7 Powerful Stress-Stopping Skills | Ep. 13 (Audio Only)

If you're ready to win the battle against anxiety, lack of self confidence, sleepless nights, and to turn the page in the pill for an ill model, you're in the right place. Our passion is to help you get your life back. You deserve freedom, you are worthy of living the life you were meant to, and you can make small changes that get you big results in a short amount of time. Welcome to my podcast. I'm Dr. Nicole Cain, a naturopathic doctor with a master's in clinical psychology and a former anxiety sufferer turned anxiety freedom rebel. Today we're going to talk about how to go deep without losing yourself in the process. You're going to learn seven powerful skills for stopping anxiety before it takes center stage. So, without further ado, let's get started. The first thing I want to say is that above all else, you must trust your inner self. Since we were born, we have been trained to obey others, and in doing so, we so often turn away from ourselves. Instead of being raised to listen to our intuition, trust our gut instincts, and honor our personal limits, even and especially when they are uncomfortable or inconvenient to others, we are told to walk in a straight line, be good Victorian children who are seen and not heard, and to comply with the rules of the house, the city, the state, your country, and even and especially God. When untethered, this kind of mentality can be dangerous and even fatal to the fire that you were given at conception. In the 17th to 19th centuries, the age of Enlightenment, otherwise known as the Age of Reason or Renaissance Humanism, emerged. This movement carried with it the work of Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton and other philosophical thinkers, paving the way for political revolutions with a centrality on sovereignty of reason, liberty, and rejecting the former philosophies of absolute monarchy and dogmatism. This Renaissance forever changed the fundamental expectations of human thought and in part served as a springbird for modern day thinkers like Danielle Laporte, Elizabeth Gilbert and Glennon Doyle. We live in a world where we are encouraged to question everything, heal at all costs, break down the iron curtain, separating what was with what shall be. But the risk that follows is an adaptation of a dogmatic pendulum that is swinging so far to one extreme that we begin to adopt a toxic interpretation of sapara o de, which is Latin for dare to know. A toxic interpretation of dare to know. What I mean by this is that we go too deep, too fast, at the risk of crumbling beyond the point of repair. We burn down our house before the next is built. We stop going to church, but fail to replace it with a new spiritual practice, we go down into a full split without stretching first, and we all know how that turns out. While deconstruction always precedes new creation, if we do not begin the process of building anew once the old has gone, we will have nothing waiting for us. Discouraged by what felt like a never ending therapeutic process, and desperate for an answer, claiming to have the solution to the stalemate she had found herself in, Emily had put the thousand dollar conference ticket and airfare on her credit card, packed her bags and flew south. Ignoring the red lights from her inner parts, she jumped down the metaphorical well. But she wasn't prepared for what she found. When her anxiety and racing heart told her to sit out on certain sessions, she challenged herself with extreme participation. When the knot in her stomach gripped, she shoved that aside and dug in deeper. She wanted to grow after all. And how can you grow if you never step out of your comfort zone? She broke open all of her vulnerabilities and in the spirit of evolution and ascension, she blasted through her well constructed protective barriers and turned her skin inside out. She broke down the walls, rejected old protective mechanisms that she felt were holding her back, and she detonated the rocky foundation that had been propping up her life for the last 30 years. She was determined to start anew, and following her well intended guide, she slid deeper and deeper and deeper. And then she lost herself. A week later, she was back in the United States, alone in her apartment, riddled with wave after wave of debilitating panic. Her body was jerking uncontrollably. She hadn't slept in days and visions of trauma after childhood trauma flashed before her eyes. Her head was filled with excruciating pain, the migraines raging and the ringing in her ears was deafening. It wouldn't stop. And she was scared. She was afraid of what she would do if it didn't end. And she didn't know where to turn. She was confused. She felt betrayed. And she felt completely and utterly alone. Her inner parts were screaming at her. Some of the voices enraged, while others wept uncontrollably. Sometimes, my love, more is not better. Your walls are there for a reason. Honor them. Your barriers are there to protect you. Thank them. Your inner voice is trying to speak to you. Listen carefully. Red light, Yellow light. Green light. The first step in the act model is acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is about turning towards what is happening now and accepting it for what it is. Acknowledgement is being in the emotions, big or small, and not trying to change them. Acknowledgement is about mindfully attending with radical mercy and acceptance to the story of your human experience. During one of these sessions with my ACT Method warriors, I was asked, what do I do if I go deep and I can't come back? How do I go deep if I'm afraid of what will happen and I won't be able to come out? I thought about this for a long time and realized that this beautiful soul was speaking with incredible wisdom. She was talking about the red light. She was telling me, if my body is giving me a red light, how do I proceed forward? What do I do? And my answer to her is this. Stop. Always honor your stoplight. While going deep is a necessary part of growing and healing. Just like a flower cannot survive with only sunshine and no water, you cannot flourish without care and respect of all of the ego states that have carried you to where you are today. Just as your right hand mirrors your left, Daring to know should be mirrored by your inner protective parts. If your wise self, your intuition, your gut, your knowing is giving you a red light or even a yellow light, this means that we need to pay attention. We need to turn back to our force field strategies. Force field strategies are protective parts that we choose to elicit. We choose them. We can call them into action when we need them, and they can buoy us during the transformation process. In emdr, this is referred to as resourcing. Force field strategies are those things in life that serve to protect us and keep us safe. Force field strategies should always be considered with a stoplight in mind. A stoplight is comprised of three. Red, yellow, and green. Red means to stop. Under no circumstances should you ignore your wise mind's red light. Our bodies have different ways of giving us red lights. For Emily, it was anxiety, a racing heart, the knot in her stomach. These were signs from her inner protective parts that something was not safe or right. And she didn't listen. What does your red light look like? What does it feel like when you have gone too far? What are your indicators that you need to hit the brakes and reassess? Yellow light means slow down. Often yellow lights present themselves in the form of intuition, A knowing, your gut instinct. When my yellow light gets activated, I feel dreadful constriction of my throat, I clench my jaw. If I ignore this protective part, it will get louder and push into red. But if I honor this, step back and listen, I can often make a decision that better honors what all of my parts need. And then green light, it means to proceed. This is where we want to be when we're breaking down our stories, doing the splits, constructing colosseums and examining our lives. Green lights are cultivated by honoring our protective parts, engaging in self care activities, resourcing and doing frequent check ins. Green lights are eager, growing, honoring, protective and directive How Deep shall I Go? When reading the works of your favorite inspirational authors and when your soul is burning to turn the page, it's important to be intentional on how deep you should go. Let's talk about how to proceed forward in a profound way that is healing for you. The first step is Meta Awareness. Meta awareness, or metacognition, is a term that came from the work of developmental psychologist John Flavell. He coined the term metacognition in order to describe a phenomenon where a person is thinking about thinking. This is where we have a thought and we explore or acknowledge and then explore what the thought is, why it's happening, how it's happening, what it means for you. Meta awareness is noticing the content of your experience. It's going deep in the moment. Meta awareness is the opposite of mindlessness. In order to go deep, in order to ascend in the sovereignty of reason and construct a new way of being, you must first practice meta awareness. In order to do this, ask yourself questions like what am I thinking right now? What do I think about what I'm thinking right now? How am I feeling about what I am thinking? What am I experiencing in my body as this thought comes up? What is beneath this? What is the narrative of my story? And why is this emotion here? The second step I want to share with you today is resourcing. In resourcing, the goal is to build your brain's gray matter so that you are more able to manage your emotions before and when they express themselves. This will help you be ready. This will give you a reservoir of resilience. We're going to be talking about seven Sunbeaming. This is a hypnotic breathing exercise where you imagine a sun ray coming in to your head. It can go into the third eye or the top of your head. And as you imagine the sun, imagine it feeling warm. It goes into your body and it's cleansing and purifying and it's from pure nature. If it's difficult for you to imagine this, you might start by practicing outside in the sun. If you have that. If you don't have sunlight, maybe a warm lamp. Whatever you do, whatever feels right, the exercise is to notice the warmth on your forehead, the third eye, and the warmth on the top of your head, and notice a small amount of heat and allow yourself to Gently, mindfully amplify that physical sensation of warmth in your mind's eye. Imagine absorbing the heat and the purifying energy and embody the feeling of nurturing. Allow a sense of openness in your head and in your shoulders. The second is clockwise, counterclockwise. In this exercise, I want you to bring up a mildly disturbing memory and to concentrate on the physical sensations that emerge. There are no right or wrong answers. Just drop in and notice. When you think of that memory, rate it on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is not at all disturbing and 10 is the worst. Notice how emotionally disturbing the memory or the event is to you right now. Notice how intense it feels, not how logically bothersome it is. Notice how you respond to it. Now notice where it's located in the body, and imagine the energy is going in a spiral, clockwise or counterclockwise. Ask yourself the direction where the energy is going, and then, once you've identified it, I want you to mindfully imagine changing the direction of that spiral. And notice what happens when you do. If this is helpful for you, rehearse it with different levels of disturbance and practice bringing the disturbing intensity down by redirecting the sensation of the spiral. Number three is befriending the body. For each meditation, pick one part of your body to befriend. For example, start with your hand. Notice anything and everything you can. Appreciate moments this hand has served you, helped you Acknowledge what the hand has done for you, how it's been there, through the good, through the painful. Think of memories where the hand has assisted you in getting things done that you needed to do. Express gratitude for that part of your body. Spend five minutes each day with a different part of your body. Number four Making a mandala. A mandala represents the inner connection of all things. You can buy a coloring book to build your mandala, craft supplies, or even create one in your yard with sticks and rocks. And what we want to do is we want to build or color or create in a clockwise direction. So as you do so, color each section, or draw or build each section one by one in a clockwise circular pattern. Spend 20 minutes building or drawing, working your way around the clock. In life, we always have seasons. While every fall is similar to the fall of your past, it is never the exact same weather pattern. Notice how everything changes, but yet it is all connected. How the spring rain waters the flowers that will bloom in summer. 5. Becoming your own parent. There is a part of you that is wiser than you. This is the knowing or the wise self. Your intuition or your gut. This is the parent of yourself. All of our parents, no matter their intentions, will always fail us because they only know life from their own perspective. Your earthly parents cannot be your parents for your entire lives. At some point you go out on your own, some while we're much younger and some while we're older. In this meditation, call upon your older, wiser self, your parent self. Drop into your body, drop into your knowing, drop into your intuition and your gut and meditate on a question you would like to ask your wise self. Wait as you meditate. Drop into your body and out of your thoughts and just notice what your gut says. Creative Input Our mind is full of thoughts, belief systems and ideologies. And beneath the surface, oftentimes these belief systems are giving us false data. Do you have any parts of you that you feel are speaking words that are not life giving, that aren't full in their truth? Where did those parts get these messages? And what is going into your brain to reinforce these messages? Most people spend more than two hours each day consuming social media, the news, television that somebody else is curating and that is going into your brain. Spend 20 minutes each day intentionally identifying a positive source of input, like poetry or rumi, a book, a podcast. Change what is going into your brain so that what comes out is what you want. Want and the number seven is breathing. Shift. Bring up a good happy or positive memory and then notice where you feel that in your body. Notice where the breath is when you think of this positive memory. Once you've identified it, place your hand over that area of your body and continue breathing and noticing. Then next bring up a different memory, one that has a low level of disturbance, and notice how your breath changes. Place your hand over that location of your body and then breathe for a couple of moments and then the last step is to keep noticing that thought, that disturbing message, that image, but place your hand back on that first positive location. Deliberately change your breathing pattern accordingly and notice the disturbance. Dissipate. The final thing I want to share with you is the importance in doing this work in bits and pieces. Limit how much you take on and for how long. Always set an end cap to your work so that it is manageable and structured. This will give you a sense of safety and empowerment in doing deep work. If it's hard to self stop, then either you may be going too far, too deep, too fast, or maybe you need a helper, somebody who can come and redirect you out. Make sure you plan ahead for that. Imagine everything that you're feeling is in a protective box and instead of opening the box and dumping it all out, select one item from the box. Start with something small and work on one aspect of it or one element of that thing and then when you're done, mindfully put it back so that you can continue to work when you are ready Today we talked about trusting yourself above all else. We explored how to listen to your inner self, your wise self, your intuition, your gut, your knowing, whatever you want to call it. You dove deep into understanding your stoplight and remembered the value of your protective parts. And finally, we tipped our toes into meta awareness and we went over seven skills for effective resourcing. These skills have been shown in clinical research to be effective, but you have to show up for yourself day after day and don't give up. Me and my team will be here for you every single step of the way. Remember, you are never alone and there is always hope. Hey everyone, thanks for listening. This has been Dr. Nicole Caine. If you love what you're hearing and are eager for more, please hit the subscribe button. It helps me know that what we're doing is valuable for you. If you want more free information on how to get your life back, check out my website@www.Dr.nicolecane.com. you can send questions, learn about consulting with me directly, and even preview our online courses. We also have a free and private Facebook membership group and you can find it by simply going to Facebook and searching for Anxiety Freedom One Week Challenge. We'd love to meet you and learn more about how we can support you and getting your life back. And now for the disclaimer. The recording you just listened to.