Today we're in my garden and we're going to be
talking about dealing with "what ifs". So your brain is super extra at imagining danger, but if you let
anxiety and "what ifs" make your choices, your world is going to shrink and you're going to feel more
anxious and powerless. So instead, we're going to talk about regaining your power through careful
risk assessment and choosing acceptable risk. This video is sponsored by Better Help, where
you can get professional, affordable, counseling online for around $65 a week. Check out the link
in the description for 10% off your first month. So here's another of the most common questions
I get on my Rewiring the Anxious Brain video; so people ask 'what if the dog bites you?' Now in
that video I was explaining how when you avoid something it makes your anxiety go up and this
is really harmful when you avoid something that feels dangerous but is actually safe. So this is
something like public speaking or taking a test or asking for a raise. In that video the example I
used was being afraid of dogs and then I explained how gradual exposure can help you overcome
that fear by gradually spending time with dogs. But of course, when making a video
about anxiety, the anxious people watching this video are going to say 'but
how can I do that? What if the dog bites you?' Now many people with anxiety focus on the
worst case scenario instead of focusing on the potential for growth and healing and that's
because when your brain is in anxiety mode it's attuned to threats, it only notices and pays
attention to the potential dangers around you, but dogs can actually be dangerous. So when
you're in anxiety mode, the one in a thousand chance of getting bit by a family's pet dog,
feels like a serious, immediate, most likely occurrence. In anxiety mode our brain is going to
assume the worst about so many things. It might ask questions like 'what if everyone hates me?' or
'what if I get covid from my groceries?' or 'what if that car swerves into my lane?' and it's really
easy to get wrapped up in all of the "what-ifs". It's easy to get so wrapped up in them that
you completely lose sight of your goals, like overcoming anxiety, or visiting your son who
has a dog. But there are some practical steps you can take to manage your brilliantly anxious
brain instead of letting anxiety run your life. So first, realize that your brain's most natural
job is to "prevent dying", to keep bad things from happening to you and unlike other mammals that are
mostly instinctual about these things, so they'll run away from an immediate threat like a tiger,
but then they'll relax when the threat is gone, our brain has the ability to imagine danger in
the future, to remember danger in the past, and that makes us feel like we're in danger in the present
moment. But just because our brain is really good at imagining dangers doesn't mean that avoiding
those fears is the way for us to live a good, happy life. I think most people with anxiety can see how
feeling anxious all the time and avoiding stuff is making their lives worse. If you let anxiety
and "what-ifs" make your choices your world will shrink and you'll feel more anxious and powerless.
So what I think that people were really asking is: 'Should I spend time with dogs if there's a risk of
getting bitten?' 'Should I face my fears if there's a risk that they could come true, like is it worth
it?' and this question is really about living a good life and I can guarantee you one thing,
if you let fear and anxiety make your choices, then your life is going to suck. You'll feel out
of control and your anxiety is going to increase. So instead, regain your power through careful
risk assessment and choosing acceptable risk. When I was in college studying the illustrious
field of recreation management and taking really intense classes like mountain biking, we had a
couple of classes on risk management, which is basically how to run a recreation program that
kept people safe while also helping them to do cool things like rock climbing and mountain
biking. So I learned how to go rock climbing in the safest way, how to tie the right knots and
how to use the right anchors, how to use equipment safely and how to make good decisions and I've
gone rock climbing literally thousands of times without any injuries to me or my friends or my
clients, but even the most carefully prepared and managed activities come with risk. I can
control the ropes and the anchors and the knots but there's always the risk of a rock
falling and hitting you on the head or an incredibly rare gear failure. So if, when all
of those people asked me, 'what if the dog bites me?', if they were saying 'I can't face my anxiety
because there's risk involved, I'll only do a form of treatment that's 100% safe and comfortable' then
we need to talk about risk and anxiety acceptance. We can't avoid all risk. Not only would trying
ruin our lives but, it's just it's not possible. So, if you avoid everything dangerous by staying
home all the time, then you risk dying of obesity and heart disease and loneliness. By
staying home you miss opportunities to work and play and laugh and love. It's really easy to
see this if we use covid as the example right, with covid, if you choose to socially distance you
protect yourself from the virus but the level of social distancing that you choose determines how
many social activities you miss out on and if you go to the extreme level of never going anywhere
of completely isolating yourself from everyone or not picking up groceries because those have a risk,
then you could starve to death right, so that's the very extreme end of this, but even on the moderate
end of social distancing comes with some risks which many of us are accepting right. So when you
miss out on social activities you risk worsening anxiety and depression. Now I'm not saying that
you shouldn't socially distance, I'm saying that every choice comes with costs and we need to be
intentional about those costs instead of driven by anxiety. So social distancing is a choice that
I'm making, while wholly accepting the costs, but I'm choosing a degree of social distancing that
still lets me go you know, pick up groceries and occasionally see a very small group of people. What
I am saying is that if you want to live a full and meaningful and happy life, you need to make a
choice based on what we value instead of letting anxiety choose for you. So let's go back to the
rock climbing example, there are different levels of danger within rock climbing. There's bouldering
and gym climbing which are relatively safest, then there's top roping, which is where the rope
is connected at the top already and you are just belayed from the bottom, um it is really very safe,
but it comes with a few uh risk factors, which come with outside climbing, which is you know, the
very rare risk of gear failure or a slightly more likely risk of you know, getting a sunburn, getting
stung by a bee, or a rock falling and hitting you on the head, so this is you know, top roping is
really very safe. With top roping when you fall, you really just fall a couple inches due to rope
stretch, because that rope is being held tight and you're being held very secure. With lead climbing,
you start at the bottom and you clip into anchors as you go up the rock face. So this is a little
bit more dangerous because however far you've gone from your last anchor you're gonna fall twice that
far if you slip and fall. So there's a little bit more chance of like a sprained ankle, of getting
you know bumps and bruises, but most likely you're not going to die. Now the next most dangerous level
of rock climbing is free soloing and free soloing is very dangerous, because if you slip or you fall
from a height, you are going to hit the ground. Now deciding whether to climb and how
to climb are choices within my control, but all of these activities come with the
risks outside of my control like environmental conditions, falling rocks, and the risk of
human error. Alex Honnold chooses to free solo. He did what I think is one of the most impressive
physical and mental athletic performances in the history of the world by climbing El Cap without
ropes, but in order to do that he risked falling to his death. Now if you talk to Alex you'll know that
he has made a careful and intentional choice to accept that level of risk in his life. When I climb,
I choose to rope up, I'm a very safe climber. I climbed for five to six years, three to four times
a week, so like thousands of times without a single serious accident, but in order to climb I do risk
sprained ankles and rock falls and you know the very rare potential risk for equipment failure and
for me that is my level of acceptable risk because climbing made my life better. Climbing helps me
think clearly and solve problems and develop grit and face my fears. I'm actually afraid of
heights, but I enjoy climbing so I accept that. Now some people choose not to climb because it
doesn't add value to their life or the value it adds isn't worth the pain or the risk and that's
okay too, as long as it's an intentional choice. So really, dealing with "what-ifs" is all about
making an intentional choice about acceptable risk and the value it has in your life, the value
of that activity, whatever it has in your life. In my mind it's much greater risk to live your
life in fear and reacting only to anxiety and trying to avoid anxiety in such a way that you
no longer have choice in your life, you're not choosing what you want to be doing in your
life, you're choosing just to avoid anxiety. So I'll use another example. I used to be quite
afraid of spoiled milk. I had a couple bad experiences and ever after that I was scared
to drink milk after it had been opened for a couple of days. So for years I just threw the milk
out if it had been opened for a couple of days. Now this was probably an irrational fear, but it
was with limited consequences. For me it wasn't worth the time and the energy to overcome this
fear because the costs on my life were so low, it was like a buck a week to just you know throw out
milk that I wasn't sure if it was good or bad. I was able to live a good life, and not drink older
milk. It wasn't worth it for me to spend a lot of time facing that anxiety because the cost was like
a dollar a week for me to just throw out old milk. But going back to the dog example, if you are
missing out on important things in your life like visiting a family member with a dog or avoiding
going out for walks because of fear of dogs or if you run away screaming and crying from safe dogs
that you see, then at some point you have to make a conscious choice about what is most valuable for
you and this is called risk acceptance and it's an important part of managing anxiety. If you don't
have dogs and you have no friends with dogs then you miss out on little because of dog avoidance,
then then cool, like make the choice to avoid dogs, but don't let anxiety decide for you. Everything
has a risk. You have to make choices about risk instead of letting anxiety make your choices for
you. Make choices about what you want your life to be about instead of simply trying to avoid anxiety.
What do you want your life to be about? Choose to live in a way that runs toward your values instead
of simply running away from discomfort or anxiety. Now real quick side note, just want to
remind you that just because something feels dangerous doesn't mean that it is. The fear
center of our brain is more instinctual than rational, so sometimes what feels dangerous isn't
actually dangerous. So for example I once worked at a treatment program that did a lot of recreational
therapy. We went climbing and rappelling, we would do hiking, biking and horseback riding, we went
rafting down rivers, and we would do ropes courses. Now guess which was our most dangerous activity.
It was the driving. Driving to these activities actually statistically had a higher risk than
the activities we were doing, but which of these activities felt most dangerous? Climbing right,
being up high, those are the scariest activities. And you want to know which activity was the second
most risky, the one that had the most accidents and injuries and the highest risk and actually the
highest cost for insurance? Horseback riding. So it's important to remember that just because
something feels dangerous doesn't mean that it's actually dangerous. We have to turn our
brain back on and make a conscious choice about you know what level of risk we're willing to
accept and when we face that anxiety a lot of times it goes away. Now anxiety usually exaggerates
the danger of certain types of activities things that our brain is like biologically programmed to
avoid things like heights, wild animals, and bugs, social interactions, things like that right. Just
because something feels dangerous doesn't mean that it actually is dangerous. Anxiety can inform
your decisions but don't let it make the choices for you. Through practice, and knowledge, and gradual
exposure, we can bring things that are normally terrifying into our realm of safety. So check out
my exposure hierarchy video to learn more about the you know, breaking these tasks down into little
steps and doing this, because facing our fears is really important to living the life that we value
instead of just living a life where we let anxiety run the show. If your family has a dog, a safe dog,
then the risk level is low and the benefits are high and that's an example of a time when you can
choose to accept the remote risk of getting bitten and and the anxiety that comes with that you know,
it's worth it to face that in order to spend time with the people that you love and when you face
that fear, over time your anxiety will go down. Now if something crazy happens and the dog happens to
bite you then you'll either realize that it wasn't that bad after all and and your anxiety will go
down or you'll reevaluate your choices and then hopefully make an intentional choice about whether
to continue to interact with that dog or not. If your neighbor has a crazy, dangerous, aggressive
dog, you may make the conscious choice to avoid that dog and that neighbor because the level of
risk doesn't outweigh the benefits of interacting with that neighbor. If a person you really care
about has a dog that genuinely seems dangerous then again, you'll need to step back and weigh the
risks and the benefits and again, make a conscious choice about what level of risk you're willing to
accept. But make that decision based not on fear but on what is most important to you. Is it safety?
Is it spending time with them, or is it some kind of compromise between the two? Maybe you'll spend
time with them, but not with their dog. What this really comes down to is looking at your anxiety,
looking at your "what-if" thoughts from an observer position when you're able to notice them from a
vantage point instead of looking through them, then you can make a choice about what you're going to
choose to act on and what you're going to accept. Then choose to do something meaningful, something
that's in line with the life that you want to live. Living a life that you value is most likely going
to include discomfort and anxiety. Making youtube videos is anxiety provoking for me, but I do it
because it makes a small positive difference in the world and so that's an acceptable
risk, it lines up with my personal values, and over time it's gotten easier for me so I
don't feel so anxious about it. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill felt tremendous anxiety
at times about continuing their respective wars. When they saw the loss of life and the pain
and the suffering of the people impacted, but they chose a path based on their values and
their beliefs and the recognition that avoiding that anxiety would actually make things worse. So
I bet, that most people doing good, feel anxiety and while there is always the chance that the
worst may happen the the choice you make, the decision you make about how much risk you accept,
should be based on your values and on conscious risk management skills instead of just on fear,
so your life is bigger, it has more meaning and more purpose than just avoiding fear. If you want
to overcome anxiety and take care of your life, then you need to spend some time figuring
out what you want your life to be about instead of just anxiety avoidance. If you want
to overcome anxiety and take control of your life then you need to spend some time figuring
out what you want your life to be about instead. What good do you want to bring to the world?
Is it kindness? Is it love? Is it education? Is it a kickbutt invention? or Is it a happy
family? When you take the time to step back and look at what you really value, then it makes it
worthwhile to face your fears, accept the "what ifs", take courage, and boldly move forward. I know
that facing your anxiety can be scary, but in the long run it's worthwhile and as you
do it your anxiety is going to decrease. Hope you found this video helpful, thank you for
watching, and take care. If you appreciate mental health skills in concise little packages, please
consider supporting this channel on Patreon.
