When it comes to your brain, who’s in charge: you or the onslaught of incoming stimulation? In “Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty and Chaos,” Emma Seppälä , a psychologist with academic postings at Yale and Stanford universities, argues that modernity has forced the human brain into a highly reactive mode, effectively hijacking it with nonstop information and noise. To soothe ourselves, Seppälä says, we mindlessly adopt an array of coping mechanisms, some of which are self-destructive, from excessive eating and alcohol intake to angry outbursts and social withdrawal. But there are ways to interrupt our knee-jerk reactions and cope more thoughtfully, Seppälä argues.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Q In the book, you describe a formative experience in college involving your relationship to food. What happened? A Starting at the age of about 16 or 17, I developed an eating disorder.
I would binge-eat when I was feeling low, and then I would feel worse. It was an addictive habit, a compulsion. In college, in 1996, I went to a meditation session.
It was Korean Zen, strict: You stared at the carpet for an hour with little to no instruction. I thought, I’m never, ever doing this again. But I felt peaceful afterward.
Then, the next day, I felt down again. There was an old leftover pizza in the dorm room. It wasn’t even a kind I liked; it was gross.
But I had this impulse to binge.