What to do When You're Feeling the Weight of the World on Your Shoulders

Hey, this is Dr. Nicole and welcome. I'm going live today. It's May 20th, and welcome. I'm so excited to see you here. I wanted to show you a visual depiction of what we're going to be talking about today. As you see, I am not the most skillful artist, but sometimes a picture can speak a thousand words. And so I want to talk with you a little bit about a topic called compassion fatigue. I was actually talking yesterday with a really sweet human who I work with periodically, and she was expressing to me, sometimes I just simply can't handle getting on social media or getting on the news or opening my phone. It just drains me and I feel overwhelmed. And sometimes we just, we don't have the bandwidth for it. I want to welcome you guys who are here doing the live. And as I'm doing this live, I would love to have your interaction in any way that would be helpful for you. So welcome, Jared, Welcome, Joshua, everybody. I'm so happy that you're here. And I had just shown a picture of what we're going to be talking about today with my amazing artistry. We're going to be talking about the topic of compassion fatigue. I also did a podcast on this where I'll get into a lot more detail on exactly what you can do to counteract an antidote to the effects of compassion fatigue. And today I want to spend just a little bit of time going into some detail on one of the exercises. And then I'm going to get into our private warriors group just to say hey and check in on you guys. And so the people who are in the warriors group, what that is, is it's a special private group for anxiety freedom warriors, people who want to get their lives back. It's a safe place. I'm in there interacting, giving lots of information. And then when you get in the group, you're actually going to be receiving a free 30 plus page book on anxiety freedom, where in that book you're going to get two exercises every day to help change the thoughts and to change the brain in a way that will help you be free from anxiety or work your way towards being free from anxiety. It also will include lots of videos for me and this great community. So going to start in here in this Facebook group and then I'm going to be bopping over and having a little bit more of an intimate connection in the private warriors group. But I want to talk first here about compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue, what is that? Have you ever heard of it? And better, more than that, have you Ever experienced it. Compassion fatigue is where we feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, and it actually comes from too much exposure to the human suffering. And I talk about my podcast, about this juxtaposition between our modern society and having access to the Internet, having access to social media, having access to news at our fingertips at every moment, every day and all night, versus traditional living. And I compared to a tribe in Africa called the Hadza tribe, where they're living in a way that's been relatively unchanged in the past 100 years. And there are about 1700 individuals. They live in Africa, Tanzania. And we talked about research on their happiness, their senses of satisfaction, and we compared that to people who have modern amenities today. And we talk about how one major difference is the sense of compassion fatigue. And so if you're dealing with feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling. With I can't even look at another news source, if you're feeling like, every time I get on Facebook, I see just depressing thing after depressing thing. And if you're feeling anxious or tired or overwhelmed or even if you're having a hard time sleeping, that could be a sign of compassion fatigue. And so, again, compassion fatigue is where we have so much information of the suffering of others that it creates symptoms in ourselves. And the good news is there is an antidote to that. And I'm going to tell you the antidote in the podcast. I want you to go and listen to it. And so there is an antidote to it, and you can have access to that, and you can use that antidote every day. And the more that you practice using that antidote, the more it's going to work. There is one tool that I talk about when I'm teaching on this topic, and it's the tool of the birds. And so that brings us back to this image that I have drawn here. So what I want to show you is this is a depiction. You know, you have the wires, you have the electric post, and then we have two birds. The bottom bird is close to the street, and on the street, you have fighting, there's fire. And then fire can be a metaphor for all sorts of different things. So stress, pressure, grief, fear, anger. And then we have a picture of a crushed vehicle. And so there's a lot that's happening here. And when you think about your bird, you imagine that this bird is pretty close to all of that. And so if you think about your life, what are you exposed to on a daily basis that could be creating stress or could be creating anxiety, could Be stimulating your nervous system. When we think about tendency towards anxiety, we also want to think about our nervous system and how it responds to anxiety or how it responds to being overstimulated. So all of these things are very stimulating to the nervous system, to the brain, to the body. And so if somebody has, for example, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, this stress can elevate the nervous system. And then in a bipolar state, that elevation, the body might deal with it by producing signs of hypomania or mania. And what does that look like? That could look like anxiety. It could look like a difficult time sleeping. It could look at, like, feeling a little bit more irritable. And so we have these things going on. We have that our bodies are getting stimulated by all this information, all this stress, all this pressure. And then you see this poor little bird is experiencing the stress. You have this energetic stuff coming up, and this bird is so close that these things are. They're strongly impacting this bird. And so this is representative of being in your lower bird state. A way to know, am I in my lower bird state is, am I feeling the effects of the things around me? Am I feeling burned out? Am I feeling agitated? Am I feeling overstimulated? Am I feeling like I just can't handle another single piece of bad news? Am I feeling like I don't have the energy, motivation, or bandwidth to talk to people about what they're going through? Am I feeling like I have enough spinning plates where I can't handle hearing about other people's grief and I just need to avoid, are you in your lower bird? And so if you're in your lower bird, you're going to be a lot more susceptible to these things. And it could create more of a risk for you going out of balance or going even further, farther out of balance and suffering greater. So the object is to actually figure out a strategy to be your upper bird. And so if we look at this bird, he's sitting up here, everything is still the same down here. But the difference is the way that these birds are experiencing it, right? So the lower bird is experiencing stress and suffering. Grief, anxiety, agitation, hypomania, compassion fatigue, anger, body tension, tingling, numbness, digestive, upset, nausea. All of these things that come when our nervous system is getting overstimulated. But then we have this bird up here who has this almost like protective shield around him, and he's near the sun. He's distanced himself from the reality of chaos. He's closer to the sky, and this bird is here. He's at peace. So the question is, how do we get ourselves to be the upper bird? How do we help ourselves be resilient without changing the circumstances? Because we can't always change our circumstances. We can change our response to our circumstances. And this bird could theoretically choose to go down and hang out with this other bird on the bottom wire. But the bird also has the opportunity to mindfully then distance himself from that. So the way I want you to try to imagine this is if you are so artistically inclined, is maybe draw your birds. Draw all of the stressors that are happening in your life. Scrolling through the New York Times, reading about people's stress, feeling your physical symptoms, your traumas, your. What is your housing situation like? We all have a stay at home order going on. What is it like for you to be in your home? And so draw out and articulate where these sources of stress are coming from? And then I want you to draw yourself as the lower bird. And we want to identify what does that feel like? What do I feel in my body when I'm the lower bird? What do my thoughts do when I'm the lower bird? How is my sleep? How is my appetite? How is my regulation of my emotions? What is the sticky factor of my emotions? Am I finding that if I get a little bit anxious that it's hard to get out of that, or am I getting really anxious and it's hard to get out of that? Or am I getting more easily triggered and agitated? Or am I getting a headache? Am I getting nausea? What are my symptoms that I'm in my lower bird? This is when we're starting to go into the red and into the yellow of our force field strategy stoplight, which I talk quite a lot about in the act method. And so what are signs that I'm getting into the yellow? I'm getting more agitated, I'm getting more elevated, I'm getting more sensitive, stimulated, I'm getting more fearful, I'm getting more angry and getting more depressed. What are signs that my body is getting revved up? What are signs that I'm at my limit? And then what are signs that the bird falls off the wire and is just in the chaos? You're in the red crisis mode. What are these signs? What are the triggers? What does it look like? And then what is it like for me when I'm able to be in my upper bird? I want you to think about a time when there were things going on, but you were able to remove yourself just a little bit, not dissociate. Dissociate's a little bit different. Dissociation is where we're not necessarily present. Dissociation. People have described it as, I'm not all there. I don't feel present. I feel like maybe my mind and body aren't connected. Dissociation could be a response to this lower bird. It's where we kind of relinquish some of our control and some of ourselves to deal with high amounts of crisis and stress. That's not what the upper bird is doing. The upper bird is able to be fully present. The upper bird is in control. But the difference is that the upper bird is protected and shielded from everything that's going on up here. The upper bird is a little bit removed. Kind of like if you're able to step back and watch a toddler have a very big emotional experience because of something that you, as an adult, thinks is a little bit silly or small, like, I can't open my. I can't open my yogurt in there for I'm gonna scream and cry, and the world is over. And you're like, oh, no. There's a good solution. We got this is. Has there been a moment in your life where you feel like you've been able to be fully empowered, fully merciful, fully present, and feeling like even though all these things are going on, that you feel okay? And sometimes it's hard to think of those moments. Some of us have lived such difficult times, traumatic lives, where being in that moment, it's either been slim to none. And so we have to come up with strategies to learn that, to create that. To put that state in our brain so that our brain can rehearse and practice that, and then it'll start to grow that capability. So maybe your entire life, you've lived in chaos, and you. You only knew there was one wire. You were only the lower bird. And sometimes you fell into the fire, and other times you came back out and you're the phoenix rising, and you got on that lower, lower wire. And so for you who haven't had the opportunity to ever see what it's like to be your upper bird, there's an exercise that Jack Kornfield talks about. I referenced this material quite a lot. He's an amazing clinician, he's an amazing healer, and he talks about the power of meditation, visualization. And what's really compelling and convincing to me is looking at this on brain scans is we can look at the areas of the brain that are activated when we're in our lower bird, when we're in that fight flight freeze response when we're being strongly impacted by all of the chaos. And then we can look at brain scans when the upper bird is activated. When a person is able to pull themselves mindfully into a more relaxed state, the brain actually changes. We see that it changes over time. One of the main changes, adding something called gray matter. And gray matter enables us to have more control over the different parts of our brain. So we know that this lower bird, logically, he's having a lot of thoughts, he's having anxious thoughts, he's having irritable thoughts, and he's also having a lot of emotions. He's feeling frightened, he's feeling irritable. The thoughts and the emotions are very intimately connected. But then this bird, look at his wings are out, his tails are flapping, he's having a huge physical response to everything that's going on. His experience is quite different than this bird. And so as we add gray matter to the brain, you're going to find that logically, you're able to use your mindful awareness to change your emotional response to things. And you're also going to be able to use your mindful awareness to change your physical response to things. And we've seen this in the data we've seen people are able to change their blood pressures through meditation. We're able to see that people are able to change their heart rate variability through meditation and mindfulness. We're able to see that people have quite a lot more control over their lower and their upper bird. So I'm going to walk you through, in our last couple of moments together, a way to help you imagine being your upper bird. And we're going to do it through a reverse exercise. So the reverse exercise. And I'm going to set this down. So if you, if you want to take a screenshot of my beautiful drawing or draw your own, this is the upper bird and the lower bird. There's lots of chaos beneath here. And we're going to work on, even though we can't change the chaos, we're going to work on helping ourselves be on the upper bird. And so just for the last couple of minutes, I want to have you just pause where you are. If you're somewhere where you're able to pull over, or if you're able to set down your phone and just listen to my voice, or if you're able and you feel safe and you can close your eyes, I'm going to close my eyes. And so we're going to do this Together. And it's something that you can do just very quickly, very briefly, just one or two times a day. And this is an exercise to help you get into the mind space of the upper bird. And so we've been using the analogy of a street with chaos and two birds on a wire. And that same image might be more beneficial if you imagine a storm at sea. So. So let's go to the storm at sea. So if you imagine that you're sitting on a buoy and there's a storm and the waves are crashing and the winds are roaring and the thunder is crunching and there's lightning and it's really scary and it's really chaotic. Right. Have you ever been on the water or been outside when there's a big storm rolling in? Your lower bird is blowing around and feeling really stressed and feeling really anxious. And so what we want to imagine you doing is imagine closing your eyes and you have developed a new skill where you can breathe underwater. And so what we're going to do is we're going to start to imagine slowly, we're going to go into the water. You're going to notice it's the perfect temperature, it's nice and warm, it covers you. You have the magical ability to breathe in the water. And so you're going to sink a little bit lower. And I want you to notice that as you go a little deeper into the water, that some of that chaos, that noise, the lightning, the wind, that it's a little bit quieter once you're just under the surface. And then I want you to just allow yourself to kind of float back. And I want you to sink just ever so more deeply into the water. And I want you to notice that as you sink more deeply into the water, that the sounds of above are quite a lot quieter. And then the jarring and the movement of the waves is more still. Still. The light is a little bit lower, it's a little bit darker underwater, but you still feel like you're able to get nice fresh breaths. And you feel like that warm, cozy water is hugging you. And so you can breathe in and out nice and slowly and just allow yourself to imagine yourself sinking down, down, down into the water. And when we're deeper into the water, things are still, things are quiet, things are peaceful. Even though there's a storm happening above, you are protected. You're not being tossed around back and forth. The water is smooth. You can look around with your eyes and see the beauty of the ocean floor. You can look up and see the Chaos above. But you are safe. You are distanced from it. You are fully in your body. You are fully in your mind. You can acknowledge what's happening above. You don't have to hang out up there. You can choose to just gently let yourself sink. I want you to notice when you go into that space, what it feels like in the different parts of your body. You might notice, like, I feel like when I'm down here, kids, I feel like my voice gets a little bit quieter, my thoughts get a little bit smoother, my breath gets a little bit softer, my muscles relax a little bit. What have you noticed? And so when you feel like you've been able to honor the space and notice the space, I want you to kind of imagine taking a camera of your mind and taking a picture, take a snapshot. And then if and when you're ready, you can kick your feet, move your hands, and swim to the surface. And you can open your eyes if they've been closed. And so this is an exercise noticing the difference between being the lower bird or being at the top of the water, whichever feels like it resonates more with you, or being the upper bird or being deep into the sea. So I'm kind of giving you, like an opposite juxtaposition. And so let's bring this round for people who just joined us is we've been talking about, hey, are you feeling burned out? Are you feeling like you can't handle looking at another piece of bad news? Are you feeling like you have the weight of the world on your shoulder? We've been talking about how that could be compassion fatigue and how the accumulation of stress can cause compassion fatigue. And that can cause symptoms head to toe of anxiety. It can aggravate a predisposition to mania. It can trigger anger and rage. It can produce all these physical symptoms. And while we can't change what's happening in the world, there is an antidote to compassion fatigue. And I talk about that antidote in my podcast. And there is an exercise that you can do to start working your way towards that, which is what we just did together, where we went and we allowed ourselves to sink just below the surface. And for you who just got on here, I drew a picture. So sometimes the picture can speak a thousand words. We have all of the chaos here. We have the lower bird, and then we have the upper bird. And when you're going through your day today, I want you to just notice if I'm scrolling, am I feeling I'm in my upper bird. Remember how you feel when you're down deeper in the sea and there's the quiet, am I feeling like my upper bird or am I feeling like my lower bird? My lower bird is getting impacted and jarred and moved back and forth just like if you were on the top of the water in a storm. And if you feel like you're your lower bird, imagine yourself floating to the top wire, floating deeper into the sea and allowing yourself to simply be in that space. We can't change what's happening around us, but we can change our experience. And the more that you practice changing your experience, the more the brain is going to wire around that response to that. So a couple of action items for you. Number one, if you're not in the anxiety Freedom One Week Challenge Facebook group, get in there. We'll give you a link to that. And when you get in there, we're going to ask you a few questions. And one of them is we're going to request your email so I can send you a free book. And that free book is 30 plus pages of exercises that you can do. And I promise you there'll be something in there that you're going to love and that's going to resonate and make a difference for you. And so make sure you give us a good email address. I promise I won't spam you. And if you're not loving the content, just simply unsubscribe. And your second piece of homework is to do the anxiety freedom when we challenge and engage and interact in the group. Because we've seen in the literature that there is an 85% greater success rate in people getting free from anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, trauma by utilizing support. So know you're not alone and practice your birds. Get into the Facebook group. We're here to support you. It's totally free. And every week on Wednesdays and Fridays, I'm going to be doing Facebook lives. They're one o' clock Eastern time zone. And after this, I'm going to be bopping in and doing a quick little live in the warriors group just to answer any questions and provide you guys direct support. And so step back, notice what it's like for you in your upper and your lower bird and let us know how we can support you. I will talk to you guys later. Much love. This has been Dr. Nicole Cain. You can learn more about my practice by going to www.drnicolecane.com. and to learn more about compassion fatigue, check out our podcast and I will put the link so you can give that a listen into the show notes. And lastly, if this would be helpful for anybody that you know or love, hit share. Make sure that you share it with them. All right? Take care. By.