3 Evidence Based Strategies To Overcome Anxiety

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode and you love this podcast and you want some more ways to improve yourself, I have a brand new journaling lesson, which is a video that teaches you how to journal, but also 30 days of journaling prompts absolutely free. If you want that, you can download it absolutely free at mindsetmentorjournal.com. Once again, mindsetmentorjournal.com. Today, we're going to be diving into three evidence-based strategies to overcome your anxiety and your anxious thoughts.

0:46The one I think will probably help you the most, I think all of them will help you. But the third one is the one that I think would start to help you the most overcoming your anxiety so that you can start to get a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more out of your comfort zone. And so why is this important right now? I was doing research on this and found that the Journal of Anxiety Disorders have found that anxiety has gone up over 300 % since the pre-pandemic levels. And anxiety is common. It's natural, and it's just a natural human response to stress, to uncertainty, but also most importantly to perceived threats, which we'll dive into today.

1:26What we're perceiving as threats that are coming up, not right now, usually in the future. And it's a good thing for humans to have anxiety because it's our brain projecting into the future and telling our body to prepare for possible threats, to prepare to fight, or whatever it might be that's coming up down the line. But if you're waking up every single day and you feel stress, you feel anxiety, and it's every single day or even all day long, when anxiety becomes chronic and it becomes something that you're always dealing with, it interferes with a lot of your daily life. And we really need to learn how to address it and not to just say, hey, you know, just be better, but actually use some actual psychological evidence-based strategies that are grounded in science of, hey, how do we get yourself out of this?

2:16How do we get out of this when we notice ourself in it? And today we're going to go over a few of those research strategies to help you with it. But first off, let's talk about what anxiety is, because if we can understand what it is and why it pops up, then when we find ourselves in the state of anxiety, which we all do, I find myself being anxious sometimes in the mornings, especially in the mornings when my cortisol levels are high, then we can find a way to get ourselves out of it. So the definition of anxiety is a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, that can range from mild to severe.

2:48And it's normal to realize that it's an essential human emotion that serves as an adaptive response to danger or to challenges. And anxiety can pop up in two different ways. It can pop up with emotional symptoms, which would be worry, fear, irritability, difficulty in concentrating, restlessness when you're trying to fall asleep and you can't seem to get yourself to go to sleep. So that would be the emotional side of it. But also physical symptoms as well. The interesting thing about anxiety is that you can feel it in your body. It can be muscle tension, it can be headaches, It can be trembling.

3:28It could be rapid heart rate, like your heart rate actually starts to go up. It could be shortness of breath. It can even mess with your digestion. And so I'm going to give you three different strategies to help you. The first one is the easiest one, and that's what we're going to dive into. Number one, which is the first one I think you should go to whenever you have the awareness of I'm feeling anxious. And the first one is deep breathing. And the reason why is because the reason why this is important to go over first is because with the other two strategies I'm going to give you, if you're trying to go into these strategies, which the other strategy I'm going to give you are some thinking strategies, but your emotion is so high, you won't be able to process through the brain and through your thinking process as easily.

4:13Because when emotion is high, logic is low. When you are really anxious, you tap into your fight, flight, or freeze. And that's where the animalistic side of you, your survival part of you, turns on. The thinking and processing and executive decision actually turns off when you feel that way. So if you get the feeling of I'm anxious right now, you need to go to breathing first so that therefore you can start to calm yourself down and your logic will be better after you calm yourself down. So deep breathing exercises can actually help activate your body's relaxation response and reduce anxiety levels.

4:53And so when you're talking about deep breathing, the interesting thing about breathing is when I tell people, hey, breathe deep, usually what they do is they go, and you can see that when they breathe in deep, their shoulders actually raise. And that's actually not a good breath. It's a breath, but it's not a good deep diaphragmatic breath. Your diaphragm, which is basically where your stomach is, is where you want to breathe through. And so when you breathe, what you want to do is actually breathe and when you breathe in, your stomach should go out, but your shoulders really shouldn't move. And you get a deeper breath.

5:28You get a more quality breath when you breathe in through your diaphragm versus just through your chest. And the easiest one that I always recommend, because there's always like box breathing, there's four, seven, eight breathing. There's all these different types of breathing techniques. When you're stressed out, when you're anxious, last thing you want to do is figure out if you're breathing correctly, right? I like to do just a simple one, which is five seconds in, 10 seconds out. So just basically be a try with me right now. So if we're feeling anxious, we're going to do five in.

5:58And breathe out.

6:08So five in, 10 out. If you can't breathe all the way in in 5 or can't breathe all the way out in 10, it could be 4-8. It could be anything around there. But the important part is that the out-breath needs to be longer than the in-breath is. Because when you breathe out slower, you actually start to slow your heart rate down with a longer exhale. And the other thing that's important about it too is you release more carbon dioxide when you breathe out. And so the longer it is, the more carbon dioxide that gets released, which allows tension in your body, tension in your muscles, and the CO2 that's stuck inside of your body to start to get out.

6:48And so it lowers your stress levels to be able to do that. So that's the first thing that's important. Just five in, 10 out. Do at least six of them. You'll already start to feel better. Now that we've done those breathing, we're going to go into strategy number two. Strategy number two is something called cognitive restructuring. It's a technique that involves identifying the challenging negative thought patterns that are then contributing to your anxiety. And this approach, just so you know, is rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is one of the best forms of therapy that you can use.

7:18That's what therapists, a lot of therapists use CBT. And it's been shown to be really effective in treating anxiety disorders. And so there's a couple different pieces to it. There's three pieces to the strategy of cognitive restructuring. The first one is identifying the negative thought. So the first thing you want to do is try to identify the negative thought. It's to become aware of it, the ones that are actually fueling your anxiety. Because what happens is this, we have things that are called automatic negative thoughts. Those are just the ones that pop up into our heads and we don't even really necessarily notice them because they're so automatic.

7:52And we don't really necessarily notice the thought, but we notice how we feel. And so when we notice that we don't feel good, we want to become aware of how the body feels. And then we want to actually come back and try to figure out what thought created that. Because there is a constant communication between your brain and body at all points in time. When your brain has a thought, whatever that thought might be, it'll send neuropeptides to your body, which basically tells your hormones either, hey, release dopamine or release serotonin, which make you feel better, or release cortisol, release adrenaline, which make you feel anxious, which make you feel uptight, which make you feel fight, flight, or freeze.

8:33And so we notice our body feeling a certain way. We need to take ourself out of the jar. We need to read the label and go, okay, I feel like I'm shortness of breath. I feel like my heart rate might be up. I feel, I don't, do I feel good or do I feel bad? If I'm being honest, like I don't really feel good. Okay. Now I'm taking myself out of the jar. I'm going to read the label. What is the thought? What was that? What was I just thinking? And that's the question I asked yourself. What was I just thinking? When I noticed I'm not feeling very good. What was I just feeling? What was I thinking about?

9:02Usually you'll start to notice your anxiety-inducing thoughts, but the thing is you usually notice your anxiety-inducing thoughts after you notice your body's reaction to it. Your thought will usually come in so quick, your body will react to it, and then you just notice that you don't feel good. Okay, I don't feel good. What was I just thinking? What was I just thinking? Oh my gosh, I was just thinking about the presentation that I have to give next week for my boss. Okay, now we can start to work through those things. So that's the first thing is to actually identify the thoughts that are actually not making you feel good.

9:38That's the first piece. Number two is you're going to challenge the negative thought. This is one of the things that people don't really do. They don't really challenge their thoughts. They don't challenge their beliefs. Once you've identified the thought, what you want to do is evaluate the accuracy and the rationality of the thought. Considering alternatives, what else you could be thinking, any other outcomes that could come out other than, you know, failing at your boss and looking like an idiot in the presentation. And you want to consider alternatives or different viewpoints as well. And so challenge the validity of the thought.

10:11You know, how valid is that thought that is making you anxious? And if you've been listening to podcasts for a while, you know that I've said this many times, psychologists have found that 85 % of what we worry about never even actually happens. And so if we can challenge our thought or say, hey, maybe it's not going to be as bad as I think it's going to be, 85 % of our thoughts of the things that we worry about never actually happen. Out of the remaining 15%, only 3 % of it happens the way that we think that it will, which means that 97 % of the things that you worry about, 97 % of the things that you're anxious about turn out better than you think that it's going to.

10:50And if that's the case, what if instead of feeling anxious towards a specific thought, once we have identified the thought, so we do the breathing exercise, then we identify the thought. What if we go, okay, what I'm thinking about is that I have this presentation I have to give. And when I think about the presentation I have to give, I start getting really worried about what if I fumble? What if I mess up? What if I get fired? What if my boss thinks I'm an idiot? And we start to think that way. Okay, if I could think the worst of the worst, can I at least try to start to think of something different?

11:19The best of the best? Or what if it doesn't turn out as bad as I think it's going to? Because 97 % of the time, it's not going to turn out the way that you think. And so that's the thing is you want to actually start to challenge the negative thought. And then after you challenge a negative thought, you want to try to replace the negative thought. After you challenge each individual negative thought that you have, you want to replace them with a more balanced, more realistic thought that doesn't contribute to your anxiety levels. Okay, I've got this presentation coming up. Listen, all I have to do is prepare.

11:51You've got this. You don't really like public speaking. You're not the best at it, but could it turn out better than I think that it's going to? Yes. Okay, instead of me failing and looking like an idiot in front of my boss, what are some other ways? You know what? I'm going to start to think positive in myself. Instead of thinking I'm going to fail in front of my boss, I'm going to prepare my ass off. I'm going to turn out really good. And this is going to be the best presentation I've ever given because I'm going to prepare so well for this. And you replace the negative thought with a different thought that's a more realistic thought because once again, 97 % of what you worry about doesn't happen the way that you think it's going to happen.

12:25So why don't I try to actually replace that negative thought with something that's more likely to happen? So that's strategy number two, which then brings us into strategy number three, which I told you is my favorite, which is called exposure therapy. And so the same way that if somebody is afraid of snakes, right? Like they could be afraid of snakes. But an easy way, easy might not be the best word because it's not easy for the person, an easier way to help the person start to get past it is to do exposure therapy, to see a snake inside of a cage across the room and they can feel the feelings and go, okay, I'm safe.

12:59But it's inside of a cage. It's across the room. I'm okay. Cool. Perfect. Beautiful. And then maybe bring the snake a little bit closer, maybe a little bit closer. You can feel those feelings of anxiety about the snake, but still know that you're safe. Well, so how do we do that if it's not necessarily a snake or heights, and it's really just the anxiety of what might be coming up in the future? Well, exposure therapy is a proven technique that allows you to gradually and systematically confront your anxiety, your feared situations, objects, thoughts, all of that until your anxiety starts to subside.

13:34And the process helps you learn that your fears for being real are often really irrational. They're kind of ridiculous sometimes. And that really makes you understand that you can tolerate the discomfort that comes with the anxiety. And so here's how you actually start to work through exposure therapy. The first thing that you're going to do is you're going to identify what is causing your anxiety. You're going to identify what's causing your anxiety. Just identifying what's causing the anxiety, this alone helps a lot of people because you can kind of take yourself out and go, okay, it's not going to be as bad as I think it's going to be.

14:11A lot of people feel anxious, but they don't take a step back and actually start to find out what they're anxious about. And identifying your anxiety-inducing thoughts can help you feel less anxious. And so, you know, an easy way to think about it is maybe you're feeling anxious today. It's a Thursday and you're like, oh my God, I feel so anxious. damn, I felt so anxious all week. Why have I felt this? I haven't slept really well. I feel like I've been anxious. Why do I feel this way? I don't know why I feel this way. Okay, let me take a step back. Why do I feel anxious right now? Do your breathing technique.

14:44And then you realize through some processing, maybe through some journaling that you felt anxious since you've learned that you have to give a presentation for work in two weeks. And maybe you're terrified of public speaking and you're even more terrified to do it for your company, right? And then what you do is you use what's called gradual exposure, the same way that if a snake is across the room, you can see it across the room. But then you, the more that it's around you, the less you start to fear it. And so the gradual exposure would be, okay, you know what I'm going to do? I know that my presentation is in two weeks.

15:16I'm going to finish my presentation as quick as I can. I'm going to get it done as thorough as possible. I'm going to know my information in and out. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to practice it out loud at my desk 10 times. So I'm going to go through and I'm going to sit at my desk where I'm safe. No one else is around. I'm going to practice it out loud 10 times. Maybe it's a 10 minute presentation. Okay. It's going to cost you a hundred minutes to do this. So you're going to just go over it 10 times, 10 times over and over outside or out loud by yourself. So you feel more safe. You're getting more exposed to it.

15:48Then what you would do is get a little bit more gradual towards what you're actually going to be doing. Then you go into your living room and you practice using your TV as the projector. Using your TV, you pull your PowerPoint up. Maybe you have a clicker or a remote and you practice it standing up in front of the TV 10 more times. Now you've already done it 20 times. You start to feel more confident with it because you start to feel more confident when you feel more prepared. And then what you would do to get a little bit more towards the snake getting closer, snake getting closer, is you're going to stay at work late one night.

16:25the week before, and you're going to go into the room that you know you're going to be presenting at, and you're going to practice it five to 10 more times for an hour or two hours after everybody leaves. You're just going to say, hey, boss, I'm going to stay late. I want to work on my presentation. You know, the boss isn't going to get mad at you for trying to practice your presentation and to try to get better, right? You go in there, everybody's left, there's nobody there, and you're just like the only person, you're standing in the room that you know you're going to be presenting at so that you get used to the room, you get used to your surroundings, is you get used to using the TV in that room.

16:56You get used to what the conference room looks like. And you do the same thing over and over and over. You do it five to 10 times. So by this time, you've already, you know, done the presentation 25 to 30 times. And then you're going to do the same thing the night before. And so the night before the presentation, so this was a week before now, a night before the presentation, you're going to stay late again if you really want to get like hammer this and get it done. And then you're going to do it another five to 10 times the night before. And then the day of, you're going to come in early before anybody else does.

17:25So if everyone gets there at nine, you're going to get there at 7.30, you're going to get there at eight, and you're going to practice it before anybody else gets there. And by the time you actually give that presentation, you have had so much exposure to practicing the presentation, to standing up, to going through the PowerPoint, to being in the room where you're going to be doing it. And you will notice that you will feel so much less anxious towards the thought of the presentation, but you'll also feel so much less anxious the day of the presentation. And so you're going to expose yourself over and over and over again to this.

18:00And you're going to practice relaxation techniques, the breathing. You're going to practice ways to help you get, you know, before I go into my presentation, I'm going to take the 30 minutes before. I'm going to do some deep breathing. I'm going to do those five in, 10 out that Rob was talking about. I'm going to go through my presentation again. And by that time, you've already done the presentation out loud 30, 40 times. you've been exposed to it. And you will go and you will do much better at it by doing that. And so those are some simple, simple techniques to help you with it. Also, as far as if you feel anxious, a lot of times it's not just your thoughts.

18:34It can also come down to, you know, your lifestyle. So a few things that really help with anxiety, regular exercise really helps with anxiety. If you're exercising 30 minutes a day, your anxiety will be reduced drastically. Your nutrition really matters. eating whole foods. Try to limit or completely get rid of eating any processed foods. For me, if it comes in a box, I don't eat it. It's like 99 % of the stuff that I eat does not come from a box. And so it's either fruits, vegetables, or meat. Another thing that really helps with lowering anxiety, limit caffeine, limit sugar. Some of you guys are like, oh my God, I can't deal without my coffee.

19:13Well, your coffee is actually spiking your cortisol levels. It's spiking your heart rate. It's making your breathing faster. And so if you feel a lot of anxiety, it might be really good to actually limit your caffeine for a week. Another thing that really helps, staying hydrated. Dehydration can actually contribute to increased anxiety levels. And another thing, have some less alcohol. Don't have as much sleep or don't have as much alcohol. And usually because alcohol, just so you know, stays in your system up to 80 hours. So if you can just prioritize and make sure that your lifestyle is a little bit easier, you're getting really good sleep, you're eating the right food, you're working out, All of those things really, really help.

19:48And then the last one, which is, I don't know if I'm gonna say the most important, one of the most important ones is to limit your screen time. Looking at your phone can really start to stress you out. I realize that with me, and this is anecdotal, but I've also read many articles on it, is if I look at my phone a lot throughout the day, I feel way more stressed out throughout the day. And so those are three simple techniques that can help you overcome your anxiety that you feel. And these are all based in science, evidence-based, these things work for you. The first thing is to make sure that you pay attention to your breathing, deep breathing, five in, 10 out.

20:23The second thing is to actually do the cognitive restructuring, which is, you know, you find the actual thought that is a negative thought, you challenge the thought, and then you replace the thought. And the last one is to use exposure therapy so you feel more comfortable from that situation that is giving you anxiety every single day. And so that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Once again, if you want the free journaling lesson, once again, it is a video. You have to go to Mindset Mentor Journal, and then you'll also get 30 days of journal prompts to help you get better journaling as well.

21:02So I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.