The TRUTH About ANXIETY And How To HEAL IT! | The Mel Robbins Podcast

Mel Robbins 0:00 (ticking clock) (upbeat music) Dr. Kennedy in the house, people. So let's go back to the basics, anxiety 101.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 0:10 All anxiety is separation anxiety.

Mel Robbins 0:11 What does that mean?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 0:12 The reason why you're anxious in the first place is because you block love. So when you say, "I love you-"

Mel Robbins 0:16 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 0:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 0:17 The reason why you're anxious is because you block love?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 0:23 For yourself, yes.

Mel Robbins 0:25 What? I th- I just had a huge breakthrough here.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 0:28 Good.

Mel Robbins 0:28 Holy shit, Russ. (upbeat music) Hey, it's Mel, and welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast. Okay, so today's episode is freaking fire. And speaking of fire, I gotta throw some amazing celebratory fire in your direction. I gotta say thank you. Thank you so much for listening, for sharing these episodes, for being as excited as I am about this thing. I started this because I just wanted to connect with you on a deeper level, and I wanted to be able for us to inspire and empower each other to create better lives. And baby, (laughs) we are doing it. Um, I also want to say thank you for being a force for good. I love the fact that you're already pouring in topic and guest suggestions. Please keep them coming, because we are going to create this thing together. We are looking at the DMs, we're looking at the stuff that you're leaving on the forums on the website. This is something we are building together, and it is just incredible, so thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, so today's episode, hello, game changer. This is fire, people. So what are we talking about? Um, anxiety. Yep, we gotta talk about anxiety. My mission with this episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast is to profoundly, fundamentally change the way you think about and approach anxiety. By the end of this episode, you will be empowered to do way more than just survive your anxiety or try to cope with it, okay? In just a few minutes, you are going to meet an incredible expert on the topic. His name is Dr. Russ Kennedy. He's a medical doctor. He has a degree in neuroscience. And in my opinion, he has written the book on anxiety. And so he's gonna come on and we're gonna talk all about the topic. We're gonna change the way that you think about it, that you approach it, and more importantly, Dr. Kennedy says you can heal your anxiety once and for all. Yeah, sure, you're gonna have moments where anxiety rise up, and, you know, you're gonna have stressful situations, but in terms of the ongoing overwhelm, nervousness, on edge feeling, he's gonna teach you how to heal that. His work is life-changing, and it has made a huge difference in my life, and I cannot wait for you to meet him in a few minutes. Now, the interesting thing about anxiety is that I am considered one of the world's leading experts on anxiety.

Mel Robbins 3:00 And I'm what you call a life-tested expert, because my expertise has been earned the hard way, the painful way, and that is by living through and struggling with anxiety for almost 45 years. The truth is, when I really think about my past, I don't ever remember a time when I wasn't nervous, or feeling on edge, or anxious, or somewhere other than the room that I was currently standing in. I think if you can come out of the womb as a baby having a panic attack, that was Mel Robbins. And that panic that I was, I think, hardwired with in my nervous system, it only grew as I got older. In fact, you know how you go to those little camps when you're little, like with the Y or, you know, maybe you go to Girl Scout camp? I was so homesick at every single camp my parents tried to send me to, I would be sent home. In fact, there is this really infamous story about me, uh, in sixth grade. So in sixth grade at North Muskegon Elementary School, there's this huge crescendo at the end of the year, and the entire sixth grade takes over the Boy Scout and Girl Scout camp that's like 10 miles away, and everybody goes to camp for five days and four nights. And it is supposed to be the most amazing thing that happens during elementary school. Everybody talks about going to sixth grade camp. Here's the thing about Mel. I was so riddled with anxiety and panic while I was there that I called my parents every single day and begged for them to come and get me. I was so out of control that the counselors actually acquiesced and said I could go home. Now, I want you to stop and think about that. Do you know how anxious you have to be to get trained counselors to basically go, "This kid is out of control. We can't handle this. Y- we gotta get her outta h- get her parents to come pick her up. Like, I, I, d- I can't deal with this." And so I got what my anxiety wanted. I got to leave, and as I was packing up my cabin, my friends came in and they're like, "Where are you going, Mel? Tonight's the big scavenger hunt. It's the last night. Why are you leaving?" I lied to them and said, "Oh, my grandmother's had a heart attack, so my parents are coming. We gotta go. We gotta go see her." Yep, that was sixth grade Mel, full of anxiety. And it only got worse as I got older. In fact, before every track meet or tennis match that I had to play as a varsity athlete, I had such a nervous stomach. That was the term that was used back in the early '80s. "She has a nervous stomach." Well, you know how I dealt with my nervous stomach? I would stand behind, like, a bush next to the tennis courts, and I would have this blue bottle packed in my backpack. It was a blue bottle of Mylanta. This is an antacid medicine that old people drink for, for reflux. I would chug that stuff. It got so bad that my parents would start buying that stuff by the case. It was disgusting and chalky, but I chugged it anyway.Honestly, I can't believe I'm admitting this to you right now. (laughs) And here's the thing, it only got worse. I mean, little elementary school anxiety Mel turned into high school anxiety Mel, and then of course I was college train wreck anxiety Mel. I don't even wanna admit half the things I did in college when I was anxious, like jumping from one relationship to another or waking up every single morning with, uh, hangxiety full of regrets about the night before. You know, when I stop and think about... oh my God. I feel like I need Mylanta right now. My stomach is starting to be like, "Woah." And I laugh about it, but honestly at the time, it's sad. Like, I- I just didn't enjoy college. I don't even like to go to college reunions 'cause I did not like the person that I was back then as my anxiety was just raging out of control. Well, when I got to law school, thankfully, the anxiety got so unbearable that I got medical help and I was finally diagnosed with anxiety. And this would have been in the early 90s, and so anxiety was not a word that people threw around casually back then. I mean, anxiety meant there was something terribly wrong with you. People didn't talk about it. If you went to therapy, you were a freak. And so thankfully for me though, this diagnosis, it was a godsend because I finally had a word and a doctor validating what I had been struggling with for my entire life for 20 years. He prescribed Zoloft. It was a complete game-changer for me. It's almost like that medication acted like a ladder. You see, the anxiety and all the mental spiraling that it caused, that spiraling put me in a very deep hole mentally, physically, and spiritually, and that Zoloft was like a little ladder that allowed me, rung by rung, to start to climb out of that hole and do the work that you need to do to start to take control of your life. So, I took Zoloft for 20 years. In fact, the only time I didn't take Zoloft was when our first daughter, Sawyer, she's now 23 years old. So when she was born, I had been off Zoloft, uh, I had to taper off of it 'cause we didn't know if you could, like, breastfeed or whatever on that medication. They know now it's safe to breastfeed with it. But when she was born, I had such severe postpartum depression, the really scary kind where you couldn't be left alone because the doctors were afraid you were gonna hurt yourself or you're gonna hurt your baby. It was a terrifying eight-week experience in my life. And so I'm telling you, between the 45 years of dealing with my own anxiety and, on top of it, Chris and I having kids that have had anxiety that at times were so severe that they slept on the floor of our bedroom, I just always thought, "Okay, I have anxiety. That's the way that it is. It's just the way that I'm wired. I hate it. I hate having anxiety, but I just have to learn to live with it." I was wrong. You do not have to hate anxiety and you do not have to just learn to live with it. You can learn how to understand it and you can learn simple things that will help you take control of it and change how you respond to moments of uncertainty and moments of stress. And so in my early 40s, the anxiety got so crippling again because there were a lot of things going on in our life that were triggering it, that every single morning the alarm would go off and I would lay in bed for an hour and I would just stare at the ceiling. And the anxiety, it's almost like it felt like a gravity blanket pinning me to that bed. And as I would lay in that bed and think about all my problems, time would tick by, the kids would miss the bus. I became a person I didn't even recognize. But I want to just tell you that I know what it's like when anxiety is ruining or running your life, because when anxiety was at its worst for me, I created this thing called the Five Second Rule, and it was out of sheer desperation and fear that I created this thing. What is it? It's a brain hack. And if you ever feel overwhelmed by anxious thoughts or anxious feelings, just count backwards, five, four, three, two, one, and you can interrupt those thoughts and feelings and then physically move. And ever since I invented this thing, I've been teaching the Five Second Rule on stages around the world and it has changed the lives of millions of people. Now, here's one of the things I want to distinguish before we bring Dr. Kennedy on in just a second. A lot of the tools that I am known for and that I teach and the things that I've been researching that help with anxiety, that help with mindset, that help with mental health, I call these tools a neck-up approach because they attack your mindset. They focus on your thoughts. They help you change the patterns of thought in your mind and the default thinking and the self-criticism and the worry and the procrastination and the perfectionism that can take hold. On today's episode though, we're gonna go in a different direction. We're gonna talk about a whole body of tools that you need that I would classify as a neck-down approach to anxiety. We are going to focus on the body. We're going to focus on your nervous system. We're going to focus on thinking about anxiety as something happening in your body first, because the fact is that if you only attack from the neck up with talk therapy or using my tools, yeah, it's gonna help. Yes, they are an essential part of the toolkit that you need for coping, and yes, it will make a huge difference, but what Dr. Kennedy is going to explain to you today is game-changer because he's gonna teach you that you can actually heal your anxiety.But you have to attack it from the neck down. You have to stop running away from the anxiety and address what's going on in your body, and that's exactly what we're gonna talk about today, and we're also gonna talk about how the heck do you do this. This is gonna be packed with takeaways, because I'm going

Mel Robbins 12:45 to just make sure that it is. So Dr. Kennedy, he is the best-selling author of the book Anxiety Rx. His work is changing the lives of people around the world. He is helping people heal their anxiety in his clinical practice. And you're gonna wanna bookmark this episode, because you're gonna learn so many takeaways that you're gonna absolutely wanna come back to this again and again, and you definitely are gonna wanna share this with your friends and family. In fact, you'll be trying his tools as you listen to this episode. He has a degree in neuroscience, he's a medical doctor, and perhaps most importantly, like me and maybe you, he's struggled with anxiety for decades. But using what you're about to learn in this episode, he has cured himself. So let's get him on the line. Hey.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 13:34 Hey, Mel Robbins, my God.

Mel Robbins 13:35 How are you?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 13:37 Good. Good.

Mel Robbins 13:38 Awesome. Is this thing going, guys? We're good with the recording? Okay, awesome. I am so excited. My favorite episodes are ones where I feel like I'm getting a personal therapy session-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 13:48 Okay.

Mel Robbins 13:48 ...that the world can listen in on, so. (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 13:51 Okay. How deep do you want to go?

Mel Robbins 13:53 Well, I have a feeling that we are gonna have you back over and over and over again.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 14:00 Okay.

Mel Robbins 14:00 And so I want to focus our conversation today on, um, just kind of some anxiety 101.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 14:09 Okay.

Mel Robbins 14:09 Because one of the things that I was so excited to, um, be able to talk to you about is the difference between a neck-up thinking approach-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 14:25 Sure.

Mel Robbins 14:25 ...to anxiety, versus a neck-down body approach to anxiety.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 14:31 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 14:31 And I, um, want to focus our conversation on truly getting people to have a wake-up call about the way that they think about what anxiety is and isn't, about what's going on in your body when you have anxiety, and almost, like, getting somebody to go, "Holy shit. Like, I gotta completely upend how I've been thinking and attacking this." Does that make sense?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 15:02 Yeah, that's what I'm good at. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 15:04 I, I know you are. So I've been following you for a while, and every time you post something, I go, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Yes, yes, yes, yes." And so first of all, thank you, thank you, thank you, Dr. Kennedy. I know you prefer to be called Russ, but I just gotta say, dude, you gotta, you g- you're an MD and you have a degree in neuroscience, and like me, you struggled with anxiety for 30 years.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 15:29 Whoo.

Mel Robbins 15:29 And so I could not be more excited to, uh, basically get a personal therapy session with you.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 15:35 Sure. Happy to do it.

Mel Robbins 15:36 (laughs) Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 15:38 Happy to do it, Mel.

Mel Robbins 15:39 So the first thing that I would love to ask you is, when a patient comes to you, and I, I, how do you describe what anxiety is?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 15:50 Well, usually they come to me with anxiety already, so, you know, I'll, I'll go into, you know, "What are you feeling? What's going on? What happens to you?" And usually, almost universally, they'll describe a thinking process. "My husband's driving me nuts. I can't drive. I can't go past this. I can't go into grocery stores. I can't go on the bus." And usually what I'll say is, "You know, that's all in your head. Like, that's all the story that your left hemisphere, your analytical left hemisphere, is making up. Now, what do you feel in your body, in your physiology, when you say you feel anxiety?" And when I, the first, almost the first thing I can get people to do is say, "I'm gonna change the word 'anxiety' to 'alarm,'" because words have consciousness to them. Anxiety doesn't have a lot of consciousness to it. A lot of people don't even understand what anxiety is.

Mel Robbins 16:37 Uh, well, I agree, and I feel-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 16:38 Or-

Mel Robbins 16:38 ... like it's thrown around all the time.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 16:40 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:40 And we think that anxiety is like a nervous stomach and a lot of worry in your head about what's gonna happen, and I love that you're saying that we want to start talking about the alarm that goes off in your body, and before we even talk about what that means, one other thing that I would love for you to address is, what are ways in which anxiety expresses itself? And I'm gonna give you an example.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 17:11 Sure.

Mel Robbins 17:11 So, so I'm your classic textbook type A hypervigilant-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 17:16 Sure.

Mel Robbins 17:17 ...always worried-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 17:18 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 17:18 ...anxiety type. Uh, panic attacks, shortness of breath, you know, I, you can, you can literally feel the, the, the alarm vibrating through my skin.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 17:29 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 17:29 But our daughter, who is 23, when she's feeling anxious or the alarm is going off in her body, she doesn't emit worry or tension. She emits frustration and anger.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 17:43 Sure.

Mel Robbins 17:44 So what are the various ways in which anxiety gets expressed in people? Because I think there's a lot of people that, quote, "struggle with anxiety," but that don't realize that it's anxiety that they're struggling with.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 17:58 Yeah. Well, um, I think what happens, what you're describing with Sawyer, is that, is that her autonomic nervous system kind of goes into a sympathetic, you know, fight or flight response, and for her, the only acceptable response inside of her is frustration or anger, because that's, that's how it gets expressed.

Mel Robbins 18:20 Hmm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 18:20 Now, other people will shut down. They'll go into freeze, right? So sympathetic nervous system is fight, flight, and freeze, and fawn too, but freeze mostly.... in that particular situation. So some people will go into this, like, withdrawal, they'll stop moving, their eye contact disappears, they, their body stops kind of moving in a, in a fluid kind of way. And it's really people display anxiety or alarm, as I should say, using my own little terminology, in very different ways, and I think it's really becoming aware of it, because I have many people that send me me- messages saying, "I didn't even know I had anxiety until I read your book." It's like, "Well, I don't know if I'm doing you any favors there, but..."

Mel Robbins 18:59 (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 18:59 You know, it, it really is, it really does manifest because when I was 20, I didn't know what anxiety was. I just knew that I had this impending doom, this sense of impending doom, and I didn't even know what it was, and I don't think a lot of people do.

Mel Robbins 19:12 I agree with you. So let's go back to the basics.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 19:15 Okay.

Mel Robbins 19:15 Anxiety 101.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 19:17 Okay.

Mel Robbins 19:17 When you say we're gonna now talk about anxiety as an alarm system in your body, and what, describe the alarm system to me.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 19:28 Okay. So there's a structure in our brains called the amygdala. And the amygdala's often called the fear center of the brain. Mm, it's, it's an okay, you know, description, but it's, it's not the best. But basically, the amygdala is involved in just about every fear reaction that we have. So the amygdala will recognize something in your external environment or your internal environment, AKA worries, that alarms it. So the amygdala has a superhighway down to the brain stem which controls your body. So your blood pressure increases, your heart rate increases, your respiration increases. Everything seems to go along with that, so we get this physiological change motivated mostly by the amygdala but other, other factors in the brain as well, and that brings us into this state of alarm. And then what the left hemisphere does is it goes, "We're alarmed. What do we have to be alarmed about?" And then you start stacking, and I've heard you say this. I think it was in, in The 5 Second Rule about, "I gotta get up. You know, this looks, this, this is bad, that's bad, one knee or boobs is bigger." (laughs) You know?

Mel Robbins 20:32 Yup.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 20:33 All this kind of stuff. That's what I call stacking. So as soon as your body feels this sense of alarm, your left hemisphere has to do something with it, so it has to make up worries and thoughts that are completely consistent with that painful sense of alarm in your system. So we start stacking up these worries, and of course, that just creates more alarm, which creates more worries, which creates more alarm, and we get caught in this alarm/anxiety cycle. So what's-

Mel Robbins 20:57 So let me see if I can unpack this, okay?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 20:59 Sure.

Mel Robbins 20:59 Because I

Mel Robbins 21:00 think this is a huge wake-up call for people to learn this, that anxiety does not start typically with your thoughts.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 21:09 Totally.

Mel Robbins 21:10 Anxiety starts with a physical response to some kind of situation that then triggers a physiological reaction in your body designed to agitate you and designed as an alarm to get you to suddenly pay attention, because your body is physically trying to get you to basically wake up from, from whatever you're doing and pay attention to some sort of threat or some sort of change or some sort of something. And the second thing that happens when your hea- when that physical thing happens is then your mind goes, "Holy cow. What am I, what, what, what is around me right now that I need to pay attention to or be worried about?" Is the, am I getting this right? So it begins in the body-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 22:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 22:04 ... as an alarm system, and then the thoughts climb on.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 22:09 I think that that, that's w-, that's an explanation that's very simple and, and, and it, very accurate, I think, is that we have this thing that I describe in my book called background alarm, which is basically kind of old unresolved emotional issues that are stuck in your body. You know, my colleague Gabor Mate talks about this too, emotions being stuck in the body, which is a construct. You can't separate the mind from the body, of course, but it's a construct, and it helps people. It really helps them understand that, "Hey, this is actually starting from my body," and because we're so versed at speaking in words and communicating to e- to ourselves and to each other with words, we don't get into the feeling. So if I ask you, "Hey, Mel, uh, what does it feel like when you, when you bite into an apple?" It's like, "Well, I don't know. I mean..." W- so, so I say, "What does it taste like?" "Well, it's sweet," or, "It's sour, it's crunchy." It's like we're so good at describing things in words, but if I, "How do you feel when you bite into that apple?" that's a brand new landscape. Like, we're not used to feeling. We're in a society that values, that worships the mind, and very, very rarely actually says, "Hey, get into your body. Feel your body." And a lot of us don't want to feel our body 'cause that's where the fricking pain is, right?

Mel Robbins 23:24 That's right.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 23:24 So we retreat into our heads because it's an escape from this old alarm that's been trapped in your body probably since childhood.

Mel Robbins 23:31 So you say that all anxiety has the exact same beginning. I was surp- I was really, this really surprised me that, that anxiety is all triggered by the same thing.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 23:43 Yes, that-

Mel Robbins 23:43 All anxiety comes from the, eh, eh, singular source. What is that?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 23:48 Separation. All anxiety is separation anxiety. It's-

Mel Robbins 23:51 What does that mean?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 23:52 Well, if you drill it down, it's, it's separation typically from yourself, but it starts with separation from your parents on some level. If you feel separate from your parents, the people that are supposed to love you, care, see you, hear you, and love you, if you feel separate from them, it creates this alarm in our system. And then when we get this alarm in our system, our brain has to do something about that. So what we tend to do as children is first of all blame ourselves. We can't blame our parents for what's going on in our childhood environment, so we blame ourselves, and then we start taking JABS at ourselves, what I call JABS, which is basically judgment, abandonment, blame, and shame. This is what we do to ourselves. This is the, the birth of the inner critic.So-

Mel Robbins 24:33 Can you give me an example? So-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 24:34 Okay.

Mel Robbins 24:35 ... so I find, and one of the things I'm, I'm, I wanna do with this show is to take, like, a lot of the stuff that sounds intellectual-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 24:43 Sure.

Mel Robbins 24:43 ... and make it really digestible and understandable. So when you say separate, you're separate from your parents, can you give us a few scenarios that, you know, aren't all horrific abuse-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 24:58 Sure.

Mel Robbins 24:58 ... situations-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 24:59 Sure.

Mel Robbins 25:00 ... that, that anybody can identify with, when you say separate from your parents?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 25:04 Yeah. Th- so there's something as simple as a parental mismatch, you know?

Mel Robbins 25:08 What does that mean?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 25:09 Well, it's kind of a term... I don't know if I heard it or I made it up, but it's basically I, I see a lot of... Most of my patients, clients, whatever you want to call them, are female, and a lot of them have issues with their mom. So it's, they felt separate. They, they felt this mismatch from their mother. They felt like, you know, "We're not connected. I love my mother. She loves me, but, you know, I like Bach and she likes, you know, punk rock." You know, w- and, and just in different parts of our lives, they're very different. And that parental mismatch, I think it might be a Nicole LePera term actually, this parental mismatch causes a tremendous amount of alarm in a child's system because you want to belong to a parent. You really want to feel like you're connected to your parent. And if you don't have that internal sense of attachment, it's very alarming to our system, and that alarm gets lodged in our body, and then that's what usually mediates the worries as we get older. It also mediates that thing I call JABS, which is judgment, abandonment, blame, and shame. We do that to ourselves. So when we're listening to our own thing, it's like, "Okay, how am I judging myself here?" You wake up in the morning, as you say, in, in High 5 Habit, you wake up in the morning-

Mel Robbins 26:15 (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 26:15 ... with anxiety or alarm, as I like to call it, and then you start thinking. You start stacking all these negative scenarios on top of yourself to make sense of it, when really what you should do, and, and take... This is out of your book, is, "I'm feeling anxious. 54321 into my body. Into my body. Find a place in my body, find a place in my breath, find a place that feels safe in my body." And some people don't feel safe in their body, and we do something with that first, but really breath. Everybody's pretty much safe in their breath. Go, "54321 into my body, out of my head." 'Cause what that does is it gives a sense of control. It ta- it takes energy away from those rumination- ruminating thoughts, and it puts it where it belongs, because maybe that alarm is your younger self that's asking

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:00 for your attention. And as a medical doctor, a neuroscientist, I kind of want to have a seizure sometimes when I talk about the ethereal nature of this. But really, from a practical sense, when you're anxious, find the alarm in your body-

Mel Robbins 27:13 Okay, so what-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:14 ... becau-

Mel Robbins 27:14 How do you do that? So let's-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:15 Okay.

Mel Robbins 27:15 So let's just take a scenario right now. Let's just say-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:18 Okay.

Mel Robbins 27:18 Um, and, you know, it could be anything.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:22 Sure.

Mel Robbins 27:22 It could be that you are sitting in the pickup line at school and you see somebody that you have beef with, and you start to feel like this wave hit you-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:37 Sure.

Mel Robbins 27:37 ... because you don't want to talk to that person or that person makes you nervous.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:42 Right.

Mel Robbins 27:42 Situation we can all relate to.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:44 Totally.

Mel Robbins 27:45 In that moment, sitting in the front seat of your car, and you feel the alarm go off, how do you locate the damn thing? 'Cause it's everywhere at this point.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 27:55 Yeah. Well, sometimes it's everywhere. I mean, it feels like it's everywhere, I think. And as I was saying earlier, we're so used to communicating with ourselves in words, we don't really think to look at the alarm in our body, right? So what I would say is, as you look at this person that kind of triggers you a little bit, you know, feel your butt in the, in the car seat, you know. Relax your shoulders, relax your jaw. You know, if you're not driving, like, close your eyes for a second. Just take a breath in and p- and, like, a nice slow breath out and go, "Where in my physiology do I sense this?" You know, imagine this person. It's like, "Okay, well, I feel this sort of, you know, kind of ache in, in my upper chest and it's... You know, maybe it's the size of an apple or whatever, and it feels like it's a pressure. It feels like it's ra- radiating-

Mel Robbins 28:38 Hmm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 28:38 ... up to my neck." That's your alarm. So put your hand over your alarm. Like in The High 5 Habit, high five your heart. High five that part of your alarm, because we're jumping right into it. I believe that that is your younger self asking for your attention, and typically what we do is we push it away. We go into our heads, right?

Mel Robbins 28:58 Right.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 28:58 So go into your body. Feel it. See if you can put your hand over that area of-

Mel Robbins 29:01 But what if I don't want to? What if I'm literally like, "I don't like this feeling"?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 29:05 Yep.

Mel Robbins 29:05 So, you know, I- I'm, I'm sitting here listening to you, and-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 29:09 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 29:09 ... and I w- and I really love your work because you are trying to get us all to go to the source of what's triggering mental health issues, which is stored experiences-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 29:27 Alarm. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 29:27 ... and the alarm in your body and your inability to tolerate or understand what's happening when it goes off, and so I have recently had this experience where I'm waking up and I get these waves of anxiety, and what's interesting is that this is not new for me. I mean, I've struggled with anxiety for 30 years, but we have just recently had a number of huge changes in our life, and I now live in a different state in a very small town, and when I wake up in the morning in the middle of all this change, my alarm is not on the nightstand next to me. It begins in my ankles, and it's like a hot lava wave that goes from my ankles, up my legs, all the way up my stomach, and then it solidifies in my chest. And as soon as I feel this wave, my immediate thought is not, "Oh, I want to feel the alarm." It's, "Fuck. Why am I feeling this? I don't want to feel dread." And then I d- and then I feel like I just want to hide from it or, like, try to fall asleep, and I know-... that it's just my body reacting to all this change. Like, it's some sort of stored experience that is coming up, and I've been working so hard on not freaking out when I feel it-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 31:03 Right.

Mel Robbins 31:03 ... but turning toward it. And as a medical doctor and a ner- and a neuroscientist, and somebody who, who has struggled with anxiety for 30 years, why is turning toward this alarm the answer in that moment? Like, what would happen? Like, tell me what happens when you turn toward it and you put your hands on your chest or you go, "Oh, thank you. You're just trying to protect me 'cause you're scared to death that you now live in Vermont and you have no friends, and, uh, you're very far away from your kids, and you're gonna live alone here on this mountain and be even more lonely." Like, I could throw this whole, like, catastrophizing-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 31:39 Thank you.

Mel Robbins 31:39 ... which will only make it worse.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 31:40 Yeah. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 31:41 Versus, "Ah, welcome this bullshit in." Like, I don't want to. Like, I just-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 31:47 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 31:47 ... don't want it to be there, Russ.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 31:49 Yeah, I get it. I get it. What if it's not bullshit though, Mel? What if it's, what if it's little Mel? Did you have a nickname when you were, when you were a little girl?

Mel Robbins 31:57 This really is becoming therapy, isn't it? (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 31:59 Well, I'd give it a try.

Mel Robbins 32:00 Yeah, when you started talking about the mismatch with the mom, I'm like, "I hope my mother doesn't-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 32:04 Uh-oh.

Mel Robbins 32:04 ... listen to this episode," 'cause I even feel guilty for admitting that we are kind of a mismatch or are-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 32:09 Okay.

Mel Robbins 32:09 ... a mismatch. Um, yeah. Well, my, my, sometimes my mom calls me Mellie and friends of mine call me Mellie, and, um, yeah. Friends of mine called me Mellie.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 32:20 Is there a name that you relate to as a child? A nickname that you relate to?

Mel Robbins 32:26 You know, in many ways, I think Mel.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 32:28 Okay.

Mel Robbins 32:28 Because I still feel very much like a child at times, and I still feel like that vulnerable kid, and I still feel like the, um, person that's on the outside looking in. I feel separate. Like, that word separate makes a lot of sense for me. Um, like, there's a, a feeling that I have in life that I'm observing what's happening, but I'm not a part of it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 32:53 Yeah, and you know, just because you've kind of given me permission here, I mean, you've spent a lot of your life outrunning your anxiety, right? And it's worked for you, Mel. Like, you're very successful, you know, you... It's worked for you. I see this with a lot of very intelligent people. They can intellectually kind of outrun their anxiety.

Mel Robbins 33:11 What does that even mean?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:12 It means that you keep yourself so busy that you don't get a chance to sit with that alarm in your body. So-

Mel Robbins 33:18 I don't wanna sit with it, that's why.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:20 Exactly. Exactly.

Mel Robbins 33:21 Why do you think moving to Vermont where there's nothing to do is so fucking terrifying? Like, there, I can't run to Target to, to make my anxiety go away.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:28 Right.

Mel Robbins 33:29 Like, I feel like I'm addicted to negative stress, and this addiction to negative stress is what I've done to numb my anxiety.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:39 Well, it's sublimating it. Y- you-

Mel Robbins 33:41 What is sub- That is a big word. What does sublimating mean?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:43 Okay. Sure. Sure. Sorry. Um, you've taken this energy and you found a way to make it work for you.

Mel Robbins 33:49 So I've taken the negative alarm-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:51 Yep.

Mel Robbins 33:52 ... or the alarm-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:53 Yep.

Mel Robbins 33:53 ... in my body-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:54 Yep.

Mel Robbins 33:55 ... and I've channeled it in a direction so I don't have to feel it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 33:59 Yes.

Mel Robbins 34:01 And when you said, "What if the alarm is trying to help you?"

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 34:04 What the hell did you mean by that?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:06 What if it's, what if it's little Mel, you know? What if it's, what if it's the younger version of you saying, "Hey, I need some attention." And then when you say, you know, "Fuck off, I don't want to feel you-"

Mel Robbins 34:17 (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:19 ... literally. What if... If you had a child come up to you in a grocery store and they were crying and they had their hands up in the air to pick them up, would you push them away? Would you go, "See ya. Fuck off." You know? No, you wouldn't. You'd pick that damn child up. But we won't do it for ourselves.

Mel Robbins 34:34 God, that's-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:35 That's the problem.

Mel Robbins 34:35 ... so true.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:36 Yeah. We won't do it for ourselves. We'll do it for our-

Mel Robbins 34:38 Wait.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:39 ... pets. Yeah. Go ahead.

Mel Robbins 34:39 You're right. You're absolutely right. Like, if I, if somebody, if you, if somebody else had an alarm going off in their body-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:47 Yep.

Mel Robbins 34:47 ... and they were, like, freaking out, or worried, or sad, or upset, or needing attention or reassurance, you would give that to them. But we-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 34:58 Without, without, without hesitation. I'm sure with Sawyer and Oakley, you do that all the time.

Mel Robbins 35:02 All the time.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:03 Yeah. But you don't do it for yourself.

Mel Robbins 35:05 No. And I think that this is the singular biggest, like, mistake that society has made around understanding anxiety. I th- I just had a huge breakthrough here.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:20 Good.

Mel Robbins 35:20 Holy shit, Russ.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:21 Good.

Mel Robbins 35:21 Um, okay. So let me just-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:23 Keep

Narrator 35:23 You're paying attention.

Mel Robbins 35:23 ... see if I can give this back to everybody listening.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:26 Sure.

Mel Robbins 35:26 So, it's the fact that you're scared of the alarm or you can't tolerate it and you don't understand what it's trying to ask of you that makes it worse.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:38 Yes.

Mel Robbins 35:39 And if you were to realize that any tension, or fear, or kinda scary feeling in your body is an alarm system that is a-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:55 From your child.

Mel Robbins 35:56 ... from your inner child-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 35:57 Or

Narrator 35:58 Youngest.

Mel Robbins 35:58 ... asking you for reassurance, or love, or attention, and you just gave yourself that reassurance, or love, or attention, the alarm would turn off. Is that what you're saying?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 36:14 Slowly. Yeah. Because it's been an adaptation for you too. You gotta remember that the ego thinks it's protecting you by firing-

Mel Robbins 36:21 I know, I don't understand what the ego is. That-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 36:23 Oh.

Mel Robbins 36:23 ... that's too intellectual for me. So, so, so-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 36:26 We'll have to have you back. That's a super-

Mel Robbins 36:27 I will have you back to talk about the ego, but the second anybody says ego, I'm like, "Oh, this is somebody who's way smarter than me. I don't wanna try to figure out what the hell an ego is." Like, so, so, so, so... And we will have you back because we all need to know what the ego is. However-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 36:39 Sure.

Mel Robbins 36:39 ... I just wanna stay on this 'cause I think this is a groundbreaking idea that I want everybody who either has some level of situational or generalized anxiety, or loves somebody-...who has situational or generalized anxiety, and at that... At this moment in time, that would be every human being on the planet. And I want you to understand that we have been taught that we're supposed to attack it from the neck up-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 37:09 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 37:09 ...with the thinking first, and that's one of the things you need to do to cope, but the real heart of healing your anxiety, which you claim you've done, and I wanna hear about that.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 37:23 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:23 That the... And I don't, I don't mean to use the word claim like I don't believe you. I'm-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 37:27 I claim that I have gotten so much better, but yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:31 (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 37:32 My god. For sure.

Mel Robbins 37:32 Well, well, you're a medical doctor, so you can say that. I feel like I understand anxiety. I still hate it, and I need to have a different relationship with it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 37:41 You do.

Mel Robbins 37:41 And I need to, and everybody needs-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 37:45 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 37:45 ...for the sake of your kids, the people that you love, for yourself, you need to understand this alarm system in your body and the fact that it desperately needs you, and you need to take a neck-down approach to listening to the alarm and diffusing it in a way that... Wow, so over time, if you do this, the alarm doesn't go off as much?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 38:11 Uh, no, yeah. That's true. Uh, it's not as intense, and you're not compulsively running up into your head when you feel the alarm. So if I had a motorcycle in my front yard, I used to work emerge as a doc, and it's like, I don't, you know, I don't-

Mel Robbins 38:25 You, you still... But does emerge mean emergency?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 38:28 Oh, emergency, yeah. The, the emer-

Mel Robbins 38:29 Okay, so you used to work in the emergency room as a doctor.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 38:32 Yeah. I delivered babies. I did kind of the whole kind of general thing.

Mel Robbins 38:36 Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 38:37 Now, uh, if I had a motorcycle in my front yard, that's why I bring up motorcycles just 'cause I used to see bad accidents with motorcycles. I don't condone motorcycles. I think they're fun, but they're dangerous. Anyway, sidetrack. So if I had a motorcycle in my front... I've never ridden one before. So if I had a motorcycle in my front driveway, and I had 50 books on how to, how to, you know, drive a motorcycle, ride a motorcycle, and then I go out to the... I go out to the motorcycle, I sit on it, and I go, "No, you know what? I gotta go back, and I gotta read a little more about how the brakes work." And then I gotta... Until you get on that fricking motorcycle and ride it around and maybe fall off a few times, which is the same thing with the emotion, as soon as you get on the alarm, you start actually feeling better. Like when you said about that thing about the person in the, the school drop-off.

Mel Robbins 39:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 39:20 As soon as you put your hand over that place of alarm, you will feel instantly better. I'm not saying it's gonna, you know, take it from a, a nine to a two, but it's gonna take it from a nine to a four because you're actually, from a, a consciousness perspective, you are actually going at the root source of the problem, which is this little child in you that says, "I don't like this person." And it's not this person. It's basically, "I don't like someone from my past that this person reminds me of." That's ins-

Mel Robbins 39:45 Or, "I don't like the feeling that I have in my body when I see this person, and this is a familiar feeling from my past."

Dr. Russell Kennedy 39:54 Yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean?

Mel Robbins 39:55 So for example, if you had like a chaotic parent or an unpredictable parent or a mentally ill parent or an absent parent, that i- this goes back to your original point.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 40:06 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 40:06 When you have a parent that you can't either connect with or that is unpredictable or that makes you feel invisible or not safe, that alarm system in your body develops as a child, and that is what you're saying when you say, "All anxiety has resulted because of separation anxiety as a child." When you feel separate or unsafe or unseen or not heard or not loved or invisible in your home, that original experience that you probably don't remember-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 40:50 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 40:52 ...that encoded your body when you were tiny-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 40:56 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 40:57 ...and any time then from that point forward, any time you again felt invisible or you felt attacked or you felt unloved, that alarm got even stronger. And so now, it's like this automatic response in your body to those situations where you feel separate. Am I getting this?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 41:21 Yeah, totally. Yeah, and what happens is when we feel the alarm, we go up into our heads to escape it 'cause we feel this alarm in our body. It's like, "I don't wanna feel this." So we go up into our heads, and we try and think, "Well, you know, what could this be?" You know, we analyze. We go into this... We, we have this, like, just fixation, this left hemisphere fixation on figuring stuff out, which basically just creates more of a problem. You know, I talk about... In my, in my book about, you know, Ulysses and the si- Siren Island, you know? So Ulysses is-

Mel Robbins 41:49 Again, you're way smarter than me, so you gotta tell me the story.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 41:51 Okay, so it's basically-

Mel Robbins 41:52 Is this, like, a Greek myth class that I, I skipped-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 41:55 Yeah, it's-

Mel Robbins 41:55 ...in college? Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 41:56 Yeah. It's that English stuff. I, you know, I'd much rather write a physics exam than an English exam. But anyway, so it's basically Siren Island. So there's these beautiful women on this island, and what the sailors will do when they hear these beautiful women singing is they'll run their ships aground, and then they'll s- try and swim to these sirens, and the sirens turn into monsters and kill them, hack them apart, whatever they want to do. So, so it basically... That's your thoughts. Your thoughts are like Siren Island. Your thoughts are trying to suck you in and going, "Hey, we have the answer. We have the answer," when all they have is more problem. You're not gonna solve anxiety, which is basically a problem of overthinking, with more fricking thinking. It's not gonna work. So-

Mel Robbins 42:34 Well, okay, so, so can I ask you a question? Why the hell, if there is an alarm system wired in our body-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 42:39 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 42:39 ...why is our brain not able to go, "It's just an alarm system. Just give yourself a hug and take a deep breath, thank it for trying to protect you, next"? Why do we not just automatically say that? Why do we kill ourselves in our own minds with our thoughts?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 42:55 ... because we don't understand it's there in the first place. We don't understand-

Mel Robbins 42:58 The alarm?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 42:59 Yep. We don't understand that it's our younger self asking for our attention, so we feel pain, and like any organism, we withdraw from pain, and when we wi- it's like that, that motorcycle that a- is on the front. If I don't get on that motorcycle and ride it around, maybe fall off a couple of times, I'm never really gonna learn how to acclimatize to that emotion, that alarm. Bessel van der Kolk talks about that in The Body Keeps the Score. We're not teaching people how to get rid of their anxiety. We're teaching them how to acclimatize to it, and then I add onto that, "And stop adding thoughts to it." Because as soon as you add thoughts to the alarm, A, you're getting out of the problem, and B, you're just making it worse. So, it's-

Mel Robbins 43:39 You know-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 43:39 Yeah?

Mel Robbins 43:39 Go ahead, please.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 43:41 So basically, we get in this thing what I call the alarm anxiety cycle. So something triggers us. Say we're, say we're in that lineup, we see this person that we don't like, and then we go, "Oh, I don't really like this person. I should really, I should really try and make an effort." You know? "I should really..." And it's like, "Well, no, no, she did this or he did that."

Mel Robbins 43:58 I'm like, "Don't make eye contact."

Dr. Russell Kennedy 44:00 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 44:00 "Get on the phone, make a fake phone call, avoid, avoid, turn shoulder, turn shoulder. Holy shit, are they closer?" Like, I'm like, "What?"

Dr. Russell Kennedy 44:07 Run away, run away!

Mel Robbins 44:10 Yes. (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 44:10 You know, to quote a Monty Python thing. So, so basically what we're doing is we're trying to intellectualize the alarm that we're feeling in our body, and i- th- the- the- it's not... The, the solution isn't in our minds. The solution's in our body, which is why so many people have a hard time healing from anxiety, because we're trying to use more thoughts to combat overthinking.

Mel Robbins 44:29 My big takeaway right now so far is that all the thinking that we reflexively do about the feelings in our body-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 44:41 Right.

Mel Robbins 44:41 ... makes the alarm louder.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 44:44 Oh, which- (laughs)

Mel Robbins 44:44 And that we have to learn to stop going above the neck and thinking about what's going on, and we need to train ourselves to go below the neck into our bodies and turn toward the alarm and give ourselves the reassurance and the soothing or whatever it is that the alarm is asking for in that moment.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 45:07 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 45:07 And then if you do that, you are now taking step one on the path of truly, what do you, what would you call it?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 45:17 Getting at the root cause.

Mel Robbins 45:17 Dealing, calming, uh, curing your anxiety.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 45:21 Getting at the root cause. It's getting-

Mel Robbins 45:22 Getting at the root cause.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 45:25 That's exactly what it is. You're getting at the root cause, which is the alarm. The thoughts are not the cause. The thoughts are a symptom. So, the thoughts are just a byproduct of this alarm that's stuck in your body. Now, thoughts do cause, you know, anxiety. There's no two ways about that. But I think we, th- where we, where the mismanage is, where the,

Dr. Russell Kennedy 45:45 where the mistake is, is that we believe the thoughts originate before the feeling. And I'm saying-

Mel Robbins 45:50 Well, you know-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 45:50 ... the feeling starts before the thought.

Mel Robbins 45:52 The feeling starts before the thought because th- e- every one of us knows a kid that can work themselves up into a panic attack because they think they're gonna throw up.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 46:01 Sure.

Mel Robbins 46:02 And what I now realize, after years of having kids with anxiety and reading so many books about this subject that I should have a PhD, and being in years of therapy myself, is that if a ch- like, let's take my son. So our son, Oakley, when he was little, he was constantly picked on at school, so of course he felt nervous in the morning before he had to head into school.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 46:33 Sure.

Mel Robbins 46:33 Plus the kid had dyslexia and ADHD, all of which was not diagnosed, so he's heading into a full day in a classroom where he physiologically, neurologically is incapable of doing what is going to be asked of him, and so his body, before entering that situation, sounds an alarm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 46:54 Totally.

Mel Robbins 46:55 And when the alarm sounds and the physiological changes happen, guess what physiological feeling he has? His stomach starts to rumble because as the physiology of the alarm changes and the chemistry in his digestive tract changes, he starts getting butterflies that feel like pterodactyls. And then all of a sudden, instead of just giving himself a hug and going, "It's gonna be okay, today's gonna be an okay day, I can face this," instead of reassuring himself, he goes into his head and says, "Oh my God, my stomach, I think I'm gonna puke. I can't go to school. Holy..." (babbles) And he ramps himself... We were dealing with panic attacks with this kid where he would literally bang his head on the kitchen island, "I don't wanna go to school," crying. He would force himself to thr- he would get so worked up, he would actually throw up. I mean, it was horrible. And I now can see that all of the interventions that were being done with this kid with therapists, which were all about, "Just change the channel upstairs."

Dr. Russell Kennedy 48:02 Right. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:02 And then he would turn to them and say, "But sometimes when I change the channel, it takes me to a channel I don't wanna watch. So what if I change the channel of my thoughts and I get another bad thought?" Like, even he was reacting against it, but nobody taught us that what the kid needed was a hug, validation, reassurance in that moment physically to get the alarm to quiet.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 48:32 Yeah. Yeah. You nailed it. So, you know, I think that's, that's part of it is that especially with kids, especially with children, you know, it's so important that they feel you, that they feel seen, heard, and loved. Touch is such a valuable thing with kids. It's just so amazing. My wife, Cynthia, is a somatic trauma therapist. She deals mostly with people that have pre-verbal trauma, before the age of seven years old, so they don't have a story about it, right? And so-

Mel Robbins 48:59 Wow. How do they know they have trauma before the age of seven?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 49:03 Because they feel it in their body.... because they feel alarmed every day, and they don't know why, because they haven't encoded it to a point where they can... See, the amygdala never forgets. The amygdala encodes everything, birth trauma, everything. It encodes everything. But we don't have the retrieval mechanism to pull it back up, so we think we have no childhood memories, which is a bit of a semantic thing because we do have childhood memories. We just (laughs) can't retrieve them. That's the problem. And there's a whole reason for that that I put on Instagram about how the hippocampus gets paralyzed, but I don't wanna get too much into that. But basically, with Oakley, like, it, it's, it's getting him into his body, into a safe place. So you practice with him, you know, putting your... And this is what I do with... I know he's older now, but, but this is what I do with parents is I, I get... Put your hand on your child's heart, then put your other hand on their back about the same level as your, as your-

Mel Robbins 49:55 Hmm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 49:55 ... front hand, and just sit there with them, and just allow their nervous system to regulate, and just allow them to feel it, and create this safe place in your body 'cause this is the next place that I'd like to go with this little interview that we're doing-

Mel Robbins 50:08 Yeah.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 50:09 ... is finding a s- Like, people say, "Well, I don't wanna go to my body." It's like, "I understand that." So how can we do that?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 50:15 Well, we find a place in our body that's either, uh, safe. You know, with me, it's my, kind of breath around my nose 'cause I used to do a lot of meditation. Um, and then what we do is we feel the alarm, and then we go into this safe place, and then we go back into the alarm.

Mel Robbins 50:31 Okay, so hold on. Let's, let's walk through this. So you're-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 50:33 Yep.

Mel Robbins 50:33 ... you just reached up. And for those of you listening, we put uncut episodes of our podcast in long form up on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/melrobbins. You'll be able to watch him do this. But he just put his hands kind of, uh, right kind of, like, if you wore a pair of glasses, you'd put your hands kind of under where your glasses are along your cheeks. And so when you said the way that you could practice this, so here's a takeaway for how you could practice this. You just got what I would call the love sandwich, hands on the heart, hands on the back.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 51:06 Sure.

Mel Robbins 51:06 And just hold somebody-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 51:09 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:09 ... when they are s- having an alarm go off in their body until you can feel them slowly start to have the alarm turn off and the clinical word being their nervous system starts to regulate again. They're in their body. They're in their safe space. But you also talked about this second tool where you locate a safe place in your body, and for you, it was sort of right here alongside-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 51:37 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:38 ... your nose. I was trying to think of another one other than the heart. Like, there have been times where I've, like, kinda tucked my hands under my armpits. It's almost-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 51:45 Right.

Mel Robbins 51:45 ... like a mini hug.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 51:47 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:47 Almost like... Uh, I don't know what it is, uh, that, like, I, I suppose that it's... Or, like, I could put my arms... I could give myself a hug kinda thing.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 51:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:55 But so you could pick anywhere in your body, your stomach for some people, like, deep breathing. What are some other places that patients of yours have selected in the past to give people an idea?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 52:03 Oh, it's all over. It's all... Uh, uh, but basically, I get them, "Where's, where's a safe place in your body?" And a lot of them will say, "I don't feel safe." And then I'll say, "Well, where's a neutral place?" It's like, "Well, my right knee feels like there, there's no feeling in my right knee." It's like, "Okay, let's go into this pain of your heart, you know, from this recent breakup that you've gone through. Now, let's, let's go and just bring our attention into that right knee, and then go back into this..." I'm doing this quite a bit faster than I normally do.

Mel Robbins 52:29 But when you, when you say bring your attention to your right knee-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 52:32 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:32 ... if I'm doing this exercise with you, does that mean that I've got kinda my eyes closed, and I'm mentally working my way down to my knee?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 52:42 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 52:43 So you're mentally kinda locating your attention at your knee. Okay, got it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 52:46 Yeah, 'cause that feels either safe or neutral, right?

Mel Robbins 52:49 Yeah.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 52:50 So what we're doing is we're basically training your unconscious mind that this pain that you're feeling in your heart is not all of you, because what'll happen is-

Mel Robbins 53:00 Ooh.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 53:00 ... the amygdala has no sense of time. So when you get triggered, you will go back. You will turn into that 11-year-old. And then basically, what we need to do is train your amygdala, like, "No, I'm not back there. I'm not 11 years old anymore. I'm actually my age that I am now." You go into that, you know, right knee that's neutral, or if there's, for me, I go into the sinuses, right? So when I get an alarm, I wake up with an alarm every day, right? But I don't give it that much credibility anymore, and then I go into this place in my sinuses where it's like-

Mel Robbins 53:30 Do you actually touch it, or do you just feel it?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 53:32 I touch it. Yeah, I touch it, and I can do it a little bit now. I might get a little zoney when I do this, but basically... And what I do is I can, I can locate the alarm in my solar plexus. I talk about this in the book.

Mel Robbins 53:48 Where are the solar plexus?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 53:50 Oh, it's right where your ribs meet, right where the bottom part of the sternum, the breath-

Mel Robbins 53:53 Oh, gotcha. Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 53:54 So that's where, that's where I have my alarm from growing up with my schizophrenic dad. So I will go into that alarm. I will try and intentionally give it love and attention, and then I will go up into that, my sinus area that feels safe, and then I will go back into that place that feels uncomfortable. So the thing is, there's a theory that says when you experience a trauma as a child, part of you stays locked at that age for the rest of your life. Part of you, right? So what I'm trying to do-

Mel Robbins 54:24 At times, I feel like all of me.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 54:25 Yeah. And it, it can be very overwhelming because it's unconscious, Mel. Like, like, it's, it's not something that we consciously feel. We actually get transported through the amygdala to that time and through the insula. The insula is kinda, like, the, the place in our brain that kind of translate the body into the mind and the mind into the body. It's kinda like the waystation. So I believe that we actually create this body memory, and I think the insula has something to do with this, and then we feel exactly the same way in our bodies now as we did when the trauma was occurring, which of course brings up all sorts of old memories, all sorts of old panic, and then we wanna make sense of that, so we-

Mel Robbins 55:05 Fears, stories, all of it. You're right.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 55:07 Okay.

Mel Robbins 55:07 I, I wanna, I wanna take another scenario.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 55:09 Sure.

Mel Robbins 55:10 So, I have a really good friend that is in the middle of a massive, um, like, kind of venture capital pitch.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 55:20 Okay.

Mel Robbins 55:21 And she is doing presentation after presentation to raise a ton of capital for this, uh, you know, super cool thing she's launching, and she is a ball of knots. She has the alarm going off all the time, the stakes feel high, and I realize part of creative energy, part of being successful, part of the kind of motivation that can drive somebody during a very successful time and the adrenaline that shoots through you-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 55:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 55:54 ... that's part of what happens when things are high stakes. How d- do these tools help you be more successful in those moments where you're at bat and I- this is a big game you're playing and that kind of adrenaline rush and alarm in your body is going off all the time? How do you use these tools in those moments?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 56:22 Well, you practice them first. There's a little thing that, that I talk to people about all the time. If I said, "Hey, Mel Robbins, uh, December the 1st, I'm gonna take you to the basketball court, and I'm gonna give you 10 foul shots, and if you make three of them, I'm gonna give you $5 million." Now, would you start practicing foul shots the day before?

Mel Robbins 56:38 No.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 56:39 No. You'd, you'd start shooting foul shots every day. Right? So that's what I mean. It's like, okay, so what I would do with her, uh, the short version is I'd probably find her alarm and work on that first, but what I would do with her is I would say, "Okay, where is this alarm in your body?" You know, I'd find it. "Can you put your hand over it? Can you breathe into it? Can you do this? Can you practice this a number of times a day so that when you need it, when you're going into that boardroom, you know, you can do a two-minute thing in the bathroom where you put your hand over your alarm, you breathe into it, you regulate your body, you relax your shoulders, you relax your jaw, close your eyes, you go into this place that you've practiced a number of times, and then you can come back out in a regulated state." As opposed-

Mel Robbins 57:21 Now, from, from a scientific standpoint-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 57:23 Yep.

Mel Robbins 57:24 ... from what's going on in your mind, why does this matter?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 57:30 Well, because you wanna be able to train yourself to regulate your own nervous system, is basically what it comes down to, and people with anxiety don't, didn't have a parent that regulated their own nervous system, so they have to do it themselves, and nobody's coming to save you. Like, I think, I see that with people all the time. No one's coming to save you. Like, you have to do this for yourself. And therapists can help, doctors can help, whatever, but unless you do it for yourself, it's not coming from a place that's really gonna dissipate that alarm. And I see this with a lot of people. It's like they, they have this unco- I think we have this unconscious belief when we have parents that didn't quite meet our needs that eventually that parent's gonna come back-

Mel Robbins 58:07 I keep waiting.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 58:08 ... and is gonna look after us.

Mel Robbins 58:09 (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 58:09 Right? We don't do it for ourselves. We don't do self-care for ourselves because we assume that parent is gonna come back. This isn't conscious. This is all unconscious. We assume that parent's gonna come back and take care of us, so why do we have to do it? And I'm sure that's what we said to ourselves at the time, "Why do I have to do this?" And it's, it, that's, that's a lot of it, is that you've got to start taking responsibility for your own body, your own alarm, and realize that it's up to you. It's that child in you that wants you back. It wants to connect with you, and if you are pushing it away all the time, that child is either gonna shut down and you're gonna go into depression, or it's going to go into this fight-flight mode where you're always an- anxious. And with you, Mel, bringing it back to you-

Mel Robbins 58:52 Uh-huh.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 58:52 ... is that this is, this is how you, you would un- you know, outrun the anxiety, and every success that you would have would kind of put a little, you know, an- anesthetic on that anxiety, and-

Mel Robbins 59:04 Well, part of the reason too-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 59:06 ... and you're right. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:06 ... is that you get a lot of positive attention when you're achieving.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 59:09 Yeah. Yep.

Mel Robbins 59:09 And I started marrying achievement with worthiness and being safe and being connected.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 59:15 Absolutely.

Mel Robbins 59:15 And so when I would be still, there was, like, every, like, achievement means that your worth is attached to something outside of you.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 59:24 Totally.

Mel Robbins 59:25 And whenever I wasn't doing something or going after something or being really busy, I didn't feel worthy. I, the alarms were going off. You know, one of the other things, I've got a couple, like, rapid fire things-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 59:39 Gotcha.

Mel Robbins 59:39 ... that I wanna get in here because I'm addicted to your Instagram account.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 59:42 Okay.

Mel Robbins 59:43 And you can follow Russ @theanxietymd, but one of the re- one of the, a couple things that I wanna, I wanna, uh, ask you about, number one, what is the difference between coping with your anxiety and healing it?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:00:00 Okay. So coping with your anxiety is mostly a, uh, a top-down thinking process, you know? You learn thinking strategies that help you deal with it. "This anxiety isn't real, I'm over-exaggerating," whatever that is. Healing it is going back to that child that, that's in you, that alarm child in you, and giving them the ability to be seen, heard, and loved by you, by adult you. Now, child you is gonna resist that because child you has been ignored by adult you for a very long time. So it takes a while before you start building that bridge back together again. So that's how you heal. You heal by finding that child in you, uh, with you, it's the 11-year-old, you know, that, with that sleepover. It's like going back to her, talking to her, sitting beside her, and saying, "Look, that must have been really hard for you. It must have been awful for you," and then see what she says. She may not talk back to you for a month or two months or six months, but eventually she will, and then when you develop that bridge, that conduit to her, that's when you heal, and you're not just sort of... You know, and, and the analogy that I draw is that you're in a rowboat, there's a hole in the rowboat, and it's filling up with water.... now you can do cognitive therapies, and I have nothing against cognitive therapies. I think they're helpful, but you can... but it's basically like bailing water out of that boat, right? So what you really need to do is go underneath, patch the hole in the hull, which I believe is the old alarm, which is the old wounded version of you as a child, find that child, show them that they are seen, heard, and loved by you. High-five them in the mirror, whatever you need to do. Like find that child and heal them, and then you heal at the root cause of it. You're not just bailing water by trying to change your thoughts. You're actually getting to the root cause of what's causing your anxiety, which is really-

Mel Robbins 1:01:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:01:46 ... a state of alarm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:48 Yeah, and the inability to understand it or to tolerate it or soothe it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:01:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:54 You also had this post that I was like, "Oh, that's interesting," where you said that you rarely see anyone with chronic anxiety who is not addicted to something.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:05 Yes.

Mel Robbins 1:02:06 And that there is a tight connection between anxiety and addictive behavior. Can you explain that and help us understand that?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:15 Sure, sure. So I'm gonna mention the E word here, and I hope you don't shut off, but-

Mel Robbins 1:02:18 Ego? I won't even understand it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:20 Well, w- w- what's-

Mel Robbins 1:02:20 Can you explain it without the ego? What's it?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:23 Your ego is kind of like an overprotective mother, right?

Mel Robbins 1:02:26 Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:26 Like it doesn't want you to go and play on the swings 'cause you might fall off. It doesn't want you to talk in front of people because when you did that when you were in grade six, people laughed at you and you never-

Mel Robbins 1:02:35 Is the ego the same thing as the alarm?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:38 It's related to it through the amygdala as well.

Mel Robbins 1:02:40 See? I'm already confused.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:42 Yeah, I know.

Mel Robbins 1:02:42 (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:42 So I'm not gonna get into too much neuroscience, but basically-

Mel Robbins 1:02:45 Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:02:45 ... your ego, your ego is hooked into the amygdala, and your amygdala says, "We're never doing that again because that hurt us." You know, whatever it was, and, and the amygdala never forgets. So it's basically getting into that, that getting... bypassing that ego because the ego is so overprotective that it will not let you go back into your old alarm, because it-

Mel Robbins 1:03:07 So the ego is thinking.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:03:09 Yeah, more or less. Yeah, it, it, it is something that, that, that... It talks to us with thinking.

Mel Robbins 1:03:15 Yep.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:03:16 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:03:16 Okay, okay. So but let's talk about the connection between anxiety-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:03:21 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:03:21 ... and addiction.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:03:22 Okay. So basically, we need, we need something to help us through this an- this i- this alarm. Okay?

Mel Robbins 1:03:32 Wait a minute. I think I just got it. Hold on.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:03:33 Okay, good. Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:03:34 Let me a- let me see if this is the answer. You ready?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:03:38 Go.

Mel Robbins 1:03:39 Is addiction typically somebody's coping mechanism for the alarm? So for example, you reach for alcohol because it drowns out the alarm. You reach for porn or drugs or stress or whatever because it-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:03:56 Or work or achievement. Yes.

Mel Robbins 1:03:57 Got it. Okay. I got it. So if somebody is struggling with addictive behavior, whether it is alcohol or cigarettes or vaping or it is any of that stuff, you are more than likely not addressing the root issue, which is the anxiety and alarm that's continuing to go off in the background.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:04:28 Yeah. And on top of that-

Mel Robbins 1:04:30 Wow.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:04:30 ... basically the ego is very powerful. It doesn't want to let you go back into that. So the only way that you can feel love, connection, whatever, is alcohol, is codeine, is cocaine, whatever you're addicted to. So-

Mel Robbins 1:04:42 So wait.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:04:43 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:04:43 But you feel the connection to the alcohol or the codeine. That's what you're saying. Like, like so, so this is why I get confused with ego-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:04:51 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:04:51 ... 'cause I'm like, "I don't give a shit about the ego."

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:04:53 Sure.

Mel Robbins 1:04:53 Let's talk... Like the, the alarm and then what makes sense to me is that addiction mutes the alarm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:05:00 Totally.

Mel Robbins 1:05:01 And that the... you become bonded and connected to... For me, it was stress. For my husband, it was a daily weed habit.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:05:10 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:05:10 You know, like for what that... And, and that addiction is what's muting the alarm.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:05:16 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:05:16 This is really cool.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:05:18 Yes.

Mel Robbins 1:05:18 So where does mindset come in? Because, you know, you, you... there is so much out there about mindset and mental wellness. And, and it's interesting because this conversation with you makes me desperate for a different word than mental health-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:05:33 Sure.

Mel Robbins 1:05:33 ... because even the word mental health makes me go neck up, makes me think thoughts-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:05:39 Got it.

Mel Robbins 1:05:39 ... makes me go to just what's going on in my mind. And what you've taught me today is a game changer because what you've taught us all is that no, no, no, no, no. All mental health issues start in the body, and they start with this kind of reaction that happens in your body to stored trauma or to a threat or to uncertainty, and then that signals our minds, and our minds then start spinning thoughts. And if we don't address this alarm system in our body, which has a purpose, which is there to protect us, which is supposed to agitate you, but we exacerbate it, we try to mute it, if we don't learn how to turn inward and heal all of this in our body and turn toward this alarm and soothe ourselves and love ourselves and give ourselves the reassurance and the support or whatever it is that we didn't get in childhood or what we need in that moment, that that's... that is actually the beginning of all healing. That's what I'm getting from you.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:06:47 Yeah, and that's exactly what it is. So I would look-

Mel Robbins 1:06:50 Why do we call it mental health then? Like what... isn't there... C- can we come up with a different word that would actually signal you that when you're struggling with depression or you're struggling with anxiety or you're struggling with any, like addiction issues, that it's not a mental health issue, it is a body something? H- like I don't even know how to describe this because it's the exact opposite-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:07:12 Well, it's an entire syste-

Mel Robbins 1:07:12 ... of the way that we think about things right now.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:07:13 Yeah, it is the opposite. And it... and, you know, I, I'd love, you know, to come up with a better term than bodyset.But I think that's-

Mel Robbins 1:07:20 Body set?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:07:20 ... part of it.

Mel Robbins 1:07:20 What is that? That feels like weightlifting.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:07:22 Well, no. Well, it's, it's, like, mindset, body set.

Mel Robbins 1:07:25 Oh.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:07:25 Like, what is-

Mel Robbins 1:07:27 Mindset.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:07:27 ... what is the place in your body?

Mel Robbins 1:07:28 I didn't get that.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:07:28 Can you, can you regulate your body? Because if you regulate your body, your mind will get regulated. If you regulate your mind, your body might get regulated. So what I'm saying is that if you go in through the body, your body's much more likely to, to relax your mind than your mind is to relax your body, because you can say, "Hey, relax. Hey, calm down."

Mel Robbins 1:07:47 Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you guys hear that?

Mel Robbins 1:07:50 That was a wake-up call for me right there. You were just dropping fricking knowledge, Russ. Okay, hold on. I'm gonna state this again. I, I, I... And now I have menopause brain, and so I've just forgotten what I said. You said something like, your bod- if you regulate your body-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:08:07 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:08:08 ... it will regulate your mind. But if you-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:08:11 It's much more effective-

Mel Robbins 1:08:11 ... regulate your mind right, it'll s- you, you say it 'cause you're, you're the one who said it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:08:15 Yeah, it's much more effective to regulate your body first, which will automatically regulate your mind, than to try and regulate your mind to, to regulate your body. 'Cause your, your mind lies to you all the time. Your body never can.

Mel Robbins 1:08:32 Is this why exercising is such an effective thing to do-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:08:37 Partly.

Mel Robbins 1:08:37 ... when it comes to anxiety and focus?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:08:41 Partly, but there is, there's something beyond, uh, exercise. There's, there's something within the somatosensory cortex, the, or the part of the brain that controls our, our movement and our sensation. When we activate that, we start getting into the sense of the body and out of the, the rumination of the mind. So that's one of the-

Mel Robbins 1:09:01 And so by activating that, is that what you're saying? You can activate that part by doing the exercises you've already talked about, in terms of locating where the alarm is and then finding a neutral part in-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:09:13 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:09:13 ... your body, breathing into it? ?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:09:18 You know, just, that's why yoga is so, that's why yoga is so effective, because it brings you into your body. You know, anxiety at it, at its root, is really a mind-body disconnect, right? We go up into our heads, and we stay in our heads 'cause we don't wanna go down in our body 'cause that's where, that's where the pain is. So we don't wanna go into Feeling Town down in our body. We only wanna stay up in our thoughts, and that's another addiction. So we get addicted to worry, and, and that's, and that's why it, it's so hard to treat anxiety just by trying to fix thoughts, because we're addicted to thinking already. We don't need (laughs) any more thinking. We need a lot more feeling, but we don't wanna feel because that's where the fricking pain is.

Mel Robbins 1:09:59 Wow. So I've gotten a couple huge things-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:10:01 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:10:01 ... from this. Um, that first of all, all anxiety results from a separation-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:10:10 Of some kind.

Mel Robbins 1:10:10 ... anxiety that ha- some kind of separation experience or feeling separate from other in childhood.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:10:17 Okay. And self.

Mel Robbins 1:10:17 And self. But what you just said too was really interesting, which is our response to that alarm or that feeling of being separate from self, or separate from others, or attacked by others, or whatever, is that we actually do separate from ourselves. Anxiety and the alarm system, the way that most of us respond to it is to separate from our bodies, go up in our heads, and the way to quiet the alarm and ultimately turn it off is to come back and join in with yourself and come back to where the alarm is sounding off in your body, and then find a neutral or safe space in your body where you can draw your attention and breathe into back and forth, and back and forth. And that when you quiet the alarm and when you go toward it and soothe your own body, that is the step that you need to take if you want to heal this, and that the thinking is part of the toolkit. Like, what would you recommend as a, as, as some sentence that we could say? If we're trying the tools, we go into our body. We're soothing ourselves. Is there something that people could say or repeat to themselves that you find is effective with the more neck-down approach?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:11:43 Absolutely. So-

Mel Robbins 1:11:44 What, what do you say?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:11:45 Basically this. "Am I safe in this moment? Am I safe in this moment? I know I've got a presentation to do on Friday. I know I've got a big tax bill. I don't know how I'm gonna pay for it. My mom is sick. But am I safe in this moment?"

Mel Robbins 1:12:00 Why a question? 'Cause I like saying, "I am safe. I-"

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:04 You could do it both.

Mel Robbins 1:12:04 "... am okay."

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:05 You could do it both ways. I find that people with anxiety, though... This is the thing about saying "I love you" in the mirror, is that people don't allow that in. The reason why you're anxious in the first place is because you block

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:15 love. So when you say, "I love you-"

Mel Robbins 1:12:16 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:12:17 The reason why you're anxious is because you block love?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:23 Or yourself, yes.

Mel Robbins 1:12:25 What?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:26 You're separated from yourself. That's exactly what it comes down to. That's what anxiety or alarm really is. It's a separation. And this is what I do. This is my little... We didn't get into my little intuitive thing here, but-

Mel Robbins 1:12:35 We're going to in a minute. Hold on.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:37 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:12:37 We're, we're gonna... We saved the best for last, but hold on. I got... Okay, keep talking about the fact that when you have this alarm going off-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:46 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:12:48 ... you are blocking... Like, just say it again. I, I, I, I, like-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:52 Well, I-

Mel Robbins 1:12:52 ... I'm processing-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:12:53 ... well, let's-

Mel Robbins 1:12:53 ... hyperprocessing now. I'm just like, "Oh my God, I think I got it. I think I got it. I think I got it," that literally your alarm is asking for love and reassurance.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:13:01 Absolutely.

Mel Robbins 1:13:02 And when you go into your head, you block yourself from receiving it.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:13:05 Yes, and you block it how?

Mel Robbins 1:13:06 When you go into your body, and you breathe into the alarm and soothe yourself, you are actually giving yourself love.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:13:14 Yes.

Mel Robbins 1:13:15 Holy shit.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:13:16 And a lot of people with anxiety just, they're, they're uncomfortable with love in the first place. I'll give you a very quick example from my own life. So my dad, before I was 10 years old, was this wonderful guy. Like he was so, uh, you know, connected to me and nurturing. Taught me how to hit a ball, play chess, all this kind of stuff. Very, very connected to him, and I loved him greatly. And then as I got to be a young teen and his schizophrenia got worse and worse and worse, and it became suicidal and a bunch of other things, I withdrew from him because to see him in, in, in horrible depression was just too painful for me. So I blocked my love for him because it was just too painful to feel it. And that, you can't block love from a parent without blocking love, on some level, to everyone. So there's a reason why I've been married three times. So, so this is one of the things. So when you find the blocks that you have to loving yourself, this is how you heal, and this is basically my little intuitive gift is I can tell people where their blocks are to loving themselves, and then when you remove those blocks, the anxiety, the alarm just kind of fades away. So this is, this is really c- going at the root cause protocol as opposed to just trying to make you think better.

Mel Robbins 1:14:25 Wow. So how do you help people find that place where they've blocked love?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:14:37 Well, I go through their body. You know? Like what I believe, the short version of what I believe happens to you is, as a child, you experience an overwhelming stress. It's too much for your conscious mind to handle so you stuff it down. Freud would call it repression. You stuff it into the unconscious. And the body keeps the score, just like Bessel van der Kolk says. So because the body is a representation of the unconscious mind and the unconscious mind is w- where these old, you know, damaging programs are stored, they'll show up in the body. So I will find in your body where you feel that alarm and reverse engineer it to get into the same room with those unconscious programs, and then I can change them.

Mel Robbins 1:15:16 Wow. That's pretty cool. I think, um, my biggest takeaway, and I keep saying this because clearly every 10 minutes I have a life-changing takeaway from this conversation. But my biggest takeaway is the connection between the alarm that goes off and the love that you're not allowing yourself to receive.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:15:35 Totally.

Mel Robbins 1:15:36 And that it's beautiful to think that loving yourself is the way you cure anxiety, and what a beautiful thing. And I, it reminds me of something, um, pretty amazing that my son Oakley shared with me. Um, I said to him the other day, I was like, "Dude, you know, one of the things I love about you is that you, more than almost anybody I have ever met, are just so comfortable with yourself. Like you really seem to like yourself." And now, you know, I should preface this by saying that, you know, this is a kid that really struggled. Three different schools before he was done with eighth grade, severe dyslexia, got so severely bullied at a camp that we had to pull him out of it, and the director wrote a long letter apologizing for everything. Like it was ... This kid has been through the ringer.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:16:34 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:16:35 And he said to me, "Well, mom," he said, "I realized just..." And he said, "This happened during quarantine. During quarantine, when I got to hang out with you and dad and, you know, my two older sisters, all four people who love me, I just started to realize, just because other people pick on me or hate me doesn't mean I have to hate myself. Like I could actually just like myself. Like I could really just allow myself to love myself." And I gotta be honest with you, from that moment, I, I can really almost pinpoint that during the pandemic, like this kid's chronic anxiety was gone. He developed this very positive attitude, and it all began from this insight around, hey, if the world is not giving me the acceptance and the love that we all are seeking, maybe I can just give it to myself.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:17:37 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:17:39 It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. I never thought about meeting the alarm of anxiety with acts of self-love.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:17:48 Yeah. And that's, you know, it's counterintuitive on some level because when you're anxious, you don't feel loving, you know? Basically your social engagement system is shut off. You're in survival mode. So when you're in survival mode and survival physiology, you go into the emotional part of your brain, which is, you know, evolutionarily programmed to look for threat. And if there's no threat in your environment (laughs) if you're just lying there in bed with your, your, the, the sheets up to your neck, you will find threat because you can make it with your big prefrontal cortex. You can make worries.

Mel Robbins 1:18:17 Well, not anymore 'cause we now know that the second you feel the alarm go off-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:18:22 Five, four, three, two, one.

Mel Robbins 1:18:24 ... five, four, three, two, one-

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:18:24 Stick that in there.

Mel Robbins 1:18:24 ... you do not go upstairs.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:18:26 Stick that in there.

Mel Robbins 1:18:26 You go downstairs.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:18:27 Yep.

Mel Robbins 1:18:27 You go downstairs.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:18:28 Yep.

Mel Robbins 1:18:29 Now, so I love to leave people in action. Obviously everybody, there will be links not only to, uh, Russ's book, Anxiety Rx. There will be links to his social media accounts. You will find all kinds of resources in the show notes. But I wanna leave people in action.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:18:48 Sure.

Mel Robbins 1:18:49 So, you know, this is one of those incredible conversations that really changes how somebody thinks about a massively overwhelming topic like anxiety and mental health. Now what I want to do is leave people in action with one simple new practice or habit that I want everyone to try-... every day for the next seven days. And what is the exercise that you want each one of us to practice for the next seven days so that we can start to use the tools that you, um, have been researching and changing lives with? What's the one thing you want us to do?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:19:48 Can I do two?

Mel Robbins 1:19:49 Yes.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:19:50 At once? Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:19:50 As long as it doesn't involve the ego.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:19:52 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:19:53 (laughs)

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:19:53 Fair enough. Fair enough. Oh, okay. Well, that's the end. That's the end of that. All right. So the first thing that I would say is what I said earlier. Uh, am I safe in this moment? Or I am safe in this moment. 'Cause this moment is all we ever have, right? The thing about anxiety is it always projects you into the future. So if you bring yourself back to the moment, and this work- this has worked for me. It saved my ass a number of times in the middle of the night when all my defenses are down and I think the world is horrible.

Mel Robbins 1:20:20 Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:20:21 I am safe in this moment. I am sa- and really feel it too. Like, I am safe in this moment.

Mel Robbins 1:20:26 Is there anything we should do with our hands

Mel Robbins 1:20:30 or with our... Do you want us to close our eyes? Do you want us to...

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:20:34 You can do the high five your heart if you want.

Mel Robbins 1:20:36 Okay, which is putting your heart right in the center of your chest. Take a deep breath. I'm safe.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:20:41 If you find...

Mel Robbins 1:20:42 I'm safe.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:20:42 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:20:42 Okay. What else could you do?

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:20:43 If you find your alarm, if you know where your alarm is, if, you know, track the alarm. When you feel anxious, go into your body and say, "Where am I feeling this? Is this in my belly? Is this in my chest? Is it in my sh- in my throat?" Put your hand over the place where you feel your alarm.

Mel Robbins 1:20:57 Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:20:57 Breathe into that.

Mel Robbins 1:20:58 Okay.

Dr. Russell Kennedy 1:20:59 There is a little thing too, uh, that I've kind of taken from Andrew Huberman about, uh, the physiological sigh. Physiological sigh is something that, that humans do, and animals do it too, to calm themselves and it's usually, uh, two qu- or one quick sniff through your nose (sniffs) and then another one (sniffs) and then a long slow breath out through your mouth. Now, with my anxiety people, I modify that. So basically this is th- this is the process that I do when I get into alarm, is I take three breaths through my nose really quickly. (sniffs) At the top, I hold it for about three to five seconds, which shows me