Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to Handle Coronavirus Anxiety | Special Edition

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

We're all being inundated with unsettling news about the new coronavirus, but there isn't a lot of information out there about how to stay sane, balanced, and calm in the midst of this pandemic. So that's what this special episode is all about. We've brought in two highly qualified experts: Dr. Luana Marques, an anxiety specialist from Harvard, and Jay Michaelson, a meditation teacher (who also happens to be a lawyer, journalist, and rabbi). We discuss practical tips for handling the fear, uncertainty, and denial that is arising for so many of us right now. Dr. Luana Marques' website: http://www.luanamarquesphd.com/ Jay Michaelson's website: https://www.jaymichaelson.net/ Email address for health care workers who want free access to the app: [e-mail] Buzzfeed article: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/coronavirus-prevention-what-to-do-how-to-help See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hey guys, we're doing a special edition of the show this week because as everybody knows we're in the middle of this outbreak and we want to lean in and give you guys some tools to weather this storm and we've got two amazing experts with us. Before I dive in, I want to say one thing which is if you are a health care worker, we at the 10% happier company understand that this is a massively stressful time. So we are offering free access for six months to anybody who's responding to the pandemic.

You can hit us up at care at 10% dot com for access. Again, that's care at 10% dot com for access. Again, that's care at 10% dot com. I'll put that email address in the show notes. And by the way, feel free to share that with any health care workers you know who might benefit from this. And thank you for your work. Really appreciate that.

All right, let's dive in. As mentioned, we've got two amazing experts. Let me give you their bios. The first is Dr. Luana Marquez. Am I saying that correctly? Luana Marquez? Yes, we are. Okay, she's a clinical psychologist,

an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy. She told me, by the way, that this bios too long when I'm reading it anyway, because it's very impressive. An expert in CBT for a wide range of psychiatric disorders, the senior clinical psychologist at the Mass General Hospital Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders Program,

as well as an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and she wrote a book called Almost Anxious. Hi. Hi, thanks for having me then. My pleasure. Our next guest has been on the show many times. He's a good friend.

Jay Michelson is a teacher and editor at 10% happier, a columnist for the Daily Beast. He's written six books on contemplative practice, including his most recent one, which is called Enlightenment by Trial and Error. He was professional LGBT activists in another life. He holds a PhD in Religion from Hebrew University, at JD from Yale Law School,

and also fun fact, he's a rabbi. Jay, good to see you, bud. Good to be back. All right, so let me start with you, Dr. Marquez, or can I be informal and call you, Alana? I was just going to say, please call me Launa. Cool. So just off the top of your head, given that so many people are so anxious right now, I'll put myself in that bucket, I'm pretty worried about this, what are your first blush thoughts about how we can deal with this in a healthy

manner? So then I think the first thing we all need to remember is anxiety is appropriate right now. There's a sense of like, well, should we be anxious? It's a real threat, right? And so I think we can really work a lot on our thinking. We can work on what we are saying to ourselves, to try to pull ourselves down. I know that Jay does a lot of meditation, so practicing meditation as you do as well. Anything that could allow you to sort of calm your brain down, it's something

that we should be doing right now. Okay, so two things I want to follow up on there. One is that anxiety makes sense as kind of adaptive, I would imagine right now, given the nature of the threat. But I would imagine there's too much of a good thing. You, I was reading some notes on your work, provided to me by some of the folks on the 10% team. And there's a phrase I'd never heard before looking for it on my notes right here, something called the Yerks Dodson curve. What is that? So the idea that anxiety has a diverse relationship of performance.

Think about this this way. When you wake up in the morning and grab a cup of coffee, you're sort of waking up and getting more aroused, right? So up to a point, the more anxious you get, the more performance you have. Think about being on the zone. People talk about this all the time, right? That there's a point, a tilting point though, that too much anxiety affects anything they were doing. So we can't think critically, we get stock,

we start to get more anxious. That's why we're almost anxious. This idea that there's a tipping point on anxiety and performance, and that curve shows us exactly what that looks like. So just state that you need some anxiety to get you to the plate. I'm sorry, I'm going to use a baseball analogy, and I know nothing about sports, and you're

from Brazil where I don't think they even play baseball, but to get you to the plate, but if you're gripping the bat so tightly and freaking out, you can't effectively swing. That's correct. At that point, we are all in fight-of-flight. The Olympic system kinks in, and it's pure biology, and we don't actually have the ability to think critically at that point, or actually even behave in a way that makes sense. So how do we apply that to right now?

Because, as you said, there's some amount of anxiety that makes sense here, but I suspect there are some of us who at times are on the wrong side of the curve. So I think the first question is, are we getting there? Right? And I think everybody can think about their own anxiety thermometer and thinking about, okay, what are the indicators for me that I know when I'm getting to anxious? The classic things are you're a little more edgy, right?

You have trouble sleeping. You're stop eating or eating too much, right? So first is finding if you're actually there. If you are getting to that place that you really get into too much, right? So first is finding if you're actually there. If you are getting to that place that you really get into too much anxiety, then I think we have to go to skills. We have to figure out how to bring your limbic system down. And so in cognitive behavior therapy, we talk a lot about our thoughts, our behavior, and our feelings. So for example, if we're going to look at the data in the news and if you're going to find any reliable source, make sure that you are waiting the information so that your thinking is not

to get a traffic. Right? So being able to right gauge what the data is coming in so that you're not walking around saying, I'm certainly going to get this and I'm going to die. So bringing down that anxiety related to your thoughts often comes down to physiology. But that sounds easier said than done. Because I can, what can I do if I notice I'm in a spiral of catastrophic thinking, what's the move?

So I would go, if you're really stuck and you're spiraling, right? Think about control out the lead for the brain, and so things like doing something behaviorally, going for a jog, going for a walk, calling somebody that you know you trust. If you really, really stress a quick technique from dialectical behavior therapy, grab two ice cubes and hold them.

It actually coals down your brain, and it calms it down a little bit. Huh. Okay, so you keep doing this, you say things in there about 75 follow-ups I want to ask. When you talk about the phone call, social connection seems both massively important in a time of anxiety and also very tricky given the mandate for social distancing right now. How would we manage that? So I think that's where you know FaceTime and any kind of connection that's virtual helps because the reality is you still feel be connected right I know this because my family is in Brazil right we're all on FaceTime talking so if if you're feeling isolated, definitely put your risk

for more anxiety and for depression. So finding ways to connect, that's a virtue. It's probably a protective factor right now. In terms of the other, I just want to make sure I put a fine point on this. The other things that we can do to press control all delete, ice cubes would be on the extreme end of it. I imagine that would be the extreme end of it,

but exercise, you mentioned as another thing. Although that too was tricky because gyms, or I would imagine massive vectors for disease right now because they're sweat all over the place, but you would recommend, go to the gym, but do it carefully or run outside. I recommend the run outside. I mean, or be careful with the gym,

but any kind of exercise. I mean, a brisk walk, it's something that any of us can do, especially in a cold day, comes you down a lot. Going up down the stairs, right? Be creative. Do jumping jacks at home. But I definitely think that an exercise brings down anxiety and it does it fast, right?

We all know this and also helps with our immune system. And we all know that our immune system needs to be strong for us to fight those virus. What about you, you mentioned news titration sort of, I don't want to put myself out of a job or Jay, but so you want us to, you say it's okay to, I would imagine it's important to stay informed and engage by the same token though,

you don't want us to get pulled down into a rabbit hole of news to the point But imagine it's important to stay informed and engage by the same token, though, you don't want us to get pulled down into a rabbit hole of news to the point where we're making ourselves miserable and ineffective. Exactly. I think it's a right dosage for you, right? Being able to stay connected, get good information like the information you're showing, but also be able to walk away a little bit. How do we, is there a way that we can know when we're going too far?

I think you're biology can tell you. Sometimes you're watching the news, your heart's pounding, you feel a little anxious, that's time to walk away. Sometimes you just feel like you're paralyzed and you're sort of so addicted to it, that's time to walk away. Do you think most people have that kind of self-awareness? I think people have some understanding of it. If you really feel like they don't,

then I think you put a limit on it 20 minutes an hour, right? Or maybe half an hour and take some breaks, but making sure there was a dosage effect here. And sleep. It's another kind of double bind, because sleep is super important. We've talked about that a lot on this show and yet when you're stressed or anxious It's hard so I was up until 3.30 last night and So and I feel diminished as a consequence and yet and I knew at 2.30 that I was gonna feel diminished as a consequence and that I think compared my ability to sleep. So what do we do in that rabbit hole? It makes both of us, right? I think all of us are worrying a little bit. So I think a couple things. Good to be paging, turning off your phones, turning off the news at a reasonable time. The increasing caffeine,

chocolate, anything that activates you. And if you can't sleep, get out of bed. Because sitting there and worrying, guarantee you won't sleep. Right, right. And I know that, and that's exactly what I did last night. Sat there and worried, the student. And I actually am one of the co-founder of a meditation app that has sleep meditations on it, which my wife recommended I do, and I didn't do it. Those sleep meditations, and I could have helped you out at 2.45.

Yeah, well, you know, I never said I wasn't a hypocrite. So, Jay, you've listened to this discussion as far as any thoughts on the foregoing. I mean, I love everything I've heard. I think partly it's that awareness of when you're not aware, awareness of, oh, I'm lost right now. And obviously, you know, in the meditation world, the mindfulness world, that's kind of one of the core things

that we teach, metacognition, aware of what's happening in your mind. Oh, I'm really stressed right now. I'm really happy right now. I'm really hungry right now. I'm really tired right now. That metacognition is just aware of what's happening in the mind. And that's developed in formal meditation and in mindfulness, but it can also just be developed by doing it a lot, by just kind of doing that gut check. You know, one of the things, not in this case of anxiety, but to regulate, let's say, our screen time, the Pomodoro just reminds you that little software app

that just every 15 minutes, like, hey, it's been 15 minutes. And that's all, just having that little reminder. So likewise here, you might want to amp that up a little bit more, finding some way to just remind yourself that, oh, it's, I've been, am I really learning more in the second hour of my news consumption of terrifying articles about this pandemic? And you know, it is a matter of finding the balance because I just sort of wanted to

throw this in. While I think most listeners are probably informed and struggling with anxiety, there are also a lot of non listeners who are struggling with anxiety, there are also a lot of non-listeners who are struggling with denial. And that's a sort of very tempting refuge because this is terrifying. And it's just hurting everyone, either financially or emotionally or hopefully not physically, but in terms of health and in terms of people who we love. And so denial is a really comfortable place to hang out, and that's at the highest levels of our government right now. And so it's sort of a balance, right? We want to not be binging on terrifying articles until 3.30 in the morning, but we do want

to be aware of the severity of this issue, and our moral responsibility to those who are less resilient and who are more vulnerable. I may personally not have that bad of a run of this particular virus, but my mother-in-law sure might. And knowing that and taking that very seriously, as much as anxiety is something that I'm sure a lot of people are struggling with, Niall is also. You know, I was thinking about that. I'm sure you have a lot to say about this,

but they seem like flip sides of a noxious coin, panic and denial. Do I have that right? I think so, in many ways, and I think you're right on, Jade. This idea that one way you avoid your emotions by denial, right? Instead of feeling the anxiety, you're just not looking at it. And that gets people equally stuck,

especially because they go for things like drugs and alcohol. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it gets harder to deny reality. You have to work harder and harder to do it, and that does become very dangerous. And I think, but we're really seeing some of the effects of that, and some of the effects in, again, whether it's government policy or otherwise, that there's a tendency to really try to run away from difficult feelings.

So again, sort of putting my meditation hat on, that's another thing that we teach over and over and over again, is to just see clearly what's happening. And just, can I be with it? Can I just be with whatever's actually happening? So yeah, seeing that there's anxiety, present. You know, a lot of things that, one thing that a lot of people do is they judge themselves for having these negative feelings,

or feelings that they don't want to have. So I feel anxious. Oh, I'm a meditation teacher. I shouldn't feel anxious, but the hell is wrong with me. I had those thoughts last night, right? And I was coming in, I went into the studio this morning to record guided meditations for working with anxiety. And last night, I was filled with anxiety.

So there's that extra layer of suffering, of self-judgment, of self-castication, that that is part of, that's the part that maybe we could do something about. But recognizing that anxiety is here, fear is here, it's justified, it's not all in your head. There are parts that are in your head, but it's not all in your head. This is a real thing.

So then how can I show up and be more resilient for my family, for my loved ones, for my community? Because it's not just about me wanting to feel calm, to feel good, it's me wanting to be effective, and to make smart decisions that are driven by science and by what the experts are telling us and not by my desire to either run away from reality or just obsess into it. You did it to me too. You know either of a million things I want to follow up with you on. On the issue of the sort of, I want to get into the basic blocking and tackling of how meditation can help, but let me just stay with denial for a second because I you can point to people in the news who are accused of denial, but for me more interesting is to watch it play

out on my own mind. I work in the news. I've been reporting on this virus for weeks and on some level, not really taking it seriously enough. And I don't think it frankly was until Monday or so that I started to get really properly worried. And is there some adaptive component to the denial, do you think, or is it all bad? I don't think it's all bad. I mean, what you're talking about is the closer it gets, the more anxiety we get, and then we start to worry more. Right? So I think we're right sizing it. And until it gets really close, we get to that fear. What you're talking about in my mind? It's not just denial. You're going through the motions, maybe we can talk about it denial, but you're sort of in some way doing what you're doing. And you hadn't really come close enough for you to feel that fear yet.

And then when you get there, then it hits. I mean, the truth is, we should be more altruistic and we should be compassionate toward all people everywhere. But that's not really how our evolution early wired. And when this was a disease that was mostly halfway around the world, it wasn't affecting our everyday life. And so again, we should have been perhaps more concerned, both from a scientific point of view and maybe from an ethical point of view, but it's where human beings.

And now it is here, it's not halfway around the world. It's probably on this block, and maybe even closer. And being aware of those feelings that come up is a way to neither fall into denial, nor obsession and anxiety. It's so interesting to watch as we're recording this on a Thursday, it's going to post on a Friday, but last night, Wednesday night, as the president was speaking, I started to just have this feeling, uh, this is some, there's some mysticism in this because I, but I, I felt almost as if I was kind of a little bit plugged into the national mood and I'm watching the president, all of a sudden, is talking in a completely

different tone. Tom Hanks announces, announces that he's got, um he's got COVID-19 or the coronavirus and the NBA suspends the season. And I thought, okay, here we are. Now we're all reckoning with this. But part of me, and I feel even more so today, part of me is wondering, why does it take Tom Hanks for many Americans to really wake up to this. But we've seen this in past epidemics, we saw this in AIDS. It took, whether it took raw cudson or ryan white or other of the sort of

full existence. And the people, the people, the people that are really personalized, the celebrities are in our lives. And that is, again, it's just part of being human. We personalize things that even aren't personal, whether it's whether patterns and storms we name them too. And so there are faces to this pandemic. And I think, to me, where denial is now a problem,

it's two places. First, where there are voices with a lot of power and large media platforms that are just not covering the reality of this for political reasons. And that's true for a major cable news network, and it's true for a lot of individual commentators, and it's deeply putting my rabbi hat on instead of my meditation, had on deeply immoral, because it's really dangerous. It's going to kill people if folks don't take the kinds of social distancing steps that

will flatten the curve of this pandemic. We will, we can't avoid it, but we can slow it down. Just for those who are uninitiated, I think a lot of us have heard flatten the curve, which is redefine it. So there's a couple of some famous graphs going around, and I hesitate to say too much about this with an actual scientist in the room. But if the rate of infection goes at a certain speed, hospitals will become overwhelmed. If the rate of infection goes slightly slower, that will still be a massive public health crisis.

But we won't have maybe the situations that we're seeing now in Italy, for example, where hospitals don't have room, where people are dying in hallways, where there isn't enough equipment or people to take care of them. So slowing down the rate of spread is absolutely essential. So that's one kind of denial. The second is on an individual level, where those of us who are fortunate enough to be healthy

and relatively young and who thus don't face a particularly high risk profile can say, well, I'm just one person. I can do this thing or I can do this trip. I can take this thing. I can take this step. And there's that denial as well, which is kind of an ethical denial, a denial of responsibility. And I think now as we are moving very, very quickly each day is so different, we're shifting into that space where that kind of denial is also very dangerous.

There's a great Buzzfeed article, I'll put a link in the show notes about one of the dynamics here, and I think this is actually going to open up, this is a general observation about human nature that I think actually can lead us into a rich discussion about actionable tips for mitigating your anxiety but this article made a point I've seen it made elsewhere but it was particularly in this article that I thought was made quite well which is that for most most of us most of us you know actuarially speaking are not at risk of serious illness here. And yet we're going to have to make serious changes to our life if we want to do the right thing.

And so we're basically being asked to make huge changes in our lives for the benefit of other people, which is we're not particularly well wired for that on some level. Especially in a country where, and again, I don't want to speak for Brazil, but in the United States, the ethos is rugged individuality. We've venerated selfishness. Yeah, we're certainly not worried that way. And we're all going to have to go there, right? At a personal level, I run a conference and we had to cancel it, right?

And the argument that, well, I want to make that decision for other people. And I felt like it was ethical and moral. I couldn't let people get to that denial. We have to figure out how to help others. And it's not biological wired. That's for sure. And you wrote a beautiful thing about this.

Thank you. I think we are at a certain inflection point where maybe we're now past some of the politicization of the crisis where there are folks across the political spectrum who are canceling their political rallies and who are agreeing that these kinds of social distancing techniques are necessary. And it's also important not to just minimize this. These things don't, it's not just a matter of selfishness.

I'm sorry that my concert that I wanted to go to got canceled and I wish I could go to this other thing. I mean, these are people's lives. The economic repercussions of these kinds of social distancing measures are terrifying to contemplate. You know, the markets, the stock markets aren't reacting to media spin, they're reacting to the realities, the economic realities of what this kind of shutting down

of the economy, partial shutting down the economy is going to mean. And just now in New York, again, we're recording Thursday. This is the day that New York decided to shut down pretty much all of the Broadway theaters. That's thousands and thousands of jobs that are affected. And so it's not just, oh, I really want to do this thing. It is actually the case that the economic costs of doing the right thing are severe. Okay, so this all leads us into where something that's going to be a little more sort of actionable

practical and I think psychologically beneficial, which is I think at a time like this, we just defyably think a lot about protecting ourselves and our loved ones all of which we should do. we should do, but a way that we can alleviate our own anxiety is to switch to thinking about the benefit of others. That's an ennobling, empowering state. So, can I get you to sort of hold forth on that notion? Sure. So, I think in some ways, the way I think about that is that it comes for me through compassion and caring for others. And that it actually comes you down, right? We have research that shows that compassion for others allows you to bring to calm down a little bit. And so one way to manage your anxiety is to lead with a place of compassion and lead a place that you can actually help others and feel good about it at the same time, while bringing anxiety down. You want to weigh in this, but?

Sure, I mean, it's one of these neat concurrences where what's most effective, it's not always this way, but what's most effective is also personally beneficial. And we see that kind of in the meditation business all the time, there's so much data that says, if you want to be happy, help others. And that may be counterintuitive. Certainly, to some iterations, I would say,

vulgarizations of the American dream. Just like, if you want to be happy, help yourself, and amass as much wealth as possible, and just do everything for yourself. Most people, actually, when you sort of do good studies, double blind studies, turn out not to be that happy. So you don't have to be a spiritual person. I know where the dance struggles with a lot. To appreciate that, you can be, you know, just purely struggles with a lot, to appreciate that.

You can be just purely kind of left brain looking at the data. And that is absolutely the case. So it's not, and I think that's really true, even on a micro level, I think one thing we would talk about, we could just talk about it now, is what to do when you're washing your hands, right? 20 seconds is a long time to wash your hands. That's not what most people do. What do you do? You could just wash your hands. right? 20 seconds is a long time to wash your hands. That's not what most people do. What do you do? You could just wash your hands. Sing happy birthday.

Right. So sing happy birthday twice. That's out there in the meditation world. There's the loving kindness phrases. May I be happy? May I be healthy? May I be free? May I be all be? I can be happy. May I be healthy? May I be free? If you do those a couple of times, not only are you spending the time, but you're also cultivating a little bit of compassion in that moment. If saying phrases still feels too weird, just even bringing to mind someone in your life who is in a vulnerable population, whether they're elderly or whether they have a diabetes or a long history of lung disease or an immune issue, and bringing them into mind and knowing that you're doing, you're taking this simple action, it's simple,

but still not, we're not used to it, watching for 20 seconds, taking the simple action for their benefit. And now you've cultivated a little bit of actual authentic, loving kindness and compassion in your heart just by bringing someone to mind who you care about. And it doesn't even have to be your mother-in-law, for example.

It could actually be the person who you see at the street or the person who, you know, someone who you vaguely know in acquaintance or something like that. I know just in my Facebook cohort, there are a number of people with elevated risk profiles, and so there are a lot of people in my life who I can think of that I'm taking this simple action, not just for myself, but for these people. When you hear that as a scientist, does that sound irretrievably woo-woo, and useless or does it sound meaningful?

Is that how it sounds to Dan? No, no, no, I do this. So I'm in the tank here, but I do want to. We actually have a scientist here. No, I mean, the data are solid here, right? I saw, I mean, we know that meditation helps you brain. And I loved your idea, actually. And the picture came into my mind as a mirror, in a bathroom, and having a loving, kind of

meditation. So people could say it to themselves, right? I always just sort of like, because anchoring the breath sometimes is hard. Anchoring somebody else, you have to bring something to mind. And I was thinking, well, could we put a loving kind of medication in every bathroom? And people could sit and actually get in touch with, you know, their kindness and loving for other people themselves. I love the idea.

Yeah. So it's, it's, you know, I have struggled a lot with the sappiness of the traditional phrases and the, and the Buddhist tradition of may, they're varied the way I do it is may, may we all be happy, may we all be happy, may we all be safe, may we all be healthy, may we all live with ease, and if you do that once or twice, it's probably close to 20 seconds, maybe three times. What I find is even if I don't even generate much of a feeling, it's just a shift, it's

a little bit like holding the ice cubes, you know what I mean, it's just, it's control all to lead. It's control out the lead. It's also a good use of those 20 seconds. Which I actually just, you know, hearing you say that, one of the things that we're doing in the 10% happier app is creating material for healthcare providers, healthcare workers,

and people who are on the front lines. And I think it's important for people in very high stress situations. We're all in a high stress moment, but people in acutely high stress situations to also kind of keep our sights low, in a sense. I get it's not reasonable to say I'm going to become, I'm going to, this is going to disappear,

the stress will disappear. And so one of the things that we've been looking at in terms of helping people on the front lines is can we get just a five second for preef, just like a little moment where the mind can rest. And with no expectation that that's going to last beyond those five seconds, because that's even that, there's just too much expectation.

So again, right, so here we are, you're washing your hands, you're doing a 20 second loving kindness phrase. That could just be for those 10, 20 seconds you're doing it. That is enough of a benefit for people who are really dealing with very acute stress. It doesn't have to even have a lasting impact. Of course, it'd be great if it did. And that would be great if we could all sleep better and have days where we're not quite

as obsessed. But just the 20 seconds is enough. I love the idea of the expectation. Like making sure that we know that's unreasonable to expect that a frontline person is not going to be anxious, right? They have faced face with something that's very serious, but also giving them something to bring it down in real time without putting the extra expectation that something miracle is going to happen, right?

You're going to go back to your job and the anxiety is protective at times, but I love sending that message. I think it's really important. Let's go back to altruism and compassion as a way. As what I love is there's a self-interested case here for compassion. As somebody who's on the selfishness spectrum, I find that appealing.

You could call it enlightened self-interest. So let's just talk practically about things we can do now that might pop us out of our own story so that we can sort of elevate our minds out of the morass of self-centered anxious thoughts, which again are adaptive and protective on some level, but taken too far. You're on the wrong side of the aforementioned Yerks, Dodson, Curve.

So for example, helping out an elderly neighbor or thinking about local businesses that are struggling in maybe buying a gift certificate or if you've got domestic workers that you don't you know that can't take the commute now but you can continue to pay them. I just think there are there seem to be ways that we can start to think about other people that might lower our anxieties. Does it sound to you like I'm on the right note here? Absolutely, then. In fact we've been thinking about this in our own home. Sort of, you know, if you don't want your people that claim your house to come in, pay them anyhow. Right? How can you tip you somebody at a restaurant or give us a money to a homeless person really finding a way to support our economy

through compassion? I love the idea of bringing food to those that can live their house. It's important. Donating to local food banks. Yeah, certainly. Because this is going to be a big issue. They're in New York City. When I think it's probably inevitable,

we shut down the public schools. There are a lot of kids in there who rely on the free meals. So food banks are going to be stressed. That just seems like another thing we can do that again, just pops us out of our own black hole of self-obsession. And with the understanding that we are taking those actions for two reasons, right? Part of it is, of course, primarily to help the person who we're helping, but also knowing that it's also human to want to be able to make a little bit of a difference. And one of the most challenging aspects of a pandemic like this is that most of us cannot

really make it. We can't stop the spread of this except as one small part of a giant collective. So we do that. We do our part. We do our part as part of this collective. But even that, it's very understandable to wish we could do more. So instead of that kind of spinning off into panic or desperately trying to figure out how can I plan this

and do them and how can I plan for three months from now and I don't know. All of those kinds of, again, very natural human things to do. Instead of going in that direction, kind of channeling some of that energy into work that's actually productive. So showing up for people and actually helping people, showing up, again, for our families trying to remain as resilient as we can. Just with that understanding that, okay, this is partly for me, as well as for the people who I'm

helping. And that's good. This means I'm channeling some of that excess energy into a place where it could actually do some good. The help of the brain too, right? Because there's so much uncertainty right now. And if you can actually leverage on the place that you have some certainty helping others, helping you and help them, right? And that cools off the brain a lot because we don't have,

and not gonna have a lot of certainty around this virus. So being able to do something like this has also psychological help. Because uncertainty, and we're seeing this, has really pernicious knock on effects. This is what leads to the kind of xenophobic attacks we've seen on Asian people. This is what leads to panic buying in a way that denies frontline health workers of face masks. It also makes us, the panic that can result from uncertainty can make us more susceptible

to terrible information on social media, misinformation. I think you were saying, I think you were telling some of my colleagues that we're in a bit of an infodemic. We sort of are. And you're absolutely right. See, uncertainty, the brain doesn't like this one. The brain wants certainty, right? When the brain starts to spin.

And so right now we have all this uncertainty and it's maintaining a lot of this anxiety. Because people are trying to figure out what to spin. And so right now, we have all this uncertainty, and it's maintaining a lot of this anxiety. Because people are trying to figure out what to do. They are trying to get some concrete answers. And the thing is, we don't have a lot of it, and we're not going to have it for a while. And so when you're talking about sort of being with your emotions, I think about writing a wave right now. We are all surfing a big Hawaiian wave,

and we are not surfers. And so it feels emotionally challenging, and it's hard to stay on top of this surfboard. But coming off of it, it's not an option. And so I think we have to figure out how to give techniques to tame our brain. And I like this idea of helping others as a way to concretely bring down uncertainty by focus on certainty. If I do this, I'm helping this person and I'm helping society at large.

So let's talk about this. You've teed up Jay quite well here because the surfing is a metaphor we use a lot in meditation. Granted, thanks for that. I used it all the time with my patient. She did it deliberately. She knew. That was all about the segue.

So a lot of people listen to the show, She did it deliberately. She knew. That was all about the segue. So a lot of people listen to the show, know the basic blocking and tackling of meditation. And I expect, however, given the broad interest in the subject, we may have some first-time listeners. So can you just walk through on a very basic level what is meditation and how can it be useful in terms of writing difficult emotions like uncertainty and fear and anger, etc.

So the kind of meditation that we're focused on, mindfulness meditation, I like to think of as kind of a two step process. The first is to kind of calm down and center the mind enough to do the second step, which is to just see what's going on, and to just coexist with what's going on. So you can't coexist or see what's going on if the mind is just filled with anxiety and you're going nuts. So the first step, and for some people this is the only step, and I think in this kind of a crisis, it's okay if this is the only step. But the first part is to just use some techniques to kind of just center the mind and quiet

the mind, sometimes grounding in the body. So for example, probably most listeners know that one way people meditate a lot is to notice the sensations of the breath. So just in doing that, there's a bit of a, there's a feedback loop, there's some calming into the mind that happens. Just by doing that, you're also not still on the hamster wheel of more anxious thoughts. So just by not doing that, you're calming down the mind and centering the mind. I think I'll repeat, that can be enough. But in a sense, that's also just the first step, because the second step is to then, if the mind is a little bit more calm,

to see what's up. Oh, my lot of anxiety is present. Oh, a lot of worry or fear or concern. Sometimes it can be up, actually, might even be positive in a sense, even in this kind of a crisis. Oh, I'm really worried about this person who I love. So there's actually something very sweet in that, right? It's painful because there's worry, but there's also something really beautiful that you can kind of see when you see a little bit more clearly.

And one of our friends and teachers, Sharon Salisberg, likes to say that the essence of this kind of meditation is just what's going on and can I be with it. So we're not trying to say it's okay. We're not trying to make the bad feelings go away. We're not trying to like tunnel in and make the bad feelings worse. We're just seeing what's going on and can I be with it. And that requires that kind of clear mind. So we calm down the mind and then we're just going to say, okay, here I am.

I'm sitting. I'm breathing. What's up? Oh, a lot of pain is up. You might even notice, here's just another example of what you might notice. You might notice some of the physical manifestations, as you could talk more about, of anxiety. Oh, my posture is really tensed. My muscles are really tense. My jaw is really tense. Like, I'm adding a lot of extra layers of tension onto what's there. So another of our favorite teachers, Sylvia Borsin, says that in life, pain is mandatory,

but suffering is optional. So what's mandatory right now is we're all going to be feeling fear and anxiety. That's part of this. If I notice though that I've been clenching my jaw like crazy for the last three hours, and I can relax out of that, that can actually really help. So just seeing what's there, just what's true for us,

sometimes does allow us to kind of, oh, okay, I don't need to do that. I don't need to add this extra layer, or I mentioned before, I see anxiety and also judging myself for the anxiety. I don't need to add that extra layer. Like this situation is difficult enough. So if I can look inside, calm the mind,

and then look inside enough to see how I'm making it worse, well, you know, maybe I won't make it worse. You guys ever see the movie ET? I saw it recently again with my son and ET, the extra terrestrial, extra terrestrial. His emotions manifest as a light in his chest. And I feel that myself, I don't have a light in my chest, but I notice that for me, when I'm anxious,

it's just like a big humming sensation in my chest. And for most of my life, my coping mechanism was to do anything I could to get rid of that feeling. But here in meditation, you're doing this counterintuitive, and I would argue baller move of leaning into it and seeing that it's not gonna kill you. And you can write it hence the surfing analogy. And after a while, make it worse, make it better,

but it's not gonna last forever. And you can lean into it, feel it, and then make commerce-sane or decisions as a consequence. And it is contrary to, however many billion years of evolution, to just allow the unpleasant thing to just be there, right? Even, you know, small animals when they have something unpleasant, they want to push it away, and when they have something pleasant, they want more of it. So it's not like we're messed up, like, you know, we're just bad humans for wanting the pleasant and not wanting the unpleasant, like that is animal nature. So it's not just weird to, you know, your past

life, it's also weird to like all of the beings on the planet to just say, okay, here's something unpleasant. I'd rather this not be here. I get that. But can I just allow it to be here and I can see clearly and I can calm the mind a little bit by not pushing it away and creating that resistance to the unpleasant thing, that's actually where so much of the stress comes from. Like there's the stress itself, but then the resistance to the stress just doubles it. And now if I can just say, all right, yeah, this sucks.

And it sucks in a profound way in ways that people are really hurting and I'm affected in various ways. OK, OK, at least then that extra resistance doesn't have to be there. Yeah, I talk about being comfortable and uncomfortable. Staying with it and the thing is pushing that chest pain, it's gonna make it worse, right? And in trying to sit with it, sometimes it's so hard as well. And so there's a sweet spot of sort of allowing to exist and biologically, you do know it comes

down, right? You can't be at that fight of life forever like you just can't just shut down right but if you ride that wave and that's why I like that that analogy and I know it's for in meditation writing the wave because if you write it I thought you were talking about my ET now no I'm back in the meditation world but no neither was really like I know I know I got to the length stairs I saw the light going on and I was like we where I got it. Your kids are too young, but you'll be what?

You have a, Jay is a two and a half, you have a three and a half year old, you'll be watching E.T. soon. Anyway, carry on. No, but I do like this idea. And I think it's hard for people to go there because that fear that if you allow it to exist, it's going to be so much, it's going to consume you. Right? And in a lot of people, I work with saying this,

like, we wanted me to experience things like that. I mean, here for each take that anxiety away. And I say to be so much, it's going to consume you. And a lot of people are working with saying, there's like, well, you want me to experience the anxiety and I'm here for you to take that anxiety away. And I say to people, listen, if I take you anxiety away, you in trouble. It's like out pain for sceptors. If you touch a stove, you need to tell us it's hot. And anxiety signals something important. And if your logic exists, it actually goes away.

And exactly, yeah, from a sort of meditation-y perspective for the last 2,500 years, that's exactly the sort of teaching. And also, some people are hurting so much that just as you said before, I want to pick up on you. But you said, sometimes it is just too much to sit with it. And meditation teachers can just be like, oh, we'll just sit with it. Sometimes, no.

I would say for most folks who are relatively safe right now as a public cause, matter of health, that's probably true. Like if I can just sit with the anxiety and just be with it, acknowledge it, that can be so, so, so helpful. But if it's someone working in healthcare on the front lines, it may be too much to sit with. It may actually be better to do less. And to just say, actually, this is too much. I'm just going to give myself an island of calm for these five minutes of listening to this recorded meditation on an app or something, and I'm just going to just do that without

any agenda of like doing any work of like seeing stuff. So again, it's everyone's different. The main advice is calm and then insight. Look in and see what's there. But for some folks, because of our different situations, it may not be. Just to put a fine point on that, Jay, and I know you want to lean in, Luana. So in meditation, as you were describing before,

there are these two for basic beginner mindfulness meditation. There are these two moves. The first is to anchor into the feeling of your breath, coming in and going out. Some people don't like being with the breath. We might pick another so-called object of meditation, is to anchor into the feeling of your breath, coming in and going out, or to some people don't like being with the breath. We might pick another so-called object of meditation

like the feeling of your whole body sitting in the chair. You tune into this one sensation, this one thing, this one object, the feeling of your breath coming in or going out and going out, or the feeling of your body sitting in the chair or some other object. And every time you get distracted, which you will a million times, you start again. And that in and of itself is the calming, the settling the mind, the little bit of calgon taking me away, even though it can be endervating to notice how often

you're thinking about, like, whoa, why don't those guys like my ET analogy or whatever. And then the next move is once you've got some level, you're not gonna be in like sort of bulletproof, thought-free zone, but you'll have some level of calm and centeredness, then you can start investigating what difficult emotions are there. But the point you were just making was for some people who are really, you know, at tilt here, maybe just do part one.

That's right. And, you know, we know this in particular, people with trauma histories that just saying, oh, just sit with this traumatic memory that's coming up is actually really profoundly unhelpful. Likewise here when someone's under intense anxiety. So yeah, and just for, again, for folks for whom this is new, that second step of inquiry

is very simple, it's just like, what's going on and can I be with it? Like, what's happening right now? What am I feeling? What am I feeling in the mind? What am I feeling in the body? Just checking in, there's no like agenda of like, oh, I should be feeling, all right, that way to go. But there's one thing that's not on the agenda, which is you're not like actively, affirmatively

indulging in all of the anxious thoughts. You might notice them come and you might get carried away a little bit, but the goal is to then notice, okay, I'm carried away. Let me go back to either the breath or investigating what are the physical bodily sensation level manifestations of this emotion. That's right. And if your mind is in the future or think about the future of the past, that's not where this where the meditation wants to lead you. So that's a good way to check in. Like, oh, I'm thinking about my stock portfolio or I'm thinking about how I'm going to put the food in the pantry or something like that.

So those are all very natural thoughts people might be having depending on where they are. And those are thoughts about the future, actually, right? So what's happening now? Oh, what's happening now is anxiety. What's happening right now is concern. What's happening right now is tension in my body, something like that. So you can easily, easily, simple, but not easy, but you can kind of bring yourself back just with that question, okay, what's happening? What's happening now?

I do think that idea that it's not for everybody right now. You brought trauma and I actually was thinking about, I treat a lot of trauma patients and this idea of staying with that without some support is really unbearable. And definitely not something that you want to be encouraging. So I like, if we're talking about just a public health, how to help people right now, I like the first step right now. Because most people can accept, it goes back to sort of, mind-first-based stress reduction, John Kabazin's work

which is really helpful in any mind, what I've done with patients, they listen, you may not be able to even pay attention to your breath, but can you brush your teeth mindfully? Can you take a walk around the block and describe the trees? Can you incline cessation? Is there something that you actually can do? And I think nowadays with all of the meditations and the amps and your guys guiding it, we certainly can do that. But sometimes it has to be something physical that somebody can do in a mindful way to allow them to be in the present moment. Because I think that's what we're talking about. Can we be here now, not in the future, worrying, not in the past, but really anchoring on

the present time, acknowledging that challenging times? And it is, look, I mean, these aren't even silver linings. I sort of don't like this whole talk about like the silver lining of a horrible pandemic public health crisis, but one somewhat, one invitation that this presents is actually for more of those physical opportunities for mindfulness, whether we were talking about washing the hands, one other option is just to feel yourself washing the hands, right? We were talking before we went on air that I'm kind of teaching this mindfulness of not touching your face, which is excruciating.

My nose was itching earlier in this podcast, and I didn't do it. It could actually be a really, you know, it's a diversion, which we all need. It's a kind of fun mindfulness practice. Can you go through the basics of that? So most of the time when we're touching our face, which just, again, people probably know this by now,

is this is actually one way that the virus gets into you because the virus has to get to your lungs somehow. So if it's on your body, you're actually, you're not going to get, it's not going to be a problem, but it's when it gets inside, it gets into the lungs. So if you touch your, your eyes, your mucus membranes, your nose, your face, your mouth, mostly, that's how it gets in. So don't touch your face. Nice advice to get from public health professionals because it's very hard to not do that. So from a mindfulness perspective, probably people listening right now are scratching their face just because I mentioned it.

I've made things worse. One you can take it on and this is sort of a lighthearted, this isn't like the core thing. But if you are looking for ways to be mindful in a body-based way, just notice like there's an itch, don't scratch it. Just see what happens. It's really interesting to just like, the world is not going to end if you don't scratch that itch, or if you have that like nervous tick where you're like,

want to touch your face or something in some way. As I did for the third time today, I mentioned right before the podcast, we were just about to start. I had face touching number three. I blew it. That's amazing, because most of us are on face touching. It's like 3000.

Yeah, no, for me that's like unbelievable because I'm a compulsive like all the time. Plus people listening, you don't know but I have a beard and so like there's like all that. So like there's a lot of opportunities. It's a really fun and I think it's okay to have a certain kind of fun during this very difficult time. Fun way of doing mindfulness,

just be like, wow, I really want to scratch my nose right now. I really want to and I'm just not going to do it. It's, but I think that my point, the reason I really want to scratch my nose right now. I really want to, and I'm just not going to do it. But I think the point, the reason I bring that up is to sort of amplify what Lwano just said, which is that for folks, meditation has a, there's an image of what meditation is, which is like somebody sitting still cross-legged

and like close their eyes, and they're like perfectly falling in the breath. I mean, that's great for some people, but for most people, mindfulness doesn't have to be formal meditation. It can be in any action, brushing your teeth, washing your hands, not scratching your face, walking back and forth, sitting in a car ride, I think, Dan, you said you'd meditation when you're in the back of a taxi cab. So, the point is to make these tools as accessible as possible when people are hurting. But what's the benefit? I understand the control, all-delete benefit

of repeating, loving kindness phrases while you're washing your hand, because it just jars the brain out of its rut. What's the benefit of watching itch is a rise in your face and not taking the bait and acting on it? So there are two benefits, the negative and the positive. The negative is what you're not doing when that's happening and what you're not doing is obsessing in your face and not taking the bait and acting on it. So there are two benefits, the negative and the positive. The negative is what you're not doing when that's happening and what you're not doing is obsessing over your anxiety creating thoughts.

So just by, and that's not about just meditation, that could be true if you read a book or watch TV or anything. Just give yourself a break from obsessing over your endless anxiety making thoughts. So when I'm paying attention to my face or my breath or whatever, I'm not doing something else, which is making more anxiety. Okay, that's the negative benefit. And the positive benefit, it's this idea of metacognition. Just be aware of your mind.

So just as I'm aware of anxiety being present, I can also be aware of physical sensations, like oh my gosh, I really wanna rub my eye right now. And just being with that, that's a very trivial, now it's not so trivial, but usually that's a very trivial, now it's not so trivial, but usually that's a very trivial, simple kind of negative unpleasant sensation, an itch, right? You're not going to die from an itch. So it's a place to practice, sometimes meditators use a word practice a lot, like we practice meditation. This is a way to practice for sometimes

when it's more serious. So right now we're living in a pandemic. The rubber is hitting the road. Now is the serious time. So by practicing meditation and mindfulness in these very simple ways, like not scratching and itch or something like that, now when there's something really unpleasant, existential worry about whether I have enough money to send my daughter to college because of the changes in our, you know, this recession that we're hitting into. Now I have practiced being with unpleasant feelings. And so when that big, serious unpleasant feeling comes up, or unpleasant is too, you know, too simple a word. What have got for a bit? What if a relative gets sick, who's vulnerable?

Now I've practiced being with what's so difficult in simple ways, in little ways, being with knee pain when I'm meditating or any other physical thing. I've practiced that. I've built up that muscle in the gym. And so now when it really is called on, which is now, now it's actually there and it's been developed. So those are the two benefits, the negative giving yourself a break and the positive actually building those muscles of metacognition so that you can compassionately, mindfully be with these difficult emotions and be resilient and show up for other people. But by negative benefit, you know what I mean? Like it's a bad benefit. No, no, negative meaning it's the absence of doing something

unhelpful and the presence of doing something helpful. And you rewire in your brain, right? When we look at meditation research and we look, we have really actually changed in your brain. If you can do that, then you're going to be more resilient in the moment when you really need it. And I want to scratch my nose by the way. I'm practicing. Yeah, the guys in the room here are all looking at the corner of my eye. Everybody's in here right now. Everybody wants some of that. You know, it's a fun, we are allowed to still have fun. I mean, we really, we need to find little breaks and this is kind of a fun way to do it.

Just watch how like crazy it is, like that we're in these bodies and we just cannot stop from doing this. Speaking of fun, he brought something else up that I should want to run by you, which is what we've been talking about some sort of high-minded ways to manage our anxiety. But what about watching TV?

I recommend Disney Plus. Sorry, that was anyway. What about books? What about, you know, my- Just don't watch Dan's incredibly stress-inducing documentary about deforestation in the Amazon right now. It's available on YouTube. Come on.

Or ET, but what about these sort of lighter cultural things that we can do or you know having a dance party with your kid etc etc. I think we all need to disconnect a little bit right and do something fun I agree with you Jay like being able to have some fun in this connect out gives you a break and break and sometimes it is a dance party is watching a movie is reading a book and sometimes you're so activated that's really a book that you've read it before. They really like that you know it's going to bring some memories. You know doing something that allows you a brain to just have a break because we're on all the time right now and for a good reason in many ways. There's something I wanted to loop back to you on. We were talking before about how you want to be a little careful if you're meditating with trauma and I know you careful if you're meditating with trauma.

And I know you treat a lot of people with trauma. But what about in moments like this for people who I would say seem more psychologically vulnerable, like who have anxiety disorders, or like OCD, or PTSD? What's your recommendation for folks in that situation for whom the pandemic would be especially activating perhaps? So I think at that point we really need to think about seeking professional help, right? And if you can't, then trying to get some good self-help books allow you to sort of change

your thoughts, change your behavior, because at that moment in time your brain is really full and fight-of-flight. If you're talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, you are hyper-rouse, you're looking around, you're scared, and it's because of a memory that now it's been amplified by this pandemic. So my recommendation at that point is it's just sick some support, ideally some professional support, and I land towards cognitive behavior therapy. It's my bias, of course, because the evidence-based kind of therapy. So we know it works, and it works for most people. It doesn't matter where in the world.

Can you say more about how exactly what we do in CBT? Absolutely. So CBT basically is the idea that our thoughts affect what we're feeling, and what we're feeling, affects what we do, and this gets us spinning. So cognitive behavior therapy in our lab in the lab in the lab in the lab in the lab in the lab, is the idea that our thoughts, emotions, we do, and this gets us spinning, right? So cognitive behavior therapy in our lab at Mass General, we talk about a tab, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Okay, and so the idea is, I had a moment ago

that I was talking about some thing, Jay, and my brain went somewhere else, and I went, oh, I lost this. And then immediately, I had this anxiety going on, and I started just scanning a little bit to make sure I was anchoring what you guys were talking about, right? Who was more boring, Jay or me?

I know, it was equal. No, I think I was trying not to scratch, I think really what it was. Right. And it captivated me, but really the idea is this gets a spinning and sometimes you don't notice it. That's why I like meditation allows us to notice what's happened in your brain. In CBT, what we do is active scales, right? For our thinking, we talk about restructure our thinking,

more balanced thoughts. So if you're going to look at the news, get data that's reliable to help you fight some of the story of thoughts. So what do we know? Am I in that kind of population that's a danger? Yes or no? And if you're not, what can you do to keep yourself safe

and you're a lot of the one safe? So in thoughts, we change our thinking. And emotions, we talk a lot about writing the waves, tolerating discomfort, being really comfortably uncomfortable, and knowing that's gonna go away. And then in behavior, we really wanna act towards things are good for you, so healthy behaviors, eating, exercising, sleeping, right?

Being able to approach things that make you feel good, such as going for walk, right? Any kind of health behavior, but also being careful of avoidance. In CBT, we talk a lot about people getting stuck because they start to get anxious and they avoid it. In this moment in time, it goes back to the sort of idea of denial,

avoidance the news completely, it's probably not a good idea. Things are changing so fast. So you wanna approach your fears, be able to tolerate them and stay with them long enough because they come down. Seems like meditation and mindfulness would turbo charge everything you just described.

Absolutely. I think in many ways is the middle of it, right? If you can create a fertile meditation place, then definitely those skills, they'll grow faster. Before I let you guys go and speaking of skills on meditation, we talked about handwashing using the phrases. There's another way to do it, which is just sort of a pure mindful in this bringing self-awareness to the feelings, physical sensations of washing the hands. Can you just run through that because I think it's a really good practical tip?

Sure. I think that's, I should also say, I think it's the easier one is to either use the phrases or to bring somebody to mind just for beginners. But yeah, I mean, that kind of so, 2500 years ago, Prince in North India, became known as the Buddha said, when, you know, the way to get enlightened, the way to get liberated, meaning not to suffer from so much stress and pain all the time, is when you're walking, you know that you're walking, when you're breathing in, you know that you're walking, when you're breathing in, you know you're breathing in, when you're breathing out,

you know you're breathing out. It's this very simple thing of just knowing what's happening. Because if you do it in those very simple actions of the body, you also do it in the complicated actions of the heart when you're feeling sad, you know, feeling sad, when you're feeling angry, I'm feeling really angry right now. Maybe now it's not the time to send the email

or you know, lash out or say this comment that I not the time to send the email or, you know, lash out or say this comment that I really want to say to this person in my life. So, you know, it's very simple, deceptively simple, just knowing what's happening. So that then, in the last, you know, especially the last 150, 200 years has been applied to all different kinds of actions.

As far as I know, the Buddha never said when you're washing your hands, know you're washing your hands, but it's that same principle, just what's happening right now. Oh, I'm washing my hands. So I'm feeling the sensation of the soap and the water, the water warmer cold, mine gets distracted. Okay, whatever mine got distracted.

Here's what's happening right now in this very tactile level. And just like I said before, there's the sort of the negative meeting, the thing that you're not doing and the thing that you are doing, the thing that you're not doing is obsessing and having feeding all sorts of different thoughts. And what you are doing is metacognition. What's happening right now? Oh, it feels like this. The water feels like that. And it's a very deceptively simple thing, you know, and that is kind of the core mindfulness practice is to just be aware of what's happening one thing at a time, maybe, and just noticing here's what the water feels like,

here's what the soap feels like. Because again, that's very simple. But then when it gets very difficult, here's what grief feels like, or here's what loneliness feels like, or fear of loneliness. And we're at the beginning of this thing. People might be listening to this two or three weeks on when they've been

locked in an apartment with their kids or something for two weeks. You know, so that's the rubber is really hitting the road. Like, here is when I just feel like I'm going to explode and I'm managing anger and my kids anger and I'm restless and I'm bored. And these are some of the things that I'm fearing about the next month. So by practicing with the simple stuff, we build those skills and those mental muscles to deal with the hard stuff.

We all have little kids. We all may be locked inside with these little kids pretty soon. What are your thoughts about A, how we handle this and B, how we talk to our kids? Well, we have very little kids, right? So I think one thing to talk to your kids is that it's just sure them that you're doing everything and you keep them safe, right? The kids are actually scanning.

We talked about this in the beginning that your kids are paying attention, right? And so making sure that you can keep yourself calm so that your kids' anxiety is not going up because if you're anxious, your kid is very likely to be anxious. So I think the first thing about your kids is manager on anxiety, right? And the second thing is to engage with them on things they have nothing to do with the news. So if you're gonna sit in front of the news and watch it, you don't have your kids right next to you, right? Because that's just gonna increase their anxiety and their brains not fully developed,

they're not ready for this, they don't have the ability to discern. And so watch ET with your kids, but watch the news separate for your kids. And make sure that they know you can reassure them, right? That you're doing what you can. Any thoughts on coping skills for, you know, you guys have toddlers, I have five-year-old kids are trying, and their job is to test your patients, and they're pretty good at their jobs. What any thoughts on, you know, in a situation several weeks from now where some of us maybe sort of lock down with these critters, how to manage your own anxiety, anger, fear, et cetera, et cetera.

So, I go back to something that I think both of you probably do. I go back to my breath and I go down and I look at my son in the eye and I breathe. Then I just look at him and I say, I love you. And then I get, it's really challenging. And then I anchor on my love for him. And that's what I do. I just sort of ride that wave. I know it's going to go away.

I think for a really little kids, you can distract them a little bit, right? But I think it's sort of just being with them and writing that wave with them. That's what I do. I scream in my kid, which is I think very effective. Kidding. I think that's great. I think that's great advice. And I find that one of the after a decade of meditation, which isn't a ton, but it's not nothing.

Just patience is one of the skills that I find emerging. It's not 100% there all the time, but I can feel when he's triggering me and I can some percentage of the time It'll let it arise and pass without doing something that I feel like I've landed him in the therapist's office for 40 years You know, I hate to say anything complimentary toward you Dan But but one of the you know really one of the best contributions that you've made And I you've heard me say this before, but maybe listeners haven't, is literally just the name

of this podcast, like the idea of 10% happier that I think we sometimes set up very high standards for ourselves, and that, you know, meditation means I have to be this kind of person, and I'm that kind of person, and I have to, you know, have incense on all the time, and I'm always calm, and, you. And maybe for the duration of this pandemic, even 2% happier would be a good bar, 2% less anxious. So that means you're still 98% anxious, right?

And I think that I really do, I mean, this sincerely, I mean, I think that just that way of thinking about this kind of work, whether it's in a psychotherapeutic modality, whether it's CBT, whether it's in a psychotherapeutic modality, whether it's C-B-T, whether it's meditation, mindfulness, knowing that it's not about success, like it's not like I've done it, of my 100% or, and thus, it's not about failure. Like I'm still feeling all this anxiety, am I a failure? It's like, okay, well, what if we could just get 2% more able to show up for

our kids, for our parents, for the people in our lives. That, for me, feels really worth the price of admission. I appreciate that. And we can now return to our regular scheduled programming of Jay verbally abusing Dan. No, I really do appreciate that, Jay. So on just before we close, as we close here, you said something, Jay, before about having a bit of analogy to getting a little to Pollyanna looking for silver linings in this moment. But you did write a very nice newsletter for 10% happier

when you talked about where you talked about the fact that, in a moment like this, we can actually connect to, and this is a little lofty, but I think actually appropriate, and innate wisdom. So can you hold forth on that, and then we'll let Loana take us on? Sure. I mean, I think there are, I guess that's why I like that language a little more of like invitations. I feel like, because we're at this early stage, I just, I just, I just, I just am reluctant around that language of silver landings.

Like, well, let's look for the bright side of this horrible thing. But there are, there are a lot of positive possibilities that are here, you know, one is to reconnect with what matters to us the most, you know, which I think has to do with love and justice and caring for people in our lives and showing up for others and, and, and growing wise in the process. It's a scary time and that brings us closer if we're fortunate enough to have people in our lives.

That can bring us closer to them. So that's one. I think the wisdom that can emerge has to do really with putting what matters in perspective. That life is profoundly uncertain. You know, most of us carry around what in sort of my lefty woke circles we call kind of ableist privilege. Like if we're like in a body that our society has said, well that body is healthy, you know, that's you're not disabled. We take for granted, like how that operates in all of our lives. Well, now we're all like a little bit, I want to say disabled, but now we're all like a little bit threatened in a certain way. And the vulnerability of being human is very apparent to us, some people much more than others. And so, you know, this is like for me a deep, difficult learning, like a lot of, you know, the loss of my parents or other, you know, losses in my life of the reality of life, that suffering is just part of life, that pain is part of life,

doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, that things don't last forever, that they really change a lot. And that's not necessarily to be gloom and doom about it, but that's to then be able to affirm what's beautiful about life. So I wouldn't wish a pandemic on anyone. And yet there are some opportunities for us to grow wise in the process. And hopefully maybe a little closer to one another,

maybe a little more respectful towards science, which would be great in our society. And a little bit more, a little bit more gentle and aware that not everybody is so fortunate all the time. Final thoughts from you? Now I love this idea of anchoring the things that matter, and we have an opportunity, a real opportunity, I agree with you. We might be locked at home with our kids,

and most of us have talked about one and just spend more time with our kids. And yes, we don't wanna do it through a pandemic, but the reality is can we actually use that moment? Can we go towards that and really do the best with it and bring our society out in a way that is more gentle? I love that idea. You guys have done a public service here. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Thank you then. And I will put links to your respective websites in the show notes. As we close, just a few items of business one is that Jay has made.

Where's many hats? A 10% happier, but one of them is he records guided meditations in his voice. And he also records little mini podcasts from all sorts of experts that go in the talks segment of our app and we're going to be posting a lot of the coronavirus related content for free both on the app, 10% happy or app and we'll be I think posting some of it in this podcast feed and also again if you want to get the app for free if you're a healthcare worker email us at care at 10%.com. Let us know what you do. Tell us about your friends and we'll hook you up with six months for free.

Finally, if you're really interested, which I think most of us are in this pandemic, ABC News is doing a similar podcast called COVID-19, what you need to know. COVID-19, what you need to know, just search for it wherever you get your podcasts. It's Monday through Friday, our chief medical correspondent, fantastic human being, meditator, Dr. Jen Ashton will answer questions submitted on social media. Again, the name of that podcast is COVID-19, what you need to know. We'll be back Wednesday with another sort of, I think the way we're going to do this going forward is on Wednesdays we'll do our regular episodes on

What we'd already been planning to talk about this Wednesday. We're going to talk to some teenagers who are really into meditation and actually go on very interesting Meditation retreats and then we're going to also try to regularly populate this feed with Corona virus related material as well. Thank you again to the guests. Thank you for listening guys. We'll see you soon material as well. Thank you again to the guests. Thank you for listening guys. We'll see you soon. Hey, hey prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident, not so expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story

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