Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Why Anxiety Is Your Superpower | Dr Wendy Suzuki #417

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Today’s guest believes that if we can understand anxiety as part of the fight or flight stress response, we can begin to see it as an evolutionary tool for productivity.  Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today's clip is from episode 325 of the podcast with neuroscientist and Professor of Neural Science and Psychology, Dr Wendy Suzuki. In this clip, she explains why anxiety can be your superpower. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/325 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

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10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 325 of the podcast with neuroscientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology, Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Wendy believes that if we can understand anxiety as part of the fight or flight stress response, we can begin to see it as an evolutionary tool for productivity. In this clip, she explains why anxiety can be your superpower. You call anxiety protective, and you also call it a powerful self-help tool.

Yeah. Most people who suffer with anxiety don't think that it's protective. They don't want to have it. They don't want to feel like that. They certainly don't call it a powerful self-help tool. So I wonder if you could elaborate, Wendy, of what exactly you meant by that. Yeah. So here's what I mean by anxiety is your superpower. Anxiety, evolutionarily speaking, anxiety and that underlying physiological stress response evolved to protect us. Okay. So that is truly the reason why it evolved. Now we're talking 2.5 million years ago when those stresses came from physical danger, the lion, the tiger, the bear. When somebody walking around trying to gather food, here's the crack of that twig, what would happen? Ooh, anxiety. That could be a bear or a lion

to kill me. That releases the stress response. And what does the stress response do? It increases your heart rate. It shunts blood to your muscles so you can either fight the lion or run away. muscles so you can either fight the lion or run away. Perfect mechanism. It is why we are here today. Unfortunately, that mechanism has not evolved with our evolving culture. And so while I have not been attacked by many lions or tigers, I do get anxiety through lots of different mechanisms. Every time the email, the text comes in, oh God, what is that? The news cycles, social media are real causes of anxiety that still release that stress response. And it's got us to the situation of high levels of anxiety. And so everybody's saying, okay, well, you just answered your own question. It's not helpful, right? And my answer is yes, it is helpful because

at the core, anxiety is protective. And the first step is to turn the volume down. So absolutely, I'm with everybody. Our anxiety levels are too high. I'm not saying that this level of anxiety, high level, kind of uncontrolled, is good. We have to get to that controlled level. As you pointed out, your beautiful example of giving a talk, that is good anxiety. That propels you to give a better talk than if you're in the weekend Netflix kind of level of activity. You would give a terrible talk if you were at that level. No, you need that little fear. You need a little bit of anxiety.

I do too, to give the best talk that I could give. That's what we're looking for. Anxiety can bring us gifts or superpowers in many parts of our life. Anxiety, as you say, at its core, is there to protect us. I think, you know, through the lens of that wild predator 2.5 million years ago, that feeling of anxiety would result in us taking some kind of action. So looking at it through that lens, the same response is happening for many of us now to our email inbox or the state of our lives or our to-do lists. First of all, is it accurate to say that it's the same response, like the body literally cannot tell the difference, whether it's a lion or 42 emails you've got to reply to? Is that, first of all, accurate?

emails you've got to reply to. Okay. Is that first of all accurate? And secondly, in terms of, you know, creating this feeling that causes us to take action, some of the actions that we tend to take to try and change our state or not feel that anxiety are alcohol, sugar, food, whatever it might be. So what can people do about that? Okay. So let me tackle the accuracy question first. And that's a great one. So like 2.5 million years ago, there could be a certain stress response to a fox versus a lion. I think I would be a little bit afraid of a fox and a lot afraid of a lion. So there was that gradation in 2.5 million years ago. Today also, I mean, a little text when I'm looking forward to a friend responding back, that might not stress me out.

But 42 emails coming in first thing Monday morning, that could stress me out. Or that unexpected Zoom request from your boss that comes, you know, Sunday night, that could also really stress me out. So just like the fox versus the lion, we have different gradations of stress response. So it does work in a very similar manner. And what you outlined about the action orientation of that original stress response is beautiful because you've just outlined the rationale for the superpower of stress that I always like to start with, which is, did you realize that one of your superpowers,

because you and everybody else has this emotion of anxiety, is that it comes with a superpower of productivity. Let me explain how that works. So this comes with a very common form of anxiety, which is that what-if list. What if the boss emailed me at Sunday night to ask for a Zoom meeting because she wants to fire me. She hates my work. She hates me. She hates everything about what I've been doing on this new project. That what-if list is a very common form of anxiety. But the other thing to note is that that what-if list is revolving around things that you care about. I don't have what-if lists about how many shows on Netflix I've watched or not watched. I have what-if lists about my work, about the meetings

coming up that are more difficult or more easy. These what-if lists are showing you what is valuable for you, what you care about in your life. That's the first thing to notice. The second thing is, what am I going to do about it? What you're going to do about it is you're going to shift your what-if list into a to-do list. You're going to put the action on it as you just identified as that kind of fundamental response to that anxiety-provoking activity 2.5 million years ago. So what are you going to do? Well, let's say the email comes in from your boss first thing in the morning. What can you do? You're worried about your productivity at work. Go ask three people about how they think you're doing. Ask advice about things. Two, go to

your coaches. Go to your advisors about this. Three, go to your friends. Talk through the anxiety with somebody that cares about you, cares about what you're doing. Take action on each one of those things that come up in your to-do list. And that will help relieve that anxiety and actually help prepare for that meeting that you're going to have to have anyway. It is making your anxiety and acknowledging your anxiety as something that is centered around things you care about and taking action on that. So that is the superpower of productivity that comes from your anxiety. Yeah, I think that's a very powerful idea. It speaks to that kind of central point you

make that anxiety is protective. Because it's really there to give us a message, isn't it? Yeah, it's, you know, the message 2 million years ago is you need to run now you need to move your tribe and your things yes and instead of maybe looking at it as a problem although i understand the temptation and i understand why people would think that this is basically saying well one way you might want to look at this is go well what is this teaching me what is this telling me about the state of my life or the particular thing I'm anxious about? Instead of trying to shun it away, as you say, turn that what if list into a to-do list. So in some ways, you're really asking people to reframe their anxiety, aren't you? Yes, yes. And that's another big topic, which is the power of mindset

in addressing your anxiety. In fact, I also call it a superpower of anxiety. This comes not just from me, but lots of psychologists that have looked at approaches to anxiety. Can you look at the thing that's making you anxious in a different way? Let me start with one that is in my history a lot. While I'm a speaker now, I was a very shy young child, but I was really interested in my classes. And I had this battle, like every time I wanted to ask a question,

oh, you know, I wanna ask it, but I'm gonna look stupid. And then they're gonna think I'm stupid if I ask this battle, like every time I wanted to ask a question, oh, you know, I want to ask it, but I'm going to look stupid. And then they're going to think I'm stupid if I ask this question. And what I would say to my younger self is ask yourself why you're there in that classroom. What if I give you the job of asking at least two questions in class? two questions in class, not about, you know, whether you're going to make a right answer or a wrong answer, but that's your job in what you bring to being in this classroom. That is part of your responsibility. So it goes from, oh, I don't know whether I should ask that question to, oh, I'm assigned to ask two questions that are of interest to me as part of my kind of contract in being in this class, which is what I tell my students in my own class. And so it really switches the narrative. It

switches your mindset from I'm putting myself out there on the line to be ridiculed by everybody, which was my mindset, to, ah, I have a job to do in this classroom. This is part of my responsibility. And of course, you know, not being ridiculed and not being made fun of as a teacher, of course, I don't do that. But it really is powerful, the belief system that you go in with. And that is something that can be addressed and modified in so many different situations of anxiety. Yeah. You know, reframing that anxiety,

it's so powerful, isn't it? Because ultimately, if you don't reframe it, if you think, why am I feeling like this? I don't like this. I want this to go away. A, you've lost a bit of agency over what's happening. B, you think there's something wrong with you. And I think certainly what I do with my patients, very similar ideas to what you've been writing about, which is, no, the anxiety is trying to help you. Let's try and figure out what the message is behind it. You don't want to get rid of it necessarily. It's a signal, right? It's a signal to learn from. Yeah, exactly. It is learning. And you can say that for any uncomfortable emotion, all these uncomfortable emotions were not just invented to annoy you in your life.

And sadness, anger, anxiety, all of them, they're all warning systems. And my favorite way that a very smart friend of mine, Desi Levinson, has taught me to think about it and talk about it is instead of anxiety as this big, heavy weight that's around your neck and weighing you down. What if you think of it as a little kid that's just going, hey, hey, over here, project over here needs some attention and just completely shifting that, that, you know, heavy, oh God, why, why me to, ah, yes, that project is very important to me. That's just a reminder. It's still an uncomfortable emotion. I'm not getting rid of it. And don't believe anybody that tells you they're going to get rid of all your uncomfortable emotions because that is unhuman. But reframing it to something that can direct you more clearly to that thing that is important to you.

Exercise, of course, is going to help here, right? Not necessarily with reframing, although it may help you see the world differently after your workouts. But going back on that evolutionary level, the anxiety often is there to encourage you to move, to run, to hide, to get away from danger. Yet, of course, these days, a lot of the anxiety is coming down while we're sat on our bums looking at a computer screen. So what is the relationship between exercise and anxiety? So that is a great question. I mean, there is a direct relationship between exercise and anxiety. Only 10 minutes of walking can have an immediate positive effect on anxiety levels. That is, it will decrease your anxiety levels.

And the reason for that is by moving your body for 10 minutes walking, you are releasing serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline. By the way, these are the things that are in common antidepressants. You get it for free just by walking inside or outside, up the steps or down the hall. It comes with that. And so good anxiety is not just healthy brain, happy life about anxiety. I go into lots of different areas, but of course I can talk a lot about the powerful direct effects of just 10 minutes of walking on modulating that mood state, which is something that everybody needs to know about, but more importantly to do.

For someone who's listening and who's feeling inspired by what you've had to say, but is also thinking, yeah, but life's not great. I've got all kinds of stresses in my life. I feel anxious. I can't see a way out of here. What would you say to them? I would say there is a way out and start small. A, there is a way out and start small. Can you walk for 10 minutes? Try walking when a moment of anxiety comes in. Try doing a short breath meditation. And if you can't find one, go to YouTube.

They're free and they have millions and millions of likes. I do practice this. And what I found and what has been confirmed in many studies is that meditation also has benefits on your mood, decreasing negative mood states like anxiety and depression, increasing positive mood states like optimism. It also can improve your focus and attention like exercise. So it's very interesting that an activity that is so quiet and an activity that makes you move around all the time has similar beneficial effects. And you might ask, well, Wendy, what's going on there? And my answer is, well, we don't know all the mechanisms.

I suspect that there are different mechanisms resulting in the same behavioral output, better mood, overall better mental health status, and better prefrontal function, because the prefrontal cortex function seems to be very, very amenable to both exercise, moving your body, and meditation. You can start small, but there are tried and true scientifically based ways to decrease your anxiety and improve your mood state. And this podcast, books like my books, will help you find those things and do it in bite-sized pieces and everybody can benefit. This is what works and there is hope and just give it a try. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. I hope you have a wonderful

weekend and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.