How to get rid of anxiety.

Hello everyone. I'm really excited 
about today's video,

because I'm someone who's suffered
from post-traumatic stress

disorder for many many years.

This means that anxiety is something
I've struggled with for a long time.

And the thing about struggling
with something for a long time is

it has a way of forcing you
to figure out what to do about it.

Taking medications for anxiety
is not the best option.

Not only is it the least effective
way that you can deal with anxiety,

it's very harmful to the body
to take these medications,

and these medications are addictive.

Any time you take something,
a medication, a chemical,

your body compensates for the presence 
of that chemical within your system.

So what your brain essentially does
is it stops producing the chemicals

that you're taking via that pill.

So what you'll find when you try
to go to get off that pill

is that your body is no longer producing
those chemicals on its own.

There's a lag time between the time that
you've stopped taking the medication,

and the time that your body recompensates
for the absence of that chemical.

And most people can't
make it through that lag time.

In other words, living life
is just too painful off of the medication

because the body hasn't 
recompensated fast enough

for the person to be
able to cope with their life.

Anxiety is a worldwide problem.

It is a problem where
our own biology,

which was designed to ensure our survival
as hunters and gatherers,

is sabotaging our bodies and minds.

When we feel fear or stress, our body 
releases cortisol,

which is a stress hormone.

This cortisol release is part
of a fight-or-flight response.

Back in the day it enabled
us to do things like

jump out of the way of an attacking 
predator or a falling rock.

In today's world those kinds of
dangers aren't as relevant.

But even though
they aren't relevant

we still have the same
biological reaction to stress.

Any time we perceive danger, our 
body reacts the same way it would

if our survival were at risk, and our 
fight-or-flight response is triggered.

The body releases cortisol 
when we get cut off on the highway,

our body releases cortisol 
when we think about

being unable 
to pay the bills on time,

our body releases cortisol when we are
approached by our boss.

What's more, our body releases cortisol
every time we think a fearful thought.

Basically, instead of our
modern lives being less stressful,

they're an absolute minefield
of stress-inducing scenarios.

This means that cortisol,
the stress hormone,

is wreaking havoc on us
in our day-to-day lives.

Elevated cortisol levels doesn't just 
affect the way we feel emotionally,

it interferes with learning and memory;

it lowers immune function 
and bone density;

it causes an increase in weight gain,

blood pressure, cholesterol, 
and heart disease;

it can trigger other mental illnesses;

it increases the likelihood of depression;

and it lowers our resiliency.

Anyone who suffers with anxiety

has a problem with one
of our basic human needs,

and that basic human need is certainty.

What do we mean by certainty?

We mean that feeling of internal security

that we know that we can 
avoid pain and gain pleasure.

Those of us who have anxiety
don't know that this is true.

That basic human need isn't met. Instead 
we feel powerless to our own lives,

we feel fear relative to our own lives,

and that causes our body
to trigger the fight-or-flight response.

It causes us to release cortisol, and 
when that happens we feel more anxious,

so our body releases more cortisol,
and that causes us to feel more anxious,

which causes us to release more cortisol,
and now we're caught in a snowball;

we can't stop feeling anxious,

our anxiety snowballs 
into serious panic attacks

because we don't have the ability
to meet our own need of certainty.

Normally there would be an outlet
for this rush of anxiety when

the fight-or-flight response 
is triggered,

such as running away 
from the perceived threat

or screaming and crying, which brings up
cortisol within the body.

But in today's modern world

there is no obvious course of action 
for the anxiety we feel,

there is no outlet for that energy.
So we have to create one, or many.

One of the best ways to do this is 
through exercise on a daily basis.

Any aerobic or cardiac activity 
will burn cortisol.

It will create an outlet to release 
the pent-up energy that is associated

with the fight-or-flight response,
and 20 to 30 minutes is all you need

to engage your body's natural ability 
to produce endorphins.

Endorphins are a bit like 
naturally ocurring opiates,

they relax you and induce 
a feeling of well-being.

Eating foods that reduce anxiety 
is really important.

There are foods 
that increase your anxiety,

and there are foods 
that decrease your anxiety.

It's important that you choose a diet
that stabilises your blood sugar.

When your blood sugar drops and it's low,
the portion of your brain that's in charge

of the fight-or-flight 
response is triggered,

so you're more likely to feel anxiety 
throughout your day.

Avoid fried foods, caffeine, 
high-glycemic carbohydrates,

sugar, and alcoholic beverages.

Some foods to include in your diet
that have been shown to reduce anxiety

for various reasons are: 
seaweed, also called nori; kimchi;

whole grains such as brown rice, 
farro, and quinoa;

blueberries; dark chocolate; maca root; 
vitamin B-12 and vitamin B-6;

omega-3 fatty acids like flax-seed oil;

chamomile tea, oolong tea, 
and oatstraw tea;

nuts, pumpkin seeds, and edamame.

Any kind of meditation, visualization,

or relaxation technique such as
yoga, qigong, or tai-chi,

will lower cortisol levels in the body,

so sign up for those classes.

Form close-knit human bonds.
It's been shown over and over again

that when we form connections 
with other people

we are reducing cortisol 
within the body.

Our parasympathetic 
nervous system is sedated

when we are in close physical contact 
with other people,

when we feel a sense 
of connection with them.

Develop these connections.

Humans are a social species. 
Isolation will increase your anxiety.

Seek opportunities to laugh;

when you're laughing your body 
can't perceive that it is in danger,

because you're sending it 
the message that it's safe.

So watch that stand-up comedian,

watch those youtube 
shows that make you laugh.

Seek any kind of fun 
that you can find,

this will significantly reduce 
your levels of anxiety.

It's also really important 
to get enough sleep,

let yourself get 8 hours 
a night at least.

Sleep is designed to reduce stress levels.
When you fall asleep, you are realigning

with your non-physical perspective,
you're releasing all of the resistance

that you carry with you on a daily basis,

you're coming into alignment 
into a state of allowing,

which is the opposite of anxiety.

Allow yourself the opportunity
to release your resistance in this way.

Sleep is essential for those people 
who suffer from anxiety.

Your fight-or-flight response is triggered
when you don't get enough sleep,

in the same way that it's triggered 
by low blood sugar,

so it's really important that you 
let yourself get at least 8 hours a night.

Sleep is the opportunity for you 
to come into alignment,

to release all of the resistance that 
you've built up in your day-to-day life.

Take advantage of that opportunity.

Release your emotion.
One of the best ways to do this

is to talk to someone about it,
or if you don't want to do that,

to release your emotion 
by writing or typing it out.

I don't want you to judge 
what's coming up.

Whenever you feel anxiety,
just sit down

with that paper 
or in front of the computer,

and start typing anything that comes out,
all of your worry and stressful thoughts.

I want you to just type them as fast

as you can possibly type them 
without judging them.

I want you to put down anything,
no matter how nonsensical it may seem.

Your body needs to release that energy,
so let it release that energy.

I have an example of a page 
that I wrote this week

to release my own anxiety,
so this is what this will sound like.

I'm flipping out, I hate my life,
what the hell was I thinking?

My stomach hurts, I feel like crap.

I hate people. 
I'm not getting anywhere.

They won't publish my book.
My fan is making me cold.

I don't want to move,
I can't move I'm stuck.

I hate life, I should quit.
I'm the worst parent on earth.

I'm not hungry. I hate that everyone
expects me to make breakfast.

God dammit. I have a session today.
I don't wanna do it.

What the hell am I 
gonna say to them?

Kill yourself now coz
it doesn't get better?

Fuck my life. I hate it 
here. I wanna die.

I'm too fucked up to 
do anything good.

I wanna remind most of you

that there'll be a lot 
of swearing in this exercise.

This expression process is not the time
to be politically correct or polite.

I want you to get out anything that you 
emotionally feel and are struggling with.

Listen to music.

Deliberately create playlists for 
yourself that reduce your anxiety.

For me, dinner jazz works wonders, as does
any music that allows me to bleed emotion.

Certain musicians, for me it's Thomas 
Newman, have the ability to create tones

that make you feel like the emotion that
is trapped in you is being leeched out.

Motivating music works well too 
because it inspires you

towards seeking an outlet for your stress.

You want to avoid any music that 
stimulates your nervous system,

makes you feel stressed, 
or provokes negative emotion.

Breathing exercises works for anxiety,
that is, taking a long deep breath in,

and a long deep breath out,
breathing deep into your belly

instead of staying up here 
in shallow breathing

where you're just pulling energy 
into your lungs.

Breathing techniques have been shown
to reduce cortisol again and again.

My anxiety was so bad 
throughout my life

that breathing exercises 
was a little bit like

chipping at a glacier with a spoon,
so I prefer to use breathing exercises

in conjunction with other exercises
instead of purely on its own.

But try these breathing exercises,
you can find them all over the internet,

and see how they work for you.

The bottom line if you suffer from anxiety
is that you have to allow yourself

to do what is necessary to make yourself
feel good throughout the day.

You've got to be deliberate
about how you wake up.

You've got to be deliberate
about how you go to sleep

and how you structure 
your life in between,

and this kind of self care 
has got to be okay for you.

If you suffer from anxiety
you have a highly sensitive system,

that doesn't mean that
something's wrong with you.

Potentially it means that
something's right with you,

and everyone else is just shut down.

Take the time to structure your life
to give yourself this TLC.

You need to really commit to self care
if you suffer from anxiety.

I was one of those people who woke up 
with such bad anxiety attacks

that after an hour or two
of struggling with them in the morning,

I'd end up suicidal or self-injuring.

But I have actually found a routine
that works for me perfectly.

But I will tell you that even to this day,
if I don't do this routine

I still wake up with anxiety attacks.

I'm gonna share this routine 
with you today.

Keep in mind that the routine
that works for you may be different

than the one that works for me.

The goal, if you suffer from anxiety,
is to collect all kinds of tools

and all kinds of processes
that you can apply throughout your day

that work specifically for you, to set up 
your own individual unique routine.

Here's mine:

1. When I first wake up, before I even 
open my eyes, I take 8 deep breaths

where I'm holding my breath for the count 
of 8 at the top, so it looks like this.

I do that 8 times.

2. I immediately go get something to eat.

Cortisol levels are highest
first thing in the morning,

which is why so many 
people who suffer from anxiety

wake up with panic attacks.
When blood sugar is low,

like it is first thing in the morning, 
it triggers your fight-or-flight response,

so we need to get our 
blood sugar levels up and quickly.

But we don't want to spike 
our blood sugar.

That's just setting ourselves up 
for failure later in the day.

So we want to choose foods 
that stabilise our blood sugar.

I usually choose a handful of 
almonds and berries,

a raw formula meal replacer 
or protein powder

mixed with coconut milk 
or almond milk,

or a banana with mixed nuts and water.

3. I write in my expression journal.

This is the place I allow myself to 
unleash all my fearful negative thoughts

and worries so I have an outlet 
for that anxious feeling.

4. I write in my gratitude journal.

This orients my focus from my thoughts
that were causing me to panic,

to the thoughts that induce
a feeling of well-being.

It forces me to look for and pay attention
to things that make me feel good

and thus begin to feel that the life I'm 
living might actually be good,

and this causes my fight-or-flight 
response to shut off.

5. I exercise.

I have collected a group of people
who feel

more motivated to work out
when we're together,

and now we all go out together 
in the morning and hike

or speed-walk or do plyometric 
training, or ski together.

The connection I feel 
with them reduces my cortisol levels

and the exercise 
itself burns off cortisol

and introduces endorphins 
into my blood stream.

6. When I get back from exercising
I drink two 8 oz glasses of water.

This allows my liver to rid my body
of excess hormones.

Your liver is the organ in your body 
that deals with excess hormones

and remember that 
cortisol is a hormone.

I also keep sipping water 
throughout the day,

and I make sure that 
this water isn't tap water;

I make sure that it's spring water 
or artesian well water,

or some kind of water that isn't 
completely full of chemicals.

7. I let myself be a diva.

What do I mean by this?

Most of us who suffer 
from anxiety

have perfected the art
of forcing ourselves

to do things that feel terrible 
to us emotionally.

We end up having breakdowns 
because our nervous systems

perceive danger 
everywhere we turn.

We need to allow ourselves 
to live a little unconventionally

and do unconventional things

if it would enable us to feel safer 
and more relaxed.

For example, I get extreme anxiety

when I am going anywhere by myself.

The traditional model of dealing with fear

says that you should force 
yourself to be alone

so that your body will desensitize to it.

This forcing your body to desensitize

is forcing your body to dissociate,

so it's not actually solving 
any major problem,

what it's doing is causing you to shut off
to your emotional guidance system.

It's pretty much 
the dumbest thing you can do.

It's never self loving to force yourself 
to get over something.

That is a harsh approach, 
it is not a gentle approach.

And if you take a harsh approach 
to something that's feeling anxious,

what you're doing is 
you're adding punishment on top of fear.

Sounds like a good idea to me. [sarcasm]

More often than not, 
all a rough approach does

when it comes to fear is cause us 
to have mental breakdowns.

So, I allow myself to take people
I associate with safety

and home with me when I go places.

Remember that if anyone else 
thinks you should or shouldn't

live in a specific way, it is projection.
They are imposing their perspective

on your life and asking you 
to validate their perspective.

This is not your job.

Your job is to find out what feels most 
empowering and joyful to you personally

and then allow yourselves
to do those things.

We do not get upset when someone 
who is in a wheelchair

needs to structure his or her life 
a little differently

in order to have a pleasant experience.

We should not get upset with ourselves
if our tendency towards anxiety

causes us to have to structure our life

a little differently in order 
to have a pleasant experience.

If we are all loving in alignment,
we would all be structuring our lives

a little differently according to
our own desires and needs.

If you suffer from anxiety, 
it is extremely important

that you practice 
the art of self-loving.

This is how it works:

If you're a person like me who has an 
issue with anxiety when you are alone,

in the beginning it's not 
very loving to yourself

to force yourself 
to go somewhere alone.

But eventually you might find 
that something happens.

It no longer feels empowering,
it no longer feels self-loving and good

for you to be stuck in a situation
where you can't go places alone.

And that's the time that you 
can start venturing out

and practicing being alone, 
practicing taking trips alone,

and only at that point 
will that action be self-loving.

Only at that point will it be in 
alignment with your empowerment,

instead of fuel your anxiety.

So you need to be very honest with 
yourself about where you currently are,

and you need only take steps towards 
self-love, that means the only time

you should try to solve anything relative 
to the anxiety you suffer

is if it feels self-loving
and empowering to do it

8. I make sure that before I go to bed 
I'm in a good vibrational space.

That means, I watch funny movies,

I watch proposal videos on youtube, 
I play board games,

I cuddle with my communal family members.

I do anything that puts me in a good mood
so that my focus is not on worry.

This is a good time to write 
in your gratitude journal.

Sometimes, right before I go to bed,

I sit down and I write an 
entire list of things

that I feel grateful for
throughout the day.

We dream in accordance with what we think 
about during our day-to-day lives,

especially what we think about
right before we go to bed.

So you don't want to have nightmares
based on thinking about things

that cause you to feel anxiety
right before you go to sleep.

And another thing, when you wake up
and you rephase with your physical body,

you will pick up where you left off,
meaning that if you've been thinking about

things that cause you to feel anxious, you
will pick up in an anxious state of mind,

and that will set your day off
already on a very bad foot.

So you want to make sure 
to structure your life,

especially relative to 
before you go to bed,

in a way that you're building a platform
for success for the day

that you're about to lead
when you wake up in the morning.

9. I ask someone to rub my feet or tickle 
my skin softly when I'm laying in bed.

This physical contact makes me feel safe,

and like all human connection,
it reduces cortisol levels in my body.

If the idea of physical contact makes you 
more anxious, you can buy

hand-held massagers,
massager pillows, and massage chairs,

to help you wind down 
at the end of the day.

10. I'm very deliberate about what I eat.

I've structured my diet in a way that
stabilizes my blood sugar all day long.

I make sure that I eat small snacks
throughout the day,

Instead of eating three large meals, and 
letting my blood sugar drop in between.

I have found that diet is one of the most
important keys to controlling my anxiety,

so it's really important that you try 
that out relative to yourself as well.

Anxiety is the body reflecting
the thoughts that you're thinking,

and if you suffer from anxiety
that means that you spend your time

thinking thoughts that vibrate in the body
at the frequency of fear.

Questioning your fearful
thoughts and changing them

will do more for your
anxiety than anything else.

When you feel that feeling of anxiety,
try to identify the thought or thoughts

that you're thinking,
and question them one by one.

Byron Katie developed
a process called The Work,

for questioning your beliefs.

In my opinion it's the best process
out there for questioning beliefs,

and I developed a process
for changing beliefs.

You can find it on youtube.

I present it in a video titled:

How to change a beleif.

Now remember if you're having
a full blown panic attack

I made a video called:

How to stop a Panic Attack.

It's on youtube as well.

In this video I'll lead you through
a process that ends panic attacks.

Panic attacks are a little bit 
different than anxiety.

They're a more intense 
extension of anxiety.

So if you're having
a panic attack,

instead of watching this video,
and utilizing these tools,

I want you to go turn to that video,
and follow along with that process.

As I said earlier, people who suffer from
anxiety have a difficult time believing

that they create their own reality. 
They don't have a way yet

of fulfilling the basic human need 
of certainty. The certainty that they can

structure their life to gain pleasure 
and not experience pain.

This means if you suffer from anxiety

it's extremely important 
that you're deliberate

about what you put your focus on.

Withdraw your attention
from anything that

makes you feel powerless
or like a victim,

or like you don't control
the circumstances of your life.

Don't watch that news station.
Don't watch those movies.

Don't read those books or articles

that make you feel as if the world
happens to you,

your life happens to you,
and all you can do is cope with it.

Instead, place your
attention on any material

that makes you feel empowered,

place your attention on anything
that fills you full of the truth

that you can control the reality that
you're living in, that it is absolutely

in your hands whether you feel good
or feel bad.

This sense of empowerment is the opposite 
vibration of the feeling of anxiety,

so try out these tips and techniques
and see how they work for you.

Have a good week.