Neuroscientist: What To Do When You Feel Like Doing Nothing (Unmotivated, Burnt Out, Unhappy)

Rangan Chatterjee

Apr 2, 2025

Episode description

VIVOBAREFOOT is sponsoring today's show. To get 20% OFF YOUR FIRST ORDER visit: https://bit.ly/3FLdvBa

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Have you ever wondered why the same traumatic experience affects different people in completely different ways? Or why finding pleasure in life is so fundamental to our mental wellbeing?

To answer these questions and a whole host more, I'm joined this week by Dr Camilla Nord. Camilla leads the Mental Health Neuroscience Lab at the University of Cambridge and is author of the best-selling book, The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health.

In this fascinating conversation, we explore:
• How everything that impacts our mental health ultimately works through the brain, and why we often artificially separate 'mind' from 'brain' and 'mental' from 'physical' health
• Why pleasure is so fundamental to mental wellbeing that a loss of it is a core symptom of depression, and how activities like social laughter can boost mood by releasing natural opioids
• The fascinating overlap between chronic pain and depression circuits in the brain – revealing why experiencing one increases your risk of developing the other
• How motivation varies throughout the day based on our individual body clocks, and why morning people and night owls have different energy patterns
• Interoception – our internal body awareness – and how practices like meditation, yoga and body scanning can enhance this crucial sense
• Why the placebo effect is so powerful and how a doctor's communication style can significantly impact treatment outcomes

Throughout the conversation, Camilla emphasises that there is no one size fits all approach and that it’s the small, consistent actions that ultimately end up transforming our lives.

#feelbetterlivemore
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Show notes available at: https://drchatterjee.com/543

Connect with Camilla:
https://twitter.com/camillalnord?lang=en

Camilla’s book:
The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health
UK https://amzn.to/445kUW0
US https://amzn.to/3XIxPtg

#feelbetterlivemore #feelbetterlivemorepodcast
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DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Episode description

Mindsip insights from this episode:

Evaluate motivation as a cost-benefit analysis for effort

Your brain treats motivation as a cost-benefit analysis, constantly weighing whether the energetic cost of exerting effort is worth the potential reward.

#energy

#motivation

Recognize dopamine as a signal for unexpected positive events

Dopamine is not a pleasure molecule itself, but rather a learning signal that fires when an event is unexpectedly better than you predicted.

#cognition

#dopamine

Prioritize pleasure to enhance mental health

Depriving yourself of everything you love in pursuit of optimized health will likely not be the route to the best mental health for most people.

#happiness

#mental-health

Use laughter to enhance pain tolerance and resilience

Laughing with friends releases endogenous opioids, which has been shown in experiments to increase people's ability to tolerate uncomfortable physical challenges like wall sits.

#pain

#resilience

Recognize biological overlap between pain and depression

If you have experienced depression, you are more likely to experience chronic pain in the future, and vice versa, because of a biological overlap in the brain circuits that support both conditions.

#depression

#pain

Experience euphoria through brief cold exposure

Brief but temporary pain, such as immersing yourself in very cold water, can induce an endogenous opioid release in the brain, leading to a feeling of euphoria.

#cognition

#cold-therapy

Explore transcranial magnetic stimulation as an alternative depression treatment

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation approach that shows similar efficacy to antidepressants for treating depression but is not yet widely available.

#depression

#therapy

Train interoception to reduce anxiety through hot yoga

Interoception, the sense of your body's internal state, can be trained through practices like hot yoga to reinterpret signals like a high heart rate as non-threatening, thereby reducing anxiety.

#anxiety

#exercise

Shift perception with SSRIs for improved mental health

Antidepressants like SSRIs may not work by fixing a serotonin deficit, but by changing your perception to be more positive, helping you interpret ambiguous events more neutrally.

#antidepressants

#mental-health

Align motivation with your chronotype for optimal effort

Your motivation to exert effort is tied to your chronotype, meaning morning people can seem apathetic in the afternoon, and night owls can seem apathetic in the morning.