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Practicing Resilience and Gratitude (with special guest Dr. Greg Hammer)
113 Plays12 days ago
This week on a very special episode of Friendless, I sit down with Dr. Greg Hammer—pediatric intensive care physician, recently retired Stanford professor, and author of A Mindful Teen—to talk about what we're actually doing to young people in 2025.
We unpack the unique pressures facing today's teens: smartphones as double-edged swords, the performative perfection trap of social media, sextortion and AI-generated abuse, fentanyl-laced everything, gun violence as background noise, and the impossible college admissions race. You know, light stuff.
But here's the thing—Dr. Hammer isn't here to just list problems. We dig into his GAIN method (Gratitude, Acceptance, Intention, Non-Judgment), a practical framework for building actual resilience without the therapy-speak bullshit. We talk about neuroplasticity, the negativity bias our brains are stuck with from evolutionary baggage, and why telling your kids to be grateful while you complain about traffic doesn't work.
We also get real about recognizing depression versus sadness, the telltale signs parents and teachers miss, and why love needs to be a verb, not just a feeling.
Fair warning: this episode discusses teen mental health, suicide, and self-harm in depth.
In This Episode:
- Why "kids are resilient" is a cop-out
- The self-surveillance generation and viral culture paralysis
- How smartphones and social media rewire developing brains
- The GAIN method: a 3-minute daily practice for mental resilience
- Three Good Things: the stupidly simple gratitude practice that actually works
- Modeling behaviour vs. telling kids what to do
- Recognizing the signs of clinical depression in teens
- Why we're all more alike than different (and our dark thoughts aren't unique)
Guest Bio:Dr. Greg Hammer is a pediatric intensive care physician, recently retired professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, and author of Gain Without Pain and A Mindful Teen. He's spent his career studying physical and mental wellness, longevity science, and resilience practices—and has raised teenagers while watching an entire generation navigate challenges he never had to face.
Resources:
- A Mindful Teen by Dr. Greg Hammer: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
- Dr. Hammer's website: greghammermd.com
- Instagram: @greghammermd
Mental Health Resources:
- Canada: Call or text 988 (Suicide Crisis Helpline)
- USA: Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline)
- Crisis Text Line (both countries): Text HOME to 741741
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Greg Hammer and Social Pressures on Youth
00:00:08
Speaker
Well, hey there, sweet peas. Welcome back to Friendless. I'm your host, James Avromenko, and this week I'm chatting with Dr. Greg Hammer. Dr. Hammer is a retired Stanford professor and physician and the author of A Mindful Teen. We discuss social pressures facing our youth today, social media perfection traps, and the benefits of a little bit of gratitude. A quick heads up, this episode does discuss suicide and self-harm, but it is a fantastic conversation that I've been really looking forward to sharing.
00:00:36
Speaker
So it's time to lean back, get comfy, set your volume at a reasonable level and enjoy my interview with the one and only
Dr. Hammer's Wellness Philosophy
00:00:42
Speaker
Dr. Greg Hammer here on Friendless.
00:00:48
Speaker
How are you doing today? Nice to meet you. Yeah, this is literally our first time chatting. And these kinds interviews are always so exciting for me because it's always like, it could go one of two ways. It could go just totally off the rails or suddenly I have a new best friend, you know? Hopefully the latter.
00:01:02
Speaker
Right? That's always the aim, you know? So Dr. Hammer, amongst a myriad of things, you are a recently retired professor from Stanford University of a School of Medicine. You're a pediatric intensive care physician. You are also an author of not only the book Gain Without Pain, but also the newly published A Mindful Team. And those feel like just scratching the surface. I don't think I can do it justice, really. I often open my interviews with a very blunt question to my guests of, who the hell are you? Ha ha ha.
00:01:35
Speaker
Well, I've always been interested in what I guess you might call wellness, um, in, you know, very active in sports. And, my undergraduate degree was in nutritional science.
00:01:48
Speaker
So I've always been interested in nutrition. I stopped eating meat when I was 18. I've gotten very interested in sleep physiology. So that I think the fundamentals of our physical well-being are sleep, exercise, and nutrition.
00:02:01
Speaker
yeah I've taken a deep dive into longevity science, but I am really also interested in resilience. And therefore, you know I think a path to personal resilience being what's commonly called mindfulness practice.
The GAIN Approach to Wellness
00:02:18
Speaker
And that's kind of a buzzword. I think that people probably shut their brains off when they hear it to some degree, or at least some people do, but you know, I've learned that our brains are wired in ways that benefit our survival or favored our survival, not necessarily anymore and not happiness, but what's the one thing that all nearly 8 billion of us want. And that is happiness.
00:02:44
Speaker
So I've been a long time meditator and student of non-duality. And how can we be more happy and why aren't we more happy, I guess, fundamentally? So in addition to physical wellbeing, sleep, exercise, nutrition, supplements, potentially drugs that may promote like healthy longevity or health span, i think we really need to focus on our mental wellbeing. And that sort of led me to the two issues that are most challenging to us. And they are,
00:03:13
Speaker
One, we have a negativity bias, so we tend to remember the negative and forget the positive. And the other one is that we have a hard time being present. Our minds, if you just sort of close your eyes and try to pay attention to what's happening right now, even just physically, the sensation of the chair against your body, maybe a passing automobile or airplane, our mind will quickly go to the future or the past. And then you combine that with our negativity bias When we overthink the future, we generate a lot of fear and anxiety. We catastrophize. Everything has sort of a negative overtone, if you will.
00:03:51
Speaker
And when we ruminate or overthink the past, we generate a lot of shame, regret. think it's a source of depression. So I think to be mentally resilient and happier, we need to be more present and sort of let go of this negativity bias.
Pressures on Teenagers and Support Methods
00:04:10
Speaker
So that's really the derivation of the GAIN approach. It's a mindfulness practice. It's a lifestyle.
00:04:18
Speaker
And GAIN is an acronym in caps for the elements of gratitude, acceptance, intention, and non-judgment. So kind of to summarize, I'm longstanding interested in physical and mental wellness. And that's why I went into medical school and continue to be very interested in those things. And the new book, A Mindful Teen, is really based on my having cared for teenagers my whole professional life, raised a couple, and just noticed what challenges they face.
00:04:53
Speaker
You know, I have 18-year-old. and then two older kids. And, you know, teenagers right now, and the rest of us to a large extent, they are especially developing and I think are most affected by so many things that I never had to face when I was a teenager, certainly, and even my older kids never had to face. So that's why I wanted to really kind of take a deep dive into those issues that teens face and what I would consider some at least roads to helping them, supporting them and and employing the GAIN method in that context.
00:05:30
Speaker
I love that. You have already opened the door to so many different threads that I want to unpack, but I know we're on a time limit, so I got to pick my words carefully here. you know I'm very much a man who who will choose 10 words when one would suffice, so you know I'll try and get it. you know You should try writing a book, and then you'll...
00:05:48
Speaker
to Get it all out, right? Yeah, you're with 500 pages, but your publisher will tell you you have to whittle it down to 250, and that's the best way to be succinct. Right? Tell me about it. Oh, my God. um So, you know, you you were talking about the idea of resilience, and there something... I was just talking about the other day with someone about youth and about the pressures that they're facing is this idea of we often have heard this kind of idiom in the past of like, well, kids are resilient, you know, and kids are this and that. And what we were talking about, though, was when you actually follow that thought is it's they have to be because that's how, you know, that's how you survive is is whatever situation you're in, you figure it out.
00:06:25
Speaker
But it it almost sort of shouldn't be that way. Kids shouldn't have to be resilient. They should be shown resilience, but they shouldn't have it forced on them, you know? And I feel like a lot of the work that you're doing here is how to sort of bridge that gap and how to open this conversation, you know? A friend of mine was just telling me this story of their younger sibling who basically will never...
00:06:45
Speaker
do anything. Like they're just this immensely boring person because they're terrified of the possibility of being filmed, having it shared, go online, suddenly go viral. So we have this whole generation that is basically self-surveilling and shutting themselves down from behaviors that we wouldn't would have done 10, 20 years ago without a second thought.
00:07:09
Speaker
And I guess I'm curious in your observations, and in your research, you know, you've highlighted a few different areas and I don't think it's sort of like one is more important than the other, but things like social media, smartphones, AI, environmental crises, all these factors, political polarization, everything. Where do you begin to sort of parse out the impacts of these different factors in order to even be able to make a bit of a roadmap of how to address these things?
Maintaining Positivity and Mental Resilience
00:07:36
Speaker
I think the key to addressing all those challenges, and I think you mentioned several, I think smartphones certainly are a double-edged sword. There are some good things about course social media and access to social media being in your pocket, but there's also a lot of hazards. People with...
00:07:55
Speaker
distorted images of what a human being is, this sort of idea that you have to be perfect and beautiful or handsome, et cetera. And there's also a lot of potential for shaming and bullying and something called sextortion, which I it's a term that's relatively new to me.
00:08:14
Speaker
i think in particular with AI has the potential to really damage a lot of young people in particular. And then, as you said, the political divide, I think families have a lot of tension and, you know, people don't talk to each other. Gun violence, we certainly never had that.
00:08:31
Speaker
ah And it's just completely out of control, of course. And practically every day you have a story in the news about some terrible tragedy. Drugs.
00:08:43
Speaker
we sort of knew what we were doing and taking whether we want, you know, you could sort of gauge what risk you wanted to take, for example, although I don't think we were necessarily very good at managing risk. That's part of being a teenager and having a developing, yeah but nowadays, you know, there's fentanyl and so many different recreational substances and, you know, kids overdose without thinking that they had a risk of overdosing.
00:09:07
Speaker
Um, So there's just so many issues that teens face. I think even just the pressure of getting into college. um Yeah. It's kind of baffling to me in a way, but I think it's much more competitive than it used to be. There's more teens applying to college than there are spaces compared to when I was applying to college. Yeah. I just know so many kids, friends of my daughter's who...
00:09:30
Speaker
had straight A's and they had lots of extracurricular activities and they maybe got into their safety school. So I just don't quite understand that. But anyway, there's just a lot of pressure and a lot of sources of anxiety. And and again, i think the solution to all these things, what they all have in common is that they're amenable to paths that lead to greater resilience. And I think that's really a matter of I kind of whittled it down to the four elements of gain. I think learning to be grateful.
00:10:03
Speaker
So when we're feeling like the weight of the world on our shoulders and we're feeling sorry for ourselves or what have you, go to your gratitude, flip it over and get away from that negativity and think of all the wonderful things we have for wish to be grateful.
00:10:18
Speaker
Acceptance. So there's a lot of things in the world that don't comport with what we think we want and need. And if we can't change them, then we need to learn to accept them if we're going to be happier.
00:10:32
Speaker
Whereas our natural tendency is to sort of resist things that don't agree with us. The I in gain is intention. And again, you know, our brains are programmed just, I think through evolution to be wary, negative,
00:10:48
Speaker
worrying about what might happen next that served us well 200,000 years ago when we were huddled in our cave, trying to keep a fire going and worried there might be a saber tooth tiger lurking outside the mouth of our cave. Yeah. The genes and epigenes that coded for wariness led to greater survival, perhaps the ability to have more offspring. And so these genes and epigenetic factors, uh,
00:11:16
Speaker
We're favored from an evolutionary standpoint, and therefore here we are 200,000 years later stuck with those traits that no longer really serve us well. yeah So we have to have a plan. you know Fortunately, our brains have this amazing quality called neuroplasticity. So you know if we have a plan, we can actually rewire our brains and change the way we think and exist.
00:11:37
Speaker
And the end and gain is non-judgment and and we're overly judgmental. And when you combine that with our negativity bias, You know, we judge others, the world and particularly ourselves in a negative light.
00:11:50
Speaker
And the good news again, is that we have this quality of neuroplasticity. We can change the way we think. So we do our gain meditation in the morning and I've designed that to be a three minute practice.
00:12:05
Speaker
So then we do our little gain practice, emphasizing those things linked with our slow, deep, deliberate breathing. And then, you know, perhaps I have a cup of coffee and then I get in my car to go to work and somebody cuts me off on the road and I start to make all these negative judgments about the driver and a light bulb goes off and I realize I'm being overly judgmental and I can drop the judgment and I get a little dopamine hit, a little laugh instead of a hit of adrenaline, chronic stress.
00:12:35
Speaker
So I think that what we can embody in terms of helping our teens is this approach, this sort of easy to learn and practice approach to life that serves us well yeah by being more grateful, accepting, intentional, and less judgmental.
00:12:54
Speaker
And you know we can't just tell our
Mindfulness, Meditation, and Routine Practices
00:12:56
Speaker
teenagers what to do. We have to show them yeah by what we do and they're watching us and they're quite good at picking up on our behaviors. So if we embrace these practices,
00:13:08
Speaker
um we can help teach our teens and this will help them become more resilient in the face of those challenges that we discussed. Yeah. Isn't that the case too, though? Didn't you just nail it of the idea of like, you know, when you tell a child something, you know, do something, but you don't do it immediately, you're creating this kind of conflict within them where they're like, well, you're not doing it. So why should I, especially when you get into the teen years where they're learning independence and they're starting to push back and they're starting to form who they actually are and how they're going to show up in the world. I mean, if we tell them you should be more grateful because look at all the wonderful things we have, the friends and family and all the love and good relationships and a roof over our head and food on the table and running water and so on that some less fortunate people in the world don't have. Let's remember that.
00:13:55
Speaker
And yet we're constantly complaining and griping and being negative. That message is just not going to get anywhere. yeah A lot of what you're talking about, oh what really grabbed to me and resonated so deeply with me is that it feels like you've really taken... So I've done workshops and I've done a lot of practice of my own with dialectical behavior therapy, just because of my own kind of experiences in my life life and the... the variety of letters that I have assembled on my portfolio, you know, and what I love so much about what you're teaching is it really distills a lot of that greater system and that very complex system into something that, you know, you can do in these really accessible ways. And while I still, you know, I hold dbt in such a high regard, I think adding a resource like this to that toolbox, you know, and funny enough, that's a dialectical right there is that it doesn't have to be It's either this or that. It can be, well, let's use both and let's put them both together, right? I guess beside like, you know, buy the book and read the book and apply it. Listeners are curious about taking their first steps and explaining this kind of gain method.
00:14:56
Speaker
What are some initial stages or steps that you recommend to explore? Like what's going to actually benefit me and my personal progress? Well, I would recommend that people...
00:15:08
Speaker
okay learn and regularly have a practice. Again, you know, we learn through repetition in small increments, baby steps, small bites, however you want to think about it.
00:15:21
Speaker
And I think the main thing is to get started with an approach that's positive, that will help you be more optimistic and present and stick with it.
00:15:33
Speaker
And when I was trying to encapsulate what I thought was a good pragmatic approach, I thought, well, what are the essential ingredients of happiness?
00:15:46
Speaker
And how can i perhaps create an acronym that I can remember that will facilitate my own practice? I thought, well... Five items is too many. I won't remember it.
00:16:00
Speaker
Three, I'm probably leaving something out. i thought four was about right for my own memory and and ability to really remember something. So that's how I came up with the acronym.
00:16:13
Speaker
and And of course, these are tried and true ingredients. Mm-hmm. um You know, having a gratitude practice is is well described and and very common. Many people will journal.
00:16:26
Speaker
I'm not a journaler. I've tried it. Tried having a book by my bed, my end table and, you know, perhaps writing down my dreams when I woke up and things like that. That doesn't endure. But even if you just mentally...
00:16:41
Speaker
Picture that for which you're grateful. It's a benefit. There's a big study that's been going on. I'm not a hundred percent sure it's still ongoing, but we started at Duke university. It's called three good things. And essentially the nuts and bolts are that just by acknowledging three things that went well during the day before you go to sleep.
00:17:01
Speaker
And this practice doesn't take any time. You can do it while you're turning down the bed linens, for example. You know, today i took my dogs for a walk. It was a beautiful day and got fresh air and it was just watching them brings me joy.
00:17:14
Speaker
ah Two, you know, I had a wonderful lunch with a friend. Three, I was on this terrific podcast. Yeah. yeah And you could stop there. Just three good things that happened during the day.
00:17:26
Speaker
When you do that regularly, it actually improves your quality of sleep and sleep. improves your quality of life. yeah These are survey studies, you know, where people fill out their own wellbeing surveys that have been well vetted and documented, but simply just thinking of three good things. It's it's a gratitude practice.
00:17:49
Speaker
So I think gratitude is intrinsic to happiness. yeah So just doing that, I think, yeah get started, do it. every evening before you go to sleep. Remember to do it. Put it in your calendar, set an alarm, what have you. yeah you know That will help you get some traction. i think just getting started is important.
00:18:08
Speaker
And, um but then, you know, as you go along, I think adding the other elements so the game practice is really meant to be three minute meditation. And so I can kind of walk you through it. I think yeah just getting started and embracing a practice that you'll stick with. It's like exercising, for example, you go to the gym, you have a routine, you'll do a dozen different exercises, things. three sets of each one. You have an organized way of doing it. You do it every time you go. you have the goal of going three times a week.
00:18:39
Speaker
um This is the kind of routinized endeavor that I think will help us succeed. So in the gain practice, we you know i tell my trainees, set your alarm three minutes earlier than you normally would. So if you're going to get up at 5.30 in the morning, and I know that sounds ungodly, but...
00:19:02
Speaker
That's my world in working in the operating room, the intensive care unit, especially for the trainees. They've got to go set the room up or make rounds before we all make rounds as a group.
00:19:13
Speaker
Anyway, if you're going to get up at 530, set your alarm for 527. So you kind of set your attention the night before. And you wake up, you open the blinds, do your morning hygiene thing, find a comfortable place to sit.
00:19:27
Speaker
close your eyes and first focus on the breath. I think the breath is intrinsic to pretty much every form of meditation, if you will. And there's so many physiologic benefits. It actually activates breath.
00:19:40
Speaker
the vagus nerve, it slows our heart rate, lowers our blood pressure, gives us a sense of calm just by breathing slowly, deeply and deliberately. So we we breathe in to a count of three through the nose, fill our chest and abdomen, pause to a count of three, and then just let the breath go without effort to a count of four.
00:20:00
Speaker
And do that a couple of times. And if each count is one second, three, three and four is 10. So you're breathing times a minute. Yeah, that's perfect. So you do that and then you just do a self-guided tour. You start with things for which you're grateful.
00:20:16
Speaker
It can be, you know, I'm gainfully employed. I've got a roof over my head. I love my dog. I have a great partner. What have you?
Counteracting Modern Challenges with Positive Practices
00:20:25
Speaker
yeah. And you do this while you continue to breathe slowly, deeply, and deliberately. And then you transition to the A in gain, which is acceptance. So I think it's important to learn how to live with the things that cause us discomfort.
00:20:41
Speaker
So imagine something even painful. I lost my son at the age of 29, eight years ago. And so I often have that just come into my mind, my focus.
00:20:54
Speaker
And as I'm doing my slow, deep, deliberate breathing, I picture my son and the pain of his passing. And I imagine opening my chest, opening my heart, bringing this feeling into my heart and just supporting it, nurturing it, breathing with it, relaxing my body into it. We can ask ourselves the question at some point, can I live with this pain forever? And the answer is eventually, yes, I can.
00:21:18
Speaker
I've accepted it. We transition then in our mind during this process to intention. And we might just say, my intention is to be present for five seconds or 10 seconds.
00:21:32
Speaker
So just experience the pressure of the chair against my body, the sound of a passing airplane or automobile or the you know, the sound of the air coming through the vents, what have you. And, you know, your mind will tend to wander, but just bring it back to those sensations for a brief period of time, five seconds this week, 10 seconds next week, et cetera. And then with the deep breathing, transition to the end and gain, which is non-judgment.
00:22:00
Speaker
And a tool that I often recommend is imagine a picture of the earth, an image of the earth, apparently suspended in space. One of these beautiful NASA images and the earth is a lovely planet, but it doesn't possess the qualities of goodness or badness. There's no judgment. It just is it's what it is. Exactly.
00:22:18
Speaker
And therefore it's logical for me to believe that I too, I'm just the person that I am. And we are doing this slow, deep, deliberate breathing and you imagining this I am-ness, maybe just repeat silently i am.
00:22:34
Speaker
And we link that to our deep breathing and then we just focus on the breath and then we slowly open our eyes and we're ready to go out in the world. And that can take three or four or five minutes. Yeah.
00:22:45
Speaker
And what happens is that then when we're being ungrateful or resisting or lapsing into the old ways of thinking and being, a light bulb goes off and we can have a little laugh to ourselves and redirect our thoughts and attention to being grateful again or accepting.
00:23:04
Speaker
So it's you know analogous to just going to the gym and having your routine, just make it part of your day, brushing your teeth, doing your other hygienic maneuvers, et Yeah. And I think that really, to me, has just transformed the way I think and the way i interact with the world, others and myself.
00:23:24
Speaker
And, you know, so there it is. And I think that can help us cope with all of these things. Yeah. You know, the politics, the terrible tragedies happening around the world, et cetera, et cetera.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah. What's wonderful about it too, is this idea of, you know, to continue that and analogy of the gym is I know with a lot of my practices, you know, it's almost feels like it's not hard enough at first, right? You think you should be like, I need to show up and I need to lift 500 pounds in one go. But you realize that, no, you show up first and you lift five pounds, you know, and you do your reps and you build those muscles. And, you know, I remember a couple years ago, I started doing a thing where I was practicing sort of like self-confidence. And I started doing this thing where no matter what happened, if I caught my reflection somewhere, I would have to stop and I would have to give myself a compliment.
00:24:08
Speaker
And I'd say, hey, you look great. Or hey, nice hair today. Or whatever it is. Every single time, no matter where I was. And for a long time, it felt really goofy. And it felt really silly. And it was hard. And I felt kind of embarrassed and resistant. But then the more I did it, the more I made myself do it, the easier it got.
00:24:21
Speaker
And then the more integrated and embodied those feelings became. And there was just less resistance to just feeling good about myself, you know? um and and what I like that. It's a beautiful practice, actually. Yeah, it's really nice. And I continue to do it still to this day because it's just this easy little thing. But I think what you're talking about is built in that same modality. And I really appreciate it because it's accessible. And I think sometimes i know myself very much so, but I know a lot of people I speak to, they think that they can ignore the little tiny things because somehow they'll make bigger movement if they do these big, huge things.
00:24:56
Speaker
declarative motions when really what actually shifts you and gets you into a new mode is by focusing on those little those little elements of just well i think five minutes you know yeah i love that and i think that you have hit on some of the gain elements just through that practice one is i'm grateful you know i'm in reasonably good shape or, you know, I, my period certainly could be worse or what have you. I'm grateful for that.
00:25:24
Speaker
And then gain non-judgment, you know, like we have a negativity bias. We judge others, the world and ourselves negatively sort of, that's our innate tendency, and particularly, I think we're hard on ourselves, and that's the most difficult thing to overcome. Because I remember all the negative things that happened during my medical career. You know, do I remember all the lives that I may have saved, et cetera? Not really. yeah What I remember are the bad outcomes. yeah And if I'd done something differently, even five or 10 minutes beforehand, I may have changed the outcome to something better.
00:26:01
Speaker
So when you look at yourself, your image and reflection, and you say, you know, It's good. It's positive. You're basically rewiring the way you think away from this negative self-judgment. Just that simple little practice. you know you've You've embodied gratitude, acceptance, if you will, intention because you've set your mind at doing this practice and now you're doing it.
00:26:27
Speaker
And non-judgment. you know you've You've bent the curve away from being so harshly self-judgmental and negative. yeah Even as small an item as that is, yeah your're taking advantage of your brain's ability to adapt and change the way you think. And and it
Addressing Mental Health and Technology's Impact
00:26:44
Speaker
makes a big difference. It really does. And it, you know, all of this kind of leads me towards, you know, I know your new book, you know, it talks about a myriad of things, but it really talks about how to sort of connect with teens about mental health and about some of the pressures that they are facing. What I find really resonant about it is that it's not necessarily a book written for teens to read so much as it's written for people to help teens. And I think that that's a really powerful message. A big thing that came up in our emails back and forth in setting up the interview was around the topic of suicide. And, you know, i realize this is a bit of a leap in, but in a lot of ways, I like to kind of just go two feet forward, two feet first in these topics, you know, because as you talk about in the book, you know, suicide still continues to be this really deeply taboo topic. And a lot of people really struggle to discuss it and to kind of work with it in the same way that you're discussing working with any emotion. You know, it's an element of something that is...
00:27:42
Speaker
to me, inherently benign, but we make it hard because we don't talk about it. And I guess to begin with, centered around this book, where do you see us beginning the sort of destigmatization conversation? And how do you see that correlating with prevention of escalating to potential suicidality?
00:28:03
Speaker
Well, that's a good question. I guess we're approaching the end of National Suicide yeah Prevention Month. And the suicide hotline, by the way, for anybody who's got serious thoughts of suicide is 988. And there are many others. But um no, I think that depression is so common.
00:28:24
Speaker
And, you know, there's it's a spectrum, of course. I think for people with serious life-changing depression, they definitely are well advised to seek professional help. Of course. But for the rest of us, I think...
00:28:39
Speaker
almost all of us, certainly myself included, have periods of sadness, the winter blues, if you will. yeah the sad yeah But also just this negativity bias. And I think that does lead to depression and this negative self-talk, self-judgment, et cetera.
00:28:58
Speaker
So it's very common. And I think the first thing is we might all recognize that this is not our dirty little secret, that everybody is... wired this way. i think for parents, just to be very cognizant of the fact that teenagers can be especially susceptible to depression and a lot of negativity and negative self-judgment because of the fact that their brain is still developing. Mm-hmm.
00:29:31
Speaker
Their frontal cortex is still developing. Their personality is still developing. And they're subjected to all this social media where they're comparing themselves constantly to those who seem idealized.
00:29:44
Speaker
And they're also subjected to bullying and shaming and terrible things through social media and online. And they have all these other issues they're still trying to sort out, as we've discussed. Yeah. Eco-anxiety, political divide, drugs, gun violence, et cetera.
00:30:04
Speaker
So parents, you know, we all love our children. That goes without saying. um But, you know, I think We all love our children. We all want them to to succeed and be happy. And so we just need to be connected and and and nonjudgmental.
00:30:20
Speaker
And there are topics that kids may be very depressed and even suicidal over and they have to do with their sexuality. and And there are topics that are uncomfortable for us to bring up.
00:30:34
Speaker
But we should bring them up. We should bring up sexuality. We should bring up, this isn't necessarily a contributor to suicide, but sexually transmitted diseases. As I write about in the book, how common chlamydia is, it it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease in women and infertility in women and men, ah HPV for which there's a vaccination now that may lead to cancer if not immunized.
00:30:59
Speaker
So, you know, that we we need to be non-judgmental with our kids, listen, be open-minded and kind of get ourselves comfortable with uncomfortable topics. Yeah.
00:31:13
Speaker
With the idea of the emotional dysregulation that that is so inherent in in sort of adolescence and this idea of the spikes, and and you've you've talked about earlier too, the idea of like replacing, you know, sort of adrenaline spikes with dopamine spikes and things like that. And yet at the same time, we're also...
00:31:29
Speaker
working with these kind of dopamine machines, right? The smartphones and how kind of saturated with dopamine that's making us and video games, social media. And I'm curious as a doctor, how do you see these dopamine floods affecting not only adolescents, but everyone? I can't help feel like adults are not immune to that either, right? No, this is, you're talking about addiction really. And yeah there's sort of, you know, we say kind of a little bit charm that so-and-so is a creature of habit.
00:31:58
Speaker
Right. I'm a creature of habit. yeah In a way, though, if you take that to a little bit of an extreme, you're sort of addicted to to your lifestyle. So, you know, do you have the same thing for breakfast every day? You're sort of addicted to this. If you don't have access to that same breakfast or whatever,
00:32:18
Speaker
you know, whatever it is you're out of sorts. And yes, you're right. So these are phone chimes. We're getting a text. You do get a little hit of dopamine. Yeah. And not only that, but you feel obliged to answer your text right away. And if you don't, you just can't stop thinking about it. So this is a sort of a habitual pattern where there's a stimulus and a response to the stimulus. And this becomes ingrained and you know, this may involve hits of dopamine,
00:32:46
Speaker
um You know, when you see an image on your phone or get a certain response to ah a stimulus that brings some kind of pleasure or something positive.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah. I think we need to be aware of exactly what you just said, that we are surrounded. And unfortunately, through AI, I think we're going to be subjected to an increasing amount of this where it's sort of tailored things.
00:33:10
Speaker
to our apparent wants and needs that are being pushed to us that are meant to grab our attention, give us that little dopamine hit and get us relatively addicted to whatever it is, advertisement or streaming service or what have you. So yes, I think it's something that we do need to be aware of. And we're kind of like mechanical beings in a certain way. So our brains are hardwired.
00:33:39
Speaker
You can just dive into the neurologic connections. We have a hundred billion neurons in our brain and a hundred trillion synapses. The more we exercise a certain pathway of neural connections, those connections are the synapses, the little space between the neurons where they speak to each other, the more ingrained they get. So through repetition,
00:34:03
Speaker
these neural pathways become further and further ingrained. If it's a dopaminergic pathway, you know, maybe that is a little pleasure pathway that gets ingrained and we get relatively or are absolutely addicted to that stimulus and something for all of us to be aware of. and And that's why I think as parents and counselors and coaches and teachers, we need to kind of embody What's important? We need to teach our teens through our own behaviors. What's really important. Set the smartphones aside during family time.
00:34:40
Speaker
Mealtime is not a time to have your phone next to you on the dining table. um You know, demonstrate acts of kindness. Demonstrate social connectivity rather than just connectivity with our smartphones. But yes, I think we need to be more aware of what you were saying.
00:34:59
Speaker
pointing toward and that is this dopamine hit this addiction this habitual response we get to various stimuli and i think this is going to become an increasing problem in the in the realm of ai i've been talking about how if we make it far enough i do think that things like social media and smartphones are going classified as illicit substances because they create similar dopamine hits as drugs and alcohol i feel like down the road somewhere somebody's going to reclassify them Well, we are at least like when I was doing research for writing the book and the content of the book as it was finalized included this growing trend whereby schools are forbidding the use of cell phones during school hours. And I think now that's become pretty standard.
00:35:45
Speaker
It's something that was just kind of getting some traction even a year ago or 18 months ago. and The Surgeon General came out with a statement about it.
Recognizing Depression and Open Communication
00:35:54
Speaker
Various governors started talking about it and now public schools and private schools too have pretty much embraced this. So we do need to kind of have some control over the stimuli that our kids are constantly bombarded with and exactly as you expressed. Yeah, I'm cognizant of the time. The thing is that I feel like I could talk to you for hours and I already am like, we're going to have to set up a sequel here because we need to talk about so many more things. But I want to make sure we kind of wrap up on a good point or on a strong point and give you a little bit of space to talk about it, too. One piece I wanted to sort of look at before we wrapped up is this idea of distinguishing between some people who get depression, some people get a little sad.
00:36:32
Speaker
And how do we sort of differentiate those things from the outside? And how do we sort of distinguish? My initial piece of my question is this idea of how do we try to distinguish between those kind of traits, especially in young people, if we're working with the youth or if they're kids or things like that? You know, I think there's a there are definitions of clinical depression that we can recognize in ourselves potentially and others.
00:36:58
Speaker
They have to do with Inadequate inability to sleep or excessive sleep changes in appetite, you know, like at one extreme or the other overeating and also loss of appetite.
00:37:12
Speaker
Kids get withdrawn. So, you know, if if ah a teenager is the victim of some kind of social media scam shaming,
00:37:24
Speaker
or shaming um um They may be withdrawn. They may just go to the room and close the door. Their friends sort of drop off one by one. Their school performance begins to trail off.
00:37:40
Speaker
So there are, you know, sort of signs of clinical depression and anxiety that are recognizable and there have been uh, the diagnostic manual that we have in medicine, you know, these are the characteristics of clinical depression.
00:37:54
Speaker
And then on the other hand, as you suggested, you know, there's just sadness, um, without those other signs. So I think that parents need to be, and teachers need to be.
00:38:05
Speaker
And want to be very clued in to observing their teen and discussing it with them again, maybe an uncomfortable topic, but. um you know, really checking in and talk to their teachers, talk to their coaches and see how their performance is in school, you know, maybe on the play field and academically.
00:38:25
Speaker
You know, it's just, you hear these stories of kids who commit suicide and their parents are just totally shocked. Yeah. You know, I'm certainly not judging anybody. It's remarkable though, how, and and you read about these stories where there's gun violence also, somebody, you know, there's like a mass shooting in a school.
00:38:43
Speaker
And everybody who knows the perpetrator is just shocked because this seemed like a normal kid, a happy kid, what have you. I just think that there must be telltale signs. So we just really need to pay attention.
00:38:55
Speaker
ah connect with teachers and coaches and social workers at school and, you know, talk to your
Hope for the Youth and Closing Thoughts
00:39:03
Speaker
kids. And this is obviously not rocket science. I'm not telling you anything you don't know already, but, and, and I guess the take home message that we can still be surprised yeah by our kids' behavior and self-harm violence against others, et cetera, just can seem to come out of nowhere. But obviously we can do our best to be plugged in with our kids. I think that idea of, you know, you you had even mentioned it earlier, you you had said, you know, we love our kids. That goes without saying it. I it was almost going to be like, but it should still be said, you know, right? More than that, I think it also, I think it needs to be shown, right? The idea, coming back to the idea of like love, love is a verb, right? And so like participating and behaving with love, right? Building out from there, I guess, just as a way to sort of bring things to a close, what, so something I often try to sort of explore on the show is this idea of, you know, you even talked about it, the idea of like,
00:39:57
Speaker
you know, hope and and sort of like not just turning to the negative bias of the future. And something i i try to highlight with guests is this idea of like, what is something that kind of is giving you hope for the future, especially because things can feel so dark and heavy and grim right now, you know? So I'm curious from from the lens of your your research and the work that you're doing, what's something that kind of gives you hope about the youth that are coming up today and and where they're going?
00:40:26
Speaker
I have a daughter who just started college and I got to know several of her friends pretty well. And what gives me hope is how, despite all of these challenges that they face that are relatively unique to this generation of teenagers. And I, you know, we didn't even talk about COVID and and ramifications that had suffered from that. But what gives me hope is just their, the resilience that I do see among them.
00:40:56
Speaker
how they are remarkable young beings. There's something in the fabric of being a human being that allows for hope because we are pretty remarkable creatures. And I think when you see teens thriving despite all of these challenges, it does give us hope. And I think sometimes we just have to remind ourselves of that too.
00:41:20
Speaker
In addition to concentrating on how we can nurture children, all those characteristics. But yes, I think kids are remarkable and there is a reason to be hopeful and optimistic despite all of the negativity.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah. Dr. Greg Hammer, what a pleasure it is. It's been to chat with you. Like I say, I've got a million more questions for you, but I know we got to wrap things up. So first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for being on the show with me, but I'm curious, where would you like to kind of point listeners to next? Where would you like them to find you?
00:41:51
Speaker
There's lots of places you can just... yeah Google my name and find the book, A Mindful Teen. It's also on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and elsewhere. And it'll be in the show notes for this episode as well. there's The website for the book is amindfulteen.com. My website is greghammermd.com.
00:42:09
Speaker
I'm on Instagram, greghammermd.com. And so I just want to tell all your listeners, just remind them that we're all pretty much the same. The dark thoughts that we have are not unique to us.
00:42:22
Speaker
They're not our dirty little secret. We're all much more alike than we are different. The chances are pretty good that if we're struggling with something, so are many, many other people. and don't be overly hard on yourself.
00:42:36
Speaker
That's the thing that I'm working on. That's... yeah you know, my my lingering challenge myself. But, you know, we're all in this together. We're all brothers and sisters. We're all made of the same stuff. Let's kind of celebrate that.
00:42:48
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. what Very last thing, real quickly, I love to try and leave my listeners with one actionable thing they could try doing this week. I often frame it around like, what's something they could do to be a more effective friend either to themselves or the community, but we could open it up to wherever you like to go with it. I'm curious, what's one thing listeners could try this week to to kind of be more effective to themselves or to their community?
00:43:12
Speaker
Well, we talked about the game practice, but we talked about three good things. So maybe for this week, think of three good things that in your day before you go to sleep tonight and do that every day for a week.
00:43:25
Speaker
doesn't take much to start bending the curve and changing the way those neurons are firing and communicating with each other. And again, baby steps, but try the three good things practice and see how simple it is and see what the effects are. Because I think gratitude is a miraculous thing to embrace. It really, really is. Well, at least one of my good things was chatting with you today, doctor. So thank so much. but Yeah. Have a wonderful day.
00:43:52
Speaker
but Likewise. Truly my pleasure.
00:44:09
Speaker
And that's it. Thank you one more time to Dr. Hammer for coming on the show and chatting with me. It was such a pleasure to get to know him and to hear all about his incredible work. If you'd like to learn more or if you'd like to check out his books, the link for that is in the show notes. And hey, while you're poking around in there, why not leave Friendless a five-star review? It's free for you and it helps me out a ton. Thank you so much in advance. I love you.
00:44:32
Speaker
If you're listening to this episode on the day that it comes out, then um you are in luck because that means you haven't missed the recording of the next live episode in my collaboration with Book Warehouse. On Wednesday, January 21st at 2 p.m., I'm going to be live in the store recording an interview with Susan Nielsen, the author of one of my...
00:44:56
Speaker
brand new favorite books um called Snap. We're going to be chatting about the book, about all kinds of other stuff. It's going to be an absolute blast. Come on down to the store, Book Warehouse on Main Street in Vancouver at 2 p.m. and be a part of the show. And if you're listening to this after, well, hey, you're still in luck because that episode is going to be on the feed next week.
00:45:17
Speaker
I don't really have anything else to plug, so I'm just going to wrap things up here. you know, let's ah you know let's let's let's go home early, right? ah Thank you so much for listening to the episode. um And I really hope I will catch you back here either live in person on Wednesday or back here on the feed next week.
00:45:38
Speaker
But hey, I'm not going to worry about that right now. And neither should you because that is then and this is now. So for now, I'll just say I love you and I wish you well. Fun and safety, sweet peas.