Changing Anxiety Into A Nothing Burger - Part 1 of Anxiety Talks

We set a clear intention to help 100,000 people manage their minds, then unpack anxiety as practiced interpretation and learnable habit. Emotions become messages that move when we give them a satisfying response, using simple tools to reframe fear and restore calm.

• neutral events gaining meaning through interpretation
• emotions as messages that flow when answered
• high-grade fear resolving vs low-grade anxiety persisting
• ads, news and FOMO manufacturing background fear
• avoidance reinforcing anxiety loops
• Stream Technique for layered emotional release
• future pacing to rehearse success and safety
• “not about me” reframes that dissolve shame and judgment
• identifying exact fears and creating satisfying responses
• regression perspective and proof of survival
• focusing influence at arm’s reach rather than global overload

Please share this on your socials if you want. It'd just be nice to grow our little group of listeners.

Chapters

• 0:00 Sharing The Intention To Help
• 2:05 Defining Anxiety And Interpretation
• 5:45 Emotions As Messages That Flow
• 9:45 High-Grade Vs Low-Grade Fears
• 15:20 Culture, Ads, And Manufactured Fear
• 20:40 “Not About Me” Reframe
• 25:45 News, Doomscrolling, And FOMO Loops
• 29:40 Driving Anxiety And Avoidance Cycles
• 33:10 Thought Habits And Worry Patterns
• 36:20 The Stream Technique For Release
• 40:10 Future Pacing And Intentional Imagery

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_03: 0:13

Good morning from the lake. It's a little bit of ice out there.

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

Is it really?

SPEAKER_03: 0:17

Yeah. Yeah, in the shallows. It's crispy. It's been cold all night.

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

It is crispy. It is crispy.

SPEAKER_03: 0:25

Explains why there's no ducks up close to the shore.

SPEAKER_00: 0:28

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 0:29

So.

SPEAKER_00: 0:30

Yeah. So before we get started here, we we did want to say that if you if you listen to this and you enjoy it, give it a share. Post it, you know, send it to a friend.

SPEAKER_02: 0:43

Please.

SPEAKER_00: 0:44

Please share it on your socials if you want. Yeah. It'd just be nice to to grow our little group of listeners.

SPEAKER_03: 0:52

That's one of those we've changed our intentions. Intentions are everything, as you know, I've said a million times. Intentions are everything. And our intention now is to, with our with our system of school and our online stuff, our goal is to, in the near future, help a hundred thousand people. It's a big-minded goal. Um, as I was led to in my my meditative state, it's about the intensity of your intentions. I thought that was really cool, a really neat way to look at it. The intensity of your intentions. When your intentions are really, really big and really specific, they they guide your actions, they guide everything and they get you to do things. And when we set that intention of we're going to help 100,000 people, we've been helping people one-on-one, lots of people, but it's one-on-one a bit at a time. It's time to crank up that number. And so it'd be we really would be grateful if you would share that intention with us. If you're finding that this stuff is helpful in some way or another, that just uh listening to these ideas that you can grab a few along the way and they make your experience of your day a little bit better. If you would just, yeah, just put on whatever social media you're on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace. No, I didn't, I never had a MySpace.

SPEAKER_00: 2:27

You did. No, I did okay, maybe for like a second, but I just wasn't into it.

SPEAKER_03: 2:34

Anyway, if you would just say, you know, here's something that I found that I like and just put it out there for other people in your world to consider. We'd be grateful. And we will move forward in our intention to help a hundred thousand people.

SPEAKER_00: 2:49

That's right. I think I'm at 1,500 to 2,000. So we're almost there. Barb says, thumbs up. So yeah, today we're we're talking about anxiety. I feel like talking about anxiety with the visual that comes to me is is the universe full of stars and how our cameras can only really point at a tiny, tiny little fraction of that. And I feel like that's what the topic is like when Les and I were talking about it this morning and yesterday. There's just so much to it. There's so many ways it could go. Everyone has different kinds of anxiety, obviously, but we're just we're just gonna focus on a little bit of it and then expand from there in the school, of course.

SPEAKER_03: 3:35

I think that when it comes to using one's mind for their own best interests, um, it's about you know how we think of things. Things are only a problem based on how we think of them. You know, I think that that's a first really big idea is that everything is basically neutral. Nothing's ever good or bad, but thinking makes it so, as Hamlet said. You know, it's just stuff. And there's so much stuff out there that we just don't care about. And it's easy to see it as neutral. Yeah, you know, and then there are things that we have particular interpretations of that become problems, they become issues, they evoke emotions, and we can't seem to get over the emotion. Yeah, and that emotion comes back every time we engage that particular thing because we are programming ourselves, we're practicing that, and we haven't had a chance to re-examine our interpretation of that. And that would be really a simple summary of what we do as hypnotists. We help people examine their interpretations of their experiences, and in doing so, many experiences that seem very potent and all the way to painful emotionally uh suddenly become very, very nothing burgers. They become, they become like everything else, which is neither good or bad, just another thing on the list of things that happen.

SPEAKER_02: 5:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 5:12

So if that's the big picture, right? If that's the big picture, then anxiety is part of that process in which we have somehow interpreted something as meaning something other than as a nothing burger. We've interpreted that thing as somehow meaning something about us.

SPEAKER_00: 5:35

Yeah. Like either we're in danger or we're gonna feel bad or we're gonna be judged.

SPEAKER_03: 5:42

When we get specific about anxiety, those are the kinds of things we've bumped into over and over. Messages, ideas, concepts that have somehow got into our mind as a habit, often when we're very, very young. So this is the big picture, and I'm talking about the big picture. Hillary will talk about the smaller picture, but let's just talk about the big picture of emotions. What are some basic things to remember about emotion?

SPEAKER_00: 6:09

That they move through you, that they're not locked in forever, even though it does feel like that in the moment, because we're always in the present moment, no matter what we think that we're living in the past, living in the future. We're always in the present moment. So in the present moment, when we have anxiety or any emotion, it it feels like, well, when did this even start and when will it end? And you can't really see not having it. So it's easy to get sucked into it.

SPEAKER_03: 6:38

So that's a great description, I think. Oh emotions arise and then they go away. And it's important to see them like that, and it's important to let them be that temporary, temporary emotions are meant to flow, right? So the emotion is the direct result of how I am interpreting the situation, the event that's going on around. I don't have emotion about things I don't care about. I don't have, I'm gonna keep using it. I don't have emotions about nothing burgers, right? I don't feel emotional about events that don't seem to mean anything about me. So what's happened is I've interpreted something to mean something about me, related to me, and I've had an emotion because of it. That emotion is a message, it's not meant to be in you, it's not meant to stay with you forever, it's meant to communicate something and motivate a response.

SPEAKER_00: 7:39

Yeah, yeah. It's it's like a little a little signpost that goes up and says, you know, waving frantically, I'm over here, I need to be listened to. But what do we usually do? We turn and run from it, which just makes it scream out louder, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 7:58

Well, and we get comfortable with our emotions so that they stay with us. Now, if we were to back up and say, you know, emotions are messages and they are meant to flow, they're meant to get a response. Let's take those three ideas, right? They're messages, they're meant to flow, they're meant to go away, right? And they will go away when you respond in a satisfactory way to them.

SPEAKER_02: 8:25

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03: 8:26

And then we talked a minute ago about before we turned on the microphone, we talked about, you know, what uh I talk about as low grade fears, which are really the problem, and high grade fears. High grade fears are, you know, there's a tiger, it's right there. Think of that fear as being really, really intense. It's hard to miss the message. I'm in danger. That's the message. I'm in danger. I'm in danger, is the message of fear. I need to do something about this. So it's demanding a response. So I turn and I run.

SPEAKER_02: 9:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 9:03

Right. And when the tiger sits there while I run away, that response is satisfying the fear. And I get back to my home and I close and lock the door, and I realize I'm safe, which is a satisfying response.

SPEAKER_02: 9:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 9:21

And now that fear is gone. You can let that fear go. You might remember, hey, I'm not going into that part of the forest again because there's a tiger there. I might even pick up the phone and say, hey, people, police, whoever, you know, there's a tiger over there. I might do a lot of things to protect myself in the future. But the point is, is the emotion demanded a response. I gave it the satisfactory response. Now the emotion goes away. I can, if I know that the tiger was over there in the forest, well, I'm just not gonna go there. And now I don't need to be afraid of the tiger. That's a great big, huge fear. And it's easy when the big fears come because they demand a response. And as a result, they those those emotions can go away. Now, if instead I interpreted that experience as there's tigers everywhere, now I'm afraid all the time there's nothing I can do about it. There is no satisfactory response to there are tigers everywhere, which isn't true, and it really can't be true, but our mind embraces that idea because we think about it over and over and over, it becomes practiced. And now thinking about going out the door is a constant fear that can't get resolved without changing the way we think of and that fear that just doesn't seem to go away to the point where it is constant. People talk about anxiety.

SPEAKER_00: 11:00

Yeah, and it even gets to the point where I've had so many clients say this is like, I don't even know where this is coming from anymore. It's just so resistant to change, to going away, to to moving through. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 11:15

And as a hypnotist, what do we say back to? I don't know where this is coming from.

SPEAKER_00: 11:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 11:19

It's coming from inside you.

SPEAKER_00: 11:21

Yeah, it's coming from your past, it's coming from little fears stacked on fears, stacked on fears that are now this, you know, sort of like a snowball now huge.

SPEAKER_03: 11:33

And it's hard to say that it's really hard, I think, for someone to say to themselves, my fear is irrational. It's really hard to say that to yourself because it's real to them, right? Yeah, it's real to me.

SPEAKER_02: 11:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 11:50

The question becomes, well, what am I really afraid of? And why do I have this fear? What created this fear? When the fear is inside you, it's really hard to be analytical about it. So, really, the first thing we do when we're helping somebody with anxiety is we just try to release it for a little while.

SPEAKER_00: 12:13

Yeah, and and see where the resistant parts come up. What are they still anxious about? With anxiety, I found with clients it's it's of course layered. And sometimes there's two layers, sometimes there's five layers. And the top layer, like yesterday when I talked about the nesting doll idea, the top layer sheds away. And then they go, Oh my gosh, there's another thing coming up which I didn't even think about. I think it masks, right? Each layer masks the layer underneath. And that's why I think, in my opinion, uh, it feels like we don't even know where this started, right? It's so part of my life now that I don't even know where it's coming from.

SPEAKER_03: 13:00

And in our society, it's really natural to encourage fear, right? Like it's neat. Yeah, it's everywhere to think about the way products, right? Products are sold using fear. It's not that boy, you would enjoy this, it's you need this. Yeah. And you need this because of these awful things that might happen if you don't have that.

SPEAKER_00: 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 13:25

It's not enough to say, well, yeah, like here's here's a great way to make somebody anxious all the time. If we, without stating it, say that aging is bad, and then we sell anti-aging products. Underneath those products is that constant fear that I'm not good enough, right? That as we get older, we become less worthwhile, less valuable. And so you want to cover up that gray, right? You want to, you know, change your shape, you want to get rid of those wrinkles. There's this massive, you know, as a as a male, maybe women don't know it, there's massive push on male face products. Like it's huge, the number of male face products out there today, right? Soaks that turn your gray beard dark again and turn your gray hair dark again, and get rid of special creams now to to put on your face to expand your skin and get rid of the wrinkles, right? This this is huge with with men now. And I it all it had to do was pop into my feed once, and then I clicked on it. Yeah, because go, well, what the heck is this, right? Because they were talking about beef towel.

SPEAKER_02: 14:43

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 14:44

And I'm thinking, what? All the all the rage. What beef towel? That's gross. Yeah. So I click on it, and now I am shocked at the number of products that there are out there telling men you're not good enough anymore. You're old. Nobody wants old, right? And I know that's been going on for centuries with women. And I'm not, I'm just saying that it's going on for all of us. The point is, is that message creates an ongoing fear. That fear, that's what they're tapping into. That fear gets you to buy things.

SPEAKER_02: 15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 15:22

And so many of our products are being sold that way, and so many of our products that we're creating are creating, we're creating from a basis of fear.

SPEAKER_00: 15:34

And they all seem to be the miracle product, right? This will happen so fast for you because we need we need it to happen fast so that we can feel good enough.

SPEAKER_03: 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:48

Again. And it's just an endless loop, right? Because it doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_03: 15:53

So it's really easy for us to be living in this world and being constantly barraged with fears, subtle fears. And these are like the low-grade fears. These aren't tigers staring us in the eye. These are things that we should be bothered by that won't ever go away.

SPEAKER_02: 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 16:14

Right?

SPEAKER_02: 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 16:15

And that's where anxiety, because it's never good enough, really kicks in. Now that's great in a market society. You could sell a lot of stuff that way, right? You could sell thousands and thousands of products that way.

SPEAKER_02: 16:29

And they do.

SPEAKER_03: 16:30

And since we have to accept that media is only existing for the purposes of advertising. There is nothing on your phone, there is nothing on your TV, there is nothing on your radio. In fact, even your favorite podcasts, not this one, even your favorite podcasts have advertisements in them. So understand that the only reason all of these platforms were built was so that advertisers could get access to customers, which means you're just living your life. You're just being a good old-fashioned, normal person. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just doing your thing and constantly without you even being aware because you're so used to it now, you're receiving hundreds of messages of fear every day. Just by living your life, be it normal in a marketplace world. I think it's important not to spend your time being angry about that or shutting off your phone. I think it's important to be aware that it's coming. Spot it. That's to me like a really big deal. If you can now, every time you receive an advertisement, look to see how they're trying to make you afraid. You can quickly neutralize that. Yeah. You can quickly say, ah, no, not me. And that will take that emotion out of that experience and allow you quite literally to release the emotion, satisfy the emotion. The emotion goes away. And now it's a nothing burger.

SPEAKER_00: 18:07

For those that have never heard nothing burger before, let's take a just a minute and explain that.

SPEAKER_03: 18:13

I think everybody heard nothing burger.

SPEAKER_00: 18:15

Oh, really? It was new to me.

SPEAKER_03: 18:17

Oh, I don't know. I think everybody knows what a if you don't know what a nothing burger, please reach it.

SPEAKER_00: 18:25

Our chat says, I never heard of it.

SPEAKER_03: 18:28

Never heard of it?

SPEAKER_00: 18:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03: 18:29

A nothing burger is when somebody puts information together and gives it to you, and in the end, you're like, well, this means nothing.

SPEAKER_00: 18:38

This is but they're all hype about it.

SPEAKER_03: 18:40

They're hyping, and you're receiving and you're examining, and you're saying, Oh, this is nothing to be bothered by. This is nothing to be excited about. This isn't this is just a big fat nothing burger.

SPEAKER_02: 18:54

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 18:55

Well, maybe we've started a trend. I think people know what a nothing is. I think people if I know what a nothing burger is, everybody knows what a nothing burger is.

SPEAKER_00: 19:08

Well, we got a thumbs up, so it's understandable. But back to anxiety. It's really about worrying about a future and a past, right? You can worry about the past. Oh my gosh, I do all the time.

SPEAKER_03: 19:22

I think the past is experience. And I think experience is constantly at play in our present. It shapes our beliefs, what we believe to be true right now about me. Now, if I was, let's say, you know, if I was a tiger and along came, you know, a snake, I probably wouldn't be very afraid. I would bet that that snake is probably afraid of the tiger, right? But I, as a human being, am afraid of snakes.

SPEAKER_02: 19:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 19:56

So what it is is what do I think about me, right? And this is where the magic comes in, because it's not about telling you that what you think about yourself is wrong. It's about showing you the truth about yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 20:14

Yeah. Yeah. And when I think about that, like when I worry about the past, it's usually it's usually only about um, like, oh, I was talking to that person and I said that stupid thing, and you know, and then I ruminate on I wish I hadn't said that. And what are they thinking now? And they probably didn't even notice, you know. But yeah, I, you know, it doesn't keep me up at night or anything, but it certainly keeps me going in the day. So it would be about me, what I think about me, you know. I'm silly for saying that, or I got, you know, why did I say that?

SPEAKER_03: 20:51

I think that that's when when we can deconstruct all of our experiences as having an element of interpretation about myself, right? If you remember it, it's because you interpreted it about you. Maybe something you should do, maybe something you should be, maybe something you've done right, something maybe you've done wrong, something that makes you feel smarter, something that makes you feel not so smart, something that makes you feel capable, something that makes you feel not so capable. These are the experiences we cling to because they mean something about us. And if we can, if we can always go to what does this mean about me? Does this mean anything about me? Right?

SPEAKER_00: 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 21:35

If that can always be part of our thought process, we will carry fewer and fewer experiences with us, which opens up the future, right? We will release a lot more emotions, which won't cloud our vision and get in the way of our being ourselves, right? Just that idea that this is not about me. I I've never seen a more powerful, life-changing reframe working with clients than this is not about me.

SPEAKER_00: 22:06

Yeah, I've used that a lot with clients too. I do see the change once it once it clicks. I think the reframe takes a little minute because usually it goes hand in hand with it's about them, not about me, right? And when we start to like at first at least, I see some resistance to that because with clients, because it's hard to see, well, what was going, what was actually going on for that person. We don't know, right? So why is it all about them? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03: 22:40

Well, I think, I think, first of all, again, from the deepest love um our caregivers from the instant we're born are trying to protect us. Somebody along the line has successfully programmed them into thinking the world's a scary place. People are scary things. There's a lot of things to be worried about and fearful of. And, you know, we just talked about how naturally that happens in our lives, right? So here's these wonderful people who are surviving in the world, who believe that that's because they have lots of fear. And now they want to pass those fears on to you because that's how you're gonna be safe, because they love you so much and they want you to be safe. And then they start to pass on these fears to you. You got to watch out for this and you got to pay attention to that, and look both ways across the street, and away we go. That it's about moving through the world in a cautious state. And that creates a predisposition for fear that causes us to interpret everything that happens as somehow about us. What does that mean about me? Right, even to the point of reading, feeling compelled to read the news because a good person is informed, and to find yourself upset about what's going on for somebody else on the other side of the world. Now, I'm not trying to be mean. I don't think I'm being mean to say that's going on on the other side of the world. And that kind of makes it not my business. Now, some people believe, no, no, everything is my business. And I think that that's a program that's not helpful.

SPEAKER_00: 24:22

Well, I think as humans, uh, we weren't meant to we we were uh we started out in in small groups, right? We weren't meant to know what was going on on, you know, the other the other side of the world. We didn't even know there was another side of the world.

SPEAKER_03: 24:39

But yeah, but how do I get you to sit in front of advertisements except by telling you that a good person is well informed and watches the news. And so I turn on the news, and what I'm really watching, what they're really selling to me, are the advertisements. They want my attention so that they can sell my attention to an advertiser. And so they're gonna turn the news into something that makes me think it's about me. This is what all you people should be afraid of. This is what's going on, and it's their fault, right? So now I got somebody to point my finger at, and I got something to be afraid of, and that keeps me outside myself, not resolving my emotions, not dealing with my own interpretation of things, being convinced that what goes on in the world is important to me. And that's why one of the reframes I use with my clients who have that, I've always had that tendency. I'm one of those guys that people used to ask what's going on in the world, because I used to pay attention to everything. Everything. And so you could ask me about, you know, how many wars are there in the world? And I could tell you, right? I could tell you who is fighting who and why, right? I thought that was important at the time. And I've reframed that for myself.

SPEAKER_00: 25:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 26:00

I've reframed that to what I call my arm's reach point of view.

SPEAKER_02: 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 26:05

If I can, within my reach as a human being, in the space that I occupy, in the people and circle that I have, if I can make a difference, I want to. I want to help 100,000 people. 100,000 people say, I am having difficulties managing my mind. I want to help you. And because I'm online, we can help people all around the world. And that's great. But you come into my arm's reach by coming onto our website and saying, hey, Les, can you help me with this?

SPEAKER_02: 26:38

Right?

SPEAKER_03: 26:38

We put each other within arm's reach, but I can't, from where I stand today, I can't do too much about what's going on in Ukraine. And being completely absorbed by it is not helping my life at all. It's not helping them at all. It's really not accomplishing much. So for me, being aware and then being aware of the people within my reach that might be of Ukrainian background and want help dealing with their emotions about it because that it can mean something about them, right? They can say, Well, I'm Ukrainian and this is my my ancestor's homeland. This might be a reason for them to say, Well, this does affect me. And I can help them manage that. There's something I can do. That's within my arm's reach. It's not in my arm's reach to fix the world. That's not, unfortunately, that's not ever going to happen. But it is my within my arm's reach to put my recordings and my meditations out there into the world and hope that people find it and get relief. So there's a balance there. Yeah. What I believe though, fundamentally, is that when I'm clear about how something does or doesn't affect me, mean anything about me. When I'm clear that it doesn't mean anything about me, I'm not gonna have emotions about it.

SPEAKER_00: 28:08

Yeah. I think anxiety, and I'm gonna try to spell it out here. I think anxiety can be, in many circumstances, addictive. I think of an anxiety loop where the person doesn't know that they're, let's say, addicted to their anxiety. But there is this idea that maybe they have some anxiety. What's going on in the world? Is the easiest one that I can think of. They have anxiety. What's going on in the world? They turn on the news. That gives them an element of resolve, right? A tiny bit of resolve because now I know. So then they get a little, even if it's the tiniest, tiniest bit of let's say dopamine. And then the anxiety part, let's call it a part for now, says, Oh, I was correct to give you anxiety because you resolved it by looking at the news and I got a little hit of dopamine. So I'm just gonna keep that loop going. So we're not sitting around thinking we're addicted to anxiety, but I think there is sort of this loop that happens for people without even knowing. Yeah, without without even without even knowing. You know, think of that idea of doom scrolling, right? I think that's a loop. I think that's an anxiety loop.

SPEAKER_03: 29:19

FOMO.

SPEAKER_00: 29:19

Yeah, you do you mean like you you want to be in the know? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 29:24

FOMO F is fear, right? Fear of missing out.

SPEAKER_00: 29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 29:28

FOMO is is the idea that somehow I'm not good enough unless I know.

SPEAKER_00: 29:35

So let's use another example. This comes up a lot with clients, is fear of driving. So this fear of driving, I've noticed, gets worse and worse. I mainly work with women. I don't know if it if it gets a lot worse with men as they get older, but for some reason, a lot of women I work with have this fear of driving, and it just seems to get worse as they're as they're getting older. If you start Listening to that. So say you're sitting on the couch, oh, I want to go into town. I have to drive. And then suddenly you have some anxiety about driving into town. And then you say to yourself, okay, I'm not going into town. The anxiety part goes, ah, again, I was correct, right? There was something to fear. And so I'm going to do it again next time you think about it. Right. It's this, it's this feeding it. And I'm not, I guess I'm not telling people to just totally go out of their comfort zones and move through it. And, you know, but to be aware that when we when we when we don't do something because we have some anxiety about it, it's it's, in my opinion, literally telling the anxiety, you were right. You were right. Protect me again next time.

SPEAKER_03: 30:50

A well-practiced fear, unfortunately, becomes hard to decipher. And it needs to be deciphered. To give it a satisfactory response to solve and resolve the fear, you need to know what you're afraid of.

SPEAKER_02: 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:08

And so it's about taking a moment and breaking down what exactly are you afraid of? What might happen?

SPEAKER_02: 31:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:17

And so for a lot of clients, that's the first step. For many of us, that's an opportunity to resolve the fear without asking for any help. If I say, well, what am I actually afraid of? And then understand that maybe I'm already safe. Uh the conditions already exist that I am safe. Or maybe there's a simple thing I can do to be safe. I know you want to go on to something else.

SPEAKER_00: 31:46

No, no, in the chat, it's asking, so is that then strengthening the anxiety?

SPEAKER_03: 31:52

Well, it's practicing the anxiety.

SPEAKER_00: 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:54

Right? It becomes a pattern, it becomes a thought process.

SPEAKER_02: 31:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:57

It's getting hardwired in your your in your neurology, in your neurobiology, what you practice, what you know, where you put your attention and what you think about become well-homed thought patterns.

SPEAKER_02: 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 32:11

So anytime you are in that anxiety without trying to resolve the emotion, you are creating a pattern.

SPEAKER_00: 32:20

Yeah, exactly. So is worry a cycle too?

SPEAKER_03: 32:23

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 32:24

A habitual thought process permit.

SPEAKER_03: 32:26

And well, that's the perfect name for it, right? Yeah. Exactly. It is a habitual thought process. Thoughts are habits. They really are. 60 to 120,000 a day, right? 80% you thought yesterday, 90% of those are negative, right? Thoughts are habits. We need to recognize that in ourselves. That's the power of our subconscious mind, is that we become habitual, and that's how we get really good at things. Sometimes we get really good at things that aren't helpful. That's worry. You know, and we can we know that. You know, you talk to somebody who would call themselves a warrior. They know it's not helpful. They know they don't want to be that way. But we can, as human beings, look at the way the world exists, the way we've been describing now for half an hour, and say becoming a warrior is a pretty natural response to what's going on in the world today, right? Becoming someone who's anxious is a pretty natural, normal response based on what we're constantly being messaged to us, right? So yeah, you're normal. To me, that's part of it, right? Part of it is saying that this is a thought pattern I created, which means I can recreate, I can create something different. It might take some effort, it might take some undoing, might take some time, but it is a habitual thought pattern, and I can change it. That's empowering to me. I'm normal, there's nothing wrong with me. I've been taught to think this way, but I can change the way I think.

SPEAKER_00: 34:04

Yeah. So things that I've used to help people with this are the stream technique, which is I've found to be a technique that releases those layers. Imagining that the anxiety, worry, stress is flowing out into the water. And that is paired with a color, you know, if someone notices a color coming out of their feet into the water. And then they check, okay, can I actually feel the worry? Can I feel the anxiety? And sometimes, again, I've like I said yesterday, these things are there's like they're sneaky. They they they'll move to another part of the body. But to me, in my mind, as a hypnosis, I'm thinking, okay, well, that's just another layer, right? They've released the one in their in their chest, now it's in their shoulder. Okay, let's move that out as well. And each one is masking the one underneath, right? Funnily enough, sometimes the colors get darker, right? As we get down to the the nucleus. Right. And and then they'll think about what they were worried about, anxious about, and they won't be able to feel it any longer. So that's that's uh energetic one that I use.

SPEAKER_03: 35:25

If if emotions are meant to flow, then that's just a beautiful metaphor, isn't it? Water flows, you're in a stream, it carries away these emotions. You know, I what I think about when you talk about that is how people do this for themselves. Yeah. Right? How do people take your technique and do it for themselves? Well, the way most people do it is they watch cat videos.

SPEAKER_02: 35:48

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03: 35:49

Yeah. What they do is they shift their mind to something pleasant, they occupy their thought cycles with something that makes them feel good.

SPEAKER_02: 35:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 36:00

That's a really human thing to do. That's a huge that's an insightfully human thing to do. To say, I want to change my thought pattern here. I want to think about something else. I want to think about something that creates calming emotions and that turns down my sympathetic nervous system. But to be more deliberate about it and be aware that I have emotion inside me that's not getting resolved, and I want to release it. And that act of releasing it, and this is why I like the stream, it often, sometimes, people will come in with such intense emotions that we have to let go of them through the stream so that we can come back and look at them.

SPEAKER_00: 36:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the stream is, I mean, I don't think you can ever do it wrong, right? But while you're watching or sensing that color is coming out of your feet and toes, all you have to do is just watch it. Don't push it, don't wonder, just watch it. And when the subconscious, this is what I have found anyway, when your subconscious mind is done with it, the stream just goes clear. And you don't have to wonder when it's gonna go clear or push it to be clear or imagine it clear. You just watch the color and that's it, right? It's like self-suggested like right idea. And then you check. Check to see if if you can lock on to that anxiety any longer. If you can, that's all right. Doesn't mean it didn't work, you just move that portion out. Chances are you'll find that it's smaller, right? Or it's moved, or it's about something else that comes up. There's another one I want to talk about, another technique that I use where you convince the mind that whatever you're worried about coming up in the future has already happened. So how you do that is you imagine yourself, say, let's take a let's take a party that you're going to and you're worried about going to the party, right? People are there. I haven't seen these people in a long time. You know, there's lots of things that people worry about. So let's imagine that the party has already happened and you're now on the other side of the party. Maybe you're back home. And what are the things, the good things that happened to get you there? Right? Bullet point list them. Well, people were nice to me. I felt comfortable. The food was good, right? I felt safe. I'm using past tense words here, right? So you are basically placing the mind because your subconscious mind doesn't know whether what you're thinking thinking about is real or pretend, like actually happening or not happening. You can place yourself in a state of, well, it actually went pretty well. And this is how it went well. And you'd be amazed how people can't then, when they think about going to the party, they can't lock on to that emotion, that anxiety.

SPEAKER_03: 39:02

Imagination and intention, such powerful tools to form the intention that today's gonna be a great day. I'm gonna accomplish a lot, I'm gonna meet some new people today, I'm gonna have some new friends today. These kinds of intentions, the imagination. You know, every hypnosis session includes what we call, come to call, I don't know if every hypnotist calls it, future pacing, which is just quite literally seeing the future without the problem, seeing the future with the problem resolved, seeing in this case the future without the anxiety. And so when you release, use the stream and release those emotions, they become easier to manage. You can then take that time to look and ask, what is it that you're afraid of? And then you can start to use your intelligent mind, your conscious mind to say, well, you know, is that really going to happen? What are the chances of that? And what would my response be? And then you future paste that out, seeing yourself at the party, relaxed, meeting people, being happy. Um uh people are allowed to say whatever they want. And it, you know, you embrace that idea that it's not about me. You see them living this party in a really happy way, coming from it with new friends and people being happy. And all of that, because it's imagination, the subconscious mind doesn't really know the difference. And the subconscious mind will play that out because now that's been practiced. Now that can be repeated.

SPEAKER_02: 40:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 40:41

And you can take whatever part of the party, let's say, that's the problem, maybe it's walking in the door, or maybe it's I'm gonna see that person, or these kinds of things. And you could practice that over and over, seeing it go well. And all of that reduces in the subconscious mind the fear of the event itself.

SPEAKER_00: 41:00

Yeah. I think we all we mostly resort to it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be okay, it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be okay. And that the subconscious mind doubles down at that point, right?

SPEAKER_03: 41:13

It's an argument.

SPEAKER_00: 41:14

It it becomes an argument, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 41:16

With your subconscious mind.

SPEAKER_00: 41:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 41:17

But if you see it, if you take it further, like it's gonna be okay is a great start. I am always safe, is a great start, but you gotta take that further and see it, imagine it as going well, and put that effort in that takes it further in the subconscious mind. Because now the subconscious mind's open to the possibility that, oh, well, it could go really well.

SPEAKER_00: 41:40

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's just a snippet of anxiety.

SPEAKER_03: 41:46

Because there's so many things, you know, anxiety is a very personal thing because everybody has their own anxieties about their own things. And everybody has their own programming around things to be afraid of. And anxiety is just that low-grade fear that says something could go wrong, something could go bad. That thing I'm afraid of could happen. And sometimes that's rational and very helpful. And, you know, sometimes when something looks like it could go bad, it's it's a smart move to avoid it. Yeah, that's a good resolution of your fear, and sometimes it's a misinterpretation of the possibility of fear, a misinterpretation of your own ability to deal with what you're afraid of.

SPEAKER_02: 42:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:32

And sometimes that can be released, and sometimes that requires exam further examination in the form of, well, we typically use regression, yeah. Going specifically back to the original time that this emotion kicked in and looking at how to reinterpret it. But here's here's a simple reframe that you might find helpful right now. When we take somebody back in regression, we often, I often, the technique I use when I'm regressing to a moment, usually a moment where there's a child, the child version of you. I bring your present-day self with you, right? So your present-day self is now there beside the child version of yourself that went through that experience. So here's the thing, right? The thing is that your adult self wouldn't be there if you hadn't survived. You actually survived it. Your existence as your adult self is proof to your child self that you have what it takes to survive this. You have what it takes to get through this, you have strategies and abilities to get past it. So always remind yourself that my very existence today is proof that I'm pretty capable. My very existence today is proof that I'm pretty smart and that I can navigate life. My very existence today is proof of all of my abilities to get past these kinds of and sometimes that that reframe can be enough.

SPEAKER_00: 44:06

Yeah, absolutely. I've seen it be enough, especially in heavy, heavily traumatic circumstances when you don't think there's any reframe. So I guess that's it for today. Any more questions? No, no questions. Thanks for the chat. All right, well, everyone have a good day, and we will see you tomorrow.