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Anxiety is Your Friend: Rapid-Fire Anxiety Q&A · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: In today's episode, I want to present with you a conversation I had with my colleague over at High Existence, Mike Slavin, about overcoming anxiety.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: What's different from this conversation from your standard interview or podcast is that I aim to keep my answers very short.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I do this to provide the maximum amount of practical applicability to my answers about how to overcome anxiety without going too deep into side tangents and unnecessary information.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I cover a lot of different areas when it comes to anxiety.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And my sincere hope is that by the end of this Q ⁇ A you will have relaxed the clenched fist in your mind and you'll start to see anxiety a little bit differently.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you resonate with my approach to this topic and you like the way I teach Stoicism, you can get a very deep dive course from me on overcoming anxiety that includes hours and hours of video instruction, psychological writing exercises, guided contemplations, and a bunch of bonus modules in my course, Stoic Anxiety Mastery.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: The website for that, if you'd like to learn more, is stoicanxiety.com.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Super simple.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And now on to today's episode.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, John.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So my question for you is when you're experiencing anxiety in the moment, what is a strategy that you can use to manage it in real time?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're feeling overwhelmed with anxiety and you're unsure what you should do, it can be very difficult because the anxious thoughts have a momentum of their own, and that momentum is telling you to get away from the feeling.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: So something that you can do that's very quick, but it's counterintuitive, is to actually ask for more anxiety and just say to yourself, I can handle this, I can cope with it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Show me more, show me more.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a it's a really counterintuitive technique because by asking for more, you stop identifying the anxiety as something foreign and alien and wrong.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And by asking for more, there's there's you you actually go beyond acceptance and instead you start dipping into gratitude for the feeling.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And even though it might sound counterintuitive, I'd recommend you actually try it the next time you feel anxious.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because with a lot of the techniques that I recommend, the proof is in the pudding.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So give it a try and see if it works for you.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: By asking for more anxiety when you feel anxious, that process, you know, reduces anxiety, makes me believe that part of the reason people feel anxious and become more anxious is because of the resistance they experience.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is that true in your in your estimation?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that makes us more anxious, one of the main models is this idea of avoidance.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when we avoid things, it they tend to become scarier and more frightening, and our anxiety increases.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when we have a lot of anxiety is we tend to have avoidance of the anxiety itself.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so we start thinking that anxiety is something to avoid, and that becomes a uh a vicious spiral because when you start feeling anxious, you start trying to push it away and force it away, which actually just makes the anxiety even more terrifying than it needs to be.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so instead, I like to see it as a signal, something that our body is trying to alert us to, but it doesn't mean that that signal is actually some terrible event that's happening.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: It could just be that you need to pay attention to something or you need to investigate how you feel.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to people who hear that advice and say, or they think that is that's too intense?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I can do that, like I don't want more anxiety, and they start to feel anxious about the suggestion itself.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: How is there a way to break through to them to get them to begin to experiment with this?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if you feel anxiety at the mere thought of asking for more anxiety and showing yourself how much you can cope, then what you can do is you can practice this cognitively.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is known as cognitive exposure or cognitive flooding, where instead of waiting for this really triggering event to happen, you can just bring to mind something with a medium level of anxiety-inducing content.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as you picture it in your mind's eye, you can say, I could handle more than this.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's turn it up from five to eight and see how I feel.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can handle more, and you just practice that and see if in the practicing of that you actually feel way worse or you actually start to feel a bit more at ease.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because one of the key ideas of anxiety is that it's often based on an illusion, but it's an illusion we don't really want to investigate because we're afraid.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: But when we actually start to investigate it, it starts to kind of fragment and and dissolve, and eventually we see that this illusion was nothing but a cloud.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it reasonable to expect that someone can completely eliminate their anxiety?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes people ask me if I can provide them with a tool or a technique that will completely eliminate their anxiety forever and then never have to feed it again.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the response that I often give is, do you actually want that?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is a is a life worth living a life without any anxiety of any kind?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually don't think that it is, because anxiety can help us learn, anxiety can help us detect danger.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, anxiety has been something that's kept the human civilization alive for millions of years.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So anxiety isn't something that we need to cut out permanently.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: We just need to change our relationship to it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to stop our anxiety ruling our lives, stop our anxiety enslaving us.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to start seeing anxiety as just like a tool, like an app in our mind that can help us actually achieve our goal, that can actually help us determine what's valuable or not valuable to us.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that we should completely remove it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think that we should just change our relationship to it to the point that it actually assists us in living the life that we want instead of holding us back.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why do people hide their anxiety from others?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most difficult parts of having anxiety is that it can feel very isolating.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: When I used to experience a lot of anxiety, on the outside I would look relatively normal to people, but on the inside there was this raging storm that was hijacking all of my senses.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: I would have tunnel vision, I couldn't hear things properly, and people would kind of look at me strange and be like, what's wrong?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing everything is fine, there's no immediate danger.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that just makes you feel alone, isolated, you feel shame, you feel like there's something wrong with you.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you have anxiety, a part of you knows that there might be some kind of distortion to it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: A part of you knows that from certain perspectives, what you're afraid of might look silly.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but yet you still have that anxiety, you still have that fear.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the reasons we tend to hide our anxiety from other people is because we just don't want them to judge us.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we want to appear to be normal.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, when we do this, we're actually going to perpetuate the cycle of our anxiety.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because by hiding our anxiety and not owning up to it, we now have more than just the struggle of dealing with our anxiety.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have the struggle of dealing with our anxiety and also trying to maintain a false image to other people.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do two of those things at the same time, then things are just going to be way harder than they need to be.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: How can I find a coping mess mechanism that works for me?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many strategies, tools, and techniques that that the even that process of finding something that works for me feels overwhelming.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: How do I go about finding something that actually works for me?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to overcoming anxiety, there are many, many different types of techniques.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and out of all the techniques, they can be subdivided into different categories like spiritual techniques and trauma-based techniques and cognitive techniques, biological-based techniques.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to finding the right one for you, I like to look at the principles that unify all of the techniques.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And in my view, there are three main principles that kind of cover the broad spectrum of techniques: there's exposure, so facing our fears, there's reframing our fears, so changing our relationship to our fears, and cognitive, so that means altering the way that we structure thoughts in our head.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And what I like to do is I like to start there and then have people experiment in the three different categories, and you'll immediately find that you are weaker in one area rather than the other.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're more of a kind of a spiritual person and you're really embodied and you have a good relationship with your body, you might not be very skilled at managing the specific kinds of distorted thoughts that you have.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so altering the cognitive side of your mind might help you the most with anxiety.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a hyper-rational person, then maybe having an embodied take when it comes to exposing yourself to the anxiety.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So being able to be relaxed, being able to take deep breaths when you face your anxiety, that might be the path forward for you.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to have people start with those three broad categories and then experiment within them before they start branching out.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, nobody wants to look at a list of 500 techniques and feel like they need to try them all because when you have anxiety, that alone can be quite overwhelming.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to someone who has found a technique that seems to be helpful to them, but they struggle with maintaining consistency in its use?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they've they use a practice and they get some benefit from it, but they can't stick with it over long periods of time.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if you found a practice that is useful to you, but you find that you can't stick to it, then you either need to change the practice or you need to change yourself, okay?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because in an ideal world, you'd always do this thing that's helpful, but we don't live in an ideal world.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so there's some reason why you're not doing it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that reason because you don't really like doing it, maybe because the technique itself takes too long, maybe the the place that you do the technique looks kind of drab and boring.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things I do when I do my journaling is I try to make my journal templates look really attractive, right?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that's in the course because I want to feel excited and enthusiastic when I sit down to journal.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to look at like a textbook and feel bored and feel like I'm just following some root checkbox item that uh that I've got from a therapeutic website.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: The other side of the coin is reigniting your motivation.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so if you know that it works for you, what can happen is that it begins to work, we start to feel some of the results, and then we don't really have a strong reason to keep doing it, then we'll stop doing it, start feeling worse, then we'll have a strong reason to do it again.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we go through this kind of up and down cycle.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: This also happens with things like meditation, that's why people are inconsistent with it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what I like to do is build into my practice a like a motivational component where every time I sit down to practice, I know why I'm doing it.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: How do you interrupt a negative thought spiral?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or how do you stop a negative thought spiral?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, when it comes to overcoming a negative thought spiral, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to try and outthink it, you know, using thoughts to beat thoughts.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: The quickest way you can escape a negative thought spiral is by overriding the thinking mind through action.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that action can come in the form of doing push-ups, that action can come in the form of listening to music and dancing, that action can come in the form of doing a few sprints, that action can come in the form of repeating a maxim that you've prepared beforehand.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that I recommend.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: There are certain maxims that you can use depending on what kind of situation you're in.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: But either way, you need to cut through the thoughts.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: You do not want to be sitting there trying to have an internal battle with your own mind because that won't work.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the mantra that we want to keep in mind is take so much action, you override the thinking mind.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Then when you're in a calm state and you're out of the negative spiral, then you can start to analyze, okay, what happened, what were the thoughts, and then you can start to pick it apart.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is anxiety interwoven in our society?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, why?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: My response to that would be that anxiety is interwoven into our biology.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so anxiety is the thing that helped you detect the tigers in the bush back in our hunter-gatherer days.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Anxiety is the thing that that helped you have a healthy dose of skepticism when meeting new people because there were no police and you could get killed potentially.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: So anxiety served a very important purpose for us.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem is now we're not living in the same kinds of environments that we were evolved to live in.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: It can look like the world is particularly anxiety-inducing, but actually what the world is doing is it's triggering our anxiety in the wrong context.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, emails, social media, meeting new people, going out to populated areas, these things are triggering our anxiety, but there's no logical reason why we should feel anxious, because there's no actual threat.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And this actually is a major problem, because this actually makes anxiety embarrassing.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because in a hunter-gatherer days, if you felt anxious about a potential saber-toothed tiger, you tell people about it, it's like, oh, I accept that.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you tell your tribe that you felt anxiety because a new tribe came onto the scene, they would accept it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if you tell your friends that you felt anxious because you went to a party, they don't quite get it, right?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're like, Well, why were you anxious?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that actually can make that that actually makes anxiety something that we're embarrassed about, and is another reason why we hide it.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a relationship between the kind of media people consume and the day-to-day anxiety they experience?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this theory called terror management theory, and the idea behind this theory is that when we get exposed to thoughts about our own mortality, we become impulsive and we make rash decisions and you know we don't feel so good.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you think back to the pandemic on a daily basis, how much did thoughts of death cross your mind?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you're someone who doesn't watch the news, it's almost uh inescapable.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, thoughts of death and death rates, and this is actually happening all the time because there's always some kind of global crisis that's happening, and death sells, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like death grabs our attention.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so the media, unfortunately, and it's you know, not not necessarily to blame them because you know the the supply meets the demand, but the media triggers this primal instinct of terror in us because it constantly reminds us about death.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can actually be in a very safe environment.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Everything can be good, okay?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like life could be very serene and peaceful, and yet in the background, you're being dripped with ideas that bad things are happening, people are getting killed, people just like you, and bad things could happen to you too.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So be careful.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the media is constantly dripping this in, dripping this into us, and it's actually using fear hijacking to make us hooked on the media because ultimately the media is a money-making machine, it needs our attention for it to sustain itself.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: If the media wasn't interesting, then it would essentially be dismantled.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is a practical tip or strategy you could give someone who struggles with social anxiety and and meeting new people?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that really helped me improve with my social anxiety the most is having social competence.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people they feel that if they can just tweak certain parts of their psyche so they don't feel anxious socially, everything will be good.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't feel like you have the skills to actually interact with people properly, then it's going to be really difficult for you to develop the confidence to do that.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the big fears that we have when we have social anxiety is that we have a mind blank or that we run out of things to say.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the big tip that I would give people to overcome social anxiety is to develop the skill of never running out of things to say.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that you do that is by separating the content of your words from the emotion behind them.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so learning to talk about anything in an enthusiastic and passionate way.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you can practice this on your own, you can practice it with friends, and a good exercise you could do is talk about your breakfast passionately.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you could talk about your breakfast as if it's the most boring event in the world, and guess what?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody will care, people will think it's the most boring event in the world.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can get excited about talking about your breakfast, suddenly people will listen, people will give you that positive feedback, and that will be a really good start in your journey to overcoming social anxiety.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a confidence that I will never run out of things to say.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to someone who doesn't feel much hope that they can overcome the way anxiety is, you know, controlling their life?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: There was a time in my past when I felt a lot of the feelings of social anxiety.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be in social situations and I felt stuck.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I couldn't really express myself.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I could feel my internal state thermometer dropping and dropping and dropping.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like the quiet one often.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: I would get nervous talking to groups, I would identify actually as someone who just isn't good with groups of people.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I made an identity out of that.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I started trying to work on my anxiety, you know, like really tried to make changes.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the methods that I used is exposing myself and getting more social experience.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when I first started doing that, I actually just couldn't do it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I would psych myself up and attempt it, and I just couldn't do it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like there was this kind of wall between me and other people that I just couldn't cross.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And many nights I felt hopeless.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I I wouldn't be able to change things and I would just be stuck staying the same forever.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: But and I say this all the time the most important thing for overcoming anxiety is a sense of persistence, is actually not giving up.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't give up and you keep trying, and you you try some of the techniques that I recommend, you'll get that one breakthrough.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be like a little break in the clouds, and then when you have that, you have that first win, it's like this this wake-up call, and your mind just goes, Oh, there's this other way of being, and then that can just build and snowball, and then you can get to a point where you almost don't even recognize yourself.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've like I I would I can't even imagine speaking to a group, say, ten years ago.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I would be extremely nervous and anxious, and just would be an impossible feat for me.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then now I'm like, oh, I can I can do that and I enjoy it and I don't overthink it, and uh it's it's a beautiful feeling, it's very freeing, and it's definitely possible.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh something I wanna, I'm not sure the right question asked to get at this, but there's this feeling of fixation where someone is preoccupied by their anxiety and like concerned with it and constantly uh engaging with like how do I deal with it, or it's it like constantly monitoring how they're doing, almost like over policing themselves.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get someone to go from that state to the like the state where that like anxiety is no longer the object of attention and they can begin to focus on the other things that are like meaningful and and more important to them?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: It almost feels like yeah, I don't know if that if that's I don't really have the right the the appropriately worded question for this one, but um like how do you get to the point where anxiety stops being the thing that you're so fixated on, and you can actually care about the things that matter to you and not the fact that you're anxious when you have anxiety, you can be very fixated on it, and it can feel like a pebble in your shoe or like a thorn in your side that you just can't really seem to shake, it just follows you everywhere, and it's this thing you're constantly trying to remove and get rid of.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually don't think that, and this is the way that I teach, I don't think that we should only strive at the aim of removing our anxiety.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think the aim of improving our anxiety should be embedded in something greater, something like emotional mastery, living a meaningful life.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that we should only try to remove social anxiety.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think We should aim at being someone who can flourish and thrive socially, and that improving our anxiety is just a stepping stone along the way.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I I like this because it's a long-term vision for our lives.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, you know, why just stop when you hit a baseline, when you when you hit like a neutral level?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why not go through the object?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's always been my approach is seeing the the overcoming of anxiety as an amazing life project.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you can actually learn to overcome your anxiety, what can't you do?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like then when you get other emotions like anger or frustration or depression come up, you've already overcome anxiety.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're almost ready to take on anything.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so I like to see anxiety as this epic project rather than this annoying thing that we need to get rid of.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: What's your number one hack for dealing with anxiety?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, my number one hack for dealing with anxiety, and it all comes back to this idea that we should welcome our emotions instead of pushing them away.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the hack is to say thank you to it whenever it arises.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this is again a counterintuitive approach to working with anxiety because a lot of us want to get rid of it and stuff it down and not deal with it.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: But if we can just say thank you, but I'm okay every time we feel anxious, what this is doing is essentially we're listening to our bodies, we're listening to that alarm.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: The analogy that I use with anxiety is that it's like a guard dog that we're just not treating very well.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so we go to bed and the guard dog is just barking and barking and barking, and there's no threat.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what do we do, most of us, when we have anxiety?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: We tell the dog to shut up, we tell the dog to get outside, we don't treat it nicely, and so the dog doesn't feel like its needs are being met.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: But if instead we actually go, hey, hey, thank you, but but but relax, we're okay, we're okay, relax, thank you, I'm here, I I heard you, but we're okay.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly the guard dog is getting the needs met and we'll start to quiet down.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: If we can start saying thank you when anxiety comes up, uh then we can essentially improve our relationship with it.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so a mantra that you can use immediately is thank you, but I'm actually okay.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you being here, I appreciate you saying something to me, but I'm absolutely fine, thank you.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's important that when we are communicating with our anxiety, if we're saying thank you, I'm listening to you, that we really bring to mind an image.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so one of the images that I think of is seeing anxiety as a friend, right?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see your anxiety as as like a part of you, a beautiful part of you that is just that is just not functioning.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Your relationship with it is just not working well because of the type of world that we live in and the way that we've that we've evolved.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's some kind of friction or tension there, and we need to relearn how to speak and negotiate with our anxiety.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can think of a friend, you can think of a child, you can think of a of a pet.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when you say thank you, I'm hearing you really mean it, you know.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is essentially working on your anxiety, is essentially a form of self-love.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the capacity that you have to show love to the anxiety is directly proportional to your ability to overcome it and lessen those feelings.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: What kinds of mistakes have you seen people, or the biggest mistake that you see people make when they're trying to overcome their anxiety that can set them back and make things worse or just keep them stagnant?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say the number one mistake that people make when it comes to overcoming their anxiety is falling prey to what's known as confirmation bias.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so confirmation bias states that we tend to seek evidence that confirms our own beliefs, right?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if we believe something, we look for evidence that confirms it.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so what can happen when someone's trying to overcome their anxiety is they might have a belief that meditation is the key to overcoming anxiety, right?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll start finding lots of evidence why that's true.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not that this isn't true, but that can actually stop them from looking at other options to overcome their anxiety.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I'll often see is that people kind of identify within a certain type of intervention.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there'll be people that are, you know, Western medicine people, there'll be people that are breathwork people, there are people that are meditation people, people that might think psychedelics are the answers to everything.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the best approach is to throw every tool that you have at the anxiety, and that also includes things that you might, you know, you might not understand yet, and things that you wouldn't have, you know, gone out of your way to learn, things that might be a bit challenging.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the classic example that comes up for me is that a lot of people in the spiritual space have a slight aversion to rationality, right?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and there is good reason to for this, but at the same time, things like cognitive behavioral therapy, where you get to look for distortions in your thoughts, might be the thing that unlocks a breakthrough for those individuals.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, the biggest mistake people make when it comes to overcoming their anxiety is only trying techniques that fit within the paradigm that they're in and being closed-minded towards other techniques.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: How can you help if you have a friend who struggles with anxiety?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: What are what are ways you can be helpful?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: What are ways you can support them?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a friend that has anxiety, the instinct is to try and give them advice, right?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And to try and tell them that the way that they're thinking about things is inaccurate, right?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like that they're not going to get kidnapped, or they're not going to get beaten up, or they're not gonna embarrass themselves, and everything will be fine, and that's the temptation that we have.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that can actually make the person with anxiety feel less heared and more alone and more ashamed of their anxiety because they're thinking, well, nobody actually understands me.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, one of the best things you can do if you have a friend with anxiety is to sit down with them and really try to understand how their mind is working and allow the person with anxiety to explain exactly the types of thoughts that they have and what why it gets triggered and when it gets triggered, and to sit there compassionately and to just accept that that's the way they think and try and relate to it as much as you can.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: When that individual starts to feel like they're being heard, they're being understood, then that will open the door for them to tell you more about the anxious episodes that they have as they go through life, and then that will give them a sense of support and will make you a real friend to them, you know, a friend that is there to understand even the quirkier and stranger and more difficult aspects of their life.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how how do you quiet negative thoughts?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the best way to quiet negative thoughts is to fully hear them.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: If we're actually trying to suppress them, they will grow louder, right?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like in psychology, you call this ironic processing.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, don't think of a white bear.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, if you're telling yourself not to think about something, it's it's gonna backfire and you're actually gonna think about it more.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: If instead you actually investigate it and go, oh, this thought is interesting.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah, that's strange.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna dive a bit into that and actually really think about that, really feel it.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is again very different from worrying.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: When you worry about something, it's almost this unconscious pattern that's kind of attacking you.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: But if you switch that worry to a contemplation, now you're actually volunteering to think about it instead of this thought thinking you.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you you go into the thought and you go, oh, interesting.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder why that's coming up.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if I can kind of turn this and you know do some free association and link it to something else.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you can do that and start to relax into it, thoughts will just naturally pass by like clouds.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you try to push it away, then it's gonna just keep looping and looping and looping.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: What have been some of the unexpected benefits that you've experienced as a consequence of overcoming anxiety that you didn't you didn't ever anticipate, you know, you would get to experience.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was sort of just this like, oh wow, I get to experience this now because I've I've gone through this process of dealing with this.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any things that really stick out to you um that you you didn't you didn't expect, you know, ways you didn't expect to benefit that you ended up being able to?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of the great benefits of having anxiety and learning to overcome it to a large degree has been the connection that I am able to experience with other people.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because anxiety is a very common issue that people experience to varying degrees.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And now when someone talks to me about anxiety, I feel an immediate connection to them and a sense of warmth.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, I see you, I I've been there, I understand.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's not this sort of like distance between us, it actually brings us closer together, and I can I can almost I can almost laugh about it with them, you know, because we can we both relate, you know, and it's that kind of shared, light-hearted, like, damn, this is this is tough, right?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's difficult, but we we can get through it, let's talk about it.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, so so many lovely conversations and relationships have been formed because I feel like I can relate to people better now, and not just relate, but actually share some things that have that have helped me and reflect back things that I think are important.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: What causes anxiety?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people will try to tell you that there's just one cause for anxiety.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's this one neatly packaged thing that causes your anxiety.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and some people will say like it's childhood trauma that will do it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Other people will say it's just the thoughts that you're having.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: The truth is, anxiety can be caused by many different things.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, like many different things.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like you take yourself, for example, if I make you sleep two hours a night, let's see how anxious you feel a month from now, right?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: If I mess with your diet and make you have 300 calories a day for the next three months, let's see how anxious you feel.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so there are many factors, biological factors, life history factors, genetic factors that all play a role in shaping our anxiety.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, my perspective is anxiety is an important emotion.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's there to tell us when there might be potential danger.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's an evolutionary alarm that keeps us safe and keeps us alive.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that in terms of overcoming anxiety, the best thing that we can do is to look at all the different modalities, look at the different causes of anxiety, the leading causes, which would be biological, cognitive, the hidden emotion model, and the biological model.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Start there, because they cover the main reasons why we might feel anxious, and then use those models to identify our particular cause of anxiety.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we're not getting enough sleep, or maybe we do have some unprocessed trauma that is causing our anxiety.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it's as simple as we're just not thinking about things properly and we need to investigate those thoughts.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you decide to create a course on anxiety?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: When people ask me why did I decide to create a course on anxiety now?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the truth is I've been creating a course for myself on anxiety for the better part of 10 years, right?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, like if I have a problem, I look for solutions, I do a lot of reading, I do a lot of research, I do a lot of experimentation.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I've created my own course, my own system, my own methods, and I've been using those and refining those for many years.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I started putting my work out there just because I was curious how people would find it, and I got an overwhelming positive response.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people were saying, like, this is really awesome, this is super helpful, I really feel heared by you, and that was all I needed.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, oh, I should actually give everything that I have and really help people uh using the tools that I've been experimenting with.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what's your favorite?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a favorite interview where the subject is anxiety on the internet?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to my methods for overcoming anxiety, I draw a lot upon things like ancient stoicism, I draw a lot upon things like cognitive behavioral therapy, um, some of the science of neurobiology and trauma healing.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: But also there's this overlay of uh Buddhism as well.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the interviews that really helped me uh with my own approach to anxiety, an interview with a monk who used to suffer with extreme panic attacks when he was a child.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that he learned to overcome his anxiety and his panic attacks, his you know, his intense panic attacks was to start seeing anxiety as his friend.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And when he started to befriend his anxiety, his panic attacks, then they started to disappear.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so from the outside, you're looking at at this guy thinking, oh, it's meditation that helped him, right?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: But it was actually what was going on during the meditation, and the thing that was going on during the meditation was uh a deepening relationship with all of his emotions, including his anxiety, and a befriending of those emotions.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe there is therapeutic benefit available in the uh careful use of psychedelic and plant medicines to heal and overcome anxiety?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely think that the responsible use of psychedelics inside a therapeutic framework can be very powerful for overcoming anxiety.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there are many reasons for this, but one of the reasons is that it can be a good opportunity to actually look at your anxiety and to look at those feelings that we are so conditioned to push down, to push away, and to run away from.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this also applies to overcoming anxiety.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever anxieties and fears and terrifying fantasies are coming in a contemplative setting where you're actually choosing voluntarily to look into it, will also be the things that are healed, and that's essentially exposure therapy.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um however, I also think that as potent as psychedelics are, there is a sense of unpredictability with what exactly you're going to get from them, and so you could have the aim of trying to work on your anxiety and something else could happen.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I actually really believe that we should be striving to overcome our anxiety every day in a structured, sober state, and then psychedelics can can be used as an additional and optional tool on top of that if you really feel drawn to that.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are there historical figures that you've drawn inspiration from as you've gone on your own healing journey in overcoming anxiety?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: would be the Buddha and Epictetus.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I draw inspiration from the Buddha is because I believe, if you look at the story of his life, that he experienced something similar to PTSD or intense anxiety, because he was living in a palace where he was being sheltered from any form of aging or suffering or illness, and then one day he was exposed to that.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: And can you imagine how traumatic and anxiety-inducing that would have been?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the story is that he went back home for six months before he went back outside again, and so it seems to me that he actually was well acquainted with intense feelings of anxiety and hypervigilance and was traumatized, and that's what actually pushed him onto this journey of seeking enlightenment.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's actually an amazing and inspiring story, you know, because a lot of us think of the Buddha as just this prince that just became enlightened when actually he had an incredibly difficult experience.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can you even imagine what that would have been like?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was it would be like you know, the Truman show waking up to this other reality, and that would have been you know very traumatic, feeling like everyone's been lying to you your whole life, and reality isn't the way you thought it was.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought that was really cool when I heard that about the Buddha.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then Epictetus is Epictetus, the name Epictetus means acquired, so he was a slave that eventually became free.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: So he would have been essentially controlled by another human being for most of his life, and then he found philosophy, and philosophy is the thing that helped him to develop equanimity, and that was the philosophy of stoicism.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I really like stories of people that have suffered, that have really felt the full spectrum of human emotion, and then have learned to overcome it, and then go on to teach other people.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's really inspiring.