Some people feel ashamed of their anxiety, which makes it worse. A CEO admitted he was nervous to 300 staff members and it broke the shame cycle. Naming the feeling consciously, instead of hiding it, moves it from automatic panic to something you can actually manage.
How does one break free from shame about being anxious? I love. This is really complex. Some people don't just suffer, they suffer about suffering. It's like this recursive kind of suffering. And the classic time would be when you're on a date, you want to be really cool and relaxed, but you're not. And so you're ashamed about not being cool and relaxed, which makes you less cool and relaxed. And that's a problem. That's a self reinforcing cycle. What do you do about that? And the answer is you rebel against your embarrassment by naming it. When I was running a company, I was a CEO for 10 years and I would get up in front of my own staff, 300 people that worked for me. My knees were knocking, man. I mean, it was so weird. And so I remember getting up and I said, I don't know, but you people really just freak me out. And it broke the ice. And that's how to deal with it. Are you ashamed of being anxious? Are you embarrassed about being anxious? Name it, own it. And that's the way that we actually get around a lot of these problems, by bringing them to the surface. Because remember, you can be managed by your limbic system or you can manage your limbic system. The way that you manage your limbic system is moving the experience of the emotion into the prefrontal cortex or becomes conscious.
