The Mindset Mentor - How to Stop Anxiety w/ Psychiatrist & Neuroscientist Jud Brewer | The Expert Series

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

On this week's episode of the Expert Series, American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and New York Times best-selling author Jud Brewer steps in with Rob Dial to discuss the intricate workings of the brain and how to stop your anxiety! -- Thank you to our sponsors: Manscaped: Visit Manscaped.com and use code: DIAL for 20% OFF + FREE shipping! AthleticGreens: Go to AthleticGreens.com/DIAL for your FREE year supply of Vitamin D & 5-FREE travel packs! Blinkist: Visit Blinkist.com/MINDSET to get 25% OFF + a 7-day FREE trial! FelixGray: Visit FelixGrayGlasses.com/DIAL for the best blue-light glasses on the market! -- Rob Dial @robdialjr Jud Brewer @dr.jud Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

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off and free shipping with the code dial at manscaped.com. Smooth it out, fellas, with Manscaped. Your boys will thank you. Welcome to today's episode with Judd Brewer. Judd Brewer is a psychiatrist whose newest book, Unwinding Anxiety, talks about the importance of figuring out where anxiety comes from, how to work through it, and how to get rid of it. We dive really deep into the addiction of anxiety, what causes it, and how to get rid of it. So with all of the stuff that's happening in the world right now that happened last year, I can't think of a better podcast episode for all of you guys to listen to and to be a part of. So without further ado, this is psychiatrist Jud Brewer. When somebody is in a full-blown panic disorder and they've developed this system,

it seems like the way that you explain it and the way that I love it is, I guess the thing that I feel like most people in the world I hear from them is that they feel like anxiety is something they can't really do anything about. But from looking through what you say in your book, it actually explains more of anxiety as being a habit. Is that correct? Yes. And this is what blew me away. When I was training to be a psychiatrist, I didn't learn any of this stuff. But doing research myself and as my lab started exploring how habits and addictions form, it turns out that anxiety can be reinforced in the same way that any other habit or addiction

can be reinforced. And it was just kind of this obscure part of the literature that people had been largely ignoring. So in fact, if you think of, actually, it's a very basic learning mechanism, you know, that helps us survive. It has three elements, a trigger, a behavior, and a result. So, you know, the survival piece is, you know, you see some danger, there's the trigger, you run away, there's the behavior, and then the result is that you survive. You know, this is at least for our ancient ancestors. behavior. And then the result is that you survive. This is at least for our ancient ancestors. But if you think of anxiety itself, anxiety can trigger worry thinking. And that worry thinking leads us to feel like we're in control and or to avoid that feeling of anxiety itself. And what that can do is then feed back and trigger that same habit loop the next time we have anxiety

because our brain has learned, oh, next time you're anxious, you should worry about this. Does that make sense? For sure. No, I feel like I know people that are actually exactly in that loop. So if I'm getting it correctly,

is the way that people actually kind of put their anxiety at bay is they worry so that they feel like they're somewhat in control of the circumstances? Yes. I know. It's crazy, isn't it? It's crazy when you say it, but then I know there's people listening that are like, yeah, this is 100% me. I'm worrying too much because the worry actually makes me feel like I'm in control of my circumstances in some way, even though worrying does nothing for

your circumstances. Right. Right. Now, what makes it worse is that maybe one in a thousand times when somebody worries, they're like, I'm going to think of all the worst case scenarios and I'm going to be prepared for them. That one in a thousand time when somebody has had that scenario go through their mind and then suddenly it happens. They're like, wow, see, it was so good that I worried about this because then I knew it was going to happen.

So that can, it's like playing the lottery. You know. It's like, I wouldn't invest in the lottery, but it gets people addicted. In the same way, if people happen to have that association where they're like, wow, I worried and it did come true, that can actually make it even... That worry habit leap even stronger. That's interesting. I know multiple people whose parents worry like crazy. And they tend to place their worry onto them. And it's almost hereditary. It just comes down through generations where they learn to worry, they learn to worry, they learn to worry. And the justification that I hear from their parents is that, I just love you so much. And I want to make sure you're safe as possible. But it sounds like when someone's outside of the

nest, the parents are actually justifying their fear of something happening for their children with the worry. And that makes them feel at least a little bit in control of a situation that they're completely un-in-control of. Is that right as well? That is it in a nutshell. Because if they look at the fallacy of that logic, I love you so much, I want to make sure nothing happens. The worry actually makes it more likely that something bad is going to happen because their worrying makes it harder for them to think and to plan. And on top of that, that seeds the anxiety in their children. So, children learn from their parents. And so, they're going to model worrying for their kids. So children learn from their parents. And so they're going to model

worrying for their kids. And then their kids are going to grow up and be like, man, why am I worrying so much about my kids? Well, it was because your parents modeled that behavior for you. For sure. And so it's super interesting just because of the fact that it's it's completely in our control. But I feel like most people act like it's completely not in their control. And so I see a lot of... I mean, now is literally the perfect time to talk, but it looks like I was saying at the very beginning. There's so much anxiety about what could possibly be happening in the future. But if you were to take out even just everything that's happened in 2020 and beyond, and we could have never seen this happen. I feel like anxiety was still

really on the rise a lot before COVID popped up, before all of the things, presidency popped up, all those things popped up. It seemed like anxiety was really on the rise. So if we just... I want to go back to COVID and talk a little bit about it because I think it'll really help people. But even before that happened, it seemed like people were starting to get very anxious. Did you see that in your lab of people getting more and more anxious? And if you did, what were the reasons why you saw that more anxiety was coming up? Yeah, we saw this both in my lab and also in my clinic. The primary referral that I get now from my clinic is people with anxiety. And I think we can look at this in

terms of... There are a number of factors that contribute, but uncertainty is probably one of the largest ones. So, for example, you know, with certain political figures that are very erratic or aren't very, I don't want to use the word unstable, but, you know, they're not necessarily predictable in how they're going to behave, right? That drives people's minds apeshit. Because our brains plan for the future based on previous events. And so our brains are going to do these simulations and they're going to say, okay, based on what happened before, I'm going to project into the future and that's going to help me survive. Yet if we don't know what, you know, if things are very uncertain, let's just put it that way, that uncertainty makes our brains go into hyperdrive thinking that they need to get more information. Yet, there's a ton of information out there, but it doesn't necessarily, one, it's a lot of it's not true. And the second part is it's hard to sift through all of it to figure

out what information is actually relevant to us. So not only is there a ton of uncertainty happening, whether it's environmental, right now we're seeing this with health crises with COVID, politically, people's jobs, all these things, a lot of uncertainty. And then on top of that, you throw in a fire hose of information and people have to sift through it to figure out what's pertinent. And then they also have to sift through it to figure out what's pertinent. And then they also have to sift through it to see what's real. From a survival standpoint, our ancient ancestors, there were no such things as deep fake saber-toothed tigers, right? You're like, is that really a saber-toothed tiger coming at me? Yeah. And they ran. So our survival brains

are saying they just take everything as gospel because that's how our survival brains work. And so we have to help our brains step back and say, wait a minute, before you freak out, you got to see if this is actually true. So there's an added layer of complexity. Yeah. That's interesting because it's almost like what you're saying is people's brains really want things to stay consistent, which is I found a lot of people are miserable, but they're so comfortable in misery that even getting out of that misery

and developing something beautiful of their life kind of scares the shit out of them because there's variables that they don't understand because they haven't been there yet. And so people can literally create anxiety about changing their life into a more beautiful future, it seems like. They can. And this relates a lot to... Often people talk about being in a comfort zone and then moving outside of the comfort zone and how we deal with that outside of the comfort zone

makes a big difference. So comfort zone is what you're talking about where it's very predictable. If we set up a routine or habit at home, it just feels good because our brain says, okay, I don't have to worry here. I don't have to... I can basically check out and it helps me save energy so I can save my brain power for learning things. When we move out of that comfort zone, our brain goes on high alert. And if you think about it from a survival standpoint, our brain, it's like out on the savannah scanning for danger because it doesn't know that territory. Now, what we could do in modern day, when most of us aren't in actual physical danger, is we can actually lean into that uncertainty and understand how our minds work so that we can say, oh, here's this, instead of moving into this

panic zone, like, oh no, this is dangerous and running back to our comfort zone, we can lean into that and say, oh, here's an opportunity to learn and grow. And here it gives us the ability to lean into that to say, okay, can I actually learn from this? Can I grow in these moments of uncertainty as compared to shrink back or panic, which are the two other options. Hey, let me tell you about my favorite drink that I take every single morning. It's called Athletic Greens. And here's how I start my day. Go to the restroom, brush my teeth, drink Athletic Greens, and then meditate. And in just 30 seconds in one scoop, I get 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients. And it has everything that a multivitamin has,

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So he's in Stanford and he is a neuroscientist that's out in Stanford. And one of the things that's real interesting is he talks about how when you're about... He deals a lot with neuroplasticity. He says, when you're about to do something that you've never done before, you start to get really stressed out. You start to get anxious. And like you're saying,

it's because it's kind of like you're stepping out. I would say a comfort zone is like a caveman's cave. You're stepping outside of it and there's a bunch of variables. You don't know what could possibly happen. Totally. What he says is that what's really interesting is what causes neuroplasticity. One of the big pieces of neuroplasticity is, I guess, acetylcholine. And acetylcholine actually is

what marks the brain for change. And what he says is that what's really interesting about before acetylcholine becomes released is that you actually turn on the stress mechanisms in the brain. becomes released is that you actually turn on the stress mechanisms in the brain. And so when most people think, I shouldn't be going further, it's almost like that stress is telling you, you're about to change. Your body's about to change. Your brain is about to change. And what you're saying is, just lean into it. Yes. Yes. So instead of the, oh no, I got to run back into the cave, we can lean into it and bring in some curiosity. Like, oh, what's happening here? And what that actually can do, another Stanford professor, Carol Dweck, she came up with this mindset model of growth versus fixed mindset.

So you can think of being in our cave as that fixed mindset where this is how things work, and this is always the way that it's going to be. Moving out of the cave gives us the potential to move into a growth mindset, but we have to be open to change. And so we can look at that stress, quote unquote, as something that helps us open to that and say, okay, because that's basically our brain saying, okay, I'm ready to learn stuff. that and say, okay, because that's basically our brain saying, okay, I'm ready to learn stuff. And there, if we can open to it and bring some curiosity in, what that does is literally opens us up to seeing things and seeing things differently or learning something new. I love the idea of just the curiosity instead of the fear. I have a friend who went and lived down for 40 days with a native Brazilian tribe. It took

two days by boat to go live with them. He lived with them for 40 days. And he looked me dead in the eyes. And the one thing he said, he said, you want to know the craziest part about it, Rob? He goes, there is no depression with these people. And the reason why is because they've always got something to work towards. They're always working towards something. They're always happy about bringing home the anaconda they just killed for everybody. But one thing he said though is he said he always had to be aware with the machete because he might come across something that was going to attack him. So if he saw a jaguar, the jaguar has been seeing you for a long time. It's an issue. And so what he said is... And the way he said it to me was, all my primal

fears turned on and all my intellectual fears turned off. People are worrying about me. What am I thinking? And I'm really curious. Do you feel like the main reason for this anxiety and everything that's coming up now is that our brain still exists from millions of years ago, 100,000, a million, 2 million years ago. It hasn't changed as much as our external world has. And we still have the animalistic part of our brain that says, I could be attacked by a lion. Even though I live in Austin, Texas, I could never be attacked. There are no lions in Austin, Texas. But that part of my brain, I guess the amygdala is always still searching for something that could be a possible threat or fear in the future. Is that

right? Yes. It's always on the lookout for danger, unless we're in the cave. Right. Yeah. And so I'm curious, what exactly triggers someone's anxiety? What are the triggers around that? And how can someone become more self-aware to those triggers and actually work through them so that they can actually have a system when they do have anxious thoughts that come up? It's a really good question. I would say it's very individual in terms of what triggers anxiety for people. And often I see people just waking up in the morning and feeling anxious. And so here, anxiety can be its own trigger for worry, which then feeds back to more anxiety because they're worried, why am I anxious? Is

there something wrong? And then it just kind of feeds on itself. So I think here we can differentiate triggers for anxiety and triggers for worry. And here, that feeling of anxiety, often it's hard for people to identify specific triggers for that. But one thing that I do see is consistent is that people with anxiety, that tends to trigger worry. And worry is one of the key characteristics of anxiety disorders, in particular, if you look in the psychiatric, the diagnostic statistical manual there. So you can think of a lot of things will trigger worry. And one thing, so anxiety, the feeling of anxiety can trigger worry. Another thing that can trigger worry is just uncertainty. Where somebody doesn't know if there's some big event that's going to happen and they start worrying, how is this going to go?

And they start going through all the worst case scenarios. So those are two of the big ones that I see in terms of precipitants or triggers for worry. And if somebody catches themselves, okay, they're in this state of anxiety, they feel it coming up, what's the best route for them to go to kind of get themselves out of it and, I guess, you know, re-calm themselves down? This is one of the things that my lab's actually been studying. So we've been looking, approaching this from a neuroscientific standpoint, which is to kind of understand

how anxiety and worry habit loops get perpetuated. We just talked about that habit loop process. And then asking questions like, how can we specifically target that from a mechanistic perspective? So there's actually a part of our brain called the orbitofrontal cortex that stores and updates reward value for certain behaviors. And it sets up this reward hierarchy so that we don't have to relearn the reward value of everything we do every day. So for example, you know, I use an example in my book of broccoli versus chocolate, right? Most of our brains have this chocolate over broccoli hierarchy so that we don't have to like, oh, broccoli, oh, chocolate, you know, and then decide, you know, every time we have

the choice which one to eat. The reason I bring all of that up is that the thing that will change reward value of behaviors is awareness, right? And there's this, we don't have to go into all the specifics, but there are these mathematical models that came out of the 70s by these two researchers, Rescorla and Wagner, basically showing that we're going to just habitually act out certain behaviors based on their previous reward value unless something changes. And the only thing that's going to change that is awareness to help us see, oh, this is more rewarding than expected or less rewarding than expected. Now, how this applies to anxiety is that we tend to see the feelings of anxiety and the mental behavior of worry as having a certain reward value. Yet, if we pay attention

to it and bring awareness to how rewarding the worry actually is, we can start to see, oh, this worry isn't getting me anywhere. And that leads to what's called a negative prediction error. Our brain has predicted that it's going to be a certain reward value. And then we just bring awareness in and we're like, wow, this is not very rewarding. And so it drops. And what that does is it helps us start to become disenchanted with the worry itself. Now, the reason I went through all that background is because this is very different than the standard way that we're taught even in residency training to help people with anxieties. Basically, try to give them some medications.

I wish our medications were better. And use cognitive control techniques, things like willpower or cognitive behavioral therapy, and replace these unhealthy mental habits or mental patterns with healthier cognitions. The problem is that that all relies on the youngest and weakest part of our brain from an evolutionary perspective. And ironically, that's the part of the brain that goes offline when we get stressed out or anxious. So we can't actually tap into these mechanisms. So we need to find something that's going to be a little more, a little stronger. And this is where we can actually tap into this reward value piece simply through having people just get very, very aware of what that worry gets them. I can give a concrete example from my clinic if that helps drive it home.

So I had a patient who was referred to me for anxiety. And this is the gentleman that had a panic disorder. He had generalized anxiety disorder. And he was terrified of driving on the highway because he described it as, it felt like I was in a speeding bullet. And what I had him do was after his first visit, we was during his first visit, we mapped out his habit loop around anxiety, around panic in particular. So it was, he would have these thoughts like, I'm going to kill somebody on the highway. His behavior would be, I'm not going to drive on the highway. And then the result was that he could avoid those really distressing thoughts. So we mapped that out and I sent him home. And I said, just go and map out as many of these things as you can and all the things

related to your anxiety, all these habit loops related to your anxiety. And in particular, pay attention to how rewarding they are using the simple question, what am I getting from this? So when you're worrying, ask yourself, what am I getting from worrying? Is this actually helping me? Not intellectually, but dropping into their direct experience, into their bodily sensations, what's happening when I worry? So this guy came back, he actually, he was very overweight and he came back two weeks later and he said, you know, I mapped out these habit loops and I lost 14 pounds. And that was a surprise for me because we weren't even going to address his obesity at the beginning, but he had realized that when he got anxious, he would eat. And that eating wasn't actually

fixing his anxiety. And in fact, it was making him feel worse about himself because he knew that he was very unhealthy. So when he started seeing how unrewarding that habit loop was, he was able to let go of it. And in fact, he lost over 100 pounds simply using that practice. And the same guy also, he went from not driving at all to becoming an Uber driver within five to six months, because he could start to see how unrewarding the worry was. And then he could start to bring in tools. I think of them as like the bigger, better offer, right? Give your brain something more rewarding. He started bringing in curiosity as that bigger, better offer.

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What I always tell people, because when you're talking about the youngest part of the brain, the thinking part of your brain, are you speaking of the neocortex? Yes. And the prefrontal cortex in particular. Okay. So the prefrontal cortex. So I used to always say, and we used to say this when I would manage people, is that when emotion is high, logic is low. And so what I always tell people is if you notice something, have a plan when your logic is as high as possible, not when you're going through that. The worst time to try to fix a relationship is in the middle of a full-blown fight. Wait till you're chilled out. But what it seems like is,

as I'm putting the pieces together, is we see worrying as a reward for, like we were saying a little while ago, for we're at least being safe in case something happens. But it seems like everybody knows worry does nothing to them. But I think it seems like if you were to write it down with a pen and paper and actually, as if it were a business plan, and you're trying to create a business, you're going to put on a piece of paper. But most people don't take their mind where things can be very abstract and actually put them on a piece of paper where it can be concrete. And it seems like almost if you were to be able to write these things down and track them, you'd be able to see, Yeah, this doesn't work here. This doesn't help me here. This doesn't help me here. This doesn't... And then your brain,

as smart as it is, starts to go, well, this doesn't hold as much value as I thought it did. But it seems like what needs to happen though is you also need to have something to replace it. And it seems like from what you're saying is that curiosity is almost like... When somebody worries, they might get the dopamine hit they want. But it's also very anxious at the same time. It seems like what you're trying to do is you're trying to get the curiosity to be a stronger dopamine hit that you feel like your brain is getting a reward from being curious about, oh, why do I feel this way versus the worry itself? Is that the thing that I'm getting there? Yeah. This image is coming to mind as you're

saying that is this business plan. If you go and pitch a business plan of worry to a bunch of investors, they're going to say, well, go find me some folks where this actually works. Give me some use case scenarios. And then you go out and you're like, I don't want to worry. This doesn't help me. And then they say, okay, we'll find a different thing. Okay. Go try the use case scenario of having people get curious and have them get curious about what those sensations of anxiety feel like in their body. Can that actually help them overcome things like anxiety? And is that something that's going to actually be a viable business strategy, so to speak? So absolutely. I think that's dead on. And you were talking about a lot of people

will wake up and have anxiety. And I know that for me, I don't have anxiety throughout the day, but I found for about six months, I was waking up. And just immediately upon going, brushing my teeth, everything, I was like, I have these anxious feelings. I was like, why am I feeling anxious in the morning? So I started reading and trying to figure out what it was. And it seems like what wakes most people up is actually cortisol. From what I've heard is that cortisol is at the highest in the morning. So for me, and I saw that in your book, you talk about meditation and mindfulness. So if somebody wakes up in the morning, they feel those immediate thoughts of anxiety. I mean, what's one of the worst things they could do? They could probably

drink a coffee and then go on the internet and go on social media. That's probably gonna make your anxiety full blown after that. So instead of going that route, what do you recommend for people who wake up and feel anxious thoughts? Well, I think it's a great thing to do to just take a beat, so to speak. So this reminds me of something I learned in medical school, which is if somebody is having a heart attack, the first thing that you should do is take your own pulse. Well, it seems counterintuitive because our goal is to help the person that's dying. But what that points out is if we are freaking out, we're actually going to make things worse. And I think this can be true for us ourselves. So if we wake up and we feel anxious and we go

get coffee, go get a stimulant, we're just adding fuel to that fire. Whereas if we can take a moment, take a beat, or maybe take five or 10 minutes and just, I hesitate to use the word meditate because it has all sorts of connotations for people. has all sorts of connotations for people. But let's say take five minutes to just simply scan down through our body and get really curious about where we feel different sensations in our body in that five-minute period. That can help ground us a bit so that we can then get up and go throughout our day without kind of spiraling out of control. And one thing I'd like to do to kind of help people wake up to their own natural capacity to be curious is if they're feeling anxious, to just feel into where they feel that anxiety most in their body, and then ask themselves, do I feel it more on the right side or the left side of my body?

And what that does is, I think you just kind of did that, is this on the right side or the left side? It doesn't matter what side it's on. But what that does is it awakens our curiosity like, huh, if I had to pick which side is it on? So that brings that awareness in and helps us see, oh, these are just physical sensations. And it also awakens that curiosity, which is very much an antidote for getting caught up in anxiety. Yeah. And that's good because the next question I was going to ask you is, it seems like a lot of people that I've worked with and spoken with, it seems like a lot of people have lost

a lot of their curiosity. They've lost a lot of their... Like being a kid, it's like you're curious about everything and you can dream the biggest dreams you could possibly. But as you become older, you become set in your ways. And it seems like being curious or actually just trying to think something amazing in the future that's different from where you currently are tends to be a chore with people. And it tends to be hard. But the questions kind of answer. I was going to ask you, what is the best case? What's the best thing to do in that case?

And it seems like just ask yourself, do I feel it more on my left or right? Which is just a simple question. You don't have to really visualize or think of anything or try to see a glowing ball that's in front of you like all of the meditations have. It's just like, okay, do I feel it more on my left or my right? In that situation, do you feel like or do you ever recommend for people to write these things down like I was saying previously? Do you find that that helps with some people? I think it can be very helpful for a lot of people. So really, some people, they like to write things down.

They like to see it on paper. And there's something really transformative about just seeing something on paper that was in their head that just makes it very concrete. And often it's this big wake up and they say, wow, I was thinking that. The other thing that that helps with is you can think of this as the observer effect. So in physics, you know, back, back in the day when they were starting to do these quantum physics experiments, there was this, they found that by doing these slit lamp experiments with light to try to determine, you know, whether it was wave or particle and all this, that actually by adding an observation

device to measure photons, they were changing the results. So they call this, I think it's the Heisenberg effect or the observer effect. And the same is true psychologically. So if we can observe our thoughts and emotions, we can see, oh, simply by observing, that gives us some distance and some perspective rather than being totally identified with them. So we can actually employ that observer effect ourselves. And the writing down on paper can add even more distance there. Yeah. And you bring in a really good point where bringing the observer into it, because a lot of people say something like, I have anxiety. So instead of saying like, I'm feeling anxious feelings. And people tend to identify with

whatever they've been told that they have. It's really interesting. The perception of somebody will change when their identity around that thing tends to change. So if somebody has anxiety, is it better for them to say like, at times, I feel anxious thoughts? Or do you feel like it's better to actually say I have anxiety, which in some sense, I think changes someone's identity and their perception of themselves? I think this is something that people can experiment with. I love where you're going with this. So at the far end of that spectrum, I have patients who come in and say, I am an anxious person. That's how identified they are with it. I remember somebody, so we made this app called Unwinding Anxiety, same name as the book. And somebody wrote me an email who is pilot testing the program. And she wrote me this

email and she said, I feel like anxiety is deeply etched into my bones, right? That's how identified she was with the anxiety. So somebody can explore this themselves and say, what's it feel like when I say I'm an anxious person? What's it feel like when I just notice those thoughts and say, oh, I have anxious thoughts. And what's it like to simply notice, oh, there's an anxious thought. It doesn't even have to belong to me, right? So somebody can explore that and see what is it like? I'm anxious versus there's an anxious thought. And I can, spoiler alert, a lot of folks, it's game-changing for them just to see that they don't have to be identified with their

thoughts and emotions, that they are not their thoughts. That is huge for a lot of people. And anybody can do this experiment. I'm anxious versus here's an anxious thought. Yeah. And it's kind of like my favorite... One of my favorite quotes is by Alan Watson. He says, you're under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago. And I think of it, the easiest way to think of anxious thoughts, happy thoughts, whatever it is, it's rainy here in Austin today, but it's not going to be rainy forever. And so it's a rainy day. And the anxious thoughts can come in for an hour, two hours. But behind it is the sun. But when you identify as I am an anxious person, it's like saying,

that is the sun. And it will always be that way. It'll always be there. But it seems like the main thing is to unwrap your identity from that thing that you think that you have and go, I'm having anxious thoughts right now. I'm having happy thoughts right now. And not identify yourself with the thoughts and the feelings that you have that run through your body and your brain. Absolutely. So if you think about this in terms of our brains wanting to have certainty, the way to have certainty is to try to keep things from changing. Well, we can flip that on its head and accept the fact that we are constantly changing as human beings. We're constantly aging. We're constantly changing. The world is constantly changing. And so there you can think of as the only unchanging thing is change itself. And if we can start to live into that piece and

kind of ride that wave, suddenly things get a lot easier to work with. Just like you're talking about, oh, things are changing. The weather's this way in this moment, but the weather constantly changes. My mind is like this in this moment. Oh, but things are constantly changing. It's really helpful to be able to kind of get on that constantly changing train as compared to really struggling all of our lives trying to make things not change. And it also helps us start to see how much suffering we cause for ourselves by trying to make things not change. Everything from relationships to our bodies. It's funny because I guess even the phrase, I'm an anxious person,

is me trying to find certainty and create no change. So when you're saying, I'm just a human that experiences different emotions, It's kind of a lot easier in that sense where it's like there is certainty there, but then the anxious and the happy will come up in some form or another. So obviously, I'm really curious about this. And I don't even know how to dive into it exactly, but I'm really curious at this point in time

with all the stuff that's happening with COVID, all the stuff that happened with the election, with vaccines, with all the stuff that's coming up. I mean, what tips and how can people create less anxiety, more happiness in all of the change that's happening right now, knowing that they want certainty? Yes. So I think of this as a three-step process. And I've seen this both in my clinic and also in the research that we've done, where the first step here is just to be able to see how our minds

create habit loops around anxiety. So the first step is just mapping them out. What's the trigger? What's the behavior? Is it worry? Is it fear? Is it whatever? And what's the result of that? Step two is what you and I just talked about a little while ago is around seeing how unrewarding that behavior is. So that habit loop. So if it's worry, we can ask ourselves, what's the cause and effect relationship here? What do I get from worrying? So that we get that negative prediction error and our brain says,

wow, that's really not as great as I remembered. That opens that door for step three, which is to bring in the BBO, the bigger, better offer. And here, the simplest bigger, better offer that I love, I think of it as a superpower, better offer. And here, the simplest bigger, better offer that I love, I think of it as a superpower, is curiosity. So in those moments when we're anxious, instead of falling into an old habit of worrying about why we're anxious, we can simply get curious about what those sensations feel like in the moment. And then this gets back to what you were just talking about. We can see that these sensations are constantly changing. And instead of worrying like, oh no, this feels bad right now,

instead of the oh no, we can dive in and say, oh, what is this? Where do I feel it? Is it on the right side, left side, front, back, those types of things. And then it's just basically rinse and repeat. That's basically what I wrote the whole book about was to help people understand this from a neurobiological perspective and then put it into action in their own lives. Yeah. It goes back to the whole phrase of the world's happening to me versus the world is happening for me, I think. Where it's like, if you think that the world's happening to you and you're just trying to dodge a bunch of stuff as you wake up, dodge circumstances all day long, it's going to be stressful and it's going to be anxious. But if you look at it and go, I think that it comes down to control problems,

which I think a lot of people really have. I've realized through some psychedelic experiences, control problems were really my issue. And as I've tried to get rid of those, it's helped and been like, man, I can't control almost anything. I can barely control anything in myself. And so if you think about the world's happening for me, it's like, okay, are these the circumstances that I would choose for myself? No. But if life is this game, if we just look at it as a game, this is my level that I'm on. And I have to deal with these circumstances to get to the next level. And it seems like for you, it's like, all right, let's be curious. If we're in this, if it's happening to me,

then it's going to be hard. If it's happening for me, why is this happening for me? That seems more fun to me than being like, oh my god, this is terrible. This is happening to me. Why is this happening for me? What can I see about this breakup? What can I see about this whole thing that's happening for me to make my future better? Yes. And so in that sense, we can bow to every circumstance as a teacher. There's this phrase, two steps forward, one step backward. Well, I would throw out there, if we are learning from that quote-unquote step backward, is it actually a step backward? Because often we learn more from our mishaps than from things going well. And so if we're actually learning from that step backward, are we ever going backwards

if we're actually open to learning in each moment? Right. It's like you can't have an arrow go anywhere unless you pull it back to launch it. And the further back you pull it, the farther it's going to go. Totally. But bow to every circumstance as a teacher is what you said. I might have to get that as like a tattoo. I feel like that's the perfect phrase for if people could just wrap up this entire thing

is just bow to every circumstance as if it's a teacher for you. There's a lesson in every single thing, whether it's good or bad. And usually the biggest lessons and the biggest teachers are in the bad things that happen. Totally.

So I think it's a good way to end it right there. That was a great little ending. I love that phrase. I'm going to write that one down as soon as we get done. So the book is called Unwinding Anxiety. For people who want to go out there and purchase it, I'm sure it's available everywhere you could possibly purchase it. And for anyone else who wants to dive deeper into it, how can they connect with you? And obviously, you can go buy the book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, all those places. But if someone wants to learn more about you and more about your app, how can they find

more about you? My website is drjudd.com, D-R-J-U-D.com. And that has a bunch of resources, talks about the apps that we've developed, the one for anxiety as well as eating and smoking, and also has links to my book and ways to contact me. If folks are on Twitter, they can hit me up on Twitter at Judd Brewer, J-U-D-D-B-R-E-W-E-R. Nice. Well, man, I appreciate it. I think this is definitely the best time for this book to come out. And I think a lot of labs are going to be changed. So I appreciate you for that. Thank you.