Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Beyond Anxiety with Martha Beck

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

In this episode of The Language of Love Conversation, I sit down with Martha Beck—bestselling author, life coach, and one of the smartest women Oprah Winfrey knows (I agree!). Martha holds three Harvard degrees and her latest book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, is a powerful guide to moving past anxiety. In this episode, Martha and I dive into what she has discovered is the key to resolving anxiety. She explains how shifting from the “anxiety spiral” to a “creativity spiral” can transform our stress into joy and growth. She even helps me work through some of my own anxieties to show how you can do the same. Through personal stories and insights, we uncover how creative expression can turn anxiety into fulfillment and connection. Here’s a sneak peek of what we talk about:  How creativity serves as a catalyst for personal growth and emotional healing    The effects of staying calm on individual wellbeing and enriching relationships    The concept of "quantum love" and its transformative impact on emotional bonds    Strategies for overcoming different forms of fear and anxiety    The vital role of community and shared experiences in the journey toward healing Don't miss out—grab a copy of Martha’s book Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose! You can also connect with her on her website, LinkedIn, or Instagram. And while you're at it, explore my website for exclusive courses tailored to help you thrive! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. Martha Beck is a best-selling author, life coach, and speaker. And she has spent a lifetime offering powerful, practical, and entertaining teachings that help all of us in our lives.

She also holds three Harvard degrees in social science. Oprah Winfrey has called her one of the smartest women I know. I would agree with that. Martha Beck has given me little pearls of the most profound advice at times that have been the darkest ones in my life. There are pearls that have been kind of pathfinders for me as I travel and create and try to do what I'm doing in the world. Her last book, The Way of Integrity, was an immediate bestseller. Now she's got a brand new book called Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose. This book is not only about how to avoid the anxiety spiral that I think all of us are in, in one way or another right now with what's happening in the

world and how to shift into the solution, which she says is the creativity spiral. We're getting into that. We're even getting into some of my fears and anxieties as she helps use me to demonstrate how you too can move beyond anxiety to your curiosity and creativity. I'm so excited for you to listen in on this conversation on the language of love. Martha Beck, I'm so excited to talk to you. I'm so happy to be talking to you again. It's been too long. It really has. And I know I've told you this story before, but I tell it often because for obvious reasons, you are who I have reached out to or ended up speaking to during some of the most horrible points of my life. There was this one point where my mother died and I had breast cancer and I was

going through this like whole new evolution. And I felt something building in me, which ultimately became quantum love and a whole new trajectory in my life. It was so abstract. And I was just in what I now call my reawakening because I was really a kid, but I'd shut that shit down long before. So I was in the middle of that. I felt something coming and like something wanting to be created, but it was so abstract and something told me to reach out to you. And so we had this conversation. This happens to me too. People are like, you said this thing to me. I'm like, I don't even remember saying it, you know, but in your life. So you probably won't remember saying this to me. I was expressing to you how I felt this thing coming and I wanted to create it.

And I didn't know even exactly what it was. And you said the words I've never forgotten. It's gotten me through everything I've had to write since, which is just write one true thing a day. That's all you have to do. And that seriously changed everything for me. Oh, my goodness. That's so much about you. I was just... And then you took this little thing and made a huge, beautiful thing out of it. Well, it was so powerful. I mean, that's such a beautiful statement. And to anyone with writer's block or who feels that creative muse coming on, but is like, what the frick is this? And how do I do this? And it feels so weird to me and so abstract. And how do I wrap my head around this?

Like that is powerful. Just write one true thing a day and then that's what you have to do. So I just finished a manuscript and I was really stuck and I was like, oh, I'm going back to just writing one truth thing a day and it worked. That's wonderful. I'm so happy. I'm so happy I can help a tiny bit. You helped a lot. And it feels relevant to part of what we're discussing. And the main thing I want to get into with you, your new book, Beyond Anxiety, because writing it for me, writing one true thing a day and just focusing on that did solve this anxiety of like, what is this? How am I going to do it? It's too big for me. I don't know how to do it. Like it took all that away. So it's kind of a beautiful story, but also a beautiful segue into this idea because

let's just talk about the landscape right now, right? On the heel of COVID, obviously during COVID, everybody was a ball of anxiety. Yes. Anxiety actually went up around the world by a full 25% during the pandemic and it didn't go back down. Yes. That's what I think is really, really important because yes you can say we were being told this was life or death we were yeah it was scary it was scary as hell i mean people were desanitizing their groceries and fighting in the aisles for toilet paper and like shit was going down like people were scared but what happened and this is what i wanted to also get your take on is what what seems to have happened is that well first of all as we couldn't go outside anymore we had to go inside and when

When inside, you know, some shit started rising to the surface that we had been avoiding with our busy, you know, wild rat race we were all on, or most of us were on. I'm sure you weren't on that, but most of us were. So what I've noticed, and maybe you know the statistics of this too, because you said it hasn't really changed, is that there's been a lot of anxiety around re-entry. Even all these, now it's been several years since we're post-COVID, but it seems to me like the anxiety is here, has not gone anywhere once we get to our life. It hasn't. When I was researching this, I remember being a little kid and having them say, the Russians are going to nuke us.

Learn to hide under your desk because that's really going to, you got a little piece of wood, you'll be fine. And I remember all it did was give my six-year-old self intense anxiety. so we've always got reasons to be anxious that's terrorism that I mean the world is scary there are people in India dealing with a mudslide as we speak right but I was wondering why doesn't it level off because in animals I once watched a wildebeest come up to a pride of lions why because wildebeests are idiots let me just say that and these lions it was the wildebeest migration. So they just eaten wild wildebeests. And this antelope comes up going, gong, gong.

And the lions were like, seriously, are you going to make us kill you? So one of them finally got off. She's like, I'll do it. She starts walking and the wildebeest was like, whoa, gong, gong. And then she leveled in and she started to run like the real attack. And that wildebeest just shot out of there and like was going like a thousand miles an hour and the lion just gave up it's just like yeah i'm full anyway yeah in that instance the wildebeest stopped running and started to graze it had with the lion still there it had gone from full fight or flight to absolute calm instantaneously and that's the way our systems are meant to work so why when we fear does the fear just keep going up? Yes. I was very, very fortunate to have the friendship of

Jill Bolte-Taylor, who was the Harvard neuroanatomist who had the massive left hemisphere stroke. We had a lot of conversations when I was wondering about this. And she was telling me how when the left side of her brain was off duty, there was no anxiety. There was just pure prince. And her way of describing the brain, which is really, it's based on a mountain of research, but it's really simple, is that on the left side, whenever we see something scary, and immediately we start trying to control things and we tell a story about why we should be afraid. And that story feeds back into the brain as if, it's like if a lion attacked me, it went away then I would sit there and go but what if another lion comes because we're able to

imagine so powerfully it would be for my brain as if another lion had actually come right so I would have boom boom boom that same trigger over and over and the left hemisphere of the brain in humans does not like to give up its control now so we get stuck in this spiral of stories and imaginary threats that feel very real, and it just goes up and up and up, and it never equalizes because we never move over to the whole brain, bring in the right side of the brain. And you do that through things like curiosity and creativity, which is what my book is about. How do you actually take the energy that's fueling your endlessly upward spiraling anxiety and feed that energy to the right side of the brain

where you can find presence and joy and creation and the mystery and love and meaning and purpose. It's missing from the perspective we have when we're anxious and we live in an anxious world that's constantly making us more anxious. Absolutely. And I recently read a statistic, they did this study and they found that 85%

of the things that we're worried about don't even happen. And in that 15% that it does happen for over 75% of them, it's not nearly, it's like nothing compared to what they imagined it was going to be. And that really stuck with me. And it also is making me think like there's this little hack that I've been playing with because I have been experiencing a lot of, and we're going to get into how to make that shift. I'm going to have you practice on me. I cannot wait. I mean, I could choose 20 things because I don't tend to be anymore.

I mean, I used to be when I was little and I'm a recovering type A. So, but for years, I've had very little anxiety or when I did, it was like a reasonable reason. Right. I guess we could say there's a reasonable reason right now with all the care. Fear is a healthy and wonderful thing,

but it's meant to go up when we're in the presence of danger and then down again. Right, and that's how it was for many, many years until my son died. And what I've realized, I think because of that, trauma, working and worked through a lot of it. There's this gobsmacked trauma inside me that's waiting and is ready and girding. So maybe that's what's underneath it. But one thing that I've been playing with that kind of, and I'm curious what you think of neurologically, because you now

have been exploring this. This isn't going to be my example, but one example of something I've been really anxious about is my eldest son, who's been having a lot of depression and feeling hopeless and helpless. And so I'm afraid that that may go too far and he might do something impulsive that, and how could I live with that? Right. And so I would start ruminating on it and worrying about it and then try to talk myself down. Like, what the hell are you doing? This is just, you know, you don't, why are you attaching to this thing happening? And one of my spiritual teacher friends said, I have a hack for you. Say this. Why is it so true that Ethan is happy healthy and thriving like why is it so true that he's feeling in alignment and filled

with excitement and creative joy and I tried and I was like whoa that like immediately takes away the anxiety why is that and what you said to me is that that turns on the part of your brain because our brain attaches and starts to find reason so when you say why is it so true that this amazing thing is happening the opposite of what I'm afraid of then my brain starts trying to find reasons why that is true. Yeah, exactly. And that's wonderful. That's redirecting your attention toward the positive. And we come by our negativity, honestly, because if you were given a basket of 15 golden retriever puppies and one Cobra, all your attention would go to the Cobras. You would not be looking at the puppies, even though there are many more puppies

than Cobras. Our brains evolved to look at that Cobra and take action. But then as evolution went along. It taught us to tell stories and create landscapes and lifescapes in our minds that are actually feeding us whatever we're paying attention to. So that's what you did. You changed the focus of your attention. You opened up things on the right side of your brain. So then the left side could be balanced. You don't turn off the left side. You don't lose anything. You just turn on the joy, the meaning, and the evidence of what is okay. I once wrote a book that upset a lot of people. And I got death threats and I got hate mail that was just so toxic. And that stuff just rang in my head night and day. And then somebody said,

have you been reading the thank you emails? So my publisher started sending me emails from people who had been helped by that book. Beautiful. By the time I got to 2000 emails and I can just Like imagine 2000, that's a lot of people. And my attention was fully on them instead of the people who never needed or wanted that book. Fine. They don't have to like it. Same thing. It's the focus of our attention that creates the inner life scape to which our emotions are responding. Yeah. Where attention goes, energy flows. So when you talk about the anxiety spiral, which I know you get into in the book, you know, is that what this is? The spiral? Like, what does that spiral look like? I'm going to use a little science-y words.

Okay. Science-y words. From engineering, because I love the science. There's something called an unregulated feedback cycle. Okay. And that is when, like, if you were using a microphone and you had an amplifier right next to it, and the microphone takes your voice, feeds it to the amplifier, makes it much louder, but then the amplifier is now feeding into the microphone, on, which is amplifying it and sending it back. And very quickly you get something called a feedback screech. Yes. I know that's horrible. Yes. Well, that's because nothing is bringing the levels down. It's just feeding more, more sound waves into the system and it just becomes unbearable. That's unregulated. Now our regulated feedback system is I'm talking to you on my

computer, if it gets too loud, the computer will mute it down so that it doesn't become a screech in your headphones. We now have technology that regulates that. But in our brains, anxiety is like a feedback screech. I'm afraid. I make a story about how I should be afraid. Oh my God, I can make an even bigger story. Oh, now that's my reality. Oh, I should be even more controlling than I was before. Because even worse things could happen. On and on and on. And it's in the media and it's in our conversations. I mean, at school, they make people do drills for catastrophe. Of course, that's useful. But like me at six years old, anticipating a nuclear attack, like, did I really need to worry so much about it? I worried about that every day as a child.

Yeah, I can imagine. And here in Los Angeles, the earthquake drills and the big one. Yeah. Yeah. So so it's that feedback loop that just gets deeper and wider and wider till you feel like you're in the bottom of a pit. You're in hell. You literally are in hell. The last book was about integrity. And I use Dante's Inferno. And he goes into this pit and goes down and down and there are people screaming in pain all the way down. That's what it's like, this anxiety spiral. Yeah. And we're doing that constantly. And many of us are living in the bottom of that spiral and even going deeper. And we're in this world now between social media and media in general, where it's the clickbait and the ratings, and they know that fear will get ratings and the

fear mongering. And so everything is painted in a life or death situation and we're all getting stuck in it. So the question then is, what is the antidote, right? Like, what do we do? Because I think you have to be Martha Beck or some guru on a mountaintop to not be struggling a little bit right now with everything that we're being fed. I struggle. But honestly, I don't struggle very much. I really don't. I did at the beginning of doing this research and writing, but oh my gosh, by doing all these processes. I just watch my anxiety go down so dramatically. Anyway, the way out. Yes. You know, we were talking, I don't know if we were on recording yet or not, but you were saying something about you get anxious and then you're like, why should I be so anxious? Like

there's this, we have a negative response to our own anxiety. And people say, I'm going to bring my, I need to bring my anxiety down. I need to end my anxiety. I need to stop my anxiety. If I were working with you as I was your coach and I came in and I said, I'm here to end you. I'm here to bring you down. I'm here to suppress you. Make you wrong. Yeah. It would make you more anxious.

Yeah. So the first thing you need to know is that think of your anxiety as a tiny little animal inside your brain. It's your amygdala. It doesn't have any fancy cognitive abilities. It's just afraid. And when you come in and say, I'm going to bring you down, it gets more frightened. Yeah, it gets more tenacious. That's true.

Yeah. So first of all, stop feeding the anxiety cycle by attacking it and go into a place of kindness toward the part of you that is anxious. Don't try to stop it from feeling what it's feeling. Okay. I'm sure you've told this to a thousand clients. sit with it in its fear. Imagine picking it up. I mean, mine, sometimes it's a bunny. Sometimes it's a puppy. What's yours? I actually see a little girl part of me. Like I see myself as

a little girl and I talk to myself like I would talk to a little child. Yeah. And you sit with this little creature or this little child and you give the energy of love to it and say, you don't have to stop being afraid right now. I would never try to force you to do anything, but I will stay with you. And I will tell you other stories. Did you know that I am now a grownup who couldn't drive a car? And I talk in the book about how I rescued a broken wing blue jay from our backyard once. And I was driving it to the wildlife rescue center and it was in a box wrapped in a towel. and I hear these scratching sounds and I'm driving on the freeway and at like 70 miles an hour and he's really scratching hard in there and I was thinking he can't get out he can't get out he

can't get out oh my god he got out I looked to my right and there's this blue jay looking very large yeah and I'm going 70 miles and I'm like he's never been behind glass he's gonna try to get out. And I thought, what if he attacks me? He could hurt his wing. He could peck out my eyes. I could cause an accident. Massive anxiety. This is while I'm writing the book. So I have all these processes. I pull over and I calm down my own anxiety creature. I just said, of course, you're scared. This is an unprecedented situation. I don't know what's happening, but I'm here for you. And I call it kind internal self-talk or kissed. We're going to be okay one way or another. And I got really calm and I looked over at the bird and he jumped off his box and walked across

the gear shift and climbed into my lap and settled down. And I just petted him. And let me tell you, he was the silkiest thing. Oh, I've never. Yeah. It must've been a beautiful moment. He was so calm all of a sudden. And I just told him, you're going to be okay. I wrapped him in the towel, put him in his box, no more scratching, took him to the center. They took the box away. And then I hear all this screaming from inside. Came back to my towel going, he's very feisty. I don't know what that was. But when I calmed the creature in myself, it was such a vivid demonstration of how it helps creatures be calm. And other people, because what you're also describing, which I mean, I love the story

in and of itself for anxiety, but what you're literally describing is quantum love. Yes. What you were doing is in training energetically the bird to your calm energy, calm to the bird down. And I found that that's one of the ways that's literally how I discovered quantum love, which ultimately the book is about relationships. But it started with my kids who were having the eldest who I was talking about earlier, who was having severe, all of them were having severe anxiety because their grandmother just

died of cancer and I had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and all hell was breaking loose and none of my usual therapist mama strategies were working. And I stumbled upon what ultimately became Quantum Love, but the first piece of it was moving my body into a state of calm before entering the room with one of them. And I immediately saw a change in them, immediately. And that blew my mind. It's very powerful. Yeah.

And that's what ultimately led to Quantum Love. So I love that. That's so cool, Laura. That's, I cannot wait to read this. I haven't read it yet, but oh. You're in the something, in the thank you or in something because that was the one where you told me write one true thing a day.

Yay, and here we are again. oh my gosh, I've got to get it right now and read it. But so once you've calmed the creature, here's the thing that puts your amygdala in a calmer state. You always have that negativity bias. The society is constantly fueling your anxiety with its anxiety collectively. So what I realized is that the opposite of anxiety in the brain isn't calm. If you go to the same structures on the right side of the brain, so the amygdala looks at something, oh, that's new. Instead of creating fear stories and control, it creates curiosity and creativity. If you go past an accident and you can't help rubbernecking, it's because part of you is afraid

of what happened and part of you is curious about what. And the moment you get really scientific about figuring stuff out, you're like, I'm going toward it. I'm going to look at it. I'm going to figure out how to not make that happen to me. That's why we evolved to have that reaction. You're going to start connecting with the pieces of what's going on. Ultimately, you're going to start thinking brand new thoughts. It's a way of going into the quantum love. Where you have fear, you find curiosity. Curiosity is like the secret doorway out of anxiety and into not just calm, but creativity. And if you take that secret doorway, curiosity, creativity, then you start to create things the way you created your book. You're like, oh, my kids are frantic. I just lost

my mom. What do I do? Okay. I'm going to try to entrain them. I'm going to calm, go in. Holy smokes. They all come. Yeah. What the hell's happening here? Yes. That's curiosity. That's research you were doing on curiosity. The moment you saw that it was working, you became a force of creativity using what you'd learned. And so that eventually led you to write the book, Quantum Love. That's the process that is beyond anxiety. It doesn't just go, now I'm calm. I can do what I want. It's now I'm calm. Now I'm curious. Now I'm connecting things. Now I'm creating something. And let me ask you this, while you were in the process of writing that book, not before you started writing or after you stopped, but in the moment of typing

away, how anxious were you? I was not anxious at all. I was so creative. I was making quantum love maps and charts. As soon as I started making algorithms, I know I'm golden. That's my creative juice. I start making my little algorithms on paper and all my little pathways and charts. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. And while you're doing that, that joyful creativity, you're not anxious and i i interviewed a bunch of people like creative artists and they're a lot of them are incredibly anxious when they're not creating yes so they turn to their creativity almost as a haven a sanctuary and here's the reason that is brilliant if you are facing a problem especially an unprecedented problem like the pandemic or like climate change or whatever it

is doing what you've done before is not going to help because this problem is unprecedented and you don't know the rules. If you turn to your creativity instead of your anxiety, you will begin to explore, create, connect, and find solutions to every problem. On the left side of your brain, you're just like hunkering down and going, I must control everything and do only what I've done before. Yeah. And I have to find you're not. Here's a shout out to any woman who has experienced a horrible loss, is going through grief, I just want you to know you don't need to do this alone. And you also don't have to go through this. You can grow through it. You can come out the other side of horrible loss, a more self-actualized, tapped in, tuned in, empowered

version of yourself. You can continue a relationship with your loved ones on the other side. I am living proof of that with the losses I have had especially of my sweet boy Sammy who's forever 16 I can tell you that you actually don't have to just suffer through this and that is why I am holding a retreat for women in Chicago called from heartbreak to healing I'm bringing in a whole bunch of my favorite healer teacher friends and we are together going to take you through the process, not only of showing you how to heal, but making it inspiring, uplifting, and beautiful. It's only women this time. I'll do some for men and for couples as well, but this time it's only women. So come and be embraced by a sacred sisterhood, meet other like-minded people and

learn how to not just have to go through this horrible pain, but grow through it in beautiful ways. Just go to the link in my bio on my Instagram page of Dr. Laura Berman, or go to Eventbrite and search for Heartbreak to Healing Chicago, and it'll come right up. I hope to see you there. Yeah. Like I noticed when I got anxious and I had to stop myself because my knee jerk thing is to go into what I call fixed management control mode. Okay. Let me try to find the solutions, find a treatment program. And I get into, that's my left brain, right? But moving more. And what's really cool about that also is that David Hawkins, who wrote this book, Power Versus Force, where he created the map of consciousness and he was able to calibrate

the energetic frequency of every emotional state and its impact. And he found that someone who is in a high frequency, which would basically be a peaceful quantum love zone, the zone you got into with the bird. Someone who is in that zone possibly affects up to 70,000 people who are in a place of fear and anger or hate or that kind of thing. So you're not just helping yourself. For those of us who, like me, who are worried, like I'm mostly worried now, and I want to ask you about this, about slightly, I wouldn't say they're existential threats because they seem pretty real or pretty possible, but like all the things that could happen because of what's happening in the world right now. And it's all arguable. It could go in a million different

directions. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know, right? But if you're worried about that, doing this process not only makes your life much more pleasant, but you are actually helping to solve that which you are afraid of. Exactly. Your positive impact on everyone around you and the world around you. And if more of us do that, then there'll be less to be scared of. Yes, absolutely. And one of the things the left hemisphere does with its little control stories is it absolutely believes itself to be right. And this is why you can take people who have strong, say, political views and show them actual evidence that contradicts their belief. And you know what happens? The beliefs grow stronger. I'm experiencing that now. the left hemisphere feels attacked and it like doubles down. And that is not the way to solve a problem, to ignore the data and just imagine fear. But when you start getting creative with

whatever circumstance there is, you are in the best possible position to form solutions. There's two quotes from Indian gurus that I like to put side by side. One of them is from Nisargadatta Maharaj, he said, the only true statement the mind can make is, I do not know. You can never be sure what's going to happen. Then there's another Indian guru who says, I exist in continuous creative response to whatever is present. That's a whole life plan right there. Yeah. Except what Asians in Asia, they call don't know mind that we can't be sure of anything. And then creatively respond to whatever is present with you. So you get into a calm state because you're going into your grieving sons and suddenly they're calming down

and then they're online and they pick an inspirational meme and send it out. And it affects a whole bunch of other people. In my book, I talked about Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. She was a journalist in the Philippines and she was investigating the corrupt government and publishing stuff about them. And they started a smear campaign. She was getting up to 90 death threats and hate emails per hour. And you know what she and her team did? They got curious. They had every reason to be afraid, but instead they became curious and they did research on the hate mail. And they found that lies, especially frightening lies spread six times faster than facts, true facts on the internet. Wow. There is one thing

that travels as fast as lies, and that is inspiration. So you go in, you're calm, your sons get calm. They start to interact with other people. They find things, you find things that inspire you and you pass those on and those travel as fast as the crazy lies. Yeah. Now we've got a chance at happiness. Yeah. Well, so let me ask you this, because to me, there's two kinds of, I mean, maybe it's all the same, you tell me, but there's two sources or categories of fear. So there's the fear like of my son, who's in this really dark place, feeling hopeless and helpless. And like, what's the point of life, right? Which feels, you know, like a potential imminent concrete. Yeah. That's specific to my life. Right. And

our life. And then there's this more existential thing happening of a like even more of a might happen, whether it's around. I don't have stories that one candidate is going to be the source of our destruction and the other is the source of our nation. But like, for instance, I am really worried about the anti-Semitism that's happening right now. Yeah. Personally worried because even though I don't, you know, identify with the Jewish faith, I am Jewish and my kids and I'm experiencing it and I'm watching it. Right. Sometimes I can be like with whatever, like this will happen or not happen. I can't control it. I can just do my little piece. And then sometimes I'm like, shit, am I going to have to move to Israel? Like what's going,

you know, how bad is this going to get? Right. So I have two questions. One, is it different how you move through each of those kind of fears, the more existential kind of abstract threat in the world and the one that's like in your living room. Right. And also when we get to creativity, are we moving? Because I know a lot of what you write about and speak about is sometimes the creativity has nothing to do with the problem or the thing you're anxious about. it's just moving into a creative space. So do they work the same? Okay. So first question first, there are two species of frightening feelings. One is true fear and that's the animal fear I described that goes up. And then when the threat is gone,

it goes down again. That's how fear is meant to work. And then there's anxiety. So if you've read the gift of fear by Gavin DeBecker. Great book came out decades ago. I was typing. I need to read Gavin DeBecker's work. And I get an email. It pops up. It says, hi, you don't know me. My name is Gavin DeBecker. Wow. I know stuff like that was happening to me the whole time I was writing your whole life. Everything. I mean, every time I talk to you, that shit's going down for you. It's amazing. So he wrote a beautiful, like he wrote, literally wrote the book on this. he's a violence prevention expert because he lived in fear his whole childhood and he learned things about it and what he tells us is that real fear is like being shot from a cannon you get a

very clear sense of what to do and it could be that there's a you know a tiger in the room but you know what to do this is when people can lift cars off their loved ones and stuff if there's a larger looming threat out there as you said an existential threat what happens is if you tune into your creativity and you're always in a calm space and something needs to change, this gets a little woo-woo, but the right side of the brain gets a little woo-woo. Yeah. We like woo-woo on this show. Yeah. I mean, why did Gavin Becker write to me while I was talking about him after I hadn't for 20 years? Anyway, because I think things broadcast. Yes. So somehow, and I've had this happen many times to me, I think, oh, I need to move.

and I just get up and move. And people are like, why are you moving? I don't know. I knew I needed to move. And as soon as I make that decision, there's no fear. But if I don't make the decision and it comes from a very clear, very calm place, and it doesn't say, be afraid, be afraid. It says, act. Martha, here's what you do. This is what you need to do. It's super calm. It's super clear. And it's very, very strong. And if I resist it, I get more and more afraid. Anxiety is when you're just sitting around eating chips with your friends on the couch and you start thinking about, you know, what would happen if COVID mutated to a deadly

strand? And suddenly everybody's telling the story. Oh my God, what do I do? Should we all put on masks right now? I don't know if that'll help. Like, you know, the difference because, and the difference is peace. When I wrote The Way of Integrity, I found through research that the one statement people felt as most truthful in their bodies was the statement, I am meant to live in peace. Yeah.

And it sounds weird to say that you can be in peace and afraid at the same time. but I mean I start out this book with this moment when I was writing the introduction at this I was in a cottage at Londolozi in the in a game preserve in South Africa where there are animals wandering through the camp all over the place and I didn't know the door next to me was open there was a screen door and it was pitch dark outside so I didn't see anything and as I'm riding along I hear and i was like i know that sound that is a leopard calling and it's in my room oh lord because it was literally about six feet away from me and it was just kind of it had come to the door to say this place is mine you know and then it went away but i had the most intense fear reaction you can't

even imagine i was so flooded with adrenaline and then i turned and i saw it walking away and i was like, yeah, that's how fear works. Then I start to worry about, okay, I'm getting older. What if I die and my family needs me and they're not going to, what should I do? Whatever, you know, the endless stories. And Gavin talks about how that kind of worry and anxiety actually makes us so divorced from the present moment that if something scary comes into our field, we don't see it. Because we're so busy being scared about the abstracts. Yeah. There's a famous case where a man was driving a bus, a double-decker bus, and he was on a hands-free headset talking to his sister. They got into an argument and he got so angry and so defensive that he did not notice he

He was driving toward a bridge that was only going to allow one story. And it just took the second story off the truck. A lot of people were killed. Did he see it? His eyes were fine. He wasn't looking at anything different. He wasn't texting. His attention was on, I am being attacked by my sister and I need to fight back.

And his attention got very narrow because that's what the anxiety spiral does. And boom, he did not notice what was actually happening. yeah so if you notice what's actually happening and you keep coming back coming back coming back and being with the parts of you that are anxious and saying boy it really is a scary world I understand why you feel that way and then let's write a poem let's dance let's do something that brings us lightness and joy and the interesting thing about creativity is that it brings together things that have never been brought together before. So then you get solutions popping out of places. As you said, the creativity may seem to have nothing to do with the problem.

Yeah, that's what I want to be clear on. So it's not like you're worried. I'm worried about anti-Semitism and I need to get creative about how to help people be less anti-Semitic. It's that I am moving toward creative pursuits. And you mentioned dance. That's like my number one thing to shift. I do that for anger. I do that for grief. I do that for fear. I got, I'm a big dance in the kitchen and in the yard kind of person or grounding outside or painting or playing, learn, I'm learning ceramics now that really helps. Oh man, that's great. So it doesn't have, so by creative, what you're, what you mean, I think, what I think you're saying is that it doesn't have, it has nothing to do with the thing you're afraid of, but what it's doing

is activating and lighting up your right brain. Yes. Way that changes what's happening internally and also probably changes your changes, your relationship in some ways. And I'm curious what you would say about this with that, which you're afraid of. Yes. And I can't wait to read your book because what happened with your sons, I've seen powerfully replicated over and over and over. One of the people I reference in the book is a man named Chris Voss, who was the FBI's lead hostage negotiator for a while. And he would go into these situations where people literally had loaded guns pointed at each other, their anxieties off the charts, they've got cortisol squirting out of their ears. And how did he talk to them? He says, you get put on a late night BJ voice, low,

slow, mellifluous. And then you say to them, wow, you sound like you're really having a bad day and you really want a helicopter to just to get out of this situation tell me about that and then people would you know he'd go into a situation and people would be like no no we have to fight we have to kill yeah like tell me how you're feeling about that and that immediately disarmed them probably like no one's asked me let me tell you everything yeah and he's got lots of great stories in his books about how that it was a law enforcement person who took care of well not took care of but he dealt with drug cartels coming across the border and he told me how he would go into these rooms where people drug dealers were counting their money and counting their drugs and

there would be gunfights and there would be all this stuff that happened and then he learned aikido which is in japanese it's the way of the harmonious spirit okay and it's all about getting absolutely peaceful and accepting of every part of yourself. Absolute self-acceptance, absolute self-love. You can't do enough practice of self-love, self-kindness. And he learned to be so kind to himself. And then he went to his next, they were raiding a drug house. And he said to his friends, let me go alone. They're like, are you crazy? He's like, no, I just feel this. He opens the door. He walks in. He says, okay, guys, you know how this is going to end. You're going to go to prison one way or another. Let's just do it the easy way.

And they all got up and went. It's like the blue bird, but on steroids. This, what you're hitting with quantum love is an absolutely crucial dimension of the human experience that it's time has come. Oh yeah. That is the solution and you may get to it by dancing in the garden. Yeah. Well, however you need to do it, that makes total sense to me and that it is sort of the, it's the antidote, right? So if you're in that anxiety spiral, just to summarize what you're saying, when you go into that anxiety spiral, the keys, I mean, obviously read the book because it can give a lot of more information. But the first step is to just accept, be with yourself, have compassion, don't try to change it or control it or make it wrong. And then to shift

to do something that will engage your right brain, create something that is creative and that isn't fixing, managing, controlling things. Yeah. So that's a brilliant summary. And there are three parts of it, if people need a mnemonic to help. First one is calm the creature. Okay. The second one is connect with the creative inside you. And the third one is surrender to creation. It's a letting go when you start to operate that creativity on the right side of your brain, just as the anxiety spiral makes other people anxious, the calm creative spiral that actually builds on itself as well. It communicates very strongly to other people and to animals. And I don't even know, it could be to inanimate objects. I don't even know how far this transformation of

consciousness that you call quantum love will affect the world. But I think it's way more powerful than our particular culture likes to believe. Yeah. And even more powerful than social media. Yes. It filters through social media. It finds its way. It's like water. It just finds its way. And when you get to that moment of inspiration and that's what you put on social media, bam, it travels as fast as the lines. And also I'll tell you something else I've noticed about social media. And I keep saying this to people. If you want to know what energetic frequency you're living in, look at your explore page. My explore page for the most part is filled with kittens and babies and nature. But if I start seeing floods of anti-Semitic reporting

and violence and I'm like, oh, shit, I've been in a state and it is literal because the algorithm is seeing my eyes linger or noticing. Yes. It's reflecting to me. It's like a litmus test for where I'm living energetically without me even being conscious of where I'm living. And when I see that, I'm like, oh, that's brilliant. Yeah. I've been in some place where I'm a frequency match to this, you know, is so brilliant. Yeah. And whenever there's something, whenever there's a clenching in my body, in my jaw, in my shoulders, I'm like, okay, where am I? That's my signal that I'm anxious. Yeah. And then I go to what am I anxious about? And here's what I've discovered. And this is, this is very controversial. I put it at the end of the book, not the

beginning. It's a very simple three words. Anxiety always lies. Yeah. I agree with what fear stands for false. Yeah. False events appearing real. Yeah. I've also heard it as fuck everything and run, which could happen, you know, either it's one of those two. Okay. If it's real fear, then it's the second one. If it's just a vague nebulous fear, all events appearing real. Yeah. I love that. I want to ask you about something kind of related, but separate, but it's something else you said to me once that I think about often these days, because I've now been stepping into creating my, I've always just shown up for events. I've never done my own events, but since I've been really stepping into helping people, I just feel so

passionate about showing people that there's a different way to grieve and that grief can be a portal of profound and gorgeous transformation. So I'm really being called to create these events. And huge anxiety has been coming up around, if I build it, they won't come. And I keep going back to this thing you once said to me. This was years ago and you were planning some event. I don't even remember what it was. And I don't even remember why this came up, but you said, all I do is lie down on the floor in my pajamas and call in everybody who this is going to be in service to. And then it just happens. I'm like, holy shit. I want some of what she's having. You just wrote a book about it. I mean, the whole idea, if you go to quantum mechanics,

and I know that's not literal, but one of the interesting things about quantum mechanics is that it is shown that two particles, once they have been entangled energetically respond to each other instantaneously, even if they are separated by the entire universe and they do it faster than the speed of light, which means they somehow are one thing. They're not separate. So, and that is the distance of the universe. So why shouldn't you be able to lie down on your floor, use your consciousness, which as far as we know, is part of the consciousness of what created all matter and like find some folks in California. It's not that hard. But like, tell me what you do, because I'm really curious. So you, you're, you're there, you're moving yourself into a

state of peace and then you're imagining reaching out. Let's play with it. Let's not do hypotheticals. Okay. So you've got a real thing to work on. I exist in continuous creative response to whatever is present. So let's work with what's present. All right. Well, this wasn't even going to be my example, but I love this one because it's coming up. I have this retreat in October that I'm worried about filling because I worry about filling it. And I'm making a financial investment, right? You have to make guarantees or get the space or whatever. I'm like, let me just break even, much less make money, right? But you know, that's not really what you want. I want to make money for my 501c3, because then I'm going to give scholarships to people to go

to these things. That's my point. I'm right there with you. People think that bestselling authors are just rolling in gold. Getting a bestselling book is a slow way to make a little money, people. It's just not what you think it is. So first of all, go to the part of you that is terrified that not enough people show up. And don't try to influence what shows up in your imagination, just feel that stress, that panicky feeling. And just tell me who in there, it's a little creature or a little girl or a little boy who's in there thinking, who's in there fearing. This is interesting. She's kind of like a tweenager me. So it must, it's like the one that was bullied and socially rejected that version of me.

Oh, OK. So she's sitting in there. Let's say she's 12 years old and horrible things have been happening to her. Real horrible things. She can feel whatever she damn well wants to feel. We're not going to take that away from her, but we are going to love her. So let's go in and sit down and say she's sitting where she's sitting. She's sitting like off where recess is off, like in the corner, just trying to kind of stay away from the mean girls and out of their line of vision. So they don't come after. So you and I go over and we sit down a safe distance away from her, but close enough to let her know we're present. And we say, what's her name? I think it's Laura.

She seems to be like a version of me. Great. So we say little Laura, we really get it. anybody who'd been through what you've been through would be scared like this. And what you've been through is bad. And you don't never let anyone tell you it didn't matter. It is a terrible experience. We did not evolve to put packs of 13 year olds together. No, you're supposed to have the care of a village that is as all ages. We're the elders of this village now. And we are here to sit with you and help you grieve the suffering. So how's she

feeling as we talk. She was immediately relieved when we just sat down. Yeah. But yeah, she likes that. She kind of threw her head back like, whew, good. So we're like, those mean girls, we don't like them much right now. And we're not going to let them get to you. Feel what you want to feel, but let us tell you right now what those girls are saying about you and the way they're making you feel. It's all lies. And they don't even know how destructive it is for them, but it is destructive for them, more destructive for them even than it is for you. So let's just get this clear. We're not going to believe what they said. So she gets to remain anxious. But now you, grown up Laura, look around that gym and see the other kids that are in agony and hiding it

and masking. See the kid whose parents are getting divorced. See the kid who's secretly already a user of alcohol. See the kids who are going to have a first love affair that will destroy them. See the kids who are going to be pregnant before they're out of high school and just see, watch them go forward into adult life and see that almost every single one of them is broken and afraid, so afraid. So we're going to love on little Laura and she gets to go with you everywhere. And if anybody tries to confront her, you and I are going to step in front of her in your imagination and say, no, you don't get to lie and get away with it anymore. The anti-Semites, they all know we believe the truth. And now think of all those broken kids

out there and they create broken relationships and they're so alone. I mean, we've been doing self-help since you know god was a kid and well at least i have been yeah and so we don't even remember how much it hurt before we started working on ourselves yeah so just feel that there are people out there in excruciating suffering yeah and all they really need is this quantum love that you are making available it's all we need and you have a method yeah you can honestly say, and I want to plug your, I'm going to plug your products right here. You can honestly say, I have a way of making things better for you. And it works. Yeah. Find them in your, feel them connected to you all over the world. Not is, is it a virtual

event? No, it's there. It's in Chicago. Okay, great. Okay. So just see all the people everywhere and it can center geographically in North America, or you can go all over the world and just say, find the pain of little Laura and all those other people who've never even got the first word about healing and say, I love you. I can help you. Welcome. Come in. Come in. So that's how you do it. That was really, really helpful because it's the idea is so abstract to me ever since you said that to me, I'm like, wait, I just go and like, ask God to bring them in. I'm just like, I'm saying, Hey, you guys, come on. You're already connected. Yeah. So you're already connected. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. All right. I'm going to do that longer than what we

just did. Whenever you get anxious, that's it. Kindness, calm the creature, start connecting with parts of yourself, parts of other people, and then surrender to the creation, which wants to love everyone. Yeah. And say, I'm a pencil in the hand of God at that point. Yeah. You can let your higher power take over. I love that. Thank you for that. Listen, I know you have questions and things that you want some assistance with, and I am here to help. So that's what my language of love sessions are for. I can talk to you live on the line, or you can email your questions and I will answer them and you can send them anonymously. It can be about a friend or a neighbor or someone, you know, but what I want

you to know is that when you ask that question, you're asking not only for yourself, but all the millions of other people who have the same question because they do and are learning right along with you. So if you have a question or you want me to talk about something or answer something or help you with a struggle, you can always email me at languageoflovepod at gmail.com. That's languageoflovepod, as in podcast, at gmail.com. Yeah, this has been such a beautiful conversation and so, so needed as we're stepping into some,

I mean, at least in our lifetime or adult lifetime, I know the 60s felt just as crazy to people. I was born in 1968, but this feels like the craziest time in most people's lifetime. And so I've never experienced this before. It feels even scarier. So the book is called Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Purpose. And we'll put the link to the book in the show notes to your website. Is there anything else you want to make sure that we let people know about where to find?

Whatever. Things find their way. You're just going to lie on the floor and invite them. I just lie around in my pajamas. I'm not even kidding. I love that so much. I mean, that's what I find myself saying again and again. I am just not interested in hustling anymore.

That causes me anxiety. I shall do no more hustling. Amen. This is the hustle antidote. because hustle comes from a place of anxiety too, unless you love hustling and it lights you up, which it doesn't mean. Hustling means push people forcefully in a direction

you want them to go, push yourself in a direction you want to go. It also means to cheat or to swindle and or to prostitute oneself. Oh, okay, you're right. That kind of hustle too. So no, we don't want to hustle. And yet that's something that people value in our society.

Well, she's got hustle. That's what I'm saying. It's all the story of this left hemisphere and it, I go into it more in the book, but it's, it's crazy. It's literally insane. Yeah, it is. And we don't realize the insane assumptions we're operating on and those are causing us the pain.

So I'm so excited for your book. I'm so excited. I'm so grateful for you as a human being in my life, but just that you exist on the planet for all of us. I have to say, you know, last time we talked, it was a really rough time. And to see you take such tragedy and such terrible grief and turn it into love. I mean, I knew you would do it, but it is, I'm looking at a miracle right now. You are astonishing.

Aw, you're going to make me cry. Thank you, Martha. all i wanna do i wanna do is take you home with me i wanna make a move i wanna make a move but i'm too shy i can't fall asleep without your arms around me