This may surprise some of you to hear, but
when I teach in front of a large group I get really nervous. My hands start
sweating and they go ice cold. I sometimes get shaky in my voice, or I often
get that like crazy, stinky armpit sweat. And even though I actually really enjoy presenting
and teaching, what's happening in my brain is that it sees all these people in the audience as a
threat and it essentially turns off the thinking part of my brain. It pumps out a bunch of stress
chemicals, and it goes into this protective mode. This is our body's physical reaction to anxiety,
and it makes it hard to solve problems and to control our behaviors. In this video you're going
to take that anxious feeling you already know, and you're gonna explore it. You're gonna learn
more concretely how it works, why it messes with your brain in the way it does, and then you're
gonna learn a few ways to calm it down so that you can turn on your thinking brain to make better
choices instead of getting stuck in your limbic system. And if you don't know what limbic system
is, don't worry; I'll be covering that here too. This video is sponsored by Skill Share. Skill
Share offers thousands of inspiring classes for curious people and lifelong learners
on topics including art and creativity, but also productivity and personal improvement.
Here's a class I recently took that's really cool- Art Journaling for Self-care: Three Exercises
for Reflection and Growth by Amanda Rich Lee. This class is really cool because it teaches
you three ways to work through emotions using art and you can see other students projects, other
people's journals that they are sharing right in the project gallery. It's really interesting
to see how other people use journaling to work through their emotions and thoughts, and there's
a ton of other classes on productivity creativity and self-care. Becoming a Skill Share member is
less than $10 a month with an annual subscription, and the first 1000 of my subscribers
to click the link in the description will get a free trial of premium membership
so you can check out Skill Share for free. Okay, back to how anxiety impacts
your brain. So have you ever done something really dumb when you've
been scared or stressed out or angry? You're not alone. You know, have you ever wondered
"Why do my hands get all cold and sweaty when I'm anxious?" or "Why does my stomach hurt when I'm
worried?" Many people don't know that the way their body responds to stress or anxiety is really
a reaction intended to keep us safe from danger. Your brain has many different emotional responses,
but in this video we're mostly going to focus on the fear response because that's the one that
often leads to the worst reactivity on our part. We freeze, we get anxious, we
feel hopeless, we get angry, all of this stems from the fear reaction in your
brain. So understanding how your brain works can help you learn how to stop reacting to emotions
and stop doing stupid stuff that you regret later, and this can help you live a happier life where
your actions line up with who you want to be. Okay. So let's talk about how your brilliant
brain works. The brain is really complex. I am not a neuroscientist, but to simplify
there are three main systems in your brain: the brain stem, the limbic system, and the cortex.
Now, the brain stem is also known as the reptile brain. It's ancient. Its job is to make sure you
stay alive. It runs your body's basic functions, like reflexes, eating, breathing, heart rate, and
temperature. All the information relayed from the body to the brain and vice versa, from the brain
to the body, has to go through the brain stem. This part of your brain can keep you alive even
when the other parts are damaged. This is what a vegetative state is, and this part of your brain
also takes precedence over the others. So when you pass out, this part of your brain keeps your
heart beating when you aren't thinking or feeling anything. Okay. Second part is the limbic system.
This is also called the mammal brain. So this is the part of the brain that manages emotions
and relationships. This is also the part of the brain where anxiety originates. This part of the
brain is more advanced than the reptilian brain. Mammals, for example, have a lot
greater emotional range than a snake, and this helps us survive. So if you imagine a
wolf, it can care for its young and it can work together with its herd, and all of
this is thanks to the more advanced features of this emotional part of the brain. So
anger, fear, love, jealousy, these are all rooted in the limbic part of the brain, the mammal brain.
This part of the brain is also reactionary and emotional, and we're gonna learn why this is also
brilliant, right? It's helpful and purposeful. But if we don't learn how to manage it, it can
also lead to us being reactive and impulsive. The limbic system houses the amygdala and the
hypothalamus. When the amygdala stimulates the hypothalamus, this is what initiates the
fight-or-flight response. The hypothalamus sends signals to the adrenal glands to produce
hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. The amygdala is also the part of the brain that
learns what to be afraid of and what is safe. The third part of our brain is the cortex, right?
This houses the human brain. This is the part that we often think of as our brain. It holds conscious
thinking, reasoning, memory, planning for future, organizing, prioritizing, complex problem-solving,
making choices, self-reflection, goals, direction, and values. Right? So even though this part of
the brain seems like it's the most important, it's actually the lowest in the hierarchy.
The two lower sections focus on survival, and that usually takes precedence over
thinking. Not always, but usually, right? For us to understand our emotions, it's important
to understand how our brains respond to threats. So the deeper levels of the brain sense survival
threats and then trigger emotions, instincts, and subconscious drives that we aren't
even aware of. When we feel threatened, our brain shuts down the higher functions
and activates a more primitive state. The greater threat that we're facing, the deeper
the level is activated in our brain. So a really big threat would be something like a massive drop
in blood pressure. In this situation the brain turns off your thinking, it turns off the cortex,
you black out, that makes you get horizontal, which helps your blood pressure go back up, and
tries to keep you alive, right? But this isn't the most common way that our brain turns off. More
commonly, when we're highly emotional, we get stuck in the limbic system. This is when the
emotional brain takes over. Now, there's a good reason for this, right? Over the last thousands
of years, humankind's biggest struggle was for survival in the face of physical dangers like wild
animals, heights, or attacks from warring groups. When faced with a real and immediate danger like a
tiger, our instincts take over and try to keep us safe. The limbic system triggers our protective
response, and we have three main reactions: fight, run away, or freeze. Now, we don't
think this or choose this; it happens much faster than we can think. Right? So a couple of
times when I've been out working in the desert, I have stepped right next to or right over a
rattlesnake. And when you hear that rattle go off, you've already jumped like a foot, like, and
then you start thinking. Like it's crazy how fast that reaction happens and your body is just
flooded with adrenaline, right? So it's like so much faster than you can think. The
fight-flight reaction actually turns down the thinking part of our brain, and it sends
power to the senses and to the muscles. This is kind of like in Star Trek, when they lower
the lights on the bridge to put all power on their weapons. The cortex actually gets sidelined -
that's the thinking part - and the limbic system, the impulsive reactionary instinctive part in
our brain that focuses purely on survival, this is the part that gets amped up. Now, not thinking
can be really helpful if you're facing a tiger, because it's not going to do you that much
good if you spend five minutes trying to plan out your next move only to get eaten. However,
not thinking isn't much help if your "danger" is public speaking and your prefrontal cortex
just shuts down, or if you're asking out a date and your brain turns off, right? Now, our body
is doing other things to try to keep us safe, right? It sends extra blood to the big muscles so
you could punch that tiger or run away from it, right? It decreases blood flow to our hands and
our feet, and that's why your hands get cold and sweaty. It turns on the adrenal glands to pump out
adrenaline to give you that quick burst of energy. This also makes you feel shaky. It turns off the
digestive system because it's more important to use that blood flow to escape the tiger than it
is to digest whatever you've eaten, right? So this part of the fight/flight/freeze response
leads to people having a decreased appetite, a tight feeling in their gut, dry mouth, and
because your digestive system is getting shut off, sometimes people, you know, get the runs or
even wet themselves. It tightens the muscles, it heightens some senses. So for example, like
your vision gets more pinpointed, leading to what can feel like tunnel vision sometimes, and it also
makes your breathing become shorter and shallower; your heart rate also gets faster. The
fight/flight/freeze response also turns off the immune system for a short time, and the body
sweats to keep cool in case of physical exertion. So that's where all that nasty pit sweat comes
from. When there's not a tiger but your brain perceives modern threats like a work evaluation,
a deadline, debt, or just too much stimuli, then we can get triggered into this fight/flight/freeze
response too. The fight response often looks like anger, shouting, big movements, muscle clenching,
right? It can feel like blame, defensiveness, being critical, attacking others physically
or just verbally or even inside of our heads. With modern stressors the flight
response can look like running away, escaping, but it can also look like avoiding
perceived threats, procrastination, distraction, or just trying not to think about a problem. With
the freeze response there are typically reactions like numbing, shrinking, or hiding. This reaction
can keep us safe when fighting or running would put us in danger or when there's no chance of
escape. The freeze response can be like feeling detached from your body or your emotions, or it
can have that sensation of feeling, like, heavy or frozen or leaden or like unable to move your
muscles. This can serve a function of making us harder to find or it can make a predator
less interested, like this duck and this dog. The duck is pretending to be dead, the dog gets
bored, the duck escapes, right? The numbness can also make an attack hurt less. Now, within
the freeze response is the fawn response. So when we can't fight off or escape an
attacker, we sometimes have the instinct to comply, to appease them, to do anything to make
them less angry or to soothe the situation. Now I talk about the freeze/fawn
response in more of my YouTube videos, but in one of them I tell the story of how
when I when a stranger groped me on the street, my immediate instinctual reaction was to say
I'm sorry, like as if it was my fault, right? This was not logical, this was not rational, I
didn't plan it, it was just my instinct kicking in to keep me safe, and in that situation it
worked. Right? The whole situation was diffused and I was able to get away. The brain
prioritizes survival over thinking. And this is brilliant, right? It makes us quick to
react. For example, there have been times where my kids have like fallen off of things, more times
than I can count, and in a split second I've been like (whoosh) shot my hand out and caught them.
I'm grateful for the limbic system and and its role in keeping me and my kids safe. This ability
has helped humans survive for thousands of years. But the fight/flight/freeze response has some
downsides. This response is designed to work in short bursts in response to immediate and
physical threats. It doesn't work well when this response happens with you know, perceived
threats instead of actual threats. So we might have a fight/flight/freeze response to a work
meeting or an email or a request from a friend. We could have a fight/flight/freeze response
to a complaint from a spouse or any number of other things. Now, the stress response is also
pretty safe in the short term, but when we don't resolve that threat our body can get trapped in
this elevated state over a long period of time, and this can lead to exhaustion, muscle tension,
digestive problems, and frequent illnesses. Also, long-term stress can contribute
to anxiety and depressive disorders. Another problem with the fight/flight/freeze
response is it doesn't help us solve emotional, cognitive, or relational problems. So most of
these problems require more complex thinking and problem solving that just isn't happening when
your brain is in survival mode. Good news is you don't have to feel trapped by this response. So
you can learn to soothe your emotional brain so you can make better decisions with your thinking
brain. You can train yourself to turn off the fight/flight/freeze response and return to a sense
of calm. So here are the basic steps on how to do that. The first one is to just become aware of
your triggers. So when you can predict that you might get emotional, that gives you a bit of time
to pause and slow down before you lose control. A way to do this is to learn to notice your
body's signs too. In the course I've got a survey where you can you know, check yourself for
signs of this fight/flight/freeze response. Now, when you do start to go into it, just notice that
you are you're "flooding." I mean, that's the John Gottman term for this, this response, right? You
pay attention to what's happening inside of you. You just notice your thoughts, notice
your sensations from an observer position, and then whenever possible take a pause, pay
attention to what's happening inside of yourself, notice your thoughts, your sensations, and
your emotions from an observer position, and then whenever possible pause, right? Pause
the conversation or situation for a few seconds. You could just say something like, "Hang on for a
second, hang on." Right? Take a break or whatever it is, and then you just try to calm down.
Remind yourself that you can solve these problems whether now or in the future, right? And
if tensions are too high, right, then for you to get, you know, get yourself together,
then you can ask for a break. This is totally okay. Take a break when things
are too intense, and then make sure to commit to coming back to the issue at a certain time.
Now, this is really important because if you don't come back to resolve the problem,
all those emotions stay trapped inside, and then the next time a little problem comes up
you feel this like irrational reaction to it. Now, while you're taking a break, while you're pausing
instead of reacting to your fight/flight/freeze response, take some time to self-soothe, so
to self-regulate, right? You can do something physically calming like a grounding exercise,
deep breathing, or going for a walk. All of these things can help you process those chemicals that
were released. And then after you've calmed down, after you've gotten your head about you, come
back to the problem from a calmer perspective. Now, sometimes we need help to do this, right?
We sometimes need help to see things from a fresh perspective. So you may want to work through
the situation with a friend or a counselor. So in summary, when your deep brain perceives
a threat, it turns off your ability to think, and it goes into this protective/reactive
mode called the fight/flight/freeze response. This physical reaction that our body has is a
huge part of anxiety, and it can make it hard to solve problems and control our behaviors. So when
you can learn to identify the fight/flight/freeze response, you can learn techniques to
calm yourself down, get thinking again, and make better choices. In the next sections
of this course you're going to learn how to train your mind and body to respond differently to
threats, to resolve anxiety, and to teach the body to return to calm quickly so that you can think
clearly and solve problems. These skills include grounding, how to regulate your nervous system,
coping skills, breathing skills, mindfulness, and relaxation skills. Thank you for being here,
and take care. This video is one skill from my 30 skill course- How To Process Your Emotions,
where I teach 30 of the most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving
mental health. Emotion processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but
most people have never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on
youtube for the world to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing
to my patreon, and my sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course in
one place, ad free with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional
short readings, and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course
is in the description below.
