- Stefanie Faye

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Stefanie Faye

You can use communication to create more of your desired future, or to repeat problems from your past.

How you communicate is based on a variety of mental models and predictive algorithms.

You can improve how you use communication by updating these algorithms. This will help you experiment and get better at saying what you really want to say... to express your needs, your future vision, your desires in ways that get closer and closer to how you feel and what you want to create in your life.

This is one of the topics covered in my book - but with a lot more science in it! It will be published the summer of 2023. In the meantime, if you want more in depth explanations, please go to stefaniefaye.com and subscribe to get my monthly newsletter.

(and subscribe to the Mindset Neuroscience podcast on iTunes and Spotify)

How to use communication to create more of what you want

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When we put ourselves into new situations, where we can't rely on our automated, habitual ways of making decisions, we activate new and complex circuitry that can help us get better at dealing with life's challenges.

One way to do this is to enter learning environments that have unpredictability and variability.

This episode will be posted next week

Go to iTunes, Spotify or my website stefaniefaye.com/podcast to listen and subscribe.

Season 3 Episode 2 Preview

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Do you find yourself getting into very repetitive types of arguments, disagreements or shutdowns when you have challenges in daily life and within your relationships?

In this video, you'll learn:

-3 specific things you need to gain mastery over your nervous system responses
-how to avoid being rigid or repetitive in your reactions to challenges and situations
-one particular practice that can help you access your most mature brain circuitry within your interactions and relationships

3 keys to mastering your nervous system

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Sometimes our issues with getting stuck in negative thinking and negative emotions is due to a lack of skills related to delayed gratification.

In this video you'll learn how to use cool and hot focus as ways to lower stressful emotions as well as engage in healthier habits for personal and relationship growth.

How to deal with stressful emotions using cool and hot focus

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By not understanding the deeper roots of our wounds, we can get stuck in behaviors that prevent us from feeling the sense of connection we ache for, and the fulfillment and autonomy we also seek in our lives.

The more we understand these roots, the more we can find ways to disentangle from them.

In this video, I cover:
- How attachment wounds relate to our power to have independence when we want it and intimacy when we want it
- How feeling trapped or abandoned affects your negativity bias towards yourself and others
- How to activate new circuits to balance out attachment-wound behavior

*please note that the suggestions and exercises offered in this video are not offered as a substitute for professional mental health care or medical care and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any mental health or medical conditions.

Attachment neuroscience: why you might feel trapped or abandoned and what to do about it

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Managing Emotions and Stress: it’s about Range, Repertoire and Awareness

A wider range and repertoire of strategies to up-regulate or down-regulate emotions is generally associated with resilience, adjustment and overall health. Awareness of attachment science can help us know how to increase this range of behaviors and reactions in response to others.

Learn more at stefaniefaye.com

(i'll post a full-length article on this soon - so go to my website and subscribe if you'd like to get it as soon as it's up!)

Neuroscience of attachment - how to regulate your nervous system in relationships

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A preview of an exploration into the beauty and intelligence of the machinery of the human body - and how we use it to communicate, create, comfort, heal, adapt and complexify.

Mind-Body Intelligence: Mindset Neuroscience Podcast Season 3 Preview

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Anxious thinking is associated with fast brainwaves. The more relaxed you are, the slower your brainwave activity.

In this video I show you how to slow your brainwaves so you can access a more relaxed state.
I also go into:
-what technology does to your brainwaves
-the power of stillness and
-how meditation influences brain activity

(This is the IG version of a video I posted last year on anxiety)

How to slow down anxious thinking using neuroscience

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Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
-Khalil Gibran

Is it possible to take a painful and negative event from our past, and 're-purpose' it to become an empowering feature of our story, of our identity?

The process of re-organizing neural circuits to integrate a negative past event into a more complex and mature perspective is tied to cognitive flexibility. This flexibility is a major aspect of the healing process for moral injury.

What is Moral Injury?
A definition by Jonathan Shay is that moral injury occurs when there is a:
"a betrayal of ‘what’s right’, either by a person in authority, or oneself, and in a high stakes situation."

Exploring Moral injury gives us a chance to understand what really matters to us. It helps us clarify our values as a socially connected species. the healing process for moral injury shows us how to take negative painful events and emotions and turn them into a force for good.

I go in depth into this in today’s podcast episode, including how:
- forgiveness and flexibility help us activate highly sophisticated and evolved neural mechanisms
-The mechanism of morality improves energy efficiency and resilience of a system
-The human species is an interconnected network of nodes that requires social signaling for trust and cooperation
-brain activations are different in trauma compared with moral injury

Listen on Spotify, iTunes, blubrry and other platforms

#mindset #moralinjury #mental-health #neuroscience #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters

Moral Injury, Forgiveness and Cognitive Flexibility - Mindset Neuroscience Podcast Season 2 Ep 12:

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Knowing what makes you rare and valuable increases your sense of self-worth, psychological safety and confidence. This state allows you to access your higher order features of neural circuitry involved in the luxurious tasks of creativity, complex problem solving and empathic, systems level thinking.

This video was inspired by Cal Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You... highly recommend you check it out!

What makes you rare and valuable?

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To react is to act again and again in a similar way.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, you are not having different relationships all the time, you’re having the same relationship with different people over and over again.

You’re playing the same things out, but with different ‘actors on the stage’. You play out a new scene, but the beliefs and mental models are there in each scene.

The other part of the word reaction is ‘action’.

Action can be broken down into a mechanical process. The more we can see the mechanics of what we are doing in each scene of our life, we have a better chance of learning how to make new adjustments that allow us to be more flexible and adaptive in our relationships with ourselves and others.

When we bring more awareness to our reactions we have more choice points for future situations.

Find out three concrete steps on how to do this in this video

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*please note that the suggestions and exercises offered in these videos are not offered as a substitute for professional mental health care or medical care and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any mental health or medical conditions.

Relationship patterns and over-reactions Part 2 of 2

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Have you had an argument recently, or an interaction with someone that didn’t go as you hoped it would?

What was your reaction in this situation? Was it anger, defensiveness, or shutting down?

Did you say what you truly wanted to say?
Did you hold back?
Or did you say something hurtful?

Is there something you feel about this situation that you can’t put your finger on why it bothers you so much? Or do you think you know why, but you don’t know how to express it to that person?

In this video, I go into:
-brain-body mechanisms that lead to overreactions
-connecting the dots between your childhood and anxiety, stress, depression and other challenges you may be facing

In part 2 of this video (which will be up next week), I share an overview of a process I have used in my own life and that I share with coaching clients to help them achieve more of what they desire in their interactions with others, and how to release limiting beliefs that come from our past.

*please note that the suggestions and exercises offered in these videos are not offered as a substitute for professional mental health care or medical care and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any mental health or medical conditions.

Relationship patterns and over-reactions part 1 of 2

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stefanieffaye

My dear friend Yoko and I are planning a trip to H

My dear friend Yoko and I are planning a trip to Hawaii in September. We’re also scoping it out as a potential for a neuroscience – personal growth retreat I’d like to hold next year.

My lease is up this fall and I’m going to be fully mobile.. I don’t have many possessions so it will be easy for me to pack up and go. I’m trying to think of a way where I could spend a few months in different locations, which would include going back home to Calgary for a period of time each year.

Anyone out there who’s doing something similar? Curious how you find short term leases in each location. Or some other way?

It might be the Pacific Northwest lack of vitamin D talking, but I’m looking for places with quite a bit of sunshine, natural beauty and a welcoming community. I’m thinking of Hawaii as one possibility although I’ve never been there so I have no idea. Could be several locations.

Any suggestions? Needs to be in the US for work reasons

Excited to explore a new sense of freedom!

#hawaiivacation #needsun

Word count for two chapters: 18,000… right on tr

Word count for two chapters: 18,000… right on track. First deadline with publishers coming up.

My reward for showing up every day for past 30 days to write.

Also, thank goodness for coffee… and coffee shops that let you show up first thing and stay for hours lol

#bookwriting #keepgoing #mindset #perseverance #coffee #earlybird

Fathers' supportiveness matters for children's lan

Fathers' supportiveness matters for children's language, cognitive development and emotional regulation...

One of my first graduate courses @nyuniversity was with Tamis-Lemonda, who was leading the way in highlighting the importance of fathers in child brain development.

Read: Fathers' Influence on Their Children's Cognitive and Emotional Development: From Toddlers to Pre-K by Cabrera, Shannon & Tamis-LeMonda @nyusteinhardt

Support dads... we need them! Their mental health and support is vital to our society.

#fathers

I remember the first time I gave a presentation to

I remember the first time I gave a presentation to parents, many years ago, about how children’s brains develop.

One of the first concepts I introduced was the fact that young brains simply have not developed enough architecture to help them self-regulate, think about long-term consequences, control many of their impulses.

As I showed graphs and had the parents reflect on various experiences, I remember seeing tears in the eyes of a few people. They realized that a lot of their upset with their child had come from a misunderstanding of what the child needed in moments of distress. They realized that they were punishing their child for being dysregulated. Their anger and punishment seemed to make things worse but they couldn't figure out why. Understanding brain development shifted how they saw their child.

Instead of seeing them as a jerk who was trying to piss them off, they saw their child as someone who didn’t know what to do with overwhelming emotions. I had many parents report improvements in their interactions with their children after understanding this.

It also gave them compassion for what they had gone through as children. Many of them realized that they also had been rejected, ridiculed or punished for being dysregulated. It gave them a new understanding of their own childhood experiences.

Knowing how our brains and nervous systems develop helps us see a universality to human needs. A sense of safety comes from knowing that someone understands us on a deeper level - that they can see through the dysregulated and defensive behaviors we might express when we don't know what to do with our emotions. This is the essence of secure attachment.

This pic is from when I worked as a French school counselor in Canada

#childdevelopment #secureattachment #attachmenttheory #neuroscience #mindset #paradigmshift #emotionalregulation #dysregulation #donellameadows #systemsthinking

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the perso

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the person who sent in this review ❤️

So grateful for the cheerleaders out there… the people who take time out of their day to encourage others.

#grateful #gohumans

“Consciousness is the self in the act of knowing

“Consciousness is the self in the act of knowing” - Antonio Damasio

Do you know why you react to people the way you do? In all likelihood, not really. As Stanislas Dehaene puts it,

“Our “self” is just a database that gets filled in through our social experiences … and is likely to include glaring gaps, misunderstandings, and delusions.”

But you CAN get better at knowing why you react the way you do.

This requires ‘metacognition’ - the capacity to think about one’s own mind.

Any type of intentional self-reflection or introspection is a step towards metacognition - in moving the unconscious to the ‘conscious workspace’, to our conscious awareness.

From there, we have the best chance of choosing a new reaction. New reactions create new trajectories into the future.

What I have found helpful for myself and clients is an Emotion History:

-while you are having an undesired feeling, reflect on when in the past you’ve felt that way before.
-If you can, write down or think about the names of people who you were with that led you to feel that way in the past. (Previous lovers, partners, high school influences, childhood interactions, family).

This is a first step in recognizing that there are unconscious forces at play.

These unconscious forces have been with you for a while. Training your mind to transform feelings requires that you recognize their patterns.

That is the first step towards bringing your unconscious patterns to your conscious mind.

It is a critical, nonnegotiable first step to change.

#consciousness #unconsciousmind #emotionalregulation #emotionalintelligence #resilience #mindset #stanislasdehaene #introspection #meditation #contemplation #stoicism #mentalresilience

A good night’s sleep is the most important platf

A good night’s sleep is the most important platform for any change you want to create in your life.

I was having some challenges recently with this - but a few nights ago, returned to my optimal bedtime routine and have been able to wake up with much more clarity and stamina.

One part of this routine is eliminating blue light at least 2 hours before bed. This can be hard to do but I’ve found that installing these light bulbs from True Dark helps - they go pink at sunset and then you can switch to red later. I can still read and do things but it calms my eyes to have this light. If I choose to look at a screen, I use the red glasses.

The science: very fast frequencies of blue light wavelengths hit a tiny area of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which then stops melatonin production. When you stop getting blue light, the SCN activates melatonin production.

I don’t get sponsored by this company - I’m sure there are other options out there but these @truedark products have helped me so thought I’d mention them.

I’m a former @40yearsofzen facilitator and got to try out lots of these types of products. These are my favorites so far.

#blueblockers #blueblockers

When we are young and at our most vulnerable, our

When we are young and at our most vulnerable, our brains specialize their networks to adapt to our surroundings.

We monitor and store the exchanges of signals and frequencies that are happening not only to us but around us. As we watch our caregivers interact we pick up on facial muscle movements, eye gaze, muscle tension in the jaw, neck, fists and other limbs, voice frequencies and words.

Depending on our caregivers’ experiences and abilities, in times of distress, they may engage in ineffective communication behaviors such as:

-threatening to leave
-trying to make the other jealous
-preoccupation with the other’s behaviors and whereabouts
-guilt trips, shaming
-appeasing and pleasing: trying to say whatever they think the other wants
-withdrawing communication: not responding, closing doors, ghosting

What occurs around us as our brains are developing may lead us to similar behaviors within relationships as adults. Usually these behaviors will come up when we feel insecure about an interaction or relationship.

The problem when you engage in these behaviors is that it often pushes the other person away, and then you end up never actually knowing if they want to connect or not. All you know is their response to your self-protecting behaviors.

If possible, notice yourself before you engage in any of these and hold off until your nervous system is more regulated. Do other activities, engage in activities or with people who help you feel regulated. See if your response changes once you’re regulated.

#emotionalresilience #emotionalregulation #secureattachment #secure #insecure #anxiousattachment #avoidantattachment #selfregulation #familysystems

Diagrams I use to understand and then attempt to e

Diagrams I use to understand and then attempt to explain concepts.

They often turn into webs or spirals 🤷🏻‍♀️

When I use these with clients, there is often an emotional response when we get to the core of what they’re struggling with.

Drawing by hand is good for creativity. Curvy lines help activate different networks than straight ones.

As we spend time in nature, our awareness expands.

What’s your self talk? Self talk is an internal

What’s your self talk?

Self talk is an internal working model. It’s the activity of brain circuits that are well-used and repeated.

Because you were around a small set of people during critical years of brain development, you were likely surrounded by similar behaviors and emotional responses over and over again.

How often did the people around you say positive things to you and to each other? How often did they criticize or blame you or others for not doing enough, being enough, or being too much?

The words that surrounded you were data that your brain used to create cause-effect models. (If something goes wrong, it’s because I’m lazy, stupid, worthless, pathetic).

Notice what happens if you don’t do well at something. Is there a voice that motivates you? Or does the voice beat you down and make you feel small, like giving up?

That voice may have more to do with what you heard when you were young than you realize.

What to do about it? Take control.

Monitor the words you consume and repeat each day. When it comes to building brain networks, it’s survival-of-the-busiest.

What percentage of the words and images you consume and repeat each day make you feel motivated, ignited, passionate, compassionate? You may need to increase that ratio to compensate for the lack of them you had growing up.

#mindset #resilience #selftalk #selftalkmatters #mentalhealthmatters #motivation #neuroplasticity

When we put ourselves into new situations, where w

When we put ourselves into new situations, where we can't rely on our automated, habitual ways of making decisions, we activate new and complex circuitry that can help us get better at dealing with life's challenges.

One way to do this is to enter learning environments that have unpredictability and variability.

This episode will be posted next week

Go to iTunes, Spotify or my website stefaniefaye.com/podcast to listen and subscribe.

#growthmindset #resilience #outdatededucation #outdoorlearning #nature #systemsthinking #cognitiveflexibility #learningmindset

Finding my writing groove.. What’s working for

Finding my writing groove..

What’s working for me: first thing in the morning, head to local coffee shop. Something about the ambient noise and great coffee help me get into a flow.

Then pack up, train clients for 7-8 hours with neurofeedback, analyze brain maps.

Squeeze in podcast interviews and editing and some form of movement and time outside before or after work.

Having the clarity of my book and vision of holding a retreat in the future fuel me to keep going.

#mindset #perseverance #bookwriting #keepgoing #seattlecoffee

(*words on computer screen are from Joseph Ledoux not me 😊)

“We spend our life monitoring our behavior as we

“We spend our life monitoring our behavior as well as that of others, and our statistical brain constantly draws inferences about what it observes, literally “making up its mind” as it proceeds. Learning who we are is a statistical deduction from observation.” -Stanislas Dehaene

Much of who you think you are is based on the limited perception of people who were around you most as you developed.

Who you surround yourself with NOW can help update those statistics. Who do you surround yourself with- online and in person?

Are they regulated, healthy contributors to society? Are they compassionate to themselves and others? Do they propose solutions and new ideas? Or are they constantly focusing on problems, negativity, and repetitiveness in their reactions?

If so, just keep in mind that so many of the opinions of yourself that you think come from you have actually come from observing the people around you.. how they talk about and treat themselves and others.

You have a choice of updating your brain’s algorithms by updating the data you allow into your awareness.

#resilience #mindset #neuroplasticity #groupthink #coregulation #mentalhealth

Thank you for the love @almaestebanavalos ❤️

Thank you for the love @almaestebanavalos ❤️

Grateful to hear things like this… it’s why I do what I do.

Currently editing and preparing interviews for season 3, stay tuned ✨

#neuroscience #growthmindset #resilience #neuroplasticity

PLAY Playfulness, sports, games, hobbies, sillines

PLAY
Playfulness, sports, games, hobbies, silliness and humor - are good for the nervous system and the brain.

They do 2 key things:

1) engage sympathoexcitatory circuits (increasing heart rate and blood flow to skeletal muscles for limb movement,

2) create psychological safety through facial gestures and vocal prosody (voice frequencies that convey emotion).

A beautiful dance of multiple systems that helps us regulate our nervous system in the presence of others.

Play, laugh, giggle, have fun.

Pic of the lego neuroscience lab I built with my nephew. I LOVE @lego

#playbasedlearning #emotionregulation #psychologicalsafety #socialemotionallearning #coregulation #polyvagaltheory

Post-Trauma Training and Awareness: A call to ACTI

Post-Trauma Training and Awareness:
A call to ACTION

Animals and humans may develop a Fear Reaction to stimulus that may have earlier been neutral or positive.

An example is when a traumatic event happens in a school. Before the event, the school was not associated with fear, panic or shutdown. However, if an event happens that is fear-arousing, new pathways in the brain-body system may associate the school - and anything associated with it - with panic and distress.

Fear reactions may look like anxiety and hyper-arousal, over-worrying about details; becoming obsessed with needing to know information; and also passive, resigned, despondent, dissociated or lethargic reactions.

We need to keep this in mind as we work with people who have experienced trauma. They may exhibit behaviors that seem unrelated or illogical.

Fear reactions like this can be re-routed.

This re-routing can occur through active coping. This helps divert flow of activity in the brain from centers that lead to immobilization, avoidance and passivity, to systems that help a person re-engage with life.

There are various trauma therapists and researchers who understand this concept. If we are working with people who have experienced traumatic events, much work and awareness is needed to help them re-route their circuits so that their nervous system can bounce back as best it can.

See work by:
Peter Levine, Janina Fisher, Ruth Lanius, Resmaa Maneken as some examples

Article: A Call to Action: Overcoming Anxiety Through Active Coping
Joseph E. LeDoux, Ph.D., and Jack M. Gorman, M.D.

#traumatraining #posttraumatic #nervoussystem #neuroscience #selfregulation #calltoaction

Instead of choosing to attack and shame, or appeas

Instead of choosing to attack and shame, or appease and self-protect, we can choose to become a secure base, anchored in an ability to self-regulate and co-regulate.

We can do this because our human brain circuitry gives us the ability to LEARN to do this.

But remember that learning requires repetition. This means that EVERY interaction you have with another human being is a moment of practice. Strangers, friends, family members, interactors on social media.

We can choose, moment-by-moment, to be a source of micro-movements, voice frequencies, breath patterns, and facial gestures that reflect a steady internal state that models for others what Internal Security and social-emotional mastery can look like in human form.

#mindset #coregulation #secureattachment #openmind #complexityuniversity complexity

Do we take for granted what our parents and previo

Do we take for granted what our parents and previous generations have gone through?

Do we understand the types of sacrifices they have made for us to be where we are at today?

As I heard the blacksmith talk about how much work must go into creating one single nail, I saw flashes of the past… of the amount of perseverance humans have shown in continuing to try to figure out how to solve problems and build things that never existed before.

Progress requires trial and error, failure, collapse, stagnation, analysis, refining, improving processes. It also requires collective effort and a coming together of human minds, a co-creative use of our hands and voices that reflects optimism that we know how to get things done and do them better.

Thanks @lawlessforge for an amazing experience.
Spiff created such a safe and fun learning environment for awkward beginners like me

#blacksmith #gohumans #resilience #innovation

#grateful #nature #gooutside

#grateful #nature #gooutside

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