The Wire, Not the Will: Rewiring Stress with Dr. Laurel Mellin

For 42 years, Dr. Laurel Mellin has been part of UCSF, as well as working and studying for almost 50 years the problem of understanding why we suffer. All this experience brought her to a conclusion: the roots of almost every chronic disease, addiction, and mental disorder are the same—a brain being stuck in survival circuits, which means that neither psychotherapy nor effort will affect it; however, five minutes of emotional processing will. In this episode of The Academic Boardroom, Dr. Mellin explains the process of Emotional Brain Training (EBT) to Dr. Eli Joseph and Dr. Janice Gassam Asare, which was developed based on the research conducted in the 1940s and has been confirmed with the help of neuroscience. She conducts a demonstration of her technique using her practice with Dr. Gassam Asare as a sample. Additionally, the negative impact of expressing our anger the way we have been taught; the complexity doctors and therapists face on the way to implementing this technique; how AI and social media blunt our feelings in the worst way possible; and why she is sure that changing the way people respond to stress can relieve tension.