Today's video is sponsored by BlendJet. I'm able to make these courses free and available to
everyone on YouTube thanks to sponsors like them. Spring is finally here, and my goal is to get out
camping more with the kids. And my kids love smoothies. BlendJet 2 is the newest generation
of portable blender, and it's even more powerful than the last. It's cordless - you just recharge
it with a USB - and it's super powerful. You can juice a carrot or blend up frozen fruit with it.
So today I'm here making my kids strawberry banana smoothies. It can hold up to 16 ounces of liquid,
and you can take it anywhere with you. My husband loves being able to take it with
him to the gym to mix up a protein shake, and my kids love that we can take it with us in the RV.
And it's super easy to clean - you just add soapy water and blend it up. Now,
you can click the link in the description below to get 50% off BlendJet 2, and you can use my code
Therapy in a Nutshell 12 for another 12% off. As we've learned in previous sections of this course,
emotions are just as much in our body as in our minds. Anxiety, fear, anger, shame,
and other core emotions are rooted in a subconscious response deep in our brain,
the fight flight freeze response. This response, also known as the sympathetic response,
triggers waves of physical changes in our body, releasing stress hormones, adrenaline,
speeding up our heart rate and breathing. It turns off digestion and the immune system.
It tenses our muscles. And afterwards, it leaves us feeling shaky and jittery. We can't just turn
off this response by thinking, you know, calm down or relax, because our thoughts
don't directly control this part of our brain. But the body has a natural counterbalancing response
called the parasympathetic response. This is also known as rest and digest. This response
slows your breathing and heart rate, releases your muscle tension, helps you relax, and turns on
that rest and digest response. So since we can't access the survival-oriented parts of our brain
very easily with our thoughts, it's often more effective to calm our brain using our body.
So to clarify, if we use thinking to calm our body, this is called a top-down approach.
And if we're using physical skills to calm our brain, this is called a bottom-up approach. And
this is a really effective way to start processing intense emotions and treating anxiety and trauma.
This topic is the last video in this section which is called Calm Body Leads to a Calm Mind. The next
section of this course is all about the top-down approach, but it's all about how changing how you
think can change how you feel. But calming your body first lays the foundation for that cognitive
work. We can turn on this calming response in our nervous system through body-based activities
like those we learned in the previous sections - things like deep breathing, progressive muscle
relaxation, the yawn, and tapping. And, you know, a bunch of other ones that we learned. But we can
also use an important skill called grounding. Being grounded means that you are in your body,
that you're aware of your body, you're aware of your present moment experience,
and that you're safe here in this present moment. Our five senses anchor us to our body and
to our surroundings. Grounding is a really important skill to have if you experience
dissociation, anxiety, panic attacks, or flashbacks. Grounding strengthens the
parasympathetic response, right. This is our body's ability to return to calm effectively,
and this counteracts the fight flight freeze response. So the more you practice grounding,
the stronger your ability is to turn on that parasympathetic response in your nervous system.
In the second half of this video, I'm going to teach you an exercise that you can use to get
grounded. But first let's talk about how grounding turns off the fight flight freeze response.
PTSD and other anxiety disorders are disordered because at their essence they're about feeling
in danger when you're actually safe. Anxiety and depression are often about fearful memories of
the past or anxious worries about the future. Grounding activities help us activate that safe
feeling in our brain by reminding ourselves that right here in this present moment, we are indeed
safe. When we're grounded and calm, we're able to process through difficult memories and thoughts in
a way that actually resolves them. Most grounding exercises can help us to reconnect with the
present moment. They often focus on breathing and increasing your awareness of the here and now,
and they also focus on your five senses. Grounding exercises connect us with our body and help us
reassert personal control, and they reorient us to the safe context of where we are. When you
get grounded, you're able to notice that the place you are, the room you're in right now
is actually safe. So you can say something like "Even though my body feels scared right now,
I am safe in this place that I'm at." And that that's what grounding does for you: I'm safe in
my environment, and I'm safe in my body. One of the ways that we gain confidence in our ability
to decrease our anxiety is by checking in with ourselves before and after grounding exercises. So
in order to notice the small and gradual progress that you make, write about how you feel before
and after a grounding exercise. You can use a 0 to 10 scale or you can write as much detail as you'd
like. Practice these skills every day when you're calm. As you get better and better at grounding,
you'll be able to begin to practice using these grounding skills in slightly difficult situations,
and then eventually you'll be able to use them to calm yourself down in really intense
situations. Okay, so let's try one. So let's start by writing down your anxiety on a scale
from zero to ten, with ten being, you know, the most anxiety, and zero being no anxiety at all.
Now this exercise can help you come down from hyper arousal or the fight flight freeze response,
and it can help you find a more balanced emotional state. It can also be used to help ground people
who are in freeze mode. So just start by noticing that you're sitting down - I'm assuming that
you're sitting down - and feel your feet touching the ground, right. Notice that you're pressing
into the ground with your feet. Now stamp your left foot into the ground, and then your right.
Do this several times really slowly
Left right left right.
Now feel your thighs and your legs and your butt in contact with the seat of your chair.
Feel the chair pressing up against you and you pressing down into the chair.
Notice if your legs and your buttocks now feel more or less present than when you started.
Now move your focus to your spine. Feel your spine as your midline.
Slowly lengthen your spine, and notice how it affects your breath.
Now move your focus to your hands and your arms. Push your hands together. Feel your strength
and your warmth. Push in hard, and then release and pause. Then push your hands together again.
Now release and rest your arms. Now move your focus to your eyes. Look around the room.
Find something that tells you that in this moment you are right here.
Remind yourself that right here, right now, that you are safe.
As you notice yourself in the room, bring your attention back to your body. Notice
what it feels like again to be pressing into the couch or the chair that you're sitting on.
Notice how it feels to have your feet pressing into the floor.
Notice how this exercise affects your breathing, your presence, your mood, your strength.
Go ahead and rate your anxiety on a scale from 0 to 10 again.
Now, it's not necessarily going to drop every time that you do one of these activities, but if you
practice over and over you'll notice a change over time. The more you practice grounding, the better
you'll get at inviting those feelings of calm and moving through those feelings of anxiety.
Okay, the next section is all about changing how we think to change how we feel. Go ahead
and check out the link in the description for my free grounding skills course. I teach a bunch of
skills on how to calm down your mind and how to calm down your body through, you know, really
simple exercises that just take a few minutes, a few minutes a day. So check that out if you'd
like to learn more. That course is completely free. Thank you for watching, and take care.
This video is one skill from my 30-skill course: How to Process Your Emotions, where I teach
30 of the most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental health.
Emotion processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but most people
have never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on YouTube for
the world to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing to my Patreon
and my sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course in one place ad
free with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional short
readings and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course is in the description below.