Brains are wired for negativity.

Our ancestors didn’t need to know which berries tasted good, they needed to know which berries could kill them.

Brains are always scanning for danger because they want to keep us safe, i.e. alive.

So when we wake up and have immediate feelings of anxiety, nothing is wrong with you.

You’re not broken, messed up, nor do you have a screwy brain.

I have a page of blog posts on my site so people can get to know who I am, learn how I see things, and how I coach with my peeps.

And I haven’t updated the page since August of 2023, LOL!

I don’t think about it and when someone mentions a blog post they read on my site I think to myself, “Oh yeah, I have that and I really should update it regularly, damn it!”

And then I forget about it until that scenario happens next time and I say that again to myself and feel bad that I haven’t done anything about it.

Queue the shame and blame spiral.

Life isn’t hard because you’re doing it wrong.

It’s hard for every human on the planet regardless of what you see on someone’s social media.

Everyone loses someone, has to wait for biopsy results, wonders how they’ll pay for the broken washing machine, has to decide to keep or let go of a toxic friendship, or figure out where their career is going next.

Whoever started the lie that it’s supposed to be easy should be forced to watch “Baby Shark” until they cry for mercy.

When you believe consciously or unconsciously that life should be easy, you create a sh*t sandwich for yourself.

It’s ok to change your mind about that thing that’s weighing on your mind and heart.

You have permission to reevaluate a friendship that’s all take and no give.

It’s ok to say, “This thing isn’t working for me this way anymore,” and take a beat to figure out your next step.

Just because you’ve been doing something one way for a hot minute, doesn’t mean you have to do it that way for the rest of your life until you die.

It’s ok that I ‘ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with sugar and/or alcohol for years, and now that I’m trusting myself in ways I never have, I’m figuring out what’s next.

This has been a small but huge shift for me that I didn’t see coming.

A client reached out to me in a panic.

She had an upcoming doctor’s appointment and was having a hard time, “settling herself.”

She was getting test results and was feeling anxiety about the unknown.

Makes perfect sense; of course she was feeling that way.

The normal and healthy primitive part of her brain was getting her amped up in order to be ready to respond.

It wanted her to be able to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn, and anxiety is a quick avenue to keep us on our toes.

What do I mean when I say, “I managed my mind while at a doctor’s appointment yesterday”?

I mean that when my new Endocrinologist (I have a tiny benign tumor on my Pituitary gland)

said I should have an MRI since my last one was 5 years ago, and my brain freaked out because I don’t like being “in the tube” and it makes me want to scream and fight to get out; I showed up for myself and didn’t spiral all day. 

Here’s one of the best analogies I’ve heard about anxiety.

Let’s say you’re walking on a trail in a park and you see something squiggly up ahead on the path.

Your nervous system causes you to freeze in your tracks because it can’t tell what said squiggly thing is.

It’s a “potential” threat.

Is it a snake or a stick?

You have 2 options with 2 different outcomes.

If you think you’re lazy, I bet that’s just an error in your thoughts about yourself. 

I bet there are plenty of examples how you get sh*t done but there might be one thing or area where you seem to drag your feet or procrastinate.

Let’s look at what else could be going on besides the quick and dirty and shaming label of lazy.

The primitive part of our brains are only concerned with you staying alive from one day to the next. 

Period. Hard stop.

We’re fed this line of crap in our culture that we need to, “FIND OUR PASSION!”

And we all believe it!

I know I used to until I put the work into dissolving that belief and headed in a different direction.

How do you feel when someone asks you, “What’s your passion?”

I used to get a deer in the headlights look on my face, I’d stammer, freeze, I’d feel like I had to come up with something awesome and amazing, and wind up feeling like I sounded like an idiot.

It’s a really stressful question.

And the wrong one!

Here’s one of the best analogies I’ve heard about anxiety.

Let’s say you’re walking on a trail in a park and you see something squiggly up ahead on the path.

Your nervous system causes you to freeze in your tracks because it can’t tell what said squiggly thing is.

It’s a “potential” threat.

Is it a snake or a stick?

You have 2 options with 2 different outcomes.

There are 3 primary states of the nervous system. Safe/social, fight/flight, and freeze.

There are 4 hybrid states of the nervous system. Play, stillness, fawn, and hypervigilance.

The one I’m most familiar with is hypervigilance, and it’s described as feeling frozen, on edge, and scanning for danger.

When I’m in that state I feel exhausted, irritable, and like everything is very serious.

When I start to feel frozen, on edge, or I’m scanning for danger, I can go into what’s called a danger feedback loop.

When I first started my massage therapy career, and a client would cancel an appointment, I would take it so personally!

I’d think, “Why did they cancel? Did I use a level of pressure they didn’t like? Did I use a technique that they didn’t prefer? What did I do wrong that they don’t want to come back in?”

So many self-blaming and shaming thoughts ran through my head that created so much suffering.

I spent so much time and energy trying to figure out what the “problem” was.

This week I’ve had more calls, texts, and emails than usual and my brain is treating them like they’re life-or-death important. They are important and I will get back to the sender ASAP, but I don’t want to keep reinforcing the lie my primitive brain is telling me that, “my life is in danger and I need to get back to them as fast as possible or ‘something bad’ will happen!!”

Two things happen most mornings when I wake up.

I have to wipe some drool off my face even though I’m totally a nose breather.

I have an anxious thought.

Neither are problems.

I love the friendship and support I’ve found being a part of two online groups. During a group call yesterday, I was sharing about my experience of having lots of panic attacks in 2018. After I was done sharing, the group facilitator, Melissa, offered a reframe for the term panic attacks. She invited us to think about them as protective responses from our nervous system instead of an attack that’s happening inside us.

This is a really good question; and an important one. If a potential client isn’t sure which would serve them better, I’ll start by asking the following questions: 

Perfectionism usually starts young, like in elementary or middle school. We want to get all A’s, have a spotless bedroom, behave in a way that doesn’t draw negative attention, get first chair in band or orchestra, or be skinny.

What does failure even mean? And who the hell cares if we missed our mark? Big damn deal. It doesn’t mean we’re horrible human beings, unworthy, or don’t deserve success. It means we tried something, and it didn’t turn out how we wanted. So what? Try something else or try it another way. Drop the drama!

Her brain isn’t spinning, trying to remember all the things. Everything is in one place so she doesn’t have multiple slips of paper, and it’s giving her more mental space to think about other things, be more present with her family and not feel low-grade frustration as much.

I’m listening to the book, Play Big, by Tara Mohr. It’s been a great book and one section hit me like a ton of bricks today.

Tara describes a book she read by the late Rabbi Alan Lew, where he says they’re a few different words and definitions for fear in Biblical Hebrew. One is Pachad, which means projected for imagined fear. Worries about the future, fear about possible rejection or someone not liking us.