Suggestible You Quotes

“Humans are not alone in creating false memories; pigeons, mice, and even bumblebees seem to have them.c That suggests false memories may just be a part of how we think—a by-product of our innate ability to group things together by theme. As Schacter says, memories are a tool to help animals predict the future by using the past. And to do that, we humans have become experts at quickly grouping things together and creating patterns.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Your brain is wired to build expectations throughout your life over hours, years, or decades, then tries its best to turn those expectations into reality. Simply put, your brain doesn't want to be wrong - and in order for expectation to match reality, it's willing to bend a few rules or even cheat outright. When expectations clash with reality, more often than not, it's your stubborn brain that wins.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“The power of energy fields, superdiluted water, stainless steel needles, and the doctor in the white lab coat is real. We’ve seen it heal. We’ve seen it change lives and bring loved ones back from the edge of despair and death.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“I want to love God with all my heart—and part of that is not to have any other gods. And I think medicine is a god. I think matter is a god. And I realize that’s radical and that you might really be offended by that.” She says this so warmly and gently that I don’t even realize she’s just called everything I believe in a false idol.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Do I think expectation plays a role in Christian Science healing? Absolutely,” Hammerstrom responds. “Does hope—does ‘Gee, I really want this to work’—does that play a role? Absolutely it does.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Unlike most other forms of alternative healing, Hammerstrom continues, Christian Science doesn’t work if it’s mixed with other treatments. It requires 100 percent faith and 100 percent dedication.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Hammerstrom explains that unlike almost every other form of alternative treatment, Christian Science permeates every aspect of its adherents’ lives. “It’s so much more than an alternative means of health care,” she says. “Christian Scientists feel that this is a way of life. It doesn’t just affect their physical bodies. It affects their relationships and their jobs.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“you can truly find relief in treatments that are no more effective than a placebo, if you can cast out fear and depression with just words, then you are lucky indeed. If you are highly hypnotizable and can treat your illness through trance, pat yourself on the back. For decades, the world has seen you as too easily influenced and pharmaceutical companies have been aggravated by you. But no longer. From here on out, call yourself what you are: talented.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“the most successful healings I investigated took the view that the healing had already happened. Mike Pauletich said this when he thought back on his recovery from Parkinson’s, and so do many Christian healing ministries and even Christian Science. It’s one thing to expect that healing will happen, but it seems far more effective to expect that it already has. Placebos might be a promise for the future, but they work only once you’ve ingested them, convinced that they have done their job.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“for many people the suspicion that a treatment might be a placebo does not change its ability to heal. There’s nothing wrong with wondering in the back of your mind whether the herbal immune-boosting shake in front of you is nothing more than a placebo wrapped in wheatgrass puree. But if you want to get the most out of your suggestibility, be strategic about how you approach the damn thing.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“In that way, the placebo effect may be more like hypnosis than we realize; it just requires your willingness to be open.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“To harness the power of expectation, first you have to understand that any placebo or hypnotic induction is nothing more than a device for storytelling. It’s an expectation vessel that works only if it can capture your imagination.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Earlier I asked how you can treat a disease if you don’t know whether it’s real. Perhaps that is the wrong question. Perhaps we should stop acting as if there is some kind of line between the mind and the body.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“There’s a surprising amount you can do to harness the power of expectation and suggestion in your own life. If the poorest man on Earth honestly sees himself as a king, is he not a king? And if the wealthiest man among us sees himself as a miserable wretch, what is he but a miserable wretch? And if either man were to change what he is, the first thing that would have to change would be his own perception. The whirligig of emotions and beliefs and memories that make up our consciousness is one of nature’s greatest creations. Minds just like ours have moved mountains, built wonders, and composed works of genius. In every case, those people were ruled not by what was but by what they expected.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“If it’s true that placebo rates are rising across the board, it’s not clear what we can do about it. Perhaps rather than fighting expectation, we could embrace it.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“it seems that over time, the placebo effect itself has gotten stronger.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“This high placebo response has been one of the main reasons why depression has been so difficult and expensive to treat.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“From 1987 to 1999 the pharmaceutical industry exploded with depression meds like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, and Celexa—each of which has become a blockbuster drug and presumably helped millions of suffering people. But if you look at drug studies during this time, about 75 to 80 percent of their efficacy can be attributed to placebo effects. And if you look carefully, there was no real difference between high doses and low doses, which is odd and suggests the meds weren’t as effective as we thought.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Depression isn’t a sadder version of you; it’s a whole different you. The best way to describe it is like being chemically sedated into someone you don’t recognize.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Almost all the world’s favorite recreational drugs either mimic or employ chemicals similar to the ones we tap into with expectation.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Some scientists say addiction literally changes the way the brain works. Not only do addicts have less dopamine from drug overuse, but also their dopamine receptors are affected (either changing their numbers or changing how well they transmit messages).”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“I don’t think the power of mind is limitless,” Crum says. “But I do think we don’t yet know where those limits are.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“when two products are roughly the same, expectation tends to play a far greater role in what we experience than do our senses. That’s why, in a 2004 blind tasting, an unlabeled bottle of two-dollar Shiraz from Charles Shaw (“Two-Buck Chuck,” as it’s called at Trader Joe’s) earned the Double Gold rating at the annual International Eastern Wine Competition, beating out thousands of other prestigious vintages.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“What if false memories could be used to replace traumatic ones? What if they could be used to treat PTSD?”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Just as most of us are susceptible to placebos and some level of hypnosis, so too do we have to realize that not everything we think happened actually did. We are all vulnerable to suggestive storytelling that fits our own expectations. And if we are unable to see these memories as fallible, the consequences can be disastrous.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“So far, no reliable trait has emerged as a way to spot false memories,”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“As opposed to the more specific “verbatim” memory (“My address growing up was 35 Grove Street”), a gist memory is based on semantics and occurs when you have a general idea of what happened but can’t recall all the details (“That house was at the top of a massive hill”). In other words, a gist memory fits into a story that we tell ourselves to help us remember something.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“Scientists have been able to paint a rich picture of how false memories might function in the brain. They can form at any stage of memory making: during the initial encoding; during the consolidation into long-term memory; and during retrieval of the memory days, months, or years later.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“many false memories possess a kernel of truth, hidden under layers of invention.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

“such hidden memories, if they exist, are extremely rare. More often, when you try to go back in time, your mind simply fills in the blanks with something that seems right, given the story it’s trying to construct. We all have memories like this—things we’re sure about and that we can see with our eyes closed—that just aren’t true.”
― Erik Vance, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal