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- We tend to run away from our fears
because we don't like how they feel.
We don't like the anxiety that accompanies fear.
We don't like feeling cold or clammy or panicked,
but when you identify your fear,
when you draw it a little bit closer
and you begin to understand why it's something
that accompanies you, you'll find that you're able
to make more confident decisions.
You won't be making decisions from a place of fear,
but rather a place of confidence and power.
You'll find that as you begin to draw and paint your fears,
you're releasing your mind from them.
They won't be clouding your brain,
and instead, you can focus on creative endeavors.
So now I'm going to begin this exercise,
so the first thing I'm going to do is go look
in the mirror for a full minute.
When I come back, I'm going to make a list
of the fears that arose in my mind
and start to sketch them out, and then we'll meet back
and we'll add color and shape together.
One of the first things I felt looking
at myself was just a heaviness.
It's a heaviness I feel often when I feel impatient
and ready for things to change,
but so worried and afraid that they never will.
As I ask myself questions,
"When do I feel this emotion the most?
When do I feel it coming to me?
How long does it last?",
I began to understand
that it comes in moments of feeling stuck.
The second item that is a symbol
of fear for me are painful memories.
I don't like to dwell on painful memories
because it can be a spiral for me,
and so because of that, I tend to avoid them.
As we'll learn with all of our fears,
when you avoid or run away
from your fear, it only grows larger,
so writing down painful memories reminds me
that there are some that I still need to work through
so that I can accept that what happened has happened,
why I should take certain lessons with me,
but why I should not take the fear
of it happening again, or of, for example,
if it's a memory that has to do with somebody,
why I shouldn't carry the fear of being close to somebody,
because that is preventing me
from constructing what I really want,
which is a meaningful relationship.
The next thing I wrote down was that
when I feel afraid, it feels like static or confusion.
I can't really always understand why I feel afraid
of something.
I just know that I do and I know
that I have a lot of anxiety that can kind
of bubble up in me and it doesn't have a shape, or a voice,
or a reason, and so I drew, honestly, a scribble,
because that's what it feels like.
So along with the heaviness,
I sometimes, my fear just feels really, really dark.
This one is about the color, not the shape,
so while I was also looking in the mirror,
a specific fear came to me,
which was living in the same place forever,
and I also think, while you're working through,
while you're drawing these and painting them in,
you can also begin to ask yourself if you feel comfortable,
"Why am I afraid of some of these things?"
So living in the same place forever,
while I draw this house, I find myself almost contemplating,
"Why is this a fear of mine?
What would it mean if I stayed in one place forever?"
I think that one of the reasons I'm afraid
of this is because I'm worried
about stagnancy and I'm worried about losing my curiosity,
and I think that I'm going to come back to this one
and try to figure out whether I can continue to grow
and stay curious in the same place.
Does the place dictate
whether I can learn and grow and remain curious,
or is that within my control
and something that I can do from anywhere?
The last fear that came up
while I was doing the mirror exercise was failure,
the fear of failure.
So here are all of my fears that came up for me
during the the mirror exercise.
The only way to overcome any fear is
by being able to be aware that you feel fear,
and then by identifying those fears,
so you're off to a really, really good start.
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- Let's start by doing a few warmup exercises
to pull that emotion out of you.
While doing these exercises, focus on the process.
Don't necessarily start to begin to think
about how you're going to turn this
into a cool Instagram post later.
Instead, think about how things feel internally.
Think about the how.
Let's start simple.
Write down three to five
of your emotions or words that describe how you feel.
Try playing with really specific words,
like if you're feeling anxiety,
does your anxiety feel jumpy and chaotic,
or maybe just feels overwhelming?
Maybe you feel pressure.
Use some of those more specific words
to describe how you're feeling and write them down.
Even if you're not experiencing that anxiety right now,
if you know what it feels like, write it down.
So here are some of the words that I picked
to describe how I'm feeling when I'm anxious
or having a panic attack even, jittery, bursting,
pressure, out of control.
Those are the four words or phrases I'm going to use
as I play with this exercise here.
Next up, let's scribble some lines and shapes
that actually represent the words that you wrote down.
I'd encourage you to play
with real tactile paper and a drawing tool if you can.
You could also try stitching your emotion
onto an embroidery hoop.
You could make a collage
or even try playing your emotion out on the piano.
Don't be limited to what you see here.
I'm going to use Posca Paint pens
and colored pencils because that's what I enjoy the most,
and what I feel most comfortable with.
Test out a couple different colors on your paper.
Check out your palette or what you're playing with,
and then describe to yourself how each
of those colors makes you feel.
I really like to counteract those jagged anxiety edges
that I draw with more bubbly shapes
to kind of balance it out.
Just play around with how you're feeling.
There's no wrong answer.
Everyone's emotions and circumstances are unique and valid.
Maybe take some cues from the lines
and shapes you drew earlier,
and simply fill the circle with how you feel.
This circle shape gives you a structure to fill something
with how you feel,
and it helps us to contain our feelings to that one place,
and not that feeling should always be contained,
but it's really nice to see it laid out
on the paper like this.
I really like doing this because it kind
of forces me to be abstract and focus on color and texture,
capturing an emotion.
It's less about sketching something real
and more just about getting it all out there.
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- Inevitably, life is going to happen.
We're going to experience setbacks
and things might happen
where you may not achieve the goals
that you set for yourself,
and that is completely okay,
and here's something that I really love
to work through anxiety with.
It's just an old fashioned child's pose,
and the reason why we love to get
into child's pose is it puts pressure
on this like third eye part of our forehead,
which helps to just instantly calm and relax us.
Then what you can do is you can go
from a child's pose right up into our little cat-cow motion,
and what that does is it helps to open our heart,
and it helps to just get us into our courage.
So child's pose is a gorgeous prescription to anxiety.
To me, catastrophizing is like bigger than anxiety,
like catastrophizing is like,
"I am having like unreasonable fears,
like maybe it's going to happen,
but it's probably, most likely not going to happen,
and I am like worried about it."
When we notice that we're really catastrophizing,
we're really elevated,
maybe our shoulders are hunched forward,
maybe we're being really, really irritable,
really negative, whatever's happening,
that's when it's good information
that we need to stop
and do something a little bit more proactive
than maybe even a child's pose.
It could be a bath.
It could be removing yourself
from that situation, taking a walk.
It could be a lot of different things,
but the most important thing is that we're going to actually
like move our body out of the situation.
Other thing that could happen is sometimes,
and I definitely struggle with this,
I'm sure you're going to be shocked.
Sometimes I might feel
like I'm being like especially self-absorbed
or really just like kind of a little bit selfish.
I don't want to have that happen when it comes
to my self care,
because I really do love showing up for people around me.
I love showing up for causes that I'm passionate about,
and I really can't do that as much
if I'm feeling way too just in myself.
So when we're feeling selfish,
a great thing that we can do to combat that
and to get out of our own way is to volunteer,
and volunteering can look so many different ways
for so many different people.
It could be that you volunteer your time at a shelter.
It could be that you volunteer at a food bank.
It could be that you bring some
of your extra food to a food bank.
It could be that you write letters.
It could be that you would get involved
in mutual aid that really speaks to you,
and I think actually when it comes to this, money's great,
money is fabulous, so you could also make a donation,
but what's even more incredible
than just like throwing money
at a donation is really donating your time.
Time equals love according to Dr. Edith Eger,
and so giving your time to causes that are important
to you and to people that are important to you,
it just helps you to gain confidence in yourself,
and it helps you to gain that feeling of integrity
and joy because when we bring joy to other people,
it emboldens us to trust ourselves,
and to feel confident in ourself,
and that is such a beautiful feeling.
Helping others really does help us,
which then it makes me think like chicken or the egg,
like am I only helping people because I want to help myself?
Well, who cares?
Because you're helping people.
That's really what self-care is.
It's us connecting with ourselves and deeply connecting
with ourselves so that we can be better community members
for ourselves, for our friends, for our families,
for people who may not look like us,
for people who may not act like us.
Really, self-care is about being an ally,
and when we don't have energy,
when we don't have our own love and our own acceptance,
it's really hard for us to show up in a full authentic way
in our relationships with those around us.
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