Understanding Anxiety: Tools for Managing Stress and Building Connection (Episode #42)

There's something about you that I can't.

Help but smile when you smile and.

Laugh when you laugh, something surround. Welcome to the human intimacy podcast, Dr. Kevin Skinner with my friend and colleague, Marianne Michaelis. Marianne, as we're getting ready for the holidays, how are you?

You know, Dr. Skinner, I am once again just really happy to be here. Really happy. I know we're going to be talking about anxiety today, and I'm really happy to be able to have this conversation, especially as we're. We know that our listeners are preparing for the holidays, and holidays oftentimes create a lot of anxiety. So I'm excited to talk about that today.

Yeah, they definitely can ramp up that feeling of anxiety, right? It's like, okay, the anticipation and am I ready? And family interactions. But we also have to look at this in another way, and it's this way, as a culture, if we were to look at the number one mental health struggle that we are having as a culture, anxiety is always listed as the number one struggle that we have. So today we want to talk about anxiety, how we can treat it and look at ourselves and dealing with our own anxiety. But also because we're talking about human intimacy, we're going to look at how it influences your relationships. So, Marianne, your leading thoughts on anxiety.

I don't think that we can underscore deeply enough how prevalent this is. Just as you said, it's the. It's one of the number one top issues that people deal with. And I think there's some different levels in the way that we perceive it. People say, I have anxiety, okay? Like, it's almost normal. We've almost normalized anxiety. So there's this level that everybody has it, and so this is normal, but yet it can be so incredibly debilitating. And it's really tricky sometimes to be. Be compassionate with ourselves and compassionate with other people, understanding how impactful that is on our lives and on the lives of the people around us, how it impacts our relationships.

And often, as we think about anxiety, let's just go into some of the ways that it manifests. Right, so we have social anxiety, which is. Influences how I interact with people, my fears of being around people, fears of being judged, the fear of saying something stupid or saying something wrong. So social anxiety. And then we have this internalized personal experience where I feel anxious all the time. I don't. I mean, I literally, if we were to put in a scenario, it's, I feel threat. I feel like something's wrong, something's going to happen, something bad is Inevitably going to happen. That form of anxiety is hard to live with.

You know, Dr. Skinner, as you're mentioning that, I think as we're talking about this, sometimes we have situational anxiety related to specific events, specific things, and then other times there's that generalized that we may be carrying with us. And I'm going to say there's probably some trauma. It's probably trauma related. There's something, there's a reason why it's showing up. But as you're talking, as we're talking about like that situational. I remember several years ago, I was having a really difficult interaction with a colleague and I was a brand new therapist. And I remember I couldn't sleep at night. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, it'd be one or two in the morning and my heart would be racing and my thoughts would be racing. And I just had. And I was like, what is this? I've never had this before in my life. What is this? And I couldn't sleep. I'd get up and I'd go hiking. But probably for about a year and a half I was dealing with these symptoms that were as a result of interacting with somebody. It took a while for me to realize this is anxiety. But it really, it's, it can be debilitating, it can be paralyzing, and it really impacts how we interact, how we function, how we show up. It's kind of like being hangry, but carrying like this, this crankiness because I'm not sleeping or I'm heightened all the time because I'm not sure if I'm safe that we're carrying everywhere we go. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I want to take it off of what you just said. Heightened. Right. So when we have anxiety, if we just look at it from a biological perspective, just taking it into our autonomic nervous system as human beings, when we feel threat, in other words, we don't feel safe. Because really it's, if I feel safe, I can't feel threat, and if I feel threat, I can't feel safe. So it's an either or in life. It's one of those things. Anxiety is a threat. My body is detecting that something is wrong. I don't feel safe in whatever that situation is. It could be in a work situation, it could be with a family member, it could be just even with yourself. You don't feel safe with your own thoughts. So anxiety is the body's way of saying, I don't feel safe. Right. If we were just Simplifying it. That's what it is.

So let me fact check. As I'm hearing you say that, let me just fact check this with you. Would you say that anxiety is relational, and if so, what percentage?

Oh, I don't know if I could come up with a percentage because sometimes I feel anxious because I didn't do well on a test, or sometimes I feel anxious because I did something that made me feel ashamed of my own behavior. So. So that may or may not be relational, but I would say a lot of our anxiety can be relational, like a fear of failing. So I can't take care of a family, so I'm trying to get good grades, or I'm embarrassed. So I would say a high percentage is relational, but it's our perception of what's going to happen to our relationships if XYZ doesn't happen or if XYD does happen. Like, if somebody knows that I've been hiding drinking in the background.

Yeah, because as I'm hearing you talk about that, I'm hearing so much relationality. What will they think if I fail? What will they think if they know? Like, it's the. It's this underlying fear of, of my interactions with other people. How will I show up? How will they show up? Will I be rejected? Will I be connected? Am I safe? I think it is coming back to that safety in our relationships.

So now, again, that's taking it into the relationship component. But we typically don't think of anxiety as being relational. We think of anxiety as, this is something that's happening to me. But again, I want to go back to the concept. Anxiety is our body's way of saying, you don't feel safe. And so it does. What it would naturally do is do. It would fight, argue, complain. Right? I've got to fight or it's going to flee to get away from whatever the threat is. So if we truly understand anxiety, if we can put it in the most simplest perspective, anxiety is your body's way of saying something is off, you're not safe. Now, it may be misfiring. It doesn't mean it's accurate. It just means perceptionally, that's what's happening.

I'm so glad you went there because so many times we can say, this doesn't make sense. I, I think one of the tools that, that I like to use for anxiety is to stop. I remember being laying in bed at night with my heart racing, going, hold on a second, I've got to stop and I've got to look and say, okay, what is this feeling inside of my body? The name I'm giving it is anxiety. Noticing where it shows up, but looking and saying, what's it telling me? And it's telling me I'm not safe. And so I have to stop and look around and say, hold on a second. I'm in my bedroom. I'm in my bed. I'm safe right here. I'm in my house. Are there any sounds around? Nope. My house sounds. Nope. My doors are locked. I had to very logically go through and say, right here, right now, in this minute, I am safe. And so, recognizing that misfiring that you're talking about, I think sometimes we do have to stop and take a look back. I work with my clients with a tool called a primary and a secondary appraisal. That primary appraisal, when I walk in the room and everybody screams at me and my heart jumps and races. Oh, no. That. My primary appraisal is I'm not safe. My secondary appraisal is I look around and say, oh, these are all people that I love. Oh, they're yelling, happy birthday. It's a surprise party. Oh. My secondary appraisal is like, wait a second, I am safe. But my body had a reaction because it was trying to keep me safe. My stomach dropped.

A natural. A natural response. Right.

Which is a healthy response. My. You know, if I walk in a room and everybody's screaming and yelling, my body. I hope my body's going to say, wait, you're not safe. But that secondary appraisal, slowing down, saying, hold on a second. Is this true?

Yes. So catching up, so to speak.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And. And with what you just identified as something that we don't talk a lot about. And in fact, even in our own field, we typically think that we have a thought before we have an emotion. It's actually inaccurate. We feel before we think. And that comes from the work of Dr. Joseph LeDoux. And. And so Dr. Joseph LeDoux, when he's looking at animals and he's looking at the fear concept, you feel fear before you think fear. Right. And so when we are automatically protected, that's the way our bodies are created. It's defined. It's prepared to protect us. Protect, protect, protect. It costs.

Yeah, there's. I remember I was. I was in grad school, kind of. In grad school, you learn about a lot of theories, and there's a cognitive based based theory, and then there's emotional focus theory. And I remember trying to understand the difference between the two. I've been to my EFT training. And they talked about how, just like what you've been saying is, we feel things first. And I was driving down the road, and a cat or something jumped out in the road in front of me, and I instinctively hit the brakes, and my stomach dropped and my throat got tight. Before I even recognized, before my brain even said, oh, that was a cat. Like, my body had just had that instant reaction. I went, oh, this is it right here. My thoughts were not there. I had the emotion. I had the feeling. My body had this response before my brain cognitively caught up. And so I. I love how you're explaining that, because it is about what our body's doing. Our body is wired to protect us. It's wired to keep us safe.

And Dr. Joseph LeDoux, not always the easiest to read because it's because he's a neuroscientist, but in his work, he found that when we hear something, it actually gets to our amygdala before the prefrontal cortex about twice as fast. Now, I'm talking microseconds here, okay? I'm talking microseconds. So we have to put it in context. It's happening very fast. But out of defensive, protective reasons, our body feels before it thinks.

And let's add on to that. Sorry, can I add on to that? Yeah, let's add on to that. What we see. Our body's picking up micro expressions from people. We're scanning constantly. We're also smelling like all of our senses are working, even though we're not thinking about them. And all of that is funneling into that amygdala, trying to figure out, am I safe? We walk in the room, and our body already knows. Is there a weird feeling in here? Is there something going on before we've ever caught up?

And let's speak to that for a second, because the body. And let's just speak to what the body's doing. The body is subconsciously. It has an under. It has a role, a very specific purpose. Protect this human being. Protect at all purposes. That's what it is. Protect. Protect. So when we feel unsafe, put me in this new situation. I feel anxious. Just as an example of that, My son is a ninth grader. He's been running cross country. They were given an opportunity to go run in Arizona this weekend before my son left. He's anxious. He's. He's. He's nervous. And you can sense it. And, I mean, bless his soul, he got on the bus, right? Here's this freshman going with these Juniors and seniors and people, older classmen on this bus trip. And, and, and, and so he's nervous. And of course he's nervous. That's what we would expect him to do. And now he's pushing himself out of a comfort zone, and he's experiencing this. And I sent him a message, how's it going? And he sends me a message back. We're playing cards, and I'm like, he's going to be just fine.

And so I think I'm hearing, like, anxiety. I think what I'm hearing you say is anxiety often gets a really bad rap. It's not always bad. Anxiety can be really healthy. Your, Your son's getting ready for a race. It makes sense that he probably has to go to the bathroom first, because our bodies, when we're preparing for things that are scary, it. It shuts down certain organs and it turns others on. And he's got, you know, our blood vessels open up and we're preparing for whatever's coming. Things are rerouted. We've got all these neurochemical shifts and changes that are happening. And for your son getting ready to run that race, he'll probably run faster and run better if he's got that adrenaline, if he's got that charge. Yeah. And so, like, this anxiety that we're talking about, it isn't always a negative thing. It's our body's natural response to help us, whether it's, yeah, get us out of danger or help us run a race or sitting on a bus with a whole bunch of older people saying, I don't know how I'm going to fit in. This might be uncomfortable.

And now let's talk about when it overwhelms us.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

Right. Because what happens is its natural purpose is designed to protect us. But what happens when I don't ever feel safe? And when you really look at anxiety, generalized anxiety, that's really what it is, is it's a place where your mind doesn't have a safe place, and it doesn't know how to get to a reset. It doesn't know there is a place where I can be calm, relaxed. And again, I'm gonna go back to that word. I feel safe in this place. So that's one of the reasons why we've seen such an increased uptick in anxiety in our society is because we're being overwhelmed and flooded by data, media, information. And if you look at smartphone use and levels of anxiety in our adolescence, for example, tremendous uptick, directly related with time spent on their devices. I think it's because they're getting messages that are overwhelming them, comparing, do I fit, do I belong? What if I wasn't invited to this party? And so what's happening, I believe, is that we're getting data overload. Especially with this recent election cycle. We had two polarized sides, fear mongering, the world's over if XYZ party wins. Too much data, too much fear mongering, too much. The body gets overwhelmed and we think the world is going to fall apart.

You know, I want to say this delicately and I couldn't agree with you more. I know that our new systems, like, so we haven't talked about social media, but that's part of this conversation as well, how it impacts how there's higher degrees of depression and anxiety for people who push like more, who spend more time on social media. But just two days ago, my sister sent me, the whole family, a group text saying, marianne, are you okay? There's a bomb cyclone that hit people in Washington and in your area. Are you okay? People are dying. And, and I was, I just come in, I was hiking and I was like, yeah, nice hike. Everything's fine. It's dry here. There's nothing here yet. What she saw on the news, she sent a link to what she'd seen on the news and it so sensationalized and it was so big. And yes, it, there had been some big weather in Seattle, but it did not impact me whatsoever. But she was so worried. And, and so I think it's important to really look at where am I getting my information, what information am I bringing or allowing into my life? Because it's not always healthy, it's not helpful.

And that overload that we're talking about, they found research that people who watch the 10 o' clock news are more likely to be depressed and then those who don't watch the 10 o' clock news.

Yeah.

So I, again, I think the idea is the anxiety that we're feeling, I think really what I'm trying to get at here is I think we need to be more intentional about what we consume and what it's doing to us. So Dr. Joe Dispenza, he said it this way. He said, you can become addicted to your own emotions. And if I am living in a state of constant fear, worry, anxiety, my body is becoming addicted to the chemical concoction that it's creating to create safety within me.

Sorry. So I was just going to say so, and maybe this is where you're going, but if that's the chemical concoction that's going. The image that comes up for me is looking at a car that's. That's. It's like you're sitting in your car and your foot's on the gas. You're in neutral or idle, and your foot's just on the gas all the time. And at some point, if my foot's on the gas all the time, at some point that motor is going to have problems. There's going to be some breakdown because that motor isn't made to sit in idle and have me flooring the gas the entire time.

Yeah. And that's what happens with anxiety, is I feel a threat. There's always a threat. And when you see or identify, and I've seen this in my office, where people are in a constant or chronic state of anxiety, there. There is no relief. And so they're almost always looking for, where's the problem? Where's the problem? Where's the problem? And. And so their mind. I often say it's like finding Waldo. And so there. There's an every page. If you're very familiar with Waldo, every page has a Waldo, and they're looking for Waldo. And when you are anxious, I really believe that's what's happening, is you're looking for the threat.

Yeah. Can I. If I can add on to that thinking about when we're in that state, that is not a state. If we're looking from an energy space. I don't know what to call it other than an energy space. But if I am in a space where I'm constantly looking for a threat, it's really hard for me to look into somebody else's eyes and to hear and see where they are. And so this is a wall. This is a barrier that creates me not allowing people to get in because it's not safe. My body's set up to say I'm not in a safe place to relate, but it also creates walls or barriers for me to reach out to other people.

I love the way you said that, because really what it's doing is it's preventing me from being present with you because I. When you're under attack or feeling threatened, it's really hard to say, well, Marianne, how are you feeling right now?

Exactly right.

So. So from a pragmatic standpoint, when you are in a state of threat, your body is in essence saying, fight, fleet, freeze, shut down, preserve. Yeah, I have. I have to. And that's. So it's not natural for me to be in that moment to be able to say, okay, so now let's talk what's going on in your world?

Yeah, so let's talk about that cycle because we're talking about a cycle here. So if I'm in a place where I'm feeling anxiety or I'm feeling really anxious and I'm in, I'll call it more of a collapsed state or a shutdown state because it means I don't have my energy that's able to flow out where I'm not able to reach out and connect. What I want and need is safety. Usually that's going to come through relationships, through somebody saying, I got you, I'm here for you. How are you like that connection? But I've got these walls that create this connection or this disconnection going. And this is just a cycle that keeps on going. It creates more anxiety because I'm not connecting and I need that connection, but I don't have it because my walls are going higher and higher and higher. And so this is a loop that we get stuck in the cycle.

Yeah. So to our listeners we're probably speaking to, based on research, we're probably at any given time, 18 to 20% of our population is anxious and it in social anxiety. This is an interesting one. They, they believe that at any time we as human beings in our lives, four out of 10 of us, a little bit more than that, will experience some form of social anxiety. So it's extremely common. One of the most common ones is public speaking. One of the most common anxieties we have is social speaking or public speaking. So we, it's normal, it's common. The question is, is what do we do? And this is really what I want our listeners to leave with today. What are some ideas or solutions that you can start implementing today to help reduce your level of anxiety? So maybe that's where I'd like to take us next. Marianne, what are some of your favorite solutions when your clients minds are racing, when they feel stuck or trapped with that threat or that fear that we've been talking about?

I'm glad we're shifting to this because I don't want to just talk, as you said, let's talk about the problem, but also let's, let's provide some solutions and some ideas. Anxiety is a physiological response and so my body is reacting. If I want to step out of this place where my body is having a physiological response, I have to engage my brain. I have to use my brain to help connect, to start redirecting. And so Stopping and saying, giving it a name. This is anxiety. I'm feeling anxiety, noticing where it is in my body. So next time it shows up, oh, there it is. That pit in my stomach, that's anxiety. So giving it a name. I think starting with that, recognizing the state that I'm in, I can't move out of a state that I'm in until I'm starting to understand where I'm at. So I love bilateral stimulation and that the easiest way to do that is to change my scenery and go outside and take a walk or step outside of the room. Whatever room I'm in, say, I need a break. So recognizing I'm feeling some anxiety and I need to take a quick break so that I can go recalibrate. I've got to recognize where I'm at so that I can start employing. Figuring out what are my tools that I have right now. You know, if I'm. If I'm public speaking, my. You know, if I'm. If I'm slated to give a presentation next, it's really tricky to say, okay, everybody, let's just take 10 minutes while I go recalibrate. That's obviously not going to be applicable. So we've got to kind of have like a big bag of tools and figure out what can work for me right now. So if I can't go outside, like I said that bilateral stimulation is just that body movement. So when we're walking, our legs are moving at different, you know, back and forth, and our arms are usually going back and forth and so moving our body. If I'm sitting in a. If I need a pr. If I'm doing a presentation, I can even just sit with my hands and just gently tap on the sides of my legs and I can start to take deep breaths. So breathing is probably like stopping, saying, hold on, this is anxiety. What can I do? Our bodies built in. Number one tool is our breath. It helps calm our sympathetic nervous system. And it's like a parachute. As I breathe in through my nose like I'm smelling a flower, and I breathe out like I'm blowing out candles. Just a gentle breath. The more that I do that, if my. If I'm breathing that way, my body says, hold on a second. She's not running from a tiger. Because if I'm. If I get that fast breathing, my. My. My brain's saying, oh, shit, there's danger. We gotta keep going. But if I start intentionally breathing slow breaths, thinking about my breathing, this is anxiety. Hold on a second. Let me sit with it. I can keep going on and on, Dr. Skinner. I've just got all these different tools. But. But what. What do you want to add to that, or what do you use?

I want to talk about the science of what you just talked about. So that's how I work, right? I. Because I. When I meet with my clients, I'm like, I want to explain to you why we're talking about this, why it matters, because if you understand the why of just resonates. And that's one of the core things that I want to talk about. You just talked about breathing. I want to talk about the why the breathing helps. And so let's. Let's go back. We call it the polyvagal theory, Dr. Stephen Porges. And in essence, we have what's called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is designed to. It really is the break. They call it a vagal break. So when I'm anxious, which really. That's my mind in the fight or flight, which is saying that my brain. And. Sorry, I'm going to be technical here for a second. The amygdala is the emotional center of the brain. It sends out the fear. When we're hungry, it says, you need to get food. The amygdala's purpose is really to design, to protect us. It's also the emotional center of the brain. The vagus nerve is the one that is. Allows us to think more clearly, to feel calmer, to be in a state where we can analyze something. And that's what you talked about earlier, is an awareness. So we know that if we can access the vagus nerve, in other words, we can push on the brake, the vagal break, then we can reduce the level of anxiety. So now, with that in mind, the purpose of what you just gave, the explanation of, of the breathing is an essential tool to push on the vagal break. And so when we breathe in a meditative way, it actually allows the body to say, as you said, there isn't a tiger here. Oh, I see. I can calm down. So if you wanted to just do what Marianne just said, do a simple box breathing exercise where you breathe in through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Do it for three minutes. But before you do that, let me give everybody a challenge. Observe the stress in your body before you do it. Intentionally breathe in through your nose, blow out through your mouth for a four to six count in, six to eight, count out. Do it for three minutes, give yourself a score when you're done and ask yourself, what just happened to me? And you will see that you're accessing the vagus nerve. There are many strategies today we're getting so much better at ways to access the vagus nerve. So we have strategies that can help you relax. The question is, will you use them?

Yeah. As you're, as you're talking about that break, like accessing that vagus nerve and a break, it just reminded me of a tool that I don't refer to as much as I could, but I'd love to give it to our listeners. And it's actually if you reach into your right ear, like right up at the top of your. Not your eardrum, but the little space above your eardrum, and you can just do a massage right there and you just kind of push in and you massage that. That's actually getting pretty close to an act. It's. It's a vagus. It's a vagal nerve massage. And so when you're talking about getting, Putting on the brakes, you do that for like two minutes just in your ear and you're. Because the polyvagal. The right side of our body is usually related to the emotions and that's the polyvagal nerve. Usually it runs through the right side, down through. They call it the wanderer because it goes everywhere. It's in our brain, it's in our head, it's in our gut. But ye. Using that, just your finger just right there, massaging that. The eardrum just. Yep. The hole above your eardrum. There's a flop of skin just right in there. That little nook, just massaging that is. Is another tool to actually physically begin to massage that. That vagal nerve.

Yeah. And again, that's just one of the tools. And now you understand the. Why it matters. Right? We're trying to access the vagus nerve, the vagal break. Because if you can access the vagus nerve, push on the brakes, then your body doesn't constantly feel in a state of stress. Now these are exercises. These are habits that you can create to help reduce anxiety. One of my very favorite ones, Marianne, is called the basic exercise. So to our listeners, I'm going to invite you to, to go to the Internet, type in the basic exercise. It's a two to three minute exercise, which is. Absolutely blows my mind. A simple two to three minute exercise. And you can find that you're accessing the vagus nerve with just the basic exercise.

I've never heard of this before. What is this?

You've never heard of it?

I've never heard of this. I, I'm excited. Go Check it out. You better explain a little bit more.

Okay. It's about as simple as can be. What you do is you lay down on your back. You put your hands together, cross your fingers, put them behind your neck. While you're laying down, you keep your head straight. You look to the right and up just a little bit until you yawn or swallow. Once you yawn or swallow, you take your eyes gently back to the center and you do the same thing to the left, up and to the left. It doesn't have to be too much up into the left, but just look to the left until you yawn or swallow. That is the called the basic exercise, and it helps you access the vagus nerve. It's unbelievable. It's effective. I do it with clients in my office when they feel anxious and overwhelmed. I just have them do this simple exercise or we do a breathing exercise. I'm trying to give them as many resources as possible to help them combat the racing, anxious mind.

That's fascinating. And my brain's going through the science, going, okay, are we. We're activating the right hemisphere. We're activating the left hemisphere. We're in a power pose. Like, I'm just. I'm gonna geek out on this a little bit and, and I can do that later, but thank you.

Go type it in. Go. I'm telling you, go type it in. And. And to our listeners, one of the things that's so important to understand is these are tools. You practice them. Which one works best for you? It' down in a business meeting. But it wouldn't be too hard to rub your ear, right? What about a breathing exercise? Okay, I can take a deep breath and I can blow out, right. What about music? And this is where to our listeners, if you've never heard of the Safe and sound protocol, Dr. Stephen Porges has created a device that it really helps access the vagus nerve. It's called the Safe and Sound Protocol. Some therapists actually use it and have been trained to use it. I've been trained to use it, use it with my clients dealing with anxiety. It's one of the best ways to help individuals. In fact, I'm really excited. We are getting ready to launch a new program with our clients dealing with betrayal trauma. And we're going to be using the Safe and Sound protocol as a one element of our treatment protocol when we work with our clients.

That's fantastic. I know that's a really great tool. And I would add. I didn't add this earlier, but as we were Talking about our populations of people who are experiencing anxiety, I would say almost every single betrayed partner I've ever worked with scores on their assessments for some anxiety. I want to. Can I. I. I want to just add a couple more tools that I think are important. Maybe just one main one. I learned this. I know I qu I quote Brett Williams in here, but our friend and colleague Brett Williams, I remember him saying that when he feels anxiety or something to the effect of he says, oh, hi, Amy. And so like amygdala, the word amygdala is spelled Amy. And so he's shortened it and said, oh, hi, Amy. When he notices it says, oh, hi, Amy. There you are. I see you're there. And so stopping and saying, hold on a second. This is a part. This is something showing up. It's trying to help me. So if I say, oh, hi, anxiety. Oh, hi, Amy, whatever I want to name it. Being able to recognize, I see that you're here. How are you trying to help me? So this Dan Siegel's coal, which is being curious, noticing I'm having an experience right now. Oh is I'm observing what happened in my environment, what's happening inside of me. A. I'm accepting it. It's not good or bad. It's just that I'm having this experience and l giving myself loving kindness and learning. If I can slow down and say, what's going on? How are you trying to help me? How's the anxiety trying to help me? Oftentimes it may be a we may have been triggered by something from our past that's showing up, trying to say, this isn't safe, this isn't safe. And so if I can slow down and say, hold on a second. How are you trying to help me? Let's look at this. Am I actually safe? Yeah, look at this. I'm an adult now. I'm not a five year old, and I am safe right now. It can really help us just to slow down and it can help us shift. It's a conversation, it's an internal conversation. And we can do it out loud or we can do it internally, but that's a really helpful tool to slowing it down and learning. Because that sensation, that emotion or that the anxiety is showing up, I would say always to help us. It might be misguided, it might not be the right timing, but it's always showing up as a reaction to something that it picked up, a threat as it perceives and so slowing it down and saying, is this valid for me right now? And if not what do I want to do with that? How do I want to change it? Or is there something I need to take care of right now? So listening to ourselves.

Yeah, a really important point of what you're bringing up here. So again, I just want to identify this. The COLE approach is a, an approach to increase the awareness. You earlier you talked about the importance of awareness. The Cole approach allows us to increase that awareness, which again is very important for creating change because if you don't stop and reflect on anxiety, your mind will be flooded with the fears that you are feeling. So a tool to help reduce anxiety, like the COLD approach, increases your awareness. And one of the. My favorite things about the Cole approach is that last one, that loving kindness. It's okay that I'm feeling this. It's okay, it's normal.

And I would happen and just to. I want to normalize a little bit when I share that with my clients. I've had so many clients say, Marianne, I am so with the C O and A that L. I don't know if I can do that because there's often a lot of self judgment. And so I just want to say that out and validate that that's a normal response. That that's a hard one for a lot of people. Yeah.

And when I have found that people have a lot of anxiety, I also see, as you described, a lot of self doubt.

Yeah.

It's almost like I feel like there's something wrong with me. And I would actually say it's just your body doing its job. Is your body doing its job. It's designed to protect you. It's just over. It's too much protection. Right. And some people say, yeah, but you don't know my life. Well, anxiety is it. It prevents us from human connection in some cases because I feel threat and I sometimes I misread, misinterpret a threat and I, it doesn't allow me to connect. Dr. Stephen Porges calls this faulty neuroception. And sorry to use this word at the end here today, but neuroception is our body's ability to detect safety. And that's the, you know, if I feel safe, then I connect and it's really a if then concept. And that's called neuroception. Faulty neuroception is when I think something's a threat, but it's actually not, or something is a threat and I misdirect or misunderstand it. So in all of our lives, learning how to interpret or read something is essential for our well being. But when I can't tell if someone or something is safe. Then I don't generally connect because I can't determine safety. And so that's a concept of neuroception as outlined by Dr. Stephen Porges. So let me conclude this part of it, transitioning to this final part. I know we're just running up against time today, human connection, and go back to saying when we learn to address our safety, our anxiety, then we learn to connect. But that is, it really does. We have to feel safe in order to socially bond. And that's why it's so important that we deal with our own anxiety so we learn to be better in our relationships. Things that continue anxiety, shame, unresolved shame, acting out, hidden behaviors, other things that increase our shame is our own interpretation of events. People are going to judge me. So it's so critical that we deal with our anxiety so we can be in relationships and deeper relationships.

And I want to add one last thought onto this as we're getting ready to close. Several years ago, NPR did a, a piece with Renee Fleming and a news report and she was looking at brain science, fmris and visualization. And as you're talking about that anxiety that can freeze us, that can get us stuck, it is usually related, not always, but oftentimes related to something about our interactions with people or other people or how we're going to show up, how others will perceive us. And the report that she did that was so fascinating, or the science that she shared was she's an opera singer, very well known opera singer. And they put her through an epime, through an MRI machine and they had her thinking about singing and they just wanted to see what the brain scans did. Then they had her go through singing and they, you know, they saw, wow, her brain's really lighting up. And then they had her go through, visualizing, seeing herself singing. And it was so much greater, it was just like fireworks compared to what it had been before. And so as we're talking about how, how you can, one of the management tools for anxiety is looking at saying, okay, if I'm going into the holidays and I can perceive that this per, that there may be some tension with this person or I got anxiety about how I'm going to show up. I'd love to invite our listeners to use some bilateral stimulation, tap gently on their legs, back and forth and visualize see themselves in the situation, acting the way that they want to, interacting that they, the way that we want to, giving our brain a pathway, a map of here's how I can do it so we can do some beforehand preparations. Before I go into the situation, let me see myself. So even your son. I know that visualization with sports is such a huge thing. Seeing myself be successful, it's creating the way for our brain to know how to do it. And so as we end, I'd love just to share that tool with our, with our listeners.

Fantastic. Great conversation. I know that we could continue going on. I know to our listeners, you might even have more questions about this again, if you ever have questions, questions, Human intimacy dot com. We receive them. We do our best to answer your questions. Let me, let me then conclude with this because there's so much of what you just described. The mental rehearsal. We really need to do a podcast on mental rehearsal because with proper preparation, which mental rehearsal is right. Proper preparation. That's how we prepare for anxiety. Anxiety based moments.

And smiling. Sorry, Dr. Skinner, I can't not go there. Proper preparation prevents a pound of pain. I learned that in our last podcast. So.

Yes, so that's exactly what I'm talking about. You were giving an example of mental rehearsal. That's giving a voice to our anxious feelings. And the more you do that, the better off you will be. It's just that simple. With anxiety, it needs a voice. We need to understand what it's doing to our bodies. Then we need to create strategies to help reduce the anxiety. Like we've given you some tools today. And then we need to take it and recognize that when I'm safe, I'm more likely to connect in human relationships. That's why it's so important that we deal with anxiety. It's actually harming our society because we become too anxious, too protective, too careful, and we're living in a state of fear rather than a state of connection. All right, thank you so much, Marianne, for your time today. Absolutely delightful conversation to our listeners. We hope that you have a great, great holiday season. We're looking forward to being with you throughout it and may you be blessed in all you do. Thanks.

Thank. You. You. Something surround you. It's like you're shining.

You're staring.