Most Replayed Moment: Instantly Calm Your Anxiety - Dr. Martha Beck

Summary

Podcast Title: The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Episode: Most Replayed Moment: Instantly Calm Your Anxiety - Dr. Martha Beck
Release Date: June 20, 2025
Host: Steven Bartlett
Guest: Dr. Martha Beck

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In this compelling episode of The Diary Of A CEO, Steven Bartlett engages in a profound conversation with renowned life coach and bestselling author, Dr. Martha Beck, focusing on practical strategies to instantly calm anxiety. The discussion delves deep into the neuroscience of anxiety, actionable techniques to manage it, and the transformative power of creativity in fostering mental well-being.

1. Understanding Anxiety and the Brain

Timestamp: 00:28 - 02:02

Dr. Beck begins by addressing the negativity bias, an inherent tendency of the human brain to focus on negative stimuli. She illustrates this with a poignant analogy:

"If I gave you a box that had 15 puppies and a cobra in it, what would catch your attention? The snake."
— Dr. Martha Beck [00:34]

This evolutionary trait, while useful for survival, contributes to the pervasive sense of anxiety in modern society. Dr. Beck emphasizes the necessity of engaging the right hemisphere of the brain—responsible for sensory experiences—to counteract this bias.

2. Techniques to Calm Anxiety

Timestamp: 02:02 - 05:42

a. Sensory Imagination Exercise

Dr. Beck introduces a practical exercise to shift the brain from anxiety to calmness by utilizing sensory imagination:

"Imagine that you are holding an orange... taste it completely and then swallow it. And then enjoy the sensation of tasting, feeling, hearing, even this experience."
— Dr. Martha Beck [02:41]

This technique engages the right hemisphere, fostering a relaxed state by focusing on vivid sensory details, thereby reducing the physiological symptoms of anxiety such as shortness of breath and tension.

b. Writing Your Name Backwards

To further activate the right hemisphere, Dr. Beck guides Steven through an artistic exercise:

"Write your first name the way you usually sign it. Now, replicate the signature, but this time, write it in mirror—writing backwards."
— Dr. Martha Beck [08:28]

This challenging task encourages the brain to form new neural connections, enhancing creativity and reducing anxiety by shifting focus from fear-based thoughts to creative expression.

3. The Role of Creativity in Alleviating Anxiety

Timestamp: 05:42 - 14:11

Dr. Beck elaborates on the intrinsic relationship between creativity and anxiety management. She explains that engaging in creative activities like art can toggle the brain from an anxious state to a creative one, effectively breaking the cycle of anxiety.

"When you begin to create... the toggle switches off in anxiety and on in creativity."
— Dr. Martha Beck [25:16]

This shift not only alleviates immediate anxiety but also fosters long-term mental resilience by promoting neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to form new neural connections.

4. The CAT Process: Calm, Art, and Transcendence

Timestamp: 14:11 - 27:20

Dr. Beck introduces the CAT acronym, outlining a three-step process to manage anxiety:

1. Calm:

   • Approach anxiety gently instead of combating it aggressively.
   • Example: Treating anxiety like a frightened animal, offering understanding and space.

2. Art:

   • Engage in creative activities to switch the brain's focus from fear to creativity.
   • Benefits: Enhances expression, reduces anxiety, and fosters a sense of accomplishment.

3. Transcendence:

   • Achieve a state of flow, where self-awareness diminishes, and one is fully immersed in the creative process.
   • Outcome: Experiences of bliss and heightened consciousness, transforming overall well-being.

Dr. Beck underscores the importance of gentleness and self-compassion in this process, advocating for methods that listen to and honor the anxious parts of ourselves rather than suppressing them.

"We've got to learn to be gentle to ourselves. We are taught to be violent to ourselves."
— Dr. Martha Beck [16:07]

5. Practical Applications and Real-Life Examples

Timestamp: 17:41 - 25:10

Steven Bartlett shares a personal anecdote about engaging in art with his partner, illustrating the therapeutic benefits of creative expression:

"My partner started making beads bracelets a while ago... it's something about creating stuff that serves no function but brings immense contentment."
— Steven Bartlett [22:47]

Dr. Beck reinforces this by citing studies that highlight how expressive writing and other creative outlets significantly reduce anxiety and improve overall mental health.

6. Transformative Potential of the CAT Process

Timestamp: 27:20 - Conclusion

Dr. Beck envisions a society where the CAT process becomes a foundational approach to mental well-being, transforming individual consciousness and fostering a more compassionate, creative, and resilient community.

"When you get it, it's like flying. It's heaven."
— Dr. Martha Beck [26:30]

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Key Takeaways:

• Negativity Bias: Understanding its impact on anxiety is crucial for managing negative thoughts.
• Right Hemisphere Engagement: Techniques like sensory imagination and creative exercises help shift the brain from anxiety to calmness.
• Creativity as Therapy: Engaging in creative activities serves as a powerful tool to alleviate anxiety and promote mental resilience.
• CAT Process: A structured approach—Calm, Art, Transcendence—offers a comprehensive method to manage and transcend anxiety.
• Self-Compassion: Being gentle with oneself and acknowledging anxious feelings is essential for effective anxiety management.

This episode serves as an invaluable resource for anyone seeking practical, science-backed strategies to manage anxiety and harness the power of creativity for mental well-being.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

How would I go about switching into this right hemisphere if I'm feeling anxious? What would you recommend that I do?

[A]

It's so easy. It's so amazingly easy. Now, your brain naturally goes toward anxiety because of something called the negativity bias. And I always think of it as 15 puppies and a cobra. If I gave you a box and it had 15 puppies and a cobra in it, what would catch your attention? The snake. And that's because in evolutionary terms, paying attention to the snake is a good idea. Yeah. But we have such a strong negativity bias in our culture and we have very little to pull us back into communion with oneness. We don't have nature around us anymore. So we have to do that. We can trick our brains into doing that. And if you want to play a little with this.

[B]

Sure. Okay, tell me what to do.

[A]

First, I want you to think of something that makes you feel a bit anxious. Maybe not panicky, but anxious. It's something you're willing to, like. Tell us what it is.

[B]

Okay. Something that makes me feel a little bit anxious.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is an interesting one. Sounds like a strange thing to say, but when my partner is not happy, and I know she's not happy, but she's not telling me why, and I'm around her and I can tell from her vibe, her face, she's not happy about something and I have no idea what it is.

[A]

Okay. I think there will be many people out there who know what this feels like. You are describing a tiny domestic nightmare that many of us feel. So think about that. Think about what that feels like and just notice what it does to your body and to your emotions. What's happening in your body if you're in that situation with your partner.

[B]

My breath is short. Yeah.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I just feel tense and I become quite impatient because I just need the answer to alleviate the anxiety.

[A]

Yeah. So you've gone to a fight or flight nervous system arousal state. Okay. Something. Something's wrong. Okay.

[B]

I'm very focused.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm very focused. And I'm very, like, I'm anxious, but I'm also a little bit snappish. Cause I'm fleeing on one side. I need to get out of this situation. But I'm fighting on the other side. Like, tell me what's wrong. So you've got a full fight or flight thing happening. So you can get into that by imagining the situation. Now I want you to imagine something else very vividly. And it would probably help if you close your eyes. Have you ever eaten an orange?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, so imagine that you are holding an orange. It's a nice, ripe, heavy, delicious orange. At the peak of its ripeness, I can tell you you've already smelled it. So you can smell the citrus. You just take a bite of it to break the seal of the peeling and just feel that little spray of citric acid that pops up when you bite the peel. And then the bitterness of the rind. And then as you bite in, the juice gets in your mouth. It's sweet. It's a little bit tangy. You can feel the filaments of the skin and the stringiness of the insides. And you can pull it back. You pull back the peel. You can feel it under your fingernails. You can smell it. Just put the broken part to your mouth and, like, squeeze the orange and let some juice get into your mouth and taste it completely and then swallow it. And then enjoy the sensation of tasting, feeling, hearing, even this experience. Okay. How's your anxiety?

[B]

My anxiety went away.

[A]

It's gone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I asked you to use sensory imagination, and that's handled by the right hemisphere. It's not in the left. So instead of verbal imagination, which can create horror stories, you are in a sensory experience. And what I don't think people realize is that we're always imagining what's going to happen to us in the next few days, weeks, months, years. But we're imagining it based on what we think is real, which is all the horror stories we're hearing about. Oh, you know, I need to mind my health. I need to. There will be accidents. There will be, you know, my loved ones will die. We have all these stories that we haven't happened yet. They may. They're not lies, but that's in the mind as we make our choices. I need to get more money. That whole thing, when you imagine forward with your senses in a way that brings relaxation. How's your body when you're in the orange thing? You said it was tense when you were in anxiety. What happens to your physical body when you're completely connected to the experience of this imaginary orange?

[B]

Relaxes. Your body relaxes.

[A]

Yeah. You start breathing more deeply. You stop producing all the cortisol, the glucocorticoids the adrenaline that you had in the fight flight state. And now you're starting to produce serotonin and dopamine and what they call the tendon befriend hormones. So say you could hold that energy and your partner's still tense and running around, but you're staying in this relaxed state. Can you then instead of being afraid of her, start to be curious about what's going on? Instead of saying, tell me what's going on. It's more like, wow, she's really tense. I wonder what that's about. And you could even ask her, honey, I don't want to step on your toes here, but the vibe I'm getting is that you're not okay. Like, can I help you? So it's a very, very different thing to approach conflict. One of the people I wrote about in this book is Chris Voss, one of the FBI's top hostage negotiators. And when he's dealing with a violent, psychopathic terrorist who has people as hostages, he's ready to kill. Chris Voss says this is how you deal with him. Gently, with a soft voice, curious about his experience and empathetic about it. And you're just thinking, what this is not in the movies, but the human amygdala is a frightened animal most of the time. And we all know that if you run at a frightened animal and say, tell me what you want, it doesn't get less frightened. So what you just did was move your nervous system into a state where you can be a field of peace for someone else who's anxious.

[B]

Do you have to do the orange thing the whole time to get into that state?

[A]

No, no, no. There are many tricks. Do you want to do some more?

[B]

Sure, let's do it.

[A]

All right. Here's one of my favorites. And I got this from a brilliant artist and professor at Harvard, William Ryman, who I was lucky enough to be his teaching assistant for a few years. And this is one of the things that he used to do to get the students to shut down the left side of their brain. Well, not shut it down, but to use the right side of the brain as well, because the left side of the brain can't draw very well. I have to tell you this. So all I want you to do is put your stylus there over toward the right center of your field and write your first name the way you usually sign it.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

All right.

[B]

The way I usually sign it or.

[A]

Write it the way I usually sign it.

[B]

Okay. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So the way I Usually sign. It's a bit more complicated.

[A]

Ooh, that's beautiful. Okay, so now put your pen, your stylus just to the left of the signature. And now replicate the signature, but this time, write it in mirror. Writing backwards. Take as much time as you need. Gosh, as much time as you need.

[B]

This is so difficult.

[A]

Just breathe.

[B]

Well, I've got it wrong already. Can I rub it out?

[A]

Absolutely. You have as many tries as you need. Notice how the rhythm of your hand goes when you're signing. Moving right. And try to see if you can find that rhythm going the opposite direction.

[B]

I might need pen and paper.

[A]

Using pencil and paper, because they're tactile, is actually you're gonna have easier access to it because you're gonna have more access to the right side of your brain.

[B]

This is so difficult. Why is my signature so complicated?

[A]

You're doing brilliantly. You did it.

[B]

Terrible.

[A]

Yay. No, not terrible. Now the torture is not over, Stephen.

[B]

It's terrible.

[A]

It's beautiful.

[B]

You said you wouldn't lie.

[A]

I just meant your first name. Anyway, this is good. Now, while you were doing that, you might have felt intense frustration and a sense of huh? But when you're anxious about it, you actually can't do it. You have to become engrossed with it in order to do it, because your brain is creating new neuron synapses that have never existed before. You've never done this before. So you are fundamentally changing your brain, teaching it a skill it has never had. And this is what children are going through when they learn to write for the first time. But what you just did was connect to parts of the brain that are in the right side. So this is why we used to make these poor students do this, because once they could, we had another book we worked with called Drawing Is Forgetting. The name of what. What you see, as long as you call it a cup, you can't draw it. You draw your image of a cup, but when you forget to call it anything, it just becomes a shape. Like your signature had to just become a shape. And shapes are on the right hemisphere. So what you just did was. It's like powerlifting. You forced your brain to create synapses that were brand new, that were taking you into a state of learning, deep learning, similar to what happens to children if you let them run around in nature. So there was a study done at NASA in the 60s to identify creative geniuses, and they found that 2% of the adults they sought out, like college graduates, were creative geniuses. After a while, few Years they decided to try giving it to four and five year olds. 98% of them were creative geniuses. And I think that probably the other 2% were just having a bad day. What happens between the moment you're four years old? A full on creative genius, learning new things the way you just did day in, day out, and adulthood where your genius has mainly gone dark, it's because you stop trying things that are brand new. Like that you're put in the factory line in school and taught to learn in a completely different way that's based on shame and fear and artificial skills that don't mean much to you and.

[B]

Right and wrong answers.

[A]

Yeah, everything's right or wrong. Everything's very judgmental in nature. Nothing's judgmental. One of the things I've done with groups of clients is take them into a forest and with the help of my another coach who's a great woodsman, we have them. We give them the tools to make fire with sticks and rocks, but they have to work as a team. And then we say make fire, but you can't talk about it because language is in the left hemisphere and sometimes they're out there for four hours and the whole time it's like, ah, what are we doing? They try all these different things and then I've never had a group that didn't do it. They figure it out and you end up with a little flame in your hands and you feed it a few bits of dried moss or whatever and you blow into it and it starts to smoke and then smoke heavily and then suddenly it just bursts into flame and there's this feeling, there's this Promethean feeling, oh my God, we can do anything. And the fact that that's how we're built to learn and there's joy in it. There's a kind of, it's an achievement, but nature's not saying wrong, right? You get an F, you get an A. You get higher levels. No, you get fire or you don't get fire. No judgment.

[B]

So what does this mean for me on a like day to day basis if I understand the power of this? Does this mean that I should draw my name a lot or is there something that I, that we can all be doing to alleviate our anxiety and to get us into the right hemisphere of our brain?

[A]

Well, there's, to me, there's a three step process and there are three sections in the book. The first one, I use it with the acronym cat. Calm, Art and Transcendence. This is how it works. The first Third of the book is just how to calm your brain. It's been taught to be anxious. It is biologically pre programmed to be anxious. So to calm it down, most people will say, they'll come in and tell me, I want to fight my anxiety, I want to get it, I want to end it, I want to bring it down, I want it gone. Because they think it's a broken machine. But it's not a broken machine, it's a frightened animal. And if you came in and I said to you, okay, I want to end you, I want to bring you down, I'm going to fight you till you're gone, would you be less afraid or more afraid? So they're attacking the part of themself that's anxious and it makes it more anxious. And that's what we're taught to do, end it, force it to calm down with chemicals. One of the most ghastly things that ever happened in psychiatry was that they used to literally take people who had inexorable anxiety and literally put a screwdriver through the eye socket and up into the brain and just mix it around. That's how mechanistic we are about our own minds. We can fix it with a screwdriver. That's a very left hemisphere way to think. And it's literally attacking ourselves. But we're all born with the intrinsic knowledge of how to calm a frightened animal. So if you found a terrified puppy on your stoop one morning and you decided to try to help it, you would instinctively know how to do that. What would you do?

[B]

I would approach it slowly or not approach it at all. And I would get down and I'd be very gentle and say hello. And I'd ask it to come to me.

[A]

Yeah. And if it didn't, you'd give it space, you'd give it time, you'd sit there with it. And just the way your energy just changed now you get down, you'd begin to smile in a very sweet way. And I could feel the tolerance and the gentleness and the space that you would give this creature. We've got to learn to be gentle to ourselves. We are taught to be violent to ourselves. Biohack that, make, you know, make yourself eat this and do that and. And instead if we could just go to the anxious part, like say you're with your partner and she's acting weird and you're feeling anxious. Generally what we do is we try to control the situation. What can I do? Can I make her happy? I'll bring her flowers I'll do whatever. Right? Have an argument. Instead of trying to control her, the best approach is go inside, find the part of yourself that's afraid. So if you're in that situation and she's nervous and you just start to observe your own anxiety, like, okay, what does that feel like? Who is that in there? Who's. Who's the anxious part of me? And just notice. I mean, try it right now, if you don't mind. She's upset, she's tense, she's not telling you the problem. Notice the anxiety. Where is it? In your body?

[B]

Exactly like here, in my chest.

[A]

Okay, in your chest. So allow that and say to it, I'm going to give you space. I'm here. I'm going to be here with you. I know she's scaring you, but I've got you. It's okay. She's not going to hurt us. I can go in the other room with you if you need and sit with it and say, let me know what. What are you feeling? Tell me everything. You get to feel exactly the way you feel, and I'm here to listen to anything you want to tell me and I will not hurt you and I will not try to stifle you or make you go away. So how does that change anything?

[B]

Yeah, for some reason it just. The volume went down. So you can describe it. It's just like the volume went down. And it made me wonder if, just because just by you saying that made me wonder if. If in those moments I should be writing it out.

[A]

That can be really helpful. There's a psychologist named James Pennebaker who found that if he just had students, he just did this experiment once as a graduate student. He had students write for 15 minutes about something that was upsetting to them. And many of them came out of the experiment in tears. It really upset them for an hour or two. He had other students just write what they did last summer or whatever. So there was this brief period where the ones who had stirred up some turmoil felt unsettled. But they, in the. In the weeks and even the years subsequent to that experiment, they had fewer doctor's visits, they had less anxiety, they had better relationships, they had better everything. So he, for his whole career, just did these writing exercises where he would have people just express themselves. Not to show anyone, not even to reread, just to express. The parts of us that are frightened need to be heard. The parts of society that are hurting need to be heard. I'm astonished by the Truth and Reconciliation councils held in South Africa after Nelson Mandela became president. These people who had been through absolute atrocities and they were just heard, they were allowed to tell their stories to the people who had hurt them and other people who were on their side. And the telling of it avoided what everyone thought would be a bloodbath. And it, of course, didn't fix all the problems, but it unburdened, to a large extent, people who had been through things that I can't even imagine. So, yes, write it, write it down. So she's in the other room, she's acting weird. Something might come up about, like, how old is that anxious part? Maybe it's young, maybe it's not.

[B]

You said something at the start. You said that anxiety's like driving over a metal spike in those police like chases. That's what I was thinking about. Like the police chases where they throw out the metal spikes and the car drives over. Why did you use that analogy, you saying there about the nature of anxiety?

[A]

That's what it's like if you get stuck in what's called the anxiety spiral in the brain. The anxiety cycle, some people call it. So what you have to do in that situation is to extend the metaphor. Get out of the car, disarm the mechanism, get that mechanism out of the way, the tire ripping thing, and then you can back out. But the stopping and getting out, that's the calming step of anxiety, and that's what you're doing here. As weird as it sounds, when you write your name backwards and you come into a state of physiological calm, you are getting rid of the tire rippers, you're building pathways that go into the calmer parts of the brain. So the same thing when you were imagining eating an orange, you're calming yourself and it allows you to reverse. It allows you to leave finally. But our culture tends to not allow you to leave. It's always telling you horror stories. So then once you get really calm and you've taken care of that part of yourself, I said the acronym is cat. Cat. Once you get to calm, then very paradoxically, I. It blew me away when I realized this. Then you need art. And I don't mean drawing, I mean making things. Making things in three dimensions, making events happen, making a podcast. Like, what was the fire in you that made you make things? And how did it feel when you were in the making?

[B]

In the making, it usually feels great.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like in the process of making, actually, me and my partner went and did last weekend. We went and made some art and I was like, stressed and stuff. And so when we went and did this art I'd, like, never painted in my life.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we went to this, like, random loft, and there was this guy there, and he had these massive two pieces of cardboard and, like, loads of spray cans and paint and stuff. And we just painted for maybe three hours or something. And I was totally lost in it. I mean, that's the way people describe it. They describe it as being lost in it, Right?

[A]

Yeah. And do you know that if people have been through a trauma and they're allowed to draw about it, even if they can't draw, you know, professionally, they have an 80% lower chance of developing PTSD? There's something about creating stuff, and it could be a company or it could be a spray paint on a cardboard. My partner started making beads bracelets a while ago. She's very busy. She doesn't have time for this, but it makes her so content. And we were talking about how if you go into a tomb in Egypt from 5,000 years ago, what are you going to find? Among other things, beaded bracelets. If you go to the Amazon rainforest and contact an uncontacted tribe, what might you find? Beaded bracelets. People are making beaded bracelets all the time, and they serve no function. They are precious, pointless things. She said that we make and all cultures make. We make music. I mean, I think about the cultures in Jamaica, one of the worst slavery colonies in the history of the world. It was just. It made what was happening on the mainland look gentle by comparison. And out of that, you get these incredible art forms. Reggae, dance. I mean, like, in the middle of being crushed, having literally everything taken from them, people were still making art. This is a part of the human spirit that is just. It's indomitable, and our culture pushes it to the fringes. Okay, Stephen, you can do that on a weekend. That's nice. But did you really make any money? You know, get a real job?

[B]

Yeah. How does this link again back to the brain? So if I'm creating, I'm making some art. I was doing that spray paint thing with the paint and the. I'll show you a picture of it after. I actually think that's cool.

[A]

Cool. I want to see it.

[B]

But how is that helping me to calm my anxiety?

[A]

It's because of the way the structures on the left side, they're obsessed with grasping material objects, acquiring, controlling other people, always thinking about fear. And there does seem to be this toggle effect that anxiety and creativity just can't work at the same time. So the moment you begin to create. Like when you said, I could write this. That's expressive writing, that's artistic writing. And all of a sudden the toggle switches off in anxiety and on in creativity. So I believe that there's another spiral on the right side of the brain, but instead of spiraling tightly into fear, it spirals outward. And ultimately you get to the final thing. There's calming, there's artistry, and then there's transcendence or awakening when you're there. Sometimes we call it flow. Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who named it flow, really looked into this and. And it's a state of creating and performing at a level so difficult, we almost can't do it exactly the way you were writing your name. It's like, ah. And you can have what's called the rage to master, where you're just like, I can't. But when you get it, and I'm sure you've had this with many things you've created in your life, it's like flying. It's heaven. And there's a time in the process of creating where the sense of self falls away and the sense of control is necessary and what you feel is creation itself sort of moving with you and through you, and it's blissful. And I believe that is the state in which we are meant to spend almost all our time. And I think that would transform our consciousness.

[B]

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