Dr. Nicole Cain breaks down the stoplight model for anxiety: green is calm, yellow is early tension, red is panic. In red zone use sensory input like touch. In yellow use rational thinking. The book Panic Proof has worksheets and more.
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Green light, yellow light and red light. Let's talk stoplight strategies. The green light represents when you feel really good, really calm. You're not dealing with anxiety emotionally. You feel relaxed, pretty confident or neutral in your body. You feel like your muscles are relaxed, your jaw is relaxed, your gut feels good, just your kind of good place to be. And then your thoughts, they feel together, they feel clear, they feel calm. Green light is flow. Green light is creativity. Green light is good. There's lots of things that can put you in green light, and in my book, Panic Proof, you'll learn a ton more about that. But for this video, we're going to focus on yellow light and red light. Yellow light represents when you're feeling a little bit more amped up in your body. You might be noticing a little bit more tension or stress or maybe a knowing in your intuition, or maybe you feel like your heart rate's picking up or your blood temperature is increasing, maybe your blood pressure is rising. Whatever it is for you, this is a sign of your yellow zone. If you take the stoplight strategies, exercise and do this on your own, you'll find out a little bit more detail about this. But we'll get to that in a moment. Red light. This is crisis. This is a panic attack, an anger attack, a depressive attack. This is when your body is in such a state of autonomic arousal or fight flight. Freeze that. It's crisis mode. So why does this matter? The biggest thing that I hear from my clients and people in my audience are, well, I was having a panic attack and someone told me to just try doing some breathing and it didn't work. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, someone may say, I'm nervous about my presentation and so my doctor gave me a Xanax, but then I was conked out on the couch. In these two circumstances, you might notice that there's a huge mismatch between symptoms and treatments. This doesn't mean that for some people, at some times, Xanax is inappropriate, and it doesn't mean that breathing doesn't work. It's all about matching where you are on your stoplight to what your body needs. And we'll get into this again more in the book. But a quick tip just to get you started with something tangible today is, is that when you're in red zone and you're in crisis zone, is that you're gonna wanna think about interventions that stimulate the body. And so this may be touch, taste, temperature, three things you can see, three things you can hear, and three things that you can touch. And so when you're in that crisis mode, try focusing on things that are more tangible and physical versus when you're in yellow light mode. Things like rationalization and self talk may be a little bit more useful, but it really depends on you. So go check out Panic Proof and then get in the Holistic Wellness Collective, because I have way more videos. I have worksheets. There's even a coloring book page in there where you can really learn your stoplight strategies and know exactly what to do when you have symptoms so that you don't experience that mismatch and you feel really empowered. This has been Dr. Nicole. If you want to learn more, check out the link in my Instagram bio rnicolecane and you can get the book and in the membership today.
