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Kreatures Of Habit Podcast
Amanda Armstrong on Reframing Depression & Anxiety: How To Regulate & Rewire the Nervous System
00:58:42
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- [00:00]
A
Anxiety or activation depression, which is shutdown, you get overwhelmed to the point of shutdown. Look, anxiety is not a disorder. If you are under sleeping, undernourished, overstressed, you don't have good social connections, you are supposed to feel unsafe. This activation and shutdown of our, of our autonomic nervous system, of this mind body system is, it's adaptive, it's protective, it's a survival mode. Your symptoms aren't here to piss you off. Your symptoms aren't here to annoy you. They're here to communicate something to you that it's too much, too fast, too soon, too often.
- [00:39]
B
I'm Michael Chernow and this is the Creatures of Habit podcast. Our habits will make us or break us. It's just that simple. I've lived on both sides of the tracks and have learned that the decisions we make on a consistent basis truly define who we are as human beings. On this show, I will be interviewing some of the most inspiring, motivating and high performing humans I've encountered to share their daily habits, routines and rituals that help them stay on top of their game and ultimately happy. So sit back, relax and pay attention because what you hear over the next 30 to 45 minutes could potentially change your life. Let's go. What up, y'all? Welcome back to the Creatures of Habit podcast. Today I have a guest on who I've not met for the first time. Actually, I met Amanda Armstrong on a Creatures of Habit community meeting where Lindsay, Lindsay Locke, who is the director of brand for Creatures of Habit, brought Amanda in to speak with some of the people in the creatures that have a community about regulating the central nervous system. Regulating the central nervous system. Amanda is a neuroscience and trauma informed anxiety and depression mental health coach. She is an author, she is a podcaster, she is a entrepreneur. And her number one focus is, is to try and help people live easier lives through understanding their central nervous system. She wrote a book about the vagus nerve. And you know, it's sometimes it's hard to believe that the external things in our lives are not the only thing impacting how we feel. Because a lot of the times the things that happen outside of our own two ears really do influence and impact how we feel. However, if your nervous system, your central nervous system, some call it the cns, is in constant overdrive. All those things that happen externally are going to be polarized and they are never going to, it is never, you're never going to feel regulated because you don't take the time to appreciate what's actually going on inside your body. And one thing that I think we'll learn today, which I'm really, really excited about, is how to actually regulate and potentially calibrate your central nervous system so that you're. You're more able to deal with the things that happen externally that we don't have control over. We have. We have control over very little things in our. Very little things in our lives. Honestly, I think, you know, most of the things that happen in life are out of our control. And so when you're able to harness the things that you can control, which I'm hoping and I'm sure we're going to learn about today, life doesn't have to feel so daunting. Anxiety and depression are real in many people's lives, especially today in the world that we live in. So, Amanda, welcome to the show.
- [03:53]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
- [03:55]
B
I want to kick off by just hearing a little bit about your background and your expertise and how you ended up in this position.
- [04:04]
A
Yeah. So I have a master's in kinesiology, emphasis exercise psych. So essentially, the university I went to at, as far as we know, had the only movement based intervention program for students with depression. And that's what I wanted to study. I had a sister who was struggling heavily with depression at the time. Um, I'm the oldest sister. I was like, maybe I can figure this out. Maybe I can crack the code, figure out how to help her better. Um, I also was working as a personal trainer. I was a college athlete. And so that seemed like a natural college job for me. And I had one of the students who I was training, and I'd been working with him, I don't know, probably about six months. And he came back from winter break and we're walking our warmup laps, and he said, I have something to tell you. And I was like, what's up? And he said, you helped me get off antidepressants. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, I have been struggling a lot in life. I was struggling a lot in school. And I had heard that exercise helps with depression. I don't know how to exercise, so. So that was part of why I hired you. And I went home and just sobbed, sobbed and sobbed and sobbed because I knew that my plan, my undergrad was international relations. I wanted to work in the nonprofit world. I wanted to help people that way. I've always had a drive to help people, and I knew that that wasn't the path anymore. And I called my dad. And I said how can I walk away from this group of people who are suffering? But there's this other group of people that I have. There's a program at my university. I can stay, I can go to grad school, I can study this, I can learn more about this. Like here's a real tangible human in my life and this made a difference and I want to understand why it made a difference. And so I, I stayed. I had a smart dad who said look, there's always going to be people in the world to help if this is what feels just really big on your soul right now, like go, go do it. This is going to be the easiest time to, to go back and stay in school. So that's what I did. I studied the bidirectional relationship between movement, social support and depression mental health. After that I got a job at Google headquarters in their corporate wellness space. And so I operated a lot as a personal trainer there. And it was cool because my manager, if you will, knew my background. So anytime a Google employee disclosed hey, I want to work with a trainer for stress management or for anxiety or for depression, that became a big part of my client load. They also have on site therapists at Google. And so I was able to do some really cool pilot studies that again merged this world of mental health and physical health. And my personal story that got me here. I've probably had what would have been labeled as anxiety since I was a teenager. My mom got really sick when I was 14. She had a brain tumor again, oldest of four kids. I operated through this lens of it's my job to hold my family together. I can distinctly remember being downstairs with my younger sisters feeling emotions show up, running upstairs, crying on the bathroom floor, putting my makeup back on, coming back down and just moving through. So there was a lot of just that's too much, that's too much for a 14 year old to really handle. And what that. The pattern that set up for me is something that I now label as kind of productivity based self worth. It was a pattern of over functioning. I in grad school at one point was taking 21 units. I was president of the Habitat for Humanity club and was working two jobs. I probably chronically underslept by many, many hours for over a decade. I was a very competitive athlete for a very, very long time and just didn't know how to turn my. At one point I went to the doctor, I was falling asleep in class and I was having a really hard time. My thesis was due, there was a deadline And I could not write it. Could not write it. And I was like, people are talking about Adderall. Maybe I have adhd. I'm gonna go talk to a doctor. So I went in to a doctor and I was like, hey, this, these are my symptoms. I've got this deadline. Help me understand what's happening. Like, what could be wrong with me. I left five minutes later with a prescription. No explanation as to what's going on. Nobody asked, are you overstressed? Are you under sleeping? Are you? And to be fair, Adderall did the job that it needed to do. It helped me focus, it allowed me to write my master's thesis. You know, I was able to graduate. I had that. But what it did was it made possible a continuation of the chronic over functioning. And then fast forward a year later, I go to meet with a psychiatrist. And he, I think it was like a 15 question questionnaire. I like circled things. He's like, yep, ADHD. Here's a prescription for Adderall. I come back a month later. Cause that's what they do. They want to check, make sure it's working. And I was like, yeah, I'm just using it as needed. I'm lucky. I have a job that keeps me on my feet. I only need it when I really need to sit down and focus. And I said, he's like, well, how many, how many did you take this month? And I was like, maybe six, maybe six days. He's like, well, you can take this medication up to two times a day. So here's a prescription for the next month of 60 pills. I had just told this man that you took six, that I took six. And I walked out with a prescription for 60 Adderall. And that was the day I was like, absolutely not, Absolutely not. The system is broken, it's fragmented. And that was still probably a year or so. So meanwhile, and my book has a whole section where I kind of unpack me questioning the diagnosis of adhd, of like, was it chronic survival mode? Because guess what? When you are. And this is the premise that we approach anxiety and depression in my practice, this is a premise that I go into detail in our programs and on my podcast is, look, anxiety or activation depression, which is shutdown, you get overwhelmed to the point of shutdown. Look, anxiety is not a disorder. If you are under sleeping, undernourished, overstressed, you don't have good social connections, you are supposed to feel unsafe. This activation and shutdown of our autonomic nervous system, of this mind body system, is it's adaptive, it's protective, it's a survival mode. Your symptoms aren't here to piss you off. Your symptoms aren't here to annoy you. They're here to communicate something to you that it's too much, too fast, too soon, too often. And so one of the things that I love so deeply about taking a nervous system approach to anxiety or depression, the thing that made the difference in my healing journey was understanding the role of the nervous system in my symptoms and understanding the role of the way that I was living my life and its impact on my nervous system and its creation of my symptoms. And what I think is so profound about that is two things happen for our clients when they really understand their symptoms through this mind body lens is number one, the story of brokenness disappears. Because what I say often is the current state of your nervous system, whether that's activated, what we label as anxiety or depressed, what we label as shutdown or shutdown, which we label as depression. The current state of your nervous system equals your past lived experiences plus your current life circumstances every single time. And what we do is with our clients is we go through and we help them assess. When we talk about your past lived experiences, that could be an injury that didn't heal well, that's still causing some stress load on your nervous system, that could be past trauma that hasn't been processed or resolved, that could be beliefs and patterns that were established that are creating chronic stress in your system. And then we look at current life circumstances. Current life circumstances can be your environment, the quality of your relationships. It's also your habits. Right? And that's what we, that's what you specialize here in your podcast. Look, if you're not living well, you can't expect to feel well. And so from a really compassionate, nonjudgmental place, we help people kind of do this assessment. And what happens every single time if someone looks at this and goes, oh, this feels heavy because it is. Not because I suck, not because I'm broken, not because I was born this way. This feels heavy because it is. And what's beautiful about going through this, what we call like a whole human, whole life assessment, is it now creates choice points for them. You don't have to go sit and talk therapy and talk about your childhood trauma for the next eight years. If that's not moving the needle in your healing, why don't we try taking on the fact that you're chronically under rested or over caffeinated, that you're in a really toxic relationship or work environment. And so one thing that I share often is this approach is a non pathologizing look at anxiety or depression. Um, and when I kind of coming back to the original question you asked, it's like kind of my background, My story was I was never gonna get better. I was never going to stop over functioning and that. Over functioning what? You know, that anxiety, it did, it came crashing down into a season of depression after actually a really bad breakup that was like the stress load that just wrecked my system. And I remember I was in Utah with my sister. She was trying on wedding dresses. I fell asleep in the chair the moment she came out in the dress that she chose, the dress that she was gonna pick to wear. I'm her big sister and I was so checked out. I was so disconnected. I remember sitting at the airport with my mom and I looked at her, tears in my eyes, and I said, I know I'm miserable to be around right now, and I want you to know I'm trying so hard. Like what you're seeing is me trying so hard. And that was, that was my depression. That was the season where my system was overwhelmed to the point of shutdown because I ignored my symptoms. I wasn't willing to change the way that I was living my daily life. And so it strong armed me into it. Meds only got me so far. Talk therapy only got me so far. It felt helpful to chat through it, but I got to a point where it's like, okay, I know why, but I need to know the what, like what do I do? And nowhere in therapy, doctor, psychiatrist, did anybody ask me about basic wellness.
- [15:12]
B
Thank you for that. Yeah, I. Because, I mean, I couldn't agree more. And I think for the people listening, if we could just clearly define in a concise way, like a lot of people hear anxiety and depression and kind of bucket them together. And from my experience, they're very, very different. Right. Anxiety is really stress about what's to come or what's happening right now. And depression is, like you said, kind of shut down from what the past has. Has what's happened in the past. Can you, in a more sort of articulate way, just sort of define what depression is first and then anxiety?
- [15:53]
A
I'm actually going to do it in the reverse and share kind of an analogy because I actually perceive anxiety and depression. Not necessarily they are distinctly different in their experience, but the way that we look at them and the way that we approach them is that they're actually a spectrum of survival mode. And so the, the visual I always have people call to mind is I want you to imagine a ladder, just a straight ladder. And on that ladder are three different color blocks. At the top is a green color block and this represents your green zone or your regulated state. That's when you're calm, you're in control, your logical brain is online. In the middle of this ladder is your yellow zone. This is a state of activation where anxiety, anger, lives. Then we have at the bottom of that ladder is a red color block and, and that represents a shutdown state where dissociation, disconnection, numbness, depression, live. So I want you to imagine that you are standing at the top of that ladder and you're holding a bucket. That bucket represents your nervous system's carrying capacity. Now we all understand that a bucket can only get so full before it either overflows or gets too heavy to pick up. What fills this bucket is stressors from your life, your past lived experience, your current life circumstances, your lifestyle habits, your health. When the stress load on your nervous system is light or manageable, you can stay at the top of that nervous system ladder no problem. Because the weight of your bucket doesn't exceed your coping skills, doesn't exceed your capacity. But as life puts more and more stressors into your bucket, it pushes you further and further down that nervous system ladder. Our autonomic nervous system is always going to default to your sympathetic state first, which is that activated, mobilized state, survival wise. If you think evolutionary a threat comes, you want to first probably try to avoid it. So that's your flee response. And if you can avoid it, you're going to turn and face it, you're going to fight it. And we all have different kind of default survival responses that we turn to based on our past lived experience, what's worked in the past for us, but on a just a physiological, biological level, as that bucket gets heavier and heavier, it pushes you further, further down the nervous system ladder. So anxiety is physiology that's mobilized to flee. So you have patterns of avoidance or to fight to face stressors. And your physiology changes. Here you've got adrenaline and cortisol going through your system. Your muscle tone changes tension, your heart rate changes, your respiration changes, your pupils dilate, you get really tunnel visioned. Your peripheral vision actually when you're in the sympathet state kind of goes offline too, which all of that translates to being very mentally tunnel visioned, focused, but not in the same way that you would be when you're like in flow. It's a different kind of focus. It's a fixated focus. So let's say you're in that yellow zone and stressors keep coming. Your stress load either increases or it just lasts too long, and it starts to push you further and further down the nervous system ladder into a shutdown state, into a place of immobilization that is a nervous system that is overwhelmed to the point of shutdown from taking on too much or carrying too much for too long. And when people can kind of understand this experience, because for a lot of people, it's not isolated anxiety or isolated depression. When people hear this, it feels really validating for their experience of, oh, that makes sense. Why I have four or five days or four or five weeks where I'm like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And then I crash. Or why I was anxious, anxious, anxious for a decade and then I crashed. Because being in this anxious or activated state, it's metabolically demanding.
- [19:54]
B
But I just got a question there, and I'm curious. So what I'm hearing is anxiety is the gateway to depression. The longer you're in fight or flight, the heavier it gets. The more you add to that bucket, the greater a chance you are going to hit the bottom of that ladder and completely detach from life.
- [20:19]
A
Basically, yeah. I would say in my experience, sometimes an exception to that is, or common exception to that is especially individuals who had really adverse childhood experiences or really unpredictable home environments, physically, emotionally, any of it. Their system learned really early on. It's, you can't flee. You can't flee because you're dependent. You can't fight because you're smaller than the people around you or the chaos around you. And so one of the things that we see is there is sometimes kind of a tendency to almost skip or rush through anxiety. For people who say, I've been depressed for as long as I can remember. Oftentimes that ties to early childhood experiences of kind of helplessness, hopelessness, where the only option you had, you stayed the safest. The most advantageous survival response was to freeze or to shut down, was to kind of disconnect from your reality because it was so overwhelming.
- [21:28]
B
Luckily, for whatever reason, I mean, I've struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. I'm one of those people that have had a really unsafe, pretty chaotic, scary childhood, lots of trauma. But I have, not that I can recall, really suffered from depression. Now, at the end of my using and drinking, you know, addiction days, I certainly wanted to kill myself. So I don't know if I was in A depressive state or just like an absolute. Like I was an addict, so it was, you know. But I have experience with people that are suffering from depression or have suffered from depression. And some, you know, one thing that I find pretty common across the board because I work with a lot of people as well. In the world of recovery, it's hard to motivate people out of depression because in many cases, they don't actually believe that they're depressed. They don't know, they're not sure what it is, but they know that they're not motivated and they don't want to do anything. However, they will deny the fact that they are actually depressed. And so for someone who is depressed, like, what could be a first step in what you've seen to be successful of stepping out of that depressive state?
- [22:47]
A
Genuine, safe human connection, finding people and places where you can be safe, be seen, be vulnerable. Human connection, I think, is the number one mitigator to being in that shutdown state because. And I think also I use the terms anxiety and depression because it's the terms that the people know, people resonate with. What's really, really fun to see is when people come into our program, a lot of times they let go those labels. And I think when people can understand their physiology enough, it's not, oh, I'm, I'm anxious, it's, oh, I'm really activated right now. Well, cool. There are tangible tools. There are ways to leverage and work with your physiology in an activated state. And those are things that we teach clients all the time. Similarly, with depression, depression is a heavy label. It's a loaded label. And so, yeah, there's. That's not something someone's gonna be like, I'm depressed. Because then you're put on. You're put on a watch list, like, your friends are worried about you. Hey, low motivation. It seems like your system's kind of shut down right now. That is considerably more, I think, approachable, accessible language for people to say yes to. Yeah, you're right. I'm kind of feeling disconnected right now. I'm feeling shut down right now. I have really low motivation. Well, the other thing that's. That's awesome about when you can understand your physiology enough to work with it. Motivation has many variables, right? We can talk about dopamine. So if you are struggling with motivation, I think, number one, you gotta find your people. You gotta find your people.
- [24:25]
B
What if that's not possible?
- [24:27]
A
I mean, you gotta go inward. If you don't have people, I would say if you can't find people in real life? Can you find people virtually? I think there are many, many pros and cons to the virtual world, but I think most people can find someone who been there, done that. Yeah, man, I get it. Even if you're not directly engaging, can you find spaces where conversations are happening that resonate with you? Podcasts, shows like this that are having conversations that give you. One of the things that I hear most often from people who've listened to my podcast is everything you're explaining just makes sense. Like, for the first time in my life, I think actually I might be able to heal. There might be a way forward. Why did nobody explain it to me this way before? And so that I think if you can find that somewhere, find that sense of being seen understood somewhere, if you can find it in person, the best. If not, find that space elsewhere. And if you can't, then you've got to understand how your mind body system works enough to work with it. So if you're low, what we need to understand is that being shut down, being depressed, it has two evolutionary purposes. It is designed to disconnect you so that you don't have to feel further harm, emotional or physical. It's also designed to immobilize you to conserve energy. Because we get into this shutdown state when our biological and psychological system has decided the threat is inescapable. Disconnect, immobilize, shut down, conserve energy. Because maybe inescapable be possible in the future. Your system is overwhelmed. It's hopeless. There's a lot of apathy. What's the point? I don't matter. It doesn't matter. And so finding gentle ways to mobilize and connect, that mobilization can come through movement. It's one of the best ways. It can come through breath work. I do a lot of vision therapy drills because your visual system and your respiratory system are two of the most effective levers you can pull to change your autonomic nervous system state. So if you're feeling shut down, whether you resonate with depression or disconnection, what can you do to mobilize? Bring some mobilization to your life?
- [27:02]
B
Go out for a walk.
- [27:03]
A
Go out for a walk. Walking is one of the best things that we can do. It is one of the things that processes a lot of stored stress in our body. It puts us outside. It oftentimes puts us in eye contact or connection with other people. Go for a walk. Go for a walk.
- [27:20]
B
Would you say that that could very well be the number one most powerful thing for People that are in a.
- [27:26]
A
Low depressive state is walking consistently. Yeah. Yep. Cause it's gentle, realistic mobilization and it changes your environment. So it takes you from sitting on the couch, sitting in your bed, moping, feeling, feeling hopeless and it just puts you outside. And there are a number of amazing things that happen from being outside too, right? There's the sunlight, there's connection to nature. What you're doing, remember we talked about the visual system? What you're doing is you're naturally laterally scanning your environment, you're naturally engaging your periphery, peripheral vision, all of those are micro safety cues to your nervous system.
- [28:04]
C
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- [29:30]
B
Obviously we're on the Creatures that have a podcast. I believe in habits and I kind of think about life in a 24 hour period of time. Right? You only get to actually live now, right? Like what's happened yesterday is history. What's gonna happen tomorrow is a mystery. Like right now is kind of what you get, you know what I mean? And so I have, I guess I was so lucky early on in my Sort of like coming out of the darkness and into the light to be, to be taught that what we do in the beginning of our day is paramount to how we're going to live the rest of our life. Also known as the next, whatever it is, 15 hours, right. Because that's what we get. So morning routine is so important for me now. It's not every single day that I nail it. Right. But when I do, which is most of the time, my days, also known as my life, is so much better. And is there a morning routine that you have that either you do or that you prescribe to the people that you work with that come into the practice to help them sort of own and win their mornings so that the rest of their day can be a little bit brighter?
- [30:54]
A
Yeah. One of the things that we say a lot is actually your morning routine starts the night before because your morning routine starts with the quantity and the quality of rest that you got. Sleep is one of the number one habits, quantity and quality, that dictate almost every other health, psychological and physiological marker in our life. And so that's where usually where we start is we say, okay, what's your bookend? How are you going to end your day to be more ready for the next day? And then in regards to my personal morning routine, I am just ending first trimester of my pregnancy, so we threw any and all to the wind as I just survived my mornings and nausea and all of that. But even through that I have some non negotiables. They don't always happen in order, but by the first hour to hour and a half of my morning. I'm also a mom to two young kids, so when they wake up sometimes I'm thrown to the wolves and I jump into motherhood quickly. My day goes better when I can start it before being reactive to my children. And what it always consists of is number one, a glass of water. So simple. But yeah, there you go. But you're waking up and I'm saying, hey body, I see a needle and I'm going to meet that pretty quickly. A protein emphasized breakfast. Blood sugar is highly correlated with your ability to focus with your mental health, physical health outcomes, all of it. And then morning sunlight and morning sunlight usually also I layer in. I sit on my porch typically when weather allows. I'll also just eat my breakfast out there. I like to. Again, I'm a busy mom. I'm a business owner. I got to do as many things at once, often as possible. So when I can, I sit out on my porch Eating my breakfast. I'm outside getting morning sunlight. And I also do some kind of breathwork and vision drills. And so what my breath work often looks like I'm actually wearing. I have a mala bracelet. I hand make and ship one of these to every single one of our members and clients.
- [33:01]
B
I want one.
- [33:02]
A
I brought one for you. Oh, yeah, I brought one for you. And what I love about this is I was somebody who really struggled with breathwork and meditation because I was so activated. I was like, yeah, the inner Amanda. No. Didn't understand the science behind it, the purpose behind it, and just struggled with stillness. And so what I love about this is you just take one breath per bead. Inhale, exhale, pull to the next, pull to the next. And I know it's two to three minutes, depending on how slowly I'm breathing, and I can check that off for the day.
- [33:30]
B
I love that.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah, it's a tangible tool. And one thing that all of our or I hear often from our members and our clients is what a vital tool it is for them too, because it's a visual cue. They see it, and they're like, oh, yeah, breathe. Even if they're not doing a full breath practice. I'm all for accessible entry points into healing and habits that help you heal. So usually I'll sit on my porch, I'll do one round of my malibress and then some vision therapy drills. So that is usually what I call color spotting. So if I were to ask you pick a color, any color.
- [34:06]
B
Blue.
- [34:06]
A
Blue. Okay. That's your color from now on for color spotting. What I love about this is this is a tool that can work really well when you're activated or when you're shut down. A lot of the breathwork tools or somatic practices, some work better when you're in an activated state, some work better when you're in a shutdown state. But this vision drill works in both because, again, when we're activated, we need to bring our peripheral vision back online. We need to send some resourcing cues to our body, some orienting cues. When we're shut down, we're disconnected. We need to connect to our environment. So all color spotting is, is I want you to slowly scan the room and just take note of anything you see that's blue, and you're slowly scanning, looking off into the distance as far as you can. And that's it. That's the practice. But what's happening is a. It's a cognitive distraction. So if your brain is spiraling or you're feeling really hopeless. It's a cognitive distraction. Physiologically, what's happening is you're visually orienting, you're engaging in some distance viewing. We spend so much of our daily life right now with screens or computers, with our eyes doing something called convergence. That's a low level stress signal to our brain, to our nervous system, opening up our vision field. We're seeing what's around us. There's no tigers. We're safe. And you can do it almost anywhere without being noticed.
- [35:40]
B
My gosh, I love those tools.
- [35:42]
A
And that's what my practice offers people that they feel is really distinctly different than what they've gotten in traditional talk therapy. Talk therapy, again, saves lives, is needed. It's never a this or, it's a both. And what our practice does is it helps people understand their physiology and it builds out their toolkit of, hey, I'm in a moment, I need to either dial it up or dial it down to show up in this moment in a way that I want to. What can I do? And unless you are a mental health practitioner who also understands physiology, the physiology that drives the symptoms that most of your clients are coming for you to see, you don't know what to tell them. You don't know about vision therapy drills or breathwork drills or vagal toning exercises. And that's where my training is just different. Being in coming from a movement background, coming from a kinesiology and a physiology focused place. And so to kind of summarize my morning routine, the boxes I check, as good of a night's sleep as I can get, glass of water, protein focused breakfast, and then sunshine layered with some breath and a vision drill. And that sounds like a lot. I mean, we're truly talking by the time breakfast is plated, we're talking five minutes. I sit on my porch for five minutes, and in five minutes I'm eating and I'm communicating to my nervous system. You're safe, be grounded, show up intentionally in the way that you run your business today, in the way that you show up as a wife today, in the way that you parent today. And I can't think of anything more important to me than those things in.
- [37:27]
B
Breathwork, in the breath work, are you just slow inhale, slow exhale? Is that kind of what you're doing in the mornings?
- [37:36]
A
Typically, yeah.
- [37:37]
B
Simple breathing?
- [37:39]
A
Yeah, it just diaphragmatic breathing. So what people don't realize is most of us are walking around with dysfunctional breathing. Most of us have shorter, shallow breath patterns. And when you have short Shallow chest breaths. That's not. Every deep breath you take stimulates and activates your vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve is your longest of your cranial nerves and it about 80% of it contributes to your parasympathetic nervous system. That's your I'm regulated, I'm safe. That's the nervous system state you want to live your life in as much as possible. And when you, if you watch a baby breathe, their belly goes up and down, they diaphragmatic breathe. We all came into this world barring a baby with dysfunctional breathing patterns for whatever reason. Diaphragmatic breathing. But because of early stress or adult stress, stressful states change the way that we breathe. So now every breath we take is contributing to a stress signal to our body versus a little rep of activating your vagus nerve, which says, hey, we're cool, we're safe, we're here. And so the majority of the early breath work that I did and I do with clients is just teaching people how to breathe well and trying to get them to as often as possible throughout their day. Oh, yeah, I'm here, or oh, I'm holding my breath is really common. I notice I'm holding my breath. Just take a few deep breaths and over time you can retrain that to be your normal, natural everyday breathing. So that's what I do. That's my default. The mornings that are different is if I do wake up and I'm feeling fatigued and I'm feeling, I'm waking up exhausted and my day calls for more of me than that. I will do some activating breath work. So you can use breath to dial up or dial down. Same thing. We all have hit that 2pm slump where we wanna reach for another cup of coffee, we wanna take a nap, we get on our phone instead of finishing the task at hand. You can caffeinate and it might impact your quality of sleep later. Or you can do 60 seconds of activating breathwork.
- [39:49]
B
What is it?
- [39:51]
A
So the one that I do, it's just simple. I call it double breathing. It's a double inhale in your nose, double exhale at your mouth. So it's.
- [39:59]
B
Just like that?
- [40:00]
A
Yep. Two layers in, two layers out, 30 so seconds of that. I'm a little sweaty, I'm a little buzzy, and if you need to simplify it, quick in, quick out, that's going to judge your system. Now if you're anxious and you do that, that could give you a panic attack. So this is why it's important to Be able to understand what tools are appropriate given where you find yourself on that nervous system.
- [40:26]
B
What's a technique of breath work that can sort of bring you down?
- [40:33]
A
Diaphragmatic breathing or extended exhale breathing. So with every breath you take, when you inhale, your heart rate speeds up just a little bit. It activates. And when you exhale, your heart rate slows down just a little bit. So an extended exhale breath is what it sounds. Your exhale is just a little longer than your inhale. Your heart rate slows down a little longer than it speeds up. That communicates safety, and it turns on your body's relaxation response. So if your inhale is four, try to exhale for six. I will give an asterisk to that. If you're on the verge of a panic attack and you try to do an extended exhale breath, when your body's really activated, if you try to strong arm it into calming down, it's gonna flip you the bird. It's gonna be like, you don't get it, There's a tiger. You're not listening. So we're gonna double down. And so when it comes to regulating your nervous system reactively in the moment, one thing that we often say is you need to meet your nervous system where it is. It's why if you take somebody who is really shut down and you tell them, like, go for a run, too much mobilization, too much, too soon, too fast, it's going to reinforce their system's need to stay shut down in a lot of cases. Similarly, if you're on the brink of a panic attack, you're really, really activated. For most people, if you try to take a really calming, deep breath, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. Your system's going to double down. One of the.
- [42:04]
B
So what do you do, though, if you're. If you're on the verge of a panic attack?
- [42:07]
A
So sometimes you got to write it out. If you're too far gone. Sometimes it's not a matter of stopping the panic attack. It's a matter of getting to the other side of it and then repairing, helping your system. And usually after a panic attack, you collapse, you drop to the bottom of that nervous system ladder, you disconnect, you shut down. Actually allowing yourself to be a little immobilized, a little disconnected can be helpful. Remember, it's not that we never want to be in that yellow zone or that red zone. It's that we want to have the skills and the tools and the awareness to navigate that nervous system ladder with agency and know what brings us back into that green zone of regulation. So I believe it or not, was actually recording my very first podcast. I was going to try to film and record and my husband works for Google, is in the YouTube space. He was all about filming. And I was just like this. It feels like too much. I got halfway through my camera, fell off the tripod. I like, I freaked, I panicked. It was too much pressure. It was too much. I was putting most pressure on myself. I'm in the basement alone. Like it's weeks before this podcast has to go live. But I feel myself panicking. My heart rate starts to speed up, my chest gets tight. I just get into a ball and my breathing starts to speed up. I'm starting to hyperventilate. So what this looked like for me was I actually, I met the unintentional hyperventilation with intentional hyperventilation. So I'm unintentionally breathing quick. So I'm just, I'm just trying to switch gears and I meet myself in this and I let myself stay there for a minute and then it's. I get up and I start to just wiggle my knees back and forth. I'm allowing my body to kind of discharge. It has a lot of activated energy. Right now, your activation stress in your body either gets processed, it gets metabolized or it gets stored. So when you're feeling really, really stressed and you like force yourself to continue to sit at a desk for eight hours a day, and then you sit in your car and then you sit at home at the dinner table, and then you sit on your couch and you watch tv, all of that excess energy is storing in your system. We need a way to outlet. So for how I made it kind of from brink of panic to totally reset was met myself in that activation with some fast breath and then slowly brought it down. I allowed myself to get up and pace and shake and move. And then I called in my husband who is a co regulating force for me. And so he just, he gave me a hug and said, let's go for a walk. Cause he knows. And then he also. So you have a muscle that runs from the back of your ear down to your collarbone. It's called your sternocleomastoid muscle, but it's a place where your vagus nerve innervates pretty close to the surface. And so if you just kind of rub your neck here, give it a little massage, it activates your vagus nerve right here. Yeah, this kind of chunky muscle that runs down the side of your neck here. Yeah. And my husband knows that that's a really effective regulator for me. So he gives me this hug and he starts rubbing this here. And I can feel my system just downshifting. And then we get out, we go for the walk, I come back, I'm good. Like, I'm reset, I'm good. I had connection, I felt safe, I moved, I metabolized. None of that experience was stored in my system. And it would have been a real big bummer if it would have been, because I would have probably negatively associated podcasting or filming in the future, which would have made me much more likely to have had that be a stressful thing for me. But because I was able to completely process and find closure of that stress cycle, I can now get in front of a camera, I can pop up to a mic like nobody's business. But what happens so often is we engage in overwhelming experiences, nobody is there to help us, or we don't have the skill set to complete the stress cycle before another stressor is introduced to our life. And those are those patterns that build up of things that aren't safe. They're unresolved, they're unprocessed. And that's where we move through our life. With hypersensitivity being really easily triggered by things, experiences, people, places around us.
- [46:27]
B
It makes a lot of sense. I mean, not being able to take it to fruition and kind of like, like hover there until the next stressful thing comes up. You know, you talked about sleep being one of the most important components of life when it comes to our nervous system, to be mindful of and to ultimately have good habits around. And before we finish, I want to just quickly ask you about some habits around sleep that you have found to be helpful and potentially some like a, like a wind down routine that could potentially be something that the audience could think about implementing.
- [47:05]
A
Yeah, I mean, the number one thing, and it's so cliche, it's get off your freaking phone, get off screens 30 minutes before bed. And I'm as guilty as the next person of not doing that a lot of times. Um, but that does make a big difference because what you're doing is you are essentially continuing to feed information, let alone the way that blue light is coming in and all of it. So that's one thing. Give yourself. If you can't Give yourself a 30 minute buffer, give yourself a 5 minute buffer. Give yourself a 10 minute buffer. Start tiny, start so small. Far too often when we are Trying to change our habits. We try to go for the gold. It's like, I don't exercise right now, but I'm gonna exercise five days a week starting Monday. It's like, no, you're not. You might do it till Tuesday, but then you're not. And then you're gonna berate yourself. We have kind of a formula that we use with our clients, and we use tiny habits, and then we use BJ Fogg. He wrote a book called Tiny Habits. B equals map. Successful behavior is always a combination of your motivation, ability, how hard is the habit, and the prompt. And what I love about this, and I'll answer your question about sleep hygiene really quickly, but this is, I think, important is it outsources the blame. I do think we need to take accountability for our actions and for our habits. But we can be strategic and understand our psychology and how that happens. And so if you set a goal to exercise five days a week, that's your behavior. And you're two days in, and it doesn't happen. You're not the problem. The equation's the problem. Your motivation isn't high enough. The ability level, the thing you're asking, the habit you're asking yourself is too high or too hard or you don't have a good enough prompt. Let's adjust those variables. How can you make it easier? How can you increase motivation, your why for doing this thing? Or get a better prompt, get more accountability to do that. And so when it comes to changing your evening habit, again, pick one. Pick one thing. Run it through that equation. Start small. So again, if you can't get off your phone 30 minutes, do it 5. I think the number one thing that makes the biggest difference for our clients. Quit putting your phone on your nightstand. Plug it in on your dresser. A lot of people don't feel good about their phone being out of their room because they don't have house phones anymore. What if it's an emergency? Put it on your dresser. Just get it out of arm's reach. The other thing I would say is let the lights in your home dim as the sun goes down. So we have different kind of receptors, light receptors in the top half of our eyes. When there's bright light overhead, it's signaling to our body. Be awake, stay awake. And so something that we do in our home is, as the sun goes down, our home lights go down. We either dim them or mostly we turn off overhead lights. And we have some side lights that are kind of like at eye level or little floor lamps. And with My two sons, we have a five, almost five and two year old. We do candle book nights. Most nights that changes in the summer cause they go to bed when it's the sun's still up. But letting the lights dim in your home as the lights go down, it promotes proper melatonin release. It helps to prepare your body to actually be tired. I think the most obvious thing is if you want to have better sleep, quit doing things that inhibit sleep. Late caffeine consumption, bright lights, stressful movies, screen time, work. We want to decrease adrenaline and cortisol in our system and help our body prepare to be rested. So you want to feel as at ease before you go to bed as possible, both psychologically and physiologically. And what, when you ask, well, you know, what do you prescribe to our clients? It's wildly different because one of the things I think we do really well is personalize any kind of recommendation, suggestion, you know, regulated living prescription that we do with clients. What is possible for you, what makes sense for you. And let's acknowledge that your human physiology is more or less the same as most of our human physiology. So A, B, C and D are going to inhibit sleep. A, B, C and D are going to promote sleep. Which one of those are we going to toggle for you? And how are we going to toggle it in a way that works for your capacity, your situation right now?
- [51:37]
B
Wow, we talked about so much and I mean, not only did I learn a lot, but also just a couple of, you know, I've been doing this podcast a long time and it's not often that I walk away with a couple of tools that either A, haven't been brought up before or B, I haven't tried some, you know, other way of, of learning about them. And I'm walking away with a couple of tools that specifically the breathing techniques, the up regulation and down regulation breathing techniques that I just haven't done. I also love having a brace, excuse me, a bracelet with beads that you can just sort of like tangibly feel. And it's like you said, the, the, the BJ Fog, you know, philosophy of having a, a trigger or having some sort of a cue. Seeing that on your wrist is in many cases would just be a potential cue if you correlate it to breathing and relaxation and safety. You know, I have a tattoo on my hand that says Walker. People are like, oh, who's Walker? And I'm like, oh, Walker is not a person. Walker is a tattoo that I put on my hand because I know that a walking is very important in my life. And if I'm not walking, chances are I'm not in a good headspace. So I make sure to get that walking in. B. I'm a walker, not a talker. And every time that I have doubt or insecurity or feel like I'm not doing what I said I was going to be doing, I just take a peek at that and I say, no, no, no, dude, you're a walker. You're not a talker. You're going to walk this one out and then three. I know that walking a certain way for my body makeup is. I was told that I need to change the way I walk about three or four years ago. And so I believe in cues and I believe in having things that can remind us that these little. These little wins, like you said, these tiny habits make massive impact when you try to take down the world tomorrow. It never works. It just never works.
- [53:47]
A
Not one time. Especially if you're struggling with anxiety and depression, right?
- [53:50]
B
It just over and over and over again. And I love that you said, hey, like, you didn't say what I hear a lot of on this podcast, which is no screens for two or three hours before bed. You didn't even start there. You said a half an hour. And if a half an hour is too much, five minutes. I just. I feel like there was so much value here. And, you know, hearing about what you do with your clients and your patients, you know, we think of therapy, and I think therapy is. Is, like you said, cognitive therapy, talk therapy is. Works for so many people. But when we think about therapy, that's typically where our brain goes right to sitting across the table with a therapist that is either asking you questions or asking you to talk about your past or working on things like that, which I've done a ton of and has been helpful at times and not helpful at other times.
- [54:44]
C
But.
- [54:44]
B
But what you're talking about is a different kind of therapy. It is a physiological therapy that is getting you off of your feet. And my story is movement saved my life. There's no doubt about it. And I was in a very, very dark place, right? Like, I don't even know how to describe not saying that I'm unique in any way. A lot of people deal with trauma and issues, but it was just. I can't describe how I felt because of how despicable, you know, how, like, angry and, like, the thoughts that I had of myself at that time in my life were just terrible, terrible. Just absolutely desperate, Absolutely desperate to change. But didn't know how to do it. And when movement became a part of my life and these little habits became a part of my life, everything changed. And so I guess the moral of this podcast, the moral of this story is it doesn't matter how far gone you believe you are, everybody can change. And it's going to start with tiny little things that you do. And I'm so grateful that you have built a career around it. And you have a lot of resources for the audience who may or may not be struggling with things like this to look into. If they want to follow your journey or learn more about you, learn more about your practice, where could they find you?
- [56:09]
A
I think one of the best places to start is my podcast. So it's called Regulate and Rewire, an anxiety and depression podcast. And that's where you can just hear me. It's right now, it's a 30 minute episodes solo podcast. I just educate. So if you want to reorient to understanding anxiety and depression this way, or consider that, or just learn about how your physiology contributes to the state of your psychology, that's a great place to start. We talked about my book. I published a book last year called Healing through the Vagus Nerve. That's on Amazon and anywhere you can buy books. My website, my practice is called Rise As We Rise as we Dot com. And so that's where you can learn more about our one on one coaching program and also my group coaching membership.
- [56:52]
B
Amanda, you're amazing. I'm super grateful that you came out here for this. And you know, I know the audience is, is gonna really, really take home some incredible tools, some education things to implement and try. That is what most of the people that listen to this podcast hope to walk away from these episodes with. And I know for sure if I am, they certainly are. So thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.
- [57:20]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me everybody.
- [57:22]
B
Please do me a favor. The only price I ask you to pay for this podcast is to share it, is really to share it. Please share this podcast with someone that you think may appreciate it. Someone that you think could learn something here or potentially change someone's life. Sometimes we don't know what is going to make people want to move. And sometimes, especially when we're dealing with people that are suffering, you know, we question why can't they hear me? Someone that you love, someone that's in your family, that you've been trying to get through to for days, weeks, months, years. You say, why can't they hear me? And sometimes it has nothing to do with you. Sometimes they need to hear it some some other way. So this could potentially be that for someone. Copy this episode in a text and share it with a friend or two. Share it with someone that you think may need to may could could need to want to listen to this. It would mean the world to me. I appreciate you guys being here. Subscribe to the podcast. Don't miss an episode. I love you and I appreciate you. Peace until the next one.