Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 521: Presenting The Dread Project

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

The team over at our sister show, More Than a Feeling, are diving deep into an emotion that a lot of us can relate to: dread. And while that may sound unappetizing, they’ve found a way to m...ake this series delightful and useful. It’s called “The Dread Project,” and today you’re gonna hear their kick off episode, and then next week, every day, in the More Than a Feeling podcast feed, you’ll find a short episode that will give you a new, short and fun exercise on how to work with your dread.Sign up for The Dread Project Challenge at dreadproject.com, and you’ll get five days of emails with insights from each day’s episode and the exercise that goes with it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant,
Starting point is 00:00:23 Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life project on your favorite podcast app. This is the 10% happier podcast. Dan Harris. Hello, party people. Today I want to direct your attention to a very interesting companion series that our sister show more than a feeling is doing right now. It's called the Dread Project.
Starting point is 00:00:57 That may not sound like a lot of fun initially, but I'm telling you actually it is fun and incredibly useful. And today you're going to hear their kickoff episode. And then next week, every day over in the more than a feeling podcast feed, you'll get a short episode. And each one will have a new, brief fun exercise for working with your dread, a very common feeling. And again, while dread may sound deeply unappetizing. I assure you, the team has found a way
Starting point is 00:01:28 to make this series a delightful and, as I said earlier, useful. So here we go now with more than a feelings. Welcome to the dread project. Hey y'all, welcome back to more than a feeling. I'm Salim Rushimwala. In case you're new here, what we do on this show is share stories, ideas, and insights on a fundamental but totally mystifying part of our life, our emotions, the good vibes,
Starting point is 00:02:01 the bad ones, the scary, the joyful, and we're kicking this season off by going deep on a feeling that seems like it's everywhere right now. A more than a feeling listener wrote in recently to tell us they were struggling with it. The title of the email was just dread. That's Raz to Reasy from Greeley, Colorado. And yeah, when Raz reached out about their dread, we had to get them on the phone to hear more. My name is Raz. I am a blind cartoonist, freelance artist
Starting point is 00:02:36 for almost 20 years, off and on, which it's fun. I consider it advanced fidgeting. I wonder if you would mind telling us the content to that email. Yeah, do you want me to read it? Please, it'd be wonderful. Yeah, okay. Let me beef up the text size a little bit.
Starting point is 00:02:55 Ah-ha, okay. Hello, Selim and your podcast team. Apologies for the grim email title. Ha-ha. I'm listening to your podcast. And when you asked for submissions, I thought of the feeling I get a lot, dread. I'm only now at 40 finding other people
Starting point is 00:03:10 who confront dread as just a part of their lives. I love how curious Razz is about their own dread, but they also expressed a deep longing to know who else out there feels it in some way. It makes me wonder how many of us there are, and if everyone feels it and just doesn't talk about it, or is it an anomaly to wake up in the middle of the night feeling like you fall into the endless space between stars?
Starting point is 00:03:35 I wonder if Dread is a universal feeling, or if it's different for everyone, is it fear writ large and strange or something else? Thanks for making this fantastic podcast, Razz. This is an amazing question, Razz. I also want to know if there are other people who are out there struggling with feelings of dread and what it's like for them.
Starting point is 00:04:00 It would take some serious time and energy to explore that and that's exactly what we're doing. We started putting that question out there It would take some serious time and energy to explore that. And that's exactly what we're doing. We started putting that question out there to more than a feeling listeners, our friends here at Temperature Happier, and beyond. My name is Lisa. I live in Oklahoma City. Kedar Young, Manhattan, New York.
Starting point is 00:04:20 I do feel the feelings of dread every day. Lurking over my shoulder, creeping up into the back of my mind. Jonathan Harmon and I'm 17 years old. I'm not going to act like I don't be worried about stuff because I do. Our first big takeaway from this call out is just wow. Y'all have been out there dreading a lot of stuff. My name is Helen Molly Matlock getting up in the morning and having to deal with whatever problems that day is going to bring. Hi, I'm David from New York City. An impending sense of doom. A sense of dread about what the future holds because things are so unpredictable.
Starting point is 00:04:59 My name is Elizabeth Alva. My name is Lindsay. I am from Beaver Creek, Ohio. I dread communicating how I feel. I feel a constant dread of the unknown Amy and I live in Linz, Austria. Zoe Miranda, it's not the distant future that scares me as much as the immediate tomorrow scares me. Oh God, what's gonna happen in the future what if I don't have a job at all?
Starting point is 00:05:26 Dread can take on a lot of different forms and intensities and like many emotion words can mean slightly different things to different people. So a working definition. When we use that word, what we're talking about in general is a scary feeling you get when you know or think that something you really don't want to have happen is going to happen. Behind the scenes, we've been thinking about it as fear plus time. It's a really uncomfortable sense of anticipation. Dread can show up around day to day things that just add up and wear us down. I'm Ashley Hamer. My name is Diana Zant. I sort of dread meeting new people because I assume
Starting point is 00:06:11 they're not going to like me. My name is Alfredo Ramirez and I'm from Miami, Florida. My name is Lindsay. I'm team the dishwasher or doing laundry or vacuuming. The small fuck-ups. I dread having to speak to another human on the phone. Then there's the really big things, often out of our control, and where the stakes feel very, very high. My name is Andrea. Betsy, loving rejection, loneliness, abandonment,
Starting point is 00:06:42 and mostly betrayal. So many things. Big dread that I guess I would have to name is Advanced Old Age Alone. Certainly the political landscape right now feels a little bit like... These external events are exacerbating everything these days.
Starting point is 00:07:02 COVID, ugly, hateful politics, war, climate change. That first listener who wrote us about dread, Rastorese, described it as a falling into the space between stars feeling. That's some poetic and very real existential dread. It's like that feeling that you're in the middle of something really vast and unknowable that like you're tiny and all alone. It may just be like the dread of dying and knowing that there will come a point
Starting point is 00:07:34 when like you stop, but the universe continues on without you. It's a strange feeling. And now we know so much of this fear plus time is out there. We can't just leave it hanging. We gotta explore it. Collect some helpful ideas for working with it. And most importantly, create some community around it. Because the worst thing about dread is that a lot of us feel like we're going through
Starting point is 00:08:00 it alone. Have you talked much with other people about dread or do you feel like it's something you can bring up with people easily? Oh gosh, no. In my experience, a lot of people, they want to stay on the surface of things. So like if you bring it up, they want to shut you down.
Starting point is 00:08:17 They're like, no, no, I don't want to talk about this. Which honestly, like that's fair. Like a lot of people don't want to be scared by these big thoughts. Silence and loneliness around dread makes it so much worse. Luckily, not everyone shines away from the topic. Hi, Peaty, really? Now? Oh, sorry. The dog has come in.
Starting point is 00:08:40 I'm trying to have a serious conversation, Peaty. Just comforting you here as you're talking about dread, you know? She does. It's hard to feel dread when you have a serious conversation, Petey. Just comforting you here, she's talking about Dread, you know. She does. It's hard to feel Dread when you have a dog. I don't think dogs experience existential dread. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Yo, I'm genuinely excited to kick off season 2 of more than a feeling with a full-on exploration of dread with all of you. Our mission is to be a little more like Pety the Dog and break through the silence around this big emotion.
Starting point is 00:09:18 We're going to look at the range of different dread experiences you're sharing with us and find out if we can all feel a little better even when we're anticipating the worst. We're calling this the Dread Project. It's got its own website, dredproject.com. And it's a special mini series that we don't want you to just listen to. This one's gonna be interactive.
Starting point is 00:09:43 There are five easy, fun little experiments you can try. I'm going to be doing them too. The idea is to help us all find ways to cope better with the dread that shows up in our own lives. And you'll be doing it alongside thousands of other listeners. We'll tell you how to join later on in the episode. So be sure to listen for that. Today though, we're going to start with some insights into why there's so much of these dread feelings out there, especially right now, and how some little shifts in perspective can let a lot more light into some of the dark places we go to. Because it turns out dread might serve a purpose that could actually be pretty helpful.
Starting point is 00:10:25 The Dread project begins in just a minute. Okay, so the Dread project is meant to be interactive, creative, hopeful, and we think helpful. Whether your Dread is attached to that nextom call or family dinner, or whether it's the rapidly escalating climate crisis, total political upheaval, talk of nuclear war, a global economy on the edge of collapse, there's clearly so much dread out there right now that even some of the mental health professionals who help us navigate our negative feelings are struggling with it.
Starting point is 00:11:09 I feel our earthquake every few months, like what's going to happen with that, and concerns about the world that now my daughter and my newborn son, what is this world that they're going to be inheriting. This is Dr. Ali Moutou, a clinical psychologist. He also teaches about mental health issues on his YouTube channel, the psych show. I live in Northern California. So for me, it's about climate change,
Starting point is 00:11:35 the wildfire season, which seems to be like year round now in California. Over the past couple of years, there's been so much going on. And there seems to be almost this dread cloud hanging over everything. People have mentioned both political tensions, climate change, of course, the pandemic. But I'm curious how much of that you're seeing and whether you think there has been a shift in the amount of dread people are feeling, or if there's something some better way to describe
Starting point is 00:12:08 that. Yeah, I think I'm going to have a good answer for you about that in about 10 years. We're so in the middle of this that it's very hard to know. I do know that pretty much every single mental health professional I know is beyond full and completely at the burnout point. And it is so hard to find a mental health professional right now. During the pandemic, rates to the ER for psychiatric emergencies, those went up. Quick disclaimer here.
Starting point is 00:12:41 Ollie says we don't yet know exactly why mental health professionals are seeing this happen. Even under normal circumstances, it's not unusual for adults to receive a mental health diagnosis at some point. And anxiety disorders are the most common. But we do seem to be living through some particularly dread-inducing years. Part of it's related to COVID, part of it's related to our political climate, part of it's related to technology, is everyone has had some kind of experience with this stuff. We were all impacted by the pandemic in some way, and we've all been impacted with polarization in some way.
Starting point is 00:13:23 Like, tread is the perfect word to use, to describe my relationship with some people in my family and me thinking about spending time with certain people leads to massive dread. That's, there is no other word to describe it. It's not a fear, it's not a worry. It's dread. And I didn't have that a few years ago.
Starting point is 00:13:53 I didn't. That has changed. I'm dreading this midterm election we have in the United States because I'm thinking about the conversations I'm gonna have to have with certain people. And I just don't wanna have them. Every generation has their own challenges to tackle, but even if we had been born into a period of peace and tranquility,
Starting point is 00:14:15 dread would probably still be with us to some degree. We know that a good chunk of our emotional temperament is genetic. Some people are born pretty fearless and they're the kids you see on the playground that are climbing a little bit higher. They're doing stuff that I never did because I was terrified. And then you have the opposite too, right?
Starting point is 00:14:41 You have kids that have a lot of what we call behavioral inhibition to the unknown. They press the brakes and they look around for a long time before they move forward. And then those people turn into adults and there's a lot of diversity here. So I think if you're someone who is more likely to experience dread that keeps you stuck. Maybe you're someone who is born with a volume turned up on anxiety. Whether or not your anxiety meter
Starting point is 00:15:11 is turned to 11 early on, it's normal to feel some level of dread as you move through the different stages of life. Throughout our lives, there are different fears that become more or less normal. Like a very young child, there's a certain age at which they develop stranger danger. Before that, you give a baby to anyone,
Starting point is 00:15:33 and you know, some babies are different, but most babies are just fine. As long as they're being held and fed, they don't care who they're with. But then at a certain age, stranger danger turns on, and they're only comfortable with people that they know. Similarly, a fear of the dark, fear of supernatural,
Starting point is 00:15:51 fear of death, these things turn on at different ages. And when you become a middle schooler and a high schooler, the primary fear becomes social rejection, and that tends to become a fear that sticks with us for our lives. And lives can change. If you end up taking care of others, if you have children, if you have aging parents in your lives, your dread might turn more to how am I going to take care of them? Am I turned to finances?
Starting point is 00:16:23 And you get more responsibilities and work, your stress can focus more on those things. But definitely this stuff changes with time, and it definitely changes with experience. So all these factors contribute to the levels of dread we experience throughout our lives. Genetics matter, life stages matter, and the people around us, that's a big one too.
Starting point is 00:16:47 For example, say you're at the age and childhood where you're starting to think about death, and the adults around you don't think you should be having that conversation yet. I'd see Roadkill and I'd ask if that was a dead animal, and my dad would say, no, it's just a stuffed toy. It's just stuffed toys all alongside the side of the road. That's how it went for Dr. Rachel Menzies.
Starting point is 00:17:08 She's a clinical psychologist from Sydney, Australia, where there's apparently a lot of roadkill. You don't believe that too long, right? Yeah, that's right. There's only so many stuff toys that can be on the side of it. Oh, hi. Despite this stuff toy mythology, Rachel grew up to be a leading expert on death anxiety and mental health conditions.
Starting point is 00:17:31 And she's written and edited a whole stack of books with titles like Mordles, How the Fear of Death shaped human society. And curing the dread of death. Rachel told us that kids are thinking about death from a really young age, even if adults don't realize it. It emerges in stages from around the ages of three to four to 10, and then by the age of 10, most children have a complete understanding of death,
Starting point is 00:18:00 even though we might not realize it. This is when kids are looking for answers, and if they get the message that death is something to fear or to avoid thinking or talking about, they can really take that to heart. We know with children that the way people talk to them about death is really important. They tend to have less dread around death
Starting point is 00:18:20 when they've had it explained in a really matter of fact, sort of objective way, just explaining the process of death, what that involves, what that means, that tends to help children cope better. And of course, life experiences in general play a big role. If someone was quite sick when they were younger, or saw other people be quite sick, those sorts of things can really create
Starting point is 00:18:40 that existential dread as people get older. I'm from a very mixed tradition, home lots of different traditions, mixing in the house. And one of them, an occasional duty that a person might have is washing a body of someone who's passed. And I can say that in the right circumstance,
Starting point is 00:19:00 there can be a kind of peace that comes with that activity. Culture, I think, in general, is one of the biggest things that shapes people's attitudes to death. You gave a great example of how some cultures have a much more intimate relationship with death, whereas in a lot of Western cultures, that is not the case whatsoever, people will die in hospitals or in nursing homes and their body is dealt with by the funeral industry
Starting point is 00:19:29 and it's a very sanitized version of death. Human mortality is such a big thing to try to grapple with. Once it shows up, we can spend the rest of our lives thinking about it. It's a full-on legitimate career for philosophers and religious leaders. We're gonna take a quick break, but in a minute, our friend Raz is back to tell us a bit about their dread origin story. There's a lot to learn from how their dread started during childhood and the coping skills they developed over time.
Starting point is 00:20:02 skills they developed over time. Razz Teresa was only six or seven when they started experiencing their first bouts of existential dread. They'd be lying in bed awake at night while everyone else was asleep. Everything is just dark and quiet and like lonely and like the sense of people around you just becomes missing when you're a kid. I think around the age when this started, I think I had experienced death in the family. In spite of a lot of the religious upbringing and indoctrination of my family, the answers people were providing me. I was just like that.
Starting point is 00:20:44 It doesn't seem realistic or right. I wish that was true, but that people were providing me. I was just like that. Doesn't seem realistic or right. Like, I wish that was true, but that can't be right. Because like I've seen pets die, I've seen great grandparents die, and they're not anywhere. They're just gone. And I think as a kid that that's haunting, and it can instilling you with the sense that like, that's going to happen to me. If you'd talk to an adult about your dread, when you were a kid, what do you now wish they would have said? Or what would you yourself say to that child version of you?
Starting point is 00:21:14 I had brought it up, I think, and I often just got dismissed. Like, you know, being pessimistic or something. I think I would have liked, and I tend to talk to my nephews this way too, I would have liked to have it just acknowledged. Even if the adults in my life have to come back and say like, you know, I don't know. That's a hard question, but I feel that too. I think kids know that adults don't know everything, so sometimes it's okay to have that confirmed with these big questions. There's one hopeful thing in what you just said,
Starting point is 00:21:45 hopeful for me personally. When my kids ask me something, there's lots of times where I'm like, whoa, my dude, I don't know, that's hard. Oh, goodness. And so it's reassuring that that might not be the worst possible answer. Well, I always wonder how it is that like adults forget
Starting point is 00:22:01 what it was to be a kid. Like so many adults forget that. But like kids, they're little people, they have their own thoughts. Like they're having understandings and realizations coming online, like, oh my God, is that what the world is like? If you ask Rachel Mendez that question,
Starting point is 00:22:19 it kind of is what the world is like. Being human and mortal is weird. And we do have to find a way to think about those things and somehow be okay with all of it in our own way. And Rachel told me there are five existential concerns that her field has identified. Death is just one of them. So the five main existential concerns which you have been identified are death, meaning or meaninglessness.
Starting point is 00:22:50 So, how do I find meaning in a world that doesn't have any inherent meaning? Identities, who am I as a person? Isolation, the fact that there is an unbridgeable gap between me and other people, that even I might have been with my partner for 10 years, but I'll never truly know what it's like to live life behind his set of eyes. And existential guilt, which is the idea that there are an infinite number of choices I could make in this world. And I can't try all of them. So I have to live with the consequences of picking one and not knowing if I've made the right choice.
Starting point is 00:23:28 These are big questions that concern all of us. And Rachel said she thinks a lot of seemingly tiny, everyday dreads could fall into some of those categories, even if we don't realize it, which might be why the stakes can feel so high with dread. We might be dreading going to work on Monday because we find that our work has no meaning for us. And it doesn't give us any feeling of connection to other people. That would be an example of a day to day feeling of dread that probably would tie into those existential concerns. We might be dreading hanging out with a
Starting point is 00:24:04 particular group of people because we don't feel that connection to them when we're with them. I'd like to just emphasise to people that these are normal things to think about and normal things to feel dread about, that everyone has to learn to grapple within some way across their life. So I think it's more a question of what extent are they experiencing it to rather than are they experiencing it at all? That is a crucial question. At a time when there's so much going on that's actually dreadful, how do we know if the dread we're feeling is too much? I mean, maybe it's exactly the right amount of dread. I asked Dr.
Starting point is 00:24:42 Alima to how he knows if someone's having so much dread that they might need some professional help. So what I look for is what's the thought that's coming up for you and how long is this thought sticking around? A lot of mental health challenges what they do is their lobby of being in the moment. But I think it's really dreadful about dread is how it can keep you stuck. I can keep you from taking any action besides thinking about this horrible
Starting point is 00:25:21 event that that may or may not occur in the future. But if we stay in those moments and just think about those things, dread can really be a barrier and a hindrance and a villain. If it's happening a lot and it's making it hard for you to live your life, that's when it's a problem and that's when we need to intervene. This seems like a good time to emphasize that during our Dread project, we're going to be offering up ideas for you to think about and try.
Starting point is 00:25:54 But please remember that this is in no way a substitute for working directly with a mental health professional. And if you find yourself struggling with difficult emotions at any point and you're looking for some direct assistance, we have some resources for you in our show notes. And whatever steps you might take to work with your dread, part of coping better is recognizing that this feeling does have some value. And that's where I think it's important to remember why we even have this emotion. And in so many ways, it's such an adaptive thing. The purpose of dread is not to paralyze you.
Starting point is 00:26:28 The purpose of dread is to help prepare you, is to help you think about what might happen. It's to help you take actions that you can right now. Oh, interesting. A healthy amount of dread is needed to show up to work and to make a earthquake preparedness plan and all of that kind of stuff. Sometimes Ali says, the actions we need to take
Starting point is 00:26:56 don't look all that active, but they're all we can do in the situation we're in. We can be with the people we wanna be with. We can move forward in our lives, in our work, in our families, in our friendships. And that's what I'm hoping people can get out of this is learning what are some ways when I am stuck with this dread that I can move forward and take action. This is such a key point. Working with Dread does not mean we kick it out of our lives, but our relationship with
Starting point is 00:27:31 it can evolve and improve. That was one of the most fascinating and inspiring things about digging into Dread with our listener Razz. They've been living with overwhelming dread feelings for so long, but they've also developed some internal resources for getting unstuck and moving forward. It sounds like you still have dread, like you still feel dread. Of course, otherwise you wouldn't have sent the email. How has it changed shape or what's different about that dread now?
Starting point is 00:28:03 Oh yeah, it's definitely still there. I think it is just more nuanced and more full and kind of more integrated in my life. I think it's somebody who feels dread like kind of constantly, I've kind of just developed sort of a strange piece with it. I'm grateful that I've been able to get some really like targeted therapy
Starting point is 00:28:26 to deal with some of this stuff. I've done a lot of training where I just have taught myself to be like, yes, you're hurting this sucks, you feel it, you don't have to dig at it and make it worse, go to sleep. But for a long time before I knew those techniques, I would just dig a hole deeper and deeper into kind of the despair part of dread. I'm glad I made it through that, but like, Dread can definitely eat you if you're not cognizant of what's happening there. We're just kind of like strange tubes of meat that live on this rock that's just flying through space and that's so ludicrous and funny, but also sad and strange,
Starting point is 00:29:06 but that doesn't mean that everything is meaningless. You make your own meaning out of life, and that can help mitigate some of the dread. I may be a grain of sand, but I can be significant to the other grains of sand that live around me. I love the idea of us as tiny grains of sand that still matter to other grains of sand. They do matter, like we matter, even if it's only to each other. There is something valuable in the honesty and knowing where you stand in existence and kind of accepting that you can still make good out of being so small. So it's kind of, it can be easy to oscillate between dread and despair and like awe. This has been a pretty joyful conversation about dread, so that makes me feel good.
Starting point is 00:30:02 It's wonderful to talk to you guys. I'm looking forward to this project so much. What's pretty clear from everything we just heard is that our dread can be so much more than just a dark, scary tunnel we have to travel through all alone. There are ways we can work with it that lead us toward a greater sense of purpose and belonging. Now, here's where we actually give you the details about the Dread Project, listener challenge,
Starting point is 00:30:32 and how you can be part of it. Our team has collected a pretty incredible range of expert input about the nature of Dread. And starting Monday, November 14th, there'll be five days of short, fun podcast episodes in your feed. Each one has a five to 10 minute experiment you can try to work with your own dread.
Starting point is 00:30:56 For example, in our first dread challenge, we look at the stories we tell ourselves about dread and how a little rewrite might help. You walked into the thing you were afraid of. You turned and faced the thing that you are dreading and you heard it out. We'll look at dread about climate change and see if we can make it less paralyzing and even a little energizing. Nothing is going to eliminate these overwhelming feelings. But we can make choices to engage with them
Starting point is 00:31:26 in what we would call titrate it or manageable ways, right? Which is not never, and it's not always, right? It's somewhere in the middle of that dance. We're gonna make the heavy weight of dread feel a little lighter by grabbing a pen or a marker. You wanna see what I've drawn so far? Oh my gosh, you've been drawing during this conversation and we'll try a mindfulness practice about death
Starting point is 00:31:47 that might surprise you with some laughter and some joy. I don't know how much time I have. I want to take time to look at the hummingbirds in awe and listen to my niece laugh and look into the eyes of my beloved and feel loved. Yes, it's coming, but until that day, I'm gonna live. Here's how to sign up. Go to dredproject.com.
Starting point is 00:32:13 Try it right now and enter your email address. That way you can get the links to new podcast episodes as they're released and get the insights and exercises from the challenge right in your inbox. Sign up for the challenge before it starts on Monday, November 14th, and you'll be doing it alongside thousands of other listeners. But if you're here in this a little late, never fear, you can still sign up to do it on your own. At DreadProject.com, you can also send us a voice memo letting us know what you think of this project.
Starting point is 00:32:46 We would love to hear your feedback and you might hear yourself in an episode. Before we sign off today, I want to leave you with some advice from one of today's guests, Dr. Ali Matou, for how to approach these exercises in a safe and constructive way. Whenever you're using a tool, if it is getting to a place where it's bringing up something that is too much, it's okay to back off. Sometimes people think like they have to go straight to the biggest traumatic stuff that they've experienced in life. And no, you don't. You absolutely don't.
Starting point is 00:33:34 You want to be taking on things that feel manageable for you right now. So trust yourself and if you feel overwhelmed back off. That's perfect advice for pretty much everything we're going to talk about in this MIDI series. More than a feeling is produced by Riva Goldberg, Yasmine Khan, Stacia Brown, Palace Shaw, and Kim Baikama. Ben Newman is co-producer of the Dread Project. Our executive producer is Jen Poient, fact checking for this episode by Jeanette Beebe, scoring and mixing by Matt Boynton of Ultraviolet Audio. Connor Donahue is our manager of technical operations. More than a feeling is a production of 10% happier. So, let me say, wow.
Starting point is 00:34:28 Huge thank you to the team over at more than a feeling they've been working really hard on this. If you search for more than a feeling wherever you get your podcasts or if you visit dreddproject.com, you can hear the whole thing. We'll see you right back here on Monday for a brand new episode. We'll be talking to Deb Dana and Kyra Jule Lingo for the third installment in our series, The Art and Science of Keeping Your Shit Together. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
Starting point is 00:35:05 Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1-3-dot-com-slash-survey. Survey.

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