Dr. Wendy Suzuki

speaker

915 appearances 5 recordings 5 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 7 Jan

Dr. Wendy Suzuki’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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On Purpose with Jay Shetty · Wendy Suzuki: 2 Powerful Tools To Use When You Feel Stressed Out (This Will Lower Your Anxiety in 1 Minute) · 17 Mar 2025 podcast

Well, if I could answer that, that would be the $64 million question. And actually part of the answer is the brain evolved to help us remember things those lessons around dangerous situations that we have. So we don't go in that direction anymore. Yes, we might forget, but actually our brain has evolved to make those kinds of fear memories or difficulty memories the hardest to get rid of.

That is why PTSD is so hard to get rid of. And those you don't want to be carrying around. So I would ask a flip question, which is, How come we don't relive our most glorious memories more often in our lives? And in fact, I think of that because that is my favorite brain hack from good anxiety, which are tools that you can use to decrease your anxiety. And this tool is called joy conditioning.

And it is designed specifically to counter fear conditioning dependent on the amygdala. Joy conditioning is dependent on another structure called the hippocampus, which allows us to formally retain our everyday memories for events. And so joy conditioning is simply using all the tools that we know about neuroscience that make those kinds of memories stick, which is reliving them.

I just went on a beautiful week-long yoga breath work. It was actually not yoga, breath work retreat. And I completely unplugged. And so what I'm practicing my joy conditioning on is what it felt to be in that circle every day, every morning, every afternoon. I remember that the ocean was so loud. We were right by the sea. The heat was so hot.

The food or the fruits were so amazing, just the flavor of the fruits. And those are the things that revivification of the what, where, why, when, the taste, the smells, the sounds, that's what strengthens the memory. I am strengthening this joyous memory. And I do that consciously. And I invite everybody to do this, to kind of counteract all those negative memories that are hard to get rid of.

Let's fill our brains with all the most joyous, funny, fun memories of our lives.

Wow.

I think it depends on how you talk about your anxiety. And I think Again, going back to this learning process, can you talk about your anxiety as... what it brings you, what you learned from either the fantastic way you handled your anxiety or the non-optimal way. And then think about, well, how will I do that differently the next time? That is the classic growth mindset.

And if we can learn how to talk about our fear, our anxiety that way, that is beautiful. In my meditation this morning, actually, it was an auditory, you know, I was listening to a guided meditation. They asked me to think about four things, and I just loved it. I didn't know this was coming up. It was, what do you fear? What scares you? What brings you joy? And what brings you hope?

And I thought, wow, what great things to ponder. And it really kind of brought things into focus for me. The first thing that came to mind, what do I fear? Who do I fear losing more people? What am I scared of? And there it was, you know... I get scared of people's opinions about myself. What brings me joy? All the friends that bring me joy.

And what do I hope for when I want to build in this world? So it's about approaching. And there's anxiety in that list that everybody will do if they choose to do those four things. But again, anxiety is pointing you towards what you hold dear. And all of those questions point out what you hold dear and what your aspirations are.

So to summarize, mindset is so critical as we are living, even as we're talking about our bad day, our bad parking experience or driving experience. Is it to learn Or is it to commiserate or just to, you know, or you're not realizing you are focusing too much on a negative thing? Mindset and awareness.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So I think that something that has really helped me is to pay attention to who you are talking to. Who is... feeding you information in your life. And if it's too negative and if it, you know, you know this person is the best complainer

in the world and you join in because it feels good to complain, you know, with a friend about something, step back and instead choose somebody who has that growth mindset that can open up other possible ways to think about that. Do it yourself. Think, okay, you know, you can do an exercise. Do the complainer mindset on yourself, by yourself, and then do the growth mindset.

And ask yourself, how does that feel? What does it feel if I just go down the road of the complainer versus what if like, oh, I actually like that idea. What if I do that next time? Can you inspire yourself? So many different routes and coaches, therapists, they're experts at doing this as well. So that's another route to go. But podcasts are another route. This is a common topic in coaching.

in podcast world these days.

I must say, I'm more of an expert, not on healing from trauma, but on growth, in the positive direction. And so here's what growth can look like based on the things that we've already talked about. So we talked about the fact that moving your body can have an immediate positive effect on your anxiety, also on your depression, decrease your stress response. What's happening there?

Every single time you move your body, you're releasing a whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain. I like to call it a neurochemical bubble bath for your brain. I love that. And so you're giving yourself this bubble bath. What's in that bubble bath? Well, you've heard some of these neurochemicals before. Dopamine, I know you love talking about dopamine.

You and so many other people talk about dopamine in such interesting ways. Serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphins, that's what's being released in this bubble bath. And so, not surprisingly, you feel better after you walk. That is why you're feeling better. But the other thing that gets released is growth factors.

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