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Numerous members of the Dragontree community have told us they’re dealing with a lot of anxiety these days, and it happens to be something I’m very familiar with. I think my half-Jewish DNA blessed me with a substantial dose of fear and paranoia. Although there have been plenty of times I wished I weren’t wired this way, I’ve worked through it enough to recognize that many good things have come out of it – including that it has allowed me to help many others with anxiety.
I’ve found that there’s no single approach that works for everyone, so I like to give people a few things to try together, and I’ll share some of these today. A good place to start is with an understanding of how our survival mechanisms work – and malfunction.
Most of us had our first taste of intense fear in childhood and it made a strong impression on us. The feeling itself is often as memorable as whatever it was trying to warn us about. After a few incidents in which a strong feeling of fear accompanied a situation in which we had a strong desire to avoid an unpleasant outcome – e.g., getting hurt or losing something or someone, perhaps our own life – we began to trust fear.
“Why would I be feeling this way,” the mind rationalizes, “if there weren’t something bad about to happen?” Fear is the emotional mechanism our survival instinct uses to get our attention and to cause us to prioritize security above all else. It makes sense that fear feels bad, that it jars us, that it causes us to react without thinking – and that, since it arises when big things seem to be at stake, it’s trustworthy. It’s not.
Our trust in fear began at an age when we didn’t know how to discern whether or not it was legitimate. It turns out much of the time that fear is aroused by our survival mechanisms, it’s misinformed and exaggerated. Just think of all the times you’ve gotten scared about something that turned out to be nothing. We even feel fear while sitting safely on our couch, reading or watching a story in which a fictional character is threatened.
For most people with anxiety, fear is an error nearly 100% of the time. We just got into the bad habit of letting it take over whenever it arises. Breaking a habit takes work, but anyone can do it. When it comes to anxiety this means, as often as possible, doing something different than usual when you feel fearful.
1) Slow down and deepen your breathing. The mind follows the breath, so slower, deeper breathing – especially with a long exhale – will slow down your mind and open up space in your consciousness so you can notice and question this feeling without being at its mercy. Let your inhale go all the way down to fill up your pelvic bowl, and let the edgy feeling pour out of you on the exhale.
2) Turn toward it with curiosity and bravery. Fear goes hand-in-hand with the fight-flight-freeze reaction. That is, we tend to fight it (resist it, hate it, throw everything at it, spend all our savings on toilet paper, etc.), run away from it (any of various avoidance mechanisms, including getting on our devices or moving to a bunker), or freeze (become physically and/or mentally immobilized). These are all animalistic reactions; we can be smarter and braver. Instead of letting the feeling run you, get interested in it. It’s just a feeling. Examine it. What is this thing? What triggered it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like?
3) Don’t resist it. While meeting the feeling with bravery and curiosity, can you soften yourself in relation to it? What if you just let the feeling be here without fighting it? What if you even invite it to stay? What if you allow yourself to feel it with total willingness? Resistance makes fear stronger. You’ve probably heard “What you resist persists,” but maybe you haven’t heard the corollary: “A feeling fully felt finally fades.” The moment you say, “Bring it on,” it changes.
4) Turn the relationship around. When you have one or more intensely anxious experiences it’s easy to develop an aversion to fear. You may find yourself experiencing it as a monster that’s chasing you, which you need to destroy or run away from. But as soon as you run, you define the relationship. You make fear bad. You make yourself a victim. You relinquish your power.
When you start chasing it instead, it stops controlling you. Tell it, “I will find you. I will learn all of your appearances, all of your hiding places,” and you’ll stop fearing fear.
I know these are uncertain times. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. But I promise you, whatever happens, certain things will still be here. Love will still be here. Grace will still be here. Kindness will still be here. Peace will still be here.
I hope these different ways of relating to anxiety are helpful for you. Next time we’ll look at broader self-care strategies for “down-regulating” your nervous system.
I’m honored to help however I can,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S
If you need extra support, I've crafted our
Anxiety-Relief tincture to do just that.
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It’s not hard to get into the routine of buying lots of stuff for your loved ones during the holidays. We want them to be happy, they seem to want stuff, and stuff is on sale. But when we’re breaking the bank to do it, when we feel compelled to go over the top or to outdo ourselves, and especially when the result is likely to be something big in the landfill in a year or two, maybe it’s worth reassessing our motives and options.
One of my favorite days as a kid – and my model for healthy gift-giving – was St. Nicholas Day. Each region celebrates this holiday in their own way. In several European countries, kids leave their shoes outside or in front of the chimney and receive small gifts in them from St. Nicholas. Sometimes they use a boot to collect the presents, or St. Nicholas sticks a treat under their pillow. In other parts, people dress as St. Nicholas and leave a bag of goodies outside neighbors’ doors. Dutch children will put out a clog with hay and a carrot for St. Nicholas’s horse.
As you can tell, elements of several of these traditions – the chimney, the shoe (which became a stocking), the gift giving, and even the name Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas in Dutch, which became Santa Claus) – all got rolled together with Jesus’s birthday, Winter Solstice, and many aspects of the Pagan festival of Yule to form Christmas. But in our family, we keep St. Nicholas Day separate – it occurs on December 6th – and this makes it easier to preserve its specialness.
In all cases, St. Nick leaves something modest – it needs to fit in a bag, in a shoe, in a boot, or under a pillow. Because of this limitation, there’s a lot more room for magic and sweetness. When I was young, the bag of goodies typically consisted of some oranges, nuts, a pineapple, a little candy, and perhaps some tree ornaments. This is what we put into the bags we make for our friends today.
We put these bags together as a family, and even though nuts and fruit are a regular part of our diets, the kids handle it as if it’s something really special because they know it’s going to be a gift. The best part is walking or driving to recipients’ houses, putting the bag on their porch, knocking on the door and running away (so it’s a mystery!). Our kids get absolutely giddy with the excitement of it (to be honest - so do we!!) When we return home, St. Nick has visited our house too (wink, wink)!
Because the emphasis isn’t on size or monetary value, the essence of what we’re doing is a lot easier to see. There’s a surprise element – an unexpected and anonymous gift – which is fun. There’s an unspoken communication – we love you and you matter to us. You add sweetness to our lives, and here’s a little sweetness back. And even if they don’t figure out it was from us, we know it was given in the most unconditional way.
What’s your gift-giving tradition like? How do you keep the emphasis on the non-material aspects of the holidays? Share your ideas with us in the comments section below.
Love,
Briana
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A decade ago I wrote an article about “beach whistles” that struck a chord with many of our readers. I thought of it while preparing for a webinar I led last week called “5 Ways to Heal the World” (you can watch it here for free).
Here’s an excerpt from that article:
I’ll never forget my eighth grade science teacher, Bill Andrake. He was a hippie with so much passion for science and the environment that it was sometimes scary. More than once, he dumped a garbage can on the floor and sifted through the trash while admonishing us for throwing away all kinds of things that were recyclable. Mind you, this was the 1980s. None of us had any idea how or where to recycle something.
One day, he took us on a walk down to the beach, and the moment we got to the sand, he bent over, picked something up, and held it high for us to see. It looked very familiar, but I didn’t know what it was. Well, I kind of knew what it was – it was one of those things that were always scattered all over the beach, which I used to decorate my sand castles. It vaguely resembled a plastic hotdog. I just didn’t know what other people used them for.
“Behold,” he shouted, “the common beach whistle!” Hmm. I had certainly never used one as a whistle. “Also known as a plastic tampon applicator!” That didn’t clarify anything. I was thirteen years old. The only word that made sense to me in “plastic tampon applicator” was “plastic.”
He went on to express his outrage over the fact that the coast was littered with these things. Immediately after school I did some research. Since there was no internet and my friends were as clueless as I was, I had to ask my sisters. Needless to say, my mind was blown, I looked at girls differently after that, and I stopped putting those things on my sand castles. The “plastics don’t biodegrade” message was lost on me because I was too busy trying to wrap my head around menstruation.
Thirty-something years later, it’s only gotten worse. I’m sharing this because I think it’s time for humans to get real about what it’s going to take to stop the piles of plastics that are accumulating in our oceans, landfills, and even in the bellies of birds and sea creatures (including micro particles in fish that we eat). Besides the fact that it’s just disgusting, there are three reasons I believe we should be concerned.
- Many plastics contain chemical constituents that have negative impacts on human health, including infertility, cancer, and thyroid disorders. For instance, the plastic additive BPA is known to impair human reproductive function. The alternative in “BPA-free” products is usually BPS which is likely just as bad.
- It’s not sustainable. We’re not just not fixing the situation, it’s actually getting worse. We’re still producing more plastics every year than the year before. Currently humans buy one million plastic bottles a minute. The great majority of it won’t get recycled.
- It’s a crime against the world that birthed us. You may or may not agree with me on this one, but I see the world as a gift, as our mother and provider, as the source of great beauty and opportunity. Human civilization owes everything to Earth, and we’re covering it with garbage. I think it should concern us that we have become so disconnected from nature and our origins that we don’t see and/or don’t care.
The biggest impediment to changing course is that we don’t want to make sacrifices. We don’t want to pay more. We don’t want anything to be less convenient. We don’t want to rinse out our containers. We don’t want to save recyclables and drive them to a recycling facility. We don’t want to buy less stuff. And we don’t want to make sacrifices if other people aren’t!
But what if we could see these sacrifices not as some kind of punishment or burden, but as a way to give back to our beloved planet – regardless of what others are doing. Have you ever looked at photographs of other planets? They’re ugly and lifeless. Ours is uniquely awesome. It’s exceptional in all ways.
The current pro-environment narrative is often something like, “If we don’t change we’re doomed” or simply, “We’re doomed.” How do those phrases make you feel?
In contrast, see how you feel about this alternative version: “This is the best planet in the universe! It’s gorgeous! It’s perfectly suited to our needs! The air, the water, the soil, the sun, the plants, the animals, and the minerals provide for us completely! Let’s take impeccable care of it! Let’s show it how much we adore it!”
Who we are is inextricable from what we’ve been provided.
I urge you to try this approach: Let yourself be fascinated by your planet. Go outside. Look more closely. Turn off your phone and your mind for a while. Be grateful for everything you have and recognize the path it took to get to you. Read National Geographic. And demonstrate your reverence for the majesty you get to bask in and be part of. Say to the world: This I am pleased to do for you as a tiny expression of my recognition and appreciation for everything you’ve done for me. Don't compare yourself to the oblivious masses; this is about your personal relationship with the world.
I’d love to hear how this feels to you. Share in the comments below. And, if you didn’t listen to my webinar, please do! I address this topic more thoroughly in the webinar, and I broaden the scope – it’s not just about how to heal the environment, but how to heal ourselves, our fellow humans, and the larger institutions that aren’t serving us. If you act now we’ll pay you $100 and send you a free blender! Ok, not really. But I know you’ll be glad you did.
Be well,
Peter
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Numerous members of the Dragontree community have told us they’re dealing with a lot of anxiety these days, and it happens to be something I’m very familiar with. I think my half-Jewish DNA blessed me with a substantial dose of fear and paranoia. Although there have been plenty of times I wished I weren’t wired this way, I’ve worked through it enough to recognize that many good things have come out of it – including that it has allowed me to help many others with anxiety.
I’ve found that there’s no single approach that works for everyone, so I like to give people a few things to try together, and I’ll share some of these today. A good place to start is with an understanding of how our survival mechanisms work – and malfunction.
Most of us had our first taste of intense fear in childhood and it made a strong impression on us. The feeling itself is often as memorable as whatever it was trying to warn us about. After a few incidents in which a strong feeling of fear accompanied a situation in which we had a strong desire to avoid an unpleasant outcome – e.g., getting hurt or losing something or someone, perhaps our own life – we began to trust fear.
“Why would I be feeling this way,” the mind rationalizes, “if there weren’t something bad about to happen?” Fear is the emotional mechanism our survival instinct uses to get our attention and to cause us to prioritize security above all else. It makes sense that fear feels bad, that it jars us, that it causes us to react without thinking – and that, since it arises when big things seem to be at stake, it’s trustworthy. It’s not.
Our trust in fear began at an age when we didn’t know how to discern whether or not it was legitimate. It turns out much of the time that fear is aroused by our survival mechanisms, it’s misinformed and exaggerated. Just think of all the times you’ve gotten scared about something that turned out to be nothing. We even feel fear while sitting safely on our couch, reading or watching a story in which a fictional character is threatened.
For most people with anxiety, fear is an error nearly 100% of the time. We just got into the bad habit of letting it take over whenever it arises. Breaking a habit takes work, but anyone can do it. When it comes to anxiety this means, as often as possible, doing something different than usual when you feel fearful.
1) Slow down and deepen your breathing. The mind follows the breath, so slower, deeper breathing – especially with a long exhale – will slow down your mind and open up space in your consciousness so you can notice and question this feeling without being at its mercy. Let your inhale go all the way down to fill up your pelvic bowl, and let the edgy feeling pour out of you on the exhale.
2) Turn toward it with curiosity and bravery. Fear goes hand-in-hand with the fight-flight-freeze reaction. That is, we tend to fight it (resist it, hate it, throw everything at it, spend all our savings on toilet paper, etc.), run away from it (any of various avoidance mechanisms, including getting on our devices or moving to a bunker), or freeze (become physically and/or mentally immobilized). These are all animalistic reactions; we can be smarter and braver. Instead of letting the feeling run you, get interested in it. It’s just a feeling. Examine it. What is this thing? What triggered it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like?
3) Don’t resist it. While meeting the feeling with bravery and curiosity, can you soften yourself in relation to it? What if you just let the feeling be here without fighting it? What if you even invite it to stay? What if you allow yourself to feel it with total willingness? Resistance makes fear stronger. You’ve probably heard “What you resist persists,” but maybe you haven’t heard the corollary: “A feeling fully felt finally fades.” The moment you say, “Bring it on,” it changes.
4) Turn the relationship around. When you have one or more intensely anxious experiences it’s easy to develop an aversion to fear. You may find yourself experiencing it as a monster that’s chasing you, which you need to destroy or run away from. But as soon as you run, you define the relationship. You make fear bad. You make yourself a victim. You relinquish your power.
When you start chasing it instead, it stops controlling you. Tell it, “I will find you. I will learn all of your appearances, all of your hiding places,” and you’ll stop fearing fear.
I know these are uncertain times. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. But I promise you, whatever happens, certain things will still be here. Love will still be here. Grace will still be here. Kindness will still be here. Peace will still be here.
I hope these different ways of relating to anxiety are helpful for you. Next time we’ll look at broader self-care strategies for “down-regulating” your nervous system.
I’m honored to help however I can,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S
If you need extra support, I've crafted our
Anxiety-Relief tincture to do just that.
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Cart
Exactly what I needed this week. My position was eliminated last week. And I wasn’t upset about it. Time to get clear on my needs and wants in my work.
Hey I’m wondering how much is the course before I book complimentary call.
Hi Carmel,
It’s $2597. There are payment plans available. And as you probably know, all the profit from your tuition goes to the charitable organization The Well Life Foundation to help women in vulnerable populations. Also, we include a whole bonus training with Briana on how to make coaching profitable, so you can not just earn back your tuition but also make a good living at helping others.
Be well,
Peter
Compassion burn out.
Tk u for the post