In this video you're going
to learn to recognize the lie of "perceived danger" that can trigger the
body's fear response when you're actually safe. You're going to learn how to soothe your
nervous system, and I'm going to show you some really practical activities that you can do to
feel safe when you are safe even when your mind lies and tells you that you're not. In this
section, the exercises are really important. This section is experiential, it's about
the experience of doing these exercises, not just thinking about the concepts I tell
you, so make sure not to skip the exercises. I love making mental health content, but it
takes a lot of time and a lot of work, so my average 15 minute video takes me between 20 and
30 hours to produce, so I just wouldn't be able to do this and put them for free on youtube without
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in just two minutes today. I'm going to share a story directly from The Worry Solution right. Let
me invite you to do a simple experiment to see how your imagination can influence the way you feel.
Make sure you're in a safe, comfortable place where you can close your eyes for a few minutes. Focus
on your body as if your attention were a radar or sonar beam slowly scanning up and down. Notice
if you feel any stress, tension, or discomfort anywhere in your body. Now let's rate it on
a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no tension and 10 is all the tension you could stand. Where would
you rate the tension level in your body right now? Now, imagine that you are camping in the woods
in the middle of the night you need to go to the bathroom, so you throw some clothes on and you
shuffle off so that you won't disturb anyone else. It's completely dark with no moon and it takes
you a while to find a level place, but you're finally able to do what you need to do. The need
attended to, you notice how really dark it is and you start to carefully pick your way back to camp
reaching out with your arms so that you don't bump into anything. You trip over tree roots and rocks,
you pick up a few scratches from unseen branches. After a while, you feel that you've
been walking too long and you should have found your campsite already. It's cold
and it's dark and you're kind of uncomfortable. You start walking in another direction and then
after a while, another, then you realize that you are lost. You quietly call out several times, but
nobody answers. Finally you yell loudly, but you still get no response. The night is even darker and
colder and you feel very alone. As you wonder what to do next, the background noises of the forest
suddenly go strangely quiet, you hear something moving in the brush nearby, it sounds like
something big and it's headed toward you. Now stop for a minute and rescan your body. Where would you
rank your tension level now on that 0 to 10 scale? Now, imagine that from the direction of the
breaking twigs you hear your good friend call out your name. It's not a bear, you are safe.
Notice if your tension goes away immediately or if there's some after effect
that lingers for a little while. The author says- "I apologize for scaring
you, but the point is, that if you did get tense or scared it's because you have a good
imagination and you can see how intimately it is connected to your body." When we believe we are
in danger, but are actually safe, our body and our mind create the same physical anxiety reaction as
if we were in physical danger, our brain signals to our body to pump out adrenaline and trigger that
fight-flight-freeze response. We do it so much we don't even notice that we're doing it. Okay, take
five minutes right now, pull out a piece of paper, and answer this question. Are you 100% safe
right now? Go ahead and set a five minute timer. When I was asked this in a workshop,
initially I was like 'yeah I'm safe', but then as I took the time, I thought 'well,
any of these people could attack me, there could be an earthquake, a fire, heck, I might have
cancer or a parasite that could kill me shortly', you know, pretty soon my mind was creating
all of these ways that I could be in danger. The other people in the workshop came up with
similar responses, the answer was no, I'm not safe, there are so many things that could kill us at any
moment. The presenter simply asked us afterwards did I ask you if you were safe in the future
or safe in the now? All of those dangers that I thought of were not happening right now,
my sense of fear created them in my mind, these were not actual threats, they were perceived
threats, dangers that our minds can imagine, but which our bodies cannot escape. We can't fight
them off physically because they're not real. They're imagined danger right? This creates a stuck
feeling of anxiety. Anxiety disorders and ptsd are essentially when our minds convince our bodies
that we're in danger when we're actually safe. We see danger in our jobs and our
commutes and when we read the news. Unlike animals, our powerful brains can see
danger in the future which our body reacts to in the present moment. This makes us rush about
our days flustered and stressed thinking that it's normal to be constantly anxious. We may
notice the stress, but be unaware of the cause. Even sedentary jobs leave us exhausted because
our bodies are running a stress marathon during the day, which includes an elevated heart
rate, fast breathing, and high blood pressure. When we're chronically stressed, it actually does
not help us stay safe, it decreases productivity. Chronic stress makes us sick, it inhibits thinking,
and it distorts our perceptions of the world. Even in a fight, if you're super freaked out
and super stressed out, you're probably not going to be as effective at this fight as
if you were calm and composed. Calm action, intentional action, is more likely to keep us safe
and healthy. So do you do this? Do you bring to mind scary things that could happen or might happen,
but there's no action you can take? Sometimes I do, but after this workshop, I was able to give this
a name. This is called perceived danger. So how has your stress response, which is supposed to help you
perform, gotten in the way of you being productive? You can write this in the workbook or if you're
on YouTube, write this in the comments section. We can heal from anxiety and fear
when we create perceived safety, noticing that we are actually safe in the here
and now. Remember our nervous system has two states- the sympathetic response, the fight-flight-
freeze response, and the parasympathetic response, the rest and digest response. We
strengthen the part that we use the most. So to create safety and calm, we need to foster
a parasympathetically dominant nervous system, a calm nervous system, and we do this on a physical
level in two ways- Number one is creating safety in our mind, changing how we perceive situations, and
number two is creating safety in our body, changing our body's physical response to situations
through a body up approach. Now we've already talked about creating safety in the body through
self-regulation, in this video you're learning how to change how you think about situations when you
change the way you think, you change your body's reaction. So the first thing that you've learned
is to notice when you think you're in danger, but you're actually safe. Now, let's move on to the
next exercise. Take three minutes and write down the things that cause you stress. Go ahead set a
three-minute timer, make sure and do this exercise. Now, look at those items again, we generally
don't realize it, but the reason that outside circumstances are linked with the stress response
is because of our interpretation that they're a threat to our physical safety. So how are you
seeing the things on your list as a threat? We got the situation and the response and insert in the
middle your interpretation. So the situation might be something like- your boss gives you feedback,
and the response is feeling a pit in your stomach, anger, or on the verge of tears. So for example
when you have a job evaluation, what is the interpretation in the middle that makes my brain
set off that fight-flight-freeze response right, that stress or anger response, or that pit in your
stomach right? It could be the perceived threat, the fear that I could lose my job, then I'd run out of
money and starve to death. This is an example of thinking, even subconscious thinking, that we're in
danger when in reality we're quite safe. We often usually don't notice that we're thinking this
way, but if we want to regulate our emotions, we need to go back to the steps of emotion processing
right, so we notice- this is a danger response, then we explore- what am I seeing as dangerous?, then we
choose to act- one or more of the following right, we change our perception or we change our bodily
reaction or we take action. So if we change the perception, we think well my boss isn't going
to fire me, I'm overreacting, I'm safe I'm okay, or we change our bodily reaction right, we
practice calming down the nervous system or we take action to solve the problem like-
'oh maybe I wasn't turning in reports on time, so now I'll make sure to do that.' Let me give you
another example right, something that causes my husband a lot of stress is when my children make
a lot of noise. We're all working from home during this crazy pandemic right, and every time
the kids scream, whether they're happy or mad, it triggers that stress response in him. Sometimes
it feels like anger, sometimes it feels like anger. So what's the interpretation in the middle
of that? What's the interpretation in the middle of that that contributes to that stress response?
Well, if you hear your kids screaming, you might be afraid that they're getting hurt or you might
be afraid that they're hurting someone else or you might be afraid that they're interfering
your ability to work and if they're interfering your ability to work, then you're not gonna be
able to make money, then you're not gonna have food, then you're gonna starve to death right?
See how all of these are danger responses? Same thing goes with like something as simple as
rejection from a group right? Like if you get really emotional and upset like if you're in a
friend group and they leave you out, I see this all the time with teenage girls right, they're really
upset because their friends aren't including them. Why is this triggering such a strong emotional
reaction? Situation is being rejected, the emotional reaction is like oh my gosh sadness, fear, anxiety,
jealousy right? What's the interpretation in the middle? Well our brain interprets social rejection
as being a threat to our life because our ancient brain knows that we needed our village to survive.
We needed our village and our people so that we didn't get kicked out, rejected from our village,
and left alone in the woods to starve to death. Our deep brain sees danger all the time even
when we're actually safe. Now remember name it to tame it? When we don't acknowledge that we're
having a "danger" response, we feel like it's out of our control, when we name it we can do something
about it. So saying the words like "danger" and "safe", give us the power to clarify the situation and
our responses. We can create perceived safety to pair with actual safety by actively exercising
our mind to challenge these interpretations. So saying things like- 'I am okay, I am safe, or he's
just asking me to make a small change or even if he does fire me, which is not likely, I will
not starve to death, I'll just find another job, I'm safe.' Saying things like this can be helpful
in challenging those thoughts. So here's another way to think about our anxiety response that
can help you soothe fear and anxiety. Why do you think our survival instincts are triggered
by things like peer rejection or our jobs? Because ancient people would have starved to
death if something went wrong with their job or if they were kicked out of the tribe.
One of the things we can do when we're feeling freaked out is to ask ourselves- 'Does this
situation really present a threat to my survival?, If I don't get this report in, am I actually going
to die of starvation?, If I get turned down by my crush, will I be kicked out of the tribe and have
to wander the wilderness alone?' Reminding our minds and bodies that we are safe will help us calm
down, and most likely this is going to help us do a better job on the report or keep our voice steady
when we ask that guy out. So take a minute to identify one stressor and ask the question- Where
is the survival fear here? Is this a valid fear? We're not dependent on our circumstance to feel
safe. We create emotional safety within ourselves through integrity. We create emotional safety
in our relationships through consistency and compassion. We create physical safety through
our perception and our actions as needed. Now let's just do a quick side note on
actual danger. If you are in a situation of actual danger, like for example if you're in
an abusive relationship or if you are on the verge of starving to death or if you have someone
threatening your life, then it's not going to be that helpful to try and you know, change your
perception or to decrease your anxiety with these skills. It's not safe, the situation you're
in, and it won't work because it's not truthful to say 'I am safe', when you're not safe. So instead,
focus on creating safety through action like getting yourself out of that situation. In actual
danger it can also be beneficial to practice calming your body to help you make better choices and
take action. So by planting, watering, and fostering these seeds of safe thoughts and sensations
and activities and by focusing on the present moment, we actually exercise our parasympathetic
nervous system and develop self-regulatory neural pathways in the same way that an athlete would
develop muscles. So in summary, chronic stress and even getting momentarily flustered,
overwhelmed, or anxious, are about perceived threats. If you get really uptight in meetings at work
or you bristle when you're receiving feedback or if you experience ptsd symptoms or if you
just get flustered while making dinner for guests, then you can benefit from understanding
the difference between perceived danger and actual safety. When we believe that we're in
danger our body and mind create the same physical anxiety reaction as if we were in actual physical
danger. This keeps us stuck in the fight- flight- freeze response. How we think about things, how
we interpret our situation, this creates a sense of calm or of stress depending on how we think. So
you can foster a calm mind and a nervous system by noticing that you feel in danger when you're
actually safe, questioning your interpretation of events, asking- 'Am I actually in physical danger
right now?', if the answer is no, then it's best to regulate your nervous system by bringing to mind
the perception of safety, creating that felt sense of safety, so you say- 'This feels dangerous, but I'm
actually safe', then you soothe your body, you do some deep breathing or some stretching or whatever
it is that calms you down. Now I really encourage you to do the next two activities because when you
do them, you're gonna feel a shift in your body, a shift to calm when you do it. These two activities
are drawing safety and creating lists of safe things. Now, just like I showed you in the beginning
of this section how when we imagine ourselves as being in danger, like in that camping story, we
create that danger response in our bodies, when we do these activities that are linked right
here, we can actively counteract the negative effects of anxiety by bringing to mind the
feeling and the thoughts of safety by imagining ourselves as being safe when we're actually safe.
We reaffirm that right here in the present moment we're okay. We can actively counteract the
negative effects of anxiety by reaffirming that we are actually safe right here in the present
moment. Thank you for watching 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.
