In this video you're going to learn to recognize the lie
of "perceived danger" that can trigger the body's fear response when you're actually safe.
You're going to learn how to soothe your nervous system, and I'm going to show you some
really practical activities that you can do to feel safe when you are safe even when your mind
lies and tells you that you're not. In this section, the exercises are really important.
This section is experiential, it's about the experience of doing these exercises,
not just thinking about the concepts I tell you, so make sure not to skip the exercises.
I love making mental health content, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of work, so my
average 15 minute video takes me between 20 and 30 hours to produce, so I just wouldn't be able to
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link in my description and get your free quote in just two minutes today. I'm going to share a
story directly from The Worry Solution right. Let me invite you to do a simple experiment to see how
your imagination can influence the way you feel. Make sure you're in a safe, comfortable place where
you can close your eyes for a few minutes. Focus on your body as if your attention were a radar or
sonar beam slowly scanning up and down. Notice if you feel any stress, tension, or discomfort
anywhere in your body. Now let's rate it on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no tension and
10 is all the tension you could stand. Where would you rate the tension level in your body right now?
Now, imagine that you are camping in the woods in the middle of the night you need to go to
the bathroom, so you throw some clothes on and you shuffle off so that you won't disturb anyone else.
It's completely dark with no moon and it takes you a while to find a level place, but you're
finally able to do what you need to do. The need attended to, you notice how really dark it is and
you start to carefully pick your way back to camp reaching out with your arms so that you don't bump
into anything. You trip over tree roots and rocks, you pick up a few scratches from unseen branches.
After a while, you feel that you've been walking too long and you should
have found your campsite already. It's cold and it's dark and you're kind of uncomfortable.
You start walking in another direction and then after a while, another, then you realize that you
are lost. You quietly call out several times, but nobody answers. Finally you yell loudly, but you
still get no response. The night is even darker and colder and you feel very alone. As you wonder what
to do next, the background noises of the forest suddenly go strangely quiet, you hear something
moving in the brush nearby, it sounds like something big and it's headed toward you. Now stop
for a minute and rescan your body. Where would you rank your tension level now on that 0 to 10 scale?
Now, imagine that from the direction of the breaking twigs you hear your good friend call
out your name. It's not a bear, you are safe. Notice if your tension goes away immediately
or if there's some after effect that lingers for a little while.
The author says- "I apologize for scaring you, but the point is, that if you did get
tense or scared it's because you have a good imagination and you can see how intimately it
is connected to your body." When we believe we are in danger, but are actually safe, our body and our
mind create the same physical anxiety reaction as if we were in physical danger, our brain signals to
our body to pump out adrenaline and trigger that fight-flight-freeze response. We do it so much we
don't even notice that we're doing it. Okay, take five minutes right now, pull out a piece of paper,
and answer this question. Are you 100% safe right now? Go ahead and set a five minute timer.
When I was asked this in a workshop, initially I was like 'yeah I'm safe',
but then as I took the time, I thought 'well, any of these people could attack me, there
could be an earthquake, a fire, heck, I might have cancer or a parasite that could kill me shortly',
you know, pretty soon my mind was creating all of these ways that I could be in danger.
The other people in the workshop came up with similar responses, the answer was no, I'm not safe,
there are so many things that could kill us at any moment. The presenter simply asked us afterwards
did I ask you if you were safe in the future or safe in the now? All of those dangers that
I thought of were not happening right now, my sense of fear created them in my mind,
these were not actual threats, they were perceived threats, dangers that our minds can imagine, but
which our bodies cannot escape. We can't fight them off physically because they're not real.
They're imagined danger right? This creates a stuck feeling of anxiety. Anxiety disorders and ptsd are
essentially when our minds convince our bodies that we're in danger when we're actually safe.
We see danger in our jobs and our commutes and when we read the news.
Unlike animals, our powerful brains can see danger in the future which our body reacts to
in the present moment. This makes us rush about our days flustered and stressed thinking that
it's normal to be constantly anxious. We may notice the stress, but be unaware of the cause.
Even sedentary jobs leave us exhausted because our bodies are running a stress marathon during
the day, which includes an elevated heart rate, fast breathing, and high blood pressure.
When we're chronically stressed, it actually does not help us stay safe, it decreases productivity.
Chronic stress makes us sick, it inhibits thinking, and it distorts our perceptions of the world.
Even in a fight, if you're super freaked out and super stressed out, you're probably not
going to be as effective at this fight as if you were calm and composed. Calm action,
intentional action, is more likely to keep us safe and healthy. So do you do this? Do you bring to mind
scary things that could happen or might happen, but there's no action you can take? Sometimes I do,
but after this workshop, I was able to give this a name. This is called perceived danger. So how has
your stress response, which is supposed to help you perform, gotten in the way of you being productive?
You can write this in the workbook or if you're on YouTube, write this in the comments section.
We can heal from anxiety and fear when we create perceived safety,
noticing that we are actually safe in the here and now. Remember our nervous system has two states-
the sympathetic response, the fight-flight- freeze response, and the parasympathetic
response, the rest and digest response. We strengthen the part that we use the most.
So to create safety and calm, we need to foster a parasympathetically dominant nervous system,
a calm nervous system, and we do this on a physical level in two ways- Number one is creating safety in
our mind, changing how we perceive situations, and number two is creating safety in our body, changing
our body's physical response to situations through a body up approach. Now we've already
talked about creating safety in the body through self-regulation, in this video you're learning how
to change how you think about situations when you change the way you think, you change your body's
reaction. So the first thing that you've learned is to notice when you think you're in danger, but
you're actually safe. Now, let's move on to the next exercise. Take three minutes and write down
the things that cause you stress. Go ahead set a three-minute timer, make sure and do this exercise.
Now, look at those items again, we generally don't realize it, but the reason that outside
circumstances are linked with the stress response is because of our interpretation that they're a
threat to our physical safety. So how are you seeing the things on your list as a threat?
We got the situation and the response and insert in the middle your interpretation. So the situation might
be something like- your boss gives you feedback, and the response is feeling a pit in your stomach,
anger, or on the verge of tears. So for example when you have a job evaluation, what is the
interpretation in the middle that makes my brain set off that fight-flight-freeze response right,
that stress or anger response, or that pit in your stomach right? It could be the perceived threat, the
fear that I could lose my job, then I'd run out of money and starve to death. This is an example of
thinking, even subconscious thinking, that we're in danger when in reality we're quite safe. We often
usually don't notice that we're thinking this way, but if we want to regulate our emotions, we
need to go back to the steps of emotion processing right, so we notice- this is a danger response, then
we explore- what am I seeing as dangerous?, then we choose to act- one or more of the following right,
we change our perception or we change our bodily reaction or we take action. So if we change the
perception, we think well my boss isn't going to fire me, I'm overreacting, I'm safe I'm okay,
or we change our bodily reaction right, we practice calming down the nervous system
or we take action to solve the problem like- 'oh maybe I wasn't turning in reports on time,
so now I'll make sure to do that.' Let me give you another example right, something that causes my
husband a lot of stress is when my children make a lot of noise. We're all working from home during
this crazy pandemic right, and every time the kids scream, whether they're happy or mad,
it triggers that stress response in him. Sometimes it feels like anger, sometimes it feels like
anger. So what's the interpretation in the middle of that? What's the interpretation in the middle
of that that contributes to that stress response? Well, if you hear your kids screaming, you might be
afraid that they're getting hurt or you might be afraid that they're hurting someone else
or you might be afraid that they're interfering your ability to work and if they're interfering
your ability to work, then you're not gonna be able to make money, then you're not gonna have
food, then you're gonna starve to death right? See how all of these are danger responses? Same
thing goes with like something as simple as rejection from a group right? Like if you
get really emotional and upset like if you're in a friend group and they leave you out, I see this all
the time with teenage girls right, they're really upset because their friends aren't including them.
Why is this triggering such a strong emotional reaction? Situation is being rejected, the emotional
reaction is like oh my gosh sadness, fear, anxiety, jealousy right? What's the interpretation in the
middle? Well our brain interprets social rejection as being a threat to our life because our ancient
brain knows that we needed our village to survive. We needed our village and our people so that we
didn't get kicked out, rejected from our village, and left alone in the woods to starve to death.
Our deep brain sees danger all the time even when we're actually safe. Now remember name it
to tame it? When we don't acknowledge that we're having a "danger" response, we feel like it's out
of our control, when we name it we can do something about it. So saying the words like "danger" and "safe",
give us the power to clarify the situation and our responses. We can create perceived safety to
pair with actual safety by actively exercising our mind to challenge these interpretations.
So saying things like- 'I am okay, I am safe, or he's just asking me to make a small change or even
if he does fire me, which is not likely, I will not starve to death, I'll just find another job,
I'm safe.' Saying things like this can be helpful in challenging those thoughts. So here's another
way to think about our anxiety response that can help you soothe fear and anxiety. Why do you
think our survival instincts are triggered by things like peer rejection or our jobs?
Because ancient people would have starved to death if something went wrong with their job
or if they were kicked out of the tribe. One of the things we can do when we're
feeling freaked out is to ask ourselves- 'Does this situation really present a threat to my survival?,
If I don't get this report in, am I actually going to die of starvation?, If I get turned down by my
crush, will I be kicked out of the tribe and have to wander the wilderness alone?' Reminding our minds
and bodies that we are safe will help us calm down, and most likely this is going to help us do a
better job on the report or keep our voice steady when we ask that guy out. So take a minute to
identify one stressor and ask the question- Where is the survival fear here? Is this a valid fear?
We're not dependent on our circumstance to feel safe. We create emotional safety within ourselves
through integrity. We create emotional safety in our relationships through consistency and
compassion. We create physical safety through our perception and our actions as needed.
Now let's just do a quick side note on actual danger. If you are in a situation
of actual danger, like for example if you're in an abusive relationship or if you are on the
verge of starving to death or if you have someone threatening your life, then it's not going to be
that helpful to try and you know, change your perception or to decrease your anxiety with
these skills. It's not safe, the situation you're in, and it won't work because it's not truthful to
say 'I am safe', when you're not safe. So instead, focus on creating safety through action like
getting yourself out of that situation. In actual danger it can also be beneficial to practice calming
your body to help you make better choices and take action. So by planting, watering, and fostering
these seeds of safe thoughts and sensations and activities and by focusing on the present
moment, we actually exercise our parasympathetic nervous system and develop self-regulatory neural
pathways in the same way that an athlete would develop muscles. So in summary, chronic stress
and even getting momentarily flustered, overwhelmed, or anxious, are about perceived threats.
If you get really uptight in meetings at work or you bristle when you're receiving feedback
or if you experience ptsd symptoms or if you just get flustered while making dinner for guests,
then you can benefit from understanding the difference between perceived danger
and actual safety. When we believe that we're in danger our body and mind create the same physical
anxiety reaction as if we were in actual physical danger. This keeps us stuck in the fight- flight-
freeze response. How we think about things, how we interpret our situation, this creates a sense
of calm or of stress depending on how we think. So you can foster a calm mind and a nervous system by
noticing that you feel in danger when you're actually safe, questioning your interpretation
of events, asking- 'Am I actually in physical danger right now?', if the answer is no, then it's best to
regulate your nervous system by bringing to mind the perception of safety, creating that felt sense
of safety, so you say- 'This feels dangerous, but I'm actually safe', then you soothe your body, you do
some deep breathing or some stretching or whatever it is that calms you down. Now I really encourage
you to do the next two activities because when you do them, you're gonna feel a shift in your body, a
shift to calm when you do it. These two activities are drawing safety and creating lists of safe
things. Now, just like I showed you in the beginning of this section how when we imagine ourselves as
being in danger, like in that camping story, we create that danger response in our bodies, when
we do these activities that are linked right here, we can actively counteract the negative
effects of anxiety by bringing to mind the feeling and the thoughts of safety by imagining
ourselves as being safe when we're actually safe. We reaffirm that right here in the present moment
we're okay. We can actively counteract the negative effects of anxiety by reaffirming that
we are actually safe right here in the present moment. 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.