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The One Skill That Rewires an Anxious Nervous System · Bye Bye Panic

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most people treat their anxiety like it's a condition, or a disease, or a chemical imbalance.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But after helping thousands of people heal their anxiety and their nervous system, I've learned that this perspective misses something incredibly important.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is going to sound crazy, but chronic anxiety is not a fear problem.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually a skill problem.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are skilled just in the wrong thing.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But once you can develop a new skill, a skill that requires your anxious nervous system into a calm one, will then you can begin feeling relief.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in this video, I want to share with you what that one skill is and how to apply it effectively so that you can rewire your nervous system and calm happens on its own.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But first, we have to see how anxiety is currently viewed.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, when we think of people who experience anxiety or panic through physical symptoms, or they have intrusive thoughts like, what if I can't handle what happens right now?
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if I fail?
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if I'm not enough?
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We think these thoughts and these sensations are the problem.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when these thoughts and sensations happen so often that they begin affecting
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well now it becomes an issue.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where therapists and doctors call it an anxiety disorder because you are experiencing this sensation all the time.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you were like me and you were experiencing this, well the answer that might have been given to you is, hey, take medicine or maybe there's something that happened in your childhood and made you this way permanently.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now the disorder is that you are experiencing anxiety all the time.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I would like to reframe this, because the disorder is not the anxiety.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The disorder is the disorder response to your anxiety that's keeping it alive.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What this means is that experiencing chronic anxiety isn't the issue, it's what's the engine behind it.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is fueling the anxiety?
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And turns out, it's your disordered response to feeling anxiety that's reinforcing the cycle.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, when you're dealing with chronic anxiety, you've gotten very skilled at treating every uncomfortable thought, feeling or sensation, like something that needs to be fixed.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You may notice, you overthink every choice, and you wait till you feel a hundred percent certain.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you were spending so much energy, fighting a sensation, resisting it, or spending so much mental bandwidth trying to figure out something, this is tells your nervous system that we need to be stuck on protection mode.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to stay stuck in this fighter flight mode.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you do this long enough, the nervous system begins to feel normal at this state.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Being on protection mode can feel like a new normal for your nervous system, even though
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, if you've gotten really skilled at treating every uncomfortable thought, feeling sensation, like something that needs to be fixed, well, the new skill to develop is to feel discomfort without making it a problem.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether that's a thought you don't like a physical sensation, an emotional trigger, uncertainty about the future, pressure that you can't resolve immediately,
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's learning to develop that skill to sit with the discomfort.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, when I learn this, I told myself, okay, so I just need to learn to sit with the discomfort.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't that mean I'm just a passive bystander to this?
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do I fix it?
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't see how just sitting with the discomfort fixes any of this.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: If anything, it just feels like I'm just tolerating this, like I'm just managing this.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to overcome this.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to feel this way.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's what took me so long to understand, which is sitting with the discomfort, rewires your anxious nervous system.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you might be thinking, how does it do that?
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, a great analogy of looking at your nervous system is like going to the gym.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, currently, if you're dealing with anxiety, you might be doing things to feel more calm.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might try to take the pressure off.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might try to handle stress less.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might try to avoid stress.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in certain peak moments, that's helpful.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what happens is that your nervous system begins to lose its resiliency.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So think about it as going to the gym.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine you're picking up a 10-pound dumbbell.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that 10-pound dumbbell feels really heavy.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so what people say is, hey, this is too difficult.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is too overwhelming.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me just go home and rest.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me not work out.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me just take some days off.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a time and a place in that.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what happens is people begin avoiding it all the time.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is that their muscle begins to atrophy.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It begins to diminish.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the five-pound dumbbell seems really heavy.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's happened is that you haven't built the resilience.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: you're trying to eliminate the discomfort of working out by avoiding the gym rather than developing resiliency in your muscle so that 10 pounds doesn't feel that heavy anymore.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in the same way when people are dealing with chronic anxiety, they become so focused on the sensation, the trigger, the what if thought that they get really good at resisting avoiding distracting
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: or they might be over-analyzing, checking to see if it's gone, and this prevents your nervous system from developing resiliency.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what this does is that this makes your nervous system more sensitive.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Normal stressors now feel like a monumental task.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the goal is like looking at your nervous system, like going to the gym.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the 10-pound feels heavy, well, you move forward with it, you do it, and eventually the 10-pound feels light.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that the 10-pound has lost any weight,
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: you have gotten stronger.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The skill of sitting with the discomfort is like working out for your nervous system.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system can handle more.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And instead of coming from a place of, I need these sensations to go away, you focus on the goal to expand your window of tolerance.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: a tolerance to it.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And over time, your tolerance grows.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what happens is that your nervous system resiliency grows as well.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: For me, I was a gorephobic.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't leave my house.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even going on a drive seemed like a terrifying experience.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What happened was I began driving and it seemed really intense.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But instead of avoiding the driving, I continued driving.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I learned how to sit with the discomfort.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I learned how to manage my feelings even if a panic attack showed up.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: What happened was, is that my nervous system began retraining itself.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It told itself that, hey, this isn't dangerous.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Sean is capable.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: These what if thoughts that we thought was gonna happen never came true?
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: The goal isn't to avoid discomfort.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've tried that.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The goal is to expand your capacity to be able to do more, to allow yourself to feel the discomfort,
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what that means is what you feel uncomfortable with right now, maybe a month, two months in, it doesn't feel that uncomfortable anymore.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that the activity was any less, it's just that your nervous system can handle more, so it doesn't seem like it's that heavy or that overwhelming.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might be thinking, okay, Sean, that makes sense, but like, how do I implement this?
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do I implement this new skill of being able to sit with the discomfort?
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, this is where I wanna give you a framework that's really gonna help.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The goal is not to try to chase a feeling.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The goal is simply non-interference.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: What this means simply put.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that let the thought be there.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let the feeling be there.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let this sensation be there without trying to change it.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That means no arguing, no checking in, no reassuring, no distracting, no forcing calm, just letting it be.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once you're able to do this and practice this, it's gonna feel very weird.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because you're gonna have this reflex of constantly trying to fix, of constantly trying to fight.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for the first time, it's gonna take you energy to not do any of these things.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like sitting there and letting it be, feels like more work than a reaction of trying to fix.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: but the goal is simple.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just don't interfere.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: What you're going to find is something very interesting.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Number one, you're going to get a lot of energy back.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you will see how much energy you've been expanding on trying to fight this or fix this.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the second thing, you're going to see that your tolerance for this discomfort is actually pretty low.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's okay.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because then it starts making sense.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You start realizing that everything you've done up until this point has made you more sensitive to these sensations, the feelings, the what it thoughts.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I want to go a bit deeper and talk about the what it thoughts, because even if you don't interfere with thoughts, if you are too engaged with your thoughts, if you are too identified with your thoughts,
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your thoughts are going to make you believe that no, this is something else.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is an anxiety, this is actually different.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the framework I want you to practice is to just become an observer of your thoughts.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are not your thoughts.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can be identified with your thoughts.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can think that your thoughts are your own.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: but your thoughts are not your own.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your thoughts come and go.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You choose based on which thoughts you engage with, which thoughts are important, which ones aren't.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I want you to develop is the skill of just observing the thoughts, becoming aware of them, without needing to get too caught up in this story or this narrative.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just view a thought.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: A great example is like looking at thoughts like their clouds.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clouds come and go.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can just witness them.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can say that's a cloud.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your mind is the sky.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Be aware of the story that you have, this narrative that you have.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all you have to do is witness it.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, as you do this, you're going to wonder, am I doing this correctly?
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I not?
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all you have to ask yourself is, am I trying to fix how I'm feeling?
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I fearing this sensations?
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I fighting this?
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I too focused on how I'm feeling or the anxiety?
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I getting frustrated by this?
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Am I trying to force this?
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or am I just allowing it to be there without trying to fight it?
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without trying to fix it?
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I want you to realize that this is a practice and because we've helped so many people around the world a mistake people can make is that they hear this kind of stuff and they say okay well you're saying I need to feel discomfort to heal and the thing to realize here is that the goal is not to eliminate the discomfort because even if you're trying to chase the discomfort to make it go away
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: is not to make feeling discomfort such a big deal.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's to stop making discomfort feel like a threat.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I read this quote recently that I thought made a lot of sense for this, which is wanting a positive experience is a negative experience.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And wanting a negative experience, ironically, is a positive experience.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So whenever we're resisting a negative sensation or a feeling or a thought,
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we run away from it, because we want to feel good, that often feels negative long-term.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But ironically, if you can just feel this sensation, if you can feel the discomfort, if you can feel the negative experience, well, the emotions burn themselves out, you feel everything in completion, and you actually feel lighter after.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You actually feel good, you feel proud that you did something that scared you, you developed confidence.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: and clarity that, hey, I was able to do something that was very difficult.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as you do this, as you just get good with the practice of the skill, the brain begins to rewire itself on its own.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might think, okay, once I've rewired my brain, life is good, I feel happy, I feel joy.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I'm not feeling anxious all the time, well, that hole will be taken up by feeling great and amazing.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well,
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: After helping so many people through our recovery programs, what we have found might actually shock you because rewiring your anxious nervous system isn't actually going to make you an amazingly happy person all of a sudden.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it will create a little bit of a hole within you.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the anxiety that you felt once that anxiety begins to leave, you're going to have a hole.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that hole is gonna feel a little bit unfamiliar.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna feel even scary.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this feeling feels so foreign for people that sometimes they unconsciously try to fill it back with the anxiety.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the anxiety feels normal.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they begin checking, analyzing, obsessing,
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: because at least the anxiety gave them something to focus on.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's recognizing that at this stage it's not more nervous system work.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not more work around the anxiety.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's learning how to live again.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What this means is filling the hole with what you care about the most.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do you want to do now?
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: What gives you a spark in life?
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to build something?
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to make a lot of money?
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want that relationship?
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: What deserves your attention now?
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And who are you when recovery is no longer the main project?
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't know what that is because anxiety's been such a big part of you, that's okay.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's an amazing opportunity.
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I was overcoming this, I was completely lost.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea I was gonna be helping people around the world, but it was kind of exciting because I could be whatever I want.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can have endless opportunities, potentials, situations that will bring me fulfillment.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: What makes me fulfilled?
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I began exploring that.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is such a fun project because there is no right or wrong.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: There isn't someone else's version of success applies to you.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You decide what success is for you.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's traveling the world if that's being an amazing parent.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If that means starting a family, whatever you want, that gives you fulfillment.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so freedom from anxiety does not automatically create fulfillment.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: What it does is that it gives you space to create it.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you rewire your nervous system, you're going to find that rewiring a nervous system doesn't hand you a new life.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: What it does is that it gives you your life back.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then it asks you, here's your life, what are you going to do with it?
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope this video helped.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want some resources or guidance on the recovery journey, there's a link in the description box.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.