M6 : Lesson 4: Tips For Anxiety & Fear
What happens with a fear response?
1. Body is stuck in sympathetic activation (anxiety)
2. MInd is stuck in perspectives of uncertainty and out of control
Tool #4: Finding Presence-Filled Certainty
Fear and anxiety ultimately are something we need to be able to be present with while surrendering/accepting the unknowns of the future. However, in level 1 I give you this practice that helped me have a sense of safety while I practiced the deeper surrender over time.
Please see the Module 6 Workbook for Lesson 4 materials.
Transcript
Listen for tips for fear and anxiety. Here, we’ll learn another tool called finding presence filled certainty. I wanna speak about fear. Of course, there’s many other emotions as it relates to trauma that we could talk about, like, anger and shame and guilt and grief. But this one I find is particularly difficult for those who have issues with limbic system and chronic illness.
So I don’t have time in this module to go through all of the emotions, but I do want to briefly touch on fear. And to give you a few guidance tips to help you deal with this, as I know for me personally, this was one of my biggest emotions to be friend. So what is happening with fear? Well, let’s talk about what’s happening in the body. And the mind.
In a nutshell, the body is in sympathetic dominance, which often feels like anxiety. And the mind is in uncertainty and out of control. So how do we untangle the fear loop? Well, we need to probably address both of these things, both the anxiety and the body and the uncertainty of the mind. Being with fear, the body and mind help.
The goal of primal trust is to find trust and acceptance, and even safety regardless of the feeling of the situation. This is the I can handle this. Well, with the body, how do we handle sympathetic activation or anxiety? Remember, fear has sympathetic activation and mind uncertainty. We need to address both.
So with the body, we are learning the level 1 tools to interrupt the brain body stress loop to interrupt the anxiety loop, and that’s where the brain retraining, bagel toning, panoramic eye gaze, which is the number 4 of the 4 is a great one for this. And somatic processing, all of that really helps with that anxiety activation loop. And with the mind, this is about finding what is within your control and being very present with it. Remember the mind when you’re caught in fear, it’s stuck in uncertainty and out of control. So to help the mind It’s helpful if we can become very present with what is in our control.
It helps the mind to relax. The mind is frantically looking for control when we’re in fear. So with this method, I have you help your mind find some certainty. Part of how we find presence filled certainty is through that development of the adult mean personality. Which can allow for aspects of the future to be unknown.
This is the adult that says, I am here now in this. I’m committed to living with this experience even though I’m feeling fear. In level 2, we focus on disarming this drive of I need to fix this to be okay. So let’s talk about the tool to help us with that sense of uncertainty and out of control. We’re already working on tools for the body based part, which was the nervous system overactivation.
So you’ve already been practicing those tools. This one specifically for the mind part, although it does work with the body as well as you will see. Overall, you’re wanting to send the message of I see what is in my control in this moment, and I can focus on that. This is where the I am here now in this mantra is particularly helpful. This is where we’re gonna learn a tool called presence filled certainty.
Okay. So this tool of finding certainty. How do we do it? Find in the moment. Let’s say you’re feeling a lot of fear right now.
To help your mind, you’ve gotta find what it is right now. That is within your control. So your mind gets a sense of like, oh, at least I can control this. Okay? Eventually, we need to just learn how to fully befriend and be with fear no matter what, but this is a nice trick that I use to help me with fear.
So I would do something deliberately and really bring my brain into it. So, for example, I’d say, I’m going to take a shower right now. And what I would do is I would rehearse every single step of taking that shower because those are things within my control. So for example, I’d say, I’m gonna turn on the handle and turn the water to warm. Now I’m going to undress.
Next, I’m going to step into the tub. Next, I’m gonna wet my hair and I go through every motion I’d speak it like this is what I’m doing step by step. And it let my brain know what’s coming next. Remember what you’re what you’re focusing on is what your limbic system is gonna focus on. So if your limbic system starts focusing on just those simple steps of taking the shower.
It starts to be like, oh, I know it’s coming next. I know it’s coming next, and then she does this. And that and it’s something that the brain knows. So it’s kind of a way of tricking it into certainty by being certain of what you’re doing in this present moment. Rather than how the brain might be afraid of what’s gonna happen a month from now or a year from now.
You’re focusing on what’s going to happen next. Another great way to do this is by making a meal, and step by step, one task at a time with absolute focus. And that helps to repattern the brain to just focus on the here and now and what you can expect in the next moment. So as you’re doing these things, you might even be saying to yourself, even though I’m feeling this fear, I am taking the shower in this moment, and I can get through this moment. And in the next moment, I’m gonna get through that next moment.
So moment by moment by moment. Sometimes I actually did this while looking into the mirror. Like, see myself say this. I’m like, okay. This is what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna do this, and then I’m gonna do this and this. And it really helped me. I was somebody who had terror and fear for many, many years. I used to be on lots of medications for many, many years. I don’t have any of that now.
I, of course, I get afraid sometimes, but I don’t get that terror that is just controlling my life in the way that it used to. So these are things that I did to help teach my brain that when I feel fear, I both need to use tools to calm down my nervous system, but they also need to give my mind a sense of certainty. And the best way to do that is what’s happening in the present moment. The other thing with fear that I wanna say is that forward motion also helps to calm you down. It’s kind of like your nervous system completing the stress response of either fleeing or fighting your moving and in your brain.
It’s like, oh, at least I’m doing something. So sometimes just taking a walk and focusing step by step on the walk like I just described. Like, I’m walking to here and then I’m gonna walk to there and you’re moving forward. It helps to send messages of safety to the brain. And some research, I think I learned this from Andrew Huberman His lab showed that it releases dopamine when we have this forward movement during stress, which helps us to rebalance and motivate you to climb out of the stress.
If you’re somebody, like, gets a lot of fear with traveling, I just wanna speak to another thing you can do. Making little goal goals. Like, first, I’m gonna go to the airline counter, I’m gonna get my ticket, and then I’m gonna go and then once you do that, okay. Next, I’m gonna do this. And next, I’m gonna do this.
So your brain starts to get certain of the very next step. And those dopamine hits of completing each step will help you to be able to have more success and handle that stress more. So this is about becoming very prefrontal, very orderly, very sequential, and having a goal. One of the things that I teach in level 2 that you’ll learn about is something called the daily structure sheet, which really helped me with my fear because I started to use it as a way of having goals throughout the day of here’s exactly what I’m gonna do today. So you’ll learn more about that in level 2.
But for right now, just focus on simple task bit by bit in the present moment to see what you actually do have control of to increase your sense of certainty, present moment by present moment. Other things you can do with fear. Like I mentioned earlier is the tool of inquiry which is asking questions. Is it true that I’m not gonna make it or that I won’t be able to handle this. Can I absolutely know?
Asking yourself questions and having a question based dialogue can help And, you know, fear there’s so much that can be said about this, and ultimately, it is just about learning how to be more in your body and befriending your sensations and responding differently. There’s a lot of tools you can use, but at the end of the day, it’s just about allowing that feeling that felt sense to ripple through your body. And to commit to live even with that feeling. I know from me that what I eventually realized I needed with all of that fear and terror was simply the feeling of what I call primal trust. Trusting in this moment, trusting in my body, interesting in the flow of life itself.
And bit by bit in this program, I hope that’s what you start to cultivate So next up, we have a longer guided practice that specifically for deeper trauma processing and It’s gonna weave together a lot of the principles that I’ve taught in the regulate program. So I will see you in lesson 5 in the guided trauma release process.