Something You Should Know - Why Status is Critical to Your Success & Why Is There So Much Anxiety?

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

In the average lifespan, there are 2 separate years (and they are decades apart) where people report being the happiest. Can you guess what they are? Listen and find out. https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/07/22/study-23-and-69-are-the-happiest-ages/ The higher your status, the more likely you are to be successful. So how do you acquire high status? You might think power grants you status but that’s not really it. People of high-status exhibit 2 qualities – and you can too, according to my guest Alison Fragale. She is a Distinguished Scholar of Organizational Behavior at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times and other media outlets. She is author of the book Likeable Badass (https://amzn.to/47a5P5c). Anxiety! You hear it talked about a lot. It seems as if more people are more anxious than ever before. So, what is anxiety, why does it seem to be on the rise and what is the best way to address it and reduce it? Here with some fresh insight into worry and anxiety is Russell Kennedy, M.D., who has dealt with his own debilitating anxiety. He is also a neuroscientist and author of the book Anxiety Rx: A Revolutionary New Prescription for Anxiety Relief―from the Doctor Who Created It (https://amzn.to/3ANfrqw). Noises have colors. At least some of them do. You have probably heard of white noise but there is also pink, brown and black noise. Listen as I reveal what they are. https://www.wired.com/story/colours-of-noise/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, what would you guess are the two ages in life when people feel happiest? Then, status. Have you ever thought about your own status in the world? You should. Status is one of the most important determinants of our success and our life satisfaction. So what status is, is how much you are respected and highly regarded by other people.

So that is your status. Also, some noises have a color. I'll explain what they are. And understanding anxiety. It's not what a lot of people think. Anxiety is not a real cognitive issue. It's a body issue. It's a feeling issue. It's a feeling that you're not safe. All the fancy cognitive therapies aren't really going to fix it because they're not really getting at the root cause of the problem. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines.

Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. So here's a question I've always wondered about. Oh, hi, by the way. Welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know.

The question is, when are people during their lifetime, when are they the happiest? And as you might imagine, someone's looked into this. And it turns out that if you're 23 years old, you really should enjoy it because you may not be this happy again until you're 69 years old. A study was done a few years ago to determine what are the happiest ages and revealed that 23 and 69 are the best years. At age 23, we're most excited about the future and our dreams. We feel we've really arrived and the world is our oyster. By our late 20s, we start to know better. Reality and responsibility set in and take some of the fun out of it.

And then it's downhill from there through our midlife crisis and into our 50s. But, levels of optimism start to rise again. As we near retirement and start to appreciate the little things in life, including grandchildren, things seem better. At

69, our happiness peaks again. As most of us are still healthy enough to enjoy life without the pressure and uncertainty that those 23-year-olds are about to face. And that is something you should know. When I say the word status, you sort of know what that means. Someone who has status is well-regarded. People look up to them. But you probably don't think a whole lot about your own status.

How do people regard you? Are you aware of your status? And are you working to improve it? Because it just may be one of the most important factors in your success. That's according to my guest, Alison Fregale. She is a distinguished scholar of organizational behavior at the Keenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She's been featured in prominent media outlets,

such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Financial Times, Boston Globe, and Inc. She's author of a book called Likeable Badass. Hi, Allison. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me. So start by going a bit deeper into what status is and why it's so important. Absolutely. So status is one of the most important determinants of our success and our life satisfaction. And we're not talking about it. Everyone wants to know, what do you mean by status?

And that's the crux of the issue or the problem. So what status is, is how much you are respected and highly regarded by other people. So their beliefs about you, that is your status. And they come to those beliefs, how? Their perception of us is based on what? The judgments that people make about us and that we make about other people are not random. They're based on two things. And so if you can visualize an X, Y axis, where the Y axis going up and down is your capabilities, that would be a measure of how I call assertive, but how competent, how confident, how decisive, to do whatever is expected of you very well. And obviously we like that. If we are in a relationship with somebody and we know we can rely on them, we value that. The X-axis is warmth or how oriented toward other people you are. Do you play well with others? Do you care about people other than yourself? And that matters a lot too.

We want to interact with people who are focused on other people, not self-interested. They're helpful, they're sincere, they're likable. And so we show up well to other people and they value us for it when we show them that we're capable and that we're very caring. And that is the foundation of respect and respect or status is the foundation of a lot of these things are mutually exclusive. And that if you're really kind and sweet and wonderful, you might put aside getting the job done in order to be kind and wonderful. So the two things don't go together. At least I think people think that. People do think that. And I think sometimes in certain groups, like women might be an example where they would feel like, oh, this is impossible. You can't be both. And I think sometimes in certain groups, like women might be an example where they

would feel like, oh, this is impossible. You can't be both. And I think, you know, but regardless of gender, people can experience that tension. I think it's because we don't recognize the fact that there are two dimensions. So there's a phenomenon in psychology, and I'm going to tell you the name and then you can forget the name as soon as I've told you, but it's called compensatory impression management. All right, now what does it mean? It means that if I want to show up as really capable, really assertive, and really strong, how will I do that? I will do that by pulling back on my warmth and my friendliness.

So people try to show up as smart by being less nice. People try to show up as smart by being less nice. People try to show up as nice by being less capable. There's no need to do that, but it's a human tendency. So we've created a narrative in our mind where nice and competent are opposite ends of a single line, but we know from the science that's not actually the case. And so when I draw it for you and I say, look, there is space to be both. And we know that space exists because if I ask you to think of a person in your life, you'd say they're very competent and capable and assertive. And they're also really beloved and they're caring about other people.

Nobody has trouble coming up with people who fit that characteristic. So I think it's, we've allowed ourselves to perpetuate this false narrative that it's either one or the other. And then we start acting as if that's true and not exploring the ways in which it is possible to be both. Not only do we know people like that, but we know people like that and probably like them. Absolutely. I mean, those are everyone's favorite people that you want to be around. And here's the beauty of this when I started looking at this. They're not just famous people. When I ask people to name people that fit this, they say, my high school music teacher, my grandmother, my next door neighbor, the first boss I ever had. Everyday people all the time are absolutely falling into the capable and caring

quadrant. And I always say, look, if they can do it, you can do it too. But it doesn't require being a different person than you already are, but understanding how these judgments are made and then turning a little awareness to the self and saying, how do I show up? Am I actively doing things that I didn't know I was doing that are taking away from me being seen that way? And with a couple tweaks, I could do that too. So what does it take then? Because my sense is that the people who I know who are capable and kind, I don't know that they work at it that hard. That just seems to be who they are.

Or do they work at it that hard? That just seems to be who they are. Or do they work at it that hard? They just don't tell me. Great question. So you have to ask the person, but here's what I've observed. Many people do a lot of things very well that have a lot of evidence behind them, but they don't know what they're doing or why it's working. So what they are doing is easy for them, and it don't know what they're doing or why it's working. So what they are doing is easy for them, and it can be equally easy for us. They don't have the insight or the language

of a psychologist to say, oh, when I do this thing, when I celebrate my successes, I'm actually building my status, but they naturally do it. When I send update emails to my boss letting them know what's going on and giving credit to the great work of other people in the process, that's building my status but I don't know why. So what I believe and want to share with people is that building your status doesn't have to be a time-consuming effort. Nobody has time to add that to their to-do list. It can be small, easy things, but the things that other people are doing that are getting them good results are not arbitrary or random. There is science behind them, even if that person doesn't know

what that science is. So if I'm somebody who says, boy, this is ringing my bell. I know exactly what you're talking about. I want to be that person. Where do you even begin? I guess it depends on which quadrant you're not on and which one you are in, but how do you even, because it sounds like you're trying to become somebody you don't think you are. So a couple of thoughts here. First step is you have to become aware of your habits. You have to make the non-conscious conscious. So I would say first step is just take an audit of what you're doing and how you're showing up. And are there things that you're putting out into the world that are actually detracting from people's ability to see you as capable and as caring as you are? So audit

yourself. And then once you're aware, then I think you as an individual have a choice to make. So to know that liking is a basis of influence, and we know that from decades of research on influence to say, okay, people will do more things for me if I'm likable than if I'm not, that doesn't mean I'm walking around being fake to people. But if I compliment somebody when I actually think the compliment is deserved and to know, okay, when I offer that kindness, that person is likely to think more positively in exchange. There's nothing wrong with recognizing that. So you do the audit and then you experiment. So one of my favorite analogies came from a former student of

mine who was a collegiate golfer. And she said something that has always stuck with me. And she said, don't have too many swing thoughts. As a golfer, you can always find things, even as a professional, that you can fix. And you can probably find a dozen of them. But she said, we were coached very early on when you want to be a high level golfer is you only fix one thing at a time, because if you try to fix more than one thing, it is going to be a mess. So pick the thing you want to fix and you forget about the rest, even though you know that they could be better than they are. And I think the idea of tweaking how we show up to the world is the same thing, which is you're already doing a lot of things right.

You've gotten to this point in your life. It's a good life. It's not a disaster. So you don't have to have an overhaul of who you are. You just have to think about what's my next swing thought. I'm going to be a better person tomorrow than I am today and better the day after that. What's the one thing that I can do that would improve the way that I could show up as my authentic self to others to get more credit for the goodness that I'm already putting into the world and leave the rest of them?

So that would be my recommendations to start. So talk about the relationship between status and power and the difference between them? They are things that people often say in the same breath, status and power. Status, as we've discussed, is being respected and valued by others. Power is controlling resources that people value. So if I'm in a workplace and I have the ability to give you the performance review,

to give you the bonus or the raise or to hire and fire or to spend the budget without approval. Those are all forms of power that I have. If with my teenager, I have the car keys, I have a form of power. And so power is controlling resources that people value, whether it's money, whether it's authority, whether it's information. And so sometimes if we see somebody who controls a lot of resources and is in control power, that might lead us to respect them. That can happen. But that relationship of power leading to status is not as clear cut or strong as the other direction, which is status leading to power. And what I mean by that is most of the time,

when someone has the resources, it's because someone else has given them to them, you have been given the authority to hire and fire or to spend the budget, you haven't, you haven't stolen it, my son has been given the car keys, he hasn't taken them without permission. So the power has been given to you. And so when you think about that, when I have a situation where I'm going to decide whether or not I'm going to let somebody have a resource that's important to me, am I going to choose to give that resource to somebody that I don't respect? Not if I can help it, because I don't think they're going to use it well. They're not very capable and they don't care about me. So why would I want to put resources in their hands? So the relationship between status and power is that status is a prerequisite for being

able to have people give you resources for getting power. But having power doesn't automatically grant you status. So one of the mental shifts that I really want people to think about is status first, is focus on being respected and valued. And if you can only do that, if that were your superpower, my kids often like to ask me what superpower I would have. If your superpower could be getting other people to respect you, you'd have to worry about the power because people would want to put the resources in your hands because you're the person who's going to use them well. We're talking about status, why it's important, and how you can get more of it. And my guest is Allison Fregale. She is author of the book, Likeable Badass. Mama, look at me. Vroom, vroom. I'm going really fast. I just got my license.

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Melissa and Doug. The play is pretend. The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. So Allison, so far I've heard you say several things about what people can do to improve their status, to elevate their status. But what about some things that perhaps we should stop doing that will help improve or elevate our status? There are several things that you would benefit from stopping doing. we should stop doing that will help improve or elevate our status? There are several things that you would benefit from stopping doing. A couple examples.

One is self-deprecating. So voluntarily putting yourself down, you know, commenting that you're not very good at something, drawing attention to faults with your work that exist only in your own mind that nobody else is commenting on. I'm a big self-deprecator. So when I started to turn attention inward and do that audit that I talked about, I noticed how much I would naturally put myself down. And even when I wrote my book on status and sent it to my editor, her biggest piece of feedback when she sent it back was, oh my goodness, you need to stop cutting yourself down in this process. So even when I was writing a book about not cutting yourself down, I was doing it. So it's something I very much empathize with.

So that's an example, is simply keeping your mouth quiet and not saying anything about negative about your performance is much better. Another example that is really great research done by by some colleagues in my field is hiding our successes. So it's a natural tendency if something good happens to you to not want to be seen as bragging about it. So we're in a situation social or professional, we could say that something good happened. I just got promoted. My podcast just hit a new high. I just had a great guest on it, whatever it is. And we keep it to ourselves. And we do that because we think it's going to build our status. We're going to be seen as more caring by not bragging.

But for better or worse, we live in a world now where the grapevine is incredibly efficient. And so whatever you didn't say is going to be found out by somebody probably pretty soon on social media, through somebody else. And when you hear that you were just conversing with somebody and that person had a success and they didn't share it with you, is your first thought, what a likable, modest person for not telling me? No, right? Your first thought is, why didn't they tell me? Am I not that good of a friend? Or did they feel sorry for me because they think my life is so pathetic that they couldn't tell me something good? So when we hide a success, that's actually

a mistake. It ends up putting us in that neither capable or caring. And if our success is found out, then we're seen as capable because people know it happened. But we still don't get the caring piece because we didn't tell people. So in that case, sharing your successes is actually more productive for building your status because you're seen as more capable. And you're actually also seen as more capable and you're actually also seen as more caring, which seems a little paradoxical. But when I explain it, you're like, oh yeah, right. Hiding successes doesn't really feel very good when they're found out.

So talk about how this works on a timeline. And what I mean by that is in a relationship with other people at work, whatever, you have a reputation. How much of what you're talking about needs to be done for that reputation to start to shift? Because I imagine just doing one of these things isn't going to make everybody go, ooh, let's give Bob some more status here. It's going to take time, right? It does take time, but the earlier you start in a relationship, the less effort you need to expend. And I think that's really important for people to remember is that, that, um, impressions are

fairly easy to form and much harder to change when we start very early on. So imagine, you know, just if you want to have a little homework or thought experiment just for the next week, go observe as you meet new people, what you start to think of them, and how quickly that thought forms, right? In terms of whether it's the cashier at the grocery store, somebody you sit next to on the airplane, or a new person you meet in a professional context. In short interactions, you start to form these judgments of how capable and how caring they are. And those initial judgments can then be easy to build on without a tremendous amount of effort and to ride. So yes, it evolves over time.

Yes, it is much easier if you have this mentality of doing it as broadly as you can and at the beginning of relationships. And that's why I also focus people on thinking about things that are easy to do as little rules to live by, that if you start living by those rules, you can start showing up this way without a lot of effort to it. And you can do it to a lot of people. So, and I'll give you an example of one of my rules. Every time I have something positive that I think about another person, I have a rule that I do not

let that thought die in my own head. I will tell somebody about it. Either it's an email, I could tell that person. So if I compliment that person, that person is going to feel more positively toward me, right? At the very least, they'll see me as more caring. And they'll probably also see me as more capable and competent too, because I've just told them they're great and they think they're great. So therefore I'm really smart for recognizing how great they are. Or I'll tell another person. And so as you do that, as I do that, just as a small behavior, I found that starts to come back to me in spades. People know that I've said something truthful that's positive about them. They want to reciprocate. They now start telling other people how wonderful

things I've done and they're now building my status for me. So that's a little rule that I live by. Always offering to make an introduction at the end of meeting a new person is another rule that I live by. And I think about that. So as I'm meeting somebody new, I'm thinking in my head, okay, I'm listening to their story. Who would they benefit from knowing? And if I can introduce them, then in five minutes, I've added a little bit. Who would they benefit from knowing? And if I can introduce them, then in five minutes, I've added a little bit of value. So I call these things small deposits because they're easy rules to live by. And those little bits of value are no different than deposits that you make in your bank account, which is that those small deposits then do compound

over time. And then you fast forward six months, a year, five years from now, you're a person who's delivered a lot of value and voila, status has been built without you really having to think you're doing anything differently. Could you give me one more of your rules? So another rule, I call it brag and thank, but in psychology, it's called dual promotion. And that is pointing out something good that I've done while always at the same time singing the praises of other people who legitimately contributed to this greatness. So you don't want to give all the credit away, which people have been told, right? Don't say we when you mean I.

But the research has shown that when you say good things about yourself and also give honest, due credit to other people who participated, you get the credit for both. You get the capability because you did something good and you get the caring because you're complimenting them. So this is another thing. Every time I do something that I think no one's going to know that I did this. If I don't tell them, it's like a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it. I will find somebody to tell often a person in power, somebody that I work with, and I will then compliment the other people involved, and I will see see them. And when I do that, not only am I building my status in the eyes of the person I'm

telling, I'm also building the relationship with the people who feel called out in a positive way and feel complimented. And again, reciprocity rules relationships. And I find that those are often the people who are most likely to come forward at a future date looking for opportunities to repay that kindness and to help me. Well, you know, as I think about it, everybody knows people who have status. We don't think about what it took to get there, what it took to be regarded in that way. And now we know what it takes to get there. I've been speaking with Alison Fregale and the name of her book is Likeable Badass. And if you'd like to read it, there is a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Alison. Great having you as part of the

show today. Obviously, you have a recipe that's working really, really well. And I learned a lot just from getting to be part of this process. So thank you. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life.

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as Eglinton Cstown lrt train testing is in progress please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks remember to follow all traffic signals be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so be alert be, and stay safe. You sure hear a lot of talk about anxiety. People are more anxious. People take medication to control their anxiety. Kids are more anxious than ever before.

Where did all this anxiety come from? What are people so anxious about? And more importantly, what can we do about it? Well, here to dive into all of that and more is Russell Kennedy. He is a medical doctor and neuroscientist who has dealt with debilitating anxiety in his own life and has been studying this problem for a long time. Russell is author of the book Anxiety Rx, a revolutionary new prescription for anxiety relief from the doctor who created it. Hi Russell, thank you for coming on Something You Should Know. Hey, it's great to be here.

So I guess we have to start with what is anxiety? Because the word gets thrown around so much today, but I don't know I necessarily understand exactly what it is or where it comes from. So what is it? Yeah, it's a great question. I don't think a lot of people know what it is. Anxiety to me is just anxious thoughts. It's just your brain coming up with negative worries, warnings, what ifs, worst case scenarios. And really the generator of what causes the pain of anxiety is what I call alarm, which is this old negative trauma energy, survival energy that's stored in the body. And that basically, that energy that's in the body fires up those thoughts of the mind so we assume that anxiety comes from the mind but really it comes from this old trauma

mostly not always but mostly that's held in the body that's only reflected by the mind and where does that trauma come from well it can come from anything i have this mnemonic that i use or acronym called alarms which is abuse, loss, great loss, loss of parents, loss of connection in childhood, abandonment, rejection, which could be bullying or neglect. And then M stands for mature too early. So it's abuse, loss, abandonment, rejection, and anything that made you mature too early as a child. If you had to take up the role of the father of the house or the mother of the house too early, it creates a tremendous amount of alarm in your system. And that alarm in your system is really the root cause of what is created the anxiety.

But can't anxiety just be a personality trait? And the reason I ask that is, even in very young children, you can see the personalities develop where some kids are much more easygoing and other kids are very anxious. They haven't had time to experience all the things you just described, but they are already showing their anxiety or lack of anxiety at a very early age. And it just seems like that's kind of who they are. It does seem Mike that temperament, our temperament is kind of wired almost genetically. So we do see some kids who are just more sensitive than others and they were probably born that way and there's other kids that seem to be kind of happy-go-lucky nothing seems to

bother them. You know that was the case in my family. I was the sensitive one and my brother was the one that was like, whatever, whatever happens. So I think sensitivity is genetic. So when we're born with a sensitive nature, as most anxious people are, and we grow up in an environment where there's lots of love and attachment and connection, that sensitivity turns into love and connection. But if we grow up with trauma, that sensitivity works against us in a double negative because we're sensitive to the trauma. We're already sensitive human beings to start with. So that's why we start seeing anxiety start in young, young children. It also seems often that you will see kids who are anxious and their parents are anxious and that it may just be modeling that the kid grew up in an anxious house and that's where the

anxiety comes from. Yep. Yep. And I think that's true. And I think kids are basically little energy sponges. They pick up. So as much as I tried to shield my anxiety from my daughter, she still picked up on my anxiety and developed some anxiety of her own because there's probably a genetic predisposition to anxiety in there somewhere. There's no actually genetic, you have this gene for anxiety. There's a predisposition to maybe sensitivity. There's a predisposition to maybe rumination. But in general, I think you're right. I think that anxious parents create anxious children. And because our society is getting more stressed all the time, I think the kids pick up on the anxiety of the parents. And it shows

that way. There's lots of people that come up to me and say, you know, I want you to see my 12-year-old daughter or my 15-year-old son. And it's like, well, I'll deal with you first because that's probably where their anxiety is coming from. There's no such thing as positive anxiety. People don't seem to ruminate about how great things might be. It's never that. That's true. It's only how horrible things might be.

And it might be, right? People are anxious about what might happen, not what has happened. Yeah, and we do have a fear bias. Human beings have a bias towards fear because 60,000 years ago, if you heard a snap in the reeds behind you and you just assumed it was the wind, you might be lunch. But if you heard a snap in the reeds and you were extra sensitive and you got the hell out of there because you were just worried in general, those are the people that passed on their genes.

So we've created this, we've taken this fear bias that's innate to all of human beings, and then we've kind of expanded on it. And in the society that we live in, where there's so much fear and separation, it just seems to be getting a foothold like nothing else. And so what are you supposed to do with this anxiety? I mean, anxious people either, I guess, learn to live with it or they go see a therapist and talk about it. But what else can you do? When we look at traditional therapies like CBT cognitive therapy,

anxiety itself is not a real cognitive issue. It's a body issue. It's a body issue. It's a feeling issue. It's a feeling that you're not safe. And we're trying to fix that by trying to talk people out of their anxiety. And because the structure of their anxiety is below the level of their cognition, all the fancy cognitive therapies aren't really going to fix it because they're not really getting at the root cause of the problem, which this deeper often trauma not always but often trauma that's still

held in the body that was pushed down when you were younger so how do you fix that so you you get in touch with the feeling of it so that's what i do with my clients patients whatever you want to call them they'll come in and they'll say, I'm really worried about flying. It's like, okay, where do you feel that when you think about waiting in the holding area for the plane to board? Where do you feel that? It's like, oh, I feel it in my gut. In my gut. Okay. What's it like? Well, it feels like a squeezing pressure. It feels like a pain, a pressure in my gut that's hot and red and hollow. Like I will prompt them. I'm speeding up this quite a bit. But really, it's trying to find the anxiety in your body as opposed to trying to find it in your head. We can always find it in our head. You know, like Brene Brown

says, don't go looking for the reasons why you don't belong in the world because you'll always find them. Don't go reasons for looking for anxiety because you'll always find them. So really the root cause is this often this trauma that's held. And this can be handed down in generations too. There's inherited family trauma as well. And sometimes as a medical doctor and neuroscientist, I want to have a seizure because this sounds so woo, like it sounds so out there. But in dealing with thousands of people with anxiety, what I often do will say, okay, let's just move out of your head, all these worries in your head, these warnings, worst case scenarios. And when you feel anxious, quote unquote anxious, scan your body. Like, where do you feel it? Is it

superficial? Is it deep? Is it hot? Is it cold? You know, where is it in your body? Because that often is the reference point to where that alarm is located. And that's what we have to soothe. That's what we have to heal. That's what we have to connect with. Because I do believe that that alarm is a version of your younger self that didn't get the attachment that they needed. That didn't get the love and connection that they needed back then. And it's up to us to give that love and connection to that part of us now.

And how do you do that? Well, you find it in your body. So for me, I took a trip on LSD because I was so frustrated with every therapy that I was on. Medications, psychiatrists, psychologists, nothing seemed to help. So I took a trip on LSD and it showed me that my anxiety, which was really the state of alarm, was held in my solar plexus. It was this hot purple fist-shaped thing that pushed up against my heart and pushed into my spine. So it's really becoming welcoming to that pain. Like so often when we feel this pain, we push it away, we push it away, which of course creates more pain. So if you look at it, as I say, as a younger version of you, say the child version of you who was hit, who was beaten, who was yelled at, who just never could

get anything right, who had perfectionist parents, that's in our body. And if we could put our hand over that area, if we can find that sensation and we can start metabolizing that sensation instead of every time we feel anxious going up in our heads and trying to figure it out, if we actually sit with that sensation and move through it, we have a chance of actually healing the root cause of the problem as opposed to just putting a Band-Aid on it

by learning better ways of thinking about it. Okay, you just said something that I think confuses a lot of people and disengages a lot of people from a discussion like this because you said, sit there and move through it. And I have no idea what you mean. I don't know what sit there and move through it means. Okay, good. For many, many years, I woke up with alarm.

I woke up with this sense in my solar plexus. It was the pressure, the pain, the discomfort that was there. So I put my hand over it, breathe into it, and just allow it to be there. There's a famous book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. He's a famous psychiatrist out of Boston. And he says, we're not teaching people how to get rid of their anxiety. What we're teaching them how to do is acclimatize to this sense. I call it alarm. He doesn't call it that. Acclimatize to this sense of alarm so they don't compulsively have to go up into their thoughts

and try and work their way through it. So really it's about, there's other techniques I can use too. So I can get you to find this place of alarm in your body, in your belly or your throat or your heart area or your chest, and just put your hand over it. And then, and then ask you, what was the very best time in your life? It's like, well, when I first met my wife or, you know, the birth of my first child, it's like, okay, well, let's go into that feeling. Let's go into that, how good that feeling went or getting that huge promotion at work or, you know, winning the lottery or whatever it is. And then go back and forth between this alarm feeling in your body and this great feeling that you had, because that tends to kind of change the initial alarm. Because if we don't actually pay any attention to it,

we don't get a chance to change it. So with you, I would find the alarm in your body. Say it's in your heart area. I get you to put your hand over it, breathe into it. And then what was the best time in your life? And then we would go into the emotion of that. And then I would track back, okay, let's go back into that alarm again.

Let's go back into the time that you were hit by your parent or whatever. Let's go into the pain of that. Okay, now I'll pull you out of that and go into what was another great time in your life. This is just one of the techniques that I use. But really what we're doing is we're metabolizing the fear that's there and we're creating a different template to follow so that it doesn't seem so overwhelming. It doesn't seem so abhorrent. So we don't have to push it away. We don't have to push this alarm feeling away because as long as we do that, we will always be anxious. So if we can bring it in and we can allow ourselves to feel it, and often the reason why this theory and this hasn't been used so much is because people just don't understand that anxiety has more to do with this state of alarm in your body than the thoughts

of your mind, which is very counterintuitive. So if you start realizing, okay, when I'm anxious, when I get up in the morning and I'm feeling scared, where do I feel that rather than going into all the stuff, I have the dentist tomorrow, I have my taxes, you know, rather than going into all that stuff, it's like, okay, where do I feel this in my body? And really focus in because this is the missing link. This is what most therapies don't do. They may say, where do you feel that? But they don't really drill down into where is that feeling? What does it feel like? And then often I'll say, okay, when you have that feeling, let's just really hone into that feeling. Now, how old are you? It's like some people say five, seven, eight, 12. It's like, okay, let's just stay with that.

What were you doing when you were 12 years old? Well, my parents were divorcing. Okay, let's go into that feeling. Is that the same feeling? Yeah, it is kind of the same feeling. Okay, now we're onto something. So it's really tracking into the feeling as opposed to trying to get people to think differently because thinking is like air. Like it just moves through.

We don't, George Carlin called it brain droppings, right? Like it's just things that just don't have any real resonance with us. But feeling, emotion has tremendous resonance. So it's a matter of how do we alchemize the emotion? How do we alchemize this feeling of alarm in our body and stop chasing our tails by trying to figure out, thinking that we can figure out changing a feeling problem, which is what alarm really is, with a thinking solution, because it doesn't work that way.

When I think of people I know who I would describe as anxious people, if you took their anxiety away, they wouldn't be the same person, because that anxiety, in a sense, defines them to a certain degree, that without it, they would be somebody else. In a way, it's curious. We worry because it makes the uncertain appear a little more certain. And because uncertainty was so abhorrent for us as children, we will do anything to avoid uncertainty. What we do is we start worrying. And when we worry, we create dopamine in our brain. When we feel like we're on the right track, when that pain in our belly is cancer, oh

my God, it must be cancer. We get a little dopamine hit in our brain because it makes the uncertain a little more certain. Now, of course, the result of that is horribly painful. But the problem is it does work temporarily. But in the long term, it just creates more and more and more worry and more and more and more alarm. So this is what we have to kind of roll back on. We have to kind of get out of our heads, get into our bodies and really start getting a sense of peace and connection with ourselves so that we don't need this dopamine hit anymore.

We can learn how to settle into ourselves. But I know exactly what you're saying. There are some people that are driven by anxiety, but usually 40, 50, 60, that's when they go over the cliff. That's when they can't do it anymore. The coping strategy of worrying, because you get dopamine, you get endogenous endorphins and enkephalins, you absolutely do get that, but it comes at a price. And the price is that you believe your worries, which of course makes this alarm energy in your body so much stronger. So that's why anxiety tends to get worse as we get older, because we're building this alarm higher and higher and higher and not really doing anything about it specifically. So yeah, some people can. I lived on accomplishment. I became an author and

a stand-up comedian and a medical doctor and a yoga teacher based on that drive for accomplishment. And anxiety drove me that far. But it also drove me close to suicide because it exhausted me but it would seem if you have anxiety that means your brain spends a lot of time worrying and if you are able to somehow relieve the anxiety then you're not worrying so it seems like your brain's going to have to find something else to do because it's got to do something. And it's so used to worrying. Yeah. So it takes a while. That's why I see things like cure your anxiety in 24 hours, you know, cure your anxiety in one week. These intrinsic programs, these body memories that are in the body don't get erased quickly. So it is one of those things that it's not the anxiety, it's not the

repetitive ruminative thoughts that are hurting you. It's the fact that you don't see the alarm below them. And it's the alarm that we have to get in there, feel, allow to process, be in a safe environment with. That's how we heal from anxiety. The anxiety is just the byproduct of this alarm that's in the body. So when we treat the alarm, as this is the case with me, the anxieties have nothing there to feed them. So they just naturally kind of fade away, but it does take time. That's the thing. It does take time before these old implicit memories, these old body memories, these old unconscious programs start to get chipped away at because they have been a coping strategy. use neuroplasticity to change the way our brains interpret our environment and perceive it and then create a story for us that we can live happily under as opposed to being, you know, I had this story about carrots and sticks. So a lot of times with people with anxiety, we hit ourselves with

sticks. We say, well, if I don't get this done, I'm going to get fired. I'm going to get this. And that's what drives them as opposed to, okay, how can I be kind and connected to the younger version of me? Because it's the younger version of you that's alarmed, that's anxious. It's not the adult version. The adult version kind of knows that things will be okay on some level. It's the child in us that kind of freaks out and keeps saying, hey, what about this? What about this? What about this? But we're not a child anymore.

We're an adult now and we can use different strategies. Some of them are cognitive. I'm not saying that cognitive strategies don't work, but I'm just saying that cognitive strategies alone, just trying to fix the way you think about your anxiety will not fix it. You have to go in and fix the root cause, which is this state of alarm, this energy that was put into you probably when you were a child.

Yeah, well, it makes sense because, you know, if you could think your way through this, you would wonder why when people are anxious and worry and typically worry about what's the worst that's going to happen, and it never does or seldom does right you don't learn from that that you don't go see well that was there was no reason to get so worried but the next time you get just as worried well the thing is the thing well there's the thing you just hit on a perfect point

is that when you worry about something happening and then it doesn't happen, there's an unconscious part of you, deep inside of you, that thinks that it didn't happen because you worried. Because a lot of this is childlike. A lot of this alarm, a lot of this anxiety comes from our child self. So we actually believe on some childlike unconscious level that the bad thing didn't happen because we worried. And then you get into this horrible, horrible, horrible situation where people are afraid not to worry.

And then I had one of my patients said to me, Dr. Kennedy, I get worried when I'm not worrying. So we've been talking about a lot of things, but sum it up for me. You're saying that anxiety is not in your head as much as it's in your body. And just explain in summary exactly what you mean by that. It all comes from just this alarm energy that got created in our childhood.

So you're a seven-year-old child. Your father's screaming at you. You don't know what to do with that. So what your brain automatically does, and this is a Freudian term, it represses or suppresses that and it pushes it down and it pushes it into your body so your mind can kind of have this working memory and be able to operate. But it's always there. That alarm is always there. So that's the root cause of what is fueling the anxiety. So if we treat the alarm by connecting with it, seeing it as the younger version of you, breathing into it, exercising,

do all this sort of thing where you start metabolizing the survival energy in your body, then you start giving the worries less to feed them. And when you give the worries less to feed them, there's just less worries. Well, I'm sure as everyone else has, I have felt anxiety. And when I hear you say it's in the body, you know, that kind of sounds right. That feels right. That maybe it's not all in our head. And it's a fascinating approach. Russell Kennedy has been my guest. He is an MD and neuroscientist and author of the book Anxiety Rx, a revolutionary new prescription for anxiety relief from the doctor who created it. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Hey, it was great having you on. Thanks, Russell.

So I really appreciate talking to you, Mike. Thank you so much. Do you know the colors of noise? We've all heard of white noise. That's considered the flattest noise. It's a continuous sound with level frequency that covers a broad spectrum. Static noise is white noise. But here are some of the lesser-known noise colors. Pink noise. It's similar to white noise, except with an emphasis on lower frequencies. It's less noisy than white noise, more like a waterfall. Brown noise is the lowest noise. It's more of a soft, deep rumbling. Thunder, trains, and that subwoofer from the car in front of you, they all fall into the category of brown noise. And black noise has a few different definitions,

but most commonly it's considered the absence of noise. Black noise is silence. And that is something you should know. One very powerful thing you can do to help support this podcast, and it is so easy, and that is to share this podcast with someone you know. Every podcast platform, whether you listen with Apple or Spotify or wherever, they all have a little share function on the show page, and it's easy to send it to anybody you know, or everybody you know. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks

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