Short YouTube video by Dr. Nicole Cain offering a quick behavioral strategy to reduce anxiety during high stress. Dr. Cain introduces the DBT-derived "half smile" (an intentional partial smile) as a way to change facial-to-brain signals, citing effects like reduced blood pressure and modulation of amygdala signals, and recommends practical reminders (e.g., a bead bracelet) and invites viewer questions.
Chapters
Hey, this is Dr. Kane. And if you're anxious and trying to figure out a way to get your brain out of the anxious loop, then stick around because I want to talk to you today about one of my favorite strategies for helping the brain actually get out of an anxious loop. This comes from my ACT method and it's all about how to conquer anxiety, which is super high right now. Right. And instead of talking about the anxiety, I want to talk about what you can do in your brain and in your body to actually bring down the anxiety response. And so one of the number one ways to do that is to do the half smile. And we get the half smile from DBT Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. And literally all it is is just intentionally put putting a half smile on your face, kind of like, all right, so my smile is not like a full on blissed out smile because that would be inauthentic perhaps. But doing a half smile could be really helpful. And it actually changes the signals going from your face to your brain. We've seen that it can reduce blood pressure, that it can increase signals that stimulate your amygdala to tell you that you're more calm and relaxed and happy. So as you're going through your days, especially in these ones coming up, is just try to remind yourself half smile. One of the ways that I remind myself to do health strategies is I'll wear like a bracelet with beads or a necklace with beads, something like that. And then every time that I notice it or feel it, I'll just tell myself, okay, half smile. So I'm hanging out here in Phoenix and we're doing social distancing, but there's lots of people in like little pockets and it's really good. So anyway, I wanted to put this up here to tell you I'm thinking of you guys. I love you. And if there's anything that I can do, any tips that I can give you or any questions I can answer, let me know in the comments or send me a private message and I'm here. But today we talked about the art of the half smile and, and how it can literally change your brain to produce less anxiety symptoms and to help you be more calm. Anyway, so I am going to log off, but I will talk to you guys later. Thanks for watching.
