Making Time for Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Amidst the Chaos with Dr. Chloe Carmichael

I'm so excited to be here today. Welcome, everybody, to our podcast, Growing Good Humans. My name is Laura Barr. I'm the owner and founder of Emerging Educational Consulting. We provide one to one mentorship for parents and students from the beginning to end of the college application process. I always love to say we're in the business of growing good humans. And what better way to do that than to educate and inform and empower both parents and students, which is why we're here today. With the amazing Dr. Chloe, I am so happy to have you here today, Dr. Chloe, I found you on LinkedIn and I became immediately fascinated with the language that you use. You are the author of the book that I want to make sure I get it right. Nervous energy, harnessing the power. Of your anxiety, and one of the reasons my eye was caught is because of this idea of harnessing instead of. Like taming it or getting rid of it. And so I'm really excited to have you talk to my parents and students today. But before we do that, will you please do yourself the amazing honor of introducing yourself and please give yourself all the kudos you deserve as you do so. Sure. So Dr. Chloe Carmichael, clinical psychologist. I'm a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm also, as you mentioned, an author. So my book, Nervous Energy, Harness the Power of Your Anxiety, is about how to unlock the healthy function of anxiety., I'm happy to say I'm a USA Today bestselling author. I think it's a message the world needs to hear. I'm also a wife and a mother myself. So your mission to really help families and kids is near and dear to my heart. Yay. Well, let's just dive in. We had some questions ahead. And I, I think I want to go back to that initial, notice that I had when I saw you on LinkedIn and why, why this idea of harness. instead of tame. Yes. Okay. So as we all know, anxiety disorders are on the rise. And I say all because I think even people who are not psychologists are just aware, either they just feel it or it's become such a media, you know, story that anxiety disorders are so much on the rise. And I think people are just so aware. You need to know that there is a healthy function to anxiety, the healthy function to anxiety. is to stimulate preparation behaviors. And when we know that we're able to use it constructively, when we don't know that we get, you know, anxiety about anxiety, where we say, Oh my goodness, I'm anxious, I must have a disorder. And ironically, we're actually more vulnerable to a to an anxiety disorder when we don't know how to use anxiety in its healthy way. So that's why I love to teach people that, you know, a person with no anxiety wouldn't even think to look both ways before they cross the street. So we just need to learn how to use it constructively. One of the things I noticed when I was reading through your reading through your kudos is that experts like Deepak Chopra have commented on that and you're really gaining a lot of attention. And I think you have some experience with yoga and mindfulness and all of that, but I'm wondering if you can just. Jump right to the chase and give us a glimpse into how, harnessing that nervous energy, how to do that. What are actionable steps that people can do just today? Sure. And yes, I will say when I learned that Deepak Chopra had endorsed my book, I just about hit the, hit the roof because I was a psychologist or I was a yoga teacher before I became a clinical psychologist. And the book actually has a chapter on mindfulness, looking at it as metacognition, which is thinking about your thoughts. And I think that's what caused Deepak Chopra to, you know, get involved, which I'm eternally grateful for that. but as far as practical ways. There are actually nine practical techniques in the book, because again, that's the whole point is that the anxiety is supposed to stimulate preparation behaviors. There's things that we are supposed to do. So, for example, you know, suppose that you, you or your child, you know, it's just really nervous about. Making that first list of schools that, you think you're going to apply to and so just even the thought of sitting down at your computer and starting to build that list, you just feel like lots of butterflies in your stomach, right? So we then want to think about, okay, and Instead of, fighting that, how can I use that energy and how can I take care of myself with that? Right. So maybe that means that you invite a friend or family member to sit down with you at the computer so that you know you're not alone if you know that that's the Stumbling block place for you because your mindfulness metacognition clues you into that then you can have someone come with you and maybe have them have them be your, scribe to write down as you look through the websites and you say, okay, yeah, I think I'll apply to school a and School B, not school C, yes, school E,, have them write it down so that you're not doing everything yourself and you can just put that energy into looking at the school since that's the most important step that you need to do. It's interesting because, obviously in our practice, we're working with high levels of anxiety, and I think, it's the unspoken and spoken pressure of getting in to colleges. One of the things that I notice,, we provide some of that mentorship, and I think we do reduce, I always say we provide a process that is simple, deliberate and joyful. And this idea that, like. Harnessing that anxiety because we have specific tasks and we're mentors, not just consultants. Right. But I will say one of the things that I see the most debilitating for our students is when anxiety turns into high levels of procrastination. Is there, or do you have, is there something. around that, that you can speak to for us? Yeah, definitely. So the to do list with emotions is another technique from my book that is actually very helpful a lot of times for people who are struggling with procrastination. So in that one, what we do is we think about what's on our list. And the emotion that goes with it. And then we layer in a self care plan. So, for example, suppose that it's on your college prep to do list that you need to write an amazing personal statement, right? So, all of our students are doing that right now. Yeah. So if you look at that and you know that, you know, what comes up for you is apprehension and fears of not being good enough and all kinds of other stuff, then, you know, your self care plan is that you would say, okay, I'm going to go. Yeah. Maybe take my laptop out to a place that always makes me feel really good and really secure, you know, it could be like your, your favorite park, or it could be your favorite restaurant, you know, and maybe over a really great meal or at your, you know, spot in the sun, you would say, okay, I'm today, I'm just going to write down a list of five or 10 things that I think I may want to include in that personal statement. I'm not even going to try to write the whole statement or anything. I'm just going to start with a, you know, random list of five or 10 things that I think I might want to include, but to beat the procrastination piece. You would entice yourself by pairing that anxiety provoking activity with something that's going to be really pleasurable and soothing. Again, for me, when I wrote my dissertation, I wrote the bulk of it at really nice restaurants and bars, right? Because I was just, I reached a point with it where I just did not even want to be staring at that screen anymore. But I certainly did want to go to a nice restaurant. So I would kind of bribe myself by taking my laptop and just having a little rule that I wasn't allowed to order anything until I had it on and connected to the Wi Fi and had my file open and, you know, was beginning to work on it. Oh, I love that. Let me say it back to you. So somebody has a feeling of procrastination. And they're not getting stuff done and the question would be instead of like you're lazy or you're not motivated or you don't really want to do this anyway is more asking the question like what are the feelings that you're having when you think about that? And it's making me feel like I need to pull out my old feeling wheel. I haven't used it in a while because I think sometimes even naming like you said apprehension. I think I can imagine many of my students not using that, but that's what they actually feel. So I'm wondering about pulling that list out again for my students, right? What is it that you're feeling? Let's create a self care plan around that feeling. How can we move to the next step? And then always pairing it with some kind of pleasurable event or a reward. Right. I think also breaking it down into the tiniest possible pieces, right? Because again, when we think about, and I, I went to Columbia, which, you know, I mean, I was just extremely nervous as you can imagine about that process. And then applying to PhD programs in clinical psychology, they're like, they're literally more competitive than med school. school. So I was extremely nervous myself, you know, about all of those things. And one of the things, to your point about procrastination is that we can feel very daunted by this giant task of saying, okay, I have to write an essay that's good enough to get me into this amazing program. That's very daunting. But what if we break it down and say, okay, well, one day I'm going to just simply write five or 10, points that I might want to include. What if the second day, my only job is to write an introductory paragraph. And even if I scrap it later, that's. But if I just bring it down to that one level another thing that can be helpful is to actually depersonalize it a little bit. I know that sounds funny about like a personal essay, but if you can imagine that your job, that you're not doing it for yourself, but like it's actually your job to write this little essay for somebody else. And so that somebody else just happens to have a lot in common with you, but you pretend like you're writing it and doing all that work for somebody else. For a lot of people, that actually takes the pressure off because they like doing things for other people. They like helping other people, but like tooting their own horn feels very daunting. So sometimes that's another little way to just depersonalize it a little bit. Oh my gosh, I really am going to, I'm going to add that to our toolbox. So not only go through what we just went through, but then say you, if you depersonalize it, you might not have as much emotion, that same emotion because you're thinking about doing it for somebody else, like your best friend, you know, that kind of thing. I love that. I want to go back to this idea of like mindfulness and self compassion. All of those words are pretty big buzzwords today. What is your opinion or do you have any experience you can give us to help guide students to apply some of these techniques in ways that they won't roll their eyes at us? Well, tell me, tell me what makes them roll their eyes. Maybe that would be a good place to start. I think, I think one of the reasons. Many people may roll their eyes is because it has become kind of cliche buzzwords like practice mindfulness or show, you know, self compassion. It all sounds so much easier when you say it than actually to do it. And so I don't know. I just feel like maybe it just doesn't feel cool to some kids and students. And yeah, so I think with mindfulness in particular again, it's just it's gotten to be such a buzzword. A lot of people think it means, you know, just being present and being in the moment. Which, you know, for, for a lot of people, that's, it kind of falls flat. But if we think about mindfulness as metacognition, which is, thinking about your thoughts and having a sense of, really what's going on with you in any given moment. So that would be saying, okay, I'm aware that when I sit down to write that personal statement, I go into people pleasing mode, or I go into self comparison mode, whatever it is that you have that awareness about yourself that you get into, then you're empowered to start course correcting. So then you might say, okay, well, because I know that I Spiral down into like the comparison mode about, well, gee, did I go to a developing economy and help, female entrepreneurs to build a water dam? You know, no, I didn't do that or whatever. Then you would just mentally make it. off limits for yourself to think about anybody but yourself, during that time, and maybe even set like an egg timer for 20 minutes and just say, okay, for these 20 minutes, I'm just going to think about myself and what I bring to the table. And when it comes to the self compassion piece. I actually think that's a really important one. And I frankly think it's a justified eye roll for a lot of people because what they have been taught about self compassion is that it means just basically giving yourself Pollyanna happy talk. And that's really not helpful, right? So in my book, I talk about a technique called thought replacement. And so for example, if, if somebody sits. down to write their personal essay and they just start thinking, Oh, I'm, such a loser. I don't have anything to bring to the table, et cetera. And then someone says, Oh, well just, you know, use self compassion where you think to yourself, I'm the most fascinating, interesting person. And I'm so intelligent and any college would be lucky to have me. That falls flat, frankly, because it's not true. And people know it, deep down inside. So when it comes to thought replacement, what we do is we make sure that we are overriding those irrational negative thoughts. With statements that are actually true, so they're not aspirational statements. And again, as a yoga teacher, I was certainly understand about affirmations and aspirational statements, and there's a time and place for that, but. Psychology studies have shown that when we go too far in those aspirational statements about just saying any college would be lucky to have me. I'm the best candidate in the whole pool. It actually makes us insecure because on some level that metacognition awareness level, we are aware that That we're saying things to ourselves that are probably not entirely rational and true either, which only makes us more insecure. So we would want to come up with true thought replacements. So we'd want to come up with statements like people with a GPA and extracurricular profile like mine have been admitted to this college before. So I do have a chance. Right? That is a thought replacement that you could say to yourself when you want to start spiraling into like irrational negative self talk. And it's better than what some people call self compassion, which is, you know, irrational happy talk. But in my view, it's true self compassion when we can say things that are actually true and accurate and designed to help us move forward. Wow. That is priceless. Thank you. it actually reminds me of, I spent my early days as an early childhood educator and I got my degree in New York City at a, at Bank Street College, which was a very brain based, I know Bank Street. You do. I love that place so much. And so from early on in my career, I learned the distinction between praise and encouragement and really what you're talking about. We try to teach parents from an early age, right? In my parent education programs, I've tried to teach Parents, the difference between praise and encouragement. But what you're talking about is the difference between praise and encouragement in self talk, which I have never heard that before. And it is so brilliant, right? Like we would expect, when a student is doing well in school, I say to parents to say things like, wow, that effort you have put in is really paying off the goals that you set are really coming. to fruition as opposed to, oh, I'm so proud of you for getting A's, right? That would be the difference. And so what you're saying is, is that in the state with, with this, we hear this talk that isn't very nice in our heads. We do self talk and we, Replace the thoughts. The thought replacement is rooted in what's real instead of just that kind of ooey gooey. Oh, you're so wonderful. You're so beautiful. You're perfect. Just the way you are. It's just that's just such tremendous, tremendous advice. Any other thoughts for parents around that praise versus encouragement for teens specifically? Yeah, I, I think that's a really good distinction, you know, that you're making as well for the way that parents talk to their kids as well. And so maybe even just normalizing for them the fact that, that, that they do have anxiety and, you know, for the parent even can tell a story about a time when the parent himself or herself was anxious. But but that they got through it. frankly, I think a lot of people are very comforted as well, just to know that there is a healthy side to anxiety, which is to stimulate preparation behaviors and that it actually oftentimes signals that you are investing. Did in the outcome of something, if you were indifferent and you didn't care about college, you wouldn't get anxious thinking about it. So to even, you know, talking to your child and to be able to say, you know, I, you can tell 'em, I, I heard a psychologist talk about how there's a healthy side to anxiety and really what it means. You know, is that you care a lot about this goal. So that's a wonderful thing. So, let's even list out all the reasons why you care about this goal. Because you, you know, want to learn how to work with animals, because you want to be a veterinarian or, whatever it is. And before you know it, you might even find yourself with a few talking points that could actually end up in your personal statement. You never know. Before I met with you, I was actually on a FaceTime with my son, who is 22, who has his new job, and he's very excited and also anxious about the future, so he is actually a follower of you also, Dr. Chloe, because I've been able to tell him those things, and it has been very comforting to him to hear that his level of anxiety can be used towards, towards bettering himself in some ways, but then also the voices in his head are, well, what if I fail? And one of the things I know you talk a lot about is how the value of goal setting. And so how do you juggle this idea of like setting goals, reaching goals? If you fail your goals, how does that? triangulate? Well, so that's an interesting one. So first of all, you know, if you, if you do fail to meet a goal, then the most important thing to ask yourself is, is what went wrong? You know,, to not really it again. I mean, unless that what went wrong is t some kind of a innate and W. N. B. A. And you know, for this. You know, there do. It's never gonna happ Then, believe it or not, I could even turn that into a positive because I could say, wow, maybe that's a liberating me to start deciding, you know, what would be the right goal for me? Because what was it I was seeking out of this endeavor? Is it that I like team sports? Is it that I like fitness? How else can I get those needs met and stop banging my head again? you know, this wall if the failure really is that kind of a failure. On the other hand, if it's one where you say, Oh, I see. I actually just need to learn more like, Oh, I got into the rounds of interviews, but then I, you know, blew it in all of the interviews. And so what that tells me is that I need to do a little bit more interview prep for next time. But the good news is, is that also means I've got the goods to get into the interviews, right? So you have to notice and celebrate what's working, what got you up to the point at which the failure occurred, and then continue to ask yourself,, what more can I learn from this? Because you have to remember. We look at, say, Steve Jobs or the founder of Hershey's or, you know, one of my great friends, Jim McCann, the founder of 1 800 Flowers. He loves to tell stories about all the times that he failed, right? So we have to get it out of our heads that, like, successful people don't fail. That's not true at all. The difference between successful people and non successful people is that successful people get up and keep trying again, right? So even if you do fail, that should not become a non. starter. However, we also want to make sure that that fear of failure doesn't block us from putting our energy into working towards success. So another technique in my book, nervous energy, harness the power of your anxiety is called the zone of control. And so what we do in that one is we look at a broad goal, like,, say, getting into college, and we divide it up into all the components of things we can and cannot control., and so one of those random things that we just cannot control is, you know, what if there's just too many students that are fit my profile exactly, and just basically almost by lottery, I just don't get in, right? That's something that's beyond our control. So we put that in the zone of non control and we do not allow ourselves to think about it. Now it's hard to say we don't allow ourselves to think about it. It's like saying don't think about pink elephants. You have something to pivot onto and Instead, so that's why you have to also have your zone of control written out so that when you feel tempted on the zone of non control, you're not just saying, don't think about that stuff. You're giving yourself something else to go onto instead. It makes it a lot easier to control your thoughts when you kind of dangle a good shiny object in front of yourself to go onto. Chloe, Dr. Chloe, these are just incredible tips, and we will take them in our practice and in my own practice, sharing with my mentors in the IECs that I coach, and then also with our parents. I will make sure that in our information section, we have a link to the book where people can purchase. The book and maybe your LinkedIn profiles. They can join us following you on LinkedIn. And I just really want to thank you so much for your time and your work. It's made a difference in my personal life and my own family's life. For those of you who want to continue following our podcast, please take some time to, like this episode and maybe share it with a friend and just, please incorporate these tips and, and I promise they will make a difference in your life. Dr. Chloe, thank you. Thanks, Laura. And people can go to nervousenergybook. com as well if they just want to see more. Perfect. Have a wonderful day and we so appreciate your time. Thanks. Okay. Bye.