The Gap Between You and Your Anxiety: Finding Healing in the Space Between

hi and welcome to another episode of the anxiety RX podcast today I am going to talk about a little stream of Consciousness thing again I've been working a lot with people with anxiety lately I'm not sure exactly why and it's not typically clients it's friends it's people that have just come up to me in my daily life massage therapists just people in my daily life that said hey you know what do I do about my anxiety it's getting worse and I think it is getting worse for us I think anxiety is basically separation and we are getting more and more separate from each other all the time we've never lived in a world that was more open and free and had food to eat and had shelter over our heads and had as little war as we have going on now now that's a little bit different now because of Ukraine and and Israel but in General human beings have never done this well with not having daytoday scary scary worries now our worries are more internal the worries we had before are external when we were younger when we were our species was younger we had specific things that were scary Waring tribes War famine now we have this sort of affluent anxiety that we have and I think on some levels it can be kind of worse I used have this joke on stage that I would do about standup and I would say if you're poor and depressed well you got a good reason to be to be depressed because you're poor but if you're rich and depressed you're screwed because you don't have a good reason now that leans into the fact that money doesn't buy happiness but today I kind of wanted to talk talk about how this anxiety just starts to take us over and as a society begins to crush us begins to separate us even more from each other and I think the way that we heal as a society externally and internally is to really pay attention to what happens internally within ourselves and the book that I wrote anxiety RX is all about recognizing the alarm in your body because it's the alarm in your body typically from old unresolved childhood wounding that is creating the anxiety in your mind this old unresolved energy is stuck in your body and it's not coming out because we're not giving it the proper place to come out so today I wanted to talk about where do you feel your alarm Have you listened to me do you understand what I'm talking about when I say that you're not anxious you're alarmed your body is alarmed and your mind is basically just making up stories that are consistent with alarm because if you have a lot of alarm in your system you're not going to make up stories about puppies picnics and cookies you're going to make up stories about your relationships falling apart or your parents are dying or whatever it is and whatever you focus on you get more of so if you focus on these stories that you're telling yourself that are based on this old alarm that's in your system it becomes this self reinforcing self- reverberating self feedback loop of alarm in your body creating anxious thoughts in your mind and the anxious thoughts of your mind creating more alarm in your body or perhaps more correctly the anxious thoughts of your mind distracting you from actually treating metabolizing and resolving this alarm that's stuck in your body so I tell people where is the alarm in your body can you find it when you're having an anxious day can you scan your body can you see where this anxiety is actually showing up as alarm inside of you now check the midline of your body between your chin and your pubic bone because that's usually where it is most people will have their alarm in their throat in their heart in their chest in their solar plexus in their belly it's usually around around the midline somewhere so find it find your alarm does it have a characteristic is it hot is it cold is it sharp is it dull is it superficial is it deep does it have a color does it have a shape is it associated with any Sensations images emotions you know really go into this alarm because this is the root cause of what what your suffering is is this alarm your mind is only responding to this alarm that's stuck in your body that's what's happening is your mind is making up All These Warnings what if worst case scenarios because your body has stored this alarm that you've kind of pushed down for so long and it's the alarm's way of coming up by creating these worries in your mind so it's finding the alarm in your body when you're anxious when you see your mind is going at a mile a minute it's not your mind it's your body that's creating the energy for this so let's go right at the source let's find the alarm in your body I'm reading this book right now that I'm quite enjoying called The Gap and the gain and it's a book for entrepreneurs mostly it was recommended to me by a friend and I've I'm reading it and I'm really loving it and it's really about the Gap how we live in the Gap so often especially as anxious people and the Gap is this place where we are uncertain about our future we're uncertain about our past a lot of negative self-image a lot of comparing ourselves to others a lot of comparing ourselves to others a lot of taking what societal reference and culture reference means for success and then transposing that on to our lives as is this what I should be doing and I think we're such creatures of culture now especially with social media that we are being trained indoctrinated if you will into this idea of success and usually it's monetary sometimes it's Fame there's a lot of stuff going out now about children children are are being pulled in schools like what do you want to be and it's like 80% of them want to be famous that's that's their that's their career goal doesn't make sense but it does make sense when you look at it in terms of culture so returning to this idea of recognizing your alarm where do you feel it so I'm out walking my dogs this morning and I noticed there was this Instagram post that kind of triggered me this this post about anxiety that I thought was wasn't accurate but yet the person has a tremendous amount of followers it was a very cognitive explanation of anxiety which I typically don't like because I don't think that anxiety at its root core is cognitive I think anxiety at its root core is a state of alarm that's stuck in our bodies so I was upset I was I was really feeling like man this they just don't get it it just doesn't work that way and then of course I go in my mind well maybe you're wrong Russ maybe maybe your whole Theory isn't accurate which of course sent me into a deeper state of alarm which of course created more anxiety but what I realized was from reading read this book it's like okay right now I'm in the Gap I'm comparing myself to other people I'm comparing myself to an ideal that not only do I think is accurate but I don't want to compare myself to and then it really came to me that how much time do I spend evaluating my own theories comparing them to somebody else is this accurate because I question my own theories quite a bit and it was really troubling for me and then I realized oh you're in the Gap and then then I noticed that when I'm in the Gap I'm also in alarm so my old solar plexus is all lit up like a Christmas tree and I was like oh okay well this is where this is coming from all right so comparing myself to others puts me in this state of alarm which of course triggers my anxiety and I get into that alarm anxiety Loop so what if I just stayed with the alarm what if I practice this thing that I I talked about on one of my podcasts before called objecting without Contracting by Kathy Kane PhD so it's this idea that you can feel this alarm but you don't have to contract around it you don't have to give it the next step in the sequence because what I find with me is that I'll feel this alarm and then all of a sudden I'll feel negatively about it and I'll not want to have it I don't want to have this feeling of alarm so I will squeeze around it I will try and I don't know sequester it I don't know exactly what happens but there's a resistance to feeling this alarm and in that resistance I think it sets off this whole Cascade of What I Call The Alarm anxiety cycle so if I can stop the resistance if I can just allow myself to feel my disgruntlement with this particular Instagram post and just allow it to sit there without adding thoughts to it without trying to make myself specifically feel better just sitting there with the discomfort and not squeezing around it just staying with that discomfort now sometimes our alarm is triggered because of some deep emotional usually childhood wound and it's really painful because it takes us back at that time we were 5 6 8 12 years old and helpless and scared and our amydala has no sense of time so when we go into this alarm we go into this Gap we transpose ourselves in time back to that place where we felt scared with all the wherewithal of an 8-year-old or a nine-year-old but we don't realize that we have all the wherewithal of a nine-year-old because we assume that we're adults but in those cases when we start getting deeper and deeper into alarm I would suggest that we become children I I would suggest that we become more and more age regressed and more excuse me more and more anxious so at that point I started going okay well what feels good at my body this is a something called oscillation or pendulation in something called sematic experiencing therapy so I felt my solar plexus with this jealousy or whatever it was I was feeling towards this particular social media post and then I went into my face and it's like okay let's I was outside so I was breathing the air just allowing the air to come in and out of my nostrils and my face and through my sinuses and into my lungs and alowing my shoulders to drop relaxing my jaw I've been doing this for a long time so it's a I'm kind of zoning myself out right now I should probably stop it and then going back into this place in my solar plexus of aarm and it didn't seem the Instagram post didn't seem so bad at that point because my alarm was down it's it's your alarm that really dictates how you feel about things it's not so much your thoughts your thoughts become the runaway train but it's really that sense of alarm so what I was doing is I was going back and forth between this feeling of alarm in my solar plexus being triggered by this particular post and then going into my face and my lungs and feeling relaxed and not objecting not Contracting around it just allowing it to be there and I think so much of anxiety work is that people only work on their anxiety when they're feeling anxious or alarmed the other thing I wanted to bring in was can you work on this anxiety when you're having a good day when you're feeling good because we know where our alarm is and I when I'm having a great day I'm out golfing or in the Sun or whatever I'll put my hand on that solar plexus and if I really focus on it I can feel the alarm that's in there and I can just sit with it and just allow it to process and I think so often what we don't do is we don't bring our alarm up to the surface when we're having a good day when we're feeling good and this is a brilliant time to bring up this old pain because we're resourced our bodies are resourced our minds are resourced we have this ability now to kind of pendulate or oscillate between this good feeling that we have and this alarm and get a chance to metabolize it and change it and integrate it take these disperate parts that are making up this alarm in our system and bring them into a functional hole but when we're deep an alarm and we try and fix it all our resources are going to survival so I guess the point of this and I didn't know it when I started recording today but it's about can you work on your anxiety when you're feeling good because a lot of times when we're feeling good we don't want to work on our anxiety we want it's like I'm glad that it's not here today I'm glad that it's not around and I'm just going to keep it that way but I'm slowly learning or I learned in the last few years that that's one of the best times to actually start bringing it up finding the alarm in your system even though it's much less intense because you're feeling good in general that's a great time to bring it up to the surface so it's working on your anxiety when you're not anxious because most people especially my friends who call me for advice when they're anxious are anxious when they call me and there's only a limited amount of help I can give them at that point so the lesson in this podcast today is about can you bring your anxiety your alarm up to the surface when you're having a good day when you're feeling good because after all that alarm is your younger self is that scared frightened not felt enough not loved enough child in you and if you're feeling good and you're resourced enough to give that child in you some love and some attention and some care and to show them that you see them you understand them you love them you'll protect them that's the best time to do it because if we only try and help our anxiety when we're feeling anxious again we're already compromised but when you're feeling good this is a time to find your find your alarm it's it's going to be in the same place I guarantee you if you have it in your heart it's going to be in your heart if it's in your solar plexus it's going to be there too put your hand over it bring that child bring that alarm into your good day and show them in no on certain terms that this alarm isn't all of them it's not all of them and I got to say that again because it's so critical that alarm is not all of you that alarmed child that sits in that place in your body is not all of them but when we can bring that child up to the surface and show them they're seing heard loved and protected in a time that we're really resourced we have a much greater chance at metabolizing that alarm and showing that child that hey this scary place that you were in back when you were 5 Seven 8 12 years old you're not there anymore you're here with me now I'm resourced I've got the ability to look after you now that maybe I don't have what I'm feeling anxious myself so what I'm saying I haven't said it enough already is that you have the power when you're feeling good to connect with that younger version of of yourself and show them that this alarm isn't all of them it's not all of you either and in that you have a chance to metabolize that alarm so that it changes it starts to release and if you don't restrict around it if you don't resist it it can release even more so a lot of healing from anxiety is a not resisting it allowing it to be there seeing it as your younger self bringing it up when you're not anxious when you're having a good day connecting with that alarm because you're truly connecting with that younger version of yourself and that's when we get some real Traction in healing our anxiety so that's it for this week we'll see you next week on the anxiety RX podcast and thanks

Channel: Dr Russell Kennedy - THE ANXIETY MD

Views: 1,726

Keywords: anxiety, state of alarm, recognizing alarm, healing anxiety, managing anxiety, societal influences, internal alarm, childhood wounds, physical manifestations, the gap, societal references, cultural standards, objecting without contracting, discomfort, inner child, healing, transformation, compassion, openness

Id: bTjq5NxXsQM

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024