Anxiety often has roots in unresolved childhood trauma stored in our bodies, not just our thoughts. Self-judgment can activate a cycle of self-criticism, hindering our nervous system regulation.

In this episode, we meet Dr. Lorne Brown, a fertility specialist with a unique blend of traditional Chinese medicine and clinical hypnotherapy.I want to remind people that whether it was a big thing or not, if it impacted them in this way, go ahead and see if you can get in there and do that connecting and finding those ways to let that be liberated from your tissue if you will. Let’s let that go, but that does maybe take a minute. You talk about conscious awareness and unconscious awareness. You talk about how a lot of people will take on this victim mentality and also worry, “Is there to keep us safe?” It’s not like, “Why is it there?” Ultimately, in nature, it was meant to be like, “What’s that noise?” We understand that there’s a place, but you also delineate between worry and anxiety. Dr. Brown's "Notice, Accept, Choose Again" approach provides a practical framework to navigate and transcend anxiety. I feel it now and it’s like, “The poor kid had a hard time with it.” I can even laugh now because of some of the sympathetic activities coming up. It used to be this dorsal vagal shutdown when I thought about my dad or schizophrenia or suicide. Now, a little bit of sympathetic activity comes up. I go into humor. I lean into humor a lot. I also have to be aware that I don’t just displace everything with humor like, “Allow yourself to feel it.” You can make jokes about it. Russ, I want to mention that you do have a chapter that gets into breathing and holotropic breathing. People have to understand you’re not throwing things out there that then through the book, they’re completely supported with ideas on how to do this. I got as close as I could to the mirror and looked into my eyeball and I was like, “You’re going to have to be strong right now.” I knew it was the kind of thing that you could see me and then see me in a year and be like, “What the hell happened to Gabby?” I knew I was going to have to decide to pay attention to stand up straight because I wanted to go and get under the duvet.

It’s like, “There’s that feeling again,” and then you teach yourself, “This is what I do when I have that feeling. I don’t go into my head. That’s the last place I want to go. I want to go into my body and feel it to heal it.” I’m curious, Gabby, what did you do when you talked about that thing with your daughter? What did you do when you had huge matches in volleyball before? How would you prepare? How would you ground yourself?

I’ve dealt with anxiety since I was a teenager. My father was schizophrenic and bipolar, and the chaos and pain of his illness created tremendous alarm in my system. My mother did her best to love and take care of my brother and me, but she had her own issue with chronic anxiety. I often say my mother was neurotic and my father was psychotic, so my psyche didn’t stand much of a chance!

I’m sure we have adult children that go, “When my parents were younger, when they were raising me, they were a completely different person.” You hear that a lot. Dr. Russell Kennedy, the book is Anxiety Rx. Thank you for doing this. I enjoyed this book and I learned a lot. I was reminded about some important things. For those of you reading, thanks for spending time with us. Thank you so much, Russ. I appreciate it. Russell Kennedy – The big thing about parenting when we all lose at a point is, “What’s my intention here? My intention is to provide the safest and I’m their best bet. Even if I’m not having my best day, I’m still their best bet.” When your chest expands like that, it sends a message up to your brain stem, the bottom part of your brain that connects to your body, that everything is okay. The converse is also true. When your chest starts to constrict, which it does when you get anxious, it also sends a message up, “We’re in danger.” The brain starts looking for dangers and if it doesn’t find one, it makes one up, which is what worry is. I have three daughters but with Brody, it’s like I’m taking my life into my hands to get a goodnight kiss. Can you at least be like, “Brody, let me put my hand on your heart.” It’s an interesting idea. The funny thing is sometimes they’ll be like, “Ew. You’re so annoying,” but then they would weirdly let you do it as well. I lived at a temple in India for a while, studied the science of spirit there, and became a yoga meditation teacher. I did all these things because I firmly believe that my dharma on this Earth is to go through this myself, and then translate it so other people can understand it. There are a lot of people out there that have gone through traditional therapy and they’re not a lot better, and then they blame themselves. It’s not your fault. We’re just not treating the right thing.

That’s why people are struggling. That’s why relationships are breaking up. It’s because we don’t allow ourselves to sit with our feelings without this compulsive, relentless need to explain everything we feel, especially negative emotions, rather than just sitting with it. Meditations like that are like, “Anger will come up. How long is this going to last? It feels like it’s going on forever.” Then you watch your thoughts.

The other part of this is living, being a human, and being sensitive to the world around us. I don’t think we have to take on other people’s things. That’s the other thing. We’re not better people because we’re miserable because our friend is miserable. I’m not suggesting that, but it’s okay to say, “I’m feeling something. I’m going to take a moment.” Anxiety 101: How the brain signals fear, how anxious thoughts occur, and how your body holds trauma But it’s a dichotomy: in shielding our true innocent selves from “harm” by keeping our authentic selves sequestered in the treasure chest, the dragon, in the same fell swoop, also prevents our authentic selves from being open to the world. In this human life, we can be in growth or protection, but other than in true faith, growth and protection are mutually exclusive. I am so thankful for this book, i dread to think of where I would be now without it as things were only getting worse. The only book to give a clear answer on how to actually get out of the cycle of chronic overthinking and anxiety. I had so much other knowledge about the body and the nervous system and unresolved trauma from reading other books but no clear instructions on what to actually do, and with a mind that overthinks and overthinks and overthinks and the anxious addiction to research to try and find a way out that wasn’t a good combination. Way to start it. You just put me in a good mood. Thank you. First of all, I am so sorry about the last time but now we have it double-covered. Your podcast threw us over the edge. We’ll get started. I’m excited to talk about this. It’s funny, I relistened your book and I was like, “I’m excited to talk about this again.” What’s the temperature where you are, Dr. Kennedy?And, the dragon is not discerning. Anything that caused us pain in the past is resisted by the dragon, especially if the pain occurred in our childhood. If you stood up in front of the class for show-and-tell and you were ridiculed, any potential public speaking opportunities in your future would light your dragon up in fight-or-flight resistance.