What Causes Dread: Doctor Explains Neuroscience and 4 Steps to Deal with It

Oh, my goodness. One of the worst feelings, right? That feeling in your body when there's foreboding and uneasiness and fear and anxiety and anticipation. And so today we're going to talk about dread. We're going to talk about what dread is, what dread isn't. We're going to talk about why we have dread and what you can do about it and a solution that I'm going to teach you today. It's called the four A's for anxiety, anticipation and dread. So it's going to be called the four A's for anxiety, anticipation and dread. And so if you deal with dread, if you deal with anticipatory anxiety, if you deal with a feeling of doom or foreboding, then this is the video for you. And make sure to stick around at the end because there is a piece of the four A's that involves the nervous system. And I want to share with you one of my quick tips for turning the page on the nervous system. Because sometimes you doing the work isn't fast enough for our need for immediate relief. So make sure you stick around to the end and I'll share with you what I do. That's my biggest quick solution, my quick fix. And so today we're going to be talking about dread. And I was thinking about dread actually, because it was actually fresh in my mind because I think of dread and anticipatory anxiety as some somewhat interchangeable. The process is that the brain is thinking about or worrying about or anticipating something that is potentially going to occur that the brain is worried is going to occur or that is actually legitimately going to occur, like it's something in the future. So the brain is projecting into the future. And the way that you experience that neurobiologically will change depending on what part part of your brain is becoming the most activated. So when we think about the parts of the brain, remember we have the logical brain. This is the prefrontal cortex behind your forehead. And so dread and anticipation and anxiety can come from having thoughts logical, not logical thoughts that are like, oh, my gosh, I have to give a speaking engagement tomorrow and I'm so nervous, and what if I mess it up? Or oh my gosh, I have to get on an airplane tomorrow and what if something bad happens or I have a panic attack, right? So those feelings of anticipation and dread come from the logical part of the brain. And then we can have anticipation and dread that come from the emotional part of the brain. This is your limbic system. This is the seat of emotional Reactivity. And so this could be just that feeling. Have you ever had that feeling come up where you just feel uneasy, you feel anxious, and you don't know what it is, and so then you start to think about what it possibly could be? And so those feelings of dread come from the midbrain. And then we have the brain stem. The brain stem is what can produce those physical feelings of anxiety, foreboding, anticipation, or dread, even though emotionally or logically you're not there. And I can tell you that happened to me recently. I have tons of meetings today, and last night my brain stem was activated. It's like, we want to make sure that we're on. We wanna make sure that we're ready. We wanna make sure that we're energized, we're focused. We wanna make sure we don't miss anything. So we're just gonna keep Dr. Nicole up until 4:00am so last night, logically, I was just like, having a good old time, just chilling with my Cavapoo. And then emotionally, I'd had fun. I played Mario Kart with my girlfriend Elizabeth last night. We were just hanging out. And then I get in bed and my body's like, we're not gonna sleep. So physically, my body was producing symptoms and signs that we needed to be awake, even though it wasn't logical or emotional. And so that's when it comes from the brain stem. So the first thing we have to do is we have to figure out through the first step of acknowledgment of what is actually going on. So why is my nervous system producing these symptoms that are keeping me awake? Or why am I emotionally afraid of whatever's coming up or I'm worried may come up, or. Or why are my thoughts more worst case scenario thoughts? So first of all, we want to acknowledge that you're having this dread, that you're having this feeling of doom. And then the second thing is you want to try to identify the order, the sequence of where that came from. And I will teach you how to do this in the act course. But one of the ways to do it is to just simply write your prologue. Write down everything that happened. So had I used the skills that I teach you last night, instead of laying awake till 4am I would have sat up and I would have acknowledged, okay, my brain stem is feeling a little bit of anticipation. And so I should have written out my prologue. I should have done what I teach and started to acknowledge. And the second thing is to accept, right? Acknowledgement and acceptance also go hand in hand. But the really important thing with acceptance is that we're not trying to resist the data from the body. Because my loves, what we resist will persist. And so if my body is producing symptoms of anxiety, anticipation, foreboding or dread, and then I try to resist this and stuff it down, it's thinking, it's doing its job. And so then if I suppress it and don't respond to it in a way that's satisfying to that part, it's just going to get louder, right? Have you ever had that happen where you're trying to ignore and suppress, but then your symptoms just either relocate in a new, annoying and unpleasant way or they just get louder? That's what happens to me. And I see that all the time. And that's because we want to know what our symptoms are. And that's part of the teaching that I do, is to help us understand that your symptoms of foreboding, your symptoms of fear, your symptoms of anticipation, your symptoms of anxiety are your body's attempts to give you data. They're attempts to give you data on how you can heal. And so this is where we come to the conversation of what dread is and what dread isn't. Dread isn't fortune telling of something that's going to happen. It's a feeling, it's an experience where you have this part of you that's hyper vigilant and it's looking for confirmation of danger so that it can help you avoid danger. So it's kind of like I have this cavapoo, right? And so if she hears a little sound and it's late at night and it's really quiet, she's an alert dog, right? So she'll bark, she'll alert us. And so she's doing her job. And just like dread is like, wait, should I be alert for tomorrow? Should I be prepared for tomorrow? Is there anything I'm missing? And so it's a good warning signal. Just like Shiva, hey, there's someone outside warning us. It's really good, but it becomes a problem if we ignore it and then it hijacks our happiness, right? So last night I ignored my feeling of anticipation, all of the meetings, all of the things, my brain stem's going rogue. I'm ignoring it because I just want to sleep. I'm suppressing it, taking all the happy sleepy powder and it just got louder. And I laid awake till 4am and this is just like if Shiva hears somebody outside and she barks and we ignore that and she barks more and more and more. So the first thing is that dread is a warning system that has been important in our bodies, important in keeping us alive. Evolutionarily, dread protected us. But the problem is when dread takes the front seat, seat and starts to control your life. And I blame in part the manifestation movement for this because what the manifestation movement has done, out of beauty, out of well intentioned clinicians, out of amazing healers that are all about intentionally paving your brain. But one of the things that I've seen happening in my clinical practice is that people are afraid that if they think that something bad is going to happen, that therefore they will create it. Have you ever had that? Like, you don't want to think, oh my gosh, like, what if I get in a car accident tomorrow? Because you're afraid that it's going to create a car accident. Right? And so dread is not necessarily fortune telling. Dread is not necessarily future projecting. Dread is not necessarily manifestation. Dread is intended biologically to be a warning system that allows us the opportunity to heed its message and then make dread decisions for ourselves. Right? So what dread is, is it's an opportunity to get data so that we can make better choices for our health. What dread is not, it is not fortune telling. It is not a guarantee of something that will happen because we don't know the future. The future has not been mapped out necessarily. You may be getting on a plane tomorrow, I may be getting up and doing all sorts of tasks today. But all we know is what we can imagine based on how we have made our plans. And dread is a part of, part of making sure we make good plans. But it is not the end all be all right. So the first step, we're talking about the four A's for anxiety and anticipation. The first step is just to simply acknowledge how you're feeling, to accept how you're feeling, that it is what it is and don't force yourself to change it because it's providing you good data. So that's the second is to accept. And then we want to address the upset part. We want to address the upset part because what we resist will persist. Why? What we deny will amplify. Right? So we want to address the upset part. We want to address the part that is feeling dread, that part that is having anticipatory anxiety, that part that is feeling completely freaked out about something down the road, that part that has the foreboding. I have a friend and she is a public speaker and she's an amazing public speaker. But every time before she goes and does a public Speaking event, this part part of herself gets activated and she has tons of anticipatory anxiety. She has terrible stage fright. And even though once she gets up there and she starts talking and speaking, she's amazing, there's always this part of her that has dread. And it's been a real problem because she wants to speak for a living and she doesn't want this part holding her back. And so an example of addressing that anxious part would be my friend doing the work to be like, okay, going to sit down, I'm going to notice this feeling. Whether it's a physical feeling produced by my brain stem or an emotion that's stirring up in worry or fear, or if it's logical, if it's just a part that's producing thoughts, we sit down with that part and we do the ego state parts work, which I teach you about in the cast of characters in the act method. This is where we actually go in and address that part. We talk, talk directly to that part. I actually have a three minute hack where I walk you through exactly how to do this. The webinar is probably about 25 minutes long, but it will teach you how to address this dread part. And you'll be able to do it in three minutes. So if you're getting ready to go and do a public speaking engagement, if you have three minutes, you can go into the bathroom, sit in the stall, deal with the part, and what you address will get better, what you address will get less. Right? So addressing that part is really huge. And so I'm going to teach you with the three minute hack how to do that. You can get to the 3 minute hack by going and clicking on our bio, and then you just simply click on that and then you'll see three minute hack pop up. It's free. So go in and do that. Because if you feel dread, if you feel anticipatory anxiety, if you have public speaking fear, it could be a part of you that is trying to give you data. And maybe that part is running the show. And that part is taking, taking center stage and controlling your life and preventing you from feeling free and happy. And so dealing with that part and honoring that part and helping that part get a new job, reassignment would be really valuable for your future. The other thing is that these parts all evolve for a reason. And so maybe something happened when you were younger, maybe something happened a year ago. Maybe you had a bad experience that created hypervigilance or feeling like you needed to look for all potential danger. So this part has evolved. And there's this really interesting thing in neuroscience where oftentimes negative events or traumas don't get stored in logical centers of the brain. So let's say that again, oftentimes traumatic events don't get stored in logical centers of the brain. So this is why it's so important to understand the neuroscience of anxiety, right? Is that we can think about it all day long. You can do all of the talk therapy, you could do all of this cognitive behavioral therapy, you could do all of that work. But sometimes trauma isn't stored in the logical part of the brain, meaning you can't get to it logically. And so that's why the ego state work is so cool. And that's what you're going to learn how to do in the three Minute Hack is to do this ego state thing. And then I have an entire chapter on it in the act method. That's the whole psychological cast of characters. So if you've been to talk therapy, if you have dread, if you have foreboding, and there's no way that you've been able to logic yourself out of it, then it could be that you have an ego state or a part that's stuck in a non logical part of the brain. And so we need to get to that through creative mechanisms that understand neurobiology and trauma. And I've got your back for that. So we've been talking about, for those who just jumped in, we've been talking about anticipatory anxiety, feelings of foreboding, we've been talking about dread, we've been talking about all of the things that may be ahead that we are worrying about. And so, so I have for you the four A's for anticipation, anxiety and dread. The first one, just in case you popped back in, is just to simply acknowledge the feeling, acknowledge the anxiety, acknowledge the dread, the stress, the overwhelm. Because what you deny will amplify, right? The second is to accept it, because if you try to change it immediately, it's another way of resisting that part. And if you resist that part, it's just going to relocate and get louder. We have to deal with it. And then the third thing is to acknowledge and address that part, right? So we were talking about the neurobiology of trauma and how sometimes trauma sometimes parts, sometimes ego states, sometimes feelings. Maybe that feeling of dread is in a part of your brain that's not accessible by logic. And so I told you about a free webinar that I have called the three Minute Hack, where I walk you through exactly how to address that upset part. And then the next part is just simply an autonomic reset. So this goes into the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is the nervous system that helps you go between the rest and digest and that fight flight freeze. And so when we're in fight flight freeze, like last night I was awake, my body wasn't in the rest state. It was like keeping me all prepared and ready for today. Right. So we needed. What I needed last night was an autonomic reset. So signs that you may need an autonomic reset would be, do you feel restless? Do you feel tension in your body? I always get it in my chest and in my shoulders. Do you feel like your thoughts are racing? Do you feel trembly? Do you feel numbness? Do you feel tingling? Do you get a headache? Do you get flushes of heat or chills? When I was having autonomic activation, my body was on fire, so I felt really hot. So symptoms and signs that you may need an autonomic reset could be anything that comes with those feelings of foreboding. And even if logically babe, it isn't there. So if you need an autonomic reset, I have lots of strategies for you that can work really quickly. And so we have the 4S model. The 4S model comes out of the ACT method and I like creating mnemonics to remember things. And so the 4S model is what we're going to use to target the brainstem. That's how we target most powerfully your nervous system. So if you have anticipatory anxiety, if, if you have dread, we're going to go through the other steps, but then you just have to put, you have to get that record groove out. You have to just change the way your nervous system is because sometimes we get stuck. So you address that part, you do the work, and then we do a nervous system reset. So the 4S model number one is we're going to change the scene. You're going to get up and you're going to move. You're going to go somewhere. That's why the three minute hack. Do it in the bathroom stall. Get up from where you are, go into the bathroom, walk around your building, walk around your house, go outside. If you're inside, if you're outside, go back inside. You want to change the scene. There's a lot of important things about changing the scene because our body is constantly reacting to the environment around us and it creates associations. Every time I smell vanilla, I think of my grandmother's house. And so it could be a positive association or it could be one that's making you more anxious. Right? So we want to change the scene. That's the first of the 4s. So after you do the other three steps in the 4a's, the acknowledge the feeling, the acceptance, the addressing that part, now we're doing the 4S model of autonomic nerdy set. You're going to change the scene. The second thing that you're going to do is you're going to change the scent. Because the brain is a very powerful activator through the nose, right? The nose is a very powerful activator. So smelling essential oils, smelling a hot cup of tea. I like to smell, smell my puppy, she just smells like happiness or going outside and smelling the fresh air or doing laundry and smelling the happy smell of clean laundry, Whatever that is for you, change the scent. Cook some food, whatever you need to do to change the scent that's going on in your nose right now. If you're in an apartment, your apartment may have a certain aroma. Go outside, change the scent, change that. And then we want to sip. And what you sip can be really powerful at changing your autonomic nervous system as well. And so sip will involve temperature and taste. And so temperature. We know that if you're in autonomic activation, that sometimes really cool beverages or really warm beverages can be really good shape shifting for you. And so when it comes to sipping, my favorite things to sip when I'm feeling autonomic arousals. I love botanical medicine. I give you algorithms for picking the herbs that are best for you, you in the act method. But for me, I love lemon balm, lavender, chamomile, kava kava passiflora, all sorts of wonderful plants. We actually just did an Instagram post of some of my top favorite autonomic resetting plants, anti anxiety plants. But a really good tip for you is that if you have something that you need to do that you're anxious about, like public speaking, where you don't want to be sleepy and sedated you is try kava kava tea. That's amazing. It works really quickly. It will help you feel calm and relaxed without making you feel foggy and shut down. So that's a really good solution for that. So sip if you want to do warm beverages. I feel like those are really good. Especially if you're more vata or kapha in the ayurvedic charts. If you're more pitta, if you tend to be more hot and agitated when you get anxious, then maybe try an iced version beverage. You could do iced herbal teas. You could just do iced water. Whatever feels like it's going to balance out your individual body. But sipping can be really good. You're swallowing, you're activating the vagus nerve, you're getting temperatures, you're getting flavors, you're getting smells. And so then the last one is stimuli. And so stimuli. The most powerful thing, like let's say you have dread, let's say you have panic, you have anxiety, and you don't know what to do, and all of these other steps aren't working and you're just painful panicking. Number one thing to do comes from Marsha Linehan's tips, which is where you tip the temperature of the body. She's the founder of DBT Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. We all stand on the shoulder of giants and so check her work out and what she talks about to stop a panic attack fast is to evoke the dive reflex by tipping the temperature of your body, changing the stimuli to your body. And so her strategy for doing that is to take a bucket of ice water, hold your breath and stick your face in the ice water for about 30 seconds. And then what that does is the cold water around the eye will activate a dive reflex, which makes your heart rate slow down, brings down your blood pressure, and it pushes you out of that fight flight freeze into more of a relaxed state. Sometimes I feel anticipatory anxiety when I don't have a bucket of ice water at hand or I don't want to mess up my makeup. So a nice alternative is that you can go online and you can buy freezer cracks that they create a chemical reaction when you crack them. And they can get nice and cold. And you can place that on your face. Just be careful, don't freeze or burn your face. Right? You know, 15 to 30 seconds. And make sure that you're also doing your other strategies from our tips method for that too. Okay? So we talked about changing the scene. Another way to change the scene is to exercise really hard. To change the stimuli in your body is to go in hot and cold showers, alternating and then doing four count breathing. There's so much you can do. Okay, so I promised at the end that I was going to give you a solution for something that you can do right away if your body is stuck in fight flight freeze. And I have what's called a wellness springboard where I tell you exactly what I do when I'm in Autonomic arousal and it talks about strategies that work really fast. And if you're looking for supplements that can give you a quick fix, then those are in there too. And so what you can do to get to the Wellness Springboard is that's totally free and is click on the link tree in the bio and then click on the button that says Wellness Springboard. And so that is free. You just download it and that's gonna give you what you need to know if you get stuck in an autonomic reset. Remember earlier I was telling you about my girlfriend who does public speaking? She uses the Springboard and it's a game changer for her. That's why she's still able to do the public speaking. And so right now we just simply have to work on getting her parts comforted and soothed. I also wanted to say thank you so much for your guys comments. Somebody here is just doing like a high five of using Marsha Linehan's DBT books. And so yes, use the methods that she teaches. Use the tools. Your brain isn't going to change if you don't do the work right. And right now if you're feeling dread and anxiety, it's kind of stuck in this wrecker groove. And so we have to teach it how to create new neural connections and that's what we're all about here. This has been Dr. Nicole, if you have feelings of dread or foreboding or future anxiety or anticipatory anxiety and if this content was helpful for you, if you don't mind giving like a little like or a little heart or even a comment that would make us so very happy. It also tells us that this content is valuable for you. If you also have a hanker and if you don't mind hitting the share button and just letting other people know that this content is out there, that would be great. My mission is to help people to turn the page in anxiety. Instead of just taking a benzo, instead of just taking a pill. Let's help you triumph. Let's help you get better. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so honored. And Again, this is Dr. Nicole. We have tons of free information about turning the page of anxiety. Just check out our bio. Alright, I am gonna go and walk my puppy. I hope you guys have a great day. So much love. Thanks for being here.