When I worked at This American Life, one of my co-workers, David Kestenbaum, reported a story on whether free will actually exists. In it, he talked about a friend of his who hit his head while ice-skating and sustained temporary amnesia. On the stretcher, his friend asked what had happened. His wife said, “You fell and hit your head,” and he replied, “That’s not how you want to leave the ice.” But a moment later, he forgot that entire exchange. He asked what happened again. His wife kept telling him. And over and over, he kept cracking the same joke: “That’s not how you want to leave the ice.” “That’s not how you want to leave the ice.” It’s a common symptom of short-term memory loss. Patients repeat the same stories, jokes, and questions over and over, with the same word choice and inflection, like a tape recorder being rewound and played again.
When it comes down to it, our brains are not so different from the most basic cells in their operational trajectory: stimulus, response. Our brains are mechanical objects programmed in such a specific way that if you input a certain stimulus, you will always get the same response. In his story, David talked about how quantum mechanics and probability validate this finding—that our circuitry leaves no space for randomness, for any different outcomes outside of what our programming dictates. And he interviewed a neuroscientist named Robert Sapolsky who wrote an entire book on the subject called Behave. Sapolsky explained to David the process of moving a muscle: “A muscle did something. Meaning a neuron in your motor cortex commanded your muscle to do that. That neuron fired only because it got inputs from umpteen other neurons milliseconds before. And those neurons only fired because they got inputs milliseconds before and back and back and back. Show me one neuron anywhere in this pathway that, from out of nowhere, decided to say something that activated in ways that are not explained by the laws of the physical universe, and ions, and channels, and all that sort of stuff. Show me one neuron that has some cellular semblance of free will. And there is no such neuron.”[9]
After reading all those articles about my brain, I relistened to David’s piece. It seemed to align with what I’d learned: that my brain is a predictable computer programmed by my experiences in childhood. One that does not divert from its code. Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. If input X, then outcome Y. So it is. Every time.
The problem with this premise, of course, is that whereas other children had programmers who fed their brains with love and kindness, my programmers were evil. My code is flawed.
My first instinct was to just delete the bug. Remove my terrible code from the system entirely. Briefly, ancient plans resurfaced: carbon monoxide and sleeping pills. But that would have its ramifications, too. My previous efforts to heal might not have fixed me, but they had woven me into this world, sewing me emotionally and professionally into a network of lives. I had friends who cared dearly about me, mentees who looked up to me. And Joey, of course. If I cut myself out of the web, I would leave a gaping hole that would hurt all those around me. And the whole point of this endeavor was to stop hurting people.
I guess I had to embrace the impossible. Goddamn it, what a task: I had to fight against fate itself.
CHAPTER 14
If the existential quandary was that I was trapped within the loop of stimulus, response and I could not change the responses…then maybe I could change the stimuli. Maybe I could hack my brain.
Quitting my job was a critical first step. Removing myself from the stressful stimuli of my boss snapping at me meant that I no longer had the accompanying problematic responses. I didn’t need to pull co-workers outside to smoke all the time. I didn’t need to complain about my boss over dinner with Joey every night. I didn’t constantly think I was the worst radio producer to ever live. So, that achieved something.
Next, I called neuroscientist and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions Are Made. She told me that our bodies have a limited number of metabolic resources. We need a certain amount of sleep and water and nourishment in order to think, to learn new things, to produce the correct hormones. If we don’t get all of those things, our bodies are “running at a deficit.”
But we don’t often understand what deficits we’re running at. We are not like The Sims, where we can see our hunger and rest and boredom levels represented as little progress bars at the bottom of the screen. Barrett said that when we’re dehydrated, we don’t necessarily feel thirsty—we feel exhausted. When we have something odd happening in our stomach, our body doesn’t quite know if we have a menstrual cramp or a stomachache or if we need to poop. We might not even be aware for a long period of time that our stomach hurts. And this isn’t unique to people with PTSD. It’s normal, everyday bodily dissociation that we all suffer from. If we find ourselves in a shitty mood, we might not necessarily be mad about a certain trigger. We could just be running at a metabolic deficit. Our body might be screaming “I NEED FUNYUNS” while we project our hangriness onto, say, this poor sweaty schmuck who’s breathing too loud in the elevator.
But Barrett said that PTSD does make these inclinations worse. It affects a variety of systems in the body, throwing them all out of whack. Our hearts might beat faster. Our lungs might pump harder. Our body budget can get tipped off-balance more easily. And when it does, our reactions to these deficits can feel outsized.
“Make sure that you get enough sleep, make sure you exercise, make sure that you eat in a healthful way,” she told me when I asked her what I could do to be a better person. When I countered that that didn’t seem like enough, she kindly offered, “You know, all you can do is take as much responsibility as you can. And sometimes it’s the attempt that matters, you know, more than the success.” Then she chuckled at herself. “That’s a very Jewish mother response!”
So, first step of hacking my brain: sustaining it with enough oxygen and nutrients. I adopted an aggressive diet that involved lots of chickpea pasta and cauliflower. I got an app that let me take fitness classes all around the city—Pilates, boxing, high-intensity interval training—and I took three classes a week. I filled my tote bags with nuts and dried fruit and chugged constantly from a giant water bottle. I quit drinking and smoking, cold turkey. I got eight hours of sleep every night and wore a Fitbit to keep me honest.
These efforts helped in some ways. I had more physical energy. My legs felt strong and capable. Exercise boosted my mood temporarily. But my psychic energy was supremely lacking. I could leap up subway stairs with a load of groceries, but I often still couldn’t get myself up off the couch to send an email.
One spring day, I was walking through a corridor of cotton-candy-pink cherry blossom trees on the way to the subway when I was abruptly beset with anxiety. I was sure I was forgetting something: Did I leave the stove on? Was I supposed to call someone? Did I have a doctor’s appointment I was missing? The recrimination was so strong, I wondered if I should turn tail and go home. But even though I didn’t know what triggered me or why this was happening, at least I knew one thing: This terror wasn’t coming from my body. My actions allowed me to assure myself that I was well rested, well fed, and healthy. This anxiety must have come instead from the dank alleys of my mind.
Well, I thought, I guess I better muster up the courage to walk inside and look for the source.
CHAPTER 15