Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Kevin Sussman: Weighted Blankets, Actor Anxiety & the Science of Sobbing

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

Kevin Sussman (actor, writer, comedian, The Big Bang Theory) discusses his anxiety surrounding performing and reveals his process for tricking his brain into redirecting anxious thoughts. Mayim and Kevin reminisce about their shared experiences on the set of The Big Bang Theory and examine the differences between Kevin and his character, "Stuart Bloom." Kevin shares the advice George Clooney and Gary Shandling gave to him about combating anxiety and the body mechanics of the Alexander Technique he uses to manage habitual physical tension. Mayim breaks down the physiological symptoms and evolutionary advantages of anxiety, the science and cultural aspects of crying, and ways to avoid the trap of rumination. They discuss the benefits and side effects of anxiety medication and natural coping methods, and Mayim ends the episode with advice for managing anxiety when trying to fall asleep in the latest installment of Ask Mayim Anything. BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The irony in life, I think, is that when you are repressing physically, emotions, whatever it is, love, pain, fear, anxiety, rather than being fully open to them, it's actually more excruciating. Hi, I'm My Ambialic and welcome to My Breakdown. This is the place that we break down, the things that make us break down. It's my ambiolyx breakdown She's going to break it down for you Because you know she knows a thing or two And now she's going to break down Today we're going to be breaking down I don't want to call it performance anxiety

Because I think that evokes Being in the bedroom Being in the bedroom Stage fright also doesn't seem to sum it up Not the right terminology Today we're going to be breaking down anxiety of the actor variety. Actor anxiety.

Not only for actors, though. But it's not only for actors, that's true. We're going to be speaking with an actor and writer who I really, really like very much, and we worked together on Big Bang Theory for, yeah, about a decade. Kevin Sussman is with us, you know, kind of known to be a very, you know, anxious kind of character in the characters he plays.

And we get to talk a little bit about, what his anxiety looks like as a performer and also how the anxiety that he's experienced as a human has impacted his career, his acting, and also ways that he's kind of harnessed that for better mental health. We also get into habitual physical tension, which is exciting. Speaking of habitual physical tension, I'd like to introduce you to Jonathan Cohen. Hello, my im. My co-pilot. Jonathan, we're pretty in purple today, aren't we? Very nice. And if you want to take a look at that, you can go to My Ami. Alex's YouTube channel, hit subscribe and the bell notification.

Ding! To get new episodes. Also, leave us a review in the audio version of wherever you're listening. Five stars helps us make more and recommend us to a friend. Do we have a word of the day? We do. Word of the day. Today's Word of the Day, and sometimes the word of the day is a cluster of words, a topic, an idea,

but today we're going simple. Back to the old school. we're going with rumination. Rumination. This came up as it relates to ruminating thoughts. Not to be confused with a ruminant stomach. Not to be confused with that at all. Ruminating is a term that should not be used interchangeably with obsessing.

But because everybody's like, I'm so OCD, I try not to use the word obsessing unless I'm specifically talking about obsessions as they relate to obsessions and compulsions. ruminating is sitting on an idea, a feeling, turning it over repeatedly so that it continues to cause distress. Sometimes we turn something over and we process something and it can be alleviated. Ruminating tends to keep us in that kind of stew of whatever that negative emotion is. We typically don't talk about ruminating on positive emotions. That's just called feeling them. but ruminating is usually used for kind of words with more of a negative affect. You know, if you've had a friend who, like, should break up with a dude, but she just wants to, like, complain about it all the time, also different than ruminating.

If you constantly think about how much she annoys you, that's more like ruminating. Often ruminating, there's, like, moments or, like, it's in an intense time period. You don't normally ruminate intensively over, like, weeks, do you? No, but I mentor some lovely young women, and sometimes they'll call and just be like turning something on, why, why, why, why, why? Why did this happen? Why did it happen? Why did it happen? It's like stuck in a thought loop. It's stuck in a thought loop. And usually it's serving something. And it's, you know, our job as humans to figure out what that something is. A lot of times it, you know, prevents you from having to come up with a solution. It prevents you from having to move on. And if you come from a home or, you know, an environment where it's familiar, things to kind of be like this. You're doing the turning, stabbing motion. It's like a, but it's like a slow, painful stab. It's like, rising is the Yiddish word.

You can feel trapped in rumination. Yeah, but there's, there, that is a loop that can be escaped. But anyway, that's rumination. Word of the day. So we're going to be talking, as I said to Kevin Sussman, and we're going to be talking about anxiety. and anxiety is a word that's thrown around a lot. Anxiety is usually described according to the physical symptoms that we feel when we're anxious.

Jonathan, you want to choose a couple things that people say happen to them when they're anxious physiologically? Increase of tension. They can have stomach problems. They can have like fluttering heart. palpitations, right? You describe a constriction in your throat at times when there's anxiousness. Also, sometimes like your throat gets dry. You can lose the ability to think as clearly and coherently.

I'd love the science behind that because you've explained it to me before. Everything's all messed up in your brain. And that's the answer we're going with. Sleep can be disrupted. Sweaty palms, that'll happen. And sweaty palms is a great example of something that you don't see in depression, whereas those other things like disruption and sleep and disruption and eating, those can happen in depression.

But yeah, anxiety is more of that inability to sit still, you know, pacing, fidgeting, things that some of us do all the time, just as our baseline. Jonathan, what do you think some of the evolutionary advantages are for anxiety? To stay alive. Right. So if we didn't have a notion of anxiety, potentially dangerous sounds, smells, tastes might not produce any response from us. and we wouldn't know, don't go there, don't eat that, don't kiss him.

Whoops. Anxiety does serve the purpose of keeping us vigilant, you know, with the purpose literally of surviving. So the reason that we have it is because nature, she is very redundant. She's not going to create a brand new, you know, template every single time. We have a new species. So we have a lot of leftovers from our state of nature. And we also have to have a certain amount of vigilance, which can look like anxiety, in our modern life as well. So for some people, anxiety is more of a concern than others.

Some people have more of a predisposition to having these kind of thought loops. And some people have more kind of anxious chemicals in them. You know, I have a need to move my body. And especially when I'm tired, I have a need to move my body. But what's the most frustrating is when someone says, like, can you stop moving? Why are you pacing? Can you stop doing that? Because the fact is, I can, but it's what happens when I stop. That's really unpleasant. So a lot of times what we see that we define as markers of anxiety, you know, I'm a nail biter. I'm a cuticle picker. You know, some people will pick, you know, even just like little things on their arm or on their face, I mean, really on any part of your body. A lot of people will eat anchors. It's because there's a feeling or set of feelings or state that comes up and the things that we see are the things that we do to try and make it go away. So when I bite my nails, I don't bite my nails because I'm anxious. I bite my nails because there's a feeling that I'm having that I'm trying to dissipate.

I'm trying to give it a place to go. So for me, when I have movement and when I create movement, it creates a sensation that is more pleasant than the feeling I was having before when I was anxious. Are there times when I'm more anxious than others? Of course. Before I perform, you know, before I have to go on stage. Really, anytime someone's yelling, roll camera, you know, I feel it like, it's like something turning over. You know, like it literally feels like something flipping over and that's putting me in this new state of, you know, of vigilance. where I'm using as much of my faculties as possible to do the task at hand.

And for me, that task is, you know, trying to get as much blood to this here brain to remember pages and pages and pages of words and movements and continuity and props and all those sorts of things. So we need anxiety, but for some people it does run a little bit rampant. And one of the things that actors experience is sort of a constant state of potential rejection, which can be very anxiety-provoking. You know, I think of kind of auditioning. It's not unlike having to have a very painful first date

every single time you want a job. Like, it's a big first date kind of experience. You're walking in to a room full of people you don't know. You're going to be judged on how you look. It's a group date. It's a weird, weird group date. and many people are surprised that like with practice you don't get less anxious. No, I just don't.

And people are like, why not? And I'm like, I don't know. But the proof that you don't is that I don't. So there are some people who say like, oh, I'm nervous at first. And sure, the beginning of a taping is more anxiety provoking than the end of a taping. But, you know, even though I'm a brain scientist, like, I don't always know why that is. It often has to do with other things that are going on in my life. if I'm texting with a friend or I'm having a, you know, an upsetting,

this is me texting, an upsetting text exchange, doesn't look like texting? I don't know who texts quite like the first motion. Also goes into a little VG's action. But if I'm having an upsetting interaction or if I'm worried about my kid or if I'm not feeling well, that's going to raise my, you know, my anxiety and then everything will feel harder. exactly the reason we started this podcast because during the quarantine, what many people have noticed

and during really this whole year of experiencing COVID, many people have noticed that, I mean, they don't always call it this, but I like to point it out to them that that's what it is. If your baseline's normally here for anxiety, everybody's baseline has been bumped up a little bit. And for those of us who already have anxiety,

like everything just gets dialed up even more. So that when anything happens, I'm like right here ready to cry. You missed my action. I'm right here ready to cry. Or like if my kids do something that like, I just like, like they're yelling at each other. I can't take the sound of your voices.

Stop it. It's like that. And that's why we are yelling more at each other. That's why we're butting heads with each other more. It's why I'm crying a lot more during quarantine than ever before. I'm going to say it out loud because it's nothing to be ashamed of. My menstrual cycles have hit me much, much harder during the quarantine. because my entire baseline system of anxiety is like, it's up here.

I've had it up to here. I don't know that we can say that there are ways to make anxiety completely go away. However, there are a lot of very simple things that we're going to talk about. Kevin has some really interesting experience with this. And also we'll wrap up, you know, in the conclusion and talk about some other things. We'll also put resources on our website, of course. With that, let's welcome Kevin Sussman. Let's have a good time talking anxiety with Kevin Sussman.

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I'm taking it so many times. When I went to school, I used to get on it to go back to Staten Island at the end of the day. And I'd pull out in that awesome cityscape with the World Trade Center. That's right. And I used to think all the time, one day I'm going to live there. And then I did briefly. And I was like, this sucks. Can you tell us a little bit, there are many boys in your family.

Tell us a little bit about kind of, kind of. your family like a little bit about how you grew up and what your folks did and what order you are in the siblings? I'm last in siblings and in life. I have three older brothers. My parents had license plates on the car that said four sons. That was before any of us had brought shame to the family. And yeah, I grew up on Staten Island. I'm the only one that has sort of a creative vibe going on. The rest of them all have normal jobs and lives. My parents were both teachers. My mom was a nurse slash teacher. My dad was a teacher and then an assistant principal for English at a high school on Staten Island that I went to. I took advantage of that at every point, you know, getting out of class and taking the hall room pass to cut class.

I would hide in the bookroom. I wasn't a great student, so I really didn't have a choice. I had to go into the arts. How old are your brothers? How much older than you are they? They're all a year apart, and the youngest of them is three years older than me. What's that story? I think we could all take a stab at what that story means.

The license plate used to say three boys? Exactly. It's crossed out. Yeah, no. And then they updated it. Whoops, four boys. Hold on. Before we move on, I'm curious with the boys and their age grouping, did they pick on you as the youngest?

Or you were enough younger that they were like, oh, you're a cute little thing that we should not beat up. You know, they would pick on me sometimes. But at the same time, if someone from outside the group picked on me, they would, you know, then become my protectors. Yeah. I think that's probably pretty common. There's a lot of specialness to you. One of your features as a performer is, you know, you have this very kind of self-deprecating,

kind of nebishy, you know, quality about you as an actor. And in real life, in the real world, I find you a very charming, you know, a kind of playful version of that. You know, I think the real Kevin is a lot more, you know, a lot more dimensions than obviously. the character that you played on the Big Bang Theory. And I guess I'm wondering, what was young Kevin like?

Like, were you a small Woody Allen child? I identified with Woody Allen. You know, when I was in high school, I watched, I was a big fan of Woody Allen. This is pre-scandal. There was no shame involved in appreciating Woody Allen. It was just his funny, silly movies. And I identified with that a lot. his neuroses.

Before I was a working actor, one of the mistakes that I made as an actor sometimes was I was a little too Woody Allen-esque. I almost like delivered stuff with his cadence and stuff because, you know, I enjoyed him so much. And then as I got, I guess if you can say I matured a little as an actor, I sort of realized, oh, wait, I, the best thing to, do is to just be as me as possible. People have described my comic sensibility as dry,

and a lot of that I chalk up to being the youngest in a group of four boys, all vying for attention. And they were always sort of, you know, they were older, they were more mature, they were funnier, and I developed an ability to be able to be. to pick my moments because I couldn't sort of barge my way into affection. I had to develop a sense of, at least I think this is what happened. I had to develop a sense of timing so that, you know, when there was a lull in the conversation, I could snipe a joke. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure.

Was that a defense mechanism to get in there and grab the love while I can't? kind of love sneak attack through comedy. Maybe, I think maybe that was partly what informed that sort of dryness that people sometimes, you know, credit my comic sensibility with. Do you remember being an anxious child? Like, was there anxiety in your home? Because what I picture, like, I picture the Sussman House. I want them all exactly like you.

Like, I picture that there's like four different, you know, versions of you. is the children, and then I picture that, you know, you're all a smaller version of your dad, but also your mom's like that too. It's just like the image that I want to have of this kind of personality. I mean, I'm sure there's differences there. But do you know, like, you know, there is, there's an anxious energy about you. There's an anxious energy about me. So I guess I'm wondering if you remember that as a child or if it's something you, you know, picked up from your parents or if it was just you. Like maybe all of your siblings are like very suave, charming. models. I'm the only char, I'm the only suave one. I'm, no, actually, we're very different.

We have a very different vibe, all four of us. And in a lot of different, I mean, all of my brothers are funny, but in different ways. And I'm definitely the most neurotic and the most anxiety prone and we're different, also physically, we're so different. When did you start acting? I was in plays in high school and stuff. Does that count? And then I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts after high school and then studied, continued studying after that. It was just a two-year program. And then I study, it was like just enough time to get me completely confused. used. Myam famously has not had formal acting training. I am not. And I think about that a lot. I keep you up at night. Because I think so much of acting training is like counterproductive,

gets you in your head, screws you up. Even good training sometimes I think it takes like years and years to figure out the difference between like acting training jargon and actual like being able to actually incorporate that as an artist. So you actually trained with one of the most famous people you can train with. Udahagen, yeah, after school. I trained with her. And she actually, and I was like at that point, I was so confused. And I would say, yes, but we learned from your book in acting school that, you know, yada, yada, yada.

And she would be like, no, you have nothing. You've learned nothing. And she would put down her little poodle and get up and explain why. all of the training where they, you know, misinterpreted her work. And thank goodness I got a chance to do that because the main thing that I learned from her that nobody in the acting school really talked about, the main difference with her training was that if it doesn't work, if these tools aren't, you know, helping your imagination, if they're getting in the way, then don't use them.

Like she would always frame the stuff that she was telling us in terms of this is what works for me. What I try doing is, you know, that type of thing. So one of the things that is hard for me about formal training. I mean, I can't help it that I've never had formal training, but I've had many opportunities, you know, in my life to take up, you know, formal training. One of the problems that I have, and I've actually never spoken about this, I mean, I've talked to. to you about it a little bit. With acting stuff, my level of anxiety surrounding performing is very, very high. That's a high level of anxiety. And when I've tried to do things like improv, you know, things that are very kind of free form, I, I mean, I freeze. Like, I literally, I freeze.

And it's like that instant not in your throat as if your esophagus has been like taken and you know, like it's stuck and there are tears there. Like I want to cry. And what I've also noticed is it's not that I don't like being told what to do. There's something about that interaction with instruction also that kind of does the same thing for me. I've had this a handful of times when working on Big Bang theory when there was a certain way they wanted a line delivered. And I was like, oh, okay, I got that. I'll do that in the next take.

And I do it, but it's still not right. And sometimes it's that like the audience isn't laughing. Like you know it's not funny. And sometimes it's just that like that our director, Mark Sandrowski or Chuck Lory or Bill Prady, they would want something different. But that I can usually do about like four takes or five takes before like the throat starts doing that thing. So I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit, Kevin, because you and I are both kind of, you know, anxious performers. But we have a very different kind of method around it.

Like we've won, like more than once, we've had plans. We play Dungeons and Dragons together just in case anyone's like shocked that that happens. Shocked that two nerds have played Dungeons and Dragons. More than once, you've, you've canceled or had to, you know, bow out of a game because you had an audition like the next day. And I remember like both of the times this has happened in recent memory, I've said to our friend Eric Kaplan, like, he's so perfect. He's so good. Why can't he come out and play? tonight. And you do have a level of kind of discipline surrounding your craft, which I wonder,

is it related to performance anxiety? Like, what is that for you? I just didn't want to play with you. Oh, stop it. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, it's a great question. That's a great question. And yes, it is. That's exactly why I, you know, tenaciously guard any time, any preparation time that I can get. One of the wild things about the Big Bang theory that I think most people don't realize is how little time we actually got to rehearse because our work took the last five years or whatever. We didn't even work on Fridays. And one day of the week was set aside for like tech rehearsal. So you're not really rehearsing. So that's three days because we also didn't work on weekends. Three days, we would go over each scene. Twice. Maybe a couple of times.

when you think about like a Broadway production, right, they have at least, what, a solid, at the very least month, two months. Absolutely. Every day, all day. Yeah. And we have, for these scenes like a solid, go over them a couple of times. And then boom, we're doing. And so I always wanted more rehearsal time.

And yeah, so for, you know, one of the things that, creates anxiety for me for an audition or for any performance, it's just not feeling prepared. It's less getting up in front of people. You know, that's not what creates the anxiety. For me, it's feeling unprepared. Where is that anxiety, you know, anchored? Is it in wanting, is it the producers?

Is it your fellow actors? Is it yourself? Almost all of the anxiety is unnoticed. and counterproductive. You know, if I thought it through, it probably doesn't even wind up in a logical place. Probably like the big picture, what is the anxiety about is about screwing it up

so that I won't continue to, I won't be able to continue doing the thing that I love. And the irony is that the anxiety makes it not pleasure, to begin with. The whole thing is counterproductive. Reminds me of when I did, the one time I did, I was doing a pilot for Fox and it was, I was, you know, it was one of my first, like, big jobs. And it was the table read for the pilot episode. And there are like, all these people and executives and and Gary Shanling was a guest of the, you know, he was friends with some of the producers and he was there and I was sitting at the table. I didn't know anybody and and Gary

Shanling took a look at me and he came over and he said, don't, don't worry about anything ever. That's my advice to you in life because he saw that I had anxiety and he, and this is a man who, if you've ever seen, there's like a multi-part documentary series on Gary Shanling so much. He was a very philosophical, super talented comedian and actor. So much of the things that he thought about were about anxiety and worry and stuff like that. And at the end of the day, it's rarely helpful. I remember reading, I read or saw something. I don't remember the source once.

believe it to be true that most worrying that we do is like the issue that you're worrying about it, any solutions that you presently can come up with, you'll come up with in about five minutes and anything beyond that is just a waste of time and energy. And it's just where we're hardwired to have this fight or flight response that is evolutionary. so old and antiquated and the things that we worry about like getting up in front of people and being funny is not a thing. There's no real reason to trigger your fight or flight response. And so it's just a waste of time. It's a total head trip to get yourself, it's one thing to know that intellectually. It's something completely else to experience that. When you're having that level of anxiety,

when you said, oh, you could come up with the answer in about five minutes. Sometimes if you're stuck in that anxiety loop, you can't come up with the answer. So you maintain that. And what you really need to do before you can get any other positive solutions is quell the anxiety and calm it down a little bit so that you can think. And, Miami, you could explain the brain science of why that is. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, that's actually, you know, Kevin, when you were talking about this, that's sort of what I was thinking. like if we take you or me,

I'm not a person who is selectively anxious only when I need to perform, right? Like I'm a person who... A lot of anxiety. I have a lot of anxiety. I mean, I'm a person who has a baseline level of anxiety, which has been really coming out in my body, meaning like I've been a nail biter my whole life.

We've talked about this a little bit here. This is a notion of, of course, mind over matter is a thing, but also some of us are born with a predisposition to a more anxious state. And that's not a choice, right? That's not a choice anymore than the other things about us, you know, our eye color. And, you know, we're born with a set of coping mechanisms. We're born with, you know, a set of genes that are expressed for, for particular reasons. and in particular, you know, in certain gene pools, the Eastern European Jewish gene pool being one of them, there's a lot of favoring evolutionarily of vigilance genes and high hypervigilance.

When people hear that I'm shy or that I'm socially anxious or that like parties make me cry, you know, people are surprised to hear that. I have people tell me all the time, like, how do I get your confidence? I'm like, no, I don't consider myself a confident person. And for me, like a very safe place is being on stage. I was never intimidated by the audition process. You know, I started in school plays, you know, in elementary school. But mostly other kids didn't really get me.

And I didn't really get the things that other kids were interested in. It hasn't really changed much as an adult, honestly. But what I knew is that there was something about that approval. system. Like really that feedback loop worked for me. And, you know, for me, my anxiety with performing, like, it's really no different than it was when I was

10 years old, standing in front of Ms. Drake. It was, it's my job to make you happy with what I do. And I don't even need to be entirely happy. Like, how many times on Big Bank theory, right? Do we deliver a line because they told us to deliver it that way

and we don't want to deliver it that way? but it gets the job done, they're happy, and we move on. Like for me, that's what's satisfying. So when people are like, oh, you don't like to watch yourself? No, that's horrible. Like, I look funny, I sound funny, I walk funny. Everything about me does not work for me. That's not my job.

Like, of course I have anxiety about all those things, but that's why it's not my job to watch myself. Like, that would be a curious job to have. Your job is to perform and then watch yourself. I'm curious, Kevin, if you have a similar experience to anxiety, if you're nervous on the stage or if it's just an audition, does it like always happen for you? Or do you find a comfort spot? You were just saying that when you're watching yourself,

that's what leads to anxiety. Me, as a performer, it's similar. If I'm thinking about myself, then I get distracted and then I start watching myself in the moment robbing the audience of the opportunity to see me as the character. And that's when everything starts to go downhill. When I am the most, I don't want to say confident, but outside of my head, when I'm not being self-conscious, it's when I am able to put my attention on someone else. Usually if it's in a scene, I'm able to put my attention on one of the other actors,

barring that, putting my attention on something about the imaginary circumstances that I'm in. And this goes back to me. That's why I want a lot of time to prepare, because I know that I need to make what's going on in the scene more interesting than what's going on in my head in terms of like how I'm doing in the performance. And I feel that this, like most things that I believe to be true about acting are true about life. I think that in life, outside of performing, when I become anxious, it's almost always because I'm in my head, rather than, and thinking about myself, rather than putting my attention out there in the world on somebody

else or something else. I think that, to me, that feels like a universal truth. How do you pull yourself out, what strategies, techniques, both on stage and in real life? Because I love that connection that your anxiety and experience of anxiety is very similar in both places. There was a time while we were on Big Bang that I had an Alexander Technique coach that I was seeing. And Alexander Technique is basically it's a way of getting rid of bad physical habits in terms, mostly with your posture and your line. A lot of people carry a lot of tension in their head and neck and back. Alexander Technique isn't just for performers, but it's great for performers. Many famous actors have endorsed it, though.

Yeah. It's basically just body mechanics, and the main principle is that all of us go through our lives, sort of resisting having both emotional responses and also habitually giving ourselves physical tension because we get into these like minor fight or flight responses on a daily basis throughout our day. And like a natural fight or flight response for most people is sort of like your shoulders go up and your head goes back. And I think I'm not an expert on Alexander technique. This may even be wrong. But, you know, whatever. It's worth actually looking into it if if you're interested. But I think what winds up happening is when you do this, you shorten your

rib cage, you, you tense up your, you know, your body, and you're, you know, you're, you can't really breathe. No, it's not, you're not getting correct oxygen. What fascinated me was that the Alexander technique is a perfect example of what Jonathan I really are so fascinated by, which is the integration of the body and the mind. And the fact, the, the, the, the, the, notion that the way you physically hold yourself and that when you hold yourself in certain ways that you get accumulations of, you know, muscle fibers doing what they have to do to support the structure of your body being held a certain way, it affects things like the amount of oxygen that's going to get to your organs. It is like that that's a real thing. And once different

organs and organ systems and cells have different amounts of oxygen than your normal state, it's going to affect your mood. It's going to affect your coping. It's going to affect how you deal with things. And when you had started this, I had just started doing some very interesting mind-body somatic work. Typically, mine falls more under the category of like PTSD therapy and trauma work. But what struck me was that so much of what you were doing and what I was doing had a similar language. It was like checking in with your body, knowing where your body is in space, like having that awareness and mindfulness.

And it just got me thinking like there's so many different ways we're all trying to get, you know, at serenity, lack of anxiety, you know, all these things. So many similar roads. But also, and we don't have to get into detail. But you and I also have had, you know, some similar ups and down. you know, in our personal lives. So I also remember, you know, I got divorced and I dated someone after that and had a really hard breakup and, you know, my father passed away during, you know, during our time on the show. And like we also, all of us, you know, we got to be together through learning about everybody's

lives. And, you know, we learned about each other's relationships and, and each other's home lives. And so also I know that, you know, I ended up in your dressing room a lot, like, I may have cried once or twice in your dressing room. No, but also just really was so grateful, you know, and I'm so grateful to know you because you understand those things about me. And having people who are going through and who kind of have your kind of brain is very important, especially when you have an anxious brain. Because so many people, I mean, I don't know what suggestions you've gotten in your

life, but, you know, the suggestions I've gotten of like, you need to eat meat. That's the problem. Oh, okay. I'll think, you know, they're like, you need to do a past life regression, or you need to get an astrology reading, or you need a full blood panel workup, or you and I also share allergies, right? Like, we have a lot, like, we've both had full panel workups. We've, we've both had, like, there's been times when it's been like a witch skin ailment is one of us going to talk about with the other person. this week. In life in general, I'm, I don't want to say that I'm not a spiritual person, but I like evidence-based stuff. One thing that I will say about Alexander technique, which is essentially just being aware of habitual physical tension that you have so that you can

let go of it, so that your body can process whatever emotion. that you're going through fully so that you can get past it, rather than having some emotion come up and then squeezing it down. That makes sense to me in a non-spiritual way. Like you're physically preventing yourself from experiencing whatever emotion. So like if you're trying to perform, you can't fully be relaxed or fully be expressive in an emotional way because you're literally holding on to the muscles that you need in order to have a level of relaxation in your breath

and physicality so that you can be fully present. And I think that, you know, the reason why I started studying Alexander wasn't because of a performing thing. It was because I don't know if you remember this, my am, but the reason why I started doing it was because I was going through a very difficult thing in my personal life. And I'm not a big crier.

And this thing was so, you know, I was going through such a hard time that I started crying. The floodgates opened. and it was like, in a way, it was a relief. I'm used to holding back the tears, and my body was like, fuck it, we're going, we're doing this. And I wept for like days, like I was, that emotional thing in my guts was closer to the surface. And I even, I can't remember if I had an audition or something.

I did some kind of performance-related thing in that period, and I realized, oh, there's a whole, like, there's a whole big chunk of my palate that I have not been using because it hasn't been available to me, because I always, like, you know, sit on it. And that's when I realize, oh, yeah, okay. So this very difficult emotions in my real life and in my professional life have been holding me back because I'm not allowing myself to fully experience them. And the irony in life, I think, is that when you are repressing physically emotions, whatever it is, love, pain, fear, anxiety, rather than being. fully open to them, it's actually more excruciating. So when you are trying to like, if you're sad, like, you should cry because that is the body's natural way of dealing with pain, both emotional and physical. But if you've, after a lifetime, especially for a guy, being told that, you know, don't cry, oh, don't cry. Even people that love you when they see that you're

upset. They say don't cry sometimes, not as like a macho thing, but as they think that it will hurt you more. It's actually their discomfort. That's why people say don't cry. Yeah. If they wanted you to feel better, they would say cry because that's the bodies, that's the, you know, you don't need, that's the body's way of dealing with difficult stuff. And it works better than drugs and whatever weird, You know, the coping mechanism, people usually skip past the natural one of the more, you know, reliable ways to deal with that kind of thing. You know, my father died, you know, five years ago. And I remember that the first time I had to act, like the first time I had to, well, I mean,

I had to act a week later on the Big Bang theory. And I remember that for like the first year, which, you know, I, I, I, I, I, said cottage for my father for a year. And I remember it was about that timing when like all of my notes from Chuck Lorry were like, not sad. You're not supposed to be sad. You're supposed to be angry. Like, you know, whatever the scene was. Like, I was always fighting with Sheldon that year, whatever it was. And he was just like, why are you sad? Like, why are you acting sad? And I was like, right, right, right. And so that was just an indication like, ooh, that's seeping through. But like, God knows what else seeps through all of us all the time, right? All of our grief that just like

comes pouring out everywhere. But I remember. that when I did something that wasn't Big Bang theory, I think it was later that summer. And I had to be sad in a scene. And like, I could conjure tears like that. Like, I've never been able to cry on command, you know, as an actor. It's not, you know, there's those like soap opera actresses and they can just like instantly like pretty tears.

No. And I remember I used to like try and practice, like looking in the mirror when I was, you know, younger. I couldn't do it. But when my father died, it was like everything was. right here, you know? And I thought, boy, is that, is that what it's like, you know, to have that access to those emotions? And I remember my therapist said to me, like, what you're feeling now, like in the most acute phase of grief, she said, hold on to it because it is the closest you'll ever

be to him. And I think about that with the emotions that we have to have, especially when we're doing dramatic work, you know, like they have to be available, you know? There have been times in my life when I've taken medication, and there have been times in my life when I haven't taken medication. And what I've noticed is that, you know, for those of us who are double-triple or quadruple winners, anxiety is not my only thing. Like, I should be so lucky that my only thing is anxiety. But for me, you know, depression can get much more dangerous.

I've made an active choice that even in times, like now, when I am on a medication, I don't specifically additionally medicate for anxiety. And the reason is a lot. You know, I'm a person who doesn't like to be on medication. I don't like any medication. And, you know, but there's a certain amount, you know, of anxiety that I kind of, it's kind of with me all the time. And, you know, if you speak to any kind of classic Western psychiatrist or really even most

therapists. And if you were to go down the list, the checklist of the things that. that, you know, I mark off as, you know, anxiety features, they would be able to say, like, there's a pill for that, you know. Oh, and if that one doesn't work, we got six more you can try, you know? And, you know, one of the things that they often give to us anxious people are things like Xanax, you know, which are essentially, you know, they're sedatives. Yeah, I was on for a little while, I can't even remember the name of it now. It's another really popular one. Well, it made me really sleepy.

And that's the reason why I stopped taking it. Not that it wasn't effective in terms of making me less anxious, but it was making... You were less awake. It's less time to be anxious if you're sleeping more. Yeah. And it was just for the type of stuff that I have to do for my job, it was just this, that particular side effect didn't work for me. Right.

And sometimes those just for the, for our audience at home, sometimes those side effects, well, those side effects affect different people differently. Not everyone will have the same side effect. Sometimes they go away. Sometimes it can be months. I like to point out that there was a medication. I won't say the name of it. But this medication that other people have a lot of success with,

people really like this drug, within 36 hours of me taking it, I was markedly violent. Wow. And it was like a wow feeling. I was like, what is this feeling? And I remember I left my psychiatrist a message at the time.

time and I said, I'm feeling really, really not okay. I described to her what I was feeling and she called me right back and she said, okay, please stop that medication immediately. So that was just a little note on side effects. But I also have known people who have taken medication for the first time often in their 20s or 30s and have said, oh my God, like I didn't have to live the way I was living and, you know, even with therapy and even with all the other things in the world, we really, you know, we have a culture that that has evolved this kind of convenience, you know, to be able to say you're behaving and perpetuating behavior in a way that you are deficient in certain chemicals, you know?

Yeah, no, I do think that everybody's like biochemistry is, you know, it's like everything else. It's on a sliding scale. And if you can, if there's a drug that helps, I think that's a great thing. Like I said, the one that I was on, I just had to weigh the side. I mean, it worked. It served its intended purpose, but just the side effects were too, like I wasn't able to. Well, and there are also, there are other ways to manage anxiety.

You had a spell as a pretty avid cyclist. Yes, I still spin. I was a cyclist, and I broke my femur, and now I have a spin bike that I got at the beginning of the lockdown. The exercise thing, not only does it create like a natural high, but for me more so, I think, is that when I'm exercising regularly, it puts me to sleep at night. and getting more sleep is again another one of these natural anti-anxiety things that is huge and like many people with anxiety I have sleep issues oh boy when it's time for me to go to sleep forget it turn okay let's review everything I did that day that you know I have anxiety about and then weigh it against everything I've done in my past going back to you know when it We went from three sons to four sons.

I mean, so yeah, exercise, if for nothing else, even without all the other great benefits of exercise, just the fact that it helps, you know, knock me out at night is it's great. I have nothing, no, nothing bad to say about exercise in terms of controlling anxiety, except for the fact that it's hard. Do you meditate? You know, I think meditation is great, but I don't have the discipline for. I would actually rather get on my spin bike and knock myself out and then like get more sleep that night. Just for me, everybody has their own thing.

I wish that I were more disciplined in terms of meditation when I have meditated. You know, it's never a bad thing. But for me, like, I just, it's easier for me to get my ass on a spin bike or, or like, you know, do push-ups or something like that where, like, I can feel it easier. And it doesn't, like, I just, I know people, every therapist that I've ever gone to has recommended that I meditate. It's just I don't do it as much as I probably should. I also don't exercise as much as I probably should. And if I'm going to do one of those two things, it's going to be exercise. Tell us about the therapy that you've tried.

Yeah, I mean, over the years, I've been to many different therapists. And let's see, the two most helpful things were probably exercise. And meditation. The therapists are always big on meditation. And I usually try it a little bit. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is good. I should do this more. And before I stop.

And also another big one, one of my therapists at one point was like, next time you get, oh, because one of my anxiety things that I do is I will obsess and I will like roll something over in my mind over and over and over and over again. And one of them was like, what you should do is like take. you know, when you have the thing that you're obsessing about, write it down on a piece of paper so that you can, you know, like, not ignore it and then crumple up the piece of paper and throw it away. You've dealt with it and now move on, which goes back to the thing about, like, so much time that we spend, like, worrying and obsessing is a waste of time. And, and, my, I saw you make that

face. Crumble up the piece of paper and throw it away. And here's the thing. I, I, I, I semi agree with the face that you made because that, for me, falls under the category of sometimes that could work. There are things, you and I, I think we've talked about this as well, probably in terms of like auditioning and stuff, the head fake. Sometimes you can psych out your brain. There have been times where I've freaked out about an audition because I really wanted it, which is like the kids. king of anxiety when you want some, you know, like when the opposite of attachment leads to anxiety. For example, one, when I auditioned for Liberty Heights, I remember I was waiting outside with someone who would help me with this audition. And I said, and I was waiting there and I felt

the anxiety mounting. And I said just to like stop obsessing about like the anxiety because I had done the work. At a lot of time, I knew that I had done the work. At this point, the only thing that was going to get in the way was myself. And to get myself out of that place, I turned to the person next to me and I said, you want to play a game? And we're going to play some kind of like improv game or something. And right at that moment, just coincidentally, the casting director said, Kevin Sussman. And because I was about to play a game, my head just by accident was in sort of a playful state. And I walked into the audition and I was able to play, which is like the best place that you want to be. However, that falls under the category of like sort of a mind trick that you're

like, that's the type of thing that you can get away with once. And the next time you try. it, your mind is like, yeah, no, I'm on. I'm on to you. Another example of that, I had another audition. I don't remember what it was for, but I was doing the thing again where I had done the work and I felt like, oh my God, I can get this, which is a whole like anxiety thing in itself. Like, the fact that I knew I had done good work and I could possibly get this created its own anxiety. and I had done this to my screwed myself a bunch in the past with this way of thinking where like I I know I'm good, I know I've done the work. I freak myself out.

I go in. I have anxiety that gets in the way of me fully being great. And then I screw up the audition. I'm in my car on the way home. And it's like I, you know, there's no more. anxiety and I do it perfectly. And this one time I had done the work, I was about to go in, I felt myself getting anxious, and I sort of like tricked my mind by saying, you know what, I know this feeling, this is the feeling of you're about to go in and screw it up. So why don't

we skip that and go straight to like what you would do if you were in the car on your way home, that feeling of liberation where there's nothing at stake because you've already fucked it up. And they called me in and I went in in that car ride on the way home mindset of complete liberation and nailed it, booked the thing. Of course, next time I auditioned, I tried to get my head right in that same and it didn't work. The loops that we get in, though, the fact that you can know you're getting in a loop. And so I love that idea of, oh, you're about to play a game and then that tricks you. Like, we are looking for those self-tricks. And we were talking about this the other day, where one thought leads to the other, leads to the other. And when we're used to allowing those

thoughts to just run anxiety loops, it's very, very hard. When I was working on burn after reading with George Clooney, I was talking to him about this, about auditioning and nerves. And he said that before ER, he was like a guest star on things here and there. I worked with him on Facts of Life. He was a regular. He and I worked together on Facts of Life in 1988. We got to find the pictures of that. Oh, there is a picture, I believe.

I would love to see that. But anyway, yeah, he said that he was in a place where he was getting like facts of life, getting guest star roles. And every time he went in for a lead role in a pilot, he freaked himself out and would screw up the audition. And then one day, he basically came to terms with himself and told himself that there's nothing, when he goes in for this pilot auditions,

these pilot auditions for these lead roles, he keeps freaking himself out. And he learned to think of it like there's, he doesn't already, have the job going in. So there's nothing, he has nothing to lose because he doesn't have it already. And he said that he had that epiphany about like realizing he doesn't have it already. So there's literally nothing to lose. And he said he went in right after that epiphany, audition for ER and boom. Okay. But everybody, everybody needs to relax because here's the thing.

Here's where my name's going to ruin all of our fun. I'm going to ruin everybody's good time. This is why I no longer I'm dating the actor I was dating.

Because you can also be so good. You can be so prepared. You can be so right for it. You can also kill the audition and still not get the job. And this is

the ultimate anxiety and neurosis of the actor. And for me, I go into every audition assuming I'm not going to get it. I'm a piece of shit. I'm uglier, fatter, and less desirable than everyone else. And then you just see what happens. But maybe that's what you need in order to free yourself up to just go in and do what you have to do. And getting yourself out of your own way is essential to see how the cards play out. I get myself out of my way

because I'm so distasteful that I shouldn't even be in my own way. No one should have to be that close to me. I don't know if there's an Alexander method for that. There's not. Kevin, thank you. I always enjoy our time together so much. And I learned a lot today. So thank you.

Oh, thank you. This is fun. Great to see you. He's very thoughtful. He's very, very intelligent. And a lot of times anxious people make me very anxious. but I actually feel very at home with him. Talk to us about the science of crying.

Cortisol has been found to be released in tears. Cortisol is a stress hormone, which, you know, the most simple explanation of that is that crying is one of the ways that we release stress from the body. We release that hormone. Also, it is a physical process, and when you think of kind of the shape that you take when you're racked with sobs is what they say,

I cried like this just the other day. You saw it. You sure did. Your body gives out at my father's grave. I was brought to my knees with tears because all of your energy goes towards producing these sounds and which can be whales, you know. And of course there's cultural aspects to this, you know, different ways we cry in general in our culture. Men are not encouraged to cry. I remember the first time I noticed that my older son needed to cry and was holding. holding back tears. And he was probably a tween, you know. And I remember thinking, well,

well, where the heck did he learn that? Like, how does that happen? It's culture. You know, there's nothing about boys that means they don't deserve to or need to cry. I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to just pick a number, which is not a scientifically validated number by any stretch. This is my favorite part of the show. I would say that there is a very high percentage of men in North America who are absolutely cry constipated. They just don't know how to do it. I think that's a very, very true statement. Y'all don't even know how to do it. It's like, you're still like holding it in and it's coming out here, but it has to come out the whole body. Like, if you don't hyperventilate, it's not a good cry.

Part of this, absolutely, it is cultural. There's cultural aspects of this, but women tend to be more verbal in general. Women tend to be more socially enmeshed. In general, we, we are talking more and talking is going to lead, I think, to crying. I'm going to go on another limb and say that when you experience that depth of crying and it literally looked like your entire soul was being wrung out, I'm not joking. Like the sounds that were coming out of you, the body posture, the intensity. Yeah. That while you couldn't fend off an animal or protect yourself in that moment.

So you could have gotten like my bank account passwords at that point. No, you were incoherent. You wouldn't have shared anything. The point here is that yes, in an evolutionary standpoint, you are weak from immediate predators. But what you're able to access in that moment to as a cleanse as a release of that stress hormone, the depth of that ringing out, I think is exceptionally powerful. I don't know. I slept really well that night. Also, everybody's wondering, why did Jonathan make her call? cry. Jonathan didn't make me cry. It wasn't me. Despite that look, it still wasn't me. Anyway, crying is something that is done out loud as a way to let others know I'm hurting. The cry of a newborn is supposed to be one of the most astonishingly disturbing sounds there is because it's

supposed to make you sit up out of a dead sleep and say, I better tend to that thing right quick. Or it might die. Or it might die. Please go to my website. site Bialikbreakdown.com, BIA, L-I-K, breakdown.com for more resources about anxiety, about crying. There you can also ask my anything, and we haven't asked my am anything. Ask my am anything. Alyssa from Los Angeles asks, how do I manage anxiety when I'm trying to fall asleep? This actually is a great question. This came up a little bit in our chat with Kevin. The reason that I asked him about meditation is because one of the things I started implementing, which

absolutely for me worked, is doing guided meditations to fall asleep. And there are free guided meditations that literally are designed to put you to sleep. I usually start with a body scan when I'm newish or just getting back into evening meditation. It's a very, very calm voice, not annoyingly calm. I use Insight Timer. It's a free app and you can just select, do you want a five minute one, a 10 minute one, 15, whatever you want. That makes me think about something other than what I want to think about. A lot of people also swear by a, in 12-step programs, they call it a 10th step where you review the day. What did I do that I didn't like? What did I do that went well? And sort of putting it aside overnight. You know, in the Jewish

tradition, there's a prayer, you say, which asks God or, you know, something. bigger than you to guard your soul while you're sleeping. And it brings, there's definitely a mantra quality to the prayers that we say at night in the Jewish tradition. But often working out or taking a walk is a good idea. Nothing too activating. I don't mean like, you know, get your sweat on for three hours. But an evening walk is something really good, also really good for digestion, not eating too close to the time you go to sleep because your body will start trying to process and digest, and that even if you're not getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom in the way that is more significant, your body needs to not be metabolizing actively, you know,

right, right when you're going to sleep. So those are some of the things for anxiety. And also, I'm just going to say it, I got a weighted blanket and it makes a big difference. I use a catalog that is designed for children on the autism spectrum and they sell these little weighted blankets. Not the big ones, which are very expensive. They make little ones. And I just like the feeling of it. I put it on my shoulders. I like it. So I often have no problem falling asleep, but then sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night. And when I wake up in the middle of the night in a particular way, I know that I am turning over things that I cannot let go of. And sometimes I just have to sit down, have a journal. You mean you're turning things over and over. That's right. Got it. And I

can't let them go and I can't fall back to sleep. I just write. I write it all out. I write every possible version of it, and sometimes it's two, three pages even, and it's annoying to do in the middle of the night. But afterwards, I'm like it's out of my head at least, and unlike Kevin's answer, where he crumples it up and throws it away, I leave it in the book

so that if I know that it's there if I need it. No, the reason that I turned my nose up at the crumple away thing, I didn't get to get back to that. The reason I turned my nose up is that's a symbolic gesture, and other symbolic gestures are me

taking that piece of paper and opening it back up and staring at it, you know? And we absolutely have the ability to take back our will all the time. So for me, there needs to be a little bit more to it. Yeah, I have something called a God box where I literally put things in there and they're not mine anymore. I'm not saying I keep it forever, but it feels like if my brain is up in the middle of the night, it's worth hanging on to it because maybe I need to go review it at some point and maybe there's an answer in there, but most of the time it's not helping me. And yes, that works well sometimes.

But generally speaking, it's good not to do things that are too activating. You know, if you're having trouble sleeping, that's just my little note. Anyway, do you have more what to say? I'm just going to encourage people to leave us a five-star review. Recommend the podcast to a friend.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Click the notifications for new episodes. And from my breakdown to the I hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my ambiolyx breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.

One fiction. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown.