Episode: 75
Harvard Professor Says THIS Is the Secret to Success (It’s Not What You Think)
with Dr. Luana Marques, PhD
Learn why “just do it” isn’t enough—and discover practical exercises to overcome anxiety, achieve your goals, and take control of your future.
Dr. Luana Marques, the world’s leading expert on the topic of fear and anxiety, shares her proven 3-step method to break free from fear and create a more confident, meaningful life.
Backed by cutting-edge research, this episode will change how you think about success, influence, mindset, and even anxiety and procrastination.
Listen on:
If you don't try, you don't know.
Dr. Luana Marques, PhD
Featured Clips
Transcript
Mel Robbins (00:00:03):
I have my jaw on the floor. I don't think anybody has really shown this spotlight on the topic of avoidance and how it's everywhere in our lives and avoiding is the main thing we do.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:00:23):
You're right. And if what we do is walk away from the things that are meaningful, if what we do is avoidance, then we are rubbing ourselves from our best lives. Holy cow.
Mel Robbins (00:00:35):
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited for today's conversation because I know I'm going to get so much out of this selfishly, I mean, you're going to get a lot out of it too, but this is such a killer topic. It's something we all do and we don't talk about it ever. So I've invited the world's leading expert on the topic of avoidance. That's right, avoidance. Have you even thought about that? I bet you haven't. I certainly hadn't. But when I read Dr. Luana Marquez's book, bold Moves, when I started to dig into the research around this habit that you and I have of avoiding stuff, holy guacamole, this was everywhere in my life. It is so sneaky how avoidance creeps in. And next thing you know, you're avoiding responding to an email because it's confronting or you're avoiding dealing with your bills, or you're avoiding having that hard conversation, or maybe you're avoiding something really big like that breakup or the talk or going to get the diagnosis.
(00:01:44):
And what Dr. Marquez is here to say is she's here to not only reveal how much you and I do this, but to tell you something that I think is really liberating. That the problem that you and I have is not fear, self-doubt or anxiety. The problem is that when we feel those things we avoid
Mel Robbins (00:02:04):
And avoiding is robbing you and people that you care about of all of the magic that you are capable of experiencing in your life. Now, Dr. Luana, she has got a remarkable story of how she went from being poverty stricken in Brazil to becoming a professor of psychiatry at Harvard. She has been working with patients and on the clinical staff at Mass General, the number one ranked health institution in the world for over a decade, and her work centers around avoidance. And today she is bringing her world-class training to you. She has changed how I think she has highlighted an issue that I didn't even realize that I had. And the same thing is going to happen for you. I promise you this is going to be fascinating. So Luana, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Thank you, Mel. I'm so excited to be here with you today.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:02:59):
I can't even tell you how excited I am.
Mel Robbins (00:03:01):
Well, it's an honor to talk to you. Your work centers around one skill that everybody on the planet needs to learn how to spot and master. What is it?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:03:18):
So my work really is about identifying avoidance and overcoming avoidance. That is it. Why do we need to do that? Because avoidance is rubbing us for our best life. It's keeping us prisoners of our own thinking and our own behavior, and that keeps us in our own mental jail.
Mel Robbins (00:03:35):
I know that you are a specialist in CBT therapy. We're going to get into that, but I want everybody to hear your background.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:03:43):
Now, it's interesting. People come to me and they want me to get rid of their fever. They say, no, Dr. Luana, get rid of my anxiety. But the problem is really not in anxiety, is what we do when we are anxious. And what we do is we avoid, and lemme tell you this, I learned this first when I was 15 and I moved in with my grandmother. So I lived in little city BU that is in Brazil. And I moved into and I just became terrified of people. My brain just screamed that people were not going to like me. They think I'm different. They come from a small town that I'm not enough. And so my grandmother noticed this. She's like, why don't you bring friends over? And I'd be like, oh, no, no, I just have to study. I need to really study. And I started to just avoid people.
(00:04:26):
Anything related to people, I didn't make friends. I started to feel lonely. I was really anxious and my brain just was failing me. My grandmother, this woman is incredible, right? She has no college training. She doesn't know. At that point, CBT was nothing. Cognitive behavioral therapy wasn't really in Brazil specifically, didn't exist. One day said to me, Luana, let's go to the mall. I want to to eat Chinese food. Now before I move into my grandmother. There were times in our lives that we didn't have food. And so this idea of having Chinese food in a big town with my grandmother was so exciting. I get this little tree, I still remember this. My hands are so excited. This Chinese, I could smell the Chinese food. And she says to me, do you see that gentleman there? The elder gentleman? Let's go talk to him.
(00:05:11):
And my stomach, Mel dropped. I was like, no, I'm not talking to him. What are you talking about? Do you know that anxiety in your pit of your stomach just turning?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:05:20):
And I was like, I can't do this. I just can't do this. And she's like, we're going to talk to him. And so we sat and she did all the talking. And at that point, I didn't want the Chinese food anymore. Let's be clear, right? You have no appetite. I had no appetite. And she just kept doing this. And so we did it again and again, and I don't remember how many times, but I remember is that eventually I could talk to people and eventually people weren't scary anymore. And eventually I made friends. And I realized in graduate school, later, 20 years later, I realized that my grandmother was doing, it's called exposure therapy.
(00:05:56):
She realized I was avoiding, right? I was avoiding strangers and she forced me. That's how I felt. She would tell you that she just helped me approach, but she taught me to go against that avoidance to go towards the things that matter. And I'm telling you, if she didn't do that, I probably would have developed social phobia. I probably would be stuck in Brazil still. And so that's why I think avoidance is so powerful. It rubs us from the life that we want. And there's a ton of science behind it. But I learned it from my grandmother.
Mel Robbins (00:06:29):
I have my jaw on the floor. And the reason why is I don't think anybody has really shown this spotlight on the topic of avoidance and how it's everywhere in our lives, and we'll dig into the way that we all avoid. But I'm having this moment where I'm going, holy cow. I remember when Brene Brown first gave that Ted talk about vulnerability, and the whole world was like, what? Vulnerability is a superpower? The way you just explained avoidance as something that anxiety triggers or uncomfortable situations trigger, and that it's not these feelings of being anxious or scared or whatever. That's the problem. It's really what we do with it. And avoiding is the main thing we do. You're right.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:07:22):
Yeah. That's what we do. And we do it all the time. We rationalize our way into avoidance. I'm not going to ask for this raise because I just haven't worked hard enough
Dr. Luana Marques (00:07:32):
Or I am not going on this date because I just have to work harder at work. So it's not that I'm afraid of dating. No, no, no, no. It's just because if I work more, it's better and it's everywhere. It's robbing us from our lives and no one is talking about avoidance. I'm so glad that you caught onto that, Mel, because that's right. People are talking about the fevers. That's how I think about
Mel Robbins (00:07:52):
The fevers or fears.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:07:53):
Fevers. Fevers, fevers.
Mel Robbins (00:07:56):
What do you mean by fevers?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:07:57):
I think about anxiety, the stress as a fever. Okay, a high fever. Nobody likes to be anxious, me included, right? But that is not the real infection that we are facing. The infection, maintaining this fear is avoidance. And so we've been fighting anxiety and anxiety. Anxiety is biologically adaptive up to a point, right? It's what we do. And if what we do is walk away from the things that are meaningful, if what we do is avoidance, then we are rob ourselves from our best lives.
Mel Robbins (00:08:27):
Holy cow, you're absolutely right. I'm just going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Because there's somebody really close to us and our family who has had this massive uptick of anxiety happen. It has been so debilitating that this person has actually taken an entire week off of work. And I've been thinking that's actually the opposite of what you should do. Because if you are scared that you're going to have a panic attack at work, so you don't go to work, you're
Mel Robbins (00:09:02):
Making the anxiety bigger than you avoiding that thing or avoiding the situation that may happen makes the fear bigger.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:09:11):
That's exactly right. This is a great example of this person because the instinct and it's biologically driven, right, is to go away. So you start to worry about having a panic attack. I've worked with lots of people that have panic attack. And so your work, you have this horrible panic attack, and then your brain basically now is saying, what work can lead to panic attacks? So I'm going to stay home. But what you're doing is you're actually training your brain to be scared of work because now you linking work with a panic attack. And let's be honest, there was no link there. Correct. Panic attacks can come out of the blue, but then if you take a whole week out of work, then what are you doing? You are basically trying to take away anything that is potentially going to trigger anxiety. But the minute you step out of your house, you can't avoid for long. You're going to come out with a baseline anxiety so high that now you're almost guaranteeing that you're going to have a panic attack at work because you've been so afraid of it. You are inducing that fight, flight or freeze. The opposite of avoidance is approach. Now just do it the way Nike tells us to
Mel Robbins (00:10:13):
Do.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:10:14):
Doesn't work with anxiety. You can't tell somebody that's having panic attacks, just go work. But can you drive towards work so you're not going to work for a week? Okay, I'm with you.
Mel Robbins (00:10:23):
I've been in this boat too, where
(00:10:25):
The anxiety's been so debilitating that I've actually had anxiety so bad that it built and built and built and built up inside me when I was a second year law student that I convinced myself that there was no way that I could get on a plane and go to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I had landed a summer job and be able to live and work on my own. And I talk about avoidance. I called that law firm and told them that I had had a family emergency and I had to not come. This was two days before I was supposed to get on the plane. And so I have done this over and over and over and over again in my life, and I can't wait until you unpack all the forms of avoidance. But you're right, you do link up this act of, oh my gosh, if I just don't do it, then I'm going to be okay. But you actually make it worse.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:11:29):
Exactly. I wish I knew you then. Because see, there's two pieces of avoidance that we're talking about. They're beautiful. The first one is the perception of threat. You flow many times before in your life, but now your brain convinced you that that flight was a threat, a perceived threat. It's not a real danger, it's a perception. And so then the long-term cost of avoidance, the prices that you pay, think about this. You did not go in a summer internship that I bet you worked really hard, Mel, to get. I imagine that was a big ticket, and your brain just in that moment said, plane equals lion not going to do it. And then we have to find a way out. So you created an emergency and that's avoid. You've retreated like you avoided by retreating from something that was so meaningful.
Mel Robbins (00:12:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I have done that over and over and over again. I think that's why I feel so just sad for this person in our life who is doing this right now. Because I'm thinking to myself, this is going to create the opposite impact. So you said that your grandmother forcing you to just go to the mall and sit with that person, and slowly she was doing what you now practice, which is exposure therapy. You're an expert in CBT, and you just said that that experience of not being allowed to avoid something that you were scared of, but being shown that you could face it, that it changed the trajectory of your life.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:12:59):
A hundred percent.
Mel Robbins (00:12:59):
So what happened after that thing that your grandmother did?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:13:04):
So after my grandmother forced me, I started to think about life. There's two things she did for me. Actually, let me just add the second one. So one was pushed me to approach instead of avoid. The second one was at 16, she gave me the Alchemist by Paul Lia
Mel Robbins (00:13:21):
To read. Oh yeah,
Dr. Luana Marques (00:13:22):
I'm sure you've read Alchemist, right? And she did it because the narrative in my brain was growing up, poor single mother, my mom fighting so hard to get us somewhere and I should tell everybody, listen to us. My grandmother was not really my grandmother. She was the mother of my stepfather who started to dating my mom. And they came from a different socioeconomic status. She had a different view of the world. So she gave me the alchemist because one day I was sitting with her for coffee and I said, I really don't know what's going to be on my life. I want to eventually pursue a medical degree or I want to do this, but my mom is never going to be able to pay for college. So what happened? And the Alchemist shifted my perspective.
(00:14:03):
It was this idea. Well, there's a sentence in the book that says, whenever you want something, the whole universe conspires in having it. And my grandmother basically said to me, listen, you are responsible for the narrative in your brain. You can believe what your brain is telling you, or you can change the narrative in your brain. And I was like, well, she forced me to push. What would you want? I said, well, eventually I want to become an exchange student. Eventually I want to get to the us. She's like, you're responsible for creating that. Somehow Mel, those conversations, my grandmother would sit with me every day and have coffee and have those conversations. I started to believe that just maybe I could do it, that maybe I could by approaching and changing the topic.
(00:14:46):
And eventually I became an exchange student. I came to the us. I spoke with no English. It was disastrous in the first six months. And then I wanted to stay. My stepdad is like, you have to go back to Brazil. So I went to Brazil for a year and then eventually got my way back to the US and did undergraduate in college. And every step, I have to tell you, avoidance will knock on the door. So when I tell my story, people are like, oh, it's so incredible, so bold. No, I scared shitless A lot of the times. It's the bottom line. And I wanted to avoid, when I was at SUNY Buffalo, my mentor was really tough on me actually. And I wanted to apply to the Harvard internship at Mass General Hospital in Boston. And I went to said, state students don't get in. And I remember sitting in my office crying as I write this application letter thinking maybe I should just apply somewhere else. Maybe I'm not good enough.
Mel Robbins (00:15:34):
There's the narrative in your head again,
Dr. Luana Marques (00:15:36):
A hundred percent. And I remember that time I was like, you know what? If I don't apply, I remember my grandmother. If you don't try, you don't know. And so I applied. And so I shared this in the spirit of like, we can't get rid of anxiety. I know everybody wants to, but we can't. What we can get rid of is avoidance that we can get rid of.
Mel Robbins (00:15:57):
And then what happens in your life when you get rid of
Dr. Luana Marques (00:15:59):
Avoidance? I'm sitting here with Mel Robbins. That's what happens. Can you believe? No, I want you to know this. It means so much to me. It's just the 10-year-old. I have tears in my eyes. A 10-year-old me would not believe that. I'd say Hill Mel Robbins. I mean, you're such an icon. You inspire so many. You I've seen you fight a once in your life, maybe not with that vocabulary, but I've seen it as I listen to your books, as I see a podcast now, it's so successful. That's what happens when we don't let the narrative in our brain run our lives. You get to meet Mel Robbins and how cool is that?
Mel Robbins (00:16:36):
Well, and I get to meet you. How cool is that? And you went on to become an associate professor at Harvard. You didn't just get the internship program in psych at Mass General. You went on to become an associate professor, a published author, the founder and chair of an incredible association around anxiety. And you just getting started. In my opinion. Thank
Dr. Luana Marques (00:17:03):
You. It does feel that way. It's interesting. For the last 10 years, I spent all this time in mass general taking CBT out of the ivory tower in the streets.
Mel Robbins (00:17:11):
Okay, what does that
Dr. Luana Marques (00:17:11):
Mean? So I create a program that I work with community organizations when I train paraprofessionals, so people with no education on skills and not therapy on CBT, but digested as skills. For example, I worked with Roca in Boston who works with young men coming out of prison.
Mel Robbins (00:17:28):
Oh, fantastic. Okay. And
Dr. Luana Marques (00:17:29):
I've actually taken CBT and created a training program that we can get an entire organization to cool off and apply skills in every day. So these young men are not going to talk to therapists like me, but they're going to talk to their peers. And if their peers knows, the brain knows how to regulate it and can teach them skills. We actually had a story of a young man that didn't shoot somebody.
Mel Robbins (00:17:55):
Wow.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:17:55):
Decided not to shoot somebody because he basically paused and said, if I shoot somebody, he reframed it. He said, if I shoot this person, I'm back in jail like my father, my grandfather. That's incredible. Can you imagine our skill shows that if you actually practice the skills that you and I are talking about today, that this young men are 65% more likely to get a job. Now if they're employed, they're not back in prison.
Mel Robbins (00:18:20):
Correct. And they have a community and they have structure and they have respect from people around them and they have a sense of pride. Being a former lawyer for legal aid, doing criminal defense work, it was painful to just see the recidivism rate and the rejection that people face after they serve time. And that's incredible. I want to back up a second and talk about CBT.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:18:46):
Let's do
Mel Robbins (00:18:46):
It. So for anyone listening, that's like C bt, is that that non-high marijuana stuff? No, that's C-B-D-C-B-T. You're the professor in this. Explain what CBT
Dr. Luana Marques (00:19:00):
Is. Cognitive behavior therapy or CBT is a wildly studied kind of therapy that's action oriented and it's really designed to change what we say to ourselves, how we behave and how we feel. Can you explain to
Mel Robbins (00:19:12):
Everybody the sequence of what happens? What is the order? Is it that something happens outside of you, you have a sensation, then you act or you have a thought? What is the chain that we want to become aware of if we're going to apply the skills you're going to teach us today?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:19:28):
Such a great question, Mel, because the first thing, if we're going to apply any skills, we need to create a pause. And in that pause we need to do a couple of things. First, we need to understand what was the situation that triggered any kind of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. I actually call this the thoughts, emotions, and behavior cycle. Okay, thoughts,
Mel Robbins (00:19:47):
Emotion, behavior, cycle. Cycle. Can we take the example of you waking up and not wanting to get out of bed?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:19:54):
Yes, absolutely. So any kind of situation, I woke up, my brain starts to spin and basically said, what if Mel Robbins doesn't like me? It was the first thought I had this morning. I have to just be honest with everybody, Leslie, I'm sorry. No, I mean the anxious brain never quiets down. And so that thought, what if she doesn't like me, led to an emotion, which for me was a little anxiety and heart pounding. My heart pumps pretty strongly. And then my behavior was the third component was wanting, didn't you just stay in bed? I was like, maybe I just want to stay in bed. And you asked, what is the sequence? Well, it depends on the entry way. For me it was a thought, right? She's not going to like me, made me anxious and then I wanted to behave a certain way. But they ping pong, right?
(00:20:34):
If I laid in bed a little longer, I bet it have gone this way. Maybe I didn't bring the right outfit. The outfit makes a difference. She's so powerful, she's really not going to like me. What if I say the wrong thing and those thoughts go really fast. Think is would shoot up and then the covers would come over. And then by the time I got out of bed, my baseline anxiety would be so high that I'd be having trouble thinking that trouble thinking would be interpreted as, oh, see you do have a problem with anxiety and now the avalanche. And so it's a ping pong and it's so fast. And that's why that pause is so important. Whenever think anxiety happens, this is a trick that I can share with everybody that you can use and you can do it right now. How do you pause is the question. Take a piece of paper and literally write down your thoughts, link them through your emotions, link them to specific behavior. What do you want to do? And this is why what we know scientifically is that writing activate the prefrontal cortex.
(00:21:31):
The prefrontal cortex, the part that helps us organize, execute, right? It's the center of the brain. That's the critical part of the brain. It is always competing for energy with our amygdala, the fight flight of freeze part of the brain. So when one is on, the other one tends to quiet down. So if you're in your anxious brain, get out of there by writing your thoughts, emotions, and behavior cycle. Just that little trick along. I've seen hundreds of patients stop their anxiety cycle and that avalanche by creating that pause,
Mel Robbins (00:22:00):
Let's take the example of being afraid to go into work, that you are worried that something's going to happen. Your boss is going to be a jerk, or you're going to have a panic attack, or you're going to screw up that huge sales meeting that you have. And so you have that feeling of just I need to not go that avoidance that we're going to talk a lot about today. So what do you do in that instance?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:22:28):
So a couple of things here. The first one I would write down the specific thoughts, right? Okay. A lot of our anxieties fed through what we're saying to ourselves. We started to have heart pounding. We've been talking about heart pounding. If I came home from a jog and my heart was pounding, I'd be like, okay, but if I'm sitting here getting ready to work and my heart pound, your brain wants to make sense of it. So then it starts to create a narrative about the heart pound, but it's just a heart pound. That's all it is.
Mel Robbins (00:22:54):
True.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:22:54):
So we pause, okay, I'm going to mess up the sales meeting. I am going to F it up. That's what I'm going to do. Once we pause, then we want to be able to ask questions of our thoughts. Let's interrogate, let's become lawyers together. What is the evidence that you have right now that you're going to mess it up?
Mel Robbins (00:23:15):
I've messed
Dr. Luana Marques (00:23:16):
It up before. Okay. How many times have you messed it up now? Twice. Twice? How many presentations have you given to this team? A hundred. A hundred? Okay. So based on that, what's the probability that you're going to mess it up? 2%. 2%? Okay. So maybe you are going to mess it up. There's 2% chance if you mess it up, what is the worst that will happen?
(00:23:36):
I'll be embarrassed. Have you been embarrassed before? Yes. Have you been able to tolerate being embarrassed? Yeah. It sort of sucks. I'm with you. It sucks. So the worst case scenario is you're going to be embarrassed. There's 2% chance. What if they fire me? When was the last time they fired you? They haven't fired me. I'm still employed. Oh really? That's amazing. So maybe they'll fire you, but sounds like the probability is small as well. Yes. But there is a small probability. Yes. Now has anybody in this company ever been fired on the spot? You've messed up, you're embarrassed, fired?
Mel Robbins (00:24:11):
Well, they've laid people off, but I don't think, not that I know
Dr. Luana Marques (00:24:13):
Of. It sounds to me like your brain is basically saying, I'm going to be embarrassed and then they're going to fire me on the spot and I'm going to be humiliated and I'm going to be in the corner all along. Yes. Which makes me want to avoid it. Of course it does. I would too. I mean it feels awful to do that. But what is the probability really, Mel, that all those events are going to happen in that sequence?
Mel Robbins (00:24:33):
Very, very small.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:24:36):
So what can you say to yourself based on your performance in the past that might change the narrative in your brain right now?
Mel Robbins (00:24:46):
That I've been nervous before and I've shown up and done a good job in the presentations.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:24:53):
And when you say that to yourself, how does it feel?
Mel Robbins (00:24:58):
Like? I don't believe it.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:24:59):
Yeah,
Mel Robbins (00:25:00):
Absolutely. Because that anxiety has that grip on you.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:25:03):
And when we just start to change our perspective, shift our thinking.
(00:25:08):
We don't believe right away because there's so much history of the anxiety driven thoughts. So I don't need you to believe it. What I need you to do is be able to say that to yourself over and over again. And I need you to show up now. I need you to approach to approach. You know what I love about this? I love that you said I don't have to believe it because it's impossible to, your brain is anxious and everybody thinks CBT, we are trying to just force people to have positive thoughts. That does not work. Lemme say that again. Positive thoughts alone does not work. We have to reframe. We have to rewire our brain and it takes time to rewire brain. It can't be overnight, but it's the first step towards a better life. I mean, if we talk to our best friends the way we talk to ourselves, let's be clear we'd have no friends.
Mel Robbins (00:25:53):
That's so true. That is so true. Can we unpack avoidance because it's not just an anxiety response.
(00:26:00):
I'm thinking about the number of conversations that people avoid, the number of situations that people avoid, the number of experiences that people want to do. I can think about one for myself where my daughter Sawyer and Chris have both gone skydiving and our son is turned 18 and he wants to go skydiving. And I feel this pull of wanting to do it, but I am scared shitless of doing it, and I can feel the avoidance in my body. It's not anxiety, it is like a wall. But I feel like this avoidance topic, can we blow it open so that anybody listening who's like, well, I don't have anxiety, but you're avoiding something. Oh yeah. So talk to us about what avoidance looks like. What are surprising kind of symptoms or ways that people avoid things?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:26:59):
I'm definitely going to talk about avoidance in a second, but before I wanted to commit to go skydiving with me. Come on Mel. We can do me. Yeah, we can do it. All
Mel Robbins (00:27:06):
Right. You're invited to Oakley's 18th birthday skydiving party. I'm going,
Dr. Luana Marques (00:27:10):
Okay,
Mel Robbins (00:27:11):
I'm going to go.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:27:12):
I don't want to miss out on life. So the only reason I went there is this. So I learned I had a Fear Heights hiking, Yosemite National Park. I had no idea my whole life. I just said I didn't like roller coasters. I wasn't avoiding roller coaster. I just didn't like roller coasters. Who needs to go on rollercoasters anyhow, but I was hiking. I get to the end of the national park and you have to hold to these cables and I just started to cry. I was like, there's no way I'm going to fall. The whole height phobia just came in and I spend time and my professional career is getting people to approach, not avoid. And I was like, okay, I can't do this. And so I started my own hierarchy and I started by doing chairs and then stairs and then going to the roof of my house. And then I got to the top of it, which was skydiving. I was so terrified and I avoided for a while. Eventually my friends is like, you know what to do. So she took me skydiving and I went three times in a row in the same day. And this is the trick. That's the only way to overcome that fear of heights is that you have to train your brain to just do it over and over again. And now I love skydiving. It's so fun. Really. I am not joking.
Mel Robbins (00:28:23):
So could you go back to Yosemite now and be with those cables?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:28:27):
A hundred
Mel Robbins (00:28:28):
Percent. Because what I always used to say is I'm not afraid of heights. I have this feeling that I'm falling.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:28:33):
That's exactly what your heights is.
Mel Robbins (00:28:34):
That's what I don't like.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:28:35):
But that's just biology now. That's just biology. And it's the same biology behind avoidance. So you asked me about avoidance. So avoidance is anything that we do or don't do in response to a perceived threat that is designed. So there's a perceived threat that's designed to bring our anxiety, discomfort, you name it down fast, but it keeps us stuck. So let me unpack this for
Mel Robbins (00:29:02):
Us, please.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:29:02):
I call it the three hours of avoidance. We either retreat, react, or remain. So if we retreat, what do I mean by that? It's what you're doing about skydiving. You have this thought and you're like, I'm just going to move away.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:29:16):
Retreating is moving away from discomfort. That's that flavor of avoidance. People retreat when they get an email that they don't like, they don't read that email. My husband does it all the time. He puts an email on the other screen, he is like, I'm just not going to look at that. We retreat by not having conversations with people. We're in our head, we are thinking we are ruminating, we're moving away from discomfort.
(00:29:38):
For some of us, avoidance is reacting. That's how I avoid whenever something threatens me, perception of threat, an email about somebody that I don't like or conflict. I go towards that. I move towards that discomfort because I feel so anxious. So I write an email really fast. I can't believe you said that. I press send and then I'm stuck on email jail because now I just reacted without thinking. And that's avoidance, right? I'm avoiding discomfort.
Mel Robbins (00:30:08):
I don't know if I understand that. So I understand the retracting, right? But I don't understand the reacting. Can you give me another example? I'm give you several
Dr. Luana Marques (00:30:20):
Examples. So reacting as a form of avoidance. Something happens and you have discomfort. Okay, give an example. Dan Harris, I was just recording with him last week, and he gave a great example, personal example. He said, whenever I feel threat, the way he reacts with anger,
Mel Robbins (00:30:35):
Oh yes, I yell at my dog when he's barking too much.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:30:41):
Ah, that's it. Because your dog barking is creating some discomfort in your body, that discomfort in your body. Basically you have to attack the discomfort so you feel better responding to email, anger, grabbing a drink too fast, have a bad day, and you're just going to,
Mel Robbins (00:30:58):
Oh, so R is having a smoke, a vape, hitting a joint, pouring a drink that is reacting.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:31:06):
Yes, you're,
(00:31:07):
And it's funny, we can slice and dice the Rs of avoidance, but you are basically trying to moving towards discomfort in reacting versus retreating. You're moving away. Let do the third one and then we can unpack a couple of examples. But the third one is remain. This is the deer in the headlight. It is staying in a situation when you no, no longer works. You're in a job you dislike, but the fear of another job just makes you so paralyzed. They stay in a relationship that you don't like. It's frozen. So the remain of avoidance is you're frozen in place, it's not working, but you're not going towards discomfort or moving away. You're just literally frozen. Wow.
Mel Robbins (00:31:51):
So what I love about this is that this, for anybody that feels like, well, I don't have anxiety, what you do have are moments every single day where your emotions get triggered and you're uncomfortable. That's it. And what I'm gathering from this conversation is that your work is really about creating a baseline of people of emotional peace.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:32:18):
That's a hundred percent it.
Mel Robbins (00:32:19):
That when you are uncomfortable, when you're triggered, when you're afraid, when your emotions go bananas, literally that is the moment that we all seek to avoid and avoiding. Wow. So is drinking or smoking, would that be more of a retreat
Dr. Luana Marques (00:32:42):
That falls more in a retreat? You're moving away, you're trying to take that discomfort away. So it's absolutely retreat. But I love what you said, Mel, because that is it. We all want to be comfortable all the time. Let's be clear, comfortable all the time. There's nothing meaningful there. And if we are completely uncomfortable, completely out of our comfort zone, we un fight flight and freeze and we're stuck. So what I want to create is a comfortably uncomfortable world, a world that you're just enough out of your comfort zone towards the things that matter the most and that you're fighting the real enemy here, which is avoidance. And we avoid microwaves, right? We just turn on the TV and I out, we go on social media and those little moments, it's like that's what I love your five second rule, because that's sort of the same idea is
Dr. Luana Marques (00:33:27):
In five seconds you can choose to go towards a life that matters or you can choose avoidance.
Mel Robbins (00:33:32):
And it's a choice. You're right. It is because we do avoidance on autopilot. And there is a big lie that we're telling ourselves because you said that we do it because we're uncomfortable and that in order to live the life that we want, we've got to be willing to be uncomfortable. But I believe if you're really honest with yourself, you'll see that avoiding the hard stuff, avoiding the things that you fear, avoiding taking a risk that's actually more uncomfortable because you know that you're selling yourself short, that you are feeling stuck. I would think that sitting alone in your apartment with no friends as a teenager was way more uncomfortable than sitting with that dude the first time with your grandmother.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:34:27):
A hundred percent. It's like, I love that you said it's a lie. It is a lie because the discomfort that we feel facing things is so much less than this monster that we create in our head of what they would be like. I bet when we go skydiving, you come off of that plane, you're going to be like, I landed. And I was like, this is the best orgasm ever. This is better than anything else really. I was like, I have this video. And I was like, oh my God, I'm so embarrassed at this video. But it's true because it's so liberating to overcome a fear.
Mel Robbins (00:34:59):
It's true.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:35:00):
And you're right, once you're out of that plane, that discomfort and you feel some fear jumping out, but then all of a sudden your whole system quiets down and you're like, oh my God, I'm living my best life. And that's what I wish for everyone, that they find their little corners of avoidance, overcome it so they can show up. Are you being your best self? And if you're not, it's because you're avoiding.
Mel Robbins (00:35:23):
Why do we do this?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:35:25):
We're biologically wired to avoid. So the brain is amazing. It cannot differentiate real threat from perceived threat. Our brain is wired to do what? To predict and protect. That's what our brain is doing. It's protecting us from danger and it's predicting and it's predict based on past information. So your family member who is having some trouble with avoidance and work, the brain is using the perception of work as danger as something really bad. It's a lion. So it's predicting.
Mel Robbins (00:35:57):
It's predicting, and then it's making a call on how to protect you based on its prediction. That's it.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:36:03):
And that call is avoidance, right? So instead of going on fight, flight of freeze, because there is actually a lion. That's why I coined the three Rs of avoidance because it's the same biology of fight, flight or freeze, but it's a perceived threat
Mel Robbins (00:36:18):
That makes so much sense. Your grandmother gave you this incredible gift where she forced you to face something to approach it, this fear of people. How did that experience help you get to become a professor at
Dr. Luana Marques (00:36:37):
Harvard? So my grandmother in helping me to approach instead of avoid and shift my perspective, the first thing she did is she helped me change my narrative. But the interesting thing about avoidance is it continues to show up in your life. And so when I applied for college in the us, I remember writing the essays and my English still wasn't very good. And my brain kept saying, you know what? A little girl from Brazil can't apply. You're not good enough. I held onto the applications so much now because of those beliefs that my stepdad had to one point be like, we need to mail it. You're not going to get in if you don't submit your applications. And I was like, oh yeah, there's that thing called submitting. And so I submitted them and then I got accepted at SUNY Buffalo. And so I ended up at SUNY Buffalo.
(00:37:20):
And when I was applying to the doctoral program, so I got to actually before even as an undergraduate, this was, I never thought I was going to be a psychologist. I thought I was going to be a medical doctor in Brazil, either a medical doctor or a lawyer. That's how you pay the bills came to the US and I started to take biochemistry and pre-med courses and then a psychology course for the fun of it. And I loved the psychology courses, loved it. But my brain kept saying, you need to be a medical doctor. You need to be a medical doctor. So I went home to Brazil, my grandmother's all my stories. I'm sorry, but that's the reality. And I said to my grandmother, I said, I was thinking about being a psychologist, but I don't know. And she's like, it's simple. You take psychology classes, you take biology classes, which one is easier in your brain?
(00:38:03):
That's what you do for a living. Why do you have to have a hard life and do things against your brain? And I looked at her and I said, well, I get a seen biochemistry, I get an A plus in psychologist. She says, go be a psychologist.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:38:14):
And I was like, that's simple. She's like, yeah, why do people fight so much to be what they can be that comes easy to their brain? Why do we? Because I think we avoid, we avoid our reality. Facing reality does not mean we like it. And I had to face reality that day. And I remember going for a walk with my dad and my stepdad and saying to him, I know you're helping with college and all of that, but I don't want to be a medical doctor anymore. I was shaking out, shaking of anxiety, and he looked at me and he said, you know what?
(00:38:43):
You're going to be poor if you're a psychologist. You can't be a psychologist. You really? And I was terrified that he's going to pull the plug, not help with collagen anymore. And I looked at him, I said, you know what? I'm good at this. I want to do this. And I almost avoided. I still took biochemistry or I think it was organic chemistry for another semester until I finally cleaned clean again with him. I was like, I can't. This is not me. So then I got to graduate school and wanted to apply to Harvard, as I told you before. And people said to me, state students don't get it. And I was so terrified, cried. Cried a lot. And then I applied. And I remember that day I walk in for the interviewer, mass General. I was listening to Daniel, me, it's a Brazilian singer to pump me up.
(00:39:28):
And my entire body wanted to run the opposite way. It's like I wanted to avoid. But I showed up and I applied and got in. And I'll share one more example of sort of landing at Harvard in about 2017. I wanted to be the president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. I was on the board, the youngest person in the board, an organization that tends to be majority white. I was the only Latina person in the board, the only person color on the board. And the opportunity to run for president came up. And I had just had my son. He was like three months old. I was home. And I went for dinner with a colleague, a senior colleague, the night before the election. And she heard that I was running. And this woman literally said to me at dinner, she says, you're too young.
(00:40:15):
You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't run for this. It's amazing to me how women do this to other women by the way. They're like, and I got home crying to my husband and said to him, David, you know what? I'm not going to apply. Maybe I'm too young and maybe I'm not going to be a good mother and maybe I'm not going to have enough energy to be the present. And so I wrote an entire email to the board to pull my application explaining not what this woman told me, not the truth by the way. I was going to do your example of the law school. I literally was going to do your, I was going through avoid. And I sat there and then my husband held my hand and he looked at me, he says, since I've met you, you've wanted this. He's like, do you really want to stop what you want based on what this woman is telling? He called me out of my avoidance and I deleted the email and I was so anxious for that interview the next day for the election, but I won. I won. Can you believe it? I became the first Latino president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. And it could have been taken from me if I listened to what this woman said to me, by yourself, by myself. And that's, we are the worst problem.
(00:41:28):
We are the ones avoiding, I can't blame her. I mean, people say all sorts of things for us, but do we have to believe it?
Mel Robbins (00:41:34):
Yeah. Like if somebody said to you, why don't you just leave your son on the side of the road? You'd be like, are you fucking crazy? Yes. But we listen and indulge other people's opinions about things that really matter to us, and then we avoid it.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:41:52):
And then we avoid it.
Mel Robbins (00:41:53):
And what I keep getting, and I hope that you're getting as you're listening, is that your whole life is one giant gift waiting for you to unwrap it. And there are ways in which you sit there and stare at it and you actively avoid reaching out to shred the paper or pull on that ribbon. And it begins with the stories that you're telling yourself and CBT and the tools I keep hearing, approach, approach, approach. We've learned pause, we've learned to change the narrative, which is shift, which is shift. And now we're learning approach is approach always the answer when it comes to things that you're avoiding.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:42:39):
So I think for me has been, it's not always the answer. It think about approach. I define approach as opposite. Action, anxiety, discomfort, sadness tells you to do something to make you feel more comfortable. So your family member doesn't want to go to work, somebody else doesn't want to ask for a raise. There's a mandate that comes with anxiety. Opposite action is just taking one step towards it. So approach to me has been always the answer because if I stop and think my brain can be really an asshole sometimes.
(00:43:15):
And so shifting our perspective is very helpful. And sometimes we have to shift to even be able to approach sometimes what we're saying to ourselves. So locked up that we have to shift. But the reality is approach is where the juice is.
Mel Robbins (00:43:28):
Absolutely. Speaking of juice, let's roll some questions. We had a lot of people submit questions for you. First one is from Charmaine.
Charmaine (00:43:40):
I want more peace, more love, more compassion, more passion, more connection, more joy, less struggle, less stuff, less complications, less stress, less anxiety. And I don't just want it for myself, but for every woman, this shit is real. I see it in my girlfriends too. And this human experience, my question is why does this feel like a struggle? Thank you, Mel, for being brave enough to do this work. I love you.
Mel Robbins (00:44:16):
Well, luckily we got Dr. I know you said that I wasn't allowed to call you doctor, but you're a doctor. So what would you say? Are we addicted to the struggle? Why do we all feel it?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:44:27):
I love Charmaine's questions. Charmaine, this is the deal. This question is what I call the magical wand. Everyone magically wants more
Dr. Luana Marques (00:44:36):
Happiness, a better life, less stress. We all want it. And I love the Charmaine one tip for the entire world. I think that's what we're talking about in this conversation. So why do we stuck? It's because we avoid charma. What are the things in your life right now that you actually have control over that you're not taking control? Because the struggle is there and we're going to have some level of struggle, but it's there because we are not taking action. We know scientifically now that if we actually act in line with our values, the things that matter the most to us, we actually have less stress, less anxiety, we have better quality of life. And so Charmaine, I'm asking you what are the actions you can take towards those things that matter the most that would stop this avoidance? Because I bet what's happening is there's a lot of
Mel Robbins (00:45:26):
Avoidance. Even if she just started to approach to use your terms, the less stuff she just started to declutter, would that shift the feeling?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:45:40):
A hundred percent. Think about this. If you walk in your office and you go into work and you show up and there's a bunch of fires and it's a mess, what does that do to your brain immediately? You're like, you feel scattered. Even if she started to approach by just organizing her life a little bit, one little step at a time. And that's the thing I want everybody to hear very loudly and clear. It's not an hour or nothing, but little approaches towards the things that matter the most can start to really change our lives. And that's how we get more happiness. That's how we feel better.
Mel Robbins (00:46:12):
Well, what I wonder is if we're really wired for emotional peace and if we're yearning for these things like happiness and more joy and less struggle, we're yearning for it because it is meant for us, I think. Well, I'm curious if somebody's struggling, is that a sign that avoidance is everywhere?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:46:34):
Yes. Simple. Yes. And this is why I've never met anyone in my life professionally and personally, okay, who have not been avoiding that avoidance is not behind their struggle. I've never now in my moments that I myself am having the most hardest time, it's because I'm avoiding
Mel Robbins (00:46:56):
How do you figure out what you're avoiding?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:46:58):
So you pause and you ask yourself, if I were to go towards this, what would happen? So in the case of your family friend, it's easy, right?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:47:08):
You clearly avoid. But it's like if I go towards whatever X, y, and Z is, do I feel more or less uncomfortable? If you feel more uncomfortable, you've been avoiding because the avoidance is designed to bring our emotional temperature down, but keeps us stuck. So by definition, going against avoidance will create some level of discomfort, right? If I do this, does it keep me stuck? If I do this, does it keep me feeling comfortable, so to speak? If the answer is yes, you're avoiding,
Mel Robbins (00:47:37):
What are the top things that your patients come in and are struggling with and how does that connect with avoidance? So
Dr. Luana Marques (00:47:49):
Mary came in because she was in a job that she hated. She put on a hundred pounds in that job, a hundred pounds, but cap doing it because her brain said, well, at least I have an income.
(00:48:02):
And she was facing that. She was just wouldn't face the reality that she hated that job. A CEO, a Fortune 500 company I worked with avoided dating his super power in his job. And if you met him in the street and you're like, this guy can get anybody that he wants, he was terrified of dating. And women, now he's 45, super successful. No relationships, no meaning for relationships. Joanna avoided asking for a race. She's single mother, three kids that race, she's in the same job for 10 years, people getting passed for promotions, she's not getting those promotions. And she just was so terrified that she wasn't good enough. She hadn't done enough. She couldn't ask for a race. She told me if I was really good, they would have given me a race. I was like, well, that's not how it works. I don't think it works that way. Sometimes it does sometimes, but it's in the corporate world, sometimes
Mel Robbins (00:48:54):
It doesn't. Those are great examples. And so as their therapist and practicing CBT therapy, are you then coaching them through the approach method?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:49:08):
Yes. So for everybody I work with, they start to think of me as the avoidance police because I was like, well, that's avoidance. So the first thing we really do is we identify their avoidance. I just had a patient make a list of everything she's avoiding and she's like, I don't need to make a list. I'm like, I'd like to see that list because we lied to ourselves. So the first thing I do with every patient is let's identify all the domains in your life where you're avoiding. And then this patient that I mentioned, she was even avoiding eating healthy
Mel Robbins (00:49:38):
Because
Dr. Luana Marques (00:49:38):
She was like, well, if I eat healthy, then perhaps I'll feel better, but I'm not sure. I do want to feel better, but I really don't know how to eat healthy. So she created this whole story that eating healthy somehow was a problem and she eat junk, feel bad, and then continue the cycle. And then I work with patients on shift approach and align, which is the third skill that we didn't talk a lot about, but it's really the idea of living a values driven life.
Mel Robbins (00:50:03):
Wow. We are going to have you back to talk about shift approach, align. Is that what it was? Shift approach, align? Yeah. I want to have you continue to answer some more questions. So let's play the one from, is it Monson?
Monson (00:50:15):
Hey Mel, I've been following your YouTube for some time and wanted to reach out long ago. So the way I deal with my mental issues and anxiety is through writing, music, creating art and other activities, they do seem to help for the moment, but in circumstances where doing so is not an option, I just struggle to enjoy whatever I'm doing or just have the feeling I want to leave whatever room I'm in. So I just want to know this is a healthy way to deal with it or are there better ways to cope
Mel Robbins (00:50:45):
The doctor's in the house?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:50:47):
I see a big smile. I love this question because you illustrate how we can avoid in even ways that are helpful but then contaminate our life. Because basically what I hear you doing is this, to overcome your own fear, you write music and you can show up and that's fantastic, but it sounds to me like you're white knuckling through it because then you're not able to generalize this to meeting a stranger sitting in a table because I bet the same narrative that you're telling to yourself is the same. There's something about not being good enough or being important enough that is getting you stuck. And so for this person, I actually think shifting the way you see yourself, what is that narrative so that you can learn to approach music and your friends with the same kind of mentality because your thinking is getting you stuck here.
Mel Robbins (00:51:36):
Well, I also noticed that the question opened with the fact that I've been following you on YouTube for some time and wanted to reach out long ago. So even in the opening sentence of the question, he admitted to avoiding something he had wanted to do, and then he goes on further and talks about how he's having a hard time enjoying whatever he is doing, and then that leads him to want to leave the room. And so if he starts to recognize that whenever I start to feel uncomfortable, I just want to leave the room, is the advice that he stays in the room, what would you have him do if he was your patient? So if
Dr. Luana Marques (00:52:20):
He was my patient, what I'd say is this, we need to figure out what you can tolerate that is comfortably uncomfortable. So for example, if what you want to do is leave the room immediately, can you stay for an extra one minute? Can you stay in the room and just observe the room for 30 seconds? If a minute's too much, if you walk out of the room, can you commit to walking back to the room and staying for a minute, walking out of the room again, walk back in the room. Small dos because see, in approach, we rewire the brain and teaching the brain that there is no lion in that room. That in fact the people there most of the time want to talk to us most of the time won't connect with us. And so small dosages of staying in that room, and I would start increasing them a minute, three minutes, five minutes, put a timer in your watch. If you have a watch, most people have an apple watch or on your phone because your brain within 10 seconds is going to tell you it's too much. I've never worked with a patient that couldn't tolerate a minute, stay for that minute, walk away, but commit to come back within a minute. Not five minutes, not 10 minutes, because avoidance will knock on the door and tell you to go home. So kept back in that room.
Mel Robbins (00:53:26):
It sounds to me like this person has trouble tolerating being bored or being alone with their thoughts because the way they're coping with their mental health is by pouring their brain and their thoughts into art. And so I can see how this would get worse and worse and worse. If you tell yourself, I can't sit in this room, which is basically saying, I can't sit here with myself, you'll never be able to sit still because it's going to just get worse. Is that also the reason why you're so adamant about approaching instead of avoiding? That's exactly right.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:54:07):
Because see, we all have to be able to sit with ourselves and sit with some level of discomfort and anxiety and discomfort runs faster than we can. So don't run away from it. Just sit and make it friends with you so that you can be a full self.
Mel Robbins (00:54:22):
Is this why kids' anxiety gets so much worse because we parents rush in and try to take it away?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:54:26):
That's exactly right. I have a five-year-old at home. And the other day he says to me,
Dr. Luana Marques (00:54:32):
I'm going to create my own podcast. I said, really? He's like, yeah, I'm going to create a podcast. And I said, what is it going to be like? He's like, I'm going to tell people they need to actually stay with their emotions and not run from them. And I was like, that is it Diego. That's what we need to, we need to not run from them and parents listening to us. It's okay for your kid to have some level of discomfort. They're growing, their brain's developing. There is some level of anxiety that comes in many of the ages in life, and you just need to let them tolerate it. Let's go to Natalie's question.
Natalie (00:55:03):
Hi Mel. I've been dealing with a mirage of debilitating physical symptoms for quite some time. I've been to many doctors and all is clear. However, symptoms persist causing this symptom fear, anxiety loop. How do I break free from this loop and finally believe this is mind, body and be able to heal once and for all? Thank you kindly.
Mel Robbins (00:55:28):
This is a great question and I want to widen it out because I think a lot about the fact that one of the number one things that kids fear is throwing up because it's a moment of losing control and then they get so worried that the anxiety increases when their stomach gurgles. This was an issue with our son Oakley.
(00:55:48):
That he got so focused on throwing up that he didn't want to eat when his stomach gurgled, he would panic about throwing up. And so how do you break this loop of fear around physical sensation?
Dr. Luana Marques (00:56:09):
It's a great question and it happens a lot in particular within the Latino communities. Growing up, I got rushed to the hospital a lot with asthma attacks and my mom would just come to school, grab me, take me to the hospital, was this horrendous thing, public hospital along the lines, me feeling like I couldn't breathe. And as an adult my patients would say, have you ever had a panic attack? And I said, no, I've never had a panic attack. And then I was writing this book and I realized now that I was having panic attacks as a kid. And the reason I got to this is they always happened after domestic incident fight between my mom and my dad and there was lots of blood and flings were ugly. And then the next day at school, I couldn't breathe. My father laughed and I've never had asthma since.
(00:56:53):
Now that is definitely a panic attack. And so I share this because I want our listeners to understand that we're not immune for it. It happened to me. So as a psychologist, now what we need to do is a couple things, physical symptoms, when they happen, we start to interpret them. I bet that Oakley thought that any kind of sensation was going to lead to vomiting. Vomiting was the worst case scenario. So the first thing we need to do in case of physical sensations is actually a type of therapy called interceptive therapy. Big name, all he means is actually exposure to physical sensations. Now, most people never heard of this, which is so surprising to me. So if I'm treating somebody that has a panic attack, for example, what I do is I make them hyperventilate, I spin them on a chair. If I was treating oakly, what I've done is I have a vomit recipe and I would actually get hy have that sensation, but it would start smaller.
(00:57:48):
We started by watching videos of YouTube of people vomiting. What? Yep. I had a patient one time that what we did is we went out on a Monday morning at fan hall because those pubs people vomit a lot. Oh, they stink. Yes. Yeah. So our exposure was walking around fan hall and just seeing puke and so that he could feel the sensation. And what happens is the brain habituates, the brain actually gets used to it. So that little sensation, the smell of it actually doesn't need to. The physical sensations, which is the opposite what everybody does. Most people when they have physical sensations, I bet our listener just runs away from it. Her heart pounds and she goes, oh my god, something is wrong. I need to avoid that sensation. So we try to do something to avoid it
Mel Robbins (00:58:30):
or you run to the doctor, which is the reacting, right? Something's wrong.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:58:36):
That's exactly right. You run to that and then the doctor says, you're okay. How many patients have I seen? They've gone to all the cardiology checkup because their heart is a problem. It is not. So what we do in therapies, we actually force you to have the sensations. And this is the important piece. I want everybody to not miss this. And then we do nothing. And I mean nothing. You just sit with that discomfort. And if you don't control it, biology will come down. It just comes down slowly. It just does. If your kid, if you're crossing a major street in Boston with your kid and your kid runs across traffic, what's going to
Mel Robbins (00:59:11):
Happen? They're going to get hit.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:59:13):
Well, hopefully you stop them before, but what happens to you? Oh my gosh,
Mel Robbins (00:59:17):
When you said
Dr. Luana Marques (00:59:18):
That my stomach dropped, right? And And you're going to run through your kid and you're going to grab your kid and you're going to hold onto that kid. Does that anxiety, that stomach drop, that fear? Does it go away right away?
Mel Robbins (00:59:30):
As soon as the threat's gone, it starts to go away faster, but it takes a little bit of time.
Dr. Luana Marques (00:59:34):
It takes a little bit of time. So biology goes down slowly fight flight or freeze comes down, but he comes down slowly. Now heart pound is just heart pound, one of it is being interpreted as a heart attack and you going to panic. The other one is going for a jog or your kid just crossing the street. We need to train the brain to slowly allow that physiology to come down. So I hyperventilate with a patient and then we sit and we literally do nothing.
Mel Robbins (01:00:00):
Oh my gosh. I did not take that approach with Oakley. I would basically go, you're not going to get sick. You're not going to get sick. And there's this famous story, I'm embarrassed. We were on an airplane and he was
Natalie (01:00:11):
Like, I think I'm going to sit. I think
Mel Robbins (01:00:13):
I'm like, oh, you just stop. You're not going to get sick. You just don't like flying. We'd been on the plane for three hours, we're off that flight walking through Logan. We're probably 15 steps into the terminal. He just vomits everywhere. And of course, see I threw up and I think he got himself so worked up, he actually threw up and it's the exact opposite of what I should have done. So I want to just make sure that for anybody that has had an illness and you're in remission or you have Lyme disease and it's dormant, but you're starting to feel like the symptoms are back. How do you approach?
Dr. Luana Marques (01:01:01):
I say this to every of my patients. I will give you reassurance once, not more than once. So if you have a newness, it's okay to check with your doctor. Once you have your appointments, it's okay to go to the doctor and say, can I have my checkup? It's probably in a schedule anyhow. What's not okay is the doctor gives you a report that you're okay, and now you go to a different doctor and a second opinion and a third opinion. But I always feel it's okay to ask once because sometimes we are not avoiding. And one thing we didn't talk about now that I do want to add is there are moments in life that you need to avoid. In the case of domestic violence, like my mom dealt with, right?
Dr. Luana Marques (01:01:40):
Poking the bear and trying to approach, sometimes it doesn't work. You have to be safe and get to a place where you then can figure out how to
Mel Robbins (01:01:47):
Approach your life. How do you know the difference? You said this thing about I just don't like heights. How do you know the difference if you're actually avoiding something that you need to approach and face in your life versus you just don't like it or it's an issue of safety.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:02:03):
So the first one is rubbing you for your best life. So there's a price tag. That's how I think about this. There is a price tag with avoidance and it's keeping you stuck. And sometimes the patient of mine was a different patient, was in a job that she really disliked. So she called me and just says, Hey, I just want to check if I'm avoiding or not. And we had a conversation about this job. It wasn't going well. It was clear she's going to have to change jobs. I said, but why are you staying? And she says to me, I'm staying because if I stay six more months, I have this big bonus. And that bonus is really going to help pay some of the bills that we have. And then what I thought is I would just tolerate for six months and then once I get the bonus, I would just find another job. I said, that's strategy. That's not avoidance, that's strategy. That's fantastic. Yes, right? But she was so trained to think about avoidance. She's like, am I avoiding by staying? No, that's strategy. Sometimes you have to have strategy in life.
Mel Robbins (01:02:56):
Well, it seems like avoidance is very reflexive, a hundred percent. And that it is something that you're doing because you're reacting. And I would imagine that if you got pushed toward the thing, you'd push back because you don't want to. Versus a strategy which you can calmly with. Emotional peace rationally explain to somebody that is
Dr. Luana Marques (01:03:18):
Exactly it. And everybody, if you are true to yourself and you pause and you really look at what's in front of you, you are going to be able to just smell avoidance
Mel Robbins (01:03:28):
Pretty
Dr. Luana Marques (01:03:28):
Quickly.
Mel Robbins (01:03:29):
So I want to ask for anybody that is just experiencing anxiety or you just feel really stuck. How do you begin this process?
Dr. Luana Marques (01:03:39):
So most of the time people come to me and they don't know they're avoiding. They have no clue. They're avoiding. The first step is really pausing. Give yourself five minutes, sit down and think about the things that you want to do. So let's think about the dream life. What are the things you want to do? And then ask yourself why you're not doing it. What are the things that are getting in the way? And you're going to pretty quickly identify your avoidance. I'm not doing this because I'm afraid of heights. I'm not doing this because if I ask for a raise, they're going to find out that I'm not good enough. I'm not going on this date because I don't think I'm pretty enough. And so if you pause, think of your dream life and then ask yourself what are the obstacles here? You're going to identify avoidance. That's the first step to changing.
Mel Robbins (01:04:22):
Wow. And
Dr. Luana Marques (01:04:23):
What if somebody goes, I don't really know.
(01:04:26):
So one way to do this is look at the mirrors in your life. Your good friends. You might not want to call your avoidance, but your friends usually know when you're avoiding. My husband calls me out on it all the time. The other day I was on a plane, I got an email that I hated. I took a picture, send it to him, and the text goes, do not respond. That's reacting. That's avoidance. You cannot do this. Lua. I had composed the email back by the way, I was about to send the email. Your family and friends, your loved one, your close friends, they are good mirrors for us. They make us better. Especially those friends that can call you on your shit, look at them and have a conversation about avoidance. I bet they can help you.
Mel Robbins (01:05:07):
Amazing. What about parents or loved ones that have somebody that struggles with anxiety and a lot of how do you support somebody?
Dr. Luana Marques (01:05:20):
So supporting somebody, especially in heightened anxiety can be very challenging. I just had a client of mine say that he's in the end of his wife. She won't get on a plane, she will not do anything that is physically active because increase. So they want to go on this beautiful vacation, but she's like, well, it has to be an electrical bike and it has to be snorkeling, not scuba diving. She's basically containing anything that's related. So he said to me, I'm done with this, right? The first piece is really trying to, number one, get the person some help if they are in that level of distress. But the second one is asking how you can be helpful. Because often we want to help people, but we want to help them in the way that we know to help. So the example Oakley and you're saying to him, just get over this because that works for you, Mel, that works for you sometimes, but it seems like a strategy that you can muscle through. And so it's in the case of vocal, it's like what would be helpful? It's one piece. What would be helpful for you right now? How can I support you two, if it is avoidance that that person is sort of talking about, listen, I want to be helpful, but I'm not going to help you avoid. And that's important for parents. If your kid is terrifying, going to school, keeping them at home is just adding to the avoidance.
(01:06:38):
So how do I support my kid getting to school? I'm going to go with you into the parking lot. We are going to go early and I'm going to walk you to the classroom. I'm going to actually help you by staying with you at day. At school. Parents tend to try to take their kids away. That's a parent level of avoidance and it's making your kids sick. So you need to find a way to approach with your kid at their level.
Mel Robbins (01:07:01):
I made this mistake when our kids, Kendall and Oak in particular had pretty significant episodes of anxiety. There was a six month period where each one of them slept on the floor of our bedroom and I was so tired. That was my excuse that I would just let them sleep there. They'd wander down in the middle of the night. I wouldn't want to have to get out of bed and walk them back up and deal with the pushback and deal with the emotions. And so I would let them stay there. And then it morphed into me just making a little bed on the ground on my side of the bed. And the funny thing is they were smart enough to know even when they were sleepwalking that they don't go to Chris's side of the bed because he would get up. They just come to mine and I could almost in the middle of my sleep sense that they were there and I would just lift up the blanket at the middle of the night and it lasted for six months. I made it worse.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:08:02):
And you're not alone. Now. I've heard this from so many mothers before because see, you're exhausted already. This is why I talk a lot about we need to learn to regulate ourselves and use those approaches for ourselves first so that we can be the best parents. Because if you're already on the negative, you did what you needed to do to survive. And I bet there's a lot of mothers listening to us who are doing similar things because they feel like they don't have anything on any gas on their tank. So they have to do this. And the thing is, it does make it worse. That's the only problem. And it makes worse for you and the kid because we are teaching the opposite. We want to teach the kid and it is hard. My five-year-old now has this thing with dogs and I'm like, what I really want to say is, you're not afraid of dogs.
(01:08:46):
Go talk. What I do is, okay, can we just stay far enough from the dog? Can you look at the dog? We, and we had this conversation yesterday. I heard you had dogs. And I said, so if you meet her, she has dogs, but what am I going to do? And I said, are we going to stay there and we going to learn about her dogs? But do I have to touch? No, you don't have to touch, but you have to show up and you have to be there because, and there's this instinct as a mother. One day I saw myself wanting to cross the street because Diego is a big dog and I got a little uncomfortable, but I was like, I'll hold your hand and we're just going to wait. We're going to pause and we're going to let the dog go by. I'm not going to go towards the dog either. I could see the fear, but as a mom, I wanted to protect him. I wanted to take him out of there. It is not what we want to do.
Mel Robbins (01:09:27):
Wow. What about the sleeping example? What would you counsel a patient to do if they were in that cycle where a child's coming down wanting to climb into bed? What do you do?
Dr. Luana Marques (01:09:44):
My husband did the sleep training at our house because I was like, I don't want to hear kids screaming. And so I'm sharing this as a mother because I remember Jake was screaming for two or three days and now he sleeps really well. And so I'm very thankful to David. But what you want to do with sleep and any kind of things that are containment, right? Kids function better if they have a sense of safety and they know what to predict. And so you have that conversation that this is your bed and that's where you sleep and you cannot have any sleep up. So if the kid comes the first night and you're exhausted, you take them to their bed and you might have to take them to their bed 10 times that night and 10 times the next night. But the first day that you let them sleep there even for 10 seconds, you're basically telling them that they can push their boundaries. Kids are learning by our modeling.
Mel Robbins (01:10:35):
That's true.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:10:35):
And once they learn it, oh, kids are so good, they're going to push a little more. They're going to push a little more and we then stop giving a little more. And so in situations like this has to be zero tolerance. No, you don't come here. No, you don't come here.
Mel Robbins (01:10:49):
You're right.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:10:50):
And pretty quickly tell the truth is if you do that, you distinguish the behavior.
Mel Robbins (01:10:55):
It's true because they're uncomfortable being alone in their bed. And so you're teaching them to tolerate that discomfort
Dr. Luana Marques (01:11:03):
And that's a skill they need to learn for the rest of their life because they're going to have to do, it's called emotion regulation, psychology. And you're teaching them basic emotion regulation by teaching them that it's okay to have that discomfort and that they're safe in their bed and over time it goes away. And that's what we need to teach ourselves. That's exactly
Mel Robbins (01:11:22):
What we, because all this avoidance is simply us not being able to tolerate as adults our own uncomfortable emotions. That is all there is.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:11:30):
We get uncomfortable when we run. We're a kid, we go running into a parent's room and now we're stuck in a cycle.
Mel Robbins (01:11:37):
But instead of running to mom and dad's room, we're running to the vodka bottle or we're avoiding the email or we're holding onto the application because that's a way to avoid the risk or the pain or the fear that we have. And we are just building more pain, more fear, and more discomfort. This is so fascinating and what I love is that you're on a mission to teach this to people so that they can truly unlock all the incredible things that are available to all of us in life.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:12:11):
Within each one of us, there is a hidden amazing jewel, and if we take avoidance away, we can all be shining within our own domains of life. We all have a gift, right? Every single person has that gift inside of them right now, and we are just like shouting it and not maximizing it. I want a world where people are bold in their own way, that they are approaching the things that matter the most. And can you imagine that world? It just would be so much better.
Mel Robbins (01:12:40):
I'm so glad you didn't become a medical doctor, but you went into psychology and that you do what you do. You are a gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us. You are going to come back again and again and again.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:12:56):
Thank you, Mel. This has been so delightful. You are amazing. For everybody listening, she's just the kindest person. Just the kindest person. So thank you.
Mel Robbins (01:13:04):
One final question, tell us about your new book.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:13:06):
New book is called Bold Move, A three Step Plan to Transform Ink Anxiety into Power. The first two chapters are all about avoidance and you need to dig in on that avoidance. And then I talk about shift approach and align. It's a very personal book because the first time in my life that I talk about the stuff that I'm talking to you here, my panic attacks and family, domestic violence and the ways I've avoided and continue to avoid and continue to fight avoidance. So I have no idea what the world will do with the book, but I'm very glad to get to this place in my life that I fully me and I can show up.
Mel Robbins (01:13:38):
It is absolutely something everybody should read. You've got CEOs and stay at home moms and everybody in between in your practice. You are an assistant professor at Harvard and in this personal tactical skills-based book, you give everybody the tools that they need to make more bold moves. So thank you, thank you, thank you, Dr. Luana Marquez, we love you, and I'm so happy you were here with us today.
Dr. Luana Marques (01:14:04):
Thank you.
Mel Robbins (01:14:05):
Oh, and one more thing, and no, this is not a blooper. This is the language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it. Good. I'll see you in the next episode. 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. Luana Marques, PhD
Dr. Luana Marques is a clinical psychologist, author, and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is the former President of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
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Book: Bold Move
Bold Move is Harvard-based psychotherapist Dr. Luana Marques’ unique, tried and tested method to get you out of your rut and give you the courage to create a more confident and meaningful life. Dr. Luana pinpoints the anxiety at the root of avoidance and shows you how to overcome it and achieve your goals.
Resources
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- Learn more about CBT (Mayo Clinic)
- Worksheet of 25 CBT Strategies
- Therapist Directory, Psychology Today
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