The Liz Moody Podcast - How To Use Neuroscience To Eliminate Anxiety, Become More Optimistic, and Overcome Childhood Trauma with Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

Today’s episode is all about anxiety, but from a very different angle than it’s typically talked about. Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University and a celebrated international authority on neuroplasticity. She serves as a sought-after expert for publications including The Wall Street Journal, Shape, and Health, and her TED talk has more than 31 million views. Her most recent book, Good Anxiety, can be found wherever books are sold. On this episode, we talk about: Exactly what’s happening physiologically and neurologically when we experience anxiety How stress and anxiety can actually kill brain cells (and how to fix it) How much of eliminating anxiety is changing our brain (our thought processes, etc) versus our body (gut health, etc) The 2 most studied ways to reduce feelings of anxiety Why it’s so hard to stick to a meditation practice or exercise routine (and how to transcend that) The 5-minute practice that research shows significantly decreases anxiety The best type of workout & time of day to workout for reducing anxiety, according to neuroscience How childhood trauma impacts your brain now How to hack your brain to stop feeling jealous How to deal with existential anxiety about what life is all about How to actually be kinder to yourself on a daily basis How to use neuroscience to become more optimistic The things you’re doing to help your anxiety that are actually making it way worse I would love to hear what you learned listening to this episode, so definitely screenshot and tag me @lizmoody on Instagram, and you can find more resources and information about Dr Suzuki’s book on goodanxiety.com. PS: My Patreon is live! You can join Green Smoothie Society and get access to ALL of my green smoothie recipes and advice! Get all the deets at patreon.com/lizmoody. This episode is sponsored by Seed, the makers of one of my all-time favorite supplements. Their Seed Daily Synbiotic is a game changer—it contains both pre- and probiotics, survives INTACT all the way into your gut, AND contains the most studied and powerful strains of probiotics out there. You can get 15% off of your first month’s supply of Seed’s Daily Synbiotic by going to seed.com and using the code LIZMOODY. This episode is sponsored by Paleovalley, who make incredibly high quality supplements. If you’d like to check out their Turmeric Complex, Vitamin C, Neuroeffect, or any of Paleovalley’s other amazing products, head over to paleovalley.com and use the code LIZM for 15% off. Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a cookbook author and long-time journalist. Today's episode is all about anxiety, but from a very different angle than it's typically talked about. Dr. Wendy Suzuki is a professor of neural science and psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University and a celebrated international authority on neuroplasticity. She serves as a sought-after expert for publications including the Wall Street Journal, shape, and health, and her TED Talk has more than 31 million views. Her most recent book, Good Anxiety, can be found wherever books are sold. On this episode, we really dive into the science behind anxiety and how we can use a deeper understanding of our brains to not only assuage anxiety and stress, but live happier, more meaningful lives. Dr. Suzuki shares what's happening on a physical and neurological level when you experience anxiety, the two most studied ways to reduce feelings of anxiety, why it's so hard to stick to a meditation practice or exercise routine and exactly how to fix it. The five-minute practice that research shows significantly decreases anxiety.

The best type of workout and time of day to workout for reducing anxiety. How childhood trauma impacts your brain now. How to hack your brain to stop feeling jealous. How to deal with existential anxiety about what life is all about. That was a big one for me. I think about that way too much, how to use neuroscience to become more optimistic and so much more. This is one of my all-time favorite types of episodes, one that's grounded in incredible research in science, but takes all of that information and makes it actually fun to learn about,

and super actionable to apply to your life today. I would love to hear what you learned listening to this episode, so definitely screenshot and tag me at Liz Moody on Instagram. and you can find more resources and information about Dr. Suzuki's book on goodanxiety.com. And if you find this conversation valuable, I would be so grateful if you'd share it with a friend or family member or leave a quick rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Both are so helpful and so, so appreciated. All right, without further ado, let's get into the episode on the neuroscience of anxiety. All right, Dr. Suzuki, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. today. I'm so happy to be here. Let's get right into this. I feel like we have so much to cover,

and I loved your whole book's take on how we can take neuroscience and apply it to our understanding of anxiety and then also taking that a step further to like, how can we actionably use this to live our best lives? So I want to talk all about all of that today. Perfect. All right, so let's start off. I don't know if this is easier. I was going to say let's start off easy, but we'll see if you think it's easy. How do you define anxiety and how does it differ from stress? Yeah, that is a great place to start off. So we're all on the same page. So anxiety is that uncomfortable feeling of worry, fear that is often stimulated by situations that are uncertain. And I don't know what more uncertain times that all of us have experiences, you know, the now. So lots of anxiety. So lots of anxiety. So

that is the basic definition, simple definition of anxiety, which is the relationship between anxiety and stress. So those uncomfortable feelings that you have when anxiety is evoked by uncertainty, that is generated by our stress response system. Stress is the body's general response to threat, and so they are intimately related. the stress response is underlying basically all of those uncomfortable feelings that come with the emotion of anxiety. Okay, so is there like a threshold where if you have a certain amount of stress, it tips into anxiety?

Well, I would say that anxiety is an emotion and anxiety always activates the stress response. So lots of things can activate your stress response. But your anxiety is one of them that absolutely does. And you could have a little bit of anxiety. You can have a full-on anxiety attack. And that will come with different levels of activation of your stress system, also referred to as the sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight system that most people have heard of.

And a little bit of anxiety might just increase your heart rate just a little bit. but full on, you'll have really high heart rate. All your blood will rush from your digestive and reproductive systems out to your muscles to get you ready to run or fight, which is why this system was evolved in the first place. It's always evoked with anxiety, but the stress system is evoked at different levels with your different levels of anxiety. So you just talked a little bit about what's actually happening in your body when you experience anxiety, but without getting too deep into the neuroscience, can you explain what's happening in our

brain when we experience anxiety? Sure, sure. So when you experience anxiety, you have activation of your amygdala, which is a fear or threat detection part of the brain that kind of gets activated along with your sympathetic, your fight or flight nervous system. There is high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone that is actually released by your adrenal glands just above your kidneys, and that stress hormone passes into your brain. And if it kind of comes in just an immediate bout, so, you know, something scary happens, oh, and then it goes away, that quick activation and that quick increase of cortisol is really helpful for your brain.

It alerts you. It makes you hypersensitive to, you know, the situation. around. This is why, you know, a mother becomes superwoman in that moment of threat when her child is threatened and she can lift a car up and she could find the exit when she has to navigate all through everything because her brain is activated at an optimal level. However, if you get cortisol levels high in the brain for a long, long, long time, I'm talking about chronic stress, chronic anxiety. Then it starts to have detrimental effects on your brain. What do I mean by detrimental? It can start to kill the input structures of your brain cells called the dendrites,

and it will ultimately start killing brain cells in both your hippocampus, critical for long-term memory, and your prefrontal cortex. Wait, it starts killing brain cells? Yes, it does. So prototypical situation where you have high, constant level of cortisol is PTSD. post-traumatic stress disorder. So everybody has a feeling for what that is. Very traumatic event. They can't get out of that traumatic situation. And these patients have high chronic levels of cortisol. What happens is the entire temporal lobe. Your hippocampus is in the temporal lobe of the brain starts to shrink. Why? Because you're killing brain cells. So this is why you want to use good anxiety to dig into all the tools that are provided that give you immediate,

medium term, and long-term strategies to decrease your anxiety and stress levels and recalibrate it so that your anxiety can start to do what it's supposed to do, which is protect you and not bring you down and bring you down into constant rumination and stress. So when you think about mitigating anxiety, how much of it do you think about as something that's happening in your brain with your thought processes and meditations and like reframing situations and how much do you think about it as something happening in our body where we're trying to, you know, control our gut or how we move or things like that? Yeah, yeah.

That is such a great question. And the answer is both because there is such a strong connection between the body and the brain. and all of these things and the tools that I talk about in good anxiety kind of tap all of that power to mitigate anxiety. So let me give you two examples, one kind of brain-based and one body-based, which are my top two approaches to decrease that feeling of anxiety when it starts or even if you're in a full kind of anxiety attack. Let's start with the brain. First powerful approach to decrease those feelings is deep breathing. It is the oldest form of meditation is breath work. And why does deep breathing? I recommend four part box breathing, which is inhaling on a four count, holding for a four,

exhaling on a four count and holding for four at the bottom. Very, very simple. And this helps because deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, also called the rest and digest part of the nervous system, it is the equal and opposite counterpart to your fight or flight system. So your fight or flight system ramps up that cortisol, gets you amped up, ready to fight or flight, and when that danger disappears, it is your parasympathetic system that kicks in. Well, sometimes we need to kickstart that parasympathetic system. And the best way to do that is to breathe deeply because that is one of the things the parasympathetic system does it.

Not only stimulates deep breathing, it decreases heart rate, it brings blood back into your digestive and reproductive systems. And that is a meditative, I'll call that my brain-based approach or parasympathetic approach to decrease anxiety. the body-based approach is simply move your body. I've studied for the last 10 years or so the effects, the powerful and transformative effects of moving your body on your brain, your cognitive functions, and your mood.

It is one of the most direct ways that you can decrease anxiety, decrease depression levels, and enhance positive feelings of energy and other positive affective feelings. So what do I mean? You don't have to go run a marathon. Go outside, take a walk, run up the stairs and down the stairs just once. Moving your body can really help decrease those claustrophobic feelings of anxiety that can come on at any time these days. Okay. I have a question about both of those. The first one, I'm curious if you have like a neuroscience-based answer for this. But I feel like I've heard so many times that like breathing is so good for me. I should be doing it. And even meditation, I can go in and out of my meditation practice. But like, why is it so hard for us to take these simple steps that we know we'll have

the results we want? And instead, like, I'll literally go listen to like 20 podcasts and read five more books. And like, they're like, how do I fix this? And everybody's like, this is an effective thing. And I'm like, oh, no, no, I can't get myself to do that, even though it's so simple. That is a great question. I think it gets at, you know, a very practical issue that faces all. of us. And my answer to that is not necessarily neuroscience one, but a very practical one. I think

one of the mistakes that people make, including myself, is say, okay, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to meditate for 20 minutes. I should be able to do that. And of course, you fail because it's hard to get up to that. 20 minutes is way too long. Two minutes. Start with two minutes of deep breathing, even one minute of deep breathing. And it's not only effective, but it starts to get you into that habit in a greater way. And I'll just say one more thing. One of my next goals that I am setting up on wendysususki.com

and good anxiety.com that's going live right now is kind of a mental health vending machine. So you can quickly not only measure your hands, anxiety levels, but do a literal two-minute meditation that is so simple. It is not for experts. It's for everybody. And get that measurement. So you see the effects. You have it right in front of your face. So I think that it is hard to start new things. And while meditation is so powerful, it's not necessarily the easiest thing to start. Like, am I doing it right? I'm not sure if this is having any feeling. We need some feedback. We need some structure to help get started. And so I've been

thinking about that. And those are the kinds of experiments that I literally am doing at NYU right now. What is the smallest, shortest, most effective kind of meditation that can have significant effects on your anxiety levels. And we're discovering that with our students at NYU. Yeah. I mean, I think that it rings super true that I like set my goals too high because I'm like, I want this to have the maximum efficacy to be worth my time to do it, but then because my goal is too high, I don't do it at all and then I have no efficacy. So what is the shortest, like most effective in the shortest amount of time meditation? Like, do you lean towards a mantra thing? Or is it that box breathing? Does that count? Yeah, absolutely. The box breathing counts. And so I can tell you statistically that we have shown

that just five minutes. So the look, the shortest one we've done so far at NYU. is five-minute visual meditation, and that has a significant decrease on your anxiety, your immediate anxiety levels. That's what my research shows. We are continuing to expand that and go even shorter and do different wider, different kinds of meditations. But my best tip in exploring this is YouTube. YouTube, if you want to explore different things, that's the other things.

Like, what do I do? I don't even know what to do. What is a meditation? Does this count? Well, go onto YouTube and to find a popular short meditation. Just, you know, Google on YouTube, one minute meditation and choose the one that has, you know, five million views. That is popular.

It's engaging. People like it. And start with that. And you will not just have one, but you'll have a whole range of choices. And because not everybody will like the box breathing. Maybe you want a sound-based one. Maybe you want a guided one where somebody is talking to you. And these are all free.

They're on YouTube and they have an immediate rating system with the number of views that they have. So I found it so powerful for not just meditation, but chair workouts if you want to get started, five minute workouts, seven minute workouts. The New York Times has that great one. But there's so many that are literally at our fingertips and are free. So I tell as many people as I can to, to, try it out that way. And it's fun. And you will be able to say yes, yes, yes, no, yes, to the ones that come up. I love that. Okay. And you mentioned moving your body. So my second question is, is there a most effective

way to move your body if your goal is to feel less anxiety or have better mental health? Yes. So there's a neuroscience answer to that. And the neuroscience answer is we know the most about moving your body so that your heart weight comes up. And so, So of course, there's a billion different ways you can move your body to get your heart rate up. And the simplest one that does not require a $110 outfit for you to go by is simply walking. A power walk can get your heart rate up. And we know that that is very effective as an immediate way to decrease anxiety stress levels. And it's also the most easy one to do.

I think people get intimidated and they see these really fit, fit, mussely people that say, come on, join me to the workout. And you're like, I don't think I could keep up with you. Well, just walking outside or even inside, you know, or could be in another homebound situation. And getting your heart rate up is a very effective way to have an immediate effect on your, on your mood levels and your anxiety levels. But if I want to wear a really cute outfit for that, I can. You can. Spend as much money. As you want, it is not a, you know, it does not keep you from benefiting from the walk. For both of those, do you feel that there's a best time of day or is it just whenever you can fit it in?

You know, since we're talking about anxiety, I would say the most flexible one to use is the box breathing. because you can do that in the middle of a conversation that's starting to get anxiety provoking. The other person doesn't even know you're doing it. You do it while they're droning on and on and making you more and more anxious, and it will have a calming effect. It's a little bit hard to start doing jumping jacks

in the middle of a conversation. They'll think you're weird. Box breathing. Also, I'm talking to so many podcasts that asked me about school, going back into school, I'm worried about my kids. how do I teach my kids to become active? That is such a simple way.

They're standing in line. You know, they're not sure what's going to go on. Do a little deep breathing. Just remember to deepen your breath. Do it in class when you're sitting there. It's equally powerful to teach your kids and for you to implement. And you can start practicing together. You know, maybe this is a situation.

And then maybe your conversation with your kid is starting to get more anxious. Okay. we both need to, let's just try it. Let's just breathe together, just a couple of rounds. Let's see if we, you know, if that makes us feel better. And I guarantee you, it does. It really does. You are activating the part of the nervous system that is evolved to make us calmer. So that is. And what a powerful, like, gift to give your kids to be able to self-regulate like that. That's just like incredible, honestly. Yeah. And what about the moving your body? Like, I'm thinking, in terms of time of day. I've heard different things about, like, when you wake up, your cortisol is high

and you want to, like, have it high in the morning and low at night and how your heart rate going up would interact with your cortisol. So is there any, like, best time around when to get your heart rate up? Yeah. So I'm going to answer practically because so many of us, the biggest obstacles, I don't have time to exercise. You know, I'll read about it, but I'm not going to do it. And so the generally, the best time, to do it is a best regular time is a time that's less likely to be interrupted, which is first thing in the morning. So that is when I work out. I get my workout in. I've come to shorter, more regular workout. So I go for six to seven days a week in the morning. I try and wake up exactly the same time no matter what day and get it in. And it's also good for another reason, not just because

it's less likely to be interrupted generally if you do it first thing in the morning. But we know, and I know from my years of research, looking at the effects of exercise on the brain, is that every time you move your body, it's like you're giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals, including dopamine and serotonin that's going to decrease your anxiety and depression levels. But growth factors and other factors that we don't even know all the details of that we know will improve your focus and attention. And I, I get better focus and attention after my workout. So what better way to, what better moment to increase your brain function than right before you're going to get to work. So lots of reason. Yeah, I love that. I've also like,

I think on a less neurochemical level, when I've played around with doing workouts at so many different times, but when I do them in the afternoon, it's this thing like hanging over my head all day that I have to do, whereas if I do it in the morning, I've already been productive and accomplished something, you know, at the beginning of the day, which just sets my whole day off on a different note, which I really like. Yeah, love that too. I love the part of the book where you talked about how our exposure to stress as a child impacts our brain as adults. I mean, I found it sad and scary as somebody who did have quite a bit of stress exposure as a child, but I also found it really fascinating. Can you speak a little bit to that? Sure. So that goes to the fact that, you know,

long-term stress, as we talked about, will kill your brain cells eventually. This is really high levels of stress. And that will tend to sculpt your brain. And that is the warning. It does not mean that, you know, if you happen to have higher levels of stress when you were young, that you were destined to have, you know, not an optimal brain. Why? Because I know the power of brain plasticity, that it is the brain was evolved to adapt to the environment. So yeah, you might be adapting to your stressful environment, but we have, we all have the capacity to shift our environment to environments that maximize our good, positive brain plasticity, things that improve our brain function, improve our kind of neurochemical environment, like moving.

our body like exercise, like sleep. So, so important for a positive brain plasticity environment is to get yourself on a regular and deep and juicy, wonderful sleep cycle. That is personally what I worked on during the pandemic. I literally read all the sleep books and I checked all of the boxes. This is work. This is work. And all of them had a tiny little positive effect And the one thing that really kind of got my sleep patterns into a better way that I could notice was giving up alcohol, sadly. I'm sorry for all the alcohol lovers out there. I did that too. It makes such a huge difference.

It does. It does. And I still have a drink, you know, on a special occasion. But when I really explored it, it was having such a detrimental effect. I felt so much better when I didn't have. that, you know, every few nights I'll have a drink or every other night. And boy, when I change that, it's like, who, I feel so much better. I didn't know how bad I felt until I try. It's an effect of like one or two glasses of wine, I think that people don't talk about. It's like you're not, you don't need,

like, you're not wasted. It's just like having just a little bit really does. It has a huge impact on sleep. It does. It does. And I realized that I was just getting used to that sleep deprivation kind of feel because I didn't know what it felt like to get that eight to nine hours. I was more like seven hours. Like I'm good with seven. No, I'm better with eight to nine. So, and I could only get that regularly without the regular alcohol. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm genuinely confused how master class gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go

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Now, let's get back to the episode. So one thing I really struggle with is, like, I think that the notion of trusting your gut is really skewed when you have anxiety because sometimes my anxiety is leading me in good directions and it's helpful and guiding me in a positive way. And sometimes I do think it's like the leftover childhood trauma that we talked about and my brain going like haywire. So how do I differentiate between the, two situations. Yeah, that's a great question because one of the things that happens with higher

levels of stress is that you can literally inhibit your prefrontal cortex while leaving your amygdala, which is that that area that stimulates the stress response and the fear response. It's left to run wild. And what happens is we lose that prefrontal cortex, which is, decision making, being able to judge and evaluate lots of different possibilities. And we tend, instead, when the prefrontal cortex is inhibited, we tend to default to our reflexive kind of responses, perhaps our habitual responses that you think, oh, that's not bad. If it's habitual, it's good. But it eliminates that ability to try new things to be creative, to use that activist mindset.

So that is what could happen. And so, you know, sometimes it's hard to tell. Is this my gut response? Or is this my prefrontal inhibited, you know, reflexive response? So I think the best way is to really pick a time when you do have less anxiety. And just to dedicate that time to introspect a little bit. That is one of the requests of the book Good Anxiety is to fit. Think in a non-stress state about your anxiety, everybody can write down the top five situations that make me anxious, the top five people that make me anxious. Write that down with no emotion and then think about what is causing that. What is the underlying kind of wisdom or thing that you want to get to that is causing that anxiety? What do I mean by that?

you know, a lot of my life I've suffered from social anxiety. I did have a fear of not having enough friends, not being in with the cool kids, fear of asking a question in class and being wrong and then being humiliated. And I realized that it's so important to maybe not being with the cool kids, but I found myself learning about how much I value social interaction. interactions generally doesn't have to be with the cold kids. It has to be with my friends. And I tend to shut myself off in anxiety. I don't need anybody. I'm fine. I'll just work this out. But I found myself realizing that all of that social anxiety, my lesson to myself was I need my friends. I need

that social interaction, that social support. And not necessarily with the cool kids, but with my true friends that I've developed over the years. And that is my take-home message. And one of the things I learned when I leaned into my own anxiety and what my social anxiety, my lifelong social anxiety was telling me about myself. So what does your anxiety tell you about yourself? And can you explore those different opportunities and address it in new and experimental ways and treat it like an experiment in your life? I absolutely love that. I think it's such an immediately like what are my different anxieties kind of telling me is what was the process of figuring that out? Is it just sort of like putting on those inquisitive goggles and asking yourself, what does this mean kind of over and over? And like you said in a time when you're not necessarily feeling that anxiety, right? Yeah. And it relates to one of the gifts or superpowers that I talk about that come from your own anxiety. And One of those superpowers is creativity. So a little known fact is that adversity and anxiety, our collective anxiety, you know,

counts as a big adversity is one of the biggest stimulators or promoters of creativity in our collective kind of arts life. You go back and look at the lives of some of the most creative people around, and you find so much adversity, so much getting around. the problems and real hardships in life, and it led to this amazing breakthrough. Well, I think that we can use that and approach that as a excuse to dig deeper into our own creativity, and that is, how do I address my anxiety? How do I change and work around my anxiety in a creative way that benefits my life?

And so make your own anxiety a stimulant for your own creativity in approaching it in an experimental, creative, playful way, even though I understand there's negative emotions associated. There's difficult emotions associated with it. But that can be a new, new way to approach this thing that ends up being an anchor around our neck. I love that part of your book. It's something I'm always saying is that my anxiety is my superpower. and it took me so long to get there, but I can see it in my ability to like story tell. Like I tell myself these crazy stories about all these terrible things can happen in the future, but it's also

what's made me just a powerful narrative builder, which has been a core component of my professional life. I can see it in my ability to empathize and to feel things deeply, which I love so much. Can you speak a little bit more to the superpowers that you think come with anxiety? Absolutely. I think that one of my favorite ones and ones that I, one that I like to share because it's so important for people to be able to tap into this one. So one of my favorite superpowers that come from anxiety that I talk about in the book is a superpower of empathy. And this is because, as I mentioned, our anxieties have been with us all of our lives. And it's one of the things that we know the best about ourselves, actually, how it makes us feel.

and the situations that that create it. And so, as I mentioned, one of my oldest anxieties is my social anxiety that I've had since I was a young girl where I was painfully shy and always wanted to be one of the cool kids and never was and always wanted to interact more in classrooms and talk to the professor and ask questions in class, but very shy to do that. Well, I've gotten over that because I am a teacher now. I'm a lecturer. I'm a speaker. And so I don't have that level of anxiety, but I still have elements of social anxiety. And I realized in writing the book, I actually didn't have this as a conscious realization before I wrote the book.

But I realized that unconsciously, I was bringing a particular kind of empathy to my own teaching because of my anxiety, my particular form of anxiety, that social anxiety. And how that worked is that I realized that ever since the first day, I stepped in front of the classroom and started teaching that I had this unconscious awareness of all those students out there that were just like me, that they wanted to ask me as a teacher a question, but they were too afraid and it was too difficult. And so I automatically always tried to make myself available for more casual conversations. I would arrive to class early and talk to students in a more casual way. So I tried to get as many of those shy people as possible. So they could ask me their question. They could interact with me and do that.

And I only did that because I knew so well how much anxiety I had in that situation. So it really did give me a superpower of empathy for my teaching situation. And that's just my anxiety. Everybody has their unique form of anxiety that they can turn outwards and turn it into an empathy or empathy for others and help them in a particular way because you know so deeply. And I don't know if there's anything more that I think this society needs right now is more empathy towards one another. So it's a great thing to think about for yourself and to practice to transform your anxiety.

all this lifetime of this anxiety. Look at what it can become. It's really a beautiful thought. I loved the part of the book where you talked about sort of transforming different negative scenarios or negative emotions into positive things. Can we walk through some like real world scenarios and you can tell me how you would sort of good anxietyify them? Sure, sure. Okay. Okay. So one is this is when I struggle with, which is that I get really, I'll like, scroll on social media and I'll get really jealous and I'll feel like everybody is living a better life than me. Like they have cooler stuff. They have cool, like more friends. They're traveling more, all of that. So how do I turn jealousy into a good thing? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. I get that

as well. And what I end up doing is trying to shift that jealousy into a dream board. So it's not a dream board becomes more personal. It's not that they have it. It is the vision of what you want for yourself because I always feel good. It always gives me a good feeling to create a dream board. And I do just like you get that bad feeling. It's like, oh, God, you know, how come I don't have that yet? But trying to transform, you know, it also, if it's a dream board, one can share that dream. It's not just my dream, but, you know, it's their dream, too, because you know very well that it's not that good for them. They just have a good camera phone and it just looks good on Instagram. So that's the trick that I use for jealousy.

What about jealousy? This is like a little more nuanced, but it is something that I think about where it's like jealousy of inherent stuff that I can't change. Like I get really jealous. This is stupid of tall people. I also get jealous of people who. I perceive, like I feel like I put in a lot of effort to create value for people. And then when people just have one of those faces where they can take a picture on Instagram and everybody's like, yay, wonderful, we love it. And like, I think I'm, I obviously have certain amounts of pretty privilege and all of that. But I get really jealous of people who are just born, jaw-droppingly beautiful and just can like show up and people are like, oh, wow, look at you. Or stuff like inherited wealth.

I feel like I've done well in my life. And again, I have certain amounts of privilege. But in the worlds that I circulate in, I'm constantly surrounded by people who are born into significant amounts of money. And I feel like I had to like scrappily work my way in from the outside. And I get jealous of that. So what about jealousy that like, I don't think those, can those things motivate me in a positive dream board way? Are they just like shitty things I'm limiting myself with thought wise? I think the latter. Because, I mean, and I have some of those same thoughts sometimes, but then I realize that there are very valuable lessons that come with more limited resources and, you know, monetary resources. You, one of them is creativity.

So what, what can you do with what you have? And it's not like, you know, just the most expensive, you know, workout outfit is going to make me happy or make me look better than I would if I was, you know, really truly inherently feel good. And, you know, you start to, you start to realize that there are lessons that we learned, that I learn, I feel like I've learned a lot of lessons about the value of money. what can come with it. And it's not like all positive things come with having lots and lots of money. There are lessons you do not learn, valuable lessons you don't learn with too much money, and that I definitely learned about, you know,

exorbitant amounts of money. So it's really about being practical about the economic lessons that come with that. And the scrappiness is not just, oh, God, you know, it's just, you know, I'm forced to be scrappy. That is, that is valuable information that you have that other people won't. I mean, if I couldn't buy my, you know, $10,000 bag, what would happen? It becomes a, it becomes a tragedy. And like, I would go like, big deal. I mean, I'll carry my purse.

So, or carry my wallet. So it's valuable to have that, that kind of perspective. and, you know, and for tallness, just appreciation of, you know, I'm a lot more comfortable in a plane than you will ever be in your whole life. So I think I'm naturally good at finding good ways to. And, you know, some of the shortest people, they look so cute and adorable. Some of the best actresses are little tiny little things. Oh, I know.

As a short person, I can literally tell you the height. of like anybody in Hollywood. It's like my life scale. People would be like Reese Withers, but I'm like five. Yeah, exactly. And Beyonce is so much shorter than she looks in those videos where they're shooting,

you know, facing up. She looks like a giant. I know. There's something about two people see. People think I'm taller than I am. And I think every Hollywood celebrity, when you meet them in real life,

you're like, oh, the number one comment they all get is, oh my gosh, you're so much shorter than I thought. There's something about like being on a screen that makes people think you're tall, which I think it's interesting.

Okay, what about, here's another real world scenario. What about a sense of like sadness or despair about things that are outside of your control? So I'm going to give you two extreme examples in very different directions. One would be climate anxiety and one would be I really want a life partner, but I can't control when or how or if I meet. Like I'm doing all this stuff, but I'm on the apps, whatever, but I can't control if I meet them. Yeah, yeah, great. So the first thing I want to say is that the goal. of all the things I talk about in good anxiety is not to eliminate anxiety. I think a really,

really important point for everybody to appreciate is that as humans, we have a huge range of emotions. And it is unhuman to think I could only live in the quote unquote positive ones all of my life. That is not, not realistic. Those more uncomfortable emotions are there for a reason. they are warning signals. They complete us. I mean, I don't know if I would want to be, I think a friend that was just happy all the time would be incredibly annoying

and not very interesting to be with, right? So start with that. And so climate change. We should be worried about it. It is of concern. We should be sad about, you know, the state of the planet. But long-term anxiety about,

I can't do anything, is not necessarily helpful. So what I like to do for climate change, and this is I'm telling you my own personal kind of approach, is I always like to feel the feeling. This is bad. Like I have bad feelings associated with the climate now and our handling of it.

But our evolutionarily designed stress system is, you know, warning signal, emotional warning signal, I got that, but action. So you're supposed to run away or you're supposed to fight. and do something. And so I can't really run away or fight climate change. But my way of actually fighting climate change is, you know, to buy all those things that help me get rid of my plastic bags, never buy a plastic bottle of water, to really consider my footprint in my Manhattan

apartment and ask, am I doing everything that I can to minimize my green footprint? because I do believe that every single little bit helps. I don't drive a car. And so I could feel good about that. And so what can you do? And then, of course, you can get more extensive and go to meetings and get activists become more of an activist. But I feel good about my efforts to minimize my carbon footprint to address climate change. And I should be worried.

And so I'm not going to get rid of that. but I'm going to try and put myself into action in that action that fits into my life. And then life partner, okay, here is another one. I can speak. You're hitting all of my own anxieties. It's weird. So life partner, how do we get to a good place about finding a life partner if you're on all the apps and you're trying everything?

I feel like, and I do believe this, that the best thing you can do to prepare to find a life partner is to work on yourself and be as happy and is fulfilled and as self-actualized as you can be because that means you feel great about where you are right now. And so this is another opportunity to look inside, to lean into your own anxieties and ask what is that caused by? And a lot of my own anxieties around. I'm single right now. And so I've had these same thoughts really comes from, you know, society's insistence that that happily ever after always means finding your prince charming. We've heard these stories since we were little and just saying, well, you know what? I don't think that that is a realistic thing. I think happily ever after means

being as happy as you can be in yourself right now, whether you have a life partner or not. And what does that look like for you? Maybe that anxiety, it comes from the outside, comes from society. And you could either buy into that or you can say, you know, I don't need to have a partner immediately right now to be just great and to be to be really, really happy in my life. I love that. I think it's such an interesting point, how much there is this one internalized narrative of what a happy life looks like. And that if you actually take a step back and be like, why do I believe that so strongly? It's because that's what we have been literally spoonbed from the second we were consuming stories. But that doesn't mean it's the right story or the only story. It just means it's the one we've been told over and over and over and over. Yeah. That's fascinating. That's like, that's really. interesting to think about. So one of the things that you talk about in the productivity section is the anxiety of like our multitasking, super productive always on worlds. And I completely get that.

I have like the anxiety of hyper performance and the anxiety of not living up to my own expectations and the anxiety that a good life doesn't actually have anything to do with sending emails or like putting up one more Instagram post. So I'm curious how you recommend dealing with, I guess, the anxiety of trying to be productive, but also the anxiety of, like, is productivity even what life is about? Yeah, that is one that I've also dealt with myself. And in the end, the way that I approach it is to step away for a second from productivity and hyper-productivity, but even though that kind of inspires me as an idea, to, what makes me happy? What really makes me happy in life? And then he's like, oh, well, that's a little bit,

that's a new way to think about it. How come I didn't think about that before? And maybe the answer to what makes me happy isn't to finish the 10 things on my list, but to, you know, to have a better balance in my life and to make sure that while I am making progress on my work project, that I also am staying connected with all of my friends because I so value that social interaction. And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to lose that. I would say it's a perspective shift. I feel like it's changed with me with age that there was definitely a time in my career that it was all about hyper-productivity. And I wish if I went back that I had a more

balanced approach and realize that that's not the end all and be all. Yeah. So that's how I think about it. It's interesting to hear you put it that way because it is like I feel like almost like if I get my work done, I reward myself with all of the other things that I value in my life. But my work is never really done and why am I also weighing it above like like why yeah why am I taught to like weigh my work above my family connections by social interactions and all these other things that really do add value to my life right and it when you get down to it um to really be truly be at your most productive you need to have great emotional regulation a balance in your life. And that never comes with throwing yourself 100% in work. It comes with a balanced life

where you are doing a good range of things that you truly enjoy and not just trying to get ahead at your work, which is two unimensional for anybody out there. So I think that's a great way to think about it. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older. What do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health.

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a bottle came across my desk and I was instantly taken by how cute the green glass packaging is. Then I found out that that packaging was actually refillable so that seed could share its products as sustainably as possible. And then I actually looked into the research behind seed and, well, I was blown away. First of all, seed is not just a probiotic. It is a symbiotic. That means it contains both pre and probiotics, which is super important.

In fact, if you remember my Ask the Doctor Gut Health Edition, we talked about how prebiotics are one of the most important and often underlooked components of great gut health. Let me break it down for you. Probiotics are the live bacteria that are so beneficial to our gut health. But prebiotics are the food that those probiotics need to thrive. If you don't have ample prebiotics, the probiotics you're consuming will be undernourished and not be able to help your health in the way that you want. Speaking of your health, there's also a common misconception that probiotics or synbiotics

are for people with gut issues, which is so not true. Like, yes, the seed symbiotic is amazing for your gut health, but your gut health impacts everything in your entire body. Your skin, your mental health, your cardiovascular health, your ability to actually assimilate the maximum amount of nutrients from all that healthy food you're eating. Having a happy gut is critical for all of it. It is hard to narrow down everything else that I love about seed. I am extremely particular with my supplements and I don't take many, but seed is just

stellar across the board. It's been tested and tested and tested. Seriously, their testing process is bananas to make sure that it has 100% survival through the digestive process, which is so rare. And somehow they do all of that without needing refrigeration, which is very handy. I find that when I have refrigerated probiotics, I just forget about them and they get buried behind like old jars of pasta sauce, whereas I keep these on my bedside table, so I'm reminded to take them every single night. They also contain the 24 strains that are the most scientifically studied. to support your whole body's health. I am obviously passionate about this stuff. Taking care of my gut has been a key part of my own anxiety journey, and seed has been a vital part of that. So feel free to reach out with any questions. And if you like learning about gut health and how probiotics and prebiotics actually function, I highly recommend heading over to Seed.com. They have a whole educational section that breaks down the science behind your microbiome in some of the easiest to understand ways that I have ever seen. And if you're a whole educational section,

And if you would like to try a seed for yourself and pretty much change your life forever, you can go to seed.com and use the code Liz Moody for 15% off your first month supply of seeds daily symbiotic. Again, that's code Liz Moody on seed.com. Now, let's get back to the episode. Does the research say anything or do you have any opinions on like existential anxiety and like what life is actually about? Yeah, I mean, this is my own opinion.

I do not know the research on existential anxiety, but I do have personal experience. And I think those questions are really interesting to think about, but it's very important to approach them with a positive and even playful attitude. like isn't this interesting to think about rather than, oh my God, I'm never going to have the answer to this. I don't know how to approach it. And it's a great example of all the things we've been talking about today because a lot of your own anxiety is helped by giving yourself a break, by learning how to be kinder to myself. This is a lesson that I've learned the hard way because I was mean to myself. I was the hardest on myself. and learning how to be kinder to myself helps you deal with big existential questions when you come

from a place of kindness and love and generosity. But that's just my personal view and personal approach to that. This might sound like a stupid question, but like is there, do you have any like super pragmatic tips for how one actually is kinder to themselves? Yes. my pragmatic tip, or here's the one that I used. I am lucky enough to have worked with different coaches and life coaches and executive coaches. And I choose the one that is, well, she worked the best for me. And she is just so good at pointing out what I do well and what she loves hearing. And it just makes me

feels so good, but it's such a talent in her. And it's like, what if I can do that for myself? What if I pretend to be Julie, who does this so beautifully? And she, she has a professional coach. And what if I can do that for myself every day when I need a little boost? That is the model that I use. And it's always things that you don't appreciate, you know, I did this, well or that well. And sometimes it takes an outside person to, you know, step back and realize it. But I have explicitly asked myself, how can I do that for myself? And I have, I've gotten better at that. It takes some practice. And actually, the best practice is to do it for somebody else. What can you say and how can you kind of coach somebody else to make them feel good? And you can tell

when you're making them feel good and make them appreciate something that they don't have. And that's a great way to practice, then try and turn it on yourself and be your own best coach, because that is a very valuable thing. Yeah. I love that. It makes so much sense, too, because then you're almost like reiterating those neural pathways of like saying those kind words and looking to spot the goodness in other people. So you're training the spotting of the goodness and you can turn that back on yourself. Yes. And it doesn't have to be, oh my God, Wendy, you're so great at that. You're so great at that. But it's more like, to me, like, oh, my gosh, I just so enjoyed that. How much of your day can you really enjoy and then appreciate that?

So, you know, I so enjoyed this conversation. That question was so interesting. Just take that extra second to say that, yeah, actually, you know, it made me think. It made me think about this question in a new way. So it's a really nice way to practice self-care in your life. In that same vein, I loved the part of the book where you talked about practicing optimism. Can you speak a little bit as to why that's important and how we can do it in our lives? Yes. I think that optimism is a wonderful antidote and resolution to the anxiety in our life. And it takes practice.

I'm not talking about becoming a Pollyanna and it's like everything always has to be good. I am talking about practicing an optimistic outlook, that there is a possible good resolution. And I'm going to, you know, spend my time thinking about all the different ways that we can get to that positive resolution. It's even more than that. it's being creative about what that positive resolution is. It could be just surviving, so that's kind of positive, or it could be this wonderful, bigger dream of all the good, juicy things associated with it that takes some more thought and dreaming and dreamboarding to actually come up with.

And it also puts you in a better mood when you are thinking, about, you know, all the, all the positive possibilities. And yes, so anxiety is telling you what, what the situation is right now and it's not there. Well, practicing optimism and positive outlook can really change the, the kind of emotional tenor of your everyday life. Those are the things that you're thinking about. And you mentioned dreamboarding is like that like an actual, you know, cutting pictures out of a magazine type putting up on a dream board? I have done that as an exercise. I do not do that all the time.

However, I do spend time thinking about, you know, thinking about the dream situation. I got this great tip from somebody who is, we were talking about, we were trying to decide which direction to take in our lives. And there were two very different directions. And she said, it comes down to this. what does Wednesday look like? What does Wednesday look like in a life that is in this direction and that direction? Because Wednesday's the hump day, you know, it's never the best day, but what do you really

want your Wednesday hump day to look like? And to be able to dream that up and think about what is that, what are those life activities going to be? How are they going to make you feel? What kind of activity is going to be associated with that? And so it's a great way to kind of charge up your imagination and to create a kind of imaginative dream board for whatever, whatever you're dealing with. Is there anything else that you recommend on like a day-to-day basis that we should be doing to sort of

work our optimism muscle? Well, I mean, the other thing that I do that I know many people find very valuable is doing a gratitude journal at the end of the day. or at the end of the day. So what were you grateful for? And also my only little trick that I've started to do since I wrote this book is not just do, not just write the good things. Oh, I got 100 on my test today.

But include those challenging things that you got through that taught you something new. I found myself, I never did that. It was always only the good things, as if that was the only thing that is helpful. But we learn much more from our difficult situations of those situations that you try and fail than from those good things. So I started adding that to my gratitude journal. And that kind of expanded it out to make me more optimistic and make me more accepting of those challenging situations every day, including of our anxious situations.

Yeah, because then it's like you can actually view them as good, anxiety, I guess, as you would say, you're building that resilience. You're building that flipping the switch a little bit. Okay, last two things. One, what is one thing that you see people doing to assuage their anxiety that you don't think the research really supports or you wouldn't recommend that they waste their time on? So there's a whole section in the book on negative coping strategies. And I've tried, not all of them, but many of them on that list. And they're common ones. It's not like you could never do it. For example, drinking. How many times have I got I was like, I need a drink? And I've done it. And it makes me feel good for the first sip. And then my

sleep is bad and I'm grumpy the next day. Food. I've also, this another one that I've done, sweet food. When I am anxious and worried and especially when that happens when I don't get enough sleep. I crave sugar so badly. And that is the worst thing because it makes you crash. You do have a sugar crash. And I'm much better if I instead, you know, have an apple and a salad instead, even though I really, really want the chocolate cake. So there are those common things are so common. Everybody's done it. I've done it. But those are some of the things that could really make the just worse. So can you find other things to substitute? So instead of the sugary snack, have, have, you know, fruit, fructose, fruit sugar. And instead of a drink, I explored, because I was

exploring, you know, non-alcoholic, so many non-alcoholic cocktails that are very good. And it gives you that satisfaction of that kind of rich flavor without, without the alcohol. So those are, Those are very common ones that I talk about in the book. I love non-alcoholic cocktails. I've been drinking like a watermelon, red pepper, like fake margarita. And it's the most delightful thing. And it's just like it's interesting. You get, yeah, you get that like satisfying ritual of drinking, but you don't.

And sometimes I'm surprised how much I'm really just craving the ritual more than the feeling of being drunk. Exactly. Exactly. I don't like that feeling of the buzz that comes. I just got, there's all this, you know, all the movies have from when I was little have pushed me into, oh, you want to be sophisticated and drink something. I was like, actually, no, I don't need to do that. Well, there's that questioning the narratives.

We've been told, you know, again, it's just like we're told these very specific stories. Okay. And then we've talked about a lot of sort of life changes you could make, you know, prioritizing your sleep and meditating and fitting movement, a walk, whatever. into your day. I would love if you could just end us with like three, maybe two to three things that you've tried or the research supports that are a little like very nuanced, very specific that people could walk away and like try tomorrow and see if it works for them. Okay. So I have the perfect thing to end on. It's a slightly longer story. So it's just one thing. But I really love

this thing that I actually invented for good anxiety. And it is a kind of. It is a kind of, concept of joy conditioning. What is joy conditioning? Joy conditioning is the antidote to fear conditioning that happens all the time. It's dependent on the brain structure called the amygdala. And it happens when you get, let's say you get mugged on a particular street corner, very negative, dangerous situation. And every time you press that past that street corner, you think, oh, God, you have this bad feeling. That is an automatic fear response, fear conditioning that happens is part of our protective mechanisms. And we can't help that it happens. And so you imagine yourself kind of gathering all these fear, automatic fear conditioning situations

all your life. We need something to counteract it. And so I offer joy conditioning. Joy conditioning doesn't happen automatically, but on the good side, you have conscious control over it. It uses the mechanism of the structure that I've studied the longest in neuroscience, which is the hippocampus important for our memory. And it works like this. Go through your memory banks for your whole life and pick out some of the juiciest, loveliest, funniest, most heartwarming memories that you could come up with. And then try and find one with an olfactory kind of smell, whether it's lemons or whatever

olfactory smell. And I say that because I know from the study of memory that an olfactory cue can be particularly evocative of a memory. So it's easy to bring that memory back if it has a smell associated with it. And so here's how it works. I'm going to share with you mine. And my joy conditioning memory that I use all the time is a memory of a particular yoga class that I went to. And this was really memorable for a couple of reasons. First, I was really flexible that day and I did really well as feeling really good about all my up

dogs and down dogs and I flipped my dog and then, you know, all the dogs were working well and then got to the end, feeling really good. And I go into my, the best pose that I do in yoga, which is shavasana. So I was doing that really well too, you know, feeling good about the whole class. But then, so that, that emotion is one that I want to bring back. But then, but then, the teacher came around and she waved under my nose, my eyes were closed, her hand that had lavender hand cream on it. So I got this big whiff of this wonderful lavender. And then she gave me the most luscious five second neck massage that I've ever had because I was feeling really good and I didn't expect it. It's like, oh, this is like the icing on the cake. And so that is my joy

conditioning memory that I re-evoke because I carry around with me a little vial of lavender essence. And when I need a little boost from my own memory banks of feeling good about myself, about getting an extra special boost of a gift of a neck massage, I smell that lavender. And every time I reavoke that memory, I make it stronger. That's how it works. And I bring more joy into my life on purpose. Everybody can do that. And I invite everybody to find that joy conditioning memory to help bring more joy and whatever good emotion you want into your life today.

So is that just like if I'm in a situation and I'm feeling joy, would it be to notice how it smells, what the music is, what like notice something about it so that I can bring it back later? Sure. And also, you know, you can use whatever. memory, even if it doesn't have a smell, it's just particularly evocative. We know that smell memory is very evocative because the olfactory sense has a direct connection that is one synapse, one connection away from the hippocampus and other modalities, vision and somatic sensation, you have to go through

lots of different modalities. So that is one of the reasons why olfaction, again, evolutionarily, is very evocative to our memories. It was protective. It was protective. in when we were nematodes, I guess. And so yeah, you can do that or, you know, we have a lifetime of wonderful memories to go back to. So you can either note one coming up and see whether it has a smell associated with it if you want to come back to it or you could kind of comb your own memory banks for a memory that is already there that may be a smell that, you know, it has to, it can't be grandma's pot roast because it's hard to, you know, have a vial of a smell. a grandma's pot rose. But most people can come up with something, something like that. But it could be

like nature and you could get like a little roll on sort of pine naturey thing and smell that or something. I love that. Exactly. That's the idea. Can you tell us a little bit about your book, Good Anxiety, where we can find it, where we can find more about you and your research? Yes, yes. So I have two websites to point people to. One is goodanxiety.com, hopefully easy. to remember, you can find all the links to buy the hardback copy, the audio book there, and the other website that you can go to for everything. If you want to see more videos, if you want to see my TED Talk, if you want to look at my classes, just go to wendysusuki.com.

And, of course, the link to the book is there as well, right in the front. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for all of this incredible information, Dr. Suzuki. I know it's going to help so many people. Thank you, Liz. This has been such a fun conversation. I hope you loved that episode with Dr. Suzuki. I hope you learned a lot. I learned so much from her, but also I just feel like she's really good. I mean, she's a professor. So she's really good at sort of like

digesting all that information and making it fun and interesting to learn about. So I hope you have a lot to think about. I would love to hear your thoughts if you'd like to share them with me. So definitely screenshot, whatever you're listening on, write some words over it, some thoughts, some feelings, some things you maybe want to try in your life and tag me on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody. And if you did Love this episode. I would so appreciate a quick rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're new here, if somebody sent you this episode or something like that, please subscribe. We have amazing episodes coming up every single Wednesday. Some really, really fun ones coming down the line. So subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. All right, that's it for me. I will see you next week on the next episode of the Healthier Together podcast.

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The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important.

because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it.

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