The Art of Manliness - Turn Your Anxiety Into a Strength

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.720 Anxiety is typically thought of as a disease or a disorder. My guest has a very different

00:00:16.200 way of looking at it. It says that rather than being a burden, anxiety can actually

00:00:19.980 become a benefit and even a strength. Dr. David Rosemarin is an associate professor

00:00:24.280 at Harvard Medical School, the founder of the Center for Anxiety, and the author of

00:00:28.060 Thriving with Anxiety, Nine Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You. Today on the show,

00:00:32.940 David explains why the prevalence of anxiety has risen while the reasons to feel anxious

00:00:36.600 have fallen, and what the increase in anxiety has to do with our growing intolerance for

00:00:40.540 uncertainty and uncontrollability. We discuss how the perception of anxiety is a big part

00:00:44.800 of the problem that has made anxiety a problem. Now you can change your relationship with anxiety,

00:00:49.220 transforming it from something that hinders your life to something that helps you develop

00:00:52.280 greater self-awareness, reach your goals, make needed changes, connect better with others,

00:00:56.660 and build your overall resilience. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:00.560 awim.is slash thrivingwithanxiety.

00:01:16.660 All right, David Rosemarin, welcome to the show.

00:01:19.540 Thanks for having me.

00:01:20.440 So you are a clinical psychologist and you founded the Center for Anxiety to help people who are

00:01:26.400 struggling with anxiety problems. I know a lot of people have that issue. We also got a new book

00:01:30.740 out called Thriving with Anxiety, Nine Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You. We walk readers

00:01:36.160 through the tools you give your clients or patients on how to manage their anxiety. Not only manage,

00:01:42.580 but like thrive with it. That's the whole point of this. I'm curious, what led you to specialize in

00:01:46.960 anxiety?

00:01:48.140 Yeah. When I was getting into clinical psychology, you know, I really wanted to do something that was

00:01:52.960 evidence-based. And there are lots of different areas to focus in. Anxiety was definitely the most

00:01:59.220 well-researched, well-understood in terms of how to do it. And that appealed to me, the scientific

00:02:05.780 approach. And that's sort of the first part about it. Little did I know that getting into this field,

00:02:11.620 I would learn a lot about myself, a lot about the world, a lot about my patients. And it's been

00:02:16.980 quite the journey.

00:02:18.100 So let's talk about definitions first. How do you define anxiety? Because I think it's a word now that's

00:02:22.060 become part of the popular culture. Everyone's talking about it. There's songs about anxiety.

00:02:27.320 Sure.

00:02:27.880 So how do you define it?

00:02:29.480 So anxiety is the same as fear. It shares the same brain circuitry,

00:02:33.360 shares the same physiology, and it's the fight or flight system, which we all know where your heart

00:02:39.680 starts beating and your breathing gets constricted and your muscles get tense and your stomach might

00:02:44.660 get upset and you might feel even a little dizzy because your pupils are dilating. And fear,

00:02:49.360 you have to start with understanding fear before you define anxiety. Fear is an adaptive, healthy

00:02:53.580 thing. It keeps you safe. It's the fight or flight system that if you need it, that's going to come

00:02:59.820 into play and you'll either fight or flee from some threat. Now, anxiety is the same exact thing,

00:03:06.380 but there's one small difference. It's actually a large difference, which is that there's no actual

00:03:12.200 threat present. You're having all the feelings of the fight or flight system, but you're not actually

00:03:19.140 experiencing a real threat in front of you at the time.

00:03:22.260 Okay. So fear would be you see a bear on the trail in front of you when you're out backpacking,

00:03:28.980 and then you're experiencing that fight or flight response. Then in that situation,

00:03:33.480 that would be an appropriate fear response. Anxiety would be experiencing that same sort of

00:03:39.920 physiological reaction to thinking about going to a party and socializing. In that situation,

00:03:48.480 like the worst thing that could happen to you is, you know, you feel awkward or uncomfortable,

00:03:53.180 but I mean, you're not under actual threat in that situation. So, you know, what's interesting

00:03:59.480 then is that, you know, despite us living in the safest, most prosperous time in human history,

00:04:06.600 where there's not a lot of threats out there, anxiety keeps increasing. You know, more and more

00:04:12.480 people have or report having anxiety than ever before. So what's going on there? Like, why are

00:04:18.180 we more anxious despite not having any real threats to be afraid of?

00:04:23.480 Yeah, it's a great question. It's at the core of my new book. I actually think it's because we are in

00:04:28.140 one of the most safe and prosperous times in human history that we have the highest levels of anxiety.

00:04:32.640 And I'll explain that one. You know, if you look at high-income countries, they have twice as much

00:04:39.360 anxiety as middle-income countries. And middle-income countries have twice as much anxiety as low-income

00:04:44.840 countries. And as things have become more prosperous and more safe in our society with more safeguards

00:04:51.920 and more information, which we're presented with, our anxiety is actually increasing substantially.

00:04:59.080 And this is objective. I mean, look at the suicide rate. If you look at the levels of disability, 0.99

00:05:03.620 it's not just people reporting it. So we have a big problem. The question is why, I think.

00:05:09.140 And we expect to be in control all the time. We expect that things are going to go well.

00:05:15.040 We expect that if we start a business right away, things are going to be hopping. We expect that we

00:05:21.660 can get the medical care that we need, that our technology is not going to fail us. And because of that,

00:05:26.560 we are not resilient. We are actually very unresilient to anxiety. And when we experience it,

00:05:32.580 even low levels, all of a sudden, boom, that cascades into a massive amount of anxiety. And I

00:05:38.140 think that's what we're seeing en masse. Our expectations are just unrealistic.

00:05:42.540 Well, here's a perfect example of that I've seen in my own life. The expectation that you shouldn't be

00:05:48.720 able to be in touch with your loved ones and know where they are at all times thanks to cell phones

00:05:53.380 has made a lot of people anxious. Because now whenever you call your spouse or you text your

00:05:59.300 kid and they don't respond, you're like, oh my gosh, something terrible happened. They're in a car

00:06:03.720 wreck. But I grew up before cell phones and I would leave at seven o'clock in the evening and go out and

00:06:11.020 hang out with my friends and not come home until midnight. And I don't think my mom ever freaked out

00:06:15.980 about it. Yeah, I think it's a perfect example. Like you see, hey, they read it. Or like, hey,

00:06:20.400 they're around the corner. I can see on the GPS. But like, why aren't they calling? Why aren't they

00:06:23.920 doing this? Where are they? You know, it's almost like the more information we have and the better

00:06:28.980 things are going day to day, the less, like I said, resilient we are. And that's a big problem.

00:06:34.900 Okay, so the more in control we feel with our life, thanks to technology and all the things we have

00:06:41.260 in our life, the more anxious that we can potentially feel. Yeah. And you mentioned the

00:06:46.520 word control and that's exactly what it's about. In reality, we're not in control. We're like,

00:06:51.680 let's acknowledge it. There's so much less that we can control than we really think day to day,

00:06:57.860 even with the information, even with the technology, even with the medical systems and financial systems

00:07:03.520 we have in place. But we don't like to live on the edge. We don't take risks. We don't like to feel

00:07:10.340 uncomfortable. We assume that even feeling uncomfortable is a disease. It's not. It's

00:07:14.320 called being human. And I think we've really forgotten how to be emotionally resilient and

00:07:20.240 to learn how to thrive with difficult emotions, which are part of life.

00:07:23.660 Well, that's another point in the book that stood out to me was this idea that even feeling

00:07:29.380 anxiety, like people can feel anxious about that. They feel bad that they feel bad, which

00:07:35.120 just causes even more anxiety. Yeah. The minute you feel anxious today,

00:07:40.860 you don't say, oh yeah, of course, I'm working really hard. Or, oh yeah, that's because there's

00:07:46.420 this news, which is really, really tough for me to stomach. Or it's because I didn't know that

00:07:50.820 something was happening. Instead, we say, oh my God, I have a disease. Something's wrong with me.

00:07:56.180 Now, if you perceive your anxiety as a disease, you're going to trigger your fight or flight system

00:08:00.340 more. You're literally going to dump adrenaline more into your system and create a cascade of

00:08:04.660 anxiety. So, we've created this monster and the effects are really quite problematic.

00:08:12.540 Yeah. I think that's one of the big problems with the popularization of psychology of people

00:08:17.720 reading psychological books or consuming psychological content like lay people and then

00:08:24.520 diagnosing themselves. Well, I have anxiety. And as soon as they make that self-diagnosis,

00:08:28.920 they've made this normal feeling of feeling nervous because of uncertainty into a bigger

00:08:36.000 problem than it needs to be. And then it can become debilitating.

00:08:40.200 I would agree. But unfortunately, I think the medical field has played into this as well.

00:08:44.100 This last summer, there was a panel of federally funded, in fact, physicians across the United States

00:08:49.980 who made a recommendation to use a very brief measure at all PCPs visits, any primary care visit.

00:08:56.360 And the net result of that was that if you report any level of worry or any level of anxiety at a

00:09:02.560 visit, it flags you for diagnosis and potential treatment of an anxiety disorder. Now, let me ask

00:09:08.500 you, how many people have you seen this week who had no anxiety and no worry at all in the last two

00:09:13.480 weeks?

00:09:14.140 You had no one. Everyone's had some.

00:09:15.900 Zero. There's nobody because it's a normal human emotion. So, I think that it's not only the,

00:09:20.760 yes, popularization of psychology, a hundred percent, no question. But the medical field,

00:09:25.680 I would even say the pharmaceutical industry, has played into this myth of having perfect emotions all

00:09:31.780 the time. And in doing so, has greatly disrupted our capacity for well-being and for flourishing.

00:09:38.980 And something you do with your work, you're working with people who have varying levels of anxiety. You

00:09:44.260 have people who, they're, you know, mostly well-functioning, but they might experience just

00:09:48.900 like, ah, I feel nervous all the time and I like to get a handle on that. But then there's also to

00:09:53.280 the point where that anxiety becomes a problem. And it's something you, actually, there's a clinical

00:09:58.580 diagnosis. Like at what level, at what point do you as a clinician diagnose someone with anxiety

00:10:03.600 disorder?

00:10:04.160 Yeah. I mean, the, you know, the simple answer to that question is when it causes significant

00:10:09.100 distress or impairment. And that's a very subjective call, to be perfectly honest. Like

00:10:13.660 there's no lab test to say you have anxiety and an anxiety disorder or you do not. There's

00:10:18.740 no, you know, clear physiological, neurobiological markers of these. And there's some indications

00:10:25.300 of, you know, pathology, what we call it, but, but not really. It's not, you can't, you can't

00:10:29.680 use those as diagnostic for each person. So to me, it's less about whether a person has

00:10:35.540 a clinical level or a subclinical level and more about what do we do when we feel anxious?

00:10:40.440 How do we change our relationship with anxiety? That it's not an indication that something's

00:10:44.360 wrong with us. It's not the end of our happiness and wellbeing. It's just considered to be part

00:10:49.200 of life and something that actually can make us stronger and even thrive better.

00:10:53.020 Well, yeah, that's the big argument in your book. This book's called Thriving with

00:10:55.720 Anxiety. You make the case that anxiety can be used as a strength in our lives. How can

00:11:00.960 this thing that we see as a disorder and everyone's trying to get rid of actually be a blessing?

00:11:07.420 Yeah, it's really simple. A really solid workout in the gym. You don't feel good at the moment,

00:11:14.440 right? You're sweating, you're uncomfortable, you're feeling a burn in your muscles. I mean,

00:11:19.560 if you're increasing, you know, you're lifting, you know, you're lifting heavy stones or whatever

00:11:23.420 it is that you got going. And it's uncomfortable. It burns. It feels like death at one point. And if

00:11:30.540 you have a trainer or someone standing over you, they're like, keep going, keep going. It looks

00:11:34.360 like torture. I mean, you know, if you're filming it from the outside, it would be, you didn't know

00:11:38.680 what was going on. You'd be like, why is that person torturing them? But they're not. And the

00:11:41.940 person who's doing it is actually voluntarily going through that pain in order to develop their muscle

00:11:48.000 tone, to develop their reaction time, to develop their cardiovascular health. And emotional health

00:11:53.940 is no different. It's no different. Going through anxiety can enhance our emotional and neural strength

00:12:01.160 and make us more resilient and more capable of handling difficult situations, which, by the way,

00:12:07.420 are going to come up, especially if you're pursuing your dreams and your goals in life.

00:12:12.160 If you're taking the easy road, maybe not. But if you're doing something that's out there

00:12:15.280 and you're, you know, being a man, so to speak, and, you know, really out there on a limb and

00:12:20.820 pushing yourself to the max, you're going to feel stressed. You're going to feel anxious. That's the

00:12:25.200 way it's going to be. And can we use anxiety to build that resilience in order to propel us forward

00:12:31.080 in our goals and dreams? I think the answer is yes. Okay. And I hope throughout this conversation,

00:12:34.820 we can discuss some of the tools you've come up with and use with your clients and patients

00:12:39.480 on how to turn their anxiety into something that can be used as a strength instead of a

00:12:44.940 liability. But one of the first things you do when you have someone that comes in to see you saying,

00:12:49.180 oh, I've got so much anxiety, is you talk to them like, well, are you, do you really have anxiety?

00:12:55.180 Because you highlight the fact that a lot of times people confuse being stressed out with being

00:13:01.660 anxious. So what's the difference between stress and anxiety? And why is that difference important?

00:13:07.700 Yeah, great question. First, I'll just mention that people only ask this question if they're feeling

00:13:12.700 anxious, that they're feeling uncomfortable. So here we already see how anxiety can help you to

00:13:17.180 thrive because it helps you to become more self-aware. And you're going to hopefully start

00:13:21.640 to ask yourself questions. Am I just stressed out by situations in my life? Or is there an imbalance

00:13:26.520 between my demands and my resources, between the number of things I have to do and the amount of time,

00:13:33.060 money, whatever it is that I have to accomplish, all that stuff? That would be called stress.

00:13:36.940 Or is my anxiety really a misfire, if you will, of my fear system, in which case I need to take a

00:13:42.820 different approach? That would be the difference between stress and anxiety. Stress is the imbalance

00:13:47.640 between demands and resources. And anxiety is, again, that fear response, which is not in response

00:13:53.420 to an actual threat. It's in response to something which is really in your mind.

00:13:57.700 Okay. So you can just be stressed when there's an imbalance in your life between

00:14:02.820 your demands and your resources. But then you can also feel anxiety about that stress because you're

00:14:09.600 like, oh my gosh, this is going to crush me. My life's going to fall apart. But that anxiety you're

00:14:15.100 feeling about your stress, I mean, it could be helpful sometimes because it can help you recognize,

00:14:20.300 okay, I've got a problem here that I need to do something about.

00:14:24.320 Yeah. Anxiety helps you to unpack all of this. If you're stressed out, like super stressed and

00:14:28.700 chronically stressed, because there's just way too much to do in your life, the structure is such

00:14:33.540 that you never have enough time, never have enough money, never have enough capacity to handle

00:14:38.660 whatever's coming your way, then your body's going to get anxious and feel uncomfortable as a sign to

00:14:44.860 tell you, hey, let's check, let's recalibrate, let's rebalance, let's maybe do something and make some

00:14:50.200 different choices here. And that's actually a healthy thing. So leaning into the anxiety, letting you

00:14:55.460 experience it can help you to be more self-aware.

00:15:00.240 And so when you have a patient that comes to you like, okay, I'm anxious. They're like, well,

00:15:04.500 let's take a look at your life. It looks like you have a lot of stress in your life. What do you tell

00:15:07.920 people to do to help manage their stress?

00:15:10.280 My go-to is when someone's stressed out, number one is going to be sleep. And I kid you not,

00:15:15.400 I've had many patients come to me. I have them go through an exercise of sleeping for eight hours a

00:15:21.480 night for two weeks. And two weeks later, they have no symptoms of anxiety.

00:15:25.460 They are really restored. They're rejuvenated. And basically their body was telling them,

00:15:31.440 please, please put me to bed. And finally, when they listened, then their symptoms went away. Now

00:15:37.440 it doesn't happen all the time, but that is going to be my go-to for dealing with stress.

00:15:41.460 Gotcha. And then you also talk about exercise is an important one.

00:15:45.820 Yeah, that's my second one.

00:15:46.960 Getting out in nature, ideally, can help out a lot. And then doing things, I think a lot of people

00:15:52.180 these days, they feel overwhelmed with the amount of news and social media they're consuming. That

00:15:56.920 can just add stress that you don't need.

00:16:01.340 Yeah. I like to think about social media and even the news that we have as the greatest

00:16:05.820 social psychology experiment of all time. And it does not seem to be going well.

00:16:10.180 Never before in history have you had a generation with unfettered access

00:16:14.360 to international news at this order of magnitude. It's incredible what we can look up in 10 seconds

00:16:22.120 on our phones. And we have to be mindful of the effects of that. That can be intense.

00:16:27.620 Yeah. Okay. So if you're feeling anxious, first question to ask, well, maybe I'm stressed out.

00:16:32.440 Look at that and do an inventory. And then if you are, get some extra sleep. I know I've noticed

00:16:37.260 in my own life with sleep. I'm sure everyone else has experienced this as well. Is it nighttime?

00:16:42.020 That's when you start ruminating and you start going down this dark place. Like, oh my gosh,

00:16:46.400 my life's terrible. I've got all this stuff going on. And oh, this problem, there's just

00:16:50.420 something about being tired and it's dark outside. And then it's usually at that point, it's like,

00:16:54.940 I got to go to bed. If I just go to bed, all the problems go away for at least eight hours.

00:17:00.220 And then I wake up and then I see those things that I thought were problems. They're not actually

00:17:04.900 problems. I feel I can take them on.

00:17:07.220 Sounds like you're also not your best self when you're super tired late at night. Hey, we got that in

00:17:11.680 common. Imagine that.

00:17:12.960 Right. Yeah. It's like, you know, sometimes we're grownups are just big babies. Like, okay,

00:17:16.860 baby, you know, is the baby crying because it needs sleep and it's hungry, et cetera. And like,

00:17:22.080 usually the same things can apply to grown humans as well.

00:17:25.340 I think that's really well put. I like that.

00:17:26.920 So one of the things you talk about is let's say someone gets triggered by anxiety and they start

00:17:32.820 feeling that anxiousness starting to percolate in their body. That feeling can be okay. It can be a

00:17:40.420 signal that something's off and that you need to explore something. But you talk about how people

00:17:44.700 can get on this anxiety spiral that takes them to a not so great place. So what's the anxiety spiral?

00:17:51.620 Yep. That's definitely the key here. And I think this relates to what we were saying before.

00:17:56.100 To me, the anxiety spiral is the reason why we have an anxiety epidemic today.

00:18:00.500 The minute we start to feel a little uncomfortable, our first perception is what's wrong with me?

00:18:05.740 Something's not right here. And we start to judge ourselves and say, oh, I'm diseased. Oh,

00:18:11.460 everyone else feels fine. Why do I feel this way? You know? And we start to get upset about the fact

00:18:15.920 that we're anxious. Okay. The second thing we do is we catastrophize. I can't handle this anxiety.

00:18:21.700 This will kill me. This will make me a weak person. This will make it impossible for me to function.

00:18:27.580 And by the way, none of that is true. People actually function better when they're anxious,

00:18:33.060 surprisingly. Often people function better when they're anxious. But those two horsemen, if you

00:18:38.840 will, horsemen of the apocalypse, the first one, the judgment of oneself, and the second one

00:18:43.560 is the catastrophizing, may actually physiologically increase the intensity of your anxiety symptoms

00:18:51.900 because you're going to have a dump of adrenaline into your system. And around and around we go.

00:18:56.500 That creates the anxiety spiral or the cascade, as I like to call it. Because the initial experience

00:19:01.020 of anxiety met with judgment, met with catastrophizing, leads to greater levels of

00:19:06.000 anxiety. And that's what's happening in our society en masse.

00:19:09.260 What's an example of the anxiety spiral? Like a very concrete example you might see in your practice.

00:19:13.660 Let's say someone has, they say, I've got an anxiety problem around, let's say socializing. I have a

00:19:18.580 social anxiety. What would that anxiety spiral look like in that situation?

00:19:22.900 Great. Okay. So you're in a social situation. You're walking into a party. You don't

00:19:26.480 know too many people. And you're worried about making small talk. So you start to feel a little

00:19:30.780 bit panicky, a little bit of a flutter in your heart. Start to feel a little bit of a pit in your

00:19:34.820 stomach. You feel the cotton mouth coming on. And then immediately start to think, oh no,

00:19:39.820 other people are going to see I'm anxious. Oh no, why do I feel this way? I'm weak. I can't really

00:19:44.660 handle this. So at that point, there are a couple of things that happen. People either leave the party

00:19:48.440 or they start drinking or they can take a bold, bold move, which is what I'm recommending,

00:19:56.140 which is to weather the storm and to say, no, I'm not feeling uncomfortable because something's

00:20:00.620 wrong with me. This is just part of a new territory for me. I'm not the most social guy. I'm not the

00:20:05.700 most, I'm a little bit shy. Okay, fine. So I'm going to learn how to do this. I'm going to build the

00:20:10.380 resilience. I'm going to build that capacity and then I'm going to move through. And that choice of

00:20:15.140 going into the anxiety spiral or what I call the positive spiral makes all the difference in the

00:20:19.740 world when we're dealing with anxiety in the moment. Well, yeah, let's talk about that positive

00:20:23.580 spiral. That's the antidote to the anxiety spiral. What does the positive spiral look like?

00:20:27.740 Yeah, the positive spiral is when we accept I'm going to feel anxious sometimes. Okay. Some people

00:20:32.500 just aren't that social. In social situations, when they're meeting new people or when they're having

00:20:36.920 conversations with, I don't know, superiors at work or whatever it is, they're going to feel

00:20:40.960 awkward. They're going to feel uncomfortable and that's okay. There's no judgment.

00:20:45.140 There's actually self-compassion. There's an understanding, okay, this is just my makeup and

00:20:48.760 I have to build my resilience and build my connection. And these opportunities, you know

00:20:53.700 what? I'm going to do it once a week. I'm going to go into an uncomfortable situation and I'm going

00:20:57.820 to build that muscle just like I would in the gym once a week, a couple times a week in order to

00:21:03.620 make the anxiety a catalyst towards thriving and growth as opposed to something that gets me down

00:21:10.480 and then I get upset about. Okay. So for someone who has maybe social anxiety,

00:21:14.100 you're in that social situation. You have to make small talk at a party. You're feeling that

00:21:18.800 moment. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm starting to feel a little anxious, feeling tight in the chest.

00:21:23.820 The positive spiral would be like, just, okay, I'm just going to experience this. I'm not going to

00:21:27.900 try to fight it. You're not going to try to convince yourself there's nothing to be afraid of.

00:21:31.440 You're just going to allow yourself to feel that tightness. And then usually what ends up

00:21:36.180 happening by just allowing it, it usually just washes over you pretty fast. And oftentimes the

00:21:40.440 anxiety just stops after a few minutes. It does. A couple of years ago, this happened to me. I was

00:21:45.380 giving a talk for an audience and I was not expecting to feel anxious at all. I don't usually get

00:21:49.280 anxious giving public lectures as a public speaker. It happens all the time that I probably give

00:21:54.220 30, 40 lectures a year at this point. But I was in this situation and all of a sudden I started to

00:22:00.000 feel anxious and I'm like, okay, great. We're going to build our resilience. I looked at my watch and

00:22:05.360 120 seconds later, the anxiety symptoms were gone.

00:22:09.240 Yeah. And this reminds me a lot of acceptance and commitment therapy from Stephen Hayes. We've

00:22:14.300 had Stephen Hayes on the podcast before. His whole thing is instead of fighting these negative emotions,

00:22:19.660 just sit with them for a bit and maybe even explore them. Like what's going on there? Why am I feeling

00:22:25.060 that tightness in my chest? And counterintuitively by really leaning into those negative feelings or

00:22:32.040 emotions, they go away.

00:22:34.180 Yeah. Steve is a bit of a mentor of mine, in fact. And he actually wrote an approbation of

00:22:39.260 a previous book that I wrote. So he definitely has had a huge influence on my work. I think

00:22:44.400 acceptance is the starting point. The question is, can you actually use anxiety in a positive

00:22:49.980 way in your life to increase your relationships with others, your connection with yourself to

00:22:55.940 start to really parlay that into pursuing higher goals and dreams? That's really where

00:23:02.080 ACT is the sort of foundation point for my approach.

00:23:07.240 Well, something I've done as I've coached flag football for my son and his friends for the past

00:23:12.960 couple of years. And there's a few boys who get really anxious before a game and they'll be like,

00:23:18.400 oh my gosh, I just have a lot of anxiety. And you can see them starting to go down that

00:23:23.500 anxiety spiral where they're going through this catastrophizing, like, what if I do this

00:23:29.180 during the game? And then they start beating themselves up like, oh, why do I feel like

00:23:32.800 this?

00:23:33.160 Why do I feel this way?

00:23:34.340 What's going on? And I have to stop and be like, hey, hey, you know, look, it's perfectly

00:23:38.400 normal to feel nervous or anxious before a big game because it means it's important to

00:23:43.400 you. Like you want to do well. That's great. It's okay. Just feel it. It's going to go away.

00:23:48.080 And then I also try to reframe it. I say, hey, you know, that feeling of anxiety, that's

00:23:52.900 just your body's way of getting ready to take on this challenge. And it seems to help

00:23:57.380 reframing it. It's like, hey, you can use that energy to do well on the football field.

00:24:03.000 Yeah, it's exactly what teachers and mentors need to be doing these days. And unfortunately,

00:24:06.580 it doesn't happen nearly enough. Usually it's like, oh, you feel anxious? Oh, something's

00:24:11.260 really wrong. Like, that's a problem. You should really speak to someone about that.

00:24:15.180 And it just reinforces the sense that we can't function in an anxious way. Sometimes people

00:24:21.460 play their best game when they're anxious. Comedians. I can't tell you how many comedians

00:24:25.840 I've had who've come into the Center for Anxiety offices. Often plagued with anxiety, hilariously

00:24:31.240 funny, and plagued with anxiety because you've got to be on. You're doing improv. You have to

00:24:36.560 be on in order to do comedy in front of hundreds of people. And if a joke fails, you've got to

00:24:41.640 be able to recover quickly. I mean, it's really anxiety provoking. And that's good. That actually

00:24:46.860 is part of the strength of comedy is that it's predicated on being on your game.

00:24:53.900 Right. You could fall flat on your face. That's what makes it exciting.

00:24:56.820 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:57.920 And you also highlight there's a lot of athletes who have a ritual. Some of them just throw up

00:25:03.100 before a game. And that's what they do. That's how they get ready for it. Because it means

00:25:09.040 that the game's important to them. If they don't do that, if they don't have that, I'm

00:25:12.560 feeling nervous, I'm throwing up, they often play worse because they don't have that edge

00:25:16.580 that they need.

00:25:17.520 Yeah. We often misinterpret today, unfortunately, our anxiety that something's wrong as opposed

00:25:22.080 to recognizing that, oh, hey, this is actually, you know, my adrenaline is starting to flow

00:25:27.680 through my body here. And that's preparing me for actually a higher level of performance.

00:25:32.740 Like it is often amping you up and keeping you on your game.

00:25:37.820 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:25:41.720 And now back to the show.

00:25:44.140 Okay. So if you feel those feelings of anxiety, don't go down the anxiety spiral. Don't catastrophize.

00:25:50.380 Don't beat yourself up. Don't say this is a big problem because that'll just make things

00:25:54.320 worse. Antidote is the positivity spiral, the positive spiral. And you can do that by

00:26:00.040 do you feel those negative, anxious feelings, just sit with them. And then also you maybe

00:26:05.500 do some reframing like, well, how can I use this to allow me to excel whatever task I'm

00:26:11.080 about to do or my relationships? We'll talk more about the relationship aspect of anxiety

00:26:14.860 because I thought that was really interesting. So you mentioned that most people don't respond

00:26:18.440 with the positivity spiral. So what are the counterproductive ways in which we try to

00:26:24.120 manage our anxiety?

00:26:26.460 Yeah. Your number one counterproductive way is by avoiding it and by shutting it off,

00:26:31.300 by squelching it, by trying to reduce the amount of distress. That's kind of the equivalent of going

00:26:37.920 to the gym, starting to do your workout and being like, oh, you know what? This is uncomfortable.

00:26:42.800 I'm not going to do this. You're not going to build your muscles. It's just the way it is.

00:26:46.640 If you avoid it, if you avoid all the distress. Now, I'm not saying we need to be facing a nine 0.98

00:26:51.800 out of 10 on the anxiety scale on a daily basis. Obviously, that's too much. That's going to lead

00:26:57.340 to the equivalent in the gym would be whatever, however many hundreds of pounds of barbells you're 0.99

00:27:03.120 lifting, which is beyond whatever your current capacity is. But I definitely think we should be

00:27:08.640 moving into the area of a four or a five, even on a daily basis. When I'm pursuing a big dream and a

00:27:15.440 big goal, I'm feeling uncomfortable. My stress level is high. I'm facing it. I get it in my chest.

00:27:22.060 It's an uncomfortable thing. And that's good. That's an indication that I'm on the right track.

00:27:28.680 So I think we need to flip into a completely different relationship with our anxiety compared

00:27:34.800 to the way we currently see it, which is as a disorder and a disease and something's wrong.

00:27:38.980 Okay. So the person with social anxiety, the way they might manage the anxieties,

00:27:43.840 they just avoid social situations completely because they don't want to feel that.

00:27:48.240 Yeah. And people who are afraid of heights won't go in elevators or they won't go up in a plane.

00:27:52.380 And people who have panic attacks are going to avoid any situation that might lead them to panic.

00:27:57.140 I've had patients who stopped riding the subway because they didn't want to panic when they

00:28:00.280 were underground. I've had patients who stopped going over bridges, stopped going through tunnels,

00:28:06.460 stopped traveling completely. I had a patient who stopped going to the supermarket.

00:28:09.440 She would not leave her house because she was so terrified that she might have a panic attack and

00:28:15.520 die. And these are real life situations that the anxiety, if it leads into avoidance, it can just

00:28:23.860 take over your life as opposed to being like, whoa, hold on. I got to actually face this and get that

00:28:29.300 opportunity to build that inner strength. And once they do that by facing it through what we call

00:28:33.300 exposure therapy, that can be a huge catalyst for bravery, for really moving oneself forward

00:28:40.900 towards flourishing.

00:28:42.500 Well, let's talk about exposure therapy. How does that look in a clinical setting? And then

00:28:45.800 can people do this? Let's say someone has mild anxiety with social situations. Could they do this

00:28:51.580 exposure therapy on their own?

00:28:53.140 Okay. Two great questions. I'll tell you what it looks like first. It looks a little bit like death.

00:28:57.420 And what I mean by that is people face their specific anxiety head on in a structured way.

00:29:05.820 So if you're afraid of spiders, then yes, I do have the name of a spider wrangler that I can call

00:29:11.160 and he will bring over tarantulas to my office. Now, of course, we don't start off with live

00:29:15.360 tarantulas. It's usually videos, it's pictures, it's maybe going to a zoo or some sort of a museum of

00:29:22.580 natural history kind of deal. But eventually, yeah, you're playing with spiders in the office

00:29:27.660 and it's very uncomfortable and the person's, you know, has super high levels of anxiety. And I kid

00:29:33.500 you not, two to three hours later, two to three hours later is often all it takes, they are able

00:29:40.360 to actually tolerate the anxiety that they have been avoiding sometimes for years. In terms of doing

00:29:46.220 it at home, you know, we like to say don't try this at home, kids. But in all seriousness,

00:29:50.980 you can try a little bit, like I might, you know, just approach some of these things, like if something

00:29:56.960 makes you uncomfortable to watch on the screen, you know, I would stay in that a little bit longer

00:30:02.920 than pulling away from it. But, you know, it's not a bad idea to have a coach when you're training

00:30:08.200 for something big. And it's not a bad idea to have a therapist when you're trying to train for the anxiety

00:30:13.720 to build your resilience and anxiety.

00:30:15.680 Okay, so you've got some serious anxiety. A coach therapist would be really helpful

00:30:20.740 to guide you through this exposure therapy. Another way people often avoid anxiety, or it

00:30:27.360 allows them to do the thing that makes them anxious, but not be there mentally or kind of

00:30:34.060 checked out is substances. How have you seen your patients use different substances?

00:30:39.100 Yeah, so we were speaking a lot about social anxiety beforehand. Social anxiety and alcohol abuse

00:30:43.920 are like brother and sister, you know. Very common, especially among college students,

00:30:48.600 especially among males, I'll add, although females as well, where people feel socially anxious

00:30:54.040 and, you know, they got to get their liquor courage, as they say. You know, that's really

00:31:00.000 kind of dangerous territory. Firstly, it can clearly lead to substance abuse and alcohol abuse and

00:31:05.720 alcohol dependence and all sorts of other issues there. But the other thing is that, you know,

00:31:09.940 if you need a drink in order to be in a social situation, you're never going to learn how to

00:31:14.780 feel truly comfortable and how to develop closer relationships with people. And that's a skill

00:31:19.460 that can leave, I mean, I should say without that skill, you can feel pretty lonely and pretty

00:31:24.680 disconnected. And I think ultimately we all want that, you know, level of, you want to call it

00:31:29.800 emotional intimacy or connection or, you know, whatever language you want to use. And being able to lead

00:31:34.780 into the anxiety actually can help us to get there. So that's one way that they're related.

00:31:40.120 You talk about another response people have whenever they go down that anxiety spiral,

00:31:44.160 start going down, it is worrying. How is worrying different from anxiety?

00:31:49.500 Yeah, it's a great question. So the clinical science on worry is really interesting.

00:31:52.740 People who worry a lot tend to have low levels of anxiety almost forever. And the reason why is

00:31:59.900 because the worry, believe it or not, it's a behavior that people engage in, in order to keep

00:32:05.020 their anxiety at a low level without actually facing the truth that there's so much that we can't control

00:32:11.920 in life. And there's so much that we can't know. You know, when we worry, we're like, what if I got

00:32:16.780 sick? What if I lost money? But it's not like really what if that were to happen? People don't actually

00:32:23.500 face the real possibility of those terrible situations, which is genuinely terrifying.

00:32:32.620 It is genuinely terrifying and perilous. But that leaning into the real anxiety beneath the worry

00:32:38.360 is where the opportunity for resilience lies.

00:32:41.540 Okay. So worrying is kind of a superficial anxiety.

00:32:44.960 You got it.

00:32:45.660 Okay. So if you're a worrier and you find yourself on that worrying cycle, anything,

00:32:50.560 any advice on getting out of it?

00:32:53.300 Yeah, this is a tough one. And this is one where therapist intervention is probably going

00:32:56.560 to be even harder because it's just, it's a little bit amorphous. It's a little bit harder

00:33:00.560 to actually do. You know, if you're afraid in exposure therapy, if you're afraid of, like

00:33:04.500 I said, spiders before, you're afraid of heights. So, okay, you can physically get into an elevator

00:33:08.960 and look out the window. It's hard, but you know what you got to do. With worry, you got

00:33:13.880 to actually sit and imagine the worst case scenario. And to do it for five minutes a day,

00:33:20.400 worry at a specific period of time and to really delve into the depths of your worry. You know,

00:33:26.240 that can be harder to do. People can do it on their own. I've seen it. But that's the kind

00:33:30.260 of thing where it's usually, you need a little more guidance and someone to give you a little

00:33:33.700 bit more of a push from the outside because it's so mental. It's really in your head.

00:33:37.200 So just to clarify, what's the positive version of worrying? So worrying is kind of productive

00:33:41.860 because it's not actually causing you to confront the thing that's actually making you anxious.

00:33:47.840 It's true.

00:33:48.960 What would the flip side of that look like?

00:33:52.080 The flip side of that is actually becoming brave and learning to accept and to tolerate

00:33:58.840 how little is within the scope of our knowledge and control because we're human beings.

00:34:04.660 We can only know so much. We can only control so much. And actually coming to peace, coming

00:34:10.860 to terms. The analogy I'll give you is like this. I have this exercise I do when I get

00:34:16.340 on a plane where I look at this aluminum box that I'm about to enter and I touch the outside

00:34:21.920 of the plane and I walk in over the threshold. I sit down and I buckle my seatbelt and I say

00:34:28.240 to myself, David, you are not in charge for the next however long. Let's say it's a two-hour

00:34:33.700 flight. You are not in charge for the next two hours. You're not going to fly the plane.

00:34:36.920 You're not going to know where it's going. You can look on the screen, but at the end

00:34:40.380 of the day, you don't know. And we have to learn to be okay with that and to embrace

00:34:45.460 the unknown, to embrace the lack of control, and to sort of man up along those lines.

00:34:53.340 My experience with worrying, going on the lines that it's a superficial anxiety,

00:34:57.500 I think one of the problems with worry that I've seen is that it makes you feel like you're

00:35:01.640 doing something, but you're not really doing anything.

00:35:04.200 That's well put. It's an attempt to convince yourself that you have control that you really

00:35:09.760 don't have.

00:35:10.280 Right. So you're just constantly thinking, you're going through all these different

00:35:13.760 situations. I could do this. I could do that. And you find yourself eventually just going

00:35:17.260 through the same two or three things over and over again. And you realize, okay, this

00:35:22.040 is actually not doing anything. I just have to accept that I don't know what's going to

00:35:25.320 happen. There are certain actions I could take, but I don't have control over the outcomes

00:35:30.900 of those actions.

00:35:32.060 No, you're just going to do the best you can. And the rest, you just got to give it

00:35:35.460 up. Like it might work, it might not work. And therein lies the challenge, but therein

00:35:40.300 lies the opportunity to be more emotionally resilient and to accept the limits of our control.

00:35:46.100 You know, that's part of being human.

00:35:47.840 Okay. So anxiety in relation to ourselves, our anxiety can kind of, I like the idea that

00:35:52.920 the anxiety can be a signal to what's important to us in life or a signal to how we can excel

00:35:59.540 or where our strengths might lie, but we might be afraid to embrace that. And we've talked

00:36:04.480 about some tools you can do, avoiding the anxiety spiral, embrace the positive spiral. I like

00:36:10.480 this idea in the book you had about how anxiety can either disconnect us or connect us to others.

00:36:17.360 So how can anxiety lead us to be disconnected from others?

00:36:23.020 Yeah. I think, so men in particular, I think are pretty bad at this in our culture. And the

00:36:28.380 reason why is because, you know, when we feel anxious and we're human, so we're going to feel

00:36:33.280 anxious sometimes. Like let's acknowledge it. Your fight or flight system is going to get triggered

00:36:36.920 every once in a while, erroneously with the anxiety spike. What do you do? Do we actually

00:36:42.500 acknowledge that and say, hey, I'm feeling kind of uncomfortable right now? Now it seems like

00:36:46.760 not like the most guy thing to do, but if you want to develop emotional connection, you know,

00:36:53.180 I would say, you know, generally speaking, especially with females, it's gold. It's just gold. 1.00

00:36:59.500 It's the best way to open up and to show that feeling. There's a vulnerability that comes with it.

00:37:06.320 And I think it can really truly enhance our connection with others. And it allows people

00:37:10.760 to drop their guard around us and to actually be with us and connect with us on a different plane.

00:37:17.660 But, you know, it's, it's gutsy. It's a gutsy move, you know, to put it out there and to say,

00:37:22.660 hey, I'm feeling, you know, I'm feeling anxious. I'm having a hard time.

00:37:25.800 It's something you talk about in the book is that some people who are really anxious about

00:37:30.960 relationships, they might see that as a weakness, right? But you actually, this idea that the anxiety

00:37:37.940 can be a strength. Those people who are really anxious about relationships, whether like, okay,

00:37:42.460 how's my marriage? Does this guy, does my boss think I'm a loser or not? They're constantly 0.94

00:37:48.540 thinking about that. These individuals, they can like, they can read people better because

00:37:53.120 they're more, more attuned to like what people are thinking, feeling, doing, et cetera.

00:37:57.840 That's definitely the case. There are these categories of people and people who are flourishing.

00:38:02.140 Everything's going well for them. They got a great business. They got a really nice car.

00:38:06.880 They've got a great house. They've got everything flying for them.

00:38:09.680 People often are misreading the emotions of others around them. Typically, that's the most hated boss,

00:38:16.900 you know, because he like doesn't pick up on how other people are really feeling and people don't

00:38:22.560 like them. The kids usually hate them. I've seen this a lot in the clinical setting. But if you look

00:38:29.580 at like the anxious guys, people who are a little more, you know, more likely to feel uncomfortable

00:38:35.660 in certain situations and they actually care about what other people think. They're more in tune with

00:38:39.960 other people's emotions. Their relationships are often closer and better. And that can predict

00:38:45.720 people's happiness as we age to a much greater extent than our level of success.

00:38:50.660 But just as there's like an anxiety spiral with ourselves, right? We experience those feelings of

00:38:56.640 anxiety and then we can go down that, okay, catastrophize and then self-judgment. This can happen in a

00:39:02.800 relationship. So someone might be in a relationship with, let's say, you know, some guys dating a woman,

00:39:09.420 but he's anxious about the state of the relationship. And he starts going down this

00:39:13.860 spiral of like checking in and kind of becoming needy and like, oh, are you okay? What do you think

00:39:18.980 about our relationship? Or I'm really sorry. Like, and then it becomes like, it's coming from a good

00:39:23.980 place because like the guy really wants to make the thing work, but he becomes so obsessed with it that

00:39:29.760 it becomes off-putting. Yeah. And sometimes it destroys the relationship.

00:39:33.440 It destroys the relationship, right? They become overly needy and attached.

00:39:36.540 Yeah. Or angry, by the way. People sometimes they, oh, what do you mean? Why'd you say that?

00:39:42.700 And they, cause they're taking it personally when like, she didn't mean it personally. Like she was

00:39:46.880 just saying what she said. And, but he, he's emotionally reactive because he's not aware of his feelings.

00:39:53.100 It's sort of the fight response or the flight response. Like the clinginess is one side of it and

00:39:57.380 the other side is getting angry. And yeah, both of those responses are maladaptive and not going to

00:40:03.220 build your, your connection. And if you care about her, then well, that's, I think be honest and be

00:40:09.720 open instead and embrace the anxiety and say, hey, you know, I've been thinking about our relationship.

00:40:13.840 Like, I really like this and I like where it's going. I'm wondering where you stand. And it's hard to

00:40:19.500 put yourself out there and to sort of, you know, and if she's like, no, I'm not so sure. Oh, that's,

00:40:24.580 that's too bad. You know, I, I really kind of like this thing and I hope that changes in the

00:40:29.600 meantime, you know, whatever, whatever your plan is, but it's hard to like embrace your anxiety and

00:40:34.480 actually put it out there, but it really builds connection. Right. You have to put it out there

00:40:38.660 and then again, accept that you have no control of the outcome. No, she might say no. She might say

00:40:43.520 yes. Who knows? It's not up to you. And I think this is why, you know, one of the factors that might be

00:40:48.540 contributing to you, you read a lot about young people having a hard time with relationships these

00:40:52.460 days. And I think it goes back to this idea of a sense of control. Like we feel like we can control

00:40:57.140 every aspect of our lives, including our relationships. So we want our dating life to

00:41:01.640 be perfect, our marriage life to be perfect. And so we try to do all these little tactics to like

00:41:08.060 control everything, but that just makes us more anxious about those relationships, which just makes

00:41:14.460 it harder to have those positive relationships. Yeah, definitely. I mean, all relationships are real

00:41:20.460 relationships and great relationships are messy. They're just messy. You know, people have

00:41:25.060 miscommunications and misunderstandings. They, you know, they rub each other the wrong way. They

00:41:30.300 have these interactions, which are problematic and these patterns, you know, that often stem from

00:41:35.220 childhood and butt up against each other. And, and, you know, therein lies the opportunity to actually

00:41:40.160 create real connection. I think it's a lost art in our society, the art of, the art of love,

00:41:45.580 if you will. I think it's a lost art and not, not to our, not in our favor.

00:41:50.800 So you mentioned anger. How can anxiety be a source of our anger?

00:41:56.360 Now, when I see angry people, almost always, almost always the root of it is anxiety, but

00:42:04.120 they're not expressing it. And sometimes they're not even aware of it. And it's amazing. We talked

00:42:08.060 about this at the beginning that the anxiety response is based on fear, which is called the

00:42:12.260 fight or flight response. Remember fight? So fight is anger. And that's often what happens.

00:42:18.160 When you're, when somebody does something that makes you anxious, you have a choice. You can say

00:42:21.760 to them, hey, what you're doing is making me uncomfortable. Or, I mean, some sort of language

00:42:25.500 around that. Or you can just say like, you jerk, like stop doing that. What's wrong with you? You know, 1.00

00:42:30.040 and blaming them as opposed to sharing how you feel. And that blame, that anger is the exact

00:42:36.380 opposite. That's leaning away from your anxiety. That's, um, covering it up, making it harder to

00:42:43.160 connect with others and, uh, usually pushes people away.

00:42:47.560 Okay. So if you have an anger problem, maybe you look at, okay, what am I, what am I potentially

00:42:51.600 anxious about in life? And then work on that.

00:42:54.540 Yeah, definitely. It's hard to get there because anger is usually a way of avoiding the feelings

00:43:00.580 of anxiety. Um, so you might need a therapist to actually probe, you know, the depths of that.

00:43:06.520 We call it a secondary emotion anger because it's a response to the primary emotion of anxiety.

00:43:12.380 Sometimes sadness, but often it's anxiety. Most often.

00:43:16.120 Gotcha. So with anxiety, there's either the flight, fight, uh, response, right? Fight or flight. So anger

00:43:21.680 is the fight response. Like I'm going to get really angry about this. I'm going to do something about it.

00:43:25.920 The flight response would be, I'm going to avoid the situation completely.

00:43:29.660 You're arguing that if you really want to thrive with anxiety, that's like the third way. You just

00:43:33.620 kind of have to sit with it and be okay with it.

00:43:35.820 Sit with it, tolerate it, and then find a positive way to do it, which might mean expressing it and

00:43:40.880 saying, Hey, I'm really having a hard time right now. I'm having, you know, an anxious moment. Um,

00:43:46.540 and if you can't do that in a romantic relationship, then at least doing that with a friend,

00:43:50.780 um, or with a therapist for that matter, you know, just being able to get it off your chest is

00:43:54.460 really, really critical and something that, uh, we have to learn how to do as humans.

00:43:59.840 Something you do with your practice is you bring in spiritual traditions from around,

00:44:04.380 around the world to help people with their anxiety. How have you done that with your work?

00:44:08.640 Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to say it's dependent on the patient and, you know,

00:44:11.720 this is only for people who want it. You know, when I was writing this book, um, uh, the publisher,

00:44:17.120 Harper Collins, they said, well, we want, you know, a third of the book to be devoted to this

00:44:20.860 subject. Cause we think that people in general are going to, are going to want spiritual approaches.

00:44:25.160 And I said, sure, like, I'm very happy to do it. And I try to use really accessible language,

00:44:29.500 which comes across different religious traditions. I say it's for people with, um, any faith or none

00:44:35.220 at all. And, uh, I stand by that. I think the spiritual concepts in the book are very broadly

00:44:40.060 applicable. So just that sort of a preamble from a faith perspective or from a spiritual perspective,

00:44:45.980 I should say, what's wrong with anxiety? You know, it's a very, uh, biomedical materialistic,

00:44:52.440 uh, reductionistic approach to say that human beings should never feel anxious, should never

00:44:57.560 feel uncomfortable, should never have any pain. And I just think when we take that approach and

00:45:02.080 we apply it to our emotions, you know, the spiritual lens is that, well, maybe there's a

00:45:06.960 higher purpose. Maybe there's something greater in our lives. Maybe we're here to self-actualize and

00:45:11.500 to bring out our potential in this world. Maybe we're here to build connection with each other.

00:45:16.480 And emotional distress can enhance every single one of those processes, every one of those

00:45:21.860 processes. So here's a place where I think the spiritual traditions approach anxiety so much

00:45:27.720 better than the current biomedical model. Um, so what are some practices that you've done

00:45:32.220 with your patients to incorporate the spiritual aspect? You know, one of them is understanding

00:45:37.180 that, and I talk about this in the book, what are your biggest goals? What are your biggest dreams?

00:45:43.320 What do you really want to be doing? You know, is your current job, is your current

00:45:48.320 day-to-day life reflective of your core values of what you really truly want to do? And if

00:45:56.560 the answer is no, usually anxiety is involved because it's scary to pursue your deepest dreams

00:46:04.380 and to try to bring out your latent potential in the world. Even to think about it can be really

00:46:10.740 terrifying because what if I fail? What if I fail? What if I can't quantify my results?

00:46:15.880 So what if it has to be some sort of qualitative, complicated way of evaluating whether I really

00:46:21.660 achieved it? And I won't even know. Nobody will know. So it gets, you know, it gets anxiety

00:46:26.660 provoking. And, uh, but I think from a spiritual perspective that that's the case. Anxiety can

00:46:32.000 actually enhance, um, our spiritual growth and our self-actualization because it's part and parcel

00:46:37.600 of self-expression. Right. And I also, you talk about just looking at spiritual traditions from

00:46:43.840 history and around the world, all of them usually have a tenet about human beings. They don't control

00:46:49.780 the world. Like you, you are not the center of the universe and your goal in life is just to figure

00:46:54.420 out how to navigate the world in which you have no control. At the center, and clinical science has

00:46:59.840 borne this out, at the center, at the core of anxiety is an intolerance of uncertainty and

00:47:06.040 intolerance of uncontrollability. If you need to know and you need to be in control, you will feel

00:47:11.460 anxious. I promise you are going to feel anxious. And I think spiritual traditions teach us that

00:47:16.540 there are human limits. There just are human limits. And whether you believe in something greater

00:47:21.920 or even if you don't, I think all of us can understand that, you know, we didn't choose

00:47:27.560 whether to be born, when to be born, where to be born, and a zillion other factors that are,

00:47:32.700 have a colossal impact on our day-to-day, there's so much that we don't know, so much that we can't

00:47:38.780 control. And can we come to a place of acceptance of those terms? I think spirituality can enhance

00:47:44.780 our acceptance and our awareness of our human limits.

00:47:49.640 So there's a few books that I've read during my lifetime that have hit on this idea that humans,

00:47:54.980 the limitations of humans and your inability to control everything. Bhagavad Gita,

00:47:59.280 really big one. I get the opening scene. You have Arjuna basically having anxiety attack,

00:48:06.880 right? He's about to see, he sees this great war unfolding before him. And he says,

00:48:11.320 my limbs sink, my mouth is parched, my body trembles, the hair bristles on my flesh,

00:48:16.360 the magic bow slips from my hand, my skin burns, I cannot stand still, my mind reels. And then he

00:48:21.800 gets a lesson from Krishna saying, yeah, you don't have control of everything. You don't,

00:48:26.500 you can't control the outcomes. Book of Job, another good one that I like to read. I know

00:48:32.740 Abraham Lincoln loved to read the Book of Job, particularly during the Civil War. The Odyssey

00:48:38.480 of Homer, another one where character doesn't have any control over the outcomes. And then another one

00:48:45.100 that I really like is Lonesome Dove. People who've listened to this podcast a lot know I'm a big fan of

00:48:49.980 Lonesome Dove. But I think that novel, one of the themes is just how life is constantly changing and

00:48:55.080 you don't know what the outcomes are going to be, but you just have to deal with it. You just kind

00:48:58.380 of have to live with it and accept whatever outcomes come your way. So those are some,

00:49:02.720 like, I guess we can call them spiritual books that have helped me out.

00:49:05.620 I love that. Sounds like a great collection. And it sounds like something that's also missing from

00:49:09.720 the education of many young people today to our detriment. You know, we live in a society that

00:49:15.860 prizes itself on predictability, on controllability, on quantitative measures,

00:49:21.920 as opposed to really embracing the limits of our humanity.

00:49:27.280 And another one, you talk about this one in the book, one of my other favorite books,

00:49:29.880 Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

00:49:31.860 Sure, Viktor Frankl.

00:49:32.800 Yeah.

00:49:33.600 Yeah, Viktor Frankl, I mean, you know, his whole story was incredible and really having to accept

00:49:40.100 really incredibly trying horrific circumstances and finding meaning despite that, or maybe even

00:49:46.660 because of it, I'll say.

00:49:47.700 So we've talked about a lot in this conversation. Let's say someone's listening to this podcast and

00:49:52.580 they've got an issue with anxiety, right? It's a problem in their lives. What's like one thing

00:49:57.980 that someone could start doing today to start turning their anxiety into a strength?

00:50:02.740 The one thing that I would say is do something that makes you anxious once a week. It doesn't

00:50:07.820 have to be a huge thing. It doesn't have to get you to an eight or a nine on a scale of

00:50:11.860 zero to 10 of anxiety, but try to do something that's going to get you to a four or a five.

00:50:17.140 And when you feel anxious, when you feel anxious in response to that, instead of squelching

00:50:21.880 it, allow yourself to experience it. Take a look at your watch, see how long it's going

00:50:26.380 to last. And if you don't fight it, I'd be shocked if it lasts more than five minutes.

00:50:32.520 I love that. And I think that that goes back, what you just said goes back to our, the beginning

00:50:36.620 of our conversation, right? Like each time you do that, you know, it's like you're going

00:50:40.820 to the gym and doing a workout. I mean, you're building your bravery and your resilience

00:50:45.700 muscle. Well, David, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:50:49.960 Sure. So my author's website, which actually is a free giveaway of a 12 page guide that

00:50:54.860 people can use, whether or not they buy the book, which is based on the nine tools. So

00:51:00.000 people are welcome to check me out at dhrossmarin.com. The book's available wherever books are sold,

00:51:07.140 including Audible. Um, and, uh, even on Spotify, I actually saw it. So the audio book is available

00:51:13.420 and I love to hear from people about, uh, the topic of anxiety and about the book and I can

00:51:18.040 be contacted through the website.

00:51:19.560 Fantastic. Well, David Rosemarin, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:51:22.140 Hey, thanks for the great chat. Really appreciate you having me on your show.

00:51:25.180 My guest here is Dr. David Rosemarin. He's the author of the book, Thriving with Anxiety. It's

00:51:29.260 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his

00:51:33.120 website, dhrosmarin.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash thriving with anxiety.

00:51:38.740 We can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:51:48.280 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:51:52.440 artofmanliness.com. We find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we've written

00:51:56.700 over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't done this already,

00:51:59.720 I'd appreciate it. If you take one minute to give us a review novel podcast or Spotify,

00:52:02.740 it helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:52:06.460 show with a friend or family member who you think reads something out of it. As always,

00:52:09.780 thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Reminder you to listen to

00:52:13.360 the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - November 29, 2023

Turn Your Anxiety Into a Strength

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