Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #371: STOP Struggling with Anxiety: The 9 Best Tools To Thrive in a Stressful World with Dr. David Rosmarin Harvard Medical School Professor, Program Director at McLean Hospital, & Founder of Center for Anxiety

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

To check out OneSkin click here!  https://shareasale.com/u.cfm?d=1054216&m=102446&u=3821794&afftrack= To get your 15% one time use discount use code: Confidence Remember if you opt in for the subscription you can cancel any time but you can only use the discount code once. In This Episode You Will Learn About:  Learning to accept your anxiety The best methods to working through your worry & stress Easy tools that you can use to cope with hard times Why anxiety is a universal feeling & what to do about it Resources: Website: dhrosmarin.com Read Thriving with Anxiety LinkedIn & Facebook: Dr. David H. Rosmarin Twitter & Instagram: @dhrosmarin Visit heathermonahan.com Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  Get 55% off at Babbel.com/MONAHAN Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan, all lowercase Save more and get peace of mind now by going to 4Patriots.com/CONFIDENCE  Show Notes:  Who hasn’t felt anxious!? With everything going on in the world, it is an impossible feeling to avoid. But it does not have to overcome you! Our guest, Dr. David H. Rosmarin, joins us to share his expertise and shed light on how we can thrive with anxiety in a landscape filled with stress and uncertainty. Dr. Rosmarin has developed 9 simple tools to take us through our most anxious days. We will uncover the power of interconnectedness, acts of kindness, and embracing the limitations of our control. Curious on how to start thriving with your anxiety? Join us! About The Guest: David H. Rosmarin PhD is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, a program director at McLean Hospital, and founder of Center for Anxiety, which services over 1,000 patients/year in multiple states. He is an international expert on spirituality and mental health, whose work has been featured in Scientific American, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Through his work as a clinical psychologist, scientist, educator and author, Dr. Rosmarin has helped thousands of patients and organizations to live happier and more productive lives. His most recent book is Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You. If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: #316: Making The Impossible, POSSIBLE With Heather! #317: How To STOP Struggling & Just DO IT With David Nurse NBA Coach & Motivational Speaker #344: Start Investing In YOURSELF With Heather! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is okay not to know. It's a very human thing not to know. And I think throughout almost all of human history, people have really been okay with not knowing because there wasn't even the possibility of knowing. Today we've got these electronic appendages that give us access to all sorts of unfettered information all the time. So we think that, you know, we have, you know, God's dictionary in our pocket. Like, it's not. This is fallible. We're fallible. When all these tools, we still don't know anything. I shouldn't say anything, but we're still extremely limited in what we can really know and control at the end of the day.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We've come at adversity, and set you up for better tomorrow. That's your most beautiful day. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back.

I'm so excited for you to meet our guest this week. The timing could not be any better. We've got Dr. David H. Rosemary, PhD, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, a program director at McLean Hospital, and founder of Center for Anxiety, which services over 1 over 1000 patients per year in multiple states. He is an international expert on spirituality, mental health, whose work has been featured

in scientific, American, the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. Through his work as a clinical psychologist, scientist, educator, and author, Dr. Rosemary has helped thousands of patients and organizations to live happier and more productive lives. His most recent book is Thriving with anxiety, nine tools to make your anxiety work for you. David, thanks so much for being here today. Thanks so much for having me with an honor to meet you. What incredible timing with everything that is happening in the world right now. I'm so grateful to be having this conversation. And we were just talking off air about when I feel nervous and anxious, I'm definitely someone who wants to avoid a conversation or not say anything right now with so many people struggling around Israel and what is happening in our world.

What are some of the tips that you give to people or that you take on yourself in times like this to really deal with massive worldwide global anxiety and stress? Yeah, that is definitely the proverbial question today. I guess it's not even proverbial. For me, it's very personal, you know, as Jewish psychologists, in particular, and somebody who's close ties to Israel with even have a sibling there and several siblings and log go quite a bit. So yeah, it's definitely been a week. It's been an intense time. I will say that to your point beforehand, our culture, our tendency when we're feeling anxious, when we're feeling uncomfortable, is not to lean into it. You know, we put on a mask, we have to perform, we got to show confidence, use your word.

And I think ultimately when we don't lean into it, when we don't accept how we feel, we actually become less confident because the reality is stuff happens. And granted, hopefully not of this magnitude all the time, I mean, we couldn't live like this, but if you look at world history, every, whatever it is, a couple of years, every couple of decades, a couple of times a century,

there are things that occur that we just don't want to experience. We want to avoid and the emotions that go along with it and emotional and behavioral sickle that occur in those contexts are, it's hard. And that's the reality. And the more we can lean into that, speak about it, it just normalizes it. You know, and that's one of the skills that I've been preaching and this week I've definitely been practicing it. I gotta tell you. I mean, I can always speak for myself.

It's hard, and this has happened to me many times. And you just articulate it very well that, you know, we're afraid to lean in for a fear of making a mistake, which then almost amplifies the anxiety to get yourself to like make that leap to say anything, it makes it so much worse. What can you do to get yourself to make that leap? Because I do believe what you're saying is correct. If you shy away from things, you're depleting your confidence. In any moment, you're either creating confidence or chipping away at it. If you're saying is correct. If you shy away from things, you're depleting your confidence. In any moment, you're either creating confidence or chipping away at it.

If you're not owning who you are and what you see and how you feel, you're chipping away at it. How can you get yourself to make that leap? Great question. The first step, which I speak about in my new book, is that we have to stop pathologizing anxiety. You're human, I'm human,

we're all going to feel anxious at some point. Okay, literally I guess an anxiety expert in that I've helped thousands of patients do this. I mean, I started a clinic. I have 80 staff working day and night to help patients with anxiety. I've done research on the subjects, yet I also have plenty of anxiety

and it doesn't take a world crisis. I got news for you in order for that to occur This is a normal human emotion if I've learned one thing about anxiety over the last two decades It's that we are over pathologizing and over medicalizing it. We think about this as you know as a disease It's not it's not and the more we perceive it as a failure when we feel unmoored and uncomfortable and anxious and clammy and cotton mouth and heart palpitations, you know, the more we perceive that as dangerous or as a sign of weakness, ironically, the more adrenaline will dump into our system the minute we have those symptoms, which actually

creates a cascade and increases our anxiety. So first lesson, this is gonna happen, and that's, okay, that's cause we're human. We're not supposed to be calm and happy all the time. And do you think that society or culture is teeing it up such that we believe we aren't supposed to have anxiety? For sure, there's no question. The messages are all over the place.

The medical profession certainly espouses these messages. Today, if you're going to a doctor's office and you say you have anxiety every once in a while, you won't just get a couple of more questions about it in discussion. You're probably going to leave with a prescription for a benzodiazepine. Basically saying this is a disease.

And not that it isn't in some cases, I mean, if you can't get disordered, it can get out of hand. And yes, it has to be managed and discussed. But simply experiencing anxiety is means you're human. You know, there's only one type of person who doesn't have anxiety. Who is that person? People who are dead. I don't want to opt in for that. You will. Right. So in your new book, which you mentioned thriving with anxiety, nine tools to make your anxiety work for you, can you talk to us a little bit about what those nine tools are? Sure, all my own.

Well, I'll tell you this. The first step again is to just accept that anxiety is going to be part of our lives. You know, I've never gotten a note of this question. Have you ever been anxious? Uh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. Today.

Right. And now the question then becomes, what do you do when you feel anxious? We have to change our relationship with anxiety. From something we load, something we constrain, something we squelch, my new favorite word, squelch it, to something that we embrace as a part of our humanity. And we use it to develop ourselves.

And that's what the tools are about. I can't go through all nine tools, I think that'll be tough. I'll tell you the ones I'm using this week. That'd be great. Rebalance, to rebalance. Anxiety is an indicator. It can be a bit like an alarm going off.

It is like an alarm going off. Often it's a false alarm, but sometimes it signifies that things are genuinely a little bit raw for you. And you got to take it down a tiny notch. It doesn't mean staying in bed all day. We don't want to go the opposite direction and get depressed. That's another book. But when you're feeling anxious, when you're feeling stressed,

when you're having a hard day, a hard week, because of whatever's going on, whether it's a factor you can identify or when you can't. It's not the time to take on a new project. It's a time to scale things back and sort of do what you need to do and to rebalance a little bit. So if it's hitting the gym more, sleep, making sure you get adequate sleep, not stand up extra late, like this week, you know, I have a huge drive to stay up really late watching

the news and seeing what's going on, right? That's nothing more anxiety. For sure. There's no question. In two ways. One, I'm depleting my sleep and the second, I'm just bombarding myself with information. So I do check in every day with the news, but I am off by 10 o'clock, 10, 10, 30, like the latest, least half hour before bedtime.

I am off and I'm not bombarding myself with it. You know, I'll check maybe 20, 30 minutes a day just to see if there's any new updates and then stuff comes across my feed throughout the day. I'll check it later and then that's it. So it's compartmentalized, it's there. It allows me to rebalance. So the rest of my day is what it is.

If I have a couple of meetings, great. I'm not going to go nine to nine though. Not going to have 12 hour days during this week. It's just not happening. More exercise, more sleep, self care. At the core of this is self compassion, just being kind and recognizing, like I need to be a little gentle with myself.

That actually means that I'm using, I'm trying to partly the anxiety into something positive in my life, which is one of the skills in the book. Anxiety can help us to be more self compassionate if we see it as a signal that we need to be kinder during anxious days. Oh, it's so true. And to that point, I live in Miami and of course, like any major city, there's homeless people

around the city. And today, not always will I go out of my way to pull over to give someone money. But today I was one of those days. And I think it's because there's just so much negative and there's so much hatred right now. And there's so much animosity and stress and anxiety out there. Just talking to myself, I can just help this one person that could make me feel better. Like it was just one small thing that I thought, I don't know, maybe that one little thing can make a difference. 100%. That's actually the second thing. The second skill I wanted to talk about, which is interpersonally.

The first one is my relationship with myself. I'm kinder to myself, not pushing myself as much. The second is a relationship with others. I had an amazing podcast with someone this week and other co-podcasts interview who conveyed to me, I think it might have been off the air, that when they were feeling anxious, it actually helped them to become more empathic with other people and to recognize sort of

like you're saying, like there's so much negative energy in the world I got to take care of these people, whoever comes my way. And I think anxiety can make us kinder. You know, it's something that we don't talk about a lot in modern psychiatry kindness or, you know, good deeds, you know, these are some ways more spiritual than psychiatric concepts, unfortunately. But it does. And those can be get, how do you feel after you gave that money

to those? I wanted to cry because it reminded me how much worse things can always be that somebody's always in a more challenging situation. Suddenly, me being stressed out about what I post online today, or I say when I interface with someone isn't as important as I just made it in my own head. puts things in perspective.

Right. If we can parlay again, that'll use that word our anxiety into recognizing how other people feel. I'll tell you a story. Many years ago, I had a group of people who all had generalized anxiety disorder and we were working together in my New York office. And I decided to do like a social experiment. So I said, okay, today for our group,

we're going to go outside and just notice other people's needs. Go around the city and see like somebody who's down on their luck, somebody who has a scratch on their car, someone who's, you know, has a kid in tow and they're like, you know, some like really super anxious parent, someone is struggling with other bags and trying to, you know, open up a door, someone, whatever it is, everybody came back an hour later with a whole list of like 10, 20 things that they noticed in other people. And simply by getting out of their own head and focusing on others, firstly, they were so good at doing it because by having anxiety, they understood the emotions of others better.

So first that, but by doing it, there was such a palpable buzz in the room. They're like, everyone is elated. It was like instant thriving. It was amazing. It was an amazing experience. It sounds like the way that you have teed it up and teed it up in the book is that anxiety

isn't a bad thing, it can be a blessing. It can be, not always. Now, if we get more focused on ourselves and we can't sometimes it's hard to get out of your own head, you might have to be more self-compassionage for a protracted period until you're ready to be kind others. And how to use which skill is more of a clinical discussion, you know, in the book I'm just presenting the skills and whichever ones people can use on their own, that's the purpose. But yeah, it is. It could be.

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no matter what stage you're in, shopify.com slash monahan. What does somebody know the difference between, they're having anxiety, which as you said, everybody's having anxiety at some point, you're having, quote, unquote, normal anxiety. Normal versus abnormal. Yeah, like when is it a real, a real problem? Yeah, great question.

Inverately, the distinction between normal and abnormal anxiety is a subjective decision based on a committee of people sitting in some room in the American Psychiatric Association offices of Washington, DC. I mean, it actually has changed over time. Children today, normal, healthy, school children, have the same levels of anxiety that psychiatric in patients, right? The most distressed people used in the 1950s, I kid you not. What?

That doesn't make any sense to me. That is the data. The level has shifted because we're so acutely aware of our anxiety and have this incessant need to feel perfect all the time. That it's actually elevated our stress to levels that used to be abnormal today. It's actually, ironically, it's gone the other way. But isn't there something inherently wrong about that? Yeah, I think that the question therefore is not whether it's normal or not. The question is what do I do when I start to feel anxious? Whether it's severe distress or whether it's somebody

who's flourishing and has a little bit of stress one day, whether it's someone who's languishing, but you know they have panic attacks every once in a while, but they're doing pretty well. You know irrespective of where you are and that continuum and it's a broad range, I think the question is what do we do with the level of anxiety that we have as opposed to like, when is this really a problem, you know, irrespective of whether it's severe, moderate, or light, so to speak, or lower levels of anxiety, we can use it in a positive way. I've seen moments on inpatient units with people who are debilitated, they can't go to work because they're so anxious.

There are moments of thriving where they grasp onto connection with others, have a hammoments and therapy, hard conversations with themselves with their loved ones, and lean into their feelings and allow themselves to experience it without self-judgment, without criticism in a connected way. That's what the rival with anxiety is about. It doesn't matter where you are, it's what you do next. Can you share a story of one of your patients that you've seen, go to something like that?

Oh, sure, oh my God, so many. Well, I wanna be meeting with today actually, later on today, in fact, after our meeting now, she's in crisis, she really is in crisis. She's struggled with anxiety for a long time, a lot of obsessive-compulsive disorder about her health, and she knows that really nothing's wrong. She's a very healthy robust 20-something, female, no health concerns, any doctor, his look-to-der has given her a clean bill palp in a minute, but she's so anxious about these tiny little

things that are going on in the areas of her body. She's been really obsessing over those and as opposed to letting the anxiety come, as opposed to just letting herself experience it, taking down her stress, talking to other people about it, she's been so focused on getting rid of those feelings that over the past two to three weeks, she's not thriving, she's really not thriving. So we're gonna have a conversation later today. Prior to this, I think she knows, I think she's finally coming to it today.

We're just not getting rid of it, allowing yourself to be vulnerable and to open up and to invite the possibility that, yeah, something might be wrong and not fighting against it. Anxiety becomes such a bigger issue when you fight it and when you want to get rid of it, which is what she's doing. So, that's my afternoon.

So we'll thank goodness that she has you. I'm grateful that she has. I'll go for her. I'll go for her. I found someone that can help her. When you were explaining that, you know what's funny is in my mind, I don't think of myself as an anxious person. However, I deal with anxiety just like everybody, as I mentioned, I got anxious about talking about the topic of Israel as soon as we got on Zoom together today.

So I get anxiety, I have it from time to time, but when you explained her story, what hit me was, I call that fear. I wonder if I just label it differently and I was just thinking in my mind when you were explaining that when I'm taking a big stage or when I was giving my TEDx talk, like these are high moments of fear for me that I've had that they came through crystal clear in my mind visually, but I call it fear. I don't think of it as anxiety. Is there any power in the way that we label it? There is a power in the way we label it, and let me ask you if this resonates. In clinical psychology and psychiatry today, fear and anxiety actually share the same brain circuitry. It's actually the same response. However, anxiety is when it's not based on something real.

Fear is when it's based on something real. If there's an actual imminent threat on you right now, that would be a fear response. The heartbeat, the increased breathing, the muscle tension, those are mobilizing you to take action. Maybe for a TEDx talk, it could be something similar because there's a social aspect of this, like what could happen. I mean, it's not like a real physical threat,

but there is a social threat there. So I could see that having elements of fear and the intention of that, your body is dumping in a adrenaline to get you more motivated, more activated. You probably gave a better talk because you were a little bit amped up as opposed to being sluggish and boring, right? It's a healthy thing.

Anxiety is when it's a false alarm. You don't need to have that. That's my patient. There's nothing really wrong with her body, but she has this cricket going off in her head, like something's wrong, something's wrong. So that's what makes an anxiety as opposed to fear. So what is the question people should be asking themselves or should they be asking them themselves a question, you know, is this real? Is there a real threat to me right now? Yes and no. The answer on the S side, we do have to know whether we're truly in danger or whether this is in my head. However, the fact that it's in your head is also normal. People have false alarms.

I prefer to have a fire alarm in my kitchen that gets triggered a little bit too quickly than one that's gonna sleep through an actual fire. I think it's fine to have a false alarm once in a while. It just means that your neural system is primed for being able to protect you and to be able to give you a fear response if you so need it. Well, it's funny that you bring up fire alarm. So yesterday I was interviewing Jim Quick

for my podcast the same show that you're on right now and all the sudden my building started testing fire on and there is no rhyme or reason to it. There was no notification for it and actually one went off today. So I was so grateful. I haven't heard one since then. However, you never know we can get one next. I'm not living in anxiety about right now. But yesterday I, there was no threat to me. Nothing horrible is going to happen to me. I just had to explain to him, listen, I'm not going to be able to talk very much in the show because I need to keep my end on mute so that we can hear and learn from you. But I could feel my heart raising. It was causing like this stress. How can you, when you feel anxiety like that, there's no fear.

It's just your own mind feeling badly for a situation, you know, whatever it is, how can you flip something like that to bring the anxiety down in the moment? Let me ask you a question. Talking about it right now, live on your podcast, when your listeners are going to be hearing, how's it feel? Fine, I don't feel stressed out about it at all. Oh, is it better?

I mean, you know, getting it off your chest is opposed to holding it in. Yeah, I mean, I think always, oh gosh, I've been in a lifetime of therapy always. And forever, it's better to get it off your chest than to hold it in for sure. There you go. A lot of people don't.

A lot of people like, oh, I shouldn't feel this way. I got to put on the smile. I got to hold it together. And that's when panic happens, because it just builds and builds and builds until you can't hold it anymore. And then it's your body's way of like leaking it out and saying, it's time to accept this and talk to someone about it and connect with other people. I like that you've mentioned that you've been through a lifetime of therapy. Has that made you more able to connect with other people

emotionally? I would think definitely so, yes. Everyone says yes to that question, almost everyone, so just that question. When everyone says yes to that question. When you're able, this is what I was going back to what I was saying before about when you have your own anxiety experience and you can use that to understand the emotions of others, it turns it into something that helps us to thrive as opposed to something that beats us down. When things go sideways, will you be prepared? Some people are concerned they might have to go for a long time without electricity or even food. That's why I want to introduce you to fourpatriots.com. Get preparedness products you can use now and that could

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Resulting a very learn more at intel.com forward slash IT heroes copyright intel corporation. One of the things from your book that I was interested to diving into is how anxiety enhances our spiritual connection. That's really interesting to me. Actually, that was the third thing I was using this week Let me tell you so I'm on the personal side and we can talk about it more, you know, professionally and what other people can do So again, I'm from the Jewish faith. That's my sort of specific brand if you will of spirituality But spirituality is a broad construct and many people have different paths to it Anything that's sacred or separate from the physical world, if you will, is sort of under that large umbrella called spirituality and there's many, many different pathways to get there.

One aspect which is really common among any faith tradition and even those who have none, to some degree people who don't even identify as spiritual, is that we are only human. And we have this very small little corner, not even a corner, small area footprint of the universe in which we operate for a very limited amount of time compared to the duration of world history. I was on a plane last night and there was a clear night and I'm looking down over, I think it was hard for Connecticut or maybe Springfield, Massachusetts and just seeing all the different lights and all the different people

and just taking it in how small we are. Yes, I have a job to do. Yes, I'm going to do it, but there's an opportunity for me to relinquish control and to really accept that there's only so much I can do at the end of the day as a human being in this world because I am finite in my space and in my time. When I feel anxious, leaning into that, as opposed to like, I gotta do this, I gotta get it done. Like, no, David, no. So it's just not necessarily your fight. That acceptance is hard, but it's so healthy. It's so healthy. And I think anxiety pulls for us to be more accepting. It occurs when we don't know what's going to happen next, and we don't have control. And when we lean into that and say, you're right, I don't have control,

I don't know what's going to happen next. The anxiety actually gets converted into something positive, which I think is a kind of spiritual growth for many people. Oh my gosh, that's so powerful. Anytime you different times in my life, I've been closer to God different times I haven't been as close in relationship and anytime that I am really connected and in a spiritual practice and praying, I have so much more ability to let go and let God and that is so incredibly freeing for people that don't specifically believe in God, how can they frame up or use the same methodology to their benefit? So living in Eastern Massachusetts, I definitely

have a lot of these conversations with folks, you know. It's not exactly the Bible belt over here. Part of my research at McLean Hospital within the Harvard Medical School system is about developing language to do this. Interestingly, you're the one who mentioned God, I did not, by the way. And I think that a lot of individuals who don't have a God concept or specific religion that they affiliate with or associate with, it'll still resonate with them, the concept that we need to be humble and we need to do the best we can, but there's also has to be at a certain point, let it go.

At a certain point, there's a let it go of control and understanding that we just can't know everything. We are so limited as humans. So is the verbiage then turning it over to the universe or turning it over to something greater than ourselves? How have you heard that framed up? I like to match the language of the patients who I speak with if I'm doing this in a clinical setting.

So with patients who'll say, you know, God or Jesus or whatever it is, then I'll try to match their language, just, you know, add a respect and it's usually the best way to engage people about it. Turning over to the universe, some people do say, that's one way to talk about it. I think either way the concept is the same of a real acceptance and a real relinquishment. I was getting personal before and talking to you about the situation now.

It's hard. It's just hard what's going on in Israel, especially with my family there. My mom's actually there right now visiting my sister and just to, you know, yes, like we're going to do whatever we can, but at the end of the day, like there is just a natural limit. And there is a technique here that actually thinking about it's hard to lean into, but really thinking about the worst, what could happen, thinking about and trying to get to a place of acceptance about, you know,

potential possibilities that we don't want to think about or accept. I think there's something very human about that. I wouldn't do it all the time, but I do think it's not a bad idea to be prepared for adversity. I mean, to really just think about conceptually how vulnerable we are. That is not something that I practice currently. So here's what's interesting, and I want to know what your medical opinion is on this. As you're explaining that I'm thinking to myself, I never do that. I don't think with the worst case scenario, that's just not how I do it. Instead, if I'm facing something scary or I have something with anxiety, I look back

to my past to challenging moments in my past and I use those examples, you know, let's use the example I brought up the TEDx suck. I was petrifiedx suck. I was petrified of nothing. I put so much pressure on myself and my heart was racing. I was having anxiety. And I lived through it. Like I'll look back on those, that's just one small example, of different times in my life where I did face anxiety, fear, and I got through it. And I used that in my mind as like that mental springboard that, oh, I got through all those things and they were fine, this is going to be fine too.

Is that the wrong way to approach it? No, it's not wrong. I love it. I think it's great. And the truth is, most of the time things do work out pretty well, I would say, but not always. Sometimes it just, things don't work out the way you want them to. And it's hard.

You know, maybe it's because I've been working in acute psychiatric settings for two decades. And like, I, it's because I've been working in acute psychiatric settings for two decades and like I... It's tough. It's very hard for me to go into an acute psych unit to have somebody who literally lost everything. I mean, they've been through trauma, through financial disaster, through war. I mean, we've had refugees come to our hospital and no, they'll be fine.

Look at back at how things were when you were a kid and then you'll bounce back from this. Like, sometimes they might not and that's hard. But anxiety calls us to yes, to think about the positive and yes to think about what could be and yes to remain hopeful while also accepting that some things are just really hard and challenging. And in the long run, you know, one thing I'll tell you about Israel, which is amazing.

It's an amazing statistic that you're not going to believe. That was over there over the summer, and I did some research with some colleagues. Levels of anxiety there, the number of people and the degree of anxiety is actually a quarter of what it is in the United States. Would you believe that? I would because it's so highly religious. Oh, that's funny. It could be. That could be a

factor. It's funny. I thought it was because of the adversity and that people actually are more accepting of challenges. Here, it's like, you know, what kind of thing goes off and we're like, oh, no, it's in the world. That's so true. As our world has developed and we're like, oh no, I was in the world. You know. That's so true as our world has developed and we have technology, we have all these amazing needs met every day when your Uber Eats delivery is running late, you're getting pissed off at someone and cursing in your mind about what is this knucklehead doing, taking so long and you have to stop yourself and say, oh my god, how am I even complaining about these first world problems? So yeah, I think that is a very fair point, where people have it much more challenging.

That's more of a norm for them and they can handle more hardship. Yeah, the socioeconomics of anxiety is very interesting. Individuals with a middle-income countries and lower-income countries have half and a quarter of the amount of anxiety that we do here in high income countries in the United States. Pretty amazing. So that means the challenges just make you stronger and make you able to make you stronger if you face them.

And what's interesting about our society, we have the opportunities to do amazing things, like, you know, connect with people around the country in a minute and, you know, medical care, notwithstanding social issues that, of course, are very, you know medical care not with standing social issues that of course are very you know ubiquitous and important and have to be addressed important national social and economic issues and in qualities that we obviously have to relate to and deal with. But notwithstanding that by comparison to the rest of the world, you know diphtheria and we're far more advanced in almost every corner of the United States. So that being the case, I think it actually gives us a susceptibility to behavioral and emotional distress. That's the sound of global success.

Do that research, get to understand the market that you're going into before you enter it. And that's the sound of a podcast that can bring you global success. Listen to the new Export Impact Podcast, where you'll hear success stories from Canadian businesses like yours, hosted by Joe Memorand, founder of Club Monaco and Joe Fresh, and brought to you by Export Development Canada. Join us and let these stories inspire you and take on the world, available now on Spotify. So, the thing that pops into my mind is that we need to spend more time serving others that do not have things as well as we do so we can be reminded like that exercise that you did with the group going out to see all the different struggles that people have so that we can reaccomit ourselves when we are distance from it. It's a great tool. It's a very important tool. Get out of ourselves and try to develop those relationships.

There's also a lot of loneliness in the United States, despite the fact that people are often not alone, but they are lonely. It's hard to admit our anxieties and our vulnerabilities and the fact that we need other people. In our very individualistic society, I don't think we do a good job with that. More collectivist societies, including in the Middle East, tend to do a better job. So that's definitely another factor. How are people lonely if they're not alone? Oh, this is a great question. We can be very lonely if we don't open up about how we really feel

to the people in our lives. When I am struggling and I can speak to my wife about it, that's what brings us closer together. Not the fact that we are sitting and having dinner together and I'm in my own head and she's in her own head. That doesn't help. That's not, we might not be alone, but we are lonely when that happens and think God it doesn't happen often.

But when we're able to really connect about what's truly going on, that's going on for her, what's going on for me, it's going on for the kids, when we're able to spill our guts and actually hold each other and accept each other, that's the opposite of loneliness, that's really togetherness and connection.

Anxiety tees us up for that in a huge way. It's one of the best things that you can have in a relationship, as long as you're with a partner who can hold you and can be with you. I don't understand what you mean by that. Well, I'll tell you this, like as a guy and as someone who works pretty hard, a large practice and an academic program, it was challenging for me to be able to acknowledge like I really struggle sometimes. Most men have that same challenge. Thanks. I know I'm not alone in this one. Yeah, I think I have a lot of factors against me and I'll tell you it was a huge learning curve for me to be able to just go to my wife and say, hey, I'm really having a hard time.

Here's what's going on right now. You know, she's going to think, I'm, uh, you know, I'm a failure. She's going to get nervous. It's going to make her, you know, all this racket in my head. And at some point, I'm like, no, I'm going to lean into this anxiety and see what it does for the relationship. But let's see. It is the best thing. I'm never turning back. Never turning back. So you see in that situation, the anxiety is a check engine light. I think that's how I've heard you frame it before to say lean into this more instead of back away from it. Yeah, sometimes the check end is in line is back off a little bit.

In this case, it's leaning right into it. And it deepened in my personal life, it deepened my, emotional, intimate connection with my wife. And I've seen this with my patients in hundreds of cases where people learn to really open up and to lean on the people in their lives and they learn in turn to be there for them. And that's mutual. That can be mutually reinforcing. That's really what connection is about. The antithesis of loneliness. Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that you just explained that. We were talking a little earlier about control and war lack of control and how that brings about anxiety, which I totally resonate with. I want everything to be predictable. I

want to know what the outcome is. Like a lot of people. And I know that you've said we'd rather have an inaccurate forecast or political pull than no information at all. Is that factually based, we'd really rather have bad info than no info at all? And is that easing our anxiety? You tell me, have you ever checked the weather and found out that it was wrong? And every day, like,

Every day, but you checked the weather. So like, I do it too. Like, why do we do that? By the time the last election, no matter which side you're on, everyone was checking on a daily basis. Like, what does Google say? What does Google say?

It's not changing people. And even change, it doesn't even matter. Like, let's understand your predictions mean nothing. And we prefer to pretend to know what's gonna happen next. Then to just acknowledge, like, you know what, this is not my hands. And that's okay. So it goes back to, from what I'm hearing, just this sense of acceptance, accepting that we don't know and accepting that it's okay not to know. It is okay not to know. It's a very human thing not to know. And I think throughout almost all

of human history, people have really been okay with not knowing because there wasn't even the possibility of knowing. Today, we've got these electronic appendages that give us access to all sorts of unfettered information all the time. So we think that, you know, we have, you know, God's Dictionary in our pocket. I'm like, it's not. This is fallible. We're fallible.

With all these tools, we still don't know anything. I shouldn't say anything, but we're still extremely limited in what we can really know and control. At the end of the day, like, I work pretty hard. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying throw your hands up, doesn't matter. No, I'm not doing that. Like, let's do it today.

Let's work as hard as we can. Let's try to push up the mountain. But don't do it out of a place of anxiety. Do it because you want to express your individuality or because you've got a mission to do in the world or if like at the end of the day, you can't do it out of a place of anxiety. Do it because you want to express your individuality or because you've got a mission to do in the world or like at the end of the day, you can't force it. You just can't force it. What just came up for me is, and I hear what you're saying,

my whole life, I've been like the ultra-over worker, you know, I outwork everybody and the grind, the grind, the grind. But now, later in life, I'm trying to marry acceptance and peace and giving myself space and letting go and letting go. To that point, my son was sick in the last week and it was not great timing. I had a million things going on,

work was so intense, so many big meetings. So I knew I'm like, okay, this is one of my chances to put this acceptance into practice and to say right now, this is an opportunity for me to focus on my child, to to be grateful I have a healthy child to know who's gonna get through this, to care for him and to let go instead of try to strangle. How can I make all these things work?

And I'll tell you, I am a work in progress, but it definitely allowed me to still sleep at night so that I felt better the next day in the past. I'd be up all night stressing out, trying to make up the work and it certainly is a work in progress, but finding that acceptance and trying to keep coming back to it, no matter how much of a new routine that can be is definitely worth it I'm finding. I love that story. That's a great anecdote. And you know, I'll even add that thriving is different than flourishing. Thriving is from a Nordic root, Scandinavian route, meaning to clutcher to grab on.

And flourishing, it's a Latin route, which means actually being successful. You are thriving this week, even with a sick kid at home. By the way, I hope you don't. Okay. He is. He's doing much better today. Thank you. Good.

Glad to hear. Because taking the opportunity to work on yourself to be more accepting the part of things down while continuing to march forward, I just love that. So that is thriving with anxiety. Yeah, but I like the word flourishing better than thriving now that you just made what it means. Yeah, I guess we all want to flourish, but you know, sometimes it doesn't work out that way,

but we can still thrive. And thriving has occurred in moments. Flourishing is more of a global thing. We'd all love to flourish, but again, sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. Thriving though is something you can have irrespective of where you're holding, because we can always clutch. We can always grab onto those moments of growth

and create moments of connection within and otherwise to mulchless, period of time. So true. So David, who did you write this book for? Well, myself, apparently this week I've been using it much more than I ever have. So I'm really glad that my own copy has arrived this week to my office. This book is really for anyone. Anyone who's having anxiety, which means all humans, you know, I think people across the spectrum can use it. If people have distress or severe distress that requires clinical intervention,

this is not a substitute for that, but I think it could be used alongside therapy, or even if people are in severe distress and need something more than that. It is certainly for the worried well for individuals who are functioning but anxious. And I think maybe most of all, it's for people who live with someone who is anxious

to start to understand better what people with anxiety are going through in order to sort of see that it is a real challenge. Yes, there are opportunities, and yes, we have to take them, but there is a real aspect to anxiety here, which is hard. It is hard. You know, honestly, the book, as I think, a broad base. And I guess we'll see what readers have to say. Oh my gosh, the timing is so good for thriving with anxiety nine tools to make your anxiety work for you. David, where can everyone get the book and where can they find you?

Thanks so much. Book is available wherever books are sold, Amazon and Audible and Barnes and Noble, of course. My website is probably the best place, dhrosmerIN.com. And I'd love to hear from people who read the book. There's a comments form on my website, I love hearing from folks how it's impacting their lives

and also course areas for further development. I am very much working progress and I'd love to use my own opportunities to grow. How many did you narrate the audible? No, I didn't. They asked me to and I don love to use my own opportunities to grow. How many did you narrate the audible? No, I didn't. They asked me to and I don't know. You said too much anxiety. And no, I wasn't anxiety.

Too much on my plate. Also, I hadn't done it before. Did you do yours? I have two books and I did both. I love doing it. Well, if I do another book, maybe I'll ask you. That's a big ask, but maybe worthwhile if it's going to be about anxiety and overcoming it. David, thank you so much for the work you're doing.

Everyone, the book thriving with anxiety, go check it out now. Everybody's got anxiety. Everybody wants to find better ways to be accepting of it and work through it. Thank you so much for writing this book and thank you for all that you're doing to make the world a better place. Thanks for having me from the great shot. Until next week, keep creating your confidence. You know I will be... Hi friends, I am here to tell you all about a new podcast that I am loving, creating confidence hosted by my friend Heather Monahan, who is part of the YAP media network. Heather sits down with experts like Gary Vee, Sarah Blakely, and Les Brown to share with

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I love that this person says that Heather is so inspiring and each episode is filled with tips and tricks on how to become more confident and live the life of your dreams. I especially love this one. I love how open and vulnerable Heather is and it makes her so relatable. She just draws you in and is able to relay her message so eloquently and in such a wonderful and encouraging way. I agree with that 200%. If you are looking to up your confidence level, you have to check out creating confidence now. You can subscribe to Creating Confidence with Heather

Monahan today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. This episode is brought to you by the Yap Media Podcast Network. I'm Holla Taha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire Yap Media, and host of Yap Young and Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world, and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. Each week, we dive into a new topic like the Art of Side Hustles, how to level up your

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