving his hands, and you can't see it, and it makes sense. So, yes, so that you're still moving forward. I think I had a realization when you were talking about this, that in order, I think it's wonderful to be cognitively flexible, but you have to make sure that you're using your higher level executive functioning skills while you're being extraordinarily cognitively flexible. My thought of it, because
00:20:00
Erica: what higher level executive functioning skills enables is it really pulls together those three skills of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, and allows you to plan, manage time, organize, and reason. So I would say I'm going to play a little devil's advocate for you. Is that I think it's fantastic that you are so cognitively flexible, and I think that's one of your genius qualities.
Darius: Thank you.
Erica: And I suspect that sometimes that gets a little out of hand if you're not using your higher level executive functioning skills to record your genius.
Darius: Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I think what tends to happen is if you're a neurodiverse, you tend to have a specialized brain in some kind of way. You know, you're, it's not like typical. Everything's reasonably average or reasonably good or whatever. You, you become extremely proficient in one area and extremely kind of not so good in another area and so on. And it's kind of like a truck is a highly specialized vehicle, like a road truck, a haulage truck. You're not going to use that in a park pathway where a bicycle might go. And a bicycle is another highly specialized vehicle. Do you know what I mean? And our brains are sometimes like that. Most people's brains are kind of like maybe a car, an SUV car or whatever, but then others might be a tractor, a Lamborghini, a, big truck digger, off road motorbike, whatever. You know, we have more sailboat mines. What?
Erica: A sailboat.
Darius: Sailboat, absolutely. Yes. Expand it into the. And I think the sailboat's a good analogy, too, because sometimes you can be the difference between a sailboat and a motorboat. And it's like, most people are motorboats, but then some people are like, what's wrong with my boat? It just doesn't motor along like everyone else. And someone comes along and says, well, actually, the, a sailboat, let's pull out the sails. And let me show you what happens. You pull out the sails and you go, oh, my goodness, this is fantastic. I can go where I can go and keep going and keep going and never needing to refuel because I've got the wind, do you know what I mean? But you need to navigate a different way if you're a sailboat than a.
Erica: Motorboat, and very different than if you are an automobile or even a, ah, kite or a plane. Right.
Darius: So let's go back to the emotions. Absolutely. And the emotions. So you've got emotion. You got emotionally dysregulated by some circumstances. Okay. And you've just gone through something like this recently, and we've all been through something like this, too. And one of the things that we can do in that setup is to think about what we expected, because I think the cognitive flexibility has a lot to do with what we expect?
Erica: Well, the cognitive inflexibility has a lot to do with what we expect, right?
Darius: Absolutely. And the cognitive flexibility is all about how we deal with what we expected, which didn't match to what actually happened. And we've talked about this numerous times with regard to cognitive flexibility. And I keep talking, I keep thinking about this as a map. You're constantly drawing a map of your environment, round about you understanding, your relationships, understanding expectations. People have of you, you have other people, the principles of this world, rights and wrongs, ethics, there's all sorts of dynamics where you've got this cognitive map of the world and you're trying to predict what's going to happen, what should happen. And when something doesn't happen the way, you expected it to happen, then there's some cognitive dissonance happening there that something's, that's not right, that's wrong, and there's emotion comes up as a result of that, and then we have to deal with it, because there's two aspects to that. One is, oh, that's not what I expected. Should I change my expectation to match reality, or should I change my reality to match my expectations? It's not always clear, and those are our choices, really. And that's part of cognitive flexibility. It's like, should I just change, oh, that's just the way things are and roll with it? Or should I be saying, no, this is what we set, this is how things should be, that we've got to make a change here, make the circumstances adapt
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Darius: to my expectations, and both are valid in different settings. And I think, for me, that's my way of understanding cognitive flexibility. What do you think of that?
Erica: Well, I like that. But I think cognitive flexibility is very interesting, because if you can truly take yourself out of your perspective, drop yourself into even completely opposing perspectives. Yes, it's the only time I'll bring this up, because, for example, I'm going to bring it up once. Donald Trump.
Darius: You're going to bring up Donald Trump?
Erica: Only for a moment. And Joe Biden, they're two very wildly different perspectives. Yes, I have a very strong perspective, and I'm not even going to tell you what it is.
Darius: Okay.
Erica: But if I were to look through the lens of somebody I disagree with, or an approach that I disagree with, if I truly drop into that intense cognitive flexibility, and I had to argue their point against somebody, anybody can do that. You can argue the opposition for the opposition. You can. Lawyers do it all the time. They may not even agree with what they're doing, but they will argue the opposition. There's something about it that softens you up a little bit.
Darius: It does.
Erica: And what it does is it unites you back into, instead of being in conflict, it builds compassion. And I love how cognitive flexibility builds compassion. And what is compassion? It's the antithesis of emotional dysregulation. And I find that to be really, really beautiful. And this is going to take me to a new place with you. We've never talked about this before, but I really wonder. I, think it would be interesting to tag where in our body. I mean, granted, the frontal lobe is where all of our executive functioning’s take place. Right? But if we were take it more symbolically, like, where would you put working memory if you couldn't put it in your brain and you had to place it into your body?
Darius: Oh, that's easy.
Erica: Where would you put working memory? Where would you put inhibitory control? And where would you put cognitive flexibility? I'm just asking you.
Darius: Okay, that's a good one. So the working memory for me is easy. That would be my hands.
Erica: Oh, that's lovely. That's lovely. That's lovely. I hadn't gone there.
Darius: That's where you capture and filter information. It's the same. And you've only got two hands, or maybe ten fingers. You can only hold just so much in your hands.
Erica: And you know what I would say my gut, my gut reaction was digestion.
Darius: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've talked about that. Mouth as digestion.
Erica: well, I was actually thinking of just like the whole intestinal tract, where your kind of absorbing all the nutrients.
Darius: Well, all that starts from your body.
Erica: And it's going into, instead of long-term memory, is going into feeding your body.
Darius: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Erica: But so, all right, so that's very interesting.
Darius: That's even better. That's even hands. into mouth, down into digestion.
Erica: Okay, so we'll combine them.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: It's a hand in mouth experience. Okay, so I like that. So working memory is your hands and your digestion, the digestive process. So what would be inhibitory control? That's harder one, right, yeah. Right, yeah. What is that?
Darius: Inhibitor control is the ability to focus on what's important.
Erica: Right, well, and also the antithesis of that. When people have attention deficit, or I like to call it attention surplus, I often say that they have an open aperture or that they're panoramic people because it takes the shame out of it, because they're absorbing everything.
Darius: So could it be your eyes?
Erica: Oh. Oh, but that's still on your head. Can you, can you, are you not.
Darius: Allowed stuff on your head? Do we know?
Erica: I guess we could. We could, but I was just like, magic.
Darius: Your mouth is on your head.
Erica: You're right. Okay. Okay, so we're going to go with the eyes. Maybe we can say the eyes and another part down below.
Darius: What about nervous system? Eyes connected to your nervous system.
Erica: That works for me because, again, inhibitory control has to do with emotional regulation. And when we're dysregulated, where do we feel it? We feel it in our nervous system. That's really good. All right, so your eyes and your nervous system is inhibitory control. All right, that's really
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Erica: good. Thank you for that. I like this. And what a fun activity.
Darius: And because your eyes are also directing where you're going, you know, you look where you're going. It's like the rudder.
Erica: You focus your attention.
Darius: Yeah. The eyes are like the rudder of your boat. You know where your eyes go, the boat goes.
Erica: Yeah. That's lovely. Okay, so I guess now it almost seems like we're hitting senses. Mouth, eyes. Cognitive flexibility is that also. Is that ears or nose? Let's think about that. And then where in the body could we find cognitive flexibility? It's a matter of shifting and pivoting. Maybe your feet or your hips or your neck. I think it would be more. No. if I had to pick another sense, I'd probably say nos. But even then, it doesn't really work that well for. But I do.
Darius: If you took this whole aspect of mapping the world around you, you know, cognitive flexibility is this ability to adapt to the world. And maybe it's like your skin, you.
Erica: Know, and the idea of, like, proprio perception. Yes, it is. I'm talking about.
Darius: I remember my wife showing me a picture of proprio perception at university, how different parts of your body sense things to different degrees of sensitivity. Is that what you mean?
Erica: Yes.
Darius: Oh, that picture. Have you seen; do you remember that picture?
Erica: I have not seen that picture.
Darius: So what they did was they draw the human anatomy. Okay? Eyes, mouth, tongue, nose, every part of you, according to how much it senses. So the less sensitive that part of your body is, the smaller it becomes in the picture, the more sensitive it is, the bigger it becomes in the picture.
Erica: Now, wouldn't it be different for everybody?
Darius: Well, no, on the whole, for most people, their tongues are absolutely massive, their noses are massive, their eyes are bulging out. They've got tiny little arms, huge hands, because the hands are sensitive, the feet are huge, the legs are my drift?
Erica: Yes, I do.
Darius: you can imagine the other parts, but it's all about what degree of sensitivity is embedded into that area.
Erica: Wouldn't that be. And I just looked up a definition. It says the body's sense of its position, movement and force. It's also known as kinesthesia.
Darius: Kinesthesia, yes.
Erica: It's like, yeah, it's largely subconscious, but humans can also be consciously aware of propria, perceptive information.
Darius: All right, so that does work. That's different from what my picture I was talking about of all the senses and the degrees of senses, people.
Erica: But that does work for cognitive flexibility in a way.
Darius: Does, yeah, I would, I'd probably go for skin.
Erica: How about we pick kind of two things? The digestive system. We had the, well we've got the.
Darius: Inner and the outer going on here, don't we? We've got the outer part of working memory, which is the hands bringing food stuff into your mouth and down into your inner part of your working memory. Digestion. We've got the outer part of your inhibitory control, the eyes and then directing it inwardly into your nervous system. And then you've got the outer part of your cognitive flexibility, which is your skin, which works into that proto.
Erica: Thingy that you talked about, which is the body's sense of position, movement and force.
Darius: Proprio perception. Is that what it is?
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: Okay, so yeah, that's how I would map them, I think, on my first go.
Erica: That's really interesting, isn't it? Yeah, that kind of changes it. It's kind of interesting how it kind of brings it into the, I like bringing things into the body. Well, it's interesting about this is that when we talk about executive functioning, it's such a cognitive thing that we can almost become decapitated thinking about it. You know, our body is just abstracted. Yeah, but our body can become like this vehicle of just that carries our brain around.
Darius: Right.
Erica: And there's so much wisdom to dropping into the body because the body can be so neglected by the brain.
Darius: You know, they're talking about AI and how the only way they can make the full breakthrough with AI is to embody AI. Because experiencing the world physically is actually the missing link in actually training AI to have a problem, proper understanding of the world round about them. But you can't just abstract it, you have to actually have that real world feedback. And
00:35:00
Darius: in a way that's that cognitive flexibility, that adapting to what's there. You know, I thought my foot should be able to go there, but it hasn't. Why not? So the computer's got to adapt to it in a way. Talking about cognitive flexibility in skin, let's just pursue that a little bit more because I think it is quite informative. Because if you think about when you touch certain things, it could be sharp, it could be, you know, soft, gentle. You know, sometimes you're like, oh, there's something not quite right with this. You use your sense of touch or whatever, and you can say, no. And that example I gave of this is the way things should be, and this is the way things are, which one's going to give, you know? And so you might be a leather maker, and you put your hand across some leather, and you can feel, oh, there's a stitch too high. That's not the way that things should be. And so you tighten that up and you make it match the way things should be. Or this is a piece of leather. It's not going to, this, is its nature. It's not going to fit in this part. So I'm going to move it and use it somewhere else. You know, that's a, a form of being flexible and adaptive.
Erica: You know, it's funny when you talk about that. It also makes me think about maybe it is kind of like a skin, but it's more like the skin of, say, a caterpillar or maybe a snake, because a snake can slough off its skin and get a new skin which feels like cognitive flexibility.
Darius: Or my skin all the time. I've got eczema. I've got skin shedding all the time. You should see beside my dance after Hoover all the time.
Erica: Oh my goodness. But that's an interesting concept because if you can be cognitively flexible enough that you completely shift and pivot and that you're somewhere completely new. An interesting example, I don't know why this is coming up, but it's interesting is if you say you've always had a Honda, and then all of a sudden you go out and you buy a BMW. You never really noticed BMWs before. You only really noticed Hondas because that’s what you had. But now suddenly you have a BMW. So you’re like, oh, my God, I can’t believe how many BMWs there are. Say you got a gray BMW. You’re like, oh, my gosh. You see every gray BMW on the road because you have kind of shifted and pivoted and you look at things differently because you now are like looking at the world through a, ah, different lens. But, you know, so skin, I like the idea of skin. But there's something about me that wants to add a little bit more of a metamorphosis into that. Like, if we can go through a m. Because we do. We're constantly going through these kinds of metamorphosis where we're changing, we're morphing. We're not the same, but we kind of are. Right? We have these realizations where we kind of. There are times where I feel like I come out and out of chrysalis, and I'm like, I've discovered my wings, you know? And then there are other times where you kind of morph into other things. But there's something about cognitive.
Darius: Yeah, please do tell you a story about a butterfly. And, to do with cognitive flexibility and metamorphosis that you've reminded me of. Okay. So a lot of people understand the metamorphosis of caterpillar, into butterfly, as this caterpillar eats lots of food, goes into the chrysalis, and then comes out with wings. Okay? Now, that's what we see from the outside. What's happening from the inside is really quite remarkable and different. So, from the inside, what happens is the caterpillar munches across the leaves, and the saliva comes out of its mouth and dissolves the leaves, and it goes into its belly, and that caterpillar rapidly grows. Okay? Then all of a sudden, something compels it to stop and to hang from the top, a branch, and it, a leaf. And it hangs from its mouth, and it starts to spin from its mouth. This spin, I'm not sure if it comes from its mouth. cocoon around itself. Okay. And then it continues to excrete saliva from its mouth. Okay? And it dissolves itself.
Erica: What does it dissolve?
Darius: It dissolves its whole body like it's dissolved a leaf. And what happens is. And this is crazy, okay? But it's true. Okay? Research, right?
Erica: I'm right here with you. I'm listening.
Darius: It's in this cocoon, okay? And it's sealed up, okay? And it continues to excrete the saliva. And the saliva starts to dissolve the whole caterpillar's
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Darius: body so that it is completely goopy. There is nothing liquefied. It's liquefied. It liquefies itself. It digests its own body.
Erica: I did not know this.
Darius: Yeah. And every single cell gets broken down into its constituent parts, except for six imaginal cells out of hundreds of thousands of cells, and there are six imaginal cells. I think there might be eight. Six or eight. Okay. Now, if the caterpillar is going to turn into a butterfly. This is the moment it's going to live or die. Those imaginal cells then start to pull the goop around them, and to start transforming it into. And they're called imaginal because they have the image of the butterfly encoded into those six cells, and they start to pull the different parts of what was the caterpillar into those imaginal cells, and it rebuilds that whole butterfly out of those six cells. And then that butterfly is inside of that cocoon. It is the same caterpillar, all the same substance, but completely liquefied, and then rebuilt from the ground up from these imaginal cells. And then that butterfly is fully formed. It's got its body; it's got its wings and so on. And then it presses against that cocoon and splits that cocoon. And that force of pressing the wings against it starts to strengthen its wing muscles. It stretches out of the cocoon, case hangs from it, takes a breather, and then it flies as a butterfly. And that's the inner story of a butterfly. I’m think sometimes when you look at the inner life of the soul, and we talk about the desert of the soul, or this inner life and inner transformation and so on, sometimes you can look at a person caterpillar, they end up in the cocoon. Oh, we went through a hard time, but now I've got stronger. Oh, you've got some wings, like. No, no, no. I just didn't, I didn't just get some wings stuck on. I was utterly melted and then rebuilt from the ground up. Now that is what metamorphosis is.
Erica: Yeah. So we m definitely don't go through. I think some people may claim that they've gone through a metamorphosis. I think there are times when people, they may have cancer and their whole body shut down and then it regenerates. So I think there are times when we go through metamorphosis, and there are just times where we're cognitively flexible and we shift and pivot. But it doesn't necessarily mean a metamorphosis that's a bigger, that's like the biggest possible cognitive flexibility.
Darius: Absolutely.
Erica: But I've seen people that have literally changed their whole personalities. Yeah, everything.
Darius: And it's often, you know, I think the closest analogy is I've seen people who've gone through the dark night of the soul, right?
Erica: They've liquefied themselves and rebuilt themselves.
Darius: They've not done it deliberately, but it's happened, and they've gone through the dark night of the soul and come out the other end, and not everyone does. And what happens is that when people have gone through this dark night of the soul, now we're gone. This is not where we expected to go. But what happens is you're making so much progress. You're growing, you're getting really fast. It feels like you just go on and you're just going to become this enormous caterpillar and take over the whole world or whatever, become the kingpin or, I don't know, whatever your dream is. And then, bang. All of a sudden, everything seems to stop. Like this caterpillar suddenly stops, and inside of it, it has to hang there, and it goes, I don't understand. Why am I not eating? Why am I not moving? But it continues to do what it was doing. And then it feels trapped inside of this cocoon, feels locked in. It used to be able to roam around and move all over the place. And it's like, why am I trapped like this? I feel like I'm in prison. And then what happens is they're not just trapped, but they go, oh, my goodness, I am being undone. You know, I am being, undone from the inside out. I am just dissolved. My soul is being dissolved. I am being broken. And then what happens is, if you have those imaginal cells inside of you, those imaginal cells take hold of those broken parts and pull them back together again in
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Darius: a way that they weren't before, and then you come out as the butterfly.
Erica: Okay. So that's a lot more than just cognitive flexibility.
Darius: Yeah.
Erica: That is the will. The will to fly. I can think of lots of corny things I could say right now, but that's really interesting.
Darius: I think the imaginal cells, I love that.
Erica: I want lots of imaginal cells.
Darius: Yeah. so the main question in all of this dynamic is, what are the imaginal cells in your life? Yes.
Erica: yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. That is beautiful.
Darius: Are the imaginal cells in your life? And we need to answer that for ourselves now. Am I. You talked about yourself, the self in this family thing. I can't remember the name of it. Ifs.
Erica: IFS, yeah. Internal family systems. So self. I would imagine that imaginal cells reside in self.
Darius: Yes, they do, I believe. And what happens is, if you allow your broken self to connect with those imaginal selves, then the imaginal cells can grow. And so another way of looking at this analogy is to think of imaginal selves as your dreams or as your vision of yourself or your passions, your goals, or whatever. So if we're talking about executive functions and just land this plane into a place that makes sense and isn't just in woo woo land, but it's like, I believe executive function is basically the ability to get important things done. And what is important is determined by you as the executive of that situation of your life. You are the executive of your life if you choose to be. Now, not everyone is the executive of their life. Some people are very happy being the technician of their life or the manager of their life, but not the executive. And I think more and more, it's more important for us to become the executives of our lives. And to become the executive of your life means to take hold of the tiller of that boat and be the captain of that boat and suddenly have that responsibility. You've got no mum or dad to blame, no wife or brother or husband or whatever who's telling you what to do, necessarily. I'm not saying that you live in isolation from other people, but there are certain areas of your life that you just say, this is on me now. I am in charge of this. I'm responsible. I'm here to serve. This is the direction that I'm going. This is where I'm meant to get to. And you become the executive of that aspect of your life. And that takes a different skill set. And part of that skill set is the ability to imagine where you're going to say, this is how I picture us landing in that port or getting to that destination or getting that result. This is important. What, I'm dreaming about, what I'm imagining, this is important, and I'm bringing it into reality by imagining it and adding all this energy and knowledge to it or substance to it, and it grows into that thing, and they're called.
Erica: Imaginal cells, which just makes me so happy because, and you were talking, you were using the word imagine, and I want to make it longer and turn it into imagination. Because when we use our imagination, that is tapping into our core, right, our core self. And it's tapping into, like, that sweet sauce, that little sweet sauce that is a part of our essence and what we can contribute to this world.
Darius: Hold on a minute. I like it but let me just adapt that a little bit. What if the saliva. Okay. Or the goop is the imagination. Because sometimes the imagination, you know, because you see, the imaginal cells, if you're looking at them from a cellular point of view, are called imaginal cells because they have the image, the DNA of the butterfly. Okay. All the other cells have got the DNA of the caterpillar.
Darius: And the imaginal cells have got the DNA of the butterfly. Now, yes. You need the imagination to sort of bring that about. But there's something about the DNA. You know, it's written, it's inscribed, it's encoded. There's something encoded there.
Erica: Yeah. And you can think of, even just in yourself, when you find something that you knew you were meant to do.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: You know, for example, I am taking this course on ifs. It's a form of therapy.
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Erica: Internal family systems. I love it so much. And on a cellular level, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm meant to do this. And that feels like a little bit of tapping into those imaginal cells, right, where you have this certain resonance, and you're just like, oh, my God, this is it. This feels so right. I feel so me. This is so amazing. It just resonates with me on a cellular level type thing, you know what I mean? And that's when we find our passions. Executive functioning is something that just resonates with me on such a cellular level. I love talking about it. I love remediating it. I love exploring it, you know? And you do too. But that, sense of, I think.
Darius: It’s about becoming the captain of your own ship, about being the executive of your own life and being happy, of.
Erica: Where it's where you're going, taking control. That's what executive functioning is all about, is, you know, we don't have to sit in the backseat. And if we are experiencing things, we don't have to be passive. We can be active.
Darius: So we have got in this analogy of the butterfly or the dark night of the soul. Okay?
Erica: Yeah.
Darius: And investigate the dark night of the soul, because not everyone goes through it, but when you go through it, it is something else. You know, if you've got this sort of. And I think this process of metamorphosis can happen to different parts of us. Not the whole part, the whole caterpillar. So I love that different parts of us that are being, growing, growing, growing, developing, then bang, hit a wall. All of a sudden you feel like you're constricted. Things are breaking down, dissolving. You're confused. Why is this not going in direction. I thought, everything seems to be breaking down, but it's not spilling all over the place. and then I think it's at that moment, and this is the cognitive flexibility and the emotion. Okay, hear me out. Bear with me, listeners. There's a part of you that needs to give the substance of what's being broken to the image of what you're pursuing. And when you give it as a gift to the imaginal cell, the imaginal cell takes it and transforms it, but it needs to be given as a gift. The imaginal cell doesn't take it. It has to be given over. it's like a gift. And so sometimes it can feel like, oh, my goodness, things are going wrong. I'm breaking. Things are not how I expected. Can you imagine how that caterpillar feels in the middle of that? They're like, this isn't meant to be happening. This is raw. I'm a caterpillar. I'm meant to be eating leaves. I'm meant to be getting bigger and fatter and more me. That's what I'm meant to be doing. And then all of a sudden, this complete shock of a whole different state. That's cognitive flexibility in that. It's like, I'm going to stop resisting this. Imagine inside of that caterpillar, there's a tiny little voice of the imaginal cell, and the imaginal cell whispers, says, hey, you're a butterfly. And the caterpillar goes, no, no, no, I'm a caterpillar. They're like, oh, you're a butterfly now. You're going to be a butterfly. You're meant to be a butterfly now. They're like, no, no, no. I've seen these butterflies. They fly around the place. I don't fly. I eat leaves and so on. And then this voice is like, you're a butterfly. You're a butterfly, butterfly. Till finally the caterpillar realizes, my goodness, maybe I'm meant to be a butterfly. And then it gives itself over to the image of the butterfly that is embedded deep down inside of it, and it gives itself over to that and starts to be transformed. If it does not do that, it dies. That part of you dies.
Erica: Can caterpillars resist? I don't know if you know this information or not, but I wonder if caterpillars can resist the. I don't think so.
Darius: But there are a number of caterpillars whose imaginal cells fail, and so they.
Erica: Don’t turn into caterpillar do they to a butterfly? So do they die in the chrysalis.
Darius: Or do they die in the chrysalis because their imaginal cells didn't take, like, a seed, didn't grow inside of them? So basically, the goal is to make that imaginal cell take root. Okay? And the substance of that future butterfly is actually the dead body of the caterpillar. So sometimes the substance of our future dreams is the dead body of another dream.
Erica: What
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Erica: we were, what we were, and.
Darius: What we thought, you know, and. But actually, that was just the acquisition stage to get the substance of what is a higher level for them.
Erica: Right. So all of these difficult times. Well, you know, there's, of course, that expression that's so overused, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Yeah, but yeah, these are all building blocks. Well, it's your choice if you're going to step into the captain's seat, right. You can become stronger from all adversity.
Darius: I suppose in the butterfly analogy there, you could say that the captain's seat is the whole caterpillar, as it were, all its substance. And it says, actually, I've realized I am a butterfly. I'm meant to be a butterfly. I don't look like one, but I'm meant to be one. I can hear it inside of me. We're going to give everything we can towards being this butterfly, and we're going to grow this thing in this dark, secluded place. And that is executive function, as it were. That's the cognitive flexibility, to say. The higher-level meta function is this ability to say, this is where we're going. This is what's meant to be. This is who I am, and this is the direction we're going. And pulling all of the resources towards that. And that, in this analogy, is the imaginal cell, is that highest level metacognition, which is, this is who I am, this is what I'm going to be. Let's pull everything towards that.
Erica: Well, yeah. And when thinking about internal family systems, it's about getting back to self.
Darius: Yeah, I suppose using the internal family system, having read the book with your recommendation, I would build that into this analogy. That's my thing. I like.
Erica: And you were using parts a lot.
Darius: So imagine the different parts of the caterpillar, okay, are starting to feel like they're breaking down and things are going wrong. Okay. And they're like, hold on, hold on a minute. You know, we can't have this going on. We can't. We need to get that saliva out the way. We need to stop this brocaine breaking down. We need to and protecting the caterpillar, because there must be a process in the beginning where the caterpillar starts to sense different parts of it starting to be digested by its own saliva. Isn't that.
Erica: It's shocking.
Darius: Staggering, you know.
Erica: Oh, some of the things that happen in nature, and, of course, they're all just, a metaphor and a reflection of everything else that's going on, but its mind blowing.
Darius: Yes. And so your body and your internal family systems, these different parts of you that have experienced things that are, like, now I'm going to protect you from this ever happening again. What they can do is they can protect you from the imaginal self. And that's basically what they're doing. They're saying, don't go near that. We're not sure about that. You know that all sorts of stuff in here have gone wrong. We just got to stay in this bubble here and stay safe and, preserve what we've.
Erica: I could go with that analogy as long as the imaginal cell is like a, hurt inner child.
Darius: But.
Erica: But that doesn't really work, because I kind of see the imaginal cell as just this really beautiful seed.
Darius: It's the seed itself.
Erica: Right. And the parts are actually protecting an exile within yourself.
Darius: But what they're often doing is they're protecting it from the self as well. You know, like, the nature of these different parts is to stay as, self-contained as possible. Whether it's from the outside or whether it's the self. It's like, no, leave us alone. We're just going. We're in lockdown here. We're safe in this zone here. Don't interrupt us. Don't get in the way. Whether itself or something nasty, whether it's good or bad, it's just different. Don't change it.
Erica: Threat.
Darius: threat. And I think that's where a lot. I'm not an expert, but I think a lot of this conversational thing is like, okay, I am safe. I'm, yourself. I'm, who you're meant to be. But, you know, let's have a talk about this. I'm going to start acting. You can predict I'll be safe, et cetera. And gradually, they let down their walls. The self-part of you can come in, and at that point, the self will start asking for the substance of who you were and build it back up into who you're meant to be using. That internal family system analogy and then meshing it with caterpillar. I mean, for me, this whole caterpillar story was a very important metaphor for about three to four years of my life when I knew I was going through that process.
Erica: Wow, what a really fascinating conversation. We went on quite a journey together
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Erica: today, and it was all spurred in the moment. We had no notes. We went down a rabbit hole, and what a fascinating rabbit hole of exploring emotion and executive functioning, and in particular, cognitive flexibility.
Darius: Yes. And I think at the heart of it all is the imaginal cell. Who are you imagining yourself to be? Who are you on the inside? Who are you going to be? Who are you becoming? Attaching those parts of you that maybe through the cognitive flexibility, maybe things happen wrong, something goes wrong, and it makes you emotional because it didn't match your expectation. Well, the way you bring it back to what's meant to be is not bringing one to the other but bringing one to the imaginal self to bring it to. Oh, this is an opportunity to adapt this situation, to actually propel me towards who I'm meant to be. So maybe there's a bit of a piece broken off. Then instead of insisting it has to stick back on exactly here, that's an opportunity to stick it to actually, this is an imagine. This is the image of where I'm meant to be going in the future. This is my direction. This is an opportunity to stick it to that and adapt to that.
Erica: Drop into self, drop into your heart, you know?
Darius: Have a vision, have a vision. Have a vision. Have a picture of who. step forward.
Erica: Yeah. Oh, what a beautiful conversation. Thank you for this, Darius. Good food for the soul. Thank you for joining our conversation here at the Personal Brain trainer podcast.
Darius: This is Dr Erica Warren and Darius Namdaran. Check out the show notes for links to resources mentioned in the podcast, and please leave us a review and share us on social media until next time. Bye.
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