103. Let's REWIRE...Anxiety

In this second episode of the Let's REWIRE miniseries, I'm talking about one of my favorite topics: anxiety. What if anxiety isn't the enemy? I explain why we don't want to get rid of anxiety, why I actually worry more about people who have none, and how to tell the difference between anxiety that keeps you safe and anxiety that keeps you from living. I also share the Yale study that shows how much our own relationship with anxiety shapes our kids, a personal story about the dead trees in our yard, and the timely message about playfulness from an ancestor session that changed how I think about rumination.

Key Points

The anxiety pattern: thought loops, catastrophizing, rumination, and trying to get a certainty we'll probably never getWhy anxiety thinks it's being responsible, and thinks you're irresponsible if you don't play out every outcomeAnxiety is here on purpose. We wouldn't be alive without our ancestors' anxietyWhy I'm done arguing about whether anxiety is "technically" an emotion, because it's happening in our bodies either wayHow anxiety lives in the sympathetic nervous system, and why staying stuck there wears us downThe close relationship between anxiety, perfectionism, and the shame underneath them"We work locally and we act globally": when we work with one pattern, we work with manyYou're not causing your daughter's anxiety. She was born with a nervous system. What you model is how you relate to itThe Yale SPACE study: training only the parents worked just as well as CBT for the anxious childAnxiety thrives on avoidance, and why over-accommodating our kids' anxiety backfiresAnxiety means you care about something. Where is it pointing you?Turning anxiety into purpose and action (like finally cutting down the dead branches over our yard)The two parts of the REWIRE process: getting to know and tending the pattern, and strengthening what lives on the other side of itWhy playfulness lives in a state where anxiety can't, and why we turn up the volume on one and turn down the other

Quotes

"What if anxiety isn't the enemy?"

"We want to have enough anxiety online to keep us alive, but not to keep us from living."

"You are not causing your daughter's anxiety, because she was born with a nervous system. Don't give yourself that much credit, honestly."

"Helping our children handle their anxiety differently begins with changing what we do when their anxiety activates us."

"I worry more about the people that have no anxiety."

"When you awaken playfulness, t