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 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I realized that that has become my superpower as a teacher because I know when I'm standing at the front of the classroom.
My shyness.
Because when I'm standing at the front of the classroom, there are always those students that say, oh, I know the answer.
I know the answer and I know that there's many more that want to talk to me that want to show me what they know want to have that interaction but can't do that and so what do I do I make sure that I am there 15 minutes before I stand there I talk to the students before I stay after class anybody that wants to come up for a casual conversation where you don't have to be the one raising your hand and I didn't even realize it until I wrote this book that that is a superpower of
of in-class empathy. And I have that particular form of empathy because of my particular form of anxiety, my social anxiety. And so imagine the 90% of people that have their particular form of anxiety. They know what it feels like. They know what's going through many others of our minds.
And what if you turn that around and you do what you do and say, how can I help somebody else in this way that I know I've struggled but I also know what can help, right? So that's one of my favorite superpowers.
I think the actual study was about the US.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah. So that's a great question. The answer is, long-term anxiety will have terrible effects on all of the physiological systems that are being activated. So what's happening when you have a stress response? Your heart rate is going up. Your respiration is going up. So long-term effects of anxiety and stress are heart disease.
The other thing that's happening when you're in a constant state of stress is that blood is being shunted from your digestive and reproductive systems to your muscles because you're supposed to be running away from the lion and you're sitting there worrying about your taxes instead or whatever, a Delta variant instead.
And so long-term effects, ulcers, reproductive problems, long-term reproductive problems with long-term anxiety. And that's just the body. So now we get to my favorite body area, the brain. And so long-term stress will literally start to first
kill off the dendrites of your neurons, the input structures of your brain cells, in two key brain areas, the hippocampus, critical for long-term memory, in the temporal lobe, and the prefrontal cortex, critical for decision-making, focus, and attention. And so, for example, PTSD, if you have PTSD, classic example of long-term stress, your whole temporal lobe gets smaller. Why?
Because you first start to degrade the size of your individual brain cells and then you start to kill them off. And so that is not memory problems ensue. So it is not good.
Yes.
Exactly.
Over months and years. And of course, there's different levels of intensity. Also, I should say that this book, Good Anxiety, is not addressing clinical anxiety. That is a different animal. For clinical anxiety, just as you would do if you had a broken leg, you need medical treatment. This is not a medical treatment for somebody that has chronic anxiety. This is the 90% of people
Let's say, yeah, I have some anxiety every day. I call it everyday anxiety. Everyday anxiety. So these are some of the approaches and mindsets that you can use to start to shift that negative effect of anxiety and shift it in to the basic brain activation that it is and start to help motivate yourself to address the things that you're afraid of.
You know, generally, and this is before the pandemic, fear of public speaking is one of the most common. Fear of money fears, another big one. I'm just thinking about all my own anxieties that are talked about in the book. Let's see. Early on, social anxiety is, you know, they mirror the clinical levels of anxiety. One is general anxiety disorder. It's just kind of
life and situations and interacting with anything start to produce anxiety. Social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders, one can start to worry obsessively about whatever that thing is that worries you. And of course, the thing that is on everybody's mind right now is the uncertainty around the coronavirus and everything that's happened in the future. We can't predict.
We don't know what's going to happen in the fall with schools or work, for that matter. And that uncertainty is the key driver for a lot of anxiety.
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