“Trust your capacity to change” – Tara Brach Interview
I am thrilled and honored to share with you an interview I did with my absolute idol, Tara Brach. If you don’t know who Tara Brach is, let me introduce to you an amazing and inspirational human.
Tara Brach is a leading Western teacher of Buddhist Meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening. Tara is a Clinical Psychologist, meditation teacher and Author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge, two of my favorite books. In addition, Tara Brach, along side Jack Kornfield, co-founded the Awareness Training Institute (ATI) and the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP).
For me, Tara’s podcast (tarabrach.com) was (and is) one of the most important parts of my own personal development and growth. For hours I would (and still do) walk the neighborhood while listening to her podcast. Tara helped me through some of the hardest times in my life and allowed me to access her tools and wisdom through a freely offered podcast and streaming service that inspired me to create CBTschool.com. Tara taught me to be a fearless mental health advocate, so you may see that much of CBT School follows her goal of offering skillful and generous work.
While I was in Washington, DC for the International OCD Foundation conference, I was lucky enough to meet with Tara in person before her Wednesdays with Tara Meditation Talk and ask her some questions about anxiety and mindfulness. I am still freaking out with excitement that I had the opportunity to meet her in person and then get to interview her for the Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast.
My goal for this podcast episode was to zero in to the questions I often get asked and see what Tara’s response would be. True to form, Tara gives us some BEAUTIFUL responses that are easy to understand and apply.
In this interview, we talk specifically about how uncertainty can be one of the hardest and most challenging parts of anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), panic attacks and depression. Tara gives some amazing mindfulness tools to help us approach uncertainty.
We also talked about her book, Radical Acceptance and what some of the road blocks are to radically accepting our discomforts or fears. If you haven’t read her books, I strongly encourage you to. Tara has a way of bringing compassion into the room, even if she isn’t physically there.
Tara gives us tips on how to implement Mindfulness practices into our everyday life and normalizes the struggles we all have with this.
One of the questions I was most interested in asking Tara was her advice for those who are deeply suffering with mental health right now. She so beautifully responded with compassion and deep knowledge of mindfulness practice. This answer brought me to tears and I am so grateful for having this experience with her.
And, last of all, I just had to ask Tara about why she uses humor in her meditation talks and Tara kindly shared with us one of her favorite jokes. Tara used humor a lot to help us understand our own reactivity or idiosyncrasies and I just loved having a little chuckle with her.
So, as you can see, I am just a teeny bit in love with Tara (wink, wink). I really hope you get as much as I did out of this episode. Thank you so much Tara for your kindness and generosity.
Ok folks! DO NOT FORGET to stay til the end of the episode because Tara so kindly gives an AMAZING GIFT at the end of the interview for our wonderful CBT School community.
One of the biggest honors I have as a therapist who treats anxiety disorders is to present at the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) annual conference. I just adore these conferences, mostly because they provide a mix of both treatment presentations and support groups for those who struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and for therapist who provide evidence based treatment for those who have OCD. Another amazing thing about these conferences is that they also provide support groups and presentations on Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRB’s) such as Trichotillomania (Hail Pulling) and Excoriation Disorder (Skin Picking) and Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) and also co-occuring Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse.
In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, I wanted to share with you some of my reflections from running several support groups and attending some amazing presentations by some of the top treatment providers in the world. The IOCDF.org put on such an amazing event and I have to admit, this one was by far my favorite.
At this years conference, I was honored to co-facilitate a new support group called the Compassion Collective with a dear friend and colleague, Michelle Massi. Michelle and I gathered every morning at 7AM (yes, it was VERY early) to meet with attendees who wanted support with self-compassion. Each morning we provided a new compassion tool to help those who are struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This was such an beautiful experience, as we got to really see inside the minds of the attendees and hear what is getting the way of them practicing self-compassion. Interestingly, perfectionism and fear of failure were two of the key components or self-compassion sabotage (which I speak a lot about in this weeks podcast episode).
I was also honored to be a part of a presentation called “Let’s Talk about Sex Baby!” This presentation was a question and answer formatted presentation where attendees asked very intimate questions about how OCD and anxiety can impact sex. One of the most interesting themes of these presentation was just how uncomfortable people were about discussing sex with their therapist. We had a very OPEN and HONEST dialog with attendees about sex and normalized it.
Finally, I was lucky enough to get to run the Co-existing OCD and Eating Disorder group this year with Beth Brawly. Beth and I have ran this group several times and I love it SOOOO much. There is a fine line where OCD and Eating Disorders combine and we met to help attendees break down faulty views of body, health, body size, food and body image. It was so wonderful to see some very brave families join together to support their family members who are struggling.
Lastly, this is a friendly reminder that ERP School (our online course for Exposure & Response Prevention for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and other Anxiety Disorders) is COMING SOON, so stay tuned. Sign up HERE to be on the waitlist and be alerted as soon as it is available.
If you know me at all, you know that I 100% believe that WE CAN DO HARD THINGS! If you are on Instagram or Facebook, you will often hear me repeat,
“We can do hard things!”
“We can do hard things!”
“We can do hard things!”
I am also a strong believer in Progressive Mastery. Progressive Mastering is the systematic and step-by-step approach to learning new things. Basically, we incredible humans can learn just about anything if we break it down into small steps and take one step at a time.
I cannot stress this approach enough when it comes to mental wellness. We must not look up at the mountain, tell ourselves how we will NEVER be able to make it up there and then give up. We must take on emotion at a time. One thought at a time. One sensation at a time. One urge at a time.
When we do this, we move forward. We move upward. We soar!
This week’s podcast is the first of a series I am doing called “We can do hard things”. During this series, I will interview people who have taken the hard, but rewarding route of working through their emotions, mental health disorders, trauma and difficult childhoods.
I could not be more excited to share this weeks episode with you. Dennis A. Aguilar joins us today to share the inspiring story of his life journey through mental illness. Dennis talks about trauma, depression, suicidal ideation, OCD, anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, ADD, social anxiety and other struggles he manages. I found this interview to be incredibly inspiring and I am sure you will to0.
Dennis also gives TONs of amazing advice to those who feel like recovery is not an option for them. He talks about how he would go through stages of hopelessness and how to fought himself to just keep going.
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.
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.
