From Subjective to Data-Driven Emotion: Revolutionizing Trauma Prevention with Wearable Biofeedback

[00:00:00] Where I started to recognize that emotion right now on every front is a subjective and impossible to scale metric. I wanted to change that. I saw that as the biggest lever to actually create change is what if we could make emotion more of a hard point of data. The first is we're going to be able to predict it before it's developed in full scale, which I think is incredible because the best trauma prevention is literal prevention.

[00:00:26] What people experience who are trying to go through trauma recovery in one way or another is this kind of trial and error approach to like what's going to work, whether it's a cocktail of different medications or different interventions. But what if you could actually see through your data what was actually making the difference, what was actually helping you move into a parasympathetic state and out of an anxious sympathetic state? Like with this feedback, you could get a sense immediately something's working for you or not.

[00:01:13] Hello, welcome to the Trauma Safe Lab. Today we have founder and entrepreneur Nicole Gibson of InTruth Technologies. Nicole, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Jennifer. Pleasure to be here. Yeah. And I know we had some back and forth about getting to this point and that's always good because we stayed in touch and we made it happen. That's it. Yeah. Time zones and everything. So where are you today? I'm in Australia today on the East Coast.

[00:01:38] All right. So today we're going to talk about decoding the emotional blueprint, how biometric technology is revolutionizing trauma recovery in human connection. And we're going to do a deep dive into how InTruth Technologies is transforming our relationship with emotions through wearable biofeedback, data sovereignty and the integration of technology with spiritual wisdom. That's like a mouthful, right? Yeah, there's a lot to cover that. So let's see how it goes.

[00:02:05] I did. I have signed up as your beta waitlist user. So I guess I'm just waiting on that to take shape. Yeah. Do you have a Garmin watch? Not yet. But that'd be the next step. We've got to get you a Garmin. And then it's all yours to test. Okay. Got it. Yeah. All right. So what brought you here? What's your why? What's your experience?

[00:02:26] Yeah, it's a big question, right? And my belief around entrepreneurship is an entrepreneur should really have a well-defined problem statement that they're trying to solve and not be sort of rigid or dogmatic in how the best solution of that problem emerges over time.

[00:02:43] And I think that's been very true to my journey when I look back at my first organization, which was actually a nonprofit working in mental health, which from a kind of business structural standpoint is pretty much the diametric opposite of the tech startup, right?

[00:02:58] But actually the problem I was trying to solve in that company and this company is the same, but what has evolved is my awareness, I think, around the need for access, the need for scale, the need for scale without the compromisation of something that's personalized.

[00:03:16] And I think that's where my journey had sort of over time led me to technology because my first organization was working very much with communities directly doing community development work. I built a model at the time called emotional infrastructure. And so I was helping communities basically build the correct cultures and help them with things like managing conflict resolution, building the basics of emotional intelligence, and basically measuring that against mental health outcomes,

[00:03:45] which lo and behold was highly effective. But at the time that was kind of like a taboo approach because the system was very like, this is a biochemical issue. You know, a diagnosis with mental illness will mean a lifelong battle. This is the black dog that you can fight forever. So people felt like getting a diagnosis of depression was like a death sentence. Considering every human is going to go through the ups and downs of being human. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was an interesting introduction to working in this space.

[00:04:14] And it also exposed me to a lot of human stories. And I realized that there's this struggle that so many people have that I think is linked to a lot of the ways that we suffer, which is the inability to really express ourselves and feel like we can stretch our emotional capacity in a way that actually helps us be resilient in the face of our struggles, struggles of those that we love and care about. And I could see that this was the problem that wasn't really being addressed. You know, drugs aren't going to change that.

[00:04:44] Mental health campaigns can sort of take us one step of the way, but then we kind of max out because it's like, ask your friend if they're okay, but if they're not okay, you might not actually have the toolkit or the capacity to know how to handle that. And so the problem became really clear to me. And my journey then took me down a political path, actually. And I advocated and lobbied for better solutions that weren't just crisis intervention, but really looking at cultural change and prevention. Okay. What's an example?

[00:05:13] An example was a lot of the work I was doing at the time in communities. So, you know, I think a really good cross-reference would be when governments bound together and said, we're going to stop smoking. This was a coordinated effort to actually shift culture. You know, we can do it. And there's been examples of how it's been done. And I believe that in the middle of the mental health crisis is basically a population that feels wildly disconnected, very addicted to technology.

[00:05:41] And we don't really have, you know, the time or the space to really be able to connect in a way that we need to as human beings to feel well, which is an infrastructure problem with, you know, how we're operating broadly as a Western civilization. The obsession, you know, on survival and individualism, I think, has deep implications. So that was very much where my work was focused.

[00:06:04] That led me to serve as a commissioner for four terms, which was really enlightening because I got to sort of handle a pretty high level of power when it came to how the federal budget in Australia was being spent in mental health. Or how they think about how to spend it. Yeah. Well, 97 cents of every dollar was going on crisis, you know, so that was the first thing is like. Try to get ahead of it. Yeah.

[00:06:26] Well, a lot of people in that space who were decision makers on a political level were very much disconnected from the way that these policies and the way that the federal spend was impacting people on the ground. Because obviously, you know, they would see maybe the worst of it when someone was in like a kind of an acute state that they were often the stories that were kind of being pushed on them.

[00:06:51] But the lack of prevention is sort of like a parent going to a doctor and saying, you know, my kid is ideating suicide. And the doctor saying, well, there's nothing we can do until they've attempted suicide. I know. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that to me was really illuminating. And I do think that advocating for how budget spent federally has a role to play. But it also made me realize that it's not the full picture.

[00:07:16] And I think that experience drove me even deeper towards innovation, where I started to recognize that emotion right now on every front is subjective and impossible to scale metric, if a metric at all. Sometimes it's just completely missed out on the conversation. And a lot of people can't define emotion. A lot of people can't express what they're actually experiencing. And I wanted to change that.

[00:07:42] I saw that as the biggest lever to actually create change is what if we could make emotion more of a hard point of data, you know, a hard metric, a hard science and mature it beyond. And this might upset some people depending on where they sit, you know, more of psychological frameworks, which are based more on soft science. Yeah. I was a critical care nurse for over 10 years. So I started my nursing school over 20 years ago. But I remember at the time getting pain to be like sixth vital sign, right?

[00:08:12] And the little pain smiley faces. So when I heard about what you were doing, I was like, oh, it's like the seventh vital sign, right? It's like emotional awareness. And in fact, actually, if we're able to get inside ourselves and feel our emotions and experience them safely enough that we can take action against them before it becomes a crisis, which is what you're describing. You know, a lot of times we can minimize it or dampen it ourselves, but we're not really even taught to do that.

[00:08:41] And so we have interoception problems either because we're already traumatized or because we're not, you know, society doesn't allow us to experience and express them without, especially if you're a woman being told you're complaining or it's, you know, because if you don't have objective evidence to show somebody and you can't prove that you feel this way, well, they can have their side of the story too. And they can put it back on you, right? And how do you survive in that kind of relationship dynamic, right?

[00:09:09] Whether it's you and your doctor, you and your spouse, you and your parents. And so then you just don't share and then you suffer and that suffering causes other illnesses. It still comes out. It comes out sideways. It comes out as cancer. You know, it comes out as high blood pressure. It comes out as irritability, lack of sleep, and it just compounds. I couldn't agree more with you. And that's exactly right. I think emotion is the most defining part of the human experience and simultaneously the most undefined.

[00:09:39] From the entrepreneur's lens, you're like, oh my God, like this is like a serious goldmine, just entrepreneurially, strictly through business. And then from a human-centric lens, you're like, how and why has no one ever paid this more attention? Because there's never been a way of scaling emotional understanding or data. Like you have, again, sort of more pseudosciences or soft sciences.

[00:10:02] Like the history of psychology was basically pushing a soft science to be recognized as a hard science because all of it's based on subjective report. Well, and also research was typically like white men, right? So not really women and not white men. Yeah, exactly. That's the whole health system, unfortunately. But, you know, it is changing. And also our generation, I would imagine we're roughly the same age.

[00:10:24] We are the first generation of women that were really brought up from birth where we could say, like, we want to be an entrepreneur and actually execute it. And probably our parents, maybe they could have done it a little later in life or fought through it to get there. But we kind of had that privilege a little bit from birth, a lot of us, right? So we are able to execute on our ideas. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's really important point to acknowledge that we do stand on the shoulders of giants in that way.

[00:10:53] And it's not to wrong anyone that's come before us, back to sort of my point around maturing some of this data and understanding the layers that have come before us that have built kind of mental models or conceptual models have supported the evolution for something like, you know, emotion, which has been kind of really elusive to become something that we really deeply understand that we consider as a data point, you know, in our lives.

[00:11:19] And one of the things I'm most passionate about in the system more broadly, because I think the lack of evidence-based data sets around emotion is also the thing that drives this attitude around, well, who cares how you feel at work? Like, just get on with it, separate. But, you know, once our data is widely adopted, employers, for example, and governments are going to see, well, when a population is, you know, in a centered emotional state, performance improves, economic opportunity improves, you know, health issues decrease.

[00:11:49] There's less divorce or violence in family units, and we're going to start to see the correlations, right? But no one's ever been able to measure this. And so I think humans judge what they can't understand. And that paints the perfect picture of how we've come to relate to our emotions, because a lot of us don't understand them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So help me understand the connection between like emotional intelligence and trauma recovery. Sure. So, again, like I think it's important.

[00:12:16] There's sort of the traditional ways that emotional intelligence has been taught, which is, you know, again, kind of more conceptual, like ideas around how to build relationship equity, how to have self-awareness and confidence. And then there's what we're doing, which is really around the quantification and the biometric tracking of emotion. And what this is doing is actually tracking your physiological signals that are happening in your body via your nervous system, your actual individual emotional signatures.

[00:12:44] And so what we're going to find, no doubt, over time as our data set grows, is what's actually happening on an emotional level when someone's in trauma. Like what are the core emotional patterns that show up? And obviously this will change depending on what kind of trauma we're dealing with, no doubt. But let's take something like, you know, we get asked a lot about PTSD or see PTSD and how that's going to show up in our data set. And when we can quantify that biometrically, there's a couple of key things here.

[00:13:13] The first is we're going to be able to predict it before it's developed in kind of full scale, which I think is incredible because the best trauma prevention is literal prevention. Right. But there are obviously some cases where people are experiencing trauma because of a traumatic event. And that's, you know, it's random. It's not it's not like developed gradually over time. It's like, you know, an event that you're exposed to that's highly traumatic. And the challenge with this at the moment is trauma is largely undefined.

[00:13:43] And a lot of what people experience who are trying to go through trauma recovery in one way or another is this kind of trial and error approach to like what's going to work, whether it's a cocktail of different medications or different interventions. But what if you could actually see through your data what was actually making the difference? What was actually helping you move into a parasympathetic state and out of an anxious sympathetic state?

[00:14:07] And you could very rapidly build protocols and a system that's truly supportive and have that biofeedback. Because the issue is, you know, you're going to a traumatic event. You're living with that trauma every second of every day. Your doctor's only seeing you probably every few weeks. And so the amount of time to actually just get a reference point to see is it working? Is this not working? It takes so long. Like people can be on that journey for like years before they even have a clue what helps or what doesn't help, you know? If at all.

[00:14:37] If at all, right. And we think that we can close that gap. Like with this feedback, you could get a sense immediately if something's working for you or not. And I think because I started wearing a wearable earlier this year, it's faceless and it tracks like my HRV and my sleep. And that's been really good for me understanding. Okay. Like right before, like, okay, I'm upstairs. I'm minding my business that I have two young kids. They're downstairs with my husband. My HRV is like a little bit higher than normal.

[00:15:06] So I'm like, okay, cool. I'm like a little more rested. I can feel it. I check. I'm like, yep. I knew it was going to look like that. Great. I'm going to go downstairs now. Right. Because mommy's not like cuckoo loco. So I go downstairs and immediately my kids are kids. Right. So this is not like anything on them. It's just my nervous system. And immediately I'm anxious again because they're like all over the place, like normal kids, healthy kids are. And later on at night, I check the wearable and my HRV dropped.

[00:15:34] And some of these are just subtle changes, but it's a repeated pattern. So like now I know I can check my tool before or after certain interactions or engagements or events or blah, blah, blah. And I can kind of already see some patterns of what works or not. And I think it's such an invaluable thing because now I have data. Like I could screenshot it. I could send it to my legal team or my medical team or whoever you need to send it to as like proof. And they can't dispute it. Right. Yeah. Data is data. Exactly.

[00:16:05] And I think that's a really powerful point that you're making that so many people's pain, you know, another application we get asked about a lot is workers comp, you know, and insurance. And obviously like we're on the pro-human side of that. We don't want this data to be used to manipulate people's insurance policies. Like we want it to be health promotion. Right. I didn't think about that. Right. So the positive use case of something like this is it like it is what it is.

[00:16:32] No longer is it no longer can someone vulnerable be strong armed because someone has a better legal team or, you know, they just have more gusto to fight the situation. There's actually hard evidence. And it goes both ways because I'm sure there's many examples of people that have tried to milk workers comp, you know, and they've actually been fine to go back to work or, you know, maybe they're truly vulnerable and scared. But their data is showing, hey, actually, we think you can handle that transition and that they're encouraged rather than kind of enabled.

[00:17:03] So I think bringing that truth true to our brand, you know, to these conditions is going to transform many industries, actually, not just health. But health is obviously my passion and my background. And I think the emotion drives 80% of our decision making or more. Right. So even when as a team, we're talking to your sort of everyday physician and who doesn't sort of think about emotion, doesn't even really think about mental health likely for their patients.

[00:17:32] And we say, what's your biggest frustration with your patients? A lot of them will say, well, we tell them what to do and they don't, you know, they don't comply with the protocol. What's not understood is this is an emotional issue. Like if giving someone a protocol to, I don't know, exercise and eat well, but they're bound by very familial emotional patterns, unless you address that, you know, the sheer force of willpower is not going to change that.

[00:17:59] So I think this will empower actually many medical professionals who are very time poor. They don't want to be a psychologist, right? But to have a piece of hard data to say, oh, wow, okay, your emotion score is actually 30 out of 100 this week. I can see that you're really struggling. You know, here's some interventions to work on that before we try to, I don't know, radically change your diet or something kind of physical. Let's work on the layers that are actually going to make those big physical changes easier for you.

[00:18:28] Yeah, and I guess, and to your point, they can say like, oh, we noticed, you know, if it only goes up three, you know, I'm just making up a number, but if it only goes up 3%, yes, it went up. But yes, that means you could tolerate it. And when it goes up 10%, that's when you usually report that it's not tolerable, right? So you can, it can also allow you to like set parameters for the patient for the stress tolerance, because any change requires a level of anxiety tolerance for each stress tolerance.

[00:18:56] Yeah, no, but the moment, it's just, again, like you're depending on subjective reporting, which I'm not saying doesn't have any merit, but especially when someone's vulnerable, anxious, going through something traumatic. The first thing that goes is your recall, right? Your recall is skewed. It's not based in reality a lot of the time. You know, you become an unreliable source of reporting.

[00:19:22] I mean, can you imagine if you're having a panic attack and somebody's like, so what percentage would this be on the like, get the fuck out of here? Questions, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, I don't even know where I am right now. You want me to do math? But what's so crazy about this, right, is we'll not only ask that and then accept the answer as the truth, because it's the best we've got. But then we then build medical decision making around that subjective report. That's the craziest thing of all. I mean, that's like...

[00:19:51] It wouldn't happen anywhere else in the medical paradigm, right? Like, oh, I think I had a stroke. Okay, here's some medicine. No, they're going to scan your brain, right? Yeah, exactly. And that's mental health to a T. And yet we empower, like, a lot of the time, GPs to prescribe antipsychotic meds based on, like, a 10-question survey with questions like, have you felt stressed in the past seven days? Like, it's so bad. I always have problems with all those questions. I'm like, so, like, when? Like, the list? Yeah. I'm like, like, all the time or just, like, once a day?

[00:20:20] Because, you know, if you're driving to work, you're going to be stressed every day, right? This is what I mean. Like, it's just so vague. It's so vague as an actual diagnostic tool to, like, a lifelong dependence on an SSRI. Like, that to me is insane. Yeah, like, I always knew I had PTSD, especially after leaving the Army. And I didn't get it formally diagnosed until 2020.

[00:20:45] And then in 2022, I got diagnosed with autism through the same person because I wanted to go back to him. That's a different story. But basically, these were, like, multiple days, hours of testing. It wasn't, you know, like a questionnaire. And I knew he specialized in how women present differently than men and blah, blah, blah. And why I'm bringing that up is because I've known people who themselves or took their kids in just, you know, like a one-hour, two-hour session. I'm like, no way they're diagnosing you that long.

[00:21:13] There's so much criteria to me that you have to go through, like, hours of testing. Because how do you know it's not like ADHD, for example, right? Which in an hour, you might not, you know, anyway, different kind of a thing. I'm so with you. But I think it's become, you know, a lot of these conversations have been popularized. You know, we could do a whole podcast episode on the DSM-5 and, like, the issues with the DSM-5.

[00:21:40] Because, again, it's, like, symptoms-based anecdotal frameworks. Like, it's not, none of it's hard data. Yeah. Yeah, or they have the teachers fill it out. I'm like, so if the teacher is expecting third graders to sit for an hour during math to learn long-form division and they don't, you know, want to do it because maybe for whatever effing reason, right? The third grader doesn't want to do it. And the teacher's like, yeah, they definitely have, like, ADHD.

[00:22:07] It could just be their bias to get their expectation of what somebody should do. So, yeah. Well, not only might be, like, it will be. I mean, it will be, yeah. Yeah, we follow our scientific framework is based on the temporal model of emotion, which creates the distinction between raw stimulus. So, stimulus and then raw emotion, which is happening every 200 milliseconds. So, it's precognitive.

[00:22:30] Like, the brain can't actually process fast enough to understand the raw emotional triggers, which is what our data is measuring. Once the brain catches up, it becomes feeling. So, it's your subjective interpretation of your emotions. But by the time the brain says, I'm feeling happy or whatever the descriptor is, you've actually experienced, like, 50 emotions, right? Yeah.

[00:22:54] And so, when you look at the actual neuroscientific model of emotion, you can see that to use subjective reporting to delineate emotion is not only unreliable, it's impossible. Yeah. It does a lot of damage, I think. Yeah. And we ignore the autonomic parts of the human, which are actually driving the ship. Like, a very small advantage of our experience is actually led by the conscious mind. Yeah.

[00:23:22] A lot of people will say, well, just stop thinking. Just, you know, when I tell them I have these struggles, I haven't been able to work. You know, you're overthinking. And I'm like, do you think I want to live like this? Like, I was so successful before this burnout or whatever this is. If I could not be like this, I would have a better life. I'm not consciously, you know, it's like my nervous system cannot tolerate normal, the normal stress of life. That's not something, like, I'm purposely consciously doing, right? It's happening before I can stop it at this point, right?

[00:23:52] Yeah, exactly right. But it's a lack of awareness around how our system actually works. A lot of the interventions too, like, you know, to tap into the autonomic nervous system, you know, our chief of science is really big on just vagal breathing, which is so basic. And it's free. No side effects.

[00:24:13] And anyone that even takes three breaths, like three in the nose and then an exhale through the mouth, like to actually relax your jaw, there's double the amount of time. If you do that three times, you will feel your blood pressure drop. Literally. I've watched it drop on my wearable. I've watched it. And actually, I do it so much that sometimes my kids become like what your device is doing. They're the 200 milliseconds per mom. Oh, actually. They're the Garmin watch for me.

[00:24:41] They actually pick up before I pick up sometimes that I'm anxious and they'll go, mom, sit down for it. They're like five and three. And like, I don't need them to parent me. So this isn't like that situation. It's more just like we're so in tune with how we talk about emotions and, you know, because I want them to have what I didn't have kind of a deal. And they'll say, mom, mom, sit down for a second. And they'll literally do that. And I'm like, oh, my God. I'm like, yep. That's yep. I need it. I needed that. Wow. Good reminder. That's it. But I think this judgment, right?

[00:25:11] This judgment that people put on, oh, well, you know, think your way out of like a stress intolerance. Yeah. It's like judging someone for breathing. Emotion is the same thing. Like breathing is autonomic. Emotion is autonomic. Yeah. But because we don't understand it, we assume that it's an intellectual process, but actually it's an autonomic process. It has nothing to do with the brain at all. Totally. Well, it has something to do with the brain. It doesn't have something to do with the conscious brain.

[00:25:39] And when people understand this, I think we will see a cultural revolution. Like you can't just tell people be more compassionate. This is the issue with mental health campaigns. Like being told to be more empathetic or more compassionate doesn't work because you have to cultivate and actually develop compassion and empathy. And there are, you know, people that go through a lived experience of a struggle and that lived experience then lends itself naturally to a feeling of compassion or empathy towards others who are struggling.

[00:26:09] But I think the rest of the population that maybe can't relate to that when they actually have a true understanding of the dynamics of how this works, empathy and compassion aren't going to be these like idealistic things. It's just going to be like a default response. Yeah. Two things about that. When I worked as a critical care nurse, I learned that if we can't diagnose it. And by that, I mean, we don't know what the diagnosis is. So then it's a rule out diagnosis, right? Well, what is it not? Right.

[00:26:38] So we might not know what it is, but we know what it's not. And if we can't label it and then we can't treat it, then we don't believe it exists. So that's kind of what we're talking about with the emotions, right? It's like they don't exist because we can't quantify them or label them or track them or monetize them. Right. Yep. Well, and now we can. Now we can. Now we can. Right. And the other thing is like what you were saying about compassion and stuff. My husband is from India. Right.

[00:27:06] I'm trying to figure out how to word this, but this is so just hear the whole thing out. Like sometimes like where his family will like yell at me. And obviously I mean that I'm being hyperbolic, but sometimes they're like, just sit down, just do this. And it's all well-meaning, but I'm not used to it. Right. They're like, why are you doing this? You should just sit. And I'm like, well, don't you want me to cook dinner yet? But you're like clearly not regulated. It's like, don't make the dinner. And I'm just like, well, that's not, I'm not used to that. Right. Cause like in America, they're like, your legs falling off.

[00:27:35] You have a no vision. All right. Feel around for the pot. Just put your hand over the heat and like figure out how to cook the egg. Right. And my husband's just like, this doesn't make any sense. Stop doing this. And I'm like, but I can. And I'm just like, and he, he like gets mad at me that I like, don't recognize my own feelings. And, um, you know, my nervous system and that I don't take positive action to protect myself and do self care.

[00:28:00] And I feel like with him, I get yelled at for almost like the opposite of what I think of like American working culture as, which, you know, like we discussed. Right. So I feel like I get like, you have to do this down. Why are you not feeding yourself? And I'm like, oh my God, I'm not used to being yelled at about like taking care of myself. Like you cannot get to the store. And I'm like, well, I have to, it's America. Like who's going to do the shopping or who's going to. And he's like, we just don't order it. Or we just order delivery. Like, just don't do it. It stresses you out too much.

[00:28:29] And I'm like, but I have to, this is what we do. You know? Yeah. I think like what you're describing around culture again, like it plays, it plays such a big role in what we experience when it comes to these kinds of things, because it will inform our self-talk on such a significant level. There's like, there's layers to how we develop our inner voice, right? There's, you know, our relationship with our parents and then our family.

[00:28:55] And then beyond that, you know, our culture, the culture that we grew up in and all the influences that go with that from cultural expectation, you know, and what we get taught is appropriate and right. What we learn at school, how media influences us. And all of this is feeding into when we're going through a good time or we're going through a hard time, how we relate to that. Whereas like, you know, in, in some cultures, which I love, it's more about, you know, equanimity, like the good and the bad, like it's all good.

[00:29:24] It's all part of the human experience. And you see when someone's learned to relate to good and bad emotional experiences in a nonjudgmental way, actually that they're able to take control of those experiences. I think with a lot more ease and grace because they're not fighting their experience. Like, whereas we wrong experiences so much and we're kind of obsessed with positive emotions only, which is emotions are like signals. You can't only prioritize good emotional experiences.

[00:29:53] It just defeats the purpose of, of what they actually are by design. Yeah. I think you brought up a good point because mostly I've been thinking about what you're tracking in the, in the way of a preventative dysregulation, right? But I would imagine it also tracks regulation and happy emotions too, right? And so how would people use that data? Well, I think it, it's a reinforcement. So, okay. For starters, like our scale of good to bad is not negative to positive emotion.

[00:30:22] Like if, and we don't even think in the binary like this, but just for simplicity, I can use that analogy. We think about it more from dysregulation to regulation. When you're in a regulated state, you have greater ability to use your executive function. Your nervous system is able to recover, you know, in, in a, a more appropriate way, but it's important that people don't think good or bad in the binary because they're actually

[00:30:49] a really appropriate times for your nervous system to be dysregulated. Like if you're in a violent situation, for example, don't try to like, don't try to repress the impact that's having on you because this is a signal to show you that this isn't an appropriate kind of situation for you. So I think that that's important to name because you, you shouldn't be trying to like meditate your way into acceptance of something that that's not appropriate for you.

[00:31:15] But in, in the broader sense, yeah, we, we more so say that the goal here is to practice mastering your emotion so that you can feel everything without being destabilized, which is very different to sort of traditional ideas around, well, you know, just even sometimes with, with ideology around like equanimity, it's a bit like, well, don't feel at all. And we have a very opposite premise.

[00:31:41] It's feel everything, but do so in a way that allows, you know, yourself to be in a, in a relatively centered state whilst you're experiencing that emotion. And then I guess by that extension, once you get through enough of the emotion that you can use your thinking brain, right? Once the monkey brain kind of sits down a little bit, then you can decide, is this the right emotion for this moment, for this event? Yeah. So you can see what, what's really helping, you know, like with simple AI integration,

[00:32:10] as an example, you could say, once you've been wearing in truth for a little while, especially if you've connected it to something like calendar or even geolocation. So it knows how environments are impacting you. I want to optimize my creativity tomorrow. Could you, you know, suggest a way in which I could structure my day to, to help me be in that, that state and it could aggregate all of that data and feed that back to you. And then I think I want to point out too, just for people who need to hear it, like sometimes

[00:32:37] we need permission when, when you said like, don't meditate your way into if it's not appropriate. So what came to mind is sometimes people have jobs, it's a toxic work environment, or it's a job that doesn't fit who they are as a person, but for whatever different reason, they force themselves to stay. And whenever you're doing something that's not organic for you or the work environment is toxic, it's never going to work out, right? Because there's so much effort you have to like put into it.

[00:33:03] And I think in that situation, meditating to get through your work so you could work there longer might not be the best use of a meditation, right? So it's like a really practical way to kind of look at that statement. Yeah, I think that's a great example. And then, you know, there could be other examples like, you know, I'm the founder of a startup and there are times where it really like the opportunity cost is on the right side of opportunity

[00:33:32] for me to push certain kind of challenge areas. Because if I don't do that, you know, I think, and no one can tell you where those lines of appropriation are, you know? And I think this is why your wellbeing, especially your emotional wellbeing is such a personal journey. And I hope that in truth just acts as, you know, a mirror for you to understand what all limits are. And whether I was getting advice from a friend who said, you know, Nick, you give way too much to this company and you should walk away.

[00:34:01] Or I'm listening to advice from a friend that says, you know, actually, no, this is your moment and go all in and, you know, reap the consequences of that after the fact. It's not that either of those pieces of advice are wrong, but it's up to me to decide, you know, where I stand and what my limits are. And I think sometimes we have to go through extreme experiences, right? Like, you know, adrenal fatigue or burnout to be like, whoa, I was way over my limit actually. And your body will tell you.

[00:34:29] And then you can like store that in your toolbox as like a benchmark for like what not like don't go that far again, right? Yeah, don't go that far again with the level of capacity you had at that time. Like, cause I do believe that there are ways you can build your capacity. And then, you know, if you were to do that effectively, you maybe could go back depending if you wanted to, right? And, and handle that without the impact. I actually think entrepreneurship is a really good example of this because a lot of people,

[00:34:58] yeah, they'll start businesses and they don't have this stress tolerance, right? But they want to be a successful entrepreneur and maybe they have to go through that failure to actually learn what they need, what protocols they need and the mindset they've got to adopt to actually be successful. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because my husband's like, he likes to be on like the risk conservative and I'm pretty conservative with risk too, but there's things where I'm just like, that's it. We're just doing it. And I'm just like throwing all my money on the roulette table because I just know it's going to win, right?

[00:35:28] And he will just never just do that, right? So even though we're both very much like, let's think through this and have informed, you know, decision-making, I'm more of like, who cares? Spend all your money and figure out if the startup works. I don't care. What's the worst case. We just build it back up again. It's like, whatever, right? Whereas he's like, but that's not like the Indian way. We have to like save our money for our children. And I'm like, it looks like there's always the balanced culture, but the stress test testing part also reminded me, you know, of like, what can you tolerate?

[00:35:58] Because when they would, when I get yelled at for like not doing the self-care, man, it used to trigger me so bad. I'm like, I don't understand why you're yelling at me about it. He's like, I'm not yelling at you, but I'm just telling you, you have to do this. And then now I'm like, he's right. I don't know why he's right. But right now I just need to listen to him because I know I feel better listening to him right now versus doing what I was going to do. Right. And so in the moment, even though I'm kind of stressed out about being told to do self-care, I've learned to just do it because I know he knows me better in that moment.

[00:36:27] And I'm not thinking clearly. And sometimes I make poor decisions that burn my nervous system faster. Yeah. I think that's, you know, that's such a beautiful example of how we can use the relationships around us in a really positive way, whether it's a marriage or, you know, a family member or even, you know, friends who really know you. So I've had moments in my journey who I haven't seen for ages, you know, see me after a long period of time and be like, something's going on with you, you know, but I've been like, I've been busy. I haven't really noticed.

[00:36:56] And those have actually been really pivotal points of feedback where I've been like, actually, yeah, like my vitality and my presence is in a shock as it usually is. And that's not okay. Like I need to, I need to listen to that and not be stubborn. That's kind of how we cycle through life if we let it happen, right? If we let those friends tell us that, if we embrace it, if we get work on it, you know, that's the cool thing about connection. Yeah. I think this is what we should aim to create in our relationships, right?

[00:37:26] And I think so often we're constrained by our own insecurities that we don't feel comfortable having that level of, you know, honesty with the people we care about. Yeah. It's something that I'm really big on when I give talks and stuff. I always try to remind people of that, that we have a power in each other's lives and, you know, that the impact we actually can have in the lives of the people we love is profound. And often we're the ones that hold ourselves back, you know, because we tell ourselves like,

[00:37:55] well, who am I to have an opinion about this, this or that, or we're nervous about how someone's going to receive it. Obviously, like don't give completely unsolicited advice like 24 seven because everyone knows that person and it's super annoying. It's a really important thing that we all have in our lives. So I was curious how this would work in the neurodivergent population and also in people that have PTSD, like chronic stress burnout, right? Because we can't really, we have interception problems, right?

[00:38:23] And in the moment, the meltdowns or the triggers are so severe sometimes, right? That even we can't get a hold of it ourselves. And I was really interested in this data for those reasons to see if I can help bring me back into myself, you know, get out of burnout or whatever this is, or just understand myself more fully. So I was curious if you have any experience with those populations.

[00:38:49] We haven't done clinical research specifically on these populations, but I'll tell you one thing, we get asked about it a lot, especially, actually both. We get asked a lot about burnout because doctors often don't take it seriously, right? And there's a population, a big population of people that have suffered from it and not gotten appropriate help. And then in neurodivergence, also a lot from parents who have children who are neurodivergent and because of the way our model works and what our model is actually measuring, we don't

[00:39:19] believe we should see variation. Like we don't, we wouldn't expect to see someone who's neurodivergent having sort of massive abnormalities around their emotional data compared to someone who's not neurodivergent, right? But what I think it would help with is, from my understanding, someone who's neurodivergent struggles maybe to identify and communicate those emotions, even though what they're experiencing is the same emotional signal that we're all

[00:39:48] experiencing, but the inability to express it can create, and the sensitivity to stimulus can create a buildup that just feels completely overwhelming. I think I just want to sit with that for a second because when you said you don't expect it to be, you know, the variances to really be that much different, I think I felt like there's like that initial like internalized response from other people like that project onto me, right? So that internalized like, that's not true. I'm sensitive.

[00:40:16] This, I have extreme emotions, right? And then there's the other part that's like, wow, that was like really validating. I'm sure there's a lot of truth to that, that we'll discover that maybe the emotions themselves don't vary much, but how we're able to feel and express them might be the differentiator. And because of that, the buildup is so high or the awareness of it is so, would it be low or high, that by the time we're like

[00:40:43] aware of it, it's like already way overboard and we can't get a handle on it, right? Because now it's like in the monkey brain part of reacting, right? Where some people can feel the 10 or 20% like, oh, I'm 10% angry. And then they can express it and work on it. Neurodivergence don't really know what's happening until it's like 90% and they're already dysregulated and showing behavior changes, right? Yeah.

[00:41:07] That, I mean, again, we haven't done specific research, but from my understanding that that's what my hypothesis would be. But we're really like, we're excited to do more research and in my own sort of unique way, I can really relate to that. Like I think very differently and often like I'm so consumed by the problems I'm solving that without practice of really being conscious, I can have all kinds of behavioral issues as

[00:41:31] just a result of like that buildup and not expressing myself and not putting the boundaries in place that I need. And yet, you know, I know my emotional data is there's no abnormalities in it. Like it's not the extreme, but my experience can become extreme and I can become severely dysregulated because I haven't prioritized regulation ahead of time. Yeah. Yes. This is such an important concept and topic to like really get out there because it's,

[00:41:59] I think really the key point of what drives somebody to mental health issues, worsening and or, you know, comorbidities, chronic diseases, blah, blah, blah, because we don't always accept or recognize that emotions are normal or that that emotion was normal at the time you acquired it, but it doesn't work in this context. And then we don't really know how to like process it, regulate it and get a handle on it. And then it becomes, then it shows up, right? However, it wants to show up that day.

[00:42:29] That's how it's going to show up. And it creates a lot of problems in your dynamics at work and with people. And especially if you're largely like consistently one way, but in those moments of dysregulation, you act a different way. People don't know how to take it. That there's a really, like, it's a super valid point that you're speaking to. And I think our data is going to be able to show, it's going to help someone understand

[00:42:53] when there is a process of dysregulation taking place and kind of be your second brain for you to be like, Hey, you're at that 10%. You're at that 20% to give you that opportunity to recognize it before it hits this point where it's really starting to say impact your relationships because you seem to someone who's uneducated, like two different people. Right.

[00:43:19] And imagine how empowering it would be to have that data, to have that self-recognition. Yeah. And feel integrated. Cause even I feel disconnected from myself when I have those meltdowns or those triggers or whatever. Yeah. And yeah, I think that it's really powerful. Like I really hope that our data can be used for this or even, you know, you show it to your husband or a friend to say, Hey, like, this is where I'm at right now. And I'm struggling to recognize where I'm at. Yeah.

[00:43:45] I'm picturing, we're going to put like a monitor in the kitchen and it's like, wherever I am, they're going to like call me and be like, mom, what are you doing? Like, we see your heart rate is like, these are the parameters that happen before you have a meltdown, like mayday, mayday. Like I'll get a walkie talkie and they could just like, you know, put it in the ear and they'll just like tell me what not to do. Yeah. That's it. Or like being able to share the data with your husband or whatever. And so he kind of knows ahead of time. Like, I think it can make a big difference.

[00:44:12] Like the reason we call what we're building an emotion language model is because we want the data to be a universal language of emotion rather than how to translate emotion into words, which is really ineffective. If we can read the data and understand what's happening on that unconscious level with each other, then it becomes a language of its own. You know, it allows us to communicate things that we haven't been able to before.

[00:44:38] It's so frustrating when I hear, and you know, I'm not perfect by any means in my childhood was very similar, but as an adult now with more language and more awareness, it's very frustrating and not frustrating in a judgment against the parent. But like when you see a parent, for example, like telling a child, what's wrong? Why are you crying? And it's like, don't worry about that now. Like get them to a regulated state first and then, you know, work on the other things. Like some of these things you cannot work on in the moment. Right. Yeah.

[00:45:07] No, yeah, totally. And that's, that's the whole concept of regulation. Right. It's not to wrong those escalations or those triggers. I think it's, you know, it's sometimes inevitable and sometimes what's triggered you has happened, you know, really quickly and there's no time, you know, to be able to see that and then just use the reflection of that awareness to even be able to tell yourself, hey, now's not the time to try to fix this.

[00:45:34] I need to actually prioritize, you know, whatever you, whatever works for you. Come back and then try to analyze what happened and start to build more awareness around how that escalation took place in the first place. I think a lot of people, right, are looking for the silver bullet. And this is the issue with the way big pharma has programmed kind of the mental health conversation. It's like, and take this drug and you won't be in pain anymore. Struggling to focus, take this medication and then all of a sudden you can focus.

[00:46:04] And it is created such an unrealistic picture of what I believe health really is, especially mental health because it's very complex and emotional health. It's all about developing awareness over time so that you incrementally improve the quality of your life. It's like fitness. Like no one's going to go to the gym once and be fit. Like it takes discipline. You have to be very committed. I think, especially in today's world to be a holistically healthy human being.

[00:46:32] And I think that's what we should, we should adjust our expectations accordingly. Like no matter what you're dealing with, whether it's the frustration and the pain of triggers because of neurodivergence or PTSD, or, you know, you haven't been able to get out of bed because of depression. Like it's not a realistic expectation to tell yourself next week, I'm going to be completely changed human being. Like way more compassion for ourselves than that. Yeah. Great.

[00:46:59] And see it as like, okay, between now and maybe, you know, when I'm old, how do I want to see the quality of my life improve and not be so short-sighted? Like, I think it's the quote, people severely underestimate what they can achieve in 10 years and severely overestimate what they can achieve in one year. It's like, cause we're socially excited, you know, but if we just extend our thinking a little bit and ask the question, where do I want to be in five years or 10 years?

[00:47:27] All of a sudden, I think the horizon becomes supportive because, you know, I dealt with panic attacks when I was younger, like really bad panic attacks. And I still do sometimes, but the window for me was like, I want to go from having a panic attack every day to like once a week and then once a week to once a month and then once a month to a couple of times a year. And that's improving my quality of life. It's not the eradication of the thing. Like that still might happen and I have to be okay with that.

[00:47:56] Can I extend the time between that, you know, traumatic event? Yeah, exactly. And I think from the loved ones around us that have seen and experienced our anxiety and panic or meltdowns or triggers or, you know, whatever word they use for it, sometimes it's hard for them too. And so they, I think you can get into a dynamic where you are looking for eradication because you could get so burned out by it. The people around you can get burned out by it.

[00:48:25] And I think if we have a tool that can help us just manage or minimize it, that itself is empowering because then you feel like, okay, we're doing something, right? Yeah. And the more self-awareness you develop, I truly do believe, again, nothing's a silver bullet, right? But I believe that you will be able to go from an experience where something has been debilitating to something that you actually feel in control of. And I think that is the ultimate catalyst for health.

[00:48:53] Like even someone who's in severe cancer diagnosis, when they move from, I don't know what's wrong with me. So this is actually what I'm experiencing. And this is what the treatment pathway is going to be. Just that shift can be enough to put someone in the mindset of, okay, I know what to expect and I'm going to be in the driver's seat of this, you know, recovery journey. And that can, just that can make the world of difference to someone's quality of life.

[00:49:21] So can we quickly get into the logistics of what's the expectation of expenses for this? Is it free? Is there a subscription? How much does it cost? Is this an algorithm? Like, how do you track it? So what our data is actually doing, that's a good place to start, is we pull the raw data from the wearable. The raw data from these sorts of wearables is called BBI data, bit-to-beat interval data. And we've basically built a model through clinically trained data sets where we've exposed people

[00:49:49] to stimulus, recorded their response, and then basically used advanced AI and machine learning to teach the BBI data how to actually clinically map against emotion by training it on all of these other markers, which is a scientific process, but that's kind of a high level of what it's doing. So it'll take your data. Imagine it's like an unclear signal. Our model helps it become clear, maps it against the emotion, and then feeds it back to you.

[00:50:17] In terms of monetization and pricing, it's an interesting question. I always assumed that we would launch in kind of a traditional consumer SaaS model once it hit the consumer market, because the obvious business pathways for us are more around enterprise use cases, research use cases, white labeling APIs into third-party platforms. These are the ways we will at least begin to monetize. The deeper we've thought about it, and don't hold me to this because we haven't made the

[00:50:46] final decision, but there is some merit in thinking about what it would mean to actually make this free for consumers. What it would allow us to do is build a very diverse and rapidly scaling data set, which no one's ever done before on emotion. And kind of, you know, our hope in that would be that we are then positioned as kind of the leading authority in global emotional data, which obviously opens up a whole bunch of other business opportunities for us and also makes what we're doing very accessible to the end user.

[00:51:16] And then if you're engaging with us as a business or, you know, an enterprise, obviously the model is more around how we aggregate that data for you in a meaningful way and help you make decisions as a company. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So is there anything you want to add that maybe I missed or something that you just thought about? I think it's been a pretty comprehensive conversation. But of course, if any of your listeners are interested in what we're doing, maybe you'll include it in the show notes, but you can head to intruth.io and then all the info on what we're building is there. Okay. All right. Sounds good.

[00:51:45] Thanks for being on the show, Nicole. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks, Jennifer.