Podcast 241: Managing anxiety, loneliness, grief, & depression during the holidays

oh god hi everyone welcome to coffee with caroline almost christmas oh gosh i just realized i've got bodies in the background instead of christmas trees in the background well my house is filled with christmas trees and lights and i have all my family here my full grown kids the husbands and we've been having the most amazing time just being together but we also have to balance everything out and so today's tour today's coffee with carolina as you saw from when from the post was we're going to be talking about you know how to get through holiday stress and how to deal with being lonely and how to deal with too many people around and being overwhelmed and what does stress look like and what can we do about it all that sort of thing and there's some amazing advice out there so i'm just going to add to it because i believe that what i've got to say is going to really help you because it's helped me a lot and so here we go so i've also got some great questions that i'm going to answer there were so many i can't answer all that i've selected a few i'm kind of combining a few so i'm sure you're going to get a lot of benefit from the questions as well but first of all i just want to say to you that well done for getting to this part of the year and i know it's been a really challenging year but there's so much to look forward to you're still alive you're here yes i know that it's been a really hard year but you know what you've been thinking differently one of the biggest things about this year that is very positive is that we had to re-look at how we think about things we had to relook at our life and our perspective of life and that is a very good thing you know for a long time and for many years we've been getting caught up in what i believe is a great word hurry sickness so busy with so much stuff that we haven't taken time to really think deeply as humans we designed for deep meaningful thinking as well as deep meaningful connection so this year has forced all of us to think deeply a lot of it because we suddenly at home we have been home a lot more and we've had more time on our hands or whatever or we've been challenged by all the events of life going on globally around us and that's forced us to really evaluate what's important and what's not important and guys that's not a bad thing it can make you feel super uncomfortable if you're not used to thinking deeply and we design for deep thinking so when we don't think deeply we actually build up toxic waste in our brain and that can make us feel even worse so what you in essence have been doing building up into this december period is a lot more deep thinking which cleans out a lot of the toxic waste in the brain which increases brain health but can bring with it a whole bunch of stuff that has been kind of pushed down and things that you haven't really faced and when that all comes up you can feel like a raw uninsulated wire now you and i all we all know that if you go and touch an uninsulated wire you're going to get a shock okay so that is kind of what we may be feeling a bit like going into the season just so much to deal with and so i hear so much of the words i mean i've said it myself my family says it i'm hearing it from thousands of people the words overwhelmed feeling overwhelmed by the events and circumstances of the year well as you may have heard me say once twice maybe a thousand times but i'll say it again we cannot control the events and circumstances of our life but we can control our reactions we need to be controlling our reactions that is in your control i showed in my most recent clinical trials that when we feel empowered to control our reactions it completely changes how stress looks in our brain and our body and in our mind when we stressed there are 1400 neurophysiological responses that are actually happening in our brain and our body and when we actually look at stress differently the way you look at stress will make stress work for you or against you so those 1400 neurophysiological responses are either supporting you through the situation or they are dragging you down how do you make that shift simply by how you view the stress response so what i want you to do as you go into this into this like in the holiday season but as you go in as you deal with this time that we're in is all the feelings that you're having of overwhelm of anger or frustration of irritation of i can't go on i'm so burned out all of those feelings just embrace them you know like you embrace someone that you love just embrace those feelings my recent recent research plus other research that's also come out very recently shows that when we embrace all these feelings whether they're the good ones and the ones that don't feel so great what you do is you actually make them work for you and not against you you shift those 1400 neurophysiological responses and they start becoming and supporting your brain health and your body health and your so your cardiovascular health and your immune health doesn't mean that the sadness and the toxins and and the depression and the anxiety and frustration will go away but it changes it becomes something that you can deal with something that you can look at differently it's like taking off glasses that are all foggy and putting on glasses that you can see or driving through the snow without any windscreen wipers or driving through the snow with windscreen wipers so it's a simple shift it's an acceptance and embracing an acceptance of these feelings i am having they're very real it's okay to be overwhelmed it's okay to feel like things are just too much it's okay to feel tired it's okay to feel lonely research shows mind plus other recent research shows that when you look at those feelings as being something that's not scary but something that's actually helpful your shift you shift your physiology you actually control your brain and body physiology as i said a moment ago you can't control what's going on around you but you can control how you react to it so by taking this attitude of our embrace is a decision that you make with your mind where you taking back control you're shifting the power balance it changes your brain and body physiology so now you're stronger now you're more able to face what is what is coming up doesn't mean you won't cry or freak out or whatever but you'll be more empowered to stand to stand back realistically and say you know what these feelings of exhaustion mean i just need to sit down and instead of rushing off to the next shop to buy the next present or rushing off here or trying to clean the floor like me i'm always cleaning floors and cleaning up after all the cooking that's happening in our house and sometimes i'm just too tired and the other night i just sat down and my kids did it they did it for me and but it's you you might just need to listen to those signals embrace those signals don't fight them don't try and push them down think i've got to be this perfect person i've got to make the meal perfect the house look perfect everyone happy i've got to keep everyone happy if you chill you are going to generate if you you if you chill and say it's okay to feel these feelings i i want to do that i want to make everything great for everyone or whatever it is that you're feeling this i'm just telling you what i do okay i'd say i understand that's part of me it's part of what i want to do it's part of what i need to do but i'm too tired to do all of that now i can't keep everyone perfectly happy i can't keep going all the time i need to just sit for a little bit and drink my coffee and just chill and listen to the conversation and join in the conversation and i'll clean up later well clean up tomorrow or and then whatever and that i embrace those by embracing those feelings i shift from from that feeling of like that you're going to just explode to oh i can actually like breathe that's okay i embrace it i embrace those feelings it shifts the physiology you'll have more blood flow to your brain more oxygen to your brain and you'll start feeling more resilient and you'll start having more clarity now you've got windscreen wipers driving through the snow you can start seeing things so you can start now being in control when you react if you you are just reactive you're not controlling it reactive you're just like exploding from whatever but when you choose to respond instead of react you start making the physiology work for you so the key sentence i've said over here is choose to respond and not react and one of the great ways of doing that as well just to help you is to do the 10 second pause and i know i've told you this before but i'm going to tell you again and i do this all the time accounts of 10 three breaths in seven breaths out okay but you do it with a cognitive component added so you can you can use your fingers so you can breathe in for three and then out for seven so that you go up to ten but as you're breathing in you say the words think feel to the three counts and then choose for seven counts so you stretch the word choose so you're breathing in you inhale for three counts you exhale for seven it's ten seconds but in the inhale of three you're saying think feel and with the exhale you're saying choose so you're getting oxygen in which resets the pag which is at the base of the brain which helps to reset your brain control the adrenaline help those physiological responses work for you start calming you down but you're also adding a cognitive component which is so important and that's think feel to so you're telling yourself i'm going to think i'm going to feel i'm going to choose why is the choose longer because when you exhale your decision making capabilities increase okay so then you're going to be wiser in whatever your response is so by doing the 10 second pause as many times as you need to do it once do it twice do it three times you can do it up to nine times which is 90 seconds and that gives you the chance for your neurophysiology to shift to work for you to get oxygen blood flow so that your neurophysiology and your body are in alignment you've calmed down and balanced the sympathetic which is the active part of the nervous system with the parasympathetic which is the calming part you kind of balance the two like on a seesaw and then you are able to then respond in a better way and maybe it's an apology maybe it's a whatever it is whatever it needs to be this works like a bomb okay and it's a great tool for this business okay the other thing i want to share with you is be careful of your expectations now i believe in having an expectation mindset okay have the expectation we are desperate for a good christmas all of us we desperate for a break we are just craving that connection with each other and just a chance to just relax and chill and smile and have fun so we we can preset in our minds this this is what it looks like and we can maybe be very rigid and have all these i've got to do this it's got to look like this and then when that moment comes or the day comes or the evening comes or the few days comes and things don't quite work out or someone loses at all it's inevitable when there's a group of people together and family members all these emotions are raw and we more relax on our family members so things tend to pop out and these reactions happening instead of responses and so these things maybe don't work out so well so an expectation mindset is i i expect to have a good time but i can also be flexible in my expectations so if i expect that to happen i'm positive i'm actually when i have an expectation mindset i'm preparing my brain i'm getting some nice healthy green trees growing i'm expecting a great time very important that you do expect a great time because it builds that resilience in your brain like a strong healthy network but at the same time i'm going to have a possibilities mindset so i'm going to expect the good because then i visualize the good i visualize what it looks like i build these networks in my brain i've got a strong base to work from so when i'm in the situation i can draw on this strong healthy network that generates good healthy brain waves through my brain and then through my body through quantum physics okay but i must add a possibilities mindset and the possibilities mindset is that in my expectations things might not go so well so i need to be open to possibilities open to change maybe not everyone feels like doing that game at that time or that meal at that time or maybe you can't decide on a restaurant or maybe you can't decide and you go to restaurants don't forget your masks please and if you and if you maybe it's time for dinner or maybe whatever you can then roll with the punches you can go with the flow you can have this possibilities mindset you can do that 10 second pause as many times as you need okay so those are a couple of tips then i want to talk now about loneliness because one of the questions that we got was what about those people that are actually stuck on their own and they can't see any family and they alone for christmas which is really hard i mean christmas as it is we know brings out that desire for deep meaningful connection that we have as humans that's inherent that first of all i want to say accept the loneliness embrace it don't try and push it away in fact analyze it look at the warning signal so i'm going to bring up my toxic tree over here so now and loneliness isn't something that you get loneliness can be very toxic okay we know that loneliness can actually cause a lot of physical and damage in the brain and body and can shorten lifespan i didn't say that to scare you but it's a basic fact okay so how do we deal with this there's one thing about loneliness and then the other thing is being alone okay there's a difference loneliness is where you feel isolated where you feel disconnected being alone you can be alone and not feel disconnected okay so what you want to do is you want to shift the load we want to reconceptualize see it differently when we conceptualize loneliness into being able to be alone okay so it's so if you physically are alone we don't want you to be lonely we want to help you to shift to be reconceptualizing it to being alone from loneliness to being at peace being alone okay so the fact is that you may be alone and there's a lot of people that send questions saying that they are going to be alone so that alone we need to keep it positive versus loneliness which is toxic okay so that this what you need to do is look at the warning signals first so this tree let's say that this is a pine tree and it's emanating that smell if you've ever walked through a pine tree forest you'll smell so that smell that this tree is giving off is a warning signal now a pine tree smells nice so let's say that for example it's you're walking past a uh you the the the trash can the trash in new york city and it smells terrible because all these bags of trash that's that's the kind of smell that a toxic thought will generate so the smell it generates and the smell being inverted commas are the warning signals and the warning signals are the things that i want you to embrace so the warning signals are what are those physical feelings in your body the tension the the the the uh the sympathetic nervous system reaction where your body's like this tense high alert like going into flight mode freezing flight and freeze mode etc what are the warning signals the anger the frustration find those then look at the behaviors the branches are memories this is a thought this is a thought of loneliness a thought is one concept okay and these are the little branches these are memories like a tree is made of branches a thought is made of memories so the memories give off these warning signals you look at those you look at the branches the branches are going to tell you more about the emotions more about the the your behaviors so you go from the warning signals which are the emotional physical responses to the behaviors from the behaviors you go to your perspective the tree trunk the perspective life sucks or whatever and then you go to the root cause which are also branches but they the root memories okay these are the root memories these are the behavior memories this is a thought of loneliness so you start embracing the signals you become aware of what your behaviors are and in and you do this very analytically what is your perspective what is and you can you literally analyze yourself you can write this all down and then you can basically say okay how do i want this to look i want to so what's the vision you have i want to i'm alone so i want to reconceptualize this into being okay with that so i want to embrace those warning signals that i feel awful like this i'm going to embrace them as soon as i embrace them they become weakened if i embrace them they become weakened which means i can change them i can control them so instead of feeling total devastation and movement and starting to ruminate by being lonely i don't want to ruminate by being lonely i want to go into deep thinking which is okay well i'm feeling lonely because of all those reasons but i'm now gonna what can i do to change how i feel about that let me deep think instead of ruminating which is going in circles you're shifting into deep thinking which is which is this deep analytical re um organizing of information and you so then you start seeing okay i want to look i want to be able to be alone and be at peace what can i do to to have a deep meaningful connection while i'm alone and you start thinking looking at all these memories of of what you would like so you start building another tree and where you might say this branch is oh i feel terrible i'm going to be sick and the root is i'm alone you can say okay i do feel terrible but what can i do to not feel terrible maybe i can set up a zoom face time with a friend and we can have coffee together over zoom or we can plan our christmas meal we can have zoom going while we cook and we can sit meet together a lot of people as you know doing that so you can be organized and reach out maybe there's someone on faith your facebook your facebook or instagram that you don't know that well you only know them through social media but they're also alone set up a zoom call set up a facetime call where you guys can have coffee together on christmas day and you can put on christmas hats and you can sing happy christmas to each other or whatever so there you are reconceptualizing it's acknowledging it's okay to feel lonely it's okay but i'm going to reconceptualize that so that i can turn my learning this into into being alone into being alone in a comfortable way then you could also volunteer you could add that to this whole the whole um branches that you build onto here you could volunteer you could say what could you do what is is there a soup kitchen is there something in your area that you could go and do to go and help other people that are learning maybe you can you can go and walk someone's dogs maybe you can go for a range that there's a whole bunch of kids in an orphanage maybe you can go and help play games with them find a volunteer situation so that you're not alone on christmas day that you can go and be with other people that are feeling lonely that need your help research shows that when you reach out and help others when you're in a bad place you can increase your own sense of your own healing by a factor of 68 so you can reduce your own loneliness that's toxic that's leading you to ruminate and feel terrible about yourself and the stress is working against you you can shift that by 68 and improve how you're functioning neurophysiologically and mentally by going out and helping someone else and that may be that you don't physically go up maybe you phone an orphanage and you read them a story over zoom you sit then you read the christmas story over zoom how beautiful would that be so these kids all sitting around listening to you reading a story or maybe it's an old age home that you could go and phone and you could there's so much be creative go get your creative thinking going instead of ruminating become deep thinking progression i think what can i do to turn my aloneness my loneliness into aloneness that is constructive did you hear what i just said how can i take my loneliness that is destructive and reconceptualize it into aloneness that is constructive okay so now let me answer some questions i've got some excellent questions just a quick one more i always think of these things in between don't forget a bit of self-care you you're reading it all over instagram people are saying self-care and that self-care is don't get guilty if you need to just go and take half an hour to listen to a podcast or go fold the washing and listen to i mean this sounds crazy but that's what i do go for the washing i do the washing and i listen to a podcast in 10 minutes of that and i've had a little bit of time out from all this business in my family and then it's great like the other day we were having like this baking competition thing and we were like there were six cakes being baked in my kitchen plus dinner i mean it was just amazing but also cowardice and i needed five minutes i went upstairs and just sorted out the washing which was piling up from having a huge family and that was just the time out that i needed it was a bit of self-care that i needed um we were going to go out for dinner last night and with our mosques obviously and we decided to just i'd say listen guys i'm just too tired can we just eat the leftovers and just hang out and watch a movie and we did that and it was amazing and my my daughter and this and her husband have this massive husky next live i'm going to bring the husky in and you can meet him called pharaoh and he was jumping all over us and just hugging him and stroking him was a bit of time out that i needed i was restored you know it was just wonderful that's self-care guys and it's rec and also tune into the people around you tune in you know some if you feeling really exhausted look at the people around you and and just see maybe someone sitting and looking a little sad you go over and just give them a hug and sit next to them say can i do anything do you want a cup of coffee do you obviously i'd offer you coffee you know that's like you know i'd offer you coffee because that just solves everyone's problems um so you know what can you do for someone else even if it's a oh just someone who takes hey i i can see you thinking a bit sad you do you want a break you want to go for a quick walk can i do something that's that will shift your healing by a 68 factor i mean these are simple things that are very real that really work they are deep meaningful connection things okay questions let's get to them okay i've got so many let me see the first one um okay this it's a long one but essentially um this one is asking it's talking about a family that's big family the way there's lots of toxicity going on and um that the mom that's this person the mom's not cystic and the sister is like wanting to just have her way and the brother is like coming in and kind of um you know trying to sort of hurt the person and whatever so there's a lot of messy relationships first of all there's very few there's no one no one family that's perfect and if they say they're perfect they're lying okay so every family has dysfunctional moments and it's okay guys it's okay even my own family and i'm in mental health we're all battling all the time but we work through it the difference is is we accept it and we manage it we don't allow it to control us we recognize okay that's someone having a dysfunctional flip what did i do to hurt them i'm sorry what and we listen to each other even if someone comes and yells at you and says you did this and you said that don't fight back listen it's okay well i hear that what and let me see if it's reasonable or whatever i mean that's the wrong wording but you listen and maybe they have in your mind think okay they've got a valid point don't just try and defend yourself listen and then say i'm so sorry i never meant that my intention was but my impact was terrible i'm sorry i'm so sorry for that impact this is why i did that i'm not trying to justify but that see that kind of deep meaningful conversation can shift to things so dysfunctional families are kind of part of the norm it's not mean doesn't mean you're neuropsychiatric brain mental cases and you're crazy and we were a little crazy guys and this year's made us all a little crazy as well so you know when these things happen it's okay that's the first thing i want to say dysfunctional families are normal but you don't have to let that be the control you can shift the power control and it comes through being authentic honest saying how you feel listening to each other and giving each other a chance to talk you did this this is the impact of me i'm so sorry this was my intention how can i fix it it's that kind of thing that heals situations okay so now you might have someone who overrides that who you do listen and you do that which is this particular question the person this person is in a situation where everyone's kind of overriding and picking on this person this is where you need some boundaries okay and we boundaries become very important because you can go through the process i've just explained but you can listen and say sorry but if they still pushing and trying to demean you you have the right to protect yourself if you can't physically remove yourself from the house can you remove yourself from the environment can you say well this is happening i choose not to let this affect me i respect that you have your point of view i respect you feel like that but i don't and i'm not going to let it touch me don't be like a sponge and absorb their anger their frustration or their problems they are trying to put their problems on you if someone is trying to put their problems on you you need to protect yourself so instead of being a sponge put up where put imagine wearing one of those medieval suits of armor and you put that on with the shield and everything and it deflects so it doesn't and that will increase your empathy it's the most amazing thing because not only when you when you put that on you visualizing putting it on okay so the visualization changes the structure in your brain brings brain health increases resilience at the same time that new thought now generates a very strong energy this is not weird this is quantum physics this is qegs that i use in my research my neuroscientific research we see that how the brain changes the different waveforms and when they're balanced you get very strong and what mental strongness looks like in in various different levels is that it generates this like shield around you literally it generates a shield so this kind of thing where i choose to set up a boundary and i choose to say i'm i i respect your point of view you're entitled to that but i'm not i don't agree and let's agree to disagree and if you don't like that i'm going to remove myself from the situation and we can talk about this later so you put up that boundary when you do that and you visualize the shield if they start attacking you visualize the shield blank and it deflects and that creates a barrier around you and starts to protect you and it takes a bit of practice but physiology physiologically is changing your brain it's making your brain more resilient and in and also it's creating an energy wave now think of when you were back at school and you know you i don't know if you ever did this but you get a white piece of paper and then you throw iron filings and you put a magnet in the middle and it creates those patterns do you remember that okay so that's what's happening here all of us generate energy fields so when what we're supposed to generate are these nice electromagnetic patterns that are all ordered so when someone is narcissistic or invading your space or trying to control you or force this thing problems on you and make you feel bad for their issues and dump everything on you and you absorb it you mess up their own filings which then messes up your entire body but if you put on this armor if you make a decision to put up the boundary which change which is the armor or i mean i really recommend boundaries work very well with this kind of visualization you then put that pattern back in place the iron filings go like they should and you've created this protection around you and you know the most amazing thing happens as well when you're in that state you can then have empathy where you can then actually almost help that person even though they are attacking you so and sometimes that means you need to pull away and then people are very narcissistic and controlling and manipulative they will get mad at you for resisting because they like to control but you're not allowing the control so you have to protect yourself against the anger and the guilt and the manipulation and not listen to it and if it's a mom doing it or because one of the other questions was someone whose mother's very manipulative there was another question someone whose brother was manipulated there was another question someone's father so like i mean i had so many questions like this where it was different family members trying to control different when someone's trying to control someone else it means they feel out of control so they are feeling like they need to control other people to control themselves so it's easier to boss someone else around and control someone else that it is than it is to control yourself so by you putting up the shield which gives you the strength to resist that you actually give them the tools to learn their own level of control so their temper tantrum that might be emitted from you putting up that boundary is actually very good for them if you don't react if you respond you don't react you remove yourself they may follow you to the room lock your door if you have to okay but that is teaching them hey she's not gonna he's not gonna be ruffled by my constant bombardment and it's gonna force them to look at themselves and because we have mirror neurons in the brain we copy each other so you are setting up a pattern of behavior that not only protects you but it also starting to teach them how to change their behavior which they need because they causing brain damage and if you absorb they're controlling you causing brain damage fortunately we can hear our brain damage remember i've told you this before when we control the way we thinking when we respond instead of reacting when we reconceptualize we're changing our brain okay i've said a ton of stuff and in addition to everything i've said you can find this in my podcast cleaning up the mental mess you can find this information in on my so follow me on social media i've got a great new book that was released on where all my books they were out here i thought i had second i'm going to grab my books okay so three tools that are going to help you immensely is this 101 ways to be less stressed gives us to this person who's manipulating you guys excellent book little tips this is the first of a whole series where you can just flip it open and find uh let's find a daily tip to help you don't regret making mistakes in front of your children there's a tip in here that endless tips in here 101 to help you ways to be less stressed fits in at christmas stocking it's a great gift give to yourself too and you can go read this or give this to that person or get one for you and for them you can pre-order my new book cleaning up your mental mess i'm so proud of this book don't you just love the cover cleaning up your mental mess this is the one of the this is the peak of my work 38 years of research my recent clinical trials and in here i teach you about the five steps on how to embrace reconceptualize which i call the neuro cycle so we are learning to neuro cycle nurse neuro cycling neuro meaning brain cycling i have research for 38 years how you can use your mind to change your brain it's a neuro hack neuro cycling is a neuro hack it's how you use your mind to change your mind to change your brain to get you to be a responder instead of a reactor it's in this book in detail you've got to pre-order this book it's on pre-order now put the link in into the into the show notes you can also learn how to neuro-cycle immediately pre-order this because it's filled with unbelievable information for you and these by the way just before i jump on to the next tool the second half of the book is filled with neuro cycles neuro cycles the five neuro cycle is a five-step process on how you can clean up your mental mess 38 years of research scientifically prove clinically applied this is not some uru self-help you know like wellness technique this is hardcore science how you use your mind to change your brain pre-ordered this book when you pre-order this book you get amazing bonuses i'm doing a like a private book club we i'll be working through the book to help you we are going to be and there's going to be a bonus chapters like on how to help your kids there is like a discount on online on the app that is coming out to suit us to match this book i mean there's amazing bonuses and also clubs that we starting all kinds of stuff so the other thing that you can do immediately is get this app which is called the switch app um available on itunes and google store this has got the neuro cycle in it the five steps to help you do what i'm telling you to do you do this for seven to fifteen minutes a day it will change your life you can apply this once you learn the system you can you can use it in five seconds but you do this daily and it's how you hack your brain and use your mind to hack your brain this is literally a biohack but it's a mind one and there's no other mind ones out there that work like this this is 38 years research so you can get this immediately it's been on it's on sale because of covert it's half price for three months but you can also get a 12 month subscription if you pre-order this book you can get you can get you get them you get you get there's some linked bonus into this app as well but you can go order this right now it's 15 bucks guys for therapy for 15 bucks seriously i mean there's so much in this and this is being upgraded um to to the to the neuro cycle it will be upgraded it will be upgraded and the new version to match the book will hopefully be out by february but in the meantime you can get this as soon as it's upgraded if you subscribe to this you will automatically be switched into the neuro cycle app okay so this is how you can learn the five steps of the neuro cycle that are in this book and as this once this is finished once we've finished all the upgrades if you subscribe for 12 months it will automatically get the new upgrade so don't worry about that but at least you can use this in the meantime to help you okay it's amazing it is really effective i have shown with my research done on these that you can improve how you respond by 81 percent you can improve your ability to control your mind those thoughts that can drive you nuts by 81 and drop your cortisol levels and drop the inflammation in your brain your body significantly and improve your telomeres on your dna that's not just that's not just words i've scientifically proven this guys it's research okay so those are three tools you can get immediately pre-order this and get this now this is also available now that's three tools none of my stuff is expensive it's scientific it's not just wellness it is seriously clinically applied and research stuff that will work to help you guys okay next question i'm gonna answer a couple more questions i have so many here oops give me a second i'm trying to find a question here let's see the next one um here we go um okay so someone this is once again the chris christmas be feeling betrayed by a parent who has a certain opinion about how a child should be raised and and is very um almost sarcastic to the daughter and that's the daughter who's asked the question wanting to remain anonymous out of respect and making it very broad ended but it's essentially someone who you're an adult you've got a child and a parent is saying you should do it this way you should do it that way but they're doing it in a very sort of snarky sarcastic once again this is boundaries and as henry cloud who's a great friend of mine would say if someone comes into your house and they start telling you what to do even if it's your mother okay i'm a mother four kids but two are married i don't have the right to go and tell my kids how to how to look or even look after the their dog okay or to how to run their life all i have all if they come to me for advice that's a different story but i can't go and tell them so if your mother is doing that or your parent is doing that to your father or someone you have the right to put up boundaries you have the right to very nicely respond and not react if you react it creates this fire you're going to put flame on fire you're going to add fuel to the fire are you being very calm putting on the shield once again like i explained in the beginning you build up a boundary you change your mental um your mental state you going to generate out love waves which will calm you down and them down and you very firmly say i'm so sorry that it upsets you the way i'm chosen to bring up my children but for my husband and i or my wife and i mom dad whoever this works for us thank you for your advice but we actually really want to do it this way and then distract them and say you know you can reject god what you're moving or going to go for a walk or but and and and then you just keep keep the boundaries be very firm do not be scared because you're an adult and you have a child and you've chosen to bring them up in a certain way and your mom or dad doesn't approve you have the right to say this is what i've chosen i'm an adult now and you know you it's not a disrespectful thing to a parent the parent is not respecting your adulthood okay so you cannot go into another person's space you can't go into a children's space unless they invite you in there when they are adults that's very important so you have the right because there were two questions saying that am i being disrespectful must i just let my parents run right all over me absolutely not i would hope my kids will tell me mom you've crossed the boundary and that's not you i don't want that advice that's sometimes i've said hey listen dude and the kids have said to me mom if i wanted your advice i would have asked you for it and i said i'm so sorry and i back off you have the right to say that and as a parent you should not get offended you should just respect the fact that they have the right to adults they have the right okay so let me have a look at another question um this is okay this is sometimes i feel anxious and sometimes i just do not know why but i often feel physically sick and end up throwing up which i'm getting better at not letting myself get to that place but how do people manage anxiety physically manage the physical physicality that comes with anxiety okay excellent question and this is the last question i'm actually going to answer today because we've been doing a long long live here today i'll do more of these if you want more of these let me know i will do more of these kind of lives where we talk about these practical things okay so anxiety is a warning signal like i said to you warning signals that what's being emitted here what do you do first embrace that anxiety that hovering anxiety embrace it that hovering anxiety is there telling you from your non-conscious mind which is where all your thoughts are stored it's telling you through your subconscious mind to pay attention to there's a reason why you feel like this in other words the anxiety is a message to be embraced because it is a symptom of an underlying cause so a sense of hovering anxiety if it's hovering and it's been there for a long time that means that you haven't dealt with the cause there's a reason you're not just anxious for nothing or even though it can feel like you are but if it's hovering there's always a reason for a warning signal there's always a symptom it's a symptom of an underlying so you need to go through the five steps of the neuro cycle to find out why you have that hovering anxiety why does it go in your body why is it that very strong physical reaction with this person talks about vomiting other people may feel that they completely freeze other people so you can have the gi symptoms you can have heart properties there's a myriad myriad of of different ways that we respond physically why well you made up of 37 trillion to 100 trillion cells every every time you experience something it goes through your mind and it builds into your brain as a thought okay so whatever you experience your mind thinks feels and chooses because your mind separates from your brain your mind is how you think feel and choose you have experience you you you think feel and choose that generates energy through your brain you build that into a thought with the roots tree trunk and the branches so the thought with all the root memories the branch memories which produce your behaviors and the warning signals this is the perspective that the roots generate which it's generated into the behavior into the warning signal this generates this creates an imbalance in your mind in the non-conscious mind and that non-conscious minds like these balls of energy and once equilibrium and homeostasis and survival we want survival okay so then it pushes up a message to the subconscious and what you're feeling the hovering anxiety is a message from the non-conscious through the subconscious which is a bridge between the conscious mind and the non-conscious you know in what's going funny okay and when that happens it pushes through and you've got to and you've got to deal with it okay so it's telling you you need to pay attention so as it happens not only is it in your brain but every single one of the 37 37 to 100 trillion cells of your brain and your body also build a memory in your body so memory is stored in the mind the brain physically and in the body three places so it absorbs into your body and what happens is that if it's a very traumatic event it can just it can create a disconnect in your mind and your body and your body can dominate so that body you that that what you're feeling in your body that vomiting reaction is also a very strong warning signal that you need to do the work to find that's the vomiting that's a physical warning signal what are the behaviors just preceding that what's the perspective what are the roots and that'll take 63 days so my advice to anyone and there were several questions in that in that genre is get this app immediately and start working through it it will help you to find embrace that message of anxiety and find the roots and pre-order the book so that you've got that information as well okay guys that's all i've got time for today don't forget to have a beautiful christmas okay don't forget to apply these things listen to this over and over and i'm going to do as many lives as i can i'll see you again soon and i follow me on social media listen to my podcast i've got excellent podcasts helping you in the last couple of weeks this last week i put out a couple of podcasts that are in this genre of what we've talked about today which will really really help you so based on that thank you so much for joining me for coffee i hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and i will see you soon and all the links to all these things will be in the show notes bye-bye guys thank you so much

Channel: Dr. Caroline Leaf

Views: 6,938

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: p1NBgbdMlGw

Length: 40min 27sec (2427 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020