HOW TO STOP Stress and Anxiety | Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Mindset is your belief. What you believe changes not only how you think about things and your approach to things, but can change your true physiology.

You know, I did a recent search and found out that 4 in 10 people would say they feel anxious or have some level of anxiety. And then, and going through your new materials, I was like, okay, so there's a, there's a whole different spin on how we deal with anxiety. But curious to know from your perspective, with all your experience, what exactly is anxiety?

So my definition of anxiety is that feeling of fear or worry that's typically associated with an uncertain situation. So that helps us explain why anxiety levels have gone up in a global pandemic. Nobody has gone through this in our lifetimes. Don't know what's going on, how come I can't get my groceries.

Or toilet paper to am I going to die? You know, talk about uncertainty. So, yes, so this situation has really heightened, which was what was already high levels of anxiety before the pandemic. And so I didn't write the book because of the pandemic. I had written the first draft before the start of the pandemic. But this is a good moment to have another positive and science based approach to understanding everyday anxiety. Not clinical levels of anxiety, but everyday anxiety. Basically the anxiety that all of us feel through everyday wear and tear of life, compounded by pandemic and job and masks and kids with schools that don't know what they're doing in terms of, you know, their, their regulations, all that stuff.

Well, it's interesting because it seems like, um, some people are adjusting really well overall. Like they're, they're, they're almost like using anxiety or whatever, anxious feelings they have to kind of work for them rather than against them. And I know one of the things that I love most about good anxiety was this concept of actually having good anxiety. And there is such a good anxiety.

Yes, right.

So break that down for us a little bit because I think it's such a unique pivot on what we normally feel like anxiety really is.

Yes, yes. So I say anxiety is good because at its core, evolutionarily, the emotion of anxiety and that underlying physiological stress response evolved in us humans to protect us, and it was critical for our survival. All good things, those are essential things. It helps us, we all know that that stress response can help us run away from a dangerous situation, fight, fight our way through a dangerous situation. And well, I'm sure everybody can say, okay, I get that argument, I could maybe buy that, but I'm not feeling protected One itty bitty little bit by my anxiety right now. And the answer is, I get you. I don't feel protected by my anxiety either. And that the reason is that we as a society, our anxiety levels have been turned up so high with the pandemic and news cycles and social media all heightening our anxiety, that we have lost that protective, that critical aspect of it. It's still there, but too much of a good thing, even a good thing is bad. And so we have too much, too much anxiety. So step one of good anxiety to get back to good anxiety is to learn how to turn the volume down. Our anxiety totally makes sense. Big part of the book, very, very practical. What can you do today? What are the science behind it? What can you do to decrease your anxiety?

So I'm glad, so glad you mentioned that. Because when I think about people that are, I mean, nobody's happy about the pandemic, nobody's excited about the stresses that's put on life. Kids going to the grocery store, you know, maybe, maybe you're having to find new employment where you had employment before or you know, any of that stuff or you know, specific mandates that maybe affect you and your work life balance.

But interestingly enough, the people that I am watching navigate at a more stable pace. One of the things that they have in common is they are not consuming quite as much media and social and things of that nature. There's a lot more detoxing going on. So is it fair to say that a detoxing, if you're struggling with anxiety a great deal, is it fair to say that maybe there's a detox that probably could help you out?

Yeah, you know, I think anxiety hits us in so many different ways that what I take from that really interesting observation is that you do need to ask yourself, what is causing my anxiety? Maybe it is the social media, maybe it's too much news, maybe it's your family because you've been, you know, nothing against families, but sometimes that can be anxiety producing. Maybe it's that it's, it's personal space, personal time that you need. And I think that that is one of the goals of turning the volume down on your anxiety, which is you can step back a little bit and look at it and help yourself kind of refine those approaches even more. I start out with two of the most science based approaches to just decrease that feeling of anxiety, which is breathwork is number one, just breathing deeply. And this isn't a yoga approach, this is a neuroscience approach because breathing deeply activates A part of our nervous system that was evolved to decrease our stress levels. Did you even know that you had part of the nervous system that did that? It's called the rest and digest part of the nervous system or parasympathetic nervous system. And what it does is it counteracts that fight or flight system. It decreases our heart rate, decreases our respiration systems respiration rate, and shunts blood from our muscles where we were using it to fight or run away to our digestive and reproductive organs. The best way to start to get all of that de stressing activity going is breathe deeply. That's what we have conscious control over. And it works well immediately, even at the start of an anxiety attack, it could really help. So that's my number one to.

Yeah, well, that's, that's really good. You know, I was just thinking, in the special Forces, one of the things that gives you the ability to run towards gunfire rather than run away from it is breathwork. Right. Is being able to assess, you know, being situationally aware, being self aware, being relationally aware all at one time. And most people don't believe they can actually do it. Reality is it just takes a little bit of practice and work.

Exactly, yeah.

One of the things that I, that I see in the, in when I, when I think of the term anxiety specifically. Right.

Yeah.

I feel like there's this massive chasm between, oh, I feel anxious because I've got to go pick up the milk at the last minute because I wasn't planning on it all the way up to like a full blown anxiety attack.

Yes.

So how do, how do we associate or disassociate ourselves from those environments to know if we do we clinically need to go get a counselor and get some help? Or is this, is, is this something that's really more to be practically based like breath work and things like that?

Right, right. So, you know, that is an individual kind of decision. But you should know that there's this huge range of anxiety levels. And what I say is that if your anxiety is persistent and deep enough so that it is not allowing you to live your life, do your job, have a relationship, have, have friendships, if it's disrupting it at that level, then I think that is the debilitating level that you should go see a professional. And while this book wasn't written for people with clinical levels of anxiety, I will say that every single tool in the book and the approaches can be used. It's just don't use this as your only tool. You need to See, a professional, but the book was really focused on kind of the rest of us. I do not have clinical levels of anxiety, but I have plenty of regular everyday anxiety. And I am that expert stepping forward as a personal, you know.

I don't know, survivor, but, but partaker in anxiety and, and the neuroscience that, that goes around with it.

Anxiety warriors. We're anxiety warriors.

Yes, exactly. Love that, Love that.

Well, one of the things that, one of the techniques that I, that resonated with me a lot in the book is this concept of using that anxious energy in a positive manner. And I stumbled on this by accident. I was doing a keynote number of years ago at an event and one of the people stood up in the audience and they said, well, how, how do I overcome my anxiety? And I said, well, are you feeling anxious right now? And they're like, yeah, okay, well, describe, describe to me how you feel like with your physiology. Tell me, tell me what your hand feels like, Tell me what your forearm feels like, your legs and so on and so forth. And as he began to explain, I said, now do you feel a little bit like a helium balloon that's been filled up all the way up and then someone just let it go and you're zipping around the room, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly how I feel. I said, okay, well, one of the things that I discovered, overcoming homelessness and then building businesses and stuff like that, I've dealt with a lot of anxiety along the way.

Yeah.

Is something that you talk a lot about in the book, which is take that energy and make it work for you. So if I feel anxious even today, like it's overwhelming anxious, I'll go, I'll just, I don't care if it's 3am, I'll head to the 24 hour gym and I'll work out at the gym for a while or I'll grab a notepad and a pen. But I'm using, I'm doing some level of action to help me get that energy out. So I'm not, you know, I'm kind of like dissipating it. Talk with us a little bit, that technique, because I thought that was pretty profound as well. Yeah.

So, you know, and that general description came from a very similar experience that I realized that the best talks that I've given in my whole career have been those talks. It's like I was scared before I went out there. Like it meant something I really wanted to do well. And my stomach was telling me, okay, you're about to Step out. Do you realize that? And. And, but that energy and that fear.

Is what made me be animated and be excited and be able to do that. And kind of the more you learn how to surf that wave, the better control you have over it. And so the realization is that in the end, it's all a particular pattern of brain activation, and there's body activation that goes along with it. But can you use that activation energy, those action potentials that your neurons are using, and channel it to.

Getting to that point faster, to kind of seeing the end and seeing that arc of the story that you're telling in your keynote? And what you just outlined was actually three beautiful ways that you can help channel it when it goes over the top, because has it gone over the top? Yes. I have stories in the book where, you know, it's like, oh, my God, you know, that was awful. That was so embarrassing, but so important to share. We all. It's not like, you know, once you do it, then. Then, you know, no more mistakes for me ever. So what do you do? You use. You learn how to use your breath work. You use. Learn how to use your movement and exercise and do those punches before you go out on the stage and be like Rocky Balboa if it makes you feel powerful, Adrian. Yeah.

Or maybe we should do Rocky Balboa and Gal Gadot for Wonder Woman at the same time. So we have models for lots of people out there. But writing is also very, very helpful. Helpful. What are you feeling? You ask that person in your audience, you could ask yourself that, what am I feeling? Am I starting to feel like the balloon that's sputtering around? Or why am I feeling this nervousness? Why is it coming on stronger now and kind of work through those fears. So many different things that you can do. And that is the power of somebody that has good anxiety. They know the tools, they know what works for them, and so they just pull them off the shelf exactly when they need it again. Still going to happen where? Oh, my God, it's still. But you get to know. And I feel like, especially after writing this book, I am so much more attuned to my own anxiety. I admit it. I was an anxiety denier. I learned before I wrote the book. It's like, yeah, I have a little bit of anxiety, but I'm going to write about it for everybody else. It's like, oh, my God, I have so much anxiety. What's the matter with me? Thank God I'm writing this book. I have to learn how to deal with it and so, you know, recognizing that anxiety and then testing it out, some tools don't work, you know, and they won't all work for you, but some work really, really well. And so that, that is the challenge, that is the goal. And can we lay this out and try it out and be creative and be kind of scientific about it? I love doing experiments on myself and I felt like this was a huge self personal experiment on my own anxiety.

Yeah. And there's another concept that I really, really liked, which is this concept of just being productive, using that energy. I don't think that most of us, when we feel anxious, feel like we can be productive. I feel like we, we feel like we're going to be. We're overwhelmed.

Yes.

Rather than trying to channel it, how are you able to discover the process of channeling towards productivity?

Yeah. Yeah. So that you've just brought up one of the six gifts or superpowers of anxiety that I talk about in the book. And this one I must give credit where credit is due. I did a lot of interviews of people having different levels of anxiety and I kind of sprinkled them throughout the book. So hopefully people can see themselves in different stories. And so as I was doing, I was just talking, talking to somebody. It was at a birthday party and I mentioned that I was writing this book about anxiety and this lawyer said, oh, anxiety. I'm the high paid lawyer that I am because of my anxiety, so please tell me your secret. And she said, you know, I've been an anxious person all of my life and I realized that I could take advantage of that because all of those worries that I had about the other side, the other lawyer working against me.

I would get myself crazy with all of the worry. What if they did this? What if they did that? What if the judge does this? What if he rules or she rules that way? She said what she does is turn all of those what ifs into to do's so that instead of just worrying about it, she turns it into an actionable item. She does it, it makes her case stronger because she's considered now 30 billion different possibilities and she's prepared for all of them. And it helps resolve the anxiety. Because anxiety was kind of evolved to have an action placed on it. You fight or you run away to help, you know, get rid of this danger. Well, I'm not going to do that, but I'm going to check that off with, with gusto and I'm going to make my to do list and check it off. And that's Going to help me resolve my anxiety. So this works because what are you worried about? You're worried about the things that are most important for your life. So it gives you this hidden, hopefully not hidden for long direction to make that worry and get out of that just puddle of worry and start to move in a direction. Using that anxiety for your own productivity.

Yeah, I mean it seems like a certain element of anxiety is trying to control the uncontrollable.

Yeah.

Thinking about a young lady that I know pretty well and she openly struggles with anxiety. She's an amazing human being. Outside looking in, you're like, you literally have everything, the whole oyster, like the world is your oyster right now.

Yeah.

You're that talented and that gifted. Right. You know, one of the things that she's mentioned a couple of times is she feels high levels of anxiety, but she doesn't know why. Like, you know, she'll be in the, you know, by herself or at her home or something like that, or hanging out with friends and she'll have had a great day and then sit down in her own quietness for a few moments and that's when the anxiety tends to come up. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on maybe how people can potentially figure out what's triggering it to begin with. Because it seems like if we can understand the trigger, then we can work on, we can work on the trigger, but then we can also use the anxiety currently to then build a framework to just feel better as well as be productive and whatnot.

Right, Right. That's hard. Sometimes these anxiety tasks can be triggered by.

Unknowable things. Sometimes they are. It's this fear. Maybe she doesn't like to be alone. Just using your story and that triggers a fear. But sometimes it's like random randomness and I think that in those. So first I would say absolutely, do the work and try and find a pattern in yourself. Maybe it's there, maybe it's not. If it's these kind of random panic attacks. And for those, I would say that you can do all of these science based things that we know. Calm your nervous system down, decrease anxiety levels, up your levels of dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline. And here I'll go to my number two. My number one go to for anxiety is the breath work because it's activating the parasympathetic system. My number two is always physical activity. You already mentioned going to the 24 hour gym and that helps because every single time you move your body, you don't have to go do a big weights workout or big Barry's boot camp workout. You can go for a walk. And even going for a walk is increasing levels of neurochemicals in your brain. I'd like to say that it's like giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals. I love that every time you go for a walk starts with a walk. Of course, it continues with whatever workout you're doing. But what are those neurochemicals that you're giving your brain this bubble bath with? They are dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphins. They make you feel good. It's those neurochemicals that are decreasing your anxiety depression levels. So would it be helpful if you do that on a regular basis so that you're just automatically giving your brain this wonderful soup to stew in and to cleanse in? Yes, it will. And so that. And then regular meditation has also been shown to decrease anxiety levels over the long term. So these are things that everybody can add to their life. The secret is always don't go too hard. Don't do that really, really hard workout. And then you're just sore the next day. You don't want to go back. Start small, start short, start fun. Go with a friend and make sure you laugh during the exercise and get it going that way.

I love that. I love that. There's one thing I love about good anxiety. The book is there are so many practical steps, right. It's a whole suite of a whole toolbox, if you will, of, you know, using anxiety, if you will, for your betterment rather than your detriment. And I love that about it. You also have this. You talk a lot about flow also in the book.

Yeah.

And how being in flow obviously can. Can assist with anxiety or at least use it for your. Your advantage.

Right.

Then you also kind of break it down into micro flow. I was kind of hoping you would maybe talk about the principle of microflow force.

Sure, sure. So. So, you know, I knew in this book that I wanted to talk about flow because it kind of seemed like to me it was the opposite of anxiety. If you don't have anxiety, what is that optimum? Well, flow. You know, the classic definition of flow. You're at this performing at this high level of performance, and it doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes everything just flows, right? It clicks in. And I'm a student of the cello, so I always think of Yo Yo Ma. He's playing these beautiful pieces. Not all the time, but occasionally that night at Carnegie hall, he got flow. And so that's kind of a beautiful image until you think about, well, if he only gets flow every once in a while, how am I ever going to get flow? And then I started getting depressed because, like, I don't. I'm not going to have flow. And. And also anxiety is the killer of flow. So if I have anxiety, my everyday anxiety is going to kill it even further. Oh, that's just depressing. But that can't be. It can't be that only people like Yo Yo Ma have flow. So I'm thinking about this. How am I going to write about it? So I don't want to depress people. So how am I going to do this? I go to this yoga class and I'm just mulling over as we do, as we're writing books, go to the yoga class. It was great yoga class. I needed it. I stretched all out. And at the end of the yoga class, we're in the corpse pose, Shavasana, and I'm there and feeling good. And suddenly it hits me. I'm flowing. I'm doing shavasana better than anybody has ever done shavasana. I'm truly flowing. It felt great. Now, it's not exactly the same as Yo Yo Ma flow, but it was this moment of flow. It never lasts long enough, right? That savasana at the end. So it was a short flow. So, okay, micro flow. It is a short moment of flow. And I just thought, well, you know, what if I. If I redefine flow that way? I have many different examples of flow during my day. And I always give the example. You know, I have, I make this green smoothie for myself every morning and, and I've been working on the recipe and like, try and find the right, exactly the right ripeness of banana to make it perfect. And so making that and kind of using all my experience, that's a moment of flow, drinking it, delicious moment of flow. I thought, oh, my God, I do have many moments of flow, which is great. But that's not anything special for with or without anxiety. Until I realized that there's a concept in psychology called the negative contrast effect, which basically says the wonderful times were more wonderful because you have bad times to compare it to. We were, you know, if we had, you know, beautiful lives all the time, it wouldn't be beautiful life, it would just be life.

We'd be bored.

We'd be bored, right? And so then I realized I'm going to combine those two concepts that my micro flow Is even more micro flowy because I have anxiety and I have these bouts during the day. I'm worried about that. Oh, did I do that right? Still happens. Of course it happens to all of us. And those uncomfortable moments of worry, of fear, of anger that we all have, those are normal human emotions. It makes my wonderful flow in Savasana even sweeter. And that is why micro flow is a gift or superpower for all of us that have anxiety.

Yeah. I mean, it seems like most of us, like, I think you just articulated beautifully where we're not even aware we go in and out of microflow or flow on a regular basis because, you know, maybe we're so focused on the adversity facing us or the things that aren't necessarily meeting our expectations that we totally miss for the fact we were just spent the last 30 minutes with a friend and it was just like you were the life coaching, life coach of the stars. Right. You know, everything's just coming out and like you're, you're fixing their life, like, and no, I'm flat and that kind of thing. You know, as I kind of think through that, it seems like microflow also would help build confidence over time. Once you can identify that you're going from microflow to microflow to microflow.

Yes.

And it also seems like confidence is the enemy to anxiety. Would you say that's accurate?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think both of those are correct. It is a muscle that we need to build up. And I'm including myself in building up this muscle that. Yeah. For a long time it's like, oh, I just have to worry because I just want to make sure I protect myself from all these bad things that could happen. And that, you know, that is a trait of anxious, anxious people. A very different mindset. And I talk a lot about a mindset in this book is, isn't that amazing how many moments of beauty that I had in this day? It was actually a hard day, but I had a moment, a microflow moment there and there and there. And it takes practice to be able to do that. Even on your worst day, the smile from your colleague that helped you get through that is a moment of micro flow. So it takes practice and it really changes the way you look at your everyday. If you start looking at it, if you start identifying those moments of microflow.

Yeah, no, I think that's fantastic. When I think about anxiety.

Especially coming from the environment that I came through, when you're going through the adversity, One of the things that I've Discovered that I feel like is true for anybody who struggles with anxiety, any level, large or small, is this element of you're trying to figure it out, but assuming the absolute possible worst case scenario at any given moment in it, and at least in my life, and I've been through some, I've been to some pretty dark places, it's never been remotely close to as difficult as I thought it was going to be when I actually went through it to begin with.

When all your research did, you kind of foresee maybe folks that maybe struggle at a deeper level with anxiety or maybe worst case scenario, folks that only see things with that kind of like glass half full kind of approach or.

You know.

I think that is a common feature of everyday anxiety that starting to veer over to glass half empty and worst case scenarios as protective mechanism. I certainly did that for many years. And.

It goes back to this idea of.

The mindset and the power of your mindset that you bring to your life. And my favorite example of the power of mindset. So mindset is your belief. What you believe changes not only how you think about things and your approach to things, but can change your true physiology. This is like putting gluing back together the brain and the body after this separation. Like, oh, I, you know, I can't change anything in my body from my mind. But my favorite example is a study done by Aaliyah Crum, a psychologist at Stanford. And she studied several hundred female hotel workers in a variety of different really big hotels. And so they spent the whole day cleaning rooms, cleaning bathrooms, changing sheets. And they were randomized into two different groups and one group brought into a room and just in a few minutes they were told that their, their work patterns were analyzed and based on the Surgeon General's assessment, they were getting a very good level of exercise. But before that they said, I don't, I don't exercise, I don't have time to exercise, you know, but, but that's what they were told. The other group wasn't told anything about the level of exercise. Four months later, both groups came back. And the group that was told that the Surgeon General had analyzed.

Their movement, they had better job satisfaction, they had lost more weight, they had lower BMIs, they had lower waist to hip ratios. And it had completely changed the way they saw their own power of their own movement. And that's a similar kind of thing, like microfluid. I don't have any microflow versus look at how much microflow that I get during each day. I hadn't even realized What a gift that is, that changes your whole affect. And so that is something that I talk about a lot in the book as something powerful that we can all learn how to manipulate and shift in a positive way.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I think it's such a good reminder because I think again, I think we get lost in the worst case scenario. Therefore, we're not even focused on what could be the best case scenario or the possibilities. You know, I think about all the various levels of adversity and the anxiety with that on the early onset throughout the course of my life, and 100% of the time when I used the right perspective with it, I was able to use it to build my life rather than take it apart. And I think it's almost like we want to live in a blissful state. Like we want to live in flow from the time we were born to the time we pass. Right. And we all know that that's not going to be a reality, but yet we expect that on a consistent basis. I am curious. One of the things that you had in the book that I really, really liked is this concept called nurture and activist mindset.

Yeah.

Like, how do we. How do we nurture an activist mindset? Because normally we think the word activist and we're like, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not really sure.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think the idea behind the activist mindset is there's an element of curiosity there, there's an element of creativity there. So can you take a situation? Many situations that come up say, oh, God, I just got thrown all of this work. How come I have to do this work? The activist mindset says, okay, well, can this be a challenge? What if I do this, this work and maybe I could really show what I can do or go the other way. You know what? Actually, this is unfair. I'm going to have a conversation to ask whether maybe there's a different distribution of this work that might be more fair for the whole group. It's about activists in that sense. Activists in the sense of curiosity activism.

Which I love. And.

I've been lucky to have people that I've been around that have always inspired me in that way that they look at the way they approach things, the way that they look at things. Oh, God, I love that. That way, because I was sitting here going, oh, God, I have to do this. And they're, they're like, oh, my God, isn't that interesting? Maybe we can do this or that. And it's not like they always get the least amount of work or the easiest thing to do. They get the same kind of things I do. But, but it's, it's the response to it is that activist, curiosity seeking response that can really be the mortal enemy of anxiety.

And so, yeah, well, it seems like anxiety draws its power from passivism. I don't even know if that's a word. I think I just made a word up. But, but I mean, that's been, I mean that's been true. Every time that I've been super anxious, I didn't take a step. Therefore I got to sit in that anxiety for a longer period of time. And one of the things that has proven out to be true in my life and also prove it out in the book is the fact that when you don't know what to do, just do something like taking, taking, you know, is there a new way to look at it? Is there a new approach to, to a test, to can you have a friend or a family member kind of connect with you and kind of look and things of that nature? You talked a little bit about some of the chemical, chemical nuances in the brain a little earlier.

Yeah, let's talk about.

Oxytocin.

Yeah, oxytocin. There we go. I was going to get it.

Let's talk about oxytocin in the brain and anxiety, if you don't mind, for a few more minutes.

Yeah, sure. Oxytocin is a powerful hormone in the brain. It's involved in so many different things.

My favorite story about oxytocin is where it was first identified, in these little critters called prairie voles that live in the Midwest. And this was work done by Tom Insel and his group. Tom used to be the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. He found that in prairie voles, little male and female prairie voles are one of the few mammals that form lifelong pair bonds. The way this happens. Yes, the way this happens is they live in large multi generational families. And how does a new pair bond form? Well, a juvenile female is walking down the path in the family area and suddenly she comes across the intoxicating odor of urine from a male, not from her family unit. If that male that happened to deposit that intoxicating urine is nearby, then a pair bond can form. And how it forms is they start, you know, they start making love. Yeah, they start having sex and it lasts for 40 hours. Four, zero. Excuse me, 40 hours.

That's crazy.

And during that time in the female, oxytocin is just be, you know, through the roof. In the male, it's vasopressin that's through the roof in their brains. And we can show that in that 40 hours of lovemaking. If you block oxytocin in the female or block vasopressin in the male, then the pair bond doesn't form. It's critical for the formation of that pair bond.

It controls a whole bunch of this behavior.

That'S defining this lifelong pair bond. That's how oxy ketocin got put on the map. It does a whole bunch of other things. It is involved in uterine contractions and in releasing the milk after a baby is born. But it's this social bonding hormone.

Yeah.

Now does it work? And so it's so funny. You know, you can try and buy. You try. You can buy oxytocin on.

I did not know that.

On the, on the Internet. What is it called? I wasn't going to say it, but yeah. And of course, it has different variations of Love Potion Number nine, you know, but. But the truth is, we are not prairie voles. It's a great story, and it's my favorite story to tell my undergraduates about the neurobiology of love.

You could change out urine for Chanel number five or something.

No, you need. You need. You know, I tell the story that, you know, I learned all about this. I went to the. All the neuroscience meetings, and as they were working this out, and I'm walking Washington Square park one day because, you know, I work at NYU right near Washington Square park, and I see this homeless guy peeing against a tree, and I thought, you know what? If I was a prairie vole, that would be my prince charming. Thank goodness I'm not a prairie vole. So I try and be very clear about the prairie vole data and the human data. In humans, oxytocin goes up. And if you give oxytocin, we become more friendly.

Social bonds are easier to make. You don't necessarily fall in love or mate for life, but.

It also can go up in positive situations.

Like some of the things I talk about in the book that can decrease anxiety. Find a friend. Connect with your best friend. Make new friends. That social interaction will increase oxytocin levels and can also decrease your anxiety levels. But we are very social species, and that's.

I enjoyed the book so much that I went ahead and ordered two copies. I have one for myself, one to give to a friend. So I Support your book 100%. I am curious to know from your perspective who is the book really for? Like, if you had to kind of identify or tell us about who the, who the perfect person is, that would gain the most insight and most transformation from your book. Who would that person be?

It would be the person that has noticed that their anxiety levels are annoying. It's getting in the way. Again, not clinical levels of anxiety, but there's this huge range of anxiety and all of us have kind of moved up a little bit towards, towards the higher end. If you've said, oh God, anxiety is just, it's, it's. I've really noticed it more. That is the person that could get a lot from the book, you've noticed it. That's the first key you've made that you've made that link in your mind. And now I try and lay out in very clear ways what you can do. Step one, turn the volume down. Step two, look in on your emotions. Step three, reap the benefits of all these superpowers or gifts, including the superpower of productivity.

Yeah.

So yeah, that would be my answer.

That's awesome. Well, it seems like, you know, for me.

Again, this is kind of a selfish show. Right?

Like my book is not selfish.

Well, I mean, I love your work so much because I can lay my personal transformation over top of many of the steps and I can see many of the journey steps. Two things. One, that some things that I wish I had known, wish I had had around the journey and other things that you talk about that I actually applied not knowing any better that ultimately led me to, you know, from where I was to where I'm at now. So I personally believe in many cases, one of the things that would have prevented me from doing as much is this element of self sabotage. Right. I found myself early, in the early stages, letting my anxiety drive my fear and letting my fear drive my action. Knowing that even early on that if I take that action, I know it's not going to end well, but I would do it anyway. Have you seen any correlation with anxiety and self sabotage yourself?

Yeah, I haven't looked deeply into self sabotage. That hasn't come up an enormous amount. I know obviously it happens, but yeah, sorry, I don't have a lot of either background stories about people or research in that area. But yes, it's absolutely something that can happen.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, it's definitely happened in my life for sure. I didn't do it knowingly and I think it's like anxiety itself. It's not something you are feeling or expressing knowingly. In many cases. It seems to be much more subconscious as a whole. But anyway. Well, I've enjoyed hanging out with you. Obviously, I love the book. Everybody's got to pick it up.

It's one of those ones that I'll probably be diving into off and on again. Like I've already, after making it through it once, I have to go back another set of highlighters because I started off with yellow highlighters and I would have an entire page highlighted. I'm like, this is not going to work.

I need orange for this and pink for this and yellow for this. But I am curious, where can everybody else find out more about you and learn how to connect with you and even get the book?

Absolutely. Best place to learn about me is wendysazuki.com, best place to find specifically about the book is good anxiety.com so you can interact with me there. My contact information is there. All my social media stuff, it's all there as well. So Wendy suzuki.com and good anxiety.com thank.

You so much for hanging out with us again. I can't wait to spend some more time with you and learn more from you.

Thank you so much. This has been such a fun conversation.

All right, take care. See you.

Okay, bye. Bye.

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It is so important from the start to set goals that are really for you. I think so many times when we are not hitting our goals, it is because they weren't really the goals for us in the first place.