The Bizarre World of Product Testing & Understanding Highly Sensitive People

When the power goes out, how long will food in your refrigerator and freezer stay safe? And how bad is it to open the door and check? Consumer Reports has some useful answers that could save you from throwing out perfectly good food—or eating something you shouldn’t. https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/emergency-preparedness/what-to-feed-your-family-when-the-power-is-out-a4425760304/ Before you trust an airplane, a child’s toy or just about anything else, it has probably been subjected to some serious testing—and some of those tests get wonderfully weird. Engineers have fired chickens into jet engines and enlisted real bears to test bear-proof containers. Alex Davies takes us inside this strange, mostly invisible world of product testing. He is a senior editor at Amazon and author of Kobuk the Destroyer: And Other Tales from the Wild, Unseen World of Test Engineering (https://amzn.to/3UR4YEg). You may not consider yourself especially sensitive—but chances are you know someone who feels things more intensely than others. Criticism can really sting, rejection can linger, and an offhand remark can hit surprisingly hard. Why are some people wired this way, and is it something they need to change? Psychiatrist Dr. Sasha Hamdani explains the science of sensitivity, rejection and resilience. She is author of Too Sensitive: Rejection, Resilience, and the Science of Feeling Deeply (https://amzn.to/4c9bgFn). When you are suspicious that someone is lying to you, watching them for clues may be counterproductive. Those commonly believed visual giveaways are often inaccurate. But there is another way to help confirm whether someone is lying that can be much more accurate and it easy to do. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/14/hidden-secret-to-spotting-a-liar-voice-inflections PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS TREES. COM: Right now, https://Trees.com have great deals on planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get 20% OFF their purchase when using the promo code SYSK at checkout. MONARCH: Write your own money story with Monarch! Use promo code SYSK at ⁠https://Monarch.com⁠ to get your 1st year of Monarch Core half off at just $50 VINTED: Ready to clean out your closet and make some extra money? Download the Vinted app for free and start listing! With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn and for a limited time, enjoy free shipping in the US on Vinted. WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. QUINCE: Find your next Fall favorites at Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! DELL: Built for those who want better. The Dell XPS, built for you! INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:22Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, when the power goes out, how long will your food last in the fridge and the freezer? Then the weird ways products are tested. Jet engines, for example.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Now, before a jet engine can be certified, you have to put it in front of a cannon and shoot a dead chicken into it. What the jet engine has to do is it has to either be able to keep running safely or it has to shut down safely. Yeah, it's called the chicken cannon test.

• 1:50Mike Carruthers?

  Also, how to tell the difference between hot and cold water by the sound it makes. And being too sensitive. Is it a flaw or something to embrace?

• 2:02Speaker 02

  I would say that there's an incredible strength in being emotionally sensitive. I think emotional sensitivity makes you a better person. It makes you a better parent. I wouldn't trade that emotional sensitivity. I like being emotionally sensitive. I just don't want to drown in it.

• 2:17Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:02Mike Carruthers?

  So rather than driving around to different nurseries, loading everything into the car and then hauling it home, I sat at my computer, picked out what I wanted, and now it's all coming right to me. And I'm really looking forward to seeing it all show up. Plus, their Alive and Thrive Guarantee promises your plants arrive happy and healthy. Right now, they have great deals on planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to our show get 20% off their purchase when using the code SYSK at checkout. That's an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at trees.com using the code SYSK at checkout.

• 3:45Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:00Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:13Mike Carruthers?

  When your power goes out, one of your first concerns is probably the food in the freezer and the refrigerator. And for good reason, because if the power stays out a long time, that food could spoil. And that's the topic we're going to start with today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. So without power, an unopened refrigerator generally keeps food safe for only about four hours. But a full freezer is a completely different story. If you leave the door shut, it can maintain its temperature for roughly 48 hours. A half full freezer lasts about 24 hours. And there's a useful trick you can do before the next outage.

• 4:58Mike Carruthers?

  Empty space makes a freezer warm up faster. So if your freezer is only partially full, freeze containers of water and then use them to fill up the empty space. The extra frozen mass helps everything stay colder longer and gives you emergency ice and water as a bonus. So when the electricity goes out, resist the urge to keep checking the freezer. The less you look, the longer your food will last. And that is something you should know.

• 5:32Mike Carruthers?

  Before you trust your life to a car or get on an airplane or hand a toy to a child or even use something as ordinary as a screwdriver, somebody has probably tried very hard to make that product fail. They've shaken it, smashed it, frozen it, overheated it, overloaded it, dropped it, and sometimes subjected it to things you would never imagine, like throwing a chicken at it, which you're going to hear about. And it's all to discover what could possibly go wrong before it goes wrong for you. Welcome to the strange and largely invisible world of test engineering. It turns out figuring out how to break things safely

• 6:17Mike Carruthers?

  is a fascinating science all its own. And some of the tests that engineers devise and the lengths that they go to are ingenious, bizarre, and occasionally spectacular. Here to take us behind the scenes is Alex Davies. He's a senior editor at Amazon, and he's author of a book called "Co-Book The Destroyer: And Other Tales From The Wild, Unseen World Of Test Engineering." Hi, Alex. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Hey, it's great to be here.

• 6:48Mike Carruthers?

  So the title of your book, "Co-Book The Destroyer", this is of interest to me because where I live, we have a bear problem. Bears get into the trash, and it's been getting worse lately. So we've all been told to get bear resistant trash cans, which we did, and the bears try. We've seen them try. They can't get in it. But I wonder, well, how do the people that made those trash cans know that bears can't get in it? Do they actually test it on bears? And "Co-Book The Destroyer", the title of your book, is a bear who tests bear resistant products? So how did that come about?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  So before bear resistant products were actually tested on bears, they were run through a couple of mechanical tests. They would drop a metal spiked object onto objects that was meant to simulate the bite of a grizzly bear, and they would push on them with mechanical, you know, hydraulic pistons. And then someone said, sure, this is mimicking the strength of a bear, but bears aren't just pure strength. Bears are intelligent creatures. And we're not testing whether or not a bear can figure out how to open this thing. They might not just bite it. They might not just push on it. They might twist it around or flip it upside down. And so they turned to a place that's outside Yellowstone National Park,

• 8:12Speaker 01

  which is a sanctuary for what are called problem bears. Bears that have gotten too accustomed to eating human food. Bears that have had too much human contact and thus become a danger to people. And in becoming a danger to people, become a danger to themselves. Sometimes these bears are relocated. Sometimes they're euthanized. But the lucky ones get sent to this bear sanctuary. Now, it's not just a life of pleasure. They do have to sing for their supper. And they sing for their supper by testing supposedly bear resistant products. So if a manufacturer has a new trash can or cooler or backpacking canister,

• 8:55Speaker 01

  they'll bring it to the sanctuary. And the keepers essentially fill it with bear friendly treats, with fish and honey and all sorts of good things. And they just give it to a bear. And if the bear spends an hour trying to get into it and can't crack it open along very certain parameters, so coolers, if they can't open it more than an inch or so, and like trash can, if they can't flip it open, then the product is considered to have passed.

• 9:23Mike Carruthers?

  I would have never guessed that. I would have assumed that testing bear resistant products was about mechanical tests that mimic a bear, not a real bear. That's a great story. And so when I think about product testing, the place that comes to mind is Underwriters Laboratories. That they've been around forever and that they've tested. My sense is it's mostly electrical things. That's who I think of when I think of product testing.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they got started after the Chicago World's Fair. So Underwriters Labs was founded by a guy named W. H. Merrill. And he was one of the first graduates of MIT's Electrical Engineering Program at the end of the 19th century. And he was hired by the insurers putting on the Chicago World's Fair, where electricity was going to be one of the big attractions. But electricity was very exciting and very scary because it had a habit of causing fires and burning down lots of things. And he was brought in to help make sure that all of the electrical connections were safe. And after that, he had the idea of, hey, maybe there's a business here.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Electricity is becoming a big thing. And all of these products are going to start going into consumers' homes. And I can be the guy, I can start the company that actually makes sure that these things are safe and usable. And that was a huge intellectual coup for him. That was really the birth of testing as a profession and as something you can make money doing. Because before that, you didn't really need it. And you didn't have electrical appliances in the home, right? Before what you think of as a clothes iron. You had a chunk of iron that you put in the fire to heat it up. Like, that's why we call it a clothes iron. But then, all of a sudden, there's electricity in that thing.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  And you have to test it to make sure that if you drop it, or pull on the cord, or just use it a lot, it's not going to start a fire. And that's where Underwriters Labs really got started and created what's now a whole global profession of test engineering.

• 11:33Mike Carruthers?

  So, take us inside the world of product testing, of test engineering, because I just don't know much about it.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  So, I think if you want to understand what actually shapes the products in your life, all of the things that make them functional, and reliable, and safe, that all comes less from inventors, and more from test engineers. Because it's, once the product is created, and starts being tested, that's where you figure out where all of the problem points are, where all of the pain points are. And that's where you start making fixes to them. And it's a really interesting job, because it relies on this blend of creativity, rigor, and also paranoia. So, you have to be paranoid to the point where you can think of everything that might

• 12:26Speaker 01

  happen to a product, within the reasonable realm of what humans can do, and what the world can do to a thing. Then you have to figure out, okay, what of those things do we actually want to protect against? What's worth protecting against? And then you have to be creative enough to figure out how to simulate those things happening in a laboratory setting. But you need to be rigorous enough to create a test that you can repeat reliably, so your data is good. And then you also have to have a real sense of judgment about it. And that comes into, well, how do you set your standards? How safe is safe enough?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  How do you balance progress against risk, against safety, against hesitation? And it's a very heady, for lack of a better word, way of thinking about things. It's thinking about, how will they fail? And how do I make them not fail?

• 13:23Mike Carruthers?

  And so, if you have a product, who are these people you go to? Do you Google "test engineers," and a whole list of people comes up? Or how do you find these people? Or are they just, they're people who are engineers, and they say, "Well, let's put on our testing hat now, and let's go test it."

• 13:40Speaker 01

  It's a little bit of both. So, if you've created a new toy that you think is going to be great for a three-year-old, and you actually want to sell it, you'll have to get it certified first. And the way to get it certified is to bring it to a professional testing laboratory. And there are a handful of these around the country and around the world. And they know exactly what the standards a toy for a three-year-old will have to pass. It has to be this strong. It has to have pieces that are at least this big, if they break off, to prevent any risk of choking. It can't have any contaminants, or any chemicals, that might be harmful to a child. These are all very carefully listed out in legislation. And if you go into this lab, they look like torture laboratories, where they're, they'll

• 14:25Speaker 01

  take a toy frog, and they'll literally put its feet to the fire, to see whether or not it's flammable. And they'll have little mechanical arms that mimic the strength of a two- or three-year-old pulling on the thing, to see whether or not it comes apart. I think a lot of the more interesting testing comes from products where we don't necessarily have all of those laws written out. And that's because testing and invention are in a continual arms race. Where when you invent something new, then you have to figure out how you're going to test it. This is something we're trying to figure out with generative AI right now, which is, how do you test that to make sure it's safer than it currently is?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  And we're figuring out new ways to do that. So, in some cases, it's professional testing laboratories that have very specific tests they know they need to run on a given product. And in other cases, it's a company's own engineers, or maybe the inventors themselves, who are thinking, now, what are all the ways in which this might fail? How can I recreate those in a recordable way? And how do I figure out where my product is failing, and how to make it better? And then, how do I test it again?

• 15:37Mike Carruthers?

  But in the testing world, how good is good enough? Because any product can be destroyed somehow. I mean, sooner or later, you, even just, you know, electronics. If you put electronics in a bowl of water, it's going to fail. But you're not supposed to put your smartphone in a bowl of water. So, you can't, you know, proof that. But how do you decide, "We've tested this for enough things"?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  The term we're talking about, for foolproofing products, is reasonably foreseeable misuse, which are, what are all of the things that I can think of, that a person might reasonably do? And it doesn't mean that that's how I want them to use it. It might even say in the instructions, "Don't do this." But I have to know that someone might well do it anyway. And one classic example is a screwdriver. If I make a screwdriver, I'm intending for people to turn screws with it. But another very common use of a screwdriver is to open paint cans. Right? It's not made for that. But because you know someone's going to use a screwdriver to open a paint can, I actually don't know of another way to open a paint can.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  You have to build a screwdriver that's strong enough, that it won't shatter, if you're levering it in that way. But on the other hand, someone could conceivably use a screwdriver to clean out, to clean the wax out of their ears. But that's not really reasonably foreseeable. There's no real pattern of people doing that. So, you don't have to make a screwdriver safe to stick up your ear. And it's always finding that balance.

• 17:13Mike Carruthers?

  There are some products, though, that are just inherently dangerous. Chainsaws, kitchen knives, I mean, you can't make them completely safe. I want to ask you more about that in just a moment. There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince, too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price.

• 17:57Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:42Mike Carruthers?

  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order, and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was something you should know. It's the best way to support our show. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call "someday clothes." "I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that." Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: Sell it.

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• 20:06Mike Carruthers?

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• 20:19Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about test engineers and what they do. My guest is Alex Davies. He's author of the book, "Co-Buck the Destroyer and Other Tales From the Wild Unseen World of Test Engineering." So Alex, there are products that are just inherently dangerous. I mean, a kitchen knife is a kitchen knife. Or a step ladder. I mean, you go up on a step ladder, you're up high, people fall off of them. I don't know how you prevent that.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  So that's a tricky one, right? Because it's reasonably foreseeable that someone's going to climb to the top step when it says, "Don't stand on the top step." But some products, I think, are simple enough. Like, take a kitchen knife, for example. It's very foreseeable that someone's going to cut themselves, and there's really nothing you can do. And there is a limit to what you can test for. A step ladder only works because it puts you at a greater height than you would otherwise be. Sometimes the danger elements of a product are so fundamental to it that you just have to say, "This is what the product is." So there is a limit to what we can test.

• 21:27Mike Carruthers?

  So tell me a story from the annals of product testing that would be great to hear.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  So if you think about the story of the miracle on the Hudson flight with Captain Sully, who had both engines of his plane taken out by a flock of geese and managed to safely land on the Hudson River. Those jet engines were able to shut down safely and not catch fire, or explode, or damage the airplane itself because they had been run through the bird ingestion test. Now, this is a test that FAA created because bird strikes were a problem from the beginning of aviation. The first person to have a bird hit his plane was one of the Wright brothers. The first person to die in a bird strike happened in the 19-teens.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  And there have been more catastrophic ones, including a plane that crashed into the Boston Harbor after all four of its engines were taken out by birds in the 1960s, and that killed several dozen people. And after that, the FAA said, "Okay, we actually need to get a handle on this." So what they did first was, they did a big study of all of the kinds of birds that are hitting planes and in what kinds of situations. And the result is that now, before a jet engine can be certified, you have to put it in front of a cannon and shoot a dead chicken into it.

• 22:51Mike Carruthers?

  And that's the test? And if it passes that test, it's okay?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  It's okay. What the jet engine has to do is, it has to either be able to keep running safely, or it has to shut down safely in that test. And we use a cannon because it's much safer than actually flying a plane into a flock of birds. This is a way of recreating that on the ground. And yeah, it's called the chicken cannon test. And the birds are fired at about 230 miles an hour, which is roughly the speed of a jet on takeoff, which is one of the times when bird strikes are most common, takeoff and landing.

• 23:35Mike Carruthers?

  But it seems like one of the potential problems with all of this is the test itself could be flawed. The test might not be a real test.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  That, I think, is one of the most interesting things I discovered in researching this world, is that any time you see a warranty on something, or you hear me talk about a jet engine that can handle being hit with a chicken, you have to think, "Well, what compromise lays behind that specific standard?"

• 24:06Mike Carruthers?

  What compromise lays behind that standard?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  So that one's actually very interesting, because there's a real critique you can make of that test. The standards to which jet engines are tested are based on compromises between federal regulators and international regulators, and also the airplane makers and the jet engine makers. And they have to balance, well, this is pretty safe, but it's also something we can do affordably, and something we actually have the technology to do. But if you take a really close look at the chicken test, it has some, it has a few holes you might be able to poke in it. One of which is that chickens don't fly, and there's never been a recorded incident

• 24:53Speaker 01

  of a chicken being sucked into a jet engine. Another is that geese are actually much bigger than the biggest bird we test jet engines on, right? And goose can be 10, 12, 15, 20 pounds. And it's geese that brought down the miracle on the Hudson flight, but we don't test with anything bigger than a four-pound bird. And the four-pound bird, we only test one. Only one gets shot into the engine, but geese fly in flocks. I think people should know about testing because it's a way of becoming a more informed consumer.

• 25:30Mike Carruthers?

  The most amazing story to me in your book is the guy who tested ejector seats. And we're almost out of time, but you've got to tell that story.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  That's Air Force Flight Surgeon Colonel John Stapp, who in the 1950s, at a time when planes were getting faster and faster and breaking the sound barrier, wanted to figure out whether or not pilots could safely eject from a crashing plane at hundreds of miles an hour. Whether or not the Air Force needed to build restraints that were strong enough, because if a human ejects at that speed and they just die, it's not worth probably building the ejector seat or building restraints that can actually do it. And so the way he tested that was, he built a rocket sled that ran on rails.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  He did this in the desert at what's now Edwards Air Force Base. And this was a guy who really put himself on the line by actually sitting himself on this rocket sled. He put on goggles. His test engineers, his fellow test engineers tied his wrists together and put a bite block in his mouth and put a helmet on his head, and rocketed him to more than 600 miles an hour. And it wasn't just hitting that speed. What he needed to test was deceleration. So then, the rocket sled hit this area where it was filled with water that stopped it almost instantaneously. And so from 600 miles an hour, he went to a stop, zero miles an hour, in under two

• 27:05Speaker 01

  seconds. And one of his fellow engineers compared it to driving a car at 250 miles an hour into a brick wall. John Stapp came away from that test blind for eight minutes. Fillings flew out of his teeth. He broke ribs. He broke his wrists. And he survived. And that was the most important thing. What he wanted to prove was that the human body can survive extreme, if brief, bouts of deceleration. And so it was, in fact, worth building ejector seats that could shoot you out of a plane flying that fast because you could survive it.

• 27:46Mike Carruthers?

  I love hearing stuff like this, things I've wondered about and never knew. And test engineering is one of those things, like, how do they, how do they test this stuff? I've been speaking with Alex Davies. He's a senior editor at Amazon, and he's author of a book called, "Co-Buck the Destroyer and Other Tales From the Wild Unseen World of Test Engineering." There's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. And Alex, great, thanks for sharing.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks so much, Mike, for taking the time and helping me get the word out.

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• 29:23Mike Carruthers?

  You probably know someone who's been told they're too sensitive. Maybe it's you. A text goes unanswered, someone's tone seems a little off, a casual remark feels like criticism. And while one person shrugs it off, another person can't stop thinking about it. We tend to see that kind of sensitivity as a weakness. You take things too personally. You need a thicker skin. But what if some people really are wired that way to feel these more intense feelings? And if they are, what's actually going on? And can they learn to keep those feelings from taking over? Dr.

• 30:03Mike Carruthers?

  Sasha Hamdani is a psychiatrist who specializes in emotional regulation and something called rejection-sensitive dysphoria. She's author of a new book called Too Sensitive: Rejection, Resilience, and the Science of Feeling Deeply. She's here to explain why some people feel things so deeply, why seemingly small events can hit so hard, and what you can do about it. Hi Sasha, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

• 30:33Mike Carruthers?

  So I guess a good first question about people who are too sensitive is, why are people too sensitive? Why are some people just more sensitive than others?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  So I think when you are looking at emotional sensitivity, you need to understand that they are literally wired to process emotions very quickly, very deeply, and for a long time.

• 31:00Mike Carruthers?

  And they are born that way? Or where did that wiring come from?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  So the thing that's interesting is because this is such an up and coming area of science, we don't have great data. It's not something that is widely discussed because for a long time emotional amplitude, I would say, was just kind of a part of your personality. You were the sensitive kid. You've kind of grown up and been that person, instead of looking at it as truly a difference in how you process emotions.

• 31:31Mike Carruthers?

  And generally, the telltale signs of someone who's too sensitive are what?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  They are feeling things and maybe having a hard time getting over things that seems disproportionate to what actually happened. I think that's a very important distinguishing factor between whether something was situationally appropriate or not. I also think that they may get into patterns where they have compensatory behaviors. Like, maybe these people are working so hard to protect that emotional sensitivity that maybe they are in relationships that they might not be best suited for. Maybe they are the people pleasers. It's difficult for them to say no to things. Maybe they're overcompensators. They're the people who are being perfectionists at work because they don't want to risk getting

• 32:20Speaker 02

  in trouble or getting criticism. So there's that compensatory component as well.

• 32:26Mike Carruthers?

  And all of the things that you just said are often viewed as flaws, that you get over it. Like, you don't, stop being so sensitive.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Move on.

• 32:38Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. That this is not a good, these things are not good things. These are things to fix.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:44Mike Carruthers?

  Are they?

• 32:45Speaker 02

  I would say that there's an incredible strength in being emotionally sensitive, and I truly mean that. I think also looking at my dad, who was incredibly emotionally sensitive, I think emotional sensitivity makes you a better person. It makes you, you know, it makes you a better parent. It makes you a better physician. I think it is one of those things that with that heightened emotional sensitivity, you also have this capacity to be more empathetic. You can tell what's going on in a room even before someone says something to you. You can, you can figure out and problem solve other people's kind of emotional climates maybe better than the average person would be able to.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  So I think that I wouldn't trade that emotional sensitivity. I like being emotionally sensitive. I just don't want to drown in it.

• 33:35Mike Carruthers?

  But are these things, things to mitigate or get over? In other words, is the goal to live with it or is the goal to fix it? Change it?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  The goal is not to become less sensitive. The goal is to be more in control of your emotions.

• 33:55Mike Carruthers?

  What does that mean?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I think, you know, as you go through these big emotional responses, it is more about trying to manage how you navigate through them rather than suppressing the feelings in the first place.

• 34:09Mike Carruthers?

  Give me an example.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Okay. I'll give you an example that happened two days ago. I've been doing a lot of podcasts, and I got an email, because I was supposed to travel and do this podcast, that they canceled, and it was two days before the podcast. And I immediately took that upon myself as, like, I read the email, was so overwhelmed by this thought of, I wasn't a big enough deal, they didn't feel like they should keep me, they didn't like what I was talking about, they thought the book was stupid, maybe the book is stupid, and I just was spinning, spinning, spinning. And that is a place that I have been in numerous times, and it has consumed me. And it is, you know, it's messed up my sleep, it's messed up my appetite, it's messed up my mood.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  But in that moment, I recognized, I know I'm spinning. I know I'm restless. I know I'm having a hard time. I had gotten up, my husband and I were sitting on the couch. I'd gotten up from the couch and started pacing. And so I said, okay, well, I need to kind of use a tool to bring myself down from this because what I'm hoping is that I'll be, if I can just think a little bit more clearly, maybe I'll see it in a different way. So I then started doing a little bit of exercise. I just seen on Instagram like a little while before that, and so it was fresh in my head that, you know, I don't know if you've seen this, but doing squats and how that, you know, is great for brain health. So I'm like, all right, fine. So I start doing squats.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Within like a minute or two, I'd calmed down enough that I was like, okay, let me look back at the email. And I look back at the email, and as you're going, as I went through it the second time, the second time, I read the phrase, "due to an emergency." And so I was like, oh, okay, this actually doesn't have anything to do with me. And then shortly after, there was a request to reschedule. So I feel like that was a moment I could have just completely been consumed by because it has happened before. But instead, I had to, I used skills, I used tools, and I tried to navigate through the moment to, to come out on the other side and reduce my distress in that moment.

• 36:21Mike Carruthers?

  You see, that's what I think people think is the flaw. You put yourself through a totally unnecessary living hell over that, and wouldn't it have been better not to have done that?

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course it would have been nice to not have done that. But let me tell you the flip side. There are times where because of that same emotional sensitivity, that I'm able to kind of, my amygdala, that emotional cortex of my brain, is picking up on things, appreciating that it's a threat or that there's something wrong. I can go. My kids are sitting absolutely quietly. They haven't said anything. I can go. I can look at my son's face. I can figure out something is going wrong with him. I can, I can kind of work through those moments with him because I can see that. So I feel like that is an incredible asset to have, especially within psychiatry, where, you know, it's such an intimate relationship you have with your patients.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  So learning how to navigate their emotional climate is such an advantage.

• 37:26Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting that people who are sensitive, or too sensitive, or so sensitive, or however you want to describe them, I think they often wish they weren't that way, or they weren't so that way, that they were a little more able to take the punches of life easier. I don't think I hear a whole lot of people who take those punches easier wishing they were more sensitive, that they felt things more.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Oh, so I definitely can relate to the first part of that. I've had numerous times where I have felt like that my emotions are out of control. I wish I was a little bit more even keel. But I have had numerous people that have said, I wish I could see the world the way that you do. I wish I could feel things the way you do.

• 38:17Mike Carruthers?

  I know you said at the beginning that this is all wiring, but are there like identifiable differences in the brain between someone who you would consider too sensitive and someone who's not?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you actually go and look at the brain, um, for people that are highly emotionally sensitive, there are two areas of the brain that are different. And I, and there's, there's many other factors, but this is kind of one of the most striking differences. The amygdala, that emotional center of the brain, which is your threat detector, that's a little bit more hyper responsive. Then you look at the prefrontal cortex, the very smartest part of your brain and charged judgment, decision-making, processing. That's a little bit under responsive. And the connection between the two is weak. So what happens is that for these highly emotionally sensitive people,

• 39:13Speaker 02

  you have this very overactive emotional center and this underresponsive logical center. So you're feeling emotions more deeply and it's hard for you to use logic to pull your way out of it. So I think when you look at that, then number one, that makes sense. Number two, if you actually look at from a neurochemical perspective and you look at dopamine, which is a great regulator of mood and attention and alertness and it, it, it helps with emotional regulation in the moment and over time. When you're looking at brains that are highly emotionally sensitive and a lot of this early research was done with ADHD,

• 39:56Speaker 02

  you can see that there was a dysregulation that's happening. And it's not even a deficit. It's not that dopamine is just not present in the brain or at significantly lower amounts. It's that it just isn't in the right place at the right time, which makes it more difficult to manage mood. And then you look at the component of the hormonal side of things. With, with dips in certain hormones, you get the subsequent dip in dopamine. And so if you are getting, which would lower your ability to emotionally regulate, which would make emotional sensitivity worse, which now you're kind of facing this situation where, you know, at certain points in a month,

• 40:38Speaker 02

  some people may feel highly emotionally sensitive. So there's, there's good science kind of pointing out that these patterns, I just don't think that we've put them all together in that way.

• 40:51Mike Carruthers?

  Well, the way you just described it makes it sound much more of a biological difference than it is some sort of emotional neurological like, like if you, if your, parts of your brain are not developed the same way. Well, there's nothing you can do about that, I don't think.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think what you can do is that if your brain is developed in slightly different ways, like that emotional part is a little bit more robust and the frontal lobe is a little bit less reactive. You can work on when that amygdala does get triggered, how do I calm down that response? How do I give my brain enough time that that frontal lobe can kick on? Like, what can I do to actually help this process and this transmission of information? And I think that's very valuable. And there are tools that you can use and there are skills that you can use that are effective and they work in the moment and they work over time to help build resilience.

• 41:49Mike Carruthers?

  Like what? What's a tool?

• 41:51Speaker 02

  So one of them, they're all tools you've heard before. It's just been annoying when you've heard them the first time. So, I mean, there's, there's stuff like, uh, movement is a huge one. Movement, you're pushing that oxygenated glucose to your frontal lobe. And so you are getting this capacity to let that amygdala quiet down a little bit and get more resources to the part of your brain that you are, that you can process your way through it. You can do things like deep breathing to kind of pull into that mindfulness. There's good research showing that with that deep breathing and with that mindfulness and that grounding practice, you can calm that amygdala response and allow your brain

• 42:36Speaker 02

  to kind of recalibrate. You can do things like, just from a psychological perspective, actually trying to challenge the thought in the moment. So if you're faced with a situation where you're feeling a little bit too sensitive, instead of just accepting, that's how it is, I feel too sensitive. This is just going to be how it is. You can gently kind of challenge, like, is there anything else that could have been happening? And a lot of people, by the way, that step does not happen. Because if they feel something and their body is sending off these alarm chemicals and confirming to them that this is proof that something bad is happening, they don't even do that step of like, could there be an alternative explanation? So there's things that you can do.

• 43:18Mike Carruthers?

  So comment on this, because I have a sense that this is true. And I don't know if there's science and you may have some experience, but I, I'm curious if there's any science about this, that people who are too sensitive and they have one of those moments, like you did with that podcast that canceled on you. They have a tendency to later on say, why did I get all worked up about this? Like the, the sensitivity doesn't last. It, clarity comes later, but it does seem to come.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, if you're thinking about that from that neurobiological perspective, once those alarm chemicals have started to clear from the amygdala kicking them off, then you start to get this reallocation of resources to that frontal lobe. And the frontal lobe is, it then gets to reassess the situation. And it's like, that actually wasn't that big of a deal. That was kind of an over response to the situation. And then the unfortunate thing that happens is that you get kind of piled on with shame and guilt in that moment afterwards.

• 44:20Mike Carruthers?

  Right, yeah. What was I thinking? That was so stupid to think that way. And, and then now you feel bad because you did it.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:30Mike Carruthers?

  Do, do sensitive people, do you think, and this would be a kind of a science question, if anybody's done this, the reason that they're sensitive, could it, does it have anything to do with environment? Were their parents likely, or one of them sensitive? Or grandma was sensitive? Or like, is there any hereditary genetic thing to this at all?

• 44:56Speaker 02

  I think so. I mean, if you look at just neurobiology in general, I think you start to see patterns and, you know, again, this, a lot of this was stemming from initial research that was done in ADHD. ADHD is highly heritable. So when you look at these kind of patterns, you, you see that there is, you can trace it back in the family a long way. So I, I think it's, I think there is a heritable and a family component to it, definitely.

• 45:27Mike Carruthers?

  And is there any kind of age component to it? And this is what I mean. Is, does it tend to diminish over time? And do people, as they get older and have more life experience under their belt, realize that maybe they've overreacted enough that, that maybe they're not going to do that so much anymore?

• 45:46Speaker 02

  I'm done now. Um, I think it does burn out a little bit with age, but I don't think that the neurological response necessarily extinguishes completely.

• 45:57Mike Carruthers?

  Is an empath typically too sensitive? And are too sensitive people typically empaths? Are they basically the same thing?

• 46:04Speaker 02

  I think there's a lot of crossover with empaths to some degree. I feel like they're very good at reading other people's envir- like emotional climates. But I think highly sensitive people, what is also true for them, because I think there is that crossover, is the way that they interpret their own internal environment. So I, maybe an empath has no difficulty with like something that is emotionally charged, but they're really good at feeling things for other people. You know, I think that with highly emotionally sensitive people, they, you know, things that happen to them are just,

• 46:49Speaker 02

  it, it takes them a long time to kind of navigate and build that self-trust around those feelings.

• 46:55Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any, has there been any studies or, or polls? I should have asked you this in the beginning. Like what percentage of the population fits this definition?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  I wish I knew. I wish I knew, but here's what I will tell you, Mike. I think it's much higher than, than we assume. Because this is in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, which is, the DSM five is the, it's basically where, for everything in psychiatry, you have the diagnostic criteria. So this is where physicians and, and therapists and mental health professionals really lean on to get their diagnoses. But because the way that we talk about emotional sensitivity, it's not present in criteria, even within different, different areas. Like for example, with ADHD, where a lot of the preliminary

• 47:52Speaker 02

  research was done, emotional dysregulation isn't included in our criteria as it stands right now. We just don't factor in emotional processing in a way that I think a lot of people recognize within themselves and then subsequently report.

• 48:10Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think your message is so important because there are a lot of people who have been told their whole life, you're too sensitive, you need a thicker skin, as if it's a flaw that needs to be fixed. And you've brought a whole different perspective that I think is very comforting to people. I've been speaking with Dr. Sasha Hamdani. The name of her book is Too Sensitive: Rejection, Resilience, and the Science of Feeling Deeply. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Sasha, thank you for spending the time.

• 48:43Speaker 04

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• 49:40Mike Carruthers?

  Time with us.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Mike.

• 49:46Mike Carruthers?

  When we're trying to decide if someone's telling us the truth or not, we naturally watch them closely. Are they looking away, fidgeting, acting nervous? But surprisingly, taking away the visual information may sometimes make people better at detecting deception. Research discussed recently in The Guardian found that people judging deception perform better when they could hear a person but couldn't see them. One reason may be watching someone gives your brain a lot of extra information to process, including supposedly suspicious body language signals that aren't actually reliable signs of lying. When you're listening only, subtle changes in rhythm,

• 50:31Mike Carruthers?

  pitch, and intonation may become easier to notice. This certainly doesn't turn anyone into a human lie detector. There's no single vocal giveaway that proves somebody's lying. But it does suggest something wonderfully counterintuitive. If you're trying to figure out whether someone's story is true, closing your eyes and listening may tell you more than staring them in the face. And that is something you should know. I'm sure if you think about it, you know, somebody who would enjoy this podcast, this episode in particular. And if you do know somebody who would enjoy this podcast, I hope you will tell them about it, share it with them and get them to listen. It's a great way to support this show. I'm Mike Carruthers.

• 51:15Mike Carruthers?

  Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.