Anxiety expert/medical doctor/neuroscientist and certified yoga teacher. I deal with anxiety myself. My Videos help understand and overcome anxiety and body alarm. More at THE ANXIETY MD on fb and Instagram - google THE ANXIETY MD.
Thanks again Dr Kennedy. I’m at the point of just beginning to untangle those headphones you spoke of. Using your advice, I think I may have identified one possible root cause of my painful anxiety. When I was a young child, I used to pretend I was ill to not go into school. I was very overweight (only child that got everything), and hated how I was treated by the other kids. I used to feel incredibly fearful of someone from the school knocking on my parent’s door and finding out I was lying about how I felt. I think that the fear and feeling of knowing I was doing the wrong thing has become etched in my emotional foundations. I find that now, when I’m challenged with something that out of my control, my default reaction is flight, followed by an irrational fear of future events. Funnily enough, I sometimes impress myself with some of the creative fearful predictions I hyper focus on. I’m now practicing your advice with regards staying with the feeling, focusing where it is, putting my hand over the area, thinking of that scared younger version of myself and saying, it’ll be ok. It does help, it really does. Just got to get better at catching it earlier and it resonating at night/early morning. Thanks again Dr Kennedy.
So my health anxiety stems from an alarm. ✅ I feel like my alarm is Shame, from stuttering fairly regularly (but doing a good job of hiding it) until about puberty. Youngest of 6, so competed for attention…thus became a people pleaser and ignored that alarm and decided pleasing others trumped myself. But I feel that my alarm started even before that…can the alarm begin in utero? My mom had a dreadful pregnancy and my birth was an emergency CSection..so I feel like I was conceived in a sea of stress hormones. (And undoubtedly stuttering was the result of that alarm?). Feels tough to work through this when I don’t know any different!?
Anxiety not being a feeling. I think you’re the first person I’ve ever heard say that but it makes sense! I would say, “but I don’t FEEL anxious!” Meanwhile my thinking is a SPIRAL 🌀 that won’t stop and my body is giving me alarm bells via symptoms in other ways.
Chronic fatigue and stomach issues are definitely me. It is so hard to stop and take a step back and think about how you feel inside before answering something someone asks you to do. It’s so very hard how to either go and help everyone or not at all. Is there a balance
Dr Kennedy - I wanted to find your step by step as Mel Robbins wouldn't let you speak! But I am interested in your heal your body idea. Does this also work for phobias?
This topic is really intense for me. My Dad suffered from debilitating panic attacks and everyone’s attention revolves around him. On top of that - he was so consumed by his work as a rancher. I was a little kid, surrounded by adults who were focused on survival and competing with each other. It was easy to get lost in the shuffle. I so wanted to be seen/heard. I created all sorts of strategies from being the good kid, the bad kid and the kid who shut herself off because caring or needing attention just didn’t get results so detachment from needing anything from anyone was the final result. The problem is - we do need other people. And, these are really challenging habits to overcome.
Right out the gate we get to see your sense of humor coming through. It’s your deep knowledge of the human experience + background in medicine and neuroscience amplified with raw honest and cheeky humor that makes your podcasts so compelling
Starting to believe that fawning can also be inherited. My mother has been in fawn all her life. So did her mother and in turn my grandmother's mother and I. Learned to be a doormat. Giving and giving until I collapse. My body and soul in wise energies go into fawn without me even understanding what is happening. Only now, nearly 50 years later, have I put together my life's puzzle. In my last relationship, which today I see as a blessing, even though it was painful deep into the bone marrow, I got to see my inner child as locked up. I also got to see myself based on how I acted as a child. When I lived with my mentally ill father and his madness. How I lived on breadcrumbs and with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. My mother in turn codependent and in fawn took care of all this. She meets a new man when I am 9 years old. A polished man on the surface but a devil on the inside. A covert narc. So fawning is perfect here. My mother serves herself to death. This also becomes my norm. So when this goes on in me today. I have to leave. Because in this I leave myself completely. I don't exist. Without this, my programming goes on automatically. Today I trust my body. It speaks clearly. Which it has always done. But not understood. Been working on myself for several years now. Hard work required. Also dare to feel all sensations without being afraid constantly. But is sensitive to raised voices and many more things. But challenges me every day with situations to get through life from a new perspective. So grateful for those I met along the way back to who I was meant to be before programming. But this is a job for life.
Psychedelic mushrooms completely helped me get out of addiction and depression. It totally rewired my mind. Honestly, they worked better than antidepressants.
Hi dr kennedy. I have a vital question. Have been doing meditation and finding the sensation for years. While great, I really believe it's a bypass. Underneath this sensation is the repressed emotions. These emotions are trying very hard to hide. Just feeling and bringing attention to the.bodily sensations is not enough in my experience. There needs to be a skilled way to reach the repressed anger and hurt. Can you speak to this? Would love to hear your feedback on this.
I fawn as a response to rejection sensitive dysphoria. Any negative social interactions (or even neutral social interactions I wrongly perceive as negative) fill me with this unbearable pain. It's like a punch in the gut. It hits this nerve so deep in my core that I become desperate to alleviate it. First I covertly fawn, and if that doesn't appease them, I straight up dissociate. I'm really becoming aware of it but that rejection sensitive dysphoria HURTS ME SO BAD ... Idk how to sit with it without trying to alleviate it somehow because it's so deeply painful ...
This video helps me see how my anxiety works. I'm not addicted to anything like alcohol or drugs...never interested me. However, I tend to buy things...shopping ...buying on Amazon even if its only a small object. Yes to feel better. I feel better whilst looking and pressing that button to buy something but that feeling quickly disappears. 😢 I only realised this a few months ago. When I looked round a noticed all the "stuff" I had purchased. I don't know how to stop this. I sit at home and get anxious as I don't know what to buy. I think about what I can buy such as clothes starting from head to toe....look around my home and think what I don't have that I can buy. I feel guilty and selfish for buying too.
Thanks Doc, 55 year old male here, who has struggled with both the beasts of anxiety/panic and addiction my whole life. Your videos are so reassuring to men like me who just feel lost and broken when acute bouts of panic and dread set in. Just knowing they’re other men out there who face a similar battle everyday is so comforting and encouraging to us lone wolf types who have hither hereto known only isolation and despair. Keep up the good work, you gave me hope to move forward for another day! 🙏
I need help I wake up feeling not real and like my brain has pretty and just not well. So beyond depressed and I know alcohol has to do with it. I only drink on the weekends but I do binge. It’s the way I deal with the social aspect. I am so scared of my future. I don’t see myself getting better
When someone attacks me verbally, i just start agreeing with everything they are saying, to appease them. Then i go back, after thinking about it and feeling hurt, i go back and readdress all the things that were said and hurt me and that i never really agreed with at all. I feel so much turmoil inside until i go back and talk honestly to the person. It seems like I'm not capable of being honest when someone is attacking me.
I just discovered you and this has been one of the most helpful explanations of anxiety yet! I’ve also done internal systems therapy too, but I like your explanation the best!
Thank you! Finally a Dr who was on psych meds themselves lived experience and prescribe properly full circle. Hard to trust someone who hasn’t been through it themselves especially medication
Hit the nail on the head Russ. Glad you pointed out that women are certainly not immune to the demon drink & drugs. And so true with your point (11:40) re “women want us to be vulnerable” (not really)…etc! Too many males take their own lives rashly…often in the midst of a drunken stupor…simply because they feel marooned, miserable, hopeless, worthless and ashamed…and maybe lack the inner humility or flexibility to seek out help. What a waste.
