Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - [Revisit]: Stay Present & Know Yourself, with Kunal Nayyar

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Revisiting one of our most popular episodes from the early days of the podcast - an oldie but a goodie with Kunal Nayyar! Kunal and Mayim had a little Big Bang Theory reunion. Kunal shares the dangers of overidentifying with anxiety, including his own experiences with debilitating panic attacks while driving on the highway and eventually riding in elevators, and how that led him to therapy and a modern day path of self-discovery. He also explains the importance of spirituality as it ties to mindfulness, encourages us to rethink the power we give our minds, and gives us practical ways to turn inward and stay present. Enjoy the best moments of Kunal Nayyar, and tune in on Tuesday for a brand new full episode of MAYIM BIALIK’S BREAKDOWN. Check out our full episode with Kunal Nayyar: https://mayim.simplecast.com/episodes/staying-present-knowing-yourself-with-kunal-nayyar BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Probably my first panic anxiety was when I was 30. I had a panic attack on the highway. Didn't know what that was. I mean, ever since then, I've had to fight some kind of battle with panic or anxiety. There's this real sense in me about taking care of my family. I have to take care of my family. I work so I could take care of my family. There's this sense.

And I was embarrassed because I felt like, oh, if I can't get into an elevator, how will I ever take care of my children? If I can't drive on the highway, how will I take them on a road trip? How can I be a husband to protect my wife if I'm having panic and anxiety? So I hid a lot of that, and I was functional on the outside. But it manifested in other ways, drinking, anger, frustration. But all of that was truly only because I had drifted very far away from my true nature. It's my Beaholics Breakdown.

She's going to break it down free. you because you know she knows a thing or two. Hi, I'm I'm Bi-L. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. Welcome to a bite-sized breakdown on a Thursday. This week, we're revisiting one of our most popular episodes ever with, it's an oldie but a goodie. Kunal Nair. Knoa and I had a little Big Bang Theory reunion.

He talks about over-identification with anxiety. He talks about his own experience. with debilitating panic attacks and eventually how those panic attacks grew and grew, how it led him to therapy and a really, really fascinating path of self-discovery that he's very, very open with us about. He is so spiritually wise and talks about how his mind and his relationship with his mind needed to change and he couldn't think his way out of thinking, which was one of my favorite lines in this episode, the idea that his thoughts were causing him problems and causing

him this panic. And yet he couldn't use his thinking mind to escape the thoughts that were plaguing him. And how does he go about doing that? It's a really wonderful episode. And especially for those of you who may have joined us later in our podcast journey, we're so excited to give you the best moments of Kunal Neir and make sure to tune in on Tuesday for a brand new full episode of Mind Bealach's breakdown. Break it down. Spirituality or spiritual teachings or mindfulness are very good because they get you to a certain point. But eventually, if you begin to live someone else's spiritual life or someone else's idea of the present,

then you're out of the present completely. Like right now, we are in the present. We may be thinking about something or imagining something. That's fine. We've given a lot of power to our mind. But you cannot not be physically in the present. I think it's very important people to realize that. How do you stay so present?

I'm not staying present. I am present. If there's any question you want to ask yourself, is what am I doing right now that's taking me away from the present moment? Because you always are in the present moment. What it felt like for me was a complete sense of no distraction

from the thinking mind and completely just here as myself. It's not always possible. because my mind sometimes. So we are very vivid imaginations. But so it's not about being in the present moment. It's just about accepting that you cannot not be in the present moment. People are turning inward, people are turning towards mindfulness,

something to understand what the meaning of all of this is that's deeper than just what you can see and touch, right? So people are talking a lot about meditation. if you talk to high F1 formula race drivers, when they're racing, it's a similar feeling of being completely in the present because one distracting thought on a turn at 250 miles an hour or whatever is going to, that's it.

I never truly ever discovered consciousness, awakeness, mindfulness, until I began to struggle in my life because I woke up happy. And I was lucky to have a family that supported me and loved me. And yes, they were tough times for all of us. I never had to look within to find myself because my identity, people always say now, you know, I got to get rid of my conditioning. But there's a lot of conditioning that I was good in me. I don't want to get rid of that stuff.

Like being kind to elders and taking care of people and my sort of harming duty towards my family. Those are good things that were conditioned in me that I don't want to get rid of. But when I began to struggle mentally, when I began to have those dark episodes, that was very shocking to me. My first panic anxiety was when I was 30. I had a panic attack on the highway. Didn't know what that was. I mean, ever since then, I've had to fight some kind of battle with panic or anxiety. I had never experienced that.

So I just got off and someone was in the car with me. I said, ah, you know, there's a lot of traffic ahead because I was embarrassed. So I'm having this full-blown panic attack inside. Now I'm being embarrassed. So like I'm pulling off and joking and joking and inside. I don't know what the hell's going on. I got so bad. I couldn't even look at my car keys without feeling panic.

And then I knew something was wrong. And then I had to begin to fight my way back to look at it. Because the scary thing is we don't look at it. We don't turn within and say, what is this? I didn't even know any of that. At the time, I was just trying to get over my fear of driving on the highway. I didn't know that the road it was going to lead me to. I didn't realize what I was going to uncover.

because when I started getting better and driving back on the highway again, it began to happen in elevators. Three years after working on the highway, it started happening. And I've never liked heights or elevators. Never. But then it became like the highway again. And that's when I said something's wrong. I mean, I'm functioning on the outside and I'm dying in the inside.

There's this real sense in me about taking care of my family. I have to take care of my family. I work so I can take care of my family. family. There's this sense. And I was embarrassed for a long time because I felt like, oh, if I can't get into an elevator, how will I ever take care of my children? If I can't drive on the highway, how will I take them on a road trip? How can I be a husband to protect my wife if I'm having panic and anxiety? So I hid a lot of that and I was functional on the outside, but it manifested in other ways, drinking, anger, frustration. But all of that. But all of that, you know, and I was functional. I was functional on the outside. But I was,

That was truly only because I had drifted very far away from my true nature. That was five years into therapy. And that's when I called my parents and I said, I'm sick. Like something's wrong. I'm feeling like mentally sick. They said, oh, it's okay. We see a family therapist. And I was like, what?

I didn't even know. So they sent me to this Indian therapist when I was home. And I had a really, really lovely time. He spoke to me also in Hindi, Hindi and English and there was maybe something about the language that spoke to me in a sort of an existential way, maybe I don't know. And I remember he gave me an anti-anxiety pill and he said, why are you so scared to be here? I said, because I don't want to take medication. I was very afraid to take medication for some reason.

But I was self-medicating with five martinis a night. So it doesn't, you know what I mean? I was still, I mean, I was medicating through alcohol. So he gave me these pills. He said, keep them for an emergency. So you know on your pocket, you have it. So if you're in an elevator and you can't get out of it, take one. Don't worry.

Sure enough, I'm on the 17th floor to go see my dentist and I begin to have this horrible panic. And I had this pill in my hand. I take it out. And I hear this voice. And we just said, before you run away from yourself, I just want to die. Even if I die right now. I'm not going to run away from myself. And I threw it away.

I threw the pill away. And that began my sort of spiritual journey. I don't want to run from myself anymore. I want to get to know who I am. That what sort of was the catalyst for me to really begin to look and spend time with myself. I started doing meditation, started with like two minutes a day, became five minutes a day, became ten minutes a day, became 30 minutes a day. And I realized that it's not a lot.

about the fear of the highway. And it's not about getting over the fear of the highway either because some new fear will spring up. Some new fear will spring up. The mind creates the fear and then the mind creates the angst to get over the fear. I realized I'm thinking about the fear and I'm thinking about getting over the fear. And it was a big aha moment for me to realize, oh, I can't outthink thinking. I can't use the same tool to get over a fight.

thought because it's not about good thoughts or bad thoughts it's about who's in here that's listening and that really was life-changing we were shooting an episode of big bang on a tuesday and i in-between takes i was listening to this meditation and for half a second half a second i experienced a complete gap between two thoughts a complete silence and in that moment i knew myself in a way that I can't explain. And that was five, four years ago. And the journey still continues. Like even today, and I'm being completely honest,

today out of the blue, I just had complete panic for like 10 minutes. As a passenger in my wife's car, out of the blue today. There's this thing that I'm realizing called surrender but. It's like, yeah, I trust the universe. But...

On my own terms. I trust the... universe. I surrender. I let go. But I don't want to let that go. And we get identified with our anxiety in a way where we feel safe with it. It's good that I'm anxious about this, because if I'm not, then what will I do with all my freedom? What will I do with all of my freedom? It becomes a cage in which we feel safe. And I don't really know what to do with that. Sometimes you have to just truly also let it happen. The only reason that is the only reason that you have to just really, you know, the only reason I know when I feel anxious or panicky or anything, it's because I'm disconnected to reality,

that I'm living and either an imagined truth or something that I'm harping on in the memory of my past. That's when I'm disconnected to what we talked about, the present moment and reality. That's when I'm living through the fragmented version of the mind. That's why we talk about letting go of some of this stuff so that you can actually see clearly what is happening. because when you see clearly what's happening, panic and anxiety. My MBLX breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful.

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I began to wash away some of the noise and the storm. My relationship got a lot better with myself. and as my relationship got better with myself, my relationship in my marriage got better. And on the other side, it was true for my partner too. When she began to do her own work, that's where when two people do a lot of work on themselves, it's really lovely to see them come together.

You can be there for someone as much as you can, but you can't do the work for them. You just cannot. I've tried and I failed. And even then, it's your own version of, what they should be doing, your own version of how they should be, your own version of this is what's going to fix them. Letting go is also letting go of those expectations and realizing the only thing you can do for society truly is in here, come home in here, come close to yourself in here,

be at peace in here with yourself. You don't need to go to a cave for 30 years to discover who you truly are, that all of us have the Buddha nature in us, the Shiva in us, the Christ in us, the Yahweh in us. We're all the same source in different stories. It's not a very popular philosophy to help people be free. The reason that programs like here are seven steps to get enlightenment or whatever. Here are 10 steps to become happy and here's 45 steps to be the best version of yourself. The mind loves those programs because it keeps the mind alive and it keeps the mind engaged and it keeps the mind running away from the true source of who you are. There's nothing wrong with those programs. They're wonderful. They do wonders. What we're doing is

eliminating all the projections of how you should be and coming home to who you've really are and living your life from that source and it's not for everyone. I think the number one thing would be to take responsibility for how you perceive things, to understand that if you are able to look within and see, wow, I am conditioned in such a way that my response to A, B, C, D, E, F is such. That's enough to have a little space from it. So you begin to look at your story and say, oh, oh, this is where I'm stuck, oh, that is where I'm stuck. You begin to become an observer of all of the things that you've learned

that you have taken to be you. For example, when you're born, your father has some energetic DNA in his sperm, combines with your mother's sort of energetic DNA, and you come into this world with some kind of, let's say, karma, carmic energy. But outside of that, everything, when you're a baby, your mind is blank, and everything you've acquired.

You've been given a name, you've been taught a religion, you've been born into a home, you've been born into a culture. These are all things that you've acquired since you are a child. And those are beautiful things too. You shouldn't get rid of any of that.

But it's important, I think, for every single human in their lifetime at some point to look within and ask, is that all that I am? Am I only my conditioning? Or is there something or someone underneath, all of that that has been here from the beginning.

It truly comes down to meeting yourself, is to truly look within and ask, like, who is in here? And why do I keep running away from this? You know, what is it that's causing me to run away from this? I've seen incredibly rich people who are unhappy, and I've seen incredibly poor people who are happy, and I've seen vice versa. I stop judging anyone's struggle,

because I know how horrible mental struggle can be, regardless of your circumstances. The reason I'm sharing my story is to help people understand it doesn't matter what you have because what I had actually created this real separation from me and who I truly am, as opposed to the opposite. It doesn't cost anything to look within. It doesn't take any time. It can be one minute before you go to bed. and no one can do that for you. Someone can say to you, look within, look within, look within, and you can say, I don't have time, I don't have time, I don't have time, fine.

But ultimately, it takes a second. The reason people don't do it, the reason people keep asking for this, asking for that, asking someone to help, help, help, help, help, help. Because it's very, very, very scary. Because our whole life we've been taught to look out for people to give us happiness. to work, to take money, to work, to build a house. We're always taught outside in, and never for one second have we ever looked inside.

And that takes tremendous amount of courage. It has nothing to do with money or resources. It just takes a real commitment. It's like when you wake up, before you put on your clothes, and just lie there and say, what does it feel like to not put on this costume for a few seconds. There's no finality in any of this.

If you get into any of this work because you just want to be enlightened or awakened or you want to live some projected version of it, you can have a beautiful spiritual life and still at some point feel anxious. Still at some point feel sad and depressed and panicky. It is life. It's never always going to be,

100% the way you wanted to. That's what we talk about when we say surrender. That there has to be a surrendering of just living your life. And there's no shame in that. There's no shame in feeling anxious. There's no shame in feeling stress. There's no shame in feeling panic. These things may creep up at some point, but they don't last forever.

Thank you for joining us for this little bite-size episode of Myambiolix breakdown. what you hear. Rate, review, subscribe. Visit us on Instagram at Bialic Breakdown. And make sure to tune in on Tuesday for a new full episode of Myambialyx Breakdown from our bite-sized breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's Myambialyx Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a Neuroscience Ph.D. or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown.