Dr. Chloe Carmichael, Ph.D, is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, consultant, and much more! She has been featured as an expert on VH1, Inside Edition, ABC Nightline, and other television; and has been quoted in the New York Times, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Shape, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, and other print media. Today, Dr. Chloe shares ways in which we can benefit from our anxiety and not just see it in a negative light. She also shares a few techniques from her book on how to harness the power of anxiety, so stay...
Dr. Chloe Carmichael, Ph.D, is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, consultant, and much more! She has been featured as an expert on VH1, Inside Edition, ABC Nightline, and other television; and has been quoted in the New York Times, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Shape, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, and other print media. Today, Dr. Chloe shares ways in which we can benefit from our anxiety and not just see it in a negative light. She also shares a few techniques from her book on how to harness the power of anxiety, so stay tuned!
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Highlights
4:19 - How teaching yoga inspired Dr. Chloe to get a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, which eventually led to calls from major media outlets and a book deal.
6:40 What does it mean to harness the power of anxiety?
9:09 State anxiety vs. Trait anxiety.
11:41 How the pandemic has impacted the broader public’s anxiety levels
13:56 How Dr. Chloe has been sharing this information with the public and the corporate world’s attitude towards the conversation.
15:36 Dr. Chloe shares a few of the nine techniques that we can use to harness the power of our anxiety.
22:00 What is “Worry Time”?
26:36 The HUGE relationship between our body and mind.
27:54 Is generational trauma real?
31:03 Dr. Chloe discusses her technique, “Thought Replacement”.
39:15 How to connect with Dr. Chloe!
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About Dr. Chloe
Dr. Chloe Carmichael, Ph.D, is a licensed clinical psychologist, known as Dr. Chloe. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Long Island University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, with a bachelor’s degree and departmental honors in psychology from Columbia University in New York. Her practice in New York City employs multiple therapists to serve high-functioning business executives, people in the arts, and everyday people seeking support with personal or professional goals.
Dr. Chloe is the author of the book Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety, endorsed by Deepak Chopra! She is a member in good standing of the American Psychological Association, as well as the National Register of Health Psychologists, an elite organization for psychologists with gold-standard credentials. She is also a consultant at Baker McKenzie, the third largest law firm in the world. She is an Advisory Board member for Women’s Health Magazine (Hearst), and a featured expert for Psychology Today. Dr. Chloe enjoys relating with the media, as well as public speaking. She has been featured as an expert on VH1, Inside Edition, ABC Nightline and other television; and has been quoted in the New York Times, Forbes, Vanity Fair, Shape, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, and other print media.
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Connect with Dr. Chloe
Website | drchloe.com/hello
Dr. Chloe's book | Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety
1 week FREE Access to Dr. Chloe's Insider's Club - https://www.drchloe.com/insider-s-club-free-gift-checkout
Connect with Dr. Lauryn
Facebook | Dr. Lauryn Lax
Twitter | @drlaurynlax
Instagram | @drlaurynlax
Website | drlauryn.com
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Transcript (Episode website contains full transcript)
Dr. Lauryn Intro (00:02):
Well, welcome to the podcast, a show dedicated to quieting the noise in the health, food, and fitness world. I'm your host, Dr. Lauryn, a former chronic illness patient gone, health detective and gut health, body love, and food freedom expert. Helping patients now radically transform their health too. On this show, we're all about disrupting both conventional wisdom and diet culture as we know it with root cause solutions that actually work because health is an inside job. Today we're talking all about anxiety and harnessing the power of anxiety in our lives. Now that may sound like a little bit of an oxymoron, especially used in one sentence and in a landscape where at least one in four people I think statistically have some sort of anxiety, be it anxiety disorder and or just like chronic everyday lingering anxiety, It's an issue. We've really seen this creep up statistically as well over the past couple years amidst pandemic times and just really being stripped of all the things, our coping tools really that brought us less anxiety, especially during the early days of quarantine and, and just really the unknowns and things like going to the gym and or like connection with community and people and church and just joy and things that brought us life prior to the pandemic. life, as you know, has really dramatically shifted and changed.
(01:27)
And along that we've also seen the uptick and just a ton of anxiety nationwide and worldwide. But, um, I really can relate to this even prior to the pandemic; I say I struggled with anxiety for about 30 years of my life until I really worked on both the mental and the physical game and the aspects. It is a journey to understand, number one, gain that awareness as to where anxiety stems from. Is it from former traumas and the ways that we cope and deal in order to get through life? Is it physiological? Especially the gut microbiome? We hear a lot about the gut-brain connection and it could not be further from the truth. Your gut greatly influences how you think and feel and actually 80% of your thoughts in your brain are directed from your gut and your gut microbiome. So as you can imagine, if you have dysbiosis and imbalances in your gut, what's going on in the brain as well and just some of that inflammation, we call it neuroinflammation that can be created physiologically, um, as well as just like systemic and um, circumstantial type of anxiety such as the pandemic or such as going through just challenges in your life.
(02:33)
We have financial challenges or relationship challenges or um, again world , state of the world challenges. Um, so today I'm so excited to bring you guest, Dr. Chloe Carmichael, who is a Ph.D. licensed clinical psychologist who has an honors in psychology from both Columbia University as her bachelor's and her clinical psychology degree from Long Island University in New York. So Dr. Chloe is also the author of the book, Nervous Energy, Harnessed the Power of Your Anxiety, endorsed by Deepak Chopra. She is a member in good standing of the American Psychological Association as well and the National Register of Health Psychologists. And today we are just bringing a lot of just normality to the topic of anxiety. How can we use it for the powers of good? Uh, it's not just all a negative light, and really what are some ways that we can take back our chronic anxiety or state of just like a tendency rather to be more anxious in certain moments in seasons of our lives, how can we really re-engineer that,
(03:41)
and Dr. Chloe's gonna teach us quite a few tactics and techniques that you can use to take your health and anxiety back into your own hands. So without further ado, let's get to the show.
Dr. Lauryn (03:55):
Well, Dr. Chloe, so excited to have you in the house today just talking all about the famous topic of anxiety that's been on a lot of people's minds this past say like 18 months, two years. But before we get into that, would love to get a little bit more info on you, what got you doing the work you're doing in the world, and inspired you down this trajectory.
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (04:18):
Sure Lauryn. It's good to be with you too. So it's a funny story I guess as to how I became a clinical psychologist, which is what I am now, and an author, my new book, Nervous Energy: Harness The Power of Your Anxiety I think I mentioned was endorsed by Deepak Chopra. But it all kind of began; I wanna say like 15 years ago I was actually teaching yoga in New York City and just to pay the bills I had found that teaching individual sessions was a better financial fit for me than teaching groups. But what the side effect of that was that I hadn't realized at the time is that people who can afford private yoga lessons and who actually choose to spend their discretionary time and money on private yoga lessons are usually pretty health-conscious, self-disciplined people. And so I actually found those private sessions I was teaching to be really informative for me just about these people and how their minds worked.
(05:21)
And I got really interested in that. I was doing custom yoga programs for them, like somebody suppose that wanted to find balance in their life, we would do balancing yoga poses and then meditations around balance. And it was so exciting for me to just see how they responded and the changes that were happening in their lives that that's what stimulated me to then just wanna go deeper into the mind. So that's what prompted me then to go get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and then after, you know, practicing for several years and I started getting calls by the media like Inside Edition, um, ABC Nightline, some pretty... VH1, some
(06:01)
big shows. And it was again just exciting for me to like connect with people on a broader level than just my own private office. And then um, from there I then uh, was offered a book deal and I love to write and it's just been such an amazing journey. I never could have predicted it, but it's been a wonderful journey and I'm really excited and thankful for it.
Dr. Lauryn (06:26):
Thank you for sharing that and excited to dive into this topic of like how we can harness the power of anxiety. That seems like kind of an oxymoron. Talk a little bit about like what that means and yeah, we'll start there.
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (06:40):
Sure. So I found that a lot of people coming to my office were, you know, again successful driven New Yorkers, and they would come because they would be having anxiety, but there was also, on the other hand, I noticed something about the fact of their anxiety that at a certain level was helping them, right? So maybe they were somebody that just always double-checked everything and to a certain point that actually helped them in life. They were always well prepared and on point, but then their own habits had almost gotten a little bit haywire and were becoming counterproductive. And so I eventually realized that they were actually more open even to my interventions to help them manage their anxiety if I could first really assure them that I wasn't going to 100% get rid of it because there is a healthy function to anxiety. And deep down they kind of knew that if they got rid of all their anxiety they would just kind of be like, almost like a lump, you know?
(07:45)
So a person with say no anxiety, for example, wouldn't think to look both ways before they cross the street. So the healthy function of anxiety is actually to stimulate preparation behaviors. So when we feel that, you know, a little bit of anxiety, the trick is to understand where it's coming from and what it needs. If it needs us to take some kind of preparation behavior or if we've already done all the preparation behaviors and it's just almost like a phantom anxiety, then it needs some good slow down and relaxation techniques. But we don't always just wanna automatically slow down, breathe in and let it go when we feel anxiety because sometimes the anxiety is actually trying to cue us to focus. So when we do get anxiety, there's even some physiological responses where, you know, our vision can narrow, we can get some adrenaline and we don't always wanna get rid of it. Sometimes the trick is to point that energy in the right direction so that it can help us to prepare for whatever's causing the anxiety.
Dr. Lauryn (08:50):
Do you find this to be the case Like with those that both maybe have chronic anxiety, like just like ongoing, it's part of like their paradigm right now compared to like situation anxiety. Or like I tend to be more anxious of a person. Like is there a difference you think on your spectrum or...
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (09:09):
Yeah, so in social psychology, we actually have two different instruments that we would use to measure anxiety. We would look at state anxiety versus trait anxiety. So as you said, there could be someone who's normally very calm, but if they're about to take a test they'll feel anxious. And then there are other people who are just a little bit more, you know, wired around that anxiety. And again, I just think it's really important to understand that it's all on a spectrum. So, you know, you could be kind of a type A person who has big goals and big ambitions and always trying to get out of your comfort zone and grow to the next level and try something new. And by definition, you're kind of inviting a little bit of stress into your life. You're, you're not just sticking in your comfort zone. So there can then be a little bit of stress that comes with that.
(10:05)
But again, there's a healthy form of stress, you know, we stressing our system now and then is how we grow. For example, when we lift um, weights, we wanna lift heavy weights that get so heavy that our muscles might even start to shake a little bit cuz that's how they get stronger. But of course, again, we don't wanna just, you know, always lug around a hundred-pound weight until we, you know, just tax and overtax and abuse our bodies. I'm not saying we wanna thrive on anxiety or dwell in it, but ironically we actually are more successful at releasing the anxiety if we allow it to serve its healthy purpose instead of trying to always automatically stuff it away or breathe it down or you know, just assume that it's something to be gotten rid of.
Dr. Lauryn (10:52):
Well, we've seen a huge uptick and like statistically seemingly an uptick in anxiety just like aligned with the pandemic and everything, um, the past couple of years. But like I would love to know from your perspective since uh, you work with patients on a one-on-one basis, like what you've seen your observations from an anxiety perspective and even statistically seen in practice and is it really related to just like this underpinning of like when we go through emotional trauma in our lives or stressful times like those that maybe have never had anxiety before are more now we're seeing that more commonly, but just would love to see thematically what you've seen and kind of what are the underpinnings or the reasons why one would have more anxiety than others even though we've all been through a very similar experience as humans?
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (11:41):
Yeah, sure. So I think on one level, like obviously, we've just had, you know, more cause for anxiety, you know, when you introduce the concerns of, you know, medical concerns and you know, there at first were great concerns about, you know, food and ventilators and even toilet paper, right? You know, so there were like scarcity concerns, which obviously can, and in fact, on a certain level should trigger anxiety, right? Like somebody who's um, unaware or unresponsive, you know, to those factors would have other problems right in, in their life. So we've certainly had more triggers for the anxiety at least in the past. Thankfully at this point I think people's concerns are starting to subside a little bit as the medical community and society at large, at least in the United States starts to um, get a little bit more of a handle on, you know, some of the volatility that the pandemic initially introduced.
(12:42)
But to your point about the increase in anxiety, there was not only a spike in the causal factors of anxiety, but there was also a decrease in the outlets for anxiety. So for example, again, if if anxiety, the healthy function could be stimulating you to get more time with your social support network or to go for a run at the gym and burn off some of that extra cortisol and adrenaline, but yet suddenly you can't get within six feet of your friends and your gym is closed and your church is closed, you know? So I think a lot of the typical and healthy things that anxiety sometimes can stimulate people to do were suddenly unavailable. So it was kind of a double whammy in the sense of an increase in the causal factors and a decrease in the coping opportunities.
Dr. Lauryn (13:39):
Yes, well said there. And I guess like as a clinician, like have you seen such an uptick in like people seeking help? Because I think, I mean people may be looking for help in some way, and has it been primarily through then talk therapy that you have found that?
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (13:56):
Yes. So my, my book actually released this year, so it's, it's in October right now for anybody listening at a different time. My book was released in March of this year, 2021. So although there was an increase in calls to my office, I personally was just more focused on, you know, activities related to my book. So I've, I've really been speaking more to organizations and groups about this concept and teaching people more on a group level about how to harness that power of their anxiety. And I do think that corporations and businesses have suddenly either become more aware of the fact of anxiety or maybe they have actually felt like they had more of a sense of permission slash responsibility to bring it up to their employees and to say, Hey, we know that this is a hard time, we're trying to bring you guys resources and so you know, we're gonna bring in Dr. Chloe to like, you know, give everybody a workshop about how to do this. Um, I do have therapists that work for me. Um, and so they certainly have been very busy, but I personally have actually not really taken any new clients this past year cuz I've been, you know, really busy with not only the book but I was chatting with you earlier about master classes and just other ways to try to serve people more on a group level.
Dr. Lauryn (15:19):
Yeah. Well, I know in your book you talk about there's nine techniques in particular for harnessing the power of your anxiety. Well, let's know if you could share with us some of those techniques and how we can integrate those just practically in our daily lives.
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (15:36):
Sure, absolutely. So there are nine techniques as you said, and I always tell people it's kind of like a cookbook, meaning that you know, you can choose whichever technique is going to suit you best with one exception, which is the first technique, which is a mindfulness technique with the reason being that I think before you can really choose which of the other eight techniques you need, for example, do you need a technique that's gonna help you relax and slow down or do you need a technique that's gonna help you really face that fear and get in there and deal with it before you really know which type of technique you're going to need, you first need to learn how to calmly really study and observe that anxiety. So the first technique is actually a breathing exercise, but as I explain to people it might look like a breathing exercise, but it's really a mindfulness exercise.
(16:33)
And even the word mindfulness I think has gotten, you know, so overused and confused by people that I just wanna explain that mindfulness, the way that I'm using it here is really about metacognition; it's about thinking about your thoughts, it's about observing your thoughts. And um, as a former yoga teacher, I know that what we would do is we would practice by just observing a random object, and then we would kind of graduate to learning how to observe what we call a semi-abstract object, which is the breath. And then we learn how to observe abstract objects like thoughts and feelings. So, I start with this mindfulness exercise and really help people to understand how to use it as a springboard to observe their thoughts and feelings. And if anybody wants a free video of me going through that technique, they can go to nervous energy book dot com and you can like enter your email and get a free video of me going through that technique and explaining that process to you.
(17:34)
But once you've done that technique then you know you can go ahead and choose from the other eight techniques. And so I'll just choose one here for example, that I really like called the to-do list with emotions. So what we do with the to-do list with emotions, because again, I personally tend to work with a lot of intelligent, driven people; they all have to-do lists, they all have goals, which is awesome. And they sometimes would kind of hit a wall where either they would be doing everything on their list but they would just kind of feel like a hamster on a wheel just knocking out the tasks but not feeling very fulfilled by them with just kind of this free-floating sense of anxiety or restlessness. Or they would suddenly start just totally procrastinating and it would be very unlike them , but they would just kind of feel as if they had like hit a wall.
(18:28)
And of course, you know, that was causing anxiety too to just find themselves suddenly procrastinating and not feeling effective doing the things that they need to do. So with the to-do list with emotions, what we do is we look at the things that are on your to-do list and then we ask ourselves what is the emotion that comes with that to do? And of course, sometimes the emotions can be surprising. So maybe on your to-do list is grocery shopping and maybe the emotion is oddly anger, you know, or oddly loneliness. And so then our next step is to say, okay, I wonder why that would be, Um, why would you be feeling those things? And I've had people say, well I guess I feel angry because I'm resentful that I not only have to earn the money to pay for the groceries, I still have to also go out and get the groceries and then I know I'm the one cooking them and I'm the one cleaning them .
(19:27)
And that like, they're just feeling very put upon. And when you discover that emotion, then the next step is to layer in a self-care behavior. And so that really getting in touch with that anger could, you know, stimulate you to have a self-care behavior of seeing, you know, I think what I need to do is maybe hire a helper, you know, to do some of those things for me. Or maybe I need to have a very candid conversation, a boundary-setting conversation, you know, with my family and have a conversation about accountability or you know, somebody else who, as I said the other example might say loneliness. Maybe they've just been through a divorce and suddenly they're shopping for one. And so maybe their self-care behavior is to plan in a cell phone catch-up call with a friend while they do the grocery shopping, to just kind of keep them in that sense of being connected and actually have, have a little fun with a positive experience that otherwise would've just brought loneliness. But the reason we have to do the to-do list with emotions is because successful driven people are sometimes kind of good at putting their emotions aside and just getting things done and there's a time and a place for that but they can get almost too good at it, which can lead to, like I said, that free-floating anxiety that they don't really understand because they do have some kind of emotion or feeling that's not getting addressed. And so the to-do list with emotions guides them through a way to fix that.
Dr. Lauryn (20:59):
Yeah, it sounds like just increasing just awareness versus like getting out of the frontal lobe of just boom, boom, boom boom.
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (21:06):
Well, it's increasing awareness but to me, it's also going a step further. So um, a lot of clients who come to my office say that they're coming because their previous therapists would guide them too often they felt to just sit with emotions, you know, like, Oh yeah, I'm feeling lonely. Okay, let's sit with that. And they're like, No, I don't wanna sit with that. I wanna do something about it. And so the to-do list with emotions not only guides people to really discover the awareness of their feelings, but then it really stimulates them to add on a self-care behavior attached to those feelings.
Dr. Lauryn (21:41):
Yeah, kind of proactive. And it seems like most of your techniques do have that proactive piece and I'm interested to know what is the worry time about. Cuz I think worry, uh, negative imagination is a lot of times what I define that as like what would worry time be? Setting a clock to just worry?
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (22:01):
. Well that, yeah, that's, that's interesting. So negative imagination, um, that would actually be an important question. So with what we do with worry time is somebody who's, you know, just got a very active mind and you know, maybe they do get pinged with worries while they're standing in line at the grocery store. They're thinking about everything from, you know, do I need to get my renter's insurance updated? And gosh, I haven't called my mom in a long time and oh my goodness, you know, am I supposed to prepare something for my book club tomorrow? Or you know, whatever the case may be. And they're having all these thoughts about the future and future-oriented thoughts and concerns about preparing for the future. It's, it's not a bad thing, but to have it happen in just kind of an unbounded way like that can be exhausting.
(22:50)
And so what I found is that some of these quote like worrywarts, they would get really down on themselves. They would kind of turn it into a black-and-white situation where they'd feel like in that moment in line at the grocery store, they had to either just pull out their dang phone and start taking care of it all right that and there. Or they would be like, I have to just let it go and not worry about it. Stop being a worry wart and almost be mad at themselves for having thought of it and try to stuff it down and forget about it. The happy medium with worry time is that you have a recurring event in your calendar and for some people, it's 10 minutes a day. For some people, it's an hour a week, whatever's best. But then when those little pings get in your mind at whatever random moment, instead of feeling like you have to either deal with them then and there or just tell yourself to forget about them, which actually can be anxiety provoking too, cuz there's a part of you that knows it might be a legitimate concern, you put it into the worry time event details for that, you know, week or that day.
(23:55)
And then at the appointed time, you can actually give that event the undivided attention it deserves. And then that actually frees your mind to really let go in that moment at the grocery store because you don't feel like you just basically almost took a credit card bill and essentially stuffed it under the sofa to just tell yourself not to think about it. You actually put it in a particular bill filing folder where it's going to get addressed and paid at a certain time and you know it. But Lauryn, you brought up something different which is, you know, like imagining things about the future. Like I do have people that might actually have the experience of opening up that calendar event for worry time and noticing that in fact, it's actually not really true legitimate concerns. It's almost silly stuff and they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I was worried about that. I would say that's actually good news, right? If you discover that in fact like you were kind of worried about nothing, it's still a win because the worry time exercise in the moment allows you to put it out of your head and then you get to actually discover later that your worry time, you know, appointed event is actually gonna be pretty light for you. Cuz there was nothing actually to worry about. So it's good news either way.
Dr. Lauryn (25:09):
Yeah, I think that technique ultimately when you, you mentioned having a calendar with myself to maybe have worry time, then I'm like, wait, I don't really, I think I'm okay. I don't know if I wanna spend that time. Like it, it seems like it would be a good perspective rather...
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (25:26):
For some people. Yeah. So I would just say again like every technique in the book is not for every person. So there's, in the book, there are three kinds of archetypes of people. Like some people are worry warts, some people are, you know, kind of OCD, and some people they just, they just smile and laugh. But underneath like they're kind of churning with anxiety. And so different techniques are gonna be helpful for different people.
Dr. Lauryn (25:51):
In your study and research of anxiety, um, would love to know kind of like the underpinnings, I mean definitely emotional situational. I do a lot of work with the gut microbiome though, and like brain-gut connection as well. Like, have you found thematically like if that makes a difference for folks? Like whether it's dietary choices and or just like actually shifting their gut microbiome? I know in my own experience, like with my history of disordered eating and then later like mold toxicity, in both of those seasons in my life, like my gut microbiome was a wreck and my anxiety was pretty high too , um, really aligned and as I healed physically as well like I just felt like light bulbs and more peace of mind also kind of take over.
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (26:36):
Oh, a hundred percent yes. I mean I almost have like a, like a subset of my practice that's like IBS people, you know. Um, like there's like definitely as again as a former yoga teacher, I almost feel like the body-mind connection just cannot be overstated. So of course the way our body feels is going to affect our mood and our thought process. And of course the, our mood and our thought process is going to affect our body. And that's true, you know, not only certainly for the gut, but even for things like neurotransmitters in our brain, you know, and exercise that we, that we have the thoughts that we think will change the neurotransmitters in our brain and of course the neurotransmitters in our brain can kind of shape the types of thoughts that we're likely to have. So I think it's really such an integrated operation. It's almost hard to overstate it.
Dr. Lauryn (27:33):
Also like what about generational or like, you know, ancestral type of anxiety? Like, do you find that sometimes my clients in the past have said, you know, like my mom struggles with anxiety or like it's anxieties in my family? So like seeing it like kind of systemically in family units, is that something that you see, and there is some method to that madness as well?
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (27:54):
Oh, for certain. So I mean there have been many psychology studies that have even shown that, for example, babies literally like within minutes out of the mother's womb, if the mother was say anxious or depressed, those babies will be demonstrably more reactive to certain types of stimulation. So I just wanna say I wasn't behind these studies, I didn't do them. So if, if anyone's listening and saying, gosh, that sounds a little weird to do this to a baby, I would actually say I agree with you. But there have been studies where minutes out of the womb, you know, they might have a baby that they do something that would be like just minorly irritating to it. I can't even remember what it was, but you know, like a, a light scratch or something and a baby that's born to a mom who's, you know, generally calm and balanced, you know, just may not really respond much to that cuz it's just a very, very mild irritation.
(28:50)
But a baby that's born to a mom that you know has been very anxious and depressed will scream his head off. You know, cuz he's just got that reactive state. And a lot of that can have to do even with the fact that in the womb, all of the chemicals as we were just saying the chemicals and the physiology of a person who's anxious or depressed is the physiological environment in which you know, that baby, um, is growing. So there's definitely a lot of overlap there. There's also, of course, you know, the fact of nurturing. So if you grow up watching your mom become hysterical over little tiny things, what you are learning is that those little tiny things must be really awful because look, mom's getting hysterical and so we're kind of internalizing that that must be something to get really concerned about because my mom is really concerned about it.
(29:45)
And then you can grow up feeling, you know, like the world is an anxious place or if you don't have parents that can model healthy coping strategies again, like suppose that, you know, every time that your mom gets a little upset, you know, she, she slaps you, right? You could grow up thinking that that's the way to deal with conflict, right? So there's definitely the physiological in utero component, there's the modeling component and there is also the genetic component as well. Personality traits and things like that are definitely heritable, meaning that they can be passed on genetically.
Dr. Lauryn (30:21):
Yeah. Little sponges, , we are, and so much happens in our young lives that we're so unaware of that affects I think, uh, a lot of how we think and see the world. One of your techniques that piqued my interest and it's called thought replacement; a lot of times I'll tell my clients like, you know, our thoughts are not always true and even kind of like statistically 95% of our thoughts being like in our subconscious, like things that we don't think about, uh, that are really wired, but like would love to know what is that technique about and how is that something that you also like kind of share with your folks that you've worked with? Just be gaining awareness over our thoughts and replacing them and what it sounds like.
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (31:04):
Yeah, definitely. So I, I like the way you said that Lauryn, that you know, our thoughts are not always true and that is the time that they need replacement, right? Because if thoughts are what psychologists call maladaptive, you know, meaning that they're not true or they're irrational, then they're not helping us and in fact, they're hurting us. And so those would be the ones that we wanna replace. But you also touched on something else which is, you know, that sometimes we're not even really fully aware of all of the thoughts and perspectives and worldviews and beliefs that are getting activated in every circumstance, right? So, you know, for example, you know, suppose that somebody walks into an exercise class, let's say me for example because I'm extremely embarrassingly uncoordinated. I can do great in a yoga class because it's certain moves and I know them and I've done them for decades but put me in a cardio step class and it's, it's an ugly situation .
(32:02)
Um, so if I walk in, you know, just to kind of use a lighthearted example, if I think about, you know, walking into a class like that, I might think to myself, I not, I might not be aware of it. I might just be walking in thinking, Oh, you know, I'm, Im a little nervous about this, or gee, I'm, I'm always really bad at these things. Or I might be, you know, replaying some really embarrassing times when I, you know, was uncoordinated in my life and telling myself, you know, I'm, I'm uncoordinated and you know, this is gonna be embarrassing. And if I always have that little script for myself, then I would wanna override those thoughts, you know, with things like, um, there's people of all ability levels in this class. I can skip the complicated moves if I want. The important thing is that I'm taking care of my health and I would just wanna repeat that over and over.
(32:58)
The thing about thought replacement though is that you have to actually memorize your thought replacement. So it's best to only use thought replacements for situations where there's a certain sentence or phrase or perspective that's like a constant refrain in your mind to the point where it actually is worth the, you know, trouble of crafting a very deliberate replacement thought. So if I, for example, for whatever reason had to start going to a cardio step class like three times a week, I would actually create that thought replacement that I just said, you know, something like, um, you know, I, I know I'll get better every week if I just do my best. You know, the important thing is I'm taking good care of my health. If I were a client of mine, I would make myself memorize that phrase to the point where I knew how many words exactly even are in that phrase.
(33:54)
And I could wake up in the middle of the night and, you know, say it the same way I could say the alphabet without, you know, any prompting or remembering. And then when that kind of negative script starts getting activated, you know exactly what to say to yourself. And people will sometimes say, Oh gee, well it doesn't feel natural. And I explain, well of course it doesn't feel natural cuz it's not what you've been telling yourself your whole life. It's kind of like if a person who's been slouching for 20 years suddenly wants to sit with their shoulders back, that's not going to feel natural either, but it's the right way to sit and it's the healthy way to sit. But you, Lauryn, had pointed out something else, which is, you know, sometimes people might not even be fully aware of what that maladaptive thought is.
(34:39)
Like, suppose I didn't even have the awareness that it's my insecurity about my coordination that makes me feel negatively every time I go into an exercise class. And I was like, I don't know why, but I just feel anxious every time I go. Then we would wanna do the mind mapping exercise in the book where you would just write, okay, exercise class. And then you draw a little spoke from that and you put the first few words that come to mind and I might say, um, fearful and uncoordinated and embarrassed. And then I would start drawing lines up from those and saying, what's the first thing that comes to mind from that? And from uncoordinated, I might write this embarrassing memory I have when I was, um, a cheerleader in high school and I went the wrong way during the whole varsity, um, you know, floor routine. And then I would start to really get down into the fact that every time I walk into a step class, that kind of sense of embarrassment is getting triggered. And that might guide me to different kinds of thought replacements. Like, you know, I might tell myself this is not a high stake situation, no one's even looking at me. I'll just do my best and be fine. And like that type of thought replacement might be best depending on what's really the underlying negative thought causing distress.
Dr. Lauryn (36:01):
Yeah. Kind of like then backtracking to do the mind mapping that gets that awareness and then you can move forward like kind of bobbing and weaving it sounds like, through some of these techniques.
Dr. Chloe Carmichael (
