Everyday we make lots of little choices that determine our baseline of fear and anxiety.

There’s a small little part of our brains called the amygdala that plays a big role in emotion and threat detection.

This little pair of small, almond-shaped structures detects danger, activates our fight/flight/ freeze responses, processes big emotions like fear, anger, and anxiety, and tags memories with emotion. For example, “That was really scary,” “This was super fun,” “I felt a lot of anxiety when I did that.”

Another great question I get asked a lot is, “So how do I start speaking up, asking for help, or start setting a boundary and still keep the peace?”

Short answer: ‘ya probably can’t and that’s ok…

Then I’ll follow up with some gentle questions of my own to gather more data and learn exactly where my client is coming from.

How are you defining peace?

Whose peace is it?

Is it their exterior peace, but your internal war?

What are your expectations for the holiday season?

Should you be making dozens of cookies, sending cards, planning the company holiday event, accepting every party invitation, hosting dinners, and decorating inside and out?

What are your expectations for your family?

That everyone will magically get along, want to drive around to see lights or go to a holiday performance, suddenly clean their rooms when company is coming, remain semi-sober and not be annoying, make a side for the pitch-in, or want to watch all the new Hallmark movies with buckets of popcorn and candy?

I’ve read/listened to every book Jen Hatmaker has published!

She’s my favorite author!

I’ve seen her in person, been hugged by her, gave her a copy of my book, and had her sign one of hers.

Her humor, writing style, and perspectives make me laugh and feel seen.

She gave me “permission” to be myself in my writing and allowed me to believe that the right people would find my work, and they have.

I appreciate her honesty, transparency, and that she doesn’t sugar coat things when life is lifey.

My thoughts about anxiety have changed A LOT over the years.

It started out as a feeling I didn’t have a name for.

It was just always there, right under the surface.

I couldn’t relax, slow down, chill, or feel comfortable in my skin.

My brain was racing non-stop from one thought to the next and I was always on high alert.

Friendship.

It’s all the things.

Life giving, soul soothing, heartbreaking.

Gets you through life’s most crushing moments.

Sometimes you have to break up and move on which is really fucking hard because it feels like you’re losing a limb, but if you don’t, your soul dies a slow death.

It’s laughing until you cry or pee your pants.

They’re your oxygen, life raft, and glimmers when there’s so much suck.

I met my friend, I’ll call her Natalie because she looks like Natalie from The Chicks, in an Overeaters Anonymous group when I was 16 and she was about 18.

This morning I accidentally scared the shit out of Ginny.

She was chewing on the lever of an air vent in the kitchen and I noticed there was a spider, the size of Aragog from the Harry Potter series, next to her.

I didn’t want her to get it and spiders that size that are in my living spaces have to die. (Don’t come at me with, “But they kill other bugs etc,” I know that and my house, my choice.)

I got her away from it, had the can of bug spray, and sprayed it.

It made a run for it from the vent area toward the fridge and I made a (very loud I guess) stomping sound (may have yelled too, IDK) and Ginny ran for the living room. 

I felt so bad that I scared her but killing the spider was my main priority and I knew that I could repair the situation with Ginny.

There have been so many fabulous moment with our new puppy, Ginny (short for Virginia)! She’s a yellow Lab and now 12 weeks old.

Like how adorable she and our older dog (a 6.5 yr old black Lab), Carolina play together, how she lays right on top of her Snuggle Puppy toy when she’s sleeping in her crate, how she loves to lay right next to you or on your feet when she wants to nap, how fascinating EVERYTHING is to her, and how her tail wiggles SO hard when she sees Carolina for the first time in the morning.

We’re ALL figuring out a new normal and routine with this new fluffy “polar shark” in our lives (polar, cuz her paws are huge like a polar bear’s, and shark, because her teeth are VERY sharp).

A friend (I’ll call her Kelly) texted me a pic of an adorable cat she was thinking about getting for her other cat.

I get that because we got Ginny (our yellow Lab puppy) in large part for her older sister (Carolina, our 6.5 yr old black Lab) to have a buddy.

Kelly said she was feeling nervous and excited and asked if I felt that way before getting Ginny.

My reply was, only 100000000000%!

She said, oh really you didn’t show it!

New, “bright and shiny” things are SO fun!

Whether they’re your ideas, people to follow on social media and their weekly emails, online courses, home decor, or all the possible paraphernalia for our puppy Ginny.

It’s so easy to get distracted, procrastinate, or lose ourselves chasing the next thing that piques our interest or promises exactly what we believe we need to make our lives better.

And OMG the dopamine is delightful AF!

But the hits of dopamine lose their kick pretty quickly anymore if I’m just going from one bright and shiny thing to the next. 

When you’re young you did what you needed to do to get through the day.

You paid attention to your mom’s mood when she comes home.

You counted how many beers your dad had and registered the volume of his voice to gauge the danger level.

You put up with comments about your weight, how your siblings got better grades, or how they were killing it in their sport.

And more often than not, all that crap continues into our adulthood.

Sometimes when I’m in social situations and someone says something rude or innapropraite to me, I’ll go into freeze mode or shock.

I’ll get the deer in the headlights look on my face or laugh it off in the moment.

Sometimes we’re not able to say something because of who the person is. Maybe it’s your boss or someone else that has power over you.

Or maybe someone said something hurtful or humiliating to you when you were younger and it pops in your head from time to time now.

It’s not too late to do what you wish you could have done in the moment.

Friendship.

It’s all the things.

Life giving, soul soothing, heartbreaking.

Gets you through life’s most crushing moments.

Sometimes you have to break up and move on which is really fucking hard because it feels like you’re losing a limb, but if you don’t, your soul dies a slow death.

It’s laughing until you cry or pee your pants.

They’re your oxygen, life raft, and glimmers when there’s so much suck.

I met my friend, I’ll call her Natalie because she looks like Natalie from The Chicks, in an Overeaters Anonymous group when I was 16 and she was about 18.

Does life become all rainbows and unicorns when you coach with me?

Nope.

The world will still be a dumpster fire sometimes, people you love will still struggle physically and emotionally, relationships will still be challenging sometimes, and you’ll still have to deal with assholes at work.

But better than the rainbows and unicorns, you’ll have accessable, effective, science-backed, do-anywhere tools to support yourself and your nervous system when life inevitably gets, well, lifey.

Sometimes I’ll get stuck ruminating on something that happened.

Could be something that happened yesterday or 4 decades ago.

I’ll replay the scene or convo with a new outcome, sporting a zinger of a comeback that my brain couldn’t come up with in the moment, thanks freeze mode.

I can lay in bed in the morning, while in the shower, or at a stoplight rehashing and just sittin’ in that good ole dirty diaper of shoulda/coulda/woulda until the cows come home.

And I have, sheesh…

When we avoid something, we’re training our brain that the thing, situation, person, is dangerous and a threat to our safety and survival.

We don’t realize that’s what we’re doing, but subconsciously that’s the message that gets wired and solidified into our brain when we keep avoiding.

That avoiding also starts to create an elephant in the room, an underlying anxiety (because you’re training your brain that there’s a threat), and a rotting and rift from the inside out.

You think, feel, and act from a place of anxiety and avoidance. 

You’re not responsible for changing or fixing someone else’s emotional state.

Especially if they’re an adult.

We’re all responsible for the energy we bring to an experience or situation.

A lot of people are emotional children walking around in adult bodies.

And when we try to fix, alter, or improve their mood you’re doing two harmful things.

Biases are one way our brains conserve energy in case you need it for a saber-toothed tiger.

Our primitive brains will never know what year it is so we need to keep reminding them and using our prefrontal cortex when making most of our decisions.

Our brains would prefer we don’t go all rogue and willy nilly thinking about and trying new things.

Nope, they’d like it if you'd keep doing what you’ve been doing, no matter the consequences or how you feel, thankyouverymuch!

And one tricky, sneaky, and honestly brilliant way our brains keep us from veering from our very well-worn patterns (even when they’re painful and keep us stuck and miserable) is by employing the exception bias.

Good news peeps!

You can stop spinning your wheels, feeling like sh*t about yourself, looking for the magic bullet or thing that will “fix” you, looking outside yourself for affirmation, self-esteem, confidence, and that general seemingly illusive feeling of okayness in your skin!

Cuz it’s only available from you and there’s an endless supply!

No more throwing yourself under the bus.

No more pleasing all the people except yourself.

No more trying to make changes you want, only to revert back to your old maladaptive patterns.

No more anxiety 24/7.

No more wondering, “What’s wrong with me and why is everyone else just dandy and I’m having a constant internal dumpster fire?!”

No more feeling broken or alone.

Here’s the simple truth.

For those playing along at home, here’s an update on how my MRI went.

It was such a different experience than my last one where I had to have the tech stop the procedure because I was having a panic attack.

By the end of this one I was almost asleep!

Like, WTAF?!