How To Rewire Your Anxious Brain Into a Source of Strength | Dr. Wendy Suzuki

0:00Thy ticket, Lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Heareth my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Getteth with the times. With the times? You're playing the lute. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right? Discover is accepted at 99 % of places that take credit cards nationwide. based on the February 2025 Nielsen Report. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:43Dr. Wendy Suzuki:One of the superpowers in good anxiety that comes from your own anxiety, and this is a beautiful example that you just told me, is the superpower of empathy. For yourself or others? Uh, for first for yourself and recognizing it in yourself and then giving it out to others. Because just as you described your journey, a lot of our own anxieties have been with us since we were little. Same anxiety. They stay for decades. For your lifetime sometimes. What was yours? Um, so, uh, I have many, but the one that I talk about here is, um, shyness and, and kind of social anxiety. and I've learned because I'm a teacher and because I want to become an author, I've learned the skills not to have those kinds of anxieties, but I was painfully shy as a young girl.

1:32Dr. Wendy Suzuki:And even into college, I found myself in social situations and wanting to join and not feeling comfortable or even in class. And so I realized that that has become my superpower as a teacher because I know when I'm standing at the front of the classroom. My shyness is a superpower. My shyness. Why is that? Because when I'm standing at the front of the classroom, there are always those students that say, oh, I know the answer. I know the answer. And I know that there's many more that want to talk to me, that want to show me what they know, want to have that interaction, but can't do that. And so what do I do?

2:09Dr. Wendy Suzuki:I make sure that I am there 15 minutes before. I stand there. I talk to the students before. I stay after class. anybody that wants to come up for a casual conversation where you don't have to be the one raising your hand. And I didn't even realize it until I wrote this book, that that is a superpower of in-class empathy. And I have that particular form of empathy because of my particular form of anxiety, my social anxiety. And so imagine the 90 % of people that have their particular form of anxiety. They know what it feels like. They know what's going through many of others of our minds. And what if you turn that around and you do what you do and say, how can I help somebody else in this way that I know I've struggled, but I also know what can help.

3:00Dr. Wendy Suzuki:So that's one of my favorite superpowers. How do we know how to turn anxiety into something good? Like if 90 % of the, is this the U.S. or the world feels anxiety? I think the actual study was about the U.S. 90 % of the U.S. claims that they have anxiety on some level, right? Yes, exactly. And what does anxiety do for us when we don't have attacks coming our way? Like if we're constantly in a state of anxiety, what does it do to the brain? And what does it do to our immune system and to our body and our emotions? Yeah. So that's a great question. The answer is long-term anxiety will have terrible effects on all of the physiological systems that are being activated.

3:43Dr. Wendy Suzuki:So what's happening when you have a stress response? Your heart rate is going up. Your respiration is going up. So long-term effects of anxiety and stress are heart disease. The other thing that's happening when you're in a constant state of stress is that blood is being shunted from your digestive and reproductive systems to your muscles because you're supposed to be running away from the lion and you're sitting there worrying about your taxes instead or whatever, a Delta variant instead. And so long-term effects, ulcers, reproductive problems, long-term reproductive problems with long-term anxiety.

4:19Dr. Wendy Suzuki:And that's just the body. So now we get to my favorite body area, the brain. And so long-term stress will literally start to first kill off the dendrites of your neurons, the input structures of your brain cells in two key brain areas, the hippocampus, critical for long-term memory in the temporal lobe, and the prefrontal cortex, critical for decision-making, focus, and attention. And so, for example, PTSD, if you have PTSD, classic example of long-term stress, your whole temporal lobe gets smaller. Why? Because you first start to degrade the size of your individual brain cells, and then you start to kill them off.

5:03Dr. Wendy Suzuki:And so that is not memory problems ensue. So it is not good. Is long-term also the same as chronic? Yes. So long-term stress, long-term anxiety is chronic anxiety and stress. Yes, exactly. What's the definition of chronic? Does that just mean something that's consistent over a period of time? Over months, over months and years. And of course, there's different levels of intensity. Also, I should say that this book, Good Anxiety, is not addressing clinical anxiety. That is a different animal. For clinical anxiety, just as you would do if you had a broken leg, you need medical treatment. This is not a medical treatment for somebody that has chronic anxiety.

5:49Dr. Wendy Suzuki:This is the 90 % of people that say, yeah, I have some anxiety every day. I call it everyday anxiety. So these are some of the approaches and mindsets that you can use to start to shift that negative effect of anxiety and shift it in to the basic brain activation that it is and start to help motivate yourself to address the things that you're afraid of.

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7:54Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

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