Dr. Jud Brewer on Overcoming Anxiety

New science shows how to break the cycles of worry and fear to heal your mind on today's Holy Human. Dr jad thank you for coming on the Holy Human podcast. I am so excited to talk to you about anxiety, which sounds very strange. It does sound funny, but I I just finished your book, Unwinding Anxiety, and I have I've also been working with your app for the last couple of weeks, and it really has been perfect timing

to to connect with your book. I saw Sharon Salzburg actually post about it, and right before that, I was just in a therapy session talking to my therapist about addictions and in habits and I'm like, we're all just basically a bunch of habits. And and then I saw her post about your book and then started reading it, and I'm like, oh my god, this is the most

divine timing ever. So I just want to say thank you for creating this book because it has been the last couple of weeks really been opening me up to new ways of dealing with my anxiety, which I have dealt with for It's been a part of my life, I think, my whole life, to be honest, Well, I'm so glad to hear that it's it's healthy. Yeah, no, it definitely is. You know, so many of us are going through such an anxious time and I've been experiencing anxiety some of us our whole lives. You say that

you feel like it's an epidemic. Can you explain why and how we got here? I'd be happy to so, as you're referring to and I jokingly say this in the book, you know BC before COVID nineteen, which seems like ancient times. Yes it does. We We all get anxious. Anxiety is part of life, and it is kind of born from the survival mechanism in our brain, which takes a lack of information or uncertain tea and kind of spins that into a driving force to go get information.

The way I think of it is, you know, when we're hungry and we have a we're low on calories, our stomach rumbles and that urges us to get off our butts to go get some food. In the same way, when we have a lack of information, our brain rumbles and we have this urge to go get information. So you know, getting information is survival literally for our brain, just like getting food is survival for our body. Interesting. So I mean, and we are living in a time

where information is coming at us twenty four seven. So is that obviously I feel like that's kind of driving home our anxiety even more and upping the anti Yes. I think there are several aspects here. One is you can think of it as uncertainty is that piece that's that's the motivating factor that says go get information. If you look at our ancient ancestors, there was certainly there

was uncertainty, but it came in into and form. So for example, if there was a saber tooth tiger or a line or whatever it was that was coming to eat us. We didn't have to go on a chat for him and discuss how dangerous sabor two tigers were. We didn't, you know, we didn't. Our brain wasn't like, is that a deep faked have they? No? Deep faked savor two tigers? You know? So back then it was pretty straightforward. You see the tiger, you run. And now not only is your pointing out, is there a whole

lot more information? You know? The Internet has allowed us to get information seven, but we all also have to sift through that constantly to see what is accurate, what is real, you know, and what is worth listening to? Yeah, I mean I know from myself it's this constant do I believe what I'm reading? Which can cause anxiety in itself because you're like, well wait, what what is true?

You know? And and that's uh, I think, especially during this past year when there's been so much you know, well not even just as Passive passed, probably four years more so than anything, you know, there's been just so much conflicting information and and I know for myself that's

definitely driven up, driven by anxiety. Through there you take a mindfulness approach to anxiety, and I know we've talked a little bit about mindfulness on this podcast, but I was wondering if you could refresh our memory a bit about what mindfulness is and why it's such a key component in helping us work with our anxiety. I'd be happy to here. I would say, let's break it down into its core elements, because mindfulness can mean different things

to different people. So here core elements really are awareness and an attitude of curiosity. Some describe it as non judgment I like curiosity, and I'll tell you why in a minute. But if we're bringing awareness and curiosity to our everyday experience, what it helps us do is to really start to see how our minds work. Because if we don't know how our minds work, we can't work with them. So it helps us see our our minds work.

But then critically, it helps us really tap into the strongest parts of our brain, which ironically form habits in the first place around anxiety and worry and procrastination and other things. But that's actually the only place that we can change the habit is through updating the reward value in our brain. So we have to go to the place that it originates. And basically I mean basically utilize that piece to start to help us instead of work

against us. We do, we do. I have tons of patients that come into my office that have no idea how their minds work, you know, and they've been pushed and pulled by anxiety or their entire lives, and you know, they've tried this and that, but they haven't been able to link up any consistent you know, I can do X in order to help my anxiety because they haven't really understood how their minds work. I think sometimes for me, I understand, I've I've you know, I read a lot

of things, and I understand how the mind works. But some times the bodily sensations, sometimes the the old pro programming in the body can be so overwhelming that it's like whatever I learned about, you know, about how the mind works just kind of like goes out the window, and that that instinct takes over. You know. It's so interesting you say that because I degree, And I'll say the way I think of this is that our thinking brain doesn't hold a candle to our feeling body, so

we can understand something is bad for us. For example, you know I shouldn't smoke, or I shouldn't overeat or I shouldn't worry. But that that we can't just understand it. Otherwise all my none of my patients would smoke, they'd all quit smoking, or they never start smoking in the first place, because they knew it was bad for them.

So it's really these urges, these primitive survival instincts that have gotten kind of caught up in modern day where food is designed to be addictive, where social media is designed to be addictive, where you know, worry is held as a badge of honor. So so all of you know, all though those pieces, it's like this old brain meets modern society and suddenly we're off to the races with all sorts of bad habits. Yeah, I feel that completely.

You talk about habits a lot in this book. Can you walk us through how a habit is form I'd be happy to the three elements that form a habit that are necessary and sufficient, are a trigger, a behavior at a reward so for and this was actually set up for our ancient ancestors to remember where food is.

So the ideas you know, you see food, there's the trigger, you eat the food, there's the behavior, and then your stomach sends this dopamine signal to your brain that says, you know, remember what you ate and where you found it. From a brain perspective, we think of this as a reward. So because this dopamine sprits really helps us lay down

this memory. So any habit is formed that way, and that you can think of them as being formed through positive reinforcement where let's say we eat some cake, it tastes good, and then we learned to eat more cake, especially if we associated with holidays and celebrations and things like that, but also through negative reinforcement, where it makes

something that is unpleasant go away. So for example, if we if our shoes are untied for and we so there's the trigger the behaviors that we trip on our shoes are shoelaces, and then that's a negative reinforcement that says, hey, why don't you learn how to tie your shoes? And then we tie your shoes and then that removes that negative of tripping on our over our feet. Got it. So so it's not just yes, So it can be

a negative award. You can be trying to avoid something which I think is I mean, I feel like a lot of my life and my anxiety has stemmed from the avoidance of something, Yes, then it is the actual uh high of of getting something, which is interesting because I know in your book you say that there's many ways that we kind of learn, and one of them is is the avoidance role, which I think I kind of lean more toward that one, which has been really interesting.

I mean, it was so fascinating to see that. I feel like we all kind of play in all of those areas of the avoidance, the kind of the one that I forgot how you actually phrase it, the one that kind of goes towards the one that avoids, and then it's kind of the fight flight er freeze right, Yes, And so I feel like I definitely, as I took the test in your book, I felt like I definitely find myself going towards each of those, but definitely the the one that was more of avoidance, the the avoidance

type was the one that I find a fall into. You say that anxiety itself can be a habit. I was wondering if you could kind of go into that a little bit, because I found that very interesting and I found that that was definitely a piece that I could relate to this is actually part of the sea for the whole Unwinding Anxiety book because I never learned this in medical school and residency. I generally learned how

to prescribe medications to give people for anxiety. And it was actually my own anxiety of not being able to help my patients with their anxiety that led me to go back and look at this. So basically, there's this this number needed to treat in medicine called that that gives you a rough estimate of how well of medication works, and that for anxiety it's five point one five, meaning you know, I have to treat five patients before one

person shows a significant benefit. So I was playing the anxiety lottery with my patients, you know, which which one of five people is going to benefit? And that anxiety was leading me to look back and see what's you know, what can we do differently or what am I missing?

And it turns out, serendipitously, my lab was studying this app called eat right Now, where we were looking at helping people change over eating habits and we've gotten pretty good results with that, and somebody said, he I'm mapping out my habit loop around eating and it goes like this, anxiety triggers me to eat, and then that eating doesn't actually fix the anxiety. So can you make an anxiety

program to fix my anxiety? And this is where I went back and looked and found that there's actually a pretty good literature from the nineteen eighties that suggested that anxiety could be negatively reinforced just like any other habit. And that's where my you know, my eyes popped out of my head and I was thinking, wow, you know, this is amazing because I I know how to work with habits. So could we actually bring the work that I'm doing in my lab together and form a program

for anxiety? And long story, short was, you know, we got a sixty seven percent reduction in anxiety and people with generalist anxiety disorder, and that number needed to treat was one point six as compared to five point when five with medications. And that's using mindfulness. That's using mindfulness. Yes, So that basically the way this works. So the way somebody forms a habit around anxiety is that anxiety or

a negative emotion can trigger worry. So if somebody has an unpleasant sensation in their body or they have a pain, then they start to worry. Oh no, you know, could this be bad? Uh? That worry especially, So I should say if somebody has some pain, you know, like despin or something like that, they should make sure that it

isn't a medical condition. But often often folks will have some you know, they'll have a pain that they've had, or they'll they'll just wake up in the morning, like my patients with anxiety, they wake up and they're anxious, and then they start worrying. Oh no, am I going to be anxious all day? Or what's what's the cause of this anxiety? That worry itself is a mental behavior that then drives anxiety more because that worry is our brains interpret this as well, at least I'm doing something,

so it gives people a feeling of control. Yet surprise, it doesn't actually give us any more control than we had when we weren't worrying. And the worry makes our thinking brain go offline. It's harder to think and play and when we're worried, so that then feeds back and tries more anxiety, which then feeds forward and tries more worry, which then, you know, causes this vicious cycle. Yeah, the the worry piece for sure. I I the anxiety for

me that I'm noticing is a loop. Um. And maybe some people can relate to this because I've also dealt with with depression. UM, I feel like my body is kind of gone. Uh. It either feels like it has one option or the other. It feels like it has this kind of freeze depressed mode, or it has this anxiety that it can it can utilize to drive itself out of freeze energizing. It is energizing, And I mean I think about the ways in which I utilize anxiety.

I think a lot of us do sometimes for performance, like when we think about, oh, you know if I feel I mean, I did it before, I did it before our conversation. And by the way, podcasting a new thing for me and I it brings up so much anxiety for me that I was literally sitting here before doing loving Kindness meditation and it I've opened my eyes

and I went, this ship works. It really does. And I've I've done loving Kindness meditation before, but not in utilizing it in the way of like when I'm anxious to like drop in and it really does work. And so I think a lot of people can relate to that performance piece two of thinking, like if I rev myself up, then I can go right into you know,

whatever I need to do. There feels like there's uh kind of more of a drive per se to do a better job, Like the anxiety is going to make us perform better, which I know you've said in your book that it's completely opposite. It is, and it's something that I think is probably going to be perpetuated through the Internet for a long time, where this idea that performance is improved anxiety, even though there's no evidence to

support it. Now, I think there's a piece that you're talking about here, which is an increased level of energy or arousal. Certainly, if we're asleep, we can't do a podcast, and if we're you know, and if we're overhyped, it's also challenging there. But the piece here that we can tap into is, you know, what type of energy are

we talking about? So for example, with anxiety, that and that energy feels restless, you know, kind of closed down tight, whereas if somebody is in flow, you know, I think of that as optimal performance, where there they don't even know what anxiety feels like because they've basically lost a sense of self. They're so in the moment right, there's tons of energy there, yet it's a very different energy.

All right, we're going to take a super quick break, but when we return, Dr jud will share just how you can tap into that more positive, more productive energy. Welcome back, my friends. We're talking with Dr Jed Brewer about better navigating anxiety. You talk a lot about contraction and expansion and that being kind of are key into what mode we're in. I guess at that moment, and uh, yeah, there's when I was doing the Loving Kindness meditation before I all of a sudden felt like my body like

literally does expand. And it's hard to when you're in that mode of closed down and tight and feeling like all of this. When I talk about anxiety, I feel for me, I feel like there's this energy just kind of like running throughout my body that someone plugged me into a wall socket. When you're in that state, like we were saying earlier, sometimes it's really hard to to think or or to grab onto that new habit of

loving kindness. Luckily, I've been working with your app for the past couple of weeks and these have become a daily occurrence where I'm noting, I'm doing loving kindness meditation, and it's it definitely does pull you out of it. But I think at first it's hard to it's hard to remember these things when we're in these feelings. What do you suggest when we're going through like just we're having a kind of a panic anxiety attack, what's the first thing that can start to bring us into these

other options. Well, here, I would say, and I within, for example, within panic attack, it's hard to be doing anything besides panic. So the good news is there. The panic attacks actually last a very short period of time, so after, you know, after it's over, we can do we can look back on that and look at the you know, the sensations, the thoughts and whatever they went through our head and through our bodies, and we can start to see these as they are. Okay, so was

a thought. You know, for example, I had panic attacks during residency training, so it would be this thought that I was going to die, I couldn't breathe, my heart was racing, and I had to actually learned to work with them in the moment. But we can even do this right afterwards, where we think, okay, my heart was racing my you know, felt like I was going to die.

That was a there was a sensation, there were thoughts and whatever, and that helps us start to get the perspective where we can be aware of those things and not be identified with them, because this is key for keeping a panic attack just as a panic attack, as its momentary occurrence and not developing into full blown panic disorder, because if we start worrying that we're going to have another panic attack, then we start avoiding situations like that,

or we start just getting more anxious thinking about them, and that's actually what just what makes us fall into panic disorder. Yet that part is optional. We don't really have control over having panic attacks, but how we respond to the panic attack is critical, and that's actually really the key of mindfulness for anything. It's it's not that we have worry thoughts, it's not that we have feelings of anxiety. It's that we are identified with them and

get caught up in them. So we can change our relationship to our thoughts and emotions and body sensations, and by changing that relationship, we're not as caught up. We can be with with them in the moment, Oh, I just had a panic attack as compared to Oh no, I just had a panic attack and then we started panicking that we might have another one. Yeah. In the book, you have people map out their their habit loops. Can

you kind of walk us through what that mapping looks like. Yes, I think of this as kind of the first of three steps in working with any type of habit. We've got to see the territory. We've got to map the territory of our own minds. And really it's just mapping the trigger, the behavior, and the results. So let's say stress eating, for example. If anxiety is the trigger my behavior stress eating, then I could start to map those out and then see what the result is. You know,

do I doesn't actually fix the anxiety generally not? Does it make me feel worse? Yes, in those types of things. So the mapping process is really just anything that helps us see, you know, what's the trigger, what's the behavior, what's the result? Gotta And then you're saying there's three steps,

So the second step in what are two and three? Yes, the second step flows right from the first, which is you know, and I guess a little bit of neuroscience background here to explain this is our brain is only going to change the behavior if it sees that that behavior is no longer rewarding. So uh, and if it's more rewarding than previous, then we're going to actually hold

onto it. Even more so with unhealthy habits like smoking, we have to pay attention to the direct experience right in the moment when we smoke, so we can line up that cause and effect relationship between the behavior and the results. So I have my patients. I tell my patients to actually smoke when they want to come and quit smoking. They look at me like I'm crazy, and I say, no, that's actually really important. You have to

see what you're getting from smoking right now. And they realize that cigarettes stays like crap right so they start to become disenchanted with it simply by paying attention as they smoke. Same is true for worrying. When somebody's worrying, I have them really pay attention. What does it feel like when you worry? Does it solve the problem? Does it keep your family safe? Does it do what you

think it is doing? And when they can clearly see that it's not keeping somebody safe, it's actually making it harder for them to perform whatever that's when they start to become disenchanted with the behavior. So that's the second step, is really paying attention to the results of what you're what the behavior is, whether it's physical or mental. I

can give you an example. My lab just finished to study where we embedded a tool to help people pay attention as they were over eating in this eat right now app And it only took ten or fift in times of somebody really paying attention as they overrate for that reward value to drop below zero, where they shifted that behavior from over eating to not over eating. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely, that's actually not that many times. It's not it's you know, and it's it makes sense

because our brains are very plastic. We can't be chased by saber tooth tigers fifteen times, you know, and and hope that we get away all fifteen It's like we have to learn really quickly that those things are dangerous, and so our brains are I think they're set up to learn very quickly. But the key there is we have to pay careful attention. That's that's the key, careful

attention and repetition. I know that you've mentioned smaller windows of time throughout the day, which at the beginning I'm like, I can't remember to do this, and then all of a sudden I find myself like noting, like, oh I'm hearing seeing I've probably done it like six, six or seven times this morning. And that's I think also such a key piece and something that I think we get so caught up in our busy lives that we forget that we're also you know, break trying to break a

habit and and step out of our habitual behaviors. And you talk about curiosity often. I wish I wonder if you could just or expand on that more why that is so important when it comes to uh to changing a habit. Sure, so that that first step of mapping out our habit loops leads to the second step, which is helping our brains see how unrewarding the old behavior is. But that then sets up this sets the stage for the third step, which I think of as the b

BO the bigger better offer. So if our brain becomes disenchanted with overeating or worrying or procrastinating or whatever, it opens the space for our brain to do something that's more rewarding, to bring in a healthy habit, and here I think one of the healthiest habits we can have is being curious. So curiosity helps us in many in multitude of ways. I think of it as a superpower. A couple of concrete ways that it becomes that bigger better offer is when we're anxious, you know, anxiety kind

of closes us down, it makes us restless. Curiosity opens us up right, and so you can't be closed and open at the same time because their binary opposites. So you can kind of inject curiosity into the moment when we're curious, and we can get curious. I'm sorry, when we're anxious, when we get and when we're anxious, we can get curious about what that anxiety feels like. Oh what does this feel like? Guess coming bad to Oh no, I'm anxious again. That, oh opens us up and also

feels better. The other thing it does because it helps us gain some perspective. So you can think of there's this thing called the observer effect in physics where you know, by observing, they were trying to measure the massive electrons and they would hit it with pot hit the electrons with photons, and they noticed that they were actually changing the mass the measurement by by doing that, So they called this the observer effect. By observe ring, you're going

to affect the results. Well, within psychology, we can do the same thing. By observing thoughts and emotions. We can actually affect the results, and we affect them by helping to gain perspective. We get some distance between ourselves and our thoughts and our ourselves and our emotions as compared to being identified with them. And what helps us get that distance is curiosity. Oh here's the thought, Oh here's an emotion, as compared to Oh, no, I am anxious,

or I am an anxious person. Interesting, we're talking about part of mindfulness. Meditation is to bring openness to the body where there once was contraction. Um which you consider the openness and the curiosity the reward. So for me and I think maybe some people can relate to this. When the feeling of anxiety feels more comfortable than being open and relaxed, how can we begin to see that

openness as a reward. You know, I've done a lot of meditation and that that openness does feel like a reward in meditation, But then I step out into the real world and it becomes a lot of things trigger me to contract, and so sometimes that openness doesn't feel safe. So when when we look at when we see that openness maybe as a lack of safety or or a loss, how how do we start to tap into these feelings of openness and curiosity to where that becomes the reward.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it's a great question. So here I think of the curiosity is helping us see things clearly, helping us see without bias. So we might go out into the world and there might be something that our brain says, oh, that could be dangerous if we are basing that on things that we have learned

in the past. So, for example, implicit biases. This way, we if somebody sees another person with a different skin color and they have been implicitly conditioned to think that that's a dangerous person, then their fear mechanism might kick in and they say, oh, there's danger here, and then they turn away and they actually perpetuate that bias. Right, So notice how there's no curiosity there, there's no openness. The curiosity helps us see clearly where we might be

built to identify. Oh, I you know, I have this implicit bias. I'm noticing my body contracting here just because it's been conditioned this way. Can I open and ask, oh, is there actual actually danger here as compared to just

something that my brain has been conditioned to do. So the openness isn't necessarily gonna it's gonna help us see clearly, help us see when something is dangerous, and help us see when something isn't dangerous as compared to just you know, utilizing our lizard brain, so to speak, where we see something and we run away immediately, and then that actually just perpetuates whatever that how it is? So that does

that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely? Um, which then goes back as I'm saying that I'm like, which goes back to the feeling and the body then sometimes not leaving us access to that openness in a in a real life situation. I guess what that basically is is just us continuing to train ourselves in our own time so that we can react differently out in the world. Right.

And one way we can do that is, you know, if we if we're out in the world and something, you know, triggers our fear and we run away, we can look back at that as soon thereafter as possible, because you know, we learned best from immediacy. So we look back and we say, was that actually dangerous? And so we can get curious in that moment after we've already fled the scene, so to speak, and if it was actually dangerous, then we can we can line that up and say, okay, that was dangerous. I need to

do that again. We learned if we say, oh, maybe I was just conditioned to do this or that maybe it wasn't as dangerous after all, we can get curious and you know, even go back and relive it and see what was it the triggered me. We can learn something about our own minds and our own reactivity, and then in future situations we can see, you know, is this similar? Can I turn towards this? Can I be

open to this? Can I get curious? Oh? Is this my mind reacting in a way that is that is habitual or conditioned, So that we can start to lean into that discomfort rather than run away. Then I'll also point out any new experience is going to be felt as a little uncomfortable to our brains and to us because our brain is saying, hey, this is different. Make sure there's no danger here, so of course we need

to make sure that the scene is safe. But then we instead of kind of moving into our panic zone, we can move into our growth zone and instead of going, oh no, this is dangerous, go oh what is going on here? Is this my brain, you know, just reacting to something, And then we can lean in and we can grow and we can learn. M hm. You talk about mindset, which you just mentioned, a growth mindset compared

to a fixed mindset. Can you explain what those are and why those are so important and uh in changing our habits. Yes, these terms were first coined by Carol Dwack, who's a Stanford professor, and she was doing a lot of research in the education space long story short, looking at people who felt that they only had a certain level of intelligence. For example, they didn't learn as much

as people who could learn that their brains are plastic. Basically, this is even way before you know these buzzwords of neuroplasticity and other things where came around. And I love her terminology because it fits beautifully with this sense of feeling closed and open, you know, with anxiety feeling closed and curiosity feeling open. When we're closed we're in fixed mindset. You know, this is the way things are. We're not

actually in a place where we can learn. When we can inject curiosity, for example, we and then move into that growth mindset and we can open to it. So, for example, if I say something nutty on a podcast, for example, just hypothetically speaking, afterwards, I could go and regret, you know, start going over in my mind what I call review and regret. I could review it, and I could regret that I said that, and then you know, I get stuck in this fixed mindset. Oh, I'm terrible

on podcasts. Nobody's gonna invite me, you know, blah blah blah, I'm gonna I'm gonna end up in the gutter, you know. And so instead of that, I could look back and say, wow, I said something kind of nutty, and that wow, that, oh could open me where I could look and learn, and I could look at what happened. I could learn from it, and that puts me in growth mindset to say, Okay, you know, maybe don't explain it that way next time.

You know, it's funny. I I feel like at a certain point in life, you kind of feel like you stopped learning and you get into you know you you think, oh, I'm at a certain age. It's like my growth mindset is now a fixed mindset. It's very easy to do.

I guess that was that was something that hit me in the book because I recognized how often it's so easy to slip into a fixed mindset because we have you know, I mean, I'm I'm only thirty eight, but I feel like I have you know, I have a lot of I think we go into this thing and I have a lot of experience, and it becomes you start to pull from that fixed experience instead of opening yourself up to you know, God, I mean the uh, you know, multitude of possibility that exists in the universe,

because that feels unsafe. You know. We feel very safe in our own little experience and this is what I know world. Um, And so that really that really hit me. I was like, oh, I I am in a fixed mindset often and I haven't even recognized because for me, I like to learn, and I often think that I am in a growth mindset. I'm probably not. Yeah, you know, You're you're pointing out something really important. There's this tension between kind of our old and our new brains, and

they're both trying to help us survive. So the you know, the old brain you find food avoid danger, is helped by the our newer parts of our brain and neo cortex, which help us think and plan. And what what are thinking and planning brains are trying to do is predict the future. And when there's uncertainty, it's harder to predict the future. So if we can kind of walk around or insulate ourselves and live more in a bubble where we only associate with certain people that say certain things,

you know, it feels comfortable. If we live in a house that's safe, it feels comfortable, and so we're more likely to stay in our house as compared to adventure outside where there's you know, there's less certainty. So that survival part of the brain is saying, hey, try to make the world as predictable as possible. Yet the world is not predictable, you know, we don't have control over

the world. So it's this it's this tension between at and then being able to be open to learn when things are constantly changing, and so both can help, but having that growth mindset and constantly going outside of our comfort zones to challenge ourselves but also finding the reward in that. I think you highlighted one piece of this. It feels great to learn things, right, so if we

can remember, oh, it feels good to learn things. If we can remember, don't only you know, watch the news that we have, you know that we that we associate with like watch all the news and see however, you know, so we can really challenge ourselves to to be in that growth mindset and see that as a benefit as compared to just trying to wall ourselves off. You know, it might feel uncomfortable at the beginning, but as we learned to lean into uncertainty, then the joy that comes

with discovery can be its own reward. Yeah. Absolutely, And there is joy and discovery. And I thank you for saying that because I really hope that people take that in because it's been something for me that, even through this podcast, to be curious. You know, people have always been curious about me. I've always been the one um being asked the questions, and it's so different to be on the other side and be the one, you know, that is curious and and it's been it's been really

fun to do that. Some key pieces that you emphasize when it comes to mindfulness and when it comes to changing habits is one is non judgment and the other is kindness um which I think a lot of us struggle with, especially you have that internal dialogue of constantly beating yourself up. These are two pieces that I think are super important. I wonder if you could just kind of expand upon that and also loving kindness and how that how bringing loving kindness to these pieces of us

that we are looking to shift, how that plays a role? Sure, so maybe we could even use examples of say anxiety and judgment, just to give concrete examples. So if we can map out a habit around anxiety, So for example, anxiety triggers the mental behavior worrying, and we can start to see that worrying doesn't keep our families safe, it doesn't solve the problem. We become disenchanted with it. We

can then substitute curiosity for worry. So when we're anxious, we get curious, Oh, you know, what does this feel like? Where do I feel it? Most of my body? All of those things, and that can open us to our direct experience. In the same way, we can start mapping out self judgment habit loops and I write a bit about this in my book because it is so pervasive unfortunately, where for example, if we um, if we do something that we regret, we start to feel shame and then

we start to so that could trigger us to judge ourselves. Oh, I can't believe I did that, and then we beat You know that beating ourselves up is doing something, just like worrying is doing something, So there could be a reward in that. Because it doesn't it can't change the past, but we can beat ourselves up for it. You know, Okay, I'm doing something. We can start to turn towards that and notice that that also feels closed and contracted. Then we can bring in, you know, this third step, this

bigger better offer. What feels better than judging ourselves well, being kind to ourselves, truly being kind to ourselves. So they are just simple acts of kindness. We can remember what it's like when somebody has been kind to us already. That opens us up and helps us step out of that old habit of self judgment. And this is where loving kindness comes in. Specifically, you know that it's glove and kindness is really about tapping into our inherent capacity

to be kind. It's really tapping into this opening quality that comes with kindness. And you know, My Love has even done your imaging studies to look at people's brains as they practice love and kindness. Interestingly, the same brain regions that get really active when we're caught up in worry quiet down when we are practicing loving kindness. And the idea is, as you know, you can't be closed and open the same time, so loving kindness opens us

up simply. You know. It's you know, we can use phrases of you know, may I be happy, may I be kind to myself, you know, things like that that can help us tap into it. But it's really that feeling of opening that comes when when we're kind to

ourselves or when somebody is being kind to us. So we can even recall those moments and that opens us up, and that quiets down these brain regions that get caught up when we're judging ourselves or when we're worrying, And after we take a quick breather, it will be right back with more ways to tap into less judgment and less anxiety. Welcome back, everyone. We're diving into ways in

which judgment can trigger anxiety. I find it so interesting that judgment in itself can be a habit loop, which I which then and for me it like in turn, I think I'm keeping myself safe by judging myself or my internal judge. Sometimes I feel like I have to drive myself to be able to do the things that I need to do. I found it mapping out these habit loops, by the way, which I also think could be a habit loop in itself. Constantly seeing the habit loops,

it really is fascinating. And the idea of constantly having to have something external, you know, to soothe, even if it's a healthy habit, it always seems like it's it's external and not internal, and I want it to be from something I internally generate. And don't you already internally generate the judgment and everything, you know, everything else is internally generated. So we think of shifting to our internal uh, internal rewards instead of external rewards. I mean, the external

is not going anywhere. Our desires and are our wants, and those things will always be there. How do you find that balance? I guess it's almost like that that phrase of like being in the world but not of it most of like you where your external reward base, because I don't think we've ever been taught that really like the internal rewards are become what drives us instead of the external. Yes, So I think there are two pieces here that we can tap into pragmatically. One is

knowing that turning to something external. Our brains are set up to become habituated to things, so that basically so we can form habits and then we opens up our brains based to learn new things. So if our habit is to soothe ourselves through I'll just use an example of looking at cute pictures of puppies on Instagram for example, Right,

puppies are darn cute. But if we turn to look at cute puppies when we're anxious, for example, our brain is going to get habituated to that, and then it says, Okay, I need cuter puppies. You know, I need puppies and kittens. I need puppies, kittens and babies, and it just goes on and on and on. So we become obituated and we're always grasping for more, and that grasping is just a natural habituation process because our brain is saying Okay, I've learned this, I want, you know, I need a

free of space to learn something else. So just knowing that if we look externally, we're always going to be looking. We're never gonna be satisfied, just the way our brains are set up. And if we look internally, it's not just looking for, you know, to generate happy thoughts for example, because that can we can also get habituated to those things.

It's really looking to see what is rewarding in the sense of helping us open, you know, because well, my lab did another study on this where we looked at a bunch of different mental states to see which ones were naturally more rewarding than others, and categorically the ones that are more rewarding are the ones that feel open. So for example, kindness, connection, curiosity, they all feel open, and they all feel better than disconnection, than anxiety, than

frustration and things like that. So anything that makes us feel closed, even if it's an internal thing, is going to probably not going to be as rewarding as finding internally findable um capacities like kindness and curiosity. And because they're open, my guess is that they don't become limited in the sense of us becoming habituated to them. They just feel different, right, We we don't run out of curiosity,

We don't run out of kindness. And in fact, the kinder we are, the better it feels, and the more we want to be kind the more curious we are, the better it feels, the more we want to be more curious in the future. So they actually kind of pay it forward in that sense. Mm hmm. I love that thought, paying it forward. This might be a weird question. Everything seems like it is a habit, and for me it's been a bit overwhelming to see that and to

really acknowledge that. How we try to get to like the basis of something like the core issue is there when we start to see all of these different habit loops. Is there a core habit that, if discovered, can start to shift all these other little habit loops? Is that it? Does that make sense? Yes, there isn't one core you know, like that is the mother habit of the hive, of all the little worker be habits, so to speak. That's

kind of what I was saying. So we but there is one core mother habit process that then is spun out into all the the you think of as the phenotypes, the different habits that we have. So knowing the process, you know that it trigger is gonna trigger a behavior, and that behavior is going to drive you know, have some result. And the more rewarding that result is, the

more likely we are to do that. That just knowing that process, I would think of that as a's where you get at the queen bee of of the mind. And once we get there, we can start to see, Okay, this queen bee makes a bunch of worker bees. Those worker bees can be unhelpful habits like overeating and procrastinating and worrying, but it can also generate helpful habits like kindness and curiosity. So that's the that's where I would say, you know, understanding that, that's the core that we need

to understand. And it's beautiful. You know, when we do studies with our unwinning anxiety app or or eat right Now app, or even our smoking app, people come to us and they say, you know, I learned about this habit, whether it's eating or smoking or anxiety, but it actually helped me learn about this and this and this and this and this habit as well. And so they kind of generalize that knowledge into wisdom. And when when I see them generate that into wisdom, then I know they've

really they've really found the queen got it. Yeah, it's if I think about it, for me, kind of the core of that knowing that pattern these feelings they don't feel as good, you know, like judgment and worry and and anxiety, all the all of the you know, sadness. I look at I look at those and think, basically, I've connected a habit of living in those feelings instead of living in other feelings because that's what I knew, like,

that's what's felt safe. So if I think of it in that way very simplistically, um, of I'm just need to move over into these other feelings. Um, that's kind of what feels like the core of you know, of it of how I've my whole patterning has developed over the years. Yes, And the beautiful part here is that awareness will help us naturally move without us having to do anything. So really, if we are, for example, these

three steps, awareness underlies all of them. If we're aware of our habit lives right and can map them out, then our brain will be able to see, oh, these are my habit looks. We don't. There's no force there, there's no effort beyond just the mapping process. If we get curious and ask ourselves what am I getting from this?

In that second step where we start to become aware of the results of the behavior, again no effort, but as as we can see in our own in my own research studies, as people become aware of over eating, they stop over eating because that awareness helps them see, oh, this isn't help, this isn't doing it for me. Awareness can be that third step can be that bigger, better offer. If we think of awareness, is this curious awareness, or if we you know, we can even think of awareness

is helping us see how rewarding kindness is. So all of all of these processes will naturally move us in the direction of curiosity and kindness simply by being curious ourselves. I love that because I you always think you have to do something. It's like, what do I have to do? How do I have to fix myself? And I think that's so beautiful what you just said. The awareness in itself will naturally move us in that direction. So anybody

like me, we can just all calm down. We can all calm down we don't have to do as much. We can just just essay, just but we can become more aware and be, you know, in the presence of what's happening. Thank you so much for lending your wisdom here today with me. I really do appreciate it. And I have something that I ask all of my guests, because music obviously is my thing I love. I love knowing what is on your playlist. If there's five songs.

We have something called the Holy Five. If there's five songs that you are digging or have or over your lifetime or your favorites. Um, and why I'd love to know. Well, you know this is an impossible question, do it, though, you can do it. I love led Zeppelin and yeah, so there's I mean everyone, they everything from their blues to their hard rock. You know. So if you just think of like Cashmir Black Dog, like those are just

amazing songs. Um. Yeah, I love R E M. The End of the World as we know it is such a great song. And then there's Jeff Buckley his rendition of um, Hallelujah, that was who I'm blanking. Who's the guy with a very low voice that wrote the song? Yes, Leonard Cohen, thank you. Um so Jeff Buckley just ethereal the way he sings Hallelujah. So I love yes, Yes, I just yes. I love Radiohead. Um, you know you're a rock guy. I love it, but very eclectic rock. Yeah. Yeah,

well there's just so many great artists out there. So Karma, what's the Radiohead song? Karma was just about to say that that. I was like, there's no way, that's right, Karma Police again. You know, just such a different sound and brilliant. I mean that that the music is brilliant. So you know, I would I would list those five just off the you know, kind of off the top of my head, and then I could go on for hours about all the other music that I love. I

love it. You love music though. Yeah. I grew up playing violin, you know, classical violin, and so I've just learned to appreciate really good music. Like I could go on and on and on. You know, like Metallica, they write great music. You know, they performed with the San Francisco Orchestra. You know, they had an album with them that was awesome. Yeah, wait, when did you when did you start playing violin? Hold for you? I think I was five. Oh wow, is it something you still do?

I do. I still play quartets with folks that I played in the orchestra in college and they happened, you know, some folks that live in the area. So yeah, that's so cool. Something I did not know about you. Yeah, I had a semi professional quartet in grad school that helped pay the bills because we you know, we can charge a fair amount of money for weddings and things like that. I love that. That's amazing, very cool, love it. That'd be awesome of you. Should could totally come play

with me one night. It's so fun. Thank you, so thank you, Thank you so much. I really do appreciate it, and thank you for your work and your book. Um it has really it's changed my life, so I appreciate it. Well, it's so great to hear that. That is very rewarding to hear. We'll continue on and that wraps up this episode of Holy Human. Thank you all so much for spending your time with me. I truly truly appreciate you.

Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments wherever you're listening, and if you think this episode might also benefit someone you know, please pass it along, so next time by everyone. On the next episode of Holy Human, you will meet the incredibly inspirational Larreya guest On, a woman who has chosen a life path that just might change the way that you see yours and the

way you view the path others are on too. It is really really great stuff, so I hope you can join us and I can't wait to share it with you. Holy Human with Me Leanne Rhymes is a production of I Heart Radio. You'll find Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes on the I Heart app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get the podcasts that matter most to you.