Clients and the CBT School community are often asking me for tools and tricks to manage anxiety. Thankfully, we are so blessed there are so many scientifically proven tools and treatment modalities to help those with anxiety, depression, and other struggles. However, I feel the need to bring us back to a mindful tool that we can use any time we want. The great thing about this tool is that it is THE BEST FREE MINDFUL TOOL! That’s right! It is the best, and it is free.
Before we do that, I want to look at things abstractly for a second. I promise it will make sense once I tell it so hear me out.
Let’s say I want to be a great mom. I want my daughter to think I am the freaking best mom ever.
Here is the thing! Just because I am her mother, that doesn’t automatically mean she and I will be good friends and have a great relationship. Or, that she will even like me.
To be a freaking rockstar mom, and to make a lasting impact on her heart and well-being, I am going to have to nurture her and our relationship.
I am going to have to hear her pains. I will need to sit with her when things are hard. She will need me to hold her hand and be compassionate when she makes mistakes. And wipe her tears when she cries. And most of all, she will need me to not deny her of her anger and sadness and brattiness. I am going to need to really be with her.
To have a nurturing and healing relationship, I can’t cheat and do it the fastest way. She is not going to think I am an amazing mom just because I buy her the newest iPad and get her the best clothes and hire the best nanny to take care of her all the time. Those things are great and will make her happy for the short term, but they won’t result in a good relationship with my daughter in the long term. She won’t feel deeply loved by me and she won’t feel deeply seen.
If I want to have a lasting and healthy relationship, I have to actually sit with her. Be with her. Not disown her because she is angry or being naughty. I can’t just leave it to the nanny to fix her when she is sad or angry or not cleaning her room. I can’t buy her a trip to Disneyland and send her off with the nanny and expect that she will feel loved by me just because I arranged it and paid for it. If I do that, she will understand that I will only be there when she is good, or when it is easy, and she will not feel worthy when she is having tough emotions. Here is where the healing and growth occurs.
So, here is this week’s lesson. When it comes to your mindfulness practice, you can’t cheat. You too have to do the actual “being with.” Our relationship with ourselves is no different. We all want to be deeply understood. We all want to feel worthy of being sat with. We all know that feeling deeply seen is one of the most healing experiences we can be given. Here’s the big question for this podcast episode. Do you try to cheat when it comes to actually spending time with yourself and deeply sitting with your experience? My guess is you are saying Yes. We cheat ourselves on self-care and just “being” all the time.
So, let’s talk about how we befriend ourselves. This is the best FREE mindful Tool I am talking about. The best free Mindful tool is your breath.
We disregard breath as one of the best mindful tools and we push forward wanting more supercharged, easier tools. During this podcast, we do a short breathing meditation, in hope to simply honor our “being” and “spend time with” ourselves. Returning to our breath really is the best free mindful tool.
Before we go, here is a reminder to check out our swag! WE ARE SO THRILLED TO FINALLY BE OFFERING IT!We have an array of t-shirts and tanks for men, women, and children.Each product has our very own CBT SCHOOL motto, “It is a beautiful day to do hard things.”Check it out at the following link!https://www.etsy.com/shop/CBTschool
The Anxiety of Decision Making Is REAL and EXHAUSTING!
Experiencing and managing anxiety is a hard and courageous task. And you guys know what I am going to say next. It is a beautiful day to do hard things!
One activity that is made difficult by anxiety is the process of making decisions. Making decisions can be exhausting and brings up a lot for us.
When making decisions, we might be faced with anxiety about making the “right” decision. We might also be faced with the anxiety of making the decision that won’t hurt others or impact others negatively. We might also be faced with anxiety that our decision will cause us to miss out on something better or more beneficial to our long term goals. This constitutes the anxiety of decision making.
Basically, making decisions is the ULTIMATE exposure to uncertainty and tolerating discomfort. There is no way to make a decision without acknowledging and facing uncertainty. Here is a teaser from the episode. Even when you put the decision making aside, you are actually making a decision. Not making a decision is technically making a decision you didn’t even know existed.
This weeks podcast is all about The Anxiety of Decision Making. We go over some of the themes that come up surrounding decision making such as Hyper-responsibility, Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and Perfectionism.
We also talk about how we must embrace uncertainty in our lives and accept that life doesn’t need to be perfect. This can be easier said than done, so we discuss some important mindfulness tools which can help us manage perfectionism, hyper-responsibility and Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) when it comes to decision making.
We hope you enjoy this week’s podcast episode or Your Anxiety Toolkit.
Also guys, we are excited to share that ERP SCHOOL is going to be released VERY soon, so keep your eyes out.
CBT School is also excited to share that our lovely friend Stuart Ralph is offering The OCD Summit, an online summit specifically for OCD therapists. The OCD Summit will be a 6-week webinar series where Stuart Ralph, host of The OCD Stories podcast, will interview some incredible scientists and clinicians in the OCD field, with you the therapist as the audience. Kimberley is honored to be selected to be one of the panelists for this exciting event. Registration will include 6 topics curated for your continued development as an OCD therapist, where you can ask questions and network with other therapists in the private FB group community. Click here to join.
Ep.42 Dispelling The Myths About Managing Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Jon Hershfield Shares How To Have A Wise Relationship With Thoughts, Feelings, and Sensations
You guys know how much I LOVE breaking down ALL THINGS ANXIETY and then deliver it in easy and helpful ways. In today’s episode, I am THRILLED to share Jon Hershfield’s wisdom with you. He is a genius at breaking things down into easy-to-understand ways.
For this episode, I reached out to some trusted and respected Mental Health Professionals for input. I asked if they could share some of the unskilled advice that some of their clients have received from their previous therapists or medical professionals.
During our time together, Jon addressed how some advice for anxiety can be problematic and Jon shared his INCREDIBLE knowledge and wisdom on how to manage anxiety and obsessions in a mindful and rational way.
We discuss topics such as:
Why can’t I just distract myself from the thoughts?
Can I just Listen to music to drown out the thoughts?
Can I imagine a Stop Sign when having intrusive thoughts or worrying?
What about squashing thoughts like a bug?
If I think it, is it my unconscious mind trying to tell me something?
My Doctor told me that I just need one really heavy period for this anxiety to pass
My Doctor told me my Anxiety is due to not being breastfed
I understand I can get these scary thoughts to go away by thinking positive and using The Law of Attraction.
Jon has a private Practice in Baltimore and uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
When your physical symptoms of anxiety are high, you may feel like nothing works. You may have moments when you feel like you can’t come back to your rational brain. When we are all wound up on anxiety, fear can run the show. You know what I am talking about, right?
Despite there being some great tools out there, but one of the most difficult parts of having severe anxiety or panic is the comprehending what IS real danger and what IS NOT.
Last month we talked about R.A.I.N, which is an acronym that helps us use some of the most important mindfulness tools. There is also non-judgment, acceptance, willingness, bringing our attention to the present moment. These are all wonderful tools.
For me personally, if I can understand the mechanism behind what is happening, I can handle it better. That is why understanding what was happening in my brain was SO helpful.
Today we are going to delve deeper into understanding our brain and what happens when we experience high anxiety.
The problem with the anxious brain is that it often sets of an alarm, making us feel like our lives are at risk, danger is ahead, when really there is no danger at all. This is a mistake our brain makes, particularly when we have an anxiety disorder like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety or Specific Phobias.
Sometimes just understanding a little bit about what our brain is doing can help us with awareness and then allow us to implement the tools better.
A Simple way to Understand YOUR Brain and Anxiety
I want you to think of the brain like a house.
This house is a two-story house, with a stairway that leads us to from upstairs to downstairs, or vice versa.
Dan Siegel and Tina Payne wrote a wonderful book called, The Whole Brain Child that coined this concept, but I have shifted them a little to specifically address the management of anxiety.
**Please note that scientifically, this is not perfect. It would take hours for me to explain the intricacies of the brain and all the areas that provide different functions. For the purpose of getting a basic understanding, we will use this simple metaphor.
The Upstairs of the brain is where we do most of our Executive Functioning. What this means is, in the upstairs brain lives the “Thinkers”.
Functions of the upstairs brain allows us to
Regulate our body (speed up or slow down)
Tune in to someone else or something else.
Balance our Emotions and use Empathy and compassion
Have response flexibility (slows down the time between impulses or urges and an action). Basically, this means that we don’t respond based on pure emotion.
Calm our fear: There are inhibitory peptides called gabba that tame our fear and help us interpret the stimuli in a rational, appropriate way. This occurs in the Prefrontal Cortex at the front of the brain.
For kids, I love Hazel Harrison’s idea of giving each of these functions a character name. Hazel Harrison is a blogger for Mindful.org, if you are interested. You can be super creative with this process and make it silly and fun.
In our upstairs brain lives:
Creative Cassidy
Problem Solving Pete
Patty the Planner
Reasonable Renee
Calming Catarina
Kind Kelly
Flexible Felix
The downstairs area of the house lives the Basic functions. While these might not seem as sophisticated as the upstairs of the brain, the downstairs helps us to stay alive.
Downstairs brain controls
Bodily mechanisms that are automatic (Breathing, Digestions and Blinking). It is really quite incredible that our whole body can function without us needing to do anything at all.
Fight, flight and freeze mechanisms. This is the most important, for today‘s discussion. The downstairs is the Emotional hub of the brain. We need to be thankful for this part of our brain, as it keeps us safe from real danger. This downstairs area of the brain is what keeps us from touching the hot plate on the stove or not walking out onto a busy highway.
For the kids (and for use Adult Kids!), our downstairs brain is the home of:
Fearful Frannie
Panicky Pete (Fight flight or freeze)
Sad Sandra
Furious Frank
Bossy Benjamin
In the downstairs brain lives the Amygdala, which interprets the current stimuli, past memories about such stimuli and the general environment to determine if there is danger or not.
If there is danger, the Amygdala sends out a message to the body to prepare for flight, fight or freeze. This message may cause a bunch of bodily sensations that will prepare you for survival. Your heart rate might go up, which is your body preparing to be able to run a long distance in a short amount of time. This message may cause you to have stomach issues such as diarrhea or vomiting, which is your body’s way of emptying its contents, again, so you can be lighter and get away from such danger.
Using the metaphor of the house representing the brain, the stairway of the house helps the upstairs and the downstairs communicate together. The upstairs and the downstairs work together to think and feel in a way that is regulated and reasonable.
If there is a real danger, let’s say there is an earthquake, the downstairs brain (specifically Fearful Frannie and Panicky Pete) take over to make sure they can send all the messages necessary to keep the body safe. An example of this is, if there was in fact an huge earthquake, the upstairs “Problem Solving Pete” would not stop to pick up the stray shoes that have been left in the middle of the lounge room in case someone trips. Or, “Reasonable Renee” would not signal for us to stop to say goodbye to the people we are standing with before we ran for safety. Our downstairs brain works very hard so it can get us to the safest place in the fastest possible time. Once the danger has gone, we go back to using a more balanced distribution of the upper and lower brain.
What happens when we have an Anxiety Disorder?
In some cases, as mentioned above, our brains interpret that there is danger and sends out these messages when there is, in fact, little or no danger at all. This is VERY common in anxiety disorders. We could say that our downstairs made a mistake and set off the alarms, signaling to the whole body that is must prepare for fight or flight.
When I am using the metaphor of the two-story house, I often call this “lockdown”. Sometimes, just as our brains do where there is a REAL danger, when our brains mistakenly set off the alarm bells, it “locks down” the downstairs brain and won’t allow us to access our upstairs brain in a reasonable way. Problem Solving Pete and Rational Renee have no way of communicating with Panicky Patty and this keeps us from questioning if this danger is, in fact, a danger.
There is great benefit from knowing this information and being able to notice and observe when your brain is sending you into “lockdown”. Just understanding and observing this can allow us to reset. In fact, identifying that we are in lockdown and that our downstairs brain is being activated instantaneously opens up the stairway a little and allows reasonable Renee to begin doing her work. It is Reasonable Renee who allows us to say “OK, I am in lockdown right now”. Isn’t that SO cool?!
Dan Siegel uses the quote, “you have to name it to tame it” and I cannot agree more when it comes to anxiety. When you (or your little ones) can name what is happening in their brain, it helps them to feel in control and then are able to tame their heightened sense of danger.
Now, don’t get me wrong, knowing this information will not make anxiety go away completely. But, the more we can identify when our downstairs is in lockdown mode, the more likely we are to use our mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tools.
Another tool is to practice using you upstairs brain when you aren’t in automatic lockdown. By exposing yourself to the very things that set off the downstairs brain in to lockdown (when there is, in fact, no danger at all), you can re-train your brain to reassess the danger appropriately. You will use your upstairs brain to regulate your downstairs brain when it wants to send you into lockdown.
It is important to know that the upstairs part of the brain isn’t fully built until sometime in a child 20’s. This doesn’t mean that this tool isn’t helpful to those who are children or adolescents. In fact, it is even more important for those who are younger. Understanding your brain can help develop the use of the upstairs brain and can benefit then in many, many ways. The goal is to have an upstairs and downstairs brain that communicate and work together.
Discussing Anxiety and the Brain with your Kids
If you are working with young children, try to make it fun. If your child is in lock down, have Bossy Benjamin tell Panicky Pete to “scram!!!!”. You could say, “You don’t belong here Panicky Pete!” You might also ask the lovely Calming Catarina to help with breathing and doing a fun activity that engages your child.
For little kids (and us big Adult kids), you might ask Reasonable Renee to keep and eye on Worried Wanda. Worried Wanda often spends too much time worrying about the future and all the bad things that might happen. Reasonable Renee can help remind Worried Wanda that her imagination has gone a little wild. Reasonable Renee might also sit down and come up with some activities that your child can do when Worried Wanda talks too loud and starts to become a bother. Ideas might include arts and crafts, take a walk, build a lego castle, do a jigsaw puzzle. The trick is to get hat upstairs AND downstairs brain engaged and communicating together!
Play around with some of these ideas and please let me know if you have any great ideas or questions.
Clients and the CBT School community are often asking me for tools and tricks to manage anxiety. Thankfully, we are so blessed there are so many scientifically proven tools and treatment modalities to help those with anxiety, depression, and other struggles. However, I feel the need to bring us back to a mindful tool that we can use any time we want. The great thing about this tool is that it is THE BEST FREE MINDFUL TOOL! That’s right! It is the best, and it is free.
Experiencing and managing anxiety is a hard and courageous task. And you guys know what I am going to say next. It is a beautiful day to do hard things!
You guys know how much I LOVE breaking down ALL THINGS ANXIETY and then deliver it in easy and helpful ways. In today’s episode, I am THRILLED to share Jon Hershfield’s wisdom with you. He is a genius at breaking things down into easy-to-understand ways.
