What do you think is a connection（连接） between a pigeon（鸽子）'s ability to count and human mental（智力的） health? The answer has to do with learned behaviors. When I was on the path（道路） to becoming a clinical（ 临床的） psychologist（心理学家）, my career veered in the direction of animal cognition（ 感知） and neuroscience. I found（找到） myself teaching pigeons（鸽子） to count using a process called shaping（形成）. You start by giving it some food every time it looks at a touch（触） screen. This creates connections in its brain that become stronger over time, even as the rules become more complex（复杂的）.

  So just like teaching a dog to stay, I eventually（终于） trained the pigeon（鸽子） to peck（ 啄食） at a red square when it saw two flashes of light and a green square when it saw three. I now had a pigeon that could count. This process happens gradually（逐渐地）, day after day, until that learned behavior becomes a habit. I've worked（使工作） in mental（智力的） health over 25 years, and I've learned that just like the pigeon, our brains reinforce（增援） certain habits or coping（对付） mechanisms（机制） that help us feel better in the moment. I've seen thousands of educators（教育家）, healthcare（ 卫生保健） workers, and first responders rely（依赖） on coping（对付） mechanisms（机制） like procrastination, overusing their smartphones, or working harder through a tough（坚韧的） time. This can backfire and train them to become anxious（焦虑的） and depressed（ 消沉的）.

  For example, do you scroll（成卷形） endlessly on social media instead of getting to that task that fills you with anxiety（焦虑） or dread（畏惧）? Or, late at night, do you get a dopamine hit when you click（点击） on the next episode（插曲） button? Procrastination can feel good at the time, but the next day is going to be a real grind（磨）. These coping mechanisms help us feel better in the moment, so it is not crazy that we do them. But, if we kept repeating them and wondered（想知道） why we're still stressed, or anxious, or burnt out, then what we're doing might be insane（患精神病的）. Insanity（精神错乱） is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different response.

  Now, we might not be aware（知道的） of our own insane（患精神病的） patterns, but chances are we all have them, myself included. The good news is that if we understand our unhelpful coping mechanisms, we can all unlearn them to improve our mental health. Now, I'd like to share with you what I've learned from being a father. My awesome daughter, Natalia, is now a teenager, but, luckily for her, having a psychologist as a father means that I've worked hard to shape the connections in her brain. So, she understands that the '90s grunge music is the absolute（绝对的） peak（山顶） of all music ever. My goal is for Natalia to be self（自己）-confident（确信的）, because I've never had a patient with clinical anxiety or depression（沮丧） also have high self（自己）-confidence（信心） at the same time.