This may surprise some of you to hear, but when I teach in front of a large group I get
really nervous, my hands start sweating and they go ice cold,
I sometimes get shaky in my voice, or I often get that like crazy, stinky armpit sweat,
and even though I actually really enjoy presenting and teaching, what's happening in my brain is that
it sees all these people in the audience as a threat and it essentially turns off the thinking
part of my brain, it pumps out a bunch of stress chemicals and it goes into this protective mode.
This is our body's physical reaction to anxiety and it makes it hard to solve problems and to
control our behaviors. In this video you're going to take that anxious feeling you already know and
you're gonna explore it. You're gonna learn more concretely how it works, why it messes with your
brain in the way it does, and then you're gonna learn a few ways to calm it down so that you can
turn on your thinking brain to make better choices instead of getting stuck in your limbic system.
And if you don't know what limbic system is don't worry, I'll be covering that here too.
This video is sponsored by Skill Share. Skill Share offers thousands of inspiring classes for
curious people and lifelong learners on topics including art and creativity,
but also productivity and personal improvement. Here's a class I recently took that's really cool-
Art Journaling for Self-care: Three Exercises for Reflection and Growth by Amanda Rich Lee. This
class is really cool because it teaches you three ways to work through emotions using art and you
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Becoming a Skill Share member is less than $10 a month with an annual subscription,
and the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a free trial of
premium membership so you can check out Skill Share for free. Okay, back to how anxiety impacts your
brain. So have you ever done something really dumb when you've been scared or stressed out or angry?
You're not alone. You know, have you ever wondered- 'why do my hands get all cold and sweaty when I'm
anxious?', or 'why does my stomach hurt when I'm worried?' Many people don't know that the way
their body responds to stress or anxiety is really a reaction intended to keep us safe from danger.
Your brain has many different emotional responses, but in this video we're mostly going to focus
on the fear response because that's the one that often leads to the worst reactivity in our part.
We freeze, we get anxious, we feel hopeless, we get angry, all of this stems from the fear reaction
in your brain. So understanding how your brain works can help you learn how to stop reacting
to emotions and stop doing stupid stuff that you regret later and this can help you live a happier
life where your actions line up with who you want to be. Okay, so let's talk about how your brilliant
brain works. The brain is really complex, I am not a neuroscientist, but to simplify there are
three main systems in your brain. The brain stem, the limbic system, and the cortex. Now the brain
stem is also known as the reptile brain, it's ancient its job is to make sure you stay alive,
it runs your body's basic functions like- reflexes, eating, breathing, heart rate, and temperature.
All the information relayed from the body to the brain and vice versa from the brain to the body
has to go through the brain stem, this part of your brain can keep you alive even when the other parts
are damaged. This is what a vegetative state is, and this part of your brain also takes precedence
over the others. So when you pass out, this part of your brain keeps your heart beating when you
aren't thinking or feeling anything. Okay, second part is the limbic system. This is also called
the mammal brain, so this is the part of the brain that manages emotions and relationships.
This is also the part of the brain where anxiety originates. This part of the brain is more advanced
than the reptilian brain. Mammals for example have a lot greater emotional range than a snake
and this helps us survive. So if you imagine a wolf it can care for its young and it can work
together with its herd and all of this is thanks to the more advanced
features of this emotional part of the brain. So anger, fear, love, jealousy, these are all rooted
in the limbic part of the brain, the mammal brain. This part of the brain is also reactionary
and emotional, and we're gonna learn why this is also brilliant right, it's helpful and purposeful.
But if we don't learn how to manage it, it can also lead to us being reactive and impulsive.
The limbic system houses the amygdala and the hypothalamus. When the amygdala stimulates the
hypothalamus this is what initiates the fight-or-flight response. The hypothalamus
sends signals to the adrenal glands to produce hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. The
amygdala is also the part of the brain that learns what to be afraid of and what is safe.
The third part of our brain is the cortex right? This houses the human brain, this is the part that
we often think of as our brain, it holds conscious thinking, reasoning, memory, planning for future,
organizing, prioritizing, complex problem solving, making choices, self-reflection, goals, direction,
and values right? So even though this part of the brain seems like it's the most important,
it's actually the lowest in the hierarchy. The two lower sections focus on survival
and that usually takes precedence over thinking, not always, but usually right?
For us to understand our emotions it's important to understand how our brains respond to threats.
So the deeper levels of the brain sense survival threats and then trigger emotions, instincts, and
subconscious drives, that we aren't even aware of. When we feel threatened our brain shuts down the
higher functions and activates a more primitive state. The greater threat that we're facing the
deeper the level is activated in our brain. So a really big threat would be something like a
massive drop in blood pressure, in this situation the brain turns off your thinking, it turns off the
cortex, you black out, that makes you get horizontal, which helps your blood pressure go back up
and tries to keep you alive right? But this isn't the most common way that our brain turns off. More
commonly, when we're highly emotional, we get stuck in the limbic system. This is when the emotional
brain takes over. Now there's a good reason for this right? Over the last thousands of years
humankind's biggest struggle was for survival in the face of physical dangers like wild animals,
heights, or attacks from warring groups. When faced with a real and immediate danger like a tiger,
our instincts take over and try to keep us safe. The limbic system triggers our protective response
and we have three main reactions- fight, run away, or freeze. Now we don't think this or choose this,
it happens much faster than we can think right? So a couple of times when I've been out working
in the desert I have stepped right next to or right over a rattlesnake, and when you hear that
rattle go off you've already jumped like a foot like and then you start thinking, like it's crazy
how fast that reaction happens in your body is just flooded with adrenaline right? So it's like
so much faster than you can think. The fight-flight reaction actually turns down the thinking part
of our brain and it sends power to the senses and to the muscles. This is kind of like in Star
Trek, when they lower the lights on the bridge to put all power on their weapons, the cortex
actually gets sidelined, that's the thinking part and the limbic system, the impulsive reactionary
instinctive part in our brain that focuses purely on survival, this is the part that gets amped up.
Now not thinking can be really helpful if you're facing a tiger, because it's not going to do you
that much good if you spend five minutes trying to plan out your next move only to get eaten. However,
not thinking isn't much help if your "danger" is public speaking and your prefrontal cortex just
shuts down or if you're asking out a date and your brain turns off right? Now our body is doing
other things to try to keep us safe right, it sends extra blood to the big muscles so you could punch
that tiger or run away from it right, it decreases blood flow to our hands and our feet, and that's
why your hands get cold and sweaty, it turns on the adrenal glands to pump out adrenaline to give you
that quick burst of energy, this also makes you feel shaky, it turns off the digestive system
because it's more important to use that blood flow to escape the tiger than it is to digest whatever
you've eaten right? So this part of the fight- flight-freeze response leads to people having
a decreased appetite, a tight feeling in their gut, dry mouth, and because your digestive system is
getting shut off, sometimes people you know, get the runs or even wet themselves. It tightens the
muscles, it heightens some senses. So for example- like your vision gets more pinpointed, leading to
what can feel like tunnel vision sometimes, and it also makes your breathing become shorter and
shallower, your heart rate also gets faster. The fight-flight-freeze response also turns off the
immune system for a short time and the body sweats to keep cool in case of physical exertion. So
that's where all that nasty pit sweat comes from. When there's not a tiger, but your brain perceives
modern threats like a work evaluation, a deadline, debt, or just too much stimuli, then we can get
triggered into this fight-flight-freeze response too. The fight response often looks like anger,
shouting, big movements, muscle clenching right? It can feel like blame, defensiveness, being critical,
attacking others physically or just verbally, or even inside of our heads. With modern stressors
the flight response can look like running away, escaping, but it can also look like avoiding
perceived threats, procrastination, distraction, or just trying not to think about a problem.
With the freeze response there are typically reactions like numbing, shrinking, or hiding.
This reaction can keep us safe when fighting or running would put us in danger, or when there's no
chance of escape. The freeze response can be like feeling detached from your body or your emotions
or it can have that sensation of feeling like heavy or frozen or leaden or like unable to
move your muscles. This can serve a function of making us harder to find or it can make a predator
less interested, like this duck and this dog. The duck is pretending to be dead, the dog gets bored,
the duck escapes right? The numbness can also make an attack hurt less. Now within the freeze response
is the fawn response. So when we can't fight off or escape an attacker, we sometimes have the instinct
to comply, to appease them, to do anything to make them less angry or to soothe the situation.
Now I talk about the freeze/fawn response in more of my YouTube videos,
but in one of them I tell the story of how when I when a stranger groped me on the street,
my immediate instinctual reaction was to say I'm sorry, like as if it was my fault right? This was
not logical, this was not rational, I didn't plan it, it was just my instinct kicking in to keep me safe,
and in that situation it worked right? The whole situation was diffused and I was able to get away.
The brain prioritizes survival over thinking and this is brilliant right? It makes us quick to react.
For example, there have been times where my kids have like fallen off of things, more times than
I can count, and in a split second I've been like (whoosh) shot my hand out and caught them. I'm grateful for
the limbic system and and its role in keeping me and my kids safe. This ability has helped
humans survive for thousands of years, but the fight-flight-freeze response has some downsides.
This response is designed to work in short bursts in response to immediate and physical threats.
It doesn't work well when this response happens with you know, "perceived" threats instead of
actual threats. So we might have a fight-flight-freeze response to a work meeting or an email or a
request from a friend. We could have a fight-flight-freeze response to a complaint from a spouse or
any number of other things. Now the stress response is also pretty safe in the short term, but when we
don't resolve that threat our body can get trapped in this elevated state over a long period of time
and this can lead to exhaustion, muscle tension, digestive problems, and frequent illnesses.
Also long-term stress can contribute to anxiety and depressive disorders.
Another problem with the fight-flight- freeze response is it doesn't help us solve
emotional, cognitive, or relational problems. So most of these problems require more complex thinking
and problem solving that just isn't happening when your brain is in survival mode. Good news
is you don't have to feel trapped by this response. So you can learn to soothe your emotional brain so
you can make better decisions with your thinking brain. You can train yourself to turn off the fight-
flight-freeze response and return to a sense of calm. So here are the basic steps on how to do that.
The first one is to just become aware of your triggers. So when you can predict that you might
get emotional, that gives you a bit of time to pause and slow down before you lose control.
A way to do this is to learn to notice your body's signs too. In the course I've got a survey where
you can you know, check yourself for signs of this fight-flight-freeze response. Now when you do start
to go into it, just notice that you are you're "flooding", I mean that's the John Gottman term for
this, this response right? You pay attention to what's happening inside of you. You just notice
your thoughts, notice your sensations from an observer position, and then whenever possible
take a pause, pay attention to what's happening inside of yourself, notice your thoughts, your
sensations, and your emotions, from an observer position, and then whenever possible pause right?
Pause the conversation or situation for a few seconds. You could just say something like-
'hang on for a second, hang on' right, take a break or whatever it is, and then you just try to calm down.
Remind yourself that you can solve these problems whether now or in the future right,
and if tensions are too high right then for you to get you know, get yourself together, then you
can ask for a break. This is totally okay, take a break when things are too intense and then
make sure to commit to coming back to the issue at a certain time. Now this is really important
because if you don't come back to resolve the problem all those emotions stay trapped inside
and then the next time a little problem comes up you feel this like irrational reaction to it.
Now while you're taking a break while you're pausing instead of reacting to your fight-flight
-freeze response, take some time to self-soothe, so to self-regulate right? You can do something
physically calming like a grounding exercise, deep breathing, or going for a walk. All of these
things can help you process those chemicals that were released and then after you've calmed down,
after you've gotten your head about you, come back to the problem from a calmer perspective.
Now sometimes we need help to do this right? We sometimes need help to see things
from a fresh perspective. So you may want to work through the situation with a friend or a counselor.
So in summary, when your deep brain perceives a threat, it turns off your ability to think
and it goes into this protective/reactive mode called the fight-flight-freeze response.
This physical reaction that our body has is a huge part of anxiety and it can make it hard to solve
problems and control our behaviors. So when you can learn to identify the fight-flight-freeze response,
you can learn techniques to calm yourself down, get thinking again, and make better choices. In the next
sections of this course you're going to learn how to train your mind and body to respond differently
to threats, to resolve anxiety, and to teach the body to return to calm quickly so that you can
think clearly and solve problems. These skills include grounding, how to regulate your nervous
system, coping skills, breathing skills, mindfulness, and relaxation skills. Thank you for being here
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.