Episode: 56
The Toolkit for Healing Anxiety, Part 1
with Dr. Russell Kennedy, MD
Learn the truth about where anxiety comes from and the mistake that most therapists make when treating it.
Dr. Russell Kennedy, a medical doctor and neuroscientist and one of the world's most respected medical experts on anxiety, is teaching you his revolutionary and effective approach to helping his patients understand and heal anxiety.
You’ll learn the critical difference between "coping with anxiety" and his protocol for "healing it" once and for all.
Listen on:
How you heal is you become connected to yourself. It doesn't come from outside of you.Dr. Russell Kennedy, MD
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Transcript
Mel Robbins (00:03):
We are talking anxiety today, and we have our most popular and most requested expert back. This is a topic whether you have struggled with anxiety or not, we are all impacted by this and by knowing the difference between just merely talking about it and trying to live with it or struggle with it or cope with it and actually healing it, that's where amazingness starts to happen. And I want that for you. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Anxiety to Toolkit on the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm so glad you're here. We are talking anxiety today and we have our most popular and most requested expert back to talk about anxiety and how you can heal it. And we're going to answer questions from five listeners of the Mel Robbins podcast. I love this topic. I am so excited to be able to bring you an appointment with one of the world's leading experts on this topic.
(01:09):
This guy is a medical doctor, a neuroscientist, a bestselling author, and he is going to meet with you, unpack the topic of anxiety step by step, and he's doing it at zero cost. And I cannot wait for you and I to experience this. I cannot wait for you to share this toolkit with your friends, for you to bookmark this and come back to it. This is a paradigm shifter, and as you know, the Mel Robbins Podcast, we're not here to just listen. We are here to do, and there's going to be a lot that you're going to be able to do for free to empower yourself and to heal from anxiety. And I think that's going to be the biggest takeaway. I know Dr. Kennedy's work. My life has changed because of his work. I have also struggled with anxiety for most of my life, and I am the mother of three adult children who had very serious periods with anxiety and they all presented very differently.
(02:03):
And so this is a topic whether you have struggled with anxiety or not, we are all impacted by this and by understanding it in a very different way and by knowing the difference between just merely talking about it and trying to live with it or struggle with it or cope with it and actually healing it, that's where amazingness starts to happen. And I want that for you. If you're brand new, welcome. This is an amazing, amazing episode to begin our relationship with together. My name's Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading experts on motivation change and habits. And one of the changes that I teach all over the world is how to heal anxiety. And Dr. Kennedy and I have an incredible relationship. He comes at it from the scientific neuroscience medical side, and I come at it from kind of the same thing, but from lived experience and all of the research that I've done with our global audience.
(03:07):
And so if you don't know Dr. Russell Kennedy, lemme tell you about the man who is in the house for the anxiety toolkit. And this is zero cost. I'm so excited about this. He is a medical doctor who specializes in this and childhood trauma and nervous system regulation. He is also a neuroscientist, which makes him very, very interesting as an expert. He's a certified yoga instructor meditation teacher, and he too has struggled with anxiety, and I love his take on this. The tools that you are undoubtedly going to learn today are going to change your life. They have changed mine for 30 years. I lived with anxiety and doing what you're going to learn today in the anxiety toolkit. When you take these steps to heal it, there is a level of peace and confidence and clarity and happiness that you will be able to access that I so want for you. And with that introduction, I want to open the door and welcome you in to your appointment with the renowned world-leading expert on this topic. Dr. Russell Kennedy is back and in the house for you. Dr. Kennedy, welcome back to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (04:35):
Thank you Mel Robbins. How are you doing?
Mel Robbins (04:38):
Me? Yeah, today I'm doing great. Good. I'm doing great. You are the, I think, most downloaded episode that we've done so far.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (04:52):
Oh, awesome. That's great.
Mel Robbins (04:54):
Yes, that's really great because your take on anxiety has helped so many people. And so I'm thrilled to have you back and I'm also thrilled that five listeners of the Mel Robbins podcast are going to get a chance to have you unpack answers to their questions. But before we jump into those questions, Dr. Kennedy, I wanted to just bring everybody up to speed because you dropped some amazing wisdom and some ways to think about anxiety that I know changed the way that I think about anxiety, and it was incredibly empowering for everybody. And so just for the sake of setting the table and welcoming everybody in, I'd love to just do rapid fire, a couple quick questions that cover what we covered in the first episode, and then we're going to jump right into questions from listeners. Does that sound good?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (05:48):
Absolutely.
Mel Robbins (05:49):
Awesome.
Mel Robbins (05:50):
So what is your definition of anxiety? Dr. Kennedy?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (05:55):
Anxiety for me is anxious thoughts, anxious thoughts of the mind. Anxiety is not painful itself. What's painful is the sense of alarm that's in our body, that's in our system, and it's the alarm that drives the thoughts because it's a very atypical way, especially as a doctor and a neuroscientist, to look at anxiety as more as a body issue like old unresolved wounding that just making sense to the mind because the mind is this compulsive meaning making makes sense machine. So when it feels the alarm in your body from the old wounds that haven't been resolved, it makes sense of it by worrying warnings what ifs, worst case scenarios, and that's what happens.
Mel Robbins (06:36):
Let me see if I can unpack that. So for you, you said anxious thoughts, anxiety is sort of those spiral of thoughts, but truly the genesis of it is unresolved trauma or issues from your childhood that is stored in the body
Dr. Russell Kennedy (06:55):
Typically. Yeah.
Mel Robbins (06:57):
Okay. Where does anxiety come from?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (07:00):
It comes from that alarm in your body because typically what happens with people with chronic anxiety, anxiety is normal anxiety over taxes, anxiety over your kids, that's normal. But if it's every day, if it's relentless, that kind of anxiety is abnormal. That typically comes from sort of unresolved stuff from your childhood
Dr. Russell Kennedy (07:22):
And it's stuck in your body and in your mind, to some extent, it's a bits a tough call because when you say anxiety is in your body, of course it's in your nervous system, which of course is your body and your mind. It's really finding that place of unresolved wounding that trauma that still sits in you because that's the engine of what's driving your thoughts. Rather than thinking of anxiety as a thought based process, it's actually a feeling based process that's only kind of reflected by the mind, but we assume that it's the mind because we're so fixated on the mind in our society. So it's really a body-based issue, but we focus on the mind and we try and fix it through the mind. And that's why people are in therapy for 30 years and they're not getting a lot better.
Mel Robbins (08:08):
That was so succinct what you just said, because what really went funk for me was when you said anxiety is a feeling issue, but our mind tries to make sense of what we're feeling in our bodies, and we have had this approach forever in the world that we try to change or fix the thoughts in our mind with our mind and what you're saying, which to me is revolutionary is no, no, no, no, no. Let's forget the mind for a minute and let's drop into the body and let's talk about the feelings that are triggering the spiral of thoughts. Is that a good summary?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (08:53):
That's a great summary.
Mel Robbins (08:54):
I've the better part of my lifetime living with all of this unrest me too and unease and on edgeness in my body, and I have tried for decades to make sense of it, to calm it, to soothe it, to heal it through my mind. And it is a revelation to realize, whoa, it really starts with thinking about the body. And so I want to ask you one more question and then we're going to kind of jump into the questions for the listeners, which will allow us to go really deep into this topic. If it's begins, which I agree with you, with this sort of stored experience in your nervous system, this stored experience and these feelings that get triggered in you. How do you know if what you're experiencing in your life right now is anxiety versus just day-to-day stress versus overwhelm?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (09:51):
I think if it's chronic, if you're looking at your life,
Dr. Russell Kennedy (09:56):
If you wake up in the morning and you're going, oh my God, I've got this, this, this, and this, which you've talked about before on the podcast, waking up with this sense of dread, that's a sign that things aren't quite right. And anxiety is one of those things. I get messages from people all the time that say, I didn't actually know I had anxiety until I read your book. It's like, well, I don't know if I'm doing any favors as far as that kind of stuff goes. But really though, I get that all the time because I think that we live in our minds, we live in our bodies, this just becomes normal. And unless it rises above this kind of critical mass where we're uncomfortable almost all the time, then we think, well, there's something going on.
(10:37):
And now with Instagram with all this stuff, everything's trauma. Now. Everything's trauma. And I watched your episode about healing childhood trauma, and I really want to dive into that as well because it's so important because the quick version is you probably had trauma as a child that was unresolvable for you as a child. Now what happens is when we get trauma as children, we blame ourselves. There's a great saying that says If you abuse, neglect or abandon a child, the child doesn't stop loving the parent. They stop loving themselves. And then that starts the split. And then we start judging, abandoning, blaming and shaming ourselves from that point forward. And that split causes this sense of
Dr. Russell Kennedy (11:19):
alarm that gets lodged in our body. And then because we don't want to feel that alarm in our body, we go up into our heads, which is the only place that a child can go because they, they're pretty powerless in their environment and they overthink. And that's a temporary escape. And then we train ourselves as children to overthink because that's the only safe places in our minds. And then when we get older, you go through a couple divorces, you get in a car accident, whatever, that stuff tends to come right back up again. So that's really the basis of where this global anxiety comes from in people is it's this unresolved trauma and your parents love you and you've got a supportive family and you're attuned and connected and securely attached. You can go through traumas like we all do in childhood, and they won't impact your nervous system to create this permanent change. Or I don't like using the word permanent because it makes it feel like it's hopeless, but it creates a permanent change in your nervous system. And trauma is anything that changes your nervous system, that stucks your nervous system in a pattern that doesn't allow you to get out of that trauma. And then we just get into this loop where there's alarm in our body, we make sense of it by making horrible thoughts in our mind, warnings what ifs, worst case scenarios, which of course makes the alarm of the body worse, which of course makes the thoughts worse. And we get caught in this alarm anxiety cycle, and unless we see it, we can't get out of it.
Mel Robbins (12:39):
Wow. One of the things that I love about you, Dr. Kennedy, is you are the loudest voice out there telling people you can heal anxiety, that you're not stuck feeling this way. You don't have to live your life feeling triggered or out of control or overthinking or on edge. And for somebody that is really struggling with anxiety, that seems impossible. In fact, our first question comes from a woman named Carrie, and it is a question from a woman who is extremely successful, and I'm sure she's hiding her anxiety, but it's gotten to the point where she just can't handle it anymore. So let's take a listen to Carrie.
Carrie (13:22):
Hey Mel. I'm a 53-year-old woman, creative leader with to the outside world, at least a so-called great career I guess you'd say, but with crippling anxiety and exhausting overthinking, traveling, accompanied by panic attacks. What the heck? I've had this issue for 30 years and all the guided meditations and mindfulness training pods in the world aren't helping. So what steps can I take to stop this, to heal and find a new piece before I chuck in a towel and just barricade myself in at home? Thanks for everything. Bye.
Mel Robbins (14:05):
I really relate to Carrie because I know that I have been somebody with what they call high functioning anxiety for most of my life, that anxiety a lot of times like lights, a fire underneath me, and that worried energy, that nervous energy, that mind that is constantly thinking 15 steps ahead has helped me be very innovative and creative and to take risks in business. But it's torturous it. You're just always nervous about something and on edge.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (14:42):
Here's the thing, and this is true with you too, is that the anxiety drives you to succeed. A lot of people with anxiety are really, so we get very, very good at thinking. We go into our heads, we've been doing it since we've been five years old, so of course it's like going to the thinking gym every day. So we get very good at thinking, we get very good at accomplishing things. The problem is that underlying trauma, I could hear in her voice for sure is driving her too much. And you went through this too. You realize, look, this isn't sustainable going this way. So the solution for her would be to find that little version of herself and see her love her, protect her, show her that she's connected. And what we do is we find where the alarm is in your body. So with her, I would say when you get into these anxious phases that I call alarm and that you brilliantly call alarm all the time, I watched your one on healing childhood trauma, and you only use the term anxiety once or twice, which I just loved.
(15:49):
But getting into the alarm in her body, which basically that alarm is a remnant of your younger self, the part of our brain, the amygdala that encodes this has no sense of time, so that when we encode these traumatic memories, when we recall them, it doesn't feel like they're coming from the past. It feels like they're happening now. So she probably has an unresolved trauma of some kind or traumas that are coming up in her body and temporarily guided meditations, breathing, all that stuff will help you. But the key out of this, and I hope everybody gets this today, if you have chronic anxiety, you have a child in you that is suffering, that is struggling, and all the guided meditations, all the breath work, all the yoga isn't going to heal that. What heals that is actually going in, finding that child, finding their eyes in a picture, or even in your mind's eye, looking at them, showing them that they are seen, heard, loved, and protected in a way now that they didn't get back then. And that's how we heal the root cause of this as opposed to just helping people cope. Because basically, most of the things that are out there today help you cope. And there's nothing wrong with coping, it's just to heal. We have to solve this at the root cause, which is this typically this unresolved wounding, typically, again, from childhood that's still in you, that's still activated. And until that child feels seen, heard, loved, and protected, you're always going to be anxious.
Mel Robbins (17:24):
So Dr. Kennedy, thank you for going into so much depth just out of the gate here. And I want to hit the pause button so we can hear a word from our sponsors and so that everybody can just take a breath and digest what we just talked about. Maybe you want to find a photo of your younger self while we're listening to our sponsors. But when we come back, we're going to dig even deeper into Carrie's question. So don't go anywhere. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and this is the Anxiety toolkit on the Mel Robbins podcast. So all of a sudden this visual came to mind and I want to see if we can maybe tease this out into some specific steps that somebody might be able to take even on their own today with the support of your expertise. Because you described in my mind the three layers that somebody has to go through to address this sort of chronic on edgeness, this stress, this panic attacks that carrie's talking about.
(18:32):
And the first level is self-awareness, right? So there may be a large number of people that are listening to this from around the world at this point. We're reaching 200 countries, seven, 17 million people in five months, Dr. Kennedy. And there's a lot of people that are thinking for the first time, I wonder if I have anxiety. And so listening to podcasts, reading books, watching videos, or watching this show on YouTube and having the self-awareness that maybe this is something called anxiety that you're dealing with. And what are some of the surprising signs, Dr. Kennedy, that people should be looking for that they may not know could actually be anxiety?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (19:24):
Well, one of the big ones that people don't really realize is constantly looking for external validation, constantly looking for love and attention outside of yourself. And when you get it, it's amazing, but when you don't get it, you get into that loneliness space. And there's a study done, I can't remember how long ago, and I don't remember the exact, but basically it was they took women and they gave them an electric shock, not a big electric shock, and it was voluntary. And then they had three scenarios, one where the woman was alone, one where she was, her hand was held by a stranger and one where hand was held by her partner. Now, to shorten this up, basically the brain has to work really, really hard if you're lonely. So when she was alone, 12 places in her brain lit up. We don't have to go into orbital frontal cortex and all that kind of stuff, but 12 places in her brain when she was held hands with a stranger, eight places in her brain lit up when she was holding hands with her partner, four places.
(20:26):
So only four places needed to come online to reassure her. So it just shows that power of human connection. But if start, if we're constantly looking for validation outside of us, that is a sign of anxiety typically, or my book Anxiety Rx is about anxiety, but it's about childhood trauma. For me, it showed up as chronic anxiety. For some people it shows up as depression. Other people, it shows up as eating disorders, personality disorders, but all of it, it comes from some sort of unresolved childhood wounding and that it will make itself obvious for me, when I was a child, my brother had orthopedic issues, my dad was schizophrenic. A lot of people know about that, who watched my channel. So a lot of my mother's attention went to my brother and my dad. So I had this sense like, Hey, what about me? What about me?
(21:19):
So I have this drive to be seen, and that's why I'm on the Mel Robbins podcast. There's a drive in me that needs to be seen and validated, but there's also a part of me that was bullied in the school that hates crowds and hates attention. So for me, that's what causes. So you can have people that are highly accomplished and they're driven by their anxiety, but it's a treadmill. Eventually after a couple of divorces or something that happens in your life that you can't control, then it comes out and then it's unmanageable. So one of the things that I see with people is looking for, for love in all the wrong places, all these things, addictions. Addictions are another one of those things that the reason why I think people take drugs or alcohol or whatever is when they're in that acute phase in the brain and the GABA receptors are all lit up and you feel calm and peaceful, I think that's one of the times that people actually feel connected to themselves.
(22:21):
It's ironic, it's odd, but in general, anxiety. And here's one of those things that you're so great at, soundbites, anxiety occurs because you've blocked love for yourself. That's really what happens.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (22:34):
So one of the things that drugs and alcohol do is they take away some of those blocks. They make you feel connected to yourself.
Mel Robbins (22:43):
It's so true. I've never thought about it that way.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (22:45):
People with anxiety and addiction hold hands like they are so close together. They both come from childhood wounding and the alcohol or the drug or whatever allows people to feel connected to themselves. I just had a surgery three weeks ago and they were putting me under and they put the mask on my face, and as I went under, because anesthetics, general anesthetics are dissociative,
(23:10):
They separate from. So as I was going under, I'm saying, okay, I love you, rusty. I love you Rusty. I love you rusty. And rusty is my name for my 12-year-old self that suffered at the hands of his dad who wasn't abusive or violent, but just crazy. And so I just kept saying, I love you Rusty. I love you rusty. I love you rusty. And it was just a nice way to kind of go under. And I think that's what ketamine and that's these psychedelics. I think it's just a way of getting connected to yourself. How you heal is you become connected to yourself. It doesn't come from outside of you, but we have to have that love from outside of us as well, of course. And as you talk about the biggest relationship is the relationship you have to yourself and as cliche and woo and all that stuff as it sounds.
(23:53):
And as a neuroscientist and a medical doctor, I sometimes want to have a seizure when I talk about this because it's just so non-scientific. Love and healing is non-scientific. We can't reduce it down to something that we can reproduce in a science lab, and that's what heals us. So science will help us cope, but I haven't seen really science help us heal. I'm going to give one more thing. And out of all the incredible advancements we've made in neuroscience in the last 15 years, and they have been amazing, very few of those advancements have actually led to different clinical outcomes when you're sitting with a patient. So that's one of the things that I am kind of disappointed about in science a little bit. But science is very helpful at helping us cope. Physiological side, there's a bunch of things that really help us cope, but to heal, it's an inside job. You really have to learn how to connect with that younger wounded part of you. And if you don't, you'll always have alarm. You'll always be anxious.
Mel Robbins (24:51):
I'd say the one exception is the exciting research in the area of all these psychedelics. But I think you just pointed out the reason why this is the biggest breakthrough, because when you have a guided therapeutic experience with a ketamine or an MDMA or psilocybin, you have the ability to reconnect and join in with yourself.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (25:18):
Absolutely.
Mel Robbins (25:19):
And repair what you say is the original cause of anxiety, which is a situation in childhood where you felt separate from the caregivers whose only job was to make you feel safe and loved and looked after and cared for. And so I want to go back to, I have this vision of there are these three phases as I'm listening to you speak. There is the phase of self-awareness and awakening and this kind of wake up moment where you're like, holy cow, maybe the overthinking and the obsessiveness with achievement, maybe feeling on edge all the time. Maybe this isn't the way I'm meant to feel. Maybe this is anxiety. So there's this first phase of self-awareness and the wake up moment. And then there's the second layer going a little bit deeper where you make an attempt to cope, whether that's through therapy or it is through breath work or you mention meditation or exercise, the bazillion different things that you and I have both done for decades
(26:36):
In order to cope with our anxiety, which for me meant trying to turn it down A, and then there's a third and deeper phase, which is what you are teaching everybody. And that third phase is healing it and going deep and getting to the root cause, which you have so beautifully taught us is separation and feeling separate from others and feeling separate from yourself. And when you feel separate, you don't experience love, you don't experience safety. And so what I want to know, Dr. Kennedy, going back to Carrie's question is, is there a simple series of steps that anybody who's listening today that's like, holy cow, I have anxiety or I'm tired of coping and talking about anxiety. I want to go deeper and start the work of healing it. You mentioned inner child, should we go back and get a photo of ourselves from when we were eight years old? Give me three things to do today to start that work, to go and reconnect with the part of ourselves that has been separate since childhood.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (27:54):
There's a lot of woo woo inner child stuff. Like people get really fired up by this concept of inner child. And I find the people that get the most fired up by the inner child, oh, that's a bunch of crap or whatever, are the ones that have the most childhood wounding. They don't want to go back there.
Mel Robbins (28:09):
That's right. I do have to admit, anytime anybody uses those two words, inner child, I'm like, Ugh, eye roll totally sounds so stupid.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (28:19):
Same.
Mel Robbins (28:20):
But as a neuroscientist and a medical doctor who specializes in this, what the fuck are you talking about when you say inner child?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (28:27):
Yeah, it's the remnant. It's the science people. It's the amygdala based remnant of the trauma. So for you, for your car accident when you rolled on the ski trip, there is your amygdala coupled the sound of crunching snow with trauma. So now whenever you go to the mailbox and you hear crunching snow, your amygdala coupled that sound with the trauma. So your body will feel exactly now when you're on your way out to the mailbox as you did back then.
Mel Robbins (29:03):
I want to share one other example for those of you who haven't heard the first episode that we did with Dr. Kennedy. And there's a second coupling that happened for me, which is I was molested by an older kid during a sleepover in the fourth grade. And when I woke up the next morning, I felt in every cell of my body that something was very wrong. And what happened is the trauma, and now you're saying inner child and the base of the amygdala coupled the experience of waking up after being a victim and the feeling that something's wrong with mourning. And ever since I've been in fourth grade, I wake up every morning and the morning itself triggers me to feel exactly the same way as a 50-year-old woman that I did when I was in the fourth grade and had woke up that morning. That's what you're saying, right?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (30:17):
Yeah. And about that, when you came downstairs and your mom was making pancakes and she said, how did you sleep, honey? And you saw the other kid, if you had a chance at that point, if there was a magic wand where you went over to your mother and said, Hey, I've got to talk to you about something, and you went to a different room and then you talked about what happened and she soothed you, it's not your fault she rubbed your back, that probably would've mitigated this whole thing because if we have this love and attention, this bubble that I call it from our parents and caregivers, we are protected. So everyone has trauma in childhood. There's no way of avoiding, but there's a difference between drama and trauma. Trauma is when the event actually changes your nervous system. So it gets stuck in the on position. It's kind of like if you're on a railroad and the old times switch switches they used to have on the railroad.
Mel Robbins (31:14):
Yeah,
Dr. Russell Kennedy (31:15):
Yeah, of course. So normally if you go along, you've got good enough parents, you have a reasonable childhood, you go along with the track, the track is straight and you just mature. Now if you get trauma in there, it's like one of those railway switches that switches you off track. So it takes you into this mode of protection as opposed to this mode of growth. So if you keep going on the track, you're in a growth mode, you feel safe, as Einstein said, is the world a safe place? You feel safe. But when we have this trauma and it's not resolved, that the time that's switch gets thrown and our nervous system changes again, I don't like using the word permanently because we can move it back, but the amygdala never forgets. There's always a remnant of that. So what we have to do is go back, find that child at that age younger self inner child.
(32:06):
I usually use younger self because it doesn't turn people off so much, but find your younger self, give them the love and support now that they needed back then because again, the amygdala has no sense of time. So we can use that fact that the amygdala has no sense of time to connect with that for grade four and soothe her, give her what she needed back then, and that starts to heal the root cause. So then we can pull the switch back. But the older we get, and the more that thing gets ingrained, the harder that switch is rusted into on position. So every time the train goes down that track and we experience something like that, we wake up, it goes off that track, it goes into that protection mode rather than the growth mode of going straight ahead. So if we go back, we find the switch, we heal that younger version of ourselves.
(32:56):
And again, I know how flaky this sounds, and as a neuroscientist, it's really difficult for me to talk about the younger self inner child, but I know after suffering from 30 plus years of crippling anxiety in myself, this was the only thing that allowed me to heal was to go back. I'm a yoga teacher. I mean I meditation, I've done all this stuff, I've done it all, and nothing really helped. And like you, I have morning anxiety or alarm. It wakes me up. I feel it. And then just the big thing about having the alarm is don't add thoughts to it. Allow the alarm to be there. Go into sensation. Use your breath. Use the grounding that you're around. If you're lying in your bed, feel the grounding, feel the support, feel your body even if it's uncomfortable. And then go back and find that younger version of yourself.
(33:48):
So you're asking for sort of a stepwise thing. So basically when people get anxious, they go into their heads and they start overthinking. And that's a trap because you'll never get out of that. You'll never get out of that overthinking. The mind will tell you, the mind says, Hey, we have the answer with more thinking. And it's like, well, I thought anxiety was a problem of overthinking. It's like, no, no, it's not. It's not. Just keep thinking
Dr. Russell Kennedy (34:09):
And that doesn't work. So what you have to do is go into your body. Now the problem is your body feels alarmed. So why am I going to go down into my body when it feels alarmed? And that's why we have things like internal family systems therapy, somatic experiencing psychedelics to some extent to make you feel safe in your body again, because once you feel safe in your body again, then you have the platform.
(34:31):
So when you're feeling anxious or as I like to say, alarmed, go, where am my body? Do I feel this? Where is it for me? It's in my solar plexus. I talk about that in the book, but find where the alarm is in your system. And some people, it's in their throat, some people it's across their shoulders. But see if you can put your hand over it and just sort of make a mental connection with that alarm and see if you don't feel better almost instantly. Now it's not going to take it away, but there is a sense when I first started doing this, it's like, Hey, this is the first time in 30 years that I'm actually on the right track. When you feel anxious, don't go into your head. Go into the sensation of your body, even if it hurts, find that alarm.
(35:15):
Find where it is. I drill down with people. It's like, does it have a shape? Does it have a color? Does it have a temperature? I really drill down in there because there's a part of our brain called the insulin, the insular cortex that's kind of like the mediator between the thinking brain and the feeling body. And that insula, I think will be in the next few years really important in changing this old pattern so that when we feel it in our body, we can go back, feel the exact same way that we did back at the time you with crunching snow and me in the mornings as well, and go, okay, there is a different path. I can actually flip the railway switch back over to the growth part and get out of protection. So it's really about connecting with that feeling of alarm in your body because that feeling of alarm in your body is your younger self.
Mel Robbins (36:10):
This feels like a good place to stop for a second, hear a word from our sponsors, and then when we come back, Dr. Kennedy, I want to go back to Carrie's question and talk about specific tools that you can use to start to address this. Now that we know what we're dealing with, we'll be right back.
Carrie (36:28):
Hey, Mel, I'm a 53-year-old woman, creative leader with to the outside world, at least a so-called great career I guess you'd say, but with crippling anxiety and exhausting overthinking, traveling, accompanied by panic attacks. What the heck? I've had this issue for 30 years and all the guided meditations and mindfulness training pods in the world aren't helping. What steps can I take to stop this, to heal and find a new piece before I chuck in a towel and just barricade myself in at home? Thanks for everything.
Mel Robbins (37:11):
Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and that was a listener of the Mel Robbins podcast named Carrie. Today we are talking anxiety toolkit. How do you heal from it? We're here with the world renowned Dr. Russell Kennedy, and we've been talking about how all anxiety begins in childhood, which is why if you're ever going to heal it, you're going to have to go back to those moments in your past and in your childhood that were painful when you felt unsafe or separate. And I promise that we would take Carrie's question and now dive into tools.
Mel Robbins (37:47):
What are specific tools that we can use Dr. Kennedy to truly start to heal this? Do you print out a photo of yourself when you were little and you make that your screen saver, which it feels like we should. How do you start? Oh my gosh,
Dr. Russell Kennedy (38:09):
That's me at three,
Mel Robbins (38:10):
Rusty.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (38:11):
Yep, that's rusty.
Mel Robbins (38:14):
So for those of you who are listening to this and not watching this podcast on YouTube, Dr. Kennedy just held up the homepage of his phone and there was a photo of him that's three years old. It just made my heart go,
Dr. Russell Kennedy (38:30):
Oh yeah, he's pretty cute.
Mel Robbins (38:32):
So what does it do if you do that for,
Dr. Russell Kennedy (38:36):
Well, that's the start, right? Because there's so much resistance to going back to visiting. That's the big thing because the child in us needs this love and support so much that it creates all this alarm to get our attention, and yet as adults, we push the alarm away. So it's kind of like, I think I might've mentioned this in the last podcast that we did, is that if a child came up to you with their hands up in a grocery store, they'd lost their parents, of course you would soothe them. But we have this alarm that goes off in our system, which is essentially the younger version of us going, Hey, pick me up, pick me up. I need some attention, I need some love. And instead we go to the internet and zombie scroll Instagram or go into our addictions or whatever, and we push that child away.
(39:20):
So the child just gets louder. The alarm just gets louder and louder and louder, but there is a resistance to going back. So the adult doesn't want to go back and visit the child because the child holds all their pain and the child has a real mistrust of us as adults because we've been ignoring their alarm for 30 years. So it is really important that we start slowly and you make that connection. So when you say get a picture, that can be really triggering for people. So sometimes I just say in your mind's eye, picture yourself at any age as a child that you want, picture what you're wearing, picture yourself maybe at a happy time in your life for you it was like skiing or something like that. Picture yourself in this happy place. And that way you start making that connection because just to go in and you're going to blow your brains out. If you go back in and you go right to the child, go right to the trauma. So go to a place that you felt good, and I use this a lot when I work with people, is what was the best time in your life? What was the best time in your life, Mel?
Mel Robbins (40:27):
I just immediately had this image of being on the front yard of our house in Michigan and there were all kinds of kids around, and it was a beautiful summer night, and it was kind of that time of night where it's not quite dark, but it's not quite daytime. It's that beautiful. It's my favorite time at night dusk when the twinkly stars first start to come out. And it's kind of confusing because the sun's up, but you see the moon and you know that the sun's about to set, and we are playing games like we're playing base and statue and all kinds of just tag and just that moment right there with my brother and a bunch of other kids in the neighborhood running around being kids in the front yard of her house in Michigan where I grew up.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (41:21):
Okay, so close your eyes and really get into that image like see your brother, see your house, relax your shoulders, relax your jaw, nice breath in and out. Just really see if you can drink in the emotion of that and where you feel in your body. Where do you feel that in your body?
Mel Robbins (41:44):
Oh, I kind of feel it from my cheeks all the way to my heart. It's like this sort of definitely for sure the heart.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (41:56):
So this is something I would add to high fiving yourself in the mirror is go back to the best time in your life when you're high fiving yourself in the mirror because then we're getting your insulin involved. We're getting your brain involved in this whole feeling state, because the feeling state is what changes us. We can change our thoughts at a dime, but the feeling state is what changes our nervous system.
(42:17):
So when you do the high five habit, when you're high, fiving yourself in the mirror, recall the best time in your life, and just try and see if you can really get a felt sense of that. Now, what I will do with people who have suffered trauma is I will take them once I have them grounded and once they trust me and stuff, I will take them into their trauma and then I will take them into the best time in their life. So with you, I might do, and we're shortening this considerably for the podcast, but for you I might say, okay, if you feel safe enough that we talk about that kid waking up with that kid on top of you and getting into that feeling now, where do you feel that in your body? And is this okay Mel
Mel Robbins (42:54):
To go into this? Oh, right in the gut?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (42:55):
Oh yeah,
Mel Robbins (42:56):
Absolutely. Right in the gut. I immediately went from the heart being full to right in the gut and the ankles weird, the ankles.
Dr. Russell Kennedy (43:05):
So what I would do is I would go back and go, okay, now go back to that feeling of dusk. You can see your house, you're playing playing statue. It's fun. You feel calm, peaceful, happy. Now let's go into your gut. Let's go into that sensation again of waking up with that kid on top of you, if it's okay to stay there for a second and then lovingly go back up into that place in your chest, in your throat where you felt really peaceful and happy playing with your brother.
Mel Robbins (43:44):
It's amazing. I feel the gut pulling me down. It's easy to drop into the gut and the bad experience, it's hard to pull yourself from that back up into this experience that I can feel that's positive. Is that normal?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (44:04):
That's absolutely normal. We're wired that way, Mel. We're wired to pay more attention to fearful situations than pleasurable ones because in our evolution, that's basically what kept us alive. So in healing this, we have to heal this at a feeling level. We can talk about that kid on top of you for the rest of your life without really changing it too much. You might get a better understanding of it cognitively. But to really change that sensation, we have to use another sensation because that's the language of trauma is sensation. It's the body. So we use that good feeling that you have, and then we go back and forth, we oscillate between back and forth, and it starts weakening that power, that negative feeling in your body that you associate with being a victim, with being helpless. And here's the other thing about, I love when you say you were talking about play, because the way this comes is trauma activates both the sympathetic, the fight or flight and the parasympathetic the rest and adjust at the same time because we're so confused, we don't know. Because once you get up to a certain point in sympathetic activity, your body can't handle it anymore, so it shuts down. So we go into parasympathetic, we don't go into pleasant parasympathetic, but we go into shut down parasympathetic,
(45:26):
And then it goes back and forth and back and forth. And a lot of us with anxiety, that's what happens during the day. We go into this place where our body just gets exhausted so we feel okay, we don't feel that tremendous anxiety anymore. And then once we get rested in the parasympathetic, then the sympathetic comes back online and we go right back into anxiety again. So the thing about play and play is so important for healing is it's another thing that activates both the parasympathetic and the sympathetic activity at the same time. So trauma activates co activation, they call it. So trauma activates parasympathetic and sympathetic simultaneously. So does play, but play allows you to start metabolizing. So when you're inactivation, when you're parasympathetic and your sympathetic is active at the same time, it's like having your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time. When you're in play, you start realizing, Hey, you know what? This sensation is actually okay. It doesn't have to fire me right into the trauma. So that's why play. One of the reasons why play is so important in healing trauma is because we get that felt sense of activation of both the parasympathetic and the sympathetic at the same time in a safe place because play is safe and it's fun.
Mel Robbins (46:40):
Okay, so going back to Carrie and number one, it was very clear to you as an expert and a medical doctor and a neuroscientist that she's dealing with stored trauma. And step one is kind of recognizing that. And then the next thing she needs to do is to recognize that thinking keeps you in the coping,
(47:03):
And that this is really going to be about dropping into your body and learning how to reconnect and heal in your body. And one of the things that you have recommended is that we think about this as younger self-work and that you can go back to positive times and feel that good sensation that if you're ready for it, printing out a photo of yourself or putting it on your phone so that you are reconnecting with that version of you where you started to feel separate or unsafe or scared. And that is a way to start this process. Is there anything else that you would recommend that Carrie think about?
Dr. Russell Kennedy (47:52):
Yeah, you have to do it slowly. You have to start, because the thing is, when we go into our alarm, we don't want to go in there. It feels painful to go in there. So it's do it slowly. And if you have a real significant trauma, emotional, physical, sexual abuse, you probably need a therapist and maybe a somatic therapist to kind of help you get into this place because it's not for amateurs in a way. If you have big trauma, if you have trauma that's manageable, absolutely, you can work it on your own. But if you have big T trauma, doing this on your own can retraumatize. So you need someone else there. You need someone there who you wish was there at the time of the trauma. And that person is you, that person is you. It's like you can go back, we can use our amygdala, we can use that sense that we are not locked in time. We can go back and find that what I have on my phone. I can look at his eyes, I can imagine his eyes too. And there's a great song by Peter Gabriel that I listen, we're getting into Dr. Kennedy's world a little bit. Every morning I do this meditation that I make for myself. And then on top of that, I end it all by listening to Peter Gabriel's song In Your Eyes.
(49:09):
So he has two versions. One's a recorded, which is about five minutes, and one's a live version. And he talks about in your eyes, and it's about in your eyes as a child, the light, the peace, I am complete. I see the vision of a thousand doors. I see my divinity, I see my connection with myself, and I look at that little picture of me that's here on my phone while I listen to that song. And the lyrics of that song are so powerful. If you imagine all my instincts, they return, all your instincts return when you connect with that version of yourself that was heard and in pain, that's what happens. And that's how you heal from anxiety and alarm. We could cope all we want, but if you want to heal, you have to find that child in you and you have to show them that they're seen hurdle up and protected. And one of the ways that I do that every day is I start my day with that song looking at him, and I use different pictures of me, but that's the main one on my phone. And it's right there already.
Mel Robbins (50:20):
Wow. Let's go to another question. We get a lot of questions about anxiety and sleep. In fact, the next listener is somebody named Jason. And his anxiety is starting to creep up at night, and it's not only impacting his ability to fall asleep, but then he wakes up in the middle of the night and his mind is racing and he can't go back to sleep. And so let's listen to this question and then talk about tools.
Jason (50:45):
Hey Mel, this is Jason. I always get anxious before I go to bed and then wake up in the middle of the night worrying about things. How do I stop myself from doing that? Thank you.
Mel Robbins (50:56):
I know I can relate to that, and I bet you can relate to Jason's question too. And Dr. Kennedy, here's what I want to do. I'm looking at the time. I want to give the remaining four questions the service that they deserve. And we covered so much about the younger self-work, and there's already so many takeaways that Dr. Kennedy, we're going to turn this into two episodes. And I want you listening to take everything that you've learned today. And there's a lot you have learned about the three phases, right? You've learned about self-awareness, you've learned that coping is important, but that's where a lot of us get stuck. And we've started to scratch the surface on what it means to heal. And if you felt inspired by the meditation that Dr. Kennedy walked me through where he took me back to remembering a time in my life that was really amazing, awesome memory where I was playing, I want you to spend some time in the next day or two bringing yourself back to that place.
(51:59):
If you feel inspired, like I feel inspired, I feel very inspired to print out a photo of myself in the fourth grade and put it on the home screen of my phone, pin it up in my office, because I think it's going to shift the way that I relate to that alarm inside of me. Because what I've learned today is that alarm is an anxiety. That alarm is the fourth grade. Mel, reaching her hands up and saying, please, somebody help me. Please reassure me. Please tell me I'm going to be okay. That's all. Please join in with me. Don't let me feel alone right now. Reassure me that's all that it is. And so I think having that physical photo is really, really, really going to help Dr. Kennedy hold that thought. And then we're going to continue this. It's going to be part two of this, and we're going to answer four more questions from listeners.
(52:58):
We're going to keep on going, and I promise you part two will be released in a couple days. So hit the subscribe button. That way you don't have to think about it. You don't have to remember this because part of managing everything in your head we're learning is the reason why we're all anxious and stressed out and overwhelmed and overthinking. So take the thinking out of it. This is a doing podcast. Hit subscribe. This next part of the conversation will be there waiting for you. The second it drops, like good friend, ready to give you a big old hug. And remember, I do this. I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to take these steps to heal, to find peace, to feel safe and confident and energized again. You deserve that. And that's why I'm here twice a week, every week, holding your hand. You got this? Alright, Dr. Kennedy and I will be back right here waiting for you in your feed in a couple days. Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician for professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
(54:42):
Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, bye. God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.
Guests Appearing in this Episode
Dr. Russell Kennedy, MD
Dr. Russell Kennedy is a physician and neuroscientist specializing in anxiety treatment, blending science and mindfulness to help people heal.
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Book: Anxiety Rx
For over thirty years, I searched for relief from anxiety and saw over fifty practitioners ranging from Indian shamanic energy healers to highly accomplished psychiatrists. (I was lucky I was a doctor so I could afford to be a patient.) Have you, too, gone to extraordinary lengths to resolve your chronic compulsion to worry and are still suffering? Read on.
What makes this book different is a relentless focus on calming anxiety at its true source, which I will share with you in detail. That source is in a place most doctors and psychologists fail to explore, and that oversight is why the positive effects of most anxiety therapies tend to wear off over time.
What is in this book has changed my life very much for the better, and I know it will do the same for you.
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Podcast: Anxiety Rx
I am an anxious doctor. Or at least I WAS an anxious doctor. After literally decades of suffering from intractable anxiety, and seeing over 50 different types of healers I found my way to heal my anxiety through very unconventional (for a medical doctor at least) means.
In 2013 I was so anxious I considered suicide and a friend suggested I try LSD, and although that scared the crap out of me it showed me the path to healing. You don’t have to do LSD to heal, I took it for you! I’m a medical doctor, neuroscientist and intuitive. (I know, common combination!)
I found my way out and it is counterintuitive and very non conventional (but not scary!).
I will show you the way out too, you just have to listen to me, dammit!
Resources
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- Scientific American: How parents’ trauma leaves biological traces in children.
- World Psychiatry: the long-term costs of traumatic stress.
- Frontiers: Childhood trauma and its link to chronic illness in adulthood.
- American Psychiatric Association: What is post-traumatic stress disorder?
- What is somatic experiencing therapy and how can it help with anxiety?
- This is EMDR therapy and how it can help if you’ve experienced trauma.
- And this is focusing-oriented experiential psychotherapy.
- Black Female Therapists: It is possible to heal from your trauma.
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