4D Human Being Podcast | Live and Lead with Impact

Breaking Free From Anxiety

• 4D Human Being

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What if one small boundary could free your nervous system and regulate your anxiety today?

Join Philippa on this solo episode of the 4D Human Being Podcast as she translates the science of anxiety into daily habits. Calm your body, tidy your thinking and reclaim your ability to choose.
You will learn:

  • Why anxiety often masks deeper feelings like shame or fear and how it shows up across physical, emotional and intellectual dimensions
  • How fight or flight hijacks pace and decisions, and why overthinking keeps the loop alive
  • The “capacity bucket” test for overwhelm
  • A simple physical hack to down-regulate fast: slow your movements, speech and breath so your body leads your brain
  • Why we tend to rely on overthinking to overcome, when it actually it's our body that is the secret doorway to escape the trap
  • When anger and confusion can be helpful signals for change

Try this today. Walk slower, make the coffee slower, speak slower. Notice how your system follows. Then ask a better question than “why am I like this?”. What does this feeling want? Safety? Belonging? Love?
Start giving those to yourself rather than chasing them in the next task or Inbox Zero.

Listen for grounded, 4D tools you can use immediately to move from anxious reaction to intentional action.

Disclaimer:
While the tools shared in this episode can be helpful, they are not a replacement for professional care. If your anxiety is intense, long lasting, or impacting your wellbeing, please seek guidance from your GP or a qualified healthcare professional.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, my name's Philip Walla. My name is Penelope Waller, and we are two of the directors at 4D Human Being. And welcome to the 4D Human Being Podcast. What's it all about, Pen? It's all about your personal and professional relationships, it's about your communication skills, how you lead, how you work and build teams, how you are looking after yourself and your well-being, and how you are much more at choice. What do we mean by that? Well, sometimes we can get a little cool impact in life. We can all be a little bit on an automatic pilot. So fully human being is all about helping us get back to choice and being a four-dimensional human being. And your fourth dimension, of course, is intention. So whether it's about your impact, your leadership style, your team dynamics, whether it's about your well-being, whether it's about your communication or your presentation skills. Anything that involves human beings interacting with other human beings, 4D Human Being are here to help. We're gonna take a deep dive and look at some tools, insights, theories that are gonna help you go from a 3D human doing to a 4D human being. So that you can happen to the world rather than the world simply happening to you. Hello and welcome to the 4D Human Being podcast. I'm flying solo this week. So this is a new format or experiment, mainly due to a busy January. So it's all go here at 4D, so I'm gonna fly solo, and I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about something that comes up a lot with clients, both coaching and therapy, and that is anxiety. Now, it's a huge topic, and it certainly deserves more than one episode of a podcast. But I'm really going to try and bring to this podcast some of the main thoughts around anxiety, some of the main issues that I certainly see with it or that I've experienced, and also some of the more tangible kind of breakthroughs as well as the blockers, some of the things that get in the way. Because we all kind of know what anxiety is. We certainly sort of know how it feels, most of us, but we can get very stuck in it, and I want to talk about why that happens. So I think January is a really good time to talk about anxiety and certainly anxiety in 4D. Um, it's so interesting, isn't it? We have such a narrative around January. I uh I've lost count of the number of people who've said, oh well, you know, it's January. And it feels like we can be holding a lot, and that also things can tip in from last year. So we're sort of almost, it's almost like a sort of hangover from last year, and the feeling that we've sort of got to get going, get started, and really, you know, kick off, or you know, it's new intentions, it's we want to do things differently, or we really want to get going, or we have a sense sometimes at the year end, at the beginning of the year, that time is moving quickly, so if time's running out, we've got to go even faster. So there's lots of reasons why the beginning of the year, January, can feel anxious. But let's face it, it's an all-round year thing, anxiety. So, what is anxiety? Well, firstly, a lot of people refer to anxiety as what we call an inhibitory emotion. So we think of kind of core emotions as fear or sadness or anger or joy, and there's lots more, of course. You know, we might have um envy, jealousy. Um, lots of people refer to anger as frustration, I hear a lot. But there's core emotions that we understand or love. An inhibitory emotion can be something that almost sits at the next level and almost can act as a barrier to stop us feeling that. So I'll come back to that, but we can think of anxiety almost like a strangely like a defense mechanism, which is sort of a weird way to think about it. Because we think, well, what's it defending me against? It's really unpleasant. It's not helping me not feel pain or discomfort, but it might be stopping us accessing a deeper fear, for example. So anxiety tends to, it shows up obviously in four dimensions. We'll feel it in the body, so we're all different. We might feel tight-chested, heart-racing. Uh, lots of us might get kind of tense muscles, particularly around the shoulders or the neck. We'll hold it in different places. Some people really hold anxiety in the stomach. You could even have um, you know, sort of problems with stomach or digestion. You might kind of get clammy, sort of sweaty hands. Um, some people might even get sort of um shaking legs or tight jaws, is another one. It comes up in all kinds of manifestations physically. Emotionally, we can often feel a kind of panic, kind of chaos, very dysregulated. We might be pinging from fear to worry to anger to frustration to blaming to sadness to defeat or even depression. So often we think about anxiety as very different from depression, but they're very strong bedfellows. Often we can move back and forth from a kind of anxious state, and then we just can't tolerate it anymore. It's too much, we're exhausted, and then we'll we'll sink, and then we might come back up again and get anxious again. So it's got a very kind of mixed flavour to it, almost to the point where we might not even recognise that we're anxious, partly because we're so normalized to it. So if I come on to the thinking in a minute, let's think about actually, first of all, let's think about being really normalized physically. That when we become anxious, our fight or flight has kicked in. So we've gone into what we call the sympathetic nervous system, terrible labelling. Our nice calm state is our parasympathetic nervous system, and our more activated state is our is our sympathetic nervous system. And when that kicks in, we're in fight or flight, so the body's very activated, the thinking starts to potentially shut down, not always, and certainly not permanently. But we've released chemicals into our body, we've released stress hormones into our body, so it's very uncomfortable and it kind of wants us to do something, although we don't always know what we can do because we're no longer in a reality where we are basically being activated because you know the tiger's on the savannah and we need to run away or kill it. We're we're activated by much more complex problems. You know, it might even be that we're anxious about, you know, we're talking a lot in therapy, even there's lots of courses now on eco-anxiety, you know, that we might be activated by the fear of what might happen to the planet, or at the moment, you know, the amount of news coming in. We can't solve those problems. So even if we're activated and we've gone into fight or flight, we can't really fight sort of global politics. We can't we can't certainly can't solve it in a moment. So that nervous system response that was very useful in a much more simplistic way of get out of this situation or fight whatever's coming towards you. The same system's getting activated, but of course, we're dealing with much more complexity that we can't just solve. So then we get really stuck. So, what can then happen? And this is what really we're often dealing with when we're having conversations with friends or family members or a therapist or a coach, is the thinking gets stuck. We're caught in this sort of what feels like an eternal loop of trying to solve the problems. So thinking, worrying. If I, you know, if I just do this, I'm holding all of the projects I've got at work, where can I find the time to schedule this in? I have have I remembered to do that? Uh what if that presentation isn't um up to up to the mark? Should I put this element in it? Should I change that around? And all of this is anxious thinking, trying to resolve a feeling of unease or worry that we want to get back to stasis, which is basically the whole human experience, is that shift between a kind of disruption, we're always trying to get back to homeostasis, to balance. So if we think about a feeling of being thirsty or hungry, the body's asking us to drink something or eat something so that we can get back to homeostasis, back to balance. But of course, it's the same when our nervous system gets activated. We've got that adrenaline now coursing through us and that cortisol often flooding the prefrontal cortex. So we can't really think straight. It's very confusing. We just need, we know we need to do something. And the body wants to get back to stasis. But of course, it's not as simple as having a glass of water or eating a meal. We're dealing with maybe a whole team of people at work or 300 people in an audience when we're about to give a presentation, or we might be dealing with family dynamics or a partner who has a certain pattern or habit around something that they've always had, and just at this point, I can't really deal with it, it's annoying, or our buttons get pushed. I want to talk more about this in a minute. It's historic stuff often that's coming up. So we can then get stuck in that because we're then we're now trying to resolve complex issues or things about other people that annoy us that, of course, we literally cannot solve because we can't change other people. And now we're stuck. We can't resolve whether or not 100% of that audience is gonna think we're good enough. We can't resolve whether or not my job's gonna last forever and I'm gonna be secure into my um, you know, retirement years. We can't resolve whether or not my, you know, your child's gonna choose the topic at university that's gonna make them happy and that they're gonna, you know, sort out, be happy in a relationship permanently. Like we just cannot resolve these things. It's absolutely impossible. So then the prefrontal cortex gets stuck in tr in just going over and over and over them to try to get back to stasis. But it's a bit of a trap, which I'm gonna come back to in a minute. So, why does this happen and why is it sometimes really worse than others? Well, often I think about you know, those Fisher Prize toys. I don't know if any that probably says a lot about my age, but they were they were like toys that had big colourful buttons on for toddlers. And when something might happen in our everyday life, you know, someone hasn't, I don't know, you know, refilled the the water bottles and put them in the fridge. That was one of mine a while ago, or um, they might have put an empty milk carton back in the fridge, or you know, something that we might think, well, that's quite small. But in these micro moments, what happens is your Fisher Prize toy from your past, it's like someone has gone up to it and gone, I'm just gonna push all these big, colourful buttons, particularly the red ones, I'm gonna really push them. It's not really about the water bottles, it's not really about the milk carton. It's about the fact that someone hasn't thought about you or someone thinks, oh, they you you can do it. You you know, you you'll manage it. It's about the fact that suddenly the buttons have been pushed where you're taken advantage of, you're not cared about, you're not thought about. It might be any number of things that you can recognize from your past. And when those buttons get pushed, you've been disrespected. It might be that, you know, many people talk about having had a difficult experience at school where they're asked to stand up and read, and then they stumbled their words, and there was shame. Shame's often very much a partner to anxiety. And suddenly these buttons are getting pushed, and we can't understand why we have reacted so strongly. But it's not really the event, it's the trauma and the trigger that it's pushing. So it's those buttons, those patterns from our childhood, often often when we were younger, that suddenly get pushed. So now we're caught in that um overthinking. This can also happen, of course, when we're overwhelmed, when our capacity bucket is full. So it might be that something really small happens and we can't understand why we're reacting so strongly. And that's could be A, because it's pushed something very deep in you. The fear of being rejected, the fear of being alone or abandoned could be in there. You know, suddenly you've got a team member leaving, or somebody hasn't invited you to a work event. It's not that you're not going to Pizza Express with the team, it's that something much deeper has been pushed. And uh equally, so it might be the event from the past, but equally, you might be in overwhelm, your capacity bucket is full, you don't even realize because you've so normalized the stress experience that day to day you're living at that heightened, almost like a dream or burnout, where your system is just activated all the time. And we really have normalized this a lot in certainly in the in the business world, in the corporate world, but I think in life in general, the pace at which we operate, the self-experience of being activated so much of the time, we've totally normalized it as a totally normal, just like that's the default setting. Like we don't even think that's activated. So then if you imagine that then another thing comes in, another thing comes in, you're now what you know what would call plate spinning, and actually think, well, this is perfectly reasonable. You know, Bob over there seems to be managing to do all these things and take on more, take on more. And what you haven't realized is that your capacity bucket is already absolutely full, and that will be different for everybody. We've all got different sizes of capacity bucket, so Bob might be able to handle it. But if you can't, you might then start beating up on yourself that you should be able to. So you've just added a whole heap more anxiety in. But what so what happens is we're already in overwhelm, something else comes in, and we don't understand why suddenly we're we can't sleep, we can't stop worrying, we can't stop thinking, we're absolutely in overwhelm. So trying to give a sort of very sort of quick overview of all the ways that anxiety can come in and and also how it's experienced. Now, there's a book by Tem Ferris called The Four Hour Week, and what he he talks he talks about the deferers in that. And I think this really speaks to anxiety. That anxiety becomes very future focused. So we get caught in the trap of if I just spin another plate, if I just do this, if I think about this a bit more, if I'm up all night thinking enough, some part of you believes eventually you'll resolve it. And that means that in the future, at some point, if I think about this enough, if I take on another job, if I do enough, if I work at this pace enough, at some point, hopefully in the kind of near future, I'll get my reward. I will feel at peace. And that is the thing that so many people say to me is when I say, What does what does that feeling want? Like what's what's really wanting here? Peace. I just want to feel peace, is what people say. Now, what's so interesting is that what we're actually doing is running around, looking at a new car, earning more money, getting the roof fixed, buying a new sofa for the house, going to the supermarket, seeing friends, booking a holiday, taking on another work project, flying here and there. We're doing all of these things, which is, you know, fine. Some of it may well be necessary. What we really want is peace. And here's the trap. We think that if we just get that supermarket shop done, if we just get that other task done, if we just do this next business trip, if we just do that presentation, if we just spend that evening till 11 o'clock and not see our family, then eventually we'll get the reward of time and peace. And it's a trap. It's an absolute trap. Now part of you knows this when I'm saying it, that if I spin another plate, if I just keep doing it, if I clear my, if I keep going through my emails and my inbox, I will get the reward where at the end of it, eventually, I will feel at peace. It's such an illusion and it's such a trap. And I'm sort of smiling, but there's a real sadness to it because the part of us that believes it is the part of us that's keeping it trapped. And that is we could call it your ego, your prefrontal cortex, your rational mind, that is constantly trying to find that either solution or justification. If I do this enough, I'll get the reward, I'll I'll get my peace, I'll just do this one, I'll just do this presentation, I'll just work till 11 o'clock every night this week, but then next week I won't. I'll just say yes to this. I don't want to upset anybody. That part of us, if I think we think about the 4D model, so we've looked at the physical, what happens to you physically, what happens to us emotionally, some of those experiences, and then we can get angry, we start blaming people, or we're we're grumpy with people, we're difficult, we're intolerant, we're impatient, all of those emotions that come in. Often we'll be quite unkind to ourselves as well. You know, you should be able to, you know, you're being ridiculous, get on with it, other people can. And then we come to the intellectual dimension. This is obviously the thinking, the ruminating. And we'll often think about this part of ourselves as the kind of smartest in the room. They're doing all the thinking, they're doing all the working out, they're doing all the well, if I've got half an hour there, I'll do that. And then if I just do that, and then we'll actually, if you if you if you cancel that coffee with your friend, then you can squeeze that in and you can uh you know, you'll be able to finish that piece of work. And don't forget to call the plumber, and that part of your that that rational brain is working so hard to supposedly resolve your anxiety, but of course, what it's actually doing is it's colluding with the anxiety. So the feelings are bubbling up, and that that thinking, that rational brain, that ego is now strategizing to see if it can spin another plate and keep going and keep going to keep all of this together. Because what that part of us fears most is stopping and the shame of not being the person who can operate at this level. So that's the trap that we think our kind of friend is our intellectual self who's really working hard to try to resolve something. But on the other side of it, it's the very part of us that is keeping us trapped. To avoid, let's go back to where I started shame, humiliation, embarrassment, not feeling good enough, the fear that if I'm not this, then I won't be loved, my friends won't want me, my partner will leave me because I won't be able to continue with the job I'm doing or whatever it is. So that's the trap. That's the trap. The part of us that keeps those plates spinning is also the part of us that believes that if we don't keep those plates spinning, we will not be worthy of love or respect or whatever it is that we want. So we are completely suspended. If you think I'm clenching my fists here, it's such a tightness to this trap, to this trick that you're almost got, you've got a taskmaster in. your head making you keep going but from not from and from a not very how can how can I put it not it's not a self-compassionate place it's not a kind place it's not saying it's gonna be okay you'll be okay I love you you will be loved it's saying you've got to keep going because if you don't it's all gonna fall apart and it's gonna be over for you so this is this is the trap. It doesn't matter how many plates we spin, we're just still in that trap. So the idea that if I spin another plate I'm gonna somehow resolve it so I'm talking to the intellect now and eventually we'll go back down to the physical because that's really where we want to hack into the anxiety trap. But the idea that if you spin enough plates you'll be free the illusion is that you'll be free from more plates needing to be spun I guess there's a very small percentage of possibility that that that that could happen. I guess if one retires or you're on Christmas holiday, you have a short break. But actually what you really want to be free from is the trap that you believe that if you don't operate at this level and you don't worry and fear that people won't want you, you'll be of no value and your life will fall apart. That's really what you want to be free of. The idea that if you do enough things your inbox will at some point be empty again that's part of the trick that if you resolve that everything else is going to be resolved but we're it's like looking the wrong way. It's like looking at the wrong problem. What we really need to be looking at is the fear that we have underneath the anxiety of what people might think or what might happen or being abandoned as I said, unloved or any number of things. Those fears that are driving like a hot furnace in an old steam trainer at just driving the speed that you've got to keep going until maybe you burn out or maybe there's enough of a crisis that you are allowed, you have permission to stop but only if there's a crisis. You're not allowed to stop unless there's a unless there's a crisis that's often part of the trick. So all of these all of these traps and tricks are playing out. Now one thing I want to say before we go to hacking at the physical level this is how I like to think about the rational super smart brain that we think is really working hard to try to resolve anxiety for us. The thing about that prefrontal cortex and that smart brain that's working really hard to try to squeeze in even more to your schedule and rationalise by saying well I'll only work half an hour more on Wednesday and I'll just about be home in time to you know see the kids or whatever it might be. That part of you that is working really, really hard to try to make the current situation tolerable and work well enough to get all of those things done and still be the good friend or parent or whoever whatever that you want to be that brain that smart rational part of our brains thinks it's the smartest cookie in the room I'm gonna take a breath because it's always finding a way out of this plate spinning treadmill trap treadmill treadmill trap here's a little secret that lovely rational brain that can often be wrapped up tied up with our ego thinks it's the smartest person in the room we've learned somehow along the way through our education that that thinking that prefrontal cortex that think think think think think think think is the smartest part of us it's not headline news not always not for some things not for this here's how to think about that part of you sometimes when it goes into overthinking it's like imagine a little mini version of yourself or like a child version of yourself sitting on a big throne that's way too big for it perhaps with even its sort of you know your parents' clothes and shoes on so it's swamped it's it's really small it's got this big crown on its head and it's sort of holding a scepter like a sort of ancient royal sitting on a throne thinking it's the big king or queen and it's this tiny little person that is way out of its depth. That's what how I like to think about that sort of smart rational thinking particularly when it comes to anxiety and overwhelm. It thinks it's the smartest person in the room but it is actually way out of its depth and it does not know how to resolve anxiety whether this is a useful reference. If anybody knows Miranda Richardson's Queen Elizabeth I from the second series I think of Black Adder where she's this sort of petulant sort of childish queen on a throne it's got sort of that element to it where it's got the power it believes but actually it doesn't really have the solutions that are promoting the wellbeing or the kind of calm or the kind of you know sense making where everyone knows where they are. Actually it's very erratic and very unpredictable and sort of petulant and childish. So it's a really nice way to think about that part of us the anxiety part of us that it thinks it's the smartest person in the room it really needs a break because all it knows how to do is to keep spinning more plates and getting angry and upset that it's spinning plates. That's the strategy that it has to try to break us out of spinning so many plates. But of course actually what happens is we just have to speed up and speed up and speed up because the only way to keep spinning more plates is to get faster and faster. And it gets dangerous for our health and certainly our relationships. So there's a couple of things to think about here. One is anger can be really useful because it's often the breakout confusion and anger two things that we really don't like feeling are often really useful. Confusion because that's finally the brain saying I really don't know how to get out of this and that's great because that's now opening a new door from this trap that the that rational path that rational brain that thinks it can find a way out through thinking finally confusion takes over and says we can't we seem to be stuck. And secondly anger can be really useful because anger is usually saying this is not okay anymore. So we often try to avoid anger we may have been conditioned out of it we shouldn't feel it it's not very appealing or I don't identify with being angry. People won't like me if I'm angry. Ask yourself this question rather than trying to ask yourself why do I feel so anxious ask yourself what these feelings are wanting. Much better question for you because we can kind of ruminate on the why forever well if I look back to my childhood I remember that time where I stood up in the classroom and people laughed and now presentations are a nightmare or I never really felt good enough I never really got the praise I wanted as I was growing up. It there might be any number of things and they are all definitely useful to to to look at to glance at but once we know that once we know well that's that is very possibly a reason why I I I feel like this in these moments you know I was bullied at school and so the the fear of power um overwhelming me or the fear of being left out of groups like that all makes sense. But then in the moment once we may have got some kind of why do I feel like this, that's not going to break us out. The rational brain doesn't really break us out. It might answer some questions but then we can't understand why well I know this so why am I still stuck? It's because we need to go into the emotion and into the physical to break free. So ask yourself firstly this question what is either my anxiety what is this feeling it might be anger it might be panic it might be anxiety what is it wanting what does it really want now you might get to that first stage of well it wants this presentation to go well. Keep pushing through what does it really want? Well it wants to feel that it's good enough or that it's acceptable or that people like it or that it's going to belong or that it's going to be safe. It'll be things around safety and belonging it'll be real really primal feelings. So first of all find out what does this feeling want to want to get to anger this isn't okay for me. What does that anger want? It wants to stop feeling put upon stop being demanded upon stop it doesn't want to feel guilt or you know shame that it needs to be more um needs to please other people or whatever it might be it just wants to feel okay I want to feel okay in myself I want to feel calm I want to feel loved great so we've now we've got some of those bases I want to feel safe I want to feel loved I want to feel belonging now ask yourself this do you make yourself feel safe do you make yourself feel loved and do you make yourself feel like you belong like you you're you're with yourself or are you because of your anxiety constantly outside of your body outside of your own present experience charging into the future as I said anxiety is usually future focused takes us into the worry of the future and have you disconnected from taking care of yourself from loving yourself from being with yourself from caring about yourself and so often we're looking for the thing that really is wanting underneath anxiety we're looking for it outside of ourselves either in a partnership or a friendship relationship or in a job or in a meeting or in a presentation or in a report we're writing if I do that if people like that then I will be valuable in love. So we're we're looking to do the thing in the world that's going to mean that the other person loves us wants us needs us will take care of us. And that is a very very unstable place to stay in because all the time we're looking outside of ourselves what we call the locus of control is outside of ourselves. It depends on other people whether I feel safe or loved we are always at the mercy of the world or the next meeting or the next pitch or the next um comment from somebody or disagreement or agreement or whatever it might be. So we need to come back to ourselves that when you're in an anxious state plate spinning usually what we're doing is trying not to feel fear or shame or anger or sadness or any number of things. So I'm looping right back to where I started anxiety is an inhibitory emotion and if we do enough we'll be wanted we'll have the external validation so we won't need to give ourselves love because other people will and we're pushing away in ourselves parts of us that we we don't want. I don't want my shame I don't want my anger I don't want my fear of rejection or whatever it might be. So I'm gonna push those parts away I must not feel sad, angry, fearful whatever it might be or shame. But I want other people to really love me all of me but I don't want those parts but I want them to make me feel better. I want them to accept me. I want them to love me. So we're absolutely now caught in another kind of trap if you like the other layer of the trap. The thinking thinking thinking is trying to keep us at the same strategy believing that at some point if I do enough I'll have peace I'll win I'll get there and things will be okay. Underneath that we're in another kind of trap which is I want other people to love me entirely but I don't want these parts of myself I don't want to love me entirely. So here's the way out of the trap physical and emotional stop what your body really wants is to slow down. You have to hack this at a nervous system level literally the way that you're about to open the tea bag box or the coffee jar in that activated state everything is going to be at a kind of hurried anxious frustrated you'll be ripping the lid or the cover off of the coffee everything will be in that place any of you those of you with dogs when I'm in that activated state and the dogs need showering you're not as gentle with them everything starts getting treated from this activated state you need to stop what your system wants is to slow down so literally walk slower pick up that coffee jar slowly you can hack it at this level the thinking is complicated but the body will take instructions imagine you're walking through water imagine dialing your speed down by 50% that everything has to go slowly that it doesn't have to be complicated not saying it's easy but it's not complex in terms of a mental strategy it's just slowing everything up down speak slower move slower walk up the stairs slowly do everything slowly you're gonna tell your system we're not playing that game anymore we are not spinning plates we are taking it very very slowly at a really fundamental level the way you pull your keys out of your pocket put them in the door everything slowed down. This is your hack and then of course you can add things to that go for a slow walk take a slow bath there's lots of things you can do talk to a friend take it gently play slower classical music like there's lots of things you can do to help this slow your system down your brain is gonna fight this so hard it's gonna fight you to to speed up again it's gonna tell you you can't it's gonna tell you it's gonna fall apart it's gonna tell you that you'll be you'll end up sort of on the rubbish heap you'll have no job no one will love you your ego mind is going to fight you every step of the way to get back to your plate spinning and to get back to your fast treadmill life. So expect it. Don't be surprised expect it I'm not even gonna say roll your sleeves up. I'm gonna say take it slowly and remember this part of you is much smarter than that little part of you who is now shouting on their throne with their oversized crown saying you've got to go faster. You are smarter than that. Smile gently at it you're not gonna get into a fight with yourself. I really hear you I really hear how frightened you are that I'm slowing down and how much you want to go faster. I really I really get that and I know how scared you are that if I slow down here it's gonna be really bad news. I I see you I hear you and I know and it's gonna come back yeah well then you should listen come on we've got to go we've got to I just keep noticing I really I can really hear you that you want to you really want to get on you want to go and work harder on that presentation you want to stay up till midnight I really really hear you I can really feel how scared you are I really get that we're just gonna take it slow for a moment it's okay both can be true. You can be scared I can be slow both can be true. No fight it's like carrying a it's like having a passenger in your car or a child in your car who's really sad or angry or scared and you go I see you I know you're there we'll we're just gonna take a moment we're gonna go and look at the view it's okay you're gonna do that for yourself because all of your running is trying to get someone else to do it for you who never did it for you enough in the past you're gonna do it for yourself. Okay. And this ties in with the second piece which is when the shame comes up when that anxiety thinking comes up or the people will think you are what dot dot dot fill in the gaps people will hate you people will see that you're not good enough all of those things I want you to imagine them as parts of yourself versions. Almost imagine them as you know the shame part of you might have their eyes down and sort of their shoulders hunched and almost imagine those parts and you're gonna say to them all I really see you. I really know how frightening this is and it's okay. It's okay and yes we will still do some work yes we'll still do those things and we're gonna take a moment we're gonna take some time and we're gonna do it a bit differently. Now it feels in a way like nothing and your brain like I said is going to fight you. This is where you can break the cycle because all the time that your fast thinking anxiety is trying to solve it at that level you're caught in almost like an infinity loop just going round and round and you'll feel a bit better when the you know you've done that bit of work and you've got the praise and now you've got the high and you'll feel a bit better but then you'll dip back down and the next thing will come and then you'll be in the fear and the frustration and the anxiety and then you'll go back round you'll get the little high of having achieved it but you're just caught caught caught caught caught caught so you're gonna use your anger to break out of that loop and start getting your system used to slowing down. Might be five seconds to start with then it might be ten it might be a minute the brain will keep going it's gonna fight you just notice it don't get into a dialogue with it. It wants to get you into a like a tennis match it wants you to say well you know but if we take a moment we might feel a bit better. Well if you take a moment then you know Bob in accounts will will be working harder and he'll pick up the email and he'll it will get into a fight with you. So you don't want to get into a dialogue with it of well yes but yes but yes but that's not what you want. Just notice it I really see you. I know you're frightened yeah but you should be getting up off the sofa. You haven't got time to slow down I really really hear you I really hear how scary that is that we're gonna take a moment almost like a child because the child that's anxious about that presentation is a child that's anxious about that presentation. It's the part of you that hasn't been taken care of and you're gonna take care of it. Now there's lots more to say on anxiety but in 4D, 2C, physical, emotional, intellectual, intentional four dimensions, two contexts environment and relationship where we usually want to go with anxiety and this is what I think why people end up coming to therapy because they've tried this and they can't understand why it doesn't work where we tend to go is the intellectual to some extent the environment we might go on holiday or we might move house or we might um buy some new clothes or something. So we might we try to use our environment intellectual environment and relational if we have that conversation with the other person if we tell them that when they do that it annoys us if we have the conversation with our boss that's all going to help. So we'll tend to go to those three parts of the 4D2c model intellect environment and relationship where we actually need to start is our own physical experience our own emotional dimension and our Our intention is to shift our intentions. So that's partly why we get so stuck. We can't understand. Literally, I'm using the words understand. We can't understand why we can understand and yet nothing changes. We can't understand why we've had the conversation with the other person and nothing changes. We can't understand why we've just had a holiday and yet we feel the same. It's because we are totally missing the first stack of our self-experience. We're trying to change the icing on the cake and we're wondering why the cake still doesn't taste good. We need to go to the cake. Slow down physically, maybe go for a run sometimes, but really balance it with not activating it but slowing it down. Hack your physical dimension, hack your emotional dimension by not rejecting or fighting those emotions anymore. Let shame in say, I see you. I know you're frightened about being humiliated. I really see you. And I'm going to be here for you. Even if people think this is rubbish, I'm going to be here for you. I am not going anywhere. That is going to be a game changer eventually. I know it feels crazy to start with. You think nothing's really happening. I'm just talking to myself like a crazy person. But your amygdala, your limbic system, is not listening to your prefrontal cortex language. It does not understand that rational thinking. It does understand imagery. It does understand visualizing emotions and different parts of ourselves. It does understand this kind of conversation we're having with ourselves. So call it crazy. If you're that anxious and you're suffering, I'm going to offer you it's definitely worth a try. So you're shifting your intentional self towards being in a different relationship with your physical self and your emotional self. Okay. I could go on and on about anxiety. That's, I just want to start with that. Some of the things that come up. Stop thinking that your rational brain has got all the answers. It's proved over the years it definitely, definitely doesn't. Love it. Say, lovely, you're doing a lovely job there with your big crown on your big throne. And sometimes when it's about reading books and analysing reports, nobody better than you. You are not the person for the job of regulating my nervous system and breaking me out of this anxiety trap. You just want to spin more plates. I am going to stop plate spinning entirely. Okay. I wish you really, really well. If you would like more on anxiety, let me know. Philippa at 4D Human Being1L2Ps, or you can uh contact me at info at 4DHumanBeing. If this is useful, if you would like more, let me know. Um and we can dive even deeper into anxiety, burnout, and overwhelm. Otherwise, Penelope and I will be back with more 4D delights very soon. I really, really wish you well. Take very, very good care of yourself. Be a friend to yourself. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the 4D Human Being podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Do take on board some of the insights, tools, and tips because every time that you try something new to get back to choice, you are making a vote for the you that you want to become. And I I love that phrase pen. I do too. And please do share this episode with somebody that you know would really benefit from the lessons and learnings we've been chatting about today. And of course, if you're interested in more from 4D Human Being, do get in touch. We run workshops, trainings online, in person, conference events and keynotes. We've got the 4D on-demand platform for your whole organization, and we do have a free essentials membership where anybody can sign up for absolutely free to access some of our insights, tools, and tips. So do get in touch with us if you'd like to hear more. We cannot wait to hear from you and to carry on the conversation.