The Mel Robbins Podcast - The Toolkit for Healing Anxiety, Part 1

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Today’s episode is my gift to you and anyone in your life who struggles with anxiety.I created this exclusive series, "The Toolkit for Healing Anxiety," because of the number of questions I am receiving from listeners asking for more resources on this topic. Part 1 is packed with tactical takeaways and features Dr. Russell Kennedy, one of the world's most respected medical experts on anxiety. Dr. Kennedy is a medical doctor and neuroscientist who has a revolutionary and effective approach to helping his patients understand and heal anxiety.(He's also been our most popular expert on the podcast to date.)Dr. Kennedy teaches you the truth about where anxiety comes from and the mistake that most therapists make when treating it. You’ll also have a front-row seat as he coaches listeners on the critical difference between "coping with anxiety" and his protocol for "healing it" once and for all.I can’t wait for you to listen and apply the advice in this life-changing series.And for anyone in your life who may be struggling, please share this exclusive series generously; it could provide the answers and guidance they need.If you have follow-up questions, send them to me in the DMs or through the podcast topic link on melrobbins.com/podcast. We read them and use them to program future episodes (this toolkit is an example of that).This episode is not meant as a replacement for therapy, but if you’ve been seeing a therapist for a while and aren’t seeing yourself improve, you may want to forward this series to them for guidance too.Xo Mel Didn’t get to listen to Dr. Kennedy’s first interview? Check that out here.In this episode, you’ll learn: ·         5:00: I bet you haven’t heard this definition of anxiety before. . ·         6:15: So where exactly does anxiety come from?·         7:30: This is a revolutionary way of thinking about how to heal anxiety.·         8:45: If you’re waking up this way, that’s a red flag. ·         9:45: A trauma response isn’t directed outward- it’s here instead.·         12:00: Have you tried everything to deal with your anxiety? ·         14:45: Forget what you’ve tried so far, THIS is what will actually heal you.·         19:00: This sign of anxiety may surprise you. ·         22:00: Anxiety happens because of this and addictions “fix” it·         24:00: I think there are these three layers to healing your anxiety.·         27:15: What the hell does “inner child” mean and why does it matter?·         30:00: There’s a difference between drama and trauma. ·         34:00: Dr. Kennedy tried everything, but only this healed his anxiety.·         37:00: Okay, what’s one specific and tangible tool we can use?·         40:30: Do this together with me now.·         44:00: Here’s why play is so important for healing trauma.·         47:00: Healing will take time. Here’s why and what you need. Disclaimer

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the anxiety toolkit on the Melbourne's podcast. I'm so glad you're here. We're talking anxiety today, and we have questions from five listeners of the Melbourne's podcast. I love this topic. I am so excited to be able to bring you on appointment with one of the world's leading experts on this topic. Dr. Kennedy is a medical doctor, a neuroscientist, a best-selling author, and he is going to meet with you unpack the topic of anxiety step by step and he's doing it at zero cost. If you're brand new, welcome.

This is an amazing, amazing episode to begin our relationship with together. My name is Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading experts on motivation change and habits. And I cannot wait for you and I to experience this. I cannot wait for you to share this anxiety toolkit with your friends, for you to bookmark this and come back to it. This is a paradigm shifter. And as you know, the Mel Robbins podcast, we're not here to just listen.

We are here to do. And there's going to be a lot that you're going to be able to do for free to empower yourself and to heal from anxiety. And I think that's going to be the biggest takeaway. I know Dr. Kennedy's work, my life has changed because of his work. And so this is a topic, whether you have struggle with anxiety or not, we are all impacted by this. And by understanding it in a very different way, and by knowing the difference between just merely talking about it and trying to live with it, or struggle with it, or cope with it it and actually healing it. That's where amazingness starts to happen and I want that for you.

Dr. Kennedy and I have an incredible relationship. He comes at it from the scientific neuroscience medical side and I come at it from lived experience and all of the research that I've done with our global audience. And so if you don't know Dr. Russell Kennedy, let me tell you about the man who is in the house for the anxiety toolkit. I'm so excited about this.

Dr. Kennedy is a medical doctor who specializes in this and childhood trauma and nervous system regulation. He is also a neuroscientist, which makes him very, very interesting as an expert. He's a certified yoga instructor, meditation teacher, and he too has struggled with anxiety. And I love his take on this. The tools that you are undoubtedly going to learn today

are going to change your life. They have changed mine. For 30 years, I lived with anxiety, and I am the mother of three adult children who had very serious periods with anxiety. What you're going to learn today in the anxiety toolkit, when you take these steps to heal it, there is a level of peace and confidence and clarity and happiness that you will be able to access that I so want for you. And with that introduction, I want to open the door and welcome you in to your appointment with the renowned world leading expert on this topic. Dr. Russell Kennedy is back and in the house for you, Dr. Kennedy!

Hey, Mel Robbins, my God. So, Dr. Kennedy, I'm so glad you're back because you have made such a difference in so many people's lives in my life. We had an outpouring of questions and of appreciation after that first episode that you and I did together many months ago. And so thank you so much for coming back. Happy to do it, Mel. We have so many new listeners to the Malaravans podcast. And there are also a lot of people out there that are experiencing anxiety for the first time, or maybe they're seeing it, or worried about it in their kids.

And so I want to welcome everybody to the table, regardless of where you are, in the understanding or the experience with anxiety. And while we covered some of this foundational knowledge in the first episode that Dr. Kennedy and I did, which we will link to in all the show notes, of this foundational knowledge in the first episode that Dr. Kennedy and I did, which we will link to in all the show notes. I wanna just rapid fire a couple of questions

to make sure that we're all jumping into this with the same baseline understanding as we go deeper with questions from listeners. So Dr. Kennedy, first question. How do you define anxiety? Anxiety for me is anxious thoughts. Anxious thoughts of the mind. Anxiety is not painful itself.

What's painful is the sense of alarm that's in our body, that's in our system. And it's the alarm that drives the thoughts. It's a very atypical way, especially as a doctor and a neuroscientist to look at anxiety as more as a body issue, like old unresolved wounding that just making sense through the mind, because the mind is this compulsive meaning-making

makes sense machine. And so when it feels the alarm in your body from the old wounds that haven't been resolved, it makes sense of it by worrying, warnings what ifs worst case scenarios. And that's what happens. Let me makes sense of it by worrying. Warnings what is worst case scenarios. And that's what happens. Let me see if I can unpack that. So for you, you said anxious thoughts like anxiety is sort of those spiral of thoughts,

but truly the the genesis of it is unresolved trauma or issues from your childhood that is stored in the body. Typically, yeah. Okay. Where does anxiety come from? resolved trauma or issues from your childhood that is stored in the body? Typically. Yeah. Okay. Where does anxiety come from? It comes from that alarm in your body. Anxiety is normal. You know, anxiety over taxes, anxiety over your kids. That's normal. But if it's every day, it's relentless. Like that kind of anxiety is abnormal. That typically comes from sort of unresolved stock from your childhood. And it stuck in your body and in your mind, to some extent,

it's a bit of a, it's a tough call because when you say anxieties in your body, of course, it's in your nervous system, which is your body and your mind. So it's really finding that place of unresolved wounding, that trauma that still sits in you because that's the engine of what's driving your thoughts. So rather than thinking of anxiety as a thought-based process, it's actually a feeling-based process that's only kind of reflected by the mind. But we assume that it's the mind because we're so fixated on the mind in our society. So it's really a body-based issue, but we focus on the mind,

and we try to fix it through the mind, and that's why people are in therapy for 30 years, and they're not getting a lot better. That was so succinct, what you just said. What really went thunk for me was when you said anxiety is a feeling issue, but our mind tries to make sense of what we're feeling in our bodies, and we try to change or fix the thoughts in our mind with our mind. And what you're saying, which to me is revolutionary, is no, no, no, no, no.

Let's forget the mind for a minute and let's drop into the body and let's talk about the feelings that are triggering the spiral of thoughts. Is that good summary? That's a great summary. You know, I've spent the better part of my lifetime living with all of this unrest and on ease and on edgeness in my body. And I have tried for decades to make sense of it, to comment, to sue, to heal it through my mind. And it is a revelation to realize, whoa, it really starts with thinking about the body.

And so I want to ask you one more question and then we're going to kind of jump into the questions for the listeners, which will also go really deep into this topic. If anxiety begins, which I agree with you, with this sort of stored experience in your nervous system, this stored experience and these feelings that get triggered in you, how do you know

if what your experience in your life right now is anxiety versus just day-to-day stress versus overwhelm? I think if it's chronic, like if you're looking at your life, if you wake up in the morning and you're going, oh my God, I've got this, this, this, this, and this, what you've talked about before on the podcast, like waking up with this sense of dread

That's a sign that things aren't quite right And anxiety is one of those things I get People all the time that say I didn't actually know I had anxiety until I read your book It's like well, I don't know if I'm doing any favors as far as I kind of stuff But really though I get that all the time because I think that we just we live in our minds, we live in our bodies, this just becomes normal. And unless it rises above this kind of critical mass where we're like uncomfortable almost all the time, then we think, well, there's something going on. I know with Instagram, but all this stuff, like everything's trauma, everything's trauma. I was your episode about healing childhood trauma. I really want to dive into that as well because it's so

important because the quick the quick version is you probably had trauma as a child that was unresolvable for you as a child. Now what happens is when we get trauma as children, we blame ourselves. So it's a great saying that says if you abused neglect or abandon a child, child doesn't stop loving the parent. They stop loving themselves. And then that starts the split.

And then we start judging, abandoning, blaming and chaining ourselves from that point forward. And that split causes this sense of alarm that gets lodged in our body. And then because we don't want to feel that alarm in our body, we go up into our heads, which is the only place that a child can go because they're pretty powerless in their environment, and they overthink. And that's a temporary escape. And then we train ourselves as children to overthink, because that's the only safe places in our minds. And then when we get older, go through a couple of divorces, you know, you get in a car

accident, whatever, that stuff tends to come right back up again. That's really the basis of where this global anxiety kind of comes from in people is it's this unresolved trauma. So if your parents love you and you've got a supportive family and you're attuned and connected and quote unquote securely attached, you can go through traumas like we all do in childhood. And they won't impact your nervous system to create this permanent change. Or I don't like using the word permanent because it makes it feel like it's hopeless.

But it creates a permanent change in your nervous system. And trauma is anything that changes your nervous system, that sucks your nervous system in a pattern that doesn't allow you to get out of that trauma. And then we just get into this loop where this alarm in our body. We make sense of this loop where this alarm in our body, we make sense of it by making horrible thoughts in our mind, warnings, what ifs, worst case scenarios, which of course makes the alarm of the body worse, which of course makes the thoughts worse.

And we get caught in this alarm anxiety cycle. And unless we see it, we can't get out of it. Wow. One of the things that I love about you, Dr. Kennedy, is you are the loudest voice out there, telling people you can heal anxiety. That you're not stuck feeling this way. You don't have to live your life feeling triggered or out of control or overthinking or

on edge. And for somebody that is really struggling with anxiety, that seems impossible. In fact, our first question comes from a woman named Kerry. And it is a question from a woman who is extremely successful, and I'm sure she's hiding her anxiety, but it's gotten to the point where she just can't handle it anymore. So let's take a listen to Kerry. Hey, Mel. I'm a 53-year year old woman creative leader with to the outside world at least a so called great career I guess you'd say, but with crippling anxiety and exhausting

overthinking. Traveling a company by panic tax, what the heck, I've had this issue for 30 years and all the guided meditations and mindfulness training pods in the world aren't helping. So what steps can I take to stop this, to heal and find a new piece before I chuck in the towel and just barricade myself in at home? Thanks for everything. Bye. I really relate to carry because I know that I have been somebody with what they call high functioning anxiety, but it's torturous because you're just always nervous about something and on

edge. Here's the thing, and this is true with you too, is that any anxiety drives you to succeed. A lot of people with anxiety are really intelligent. So we get very, very good at thinking. We go into our heads, we've been doing it since we've been five years old, and it's like going to the thinking gym every day. So we get very good at thinking, we get very good at accomplishing things. So we get very good at thinking, we get very good at accomplishing things. The problem is that underlying trauma, I could hear in her voice, for sure, is driving her too much. And you went through this too. You realize, look, this isn't sustainable going this way.

So the solution for her would be to find that little version of herself and see her, love her, protect her, show her that she's connected. And what we do is we find where the alarm is in your body. So with her, I would say, you know, when you get into these anxious phases that I call alarm, and that you brilliantly call alarm all the time, I watched your one on healing childhood trauma and you only use the term anxiety once or twice, which I just loved. But getting into the alarm in her body, which basically that alarm is a remnant of your younger self, the part of our brain, the amygdala that encodes this has no sense of time,

so that when we encode these traumatic memories, when we recall them, it doesn't feel like they're coming from the past. It feels like they're happening now. So she probably has an unresolved trauma of some kind or traumas that are coming up in her body. And temporarily, guided meditations, breathing, all that stuff will help you. But the key out of this, and I hope everybody gets this today, if you have a chronic anxiety, you have a child in you that is suffering, that is struggling,

and all the guided meditations, all the breathwork, all the yoga, isn't gonna heal that. What heals that is actually going in, finding that child, finding their eyes, in a picture or even in your mind's eye, looking at them, showing them that they are seen, heard, loved and protected,

in a way now that they are seen heard left and protected in a way. Now that they didn't get back then and that's how we heal the root cause of this as opposed to just Helping people cope because basically most of the things that are out there today help you cope Exactly. I think that's why Carrie's so frustrated. She's saying she's just coping. You know, Dr. Kennedy, I got to thank you for going into so much depth right out of the gate. And let's hit pause real quick. We need to hear a word from our sponsors. Plus, I think we've gone so deep, so quickly that let's just take a breath and digest what we talked about and maybe Carrie and you listening. Maybe you want to find a photo of your younger self so that you have it in front of you

when we come back because we're going to go even deeper into Carrie's question and the specific layers to healing when we return. So don't go anywhere. Welcome back, I'm Mel Robbins. This is the anxiety toolkit on the Mel Robbins podcast, and we're sitting here with a renowned Dr. Russell Kennedy answering a question from a listener named Kerry who has a great career, very successful on the outside, but is struggling on the inside as she puts it with crippling anxiety and exhausting overthinking. Traveling company by panic tax, what the heck? Just hearing Carrie's voice, I just so relate to how frustrated she is, Dr. Kennedy. And Dr. Kennedy says that you don't

have to just cope with anxiety. You can heal it. And there's nothing wrong with coping. It's just to heal. We have to solve this at the root cause, which is this typically, this unresolved wounding, typically again, from childhood, that's still in you, that's still activated. And until that child feels seen, her love then protected, you're always going to be anxious. So all of a sudden this visual came to mind, and I want to see if we can maybe tease this out into some specific steps that somebody might be able to take even on their own today with the support of your expertise. Because you described in my mind the three layers that somebody has to go through to address

this sort of chronic on-edgeness, this stress, this panic attacks that Carrie's talking about. There's this first phase of self-awareness and then there's the second layer where you make an attempt to cope. And then there's a third phase, healing it and getting to the root cause and the first level is self-awareness, right? So there may be a large number of people that are listening to this from around the world, because at this point we're reaching 200 countries,

17 million people. And there's a lot of people that are thinking for the first time, thinking for the first time, huh? I wonder if I have anxiety. And so listening to podcasts, reading books, watching videos, or watching the show on YouTube, and having the self-awareness that maybe this is something called anxiety that you're dealing with. And what are some of the surprising signs, Dr. Kennedy, that people should be looking for, that they may not know could actually be anxiety? Well, one of the big ones that people don't really realize is constantly looking for external validation. I'm constantly looking for love and attention outside of yourself. And when you get it, it's amazing. But when you don't get it, you get into that loneliness space. And there's a study done, I can't remember how long ago, and I don't remember the

exact, but basically it was they took women and they gave them an electric shock, not a big electric shock. And it was voluntary. And then they had three scenarios, one where the woman was alone, one where her hand was held by a stranger, and one where her hand was held by her partner. Now, to shorten this up, basically, the brain has to work really, really hard if you're lonely. So when she was alone, 12 places in her brain lit up, we don't have to go into orbital frontal cortex and all that kind of stuff, but 12-place interbray. When she was held hands with a stranger, eight places in her brain lit up. When she was held holding hands with her partner, four places. So only four places needed to come online to reassure her. So it just shows that power of human connection,

but if we're constantly looking for validation outside of us, that is the sign of anxiety, typically. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's exactly what I would do. And I think that's what Kerry is doing, too, and most people with anxiety. You know, my book, anxietyRX is about anxiety, but really it's about childhood trauma. For me, it showed up as as chronic anxiety. For some people, it shows up as depression.

Other people, it shows up as eating disorders, personality disorders, but all of it it comes from some sort of unresolved childhood wounding. It will make itself obvious. For me when I was a child, my brother had orthopedic issues, my dad was schizophrenic. A lot of people know about that who watched my channel. A lot of my mother's attention went to my brother and my dad. So I had this sense like, hey, what about me? What about me? I have this drive to be seen. And that's why I'm on the Mel Robbins podcast. There's a drive in me that needs to be seen and validated.

But there's also a part of me that was believed in the school that hates crowds and hates attention. So you can have people that are highly accomplished and they're driven by their anxiety. Like me and Carrie, it's a double edged sword. But it's a treadmill eventually after a couple of divorces, you know, or something that happens in your life that's you can't control, then it comes out and then it's unmanageable. One of the things that I see with people is looking for, looking for love and all their own places, you know, all these things.

Addictions are another one of those things that the reason why I think people take drugs or alcohol or whatever is when they're in that acute phase in the brain and the GABA receptors are all lit up and you feel calm and peaceful. I think that's one of the times that people actually feel connected to themselves. It's ironic, it's odd, but in general, anxiety occurs because you block love for yourself. That's really what happens. So, one of the things that drugs in alcohol do is they take away some of those blocks, they make you feel connected to yourself. It's so true.

I've never thought about it that way. Maybe that's not what Carrie is struggling with, but there are so many people who have anxiety and turn to substances for relief from it. Anxiety and addiction hold hands, like they are so close together. They both come from childhood wounding and the alcohol or the drug or whatever allows people to feel connected to themselves. And I think that's what ketamine and this is these psychedelics. I think it's just a way of getting connected to yourself because that's how you heal as you become connected to yourself. It doesn't come from outside of you. But we have to have that love from outside of us as well, of course.

And as you talk about, the biggest relationship is the relationship you have to yourself and is cliche and woo and all that stuff as it sounds. And as a neuroscientist and a medical doctor, it kind of has one I have a seizure when I talk about this because it's just so non scientific. Love and healing is non scientific. We can't reduce it down to something that we can reproduce in a science lab. And that's what heals us. So science will help us cope, but I haven't seen really science help us heal. Out of all the incredible advancements we've made in neuroscience in the last 15 years,

and they have been amazing. Very few of those advancements have actually led to different clinical outcomes when you're sitting with a patient. So that's one of the things that I'm kind of disappointed about in science a little bit. But science is very helpful at helping us cope. But to heal, it's an inside job.

You really have to learn how to connect with that younger wounded part of you. And if you don't, you'll always have a alarm. You'll always be anxious. I'd say the one exception is the exciting research in the area of all these psychedelics. But I think you just pointed out the reason why this is the biggest breakthrough, because when you have a guided therapeutic experience with an ketamine or an MDMA or psilocybin,

you have the ability to reconnect and join in with yourself. And repair what you say is the original cause of anxiety, which is a situation in childhood where you felt separate from the caregivers whose only job was to make you feel safe and loved and looked after and cared for. I want to go back to you know, I have this vision of there are these three phases as I'm listening to you speak. There is the phase of self-awareness and awakening and this kind of wake up moment, you're like, holy cow, maybe the overthinking, and the obsessiveness with achievement,

maybe feeling on edge all the time, maybe this isn't the way I'm meant to feel, maybe this is anxiety. So there's this first phase of self-awareness and the wake up moment. And then there's the second layer going a little bit deeper where you make an attempt to cope, whether that's through therapy

or it is through breath work or you mentioned meditation or exercise the bazillion different things that you and I have both done for decades in order to cope with our anxiety, which for me meant trying to turn it down a little. And then there's a third and deeper phase, which is what you are teaching everybody. And that third phase is healing it and going deep and getting to the root cause, which you have so beautifully taught us is separation and feelings separate from others and feeling separate from yourself.

And when you feel separate, you don't experience love. You don't experience safety. And so what I want to know, Dr. Kennedy, going back to Carrie's question, is is there a simple series of steps that anybody who's listening today that's like, holy cow, I have anxiety, I want to go deeper and start the work of healing it. What do you do? Can you give me and carry and everyone listening who thinks or knows that they have anxiety, give us three things, Dr. Kennedy, that we can do starting today that work to go and reconnect with the part of ourselves that has been separate since childhood.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of like woo-woo inner child stuff. Like people get really fired up by this concept of inner child, and I find the people that get the most fired up by the inner child, oh, that's a bunch of crap or whatever are the ones that have the most childhood moving, because they don't wanna go back there. That's right, I do have to admit,

anytime anybody uses those two words, inner child, I'm like, ugh, I roll. Me too. Sounds so stupid. But as a neuroscientist and a medical doctor who specializes in this, what the fuck are you talking about when you say inner child? Yeah, the science people, it's the amygdala-based remnant of the trauma.

So for you, for your car accident, when you rolled on the ski trip. Oh yeah, and for those of you who don't know what Dr. Kennedy's referring to, my mom and I got into this major car accident where we slid off the road and rolled the car as we were driving up to a ski resort when I was really little in Michigan. And it was a very traumatic experience. And the first time Dr. Kennedy was on, I was telling him that now decades later, whenever I hear crunching snow, I immediately remember what it felt like to be in the car. It's a trauma response that's personal to me and that traumatic incident.

There is your amygdala coupled the sound of crunching snow with trauma. So now whenever you go to the mailbox and you hear crunching snow, you're a migdala coupled that sound with the trauma. So your body will feel exactly now on your way out to the mailbox as you did back then. I want to share one other example for those of you who haven't heard the first episode that we did with Dr. Kennedy. And there's a second coupling that happened for me, which is I was molested by an older kid during a sleepover in the fourth grade.

And when I woke up the next morning, I felt in every cell of my body that something was very wrong. And what happened is the trauma, and now you're saying inner child and the base of the amygdala coupled, the experience of waking up after being a victim and the feeling that something's wrong with mourning. And ever since I've been in fourth grade, I wake up every morning and the morning itself triggers me to feel exactly the same way as a 50 year old woman that I did when I was in the fourth grade and had woked up that morning. Is that that's what you're saying, right? Yeah. When you came to downstairs, and your mom was making pancakes and she said, how did you sleep, honey? And you saw the other kid,

if you had a chance at that point, if there was a magic one where, you know, you went over to your mother and said, Hey, you know, I've got to talk to you about something. And she, and you know, you went to a different room. And then you, you talked about what happened. And she sued you. It's not your fault. You rubbed your back. That probably would have mitigated this whole thing.

Wow. Because if we have this love and attention from our, our parents and caregivers, we are protected. So everyone has trauma in child, like there's no way of avoiding, but there's a difference between drama and trauma. Trauma is when the event actually changes your nervous system, so it gets stuck in the on position. It's kind of like if you're on a railroad

and the old time switch, you know, the switches they used to have on the railroad. Yeah, of course. So normally, you know, if you go along, you've got good enough parents, you know, you have a reason for a childhood, you go along with the track, the track is straight, and you just mature. Now, if you get trauma in there, it's like one of those railway switches that switches you off track.

So it takes you into this mode of protection as opposed to this mode of growth. So if you keep going on the track, you're in a growth mode, you feel safe. But when we have this trauma and it's not resolved at the time, that switch gets thrown and our nervous system changes. Again, I don't like using the word permanently because we can move it back, but the amygdala never forgets. There's always a remnant of that. So what can someone like Carrie or me or anyone listening do to put the switch in the right direction? So we don't feel so anxious all the time. Oh wait, hold on, Dr. Kenny, I think

we are all going to benefit from what you're about to say, and I'm looking at the time. And so, I want you to hold that thought, because we will answer that question after the break. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and this is the anxiety toolkit on the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm here with Dr. Russell Kennedy, who is a world-renowned expert on anxiety. And he says that all anxiety is rooted in unresolved trauma from childhood. We are unpacking a question from a listener named Carrie. And right before the break, Dr. Kennedy, you said that the childhood trauma that makes anxious people like me and Carrie and perhaps you listening to us get

stuck feeling anxious and on edge all the time has to do with our nervous system, getting stuck in a state of being on alert. Now, Carrie tried coping with it through mindfulness, and I want to replay her question, though, because she asks you a very specific question, and we all want the answer. What steps can I take to stop this, to heal, and find a new piece before I chuck in the towel, piece before I chuck in the towel and just barricade myself in at home. So what we have to do is go back, find that child at that age, younger self, inner child. I usually use younger self because it doesn't turn people off so much, but find your younger self. Give them the love and support now that they need it back then because again, the amygdala has no sense of time.

So we can use that fact that the amygdala has no sense of time. So we can use that fact that the amygdala has no sense of time to connect and soothe her, give her what she needed back then. And that starts to heal the root cause. So then we can pull the switch back, but the older we get and the more that thing gets ingrained, the harder that switch is rusted into the on position. So every time the train goes down that track

and we experience something like that, we wake up. It goes off that track. It goes into that protection mode rather than the growth mode of going straight ahead. So if we go back, we find the switch, we heal that younger version of ourselves. And again, I know how flaky this sounds and as a neuroscientist, it's really difficult for me to talk about the younger self-interchild, but I know after suffering from 30 plus years of crippling anxiety myself, this was the only thing that allowed me to heal, was to go back. I'm a yoga teacher.

I mean, I am meditation-ty, I've done all this stuff. I've done it all. And nothing really helped. And like you, I have morning anxiety or alarm. It wakes me up. I feel it. And then I just the big thing about having the alarm is don't add thoughts to it. Like allow the alarm to be there. Go in a sensation. You know, use your breath, use the grounding that you're around. If you're lying in your bed, feel the grounding, feel the support,

feel your body, even if it's uncomfortable, and then go back and find that younger version. So you're asking for a step. So basically, when people get anxious, they go into their heads and they start overthinking. And that's a trap because you'll never get out of that. We'll never get out of that overthinking. Because the mind says, hey, we have the answer with more thinking. And it's like, well, I thought anxiety was a problem of overthinking. It's like, no, no, it's not. It's not just keep thinking. And that doesn't work.

So what you have to do is go into your body. Now the problem is your body feels alarmed. So why am I going to go down into my body when it feels alarmed? And that's why we have things like internal family systems, therapy, somatic experiencing, psychedelics, some extent to make you feel safe in your body again. Because once you feel safe in your body again, then you have the platform. So when you're feeling anxious or as I like to say, alarmed, go, where are my body do I feel this? Where is it? For me, it's in my solar plexus. I talk about that in the book. But find where the alarm is in your system. And some people, it's in their throat,

some people, it's in their across their shoulders. But see, if you can put your hand over it, and just sort of make a mental connection with that alarm. And see, if you don't feel better almost instantly, now it's not going to take it away. But there is a sense when I first started doing this, it's like, hey, you know, this is the first time in 30 years that I'm actually on the right track. So when you feel anxious, don't go into your head, go into the sensation of your body, even if it hurts. Find that alarm, find where it is, because I drill down with people. It's like, does I have a shape, does I have a color, does I have a temperature? Like, I really drill down in there because it's a part of our brain called the insula, the insular cortex,

that's kind of like the mediator between the thinking brain and the feeling body. And that insula, I think, will be in the next few years really important in changing this old pattern, so that when we feel it in our body, we can go back, feel the exact same way that we did in our body, we can go back, feel the exact same way that we did back at the time, you with crunching snow, and me in the mornings as well, and go, okay, there is a different path. I can actually flip the railways switch back over to the growth part and get out of protection. So it's really about connecting with that feeling of alarm in your body, because that feeling of alarm in your body because that feeling of alarm in your body is your younger self.

So, carry myself, anybody who has anxiety, the pathway to healing is to connect with the younger self, the part of you that felt separate. But can we go into specific tools, Dr. Kennedy, because I think the second that you start talking younger self, a lot of us check out. Do I print out a photo of when I was little? Do I make that photo my screen saver, which I kind of feel like maybe I should? How exactly do we start? So that's me at three.

Oh my gosh. Oh, Rusty. Yeah. That's me at three. Oh my gosh. Oh, rusty. Yeah, that's rusty. So for those of you who are listening to this and not watching this podcast on YouTube, Dr. Kennedy just held up the homepage of his phone and there was a photo of him that's three years old. It just made my heart go all wrong.

Yeah, he's pretty cute. So what does it do if you do that for yourself? Well, that's the start, right? That's the big thing because the child in us needs this love and support so much that it creates all this alarm to get our attention. And yet, as adults, we push the alarm away. So it's kind of like, I think I might have mentioned this in the last podcast that we did, is that if a child came up to you with their hands up in a grocery store, like they'd lost their parents, of course, you would sue them. But we have this alarm that goes off in our system, which is essentially the younger version of us going, hey, pick me up. Pick me up. I need some attention. I need some

love. And instead, we go to the internet and zombies for all Instagram or go into our addictions or whatever. And we push that child away. So the child just gets louder. The alarm just gets louder and louder and louder. But there is a resistance to going back. The adult doesn't want to go back and visit the child because the child holds all their pain. And the child has a real mistrust of us as adults because we've been ignoring their alarm for 30 years. So it's really important that we start slowly and you make that connection. So when you say get a picture,

that can be really triggering for people. So sometimes I just say in your mind's eye, picture yourself at any age as a child that you want. Picture what you're wearing, picture yourself, maybe at a a child that you want. You know, picture what you're wearing, picture yourself, maybe at a happy time in your life. You know, like for you, it was like skiing or something like that. Picture yourself in this happy place.

And that way you start making that connection. So go to a place that you felt good. And I use this a lot when I work with people is what was the best time in your life? What was the best time in your life now? I just immediately had this image of being on the front yard of our house in Michigan. And there are all kinds of kids around. And it was a beautiful summer night. It's my favorite time of night, dusk, when this twinkly stars first start to come out. And it was a beautiful summer night. It's my favorite time at night, dusk,

when this twinkly stars first start to come out and it's kind of confusing because the sun's up but you see the moon. And we are playing games. Like we're playing bass and statue and tag and like just that moment right there with my brother and a bunch of other kids in the neighborhood running around being kids in the front yard of her house in Michigan where I grew up.

Okay, so close your eyes and really get into that image. Okay, I will and I want you listening to do this with me. If you're not driving a car right now me. If you're not driving a car right now and you can just stop, like take your hands off the keyboard, put the dishes down, sit down on a bench if you're walking your dog, and just stop for a minute. And let's do this together. Relax your shoulders, relax your jaw. Nice breath. And now just really see if you can drink in the emotion of that. Where do you feel that in your body? Oh, I kind of feel it from my cheeks all the way to my heart.

It's like this sort of like definitely like for sure the heart. So this, you know, this is something I would add to high-fiving yourself in the mirror is go back to the best time of your life. When you're high-fiving yourself in the mirror because then we're getting your insulin ball, we're getting your brain involved in this whole feeling state because the feeling state is what changes us. We can change our thoughts at a dime, but the feeling state because the feeling state is what changes us. We can change our thoughts at a dime, but the feeling state is what changes our nervous system. So when you do the high five habit, when you're high fiveing yourself in the mirror, recall the best time of your life and just try and see if you can really get a felt sense of that. Now, what I will do with people who have separate trauma is I will take them once I have them grounded and once they trust me and stuff, I will take them into their trauma and then I will take them into the best time in their life.

So with you, I might do and we're shortening this considerably for the podcast, but for you, I might say, okay, if you feel safe enough that we talk about that kid waking up with that kid on top of you and getting into that feeling, now where do you feel that in your body? Like right in the gut. Is this okay, male? Did it go into this? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, okay. Like I immediately went from like the heart being full to like, like right in the gut. And the ankle's weird, the ankles. So what I would do is I would go back and go, okay. Now, go back to that feeling of dusk. You can see your house, you're playing, playing statue. It's fun.

You feel calm, peaceful, happy. Now, let's go into your gut. Let's go into that sensation again of waking up with that kid on top of you. If it's okay to stay there for a second. And then lovingly go back up into that place in your chest and your throat where you felt really peaceful and happy playing with your brother. It's amazing because I feel the gut like pulling me down. Like that.

It's easy to drop into the gut. Yep. And the bad experience, it's hard to pull yourself from that back up into this experience that I can feel that's positive. Is that normal? That's absolutely normal. We're wired that way, male. We're wired to pay more attention to fearful situations than pleasurable ones, because in our evolution, that's basically what kicked us alive. So we have to heal this at a feeling level. We

can talk about that kid on top of you for the rest of your life without really changing it too much. You might get a better understanding of it cognitively, but to really change that sensation, we have to use another sensation because that's the language of trauma, it's sensation, it's the body. So we use that good feeling that you have. And then we just, we go back and forth, we oscillate between back and forth. And it starts weakening that power,

that negative feeling in your body that you associate with being a victim, with being helpless. Yeah. I love when you say you're talking about play because trauma activates both the sympathetic, the fight or flight, and the parasympathetic,

the rest of the just at the same time. Oh, I understand. Because we're confused, we don't know, yeah, because once you get up to a certain point in sympathetic activity, your body can't handle it anymore. So it shuts down. So we go into parasympathetic.

We don't go into pleasant parasympathetic, but we go into shutdown parasympathetic. And then it goes back and forth and back and forth. And a lot of us with anxiety, that's what happens during the day. We go into this place where our body just gets exhausted. So we feel okay. We don't feel that tremendous anxiety anymore. And then once we get rested in the parasympathetic, then the sympathetic comes back online and we go right back into anxiety again. So play is so important for healing. Another thing that activates both the parasympathetic and

the sympathetic activity at the same time. Trauma activates, co-activation, they call it. Trauma activates parasympathetic and sympathetic simultaneously. So does play. But play allows you to start metabolizing. So when you're in co-activation, when you're parasympathetic and your sympathetic is active at the same time, it's like having your foot on the gas

and the brake at the same time. When you're in play, you start realizing, hey, you know what, this sensation is actually okay. It doesn't have to fire me right into the trauma. That's why play, one start realizing, hey, you know what, this sensation is actually okay. It doesn't have to fire me right into the trauma. That's why I play one of the reasons why play is so important in healing trauma is because we get that felt sense of activation of both the parasympathetic and the sympathetic at the same time in a safe place because play is safe and it's fun. Okay, so going back to carry. Number one, it was very clear to you as an expert and a medical doctor and a neuroscientist

that she's dealing with stored trauma. And step one is kind of recognizing that. And then the next thing she needs to do is to recognize that thinking keeps you in the coping and that this is really going to be about dropping into your body and learning how to reconnect and heal in your body. And one of the things that you have recommended is that we think about this as younger self-work, and that you can go back to positive times and feel that good sensation, that if you're ready for it, printing out a photo of yourself or putting it on your phone so that you are reconnecting with that version of you, where you started to feel separate or unsafe or scared. And that that is a way to start this process. Is there anything else that you would

recommend that Carrie think about? Yeah, you have to do it slowly because the thing is when we go into our alarm, we don't want to go in there. Like it feels painful to go in there. Do it slowly. If you have a real significant trauma, you know, emotional, physical, sexual abuse, you probably need a therapist and maybe a somatic therapist to kind of help you get into this place because it's not for amateurs in a way. If you have big trauma, if you have trauma that's manageable, absolutely you can work on on your own.

But if you have big T-trauma, doing this on your own can re-traumatize. So you need someone else there. You need someone there who you wish was there at the time of the trauma. And that person is you. That person is you. It's like, you can go back. We can use our make-doll. We can use that sense that we are not locked in time.

We can go back and find that like what I have on my phone I can look in his eyes. I can imagine his eyes too and that's how you heal from anxiety and alarm We can cope All we want but if you want to heal you have to find that child in you and you have to show them that they're seeing hurt Loved and protected and one of the ways that I do that every day is I start my day looking at him. And I use different pictures of me, but that's the main one, because it's on my phone and it's right there already.

Wow, let's go to another question. We get a lot of questions about anxiety and sleep. In fact, the next listener is somebody named Jason and his anxiety is starting to creep up at night. And it's not only impacting his ability to fall asleep, but then he wakes up in the middle of the night and his mind is racing and he can't go back to sleep. And so let's listen to this question and then talk about tools.

Hey, Mel, this is Jason. I always get anxious before I go to bed and then wake up in the middle of the night We're not about things. How do I stop myself from doing that? Thank you Dr. Kennedy here's what I want to do. I want to give the remaining four questions The service that they deserve and we covered so much about the younger self-work and There's already so many takeaways that Dr. Kennedy We're going to turn this into two episodes. Sure. And I want you listening to take everything that you've learned today.

And there's a lot. You have learned about the three phases. You've learned about self-awareness. You've learned that coping is important, but that's where a lot of us get stuck. And we've started to scratch the surface on what it means to heal. And if you felt inspired by the meditation that Dr. Kennedy walked me through where he took me back to remembering a time my life, that was a really awesome memory where I was playing. I want you to spend some time in the next day or two bringing yourself

back to that place. If you feel inspired, like I feel inspired, I feel very inspired to print out a photo of myself in the fourth grade and put it on the home screen of my phone. Pin it up in my office, because I think it's going to shift the way that I relate to that alarm inside of me, because what I've learned today is that alarm is an anxiety. That alarm is the fourth grade male reaching her hands up and saying, please, somebody help me.

Please reassure me, please tell me I'm going to be okay. Having that physical photo is really, really, really going to help. So Dr. Kennedy, we're going to be okay. Having that physical photo is really really really going to help. So, Dr. Kennedy, we're going to continue this. It's going to be part two of this and we're going to answer four more questions from listeners. We're going to keep on going and I promise you, part two will be released in a couple days. So hit the subscribe button and this next part of the conversation will be there waiting for you. The second it drops. I do this because I love you.

And I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to take these steps, to heal, to find peace, to feel safe and confident and energized again. You deserve that. Alright, Dr. Kennedy and I will be back right here waiting for you in your feet in a couple of days. Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.

It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professionals. Stitcher Stitcher.