Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real thanks. I'm your host, certified coach, Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to episode number nineteen, the Anti-Anxiety episode. You know what might give you anxiety? If you saw me right now because My husband is an incredible musician and it is my great blessing and fortune to be able to use his recording equipment to record this podcast.
If you've ever been like, oh, she sounds so good. How's it so good? It's because of that. Because he is a musical genius and sound genius and so I get to use all of his stuff and, you know, he uses it. After I go to bed ridiculously early at night, he comes in sometimes and records some music, takes his equipment back. And he said he's been hearing some echoes in the room when he recorded his his last couple songs. And so he came in this evening before I started recording this podcast, and he put this gigantic sound cancelling foam ball on the microphone. And I kid you not, almost as large as my head.
So I'm going to post a picture of me talking into this microphone to make you laugh, so there you go. I'm recording this tonight and then we'll be getting on a plane tomorrow to take my children to Maui to visit their family out there. My husband's family lives out there. So hoping to see some of my waley friends and spend some time with family, and I will hopefully bring back some hilarious stories, which I try to do from the places that I go just for you.
But today, we are talking about anxiety. Do you ever have that feeling? In the pit of your stomach, that type of dread that has you really convinced that you might have to run to the bathroom and throw up or maybe you feel it in your head like hot and fast like a swarm of bees is buzzing around inside your head between your ears or maybe it's more like this subtle ache. Like a distraction, like maybe it's a heart flutter.
I'm talking about anxiety. Feels a little bit different for all of us. Take a moment right now and just think, conjure up, what does anxiety feel like for you? If there was a metaphor like a swarm of bees or like this nauseous ickiness, this ball of it in this in the pettier stomach. If there was a color to it or a feeling to it, what is it like for you? It's a little different for everybody, but most people that I talk to these days feel some form of anxiety. Most days.
The number one thing that my clients bring to me in some way, shape, or form, whether they're calling at this or not, is anxiety. And we all, we think it's happening to us. We think it's not within our control, that it's just this part of life that we have to grid our teeth and accept. But there there are things that we can do about it.
And today's episode, is all about that. I'm going to share with you four ways that you can stop anxiety in its tracks. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, but the reason I wanted to make this episode is to just give you some actual tools that you can use in the moment. When that swarm of bees or that ball of egg or whatever it is for you, takes you over.
I was studying with Melissa Tiers, who's a New York hypnotist. She's quite fantastic. And she was talking about anxiety. And it made me think about this article that I read in Newsweek about habituated behavior. I'll go back to Melissa in just a moment, but I read in this article that forty three percent of what we do is habituated and that we dramatically over-assign our actions all day long to our sort of like conscious mind. We think we're making decisions throughout the day. We'll look back at what we did and didn't do.
And we're like, yeah, I decided to do that. But most of it or not most, but a lot of it is actually habit. We do things because we've done them many times before and because that's how we can get through our day. And anything that our brain does over and over again becomes a habit. We often think about habits. In terms of actions like waking up early or going to bed late or exercising or eating habits or driving habits or what have you.
But what I want to share with you today is the idea that anxiety and many of the other feelings that we have, but anxiety, our focus today, is habitual. It's a habit. Melissa Tiers who was teaching about neuroplasticity and different ways that we can create different habits in our brain, was really talking about how in our mind we create these networks of of clusters of wires in our brain, you can think of a car engine and a whole bunch of wires that are all close together. And we create these clusters related to the things that we do over and over and over again.
Melissa Tiers talked about how a violin player will have a whole cluster, a neural cluster around her hands. And how she plays the violin. There have been studies around the parts of the brain that fire in New York taxi cab drivers. These are these neural clusters that are developed to habituate their behavior on the road. And just like those two examples of someone playing a violin, or someone that drives a car in high traffic areas with people yelling at them.
We also have a neural cluster associated with our habit of feeling anxiety. I'm going to throw that one more name back at you. John Overdurf, calls this the bully in our brain. And I really like this because he talks about this anxiety, neuro cluster as the bully on the block who is strong, thick, and overly sensitive. This makes it easily triggered, he says. So I'm sharing this with you to just really normalize this experience that many people have of anxiety as a really strong bully in their mind. And really normalize that the reason that it's there is because you have your brain wired.
To experience anxiety when it's triggered by different things that happen throughout your day. And that many people have that. Our brains have been wired to become like this through the experiences we've had in our lives and they can be unwired. We can untangle that cluster of neurons little by little.
So all of this is to say that our neurons are just doing what they think they're supposed to do. Because all their friends are doing it. And then the great news is that we can create new neural pathways and new neural networks, give them new friends. We can train our brains to feel calm or curiosity instead of anxiety. It is very possible.
We can do it fast by rewiring these triggers and retraining our brain.I do this in in sessions with my clients all the time, but today I'm just going to teach you the first part of that process, which is to interrupt the pattern of anxiety. I used to feel anxiety every day. And through doing this work, I feel it about ninety percent less often. I sleep better. I am so much more comfortable in my skin.
Anxiety is just not a go to feeling for me anymore. This is a huge change for me and it has dramatically increased the quality of my life.
So, I want to share this episode with you. And then the next episode that I share will expand into the four things we do with any feeling. Whether the the feelings are shame or anger or jealousy and and why many of the go to ways that we treat our feelings really backfire on us. I'm going to teach you how to make your feelings a superpower instead of an Achilles heel.
But right now, we're focusing in on anxiety. And on how to stop that bully in your brain, as Melissa Tiers, and as John Overdurf says, by interrupting the pattern. That your brain has of feeling anxiety in response to the things that you're walking around seeing and hearing and doing.
So first off, we're going to talk about what was in that Newsweek article because this is a really new set of information that is based in some longitudinal studies that they did on neuroplasticity and on habitual behavior and how so much of it is really based in triggers. The very first and easiest thing before I'm going to get into any of the ways that you can intercept anxiety once it's already there.
The first tip I'm going to give you is about how you can avoid anxiety. If there are things that you can predict will give you anxiety. So what the Newsweek article said is that the majority of our anxiety is triggered by something very specific in our environment. And the fastest and easiest way to change that anxiety is to remove the trigger.
Now, many of the things that trigger our anxiety are things that we can't just remove from our lives. There are house or our family or traffic or our job or, you know, what have you. And stay with me when I say that if there is an element of any of those things that specifically triggers your anxiety. If your spouse says something specific that triggers your anxiety. You can remove that trigger. You can request that your spouse doesn't say that thing. Or if there's a certain situation that happens at work or in a social circle that triggers your anxiety, you can remove that trigger or prepare yourself for it.
I have an example of this that's not specifically related to the habit of feeling anxiety, but that is related to a different habit that I changed. During COVID, my husband and I started having a glass of wine every night with dinner. And after a couple months, I started feeling like, wait, how did we get here? We're having a glass of wine, like, every night. And I had just not even had anything to drink for two or three years before that and it just sort of like we fell into it and all of a sudden we were having a glass wine, like, every single night. And I didn't want to do that anymore. That wasn't the environment I wanted to create at home and it wasn't the habit I wanted to have day to day.
So, I removed the wine glasses in my cupboard and put the glasses somewhere else and instead had these giant Mason jars that I put in my cupboard. And at the end of the evening, when I opened my cupboard, I saw giant Mason jars there on the shelf where the wine glasses used to be. And in the fridge, I had fresh, grapefruit juice. And I started having these big sparkling water nascent jars with a little bit of grapefruit juice that were so delicious and refreshing. And I started training myself to really love and enjoy the hydration and this delicious experience instead of a glass of wine.
And it was better in all the ways. But I removed the trigger of the actual wine glass when I opened the cupboard door and the actual bottle of wine in my fridge. And instead, replaced them with the trigger of a fresh squeezed grapefruit juice bottle and mason jars. And it really helped me. So that's sort of a very literal example of changing a trigger to remove the anxiety.
Now once the anxiety is there, it's super important with anxiety or any other feeling to just touch the feeling, just to recognize it, acknowledge that anxiety is there, and then acknowledge that you are not your anxiety. A part of you feels really anxious about what's going down. A part of you feels really anxious about whatever it is that is triggering your anxiety. And just that one step. Of recognizing that you are not your anxiety. It is one part of you. Makes all the difference in the world. So, that's the first step is to remove triggers if you can, and to recognize that the anxiety is just a part of you, not all of you. It's not happening to you. One part of you is experiencing anxiety.
Now the next three that I'm going to share with you are actual tools that you can use to interrupt anxiety in the moment. And what I'm going to do is sort of scaffold these so that they go sort of for mild anxiety and a tool you can use to interrupt real mild anxiety to a tool you can use with anxiety that's a little bit bigger than that. And then a tool you can use when anxiety is like a tidal wave. That's just washing over you and spinning you around. So tool number two is called bilateral stimulation. And this one is so amazing because you really can't do it anywhere. It just looks like you're tossing something around in your hands.
Take a ball, or an apple, or a pen, really anything that you can toss back and forth between your two hands. And then just think about your anxiety and rate it one to ten. How big is that anxiety?
Once you've rated it, pass that ball or that apple, that object back and forth from one hand to the other crossing, the midline of your body. It works really well when you cross the midline of your body, hand the ball, to the other hand and then hold that hand still out in front of you and then cross the hand back over.
So, you're you're switching the ball back and forth, crossing the midline of your body, and handing it back and forth. What you're doing here is you're stimulating both hemispheres of your brain. So you'll do it for about a minute. You're going to stop and take a deep breath and then check-in.
Has the anxiety changed? Has it started to fade? When you activate both hemispheres of your brain, you're spreading electrical impulses and energy and blood throughout your whole brain. And then it's flooding that cluster of nerves that's really attached to that trigger stimulating anxiety. So it's flooding it. And diffusing that.
Your body will begin to release the feeling of anxiety. And when you check-in, if the anxiety is still there, do it again. Do it again for a minute. Passing that ball back and forth from each side of your body to the other, crossing the midline, and then pause and rate it again. So that's your first tool.
If you're in a Zoom meeting, you can do it under the screen. If you're chatting with someone, it just looks like you're tossing something back and forth. You do it when you're walking down the street. It's called bilateral stimulation. And that will interrupt that bully in your brain.
Alright, number two is my favorite one because it's so fun. And when I do this one with clients, it feels like pulling up the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. They usually look at me with these wide eyes. They're like, what just happened? It's a really magical and very effective tool. So this one is called the backward spin.
So, one of the things about anxiety is that it moves, it moves throughout your body. So Richard Bandler was one of the original thinkers that created he was one of the co creators of neurologistic programming, and he came up with this. And he talks about how anxiety is unique because, while some feelings are in your body for just a moment and then they move out or if you have a physical response, you can feel it in your body and then it sort of dissipates
Usually, anxiety remains in your body. It sort of cycles through your body. It stays there and it spins. And so what this tool does is it asks you to identify that spin. So, if you're feeling anxiety that's a little bit bigger, for instance, you have to go to an event and maybe it's later on that day or maybe it's the next day and you're going to see some people that cause you a lot of anxiety, or maybe you're going to speak at the event, or maybe you don't know anyone at the event, but there's something coming up that is causing you anxiety. So, you keep going back to it, you keep thinking about it, it's spinning in your head, maybe you don't feel prepared for whatever the event is, what ever it is you have this anxiety and it just keeps cycling through your body.
What you do with a backwards spin is you ask yourself, what direction is this spinning? Just ask yourself, right now, if there's anything that you feel anxious about. Ask yourself which direction it's spinning. Just kinda do that like a clock. Do it with your finger. And then pull that spin as you're spinning it around and around, pull it out in front of you. If you just really take it right out there in front of you and watch it spin around and around. And the next thing that you're going to do is you're going to switch directions and notice what happens.
Most of my clients, I would I'll actually say all of my clients that I've done this with, have this moment where their eyes widen and I say, how do you feel, what do you notice? And they say, weird I feel weird. That's crazy. The feeling just changes immediately for most people. And when you move that spin outside of your body and you change the direction, if you really want to take it to the next level, you make yourself laugh. Whether that's a real laugh, or not a real laugh, just make yourself laugh. If you add some laughter to that spin, it releases some hormones whether it's a real laugh or not. Some chemicals and hormones that release in the body that are the opposite of that feeling of anxiety. So that is number three, my very favorite, the backwards spin. And number four is the one to use when you have a tidal wave of emotion.
I experience this when I'm lying in bed in the middle of the night and I will wake up. And I'll think about something that I said or did around my children that has ruined them for life. It's the middle of the night and I will wake up and I'll be like, oh, why did I say that, why didn't I do this differently? Why didn't I intercept this moment? And I will have a wave of shame that just sinks into my stomach, like rocks in my stomach. And it just feels like I can feel it like this weighted blanket come over my shoulders and down into my stomach and just like pressure and wait. And it feels so dense.
It's anxiety, but it's like this big, green, Incredible Hulk of anxiety. It's like that's like picking up a stunt car in a show. It's real strong. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Incredible Hulk. Anybody? It's like a real big feeling.
Anyway, the tool that I use for that for the big feeling is especially the ones that come in the middle of the night when our subconscious is just having a party in our brains without the babysitter of our referential cortex, when it's just doing whatever it wants in the middle of the night because our conscious mind is at rest. I use this tool. And by the way, before I share the tool with you, the morning is statistically the time when you're most likely to have a ton of negative thoughts and feelings. Because your conscious mind has been at rest. So whatever your subconscious wanted to say that you were sort of subverting throughout the day is going to come up at night. And so in the morning, you're very likely to have a lot of anxiety and negative thoughts.
So Melissa Tiers is this New York hypnotist who talks about during her trainings, how no one has time for anything in New York and how she took what's called EFT tapping from EFT, which she has seen change trauma as deep as you know, war veteran trauma. She's shortened this school so that anybody can use it, so that New Yorkers can use it. She took up a super powerful tool and created an abridged version. She calls it New York tapping. So in the middle of the night, if I feel this big wave of anxiety or shame, I will use this tool.
You take three fingers on both hands, and you tap the top of your head. And you tap tap tap tap tap tap on top of your head and just release the feelings, letting it go. Tap the top of your head and just breathe. And then tap right over your eyes. Tap the sides of your eyes. Tap right under your eyes. Tap your chin. Tap your collarbone. And then really put some pressure on your chest. You can kind of thud your chest and say, release this. I release this. And then to bring it home, you can compress your wrist with one hand. So to kind of wrap your hand around the opposite wrist and just put a little pressure there. Say, release this. I release this.
Tapping is an incredible evidence-based way to interrupt patterns of habituated feeling, thinking and doing. So that's the big one. Number four, tapping.
So today I shared with you four tools. The first one is to remove triggers whenever you can. And when you do feel anxiety to recognize that it's just a part of you, it's not all of you. You are not your anxiety. It is a part of you. That gives you agency. You realize that you have choice whether or not to continue to feel it.
The second one is called bilateral stimulation, and this one you can use when it's a little bit bigger anxiety, and it's passing something back and forth to cross the midline of the body and stimulate both hemispheres of your brain. Short circuit that bully in your brain of anxiety.
The third one is my personal favorites, the backwards spin. Which is to ask yourself which direction that anxiety is spinning, pull it out in front of you, and then change direction. If you want a little frosting on your cupcake, add a laugh to the end of that one.
And then the fourth one when it's real big anxiety, but really you can use any of these anytime you want. But this is the order that I like to use them in when it's a big feeling, anxiety, or otherwise. I taught you the speed way of doing tapping. To really interrupt the pattern of a big feeling.
So I hope you enjoyed today's anti-anxiety episode. I hope this serves you in the moments when you most need it, that is my hope. As always, reach out to tell me if it works for you, what questions you have. If you want more tools like this, I'm full of it. I'm full of them.
And next week, I'll be back with you to talk about the four ways that we deal with emotion, why it backfires, and the one way that we can turn our feelings, our emotions, our responses into a superpower.
That's what I've got for you today, and I will see you next week.
Thanks for hanging out with me friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend.
See you next time.
