5 Easy Ways to Ensure Your Brain Isn’t Pulling One Over On You

You’re sitting there in your yoga pants sipping your favorite hot beverage and reading a Reddit article on your phone. Seems pretty mellow right? For the most part it is. But on a sensory level, your brain isn’t resting. There are still tons of pieces of information your brain is processing and staying on top of. Now picture all the information that your brain takes in as you ride down the busy escalator to the packed subway on your way to work. No doubt your brain is working double-time!

Fortunately, your brain is expertly equipped for both situations, and all situations in between. 

So let’s pause a moment and give your brain the props it deserves. Nice work brain, keep it up!

Thank goodness too, that your brain isn’t the complaining type. From a cognitive perspective, information is costly to take in, store, manipulate and retrieve. The more information it is presented with, like the subway station during rush hour, the more taxing. Don’t be fooled just because your brain makes it look easy. It’s not.

The way your brain is able to function efficiently during even the most stimulation-dense situations is through various short-cut systems it has at its’ disposal. One of the most common is the use of narrative. 

Narrative, or the way you explain things to yourself, fills in the blanks when you don’t have facts, and the stories you tell yourself, creates patterns. Patterns are easier for your brain to recognize and manage than tons of disparate bits of information or things that don’t make sense. 

There are many types of patterns your brain relies on. 

Causality, that is logically progressing from cause to effect, makes for an efficient narrative and is a common ‘go-to’ pattern for our brains. A story that progresses logically in this manner is easier to neatly package than one that takes wild twists and turns and may not wrap up nicely. It’s no surprise that an overworked brain likes causality. And no surprise then, that we quickly come up with answers for everything, explain anything that comes across our paths and try to avoid uncertainty at all cost!

We feel better when we know the why of things and when things ‘make sense’ to us. We even feel better when we totally make things up that fit that bill. We end up telling ourselves a lot of stories that increase our impression of understanding, without needing them to be based on reality. 

Your brain’s ‘Causality Narrative’ pattern building is essential for continuing to function at the high level you do. But in order to make sure this short-cut is helpful and doesn’t lead you astray, it’s important to do these 5 things:

• Become aware of the cause-and-effect stories you tell yourself

• Become aware of the ways you fill-in-the-blanks when you don’t know the facts

• Become aware of the ways your wishful thinking or pessimistic thinking influences that way you explain things

• Become aware of how your stories fail to respect the facts that you actually know

• Increase your comfort level with uncertainty so you don’t automatically explain things you don’t know.

The more you understand how your brain works and practice fine tuning it, the higher performing your brain will become without negatively effecting its’ efficiency.

5 Ways to Stop Bargaining with Your Anxiety and Feel Better

We’re all bargainers. No, not like the world class ones you’ll encounter as you nudge your way through the busy shops of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, or wander through the famous stalls of Jemaa El Fnaa in Marrakech, or get lost in the maze of the ancient markets in Delhi. Few of us ever reach that level of bargaining. Most of us feel utterly uncomfortable in these types of haggling situations. We avoid them at all cost. And if by total accident we ever found ourselves there, we’d be counting the days until we were back in the safety of fixed price tags!

We think we prefer things more concrete and non-negotiable.

The funny thing is, we’re constantly negotiating. If we were to turn up the volume on our awareness, we’d shock ourselves with how often we are wheeling and dealing…with ourselves!

Here are some examples. Have you bargained with the anxiety gods that as long as you keep your anxiety they will protect you from really bad things happening? Or convince yourself that as long as you keep your worry front and center, you’re being responsible and ‘fighting the good fight’ and that it will eventually pay off? Or have you traded your ‘peace of mind’ in exchange for providing for your family?

The problem with this type of internal bargaining and negotiating is that it is a one-way street. The other side might be at the table but they aren’t signing the contract. So, because in our minds so much is at stake, we end up with exceptional follow-through. We live up to our side of the bargain and worry, keep our anxiety, avoid certain things, even throw in a panic attack or two, and the other side? Well, they’re still not signing and there are no guarantees that they’re going to come through for us.

Would you EVER enter into a business deal like this? Even if your job doesn’t require making deals…logically does this make sense to you?

Me either.

So where does that leave us?

5 Ways to Stop Bargaining with Your Anxiety

1. We need to shed some light on the bargains we’ve made with some unreliable counterparts. Constant anxiety in return for life turning out ok. Lack of sleep in order to ensure business success. Chronic worry in order to guarantee my kids stay safe. Being overweight in order for my kids to get to their activities. Panic attacks to stay employed with my demanding but high paying job.

2. We need to ask ourselves if this is the only way that we will get the outcome we are wanting. Do I really need to wake up anxious in order for my life to turn out ok? Is the picture I’ve painted for my life the only picture that will work? Is being afraid of losing what I have or what I want to have the best way to keep it? Ask yourself some real questions along these lines.

3. Think logically even though anxiety isn’t logical. Anxiety is usually based on something that is potentially real and so logically an anxious reaction does make sense, though exaggerated. Once we accept that, we then we can think of other logical ways to deal with whatever we’re struggling with. We keep anxiety as one option and then we add other options to our menu. For example, you’re overwhelmed with responsibilities at work. One option is to wake up each morning before work feeling anxious, another option is to call in sick, or start looking for another job, or talk with your boss, or reframe what’s being asked of you, or take an online class to fill in skill gaps, or talk with a friend, or learn natural ways to help your body calm down, or make sure you exercise, or or or…

4. We need to experiment with other options. We can always return back to an anxious reaction. In a screwed up kinda way, anxiety will actually even feel comfortable because the known is always more comfortable than the unknown. But, we need to try out other reactions to address and deal with what is totally stressing us out because anxiety isn’t effective and makes life complicated and sucky. The key when we’re experimenting is to actually give the new reaction repetition and time to see if it works. Too often we try something once or twice and determine it doesn’t work. Our anxiety has had plenty of time and practice so we owe the same to other strategies!

5. Cut ourselves some slack. I know, that goes against all the hard-a$$ ‘wisdom’ out there. It flies in the face of all the self-critical cheerleading that has become the sacred path to success in our culture. Most likely you’ve been going that way too. It really doesn’t work for the long haul. So, maybe throw this one into your experimenting cycle too. You’re not going to the opposite end of the spectrum, lighting patchouli and telling yourself, “It’s all good.” You’re merely accepting a little bit more of being human, having reactions that make sense, and doing your best to make changes going forward…minus the self-flagellation.

Backing out of a past negotiation with your anxiety is ok. I think your anxiety is expecting it any day now.

Leave a reply and let me know what you just unbargained out of :-)

5 Ways to Strengthen Communication with Your Vagus Nerve for the New, Calmer You!

Want to be able to cut to the front of the line and immediately get the attention of your calming rock star? Want a VIP pass with your nervous system for those times you are about to lose it? It is yours for the taking and it comes in the form of your vagus nerve.

Your vagus nerve is responsible for your ‘rest and digest’ functions of your nervous system (aka calming down). To some degree, you are genetically predisposed to varying levels of vagal tone (receptivity), but this still doesn’t mean that you can’t change it.

Here are 5 ways to increase the receptivity or tone the vagus nerve:

1. Slow, rhythmic, diaphragmatic breathing. Breathing from your diaphragm (you can think of it like breathing from your belly), rather than shallowly from the top of the lungs stimulates and tones the vagus nerve. Make a plan to do this slow, rhythmic belly breathing a few times a day for a couple minutes each. Celebrate! It’s not like we need to run miles each day. Deep, slow breathing is totally doable!

2. Humming and Speaking. Since the vagus nerve is connected to the vocal cords, humming mechanically or talking stimulates it. You can hum a song, talk with your co-worker, or even better repeat the sound ‘OM.’

3. Washing your face with cold water. The mechanism here is not known, but cold water on your face stimulates the vagus nerve. This is totally NOT what you feel like doing when you are getting that ‘ramping up’ anxiety feeling, but next time you do give this a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

4. Meditation. Loving kindness meditation promotes feelings of goodwill towards yourself and others. A 2010 study by Barbara Fredrickson and Bethany Kik found that increasing positive emotions led to increased social closeness and an improvement in vagal tone. Again, the mechanics aren’t quite known but this one is too good and easy to pass up.

5. Balancing the gut microbiome. The presence of healthy bacteria in the gut creates a positive feedback loop through the vagus nerve, increasing its tone. Yes, your gut bacteria are finally getting their fifteen minutes of fame! It may seem like the trendy health topic of the day but more and more research is backing up the mind-body connection theory that has been around for a long time.

Toning your vagus nerve sounds funny, I know. Sorta kinky even. However, the vagus nerve holds one of the most easily accessed keys to creating the calmer new you in 2018. What have you got to lose?

I’d love to hear how they work for you!

20 Natural Ways to Increase GABA and Serotonin to Help Your Anxiety

Remember playing in the sand at the beach when you were a kid? You’d dig a hole in the dry sand with your hands only to have the sand slide back in and fill in the hole as you go. It often felt like one step forward, two steps back.

When our bodies are low in GABA or serotonin it can have that ‘one step forward, two steps back’ effect on our anxiety, our ability to calm ourselves or our mood in general. We try to feel better and shake things off but we just don’t seem to get any traction.

Fortunately, there are some natural things we can do to help get these two important levels back in balance. These suggestions don’t require major overhauls of your life, just little tweaks here and there. Little tweaks, when practiced consistently, can make huge changes so please don’t brush them off and continue with your status quo. Your life is too important for that.

Also, if you’re like me, knowing specifically why you’re ‘doing this’ or ‘not doing that’ is extremely motivating! For example, in the past when I would hear something about the importance of reducing stress I would think to myself, “Yeah, yeah, I know…” But once the dots were connected with stress’ contribution to low GABA and serotonin, figuring out how to reduce stress seemed particularly valuable!

If you want a quick reminder of the different symptoms for low GABA and low serotonin, I listed them here .

GABA (Gamma-AminoButyric Acid) is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that has a calming and relaxing effect in the brain.

Serotonin is also an inhibitory neurotransmitter that helps us with impulse control, pain relief, appetite, sleep and is probably best known for its role in helping to create a positive mood.

If you are interested in getting more information on how these two neurotransmitters might be affecting how you feel, make an appointment with a functional medicine doctor near you. If you don’t live near one, there are some wellness centers online that do tele-consultations.

Leave comments below if you’ve had particular success with this! I’d love to hear what worked for you.

Is Your High Functioning Anxiety Caused by Low GABA or Serotonin?

You gotta like puzzles. Or at least experiments. Sometimes it feels like solving a riddle.

Understanding and alleviating your anxiety often requires all three. Even though there has been a ton of headway made in understanding the biological and neurological mechanics of anxiety it seems like there are more people than ever that are still struggling.

As with most things, there isn’t one size that fits all so overcoming anxiety relies on a bit of Sherlock Holmes-style deductive reasoning.

When it comes to overcoming your anxiety, one piece of sleuthing involves identifying your symptoms pretty specifically. There is good reason to believe that different anxiety symptoms could point to different neurotransmitters with which your body may need additional assistance. Low levels of GABA or serotonin, two neurotransmitters, have been linked to anxiety and are commonly low in many people. These low levels are due in part to chronic stress, lack of certain nutrition, and not having time to exercise.

Check out these lists and see if half or more relate to you. Spoiler alert: if you do have low levels of either GABA or serotonin, it is totally doable to increase your levels naturally and without pharmaceuticals!

GABA (Gamma-AminoButyric Acid) is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that has a calming and relaxing effect in the brain.

Serotonin is also an inhibitory neurotransmitter that helps us with impulse control, pain relief and is probably best known for its role in helping to create a positive mood.

Well, did you find out anything interesting? If you could relate to half or more of the symptoms on the following two lists there’s a chance you currently have low levels of these neurotransmitters and they could be contributing to your anxiety.

Find a doctor of natural medicine and/or functional nutritionist to guide you on your next steps to correct this imbalance. Nutrition and dietary interventions, exercise and possibly taking supplements are effective and natural ways to increase levels of GABA and serotonin and will most likely be the first things recommended.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself When You Feel Anxiety

1 Thing You Can Do Right Now if You’re Feeling Anxiety

When I tell people that I‘m an anxiety therapist they say, ”Wow, could I use someone like you!” People say that All.The.Time. Fortunately, I have the awareness that this comment is not an open invitation for unsolicited advice on overcoming anxiety. So I smile and say, “Me too!”

But after a few of these comments it got me thinking what could I say to someone if they wanted my quick 2 cents that would be helpful, universally effective, and that could be called on when needed?

At a bare minimum, you need a clear strategy for 3 aspects of your anxiety:

1. When your mind starts going to that anxious place
2. When your body starts amping up
3. When you start getting down on yourself because you have anxiety

If I had to give one piece of truly helpful advice, here is what I came up with. It's an If/Then plan to use each and every time you start getting those anxious thoughts, feelings and body sensations. 

Use this as your If/Then plan for All 3:

• Label it. Label the fact that you are feeling anxious and having anxious thoughts. Label the fact that your body is responding in an anxious way. Label that you're having self-critical thoughts. Call it out in a direct, objective way. “I’m having anxious thoughts" or " My body is getting that anxious feeling" or "I'm having self critical thoughts."  Don’t go into why or why you’d like them to stop. Simply label the thoughts,  feelings and body sensations you’re having as anxious thoughts, feelings, body sensations. Less really is more here.
• Turning your attention. When this happens, turn your attention onto something else. After you label your thoughts, feelings or body sensations, letting your brain know that you’ve received that message, turn your attention on to something else. Preferably back to what you were doing or need to be doing but literally putting your attention and focus on anything other than your ruminating anxious thoughts will do the trick. In the beginning, it will feel like you are plying your mind away from the stickiest glue you can imagine. It’s that tough. But over time it gets infinitely easier!

From your experience, what do you think? What would be the #1 thing you’d suggest to a person to try?

3 Ways to Rid Yourself of An Obsessive Comparison Habit

Forever gone are the days that your 10-year reunion was the one night that your life had to be amazing beyond belief. Now, we’re trying to pull that appearance off every second of every day!

Social media has created an outrageously fertile soil to help us compare ourselves with every human on the planet… all the time.

Have you noticed that too?

This is for you if you find you’re in the habit of comparing yourself 24/7.

 3 ways to get off that roller coaster:

1.Awareness. First, you have to know that comparing yourself to others is normal and it’s something we do instinctually. So it’s not going to stop anytime soon. But that’s not the problem. The problem is when we subconsciously use what we see around us as a barometer to measure how our life is or how we are as a person.

Check in with yourself and see if you’ve inadvertently fallen into the obsessive comparison trap. You’ll know you’re either there or are getting a little too close for comfort, if your emotions and mood rise and plummet as you look at other people and compare yourself to them.

2. Limit your facebook, instagram, web-surfing and social media time.These things fuel our obsessive comparing. They just do. If you notice you are on a comparison roller coaster then get off. You must limit your time looking online. Nuf said.

3. Gratitude. You might be more vulnerable to obsessive comparison than usual if you’re going through a tough spell or, more deeply, if you’re not where you thought you’d be with your life at this point. It’s normal to look outward at all the examples of people who are (seemingly) experiencing what you want to be experiencing and be a bit jealous.

A point I want to highlight is that whatever we put our attention on grows in importance and grows in the amount of time it consumes in our thinking. In this case of obsessive comparing, what’s growing is most likely jealousy, unhappiness, and feeling of lack. SO, a daily habit of reflecting on 3 things you are grateful for will be a total game-changer. It’ll disrupt the comparison habit you’ve formed and will start shrinking the jealousy, unhappiness and feeling of lack.

Do you have other strategies that help you? Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear from you!

Check Out 3 Ways Your Language Says It All. Ways Your Anxiety Makes You Play Small.

Your anxiety comes up with many ways to keep you playing small.

Like when it talks you out of trying out for the team, convinces you not to pursue a promotion, keeps you from introducing yourself to that interesting person, or scares you away from going for the life you want. These examples are classic ‘overt’ ways anxiety rears its ugly head.

Another way, on a more subtle level, are the words you use. They are also influenced by your anxiety and can keep you playing small.

They are subtle ‘tells’ to be sure. But once you become aware of them they’ll stand out like a sore thumb. You’ll start to notice them all around you, not only in yourself but in others too. Start changing them and your anxiety will start to notice it is being challenged. You’ll start taking up more space. That’s a good thing. Anxiety flourishes when we play small.

Here are the top 3 ‘tells’ to be on the lookout for:

1. Shrinkers. These are ways we frequently minimize the meaning or impact of what we are trying to communicate. We use words like “just”, “actually” and “almost”. We say or write things like, “I just think.., “I actually disagree…”, or ”I almost want to opt for the other…” Although you’re not physically shrinking or avoiding things, when you use the words “just”, “actually” and “almost” in your communicating, you are energetically shrinking by devaluing your thoughts and opinions. These “shrinker” words reinforce anxiety’s message that it is right to fear taking up space.
2. Unnecessary Apologies. This unfortunate habit is more prevalent in women than men but does the same thing. It keeps you small. Saying you are sorry is intended to be used when you have hurt someone’s feelings, have done something wrong, or have caused harm in some way. Not because you exist and are human. It’s also something to be used sparingly so it doesn’t lose its value and meaning. When your anxiety has you constantly saying things like, “Sorry to bother you but…” or “Sorry if this is a silly question…”, it’s time to do some serious editing. If you catch yourself writing like this in an email, delete it. If you find you use these words in conversation, stop yourself. It’s feeding your anxiety monster by keeping you in your “sorry” comfort zone.
3. Undermining disclaimers. Your anxiety can be not only clever but downright sneaky. There are times when it doesn’t make you totally avoid doing something, being bold and speaking up but it inserts itself in a way that keeps you safe…and small. It does so when you say or write things like, “I’m just thinking off the top of my head, but . . . ,” “I’m no expert in this, but . . . ,” or “You clearly know about this more than I do but . . .” You undermine your value with disclaimers to soften a potentially negative response. Anxiety is all about the potential! When you notice your anxiety is showing up in this way, take a deep breath, delete the qualifier and simply say what you have to say.

What are other ways you’ve noticed that anxiety makes you speak small? I’d love to hear about them!

3 Common Mindfulness Pitfalls When Life Get's Stressful and How to Avoid Them

Your job is at a dead end, your relationship with your significant other is on the rocks, you’re constantly exhausted, and on top of all that, you’re at the end of your favorite Netflix binge.

I hear you — and a ton of other people like you — sincerely and quizzically asking, “Why would I want to become more mindful of the present moment?”

Mindfulness is a tough sell for this very reason. When we need it most, we are most likely to say “No thanks.” After all, why would anyone in their right mind want to be reminded of how unhappy they are? Who could possibly be enthusiastic about contemplating how much their life stinks?

I totally get it. I used to think this way too.

In the past, when bad or stressful times hit, I would instantly forget key pieces of being mindful. As it turns out, many people I’ve talked to about mindfulness over the years tend to get derailed by forgetting some of these same aspects.

Let’s take a look at three common places people get off track and what you can do to avoid them or get back on track.

1. Judging: 

When things get hard, or when we’re particularly stressed out, it’s very easy to slide into old habits and ways of thinking. One of the most tried-and-true ways of derailing mindful awareness is by judging our thoughts, feelings and experiences as good or bad.

It isn’t surprising that we do this. There’s a human survival mechanism inherent in this mental habit of judging things as good or bad. It keeps us safe and alerts us to our boundaries. The problem is that it also robs us of our objectivity and our ability to respond in the best way possible. To a large degree, our mental judging chooses our responses for us.

This is okay in an actual survival situation, but the fact that it happens in our day-to-day lives (i.e. when we hate our job or hate our thighs) that it becomes a problem. This kind of thinking automatically kicks us into that “good equals do more of/want more of” and “bad equals avoid or feel bad about” mode. That is exhausting.

When we aren’t happy with how things are going in our lives, it is common to get automatically pulled back to this habit. If you’re resisting the idea of mindfulness right about now, check in with your thoughts and see if you’ve slipped back into judging. Awareness, and a gentle nudge, is the antidote to this one.

2. Falling into the Gap: 

The second place people get tripped up when life stinks is by getting triggered by the gap. By this I mean focusing on what seems to be a deep chasm between what we feel now about our life and what we wish we were feeling about our life. Or the distance between life as it is currently and our prized destination.

The gap is a powerful force when our reserves are low. That gap consists of all the conditions we’ve consciously or subconsciously set up for ourselves in order to be happy. For example, “If I find my soul mate, I will be happy,” or “I won’t be happy until I’m skinny.” When we get pulled into the gap, we often feel dissatisfied. That sense of lack looms large, making us feel inferior and weak.

Mindfulness in these situations is when we recognize that we’re being pulled toward the gap. A good guideline for noticing this dynamic is that often, when you’re unhappy or feeling like you’re missing something, you’re being pulled. You’re wrestling against a condition you’ve set up for yourself, consciously or subconsciously.

When you realize this, bring the condition out into the light by identifying it. Once you do, turn it into a preference instead of a need. For example, turn it into, “I prefer to lose weight” or “I prefer to be in relationship with my soul mate.” Notice how breaking the chains of this need helps you become more present to your current situation in the here and now.

3. Acceptance: 

This last one is so much easier to do in good times than in bad. We often imagine we’ll be able to accept disappointment in times of challenge or crisis only to find out that, well, it’s much more challenging than we thought it would be.

A common scenario in which people get derailed when faced with hard times is thinking that acceptance seems too risky. You worry about surprising yourself if you dare to think, “What if accepting means I’m admitting that I’m okay with what’s happening?” It might look like you lack initiative or have no motivation to change. Often this pushback surfaces when we haven’t had opportunities to practice acceptance in real life. As an intellectual exercise, we thought it made sense. In real time? Not as much.

If you find yourself resisting acceptance, try to approach it as an experiment. Try accepting whatever you’re unhappy with as simply what is. Then see what happens. For example, if you’re in a dead end job and you accept that, see if you decide to look for another job, see if you decide that this job is good enough for now, or another option. There’s no right answer. What you will most likely find is that acceptance gives you the distance you need to best create and evaluate your options in the here and now, without the drawbacks you were fearing.

When life is challenging we often surprise ourselves with how we react. As a longtime practitioner of mindfulness, I’m humbled by the power of old habits. They never fail to provide new opportunities for me to practice and grow. Throw in some self-compassion, and I have all the ingredients for a rich and evolving practice.

And as we all know, life is always ready to give us plenty of material to work with.