How To Stop Doomscrolling And Find Calm Again

We talk about how fear shifts from a normal emotion into a constant default setting, and why many of us wake up already bracing for bad news. We share simple ways to interrupt the loop, then go deeper into meditation, connection, and how hypnosis helps us unwind the mental programming underneath anxiety. 
• the overcast sky as a metaphor for fear and truth 
• removing distractions like news and doomscrolling to regain peace 
• fear as a trained default setting rather than a real time signal 
• the phone check compulsion as anxiety dressed up as “needing to know” 
• observing habits without judgment as the first step to change 
• using “Not Yet” to delay fear and start the day differently 
• meditation and sending peace outward as a practical reset 
• a COVID hospital story that reframes love as beingness and connection 
• hypnosis as a tool to unwind beliefs and rebuild self worth 

Transcript

Overcast Days And Global Fear

SPEAKER_00 0:10

We are on the line, finally.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

On an overcast day by the lake.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

The overcast, I think, is just a wonderfully symbolic thing about how I think everybody feels a little bit like life is in an overcast right now. Sun is hard to find. It's interesting to see the clouds as symbols of fear that get in the way of seeing the truth or the sunshine. The sun is there, it's never gone. It's always waiting for the clouds to part. The clouds are are there today, I think around the world. I hope somebody who's listening is enjoying sunshine. But for those of us who feel the overriding pale of intensity that's going on in our world as we become sensitive to that, I think yeah, it's a good day to talk about fear.

Remove Distractions To Find Peace

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah, what came to me this morning was sort of removing the distractions that pull us into fear. You know, the removal of distractions, whether it's doom scrolling or looking at the news. I think it's important to do those things because you'll naturally move towards more peace in your life if you remove those distractions. Remove, you know, instead of trying to be more peaceful in other ways and or more happy in other ways, the removal of things in your life can be easier.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

There's this thing about fear. And fear has gone from being an emotional response to a situation to an almost default setting. That as human beings, we we've gotten ourselves programmed. And I don't I I think it's innocent. I think that our world is has evolved to being that way. And I'm not positive that it that it was unintentional in in the eyes of some, but I I believe that what matters is how we are all experiencing this low-grade constant fear. And it's no longer a response to conditions, it is a programmed setting that suggests that we're alone, that we're inadequate, that we are imminently in danger, and there are certain things we always have to do. And so I guess I I offer that as a description and a suggestion. Can you identify with that? Can you relate to that? Can you see that in yourself? Can you see that it's hard for many of us to move through our day without anticipating a problem, without planning for a problem, without even in our own minds talking ourselves through problems that haven't even happened yet, that probably won't happen. That we are constantly preparing ourselves mentally through self-talk, through emotional churning, even to the point where it's become just second nature. It's I I don't even have to try to fall into that mode. I I move right into it as soon as I begin my day. I have a running list of things I should do, a running list of things I should be concerned with, a running list of potential arguments I'm going to have with people today and conflicts, a potential anticipation, constant anticipation of potential negative interactions with others and the world, the complete expectation that when I look into the news, I'm gonna see something negative. I'm gonna see something that upsets me, angers me, frustrates me. I've already got these mental processes and habits churning before I've even engaged my day. If we can relate to that, if if you can if you can say, yeah, I know how that feels, yeah, I guess I I'm like that, then start off by taking a deep breath and tell yourself you're normal. There's nothing wrong with you. This is training, this is practice, this is the result of being led to believe that being afraid is how we stay safe. And that's not true.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, when I was channeling this morning, what sort of came to me was, you know, uh when I when I look at the news, when I and I've said this a little bit on the podcast before, but when I look at the news, when I look at reels on whatever social media platform, I feel immune to it. I feel immune to the fear, but it is like it the vision that comes to me is sort of like laying bricks, you know. The wall's not very high at first, but then suddenly after brick by brick by brick, you have this big wall in front of you of fear. And you know, over the last couple months I haven't really felt it, but I don't know, this morning I was feeling it a little more. And so I yeah, just what came through was just put the devices down, put the the don't go straight to the to the TV in the evening and watch the news. And it's so easy. I mean, think about it, it's so easy to just pick up your phone and start looking at videos. And you know, it does not take long to suddenly have news in your in your feed. You can have all, as we joke about, all cat videos doing silly things. And then you watch one news article or one news reel, and suddenly that's all you're seeing, right? It's it's there, and you're getting sucked into the into the craziness. So, you know, just just putting down the devices. I can't say I'm very good at it, but I thought it was helpful maybe to say this morning. And and getting away from the news. If something, if you have to know something, if if there's something imminent, you will know, you will find out. You don't need to be reminded every five seconds. Just scroll, scroll, scroll.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, I wanna I wanna talk about that because as you're explaining that, I I've I'm I'm seeing in my mind that the the picking up of your phone, the reaching out into the world immediately, that compulsion, underneath it is that layer of well-practiced fear, right? Well-practice anxiety, the the almost uh I'm gonna use the word compulsion because it's it's not rational and it's not intentional. It is I am awake and where is my phone? I am awake, check my phone. I am awake, did somebody reach out to me? Is there something going on? I need to check my phone. There is this, this, and and I want to point it out. It is it is that established default setting of fear. I need to know. I think that there's a lot of truth in what you just said. You know, you're if something's going on, you'll know. You'll know eventually. And you know, even better, you'll probably know through communication with people, with people that you love and who love you, and you will be reaching out to each other in concern. But what I want us to do, you know, to be really helpful for me right now is to point out without judgment, that underlying default setting of what don't I know? What do I need to know? What's going on today? Who's who's doing what? And and that that compulsion to dive into a world with a predisposition to think something bad's happening. And I want us to recognize that. I think that there's a great deal of value in recognizing that because until we step back and observe ourselves, we have no real hope of changing. We need to, we need to be observing ourselves. This is always kind of step one. You know, I don't know anybody that says, I love the fact that when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is pick up my phone. I don't hear anybody saying, oh my goodness, I love turning to my phone first thing in the morning. I think for many people, you know, this is what I do. I just sort of tell myself I'm not touching my phone until I've had a coffee and we've decided on a podcast topic. I'm not touching my phone. I don't want to. And what's unfortunate for me is what happens is, you know, uh, I'm part of text groups that include my family, who are immediately at sunrise texting each other pictures of the sunrise. And so my phone is honking, my phone is making noise, my phone is grabbing and seeking my attention. And it's it's a beautiful thing, what I believe these people that I love want to accomplish. But for me, I just want to stay away from my phone. And recently I got a new phone. Like that was a smart move. Recently I got a new phone, and that's been just, you know, an experience unto itself. We'll talk about that another day. You know, changing from one phone to another is just crazy, isn't it? Then I moved from an Android phone to an Apple phone, and oh my God. But anyway, the point is that right now I don't have all my settings to shut off. And so it's popping up notifications on everything, and which I turn off. I turn notifications off for everything except phone calls and text. That's what I do. I I know that I can't keep my nose out of my phone, so I know I'm gonna find out what my emails are, and I know what I'm gonna find out what my messages are, and I know I'm gonna find out whatever cool stuff is waiting for me on TikTok or whatever. I know I'm gonna find all that stuff eventually today. So unless you know you want to tell me that there's something actually imminent that needs to be addressed, which would come to me through a text from my family or a phone call, I don't want to know. At least not till I've had a coffee and I've sat and tried to find a beginning of the day in a pleasant way. And, you know, like yeah, I I start my day with a hug from Hillary and a and a kiss from my doggy. And that's, I think, is the way to begin, right? And so anyway, the point is, is there's a compulsion. And even when I am actively avoiding it, I have this compulsion, and the system as it's established is trying to gain my attention to the outside world, the things outside myself. And when I see that, when I recognize that, when I recognize that and observe it in myself, I'm now in a position to say, well, what the heck is that? And what can I do about it? And that I think knowing that you're normal, no judgment, no self-judgment, no judgment on the world, no judgment on the way my phone works, no judgment, just recognizing how it happens. There's value in that.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah. And I think if we go a little woo, you know, there's this greater consciousness that we're we're tapping into. And what's coming to me is, you know, we think that we're one little person and we don't have much influence on the consciousness as one little person, but you know, taking taking time to recognize if you want to recognize or think about this greater consciousness that we're all tapped into, and sit in silence and meditation to contribute. I I don't know why all this is coming up right now, but like to contribute loving thoughts, to contribute peaceful thoughts to the consciousness. I don't know why the word prayer is coming up, not in like a religious sense, unless you want to do that, but just sending words of peace and and love to the greater consciousness. I think it can have a wonderful effect on yourself. I think it absolutely has a wonderful effect, a ripple effect outwards to others. And I don't know if all that makes sense, but it sort of just came to me to say, and I think I think that's helpful. I think that's helpful when we just sit in in silence and meditate and and send our our energy out into the out into the greater consciousness. Does that make sense?

Saying Not Yet To Fear

A COVID Hospital Lesson In Love

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah, it's a good first suggestion. A good a good first response. Right? If you can wake up this morning or tomorrow morning and be aware that inside you there is there has developed a default setting of concern or anxiety, then you know that's beautiful. Way to go. When you see it in yourself, that's that's the beginning, that's the opportunity. That's the that is the that is the ability to then examine and step back. And once you can, once you can step back, then the question, of course, is obviously, what do I do? And I think you know what you're saying is really, really valuable. So if I wake up and I say, okay, I'm already feeling compelled to pick up my phone, I'm already worried about what's going on in the world today, I'm already anticipating a whole bunch of issues in my day. What's a good response? And the a good response starts with saying, not yet. Saying to yourself, not yet, not yet. I'm not going there yet. I'm gonna start somewhere else, not yet. I'm not gonna dwell in fear, not yet. I'm not gonna pick up my phone, not yet. I'm not gonna reach out to anybody, not yet. I'm gonna take a moment and I'm going to be. And I feel compelled now, I'm feeling all emotional because this is always when I feel like impromptu. I'm gonna tell a story about something that happened to me internally about yeah, about six years ago now, a little bit more than six years ago, when we were going through that beginning of COVID. And I woke up one morning ready to, we had just shut down live classes at the college, and I woke up that morning ready to give my class at 8 a.m. And by 7:30, I wasn't feeling well, and I thought that was weird. It was all of a sudden, and of course, my immediate, immediately my thoughts went to the day before when I went out in public and I went into a grocery store, and I stood beside somebody that was quite apparently to me not well, and it was already in my mind, and I suddenly was overwhelmed with the fear that I might be sick. And you know, to make the the play-by-play shorter, within a half an hour, I was feeling really, really crappy. And I told Hillary. Within a half an hour after that, I was lying in bed with a fever, and yeah, I was vomiting, I was throwing up. In less than 20 minutes after that, I couldn't catch my breath. I just couldn't get a relaxed breath going on again. I was always, I was, I was not breathing well. And half an hour after that, I was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, and it was a pretty terrifying experience, I think, for all of us. And because at the time everything was unknown, and we didn't know what was going on, and we didn't know what it was. But anyway, to make a long story short, by the end of the day, I was in a hospital isolation bed in the hospital with you know all the accoutrements of this is a guy with COVID, the negative pressure room, the nurses coming in with three layers of protective gear on, me, you know, being asked that when I cough, I cough into a towel, a fever that had me in absolute agony from head to toe. And the kindness, I'll say, of the nurses, because they were they were so beautifully kind to me. Anyway, through all of that experience, I'm now find myself lying awake all night, feeling pretty crappy, in the hospital to the next day, and just wanting to just wanting to stop being afraid. And yeah, so I immediately I got my medicines for the morning, and my fever ebbed a little bit, and my my overall physical pain eased, and I tilted up in the beautiful hospital bed, and I just knew that the only thing I could do was meditate. It was the only thing I could do, and I was basically engaged in a meditation self-hypnosis. I just dove into it. I must have been doing it for a couple of hours because it was just the clock spun. Anyway, here's what here's what I learned. And it was peculiar that I would learn that in that moment. My attention was internal, and I was doing recognitions and and and you know, acknowledging to myself that I am lovable. And my curiosity about love was sort of turned on, right? What does it mean to be lovable? And am I being loved? And it became a question in my mind, and I immediately heard the birds outside the window because this was springtime, this was the beginning of April, and I heard the birds outside, and then it came to me, and I I believe that I was just, you know, blessed with guidance in the moment. It came to me that the birds were loving me, they were outside the window singing. They didn't all gather and say, look, we've got to help Lass, let's all go to the window and sing to Lass. That's not what went on. They were just being who they were. And in being who they were, they were loving me. And that turned into a whole string of understandings that everything is and its very existence of just being itself, whatever it is, is in fact the expression of love, and the truest expression of love is just being yourself. Not who you think you're supposed to be, not who you think others want you to be, not thinking about what you think you need to be, but just in the moment of being. And that it is in the very nature of existence. It is it is existence that proves love. That we don't as as human beings living in our lives, we don't really understand love while it The same time we're living it. We're living love. Our existence is expression of love. The universe loves so much that it grows and it expands and it evolves and it becomes. And that that force of existence, that force of beingness is the expression of love. And in that moment, I felt very, very loved because the beeping of the machine beside me monitoring me, the sounds of the birds outside the window, the hearing the nurses moving up and down the hall, the sound of my own breath all became for me in that moment expressions of love, an understanding of the connection between being and love, the nature of love. And it's not really easily expressed with words. But there was an understanding there. And it was in those few moments where I suddenly realized, and I think I turned the corner that I'm going to be okay. And in fact, that I was going to be better than ever. And pretty much physically, mentally, emotionally, since that moment, I think, ever since I've been better and better and better and better at just being me, at just finding my way. Now, life has certainly brought me more than a few hiccups, and I'm learning my way through them all. But now I see them that way. I see them as lessons. I see them as opportunities of growth. I see it as I try to embrace everything that the crappiest of the crappiest, I try to embrace it as this is my opportunity. This is my opportunity to love anyway, to find a way through with love. And so this morning, when I got up with my own default setting of fear, knowing that I had been helped through the night by my guides, opening myself to them, they basically encouraged me to do what I did again, which was to drop into your deepest center, not your mind and not your body per se, but your center, however, you perceive that, and breathe into that and be aware of the life inside you. And then extend that out on awareness of everything around you, and allow yourself to see yourself connected to all of that. And then once you feel that, allow yourself to extend that to everything you don't see and experience right now, but the whole, knowing that this is just a piece of the whole, and you're connected to all of that, which means you you can never be alone, which is probably the part in fear that creates the terror, right? The thought that, you know, I tried to figure out what fear is, you know, fear is the thought that something bad's about to happen. I don't know how to handle it, and I'm all alone. But when you spend time in that beingness and you spend time in that connectedness, you are now stepping away from all the things that would draw you into fear, and you're stepping into an awareness of the beauty of your existence. The universe wants you here, or you wouldn't be. And in bringing you here in that beingness, the universe is expressing love. And in being in that love and allowing yourself to dwell there for however long you can allow yourself to dwell there, there is nothing to fear. And that, in fact, is the first step away from this programming, training, indoctrination of fear that we're living right now in this world. And even if you can find that that split second where the fear dissipates, and what is dominant in your being is a connectedness. Understand that connectedness is love and be in that. And that's probably the best I have to say today.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

I think it's great. What was coming to me was at the end there, and this I I don't like this word, but it's the word that comes into my mind. It's not that I don't like it, but it's not very good at explaining it. But I'm gonna use it anyway, and hopefully people understand it. What would you do if you knew you were a tendril of source and experien you were source experiencing itself like at the at the end of that tendril? I don't like the word tendril because you know I think of I think of us at the like very end of it, but now as I'm speaking, we are the full. Is that the right word? Like a good word to me, you know, like a cord of light, uh an extension. And source, God, the universe, whatever word that you feel most connected to, is wanting to play. It's wanting to create. And you are that creation. And you know, what would you do if you had that in your mind? That oh my gosh, I'm just gonna play in this world today because source, God, the universe wants to experience this world in this way.

Hypnosis And Unwinding The Program

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Yeah, you know, I think it's really fair for someone to say, I thought this was a podcast about hypnosis. And, you know, I I guess in response, you know, it's a podcast about using your mind in ways that are helpful, that we have discovered as hypnotists. And that the biggest thing that everyone who experiences decides that they want to have hypnosis, they want to go on this journey, which is often I choose hypnosis because nothing else has worked. I choose hypnosis because everything that I was told to try didn't work. I still feel the same way I always did. That the the the origin of all of our emotions, positive and negative, is in our mind. And the mind is the creator of everything because mostly it's the interpreter of everything. And it's the interpretation that we put on everything that will determine the emotional response we have to it. And so once you say, okay, I've got to look in my mind, you know, my experience, my unhappiness, my depression, my confusion, my fears, all of that's being experienced by me in my mind, no matter what's going on out in the world, where I experience it, is in my mind, then I'm gonna go to the mind and I'm gonna figure out what's going on there. And that's why people come to hypnosis. And when people come to hypnosis, what they discover is how much of their beliefs, their values, their interpretation, their views, their way of being is a program. It is a collection, for better or worse, of all the things we've allowed into our mind that we use to make our way through the world. And once you see the program and you engage the process of unwinding the program, even if it's just here, this little piece over here, this thing I've always thought, just isn't true. Or this way that I think about people, that's just not helpful. Or this, this way that I comfort myself when I'm feeling all these negative feelings. It's it's making me, you know, gain weight or consume stuff that hurts me, or behave in ways that hurts my friendships and my and my family. You know, it's it's a you discover just one part of that program that is not serving you, and you address it. It almost always leads you to questions about self-love and self-worth and your own abilities and capabilities, your own value. And when you start to question those things, when you start to look at the programming around those things, you're forced to answer questions like, Who am I really? You're forced to examine beyond your superficial mind, right? There's a layer of our mind we use every day filled with programs to get through the world. And then when we pause and start examining that, we discover that there's a whole lot more to me and my mind than these habits and these programs. And then you inevitably are forced to deal with questions like, how am I using my mind? How am I programmed in a way that isn't serving me? And it's not about figuring out who to blame, and it's not about finding the moment in your life to say it was this person in this situation's fault, because that's not where the solution lies. That's the moment where the solution is revealed to you. And the moment that the solution is revealed to you is to be able to see things differently with a broader awareness and a greater love for yourself. Yeah, we we avoid that word love a lot. Um it's the answer to a lot of things. But the point is, hypnosis is the journey that starts to guide you there. And you start to unravel your mind and you start to unravel your views and values and you know, biases and prejudices, and you start to start to touch a deeper sense of yourself. And that's the journey that we've been on. I've been on for 20 years, we've been on for years and years and years, and we help other people with. And so it's really impossible now not to talk about these deeper aspects of yourself. Because when somebody else tells you it's okay to love yourself regardless of what other people think of you, it is correct to realize that you were born worthy and nothing can take that worth away from you. That the only place your worth is actually in question is in your own mind. When you start to see the mind as source, when you start to see the mind as the creator, you see the invitation to recreate, to adjust. And so, yeah, I mean, it might sound wacky that we're talking about on a podcast about hypnosis in the mind, but I would say that we just don't talk about love enough. And it is it is part of the journey of solution.

Closing Thoughts And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 33:58

All right, everybody. So thank you for hanging out today and have a beautiful day out there, spring day, and we will see you later.