Why anxiety is a superpower

As bad as it feels, anxiety is essential, says psychotherapist Britt Frank, author of The Science of Stuck. It can be a helpful warning signal that something is off, or even dangerous. But when anxiety hits, it's hard to remember its importance. In this episode, Frank explains what we can do to feel more centered when we anxiety makes us feel overwhelmed -- so we can listen to what it's telling us. This episode was originally published on May 23, 2023. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here. Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekitLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:17Marielle Segarra?

  You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

• 0:22Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, everybody. It's Marielle Segarra.

• 0:28Marielle Segarra?

  If you've ever had anxiety, it can feel like your body is under attack. Your mind is racing. Maybe your heart's pounding, or your palms are sweating, your stomach hurts, your skin gets red and hot. Psychotherapist Britt Frank says she gets it.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Anxiety feels awful, and it can be debilitating. I've had anxiety issues my whole life, but anxiety doesn't attack us.

• 0:51Marielle Segarra?

  Frank is the author of the book The Science of Stuck, and she specializes in something called somatic experiencing.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Which is a very fancy way to say that you have a brain attached to a body, and your body does things.

• 1:02Marielle Segarra?

  Frank says anxiety can actually be like the check engine light of your brain.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Anxiety is an indicator light. It is something that happens in our body in response to either an unsafe situation, to an injury from the past, or to a perceived or a real threat coming from the future.

• 1:20Marielle Segarra?

  And if you think about things that way, anxiety can give you a lot of information about what feels right to you, about how you want to spend your time, and about who you want to spend it with.

• 1:30Marielle Segarra?

  But to get to those insights, you've got to dial down the overwhelming symptoms, even if that's from a 10 to a 7. On this episode of Life Kit, we're going to give you some practical, research-backed ways to do that in the moment, and then help you listen to what your anxiety is trying to tell you.

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• 3:05Marielle Segarra?

  What's happening in our bodies when we're feeling anxious?

• 3:08Speaker 02

  So when we're feeling anxious, we have the amygdala, and the amygdala is the panic signal of the body. When that goes off, it's preparing our body to fight or flight or flee. And we don't get to decide which one our bodies default to, nor do we get to decide how intense that is.

• 3:26Marielle Segarra?

  If you're in that moment, there are a few steps that you can take to dial it down, to dial that response down and bring your body and mind back to a calm state.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Now, not everyone feels the same exact physiological cues, but if it's a physiological state, then there are physiological solutions to be had. This is my little schticky three-step thing. If you are feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, step one, just assume your brain knows what it's doing. Why am I anxious? Because my brain is braining. Step two, ask yourself, what are three small, micro yeses available to me now? What are three resources, people, places, thoughts, things? What are some things that help me feel not better, but safer? Things available to me, things that I can do right now? That might be able to help me dial down from a 10 to a 7?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  And then step three is of that small list of things, pick one and do it.

• 4:25Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, for me, I like to watch shows like Gilmore Girls.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Uh huh, yeah.

• 4:30Marielle Segarra?

  Um, because I grew up on watching that show, but also it just like, nothing ever goes that wrong in that show. You know, it feels familiar, it feels like the problems get solved.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:43Marielle Segarra?

  It feels like everybody loves each other. Uh, so I find that helps ground me.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and watching the same shows over and over. Mine is my version of Gilmore Girls is the West Wing. Anytime I'm feeling anxious, I watch it because I know exactly what's gonna happen. There's no surprises. So a lot of people will find that watching the same things over and over, or listening to the same song over and over is comforting. So I love that as an anxiety intervention.

• 5:12Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, in the book you talk about other things that might make you feel safe. Maybe that's hugging your best friend, or sitting on the beach, or curling up with a book. Maybe it's drinking tea. Um, and then there's also the idea of using your senses. Can you talk a little bit about that?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yes, so, and again, none of these interventions are gonna magic your way out of a stressful environment, or a difficult job, or a financial situation. But what we're trying to do in the moment is take your brain from being on fire, where you can't think at all, to a place where thinking and logic and access to your choices becomes more readily available. And using your senses is the way to do that. Holding on to ice cubes, sticking your face in a bowl of cold water, smelling something really, really strong, sucking on things like, you know, hot tamales or really sour Lemon candies can sort of snow globe your brain just a little bit,

• 6:15Speaker 02

  just enough that your brain can access, I am not being eaten by a tiger right now.

• 6:20Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, and there are some others that I thought were really helpful too. Like different sort of mental exercises. Notice five things you can see or hear or touch or smell or taste. So it's thinking about the senses, but just kind of naming those things.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Yes, and that one I'm really happy to see has gotten super trendy. And giving language to our experience again, gives your brain something to do. I think of it like a chew toy for the brain. So when you're saying, okay, here I can see a plant, I can see a painting, I can see this. And here's what I can feel and here's what I can hear. That again, gives your brain something to grab on to besides five alarm fire.

• 7:02Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, there's another one from the book I really want to share. I think it works especially well if you have some sort of chronic pain that comes back when you're anxious. But it's to name the sensation you're having wherever you're having it. So maybe you're like, okay, my face feels really hot and itchy right now. And then you look for a place in your body where you feel, I like to think of it as nothing, but like neutral, calm, nothing. For me, it's always my ear. Like I'm like, no, my ear feels like nothing. I can't, I can barely even feel it.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Well, what we're trying to do is help your body understand that it's not globally feeling terrible. Now, some people get very, they, they're like, well, are you saying that we're supposed to gaslight ourselves out of our pain? And just go into this toxic, positive, everything is fabulous. And the answer is that is no. It's what we want to do is, okay, so if you have a chronic GI issue, notice that your stomach feels like it's on fire and it's tight. But then notice your left ear, like you said, and notice that your left ear is feeling neutral or nothing. Notice your stomach and then notice your right kneecap. And by bringing attention, not just to something else, but giving yourself permission to feel your pain.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  And also noticing that your pain is not global, that can help dial down the intensity. And anyone who's had chronic pain knows, even if you can dial it down just a notch or two, is going to bring significant relief.

• 8:34Marielle Segarra?

  It's actually incredible how this works. It doesn't sound like it would work, but it's like you're feeling a throbbing pain and then you toggle back and forth like that. Something about it, it really just feel like it turns the volume down.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  I was so mad when I learned this. I sat, I remember sitting in my somatic training just with my arms crossed. I was such a cynic. I'm like, this is dumb. You're telling me I paid how much money to learn how to just bring my attention to like my left leg and then to my right knee. And it does, it works. And people who are way smarter than I am have studied how the central nervous system encodes information and the things that help dial it down in intensity. And this is one of them.

• 9:16Marielle Segarra?

  You also have this concept of anxiety fire drills. It's basically when you practice bringing yourself down from an anxious state when you're not actually feeling anxious. Can you talk more about that?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  So, you know, as a little kid, stop, drop and roll was drilled into us so many times that if there were a fire, we wouldn't be thinking, oh no, what do I do? Oh, we just know stop, drop and roll because we did fire drills so often. And same thing with anxiety. With mental health issues, we're not taught to practice for when the crisis hits. We're taught, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. Oh no, you're not fine. So an anxiety fire drill would be, make a list of five people, places, thoughts or things that help you feel safe or safer or slightly less threatened and then practice doing them. Because anyone who's ever struggled with anxiety or depression knows, like the last thing you want to do when you're struggling is bother someone

• 10:15Speaker 02

  or reach out because you don't have the energy to. But if you've practiced, if you've done the muscle memory thing, then it's going to be second nature.

• 10:24Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, so how does this work? Like you have a list of people that you reach out to when you're not anxious and you just say, Hey, can you coach me on the things that'll calm me down? Can we run through this?

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Doesn't that sound silly? But it works. So you know, you can have a list of things that don't require other people. And that might be taking a bath, watching Gilmore Girls, or for me, West Wing. Having a cup of tea, sticking your face in a bowl of ice cubes. Those are all things that you can do solo. But sometimes our anxiety needs to be met with another human being because we're not designed to thrive in isolation. For the friends that you have on standby, absolutely practice calling them when you're not anxious and call them and say, all right, this is a fire drill. What you need to hear is, okay, in this moment, right now, you are safe. I believe you and I'm here with you. And yeah, practice doing that when you're not in the middle of an anxiety swirl.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  And I guarantee you whoever's doing that with you is going to find it helpful because then when the fire hits, you've already done the thing.

• 11:31Marielle Segarra?

  I feel like it might be helpful to have the, one of your anxiety fire drill people be someone else who has anxiety, like, you know, because you do that for each other. It's like, all right, here we go, you know, and you kind of like understand it too.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then it becomes funny. Like if you have another person that you know with anxiety, you're both going to start laughing because it feels so stupid. And that is a double neuro bonus because laughter is going to deactivate your panic response. So if you guys start cracking up because you both feel like idiots doing this, bonus, that's an extra dose of anti-anxiety medication for the two of you.

• 12:09Marielle Segarra?

  We will have more Life Kit after the break.

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• 13:09Marielle Segarra?

  So we're trying to figure out, in the long term, once the the fire is out or the dial is is turned down on the anxiety, it seems like we want to reflect on maybe why that happened. I think it feels like a lot of the time, the anxiety that people feel, it can seem like it's attached to one particular thing, right? It's like I have a friend who he really always thinks that he didn't lock the car door. And he gets super anxious that there's stuff is going to be stolen from the car and whatever. And then we go back and it's it's fine. But he's not actually really nervous about the car. There's usually something going on like at work or or some other reason that he's feeling like off in his life.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Sure. And our symptoms can take up so much bandwidth that it's easy to forget that symptoms point toward a problem. They're a problem, but they're not the problem. And again, so many factors go into this, right? Genetics, environment, level of access, privilege. There are a lot of factors that go into how safe or how unsafe our brains feel. But it's really useful to just start with, okay, this isn't just about this. This could be about something else. And that opens more doors for you to explore and to perhaps find your way to solutions.

• 14:25Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah. Okay, so so what if we're there? We're like, okay, it's not about the car door. What is it about?

• 14:34Marielle Segarra?

  Like, in the book, you have some challenges that I think get at this unpacking, or help you figure out what that anxiety map is leading to. One of them is to take a piece of paper and list all the stressful people in your life. And then, on the other side of the paper, for every person to write, "My real feelings about her, or them, or him are blank." And then, at the bottom, write, "I have a right to my feelings."

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:08Marielle Segarra?

  What is this exercise about?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I have never seen anybody do that exercise feeling more anxious at the end of it. It's kind of, there's a lot of dismay when you actually put pen to paper and you start writing out your stressors. But when you start listing out how many stressful people are in your life, and the impacts that these people are actually having, you're going to look at that list and go, "Oh, my gosh. Okay, my anxiety makes a little bit more sense to me now." So, you know, if someone comes in to me and says, you know, on a first session, "I have an anxiety disorder." I'm like, "Okay, well, let's list all of the significant people in your life, your boss, your coworkers, your family members.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  List all of the messages that these people are giving you. List all of your unacknowledged feelings about these people. Is it possible that your anxiety is actually a bunch of feelings that you have not given yourself permission to feel?"

• 16:06Marielle Segarra?

  Does it help, then, to say, "Okay, well, this is what I'm gonna do? Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see my, my family member less, or I'm gonna tell them I don't want to talk about dieting with them," or whatever?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  So, what you're talking about is boundaries, which are incredibly useful and incredibly powerful, and incredibly difficult and scary and cumbersome to have to set, and then to have to hold. So, I tell people, "Don't even worry about what this means as far as what you're going to do. Let's separate it into smaller components." Because if I acknowledge that my mom's comments about my weight are stressing me out, now I feel like I have to do something about it. Now I'm going to go back into that state of freezing stuckness again. So let's just start with, what's the reality of these relationships? Then, in a perfect world, what would be your decision? And then, as

• 17:05Speaker 02

  the next step, it's, okay, well, what's realistic? What are you realistically willing and able to do boundary-wise? Because it might not be realistic, from a medical perspective, or from a financial perspective, to set as hard of a boundary as you may want. And that's fine, because we can always find something.

• 17:25Marielle Segarra?

  Have you noticed that your client's anxiety has diminished significantly, once they make decisions that are more authentic to them?

• 17:35Speaker 02

  It kind of gets worse before it gets better. So I would say, yes, people's anxiety does get better, but it does create some other problems that are important to work through, too. Often, anxiety is displaced grief, because I don't want to grieve. There's a large degree to which we, you know, we amplify our symptoms by not acknowledging what's true for us and about us, because it's unpleasant and it's painful. But the pain of acknowledging our reality is preferable to the pain that comes with trying to repress or deny.

• 18:09Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Coming back to the idea of anxiety as a signal or a check engine light, if you could almost start to see it as your old friend, like, you know, it's like, I have certain things in my body that when I feel them, I'm like, all right, what's this about? Is there somebody around me that's behaving in a certain way that's reminding me of something from the past? Or is there like, am I not being fully honest with this person or something? And it's like a literal physical pain, but it's like an indication to me now. I'm not so afraid of it.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Right. And we're taught to fear our physiology. If you think of our language, right? We fight depression and we battle the scale, and we're being attacked by our anxiety. Now, again, I'm not saying that the symptoms are pleasant, or that you have to enjoy them. I am saying it helps to start with the assumption that your brain is on your side.

• 19:14Marielle Segarra?

  I'm so glad that you wrote this chapter and this book because it does feel like it's just called a disorder or it's like the word pathological is used. And it's like, wait, there is a clear tie to something.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yes. Anxiety is a superpower. I hate it and it's awful. But imagine not having it. Imagine the state of our lives and our relationships if we didn't have that little feeling inside us going, uh-uh, don't go there. Don't do that. So it's awful, but we need it.

• 19:44Marielle Segarra?

  Well, thank you so much. This has been really, really helpful, Britt.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  I'm so glad.

• 19:49Marielle Segarra?

  All right, it's time for a recap. If you find yourself in an anxiety spiral and you want to turn the dial down, try naming the resources available to you that make you feel safe. Those can be people, places, things. Maybe it's your favorite TV show or a cup of tea or that white noise machine or those microwaveable slippers. Warm toes make everything feel better. Also, use your senses to ground yourself. Rub an ice cube on your forehead or suck on something sour. Name five things you can see or smell. You can also practice anxiety fire drills with a loved one so they know exactly how to talk you down in the moment. That means calling or texting them beforehand and saying, hey, this is a fire drill. And that'll also train you to reach out

• 20:34Marielle Segarra?

  even when you want to retreat. Once you have a plan for the next time you're feeling like this, you can start to decode what your anxiety is telling you. List the people in your life and how they make you feel. Dig for any other feelings you might not be paying attention to. Anxiety can be really scary and painful, but these techniques can help.

• 20:56Marielle Segarra?

  For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one on how to process grief and another on what to do at work when you're struggling with your mental health. You can find those at npr.org/lifekit. And if you love Life Kit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/lifekitnewsletter.

• 21:17Marielle Segarra?

  This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Greb. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Claire Marie Schneider, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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