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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode.
And if you're out there and you love this podcast, send me a text message right now because I will text you back with inspirational, motivational mindset tips and tricks throughout the week to help you improving it better. It's 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to be talking about your anxiety and how to stop feeling so anxious about your anxiety.
Anxiety is on the rise, but anxiety itself is very natural. And so people are like, I want to get rid of my anxiety. And I'm like, no, you want to get rid of certain aspects of your anxiety. Because anxiety is a natural response to fear and to stress and to uncertainty and more specifically perceived threats.
If you have anxiety when you're walking down, like you start getting a real anxious feeling when you're walking in the dark, going through a crowded dark room and you start getting anxious, well, maybe that's something that's telling you you should be anxious so that you protect yourself. Or if you're going through a dark alley and you get anxious, that's a good thing.
But when you're anxious and feel anxiety when you're sitting in your house watching TV or just hanging out, probably not the best time to be anxious. There's nothing to really fear in that moment. And so it's a good thing for humans because what it is, is it is our brain projecting itself into the future and then telling our body to prepare for some sort of possible threat.
So think about that for a So at the core of anxiety is the thought of I am not safe. I need to prepare my body for some sort of attack or to be able to run or to be able to fight or to be able to freeze. And so your safety in some way feels threatened, believe it or not. And so the question is, what does it feel threatened by? That's what you really need to figure out.
You need to take a step back when you're feeling anxious and saying like, where do I not feel safe right now? So if you get, I'll give you a couple of examples. You get anxious about public speaking. It might show up in sweaty palms and your heart's racing and you start to think about, oh my gosh, I'm getting really anxious about this public speaking that I need to do.
The fear behind it might be, I'm not safe because I might be humiliated or I have to give a presentation at work. I'm not safe because what if I screw up this presentation in public speaking and then I get fired and then I lose my house and then I go broke and then live on the street. That's my safety being taken from me in some sort of way. So my body's preparing for some form of attack.
If you start to get real anxious about, When you go out to social events, it might be like, I'm not safe. I might say something wrong or I might be rejected or I might be kicked out of the tribe. And so I don't feel safe.
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Chapter 2: What is anxiety and why do we feel it?
And so I have this feeling of anxiety when I think about social events. Maybe you were raised by a mother who was really, really worried about health concerns. And so maybe you get anxiety about your health. And so how it shows up is you're excessively Googling anytime your elbow hurts or something like that. And so you get body scans or you're doing frequent doctor visits all the time.
It's like, I'm not safe because there might be something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with me. I got to make sure that anything that's wrong with me, I've got to fix. You know, maybe you're getting really anxious about being late somewhere. So you're rushing and you're frantic and you're sweating and your heart's racing and you're irritable.
And it's like, I'm not safe because if I show up late, everyone's going to see that I'm late. Others might think that I'm irresponsible and they might not want to hang out with me. So once again, I'm getting kicked out of the tribe again in some sort of way. Maybe you're sitting at work and you're having a great day and you're just putting your stuff together and just writing your emails.
You're sitting there and then bing, a notification from your boss pops up and it says, hey, are you free today at four? And you just get anxious immediately. And you're like, oh my God, I'm not safe because I might get fired. There must be something that I did wrong. Maybe they're downsizing. Maybe I'm not good enough in some sort of way. I can't lose my job because I got to feed my children.
I've got to feed myself. I've got to pay my mortgage. Or maybe you're sitting there and your phone buzzes and it says, mom calling. And you get all anxious, you get all tight. You can feel yourself start to get anxious. And you're like, oh my God, I'm not safe. Maybe there's something going on with her. Maybe there's something going on with dad. I might have to deal with something stressful.
Maybe she tells me that dad fell down the stairs. And it's like, there's all of these safety and these fears that are there. And so in some sort of way, when you have these anxious feelings, it's you feel like there's a threat. in your environment in some sort of way. It's good to have anxiety when you need it.
Like I said, when you're walking through a dark alley, to have those anxious feelings to prepare you just in case. It's not good when it's like an everyday, all day kind of thing. Chronic anxiety interferes with your daily life and we need to address it and it can be overcome. That's the best part about it. Anxiety almost always comes from your thoughts.
So really when we feel anxious, we need to take a step back and be like, what was I just thinking? And so we're going to go over some research-backed techniques to kind of help you overcome that anxiety, those anxious thoughts, and to be able to pull your body out of that anxiety, that anxious feeling that you have. And so...
When you look at anxiety, first off, the definition of anxiety itself is a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear that can range from mild to severe. It is normal and essential human emotion that serves as an adaptive response to danger or challenges. That's the definition of anxiety. Let me say it one more time, just so you can understand the actual definition is a feeling of unease,
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Chapter 3: How does the feeling of being unsafe contribute to anxiety?
So as soon as you start to notice anxious feeling, immediately go back to the breath. The fastest way to change your state is to go back to your breath every single time. Okay? That's the first thing. You got to deal with the body. You got to calm it down.
Then we can start to talk about the thinking side of things and how to change it, which goes to strategy number two, which is something called cognitive restructuring. It's a technique that involves identifying and challenging negative thought patterns or fears that are contributing to your anxiety, right? This is where you're gonna be like, well, what was I just thinking?
I was thinking this, you know, email from my boss, I'm definitely getting fired. It's like, well, hold on. Let me let me not just go down that road. It might be he wants to talk with me because I've been doing so well. Might be because of the fact that we have a presentation for a competitor to beat a competitor out in a week or something like that.
And so what you want to do with cognitive restructuring, it's rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy, and it's been shown to be effective with treating anxiety disorders specifically. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to identify your negative thoughts. That's the first step is to become aware of the negative thoughts that fuel your anxiety.
Notice when you don't feel good, become aware of how your body feels. And usually you'll start to notice the anxiety-inducing thoughts after you notice your body's reaction to it. Most of the time, our anxiety, like our thoughts around anxiety, come under the conscious mind, the subconscious. So it's like, bing, the email from the boss comes through almost immediately. Holy shit. I feel anxious.
I'm feeling all this anxiety. You don't even notice the thought that is in between the bing and the body, but there's always some sort of thought. And so you have to understand when you take a step back, when you do the breathing and then you say like, what was I just thinking? you'll usually start to notice the thought after that. You can usually start to use cognitive restructuring.
And so what you want to do, that's the first step is to notice it and all that. And the second step is to challenge the negative thoughts. Once you identify the negative thoughts, evaluate the accuracy of these thoughts. Try alternative explanations. Try another perspective. How valid is your thought that is making you anxious?
Psychologists have found that 85% of what we worry about never happens. Never. Out of the remaining 15%, only 3% of it happens the way that we think that it will. The other 12% of that 15% doesn't happen as bad as we think, which means 97% of what we think and worry about
and have anxiety over and mull over and ruin our day, 97% of it doesn't happen or turns out better than we think that it's going to. And so it's like, how can I take a step back and use cognitive restructuring to challenge the thought that is giving me anxiety? So that's the second thing. And number three is to replace your negative thoughts.
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