Last week I helped my friend move her cats to a new home and one of the things I learned in the process was how she was unconsciously fueling her project managing with constant rumination and anxiety which feels TERRIBLE. So with her permission, I'm talking through how by creating awareness and embodying mindbody changework, we can get similar outcomes of getting all the stuff done that needs to get done AND unwiring old unnecessary habitual patterns that are driving our body's stress response.
Book a curiosity call with me - https://calendly.com/paincoachdeb
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to move with Deb. I am Deb, your friendly neuroplastician, and this is a podcast that explores the relationship between the body and the mind. From a health at every size, judgment-free perspective, I teach you how developing a new internal conversation based on curiosity, self friendship, and simple neuroplasticity techniques can rewire your body mind.
[00:00:36] Out of pain and emotional overwhelm to help you build the rich full life that you want to live. Disclaimer, this is not a replacement for medical care.
[00:00:56] Welcome to Move with Deb, the podcast soon to be Retitled, the Curiosity Cure. And today I just wanted to share some experiences I had this weekend. I was helping a friend move her cats to Kansas. Not just her cats. She moved to Kansas. She had two cats, and you need two people to move two cats on a plane.
[00:01:24] I'm happy that she's starting this new chapter in her life. And while that has some anxiety and fear that comes along with it, it also brings with it this excitement, this sense of new beginnings. I feel very privileged and honored to get to be a witness to this blossoming of this new home and new relationship and lots of newness.
[00:01:50] And moving is one of the top five most stressful things that you can experience. And I was not moving, but I was participating in helping my friend, I was helping her move and previously had helped her pack for other moves. She's moved multiple times this year, which is, you know, hello, compounding stress, hello, cost of living in a very expensive place, there's just added stress that goes along with that and stress affects our bodies, but also stress is not necessarily intrinsic to the experience, it's also how we relate to the experience. And what I observed what we do when we are trying to either solve a problem, deal with a stressor, create change, are we winding ourselves up? You can't see my finger, but my finger is literally like winding up or we winding ourself down. Winding down the distress and the stress calming our bodies and our nervous system, or we like just staying the same. Are we riding the ride of life?
[00:03:08] So, one of the things my friend shared with me, she's incredibly brilliant and just the most lovely human being, but she also is really well practiced at having anxiety. And so one of the things that she had said to me was, you know, from the moment I get up in the morning, I just am like thinking about and fixating on getting these cats safely through the airport experience.
[00:03:35] And her cats are a little feisty or maybe a lot feisty, so she had a lot of worries because you have to take the cat out of the bag. You can request a private room, you have to take a cat out of the bag and hold it while they scan the bag and then they wipe down your hands. And this is part of our process of flying with the t s a.
[00:03:56] This is what she thinks about every single day. And we do have to think about things to create solutions. Like she had to know what the rules were and have the right equipment, and have the right things to show up to the airport to have the cats be able to get on the plane and go through that process safely.
[00:04:17] So you can't just show up at an airport with some cats and be like, oh, okay, cool. You'll just let me on the plane. Right? So there is the process of knowing what it is that you need to know about anything, what, whatever it is that you're trying to create in your life. And then there's the process of the problem solving. Are there things here that I need to acquire? Are there papers that I need to get printed? Or is there a vet visit that I need to do before traveling? And like gathering all of that information and also completing the tasks that there are to do.
[00:04:52] Then there's the experience that we're having about the situation and that's like where my work comes in, right? If you're spending your whole day every day, and the way that you wake up in the morning is you start ruminating and fixating and hyper-focused with a lot of intensity, fear, anxiety, overwhelm, and you know, and really running worst case scenarios over and over and over, your body will reflect that stress.
[00:05:28] When I help my clients think about stress, we can't control all the stressors in our life, but we can control making stressful things more stressful or less stressful. So some of this is about how we relate to the stressors in our life. So as her friend, I knew that my job was to be calm and helpful. Right? So these are her cats. This is her plan. She said bring gardening gloves. I brought gardening gloves, actually brought two. So I was prepared to help in whatever way I was being asked to help. But I also knew that what would really be helpful is if I were really calm. And also I had practiced imagining this process going really smoothly. I watched some YouTube videos just to kind of have a vision in my mind of what it would be like to go take the cats through the experience. She was very, very prepared and talked me through it, and I just got the sense like, okay, it's gonna be my job to be kind of like the backup, hold the cat, do these things, but I knew that the quality of my energy and the quality of my attention where it would be really, really valuable is being this kind of safe home base.
[00:06:59] We, we talk about that in pain reprocessing in creating a kind of a sensory home base, a safe sensory home base. I really viewed myself in that role. So that was what I practiced. I love this idea of mental rehearsal because it's Very proven and supported by science. There's all kinds of really cool studies, people controlling their vo2 max, their, the amount of oxygen they get in their bodies, just through thoughts and through rehearsing. So we, we know that our thoughts have a direct effect on our bodies, and we also know that when we are in an anxiety state, oftentimes our body sensations kind of feel very loud, right? Our heart is beating, pounding, we might be really keyed into what's happening in our bodies. Maybe our breath feels shallow and hard to access, and then there might be a tension in your belly or your hands or your neck or your back.
[00:08:07] So all of that tension, the shallow breathing, the intense sensory. This, what, how do I wanna say this? The self-awareness about the sensory experiences also can create more fear, right? When your heart is pounding and now you start freaking out because the way your heart is pounding and it's a reflection of what is happening on the inside. And we can create more relaxation in this process. So I was having this chat with her and I was like, well, no wonder this has been very stressful. Yes, there is the stress of it, and yes, there is the stress of your cats being these little tiny murder experts, right? They're, they're lethal, these little cats of her. So I believe her when she says that they are very good at biting and scratching people, but at the same time, waking up every day practicing and amplifying and increasing the worry and distress is a, a counter useful strategy because it's not gonna change anything for the cats.
[00:09:25] What it might do is put you into a sympathetic Nervous system mode where you are on more high alert, and so your attention and focus might narrow and that might feel like being really good at problem solving, because right now your whole worldview is super narrow and you can't see me, but my hands are going out from wide into this very narrow, and you get this narrow focused tunnel vision.
[00:09:55] And it's very hard to pull yourself away and see anything else other than what you are seeing in this tunnel vision. Some of the work I do with my clients is helping them break out of tunnel vision mode and zooming out into a broader view. We can do that with shifting into a peripheral vision or sometimes we take a, a journey from whatever the narrow focus is and putting it in a larger context. Sometimes we play with that in metaphor. So we'll take whatever the problem state is, whatever the issue is that's bothering you, that you kind of can't stop thinking about. You can't stop obsessing about this one thing, and in a lot of ways we're practicing we're creating mental rehearsal. You are creating mental rehearsal with that problem state, and what's everything else that you're not doing? What's everything else that you're not thinking about or not focusing on? That's also happening, but it's not really in your awareness.
[00:11:03] So this is a lot about this interplay between attention, awareness, activity, emotions... and we can tell pretty quickly what happens in the body when we shift into a larger view. So I did this with a client the other day and they were talking about where they lived. So I was like, okay, cool. Well let's just think about your house.
[00:11:28] And then think about like being in your house and thinking about then your house on the block. Think about your house in the town. And then think about the town is in a city and the city is in a state, and the state is in a country, and the country is on a continent. The continent is on a planet, you know, and we just kept pulling the vision out and you know, they had gone into a relaxed state and their eyes were closed and they were just imagining all of these metaphors being, going through that mental rehearsal journey. And when they came out of it, we got all the way to the galaxy, or to the universe, or to the metaverse. And one of the things that I realize is, I don't know, the order of things when we get out into space, but also it's a metaphor. We're making it up.
[00:12:26] One of the things that they had said was their breath felt more relaxed, so the tension in their body ease, the tension in the diaphragm eased, and then the breath felt more ready to be taken in. Right? We need that beautiful, lovely, incredible oxygen that our body uses, and being able to feel relaxed when you're breathing is a direct communication to our nervous system that we are safe, right? So expanding into peripheral vision, out of a narrow vision directly communicates to our nervous system to like bring down the high alert. So sometimes we do this through our thinking brain, sometimes we do it through our body, sometimes we do it both.
[00:13:15] I love that part about hypnosis is that we really just get to invite our imagination in. So we can just start by asking ourselves, what is it that we're practicing? I've been inviting in a practice of, and I mentioned this on a previous podcast, of really bringing an ease to my day. Not starting my day, believing that I'm already behind, that there's so many things that I have to do that there's a lot of obstacles before signing new clients or being successful or taking action in my business, you know, and those are cognitive, whether they're, we wanna call them distortions or beliefs or just thoughts that wander in habitual practices of thinking. I really believe in the ability to change that. So, but first we have to have awareness because you can't change what you're not aware of. So, At the very least, becoming aware of what is it that you are mentally rehearsing every day.
[00:14:23] Here's what's so funny is like, you know, mental rehearsal's not gonna make you a perfect human being, right? But it's really meant to help you feel more secure, relaxed, calm, and help your physiology than support that state. Because when I got to the airport, there was this dude who was working there and, this is something I didn't rehearse, and now that I've had this experience, like I'm gonna add this interaction into my, future rehearsal. Right. He was very upset that I had TSA pre-check and my friend did not, but we wanted to go on the same line to the same screening person because of course the cats had to stay together. We had to stay together because, this was all one process and we needed to both be there to deal with the cats in the whole process of getting them screened. And he was already pre upset that people were not doing the line in the correct way and the way that he wanted them to.
[00:15:31] And so he wasn't really able to hear what I was trying to explain to him. But also I got my, like, New York City, uh, you know, oh, you're gonna come at me, I'm gonna come at you. So I was not calm. I mean, I was not crazy, but I was also not like, you know, Calm and relaxed like I'm talking now and open to deal with anything that comes my way.
[00:15:55] No, I was myself and, but I was able to have that experience, see what was happening, kind of try to pull myself back, see if I could, navigate as towards something that made sense. So I was trying to deescalate, but you know, at the end of the day, like also still human. So these mind-body practices are, are here to get us feeling more capable and also just to help us unlearn patterns. Like what is it that you're practicing and rehearsing and how often are you doing it and what is that doing to your fight, flight, freeze, fawn response. And how is that relating to how we are feeling in our bodies? One of the things that I love to do is get to the airport really early because, I totally relax when I get through security. I'm just like, okay, so now I can just be here knowing that whatever happens, I've gotten through this part, you know, and I get to my gate and I just feel so relaxed and that I don't care that I am there well before the plane is taking off, because what I want to avoid is, you know, anything having to do with running through an airport, waiting online and feeling super stressed out, you know, so those are things that I, I take actions to avoid.
[00:17:19] So, you know, we were there super early 'cause we knew we didn't necessarily have control over each part of this process. We wanted to be there early so that even if. You know, they couldn't find a room or they couldn't find people to go in the room with us, or if we had to wait, that all of that would be okay. That at no point were we feeling rushed. Those are actions that we took to create, to help us manage our state. But what you are doing in your mind, Also helps you manage your state. It's kind of a both, and.
[00:17:55] I love my friend and, and we were like, well, what part of this experience do you wanna keep? What part of it is useful? Okay. She was amazing at getting all of the pieces done that she had to get done, and knowing all the rules and, and doing all the research and planning it all out. And I was like, okay, that's amazing. And then when you have those pieces concluded can you let yourself not constantly be ruminating every day and worrying about it. Where can you find the ease in the process of being planned? There's no moral obligation to being relaxed, but it does feel better. And it helps your prefrontal cortex stay on and available, which helps you problem solve things that need problem solving in the moment. And also it helps your body. It helps your body be relaxed, and we digest food when we are relaxed. Like when we are tense and tight, our body is cutting off blood flow and it's shunting it to these other, to places where it needs to help manage your body budget. Which is a Lisa Feldman Barrett term.
[00:19:12] Our brain is the one deciding that, our brain is the one deciding where our resources go, and we now can take this knowledge and help our brain be better at putting resources where they need to go.
[00:19:30] So maybe that's focusing on sleep. Maybe that's focusing on practicing ease rather than practicing anxiety. And just like any other skill, when you practice something, you get better at it. One, having successfully gone through this experience of traveling with her cats and flying them, everything went smoothly and absolutely when we were done and got through the experience of going through security and everybody else was really nice and like there were times where they didn't understand why we were wearing gloves. And you can't wear the gloves 'cause you have to get your hands swabbed. So I. We figured it out. So one of us would like not wear gloves and the other one was like the support and wore gloves just in case we needed the intervention for the, the attack cat. And so we all figured it out actually, you know, which I kind of loved. It's like we problem solved all of this together. Most of the time when we're more able to calm, we can hear what people are trying to communicate. And that can be really helpful. Then we can be like, what is the problem here that we need to solve or resolve? And how can we do that in a way that honors everybody's needs? And so we were able to do that. And when we got through security, she was just like, I'm trying not to cry. And I was like, oh my God, please cry. Like what a relief This must feel like if this is what you spend all day long thinking about, of course you're gonna wanna cry because what a relief that feels like.
[00:21:15] And I see this with clients, I've helped clients like navigate other trips or navigate flying on an airplane, whether it's fear or fear of having any kind of body symptom. We work through and we create opportunities for mental rehearsal, but we also create, this, the, I don't know. How do I wanna say this? The unwinding of rumination, right? It really does sometimes feel like it has a spin. Are we winding it up? Can we imagine winding it down slowly, right? When we take something that feels very speedy and fast, even if we just hit the pause button and then imagine maybe it going at half speed.
[00:21:59] Our bodies are listening. Our bodies are always listening. That is literally their job. That's like why when you're driving on the road, you kind of like can tell if somebody's gonna cut out in front of you, even if you're like, not paying super close attention. Our bodies are paying attention. Our body, our embodied cognition, knows so much more of what is happening around us. And we don't want to be in hypervigilant mode all the time. We actually want to be in this kind of relaxed alert state. This trusting that our body knows what's happening around us and that we're able to take action when there's action that needs taking. Right. So if somebody's gonna zoom out in front of you, you know, maybe you slow down, maybe you honk your horn, there's a lot of different options, but there's so much more of you having this perception of you, your body and the world around you. We don't have to only create that from this tense, hyper fixated, intense rumination place because our body then learns that. It learns that, oh, this is how I get things done. So in some ways then we learn well, this is where I take action from. So this very, tense, hyper-focused, anxious, overwhelmed place is then what is, drives our action. Then it feels very weird to do something when we're not wound up.
[00:23:37] So it can be kind of destabilizing for our sense of self if we haven't yet practiced how to do things when we feel relaxed. And so that's a little bit of what my morning routine is about, which is like, okay, if I'm not like hurling myself out of bed, fueled by adrenaline and panic, how else do I get out of bed? My goal is to get out of bed. My goal is not to stay in bed. So it's like imagining just that lightest touch on the gas pedal and really just feeling how good it feels to come into the wakening of my body in the morning and feeding my mind with good thoughts and good feelings, feeding my body with good feelings and just enjoying the day.
[00:24:27] So if I want to enjoy my day, if by the end of my day I want to have enjoyed my day, I wanna start practicing enjoying my enjoy day from the very beginning. Then whatever comes into my day, whatever it is that I need to do with my day, it will be met by the me who has already practiced enjoying my day.
[00:24:49] And this is intentional work, and I love it because it's so worth doing because the quality of my life matters to me. And I remember learning meditation way back when and, and being like, oh my God, this is so cool. And we can have these kinds of experiences through meditation. But I used to get this kind of on off experience with meditation where I would have this experience on the cushion or in the Meditation space, but then it didn't filter necessarily, I didn't know how to filter it into the rest of my day. And then that made me feel like there were two parts of me that there was this part of me that was kind of failing at feeling good more of the time. And then the part of me that could find it, but it was only found while meditating and you know, I might be a little hyperbolic and exaggerating, but it definitely did feel a little bit like there was a, a gulf and there was no bridge.
[00:25:54] And maybe we get that from meditating over time, but this conceptualization of a very similar idea, takes me wherever I wanna go, and maybe is its own bridge. So this ability to have mental rehearsal feel the way that I wanna feel and practice that. And have that more often really does become more of my experience. And then if I do wanna sit and do a formal meditation practice, I can also do that.
[00:26:26] I just wanted to say, I ended up having some great conversations with my friend and her partner, and we were just talking about inviting ourselves to let go of things that we needed when we were young, like old habits and practices, ways of soothing ourselves or feeling pleasure, whether that was with food or other types of things. Now we have this awareness and we have this agency that we didn't have when we were a child. And so if we want to feel good and we kind of know that like, oh, this one thing is a sure bet, what if we practice what else might help us feel good? Right? Instead of just wearing the one groove deeper and deeper and deeper. 'cause maybe it comes with after effects and experiences that we're not enjoying. So where's the harm reduction version? You know, it's sometimes it is, as an adult learning, like actually I can have an experience of discomfort and I don't actually have to change it and that's just fine. Like, I will move through the discomfort and I'll teach myself that this discomfort is temporary. So there's one that kind of one limb of it, right? And then there's the evoking positive sensations or leaning into something that feels good using our, our senses, right?
[00:27:56] So we're just looking at like, how do we create more variety and maybe expand ourselves out of that narrow, fixed way of looking at things and lean into that curious, open, evocative, like not knowing space and really letting not knowing, be its own source of pleasure. Letting curiosity be its own source of pleasure and really learning to have our own back and teaching our brain and our body that we can actually do something more. And do something different.
[00:28:34] And then we bring in our conscious mind to maybe evaluate and be like, okay, what parts of that experience did I like? What parts didn't I like? Like what worked, what didn't work? What do I want more of? And how do I think I can have that? So I know I've talked about mental rehearsal before, but I think I was really able to see the rumination, and if you know the thought work model, with my clients that I use the model with, I put rumination as an action. 'cause rumination is really something you are doing, even if it's a unconscious or non-conscious habit. I like to think of it as something we're doing because then it gives us the power to practice not doing or doing something else. It can be really useful to do something different to break us out out of these habits. And rumination is definitely one of those, and I think really can change. And when that changes, I think people's lives dramatically change because underneath rumination, what there is is this real desire for safety and a real desire for self-trust and a real desire for comfort, ease, love, and We can practice feeling those ways without that habit of rumination, which keeps the nervous system and the brain in a little fear spiral.
[00:30:06] So I hope that this conversation is helpful for you. And when you're practicing worry, the answer is not to say, oh, don't worry about it. ' cause Oh my God, don't you hate it when somebody says don't worry about it. Uh, you're like, yeah, if I could not worry about it, I would not worry about it. So I would just say really notice what you're worrying about and where can you find the oh yeah, I've got this handled part to it.
[00:30:34] And then the other part, which is like, what then do you wanna practice? That's also the thing. You can't practice not worrying, you can't practice not. You have to practice something. So if we're gonna practice not worrying, really what you practice is a sense of ease or you practice the belief that whatever happens, I've got my own back, or all of it.
[00:31:00] Like you can create like a whole buffet of things that you wanna practice. And we also wanna look at the quality of the practice, right? We don't wanna be practicing with this high intensity fear mind, right? So in practicing ease, what we are doing is unwiring fear. What fires together, wires together, and then the opposite is true. And what un fires unwires, and that's called pruning. And we're just becoming more adept through this act of mental rehearsal and practicing more of what we want.
[00:31:38] So I just wanted to share that experience. 'cause it was a really beautiful and very clear, my heart just went out to my friend when she told me that that's what was happening in her mind. And I was like, oh my God, that sounds awful. And I think now having gone through this experience, I kind of invited her to be like, how can you get the same successful results but without all of that amped up hyperfocus? What if we just focused instead of hyperfocused? What would be different for you in your life if you just focused and then also felt ease and relaxation? I don't know, try that on for size. See how that feels. And if this is work that you want to do with a guide, a coach, a mentor, please hit me up for a free curiosity call, and I'm really happy to chat with you about how we work together. All right, take care. Bye.