How to Be Human

by Ruby Wax

  I remember the feeling, but what I remember even more was being on stage with remarkable actors like Alan Rickman, Zoë Wanamaker, Jonathan Pryce, Richard Griffiths, Michael Hordern and others who were or became famous. All of them could do English accents, mainly because they were English. Mine was very Dick Van Dyke, and I recall the looks I got from my fellow actors when I delivered my lines; they actually winced. I even had a rolled-up note thrown at me during my performance from another actor on stage with me that read, ‘You can’t act. Get another job.’ Sometimes when I spoke my Shakespearean lines, I winced at what was coming out of my mouth. When I spoke the Bard’s words, it was like a dull, dead drone. I practised for hours in my dressing room – ‘La la la la ta ta ta ta ga ga ga, meeeeeeeeem, beeeeeem, leeeeeeeem’ – and yet my accent didn’t change. That’s what I remember, far more than the letter offering me a place and congratulating me on having got into the RSC. To this day, the memory of that rolled-up note is much more poignant. I have always been Velcro for the negative.

  We create our own whips with our thinking. What makes us most stressed is not the actual situation but the thoughts that accompany it. As Hamlet says in Act II, scene 2, ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.’ Hamlet and I agree on this point.

  Inner Theme Tunes

  I just want to make a point here. I always think it’s so pretentious when people use quotes, especially at dinner parties, to show how intellectual and well-read they are. They’ll say something like, ‘Speaking of fish soup, I remember Marcus Aurelius said, “Blah blah blah …” ’ Coincidentally, I am one of those people, so here we go with another quote, and there will be many more. Marcus Aurelius wrote, ‘Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.’ How come nobody knows this stuff except me, Marcus, Hamlet, Buddha and Plato?

  The Point of All This

  I don’t know about you, but for me the realization that thoughts – and particularly the negative ones – are just another by-product of our evolutionary survival kit helps me accept myself, mental warts and all.

  What a liberation it is to find out my negative thoughts aren’t my fault. Free at last!! They’re pre-recorded from Mommy, Daddy, genes, evolution and experience. Negative thinking comes with the package, just as your legs do when they won’t run as fast as you want them to or can’t take you over a hurdle and you don’t start berating them, do you?

  The Monk, the Neuroscientist and Me

  As promised in the Preface, I’m going to welcome Thubten (Buddhist monk) and Ash (neuroscientist) to explain how the mind and the brain interconnect. Ash can explain both the brilliance and the shortcomings of the brain and Thubten can tell us what to do about it. So, take it away, boys …

  Ruby: Here’s an easy one, Ash, why do we have thoughts in the first place? What are they?

  Neuroscientist: It sounds like such a simple question! I think what you mean by thoughts is the internal voice, the way you talk to yourself about your own ideas, who you are and what you want. That’s right at the centre of what we mean by ‘consciousness’. But we get into trouble with thoughts about thoughts – rumination.

  Ruby: And what does Thubten think of thoughts?

  Monk: Well, Buddhism is traditionally called the ‘science of mind’. It’s all about the study of the mind itself. We’re looking into the nature of thoughts and the mind which is thinking those thoughts.

  Ruby: So, Thubten, you think about the mind and Ash thinks about the brain. I heard that the brain is the piece of meat and the mind is the information that flows through it. Do you guys ever cross paths?

  Neuroscientist: There’s a bit of a love affair between neuroscientists and Buddhists. Buddhists have been studying mental function in detail for a very long time, and neuroscientists get pretty excited about that. The questions are the same but the methods are different.

  Monk: Exactly. It’s an exciting interface.

  Ruby: Are you guys flirting? Okay, here’s the million-dollar question: where are thoughts in our brain? Where do they reside?

  Neuroscientist: ‘Where’ can be misleading in the brain because we’re almost always talking about large networks rather than specific areas. So when we look at thoughts that we’re aware of, when we speak to ourselves with an internal voice, we’re linking parts of the brain that do language, like auditory cortex, with parts that do self-awareness, like –

  Ruby: Don’t get too fancy, I want people to read this book.

  Neuroscientist: But you asked me the question! I’m a neuroscientist, the answer is going to be complicated. Hearing your own thoughts requires both language and self-awareness, so you’re talking about the dominant temporal lobe and the medial frontal cortex, mostly the cingulate cortex. That network creates a sense of self, so you recognize that the thoughts are your own. If the network doesn’t work, like in schizophrenia, you hear the voices but can’t recognize them as your own. The voices will seem to come from someone else.

  Ruby: I love when you talk brain to me. Thubten, what’s your view on all this?

  Monk: We can study the nature of thoughts through practising meditation or mindfulness. Thoughts don’t exist in the way we normally think they do, so that blows the question of ‘where’ out of the water. The whole point is to see that we’re bigger than our thoughts – so we don’t have to be so glued to them, or controlled by them. There’s an old Tibetan saying: ‘When you run after your thoughts, you’re like a dog chasing a stick. Instead, be like a lion: turn around and face the thrower. You only throw a stick at a lion once.’

  Ruby: Ash, I wrote earlier in this chapter about how we’re the worst critics of ourselves. What is the point of having thoughts that make us so miserable? At least I’m grateful you can’t hear what I’m thinking.

  Neuroscientist: How do you know I can’t? I’m a doctor, after all.

  Ruby: I’m pretty sure you can’t hear channel ‘me’ because you’re on channel ‘you’. If you ever heard what I’m thinking, you’d run for the hills. There’s a lot of self-flagellating going on because I know you’re a neuroscientist and I’m not. I’m scared you’ll catch on that I know very little. Those are mine; what are your thoughts?

  Neuroscientist: I worry that what I’m telling you isn’t funny and I’m going to come across as dull and boring.

  Ruby: What about you, Thubten? Do you have critical thoughts, even though you’re a maroon-wearing monk?

  Monk: Yes, I’m worried that if I don’t come up with the goods, you’ll dump me for the Dalai Lama.

  Ruby: I was thinking of doing that but he’s not free. What’s with us? I still want to know why are we so self-critical. Ash, do we have some sort of asshole gene? Nothing to do with the bum. Just asking.

  Neuroscientist: If we’re using the word ‘gene’ as shorthand for some biological tendency that we’re born with, then I think yes. Our brains have a tendency to focus on error signals; to focus on the negative. That may be something we’ve developed to survive.

  Ruby: Well, where is the asshole gene exactly?

  Neuroscientist: The asshole gene is the self-critical bits of the brain, the parts that do internal monitoring. Those are regions like the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate and the insula.

  Ruby: But why do we need those parts? Life is tough enough.

  Neuroscientist: Because those parts activate error signals, which are there to help you. So, for example, you’re walking down the stairs and you think you’ve come to the bottom step but your foot continues to go down a bit too far. Your brain generates a big error signal that grabs your attention and stops you falling. Error signals work like stop signs, so you can figure out what’s wrong and do something different.

  Ruby: I can understand there’s a part in your brain giving you, ‘Oops, maybe I’m going to fall down the stairs’ but why do I also add, ‘I’m such a klutz?’

  Monk: The problem is we have that error signal and, on top of th
at, judgement and self-criticism. This seems to be especially prevalent in modern society. When the Tibetan lamas first started coming to the West in the sixties, they were shocked at the levels of self-hatred and guilt that so many people here suffer from. In the Tibetan language, there’s no word for ‘guilt’. In fact, in Buddhist cultures, children are brought up to believe that the mind is naturally good.

  Ruby: What if, in the West, we left out the word ‘guilt’ and didn’t teach it to kids? Would we not feel guilt?

  Neuroscientist: We’d definitely be better off. Our brains may stop and notice our mistakes, but if the culture doesn’t push it then guilt may never come into play.

  Ruby: If we gave monks the word ‘guilt’, would they feel it after a while?

  Monk: A lot has to do with upbringing. I think children in the West are told ‘no’ a lot of the time. Maybe our parents are so stressed that it’s just easier to say ‘no’ a lot. Traditional society in the East tends to be more of a ‘yes’ culture. If children hear the word ‘no’ often enough, they grow up believing they’ve done something bad, haunted by this internal voice, ‘You’re wrong’ or ‘You’re bad,’ and that who they are is something to be said ‘no’ to. We’ve grown up with the feeling that there’s something wrong with us.

  Neuroscientist: I had a lot of guilt as a child. It’s probably the intersection of an American Midwestern culture, which is pretty puritanical, with an Indian culture where children carry the burden of their parents’ aspirations. I suppose that, as an adult, that guilt is at the root of a lot of my self-criticism about something being wrong with me or whether I’m working hard enough. But can I go back to the asshole gene for a minute?

  Ruby: Maybe because you feel guilty you want to change the subject. Okay, go back to it.

  Neuroscientist: I think in some ways it’s not bad to be self-critical, because it warns you that something isn’t right. Your internal voice grabs your attention so that you analyse the situation. When you’re feeling happy and things are going well, the internal voices are quiet.

  Ruby: Why don’t you notice the nice voices? You’re so right. I’ve never gone, ‘Wow, I am so gorgeous, I could date myself.’

  Neuroscientist: When you’re feeling happy, you’re not doing a lot of analysis about how you’re feeling, you’re just feeling. But negative thoughts are different. They signal to the brain that there is a problem and resources should be dedicated to fixing it.

  Ruby: So, if I had a life with no negative thoughts, what would I be thinking about?

  Neuroscientist: I think you’d just be being. When the brain isn’t worrying and you’re just at rest, it’s neither happy nor sad, it’s just whirring away. Thubten, is that what mindfulness is?

  Monk: Mindfulness isn’t just the absence of negative thoughts, it’s about finding a completely different relationship to thoughts, negative or positive. Whatever you’re thinking, the aim is to just notice the thoughts without judging them, and then they don’t have so much power over us. The point of learning mindfulness is to reduce our suffering; and the reason we suffer is because we believe our thoughts and therefore we’re constantly being pulled into distressing mind states.

  Ruby: So, are you saying we’re all natural-born sufferers?

  Monk: We tend to be what I call ‘nego-centric’, made worse because the culture we live in constantly makes us feel we’re ‘lacking’ – we’re not beautiful enough, thin enough or driving the right car. There are various ways in which we suffer. We could talk about four major types of stress: not getting what we want, getting what we don’t want, protecting what we have, losing what we’re attached to.

  Ruby: That’s me. All four of those.

  Monk: And they just continue. The wanting creates more wanting, and it creates a feeling of deficiency or lack.

  Ruby: So, what do you do about it?

  Monk: It takes training. That’s what mindfulness is for. You see it arise, learn not to grab on to it and, because you don’t make a meal of it, it can begin to dissolve.

  Ruby: I guess we’re born with the ability to stand back from our thoughts and not give them bad reviews, but we forget to do it. Same as we’re all born with a pelvic floor but we don’t use it. Do you agree, Thubten?

  Monk: I don’t know what a pelvic floor is.

  Ruby: I’m not going there, I don’t want to ruin your life. Ash, do you think you can hold back from judging?

  Neuroscientist: I’m very judgemental. In general, judgement and evaluation are central to how the brain works. But there is a gap in time between perceiving something and judging what it is and what it means. For example, when you see an object, it might take something in the range of fifty to seventy-five milliseconds to start to see its colours and shapes. It takes up to two hundred milliseconds before your brain can name the object and associate that name with meaning and value.

  Ruby: I heard it was about 201 milliseconds.

  Monk: I heard it was 199.

  Neuroscientist: I’m pretty sure it’s two hundred. Maybe the goal of mindfulness is to intervene after those first seventy-five milliseconds, to just see what’s in front of you before naming it or evaluating it. I imagine that could be possible with training and practice.

  Monk: And it’s the same with thoughts. Mindfulness trains you to pause in those early milliseconds when you notice a thought, before you start evaluating and judging. Then the thought will control you less, and you can start to make wiser choices.

  Ruby: So, I’d just notice I missed the stair but I wouldn’t need to then tell myself I’m an idiot for missing it.

  Neuroscientist: Right. You can develop a habit like that. You have the thoughts but you don’t get wrapped up in the commentary.

  Ruby: So, what part of Thubten’s brain stops him from getting caught up in judging and commenting? If we skinned Thubten’s head, what would we see?

  Monk: I’m already skinned, I’m bald.

  Ruby: Not enough. I want to know what his brain looks like after all that mindfulness?

  Neuroscientist: Well, studies show that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex becomes more active in experienced meditators. That part of the brain is involved in stopping self-criticism and judgement. The more you practise taking control of your thoughts, the more effective that part of your brain gets.

  Ruby: So, the idea is to bulk up that part of the brain so we can pick and choose our thoughts, like you do with Spotify?

  Monk: Yes, with mindfulness we can start to understand which thoughts are helpful and which ones make us suffer, and we strengthen our ability to let go. We’re not usually our own boss; our mind often goes to places we’d rather it didn’t, or it won’t do what we want it to. But now we’re getting into the driving seat.

  Neuroscientist: That makes sense from a brain perspective, but how do you actually do that? What are you doing when you’re practising meditation?

  Monk: When you notice your mind getting caught in a whirlwind of thoughts, you can gently bring your focus to one of your senses, such as breathing or sensations in the body, using these as an anchor. It’s like getting in the driving seat and driving that car back to base.

  Neuroscientist: Okay, but how does that help stop your runaway thoughts?

  Monk: Because you can’t be focused on thoughts and breathing or sensing at the same time. And when you get good at this, your thoughts are going to control you less. Eventually, you won’t need an anchor to bring you back, you can just observe and let the mind be without needing to interfere in it.

  You’ll find the relevant mindfulness exercises for thoughts in Chapter 11.

  3

  Emotions

  Gloria Steinem wrote, ‘The truth will set you free. But first it has to piss you off.’

  What’s the Matter with Emotions?

  If it wasn’t for emotions, we’d never need shrinks or meds. Sometimes they’re what make us suffer, even more than physical pain, which is why we spend a lot of our waking hours trying to bury or r
un from them. They rise up from within and we’re held hostage by them until they decide to slink away. We can build telescopes that allow us to see a star 345,678,803,940 light years away (I’m not an expert in this area, so the numbers may be slightly wrong), but do we have any control if we fall in love with someone twenty years younger than us with the brain of a fruit fly? No, we do not.

  The fact we can’t figure out how to be happy feels, to many of us, like a personal failure. If you don’t believe me, go to the self-help section in any bookshop. If you lined up all the books on how to be happy, they would circle the equator fifty-seven times. You’re even supposed to feel happy on your birthday, which is the most miserable day in my calendar, along with (Happy?) New Year. Happy about what? All of us whizzing faster towards extinction? What makes me deeply unhappy is the feeling that everyone else has figured it out. This feeling of helplessness creates a kind of background buzz of discontentment, along with a slash of envy.

  Thank God: Medical Help

  If emotions do become overwhelming, they can be dealt with because, luckily, some biologist in the second half of the twentieth century was looking for a cure for tuberculosis and accidentally tripped upon the recipe for antidepressants. Around the same time, some guy in Australia found that the lithium he was feeding guinea pigs made them docile (why he was giving them lithium I do not know) and, accidentally, he discovered bipolar-disorder medication. To this day, there are very few manic-depressive guinea pigs, which is a good thing; they were getting too crazy, zipping around on their running wheels for months on end, buying thousands of pounds worth of food pellets and selling them the next day. Soon afterwards, scientists found that tiny molecules transported to the brain could banish anxiety. Hello, Valium! Welcome, Xanax! These are still very popular emotion squasher-downers.