In the latest episode of “Why Am I Like This?”, hosts Laura Wood, a trauma therapist, and Michaela Beaver, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, explore the intricate dynamics of fear, trauma, and anxiety, shedding light on how these emotional responses are deeply rooted in our nervous system. From the whimsical childhood scares to more profound trauma-induced reactions, the episode delves into the lasting impacts on our psyche and physiology. Through personal anecdotes and professional insights, Laura and Michaela provide a comprehensive look into why we might react so strongly to seemingly benign triggers, such as a balloon pop or a spider’s crawl.
The discussion kicks off by examining the fear response, a primal reaction deeply embedded in our limbic system, particularly the amygdala. Laura shares her experiences with her father’s playful scares, leading to an exaggerated startle response in adulthood. This segment emphasizes how early experiences can shape our nervous system’s response to perceived threats, even in non-threatening scenarios. Michaela adds depth to the conversation with her account of a traumatic high school event that heightened her startle response, highlighting the long-term impact of trauma on the nervous system.
As the episode progresses, the focus shifts to understanding the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, essential for maintaining a sense of safety and stability. The hosts explore how trauma can lead to hypervigilance, where the nervous system remains on high alert long after the danger has passed. Techniques such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) are discussed as effective methods for processing trauma and reducing hyperactive responses. This part of the episode underscores the importance of timely trauma intervention to prevent long-term psychological effects.
The exploration of anxiety and phobias likens these responses to an “allergy of the mind,” where the fear response is disproportionate to the actual threat. The hosts discuss various techniques to manage anxiety, such as controlled breathing and cognitive exercises, which help re-engage the cognitive brain, allowing individuals to assess situations more rationally. This section is particularly insightful for those grappling with anxiety disorders, emphasizing the need for professional guidance and a supportive toolkit to navigate these challenges effectively.
In concluding the episode, Laura and Michaela offer practical strategies for overcoming fears and finding stability in a world that often feels unpredictable. Grounding techniques, such as touching the floor or focusing on physical sensations, are highlighted as methods to redirect attention away from fear and towards a more centered state. The concept of the “window of tolerance” is introduced, providing listeners with a framework to understand their emotional thresholds and work within them to achieve a state of calm and competence.
Overall, this episode of “Why Am I Like This?” offers a profound exploration of the complex interplay between fear, trauma, and anxiety, providing listeners with both theoretical understanding and practical tools for managing these responses. Through relatable stories and expert insights, Laura and Michaela empower their audience to confront their fears with knowledge and resilience, promoting a healthier relationship with their emotions and a greater sense of control over their mental well-being.
Read the full transcript
Laura : 0:03
Hello and welcome to. Why Am I Like this? The podcast for those who didn’t get enough hugs as a child? I’m Laura Wood and I’m a trauma therapist.
Michaela: 0:13
And I’m Michaela Beaver. I’m a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
Laura : 0:17
So, Michaela, why are we doing this podcast?
Michaela: 0:21
I am so glad that you asked. Today is a spooky podcast about why we are so frightened, and we are doing this podcast to help you understand yourself a little bit better how the things that you learned about yourself in the world and childhood are still affecting you today. We want to figure out why are we like this, those random things about ourselves that we might wonder about, like why am I so jumpy? Why am I so anxious? Why do I take everything personally? Why are my thoughts so negative?
Laura : 0:52
Why do I feel like I have to fix everything all the time? Yes, and today we’re talking about fear. We are going to try to answer the following questions why do I feel so jumpy, why are spiders so scary and how do I overcome my fears? So let’s get into it. Why are we so jumpy?
Michaela: 1:13
This is a good question. So I think that there’s multiple answers to this. I can tell you why I’m so jumpy. So when I was growing up as a child, my dad loved to jump out and scare us, specifically me, I feel like I feel like I was targeted because I’m kind of an easy target, and he would jump out of random places, like around the corner. He would literally hide in a closet oh no and scare you. He thought it was so funny, funny. And now I like I was literally at a birthday party and a balloon popped and I literally jumped out of my skin and I swear that this is because my dad um, he loved scaring people and it wasn’t like a bad thing, it was all in fun, but like my nervous system responded to it so strongly that now I like get like frightened of like my own shadow sometimes. Oh my gosh.
Laura : 2:12
So you are basically trained that somebody is going to jump out and scare you at any moment of any day, and now your nervous system is just super hypervigilant.
Michaela: 2:23
Yes, I think so, and the funny thing is is my kids love to scare me too.
Laura : 2:28
That’s funny. My kids love to scare me because I’m also so jumpy. Why are you so jumpy? I’m jumpy because I have like PTSD from an event that happened when I was in high school and I am so like I have this hyper startle response where I always feel like somebody’s like sneaking up on me and if someone I can know you’re in the room and happen and like turn and look at you and see you and be startled by you, even though I know that you’re in the room, I’ve known you, were there the whole time. It’s so crazy I just get startled so easily. I could totally. I think about maybe like hypnotizing myself out of this or something Like I need to get into hypnosis to see if I can make myself not jumpy anymore. But I’m super, super startly and my kids think it’s hilarious and they jump out at me all the time. Mm, hmm.
Laura : 3:26
They just they just know it’s so mean what they’re doing to me and that’s okay. It’s, it’s really funny Usually.
Michaela: 3:36
Once you get over the initial like I’m scared moment, you’re liable to get punched or kicked or something that literally happened as a kid able to get punched or kicked or something that literally happened as a kid. So my brother and I don’t remember this story for whatever reason, but my brother jumped out of the closet and scared me and apparently like I reacted and like pushed him or kicked him or something and I was I was legit scared and like yeah, I feel bad about it now because I like don’t remember doing that, but yeah, they loved scaring people, I guess. So trauma is a cause of that and so hearing about you know that. How does that affect people’s nervous systems?
Laura : 4:21
Yeah, so we have. Our nervous system is geared towards determining what’s safe and what’s dangerous. Right? So we have these channels of information processing our affective channel, our sensory channel and our cognitive channel and each of those has a job to do. They take in information and help our processing, help us process that information to determine whether or not something is safe or dangerous. Now, our cognitive channel doesn’t really do that as much, which is why we get scared of something that’s not really that scary, like our kid or, you know, your dad jumping out of the closet or whatever. But our affect and sensory channels are really hardwired for safety and danger. That’s. Their only job is to determine if you’re going to die or not, and so yeah, so it’s very interesting.
Michaela: 5:13
I love that you brought this up, because you know our brains, the information is coming to us really quickly and that’s why we, you know, jump back before we even recognize that it’s a snake on the ground or whatever it is. We are nervous system. Those sensory information is going straight to the amygdala, or maybe it’s going to the thalamus Right or I think before. Yeah, it’s going in, it’s getting, it’s getting recognized, but sometimes it’s going straight to you know those centers, before our brain even recognize, in that memory center, in that thought center, what’s going on, right?
Laura : 5:51
Yeah, so it’s coming in the lower part of our brain, the rear part of our brain, so lower in the back, basically our brainstem.
Laura : 5:58
It’s coming in there and then that’s where our limbic system lives, which our amygdala is in there, and our amygdala controls our emotional response. So our amygdala is what’s going to react to the emotional information before we actually can think about it. So by the time it gets to the top of our brain or the center of our brain, the front of our brain, that’s when we can actually think through what just happened and realize that we got scared for no reason or we got scared of something that’s not really dangerous. So we pick up the feeling of the danger way before we actually have the thoughts about why it’s dangerous. And so, like, if you hear something in the distance, you might just get this like jolt of kind of fear, like this flood of adrenaline, and you might not even know what it’s, what is related to it. But it’s just because you heard something really quick, like that, you didn’t even clock as like something to think through.
Michaela: 7:03
Sure, yeah, Like oh, man, I forgot to turn in my homework. All of a sudden you’re like I feel like I forgot something and then like, oh, that’s what it was.
Laura : 7:15
Right, you have this sense, this affect, this feeling that something’s off. And so our brain is picking up on all these like micro clues all the time, and that’s happening so fast that we don’t even recognize like what information we’re picking up. We just know that it’s something’s happening. And so when we think about fear, the fear is a response to the stimuli. So we have the stimuli happening, it goes into the back of our brain and our brain is like, oh, this is dangerous.
Laura : 7:50
So then it activates all these chemical reactions that trigger adrenaline and cortisol and all of the things that I need in order to not die, like my heart rate will go fast and my breathing will get heavy and you know I’ll, I’ll have like a flood of blood flow to my muscles and so that I might get warm right or flushed or whatever. So all of those things are the response to the stimuli and that feeling of fear is what tells us hey, get out. Like this is dangerous, we’ve got to run. And so that jump is literally our body reacting to that chemical flood that is occurring, and then it gives us the ability to get away and flee, because our first fight or flight reaction is actually flight. So in a hierarchy, like it works in order. If you can’t run, then you’ll fight, but running away, fleeing flight, is the first response that we have to any kind of danger.
Michaela: 8:49
Right. And when you think about the limbic system, you think about like you know those documentaries of, like the Serengeti and the. You know the animals. Once they sense danger, what do they do? They have a limbic system just like us, and so they run right. So that’s exactly what we’re feeling in those situations.
Laura : 9:10
That’s exactly right. This is our what some people call our reptilian brain. It’s our brain that is the oldest. It is our brain that we’ve had the longest as a living being. Like, from an evolution perspective, it’s the part of our brain that evolved first and has stayed really, really sharp in its same skills. It hasn’t changed in what it’s designed to do, which is to just keep us safe, keep us from dying, and so when we have a threat, we startle. Now, why does PTSD cause you to have a startle response for a long time after the event is over? That’s where you’ve got, like your maladaptively stored information, so PTSD will.
Laura : 9:57
Post-traumatic stress disorder comes with a set of symptoms like flashbacks. Hyper startle response comes with a set of symptoms like flashbacks. A hyper startle response, the sense of time being lost, like not realizing that it’s not happening now but that it happened a long time ago. Not really like having it feel like it was just yesterday, but it was really like years ago that this thing happened. Because it’s so over activating our limbic system, this content, and it’s really memories that are activating it now, but the memories are so connected to our limbic system that it activates all of that stuff that it would activate in the real situation until that information has been healed and fully processed through the center, the top, the front of your brain, all of that cognitive, making sense of it, information that needs to happen in order for us to then settle back down. So that’s why, when we process the information, like through therapy or whatever that’s when we don’t we lose that startle response and we don’t have to be so scared all the time.
Michaela: 11:00
Yes, I think you said that really, really well and I love that you touched on on why that is happening and so healing it can make it so that that jumpy, startle response isn’t quite as you’re not quite as sensitive to things, right quite as hypervigilant.
Laura : 11:27
So hypervigilance is an over arousal of your nervous system, it’s an over activation of your sympathetic nervous system and in your, with your sympathetic nervous system, that’s the one that activates in order for you to run away and it gives you all the energy and adrenaline and everything else. And so we need to activate our parasympathetic nervous system to settle that down and kind of bring us back to center, because what we want is the perfect balance between our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in order to feel safe and stable, and that’s really where they’re working together the best. But an overactivation of either will send you into one of those reactions.
Michaela: 12:04
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and you know, our bodies are really smart and they’re designed to keep us safe, like you said. And so this isn’t a bad thing, right, and it’s actually a very helpful thing, and it’s necessary to be able to recognize, like, when there are things that are dangerous or when you did go through something traumatic. You know it’s your brain’s way of helping to try to protect you. But these things happen for a reason and it can make it hard if you don’t get the healing that you need in the time. So if you have a traumatic event, it’s usually better to try to work through those things, you know, sooner than later, right, so that you can try to prevent that thing from getting stored and not and not heal, right?
Laura : 12:57
Yeah, if you can heal the event in real time, meaning like within a year of it happening, within like within nine or within 90 days is best, but like if you can heal that within a even a year of it happening, then you’re far less likely to have a long-term consequence, a long-term result.
Laura : 13:15
Because your brain is what it needs to do is it needs to make sense of this trauma, it needs to make sense of whatever happened to you that was so scary and dangerous, and because your brain thought I’m going to die, but then you didn’t die.
Laura : 13:30
And so what’s going to happen is your brain’s going to replay that over and over in the form of flashbacks, and what it’s also going to do is it’s going to try to make it so that that never happened in the first place, because it gets stuck in the not realizing that you didn’t die yet. Like it, sometimes our brain’s process just gets stuck on. It’s like a light switch and we turn on this light switch, and so this process of survival continues to go and go, and go and go and go and it doesn’t fully realize that the process is over and that you didn’t die, that you’re safe now. So what it needs to do is it needs to close that loop, it needs to finish that process so that it recognizes that you’re safe now and that you didn’t die, and that these things happen and we can’t always control or prevent them. And that’s the hardest thing I think about. It is that we can’t always prevent dangerous things from happening, even though we want to Sure.
Michaela: 14:28
Yeah, so I didn’t. My jumpiness didn’t come from a traumatic event per se. But you know, would EMDR help me desensitize my jumpiness?
Laura : 14:43
I think so. I have a lot of faith in adaptive information processing and I have a lot of faith in our brain and I trust your brain to be able to work out what it needs to work out and so to recognize that you don’t have to startle that big anymore. One, because the first time you get startled like that, it is kind of like a trauma, right, even though it’s not dangerous, like it’s a trauma from the perspective of you didn’t know it wasn’t Right.
Michaela: 15:11
I did not know what was jumping out of the closet at me.
Laura : 15:15
Right. So I hear from kids often who are going to school these days where they have their active shooter drills. I think I’ve brought this up before but they get traumatized by these drills because they don’t know it’s a drill. There are some times when they are just told that they have to go under their desk or they have to do all the things. I don’t know exactly what these drills entail, but if you think that there’s an active shooter in your school, your body is going to react like that’s true and so, just having had that happen, the fear stays with you. If you didn’t know that at the time, that counts as trauma, because trauma is anything that sends you into that fight or flight, dissociative state that requires you to separate from the present reality and just survive and not die in that moment. If there are things that have happened to you that maybe were benign, but you didn’t know they were benign at the time because you’re a little tiny kid, those things will stick in your nervous system and they’ll train you to be afraid.
Michaela: 16:37
Yeah. So that makes me think why are spiders so scary? Why?
Laura : 16:44
are spiders so scary? Spiders are scary because they’re gross and they’re crawly and they’re fast and they come out of nowhere and you can’t always see them. And you can see one, and then it hides underneath the furniture and then you can’t find it, but you know it’s there. So those are the reasons why spiders are so scary for me.
Michaela: 17:05
Yeah Well, my kids don’t think spiders are scary and they’re literally like digging in the dirt trying to find spiders and they’re like it’s a black widow. It’s a black widow and they run away Right. And they do get scared when they think it’s like something that is actually dangerous, that could cause them harm, but until then they think it’s fun. That is actually dangerous, that could cause them harm, but until then they think it’s fun. I think that’s great.
Laura : 17:29
So one of the reasons why we think spiders- are scary is because our moms think spiders are scary and because our dads think spiders are scary and because our older siblings and whoever’s raising us think spiders are scary. So when we have someone else telling us what to be afraid of, we’ll we’re creating that fear in our kids. So, like um, our kids learn how to be afraid of certain things that we’re afraid of, and so it’s really important, as an adult at raising kids, to try to focus on calm, confident leadership, not to pass our fears down onto our families.
Michaela: 18:10
Yeah, I heard somebody say this thing the other day and I thought it was so good. I’m going to repeat it Biology becomes no, I’m sorry, Biography becomes biology.
Laura : 18:24
Ooh that’s really good. Yeah, I thought more about that.
Michaela: 18:27
Yeah, so this is kind of like what you’re talking about. So I think, like you know, you think of epigenetics, right, but I think too, you know, our experiences are causing those genes to turn on and off. Are the experiences of our family are turning genes on and off? Right, but in this case, like it’s our environment, it’s the things that are going on around us, the things that we see, how our parents react to things, turning into what’s going on and what’s informing our nervous system.
Laura : 18:59
Yeah, that’s right, it becomes our biology. I have a story that I tell to kind of illustrate this. I call it the restaurant story, but so you’ve heard it and you know maybe this everybody on this podcast has heard it, because I’ve probably said it before. But basically it’s like pretend that there’s a little kid who is going out to a restaurant with their family and then, as they’re leaving, this little kid realizes they forgot their stuffed animal and runs back into the store without their parents realizing. They run back into the store to get their stuffed animal and their parents don’t realize that they got out of the car and then they drive away and they start to leave the parking lot before they realize that they left the little person. So if that happened, well then this little child is going to be really scared, feeling abandoned, like this kid just got abandoned, right, like was. Now it’s this kid that has to fend for himself. They have to take care of themselves Like they can’t make it.
Laura : 19:59
On the street there’s a little kid, so in that moment that is a traumatic event. That child was just abandoned and it’s dangerous. It’s a life or death situation, right? Yeah, so that child now is going to encode and store every single piece of sensory information that it can access in this moment as potentially dangerous. So, whatever the restaurant looks like, the color of the seats, the way it smells, the sounds that they hear, the things that they taste, the things that they touch, so what they’re doing, your nervous system in that moment of danger, of like grave danger, is encoding all of these things that now are going to signal danger in the future. Right, because it’s going to prevent this from ever happening again, even though 30 seconds later the mom comes running in and it’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t see you get back in the car. I love you, let’s go to you know, whatever, Right, well, and and two.
Michaela: 21:02
Part of PTSD is sometimes that important pieces of the events are not always clear, because cortisol is toxic to that part of the memory center of the brain that’s required for taking those snapshots. Now, just like a red booth makes you flash back to that moment or feel dangerous, and you, you know, you’re not really even sure you remember the original event to begin with. You just now know that red booths are dangerous.
Laura : 21:28
Right. So you only know those signals. You don’t know why. You don’t know why do I think a red booth is dangerous? Or you might not even connect logically that the red booth is the thing that’s triggering you to be scared. You might just see it, your brain is just like, oh, that’s dangerous. But it doesn’t actually go through the process of telling you I’m scared of this red booth because of this one time that this happened. It doesn’t go through that process because that process takes too much time. So what it’s doing is it’s going to alert you to the danger so that you run away and you get out of there. And so the same is true for spiders. If you have, it’s not the spider, it’s the reaction to the spider. If you have a spider on you and you’re a little kid and your mom comes running out and is like, oh my gosh, that’s so scary and, like you know, freaks out about the spider, well now, spiders make your mom freak out. So they’re a definite threat, right.
Michaela: 22:27
And I think it’s the perception of whatever you and your little kid brain sees it as right. Like, if my perception is like you know, everybody’s laughing and joking and this doesn’t seem bad, then I’m not going to be scared of spiders. Like, right, it’d be funny, right? If everybody reacts and I believe, oh my gosh, I was really about to die, spiders are going to kill me, then yeah, we’re going to be scared of spiders.
Laura : 22:53
Yeah, and it also. We might not realize this, but it’s also the distress that your parent being upset causes you. So when our parents are really upset, that’s a really dangerous thing for a kid, because if the parent is losing control, that means there’s no one there to save you. There’s no one there to take care of you. So when your parents are out of control and you’re a kid, that’s really really, really dangerous and scary. And so if you grew up in a house where your parents were often out of control they didn’t have control over themselves or of others of you, you didn’t have control over yourself that chronic toxic stress will create a PTSD response in you. You will become hypervigilant because of that amount of stress that you experienced.
Michaela: 23:44
Yes, absolutely. I think that they’re like it’s not a DSM diagnosis but there is talk about you know that complex developmental trauma kind of thing, and so you’re absolutely right. It is constantly having that elevation in cortisol which is why you know people develop PTSD in childhood is just having that chronic fight or fight and flight response activated.
Laura : 24:14
Yeah, they get that switch stuck on and it’s really hard to turn that off, especially because if this environment doesn’t change, you’re not going to have a reason to turn off this switch until you get out of that environment into a safe one. So if your family is in chaos a lot of the time and your parents aren’t really in control, and chaos a lot of the time and your parents aren’t really in control, then that’s that toxic stress is a real danger. Yeah, it’s still dangerous to you. So you have to keep that stuff on. You have to keep that response level on because you have to be hyper aware. You have to be hyper alert because you are the one who’s in charge of keeping yourself safe, which is too big a job for a child to do. Children can’t handle that. It’s too much on their brains.
Michaela: 25:06
Yeah. And so it makes me think too about, like, talking about phobias. And you know, why am I so scared of spiders? It doesn’t just have to be spiders, but I think that, in general, you know, you have this response whether it’s a spider or it’s going to the grocery store or it’s, you know, public speaking, whatever the thing is, you know, you know thunderstorms it’s.
Michaela: 25:42
It’s the fact that your, your, your brain, is tied to emotional responses, and so if you have an emotional response to something, your brain says, ooh, this is important, we need to pay attention to this.
Michaela: 25:50
And so then, now, every time we encounter similar situations, our brain is reminding us of that thing and it’s saying, hey, you know, oh, remember, you know you’re not thinking about this, but it remembers that when you gave that presentation, that you got laughed at or you thought that the kids were talking bad about you, and so that’s encoded in your brain that, like, that’s not safe, it’s not, I’m not going to go do a good job, this isn’t for me. And so then you start to have that experience of having that adrenaline fight and flight response, and then you avoid it if you can, and that avoidance says, oh, that made me feel better. So now I know that if I go do this thing then I will feel anxious, and that’s not comfortable, that’s dangerous, and if I avoid it then I’m safe, and so then that creates the desire to avoid things that are, you know, dangerous, and so then we become phobic of that thing.
Laura : 26:47
Yeah, absolutely, and it’s like the initial response that we have to the event is the thing that creates the phobia. So, for example, we were talking earlier about this fear of something specific, like a fear of spiders, like arachnophobia, and how your brain encoded the information when it first encountered that spider. So if the information required your brain to go into fight or flight, then you’re going to have that response every time. It’s like an allergy for your brain. So when you have an allergy, you’re not allergic to the thing until after you encounter it. So you encounter the thing and then that’s how you know you’re allergic, or that’s how your body tells you that this is a thing that it can’t tolerate, and so it has this over overactive histamine response to this particular stimulus.
Laura : 27:42
So the same is true for phobias. So like, if you think of this, if you encounter this information and your brain has this overreactive amygdala response, then now it can turn into a phobia, because you are going to continue to avoid it and your brain is going to keep building it up, and you are going to continue to avoid it and your brain is going to keep building it up and you’re going to keep having this same cycle of intolerance for this thing. So we want to remind ourselves, if you have a phobia and you recognize that that phobia is unnecessary, like the thing isn’t really that dangerous or whatever. Like if it’s public speaking and you have to do it anyway, you can remind yourself like oh, this is just like an allergy, it’s like an allergy for my brain that I’m having this fear response because this fear isn’t actually telling me, like because this thing’s not actually dangerous.
Michaela: 28:30
Sure and your antihistamine and your EpiPen to treat it is doing it anyways.
Laura : 28:39
Yeah, I can do it anyways, even though it’s scary.
Michaela: 28:43
Yeah, allow yourself to feel a little nervous and anxious about it, because you know it’s actually not dangerous and that anxious response is normal and it’s not a bad thing. We don’t need to fight feeling anxiety when our heart races and we get flushed and our muscles get tight and all those things. That that doesn’t mean always that there’s something bad happening, and so you can actually do some calming techniques to calm your nervous system down so that you can give yourself a chance to be able to interact with those things and I know we’ve talked a lot about these things on the podcast already. But just taking a moment and breathing and just allowing yourself to slow your heart rate down and let yourself get back your brain, get back online, right, you know, when that amygdala and the fight and flight response is going off, our brain is not really working the way that it should, and so we need to just take a breath, take a moment and and calm our nervous system down, maybe body up, then top down, you know, so we can think through it better.
Laura : 29:51
Yeah, when we are experiencing those reactions, our cognitive processing part of our brain is not online, it’s not operationally functioning the way that it needs to in order to be helpful. So we want to re-engage our cognitive brain. So one way to do that is like counting count backwards from 10 while you’re breathing. Making you know squares with your hand while you’re breathing or you know doing something. Including a cognitive function like a thought function can be really helpful. That’s like a top-down approach to calming yourself down and you’re able to recognize oh, my amygdala was responding, but my cognitive brain knows that this isn’t actually life or death.
Laura : 30:40
I don’t have to be so afraid, and I think sometimes we get afraid of the anxiety in and of itself. I hear that all the time, and so one thing I say to people is to remind yourself this is difficult, it’s not dangerous. A little bit of anxiety is okay, it’s a normal feeling, and so we have to change the way we think about these particular events because, remember, the fear is about our reaction to the event, it’s not the event itself. So our reaction to the event is I feel like I’m going to die or I believe that this is going to hurt me. I believe that I’m going to be unsuccessful, so my thoughts and beliefs can drive some of that fear as well.
Michaela: 31:27
Absolutely.
Laura : 31:29
So challenging. Those thoughts can be helpful.
Michaela: 31:32
Right, and we’re not saying that if you have a panic disorder or that you have a phobia that you go like intentionally, do like prolonged exposure on your own of anything Right, this is like reasonable. I have a little bit of anxiety and I can calm my nervous system down and I can tolerate it of reaction to something. You need to be working with someone as you walk that path of exposing yourself to these things that make you nervous, right.
Laura : 32:04
Yeah, there’s an anxiety curve. We don’t want to have too little, because then we’re shut down and we’re not responding to any stimuli, but we don’t want to have too much, because then that’s going to give us panic. So we want to dial it back a little bit and get in that sweet spot of I’m alert, I’m aware, I’m awake, but I’m also ready and able and competent and capable. And in order to do that, we have to be grounded in ourselves and we can take control of our bodies by breathing techniques. That’s like I have a choice, I have control, I can take on, I can breathe and force myself to slow down and settle down. That’s showing your brain and body that you are in control and that you are safe in this moment.
Michaela: 32:52
Right, absolutely. You are literally activating that parasympathetic rest and digest part of your body and you’re literally having your body tell the brain oh wait, everything’s cool down here, right, like we’re good. And then you go oh wait, ok, we’re not, we’re not dying, our heart’s not racing, you know, we can start digesting our food again.
Laura : 33:15
Absolutely. I like basic grounding skills like touching the floor, like putting putting your feet on the floor, wiggling your toes in your shoes, like recognizing, like I have freedom of movement, I can control my body and when I focus on my feet and my shoes, I’m not focused on whatever I’m afraid of in that moment. I’m able to shift my attention and change my focus of attention into something that is more helpful and more readily available to me than to think about and to act on. Then the fear is kind of flooding me with all these chemicals.
Michaela: 33:50
Yeah, I love that. I think that I use that a lot, now that we’ve talked about that several times. I use that a lot, like telling people just wiggle their toes. I like that. You know you’ve said that like that’s typically not where they’re feeling the experience in their body, right, and so it’s a good distraction and it’s also separate from kind of what they’re experiencing. So I really like that and I think that even something I use on myself sometimes when I’ve just had a long day and I’m like okay, I’m, you know, I just got to check back in with myself and it helps, it makes a difference.
Laura : 34:26
So, as we go through all of these ways to overcome our fears, what else can we do to give ourselves a little bit more stability and safety when we’re feeling afraid? Is there any other resources that we can think?
Michaela: 34:41
of.
Michaela: 34:45
Well, I think that you know, definitely getting into a therapist is key and working through like what the original kind of like traumatic experience was or like trying to like process through those things, but also like I think medication can be a great support for people who are not are having trouble managing to get this under control right.
Michaela: 35:08
Like I think of the window of tolerance.
Michaela: 35:11
So some people come and they’re like I have literally tried everything, like I’ve been in therapy for a year and like these skills don’t seem to be making a difference for me and I kind of talked to them about like the window of tolerance and if we’re, if we’re up here like a 10 and our, our skills are not going to help us until in that particular person, they’re not going to help until we’re a bit lower Right, and so sometimes adding a medication in or a supplement protocol or you know something like that, to help kind of just calm the nervous system down a bit so that we can actually feel like we’re gaining some traction within managing those experiences that are really challenging for them. So you know, if, if I see a spider and every time I see a spider I’m, you know, a 10, I can’t and I can’t do anything but run away from it, then that might be a good chance for you to try to try to look at something else, to see if, like a medicine or supplement, could be helpful.
Laura : 36:13
Yeah, that’s a good point. So we’ve got breathing techniques, grounding techniques. We can take back control by challenging our thoughts and challenging our beliefs, and we can seek professional help if we need to. I think those are really good ways to help overcome your fears. So I think that’s a good place to end this spooky episode.
Michaela: 36:37
Yeah, Thanks for joining us on this Halloween spooky, frightening episode. I know I’m. I was a little scared starting it.
Laura : 36:46
And we did it anyway. And here we are. Well, thank you for listening to. Why Am I Like this? If you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform, follow the show and share it with your friends. This episode was written and produced by me, Laura Wood and Michaela Beaver. Our theme song is Making Ends Meet by Sickest Bees, and a special thanks to Benavieri Counseling and Coaching and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring this show.
