Harvard Professor Says THIS Is the Secret to Success (It’s Not What You Think) | Mel Robbins Podcast

Mel Robbins 0:00 (ticking clock) (upbeat music) I have my jaw on the floor. I don't think anybody has really shown this, like, spotlight on the topic of avoidance and how it's everywhere in our lives, and avoiding is the main thing we do. You're right.

Dr. Luana Marques 0:24 And if what we do is walk away from the things that are meaningful, if what we do is avoidance, then we are robbing ourselves from our best life.

Mel Robbins 0:31 Holy cow. (upbeat music) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited for today's conversation because I know I'm going to get so much out of this, selfishly. I mean, you're going to get a lot out of it too, but this is such a killer topic. It's something we all do, and we don't talk about it ever. And so I've invited the world's leading expert on the topic of avoidance. That's right, avoidance. Have you even thought about that? I bet you haven't, 'cause I certainly hadn't. But when I read, uh, Dr. Luana Marquez's book, Bold Moves, when I started to dig into the research around this habit that you and I have of avoiding stuff, holy guacamole. I gotta, I- I, like, this was everywhere in my life. It is so sneaky how avoidance creeps in, and next thing you know, you're avoiding responding to an email because it's confronting, or you're avoiding dealing with your bills, or you're avoiding having that hard conversation, or maybe you're avoiding something really big, like that breakup, or the talk, or going to get the diagnosis. And what Dr. Marquez is here to say is she's here to not only reveal how much you and I do this, but to tell you something that I think is really liberating, that the problem that you and I have is not fear, self-doubt, or anxiety. The problem is that when we feel those things, we avoid.

Mel Robbins 2:05 And avoiding is robbing you and people that you care about of all of the magic that you are capable of experiencing in your life. Now, Dr. Luana, she has got a remarkable story of how she went from being poverty-stricken in Brazil to becoming a professor of psychiatry at Harvard. She has been working with patients and on the clinical staff at Mass General, the number one ranked health institution in the world, for over a decade, and her work centers around avoidance. And today, she is bringing her world-class training to you. She has changed how I think. She has highlighted an issue that I didn't even realize that I had. And the same thing is gonna happen for you. I promise you, this is gonna be fascinating. So Luana, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Dr. Luana Marques 2:57 Thank you, Mel. I'm so excited to be here with you today. I can't even tell you how excited I am.

Mel Robbins 3:01 Well, it's an honor to talk to you. Your work centers around one skill that everybody on the planet needs to learn how to spot and master. What is it?

Dr. Luana Marques 3:18 So my work really is about identifying avoidance and overcoming avoidance.

Mel Robbins 3:23 And-

Dr. Luana Marques 3:23 That is it.

Mel Robbins 3:24 ... why do we need to do that?

Dr. Luana Marques 3:26 Because avoidance is robbing us from our best life. It's keeping us prisoners of our own thinking and our own behavior, and that keeps us in our own mental jail.

Mel Robbins 3:35 I know that you are a specialist in CBT therapy. We're gonna get into that. But I want everybody to hear your background.

Dr. Luana Marques 3:43 Mel, you know, it's- it's interesting. People come to me and they want me to get rid of their fever. They say, "No, Dr. Luana, get rid of my anxiety." But the problem is really not anxiety. It's what we do when we are anxious, and what we do is we avoid. And let me tell you this. I learned this first when I was, like, 15 and I moved in with my grandmother. So I lived in little city, in Brazil, and I moved into and I just became terrified of people. Like, my brain would just scream that people were not gonna like me, they- they think I'm different, they come from a small town, that I'm not enough. And so my grandmother noticed this. She's like, "Why don't you bring friends over?" And I'd be like, "Oh, no, no, I just have to study. I need to really study." And I started to just avoid people, anything related to people. I didn't make friends. I started to feel lonely. I was really anxious and my brain just was failing me. My grandmother, this woman is incredible, right? She has no college training. She doesn't know, at that point, CBT was nothing. Cognitive behavioral therapy wasn't real in Brazil, specifically, it didn't exist. She one day said to me, "Luana, let's go to the mall. I want, I want us to eat Chinese food." Now, before moving in with my grandmother, there were times in our lives that we didn't have food, and so this idea of having Chinese food in a big town with my grandmother was so exciting. I get this little tray. I still remember this. My hands are, like, so excited. This Chinese, I could smell the Chinese food. And she says to me, "Do you see that gentleman there, the elder gentleman? Let's go talk to him." And my stomach, Mel, dropped. I was like, "No, I'm not talking to him. What are you talking about?" Like, m- d- you know that anxiety in your, pit of your stomach-

Mel Robbins 5:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 5:19 ... just churning?

Dr. Luana Marques 5:20 And I was like, "I can't do this. Like, I just can't do this." And she's like, "We're gonna talk to him." And so we sat and she did all the talking, and at that point, I didn't want the Chinese food anymore, let's be clear, right? Like- (laughs)

Mel Robbins 5:31 You have no appetite.

Dr. Luana Marques 5:32 (laughs) I had no appetite. And- and she just kept doing this. And so we did it again and again, and I- I don't remember how many times. What I remember is that eventually I could talk to people, and eventually people weren't scary anymore, and eventually I made friends.

Mel Robbins 5:48 Mm.

Dr. Luana Marques 5:48 And I realized in graduate school, like later, 20 years later, I realized that what my grandmother was doing is called exposure therapy. She realized I was avoiding, right? I was avoiding strangers and she forced me, that's how I felt (laughs) , she just, she would tell you that she just helped me approach, but she......taught me to go against that avoidance, to go towards the things that matter. And I'm telling you, if she didn't do that, I probably would have developed social phobia, I probably would be stuck in Brazil still. And so, that's why I think avoidance is so powerful, it robs us from the lifestyle we want. And there's a ton of science behind that, but I learned it from my grandmother.

Mel Robbins 6:29 I have my jaw on the floor, and the reason why is, I don't think anybody has really shown this, like, spotlight on the topic of avoidance and how it's everywhere in our lives, and we'll dig into the way that we all avoid, but I'm having this moment where I'm going, "Holy cow." I remember when Brené Brown first gave that TED Talk about vulnerability, and the whole world was like, "What? Vulnerability is a superpower?" The way you just explained avoidance as something that anxiety triggers or uncomfortable situations trigger, and that it's not these feelings of being anxious or scared or whatever that's the problem, it's really what we do with it, and avoiding is the main thing we do. You're right.

Dr. Luana Marques 7:22 Yeah. That's what we do, like, and, and we do that all the time. We rationalize our way into avoidance. You know, "I'm, I'm not gonna ask for this raise because, you know, I just haven't worked hard enough."

Dr. Luana Marques 7:32 Or, "I am not going on this date because, you know, I just have to work harder at work. So it's not that I, I'm afraid of dating, no, no, no, no. It's just because, you know, if I work more, it's better." And it's everywhere, right? It's robbing us from our lives, and no one is talking about avoidance. I'm so glad that you caught onto that, Mel, because that's right. Like, people are talking about the fevers. That's how I think about it.

Mel Robbins 7:52 The fevers or fears?

Dr. Luana Marques 7:54 Fe- Fevers. Like-

Mel Robbins 7:55 Fevers?

Dr. Luana Marques 7:56 Fevers. That's how-

Mel Robbins 7:56 What do you mean by fevers?

Dr. Luana Marques 7:57 That, I think about anxiety, the stress as a fever, okay? A high fever.

Mel Robbins 8:02 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 8:02 Nobody likes to be anxious.

Mel Robbins 8:04 No.

Dr. Luana Marques 8:04 Me included. Right?

Mel Robbins 8:05 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 8:06 But that is not the real infection that we are facing. The infection maintaining this fear is avoidance. Right? And so we have been fighting anxiety, anxiety. Anxiety is biologically adaptive up to a point. Right? It's what we do, and if what we do is walk away from the things that are meaningful, if what we do is avoidance, then we are robbing ourselves from our best lives.

Mel Robbins 8:27 Holy cow. You're absolutely right. I, I'm just going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, because there's somebody really close to us and our family who has had this massive uptick of anxiety happen, and it has been so debilitating that this person has actually taken an entire week off of work, and I've been thinking, that's actually the opposite of what you should do.

Dr. Luana Marques 8:55 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 8:55 Because if you are scared that you're going to have a panic attack at work so you don't go to work, you're making

Mel Robbins 9:02 the anxiety bigger than you. Avoiding that thing or avoiding the situation that may happen makes the fear bigger.

Dr. Luana Marques 9:11 That's exactly right. This is a great example of this person, because the instinct, and it's biologically driven, right, is to go away. So you start to worry about having a panic attack, I've worked with lots of people that have panic attack, and so you work, you have this horrible panic attack, and then your brain basically now is saying, "Well, work can lead to panic attacks, so I'm gonna stay home." But what you're doing is you're actually training your brain to be scared of work, because now you're linking work with a panic attack, and let's be honest, there was no link there.

Mel Robbins 9:39 Correct.

Dr. Luana Marques 9:39 Right? Panic attacks can come out of the blue. But then if you take a whole week out of work, then what are you doing? You're basically trying to take away anything that is potentially going to trigger anxiety. But the minute you step out of your house, you can't avoid for long.

Mel Robbins 9:54 Right.

Dr. Luana Marques 9:55 You're gonna come out with h- a baseline anxiety so high that now you're almost guaranteeing that you're going to have a panic attack at work because you've been so afraid of it. Right? You're inducing that fight, flight, or freeze. The opposite of avoidance is approach. Now, just do it, the way Nike tells us to do-

Mel Robbins 10:13 Right, right.

Dr. Luana Marques 10:14 ... doesn't work with anxiety. You can't tell somebody that's having panic attacks, "Just go work." Right? But can you drive towards work? So you're not gonna work for a week. Okay. I'm with you.

Mel Robbins 10:22 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 10:22 Okay?

Mel Robbins 10:23 I, I've been in this boat too, where-

Dr. Luana Marques 10:24 Right?

Mel Robbins 10:25 ... the anxiety has been so debilitating that I... I've actually had anxiety so bad that it built and built and built and built up inside me when I was a second-year law student that I convinced myself that there was no way that I could get on a plane and go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I had landed a summer job and be able to live and work on my own. And I... Talk about avoidance. I called that law firm and told them that I had had a family emergency-

Dr. Luana Marques 11:03 (laughs) Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 11:04 ... and I had to not come. This was two days before I was supposed to get on the plane.

Dr. Luana Marques 11:08 Oh, Mel.

Mel Robbins 11:09 And so I have done this over and over and over and over again in my life, and I can't wait until you unpack all the forms of avoidance, but you're right. You do link up this act of, "Oh my gosh, if I just don't do it, then I'm gonna be okay," but you actually make it worse.

Dr. Luana Marques 11:29 That's exact... I wish I knew then, because see, there's two pieces of, of avoidance that we're talking about there, beautiful. Right? The first one is the perception of threat. Right? You've flown many times before in your life, but now your brain convinced you that that flight was a threat, a perceived threat. It's not a real danger. It's a perception.

Mel Robbins 11:47 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 11:47 Right? And so then, the long-term cost of avoidance, the prices that you pay... Think about this. You did not go in a summer internship that I bet you worked really hard, Mel, to get.

Mel Robbins 11:57 Yeah.

Dr. Luana Marques 11:58 Right? I imagine that was like, a big ticket, and your brain just in that moment said, "Plane equals lion. Not gonna do it," and then we have to find a way out, so you created an emergency, and that's avoiding. You've retreated. Like, you avoided by retreating from something that was so meaningful.

Mel Robbins 12:15 Yeah. Yeah. It's- I, I, I have done that over and over and over again. I think that's why I f- I feel so-... just sad for this person in our life who is doing this right now, 'cause I- I'm thinking to myself, "This is going to create the opposite impact." So you said that your grandmother forcing you-

Dr. Luana Marques 12:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 12:36 ... to just, you know, go to the mall and sit with that person, and slowly, she was doing what you now practice, which is exposure therapy. You're an expert in CBT, and you just said that that experience of not being allowed to avoid something that you were scared of, but being shown that you could face it, that it changed the trajectory of your life.

Dr. Luana Marques 12:59 100%.

Mel Robbins 12:59 So what happened after that thing that your grandmother did?

Dr. Luana Marques 13:04 So, after my grandmother forced me, I started to think about life... There's two things she did for me, actually. Let me just-

Mel Robbins 13:11 Yeah.

Dr. Luana Marques 13:11 ... add the second one. So one was push me to approach instead of avoid. The second one was at 16 she gave me The Alchemist by Paulo

Dr. Luana Marques 13:21 Coelho to read.

Mel Robbins 13:21 Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.

Dr. Luana Marques 13:22 I'm sure you've read The Alchemist, right?

Mel Robbins 13:24 Yeah.

Dr. Luana Marques 13:24 And she did it because the narrative in my brain was, you know, growing up poor, single mother. My mom fighting so hard to get us somewhere, and I should tell everybody listening to this, my grandmother was not really my grandmother. She was the mother of my stepfather, who started to date my mom, and they came from a different socioeconomic status. She had a different view of the world. So she gave me The Alchemist because one day I was sitting with her for coffee, and I said, "You know, I really don't know what's going to be of my life. You know, I want to eventually pursue a medical degree or I want to do this, but my mom is never going to be able to pay for college."

Mel Robbins 13:58 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 13:58 "So what happens?" And The Alchemist shifted my perspective.

Mel Robbins 14:03 How?

Dr. Luana Marques 14:03 It was this idea... Well, there's a sentence in the book that says, "Whenever you want something, the whole universe conspires in having it." And my grandmother basically said to me, "Listen, you are responsible for the narrative in your brain. You can, you can believe what your brain is telling you, or you can change the narrative in your brain." And I was like, "Well, if I..." And she, she forced me to push, like, "What would you want?" I said, "Well, eventually I want to become an exchange student. Eventually, I want to get to the US." And she's like, "You're responsible for creating that." And somehow .............................. those conversations, my grandmother would sit with me every day and have coffee and have those conversations. I started to believe that just maybe I could do it, that maybe I could by approaching and changing the topic.

Mel Robbins 14:46 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 14:46 And eventually, I became an exchange student. I came to the US. I spoke no English. (laughs) It was disastrous in the first six months, and then I, I wanted to stay and my stepdad is like, "You know, you have to go back to Brazil." So I went to Brazil for a year and then eventually got my way back to the US and did undergraduate in college. And every step, I have to tell you, avoidance will knock on the door. So when I tell my story, people are like, "Oh, it's so incredible, so bold." No, I was scared shitless a lot of the times.

Mel Robbins 15:12 (laughs) .

Dr. Luana Marques 15:13 Bottom line. And I wanted to avoid, when I was at SUNY Buffalo, my mentor was really tough on me actually, and I wanted to apply to the Harvard internship at Mass General Hospital in Boston, and when she says, "State students don't get in." And I remember sitting in my office crying as I write this application letter thinking, "Maybe I should just apply somewhere else. Maybe I'm not good enough."

Mel Robbins 15:34 There's the narrative in your head again.

Dr. Luana Marques 15:35 100%. And I remember at that time I was like, "You know what? If I don't apply..." That's... I remember my grandmother. "If you don't try, you don't know," and so I applied. And, and so I, I share this in the spirit of, like, we can't get rid of anxiety. I know everybody wants to, but we can't. What we can get rid of is avoidance.

Mel Robbins 15:55 Wow.

Dr. Luana Marques 15:55 That, we can get rid of.

Mel Robbins 15:57 I lo- And then what happens in your life when you get rid of avoidance?

Dr. Luana Marques 16:00 I'm sitting here with Mel Robbins. That's what happens. Can you believe this?

Mel Robbins 16:04 Will you stop at that? (laughs) .

Dr. Luana Marques 16:04 No, I, I, I, I just don't... I want you to know this. It means so much to me. Like, it's just... The 10-year-old... I have tears in my eyes. The 10-year-old me would not believe that I'd say to Mel Robbins, "I mean, you're such an icon. You inspire so many." You, I've seen you fight avoidance in your life. Maybe not with that vocabulary, but I seen that. As I listen to your books, as I see your podcast now, it's so successful. That's what happens when we don't let the narrative in our brain run our lives. You get to meet Mel Robbins, and, and how cool is that?

Mel Robbins 16:36 Well, and I get to meet you. How cool is that? And you went on to become an associate professor at Harvard. You didn't just get the internship program, uh, in psych at Mass General. You went on to become an associate professor, a published author, the founder and chair of an incredible, like, association around anxiety, and you're just getting started-

Dr. Luana Marques 17:01 (laughs) .

Mel Robbins 17:01 ... in my opinion.

Dr. Luana Marques 17:02 Thank you. It does feel that way. You know, it's, it's interesting. For the last 10 years, I spent all this time at Mass General taking CBT out of the ivory tower, in the streets.

Mel Robbins 17:11 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 17:11 Right?

Mel Robbins 17:11 What does that mean?

Dr. Luana Marques 17:12 So I, I create a program that I work with community organizations where I train paraprofessionals, so people with no education, on skills in art therapy, on CBT, but digested as skills. For example, I worked with Roca in Boston who works with young men coming out of prison.

Mel Robbins 17:28 Oh, fantastic.

Dr. Luana Marques 17:29 And-

Mel Robbins 17:29 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 17:29 ... I've actually taken CBT and created a training program that we can get an entire organization to cool off and apply skills in every day. So these young men are not gonna talk to therapists like me, right? But they are going to talk to their peers.

Mel Robbins 17:44 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 17:45 And if their peers knows the brain, knows how to regulate it, and can teach them skills... We actually had a, a story of a young man that didn't shoot somebody.

Mel Robbins 17:55 Wow.

Dr. Luana Marques 17:55 Decided not to shoot somebody because he basically paused and said, "If I shoot somebody..." He reframed it. He said, "If I shoot this person, I'm back in jail like my father and my grandfather."

Mel Robbins 18:07 That's incredible.

Dr. Luana Marques 18:07 Can you imagine? Well, our study shows that if you actually practice the skills that you and I are talking about today-

Mel Robbins 18:12 Right.

Dr. Luana Marques 18:12 ... right, that these young men are 65% more likely to get a job. Now, if they employed, they're not back in prison.

Mel Robbins 18:20 Correct, and they have a community, and they have structure, and they have respect-... from people around them, and they have a sense of pride. I, uh, being a former lawyer for Legal Aid doing criminal defense work, it was painful to just see the recidivism rate and the rejection that people face after they serve time.

Dr. Luana Marques 18:40 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:41 And, um, that's incredible. I want to back up a second and talk about CBT.

Dr. Luana Marques 18:46 Let's do it.

Mel Robbins 18:46 So for anyone listening that's like, "CBT, d- is that the, is that that, like, non-high marijuana stuff?"

Dr. Luana Marques 18:53 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 18:53 No, that's CBD. CBT, you, you're the professor in this. Explain what CBT is.

Dr. Luana Marques 19:00 Cognitive behavior therapy, or CBT, is a widely studied kind of therapy that's action-oriented, and it's really designed to change what we say to ourselves, how we behave, and how we feel.

Mel Robbins 19:11 Can you explain to everybody the sequence of what happens? Like, what is the order? Is it like that something happens outside of you, you have a sensation, then you act, or you have a thought? Like, how, what is the chain that we want to become aware of if we're going to apply the skills you're going to teach us today?

Dr. Luana Marques 19:29 Such a great question, Mel, because the first thing, if we're going to apply any skills, we need to create a pause. And in that pause, we need to do a couple of things. First, we need to understand what was the situation that triggered any kind of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors? I actually call this the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors cycle. Right?

Mel Robbins 19:46 Okay, thoughts,

Mel Robbins 19:47 emotion, behavior-

Dr. Luana Marques 19:48 Cycle.

Mel Robbins 19:49 ... cycle. Can we take the example of you waking up and not wanting to get out of bed?

Dr. Luana Marques 19:54 Yes, absolutely. So, any kind of situation. I woke up, my brain starts to spin and basically said, "What if Mel Robbins doesn't like me?" It was the first thought I had this morning, I have to just be honest with everybody listening. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 20:06 Oh, sorry. (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 20:06 No, I mean, the anxious brain never quiets down, right? And so that thought, "What if she doesn't like me?" led to an emotion, which for me was a little anxiety and heart pounding. My heart pounds pretty f- pretty strongly, and then my behavior, is the third component, was wanting to just stay in bed.

Mel Robbins 20:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 20:22 I was like, "Maybe I just want to stay in bed." And you asked, what is the sequence? Well, it depends the entry way. For me, it was a thought, right?

Mel Robbins 20:28 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 20:28 "She's not going to like me-"

Mel Robbins 20:29 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 20:29 "... made me anxious," and then I wanted to behave a certain way. But the ping-pong, l- right? If I had laid in bed a little longer, I bet it would have gone this way. "Yeah, maybe I didn't bring the right outfit. The outfit makes a difference. She's so powerful, she's really not gonna like me. What if I say the wrong thing?" And those thoughts would go really fast, the anxiety would shoot up, and then the covers would come over. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 20:50 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 20:50 And then by the time I got out of bed, my baseline anxiety would be so high that I'd be having trouble thinking. That trouble thinking would be interpreted as, "Oh, see, you do have a problem with anxiety," and now the avalanche. And so it's a ping-pong, and it's so fast, and that's why that pause is so important. Right?

Mel Robbins 21:08 Wow, okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 21:08 We, we need... Whenever the anxiety happens, this is a trick that I can share with everybody that you can use and you can do it right now. How do you pause is the question, right? Take a piece of paper and literally write down your thoughts, linking them to your emotions, link them to specific behavior. What do you want to do? And this is why. What we know scientifically is that writing activate the prefrontal cortex.

Mel Robbins 21:31 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 21:31 The prefrontal cortex, the part that helps us organize, execute, right? It's the center of the brain that's the critical part of the brain. It is always competing for energy with our amygdala, the fight, flight, or freeze part of the brain. So one w- when one is on, the other one tends to quiet down. So if you're in your anxious brain, get out of there by writing your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors cycle. Just that little trick alone, I've seen hundreds of patients stop their anxiety cycle and that avalanche by creating that pause.

Mel Robbins 22:00 Let's take the example of being afraid to go into work.

Dr. Luana Marques 22:04 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 22:04 That you are worried that something's gonna happen, your boss is gonna be a jerk, or you're gonna have a panic attack, or you're gonna screw up that huge, uh, sales meeting that you have, and so you have that feeling of just, "Uh, I, I need to, like, not go."

Dr. Luana Marques 22:21 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 22:21 That avoidance that we're gonna talk a lot about today. So what do you do in that instance?

Dr. Luana Marques 22:28 So a couple of things here. The first one, I would write down the specific thoughts, right?

Mel Robbins 22:32 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 22:32 Um, a lot of our anxiety is fed through what we're saying to ourselves.

Mel Robbins 22:37 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 22:37 Right? We start to have heart pounding, and we've been talking about heart pounding. If I came home from the jog and my heart was pounding, I'd be like, "Okay," but if I'm sitting here getting ready to work and my heart pounds, your brain wants to make sense of it. So then, it starts to create a narrative about the heart pound, but it's just a heart pound. That's all it is.

Mel Robbins 22:54 True.

Dr. Luana Marques 22:54 So we pause. "Okay, I'm gonna mess up the sales meeting." Right? Right? "I'm gonna, I'm gonna F it up. That's what I'm gonna do." Okay, once we pause, then we want to be able to ask questions of our thoughts, right?

Mel Robbins 23:08 Right.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:08 Let's interrogate. Let's become lawyers together.

Mel Robbins 23:11 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:12 What is the evidence that you have right now that you're gonna mess it up?

Mel Robbins 23:15 I've done... I've messed it up before.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:16 Okay. How many times have you messed it up now?

Mel Robbins 23:18 Twice.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:18 Twice. How many presentations have you given to this team?

Mel Robbins 23:23 100.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:23 100. Okay, so based on that, what's the probability that you're gonna mess it up?

Mel Robbins 23:27 2%.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:27 2%, okay, so maybe you are gonna mess it up. There's 2% chance. Um, if you mess it up, what is the worst that will happen?

Mel Robbins 23:35 Um, I'll be embarrassed.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:37 Mm-hmm. Have you been embarrassed before?

Mel Robbins 23:39 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:39 Have you been able to tolerate being embarrassed? Yeah, it sort of sucks.

Mel Robbins 23:43 Yeah, it sucks.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:43 I'm with you, it sucks. So the worst case scenario is you're going to be embarrassed, there's 2% chance.

Mel Robbins 23:48 What if they fire me?

Dr. Luana Marques 23:50 When was the last time they fired you?

Mel Robbins 23:52 Uh, they haven't fired me.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:53 Okay.

Mel Robbins 23:53 I'm still employed.

Dr. Luana Marques 23:53 Oh, really?

Mel Robbins 23:54 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 23:54 That's amazing. So maybe they'll fire you, but sounds like the probability is small as well.

Mel Robbins 24:00 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 24:00 But there is a small probability.

Mel Robbins 24:02 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 24:02 Now, has anybody in this company ever been fired on the spot? Like, "Oop, you messed up, you're embarrassed, fired."

Mel Robbins 24:08 Uh... Well, they've laid people off, but I don't think... Not that I know of.

Dr. Luana Marques 24:14 It, it sounds to me like your brain is basically saying, "I'm gonna be embarrassed, and then they're gonna fire me on the spot, and I'm gonna be humiliated, and I'm gonna be in the corner all alone."

Mel Robbins 24:22 Yes, which makes me want to avoid it.

Dr. Luana Marques 24:24 Of course it does. I would too. I mean, (laughs) it feels awful to do that. But what is the probability really, Mel, that all those events are gonna happen in that sequence?

Mel Robbins 24:34 ... v- very, very small.

Dr. Luana Marques 24:36 So, what can you say to yourself based on your performance in the past that might change that narrative in your brain right now?

Mel Robbins 24:43 Ooh. Um, that I've been nervous before, and I've shown up and done a good job in the presentations.

Dr. Luana Marques 24:53 And when you say that to yourself, how does it feel?

Mel Robbins 24:58 Like I don't believe it.

Dr. Luana Marques 24:59 Yeah, absolutely.

Mel Robbins 25:00 Because that anxiety, you know, has that grip on you.

Dr. Luana Marques 25:03 And when we just start to change our perspective, shift our thinking-

Mel Robbins 25:08 Yeah.

Dr. Luana Marques 25:08 ... we don't believe right away because there's so much history of the anxiety-driven thoughts. So I don't need you to believe it. What I need you to do is be able to say that to yourself over and over again, and I need you to show up, Mel. I need you to approach.

Mel Robbins 25:21 To approach. I, you know what I love about this? I love that you said, "I don't have to believe it."

Dr. Luana Marques 25:26 Y- you don't have, because it's impossible to. Your brain is anxious, and, and everybody thinks CBT, we are trying to just force people to have positive thoughts. That does not work. Let me say that again. Positive thoughts alone does not work. We have to reframe. We have to rewire our brain, and it takes time to rewire our brain. It can't be, like, overnight, but it's the first step towards a better life, right? I mean, if we talked to our best friends the way we talk to ourselves, let's be clear, we'd have no friends.

Mel Robbins 25:53 That's so true. That is so true. Can we unpack avoidance?

Dr. Luana Marques 25:57 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 25:57 Because it's not just an anxiety response.

Dr. Luana Marques 26:00 No.

Mel Robbins 26:00 Like, I'm thinking about the number of conversations that people avoid, the number of situations that people avoid, uh, the number of experiences that people want to do. Like, I, I can think about one for myself where my whol- my daughter, Sawyer, and Chris, um, have both, uh, gone skydiving, and our son is turned 18, and he wants to go skydiving. And I feel this pull of wanting to do it, but I am scared shitless of doing it, and I can feel the avoidance in my body. It's not anxiety. It is like a wall, but I feel like this avoidance topic, can we blow it open so that anybody listening who's like, "Well, I don't have anxiety," but you're avoiding something.

Dr. Luana Marques 26:48 Oh, yeah.

Mel Robbins 26:49 So, talk to us about what avoidance looks like, what are surprising, uh, s- kind of symptoms or ways that people avoid things?

Dr. Luana Marques 26:59 I'm definitely going to talk about avoidance in a second, but before, I wanted you to commit to go skydiving with me. Come on, Mel. We can do it.

Mel Robbins 27:05 Me?

Dr. Luana Marques 27:05 Yeah, we can do it.

Mel Robbins 27:06 All right. You're invited to Oakley's 18th birthday skydiving party. I'm going.

Dr. Luana Marques 27:10 Okay.

Mel Robbins 27:11 I'm gonna go 'cause I don't wanna miss out on life.

Dr. Luana Marques 27:14 So, the only reason I went there is this. So, I learned I had a fear of heights hiking Yosemite National Park. I had no idea. My whole life, I just said I didn't like roller coasters, you know?

Mel Robbins 27:23 Right.

Dr. Luana Marques 27:23 I wasn't avoiding roller coasters.

Mel Robbins 27:24 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 27:24 I just didn't like roller coasters.

Mel Robbins 27:26 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 27:26 Who needs to go on roller coasters anyhow? But I was hiking. I get to the end of Yosemite National Park, and you have to hold this cables, right? And I just started to cry. I was like, "There's no way. I'm gonna fall." The whole height phobia just came in, and I spend time, and my professional career is getting people to approach, not avoid. And I was like, "Okay, I can't do this." And so I started my own hierarchy, and I started by doing chairs, and then stairs, and then going to the roof of my house, and then I got to the top of it, which was skydiving. I was so terrified, and I avoided for a while. Eventually, one of my friends is like, "You know what to do." So, she took me skydiving, and I went three times in a row in the same day. And this is the trick. That's the only way to overcome that fear of heights is that you have to train your brain to just do it over and over again. And now, I love skydiving. It's, like, so fun.

Mel Robbins 28:20 Really?

Dr. Luana Marques 28:21 I am not joking.

Mel Robbins 28:23 So, could you go back to Yosemite now, and-

Dr. Luana Marques 28:26 I-

Mel Robbins 28:26 ... be with those cables?

Dr. Luana Marques 28:27 100%.

Mel Robbins 28:28 'Cause what I always used to say is, "I'm not afraid of heights. I have this feeling that I'm falling."

Dr. Luana Marques 28:33 That's exactly what a fear of height is.

Mel Robbins 28:33 And that's why I don't like.

Dr. Luana Marques 28:35 Yeah, but that's, that's just biology, Mel. That's just biology, and it's the same biology behind avoidance. So, so you asked me about avoidance. So, avoidance is anything that we do-

Mel Robbins 28:45 Yeah.

Dr. Luana Marques 28:45 ... or don't do-

Mel Robbins 28:46 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 28:46 ... okay, in response to a perceived threat that is designed, so there's a perceived threat-

Mel Robbins 28:51 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 28:51 ... that's designed to bring our anxiety, discomfort, you name it, down fast, okay? But it keeps us stuck long term.

Mel Robbins 28:59 Huh.

Dr. Luana Marques 29:00 So, let me, let me unpack this for us.

Mel Robbins 29:02 Please.

Dr. Luana Marques 29:02 I call it the three Rs of avoidance. We either retreat, react, or remain. Okay? So, if we retreat, what do I mean by that? It's what you're doing about skydiving. You have this thought-

Mel Robbins 29:14 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 29:14 ... and you're like, "I'm just gonna move away." Retreating-

Mel Robbins 29:17 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 29:17 ... is moving away from discomfort. That's that flavor of avoidance. People retreat when they get an email that they don't like. They don't read that email. My husband does it all the time. He puts an email on the- the sc- other screen. He's like, "I'm just not gonna look at that." We retreat by not having conversations with people. We're in our head. We are thinking. We are ruminating, right? We're moving away from discomfort.

Mel Robbins 29:38 Mm.

Dr. Luana Marques 29:38 For some of us, avoidance is reacting. That's how I avoid. Whenever something threatens me, perception of threat, an email about somebody that I don't like or conflict-

Mel Robbins 29:49 Right, right.

Dr. Luana Marques 29:50 ... I go, I go towards that. I move towards that discomfort because I feel so anxious. So, I write an email really fast. "I can't believe you said this," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I press send, and then I'm, like, stuck on email jail because now, I just reacted without thinking, and that's avoidance, right? I'm avoiding discomfort.

Mel Robbins 30:08 I don't know if I understand that. So, so, so I understand the retracting-

Dr. Luana Marques 30:13 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 30:14 ... right? But I don't understand the reacting. Can you give me another example?

Dr. Luana Marques 30:19 I can give you several examples. So, reacting is a form of avoidance. Something happens, and you have discomfort. Okay, give you an example. Dan Harris, I was just recording with him last week, and he, he gave a great example, personal example. He said, "You know, whenever I feel threat, the way he reacts with anger."

Mel Robbins 30:36 Oh.Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 30:37 Right? So-

Mel Robbins 30:38 I yell at my dog when the, he's barking too much.

Dr. Luana Marques 30:41 That's-

Mel Robbins 30:41 I'm like, "Ah."

Dr. Luana Marques 30:42 That's it. Because y- your dog barking is creating some discomfort in your body. That discomfort in your body, basically you have to attack the discomfort so you feel better, right? Responding to email, anger, um, grabbing a drink too fast, have a bad day and you just go into...

Mel Robbins 30:58 Oh, so R is having a smoke, a vape, hitting a joint, pouring a drink. That is reacting?

Dr. Luana Marques 31:06 Yes. You're-

Mel Robbins 31:06 Oh.

Dr. Luana Marques 31:07 You know, and it's funny, we can slice and dice the Rs of avoidance, but like you are basically trying to move aw- moving towards discomfort and, and reacting, right? Versus retreating, you're moving away.

Mel Robbins 31:20 Gotcha.

Dr. Luana Marques 31:20 Let me do the third one and then we can unpack a couple-

Mel Robbins 31:22 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 31:22 ... examples. But the third one is remain. This is the deer in the headlight. It is staying in a situation when you know it no longer works. You're in a job you dislike, but the fear of another job just makes you so paralyzed that you stay.

Mel Robbins 31:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 31:37 Stay in a relationship that you don't like, right? It's frozen. So the, the remain of avoidance is you're frozen in place. You know it's not working, right? But you're not going towards discomfort or moving away. You're just literally frozen.

Mel Robbins 31:50 Wow. So what I love about this is that this... For anybody that feels like, "Well, I don't have anxiety," what you do have are moments every single day where your emotions get triggered and you're uncomfortable.

Dr. Luana Marques 32:09 That's it.

Mel Robbins 32:10 And what I'm gathering from this conversation is that your work is really about creating a baseline of people of emotional peace.

Dr. Luana Marques 32:18 That's 100% it.

Mel Robbins 32:19 That when you are uncomfortable, when you're triggered, when you're afraid, when your emotions go bananas, literally that is the moment that we all seek to avoid. And avoiding... Wow. So is, is drinking or smoking, would that be more of a retreat?

Dr. Luana Marques 32:42 That falls more in a retreat. So right, you're moving away, you're trying to take that discomfort away.

Mel Robbins 32:46 Gotcha.

Dr. Luana Marques 32:46 So it's absolutely a retreat. But I love what you said now because that is it. We all want to be comfortable all the time. Let's be clear, comfortable all the time, there's nothing meaningful there, right? And if we are completely uncomfortable, completely out of our comfort zone, we on fight, flight and freeze and we're stuck. So what I want to create is a comfortably uncomfortable world, a world that you're just enough out of your comfort zone towards the things that matter the most, and that you're fighting the real enemy here, which is avoidance. And we avoid in micro ways, right? We just turn on the TV and I'm out. We go on social media, and those little moments, it's like I... That's what I love, your five-second rule, because that's sort of the same idea. It's like in five seconds you can choose to go towards

Dr. Luana Marques 33:30 a life that matters or you can choose avoidance, and it's a choice.

Mel Robbins 33:34 You're right, it is, because we do avoidance on autopilot, and there is a big lie that we're telling ourselves because you said that we do it because we're uncomfortable and that in order to live the life that we want, we've got to be willing to be uncomfortable. But I believe if you're really honest with yourself, you'll see that avoiding the hard stuff, avoiding the things that you fear, avoiding taking a risk, that's actually more uncomfortable because you know that you're selling yourself short. You know that you are feeling stuck. Like, I would think that kind of sitting alone in your apartment with no friends as a teenager was way more uncomfortable than sitting with that dude the first time with your grandmother.

Dr. Luana Marques 34:27 100%. It, it, it's like we're... It's, it's... I love how you said it's a lie. It is a lie because the discomfort that we feel facing things is so much less than this monster that we create in our head of what they would be like. I bet when we go skydiving, you come off of that plane, you're going to be like... (laughs) You know, I landed and I was like, "This is the best orgasm ever."

Mel Robbins 34:48 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 34:48 Like, "This is better than anything else."

Mel Robbins 34:50 Really?

Dr. Luana Marques 34:51 I was like... I... Like, I have this video and I was like, "Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed at this video." But like, it is true because it's so liberating to overcome a fear.

Mel Robbins 34:59 That's true.

Dr. Luana Marques 34:59 It's like... And, and you're right, like once you're out of that plane, the discomfort... And, and you'll feel some fear jumping out but then all of a sudden your whole system quiets down and you're like, "Oh my God, I'm living my best life." And that's what I wish for everyone, that they find their little corners of avoidance, overcome it so they can show up. Like, are you being your best self? And if you're not, it's because you're avoiding.

Mel Robbins 35:24 Why do we do this?

Dr. Luana Marques 35:25 We are biologically wired to avoid. So the brain is amazing, right? It, it does... It cannot differentiate real threat from perceived threat, right? Our brain is wired to do what? To predict and protect. That's what our brain is doing. It's protecting us from danger and it's predicting, and it's predicting based on past information.

Mel Robbins 35:44 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 35:44 So your family member who is having some trouble with avoidance and work, the brain is using the perception of work as danger as something really bad, like it's a lion.

Mel Robbins 35:55 Oh, so it's predicting.

Dr. Luana Marques 35:57 It's predicting-

Mel Robbins 35:58 And then it's making y- it's making a call on how to protect you based on its prediction.

Dr. Luana Marques 36:03 That's it. And that call is avoidance, right? So instead of going on fight, flight or freeze because there is actually a lion, that's why I coined the three Rs of avoidance, because it's the same biology of fight, flight or freeze, but it's a perceived threat.

Mel Robbins 36:18 Hmm. That makes so much sense. So your grandmother gave you this incredible gift where she forced you to face something, to approach it, right?

Dr. Luana Marques 36:29 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 36:29 This fear of people. How did that experience help you get to become a professor at Harvard?

Dr. Luana Marques 36:39 So my grandmother, in helping me to approach instead of avoid and shift my perspective, the first thing she did is help me change my narrative. But the interesting thing about avoidance is it continues to show up in your life. And so, when I applied for college in the US, I remember writing the essays, and, you know, my English still wasn't very good. And my brain kept saying, "You know what? A little girl from Brazil can't apply." Like, "It's not ... You're not good enough." I held onto the applications so much, Mel, because of those beliefs that my stepdad had to at one point be like, "We need to mail it. You're not going to get in if you don't submit your applications." (laughs) And I was like, "Oh, yeah, there's that thing called submitting." And so I submitted them, and then I got accepted at SUNY Buffalo, and so I end up at SUNY Buffalo. And when I was applying to the doctoral program ... So I got to under- ... Uh, actually, before even, (laughs) as an undergraduate, this was ... You know, I really, I never thought I was going to be a psychologist. I thought I was going to be a medical doctor. In Brazil, either medical doctor or lawyer. That's how you pay the bills. Came to the US and I started to take biochemistry and pre-med courses, and then a psychology course for the fun of it. And I loved the psychology courses, loved them. My brain kept saying, "You need to be a medical doctor, you need to be a medical doctor." So I went home to Brazil. My grandmother knows all my stories. I'm sorry, but that's the reality. And I said to my grandmother, I said, "You know, I was thinking about being a psychologist, but I don't know." And she's like, "It's simple. You take psychology classes, you take biology classes. Which one is easier on your brain? That's what you do for a living. Why do you have to have a hard life and do things against your brain?" And I looked at her and I says, "Well, I get a C in biochemistry, I get a A+ in psychology." She says, "Go be a psychologist."

Dr. Luana Marques 38:14 And I was like, "That simple?" She's like, "Yeah, like, why do you fight ... Why do people fight so much to be what they can be that comes easy to their brain? Why do we?" Because I think we avoid. We avoid our reality. Like, facing reality does not mean we like it. And I had to face the reality that day, and I remember going for a walk with my dad and my stepdad and saying to him, like, "I know you're helping with college and all of that, and ... but I don't want to be a medical doctor anymore." I was shaking, Mel, like shaking of anxiety. You know? And he looked at me and he said, "You know what? You're going to be poor if you're a psychologist. You can't be a psychologist. You really ..." Like ... And I was terrified that he's going to pull the plug and not help with college anymore. And I looked at him, I said, "You know what? I'm good at this. Like, I want to do this." And, like, I almost avoided. Like, I still took biochemistry, or I think it was organic chemistry, for another semester until I finally claimed clean again with him. I was like, "I can't. Like, this is not me." So then I got to graduate school and wanted to apply to Harvard, as I told you before. And, and people said to me, "State students don't get in." And I was so terrified. Cried, cried a lot. Um, and then I applied. And I remember the day I walk in for the interview at Mass General. I was listening to Daniela Mercury, it's a Brazilian singer, to pump me up. And like, my entire body wanted to run the opposite way. (laughs) It's like, you know, I wanted to avoid, but I showed up, and, and I applied and got in. And I'll share one more example of sort of, you know, landing at Harvard. In about 2017, I wanted to be the president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. I was in the board. I'm the youngest person in the board. An organization that tends to be majority white, I was the only Latina person in the board, the only person of qual- color on the board. And the opportunity to run for president came up, and I just had my son. He was like three months old. I was home, and I went for dinner with a colleague, a senior colleague, the night before the election. And she heard that I was running, and this woman literally said to me at dinner, she says, "You're too young. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't run for this." It's amazing to me how women do this to other women, by the way. They're like ... And I got home crying to my husband and said to him, "David, you know what? I'm not going to apply. Like, maybe I'm too young and maybe I'm not going to be a good mother, and maybe I'm not going to have enough energy to be the president." And so I wrote an entire email to the board to pull my application, explaining not what this woman told me, not the truth, by the way. I was going to do your example of the law school. I literally was going to do your example. I was going to avoid. And I sat there, and then my husband like held my hand and he looked at me, he says, "Since I've met you, you've wanted this." He's like, "Do you really want to stop what you want based on what this woman's telling? Do you ... " Like, he called me out on my avoidance. And I deleted the email. And I was so anxious for that interview the next day for the election, but I won. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 41:08 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 41:09 I won. Can you believe it? I became the first Latina president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, and it could have been taken from me if I listened to what this woman said to me.

Mel Robbins 41:21 By yourself?

Dr. Luana Marques 41:22 By myself. And that's the ... We are the worst problem. We are, we are the ones avoiding. I can't blame her. She can ... I mean, people say all sorts of things for us, but do we have to believe it?

Mel Robbins 41:34 Yeah. Like if somebody said to you, "Why don't you just leave your son on the side of the road?" You'd be like, "Are you fucking crazy? Shut up."

Dr. Luana Marques 41:42 Yes.

Mel Robbins 41:42 But we listen and indulge other people's opinions about things that really matter to us, and then we avoid it.

Dr. Luana Marques 41:52 And then we avoid it.

Mel Robbins 41:53 And what I keep getting, and I hope that you're getting as you're listening, is that your whole life is one giant gift waiting for you to unwrap it. And there are ways in which you sit there and stare at it, and you actively avoid reaching out to shred the paper or pull on that ribbon. And it begins with the stories that you're telling yourself. And CBT, and the tools. I keep hearing approach, approach, approach. We've learned pause, we've learned, uh, to change the narrative-

Dr. Luana Marques 42:29 Which is SHIFT.

Mel Robbins 42:30 Which is SHIFT. And now we're learning approach. Is approach always the answer when it comes to things that you're avoiding?

Dr. Luana Marques 42:41 I think for

Dr. Luana Marques 42:42 me has been. (laughs) It's not always the answer. Think about approach. I define approach as opposite action. Anxiety, discomfort, sadness tells you to do something to make you feel more comfortable, right?

Mel Robbins 42:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 42:55 So your s- your family member doesn't want to go to work, somebody else doesn't want to ask for a raise. Eh, there's a mandate that comes with anxiety. Opposite action is just taking one step towards it, right?

Mel Robbins 43:06 Okay.

Dr. Luana Marques 43:06 So approach, to me, has been always the answer, because I, if I stop and think, my brain can be really an asshole sometimes.

Mel Robbins 43:14 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 43:15 And so, you know, shifting our perspective is very helpful, and sometimes we have to shift to even be able to approach, right? Sometimes what we're saying to ourselves is so locked up that we have to shift. But the reality is, approach is where the juice is.

Mel Robbins 43:29 Absolutely. Speaking of juice, let's roll some questions, 'cause, uh, we had a lot of people submit questions for you. First one is from Charmaine.

Narrator 43:40 I want more peace, more love, more compassion, more passion, more connection, more joy, less struggle, less stuff, less complications, less stress, less anxiety. And I don't just want it for myself, but for every woman. This shit is real. I see it in my girlfriends too, in this human experience. My question is, why? Why does this feel like a struggle? Thank you, Mel, for being brave enough to do this work. I love you.

Mel Robbins 44:16 Well, luckily we got Dr. Lou- I know you said that I wasn't allowed to call you doctor-

Dr. Luana Marques 44:20 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 44:20 ... but you are a doctor, so what would you say? Like, what, are we addicted to the struggle? Why do we all feel it?

Dr. Luana Marques 44:27 I love Charmaine's question. Charmaine, this is the deal. This question is what I call the magical want. Everyone magically wants more

Dr. Luana Marques 44:36 happiness, a better life, less stress. We all want it, and I love that Charmaine wants it for the entire world, 'cause I think that's what we're talking about in this conversation. So why, why do we stuck? It's because we avoiding, Charmaine. What are the things in your life right now that you actually have control over that you're not taking control? Because the struggle is there, and we're gonna have some level of struggle, but it's there because we are not taking action.

Mel Robbins 45:01 Oh.

Dr. Luana Marques 45:03 Right? We know scientifically, Mel, that if we actually act in line with our values, the things that matter the most to us, right, we actually have less stress, less anxiety. We have better quality of life. And so Charmaine, I'm asking you, what are the actions you can take towards those things that matter the most that would stop this avoidance? Because I bet what's happening is there's a lot of avoidance.

Mel Robbins 45:28 You know, even if she just started to approach, to use your terms, the less stuff-

Dr. Luana Marques 45:36 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 45:37 ... she just started to declutter, would that shift the feeling?

Dr. Luana Marques 45:40 100%. Think about this, if you walk in your office, and you go into work, and you sh- you show up, and there's a bunch of files, and it's a mess. What does that do to your brain? Immediately, you're like, you feel scattered, right? Even if she started to approach by just organizing her life a little bit, one little step at a time. And that's the thing I want everybody to hear very loudly and clear, it's not an all or nothing, right? But little approaches towards the things that matter the most can start to really change our lives, and that's how we get more happiness. That's how we feel better.

Mel Robbins 46:12 Well, what I wonder is, if we're really wired for emotional peace, and if we're yearning for these things like happiness, and more joy, and less struggle, we're yearning for it because it is meant for us. And I think... Well, I'm curious, if somebody's struggling, is that a sign that avoidance is everywhere?

Dr. Luana Marques 46:34 Yes. Simple yes, and this is why I've never met anyone in my life, professionally and personally, okay, who have not been avoiding, that avoidance is not behind their struggle, right? I've never, Mel. Like, in my moments that I myself am having the most hardest time, it's because I'm avoiding.

Mel Robbins 46:56 How do you figure out what you're avoiding?

Dr. Luana Marques 46:58 So you pause and you ask yourself, "If I were to go towards this, what would happen?" So in the case of your family friend, it's easy, right?

Dr. Luana Marques 47:08 It's, you're clearly avoiding. But it's like, "If I go towards whatever X, Y, and Z is, do I feel more or less uncomfortable?" If you feel more uncomfortable, you've been avoiding, 'cause the avoidance is designed to bring our emotional temperature down, but keeps us stuck.

Mel Robbins 47:22 Mmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 47:23 So by definition, going against avoidance will create some level of discomfort, right? So, "If I do this, does it keep me stuck? If I do this, does it keep me feeling comfortable," so to speak. If the answer is yes, you're avoiding.

Mel Robbins 47:38 What are the top things that your patients come in and are struggling with, and how does that connect with avoidance?

Dr. Luana Marques 47:47 So Mary came in because she was in a job that she hated.

Mel Robbins 47:53 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 47:54 She put on 100 pounds in that job, 100 pounds, but kept doing it because her brain said, "Well, at least I have an income."

Mel Robbins 48:01 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 48:02 And she was facing that, and she was just wouldn't face th- the reality that she hated that job. You know, um, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company I worked with avoided dating. He has super power in his job, and if you met him in the street, and you're like, "This guy can get anybody that he wants," he was terrified of dating and women. Now he's 45, super successful, no relationships, no meaningful relationships. Um, Joanna avoided asking for a raise. She's single mother, three kids, that raise, she's in the same job for 10 years. People getting passed for promotions, she's not getting those promotions, and she just was so terrified that she wasn't good enough, she hadn't done enough....she couldn't ask for a raise. She, she told me, "You know, if I was really good, they would have given me a raise." I was, like, "Well..."

Mel Robbins 48:47 (laughs) That's not how it works.

Dr. Luana Marques 48:48 "I don't think it works that way."

Mel Robbins 48:50 Sometimes it does.

Dr. Luana Marques 48:51 Sometimes. But, but it's... In the corporate world, sometimes it doesn't.

Mel Robbins 48:55 Um, those are great examples. And so as their therapist and, uh, practicing CBT therapy, are you then coaching them through the APPROACH method?

Dr. Luana Marques 49:08 Yes. So for everybody I work with, they, they start to think of me as the avoidance police-

Mel Robbins 49:13 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 49:14 ... (laughs) because I was like, "Oop, that's avoidance." So the first thing we really do is we identify their avoidance. Um, I just had a patient, um, make a list of everything she's avoiding, and she's like, "I don't need to make a list." I'm like, "I'd like to see that list." Because, see, we lie to ourselves. So the first thing I do with every patient is, "Let's identify all the domains in your life where you're avoiding." And then, like this patient that I mentioned, she was even avoiding eating healthy-

Mel Robbins 49:38 Uh-huh.

Dr. Luana Marques 49:38 ... because she was like, "Well, if I eat healthy, then perhaps I'll feel better, but I'm not sure. I do want to feel better, but I really don't know how to eat healthy." So she created this whole story that eating healthy somehow was a problem, and she'd eat junk, feel bad, and, and, like, then continue the cycle. And then I work with patients on SHIFT, APPROACH, and ALIGN, which is the third skill that we didn't talk a lot about, but it's really the idea of living a values-driven life.

Mel Robbins 50:03 Wow. We are going to have you back to talk about SHIFT, APPROACH, ALIGN. Is that what it was, SHIFT, APPROACH, ALIGN?

Dr. Luana Marques 50:09 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 50:09 Um, I want to have you continue to ask, answer some more questions. So let's play the one from, is it Mon-san?

Narrator 50:15 Hey, Mel. I've been following your YouTube for some time and wanted to reach out long ago. So the way I deal with my mental issues and anxieties through writing music, creating art, and other activities, and they, they do seem to help for the moment, but in circumstances where doing so is not an option, I just struggle to enjoy whatever w- whatever I'm doing or just have the feeling I want to leave whatever room I'm in. So I just want to know if this is a healthy way to deal with it, or are there better ways to cope?

Mel Robbins 50:45 The doctor's in the house.

Dr. Luana Marques 50:47 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 50:47 I see a big smile.

Dr. Luana Marques 50:50 I love this question because it illustrate how we, um, can avoid even ways that are helpful but then contaminates our life. Because basically what I hear you doing is this. To overcome your own fear, you write music, and you can show up, and that's fantastic, right? But it sounds to me like you're white-knuckling through it-

Mel Robbins 51:08 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 51:08 ... because then you're not able to generalize this to meeting a stranger sitting at a table, because I bet the same narrative that you're telling to yourself is the s- is the same. There's something about not being good enough or being important enough that is getting you stuck. And so for this person, I actually think shifting the way you see yourself, what is that narrative, so that you can learn to approach music and your friends with the same kind of mentality, because your thinking is getting you stuck here.

Mel Robbins 51:36 Well, I also noticed that, uh, the question opened with the fact that, "I've been following you on YouTube for some time and wanted to reach out long ago." So even in the opening sentence of the question, he admitted to avoiding something he had wanted to do, and then he goes on further and talks about how he's having a hard time enjoying whatever he's doing, and then that leads him to want to leave the room. And so if he starts to recognize that, "Whenever I start to feel uncomfortable, I just want to leave the room," is the advice that he stays in the room? Like, what would you have him do if he was your patient?

Dr. Luana Marques 52:20 So if he was my patient, what I'd say is this, "We need to figure out what you can tolerate that is comfortably uncomfortable." So for example, if what you want to do is leave the room immediately, can you stay for an extra one minute? Can you stay in the room and just observe the room for 30 seconds, if a minute's too much? If you walk out of the room, can you commit to walking back to the room, staying for a minute, walking out of the room again, walk back in the room? Small doses. 'Cause, see, in APPROACH, we're rewiring the brain and teaching the brain that there is no lion in that room, that, in fact, the people there most of the time want to talk to us, most of the time want to connect with us. And so small dosages of staying in that room, and, and I would start increasing them, a minute, three minutes, five minutes. Put a timer in your watch, if you have a watch, most people have an Apple Watch, or on your phone, because your brain within 10 seconds is gonna tell you it's too much. I've never worked with a patient that couldn't tolerate a minute. So stay for that minute, walk away, but commit to come back within a minute, not 5 minutes, not 10 minutes, because avoidance will knock on the door and tell you to go home, So get back in that room.

Mel Robbins 53:26 It sounds to me like this person has trouble tolerating being bored or being alone with their thoughts, because the way they're coping with their mental health is by pouring their brain and their thoughts into art. And so I can see how this would get worse and worse and worse. If you tell yourself, "I can't sit in this room," which is basically saying, "I can't sit here with myself," you will never be able to sit still, because it's gonna just get worse. Is that also the reason why you're so adamant about approaching instead of avoiding?

Dr. Luana Marques 54:06 That's exactly right. Because, see, it... We all have to be able to sit with ourselves and sit with some level of discomfort, and anxiety and discomfort runs faster than we can. So don't run away from it. Just sit and make friends with it, so that you can be your full self.

Mel Robbins 54:22 Is this why kids' anxiety gets so much worse, because we parents rush in and try to take it away?

Dr. Luana Marques 54:26 That's exactly right. You know, I, I have a five-year-old at home, and the other day he says to me, "I'm gonna create my

Dr. Luana Marques 54:33 own podcast." I said, "Really?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna create a podcast." And I said, "What is it going to be like?" He's like, "I'm gonna tell people they need to actually stay with their emotions and not run from them." And I was like, "That is it, Diego."That's what we need to do. We need to not run from them. And parents listening to us, it's okay for your kid to have some level of discomfort. It's, it's ex- it... They're growing, their brain's developing. There is some level of anxiety that comes in many of the ages in life, and you just need to let them tolerate it.

Mel Robbins 55:01 Let's go to Natalie's question.

Narrator 55:03 Hi, Mel. I've been dealing with a mirage of debilitating physical symptoms for quite some time. I've been to many doctors, and all was clear. However, symptoms persist, causing this symptom-fear-anxiety loop. How do I break free from this loop and finally believe this is mind-body, and be able to heal once and for all? Thank you kindly.

Mel Robbins 55:28 This is a great question, and I want to widen it out, because I think a lot about the fact that one of the number one things that kids fear is throwing up-

Dr. Luana Marques 55:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 55:37 ... because it's a moment of losing control.

Dr. Luana Marques 55:39 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 55:40 And then they get so worried that the anxiety increases when their stomach gurgles.

Dr. Luana Marques 55:45 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 55:45 We did the... This, this was an issue with our son, Oakley.

Dr. Luana Marques 55:48 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 55:48 That he got so focused on throwing up-

Dr. Luana Marques 55:53 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 55:54 ... that he didn't want to eat. When his stomach gurgled, he would panic about throwing up.

Dr. Luana Marques 56:00 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 56:00 And so, how do you break this loop of fear around physical sensation?

Dr. Luana Marques 56:09 It's a great question, and happens a lot in, in particular, within the Latino communities. Um, growing up, I got rushed to the hospital a lot, and... With asthma attacks. And I... My mom would just come to school, grab me, take me to the hospital. It was this horrendous thing, public hospital, long lines, me feeling like I couldn't breathe. And as an adult, my patients would say, "Have you ever had a panic attack?" And I said, "No, I've never had a panic attack." And then I was writing this book, and I realized, Mel, that I was having panic attacks as a kid. And the reason I got to this is, they always happened after a domestic incident, fight between my mom and my dad, and there was lots of blood and things were ugly. And then the next day at school, I couldn't breathe. My father left, and I've never had asthma since. Now, that is definitely a panic attack. And so I share this because I want our listeners to understand that we're not... That, that I'm not immune for it. It happened to me, right? So as a psychologist now, what we need to do is a couple of things. Physical symptoms, okay? When they happen, we start to interpret them. I bet that Oakley thought that any kind of sensation was gonna lead to vomiting-

Mel Robbins 57:15 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 57:15 ... and vomiting was the worst case scenario.

Mel Robbins 57:17 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 57:17 Right? So the first thing we need to do in case of physical sensations is actually a type of therapy called interoceptive therapy. Big name. All it means is actually exposure to physical sensations. Now most people never heard of this, which is so surprising to me. So if I'm treating somebody that has a panic attack, for example, what I do is, I make them hyperventilate. I spin them on a chair. If I was drinking- treating Oakley, what I've done is, I have a vomit recipe, and I would actually get him to have that sensation, but it would start smaller. It started by watching videos of YouTube of people vomiting.

Mel Robbins 57:50 What?

Dr. Luana Marques 57:51 Yep. I had a patient one time that we... What we did is, we went out on a Monday morning, uh, at Faneuil Hall, because those pubs, people vomit a lot.

Mel Robbins 57:59 Oh, they stink, yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 57:59 Yeah, yeah. So our exposure was walking around Faneuil Hall and just seeing puke, and so that he could feel the sensation. And what happens is the brain habituates, the brain actually gets used to it, so that that little sensation, the smell of it, actually doesn't lead to the physical sensations, which is the opposite of what everybody does. Most people, when they have physical sensations, I bet our listener, just runs away from that. Her heart pounds and she goes, "Oh, my God, something is wrong. I need to avoid that sensation." So we try to do something to avoid it.

Mel Robbins 58:30 Or you run to the doctor-

Dr. Luana Marques 58:31 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 58:32 ... which is the reacting, right?

Dr. Luana Marques 58:35 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 58:35 If something's wrong...

Dr. Luana Marques 58:36 That's exactly right. You run to the... And then the doctor says, "You're okay." How many patients have I seen, they've gone to all the cardiologist checkup, because their heart is a problem. It is not. So what we do in therapy is we actually force you to have the sensations. And this is the important piece, I want everybody to not miss this. And then we do nothing. And I mean nothing. You just sit with the discomfort. And if you don't control it, biology will come down. It's just, it comes down slowly. It just does. If your kid... Okay? If you're crossing a major street in Boston with your kid and your kid runs across traffic, what's going to happen?

Mel Robbins 59:12 They're going to get hit.

Dr. Luana Marques 59:13 Well, hopefully you stop them before, but what happens to you?

Mel Robbins 59:16 Oh, my gosh. I, I... When, when you said that, my stomach dropped.

Dr. Luana Marques 59:19 Right? And, and you panic.

Mel Robbins 59:21 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 59:21 And you're gonna run to your kid, and you're gonna grab your kid, and you're gonna hold onto that kid. Does that anxiety, that stomach drop, that fear, does it go away right away?

Mel Robbins 59:29 Mm, as soon as the threat's gone, it starts to go away faster, but it takes a little bit of time.

Dr. Luana Marques 59:34 It takes a little bit of time. So biology goes down slowly, right? Fight, flight, or freeze comes down, but it comes down slowly. Now heart pounds just heart pound, right? One of it is being interpreted as a heart attack, and you go into panic. The other one is going for a jog, or your kid just crossing the street. We need to train the brain to slowly allow that physiology to come down. So I hyperventilate with a patient, and then we sit and we literally do nothing.

Mel Robbins 1:00:00 Oh, my gosh. I, I did not take that approach with Oakley. I would basically go, "You're not going to get sick. You're not going to get sick." And there's this famous story (laughs) .

Dr. Luana Marques 1:00:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:00:09 I'm embarrassed. We were on an airplane, and he's like, "I think I'm gonna sit up here." And I'm like, "Oh, will you just stop? You're not going to get sick. You just don't like flying." We'd been on the plane for three hours. We are off that flight, walking through Logan. We're probably 15 steps into the terminal. He just vomits everywhere. And of course, "See, I threw up," and it's... I think he got himself so worked up, he actually threw up.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:00:33 Yup.

Mel Robbins 1:00:34 And it's the exact opposite of what I should have done. So I want to just make sure that for anybody that has...... had an illness and you're in remission, or you have, uh, Lyme disease and it's dormant, but you're starting to feel like the symptoms are back, how do you approach?

Dr. Luana Marques 1:01:01 So I say this to every one of my patients, I will give you reassurance once, not more than once. So if you have an illness, it's okay to check with your doctor once, right? You have your appointments, it's okay to go to the doctor and say, "Can I have my check-up?" You have it, it's probably in a schedule anyhow. What's not okay is the doctor gives you a report that you're okay, and now you go to a different doctor, and a second opinion, and a third opinion. But I always feel it's okay to ask once, because sometimes we're not avoiding, right?

Mel Robbins 1:01:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:01:31 And, and one thing we didn't talk about, though, that I do want to add is there are moments in life that you need to avoid. Like in the case of domestic violence, like my mom dealt

Dr. Luana Marques 1:01:40 with, right, poking the bear and trying to approach, sometimes it doesn't work. You have to be safe and get to a place where you then can figure out how to approach your life.

Mel Robbins 1:01:49 How do you know the difference? Like you said this thing about, "I just don't like heights."

Dr. Luana Marques 1:01:52 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:53 How do you know the difference if you're actually avoiding something that you need to approach and face in your life versus you just don't like it, or it's an issue of safety?

Dr. Luana Marques 1:02:02 (smacks lips) So the first one is robbing you from your best life. So one of ... Uh, there's a price tag. That's how I think about this.

Mel Robbins 1:02:10 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:02:10 There is a price tag with avoidance, and it's keeping you stuck, right? And sometimes, the patient of mine was a different patient, was in a job that she really disliked. So she called me and she says, "Hey, Luana, I just want to check if I'm avoiding or not." And we had a conversation about this job. It wasn't going well. It was clear she was going to have to change jobs. I said, "But why are you staying?" And she says to me, "I'm staying because if I stay six more months, I have this big bonus, and that bonus-"

Mel Robbins 1:02:34 Oh.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:02:34 ... "is really going to help pay some of the bills that we have. And then what I thought is I would just tolerate for six months, and then once I get the bonus, I will just find another job." I said, "That's strategy. (laughs) That's not avoidance."

Mel Robbins 1:02:47 Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:02:47 "That's strategy. That's fantastic."

Mel Robbins 1:02:49 Yes. Yes.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:02:50 Right? But she was so trained to think about avoidance. She's like, "Am I avoiding by staying?" No. That's strategy. Sometimes we have to have strategy in life.

Mel Robbins 1:02:56 Well, it seems like avoidance is very reflexive-

Dr. Luana Marques 1:02:59 Mm-hmm. 100%.

Mel Robbins 1:02:59 ... and that it is something that you're doing because you're reacting, and I would imagine that if you got pushed to, toward the thing, you'd push back 'cause you don't want to, versus a strategy which you can calmly, with emotional peace, rationally explain to somebody.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:03:18 That is exactly it. That, and, and everybody, if you, if you're true to yourself-

Mel Robbins 1:03:23 Yep.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:03:23 ... and you pause, and you really look at what's in front of you, you're going to be able to smell avoidance pretty quickly.

Mel Robbins 1:03:29 Wow. So I want to ask, for anybody that is just experiencing anxiety or you just feel really stuck, how do you begin this process?

Dr. Luana Marques 1:03:39 So most of the time, people come to me and they don't know they're avoiding. They have no clue they're avoiding. So the first step is really pausing. Give yourself five minutes, sit down, and think about the things that you want to do. So let's think about the dream life. What are the things you want to do? And then ask yourself why you're not doing that. What are the things that are getting in the way? And you're going to pretty quickly identify your avoidance. "I'm not doing this because I'm afraid of heights. I'm not doing this because if I ask for a raise, they're going to find out that I'm not good enough. I'm not going on this date because I don't think I'm pretty enough." Right?

Mel Robbins 1:04:14 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:04:14 And so if you pause, think of your dream life, and then ask yourself, "What are the obstacles here?" You're going to identify your avoidance. That's the first step to changing.

Mel Robbins 1:04:22 Wow. And what if somebody goes, "I don't really know?"

Dr. Luana Marques 1:04:26 So one way to do this is look at the mirrors in your life, your good friends. You might not want to call your avoidance, but your friends usually know when you're avoiding. My husband calls me out on it all the time. The other day I was on a plane. I got an email that I hated. I took a picture, sent it to him, and the text goes, "Do not respond. That's reacting. That's avoidance. You cannot do this, Luana." And I, like, I had composed the email back by the way. (laughs) I was about to send the email. Your family and friends, your loved one, your close friends, they are good mirrors for us. They make us better, especially those friends that can call you on your shit.

Mel Robbins 1:05:03 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:05:03 Look at them and have a conversation about avoidance. I bet they can help you.

Mel Robbins 1:05:07 Amazing. What about people that have, uh, what about parents or loved ones that have somebody that struggles with anxiety and a lot of avoidance? How do you support somebody?

Dr. Luana Marques 1:05:20 So supporting somebody, especially in heightened anxiety, can be very challenging. Um, I just had a client of mine say that he's at the end of his wife, like she won't get on a plane, she will not do anything that is physically active because increase ... So they, they want to go on this beautiful vacation, but she's like, "Well, okay, it has to be an electrical bike, and it has to be snorkeling, not scuba diving." Had, like she's basically containing anything that's related. So he said to me, "I'm, I'm, I'm just, I'm done with this," right? The first piece is really trying to, number one, get the person some help if they are in that level of distress, but the second one is asking how you can be helpful, okay? Because often, we want to help people, but we want to help them in the way that we know to help.

Mel Robbins 1:06:05 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:06:05 So the example of Oakley, and you're saying to him, like, "Just get over this."

Mel Robbins 1:06:08 (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 1:06:08 Because that works for you, Mel. Like, that works for you.

Mel Robbins 1:06:11 Sometimes. (laughs)

Dr. Luana Marques 1:06:12 (laughs) But it, but it seems like a strategy that you can, you can muscle through, right? And so it, it's ... In the case of Oakley, it's like, what would be helpful? This is one piece. Like, what would be helpful for you right now? How can I support you? Two, if it is avoidance that that person is sort of talking about, listen, I want to be helpful, but I'm not going to help you avoid. And that's important for parents. If your kid is terrified of going to school, keeping them at home is just adding to the avoidance.

Mel Robbins 1:06:38 Hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:06:39 So how do I support my kid getting to school? I'm going to go with you onto the parking lot. We're going to go early, and I'm going to walk you to your classroom. I'm going to actually help you by staying with you a day at school. Right? Parents tend to try to take their kids away. That's a parent level avoidance, and it's making your kids sick. So you need to find a way to approach with your kid at their level.

Mel Robbins 1:07:01 I made this mistake.... when our kids, Kendall and Oak in particular, had pretty significant episodes of anxiety. Uh, there was a six-month period where each one of them slept on the floor of our bedroom, and I was so tired, that was my excuse, that I would just let them sleep there. They'd wander down in the middle of the night. I wouldn't want to have to get out of bed and walk them back up, and deal with the pushback, and deal with the emotions, and so I would let them stay there, and then it morphed into me just making a little bed on the ground on my side of the bed. And the funny thing is, is they were smart enough to know, even when they were sleepwalking, that they don't go to Chris's side of the bed because he would get up. They'd just come to mine, and I could almost, in the middle of my sleep, sense that they were there and I would just lift up the blanket in the middle of the night, and it lasted for six months. I made it worse.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:08:02 Yeah. And you're not alone, Mel. I've heard this from so many mothers before because see, you're exhausted already, right? This is why I talk a lot about we need to learn to regulate ourselves and use those approaches for ourselves first so that we can be the best parents.

Mel Robbins 1:08:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:08:16 Because if you're already on the negative, you did what you needed to do to survive, right? And I bet there's a lot of mothers listening to us who are doing similar things because they feel like they don't have anything in their gas, uh, th- th- l- any gas on their tank, so they have to do this. And the thing is, it does make it worse. That's the only problem, and it makes it worse-

Mel Robbins 1:08:33 It's true.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:08:33 ... for you and the kid, because we are teaching the opposite of what we want to teach the kid, right? And, and, and it is hard. Like, my five-year-old now has this thing with dogs, and I'm like, "Let's..." What I really want to say is, "You're not afraid of dogs. Go, go, go talk to them." What I do is, "Okay, can we just stay far enough from the dog?"

Mel Robbins 1:08:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:08:50 "Can you look at the dog? Can we..." And, you know, we had this conversation yesterday. I heard you had dogs and I said, "So if you meet her, she has dogs." "But what am I gonna do?" And I said, "Well, you're gonna stay there and we're gonna learn about her dogs." "And, but do I have to touch?" "No, you don't have to touch, but you have to show up and you have to be there," because I, you know, and there's this instinct as a mother. One day, I saw myself wanting to cross the street because Diego's is a big dog, and I got a little uncomfortable, but I was like, "I'll hold your hand and we're just gonna wait. We're gonna pause and we're gonna let the dog go by."

Mel Robbins 1:09:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:09:18 "Not gonna go towards the dog either," right? I could see the fear, but as a mom, I wanted to protect him. I wanted to take him out of there.

Mel Robbins 1:09:25 Yeah.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:09:25 It is not what we want to do.

Mel Robbins 1:09:27 Wow. What about, um, the sleeping example? What would you counsel a patient to do if they were in that cycle, where a s- child's coming down, wanting to climb into bed? What do you do?

Dr. Luana Marques 1:09:42 You know, my husband did the sleep training at our house, um, because (laughs) I was like, "I don't want to hear a kid screaming, and..." And so I'm sharing this as a mother because I remember Diego screaming for two or three days, and now he sleeps really well, and so I'm very thankful to David. But what you want to do with sleep and any kind of things that are containment, right? Kids function better if they have a sense of safety-

Mel Robbins 1:10:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:10:08 ... and they know what to predict, and so you have that conversation that this is your bed and that's where you sleep, and you cannot have any sleep-ups. So, if the kid comes the first night and you're exhausted, you take them to their bed, and you might have to take them to their bed 10 times that night, and 10 times the next night, but the first day that you let them sleep there, even for 10 seconds, you're basically telling them that they can push the boundaries. Kids are learning by our modeling.

Mel Robbins 1:10:35 It's true.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:10:35 And once we, they learn it, oh, kids are so good. They are gonna push a little more, and they're gonna push a little more, and we then start giving a little more. And so, in situations like this, there has to be zero tolerance. "Nope, you don't come here. Nope, you don't come here."

Mel Robbins 1:10:50 You're right.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:10:50 And pretty quickly, to tell you the truth, is if you do that, you distinguish the behavior.

Mel Robbins 1:10:55 It's true because they're uncomfortable being alone in their bed, and so you're teaching them to tolerate that discomfort.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:11:03 That is... And that's a skill they need to learn for the rest of their life, because they're going to have to do... It's called emotion regulation psychology, and you're teaching them basic emotion regulation by teaching them that it's okay to have that discomfort and that they're safe in their bed, and over time, it goes away.

Mel Robbins 1:11:20 And that's what we need to teach ourselves.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:11:22 That's exactly what we need to teach ourselves.

Mel Robbins 1:11:22 Because all this avoidance is simply us not being able to tolerate, as adults, our own uncomfortable emotions.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:11:29 That is all there is. We get uncomfortable and we run like we're a kid. We go run into our parents' room, and, and now we're stuck in a cycle.

Mel Robbins 1:11:36 Yeah, but instead of running to mom and dad's room, we're running to the vodka bottle, or we're avoiding the email, or we're holding onto the application because that's a way to avoid the risk or the pain or the, like, fear that we have.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:11:53 And we are just building more pain, more fear, and more discomfort.

Mel Robbins 1:11:56 This is so fascinating, and what I love is that you're on a mission to teach this to people so that they can truly unlock all of the incredible things that are available to all of us in life.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:12:11 Within each one of us, there is a hidden amazing jewel, and if we take avoidance away, we can all be shining within our own domains of life. We all have a gift, right? Every single person has that gift inside of them right now, and we are just like shouting it and, and not, not maximizing it. I want a world where people are bold in their own way, that they are approaching the things that matter the most, and, and can you imagine that world? Like, it just would be so much better.

Mel Robbins 1:12:40 I'm so glad you didn't become a medical doctor-

Dr. Luana Marques 1:12:42 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:12:43 ... but you went into psychology, and that you do what you do. You are a gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us. Um, you are gonna come back again and again and again.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:12:56 Thank you, Mel. This has been so delightful. You are amazing. For everybody listening, she's just the kindest person.

Mel Robbins 1:13:01 Aw.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:13:02 Like, just the kindest person, so thank you.

Mel Robbins 1:13:04 One final question, tell us about your new book.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:13:06 New book is called Bold Move: A Three-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power. The first two chapters are all about avoidance, and you need to dig in on that avoidance, and then I talk about shift, approach, and align. It's a very personal book because it's the first time in my life that I talk about the stuff that I'm talking to you here, my panic attacks, and family domestic violence, and the ways I've avoided and continue to avoid and continue to fight avoidance. So I have no idea what the world'll do with the book, but I'm very glad to get to this place in my life that I fully me and I can show up.

Mel Robbins 1:13:38 It is absolutely something everybody should read. You've got CEOs and stay-at-home moms and everybody in between in your practice. You are an assistant professor at Harvard, and in this personal, tactical, skills-based book, you give everybody the tools that they need to make more bold moves. (instrumental music plays) So thank you, thank you, thank you, Dr. Luana Marques. We love you, and I'm so happy you're here with us today.

Dr. Luana Marques 1:14:04 Thank you.

Mel Robbins 1:14:05 Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. (laughs) This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. (instrumental music plays) Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe 'cause I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe. Mwah.