April 10, 2025 • 36 mins
Ever wonder why fear feels so much bigger when you have ADHD? You're not imagining it!
In this episode, Renee taps into the science of the ADHD brain and explores why it tends to amplify fear, anxiety, and self-doubt—and interfere with life.
From rejection sensitivity to emotional dysregulation, Renee discusses the ways ADHD can heighten fear responses and hold you back from acting in a more logical, rational way.
Get practical strategies to calm your nervous system, quiet that fear, and build the courage to move forward, even when your brain doesn't think you can.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I am Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
And usually I say I'm excited to be here, but I
don't know why. Today has been really hard to come up
here and record this episode. So instead of recording
(00:50):
the next episode, which was going to be the second part
of why it's difficult or hard to process information, follow
instructions, and all of that, I'm going to talk about working
through fear and what to do when fear
or anxiety, it might not feel like fear when that comes
(01:13):
up, because for some reason, that's what's been happening to
me today, and I don't know why. So I've tried
all my yoga things. I didn't teach yoga today, and I.
I did a few of my yoga things that I do on my own, but
I thought I really need to work with someone else.
(01:33):
And there's a man that I've taken breathing workshops with
before, and I've read his books, listened to his audiobooks.
His voice is super soothing. So I even tried that
and it helped a little bit.
But while I was doing it, in the part where I
was really relaxing at the end, I was just recognizing what
(01:56):
I'm feeling is fear inside of my. Inside of my whole lung,
heart area, like it was coming inward.
And I'm sorry if this is loud. When the microphone.
I move the microphone closer to my body.
I'm actually sitting by the couch, if you haven't noticed, because
(02:16):
I realized that in order to get myself going here, that it
would be helpful if I just did whatever I could to
be comfortable. And honestly, when I'm sitting up and recording
the podcast, either on audio or on video, I'm not really
comfortable sitting in a chair for very long.
And that may be my hyperactive part of adhd, but
(02:40):
I just feel a little more tense. And if I'm sitting on
the floor talking to a friend, a hundred times better.
If I'm laying back on the couch, a thousand times better.
And I've noticed that when I join Zoom Calls that
I want to just lay on the couch and hold my phone or my.
Or we have my laptop and just be kicking back or on my bed.
And I look at these Zoom Calls, and these are for things that
(03:03):
help me figure out how to do all this online stuff
for my podcast and my website. And I notice I'm
the only one in my bed. And it's not like I'm in my bed because
I can't get out of bed. It's just that's where it's comfortable,
or laying on my couch is comfortable, and then I sit up straight
to be with them and I'm not as comfortable and I just
(03:26):
feel a little more anxious. So I thought maybe help to sit against
the couch. So here I am. Thank you for letting me do
whatever I do. I mean, it's my podcast, right?
I can do whatever I wanna do. But I just thought I should talk
about this for first because maybe it'll help me
so that I stop acting this way and stop feeling this
way and I can actually make that other episode.
(03:49):
So this is it for right now. So I actually looked up
what are some techniques. Well, first I.
I've been learning about why ADHD amplifies fear, why
that gets amplified, maybe more for someone with ADHD than someone
who doesn't have it. And maybe there are other conditions, especially
if you have anxiety without adhd, but with adhd,
(04:15):
what can cause your brain to amplify that fear?
What can make it bigger than what's actually.
What reality is, is that we have emotional responses
to, To a lot of things. I, I don't know that
we have them for everything. And some people have fewer emotional
responses, you know, have a different level, but we have emotional
(04:38):
responses to what's going on, whether it's a plan of something
that we need to do or something we want to do.
This is something I really want to do.
I want to be here. I want to talk about this, this topic.
I, I love to be on my podcast, but for whatever reason,
whatever emotional response I might usually have of.
Are you ready for that? Are you sure?
(05:00):
Or maybe you should get something else done.
You know, all of that questioning could be, could
be just processed like, yeah, you're fine, go ahead and do it
or do something else first. You know, it would be no big deal,
but the longer I waited to do it, the bigger it got
and the emotional response grew. And emotional dysregulation
(05:24):
is not being able to re regulate that emotion,
not being able to bring it back down to a manageable point
where it's growing and growing, and it dysregulation could actually
be doing the opposite thing. You know, it could be, you know,
whether it's. It could be changing the emotions from super excitement
(05:44):
to super sadness, you know, or super anger to laughing, you
know, it could be that kind of dysregulation, but I'm talking
about the dysregulation where it's just, it's just growing and
you can't, you can't bring it back down.
So that's something in the brain that could happen, and that's
what I saw happening today. And the longer I waited,
(06:06):
it wasn't like I felt overwhelmed, like, oh, I can't
do that. I knew I couldn't, but I just kept having
kind of that decision. Fatigue and the paralysis of.
Wasn't that I wasn't doing anything.
I just wasn't doing the thing that I wanted to do the most because
I kept get. It wasn't a distraction.
(06:27):
There are so many things that we do with ADHD where we
can name it and say, yeah, I was distracted, so that's
why I didn't do it. Or I was overwhelmed by the idea, so I
didn't do it. Or I was afraid because I've never
done this before. It's new. None of those applied.
But my brain could not calm this anxiety, this.
(06:52):
This anxiousness I was feeling. And I've named it.
Now I know where it's coming from. And that anxiety
is. Or that fear is interfering with my
ability to make a decision, my ability to just get myself
to do something.
(07:13):
And it's just made it a lot harder to even regulate the emotion.
And the fear is more from going to the
doctor's office. I don't know what day it was when I made this
podcast on Tuesday at a doctor's appointment, and my blood pressure
rating was higher. And. And honestly, if the woman.
(07:33):
I don't know if she was a nurse or a physician's assistant or
what. I. I'm very affected by other people's.
Other people's beings, their emotional state or.
Yeah, I don't even know if it was an emotional state.
I'm affected by how they are. And I think
(07:54):
if she had said, oh, this is high. Let's do it
again, which actually happened a week or two before when I had
to go get a blood test, they said, oh, this is high.
Let's give it a few minutes. You know, the reassuring voice.
Let's give it a few minutes and see if.
See if it goes down. You know, we waited a few minutes.
She was, you know, nice and stuff. Did it again.
(08:15):
Oh, and Dalla, use that reading. So this woman, the
woman on Tuesday, didn't. Didn't respond that way.
She was more of an alarmist. Oh, your blood pressure is
really high. And. And like, it's the end of
the world. And I. I thought, oh, but
(08:36):
you could always wait and. And do it a little bit later,
like you want to do it, you know? So I said, yeah, that happened
a week ago. So this is my calm response where the emotions hadn't
kicked in yet. They didn't kick until after I got home where
she said, you know where? I said, oh, that happened last week
when I got my blood test. But then she just waited a little bit
and it went down. I also have a son who's a resident.
(08:58):
He's a doctor. Resident, doctor right now.
And he told me there's a thing called white coat syndrome, and
that there are times that the first time I had a
high blood pressure reading, which was last fall, I.
I was. It. It made me nervous when she said
that. I thought, well, I've never had high blood pressure before.
(09:18):
So I got worried about it. And then, and then she
did it a second time and she did it too tight and it hurt.
So I said, that's hurting my arm. That's hurting my arm.
So second thing. So first thing was, was like my worry, my
fear, like, oh, that. That can't be good if it's high.
Second thing was it hu.
I'm tensing up from it hurting. And so she did
(09:43):
it a third time and it did go down, but not to my
normal level. And my son said, yeah, there's a
white coat syndrome that sometimes people's blood pressure is
higher because it's a scary situation.
And that was my first time in that office.
It was kind of scary. So anyway, so I knew that
too. So that was my logical part. My logical part was, hey, a
(10:05):
week ago this happened and they took it again.
Second logical part was, oh, it could be white coat syndrome.
But, you know, I mean, obviously it could be something else too.
But. But the second time she did it, she didn't say,
oh, it went down. She just said, yeah, it went down, but not
that, not that much. And you still have high blood pressure.
(10:25):
And. And I just laughing because, I don't know, I
just feel like people in positions like that should try
to be me more reassuring or something.
But anyway, my doctor didn't seem to think much about it
when she saw that, you know, the second reading was the thing.
So I forgot about it until yesterday.
(10:46):
It's funny what can trigger things like, my life was good.
I mean, you know what I mean? Like, nothing changed from
walking out feeling good because my doctor felt good about it.
Or at least she didn't say anything about it.
But the next day when I get an email that
says, your after visit summary is here, that's when I
(11:09):
saw in red my blood pressure thing. So
anyway, yeah, so I just thought, oh.
So I started getting all Scared and everything, and it was
just lame. But it came up again today because now I've
been testing my blood pressure at home, and so I had
a really good result after I got up.
(11:31):
And then I'm reading, like, what time of day do you do it?
So now I'm starting to worry about it.
But then I thought, check it again. And it was higher.
And it might have been after I took my medication, my stimulant,
I don't know, it just built inside of me, and
it got in the way of being able to
do something I really wanted to do, which was this.
(11:53):
This. I was able to quiet my mind by putting
in some AirPods and a podcast and just
doing some laundry and some cleaning, which is good, but I really
wanted to be doing this. Honestly, I'd much rather be doing this.
Yeah. So I thought I'd talk about this, because when
(12:15):
I really recognized this anxiousness that you're
feeling about the podcast is not about the podcast.
Because logically it wasn't, but I thought it was.
I thought, why are you worried to do that?
You know, why are you scared to do this?
Just do it. You've done it before. This is.
This is episode 80. So I should be able
(12:37):
to do it right. But when I did that breathing
practice, and the man's name's Max Strom.
M A X S T R O M. I think I've mentioned him
before, but if you go on YouTube, he has some videos
on breathing techniques for anxiety or better sleep or
different things like that. And so anyway, I did it, but
(13:00):
the impatient part of my ADHD didn't finish it.
I almost got there because I got to the point of where I
recognized, oh, this is actually fear.
And maybe a lot of anxiety comes from fear.
But for me to understand, where's that fear coming
from? Is there anything you can do about it?
(13:22):
Can you change your reaction to it? Can you do
something progressive to alleviate that fear?
Not just an action like breathing, but whatever I'm afraid of.
Instead of feeling like I don't have any control
in this situation. Oh, no. Oh, no. And then monitoring my
(13:44):
blood pressure every day, I could do things like look
at the foods that can cause high blood pressure.
And granted, it's not super high, but according to
the woman who took my blood pressure, she was alarmed.
So I want to get to the point where she would look
at it and say, not only this is normal, but this
(14:05):
is low. Because for a million years, I have six kids, so
I've got, you know, gone to the doctor A kajillion times.
And they'd always do the blood pressure, and they'd always say,
you know, oh, you're 118 over. They'd always say these two
numbers, and I'd. I'd usually say, I don't know what that means.
You know, is that good? You know, I.
And they'd say, yeah, it's really good.
And I go, okay. And I. There was never anything like that.
(14:27):
And maybe that RSD of wanting to have the approval of somebody
factored into her reaction. Like, I should have just said
okay. You know, like, if that's how she reacts, if she's cold
when she talks to me, that's okay, but it's not okay,
because I like to connect with people.
So we all have our attachments to things,
(14:51):
and one of mine is connecting with people.
And. Yeah, ask my husband. I come back from
experiences and say, I wish everybody enjoyed meeting people
as much as I do, because it's really frustrating to go into a
store or go to an office or something and just
get stone faces from people. And I really do want
(15:12):
to, like, I don't have to tell my life story.
I'm not trying to do that. I just want to smile.
I just want a connection. And actually, the woman that took my
blood pressure had to come back in and give me vaccines for pneumonia.
I'm giving all my medical information, but pneumonia.
And what was the other one? Oh, tetanus.
And somehow we found common ground as I
(15:34):
talked to her, and she was. She warmed up to me, but
still left me with some. A little bit of
emotional dysregulation afterwards. So.
Yeah, and that was me just bringing that back in.
It was. But why is it hard to. To. To
get those emotions where we need them to be?
(15:57):
It just is. It just is. We have emotional dysregulation along
with our executive dysfunction. That is part of it, or
at least it is for me. It might be for you, too.
You may also have the rejection sensitivity.
Wait, I always say it wrong. Rejection sensitive dysphoria.
I don't think I have it to the RSD point, but I
(16:19):
have the rejection sensitivity for sure.
I want to be friends with everyone, and I know that I
can't be, and I know that not everyone's going to like me, but,
yeah, that plays into it, too.
So what else? Okay, so this is also interesting with adhd, why
you amplify fear? Because, as I said, logically, I could
(16:40):
look and say okay, and I actually did, throughout the day,
look at what foods not to Eat. Look at what food to eat.
Well, that caused stress too, because then you're starting to
limit what you eat. And I'm already picky.
I already
don't like cooking stuff, so, so I just go, well,
I don't feel like any, any, anything then.
(17:00):
But I, I would eat a few things here and there.
But yeah, so I did make some attempts to
just move forward. Well, what can you control?
But if you have time blindness in any way, it
could be like, it's time to go, I'm just gonna go put on my
makeup for five seconds. And then 10 minutes later you're
(17:20):
like, how did, how am I leaving so late?
You know, that's, that's the time blindness that I relate to.
Another time blindness is things can feel more
intense or urgent time wise than maybe they
really are. And you start to think, or like in
this case, I might think, oh, I like that might take forever,
(17:42):
that I just make changes in what I eat and then it
makes a difference. You know, I'm not looking at
it realistically and, and I should. So things
may not be as urgent as intense time wise
or even, you know, just. We might have
(18:04):
that alarmist reaction for different reasons.
And then also,
if your memory isn't, you know, you have, if you
have so many ideas coming in your mind, the rational part may
not come in as evenly. You may not store the
information. Like, you might talk to a friend, which would have
(18:26):
been a good idea. I didn't talk to anybody about this today.
But it, you could talk to somebody and they'd say, well, don't
you remember this happened to you once before and what you
did was this. Or, you know, they give you something that
boosts your confidence. And often they're things that
you already know, but you might not be recalling that.
(18:48):
You may not, might, might not even have that memory.
Like, did that really happen? Like, you might not have the memory
at all because you never stored it. Or you just, just
can't remember because your, your mind is swirling too much
so your memory isn't working as well.
But. But yeah. So those are some reasons why
(19:09):
fear can grow. And there are a lot of women I've
met. Not that everything has to be within my circle,
but there are a lot of women I've met and that I've read about
online who have been diagnosed with
anxiety and then, and not adhd, and then
(19:30):
later find out they have adhd, treat the ADHD and
they either don't need the anxiety medication anymore, don't
need as much, or, or Just don't deal with it
as bad as they used to. So anxiety is definitely
(19:51):
related to adhd and sometimes treating the ADHD is what
alleviates the anxiety, which is really great to know.
I've never had anxiety like as a diagnosis
or anything, but I'm finding it coming up as we
tend to do. So what are some things you can do for
(20:12):
anxiety
if it's stopping you from doing something?
One is to not feed it, not feed it.
By retreating. If you retreat from what
you don't want to do, you're building this narrative
(20:33):
in your mind that, yeah, that's true, that's true, that's true.
And you think you can't do it. Like, I can't go up
and do this right now because I am just feeling too crazy inside.
I can't possibly talk on a podcast about this because I can't
focus on it because I'm feeling too crazy inside.
The more I said that to myself, it got bigger.
It got bigger, that idea got bigger.
(20:54):
So sometimes just whatever it is that scaring you
to do, whether that fear comes from somewhere else or
you have a new fear, because that fear of something else is actually
the new deeper rooted thing, physically moving, standing up,
taking a step toward it, even just a tiny little action.
(21:14):
Like, I'm just gonna do this. Like, let's say I have to
respond to somebody's email or text.
I don't wanna do it, but I'm just gonna open the email.
Or I'm just gonna set a timer and get myself to do
part of it and then I can stop it. I've done that before
when I work on. Because I put, I put so much pressure on
myself sometimes. I don't know if it's pressure, but I don't
(21:36):
know if you do this with, with texts or emails.
Yeah, I guess it's my own pressure. Nobody else expects me to
respond in the way that I want to respond, but I want to
respond in a thorough way. So it's not even a response of,
oh, I don't know, if I say this, it might hurt their feelings
or am I going to say it in a way that offends them or whatever.
That's a different category. But just the one of I can't
(21:56):
do it unless it's complete. Then sometimes I do things like
just do drafts. You know, do do a draft in the notes
app where you're not going to accidentally send it part way and
then think, oh, now you have to finish it.
You're not going to overwhelm yourself.
With that, but you just do part of it.
Put it in a notes app, put it, I guess, just like
(22:17):
in Google Doc. I don't know if you use Google Drive, but Google
Docs docs are a great way to write an email because
you won't accidentally send it. And I do have that feature on
my Gmail where, you know, I think it actually just has like a
5 second delay, 10 second delay, but it gives you a chance
to cancel your send, which I've had to do before.
(22:38):
But writing it in a doc is even nicer.
For my newsletter I've started doing that.
It just takes the pressure off like that.
I don't know. Especially since my newsletter editing,
the way that they do it in that newsletter format is really
difficult. A lot of times I delete stuff on accident and it drives
(22:59):
me crazy. So anyway, it takes off some of the
pressure, it takes off some of the fear, it takes off some of
the anxiousness that you might be feeling about a process.
And then just even saying, I'm doing it now, you just
say that out loud, I'm doing it now.
Just go see what happens. Just go see what happens.
You don't have to do the whole thing.
I've done that with my kids. Like, let's just, let's just start.
Let's just start. See how far we get.
(23:20):
And you're not even planning to do a tiny step, but
you're just telling yourself, stand up.
You can count to three if you want. You can say out loud, I'm
just going to do this. And you do it because whatever's building
in you that's saying, I can't do this, I can't do this.
You can get a step toward that. And then just asking
(23:43):
yourself if you want to, do I have to do
any of these? Honestly, when I read a lot of steps
to things or read books about how to do this, this
is the cure all. I agree with maybe two of them or
I only have one or two that I think, yeah, I could do
that. Because you can't possibly one with adhd.
Remember all of them. But they may not apply to the
(24:07):
way that your brain works, but you could try them and see, even
if it doesn't sound great. But naming the fear out loud.
So telling yourself like, like if you just know this feels scary
because, or I'm afraid that, or I don't know
why I'm afraid, but maybe if I lay down and just
kind of think about it, I might be able to figure it out.
(24:27):
And just, even if you don't even get to the root
of it. You can
make it a little less emotional. It gets from the
emotional part of your brain to the thinking part of your brain.
It becomes a little more analytical, and it doesn't have as
big of a grasp on you emotionally. You can just kind
(24:50):
of talk it out, like, huh, I wonder if this is happening.
As soon as I said that, I, yeah, this is probably what is
happening from this stupid high blood pressure thing.
And then you go, okay, well, then what can I do with
that? What can I do with that? And maybe nothing instantly.
Maybe so, but I really should have gone outside for
(25:12):
a walk, honestly. But it's good weather.
I'm in Florida, where it gets hot and humid, and I didn't grow
up with that. I mean, we didn't live here till about two years
ago, so I lived in California, where we only got the
humidity if it was cold, the foggy coastal northwest kind
of stuff, the humidity and the heat, and it never really
got very hot where we lived either. But, yeah, so it's.
(25:34):
It's cool weather this week. I should be out there, but
I wanted to do this, so I'm glad I'm here.
But also, breathing techniques, there are a lot of
them, and one is breathing in for
four counts. And I always say counts instead of seconds because,
you know, who cares what the count is?
But you just do, you know, inhale for four, you can hold for
(25:58):
four. It's a natural pause, as they say in yoga.
They actually have four words in Sanskrit for the breathing.
The four parts is the inhale, the natural pause, the exhale,
and the natural pause. And each pause between the inhale and
exhale is different than the one between the exhale and inhale.
(26:18):
Who knows why? Maybe I'll learn. I haven't gotten curious about
that yet, but inhale for four, hold for four,
exhale for four, hold for four. I, you know, like
I said, I reject a lot of stuff. In all my years of
doing yoga and teaching yoga, I've never taught that way.
I don't like to hold my breath as long, so I usually
(26:42):
will hold for maybe two or something and
exhale. Or just observe the pause. You know, just observe
the natural pause. This is what I think is cool.
So if you ever, you know, like to swing on a
swing set when you're little, if you swing really high, it
might even happen when you're not swinging as high.
(27:03):
But when you swing really high, it almost feels like
there's like a pause in the air before it goes the Other
way. And then it kind of pauses. So you swing up in a little
pause and swing down. Little pause. I'm sure if I asked
my son, who knows physics and things, I don't know if that's
physics or not, he'd probably explain why.
But that's what I think of with my breathing methods is
(27:26):
more observe that natural pause. The only time I
really control the pause or lengthen it out is with the alternate
nostril breathing, which they need to think of another name besides.
I mean, in Sanskrit, it's nadi N a D I.
But nostrils is just not a pretty word.
But I will hold that longer. And I've read that you
(27:46):
shouldn't hold it longer unless you've been doing it for a while.
But I don't know. I guess I've worked my way up to
it for calming the active part of the
brain. I don't know if it calms. I guess that is the emotional
part, huh. I don't know. It's just supposed to balance out the
sides of the brain so you can fall asleep or you can relax.
I usually use it for sleeping, but anyway.
(28:08):
So yeah, you could choose a breathing technique, even just slowing
your breathing. Go wider on the inhale in
a little pause. Cause it's natural. And exhale.
I usually like to exhale a little longer than the inhale because
that's what I'm capable of doing, I think.
I just don't like to be told what to do because whenever I've
(28:30):
done breathing in a class with a teacher telling me
how long to hold it, I. Not relaxing.
It doesn't always work with my body.
And I. And I. Then I get tense. So I'm not
happy anymore. But another. And I've heard about
this. I don't think I've ever tried it.
(28:51):
Have you ever tried it? So it's
tuning in to all of your senses. So all five
of your senses. So instead of letting this, this fear,
this anxiety well up, you can just look and
count. You know, we're going to go five, four, three, two, one.
So five things that you can see. Notice those five things.
(29:14):
Four things you can touch. Couldn't do that.
Try to be quiet. Three things you could hear.
I actually did that one a little longer because I can't hear
anything in here. If I go outside, I can do it.
I can see. At least for me, that one would be more
powerful. Because hearing things, especially if they're calm
(29:37):
things, can be calming. And a lot of times there are
sounds, especially if you're Outside and not where cars
are driving by really fast. There are sounds that you don't notice
until you try to notice them. And I used to
teach yoga to this family. It was so much fun.
There were, I think, three children, the mom and
(29:59):
the three children, and they homeschooled.
And so she had me. She used to come to my classes, and I
super loved her coming to my classes, but her kids had.
Were different ages. A teenage daughter and then a son
and then a little, little son. And you could see the
(30:20):
sibling stuff going on at times where they're kind of
like bugging each other and, and stuff.
And during Shavasana, which is when ideally you're laying
there, still not making noise, not disturbing anybody
else, and just able to relax. And now that
(30:41):
I know about adhd, definitely the youngest boy, I mean,
I'm not a doctor, but the youngest boy had adhd.
And so he would do things to bug his sister or
just be wiggly or disruptive or something.
And having had a lot of kids myself and just
always being quick on my feet with children, like, gotta switch
(31:04):
gears here. I said to them that first Shavasana, when I
could see it was needed, was to listen and count
every sound. Count in your mind every different sound that
you hear, and afterwards tell me how many
that was. They were all so excited to do it.
(31:25):
And he got really quiet because he had something to do.
But I also think just listening, just listening to those
sounds was, Was calming for him. And it.
It can be to me too. So, last one is one
thing you could taste. I wonder if they put the one at the.
The end so that you're not eating too much.
You know, if you always had five things you can taste and then
(31:48):
one thing you can see. But anyway, yeah, it's just
a way to ground yourself. And speaking of grounding, I don't
know if you've ever heard of, like, I don't know if it's called
earth grounding or something, that being outside does connect
you more electromagnetically with the earth.
And people who do the grounding, the earthing, I think
(32:10):
that's what it's called, earthing. You actually take off your
shoes and socks and have your feet touch the sand, which doesn't
sound as outlandish. You know, if we're at the beach, we might
do that anywhere our hands would touch the sand.
Not just on the beach towel or not with sandals on or,
you know, with the, the dirt or the tree or whatever
(32:31):
you're. You're getting that from the earth up, which Is kind
of cool, too. That's calming, too. Not that I do it a lot, but
I remember it and it is nice to do. But anyway, last
few things. Okay. Talk to yourself like a friend.
Try to give yourself support. You will be much
(32:51):
more rational if you talk to yourself like a friend than you
will be if you're talking to yourself as yourself.
And. And then the last thing is to
do something with, like, even just standing or
sitting that's like, more powerful. Like stand like Wonder Woman
(33:12):
or the victory pose. Arms are up like, yes.
You could even say that. Yes. Or just look in the
mirror and smile. I do that a lot. I didn't think
of it today because it usually makes me laugh.
Like, I'll just smile. Like, oh, yeah, this is so wonderful.
And then I'll laugh because it's not always feeling wonderful
(33:33):
at the moment. But that smile does make a
change in your nervous system. That victory pose, we do that
for a reason. We're opening in our hearts.
We're. Our worry, you know, is. Is
the shoulders coming in. So that's the opposite.
Is the arms going up. And then the power pose.
(33:54):
I mean, we see that in the animal kingdom of puffing out your
chest and showing, I'm strong. I can do this.
But that confidence could be signaling our nervous
system. It could be signaling. It could be communicating with,
yes, we've got this. We've got this.
So I think that's going to be it for today.
(34:16):
Today. I hope this is helpful for you.
It's helpful for me. I think I need to drink more water, too.
I have been, but I'm just sitting right now.
I do feel better. I wouldn't say like a thousand
percent better or even 100% better.
Maybe not even 10% better, but I do feel better than I
(34:36):
did when I started. Sitting back is probably helpful.
If I was like this, it'd be even better.
I know those of you who are listening instead of watching, I.
I hope it's not frustrating for you that I'm.
You know, that I'm. That I'm talking about
what you see when you don't see it. But I was just leaning back.
But thank you so much for being here.
(34:59):
I appreciate it. And.
And hopefully this will be the last time I feel like this one
when it's time to record. So I'm grateful that you
are out there listening. It makes a difference for me.
And I guess that's it. I'm gonna go.
(35:19):
Bye.
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow.
Call.
(35:40):
Time for a poem
Rewind. Like run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
(36:06):
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I am Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
And usually I say I'm excited to be here, but I
don't know why. Today has been really hard to come up
here and record this episode. So instead of recording
(00:50):
the next episode, which was going to be the second part
of why it's difficult or hard to process information, follow
instructions, and all of that, I'm going to talk about working
through fear and what to do when fear
or anxiety, it might not feel like fear when that comes
(01:13):
up, because for some reason, that's what's been happening to
me today, and I don't know why. So I've tried
all my yoga things. I didn't teach yoga today, and I.
I did a few of my yoga things that I do on my own, but
I thought I really need to work with someone else.
(01:33):
And there's a man that I've taken breathing workshops with
before, and I've read his books, listened to his audiobooks.
His voice is super soothing. So I even tried that
and it helped a little bit.
But while I was doing it, in the part where I
was really relaxing at the end, I was just recognizing what
(01:56):
I'm feeling is fear inside of my. Inside of my whole lung,
heart area, like it was coming inward.
And I'm sorry if this is loud. When the microphone.
I move the microphone closer to my body.
I'm actually sitting by the couch, if you haven't noticed, because
(02:16):
I realized that in order to get myself going here, that it
would be helpful if I just did whatever I could to
be comfortable. And honestly, when I'm sitting up and recording
the podcast, either on audio or on video, I'm not really
comfortable sitting in a chair for very long.
And that may be my hyperactive part of adhd, but
(02:40):
I just feel a little more tense. And if I'm sitting on
the floor talking to a friend, a hundred times better.
If I'm laying back on the couch, a thousand times better.
And I've noticed that when I join Zoom Calls that
I want to just lay on the couch and hold my phone or my.
Or we have my laptop and just be kicking back or on my bed.
And I look at these Zoom Calls, and these are for things that
(03:03):
help me figure out how to do all this online stuff
for my podcast and my website. And I notice I'm
the only one in my bed. And it's not like I'm in my bed because
I can't get out of bed. It's just that's where it's comfortable,
or laying on my couch is comfortable, and then I sit up straight
to be with them and I'm not as comfortable and I just
(03:26):
feel a little more anxious. So I thought maybe help to sit against
the couch. So here I am. Thank you for letting me do
whatever I do. I mean, it's my podcast, right?
I can do whatever I wanna do. But I just thought I should talk
about this for first because maybe it'll help me
so that I stop acting this way and stop feeling this
way and I can actually make that other episode.
(03:49):
So this is it for right now. So I actually looked up
what are some techniques. Well, first I.
I've been learning about why ADHD amplifies fear, why
that gets amplified, maybe more for someone with ADHD than someone
who doesn't have it. And maybe there are other conditions, especially
if you have anxiety without adhd, but with adhd,
(04:15):
what can cause your brain to amplify that fear?
What can make it bigger than what's actually.
What reality is, is that we have emotional responses
to, To a lot of things. I, I don't know that
we have them for everything. And some people have fewer emotional
responses, you know, have a different level, but we have emotional
(04:38):
responses to what's going on, whether it's a plan of something
that we need to do or something we want to do.
This is something I really want to do.
I want to be here. I want to talk about this, this topic.
I, I love to be on my podcast, but for whatever reason,
whatever emotional response I might usually have of.
Are you ready for that? Are you sure?
(05:00):
Or maybe you should get something else done.
You know, all of that questioning could be, could
be just processed like, yeah, you're fine, go ahead and do it
or do something else first. You know, it would be no big deal,
but the longer I waited to do it, the bigger it got
and the emotional response grew. And emotional dysregulation
(05:24):
is not being able to re regulate that emotion,
not being able to bring it back down to a manageable point
where it's growing and growing, and it dysregulation could actually
be doing the opposite thing. You know, it could be, you know,
whether it's. It could be changing the emotions from super excitement
(05:44):
to super sadness, you know, or super anger to laughing, you
know, it could be that kind of dysregulation, but I'm talking
about the dysregulation where it's just, it's just growing and
you can't, you can't bring it back down.
So that's something in the brain that could happen, and that's
what I saw happening today. And the longer I waited,
(06:06):
it wasn't like I felt overwhelmed, like, oh, I can't
do that. I knew I couldn't, but I just kept having
kind of that decision. Fatigue and the paralysis of.
Wasn't that I wasn't doing anything.
I just wasn't doing the thing that I wanted to do the most because
I kept get. It wasn't a distraction.
(06:27):
There are so many things that we do with ADHD where we
can name it and say, yeah, I was distracted, so that's
why I didn't do it. Or I was overwhelmed by the idea, so I
didn't do it. Or I was afraid because I've never
done this before. It's new. None of those applied.
But my brain could not calm this anxiety, this.
(06:52):
This anxiousness I was feeling. And I've named it.
Now I know where it's coming from. And that anxiety
is. Or that fear is interfering with my
ability to make a decision, my ability to just get myself
to do something.
(07:13):
And it's just made it a lot harder to even regulate the emotion.
And the fear is more from going to the
doctor's office. I don't know what day it was when I made this
podcast on Tuesday at a doctor's appointment, and my blood pressure
rating was higher. And. And honestly, if the woman.
(07:33):
I don't know if she was a nurse or a physician's assistant or
what. I. I'm very affected by other people's.
Other people's beings, their emotional state or.
Yeah, I don't even know if it was an emotional state.
I'm affected by how they are. And I think
(07:54):
if she had said, oh, this is high. Let's do it
again, which actually happened a week or two before when I had
to go get a blood test, they said, oh, this is high.
Let's give it a few minutes. You know, the reassuring voice.
Let's give it a few minutes and see if.
See if it goes down. You know, we waited a few minutes.
She was, you know, nice and stuff. Did it again.
(08:15):
Oh, and Dalla, use that reading. So this woman, the
woman on Tuesday, didn't. Didn't respond that way.
She was more of an alarmist. Oh, your blood pressure is
really high. And. And like, it's the end of
the world. And I. I thought, oh, but
(08:36):
you could always wait and. And do it a little bit later,
like you want to do it, you know? So I said, yeah, that happened
a week ago. So this is my calm response where the emotions hadn't
kicked in yet. They didn't kick until after I got home where
she said, you know where? I said, oh, that happened last week
when I got my blood test. But then she just waited a little bit
and it went down. I also have a son who's a resident.
(08:58):
He's a doctor. Resident, doctor right now.
And he told me there's a thing called white coat syndrome, and
that there are times that the first time I had a
high blood pressure reading, which was last fall, I.
I was. It. It made me nervous when she said
that. I thought, well, I've never had high blood pressure before.
(09:18):
So I got worried about it. And then, and then she
did it a second time and she did it too tight and it hurt.
So I said, that's hurting my arm. That's hurting my arm.
So second thing. So first thing was, was like my worry, my
fear, like, oh, that. That can't be good if it's high.
Second thing was it hu.
I'm tensing up from it hurting. And so she did
(09:43):
it a third time and it did go down, but not to my
normal level. And my son said, yeah, there's a
white coat syndrome that sometimes people's blood pressure is
higher because it's a scary situation.
And that was my first time in that office.
It was kind of scary. So anyway, so I knew that
too. So that was my logical part. My logical part was, hey, a
(10:05):
week ago this happened and they took it again.
Second logical part was, oh, it could be white coat syndrome.
But, you know, I mean, obviously it could be something else too.
But. But the second time she did it, she didn't say,
oh, it went down. She just said, yeah, it went down, but not
that, not that much. And you still have high blood pressure.
(10:25):
And. And I just laughing because, I don't know, I
just feel like people in positions like that should try
to be me more reassuring or something.
But anyway, my doctor didn't seem to think much about it
when she saw that, you know, the second reading was the thing.
So I forgot about it until yesterday.
(10:46):
It's funny what can trigger things like, my life was good.
I mean, you know what I mean? Like, nothing changed from
walking out feeling good because my doctor felt good about it.
Or at least she didn't say anything about it.
But the next day when I get an email that
says, your after visit summary is here, that's when I
(11:09):
saw in red my blood pressure thing. So
anyway, yeah, so I just thought, oh.
So I started getting all Scared and everything, and it was
just lame. But it came up again today because now I've
been testing my blood pressure at home, and so I had
a really good result after I got up.
(11:31):
And then I'm reading, like, what time of day do you do it?
So now I'm starting to worry about it.
But then I thought, check it again. And it was higher.
And it might have been after I took my medication, my stimulant,
I don't know, it just built inside of me, and
it got in the way of being able to
do something I really wanted to do, which was this.
(11:53):
This. I was able to quiet my mind by putting
in some AirPods and a podcast and just
doing some laundry and some cleaning, which is good, but I really
wanted to be doing this. Honestly, I'd much rather be doing this.
Yeah. So I thought I'd talk about this, because when
(12:15):
I really recognized this anxiousness that you're
feeling about the podcast is not about the podcast.
Because logically it wasn't, but I thought it was.
I thought, why are you worried to do that?
You know, why are you scared to do this?
Just do it. You've done it before. This is.
This is episode 80. So I should be able
(12:37):
to do it right. But when I did that breathing
practice, and the man's name's Max Strom.
M A X S T R O M. I think I've mentioned him
before, but if you go on YouTube, he has some videos
on breathing techniques for anxiety or better sleep or
different things like that. And so anyway, I did it, but
(13:00):
the impatient part of my ADHD didn't finish it.
I almost got there because I got to the point of where I
recognized, oh, this is actually fear.
And maybe a lot of anxiety comes from fear.
But for me to understand, where's that fear coming
from? Is there anything you can do about it?
(13:22):
Can you change your reaction to it? Can you do
something progressive to alleviate that fear?
Not just an action like breathing, but whatever I'm afraid of.
Instead of feeling like I don't have any control
in this situation. Oh, no. Oh, no. And then monitoring my
(13:44):
blood pressure every day, I could do things like look
at the foods that can cause high blood pressure.
And granted, it's not super high, but according to
the woman who took my blood pressure, she was alarmed.
So I want to get to the point where she would look
at it and say, not only this is normal, but this
(14:05):
is low. Because for a million years, I have six kids, so
I've got, you know, gone to the doctor A kajillion times.
And they'd always do the blood pressure, and they'd always say,
you know, oh, you're 118 over. They'd always say these two
numbers, and I'd. I'd usually say, I don't know what that means.
You know, is that good? You know, I.
And they'd say, yeah, it's really good.
And I go, okay. And I. There was never anything like that.
(14:27):
And maybe that RSD of wanting to have the approval of somebody
factored into her reaction. Like, I should have just said
okay. You know, like, if that's how she reacts, if she's cold
when she talks to me, that's okay, but it's not okay,
because I like to connect with people.
So we all have our attachments to things,
(14:51):
and one of mine is connecting with people.
And. Yeah, ask my husband. I come back from
experiences and say, I wish everybody enjoyed meeting people
as much as I do, because it's really frustrating to go into a
store or go to an office or something and just
get stone faces from people. And I really do want
(15:12):
to, like, I don't have to tell my life story.
I'm not trying to do that. I just want to smile.
I just want a connection. And actually, the woman that took my
blood pressure had to come back in and give me vaccines for pneumonia.
I'm giving all my medical information, but pneumonia.
And what was the other one? Oh, tetanus.
And somehow we found common ground as I
(15:34):
talked to her, and she was. She warmed up to me, but
still left me with some. A little bit of
emotional dysregulation afterwards. So.
Yeah, and that was me just bringing that back in.
It was. But why is it hard to. To. To
get those emotions where we need them to be?
(15:57):
It just is. It just is. We have emotional dysregulation along
with our executive dysfunction. That is part of it, or
at least it is for me. It might be for you, too.
You may also have the rejection sensitivity.
Wait, I always say it wrong. Rejection sensitive dysphoria.
I don't think I have it to the RSD point, but I
(16:19):
have the rejection sensitivity for sure.
I want to be friends with everyone, and I know that I
can't be, and I know that not everyone's going to like me, but,
yeah, that plays into it, too.
So what else? Okay, so this is also interesting with adhd, why
you amplify fear? Because, as I said, logically, I could
(16:40):
look and say okay, and I actually did, throughout the day,
look at what foods not to Eat. Look at what food to eat.
Well, that caused stress too, because then you're starting to
limit what you eat. And I'm already picky.
I already
don't like cooking stuff, so, so I just go, well,
I don't feel like any, any, anything then.
(17:00):
But I, I would eat a few things here and there.
But yeah, so I did make some attempts to
just move forward. Well, what can you control?
But if you have time blindness in any way, it
could be like, it's time to go, I'm just gonna go put on my
makeup for five seconds. And then 10 minutes later you're
(17:20):
like, how did, how am I leaving so late?
You know, that's, that's the time blindness that I relate to.
Another time blindness is things can feel more
intense or urgent time wise than maybe they
really are. And you start to think, or like in
this case, I might think, oh, I like that might take forever,
(17:42):
that I just make changes in what I eat and then it
makes a difference. You know, I'm not looking at
it realistically and, and I should. So things
may not be as urgent as intense time wise
or even, you know, just. We might have
(18:04):
that alarmist reaction for different reasons.
And then also,
if your memory isn't, you know, you have, if you
have so many ideas coming in your mind, the rational part may
not come in as evenly. You may not store the
information. Like, you might talk to a friend, which would have
(18:26):
been a good idea. I didn't talk to anybody about this today.
But it, you could talk to somebody and they'd say, well, don't
you remember this happened to you once before and what you
did was this. Or, you know, they give you something that
boosts your confidence. And often they're things that
you already know, but you might not be recalling that.
(18:48):
You may not, might, might not even have that memory.
Like, did that really happen? Like, you might not have the memory
at all because you never stored it. Or you just, just
can't remember because your, your mind is swirling too much
so your memory isn't working as well.
But. But yeah. So those are some reasons why
(19:09):
fear can grow. And there are a lot of women I've
met. Not that everything has to be within my circle,
but there are a lot of women I've met and that I've read about
online who have been diagnosed with
anxiety and then, and not adhd, and then
(19:30):
later find out they have adhd, treat the ADHD and
they either don't need the anxiety medication anymore, don't
need as much, or, or Just don't deal with it
as bad as they used to. So anxiety is definitely
(19:51):
related to adhd and sometimes treating the ADHD is what
alleviates the anxiety, which is really great to know.
I've never had anxiety like as a diagnosis
or anything, but I'm finding it coming up as we
tend to do. So what are some things you can do for
(20:12):
anxiety
if it's stopping you from doing something?
One is to not feed it, not feed it.
By retreating. If you retreat from what
you don't want to do, you're building this narrative
(20:33):
in your mind that, yeah, that's true, that's true, that's true.
And you think you can't do it. Like, I can't go up
and do this right now because I am just feeling too crazy inside.
I can't possibly talk on a podcast about this because I can't
focus on it because I'm feeling too crazy inside.
The more I said that to myself, it got bigger.
It got bigger, that idea got bigger.
(20:54):
So sometimes just whatever it is that scaring you
to do, whether that fear comes from somewhere else or
you have a new fear, because that fear of something else is actually
the new deeper rooted thing, physically moving, standing up,
taking a step toward it, even just a tiny little action.
(21:14):
Like, I'm just gonna do this. Like, let's say I have to
respond to somebody's email or text.
I don't wanna do it, but I'm just gonna open the email.
Or I'm just gonna set a timer and get myself to do
part of it and then I can stop it. I've done that before
when I work on. Because I put, I put so much pressure on
myself sometimes. I don't know if it's pressure, but I don't
(21:36):
know if you do this with, with texts or emails.
Yeah, I guess it's my own pressure. Nobody else expects me to
respond in the way that I want to respond, but I want to
respond in a thorough way. So it's not even a response of,
oh, I don't know, if I say this, it might hurt their feelings
or am I going to say it in a way that offends them or whatever.
That's a different category. But just the one of I can't
(21:56):
do it unless it's complete. Then sometimes I do things like
just do drafts. You know, do do a draft in the notes
app where you're not going to accidentally send it part way and
then think, oh, now you have to finish it.
You're not going to overwhelm yourself.
With that, but you just do part of it.
Put it in a notes app, put it, I guess, just like
(22:17):
in Google Doc. I don't know if you use Google Drive, but Google
Docs docs are a great way to write an email because
you won't accidentally send it. And I do have that feature on
my Gmail where, you know, I think it actually just has like a
5 second delay, 10 second delay, but it gives you a chance
to cancel your send, which I've had to do before.
(22:38):
But writing it in a doc is even nicer.
For my newsletter I've started doing that.
It just takes the pressure off like that.
I don't know. Especially since my newsletter editing,
the way that they do it in that newsletter format is really
difficult. A lot of times I delete stuff on accident and it drives
(22:59):
me crazy. So anyway, it takes off some of the
pressure, it takes off some of the fear, it takes off some of
the anxiousness that you might be feeling about a process.
And then just even saying, I'm doing it now, you just
say that out loud, I'm doing it now.
Just go see what happens. Just go see what happens.
You don't have to do the whole thing.
I've done that with my kids. Like, let's just, let's just start.
Let's just start. See how far we get.
(23:20):
And you're not even planning to do a tiny step, but
you're just telling yourself, stand up.
You can count to three if you want. You can say out loud, I'm
just going to do this. And you do it because whatever's building
in you that's saying, I can't do this, I can't do this.
You can get a step toward that. And then just asking
(23:43):
yourself if you want to, do I have to do
any of these? Honestly, when I read a lot of steps
to things or read books about how to do this, this
is the cure all. I agree with maybe two of them or
I only have one or two that I think, yeah, I could do
that. Because you can't possibly one with adhd.
Remember all of them. But they may not apply to the
(24:07):
way that your brain works, but you could try them and see, even
if it doesn't sound great. But naming the fear out loud.
So telling yourself like, like if you just know this feels scary
because, or I'm afraid that, or I don't know
why I'm afraid, but maybe if I lay down and just
kind of think about it, I might be able to figure it out.
(24:27):
And just, even if you don't even get to the root
of it. You can
make it a little less emotional. It gets from the
emotional part of your brain to the thinking part of your brain.
It becomes a little more analytical, and it doesn't have as
big of a grasp on you emotionally. You can just kind
(24:50):
of talk it out, like, huh, I wonder if this is happening.
As soon as I said that, I, yeah, this is probably what is
happening from this stupid high blood pressure thing.
And then you go, okay, well, then what can I do with
that? What can I do with that? And maybe nothing instantly.
Maybe so, but I really should have gone outside for
(25:12):
a walk, honestly. But it's good weather.
I'm in Florida, where it gets hot and humid, and I didn't grow
up with that. I mean, we didn't live here till about two years
ago, so I lived in California, where we only got the
humidity if it was cold, the foggy coastal northwest kind
of stuff, the humidity and the heat, and it never really
got very hot where we lived either. But, yeah, so it's.
(25:34):
It's cool weather this week. I should be out there, but
I wanted to do this, so I'm glad I'm here.
But also, breathing techniques, there are a lot of
them, and one is breathing in for
four counts. And I always say counts instead of seconds because,
you know, who cares what the count is?
But you just do, you know, inhale for four, you can hold for
(25:58):
four. It's a natural pause, as they say in yoga.
They actually have four words in Sanskrit for the breathing.
The four parts is the inhale, the natural pause, the exhale,
and the natural pause. And each pause between the inhale and
exhale is different than the one between the exhale and inhale.
(26:18):
Who knows why? Maybe I'll learn. I haven't gotten curious about
that yet, but inhale for four, hold for four,
exhale for four, hold for four. I, you know, like
I said, I reject a lot of stuff. In all my years of
doing yoga and teaching yoga, I've never taught that way.
I don't like to hold my breath as long, so I usually
(26:42):
will hold for maybe two or something and
exhale. Or just observe the pause. You know, just observe
the natural pause. This is what I think is cool.
So if you ever, you know, like to swing on a
swing set when you're little, if you swing really high, it
might even happen when you're not swinging as high.
(27:03):
But when you swing really high, it almost feels like
there's like a pause in the air before it goes the Other
way. And then it kind of pauses. So you swing up in a little
pause and swing down. Little pause. I'm sure if I asked
my son, who knows physics and things, I don't know if that's
physics or not, he'd probably explain why.
But that's what I think of with my breathing methods is
(27:26):
more observe that natural pause. The only time I
really control the pause or lengthen it out is with the alternate
nostril breathing, which they need to think of another name besides.
I mean, in Sanskrit, it's nadi N a D I.
But nostrils is just not a pretty word.
But I will hold that longer. And I've read that you
(27:46):
shouldn't hold it longer unless you've been doing it for a while.
But I don't know. I guess I've worked my way up to
it for calming the active part of the
brain. I don't know if it calms. I guess that is the emotional
part, huh. I don't know. It's just supposed to balance out the
sides of the brain so you can fall asleep or you can relax.
I usually use it for sleeping, but anyway.
(28:08):
So yeah, you could choose a breathing technique, even just slowing
your breathing. Go wider on the inhale in
a little pause. Cause it's natural. And exhale.
I usually like to exhale a little longer than the inhale because
that's what I'm capable of doing, I think.
I just don't like to be told what to do because whenever I've
(28:30):
done breathing in a class with a teacher telling me
how long to hold it, I. Not relaxing.
It doesn't always work with my body.
And I. And I. Then I get tense. So I'm not
happy anymore. But another. And I've heard about
this. I don't think I've ever tried it.
(28:51):
Have you ever tried it? So it's
tuning in to all of your senses. So all five
of your senses. So instead of letting this, this fear,
this anxiety well up, you can just look and
count. You know, we're going to go five, four, three, two, one.
So five things that you can see. Notice those five things.
(29:14):
Four things you can touch. Couldn't do that.
Try to be quiet. Three things you could hear.
I actually did that one a little longer because I can't hear
anything in here. If I go outside, I can do it.
I can see. At least for me, that one would be more
powerful. Because hearing things, especially if they're calm
(29:37):
things, can be calming. And a lot of times there are
sounds, especially if you're Outside and not where cars
are driving by really fast. There are sounds that you don't notice
until you try to notice them. And I used to
teach yoga to this family. It was so much fun.
There were, I think, three children, the mom and
(29:59):
the three children, and they homeschooled.
And so she had me. She used to come to my classes, and I
super loved her coming to my classes, but her kids had.
Were different ages. A teenage daughter and then a son
and then a little, little son. And you could see the
(30:20):
sibling stuff going on at times where they're kind of
like bugging each other and, and stuff.
And during Shavasana, which is when ideally you're laying
there, still not making noise, not disturbing anybody
else, and just able to relax. And now that
(30:41):
I know about adhd, definitely the youngest boy, I mean,
I'm not a doctor, but the youngest boy had adhd.
And so he would do things to bug his sister or
just be wiggly or disruptive or something.
And having had a lot of kids myself and just
always being quick on my feet with children, like, gotta switch
(31:04):
gears here. I said to them that first Shavasana, when I
could see it was needed, was to listen and count
every sound. Count in your mind every different sound that
you hear, and afterwards tell me how many
that was. They were all so excited to do it.
(31:25):
And he got really quiet because he had something to do.
But I also think just listening, just listening to those
sounds was, Was calming for him. And it.
It can be to me too. So, last one is one
thing you could taste. I wonder if they put the one at the.
The end so that you're not eating too much.
You know, if you always had five things you can taste and then
(31:48):
one thing you can see. But anyway, yeah, it's just
a way to ground yourself. And speaking of grounding, I don't
know if you've ever heard of, like, I don't know if it's called
earth grounding or something, that being outside does connect
you more electromagnetically with the earth.
And people who do the grounding, the earthing, I think
(32:10):
that's what it's called, earthing. You actually take off your
shoes and socks and have your feet touch the sand, which doesn't
sound as outlandish. You know, if we're at the beach, we might
do that anywhere our hands would touch the sand.
Not just on the beach towel or not with sandals on or,
you know, with the, the dirt or the tree or whatever
(32:31):
you're. You're getting that from the earth up, which Is kind
of cool, too. That's calming, too. Not that I do it a lot, but
I remember it and it is nice to do. But anyway, last
few things. Okay. Talk to yourself like a friend.
Try to give yourself support. You will be much
(32:51):
more rational if you talk to yourself like a friend than you
will be if you're talking to yourself as yourself.
And. And then the last thing is to
do something with, like, even just standing or
sitting that's like, more powerful. Like stand like Wonder Woman
(33:12):
or the victory pose. Arms are up like, yes.
You could even say that. Yes. Or just look in the
mirror and smile. I do that a lot. I didn't think
of it today because it usually makes me laugh.
Like, I'll just smile. Like, oh, yeah, this is so wonderful.
And then I'll laugh because it's not always feeling wonderful
(33:33):
at the moment. But that smile does make a
change in your nervous system. That victory pose, we do that
for a reason. We're opening in our hearts.
We're. Our worry, you know, is. Is
the shoulders coming in. So that's the opposite.
Is the arms going up. And then the power pose.
(33:54):
I mean, we see that in the animal kingdom of puffing out your
chest and showing, I'm strong. I can do this.
But that confidence could be signaling our nervous
system. It could be signaling. It could be communicating with,
yes, we've got this. We've got this.
So I think that's going to be it for today.
(34:16):
Today. I hope this is helpful for you.
It's helpful for me. I think I need to drink more water, too.
I have been, but I'm just sitting right now.
I do feel better. I wouldn't say like a thousand
percent better or even 100% better.
Maybe not even 10% better, but I do feel better than I
(34:36):
did when I started. Sitting back is probably helpful.
If I was like this, it'd be even better.
I know those of you who are listening instead of watching, I.
I hope it's not frustrating for you that I'm.
You know, that I'm. That I'm talking about
what you see when you don't see it. But I was just leaning back.
But thank you so much for being here.
(34:59):
I appreciate it. And.
And hopefully this will be the last time I feel like this one
when it's time to record. So I'm grateful that you
are out there listening. It makes a difference for me.
And I guess that's it. I'm gonna go.
(35:19):
Bye.
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow.
Call.
(35:40):
Time for a poem
Rewind. Like run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
(36:06):
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
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