Change Your Brain Every Day - Tips for Handling Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Episode Date: May 3, 2017

For many of us, panic attacks can strike at the most inopportune times. Fortunately, there are coping mechanisms you can employ to keep your anxiety at bay. In this episode of the Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen dive into the topic of anxiety to give you tips for dealing with that overwhelming feeling of stress that can occur during a panic attack.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Today, we're going to talk about anxiety. And I know more about this than I want to know. So I grew up in a family of seven children. So in four years, my mother had four children.

And five of them. Are girls. So I love to say that Daniel came housebroken and fully trained. I am grateful to his sisters. So yes, it's amazing. But you know, and I'm not sure why, but I grew up with a lot of anxiety. And I don't think it's necessarily all the drama in my house. Although there would be a lot of chaos with five girls.

There's a lot of chaos. And I'm third of seven children. And I didn't get much attention because- Well, seven kids is hard. You know, the people who are special in a family. So the oldest child, and then the oldest girl, and oldest boy, and then the youngest. Right.

And so I had an older sister and an older brother. So that just meant I was completely not special. And my younger sister, the ones that's just younger than I am, Jeannie, is 13 months younger than I am. Right. Which means when I was four months old, my mom got pregnant. And so if you just think about that sort of chaos, and I remember as a child, terribly conflict avoidant, I'd bite my fingernails until

they bled. Oh, really? Wow. Had trouble speaking up in class because I didn't want people to think I was stupid. Plus, when I went to school, it wasn't a classroom of 20 children. I had 48 kids in my class. They're six rows, eight people deep. And we grew up seriously Catholic. So my mom was very serious about the whole thing. And there was always this sort of idea of hell and damnation and doing something wrong and then confession and then bad thoughts and judgment. And so I grew up actually feeling really anxious. And I think it's no wonder that when I decided to be a psychiatrist, and I didn't really do it for me, you know, thinking, oh, this would really help me.

I did it because someone I cared about tried to kill herself. And then I'm like, wow. And I just loved it. But I gravitated toward hypnosis. Oh, interesting. And doing hypnosis for my patients actually took a whole month elective in hypnosis at UC Irvine. And I found that when I would hypnotize people, I would get super relaxed. I loved how I felt when I was putting people in a hypnotic trance because I would go along with them.

Right. And then I learned biofeedback. And biofeedback is where you use instruments to teach people to warm their hands, relax their muscles, decrease sweat gland activity, breathe diaphragmatically. And I was just amazed at how that helped me. And I used to be scared to death in front of audiences, which is funny now. Right. I'm like, what? Because I was in front of 26,000 people last year. You love speaking.

Right. And I was at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas. And I didn't have one flutter of anxiety. But before, because I was worried about people judging me, and I remember if I used to hold my notes, they would shake in my hand because I would have that sort of motor overflow of anxiety. And I love the fact that I've been able to conquer this. But it would have come out in other ways too. Because when you're anxious, you become masterful at predicting the worst possible thing. And now, just thinking about it, I was one of those kids who wet his bed when he was little.

So that means every single morning until i was about 10 years old i woke up in a panic because it's like did i didn't i what's the fallout and my mom was was never bad i've heard kids say that that's like traumatizing i mean i have one person i was actually um testifying in a death penalty case and um le And Lewis killed four people in 11 days on a meth run. His brain was just awful. And he was a bedwetter. But, you know, as opposed to my mom, who handled it in a rational way,

except one time, which I'll tell you about. What they did with Lewis is they took him and his wet sheets and tied him to a tree outside in the neighborhood so everybody can see. Oh, that's terrible. And so they shamed him. So my mom took me to a urologist and said, what do you do? And now we have treatment for that. I treat many bedwetters.

There's a medication that helps it. There's a nasal spray called DDAVP or imipramine. Both of them work and take care of it because you just have an immature bladder. And there's a lot of reasons that can happen in case anyone's listening. Just go get it checked. Don't shame your child. Please don't do that. Yes, because it's not that hard to treat.

So that obviously could have been the seeds to some of my anxiety. But she took me to a urologist who told her to make me drink lots of water and then prevent me from going to the bathroom so that I would expand my bladder. Oh my gosh. And now I'm like always freaked out. I can't find the bathroom. So they created another anxiety disorder. So they completely created an anxiety disorder about it. And so, but when you have an anxiety disorder, you actually begin to start having anticipatory anxiety, or you begin to predict the worst possible thing that could happen. And I remember when I learned about cognitive therapy or what we

call ant therapy, that I used to be masterful at predicting the worst. So if I almost got into an accident, rather than saying, oh, thank God I didn't get into an accident, my brain would play the whole thing out as if I got into a bad accident. So wait for a second. So I would see somebody hitting my car, the car exploding, the ambulance driver having ADD and getting lost on the way. And then I'd be burned over 90% of my body. I'd go to the hospital

and the nurse wouldn't even be cute as she had to rip off the bandages in the burn unit. And now, you know, when I realized that tendency, I just go, stop it. So I have to jump in here because this is hilarious. This part I'm going to tell you is not hilarious. We're helping someone in our family who's going through a really serious crisis. And she's going through a program. And she does that. And it would make me crazy I'm like why are

we doing these future like you're going so far into the future with things that have not happened stop it I was like trying to coach her into this her new program they said stop future tripping I love that term you were future tripping oh. And then if you do anxiety-provoking work like we do here at Amen Clinics, I mean, we do imaging. Most psychiatrists don't do that. But I really had to learn to deal with my anxiety so that I could fight for the right to do the mission we do here at Amen Clinics, which is look at people's brains, which now it's just obvious. Of course you should look. But at the time, we were getting attacked. And if you have trouble dealing with conflict, then it's really hard to be a pioneer. And so let's talk about how do you deal with anxiety? And actually, you're not immune to it. I remember when you were nine years old

that you actually had separation anxiety from your mom. I've been through many, many periods in my life where I was wracked with anxiety. So I completely get this. I don't think I'm as fearful of it as the depression because it didn't make me want to die. I mean, you know, let's face it, I wanted to die with the depression. the anxiety, it can be paralyzing. Um, but I think for me personally,

not to the same level that the depression did. So, but I'm, you're the one who explained, um, anxious ADD to me. So overanxious, over-focused ADD. So no, I'm definitely not immune to it. It's what keeps me doing the right things. It's what keeps me from being late, even though I have ADD or keeps me from not turning things in or keeps me, I got straight A's in school. It's that anxiety that keeps me on track. So you need some anxiety. So let's not get rid of anxiety altogether. I've got a little bit more than normal, but. So the things I've done that have really helped me, hypnosis.

I just love it. Me too. So I'm a huge fan. And on Brain Fit Life. So if you want to listen to six hypnosis audios that I've done. So you are the person who got me into hypnosis. Daniel created some hypnosis audios just for me for performance because I used to have some performance anxiety in martial arts for my belt tests. And I just rocked them.

And so I became a huge fan because I found them to be so relaxing. I started using it in other areas of my life. So our hypnosis audios, I'm a huge fan. So if you go to MyBrainFitLife.com, you can sign up and learn more about that. We have hypnosis audios for anxiety, for sleep, for weight, for pain. Performance too, right? And performance. There's also brain enhancing music.

Some of the music you listen to will help you feel less anxious, more relaxed. Some music you listen to will make you feel less anxious, more relaxed. Some music you listen to will make you feel more anxious. So the quality of the music you listen to really does matter. There are games on BrainFit Life. My favorite one for anxiety is called My Calm Beat. Oh, that's really good. Which is a breathing pacer. Right. Because when people get anxious, they tend to breathe more with the upper part of their chest and they tend to breathe faster, which will trigger your brain. Something's wrong. Be anxious. Right. And so we teach you to breathe diaphragmatically. That triggers an adrenaline response. And if you set the pacer to about 5.5 breaths per minute right it's a relaxation it's a great it's a great program it's a really great program and then of course learning

to kill the ants the fortune telling ants that steal your happiness so whenever you're feeling anxious write down whatever thought you have and when when you get anxious, try not to leave the situation. Because if you leave, unless, of course, it's dangerous. If it's dangerous, just leave. But if it's not dangerous, you're starting to have a panic attack in the grocery store. Don't just leave. Talk your way through it. Try to stay, breathe diaphragmatically.

Think of warming images. Because we found that when we teach people to warm their hands, it's an immediate relaxation response. Sometimes just go to a sink and put on not hot water, but warm water, and that can have an immediate relaxation response. So I want to jump in here for a second because this is a great example for acute anxiety. I like to teach people what anxiety does and how people can actually train yourself to not have the anxiety reaction, the adrenaline response. So I was attacked when I was 15 walking to high school. And what happens when people get attacked is they have this rush of this adrenaline response, the flight or fight reaction, right? Well, a lot of people

shut down when that happens. Some people go crazy. I go crazy. So they go crazy and they just fight and they don't even know what they're doing, but they're just like going crazy fighting. So, but one of those two reactions usually happens, but that adrenaline reaction is what's happening in your body with a panic attack. So when you practice martial arts or soldiers or cops, you know, these people, they all learn how to manage this adrenaline response. And there's a couple of things that happen instantly. So one of the things they taught us is, look, if you ever get attacked, that adrenaline response is going to kick in. It's why you don't fight immediately or you don't respond appropriately. Because when it kicks in,

a couple of things happen. You get tunnel tunnel vision instantly you can't speak in sentences you like monosyllabic like you like one sound words come out of your mouth and you start to hyper ventilate like you said your breathing goes really fast so what they started doing was training police officers and soldiers and martial artists who are trying to like for self-defense what they train you to do they put you in stressful environments and then what they instantly teach you to do break that tunnel vision so you want to look side to side take three big deep breaths like you talked about so you've got to break you got to break the cycle that's happening break the tunnel vision break that fast breathing,

and then instantly try to ground yourself really quickly and then start to talk. And then if you can do that, you'll start to train that adrenaline response not to just take off, like to control you. You control the adrenaline response. And I like what you said. Get control of your breathing. So take a big breath, five seconds in, hold it for two seconds, blow it out, but take five seconds to blow it out, hold it out for two seconds. And belly breathe. And repeat that just three or four or five times and it can break a panic attack. So, so many things you can do. You don't have to live with anxiety that ultimately steals your happiness and your health. You're listening to The Brain Warrior's Way. Stay with us. Thank you for listening to The Brain Warrior's Way podcast. We have a special gift for you. It's an opportunity to win an evaluation at

the Amen Clinics. All you have to do is subscribe to this podcast, leave a review, and rate us on iTunes. To learn more about Amen Clinics and the work we do, go to amenclinics.com. You can also learn about our nutraceutical products at brainmdhealth.com. Thanks for listening.