Well with Arielle Lorre - 142: Using Hypnotherapy to Overcome Anxiety with Chloe Brotheridge

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

In this episode I am talking to hypnotherapist and coach Chloe Brotheridge about anxiety and the different tools we can use to cope. We also delve specifically into social anxiety which can be helpful especially around this time of year with the holidays and social functions.   www.Trybite.com/Blonde for 20% off your first subscription order. www.Drinkolipop.com/BLONDEFILES for 20% off your order plus free shipping. www.THEHydrojug.com with code Blonde for 10% off your order. www.Piquetea.com/Blonde for an additional 5% off their limited-time bundle with gifts.   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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slash blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E, and the code is blonde for an additional 5% off the limited time bundle with gifts. Hey, welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Arial Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody, welcome to the show. I have

such a good episode for you today just in time for the holidays, the end of the year, crush. I don't know if you guys are feeling it. As I have been feeling it, I feel like I've been talking about it nonstop, but the end of the year tends to be pretty stressful. We all have deadlines and holidays and family things, and it just can be a lot. So this episode is all about anxiety and some coping mechanisms. So I'm talking to Chloe Brotherage. She is an anxiety coach and hypnotherapist. She's also a writer for The Guardian, Daily Mail, stylist, Marie Claire Online, and Cosmopolitan. And she's the host of the Commer You podcast and the best-selling author of The Anxiety Solution and The Confidence Solution. And we talk about her experience with anxiety and how that galvanized her to do what she does.

And we talked about hypnotherapy, which is an interesting treatment modality that I have never explored here on the podcast. And we just talk all about how to cope. So I hope this is helpful for you guys and enjoy the episode. Okay, welcome, Chloe. So excited to talk to you. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. So I have found through talking to hundreds of people on my podcast now that usually when somebody is in a helping profession, it is kind of born out of their own experience with that thing. So I would love to start to just have you tell the listeners about who you are, what you do. And then I'd also love to hear about kind of your own journey and how you came to do what you do. Yeah, great. Thank you. So I'm a hypnototherapist and a coach and an author. I wrote a book called The Anxiety Solution. And you're absolutely, you're absolutely, absolutely right. I have had my own issues of anxiety myself and that's really what got me into this.

I, yeah, I started having panic attacks at 15 and basically thought I was dying, went into, you know, begged my friend to take me to hospital because I thought I was losing my mind, couldn't breathe, thought that at 15 I was having some kind of heart attack and found out afterwards that it was a panic attack. I'd never heard of that before, you know, in those days. No one was talking about anxiety and I'd never really, it never really crossed my mind. But after that experience, I remember, I remember really feeling as though I couldn't trust my body. Like this thing had happened. I've lost control. I couldn't trust my body. And so after that experience, I was really on edge, wondering if I was going to have another panic attack, feeling not safe in my body, kind of developed things like health anxieties and, yeah, health anxieties, worrying, social anxieties, all that stuff. And it took me a long time to get help for it. And I know this is really common. Here in the UK, there's a charity called Anxiety UK. And they have found that people wait on average 10 years before they get any help for anxiety. And that was the same for me. I think it was about 25. It was 10 years that I really sort of needed help. I just got together with my boyfriend. And I think being in a relationship, I thought I could bury the anxieties and kind of try and ignore them. But being.

in that relationship and feeling vulnerable and having to open up, sort of open this whole kind of worms. And I eventually did get some help and tried everything that I could try. And a lot of it, you know, didn't work. And then I tried something else. And I eventually found things that did help me. And so, yeah, these days, I am a lot calmer, thankfully. And I trained as a hypnototherapist about 10 years ago and have been helping people with that and with my podcast and coaching and that sort of thing of a sense. I think that's part of the insidiousness of anxiety, at least in my experience, is like you have a panic attack or you have an experience that's, you know, really rattling. And then there's a fear that it's going to happen again. And that fear just perpetuates the anxiety even more.

And yeah, you start to really distrust your body. I had a panic attack for the first time last year actually flying. And it just came out of nowhere. And ever since then, every time I get on a plane, I'm afraid that I'm going to have a panic attack. And then that usually is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in and of itself. And it's hard. I mean, I think so many people are struggling with anxiety now. And it just seems like it's hard to find a solution. There are so many different things. So I would love to hear some of the things that maybe you tried. And then I really want to delve into the hypnotherapy aspect of it because I've actually never spoken to somebody who uses that modality. So I'd love to hear why that is so beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're right about how

it's almost like a fear of the fear or a fear of losing control that can cause us to get into like an anxiety spiral where it just seems like, yeah, it gets worse and worse. But yeah, for me, I tried, I remember, I remember being about 16 and trying to meditate. And I learned Transcendental Meditation. It's the one that I do now. But at the time, I think, yeah, oh, cool. Yeah, so at the time, I just couldn't sit still. And my heart was racing so much.

And as soon as I tried to, you know, quiet my mind, I was too focused on my breathing and how that didn't feel right. And I realized, I think, that I needed to find different ways to sort of discharge the physical side of anxiety. I think for me, and I know for lots of people, anxiety can be about worrying, but it's so much the physical sensations, the racing heart, the stomach, you know, tightening up,

feeling, you know, shaky or hot or fidgety. And so for me, it was a combination of doing things like, yeah, physical exercise, talking about things. it took me a long time to be able to open up to people. I remember going to therapy the first time and like clawing at my legs because I was so uncomfortable. I was like I wanted to just escape from my skin. I found it so hard to talk about myself and to open up. But once I'd, once I kind of cracked that and got used to that, that was that was really, really helpful. Just taking the shame out, I think, of what I was

experiencing, having someone witness, you know, what I was saying and not be horrified and not be like, oh, you're a weirdo or, oh, you're going mad, actually, you know, meeting what I was saying with acceptance. That was a really healing thing for me. And then in my 20s, I rediscovered Transcendental Meditation, and that really did something for me in terms of, I feel like it just changed my brain. I feel like my brain just functions better when I'm doing my TM. So that was a, that was a huge one for me. But, you know, I've tried so many things, gone on very strange retreats, done all sorts of things to try to manage my own anxiety. I think the main ones are, yeah, the meditation, exercising, talking, quite standard things like that that I think I just

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Yes, yes. To the jungle, not the web store. Can you talk about that experience a little bit? Yeah, so we went to spend time with a tribe who live in the Brazilian Amazon called the Hunikoon. And we went for two weeks, and the idea is that you go, you spend time with the shamans in the tribe and you live in the same way as they do, you know, in the tribe. You sleep in a hammock. They drink a plant medicine called ayahuasca, this tribe, as do many tribes in South America. And ayahuasca is a psychedelic drink, which you drink and it shows you a lot of

things about yourself and helps you to process pain that you might have been suppressing. It helps you to gain insights about yourself. And it's very intense. I don't know if you've experienced, it's it yourself, Ariel, but it's very intense. You, you, you know, it can be very, you know, emotionally painful. It's very kind of physically intense. And you do it all night. So you're up all night and then you go to sleep, hopefully in the day. But yeah, we did, we did that. And that was every other day for the two weeks that we were, we were there. But I think, yeah, one of the hardest parts for me is I'm quite a quite high maintenance girl and not having showers. not having toilets, not having even a place, you know, not having taps to wash your hands.

Like I found that really hard and that for me was part of, you know, almost as bigger part of the experience in terms of teaching me a lot and being a challenge to overcome and sort of testing me as for the psychedelic. So that was very interesting. And the massive spiders that we got there and there was a huge spider light as big as my hand above our bed. We're sleeping in those hammocks. Oh my God. So it was intense. It was intense. Talk about facing your fears and anxieties. Yeah, exactly. I know I'm the sort of person.

Like, I would never choose to do that. But, you know, my boyfriend really wanted to do it. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to challenge myself. So, yeah, I did find it useful because I think, you know, I've done that. And now everything else that I try to do will hopefully not be quite so challenging, well, most things. I have never and probably will never do ayahuasca only because I'm sober. And I feel like that's a little bit of a gray area. I mean, but I just feel like, you know, it's probably not an option for me.

So I'm always fascinated to hear about people's experiences who have done it. But it's interesting that you say that kind of the circumstances of that trip themselves were almost as transformative as doing ayahuasca itself. Yeah, definitely, definitely roughing it, being in the jungle. You know, my anxiety is about, I don't know, something going wrong. Like, you can't just drive out of the Amazon. and you have to get a plane, you have to get a boat for hours and a tiny plane for several hours, just trees all around, no roads. So that was interesting just to be, you know, trusting that it was all going to be okay and learning to surrender to my, you know, fears about, you know, something going wrong,

that sort of thing. So you are trained in hypnotherapy. Can you kind of just tell everybody what exactly hypnotherapy is and how it can be useful in the treatment of things? anxiety. Yeah. So hypothera therapy is about getting into a deeper state of mind, whereby the conscious part of your mind that's having thoughts on the surface and, you know, commenting on things, your internal dialogue, your will, that's your conscious mind. It's about quieting that part of the mind down so that the subconscious, which is actually running the show, you know, a lot of the time. The subconscious is responsible for all of our automatic thoughts, our habits, all those, you know, processes of our body that is just being controlled by the subconscious mind, like your

digestion. And actually a lot of anxiety is very unconscious. It's very subconscious. No one decides to feel anxious or decides to have a panic attack or to be, you know, obsessively worrying about something. And so in hypnosis, we get into this deep state. It feels a like being in a daydream. It's like partly like being in a meditation, partly like being in a daydream. And the subconscious becomes more receptive, more open. We can more easily absorb, you know, helpful ideas, different perspectives. We can let go of things from the past that are in the subconscious. So, you know, all of our baggage, all of the unhelpful messages and beliefs that we've absorbed throughout our lives, we can just access those more easily. And

and process them and change them. And we can also really use our imagination very powerfully in hypnosis. So you find that you're able to imagine things very vividly, very clearly. And in using your imagination, you can, you do things like create a new image of yourself, how you want to be, how you want to respond in situations. So it is really good for firstly helping you to relax. I know that a lot of people with anxiety find it hard to relax. and switch off. So it's firstly very relaxing, but then you're processing things from the past

and you're absorbing, you know, positive ideas, new ideas about yourself, your abilities. And yeah, so those are the ways that it is really helpful for anxiety. It sounds almost meditative. Yeah, it does feel like that. It does feel like, you know, when you're having a really good meditation session and you go very deep and it gets very calm and quiet. But what we're using in that, whilst in that state, in that receptive state is we're using suggestions, we're using different tools from psychology to bring about changes. So could you describe like a typical session? I mean, I think people probably

hear hypnotherapy or hypnosis and think of, you know, somebody completely kind of going into a different place mentally. Is that an accurate kind of depiction of hypnotherapy or what is it generally like? I think, yeah, a lot of people have this image of sometimes of losing control, which no one really wants to do. And it isn't like that at all. I think a lot of people's experience of hypnosis might have been watching a stage show on holiday where someone gets up on the stage and eats an onion thinking it's an apple because they've been hypnotized or something like that. But it's really not like that. We can get into very deep states, but quite often, you know, my client is aware of what's being said. you don't kind of go unconscious, you don't fall asleep. You just feel yourself really going inside yourself, really accessing this peaceful part of yourself. And then being able to perhaps get to the root of your anxiety or whatever problem you're having. So sometimes I'll be asking my client, you know, when was the first experience that you

had when you felt like you weren't good enough, for example? And because they're in that deeper state, they can access memory. and they can see things more clearly than perhaps they could in a normal conversation. So they might go back to a time when they were, you know, six years old and have clarity on, you know, this happens. You know, my dad said this to me or this happened at school. And then we can do some work to help the person, the client, to reprocess that memory, that experience and just see it in a different light so that they can, you know, reprocess it and not have to carry that negative message. or whatever it is that they've taken on board. So, yeah, so it can feel very deep.

It's very relaxing, but you don't lose control. You don't, you know, blurt things out. Like, I think people get worried you're going to suddenly, like, tell the hypnototherapist saw your, I don't know, secrets or something, but you're aware of what you're saying if you are speaking, doing hypnosis. So it's very interesting. You know, often in one session, people really notice the change, and it's, it can be very enlightening.

It can kind of unlock things that you haven't been able to access. before. So it is interesting. I'm sure everybody's circumstances are different, but I'm curious if, like, at the root of it, you've found some kind of universal things that people have dealt with that kind of manifest as anxiety or, like, just kind of root feelings or emotions that manifest as anxiety. Yeah. I mean, I would say almost everyone has this thing about not being good enough, I think, don't they? I think we all do to some extent. And I believe it all goes back to the messages that we take on board as children. We're so receptive to things that our parents say, things that we

observe, things that happen at school, we're like sponges, we absorb things. And yet we don't have the capacity when we're young to understand why people do the things they do or why you know, people get divorced or why people shout and get angry sometimes, and we can misinterpret it and make it mean that we're not okay or that we're not enough, that we need to be, you know, a good girl or a good boy in order to get love. And so, you know, I would say almost everyone that I've worked with will have some kind of not good enough thing that's at the root of things. And if we can work on feeling enough, feeling okay with ourselves, and the very least learning to be kind to ourselves.

I would say that's probably a really universal thing. You know, we're not able to be kind to ourselves. We beat ourselves up. We're really harsh. And that can, you know, that pressure that we put on ourselves can create so much anxiety. And I think as well it comes down to not trusting ourselves. I was like, if we don't feel good enough,

if we're not kind to ourselves, we can't trust ourselves. And then we feel like we have to be on edge. ensure we put extra pressure on ourselves. Yeah, obviously everyone's different, but I think that's the main thing that I see. Do you have any tips for people who are feeling like they're less than? I know that you've talked about like imposter syndrome. And I think that everybody, especially now, just with, you know, our addiction to social media and seeing other people's lives and comparing ourselves and, you know, kind of pedestalizing burnout and workaholism and all of these things, how can we kind of turn some of that off or tune some of that out and, you know, find peace with ourselves?

I think the fact that it is so universal, I often find I do a lot of groups with people and so often people are surprised, you know, even nowadays when we are talking about this stuff more, we are talking about mental health more, people are surprised that they're not, the only one that feels that way. I think we can really tell ourselves, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not good enough. I'm not okay. I'm embarrassing. And we think that we're alone. I think that's part of anxiety. It's like it can feel really isolating. And yet it is so universal. Things like imposter syndrome, if you, you know, depending on what survey you read, anywhere from 60 to 100% of people, particularly women, experience imposter syndrome. And yet,

you know, in our own minds, it can seem like this personal failing that we somehow have been fooling everyone and we're going to get found out and yet it is just so, so common. So I think trying to remind ourselves that it is normal to doubt yourself and it's not a sign that you are not okay. It's normal to have those feelings of being an imposter sometimes, but it's not a sign that you are an imposter. And I think doing things like, well, I have this exercise that I, I I do with my clients sometimes where, and it's quite challenging to do for some people, especially if you're somebody that doesn't like compliments, but basically you reach out to five friends, family members, colleagues, and you ask them to tell you what they think your strengths

are and what they admire about you. And you in turn can also say to them, you know, these are the strengths that I see in you, this is what I admire about you. And then you wait and you get your answers back over the next couple of days. And it can be quite challenging to do that, to reach out to people and to ask. But from my experience of doing this with a lot of people, it can be really, really encouraging and supportive and affirming just to hear some nice comments and reminders and and that affirmation from the people that know you and love you, that actually you're doing okay. And I say to people to get those answers and keep them somewhere safe and remind yourself

of those things, keep reminding yourself of the things that other people see in you. You do have strengths. People admire things about you. People love you. And just reminding yourself of that. It's just one little exercise that people can try. I love that. And it sounds like a lot of what you believe in is what you experienced yourself.

So like when you went to therapy when you were younger and you felt so ashamed and awkward, but once you started talking about it, that feeling kind of lost its power, right? And I've had a similar experience multiple times over in therapy and in recovery and even like on this podcast, you know, just talking about it honestly and realizing that everybody else, you know, these are universal human experiences. Maybe the degrees vary, but talking about it, you really do come to realize that, you know, you're not alone in this. And you're right, it does feel very isolating.

So I really, I really can't emphasize that enough for anybody who's listening. Like, it feels like this shameful thing. And really, it's the, I feel like it's kind of the secrecy of it that perpetuates that shame. I know that you guys like me are trying to find ways to reduce plastic waste in your daily routines and value clean ingredients. So I want to talk to you about something that you might not expect in your daily routine that actually contributes a lot of plastic waste and can be filled with not great ingredients. So I'm talking about toothpaste. In fact, over one billion plastic toothpaste tubes are thrown out every year ending up in landfills and oceans, which is 50 Empire State Building's worth of plastic every single year. It's absolutely crazy. So Bight is reinventing personal care by making products

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feel the same and actually we're loved, you know, for who we are. And when we open up, you know, that can make people love us more because that builds more connection and that vulnerability. And I think, yeah, really hope that, yeah, people listening can remember that as well. Something I know you've talked about before that I have not really ever touched on this podcast, even though I've done a lot of episodes on anxiety, but is social anxiety. I think that a lot of people are probably feeling that now as, you know, we're kind of getting back out into the world, although, you know, it comes in waves. We get back out and then we're kind of shut back down again. But I think this is something that so many people struggle with. And I know for me, it's something

that I started to really struggle with only in adulthood. And that was even more shameful, I think. You know, anxiety is maybe more acceptable than social anxiety. That just felt like there's really something wrong with me. So can you talk about your experience with that and some tips to deal with it? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, there is a lot of shame with social anxiety. I think there's expectations of, you know, I think being an extrovert, you know, being the life and soul of the party, having lots of friends, all those sorts of things. If you don't fit into that mold or you don't feel so comfortable with those things, there can be a lot of shame. And I think for me, I, yeah, I had a group of friends that I grew up with that I was very close with. I knew very

well and that knew me. And so with those people, I was fine. But when I went to university and was meeting new people and going into new situations, I found it so hard to be myself and to open up to people. And I would use alcohol to give myself confidence. And, you know, that never turns out very well. And so, yeah, I remember even, you know, into my early 20s, mid-20s, being so nervous. I had to, well, I wanted to go to a networking event, but that seemed like the worst possible thing that could ever happen. And I literally thought I was going to die. Like, I couldn't imagine my life after this networking event because it just seemed so awful. And I think people listening that have social anxiety, you know, that's not an exaggeration. It really does feel like you're going to die.

And my hands were shaking. You know, I, you know, I got through it, but it was really challenging. And even for me, meeting people one-on-one was difficult. So I would go and meet someone for a coffee, but my hands would be shaking. I couldn't even pick up my coffee mug because, you know, it would be too obvious that I was shaking. And that was just too awful. And so for me, I knew I really wanted to overcome this. And so I did something called exposure therapy. I didn't do it with a therapist, but I did it myself, which is where you basically, in a step-by-step way,

put yourself into situations that make you anxious and you're, you're going to. stay in those situations and you, you know, you get through it. And in surviving, you know, going to a networking event, meeting some for a coffee, you know, going to a party and talking to people, in surviving that your nervous system eventually learns that it's not actually a life or death situation that you can be okay. And so for me, you know, I started off very small and built up. We're doing more things like public speaking and then finally was doing things like, you know, going on live radio and speaking in front of hundreds of people. But it was, you know, It was a real step-by-step process for me to retrain my nervous system to feel more, more confident.

But yeah, I have so much compassion for people that might be going through feeling social anxiety. I think especially now, you know, in a way, you know, social confidence is something that you've got to use it or you can lose it. So if we've been in lockdown, not seeing people, you know, people are seeing that maybe they're feeling socially anxious when they didn't before or they, you know, they did in the past and it's gotten work. since the lockdown. So I think not hiding away, even though it's very tempting and normal to want to avoid situations that make you anxious, it's like the more we avoid, you know, social situations, the worse it gets. And so, you know, step by step, trying to put yourself, you know, outside of your comfort zone is literally the only way that we can really overcome it. Yeah, it's kind of that contrary action. The thing that you really don't want to do is usually the thing

that is ultimately going to help you. I can think of like just in my own experience with my podcast. Like I started struggling with social anxiety a few years ago and right around the time that I started my podcast. And I thought like sitting, talking to someone one on one and, you know, talking to God knows how many people are going to be listening to it. I mean, I didn't let it stop me, but I look back now and I remember just like sweating through my first year. of interviews and it was so uncomfortable. And I was thinking about it the other day. And now it's like, I mean, there's none of that ever. Sometimes I get like kind of excited, anticipation feelings that can sometimes feel like a little bit of anxiety, but, but nothing like before. And I was thinking about,

well, wow, like, that's pretty much exposure therapy. And it took me two, two and a half years to get to the point where I'm super comfortable with it. But that just shows that. you know, if you do something enough times, you do get comfortable with it. I think that's so encouraging. Definitely. And even saying that, I mean, I was listening to Rich Rolls podcast. I don't know if you know him. He's American. And he literally has recorded over a thousand podcast episodes of his podcast. And he says that he still gets nervous before every single one. And I thought that was really interesting because, you know, you never know from the look of him. It seems, you know, really confident he's done that, you know, so many episodes. And yet he still feels nervous. And

that was very kind of permission giving for me. I was like, actually, you know, is that reminder to me, it's okay to still feel nervous. It's okay to find things challenging sometimes. It's actually normal. Even people who were, you know, at the top of their game can still feel that. Yeah, you would never know it listening to him. He's very even keeled. Yeah. That's funny. Well, I like what you said about that being kind of permission giving, because I think even with all of these tools, anxiety is still normal. Is that right? I mean, we just experience it maybe in varying degrees and learn that we can live with it instead of trying to fight it so much. Yeah, it's a normal emotion. Everyone's going to feel some anxiety from time to time, you know, before a job interview,

before a date, you know, it is a normal emotion. And to, you know, that's why I don't like to say things like, oh yeah, cure your anxiety because you can't cure a normal emotion. I think we can get to a point where we manage anxiety. We feel calm most of the time. We're not, you know, clinically anxious. But you're never going to be free of all uncomfortable emotions. That's sometimes something I think that it's like it's not very acceptable for us.

I think in our culture to feel bad, to feel sad, to feel fearful. We try to numb ourselves or distract ourselves or keep really busy so we don't have to feel that, but actually a certain amount of those less desirable emotions are completely normal. And you could have all the tools in the world and still you're going to feel sad sometimes. You're going to feel fearful sometimes. And I think a certain level of accepting that and learning to embrace that and move through the feelings is really important. So if somebody is listening right now and they're struggling with anxiety, whether it's social anxiety or just generalized or they're having panic attacks, what are some practical tips that you would have for that person or those people that they could start doing today to help move through that? So one of my favorite things to do is shaking.

So there doesn't need to be any particular technique. It is literally just like getting up and shaking your body all over. I kind of like to kind of bounce my knees a little bit, get my shoulders involved in the shake. And it's something that animals do in the wild to discharge tension and stress. If you've ever watched a cat or a dog and they hear a loud noise and they get a bit of a fright and then they shake their bodies really vigorously afterwards, this is what all animals do to get rid of the adrenaline, the tension, the stress. And so much of anxiety is very physical, so much of it is held in the body.

and so having some sort of shaking process that you do. Like I do mine in the morning, sometimes when I'm brushing my teeth, I'll shake, or before bed, if I've had a kind of evening where I'm being social or I'm working and I just want to, you know, get rid of the tension, I'll shake my body for a few minutes before bed. And it just helps me to sleep better and kind of unwind. So, yeah, I love shaking just as a way to kind of address the physical side of. anxiety because so much of it is physical. Another thing that I would really suggest is writing down your thoughts and feelings and as much as possible putting your feelings into words.

And there's something that I use called the feelings wheel. If people just Google, feelings wheel, it will come up and it basically lists all the emotions that we can have. And the thing is that we're not very good generally at knowing exactly what it is. is that we're feeling. We use very broad terms like, oh, I'm stressed, I'm anxious, I feel sad. But actually, there can be so many different emotions that better describe what it is that we're feeling. And they found in studies that when we can label our emotions and we can name them accurately, that has a very calming effect on us. They've done brain scans and finds it, found that it calms the amygdala down when we do that. So, So instead of feeling anxious, you might actually be feeling disappointed.

You might be feeling vulnerable. And so actually knowing that and writing that down and kind of tuning into your feelings and what they are is a really good practice just for getting more in touch with yourself and for calming yourself down. So, yeah, I would say to people, check out the feelings wheel and really get to know what is your feeling and write that down. I love that. Those are definitely some simple things that everybody can start.

today. And if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you? Yeah. So I'm on Instagram at Chloe Brotheridge and I have a podcast all about anxiety called the Karma You podcast. And my website is karma-hyphenu.com. And I've got loads of freebies and resources for anxiety there. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Great to chat. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blond Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie.