Season 8 Episode 2: Anxiety with The Anxiety MD, Dr. Russ Kennedy

ANXIETY. We all have it, to one extent or another. But do you know what it really is? Instead of coping with it, what if you could heal your anxiety? Here’s a hint – it won’t happen through busyness or overthinking. In this episode of “Coaching and a Cup of Tea with Mummabear,” physician, neuroscientist and the author of “Anxiety RX,” Dr. Russell Kennedy joins Master Certified Coach Melissa Wiggins to talk about why anxiety is a feeling problem, and what that means for our bodies and our lives. Grab a cuppa and listen in.

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Melissa Wiggins  00:39

Hello lassies and lads, welcome to Coaching and a Cup of tea with Mummabear. I have a very special guest here today who actually did a very, very good Scottish accent. And maybe he will do it for us. Dr. Russ Kennedy, welcome to my podcast.

Dr Russ Kennedy  00:56

Oh, it's nice to be here. And at some point in the podcast, I'll break into my scar. Right now, I'm currently Canadian. So we'll just stick with that for now.

Melissa Wiggins  01:05

All right, we got it. So I wanted to have you on the podcast because I read your incredible book anxiety, our aid anxiety prescription. I'm just fascinated by all of your work. And I just really wanted for the audience to hear about the way you're trying to change the way people look at anxiety, because that's what this book is really doing.

Dr Russ Kennedy  01:30

Yeah. Yeah, it's really about, you know, so much of anxiety therapy involves changing the thoughts of your mind, right? And what if the thoughts of your mind are the problem? What if they're just the symptom? So you know, like you if you have, if you have a viral infection, you have a fever, the fever isn't the problem. It's the viral infection, right? So, so what happens, I believe in anxiety is we get these old traumas from typically from childhood, but they can be inherited, you know, there's a bunch of ways that we get trauma into our system. And that trauma sort of reverberates that trauma energy reverberates inside of our body. 

Find the FULL Transcript Here: Season 8 Episode 2: Anxiety with the Anxiety MD, Dr. Russ Kennedy

Transcript

Melissa Wiggins  00:39

Hello lassies and lads, welcome to Coaching and a Cup of tea with Mummabear. I have a very special guest here today who actually did a very, very good Scottish accent. And maybe he will do it for us. Dr. Russ Kennedy, welcome to my podcast.

Dr Russ Kennedy  00:56

Oh, it's nice to be here. And at some point in the podcast, I'll break into my scar. Right now, I'm currently Canadian. So we'll just stick with that for now. 

Melissa Wiggins  01:05

All right, we got it. So I wanted to have you on the podcast because I read your incredible book anxiety, our aid anxiety prescription. I'm just fascinated by all of your work. And I just really wanted for the audience to hear about the way you're trying to change the way people look at anxiety, because that's what this book is really doing.

Dr Russ Kennedy  01:30

Yeah. Yeah, it's really about, you know, so much of anxiety therapy involves changing the thoughts of your mind, right? And what if the thoughts of your mind are the problem? What if they're just the symptom? So you know, like you if you have, if you have a viral infection, you have a fever, the fever isn't the problem. It's the viral infection, right? So, so what happens, I believe in anxiety is we get these old traumas from typically from childhood, but they can be inherited, you know, there's a bunch of ways that we get trauma into our system. And that trauma sort of reverberates that trauma energy reverberates inside of our body. And our mind, which is just a compulsive meaning making makes sense machine takes that energy, that negative energy and makes negative thoughts about that energy and then creates more negative energy when we believe the negative thoughts. So we get caught in this alarm anxiety cycle. And we need to fix the alarm in the body, the old trauma as opposed to trying to fix the thoughts because you're, you're never going to fix you're never going to fix a problem if you try and fix the effect of the problem rather than the underlying cause.

Melissa Wiggins  02:35

And it sounds like so simple when you see all of that, but it really is not. I have not read this or thought about it this way before this book. And I have my son is he's now nine but he at five was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder. When I was giving birth to my twins, which he is one of them, my other son was diagnosed with stage four cancer so I wasn't able to be with him as a mother in the way that you typically would. And so this anxiety came over him and I'm trying to help my son who's sick with cancer and this other son of nine is wanting to be with me all the time. And the separation was just brutal for him. And by age five, it was extremely severe and so yeah, as a mother and as a you know, former lawyer who works in words and no mindset coach, I thought Dr. Rush just filled transparency, that I could talk him out of these things, that I can somehow use my master certifications, right? My word mastering to sort of, you know, motivate him out of and you know, help thought reset him. And just none of it worked. And, you know, you talk about that in the book with all the different things you tried for your anxiety, right? It's like, you tried everything, like pretty much like and this that you discuss in the book, but I hope that we'll be able to discuss here is it's just it's going to change the game if we can just get everybody in the world to read it. Like finding the alarm and the body not trying to fix the body with words.

Dr Russ Kennedy  04:37

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I often say in the book and and otherwise you can't think your way out of a feeling problem, right? It's a feeling issue. Anxiety is a feeling situation, but instead because the thoughts are so obvious to us, because most of our communication with ourselves and with other people is a language is in words. So we assume that language and words can fix every anything when it can't win actually, anxiety if you really look at it as a problem too much thinking, so why are we thinking that we can fix a feeling problem that involves overthinking with more thinking, like, it just doesn't work, right. And the funny thing is, in the short term, you can convince yourself that things are okay or whatever, but that that alarm in your system is still there. So unless you actually address the alarm in your system, which I believe is the trauma from your younger self, unless you believe, unless you address and resolve that energy, that alarm energy, you're always gonna be playing ping pong with your thoughts, like, you're never going to fix things by just trying to fix your thoughts. It's too much work.

Melissa Wiggins  05:43

I remember when Aaron would be separated from me, or when I was trying to send him to school and, you know, has feel better, like he could not take control of himself. It was lately taking over his body. And, you know, again, trying to use words to come first. So I love in the, it was either in the book or one of the podcast, maybe it was the Mel Robbins podcast where you talked about that kind of love sandwich, where you sort of like put your hand on either side and, like, soothe. So I've been doing that. 

Dr Russ Kennedy  06:16

Good. How's it going?

Melissa Wiggins  06:18

It's going better. And this thing like I didn't realize before this, like how much that was, it's all sort of meat sayings, right? Like you're pooling and pulling away. I'm leaving him is reminding him of that trauma when he just couldn't be with his mom when he was little. Yeah. Good. I was in the hospital. Like it just multiple.

Dr Russ Kennedy  06:41

Yeah. And bridging is really important to like, when you when you leave him, you're always bridging the next connection. What's his name?

Melissa Wiggins  06:49

Arran, like the Isle of Arran 

Dr Russ Kennedy 06:52

Okay. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. That's where my mother was born. Actually. 

Melissa Wiggins  06:58

Yeah, that's his name. 

Dr Russ Kennedy 06:58

Yeah. So so it is really important to say, Arran, you know, as you know, have a good day at school, I'm really looking forward to picking you up right here at 330. We're gonna go to the park. And then when we go home, tonight, we're gonna have spaghetti for dinner or whatever it is, like you're always bridging the next connection. You never saying, Okay, have a good day at school, we'll see you later, you're always letting him know that there's another connection just on the horizon. So that's that it's called Bridging. It's very, very important for children.

Melissa Wiggins  07:28

That's beautiful. So I just had a women's retreat. And before that, everyone was saying, the podcast interview you did with Mel Robbins, everyone was saying this book before we went on retreat, because I love how some of this, you talk about the somatic exercises that your wife does, and how these play a big part with the body. So we actually weighed that laning. And during ziplining, one of the last days had a full on panic attack, like real and moment time. And I'm like, Okay, this is, this is like real scenario of me to get to use what's actually in the book. And so she starts having a panic, I think I have to go down, sorry, I think you have to get me down. And she's asked me the guy, they're like, I need you to tell me about safety. And I said exactly what you said, which is like your thinking is not going to fix this feeling problem. Like let's find your alarm, she starts putting her hand on her chase telling herself, she's safe. And she worked through the whole thing. And it did two hours of ziplining. And there was nothing, Dr. Kennedy that we could have saved to heart and that moment that it would have gone hard to I'm saying there was just no worse.

Dr Russ Kennedy  08:45

Yeah. Yeah. Because basically, yeah, what happens when you get into survival mode like that is that you secrete all sorts of epinephrine, adrenaline and cortisol into your system, which basically paralyzes the rational part of your mind, right? The rational part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, the part that's up here, is offline. So no matter how good your argument is, the part of your brand who would understand words is really not online, so it's not going to understand it anyway. So what you have to do is go to feeling first, and when you can put your hand on your chest when you can take some breaths when you can get into feeling then the blood flow will return to your rational mind. And then you can sort of start talking more rationally to people. But there's no point in saying you know, calm down to someone who's who's in a panic attack because their brain literally doesn't it understands the words It just can't implement them because the part of the brain that would do that is offline.

Melissa Wiggins  09:40

I love I love all everything that you've been putting on Instagram and explaining the little things like that's another one right? Then who's to say to people and these scenarios, right because I think that is just human nature like we do. We feel so uncomfortable, right? Like everyone was uncomfortable around her and they're like How do we fix that? Like, how do we fix that we fix it with words, right? And so everyone was saying things to her, they're just kinda like move them out of the way and sort of try to do something more somatic. And it was like a very, it was just like, we were like, we have to tell Dr. Kennedy, we used to end. And she was very grateful.

10:20

And it's the same thing with Arran., It's the same thing with Arran, Melissa, it's the same thing. It's feeling, you know.The other thing you can use with him was essential oil. Like if there's an oil, he likes the smell of like camamile, or lavender or something like that, that'll bring him into his body touch will bring him into his body. It's really about bringing him into sensation of the present moment, you know, so get him to focus on his breath. You know, that kind of thing. Like it's really about sensation has very little to do at least in the early stages with thinking, you know, because like I like I said, anxiety is a problem with overthinking. So don't throw more words in there, because you're just gonna make it worse.

Melissa Wiggins  10:58

Yeah, I think the way that I've used words has been helpful, not in real time. So not when he's having a panic attack, not when it's like, really like stressful in the moment, but just randomly, you know, driving to Publix, and talking to him and making him know, you know, Mom has this to Mom deals with these things, you know, sort of, instead of like, get on with the approach, which is a very Scottish approach and was growing up, you know, there's not going to be any tears when you keep that. And I mean, I didn't honestly cry until I was like, in my 30s. Like, you just don't. And so being raised that way and no sort of being like, Okay, I have to do something a little different. I, I love how you talked in one of your podcasts, interviews about appearance mismatch? And like, it's so interesting.

Dr Russ Kennedy  11:55

Yeah. Because I think that's what happens is that most often our kids, you know, we bond with our kids. But there are some cases. And I think I got this from the I can't remember exactly who I got the parental mismatch term from, I think it was Nicole, I think it was Nicole Lapera. And she talks about, you know, just sometimes you just don't match up with a parent, like, it's just your temperament, the way you look at the world, all that kind of thing. And I see that, as most devastating with a daughter and a mother, like mothers and daughters are really, you know, they're really close, like same sex parents really close fathers and sons, you see a lot of mismatch with them just because of the way males are in general. So it's a little more it's a little a little more insidious with men. But with women, if you if you're a girl, and you have a mismatch with your mother, it's very alarming. If you

Melissa Wiggins  12:46

had like the ability to have the biggest audience you've ever had in your life. And to explain what do you think would be the biggest thing that people could take away about anxiety and how to handle it?

Dr Russ Kennedy  13:00

Well, I'd say that anxiety is first a state of alarm in your body, it's not actually in your mind, you believe it's in your mind because that you have a worry, and then immediately your body feels bad. So your, your rational brain says, Oh, it must have been the worry. But what I would say is what created the worry in the first place. It was a state of alarm in your body. So if you can learn how to find that alarm, and I talked about that in the book, and I'm writing a masterclass right now about exactly that thing, finding the alarm, and just sitting with the alarm, even though it's uncomfortable, because I believe that alarm is a part of your younger self that got trapped in that old trauma. So if you can, if you can pay attention to that alarm, your younger self in your body, as opposed to going up into your head. But it's very seductive, because when we're children, and we have trauma, it's a lot easier for us to go up and escape into our heads with rumination and excessive worry than it is to stay with that feeling of alarm in our system. So we kind of train ourselves like Pavlov's dog, in a way to when we feel this alarm, the way we relieve it is to worry and worry does actually give us a sense of relief on some level quite quickly because it it fires up dopamine. And that means the limbic dopamine system, it makes something that doesn't make sense. Make sense again, which is what our brain loves, especially if you have a history of trauma. And uncertainty for you is just the worst thing in the world. So it's just getting into that feeling of alarm and being able to stay with it. And if you can't stay with it, like find a therapist that can help you stay with it because the only way you're going to heal that anxiety is to learn how to tolerate the alarm and Bessel Vander Kolk. In his book The Body Keeps the Score says we're not teaching people how to get rid of their anxiety. We're teaching you how to acclimatized to the sensation of alarm alarm is my term. It's not his, but we're climatized to the alarm in your body so that you you get used to it on some level. So that you don't always have to shoot up into your head as an escape, you can actually sit there and handle the discomfort of the alarm, rather than automatically and compulsively going up into your head. And worrying, because I leave it on this is that if you have an issue of the alarm in your body, and every time you feel that alarm, you go into your head, you never actually metabolize that alarm, you never actually go into a place where you can actually change it. Because every time you open its door, you run away at the thought. So you never actually get into the alarm and getting into the alarm is how you heal it. So if you just retreat into your head all the time, you're never going to heal the alarm and the anxiety is going to be with you forever.

Melissa Wiggins  15:39

Oh, wow.

Dr Russ Kennedy  15:41

Yeah, I can get going.

Melissa Wiggins  15:43

I mean, it's I mean, it will metabolize it.

Dr Russ Kennedy  15:48

Well, you have to, you have to go in there. And you have to change the step and the dance, right? Because if every time you feel this alarm, and you're not even most people aren't even aware that it's an alarm issue, right, they just think it's the thoughts of their mind. So of every once you start seeing that it's actually this state of alarm in your body, and you can find it for me, it's in my solar plexus. For some people, it's in their heart area. Other people, it's in their gut, some people it's across their shoulders, some people it's in their throat, once you find that alarm, then you can actually do something about it, put your hand over it, breathe into it, like feel the alarm, even though it hurts, then you can start to change it. But if every time you feel this over impending doom, or whatever, however, anxiety shows up for you, if every single time you move into your head, you never actually changed that alarm, that underlying program that's running the whole show in the first place. So that's that's the main issue. If I if I told one tip for people, it's like, feel the alarm. And learn to teach yourself not to go into your thoughts not to go anywhere. It's easier said than done. But that's that's the way you heal.

Melissa Wiggins  16:52

So you are creating a masterclass about that. So I can like, there's gonna be a link I could get from you to put in the show notes and people can register I'm

Dr Russ Kennedy  17:01

writing it now. I originally wrote it and then I filmed it on my own because I have a little small little studio in my house, which I actually call my walk in closet. And and I wrote it I sent it out to a couple of people. I said, it's just too big. Is there too much information? And they said, Yeah, it's too big. So what I'm doing now is I'm chopping it up into kind of digestible, like five to 12 minute segments. So it'll be like a masterclass, but it'll be kind of more like an online course format, because I tried to do it all in one go. Because what I love about this masterclass is is it trains your conscious mind. But it also trains your unconscious mind. And your unconscious mind is where all your anxiety programs are. So I actually started going in there and fixing the unconscious programs, rather than just showing you what to do. So people will say, well, it's repetitive. Well, it's repetitive for a reason. Because if I don't repeat this from different angles over and over, your ego will reject it. Because your ego doesn't want to get better your ego perceives that the anxiety, the hyper vigilance, the chronic worrying is keeping you safe. Right. So in this masterclass, what I'm doing is I'm teaching you how not to do that. So your ego is going to say, Well, if we don't worry, we're not safe. So why why is this guy showing us know how not to worry? So it's a bit of a catch 22. And it's one of the reasons why anxiety is so hard to treat, is because that ego comes in and says no worrying is what keeps us safe. You can't stop us from worrying,

Melissa Wiggins  18:37

Addicted to the chaos. addicted. They've kept going. 

Dr Russ Kennedy  18:40

Absolutely. If you have chaos was part of your childhood, you will unconsciously replicate that chaos in your adulthood. And I'll tell you that from firsthand. That's exactly what I did.

Melissa Wiggins  18:50

Yeah. And I think what is so interesting about what you're saying is you you with your massive intelligence, right, did it again, right? Like it's like, intellectually, you knew like, Hey, this is chaotic. And then you created the same thing. And it's like, no, well, you created it through your subconscious because that's where a lead.

Dr Russ Kennedy  19:14

Yeah, basically. And smart people are the anxious ones. Right? The better. Like I've heard, I can't remember the author, but basically, and I don't remember the exact way they said it, but it was like, anxiety is the price that we pay for our imagination. Right. So the fact that we can imagine these horrible things, you know, like animals don't do that. You know, animals don't you know, your dog doesn't go out and go geez, I I hope I don't run into Reggie the pit bull today. You know, I hope that doesn't happen last time. Last time, you gave me a real scare. You know, he's just like, let's go out. Let's go out there. He's not going. I hope Reggie isn't out there. So whereas we we do that And Eckhart Tolle has that in his book to a New Earth on page 139. He talks about the ducks and about two ducks in a pond, and how they'll have an altercation and then they'll flap their wings, they'll discharge the energy and they'll just sail away. Whereas if, if, if they were human beings, the Ducks would kind of be saying, as they as they walked away, they How dare he, like I own this place. Why would he even? why would why would he challenge me like that? I don't understand. And they would just ruminate on it for days to weeks, whereas the ducks just go. That's the end of that. Let's just leave that alone.

Melissa Wiggins  20:31

We have that sayiing, water off a duck's back. Yeah. a duck's back. Yep. So one of the things that you say is that the body never lies, but the main does, what do you mean by that?

Dr Russ Kennedy  20:45

Well, your mind will always try and make make up reasons for why you're feeling a certain way. Right. So if you're feeling sad, you know, or if you're feeling you know, alarmed in your system, your mind doesn't like having free floating emotion without a reason. So if you're feeling sad, your mind will say, Well, you're sad because your dad's dead, or you're sad because your dog is sick. Now, you may just be sad. And we may never know the reason. But the mind which is a compulsive meaning making makes sense machine, it wants, especially the left hemisphere, it wants to know the analytical left hemisphere wants a reason. So your mind will make up a reason. Even if it doesn't make sense. And because you made it up, you'll believe it. So but your body can't lie to you, your body is just telling you what's going on. Now your interpretation that your mind makes can be wrong. But your body the sensation of your body is never wrong. Like the sensation is always there for a reason. You can't you can't overcome the ties feeling like when you feel something, you can develop a reason for it. And but your reason is often wrong. But we can't really explain feeling like if you look at somebody who wins the Super Bowl or or you know, the birth of their first child, how do you how do you feel they can't explain it in words, you can't put that stuff in words. So it's a matter of like, how do you assess the emotion and just allow that emotion to be there, and not compulsively and relentlessly have to make a reason for it. Because that's what that's you know, because your mind will just take the first, the first option that you that you give it that explains the situation. And usually it's wrong.

Melissa Wiggins  22:33

So focus more on the body in order to what do you see you have to see it to heal it, there's a quote

Dr Russ Kennedy  22:40

You've got to feel it to heal it, you know, with some people, you know, that have had severe emotional, physical and sexual abuse, it's too much for them to feel it. Like it's too much, you can't do this on your own right. So those are the people I really suggest like find a therapist, particularly like a somatic therapist that can so slowly bring you through this healing. Because there's there's traumas that are just too much for us to heal on our own. And I'm all about self healing, and all that kind of thing. But there's some traumas that are just too much. We need someone else's nervous system there to help us regulate. You know, that's a lot. That's a lot of what my wife does. Cynthia, she, she's sort of she's a somatic trauma therapist. So she uses her nervous system, her calm, nervous system, to regulate other people as they go through their old traumas, as they recount their physical emotional sexual abuse, she's there to stabilize them. So it doesn't feel like the to them, it doesn't feel like they're going back into this nine year old who was physically assaulted, you know, it's like they are they're present with her. And in that you get a new framework on that, on that particular story and that feeling that you've told yourself, so you get a chance to do it differently, but you can't often with severe trauma, you can't do that for yourself, you need someone to help you.

Melissa Wiggins  23:58

What about, you know, the sort of average Mama Bear, I guess, like me, who has like the busy life and you know, the businesses and the podcast and, you know, lots of children and all the things and like, you know, there is a tendency to sort of get addicted to, like you said, you know, when you have that chaotic childhood, then you come into, you know, adulthood, and here I'm about to be 40 years old, and you know, life can be very chaotic. And isn't that funny that, you know, I have four small children and one's adopted and you know, it's like adding more things on and then you kind of wake up and you're like, oh, wait, burnout, exhaustion, like something's got a shift here. You know, that was me a couple years ago and moving through some of that, but that is a lot of my clients. A lot of my coaching clients are busy Mama Bear entrepreneurs who have a lot going on and they wake up Dr. Kennedy I anxious.

25:00

Yeah. And then they try and outrun their anxiety for the rest of the day by accomplishing things. Right, which works. Mel Robbins is like that. And I told her that on the podcast, I said, you know, you've spent a lifetime trying to outrun your anxiety. And it works for smart people for driven people. It works until it doesn't until we crash. So, so for you, Melissa, do you have did you have chaos in your childhood? Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. So it's one of those things that, you know, we unconsciously Freud called it the repetition compulsion, right. Like, whatever was normal for us in childhood, there is a sense of security, even if it's abusive, there is a sense of security in that familiarity. So unconsciously, you know, like, the, the iceberg is a great analogy, you know, the top ninth of the iceberg, you can see above the surface, those are your kind of, like your thoughts, and, but all the motivation for those thoughts is below the surface that you can't see, you know, so all the motivation to create that chaos. So externally on, you know, on the surface of your life, it looks like you got it all together, you're doing this, you're on the PTA or on the, you know, volleyball twice a week, you know, but you know, a lot of people like that are basically trying to outrun the old trauma in their system. And it works until it doesn't.

Melissa Wiggins  26:21

When my son Cannon was diagnosed with stage four cancer, like I said, I was pregnant with twins I had the days after he was diagnosed, and it was chaos for five years, three and a half years was traveling around the country, you know, trying to save his life. And then in the midst of that, I decided with my husband, well, I should start a nonprofit, and we should raise millions of dollars for pediatric cancer, which we did, and we still have the nonprofit. But then I started traveling all over the country and meeting with researchers all over the country. And then I burned to the ground. Like, literally and utterly three years ago, I like literally started to feel almost allergic to work. I couldn't I like physically couldn't even get on a plane to go do it anymore. Yeah.

Dr Russ Kennedy  27:10

So that's, you know, my colleague, Gabor Ma Tei talks about that when the body says no, you know, you you can be a people pleaser, you can be a go getter, all that kind of thing, but eventually, your body's gonna say no, like, it's just like, No, I'm not doing this anymore. Like, that's, that's it,

Melissa Wiggins  27:27

but it's that quick, like, parsable the body whispers and then a Yale's

Dr Russ Kennedy  27:31

Yeah, it's kind of like that, you know, and we do get, like, we show up with auto auto immune stuff, you know, show up, like, like low grade lupus and all that kind of thing. And we ignore that we just keep working, you know, and I think, because we are trained, you know, we're very Pavlovian, we're very, we're very trainable as human beings, especially when something releases pain. So there's some, there's a concept called negative reinforcement. In psychology, which people often think is like punishment, spanking is not negative reinforcement, is when you remove a painful stimulus, right. So so if something, say you're overworking and you're exhausted, and whatever, now, we removed work, that in a way, that's negative reinforcement, and we learn that, you know, work is not the be all and end all of our satisfaction, we can see sometimes for the first time, when work is gone. And this is when people get cancer, this when people get really sick, or when people get a horrendously sick child, you know, then we start to start seeing what's important in life, then we start seeing, like, where I have to stop trying to outrun this pain, right. So I have to start doing things differently. And I think that's really what it comes down to is learning that your body won't lie to you, you have to take care of it. And also, your body is your wounded younger self, it holds your wounded younger self. And you have to look after that body and look after that wounded child in you and find it in your body. Like I said, some people it's in their solar plexus, some people it's in their throat, some people it's in their shoulders, you've got to find it, and then really make a concerted effort to find that wounded child in you that thrives on chaos and give them the love and attention that they need now that they are in need yeah need now that they didn't get back then that's really how we heal. Is it

Melissa Wiggins  29:26

always love and attention like is that is that always what it is? When children have been raised but there is key off but there was love and attention and yeah, it was still is that more of the mismatch? Like how does that end up being sort of the same? Because I would say you know, I I main sort of started I drank I'm 13 years sober No, but I used alcohol or I nums and then it was kind of like more Mel Robbins where it was like achievement and doing and all of this Uh, so my kid gets cancer. So I'll start a foundation. So I'll you know, then I'll adopt a child and like, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Is that? Is that running away? Always about loving attention? Or is it about something else?

Dr Russ Kennedy  30:16

Well, all anxiety is separation anxiety, right? All anxiety. So. So basically, it's, but it's mostly separation from yourself. So it's really about reconnecting to yourself. Because usually, when when there's trauma in your childhood home, children tend to blame themselves. And there's this other saying that says, you know, if you abuse neglect or abandoned the child, the child doesn't stop loving the parent, they stop loving themselves. So a split starts to occur in a child of trauma, where are they so to start blaming themselves for the trauma, because you can't blame your parents, because your parents are the ones that are supposed to be looking after you. So the only thing, the only person that can be responsible for the trauma is you. So that's where the inner critic comes in. And then you start judging, abandoning, blaming and shaming yourself, and then that split creates this alarm in your system. And then that alarm creates all these negative thoughts, which, of course, feed the inner critic. So you get into this cycle that you don't get out of until you repair that split, and how you repair that split is to find that child in you that got separated from so long ago, and see them hear them and love them in a way that they didn't get back then because if they were seen heard and loved back then they wouldn't have split from themselves.

Melissa Wiggins  31:37

So a separation for himself.

Dr Russ Kennedy  31:40

Yeah, that's that's what I believe anxiety really is. And then it shows up as mind body disconnection to there's a whole bunch of ways, but really, it's a split inside yourself. That's what I talked about in the masterclass too. It's really about a split inside yourself that you have to resolve and, and all the money all the accomplishment, all that sort of stuff won't was it anesthetized? Is it a bit just like alcohol does, it numbs it, but it's still there. So, and the little analogy that I draw, and I say just about every podcast is like being in a rowboat, and there's a hole in the rowboat, and it's filling up with water, right, so. So now you can bail water, you can deal with your thoughts, and you can bail water out of that rowboat and lower the water level a little bit, which will make you feel a little better. But unless you go under, unless you patch the hole that's in the in the floor of the boat, water is always going to be coming in. So patching the hole on the bottom of the boat is dealing with the alarm, connecting with yourself at a very deep somatic body level and practicing and keeping doing because here's the thing, like I'm writing a lot a little bit here today. But here's the thing. So when we're disconnected from ourselves, we can't heal anything. So what do we do is we you know, take drugs or work harder or whatever, which just makes us further disconnected from ourselves. But it appears to work initially, you know, overwork, keeping your mind busy, whatever it appears to distract you from the pain. But unless you go back and you find that child who got you know, bullied, or lost their mom, or was separated from their mom, until you go back and find that child and reassure them and see them here that will love them and repair that split, that alarm is always going to be there. And the alarm is what feeds the anxiety, the anxiety isn't there just for no reason. It's the alarm that feeds the anxiety. If you heal the alarm, the anxiety just fades away. And that's exactly what happened with me. And it happens with most of the patients that follow my protocols. Now not saying you're going to be anxiety free, because anxiety is a part of like, you know, it's not like I'm going to cure your fear of you know, not having enough money to pay the rent at the end of the month. Like that's not going to happen. But what does happen when you heal is that you start seeing the alarm in your system for what it is. And you start directing your attention at that alarm, as opposed to getting sucked into the thoughts of your mind which are it's a never ending, never ending prophecy is going into your mind like it will never end.

Melissa Wiggins  34:09

I love the I love this story you told on one of the podcasts I heard where you said you would never like if a child was saying to you like me or she you know, like, whatever you would never just be like, Oh, get on with that. Like, like your pain. And honestly, that really spoke to me because I would never do that to my kids. Of course. Like we do that to silence ourselves to shut ourselves off because you know, like we gotta go, right?

Dr Russ Kennedy  34:38

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the story I usually tell is have a child if you're in a grocery store, and a lost child came up to you like in tears with their hands raised like pick me up. I'm feeling scared. You would pick them up. So why won't you do that for yourself? With the child in you? That's equally upset. That's got their hands up like, please like connected With me, why do you keep pushing them off to the side?

Melissa Wiggins  35:03

And yet we do, man. Yeah, we do.

Dr Russ Kennedy  35:05

Because we don't want it. Yeah, we don't want to deal with our own pain. I mean, the analogy is a little weaker in that because it's our own pain, right. So it's our own pain reaching up for us. So it's like, it's a lot easier to deal with someone else's pain, which is a lot of what therapists do is a lot of therapists, they became therapists because of their own pain, right? So it's easier to help somebody else with their pain than it is to actually go in and work on yours.

Melissa Wiggins  35:31

It's interesting, though, being an adult today, any more sort of conscious time, right, where we're starting to be aware, learn more, understand ourselves a little bit more, and also, at the same time, raise humans, and it's like, this sort of mix between, alright, Melissa, you got like generational trauma stuff, you gotta like, figure out real fast, and also, like, not put it on to your children, and then also help them through their stuff? Well, the

Dr Russ Kennedy  36:02

kids have it to Melissa, you know, the kids have it to African American populations, you know, Eastern European populations, you know, there was a lot of trauma there, that gets handed down to families and families learn similar coping strategies, a lot of it, you know, and in, in British families, it's just sweeping under the rug, you just, you ignore it, you know, stiff upper lip, just keep moving on, just keep moving forward, that kind of stuff. And, and it does work in the short term. And that's why we keep doing it. But in the long term, it's going to catch up with you like it's going to, it's, you're going to have a breakdown, you're going to lose your job, you're going to you know, have a sick child, there's something that's going to happen, that's going to break that coping strategy apart, you can no longer outrun your trauma. So then that's the other thing about human nature is people don't tend to do anything until things get really bad. Yeah. So it's like I try and train people, it's like, you know, your anxiety is a good thing. Because it's showing you that you need more attention to yourself, you don't want to have a heart attack at 58 years old, because you ignored this your whole life. Yeah. So it's really important to sort of understand that anxiety is just a sign that you need to be more connected to yourself. And I know sometimes as a medical doctor and a neuroscientist, that sounds so woowoo it sounds so inner child, you know, peace and love, and we should all get together and love each other. But it's really, that's what it comes down to. And something you were saying earlier on, or reminded me about, you know, is it is healing, just love it kind of is, you know, really, there is only love and fear. That's it, there's no there's nothing else, you know, love is appreciation, gratitude. Fear is, is jealousy, anger, angst, you know, so. So the really, we have this bias towards fear in our system. And I kind of look at it as a closed box. So the more fear you push in, the more love you push out. And the more love you push in, the more fear you push out. But as human beings from an evolutionary perspective, we are trained to fear because fear kept us alive. We have Stone Age brains in a digital world. So what happens is that we fear we just keep bringing in bringing in bringing in but we don't realize that as we bring in more fear, we push love out the other side of the box. And then fear takes over over the course of time. And the only way to heal from that is start pushing love back into the box, because that will push fear out the other side. But it's hard to do that if you spent your whole life basically working on fear.

Melissa Wiggins  38:29

What do you think the role of awareness as in all of this work, because you talk a lot about it in the book. And I also love like, I love the reason why there's the number of chapters in the back, just like fascinating. I know. But you talk a lot about awareness.

Dr Russ Kennedy  38:44

Sure. Yeah. Because that's, that's really the key. What we're trying to do is we're trying to use your conscious mind to change your unconscious programming. And unless we see it, we're destined to be it. We can't change it unless we see it. So becoming very adept at how does my alarm feel, you know, like, I've a thing in my masterclass where I talk about a patient of mine, Debbie. And Debbie was basically berated by her mother from the time she could remember. So when her mother said, I'm coming for a visit, of course, Debbie freaks out and says, I have that the House has to be perfect. I have to be perfect. You know, all this kind of thing. So it's like, where do you feel that in your body, you know, and that's what I work out with her is like, where did she end? She had it in her throat. It's like, okay, well, that's fine Little Debbie in your throat. Right? Because that's where she is. And we worked on that for quite a while. And then you know, she doesn't have a perfect relationship with her mother now, but she certainly understands where mothers coming from and when their mother phones, she can talk to her and she can she can be loving towards her, because she understand that she's taken care of this little girl who's freaked out so often now that she knows that that little girl doesn't have to freak out anymore. And the little girl at her knows that she doesn't have to freak out anymore. So it's that Have you heal from this kind of stuff?

Melissa Wiggins  40:01

Well, I'm super excited that you're doing the master class. And we'll be able to share any information you have about it in the show notes. And I just really appreciate your time you've given lots of time and I've written like so many notes to

Dr Russ Kennedy  40:17

know. Thanks for listening. Yes, I'm very grateful to you for having me on the show. I said that I would talk in a bit of a Scots accent for a while and I'll do that because I said I would. That's what I'm gonna do. So there Yeah. I guess that's what we'll call it today.

Melissa Wiggins  40:37

I love it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks, Melissa