How To Cultivate An Anxiety Freedom Mindset

Mindset is hugely important. In fact, research has shown that mindset is one of the most profoundly important parts of someone's recovery. In today's short podcast you're going to learn MY BEST STRATEGY for shifting your mindset, and it's called the Plot-line Pivot. The Plot-Line Pivot is from the ACT method for overcoming Anxiety, which can be found in my full 9 hour course: The Anxiety Breakthrough Program.

Transcript

Today,

We're going to learn about how to change your mindset with anxiety.

When I was at anxiety rock bottom and my symptoms were so extreme and they were so bothersome and I felt like I was never going to get better,

My mindset was that anxiety is going to get worse.

I was never going to feel better and the more that I engaged in those thinking patterns,

The more that that mindset really hit me,

The more that it became true.

And so today,

We're going to talk about how you can change your mindset and one of my favorite strategies to do it.

This strategy comes from the ACT Method,

A course that I made from my decade in clinical psychology and naturopathic medicine to help people send anxiety to the sidelines where it belongs and this exercise has changed thousands of lives.

And so I want to share it with you today and it's called the Plotline Pivot.

Also stay around to the end of this video because if you're stressed like me and if the holidays are just amplifying your nervous system and it's out of the brain and like in the body,

Then I'm going to share with you my number one go-to solution and also make sure that there's a link in the comments.

And so without further ado,

I want to share with you a couple of really interesting things about anxiety and mindset.

And you're going to get three takeaways.

Number one is you're going to learn the difference between panic and stress and excitement and how they're virtually the same according to your body.

And then second,

You're going to learn that shifting your perspective will actually change your life and I'm going to teach you how to do this.

And then you're going to gain exclusive access to the Plotline Pivot exercise that I'm telling you will make huge changes and you can start using it right now today.

So I want to dive in first.

So number one is let's talk about what's happening with panic and how it's different from when you're excited.

And so in order to do this,

I'm going to tell you a story and this is Susie and Susie lived in the hunter-gatherer days,

Right?

And so she's out and she's gathering berries and gathering snacks for her family and she is well attuned to the signs of danger in the brush.

And so her ears are peaked and she's just gathering berries and just hanging out,

Maybe popping a few,

Just having a great old day.

And then she hears a little tiger growl in the distance and her body snaps into action.

And before she logically realizes it,

A fear signal starts in her limbic system,

Which is the center of the brain.

And this limbic system activation causes a change,

A cascade of reactions that go down through the brainstem,

Your hypothalamic pituitary axis to tell your adrenal glands to release all sorts of cortisol,

Epinephrine,

Other stress hormones.

And before she knows it,

Her heart is racing so her cells and her muscles can get energy and blood.

She's breathing faster so she can oxygenate and keep up with the demand.

Her blood pressure is rising so that she can run and her body is de-prioritizing the blood to her fingertips so that it can send all that blood to her vital organs so she gets some numbness and some tingling.

And her metabolic activity is rising,

Her muscles are clenched,

She's running and her body is pumping as she's zigzagging at lightning speeds and her thoughts are sharp and crisp and intrusive and sudden so that she can calculate the next moment and the next and the next,

So do any of these changes sound familiar?

And that's the question.

In Suzy's example,

She is dealing with actual and acute danger.

She hears the roar of a tiger and her body goes into this automatic response that happens before she can even think logically about it.

The body creates a chemical cascade of signals that help her to run safely away from danger.

These responses from the body help keep her alive.

If Suzy didn't have these responses,

She may have continued eating berries and then became the tiger's lunch,

Right?

So what if Suzy had these same sensations while trying to go to sleep at night?

If her heart was throbbing,

Her muscles were twitching,

She felt really tight and contracted,

Her breathing was fast,

She had numbness and tingling,

Her body temperature rose,

Her thoughts were rising,

She might call this a panic attack,

Right?

And so the body is producing the same changes in a panic attack that they're producing when you are in actual danger.

And the only difference between these two things is context.

And our body is responding based on the context when we're in danger,

But when we're dealing with panic and stress and anxiety,

The context isn't lining up with the danger.

And so what we have to do is we have to shift our perspective and shift the context.

So an example of that might be is to notice that you're having all of these bodily sensations.

Your blood pressure is rising,

You have the numbness and tingling,

Your heart is throbbing,

Your breathing is faster,

You feel hot,

You feel the urge to move.

You can tell your brain,

Oh,

You're going into an activated state right now.

I am getting signals that my body feels like I'm in danger.

And so what we can do is one of two things.

We can receive this information or we can resist this information.

Resisting the information is commonly what we want to do.

We want to do anything to get calm on command,

Right?

We want to suppress it,

We want to distract,

We want to engage in compulsions that help reduce those sensations.

We want to run,

Exercise,

Take a Xanax.

We want to do anything we can to avoid those sensations.

But then what happens?

They get worse,

Don't they?

The information gets louder and louder and louder.

And if we're suppressing that information,

The body in an attempt to create homeostasis is going to keep dialing up that fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Flaunt,

Flop response,

And then it's going to be doing this push,

Pull,

Teeter,

Totter reaction.

So what I want to actually help you to do,

The most singularly most powerful thing that you can do to stop anxiety from continuing to happen is to start receiving the anxiety.

We've all heard the term what we resist persists,

Right?

And so in anxiety,

Amazingly,

If you start to receive that information and just notice and let it come and let it go,

Your body will no longer need to give you that data.

And so think about like waves in an ocean.

These waves are going to come.

Inevitably they're going to come.

And you can be sitting on the ocean and you could try to do everything you can to smack those waves away,

Push those waves away,

But you're still going to experience those waves.

They are going to come.

But if we allow ourselves to receive those waves,

Notice those waves,

Notice the heart racing,

The muscles clenching,

Notice the vision getting blurry when you try to read things up close,

Noticing all of those things and then changing the context of,

Okay,

My body's producing these signals.

I am actually safe,

But my body,

My limbic system is communicating otherwise for whatever reason which we can start to explore,

Whatever reason is sharing this information and I'm just going to receive it.

So let's talk about the difference between resisting and receiving.

Resisting is refusing to tolerate the moment as opposed to receiving is where you just be in the moment.

And what does being in the moment even look like?

It's breathing,

It's sitting,

It's resting,

It's detecting,

It's being a witness without judgment.

Resisting is giving up on the process and receiving is holding the space even when the emotions become extremely powerful,

You just hang on.

Resisting would be trying to distract yourself,

Calling a friend,

Using all these wonderful coping strategies which we'll talk about in a moment.

And receiving is letting go of the need to control.

Resisting is overfilling your schedule,

Going to work,

Doing all of the things so that you don't have to feel what's happening in your body and receiving is giving yourself the space and time to listen.

And resisting is trying to be in control and attaching to your hurts and analyzing it and trying to figure it out and create all the solutions and go down rabbit holes of internet research on what to do.

And receiving is just simply know that you are not your thoughts,

Know that your body is giving you information and that you are here bearing witness.

And so then the question is,

Is so should I not do things for my anxiety?

Should I just suffer?

And the answer is no.

What I would encourage you to do is to do an exercise,

What we're gonna talk about next is called the plot line pivot.

And this technique,

Like I said,

It has literally changed thousands of lives.

And this can be used if you deal with insomnia and you need to deal with your perspective and your context of insomnia,

Or if you're depressed,

Or if you're in a situation where you can't change it,

You don't have control over changing it and you can either suffer or just accept it.

And so in any of these moments when you feel like it has to be one or the other,

There's a way that we can put you in a space to deal with that and this is what you're going to learn next.

So the plot line pivot is where we intentionally create space to feel the waves,

Whether it's stress or anger or irritation or resentment or fear or analysis.

It's when the brain is racing and the muscles are tight and the heart is pumping and you can't feel your fingers or your face.

When these things are happening,

We want to notice and feel it,

But we don't want it to go on forever.

We want to be the ones who are in control over that.

And so what we do is we go into one plot line,

We hold the space,

We receive the space,

We're in that moment,

And then we do a plot line pivot.

We switch.

And so let me walk you through what that would look like.

So when you have anxiety,

I want you to notice what the anxiety feels like.

Write it down,

Write down all of the bad thoughts that you're having.

I want you to notice where you feel it.

My heart is constricted.

It's like an elephant sitting on my chest.

I can't feel my lips.

They become numb.

I have all these catastrophic thoughts.

I'm going to die.

I'm going to go insane.

My health is failing.

What if I get COVID?

All of the thoughts that you have,

Whatever they are,

Write them down.

All of the feelings,

Write them down and then just notice them.

Notice the wave,

Notice the feelings,

And then put a timer on your clock so that you can hold that space in that moment for as long as you deem appropriate.

And then you're going to pivot the plot line.

So the next step is when you start to change your body and you start to change your plot line.

And so I want you to start to imagine a time when you felt really good,

When you felt really confident,

When you felt like a bad-ass.

For me,

I feel really good and when I feel like really confident and on top of the world when I'm teaching.

When I'm able to make a difference in the lives of my students and my clients and I feel a change in my posture,

I feel a change in my voice,

A change in my body.

And so I want you to see if you can think of a time when you felt really confident or really good or maybe you don't have that moment.

And so you can imagine emulating what that might feel like.

Look at somebody who you admire like Belle from Beauty and the Beast or Wonder Woman or somebody who's a leader or somebody you admire,

A mentor,

Somebody,

Something where you can emulate that if you haven't had that moment in your own life.

And I want you to close your eyes and I want you to notice the difference.

I want you to notice how you can bring your shoulders back,

Take a breath in and exhale the breath and notice the confidence,

The relaxation.

I want you to notice your eyebrows where your tongue is positioned in your mouth.

I want you to notice how you gesture.

I want you to notice a half smile on your face.

And I want you to practice this for a predetermined amount of time.

I want you to really start to own your bad ass self.

And so then with the plot line pivot,

You're actually going to rehearse going back and forth between these states because what's happening with anxiety is that anxiety is happening.

The root causes are there and the anxiety freedom course will help you work through that.

And so now we have to take back the control so that you are choosing like right now I'm going to be in a plot line where I'm feeling the anxiety and feeling the grief.

I'm noticing it and this is how I'm going to pivot that plot line and get out of that space and start to own my power.

So this has been the plot line pivot exercise and the difference that we're talking about is changing your mindset and changing your attitude.

And when you're in one plot line,

Your mindset may be doomed.

It may be gloom,

It may be fear.

And in the other plot line,

When you do that pivot,

It's noticing the data,

It's receiving,

It's honoring,

It's being in that space and knowing that you are working towards control.

People will often ask me where in the plot line pivot can I take a supplement?

Can I do the distraction?

And I would say do it at the end.

So set your alarm,

Have one minute being in the flow,

Being in the receiving,

And then one minute going back into your confident self and then repeat that two or three times ending in confidence and then set a hard stop.

So that's where,

Okay,

I did my work and now I need to take some call on command or now I need to do some self care.

I'm going to go run or I'm going to call a friend now.

So that you started the process of opening that soda bottle that's got all this pressure building up.

You're working on opening the soda bottle,

Letting out some of that pressure,

But also reinstalling into your brain the life that you want.

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