The Mindset Mentor - How to Rewire Your Anxious Brain

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another one of these podcast episodes. And if you love this podcast, you want some extra mindset tips and tricks to help you get better, go to mondayemail.com right now. Once again, mondayemail.com. It's absolutely free. And what I do is every single Monday, I will send you an email with what I'm working on and what you can work on to reprogram yourself to work through everything that you want to work through, but also optimize yourself to be the best you possibly can. So speaking of that, today we're going to be talking about how to rewire your anxious brain. So is it possible to rewire anxiety out of your brain?

Well, maybe not fully. I'm going to say that up front, like there's no destination. A lot of people think like, oh, I've been working on myself for so long. I'm not there yet. And it's like there is no there. The journey of life, the journey of working on yourself, all of this stuff is what we're here to do, I believe. So we're working on ourself. We're trying to become better.

There is no there. There is no destination. There is no waking up. In my opinion, there is no waking up and being like, oh my God, I have no anxiety. I have no stress. I have no fear. The world is perfect and it will be perfect forever. Nothing can get me out of this, right? I don't know. That might be like a monk could get there, but I ain't a monk and I probably am never going to get there, but I will enjoy this journey of working on myself. And so when we talk about rewiring, I mean, rewiring in a case of like having a whole lot less, but also what's really important is understanding your brain, where this anxiety could be coming from. And I'm going to talk about two different regions of your brain so that you can actually start to diagnose where this is coming

from and what the best strategy is to stop the anxiety as quick as you possibly can. Sound good? If you've ever felt anxiety, this should definitely help you. Anxiety comes from your thoughts. That's one thing that we know. It comes from your thoughts in some sort of way. And people say like, oh, they have anxiety and all this stuff. Anxiety is one of the most unknown things that sadly is actually diagnosed by doctors. And a lot of people are misdiagnosed with depression or with anxiety. And there's definitely people who might need some help. But a lot of people don't realize that they can actually work through this a lot with your brain

and knowing this. The cool thing that I love is I love when I work with people, I worked with them in the past and like, I got off my medication. I love when my clients who, you know, I teach coaches how to grow coaching businesses. I love when they hear from their, you know, their clients, my clients' clients. They're like, I got off of medication. I feel so much better. I'm so much happier, all of that stuff. So anxiety comes from your thoughts.

It comes from your thoughts. And usually it's about something happening in the future. It's some future that you're projecting into. Last episode, we talked about the future that we project ourselves into. And humans can imagine a future. And we can imagine amazing, beautiful, incredible futures, or we can imagine futures that just really suck. And so I'm going to talk to you about the two major brain circuits that you have, where anxiety might be coming from with those, and then how to actually get rid of the anxiety. Sound good? So there's two major brain circuits that you have. The first one is called the neocortex. The neocortex is the much more advanced brain circuit. And anxiety, in this case,

is the anticipation of something happening in the future. It is the anticipation of something happening in the future. It is the anticipation of, oh, my girlfriend hasn't been texting me back that much. We're going to go to dinner tonight and I'm worried that she's going to break up with me. And I'm anxious about the fact that she's going to break up with me when we go to dinner night because of this, this, this, this, this, this. And your brain can create, if you ask, oh my gosh, you know, why would my girlfriend possibly break up with me? Your brain's going to come up with a list

because whatever you ask of your brain, it will come up with the answers to. So if you ask, why would she not be happy? Why could she be cheating on me? Why could she want to break up? Your brain's going to type it into your brain Google, into the drive, and it's going to go, it's going to give you all of the answers as to why that's a possibility. And then you're going to feel anxious because you're imagining that future happening. Humans can imagine a future. That's awesome. If we use it correctly, we imagine the future. The wrong thing, the thing that sucks most of the time is the problem. And so we can have anxiety inducing thoughts. You know, maybe you get into a car accident and that sucks.

You get into a car accident or maybe you've been in a car accident six months ago. And every time you get into a car, subconsciously and sometimes consciously, it just comes up. Anxiety comes up. Why? Because you're thinking not about the past car accident. You're thinking about getting into this car, going for a drive and getting to an accident on this drive. So you can have anxiety inducing thoughts based off of maybe something that happened to you in the past and you're taking your past and you're throwing it into your future

and going, oh my gosh, this could happen to me right now. Or you're having anxiety inducing thoughts about something that's never happened before, but you're throwing it into your future and you're feeling it, right? You can think to yourself, oh yeah, like one of the things that I love is when I'm not at home, we have a whole security system, ring system, all of that stuff. And when I'm not home, my fiance will literally turn on the ring at like 7.30, 8 o'clock because she gets all ready for bed. She takes the dog and goes through the room and she watches Netflix in there because she doesn't want to be in the living room because we have big, huge glass walls. She doesn't want to be in the living room because she's

feeling that people might be able to watch her, right? So you can have that feeling of like, you know, you're by yourself and you hear like a little noise and you think, oh my God, someone's starting to break in. Someone's going to break in. What if I get murdered? And what happens is it starts. And if you've ever noticed this, it's like a cascade. Like the thoughts can keep coming and coming and coming and coming. And then your brain is literally noticing every single sound because you have basically put your focus on the sound of someone breaking in. And then you start hearing everything. You think someone's breaking in all over the place. It's like, I don't know if you've ever been this way. I don't like spiders, but you see a spider or you see an insect or something like that. And then you start to feel

all of like, even just your hair, when it moves a little bit and you start thinking it's like an insect, you start to think it's a bug. You start to think it's a arachnid, whatever it might be. There's something on it. You start to feel it all because your brain is focusing on that thing. And so then we got to ask ourselves, why does this exist? Why does this part of our brain, why does this anxiety, this future that we don't want exist? Well, it's a protection mechanism. Your brain doesn't care about your happiness. It doesn't care about your peace. It doesn't care about your success. It doesn't give a damn how much money is in your bank account. It cares about keeping you alive.

And so what it'll do is it'll notice things and then it will start to make connections among all the other things that could possibly line up with that. Like you hear a sound, think someone's breaking in, and then you just hear all sounds. It just hones in on the auditory part of your brain and you start to notice that. Or you feel something, maybe you have a spider on you and you push it off and you start to feel spiders all over the place. That happens. And so there was a benefit for our ancestors, but today if we're not in charge of it, it'll drive us crazy. And so why does it exist? If you go back to the caveman days and you're walking by a river and you're having a little caveman conversation with your buddy Bill, and he's a caveman as well. You're walking by the river and then bam, an alligator jumps out from the bank, attacks him and ruthlessly just ravages

and tears Bill apart. Holy shit, that was drastic, huh? Well, then now what's going to happen is every single time that you walk by a lake, you're probably going to start to feel feelings of anxiety. Every time that you see an alligator, you're probably going to start to feel feelings of anxiety. Next time that you're by a lake, next time you're by a river, next time you're by a body of water, you will be more on guard than anything else because you don't want the same thing to happen to you that happened to Bill. Right? Caveman Bill's gone. I don't want to be like Caveman Bill. Hey, can we talk about notifications for a second? Who actually loves those sounds anymore? Well, besides that kind, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow your business. Shopify makes it simple

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I love about Shopify is how it's all done in one place, making it easier on you. So when you're ready to launch your thing into the spotlight, do it with Shopify, the commerce platform backing millions of businesses from down the street to around the globe. Go on, try Shopify for free and start selling anywhere. This is possibility powered by Shopify. Sign up for a free trial at shopify.com slash dial, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash dial and start selling online today. all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash dial and start selling online today. That's shopify.com slash dial. So then the question is, how the hell do we get rid of this? Well, the neocortex in this part that we're talking about is the thinking part of your brain. And so what do you do if you notice, okay, I'm projecting into the future and this is definitely the thinking part

of my brain that's using this because we've got to distinguish. There's the thinking part of your brain. There's the other part of your brain I'm going to talk about in just a second. What's going on? Oh, I'm thinking about the future. I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about this, this, this, this, this happened. Am I thinking about this too much? Yeah, it's probably my neocortex. I'm probably thinking too much into the future and causing myself anxiety. Okay. Well, if I'm thinking and using the thinking part of my brain, what do I want to do? I want to think through this process and show my brain how this fear, this anxiety that I'm feeling is actually illogical and how it doesn't make any sense. And so the easiest way to do this, if you're thinking yourself into anxiety, what can you do? Well,

you can go ahead and use that thinking part of your brain and show your brain why that fear, why that anxiety is actually illogical. So you take out a pen and paper and you start writing down why that won't happen. You know, if I'm thinking to myself, like I told you a few minutes ago, like maybe that the boss is going to email me and want to fire me. I could write down, why would it be ridiculous for my boss to fire me? Why is my boss not going to fire me? And I come up with all of the answers and I actually think through the opposite of what I'm fearing. Make sense?

I'm using the thinking part of my brain, the neocortex, and I'm going to think through the opposite of what I'm fearing so that therefore my brain can go, yeah, let's go ahead and turn this off. Not a big deal. Let it go. And then you can let it go. It ends up working really, really well, but it works the best if you have pen and paper and you can actually write it down pen and paper what's going on. So that's the first side, which is the neocortex. The other side is the amygdala, which is not really the thinking part of the brain. It is the reaction part of the brain. It is a part of the brain that is a little bit more, well, they call it from the, it's in your limbic system, which they call the reptilian part of your brain. It's like the oldest part of your brain, one of the oldest parts of your brain. And this is a part

of your brain that, you know, you see a dark shadow at night and you think somebody is next to you or inside of your house or something like that. And you react to it. The immediate reaction is the amygdala kicking in. It's your reaction. And you're like, oh my gosh, that's just my jacket. Or, you know, you're walking outside and it's a little bit dark and you see a hose curled up and you react immediately. It's almost like subconscious. It's conscious for sure, but it's almost like subconscious as well. Like it's, it's very fast. And you think it's a snake. Uh, but you know what that was? Uh, that was just a, you know, that was just a curled up hose on the side of the, the side of the road. That's whatever it was. Right. And it reacts immediately. Or, you know, you hear a boom and your body immediately reacts and you duck down, not knowing what it was, but it's an immediate reaction. It responds quick. It's the first,

the way the amygdala works, the way you want to think of it is it reacts first, ask questions later. So it's like dark shadow at night, reacts first, ask questions later. Oh, yeah, that was just my jacket. Curled up hose, reacts first. Oh yeah, that wasn't a sink. That was just my hose that's on the side right there. Loud noise reacts first. Oh, that was just, you know, my cat, he knocked something off of the counter. And what happens is it responds quick, reacts first, asks questions later. It's the reason why it's really hard to talk yourself out of a panic attack is because usually a panic attack or, you know, in some lower levels of PTSD come from an immediate reaction. Somebody hears something, it reminds them exactly of a past, and then they go into a panic attack

in some sort of way. It's the reason why you can't talk yourself out of it because it's not the thinking part of the brain most of the time. So the neocortex is the thinking part of the brain. Try to talk yourself out of a panic attack. It's not going to happen. The amygdala usually helps with the panic attack. A real panic attack where it's real bad is usually both of them together, the amygdala and the neocortex as well. So how do you get yourself out of that feeling? How do you get rid of it? Oh, I've noticed, okay, that is a body feeling. I reacted first. And now I'm starting to ask questions later, is you have to bypass the mind and directly affect the nervous system. Okay, you have to completely bypass the mind and directly affect the nervous system. How do you do that? One of the best ways, probably the best way to

affect the nervous system is to get really drunk. No, I'm just kidding. The best way to affect the nervous system is through deep breathing, right? Just into the nose, out through the mouth. When you exhale, you want your exhale to be like you're breathing out through a straw. The longer the exhale, the more it'll slow your heart rate down, which usually if you're reacting to something, you know, a loud noise, whatever it might be, the first thing to change is your breath and then your heart rate. So if your heart rate is racing, it's going, it's going, it's going, that shows you that it's in the body. Okay, let's go into the body. Let's just bypass the mind directly and go straight into the body. So you can do some deep breathing, do some deep breathing and see if that helps.

body. So you can do some deep breathing, do some deep breathing and see if that helps. Working out tends to help really well as well because the extra energy you're actually able to get rid of. One of the things that humans don't do very well, that animals do very well, is when they're stressed, they have a physical body reaction to it. Like my dog, when he's stressed, he does like a stress yawn and it's immediate. Like it doesn't, it's not five minutes later, it's immediate. A lot of animals, like if you watch an impala that's running away from a cheetah, they'll be running, running, running. And then what happens is, you know, say they get away. Well, their body dumped a ton of cortisol into their body. And so they'll actually do this thing called a shake where they'll literally shake their body. And what

it's doing is it's actually removing and actually using more energy to start to get rid of the cortisol that's inside of them. Us as humans, we'll feel something, we'll freak out, something will happen, and then we'll just sit there, right? So working out sometimes is a really good way to get rid of the excess energy, the cortisol, everything that's in there as well. So you could also do Wim Hof breathing, 30 deep breaths. And then you do 30 deep breaths, take one deep breath and do as many pushups as you possibly can. That's one thing that really helps me reset my nervous system. And you could do this if you want, you can try it. I don't recommend it just because I don't recommend anything to anybody that happens to do with holding your breath. But what I'll do is I'll

do 30 deep breaths in through nose, out the mouth, in through nose, out through mouth. And then what you do is you hold your breath at the end. Excuse me, what I do is hold my breath at the end and then do as many pushups as I possibly can. And it feels like a reset to the nervous system. What's kind of crazy about it too is I can do more pushups holding my breath than I can when I'm not holding my breath. So you have to decide with yourself, which part of the brain is it? When you're feeling that anxiety, is it the thinking part of your brain? Is it the neocortex? Is it you're sitting there thinking through, you're thinking through, you're thinking through it? Well, then maybe you have to journal through it and write it down and show your brain how

logical it is. Show how ridiculous it is. Like, oh, I'm going to post this thing on Instagram and I get all anxious because I'm worried about people judging me online that I've never met before. That's dumb. Who cares? Let's journal through that so we can get rid of that anxiety. Or is it the other part of the mind where it's just the, you feel it in the body. It's just react first, think later, ask questions later, and you start to realize that it's in the body. It's in the body. Well, if it's in the body, work with the body. Deep breathing, workout, do the 30 deep breaths, the Wim Hof breathing. Ultimately, what it's important to know is to make note of this so that therefore next time you find yourself feeling anxious and in an anxious state, you can remove yourself as quickly as possible by identifying, is this in the mind

or is this more in the body? If it's in the mind or is this more in the body? If it's in the mind, this is more in the body. If it's in the mind, it's in the neocortex. If it's in the body, even though the amygdala is in the brain, it's usually more of a physical feeling more than anything else. So now you have an idea of how to rewire your anxious brain. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you love this podcast, go ahead and follow us on Instagram.

It is The Mindset Mentor Podcast, The Mindset Mentor Podcast. And I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission makes someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.