[00:00:00] Hi everyone. I hope you are having an amazing day today. I, oh, it's getting to be spring here and I love it just energizes me and I get so excited about life and ready to take on new challenges. I'm going to try something different in this video. So hopefully it works out the way I want it to. I'm going to figure out how to, I don't edit video very much.
I, I just don't. Take a lot of time and really know what I'm doing, and I don't want to spend the time to learn it. So I'm going to try something. So we'll see how it works, but I am reading this book right now, and it is called Freedom from Anxious Thoughts and Feelings by Scott Symington, and it's really good.
And so I'm giving him credit for this idea, but as I was reading this book, I got, do you guys like ASMR? I've [00:01:00] never tried to do an ASMR video, but I watch them all the time. If you hate that, then I won't do it very much because I, I, this is not an ASMR video, but I love it. And that's one of the things that calms me.
And so if you don't know what it is, check it out. It's so amazing. There's all sorts of different ASMR triggers. And so if, Tapping isn't one of your triggers. You might have others or maybe it doesn't even work for you. My husband thinks it's a bunch of hooey. I absolutely love it. And I'll, I, I believed in it since I was in kindergarten.
I just didn't know what it was called then. But anyway I want to teach you a concept that I haven't even finished this book yet. I'm learning so much. And so, you know, you may be wanting to get it. Cause it's so. It's been so helpful, but at this, he talks about this two screen method, and I'm going to teach about it today on this video because I think it's so important.
And it's such a great visual way to imagine how to deal with [00:02:00] anxious, Thoughts and feelings. And I'm going to teach several things out of this book in different episodes, but I, I have a visual, like it is a great visual tool, but I actually create a, I made another little video of how I visualize this and I'm going to insert it into this video.
If I can make that work, I hope I can. Cause I thought it was a, I like my, in my quick ideas, like, Oh my gosh, I could do this. But I want to. Talk to you about this two screen method. And so if you're listening to this completely on my podcast channel, then do go over to the YouTube video so that you can see what the visual looks like.
Cause I'm going to insert it in here. You, you need to imagine that You see two screens in your brain, and so there's a screen in front [00:03:00] of you, and the screen that's in front of you is your present time. All the things that are happening to you right now, but also all the things that just make you happy, and the things you love, and your friends, and stuff that you enjoy doing, and just, you know, Peacefulness and all the things that are just feel good things.
And then you have the side screen that you can see kind of out of the corner of your eye. It's not totally in your view, but it's over here. It's over to your right. And it has all the things That your brain tells you all the anxious stuff, all the anxious thoughts and ideas and, Oh, you're going to have an accident.
Oh, you're going to get, you have cancer. Somebody hates you. You're ugly. You're fat. Don't go there. It's dangerous. You know, whatever, whatever the things are that create anxiety for you, that's over on the side screen. And I would say that, [00:04:00] That's probably that is running all the time, but there are times when it gets kind of dim because you are in the present moment and you are enjoying something and you are thinking about something that is going to be fun to do.
And then maybe the screen to the side lights up all of a sudden, it's like, Oh, But don't forget all these terrible bad things. And so every time that that screen to the side lights up, it distracts your attention and you're like, Oh no, what about all those things or what about all these people that hate me?
Or what about if I make a fool of myself or what if those people get upset if I say that I don't want to do something and we can get lost in that. Attention goes over to the side of that screen and we can just get sucked into all the terrible things and we lose track of what's in front of us and what we really want to be doing and what is important in our lives.
And so [00:05:00] some people get so caught up in the side screen that they stay at home and they don't go to do the things. One of the stories in the book is about a lady who is terrified to drive on the freeway. Now we, you In Kansas, we don't have freeways here. We have like busier like turnpikes or the turnpike near us has three lanes of traffic going one way.
And that's like the craziest driving, you know, we're in Kansas city. I get so freaked out if I have to go to Kansas city. I, I don't like a whole bunch of like merging on and all these different things. And so that's the kind of you know, that's how I picture a freeway though. I think it's probably even crazier.
So the, the freeway traffic, she's avoiding it. So she doesn't go visit her friends across town because she's too afraid to drive on the freeway. So she wants to be with her friends, but she would [00:06:00] rather avoid the freeway than do the thing that she wants to do. So when she's driving along and she, or she's thinking about, Oh, I want to visit my friends.
It's so fun. And she's on the front screen. Then the side screen lights up and it's like, Oh, you could have a terrible accident and all these bad things are going to happen. And then she would rather just stay, pay attention to the side screen and not see her friends than actually divert her attention from the side screen and actually do the thing that she wants to do.
So, or I know that there was a lot of kids who avoid school because of whatever dangerous things or terrible things that they imagine is going to happen at school. So they would rather stay in bed than, or stay at home in their comfy coziness than go to school where it seems dangerous. And some people don't.
Want to do what the side screen or don't want to believe or think about what the side screen is telling him. So then they spend a lot of time fighting [00:07:00] against it. And it's like, Oh, that's not going to happen. I'm tired of you telling me this. Oh no, I can't believe this is happening. And or I can't deal with these feelings or I'm so sick of it.
And all of that is overwhelming and exhausting. And so then they. feel like they can't divert their eyes from the screen because they're fighting against it. Okay. So here's how I see the two screens. This is an idea that came up to me as I was reading this in the book that think about like my laptop is my front screen and look at all the things that are going on on the front screen.
I want all these videos to be working and I don't know why they're not, but, you know, people are happy. These are the things that we want to be doing. Our friends are having fun. We're walking in a meadow. We're doing all the things that we want to do, but then you can kind [00:08:00] of see over here and sort of the periphery of my vision is another screen.
And look at this screen, look at all the things that are going on over here. People are being bullied. There's disasters going on. There's accidents. Somebody is somebody has a, well, you can't tell because the video is not running, but there is a person with a gun. I'm gonna have to figure out how to make this work a little bit better for a better video, but.
So I just picture this, you've got these two screens, I have this laptop in front of me, and when I'm focused on it, I really can't see what's going on, on the side, because I'm looking at all the fun things that are happening, the things that I want to be involved in, the happiness, the peacefulness, whatever is happening in my present time, that is what I want to be focused on.
But when we, when we're in those times, our anxieties over here trying to get our attention saying, Oh, look at all these bad things that could happen. And, you [00:09:00] know, why are you trying to have fun when all this. Tragedies going on and so what I'm going to teach today is how when we're over here giving this screen the side anxiety screen so much attention, then we're taking away from all the wonderful things that are happening.
And every time we turn our attention over here. We're giving fuel and energy to this screen and it just keeps going, but the more we can divert our attention back to that front screen, then this screen is going to get less visible and it's going to get it's going to dim so that it's not like catching our attention.
And so that's too much, but, so that's kind of how that works and I'm going to try to figure out how to. make this a whole video with this in here so you can see kind of a [00:10:00] visual of what I'm talking about. I was going to try to do my whole video by doing it this way but I didn't know if the sound would be very good or if I'd be able to make it, if I'd be able to Make it make sense while I was doing this.
So I want to tell you about three ways that the side screen gets energy and how you're probably playing into that and actually increasing your anxiety instead of what you would feel like is decreasing your anxiety. So of course, the first one is paying attention to it. So anytime we get sucked in over to the side screen and we get lost in Dealing with it, then we're, we're giving it power.
We're giving it strength and energy because we're paying attention to it. You know, just like a toddler I, we have two toddlers in our family right now and they [00:11:00] do things to get our attention that we don't want them to be doing, like screaming out or making a certain weird sound, like a grunting sound or whatever, and we want to teach them not to do that.
So when they do it. We just pretend like we can't hear it or we pretend that we're not seeing them do that thing. And so you know, we, it's there, they're doing it, but we're looking at something else. So it's kind of like if you pretend that your side screen is a toddler and it's doing something that you don't want it to do, and instead of saying, oh, don't do that, or I don't want you to do that, which is what we do a lot to our exit.
Anxiety. Oh, don't, don't get upset. It's fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it. We we just divert our attention away and we just pretend that we can't see it. So in order to not give it energy to pay attention to it, we don't pay attention to it. That seems fairly easy though. I know it's not, it's not easy to [00:12:00] ignore toddlers either.
Also reacting to the side screen. So that gives us energy. So when we get mad at it or when we're like, Oh, I can't stand this. I'm not going to look at it. And we get like really worked up about what's happening on the side screen or what our brain is telling us. We're actually giving it energy and we're thinking about, Oh no, I don't want to feel this way.
Why is this happening again? I'm so tired of it. There's something wrong with me. All of that. Even though you think it's like Gonna stop it from happening. You're actually giving it energy because you're playing into what it's trying to do
Even if you are trying to be positive like it's giving you all this negative stuff And you say something like, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. That actually gives it more power. And I was thinking about, you know, the freeway driving and how I feel when I'm driving in Kansas [00:13:00] city and I have to find something, cause usually when I go there, because I don't go there very much.
I never know where I'm going, even if I've been there before, and I have to like watch my, my directions or listen to my directions to get there. And I'm doing that to myself. Like, as I'm driving, it's gonna be, I'm gonna get there. It's gonna be fine. And I'm probably increasing my anxiety by telling myself.
Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. But it's just kind of a way for me to talk myself through driving through that like really intense driving, but it isn't probably helpful. And so I just want you to know that you are giving it energy when you're telling it positive things over and over again, because you really just want to divert your attention away and allow it to be there.
And you're focused on the front. And I'm actually in another video, I'm going to talk about how to do all the allowing, but that's I didn't want to make this one too long and how we avoid the [00:14:00] screen also gives it power. And I know that all this sounds like, Oh my gosh, how do I even deal with this?
But I'm going to. Tell you more things about that. But so if the side screen says that going to school is dangerous and then we decide, okay, well, if going to school is going to cause me all these problems, I'm just going to stay home, avoiding the feelings or avoiding the stuff that's going to happen, or we think is going to happen on the screen by not going to school actually creates a conditioned response.
And. I would think if you are, have taken psychology at all, or this could be even in biology where you learn about conditioned response. There was that whole I think it was a psychological kind of study, but it could be a biological study as well, where with Pavlov's dogs. And remember if you. Already learned about that.
Or if you haven't learned about it, [00:15:00] he Pavlov was a researcher and he did these different experiments with dogs where he would, when he, every time he fed the dogs, he rang a bell. And so he would ring the bell, feed the dogs, ring the bell, feed the dogs. And after a while he could ring the bell. And the dogs would salivate as if food was there, but he didn't bring the food.
And it's because their brain got conditioned that when I hear a bell, I'm going to get food. And so that's what they call a conditioned response. So if your brain sets off the alarm, school is dangerous. And then you don't go to school. Your brain starts can be in condition to believe school is dangerous.
And so every time school comes up, you feel like you have a panicked danger response and that gets ingrained in your, in your brain. Like that's just a loop [00:16:00] that keeps happening. And so when you avoid school, you're actually energizing that conditioned response. And so the only way To stop your brain from having that conditioned response is to go to school.
So I know that this is like really difficult to think about, but I just want you to realize how often you're actually strengthening this side screen, even when you think you're turning it down. Also when you think about. you know, you emotionally avoid this stuff. So maybe not physically avoiding something like not going to a place that causes you anxious anxiety.
Like the lady that, that was avoiding the freeway, she was making a conditioned response in her brain that if I drive on the freeway, something dangerous is going to happen. So she just never went on the freeway and she felt better about that. Like, because it didn't cause her to be anxious, but she was actually making that energy worse.
And so the only [00:17:00] way she could learn that is to drive on the freeway. And so that and that's also called exposure therapy, which we can talk about later, but there's also. People that they, maybe they're not physically avoiding a certain situation, but they're emotionally avoiding it by maybe taking drugs and alcohol to numb that feeling.
So maybe a, someone who's afraid of flying, they still fly cause they have to, cause maybe that's part of their business or something, but they take a bunch of drugs or get drunk on the flight because that makes them feel better. Then feeling the anxious response, but it really doesn't make it better. It actually energizes it because again, you're telling your brain Oh, you have to do all these things to avoid this terrible feeling when there are other things To do to just divert your attention away from the side screen.
So [00:18:00] And imagine how limiting your personal freedom is. If you just live in this tiny bubble of things because you have to avoid all these situations, you have to avoid all these people, you have to avoid all these feelings and you're just in this tiny area, you cannot have an expansive, amazing life. And that's what anxiety takes away from you.
And I don't want you to live in this tiny bubble and having to avoid all these things and all these people and all this stuff. Because you don't want to feel something when we can find out that when we feel it. We can actually allow it to be there and we can release it. And that's what we're gonna talk about next time, is how do we allow this screen because this, this screen's not going away.
It's there, but how can we allow it to be there, lighting up, telling us all these terrible things and we just keep looking at the front screen. So check out the video so that you can see what my [00:19:00] visual is of this, this screen situation, and I'll talk to you soon.