The Liz Moody Podcast - My FULL Anxiety Story + The Tools That Help Me The Most

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

In this special solo episode for Mental Health Awareness Month, I take you all through my personal anxiety and mental health journey, the tools I still use that have gotten me to where I am today, and answer your questions about anxiety. I’ve shared bits and pieces of my journey on other podcasts and in my book, 100 Ways to Change Your Life, but this is the first time I’m sharing it in its entirety.  If I can make even just one person feel less alone on their own anxiety journey with this episode, that’s my ultimate goal. Not only do we need to break the stigma around mental health, we need to build up supportive communities. As you’ll hear, community is so incredibly important. Please be aware that this episode discusses anxiety, PTSD, OCD, anorexia, and seizures. If any of those topics are triggering for you, it may be best to sit this episode out. I love you and I’ll see you next week! To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: Great Lakes Wellness: use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first purchase at greatlakeswellness.com. AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.  Puori: go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for 20% sitewide. Molly’s Suds: go to mollyssuds.com/LIZMOODY and use code LIZMOODY for 20% off. Previous episodes referred to in this episode: The REAL Science of Eating Well: Cutting Through Social Media Confusion To Find YOUR Best Diet  Fighting Can Make Your Relationship Better—If You Do It THIS Way with Drs Julie & John Gottman Secrets To Optimal Health: An MD’s Exact Plan For Inflammation, Supplements, Exercise, & Knowing What ACTUALLY Works Ask The Doctor: Anxiety Edition: Everything You Need To Know About Treating Anxiety Naturally with Ellen Vora, Md Relieve Stress Now: Science To Feel Calmer & Happier with Dr. Elissa Epel 10 Learnings From My Week At The Life-Changing Hoffman Process Personal Growth Retreat How To Become More Confident: Quiet Your Inner Critic, Stop People Pleasing, and Unlock A Bigger Life With Dr. Aziz Gazipura The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're learning what's myth and what's fact in the world of eating well, hearing why fighting can actually make your relationship better, or discovering the secrets to optimizing brain health to maximize intelligence, focus, and memory. And yes, those are all real episodes and they are linked in the show notes if you would like to listen.

Today we're going to get into my anxiety journey, which I've shared little bits and pieces of on other podcasts. I've shared a little bit of it in my book, 100 ways to change your life, but I've never shared the entire story. So we're going to dive deep into that today, which I'm a little bit nervous about. It feels a little bit vulnerable. But I'm also really excited to share what I've been through to have you guys have that richer understanding of me and my journey and also to hopefully help anybody else who's out

there. I remember when I was agoraphobic, when I was living in England. And I would literally have panic attacks whenever I left the house. And one of the things that I did to cope during that period of my life was that I would Google celebrities with anxiety. And I would watch like Amanda Seyfried, the actress from Mamma Mia and Mean Girls, all these other movies. She's talked really openly about having anxiety and how she'd have panic attacks before certain episodes of going on late night shows. And I remember watching those videos and feeling so inspired that somebody could have anxiety and still go on the late night show and make these

movies and live this big, bold, exciting life. And there was a British YouTuber at the time. Her name was Zoe Sugg, Zoella, and she was really popular as well. And she had anxiety and she talked openly about it. And these people were my lifeline. They gave me a sense of hope and possibility for my future. They made me feel like there was. is even the tiniest, tiniest chance that where I was at that moment did not have to be where I would be for the rest of my life. They gave me a sense of, oh, you can have anxiety and you can have a big, bold, beautiful, satisfying life. And that's why I'm so excited to share my story today, because I am living proof that you can have anxiety that keeps you bed bound. Literally, I would have

panic attacks whenever I left my house. And you can come out of that and you can travel and you can marry the love of your life and you can live out your career dreams. And that's why I won't shut up about my anxiety. I cannot stop sharing the story because if there's just one person out there who is in the place that I was when I was in bed, when I was desperate for anybody to give me a sense of hope, who will find my story and who will hear it and who will feel a sliver of that hope, that's enough for me. Like, I'm good to go. So I'm going to share my story. And then I'm going to share the tools that have worked for me the most on my journey. I have gotten a lot of exposure to all of the different things that you can do to help anxiety via this podcast, via the experts, the scientists, the doctors,

the registered dietitians that I'm lucky enough to interview. So I've been able to try so many different things. And I've pieced together a plan, essentially, that works really, really well for me. Obviously, different things are going to work for different people. So this is just what works for me, huge caveat, but I will share the things that I rely on the most in my day-to-day life. And then I put up a question box on Instagram to get all of your questions about my anxiety journey, my relationship with anxiety, how anxiety impacts my relationships with my husband, with my friends, things like that. So I have a bunch of very juicy questions that you submitted. And at the end of the episode, I will answer all of those. Okay, let's start off with my anxiety journey.

When I was two years old, my mother was in a horseback riding accident and she ended up being in a coma. She was in the hospital for a really long time recovering. And as a result of that accident, her and my father ended up getting divorced and it just had this ripple effect throughout my entire family. I'm not going to get too much into the details of that because it impacts other people and it continues to be something that's very sensitive in my. family. But that incident taught me from the earliest age that I can remember that these one in a million things that you don't think can happen to anybody that cause these life-changing impacts on so many people's lives, these things not only can happen, but they do happen and they happened to me. There's probably a lot of other deeper psychological things that happened as a result of this

accident, my mother was there one day when I was two years old and then the next day she was gone for a very extended period of time. And I, of course, couldn't process that. Nobody could explain that to me in a way that I could understand. So I'm sure there's attachment impacts and other traumatic things that were happening on a much deeper level in my brain. But at the most basic level, from the earliest memories that I have, I've always had the state of hypervigilance and I've always had this belief that I need to control everything and I need to know everything that's going on. And if I can't do either of those things, then everything's going to fall apart. Everything's going to be disaster.

There will be catastrophic consequences if I can't control everything enough to prevent bad things from happening because that's what happened. It really did have a hugely negative impact on my family. Again, this was the reason for my parents' divorce. It was something that was talked about throughout my childhood. And I really just got the sense that everything could change in a second. And we were never really safe. And those statistics that people used to comfort you are not, in fact, that comforting.

People used to share statistics all the time because I'm afraid of flying, which I'll get into that in a second. But people used to share statistics about how safe planes were. I've also dealt with hypochondria. So people would share statistics about, oh, you have a lot of. a one in a million chance for this. You have a one in 10 million chance for this. And it has never comforted me in my entire life because I've been like, well, I can be the one. My mother was the one. Why would I not be the one? So then my parents got divorced and my mom moved to Tucson, Arizona, and my dad stayed in Modesto, California. And I started flying between them around once a month.

And until I was five years old, my dad would fly with me because you're not allowed to send kids on planes by themselves, I think, until they're five years old. But once you turn five, you're allowed to fly alone as essentially in what's called an unaccompanied minor. The flight attendants will look out for you a little bit. They sit you together with other kids, or at least they did back when I was doing this. And if I had a layover, sometimes I'd have a layover in Phoenix and they would take me to this special kids waiting area where they had snacks and they had sodas and it was actually really, really fun. But more or less, you're on your own. So I have a few vague memories of flying with my dad before I was five. And I don't remember being scared.

But my first memories of flying after that are being terrified. I remember crying and screaming on the way to the airport. I remember the flight attendants physically removing me from my dad's arms as I was crying and screaming and I didn't want to leave him and I didn't want to get on the plane. And I think all of that trauma of going back and forth between my parents was very much combined in my head with this feeling of being alone on the plane and feeling out of control and feeling really just disconnected. I do still fly. I'll get into that later. But it's definitely one of the things that most negatively impacts my life because every single time I'm booking a flight, I'm thinking, is this going to be the last thing that I do on this planet? It is only very recently that I've started making plans for after a flight because I've been so sure that I would have no need

for plans after the flight. And I see my friends and they're going on vacations and flying off to this place and that without a thought in the world. And even though I can make myself get on that plane, I can go on the group trip, I can go on the vacation with Zach and I can do all the things for work. I just did this book tour where I was flying almost every other day. I can do all of these. things, but I do it with so much fear. And so when I see my friends who do it without a care in the world, I have one girlfriend, and she just falls asleep when she gets on a plane. She gets in a plane, she falls asleep. The plane land, she wakes up. And I'm like, you are essentially teleporting. And I'm so, so jealous of it. And I wonder sometimes if there's anything that

my parents could have done that would have disentangled this trauma of going between them from flying. Neither of my parents are afraid of flying at all. They're both incredibly comfortable, incredibly casual flyers. And I do struggle with some resentment around that. That said, it's really expensive to buy plane tickets to fly with your kid every month. And I understand that the cost was a really, really big factor to nobody flying with me. And I'm not sure exactly what the solution would have been, but it's something I've struggled with over the year. So I had this fear of flying. I also had hypochondria. I was pretty fixated on what was going on in my body, and I've been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The way that I've found my fixations work

is they sort of hop around. So at one moment I'll be fixated on one thing, and another moment I'll completely forget that fixation, and my anxiety will attach to something different, which sometimes I can find really comforting because if I'm fixating on something, If my anxiety is tied to, say, a noise or something happening in my body, I can almost tell myself, well, in a week or two, your fixation will move on. You won't be thinking about this thing anymore. It'll be something else entirely. So I find that comforting.

But also, it's very frustrating in the moments that I am fixated on, whatever I'm fixated on. So often that fixation has been on things in my body, on health concerns, and just this belief that I could be that one in a million person who could have something catastrophic. traffic happen. I really struggle with all or nothing thinking. This is something that I worked on a lot at Hoffman, which is a week-long intensive therapy retreat that I went to. I have an entire episode about that if you want to hear more about it. But all or nothing thinking is essentially exactly what it sounds like when you think something is completely going to be one way or completely another way. You are sick or you are well. I did it in my relationship with Zach for years.

We're either in a good place or a bad place. And I have to notice it and catch myself. now and say it's probably not going to be completely this or completely that. It's probably going to be something in the middle. I still have to train myself into finding that gray area, finding that middle ground. And it's something I still have to be very gentle with myself about. I have to remind myself about frequently. I almost have to do a meditative like process where my attention will go one way. It'll go to the all or nothing thinking and I'll have to notice it and gently bring it back to what's the reality of this situation, what's likely to actually happen, which is usually, again, in that middle ground. So there was a lot of all or nothing thinking.

I would have panic attacks as a child and as a teenager, but they weren't that often. I had a low buzz, a low hum of anxious thoughts, and occasionally that noise of anxiety would get so loud that I'd have a panic attack and then it would calm back down again. And then maybe a few months would pass and it would still be a low hum, a low buzz, and then it would get really loud and I'd have a panic attack, and then it would calm down again. But mostly I was living a normal life. I had friends as a teenager. I partied a lot. And then after I graduated from high school, I went and I was traveling the world. I essentially did one semester where I would go to school, and then I would do a semester where I would travel on an absolute shoestring, ridiculous budget.

And it was perhaps not the most healthy life. I was doing a lot of drugs at this point. I had really bad self-esteem issues. I felt very insecure. I was partying to deal with that insecurity. All of these things. I was out in the clubs until three or four in the morning. I was in different countries all the time. I was having all of these adventures with this low-grade background hum of anxiety. And then when I was 19 years old, I was traveling by myself in Brazil. I was anorexic at the time. I was at the lowest weight I'd ever been at. And I did not know that. I just thought I looked really great and that I had achieved all of my Thinspo goals that I'd seen all of the actresses in Us Weekly achieving. And this was

the time of glamorizing like Lindsay Lohan when she definitely was not well. Mary Kay and Ashley Olson, it was the time of those prominent collarbones. And I just look back at those pictures now. And I was like, somebody needed to get these people help. And instead of getting these people help, we were putting them on the covers of magazines and saying, this is the ideal. We should all look like this, which is just mind-boggling and so, so, so sad to me. But it was that era in the world. So I thought I was achieving the societal standard of beauty at the time, even though I was really, really, really unwell. And I bought some weed from a very questionable source and I smoked it on the beach by myself. And I just remember having this very strong sense of you need to eat something.

And it wasn't a casual like, oh, grab a snack. It was like a very visceral, you need to eat something right now. Go find food. And I remember getting up on the beach and walking into a Bob's burgers, which is a burger chain in Rio de Janeiro. and I was ordering at the counter and I remember saying, Solomente ketchup, which means only ketchup, because I like my burgers with only ketchup. And then the next thing I remember, I was on the floor. I vaguely have this memory of trying to give my wallet to a woman who was helping me.

I don't know why, just because my brain was really addled. And she was describing to me that I'd had a seizure. She did this hand motion of her hand going back and forth. And she was like, you were doing this. And I was like, oh, no, I'm sure I just fainted. I'm sure I just passed out. And she's like, no, no, and she did this motion with her hand going back and forth really fast that really signified, like, no, no, you had a seizure. And they called an ambulance for me, which took me to a public hospital. They took my blood sugar. They said it was super, super low. They gave me a bag of

potato chips and they gave me a clonapin prescription and said, go on your merry way, eat more food, don't let your blood sugar get so low. I did not think much of it. at the time. I started taking the clonopin, which nobody told me was an anti-anxiety drug either. It's a drug for seizures, which is why they gave it to me. But they also didn't give me any instructions. It's a very serious drug. If you take it, you need to wean off of it. That I was flying during that time. I remember I flew up to Salvador for carnival. And I was like, wait, I'm not afraid on the plane. What's going on? And then later, I was researching it. And it was like, clonopins used often as an anti-anxiety drug. And I was like, oh, that's a lot. And I was like, oh,

That makes sense. So that's when I started taking clonopin to fly when I made that connection and I was like, oh, clonopin makes me not scared on planes. And I think they gave me a two-week prescription. So I took it for two weeks every single day, which again is just so dangerous, taking this very serious drug without a doctor supervising it and not weaning off of it and just doing it for this random amount of time. And then I got another prescription later and I took it when I flew for years and years and

years after that because I learned during that experience that it made me much less anxious when I flew. So I took my clonopin and I took my chips and I kept traveling all over South America. I went and lived in Buenos Aires for a while. And what started to happen was I was having panic attacks because I had PTSD from this experience that I in no way recognized as PTSD. It was essentially treating my body like garbage for months and months and months and months and months. But I couldn't get my head around that. I couldn't believe that. So to me, it was more of this random crazy event that happened that I couldn't process in any sort of rational or logical way. So I had this lingering under the surface PTSD, but I was still living my life. I was still doing a ton of drugs. I wasn't

really eating very much still. And what started to happen was I would begin to have these panic attacks, but I would breathe through it. And then I would get back to my life and be like, who, that was weird, let's go out and get drunk. And then I came back to Berkeley, which is where I went to college at the time, and I met Zach, who's my husband now, and we fell in love. And we dated for years. We moved to New York City together. And everything was great.

I would occasionally have these panic attacks. I still had some of that background hum of anxiety, but I had a great job. I had great friends. I had a life that felt very, very satisfying and full. And then we moved to England. He had gotten into an incredible graduate school program there, and I was just excited to go have an adventure. I'd spent my life traveling. I really self-identified as a traveler. So I was like, I'm going to do great. I'm going to absolutely rock this. I'm going to thrive in this new environment. So we moved to England. We bring Bella with us.

We rent a flat. And at the beginning, it was really fun. I loved exploring London. I was still doing a job that I had in New York. I was doing it freelance from London. and it was wonderful. And then I decided to quit my job because I'd saved up enough money and I wanted to take a shot at being a novelist, which was my dream since I was a tiny baby, since my earliest memories. I was like, I'm going to write a novel. This is going to be my career. I'd written a number of novels, memoirs, whatever at that point. I had been agented a few times, but I was like, I have a good sense of what I need to write to break through in the publishing industry. And I want to take this as an opportunity to do that. So I started writing full time. And at the same time, Zach's schedule was

getting busier and busier. And he would make efforts to include me in anything that him and his graduate school friends were doing. But London is a super, super spread out city. So we lived in an area called Angel. His school was in a place called South Kensington. It is over an hour between those two places. So even if you would text me and say, hey, we're thinking about going to the pub after school, I would have to get ready, get on the tube, go all the way across town. And often by the time I got there, things were sort of winding down. So despite his best efforts, I wasn't really part of his graduate school crew, which makes sense because they were spending all day, every day together. They were doing really intensive work. I made a few friends in that group,

but I mostly felt really, really, really lonely. I also made a few attempts to make new friends, but I didn't really know how to do it. I didn't have all of the information and knowledge about making friends that I do now. And because I didn't have a job, because I didn't have structure, because I didn't have a place that I went to every single day and saw the same people and began to develop that familiarity that breeds friendship, I just got lonelier and lonelier and my world got smaller and smaller. And then on top of that, because I was trying to write a novel at the time, I was also living in my head every single day and I wasn't even interacting with the outside world on email or text or through any type of job. Look, I'm never

going to make everything that I wear organic. But your sheets, your pillows, your comforter are literally touching your skin for eight hours every single night. That is a third of your life right there with one simple swap. And if your bedding is worn out, it's trapping heat or it's made with questionable materials, your sleep is going to suffer. And so will everything that depends on it. You want a bed, you deserve a bed that you are excited to get into every single night so that you can get the sleep that you need to feel your best. That's why I love Bowlin Branch so much. Their signature organic cotton sheets are incredibly soft. You notice that the first night, and they are so breathable, which is a godsend if you sleep hot like I do.

But what massively impresses me is that in an era where everyone is greenwashing everything, Bowlin Branch takes the safety and the quality of their products so seriously. They're got certified, meaning the organic integrity is verified at every single step of production, not just the raw material. They're Okotech certified, which I always look for. It means that everything has been tested and cleared for harmful substances from the yarn all the way to the finished product. And they are fair trade certified.

so the people actually making your sheets are being paid and treated fairly. Most people start with the signature sheet set and honestly once you feel them, you're going to want to do the entire bed. They feel like a fancy hotel, but maybe even better. It's made travel actually worse for me, fair warning, because my own bed at home is like nicer than the nicest hotels. It just feels so good. I get so excited to get into it every single night.

It's time to upgrade your sleep with Bowlen Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at bollandbranch. slash Liz Moody with code Liz Moody. That's Bullen Branch, B-O-L-L-andbranch.com slash Liz Moody, use code Liz Moody to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. I'm genuinely confused how Masterclass 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 to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear

lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Mastering Confidence and Sex Appeal class is 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaley. Literally, you name it, they're on master class and it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually. And you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn

at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode, like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at masterclass. com slash Liz Moody. Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. So my anxiety was ramping up and up and up at the time, but I wasn't really noticing what was happening until there's a few key moments that really stand out for me. One is I was waiting in line at the grocery store and I had my basket filled with groceries

and I was suddenly overcome with a panic attack and I had to leave my grocery basket in line and essentially make my way home. And it was such a striking feeling because it was like I can't even do this very basic human task of shopping for groceries. What is going on with me? And around that same time, I remember Zach and I were both in our bedroom, in our flat, and he asked me if I wanted to go to a pub to watch a rugby game. And I couldn't picture being able to do that without being flooded with anxiety. And the idea that I couldn't do something as simple as go to a pub to watch a rugby game really, really scared me.

What was happening, even though I did not understand this at the time, was my PTSD from my seizure had cropped back up. It had gotten really, really, really bad. And so I became afraid at any time if I left my house that I might have a seizure, which resulted in me having panic attacks whenever I left my house. So I pretty much stopped leaving my house. My OCD was also showing up pretty strongly at the time. At that moment, my fixation was checking my blood sugar. So I had one of those finger prick blood sugar monitors, and I would check my blood sugar 20, 30 times a day, and my fingertips were raw and bleeding. And I was just trying to gain a sense of control over my body, which I felt increasingly out of control of. and I stopped going out. Eventually, I stopped going downstairs. Even going to the bathroom became

really hard. I remember bracing myself in the shower because the shower always felt like a really unsafe space, a space that I could have a panic attack, that I could have an episode. And eventually it got to the point where my bed became the only place that really felt safe to me. And I spent months with my bed as the primary place that I spent my time. Bella was there. I would watch Netflix. I would browse the internet. I had my computer propped up on the pillow next to me. And I remember thinking I could just live like this. Like this could be a fine life because the idea of fighting through the intense level of fear that I had about the alternative. was so great that I was needing to justify in my head why this was good enough, this teeny

tiny life in my bed where my only access to the outside world was via fiction on my computer. I was obsessively watching friends at the time and I was like, these are my friends, this is enough, which makes me so heartbroken to say out loud now. It makes me want to cry for that version of myself. But it's how I felt. I was like, I can make do with this. But I had been a journalist for years at that point. My first professional writing job was when I was a teenager and I pitched a newspaper column to my local newspaper.

I was like, you need a newspaper column for teens and by teens. And that teen that it should be by should be me. And then that ended up being nationally syndicated. And I had written for a number of magazines. and the thing that I knew how to do was ask sources for information. So while I was laying in my bed with my computer propped up next to me with my friends, the TV show people as my friends, I started emailing people that I had no right to email. This was such a never be the one to say no to yourself moment.

If you're familiar with me, you know this is one of my life mottos. never be the one to say no to yourself because you never know who might give you a yes. I've lived by this for my entire life and I'm so glad that I lived by it even in that moment because I emailed the people who were leading the research on the brain and the body at Harvard and Stanford and registered dietitians and world famous doctors and people I would be excited to get on this podcast today. and I asked them all of these questions about what was going on with my anxiety, what was happening in my brain, what was happening in my body, what were the mechanisms of action, and how could

I begin to disrupt those mechanisms and feel better? And 95% of them did not email me back because they're very important, very busy people, but a few of them did, and they were so generous with their time and they were so helpful in answering my questions and they began to give me the information that I needed to piece together a plan for myself. And one of them was a registered dietitian and we were going back and forth a little bit about nutrients and how I probably had not given my body the nutrients that it needed to feel good in a very long time. And I told her that I was having a really hard time eating at that moment because I always felt really nauseous and it was just hard to find food appealing.

And she suggested that I have a green smoothie. And I made my way downstairs and I made a green smoothie. I think I had Zach pick up the ingredients for it. And that was the first step in feeling better. I also started meditating a little bit in bed. I started doing yoga at the foot of my bed with an online yoga studio. I started doing these little teeny tiny practices that felt safe enough to still be within my comfort zone. And not immediately, but as a week past two weeks, three weeks, a month, two months, I started to feel a little bit better.

Not completely. Oh my gosh, you just meditate a little bit, have a green smoothie, do some yoga. You're cured, not by any means. But I started to feel a little bit better and feeling a little bit better. and feeling a little bit better gave me that glimmer of hope that I needed to believe in the possibility of ever feeling different than I felt in that moment. So we left London. We moved back to the U.S.

We actually moved in with Zach's parents for a year, which is a story for another day. But I was so embarrassed about it at the time. And looking back, I'm so grateful. It, first of all, allowed me to start writing more freelance, to start doing some stuff on Instagram and eventually to write the proposal that became Glopops, which was my first cookbook, which led to healthier together, which led to this podcast, which used to be called healthier together, which led to 100 ways to change your life and really set the groundwork for the life that I have today.

So that was conceived in the time that we were living with Zach's parents after graduate school. And during that time, I was still pretty anxious, but I was leaving the house. I was still checking my blood sugar all the time. I could go out, but tentatively, and I was building in more and more tools and practices in my life. I was acquiring more information. And then I was offered a full-time job at an editorial website in New York City.

So Zach and I moved back to New York. We'd been living in New York before we went to London. And I remember being so nervous to take this job because at that point, I had built so many of my routines around being anxious, around you can sleep in really late if you need to. You can take a break at 2 p.m. if you're having a panic attack around just having no structure so I could have all of the freedom in the world to feel whatever I was feeling at any given moment. And I was like, how is this going to work if I have to go into a full-time job every day? But also, this was a dream job for me and I really needed money. And while I loved living with Zach's parents, I was also like,

I don't want to do this forever. So I took the job and that structure of the full-time job and the community that came with that job ended up being exactly the things that tipped me back into living a life that didn't feel tentative anymore that felt robust and rich and full and exciting, a life that, again, wasn't free of anxiety, but where anxiety was tagging along for the journey. It wasn't driving the car anymore. It was chilling in the passenger seat. It was looking out the window.

It was admiring the view. Also, because that job was an editorial job at a wellness online magazine, it gave me the ability to continue to explore my anxiety to interview even more experts and doctors and read more studies and find out more about my situation. And everybody I worked with was brilliant and so well-informed. about health and wellness. And so I was able to learn from them as well. And I'm so grateful to that company, to that time in my life.

And that's where I really feel like I entered the phase that I'm in now, the phase where I felt truly healed. I felt not back to my old self because I changed in so many ways inevitably along this journey, but where I entered a more fully realized life and began to embrace the new person that I was in that life. Which brings me to the tools that have helped me the most on this journey. And I want to start with the two that I just mentioned, which are structure and community. I think a lot of people with anxiety can convince themselves. I certainly convince myself to let go of structure as much as possible, to give space for whatever happened with my anxiety to happen. But structure is so important for all of us,

but especially for anybody dealing with anxiety. Structure is the antidote to anxiety, waking up at a certain time every single day, going to bed at a certain time, having a place that you go every single day, having a schedule that you would adhere to. It gives such a powerful sense of comfort to our brains to know what's going to happen next. So I thought my anxiety needed no structure. My anxiety needs so much structure. And that's something that I put into place in my life to this day. I try to go to bed at the same time. I try to wake up at the same time. I have a morning routine that I adhere to. I have an evening routine that I adhere to. I time block my day. I time block my weeks. All of my calls go on Mondays. I have certain days that I do podcasts. I have certain days that I do content creation.

I know when I'm going to do my workouts. I know what workout I'm going to do. As much as possible. I create structure in my routine, which serves as a backbone to my life and provide such stability and such comfort for it. And then community is just critical. It is so critical for our health, our happiness. I will never stop talking about the Harvard Adult Development Study, which found that the single biggest predictor of our longevity and our happiness over the course of our lives is the strength and quality of our relationship. our relationships are the most important thing. And spending the time to develop and nurture those relationships is going to pay off in

every single facet in your life. It will make you feel better in the moment. It'll make your life more fun. It'll make your life more playful. It'll reduce stress. It'll reduce inflammation. It will make you live longer. It is so, so good for us.

And yet we act often like it is the leftover priority. Like after we get through our entire to-do list, that's when we can see our friends. That's when we can spend time with our family. But those relationships should be a non-negotiable because they are that important to our health and our happiness. I started to learn that when I moved back to New York to do the full-time job and I had the greatest group of editors around me. I'm still best friends with many of them to this day. And I've continued to learn it in the year since, both from guests on this podcast. to come on over and over and over again and talk about how important our community is,

how important our friendships, how important our relationships are. And in my own life, a huge reason that we chose to stop nomading and to live in the Bay Area is because we realized that we were really, really missing a deep sense of community in our lives. And since I moved back to the Bay Area, I've prioritized that. I've started a book club. I've started a recurring game night. I've made so many plans with friends. I've made an effort to make new friends and expand my social circle here. And I've really said this year is my year of community. It's the year I'm going to prioritize this. I have a rule where if I can afford it and I can fit it into my schedule, I'm never saying no to a group trip because I love group trips so, so, so much. And we've done a ton

of group trips this year as a result of just recognizing that that's a priority in our lives. And I was telling Zach the other day that I said in January, this is the year I want to prioritize community and I have done that since. And I was telling him the other day, it has paid off so much. It feels every bit as good as I thought it would. I wake up happier every single day. I have a noticeable difference in my stress levels, in my anxiety. I feel a sense of joy to live my life that I haven't felt in years, and I attribute a lot of that to my community. So community and structure are two of the biggest tools that have helped with my anxiety. But I'm going to get into some of the other nitty-gritty ones here. I have a whole list.

Okay, these are in no particular order, but first up is keeping my blood sugar stable. And this one's a little bit tricky for me because, as I mentioned earlier, checking my blood sugar is one of my OCD fixations. so I have to be careful to not be overly sensitive about this. But Dr. Ellen Vora, who's a friend of mine, she's been on this podcast, she has an incredible book called The Anatomy of Anxiety. And she talks a lot about the relationship between our physical states and our mental states. And one of the things that she taught me is that when your blood sugar crashes, you can essentially experience what's called misattribution.

So you have this sensation of your hands are clammy, you feel little nauseous, you feel a little lightheaded, you feel a little bit dizzy. and your brain says, hey, why do I feel these things? Oh, that feels similar to when I had anxiety before. What am I anxious about? And your brain can always, always, always find something to be anxious about. So then it finds a thing to be anxious about. You think the anxious thought, and it turns into this cycle where the anxious thought actually creates anxiety. And then suddenly this blood sugar dip has become an anxiety episode and perhaps even a panic attack. So if you can stop that cycle before it even begins by mitigating those blood sugar crashes, it can do wonders for anxiety.

If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners. One study found that regular use of cleaning sprays was associated with a lung function decline comparable to smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes per day. Synthetic fragrances are a well-documented migraine trigger and a number of studies have linked ingredients in common household cleaners to fertility issues, thyroid dysfunction, mood changes, and more

because of their impact on our endocrine systems. Luckily, you can just make one simple swap and you can eliminate all of those risk factors that you get from common household cleaners. Branch Basics makes cleaning products that are plant and mineral-based, completely fragrance-free and made safe certified, meaning they are screened against thousands of known and suspected harmful chemicals. And best of all, you literally use one product, but you mix it with different amounts of water to make your kitchen spray, your bathroom cleaner,

your laundry detergent, your produce wash, your glass cleaner, literally everything. It does not smell. It does not give me headaches. It does not give me rashes or itchiness from clothes because you are. Remember, we're using this for laundry. We're using this for literally everything and it works so well. Everything gets so clean. And I know that I'm protecting myself from all those long-term issues too. And I'm protecting my kittens who are much tinier than me. So anything they're exposed to has a much greater impact on their little tiny systems. And they're running around on their little paws and then they're licking them. So I'm protecting them too. Branch basics is now available at Target.com, Amazon and branchbasics.com. So it's easier than ever to make the switch. And if you want to

grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branchbasics.com and use code Liz Moody. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years. And I am so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it. So now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older.

It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refused to die. They sit there releasing inflammatory signals, breaking down your collagen, degrading your skin barrier, and accelerating every visible sign of aging. Scientists call them zombie cells and as they accumulate, they are one of the primary drivers of how old your skin looks and feels. The team at one skin, a group of female longevity researchers and PhDs, spent five years testing over 900 peptides to figure out how to help reduce the accumulation of senescent cells.

And they finally landed on it. OSO1, the first peptide scientifically studied to reduce skin's biological age at the molecular level. OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent cells so it helps skin function like healthier, younger looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now, and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference. And you're kind of like, do I? Do I? And this I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells,

it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer. It looks glowier. The texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers.

I hate that like sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. And then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. OneSkin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies and over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up.

For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.co slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at one skin.c.com with code Liz. This also works for other symptoms that you might have that go along with your anxiety. If you can stop those symptoms that you associate with anxiety, as much as possible. Obviously, we do not have complete control over this stuff. But for me, for instance, nausea is a really big symptom that I experience with my anxiety. So I have a whole arsenal of tools. I have gender tincture. I have my HILMA supplements. I have all these different things I do when I experience nausea so that I can deal with the nausea and not have that be misattributed to anxiety, which then can cause more anxiety.

So from the blood sugar perspective, I'm thinking for every single meal, how can I have protein, how can I have as much fiber as possible, how can I have some sort of healthy fat? I'm just trying to always increase my satiety with my meals to keep my blood sugar really stable so I don't have those crashes that I misattribute to anxiety while not being overly fixated on this because again, it's something that's very tied to my OCD. Next up is retreats. This came from really interesting research from Dr. Alyssa Epple. She's one of the world's leading researchers on stress. And when she came on the podcast, she taught me that one week of doing a retreat,

particularly one that's focused on mental health or mindfulness can help your stress levels for over a year afterward. And I think this is such an interesting hack. Obviously, it's a privilege to be able to do a retreat, but also if you're somebody who has a hard time fitting meditation into your daily life, focusing on it for a weekend, a week, and then reaping those benefits for a year after, I think is a really fun option. And so I did that this year with Hoffman. This was my first experience of anything like this, but it's a week completely offline and really focused on a whole bunch of different techniques and tools that help with your mental health. And it was one of the most rewarding, satisfying, incredible experiences of my life.

Again, I have an entire episode about it. And I continue to feel the benefits of it, even though it's months later. And Zach and I have a Zen meditation retreat scheduled. It was my anniversary pick for us. So he plans our dating anniversary and I plan our wedding anniversary. So I planned a weekend then meditation retreat, which I'm really, really excited about. It's the first time I've done anything like that. And I will let you know how it goes.

But retreats that are focused on mental health, on mindfulness, on stress relieving practices, whether it's for a weekend, for a week, whatever you can do. I have a tip in my book about how to do an at-home silent retreat, which I think is so interesting, so fun. well worth playing around with because this type of thing can reap benefits for months and even years afterward. Magnesium glycinate. I love magnesium glycinate. First of all, many of us are deficient in magnesium, but magnesium can have a powerful

impact on anxiety. I am not a doctor. Work with your doctor if you're going to consume a new supplement. But for me, I take two of the pure encapsulation, magnesium glycinate pills. I take them in the moment when I feel a little bit anxious. And it's the closest thing to Xanax that I've ever experienced. I absolutely love it. It creates the most noticeable shift in my mental and physical state of any supplement that I consume.

And they're very affordable. You can get them online. And I absolutely love them. I'm not a doctor. So consult your doctor before adding any new supplement to your life. But magnesium glycinate for me has made the world's biggest difference in my anxiety. movement. I'm going to put this in two categories. One, we have movement generally. So I did not exercise for years and years and years and years. I only thought about exercise in terms of how it

impacted how my body looked. And I'd always heard your body is 80% what you eat and 20% your workout. You can't outrun a bad diet, et cetera, et cetera. So I was like, what's the point of even doing a workout? And it wasn't until I realized that working out is about the way that you feel in your body, that I found a why that resonated with me to the point of the find your why tip in my book. It's one of the most important tips in my book. I keep coming back to it over and over because if we do not have a good why, we will not have motivation to actually implement the habit and stick to them long enough to see the changes that we want them to make in our lives. So you need to find a why that really, really resonates with you. And the why of having my body look a certain way never

really resonated with me. But the why of having my body feel a certain way really did. So once I realized that on days that I worked out, my anxiety levels were noticeably, drastically different all day long. I was like, oh, well, that's a pretty good motivation to spend 20 or 30 minutes moving my body. And since then, I've been able to successfully stick to a workout routine and I love it and it makes a huge difference in my anxiety. And then I'm going to add in a second category of movement, which is moving anxiety. through my body. This is something I did not learn about until recently. It's a huge part of the

Hoffman experience is that you're not only talking about how you feel and talking about your past and talking about your trauma, but you're moving it through your physical body, whether you're doing things like hitting things with the bat or screaming or jumping or yelling or recently I've added in boxing and I love it. I love it so much the feeling of being able to. I'm to move the emotion through my body in that way is so satisfying. And I did not realize that that was such a huge missing part of what I needed to heal from my anxiety. And it's come up in podcast since then. The somatic experience is so important. And often we get stuck in the intellectual experience of anxiety. We'll go to therapy. We'll talk through it. We'll talk in circles. And then we'll say,

why don't I feel better? And that's because that is just one phase of moving the anxiety through you. Therapy is wonderful. Talking to people is wonderful. Disclosure is wonderful and it's very, very sense-making and it's very, very healing. There's a ton of research behind that. But moving through your body is a key part of the process and it's the part of the process that so many of us often miss. So if you can, stomp and yell and dance and box and hit your mattress with a wiffle ball bat, do whatever you can to move. those sensations through your body. That has been a game changer for me. Meditation and breathwork have both been really, really helpful for me. I did a Vedic meditation training course years ago, so I have a mantra, so I will often do a 20-minute mantra meditation, or I also love the open meditation

and then I love some of the meditations on the Insight Timer app as well. So I'll pull up a different meditation. I used to be kind of a stickler of like, what's the best type of meditation? Should I be doing this one or this one or this one to get the most results. And now I'm just kind of like, as long as I do a meditation every single day, I'm good to go. Like I'm having some sort of positive impact on my brain. I love meditation because not only are there long term benefits and there's very well researched benefits in addition to the benefits that I've very much seen and felt in my own life, but there's also an immediate reward. The way I feel after I meditate, the best way that I can describe it is like my brain has gone through a car wash and it just feels so delicious.

that it motivates me to keep meditating because I seek out that feeling. So I do that. I also do a number of breathwork practices. I love the ones on the open meditation app. I also love a box breath, which is just four in, hold for four, four out, hold for four. There's incredible research behind that. I love a cyclic sigh. I write about this in my book, but it's based on incredible research out of Stanford. It's too sharp inhales through your nose and then a longer exhale through your mouth. and all of these breathwork exercises are really powerful and very fast ways to activate the parasympathetic nervous system or the rest and digest part of your nervous system. So I try to practice them regularly and then also because they are so quick, it takes less than 30 seconds to do any of these

breathwork exercises. I'll use them in the moments that I'm feeling really anxious. So before a podcast interview or before I go on TV or before I go into a social situation that It's making me particularly anxious. I'll sit and do a few rounds of box breathing or I'll sit and do a few cyclic sides. And it makes a huge, huge difference because you're essentially forcibly shifting your physical state from your sympathetic nervous system to your parasympathetic nervous system. Being in nature has been incredibly helpful for me. That's another one that comes up on podcast episode after podcast episode after podcast episode.

And I've been trying to spend as much time as possible in nature. I try to go on hikes a few times a week, but also just walking around the block in my neighborhood and really tapping into that sense of awe around nature. There's some really interesting research around the healing power of awe. My old college professor, Dr. Keltner, actually wrote a book on this. I want to have him on the podcast to talk about it more. But awe is such a powerful emotion and nature provides such ample opportunities for that awe. from watching a hummingbird feed out of a flower to looking at life come in the spring.

Right now, I feel like the world is just bursting with life with greens and blues and pinks and purples. And it gives me such a sense of awe, just going on my morning circwalk in my neighborhood to think that all of this exists and that I get to look at all of this and be part of all of this. Also, when I'm in nature, I try to tap into as many of my senses as possible. Tapping into your different senses is a really, really powerful technique to help calm anxiety. So in a moment that you're feeling anxiety, you can say, what do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell?

What do I taste? What do I touch? And grounding yourself in those senses can take you into your body and out of your head, and it can be really effective for stopping an anxiety spiral. but also being in my senses in nature, tapping into my senses throughout the day, gives me a sense of gratitude, it gives me a sense of calm, it gives me a sense of grounding, even if I'm not coming from a place of anxiety in the first place. Cold plunging and cold showers, these have a physiologic effect.

They have an impact on your cortisol levels. They have an impact on inflammation. They're really helpful in the sense of your body. But to me, in a greater way, they're helpful because they give me a safe space to push my body and my brain slightly beyond the realm of what's comfortable so that I can begin to get more comfortable with discomfort. A lot of my anxiety comes from the fear of being uncomfortable, the fear that I won't be able to handle that. And cold plunging allows me to build belief in my own resilience in this, safe container. And I do feel like if I can push myself a little bit in this way, I feel stronger

in my body. I build more trust in my body. I build more trust in my brain. And I build that belief in my resilience that carries over into the rest of my day and it carries over into the rest of my life. So that's been a practice that I've really been loving. The next one is not always asking why. Sometimes I think there can be a tendency when you experience anxiety to get up in your head and say, well, is it because of this? Is it because of this? It's a problem that I need to solve. So I need to identify what that problem is. And that's not that effective for a few reasons. One, when we're in our sympathetic nervous system, when we're in that fight or flight state, our brain is not as adept at identifying problems or identifying solutions. So we're going to be

grasping and not as equipped to find the things that we are grasping for in those moments. And two, sometimes there's just not a reason for anxiety. So when you're sitting there and you're trying to come up with a reason, all you're really doing is coming up with more reasons that you should feel anxious and you're adding to this vicious cycle of anxiety and you're piling undue stress on yourself. So one of the most powerful things that I have done with my anxiety is instead of tensing up and wanting to figure it out and wanting to push it away, I imagine myself leaning into it. It's really a mental image of, oh, hello, anxiety. I see that you're here. I'm just going to accept you. I'm going to lean in. I'm not going to try to push you away. I'm not going to

try to ask why. If there is a why, I'll figure it out later when I'm back into a rest and digest state when my problem solving brain is back online, when my connective creative brain is back online. But for right now, I'm just going to welcome you. I'm just going to lean into you and I'm going to accept that this is the way that I feel right now. There's a Buddhist idea that really resonates with me that the greatest form of suffering is the denial of what is. And when we try to push our anxiety away, we're denying the state that we're in in that moment. So I've tried to accept my anxiety is the state that I'm in in this moment. I've also tried to feel it in my body. Is my anxiety in my stomach? Is my anxiety in my chest? And I'll move my hands to that area.

Sometimes I'll gently give myself a hug. Sometimes I'll put my one hand over the other hand on my chest and I'll just sit there and I'll breathe into the place that I feel the anxiety in my body for a moment. And sometimes I'll even picture that little childhood me who needed a lot more love than she was able to get, who needed a lot more stability and comfort and care than she was able to get. And I'll give myself those things. I'll hold myself and I'll say, you're safe and you've got this. And that's what our anxiety needs in the moment. It doesn't need a list of problems. It doesn't need a to-do list heaped upon an already racing brain. It needs trust and comfort and love and it needs somebody saying, you're safe.

You've got this. We've got this together. So I've been trying to tap into my anxiety and my body. I've been trying to tap into that child version of me. And I've been trying to give myself the comfort that I really, really deserve. serve. 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. Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength,

your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath.

And that is exactly what their supplement mitopure does. It contains uralithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitopure increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithineg keeps your cells healthy.

Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. this has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopure gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz.

The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20 minute meal and like get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you eliminate waste. Great. That's sorted. But they also have

meals that you can just heat up. They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal in. They have grab and go snacks. Everything is made from farm-fresh produce with high-quality proteins and you can select by dietary preferences, including Mediterranean diet, which is the top diet that doctors on this podcast recommend. Also things like gluten-free, dairy-free, low sodium, anything that you need. The food is so good and it's so gourmet feeling like you feel like you're at a nice restaurant. We're talking like chicken Milanese with a crunch cucumber arugula salad or everything bagel salmon with truffle chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and

I was like, wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily. It's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful. And honestly, that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer in there. Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. And then the last thing is just knowing that I want a big life, that it is a value of mine to live a big and bold and beautiful life that's filled with adventure and travel and excitement. It's how I get on planes, even though

I'm still very much afraid of flying. I'll be sitting there and I'll be saying it to myself like a mantra over and over and over. I want a big life. I picture how small my life was when I was laying in bed, when I was having panic attacks for even leaving the house. And my life couldn't be big enough to go to a rugby game at a pub with friends or go shopping at a grocery store. And I know that is not what I want for myself. I want love and connection and adventure and delicious food and dancing and sunshine on my skin and interesting conversations with strangers. I want all of these things and that motivates me even in the moments where I still feel fear It gives me permission to feel that fear, to be okay with feeling that fear and to do it anyway

because the life that I value and the things that I want for my short time on this planet are on the other side of that fear. Okay, let's get into some of your questions. What is the top tool you use in the moment to calm acute anxiety that doesn't involve talking about the anxiety? I actually don't think that talking about the anxiety is the most helpful thing in the moment, at least for me. I'll talk about it later, but in the moment, either putting my hands on my heart or trying to feel my anxiety in my body and putting my hands on whatever that place is or taking two magnesium glycinate or doing a breathwork exercise or some combination of those three. Those are the things that help me the most in the moment. Sometimes I find even talking to somebody, talking to Zach, talking to a friend makes me more anxious if I'm really in an anxious place. So I'll wait and do that after I've self-soothed with one of those techniques.

What is the best way to get out of cyclical thinking? I do not believe that you can think yourself out of an anxiety state. Again, the part of your brain that problem solves and that has creative solutions is not online when you're anxious. you need to move your way out of an anxiety state. So this can look like going for a walk around the block. This can look like doing a workout. This can look like putting on a song and dancing to it. But moving your physical self is going to be the thing that breaks that pattern of cyclic thinking

and giving yourself permission to not solve the problem at the moment to give your brain a break, but also not to forcibly try to make your brain think about something else because that's like the old adage of if they say there's an elephant in the room and then they say, don't think about the elephant. All you're going to be thinking about is the elephant or something like that. I think I butcher that completely. But you can't force your brain to change your thought patterns. But it can be really hard in those moments of spiral to forcibly take your brain from one thought to a better thought. So that's why I find that things like talking through it or meditation don't tend to work in those spiraling moments.

But you can shift your body. you can get some space from any thoughts at all, and then you can come back when you've shifted your physical state and you're in a better mental state and address any actual problems or shifts that need to be made. I got a lot of questions about if I have tried medication or if I've tried plant medicine like ayahuasca or psilocybin, so I will address both of those. I have not tried any type of SSRI or medication that you take every single day. that is not because I don't believe those medications can be helpful for some people. But for me, so much of my anxiety is grounded in physical health things that it felt more nerve-wracking to me to introduce chemical to my brain and what would be the impacts of that.

And I felt like I would be fixated on that in a way where it would not be as helpful as it was harmful. I did take clonopin right after the incident in Brazil. And then when I was in my worst state in England, I took clonopin on and off. Whenever I would try to do quote unquote normal things like we went on a trip to Sicily at that time, to do things like that, I would take clonapin. And so I took it for a week here, a week there. Again, not recommended. I did not do it under the supervision of a time.

doctor, I just used it as a last resort because I was trying to cling to some notion of the life that I thought I should have. And I did not yet have the tools to address any of my anxiety at its root at that moment. I also have taken Xanax when I fly. I don't take it every time I fly now. I take it sometimes, but I always have it with me and it makes me very anxious the idea of not having it with me. Like I've had nightmares about not bringing my Xanax to the airport, not nightmares about the plane crashing. I'm like afraid of losing the option to assuage my anxiety if I need it. So that's like a little security bottle that I carry with me. In terms of ayahuasca psilocybin, it's really the same answer. I have a lot of belief in the power, particularly of psilocybin.

My dad's a psychologist and he just did this program. at UC Berkeley where a lot of psychologists and anesthesiologists and other types of doctors and people who were in the late stages of very successful professional careers got together and were trying to figure out ideal protocols for using psilocybin for mental health treatments in conjunction with the California government. And the research that he has shared with me and that I've seen on my own of the impacts of psilocybin on anxiety, particularly when you, used with a professional and a guided experience with somebody who's really qualified to do that

type of treatment are so powerful. And I think we're going to probably see the legalization of psilocybin in the not so distant future. But for all the aforementioned reasons about not wanting to impact my brain state or my body state, I think it will make me more anxious than it will alleviate my anxiety to try something like psilocybin. I have done it in the past. Ironically, I did mushrooms a lot in my youth. I did them all the time when I was living in Amsterdam, where they are legal. But like all drugs, since I entered this really severe phase of anxiety in England, all drugs just feel like they change my state too much. And it's a little bit of a bummer, because I feel like I used up my drugs in my party days of my life,

and now I can't benefit from them in a therapeutic capacity. But it is what it is. So I don't take any medication really, except for the occasional Xanax on a plane, and I have not tried psilocybin or ayahuasca. How do you stop letting the anxiety of change or making the wrong decision rule your life? So a few things on this.

One, you can practice decision-making, so that you can trust your gut a little bit more. This is great research from Dr. Aziz Gazapura. We did an entire episode on Confidence. This is also in my book, 100 ways to change your life. But essentially, if you utilize all of these little moments of trusting your gut, like when you go to a restaurant and you look at the menu and instead of saying, oh my gosh, do I want this?

Do I want this? Do I want this? I used to ask Zach, what dish on the menu would make me the happiest, which is just ridiculous to me in the context of trusting your gut. I'm like, I'll trust his gut about what would make me the happiest. But instead of doing that, instead of asking your husband, what dish would make you the happiest or debating it forever, you can trust your gut, trust your intuition, and just go with your first thought. And what that's going to do is two things.

One, it's going to hone that skill of trusting your gut, of trusting your intuition. But two, you're not always going to pick the right thing, whether it's something on a restaurant menu or you're debating about something you're ordering online and you're looking at the options, you have all the pages and all the reviews up. You're not always going to pick right, but by forcing yourself to pick, you're building belief in your resilience that when you don't pick right, it'll be okay. The world will not end. You cannot choose the exact ideal thing at every single moment and everything will be fine. We are so much more resilient than we think and we try to protect ourselves from making the wrong choice for fear that we won't be able to deal with it,

but we can deal with it. And building that belief in yourself is one of the best gifts that you can give yourself. Also, I remind myself that the vast, vast, vast majority of decisions are not permanent and they are not forever. If you would, You're debating for years, whether you would be happier if you moved to a different town or tried a different job. Move to the town. Try the job. If it is awful, you will figure out a way to make the change that you need to make.

Often we spend more time debating a decision than actually trying it out, seeing how it sits, and then adjusting our lives accordingly. So I'd say practice your decision making, build belief in your resilience regardless of the outcome of the decision that you make, and know that most things are not forever. And we can try things out and we can adjust and we can make changes if we need to make those changes. Okay, this one is kind of similar. What is your best advice for differentiating between anxiety and a true gut instinct and intuition? For me, anxiety feels really contracting. It feels like I have less decisions, less choices, less options.

Like my world gets smaller and smaller. And intuition and gut feelings tend to feel far more expansive. Like I have more choices, more options, more of a sense of possibility in the world around me and in myself. There are also very real physical things that you can notice. Because anxiety is a shift into your sympathetic nervous system, you will go into a state of fight or flight. You will have sweaty palms. You'll have a racing heart. You will have nausea or upset stomach or indigestion. If you are experiencing those things, that is probably

anxiety, that is probably not a gut feeling or intuition. And because you're in that sympathetic nervous system state, you are not able to access the problem solving or the creative thinking part of your brain and you won't be making the best decision. So you'll actually have a harder time tapping into your gut. So if you feel any of those symptoms, that's a great sign it's anxiety, I would say tune into your body at any given moment. And if you really feel into what your body's feeling, you'll generally be able to get a sense of, is this anxiety or is this my gut telling me something? How much has your income influenced your tools? So my income has not directly influenced my tools. The vast majority of my tools are free. Barring the cold plunge, but I also used to

cold shower before I had a cold plunge. The cold plunge is a very recent addition in my life and you can get incredible results with just a cold shower. But I do have a story about money that really helped me with my anxiety and I think there's a helpful takeaway here. In brief, I have a great job. I'm lucky enough to make an income doing the things that I love, hosting this podcast, doing social media, writing books, things like that. But I had a lot of anxiety when I shifted from my full-time job into this job, even though this job paid more money than my full-time job, about it all going away. There's an innate sense of insecurity in this type of job where the algorithm could change any second and people could stop seeing your content. Apple Podcasts just did an update recently

where they basically turned off automatic downloads for people, podcasts stopped showing up in people's feeds. Many podcasts lost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of listeners. because essentially people had to remember, oh, wait, I wanted to listen to that podcast. I'll go check and see if they have new episodes. I didn't even notice that they weren't showing up in my feed for months, et cetera. So things like this happen. And of course, people can just decide they don't want to read your books. They don't want to listen to your podcast. They don't want to engage with your content on social media. So I had a real sense of scarcity around that. And it made me incredibly nervous, even though I was doing my dream job, that it could go away at any second. And the thing

that helped with that the most was not trying to comfort myself or give myself all the reasons why this job would last for a long time and why it was more stable than I thought, et cetera, et cetera, it wasn't any of those things. It was I got a financial advisor and we worked out a plan so that I could save money so that I could have an emergency fund. So if this job was, went away, I would not have to move back in with my parents. I'd be able to support myself while I figured out the next thing. And I share this story because I love all of the tools that I've shared in this episode, and they're all incredibly helpful for me. Hands on heart, breath work, moving your body, somatic experiences, all these things. So wonderful, so helpful.

And also, sometimes the best way to assuage anxiety is to take real-world actions that are grounded in the very real problems that exist with being a human on this planet. So I have in my book, do a life admin day. If you have a lot of niggling anxiety of like, oh, I have to return this package, I have to answer these emails, I have to make these doctor's appointments, set aside a bunch of time and do all of those things so that you can take those very real anxieties off of your plate. There is no amount of hands-on heart that's going to make you feel better if you have a bunch of doctor's appointments to make and you haven't yet made them. For me, there was no of meditation that was going to make me feel as good about my financial situation as actually

developing a financial plan that would build real monetary security into my life. So I think taking a step back sometimes and saying, do I need a tool about my anxiety here? Do I need to make a shift in the rest of my life that will help assuage my anxiety can be really, really, really helpful? That honestly felt wildly vulnerable. but I am glad that it's all out there, and I do just want to reiterate that change is possible. I just finished a multi-month-long book tour where I was on a plane every other day, literally. I was speaking in front of rooms of hundreds of people.

I was touring for my best-selling book. If you had told the version of me that couldn't go to the grocery store without having a panic attack, that this would be my life someday, I just wouldn't have believed you. I talked to Hoda and Jenna on the Today Show. They decorated the entire set to match my book cover. No matter where you are, no matter how you feel today, I promise you, I promise you from the bottom of my heart, a new reality is possible. If even one of the tools or the stories that I shared in this episode helps you, I will be so, so happy. if you have any friends or you have family members or you know anybody that you think would benefit

from utilizing these tools that could use a dose of hope or possibility for their lives, please, please send them a link to this episode. I know I always say that and it is true that sharing episodes is the hands down best way to support the podcast. But this one is obviously very personal and I just don't want anybody to feel the way that I felt and not feel like there's a sense of hope and not feel like they can try one of these tools. This one's important to me. So please spread it far and wide.

And I just don't want anybody to feel alone. And if you're listening to this and you feel alone, I promise you, you are not. One of the interesting parts of sharing a story like this publicly is you get to hear the stories of so many other people who are going through it. And if you feel like you're alone right now, I can promise you that there are. are thousands of other people out there at every stage in the journey. So reach out, text somebody, call somebody, or just know that I am in this with you and I am rooting for you and I believe in you. If someone should have a link to this episode with you, if this is your first time

listening to the podcast, welcome. I am so glad that you're here. If you're not following the podcast, I know so many of you listen. I just met somebody to invent the other day and she's like, I love your podcast. I listen every single week. I don't know why I haven't followed it yet. And I was like, I don't know why either. Tell me why. But if you're listening, if you're one of those people, please, please follow the podcast. It really supports the podcast. And it also makes sure that they always show up in your feed. So you never miss out on an episode. All you have to do is go to the page that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes. You click on the Liz Moody podcast wherever you listen. And then you'll see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there's a little follow.

with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. Also, even if you've been following on Apple forever, they just did this update. So even if you've been following since the healthier together days, please just go to the main page, the one that lists all the Liz Middy podcast episodes, click that follow button and then click turn on automatic downloads and that way the pod will keep showing up in your feed. And you will not miss out on any new episodes. They'll appear right in your feed every single Wednesday and also every other Monday. And you definitely do not want to miss out. We've got some really, really good ones coming up. We have some really fun celebrity guests. We have an episode that's going to completely change the way that

you think about productivity and time management with a very, very, very requested expert. We have one on attachment styles. We have a really interesting friendship one. We just got some really good stuff coming up. So you do not want to miss out. I promise hit that follow button. Okay, I love you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for spending this time with me. And I will see you on Monday for the next episode of the Liz Moody Podcast.