21 Tips to Beat Anxiety with Dr. Dawn Elise Snipes

Hi, everybody, and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. Practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. Today we're going to be talking about 21 practical tips to Beat Anxiety. This is based on a book that I've got coming out in two months. It's in press right now. Happiness isn't brain 100 practical tips to Beat Anxiety. So look for that to be released in June of 2018. So not too long now. We're going to go over 21 of the tips that are in that book right now to give you an idea of some things that you can start doing now instead of having to wait till June to deal with your anxiety. So the first one, and I've talked about this in different situations, is learning the difference between emotional and factual reasoning. Just because you may feel anxious doesn't mean that it's necessarily a threatening or dangerous situation. When I get ready to go to a social function, I get a little bit butterfly in my stomach. I get a little bit of anxiety. I'm not one to do mixers, so I get a little bit of anxiety. But emotional reasoning would mean that I'm thinking about all the reasons that I need to be scared before I go into that situation. Factual reasoning is backing up and thinking factually about the situation. I'm going to this mixer. There's a lot of other people there. Many of them probably feel like me, and, you know, this is what I'm going to do. The facts of the matter are that it doesn't have to be scary. Nobody at the mixer is going to try to embarrass me or humiliate me. Any potential perceived threats are pretty much all in my own head. So it's important to separate emotional from factual. Learn to differentiate what's actually happening from what you're currently thinking about. Sometimes you can be going in and doing something and thinking about the worst possible scenario, thinking that the sky is going to fall, for example. And in reality, it's not that bad when we have a storm come through. For example, last year we had a significant portion of our fence blown down in a storm that came through, which is kind of a big deal when you've got, you know, equines and chickens and ducks and everybody to keep contained. And it kind of freaked me out a little bit. So now when we have a storm, I can get a little bit anxious at first and I need to remember, you know, what's actually happening right now is it's a storm. It's no big deal. We've had hundreds of them. Factual. And what's happening now, not what I'm currently thinking about, which is what happened last year. So I need to get my head out of the past because the past is the past and there's nothing saying that it has to ever occur again. So focusing on what is actually happening now. If you've been in a car accident before, for example, then you might get stressed out when you're in heavy traffic. Again, what is actually happening now? Yes, traffic is heavy, but you're safe. You've got good distance between you and the people in front of you. If you feel the need to, you can get all the way over into the right lane. So you have an exit strategy should you feel like it's getting too, you know, claustrophobic or something. But that's what's happening now. You're not currently in danger, you're just going with the flow. The third thing you can do is try to prove yourself wrong. Show yourself that your thoughts have no basis in truth. So if you're worried about, you know, a rash, you've got go to the doctor and confirm that you aren't dying of some incurable disease, which is what you may be thinking. Thinking about. Or ask someone how they feel about you. If you don't know. So if you're wondering if so and so hates you, instead of stressing about it, ask them. You know, prove yourself wrong or right. But at least you'll have an answer. You'll have a factual answer, not just an emotion based answer. Don't live in the gray area when answers are available to you. Sometimes there aren't any answers. Sometimes you have a gray area. But if there are answers available, get them so you can let go of that anxiety or deal with it and move on. Number four is stop trying to navigate the path while the hallway is dark. You know that old saying that when one door closes, another door opens and the follow on to that is. But those hallways are a bitch. Yeah, it's dark before that other door opens and the first one is closed. You're in a dark hallway. That's okay, you know, don't try to make decisions when the hallway is dark. When you can't see what's going on. And this is what happens when you're up, you kind of get tunnel vision. When you get a lot of adrenaline going through your system, you get tunnel vision and that can make things dark. It can make it harder to see all of your options. So wait until you're less upset. Get in Your wise mind. Before you make any life altering decisions. You know, you may decide when you're upset something bad happens at work, you're anxious about something. You may decide that you need to go on a walk. Okay, that's fine. But when you're anxious and upset and right in the midst of it, it's not the time to say, well, I'm going to quit my job. No, no, the hallway is dark. You need to be able to look at what are at least three options that you can consider when you are trying to figure out what to do. Number five is to unhook from your emotions. Instead of saying I am terrified, say I am having the thirst thought that I'm terrified. And you may think to yourself, you know, whatever. You know, that's just semantics. But think about it this way. If you are a smoker, for example, or you like chocolate cake, if you think to yourself, I have to have a piece of chocolate cake or I have to have a cigarette, it feels like it has to be done. You know, there's just no question. If you say to yourself, I'm having the thought that I have to have a piece of chocolate cake or a cigarette, then that thought you can choose to act on or not act on. So it's separating it and making it so it's something that you can put away. Fire can burn your house down, or it can cook your dinner each night and keep you warm in the winter. Which means it can be bad or it can be good. Your mind is the same way. Will you let it burn you out and cause you to feel helpless and hopeless, just spinning around with anxiety and what ifs and oh my goodnesses? Or will it help you turn into MacGyver? And whenever you face a challenge or something that makes you anxious, it will help you view that as a challenge and find creative solutions. Your mind can do either one. It can keep you spinning. I don't know if the younger people listening may remember sit and spins. We had those when I was little. You sat on this little disc and you turned and you just spun around in the same place until you got dizzy. And that's all it did. And that's what happens when we get stuck with our emotions. We're on our own little personal sit and spin. It's not going to do any good except for make us sick to our stomach. Now if we take that energy and instead of sitting and spinning, we use it to address the challenge and view it as a problem that can be solved, then we're going to make Some more forward progress. Number seven, realize that thoughts can be merely illusions. Think about all the things that you've thought about and worried about that have turned out to be nothing at all. You know, you got yourself all in a tizzy over nothing. Think of all the time you wasted preparing for outcomes that would never happen. The what ifs. I mean, I'll admit I'm bad. I'm one of those people who usually has not only a plan B but also a plan C. But I stop at plan C. I know people who have plan D, E and F. And you know, that takes a lot of time and energy to have all those backup plans. So in the future, when you start to worry, ask yourself if what you're worried about is factual and probable. So if you're getting ready to go take an exam, you know, you can worry that you're going to fail it, but you know, that's a lot of worry. And you can start figuring out what you're going to do if you fail that test, which means you're probably going to fail the class, which means you can work yourself up into this whole catastrophic situation. Or you can say, is it factual? Is it probable that I'm going to this exam? Well, if you've done what you needed to, probably not. When people go in to have their HIV test done, there's typically a lot of anxiety going in to do that. And so people can get really worried and start coming up with all these plans of how they're going to tell people and what they're going to do if they're positive and how life will change and all this kind of stuff. And they get their results back in their negative. They expended amazing amounts of energy planning for the worst case scenario. So sometimes, especially if there's an answer to it, you know, you're not living in the gray area. You're getting ready to get the answer. Sometimes you have to be patient and just have faith that you will be able to handle whatever the answer is. Otherwise you could be going in the completely wrong direction with your plans. Follow it to the end is number eight, Think about whatever you're worried about. Then imagine realistically what will happen and follow it to its conclusion. Your boss leaves a message on your desk that he needs to talk to you on Monday at 9am be in his office. Well, that can be a little bit intimidating no matter who you are, if your boss is doing that, and then you've got all weekend to worry about it. So imagine realistically what's going to happen so think about, you know, have you been doing your job? Have you been a decent employee? All right, are things, does the business seem to be going well or are they laying people off? Realistically, is he going to call you in individually if he's going to do layoffs? No. So going through all those things in your head, you can figure out with reasonable accuracy what is likely going to happen and at least whether the worst thing is likely going to happen. If you go through those things and you say, yeah, I've been being a good employee, I've been on time, I've done all these things, the business is doing well, you know, I don't think there's anything that I could be in trouble for. So I don't know what he wants. Wish I did, but I don't. Then you can distract yourself for the rest of the weekend because you follow it to its conclusion. If there's nothing major that you've done wrong, then likely you're not going to lose your job. Likely you're not going to get demoted. None of those awful things are going to happen. Likely you will meet with him and he'll say whatever he has to say, and then you'll go on about your business. If you stick with fact based, probable scenarios, you will often find that the outcome is not that scary. You know, if you look over it and you go, yeah, I've been late six days out of the last 15 and I haven't gotten my work done in a month. Well then, yeah, you probably need to make some plans. But at this point, there's nothing much that you can do to change it. Change whatever he's got to say. So being aware of what is likely and probable to happen, remember, the average person has over 50,000 thoughts every day. Heck, I had four thoughts before I even got out of bed this morning I woke up and I've got a foster kitty staying in my room. And my first thought was, where's Vicki? And then she was up on my bed. And my second thought was, that's different. She's sitting on my feet instead of on her pillow. And my third thought was, I don't really want to get out of bed this morning. And just kept going on 50,000 thoughts. Some are happy, some are sad, some are fearful. If you were asked how many of your 50,000 thoughts you remembered today, it's likely going to be less than 100. You know, you can remember that you thought about what to eat for breakfast. You can remember that you decided whether or not to go to the gym. You know, those are thoughts that you can probably think back and remember. But if you really had to start thinking, you know, I bet you would be hard pressed to come up with more than a hundred. So you're going to have some scary thoughts. That's okay, let them go. Thoughts are just illusions. They come in and they go out. It's kind of like think about clouds. If you've ever made cloud pictures, cloud pictures, you know, you're laying on your back, you're watching the clouds and they morph into something and it's a dinosaur or a whale or something and that's awesome and it's, it's exciting and then it turns into something else. Our thoughts are the same way, you know, they don't have to stay stuck. Anxiety ride the wave is number 10. And we've talked about this one before. Feelings come peak in about 20 minutes and subside just like waves come in and crest and go out. Unless you feed them. If you're anxious and you start thinking about all the reasons you need to be anxious and you start thinking about all the possible worst case scenarios that could happen or what if ing yourself, you're going to stay stuck, you're feeding that anxiety. You know, imagine if you've ever played don't cut the rope, the little green monster on that, he's so cute. But imagine feeding him. Imagine that to your anxiety monster. And every time you have a catastrophic thought, you're just feeding him and giving him energy. If you ride the wave, acknowledge that you're anxious. You know, but if your boss leaves that note on your desk, you may be anxious. So all weekend, periodically, you may have that thought. I wonder what my boss wants to talk to me about. You know, that's kind of intimidating. Acknowledge it. Say, that's stressful. I'm anxious about that, but there's nothing I can do about it right now. And what can you do to improve the next moment? And focusing on that and dwelling on it is not going to improve the next moment. So ride the wave, let your feelings come in, acknowledge them. Go, do something, distract yourself. You'll check in a few minutes later and you'll go, what? You'll probably say, you know what, I don't feel as stressed out right now. You know that feeling starting to go away. Now some feelings, like grief can linger for a while. You know, I'm not saying that all feelings are going to come in and go out, but anxiety is one of those that if we start looking at the positive, if we start looking at the facts, if we start really evaluating the situation instead of using emotion based reasoning and worst case scenarios, our anxiety can go away. Don't swat the bee. And this is another one that I've talked about in some of the other podcasts. Our urges are what happen when we have a feeling and we want it to go away. When you have that feeling of anxiety, you want to make it stop. It's unpleasant. It's like when a bee lands on your arm. You want it to go away because you're afraid it's going to sting you and that's going to hurt. So you want to. Your urge is to swat at it, to get it to get off of you. Well, if you swat at it, you're increasing the likelihood that it's going to sting you. Most of the time it won't. So just like you let the bee fly off on his own, everybody's happy. When you have anxiety, don't act impulsively. Don't do the first thing that comes to mind to make the anxiety stop. Because a lot of times that's not going to be your best choice. Let yourself get rid of some of the adrenaline. Get into your wise mind, Think of three options for how to handle this situation and then choose from there. By the time you do all that stuff, the adrenaline is gone down. But until you can think of three potential options or scenarios, then you're still in that adrenaline haze. Embrace the dialectics as number 12. Try to figure out how two seemingly contradictory things can be true, such as this relationship I'm in may end. You know, it can. Some people get really anxious that they're going to be abandoned or that a relationship is going to end up and it may end, but you can also be okay, you know, and both of those things can be true. It's hard to imagine, but both of them can be true. Somebody could be anxious that they're going to lose their job and you know, because there are a bunch of layoffs happening at the company, so they could start having a lot of stress about that. But remembering that they could still lose their job, but it doesn't mean they'll lose their family. They'll still have their family, they'll still have other things that are important to them. So remembering and embracing the dialectics, there are going to be some bad things, but those bad things will be balanced by good things and can even create opportunities. If you lose your job, maybe you'll be in a better one that's more secure. Look for opportunity in the angst. Worry tells you that Something might need to change. If you're in a relationship and you're worried that it's going to end up, that tells me that there's something going on. Either it's an unhealthy relationship or the communication is poor, or you've got some stuff that you need to deal with. Something is going on that's making you feel either unlovable or feel like the relationship is going to end. So that's what worry tells you. Okay, well, that's fine. Thank you for alerting me to the fact that something might need to change, Mr. Worry Monster. Now, what's the opportunity? How can I embrace this and say, what can I do to improve this situation? Opportunities make up the majority of the iceberg that is in the reality you don't yet know and can't yet see. So if you're in this relationship and it ends, you know, that's the tip of the iceberg. And that's the thing you don't really want to know about and you don't really want to see. And that's the awful thing, the elephant in the middle of the room, so to speak. But underneath the water, the bottom of that iceberg is much, much bigger. And it's all the opportunities that wait for you now that you're not in that relationship. So how can this be an opportunity for you to grow, to meet someone new, to explore something, to maybe get a job somewhere else and move to a different state, start over again? Who knows? What are the opportunities? Number 14 is to change your objective. The goal shouldn't be to feel good all the time. Nobody's going to feel good all the time. The goal is to be able to express a healthy range of emotion without suppressing it or suffering. You know, if you don't have any days when you're sad, that likely means you don't have anything that's important to you that you've lost. And, you know, things that are important to us, we occasionally lose. We lose pets, we lose, you know, whatever relationships we lose people, people die. We lose jobs, we lose hopes, we lose dreams, we lose things. And when we lose those things, we're going to feel sad. That's your brain's way of saying, that was important. We're going to miss that. Okay? You know, so acknowledge it, experience it, and improve the next moment. You don't have to feel good all the time. Matter of fact, if you felt good all the time, it wouldn't be that rewarding. You'd just be like, yeah, this is normal now. If you have occasional sad days and occasionally get a little bit irritable, then when you feel happy, you're like, oh, I like this. We'll do this for quite a while. So you feel a difference and you feel that depth of, of emotion. Remember Yin and Yang. And if you look at it, you have the circle and then the little, you know, apostrophe looking things that are together. But in each one, there's a little bit of the other. In Yin, there's a little bit of Yang, and in Yang, there's a little bit of Yin. You can't have pure happiness. You know, there's always going to be a little bit of stuff that's not going quite right or not exactly the way you want, but. But it doesn't mean you can't be the majority of happy. When there's unpleasantness and it can feel like there's a lot of it, but if you look in that unpleasantness, there's going to be a little bit of happiness, a little bit of opportunity, a little bit of something to be grateful for. So it's embracing the depth and quality of those emotions, recognizing that, okay, anxiety is kind of on the dark side. How can we turn this into an opportunity to learn and to grow and express the full range of emotions? Develop hardiness, commitment, control, and challenge. Hardiness means that you understand that there are dozens of things that make your life rich and meaningful and you're committed to those things. Now, occasionally one of those is going to go wonky and you're going to have to deal with it. But while you're dealing with that wonky thing, the other 11 things or more in your life that make it rich and meaningful and that you're committed to, they're still going well. So, for example, if work starts to go a little bit haywire and you're unhappy at your job, all right, you got to deal with that. But it's allowing you to put a roof over your head and you like your house. It's allowing you to put food on the table and feed your family. You love your family. They're really important. So your commitment to all those things makes life worth living. Even though this thing over here not going so well right now, control is the second part of it. Once you're looking at all those things that you're committed to, most of them you don't have 100% control over. That's just life. So focusing only on the things that you have control over, if you try to change things you don't have control Over. You're going to make yourself depressed, anxious, upset, irritable. So don't do it. Ask yourself, is this something I actually can control? We can't control other people. We can't control other people's reactions. We can control what we do. You know, the person who is worried that he's going to get laid off, fired, you know, he can't control whether the business is doing well. He can't control what his colleagues are doing. All he can control is whether he goes to work, gets there on time, and does his job. That part is in his control. Irrational thoughts. It's important to think about irrational thoughts as something your brain is telling you that's kind of extreme, like, I must be loved by everybody all the time or the world is going to end. Oftentimes, irrational thoughts are products of traumas that you've yet to fully acknowledge or deal with. So if you grew up in a chaotic home environment and you have a lot of anxiety about relationships ending and people abandoning you, you may have some irrational thoughts that are telling you that you're not lovable or you're going to be abandoned that stem from that childhood trauma. So when you start getting anxious, you need to ask yourself, what am I afraid of and why am I afraid of it? Is this really a threat right now? So what am I afraid of? This relationship ending, why am I afraid of it? Because I don't want to be abandoned. Is this really a threat right now? When you're six, fearing that a parent is going to abandon you is threatening. When you are 26, fearing that a relationship is going to end, you know, it's unpleasant, but you can still feed yourself, you can meet new people, you can go go on about your life. So it's likely not as imperative that you maintain that relationship. So, you know, think about when you start getting anxious. Is this a reaction caused by something in my past, or is this a reaction to something that's going on now? Accept the fact that everyone, everywhere has weird, incorrect, disturbing thoughts that have no bearing on reality. We all have catastrophic thoughts sometimes. You're not a freak. You're probably not sick. You just have to learn to not be intimidated by your own mind. Your mind takes in information, but ironically, it's really not that smart. So we have to help it interpret that information. If I hear a loud noise outside, you know, it may sound like a gunshot, but it could be a car backfiring. So initially I'll have a startle reaction because it was a loud noise. And I think, oh my Gosh, you know, there's a gunshot and then reality sets in. And I go, no, I'm in downtown. You know, there's parking lot outside. It was probably a car backfiring. So making sure that you check yourself and check your thoughts to make sure that you're not just making a catastrophe. When you completely misinterpret this situation, stop gauging how bad things are by how much you panic. The more you panic, the more you panic. So if you get nervous about going to the doctor and think, oh, this must be really bad because I'm really stressed out, then you're going to get yourself even more stressed out because your heart rate's going to go up and your breathing is going to go faster, which is going to cause your body to release more stress chemicals. So you're going to feel worse. So don't assume that because you feel really bad, really anxious that it's really that bad. You could have got, talked yourself into it. So instead of gauging how bad things are by how much you panic, remember to gauge things how bad things are based on facts for it being a catastrophe and against it being a catastrophe. What are the actual facts in the situation? Identify your comfort zones and step back into them now and again. You didn't think I'd ever say that, did you? A lot of times I'm saying step out of your comfort zone. Well, it can be anxiety provoking. Moving past the place that you're comfortable with out of your comfort zone is a gradual process. Going too quickly is a recipe for stress. So when we take students, and I just did a class today on helping students transition from high school to college, that is a huge jump from one comfort zone to a discomfort zone, so to speak, because students just aren't used to living on their own and being away from mom and dad and all those different things. So it causes a lot of stress in college freshmen. But the same thing is true if it's a new job or whatever it is. Go in slowly, you know, dip your toe in, see how it feels. Just like when you're getting into a cold pool. Well, at least me, I don't do a cannonball into the pool. I put my toe in, let my feet get used to it, then let my calves get used to it, and I ease myself in. So it isn't quite as much of a shock to my system and it doesn't cause me as much discomfort. But you can practice, and this is number 20, practice healthy discomfort. This means lean into your stress. Don't resist it, acknowledge that you're anxious and go, ok, this means I am getting outside my comfort zone, which means I am growing. And that is awesome. Means this is a challenge and that is a little intimidating, but it is also exciting. Accept how you feel and remember you can tolerate it. Think back to times in the past when you've been anxious and you've worked through a situation. It wasn't the end of the world. Think about times in the past when you've been anxious and ways you've coped with it. You know, I'm not asking you to lean into it and do it all by yourself. You know, call on those past strengths and tools that you've used to deal with the anxiety instead of running from it. Finally, practice radical acceptance. Learn to acknowledge the parts of your story you'd rather ignore, forget, or not admit. So choose to love your home, your body and your work. Instead of saying, I am fat, ugly and useless and being upset or saying, everybody's going to abandon me because I'm not lovable, you know, let's practice radical acceptance. You are who you are, and you can choose to hate yourself, or you can choose to love yourself. You can choose to hate where you live and be miserable about it and go around like Oscar the Grouch, or you can choose to love where you live and make it a home and decide to change whatever you think needs to be changed. Choose to build your life from a place of gratitude and vision. Maybe you don't love everything about yourself right now. That's okay. That means you've got room for growth. So embrace yourself. Love yourself as a human being and say, okay, now there are things I need to work on. And use that vision to figure out where you want to go from here. Because you've got a long way to go on your life's journey. When you build your life from gratitude and vision, then you're using your energy to grow and move forward instead of run from your own fears. So remember, anxiety is your body's response to what it thinks might be a threat. It's like that faulty fire alarm that goes off. It's trying to warn you, but in reality, there's nothing to be warned about. There are many ways to address your anxiety, including getting good nutrition, avoiding too many stimulants, getting plenty of sleep so you're not exhausted and overtired. Exercise, which releases serotonin. Get social support. You know, reach out to those friends and change your perspective. So instead of looking at the worst possible scenario, you're saying, what's the best thing that could happen? Or how have I handled similar situations before? Because I can do this and add some happiness to your life. You know, you really can't just eliminate anxiety or just eliminate depression. If you eliminate it, then there's nothing. You need to add some happiness to take its place and that will help you start addressing your anxiety. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on.