Ever heard a really good joke about polio?
Or made a casual reference to someone having hepatitis? Or maybe teased your buddy by saying
he has muscular dystrophy? Of course you have never done that, because
you are not a terrible person. You’d never make fun of someone for having a physical
illness, but folks make all kinds of offhand remarks about people having mental illnesses
and never give it a second thought. How often have you heard a person say that
someone’s psycho, or schizo, or bipolar, or OCD? I can pretty much guarantee that the
people who used those terms had no idea what they actually meant. We’ve talked about how psychological disorders
and the people who have them have often been stigmatized. But at the same time, we tend to minimize
those disorders, using them as nicknames for things that people do, think, or say, that
may not exactly be universal, but are still basically healthy.
And we all do it, but only because we don’t
really understand those conditions. But that’s why we’re here, because as we go
deeper into psychological disorders, we get a clearer understanding of their symptoms,
types, causes, and the perspectives that help explain them. And some of the most common disorders have
their root in an unpleasant mental state that’s familiar to us all: anxiety. It’s a part of being human, but for some people
it can develop into intense fear, and paralyzing dread, and ultimately turn into full-fledged
anxiety disorder. Defining psychological disorders again: a
deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional pattern of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that interferes
with the ability to function in a healthy way. So when it comes to anxiety, that definition
is the difference between the guy you probably called phobic because he didn’t like Space
Mountain as much as you did, and the person who truly can’t leave their house for fear
of interacting with others. It’s the difference between the girl who’s
teased by her friends as being OCD because she does her laundry every night and the girl who
has to wash her hands so often that they bleed.
Starting today, you’re going to understand
all of those terms you’ve been using. We commonly equate anxiety with fear, but
anxiety disorders aren’t just a matter of fear itself. A key component is also what we do to get
rid of that fear. Say someone almost drowned as a kid and is
now afraid of water. A family picnic at the river may cause that
anxiety to bubble up, and to cope, they may stay sequestered in the car, less anxious
but probably still unhappy while the rest of the family is having fun. So, in clinical terms, anxiety disorders are
characterized not only by distressing, persistent anxiety but also often by the dysfunctional
behaviors that reduce that anxiety. At least a fifth of all people will experience
a diagnosable anxiety disorder of some kind at some point in their lives.
That is a lot
of us. So I want to start out with a condition that
used to be categorized as an anxiety disorder but is now considered complex enough to be
in a class by itself, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or OCD. You probably know that condition is characterized
by unwanted repetitive thoughts, which become obsessions, which are sometimes accompanied
by actions, which become compulsions. And it is a great example of a psychological
disorder that could use some mental-health myth busting.
Being neat, and orderly, and fastidious does
not make you OCD. OCD is a debilitating condition whose sufferers
take normal behaviors like, washing your hands, or double checking that you turned off the
stove and perform them compulsively. And they often use these compulsive, even ritualistic
behaviors to relieve intense and unbearable anxiety. So, soon they’re scrubbing their hands every five minutes, or constantly checking the stove, or counting the exact number of steps they
take everywhere they go. If you’re still unclear about what it means
for disorders to be deviant, distressful and dysfunctional, OCD might help you understand. Because it is hard to keep a job, run a household,
sit still, or do much of anything if you feel intensely compelled to run to the kitchen
twenty times an hour. And both the thoughts and behaviors associated with
OCD are often driven by a fear that is itself obsessive, like if you don’t go to the kitchen
right now your house will burn down and your child will die which makes the condition that
much more distressing and self-reinforcing.
There are treatments that help OCD including certain
kinds of psychotherapy and some psychotropic drugs. But the key here is that it is not a description
for your roommate who cleans her bathroom twice a week, or the guy in the cubicle next to
you, who only likes to use green felt tip pens. And even though OCD is considered its own
unique set of psychological issues, the pervasive senses of fear, worry, and loss of control
that often accompany it, have a lot in common with other anxiety disorders.
The broadest of these is Generalized Anxiety
Disorder or GAD. People with this condition tend to feel continually
tense and apprehensive, experiencing unfocused, negative, and out-of-control feelings. Of course feeling this way occasionally is
common enough, but feeling it consistently for over six months – the length of time required for
a formal diagnosis – is not. Folks with GAD worry all the time and are
frequently agitated and on edge, but unlike some other kinds of anxiety, patients often can’t
identify what’s causing the anxiousness, so they don’t even know what to avoid. Then there’s Panic Disorder, which affects about
1 in 75 people, most often teens and young adults. It’s calling card is Panic Attacks or sudden
episodes of intense dread or sudden fear that come without warning. Unlike the symptoms of GAD which can be hard
to pin down, Panic Attacks are brief, well-defined, and sometimes severe bouts of elevated anxiety. And if you’ve ever had one, or been with someone
who has, you know that they call these attacks for good reason. They can cause chest pains and racing heartbeat,
difficulty breathing and a general sense that you’re going crazy or even dying.
It’s as
awful as it sounds. We’ve talked a lot about the body’s physiological
fight or flight response and that’s definitely part of what’s going on here, even though
there often isn’t an obvious trigger. There may be a genetic pre-disposition to
panic disorder, but persistent stress or having experienced psychological trauma in the past
can also set you up for these attacks. And because the attacks themselves can be
downright terrifying, a common trigger for panic disorder is simply the fear of having
another panic attack. How’s that for a kick in the head? Say you have a panic attack on a bus, or you
find yourself hyperventilating in front of dozens of strangers with nowhere to go to
calm yourself down, that whole ordeal might make you never want to be in that situation
again, so your anxiety could lead you to start avoiding crowded or confined places.
At this point the initial anxiety has spun
of into a fear of anxiety which means, welcome you’ve migrated into another realm of anxiety
disorder, Phobias. And again this is a term that’s been misused
for a long time to describe people who, say, they don’t like cats, or are uncomfortable
on long plane trips. Simply experiencing fear or discomfort doesn’t
make you phobic. In clinical terms, phobias are persistent,
irrational fears of specific objects, activities, or situations, that also, and this is important,
leads to avoidance behavior. You hear a lot about fears of heights, or
spiders, or clowns, and those are real things. They’re specific phobias that focus on particular
objects or situations. For example, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in
Maryland is a seven-thousand meter span that crosses the Chesapeake Bay, if you want to
get to or from Eastern Maryland that’s pretty much the only way to do it, at least in a
car, but there are thousands of people who are so afraid of crossing that bridge that
they simply can’t do it.
So, to accommodate this avoidance behavior,
driver services are available. For $25 people with Gephyrophobia, a fear of bridges,
can hire someone to drive themselves, and their kids, and dogs, and groceries across the bridge
in their own car, while trying not to freak out. But other phobias lack such specific triggers,
what we might think of as social phobia, currently known as social anxiety disorder, is characterized
by anxiety related to interacting or being seen by others, which could be triggered by
a phone call, or being called on in class, or just thinking about meeting new people. So you can probably see at this point how
anxiety disorders are related and how they can be difficult to tease apart. The same thing can be said about what we think
causes them. Because much in the same way anxiety can show
up as both a feeling like panic, and a thought, like is my kitchen on fire, there are also two main
perspectives on how we currently view anxiety as a function of both learning and biology.
The learning perspective suggests that things
like, conditioning, and observational learning and cognition, all of which we’ve talked about
before best explain the source of our anxiety. Remember our behaviorist friend, John B. Watson
and his conditioning experiments with poor little Albert, by making a loud scary noise
every time you showed the kid a white rat, he ended up conditioning the boy to fear any
furry object, from bunnies, to dogs, to fur coats. That conditioning used two specific learning processes
to cement itself in Little Albert’s young mind. Stimulus Generalization, expanded or generalized
his fear of the rat to other furry objects, the same principle holds true if you were,
like, attacked by your neighbours mean parrot and subsequently fear all birds.
But then the anxiety is solidified through
reinforcement, every time you avoid or escape a feared situations, a pair of fuzzy slippers
or a robin on the street, you ease your anxiety, which might make you feel better temporarily,
but it actually reinforces your phobic behavior, making it stronger. Cognition also influences our anxiety, whether
we interpret a strange noise outside as a hungry bear, or a robber, or merely the wind,
determines if we roll-over and keep snoring, or freak out and run for a kitchen knife. And we might also acquire anxiety from other
people through observational learning. A parent who’s terrified of water may end
up instilling that fear in their child by violently snatching them away from kiddie
pools or generally acting anxious around park fountains and duck ponds.
But there’re also equally important biological
perspectives. Natural selection, for instance, might explain why we seem to fear certain potentially
dangerous animals, like snakes, or why fears of heights or closed in spaces are relatively
common. It’s probably true that our more wary ancestors
who had the sense to stay away from cliff edges and hissing serpents were more likely
to live another day and pass along their genes, so this might explain why those fears can
persist, and why even people who live in places without poisonous snakes would still fear
snakes anyway.
And then you got the genetics and the brain
chemistry to consider. Research has shown for example that identical
twins, those eternal test subjects, are more likely to develop phobias even if they’re
raised apart. Some researchers have detected seventeen different
genes that seem to be expressed with various anxiety disorders. So it may be that some folks are just naturally
more anxious than others and they might pass on that quality to their kids. And of course individual brains have a lot
to say about how they process anxiety. Physiologically, people who experience panic
attacks, generalized anxiety, or obsessive compulsions show over-arousal in the areasof the brain that deal in impulse control and habitual behaviors. Now we don’t know whether these irregularities
cause the disorder or are caused by it, but again, it reinforces the truism that everything that
is psychological is simultaneously biological. And that holds true for many other psychological
disorders we’ll talk about in the coming weeks, many of which have names that you’ve also
heard being misused in the past.
Today you learned what defines an anxiety
disorder, as well as the symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder,
panic disorder and phobias. You also learned about the two main perspectives
on the origins of anxiety disorders, the learning perspective and the biological perspective
and hopefully you learned not to use “OCD” as a punch line from now on. Thanks for watching, especially to all of
our Subbable subscribers who make Crash Course available to them and also to everyone else. To find out how you can become a supporter
just go to subbable.com/crashcourse. This episode was written by Kathleen Yale,
edited by Blake de Pastino, and our consultant is Dr.
Ranjit Bhagwat. Our director and editor is Nicholas Jenkins,
the script supervisor is Michael Aranda who is also our sound designer and the graphics
team is Thought Cafe..
– Hey guys, welcome to Yoga with Adriene. I'm Adriene, and today we
have a sequence for anxiety. So this practice is awesome for when you're feeling stressed out, or maybe you're feeling a little anxious, maybe a little panic attacky, or you just need to
move from the darkness, into the light. Hop on the mat and let's get started.
Alrighty, let's begin with
a nice, comfortable seat. Sit up nice and tall. And arrive here now. You've started the video, you're here, the hard part is over. Let's begin with the breath. Inhale. As you breathe in, draw the
shoulders up to the ears. As you breathe out,
draw the shoulders down away from the ears. Good. As you breathe in, squeeze and lift. As you breathe out, drop, create space. Couple more times. Inhale, find what feels good here. And exhale, create space. One more time. Inhale, squeeze to the max. And exhale, create space. Awesome, take your right ear
over your right shoulder, breathe, ground down through the elbows. Lift it back to center,
and to the other side. Left ear over left shoulder. Draw down through the elbows. Great, bringing it back to center. And we're gonna come into
a little moodra here as we prepare for alternate
nostril breathing. So this is my number one,
if you don't have time for the whole video, at least have time for this Pranayama technique,
which I really do think is like a magic elixir.
For when I'm feeling anxious, if you ever feel like you are in kind of a panic attack
moment, or anything like that, or you just need to
de-stress, balance out. This is the one for you, my friends. So, we're gonna take the
kind of hang loose sign here, it's kind of like this, and
we're just gonna bring it to the ring finger and the thumb. See, bring the two peace fingers in. Or, if that's difficult
for you, you can also do your middle finger and your thumb. So, you have your thumb,
and an extra finger here. And we have a whole video on
alternate nostril breathing, so if you're new to this and you want to go ahead and learn the technique first, you can pause it and click on that.
Open it up in another window,
and it's really lovely. Um, but to honor your time, we're just gonna hop right in so you can practice this regularly. So, thumb's gonna come
to the right nostril. Sit up nice and tall and breathe in through the left nostril. Keep the shoulders relaxed,
as you pause at the top, we switch, covering the left nostril, breathing out through the right nostril. Inhale in through the right nostril. Always holding, pausing
at the top to switch. Exhale out through the left nostril. Inhale in. Alternating at the top, exhale. Inhale. And alternating at the top, exhale. Keep it going. Nice and easy, smooth breaths. Again, alternating at the top. After a little bit of experiment, you find a rhythm that works good for you. A hand moodra that works good for you. And even it out here, really come in.
And gently release both hands down. Take a deep breath in
through both nostrils. And out through both nostrils. Slowly open the eyes. Amazing, and notice how you feel. Great. From here we're gonna
move on to all fours, but take this sense, whatever
the breath did to you, maybe nothing, but just take one thing and add it on the rights, we're
staying present in the moment, but we're kind of allowing
ourself to change the course of things, right? Trying to let go of the stress. The anxiety in the body. That breath's so lovely
for the nervous system, so keep it soft and easy as
you come to all fours here, my sweet friends.
Be kind to yourself. And we'll move into a little Cat-Cow. Should feel awesome. We've already connected the brain. And the breath. And the alternate nostril
breathing, Nadi Shodhana. It's a purifying breath. So keep nice, long
smooth deep breaths here, as you now begin to integrate the spine, which is also connected to the brain. So when the brain is a mess, it is so beneficial to do spinal work. Even something as simple
and delicious as Cat-Cow. Awesome, from here, I'm
gonna curl the toes under, walk the palms slightly forward. Nice and easy, inhale in, on an exhale, lift the hips Downward-Facing Dog. So connect to your strength here, but keep a softness.
Press into the palms,
take care of the wrists, bend the knees. Inhale in. Exhale lowering back down. Awesome. Press into the tops of the feet, walk the wrists back
underneath the shoulders. Then inhale, keep the right
palm where it is here, and we're gonna open
the left fingertips out. So just go as far as you
can before you feel… a pinch in the back body. Opening, inhale. Exhale, left palm down,
right fingertips reach up, so it might not be all
the way here is what I'm trying to say, it might
just be here, even here, as you inhale. Open up through the chest. Exhale. Again, to the left, inhale,
press away from your yoga mat. Exhale, press into the tops of the feet. Inhale. And exhale. And one more time. Long in the neck. Synchronizing with the breath. Super awesome.
All right. Walk the knees together,
take a Child's Pose here, go ahead and keep the
fingertips reaching out long those, stretching to the side body. Knees are together though, and we bow the forehead. Rest your heart. Slowly we're gonna walk
the palms over towards the right, excuse me,
left edge of your mat. And the right hand's gonna come over to kiss the left hand. So maybe they come one
on top of each other. Breathe into the right
shoulder, the right side body. Pull back gently with
the right hip crease, and breathe deeply. And now through center. And to the right, right palm
to the right edge of your mat. Left palm comes and hops
on top of the right, and we breathe here,
forehead grounding down, and reaching down. Stick with your breath my friends, I know the mind is powerful,
but so is your breath. Come back to center. Inhale, lifts you up. Exhale, curl the toes
under, Downward-Facing Dog. Okay, time for a cleanser. We need to inhale in through the nose. Exhale out through the mouth. Inhale in through the nose.
Exhale out through the mouth. One more, don't be shy. Beauty of home practice. Lion's Breath. Great, drop the left heel, lift the right leg up high, inhale. Exhale, step it up into a nice Low Lunge. Prepping for Warrior 2. Take your time getting there. We'll pivot on the back foot. Keep the front knee bent. When you're ready, rise up strong. Find strong footing here
today, super important that you ground through all
four corners of the feet. Press into the ninth
edge of that back foot, and charge the left of your thigh. Reach the right fingertips, really reach. Left fingertips back, really reach. Really deep here. Send energy out in all directions. Left to right, down to the Earth, and lift and lengthen
up through the crown.
Big breath in here. Big breath out, draw your shoulders down. Pull the pinkies back. Great, and keep the front
knee bent here for now, as you reach the right fingertips forward. Up and back, Peaceful Warrior here. Keep the front knee bent. Now hug the low ribs in. Just a hair, sorry, had an itch, and then we're gonna inhale. Straighten leg, front leg. Exhale, bend. Inhale, reach. Exhale, bend. One more, inhale reach. Exhale, bend. This time, continue the
journey all the way down, extended side angle. Right fingertips to the Earth. Left fingertips towards the sky. Can also be here on the top of the thigh. Breathe deep, inhale in. Long exhale out. Inhale. And exhale. Stick with your breath. One more time, inhale in. And exhale, bringing the
left fingertips down. We'll pivot back to our Lunge. Clamp the palm, step it back to Plank, you can move through a Vinyasa here, if you like, or send it
straight to Downward-Facing Dog. Meld your heart back.
Send your hips up high. Press into the palms, especially
the index finger and thumb. And we'll drop the right
heel down and inhale, lift the left leg up. Exhale, step it up into your Lunge. Warrior 2. So take a second getting there. All right, it's really
about the sensation today. And about the journey. And so take your time as you arrive. Your strong, grounded,beautiful Warrior 2. So a little work on the feet. Goes a long way. Then connect to the energetic body. Tailbone down. Front body lifts. Reach both directions. Up, ground down. Big breath in. So good for the body here,
full body experience. Energy radiating. Then keep the front knee bent my friends, best you can. And send the left fingertips
forward, up, and back. As you can see, my right
hand's coming around, it can stay in the small of the back here, or reach around to the top
of the left hip crease. Keep the front knee bent as you inhale. And exhale. Now here we go, inhale,
straightening through the front leg. Inhale, extend energy out
through the left fingertips.
Exhale. Sink deep. Stay strong in your back leg. Inhale, extend, And exhale, sink deep. Ooh, nice, you got it. Inhale one last time. And exhale, continue this journey, meld it all the way down into your extended side angle. Lean back everyone. Remember, we can always be here. Big breaths. Strong connection to the Earth. One more breath here, you got it. Then slowly, right fingertips
float down to meet the left.
We come back to our Lunge. We plant the palms. Again, you can move
through a Vinyasa here, or you can send it straight
to Downward-Facing Dog. And Down Dog, back to
that cleansing breath. Take a big inhale, in
through the nostrils. And exhale out through the mouth. Great, drop the left heel,
lift the right leg up high. This time, come to Warrior
1, nice and strong. Reach the fingertips up high, press into the outer
edge of the back foot. Then inhale and look up. Exhale,rain your fingertips down. Stay strong in your front leg. Hug energy into the
mid-line here for stability. And step back a little bit here, so, draw the knuckles down and away, and as you inhale in, find that lift in the heart extension through the crown.
As you exhale, lift your left heel up. Stay soft and bent in the front knee. And we're gonna play
with a little Warrior 3. So you might just come to
here, big toe on the Earth. Keep your focus out in
front, neck nice and long. Inhale in, and exhale, maybe you begin to lift through the left inner thigh. Maybe you come to here right away. Or maybe again, you're growing this, and so we keep big toe on the Earth. Stay connected. Ah, the mind begins to
clear, we begin to focus on the sensations of the
body as you lift through the left air and thigh.
You can stay here. You can release with
control to Airplane Arms. Or maybe you take the
fingertips all the way forward. Wherever you are, full body
experience, breathe deep. And then slowly make your
way back to Warrior 1. Inhale and smile. Exhale. Let it go. Back to the Lunge. Optional Vinyasa here,
take it or leave it. Into Downward-Facing Dog. Beautiful. Drop the right heel, lift
the left leg up high. Inhale. Exhale, stepping through. Find Warrior 1. Take your time. Strong legs. When you're ready, reach
the fingertips up high. Grab em down through the shoulders. Connect to the sensations in the body and today, stay present. Inhale in. Exhale, rain it down. Interlace. This time you'll be opposite them on top, so the one that feels kind of weird. And knuckles are all down and away as we open the heart. Welcome that heat. That aliveness that's starting to maybe glisten on your
forehead or your lip. Stay strong and grounded
to the Earth, you got this. Inhale, look up. On an exhale, begin to slowly stay bent in the front leg, lift on
to the right big toe.
Again, maybe this is your pose today. Yes. Working on balance, stability, I'm here, I love myself, I've got this. And maybe we take it a step further by softening through the back knee. And beginning to lift up. Maybe even further. Maybe even further. Lifting up through the right inner thigh, if you are lifted, finding
extension through the crown. Wherever you are, focus on your breath, the sensations in your body. Clear your mind of any stress. Of any anxiety, any worry. Focus on connecting to
your strength right here. Right now. So even if you fall, you come back. Come back to the practice,
come back to the mid line.
Maybe you release the
fingertips with control. So resist the slingshot effect. And find Airplane Arms. And maybe reach it forward. Nice, strong breaths. Everyone, wherever you
are, be there fully. With your breath. Then slowly take your
practice back to Warrior 1. Inhale, look up. Exhale, shake it off. Take it all the way back down. Last chance for a Vinyasa,
feel free to take it, or leave it. Moving through a Heart
Opener, if it feels good. And then we'll all make our way to Extended Child's Pose. Bring the big toes together,
meld the heart back. Bring the palms together. And then up and over the head. Gently crawl the elbows forward a hair. Stretch through the side
body and the shoulder. Take a deep breath in. And exhale, let everything go. Surrender here, priminal. Bring it into the back body. Close your eyes. Just take a second to
bow to the big picture. To surrender to that which
is out of your control. And to connect to a little sense of peace and love within. Slowly we'll drop the
fingertips back to the mat.
Plant the palms in nice and easy rise up. Walk the knees into center. Carefully cross the ankles. And use your fingertips
to help guide yourself all the way back to a seat. And we'll extend the legs out long, heels in line with the hips. If you're a little bit
tight in the hips and the lower body, we can
maybe lift the hip up on a blanket or block here
if that feels good. And then we'll inhale,
reach towards the sky, ground down through
the tops of the thighs. And then exhale, reaching forward. So this will look a little
different for everyone, it might be here for you. Keeping the neck and
the spine nice and long. It might be here. It might be here. So find your Forward Fold. Again, very helpful to lift the hips up a little bit here. Eventually, you find a sense
of surrender here again, rounding through the
spine, eventually the neck, stretching nicely.
Yummy here's, you bow the head. And bend the knees as
generous as you need to here, no need to kind of hit this
perfect little yoga shape today, or any day for that matter, but uh, find what feels good. Find the layer of breath. And then slowly we'll release. And come to lie flat on the back. When you arrive, go ahead and
hug the knees into the chest. And then release the
left foot to the ground, and the right leg up high. Cross the right ankle over the left. Interlace the fingertips behind
the back of the left thigh, and then bring your left foot
onto an imaginary wall here, so press up against the wall, flex. Now we'll begin to squeeze and pull. Breathing deep here in a little
reclined One Legged Pigeon. Neck is nice and long,
so your chin is lifted, see we can tuck it in a little bit. Breathing deep here. Hmmmm. Great, then send the left leg up high, just a little hamstring
bonus here, one more breath. And then nice and easy,
with control, right? So again, resist the slingshot effect.
With control send the
left, uh, right leg up to meet the left. And I'm gonna reach
both fingertips towards the outer edges and I'm gonna pulse here. Keep the shoulders relaxed. Palms facing each other. Tailbone scooping up towards the sky. Oh my God, creaky old floor! Oh my God, we have a creaky floor here. Yay, everything's in alignment. See, sometimes when you move, it just takes a while, right? Take it to the left, pulse. Creaky old floor. Let's bring all the YWA members who've been with me for a while. And to the right, here we go.
Miss that creaky old floor. But we have one here. Oh my gosh. And then back to center. Five, four, three, two, and release. Yay. You never know when you're
gonna make new discoveries. Right foot to the
ground, left leg up high. Crossing the left, (laughs) left ankle over the right. Interlace. Who'd have thought a creaky floor could bring so much joy to someone. Okay. Shin parallel to the ceiling. Flex your right foot. So chances are you know this shape, right, but the feet just kind of
have to hang dead-like. So keep a little aliveness
here, and then squeeze. Again, tuck your chin into your chest. And then creaky old floor aside, I need you to close your eyes and I would like to invite
you to feel supported.
Your spine supported here, the weight of your body supported by the Earth. Keep breathing. Then extend that right leg up. Great, slowly unravel. Left foot joining the right, this time we interlace
fingertips behind the head. Inhale in. Exhale, lift the head,
the neck, the shoulders. Press into the heels. Inhale lower. Exhale lift. Inhale lower. Exhale lift. Keep the elbows wide. Keep it going. Inhale lower. Exhale lift. Extend the thumbs, nice
little neck hammock here. And three more. Scooping the tailbone out. And last one, you got it.
And release. Supta Baddha Konasana. Ah, we lit the fire in
our belly after all. Shimmy the shoulders
underneath the heart here. Maybe give your little belly a pet. Ahh… Inhale, lots of love in. Exhale, close your eyes. Begin to allow your breath to return back to a natural rhythm here. And then when you're ready,
we'll peel the arms out wide. And slide the legs out long. Allow your body to grow heavy, even if you don't have
time for a long Halasana. Take a second here to let
the body settle and rest. To allow the nutrients of
your practice to seep in, to settle in. Then notice how you feel. Then slowly draw the palms together, bring them to your third eye. And we seal the deal by saying Namaste, which is honoring the best and most beautiful version of ourself. Seeing that, honoring that in one's self. And then also in others. Take good care, my friends. Choose the light. Let it go. Namaste. (soothing music).
Hey everybody! Today we're gonna be talking about the five myths of panic attacks. So let's get into them. *intro music* Now the first myth is that they're caused by stress and anxiety. If you yourself have ever suffered with a panic attack you know that they come out of nowhere we don't even know what necessarily triggers us, something may not even trigger us. It's not necessarily something that environmental or something that's occurring right now. Panic attacks honestly happen because our system gets overwhelmed and overloaded and sends us into a fight or flight response, AKA, a panic! I also don't like this myth because it implies that we have control over it like we can stop our panic attacks if we just change our environment and the truth is the panic attacks will happen in a wide variety of places for a wide variety of reasons those of which we aren't even privy too.
We don't even know why they happen. And the second myth is that they're going to make us go crazy. Panic attacks, if they happen for too long we're just gonna go insane. I've heard a lot of my clients say this, that it feels like they're losing their mind and they wonder if it can cause other mental illnesses to occur and the truth is the panic attacks usually happen because we have some underlying mental illness, whether it be another anxiety disorder or depressive disorder, any kind of mood disorder can be a lot of different components that can lead us to having panic attacks and being more predisposed for panic.
The truth is that panic attacks in no way affect the functioning of our brain as a whole in the hormones, like dopamine, norepinephrine or any kind of neurotransmitter that could cause another mental illness or psychosis or quote, unquote, make us go crazy. The third myth about panic attacks is that having a severe one is going to cause us to go into cardiac arrest. I've heard from a lot of my clients that because a racing heart is one of the symptoms that they experience most with panic attacks, or even the build-up to a panic attack, they'll start feeling their heart race and they worry that if they're in a really extreme or intense panic attack for a sustained period of time, let's say for an hour, that they're going to go into cardiac arrest and this is going to be how they're going to die and it sends them into panic even more quickly and keeps them there longer.
But the truth is and this is something important to kind of note and to tell yourself, maybe when you're, you feel those symptoms happening is that our heart is extremely strong it can beat at over 200 beats per minute for days, if not weeks especially if we're young, it can be four weeks at that rate without sustaining any damage. I just want to take a second to let that sink in. We can essentially be in panic for a really really long period of time without our heart ever being hurt or even potentially considering it going into cardiac arrest or having any kind of malfunction.
Therefore on average, panic attacks last from three to ten minutes so a three to ten minute panic attack is not in any way going to harm your heart or cause a heart attack. The fourth myth is that they're used as a way to get out of something we just don't want to do. Uh, if we hear that one more time. Am I right? For those of you who don't understand what a panic attack is or what can cause a panic attack, like I stated earlier, they come out of nowhere. They are not triggered by our environment, it's not due to an over reaction by up if usually a result of another underlying mental illness and these feel like they come out of nowhere, happen quickly and can stay and they're extremely uncomfortable, so if you found yourself having these attacks anytime you went into the grocery store, then you would start to not want to go to the grocery store or whenever you're in a crowded place, like I've had a lot of clients are like, "If I'm ever in a busy thing like a club or a concert or even like a really busy day at the mall," they've had panic attacks, we don't really know why but they're then attaching busyness and a lot of people with panic attacks therefore if someone's going to call you, if a friends going to ask you to go out to a party, and you think it's going to be a small group you're like sure, then later you find out there's going to be like 50 people there, you're like I'm gonna have to say no.
But we need to understand that panic attacks and panic disorder is a real diagnosable mental illness and because we don't know what triggers them and they come out of nowhere we fear the next one may be just around the corner. So of course we're going to limit the amount of things that we do until we can get them more under control. And the fifth and final myth about panic attacks is that there is nothing that we can do to treat them. Meeh. That's wrong, there are a lot of things we can do to treat them. Yay! Number one, and something that I've been reading because if any of you follow me or have been on the live streams or follow me on snapchat or Instagram, I have been working very hard at your anxiety workbook and I'm super excited for it to come out, but the thing that I learned through all the research I've been doing, is that progressive relaxation, you know like clench your feet, relax your feet, clench your calves, relax your calves, that type of exercise, doing that 20 to 30 minutes a day can calm our system down to such an amount that those who struggle with panic disorder may rarely, if never again, if they continue to do the progressive relaxation each day, they may never have the symptoms again.
They're still doing more studies on it but progressive relaxation is, surprising to me, but it's so amazing and been so helpful and beneficial. And the other is that CBT, so cognitive behavioral therapy, is also helpful with panic disorder and those of us who struggle with panic attacks because a lot of times we build up the panic and our system's fight-or-flight response by worrying about all of those things like it's going to cause a heart attack, I'm going to be super embarrassed, I'm going to go crazy, I may fall over or faint, all those worries and kind of falsely held beliefs that we have, CBT can really help us challenge those.
Also medications have been shown to be extremely beneficial SSRIs, SNRIs, and benzodiazepine have been shown to be extremely helpful for those of us who struggle with panic disorder and I know that not all of you are interested in taking medication this is another option that's available and if you're out there and you're struggling with panic attacks and you feel like they're happening with more frequency, it's controlling the way you live your life please reach out, please talk to someone. There are different professionals and a ton of help available, we just have to ask for it and we just have to reach out and I know it's scary to do the first reach out, but know that we're used to managing it we can handle it. We are kind, calm, wonderful people and maybe bring an extra supportive person with you to that first appointment or maybe they make the call and set up the appointment for you.
Find ways, use your resources to get the support and help that you need. Please share this video, I think a lot of people talk poorly about panic attacks or don't understand and I also put some in here, if you didn't notice for those of us who struggle and the myths that we tell ourselves about panic attack because I think both are really important to note, and leave in the comments what are some myths that you've heard. What is the way that you talk back to that, so that we have as a community are raising the stigma associated with mental health. I love you all and I will see you next time. Bye!.
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