Caroline Foran

And when it comes to anxiety, especially if your body has been under strain for a long time and maybe it's stress that has tippled over into more anxiety territory.

The way our brain receives information, everything comes in through the brain stem and it goes up through the fear centres of our brain before it gets to any logical part.

And that is because primarily our only goal is survival.

So we have to first register if something is a threat, if something is not safe, because it doesn't matter.

Having a nice idea about something is the last thing that we need if we're not safe.

So all anxious thoughts, we're trying so hard to not have them.

We're trying to master our thoughts.

A lot of them are pre-rational.

They're happening before you've even become aware of it.

And that's okay.

And instead of, I wish that people knew and I wish that I had known.

to not try to like outmaneuver your thoughts.

And I was focusing so much on heat up here and changing here and trying to be someone who didn't have anxious thoughts when of course I was having them because of the situation I was in, because of how worn out the part of my brain that can say, no, we're okay, we're safe.

So when you can sort of say, okay, well, I'm not willing myself into these anxious thoughts, they're happening, but it's how I respond to them is where I can make the most meaningful difference and meeting the anxiety in the body.

So

I spent, like I said, so long, like we focus so much on the cognitive and we're trying to do everything top down, like how we think about anxiety and all of that's important to a point.

But sometimes instead of trying to like stop the anxiety or change the anxiety, it's showing your body safety and then your mind kind of follows suit, even in really small, like micro ways.

So, for example, like I would have learned

I mean, I remember people say, oh, go for a walk.

I'm like, oh, if that would have helped, I would have done that by now.