January 17, 2022 • 26 mins
Many of the most painful or troubling emotions we experience are reactions to events that have actually happened - but one powerful and sometimes paralyzing feeling can be provoked by things as yet to occur. Say hello to anxiety.
Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Andrea Wachter spent much of her life being stalked by the physical and mental manifestations of anxiety - the brain fog and the pit of the stomach dread of something bad looming on the horizon. She's amassed a wealth of strategies to overcome the thoughts and sensations that make up anxiety and she explains them to Dr Laurie Santos.
You can try her meditations and courses on insighttimer.com/andreawachter, and for her books and blogs can be found at www.andreawachter.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Over the past few weeks, we've been exploring how
to better navigate our negative emotions. So far, we've seen
that even though it's uncomfortable to sit with our messy feelings,
committing to getting curious about these sensations and facing them
head on might be an unexpected key to a happier life.
(00:38):
In this episode, we're going to tackle a nasty feeling,
one that I suffer from a lot. Today we're in
the company of anxiety. Well, I sort of feel like
I was born bracing for impact. I came out what
I call a sensitive breed, and many people who struggle
with anxiety can relate to that. Just always felt more
fragile than certainly my siblings and most of my friends,
(01:02):
and that level of sensitivity led to a lot of anxiety.
This is psychotherapist, author, and meditation teacher Andrea Walkder. Nobody
decides I'm going to wake up at two in the
morning and worry. Nobody decides I'm going to have a
pit in my stomach all afternoon and feel shaky. It's
just it's these takeover mechanisms that happen automatically and unconsciously,
(01:23):
and that's why I think we need so many tools
to help us out. Andrea knows how awful anxiety feels
because she's experienced it a lot herself, but she's also
developed a suite of tools we can all use to
face this emotion head on and to feel better. I'm
doctor Laurie Santos, and this is the Happiness Lab. Andrea
(01:46):
is no stranger to anxiety. For more than thirty years,
she's been passionate about providing people with strategies they can
use to regulate this emotion. While I have two anxiety
relief classes on Insight Timer, so people can go through
these lessons and gather the tools that resonate for them,
and then practice and practice and practice. Andrea knows the
(02:07):
importance of practice. He's had her own decades long journey
with dealing with anxiety. I used to just be walking
around with fight or flight constantly and constantly thinking and obsessing. Unfortunately,
the tools that I turned to when I was growing
up were in the form of drugs and alcohol and
cigarettes and a really terrible eating disorder. I use those things,
(02:29):
I believe, in an attempt to try to cope with
and tamp down my anxiety. After many, many strategies, that
didn't work, Andrea finally tried something new. A guy she
dated asked her if she'd be interested in checking out
a new class and I said, what's the topic and
he said presence And I said like gifts, like stuff
you get on Christmas and he said, no, Presence like
(02:50):
being in the present moment. And I thought, well, I
have very little experience with that. I might as well
try a class. And I went to this class and
it was all about being present and they talked about
Eckertoli The Power of Now, and I got the book
and literally felt like a bag had been taken off
my head. I had really been haunted by my thoughts,
but only for as long as I could remember, and
(03:12):
just started practicing being present and it was life changing.
But before getting into the idea that we can arm
ourselves with tools to navigate anxiety, I wanted Andrea to
help us better understand what anxiety actually is. Anxiety can
manifest in several ways, mostly physically and mentally. It's worrisome thoughts,
(03:34):
it's fight or flight in the body, and it can
be a variety of a spectrum really of how that
plays out for people. And so you mentioned this idea
of a fight or flight, you know, talk a little
bit about what this means like physically in our bodies
when these systems get activated. Oh, physically, it can manifest
as that pit in the stomach, tightness in the chest, shaking, nausea, headaches, fatigue,
(03:57):
brain fog. There's just so many ways that people can
feel taken over by anxious feelings and sensations. And those
anxious feelings, as you mentioned, seemed to go along with
anxious thoughts. You know, So what's going on there? Give
me a sense of kind of what anxious thoughts feel like. Well,
anxious thoughts are usually in the form of what I
call what ifs, you know, what if this happens? And
what if that happens, and just worrying. And we're usually
(04:21):
when we're worrying, we're not in immediate danger. Because when
we're in immediate danger, we just deal with it. We
don't have time to worry about it. So anxiety is
usually about the future. It's kind of a sense that
something is going to go wrong. It's often based on
the past that things have happened. It's like a hostage
takeover of just worrysome thoughts. One of the things that
(04:41):
can happen when you're in the grip of anxiety, particularly
anxious sensations, is it can be hard to believe that
they don't necessarily need to be that way, that you
can change them around, that you can take action against them.
We can't control what thoughts pop up in our minds,
but we can control how we respond to them, and
that's the work. That's when we bring in compassion, that's
when we bring in questioning our thoughts, that's when we
(05:03):
bring in mindfulness. Coming back to the present moment, you've
talked about the idea that once we kind of recognize
this psycho, there are these paths that we can take
to kind of deal with anxiety, you know, So share
with me this metaphor that you've been using with your students.
So imagine that you're on a path, and this is
the path of anxiety. You might be walking on it,
you might be stuck or crawling, but you're on this
(05:24):
path of anxiety. And on this path, there's often these
anxious sensations in the body, like we just talked about
these fight or flight. This court as all in adrenaline
just coursing through you. In addition to the anxious sensations
in the body. When we're on the path of anxiety,
there's usually worrisome thoughts in the mind. Now, oftentimes the
worrisome thoughts in the mind cause anxious sensations in the body.
(05:48):
But sometimes people can have anxious sensations and they are
not aware that they were having any worrisome thoughts. So
many times people will say to me, I wasn't even worrying.
I was just you know, in the shower, doing my
day and just taken over. So then people have worrisome
thoughts about the sensations. So we can have anxious thoughts
(06:09):
about our sensations, and we could have anxious thoughts that
cause sensations. In addition, when we're on the path of anxiety,
we often have a sense of self blame. Just like,
I can't believe I'm still anxious after all that I do,
after all the meditating I do, I'm still anxious, all
the work on myself, I'm still anxious. So then in
(06:30):
addition to sensations and anxious, worrisome thoughts and self blame,
there's often a disapproval of the anxiety itself. I hate
this feeling. I can't stand feeling this way, and I
understand because it's unpleasant, it doesn't help, and in fact,
it usually makes things worse. So here we are on
this path of anxiety, maybe you've been on it for
two hours or two days or as long as you
(06:52):
can remember, and you come to a fork in the
road and you see that there's an alternate path, and
those are your anxiety relief tools. And this fork in
the road is when you become aware that you've been
on the path. You've been lost in the trance of
worry and sessing on sensations and beating yourself up. And
(07:14):
that's when we have the chance and the choice to
choose a new path, and we go down that path
as many times a day as we need to. And
every change is proceeded by awareness. So we have to
wake up from the trance of anxiety and say, okay,
I've been on it. Now I'm choosing even if you
still feel it in your body, We're going to choose
a tool at that moment. When we get back from
(07:37):
the break, we'll talk about how we can wake up
from the trance of anxiety and find the alternative path
Andrea was describing. We'll hear about some specific tools She's
used to help her clients manage anxious sensations, and why
finding ways to just allow these negative experiences might, ironically enough,
be the best path to stopping them. The Happiness Lab.
We'll be right back. I've been talking to psychotherapist and
(08:07):
insight time or teacher Andrea about anxiety. Andrea's own experience
with anxiety has made her quite familiar with how this
emotion shows up in our bodies. Just this pit in
my stomach, this dread in my stomach. I didn't know
that my thoughts were largely causing the sensations. I didn't
know how to quiet my thoughts. I didn't know how
(08:27):
to come into the present moment. I didn't know my
thoughts were made up, that they weren't even real. And
so when we think of kind of what our system
is doing, you know, I think we often get really
mad at the system, and we feel guilty about it
and so on. But in some ways, you know, having
this fight or flight reaction is a smart reaction. It
is it's the body's attempt to protect or prepare. It's
a good try. It's just that the mind doesn't know
(08:50):
the difference between really being in danger or thinking we're
in danger. So when we're sitting there obsessing or worrying,
the mind's going to respond with those stress hormones in
the same way as if it would if we were
just had a car accident. And so this is one
of the reasons you often recommend sort of treating your
anxtrous feelings like you'd treat kind of an anxious child,
(09:10):
you know, with the sort of self compassion and kindness
that comes with that. You know why is self compassion
sort of so important when we're feeling anxious because we
need compassion. Imagine talking to a child that came to
you that was scared and you yelled at them. Not
only would they not feel better, they would feel worse.
So we just as human beings, we soften when we're compassionate.
(09:31):
We soften when we're given empathy and love and tenderness
and soothing, and we tighten and get more stressed when
we're given anger or more worry. You know another thing
we do that I think just absolutely doesn't work. I've
done this myself. Is this this all this resistance we
bring to these feelings, Like ultimately they're just feelings, but
we kind of hate them to the point that we're
(09:52):
going to stuff them away or you know, get busy
or run away from them. You talk about why this
is like not the best way to react to these
anxious feelings. Yeah, it's like the opposite of the best way.
And it's understandable because painful feelings are painful, and unpleasant
feelings are unpleasant. We don't necessarily want them. But like
I tell my clients all the time, it's not going
(10:13):
to be seventy with a light breeze every day. We
have to deal with weather patterns, and we have internal
weather patterns, and in order to be healthy, emotionally healthy
and not need to use substances or behaviors to stuff
down our emotions, we have to befriend them. We have
to make peace with them and learn how to welcome them,
accept them, and tend to them in a way that
(10:34):
soothes them until they pass and then they come back
again and we repeat. And so this is why the
toolkit for dealing with our anxious sensations can be so important,
and so one of the tools in your toolkit, I know,
is the idea of kind of working with your anxious
sensations through the use of your breath. You know why
is the breath such an effective way of kind of
dealing with anxious feelings. Well for starters, it's an anchor
(10:55):
that brings us home into the present moment, but it's
also bringing oxygen into our bodies and really literally calming
and slowing down our systems. Our breath is shallow and
we're anxious. When we begin to deepen our breath then
slow down our breath, it literally calms our system. Another
move though, is in some ways like the opposite, which
(11:16):
is to kind of get the system moving, to kind
of let the fight or flight system kind of run
its course. And you've talked about doing that through processes
like exercise, but exercise in a particular way where you're
really moving your body in a loving way. Yes, And
this is also why I like to share such a
wide variety of tools, because we don't always need the
same thing in any given moment, just like if a
(11:38):
child is crying, you know, they don't always need the
same thing, And so we sometimes might want to get moving,
We sometimes might want to get still into a meditation,
We sometimes might need to reach out for safe support.
We need different things. So it's being able to tune
into yourself and your body like a loving parent would
tune into a child's needs. And one of those ways
(11:58):
of tuning in really involves like becoming one with your
anxious sensations, no matter how they might feel right, it's
actually leaning into those anxious sensations by noticing what it
means to be there with those sensations right now. And so,
what are some strategies in your toolkit that you've suggested
for how people can kind of be with these sensations
or just be in their body when they're going through
(12:19):
something like this. Well, one thing is simply observing them,
observing them without judgment, observing them like you would observe
a painting on the wall. And again that's challenging. But
when we let go of the notion that they're bad
and they should be gone, then it helps to be
more of a neutral observer. And then many of the
(12:40):
tools are about shifting, so shifting to something else, a
healthy distraction, so to speak, or using a tool, but yes,
just being able to notice those sensations and even to
talk to them, even to suit them. I see you
put your hand on your stomach or your chest, and
I am with you. You're okay. Imagine it having a conversation,
a compassionate dialogue with the sensations. Another tool that you
(13:03):
talk about for kind of dealing with anxious sensations is
what's called self havening. You know what is self hevening
and how does it work well? Self havening comes from havening,
which is kind of bringing yourself into a havening place,
a safe haven. And it was developed by a neuroscientist,
Ronald Ruden, and he discovered that there were several parts
(13:23):
of our bodies that when we use sensory touch and
in many cases adding calming words and images that we
can actually calm our systems. We can actually bring ourselves
into delta brain waves which are calming. And the three
areas are the palms of your hands and your upper
arms and the sides of your face. I hear from
(13:45):
students often that they'll start this lesson out thinking, oh, please,
you know, I'm just going to rub my hands together
and stroke my arms and feel better, And then they
say by the end of the lesson they are actually
calmer and more relaxed, so it really works. Another thing
you've advised is really just to start actually paying attention
to your sensations more directly, not necessarily even the anxious sensations,
(14:06):
but just the information your sensory system is giving you. Yes, well,
this is basic mindfulness. So lots of people probably know
that word, and it basically means coming back to the
present moment, bringing yourself here, to what's actually factually here,
where the mind is going to play those mind movies
and take us away from the present moment. We can
come back to our senses, so you can actually look around.
(14:29):
What do I see right now? What shapes and colors
do I see right now? What do I hear right now?
What am I touching right now? My body breathing this
inhalation right now, this exhalation. And even if you're still
feeling anxious while you're focusing on your senses, that's okay.
I like the idea of looking at if a fire
has been burning for a while and you start to
(14:50):
put it out, it still may be smoky and warm,
but you still keep putting it out. Another tool that
you used, particularly for anxious sensations is this idea of
finding a way to get the sensations without the stories.
You know, what does it mean to separate the sensations
from the stories. It means noticing the sensations in your
body without judgment, noticing the sensations with neutrality, which is
(15:15):
challenging to do if you've been hating them and arguing
with them and wanting them gone for so long. It
is a big shift, but it's extremely powerful. So far,
Andrea has given us strategies for managing the anxious sensations
that take over our body. But becoming truly curious about
this emotion means listening to and maybe even learning from
our anxious thoughts and stories directly. But how do we
(15:38):
face all those scary thoughts head on? We'll discuss some
effective strategies for doing that when the happiness lab returns
in a moment. The mind movies can certainly feel very
convincing and very enticing, and so we want to learn
(16:00):
how to question them. I mean, personally, I was a
mind movie with limbs for most of my life before
I started learning about mindfulness and learning too. I really
was just hijacked by my thoughts, and they were not
all pleasant thoughts. Psychotherapists and meditation teacher Andrea Walkder knows
how awful it feels to be stuck in the grip
of an awful and seemingly never ending stream of anxious thoughts.
(16:24):
Our stories literally can take us down. So we want
to be aware enough of when our mind has taken
over the house, so to speak, and how to bring
ourselves back to present moment reality. And that's a powerful
thing because once you've become aware that these things are thoughts,
I think two things happen. One is that you can
separate them a little bit more. Right, they're just a thought.
(16:44):
It's an odd thing to realize, but it can be
so powerful to be like, hey, this is just a
thought in my head. It doesn't necessarily mean it's true, right,
And sometimes people feel so taken over by their thoughts
that that really feels like that's all there is, that
one hundred percent of them is anxiety right now. But
then if they can't find a part that's compassionate or
a neutral witness, or that they can speak to the
(17:07):
anxiety from their heart, then we bring in another resource. Perhaps,
how would you talk to somebody else right now? How
would you treat a child right now? Because we all
have compassion inside of us, it's just being able to
resource that to your most challenging feelings and thoughts. One
of the interesting tools that you've given your students for
how to deal with their thoughts and kind of make people,
(17:28):
help people realize that their thoughts are not themselves is
through some creative ways of talking back to your thoughts,
which I quite love, you know, So talk to me
about this tool and some strategies for kind of like
talking back at your thoughts in these kind of creative ways. Yes, well,
one lesson was strong, soft, silly, and silent, and just
being creative with how you're going to talk back to
(17:50):
your busy mind or your unkind mind. So it might
be for some people or in some moments it might
be a stronger voice. You know that's not happening right now,
and I'm going to need you to focus on what
we're doing right now, sweetheart, we are driving to work.
Or it might be soft, like I know you're scared.
I know life big sometimes, but right now we're safe.
(18:11):
Let's take a deep breath. Or silly, just oh you again,
I've heard of you back again, or silent where you
just shift you're at focus to something that's healthy, a
healthy distraction and you don't give it a lot of
power those thoughts. Have you had students use these kinds
of different voices with some success, like what are some
of their stories about these voices working for them all
(18:34):
the time? In fact, just yesterday I received a note
in my course classroom from someone taking one of the
anxiety classes, and he said that the notion of making
his anxiety into a separate part. When he first listened
to the lesson, he thought, oh, please, you know that's ridiculous.
And then he tried it, and he said he was
able to talk to his anxious part the way he
(18:57):
would a friend, and he began to look forward to it,
like how am I going to roll up my sleeves
and help my friend that I care about? And he
said it was really calming his anxiety and none of
one of the famous tools you've talked about in your
anxiety course. Is this method the work? What is the work?
And how do you do it? So basically the work
was discovered by Byron Katie. She's an author and spiritual teacher.
(19:18):
She goes by Katie, and these questions came to her
when she was at the bottom of the barrel with
addiction and eating disorder and suicidal and completely anxious, and
she took or came up with these four simple questions
and what she calls a turnaround, and you take a
thought that is causing anxiety, and you walk through these
(19:39):
four questions and a turnaround. Should we try it together? Yeah,
let's do it. Okay. So let's say someone is thinking
the thought I'm never going to be okay? So the
first question in the work is that true? And Katie
asks her a yes or no answer? So I'm never
going to be okay? And you go inside and you
(20:01):
feel is that true? I'm never going to be okay?
I want to say I don't know, but she says no,
yes or no. If I say yes feels true? I
would go to the second question, are you absolutely sure
it's true? She gives you a second chance. So am
I absolutely sure that I'm never going to be okay?
And I would really feel into that, really think about that.
(20:22):
Probably I would come up with no, I'm not absolutely sure.
I mean, I don't really know anything. If I think
about it, I don't really know that that's true. Question
number three, how do I feel when I believe that
thought and I really feel into it, I'm never going
to be okay? Dread? Perhaps hopeless, perhaps throw in a
little anxiety and depression, and then four the fourth question.
(20:45):
Sometimes I feel like it's not even in the language
of which I speak. It feels so deep and foreign.
It's who would you be without that thought? And sometimes
a thought can be so sticky and so convincing that
it's hard to imagine who you'd be without it. But
she asks us to meditate on it, to really go
inside and think if I didn't have that thought that
(21:06):
I'm never going to be okay, and I would feel
like I am okay. Actually I'm just sitting in a chair.
I actually am okay. So we realize that it's the
thoughts that take us down only every time. And then
the turnaround is basically, you play with that original thought
the opposite I'm never going to be okay. I am okay.
(21:28):
I'm always going to be okay. My thoughts are never
going to be okay. You play with the thought and
see how that feels. I love the word because I
think it's just so powerful, because when you get to
that fourth question, this idea of like who would I
be if I didn't have this thought? Often you're like,
I'd be badass. If I didn't have this thought, I'd
be fine. I wouldn't be you know, shaking, And so,
you know, I've found the work to be helpful for
(21:49):
dealing with anxious thoughts, you know, which are often you know,
untrue or at least uncertain, right, because that's the nature
of them. But also just for so many of my
negative thoughts about myself, it's like, well, if I didn't
really believe this, who would I be? Like what I'd
be better? You know? Maybe I need to go back
and work on those thoughts and kind of make them
a little bit different. Is this the kind of reaction
you get in students? You know? Have you had the
stories of them use the work for their anxious thoughts
(22:10):
to make a difference. All the time people are really
affected in a positive way by the work. It really
is one of the keys to breaking free from thoughts,
because it's so easy to think that our problem is
what's going on in the world or our bodies, But
the problem is what we think about what's going on
in the world or our bodies. Certainly there are real
(22:31):
life issues, but when our thinking is clear and present,
then the problems lesson and the anxiety really diminishes. And
so we've never heard a bunch of different strategies both
for thinking about our anxious sensation and thinking about anxious thoughts.
But I know when I've like in the grip of anxiety,
it can be very hard to remember how to do them,
(22:52):
And so any strategies you can share for how to
remember what to do and to remember to use this toolkit,
we're kind of in the thick of our anxious moments
absolutely well. One of the things that I recommend to
my students a lot is to gather a list, start
a tool kit, if you will, of what your favorite
tools are, whatever tools resonate for you, and practice them
(23:15):
till you really know how to do them, till their
second nature. So that way, when anxiety takes over and
your logical mind might be a little quieter, you already
practiced and put that toolkit. Put that list in a
place where it's easily accessible, and set yourself reminders, whether
they're on your phone or post, it's on your computer,
(23:35):
or your dashboard or a piece of jewelry sometimes people
will wear to remind themselves to use a tool. And
even if you're still anxious while you're practicing your tools,
keep going, because if you quiet your mind and question
your thoughts and soothe your body enough times it can't
help but quiet down the anxiety. Speaking with Andrea made
(23:57):
me realize that we don't need to run away from
our anxious thoughts and sensations. I mean, I'll be the
first to admit that hanging out with anxiety can feel
very uncomfortable. But by making the choice to sit with anxiety,
by agreeing to listen to it and talk to it kindly,
we can find ways to really learn what this sensation
is trying to teach us. Andrea is living proof that
with practice and patience and even more practice, your anxiety
(24:21):
will start to relax over time. I hope andrea Is
toolkit is a resource that you can come back to
whenever you find yourself in the path of anxiety. When
you notice you're at that fork in the road, remember
to take a moment and tune into what you need.
Take a deep breath, and remind yourself that you are
not your thoughts, and that you can start down a
new path, one of calm and clarity. In our next episode,
(24:45):
we'll focus on an emotion that I find to be
the absolute scariest, especially when I see it in my
friends or in myself. That emotion is anger, but it
doesn't feel good like it doesn't feel good in our body,
and there's a physiological reason for it. Our body is
pushing us to do something. It's a very protective mechanism,
(25:05):
and so the body is determined to force us into
act in order to protect us, which is why it
is so incredibly uncomfortable to feel angry and to want
to do something about it. As soon as possible, we'll
look at what anger actually is, how it works in
the body, and what it's trying to tell us. We'll
see that even a potent emotion like anger might be
(25:25):
there to help us more than we realize. So I
hope you'll join me again soon for the next episode
of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If
you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider
subscribing to pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
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(25:48):
ninety nine a month. As a special gift to pushkin
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our experts. Pushkin Plus is available on the show page
and Apple Podcasts, or at Pushkin, dot fm, slash Plus.
(26:09):
The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley,
Emily Anne Vaughan, and Courtney Guerino. Our original music was
composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering
by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Miilabelle, Heather Faine, John Schnarz,
Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Brandt Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
(26:29):
Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis.
That Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
and me Doctor Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your podcasts,
Pushkin. Over the past few weeks, we've been exploring how
to better navigate our negative emotions. So far, we've seen
that even though it's uncomfortable to sit with our messy feelings,
committing to getting curious about these sensations and facing them
head on might be an unexpected key to a happier life.
(00:38):
In this episode, we're going to tackle a nasty feeling,
one that I suffer from a lot. Today we're in
the company of anxiety. Well, I sort of feel like
I was born bracing for impact. I came out what
I call a sensitive breed, and many people who struggle
with anxiety can relate to that. Just always felt more
fragile than certainly my siblings and most of my friends,
(01:02):
and that level of sensitivity led to a lot of anxiety.
This is psychotherapist, author, and meditation teacher Andrea Walkder. Nobody
decides I'm going to wake up at two in the
morning and worry. Nobody decides I'm going to have a
pit in my stomach all afternoon and feel shaky. It's
just it's these takeover mechanisms that happen automatically and unconsciously,
(01:23):
and that's why I think we need so many tools
to help us out. Andrea knows how awful anxiety feels
because she's experienced it a lot herself, but she's also
developed a suite of tools we can all use to
face this emotion head on and to feel better. I'm
doctor Laurie Santos, and this is the Happiness Lab. Andrea
(01:46):
is no stranger to anxiety. For more than thirty years,
she's been passionate about providing people with strategies they can
use to regulate this emotion. While I have two anxiety
relief classes on Insight Timer, so people can go through
these lessons and gather the tools that resonate for them,
and then practice and practice and practice. Andrea knows the
(02:07):
importance of practice. He's had her own decades long journey
with dealing with anxiety. I used to just be walking
around with fight or flight constantly and constantly thinking and obsessing. Unfortunately,
the tools that I turned to when I was growing
up were in the form of drugs and alcohol and
cigarettes and a really terrible eating disorder. I use those things,
(02:29):
I believe, in an attempt to try to cope with
and tamp down my anxiety. After many, many strategies, that
didn't work, Andrea finally tried something new. A guy she
dated asked her if she'd be interested in checking out
a new class and I said, what's the topic and
he said presence And I said like gifts, like stuff
you get on Christmas and he said, no, Presence like
(02:50):
being in the present moment. And I thought, well, I
have very little experience with that. I might as well
try a class. And I went to this class and
it was all about being present and they talked about
Eckertoli The Power of Now, and I got the book
and literally felt like a bag had been taken off
my head. I had really been haunted by my thoughts,
but only for as long as I could remember, and
(03:12):
just started practicing being present and it was life changing.
But before getting into the idea that we can arm
ourselves with tools to navigate anxiety, I wanted Andrea to
help us better understand what anxiety actually is. Anxiety can
manifest in several ways, mostly physically and mentally. It's worrisome thoughts,
(03:34):
it's fight or flight in the body, and it can
be a variety of a spectrum really of how that
plays out for people. And so you mentioned this idea
of a fight or flight, you know, talk a little
bit about what this means like physically in our bodies
when these systems get activated. Oh, physically, it can manifest
as that pit in the stomach, tightness in the chest, shaking, nausea, headaches, fatigue,
(03:57):
brain fog. There's just so many ways that people can
feel taken over by anxious feelings and sensations. And those
anxious feelings, as you mentioned, seemed to go along with
anxious thoughts. You know, So what's going on there? Give
me a sense of kind of what anxious thoughts feel like. Well,
anxious thoughts are usually in the form of what I
call what ifs, you know, what if this happens? And
what if that happens, and just worrying. And we're usually
(04:21):
when we're worrying, we're not in immediate danger. Because when
we're in immediate danger, we just deal with it. We
don't have time to worry about it. So anxiety is
usually about the future. It's kind of a sense that
something is going to go wrong. It's often based on
the past that things have happened. It's like a hostage
takeover of just worrysome thoughts. One of the things that
(04:41):
can happen when you're in the grip of anxiety, particularly
anxious sensations, is it can be hard to believe that
they don't necessarily need to be that way, that you
can change them around, that you can take action against them.
We can't control what thoughts pop up in our minds,
but we can control how we respond to them, and
that's the work. That's when we bring in compassion, that's
when we bring in questioning our thoughts, that's when we
(05:03):
bring in mindfulness. Coming back to the present moment, you've
talked about the idea that once we kind of recognize
this psycho, there are these paths that we can take
to kind of deal with anxiety, you know, So share
with me this metaphor that you've been using with your students.
So imagine that you're on a path, and this is
the path of anxiety. You might be walking on it,
you might be stuck or crawling, but you're on this
(05:24):
path of anxiety. And on this path, there's often these
anxious sensations in the body, like we just talked about
these fight or flight. This court as all in adrenaline
just coursing through you. In addition to the anxious sensations
in the body. When we're on the path of anxiety,
there's usually worrisome thoughts in the mind. Now, oftentimes the
worrisome thoughts in the mind cause anxious sensations in the body.
(05:48):
But sometimes people can have anxious sensations and they are
not aware that they were having any worrisome thoughts. So
many times people will say to me, I wasn't even worrying.
I was just you know, in the shower, doing my
day and just taken over. So then people have worrisome
thoughts about the sensations. So we can have anxious thoughts
(06:09):
about our sensations, and we could have anxious thoughts that
cause sensations. In addition, when we're on the path of anxiety,
we often have a sense of self blame. Just like,
I can't believe I'm still anxious after all that I do,
after all the meditating I do, I'm still anxious, all
the work on myself, I'm still anxious. So then in
(06:30):
addition to sensations and anxious, worrisome thoughts and self blame,
there's often a disapproval of the anxiety itself. I hate
this feeling. I can't stand feeling this way, and I
understand because it's unpleasant, it doesn't help, and in fact,
it usually makes things worse. So here we are on
this path of anxiety, maybe you've been on it for
two hours or two days or as long as you
(06:52):
can remember, and you come to a fork in the
road and you see that there's an alternate path, and
those are your anxiety relief tools. And this fork in
the road is when you become aware that you've been
on the path. You've been lost in the trance of
worry and sessing on sensations and beating yourself up. And
(07:14):
that's when we have the chance and the choice to
choose a new path, and we go down that path
as many times a day as we need to. And
every change is proceeded by awareness. So we have to
wake up from the trance of anxiety and say, okay,
I've been on it. Now I'm choosing even if you
still feel it in your body, We're going to choose
a tool at that moment. When we get back from
(07:37):
the break, we'll talk about how we can wake up
from the trance of anxiety and find the alternative path
Andrea was describing. We'll hear about some specific tools She's
used to help her clients manage anxious sensations, and why
finding ways to just allow these negative experiences might, ironically enough,
be the best path to stopping them. The Happiness Lab.
We'll be right back. I've been talking to psychotherapist and
(08:07):
insight time or teacher Andrea about anxiety. Andrea's own experience
with anxiety has made her quite familiar with how this
emotion shows up in our bodies. Just this pit in
my stomach, this dread in my stomach. I didn't know
that my thoughts were largely causing the sensations. I didn't
know how to quiet my thoughts. I didn't know how
(08:27):
to come into the present moment. I didn't know my
thoughts were made up, that they weren't even real. And
so when we think of kind of what our system
is doing, you know, I think we often get really
mad at the system, and we feel guilty about it
and so on. But in some ways, you know, having
this fight or flight reaction is a smart reaction. It
is it's the body's attempt to protect or prepare. It's
a good try. It's just that the mind doesn't know
(08:50):
the difference between really being in danger or thinking we're
in danger. So when we're sitting there obsessing or worrying,
the mind's going to respond with those stress hormones in
the same way as if it would if we were
just had a car accident. And so this is one
of the reasons you often recommend sort of treating your
anxtrous feelings like you'd treat kind of an anxious child,
(09:10):
you know, with the sort of self compassion and kindness
that comes with that. You know why is self compassion
sort of so important when we're feeling anxious because we
need compassion. Imagine talking to a child that came to
you that was scared and you yelled at them. Not
only would they not feel better, they would feel worse.
So we just as human beings, we soften when we're compassionate.
(09:31):
We soften when we're given empathy and love and tenderness
and soothing, and we tighten and get more stressed when
we're given anger or more worry. You know another thing
we do that I think just absolutely doesn't work. I've
done this myself. Is this this all this resistance we
bring to these feelings, Like ultimately they're just feelings, but
we kind of hate them to the point that we're
(09:52):
going to stuff them away or you know, get busy
or run away from them. You talk about why this
is like not the best way to react to these
anxious feelings. Yeah, it's like the opposite of the best way.
And it's understandable because painful feelings are painful, and unpleasant
feelings are unpleasant. We don't necessarily want them. But like
I tell my clients all the time, it's not going
(10:13):
to be seventy with a light breeze every day. We
have to deal with weather patterns, and we have internal
weather patterns, and in order to be healthy, emotionally healthy
and not need to use substances or behaviors to stuff
down our emotions, we have to befriend them. We have
to make peace with them and learn how to welcome them,
accept them, and tend to them in a way that
(10:34):
soothes them until they pass and then they come back
again and we repeat. And so this is why the
toolkit for dealing with our anxious sensations can be so important,
and so one of the tools in your toolkit, I know,
is the idea of kind of working with your anxious
sensations through the use of your breath. You know why
is the breath such an effective way of kind of
dealing with anxious feelings. Well for starters, it's an anchor
(10:55):
that brings us home into the present moment, but it's
also bringing oxygen into our bodies and really literally calming
and slowing down our systems. Our breath is shallow and
we're anxious. When we begin to deepen our breath then
slow down our breath, it literally calms our system. Another
move though, is in some ways like the opposite, which
(11:16):
is to kind of get the system moving, to kind
of let the fight or flight system kind of run
its course. And you've talked about doing that through processes
like exercise, but exercise in a particular way where you're
really moving your body in a loving way. Yes, And
this is also why I like to share such a
wide variety of tools, because we don't always need the
same thing in any given moment, just like if a
(11:38):
child is crying, you know, they don't always need the
same thing, And so we sometimes might want to get moving,
We sometimes might want to get still into a meditation,
We sometimes might need to reach out for safe support.
We need different things. So it's being able to tune
into yourself and your body like a loving parent would
tune into a child's needs. And one of those ways
(11:58):
of tuning in really involves like becoming one with your
anxious sensations, no matter how they might feel right, it's
actually leaning into those anxious sensations by noticing what it
means to be there with those sensations right now. And so,
what are some strategies in your toolkit that you've suggested
for how people can kind of be with these sensations
or just be in their body when they're going through
(12:19):
something like this. Well, one thing is simply observing them,
observing them without judgment, observing them like you would observe
a painting on the wall. And again that's challenging. But
when we let go of the notion that they're bad
and they should be gone, then it helps to be
more of a neutral observer. And then many of the
(12:40):
tools are about shifting, so shifting to something else, a
healthy distraction, so to speak, or using a tool, but yes,
just being able to notice those sensations and even to
talk to them, even to suit them. I see you
put your hand on your stomach or your chest, and
I am with you. You're okay. Imagine it having a conversation,
a compassionate dialogue with the sensations. Another tool that you
(13:03):
talk about for kind of dealing with anxious sensations is
what's called self havening. You know what is self hevening
and how does it work well? Self havening comes from havening,
which is kind of bringing yourself into a havening place,
a safe haven. And it was developed by a neuroscientist,
Ronald Ruden, and he discovered that there were several parts
(13:23):
of our bodies that when we use sensory touch and
in many cases adding calming words and images that we
can actually calm our systems. We can actually bring ourselves
into delta brain waves which are calming. And the three
areas are the palms of your hands and your upper
arms and the sides of your face. I hear from
(13:45):
students often that they'll start this lesson out thinking, oh, please,
you know, I'm just going to rub my hands together
and stroke my arms and feel better, And then they
say by the end of the lesson they are actually
calmer and more relaxed, so it really works. Another thing
you've advised is really just to start actually paying attention
to your sensations more directly, not necessarily even the anxious sensations,
(14:06):
but just the information your sensory system is giving you. Yes, well,
this is basic mindfulness. So lots of people probably know
that word, and it basically means coming back to the
present moment, bringing yourself here, to what's actually factually here,
where the mind is going to play those mind movies
and take us away from the present moment. We can
come back to our senses, so you can actually look around.
(14:29):
What do I see right now? What shapes and colors
do I see right now? What do I hear right now?
What am I touching right now? My body breathing this
inhalation right now, this exhalation. And even if you're still
feeling anxious while you're focusing on your senses, that's okay.
I like the idea of looking at if a fire
has been burning for a while and you start to
(14:50):
put it out, it still may be smoky and warm,
but you still keep putting it out. Another tool that
you used, particularly for anxious sensations is this idea of
finding a way to get the sensations without the stories.
You know, what does it mean to separate the sensations
from the stories. It means noticing the sensations in your
body without judgment, noticing the sensations with neutrality, which is
(15:15):
challenging to do if you've been hating them and arguing
with them and wanting them gone for so long. It
is a big shift, but it's extremely powerful. So far,
Andrea has given us strategies for managing the anxious sensations
that take over our body. But becoming truly curious about
this emotion means listening to and maybe even learning from
our anxious thoughts and stories directly. But how do we
(15:38):
face all those scary thoughts head on? We'll discuss some
effective strategies for doing that when the happiness lab returns
in a moment. The mind movies can certainly feel very
convincing and very enticing, and so we want to learn
(16:00):
how to question them. I mean, personally, I was a
mind movie with limbs for most of my life before
I started learning about mindfulness and learning too. I really
was just hijacked by my thoughts, and they were not
all pleasant thoughts. Psychotherapists and meditation teacher Andrea Walkder knows
how awful it feels to be stuck in the grip
of an awful and seemingly never ending stream of anxious thoughts.
(16:24):
Our stories literally can take us down. So we want
to be aware enough of when our mind has taken
over the house, so to speak, and how to bring
ourselves back to present moment reality. And that's a powerful
thing because once you've become aware that these things are thoughts,
I think two things happen. One is that you can
separate them a little bit more. Right, they're just a thought.
(16:44):
It's an odd thing to realize, but it can be
so powerful to be like, hey, this is just a
thought in my head. It doesn't necessarily mean it's true, right,
And sometimes people feel so taken over by their thoughts
that that really feels like that's all there is, that
one hundred percent of them is anxiety right now. But
then if they can't find a part that's compassionate or
a neutral witness, or that they can speak to the
(17:07):
anxiety from their heart, then we bring in another resource. Perhaps,
how would you talk to somebody else right now? How
would you treat a child right now? Because we all
have compassion inside of us, it's just being able to
resource that to your most challenging feelings and thoughts. One
of the interesting tools that you've given your students for
how to deal with their thoughts and kind of make people,
(17:28):
help people realize that their thoughts are not themselves is
through some creative ways of talking back to your thoughts,
which I quite love, you know, So talk to me
about this tool and some strategies for kind of like
talking back at your thoughts in these kind of creative ways. Yes, well,
one lesson was strong, soft, silly, and silent, and just
being creative with how you're going to talk back to
(17:50):
your busy mind or your unkind mind. So it might
be for some people or in some moments it might
be a stronger voice. You know that's not happening right now,
and I'm going to need you to focus on what
we're doing right now, sweetheart, we are driving to work.
Or it might be soft, like I know you're scared.
I know life big sometimes, but right now we're safe.
(18:11):
Let's take a deep breath. Or silly, just oh you again,
I've heard of you back again, or silent where you
just shift you're at focus to something that's healthy, a
healthy distraction and you don't give it a lot of
power those thoughts. Have you had students use these kinds
of different voices with some success, like what are some
of their stories about these voices working for them all
(18:34):
the time? In fact, just yesterday I received a note
in my course classroom from someone taking one of the
anxiety classes, and he said that the notion of making
his anxiety into a separate part. When he first listened
to the lesson, he thought, oh, please, you know that's ridiculous.
And then he tried it, and he said he was
able to talk to his anxious part the way he
(18:57):
would a friend, and he began to look forward to it,
like how am I going to roll up my sleeves
and help my friend that I care about? And he
said it was really calming his anxiety and none of
one of the famous tools you've talked about in your
anxiety course. Is this method the work? What is the work?
And how do you do it? So basically the work
was discovered by Byron Katie. She's an author and spiritual teacher.
(19:18):
She goes by Katie, and these questions came to her
when she was at the bottom of the barrel with
addiction and eating disorder and suicidal and completely anxious, and
she took or came up with these four simple questions
and what she calls a turnaround, and you take a
thought that is causing anxiety, and you walk through these
(19:39):
four questions and a turnaround. Should we try it together? Yeah,
let's do it. Okay. So let's say someone is thinking
the thought I'm never going to be okay? So the
first question in the work is that true? And Katie
asks her a yes or no answer? So I'm never
going to be okay? And you go inside and you
(20:01):
feel is that true? I'm never going to be okay?
I want to say I don't know, but she says no,
yes or no. If I say yes feels true? I
would go to the second question, are you absolutely sure
it's true? She gives you a second chance. So am
I absolutely sure that I'm never going to be okay?
And I would really feel into that, really think about that.
(20:22):
Probably I would come up with no, I'm not absolutely sure.
I mean, I don't really know anything. If I think
about it, I don't really know that that's true. Question
number three, how do I feel when I believe that
thought and I really feel into it, I'm never going
to be okay? Dread? Perhaps hopeless, perhaps throw in a
little anxiety and depression, and then four the fourth question.
(20:45):
Sometimes I feel like it's not even in the language
of which I speak. It feels so deep and foreign.
It's who would you be without that thought? And sometimes
a thought can be so sticky and so convincing that
it's hard to imagine who you'd be without it. But
she asks us to meditate on it, to really go
inside and think if I didn't have that thought that
(21:06):
I'm never going to be okay, and I would feel
like I am okay. Actually I'm just sitting in a chair.
I actually am okay. So we realize that it's the
thoughts that take us down only every time. And then
the turnaround is basically, you play with that original thought
the opposite I'm never going to be okay. I am okay.
(21:28):
I'm always going to be okay. My thoughts are never
going to be okay. You play with the thought and
see how that feels. I love the word because I
think it's just so powerful, because when you get to
that fourth question, this idea of like who would I
be if I didn't have this thought? Often you're like,
I'd be badass. If I didn't have this thought, I'd
be fine. I wouldn't be you know, shaking, And so,
you know, I've found the work to be helpful for
(21:49):
dealing with anxious thoughts, you know, which are often you know,
untrue or at least uncertain, right, because that's the nature
of them. But also just for so many of my
negative thoughts about myself, it's like, well, if I didn't
really believe this, who would I be? Like what I'd
be better? You know? Maybe I need to go back
and work on those thoughts and kind of make them
a little bit different. Is this the kind of reaction
you get in students? You know? Have you had the
stories of them use the work for their anxious thoughts
(22:10):
to make a difference. All the time people are really
affected in a positive way by the work. It really
is one of the keys to breaking free from thoughts,
because it's so easy to think that our problem is
what's going on in the world or our bodies, But
the problem is what we think about what's going on
in the world or our bodies. Certainly there are real
(22:31):
life issues, but when our thinking is clear and present,
then the problems lesson and the anxiety really diminishes. And
so we've never heard a bunch of different strategies both
for thinking about our anxious sensation and thinking about anxious thoughts.
But I know when I've like in the grip of anxiety,
it can be very hard to remember how to do them,
(22:52):
And so any strategies you can share for how to
remember what to do and to remember to use this toolkit,
we're kind of in the thick of our anxious moments
absolutely well. One of the things that I recommend to
my students a lot is to gather a list, start
a tool kit, if you will, of what your favorite
tools are, whatever tools resonate for you, and practice them
(23:15):
till you really know how to do them, till their
second nature. So that way, when anxiety takes over and
your logical mind might be a little quieter, you already
practiced and put that toolkit. Put that list in a
place where it's easily accessible, and set yourself reminders, whether
they're on your phone or post, it's on your computer,
(23:35):
or your dashboard or a piece of jewelry sometimes people
will wear to remind themselves to use a tool. And
even if you're still anxious while you're practicing your tools,
keep going, because if you quiet your mind and question
your thoughts and soothe your body enough times it can't
help but quiet down the anxiety. Speaking with Andrea made
(23:57):
me realize that we don't need to run away from
our anxious thoughts and sensations. I mean, I'll be the
first to admit that hanging out with anxiety can feel
very uncomfortable. But by making the choice to sit with anxiety,
by agreeing to listen to it and talk to it kindly,
we can find ways to really learn what this sensation
is trying to teach us. Andrea is living proof that
with practice and patience and even more practice, your anxiety
(24:21):
will start to relax over time. I hope andrea Is
toolkit is a resource that you can come back to
whenever you find yourself in the path of anxiety. When
you notice you're at that fork in the road, remember
to take a moment and tune into what you need.
Take a deep breath, and remind yourself that you are
not your thoughts, and that you can start down a
new path, one of calm and clarity. In our next episode,
(24:45):
we'll focus on an emotion that I find to be
the absolute scariest, especially when I see it in my
friends or in myself. That emotion is anger, but it
doesn't feel good like it doesn't feel good in our body,
and there's a physiological reason for it. Our body is
pushing us to do something. It's a very protective mechanism,
(25:05):
and so the body is determined to force us into
act in order to protect us, which is why it
is so incredibly uncomfortable to feel angry and to want
to do something about it. As soon as possible, we'll
look at what anger actually is, how it works in
the body, and what it's trying to tell us. We'll
see that even a potent emotion like anger might be
(25:25):
there to help us more than we realize. So I
hope you'll join me again soon for the next episode
of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If
you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider
subscribing to pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for only four
(25:48):
ninety nine a month. As a special gift to pushkin
Plus subscribers, I'll be sharing a series of six guided
meditations to help you practice the lessons we've learned from
our experts. Pushkin Plus is available on the show page
and Apple Podcasts, or at Pushkin, dot fm, slash Plus.
(26:09):
The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley,
Emily Anne Vaughan, and Courtney Guerino. Our original music was
composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering
by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Miilabelle, Heather Faine, John Schnarz,
Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Brandt Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
(26:29):
Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis.
That Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
and me Doctor Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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