Transcript

Most Replayed Moment: Instantly Calm Your Anxiety - Dr. Martha Beck

0:00 How would I go about switching into this right hemisphere? If I feel anxious, what would you recommend that I do. It's so easy. It's so amazingly easy. Now

0:11 Your brain naturally goes toward anxiety because of something called the negativity bias. And I always think of it as fifteen puppies and a cobra. If I gave you a box and it had fifteen puppies and a cobra in it. What would catch your attention? The snake. And that's because

0:29 In evolutionary terms, paying attention to the snake snake is a good idea. Yeah. But Um Yeah. We have such a strong negativity bias in our culture and we have very little to pull us back into communion with

0:43 Oneness. We don't have nature around us anymore. So we have to do that. We can trick our brains into doing that. And if you want to play a little with this.

0:54 Okay. Tell me what to do. First, I want you to think of something that makes you feel a bit anxious. Maybe not Panicky, but Anxious. It's something you're willing to like.

1:05 Tell us what it is. Um something that makes me feel a little bit anxious. Yeah. No, this is an interesting one. Um Sounds like a strange thing to say, but um When my partner is not happy

1:23 And I know she's not happy, but she's not telling me why. And I'm around her and I can tell from her vibe, her face, she's not happy about something and I have no idea what it is. Okay, I think there will be many people out there. You are describing

1:42 A domestic a tiny domestic nightmare that many of us feel. So think about that. Think about what that feels like and just notice what it does to your body. And to your emotions. Mm-hmm. What's happening in your body if you're in that situation with your partner.

1:59 Yeah. Right. I just feel tense and I I become quite impatient. Because I just need the answer to like really

2:06 Alleviate the anxiety. Yeah. So you've gone to a fight or flight. nervous system arousal state. Okay, uh uh something something's wrong. Okay. Yeah, I'm very focused and I'm very like I'm anxious, but I'm also a little bit snappish because I'm I I I'm fla fleeing on one side, I need to get out of this situation, but I'm fighting on the other side. Tell me what's wrong. So you've got a full

2:29 Fight or flight thing happening. So You can get into that by imagining the situation. Now I want you to imagine something else. Very vividly.

2:38 Um, and it would probably help if you close your eyes. Um Have you ever eaten an orange? Yeah. All right.

2:45 So Imagine that you are holding An orange. Mm-hmm. Um it's a nice ripe

2:52 Heavy. Delicious orange at the peak of its Ripness, I can tell you you've already smelled it. You can smell the citrus. You just take a bite of it to break

3:04 The seal of the Of the Peeling. And just Feel that little spray of citric acid that

3:11 Pops when you bite the peel and then the bitterness of the rind. And then as you buy it in the juice. gets in your mouth, it's sweet, it's a little bit tangy. Uh you can feel the filaments of the skin and the stringiness of the insides. And you can

3:28 Pull it back you pull back the peel. You can feel it under your fingernails. You can smell it. Um P just put the broken part to your mouth and like

3:39 Squeeze the orange and let some juice get into your mouth. And Taste it completely. And then swallow it. And then

3:50 Enjoy. The sensation of Tasting feeling. Hearing even. This experience.

4:01 How's your anxiety? Uh my anxiety went away. It's gone. Yeah. Because I asked you to use sensory imagination. And that's handled by the right hemisphere.

4:12 It's not in the left. So Instead of verbal imagination, which can create horror stories. You were in a sensory experience. And what I don't think people realize is that we're always imagining what's going to happen to us in the next few days, weeks, months, years. But we're imagining it based on what we think is real.

4:32 Which is all the horror stories we're hearing about. Oh You know, I need to mind my health. I need to there will be accidents. There will be you know, my loved ones will die. We have all these Stories that we haven't happened yet. They may. They're not lies, but that's in the mind as we make our choices. I need to get more money, that whole thing. Веню форд видів сенс.

4:57 In a way that brings Relaxation. How's your body When you're in the orange thing, you said it was tense. When you were in anxiety. What happens to your physical body when you're completely

5:09 connected to the experience of Yes. Imaginary orange. Relaxes. Your body relaxes. Yeah. You start breathing more deeply.

5:19 You stop producing all the the cortisol, the group glucocorticoids, the adrenaline that you had in the fight flight state. And now you're starting to produce serotonin and dopamine and and the what they call the tendon befriend. Hormones. Mm-hmm.

5:37 So you're Say if you say you could hold that energy. And your partner's still tense and running around, but you're staying in this Relaxed state. And you then instead of being afraid of her

5:51 Start to be Curious. About What's going on? Instead of saying Tell me what's going on. It's more like

6:00 Wow, she's really danse. I wonder what that's about. Mm-hmm. And you could even ask her, honey. I don't wanna step on your toes here, but I the vibe I'm getting is that you're not

6:11 Okay, like can I help you? Mm. So it's a very, very different thing to approach conflict. Um, one of the people I wrote about in this book is Chris Voss, one of the FBI's top

6:23 Hostage negotiators. And when he's dealing with a violent psychopathic Terrorist who has people as hostages, he's ready to kill. Chris Voss says. This is how you deal with him.

6:39 Gently. With a soft Voice. Curious about his experience. An empathetic.

6:47 About it. And you're just thinking. What this is not in the movies. But The human amygdala. Is a frightened animal.

6:56 Most of the time. And we all know that if you run at a frightened animal and say, Tell me what you want It doesn't get less frightened. Mm-hmm. So what you just did was move your nervous system.

7:09 Into a state. Where you can be a field of peace. For someone else who's anxious. Do you have to do the orange thing the whole time to get into that state? No, no, no. There are many tricks. Do you want to do some more? Sure, Mr. All right.

7:23 Here's one of my favorites. Um, and I got this from a brilliant Artist and professor at Harvard, William Ryman, who I was his lucky enough to be his teaching assistant for a few years. And this is one of the things that he used to do to get the students to

7:39 shut down the left side of their brain. Well, not shut it down, but to use the right side of the brain as well. Because the left side of the brain can't draw very well, I have to tell you this. So all I want you to do is put your stylist there over toward the right Uh center of your field.

7:55 And Write your first name the way you usually sign it. Yeah. All right. Do I usually sign it or write it?

8:03 The way you usually sign it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the way you design it's a bit more complicated. Ooh, that's beautiful.

8:12 Okay. So now Your style is just Two

8:18 The left Of the signature. And now Replicate the signature, but this time write it in mirror writing. Backwards.

8:26 Take as much time as you need. Gosh. Difficult. Just breathe. Wait, I've got it wrong already.

8:35 Can I grab out? Absolutely. You have as many tries as you need. Notice how the rhythm of your hand goes when you're signing moving right. And try to see if you can find that rhythm going the opposite direction. I might need pen and paper.

8:52 Using pencil and paper because they're tactile. is actually you're gonna have easier access to it because you're having you're gonna have more access to the right side of your brain. This is so difficult. Why is my signature so so complicated? You're doing brilliantly. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

9:12 Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. You did it. Terrible. Yay. No, not terrible.

9:19 No, but the torture is not over, Stephen. It's terrible. It's beautiful. You said you wouldn't lie. I I just meant your I just meant your first name anyway. Now While you were doing that, you might have felt intense frustration. And

9:34 A sense of Huh. But when When you're anxious about it, you actually can't do it. Yeah.

9:41 You have to become engrossed with it. In order to do it. Because your brain is creating new neuron synapses that have never existed before. You've never done this before. So You are fundamentally changing your brain.

9:55 Teaching and a skill it has never had. And this is what children are going through when they learn to write for the first time. But What you just did was connect. Two parts of the brain.

10:06 that are in the right side. So this is why we used to make these poor students do this. Because once they could we had another book we worked with called Drawing is Forgetting the Name of What You See. As long as you call it a Cup. You can't draw it. You draw your Image of a crop.

10:23 But when you forget To call it anything. It just becomes a shape. Like your signature had to just become a shape. And shapes.

10:33 Or on the right hemisphere. So what you just did Was A It's like Power lifting.

10:42 You find Forced your brain. To create synapses that were brand new. that we're taking you into a state of learning, deep learning. Mm.

10:52 Similar to what happens to children if you let them run around in nature. So There was a study done at Nassa in the sixties. To identify creative geniuses. And they found that two percent

11:04 Of the adults thing. sought out like college graduates were creative geniuses. After a while, a few years, they decided to try giving it to four and five year olds. Ninety eight percent of them were creative geniuses. And I think that probably the other two percent were just having a bad day.

11:23 What happens? Between the f moment you're four years old Uh full on creative genius, learning new things the way you just did. Day in, day out.

11:34 And Adulthood Well Eu genius. has mainly gone dark.

11:40 It's because you stop. Trying things that are brand new like that. Mm-hmm. You're put in the factory line. In school.

11:49 And taught to learn in a completely different way that's based on Shame and fear. And Artificial skills that don't mean much to you. And written romances. Yeah.

12:00 Everything's right or wrong. Everything's very judgmental. In nature, nothing's judgmental. Um Uh one of the things I've done with groups of clients is take them Into a forest and

12:13 Uh, with the help of my Uh another coach who's a great woodsman We have them we give them the tools to make fire with sticks and rocks. But they have to work as a team. And then we say, make fire, but you can't talk about it.

12:27 Because language is in the left hemisphere. And sometimes they're out there for four hours. And The whole time it's like Ah, what are we doing? They try all these different things. And then

12:41 I've never had a group that didn't do it. They figure it out. And you end up with a little um flame in your hands and you feed it. A few bits of dried moss or whatever and you blow into it. And it starts to smoke and then smoke.

12:55 Heavily and then Suddenly it just Bursts into flame. And there's this feeling, there's this Promethean feeling. Oh my God, we can do that.

13:05 Anything. And The fact that that's how we're built to learn and there's joy in it. There's a kind of It's an achievement, but nature's not saying wrong.

13:20 Right. You get a you get an F, you get an A, you get higher levels. No. You get fire or you don't get fired. No judgment. So d what does this mean for me on a like day to day basis? If I Understand the power of this, does this mean that I I should draw my name a lot. Or is there something that I

13:37 That we can all be doing. to alleviate our anxiety and to get us into the Right hemisphere of our brain. Well, there's to me there's a three step process and there are three sections in the book. The first one, I I use it with the acronym CAT.

13:51 Mm-hmm. Art. And transcendence. This is how it works. The first third of the book is just How to calm your brain. It's been taught.

14:00 To be anxious. Um it is biologically pre programmed to be anxious. So To calm it down. Most people will say they'll come in and tell me, I wanna fight my anxiety, I wanna get it d I wanna end it, I wanna bring it down, I want it gone.

14:16 Because they think it's a broken machine, but it's not a broken machine. It's a frightened animal. And if If you came in and I said to you Okay, I wanna end you, I wanna bring you down, I'm gonna fight you till you're Gone.

14:29 Would you be less afraid or more afraid? So they're attacking. The part of themself that's anxious. And it makes it more anxious. So and that's what we're taught to do. End it.

14:42 Force it to calm down with chemicals. One of the most ghastly things that ever happen in the in psychiatry was that they used to literally take people Go ahead.

14:53 You know Inexorable. uh anxiety And Literally put a screwdriver through the eye socket and up into the brain and just mix it around.

15:04 That's how mechanistic we are about. Our own Minds. We can fix it with a screwdriver. That's a very left hemisphere way to think. And it's literally attacking ourselves.

15:19 But we're all Work. born with the intrinsic knowledge of how to calm a frightened animal. So if you found A terrified puppy.

15:30 on your stoop one morning and you decided to try to help it. You would instinctively know that how to do that. What what would you do? Um I would approach it slowly or not approach it at all. And I would Get down.

15:44 Yes. And I'd be very gentle and say hello. Not ask it to come to me. Yeah. And if it didn't, you'd give it space, you'd give it time. It's there with it. Yeah.

15:54 And just the way Your energy just changed now. You get down. He began to smile in a very sweet way. And

16:02 I could feel the tolerance and the gentleness and the space that you would give this creature. We have Got it. To learn to be gentle. To ourselves.

16:14 We are taught to be violent to ourselves. Biohack that. Make you know, make yourself eat this and do that and And instead If we could just go to the anxious part. Like Say you're with your partner and she's acting weird.

16:29 And you're feeling anxious. Generally what we do is we try to control the situation. What can I do? Can I make her happy? I'll bring her flowers, I'll do whatever, right? Have an argument. Instead of trying to control Huh.

16:43 The best approach is Go inside, find the part of yourself that's afraid. So If you're in that situation and she's nervous and you just start to observe Your own anxiety.

16:57 I okay. What does that feel like? Who is that in there? Who's who's the anxious part of me? And just notice, I mean try it right now if you don't mind. She's upset, she's tense, she's not telling you the problem. Notice the anxiety. Where is it in your body exactly?

17:15 Like here in my chest. So Allow that. And say to it. I'm gonna give you space. I'm here.

17:25 I'm gonna be here with you. Uh, I know she's scaring you, but I've got you. It's okay. I'm she's not gonna hurt us. I can go in the other room with you if you need. And sit with it. And say

17:39 Let me know what What are you feeling? Tell me everything. You get to feel exactly the way you feel. And I'm here to listen to anything you want to tell me, and I will not hurt you.

17:53 And I will not try to stifle you or make you go away. So how does that Change. Anything. Yeah, for some reason it just um

18:06 The volume went down. So you can describe it. It's just like the volume is. And it made me wonder if you're not going to be able to J because just by you saying that, made me wonder if If

18:14 In those moments I should be writing it out. That can be really helpful. There's a psychologist named James Pennebaker who found that If he just had students he just did this experiment once as a graduate student. He had students write for fifteen minutes about something that was upsetting to them. And many of them came out of the experiment in tears. It really

18:35 upset them for an hour or two. Yet other students just write What they did last summer or whatever. So there was this brief period where the ones who had stirred up some turmoil Felt. Unsettled.

18:49 But they in the in the weeks and even the years subsequent to that experiment. They had fewer doctors visits, they had less anxiety, they had better relationships, they had better everything. So he For his whole career. Just did these writing exercises.

19:07 Where we he would have people just express themselves. Not to show anyone, not even to re read. Just to express. Mm-hmm. The parts of us that are frightened need to need to be heard.

19:20 The parts of Society that are hurting need to be hurt. Astonished. By the um Truth and reconciliation councils held in South Africa after Nelson Mandela became president.

19:32 These people who had been through Absolute atrocities. And They were just hurt. Hard.

19:41 They were allowed to tell their stories to the people who had hurt them and other people who were on their side. And the telling of it. Avoided You know, what everyone thought would be a bloodbath. And it

19:54 O course didn't fix all the problems. But it Unburdened. to a large extent people who had been through things that I can't even imagine.

20:03 So yes, write it. Write it down. So y she's in the other room. She's acting weird. Something might come up about Like how old is that anxious part? Maybe it's young.

20:16 Maybe it's not. You said something at the start. You said that um Anxiety's like driving over a Metal spike. And it's

20:27 police like chases. That's what I was thinking about, like the police chases where they're they threw out the metal spikes and the car. Why why did you use that analogy? What are you what are you saying there about the nature of anxiety? That's what it's like if you get stuck in what's called the anxiety spiral. Uh in the brain anxiety cycle, some people call it. Um so what you have to do in that situation is To extend the metaphor. Get out of the car, disarm the mechanism.

20:52 Get that mechanism out of the way. You know, the the tire ripping thing. And then you can back out. But the stopping And getting out that's the calming step of anxiety, and that's what you're doing here.

21:06 As weird as it sounds, when you write your name backwards. And you come into a state of physiological call. You are Getting rid of the tire rippers. You're building pathways that go into the calmer parts of the brain.

21:20 So Um the same thing when you were Imagining eating an orange. You're Calming yourself. And it re it

21:28 Allows you to reverse. It allows you to leave. Finally. But our culture tends to not allow you to leave. It's always telling you horror stories.

21:39 So then once you get really calm. And you've taken care of that part of yourself. I said the acronym is CAP CAP. Once you get to calm. Then

21:51 Very paradoxically. I It blew me away when I realized this. Then you need art. And I don't mean drawing. I mean Making things.

22:02 Making things in three dimensions. Making events happen, making a podcast. Like What was the fire in you? That made you make things and how did it feel when you were in the making?

22:17 In the making it usually feels Great. Yeah. Like in the process of making actually me and my partner went and did um last weekend we went and made some art Mm. And I was like stressed and stuff and so when we

22:29 When and did this uh I'd like never painted in my life. Yeah. So we went to this like random loft and there was this guy there and uh he had these massive two pieces of cardboard and like loads of spray cans and paint and stuff and we just painted for Maybe three hours or something. Yeah. And I was totally lost in it.

22:44 I mean that's the way people describe it. They describe it as being lost in it, right? Yeah. And do you know that If people have been through a trauma and they're allowed to draw about it. Even if they can't draw f you know, professionally.

22:57 They have an eighty percent lower chance of developing PTSD. There's something about creating stuff. And it could be a company or it could be a spray paint on a cardboard. Um my partner um started Making B Bracelets a while ago.

23:15 She's very busy. She doesn't have time for this. But it makes her so Mm. And we were talking about how if you go into A tomb in Egypt from five thousand years ago. What are you gonna find?

23:27 Among other things, beaded bracelets. If you go to the Amazon rainforest and contact an uncontacted tribe. What might you find? Beaded bracelets. People are making beaded bracelets all the time and they serve no function. They are precious pointless things.

23:44 She said that we make And All cultures make we make music. I mean, I think about the cultures in Jamaica. One of the worst

23:54 slavery colonies in the history of the world. It it was just it made what was happening on the mainland look gentle by comparison. And out of that you get These incredible art forms, reggae. Dance. Like In the middle of

24:09 Being crushed, having literally Everything taken from them. People were still making art. Yeah. This is a part of the human spirit.

24:19 That is just It's indomitable. And our culture pushes it to the fringes. Okay, Steven, you can do that on a weekend. That's nice. But did you really make any money? You know get a real job.

24:33 Yeah. How does this link again back to the brain? So if I'm creating, I'm making some art, I was doing that spray paint thing with the paint and the I'll show you a picture of it after I should think that's a good thing. But how is that helping me to Calm. My anxiety. It's because of the way the structures on the left side, um, they're obsessed with grasping.

24:54 um material objects, acquiring, controlling other people, always thinking about fear. And There does seem to be this toggle effect. That anxiety and creativity Just can't work at the same time.

25:10 So the moment you begin to create Like when you said I could write this, that's expressive writing, that's artistic writing. And All of a sudden. The toggle switches

25:21 Oh In anxiety and on And creativity. So I believe Th there's the another spiral on the right side of the brain, but it instead of spiraling tightly into fear, it spires

25:33 It it spirals outward. And ultimately You get to the final thing. There's calming, there's Artistry and then there's transcendence. Or awakening.

25:45 When you're there, sometimes We call it flow, chicks at knee high, the psychologist who named it. Low um really looked into this. And it's a state of creating and performing. At a level so difficult we almost can't do it.

26:00 The exactly the way you were writing your name. Oh. Phew. And you can have what's called the rage to master where you're just like I can't But

26:10 When you get it. And I'm sure you've had this with many things you've created in your life. It's like flying. It's heaven. And there's a time in the process of creation creating Yeah,

26:23 The sense of self falls away and the sense of control isn't necessary. And what you feel Is creation itself sort of moving with you and through you? And it's blissful. And I believe that is the state in which we are meant to spend almost all our time.

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