https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcZXl0Yr-QU
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Hi everybody and welcome to happiness and brain surgery with dr dawn elise snipes practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life today we’re going to be talking about 21 practical tips to beat anxiety this is based on a book that i’ve got coming out in two months it’s in the
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in press right now happiness isn’t brain surgery 100 plus practical tips to beat anxiety so look for that to be released in june of 2018 so not too long now we’re going to go over 21 of the tips that are in that book right now to give you an idea of some things that you can start doing now
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instead of having to wait till june to deal with your anxiety so the first one and i’ve talked about this in different situations is learning the difference between emotional and factual reasoning just because you may feel anxious doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a threatening or dangerous
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situation when i get ready to go to a social function i get a little bit butterfly in my stomach i get a little bit of anxiety i’m not one to do mixers so i get a little bit of anxiety but emotional reasoning would mean that i’m thinking about all the reasons that i need to be scared
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before i go into that situation factual reasoning is backing up and thinking factually about the situation i’m going to this mixer there’s a lot of other people there many of them probably feel like me um and you know this is what i’m going to do the facts of
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the matter are that it doesn’t have to be scary nobody at the mixer is going to try to embarrass me or humiliate me um any potential perceived threats are pretty much all in my own head so it’s important to separate emotional from factual learn to differentiate what’s actually
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happening happening from what you’re currently thinking about sometimes you can be going in and doing something and thinking about the worst possible scenario thinking that the sky is going to fall for example and in reality it’s not that bad when we have a storm come through for example
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last year we had a significant portion of our fence blown down in a storm that came through which is kind of a big deal when you’ve got you know equines and chickens and ducks and everybody to keep contained and it kind of freaked me out a little bit so now when we have a storm i can get a
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little bit anxious at first and i need to remember you know what’s actually happening right now is it’s a storm it’s no big deal we’ve had hundreds of them factual and what’s happening now not what i’m currently thinking about which is what happened last year so i need to get my head out of
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the past because the past is the past and there’s no nothing saying that it has to ever occur again so focusing on what is actually happening now if you’ve been in a car accident before for example then you might get stressed out when you’re in heavy traffic again what is actually happening
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now yes traffic is heavy but you’re safe you’ve got good distance between you and the people in front of you you know if you feel the need to you can get all the way over into the right lane so you have an exit strategy should you feel like it’s getting too you know claustrophobic or
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something but that’s what’s happening now you’re not currently in danger you’re just going with the flow the third thing you can do is try to prove yourself wrong show yourself that your thoughts have no basis in truth so if you’re worried about you know a rash you’ve got go to the doctor and
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confirm that you aren’t dying of some incurable disease which is what you may be thinking about or ask someone how they feel about you if you don’t know so if you’re wondering if so-and-so hates you instead of stressing about it ask them you know prove yourself wrong or right but at
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least you’ll have an answer you’ll have a factual answer not just an emotion based answer don’t live in the gray area when answers are available to you sometimes there aren’t any answers sometimes you have a gray area but if there are answers available get them so you can let go of
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that anxiety or deal with it and move on number four is stop trying to navigate the path while the hallway is dark you know that old saying that when one door closes another door opens and the follow on to that is but those hallways are a [ __ ] yeah um it’s dark before that other door opens and
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the first one is closed you’re in a dark hallway that’s okay you know don’t try to make decisions when the hallway is dark when you can’t see what’s going on and this is what happens when you’re upset you kind of get tunnel vision when you get a lot of adrenaline going through your system you
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get tunnel vision and that can make things dark it can make it harder to see all of your options so wait until you’re less upset get in your wise mind before you make any life-altering decisions you know you may decide when you’re upset something bad happens at work you’re anxious about something
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you may decide that you need to go on a walk okay that’s fine but when you’re anxious and upset and right in the midst of it it’s not the time to say well i’m going to quit my job no no the hallway’s dark you need to be able to look at what are at least three options that you can consider
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when you are trying to figure out what to do number five is to unhook from your emotions instead of saying i am terrified say i am having the thought that i’m terrified and you may think to yourself you know whatever you know that’s just semantics but think about it this way
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if you are a smoker for example or you like chocolate cake if you think to yourself i have to have a piece of chocolate cake or i have to have a cigarette it feels like it has to be done you know there’s just no question if you say to yourself i’m having the thought that i have to
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have a piece of chocolate cake or a cigarette then that thought you can choose to act on or not act on so it’s separating it and making it so it’s something that you can put away fire can burn your house down or it can cook your dinner each night and keep you warm in the winter
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which means it can be bad or it can be good your mind is the same way will you let it burn you out and cause you to feel helpless and hopeless just spinning around with anxiety and what ifs and oh my goodnesses or will it help you turn into macgyver and whenever you face
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a challenge or something that makes you anxious it will help you view that as a challenge and find creative solutions your mind can do either one it can keep you spinning you know i don’t know if you know the younger people listening may remember sitting spins
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we had those when i was little you sat on this little disc and you turned and you just spun around in it in the same place until you got dizzy and that’s all it did and that’s what happens when we get stuck with our emotions we’re on our own little personal sit and spin
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it’s not going to do any any good except for make us sick to our stomach now if we take that energy and instead of sitting and spinning we use it to address the challenge and view it as a problem that can be solved then we’re going to make some more forward progress
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number seven realize that thoughts can be merely illusions think about all the things that you’ve thought about and worried about that have turned out to be nothing at all you know you got yourself all in a tizzy over nothing think of all the time you wasted preparing for outcomes that would never
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happen the what ifs i mean i’m i’ll admit i’m bad i’m one of those people who usually has not only a plan b but also a plan c but i stop at plan c i know people who have planned d e and f and you know that takes a lot of time and energy to have all those backup plans so in the future when
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you start to worry ask yourself if what you’re worried about is factual and probable so if you’re getting ready to go take an exam um you know you can worry that you’re going to fail it but you know that’s a lot of worry and you can start figuring out what you’re going to
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do if you fail that test which means you’re probably going to fail the class which means you can work yourself up into this whole catastrophic situation or you can say is it factual is it probable that i’m going to fail this exam well if you’ve done what you needed to
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probably not when you when people go in to have their hiv test done there’s typically a lot of anxiety going in to do that and so people can get really worried and start coming up with all these plans of how they’re gonna tell people and what they’re gonna do if they’re positive and
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what they’re gonna how life will change and all this kind of stuff and they get their results back in their negative and they expended amazing amounts of energy planning for the worst case scenario so sometimes especially if there’s an answer to it you know you’re not living
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in the gray area you’re getting ready to get the answer sometimes you have to be patient and just have faith that you will be able to handle whatever the answer is otherwise you could be going in the completely wrong direction with with your plans follow it to the end is number eight
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think about whatever you’re worried about then imagine realistically what will happen and follow it to its conclusion your boss leaves a message on your desk that he needs to talk to you on monday at 9am be in his office well that can be a little bit intimidating no matter who you are
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if your boss is doing that and then you’ve got all weekend to worry about it so imagine realistically what’s going to happen so think about you know have you been doing your job have you been a decent employee all right are things does the business seem to be going well or
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are they laying people off realistically is he going to call you in individually if he’s going to do layoffs no so going through all those things in the in your head you can figure out with reasonable accuracy what is likely going to happen um and at least whether the worst thing
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is likely going to happen if you go through those things and you say yeah i’ve been being a good employee i’ve been on time i’ve done all these things the business is doing well you know i don’t think there’s anything that i could be in trouble for so i don’t know what he
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wants wish i did but i don’t and then you can distract yourself for the rest of the weekend because you follow it to its conclusion if there’s nothing major that you’ve done wrong then likely you’re not going to lose your job likely you’re not going to get demoted none of those awful
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things are going to happen likely you will meet with him and he’ll say whatever he has to say and then you’ll go on about your business if you stick with fact-based probable scenarios you will often find that the outcome is not that scary you know if you look over it and you go yeah i’ve been
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late six days out of the last 15 and i haven’t gotten my work done in a month well then yeah you probably need to make some plans but at this point there’s nothing much that you can do to change it change what whatever he’s got to say so being aware of what is likely and probable to happen
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remember the average person has over 50 000 thoughts every day heck i had four thoughts before i even got out of bed this morning i woke up and i’ve got a foster kitty staying in my room and my first thought was where’s vicki and then she was up on my bed and my second thought was
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that’s different she’s you know sitting on my feet instead of on her pillow and my third thought was i don’t really want to get out of bed this morning and you know just kept going on fifty thousand thoughts some are happy some are sad some are fearful
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if you were asked how many of your fifty thousand thoughts you remember today it’s likely going to be less than a hundred you know you can remember that you thought about what to eat for breakfast you can remember that you decided whether or not to go to the gym
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you know those are thoughts that you can probably think back and remember but if you really had to start thinking you know i bet you would be hard-pressed to come up with more than a hundred so you’re going to have some scary thoughts that’s okay let them go thoughts are just
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illusions they come in and they go out it’s kind of like think about clouds if you’ve ever made cloud pictures cloud pictures um you know you’re laying on your back you’re watching the clouds and they morph into something and it’s a dinosaur or a whale or something and that’s awesome
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and it’s it it’s exciting and then it turns into something else our thoughts are the same way you know they don’t have to stay stuck in anxiety ride the wave is number 10. and we’ve talked about this one before feelings come peak in
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about 20 minutes and subside just like waves come in and crest and and go out unless you feed them if you’re anxious and you start thinking about all the reasons you need to be anxious and you start thinking about all the possible worst case scenarios that could happen or what if in yourself
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you’re going to stay stuck you’re feeding that anxiety you know imagine if you’ve ever played um don’t cut the rope the little green monster on that he’s so cute but imagine feeding him imagine that to your anxiety monster and every time you have a catastrophic thought you’re just feeding
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him and giving him energy if you ride the wave acknowledge that you’re anxious you know but if your boss leaves that note on your desk you may be anxious so all weekend periodically you may have that thought i wonder what my boss wants to talk to me about you know that’s kind of intimidating
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acknowledge it say that’s that’s stressful i’m anxious about that but there’s nothing i can do about it right now and what can you do to improve the next moment and focusing on that and dwelling on it is not going to improve the next moment
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so ride the wave let your feelings come in acknowledge them go do something distract yourself you’ll check in a few minutes later and you’ll go what you’ll probably say you know what i don’t feel as stressed out right now you know it’s that feeling’s starting to go away
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now some feelings like grief can linger for a while you know i’m not saying that all feelings are going to come in and go out but anxiety is one of those that if we start looking at the positive if we start looking at the facts if we start really evaluating the situation
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instead of using emotion-based reasoning and worst case scenarios our anxiety can go away don’t swat the bee and this is another one that i’ve talked about in some of the other podcasts our urges are what happen when we have a feeling and we want it to go away when you have that
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feeling of anxiety you want to make it stop it’s unpleasant it’s like when a bee lands on your arm you want it to go away because you’re afraid it’s gonna sting you and that’s gonna hurt so you wanna your urge is to swat at it to get it to get off of you well if you swat
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at it you’re increasing the likelihood that it’s going to sting you most of the time it won’t so just like you let the bee fly off on his own and everybody’s happy when you have anxiety don’t act impulsively don’t do the first thing that comes to mind to make the anxiety stop because a lot
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of times that’s not going to be your best choice let yourself get rid of some of the adrenaline get into your wise mind think of three options for how to handle this situation and then choose from there by the time you do all that stuff the adrenaline is gone down but until you can think of
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three potential options or scenarios then you’re still in that adrenaline haze embrace the dialectics as number 12. try to figure out how two seemingly contradictory things can be true such as this relationship i’m in may end you know it can’t some people get really anxious
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that they’re going to be abandoned or that a relationship’s going to end and it may end but you can also be okay you know and both of those things can be true it’s hard to imagine but both of them can be true somebody could be anxious that they’re going to lose their job
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and you know because there are a bunch of layoffs happening at the company so they could start having a lot of stress about that but remembering that they could still lose their job but it doesn’t mean they’ll lose their family they’ll still have their family they’ll still have
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other things that are important to them so remembering and embracing the dialectics there are going to be some bad things but those bad things will be balanced by good things and can even create opportunities if you lose your job maybe you’ll be in a better one that’s more secure
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look for opportunity in the angst worry tells you that something might need to change if you’re in a relationship and you’re worried that it’s going to end that tells me that there’s something going on either it’s an unhealthy relationship or the communication is poor or you’ve got some stuff
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that you need to deal with something is going on that’s making you feel either unlovable or feel like the relationship is going to end so that’s what worry tells you okay well that’s fine thank you for alerting me to the fact that something might need to change mr worry monster
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now what’s the opportunity how can i embrace this and say what can i do to improve this situation opportunities make up the majority of the iceberg that is in in the reality you don’t yet know and can’t yet see so if you’re in this relationship and it ends you know that’s the tip of the iceberg
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and that’s the thing you don’t really want to know about and you don’t really want to see and that’s the awful thing the elephant in the middle of the room so to speak but underneath the water the bottom of that iceberg is much much bigger and it’s all the opportunities that wait for you
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now that you’re not in that relationship so how can this be an opportunity for you to grow to meet someone new to explore something to maybe get a job somewhere else and move to a different state start over again who knows what are the opportunities number 14 is to change your
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objective the goal shouldn’t be to feel good all the time nobody’s going to feel good all the time the goal is to be able to express a healthy range of emotion without suppressing it or suffering you know if you don’t have any days when you’re sad that mean likely means you don’t
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have anything that’s important to you that you’ve lost and you know things that are important to us we occasionally lose we lose pets we lose you know whatever relationships we lose people people die we lose jobs we lose hopes we lose dreams we lose things and when we lose those
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things we’re going to feel sad that’s your brain’s way of saying that was important we’re gonna miss that okay you know so acknowledge it experience it and improve the next moment you don’t have to feel good all the time matter of fact if you felt good all the time it wouldn’t
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be that rewarding you’d just be like yeah this is normal now if you have occasional sad days and occasionally get a little bit irritable then when you feel happy you’re like oh i like this we’ll we’ll do this for quite a while so you feel a difference and you feel that depth of emotion
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remember yin and yang and if you look at it you have the circle and then the little you know apostrophe looking things that are together but in each one there’s a little bit of the other in yin there’s a little bit of yang and in yang there’s a little bit of yin you can’t have
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pure happiness you know there’s always going to be a little bit of stuff that’s not going quite right or not exactly the way you want but it doesn’t mean you can’t be the majority of happy when there’s unpleasantness and it can feel like there’s a lot of it
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but if you look in that unpleasantness there’s going to be a little bit of happiness a little bit of opportunity a little bit of something to be grateful for so it’s embracing the depth and quality of those emotions recognizing that okay anxiety is is on
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kind of on the dark side how can we turn this into an opportunity to learn and to grow and express the full range of emotions develop hardiness commitment control and challenge heartiness means that you understand that there are dozens of things that make your life rich and
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meaningful and you’re committed to those things now occasionally one of those is going to go wonky and you’re gonna have to deal with it but while you’re dealing with that wonky thing the other 11 things or more in your life that make it rich and meaningful and that you’re committed
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to they’re still going well so for example if work starts to go a little bit haywire and you’re unhappy at your job all right you got to deal with that but it’s allowing you to put a roof over your head and you you like your house it’s allowing you to put food on the table and feed your family
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you’ll love your family they’re really important so your commitment to all those things makes life worth living even though this thing over here not going so well right now control is the second part of it once you’re looking at all those things that you’re committed to
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most of them you don’t have a hundred percent control over that’s just life so focusing only on the things that you have control over if you try to change things you don’t have control over you’re going to make yourself depressed anxious upset irritable so don’t do it
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ask yourself is this something i actually can control we can’t control other people we can’t control other people’s reactions we can control what we do you know the person who is worried that he’s going to get laid off or fired you know they he can’t control whether
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the business is doing well he can’t control what his colleagues are doing all he can control is whether he goes to work gets there on time and does his job that part is in his control um irrational thoughts it’s important to think about irrational thoughts as
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something your brain is telling you that’s kind of extreme like i must be loved by everybody all the time or the world is going to end oftentimes irrational thoughts are products of traumas that you’ve yet to fully acknowledge or deal with so if you grew up in a chaotic home environment
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and you have a lot of anxiety about relationships ending and people abandoning you you may have some irrational thoughts that are telling you that you’re not lovable or you’re going to be abandoned that stem from that childhood trauma so when you start getting anxious
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you need to ask yourself what am i afraid of and why am i afraid of it what is this really a threat right now so what am i afraid of this relationship ending why am i afraid of it because i don’t want to be abandoned um is this really a threat right now
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when you’re six fearing that a parent is going to abandon you is threatening when you are 26 fearing that a relationship is going to end you know it’s unpleasant but you can still feed yourself you can meet new people you can go go on about your life so it’s likely not as
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imperative that you maintain that relationship so you know think about when you start getting anxious is this a reaction caused by something in my past or is this a reaction to something that’s going on now except the fact that everyone everywhere has weird incorrect disturbing thoughts
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that have no bearing on reality we all have catastrophic thoughts sometimes you’re not a freak you’re probably not sick you just have to learn to not be intimidated by your own mind your mind takes in information but ironically it’s really not that smart so we have to help
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it interpret that information if i hear a loud noise outside you know it may sound like a gunshot but it could be a car back firing so initially i’ll have a startle reaction because it was a loud noise and i think oh my gosh you know there’s a gunshot and then reality sets in
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and i go no i’m in downtown you know there’s parking lot outside it was probably a car back firing so making sure that you check yourself and check your thoughts to make sure that you’re not just making a catastrophe when you completely misinterpret this situation
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stop gauging how bad things are by how much you panic the more you panic the more you panic so if you get nervous about going to the doctor and think oh this must be really bad because i’m really stressed out then you’re going to get yourself even more stressed out because your heart
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rate’s going to go up and your breathing is going to go faster which is going to cause your body to release more stress chemicals so you’re going to feel worse so don’t assume that because you feel really bad really anxious that it’s really that bad you could have got talked yourself into it
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so instead of gauging how bad things are by how much you panic remember to gauge things how bad things are based on facts for it being a catastrophe and against it being a catastrophe what are the actual facts in the situation identify your comfort zones
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and step back into them now and again you didn’t think i’d ever say that did you a lot of times i’m saying step out of your comfort zone well it can be anxiety provoking moving past the place that you’re comfortable with out of your comfort zone is a gradual process
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going too quickly is a recipe for stress so when we take students and i just did a class today on helping students transition from high school to college that is a huge jump from one comfort zone to a discomfort zone so to speak because students just aren’t used to living on their own and have
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being away from mom and dad and all those different things so it causes a lot of stress in college freshmen but the same thing is true if it’s a new job or whatever it is go in slowly you know dip your toe in see how it feels just like when you’re getting
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into a cold pool well at least me i don’t do a cannonball into the pool i put my toe in let my feet get used to it then let my calves get used to it and i ease myself in so it isn’t quite as much of a shock to my system and it doesn’t cause me as as much discomfort
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but you can practice and this is number 20 practice healthy discomfort this means lean into your stress don’t resist it acknowledge that you’re anxious and go okay this means i’m getting outside my comfort zone which means i’m growing and that’s awesome
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means this is a challenge and that’s a little intimidating but it’s also exciting accept how you feel and remember you can tolerate it think back to times in the past when you’ve been anxious and you’ve worked through a situation it wasn’t the end of the world
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think about times in the past when you’ve been anxious and ways you’ve coped with it you know i’m not asking you to lean into it and do it all by yourself you know call on those past strengths and tools that you’ve used to deal with the anxiety instead of running from it
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finally practice radical acceptance learn to acknowledge the parts of your story you’d rather ignore forget or not admit so choose to love your home your body and your work instead of saying you know i am fat ugly and useless and being upset or saying everybody’s
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going to abandon me because i’m not lovable um you know let’s practice radical acceptance you are who you are and you can choose to hate yourself or you can choose to love yourself you can choose to hate where you live and be miserable about it and go around like oscar the grouch or you can choose to
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love where you live and make it a home and decide to change whatever you think needs to be changed choose to build your life from a place of gratitude and vision you know maybe you don’t love everything about yourself right now that’s okay that means you’ve got room for growth so embrace
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yourself love yourself as a human being and say okay now there are things i need to work on and use that vision to figure out where you want to go from here because you’ve got a long way to go on your life journey life’s journey when you build your life from gratitude and vision
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then you’re using your energy to grow and move forward instead of run from your own fears so remember anxiety is your body’s response to what it thinks might be a threat it’s like that faulty fire alarm that goes off it’s trying to warn you but in reality there’s nothing to be
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warned about there are many ways to address your anxiety including getting good nutrition avoiding too many stimulants getting plenty of sleep so you’re not exhausted and over tired exercise which releases serotonin get social support you know reach out to those friends
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and change your perspective so instead of looking at the worst possible scenario you’re saying what’s the best thing that could happen or how have i handled similar situations before because i can do this and add some happiness to your life you know you really
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can’t just eliminate anxiety or just eliminate depression if you eliminate it then there’s nothing you need to add some happiness to take its place and that will help you start addressing your anxiety if you like this podcast please subscribe
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