What if the word "anxiety" didn't exist? How would we describe this feeling?

I'm almost done , but I just didn't want to wait to have this discussion with you , and I hope the title of this episode was enough to get you in and curious about it . What if ? So ? This is the question we're asking ourselves today . What if the word anxiety didn't exist ? We're going to stretch that out a little bit . What if the word anger didn't exist ?

What if the word sadness didn't exist ?

The reason why we are exploring this is because I've been reading Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett's book how Emotions Are Made , and a lot of what she talks about falls within what we say here at Kyrus Non and what I've been talking about for years , but she puts things into these really beautiful concepts that I think we should be talking about .

So here's what we're going to talk about today . There's going to be two really important take home messages , maybe more than one , but we're going to talk about how we have a lot more control over emotions than we believe or we might realize , and that falls back on emotion regulation skills .

So that's what I mean by it touches on things that we talk about , but we're going to look at it in a different way . And then we've spoken about this before , where there's this body-brain connection We've talked about .

We've had a researcher here from UCLA , I think two years ago now , or maybe even three , where we spoke about the gut and we spoke about the brain and mental health and gut health . I'm actually having that researcher back on this season . So you know it's . I think it's an important topic to discuss .

But Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about body budget and I just love this concept so much and I think it's going to help you guys understand yourselves a lot more and how you process emotions , how you cope with emotions , and hopefully , after today's episode , you are going to feel empowered and waiting and ready for the next emotional event to happen and be like I

got this , let's go . Yeah , so that's the hope I have . But before we begin , as always , I've been asking you this every episode and it's because it's just that important . Can you please take a moment to rate or review ?

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Whatever it is , I don't make a lot of jokes , but be honest with me and criticize me if you want . I will do the best that I can . All right , so let's jump into today's topic . I'm really excited about this .

So this book called how Emotions Are Made is a heavier book I think it's like 700 pages but it's been so good and my kids are laughing at me because I sit there and I read a page and then you see me thinking and I'm like processing this information .

I do think that it you know we're going to share this information because it really helps us rethink how we perceive emotions . I don't know if you see it as a way where we're kind of hardwired with these emotions .

So let's start with that first concept , right when I said that emotions are constructed , and this reminds us about the importance of the environment , our past experiences . So what she means by that is you're in a certain situation and we are going to , to a certain extent , construct the emotion that we're going to experience in that very moment .

And the construction of this emotion is based on our sensory input , which is why , more and more now , the more , we understand emotions which we're not even close to , but we're getting there where we're starting to understand what it looks like in the brain .

That sensory piece is something we've been hearing a lot more and even for me , as a forty year old , I was never thinking about this in my thirties in terms of like the impact that the sensory world around me will have on my emotions .

So we construct our emotions based on the sensory input that our system is getting , based on past experiences , which is why our childhood matters we cannot ignore that and our cultural differences or influences . This , these three aspects are what will construct that emotion in that moment .

So just have a thought like think of the last emotional moment that you experienced and think about how you felt in that moment and what was coming into your system . If we see our emotions , as you know , being constructed , then we're aware that there are so many variables that impact how we feel in that moment .

And this is something that I've personally been trying to , you know , share with parents , because I think it's important that we don't see it as my child did or said something and that made me mad . There's a lot more to it than just that .

Even the word stress whenever a parent tells me or a friend says I'm so stressed , I'm stressed , I'm stressed about this , I'm stressed about that I asked them to change the word . If you didn't have the word stressed , which word would you use ?

And just trying to use other words that allow us to describe a little bit more right , like , I'm feeling overwhelmed by the sound around me or the noise around me , or the fact that my kids have been . You know , if you have a newborn and you have a toddler in the home , you might feel overwhelmed from a sensory perspective .

By the end of your day , you might feel overwhelmed from not a Tory perspective . Right , there's a lot of noise . Your past experiences of you have a toddler that's whining or yelling at you or ignoring you . Past experiences Leading to the brain and Dr Feldman Barrett really explains this well in her book . The brain is based or functions on predictions .

So , you know , I've had some conversations with people who feel like I don't , I don't need to tap into my childhood . That's ridiculous . You know , like I am , who I am today , I've made the decisions , I am OK with who I am today . I don't need to go back into the past and to a certain extent , maybe not .

However , if you're in a situation where you're like I don't understand why I react this way in certain emotional experiences , well then maybe there's a reason why , and maybe our brain , subconsciously , is making certain predictions that we're not even aware of . And if we're not aware of these predictions , that's why we say we go from zero to 100 .

We're not aware of what is happening in between , and it's unconscious , and they're based on predictions , and then we just yell and we lose it and we feel rage and we lose our minds and we feel guilty after .

So we do have to be aware of our past experiences because , even if we're not aware of it , it might be leading to us reacting in a way with partners , with friends , with colleagues , with our kids . And when this happens , well then that's why we , you know , respond a certain way or react a certain way rather than responding to our child , we lose control .

So , knowing , keeping that phrase in our mind , that we construct our emotions based on sensory input , past experiences and cultural influences , it just reminds us how much is playing into the moment that we are experiencing when we feel something , and so many things that we're just not even aware of or we're not conscious of cultural influences .

I think this is really important . So let's go back to the title , right ? So what if the word anxiety didn't exist ? What if the word sad or mad didn't exist ? Well , there's this belief in part of the science that you know , if I look at a face and the face has , you know , the frown on , they look sad .

Well , I'll know right away that this person looks sad . But there are cultural differences and I might perceive that face as sad , you might perceive it as bored , somebody else might perceive it as slightly mad or confused , or scared , and there's so much variability in how we perceive emotions .

I remember when I was defending my PhD , that was one of the questions . So I was studying emotions and one of them signed me up for a PhD . One of them scientists on the panel for my PhD defense said would your study results have been the same if they had been performed in China ?

And the answer was no , probably not , because emotions there are perceived differently than they are here , and so it might not have . The output of the results would have been different , that's a given for sure . So we do have to take into consideration our cultural differences and influences .

Now , going back to the word , I might I don't know explain to my kids what anxiety is , or anger , or sadness , in a certain way , where a different culture might explain it very differently than I would .

So that means that if I am experiencing anger , but somebody from a different culture who was raised in an environment where anger was described differently , we might be labeling it as anger , but having different experiences .

And we need to think about this because , again going back to that word , stress , right , like , stress might mean something different between you and I , and but we label everything as being stressful , right , we kind of like , put that word everywhere , throw it out .

I mean not put it everywhere , but throw it out , and we have to remind ourselves that it's very different . So let's go back to the fact that now we are parents and we have to teach our kids how to cope with emotions , understand emotions .

Well , why are we placing so much emphasis and this is something I wish that wouldn't exist or that there'd be more context to it these sort of preschool posters that I have in my mind right now , with the happy , sad , the mad face , the scared face , the bored face or whatever it is .

I don't think they have bored , but if you are an educator listening to this , I what I would love for preschools to have is a lot more context . You know , when it comes to those faces , what does that emotion feel like for you in your body ? How would you describe that emotion in your body ?

And we recently had a conversation with Dr Mark Brackett , who has this really beautiful layout of emotions which is based on science , and that's about being pleasant or unpleasant and high energy or low energy . Going back to today's title , what if the word anxiety didn't exist ? What if we couldn't use that word to label what we were experiencing in that moment ?

And all we had were the words pleasant or unpleasant , high energy or low energy ? And we would probably say , if we were about to give a presentation in front of a thousand people I'm experiencing a lot of unpleasantness inside my body .

I can feel my heart thumping , I can feel my stomach turning or it's a knots , and I have a lot of energy at the same time , because I'm about to go on stage and there's , you know , a thousand people right in front of me and who I feel like throwing up . I feel my palms sweating , whatever it is .

We would describe the scenario much more efficiently and understand our body in that moment a lot better . Rather , what we tend to do is , throughout the label I'm anxious , I'm mad , I'm sad , I'm happy . But we most of us , I would argue don't really know the feeling in our body or not really attuned . We're not really mindful of that .

And if we can just focus on , is this a pleasant feeling or unpleasant ? Am I feeling high energy right now or really low energy ? Back to Dr Mark Brackett's work , but applying this with the concept of Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett's work , where we construct emotions , then we would build , in my opinion , these really beautiful moments where we connect with ourselves .

In that moment , we connect with what's happening inside our body and we connect with what we need right now . Right . So if I'm having lots of high energy right now , I know I need to let it go . Somehow I'm going to get on that stage and I know I'm feeling these really unpleasant emotions . What do I do when I have unpleasant emotions ?

I might talk to somebody about it , I might do some jumping jacks , get that energy out . I don't know , but it would be different for everybody and we would know that , and then we would just do what our body needs in that moment . Our body and that's going to segue into my second part of this talk , which is about body budget .

Lisa , in her book , talks about she uses this word body budget , and the way that you can perceive or understand this is the body budget is the brain's prediction and management system . So this is for our body's energy resources . We have we don't have , sorry , an unlimited amount of energy and resources . It's not unlimited .

So our body , our brain , has to allocate the right resources to the right places . So think about standing in the jungle and all of a sudden , a tiger shows up right in front of you . At that moment , your brain is going to determine where does this energy need to go ? In Cindy's body , and I guarantee you it's going to go towards my legs .

It's going to pump my blood , it's going to , you know , give me more oxygen , and that's the fight or flight . And once that happens , I'm ready to run as fast as I've ever run before . I'm going to run , really , although I don't run fast , but just to say your body is going to allocate the right amount of energy in the right spot . All right , it's not .

This is not just for running away from a tiger . Our body budget is our financial manager , right ? So we're going to put a little bit in this account , a little bit in that account , a little bit in this other account . And it's the same thing for our brain and our body . They are so connected .

So if we are just sitting down doing some work , then our body , our body budget , is going to say well , cindy needs to continue breathing , so I'm going to allocate a few of those resources to breathing . And our heart needs to come .

We keep pumping and well , maybe she just ate a sandwich after lunch , so I actually have to allocate some of those resources to digestion . The same thing applies for our emotional responses . When we're experiencing these emotional responses , when we're feeling something , this unpleasantness or pleasant , a pleasant feeling , that's high energy . I'm excited for the talk .

I'm excited , I don't know to why . Why can't . I think of something I'm excited to go play in the snow . We just got like two feet of snow this week , you know , whatever it is , then I'm going to allocate my brain is going to allocate the right energy where it belongs in my body .

But when it comes to emotions , I think we tend to forget that it needs some of our resources . But wait , you don't , we don't realize it in the moment . And if I tell you right now , when you are feeling tired and stressed , let's just use those two , I could throw in hungry .

But let's just say if you are tired and you are stressed because of something happening at work , do you have the same amount of resources or energy or patience to deal with your child ? Most probably the answer is no . The answer for me is no . That is because we've already allocated so many of our resources to other things .

If there's always an underlying feeling that is unpleasant , aka anxiety , then our body is constantly allocating the resources to what it needs for maintaining that like , for that feeling , that emotional experience that we're under .

So , when it comes to patients with our kids , when it comes to the energy to go for a walk or exercise , but we've been anxious or feeling stressed all day and our body has allocated the resources , extra resources , to feeling , staying awake , breathing , our heart rate , digestion , whatever it is .

There is nothing left at the end of the day when we see our kids , and that's when it becomes very difficult . So you know that I've been talking about addressing your needs .

And if you didn't get your hands on my new workbook , I said last episode that it was going to be or the first episode of the year that the reflective parent workbook would be 50 pages . Well , I kept working on it and I kept having a lot of ideas . So it's actually 100 pages , 101 .

But all this to say , I wanted to make sure that you were able to reflect through nine different events that you might experience , whether it's arguing with your partner , whether it's work , life balance , whether it's addressing your needs .

I wanted to make sure that you had ample reflection prompts and activities to walk you through nurturing your emotional well being , which is why I ended up with 100 pages . But you could click the link in the show notes or visit curesnearoncom or send me an email if you can't find it . The reflective parent workbook is now available at Cures Neuron Academy .

It is $29.99 . But if you send me a screenshot of a review , not a rating , you need to leave a review on Spotify no , I don't think you can on Spotify , on Apple . Or if you listen through Spotify and you can't leave a review , then post it , post the podcast in your stories on Instagram and tag me .

I will give you $10 off the reflective parent workbook , just to thank you , because that's how important it is . I really need those ratings , okay , so , like I was saying , how do we get to the reflective parent ?

Oh , yeah , so it really is important for you to think about how your body and your , how your brain is allocating certain resources to your body , because , by the end of the day , if we don't address our needs right our needs being sensory needs , perhaps psychological if there's a past that we need , that is , you know , a trauma , or even just past experiences

that impact us , anything that is impacting us in that moment , then , of course , we have nothing left for our kids and it's really important for us to think about this . So , knowing that emotions are constructed by the brain based on predictions , we truly need to take into account our body budget .

We need to anticipate the energy that it takes to process emotions and not ignore them . So this is what my hope is for you , my dear friend , this week I truly want you to be mindful of the resources that your brain has to allocate to your body during the day , knowing that it's not unlimited . How are you nurturing and taking care of yourself ?

And Dr Barrett talks about emotional granularity and she coined this term in research and it's accurately reading your internal emotional state . Remember , I don't know when it was last year at some point I spoke about kind of not ignoring micro emotions . Micro emotions is not a thing , it's something that I use to help me come up with it .

Not come up with the concept , but understand the concept that we experience so many emotions in very short periods of time . If you just think about the morning routine that you have with your kids , you can feel happy , love .

You know you experience all this , these pleasant emotions , with them in the morning when they wake up , and that maybe lasts a couple minutes , because then it's time to get dressed and they don't want to .

Then all of a sudden , you switch from pleasant to unpleasant , maybe high energy to low energy , because already you might not have the patience anymore for what they're doing and saying and pleasant and unpleasant switches back and forth , and back and forth , and back and forth , to the point that you're leaving your home and you've probably switched you know four or

five , six times , who knows and then you're in your car , driving to work and you're feeling stressed , right , that word . And that word means you have your . If you think of your body budget being , you know a cup , you know we talk about our cup being empty . If you've already allocated all your resources , no wonder you're depleted .

So we need to be mindful of what's being . You know what's happening with that body budget , so that we could remember that we need to fill it up , fill back that cup . How ? What matters to us ? I don't have an answer for you when it comes to that , but I do know .

But I do know that it's important that whenever we experience an emotional situation , that we take the time to acknowledge it but also to reappraise it , right ?

So if you get in the car and now you're feeling really overwhelmed by the morning , but it's done , and it was about your child not wanting to get dressed and it was about your child wanting to put on their shoes when you're trying to leave the house , or your child not wanting to go to school and you're fighting with them again once you're in the car .

You need to consciously somehow , if you can , if it's little moments , not if it's something very big and heavy , but if it's those little moments , you have to consciously let them go or reappraise your situation right now and say things like right now , that moment is done .

I'm going to take a deep breath and know that this moment is over with and I'm going to work and I'm excited for what I have to do at work today , or I'm excited for the lunch . I'm meeting a friend at lunch today , or I'm going to work out once I get to work , or at lunchtime , whatever it is . Reallocate those energy resources right .

Think about how you're going to add more if you feel depleted . How can you do that ? And maybe it's about walking around the office for five minutes and just like mindfully looking around and reminding yourself that morning is done with and you've got this . Now you're in a different environment , you're safe .

If you have to remind yourself that , and now's the time to change the sort of allocation of those resources to work , to being with colleagues , to friends , to whatever it is . I really hope that , rethinking how we look at emotions and not just saying I'm anxious , I'm mad , I'm sad . It's not that I want everybody to never use those words again .

It was just really like a brain exercise , a way of rethinking emotions , and I hope that it helped you , because I think that if we see it as pleasant and unpleasant and we really focus on how we're feeling in that moment , we will do what we need to do in order to support our needs in that moment .

I hope that is my hope , and this is just the first part of how emotions are made and how I'm interpreting and trying to change when I'm reading into some advice for you guys . I hope that this was helpful .

I really really do hope that you were able to take something from this , but I do want you to remind yourself how important it is for you to be aware of what your body is going through and what your mind is going through .

We cannot continue to be on autopilot , because that's what's going to just you know , continue this cycle of I lost my shit and I don't know why . I went from zero to a hundred . I felt some rage .

Once we start tuning into our minds and our bodies , maybe we'll realize that we're stuck , maybe , in an unpleasant emotion , whether that's sadness or anxiety or anger . Maybe we'll realize that half the time our heart's pounding , you know , faster . And if we , you know , monitor that , we might realize wow , I had no idea that this was happening to me .

Maybe we'll realize that we clench our jaws when we're mad or when we're anxious . But all I want for you today or this week is to tune into your body and to see what sort of resources your brain is allocating , right like to your stomach , to your breathing , your heart rate , whatever it is just become attuned with your needs this week .

That's all I ask for you , that's all I ask of you . All right , my dear friend , thank you for listening to the Cures Non-Podcast we have this month . We have Amy Moran at the end of the month , who's the author of 13 things mentally strong people don't do , and she has a new book about couples . So you don't want to miss that .

And I'm speaking with a researcher next week where we're talking about men and mental health , whether you yourself are a dad or a grandpa or an uncle , or even if you're not , you need to listen to this episode because the conversation that I had with this researcher , matt is a really important one , and I hope you are there to listen next week .

Have a good week everyone . Bye .