5 Ways To Break Free From Anxiety

Have you ever felt a knot in your stomach from worry?  Racing thoughts? A heart that won't slow down?  Kimberly Beam Holmes knows exactly how anxiety feels.  She shares her deeply personal journey with anxiety, starting from childhood experiences that laid the foundation for her struggles.  If you or someone you love grapples with adult anxiety, this video is for you!

Kimberly discusses specific anxiety disorders like generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety, phobias, and hypochondria, explaining how they manifest and impact our lives. Discover how anxiety affects the body, potential causes, and why it's more common in women.  In this episode, she delves into managing anxiety through uncertainty and the broader topic of stress management.

Don't let anxiety control you! Kimberly reveals actionable strategies to manage your anxiety, including:

- The Power of Self-Care: Practical tips to nurture your mind and body.
- Mind Over Matter: How cognitive-behavioral techniques can rewire your thinking.
- Move Your Body, Calm Your Mind: The science behind exercise as an anxiety-buster.
- Breathe Deeply: Simple breathwork techniques for anxiety relief.
- The Gratitude Effect: How focusing on the good can transform your outlook.
- Journaling for Anxiety: Discover the power of writing to ease anxious thoughts.

Remember, you are not alone. Kimberly's story is one of hope and resilience – proof that you can learn to thrive despite anxiety.

LINK TO RESEARCH: https://bit.ly/3vj9j72 🧠

Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships


Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.


Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com


Thanks for listening!


Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes


Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the podcast and leave a comment!

WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!

Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

I first started struggling with anxiety at around six years old. It was around that time that my grandmother had actually passed away and I saw the grief that my mom naturally went through in losing her mom. But since I was such a young age and I didn't know how to process all of that, I internalized what was happening by fear. I was scared because all I could really see was my mom had lost her mom and that made her really sad and it made her go through a lot of pain. And my biggest fear was that I never wanted to feel the pain that my mom was feeling. So for several years I started to really struggle with separation anxiety from my parents and I developed a phobia of storms and tornadoes to the extent that if any kind of storm came up during the school day then my parents would have to come and get me because I was unable to cope. And I have overcome many of those phobias and different types of anxiety, like separation anxiety, since then. But it developed and kind of shifted into my teenage years and into adulthood into things more like hypochondria or generalized anxiety disorder. So the subject matter that we talk about today. I happened to experience, and still experience to this day from a firsthand experience. Maybe you have felt similar ways as well. If you feel like you think more about the negative things that might happen in the future than your spouse or your friends or the normal quote unquote normal person, then maybe you struggle with anxiety and you are not alone. Millions upon millions of Americans suffer from anxiety in some shape or fashion, and in today's episode we're going to dive into what is anxiety, how does it somatically show up in the body and what are some things that we can do to help manage anxiety that we have.

Speaker 1: 2:32

I also want to say on the forefront that having anxiety doesn't mean that you are disordered or that you are not good enough. In fact, for many of us that do struggle with anxiety, there are some strengths to anxiety as well. Not that I would wish it on any person, but anxiety is a great motivator. It has gotten me, for example, to do things and get going in certain areas of my life. Maybe the motivation initially was because I was anxious about it and didn't want to end up with some kind of negative health consequence or whatever it might be, but it ended up putting me into action to do things to help calm my anxiety.

Speaker 1: 3:17

It's one of the big reasons that I care a lot about health and fitness, not just because at times in my life I've struggled with hypochondria, which is a basically a fear of health related kind of disorders. Like you, it's WebMD on steroids, like anything that I feel in my body. Automatically I'm going to just say it's cancer and continue to freak out about it and overly think about it and obsess about any of those symptoms until I find out otherwise. That's not necessarily the full reason that I'm so into health and fitness, but I have found ways over the years to really manage my hypochondria. I do not struggle with hypochondria near to the level that I did even three years ago. I've made a lot of leaps and bounds and even just with my overall generalized anxiety disorder that I've struggled with since six years old, I can say that there are tools and techniques that I have used to help manage that over the past several years and I continue to do a better job at it year after year.

Speaker 1: 4:16

So I hope some of the things we share today, which are based in evidence not just my personal experience, but I will add in personal experience at times to add some flavor to the episode. I hope the takeaway for you today is realizing you're not alone, that there is always hope, and realize that there's some great takeaways that you can take away from this episode to help feel less anxious, more calm, more peace and more hope. This is a new type of episode that we're doing. It's one of the first in our series of what we're calling these solo episodes, where I'm alone, but I'm not totally alone, because I'm joined by our producer, jason. Jason is the voice of reason, so to say, on our podcast to help slow me down, to help think of things in a different way and explain things better, so that you, the listener, can have better takeaways from our episodes. So, jason, thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 5:12

Yeah, thanks for having me. Voice of Reason is a scary thing for this podcast, you're anointed as voice of reason Sorry.

Speaker 1: 5:20

It's gonna be great. All right, let's dive in. Actually, before we dive in, one other thing that I just have to mention. If you listen to this show on, especially Apple podcast, please be sure that you hit the follow button, because Apple made a big change I'm not quite sure what it was. They don't consult me although I'm up for consultation if you ever wish and they made a change and so some people's algorithms have changed, and if you're not hitting that follow button, you may not be aware of new episodes. If it starts with attraction that comes out, and even more than that, it is the best free way that you can support this show, support me and support us reaching even more people. So please go and hit that follow button before we dive in. All right, let's get started.

Speaker 1: 6:06

So what is anxiety and what is stress? Here's what happens. Anxiety is really a focus, an overly heightened focus on future events. The American Psychological Association defines anxiety as an emotion characterized by apprehension and somatic symptoms of tension, in which an individual anticipates impending danger, catastrophe or misfortune. Let's put that into layperson language that all of us can understand. Basically, anxiety is when we are focused more about the negative things that might happen in the future than positive things that might happen in the future. And because of that worry, it affects us physiologically, which we'll get into some of those areas Now.

Speaker 1: 6:57

Anxiety can show up in several different ways and if you took psychology in undergrad or maybe minored in psychology, which was really popular about 10 to 20 years ago a lot of people went through psychology classes and maybe went through abnormal psych where they talked about a lot of these. But here are some of the anxiety disorders that exist. So there's people who have specific phobias. So this is kind of what I was talking about earlier. I had a specific phobia of tornadoes or a specific phobia of health-related instances of hypochondria. So people and this is actually the biggest percentage of anxiety that people deal with 8 to 12 percent of the US population has a phobia of some kind. Another very popular one here is fear of public speaking or fear of heights. Ironically, my husband, who is a pilot, has a fear of heights For some reason. When he's in the plane he's not scared, but if we're on like the top story of a building, he can't get near the window.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Yeah, I'm the same way I feel for Rob.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Isn't that weird yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:01

In a plane, I'm fine. Like you, get me on a roller coaster or anything. I'm like shaking, sweating.

Speaker 1: 8:07

I only felt this way once. It was actually a couple weeks ago, when my husband and I were in Portugal and, for whatever reason, as we were taking off in the plane, in my mind it seemed like the plane did not stop going up At one point. I looked out and I was like Rob, I think we're going to space and I am like terrified right now. It was the strangest thing. So, anyway, specific phobias this is the most common type of anxiety that people have. There's also social anxiety disorder, which is actually the next most common, which I was really shocked to find. About 7% of the US population has a social anxiety disorder, where they have anxiety about going into social situations, and I really wonder if that number has just shot up ever since 2020.

Speaker 2: 8:49

Yeah, I bet so.

Speaker 1: 8:50

I bet it has Panic disorder. 2 to 3% of the US population deals with that. Agoraphobia, which is the fear of being in situations where escape may be difficult or embarrassing. So a lot of times when people talk about quote, unquote, shut-ins, which is not the appropriate way to talk about this, but typically they're talking about people who are more agoraphobic. They're scared to go out in public, they're scared to be in open places, and that's just about one to one and a half percent of the US population. Then there's generalized anxiety disorder. The anxiety doesn't attach to anything specifically, because it can attach to anything.

Speaker 1: 9:24

One of the ways that I and my husband joke about me is, if it's been a while that I haven't had anxiety about something, then and something kind of pops up. Case in point Last night we were watching the episode of the Office with the Fun Run for rabies. Yeah, and as it's starting, I said, rob, does rabies have a cure? And I like Googled it, because they say in the episode, like you know, there's a cure, there's something that's already cured. He said, no, I don't think there's a cure. I Google it there is no cure. All of a sudden I'm anxious about getting rabies one day.

Speaker 1: 9:59

And I'm like, are there any dogs along my running route? Like how worried should I be? And Rob and it's a joke, like I appreciate the fact that he can he can say this lightheartedly at times. But Rob, last night he said you know, you haven't been anxious in a long time. I was wondering when it was going to pop back up, because this is kind of how it happens, like it attaches to just something that seems like a fear in the moment. But don't worry, I've realized I'm more at risk of being in a car wreck than getting rabies.

Speaker 2: 10:26

So yeah, we're. I think we should do our own 5k fun run for the cure?

Speaker 1: 10:30

Yeah, I think we should too. Then there's separation anxiety disorder. This is most common in children, and about and about 4% of children experience this, and then only about one to 2% of adults continue to experience this as an adult, and then it can continue to go on and on, but those are some of the biggest ones that people deal with. Women do tend to have higher anxiety or be more prevalent in the anxiety disorders than men do. The reason for that is not quite fully known. So when we look at, as we've said, anxiety is really about a negative expectation of the future, and this was looked at in a couple of different, different studies. I won't go into all of the details of each of them because we have a lot of ground to cover on today's episode, but there was a study done by McCleod and Byrne in 1996 that focused on giving people some questionnaires about hope, about anxiety, different things and basically then requiring that the participants to think of future experiences that we're going to occur in the next week, year, or five to 10 years and, not surprisingly, anxious groups, the groups of people that scored higher on the anxiety scales also tended to have the highest amount of future negative expectations. Now here was an interesting thing at least. I found it really fascinating that the group that had the highest amount of anxiety were associated with increased negative future thinking, but not necessarily with decreased positive future thinking. It was only with the group that was struggling with depression that they had both negative future and neg and decreased positive future thinking. So here's what that means.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Think about someone who's depressed. They can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. For them, they feel like everything is gray and heavy. When I was 17 to about 22 years old, I struggled with clinical depression and I just remember, even thinking back to it there's like a grayness of my memories and of my thoughts, and it even felt that that was true of my actual like sight when I was going through depression. And so every like you can't see light at the end of the tunnel. There is no hope. When you're depressed, it's part of it, but with anxiety that's not true. When someone struggles with anxiety they have more worries about the future, but it doesn't necessarily take away the excitement and positivity they have about the future as well. So they're kind of mixing those two, and I totally get this because I have a lot of hope and great expectations and visions for the future. It's just at the same time I can see every way it can go wrong.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Yeah, it's just an addition of the negative, not a subtraction of the positive.

Speaker 1: 13:22

Yeah, that's the way to say it, an addition of the negative, not a subtraction of the positive like that. Yes, so that's how anxiety can begin to feel. Let's talk more about the somatic implications, or the physiological experiences that we have when we struggle with anxiety. Well, the APA further defines anxiety as an emotion, as we already said, characterized by apprehension and somatic symptoms, where you feel like you're going to be in danger. So your body begins to react like you're going to be in danger. Your muscles begin to tense because they're getting ready to fight. Your breathing rate is faster because the faster you breathe it actually allows your muscles to activate more oxygen. It allows you to get into gear to fight or flight. That's what your body is getting ready to do. When you enter into this state, your heart beats more rapidly again because it's getting more blood flow through your GI tract shuts down because digestion is not important when you are anxious and scared about something coming to attack you. So all of these things in our body begin to change, and that's fine if there is a real and imminent danger that we are running from. It's not fine when it becomes chronic and our bodies stay in this heightened state of awareness that we weren't created to be in. There's a reason that the Bible tells us do not worry, and it's one of the most ironic things, I think, in the Bible for God to just say don't worry. It's like, yeah, god, you know it's not that easy, but also you know how important it is that we aren't chronically worrying, because it does have really negative implications on us long term when we stay in that heightened state of arousal and awareness.

Speaker 1: 15:09

Long term there is a correlation with a much higher rate of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease that people experience, especially in women. Irregular heart beats can occur, palpitations and sweating without exercise, which just puts further strain on the heart and not in a good way, and so that's not good a higher risk of coronary heart disease. But then there's also, as we said earlier, gi distress that people can then experience long term frequent heartburn, constipation or diarrhea because of that GI distress that people are experiencing nausea. All of these things continue to happen the longer. I mean just when someone has anxiety. If you are also struggling with maybe you're like eating, being hungry, or maybe because you're so anxious when you eat it just goes straight through you, or you feel like you can't process food well, all of that can be because your body is just in this heightened state of arousal, heightened state of awareness, and it's beginning to impede your body from doing what it was naturally created to do.

Speaker 2: 16:21

I thought it was interesting that men were more likely to have higher psychological symptoms and women were more likely to have somatic symptoms.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Yeah, I totally miss that actually. So this is why you're the voice of reason. Absolutely, men were more likely to have higher psychological symptoms. And I wonder, going back through that study, oh, because of anxiety, women were more likely to have the heart disease problem of the high anxiety, whereas men were more likely to have the higher psychological symptoms. Yeah, fascinating.

Speaker 2: 16:54

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:56

So what causes anxiety? We already know it's this fear that we have of something. So what are these things that cause the fear? Well, genetic factors are a big part of it. There were a couple of different twin studies that were conducted that found that genetics really did have a decent amount of impact on whether or not a person was going to struggle with an anxiety disorder in the future. But then also there are neurotransmitter imbalances. So hot topics out there right now A lot of people talking about dopamine, a lot of people talking about serotonin.

Speaker 1: 17:31

Gaba not as much. But GABA is actually one of those neurotransmitters. It's gamma-aminobuteric acid, gaba, and it is a key in regulating anxiety. The neurotransmitter in GABA is part of what. When we don't have it, when there's not enough GABA in our brains and our system, that goes up to our brains. It leads to a higher amount of restlessness, insomnia, arousal and anxiety, because GABA is calming. When we have GABA, it calms us and people can actually take GABA as a supplement.

Speaker 1: 18:09

I don't recommend taking GABA as a supplement, especially if you haven't spoken with a doctor about it, but there are ways if you feel like you struggle with anxiety and you don't wanna take benzodiazepines or some of the different medications that are out there for anxiety, which, again, that should be your doctor's decision with you. You and your doctor should discuss that. But there are some of these supplements. But just remember, a lot of the supplements that we take, such as GABA, are neurotransmitters, hormones, chemicals, and we need to be aware that we're messing with that in our body when we take these things. It's not just like drinking some electrolyte water which does I mean that has electrolytes in it which can mess with our electrolyte levels, but you can really start to mess with the way that your brain processes chemicals in your body if you just start like popping a bunch of GABA, thinking that it's gonna help your anxiety. So you should always talk with a doctor about that. But GABA is something that naturally occurs in our body and when we don't have enough of it or when it's dysregulated, it may also lead to an increase in anxiety.

Speaker 1: 19:20

Also, adenosine, now. This point I find absolutely fascinating. It says increased levels of adenosine can cause fear in healthy people and panic attacks in those with anxiety disorders. Now, this is from an article from Carr and Singh in 2017, when they were looking at the role of neurotransmitters in anxiety. It comes from the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research, adenosine.

Speaker 1: 19:48

These are the receptors in our brains that are blocked by caffeine. So when we drink two, or when we drink any caffeine, the caffeine goes into our adenosine receptors and stops the buildup of adenosine from being able to happen in our body, or no, I need to say that the opposite way, it doesn't allow our bodies to clear the amount of adenosine that we have in it, so adenosine begins to accumulate in our bodies. Increased levels of adenosine can cause fear. This is why that if you ever drink coffee and start to get jittery or start to get more anxious, it's because the caffeine is going into the places where the adenosine should be being dealt with. The adenosine isn't being dealt with, it's continuing to accumulate in your body and it's leading to higher anxiety levels. So, and as we see the research telling us, caffeine is a non-selective adenosine receptor antagonist. So the caffeine is what binds to those adenosine receptors and therefore it's another reason, another way that caffeine can mess us up.

Speaker 2: 21:06

Yeah. So I guess you would say, if you're dealing with anxiety or having anxious thoughts or symptoms, probably not a good idea to drink caffeine.

Speaker 1: 21:14

Yeah, yeah, which is really hard. Yeah, I love caffeine. Yeah so do I I don't love caffeine as much as you love caffeine.

Speaker 2: 21:21

Yeah, they didn't need to know that Right.

Speaker 1: 21:24

Yeah, but if nothing else, it's at least reason to watch the amount of caffeine that you're taking on a daily basis. That's why for me I know because I do love caffeine and I know that if I drink about 200 to 300 milligrams max a day, then especially if I drink it, you know, before 10 am, then it'll be cleared out of my system enough. But if there's a day where I wake up and I'm already super anxious, for whatever reason, then I'm not gonna drink caffeine that morning.

Speaker 2: 21:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:56

Because it's especially if I have to perform like if I'm gonna be speaking or there's something that I really have to be on my game for. The last thing in the world I need is to be more anxious because of caffeine.

Speaker 2: 22:06

Yeah, and so the more caffeine that you drink or that you intake, it increases the chance of experiencing anxious symptoms, right?

Speaker 1: 22:18

I mean, that's the theory right, and every person does tend to be different in like how quickly their adenosine receptors can get rid of the caffeine.

Speaker 2: 22:26

It at least increases the chance that you'll.

Speaker 1: 22:29

I mean for sure. So it is one of those kind of low-hanging fruits. If someone is feeling anxious, a great first question is let's look at your caffeine intake.

Speaker 2: 22:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Well, the reason it's hard is because caffeine is a drug.

Speaker 2: 22:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:44

And we're addicted to it.

Speaker 2: 22:45

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:46

It's the most commonly used drug in the world. Yeah, and it works. It gets us, it wakes us up, and so then you start having to get into people kind of trying to like fight to keep their caffeine yeah, right, because we're addicted to it. Yeah, but it's. We'll talk more about mindfulness and different things like that later in the episode, but it really is going to ultimately end up coming down to what is it that is best for your body and for what outcomes you're wanting to have in your life, and what changes are you going to be willing to make because of that? And caffeine may need to be looked something to be looked at, at least cutting down on it, even if we're not giving it up, all right.

Speaker 1: 23:30

So let's look at some potential risk factors If there has been a negative or stressful life event, especially someone, or especially one that someone experienced as a child. So there's an ACEs study which stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, and it has about 11 questions. You can Google it. One of those, or a couple of those questions are did you grow up in a home where a parent was incarcerated, or where a parent was an addict of some kind, especially an alcoholic, or where your parents divorced? Were you sexually abused as a child? Did you experience any other type of traumatic event as a child? All of these things can lay a foundation or be a potential risk factor for future or continued anxiety into someone's life Because, again, it has alerted the brain that there is something to be scared of out there that you don't know how to process, and especially the longer it goes unprocessed, the more it continues to be a lingering fear in the back of our minds. So, like with watching how my grandmother had died and watching how my mom experienced that, and then, shortly after that, my sister moving away to college and I was six years old and none of these things at their core seem like a traumatic event. And it wasn't traumatic in the sense of the ACEs study and the big T trauma things that people go through.

Speaker 1: 25:04

But also think, for a six year old who my sister, was my life. I mean she was kind of like my second mother because she was 12 years older than me. I spent most of my time with her. She would drive me around to things, take me to school, and all of a sudden she's gone. And then all of a sudden my grandmother's gone and I'm going to a funeral and I see someone laying in a casket and I have no idea, like, how to comprehend what this means. And then I see how upset my mom is, and I've never seen my mom cry this much or be this upset, and my six year old brain has no idea how to comprehend any of that.

Speaker 1: 25:41

And so in my mind, it's think, my mind, is like there's danger that you aren't even aware of, and so, as I continued to grow up, my body was on alert for these dangers that I might not know about. So all of these things that popped up, like when tornadoes began to hit my town, that I lived in Georgia and people were dying, then it was like, well, that's scary and it's my body's way of trying to control the situation that I'm in, because I never wanna be out of control. That's the way that the mind thinks. Like if I'm out of control, then something could like spring up on me and it could hurt me and I'm not gonna know how to process it. None of it's logical right, like none of it's the way it actually works, but this is the way that our brains think, especially the younger our brain is when we experience some of these harder things that we might go through.

Speaker 1: 26:42

As we also said, genetics can play into this, and then even, like people's personalities can play into this. There are people who are more shy, are more introverted, and if they're forced into situations where they don't feel comfortable, even that can be something that increases their anxiety. So there's several things out there that can increase anxiety, but it doesn't mean that it's a death sentence. So what can you do to calm anxiety? Because that's really the core of all of this Anxious thoughts don't have to overtake us, and the anxiety that can wreak havoc on and inside of our bodies doesn't have to own us either. We can begin to be intentional about the things that we do to calm anxiety in us and within us. So the first thing that we can do to calm anxiety is one of my favorite things in the world, and that is exercise. Exercise can improve so many different parts of our emotional health, including how we respond to things emotionally.

Speaker 1: 27:49

There was an article that was written in 2014 by Childs and DeWitt in Frontiers of Physiology. They took 111 individuals between the ages of 18 and 32, and they had participants engage in different stressful situations and then different non-stressful situations, and the results found that participants who regularly exercised exhibited less of a decline in their overall positive effect so basically their overall demeanor after experiencing stressful situations, than sedentary participants. Moreover, here's a quote from the article. Moreover, positive but not negative effect has been linked to a decreased risk of mortality. Thus, an ability to maintain greater positive mood during stress exposure among regular exercisers may serve as a protective function, minimizing the accumulation of stress burden with repeated exposures that is linked with the development of disease.

Speaker 1: 28:55

What does all of that mean? That means that when we have a negative outlook and when we have a negative effect, that it actually impedes our ability to better deal with stressful situations. But Exercise, for whatever reason, I believe it's because it moves some of this stress and tension out of our bodies through doing these movements of exercise. But exercise is a protective agent basically against this, to where people who exercise tend to be able to face stressful situations with a better effect, with a better mood. They tend to have a more positive outlook going through really stressful situations. And it's probably because you have to do a lot of really hard stuff when you exercise so you learn how to deal with a really negative situation and also like almost just takes your mind off of it too.

Speaker 2: 29:49

Like if you're like doing a workout, like you have to focus on what you're doing when you're working out or you're going to get hurt. So it's almost like just completely pushing it like forces you to push those anxious thoughts kind of out of the way, even for a little bit.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it. I have a friend who she did CrossFit. She was a pretty avid exerciser and then she went through a really difficult pregnancy, to the point that when she gave birth she ended up getting into a situation where she almost died and she ended up there like only I think it was only like 10 to 20% of women make it through what she went through in childbirth, and what they told her after she kind of stabilized and got into a better place was it's the fact that you were such an avid exerciser that your body was used to being under this kind of stress and was able to pull through in this moment.

Speaker 2: 30:47

Yeah, so your body's kind of conditioned for it. Yeah, kind of conditioned for it.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Yeah, that's right, and there's been several articles that have looked at this association between exercise and anxiety. Another one by LaTarri et al in 2018 looked at groups of people split into an exercise group and a control group and basically found that the participants in the exercise group showed a decreased Beck depression inventory and Beck anxiety inventory, so they experienced less anxiety and less depression because of the exercise that they had, and it was a large effect size, basically meaning that there's different levels of magnitude of effect in research and in statistics. There's small, medium and large, and a large effect size is, of course, the best. It typically means that it is the more statistically significant. There's not necessarily levels of statistics significance, but the larger the effect size, the more we can trust that. That's a generalizable idea for the general public. Exercise, it helps depression, it helps anxiety. That's the bottom line.

Speaker 2: 31:57

Also, just before we forget, if you want to go and check all this research, it will all be linked below down in the show notes as well. So after the show is over, if you want to go and check any of this out, double check us, you know, check us on our work you can go and do that. It'll be linked in the show notes below.

Speaker 1: 32:12

Oh, I love that we're citing our work, because that's what researchers do which is great.

Speaker 1: 32:19

So what are some recommendations quickly for types of exercise. I could do a whole program and have done full programs about exercise. There was one that released episode 195 where I was debunking the top 10 exercise myths and in there we give some recommendations about exercise and things that you can do and all of that. So definitely go check that episode out. It'll be linked in the show notes as well, but we'll briefly cover some here as well. So these come from Harvard Health.

Speaker 1: 32:48

30 to 40 minutes of moderate exercise, such as walking, or 15 to 20 minutes of vigorous exercise, such as running, rowing, swimming, power, walking, things like that those are some great places to start. If we're looking at the general recommendations. Really you want to try and aim as much as possible to getting 150 to 180 minutes minimum of exercise, especially cardiovascular exercise, a week and that's kind of on the low end. But we all have to start somewhere. So, starting with 30 to 40 minutes of moderate or 15 to 20 minutes of vigorous, actually, if you're just starting, you should just start with walking. You should just start with getting your body moving and work up into moderate and then work up into vigorous exercise. Another idea is aiming to walk at least two miles a day or do the equivalent amount of another activity. If you can't walk for whatever reason, bike row, find another one that you can do, and it's better if you can do a two mile walk all at one time. It actually builds up your cardiovascular system specifically for your health, like your heart health really benefits from that as opposed to chunking it into 15 minute increments throughout the day. But doing something is better than doing nothing.

Speaker 1: 34:09

Strength training is also super helpful. I love a good mix of cardio and strength training. Of course you have to go at your pace and at your expertise level and what you're comfortable with. But strength training and stretching are also really good additions to any cardio type program. Even if that cardio is walking, still find a way to do some strength training, even if it's body weight and stretching. It really gives you a more overall, comprehensive way to approach exercise. And then there are auto regulation exercises, which is just a fancy word for breathing, and actually the mechanics of the way we breathe has a huge impact on our exercise. I won't get into all of that now, but I will say that later in the show we're going to be talking about breathing and muscular relaxation and some different tools and techniques that you can use for that. So stick around, we're going to get to that pretty soon.

Speaker 1: 35:01

So the first thing we can do to calm anxiety is exercise. I love that one, and that one has made a really big difference in my life. The second one that we have is connection with others and socializing. I love that this is a way to decrease anxiety and that research indicates that, because it's so true that when you begin to feel anxious, you can become a hermit and you can start to think that the world is going crazy and that you're all alone and that no one understands and the sky is falling down and it kind of just feels like the world becomes closer and closer and smaller and smaller. And it's so true that when we can socialize and find comfort and encouragement through others who can help to calm us down, it's so helpful in regulating anxiety.

Speaker 1: 35:55

So there was a study here that was of over a thousand individuals and it ended up finding in this study that people especially because the ages that they looked at here were five months to 20 years old, so it said emerging adults, kind of on the upper end of that scale 18, 19, 20 year olds who perceived a higher level of social support reported fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety a year later. It is a protective measure. Also, people who felt that they had more social support were less likely to report suicidal ideation, and females perceived that they had more social support than males. Maybe because women go to the bathroom together. I don't know why it is, but for whatever reason, females in that study perceived that they had more social support than men. You know what? I think? That's a great opportunity for men to realize hey, other men need friendship. And I don't know, because I'm not a guy. You know our guys as likely as girls to be like girls night.

Speaker 2: 37:03

No, no, we're just stubborn. Yeah yeah, we like our alone time and it's usually not the best.

Speaker 1: 37:09

Clearly, that's what the study indicates.

Speaker 2: 37:10

Yeah, being alone with anxious thoughts is not really good, but guys are just the worst about trying to reach out to other guys to be like hey, let's go do something.

Speaker 1: 37:20

And probably less likely to talk about. I'm really struggling with this.

Speaker 2: 37:23

Yeah, yeah, especially that yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:27

Oh, I do want the time involved. Yeah, either open. I mean, I'm in a couple of text threads with ladies where we'll just hop in and be like this is what I'm dealing with today. But you know what? The research shows us? That that ability to have someone that we can turn to and connect with is extremely important. Friends are great. A spouse can help do this as well. A boyfriend or a girlfriend, people who you can see as a peer and on your level.

Speaker 1: 37:54

It's not necessarily the best to try and get your kids to be the person or the people who calm your anxious thoughts. That's not a place that you want to put your children into, but it is important to socialize with your children and to do board games or to have family night or watch movies together, because even just doing that even if you're not talking about anxiety or the things that are making you anxious with those people, especially your children, it can still help to regulate the anxious feelings that you may have. Another study by Osbay and colleagues in 2007 in the journal Psychiatry the quotes we're quoting here in human studies, low social support has been associated with physiological and neuroendocrine indices of heightened stress reactivity more likely to be stressed out, including elevated heart rate, increased blood pressure and exaggerated cardiovascular and neuroendocrine responses to stressors in a laboratory. So, basically, all the things we don't want our body to negatively experience. And, in contrast to low social support, which all of those previous things that we discussed were linked to high levels of social support appear to buffer or protect against the full impact of mental and physical illness, having high levels of social support actually help your physical body. They protect, they protect your mental health. It's good for you all around.

Speaker 1: 39:31

So what are some recommendations for ways that you can connect with others? Spending time with family and friends I've talked a lot, whether on this podcast or in some of the other content that I do for Merit Shilper, about how it's not just about quality time, it's also about quantity time being intentional, being with your family, being with your friends and prioritizing that, whether it's prioritizing a girl's night, a guy's night, a date night, a family night. Be intentional, make it happen, even if you don't necessarily feel like it. Begin doing the next right thing, because it's the next right thing for you and, in so many other ways, for the connection and the positive benefit of strengthening and forging those relationships with other people in your life that you care about.

Speaker 1: 40:23

Another way that you can connect with others is by joining a club or a group or finding a hobby you enjoy. There's a rec center close to where I live that offers classes, painting classes, dance classes, different things that you can go and get involved in and meet new people while you're there. If you're involved in a community or if you're involved in a church, then joining a small group, joining a Bible study for men or for women to find other people that you can connect with is so important in helping you get through difficult times in life. You can also meet people by volunteering, especially at an organization that you're passionate about. Then that can help to meet other like-minded individuals that you can connect with. Well, even just getting to know your neighbors what a thought Back when we knew our neighbors' names. Do you know your neighbors' names?

Speaker 2: 41:21

No, I know their dog's names but, I, don't know my neighbors' names.

Speaker 1: 41:25

Yeah, we're going through a sermon series at church about this right now. Anyway, I do know my neighbors' names, but I need to invite them to dinner. That's my next step. That's my next step. Kalia, I'm coming. I'm responding to that Facebook message. I promise, get to know your neighbors. These are the people who live around you and it can just be helpful to soothe anxiety in general if your spouse is going to be gone or if there's something crazy happening in the neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 41:55

To know that the people who live around you, that you know them and you like them and that they'll be there for you if you need them, then another recommendation for connection is to call a friend instead of just using social media. Get off the phone, at least looking at the phone, and instead call your mom, call your friend, call your sister, call your brother, call someone and have a conversation. I used to have a landline in my house. Did you ever have a landline? Yeah, and people would call and I feel like this is something my kids miss out on because no one's calling them to talk. Yeah, right, yeah, I did that all the time.

Speaker 2: 42:38

People would call. They'd call your parents, yeah, and then or at least for me, they'd call your parents and then your mom would be like, hey, somebody's on the phone, they want to talk to you, and then you go and pick up the phone.

Speaker 1: 42:48

It felt so cool.

Speaker 2: 42:50

Yeah, for real.

Speaker 1: 42:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:51

Especially when they became wireless.

Speaker 1: 42:53

Oh, big time.

Speaker 2: 42:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:56

Yeah, I had. So I was on the phone so much that my parents got me a separate landline phone number. Just, I wasn't even popular, I was just always on the phone with like one of three friends.

Speaker 2: 43:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:13

Wow. Here's the third thing that we can do to help calm anxiety journaling. Now this one is new. I haven't talked about journaling before, but I love this one. Over the years I've journaled. I mean, I've probably started journaling when I was in third or fourth grade. On and off I haven't been a consistent journaler, but journaling has so many positive effects on anxiety symptoms.

Speaker 1: 43:36

There was one study I don't know the year that it was done, but it was a meta analysis so they looked at the researchers, reviewed 20 randomized control trials and this was done in the journal Family Medicine and Community Health, and what it found was that the results of this work, of the meta analysis, revealed that a journaling intervention resulted in an average statistically significant reduction in patient scores on mental health measures, with the greatest benefit occurring in those who were suffering from anxiety. So there was a 9% reduction for the people who are struggling with anxiety as as compared to a control group, which is statistically significant. You might listen to that and think 9% I mean, that's almost 10 and 10% for someone struggling with anxiety. A 10% reduction in that level of fear is a huge step in the right direction, which is super helpful. Another study done in 2018 by Smith and colleagues in the Journal of Mental Health. The JMIR. Mental Health Journal found that positive effect journaling which I are my team just taught me about this a couple of weeks ago positive effect journaling had a really big impact on anxiety symptoms.

Speaker 1: 44:57

So what is positive effect journaling? Positive effect journaling is when someone basically has a couple of prompts that they use. That prompt I hate to use that word twice in a row but prompt in themselves a things that are that make them happy, whether this be gratitude or some other questions that put them in a positive mindset. So questions like what are you thankful for? What was a good thing that happened today? What is something that someone else did for you? How did someone help you today? All of these things that put us into a more positive mental state. And what the results of this study found was that when people did this positive affect journaling, it appeared to reduce mental distress, anxiety and perceived stress, and that patients who did it showed greater perceived personal resilience and they had higher social integration. They felt like they belonged more in groups with other people. So it was. It was huge. It was a huge success for these people. So positive affect journaling maybe that's something that you can easily start doing right now, where you take a journal and you simply each day ask yourself a question of what am I thankful for? What are three good things that happened today? Even if you don't do every day, the point isn't about being just completely diligent about it, marking it off every single day. The point is about putting yourself into circumstances where you can think about good things that happened and doing that more consistently throughout the day.

Speaker 1: 46:36

There's several different recommendations for ways that someone can journal. There's bullet journals, where you basically just kind of make bullets and log plans, log to-do lists, log appointments. I feel like I do this naturally, without knowing it. I'm always making a list of things that I have to do, and it helps me clear my brain of the things I feel like I have to do to make room for better thoughts, for more positive thoughts. I love this one. There's a collage journal. If you're a more artistic person I'm definitely not. If you are an artistic person then this is the kind of journal that uses art instead of words and helps you to make a vision board, and this might be a great way for you to kind of put some of those emotions out there.

Speaker 1: 47:19

There's emotional release journals, where you write about emotional responses to events and this can be related to events that happened that day. This is kind of just what I feel like is the regular form of journaling, where you're writing about your day. Maybe it's a prayer type journal, but your prayers are God, here's what's happening, and you're in conversation with God, releasing the processing of what is going on and what you're thinking about. Then there's gratitude journals, writing what you're thankful for each day, and then unscent letter journals. These are really helpful in overcoming grief and are used a lot in grief work, where you actually write a letter to someone who has passed away, someone who has hurt you, anything along that spectrum, where you write to them in a very honest way, which can be very cathartic, but you don't ever send them that letter. Maybe you're really angry at someone and you just write it all out in this letter, but you never send it and maybe destroy it so that no one finds it. But it can be a really helpful way to process.

Speaker 1: 48:26

Overall, journaling is a way to help us process our emotions in a similar way, although not equal to and a similar way to how counseling or therapeutic methods such as EMDR can help us process traumatic events in the past. We don't have EMDR as one of the main ways to overcome anxiety for this episode, but I have talked about it a lot in the past and we'll put it here as a side note and as a kind of a bonus point for you. If you have experienced trauma in your past, whether that's big T trauma or little T trauma, any situation in which you felt overwhelmed about a situation and powerless to do something about it and you struggle with anxiety, those very well may be linked, and engaging in a practice with a reputable and certified therapist to guide you through this EMDR process can be really helpful in allowing your brain to process previous traumatic events and has very high or has very good results and is very highly thought of in the psychological community. This leads us to number four, which is breathwork. Breathing and breathwork can help lower anxiety symptoms.

Speaker 1: 49:47

When we start to become anxious, as we said earlier, we begin to gear up to fight, and when we gear up to fight, we begin to breathe heavier. Our respiratory rate goes up, as we said earlier, and so we may not realize it that when we're anxious, we're actually breathing heavier, breathing faster, and what happens is, when we breathe faster, it continues that response, that physiological response in our bodies that continues the feeling of fight or flight. In fact, if I were to just sit here for a minute and breathe quickly, I would start getting anxious. Our body will react to the way that we breathe. So one way that we can oppose the feelings of anxiety is by slowing our breath intentionally. So when you do this breathwork, when you do intentional breathing exercises, intentional slow breathing it decreases anxiety and this was found in one study that was done by Magnan and colleagues in 2021 in the Scientific Reports Journal Anxiety decreased among older and younger adults after doing five minutes of deep and slow breathing, which is great. Another study that was done in 2023 by many people Balbi was the leading, or Balbin was the leading journalist or the leading researcher on this study, but it was also a journal study published by someone you may have heard of before named Andrew Huberman.

Speaker 1: 51:21

He was one of the guests or the contributing researchers of this study that was looking at physiological breathing and the way that our bodies respond to breath work with a physiological response. So this is Huberman's work, which is just kind of cool to look into. They took 108 participants and put them into two different groups. One had a mindful meditation protocol where they were simply instructed to lie down and, for five minutes, to focus on their forehead while breathing. So they weren't told to breathe any certain way or for any certain amount of time, or even to breathe deeply, just to lay down and focus on their forehead, but which sounds really relaxing to do in and of itself if we're gonna be real.

Speaker 1: 52:10

But then the second group of people were given some different breath work. They were put into some breath work groups. One was told to do cyclic sighing. So they were told to lie down and to inhale slowly until their lungs were full and then inhale again before breathing out to achieve max capacity and then to slowly and fully exhale. This is called cyclic sighing.

Speaker 1: 52:38

Huberman talks a lot about it on his podcast as the physiologic sigh, and it goes like this you breathe in, you breathe out twice through your nose, you breathe out once through your mouth, and that specifically was compared to box breathing, where you breathe in for a count of four, you hold it for a count of four, you breathe out for a count of four and then you hold the breath out for a count of four, and it was also compared to cyclic hyperventilation, which is similar to the Wim Hof method for any of you who may know that but it's where the cyclic hyperventilation is more like this. So it's a lot of breathing but it's really focusing more on the inhale than it's focusing on the exhale. And here's what their results found. They also took some anxiety inventories along. All of the groups took an anxiety inventory along with this. They found that exhale emphasized.

Speaker 1: 53:45

Well before that. They found that cyclic sighing, which is the breathe in, breathe in again and then breathe out through your nose, had significantly higher increase in positive affect when compared to just the mindful meditation, just the people lying on the couch thinking about their foreheads, which I still think sounds calming. But the cyclic sighing had way better results in positive affect and the exhale emphasized that the cyclic sighing group had the absolute highest increase in positive affect. Here's why Because it's in our exhale that our body down regulates. It's in our inhale that everything is gearing up to go. It's in our exhale that we can calm down. So when you focus on doing the breath in, the breath in and the exhale, you really wanna focus on making the exhale longer than any of the two inhales. So it should go a little something like which already feels good.

Speaker 2: 54:59

Yeah, yeah. Actually, after I saw this on a human episode, I started doing it when I would feel anxious and it works, like it really does, like you just did, like immediately makes you feel 10 times better.

Speaker 1: 55:12

Yeah, they've also talked about. He's said it on the podcast. I don't know if they put it in the if they published it in the paper, but that doing it in the middle of exercising is a great way to like reset you and get you ready for your next round.

Speaker 2: 55:27

Interesting.

Speaker 1: 55:28

Yeah, which is really interesting. There's many different types of breathing, though. We've talked about box breathing. There's the belly breathing, where you just focus on breathing in to your belly. You can kind of put your hand on your belly and really focus on filling up your diaphragm. Actually a fun side note on that one If you do that, laying on the ground, you really want to focus on filling your not just your belly up, but you're focusing on filling out your core as you breathe in and expanding your core.

Speaker 1: 55:57

So if you had a pair of shorts on, you would even want to feel your core expanding on your back, like the back part of the bottom of your back, like top of your glutes. You would want to feel your breath even expanding your shorts in there. So why this? Because it's about deeply breathing and the deeper that we're able to breathe. It actually helps us to be able to breathe better when we're exercising, when we're running, especially with cardiovascular training, when we're in our day-to-day life, and the posture that we're in when we breathe, which I won't get into here has an effect on a lot of things, a lot of things as well.

Speaker 1: 56:39

But by just beginning by focusing on breathing is a great place to start and some immediate impacts to feeling more resilient. We actually see in the brain that the areas that light up with resilience, like the amygdala clearing out the amygdala can happen quicker when we focus on things like four-by-four box breathing, the psychological side or the physiologic side, and different things like that. So you definitely have options. And then our fifth and final point of how we can calm anxiety is through mindfulness. Oh, mindfulness, it is the most, I believe, misunderstood or least well-understood parts of anything that we've probably talked about today. How would you define mindfulness, jason?

Speaker 2: 57:31

I don't know. That's a great question. I have no idea. This is something that I was actually really interested in getting in to this last, I guess, section of the podcast, because I really don't know. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what mindfulness is.

Speaker 1: 57:44

But you hear people talk about it a lot yeah, all the time, all the time.

Speaker 1: 57:47

But I don't think anyone people know, but I think the majority of people are like oh, it means I think there's kind of a thought out there that it means doing things slowly or doing things, and it's not even necessarily slowly. It's about being intentional in what you do, even if it's fast. And I will say I've talked before maybe on the podcast, maybe not, but Dr Justin Brewer is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist in this area. He wrote a book called Unwinding Anxiety, which is a fantastic book Highly recommend that you read it. He's also written another book recently called the Hunger Habit. I really wanna get him on the show. We'll see if we can get him on, but if not, I'm probably still gonna specifically one day go through the book the Hunger Habit and give you my thoughts about it, because it's been an amazing book. Why? Here's why he talks a lot about mindfulness, and I'm gonna get into why in just a minute.

Speaker 1: 58:45

But mindfulness is a focus on attention and acceptance. Here's really what that means. It's giving an intentional attention to what we're doing and why we're doing it and noticing the results. So mindful eating, as an example, is when, before we eat, we even ask ourselves am I actually hungry? Like what is my body actually telling me? Because here's the thing and this is something that Dr Judd talked about in the book, where he said a lot of us spend so much of our adult life not listening like intentionally not listening to the things our bodies are telling us. We go into, like we do intermittent fasting because we hear that it's the best thing to do, but we're ignoring our body and telling us what it needs, and so on and so forth, and so we kind of become creatures that don't know how to listen to our bodies and our body doesn't know how to talk to us because we haven't listened. So when we actually stop and think, how do I actually feel right now?

Speaker 1: 59:54

And one of his kind of prompts, one of Dr Brewer's prompts in the book, was take this next day and just listen to every like, try and be mindful throughout the day of what is it my body needs right now and what is it trying to tell me.

Speaker 1: 1:00:09

And there were times during that next day I would just stop and think. You know, I've actually needed to go to the bathroom for like an hour, but I've been in a ton of meetings and I just haven't listened. I've like pushed it down and pushed it away. But what does my body actually need? Or sometimes it's that we need to get up and walk, but we're in the middle of trying to get something done and we're trying to push through and power through and our minds aren't clear, but we're still trying to push through when our body is telling us what we need. So when we begin to have a mindfulness, a, an attunement to our body and what our body needs, and then an acceptance of what that is. Now I don't really think that your body ever needs three donuts, but sometimes Sounds good to me.

Speaker 1: 1:01:00

But sometimes people may, but actually, but in reality, some people may get to the point where, like, my body needs something to help me stay awake. Does that mean that it's food or does it mean that it's blood flow? Does it mean I mean it just takes time and a process of listening to your body and kind of working through this mindfulness that helps us begin to understand what our body's trying to tell us and how we should respond to our bodies, which leads to the next part of it. So specifically in his book, the Hunger Habit, he's talking about eating. So before you eat, ask yourself am I actually hungry or am I thirsty, or am I bored or am I angry? And am I just trying to cover up those emotions with food? And then maybe you are hungry, then eat.

Speaker 1: 1:01:48

So, if you are hungry, eat, but as you eat, be mindful about the food. How does it actually taste? Do you even like it? Chew it, not necessarily just slowly, slowly, but like thoroughly, to where you can actually taste it and enjoy the food while you're eating it, as opposed to just scarfing it down. And then, after each bite, ask yourself intentionally do I want more? Do I need more? And then be mindful of how you feel after you eat this. I started doing this as well about. I've been reading this book for a couple of weeks, and last week I began to realize there were foods that I was craving on a daily basis. But when I began to be mindful about how I felt during and after eating them, I realized I don't actually like that food anymore, like.

Speaker 2: 1:02:51

I don't want it. Yeah, it's gross. Yeah, it's almost like you're becoming actively hyper aware of what your body is trying to tell you, right, and actually responding to it.

Speaker 1: 1:03:02

And actually responding to it. Yeah, what a novel idea. And that's the other reason why it's so important to not multitask while eating, as an example, because we're not focused on how the food makes us feel, we're just focused on like this robotic movement and that's one of the things I've actually begun to enjoy has been I'm not going to eat in front of the TV or while scrolling social media or whatever. I'm actually going to just sit there and enjoy my experience of eating.

Speaker 2: 1:03:38

Interesting.

Speaker 1: 1:03:39

It's been really interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

Yeah, I need to try that Right.

Speaker 1: 1:03:41

Yeah, it's been revolutionary and it's like the simplest thing in the world. But that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about mindfulness, and it doesn't mean that you do it slowly you can, but some people live busy lives but it's about being mindful, even in the midst of the busyness, of how your body is reacting to something. So how does this relate to anxiety? Well, a lot of us do a lot of things to cope with anxiety that actually don't help us, caffeine being one of them. Like we talked about earlier, it's that being mindful of your morning coffee. This was me this morning.

Speaker 1: 1:04:17

I was sitting there drinking my coffee and with each sip, I was just trying to be really intentional with how is this making my body feel right now and how is this making my anxiety feel right now. And because I wasn't just gulping it down, I was really trying to be intentional. I wasn't really doing much work or anything as I was going through that process. I got about a third of the way done and I said you know what? This is it, this is good. If I take any more sips, it's gonna be too much, I'm gonna be too anxious.

Speaker 1: 1:04:49

And I had some recording I had to do earlier this morning. That was important and I didn't wanna be anxious for that, but I wanted to be alert and I wanted to be at my best. So I know I needed caffeine, because I'm used to having caffeine, but I was mindful about it. That's where this comes in. It's not about just being a robot to our habits, but really understanding are the habits that we have, even the best ones for the person that we're trying to become and the life that we're trying to live.

Speaker 2: 1:05:18

Yeah, well, now that you mentioned coffee, like I think I have sort of been practicing a little bit of mindfulness, but like didn't realize it Because like this week I haven't had like any coffee, because not in the mornings I've had other forms of caffeine, but like not like a big glass of coffee or a cup of coffee. Because last week I was like I don't know if this is actually doing anything.

Speaker 1: 1:05:43

Like, I feel like I'm just.

Speaker 2: 1:05:45

I'm drinking coffee and sugar.

Speaker 1: 1:05:47

Right.

Speaker 2: 1:05:48

And it's like not really For what? I don't really do anything Like. Maybe like a little bit of the caffeine is helping just to kind of get me going, but I feel like the majority of it, especially the way that I drink my coffee, is a lot of sugar and it's probably not good for me.

Speaker 2: 1:06:04

I know, it's not good for me, yeah, so yeah, just, I guess becoming aware of that has I don't know, I guess I didn't realize that I was becoming aware to it, so maybe I just need to focus on that in other areas of my life.

Speaker 1: 1:06:17

And see, that's the interesting thing about an. In general, in the psychological community, willpower is a very controversial topic because there are some people on the side that say willpower is finite, you only have so much of it and you can only muster it as much as you can, and then, once you've mustered all you can, it's done. There's other people who say willpower is infinite and you like, the more you exert and exercise willpower, it's like a muscle it'll just get better and easier. I really don't know where I fall on either end of that spectrum, but what I do know is that habit formation and being motivated to do something, to form new habits or to get into a new routine, which is a huge part of willpower is all about what our brain sees as the reward. And when we are on autopilot, then we're not.

Speaker 1: 1:07:14

We might believe that something is a reward, like, oh I this coffee with a bunch of cream in it, like I know I like it because coffee wakes me up and all of this stuff and the more. And if we don't stop to think about it, then that's what our brain is gonna continue to see as the reward. It's what we're gonna keep doing because we're programmed to do it. We are creatures of habit. And it's not until we actually stop that cycle, that automatic cycle within our brains, and say what is this the rewarding thing? Because if our brains will begin to realize, if they kind of decide for themselves like, oh, that's not rewarding, it stops the habit, or better, stops the habit.

Speaker 1: 1:07:59

And it's kind of like if you try and tell a kid to do something, they're not gonna do it, but if it's their idea they'll do it. We're kind of like playing that game with our brain, and so it really is about having the intentionality. So, even after exercise, a lot of people will say, oh, I hate exercise, but have you ever taken the time to sit for two minutes after you finished an exercise and see how your body feels? Because there's a ton of endorphins that are going off. There's probably a bunch of dopamine, like in that moment you probably feel really good.

Speaker 2: 1:08:33

Yeah, you're missing it. You're missing the best part and you're missing it right.

Speaker 1: 1:08:36

And that's gonna be the positive reinforcement that your body needs to continue to do it again.

Speaker 1: 1:08:42

It's 100% right.

Speaker 1: 1:08:43

When I finished my run yesterday morning, I just like basked in the glow of my run because I and I didn't. I have not always loved running, I have not, I hated running. But yesterday, like there's so much that just happens and I mean we talked about with exercise or so much that happens in our body and when we can just like, even in just thinking, like I'm so proud of my body and what it just did, it re-emphasizes the right behavior and too often we miss the, we skip over, like we don't acknowledge ourselves and the great things we've done and the hard things we've done and we just like muscle through into the next thing and it's making it harder to keep doing the right things over and over. And so people then try to eat right or they try to exercise or they try to stop eating sugar or whatever it is, but they're making it harder, we're making harder I do this too because we don't actually stop and express gratitude and like feel the positive benefits of when we do the right things. I'll end my soapbox there.

Speaker 2: 1:09:51

No, it was good. That was a very good.

Speaker 1: 1:09:53

So mindfulness is important. There's some ways that we can do mindfulness. We can do like I mean, you can look online, like there's things where you can just kind of do body scan, like body scan meditations, where you kind of start with your feet and just ask yourself wherever you are lying in bed at night when you wake up in the morning maybe just sitting in your office midday but you feel like you've become in a slump and you just start to ask yourself how do my toes feel right now, how do my feet feel? And you kind of start going up your body, focusing on each individual area and just seeing what it feels like in the moment, to get back in tune with figuring out what it looks like to be attuned to your body and to be mindful of what your body is experiencing at any given moment. So those are some ways that you can do that. Okay, we've covered a lot. We have.

Speaker 1: 1:10:45

There were five. We've covered five main ways that you can decrease anxiety. First is exercise. Second is socializing or connection with others. The third was Breathing. Breathing we talked about the physiological side. The fourth one Journaling, was journaling and the fifth one was mindfulness. What are your takeaways, jason?

Speaker 2: 1:11:11

I think, for me personally, focusing more on, obviously, caffeine consumption I feel like that probably plays more of a role in anxiety than at least I realize and so being more aware of how much caffeine I'm taking in every day, as well as focusing on my breathing when I get in those anxious moments, because I know it works, like I've done it before. As well as journaling, like if you especially guys out there if you think that journaling is not gonna work, it does work, I promise, cause I've done it before and it works. I just have to do a better job of actually doing it. So, for me personally, those are kind of my key takeaways. And then, I guess, practicing a little bit of mindfulness too, trying to figure out that whole process and how I can better understand what my body is trying to tell me.

Speaker 1: 1:12:10

All right. So after like in the morning, waking up and not drinking caffeine, just sitting with like how do I feel, realizing if you feel good D it helps to break that tie. Or how do you feel after you journal being mindful about that helps reinforce the habit.

Speaker 1: 1:12:29

I think those are great key takeaways the breath and the breath one too. It's like the easiest one to do and the hardest one to do at the same time. So many of the things in health and wellness are that work are the things that are free and easy, but people still tend to buy thousands of dollars of supplements and weight loss pills and all of the things. There's no magic pill. There is only doing the right things that will lead to the right results. That's it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:04

The brain is a powerful tool too. Brain is a powerful tool.

Speaker 1: 1:13:06

Brain is a powerful tool and the brain can get us into a mess, like it is our greatest asset and our biggest weakness at times, because our hearts, which are like the way that we emotionally process things in our brain, our hearts can want to lead us astray and want to get us to focus on the things that we fear. As we said earlier in the episode, do not worry. It's a command that we see in scripture for those of us who are Christians, and a lot of people like to say we see it 365 times, because God wanted to say do not worry or do not fear, once for every day of the year. And I don't know, yes, maybe, sure, I think it sounds nice, but I believe there's a book in the New Testament that we see called Philippians, where there's this group of people that live in Philippi and Paul is writing a letter to them, and we won't necessarily go into what they might be anxious about, but here is the encouragement that Paul gives to those people when he says do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. I love this because we're gonna be anxious about things. I am anxious about a lot of things, but if he doesn't just say don't be anxious like, stop being anxious, stop being ridiculous, stop being such a girl, that's not what it says. It does say do not be anxious. But then it tells us what to do in everything, in everything that you're scared about, in everything that you're worried about, in every fear that you have, as crazy as it might seem or as real as it might be, in everything, by prayer and supplication, by prayer and asking God to take this from you, let your requests be made known to God and don't forget the part about thanksgiving, about gratitude.

Speaker 1: 1:15:18

We talked about gratitude. We saw in the research how gratitude leads to a decrease in anxiety, and scripture tells us that too, and it tells us that God will give us peace that surpasses all understanding. I have prayed very many times in the middle of the worst of my anxiety, that God would give me peace, because in my body it didn't make sense how I could find it. I couldn't find it. I could never find it on my own. But God gave peace that surpassed understanding, and he will continue to guard your hearts and your minds, especially if you ask him to. My favorite part is where it says and maybe many of you have heard this verse finally, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. That's what the research just told us Gratitude, think about the good things, think about the positive things, think about the things that you can be thankful for, and these are the things that will change your heart and that will change your mind.

Speaker 1: 1:16:36

I hope that you've enjoyed today's episode. If you think that there's someone in your life that you love, a friend or a family member who could benefit from this, please share it with them. And also, don't forget to hit that follow button. If you're listening on Apple podcasts, if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to hit that subscribe button so that you'll always be notified when we have new content come out, but also because, honestly, it helps us to reach more people, so please do that. We would also love for you to leave a review or leave a comment, because we really do love hearing from you. Until next week, stay strong.