Dealing with Anxiety when the World is Scary

All right, I think we're live. This is Dr. Nicole and Paul and I just wanted to bop on here and give a little love to everybody. My jam, my passion is helping people with anxiety. And I think there's no time like the present. And so we are hanging out on this beautiful gateway loop and we are taking a little sit after doing some hiking. Hi, Ashley. It's nice to see you. Thanks for watching. I wanted to talk a little bit about what to do when everything feels really scary and what the anxious brain does and what you can do about it. And Paul's gonna help. Paul is a psychotherapist. He's been doing psychotherapy for over a decade. We actually met in graduate school.

That's true.

And so I'm gonna talk for just a couple of minutes, and then I'm sure Paul's gonna have such brilliant things to say. So I hope you. I hope you benefit and enjoy. So with anxiety, what can happen is when it feels like there's a lot of chaos, when the world feels out of control, when it feels scary, whether it's due to something political or something happening with your health or finances or whatever it is, it creates this feeling of chaos in the brain. And what the brain will end up doing is it'll swing on a pendulum to rigidity. And so we have this, like, constant chaos to rigidity swing. And there's the cutest puppies coming, which is so exciting to me, all of the puppies. And so the question is, is what do you do when your brain is on this pendulum swing of chaos to rigidity, to chaos to rigidity. And examples of the rigidity might be something like, okay, I have to try to hyper control. I have to hyper control. I'm going to buy all of the toilet paper that I can find, or I have to hypercontrol. I'm going to wash my hands every six seconds. It can produce symptoms that we would maybe call obsessive compulsive, which can exist on a whole continuum. It can produce symptoms of analysis, paralysis. And so I can tell you that that's my go to is when I get anxious, my brain just hyper analyzes everything. And I try to control it by coming up with solutions. And Paul's just like pointing, we're walking.

Down the trail while we talk about.

The next part some more. He's like, let's walk while we do this. Hi, Kathy, my love, it's so nice to see you. So with anxiety, there's a pendulum. And so we go from anxiety and chaos to Rigidity and this feeling of a need to control. And so the question is, is what is going to help your anxiety? What is going to help when the circumstances aren't changeable and you just have to deal with it, you just have to be in it. And so Paul, actually, as we were talking earlier, we're just like doing this hike, and I was like, wow, we should go live and just share this with people. Paul had some really good ideas, so I'm actually gonna hand the phone over to him and let him share a little bit.

So there's lots of things you can do, but one of the things is you have to figure out what you're doing obsessively, and you have to identify that. So for some people, it's checking the news every five minutes, it's checking their supplies, checking their bank account or whatever it is. And we have to come to the realization that whatever is going on in the world or whatever is going on in your personal life will not always continue to go on. I remember when 911 happened, I couldn't imagine the world without being so scared about attacks and different things happening to the big Cities and the U.S. but here we are now, and there's a lot of different feelings about that now, and it doesn't feel as scary as it did at that time. So we have to remember that at some point this will pass and we have to disconnect from the constant information stream that we find ourselves in and take time, maybe even blocking the time, to find a way to get back into the middle or the center. So there's a lot of things you can do for that. Go for a walk, read a book, maybe a fiction book, write in a journal, go exercise if possible. If you can't go anywhere, just try exercising in your house, looking at pictures, calling a friend, watching a movie, doing something immersive, wherever you are. I like mindfulness meditation, but normally that can take 20 to 30 minutes at a time. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to acknowledge the chaos and the fear while also trying not to flip into compulsive behaviors that continue to try to make us feel safe when we can't feel safe. Also connecting with people, because we're all in this situation together, and if we connect with people, we can find that we're not alone and we just have to get through the present.

There's a super cool exercise that I want to do with you guys that I'm borrowing from Jack Kornfield. And so when your brain is in Chaos, or when you're trying to go to rigidity and you feel like you can't control everything. There is a benefit to distraction, but there's also a benefit to rewiring your brain. And I talk all about this in my act method for anxiety. And the first step is, number one, let's acknowledge. Hey, this is really shitty. This is really scary. I'm having a hard time with this. And then once you acknowledge it, instead of just repressing and suppressing your emotional experience, you're actually giving your brain the space. So number one is acknowledge it. And then we have to do effective tolerance skills. And effective tolerance is basically the ability to tolerate your affect, and your affect is your emotional experience. And so the question is how to do that. So this exercise I'm going to teach you is called the Boats, and it's by Jack Kornfield. And so anytime in your life when there's something that's really difficult, out of your control, chaotic, the more that you can practice this, you're literally going to change the wiring in your brain, the structure in your brain, to. To where instead of going from one end of the continuum to the other, you're going to be more in the gray area. And so I'm going to do the boats exercise with you and play this often, practice this often, because I'm telling you, the way that you wire it is the way that you're going to fire it. Your brain will actually start to change and grow something called gray matter. And the gray matter is what gives you control over that chaotic pendulum. And so I'm going to find a nice place to pop a squat. And while I'm doing it, it's so nice to see you, you guys. Thank you for watching. I hope that this is helpful for you. We're gonna do the boats exercise in just a second. I see a beautiful rock up here. And by the way, this is Arizona in the winter, and look how beautiful and green it is. It's so beautiful outside, you guys. It's so, so beautiful. So, okay, I found this rock. I'm gonna pop a squat on the rock, and we're gonna do the boats exercise together. Are you ready? Okay. Okay. So I'm gonna imagine that there's a river before me, and so this is my view. And I'm gonna do the boats exercise. And so I want you guys to imagine. Just close your eyes and just acknowledge that there's a lot of chaos right now. There's a lot of scariness, there's a lot of impulses. I have to refresh my Facebook. I have to load the news, I have to see what 45 has been up to. I have to do all of the things, but just relinquish that for the next couple of minutes. And I want you to just imagine that you're sitting at the edge of a stream, and then in the stream, there are boats. And the boats all represent an anxious feeling or an anxious thought or chaos, right? So as you notice that boat, notice the feelings that you have about it. Notice what comes up on your body. Notice thoughts that you have. And then I want you to project them onto the boat. And the projection part is the releasing part. So we don't want to go into rigidity and we can't control the chaos. And so we just have to be. So notice that boat. Notice those thoughts, Notice those feelings, those worries that are coming up for you. And then put them on the boat. And then allow that boat to continue floating down the stream. And then notice along comes another boat. And that boat could have another worry, it could have another fear, another anxiety. You might feel it in your teeth, you might feel it in your heart or your skin. Wherever you feel that, just notice it. Project it onto the boat, and then allow that boat to continue floating past. And sometimes in this exercise, the boats will come back. They'll go around the little island and they'll come back and just allow them to come back and do the same thing. Just notice them. When you feel scared, when you feel chaotic, just allow yourself to sit down for just a moment. Imagine that stream, Imagine that boat, what that boat represents for you. And I want you to project that all onto the boat and let it go. The more that you practice this, the more the brain is going to become adept at letting go. Because right now it's grabbing a hold of those boats. It's trying to control it, it's trying to fix it. But you can add gray matter by simply doing this exercise. Also, when you're doing this exercise, notice the compulsions you have towards the boat. So I could tell you that when I'm really upset, I'm really scared or indignant or worried about something, that I just want to torpedo the boat. And so that is another thing to acknowledge and just notice and accept and acknowledge that feeling like, this is really awful, it's unfair, it's unjust, there's so many ridiculous things that are going on and that are going wrong and that could have been done better. And you know what? Just honestly just notice that. And then with everything else, just let that boat go by and continue to do this exercise for if you could do this exercise, five minutes a day, I promise you, loves, it's going to change your brain and it's going to get easier. If you resist the feelings of stress, they're going to persist. And so if you can just allow yourself just five minutes of watching the boats go by, putting it on the boats, I promise you it's going to get better. So that was the boats exercise extrapolated from Jack Kornfield. And before we go, oh my goodness, it's so, so good to see you guys. I love you. Lots of love and light to you. Kathy, Lori, Jamie. Oh my gosh, my love, it's so good to see you. Jonathan, Paul has something he wants to say.

So after you do the five minutes of the boat, this is just one really simple thing I'm going to tell you about. Take about 10 seconds. So after you do the boats, set your phone for two minutes and when you're sitting there after the boats exercise, count to four as you breathe in, 1, 2, 3, 4 and then out 1, 2, 3, 4 in your head. So ready? It's called four count breathing. So after you do the boat exercise where you're rewiring your brain, just do a cool down of four count breathing for two minutes until your phone alarm goes off and then you'll be reset and then try not to pick up your phone for a while. So one cool thing I want to announce is that Dr. Kane is working on a really cool anxiety course and a podcast that's going to be released early in the summer. So stay tuned for a lot more content and if you have any questions, you can give the office a call. Just check out drnicolecane.com and thanks so much for watching and we hope that maybe doing the boats exercise and re watching this video will help you in this time of difficulty and anxiety.

Babes, you are not alone. We're with you. We love you. This too shall pass and then something else will come and then we're just gonna visit our boat some more. So I love you guys so much and I'm here and if there's anything that I can do, send me a private message and I will get back to you. So this is fun doing Facebook Live to take care. Bye.