Understanding Anxiety: What Happens When We Stop Interfering

What if there’s far less for us to manage when anxiety shows up? In this track, I explore what happens when our internal alarm is activated, why the mind goes to work trying to make sense of it, and the incredible capacity we already have to settle. An invitation to understand anxiety differently — and see what you notice for yourself.

Transcript

Today I want to talk to you about something I got to witness in real time, The amazing system of being a human being. And I'm going to bring you into it through two completely different moments, A trip to a shopping center and witnessing someone else's system become really activated. So, The shopping center bit first. I went in for cotton wool. I'm not really sure that matters anyway. I'm set in the scene. And when I walked in, They immediately came up to me, The shop people, And they said, Excuse me, Madam, We're going to do a fire test in a moment, But don't be alarmed. And I thought, Lucky me. And I don't think I've quite heard an alarm so flipping noisy. And I know that's the point. It's a fire alarm. But it went off when I was paying for my cotton wool. And I couldn't hear what she was saying to me. As, Obviously I couldn't hear what she was saying to me, As I was paying for the cotton wool. Proceeded to talk back to her and we both could see that we weren't being heard. And then, As I mentioned a moment ago, I had this amazing experience of witnessing somebody else's system become really activated, A bit like the alarm in the shopping centre. And I got to see what happened when there was space for that system to do what it knows how to do. And these two completely unrelated experiences point to something so fundamental about anxiety. Because when our system senses danger, It responds. It's what it's designed to do. The body changes. Adrenaline gets released. Our heart might beat faster. Our breathing can change. Our attention narrows. We're scanning, We're looking, We're preparing. And even the way our brain is operating changes. Now. I'm going to keep the science really, Really simple here and I don't think it needs to be any more than this personally. There's a place for science. It's a big picture that I'm pointing you to here and there is definitely a place for science but we get really, Really caught up in the science and I can't help but think innocently that's where a lot of anxiety support tends to look towards and I just know to my core that we're looking in the wrong direction as a collective when it comes to anxiety. I've lived it and I've seen it over and over again. So, We know that when we are, Or you may not know, But when we are in an acute stress response, Some of the functions associated with the prefrontal cortex, Things like perspective, Flexible thinking, Weighing things up and seeing the bigger picture, Don't work in quite the same way. And actually, There's an efficiency to this. When your system believes you're in danger, It isn't particularly interested in giving you loads of perspectives and 17 different ways of looking at something. It prioritises speed, Threat and action, Which, If there was a bear coming towards you, Great. What a wonderful system to know that if I was being chased by a bear then I'd be all right, Hopefully. But it is an incredible system doing exactly what it's designed to do. But here's a bit that I think is really, Really interesting. Doesn't have to be a bear. I mean, I don't meet many bears, Luckily, But when I was really struggling, It was the small things. It was the lying in bed at night. And I say the small things. I'm not sort of. . . Sort of diminishing anybody's experience here. But what I want you to get a feel of, It's this modern day threat that the system is still following that same historic pattern that we are designed The system is designed to follow in the event of danger. So you could be lying in bed at three in the morning or sitting at your desk or even driving your car. It could be an email that comes through, A conversation you've had. Physical sensation you feel in the body or maybe you have a loved one that's going through something. The thing is the mind absolutely goes to work and I mean really goes to work. There's this feeling in the body, The alarm is sounding and the mind makes its best attempt to interpret what the heck is going on. Why do I feel like this? What's wrong? What does this mean? What if this happens? What if that happens? What do I need to do? Or maybe simply a thought pops in our head you know, The list is endless and the body responds accordingly. Your stomach drops, Your heart starts racing and you just feel that, It feels like a rush. It's like an alarm is sounding. And then the mind goes to work around that too. More thinking, More interpreting, More predicting. But the mind is doing what the mind is designed to do. It's trying to understand what the heck's going on. It's trying to help. But what I think is really important to see is that once we're in that activated experience, The mind is doing all of this from that state. It's not sitting somewhere outside of the experience calmly looking back at you and giving you this completely objective version of what's going on. The alarm is sounding and the mind is making its best attempt to make sense of what the heck is going on. It's very similar, I guess, If I went into that shop to buy that cotton wool and somebody didn't come up to me and tell me the alarm was going off. But because I knew it was a test. I didn't remove myself from the building. I got the memo, Right? And this is the piece that becomes really important to recognize. Because the minute we're in an activated experience, We think. We need to do something about it. We think we need to get out of it. We think we need to calm down. We think we need to sort our thinking out. Or make sense of what's going on. And that's what I did for years. I interfered. I didn't know I was interfering again. I thought I was doing a grand job. I was constantly getting involved with something that, Actually, My bloody incredible system knew what it was doing. I was going against something that worked perfectly. So when I got to witness this so beautifully in somebody recently. What was so incredible was the transition that was so significant to me. I could see somebody whose system was really activated and I could see their mind going to work. The conclusions and predictions. What things meant, What was going to happen. What they could and couldn't cope with. And when you're the observer. Sometimes it's so much easier to see. It was almost like witnessing somebody being totally offline. I don't particularly want to use online and offline as though it's black and white, But obviously it isn't. But that's almost what it looked like. It was almost like there was this really loud alarm going off. And even if we don't witness it in other people and you're listening to this because you want to have a different experience with the anxiety that is coming up for you. We can still observe this. So I gave this person space. I didn't need them to get out of it. I didn't need to argue with what their mind was saying. I didn't need to find a better Thor and give it to them. I didn't even have to convince them. That I could see something that they couldn't in that moment. All that was needed was space. And what I witnessed next was really, Really wonderful. Bass system calmed. And something else came through. There was clarity and there was perspective. There was this knowing. Wisdom and it was almost like watching a cork float to the surface. That's the only way I can describe it in this moment. You don't have to teach a cork how to float. You don't have to pull it upwards. You don't have to tell it where the surface is. You let go and it pops up to the surface. And that's what it looked like. It was just becoming so clear to the person that was experiencing this. Nothing was added. It wasn't like they suddenly became wiser. They hadn't learned a new piece of information. There was just less noise. And suddenly, What had been there all along was available again. This always reminds me of how we know that if we cut ourselves and we just keep poking at it, It isn't going to heal. But if we just leave it, It just heals. The body is a really incredible system and we definitely don't stand over a cut every morning telling it what to do. Right, Close that bit up, Send something over there, Make new skin in this area. We don't do any of that. We trust it. We know that the body has this incredible capacity to heal and somewhere along the line, And I don't know where, We started really interfering when it came to our psychology. We started believing that every uncomfortable feeling needed managing, Every anxious state needed fixing, Every thought needed listening to, Or challenging, Or understanding. I just want you to consider this. The same system that heals a cut on your hand or a burn allows you to come back to a place of calm. Because that's who you are. And anything else is our psychology. It's designed to move through us. And it isn't us. And that changes so much. Because we become so identified with our psychology and so habitually used to listening to it that we think that it's us. And then we manage our lives from that place or we see our life through that lens. There's so much. Less to do than we've been taught. I think the snow globe is such a beautiful way of seeing this too. Imagine picking up a snow globe and shaking it really hard. The snow goes everywhere. You can't see through the snow globe to what's in the middle. And then imagine deciding that that's the exact moment you're going to work out what's on the other side, What's inside the snow globe. So you peer harder, You analyse it, You turn it around, You might even shake it a bit more. But the scene hasn't disappeared. Is just obscured and you don't need to take every single snowflake and put it back at the bottom. You don't need to manage the snow. You don't need to teach it how to settle. You put the globe down on a surface and the snow settles all by itself. And I think that's what I spent so many years not understanding. I thought it was my job to settle the snow. I thought it was my job to manage my mind. And get myself back to calm. And now I can see it's the complete opposite. And it's not that I never feel anxious. It's not that my mind doesn't go to work. Of course it does. It's a mind. It's what they do. But there's such a deeper understanding now that I'm not my psychology and I don't have to go with everything it gives me. I don't have to sort through every thought and decide whether it's true or false. I don't have to work out which ones I should trust and which ones I shouldn't. And I don't want to give you another rule here that says, When you're anxious, Don't trust your thinking, When you're calm, Trust your thinking, Because who knows? I don't think it's as black and white as that. But what looks really clear to me is that when the system settles, There's less overlay. There's less noise, And we seem to have much greater access to wisdom. And maybe wisdom? Ok, I know what to do, I'm just going to leave this at the moment. Or actually, I really need to have that conversation. Whatever it is, There's just a different quality to it. It feels more, Lack of a better word, Aligned. And the deeper my understanding has become of the mind being in this overlay, This incredible system that's interpreting and predicting and making meaning, The more I've really trusted that quieter wisdom underneath it. And I can't tell you exactly what that will feel like for you. And actually, I don't want you to take my word for any of this. Just don't. Because change doesn't really happen because somebody tells you how human beings work. The transformation is up for grabs when you see it for yourself. So play with this. Experiment, Explore with what I'm sharing. If you feel anxious or if you know someone else experiencing anxiety, See if you can witness it. And not as another technique, Not in a right Becker says my mind's doing this and now I need to watch my mind kind of way. Please don't create another job. Jobs get in the way, Remember. Just get curious, Even if that's over time. Notice the alarm. Notice what happens when that response is activated. Notice how quickly the mind goes to work. Notice the urgency. Spot how incredibly convincing it can feel. And how the body reacts and how the system settles by itself. What happens to the noise? What becomes available. And what could you see that you couldn't see before? And I guess, Maybe there's just one thing I want to leave you with? And that's, Can you see that perhaps we're getting in the way of a wonderful, Beautiful, Intelligent system? Not deliberately, Of course. God knows. I wasn't. I thought I was actually helping myself. But what if there's less for us to manage than we've been led to believe? What if calm isn't something we have to create? And what if wisdom isn't something we need to find? And what if who we are is already okay underneath all of this psychology? The alarm can sound, The mic can go to work, The snow can swirl, But none of that is who you are. And when we stop identifying quite so heavily with it all. Maybe we can start trusting something so much deeper. The cut heals, The snow settles, The cork rises, The system knows. And maybe our job isn't to manage it. Maybe it's to understand it enough that, Little by little, We stop getting in its way. I've been Becca Gardner.