I’m forty and after four years of devoted talk therapy and psychiatric / recreational drug exploration, I’m still discovering how my anxiety was wired at age three.
I don't think i have any clear memories from that far back. It sounds quite terrifying that our lives can be affected so heavily by something that we have little or no recollection of...
Ruminococcus is named for the rumen in cows (part of a cow stomach) 🐮❤ What's cool is that we get the word "ruminate" from animals like cows/sheep which are called "ruminants" because they bring up partly digested grass back into their mouths to chew on. So when you keep chewing on/thinking about a thought you're ruminating on it, like cows with grass
That's so cool, I thought only my language was like that. In kurdish, the word for ruminate is also the same word we use for cows and camels and such bringing partly digested food back into their mouths to chew on.
I know exactly where my anxiety came from. My Mother was either highly anxious herself, or extremely paranoid. I couldn’t even go outside to play without her telling me about kidnappings, violent rape and murders, dog attacks, and allergic reactions that could happen every time you step foot out of the door. So when I finally got about thirty minutes outside; I was to worried about stranger danger, rapists and allergies to actually enjoy myself. Little wonder I am now extremely agoraphobic, sometimes I am to scared to check the mail for months. I remember when I was about ten I wanted to get some donuts from the local shop, and to my horror, she let me go in alone. I had my first panic attack then, I was convinced the clerks where going to abduct and torture me, so I left the shop and lied and said they where out of the donut I wanted. Life has been an ongoing story of entering unknown places, feeling like someone is going to harm me, and then running. I have managed my symptoms just enough to be a fucational member of society, but it’s exhausting.
That sounds terrible and it sucks she didn’t have the foresight to know how that would affect you in your life. You know where it comes from and that it’s not “real” so I encourage you to keep pushing yourself
Do uncomfortable things in comfortable settings or do comfortable things in uncomfortable settings. Don't do uncomfortable things in uncomfortable settings, for most people it's too much. Take the smallest possible step and repeat it until it no longer triggers the response, then take the next step. How does this look? For example phone calls are triggering for me, they used to be worse in the past. Uncomfortable thing in comfortable setting; only accept phone calls from my family (whom I adore)...progressed to calling my family (while at home). Next step; no longer being triggered at my work with in-house answering and making calls. Comfortable thing in uncomfortable setting; I really enjoy spending time with my coworkers, but I hate going to places I don't know yet. I went to dinner with my coworkers, told them ahead of time I would probably get lost, got lost, did trigger anxiety as I did end up being 10 minutes late. However my brain started realizing "it wasn't super bad, worst case scenario happened, your coworkers didn't hate you, you didn't die, we gucci" Now if I would have to call a stranger because I want to buy something from them it would be too big of a first step; as I am uncomfortable with the action of calling and I am uncomfortable with the setting of a stranger in a place I don't know.
I highly recommend getting firearms training and carrying a handgun, concealed or otherwise. If you can convince yourself that you can effectively protect yourself from those kinds of dangers, that worry might start going away or at least improving. Like, sure there's a slim chance you could get attacked or kidnapped in public, but if you can kill them in 2 seconds, you're not in danger and thus the fear should subside at least a bit I'm 19 and have the same kind of fears, although to a much much lesser degree compared to you. Simply carrying an ankle knife has made me feel so so much better and confident, because I feel confident that I can scare off threats and defend myself if I absolutely have to
"when did I learn that I can't afford to piss anyone off?" Me thinking about my mom yelling at 10 years old me that I will be alone forever, because nobody would ever spend their time with such a pain in the ass like me, just because I asked her for help because I couldn't sleep: "yeah I think I got the idea"
I'm 36, and I have struggled my entire life with worrying about literally everything. I also struggle with getting things done because I spend all of my time thinking about tasks I need to do and not just doing them. This was hugely helpful, thank you!!
I've been doing a 1 2 3 count and then making small progress towards a task. There are days where I've planned out my whole work day and I still won't be willing to open my email inbox to start the day. So what I do is I set a small goal to open the inbox and after a 3 count I do something, anything, to get me closer to that goal. 1 2 3 place hand on mouse. 1 2 3 open browser. At a certain point I stop counting and I'll be able to work without any mental blocks. Last year I developed anxiety around my work too and my discipline and attention span was waning, probably not adhd just symptomatic. I had to recognize my procrastination had become habitual and I worked on finding ways to break the cycle of thoughts that said " I'll do that later". Currently I use the 1 2 3 way less and a few deep breaths are all I need to interrupt my thoughts and clear the mind for action. Hope this story brings you closer to improving your situation.
@@citrineforme I learned from my therapist that that's not necessarily the case. There's a lot of overlapping symptoms w/ ADD/ADHD and anxiety. The inability to focus is a big one. The mind is busy trying to work through bigger problems and there isn't much thinking room allocated to smaller details and more mundane things. A good way to know is if ADHD drugs calm you, it's ADHD, if it energizes you and gets you buzzing, then it's not.
A video so nice I watched it twice, so here are my DIY chapters: 0:00 intro 0:58 HG coaching promo 1:43 historical and recent professional understandings of anxiety 4:08 what anxiety is and why it is 5:50 how our ability to judge threats gets messed up 9:25 transition to adulthood - why does anxiety remain? 11:40 physiological factors impacting anxiety and emotion 22:16 the mind, experience, and the control-the-world approach 26:34 tolerance-based solutions 28:23 self-observation and detachment-based solutions 32:20 summary
I’ve watched so many videos, talked to so many counselors, listened to podcasts, read books about anxiety because I’ve experienced it since I was about 10. I’m 10 minutes into this video and I’ve learned more than anything else combined. I’ve never known where my anxiety came from. It’s like it suddenly appeared when I was a kid out of nowhere. But every example used here was my childhood. My dad owned two bars, he came home drunk nightly, usually angry. If I saw his car pulling up the driveway at night, I’d run to my room and pretend I was asleep. All throughout my teens was like that as well. My parents left every weekend to their cabin and would come home Sunday and berate me all day if the house wasn’t clean. I’d spend literally hours cleaning every Sunday morning praying they wouldn’t find the smallest thing wrong. They always did. They were not physically abusive people but that’s about the only good thing. I was mentally torn down and berated on a daily basis and I guess I never understood that’s most likely why I have such anxiety as an adult, why like he mentioned I’m afraid to talk to my boss, I’m afraid to question anyone in an authority position, it’s just all adding up. Thank you for this video
I’m finding a lot of people in the childhood trauma videos that have all these same experiences; “It wasn’t that bad because I wasn’t hit, I wasn’t put in the ER and I was never taken away by CPS.” And when we’ve seen peers that DID, we minimize our exposure to that mental trauma even more. But your brain still processes it as trauma, and all those little things, persistently over time, adds up to the anxiety we have to work through today.
My anxiety has a lot to do with my ego and worrying about how others will perceive me in even the smallest moments with strangers. I wish I could just obliterate my ego with psychedelics or something.
I think I have this problem too, but in different areas... Maybe we have to try figure out why we have an ego about certain things in the first place, because frankly when I see other people fail in the things I'm sensitive about, I could never be judgmental of that because I understand, but with myself I still somehow think I need to be above my human emotions...
Alcohol has Monday and Tuesday repercussions. Even if you don't drink on Sunday, the stomach spends all that time recreating a proper digestive environment. So even after the minor hangover passes, there will be frequent bathroom visits all day Monday into Tuesday morning.
Try microdosing psi-lo-cybin 🍄 some months ago I did very small amounts, like 0.06-0.08 every three days or so, it helped my mindset in being able to focus on the problems/situations at hand without trapping myself in my head so much
My anxiety was probably formed in elementary/middle school where i was getting bullied for how i looked, acted and spoke. It was years of bullying in and outside of school that now made me hyper vigilant about the way i look, speak and where my eyes are looking, what my hands are doing etc. I remember people pointing out that my socks were too high when i had them above my ankles (yes it was ridiculous) and pointing out any movement i made, to the point of observing the way i turned my head in class or raised my hand. My classmates were obsessed about pointing out anything about me that didn't sit right with them. Today that means a stranger passing on the other side of the road makes me feel like they're judging me or will talk shit about me to someone (yes it sounds stupid but it is what it is).
Unreasonable fears are the hardest to conquer! Keep saying to yourself I'm ok and they are too busy to care about me. I find the idea that I am not important to " them" to be very enabling.
Always tell yourself that, those days were in the past. Toxic people & situations are gone. It's a new day now. So, let go of the past and live in the present, work your best so that you can have a good future 😀🎉 nobody's harassing you now. so chill, relax, be confident, be happy 😎
I was also bullied by my classmates however I came over it in college and university. But the school bully somehow hit me like a bus when I started working in a corporate environment and my boss started micromanaging me. I started losing hair and confidence and now working my way back up to be normal. I believe in myself and carry to beat and win /free me from myself...
I know exactly what you mean. I get stressed when I am walking sometimes because I think every person is judging how I am walking… But I’ve learned to quickly shun those thoughts, and with time it’s starting to work.
I was diagnosed with GAD and social anxiety at age 11. I'm 28 now. I've been doing talk therapy almost my whole life, I've been on most anti-anxiety drugs and I did DBT. My anxiety has gotten way better and I contribute it to 2 major things. One, I noticed that it started calming down when I turned 24. I can't prove it, but I think something in my brain just changed once it was fully developed. Two, exposure and endurance. I used to not feel safe anywhere. I would have full blown panic attacks at the mall, school bathrooms, at work, while driving...for many years I tried to avoid my triggers, which was impossible because basically my trigger was existing. But I got older and avoiding things became less possible. I had no choice but to go to work and drive and shop, etcetera. So I just did, and I had my panic attacks, and I cried in dark corners, then I went back to whatever I was doing. After a while I'd feel the anxiety start to ramp up and I developed this attitude like 'so, this is what we're doing? Fine, let's get it over with.' and eventually the anxiety started to wane. Persistent, mindful acceptance and exposure, not trying to avoid my triggers but preparing myself for when they came. Now, I still have anxiety and it's unpleasant, but I haven't had a panic attacks in a few years and I'm better at recognizing and coping things.
Panic attacks really do go away after a while when you take them for what they are. Because of the pandemic I was able to avoid triggers while working from home. Quit smoking and felt better at first, but isolation makes it worse in the long run. I'm trying to get out there, got a new job that forces me to go out twice a week, but getting out of avoidance mode is not easy, even a small thing can set you off. I hope exposure and awareness will help me get back on the right track. All the best to you!
Thank you for sharing this, it is truly inspiring. I suffer from severe panic attacks and it led to life of avoidance. Hope one day I'll manage to build up the same courage.
I'm been outright angry and devastated over how much I've missed in life and the mistakes I've made as a result of my anxiety. I even lost what I felt was the love of my life. This video clarified so much of it, I feel like I'm going to tear up.
I hope you’re doing alright. I’ve been internally screaming at myself trying to pull my life together and only in the past 2 years have I started to learn who I am.
It’s sooooooooo maddening that we don’t have more therapists available like this guy. He’s energetic he’s untraditional. He’s bold, he gets to the point. He doesn’t patronize. I love his energy. He goes deeper than the surface and the surface is what most therapists focus on. And he’s hip and cute because he’s smart and doesn’t BS.
Is it weird that I was professionally diagnosed with generalized anxiety, but it got better after I changed my mindset, thinking it was good for me because I used it as fuel to push myself? Now, instead of it crippling me and thinking it's horrible, since I changed my view on anxiety and started seeing it as fuel, I ended up doing the things I used to be scared of.
@@amerstain I'm not him but I kinda relate, I would get veeeeery anxious if I didn't have any control over x situation, so what I did was just prepare as much as possible to that situation, for example I experienced physical abuse for a decade, so ofc I would get scared of people, so I put an overwhelming amount of effort to prepare myself to deal with people, hell I even got jacked bcs of this lol
This might be a strange request and an absurd place to make it, but this video sparked the thought. I'd love to see a future Dr. K video that looks into how food/diet affect our mood and psychology.
When I hear anxiety, first thing I think is food. Won't solve everyone's anxiety, but it will make a huge impact on a ton of people. The body/brain is a totally different entity when it's getting everything and only what it needs to function optimally.
I have a lot of trauma and anxiety. I once took some THC gummies and started laughing a lot at the stupidest things and I continued laughing at how stupid I was for laughing and it became like a chain effect. I don't laugh often or enjoy many things in life so I could immediately tell my body was releasing a lot of stress through laughing. I noticed my body would even try to hold back as I tried to let go by just laughing. A week later I took even more THC gummies and I completely let go by laughing as much as possible and started crying and bawling. I knew my pain was being masked by laughter and the whole ordeal was so cathartic.
One thing that always fascinated me about anxiety is the parallel to excitement. The physical reaction is similar. Sometimes when my anxiety flares up I just convince myself I’m excited LOL.
the book “what happened to you?” reflects a lot of what you say in this video, and its a good resource for anyone wanting to learn more about trauma’s effect on who you grow up to be
Dear Dr. K, You continue to provide so much help to people you don’t even know. Last year my girlfriend of 7 years broke up with me, I got fired from my job, and I became addicted to delta 8 and my depression spiraled into me being unemployed for over 6 months. 2022 was the worst year of my entire life. I’ve learned so much from you and your videos, I stumbled across you when I was looking to better understand my ADHD and how my brain works. Since then I better understand myself and how my brain works, I’ve improved my relationship with my mother, I’ve become a counselor for my friends and family, and this video in particular helped my friend, a relationship I let go for years, better understand his own brain and get him to admit the conspiracy theory’s he was entertaining was nothing but his anxiety making him believe non threats to be real. Thank you so much for all you do.
When I started coaching on adhd after a late diagnosis (mid 30s) and started talking about my family life from childhood, I had this very viscerally upsetting story that I started explaining and it hit me right there how fucked up it was, 30 ish years later. My coach handed me off to a trauma therapist, and just a year with that has done more for me than a decade on antidepressants. It’s wild how much wiring happens early and then stays that way until you can have the presence of mind and understanding to try and undo and rewire it later. This is why I care more about how I am parenting my young child now than my job or anything else.
Thought it was a meme that Dr. K always does videos on things related to what you're going through. 40 minutes ago I had a job interview and I was thinking to myself "damn Im hella anxious, whats up, I should be good with this sort of stuff", I see what y'all mean now xD
@@Lipinki.luzyckie Tru. In my case last time I was decently Anxious was 2 months ago at another job interview so it's not that common for me at least. Can't help but feel it's funny seeing the video happened minutes after I experienced a thing that happends once every couple of months lel
I think a piece of advice that I needed to hear is, that job interviews are something that you need to learn how to do like you need to learn everything else in life. The best way to learn this is to apply for jobs that are slightly less than what you aim for and get used to just going there and u nderstanding how you sell yourself basically. And keep in mind, the job interview is an interview for the company too. They need to hire a person, and you get to have conditions and ask questions that concern their employees and how they are treated to make sure you are getting a job that does not treat you like you're disposable. Doing that to some degree gives them a sense of how you have agency, which is lacking in most people that apply for a job. I know you didn't ask for advice, but I wish someone told me these things earlier in life.
This definitely makes sense. It's often just hard to stay cool and detached when the alarm bells of anxiety ring. As a social phobic, that has devolved into evasive personality disorder over the years, it's definitely my tolerance towards anxiety that needs to be worked on if I'm to get better. I also have a hard time figuring out where the border between my natural introversion and anxiety is. Part of my healing process seems to be to accept my introversion instead of beating myself up for not being better socially and wanting more of it than I do.
self compassion is very important, understanding where the anxiety came from and how it served you once as a survival mechanism is essential to have more compassion toward yourself. Nobody develops anxiety out of the blue. If you have a family history of anxiety genetics make you more sensitive to developing it but it’s the experiences you had that finally made you develop it
1. digest the anxiety of your past 2. dont try to control other people, learn how to tolerate anxiety (exposure therapy, where you cannot do anything) SIT WITH IT, UNDERSTAND IT, my mind is saying... my body is feeling.... 3. watch out how you use behaviours to control anxiety --> try not to do it right away 4. detach,separation from ego, spiritual view on anxiety can be extremely beneficial samskara change your diet: less processed food, probiotics holistic approach
I think my anxiety spawned due to literally everyone in my close and extended family having severe anxiety. I've always had it and I just assume being around anxious people will make you generally anxious. I can't be mad at them though nobody really acknowledged anxiety as a thing, peopler were just "acting up" until pretty recently.
same here, getting the message from your caregivers that the world is a dangerous place does a lot against your mental health. You get the idea that you can’t trust yourself and other people which causes a real disconnect to yourself and your authenticity. Also my mother had problems with mental health and attempted suicide when I was 6, luckily came through and later when I was 13 admitted herself to the hospital again for some time. So I think that messed up my sense of trust a bit. There is probably also a genetic sensibility to developing anxiety because there is some mental illness family history on my mothers side but that’s minor. If I had a different childhood I’d not have those struggles even with my predisposition
Holy crap, I think this video literally saved my life. The fact that you bring mindfulness into the equation without simply advising people to be present is amazing. This video is the most cohesive and digestable ressource I've ever found about anxiety. It gave me an amazing new perspective about my anxiety, how it works and why it keeps coming back. While at the same time incoporating spiritual concepts and giving us concrete, down to earth steps we can implement right now. I've never seen my anxiety that way and I felt a urge such of gratitude after finishing the video. Thank you so MUCH for being here and giving us so much quality content for free !
I had serious generalized anxiety for my first 19 years or so before I got therapy I was receptive to, and after 4 years or so, I had nearly shed it altogether. I observed that internally, what would happen in my mind is that when I had anxiety about something, even though that thing went off without a hitch, rather than my mind taking away that nothing bad happened so there was no need for anxiety, it took away that nothing bad happened because I was anxious and alert. This reinforced the anxiety. It wasn't until after a very dangerous, undiagnosed manic episode that I got therapy and realized that, despite the walls and webbing of anxiety I built to protect myself from perceived threats, they were fundamentally incapable of protecting me from mania. I NEVER wanted something like that to happen to me again. That truth weakened the foundation of the anxiety, and primarily with cbt and meditation, I was able to pick away at it one piece at a time.
I spent the last few years living with anxiety without even realizing it. I use to love fishing, but was too 'anxious' to tow my boat to the ramp - what if a wheel falls off the trailer, what if I get stuck at sea etc. I'd get worried if my dog barked at something during the night - oh no what if it pisses off my neighbors and they throw poisoned meat over the fence. Thoughts like that which stopped me from living life. I thought it was just a normal part of getting older and being more responsible. Anyhow, I started taking Apigenin to help myself have deeper sleeps as it supports relaxation. But holy crap, it relaxed my mind and cleared the anxiety I never knew was there. I've been taking it for a week and have been fishing 4 out of the last 7 days! It feels like I have got my life back.
I have those same type of ‘what if’ worries, and yes they stop me from living. I heard about apigenin on Andrew Huber man’s podcast. I may give that a try.
I'm finding my biggest stressor of anxiety at this point is my knowledge of all these things and trying to CONTROL everything. I want desperately to min/max all the life hacks. Cold showers, sauna, sunlight, proper sleep, blue light at night, gut biome, calorie restrictions, working out, eating right etc etc. I'm at the point where I "know too much" and it gives me anxiety. I wish I could rewind some of the information I have. Ignorance is bliss. Just eat healthy, sleep well, and exercise.
This is real. I feel like I’m going down this path rn always researching and trying to find the why and prevent them bc I’m scared of developing or letting something grow but it is a large source of anxiety. Ignorance is bliss, I gotta stop researching and listening to other ppls stories because of how much confirmation bias and fear lie in them.
I thought I was just anxious, turns out my diet is crap, my gut biome is against me, and my heart is being worn out faster than it should. That knowledge will definitely make me less anxious.
I have cptsd from childhood and learned to stay calm in every given situation to protect myself. Additionally, I learned what not to do to keep myself safe. Therefore, I did not have much anxiety. Fear yes, back then, but not now!
As someone with social anxiety and life basically on hold forever, I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for your incredible videos Dr. K .🧡 Yesterday I watched your video on "How to Stop Being a Doormat," and it was absolutely mind-blowing. The impact it had on me was profound. For the first time ever, I was able to say no to meeting someone I care for, without worrying about whether they would still like me or not. It felt incredibly freeing, and I owe that to you and your insightful teachings. I have a playlist of your videos now! Your generosity, brilliance, intelligence, and compassion are truly one of a kind. Your videos not only help me personally, but they have also sparked a great interest in your field. Thank you for all that you do. It is so comforting and empowering to feel understood.
@@ShinyStar611 Yes, right? 🧡 At 35, I find it challenging to find meaning and do something with my life. Time seems to fly by, yet I mostly sit at home. For many years now. I look self-confident, so others think I am joking when I express my struggles. My hands can shake severely when I meet someone new, so I don’t. Of course, I know that the reason for my struggles is my traumatic experiences. People have hurt me, and I didn't do anything wrong. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to cope. However, I’ve found solace in watching Dr. K's videos recently. He is a lifesaver! He helps us break free from the cages that we’ve created for ourselves. It's reassuring to know that one isn't alone In this. I listen to Dr. K every day now, especially before bedtime. I hope that you can find the strength to overcome your struggles🧡. I think this is a great place to start !!
Seriously, you unraveled a ton with your Dysthymia clip. I'll be 54 December 2024. My diagnosis was decades ago. Every video you post, floors me. I speak for everyone, thank you.
As someone with a HIGH amount of anxiety to the point where it's crippling, this is telling me to get a therapist but I cannot afford one. It's a bit difficult to deal with, as I am unsure how to "sit with" my anxiety emotionally because my reaction to any anxiety-inducing situation is crying. I try not to as I hate crying, I hate people seeing me cry, and I hate feeling like crying I try to stop it but before I even realize my anxiety is getting unbearable, tears are coming out. I have been medicated in the past which lead to a permanent shake, but I was a minor when I was last treated, I feel horrible for not taking advantage of that help, as I cannot without so much fear now, it just leaks into needing help to help my anxiety that my anxiety tries to stop me from getting. It's hell. From throwing up trying to make appointments or just going out to talk with a friend, it makes you feel a bit helpless :(
If you cant afford therapy watch youtube videos like these try to educate yourself ass much ass possible and honestly try eating cleaner and just see if it does anything for you until you can afford to have one
Dude I’ll watch this twice and download this and listen to it weekly until it sets in my mind, you have perfectly described my issues and gave me so much to think about (in a healthy way at least haha) Ive tried many healthy habits like going out and exercise but it keeps coming back, so I’ll check my guts too since Ive always had bowel problems but nothing fully diagnosed and only got worse in the pandemic lockdown and with anxiety crisis. I had a history of being bullied on my childhood so that’s probably where everything started. Thank you very much!
My parents essentially raised me to be a paranoid man child. They simultaneously infantilized me up until my mid teens AND tried to live vicariously through my "potential" at a really young age, and then when that behavior made it so I never really learned how to do anything for myself and started to struggle they flipped the script and treated me like I was dumb, lazy, and worthless. That combined with a bunch of other factors gave me really bad depression and anxiety that were almost getting better right before the pandemic hit and then, well, the pandemic hit. I keep trying to explain to people that tell me to go to therapy that the only thing therapy is gonna do is keep me thinking about my problems and worsen my anxiety. I've realized that I'm literally form singular habits anymore because my brain just drops them into "the list" and the longer the list gets the more anxious I get until it's unsustainable. Instead I've been desperately trying to build a mesh of habits at the same time in order to finally control the inside instead of the outside. I'm taking my certification test to become a personal trainer on Monday, and I've been learning not just to cook and cook healthy stuff but to make the most out of every ingredient I buy. That feeds into the only anxiety I have that I perceive as useful which is that pandemic-fueled anxiety that turned me into a prepper, since my new knowledge gives me the ability to fix a piece of the problem on the inside while also giving me some control of the outside. For me, managing my anxiety is about turning it into a tool that I know when it's appropriate to deploy rather than letting it control me, and giving myself the knowledge and the skills to operate that tool. That mesh of habits I was talking about is more like a house of cards though, and has already fallen over multiple times, which only serves to worsen my anxiety because it makes me afraid I'll die long before I even get close to overcoming these issues. Maybe it's just me or maybe other people feel like this too, but it's just awful because you spend every waking second trying to fix your life and all that does is make it harder
I feel that to the core. I’ve had anxiety for a long ass time for various reasons I’d rather not go into. But yea, I went to see my nurse practitioner the other day and he told me that “we need to fix your sleep schedule” and I started bawling my eyes out saying “if I have to do anything more than take a pill at night, I don’t think I can do it. There’s too many things to fix and I’m tired”. The “list of things to fix” is so real, pretty much the exact reason why I live on my notes app. Having ADHD isn’t helpful either cuz I have to *constantly* think about the list, just in case I forget something and everything goes to shit again. Yea, not a helpful post, but I hope that knowing that there’s someoen out there that understands what you’re going through will make u feel a bit better, cuz your comment certainly did that for me.
That's the problem with the insufficient approach so many of us have been consistently exposed to, of always only trying to fix and never building a life we want instead.
That’s very relatable. In my spiral, if I’m told to just not worry about it,even though the person might tell me why and give me ample evidence that worrying is not necessary, I will still worry because that is what I have learned to do, that is how I’m adapted to cope. Yes I’m working on it, but this is ongoing.
When you first linked anxiety with overthinking, I struggled to relate it to my own situation. As a child, I would experience so much stress from family issues, instable family life and bullying that I would just straight up check out/dissasociate/black out/shut down. When I would come home from school, the only thing that I would be capable of doing was sitting in front of the television because I was in such a high stress state of mind that I was unable to socialize. I realize that things got better when I was able to formulate my high stress experiences into words and that I could then express these words. It took a specialist in autism + a year of therapy to see that my anxiety wells up from 2 springs: - a traumatic event when I asked an innocent question regarding an argument between my mom and my uncle after which the argument exploded. My mom got into a crying fit/panic attack and my uncle ignored us and walked out. This taught me that making social mistakes is dangerous and can lead to harm. - I grew up in an environment that felt very chaotic and demanding. This taught me that I cant solve my problems and I also cant navigate them due to poor insight. These two springs actually reinforced each other meaning that I felt completely and utterly crippled to actually take action. When I addressed the second part, where I shut down when the demands get to high with my therapist, we made a list with triggers and then she gave me an exposure exercise. I have been doing this for about a month and I realize it now becomes a lot easier to do stuff. This anxiety, which I call 'The Terror', is actually a lot less now. The other vid you have on anxiety where you roleplayed with Sidekick, showed me the importance of focussing on max 3 things. Seeing how much I juggled and ruminated, it is ok to drop stuff and let others sort their mess out. it is ok to just focus on my own wellness and if others can ride on these tailwinds, good for them. But I dont need to fix their lives/manage their anxiety.
I’m currently in therapy. Only about 3 sessions in, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much out of it. But something about this video really made it click for me. The science makes it make sense
Anyone else watching this and wondering how he's managed to completely describe in exquisite detail your exact experiences? Get out of my head my man 😢 I kid but it's eerie how precisely everything you describe here is exactly what I've been dealing with my entire life. I don't remember ever not feeling this way.
Thank you SO very much for everything you are doing! I am going through a divorce from an abusive person, then got targeted by a narcissist (actual. Having to double my income overnight, car broje down, bank account got hacked, while trying to heal from trauma and dissociation has been incredibly hard. I discovered one of your videos last month and have been using them and implementing what you advocate daily. I also have been meditating, picked up Mohiniyattam dance (which is an ancient classical Indian dance that helps women who have gone through trauma). I also have been strengthening my spiritual practice by doing Sadhana daily. 🙏🏼 I have been recommending your videos like to my kids and anyone that I feel might benefit. You are unique in the mental health world, i am thankful to God for you 🙏🏼
When you talked about control, I had to stop for a moment and think about myself. I have a problem with semi-perfectionism that I think caused me to develop a fear of failure. Or maybe it actually was the fear of failure that caused me to develop perfectionism... It helped me a lot in the past to motivate me to become a better person and to take control over my life. But now the brain, by trying to protect me, is completely destroying my ability to do anything that has even a slight chance of evoking negative emotions. It cripples my ability to do creative things that I really really want to do and causes me to have strong emotions when I am not doing well in games. I stopped playing competitive games like csgo or lol, because whenever I mess up even slightly, I feel crippling disappointment towards myself. That even happens when it's completely out of my control and is not my fault and I have those completely unrealistic expectations that 'I should be able to do 1vs5', "I should be able to carry my entire team", "I should not fail". In a way my recipe for success would be to gain control over the situation I have no control over (by trying to be better at the game, but in a toxic way). Now I see that avoiding those situations will not help me. I always thought that if I don't have panic attacks, I can't have anxiety. Now I think I might actually have it in some form, though it's more internal and hidden. I will need to take a closer look at my past to see how I got in this situation. Thank you for this information-packed video, it helps a lot!
I can not thank you enough for summarizing anxiety in a this amount of time. I APPRECIATE IT WITH MY WHOLE HEART. Everything you say is what I am working on. I can contribute your video with “meta awareness”. Thinking about thoughts. I know sometimes it is hard to face with our fears and thoughts. But somehow I passed that line (somehow=It s just me. I like challenges, I always wonder what I can do, my diet has been always good, I always exercise etc. Somehow means It happened without aiming) and I can think about my feelings and fears. My problem is money. Loosing money, being ripped off etc. My father uploaded that to me. Not purposely but just because he wasn’t aware his fears and wasn’t able to work on (before internet information is very limited like diseases!). Anyway thank you so much. I will work on my anxiety way more efficiently and effectively. Best regards
My GAD (general anxiety disorder) came from two parts of my childhood, being heavily bullied, and also going through really high amounts of stress when I was young starting from the first grade.
I'm the type of person that, if I understand something then I can finish it and learn from it. So, my therapist told me that not understanding the EMDR process would help, it didn't. I STG the only reason I feel better than the past almost 2 YEARS, is because you just explained why EMDR works, and how. So thank you so much cause I am broken at and suddenly I feel better. Thank you so much
Thanks Dr K. for presenting this topic. I don't know why, but hearing out loud that trying to control the situation and analyze every possible outcome is way too overwhelming to me. Tears and tightening in my chest just after hearing those words are quite worrisome. The next therapy session will be quite interesting.
It maybe a little off brand for the channel but I would love to see a video just dedicated to a diet that helps with anxiety. I have adhd and generalized anxiety disorder and i found my adhd symptoms get worse with anti anxiety medications i have used in the past, so much so that i don't treat it. If i could make some changes to my diet to help improve thing that would be a god sent. fantastic video by the way
Wow, you just completely explained my whole life. Now I'm raising teens, and obviously they are not something I can control, and I am going insane with anxiety. I don't know if this has something to do with my ego or if it's something else. I don't want to fail them. It's hard to let go. It's hard to detach. It's hard to stop feeling responsible for their happiness and wellbeing. I love how this video talks about the many ways to work on anxiety -- body, mind, origin. LOL -- I have to "control" my anxiety -- yeah, I'm good at trying to control. Thanks for the overview. It's helpful. You're doing great work. Thanks for helping my gamer kid. Much love.
I had one experience as a toddler, just one, where I saw my dad leaving for work around dawn. It was a little dark outside but I was with my mom watching him leave the driveway in his old car through the window of our front door. He did this every morning just as routine since work was relatively far away... but for some reason, I was crying and frightened that he was leaving us forever. I don't know why. That moment of time stays in my memories as something traumatic. Even though I'm working on recognizing it these days, even today I still struggle with the anxiety and fear that a loved one could abandon me. Makes me wonder just how one regular everyday occurrence can affect growth.
I have never so strongly felt like a TH-cam video, let alone a video about mental health, was made exactly for me. I was blown away with how much I resonated with so many things said in this video. I've only recently started on this path to really understand why I am the way that I am, and I feel like this is only going to help me moving forward. Thanks Dr. K!
A video so nice I watched it twice, so here are my DIY chapters: 0:00 intro 0:58 HG coaching promo 1:43 historical and recent professional understandings of anxiety 4:08 what anxiety is and why it is 5:50 how our ability to judge threats gets messed up 9:25 transition to adulthood - why does anxiety remain? 11:40 physiological factors impacting anxiety and emotion 22:16 the mind, experience, and the control-the-world approach 26:34 tolerance-based solutions 28:23 self-observation and detachment-based solutions 32:20 summary
The discussion about heart rate is pretty much spot on according to sport science. Working out with progressively heavier weight is pretty much training your heart and hormonal system to controlled stress (in this case it is the heavy weights)
I'm constantly worrying about something, theres always some test, project, paper, etc to do for college. And then I procastinate, but always worrying about it. The thoughts are so ubearable that I have to always be listening to music or watching something so that I can stop thinking
My daughter was born anxious, she had separation anxiety and I may have had TOO MUCH empathy but I couldn't bear to see her panic and cry so I became a stay at home mom. She was diagnosed with selective mutism in 2nd grade - there was no trauma or any specific event. When confronted with an uncomfortable situation, she tends to freeze, stare into space, "zone out". No threat under the sun will bring her to respond. This is a long story, she's 25 - and it's just her personality but she's made some progress...
holy moly having watched this feels so beneficial to my journey. what a incredibly insightful, compassionate, and holistic explanation!! this unfortunately resonated too much with my current life state. each day is getting better, though, and now i have a better understanding of what the heck is going on in my nervous system. the domino analogy reallly put that slippery slope into perspective. thank you thank you thank you!!!!
There have been nights where my anxiety has been so bad I’ve almost tried to end my life. It’s honestly unbearable sometimes, and I don’t wish it upon anyone.
Ive always known im quite an anxious person and even watching most of Dr K's videos i didn't quite realize just how bad my anxiety is until this video. Im beginning to realize how my anxiety controls every facet in my life.
@@ianpaulkenchington4311 Thanks! I think being aware of it already helps a ton. Also i already try to optimize my diet and excercise, aswell as dwelve into meditative practices. These things keep me together!
Yeah we just think living that way is normal I get it. After therapy it’s still weird to not be turned up all the way all the time… like my anxiety is still there but it’s less of a chokehold or burden. I’m able to cope with it better too and sleep a little better. I have my off days and stress at work makes it go off, but I hope you can get help! Journaling helps too I resisted it at first and it seemed silly but it forces me to reflect, trauma dump, process and then be positive or reflect on being grateful.
Thank you. I loved your explanation and break down on what anxiety is. I wasn't born when I became affected by anxiety. Through my life, on a few occasions, my subconscious has put my mind into an hypnosis state to relive the experience of when I was in my mother's belly and she went through an extreme anxiety experience that created the belief in me that the world was dangerous. It is a survival mechanism to prepare me for the outside world, but it affected me for the decades to come. Been a therapy for the last three-four years and improved tremendously but I've never heard about tolerating anxiety without trying to control it. And it makes so much sense! I'll apply your advices and try to become healthier, because I deserve so. From France, with love.
This is the best description of the experience of GAD that I have seen. At the moment I am completely stuck in anxiety. It is good to be reminded of healthy solutions. What's funny is that the story about the gut bacteria and the exercise and diet is the same story that I've heard about rheumatoid arthritis which I also have. So, I conclude that I should make an effort to get back to the diet and exercise routine to improve both my ailments. Great.
This lecture reshaped a lot how I understand my anxiety. Without a properly helpful environment, this is just getting worse, and worse. I am looking forward to my upcoming days, how I could understand my anxiety for my studies and upcoming tasks. Thanks Dr. K.!
I can't afford therapy, or at least I'm so anxious about debt and my unstable medical insurance and the lack of availability of therapists, that I can't find one. But this video (first time commenting here btw) showed I'm already making progress with my anxiety and depression. I don't know what exactly happened to me in my childhood to make me like this, but I do know that I had a lot of siblings and I learned that anything I wanted or needed, I had to get for myself. I learned "if I don't need it, then I can live without it" and now I struggle to know anything that I WANT. I learned how to not want, and now it is so much harder to figure out what I want on any scale. Like... It's hard to explain, but it's like if I get close to realizing I want something, I automatically assume that's a fantasy not worth dwelling in, because either it literally doesn't exist (species alteration through some sort of genetic or medical procedure as one example) or I know I'll be disappointed (that game looks neat, but it's probably just like all the rest). Anxiety on top means I rarely bother to ask. It'll just cause drama that I'd rather avoid more than any pleasure I might have from bringing it up. I almost didn't have a cap and gown for high school graduation in 2006 because my mom had broken her leg at the time, and I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to afford it. I need therapy, but it is unavailable. What do I do?
Dr. K, you helped break down the way I process my emotions and thank you for putting into words the frustration I’ve had with myself for not proactively working on my anxiety!!😭🙏🏻
I feel like school played a huge roll in me developing anxiety lack of self identity wearing a big fur coat on the first day of school. It was the only coat I had being a freshman so I was always sweating but it felt isolateing blocked myself off from the view of others I felt safe yet so uncomfortable. Didn’t know anybody come around lunch time haveing the choice to sit wherever I want but didn’t know anybody made me always feel indecisive to the point i avoided eating there and would rather eat in hallways alone or inside classrooms with permission. I feel like halfway into the school year I made enemy’s not just in school but on the bus which at the time that fur coat with the hood up might of been the reason I stood out and got picked on so much. That it escalated into bullying acting out getting into fights almost near death experiences and traumatizing moments I had no idea how to control my emotions i was always angry didn’t know how to calm down and I was put on behavioral meds which wasn’t the right solution that I got suspensions and eventually got kicked out. I could no longer learn in the environment I was in that’s suppose to help kids learn I feel like I’m shareing this because somebody may need to hear this but more for me because I realize school shaped me into the person I am today. This video helped me recall why I’m so anxious and avoidant around others and antisocial cause I’m afraid of that happening again because I feel like that inner child still in an adult world being an adult. Im lucky that im seeing my therapist this month in april.
My anxiety got much worse when I developed a health condition that worsened randomly, I became anxious to eat, sleep, walk, everything! I couldn't open emails for 6-7 months at a time because of avoidance
A lot of what he says here resonates with my experience of anxiety and the physiological effects have gotten to the point where my physical health has declined. I’ve felt like anxiety is slowly killing me (dramatic) since highschool but it really feels like an inflammatory event, I feel like I catch a cold, adrenal fatigue etc.
You should start working out if you haven’t already, and incorporate a healthy lifestyle in general (food), it really is part of the puzzle to healing I think, at least it helps me greatly. I am not healed in any way yet but we take one step at a time right ?
This was such a great explanation to Anxiety. I am surprised to see that it's not just medication but physical changes that are needed to find solutions to it.
It is always so tempting to think a bit of junk food (or a lot of junk food) will make me feel better (at least for a little while) but of course it isn't a long term solution. Now it is increasingly hard to change habits and the anxiety itself makes it vastly harder.
One of the most frustrating thing about this is, if i see this in others i would give them reasonable advice on what to do and how to deal with their problems. But i encounter the exact same problems for myself i'm not able to follow the the same advice i would give, or sometimes have given to someone else for that very situation.
Dude I'm currently looking for an apartment but I was too afraid to contact someone, it's true what they say about Dr. K always uploading what you need at the right time :D
I enjoy that you have made this. I currently dont have a therapist, but when i did they wouldnt help me. One needed specific scenarios and would provide solutions that made no sense. Like, oh im worried theres ppl watching me from outside every time i hear a noise in my room, so hed say to close the blinds. Like duh, but i want to not worry AND have sunlight. My second one would just tell me im smart and can figure it out on my own. So google has been more helpful than any therapist. This video provides information i could not find on google. Google tells me how to deal with a panic attack, and says nothing about the ongoing residual anxiety that i experience. Its more helpful at answering ADHD questions. This video gives me things i can actually work on. 1) i can look up what foods specifically help with anxiety and eat them 2) i can spend time regularly connecting my inner monologue to childhood experiences and sitting with it. 3) i can read more about how to control the heart rate
Detachment is a very important muscle to train in our lives. I used to tell my ex-girlfriend that I am a jealous person, but I don't act on it. It used to eat from inside when she had her girls night out, I was afraid that she would meet somebody and cheat or simply leave me. But I decided to detach from that idea, because I had zero control over it. Ultimately, my greatest fear came to pass, she did meet somebody when she was out with her co-workers, but having exercised detachment from things I could not control, it was easier to break it off and minimize suffering. Also dodged a bullet.
A lot of this explains why my GP -who focuses a lot on treating and controlling inflammation (and also put me on the path to my ADHD diagnosis)-has been more successful at helping me treat and control my anxiety than my therapists ever were. (Also explains a bit why my anxiety has started surging again lately, right around the time I stopped eating as well and started experiencing IBS symptoms again.)
This makes so much sense, more so than the mental health coaching that i have paid for. Everything is just clear and makes sense and logical, can’t believe this is free content!
That's where the timing of these videos is just straight-up jarring. Because yesterday I was genuinely having an existential crisis with how rapidly technology is moving and the state of the world. I feel like I'm falling behind in my generation and it's just hard to keep up with everything now. Ai is REALY freaking me out the most along with extreme hyper-realism with real-time rendering and VR not to mention deepfakes are genuinely getting exceptionally good. It feels like manipulating the public just gets easier with every year. I feel like within the next few years all this stuff is becoming a very real chance of replacing my presents or the presents around me and I'm not going to be able to differentiate between reality and fiction anymore. Before I had rational fears of death, now I fear unnatural deaths or genuine lunacy. I'm also starting to freak out about how society is starting to destabilize and it feel like within the next decade or so there's a high likelihood that there is going to be a societal collapse.
I had (and still have) these kinds of fears, and I do not know if I can say if they are 100% irrational or rational. I had to completely cut out reading news, especially about triggering topics, at least for some time, so my body could finally relax and have tried to talk with friends more (about the news or other stuff to get support), also getting sleep etc etc and planning for the future. No one person can change the word issues, but we absolutely can take care of ourselves and try to seek connections with others. This will make both us and a small part of the world around us stronger and more resilient. Panic-surviving mode isn't great for solving long lasting problems, it's okay to let it go and ground yourself for a moment ❤️
With all the stresses the world offers us today, now we need advice like "How not to end up like Reckful" or something like that. With everything that's going on today, it seems like the world burning in flames, the fire is spreading more and more, and tomorrow will only get worse. The world has never been a perfect place, as a Millennial I caught 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and several market crashes, but this time it feels different. It's like, I can't even guess how fucked up everything will be tomorrow and what's going to happen next. Hard to explain, you can only feel it.
We're all just "Proles" as Orwell would call us, we're merely a "cog in the wheel" unable to change the system he is trapped in (aka Capitalism) and the result is anxiety (Alienation). Capitalism creates this condition of Alienation, because people are separated from their own human nature, and their fellow human beings. They are anxious because they do not own the means of production so they must sell their labor to survive. Plus, they know their jobs could be ended at any time, or a person who is willing to work for less money could take their job. This alienation causes people to feel fearful, dissatisfied, unhappy, and anxious, because they are unable to realize their full human potential and creativity. Marx also argues that since capitalism is driven by a relentless pursuit of profit, it exploits the workers and creates a class conflict between the working class and their emplorers (aka, the proletariat and bourgeoisie) This conflict generates social instability, inequality, and injustice, which further contributes to the anxiety of the working class.
Thank you. I'm 41 and ive always felt "highly aware" of my surroundings ad never knew why. It always made me feel uneasy and that it wasn't normal. Your video has given me great insight and a flood of memories that all make sense. Thank you.
I never had a traumatic childhood, but I've always been pretty anxious (though I didn't know it at the time). Then in 2017 I had a really hard year (Grandmother dying of cancer, hard time at work, emotional abuse from the partner I was living with) and started having panic attacks. Ever since my anxiety has been severe and I'm on an SSRI to help. I always have to wonder where my anxiety started since my childhood wasn't hard.
I'd recommend working through the childhood question with a therapist. I spent most of my life thinking my childhood was fine, and it took me years to realize that I received targeted verbal abuse from one of my parents, which impacted me profoundly. There are many problematic and even abusive behaviors that are normalized in mainstream culture. We assume that if these things happen to a lot of people, that means they aren't that bad. However, common ≠ healthy. We also might assume that since some people weren't seemingly impacted by X experience, it wasn't a big deal. However, people respond in different ways to difficult experiences depending on your genetics, development, and mental predisposition. As an extreme example, you can have two people go through the same exact event and one person gets PTSD and another doesn't. Could just be you got unlucky in the genetic lottery with anxiety, but I do want to advocate that sometimes "a good childhood" is more complex than it may seem at first glance.
Dr K's guide to mental health is the deep dive that condenses all the takeaways and relevant meditations. Group coaching can help too but the guide is a very good resource with hours of material on anxiety as well as depression and adhd
Watched it looking straight into dr k's soul, I hope to watch it again soon. Except this time we are taking notes, ladies and gentlemen. I thought I was watching 4 hours old video turns out it's year old. I love how he maintains eye contact with camera, as if he is addressing us, I'm literally nodding along. I am in middle of inter-relatives fight right now, and I'm constantly anxious thinking of all the possibilities even if they are far fetched. Like "what if this happens, that happens". And also I can testify to the affect of food on my anxiety, because recently I got food poisoning and after throwing up for few hours and pooping, my stomach was completely cleared out. While I also felt extremely weak, but as I started to gain strength I also felt incredibly happy, light and less anxious. Thank you so much man.
This is so interesting to me because, I started off my morning quite productive- but seemingly out of nowhere I started getting the butterflies in my stomach and the increased heart rate and I was anxious for some unknown reason. The explanation that processed foods can play a big part in your anxiety makes SO MUCH SENSE. I ate like a bunch of pizza rolls and it would make sense why all of a sudden I was feeling anxious when my body is reacting the way it is to something the body wasn't evolved for. LOL, really cool.
Your knowledge along with your voice and use of cadence and tone variation make your videos so much more engaging to me. Everytime i try to listen to videos with similar content i tune out or go to sleep because of how dry and monotoned it is.
Ive learned so many new things about my body and my mind thanks to your videos and im truly thankful that you provided me with all of this knowledge. thank you very much dr k you are changing my life for the better and i hope u will only continue to provide peope with meaningful content like this in the future
I have a question! Do you believe anxiety is a standalone disorder, or is it always a symptom of something else? (either another disorder, trauma, programming, ect...) Personally I believe it's always a symptom of something, and most therapists I've had try to treat the anxiety itself, rather than the root cause of it. I believe anxiety is always a symptom of something else that needs to be addressed to fully relieve the anxiety and properly treat it. Similarly with depression, in most cases it seems like the depression has a root cause except in some cases where it's a chemical imbalance and nothing else. But I think more therapists and psychologists should look for the root causes of anxiety and depression instead of just treating the anxiety and depression symptoms alone.
I think anxiety and depression are both in the mind and in the body. Just like Dr K said on the video our anxiety might be due to gut bacteria. Also Co2 levels also can cause anxiety. So it can be both a physical and a mental condition. So we shoud treat our anxiety both targeting the body and the mind. And also our enviroment, since our enviroment can target both our body and our mind.
a chemical imbalance definitely is part of it, for example, a vitamin D deficiency can be a factor that can lead to depression but that is just 1 factor among many things that can be a cause.
Watched this video in chunks and journaled about it. It was hard to digest because firstly, this fits me perfectly. And secondly, I am very stuck in the anxiety cycle and didn't know what to do about it. This video could not have come at a better time! I also deal with digestive issues so I'm also going to work on eating healthier. Thank you!
I’m forty and after four years of devoted talk therapy and psychiatric / recreational drug exploration, I’m still discovering how my anxiety was wired at age three.
bro who tf are u
I don't think i have any clear memories from that far back. It sounds quite terrifying that our lives can be affected so heavily by something that we have little or no recollection of...
@@SirBojo4 HE'S THE CHOCOLATE RAIN GUY, HOW COME YOU DON'T KNOW HIM?????
You’ll get there Tay!
Then you’ll have the wisdom to help others around you too
❤❤❤
The lamps in his background look like lil mushrooms to me ☺️
As soon as you said "when did I lean that I cannot *afford* to piss anyone off" I started tearing up. You're good at this.
That hit like a train for me
Oh my god I thought I was the only one who felt like that :((
Ruminococcus is named for the rumen in cows (part of a cow stomach) 🐮❤ What's cool is that we get the word "ruminate" from animals like cows/sheep which are called "ruminants" because they bring up partly digested grass back into their mouths to chew on. So when you keep chewing on/thinking about a thought you're ruminating on it, like cows with grass
Geez, that's so cool
Etymology is wicked
Thank you for sharing this information!
That's so cool, I thought only my language was like that. In kurdish, the word for ruminate is also the same word we use for cows and camels and such bringing partly digested food back into their mouths to chew on.
@@zhiyako4032its like that in norwegian too:))
I know exactly where my anxiety came from. My Mother was either highly anxious herself, or extremely paranoid. I couldn’t even go outside to play without her telling me about kidnappings, violent rape and murders, dog attacks, and allergic reactions that could happen every time you step foot out of the door. So when I finally got about thirty minutes outside; I was to worried about stranger danger, rapists and allergies to actually enjoy myself. Little wonder I am now extremely agoraphobic, sometimes I am to scared to check the mail for months. I remember when I was about ten I wanted to get some donuts from the local shop, and to my horror, she let me go in alone. I had my first panic attack then, I was convinced the clerks where going to abduct and torture me, so I left the shop and lied and said they where out of the donut I wanted. Life has been an ongoing story of entering unknown places, feeling like someone is going to harm me, and then running. I have managed my symptoms just enough to be a fucational member of society, but it’s exhausting.
That sounds terrible and it sucks she didn’t have the foresight to know how that would affect you in your life. You know where it comes from and that it’s not “real” so I encourage you to keep pushing yourself
@@c0rkum Thank you! Day by day I have to challenge myself, it’s never easy but I am slowly improving.
Do uncomfortable things in comfortable settings or do comfortable things in uncomfortable settings.
Don't do uncomfortable things in uncomfortable settings, for most people it's too much.
Take the smallest possible step and repeat it until it no longer triggers the response, then take the next step.
How does this look? For example phone calls are triggering for me, they used to be worse in the past.
Uncomfortable thing in comfortable setting; only accept phone calls from my family (whom I adore)...progressed to calling my family (while at home). Next step; no longer being triggered at my work with in-house answering and making calls.
Comfortable thing in uncomfortable setting; I really enjoy spending time with my coworkers, but I hate going to places I don't know yet. I went to dinner with my coworkers, told them ahead of time I would probably get lost, got lost, did trigger anxiety as I did end up being 10 minutes late. However my brain started realizing "it wasn't super bad, worst case scenario happened, your coworkers didn't hate you, you didn't die, we gucci"
Now if I would have to call a stranger because I want to buy something from them it would be too big of a first step; as I am uncomfortable with the action of calling and I am uncomfortable with the setting of a stranger in a place I don't know.
I know that this comment is late, but you might enjoy the movie “Beau is Afraid” it’s anxiety the movie
I highly recommend getting firearms training and carrying a handgun, concealed or otherwise. If you can convince yourself that you can effectively protect yourself from those kinds of dangers, that worry might start going away or at least improving.
Like, sure there's a slim chance you could get attacked or kidnapped in public, but if you can kill them in 2 seconds, you're not in danger and thus the fear should subside at least a bit
I'm 19 and have the same kind of fears, although to a much much lesser degree compared to you. Simply carrying an ankle knife has made me feel so so much better and confident, because I feel confident that I can scare off threats and defend myself if I absolutely have to
"when did I learn that I can't afford to piss anyone off?" Me thinking about my mom yelling at 10 years old me that I will be alone forever, because nobody would ever spend their time with such a pain in the ass like me, just because I asked her for help because I couldn't sleep: "yeah I think I got the idea"
Ah yes, a new Dr. K video on anxiety just as I’m getting overwhelmed by anxiety. Perfect timing, as always
I'm 36, and I have struggled my entire life with worrying about literally everything. I also struggle with getting things done because I spend all of my time thinking about tasks I need to do and not just doing them. This was hugely helpful, thank you!!
You might also have ADD, ADHD - inattentive type if you can't seem to get things done.
I've been doing a 1 2 3 count and then making small progress towards a task. There are days where I've planned out my whole work day and I still won't be willing to open my email inbox to start the day. So what I do is I set a small goal to open the inbox and after a 3 count I do something, anything, to get me closer to that goal. 1 2 3 place hand on mouse. 1 2 3 open browser. At a certain point I stop counting and I'll be able to work without any mental blocks. Last year I developed anxiety around my work too and my discipline and attention span was waning, probably not adhd just symptomatic. I had to recognize my procrastination had become habitual and I worked on finding ways to break the cycle of thoughts that said " I'll do that later". Currently I use the 1 2 3 way less and a few deep breaths are all I need to interrupt my thoughts and clear the mind for action. Hope this story brings you closer to improving your situation.
@@citrineforme I learned from my therapist that that's not necessarily the case. There's a lot of overlapping symptoms w/ ADD/ADHD and anxiety. The inability to focus is a big one. The mind is busy trying to work through bigger problems and there isn't much thinking room allocated to smaller details and more mundane things. A good way to know is if ADHD drugs calm you, it's ADHD, if it energizes you and gets you buzzing, then it's not.
I relate so much with this
A video so nice I watched it twice, so here are my DIY chapters:
0:00 intro
0:58 HG coaching promo
1:43 historical and recent professional understandings of anxiety
4:08 what anxiety is and why it is
5:50 how our ability to judge threats gets messed up
9:25 transition to adulthood - why does anxiety remain?
11:40 physiological factors impacting anxiety and emotion
22:16 the mind, experience, and the control-the-world approach
26:34 tolerance-based solutions
28:23 self-observation and detachment-based solutions
32:20 summary
Is that a Motto Motto reference?
@I need a name sure, I guess! It's been a common rhyme since before Madagascar 2 came out. Or, at least I've heard it used in other cases.
I’ve watched so many videos, talked to so many counselors, listened to podcasts, read books about anxiety because I’ve experienced it since I was about 10. I’m 10 minutes into this video and I’ve learned more than anything else combined.
I’ve never known where my anxiety came from. It’s like it suddenly appeared when I was a kid out of nowhere. But every example used here was my childhood. My dad owned two bars, he came home drunk nightly, usually angry. If I saw his car pulling up the driveway at night, I’d run to my room and pretend I was asleep. All throughout my teens was like that as well. My parents left every weekend to their cabin and would come home Sunday and berate me all day if the house wasn’t clean. I’d spend literally hours cleaning every Sunday morning praying they wouldn’t find the smallest thing wrong. They always did. They were not physically abusive people but that’s about the only good thing. I was mentally torn down and berated on a daily basis and I guess I never understood that’s most likely why I have such anxiety as an adult, why like he mentioned I’m afraid to talk to my boss, I’m afraid to question anyone in an authority position, it’s just all adding up. Thank you for this video
We all have experienced the same from drk videos
It's like he has given all he have
Same same. Blessings
I’m finding a lot of people in the childhood trauma videos that have all these same experiences; “It wasn’t that bad because I wasn’t hit, I wasn’t put in the ER and I was never taken away by CPS.” And when we’ve seen peers that DID, we minimize our exposure to that mental trauma even more. But your brain still processes it as trauma, and all those little things, persistently over time, adds up to the anxiety we have to work through today.
Thanks for writing exactly what I came here to write.
So sad to imagine any child to be treated like that
My anxiety has a lot to do with my ego and worrying about how others will perceive me in even the smallest moments with strangers. I wish I could just obliterate my ego with psychedelics or something.
I think I have this problem too, but in different areas...
Maybe we have to try figure out why we have an ego about certain things in the first place, because frankly when I see other people fail in the things I'm sensitive about, I could never be judgmental of that because I understand, but with myself I still somehow think I need to be above my human emotions...
alcohol.
@@robocrab5811 alcohol raises your anxiety when you sober up. Hangxiety, the anxiety you get to accompany your hangover.
Alcohol has Monday and Tuesday repercussions. Even if you don't drink on Sunday, the stomach spends all that time recreating a proper digestive environment. So even after the minor hangover passes, there will be frequent bathroom visits all day Monday into Tuesday morning.
Try microdosing psi-lo-cybin 🍄 some months ago I did very small amounts, like 0.06-0.08 every three days or so, it helped my mindset in being able to focus on the problems/situations at hand without trapping myself in my head so much
My anxiety was probably formed in elementary/middle school where i was getting bullied for how i looked, acted and spoke. It was years of bullying in and outside of school that now made me hyper vigilant about the way i look, speak and where my eyes are looking, what my hands are doing etc.
I remember people pointing out that my socks were too high when i had them above my ankles (yes it was ridiculous) and pointing out any movement i made, to the point of observing the way i turned my head in class or raised my hand.
My classmates were obsessed about pointing out anything about me that didn't sit right with them.
Today that means a stranger passing on the other side of the road makes me feel like they're judging me or will talk shit about me to someone (yes it sounds stupid but it is what it is).
Unreasonable fears are the hardest to conquer! Keep saying to yourself I'm ok and they are too busy to care about me. I find the idea that I am not important to " them" to be very enabling.
Always tell yourself that, those days were in the past. Toxic people & situations are gone. It's a new day now. So, let go of the past and live in the present, work your best so that you can have a good future 😀🎉 nobody's harassing you now. so chill, relax, be confident, be happy 😎
I was also bullied by my classmates however I came over it in college and university. But the school bully somehow hit me like a bus when I started working in a corporate environment and my boss started micromanaging me. I started losing hair and confidence and now working my way back up to be normal. I believe in myself and carry to beat and win /free me from myself...
I totally relate, hugs 🫂 🤗 😢 😔 💖 ❤️ 🫂
I know exactly what you mean. I get stressed when I am walking sometimes because I think every person is judging how I am walking… But I’ve learned to quickly shun those thoughts, and with time it’s starting to work.
I was diagnosed with GAD and social anxiety at age 11. I'm 28 now. I've been doing talk therapy almost my whole life, I've been on most anti-anxiety drugs and I did DBT. My anxiety has gotten way better and I contribute it to 2 major things. One, I noticed that it started calming down when I turned 24. I can't prove it, but I think something in my brain just changed once it was fully developed. Two, exposure and endurance. I used to not feel safe anywhere. I would have full blown panic attacks at the mall, school bathrooms, at work, while driving...for many years I tried to avoid my triggers, which was impossible because basically my trigger was existing. But I got older and avoiding things became less possible. I had no choice but to go to work and drive and shop, etcetera. So I just did, and I had my panic attacks, and I cried in dark corners, then I went back to whatever I was doing. After a while I'd feel the anxiety start to ramp up and I developed this attitude like 'so, this is what we're doing? Fine, let's get it over with.' and eventually the anxiety started to wane. Persistent, mindful acceptance and exposure, not trying to avoid my triggers but preparing myself for when they came. Now, I still have anxiety and it's unpleasant, but I haven't had a panic attacks in a few years and I'm better at recognizing and coping things.
Panic attacks really do go away after a while when you take them for what they are. Because of the pandemic I was able to avoid triggers while working from home. Quit smoking and felt better at first, but isolation makes it worse in the long run. I'm trying to get out there, got a new job that forces me to go out twice a week, but getting out of avoidance mode is not easy, even a small thing can set you off. I hope exposure and awareness will help me get back on the right track. All the best to you!
Thank you for sharing this, it is truly inspiring. I suffer from severe panic attacks and it led to life of avoidance. Hope one day I'll manage to build up the same courage.
Thanks for this comment, i had a lot of anxiety last week because of exams, so i sat down, tried breathing and it eventually went away
I'm been outright angry and devastated over how much I've missed in life and the mistakes I've made as a result of my anxiety. I even lost what I felt was the love of my life. This video clarified so much of it, I feel like I'm going to tear up.
oh no :(
How are you doing now?
I hope you’re doing alright. I’ve been internally screaming at myself trying to pull my life together and only in the past 2 years have I started to learn who I am.
It’s sooooooooo maddening that we don’t have more therapists available like this guy. He’s energetic he’s untraditional. He’s bold, he gets to the point. He doesn’t patronize. I love his energy. He goes deeper than the surface and the surface is what most therapists focus on. And he’s hip and cute because he’s smart and doesn’t BS.
Is it weird that I was professionally diagnosed with generalized anxiety, but it got better after I changed my mindset, thinking it was good for me because I used it as fuel to push myself? Now, instead of it crippling me and thinking it's horrible, since I changed my view on anxiety and started seeing it as fuel, I ended up doing the things I used to be scared of.
That's awesome , you can do that with more negative emotions as well. Keep it. up 💪💪
In many things this is a really good change and Skill to have but fear is nothing bad. It is absolutly mandatory to be afraid of some situations.
@@xeojoex3713 lol makes sense i need to try thinking like this
Could you explain a vit if you don't mind? How do you see it as fuel when it's something that, well, clouds your mind?
@@amerstain I'm not him but I kinda relate, I would get veeeeery anxious if I didn't have any control over x situation, so what I did was just prepare as much as possible to that situation, for example I experienced physical abuse for a decade, so ofc I would get scared of people, so I put an overwhelming amount of effort to prepare myself to deal with people, hell I even got jacked bcs of this lol
This might be a strange request and an absurd place to make it, but this video sparked the thought. I'd love to see a future Dr. K video that looks into how food/diet affect our mood and psychology.
see his videos on ayurveda
When I hear anxiety, first thing I think is food. Won't solve everyone's anxiety, but it will make a huge impact on a ton of people. The body/brain is a totally different entity when it's getting everything and only what it needs to function optimally.
@@0ptimalwhat foods are best?
I have a lot of trauma and anxiety. I once took some THC gummies and started laughing a lot at the stupidest things and I continued laughing at how stupid I was for laughing and it became like a chain effect. I don't laugh often or enjoy many things in life so I could immediately tell my body was releasing a lot of stress through laughing. I noticed my body would even try to hold back as I tried to let go by just laughing. A week later I took even more THC gummies and I completely let go by laughing as much as possible and started crying and bawling. I knew my pain was being masked by laughter and the whole ordeal was so cathartic.
Weed gives me anxiety. I prefer lsd.
One thing that always fascinated me about anxiety is the parallel to excitement. The physical reaction is similar. Sometimes when my anxiety flares up I just convince myself I’m excited LOL.
the book “what happened to you?” reflects a lot of what you say in this video, and its a good resource for anyone wanting to learn more about trauma’s effect on who you grow up to be
This is by far the best information I have ever received about anxiety, and I have seen a lot of therapists and done a lot of research!
Same here, brother. It's a gift. Let's use it to improve :)
Dear Dr. K,
You continue to provide so much help to people you don’t even know. Last year my girlfriend of 7 years broke up with me, I got fired from my job, and I became addicted to delta 8 and my depression spiraled into me being unemployed for over 6 months. 2022 was the worst year of my entire life.
I’ve learned so much from you and your videos, I stumbled across you when I was looking to better understand my ADHD and how my brain works.
Since then I better understand myself and how my brain works, I’ve improved my relationship with my mother, I’ve become a counselor for my friends and family, and this video in particular helped my friend, a relationship I let go for years, better understand his own brain and get him to admit the conspiracy theory’s he was entertaining was nothing but his anxiety making him believe non threats to be real.
Thank you so much for all you do.
When I started coaching on adhd after a late diagnosis (mid 30s) and started talking about my family life from childhood, I had this very viscerally upsetting story that I started explaining and it hit me right there how fucked up it was, 30 ish years later. My coach handed me off to a trauma therapist, and just a year with that has done more for me than a decade on antidepressants. It’s wild how much wiring happens early and then stays that way until you can have the presence of mind and understanding to try and undo and rewire it later. This is why I care more about how I am parenting my young child now than my job or anything else.
Thank you for sharing.
Thought it was a meme that Dr. K always does videos on things related to what you're going through.
40 minutes ago I had a job interview and I was thinking to myself "damn Im hella anxious, whats up, I should be good with this sort of stuff", I see what y'all mean now xD
Tbh it's just is a sign that those are massively common problems
@@Lipinki.luzyckie Tru. In my case last time I was decently Anxious was 2 months ago at another job interview so it's not that common for me at least. Can't help but feel it's funny seeing the video happened minutes after I experienced a thing that happends once every couple of months lel
Best of luck getting the job.
@@chaoskitsu11 Thanks man 🫡
I think a piece of advice that I needed to hear is, that job interviews are something that you need to learn how to do like you need to learn everything else in life. The best way to learn this is to apply for jobs that are slightly less than what you aim for and get used to just going there and u nderstanding how you sell yourself basically.
And keep in mind, the job interview is an interview for the company too. They need to hire a person, and you get to have conditions and ask questions that concern their employees and how they are treated to make sure you are getting a job that does not treat you like you're disposable. Doing that to some degree gives them a sense of how you have agency, which is lacking in most people that apply for a job.
I know you didn't ask for advice, but I wish someone told me these things earlier in life.
This man is the greatest explainer of all time.
This definitely makes sense. It's often just hard to stay cool and detached when the alarm bells of anxiety ring. As a social phobic, that has devolved into evasive personality disorder over the years, it's definitely my tolerance towards anxiety that needs to be worked on if I'm to get better.
I also have a hard time figuring out where the border between my natural introversion and anxiety is. Part of my healing process seems to be to accept my introversion instead of beating myself up for not being better socially and wanting more of it than I do.
self compassion is very important, understanding where the anxiety came from and how it served you once as a survival mechanism is essential to have more compassion toward yourself. Nobody develops anxiety out of the blue. If you have a family history of anxiety genetics make you more sensitive to developing it but it’s the experiences you had that finally made you develop it
1. digest the anxiety of your past
2. dont try to control other people, learn how to tolerate anxiety (exposure therapy, where you cannot do anything) SIT WITH IT, UNDERSTAND IT, my mind is saying... my body is feeling....
3. watch out how you use behaviours to control anxiety --> try not to do it right away
4. detach,separation from ego, spiritual view on anxiety can be extremely beneficial
samskara
change your diet: less processed food, probiotics
holistic approach
I think my anxiety spawned due to literally everyone in my close and extended family having severe anxiety. I've always had it and I just assume being around anxious people will make you generally anxious. I can't be mad at them though nobody really acknowledged anxiety as a thing, peopler were just "acting up" until pretty recently.
same here, getting the message from your caregivers that the world is a dangerous place does a lot against your mental health. You get the idea that you can’t trust yourself and other people which causes a real disconnect to yourself and your authenticity. Also my mother had problems with mental health and attempted suicide when I was 6, luckily came through and later when I was 13 admitted herself to the hospital again for some time. So I think that messed up my sense of trust a bit. There is probably also a genetic sensibility to developing anxiety because there is some mental illness family history on my mothers side but that’s minor. If I had a different childhood I’d not have those struggles even with my predisposition
Holy crap, I think this video literally saved my life.
The fact that you bring mindfulness into the equation without simply advising people to be present is amazing. This video is the most cohesive and digestable ressource I've ever found about anxiety. It gave me an amazing new perspective about my anxiety, how it works and why it keeps coming back. While at the same time incoporating spiritual concepts and giving us concrete, down to earth steps we can implement right now.
I've never seen my anxiety that way and I felt a urge such of gratitude after finishing the video. Thank you so MUCH for being here and giving us so much quality content for free !
I had serious generalized anxiety for my first 19 years or so before I got therapy I was receptive to, and after 4 years or so, I had nearly shed it altogether. I observed that internally, what would happen in my mind is that when I had anxiety about something, even though that thing went off without a hitch, rather than my mind taking away that nothing bad happened so there was no need for anxiety, it took away that nothing bad happened because I was anxious and alert. This reinforced the anxiety. It wasn't until after a very dangerous, undiagnosed manic episode that I got therapy and realized that, despite the walls and webbing of anxiety I built to protect myself from perceived threats, they were fundamentally incapable of protecting me from mania. I NEVER wanted something like that to happen to me again. That truth weakened the foundation of the anxiety, and primarily with cbt and meditation, I was able to pick away at it one piece at a time.
Congratulations on the effort to understand yourself better ❤
I spent the last few years living with anxiety without even realizing it. I use to love fishing, but was too 'anxious' to tow my boat to the ramp - what if a wheel falls off the trailer, what if I get stuck at sea etc. I'd get worried if my dog barked at something during the night - oh no what if it pisses off my neighbors and they throw poisoned meat over the fence. Thoughts like that which stopped me from living life. I thought it was just a normal part of getting older and being more responsible.
Anyhow, I started taking Apigenin to help myself have deeper sleeps as it supports relaxation. But holy crap, it relaxed my mind and cleared the anxiety I never knew was there. I've been taking it for a week and have been fishing 4 out of the last 7 days! It feels like I have got my life back.
*Devil's advocate incoming* How is your dog? It's just...I remembered how one of mine was poisoned.
I have those same type of ‘what if’ worries, and yes they stop me from living. I heard about apigenin on Andrew Huber man’s podcast. I may give that a try.
I'm finding my biggest stressor of anxiety at this point is my knowledge of all these things and trying to CONTROL everything. I want desperately to min/max all the life hacks. Cold showers, sauna, sunlight, proper sleep, blue light at night, gut biome, calorie restrictions, working out, eating right etc etc. I'm at the point where I "know too much" and it gives me anxiety. I wish I could rewind some of the information I have. Ignorance is bliss. Just eat healthy, sleep well, and exercise.
This is real. I feel like I’m going down this path rn always researching and trying to find the why and prevent them bc I’m scared of developing or letting something grow but it is a large source of anxiety. Ignorance is bliss, I gotta stop researching and listening to other ppls stories because of how much confirmation bias and fear lie in them.
I thought I was just anxious, turns out my diet is crap, my gut biome is against me, and my heart is being worn out faster than it should. That knowledge will definitely make me less anxious.
I have cptsd from childhood and learned to stay calm in every given situation to protect myself. Additionally, I learned what not to do to keep myself safe. Therefore, I did not have much anxiety. Fear yes, back then, but not now!
As someone with social anxiety and life basically on hold forever, I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for your incredible videos Dr. K .🧡 Yesterday I watched your video on "How to Stop Being a Doormat," and it was absolutely mind-blowing. The impact it had on me was profound.
For the first time ever, I was able to say no to meeting someone I care for, without worrying about whether they would still like me or not. It felt incredibly freeing, and I owe that to you and your insightful teachings.
I have a playlist of your videos now!
Your generosity, brilliance, intelligence, and compassion are truly one of a kind. Your videos not only help me personally, but they have also sparked a great interest in your field. Thank you for all that you do. It is so comforting and empowering to feel understood.
"life basically on hold forever" is the perfect description :/
@@ShinyStar611 Yes, right? 🧡
At 35, I find it challenging to find meaning and do something with my life. Time seems to fly by, yet I mostly sit at home. For many years now. I look self-confident, so others think I am joking when I express my struggles.
My hands can shake severely when I meet someone new, so I don’t.
Of course, I know that the reason for my struggles is my traumatic experiences. People have hurt me, and I didn't do anything wrong. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to cope.
However, I’ve found solace in watching Dr. K's videos recently. He is a lifesaver! He helps us break free from the cages that we’ve created for ourselves. It's reassuring to know that one isn't alone In this. I listen to Dr. K every day now, especially before bedtime. I hope that you can find the strength to overcome your struggles🧡.
I think this is a great place to start !!
Seriously, you unraveled a ton with your Dysthymia clip. I'll be 54 December 2024. My diagnosis was decades ago. Every video you post, floors me. I speak for everyone, thank you.
As someone with a HIGH amount of anxiety to the point where it's crippling, this is telling me to get a therapist but I cannot afford one. It's a bit difficult to deal with, as I am unsure how to "sit with" my anxiety emotionally because my reaction to any anxiety-inducing situation is crying. I try not to as I hate crying, I hate people seeing me cry, and I hate feeling like crying I try to stop it but before I even realize my anxiety is getting unbearable, tears are coming out. I have been medicated in the past which lead to a permanent shake, but I was a minor when I was last treated, I feel horrible for not taking advantage of that help, as I cannot without so much fear now, it just leaks into needing help to help my anxiety that my anxiety tries to stop me from getting. It's hell. From throwing up trying to make appointments or just going out to talk with a friend, it makes you feel a bit helpless :(
If you cant afford therapy watch youtube videos like these try to educate yourself ass much ass possible and honestly try eating cleaner and just see if it does anything for you until you can afford to have one
Dude I’ll watch this twice and download this and listen to it weekly until it sets in my mind, you have perfectly described my issues and gave me so much to think about (in a healthy way at least haha)
Ive tried many healthy habits like going out and exercise but it keeps coming back, so I’ll check my guts too since Ive always had bowel problems but nothing fully diagnosed and only got worse in the pandemic lockdown and with anxiety crisis. I had a history of being bullied on my childhood so that’s probably where everything started.
Thank you very much!
Same ! And it really helps to listen to DR K over and over again
My parents essentially raised me to be a paranoid man child. They simultaneously infantilized me up until my mid teens AND tried to live vicariously through my "potential" at a really young age, and then when that behavior made it so I never really learned how to do anything for myself and started to struggle they flipped the script and treated me like I was dumb, lazy, and worthless. That combined with a bunch of other factors gave me really bad depression and anxiety that were almost getting better right before the pandemic hit and then, well, the pandemic hit. I keep trying to explain to people that tell me to go to therapy that the only thing therapy is gonna do is keep me thinking about my problems and worsen my anxiety. I've realized that I'm literally form singular habits anymore because my brain just drops them into "the list" and the longer the list gets the more anxious I get until it's unsustainable. Instead I've been desperately trying to build a mesh of habits at the same time in order to finally control the inside instead of the outside. I'm taking my certification test to become a personal trainer on Monday, and I've been learning not just to cook and cook healthy stuff but to make the most out of every ingredient I buy. That feeds into the only anxiety I have that I perceive as useful which is that pandemic-fueled anxiety that turned me into a prepper, since my new knowledge gives me the ability to fix a piece of the problem on the inside while also giving me some control of the outside. For me, managing my anxiety is about turning it into a tool that I know when it's appropriate to deploy rather than letting it control me, and giving myself the knowledge and the skills to operate that tool. That mesh of habits I was talking about is more like a house of cards though, and has already fallen over multiple times, which only serves to worsen my anxiety because it makes me afraid I'll die long before I even get close to overcoming these issues. Maybe it's just me or maybe other people feel like this too, but it's just awful because you spend every waking second trying to fix your life and all that does is make it harder
I feel that to the core. I’ve had anxiety for a long ass time for various reasons I’d rather not go into. But yea, I went to see my nurse practitioner the other day and he told me that “we need to fix your sleep schedule” and I started bawling my eyes out saying “if I have to do anything more than take a pill at night, I don’t think I can do it. There’s too many things to fix and I’m tired”. The “list of things to fix” is so real, pretty much the exact reason why I live on my notes app. Having ADHD isn’t helpful either cuz I have to *constantly* think about the list, just in case I forget something and everything goes to shit again. Yea, not a helpful post, but I hope that knowing that there’s someoen out there that understands what you’re going through will make u feel a bit better, cuz your comment certainly did that for me.
That's the problem with the insufficient approach so many of us have been consistently exposed to, of always only trying to fix and never building a life we want instead.
I thought and acted, because I had to survive. That’s how I calmly dealt with situations. I do have CPTSD, but no anxiety.
This spoke to me so much, 10 minutes in and I’m crying because I don’t feel at fault anymore for why I overthink so hard😢 You’re the best Dr.K ❤
That’s very relatable. In my spiral, if I’m told to just not worry about it,even though the person might tell me why and give me ample evidence that worrying is not necessary, I will still worry because that is what I have learned to do, that is how I’m adapted to cope. Yes I’m working on it, but this is ongoing.
When you first linked anxiety with overthinking, I struggled to relate it to my own situation. As a child, I would experience so much stress from family issues, instable family life and bullying that I would just straight up check out/dissasociate/black out/shut down. When I would come home from school, the only thing that I would be capable of doing was sitting in front of the television because I was in such a high stress state of mind that I was unable to socialize.
I realize that things got better when I was able to formulate my high stress experiences into words and that I could then express these words. It took a specialist in autism + a year of therapy to see that my anxiety wells up from 2 springs:
- a traumatic event when I asked an innocent question regarding an argument between my mom and my uncle after which the argument exploded. My mom got into a crying fit/panic attack and my uncle ignored us and walked out. This taught me that making social mistakes is dangerous and can lead to harm.
- I grew up in an environment that felt very chaotic and demanding. This taught me that I cant solve my problems and I also cant navigate them due to poor insight.
These two springs actually reinforced each other meaning that I felt completely and utterly crippled to actually take action. When I addressed the second part, where I shut down when the demands get to high with my therapist, we made a list with triggers and then she gave me an exposure exercise. I have been doing this for about a month and I realize it now becomes a lot easier to do stuff. This anxiety, which I call 'The Terror', is actually a lot less now. The other vid you have on anxiety where you roleplayed with Sidekick, showed me the importance of focussing on max 3 things.
Seeing how much I juggled and ruminated, it is ok to drop stuff and let others sort their mess out. it is ok to just focus on my own wellness and if others can ride on these tailwinds, good for them. But I dont need to fix their lives/manage their anxiety.
I’m currently in therapy. Only about 3 sessions in, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much out of it. But something about this video really made it click for me. The science makes it make sense
Anyone else watching this and wondering how he's managed to completely describe in exquisite detail your exact experiences? Get out of my head my man 😢 I kid but it's eerie how precisely everything you describe here is exactly what I've been dealing with my entire life. I don't remember ever not feeling this way.
Right ! It feels so good though, I feel so much better lately, aware that someone totally knows what’s in my head. Never felt so understood before …
Thank you SO very much for everything you are doing!
I am going through a divorce from an abusive person, then got targeted by a narcissist (actual. Having to double my income overnight, car broje down, bank account got hacked, while trying to heal from trauma and dissociation has been incredibly hard.
I discovered one of your videos last month and have been using them and implementing what you advocate daily. I also have been meditating, picked up Mohiniyattam dance (which is an ancient classical Indian dance that helps women who have gone through trauma). I also have been strengthening my spiritual practice by doing Sadhana daily. 🙏🏼
I have been recommending your videos like to my kids and anyone that I feel might benefit.
You are unique in the mental health world, i am thankful to God for you 🙏🏼
When you talked about control, I had to stop for a moment and think about myself. I have a problem with semi-perfectionism that I think caused me to develop a fear of failure. Or maybe it actually was the fear of failure that caused me to develop perfectionism...
It helped me a lot in the past to motivate me to become a better person and to take control over my life. But now the brain, by trying to protect me, is completely destroying my ability to do anything that has even a slight chance of evoking negative emotions.
It cripples my ability to do creative things that I really really want to do and causes me to have strong emotions when I am not doing well in games. I stopped playing competitive games like csgo or lol, because whenever I mess up even slightly, I feel crippling disappointment towards myself. That even happens when it's completely out of my control and is not my fault and I have those completely unrealistic expectations that 'I should be able to do 1vs5', "I should be able to carry my entire team", "I should not fail". In a way my recipe for success would be to gain control over the situation I have no control over (by trying to be better at the game, but in a toxic way).
Now I see that avoiding those situations will not help me. I always thought that if I don't have panic attacks, I can't have anxiety. Now I think I might actually have it in some form, though it's more internal and hidden. I will need to take a closer look at my past to see how I got in this situation.
Thank you for this information-packed video, it helps a lot!
I can not thank you enough for summarizing anxiety in a this amount of time. I APPRECIATE IT WITH MY WHOLE HEART.
Everything you say is what I am working on. I can contribute your video with “meta awareness”. Thinking about thoughts. I know sometimes it is hard to face with our fears and thoughts. But somehow I passed that line (somehow=It s just me. I like challenges, I always wonder what I can do, my diet has been always good, I always exercise etc. Somehow means It happened without aiming) and I can think about my feelings and fears. My problem is money. Loosing money, being ripped off etc. My father uploaded that to me. Not purposely but just because he wasn’t aware his fears and wasn’t able to work on (before internet information is very limited like diseases!).
Anyway thank you so much. I will work on my anxiety way more efficiently and effectively.
Best regards
My GAD (general anxiety disorder) came from two parts of my childhood, being heavily bullied, and also going through really high amounts of stress when I was young starting from the first grade.
I'm the type of person that, if I understand something then I can finish it and learn from it. So, my therapist told me that not understanding the EMDR process would help, it didn't. I STG the only reason I feel better than the past almost 2 YEARS, is because you just explained why EMDR works, and how. So thank you so much cause I am broken at and suddenly I feel better. Thank you so much
Thanks Dr K. for presenting this topic. I don't know why, but hearing out loud that trying to control the situation and analyze every possible outcome is way too overwhelming to me. Tears and tightening in my chest just after hearing those words are quite worrisome. The next therapy session will be quite interesting.
Living with anxiety is basically that feeling when you notice your keys aren't in your pocket, except its all the time.
It maybe a little off brand for the channel but I would love to see a video just dedicated to a diet that helps with anxiety. I have adhd and generalized anxiety disorder and i found my adhd symptoms get worse with anti anxiety medications i have used in the past, so much so that i don't treat it. If i could make some changes to my diet to help improve thing that would be a god sent. fantastic video by the way
Wow, you just completely explained my whole life. Now I'm raising teens, and obviously they are not something I can control, and I am going insane with anxiety. I don't know if this has something to do with my ego or if it's something else. I don't want to fail them. It's hard to let go. It's hard to detach. It's hard to stop feeling responsible for their happiness and wellbeing. I love how this video talks about the many ways to work on anxiety -- body, mind, origin. LOL -- I have to "control" my anxiety -- yeah, I'm good at trying to control. Thanks for the overview. It's helpful. You're doing great work. Thanks for helping my gamer kid. Much love.
I had one experience as a toddler, just one, where I saw my dad leaving for work around dawn. It was a little dark outside but I was with my mom watching him leave the driveway in his old car through the window of our front door. He did this every morning just as routine since work was relatively far away... but for some reason, I was crying and frightened that he was leaving us forever. I don't know why. That moment of time stays in my memories as something traumatic. Even though I'm working on recognizing it these days, even today I still struggle with the anxiety and fear that a loved one could abandon me.
Makes me wonder just how one regular everyday occurrence can affect growth.
I have never so strongly felt like a TH-cam video, let alone a video about mental health, was made exactly for me. I was blown away with how much I resonated with so many things said in this video. I've only recently started on this path to really understand why I am the way that I am, and I feel like this is only going to help me moving forward.
Thanks Dr. K!
That meme of dr k living in our walls and knowing what we’re going through might be real, and it is making me anxious (pun intended)
He is not living in our walls, but he is living in the physical dimension that you put your phone in
A video so nice I watched it twice, so here are my DIY chapters:
0:00 intro
0:58 HG coaching promo
1:43 historical and recent professional understandings of anxiety
4:08 what anxiety is and why it is
5:50 how our ability to judge threats gets messed up
9:25 transition to adulthood - why does anxiety remain?
11:40 physiological factors impacting anxiety and emotion
22:16 the mind, experience, and the control-the-world approach
26:34 tolerance-based solutions
28:23 self-observation and detachment-based solutions
32:20 summary
The discussion about heart rate is pretty much spot on according to sport science. Working out with progressively heavier weight is pretty much training your heart and hormonal system to controlled stress (in this case it is the heavy weights)
Thank you. I'm overwhelmed with emotion. All I can say is thank you so so so much for this video.
I'm constantly worrying about something, theres always some test, project, paper, etc to do for college. And then I procastinate, but always worrying about it. The thoughts are so ubearable that I have to always be listening to music or watching something so that I can stop thinking
My daughter was born anxious, she had separation anxiety and I may have had TOO MUCH empathy but I couldn't bear to see her panic and cry so I became a stay at home mom. She was diagnosed with selective mutism in 2nd grade - there was no trauma or any specific event. When confronted with an uncomfortable situation, she tends to freeze, stare into space, "zone out". No threat under the sun will bring her to respond. This is a long story, she's 25 - and it's just her personality but she's made some progress...
holy moly having watched this feels so beneficial to my journey. what a incredibly insightful, compassionate, and holistic explanation!! this unfortunately resonated too much with my current life state. each day is getting better, though, and now i have a better understanding of what the heck is going on in my nervous system. the domino analogy reallly put that slippery slope into perspective. thank you thank you thank you!!!!
There have been nights where my anxiety has been so bad I’ve almost tried to end my life. It’s honestly unbearable sometimes, and I don’t wish it upon anyone.
Ive always known im quite an anxious person and even watching most of Dr K's videos i didn't quite realize just how bad my anxiety is until this video. Im beginning to realize how my anxiety controls every facet in my life.
Could just be you've found an excuse that fits. Food for thought
@@levigivens Excuse for what?
Well, I hope that you help yourself with this new piece of information in a healthy way, cheers fellow anxious!
@@ianpaulkenchington4311 Thanks! I think being aware of it already helps a ton. Also i already try to optimize my diet and excercise, aswell as dwelve into meditative practices. These things keep me together!
Yeah we just think living that way is normal I get it. After therapy it’s still weird to not be turned up all the way all the time… like my anxiety is still there but it’s less of a chokehold or burden. I’m able to cope with it better too and sleep a little better. I have my off days and stress at work makes it go off, but I hope you can get help! Journaling helps too I resisted it at first and it seemed silly but it forces me to reflect, trauma dump, process and then be positive or reflect on being grateful.
Thank you. I loved your explanation and break down on what anxiety is.
I wasn't born when I became affected by anxiety. Through my life, on a few occasions, my subconscious has put my mind into an hypnosis state to relive the experience of when I was in my mother's belly and she went through an extreme anxiety experience that created the belief in me that the world was dangerous. It is a survival mechanism to prepare me for the outside world, but it affected me for the decades to come.
Been a therapy for the last three-four years and improved tremendously but I've never heard about tolerating anxiety without trying to control it. And it makes so much sense!
I'll apply your advices and try to become healthier, because I deserve so.
From France, with love.
This is the best description of the experience of GAD that I have seen. At the moment I am completely stuck in anxiety. It is good to be reminded of healthy solutions. What's funny is that the story about the gut bacteria and the exercise and diet is the same story that I've heard about rheumatoid arthritis which I also have. So, I conclude that I should make an effort to get back to the diet and exercise routine to improve both my ailments. Great.
This lecture reshaped a lot how I understand my anxiety. Without a properly helpful environment, this is just getting worse, and worse. I am looking forward to my upcoming days, how I could understand my anxiety for my studies and upcoming tasks. Thanks Dr. K.!
I can't afford therapy, or at least I'm so anxious about debt and my unstable medical insurance and the lack of availability of therapists, that I can't find one.
But this video (first time commenting here btw) showed I'm already making progress with my anxiety and depression. I don't know what exactly happened to me in my childhood to make me like this, but I do know that I had a lot of siblings and I learned that anything I wanted or needed, I had to get for myself. I learned "if I don't need it, then I can live without it" and now I struggle to know anything that I WANT. I learned how to not want, and now it is so much harder to figure out what I want on any scale. Like... It's hard to explain, but it's like if I get close to realizing I want something, I automatically assume that's a fantasy not worth dwelling in, because either it literally doesn't exist (species alteration through some sort of genetic or medical procedure as one example) or I know I'll be disappointed (that game looks neat, but it's probably just like all the rest). Anxiety on top means I rarely bother to ask. It'll just cause drama that I'd rather avoid more than any pleasure I might have from bringing it up. I almost didn't have a cap and gown for high school graduation in 2006 because my mom had broken her leg at the time, and I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to afford it.
I need therapy, but it is unavailable. What do I do?
Dr. K, you helped break down the way I process my emotions and thank you for putting into words the frustration I’ve had with myself for not proactively working on my anxiety!!😭🙏🏻
I feel like school played a huge roll in me developing anxiety lack of self identity wearing a big fur coat on the first day of school. It was the only coat I had being a freshman so I was always sweating but it felt isolateing blocked myself off from the view of others I felt safe yet so uncomfortable. Didn’t know anybody come around lunch time haveing the choice to sit wherever I want but didn’t know anybody made me always feel indecisive to the point i avoided eating there and would rather eat in hallways alone or inside classrooms with permission. I feel like halfway into the school year I made enemy’s not just in school but on the bus which at the time that fur coat with the hood up might of been the reason I stood out and got picked on so much. That it escalated into bullying acting out getting into fights almost near death experiences and traumatizing moments I had no idea how to control my emotions i was always angry didn’t know how to calm down and I was put on behavioral meds which wasn’t the right solution that I got suspensions and eventually got kicked out. I could no longer learn in the environment I was in that’s suppose to help kids learn I feel like I’m shareing this because somebody may need to hear this but more for me because I realize school shaped me into the person I am today. This video helped me recall why I’m so anxious and avoidant around others and antisocial cause I’m afraid of that happening again because I feel like that inner child still in an adult world being an adult. Im lucky that im seeing my therapist this month in april.
My anxiety got much worse when I developed a health condition that worsened randomly, I became anxious to eat, sleep, walk, everything! I couldn't open emails for 6-7 months at a time because of avoidance
A lot of what he says here resonates with my experience of anxiety and the physiological effects have gotten to the point where my physical health has declined. I’ve felt like anxiety is slowly killing me (dramatic) since highschool but it really feels like an inflammatory event, I feel like I catch a cold, adrenal fatigue etc.
You should start working out if you haven’t already, and incorporate a healthy lifestyle in general (food), it really is part of the puzzle to healing I think, at least it helps me greatly. I am not healed in any way yet but we take one step at a time right ?
This was such a great explanation to Anxiety. I am surprised to see that it's not just medication but physical changes that are needed to find solutions to it.
It is always so tempting to think a bit of junk food (or a lot of junk food) will make me feel better (at least for a little while) but of course it isn't a long term solution. Now it is increasingly hard to change habits and the anxiety itself makes it vastly harder.
Doc, you’re inspiring me to go back to school after realizing my passion to help my other fellow humans. You’re a beacon of love, thank you.
One of the most frustrating thing about this is, if i see this in others i would give them reasonable advice on what to do and how to deal with their problems.
But i encounter the exact same problems for myself i'm not able to follow the the same advice i would give, or sometimes have given to someone else for that very situation.
This doc has a very rare gift of explaining complex concepts in such a way that even a child would understand it. I'm an instant fan ❤
Dude I'm currently looking for an apartment but I was too afraid to contact someone, it's true what they say about Dr. K always uploading what you need at the right time :D
I enjoy that you have made this. I currently dont have a therapist, but when i did they wouldnt help me. One needed specific scenarios and would provide solutions that made no sense. Like, oh im worried theres ppl watching me from outside every time i hear a noise in my room, so hed say to close the blinds. Like duh, but i want to not worry AND have sunlight. My second one would just tell me im smart and can figure it out on my own. So google has been more helpful than any therapist. This video provides information i could not find on google. Google tells me how to deal with a panic attack, and says nothing about the ongoing residual anxiety that i experience. Its more helpful at answering ADHD questions.
This video gives me things i can actually work on.
1) i can look up what foods specifically help with anxiety and eat them
2) i can spend time regularly connecting my inner monologue to childhood experiences and sitting with it.
3) i can read more about how to control the heart rate
One of the best videos on anxiety I have ever seen Dr K.
Detachment is a very important muscle to train in our lives.
I used to tell my ex-girlfriend that I am a jealous person, but I don't act on it.
It used to eat from inside when she had her girls night out, I was afraid that she would meet somebody and cheat or simply leave me. But I decided to detach from that idea, because I had zero control over it.
Ultimately, my greatest fear came to pass, she did meet somebody when she was out with her co-workers, but having exercised detachment from things I could not control, it was easier to break it off and minimize suffering. Also dodged a bullet.
A lot of this explains why my GP -who focuses a lot on treating and controlling inflammation (and also put me on the path to my ADHD diagnosis)-has been more successful at helping me treat and control my anxiety than my therapists ever were. (Also explains a bit why my anxiety has started surging again lately, right around the time I stopped eating as well and started experiencing IBS symptoms again.)
This makes so much sense, more so than the mental health coaching that i have paid for. Everything is just clear and makes sense and logical, can’t believe this is free content!
That's where the timing of these videos is just straight-up jarring.
Because yesterday I was genuinely having an existential crisis with how rapidly technology is moving and the state of the world.
I feel like I'm falling behind in my generation and it's just hard to keep up with everything now.
Ai is REALY freaking me out the most along with extreme hyper-realism with real-time rendering and VR not to mention deepfakes are genuinely getting exceptionally good.
It feels like manipulating the public just gets easier with every year.
I feel like within the next few years all this stuff is becoming a very real chance of replacing my presents or the presents around me and I'm not going to be able to differentiate between reality and fiction anymore.
Before I had rational fears of death, now I fear unnatural deaths or genuine lunacy.
I'm also starting to freak out about how society is starting to destabilize and it feel like within the next decade or so there's a high likelihood that there is going to be a societal collapse.
I had (and still have) these kinds of fears, and I do not know if I can say if they are 100% irrational or rational.
I had to completely cut out reading news, especially about triggering topics, at least for some time, so my body could finally relax and have tried to talk with friends more (about the news or other stuff to get support), also getting sleep etc etc and planning for the future.
No one person can change the word issues, but we absolutely can take care of ourselves and try to seek connections with others. This will make both us and a small part of the world around us stronger and more resilient. Panic-surviving mode isn't great for solving long lasting problems, it's okay to let it go and ground yourself for a moment ❤️
Your ability to speak confidently despite understanding the subject astonishes me
With all the stresses the world offers us today, now we need advice like "How not to end up like Reckful" or something like that.
With everything that's going on today, it seems like the world burning in flames, the fire is spreading more and more, and tomorrow will only get worse.
The world has never been a perfect place, as a Millennial I caught 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis and several market crashes, but this time it feels different.
It's like, I can't even guess how fucked up everything will be tomorrow and what's going to happen next. Hard to explain, you can only feel it.
We're all just "Proles" as Orwell would call us, we're merely a "cog in the wheel" unable to change the system he is trapped in (aka Capitalism) and the result is anxiety (Alienation).
Capitalism creates this condition of Alienation, because people are separated from their own human nature, and their fellow human beings. They are anxious because they do not own the means of production so they must sell their labor to survive. Plus, they know their jobs could be ended at any time, or a person who is willing to work for less money could take their job.
This alienation causes people to feel fearful, dissatisfied, unhappy, and anxious, because they are unable to realize their full human potential and creativity.
Marx also argues that since capitalism is driven by a relentless pursuit of profit, it exploits the workers and creates a class conflict between the working class and their emplorers (aka, the proletariat and bourgeoisie)
This conflict generates social instability, inequality, and injustice, which further contributes to the anxiety of the working class.
Thank you. I'm 41 and ive always felt "highly aware" of my surroundings ad never knew why. It always made me feel uneasy and that it wasn't normal. Your video has given me great insight and a flood of memories that all make sense. Thank you.
I never had a traumatic childhood, but I've always been pretty anxious (though I didn't know it at the time). Then in 2017 I had a really hard year (Grandmother dying of cancer, hard time at work, emotional abuse from the partner I was living with) and started having panic attacks. Ever since my anxiety has been severe and I'm on an SSRI to help. I always have to wonder where my anxiety started since my childhood wasn't hard.
I'd recommend working through the childhood question with a therapist. I spent most of my life thinking my childhood was fine, and it took me years to realize that I received targeted verbal abuse from one of my parents, which impacted me profoundly. There are many problematic and even abusive behaviors that are normalized in mainstream culture. We assume that if these things happen to a lot of people, that means they aren't that bad. However, common ≠ healthy. We also might assume that since some people weren't seemingly impacted by X experience, it wasn't a big deal. However, people respond in different ways to difficult experiences depending on your genetics, development, and mental predisposition. As an extreme example, you can have two people go through the same exact event and one person gets PTSD and another doesn't. Could just be you got unlucky in the genetic lottery with anxiety, but I do want to advocate that sometimes "a good childhood" is more complex than it may seem at first glance.
Thank you for describing this topic so well! 10years of therapy didn’t help me understand this so well!
I don’t know where to go from here.
I feel this on so many levels😭🙌
Dr K's guide to mental health is the deep dive that condenses all the takeaways and relevant meditations. Group coaching can help too but the guide is a very good resource with hours of material on anxiety as well as depression and adhd
Same.
@@blondequijote Do yo know if the guide includes the diet that helps anxiety?
Eating healthier and cutting out caffeine and alcohol is a start.
Watched it looking straight into dr k's soul, I hope to watch it again soon. Except this time we are taking notes, ladies and gentlemen. I thought I was watching 4 hours old video turns out it's year old. I love how he maintains eye contact with camera, as if he is addressing us, I'm literally nodding along. I am in middle of inter-relatives fight right now, and I'm constantly anxious thinking of all the possibilities even if they are far fetched. Like "what if this happens, that happens". And also I can testify to the affect of food on my anxiety, because recently I got food poisoning and after throwing up for few hours and pooping, my stomach was completely cleared out. While I also felt extremely weak, but as I started to gain strength I also felt incredibly happy, light and less anxious. Thank you so much man.
just woke up feeling extremely anxious. timely
This is so interesting to me because, I started off my morning quite productive- but seemingly out of nowhere I started getting the butterflies in my stomach and the increased heart rate and I was anxious for some unknown reason. The explanation that processed foods can play a big part in your anxiety makes SO MUCH SENSE. I ate like a bunch of pizza rolls and it would make sense why all of a sudden I was feeling anxious when my body is reacting the way it is to something the body wasn't evolved for. LOL, really cool.
Holy cow! After many years, this is the first explanation that makes sense and takes everything into account. Thanks a lot!
I have a super power, I can see the future and all the things that may or may not happen.
Exactly how I try to explain what anxiety is to people. it's the worst super power, but when it works it makes it worse because I think it's valid
Your knowledge along with your voice and use of cadence and tone variation make your videos so much more engaging to me. Everytime i try to listen to videos with similar content i tune out or go to sleep because of how dry and monotoned it is.
Thanks for bringing up the heart and gut biome stuff here Doc! ❤🎉🏆
Ive learned so many new things about my body and my mind thanks to your videos and im truly thankful that you provided me with all of this knowledge. thank you very much dr k you are changing my life for the better and i hope u will only continue to provide peope with meaningful content like this in the future
I have a question! Do you believe anxiety is a standalone disorder, or is it always a symptom of something else? (either another disorder, trauma, programming, ect...)
Personally I believe it's always a symptom of something, and most therapists I've had try to treat the anxiety itself, rather than the root cause of it. I believe anxiety is always a symptom of something else that needs to be addressed to fully relieve the anxiety and properly treat it.
Similarly with depression, in most cases it seems like the depression has a root cause except in some cases where it's a chemical imbalance and nothing else. But I think more therapists and psychologists should look for the root causes of anxiety and depression instead of just treating the anxiety and depression symptoms alone.
I wish I could conduct some sort of study on this but I wouldn't know how to go about it.
I think anxiety and depression are both in the mind and in the body. Just like Dr K said on the video our anxiety might be due to gut bacteria. Also Co2 levels also can cause anxiety. So it can be both a physical and a mental condition. So we shoud treat our anxiety both targeting the body and the mind. And also our enviroment, since our enviroment can target both our body and our mind.
a chemical imbalance definitely is part of it, for example, a vitamin D deficiency can be a factor that can lead to depression but that is just 1 factor among many things that can be a cause.
Watched this video in chunks and journaled about it. It was hard to digest because firstly, this fits me perfectly. And secondly, I am very stuck in the anxiety cycle and didn't know what to do about it. This video could not have come at a better time! I also deal with digestive issues so I'm also going to work on eating healthier. Thank you!