Start Your Anxiety Freedom Journey Now!

Hi, Everybody. This is Dr. Nicole, and I just wanted to pop on here to talk about anxiety. I'm going to be doing Facebook lives at this time, which is 10 o' clock Arizona, 1 o' clock Michigan, Eastern time zone. And I'm here to just offer you lots of love and lots of support on anxiety. And so if this is exciting or interesting to you, be here. If you can't make it, then I will be saving all these and you can check them out later. But I wanted to talk about one really important thing when it comes to anxiety, and it's the journey in and out of the Grand Canyon and what that looks like. I was talking to a really beloved friend yesterday who is an anxiety warrior, and we talked about how she started, and she was kind of numb and she still had anxiety, but she was medicated and she was taking antidepressants and benzodiazepines and all these supplements, just basically trying to numb out her anxiety. And then she made a really profound and brave step to see what she could do to put a comma at the end of her sentence. Anxiety had been running her show and. And she was desperately unhappy, but she felt like there was nothing else that she could do. And there was also this big fear of stopping the medications and doing more, because what if she got worse? She couldn't even imagine getting worse. And so she decided, she talked to her family, her loved ones, and she decided to take the step towards anxiety freedom. And as she did that, she was able to start to identify what her triggers were for anxiety, what the traumas were behind anxiety. And she learned a lot about what I call the cast of characters behind her anxiety. And so she started to unpack this process. And what was really interesting in her case is that as she journeyed, sometimes things got better, and then other times, things from the past would get unpacked. And we see this a lot. It's like the body keeps the score. If you haven't heard of that book, you should check it out. But we see this all the time where as the body is expressing and healing that even if you feel emotionally like you're on the right track, things may physically start to unpack and you may feel them again or they may feel a little bit worse. And so we use the metaphor, when we were talking together in her anxiety journey about going down deeper and deeper and deeper, and we use the metaphor of the Grand Canyon because let's face it, babe, sometimes it can feel like it's never going to end. And so she's going deeper into it. And she's talking about her journey, and she's talking with me about what it felt like to unpack these things with anxiety. And there's a couple of key observations, and one is that she felt lighter. She felt like suddenly she had more control and more power. And she noticed that there were reasons for the way that she felt. So instead of feeling this total chaos and anxiety and feeling out of control, she was able to say, like, oh, this feeling in my chest reminds me of this experience. And so she's able to go to her counselor, do some emdr, work on that. And then that experience, that physical sensation lifted. So she's going deeper into the Grand Canyon, and then she lands at rock bottom. And this is where we were talking yesterday is what it's like when you end up in the bottom, and how do you know you're at the bottom? And. And then with that can come this intense feeling of hopelessness and despair. And so she and I are going to do a podcast together. So stay tuned for that. It's all about anxiety, freedom. And I want you to have the opportunity to connect with other warriors, to learn about their journeys, to tell you that you are not alone, to share strategies to get yourself out, and to figure out how to do that as effectively and safely and powerfully as possible. So right now, where she is in her journey is she's been unpacking a lot of really deep stuff. And as she goes through every layer, she notices new symptoms come up. And as the new symptoms come up, she identifies those as what we call an ego state. She notices, explores, honors, works with that ego state. And then once that ego state feels like it's resolved and feels better, that symptom always goes away. And then she keeps coming, going, and moves on to another ego state. And so I want to talk about ego states, but before I get there, I want to talk to you about, okay, so now we're at the bottom of anxiety. Is there any hope of getting out? And she said, will I ever not be anxious, and will I ever feel like myself again, and will this ever go away, or am I doomed to just be in rock bottom? She opened Pandora's box. Is that just what's going to be for the rest of her life? And that's why it's so important to have community, because then you can talk to people about, okay, this is where I am right now. What hope do I have? What can I do? What are some strategies? What are words of encouragement that you can offer me? And so I started to talk with her about my anxiety journey. As you guys know, I'm an anxiety warrior myself. And I went through a period where I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and all these triggers were coming up and my parts, my ego states were telling me that they needed attention, and it was so overwhelming. And I was able to get out of the Grand Canyon. I was able to climb out of it. I'm on the other side. There, of course, are dips in the roads here and there, but generally speaking, there is hope. There is hope for you. You can get through it. And I believe that she will get through it. I've helped thousands of people get through it. And my mission in doing these lives to offer free support for you and to tell you kind of at the journey. So you start at the beginning, and you may be numbed, you may be in this state of protection. And then as you start to explore and go deeper, you may feel a little bit worse for a time. But she was able to come down on her medications, and so in some ways she was feeling better. And so she was really anxious and sedated on medications. She came down, she's unpacking it, she's doing a ton of of work that we talk about in the ACT model. She was doing therapy, she was doing all sorts of integrative, natural things. And so then she's now in the bottom of the Grand Canyon and she's looking for a message of hope. And so getting in. The group that I created is the Anxiety Freedom One Week challenge Group is I created this. It's free and it's because babes, anxiety sucks. Millions of people around the world are struggling with anxiety right now. And you don't have to do it alone. And so connecting with other people who've been in the bottom of the Grand Canyon and who can see the other side is a real important testimony that you can get better. You just gotta take it step by step. And I'm gonna be here with you every step of the way. And the other thing that's really cool is that if you're even thinking about healing from anxiety and what to do and you're not sure you want to go into the Grand Canyon, there's people that have been there too and can support you and walk you through that and whatever decision that you decide to make. And so if you're struggling with anxiety or stress is another word for it, a lot of people identify more with the word stress. Then there's tons of free resources. And I just want to Be here to support you. So I want to talk a little bit about the glitter and gold model and then we'll get to ego states. So glitter and gold. So when I created the Anxiety freedom one week challenge, I broke it down into sections. Seven days, every day I'm going to give you two skills. One is a glitter skill, one is a gold skill. And then you have a booklet with homework and explanation. And then there's a video that will get sent to you where I actually apply that and I tell you about a patient case or I tell you about my personal experience, how to use that skill and what to do and when. And I wanted to explain to you why is it called glitter and gold? So glitter refers to cognitive thoughts. And if you've ever seen glitter like that style stuff gets everywhere, right? It's bright, it's sparkly, sometimes it's sharp. And when you open up the glitter, it's like popping everywhere. And these are like your thoughts. Your thoughts can go all over the place. Your thoughts can be everywhere. The thoughts can spread, they can remain people's other thoughts. Their glitter can get on you. And so then there may be stuff that isn't yours that you need to return to sender. So the cognitive piece I refer to as glitter and the glitter are the thoughts that we have, whether they're helpful thoughts or anxious thoughts or thoughts that belong to somebody else. And then we have the gold. Gold is more grounding, gold is more heavy, gold is more solid. But gold can be very malleable. Like gold is a pretty soft metal. And so when I'm talking about gold in the glitter and gold one anxiety freedom model, I talk about glitters. All those thoughts that are all over the place that could get stuck, stuck on you, they can come from other people. Like I've hugged someone who has glitter on their eyelashes and then suddenly I have glitter on myself for three days. You may talk to somebody who has an anxiety narrative and then you may feel anxiety the next few days. Glitter are all of the thoughts that you may experience. And I have tips for you on what to do about that. And then gold is the physical body. Our physical body can be malleable, but it is a metal. And so we have to figure out strategies to actually change the physical body. And I have all of those tips for you in the free one week challenge. And so, for example, with the body, when we think anxious thoughts or we think self defeating thoughts, the brain actually starts to wire and change around that. And so I think a thought, think about it like Creating a bridge. I actually have a bridge outside here. We're in this beautiful apartment complex. We're leaving today, driving to Santa Fe today. We're all packing up and so I'm sitting outside just taking in a little bit of the desert air before we head out. And so the thoughts can create bridges in the literal brain, in your literal mind. And so when you think a thought, you have that glitter everywhere. It changes your brain. The brain is malleable and then that brain is auto primed, it's programmed to produce more of those glittery thoughts. So when we're healing from anxiety, we have to not only work on our thoughts, but when we do work on our thoughts, we're going to be literally going in and reconstructing, constructing those bridges. We're going to be not using the ones taking us down an anxious pathway and we're going to be building new ones that take us towards self empowerment. And so when you get the anxiety freedom, notice that it's glitter and gold. Glitter are the thoughts and then gold is the physical structure, the body and the brain. And we have to heal both in order for you to truly get your life back. So that's the cool thing about this whole project is that it doesn't just teach you how to think differently. I'm actually going to teach you how to change your brain so that your brain isn't programmed for anxiety. And we could do this together. We see that there's 85% greater success when working with community and working in groups. And so that's why I created this group. Again, it's free. There's no pressure. If you're interested, the link is on my Facebook page and so get in there, get the free workbook. Now's the time. If you're thinking about going into the Grand Canyon and you just want to check it out, you're connect with the people in there. It's a small group and they're warriors and we're just here to love you and support you. Before I go in to talk about ego states, I just want to say hey and thank some people who are on the live call. I see Julianne here. My goodness, babe, I just love you and admire you so much. Thanks for being on the live here, Nicole. Oh my God, sister, you are so amazing and supportive. You guys, if you have not seen Nicole Vega, she has an Instagram where she's downloading so much amazing information. She's definitely a thought leader. I will make sure to get her linked in my Facebook so you can go over and follow her on Instagram. She's amazing. And then she wanted us to all remember that nothing, that nothing is fixed and can always be changed. And that's super cool. And I see Anthony on here. Tony, you are such an amazing person. I admire you so much. Thank you for being here. You have such an amazing bright disposition. And one thing that I really admire about Tony is that he's constantly installing bridges of joy, bridges of laughter, bridges of comedy. And I think that's really important in it's more honest to acknowledge the darkness with the light. You can't have one without the other. And one thing I think that Nicole does that's really super cool is that he builds bridges of light and laughter. And so when I'm like scrolling through social media and I just see sad post after dark, post after political post, I see Tony and he's building bridges in my brain of happiness. And so that goes back to the gold. Remember, the gold is our bodies. It's the structure of our brain. And we can mindfully and willfully change our brains. We, we see this in the work of Dan Siegel and we see this in brain MRI studies. You can literally change your brain. And so for people who just got on, I wanted to update you. Sorry if it's really breezy here. I wanted to update you that anxiety sucks. And this is my jam. I've totally got you. I have a free group and free booklet. That's a seven day anxiety freedom challenge. I would love for you to go get it. If you think this message would help somebody that you know or love that's really stressed or anxious, or if you're just curious for some like, good goodness, then check it out. Join the group. There should be a link in this live when I get it posted. I did a live on Wednesday and the link is definitely in there, so click on it. Please answer the three questions and then I'll be able to send you the workbook. One of the questions I do is I ask for your email and that's how I send you the workbook. I promise I won't spam you. I'm here just to love on you babes, and it's going to be amazing. I also wanted to do a shout out to Heidi. Heidi, babe, you are an inspiration. You are a soul sister. I am so grateful for you and I would love to have you on my podcast because you have so much wisdom that I think that people need to hear and I would love that. So thank you for watching Mary, my darling. Thank you for being on here, there's just so much, so many amazing people you guys need to meet. This is why community is so important. And before I finish up here, I promised that we would talk about Ego State. I love this. Nicole's like, you could totally spam me. Got it. Logged that away. I'm going to be driving for the next week from Arizona to Michigan. So spam is coming, babe. But I want to talk quickly about Ego State Therapy. Ego State Therapy comes from internal family systems, and we also talk about Ego State Therapy and in emdr. And what this is, is it actually talks about the different parts of ourselves. And I brought this up in a couple of other videos. And so if this is old and easy, maybe you can, like, bop on and fill in the blanks for me. But Ego State Therapy is this. Anxiety is a part of you. You are not anxious. You are not an anxious person. You have an anxious part. And that anxious part needs healing. And what can happen is that we have other parts of ourselves. There's parts of ourselves that are angry, or there's parts of ourselves that feel insecure, or there's parts of ourselves that feel like they're 10 years old, or there's parts of ourselves that are protectors and warriors, and they don't want any of the other parts to have access to the outside world. And so what we have to do when we're working with anxiety to truly support and honor and heal that part is that we have to acknowledge that that part exists first. And so we do this. One of my favorite strategies to do this is through a process that I call somatographic imagery, where we can actually go into the deeper parts of ourselves and identify them, figure out what their needs are, and figure out how to support them. And the reason I'm mentioning this is because we can have dominant parts, and they may go into therapy and talk circles around the therapist, but behind them and is the anxious part. And the anxious part may not be getting the support that he or she needs, because the dominant part is running the show. And so having the ability to notice all of the parts is really profoundly important. A really just general example is that a part of you may want a salad for lunch today, and a part of you may want a burrito. And we all have different parts, and those parts are very complex, and they come from different parts of our lives and our experience. And so while we're working on the glitter and the gold, we're working on our thoughts, we're working on our brain structure. The next thing I want you to start thinking about is what part of me is anxious? Who is that part? What are their needs? What are their unmet needs? What are their difficulties and traumas? And then start to explore and download that. And I'm going to be teaching you a whole lot about that because that, sister, is what is the stuff of healing. And so I want to close up here really quickly, but I just wanted to recap that, hey, anxiety sucks. The world is really, really stressful and uncertain right now and I have supports and they're all free. I just want to put this out in the world, so please share. I have an invitation in my Facebook group to invite you to the one week Freedom Anxiety Challenge. Get in that group where they're supporting each other again. It's free. There's a workbook. It's really beautiful. My girl Haley made it on all of the stuff that we're going to be learning about today. I love this. Nicole's talking about her parts and right now her burrito part is pretty loud. And so there you have it. Parts work. So, yeah, get into the anxiety freedom group. We're going to keep it fairly small, but because we're all there to support each other, I'm going to be in there interacting quite a lot. Especially, let's be real, I am going to be stuck in the car with a cavapoo and my husband for the next 10 days. And so I'm going to need some anxiety love from you guys. So get in the group, download the workbook, answer the questions, and let's totally love on each other and support each other. And so I honor you. I love you. Thank you for watching this live. It's community for me and we all need each other. And I want you to know that I humbly want to show up in whatever way is best for you. And so please send me a private message or join the group or reach out. I've got you, babe. I'm an anxiety warrior myself and I've gone to the other side of the Grand Canyon. Sometimes I've slipped back in. But generally speaking, babe, I'm on the other side and so I can help guide you to the other side. And I want to do this through the group. I want to do this for free for whomever needs the support. I love you. I honor you. Thank you for watching and I will see you again. I'm going to be doing these lives on Wednesdays and Fridays. It's going to be 10 o' clock west coast and noon Eastern. So I love you lots. I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye.