How I Deal With My Anxiety and How You Can Too

I was going to film a video about Why Rejection Hurts and how our brain is wired to understand, react, and cope with rejection. But given the current situation, I'll save that for another day.



The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the anxiety and fear of uncertainty for many people across the globe. We fear for our health, our jobs, a global recession, and the wellbeing of the most defenseless members of our community. Right about now, most of the planet is in a lockdown mode. Humanity never faced anything like that before, and it is only normal to be triggered and experience anxiety. 
 

In today's video, I'll share with you How I Deal With Anxiety and How you Can too. We're going to examine why some people feel more anxiety than others, and we'll design a map, to understand how it works. 


I'm Dimitris and welcome to another video of Design Thyself.


I've been in lockdown for weeks. Many of you are in the same situation. I wake up every morning, and I have the same feeling as the day before. And the day before that. I do my morning meditation to ground myself, and that helps me realise that any wisdom that exists, exists in what I already have within me. I don't meditate to get rid of disturbing thoughts or strong emotions. I meditate to become more aware of them. To witness them. Not battle with them. 


 Every time I face a challenge, what I try to do is become an expert on the thing that is scaring me. That helps me deal with my natural fear. And I do this in three steps. Number one is "understand where it comes from". Number two, is "make space for it to exist" and number three I try to "be competent in using it". Those same three principles I applied to deal with my anxiety.


The best antidote for fear is competence. If you can make yourself competent in understanding where your anxiety comes from, then making space for it and using it to your advantage, becomes easier. Some people are more sensitive to anxiety than others. That is a great place to start looking for answers. This is how I started exploring my anxiety issues. I started by asking myself this: Did I feel anxiety when I was 1 day old? How about when I was 2 days old? How about when I was 3 days old? Where I'm going with this is to illustrate that at some point in your life something happened that made you construct the narrative that being anxious is helpful. It might sound odd, but stay with me. To give you a clear picture of what I mean we need to go deep into how anxiety is formed in the first place.  


Anxiety has a birthplace. And the birthplace of anxiety is Memory. A good question to ask is “what's the purpose of memory?”. You might say the purpose of memory is to remember the past. But that is just wrong. And not only it’s wrong but it’s the most misguided thought one might have about memory. The purpose of memory is to choose from the past what was effective while avoiding what was harmful so that you can secure a better future. That’s the purpose of memory.


Memories that help us learn the most (good or bad) are associated with a strong emotional impact. In contrast to "ordinary" memories, like for example what you had for lunch yesterday, which might change in time, meaning you might not remember it, those "learning memories” are fixed and static. They do not change. 
 
I know it's getting a bit confusing. So now it's time to design a map and see now how memory works: (Design of Memory timeline)


You'd think that memory is like a box in which all the things we remember live. But that's not the case. Or to be more precise, it's a lot more than that. Memory is divided into Explicit and Implicit. Broadly speaking, Explicit memory is the conscious memory, while Implicit is relatively unconscious. So there's a gradual fade of awareness from one to the other. From the most conscious to the least conscious. Even though both are memory systems and both are meant to guide us throughout our lives, they are quite different in the functions they serve. They are also different in the way they connect different parts of the brain and body.

Let's take a closer look. Explicit memory consists of Declarative and Episodic memory, while Implicit memory is made up of Emotional and Procedural.

If I'd ask you what did you have for dinner last night, the Declarative part will be activated. Declarative memory allows us to recall information consciously and to communicate it to other people. It's what enables us to tell a story that makes sense. When we articulate a Declarative memory, we use the part of our brain, which is called the cerebral cortex. This is the outer layer of our brain, the one that looks like a walnut with all the foldings, and it's full of neurons that process the highest-order tasks in the brain like knowledge, comprehension, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It's the place where memories that are objective and free of emotion live. Let's call it the "shopping lists" place. And a thing to keep in mind is that the shopping list place is rarely relevant to therapy. 


The next one is Episodic Memory. If Declarative memories are factual and objective, Episodic memories are warm, full of emotions. They act as a bridge between the most conscious and the least conscious. These are the memories that are felt rather than accurately remembered. They have this dreamy quality and can be very vague but can also be quite vivid. Episodic Memories are responsible for creating beliefs. For example, if you had a positive experience with a teacher in elementary school, you might have associated learning with something nice and fun. Me, one the other hand, I remember being mocked by my teacher when I didn't know how to multiply numbers properly. I was standing in front of the entire classroom, not knowing what to answer, and she kept making fun of me. I can clearly remember the feelings of shame and sadness I had. And for all my school years, I had associated math with something scary and negative.

Episodic memory helps us orient in space and time, recalling from the past what can be of use for the future. Therefore, it gives us an advantage of survival. We generally consider episodic memories to go back to the age of three, and sometimes earlier than that, when the part of our brain, which is called the hippocampus, becomes reasonably functional. So let's draw a heart here and call this the heartfelt memory. 


So far so good. But now it's time to move deeper, to the darker, more unconscious parts of memory! So let's explore the territory of Implicit Memories.


Implicit memories can't be remembered voluntarily. You can't access them, not even as dreamy recollections. They come up as behavioural reactions, emotions, and sensations in your body. In therapy, they are often called "action patterns," and those unconscious memories are shaping your life more than anything else. To understand Implicit memories better, we need to talk about Emotions. So, what are these things we call emotions? Emotions are universal instincts shared by all mammals. The most dominant are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy, and excitement. Emotions are there to connect us with other people, but they are also there to connect us with the essence of our self. The role of emotional memory is to encode significant experiences for instant reference in the future and create immediate signals for our motor network. In other words, Implicit memories organise our entire system for action. 


For example, let's say when you were a little kid, you had a nice walk with your parents in the park. Suddenly you hear the rustling of leaves, and as you turn your head, you see with the side of your eyes the leaves of a bush moving. By the time you fully turn your head to see the bush clearly, a mad dog jumps behind it and bites your arm with its sharp teeth. Your parents saved you, of course, and that's why you're watching this video right now but, you're now 30 and you're going on a date with a person you really like.

You go for dinner, and you get all the queues that the person likes you back, and that's such a great feeling, so you suggest going for a walk in the park. It's a beautiful warm summer evening and all of a sudden you feel a gentle cool breeze on your face and life seems so good now it makes you smile, but that same nice breeze makes the leaves of the trees in the park rustle. The rustle of leaves triggers something unexpected. Your pupils dilate, your mouth becomes dry, your heart starts beating fast, and your lungs take short, shallow breaths. Anxiety has conquered your body. Your date asks you if everything is ok, you feel embarrassed, and even more anxious. 


So what just happened here? What happened is that your body, without your conscious effort, has prepared you for a fight or flight response. The rustling of leaves was linked with the need for motor action with only one purpose. Your survival. But you don't experience it as such. You experience it as stress and anxiety. And let’s say you have consciously forgotten about the mad dog, so what you might do then, is that you will link the anxiety with dating that person. These are the Emotional memories and emotional memories are the red flags of our system. So let's draw a flag here. Something that had a tremendous emotional impact on us and was encoded for immediate access. 


Next one is the Procedural Memory. Procedural Memory goes even deeper, and its the spontaneous sensation and automatic movement of our body. We can divide Procedural memories into three categories. The first one is the "Learned Motor Actions." For example learning how to ride a bicycle, or how to snowboard or even how to make love belongs in this category. With time and practice, our brain creates shortcuts to make our body move without conscious commands. So if I want to drink water, I have to give an order to my arm to grab the glass. If I'm riding the bicycle and I'm leaning more to the left-hand side, my body knows by instinct to give more weight to the right side for balancing. 



The second category we call "Emergency responses" and is accessed when we face an immediate threat. Contraction, retraction, fight, flight and freeze live in this category. And that brings us to the deepest category of Memory. What lives here is something so primal so before our time on this earth, that if we do not comply with its commands, our life can be in great danger. What lives down here is the tendencies of Approach or Avoidance. The human with the highest IQ and the smallest and most insignificant known organism on this planet share this same system of Approach or Avoidance. We approach what is nourishing, and we avoid what is toxic. And we call this the Memory of the "Organism." or “Organisminc" Memory. I know you just thought of Orgasmic but let's not confuse those two. These movement patterns of Approach and Avoidance, in other words, expansion and contraction, are the backbone of all other motor actions in our system. Think of them as the traffic lights of our entire system. Red Avoidance/contraction and Green for Approach/ expansion.
 
So when these Procedural Memories are being activated, it happens way below the radar of our intentional awareness. It usually happens when we least expect it and when we least consciously want it. Those parts of memory are so deeply engraved in our system that in times of threat and stress, they override everything else. All other parts of Implicit and Explicit memories get disregarded. But you have to understand that this happens for one reason only. To ensure your survival. Because at some point in your life, those reactions kept you alive during a traumatic event. 


Let me ask you this: What are the sensations that you feel in your body when you're anxious about something? Most people would say "tension, rapid heart rate, rapid breathing, pain in the chest as if I have load in my chest, in many cases muscle twitching or trembling". What do you think your body is preparing you to do? Expand and approach something or contract to avoid danger? 


Now the million-dollar question: Do you still think that the source of your anxiety is the COVID-19, or any other thing you think it is?


The answer is His Sunt Dragones. It's Latin and what it means is: Here Be Dragons. Do you remember old medieval maps? Map makers used this phrase at the edges of the maps, where everything ended, and unknown territories started. They use to draw dragons, and monsters guarding those territories, scaring all the ships away. "Here Be Dragons" means danger is lurking that we don't understand. 


Do you really want to understand your anxiety? The good news is that you can! You just have to be your own map maker. You have to go to those uncharted territories of your memory that are guarded by dragons and map a path that is safe to cross. Your tools to do so are the bodily sensation that you feel every time you are anxious, stressed, or feel under threat.

Freud once said "What the mind has forgotten, the body has not...Thankfully". And that is your key to those unknown areas. You build a bridge between your conscious and your least conscious memories by elaborating your bodily responses in a safe environment, with trustworthy guidance.


Traumatic memories shape our lives in ways we cannot comprehend. Ways we might never suspect. But they all live in this big box of different kinds of memories. The narrative of our lives is based on things that have happened in the past that made us who we are now. Some of them we remember with our minds, others with our bodies. The memories are all there. And if you feel there are parts of you that you want to understand more, or you want to change, what you need to do is to establish a clear line of communication between your explicit and implicit memories and do the work. This work will help you develop new meanings and new behaviours as it will allow new cognitive beliefs to emerge. This is where you find meaning. In taking responsibility for your own wellbeing by understanding your dragons.


At the beginning of this video I spoke about how I meditate each morning. I mentioned that when I meditate, I do not fight my thoughts. I do not fight my anxiety, or my stress and I never try keep my mind empty. Instead, I try to make space for thoughts to exist. I meditate to become more aware of the anxiety I am feeling. I try to witness how it affects my bodily sensations. I just observe it. Try it too and leave a comment below to share your experience with us. I'd love to hear the sensations you notice in your body.

To know yourself is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. And it all begins with a couple of breaths and by noticing the sensations that arise in your body.

Above all don't forget that your anxiety is just trying to protect you. But it's doing it in an unhelpful way. Make it your friend and understand where it comes from. And if you need to chat about it or you feel like going deeper in understanding it, click the link in the description below, and let's have a chat.


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 I'm Dimitris and thanks for watching.