Neuroscientist: How To Stop Feeling So Lost, Anxious, Unmotivated & Stressed | Dr. Russell Kennedy

you and I were talking a few minutes ago and you said you don't know a single person that you're spending time with or people that you're coaching that's doing well right now why do you think people are feeling so lost you know I think that we're in this dopamine driven immediate gratification society and I think we're kind of losing that sort of Serotonin based hey let's just sit here and watch the sunset for half an hour right we're we're not able to do that anymore so I think our own idea of what our life should be the expectations are so high and there is something in dopamine called reward prediction error which is if you you know think that you're going to get you know a B on an exam and you go up to the board and you see that you get an A you get this massive spike in dopamine right but if you go up to the board and you see that you got a C you get this huge drop of dopamine that drops below Baseline and then we get more and more addicted to the dopamine hit and the more and more this immediate gratification Society so I think we start wanting more and then we see social media all these people like I'm in Hawaii you know I'm in Ma I'm in Bali you know we see all these people living their their best life and one of the things that I one of the saying that I love for years is don't compare your inside life to their outside life so I think I think a lot of it is that you know we are getting more separate in general I think covid did that to us and and all anxiety is separation anxiety so the sense of separation from each other as human beings I think is is increasing which makes us more dysphoric it makes us more unhappy and then we start looking towards our addiction like that dopamine based immediate gratification to sort of make our lives make sense and it's an addiction that isn't going to help us in the long run so what's the path out of that presence I mean awareness presence but you know we're talking about 10% of the population because most people just sort of go through their lives the way that they see it they don't really see that there's another option they don't see the awareness they don't see the ability to kind of take a helicopter view of what's going on in their situation they don't see that their feelings are and their thoughts are not who they are so you know in that population it's really difficult to kind of create social change if there's not enough awareness the change needs to happen people know that they don't feel good but they don't know what to do about it people who listen to my show they're looking to make a change they looking to like level up their life they're looking to better themselves if somebody's listening to this and they're feeling a little lost they're feeling just disconnected from themselves disconnected from the world a little bit disconnected from their goals with a good like first step for them to take to be able to come back to themselves and be able to feel like they're on this this Continuum moving forward so that they can not feel so Left Behind yeah I mean as Woo is it sounds I just think self-touch you know just putting your hand over your chest just sort of getting into that sensation of touch which I don't think we get enough of when we're young I don't think we get enough touch when we're adults and touch is one of those things that we are are hardwired to connect with and if you don't get enough touch you know and and this can be in a way mental touch as well like personal connection conversations with friends like deep conversations connection that kind of stuff I mean but I would start with kind of just you know breath and touch as woo as that sounds and I know people is from a neuroscientist and and a doctor they want something that's a little more uh you know maybe sexy in a way but I think it's just really getting into sensation because a lot of stress is basically a separation of your mind and your body we go up into our heads and we start getting this dopamine addiction and we lose that sense of our body and then time goes by it feels like man it's like two months have gone by I haven't really noticed you know it's just not being in your body it's not being in that sense of sensation and making the intention to stay with sensation even even and especially if that sensation is uncomfortable you know if you feel sad or whatever it's okay to feel sad you don't have to run and and you know go to your phone all the time you know it's just it's just being able to to metabolize that feeling and and being able to stay in it and and it's hard you know when you get into depression and anxiety that's a pathological perseverance in it but in general it just kind of doesn't allow us to stay uh we don't allow ourselves to stay present in any emotion good bad or indifferent because we're so used to what's next what's next what's next so the bottom line is that we're in this dopamine driven situation and we're not actually staying in sensation we're always looking for something new something better which is you know part of our human wiring but unfortunately it makes us very unhappy in the long term you mentioned the importance of touch and putting our hand over our heart as woo woo and as maybe Odd as it may sound to somebody a lot of times people will take quiet time like first thing in the morning and connect to their breath connect to to themselves is this what you would recommend like doing this like first thing in the morning yeah yeah I mean I A lot of people do meditation and that kind of thing but I think we miss we totally miss this aspect of self-touch you know one of the things that I work on with the people that you know I'm an anxiety Specialists that struggle with anxiety it's like where is this alarm I call anxiety alarm because that's what I believe it is where is this alarm in your body and some people say what's up in my throat or in my chest or in my belly or whatever it's like okay what does it feel like well it's kind of hot it's kind of sharp it feels like a pressure uh feels like a pain it's like okay can you put your hand over that area can you connect with it because to go another step into Woo is I believe a lot of people that have chronic anxiety have a younger version of themselves that manifest in their body so for me it's in my solar plexus and there's a lot of Neuroscience behind this you know like the the insular cortex in the brain sort of mediates this sort of top down bottom up kind of part it's kind of like the way station where we feel and think at the same place and I think that we create these body memories these implicit memories unconscious memories that are mediated by this part of the brain and the amydala but the insula is one of those things that it's kind of like where do you feel something in your body your insulin is kind of what metabolizes that it's like oh I feel when I when you get a break when you get broken up with or or something you're going through a breakup the insula creates that feeling of Heartache in your chest so one of my my work is to try and like can we access that insular cortex when you are feeling anxious can we can we change the sensation can we accept the sensation can we put our hand over it can we connect with it because I think that that is the younger version of us and I realize this does sound woo and as a medical doctor and neuroscientist I want to have a seizure sometimes when I talk about this stuff but it's really important to connect with our with ourselves through self-touch that we don't do it's not like Med meditation is pretty common yoga is pretty common um but it's really getting that sensation and connecting with that sensation because you know the alarm sensation in your body could well be that younger version of you trying to get your attention is there any kind of like protocol you would recommend to somebody who's feeling like anxious in the moment they're feeling a bit trapped is it just putting their hand over their heart and breathing I know we talked about like the nostril breathing and the exhale I think the last time like how how do we blend those things together well it's getting out of your head really because I think what happens with stress as we try and think our way out of a feeling problem doesn't work it just doesn't work but we it doesn't stop us from trying to do that I mean I think as children we the only place we had to go if if our parents weren't you know there for us in a way was our heads because staying in your body was just too painful like that's where the that's where all the pain is stored so you go up into your head you start overthinking you start becoming hypervigilant that kind of thing and it's a habit that we take into adulthood that we don't even realize that we've been caught in our head for 10 20 30 40 50 years sometimes so it's like can you make the conscious intention to move out of your head because your worries aren't aren't going to solve anything in fact they're just going to make you more uncomfortable can you take the opposite choice and go into your body rather than trying to stay in your head now your body is probably going to be uncomfortable because this is where you store all the old alarm so initially it may feel more uh uncomfortable to go into your body but I think there is this kind of overwhelming sense that when you put your hand over the area where you feel your stress in your body there is this sense of connection that's there and it immediately helps people and it's like okay I'm on the right track here I'm on the right track with this this sensation and tracking this in my body and slowing it down too like our minds go so quickly our mind goes so fast that it just outruns our body most of the time and it's like can you slow your mind down enough so that it can actually join up with your body because one of the things I say about anxiety chronic anxiety is that the separation of your adult self and your child's self because the adult in you doesn't want to go back to the child because that's where all all our pain is stored and it's a separation from our mind from our body so when we connect our mind and our body back together again we actually create this fertile ground to actually metabolize the trauma metabolize the sadness metabolize the pain rather than just going into our head which basically just suspends it it's the the pain is in suspended an animation as soon as you go into your head you never actually make a dent in that pain because you're too busy up in your head the if the issue is you know stuck in your body and you're woring around hypervigilant in your mind all the time that part of your body never gets dealt with and that pain never gets never gets uh any sort of air time never gets any connection so of course course it's not going to heal and it's probably just going to get worse what would you say the biggest mistakes people make that might not be so obvious maybe these are subtle that you know throughout the week actually increase their anxiety well just thinking more just just believing unconsciously that you're going to solve this problem you know if you're worried about your son or your daughter or your mom or your dad or whatever worrying about it isn't going to do anything in fact it's just going to it's just going to drag your physiology into the gutter but if you can learn how to sort of go into your body and allow that that sensation to be there that discomfort about like my my I had did a podcast about my oldest dog Buddha you know he's kind of failing so he may not last another six months or so so it's one of those things where can I go into that sensation in my body of what it's going to be like to lose him and can I stay with it can I can I actually metabolize it rather than just overthink and go well you know he's still doing okay he's still doing well you know he'll probably be okay that kind of stuff like we know that we're just worrying and we know that the worry doesn't actually solve anything it just suspends things in in suspended animation and the pain is still there so go at the pain directly allow the pain to be there metabolize the pain and a lot of people who have like um a partner relative parent whatever with a cancer diagnosis they do a lot of The Grieving before the person actually passes and this is what I'm talking about is just basically metabolizing The Angst that you're feeling rather than going up into your head and trying to explain why you should feel better other than overthinking things or thinking that you can think your way out of a problem or think your way into a solution is there anything that people should be doing that they're not doing maybe like daily exercise movement yeah conscious movement for sure like I think even like I have this little practice that I do something sometimes and I just basically move my hand and my breath it's not it looks a bit taish and that kind of stuff but it's basically I just make it up and anytime that you match your breath and your movement together you start joining your mind and your body together so it starts alleviating your stress right away and when you move into your body and out of your head you're starting to get to the the root cause of the problem instead of just unfortunately were wired to believe that worry unconsciously believe that worry is helpful and it B basically just traps Us in more worry so the more you can go into the sensation specifically of your body even if it hurts the more you can start actually processing and metabolizing the underlying cause of this problem in the first place as opposed to just trying to numb it by you know overthinking on the other side of this is people can become I think passive because we know we're talking about how to like not suppress but mitigate stress mitigate anxiety and on the other side of all all this there's people that are feeling you know unmotivated unable to focus lazy if you will so how can people do the opposite if they're like trying to upregulate their nervous system a bit to be able to Prime themselves to take action well this is hard but get off social media for one you know it just it's just you burned out your dopamine system you know we have this place in our brain called the ventral tegmental area that makes dopamine one of them and uh it squirts dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens which is basically our motivation Center and if you create way too much dopamine all the time you you drop the bar or actually you raise the bar and what's going to excite you so if you're always EXC you know excited excited excited excited excited all the time uh when you drop into a normal Baseline State it's going to feel pretty pretty lonely and bere in there so a lot of what happens I think is that we get so wrapped up in this dopamine driven society that we forget about the sort of the more serotonin the more here and now kind of like the more awareness the more presence and if you don't spend a lot of time in presence you're probably not going to want to spend a lot more time in presents and you just keep going at this dopamine cycle and you can only go at it for so long until it just starts to burn you out and you just feel and this is what I'm seeing a lot in people this this thing called anhedonia which is this I don't feel pleasure in anything because they burned out their dopamine system right so you can start building it back up again by doing things like you know cold plunges you know putting your putting your body in this sort of stressful thing where you know you can kind of recirculate some of the the the isness of life like the feeling in life even if it's uncomfortable so I think we spend so much time avoiding discomfort and in through distraction specifically with social media is that we never really get a chance to feel anything anymore because we're always looking for the next hit and after a while you burn out that dopamine system and then you won't feel motivation for anything and then that's that's a dangerous place to be in because um there's not a whole lot of ways out of that other than doing the exact opposite which is maybe getting into some meditation going for walks staying away from kind of like that immediate gratification all the time and just retraining that system to build up you know the the sense of life again because that's what I'm seeing with so many people is that they don't really have this joy in life I don't see too many people that feel Joy in life anymore so do you think that the only solution to this is is similar to an Elimination Diet where you completely detox yourself from dopamine for a period of time and then start to reintroduce it into your life in a way that's healthy yeah or you know just you know what do you like what did you like when you were a kid like did you like you know playing Road hockey did you like riding your bike like what is it that you liked to do when you were younger and you're probably still like to do those things now so start with the things that you you know that you liked in the past and start reintroducing them you know start going on a bike ride you know every couple of days or whatever getting out of that mold of being in the house being separate from other people you know connecting with other people I mean we used to have you know 70s and 80 we used to have clubs you know car clubs and and clubs and people would join and and and meet together and now because we have everything we we kind of desire in a way in in on a computer screen why would we go to the house you know movie theaters aren't doing well anymore like all these things that used to get people out and and get them feeling together and feeling connected you know I always get reminded of those um those starlings you know when you see those thousands of Starlings and they're all moving in One Direction it looks like a big cloud you know there there is this neural net that we believe forms from bird to bird and they all move in the same thing they're all sharing one nervous system and I think on some level too this is what happens with like soccer hooliganism and you know and and football games and basketball games when crowds just go nuts is that there's this wiring that occurs between human beings we can't explain but it's very powerful and if we lose that if we lose that connection with other people we become depressed and you know what you and I have talked about before is we develop this us and them mentality where we only feel good when we're making them feel bad when we're insulting them and this is what this is what social media is doing this is why people will go on and just insult somebody someone who says like here's my flower arrangement that did I did today it's like why do you use roses you know like you're an idiot to use Ro like where where is this coming from and it's coming from the fact that that people feel separate from other people and and it becomes ultimately because you feel separate from yourself and when you're split from yourself you're always looking for something to make yourself feel better and usually the first thing you look for is like dopamine driven it's not you don't sort of look like oh okay I'll just go down and watch the sunset make myself feel better that way it's like I'll go on social media or I'll go do something that kind of you know involves a screen or involves a phone and and eventually that kind of creates this internal separateness within us that just makes us really unhappy you're talking about the importance of reconnection and like getting back to your younger self and your true self and doing things that you used to like doing as a kid if somebody's listening to this or they're watching this and maybe they need to make more money in their life maybe they need to work on their relationship with their partner maybe they need to work on their health if they like playing Road hockey as a kid they're doing that now that's great but that's not going to necessarily help them make more money or help them feel more motivated to reconnect with their spouse like outside of like getting grounded kind of staying off of social media a bit what are some other things somebody can do if they're feeling unmotivated to change something yeah I mean it's it's a catch22 because when you feel unmotivated you don't really want to do anything so that's that's the problem and I think um when you were saying like when you're playing Road hockey it's not going to make you connected I think it does I think when you're more connected to yourself you're more open to your spouse you're more open to sharing and when we're not connected to ourselves we become more closed and the more closed we are the more we kind of have that air of being closed and and people don't want to come and connect with us because we don't have that sense and I think on a global stage this is what's happening everyone's kind of withdrawn into themselves a little bit and nobody's out there sort of making that first move to make the connection anymore because we're not happy I know when I'm on vacation like Cynthia and I just came back from Hawaii you know and she said look you know you're so much happier you know not that I'm unhappy in general which is not the case but you know when we were on vacation like we were connecting you know we did all this sort of stuff and then when you're here you know you're writing you're you know doing podcasts and all that kind of stuff and she say I I feel a little more separate from you so I think when you're happier in general I think you're just more connected and the reverse is also true when you're more sad or more upset in general the more disconnected you are and the less likely you're going to be connected so one of the ways of doing that is like what do I want like what makes me happy and a lot of people have a hard time with that question because they haven't addressed it for so long like what makes you happy and finding like what used to make you happy and kind of slowly dipping your toe back into that again because I think when you're when we're happier we're more connected when we're more sad we're less connected and and both tend to exacerbate the same so if you're happy you're more likely to continue on being happy if you're sad or anxious you're more likely to continue on being sad and anxious so it does take an intention to change it's not going to change on its own so would you say that the number one habit or skill somebody must develop in order to stay motivated to be productive to stay focused is paying attention to the connection to self and working on that you know there's a saying that says your connection with other people can be no greater than your connection with yourself and I believe that's true I think that there's you know narcissistic people and and that kind of thing that are very good at giving people what the other they perceive the other person needs it's sort of a man manipulative sense but yeah I mean that that sense of being being connected with yourself everything everything comes from that you know and I can tell you that from my own personal experience as well that's how I I got to the place where I wrote the book and and that kind of thing it was like oh I have this self-c connection and it doesn't necessarily mean it's it's it's a happy connection like you can be connected to the sad parts of yourself like internal family systems work is a lot about this is like you know can you find the part of you that was like bullied or abused or neglected or abandoned when you were a child can you find that part uh and that's not going to be fun but you know if you if we have this separation from ourselves whereas our adult self learns how to be you know adapting to the situation but really neglects the child in us that's still asking for our to be seen heard loved and protected you know eventually you're going to be unhappy eventually you're going to be separate and I think this is why people commit suicide I think this why people get divorced is that is that they they lose the meaning in life and they lose the meaning in life because they've lost a connection within themselves morning routines have become super popular over the last decade I think one of the main reasons is because it helps somebody allocate times for themselves it helps people allocate time for themselves before the day gets started before they got to take the kids to school before they got to go to work before they got to do X Y and Z we talked about the importance of connecting to yourself through touch breath first thing in the morning when you wake up we're talking now about some introspective stuff and journaling can become very powerful when doing so so as far as the morning routine goes anything you would recommend somebody doing like every single morning to be able to stay connected to themselves so that they can be more motivated focused happier Etc yeah I mean a simple one is is you know this this is a meditation that I kind of use when I've fallen out of meditation because it's fairly easy to do is just sit yourself in a comfortable position be in a quiet room or whatever and then just count your breast in and out so I count to 50 so it's inhale one exhale two inhale three exhale four I don't say inhale exhale but I just say the numbers and then the other thing that I do in that particular sort of meditation is that I I elongate the space between the inhalation and the exhalation so there is that break as you breathe out there's a tiny little gap between when you start breathing in again and when you breathe in there's a tiny little gap between and I just expand that Gap just like an extra half of a second and just that Focus uh it's it's an easy meditation to do and you can start by doing 20 you know or 10 you know it's just a matter of just starting you know James clear and atomic habits talks about that like don't don't say I'm going to meditate and go you know try and sit down for 20 minutes because because you're going to blow your brain out like it's just too it's too much and then you're going to develop an aversion to it and you're never going to want to do it again so often I'll tell people you know just do 10 you know inhale one two and do that start with that get some success with that and then start because it's just it's just slowing yourself down like we go so quickly that I think this is one of the reasons why I think people say you know my life is just flying by because I think we live in our heads and we live so quickly in our heads that we don't feel in our bodies we don't feel the day we don't feel anything because we're too busy trying to get to that next place where you know we might be able to have a drink or or you know we can eat like lunch is coming oh lunch is two hours away what am I going to do so it is that building up that resilience to be okay with not having anything specific to soothe yourself can you just stay in that moment can you just stay in and easier said than done and I realize that it's not easy especially if you're going through anxiety depression OCD all that stuff but it's just you got to start somewhere if you were to give the audience three tips to reduce their overall stress in their life other than some of the things that we've already covered what would you say well the thing about stress is that you can either decrease your stressors or increase your resources those are your two options right and I don't think people think enough about increasing their resources so you know self-touch breath work that kind of stuff this increases your capacity and the resilience in your nervous system so you can handle the amount of stress that you had yesterday but be you can handle it better because you have more resources the other thing is like can you lower the stress if you're if you're constantly fighting with your spouse can you get some counseling can you talk to them can you say look this is making me really unhappy I'm sure it's making you happy to what can we do to kind of lower our level of stress so it's really you know increase increase resources or lower stressors and just look make a list of what are the stressors in my life and and can I you know sometime you know you have two kids and they're kind of flying around the house there's not a whole lot you can do in a way but you know you can teach them meditation too you can teach them breathing you can teach them you can you can you know do self-touch with them or or put your hand on their chest and connect with them because when we when we soothe our kids we have this natural soothing in ourselves but if we're always running this peretic lifestyle where you know the kids are going to soccer and then they're going to band practice and they're going this like it's just there there's no presence in that and it's not like I'm like oh you have to live in presents and that's you know it's not like that it's basically just create you know more resources in your life and try and be intentional about the stressors that you do do allow in there rather than just unconsciously you know taking on more stuff and a lot of us do that I did that for a long long time was someone asked me if I could do something I would just do it you know and then now I realize okay if I do this I'm actually increasing my stresses and probably decreasing my resources because the time that I would use to do this thing for this other person is taking away from the time that I would do something for myself so it's really being aware I think that big thing for me um this is from like David rosar and's book thriving with anxiety about you have to either decrease your stresses or increase your resources and I think it's such a a simple but valuable tool to just realize make your make your stresses intentional make your resources intentional because if you just sort of back your way through life yeah you're going to be stressed I want to go back to dopamine for a second and as it relates to motivation and achieving things and obviously making money Achi achieving goals that sort of thing can be addictive and fleeting at times and it's kind of like what you were talking about at the beginning that we're in this like dopamine Rat Race you know in many ways but talk about how somebody can have a healthy relationship with that so let's just say that they're doing everything that we're talking about now and now they're on this pursuit of wanting to achieve the thing and they're they're on the process how can they stay excited and motivated about what they're trying to to achieve in a way that's sustainable yeah little goals like Andrew Hub talks about that too is like creating little goals along the way rather than you know have everything piled into when I finally get this thing you know I often tell the story about when I got my medical degree and as soon as they they handed it to me as soon as I felt the parchment paper of my MD degree in my hand I was like okay what's next what's next right there wasn't like oh my God this is such a miraculous achievement this is amazing it was like okay what's next and I think that's a lot of our our society is that is that we think that when we get somewhere like everything our problems are going to just resolve I mean for me even like I created a program um called Your Mind Body prescription for permanent anxiety healing there's 3,000 people in there uh in eight months nine months it's made me close to $400,000 and I've never had this much money in my life and for the first two or three weeks it was freaking amazing and now it's kind of like oh you know it's it's just so human of us that we get into this thing where we think this is going to make things different and and you know I am not denigrating having like money to do stuff and that kind of thing too because I know a lot of people don't but it's just that old thing about like money's not going to make you happy and whever wherever you go there you are you know it's great I think we need purpose we definitely need need purpose which is I think an amazing thing for human beings to to have purpose but don't put too much emphasis on the outcome and the final like getting it because it may not be the thing that you think is going to sort of heal your life or or fix your life and can you make little rewards along the way like I have this whiteboard in my office I wish I could show it to you but basically it's like four by it's it's pretty big it's like 3x4 and every day I write stuff on it that I need to do and that makes me feel better because you know I'm not going to forget it because like I my little add brain forgets stuff all the time so now I write it up there and I feel so much more comfortable and then at the end of the day what I used to do is I used to as I finish the thing I would erase them right and now what I do is I draw a line through them so I see on the thing there there's like 15 things with line I mean still got five 10 other things I've got to do but there's 15 things with lines to it it's like freaking did that you know like those things I accomplished and and I think that that's those are like setting little goals for yourself so I'm I'm a big fan of these whiteboards you know put them up in your office and just write even the smallest things you know like go to the gym you know call your daughter whatever like when you get it when you do it you put a line through it and you look at the end of the day and it's like man I I got a lot of stuff done today whereas you know six months ago what I used to do is I I would I would do a ton of stuff and at the end of the day I would go really don't know what I did today like I really don't know what I go I know I did some stuff but and then now I have a real like hardcore like this is all the stuff that you got done it's like you're doing pretty good I think one of the things people struggle with when it comes to the small goals is they don't know how to quantify it right because we've been taught that goals are just these big things you got to achieve you got to lose the 50 pounds you got to have a million dollars in the bank you out of all these things and so when they think about these mini goals they're like am I really playing big enough am I doing enough how have you learned to quantify those for yourself so that it's not just manageable for you but you're also like in a state of flow where you're you're still pushing yourself yeah well I think that whiteboard that I was talking about I think that gives that gives me that sense that okay even the small things like I'm getting stuff done and I think a lot of us who are goal directed we don't pay enough attention to the small stuff we we start looking for you know big validation money or you know Awards or whatever it is and those things are few and far between but you know creating this sense like what did I do today who did I connect with today that's another thing that I do who did I can I try and just send a text to somebody that I you know I I I scroll down in my text and see someone that I haven't texted for you know two or three weeks or whatever and say Hey you know I really appreciate um you giving me advice on that you know three weeks ago it's made a difference and like just the connection just creating those connections with other people even if it's small even if it's a little text message like it it really does change the you know this dopamine driven thing into this sort of Serotonin I did something nice for someone today like I really uh and that's doing something for you like there is that that sort of Buddhist concept that giving is actually getting and I think the more generous we are with giving you know without exhausting ourselves of course the more we get you have an interesting background in that you're a neuroscientist but you also have this of you that understands trauma spirituality and stuff like that and you mentioned like the money you were making you're like yeah it was cool for a few weeks but then it was like ah on to the next thing right and people do that all the time I'm wondering what I would love to get your thoughts on this whether or not you think is it a survival thing that's like I need to make more money because that's just what we're taught or is it an ego thing partly I think it's partly and I think it depends on how you were raised for sure like I when when I grew up my brother and I and my family we didn't have very much money my dad was um schizophrenic and bipolar so he couldn't work and he also liked the chain smoke as well so packets of cigarettes you know cartons of cigarettes were expensive so there was points where we would eat you know or we would drink powdered milk because we couldn't afford regular milk so I think there is an element of lack in my my money thing as well there's also a sense of validation making you know making more money and that kind of thing uh I think there's to be honest that's part of it is just you know being an uh as a general practitioner I I made a reasonable link l income I made you know probably between1 $200,000 a year to me and that was great but it never really seemed to satisfy me you know I did a lot of travel I did a lot of stuff with it it wasn't like that I I I was feeling a lot of lack but I think a lot of it for me is that sense that you know you're not going to be hungry again not that we were ever really like hungry or whatever but there wasn't a whole lot of extras growing up so you know and and it's not like I feel like it's all going to get taken away from me and that kind of stuff too but I think it depends on how you grew up but what was your family's relationship with money and and how does that affect you today so for me I think the money partly is validation is like I'm on the right track I'm helping people and the thing about my program is I I I priced it at $100 like it's not like I'm I'm selling this thing for 9.97 or something like that like I want it accessible to as many people and my daughter works for me and she was saying you know there's people in Chile there's people in Australia there's people in India there's people you know in Uruguay that are buying this program it's like and it warmed my heart to know that this is getting you know across the world and that's why I priced it at 100 bucks because it's it's less than the price of a therapy session and people can actually really see what their anxiety truly is and so for me that validation is very you know life affirming for me so I'm I mean I'm living my purpose for sure and I think that's that's I think one of the things that um causes the most angst with people is they feel like I'm not living my purpose I'm not living what I what I should do and even as a even as a medical doctor I didn't feel like I was living my purpose so now I do you know so I don't know if that it's kind of a roundabout approach I don't know what your original question was Doug I was asking like if you think that people want more once they get the thing is it a survival thing or is it an ego thing I think it's both you know I think there I for me it's definitely both like there's an element of survival there's an element of ego but there's also an altruistic element of like I I just love what I'm doing and I love that I'm creating a different conversation about anxiety I love that I'm creating something different that psychologist psychiatrist whatever can look at as a different model to use rather than this traditional model that it's just what you think you know anxiety is just what you think and it's not it's basically it's how you feel and how you feel dictates what you think more than how you think dictate dictates what you feel and it's both it's actually both but what traditional therapy misses is that they they miss this somatic role this role of what we call interoception the brain is always reading the body and if the body has stress in it the brain will create worries and stresses that are completely consistent with the stress and the body and if you can learn how to release that stress in the body the thoughts the negative thoughts kind of Fade Away into the background because you actually treat the true root underlying cause of this as opposed to just trying to fix thoughts which is basically just trying to you know shovel water out of a river it doesn't work at the beginning we talked about why people are feeling lost right now and I think you I heard you say something to the effect of people are feeling separated separated from others they're feeling alone they're feeling disconnected from themselves separated from themselves talked about anxiety and the problems that that can create if we're not kind of careful and how we navigate that we've covered feeling lost unmotivated we've talked about why people don't achieve their goals why people are unhappy do you think at the Crux of this the fundamental reason that people are feeling this way is their inability to deal with anxiety and regulate their nervous system well it's their inability to connect with themselves and connect with other people and that's what our what's happening in in a societ as a society is that we're losing that that good will that we have for other human beings whether or not they look like us or not whether they're not they white males or or you know bipo or whatever it is like we're losing that ability to just give credibility to other human beings for just being human beings and I and I think that the more separate we become from other people the more separate we naturally become from ourselves which lends to you know dysphoria anxiety depression all this kind of stuff and they we're seeing an increase in all of these things including suicides because people are just getting more and more separate from each other and my mentor in developmental psychology Dr Gordon newfeld said this one thing that's always stuck with me it's like all anxiety is separation anxiety and it's and I add on there and it's mostly separation from yourself so the more connected we are the happier we are the more disconnected we are the more us and them mentality we start to to adopt and this is what's happening in the states as far as politics is it's not so much about governing it's just about making the other side look bad because we do get this little you know basa Preen dopamine Rush from you know pecking down or hitting down on someone else and unfortunately it's like an addiction but it's never satisfying it's never satisfying to create an us and them mentality because you're separating ultimately you're separating from yourself which is going to make you more unhappy which is what's happening with Society in general we're just getting more separate from each other I think talking about this more big picture as far as being connected to ourselves and and doing what we want in life and having autonomy and feeling like we're running our own race we're not paying attention to others as much how do you think somebody can know if they're living like a fully aligned life I think you just know like when you're aligned you don't you don't think about you know you don't think about living alive it's like when people used to come in to me in my practice and say I'm worried that I'm getting Alzheimer's disease and it's like well you you know the fact that you're worried about it they're worried about your memory is probably a sign that you don't have it because the thing about Alzheimer's disease is that the memory starts to go and people don't notice it so people around them notice but they don't notice themselves so it's kind of like when you direct attention to it yourself you know when you know that you're not feeling you know validated or mentally strong what are you going to do about that you know typically what what most of us do is kind of like the lazier way which is get you know locked into our addictions and and take short-term gratification it's it's hard to actually do the big things it's hard to start an exercise program it's start to it's hard to stop uh eating sugar it's hard to do these things but I think you know when we make the intention that we're going to do it and we take it in small steps like I said about the meditation you know just breathe in and out count to 10 each breath in one out two and just do that for 5 days then pck it up to 20 and take it up to 50 you know it's like little steps in connection with yourself because the First Leap is too much it's too much to say I'm just going to stop sugar all together some people can do it uh or I'm going to stop my addictions all together I'm gonna stop drinking all together it's like it's really hard to sort of take that huge step and if you can take it in incremental process incremental steps and all the while feel connected to yourself self-touch like breathing like connected in your body like really feel it even if it's uncomfortable like really allow yourself to stay with the emotion stay with the feeling then you start learning how to live otherwise you're just basically kind of living in this dopamine Driven peretic Life how can somebody begin to identify what they want for themselves it's a tough question you know it's a really tough question because I think for so long we've looked for validation externally and we lose the muscle of what do you need and that's why I said you know what did you do when you were a kid you know did you draw did you dance did you did you I I I did drugs okay well there you go get back into drugs that's what you gotta do man I did op sorry I'm just sorry yeah no it's good I like it no if you start getting like Robin Williams was like that too when he would come into the the club that I worked at uh when he was filming a movie and you could talk to Robin and he would have a conversation with you but as soon as someone came in and cracked a joke he was gone so you know and I think that was his addiction you know his addiction was humor because it does it humor does make you feel better you know humor and tears crying and laughter are not that far apart Believe It or Not uh in the nervous system so both release a lot of like stress and Trauma and that kind of thing so laugh more I mean if you can go to a comedy club you know if you can if you can find ways of activating that sort of parasympathetic nervous system through tears you know sometimes when I when things when stress builds up on me a lot it's like I will watch videos of dog rescues you know dogs that are abandoned or chained up or whatever and being rescued and that brings me to tears and allows me to sort of you know move through that that uh that negativity because another thing Dr newfeld taught me is that you know tears are adaptive you know the you know your wife is still leaving you your pet is still died but you Chang the internal structure of your brain so your perception of those things isn't quite as bad so Tears Don't Change the external event but they change your internal perception of the event and I think that's why men commit suicide way more than women do because we take we've taken tears away which is a very uh helpful way of discharging negative emotion but we've taken that away from men so you know of course they commit suicide more I mean there's a number of reasons for that but I think that's one of one of the the ones to be considered is that you know we take away from boys when they're very young and tears are one of those things that help you adapt to a situation you cannot change you talked a few minutes ago about you know our our idea of what we want in our life a lot of it comes from the external and we have to really go within and come up with what we what we truly want in our lives and you talked about going back to what we did as a kid like in a more in a tactical way do you think it's helpful for people to like do you think it's helpful for people to outline like things that they want in their life morals values beliefs or do do you find that some there's something else that might be a little bit more effective yeah everybody's different you know but I don't think it hurts to sort of write down you know what are the things that you want and then just because your writing brain is different than your speaking brain right so that's why I think journaling is so important to understand is that you know we have this internal conversation with ourselves all the time but that conversation may not ever be different but when you start writing something down your writing brain is different than your than your speaking brain so you will see things that you will write that kind of surprise you because it's not it's not the typical thing that you Converse your with yourself in and you will see things when you write it down that you won't see when you speak it out loud so I think that's why journaling is really important but it's just creating this sort of sense of quiet because you know you can't see what you want while the cacophony of you know life is around you you know you really have to take those and make the intention and realize that it may take you a month or two or longer to realize what you want because that muscle like I said has been atrophied from disuse for so long you've been so used to looking externally for um validation dopamine whatever it is that we lose that ability to kind of just go inside and think okay what is it that I like what makes me feel good and what does make you feel good you know and if it's an addiction well you know be careful of that but if it's a connection with yourself or others you know give yourself more of that I feel like one of the traps people will fall into is they'll hear stuff like this and they'll like all right I got to figure out a way to make my life perfect with my thoughts my my beliefs like my anxiety everything before I take a step in the right direction and and try to like accomplish something in my life and I think that one of the fastest ways to figure out what you want in life is to move forward and then by trial and tribulation learn what you don't want in life what are your thoughts on that I think that's true and I think it's especially true when you're younger you know like my youngest uh son he's 19 no he's 20 now just turned 20 and he's like what am I gonna do you know what am i g to do with my life and I always tell him it's like like I didn't start back to school until I was 22 right like you still got some time to figure it out like I didn't become a doctor and I didn't start this whole I was a bartender I did all sorts of like different jobs before I went back to Premed to become a physician so so it's really kind of getting into that quiet space with yourself like what do you like to do like Michael likes to Tinker with stuff like he likes to fix stuff and it's like so is there something in that realm you know that that you might like to do and he's kind of looking into like electrician or something like that like what do you like like look around you and see what your hobbies are like see what the things that you you like now you may not be able to make a living at those things like that's that's the thing but if you do those things you're much more likely to be able to to start exercising the muscle of what you do what you do want as opposed to just like blindly kind of oh well this this profession might be good or this this profession will make me a lot of money you know and I see a lot of people like I I know a lot of people who are quite wealthy and extremely unhappy you know now I'm selecting for people that want to you know talk to me because that's kind of what I deal with is is chronic sort of existential anxiety on some level but it's just it's just being quiet and developing that connection with yourself because unless you have that you're kind of fumbling around in the dark and one of the reasons I became a doctor was because I never really felt like I was listened to as a child so um you know my dad took up a lot of the space in my house because of his mental illness so one of the reasons I became a physician and one of the reasons I do this is probably because I I you know I'm hurt you know people are listening to me and and uh so we have these propensity in us for sure like I've always been a performer even when I was a kid so it was kind of like okay this is why I became a standup comic this is why I became a doctor this is why I became sort of uh you know on Instagram is because I want to be heard but there's part of me that's very quiet too that doesn't really you know that looks at the part of me that that sort of needs validation it's like well you know and uh I think you just you just learn about yourself you know when you're quiet you don't learn yourself about yourself when you're always running from place to place to place I think you just become more more of what's externally expected of you and one of the things that I used to end some of my talks with is be careful of what you're good at because people will expect that from you and then you will expect it from yourself and it's very hard to get outside of that Groove once you've you know lived in it for 10 20 30 years but you can do it I did it you know a a topic that often gets talked about when it comes to anxiety stress feeling lost unmotivated Etc is dealing with the unknown how do we get better at that that's what anxiety is anxiety basically is uncertainty intolerance that's what anxiety is like in one sentence I could tell you that anxiety is basically being intolerant of uncertainty probably because uncertainty was so painful for you as a child right so whenever we experience uncertainty as adults it takes us back through the insula through that per that that feeling in our body of being helpless you know being powerless and we're not you know we're adults now but the thing is our brain doesn't know that when you go back when you regress you know one of my favorite sayings is all emotional overreactions or age regressions so when you see someone losing their you know it's uh they're in an age regression and you know they become eight years old and then we get into Partnerships when we each of us are eight years old fighting with the other and two eight-year-olds hammering out aren't going to do well so it's really understanding like how how do you understand how you go about things and can you can you become aware of you know are you an avoidant you know as far as your attachment style not that I'm huge on attachment Styles but it's it's certainly a nice uh metric you know are you avoidant in your relationships you get close and then you're like once you get too close it's like I can't do this anymore or are you anxious or you're always chasing after someone else right and it's amazing how often the the anxious and the avoidant match up with each other right they pair up so it's just but understanding yourself like understanding you know what you need like what what's your go-to when you get stressed what happens and you know can you give yourself what you want from other people can you start doing that as opposed to expecting it from other people and I was thinking about this this morning is that you know this whole thing about self-care and um I think a lot of people specifically anxiety depression OCD personality disorders all this sort of stuff they don't look after themselves because I think there is this subconscious just drive in them that they think their parent is going to finally come back and they're finally going to do what they were supposed to do and and I think that a lot of people don't look after themselves because of that and consciously they know it's ridiculous that the parent isn't coming back but unconsciously there's always that thing in us as children that we always even as adults the child in US is always kind of hoping that someone's going to come back and take care of us and I'm here to tell you nobody's coming to save you it's up to you Dr Russ this has been all awesome super insightful conversation I think a lot of people are going to get so much value out of this if people want to connect with you if they want to learn more about your work if they want to buy your book where's the best place to do that probably my website uh like all my stuff is the anxiety MD not the anxiety doctor but the anxiety MD so uh Instagram at the anxiety MD my website is the anxiety MD everything is the anxiety MD it's pretty easy to find me I'm kind of all over the Internet these days awesome well thank you so much once again for coming on the podcast I appreciate it audience is going to really enjoy this one thank you so much for watching if you like this video I really think you're going to like this video as well I'll see you there

Channel: Doug Bopst

Views: 25,572

Keywords:

Id: SxnHHM1LzdE

Length: 54min 19sec (3259 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024