Top 4 Tips for Emotional Wellness

Looking for supports on how to improve your emotional wellness. Have you been dealing with feelings of overwhelm, feeling stressed? And are you looking for a strategy that goes beyond the pill for an ill? Well, I'm Dr. Nicole Cain and my heart is to help you get your life back, to turn the page and to do so without depending on handfuls of supplements or pills for an ill. And today we're going to learn about Top 4 Tips for Emotional wellness. And I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to tell you all about an amazing free resource that I have created called the Anxiety Breakthrough Wellness Springboard. And it's totally free. It's there for you and it has a ton of information on how to get you results right away. So let's talk about the four tips for emotional wellness. The first, my love, is to know that you have a stoplight. And your stoplight is broken into green, yellow and red. Green represents feeling good, feeling calm, feeling relaxed and empowered. Your brain is sharp and you feel like yourself. And then on that continuum we go into yellow. Yellow represents feeling kind of agitated or stressed. You might notice that your body is more tense. Some people tell me that they feel it in their gut like a knot in their stomach or, or maybe you feel tightness in your chest or maybe even tension in your neck and in your shoulders. Yellow is where we feel like our heart rate is quicker. We feel more agitated, maybe a little bit more anxious or even more depressed or even hypomanic. And then as we continue up that spectrum, we get to the wonky zone. And that wonky zone is that juxtaposition between where we're in yellow. Kind of like that agitated, not good space right before we go into the red light. The red zone, which represents crisis mode. Crisis mode could be panic attacks, it could be rage attacks, it could be extreme depression, or it could be even your physical responses are super ramped up. So the first step in emotional wellness is to create your stoplight strategy guide. And the first step is to write down and identify what it feels like for you in each cup color. And then the second step to that first is to figure out what pushes you into green and what pushes you into yellow or red. Things that help me stay in green are to do self care, like playing with my puppy, going outside and gardening and getting plenty of sleep. But if those things are dialed back and I start to go into yellow, things that are for sure going to push me into yellow are working too much and not taking breaks, then I start to feel more stressed and agitated. And so being able to identify those signs of stress and agitation will help me hit the brakes on that response and be intentional to turn my car around and turn it back towards green as opposed to continuing to hit the gas, push myself through that, and then end up in the red. And so for you, what is it like when you're in the green? What kinds of things help you feel more calm and collected and like yourself? What kinds of things ramp you up in a way that makes you feel more anxious or more agitated or maybe even harder on yourself, more self critical? And then what are those things you absolutely need to stay away from that can push you into the red, which could be mania or anger or panic attacks or depression. What do those things look like for you? And drawing that out and putting it on a cue card can help you be able to identify in the moment before something becomes really dangerous or really problematic. And so that's the first is to create your stoplight strategy guide. The second step is to seek balance. In seeking balance, I think of this in terms of the spoons and or the lemonade pitcher. These represent how much bandwidth do you have, how much support are you receiving, how full is your lemonade pitcher, how many spoons do you have that you're able to give out to the people around you? Unless you're a stressed savant already, your lifestyle might be part of your stress problem. So think about and assess how much time are you spending working for others or giving away your time and energy as opposed to those people doing it for you, or you spending time filling your pitcher or collecting spoons that serve you? Sometimes it's important to say no. We live in a culture where we are revered for saying yes. And in fact, I tell the story about how when I was in my medical residency, one of my mentors said, you know what, Dr. Kane, one thing I love about you is that you always say yes. You never say no. And I looked at my life and I was incredibly stressed. I was in that yellow, going into red basically all of the time. I was a wonky zone pro. And part of my problem was that I always said yes. I was always pouring out all of my lemonade, giving away all of my spirit spoons. I didn't have balance. And so one of the things I needed to do was to work on figuring out where I could start saying no, where I could start collecting spoons and investing my time in ways that nurtured me and built me up. So as you think about this, where may there Be an imbalance in your life that could be pushing you into the wonky zone, or maybe even worse, into the red zone. The third is to accept support and stay connected with which is so important right now. As we're dealing with the aftermath of COVID is we have so much social distancing. People are feeling really isolated and alone. I totally resonate with that, as I'm a people person. I want to be out and about and with people, and that fills my lemonade picture. And social distancing has really been a bummer for that. And so we have to get creative. We have to stay connected, and we need space, support. And so a creative way that I've worked on making a supportive environment is to actually create an anxiety freedom warriors group, which you can be a member of if you're interested. It's totally free, it's private, no pressure, and it's just a group of awesome people who are getting together on Facebook to support each other, lift each other up, and create an intentional space where we can connect. Where do you feel connected? What kinds of creative outlets work for you to help you feel like you're getting the support that you need from other people? And then the fourth is to be mindful. And I'm sure you've heard so many mindfulness and wellness experts talking about the amazingness of being mindful, but mindfulness literally changes your brain. We can take a picture of your brain pre mindfulness, and then take a picture of your brain post mindfulness. And that could be after just five minutes or after five years. And one of the really cool things that we see is increased activation in different parts of your brain that help you control your moods. The other thing that we see is more gray matter being added to your brain. And gray matter is the connection that helps you feel in control and in a sense of power when you're feeling stressed and triggered. It helps you be able to change your body and change your responses on command. This is how mindfulness experts have been able to show changes on their biometrics. They're able to bring down their blood sugar, bring down their blood pressure, and actually change the way their body is responding to stress just with the power of their own will. And that could be accomplished in just five minutes a day of doing mindfulness. And mindfulness could specifically look like going for a walk. It could mean just breathing and noticing your body for 30 seconds. The research has shown that if you can get five minutes a day in that, you are going to notice appreciable beneficial results. Okay, so we've talked about the four amazing tips for emotional wellness and I promised I would tell you more about the Springboard. And, and I am really excited to share this with you. If you're anything like me. You wanted results yesterday and so I created the springboard because there are strategies and tools in there that have quick results. And when we pair those quick results with the work of doing underneath of everything that foundational piece, it can help keep us going while we're working towards our goals. You can turn the page, you can change your brain. You can get out of that vicious cycle of a pill for an ill, a sick supplement for a symptom where you're spending thousands of dollars on staying the same, staying afloat, and you can actually turn the page on that. And the breakthrough springboard is a quick way to get that jump started. So the springboard is totally free. We'll include the link for that. And it's just my gift for you because, babe, I get what it's like to be really stressed and really anxious and need results yesterday. So check it out. I have several tips in there. One is a morning mastery challenge that is used by the most high achieving experts that we have out there. And I've consolidated the key points. And then there's also a couple of really awesome surprises that you should see. I would love it. If you don't mind, click like on this video if this information has been helpful for you because it helps the Facebook algorithm so that the information that we're sharing continues to be seen. And if this would benefit anybody that you know or love, then please hit the share button on the bottom right hand corner of the screen and make sure to spread the word again that helps us know that what we're doing is valuable for you. To get in the Anxiety Freedom group, just click on the link in the comments to access your springboard and get started right away. There's going to also be a link in there and then I'm going to be back here every Wednesday and Friday, 1:00 Eastern. I'm Dr. Nicole Caine and my passion is to help you get your life back. If you're dealing with anxiety or frustration, overwhelm or depression, let's get your life back naturally and safely and effectively. So check us out, learn all about us, get involved and let's start pouring some lemonade into your picture. And start today with downloading the Springboard. I'm so happy to have gotten to meet you and let me know if there's anything else that we can do to support you. I'll see you guys on Friday. Thank you. Take care.