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00:00:02 Five things you should never share with anyone Albert Einstein everyone has a problem but if yours become so alarming others will leave theirs and debate yours there are things you should share with people and there are things you never share with people no matter how close they are to you 00:00:27 Albert Einstein summarized those things into just five because if you are able to keep these five things private other things will fall into place let’s look at the five things you should never share with people by Albert Einstein 00:00:48 number one The Secret of your success this does not mean that you cannot motivate and inspire people with your success going about sharing those secrets to your success with everyone is not advisable 00:01:10 in this world we live in you don’t actually know what people are really made of we still have good ones no Dot it will be an advantage for you to go about your normal business without having to 00:01:27 share how and the things you do in secret that make you more successful than others if you tell someone The Secret of your success people will try to do the same thing but if they fail they will accuse you of not telling them the truth so never tell anybody 00:01:47 The Secret of your success [Music] number two don’t share your problem with anyone sharing our problems makes us feel lighter and less burden but instead of solving the problem telling it to people can actually increase it in fact 70 percent of people are happy to hear about 00:02:14 your problem and 10 percent really care so think twice before telling someone your problem [Music] when you go about sharing your problems with people you open yourself up to be used as an objective gossip 00:02:34 so many people don’t really care about your problems some of them are happy that you have them best thing you can do for yourself is to find a way to solve your problems without opening yourself to people 00:02:54 no matter how much you trust them your problems should remain private unless you are sharing it with your doctor therapist or other Professionals for professional advice and help number three don’t share your dreams with anyone 00:03:15 if you have already set your goals and your dreams in life it is best to keep them to yourself because sharing them can affect your point of view and your purpose and you can get caught up in it always remember that you cannot get the same advice or opinion 00:03:36 from others because everybody has a different point of view talking about point of view your dream may seem like a joke or even worthless to so many people you might be seeing light while they are seeing Darkness 00:03:57 point of view differs everyone must not agree with you but that is not a problem keep it to yourself and work on it consistently until it becomes a reality number four don’t share with anyone how much you earn 00:04:19 your income is definitely something that others should not be aware of if you go about sharing everything about your income and personal finance with people you will soon attract unnecessary hatred for yourself [Music] your income and personal finances 00:04:40 should be between you and yourself if you need advice concerning your money you should channel the questions to the appropriate Authority not to your friends number five don’t share your family problems with anyone 00:05:01 there is no family that dong have a problem some have big problems while some have small ones but sharing the problem with someone would never solve these problems sharing with others only aggravate the problem [Music] it is called family problems 00:05:22 and it should remain within the family and its members no third party should take part in it every family has its own different problem but if yours becomes too alarming others will leave theirs and debate yours
Sadhguru: There are no subtractions and divisions in our mind, there is only addition and multiplication. ‘I will just remove negative thoughts and I will have positive thoughts,’ all the best, it’s not going to work. It’s just that you need to pay little attention as to how it functions. You will see there is a distinction between what is you and what you have gathered. Well, see the way the question is asked and also the way normally it’s addressed is, people think there is something called as negative thought and positive thought. They want to remove the negative thoughts and have only positive thoughts. For such people, I would ask them to just experiment for ten, fifteen seconds. Let them forcefully remove one thought from their mind. For example, next ten seconds, just don’t think of a monkey. Try not to think of a monkey for next ten seconds – you will see, you will be full of monkeys. So, what I am saying is, this is the nature of your mind, because in this mind, all the three pedals are throttle – there is no brake, there is no clutch – whatever you touch, it will only go faster. 00:01:26 In this kind of mind, people have been taught from moral teachers and religious teachers, “Do not think about bad things.” Well, since then, it’s been a full-time job. So, there is no way you can handle the mind like this, this doesn’t need any great enlightenment. If you spend two minutes with your eyes closed, you will realize, you cannot do anything forcefully with this mind. So, ‘I want to remove negative thoughts,’ do not ever go in this direction, because what you want to remove will become your quality, always you will be on it. “So, what should I do?” The thing is this – without understanding the fundamental mechanism of this mind, because our mind, human mind is the most sophet… sophisticated computer on the planet. Even all the supercomputers have come out of this. When this is the case, is it not important that we understand the mechanics of how it functions? One simplistic aspect of how it functions is – there are no subtractions and divisions in our mind, there is only addition and multiplication. If you try to do something with it, it will say, “One more.” If you try hard, it will multiply into many more. In this mind, you don’t try to identify what is positive, what is negative and try to remove it. First of all, one needs to understand, this mind of yours, this body of yours is supposed to serve you. The life that you are is important. Body and mind are vehicles that must serve us. If you sit in a vehicle, it must go (Laughs), where you want to go. If it goes to its own destination, what is the point of such a vehicle? It’s just a nuisance. Right now, most human beings are unfortunately, experiencing this fantastic possibility of human mind as a nuisance, as a troublesome thing. Well, this is the most beautiful thing you have. It’s just that you need to pay little attention as to how it functions. One simple thing is this – first and foremost process is… that’s why we put out this process called ‘Isha Kriya.’ This is to distance yourself from your physiological and psychological process. There is something called as, “You” which exists. This is not a composite of all your thoughts and emotions and physiological processes. Beyond that, there is you. If you close your eyes, even if you cannot see anything, you’re still there. It is through the window of your eyes that you are looking out, but if you close your eyes, it doesn’t mean that you don’t exist, you still exist. So, beyond your thought you still exist, beyond your emotion you still exist, so that you, the life that you are, this has to come into your experience. Why is it that you’re not allowing that to come into your experience, which is the most significant aspect of who you are? Who you are right now, the most significant aspect is – you and me are alive right now, this is it. ‘What I’m thinking, what you’re thinking’ is not the important thing. We are alive right now, that is the important thing. So, it is important that you focus on this fundamental sense of aliveness within you, and then you will see there is a natural distance between you and your thought process. 00:04:55 Once there is a distance between your psychological process and your physiological process, this is the end of suffering. Because there are only two kinds of suffering that human beings go through – physical suffering and mental suffering. Once you create a little space between you and your mind, between you and your body, this is the end of suffering. This is something every human being has to experience and know, otherwise thinking, “I will just remove negative thoughts and I will have positive thoughts,” all the best, it’s not going to work. One hundred percent it’s not going to work, because nobody can remove it, they can avoid it for some time. So, when negative thoughts come, you say, “Ram, Ram, Shiva, Shiva,” whatever you want, but this is just avoiding, it’s not gone. The moment you stop that, it will pop back with great force, otherwise it will come back in your dreams. So, it’s very important. First of all, you need to understand – your anger, your resentment, your fear, your anxieties, the negativity that you generate; generally resentment, anger, it is always directed towards somebody. But we need to understand this is poisons that we are drinking and expecting somebody else to die. Fortunately, life doesn’t work like that. If I drink poison, I die. If I drink poison, you don’t die. So, we need to understand this. When I say, “Poison” – today, you can have yourself chemically analyzed. Right now, ‘what is your blood work?’ What it says, five minutes of intense anger, check your blood work and see, there will be lots of negative elements in it. Literally, you’re poisoning yourself. So, do you want to poison yourself? Definitely not. Now the very question is coming from certain helplessness, ‘What shall I do?’ Don’t do anything. Just sit back and just concern yourself with something which is the life process, maybe your heartbeat, maybe your breath, maybe just the sensation of being alive. Depending upon how sensitive or how perceptive you are, accordingly, find something, it could be a sensation in the body, it could be breath, it could be heartbeat, it could be anything, something which indicates life to you. Just pay attention to that for some time. Slowly, you will see there is a distinction between what is you and what you have gathered, which includes both your physiological and psychological possibility or mess, whatever you’ve made out of it.
CEUs are available at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU everybody and welcome to this video on 35 trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy techniques i’m your host dr donnelly snipes 00:00:10 as the title implies in this video we’re going to review 35 cognitive behavioral therapy tools that can be used to help people feel safer and more empowered now if you’re looking for a specific tool there are time stamps down in the video notes just fyi because 35 is a lot of tools 00:00:28 so that can help you jump around a little bit more if you need to in terms of the principles of trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy the goal is to use people’s strengths build on what they’re already doing 00:00:45 help people recognize that they are the experts on their own lives and tools and strategies they’ve developed in order to cope with stress cope with life until now may not be the most effective may not necessarily be the most helpful like in the case of addictions but they 00:01:05 were developed to help that person survive help them see the survivor in themselves we want to help them identify secondary effects of trauma like depression anxiety poor communication skills abandonment anxiety you know there’s a whole host of things 00:01:24 help them see how that’s maybe related to trauma and promote self-care help them develop tools so they can start moving toward the rich and meaningful life that they envision the first and most basic tool is a behavioral one and that is to create safety we need to 00:01:46 help people feel like they are safe so their hpa access or their threat response system can take a break we don’t want to have them feeling constantly hyper vigilant constantly being on guard and have an exaggerated startle response so if we can help them feel safer and at home 00:02:09 in the car anywhere else they spend a fair amount of time it’s going to reduce the intensity and maybe even the frequency that that stress response system is activated it’s going to help their body start to recalibrate and that is wonderful when they start feeling empowered when they start 00:02:27 looking at environments at places and saying you know what there are things that i can do to help myself feel safe that is huge now there’s a lot of types of safety though and we need to help them create a sense of physical safety from self and others now physical safety 00:02:47 from others is pretty obvious we want them to not be afraid that they’re going to be assaulted or hurt in some way physically by another person but safety from self is also important we want them to feel like they have tools to deal with overwhelming emotions so they don’t engage in 00:03:10 self-injurious behavior or addictive behaviors or other behaviors that could potentially be destructive affective or emotional and cognitive safety from self and others is another type of safety we need to help them develop recognizing that that inner critic in their head can feel 00:03:32 very threatening can feel very intimidating a lot of times and can intensify trauma helping them figure out how to deal with that inner critic is another aspect of creating safety as well as helping them develop safety from others emotionally and cognitively being able to 00:03:55 set those boundaries and say this is how i feel these are my thoughts you don’t have to agree but you can’t i’m not going to let you take them from me i’m not going to let you invalidate my thoughts or feelings and then environmental safety from self and others 00:04:14 or from others and environmental safety is different than physical safety physical safety has to do with my body and not letting people injure myself environmental safety means creating an environment in which people don’t have to fear for the things that they cherish 00:04:34 their belongings they don’t have to worry that somebody’s going to encroach on their environment that somebody’s going to take their environment from them maybe kick them out on the street for example so we need to help them look at all aspects of safety and do as much as they can 00:04:53 to reduce their feeling of threat and increase their feeling of safety and empowerment i believe it’s also important that people create a rescue pack to have with them this safety rescue pack can help people feel grounded safer more empowered in a variety of situations because 00:05:14 you can’t possibly plan for every situation and how you’re going to feel safer in you know every single situation so a rescue pack can be helpful in that rescue pack i encourage them to create a thought list that has distress tolerant mantras such as i can get through this 00:05:35 this will this too shall pass i have friends that can help me whatever distress tolerance thoughts that they find helpful usually somewhere between three and ten thoughts that they can have that they can just read over when they’re feeling distressed can be very very helpful 00:05:56 activities is something else they can do to trigger that vagus nerve trigger that relaxation response or sometimes just help them stay grounded or turn their attention completely from whatever is making them feel nervous breathing slow diaphragmatic breathing will help trigger 00:06:16 the vagus nerve bubble stuff blowing bubbles blowing up balloons or blowing bubble gum also has the same effect because it slows breathing down and can help trigger the relaxation response keeping a phone with them which most people have now so that’s not too outlandish is also important 00:06:38 so they have the ability to reach out to a friend to reach out to someone who can listen who can provide support who can help them feel safer in the event that they don’t have anybody then making sure they have the number of the local crisis line so they have somebody that they can reach out to 00:07:03 and narration is another activity that can be really helpful when people are feeling unsafe if they narrate what they’re doing it can help them stay grounded avoid dissociating and be more aware of what’s going on and how they are safe in the moment and sensations 00:07:25 essential oils or wax tarts are wonderful because sometimes just smelling something that promotes a sensation of relaxation or brings back a positive memory can help trigger that relaxation response and that can be really helpful likewise having something that they can smell that can displace a 00:07:50 trauma trigger a smell that triggers their trauma can also be helpful so if there’s a particular cologne that triggers memories of their trauma when they’re in the store if somebody walks by they have that cologne on then the person can reach into their rescue pack 00:08:10 and get one of those essential oils or wax tarts or whatever out and smell that so it displaces that it turns their attention to something else if they want to for people who have a lot of especially olfactory sensory triggers they may consider using something like fix vaporub 00:08:33 or some other type of rub that lotion or something that is scented and rubbing it right below their nose so they are smelling that pleasant scent the whole time and they’re not waiting until they might be triggered keeping an anchoring object with them something they can hold 00:08:53 something they can feel whether it’s a you know those little tiny um stuffed animals i don’t know what to call them that kids used to attach to their backpacks when i was in school those can be helpful because you can stick those in a purse or something 00:09:09 a worry stone or prayer beads or something else that the person can hold they can feel that helps them feel anchored can be very very helpful sometimes jolting yourself if you will out of a particular memory is can be really helpful you can splash cold water on your face 00:09:34 now i wear makeup so i am not inclined to go into the bathroom when i’m feeling stressed and throw cold water on my face because that’s going to make my mascara run that’s not a good thing ice packs can be helpful and this was one that you probably aren’t going to use a whole lot because they’re 00:09:52 not reusable but the instant ice packs can be used if you can’t access cold water to put on your wrists on your neck or splash on your face to help jolt you out of a particular distress spiral some people have particular music that they like to listen to or playlists that they listen to 00:10:14 that help them feel empowered that help them feel safer that help them calm down whatever feeling they’re looking for and on the other end of the spectrum sometimes noise-canceling headphones can be really helpful if for example one of their triggers is the sound of ambulance 00:10:33 sirens you can’t make ambulances not run therefore if they are feeling particularly stressed having noise cancelling headphones can be helpful to block out the sound of that particular trigger i know the other morning something was going on in our town and it was early morning so sound 00:10:58 was traveling but no joke for 30 minutes it was just siren after siren after siren and for somebody who’s triggered by sirens that would have been pretty pretty intense for them the next cognitive behavioral technique is distress tolerance and if you’re familiar 00:11:20 with dialectical behavior therapy you’re probably familiar with distress tolerance i have distilled the stress tolerance activities down from accepts and improves which is what linehan uses and they’re wonderful but i’ve simplified it because a lot of people have 00:11:36 difficulty remembering all of those tags thoughts distress tolerant thoughts we’ve already talked about those and having people develop a list of distress tolerant thoughts that can help them feel safer and more empowered activities to reset the hpa axis and improve vagal tone that is 00:12:00 to trigger the rest and digest to trigger the relaxation response that can be that diaphragmatic breathing that you do just breathing or blowing bubbles or blowing up balloons it can be through a vagus nerve massage where you’re massaging one finger behind the ear 00:12:20 one finger right on the tragus the little flippy flop thing on the ear and just gently massaging yawning is another thing and now that i rubbed my tragus i’m getting ready to yawn yawning is another activity that stimulates deep breathing but it also triggers the 00:12:39 relaxation response guided imagery is another tool in the distress tolerance toolbox if you will and you notice on the recovery pack that we just talked about on the rescue pack i had thoughts activities and sensations but i didn’t have guided imagery because when people are 00:13:04 feeling threatened when they’re needing that rescue pack they’re not wanting to check out they’re not wanting to use guided imagery they’re not going to feel safe enough to transport themselves somewhere else a lot of times however when they are in a safe place 00:13:21 if they’re having flashbacks if they’re having intrusive feelings sometimes it’s not even a memory it’s this feeling that comes from out of nowhere guided imagery can be helpful and that guided imagery can take the form of a mental vacation going to their favorite vacation spot 00:13:41 and identifying five things that they see when they get to that spot four things they hear three things they smell two things they can feel that can really help people turn their attention to something that promotes dopamine and relaxation chemicals 00:14:04 being released which can help down regulate that stress response which is what we’re doing with the stress tolerance we’re not trying to avoid it we’re trying to down regulate the stress response so the person can get in their wise mind another image people can use is one i just call it safety 00:14:25 whatever that looks like to them for some people they envision a force field around themselves for other people they have an angel on their shoulder for other people they have their god carrying them like you hear in the poem footprints in the sand whatever they envision 00:14:44 that helps them feel safer and the moment can be incredibly empowering and if they’re hurt in some way distress tolerance can be helpful if they’re feeling pain especially physical pain they can envision healing whether it’s you know nanobots or their immune cells 00:15:07 knitting together or healing the injured part they’ve actually done studies on people with hiv and aids and found that guided imagery that focuses on the immune system actually does increase the the number of t helper cells which i thought was kind of cool and sensory 00:15:30 we talked about that briefly here and we’re going to talk about it some more because distress tolerance is sort of woven throughout cognitive behavioral therapy but sensory tools can help people trigger that relaxation response so that can be smells that help them feel relaxed 00:15:50 it doesn’t have to be essential oils it can be anything that triggers a positive memory or a positive feeling like coffee for me if i smell good coffee that’s just absolutely amazing and it triggers that little bit of an endorphin rush and that relaxation response 00:16:10 sites whether it’s pictures of their kids or of their dog or of a beautiful landscape what is it that they can look at that may help them feel calmer or more more safer in the moment sights smells sounds what can they listen to that might help turn their attention away from their distress 00:16:34 for a moment we’re not ignoring it we are turning our attention away from it we’re taking a break until the stress response can be dampened some so the person can address it through their wise mind breath work i already mentioned this a little bit but breath work is so incredibly important 00:16:57 in therapy and cognitive behavior behavioral therapy in just everything well we need breathing we need oxygen to live but slow deep breathing especially diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing actually can help trigger the vagus nerve 00:17:16 they call it respiratory vagus nerve stimulation or rvns so square breathing we’ve talked about in multiple other videos is when you breathe in for four you hold for four you exhale for four and you hold for four and then you repeat that a couple of times when you slow your breathing 00:17:39 it automatically triggers your heart rate to slow down when your breathing and your heart rate slow down your stress response system says oh guess i don’t need to be freaking out right now so you’re manually overriding by slowing your breathing you’re manually overriding your stress response 00:17:59 now obviously if there is an impending threat right before you no matter how slowly you breathe you’re going to be getting other feedback that is going to keep you from becoming completely relaxed but even in the face of stress 00:18:18 slowing your breathing can help mitigate that stress response so you can maintain your quote wits about you um a little bit more effectively so square breathing is ultimately the foundation of what we’re talking about but there’s a lot of ways to 00:18:37 slow your breathing down some people feel like the square breathing or taking a few deep breaths is corny or they don’t feel comfortable doing it whatever okay fine as i mentioned yawning is a wonderful way to slow your breathing and you can force yourself to yawn you can also 00:18:57 massage your vagus nerve and that may encourage a yawn you can do different vagus nerve stimulation exercises that can trigger yawning laughter when we laugh especially again belly a good old belly laugh you’re going to take a deep breath in and then you go fall until you 00:19:20 have exhaled so you’re doing a slower exhale you just don’t really pay attention to it i encourage people to create a playlist on youtube or i don’t know if you can do playlists on tick tock or not but create a playlist that stimulates that guffaw that stimulates that good belly laughter that they 00:19:42 can turn to when they need to um trigger their relaxation response i mentioned already bubble gum when you blow a bubble you’re going to blow slowly so it doesn’t pop in your face bubble stuff and you can get the little tiny uh bubble stuff containers that they use for parties 00:20:05 you can get that at target or walmart or online i’m sure and you can carry that with you and so you can just pull it out and blow bubbles whenever now being 50 years old people look at me like i’m a little odd if i pull bubbles out in the middle of the parking lot and start blowing them 00:20:23 but you know if you don’t care then no big deal balloons are another thing and you can do this in your car or so if you’re having a bad moment maybe you can go to your car you’ve got a balloon there you can blow it up again to blow up a balloon you’re going to inhale big 00:20:43 and there then you’re going to blow blow blow so you’re slowing your breathing and those are things you can keep with yourself party noise makers and i don’t know what else to call them they’re the little noise makers that you blow on and 00:21:00 they make that horrible screeching sound or whatever however you characterize it kids especially love those because they’re loud and annoying but that can be one other option or dragon breathers and that’s what i have a picture of here you can use a toilet paper 00:21:19 roll or you can use one of those plastic cups a red solo cup or something and then you cut strips of tissue paper and glue it to one end and you cut out the other end so it’s a tube if you’re using a cup and then when the child is distressed they can take a big 00:21:38 breath and then they can blow and let all that anger out through the dragon breather and last but not least fitness trackers fitness trackers monitor your heart rate so instead of thinking about breathing if you’re thinking about lowering your heart rate 00:21:57 well you’ve got to slow your breathing in order to lower lower your heart rate so some people will use their fitness tracker and they will just sit back for a minute and then they will intentionally slow their breathing so they can reduce their heart rate when your 00:22:15 relaxation response is triggered your heart rate is going to go down so that is a clear indication that you have manually overridden that hpa axis another one of my favorite techniques is defining your rich and meaningful life for people to figure 00:22:38 out you know where am i going how should i use my energy what’s important for me to focus on ultimately it’s important to know where they’re going or know where they want to go so what does that rich and meaningful look life look like for them and this is just an example of a vision board 00:22:56 that i created you only have so much time and energy how are you going to use yours what people are important in your rich and meaningful life how are you going to use your energy to nurture those relationships what things like health are important in your rich and meaningful life and how 00:23:19 how much energy are you going to use to nurture that career is another one i’ve got on mine how much energy am i going to use to nurture that and what does that look like in my rich and meaningful life and then again this is mine so all my critters and my farm are on here too 00:23:39 but this gives people something to look at and they can start every day looking at this and saying all right these are the things that are important and this is how i’m going to allocate this is how i’m going to spend my energy today or this week 00:23:55 so it helps get them focused and then if they have to make a decision if something comes up during the day they have the ability to reflect look at this again and they can just take a picture and keep it on their mobile device they can look at that picture again and ask themself 00:24:13 all right is devoting energy to whatever this is that’s come up helping me move toward my rich and meaningful life or is it stealing energy from the things that are important in my rich and meaningful life 00:24:29 so i really love this vision board as a tool not only to have on the wall but also to have on the mobile device to help people regroup and refocus throughout the day once they’ve defined their rich and meaningful life 00:24:48 then we move on to what haze in acceptance and commitment therapy calls purposeful action mindfully acknowledging the present this is where i am right now this is what’s going on it’s not good it’s not bad it just is and then how should i use my energy right now given my context 00:25:09 what is the most effective way to use my energy to deal with the current situation that will help me move toward the things that are important in my rich and meaningful life do i need to address it is it something that is in my way is it something that i need to do something about 00:25:27 okay if so then let’s make a plan is it something that really doesn’t matter i’m just getting all tied up about it but in the big scheme of things it doesn’t keep me it’s not blocking me from moving toward my rich and meaningful life i’ve just got gotten distracted by it 00:25:46 or should i change my reaction to the situation moving from anger for example to compassion maybe somebody does something in my life that triggers my anger is holding on to that anger is continuing to be angry at them helping me move towards my rich and meaningful life 00:26:06 or is it stealing energy that i could be using spending on nurturing other relationships or even having compassion for them purposeful action is another tool of empowerment because it helps people recognize that they have options and that is so important 00:26:30 now symptom locks bear with me with the symptom logs because i’m going to show you a few different ways to do it however you know i got some of my foundation knowledge i got my minor in behavior modification 00:26:45 so that gave me just enough knowledge to be dangerous sometimes but symptom logs were one of the big takeaways that i got from that and symptom logs are important because you know for example when you’re on a diet or if you’ve got small children or a puppy at home 00:27:05 when you are seeing that thing every day when you’re interacting with that thing every day whether it’s yourself your kid your puppy you may not notice incremental changes and then all of a sudden one day you’re like whoa you’ve grown up or whoa you’ve mastered the piano or something 00:27:26 um but so the same thing is true with mental health symptoms when people are dealing with it day in and day out they may not notice the incremental changes so symptom logs can be really really helpful not only for documenting those baby steps 00:27:45 toward their rich and meaningful life but also to help people see how far they’ve come every couple of weeks you can look at it and say okay let’s look at the how far you’ve come and it gives you the ability to look for trends you can look for triggers for particular symptoms 00:28:05 you can look for vulnerabilities what things or situations make a person more vulnerable to reacting to situations with anger you know sometimes it something may happen and it may not bother them at all they get cut off in traffic for example other times they get cut off in traffic 00:28:23 and they just fly into a rage what’s different why were they more vulnerable the second time so symptom logs can provide us a lot of information because it gives us a better peek into what happened in dialectical behavior therapy linehan talks about backward chaining 00:28:45 ideally the person completes the symptom log when it happens but you can do it at the end of the day symptom logs need to at the very least include the date it happens the time is it eight in the morning because some people are more irritable or in a better mood first thing in the morning 00:29:04 versus late at night and vice versa so what date does it occur what time does it occur what triggered the symptom if known or if there were distressful thoughts what was the theme what was the intensity of the experience if they’re having a flashback or if they’re having 00:29:25 an anxiety attack was it a one i noticed it but wasn’t a big deal was it a two i noticed it it was uncomfortable but i managed to get through it was it a three it was really difficult to keep moving forward while i was having this symptom or was it a four and in a 00:29:51 four the symptom is just all-encompassing and they can’t continue doing what they were it kind of shuts them down for a minute how long did it last was it five minutes or five hours how did it impact their energy mood productivity relationships said another 00:30:12 another way how did it impact those things that are important in their rich and meaningful life what vulnerabilities and this goes to that backward chaining what vulnerabilities were present if they had an anxiety reaction were they over caffeinated or dehydrated or was their blood 00:30:31 sugar low or were they in a particular environment that they tend to find stressful anyway what did they do to cope was it effective and what do they want to try to do the next time maybe they want to do the same thing the next time because it was effective 00:30:48 great if it wasn’t effective they may choose to try to do something else if the symptom seems ever-present like anxiety some people feel anxious quote all the time okay have them complete the log every hour that they’re awake now i know that seems 00:31:08 like a lot and if they’re working full time that might not be practical if they’re not working it’s definitely doable if they’re in residential treatment it’s definitely doable so you can adjust how often they do their check-ins but definitely every couple of hours 00:31:30 once they get this information once they’ve got the data then it’s going to be important to review the logs for themes in triggers and vulnerabilities i encourage people to make a pictograph of the frequency intensity and duration of their symptom so they can get an idea of 00:31:50 how often is this happening and kind of how bad is it in this one you can see from 8 am to 9 am the person was having an anxiety attack it lasted for a whole hour which is why it’s as wide as it is and the entire time they were having it it was at a level of a 00:32:08 three so it felt pretty damn overpowering they still kept moving but it was really overpowering and then at nine o’clock or 9 15 that went away and then at 10 30 they had another little anxiety attack but that only was a one and it only lasted for about 30 minutes 00:32:34 and then at 12 30 12 45 whatever they had another one that was a big one i mean it was all-encompassing full-out panic attack and that lasted for almost 30 minutes so then when somebody brings this in i would talk with them and i would say 00:32:51 you know what were the triggers and maybe at 8 a.m the person’s anxiety ramped up because they knew they had to go to work and work is just really really a huge source of stress right now or they knew they had to go to work and they were going to have to ride the subway and the subway 00:33:10 is one of their triggers from their trauma so their anxiety went up really really high but then they got to work at nine o’clock everything was okay they de-escalated sweet and then at 10 30 they had to go to a meeting with their boss and that was a little stressful 00:33:30 they got along with their boss fine so it’s not a big deal but it was a little bit stressful having to do that and then at 12 30 that was after lunch was over and they were getting ready to go back to work and they got cut off in traffic and it triggered an anxiety attack that lasted 00:33:54 20 or 30 minutes okay so by looking at this we can see how long they’re lasting and then we can more granularly look back and go okay what’s triggering and see if there are themes that are triggering anxiety at particular times of day or in particular places because that can help the 00:34:14 person gain more awareness and be better able to prepare or adjust in order to reduce their stress now you have a lot of these charts laying around that’s great you may be able to look at them but it’s hard to really get see incremental progress when you’re still looking at four 00:34:39 or five episodes a day and they’re all still pretty high it’s hard to know are we making progress are we reducing the frequency intensity or duration and you know sometimes it may be obvious but sometimes it may not be i use a mathematical formula so 00:34:59 here the first block is 1.25 hours so for an hour and 25 minutes she was feeling you know huge amounts of anxiety the intensity was at a level of a three so you can see 1.25 hours level of a three and then the next one was at 10 30 that lasted half an hour it was an intensity of a one and 00:35:27 then we had this other one over here that was a half an hour that was in an intensity of a four in order to take into account the frequency intensity and duration because we’re looking for an overall improvement it doesn’t matter whether it’s frequency intensity or duration 00:35:46 i multiply the number of hours by the intensity and add it all up then their average anxiety is the number of total hours they were feeling anxious divided by the total intensity so the mathematical formula here was a 0.36 so if we had to 00:36:07 average out her anxiety over the entire day um what we would be looking at is a .36 remember one is they’re they’re feeling it and ideally we don’t want people feeling anxious all day every day so i’d like to see that a lot closer to a 0.0 than a 0.3 but next week we would go through and 00:36:36 add up the data and do this again now for some people this could be too data-driven and i get that so you can skip the mathematical formula if it’s not for you but i think the charts are at the very least very helpful because people can really get a quick vision of do we see things going down 00:37:02 now an alternative log if somebody feels like they are anxious all the time they’ve got generalized anxiety then there’s not going to be any particular time that they have a symptom or they have an episode it’s just kind of all the time so remember i said assessing it 00:37:21 on an hourly basis and this is a chart on an hourly basis if you do it every two hours then it would adjust accordingly so each hour the person asks themselves how am i feeling on a scale of one to four and we have three hours that it was a three 00:37:40 we have one hour that it was a three and a half and then you can see that towards the evening towards the end of the day it actually went down to a one we want to ask the person you know what was different at 3 pm then at 8 am what 00:37:58 was triggering your anxiety throughout the day and why did it go down at 3 pm but also why was it still present at all at 3 pm what else is contributing or maintaining your anxiety and maybe it’s just ruminating or anticipating having to go to work the next day i don’t know 00:38:20 you can do the same mathematical formula here and for this person based on that chart their average anxiety over the course of the day was a 1.88 so they’re still feeling some pretty intense anxiety and we would look for that number to gradually decrease over the course of treatment 00:38:47 the next technique we’re going to talk about is systematic desensitization and ownership and these are similar or similarly related techniques they’re not exactly the same but i lumped them together systematic desensitization and ownership helps the person alter their reaction to triggers 00:39:04 or stimuli in the environment think about it like an allergy shot for cognitive allergens it creates an environment of safety and empowerment when they start realizing that things do not have to control them then they can start feeling more empowered 00:39:25 they mastered the ability to use breathing relaxation and distress tolerance skills to down regulate their stress response when they feel triggered just because i smell this smell just because i see this thing it may trigger a trauma feeling but i d it doesn’t have to consume 00:39:46 me i can address it i can help myself feel safe and i can get control of that situation so the example i use for systematic desensitization is snakes because a lot of people have a fear of snakes but it can be anything the first step is to learn about the trigger learn 00:40:09 about whatever it is whether it’s snakes or flying or in the case of trauma triggers like the smell of a particular cologne you may not have to learn a lot about that but you recognize that oh okay the smell of this cologne triggers a trauma memory all right now what do i do about it 00:40:32 well we’re going to take away the power of that trigger we’re going to take away the power of that stimulus so we have the person think about the stimulus and so think about the snake or think about what that’s smelling that cologne and their anxiety is going to go up their stress 00:40:50 response is going to go up and then they’re going to use distress tolerance skills to trigger the relaxation response to dampen that stress response so they can get into their wise mind once they’re in their wise mind then they can effectively address the facts of the situation 00:41:10 in this situation at this time am i safe i smelled that smell triggered my stress response all right i’m going to push down my stress reaction i’m going to dampen my stress reaction get into my wise mind in this situation at this time does that smell 00:41:31 represent a threat to me or is it just somebody that walked past me in the store the important thing is helping people get into their wise minds so they can effectively evaluate the facts in the current context once they can think about a snake and 00:41:52 it doesn’t trigger that stress response they’ve been able to decouple that stress so just thinking about it doesn’t trigger that response anymore then think about being in a room with a caged snake so it’s not just some snake somewhere it’s a snake in the same room with you it’s in a cage 00:42:12 but it’s in the room and they go through the same process practicing imagining that and down regulating their stress response until thinking about being in a room with a caged snake doesn’t trigger that response think about being in a room with someone else holding 00:42:33 a snake so now the snake’s not even in a cage but somebody else is holding on to it thinking about that we’re not nowhere near being in the same room with a snake yet we’re just helping the person envision imagine these situations and learn how to 00:42:52 down regulate the stress response to their cognitions to their beliefs think about petting a snake someone else is holding and then think about holding a snake once a person can move through all of these things and it doesn’t trigger 00:43:11 their anxiety response it doesn’t trigger their stress response anymore then you can move toward you know maybe going to a pet store where you’re in an environment with a caged snake and again there would be more steps to desensitizing to that particular stressor 00:43:30 but it can be really helpful not again not only for snakes or spiders or planes or phobias but also for other triggers so people can think about smelling that smell and then they can get to the point where they can actually smell the smell and it doesn’t trigger that stress response for them 00:43:56 in terms of ownership or immersion when you’re regularly exposed to something and able to manage your response it loses much of its power now this isn’t something that i recommend i don’t recommend flooding for people to do 00:44:12 on their own but it is a technique that people can use especially with what i call annoyance triggers it’s not a trigger that triggers this cascade this flood of stress chemicals but it’s enough to trigger a stress response it triggers their resentment their irritability 00:44:33 if it is a smell or a saying sometimes people have have success making it their own making it theirs to control so they start wearing that particular perfume or they start using that particular scent to as a fragrance in their house 00:44:54 i had a client one time who had a significant other that had a particular saying and every time he heard that saying after they broke up it just brought back a flood of memories and just triggered his anger he’s like oh when people say that it makes me want to climb the wall 00:45:14 so i encouraged him for the next week to use it himself you start saying that whenever you can you start saying that make it your own so it’s no longer associated with her it’s something that you do and then if you don’t want to say it anymore after that that’s fine 00:45:32 associated with positive things like smells activities or holidays if something triggers a stress response try to pair it with something else positive as much as possible and regularly expose yourself to it while regulating your stress response and this is one i use for bridges 00:45:57 because i can’t get away from bridges where i live but i don’t like bridges however i’ve gotten to the point where i can drive over them and they don’t really bother me that much anymore systematic desensitization should be undertaken with 00:46:15 care to prevent moving forward too quickly and causing additional anxiety or trump re-traumatizing yourself it always starts with ensuring you feel safe and empowered and every scenario needs to end with the person feeling safe and empowered so they feel safe and empowered 00:46:38 they imagine the stressful situation and then they de-escalate before beginning any type of exposure even imaginary exposure it is essential to have mastered the skills of distress tolerance and emotion regulation 00:46:57 mindfulness is another wonderful cognitive behavioral tool mindfulness means turning off autopilot and being non-judgmentally aware of your thoughts feelings needs and behaviors in the present moment it helps connect thoughts 00:47:14 feelings and behaviors and promotes prevention and early intervention of distress think about how operating on autopilot may contribute to sickness anger outbursts or relapses of depression so there are a lot of different kinds of mindfulness and the first one we’re going 00:47:37 to talk about is personal mindfulness start with being as being mindful as soon as you wake up in the morning at each meal and before going to bed and for a lot of people that i work with i encourage them to set push notifications to remind them to check in and be mindful i know 00:47:55 you need reminders to be mindful but each time they check in with themselves throughout the day they ask themselves how do i feel physically how do i feel emotionally and why what do i need right now to continue feeling great if they’re feeling awesome great keep it going 00:48:16 or improve the next moment if they’re feeling tired hungry run down anxious checking in with themselves and figuring out what is it that i need to do to improve the next moment grounding can be thought of as another kind of mindfulness and it’s a technique to help 00:48:37 people feel connected to the present moment and not swept up by emotions or thoughts two of the most common grounding activities are the 54321 and the describe an object in 54321 when the person starts feeling stressed they identify five things they see four things 00:48:58 they hear three things they smell two things they feel and if possible one thing they taste describing an object can mean holding an object it can be your phone it can be your purse it can be your grounding object and just describing it to yourself is it cold is it hot is it soft is 00:49:20 it bumpy whatever sensations you get from it but that encourages the brain to stay anchored in the present moment which can help with dissociation it can help with anxiety and it can help with triggering that relaxation response as people turn their attention away from the 00:49:44 anxiety provoking stimulus to what is helping them stay relaxed in the moment i find the describing object is really helpful when i go in to get shots because to this day i am terrified of needles but that helps me a lot i’ll be holding 00:50:02 a grounding object and thinking about what it feels like and all those things so when i get the shot i’m not thinking about that i’m not anticipating it hurting i’m not tensing up general mindful awareness uh encourages people to be aware of the moment not just 00:50:26 themselves but the moment in general become more mindful in your actions as you’re doing them what do you see what do you hear what do you smell when you’re out on a walk have that open awareness where you’re just noticing anything that’s there it’s not necessarily good or bad you’re just 00:50:47 noticing it you’ll be surprised at all the things that you typically probably overlook and mindful reflection is an activity in which people reflect on their activities at the end of the day by asking themselves 00:51:04 what did i do and for each of each thing that they did throughout the day was doing this an effective use of my energy to move toward the things that are important in my rich and meaningful life or was doing this whatever it was what a happy healthy successful person would do 00:51:26 some people like the rich and meaningful life you know does it help me move toward my goals other people want to act as if fake it till you make it as they say so they ask themselves was i acting like a person who was happy healthy and successful would have acted examples 00:51:48 you know when you’re reflecting on the day if you got sucked into video games for three or four hours it’s easy to do asking yourself was this an effective use of my time to move me toward my rich and meaningful life if you were playing video games with your best friend 00:52:06 and it was good bonding time well then maybe it was if not maybe it wasn’t you know it’s up to each individual to decide was this important is this something that you really like doing is it a hobby does it promote relaxation well then maybe it was an effective use of energy 00:52:25 you can do the same thing for dwelling on resentments or eating unhealthfully was it effective at helping you move towards your goals was it something that a happy healthy successful person would typically do 00:52:43 an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure mindfulness is essential to health and well-being because it can help you become your own consistently empathetic responsive best friend it can help you become more aware of the situation and notice the good and the beauty in in life 00:53:02 in addition to the stressors and also become more aware of how how you’re using your energy and whether it is moving you forward or keeping you stuck authenticity is the next tool we’re going to talk about and i love authenticity it means being 00:53:22 true to yourself people often become inauthentic because they’re trying to get approval from others their self-esteem is low so they’re looking for somebody else to tell them they’re okay they may be inauthentic because they’re afraid of being rejected abandoned or in today’s society 00:53:42 cancelled or they may be inauthentic because they’re just operating on autopilot they’re not acting mindfully they have always just kind of done whatever happens and hadn’t haven’t really stopped to think about is this me is this me being authentic or is this me just being impulsive 00:54:04 i use the metaphor for chocolate chip cookies when i talk about relationships and when i talk about authenticity when you have chocolate chip cookies you’ve got sugar cookies and you’ve got chocolate chips 00:54:17 both of them are just fine on their own thank you very much one doesn’t pretend to be the other they are authentic in who they are now if you put them together in relationships when you have two authentic people that join together you can get something that is potentially infinitely 00:54:35 better than either one of those things all by themselves because they enhance each other they don’t complete each other they’re already complete by themselves they enhance one another when you’re practicing on authenticity it’s important to become mindful of your thoughts 00:54:56 feelings and needs and act in accordance with them instead of being a chameleon so mindfulness is a precursor to authenticity it’s also important to help people separate approval or disapproval of behaviors from themselves not everybody’s going to like what you do if you’re behaving authentically 00:55:18 not everybody may like your choices but does that mean they dislike you or they dislike your choice it’s important for people to ex explore and address their fears related to being authentic and a lot of people have fears about being authentic for very legit reasons these days unfortunately 00:55:41 and if it is an office because of that radical authenticity or being yourself a hundred percent of the time may not be safe for everybody in every situation so it’s important that they practice being assertive and authentic sharing themselves with safe other people first and then deciding 00:56:05 is it important for me to be authentic here is it important for me to be authentic on social media is it important for me to be a hundred percent authentic at work and only the individual can figure that out and if they can’t be a hundred percent authentic 00:56:24 is that an environment that’s healthy for them to be in and again only they can decide but that’s part of the empowerment of cognitive behavioral therapy helping people recognize that they are good enough they are deserving of love 00:56:40 they are in a position they are empowered to help keep themselves safe and that also means safe from harm from others and safe from others being mean to them if you will if they’re authentic from taking away their authentic selves 00:57:03 authenticity means moving from what moving from being aware of thoughts wants and needs to acting in a way that’s in accordance with them so if you know that you like italian over mexican food or that’s what you want an authentic person would be mindful they would recognize hey i want to go 00:57:25 for italian food and they would tell people that they would assert that if you’re being inauthentic then you may know that you have a craving for italian food but you know what no i don’t care where we go i don’t have any preference well that’s inauthentic yes you do have a preference 00:57:45 being authentic can be scary at first and is often advisable to not advisable to suddenly start practicing what i call radical authenticity which can make the person feel really vulnerable not suddenly deciding that okay starting today i am going to be a hundred percent authentic 00:58:05 all the time that is a radical shift not only for the individual but for everybody around them and it could upset the apple cart so to speak it may take people a minute to get used to someone suddenly becoming authentic so which can set them up 00:58:26 for not so great reactions from significant others but also when you’re authentic you’re putting your true self out there you’re making yourself vulnerable and making yourself vulnerable can be extremely scary especially for people with a history of abandonment rejection or trauma 00:58:46 so it is important to use this with care yes it’s great when people feel like they can be authentic but it’s something that a lot of times people need to build up to as people become more authentic have them notice how it impacts their mental and physical health 00:59:09 thought stopping is the next tool thought stopping helps us redirect our brain and we can engage in thought stopping by simply telling ourself no not now not thinking about it sometimes that helps sometimes people need to replace the thought with a mantra a prayer or 00:59:30 grounding activities to sort of drown out whatever that thought is to turn their attention if the thought keeps coming back okay then ask yourself what’s the benefit to ruminating on this thought why does it keep coming back why do i keep feeling like i need to think about this is there anything 00:59:54 that the person can do to address the thought and improve the issue at this moment so for example if you’re waiting on test results from the doctor that aren’t going to be in for another six days what’s the benefit to ruminating on that why does it keep coming back is there anything you 01:00:12 can addre do to address the thought in the moment and the answer is no you just gotta wait and be patient so sometimes people will write it down and put it into their thought box a lot of times it can be helpful for people who have um persistent thoughts ruminations whatever you want to call 01:00:32 call it they write these things down and then they schedule 30 minutes a day that’s their worry time so these thoughts pop up and instead of saying no i’m not going to think about it ever it’s no i’m not going to think about that right now i will think about it this afternoon during my 01:00:50 worry period encourage people to start small try to stop having the thought for five minutes and if they make it to five minutes then great thought may come back let’s try 10 minutes now see if you can make it 10 minutes without thinking 01:01:06 about it and it can be empowering to the person to recognize that they are getting better at learning how to stop some of those annoying thoughts or those annoying voices that want to chime in perspective taking is another tool look perspective taking means looking at the 01:01:30 bigger picture to understand the reactions of other people as sometimes as well as yourself you know stepping back and trying to get a different perspective there are four p’s in perspective taking predisposing what were the background factors that contributed to the behavior whether 01:01:49 it’s another person or yours if the client has a history of trauma that’s one of those predisposing factors that may contribute to them reacting with fear or anger in particular situations for example precipitating factors so you have somebody who’s been 01:02:13 exposed to trauma somebody who’s endured trauma and so they already have an hpa axis that’s you know turned on they already tend to be more hyper vigilant precipitating factors are vulnerabilities and contextual factors that precipitate their reaction 01:02:31 they have this history and then they’re in a situation in which they feel somewhat unsafe they’re in this situation where there’s lots of hustle and bustle maybe they’re at the airport and there’s just lots of people going around and bumping into one another and they start 01:02:46 feeling really stressed out because it is feels like an unsafe environment they feel vulnerable provocations what provoked or triggered that behavior and if you’re talking about trying to understand somebody else’s reaction then looking at your own behavior and saying in what way might 01:03:08 i have inadvertently provoked that behavior and i say inadvertently because a lot of times we may trigger somebody’s anger and we didn’t even mean to we didn’t maybe we didn’t think clearly before we said something or maybe we have no idea what we did to trigger that person’s behavior 01:03:27 but recognizing um that there may be something that we did okay doesn’t mean we meant to and plans if you reacted with anger or anxiety and you regret it recognizing where that came from and asking yourself well did i have good intentions did 01:03:50 i go into this situation saying yeah i’m just going to be kind of nasty about this or did i have good intentions but the predisposing precipitating and provoking factors led me in a different way same thing with when you’re dealing with somebody else 01:04:09 if you’re interacting with them and they react strongly to something that you say it’s important to ask yourself you know why are they perceiving it differently than i am what predisposing factors what historical or experiences might they have had that caused them to interpret this 01:04:27 situation differently in what way might have i have inadvertently provoked the behavior and did the person really ultimately have good intentions they may have not intended to get into an argument with you but it just it ended up there 01:04:49 self forgiveness is the next tool we’re going to talk about remember that forgiveness does not mean that you agree or condone the situation or what happened but you’re choosing to stop using your energy to beat yourself up the four r’s of self forgiveness responsibility 01:05:11 yeah you need to take responsibility for the aspects that you’re responsible for but that’s it only take responsibility for the aspects that you’re responsible for if something happened between you and someone else as they say it takes two to tango there are probably a lot of 01:05:29 other factors that were out of your control take responsibility for what you’re responsible for the second r is remorse well if you’re work working on forgiveness then you do feel remorseful you feel guilty but just feeling guilty keeps you beating yourself up guilt is self-anger so 01:05:51 feeling remorse is your body’s way of saying okay here’s some energy now you can use this energy to learn from this situation so you can stay safe in the future or you can fix the mistake you made which takes us to rectifying or making amends what do you need to do to 01:06:12 fix this situation make amends or just learn from it sometimes you can’t fix it and the final r is releasing past hurt and accepting imperfection forgiving yourself and saying all right you screwed up it doesn’t make you less lovable it just means you’re 01:06:32 human you’re fallible you’re imperfect and you forgive yourself you’re going to choose to not continue using energy beating yourself up for something that you have rectified and taken responsibility for 01:07:00 forgiving others is very similar forgiveness still means choosing to stop giving energy to that person or memory that is causing you distress forgiveness can involve recalling the betrayal recal recalling what happened that is causing 01:07:19 you to feel angry or resentful explore why you might be afraid to forgive them why are you wanting to hold on to this energy why are you afraid to learn and let go altruism visualize forgiving this person as a gift to yourself and your significant others i’m forgiving 01:07:42 this person over here so i’m not tying all my energy up in it anymore which is great because now i have all this energy freed up that i can give to myself and my significant others learn from it and adjust your expectations sometimes people ain’t gonna change therefore recalling the betrayal 01:08:05 what happened and what do you need to learn so you don’t get hurt in the future living in the and is another tool that can be helpful for forgiving you can have a rich and meaningful life 01:08:21 and not be able to trust this person anymore if that’s what has to happen it doesn’t mean you’re going to continue to be angry at them you you’ve just learned that they’re not trustworthy so living in the and means you can have a rich and meaningful life and forgive other people 01:08:42 sometimes it’s easier to forgive smaller things first it can help to empathize without minimizing you can empathize and try to understand why somebody did what they did maybe even have compassion or pity for them 01:08:58 but not minimize it you’re not saying oh i have pity for you i understand why it happened and you know i guess it wasn’t really that bad no i i can empathize with what you were going through and maybe why you reacted with such anger however 01:09:18 this is how it impacted me and i am not going to diminish the impact it had on me just because you were going through a bad thing so i’m going to empathize without minimizing safely share your feelings this isn’t always possible but sometimes it can be helpful to safely 01:09:38 share your feelings with that person or maybe even with your higher power or just your journal but sometimes you need to get them out sometimes there are things that quote need to be said that are going to keep bouncing around in your head until you can say them so say them in a safe way 01:09:58 and then practice thought stopping even after you’ve chosen to forgive somebody every once in a while that resentment or that anger is going to creep back up and you’re going to remember what happened and that’s when thought stopping comes in handy and you can say 01:10:13 nope handled that already not going to revisit it and then the abcdes of cbt a and if you remember back to basic cognitive behavioral therapy this is one of your basic tools a is the activating event what happened 01:10:38 c is the consequences of the activating event and we want to consider all of the consequences not just your emotional reaction but your physical reaction your cognitive reaction how did it change the way you think about people and the world your relationship reaction how did it change the way 01:10:59 you feel about your ability or the trustworthiness of people in the world so the activating event and the consequences but between the time that something happens and you get angry or that hpa axis that stress response gets triggered you have a litany of automatic beliefs that come from 01:11:19 schema come from past experiences your brain’s going okay let me tell you how to interpret this a lot of times these beliefs because they’re based on past experiences may not be a hundred percent accurate in the present context which is why we go down to d after you’ve identified 01:11:40 what those beliefs are then you dispute each one of them based on the facts in the current context is this belief still a hundred percent accurate based on the facts in the current context once you’ve identified what is actually true in the current context then you can evaluate 01:12:02 the effectiveness of your reactions for helping you use your energy and time to move toward your rich and meaningful life so okay maybe something happens it triggers rage in you you get really angry that somebody did something you go through your beliefs and you dispute them and 01:12:22 you determine yeah you know they betrayed me it was a big hurt okay so evaluate the effectiveness of your reaction is holding on to anger is dwelling and stewing on anger and holding on to this resentment is that an effective use of your time and energy to help you move 01:12:43 towards your rich and meaningful life or would something like forgiveness be a more helpful tool cognitive distortions is another basic cognitive behavioral therapy tool that we look at and there are five maybe six uh big ones that frequently come up when i work 01:13:08 with people and all or none thinking this person always does this or this person never does this i encourage people to pay attention to their cognitive distortions to their um extreme language and if they say always or never to reframe that and start saying sometimes or often 01:13:34 look for exceptions if you say that jane never calls when she’s going to be late look back are there exceptions are there times when jane did call personalization means taking what somebody else does personally it’s my fault 01:13:51 or they looked at me with this horrible look they must be angry at me what are three alternatives that have nothing to do with you magnification or catastrophing which means making a mountain out of a molehill or assuming that the worst case scenario is going to happen 01:14:10 look at the facts in the situation based on the facts how accurate is your belief minimization is the same way and sometimes people will minimize the impact of drinking for example and that can be faulty if they are having if they’re in recovery for alcoholism 01:14:33 they may also minimize their strength and their power and their ability to move towards their goals they may minimize their own effectiveness and so it’s important to look at the facts is it true that you are powerless in this situation 01:14:54 and then assuming can be broken down into mind reading and jumping to conclusions a lot of times when people grew up in dysfunctional environments they learn to try to anticipate other people’s needs in order to get approval and prevent punishment 01:15:10 and they carry that with them into adulthood unfortunately it’s not common to be able to effectively read other people’s minds open communication is a whole lot more effective so if you are mind reading if you’re assuming that you know what somebody is thinking 01:15:31 or wanting check it out what are the facts what do you actually know versus what are you assuming related is jumping to conclusions maybe your best friend doesn’t text you back or stands you up for lunch a lunch date that you made three weeks ago you jumped to the conclusion that um 01:15:54 something terrible happened and she’s as my mother would always say lying dead in a ditch somewhere um that’s jumping to conclusions so look at the facts based on what you know you don’t know why they didn’t show up for your lunch date 01:16:13 when i’m working with clients i have a cognitive distortions worksheet that i give them and i encourage them to go through it when they have stress when they feel anxious when they feel angry when they feel distressed they write down what the 01:16:30 activating event was what the trigger was and then b is the beliefs they write down those beliefs and then they evaluate each one of those beliefs for cognitive distortions alternate problem formulation is another cool one or i think it is and i use the mnemonic 01:16:52 peace corps for this and this kind of puts together a lot of what we’ve been talking about so the person identifies the problem they identify early experiences they’ve had that may impact how they perceive the situation so maybe they have their um anxious around authority figures that’s 01:17:14 the problem early experiences we look back at early experiences with authority figures well not so good so yeah it makes sense why this person might have anxiety around authority figures a stands for assumptions rules and attitudes what are your assumptions about people who 01:17:34 are in authority positions based on your early experiences so you’re seeing how this is all starting to connect our past helps us try to interpret the present but it’s not always a hundred percent accurate so we need to understand why am i assuming this to be true c is core 01:17:57 beliefs what are your core beliefs about people if you have core beliefs that people are only out for themselves and they’ll throw you under the bus any chance they get then you’re going to feel less trusting and probably be more apprehensive than if you think that people are altruistic 01:18:16 e stands for effectiveness of assumptions core beliefs and reactions based on all this stuff in the current context how effective are my assumptions and core beliefs at helping me function and then the core part is looking at that context in 01:18:35 with the facts that i have in this context at this time what are my options to handle the situation what resources do i have to help me handle the situation if i do the things that are within my control that i have options and resources for what’s 01:18:55 the probability that things are going to go well and where can i find support another technique that i really like is tragic optimism and this can be you um summarized in the mnemonic crab grass and i like crabgrass because it is an example of tragic optimism 01:19:21 i don’t know if it grows in the northern states but in the southern states we have this weed that we call crabgrass and it will take over your lawn it is just a bugger and a half to get rid of but it tends to be very resistant to heat and weather and it stays green for a really long time 01:19:41 so if your goal is to have a green lawn crab grass can be really freaking awesome if your goal is to have this perfect fescue or bermuda grass lawn then yeah crabgrass is not your friend but so tragic optimism means embracing the good with the bad recognizing the current situation and saying 01:20:06 all right it is what it is what do i want is there hope that it can get better and um so you start out by creating a vision what is your vision of your rich and meaningful life tragic optimism doesn’t mean ignoring the bad it means acknowledging the bad saying 01:20:24 okay this happened this sucks maybe in my rich and meaningful life i would be able to work on the farm until i was 80 years old but hey i had to have both knees replaced okay so my vision of being able to work on the farm until i’m 80 years old 01:20:45 may not be doable anymore so radically acceptance right radically accepting what’s going on all right i had to have my knees replaced it is what it is therefore uh how can i have a rich and meaningful life and have some knees that don’t work as well anymore 01:21:08 and that is the our part of crabgrass so i see what i want i recognize what is and then i try to figure out okay how can i mesh these two together how can i still have a rich and meaningful life and accept this adversity a stands for anticipate the positive a lot of times we can get stuck in 01:21:34 the negative anticipating the positive means trying to find hope trying to find compromise in what’s going on instead of anticipating the worst b stands for be present be aware be mindful of what’s going on how you feel in the moment and then address it if like the example i gave 01:21:57 your vision for your rich and meaningful life suddenly took a hard left turn okay well acknowledging that and radically accepting it living in the end that’s all well and good but you may also have some grief that you’ve got to deal with so being present helps you identify and say 01:22:18 i hear all that i see all that is logical but i also need to acknowledge how i’m feeling right now g stands for growth and learning this is an unfortunate experience how can i use it as a growth experience what can i learn from it in order to improve my life 01:22:40 r is realistic goals and expectations okay well maybe i can’t work independently on the farm until i’m 80 years old but what can i do i can still have chickens i may not be riding horses anymore but i can still have chickens i can still do some gardening so those are realistic goals 01:22:59 based on the new reality radical acceptance of the new reality a stands for affirm yourself one step at a time when something bad happens we want it to go away we want to feel better but we generally don’t go from misery to exhilaration 01:23:18 like that so affirming yourself recognizes um and acknowledges the positive steps you’re taking toward adjusting to this new situation s is find solutions to the problem any problems that come up because you’re having to make some adjustments and then the final s is in serenity accepting what can 01:23:47 and cannot be changed you know in the example i’m using you can’t get back your 20 year old knees so if you don’t have that you can’t get that back you have to accept that that cannot be changed and potentially again process it through grief for whatever you need to do 01:24:10 challenging questions face palm when we start to feel distressed when we start to feel overwhelmed it’s important to evaluate our beliefs what are the facts for and against your belief not your assumptions not emotional reasoning what are the facts for and against your belief 01:24:31 what additional factors need to be considered like the context like the other people that were there like whatever what else contributed to the situation and how it turned out what is the context of the situation and are you using extreme language are you using all or nothing words 01:24:57 p stands for probability or likelihood if you’re having this belief that’s catastrophic that’s stressful in nature what is the probability or likelihood that the worst case scenario is going to play out a stands for alternate explanations 01:25:16 what are some alternate explanations for why this might be happening or what might have happened because sometimes we assume we know what happened and why it happened and that’s not it i mean think about a car you can take it into a mechanic and he says oh it’s the compressor and he changes out the 01:25:32 compressor and the air conditioner still doesn’t work and he’s like oh well what are some alternate explanations learn from it and move forward and moving forward can be really difficult because whatever triggered that feeling triggered that stress response and it’s important to learn 01:25:56 how you’re safe learn what you have power over and recognize that you do have the power to move forward it may come back and visit you occasionally but you can stop those thoughts radical acceptance and i love the mnemonic well i created it so 01:26:18 uh face it um f stands for fact for and against your belief radical acceptance means accepting the moment as it is it is what it is and if that phrase bugs you you know you may want to look at why but a lot of times that phrase bugs people because they don’t like accepting things 01:26:42 they don’t like not having complete control over things but sometimes you don’t it is what it is okay so what are the facts for and against your belief what is going on right now a is acceptance that radical acceptance embracing the present and acknowledging 01:27:03 that it is what it is and you don’t have to like it but you may not be able to change it by recognizing this you eliminate should you eliminate saying well it shouldn’t be this way or it should be this way it’s not it just is which also helps you reduce the amount of energy 01:27:24 wasted being angry over something that you don’t like in the moment and you have no control over c stands for control once you’ve identified the facts and accepted them then you can identify which aspects of the situation you can control which ones you can’t 01:27:46 and the best way to use your energy to cope with the situation continue to worry stay angry miserable is that helpful what aspects can you control how can you change your situation or the way you feel about the situation and then e 01:28:05 stands for evaluate the effectiveness of your choices so you’re facing it successive approximations and scaffolding is another tool that i have used a lot and i really love successive approximations means striving to get a little bit better or closer to the goal 01:28:28 every single time so maybe if you’re learning how to shoot free throws you know the first time you shoot the ball and it just whiffs completely misses the backboard the rim everything all together all right well then you practice and the next time you get the ball up there and 01:28:47 it grazes the rim that’s better it’s closer the next time it hits the backboard but bounces off okay and then the fourth time you hit it up there and it actually sinks in the bucket now for most people it’s not going to be a 1 2 3 4 like that but you get the analogy that i’m 01:29:09 making successive approximations means looking for a little bit of improvement every single time scaffolding goes along with successive approximations and means letting somebody do something up until the point they need help the goal is to prompt 01:29:26 successive approximations so they get a little bit better and need a little less help each time think if you’ve ever tried to teach your kid to tie their shoes you know tying shoes can be difficult so the first you want to get them so they can slide the shoe on their foot that’s the 01:29:44 first step and then it’s crisscrossing the laces and pulling them tight and then making the bow and then the rabbit goes around the tree and then pulling the ear through you know how it goes when you’re trying to teach children to tie their shoes there’s a lot of steps in it 01:30:02 but you want to let them do as much as they can because that helps them feel empowered that helps them feel more capable and that helps them learn how to do it and then once they get to the point where they’re stuck then you can either talk them through it or take over 01:30:22 and then the next time hopefully they’ll get a little bit further but this can be applied to things like tying shoes washing clothes learning a computer program school work folding a fitted sheet one of the banes of my existence or even things like anger management 01:30:43 heartiness is represented by commitment control and challenge and this is a concept that was proposed way back in 1978 but it’s still true and useful today commitment means identifying all of the things in your rich and meaningful life to which you are committed that you are 01:31:05 that are important to you that you want to devote your time and energy to looking at that so you may have your house you may have your garden you may have your animals and your kids and your friends and your job and you know all these things out here well that’s great 01:31:22 at any one point in time it’s likely that every single one of them is probably not going perfectly but heartiness encourages us instead of focusing on the one sliver of the pie that’s going bad to acknowledge the part of the pie that’s going bad and recognize everything that’s going well 01:31:44 which helps buffer so we don’t feel hopeless overwhelmed dejected sometimes people will do this can chart this out using a pie chart where each part of their life that’s going good is shaded in green and each part that’s not going well is shaded in red 01:32:03 other times people have used green and red solo cups you know the little plastic cups and they’ve put marbles or rocks representing each thing that’s important to them in the cups accordingly and hopefully the green solo cup ends up with filled up more 01:32:23 with a lot more rocks than the red solo cup so people have a visual representation of hey you know yes this stuff over here is going crappy but look at all this stuff that’s going well c stands for control of those things the ones that are going crappy as well as the ones that 01:32:44 are going well what aspects can you control the things that are going well how can you continue to use your energy to keep those things going well the things that are going crappy how can you use your energy to help them improve if at all and challenge instead of seeing it as a barrier 01:33:08 that keeps you from moving toward your rich and meaningful life seeing things that are not going so well as a challenge recognizing the ways that you’ve endured difficult situations in the past and then like an athlete constantly strives to get stronger better or faster how can this 01:33:28 experience be seen as a challenge to help you strengthen the skills that you already have to get around or over or under this particular obstacle that’s in your path playing the tape through is another one that i really like too often we make decisions or 01:33:50 assumptions based on emotions we feel angry we feel anxious we want to fight or flee so we do things out of anger or anxiety instead of instead of our wise mind playing the tape through means considering all the factors and options both in the short 01:34:07 and the long term so it’s kind of like playing a game of chess with in life it’s important to beta test before acting or reacting for example quitting a job maybe you hate your job and you want to quit your job and 01:34:29 in the short term oh my gosh that would be such a relief that’s that’s true but play the tape through what are the long-term consequences of quitting your job right now or maybe you have difficulty being around people places or things that are triggering or you you 01:34:51 choose to be around people places or things that are triggering maybe you’re somebody who’s in recovery from alcoholism and you start minimizing and say and rationalizing and saying oh you know i haven’t had a drink in two years so i can go meet my friends at a bar and i’ll just have club soda 01:35:10 that’s rationalizing you want to play the tape through you think you can but in the long run how likely is that to happen what are the potential consequences of taking that risk decisional balance activities are it’s a chart that is proposed and used a lot 01:35:34 in motivational interviewing and when you practice decisional balance you encourage people to look at the benefits and the drawbacks not only to change but also to staying the same the benefits to change well helping them figure out why is it that they want to change that one 01:35:53 seems pretty obvious you know how is it going to help them feel better physically get more sleep be healthier have more energy feel happier improve their relationships improve their finances you know okay all those things so that one may seem pretty obvious but then we want to talk about what 01:36:10 are the drawbacks to change and sometimes people look at me like i’m crazy when i ask them that but the goal is to try to figure out what things might get in their way what might prevent them from changing what might make them decide you know what it’s not worth all this effort so what 01:36:31 are the drawbacks and we go again through what emotionally how are you going to feel what are what’s scary or anxiety provoking about change physically when we’re talking about addiction one of the drawbacks to change physically is the withdrawal symptoms okay well how 01:36:50 can we mitigate those so they’re not quite as intense so they don’t make you as miserable interpersonally what are the drawbacks to change sometimes when people change it means they lose some friends or change their social circle and that can be really intimidating 01:37:08 financially what are the drawbacks to change well we’re talking about addiction for example residential treatment can be really expensive in the short term but in the long term um maybe not and then legally if there are any legal consequences 01:37:28 and then you do the same thing for staying the same what are the benefits to staying the same what do you like about what you’re doing now and then what are the drawbacks to staying the same and by going through all four of these quadrants by breaking it down very granularly 01:37:46 you can help people identify their motivations for change and then areas that you need to address that might serve as obstacles to change dialectics radical acceptance and cognitive restructuring means embracing the positive 01:38:06 and negative aspects of a situation dog hair and sometimes i’ve mentioned in other videos that around my house it feels like i’m trying to brush my teeth and eat oreos at the same time because we have three dogs and four cats and two teenagers and so our house is always needing to 01:38:26 be dusted which drives me crazy i i don’t like dust and and dog hair and everything all around but i love my animals more and if i have a completely sterile house that would be beautiful but i wouldn’t have my animals and that would break my heart i can’t imagine living without 01:38:49 animals so yeah the dog hair not ideal but the love of my animals is much more important feeling vulnerable in a relationship well when you start to care about somebody you’re going to often feel more vulnerable and that can be anxiety provoking 01:39:10 but feeling vulnerable and that little bit of anxiety also means that you care about somebody so embracing the good with the bad and recognizing you can’t have one without having the other or feeling anxiety or distress when doing particular therapy activities 01:39:30 therapy recovery treatment whatever you want to call it often involves debriding at least old wounds opening up old wounds and doing it carefully obviously is important but i’ve never worked with somebody in the 20 some odd years that 01:39:50 i’ve been practicing that the entire time we’ve worked together it’s been a cakewalk if we did i wouldn’t be doing my job the whole goal is to process those issues and those traumas that bring up sadness or fear or even anger 01:40:06 and work through them so yeah it’s uncomfortable to feel some of those feelings sometimes but once you process them then you’re able to move forward so you can’t have one without the other and autobiography can be really helpful and you can do autobiographies a lot of different ways 01:40:28 from the adult self assuming you’re working with an adult they write their autobiography that’s the way we usually do it i’ve also had people write their autobiography from someone else’s perspective if have write your autobiography as if your 01:40:44 mother or your grandmother or your best friend were telling me all about you so it’s writing your biography so to speak or they can write their autobiography autobiography from their child self perspective and obviously this just goes up through a certain period of time but going back 01:41:05 to maybe when that trauma happened or before that trauma happened having them write their autobiography from the perspective of that five or six year old you know what were they seeing what were they feeling what were they experiencing and then seeing how that changes as the child grows 01:41:27 you can also engage in letter writing and i use the term letters but in this day and age you can write old-fashioned letters by hand you can type them you can do videos or you can even practice what we call a gestalt therapy empty chair technique any of these what you’re doing is 01:41:46 you’re getting words and thoughts out of your head and putting them out here you can write letters to your future self to your past self or to other people from your past maybe they were really important to you or maybe they were really traumatizing to you but you got something 01:42:04 to say to them you can write these letters to any of these people in the voice of your past self so maybe the six-year-old that was neglected needs to write a letter to their caregiver you can write it in the voice of your present self so as a 26 year old you can write a letter 01:42:28 uh in the voice of your present self telling your past person what happened or telling your past self what happened you know you’re in the present writing a letter to your past self or writing a letter to your child self or even your future self or you can write 01:42:50 it in the voice of your future self you can imagine yourself as being happy healthy and in that rich and meaningful life writing a letter to your present self about the things that you learned or the changes that you made so how are you different in your rich and meaningful life 01:43:08 there’s a lot of different permutations of this and i encourage you to get creative journaling kind of similar you can journal by just doing a daily reflection like writing a diary you can keep symptom logs some people aren’t into the whole prose thing 01:43:29 you can practice mindful journaling so sitting down in the moment and spending 10 15 minutes writing what you’re thinking seeing hearing feeling you can journal about a particular feeling happiness so you’re going to write about the 01:43:46 things that make you happy or the things that make you angry you can keep a gratitude journal or journal from the perspective of the inner child the manager or the firefighter and these are archetypes if you will from internal family systems theory the inner child is the part of 01:44:06 you that may have experienced trauma and is still scared and is still sort of huddling back in the corner so that child may come out and journal and talk about what it feels like for them right now the manager is the part of you that just tries to get things done and they tend to be less emotional 01:44:29 and more practical and putting one foot in front of the other but they can get frustrated by the inner child that is you know fussing and anxious and needy and the firefighter who is the emotion response who’s constantly trying to just make it stop hurting and you know throw water on it 01:44:51 or you can write it from the perspective of the firefighter that gets exhausted by getting called out all the time you can do journals in text or in video or audio format you can change if you’re writing it you can change your writing utensils you can use a 01:45:09 pen or a pencil or a crayon or even charcoal you can make your journals verbal where you’re writing words or graphic where you’re scrapbooking or drawing things guided imagery is one of the final techniques we’re going to talk about 01:45:32 but guided imagery can be used for emotional or physical pain people can be helped to envision a dial like a knob on the television i guess we don’t have those anymore but you understand um on the stove we still have knobs on a lot of stoves where they’re turning it down they 01:45:52 actually turn down the intensity the volume of their emotional or physical pain they can envision their emotion or their physical pain as a color and maybe it starts out as red and then it turns to blue or it starts out as completely opaque and you just can’t even see 01:46:13 the thing that’s hurting and if it’s your elbow it’s your elbow if it’s an emotion maybe it’s your heart it’s red and opaque and you can’t see anything and then as the pain goes away it becomes more and more transparent until it goes away completely 01:46:31 nanobots you can tell i watch science fiction but or or your helper t cells or your immune system you can envision your body healing itself or sometimes you can envision like if you’re having anxiety you can envision a wave coming over you and just whooshing it away sometimes 01:46:54 it can be helpful to be sitting under a fan when you do that but guided imagery can take just about any form somebody wants it to take how would you see this getting better and then encouraging them helping them actually see it getting better envisioning it 01:47:12 you can use guided imagery for anticipatory anxiety too if somebody has to do a speech or they’re anticipating something that’s stressful or they’re anticipating heaven forbid the death of a loved one you can help them use guided imagery to envision themselves successfully 01:47:31 navigating that situation it may not be you know all ribbons and roses and butterflies but they can start to feel more empowered feel more capable of handling that situation you can use guided imagery for growth you can right before you go to sleep you can envision 01:47:52 what you want to do better or how you want to be tomorrow you can start reprogramming your subconscious right before you go to sleep and then when you wake up theoretically that has been imp imprinted on your subconscious a little bit now it’s not going to do 01:48:10 things like overnight but they have done a lot of research that has shown that meditating or using guided imagery to change your subconscious is most effective if done right before sleep and then guided imagery for sleep and the old 01:48:30 counting sheep thing that most of us told our kids to do is an example of guided imagery the person is closing their eyes and they’re envisioning they’re seeing this image of sheep jumping over a fence and that guided imagery can help them trigger their relaxation response and focus their 01:48:50 attention on a pleasant safe empowering scene instead of going all over the place and thinking about the meeting they’ve got tomorrow and what happened today and this that and the other thing and health literacy can’t end something on with cognitive behavioral therapy without talking about 01:49:14 education and cognitions part of cognitive behavioral therapy is helping people understand the connection between their mind and their body or their thoughts and their symptoms helping them understand the connection between their thoughts 01:49:30 their feelings how they perceive the world and how they react and helping them learn and understand the connection between their past experiences and their present reactions it’s also important for a lot of people especially those who encounter trauma early on to understand 01:49:52 to be educated about the impact of cognitive development on their perceptions children think differently than adults children tend to think in all or nothing terms and very personally very egocentrically so whatever happened the way i perceive it must be the way it is 01:50:10 whatever happened is all my fault and it’s all or nothing so if people’s perceptions when they were children were formed that way and formed that way around trauma then in the present they may still perceive things in very um extreme terms so we need to help them understand that those schema 01:50:35 that were formed when you were going through that trauma when you were developing were very normal because that’s how a nine-year-old that’s how an eight-year-old thinks in the present you have different abilities your brain actually changes as you get older so maybe we can re revisit that 01:50:58 cognitive behavioral therapy is not appropriate for everybody but for many trauma survivors it can be helpful to have practical tools to better understand address and respond to their thoughts feelings and behaviors in context so they don’t feel like these flashbacks and feelings come out 01:51:17 from out of nowhere and they’re powerless against them trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy always empowers the person to learn about the tool decide whether it’s one that they want to use and arrive at their own conclusions when evaluating thoughts beliefs and perceptions
CEUs are available at AllCEUs.com/Anxiety-Master hey there everybody and welcome to this video on 20 anxiety relief strategies i’m your host dr donnelly snipes in this video i’m going to walk you through the basic strategies that i 00:00:16 use to address generalized anxiety in someone who comes into my office now it’s important to remember that every person is different and every person may display their anxiety slightly differently so this just gives you a general idea of tools and techniques that i might use 00:00:35 we’re going to start out by looking at what i go over in the assessment or intake interview and how that relates to the symptoms of anxiety then we’ll explore other things that i rule out or rule in that might be contributing to the person’s symptoms 00:00:52 then we summarize the typical interventions that i use when treating generalized anxiety disorder and i finish up by listing 15 psycho-educational topics that i think are important for everybody to have in a foundation treatment program if you’re not familiar with some of these 00:01:11 tools or techniques that i’m using that’s okay i’ve linked to longer videos that i’ve done on each one of them in the notes to this video so just scroll down look at some of those videos and you’ll be up to speed so let’s start out with the intake assessment or the diagnostic criteria 00:01:31 remember anxiety is a feeling it’s an emotion so the first criteria for diagnosing generalized anxiety is excessive anxiety that’s difficult to control on most days for at least six months about a variety of things it’s not about one specific thing it’s about a variety of things 00:01:53 it’s also important to recognize that just like you wouldn’t wait to go to the doctor until you had a pneumonia you also are likely going to do better if you start addressing anxiety when you notice it instead of waiting until you’re at a crisis point or until you accurately 00:02:11 and completely fulfill diagnostic criteria just because you haven’t had it for six months or more doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be addressed so we start out with this first symptom and i ask people about what triggers their anxiety what causes them to feel anxious what things do they think 00:02:31 about when they’re feeling anxious and i make a list of these things as we talk and then we examine those triggers for themes are they related to things like loss or abandonment or rejection or failure or loss of control and we start trying to group them together a little bit 00:02:50 to help the person get a better understanding maybe of where their anxiety might be coming from then i asked them about their anxiety vulnerabilities now remember vulnerabilities are different than triggers triggers are things that 00:03:06 kick off the anxiety response vulnerabilities are things that make people more likely to be triggered when they encounter certain stimuli so being over caffeinated being unrested being sick being in a strange environment all of those may be vulnerabilities for people’s anxiety 00:03:30 and i go through each one very systematically we look at physical vulnerabilities such as being over caffeinated or having low blood sugar having poor sleep being in pain then we move on to affective vulnerabilities if the person’s already feeling stressed out 00:03:50 or overwhelmed about things maybe they’re just starting to feel burned out then that may make them more vulnerable to react to things with with anxiety then we look at cognitive vulnerabilities when they are in a particular mood perceiving the world as either optimistic or pessimistic 00:04:12 does that make them more likely to feel anxiety and then we’ll look at environment are there particular environments that contribute to their anxiety like i mentioned earlier being in a strange place or maybe being in an environment where there’s lots of activity like your kid’s 00:04:29 preschool classroom or a very busy restaurant as opposed to your home or the library and finally we’ll look at relationship vulnerabilities if you will and that is people in the person’s life that may make them more vulnerable to react with anxiety are there people that 00:04:54 make the person feel on edge that may contribute to them being a little bit more hyper vigilant so they’re more likely to become anxious and notice for example micro expressions after we go through the themes the triggers and the vulnerabilities then we go to effective coping strategies what 00:05:16 is the person doing right now that helps them either a little bit kind of take the edge off their anxiety or maybe it helps them relieve their anxiety even if just for 5 10 minutes 30 minutes those are things that we can build on and that helps me understand 00:05:36 the types of tools that might be effective for that person the next characteristic or criteria for diagnosis of anxiety disorder is feeling restless keyed up or on edge now this is different than anxiety this is having difficulty sitting still and this is a 00:05:55 common symptom of adhd so the person may have anxiety but they also may have concurrent adhd or concurrent ptsd that is contributing to their sense of restlessness so no matter how much of the anxiety that we treat this particular symptom may continue to be present unless we also address it 00:06:21 so again i asked them about what triggers your restlessness what triggers your inability or difficulty sitting still and are there any vulnerabilities that make it more likely that you will have difficulty sitting still or that you you will feel more keyed up a lot of these 00:06:40 often overlap with the anxiety triggers but it’s still helpful to take a look at them then i asked them about their strengths and coping strategies for dealing with feeling restless or keyed up what do you do when you have to sit still and you feel restless maybe it’s in 00:07:00 a staff meeting or on an airplane or something else what strategies can you use that help you cope with that sense of restlessness and edginess muscle tensions sleep disturbances and being easily fatigued are all additional symptoms 00:07:21 and they can all be caused by a variety of things muscle tension can be caused by poor ergonomics and pain for example that is completely unrelated to anxiety so again we can treat the anxiety and we can address the stress related muscle tension but if there’s also muscle tension for 00:07:42 other reasons we need to pay attention to that too because muscle tension is perceived by the body as a stressor and that is going to trigger the stress response which is going to make the person more vulnerable to anxiety so i ask about 00:07:59 different triggers for their muscle tension and what’s an effective coping strategy whether it’s progressive muscular relaxation or massage or heat or stretching what is it that helps them reduce their muscle tension in terms of sleep disturbances sleep can be disturbed for a lot of 00:08:20 reasons your circadian rhythms can be out of whack your hormones can be out of whack you’re you could be experiencing pain that is impacting your sleep none of those are necessarily directly related to the anxiety but they could be contributing to maintaining the symptoms so i asked about 00:08:41 what are triggers for sleep disturbances for example watching particular movies before going to sleep or checking their email before going to sleep and what vulnera vulnerabilities exist for sleep disturbance what things make you more likely to have difficulty going to sleep 00:09:03 and what are some effective street sleep strategies that the person currently uses sleep hygiene is a big focus of early treatment for dare i say just about every disorder that i treat because when a person is sleep deprived when they’re not getting good quality sleep 00:09:23 it contributes to a whole bunch of symptoms physical symptoms cognitive thinking symptoms emotional symptoms as well as emotional ability and difficulty regulating their emotions so sleep strategies are important and i generally provide people in the initial intake a link to a 00:09:46 video on sleep hygiene and a handout on sleep hygiene so they can evaluate their own sleep and then if they’re easily fatigued why is this is it because they’re not getting good sleep okay that could be it is it because their nutrition is poor if you’re not getting good b vitamins 00:10:08 or if you’re stressed all the time so your body can’t use the food that you are eating nearly as effectively or if you’re eating foods that don’t provide all the nutrients for your body to make energy available then nutrition may be a cause of fatigue or a contributor to your fatigue 00:10:31 over and above fatigue caused by poor sleep and being anxious or stressed out all the time tension can contribute to fatigue even though you may not notice that you’re holding a lot of muscle tension holding that tension keeping those muscles clenched takes 00:10:49 energy and that contributes to fatigue and finally deconditioning people who are anxious and people who are depressed often feel overwhelmed and exhausted because of life so going to the gym that’s a pie in the sky thought they feel like they barely have the energy to get through the day 00:11:12 they can’t imagine mustering the energy to work out but even deconditioning in terms of not being able to spend as much time cleaning the house or working on the yard just doing regular activities of daily living may seem completely overwhelming so they’re not doing them and after a period of 00:11:34 time the body loses its conditioning it loses its stamina the good thing is stamina can be rebuilt but it’s not something that comes back overnight it’s something that has to be gradually rebuilt and what helps the person improve their energy when they’re feeling fatigued 00:11:51 you may not be able to go from feeling completely exhausted to ready to go to the gym but if you’re feeling fatigued is there something that can put a little pep in your step besides caffeine and i ask people about music are there particular songs or playlists they listen to that can give them a 00:12:12 little boost music can actually help increase dopamine and norepinephrine which make energy more available to us so music’s one maybe deep breathing or just getting up and moving around or going outside into bright light those are all tools or techniques that help some people 00:12:33 get a little bit of energy like i said it’s not going to be a panacea but we want to look at any strategies that work for the person at least a little bit and then we can build on those two more criteria for anxiety disorder include difficulty concentrating or your mind going blank 00:12:55 and irritability when you’re stressed when you feel anxious you’ve got that fight-or-flight system going on you’ve got your brain in rescue mode if you will so your brain is paying more attention to all the threats because it doesn’t feel safe it’s paying attention to more things 00:13:15 that are going on around you because it doesn’t feel safe which means if you’re in an environment where there’s a lot of distractions maybe in a busy restaurant or even at work if you work in a open area with lots of other people moving around it may be more difficult to maintain your train of 00:13:36 thought because you’re thinking and then all of a sudden your hyper vigilance makes you go over here to pay attention to that person that just walked in or over there to pay attention to sally who just dropped something on the floor and then you completely lose your train of thought 00:13:55 so it’s important for people to recognize when they’re feeling anxious what environments what situations what conditions make them more vulnerable to having episodes where they can’t concentrate or their mind goes blank and what can help them 00:14:13 a lot of people find that in this particular situation having noise cancelling headphones on sitting in a quiet environment at work maybe in a carol or in a private office can help them focus more effectively and what effective coping strategies do they have 00:14:33 to help them deal with this difficulty concentrating in their mind going blank making lists is a big one if they have a bunch of stuff to do at work but they’ve got a lot of anxiety it may be hard to remember okay what is it that i’ve got to do next but if they make lists 00:14:50 that can help them keep track and follow along with what they need to do and irritability is that sense of being short-tempered if you will and it’s important for people to recognize what makes them irritable irritability is sort of you can think of it as a 00:15:11 mild form of anger and anger just like anxiety is a response to a threat when a person feels anxious when a person feels exhausted when a person feels vulnerable for some reason then they’re more likely to respond to any sort of outside input especially 00:15:31 stressful outside input with irritability it’s like i just can’t take one more thing go away it’s important for people to recognize that and recognize what their triggers are for irritability when they’re angry i’m sorry when they’re anxious 00:15:49 what things tend to trigger their short fuse if you will and what makes them more likely to be triggered for example being too hyped up on caffeine or being exhausted or being in pain then i move on to ruling out no matter how much work a person does on their anxiety and their 00:16:14 thoughts and cognitions about their anxiety if there are underlying physical issues or other mental health issues that aren’t being addressed there’s only so much progress the person can make it’s important to recognize that people are 00:16:33 not just a bunch of independent parts everything interacts so if somebody’s in pain physical pain that’s going to trigger their stress response which is going to make them more vulnerable to anxiety in order to make them less vulnerable to anxiety helping them address anxiety is great but 00:16:52 we also have to address that pain so the stress response system the hpa axis isn’t always turned on we want to rule out thyroid imbalance hyper or hypothyroid estrogen fluctuations lyme disease nutritional deficiencies food sensitivities excess caffeine or stimulants and that can come from the 00:17:20 form of energy drinks or diet pills or other herbs that somebody may be taking that have stimulatory effects medication side effects some medications have in their list of side effects can contribute to anxiety it’s important to recognize that when serotonin gets too high for example 00:17:43 it can contribute to anxiety some people when they start taking antidepressants feel anxiety for the first couple of days because all of a sudden their body’s being exposed to more serotonin than it was prior to taking the medication now eventually 00:18:00 it all balances out but it’s important to recognize that that is a potential side effect alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal also contribute to feelings of anxiety now alcohol related anxiety tends to be much shorter than benzodiazepine withdrawal when you withdraw from 00:18:22 alcohol usually it’s two or three days that the person experiences high blood pressure increased anxiety etc and then things start to level out i’m not going to say their anxiety goes away but it levels out quite a bit with benzodiazepines or anti-anxiety medications it can take a lot 00:18:43 longer for the anxiety to go away a lot of people also experience rebound anxiety when their anti-anxiety medication starts to leave their system so if they’re taking a short acting anti-anxiety medication it may start helping them feel better real quick but then as it starts to 00:19:06 leave their system their anxiety rebounds and it feels like it’s even stronger than it was before they took the pill in the first place and it’s important if that’s occurring to talk with your doctor about whether there are more longer acting options that would reduce the rebound 00:19:26 anxiety or if there are other treatment options which there are in in lieu of benzodiazepines pain as i mentioned can also contribute to keeping that stress response that hpa axis turned on keeping the person hyper vigilant when you’re in pain you tend to be 00:19:47 kind of guarding because you don’t want to hurt anymore you don’t want to get injured anymore and it can make people more likely to respond with anger or anxiety so we do need to address pain whether it’s chronic pain like from fibromyalgia or intermittent pain like from frequent migraines 00:20:08 we still need to address what’s going on for people who have intermittent pain they can also experience anxiety because they dread having another episode for people with chronic pain they can have anxiety related to the chronic pain worrying that it’s going to get worse and worrying 00:20:29 that it’s going to keep them from having the life they want ptsd post traumatic stress disorder has a lot of anxiety related symptoms however people can have both generalized anxiety as well as ptsd ptsd symptoms are focused mainly around triggers reminders of the trauma whereas generalized 00:20:55 anxiety the anxiety is about more things but if a person has ptsd they are going to likely be hyper vigilant which is going to make them more vulnerable to anxiety about a variety of things obsessive-compulsive disorder has an anxiety component people have these obsessions 00:21:17 that they are they can’t get out of their head and they’re worried that if they don’t do if they don’t do x if they don’t engage in a compulsion then it is going to end up causing bad things or they may just have this repetitive intrusive thought that they ruminate on that contributes to 00:21:37 their anxiety and social anxiety remember i said generalized anxiety the person is anxious about a multitude of things in social anxiety the anxiety is specifically about being negatively evaluated by people can you have both yes potentially but we do need if somebody has a social anxiety component 00:22:00 we need to make sure that we’re addressing that in addition to the generalized anxiety the general treatment flow that i go through with general with generalized anxiety in this initial meeting we have talked about triggers vulnerabilities and current effective 00:22:23 strategies that the person uses so i take all of those and i put them into a spreadsheet and we look for themes and i give them to the per give the spreadsheet to the person so they are more aware they can start identifying vulnerabilities and triggers that they 00:22:40 want to address i also refer people to their primary care to rule out physical causes and contributors like hormone imbalances nutritional deficiencies chronic pain if they need to be or they want to be referred to a nutritionist or a sleep specialist i also make a referral 00:23:00 to those particular people at that point in time i also have people start keeping a daily anxiety log in which they note the date the time the trigger or triggers for their anxiety the intensity of their anxiety on a scale of one to four one being yeah i noticed it but it wasn’t a big deal 00:23:24 two is i felt anxious but i was able to get through just fine three is i felt really anxious but i managed somehow to get through it and pushed through but it was really really hard and four the anxiety was overwhelming i just i couldn’t i was paralyzed so date time triggers 00:23:49 intensity duration did it last five minutes or five hours and what interventions what things did they do that helped to either reduce their anxiety or help them recover after the anxiety episode and then henceforth each week we review their anxiety logs that’s like the first thing that 00:24:12 i do with people after i ask them you know how’s your week been we look at the anxiety logs and i evaluate it for repeating triggers and repeating themes for their anxiety then we process at least three of their triggers for their anxiety and i use the fcp method what are the facts for 00:24:34 and against your belief about this situation what aspects did you have control of in this situation and based on the facts and your ability to control the factors you had control of what’s the probability that this actually would have ended up being 00:24:55 a catastrophe would have actually ended up being a notable threat that’s where we start a lot of times helping people move away from emotional reasoning into factual reasoning gives them a sense of new perspective and a greater sense of mastery over the situation they may not 00:25:21 feel like they can control it yet but they’re feeling like they have a better understanding eventually as we go through the treatment process people will learn about cognitive restructuring dialectics living in the and purposeful action and hardiness and we’ll apply each one of those tools 00:25:40 as they learn them when we process their triggers i also look at their anxiety logs for potential vulnerabilities and i and i identify mitigation strategies include setting and maintaining boundaries assertiveness and trigger management so for example 00:25:59 if one of their common triggers was interacting with their boss or interacting with their sister-in-law then i would say okay what mitigation strategies could we use how can you effectively set and maintain healthy boundaries and manage this trigger in a meaningful 00:26:23 way may not be able to completely prevent the anxiety but how can we help you move from a four where you’re completely paralyzed by your anxiety to a three where you can start you can get through it it sucks but you can get through it and then eventually we’ll get down to a one 00:26:43 we discuss what tools have been effective in the past week it’s really important in my mind to help people identify and build on their strengths and realize the power that they already have realize the resources that they already have that they may be taking for granted 00:27:04 and then i provide a video handout and worksheet on a particular psycho-education topic and it’s important for a lot of people to have a video that kind of explains it and walks them through it and then a handout or worksheet to apply it why do i do this for in between sessions 00:27:23 because i feel that people’s money is best spent when they’re in session with me actually processing stuff the psychoeducation component i think is something in most cases is something that people can spend their time learning between sessions i don’t want to waste their money 00:27:46 lecturing them when they could watch a video on it i want to spend their time in session actually using what they’ve learned and applying the information so the psycho-education topics that i think are important for everybody to 00:28:04 learn about the function of anxiety its connection to the stress response and the impact of fight or flight on perception and problem solving and i mentioned that several times in this video that when we’re in fight-or-flight mode we don’t pay attention to the good stuff we are actually more 00:28:21 aware of more of the threats in the environment because we are on high alert so to speak which means we tend to perceive the world as more dangerous and because of all that because of the glutamate and the norepinephrine and everything else in our brain it makes it harder 00:28:39 to think clearly our brain is has tunnel vision adrenaline haze whatever you want to call it that is geared towards helping us fight or flee not think about all the possible options and problem solving so until people can get into what linehan called the wise mind until 00:28:58 people can get out of that high anxiety state it’s going to be difficult to problem solve then we talk about distress tolerance skills which are the skills that people need when they feel anxious to help them remember that they can tolerate the distress 00:29:17 so they don’t feed into it by saying oh my gosh this is going to overwhelm me i’m not going to be able to handle it these distress tolerance skills help people feel more empowered even in the face of anxiety and can help them get into their wise mind 00:29:34 we talk about circadian rhythms and sleep hygiene because it’s so important for developing new skills for learning new things as well as for helping the hpa access the threat response system recover that people are getting good quality sleep then i talk about nutrition 00:29:55 and neurotransmitter support what we eat is broken down to make neurotransmitters to make hormones to repair the body so if we’re eating like crap we’re probably going to feel like crap a lot of people want to get straight down to the nitty-gritty of how can i improve my serotonin 00:30:15 my dopamine my norepinephrine and ultimately everything is in a fine balance so if one goes up one happy chemical goes up the other ones are likely going to go up too but that requires a healthy diet for example making serotonin to break down tryptophan we need to have vitamin 00:30:37 b we need to have calcium we need to have zinc we need to have iron we need to have tryptophan itself and then to break down it goes from tryptophan to 5 ht then to break that down even more we need even more vitamins and minerals so it’s important that people 00:30:56 understand the importance of a healthy diet but also understand the regular foods that they can eat to support their body’s ability to make those neurotransmitters like spinach and bananas and cocoa and tea and colorful vegetables it’s not anything that’s really weird wild and radical 00:31:22 next we talk about mindfulness the difference between focused mindfulness so you’re focusing on something like a candle flame or open awareness mindfulness where you’re walking through a park for example and you’re not focusing on any one thing in particular you’re just noticing 00:31:41 quote everything as you walk down the path that open awareness encourages you to be mindful be in the moment instead of thinking instead of being in your own head and then mindfulness in terms of the self scan mindfully scanning your your head heart and gut 00:32:01 so to speak how am i feeling emotionally how am i feeling physically what am i needing emotionally what am i needing physically right now the next lesson is on compassion and loving-kindness developing compassion for yourself as well as other people a lot of times anxiety 00:32:24 comes from fears of being rejected fears of being criticized fears of not being good enough and sometimes that comes because your own inner critic is just harsh and hateful so developing self-compassion recognizing that it’s okay to be imperfect 00:32:46 can be helpful to encourage people to move towards self-acceptance as opposed to self-abandonment and loving-kindness meditation is helpful to inspire compassion for others even others that are being kind of difficult 00:33:06 the next unit or topic is cognitive distortions what they are their function and restructuring them cognitive distortions include think things like all or none thinking mind reading and catastrophizing and over personalization so we talk about how those thinking errors are likely 00:33:28 thinking strategies that formed in childhood before you could think more critically so to speak and often remained unchecked then we talk about alternatives such as looking for alternatives instead of thinking it always happens or it never happens looking for exceptions 00:33:49 you know when has this happened if i if i say it never happens is that true or are there exceptions if i’m taking things too personally instead of saying it’s all about me or the person’s mad at me or hates me what are three other explanations for why they may have given you a dirty look 00:34:08 besides you you were they even did they even see you or were they caught in their own thoughts then we move on to optimism and i have in here tragic optimism because unbridled optimism can be just as unhealthy as unbridled pessimism tragic optimism includes 00:34:29 an element of dialectics and living in the and in tragic optimism we recognize what is but we have hope that it can get better we recognize the good and the bad and the present and we have hope that we can make a difference to move towards a more rich and meaningful life 00:34:51 unit 9 looks at schema schema are our brains cliff notes our brain shortcut to help us interpret what to happen you have schema about everything stop lights i’m assuming everybody who’s watching drives and so you have a schema 00:35:08 when you see a stop light that’s on yellow you have a schema that tells you how to react if you think that yellow lights are really long and you’ve got plenty of time to get through then you’re going to keep on going or maybe even floor it if you think that yellow lights tend to 00:35:27 change really quickly and you don’t want to run the red light then you’re probably going to stop so based on your past experiences with yellow lights you’re going to react in the current moment probably without thinking about it you’re not going to sit there and go okay well the 00:35:43 last three times i came to this light it changed really fast it’s just sort of an automatic process that’s the beauty of schema it helps us do some of our things in default mode or on autopilot unfortunately if somebody’s been exposed to trauma or has been anxious for a long time then their 00:36:06 schema may have been altered to expect that the world is going to always be a dangerous disempowering un unpleasant place so it’s going to be important to evaluate their schema back then that may have been true in the current context at the current time is this schema still accurate 00:36:32 if so okay how do we deal with it if not how can you adjust your schema relationships are the same way if you’ve been in multiple bad relationships you may expect that people aren’t trustworthy but that really sets everybody else up to be at a loss because you’re just expecting they’re 00:36:53 going to behave badly if you adjust your schema and you say okay in this context at this time with this person are my beliefs about what’s going on are my expectations true or am i just assuming based on other people’s behaviors and past experiences 00:37:16 number 10 is creating a rich and meaningful life vision board helping people visualize what things are important in their rich and meaningful life what things do they currently have that are important in their rich and meaningful life and instead of using their energy just holding on to 00:37:35 anxiety and tossing it around in their hands like a hot potato how can they instead use that energy to nurture the things that are important in their life and what kind of a difference would that make number 11 is acceptance purposeful action and heartiness helping people recognize 00:37:56 that sometimes life just sucks it is what it is so to speak but using their energy purposefully instead of using their energy to be angry about it and stew on it and pout using their energy and saying okay can’t change this situation but what can i change what can 00:38:17 i use this energy for that would help me move closer to a rich and meaningful life number 12 moves into relationships and interpersonal behaviors and i start out with setting and maintaining boundaries a lot of times people feel anxious because 00:38:38 they have never been taught how to set boundaries and maintain them they have other people have encroached on their boundaries and told them what to think or what to feel or criticized them for how they think or how they feel and so learning how to set and maintain boundaries is 00:38:56 really important to helping people feel empowered and safe in any relationship in section 13 we talk about secure attachment positive self-talk and the inner child so there’s a lot there hopefully by this point in treatment people’s triggers and anxiety experiences are a lot less intense 00:39:19 and a lot less frequent so they have more time to spend on developing additional skills but in order to feel safe in order to feel loved people typically need to have some secure attachments including a secure attachment with self feeling like you can be there to respond to your own needs 00:39:43 so we talk about what secure attachment looks like how secure attachment is developed how to use positive self-talk to enhance your secure attachment with yourself and to help heal your inner child that may have been wounded because of past things 00:40:04 in unit 14 we talk talk more about the inner critic because the inner critic is huge and contributes to a lot of people’s anxiety the inner critic may bring up past stuff remember back then you failed you’re going to fail again which can trigger anxiety or the inner critic can 00:40:26 bring up anticipatory things you think you’re going to be able to do this you’re going to fail and then this is what’s going to happen and the sky is going to fall so getting that inner critic under control is really important 00:40:41 in 15 we talk about listening without defensiveness because defensiveness is a anxiety anger threat reaction when people feel like they’re being criticized or when people feel like others don’t necessarily agree with them the automatic reaction for a lot of people 00:41:05 is to feel threatened and to get defensive so we talk about how to hear other people’s opinions maintain your own boundaries and not get defensive you don’t have to agree with them but it’s important to be able to listen and then finally in unit 16 we talk about assertiveness 00:41:26 in order to feel safe and empowered which is what you need to do to feel not threatened to feel less anxious it’s important to be able to assertively communicate your thoughts wants and needs so we talk about any barriers to assertiveness and how to assertively communicate what you 00:41:48 need to others while still respecting their boundaries and maintaining yours that gives you a general overview of the types of things that i go through in a 12 to 16 week treatment program with somebody who presents with generalized anxiety now remember every individual 00:42:13 is different so i may add things like a unit on abandonment anxiety or a unit on grief and loss for people based on what their the themes of their anxiety triggers are but the skills that i have already gone over the skills that i’ve highlighted in this presentation i think are essential
This after skool presentation was written and narrated by eternalized [Music] Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw how the modern materialistic world of money pleasure Fame and 00:00:18 power did not lead to happiness but rather an increasing sense of meaninglessness anxiety suffering and loneliness he sought to bring our attention back to the search of our soul and to restore our connection with herself our innermost Sanctuary life is a journey 00:00:34 of discovering ourself which is our true and complete personality consisting of both our conscious and unconscious lives this is what Jung calls the individuation process our journey of psychological maturation it is the indestructible Foundation that supports us when we can no longer 00:00:53 support ourselves like a rock that the waves keep crashing over standing unmoved despite the Raging of the sea to be in contact with this deeper part of ourselves is to be in a state of Tranquility undisturbed by wild emotional fluctuations the goal in life is not not Perfection but wholeness 00:01:12 for Jung there are two stages of life that are part of individuation the first half of life is oriented towards the outer world work education relationships Etc we must throw ourselves into the fire of life and expose ourselves to daily life and hard work 00:01:30 which solidifies our personality natural life is the nourishing soul of the soil which provides a rich source of nutrients that heals us this is why contact with nature is important we mustn’t get lost in abstract thinking to the detriment of practical life it is the body the feeling the 00:01:49 instinct which connects us with the soil in his old age Jung continued to Value this way of life he wrote I have done without electricity and tend the fireplace and stove myself evenings I light the old lamps there’s no running water and I pump the water from the well I chop the 00:02:08 wood and cook the food these simple acts make and simple and how difficult it is to be simple this anchoring in reality is a prerequisite for the second half of life where our Focus shifts to our inner World our quest for individuation and this is the phase of Life Jung is mostly concerned 00:02:29 with the realm of the unconscious the world of the inner life is as infinite as the world of the outer life man lives in Two Worlds many people however have neglected this part of themselves and only remain half alive they are unprepared by the natural transition into the second half of 00:02:48 life and fall into a mid-life crisis because they have not learned to align Both Worlds when we are confronted with the real and crushing problems of life we desperately search for our soul we realize that the values we have learned from society provides no help to us Conformity is the great 00:03:06 destroyer of self-hurt the opposite to courage in our society is not cowardice it is Conformity we are often persuaded to take the Apparently easier Road of merging with the crowd and forgetting ourselves it requires courage to stand against the crowd a person can be surrounded by a crowd of 00:03:25 people and yet feel completely alone because he’s alienated from himself the search for the soul is a solitary task and when we avoid the soul it keeps on stirring it disturbs us makes us restless and gives us no peace however these problems are important they are incentives for us to undertake 00:03:47 Soul work without the trials and tribulations of life we aren’t likely to summon the determination to overcome the indifference of daily life people will do anything no matter how absurd to avoid facing their own soul the gate that leads to destruction is Broad and many answers 00:04:07 through it but the gateway to peace is narrow and on me answers safe through Affliction of the Soul it is wise to nourish the soul otherwise you’ll breed dragons and devils in your heart every psychic advance of man arises from the suffering of the Soul embrace your grief for 00:04:26 there your soul will grow like the Primitive indigenous tribesmen Jung recognized that the loss of Soul leads to a sense of meaninglessness in life when a tribe of people lose their feeling that their way of life is worthwhile they may stop reproducing or in large numbers simply lie 00:04:44 down and die besides streams full of fish food is not the primary nourishment of man in place of our current banana life Jung would ask us to embark on a great adventure of self-knowledge which comes upon investigating once in a world the unconscious realm and for yum this is the true journey of life 00:05:07 without the soul the body is dead and without the body the soul is unreal the soul is the home of our Supreme values Dreams Are The Guiding words of the Soul we must carry them in our heart and go back and forth over them in our mind like the words of the person dearest to us the dream 00:05:27 is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the Soul opening into that Cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego consciousness apart from dreams Jung developed the technique of active imagination where you have a dialogue with 00:05:45 different parts of yourself that live in the unconscious it is similar to Dreaming except that you are fully awake and conscious during the experience he discovered this technique when he experienced The Dark Knight of the Soul or what he calls his confrontation with the unconscious 00:06:02 a midlife existential catastrophe in which he was overwhelmed with visions and plunged into unknown depths it was as though he experienced a psychological death and he decided that outer death is better than inner death for that reason he turned away and sought the place of the inner 00:06:22 life and thus began his search for his soul this led to one of the greatest contributions to mankind the red book Jung wrote my soul my soul where are you do you hear me I speak I call you are you there I have returned I am here again I’ve shaken the dust of all the land from my feet 00:06:45 and I’ve come to you I am with you after long years of long wandering I’ve come to you again there is only one way to the soul and that is your way there is only one salvation and that is your salvation if the path before you is clear you’re probably on someone else’s each one must 00:07:06 go his own way hence look into yourself for you must fulfill the way that is in you when we are in contact with our inner self we are more likely to experience synchronicities that is Meaningful patterns in life where the inner world is seen to have a correspondence in external reality 00:07:26 the first step towards individuation is the integration of the Shadow this is not our enemy but our Ally it contains pure gold waiting to be integrated into our personality it becomes dark only when it is ignored we must learn to watch our emotional impulses and be aware of projecting 00:07:46 our own problems onto other innocent people it is only after the encounter with a shadow that we can move on to the deepest part of the Soul which Jung calls the Anima the female psychological tendencies in man and the Animus the male psychological tendencies in women these are the 00:08:05 contrasexual soul images in our psyche while the integration of the Shadow is The Apprentice piece the soul image is the Masterpiece the integration of the anima is done through taking seriously the feelings moods and fantasies of the unconscious and bringing them into reality through creative 00:08:25 work such as painting writing sculpture or musical composition the anima is the source of life and when it is not integrated we feel lifeless and depressed it enriches our life by making the unconscious contents conscious the animus on the other hand is the source of meaning it gives our 00:08:46 unconscious content meaning in the outer World it endows a woman with qualities of initiative courage objectivity and spiritual wisdom avoiding cold and destructive Reflections or hidden convictions about how life ought to be as if stuck in a cocoon of dreamy thoughts which cuts a woman 00:09:05 off from the reality of life the integration of the Soul image is what caused a path to the most fundamental figure the self wholeness can only be achieved through a union of opposites in which our light and dark side are united Jung’s individuation process is analogous to the great 00:09:26 work of the Alchemists where the Philosopher’s Stone is a symbol of the self which is found within oneself for Jung the task of alchemy is psychological it is the art of expanding consciousness of self-realization when we have lost our way or do not know what to do with our 00:09:46 life we can only surrender to the higher wisdom of the self our constant inner companion through life Jung did not see himself as a Healer but as someone who could guide you to heal yourself The Cure ought to grow naturally out of the Wounded individual this search for herself allows for 00:10:07 empathy Mutual understanding and they desire to become an ally in other people’s Journeys towards psychological maturation thus we improve our relationship with ourselves with others and with nature life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced we do not require any 00:10:28 esoteric knowledge to be in contact with herself anyone can take the time to look within to reflect on life’s meaning to give time and attention to values interests and activities that bring joy and fulfillment to one’s personal life who looks outside dreams who looks inside awakes 00:10:54 if you are interested in learning more about the works of Jung head over to my channel eternalized where I have explained these Concepts more in depth thank you for watching foreign [Music]
[Music] we have three types of stress that we process in the physical body we have physical stress that’s like trauma accidents injuries Falls and then you have chemical stress like toxins or pesticides or pollutants or viruses or bacteria or hangovers or nutritional deficiencies 00:00:27 and then you have emotional stress right and emotional stress could be family tragedies car accidents second mortgages single parenting 401ks you know whatever that is but each one of those things physical chemical or emotional knock the body out of homeostasis out of Regulation out 00:00:46 of balance the innate capacity of the body when it’s not overstressed is that it wants to always return back and regulate it wants to return back to homeostasis it wants to return back to order and that’s inate in us that’s an automatic process that’s running through the autonomic 00:01:03 nervous system so we could say the job of the autonomic nervous system is to create balance and Regulation and homeostasis and it’s automatic and that part of the brain sits under the thinking neocortex and it’s called the chemical brain or the emotional brain or the lyic brain or the 00:01:18 mamelon brain and it has all of those functions that make blood sugar balanced hormone levels digestive enzymes it’s it’s it’s it’s doing what it can to take the body and constantly repair it and regenerate it and move it back into balance all of those stressors knock the brain and 00:01:36 body out of balance and the innate mechanism the stress response brings it back to balance well it just makes sense if you keep knocking it out of balance over and over again and you keep moving it out of homeostasis that imbalance is going to become the new balance and now you’re headed for 00:01:52 disease because that autonomic automatic system can’t regulate order in the body so a system then is compromised the system breaks down and so if it’s physical trauma you know your body can heal if you rest it if it’s chemical imbalance you take your uh Pharmaceuticals or you take your 00:02:12 nutriceuticals your vitamins your minerals your herbs you intermittent fast you do anything you can to get the body back so that it’s using more energy for growth and repair but the big factor is emotional stress 75 to 90% of every person that walks into a Healthcare facility in the 00:02:31 Western World walks in because of psychological or emotional stress pretty much four out of five people what’s really causing their health condition is that they’re emotionally stressed and emotionally out of balance okay so what are the emotions that are connected to the stress 00:02:47 hormones it’s anger it’s hatred it’s frustration it’s competition it’s control it’s judgment it’s Envy it’s jealousy it’s insecurity it’s fear it’s anxiety it’s worry it’s angst it’s uh hopelessness it’s powerlessness it’s guilt it shame its unworthiness you know and psychology calls these 00:03:08 normal human States Of Consciousness these are Altered States Of Consciousness so our response to someone or something in in our environment or our response to our own thought an image of what could happen in the future a memory of the past could actually cause chemicals to be secreted 00:03:26 from the brain that causes the body to actually believe it’s living in that same environment of fear or danger right so that thought when you’re seeing that thought in your mind or remembering that image it’s the image and the emotion it’s the thought and the feeling it’s the stimulus and 00:03:45 response that’s immediately conditioning the body into that state of imbalance so it’s a scientific fact that the long-term effects of the hormones of stress push the genetic buttons and create disease if you can turn on that stress response just by thought alone your thoughts are literally going 00:04:01 to make you sick that’s the greatest example of the Mind Body Connection so the next fundamental question is okay if our thoughts could make us sick is it possible that my thoughts could make me well well if that’s the case then then I’m going to have to manage my attention and I’m 00:04:17 going to have to manage my energy because where I place my attention is where I place my energy and I’m going to have to inhibit that thought that has conditioned the body to subconsciously be the mind and the body is so objective that it does not know the difference between the real life experience 00:04:35 that’s creating that emotion and the emotion that person is fabricating by thought alone to the body it’s exactly the same so the body’s believing it’s being chased by a predator the body is believing it’s in an offensive situation where it has to attack the body’s believing it’s constantly 00:04:50 needing to be ready and it’s it’s constantly out of homeostasis is constantly out of balance it’s in emergency it’s in fight ORF flight it’s a different system the autonomic nervous system where you’re stepping on the gas where you’re you’re mobilizing enormous amounts of energy 00:05:04 for some threat some Danger real or imagined but that thought and that feeling the image the emotion the stimulus response is conditioning the body to automatically be the mind of that emotion now the body becomes conditioned and addicted now this gets to be a problem because people 00:05:20 get addicted to their own thoughts and they become addicted to the life they don’t even like because the response to the coworker to the boss to the ex is actually giving them Rush of energy A Rush of agine and they’re they’re associating that Rush of energy with some problem or condition in their 00:05:35 life and now come time to change and manage your attention and manage your emotion it’s no different than Breaking addiction to anything there’s Cravings the body wants to return back to how it’s been conditioned into the familiar past into the gnome the body starts saying to the mind 00:05:53 you can it’s too hard you’ll never change this is too uncomfortable I don’t like this go back to make the same Choice do the same thing create the same experience feel the same emotion so you can return back to the known and that’s how people seamlessly return back to that same identity so we 00:06:09 only accept believe and surrender to the thoughts that are equal to our emotional state we’ll never accept believe and surrender any thoughts that are not equal to your emotional state so you could say I’m abundant I’m Eternal I’ll live forever I’m healthy and wealthy and if you’re programmed your 00:06:26 body into that emotional state it’s going to say you you’re not that take a person whose identity is resentment and their identity is anger and and frustration and betrayal and you ask them why are you this way and they’ll say I’m this way because of this event that happened to me 15 years ago 00:06:44 strong are the emotion we feel from some event the more altered we feel inside of us the more that chemical continuity is disrupted from something that surprises us that alters our state the more the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot that’s called a memory but the problem is that we 00:06:58 think about that event over and over again after it happens we’re producing the same chemistry in the brain and body as if the event was occurring and so the body is conditioned literally into the past so you say a person’s resentful about everything they’re seeing their life through the 00:07:15 lens of resentment and frustration and anger and everything’s upsetting them well that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy you say okay now it’s an addiction you got to change that and the person goes oh okay that makes sense and now now you got to get out of the bleachers on the playing field 00:07:29 say okay these emotions could literally have something to do with my health just saying if I stop feeling these emotions what if I start feeling these emotions okay what would be the emotions that would make me happy these emotions are making me feel really bad the memories are 00:07:47 making me feel really bad can I remember a future how would I feel if my future could happen I got to trade those emotions for different emotions well if I’ve been practicing feeling these emotions and I’ve conditioned my body be the mind it’s going to take some time for me to start 00:08:03 making different chemistry with the intention of making that chemistry getting my body back into homeostasis and balance work on my breath when I breathe I change my state practice breathing work with your body so it can start to relax so that it feels safe enough to feel something other than 00:08:21 that again and if it takes you 3 weeks it would be worth it so then person then starts okay I really know how to feel gratitude okay well maybe start going out and giving and give to people I promise you start giving you start feeling grateful and then start practicing feeling gratitude teach 00:08:40 your body just for 15 minutes a day what it would like to feel gratitude what would be like and our data shows that you take someone to do that for four days three times a day they make a immunoglobulin called immunoglobulin a it’s your body’s natural flu shot it’s the greatest immune 00:08:59 chemical we have 50% increase in the subjects we studied in 4 days immunoglobulin went up 50% in 4 days where is that chemistry coming from they’re not taking anything it’s coming from within them right what is the emotional signature of gratitude when you receive something or you just receive 00:09:18 something when something wonderful happened to you or something wonderful is happening to you you feel grateful so now if you’re in a state of gratitude it makes total sense then you will accept believe and surrender the thoughts that are equal to that emotional state and you could 00:09:32 actually program your autonomic nervous system to make the pharmacy of chemicals that causes growth and repair to happen in the body and that’s exactly what we’re discovering so then when people understand why they’re doing it the how gets easier so you can assign meaning to the task 00:09:47 and switch on the prefrontal cortex and when you switch on that prefrontal cortex it wants to get an outcome it doesn’t want to mess around it wants the outcome you’re doing it for the outcome and that’s kind of a strong intention and a change in energy or an emotional state and that’s changing 00:10:03 your state of being and when you change your state of being like that every day get ready because you’re going to start having synchronicities and coincidences and weird things start happening in your life to prove to you that you’re actually the creator of your life instead of the victim of your
Hello everybody and welcome to this video anxiety meditations i am your host dr dawn elise snipes anxiety often occurs when we feel unsafe or powerless it increases your stress chemicals kicks off that hpa axis or the fight or flight response and you start to have tunnel vision 00:00:21
and become more reactive and impulsive so anxiety can be a problem now remember anxiety is a feeling it’s a normal feeling that tells you that hey there might be something to be aware of there might be a threat it doesn’t mean there is a threat the anxiety is just 00:00:41
telling you to check and see if there’s a threat meditation can help calm your stress response so you can think more clearly about what to do to improve the next moment so if you look around and you decide you know what there’s really not a threat or whatever it is that is threatening 00:00:59
i have no control over like you know a pandemic or something then meditation can help you calm or or tamp down that stress response so you’re not burning up tons and tons of energy and feeling anxious like you’re going to crawl out of your skin all the time it’s 00:01:21
important before you begin any sort of meditation to examine your surroundings and make sure you are safe from interruptions you don’t want to get into this nice relaxed state and all of a sudden have your phone go off or the dog bark get into a situation where you are 00:01:39
protected from interruption where you feel safe in your environment you have the door shut you may have the blinds drawn whatever it is that makes you feel the most safe and secure if you’re not comfortable closing your eyes some people have trauma histories and they are not 00:01:56
comfortable closing their eyes and that’s cool if you’re not then pick a stationary object in the room to focus on when i do meditations i love focusing on the a candle flame just that’s always been something that has um attracted my focus so candle flames work for me you can pick a spot on 00:02:19
the wall you can pick a vase whatever it is you want just make sure it’s not something that’s going to move around that you’ve got a track you want to make sure it stays right there the next thing you need to do once you feel like you’re in a safe environment think of an 00:02:36
empowering mantra that you’re going to repeat to yourself and depending on what is triggering your anxiety you may have several different mantras that you rotate through depending on the type of anxiety if you are facing some sort of adversity you can tell yourself i’ve got this or this too 00:02:55
shall pass you know maybe you are getting ready to go take a your graduate entrance exams or you are going on a job interview or you are experiencing some something distressful maybe you and your best friend got into a disagreement and there’s tension right there so this too shall pass can work 00:03:18
another set if it has to do more with failure you can remind yourself progress not perfection nobody’s perfect and it’s important to strive for progress not perfection to learn from our failures or just i can succeed if you are afraid of failure and you’re getting ready to do something just 00:03:39
telling yourself i can succeed i may not succeed at everything but i can’t succeed now obviously i’m elaborating on some of these you want to pick something that is not more than a few words to repeat to yourself if your anxiety has to do with rejection 00:03:58
you may say to yourself something like it’s not about me or i am enough if you have anxiety about uncertainty you don’t know what’s going to happen next you can tell yourself something like stay open to options or i’m not alone and i’m not alone really appeals to people who don’t like 00:04:21
uncertainty they like control but knowing that they’re not alone knowing that they’ve got support people to help them through something that is uncertain can be very reassuring now you can come up with your own mantras these were just a few that i i pulled out for you 00:04:39
to give you an idea of think something that you might want to say to yourself look at the root of whatever’s causing your anxiety pick a mantra make sure you’re in a safe place with time and practice you’ll be able to trigger the relaxation response 00:04:55
with your mantra and a deep breath or two so you may not have to go through the entire meditation which is really awesome so when if you get used to it you may be able to approach adversity and take a deep breath tell yourself i’ve got this and exhale and do that a couple of more times 00:05:17
and feel relaxed it can help you get grounded once your body’s recognized that okay when we start saying this it’s time to relax you may think that’s a little corny but think about other times in your past when somebody has said something that has just a word has triggered a response 00:05:36
when i used to teach at uf i would tell my class okay clear your desk it’s time to take a pop quiz and those words would strike fear in the majority of the people in my class and that would trigger their fight or flight response now obviously we want to do the opposite here my point is 00:05:56
that something as simple as a word can trigger a fight or flight response or a relaxation response so i’m going to tell you what we’re going to do and then we’re going to start doing it you’re going to start by sitting comfortably you know you’re in a safe environment you’ve 00:06:15
picked your mantra then you get comfortable sitting ideally both feet on the ground you know in a relaxed position begin by focusing on your breath you’re gonna breathe in for four hold for four and breathe out for four you’re gonna do that twice and then you’re going to 00:06:34
continue to breathe in for four hold for four and exhale for four but you’re when you do this then you’re going to start noticing your belly expand and deflate so the first thing you just want to focus on your breath and then you want to start focusing on your breath and your body 00:06:51
the next step is to notice the cool refreshing air as it passes through your nose feel it moving through your entire body you’re going to do that twice finally you’re going to as you breathe in you’re going to repeat your mantra and sit with it while 00:07:09
you hold your breath for that four and as you exhale you’re gonna feel the bad energy and worry leaving your body you’re going to repeat this 10 times then just sit with this feeling for a few minutes noticing how relaxed your body feels it’s that simple you’re going to gradually 00:07:29
work up to ramp up to focusing on your on your mantra and relaxing your anxiety but the first thing you got to do is start with your breath i’m going to walk you through this mantra and it will take about 10 minutes so go ahead and sit down and get comfortable 00:07:50
begin by focusing on your breath breathe in for four three hold for four two three and exhale for four three four let’s do that again breathe in for four two three four hold for four two 00:08:17
three and exhale for four now when you breathe in for four notice your belly expand hold for four 00:08:36
and exhale for four feeling your belly deflate again breathe in and notice your belly expand hold for 4. and exhale for four 00:09:00
now as you breathe in for four notice the cool refreshing air as it passes through your nose feel it moving throughout your entire body hold for four and exhale for four 00:09:21
again inhale noticing the cool air as it passes through your nose and feel it moving through your entire body hold for four 00:09:35
and exhale or four now as you breathe in repeat your mantra breathe in for four tell yourself that it’s okay that you’ve got this 00:09:55
hold for four as you exhale feel the bad energy and worry leaving your body let’s breathe in again repeat your mantra to yourself 00:10:16
hold and exhale feeling the energy the bad energy and worry leaving your body breathe in again repeat your mantra really believing what you’re telling yourself 00:10:42
and exhale feeling the worry and the bad energy leaving your body breathe in repeat your mantra feel the positivity and the strength feeling your body hold and exhale feeling the bad energy and worry leaving 00:11:13
breathe in again repeat your mantra notice how you’re starting to feel more calm sit with this feeling of calmness as you hold your breath and then exhale feeling the bad energy worry leaving your body 00:11:37
breathing again repeating your mantra believing your mantra feeling that breath you took absorbing all of the negative energy and exhale breathe in again repeat your mantra 00:12:05
sit with this feeling of calm and strength feeling the breath absorbing all of the bad energy and exhale breathe in repeat your mantra 00:12:32
really believe how strong and safe you are feel that oxygen absorbing the bad energy and exhale feeling the bad energy and worry leaving your body breathe in repeat your mantra repeat your mantra again 00:13:04
sit with it while you hold your breath for a minute let that air absorb all the bad energy and as you exhale really feel your body relaxing and melting into the chair that you’re sitting in one more time breathe in 00:13:27
repeat your mantra notice a sense of hope and energy but also calmness sit with this for a minute 00:13:43
and exhale feeling the last little bit of that worry leaving your body notice how relaxed your body feels now sit with this feeling continue to repeat your mantra until you’re ready to start rejoining your activities for the day there are
00:00:03 Welcome everybody to this video on cued progressive muscular relaxation one of many techniques for meditation to help cope with anxiety and depression i’m your host dr donnelly snipes meditation and cute progressive muscular relaxation can help 00:00:20 calm your stress response so you can use energy to improve the next moment instead of staying stuck when you’re stressed you often tense your muscles reducing blood flow increasing pain and fatigue the goal of cute progressive muscular relaxation is to help you become more aware of tension 00:00:40 in your body and be able to release it in the moment instead of letting it build up cute progressive muscular relaxation can also be helpful for people who have difficulty sleeping because they can’t turn off their mind 00:00:59 in cued progressive muscular relaxation you’re going to move from the top of your head to the tips of your toes imagining pushing the stress and bad energy out of your body try it with your arms in your upper arms tense them as tight as you can possibly tense them 00:01:19 feel them being tight and then relax as you relax feel the blood moving through your arms and pushing out that bad energy nourishing your muscles as with any meditation it’s important to examine your surroundings and make sure you’re safe from 00:01:40 interruption make sure you’re in an environment in which you feel safe and can relax you’re not going to be disturbed by the phone by the dog barking by the ups man for cute progressive muscular relaxation it is preferable to be able to lay down but at least get comfortable wherever you’re at 00:02:02 if you’re not comfortable closing your eyes pick a stationary object in the room to focus on it can be a vase a candle a spot on the wall something that you can focus your attention on begin by turning attention to your body just kind of do a scan notice where is their tension right 00:02:25 now where is this their discomfort you may not have even noticed it until you started looking for it now focus on your breath i want you to breathe in for four hold 00:02:45 exhale try that again breathe in hold and exhale now when you breathe in notice your belly expand 00:03:10 hold as you exhale feel your belly deflate and push out that negative energy again breathe in feeling your belly expand 00:03:25 hold and exhale feeling your belly deflate now when you breathe in notice the cool refreshing air as it passes through your nose 00:03:41 feel it moving through and nourishing your entire body hold exhale 00:03:57 again breathe in feel the refreshing air nourishing your body hold and exhale now each time you tense a muscle group i want you to inhale as you hold your muscles tense you’re going to hold your breath 00:04:23 as you exhale you’re going to tell yourself relax and feel the negative energy leaving your body we’ll start with the scalp imagine a string pulling your ears back and your eyebrows up tense that scalp as hard as you can and inhale 00:04:46 hold that position hold your breath now exhale and relax feeling the negative energy moving out of your scalp and down out your body tense your scalp again inhale holding your breath 00:05:19 exhale relax and feel the negative energy leaving your body now move down to your face inhale and squinch up your face really tight as tight as you can and hold 00:05:43 exhale and relax your face feel the blood moving through the skin on your cheeks inhale and tighten your face again hold 00:06:04 and exhale feeling your face relax move down to your jaw tighten your jaw clench your teeth as you inhale and hold exhale and relax letting your jaw just drop open inhale and tense your jaw 00:06:38 hold exhale and relax letting your jaw fall open now go back up to your top of your head scan and feel the blood moving through your scalp and your face and your jaw and all of those muscles relaxing 00:07:01 inhale and pull your shoulders to your ears tightening your neck and your shoulder muscles hold and relax 00:07:18 feel your shoulders dropping again inhale bring your shoulders to your ears hold exhale and let those shoulders fall and relax falling deeper into the chair 00:07:45 now move back to your shoulder blades and imagine you’re squeezing a pencil between your shoulder blades as you inhale and squeeze those shoulder blades hold 00:08:01 exhale and relax pull those shoulder blades back together again squeezing as tight as you can pushing all of that stress out of those muscles 00:08:21 exhale and relax feel the tension leaving those muscles now move to your upper arms your biceps tighten your upper arms as tight as you can hold exhale and relax feel all of that energy moving towards your fingertips 00:08:49 moving the bad energy away inhale again tightening those upper arms hold and relax feeling the energy move down to your fingertips 00:09:12 now tighten your fists inhale tighten your fists and curl them up to tighten your forearm and your fists really grab all that negative energy that’s been pushed down there hold it and as you exhale relax and feel the energy just leaving your fingertips all the bad energy 00:09:43 let’s do that again inhale tighten your fists and curl them up hold all that tension exhale relax and feel that negative energy being pushed out as the blood is drawn to your fingers now tighten your shoulder blades again because a lot of people store 00:10:12 tension all the way up in their upper back hold that exhale and relax now tighten your chest muscles kind of like if you were the hulk 00:10:37 tighten your chest muscles as you inhale and hold exhale and relax the chest muscles cover your heart we want to disperse all of the stress from that area so 00:11:03 inhale and tighten those chest muscles again and hold feel like you’re grabbing all that stress and all that negative energy exhale and relax 00:11:23 and feel the blood moving through that area pushing out all of the tension move down to your stomach tighten your stomach curl up like you’re curling into a little ball tighten tightening your stomach muscles as you inhale easier said than done 00:11:48 relax as you exhale again tighten those abdominal muscles as you inhale and hold as you exhale start to relax 00:12:09 you’ll feel the relaxation in your stomach as well as your lower back now move down to your glutes or your butt whatever you want to call it tighten those muscles as tight as you can 00:12:27 inhale and hold exhale as you relax one more time inhale and tighten those glutes as tight as you can 00:12:51 hold exhale and relax feeling the blood coursing and pushing that negative energy down towards your toes 00:13:09 tighten your thighs as you inhale hold and keep it tight exhale and relax again inhale and tighten those thighs as tight as you can a little bit tighter 00:13:39 hold exhale and relax notice the feeling of warmth as the blood moves the energy down towards your toes now tighten your calves as you inhale by pointing your toes 00:14:04 hold exhale and relax start to feel the warmth moving through your calves and into your toes 00:14:23 inhale and point your toes tightening those calves as tight as you can exhale and relax now flex your feet as you inhale tighten those shins as tight as you can 00:14:51 hold exhale and relax one more time inhale as you tighten those shins flexing your feet and hold 00:15:17 exhale and relax you’ve pushed all that energy down towards your toes now inhale and curl your toes curl your feet up as tiny as you can get them curling those toes tight hold and relax your feet exhale 00:15:49 inhale and curl your toes hold and relax 00:16:04 notice how calm and relaxed your body feels try to make it relaxed even more try to make it go even more limp as you inhale hold 00:16:25 exhale and relax feeling yourself sinking deeper into your seat and last time inhale hold exhale feeling yourself sinking deeper into your seat sit and notice how you feel
Hello everybody and welcome to this video anxiety meditations i am your host dr dawn elise snipes anxiety often occurs when we feel unsafe or powerless it increases your stress chemicals kicks off that hpa axis or the fight or flight response and you start to have tunnel vision 00:00:21 and become more reactive and impulsive so anxiety can be a problem now remember anxiety is a feeling it’s a normal feeling that tells you that hey there might be something to be aware of there might be a threat it doesn’t mean there is a threat the anxiety is just 00:00:41 telling you to check and see if there’s a threat meditation can help calm your stress response so you can think more clearly about what to do to improve the next moment so if you look around and you decide you know what there’s really not a threat or whatever it is that is threatening 00:00:59 i have no control over like you know a pandemic or something then meditation can help you calm or or tamp down that stress response so you’re not burning up tons and tons of energy and feeling anxious like you’re going to crawl out of your skin all the time it’s 00:01:21 important before you begin any sort of meditation to examine your surroundings and make sure you are safe from interruptions you don’t want to get into this nice relaxed state and all of a sudden have your phone go off or the dog bark get into a situation where you are 00:01:39 protected from interruption where you feel safe in your environment you have the door shut you may have the blinds drawn whatever it is that makes you feel the most safe and secure if you’re not comfortable closing your eyes some people have trauma histories and they are not 00:01:56 comfortable closing their eyes and that’s cool if you’re not then pick a stationary object in the room to focus on when i do meditations i love focusing on the a candle flame just that’s always been something that has um attracted my focus so candle flames work for me you can pick a spot on 00:02:19 the wall you can pick a vase whatever it is you want just make sure it’s not something that’s going to move around that you’ve got a track you want to make sure it stays right there the next thing you need to do once you feel like you’re in a safe environment think of an 00:02:36 empowering mantra that you’re going to repeat to yourself and depending on what is triggering your anxiety you may have several different mantras that you rotate through depending on the type of anxiety if you are facing some sort of adversity you can tell yourself i’ve got this or this too 00:02:55 shall pass you know maybe you are getting ready to go take a your graduate entrance exams or you are going on a job interview or you are experiencing some something distressful maybe you and your best friend got into a disagreement and there’s tension right there so this too shall pass can work 00:03:18 another set if it has to do more with failure you can remind yourself progress not perfection nobody’s perfect and it’s important to strive for progress not perfection to learn from our failures or just i can succeed if you are afraid of failure and you’re getting ready to do something just 00:03:39 telling yourself i can succeed i may not succeed at everything but i can’t succeed now obviously i’m elaborating on some of these you want to pick something that is not more than a few words to repeat to yourself if your anxiety has to do with rejection 00:03:58 you may say to yourself something like it’s not about me or i am enough if you have anxiety about uncertainty you don’t know what’s going to happen next you can tell yourself something like stay open to options or i’m not alone and i’m not alone really appeals to people who don’t like 00:04:21 uncertainty they like control but knowing that they’re not alone knowing that they’ve got support people to help them through something that is uncertain can be very reassuring now you can come up with your own mantras these were just a few that i i pulled out for you 00:04:39 to give you an idea of think something that you might want to say to yourself look at the root of whatever’s causing your anxiety pick a mantra make sure you’re in a safe place with time and practice you’ll be able to trigger the relaxation response 00:04:55 with your mantra and a deep breath or two so you may not have to go through the entire meditation which is really awesome so when if you get used to it you may be able to approach adversity and take a deep breath tell yourself i’ve got this and exhale and do that a couple of more times 00:05:17 and feel relaxed it can help you get grounded once your body’s recognized that okay when we start saying this it’s time to relax you may think that’s a little corny but think about other times in your past when somebody has said something that has just a word has triggered a response 00:05:36 when i used to teach at uf i would tell my class okay clear your desk it’s time to take a pop quiz and those words would strike fear in the majority of the people in my class and that would trigger their fight or flight response now obviously we want to do the opposite here my point is 00:05:56 that something as simple as a word can trigger a fight or flight response or a relaxation response so i’m going to tell you what we’re going to do and then we’re going to start doing it you’re going to start by sitting comfortably you know you’re in a safe environment you’ve 00:06:15 picked your mantra then you get comfortable sitting ideally both feet on the ground you know in a relaxed position begin by focusing on your breath you’re gonna breathe in for four hold for four and breathe out for four you’re gonna do that twice and then you’re going to 00:06:34 continue to breathe in for four hold for four and exhale for four but you’re when you do this then you’re going to start noticing your belly expand and deflate so the first thing you just want to focus on your breath and then you want to start focusing on your breath and your body 00:06:51 the next step is to notice the cool refreshing air as it passes through your nose feel it moving through your entire body you’re going to do that twice finally you’re going to as you breathe in you’re going to repeat your mantra and sit with it while 00:07:09 you hold your breath for that four and as you exhale you’re gonna feel the bad energy and worry leaving your body you’re going to repeat this 10 times then just sit with this feeling for a few minutes noticing how relaxed your body feels it’s that simple you’re going to gradually 00:07:29 work up to ramp up to focusing on your on your mantra and relaxing your anxiety but the first thing you got to do is start with your breath i’m going to walk you through this mantra and it will take about 10 minutes so go ahead and sit down and get comfortable 00:07:50 begin by focusing on your breath breathe in for four three hold for four two three and exhale for four three four let’s do that again breathe in for four two three four hold for four two 00:08:17 three and exhale for four now when you breathe in for four notice your belly expand hold for four 00:08:36 and exhale for four feeling your belly deflate again breathe in and notice your belly expand hold for 4. and exhale for four 00:09:00 now as you breathe in for four notice the cool refreshing air as it passes through your nose feel it moving throughout your entire body hold for four and exhale for four 00:09:21 again inhale noticing the cool air as it passes through your nose and feel it moving through your entire body hold for four 00:09:35 and exhale or four now as you breathe in repeat your mantra breathe in for four tell yourself that it’s okay that you’ve got this 00:09:55 hold for four as you exhale feel the bad energy and worry leaving your body let’s breathe in again repeat your mantra to yourself 00:10:16 hold and exhale feeling the energy the bad energy and worry leaving your body breathe in again repeat your mantra really believing what you’re telling yourself 00:10:42 and exhale feeling the worry and the bad energy leaving your body breathe in repeat your mantra feel the positivity and the strength feeling your body hold and exhale feeling the bad energy and worry leaving 00:11:13 breathe in again repeat your mantra notice how you’re starting to feel more calm sit with this feeling of calmness as you hold your breath and then exhale feeling the bad energy worry leaving your body 00:11:37 breathing again repeating your mantra believing your mantra feeling that breath you took absorbing all of the negative energy and exhale breathe in again repeat your mantra 00:12:05 sit with this feeling of calm and strength feeling the breath absorbing all of the bad energy and exhale breathe in repeat your mantra 00:12:32 really believe how strong and safe you are feel that oxygen absorbing the bad energy and exhale feeling the bad energy and worry leaving your body breathe in repeat your mantra repeat your mantra again 00:13:04 sit with it while you hold your breath for a minute let that air absorb all the bad energy and as you exhale really feel your body relaxing and melting into the chair that you’re sitting in one more time breathe in 00:13:27 repeat your mantra notice a sense of hope and energy but also calmness sit with this for a minute 00:13:43 and exhale feeling the last little bit of that worry leaving your body notice how relaxed your body feels now sit with this feeling continue to repeat your mantra until you’re ready to start rejoining your activities for the day there are
