Exploring Our Anxious Thoughts & Other Existential Tangents

Honestly, I can't believe this is happening right now. I've never made a YouTube video in my dining room, but the lighting is pretty decent, pretty much better than my room. Edit and alter and make light better. But yeah, this is embrace of madness. If you are new here, welcome. This is my podcast. I just recently have been doing video podcasting, so that's exciting. I have a bunch of audio only podcast episodes, spotify, itunes, basically everywhere the platforms that podcasts are hosted and you've got a couple video ones on YouTube. You can check that out. If you're here. You are probably maybe already aware of my YouTube channel, but it's Youtube.com slash at Embracethmadness. I guess that would make sense for people who are listening on audio. There should also be a link in the description. But yeah, it's been a minute and I've been really trying to do this thing where I won't do it unless I'm stoked about it. And that's not to say that's always the case because sometimes I do stuff and I'm not stoked about it, but I've really been trying this practice of waiting until the inspiration hits. And I know sometimes we think that's not really a reliable way of navigating, but if I've learned anything in my creative journey, it's that honestly, it just reminds me of a cat. You know how a cat's like, oh, I want to come snuggle with you, but not right now, and you just kind of have to play at the whim of the cat. And I'm just learning that's kind of my relationship with creativity, I think definitely creating structure for myself and all that jazz allows me more creativity and more space to flow. So I'm still learning how to do that. But yeah, I just have spent and you could probably hear it in a lot of podcasts. I know when I did my patreon, I felt like I had to do it. Especially when I started, I was like, if I don't have a podcast out every Monday, well, if I don't have a podcast out every week, which I used to schedule them. So it's like if I didn't have my podcast ready the night before or hours before, I was just really hard on myself. And as I get older and it's been like a few years since I've done it, I'm like, I really don't have to do any of that. We are our biggest critics, but I believe that my audience just wants to hear what I have to share and they don't want me to be stressed out and they don't want me to be like because that's not what you want to hear. I mean, that might be what you want to hear, but I'm learning that, yeah, my relationship with myself and my business and all of that and my podcast, all of it, I got to be in tune with my flow so that I can actually show up and do the thing. So last time we talked about this whole social media career, likes, being an artist, all of that, I shared my kind of experience with it and I was laughing because I was a millennial. So I grew up with MySpace and really realizing that might need to get water, realizing that we've fucking grown up with social media likes and that stuff has never not mattered since I was like twelve or 13. And that's like wild to think about. It's wild to think now that future generations are getting on social media even younger and technology is wild. I highly recommend you give it a listen if you are an artist or a creative or have ever struggled with likes, or worrying about what other people think and all that jazz. I said that twice this episode, and it hasn't even been probably five minutes, but I'm glad you're here. I appreciate y'all just letting me do my thing and show up and share what I know. I've definitely been in my head probably the last several months. I kind of dropped off. I've been posting pretty regularly on TikTok and started my YouTube, really focusing on that, and I've just been just kind of off some social media. Haven't really been out, we've just been at our house really just nesting. Work's been intermittent for me, and I think that's just kind of been like a thing. Just figuring out what I want to do that is inspiring, that pays me and is really aligned with my skills and my talents and what I want to do and bring about in the world. So been so much in my head and I have sometimes like a list of podcast episodes I want to do. It just depends because I'm trying to practice. Like, oh, I don't want to force myself. Because you can hear that. You can hear it when someone doesn't want to do anything, especially with video, you can see it. You just get the idea that they don't want to be here. And I'm a sensitive person when someone doesn't want to be here, or I can feel that their energy is just not present or pissed. You can really feel it. And I don't want you guys to have to deal with my shit. I go through shit because I'm a human and I want to continue sharing that with you all. But yeah, I've been in my head and so I was like, Damn. It's probably a really good podcast to have because I know I'm not the only one. If you're a fellow air sign I'm not an air sign, but I have an air. Moon libra. Aquarius gemini. You know that sometimes we get stuck in our heads, sometimes the gears are moving and our brains are like, no, but we can't always be there because we're here. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's been an adventure trying to pull myself out. I talk about it a lot and I'll probably talk about it forever because it's my life, but when we got here it just felt like a crash landing. We moved from Memphis to Nashville. It was like New Year's and the house we were supposed to move into was flooded and I've shared that blah blah, blah and we're basically over know, it's just felt like months know, like I try not to be hard because it's like, oh, well, it's okay. It's not like you are supposed to be anywhere or be doing anything. It's just been weird and I think I don't know because I don't know and I don't presently go to therapy and I know I talk about going to therapy and either way, I think knowing myself, I probably was depressed and I don't take any medication raw dogging it out here. But I also pride myself on being really in tune with myself and self aware. And I feel like I've got really good habits and I've been picking up exercising. So I do a lot for my mental health in a way that I feel good. But I would say probably that if you were to zoom out and look, it would probably be a dip. Which is fine. It's fine. It's weird. I'm sure a lot of it is. I miss my family. That was something I was realizing too. We all kind of experience this just newness. You can be happy for someone leaving, but it doesn't mean it still doesn't feel like they're getting ripped away. And I'm not saying that's how they feel or anything like that. I'm just acknowledging that a major life event happened so it wouldn't be surprising if you were depressed. And so really today I feel really good and I wonder if you're into astrology. I know the nodes just shifted from Taurus and Scorpio into Aries and Libra. So I've got some Aries in my chart and I imagine know a big transit. But the last few weeks have been rough mentally and I'm so thankful that I have my practices. I talk about it sometimes, but I've had a really good, strong, consistent journal practice for the last three and a half years and that yeah, I don't know what I would do without it. But I just wanted to share because I know anxiety is not something that we experience on an individual. That's not how I meant to say it. It's not something we're alone. Everybody has anxiety. I think it's just a symptom of living in our world in 2023. A lot of what I share in Embrace the Madness is about how do we take this anxiety and just all of this mental and emotional weirdness that is a symptom and is when you want to use a word and you're like, that's not the right word. I was going to say precursor, but symptom consequence. Anyways, I just feel like it is part of living in a society that doesn't really feel like it was created for you. If you are creative, it looks bleak and depressing looking at the state of the world. I mean, you don't even have to be a creative to feel depressed when you think about life right now, I just say creatives because I know they tend to have a connection to suffering and the emotional experience. So I'm sure we all fucking realize I'm like, Can I kiss? I'm like, yes, and that shit's hard. And I think I like to think that I have my wits about me and I can navigate through things, and I know that people benefit and really resonate with things I have to share as I go through these experiences, because to me, this human life is universal. We are all humans at the end of the day. We all have these emotions that not always make sense. We have a brain that likes to zoom, zoom, zoom. I do think it's crazy that not everybody has an internal dialogue, but I don't know. And then there's, like, the whole neurodivergent spectrum. And yeah, I'd be curious to see different research about because it all seems to make sense, especially with our generation and the way society is and how a lot of us report feeling. Like, I don't feel like I fit in. I don't feel like I'm meant for this. I don't want to work one of these jobs. I want to go get out there and live and play and be in nature, right? I wasn't born to go sit at a desk, and some people like desk jobs, and that's okay. And I wonder if Boomers and Gen X just like, that's just what you did. And it feels like we're kind of creating this new way of being, which is really exciting. But all that to say, I've been in my head, and there were even days where I was just like, I don't even know. The most I can do is lay, literally, and especially just with figuring out how to make a living out here. So many people were like, oh, you're going to move to Nashville, and you're going to be broke, and everything's so expensive. And I'm like, okay, I acknowledge this. But I'm also choosing not to identify with that because I believe that we can afford things, and I have the privilege of being able to work a job and live in a house and pay rent and feed ourselves. And it's just been an interesting transition, and I would love to talk about money one day. I think I'm still understanding my whole kind of background with it and mindset and learning, and I think I'll definitely probably do some because not to get off on a tangent, but I feel like money is just a part of our 3D world. I mean, until we figure out another system, like, right now, this is what we are working with, and I'm not doing this episode about capitalism or any political things. I don't even know why I went off. Who fucking knows? Somebody gave her a microphone. But yeah, ultimately I would want to talk about money because I realized how in our heads we get about it. I just start freaking out about how I'm going to pay my bills, how we're going to do anything. And I had to realize a lot of that is my brain just like, we don't have to be a dead horse by bringing this shit up and just ruminating, but I sure as hell wasn't taught how not to. You know what I mean? I definitely don't think we were emotionally set up to handle this stuff, but I really feel called to explore this part of existence and reality, and I really have found that figuring out how to balance and find equilibrium has saved me. So I just want to share what's worked for me and what could possibly help you. I know you don't even have to be an air sign to be in your head. I really just feel like anxiety is something that plagues us all. Whether I know there's a spectrum of like, oh, you could be really, really anxious, or you could just have general anxiety, but it's disempowering and it's like paralyzing, and I feel trapped. I love the card in Tarot. The nine and ten of swords are like, just these people who really the ten of swords is like, they've got so many wounds from all of these mental swords just, like, puncturing them. And that's what it's felt like lately. Like, anxiety just so painful, even though it's like, all up here. Oh, it starts up there. But there's got to be another way. There's got to be a way that we don't have to live in fear and anxiety every day. And I also acknowledge that I'm a white female, and I understand that I have certain privileges, that my anxiety might not be the same as someone else's anxiety. I want to help all of us realize that there are ways of transcending that trauma and anxiety and figuring out how to transmute it and at least live a little bit better or a little bit more at peace. I know I grew up with a lot of anxiety, just a lot of trauma just in my body. And I think the older I got, being able to do practices like breathing exercises or breath work or meditation, dancing, like, things to get this stuff out, and it's been so helpful. And I think we got to share it with each other because we're all dealing with it, we're all experiencing it. Feels like after COVID, just like, for a minute, looking at the news, you're like, oh, cool. What's going to happen today? I don't know. And it felt like that recently too. I trigger warning. I was not closely involved, but just at least adjacent to the school shooting here in nashville. And so if that affected me being way off to the side, there's just so many people that are impacted way more intensely. And this isn't to create a hierarchy of suffering or pain, because all of our pain sucks and all of our suffering sucks. And I've had to talk to myself because I'll be like, oh, well, my pain's not as bad as that, or my suffering of the situation isn't as bad as this perspective, but it's still pain and it's still suffering. And I think it's so important that we acknowledge our individual pain so that we can acknowledge other people's pain and work together to figure out how to make less pain. So if you are new to anxiety or you're like, Fuck, I have anxiety, I don't know what to do. You've never had any access to therapy or you've just never been to therapy or gone or anything like that? Anxiety is basically this kind of reaction that our bodies are having to danger or threats. And this is like my favorite intersection of psychology and biology and evolutionary science because we as humans are humans. We have a brain and we have consciousness and awareness and emotions, but we also have very similar biology to, I don't know, other mammals, other animals, even insects. Like, we have some similar structures. We're all from carbon. But it really provides this connected perspective for me. And going back, anxiety is just this response to an animal feeling threatened, an organism feeling threatened. Our bodies have these systems that, hey, there's danger. We need a GTFO or something bad's happening. I need to get out of here. Fight or flight. I have a whole entire episode, cultivating Peace From Within that talks about this in the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic fight or flight, things like that. And so anxiety is our body's response to perceived danger and perceived threat. So we as animals notice danger. But you'll see, danger in 2023 looks different. It's not like a tiger chasing after you in a jungle. It's someone bullying you on social media or it's someone saying a rude comment to you at the grocery store. We have so many different little micro ways of feeling threatened and feeling danger that our animal brains don't really know how to tell the difference. And this isn't to minimize any anxiety or anything like that, but at its basic definition, it's just our body's reaction to danger, perceived danger, real danger, whatever. And so for me, that was really helpful to realize because I'm like, oh, well, if this is my body's response, then it's keeping me safe. That's pretty cool. And I know sometimes it's hard to remember that in the moment or if we're going through it and we're like, oh, well, Lisa's keeping me sane. But it really does provide this universality of it and this connectedness to it. And the way my brain works is like, oh, well, let's look at the biological reason. Let's work backwards and see how we can navigate this. And there's a super cool, super cool book called The Practical Neuroscience of Buddhism. I really love that intersection too, of just like spirituality and science. I really think that they're here to teach with and about each other. And anyways, it is this really research heavy, science heavy book that has a lot of the current research on brain health. And it actually takes a lot of the tenets of Buddhism and the textual teachings and provides research, like, science backed, peer reviewed research studies of, like, oh, yeah, well, these monks meditated and their gray matter increased. Or we looked at the way at how what structures are lit up and get activated when you get that notification of danger. When we see something dangerous, first our eyes have to see it and then they send that information to the brain. So we pick up information with our senses, our sight, our sound, our smell, our touch, our hear. I already said sound, sight, smell, sound, touch, taste. And yeah, this information gets picked up by the brain and then the brain tells different structures like, okay, you need to immediately go send all this blood to your legs so you can run or it sends it to your arms so you can punch someone. Your brain is like rapid firing. Like, okay, this is happening, so this needs to happen. And also if we had a bad experience with something that gets stored in our memory, I'm not really sure what all the research is on animals and memory and stuff like that. I'm sure they have averse experiences because of memory, but our memory is stronger when we experience a negative encounter. So the memory actually gets solidified. I'm pretty sure someone can fact check me, but yeah, the memory gets solidified more intensely when we experience negative things versus positive. And if you understand that our body is trying to keep us safe at the baseline foundational duty, then it makes sense because it's like, oh, well, your brain would want to remember the really bad stuff so that it doesn't happen again. Your brain wants to remember the thing that almost killed you, so it will know next time. GTFO and so starting to look at our anxiety like that is just fascinating to me. There's so much research out there if you want to get on a cellular level or a systems level or if you don't want to get on any level, it's just fascinating to me. Really powerful. And it also just brings up this idea that suffering is universal. Humans suffer. We experience suffering because we're human. And I know different religions talk about why some believe in original sin. Some believe that we're being separated from God or our wholeness. Different people say different things and whatever you believe is whatever you believe. I think just at the end of the day is like, okay, well, we can fight over how it got here. But the thing is, it's here, and it's bothering me, and I would like to live a life without it or as minimal as possible. So anxiety is our bodies letting us know that things are not okay and that we are in danger. And so we have thoughts come up too, because the emotional aspect of things are also considered, and our thoughts can create emotional responses. If I think that that jaguar. Jaguar. That's so weird because it's not jaguar. Jaguar, jaguar. I think that's right now I'm like, what's a jaguar? That's so crazy that we say jaguar, or maybe we don't say jaguar. But if I think that that jaguar is dangerous and scary and going to eat me, it's going to bring up all these emotions like fear and stress and anxiety. And I don't know if stress is an emotion, but it's just going to bring up all this stuff, and it's like, from that moment, then that's what our body's responding to. I don't have the book on me, and I don't remember exactly, but I think Buddhism refers to it as a second arrow. So it's like this idea of having a thought, and then the reaction to the thought is like getting shot by an arrow and then shooting ourselves again with an arrow. Because it's like, oh, well, if you didn't shoot that second arrow, it might be less painful, because a lot of times, that second arrow is what is causing us the most pain. And that's what I'm realizing, too, about this whole just chapter. And really my whole life is like, the way I think about things or think about something is like, oh, that's what's making me feel so bad. Because I ruminate or because I think it's like the end of the world. I'm just in so much pain and in so much mental anguish. And I know when we start thinking about Law of Attraction and people are like, oh, your thoughts create your reality, I completely acknowledge that. How do I want to say this? Sometimes it feels impossible to think our way out of something. Sometimes it's not possible to think our way out of something. I'm realizing that a lot of times it's just the way we relate to things. It's these second eras that we create that is actually probably the reason for a lot of this anxiety. And that's not to say that there aren't real world things that are actively harming you or causing you pain and suffering. It's just interesting to consider, like, oh, I wouldn't have even thought that I was thinking about something in a certain way that is actually making things harder for me. Yeah, just really acknowledging where all these thoughts are coming from, like all the rumination that's happening and how it's really not doing me any good at all. It's actually making my experience worse, and I'm suffering more. I'm living in my head. So it's like I'm living in this idealized fantasy world based on what my brain is saying is real, and it's actually keeping me from experiencing life in what is like in front of me, if that makes sense. And so we talked about what it is, kind of and where it comes from. Well, going back to that whole second arrow is, what if there's a way to stop that second arrow from puncturing us? What if there's a way we can slow down and not think a horrible thought? It just asks these questions. And I love solving problems where there's a wook, where there's a will, there's a way. I really think that everything is solvable and we can creatively find solutions to problems. And, yeah, I'm an optimist. I just believe that things are possible. I mean, it's taken me some time to really, truly believe that, but I feel like I just need a whole B roll of just, like, me being like, I lost my place. I don't know where I am. This is also another part of the intuitive channeled. Speaking is like, sometimes there's not an outline, and sometimes who knows what I'm going to say? But I really hope this is all beneficial because I just know how painful and it's just, like, gut wrenching. That's what I think of. Just, like, when we live in our head and we're just, like, in our thoughts, and we feel like there's no way. We feel like there's no way out. We feel like the world sucks, and we feel like nothing's working. Our brain's really good at making us feel like that. Our brain wants us to be safe and comfortable and taken care of. I remember, and I probably shared this before, but my biology teacher taught us there's two goals to survive and to procreate. So an organism wants to live, doesn't want to die, because it wants to continue life. It wants to procreate, it wants to have offspring. It doesn't want to die because if it dies, then its lineage is dead. Like, there's no more. So it makes sense that our brains want to keep us safe. It's just the way things are in 2023. It's just different. We have the Internet, we have technology, we have traffic, we have cars. We just have so many things. We have machine guns and we have assault rifle. There's just so much shit. So much shit in 2023 that is anxiety inducing. We've got the news. The news. It's unfortunate because it's like one of those industries that relies on creating drama. I don't know if you've ever seen Nightcrawler, Jay Gyllenhaal's in it, but it's like I'll do anything to get the most dramatic and graphic story, and it's like, some people are into that. I get it. I'm just not into it. I'm also very pink and light, and I like to play in the cloud. It's not in the darkness. But yeah, that stuff's anxiety inducing crime podcasts. I'm not talking them down. I'm just like acknowledging that they are probably a boost in cortisol shit freaks us out. And the thing is too, our brains have a hard time telling what is real and what's not. We were watching Donald Glover did that show. What was it called? It's not atlanta. Heckin, I might have to look it up. What show is it? Donald Glover TV show swarm. I love Donald Glover, but that show was intimidate. That show was like gnarly. And I just stopped watching scary movies a long time ago. I don't know. I'm sure it would help if I wasn't alone. But yeah, that show was hard. But I could feel how I would just be like up in my chest the whole time. And it's crazy that movies and entertainment have the possibility I mean, music even have, that they're able to elicit those feelings from us. But this brings back the whole disempowering thing. Our anxiety and our fight or flight can be disempowering. When we live there, when we are stuck, when we feel like every day is scary and sucky, we do not have any power because we are trying to protect ourselves. We feel like there's nothing else to focus on. We feel like nothing else is more important because I got bills to pay. I got to feed my family tonight. Yeah. I'm just so grateful and I can only imagine how sucky it is and how painful and to feel trapped and to feel like nothing you do is going to get you out of this. But we got to believe in ourselves. And it's the whole thing. It's like we literally don't have the brain space or capacity to care about things or to believe in possibilities because we are so tunnel vision on like, I got to make sure that nobody dies today. So if you have anxiety and you are like, well, how do I deal with it? How do I get out of fight or flight? How do I fix this? How do I not be here all the time? And I think that's a question that we're answering as best we can as time goes on. We're all just human and learning and yeah, I know that generations before us weren't really set up to be aware of how these emotions impact us and all of it. And I know we are moving into a time where mental health matters and we really care about this stuff, but it's just crazy. It's crazy. And I think I was talking about the news, but it just feels disempowering because when the news gets off on ratings and things that are scary, it's like going back to the beating the dead horse. It's like, oh, look at this news story and this news story and this news story and this news story. And then it's like, okay, well, I hope I don't die today. And then you wake up in the next. Day and you're like, and this news story and this happened, and this happened, and you're like, well, today's the day that I'm going to die. And it's like, that's sad. And really it's kind of infuriating. It hurts my heart that we have industries that get off on people's pain. And you can call me a snowflake and you can call me blah, blah, blah, a whiny baby, a wussy, I don't know. But I care about feelings and I care about taking care of each other. I still dream of living in a world where we love each other. And that's all I'll say about that. So figuring out how to get from this place of fight or flight to, I don't know, from this island to this island, because honestly, it's like we can't really expect ourselves to take these huge leaps. I think it's great to have an anything is possible mindset. I think our mindset and beliefs do really come into play when we are facilitating change and creating things like that. But we just need baby steps at first. And I really think that awareness of that second arrow like, okay, well, knowing that it's even possible to pause is a huge step. If you don't even think it's possible, if you just think you're a victim to your circumstances, of course you're going to have a hard time. But just even knowing that it's possible to pause I think is a huge step in the right direction. A huge weight off of our shoulders, like, okay, it feels less heavy because I know that there's a way to reduce my suffering. So really just becoming aware that it is possible to go to a different island, to go to a different place. Oh, there's a pretty butterfly. And they're like, yes, there's a possibility. And this is like a huge skill and muscle that you have to build. And I actually did a huge July collective reading on this. It's on my YouTube. But yeah, learning how to become less affected by things and our emotions because what are you going to think if danger comes? You're going to freak the fuck out. But if we can begin to teach and learn that all of these things aren't necessarily threats, we're not in imminent danger, right? Then if our brain freaks out that someone says a mean comment on the internet, we can remind ourselves that that comment is not life or death. That comment is not about to kill me. That comment is, yeah, just not we just learn to give things less. And I don't really know the word I'm thinking of, but making ourselves aware of our breath too is really important because we actually have a cool way of inducing the parasympathetic nervous system just by breathing. And so this is a really cool thing to be aware of, and I learned it from the practical neuroscience of Buddhism, but we can actually induce it because we are telling our brain that we are safe. When our brain is like, oh no, we're not safe, that's when things start kicking into gear. But when we can pause and let our brain know that we are safe even in that moment. I mean, it's one thing if you are in an experience where you're literally not safe and literally in danger. But for all of these times when we're not, or if our sweater got ruined in the dryer, that sucks and that's a yucky thing. But it's not life or death. And I think we have a lot of those things in our lives that we think are life and death, but they're not. And so reminding our brains that we are safe is another huge step. So to induce the parasympathetic nervous system. And I'm not sure if it was a certain number of breaths, but just by deep breathing, we can slow our heart rate down, because that's a whole I kind of touched on it when I was talking about the blood, sending the brain, telling the body to send blood to the legs and things like that. A lot of times during fight or flight, not even a lot of times the whole point of fight or flight is like helping our bodies escape danger. And so one of those is increased heart rate. And if you've ever had a panic attack or even just like maybe something under a panic attack where you're just nervous and your heart's beating real fast, you know that feeling. And you also know this is where I feel like the second sword comes in, at least for me, is like if I notice that my heart's beating really fast, it starts beating faster because I start getting scared or more scared. And so yeah, learning to just slow down and pause will really help our anxiety and our brains from spiraling and snowballing. So what you can do when you notice that you are especially anxious and you don't really know why, even if you do know why getting in tune with our bodies is so powerful because this is where being in our head is like it's just like the ruminating and it's like the second arrow. When we stay in our head, it's just like meow but really slowing down and connecting to our bodies. We can induce that everything is okay. We're going to rest and relax. The opposite of tense relax our muscles. So what you can do is just start doing deep breaths. And if this is brand new and you've never actually done breathing or anything like that, you're going to breathe in through your nose. And I like to do out the mouth. You can do out your nose. It doesn't really matter how. It just matters that you are taking these deep long breaths and it's probably going to take a couple of breaths for you to feel some relaxing from your body. Because if our brains are, I don't know if you've ever been pedaling on a bike, but this just came in my head. If the pedal just kept going and it was like slowing down, our brains are just like that. It's not going to just immediately stop. It's going to slowly slow down. You know what I mean? So what you can do is start breathing. So I like to do square breathing. It's a popular technique of just like four breaths in 4 seconds of holding, pausing, and then four of breathing out and then four of pause. So you can do that. And as you become more comfortable with it, you can actually do longer breaths, longer pauses, longer exhale. So let's do a couple together. So we're going to do remember four. Four. And I'll kind of guide you. Okay, so my fingers it's, but yeah, you'll notice that just as a result of just literally focusing on our breath, that becomes our main focus. Everything else just seems to fall away. I really enjoy listening to soothing music that really helps when things are just slower. We can connect to that more natural, slow, rhythmic way of being. Fight or flight just has this like, I don't know about you all, but I'll just be like, whoa, I haven't been breathing for the last five minutes. And of course, our bodies are doing all this thing, all of these things autonomously. I think that's the word. But still, those short breaths are what is keeping us in that fight or flight. So by taking the time, even if it's just for 30 seconds, to come back to the breath can be a complete game changer. And even if this is like a practice that you can do, if, let's say, you have a heated phone call with either a partner or a boss or a friend, you can take a moment to just chill. I'm not saying shove your feelings away and pretend like that didn't happen because I think our feelings are important and all that, all that jazz. And I'm just saying that you deserve peace of mind and deserve to chill out because we're not in danger. I just had a really emotionally intense moment. I can make it through this. And I can take time for my body because I want to suffer less. I want to feel better about this. I don't want to feel like I'm going to die. I don't want to feel a panic attack. I don't want to be here. So that is a super helpful practice. And going back to the practical neuroscience of Buddhism, it's got a lot of research backing meditation. And I think it's so cool that we've had these philosophies and groups of people who have been meditating for centuries, more than centuries, but really feeling the benefits of this connected to breathing. And when we go back to the nature aspect, it's like animals aren't worried about traffic or well, deer are, but let's say like a tiger living in its habitat. It's going to feel fight or flight when it's chasing its prey but the majority of the time it's like in tune with its natural rhythms and breathing and chilling and I think us as animals, that is our natural way of being. It's not being in a fight or flight triggered state of being all the time. We deserve peace and we deserve space and calmness and we don't deserve to live in our heads in anxiety because we're worried about things. Like it sucks. I'm tired of living in anxiety. Anxiety will having you think of dumb shit like I will snowball so fast. Like I'm just visualizing snow. It's like, yeah, I have to tell my brain like I am getting to a point where I can chill out and stop listening to it, but unhinged, my brain is unhinged and I know I'm not alone. I know that a lot of our brains are unhinged and I also acknowledge that we live in a society that profits off of us being triggered and being unhinged. So I want to do my part in helping to create a society where there's less if we're unhinged in a good way, if we are more at peace and less suffering because I think we all deserve happiness and peace and tranquility and rest and to be able to relax and not worry about dying. That's so heartbreaking. It's so heartbreaking. Yeah, I acknowledge that not everything's going to be fixed in a day and I acknowledge that suffering is a part of human existence and who knows if it will ever go away. I do believe that we are moving towards just a lighter, better way of being. So I have a lot of hope and faith and I know that by sharing practices like this that have worked for me can only benefit you and so many people and yeah, getting in tune with your breath meditation. I love journaling, I love being able to get all the shit out of my head onto paper. It's almost like a transferring of energy and it's no longer in my brain and it's over here and yeah, really being able to just write out a few pages of all the scary thoughts that I'm having and stuff like that to be able to get it to leave my brain is a blessing. If you are able to go to therapy and yeah, see a mental health professional, I think that's super important, especially when we're working through big scary things or traumatic things. There's a lot. And I also acknowledge that not everybody has the privilege of going to therapy and I'm grateful for all of the organizations and ways that we are trying to make mental health more accessible. I love being able to share what has worked for me and I feel really hopeful about the future and I know that the more we get in tune with ourselves and connected to ourselves and nature and our community. That shit's just going to start popping off, and I'm excited. So this was kind of a cool, long episode. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening to me go on my million tangents and just do all the things. So let me know if this was helpful for you. Let me know if I answered any of your questions about anxiety. Let me know if you have more questions about anxiety. I love answering questions. And, yeah, helping you realize that what you want is a lot closer than you think, and a cool, happy, healthy life is definitely possible for all of us. And, yeah, I look forward to hearing from you, and I can't wait till the next episode. This is. Embrace the madness. I'm bye, villain, and I'll see you next time. Bye.