Walking on custard: How physics helps anxious humans | Neil Hughes | TEDxLeamingtonSpa

Comedian, author, and physicist Neil Hughes lived with anxiety for years before he had a strange realization: anxiety is just like custard! This surprising pudding-based insight led to a new approach to his mental health. In this talk, he uses physics, humor, and poorly-drawn doodles to share this new way of thinking about mind management, including practical suggestions for improving mental habits.

Neil Hughes is a comedian, anxiety sufferer and the author of "Walking on Custard & the Meaning of Life," a unique combination of autobiographical confessions, humorous fantasy fiction, and a "how-to" for living less anxiously and more happily. As well as speaking about mental health, he is currently working on developing a comedy show, writing his first novel and perfecting the art of the pasta bake.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Fear...

It's not very nice, really.

But, apparently, that's not enough
for a [TEDx] talk,

and I'm supposed to say some more things.

So...

Fear normally pops up
when we're doing something scary:

jumping from planes, running from bulls,
going clothes shopping.

(Laughter)

But, sometimes, our fear response
gets out of control

and we end up spending a disproportionate
amount of time feeling afraid,

and we call this "anxiety."

Language is limiting,

and it's sort of frustrating
that we use the same word, "anxiety,"

for both reasonably worrying
about a job interview

and also a crippling terror
that prevents me from leaving the house.

It's like having the same word
for all-out nuclear war

and also playful tickle fight.

(Laughter)

Like, it's a spectrum,

and the associations
each of us has with the word

might not be shared
with anyone else who's using it.

For me, I've always been more
at the unpleasant end of the spectrum.

As a child, I was deeply worried
about mortgages, for some reason.

And then, as I grew up,

it became obvious that worrying
was my main way of relating to the world.

Whatever I had to do I'd worry about.

Then I'd worry about the next thing
and the next thing,

until eventually this endless
conveyor belt of worry got out of control,

and I ended up living
with quite horrible anxiety.

I couldn't sleep, I couldn't relax,
I couldn't enjoy life at all.

And unfortunately my reaction
was to worry about it,

which just made it worse.

At points, I felt so trapped

I even wondered if suicide
was the only way out.

Now, as you can tell from this
high-definition photo that I drew,

I wasn't very open about this.

If you'd have met at the time,

I'd have given a fairly
convincing impression

of having things mostly together.

I was putting up an image,
and that was bad.

It was bad for me because I didn't get
to share my problems with anybody else,

but it was bad for others too
because they didn't get to see the truth.

If we all put up an image,
then everyone struggles alone.

So, I'm trying to be more open
about these things.

Hence, I'm giving this talk,

although quite a lot of people would say
this is probably taking it too far.

(Laughter)

I want to ask the question:
how do we live less anxiously?

And I'm sure it won't surprise you
in the slightest to learn

that the answer lies
in advanced fluid dynamics.

(Laughter)

Now, I know you're all probably
extremely familiar with these equations.

So, we're just just
going to brush over them.

As you know, this describes
the motion of liquids.

And, like I said, we're not
going to worry about the maths.

Instead, we'll just divide all
the liquids in the world into two groups.

It's quite a fun game to play

if you've got a lot of liquid
and nothing better to do with your time.

The two groups we're interested in
are Newtonian fluids

and non-Newtonian fluids.

This distinction describes
how liquids behave

when they're subjected
to an outside force.

In other words, we're answering
the classic scientific question:

"What happens if I hit it?"

If we hit a Newtonian fluid,
like for example, water,

we know what happens:

it splashes, going all over the place
and soaking everyting in sight.

In Germany, I got politely asked to leave
for causing an unnecessary disturbance.

But a non-Newtonian fluid like for example
popular pudding sauce, custard,

behaves differently.

Instead of splashing apart,
it clumps up together when you hit it,

hardening temporarily... hello...

(Laughter)

Well, that's carnage, isn't it?

(Laughter)

Basically, you get to the point
where it hardens temporarily,

before relaxing back to a previous state.

In other words, if I punch custard
for my own personal reasons,

then it hardens.

Now, as you might have guessed,
there is a pedantic disclaimer alert:

this does depend on the exact nature
of the custard. But really, who cares?

This means we can do really awesome things

like fill a swimming pool
with custard and walk on it.

Look, I'm walking on custard.

I mean, go with me here,
it's obviously not real custard.

It's like a biblical miracle,
except even more sugary.

Like, how fun is this!

But the problem is the more we thought
about the walking on custard -

and I thought about it way more
than anyone probably should -

the more I realized
how exhausting it would be.

Like, once I start, I can't stop.

Every time my foot hits the surface,
it hardens underneath me,

but I can't pause to enjoy it,
I have to keep going.

If I stop, then I'm going to sink
and drown in custard,

which is definitely in the top three most
embarrassing ways to die that there is.

(Laughter)

Years after I first learned about this,

I was in the middle
of a terribly anxious period,

and this image of walking
on custard came to my mind,

and I realized it described
my anxiety perfectly.

I was running, and running,
and running on the spot,

exhausted, unable to stop,

and with this constant fear
of drowning in my own life.

And the more I spoke to people,
the more I realized how common this is,

this feeling of exhaustion,
of not being able to rest,

of not getting anywhere.

It's like we're all mentally walking
on custard in some way,

and I wondered what it would mean to stop,

not stop on the custard where we'd drown.

What would it mean
to make it to solid ground,

somewhere where we can rest,

somewhere where we can be at peace,
without anxiously struggling,

somewhere where we can live?

So, I made it my number-one priority

to figure out what
this custard was for me,

what is this anxiety,

and to figure out
how to get to solid ground.

And I learned a whole load of things,

but the idea that I want
to share with you today

is what I came to think
of as custard traps,

unhelpful mental habits which were
causing my anxiety or making it worse.

And I think of them as traps because,
at times, I'd be going along quite happily

and then, suddenly,

I'm having a panic attack,
I've fallen into a custard trap.

At other points, it was more
like a vast sea of custard,

and I was trudging exhausted for months,

before finally getting
to somewhere I could rest.

Some people have told me
that this image resonates with them,

but for them, the custard
doesn't fell like anxiety;

it feels like shame, or depression,
or some other emotion.

But whatever it feels like,

and whether it's a temporary custard trap
or a vast sea of custard,

these custard traps, these mental habits,
share a number of features.

Firstly, they appear invisible.

Everything we do becomes normal.

Our brains are amazing
at normalizing things.

There's this guy, George Stratton -
that's not a real photo, by the way.

(Laughter)

He wore glasses that flipped
his vision upside down,

and after a few days, it made everything
start to look the right way up again.

Then, a few days later,
when he took the glasses off,

things appeared upside down
when he wasn't wearing them.

His brain had adapted
to the new information.

And we do this all the time.

If we change something in our homes,
paint it, move it around,

adopt a vicious angry bear
to come live in the hall,

then, after a few days,
we don't even notice anymore.

It just fades into the background
and becomes normal.

We're like, "Don't worry about it.
That's just Steve."

And we do this with our mental habits too.

The number-one reason I didn't do anything
about my anxiety for so long

is that I wasn't aware of all the habits
I was doing internally that fed it.

They were invisible to me.

And the solution to this was observation,

self-observation,
getting to know ourselves.

Now, this idea annoyed and offended me
the first hundred times I heard it.

"You've got to get to know yourself."

It's so patronizing and irritating,
but it's unfortunately true.

Self-knowledge
doesn't just magically appear.

There's no process that's monitoring our
mental habits and letting us know that,

"Maybe you could change those around
a little bit and you'd be happier."

We have to do the work ourselves
to understand what's going on inside us.

I'm going to give you an example.

Imagine I'm walking away
from a group of my friends,

and maybe a thought pops into my head,

something proportional,
rational and reasonable like,

"Oh, Neil, you said goodbye
a little bit awkwardly there.

Maybe all of your friends now hate you."

If I'm not paying attention
and that thought pops up,

then I'll have an emotional reaction.

I'm going to feel bad,
I'm going to be thinking,

"Oh, that was a bit awkward
now I think about it.

And all my friends think
I'm super cool, of course.

But what if this is the moment
they realize I'm not?

This could be the end,
I'm going to die alone!"

And I'm on the custard,
having a bad time over nothing.

If I'm paying attention
when that thought pops up,

I can choose my reaction to it;
I'll notice it and can choose.

Maybe I'll choose to have
an emotional freak-out,

but maybe, instead, I'll choose
to react to it more rationally,

recognizing what's going on inside.

This self-observation is crucial
to making these custard traps visible,

so we can deal with them
in the first place.

The second key feature of custard traps
is that they're self-reinforcing.

The traps themselves remove
our ability to escape the trap.

They're quite devious like that.

Incidentally, "Devious Custard"
is the name of my rapper alter ego,

but that's not actually
important right now.

(Laughter)

Yes, they're self-reinforcing.

Anxiety, for example,
it protects itself by tiring us out.

It is exhausting being anxious.

It sucks up all of our energy

and leaves very little energy
to deal with the root of the problem.

It's self-reinforcing,

and this self-reinforcing aspect
of the custard traps

often appears in the form of a cycle...

Sorry, my apologies.

It often appears in the form of a cycle.

So, for example, again,
sticking with anxiety is a broad example.

Being anxious takes a toll on our bodies,
which can make us feel ill,

and then we can be anxious
about being ill,

which feeds itself,
and the cycle gets stronger.

Or perfectionism.

I have perfectionist tendencies,
so I beat myself up for every mistake.

Then, I beat myself up
for beating myself up

because a perfect person
wouldn't do that either.

And again, the cycle continues.

It's so easy to get stuck in these loops,

and the solution is to do
something different...

oh, hello...

to do something different.

Lots of previews are coming up here.

(Laughter)

This is based on the very simple idea that
clearly whatever I'm doing isn't working.

My natural impulse is to do the next step
in this cycle I'm stuck in.

That's what makes it a cycle.

So, if my instinct is to sit
and dwell on some mental movie

of something terrible
I'm convinced is about to happen,

instead, maybe I should stand up
and sing the Danish national anthem.

I mean, it won't help,

not least because I don't know
the Danish national anthem,

but it'll break me out of the loop
I'm in, it's something different,

it's not me resisting the urge
to continue this unpleasant cycle.

And if whatever I choose to do
isn't helpful, that's fine.

Next time I'll choose something different,

and over time, I'll learn
some things I can do.

There are useful ways of getting out
of these loops, these traps.

The third key feature of custard traps,
you may have guessed,

is that they're habitual.

(Laughter)

So, they're difficult
to escape in the moment,

but we keep falling into them
in the first place because they're habits.

Now, I'm no brain scientist,

but I do know that our brains are
constantly forming physical pathways,

they are essentially
rewiring themselves all the time,

and this makes us prone to habits.

So, it becomes instinct for me to go from,

"Oh, there's a slight pain
on my left leg,"

to, "That's definitely a blood clot!
I'm on the verge of death!"

This link between these two concepts
has been strengthened in my brain

through habitual repetition.

And, therefore, what we need to do
is to have a really long-term outlook.

Oh, my goodness...

We need to learn to replace
these habits in the long term,

and this is about learning
what it feels like

to dip our toes in the custard,

what it feels like just as we're
entering a custard trap.

For me, there are physical sensations.

I get a stab in the chest,
a fizz in the brain.

There are also situational triggers.

I know everything involving my health

is likely to send me
into one of these anxious traps.

For other people, maybe it's
social situations, fear of contamination,

any of a million different things.

But once we've learned
what these triggers are for us

and what it feels like to be getting stuck
into one of these loops,

we can use that itself as a trigger
to do something positive.

So, as I feel myself falling into a trap,

that reminds me to take
some positive action,

something really quick and easy.

Maybe I'll drink a glass of water
or phone a friend,

meditate for ten seconds
or relive a sporting triumph.

I mean, not one of mine, obviously;
just one I've seen.

But the point is to associate
something positive

with what was formerly negative,

and, over time,
this can replace the habit.

It's like laying a foundation
over the custard

and transforming it into solid ground.

Did this sound a bit too easy?
It probably should.

It's good to be suspicious
of easy answers to tough problems,

and anxiety is a really tough problem.

I've only touched the surface of the
mind management aspects of it today,

but there are also chemical aspects,
social aspects, situational aspects.

Mind management
is a really good one to focus on

because we can always take more control
over what's happening in our minds.

But it is difficult,

and I've actually got
a highly scientific graph here

of exactly how difficult it is.

In the beginning,
things might be quite tough.

And then we make a decision
to stop doing something about it,

to make it to solid ground,

and for a while,
things actually get worse.

It's because previously we were using
all of our energy just staying afloat;

now we're putting extra energy
seeking out solid ground

and making our way towards it.

It's harder for a bit,
but there's a payoff

as we learn to start getting better
at understanding ourselves,

at replacing our habits, at breaking
all of these unpleasant cycles.

Eventually we start to spend
a little more time on solid ground

and a bit less time
anxiously struggling on the custard.

I don't know if we can ever make it
to the bottom of the graph

where all is wonderful all the time;
I doubt it, but it'd be nice.

But I do believe we can learn
to spend more time at peace.

I'd love to be able to give you personally

the actions that you need
to individually take to be less anxious,

but these things are so unique to us.

We've spent years developing
our own individual mental habits,

our own personal custard traps,

and only we can put in the effort
required to escape them.

But it's my hope that, if we're all
a little bit more open and honest

about these difficult
personal experiences,

these tough solo journeys
across the custard to solid ground

are journeys that
we can all make together.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)