The Toolkit for Healing Anxiety, Part 2
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Hey, it's your friend. Well and welcome to part two of the anxiety took IT on broadcast. Let's go. welcome.

This is part two of an anxiety tool kit that i've created for you at zero cost and thrilled that you're here. I mell robbins. I'm in new york times veselin author and one of the world's leading experts on change motivation and habits.

And today we are joined by no other than doctor Russell Kennedy. He is back. He is in the house waiting for you. Doctor Kennedy, welcome back.

Thank you. Now, robbins.

now you've got a free appointment today. So pull up a chair and get ready to change your life. Doctor Russell Kennedy is one of the world's leading experts on anxiety, childhood trauma and nervous system regulation.

And one of the things that i'd love about doctor Kennedy is he's not only a medical doctor, he is a neuroscientist. How cool is that? And he also has lived with anxiety.

So he brings both the medicine, the science, the research and his own experience. And he's here to tell you something very loud and clear. You don't have to just live with anxious.

You don't have to cope with IT because you can learn how to heal IT. Isn't that right, doctor Kennedy, yeah. Now before we jump into IT, I just want to welcome you in case you're new, both to the male rob's podcast or to the topic of anxiety. This is a conversation for all of us, whether you're struggling with anxiety or you suddenly have a friend or a family member or one of your kids who is struggling, every single one of us is affected by this topic.

And so this conversation today is going to change your life, and it's going to improve your life because IT will help you understand anxiety, and you will live with very simple, powerful, free tools that you can use to help yourself or people that you love face IT and ultimately heal from IT. And in just a second, you're gona hear a question from a listener about anxiety and whether or not its impacting your ability to sleep. But before we do that, I just want to make sure that in case you haven't heard part one, I give you just a couple quick points as we jump into this part two of the conversation.

Number one, doctor Kennedy refers to aniele as an alarm in your body. Number two, doctor kadi's belief is that all anxiety is first triggers red in your child od, where you have a moment where you feel separate or unsafe. And your nervous system then signals that alarm because when you're little, you're not supposed to feel separate or unsafe.

And what we're learning from doctor Kennedy is that what happens is that as you become an adult, that alarm starts to signal more and more anytime you feel separate from a group or separate from your partner or separate from friends or any time where you feel unsafe. And that's where anxiety comes from, those moments of separation. That's what trigger the alarm.

Are I doctor Kennedy? Are you ready? Are you ready? awesome. Let's jump in with this question from Jason. Hey, is Jason.

I always get anxious before I go to bed and then wake up in the middle night worrying about things. How do I stop myself from doing that? Thank you.

Let's first talk about what are some of the changes are simple things at Jason? Or anybody listening who gets anxious at night? What can they start doing? And what do we need to know about sleep and anxiety? Doctor Kennedy.

so there's all sorts of the physiological and psychological stuff that goes into sleep. The best thing to do is use a two prom approach, two hours we've in a work, and then one hour before, like no screens. And that's really important because our particular activating system, which you talked about before, which works in our brain and which is the lower part of our brain that controls our body, IT wants to be active.

And if you're zombie strolling instagram until the moment before you go to sleep, that particular activating system is still going so IT will wake you up. And the other thing about that particular question is, know what was going to bed like for you was a child, you know, was that safe? You know, for me, my mother workshift work, so sometimes my mother was out three to eleven SHE was a nurse, so sometimes my mother was gone, you know and i'm there with you know my crazy father and like but he wasn't always crazy.

But there is points was just a little touch and go there so um evenings for me can have that sort of sense as well. So what was going on in your childhood? And not everything is about child travel like I really don't want to give that impression that everything is about IT. But so much of chronic anxious is unresolved fear and unresolved wounding.

Can you find the the child in you that had a difficult time going to bed, or maybe you are a bad weather, you know, maybe the, maybe the the image of that is still in printed on your nervous system that is not safe to sleep, because when I sleep, I went bad and then all sorts of, you know, all help break loose in the morning. So there's all sorts of the physiological and psychological stuff that goes into sleep. And it's really important to be able to tease that out a little bit.

I can give you generations like, you know, shut the shot, the computer off you before you go to sleep and calm things down, keep the light, so don't use blue light. All that kind of that is all important. But those are, again, coping mechanisms.

If you really want to fix the problem and it's route, find that place where I was uncomfortable for you to go to bed and see if you can find that place in you. And again, not that everything is child to trauma, but so much of IT is and IT is fixie. So if that's the underlying, you're not going to fix that just by avoiding blue light, just by avoiding the computer, just by not working.

You know, the best thing to do is use a two prong approach. I don't have anything against called the north therapy. It's really important that we have understanding of what's happening to us, yes. But what's more important, and what often most therapy in north amErica specifically misses, is this incredible role of the body and old trauma that stored in the body and just virtually gets ignored by thinking that we can talk about our problems and having insight to them is gona fix them and IT.

Doesn't that makes so much sense? I would love to ask you, doctor Kennedy, for specific advice and a strategy for that moment, when you wake up in the middle of the night, your thoughts are spinning, you're having trouble going back to sleep. What exactly should you do?

And I safe in this moment. So we talked about this last time when I talked. So this is something that I ve used for many, many years.

So we wake up. We talked to Jason. So just like, I want you to pretend Jasons here and let's coach Jason. So Jason, tonight, when you wake up in the middle the night, if you do, these are the specific things I want you to do.

Yeah, I want you to connect with that feeling in your body, put your hand over, breathe into IT, and then ask yourself, am I safe in this moment? I know i'm free though. I know that there's something happening in a week or two, but in this moment, in this moment right now, where i'm lying in my bed, am I safe? And you, yeah, i'm safe.

And then feel that that you have to associate this one I said before, that you have to connect the feeling with the thinking. That's how we heal. That's how we create new neural pathways, is we create the feeling.

And the feeling will fear in the thinking. So when you say, am I safe in this moment and you go, I am safe. Some people say I am safe in this moment, rather than making you a question. And in the middle the day and the middle the night, when your mind is going nuts, you can just say, I know, because exact is always about the future. It's always about the future.

So if you bring yourself in at the present moment, and one of the ways of doing that is with sensation, you know, with with sensation when you, when you touch your own chest, when you take IT the breath, when you smell on essential oil, when you harm, when you sing, you're bringing yourself into the sensation of the present moment. And you're removing that, that focus on the future, or the past or the pain of the past. When you bring yourself into the present moment that the fertile ground of healing is the present moment, we don't heal when we're stuck in our trauma.

We don't heal when we're stuck in our worries. We heal the present moments sensation of our body. That's how we heal. Now, the code of structures help.

After I started regulating my body, I was like, how this is what IT is, this IT all starts to make sense. The puzzle pieces start coming back in the connection again, say, oh yeah. Like, that's what I came about with with I didn't get enough attention as a child from my mother.

So because my brother was was sick with club feet or my dad was crazy, so I made myself small. So now it's like I gotta be seen, but there's part of me that hates being see. So IT, is this real dichotomy that I go back and forth up.

So now I accept that. I accept that little boy in me needs the attention, and I give IT to him. And I don't need IT so much from the outside. And I think that's that's when you know you you started here.

You don't need so much attention the outside, and you are more connected in your relationships to other people, because when you're in the associated alarm state, your in survival mode, and in survival mode, the social engagement system that all humans have is shut up, you know, eye contact, facial expression, tone of voice, body language. IT gets shot off when we're alarmed. So no wonder we don't want to go to a party.

No wonder we have social anxiety. Ty, no one that we can connect with our sports for our kids. Because evolutionary, we are built when we're in alarm.

The connection isn't what we're looking for. We're looking for safety. So it's very hard to be warm and connected to your spouse, your kids or whatever when you're in alarm.

And a lot of people feel so guilty about that, it's like and they question the relation, am I in the right relationship? So you probably are, but you are just associated so you can't love yourself, so you're not gonna ve another person. So your relationships are onna suffer. And as you quoted the harvard study, relationships are the most important feature in recovering from any illness of any kind.

So is IT Normal for people to wake up .

in the middle the night, and just like every night.

And I so in terms of people that wake up so in the middle the night, is that a symptom or a sign that you might have anxiety?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Your sympathetic nervous system um isn't shutting off. You're not going to paris.

The great. And here's the reason for that. I see this a lot with my patients about alcoholic parents.

Things will go along fine for a while and then there be a master blow up. And then there will be this sort of approach, more alcohol, and say, i'm sorry, so sorry. And then there will be sported this again, quiet again, and then I blow up again.

So what a child's and nervous system will do is it'll say, I am not going to let myself relax because I know the ship is going to go down again. So I am going to keep myself in this hypervigilant state, the sympathetic activated state. So when you're in that synthetic activated state, you start thinking it's safer for me to keep myself at this level of activation all the time.

And then you can sleep, you don't eat well. They I just screw up your entire life when you can't move yourself into psychology. I remember the the quick story that I tell you is that I used to get massages.

Sometimes I would walk out of her studio feeling so relaxed that I have a panic attack, because when I was relaxed as a child, that was exactly the time I got smashed in the face by my, my dad, not physically, but he would be going into depression or going into media, or going to psychosis. So there was this thing with me as I don't get too happy, don't let your guard down, because this is all going on the shit in in the near future. And I could be like a year before he would have another episode, but I was always everyday.

And that's a metaphor for a lot of us, for the anxiety as we have. We keep ourselves in this hypervigilant state thinking that we're protecting ourselves. Pray Brown talks about that too.

He says, you know, we were expecting that we reach that thing in our mind, getting that call from the school, that your child's been hurt or injured or whatever, we do that every day. And IT never happens. IT doesn't prepare.

You go for anything. No matter how often you get that, you practice that phone call from the school, you're still gonna have to react to IT. But that's one of the reasons why people have such a hard time healing from anxiety. Because when I get people feeling Better again, they don't trust IT because IT goes back to that place. Or when I felt safe as a kid, I got line sided.

Well, you know, my personal experience is I became so good at talking about my anxiety and what happened to me and how IT made me feel. And all of that was helpful, so that I was aware of what happened. I was aware of what I was feeling, and I was able to come up with ways to cope, whether that was yoga or taking anxiety medication or IT was getting into therapy. But I wasn't doing the work to truly heal. The root caused the anxious and IT wasn't until I stopped fucking talking about IT and I got below the neck and started dealing with the uncomfortable feelings and the stored memories in my nervous system, which is very different than talking about how you feel and how does .

that feel like when you when you felt like you are really getting at the root cause of IT like how does that feel for you?

Oh, it's liberating and it's it's a parent.

I shift IT is totally .

I couldn't believe how quickly IT happened. I have been attacking IT in the wrong order. I have been attacking IT first and only in my mind.

And yes, you've to you ve got to start with your mind so that you're are aware that you're IT like, that you're like, ding, oh, it's it's anxiety. But once you know what you're dealing with, get out of your head and get into your body. And when I started to feel like a wait a minute, i'm not enough.

In my mind. I have a nervous system that needs some support, and I gotta be able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and not have to escalate. And I gotto learn how to soothe myself, and I gotto learn how to be compassionate with myself. If I can do those things, I can ride the up and downs of any feeling.

When I follow you on your podcast, you are doing exactly that. The cold plunges all that. If you look at the way that sensation is transferred to the brain, the back part of the spinal cord, the spinal islamic track, the sort of group of wires that fire ups to your brain, whole pain temperature.

So in emotional pain, physical pain in the brain are handled by very similar structures. So when you go into a cold plant and you overwhelm that pain pathway, you are giving yourself a break. And then when you're going into this uncomfortable state, because going at your alarm, matching up with that child is hurting, is painful.

And then when you're in this cold pledge and you feel uncomfortable and you break through IT, that's exactly what you need to do as far as feeling that alarm child in you because it's gonna hurt, it's gonna hurt and being able to have the resilience to be able to go, you know what? This hurts, but i'm going to stay with you as a talking to your child. This hurts us, but i'm going to stay with you.

You and I will always be together. There is no way that i'm ever gonna end on you again, because I know you're there now. I know you're there now.

So now I will make sure that I will never, ever leave you. Now the child needs to hear that a number of times because you can ignore ing you personally. But collectively we ignore the child for the decades. So IT takes a while for the child to come around. But there is this sense that were on the right track.

And for the first time for me when I started, you know, healing 7 matic ally and really being able to tolerate that pain that's venter code talks about that in the body keeps the story says we're not teaching people how to get rid of their anxiety called alarm。 We're not teaching how to get rid of the alarm. What we're doing is we're teaching you how to climate ze ze to IT so that when you feel that discover, you don't compulsively and relentlessly go into your head for a solution that you'll never find there.

right? You need to go into your body where the alarm is, and you suggest putting your hand there.

stay there even if he hurts.

and just pay through IT just suit yourself through that moment. This feels like a good place to take a quick break and process what we just heard. And when we come back, we got more of your questions and more in this incredible anxiety tool kit with doctor rusal cannet stay with.

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Welcome back, I mell robbins. And this is the anxiety tall kit on the malbin podcast, and we are sitting here with the renowned doctor, rusal Kennedy. So let's just jump right back into IT. I want to try to connect the dots, particularly on this question about sleep, because we're getting so many questions from listeners who are having trouble sleeping, and you said a couple things that I wanted try to connect.

So for those of you that are having trouble sleeping after the last three years and the unprecedented amount of uncertainty and change and separation, yes, that we've all experienced, if you're finding that, wow, I do have a lot of trouble sleeping, or I wake up all the time in the middle of the night, and i'm just constantly worried about this stuff. What doctor Kennedy has explained to you is that IT goes back to this original alarm, a feeling and safe, and that's why in the middle of the night, lying there, thinking about your bills, putting your hand wherever the tension is, and saying, I am safe for asking, am I safe in this moment? That's the first step because what you're teaching us, doctor Kennedy, is you're teaching us how to ster to repair the root cause of IT, right? And I getting this right.

yes, absolutely. Is there .

anything else you would recommend? Because we get a lot of questions technically about sleep. Do I get out of bed? Do I lay in bed? How do I go back to sleep? And since IT is absolutely tied to this alarm and the way that IT IT makes the minds spin and the inability for so many of us to slow down, to trust that it's gona be okay, is there anything else that you would recommend that we do in that moment?

IT will breathe. You know, physiological side will help know. So too slow things and a long slow x health.

So you get that everybody, it's too sniff then and then a .

long slow at sale. What does that do? Well, IT IT starts to to move you in the partha's tic very quickly.

So IT IT block that chain reaction of feeling, thought, feeling, thought, feeling, thought. As soon as you start moving your body into a party of that state, your state depends. Your state will determine how you think. So the state of your body determines how your mind think.

That makes so much sense. Doctor Kennedy, the way that you just put IT that your state in your body then trigger how your mind seeks. And you know what? I just realized that since this is part two of the anxiety tool kit, in case you haven't listened to that yet and you don't know what the term paris sympathetic means, let me just give that definition really quickly again.

dr. Kennedy, so what doctor Kennedy has taught us is that you have two parts to your automatic nervous system. There's the sympathetic, which you're going to hear us call alarm or fighter flight or freeze.

And then you have the second part, the para sympathetic nervous system, that's the resting, relaxed reset com state that you can be in. And doctor Kennedy, d. Ni, are kind of using a short form.

We basically refer to the sympathetic, the fighter flight as an alarm or feeling unsafe. And then we refer to the parasympathetic state as being relaxed, being in reset, being calm. And doctor Kennedy is teaching you how to recognize when you're in alarm.

And now healing requires us to learn how to switch back into our relaxed state. And again, after this, you can go back to part one of this tall, get and listen and learn all about that. But I think you've probably had that experience of being stressed out in your life. And then you get up from your desk and you go outside and you take a walk or you exercise and all that you feel Better.

Oh yeah, you know, after after Warren death, when Chris took you out to patent, last thing you wanted to do, right you're so .

right about the fact that I didn't want to do anything and know if you don't know what doctor Kennedy's referring to. Um basically one of my favorite uncles, my uncle warne, died very, very suddenly a couple weeks ago. And on the day that I learned about his death, I went into an alarm state where I just kind of froze.

And I have this male come over me. I was so like, overwhelmed by the news. And my husband, Christina, I had had this preexisting double date to go play paddle tennis here in southern vermont with some friends of hours. And I just didn't want to go. I was like, I was paralyzed .

because this media to to anxiety alarm. You know, there there is this free state that we go into. We don't want to do that.

But when you force yourself to get into a different, and that's exactly what happened, you got into a different state in your body. And as that state change, your thoughts change. So we worship the mind in the society, thinking the mind can fix everything, but it's more related to how your body feels.

You will think exactly the way your body feels, and it's very difficult. It's like pushing a rock up a hill. When you're feeling anxious or depressed to go, i'm happy, i'm happy, i'm happy, i'm happy because you don't feel happy and you can change IT.

Like gratitude is one of those things that actually does start neuro chemically changing the chemicals in your brain that allow you to start slip in the switch over the other side. But you have to use that always, like five, three, two, one. Like start gratitude first, and then five, four, three, two, one, go to panel or go to the beach, or go, like, go somewhere.

Because as you point out, the more we stay frozen, the more the brain thinks there is something dangerous. And we started to creating court is all we started, ts, to creating a drinking and in its supports, whatever we think. So we think we're afraid your brain will support.

You also say, yes, you're afraid if you think you know you lean into the balls of your feet and you go i'm going to go and ask that person to to copy or whatever. When you lean in there, you go at what scares you. Your brain starts creating your own natural morphine and starts creating doping.

And IT tells you you're on the right track. You're on the right track and that changes your physiology. So it's really this baLance between physiology and psychology. But our our physiology is so, is so deep IT IT IT create so much of an influence on our psychology they were not even aware of.

And that's my biggest point, is like why or in there be paying attention to our physiology as much as our psychology? Because if you look at from a neuroscience point of view, there's the the neocortex, the new brain, the the all humans have that basically are the fantastic thinking, memory, all this kind of stuff. And then there's the deeper structures in our brain, you know, the amiga a, the brain stem that that have no concept words.

Your body has no concept of words. Its language is feeling. And if the trauma is stored in your body and the bodies language is feeling, you have to change that trauma with the feeling.

Just changing your thinking won't do much. IT will help you. IT will help you. There's no doubt IT will help you cope, but IT will not help you.

We can we get technical for just a minute. So when IT comes to sensation and feeling, whether it's the pit, my stomach or the kind of getting tense in your chest, are you saying that all of that feeling in your nervous system channels up through the brain stem, which has no access to words?

yes.

And then IT is converted into some kind of explanation by the prefrontal .

cortex .

and other parts to memory parts .

to ah so it's like almost .

like a game of telephone, yes, where nervous system is feeling something and sending through the parts of the brain that have no language a message and the prefrontal cortex is interpreting IT as unsafe danger. And you are saying that we have to learn how to deal with the sensation before the prefrontal cortex is allowed to make IT mean something. Yes.

your mind is a compulsive meaning making make sense machine. So when IT feels something in your body, IT has to make sense of bit that especially left hemisphere left hemisphere analytical um like verbal, literal IT has to make sense of IT. So IT makes sense of IT with words that are typically pretty painful because they're consistent with the alarm feeling in your body.

If you're feeling great, if you're walking on the streets of Sunny day, everything is going on, great, your thoughts are gonna pretty, aren't good. But if you're feeling anxious, if you're feeling alarmed and you've got a dentist appointment, like a week later, whatever you gonna fix, IT on the dentist appointed, because that makes sense to your brain, like we feel bad. What do we have to feel about about? And then we we do that stacking that I was talking about the last time we start stacking.

So every negative thing in your life, that point, you know, all that stuff stacks on tobia. So when he does that, IT just keeps you in that negative state. So it's really about, okay, i'm anxious like we're saying earlier.

Okay, where's that in your body? Now you can start when you start finding the anxiety in the alarm in your body. Now you're starting actually to get the root cause, because in your head, you will never solve IT.

You will always be caught in your head. You will never get out of your head. You always have to go anybody.

It's so true. You will never, never get out your hand. Doctor, can we have another question and it's from a list or named lena, and it's about breaking the chain of anxiety.

And here's a quick preview of IT. How can I break this generation cycle of anxiety? Enda easiness, and start healing now. Doctor Kennedy, we have to take a quick break for our sponsors.

So if you can think about her question and when we come back, we will play lean as full question, and then we're going to tackle whether or not anxiety is dramatic and how you can spot IT in your parents stay with us. You know others. One thing that I know about you because you listen to this podcast that you have big ambitions.

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Welcome back. My name's mell Robins. I'm here with the renown doctor rusal Kennedy. This is part two of the anxiety tool kit.

And we are jumping back can with a question from a listener name, lena. Hey, man, my name is lina. My father passed his inside to me in the rest of my siblings growing up.

I'm trying to not let my children adopt being short tempered and axial, like many people in my family are. How can I break this generation and cycle of anxiety and uneasiness and start healing? So how do you break this cycle of anxiety and a family?

Well, first you start breaking the cycle in yourself. So you start realizing this anxiety, I feel, is actually this alarm in my body. I'm going to pay attention to that because that is my Young.

And I have many, many people contact me, say, oh, my fifteen year old daughter is so anxious. Can you see here? Can you see here? And it's like, no, what i'm going to do is i'm going to fix you first is like scissor milan, the dog whispers doesn't fix the dog.

He fix the parent, so that's what I work on with people. As I work on the parent, I showed the parent how to heal themselves. And then that energy just seems to translate into the children. They started saying, you know, hi mom, you seem more connected because he is, because she's not in that alarm stake or he can actually give love and attention to our kids so those kids can get filled up and feel safe and then that gets handed down from generation to generation. If your mother or father was anxious, which mine was um both my parents actually were quite anxious.

You will start seeing that and and almost be Operative conditioned to create an anxiety because you feel IT in the so a lot of the kids that there are people that refer their kids to me are because they are anxious themselves and they feel helpless and powerless to help themselves. Then one help their kids, and then they feel horrible. They kind of transfer this anxious gene quote on, quote to their kids.

And it's really about heal yourself first. And then your kids will come along. Your kids will start feeling that. So the a IT would be OK.

How do we find your alarm? How do we start changing that pattern, that automatic pattern, negativity and your ability in you first, and then you're more available to your kids. And when you are more available to your kids, your kids don't feel so alarm themselves. And you start healing that whole generational .

cycle anxiety. A family is not about the kids. It's about the adults.

yes.

And you help kids that have anxiety by addressing and healing the anxiety in the adult, in that family.

And so doctor .

Kennedy is anxiety genetic?

no. The short answer is no. There are. There are mental illnesses.

And I put that quotation Marks that do seem to have a bit more of a genetic component. And chizen ia bipolar. But anxiety in the of itself is not genetic.

We haven't really isolated anything that would say this is the anxious gene. What I do think that we have genetically is A A tendency to be sensitive. So if you are born sensitive, which everybody I see with this ety, everybody i've ever consulted with, with anxiety, is a sensitive person. You are a sensitive person.

How do you know if you are a sensitive person?

Well, because you feel everything. And then the other part about feeling everything as a sensitive person is to survive, you have to start shutting off your connection because it's just too much. And when you're born sensitive, you learn ways of protecting yourself because your homelife doesn't give you the love and attention that you need.

Now you could have good parents who are loving and caring, but just because we are more sensitive, we just need more love. I need more love them. My brother, right? He's not as sensitive as I am, so your parents could have been fine in a way. But if you are sensitive and you need more love, if you don't get IT, you have to start really giving that compassion, love and attention to your .

what's like learning to feed yourself for crying out, lad. Like it's that basic IT is what are signs of adult anxiety, particularly for that generation of our parents who never talked about this project, was not even invented yet. That was not a generation of expressing feelings that was the be seen and not her generation. Shut up .

and pull up.

Girl ious. I am recently said to me, you know. Never even occurred to me that I .

had anxiety .

because maybe I didn't want to feel all that maybe i'm afraid to to like go talk to a theriere and open that all up like we didn't talk about our feelings. Nobody was going to do shit about IT anyway. And so IT didn't occur to me until recently that, gosh, you know, my mom clearly had a lot of trauma in her childhood and felt invisible, and i've never looked at her.

And then, like the woman, has anxiety. So what are the surprising signs that your parents may be dealing with? anxiety?

alcoholism? That's a big one, because they didn't have the open dialogue that we have now. So IT wasn't OK. You know, mental illness had a tremendous stigma, and IT still does, still really does.

So there is this resistance to actually admitting you have a problem because that child in you are in them that is loud and painful. It's easier in a way to just keep stuffing that child down because it's not talking about I don't want to be different than anyone else. We just accept our nervous system as this is what we're stuck with and this is the way it's going to go.

It's been like this for ten or fifteen years. I've been like so many people that say up IT in third people like five, ten, fifteen years. And yeah I mean, I feel a little bit Better, but i'm not really getting there.

When you look at there, be costing one hundred, fifty hours an hour. You know, it's pretty frustrating for people. It's pretty out .

of reach for people. So alcoholism was won. What are the other signs?

Irritability, people, parents that are chronically irritable, not connected, just not feeling connected to apparent, you know, my mother is very warm and caring at points and very cold and distant at others. I think that's kind of like the british way in a lot of ways. And so for a child is like, hey, know, sometimes you're Robin, my back and and we're feeling connected and other times your cold desire.

So in a way that's almost worse than being consistently one or the other. If he was consistently cold, I would learn how to protect myself from that. If he was consistently warm, I wouldn't protection in the first place.

So were a lot of us kids had emotional deregulation in our parents that we didn't recognize. So sometimes they they be nice and connected, and other times they be off the deep band. And I think irritability is one way of doing that hypervigiLance hyper organization. You know, these things that they show up in our parents because they didn't have a way of expressing IT, they didn't know or they went to therapy. A lot of people go to therapy and they been in there for five years.

And they feel terrible because it's 在 IT helped me at first and and but now i'm i'm just feeling just as bad as I always have， but i'm just spent no forty thousand dollars on ten years of therapy and it's because you know that they're not addressing the room cause. And I think hyper vigan shows I think your ability um drug abuse um and i'm not talking like you know cocaine or whatever, it's you know prescription drugs that kind of stuff. The people need to cut a cope because like I said, when we go in a survival mode, we become very inaccessible, both to ourselves and to other people.

And when were warm and connected to ourselves, we can extend that out to other people. A lot of people are more connected to their pets, that they arent their spouse because they see their pet as safe. They don't see their spouse is safe because their spouse s reflects some of the the the crimes of the parent in a way.

So it's really it's very interest to see how anxiety shows up, how child hod trauma shows up in people. And it's usually emotional deregulation of some kind where they can't connect. And another way of connecting that doesn't look like IT is the people, please, there is the mom who is doing at making cookies for everybody and doing all this and and appear so connected because we're very good, like anxious people, very smart. We know how to present an image that appears connected that really isn't, but people can feel that people can feel your authenticity when you're connected.

Um the point that really struck me there was a somebody who is just so loving and kind with an animal and cold. Where are the people?

No, because they entrust your parents. The parents didn't didn't establish that people are safe. My dad didn't establish that he was, even though my dad was really kind and loving and playful and great.

Uh, many, many. In fact, most of the time that I spent with them was good. But it's like when you get that one bad experience with a dog, IT takes a thousand good experience to cut a racing a little.

So it's really important to tly again our brains. We have a fear bias. We are evolutionary programmed to focus on fear. And another thing that I got from one of your your podcast recently is, you know, and I said this a lot, is whatever you focus on, you'll get more of so if you focus on your anxiety, you will get more anxiety. If you focus on gratitude, you get more gradually is basically what IT comes to.

I love that all. Instead of focusing on anxiety, try to switch your focus to what you're grateful for. Let's switch gears and go to another question from a listener name back.

I how do you like calm that anxiety and get IT all to slow down? You get so anxious, you can't stop thinking about the worst that's gonna happen. And sometimes it's not even realistic things, but you just get in increased and you can't get IT to stop.

What are some tools we need? Those go into your body, get out your head. You're not going to find the solution in your head.

It's not there. You know a stop looking for peanut butter or the harper store. You're you're not going to find IT there.

You're not going to find the solution in your head. But now would have be focused on, you get more up. So if you are focusing on your thoughts, of course, you just gna get more thoughts.

And just to be an endless self fulfilling cycle, so congest sly, you have to realize what happens to me when I feel ankles. Where do I feel the anxious? And can I train myself to go? Oh, there is that pain in my chest again.

There is that pressure. There is that love in my throat. That's a sign that i'm starting to go into alarm. So what i'm going to do is i'm going to go into my body. And this is one of the other times where I, you know, I get people draw the best times of their life. He will change that feeling state.

Can I use question more quick? Yes, yeah. I want to go right to the moment that the thoughts are spiraling and you realize you trapped in the worst case loop shared. Somebody do the psychological site.

I, yes.

just do that to stop .

the cyl. So that's a .

great use. Just stop the idle. Is there another one to stop that spinning of thoughts?

Breathing is probably the most effective. You know, we don't realize that we're an anxiety. We consider an anxiety for hours and not realized that we're in IT.

So if you don't realize you're in IT, you just feel that you feel this terrible feeling. You can't change IT, so you develop this awareness. Okay, this is my alarm coming up. That's your first thing.

So at that point, five, four, three, two, one, the house put my shoes on, go to the house, go to the gym, go somewhere, do something like, do something they break all. Because if you don't break that cycle, you're gonna sit there and ruminate and mining and ruminate and rumination has tremendous inertia. Like once you start getting a negative thoughts, you don't feel like doing anything.

It's like one warn passed away and you didn't want to go anywhere. You don't, anna, do anything physiologically. We go into the biggest shutdown and that shuts us down. We need something outside of ourselves.

Five or three, two, one is awesome, by the way, because it's just a really like, okay, after you dated about the times, you can okay, you have to change your state. And one of the best ways of changing your state is changing your body. And one of the best ways of changing your body starting to freak move.

Yes.

so you know I I can sit there and I never being in a man school, but the the cover is after my chain like I can get in the school today and I always did but I was like, you just wake up in your this panic like I can get there today and I didn't have five, four, three, two, one back but I was just like, okay, I have to move. Like, I have to move and giving myself a reward to move. Like, okay, i'm going to get a nice cool glass of water. Now wasn't that appealing, but I was just something, I was something to break that cycle. Because if you don't break that cycle of rumination, IT will just run rush shot over you.

What is IT like to live without anxiety? And the reason I ask this question is I think so many of us have lived in a alarm state for so long. We don't know what it's like to be able to turn this off. So what is available to everybody if they start to do the work in their bodies? Uh, a drug access to a repeated .

process where you can find peace, maybe not right away. Maybe IT takes you five minutes, maybe takes you ten minutes at least, or on the right track at least, or not. You know, I should feel like I was, you know, a bubble in an ocean, because whatever the ocean went, wherever my emotion went, I was taken with IT. And the thing about starting to find that piece in your body is you kind of go down below the surface of the waves, and you can look up, this is the image that I get anyway, I look up and I can kind of see, you know, kind of hazy blue when you're under the water and you're looking up, I can see the waves there.

And it's, you can create a sense of separate ness, ironically, from the alarm, where this isn't all of me, because when you were a child, IT was all of you, like when you were in your trauma as a child, there was no way of, there wasn't, you look everywhere and there was no way of, but as an adult, you can look and you can start seeing, you know what? I I feel you alarm like, I feel you there. And I know that you are my Young herself, but I can see that there is there is a sense of separately there that I don't have to completely be taken over by this.

Now at the same time, the paradox is that alarm is your Young herself, so you want to be attached to IT. So can you see the. Alarm with this sense of curiosity because when you look at something with curiosity, you take a lot of the emotion.

It's like that's really interesting that i've got this sense of alarm in my solar plex that appeals heavy and sharp and purple. Well, that's really that's really interesting because when you look at IT with jurist sy, you're changing your sort of psychological mindset towards IT. And when you start changing IT in any way, IT starts making that cycle easier to break.

So when you record IT rumination and thought you can start going into your body even if IT hurts initially, because you are on the right track and your your ventures tegmental area, the part of your brain is to create p me, we will start telling you you're on the right track. And and I think that when we start healing, we start being get the sense of power over the alarm, because we have been prisoners of IT for so long. And in a way, we are prisoners of our Younger child.

If we don't pay attention to them, they will make us this report together. So when you start paying attention to that and you start knowing, hey, i'm on the right track, like dopamine starts going in your brain when you're on the right track with something, you can all these sort of feel good chemicals. And then you have a sense that you are no longer this passive, you bubble in the ocean anymore like you you have something that you can tap into this in all of us, I mean, this power and and we see this a lot with people that have had spontaneous emissions from cancers and from horrible diseases.

And step, they feel this power in them that they didn't know is there, but they just feel that, they just feel that power. And I think what happens when we have trauma as children, because we lose faith in that power, we lose sight of that power. So when you connect with your Young yourself again, you can have access to that power is in all of us.

And you get into that state. And when you start healing from anxiety and you start realizing, hey, IT is actually safe, to feel safe, there's a tremendous feeling of a rush of man. I suffered from this for so long. Why did I wait so long to do this?

Well, I know for me personally, that happened a lot faster than I expected IT to. And the experience for me is emotional peace. Like there's a level of steadiness. There's a calmness, confidence like it's all available to you, but most adults are incapable of handling the feelings and the sensations that are rising up in their bodies, which is why they act in ways that feel very toxic or abusive or confusing and it's why we do that and then regret IT.

And the whole solution to all of this is the three layer approach we've been talking about today is first, you got to become aware, aware yeah, that you have this alarm that is getting triggered in your adult life and that there's shift that went down when you were a kid that needs your attention and needs your healing. And then there is the coping with IT therapy is amazing, if you can afford IT. And all the modalities are incredible in and help youtube cope and breathing and meditation, and yoga and walks in the woods and lots of things that that you know, both doctor Kennedy and I recommend.

And IT will help you cope, and IT will help the anxiety dissipate. But if you really wanna dismantle the alarm, you got to go a layer deeper, which is in your body, finding the source of the alarm, repairing yourself and that little person inside of you that felt alarmed and then taking care of yourself by staying in your body and becoming aware of when the alarm goes off. It's remarkably powerful. What you're talking about, doctor Kennedy.

and I think that that's that's really you kind of hit the nail on the head. I mean, there's there's superficial things we can do, you know, outside, breath, work, grounding, just feeling your boat in the chair, feeling your feet on the ground, like there is something psychologically about being grounded.

IT does help us for sure touch, you know, touching yourself, touching other people, um you know temperature feeling, you know, going through those extremely temperature, cold, heat, whatever temperature is one of those ways that we can access the deeper structures in our brain to smell know if you have an essential oil that you love, like lave under cm, Carry with you if you're struggling. Smell is one of those things that is the only sense that doesn't get processed by the filament. The problem is kind of like the central switchboard d of the brain.

Smell goes right into our emotional brain. So if you have something that smells good, IT will change your your state right away. There is this thing also about moving your eyes back in for side. Decide sort of the basis of E, M, D R.

And IT does show that if you move your eyes back and forth, back and forth, not up and down, but back and forth, IT does decrease the activity in the now all those things are coping strategies to heal. You've got ta find the alarm. You've got to find the trauma.

You've got to find your Young yourself. You have to have faith in yourself because I I think is trauma. When we get traumatized, this children and we lose faith in the world. And when we lose face in the world, we start believing everything is up to me. And if you are seven year old and you take everything is up to you, life gone to be very anxious, you're document, and finding that power inside of you.

There's this power inside all of us that we lose with trauma, finding that again, to really important, having gratitude for the pain, having gratitude for the alarm, because that you can do IT to your healing, is that alarm. So as much as you, the moon, having IT, it's actually a beacon to your Young yourself. Be grateful for that sense of alarm, because you you have a pathway now to find that child and play.

It's it's so important to adopt play, because when you play, you start changing that automation ic nervous system and that automatic nerve system runs your life. So the more you can play, the more you can regulate that economic nervous system, that synthetic sympathetic nervous system, the easier life is gonna be, the more connected you're gonna be to yourself, and maybe more importantly, to others, because we need others, because loneliness is killing us. Separation is killing us.

Give me your top three recommendations for play that you give to your patients.

Well, I I often ask people, like, what did you do when you are teenager? Know, some people say, I rode my bike, I play chess. I did this so things that you like when you were a kid, chances are you still like now.

So that kind of there's no sort of global thing that I suggested to people. Ideally, IT would be something that's fun that doesn't really have a winner and a loser kind of thing that you know. And gordon newfiles, who's my sort of mentors and developmental psychology, talks about that with kids.

It's so important to have play just for play sake. There is no winter, there is no loser. There's no, there's nothing there. And one of the things that I really recommend for parents is playing around the dinner table with facial expressions like how my fear when I make this face, how my feeling. Because then you're actually mattering their social engaging system. You're mattering the part of their brain, you know facial expression, model language, I E contact your europe, improving the part of their brain that allows them to suit others and suit themselves. So it's important to do this in a playful way, you know and and that's really once we start really adopting play in our day to day life, then we start regulating our nervous system and in a way that you don't have to academically go back and find the trauma.

Amazing that your knee, anything else.

I think it's really being compassion of yourself. I have this process called A B, C. So a is awareness, as you said, being aware what anxiety your alarm feels like in your body.

B is for body and breath. So go into your body, go into your breath. Physiological size, great. Getting granted in your body and then see is compassionate connection for yourself, and specifically the Younger version of yourself. So if you do that, each time that you have anxiety or alarm, you will start training your nervous system to focus on something that will heal you, instead of focusing on your thoughts.

which are only gonna make you worse. dr. Kennedy, you are such a gift. Thank you for giving us so much time and so many tactics and just pouring into us.

And one thing I wanted to just say is that when we were talking about the Young herself, I had this image of my husband, and he tells the story about how he had asked, uh, somebody had forgotten, met and IT was a game day. And so we had a book at home, because nobody uses the game and he gets home. And here is in a baseball uniform, and he came at the house.

No boy's left IT on lock form. And so he has to go around the side of the house and climb up the trailer so we can get onto the a balcony outside of his parents bedroom. And the trees is full of bees because the trailer is covered with flowers. So he's climbing up this thing and he's getting strong. And then he gets on to the the kind of porch on the second floor and IT goes up to the french doors and his parents bedroom, and he goes to open them up, and they are locked.

So he ends up punching through one of the pains of glass and cutting his hand and then dripping blood across the hardwood floors that had just been refinished as he's walking in his and I have this image of him because there's a particular image of him in this blue and White baseball uniform. He's probably in the fourth grade. It's got kind along blind curls.

And it's very useful to me to look at the man i've been married to for twenty six years in those moments where I get really pissed off or irritated or annoyed and visualize that kid in the baseball uniform just trying to do his best and feeling like nobody y's there to support him. That was really helpful. I think that's really gonna help me show .

up and end for couples too. I have a picture of your partner when they were like seven, eight or nine around the house and then when they start go on off for what you think is a seemingly trivial matter, look at that picture because that who are dealing with, you know? And I feel bad for Chris because I know he was a aci kid and didn't feel supported.

So that must have been a very difficult situation for him, because I think he would learn to be overly self reliant. Yes, when you're overly self reliant, you don't allow love in, you know, you become an alph a child like all an alpha child, and you think that everything is up to you. And again, if you're a child and you think everything is up to you, and you know, because you're a child, you have the ability to deal with this stuff is gonna tremendously alarming. And it's gona stick in your body.

Wow, there is so much more we are going to talk about .

every three months. Now I will will have a check in. I'll write your prescription. I will see you again in three months. Please do love you, your amazing.

You're amazing. Doctor Kennedy, thank you so much for being here and for helping us bring everybody all of these tools and resources at zero cost. And I also want to highlight something else.

It's available to you. In addition to all of the resources in the shown notes, I just launched a three, three part training. That is, video based IT has a workbook.

I do this every single spring for all of our followers online. And now for you, our podcast listening ers. This one is called take control with ml robbins. More than a quarter of a million people have signed up from around the world, with people represented from over two hundred countries. In the training.

You're gonna love IT and IT will help you step by step by step, apply not only what you just learn from doctor Kennedy, but I will go even deeper into helping you figure out your next move and simple science back mindset tools you can use to start moving forward on them again. You can find that and take control with meller Robins, which is male Robins that com slash. Take control.

Or just check the link in the show notes. Doctor Kennedy, thank you. Thank you, and thank you for being here.

Thank you for sharing this. This is one of those toolkit episodes that I know is going to just explode online. And please share this with people.

If you don't know how to explain what your anxiety feels like, this podcast episode can be that surrogate to help other people in your life understand what you're feeling and going through and to Better support you. If you've got somebody that's really struggling that won't listen to you, maybe they will listen to doctor Kennedy. Send them this talk IT.

When you do that, you are part of a wave of positive change around the world. And you have no idea how just one podcast episode can change the trajectories of somebody's life. So thank you in advance for sharing this generously. Thank you for being here and spending your time with me.

And in case nobody else tells you, I want to tell you that I love you, I believe in you, and I do this because I not only believe in your ability to create a Better life, I know you can do IT, and I know you deserve to. And I hope every time you listen to one of these episodes and you do something with IT, you start to believe IT to already. I'll see you in a few days.

Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.

IT is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapy or other qualified professional. stitcher. Experiences make life more meaningful.

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