It's Not Your Fault You're Anxious

Hi, this is Dr. Nicole. Today I want to talk with you about the power model for anxiety, freedom. But first, there's something you need to know. It's not your fault you're anxious. It's actually the fault of two constructs. The first is that every human is molded to a fit into the world they're born into, whether or not that molding is in accordance to that person's unique and inherent nature. The second is that molding is done through a reward and punishment system. Healing comes from claiming your own story, taking it back. When you came into this world, you were given a book that had pages filled with expectations, morality, virtues, values, a certain economic status, advantages, vulnerabilities, and all of the things right. Some of us had pages where we could fill in the blanks and had a little bit of say. Others received a fully edited and finalized copy of this book. By reclaiming your own story, you are turning the page and looking at all of the beautiful, crisp, clean and fresh pieces of paper. Reclaiming your story is freedom to write your next act the way you want it to be. And an important part of reclaiming your story is acknowledgement. And that's what the A stands for in the act method. Acknowledgement of what you're dealing with right now. Acknowledgement of where you came from, which is your origin story. Acknowledgement of your stories of triumph, your stories of suffering. Acknowledgment of all of the constructs that build your pages of your autobiography. Reclaiming your story means you take your life back, taking a hold of freedom and taking them back from those outer world constructs. Reclaiming your story provides you the opportunity to answer the question, who was I before the world told me who to be? Once we see something, we can acknowledgement, and then we have the opportunity to resist or accept. And that's where anxiety comes into the story. I want you to imagine two birds sitting on parallel wires. One wire is closer to the ground and the other is several feet higher. The lower bird is close to the street, where there's traffic and strife and loss and car accidents and all sorts of danger. The lower bird is so close that she jumps and starts and resists while the upper bird watches, notices, acknowledges, and accepts what's happening. The upper bird doesn't try to change anything. She just simply observes. And we can learn how to be the upper bird or the lower bird. The lower bird resists what she cannot control. She cannot let go of her lack of power. Resistance is what leads to anxiety. Resistance is like trying to bail water out of a sinking ship with a strainer. The upper bird looks onto the scene with acceptance. She's able to see reality and she's able to hold the truth of the situation and acknowledge it for what it is. But she's not suffering like the lower bird. So how does she do it? The one thing I want to tell you is that acceptance is not to be mistaken for giving up or complacency. Was the lower bird complacent? Was she more complacent than the upper bird? Of course not. Was the upper bird more hopeful upon looking down at the tragedy below? Not necessarily. They could have had the same amount of hope and complacency. But the difference. Not an action. The difference is a way of being. Acceptance is a way of being. Acceptance helps us cope with things that are out of our control. Acceptance gives us the space to shift our focus away from what we can't control and towards what we can control. Anxiety is stuck in a time capsule and acceptance is staying in the present time zone. Anxiety is feeling out of control, where acceptance is reclaiming your personal power. And anxiety is focused on the future, whereas acceptance is focused on the here and now. Anxiety is facts and emotional reactions, and acceptance is just straight up facts. Anxiety is all in your head and in your mind, and acceptance is grounded in your body. And anxiety is swinging from chaos to control, chaos to control, while excited acceptance is just resting in that middle space. Anxiety is being the lower bird, while acceptance is being the upper bird. Anxiety is being on the top of the water when there's a storm brewing and the waves are crashing and acceptance is floating deep into the sea. One of the exercises in the acknowledgment section of the act model is called the power model. The power model is a tool that you can use to help you identify what you can control and what you can do to deal with the situation. Let me give you an example. A friend of mine, she was going through a lot and she decided to make a huge change recently in her life and it felt like an emotional whim. She left her job and decided to branch out and do her own thing. And I've been extremely anxious about it in this economic climate. I was so worried about her ability to pay her bills, take care of her kids, and I've been worried about her mental health. I was also worried that I'd lose our friendship. And as a result, I sent her annoying texts and she ended up becoming really quite stressed out by me and it strained our relationship. So had I followed my own advice, which I'm doing now. But let's apply this example to the power model. So the power method, it stands for proof, opposite action, write a new story, emotional renewal, and repeat power. So proof, this is where you make sure that your emotion is based on facts and you pull out the things that are not factual and that may just straight up be emotional. And so the facts of the situation is that I do know she quit her job, I do know that the economic climate is worrisome for some, but I don't know the details of her financial situation. Maybe she has a giant savings account. And I didn't know that stressing about an unknown variable wasn't doing my friend any good. And it wasn't doing me any good. My worry about me maybe losing my friend and her losing herself was me trying to control the situation. And it created kind of a lot of problems. The O in power is opposite action. And this helps us choose how we want to respond instead of responding from past memories or judgments, associations that may be unrelated to the facts. So this is where I did a little bit of deep diving. And this comes from the cast of characters, part of the act model where we look at our own psychological cast of characters. And when I was a kid, my dad had a job change and that resulted us leaving our beautiful home in North Carolina and we moved across the country to a teeny tiny hotel room where we lived for a month. And I was 4. I was pulled out of my kindergarten class, I was pulled away from my friends, my babysitter, we moved across the country into a teeny tiny little room that felt scary and unfamiliar. And I realized that I had been responding to my friend making a job change from a four year old self who believed that change is dangerous. And I was responding from a place of fear. And instead of a part of me feeling anxious about my friend falling into disaster, I could choose to meet the needs of my little 4 year old self and also be supportive of my friend at the same time. And so this is where we come to the W in the power model, which is where we write a new story. And this helps us create a new narrative, a new way of perhaps looking at the situation. And in this example that I'm sharing with you from my life, there's a couple neat ways that we could rewrite the story. And one is that my family went on a cross country adventure and I could remind my little me that I learned what it was like to live in a hotel and that bad things didn't happen. And I could also Remind my little me that we were safe, even though things were different. And in the situation with my friend, I could hold in one hand the possibility of disaster. And in the other hand I could hold the possibility of a wonderful new adventure. Remember, anxiety is fortune telling. Anxiety is worrying about what could happen. And oftentimes anxiety is worrying about things that are out of our control. And so what I want you to practice doing when you do the power model, the power method is to hold on to the different possibilities, one in each hand. So imagine in your right hand is the really scary, terrible possible outcome, maybe the worst case scenario, right? Hold that in your right hand and then in your left hand I want you to hold, I want you to hold on to something that feels like possible, honest, truthful, but really positive. Something that is just as likely because we don't know the future. And I want you to hold on to that and to kind of emphasize the left hand is I want you to imagine yourself a decade ago. And so where were you a decade ago? What were you worrying about? What were you anticipating? What were you thinking about? And then I want you to think about all of the things that have happened in the last decade that you never would have expected. And I want you to acknowledge that there is possibility that you might not get it right as you anxiously predict the future and acknowledge the possibility that what is the most truthful, the most honest is what we have right now. And so you can hold the possible terrible future, or you could hold a possible good future, or you could be like the upper bird and just notice, just be, don't try to change what you cannot change. Just acknowledge and accept. And so in the power model now we come to E, which is emotional renewal. And this helps us create a new feeling based on our ability to problem solve as opposed to being stuck in that emotion. And so instead of being anxious about my friend, I could choose to feel confident that what what will be will be and that I can support her. I can offer my opinions, I can offer my advice if she asks. But I will be a better friend and a better person by just being in the moment. And so then we have are in the power and it's just repeat, do it again and again and again. Just remember that anxiety and fear are about something that can't be changed and can't control oftentimes. And that is us not staying in our lane. It's not staying in our time zone, is going into the anxiety spectrum. And so when you're thinking about the power model, I want you to think about how you can write your own story and start thinking about, okay, am I the lower bird or am I the upper bird? And what do I need to do to help shift my bird? Spectus this has been Dr. Nicole and today we've been talking about the power model for anxiety freedom, which comes out of the ACT method. And if you have any questions or if there's any specific situations that would be helpful for you to talk through, then let us know and we'll be here for you. To learn more about us and what we're offering, you can go to our website@drnicolecane.com and I will be here every Wednesday. And then sometimes I'll jump on for a bonus Friday. And so I hope to see you. I'll talk with you soon. Much love.