Dr. Craig Goodman - Torah & Psychology: Tools to Overcome Anxiety

Shalom my name is Dr Craig Goodman I'm a clinical psychologist and a neurobiologist I'm here today at heab brute to talk to you about an issue of anxiety anxiety is a very widespread phenomenon that's occurring to more and more people and I've talked about this several times in the past but why is it so important because anxiety is really centered at a negative perception that we all have anxiety is something that's internal and everyone experiences anxiety but what about when it becomes extreme then we enter what's called a panic attack now what's a panic panic attack or entering into a state of anxiety usually this occurs when we're under a threat or there's a danger in our environment um in our surroundings what this does is this engages our nervous system and our brain to work overtime to work faster to release an incredible rate uh adrenaline and cortisone which will make our hearts pump faster we'll breathe faster so that we'll get more blood flow and more oxygen to the brain so that we can think and respond in a faster more optimal way that's what we call anxiety that's an anxiety reaction now every person programmed into them has what we call the two FS fight or flight now if I find there's a danger in my my vicinity and I feel that I can fight and overcome it this doesn't necessarily mean fighting physically but trying to engage it let's for example if there was a fire then I go to try and put out the fire with water or there was uh there was somebody in in danger and I pulled them from danger um flight is where I find that the uh object of danger is too uh powerful or too threatening or something that I cannot overcome so I tried to escape it in the same note if the fire was a small fire I could probably put it out if it was a large fire I would probably have to try and Evacuate the premises hit the smoke alarm the fire alarm and wait for the fire department to arrive now what happens is after these states of anxiety occur in us we feel I mean during that time all these negative symptoms oftentimes people misinterpret them as being a heart problem or or chest pains or whatever and they'll run needlessly to a emergency room and I I I'm not sure of the exact statistic I'm sure it's changing daily but uh a very high percentage of cases that come every day to the uh eer room everywhere are by and large anxiety uh uh disorders or panic attacks or people who are you know having a fullblown anxiety attack so what can we do to get over this to avoid it to learn how to manage our stress and to become stronger individuals and more uh apt to not respond in such a negative way and there's basically three stages now before we're going to get into we don't have the in terms of our scope of time today into how to completely get over harot um anxiety um but uh we can start with some preliminary tools that you can use in order to manage these feelings and these experiences now as we said for once someone gets into a state of anxiety or panic in light of some danger or threat during that time they're in you know they're in full uh uh full action you know their whole body is is is moving and thinking and working very at a very fast rate obviously afterwards once the danger has been eradicated or or uh controlled or you've distanced yourself from it you have a feeling of relaxation a feeling of release where afterwards the anxiety slowly subsides and your heart rate goes down to normal you start breathing normal you feel more relaxed your muscles become less tense you become uh a little more you know less h Vigilant but at the same time you feel tired because your body has put out a lot of energy that tiredness is natural in addition to that you also will feel or you should feel a sense of uh more confidence more higher self-esteem because here I've been able to distance myself and overcome this anxiety now what if I didn't overcome it and what if I got stuck and I had an anxiety attack or I'm having anxiety attack now I have to before I go further I have to give you u a word of caution many many people as we said it's a it's an Adaptive normal part of every human being anxiety States and anxiety reactions especially to very high level stress situations but it's enough that somebody had that experience once that the feelings the symptoms of the heart racing the breathing it felt so scary for them that that actual experience of being in the anxiety itself caused them later on to become uh or to develop an anxiety about the anxiety or anxiety about the anxiety attack so then they I mean it may not even be the original actual first thing that caused them to fear but it's the secondary actual reaction to that fearful situation that becomes the actual fear stimulus the thing that causes us to feel scared to feel nervous and to anticipate and this can become a full-blown disorder if we don't check ourselves and we don't work on how we can control this and overcome it and learn to manage our thoughts now we're talking about a real danger in our environment what if the danger is imagined what if the danger is just in my mind what if the fear is only within me so in a sense it may be real to me and that realness is enough to cause me to have an anxiety reaction even and it get into an anxiety state or panic attack or anxiety attack now if it's not real or it's nothing that I can tangibly overcome fight or flight then we can add another F to the mix which is not natural and that's freeze or I feel like I'm frozen or I'm stuck or I can't function or I can't think or I don't know how to react and then we really really fall into this anxiety and panic now how can we avoid these things first of all we have to know that our thoughts are powerful and they can cause us to experience all types of physiological and different bodily changes just by our thinking so it's enough if I imagine something I put myself into that situation it becomes for me a reality now if this fear that I have is there and I let it exist in my mind it has the threat of always coming and causing me to become uh full of this anxiety or to go into an anxiety state now let's just say I've gotten into this state forget about preventative how do I deal with it right now right now I'm in an anxiety attack right now I'm having a panic attack how do I handle it there three stages it's very simple the first stage I need to give myself validation and accept and identify that I'm feeling what I'm feeling most people what they do is they try to do the opposite if they're afraid or they're worried or they're scared or they have this this Panic or this anxiety what do they try to do they try to occupy their minds they try to keep themselves busy or find something to do so they won't think about that but it's there it hasn't gone anywhere it's just kind of being swept under the carpet so I can try and busy my mind and run from myself but no matter how much I run I'm stuck with myself and I'm stuck with my own thoughts I might as well try and Endeavor to create those thoughts and make them more positive ones so what I have to do is if I find myself in a state of panic or fear or could be any emotion but specifically in this regard to negative fearful emotions I need to say to myself right now take a deep breath and say right now I feel afraid right now I have a lot of anxiety or right now I'm stressed or right now I'm worried by doing that and not causing myself the need to run away from the problem run away from the feeling and feel threatened by the feeling itself I give myself the legitimacy and the permission to feel what I'm feeling because if I try to line to myself I try to trick myself it's not going to work I'm too smart for that so I have to allow myself to say right now I'm feeling this it's real I don't need to negate my own emotional experience I don't need to stop myself from feeling what I feel the second stage is that I need to say in the same vein that this is a feeling I don't need to identify with this feeling this feeling does not define me it does not make me who I am it's just simply a feeling that I'm feeling right now or I'm experiencing right now and just as that feeling is is causing me stress and it appeared suddenly or gradually it will disappear it will pass a feeling it's just a feeling and it's not permanent and it will pass what I've done is I've already taken in two stages of giving myself an ability to relax and take part of the thorn or the the part that hurts the sting out of it by lowering the danger or the threat by saying I don't need to run I don't need to worry about this feeling it's okay that I feel this it's a feeling that I'm having right now and this feeling is not who I am it's just a feeling that I'm having right now out and that brings us to the third stage the third stage what I have to do is I have to try to imagine another event or another time where I felt something different could be in a wedding could be in a vacation I was in a a beautiful beach or swimming or having a good time and I think about try to put yourself in that imagination imagine yourself there and think about how you felt then what that will do is allow you at that same moment to remember feeling something different than what you're feeling now so what that does is it says to your mind hey I'm capable of feeling other things not just this negative feeling right now and that even more so reinforces and strengthens that conviction that this is just a feeling it will pass now I want to bring uh two other uh references uh there's references in um Genesis in the first book of Torah in the first parasa and in one of those it says uh it talks about the and it says it talks about but what does this mean the sin rests or lies in the opening okay or weights in the opening meaning the negative the the Satan the negative forces the yet the evil inclination within ourselves is always there waiting in the wings waiting to put us down or get us down or find some little weakness within our elves once that weakness is revealed and is you know basically uh utilized by my yet I can get into this state of panic and this anxiety very easily but what does Rashi say about it the translation if you want you can overcome it meaning that any kind of feeling any kind of thought any kind of negative experience that you experience you have the ability to overcome it Hashem has given us this power this ability we don't need to continue to be afraid of our own thoughts we need to be aware we need to take care in what we think we need to be careful in what we make a part of of our reality what thoughts invade or come into our internal existence and our emotional states and affect us positively or negatively now what um there's another reference I'd like to give and that's from the Ram rim lato who wrote uh probably the greatest book on mus um which is called in this book he has a uh chapter on uh zut which means uh roughly translated uh being careful or taking care or um avoiding uh danger or negative things caution let's say in this he he has a I mean everything in the book is amazing but there's a specific uh thing that he discusses in this chapter that he says that a person in order to get control of his thoughts and his yet he must be aware of them he must pay great attention to them he must use his great and strong intelligence and high intelligence to identify those negative thoughts and weed them out and eradicate them and not to give sleep or Slumber to his eyes to be aware of himself and what kinds of thoughts he allows into his mind what thoughts he allows to exist and to take on meaning for him if I realize and I find that my yet is just trying to throw me off and giving me negative thoughts I need to say get out of here forget it I don't want them I'm not giving these thoughts any Credence any validity or the negative feelings as we said that are caused from these negative thoughts but in addition to that I also want to find a way that I can feel that no matter what I experience I have the control and the ability to change that inner experience or thought sometimes it's not a a immediate sometimes it's a process but I have the ability to do so so when we want to try to control these thoughts these negative thoughts we have to recognize that we're always going to have negative thoughts the yet the negative inclination or the evil inclination is in all of us so our yet our negative side is always going to try and throw these negative thoughts at us and Shake us up we always have to be on guard we always have to be ready for them and on our Mark at any moment to get rid of those negative thoughts and really believe and feel good about ourselves not to give room for these negative feelings to exist in us may you all have great success in overcoming all your fears and may you only have positive and holy happy thoughts thank you and shalom