EP 124
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.
Alyssa:
I'm excited. I have a new friend. She's looking at me on screen. I know you can't see her, but Danita Young is with me, and she's a fellow coach, so that's always cool, but you specialize in some interesting areas. You see your transformational coach, and you deal with a lot of things. We're gonna talk about, anxiety, procrastination and things like that, but introduce yourself a little bit more to me and to the audience, like, what kind of coaching do you do? What kind of coaching Do you love?
Danita Young:
Yeah, it accidentally got tripped into it. Those are the best kind of stories, right? Where you accidentally fall into the career path you're in. But it's very summed up into transformational so it could be life coaching. You might have heard that my certifications, NLP, CBT, I've I'm an owner and founder of a fitness company, and really how I tripped into coaching was just generally trying to help people with a fitness transformation, and did not know, end up, end up all I'd be here with anxiety and procrastination and things like consistency.
Alyssa:
I love that. I you know when you say you tripped into it, I think you probably was a path into it. But needless to say, I'm glad you found it, because you have some really interesting ideas about not just ideas, but methodologies that you've developed to help people deal with anxiety, and we're going to focus on that for today. But this word anxiety. It's kind of like a toss phrase, like, what does that mean to you? And I, when somebody says, I feel anxious, what does that open up for you?
Danita Young:
Just means their survival brains activated. They're in a contracting state, and they haven't learned the right tools to get out of it.
Alyssa:
So what? But what does it feel like? Like, I mean, I know I say I'm anxious. Like, there's certain things that happen. Maybe I get a little jittery, physically jittery. Maybe I ruminate in my head, like, what? What are some of the symptoms that you hear that people are saying, I feel this way, and subsequently you go, okay, they're anxious.
Danita Young:
Yeah, a lot of physical symptoms come from the nervous system. So I see hypertension, so high blood pressure could be one. Their middle ear is turned off, so they're not listening as much. So they make a lot of costly mistakes in their life or their career path. Brain fog is another one where they're not being able to get enough oxygen in their body and therefore not being able to get into their brain. I hear a lot of physical pain. So you heard you hear of a tension myositis syndrome, where their muscles are tightening no apparent reason, then you're losing the blood flow and the oxygen there. So there's unexplained problems when they're having to go live in chiropractor chiropractic offices because of that, I hear dizziness. I hear sleeplessness. Insomnia is a big one. Slow metabolism can be one. Hormones can be all thrown off as another one.
Alyssa:
Man general, everything can go wrong, sideways, right? Oh, yeah. So anxiety. It could be caused by a lot of things, right? Let's start with maybe. Is it genetic? Do you know, is it something you inherit? Is it, I mean, it's clearly something you can learn from anyone around you. But you think that certain people are more prone to being anxious?
Danita Young:
Yeah, I do. I think I what I've seen is that generally, if you have anxiety, you might find that your grandma's grandma, grandma gave it to mom gave it and then, therefore, you're in the atmosphere, you're in the belief systems of operating in more of a fear mindset. So that was where I would say more generational, not like bloodline. I wouldn't, I haven't gone down that path. But as far as, like, cognitively, yes, that we absorb belief systems from our generations. And so that could definitely be one. I definitely see it get passed on to kids after that. So it is something that ripples other parts. Is sometimes people don't have anything in their generational line, but they just had a life event, or some sort of trauma event that happened in their life that triggered the survival mechanism, and then it has just activated, and they can't seem to get rid of it.
Alyssa:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I see it in my own kids, for that matter, that a lot of the family members were, you know, New Yorkers by birth. So I think it comes also geographically, but there's a reaction. And we talk a lot on this podcast about brain science. So you know, I'm not afraid to use the amygdala word. You know that amygdala moment that they get nervous about something, there's some kind of a fear, right? And then they do go into that survival mode, instead of saying, Alright, stop, stop, stop, stop. And
it is learned for sure. But I think in some ways it's a sociological I mean, I think we're all kind of conditioned to be, by default. Anxious. Would you agree with that? Or what's your feeling?
Danita Young:
I would agree. I think a lot of people are confused, thinking we're built to thrive now we're built to survive. So the basal ganglia and just recognizing that there is a automatic pilot for us to turn on, it says time to survive, and that's just that's something that has to be learned to overcome that. Otherwise, we go our entire life and you hear the people that are on their deathbed saying, I should have done more. I should have faced the fear. I should have lived that moment. I should have done the thing that's it's because we've all been built just to survive, and so it really is a learned at least the research I found is about 92% of people are stuck in are stuck in that survival version.
That's why most of us feel like we're just on that hamster wheel of life, versus only 8% of people really break that. And these are the ones that we're looking up to. These are the ones where they want to wait. What are they doing? How come they're able to enter and then we think, Oh, they're the lucky ones, or oh, they were smarter. No, no, they're not. They're really not. Once we just have different tools. We can, we can be just like that and better.
Alyssa:
Yeah, and, you know, that's, that's kind of like my whole body of research is exactly that is, you know, confidence is a choice. It's a learned thing. And what it really boils down to is exactly what you're saying is learning to break that amygdala moment. So you go, Wait a minute, because, you know, it's funny, the survival mechanisms are all in the bottom of our brain. So I kind of joke with people. I'm like, well, it's gravitational pull, but it's really evolutionary pull, right? That is the strongest part of our brain, the oldest part of our brain, all that. So it does take a little energy, at least a little bit of will. You know, if somebody doesn't want to break that cycle, they can't. But, you know, we talked about some of the symptoms, you know, the physical symptoms, or the tells. and you mentioned a couple of things and that I want to go back to, but also have you expand on you said, middle ears turned off, and subsequently, they're not really in the present moment. What are the things that you see? What are the impacts? How is this anxiety impacting people that come to you and say, Danita, I need help. I need to deal with this. What are the things that are sideways, that need to be corrected?
Danita Young:
Driving is a problem. Being social is a problem. They are not being able to go to their kids events anymore. A lot of people say I feel like I'm alive, but I'm dead inside. I'm not social anymore. I don't have any friends anymore. I'm just sitting in the walls of my own home and afraid of everything. Usually, I find that they stopped their career, and so they've had a lot of career stagnation, which creates financial instability, relationship problems always are definitely a ripple effect of this. And then definitely health. Health is a big concern as well that we know everything from the health comes from the nervous system. So yeah, that's those three things are huge.
Alyssa:
These are serious, really serious. And so are they being told to go seek help, or do they normally self recognize this?
Danita Young:
I think what's unfortunate is, yeah, they go and seek help, but when they do seek help, what they're getting is medication, which we all know is a band aid fix, and it's not fixing anything as far as the processes of the subconscious or conscious and and unfortunate, it's just they go, I speak a lot of people that have been over medicated and or that that they feel like that is their only option. The other thing that I have found, too, is talk therapy, where talk therapy is you're just spinning around in circles, and you keep telling the story over and over on repeat, but there's not much growth, right?
So there's a big difference between, like, therapist versus coaching. Coaching coaching is like I heard the story once. Do you want me to hear it twice? Are we ready to get out of this? So I would say that sometimes even people would have come to me with trying different types of modalities, modalities of therapy. They just feel like, man, I'm just not there yet. I feel like, maybe I've had some growth, but I'm just not there yet. That's what I come across.
Alyssa:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that you differentiated coaching and therapy. They are different. I think a really good coach, as you seem to be, from just what you said, Will, you know, kind of shed the light and also disrupt that story that may be completely false in their head. So you know, when you hear somebody who's anxious about something that is completely preposterous, and I see preposterous like, you're like, there is no way that can be true, they've created a truth in their brain that's not real. Do you want like, are you probably saying to yourself in your head, oh, my God, this person is. Just so far from reality. What do you know? Do you call them out on it?
Danita Young:
No, because there's a white and black thinking so they get stuck into a perspective. Is usually what happens, at least, that's what I see 100% of the time. It's just a perspective shift. And what happens with our day and age right now is what's called fake positivity. They a lot of people are coming up to him, saying, it's water underneath the bridge. It's mind over matter. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. Get over it, right? These type of things have actually made it actually worse for the person that's struggling with anxiety, because what they're saying is, you're not seeing it, you're not feeling it, you're not in it. You're just giving something that's just again, like it would be, it's just a surface as medication is, it's not really fixing the root of it. And so these people feel like they just, they've gone to every point in their life to try to figure out who can see me, who can recognize me.
And so I really do see two parts of a person. There's a core version of an individual, and then there is this survival mechanism. You can call it ego. You can call it whatever you want. Whatever you want to call it, but I see always the core version of them. So I never have this like, oh my gosh, what's wrong with you? Like, there's never a judgment at all that comes to play. It just means you're trapped and you haven't learned a new tools to allow the perception to shift into a curiosity that's expansive, that allows you to really break out of that.
Alyssa:
I love that. And thank you for kind of not taking the bait there, because I think a lot of coaches or a lot of therapists would be like, knock it off right in some form. And it's not, it's not necessarily wrong. It's just you're right. There is more to the story. And usually people don't just create anxiety, right? They're not like looking for it. It's something that's manifested. It could be 1000 different reasons. Why do you get wrapped up in trying to figure out why they're anxious or just more focused on, let's, let's break the cycle and get out of it.
Danita Young:
I like to try not to relive the past trauma. I think that by going into the details, there's no point and rhyme or reason to actually just instill more of the emotion, the survival mechanism, to come on. So what I like to do is just get the main points of it. What, where did it start? Usually, COVID is a big one for all those people in New York that I get. A lot of people from New York that went through the COVID experience and just random stabbings everywhere, right? Like that still lives in, inside their subconscious that they're dealing with and and so once we, once we, once we were able to recognize that it's, it's not something we to relive. I don't need to go back and hear the horror stories in every detail about like what happened. But we do need to recognize, like truth. That's, again, that's the antidote to anything as far as fear based. And where anxiety actually loves is the fear and and it likes to not change. It likes comfortability. We are built to be in that familiar place, and it just is. It is what it is. And so it's not until we have to say to ourself, literally, you will be safe if you're happy, you will be safe if you make more money in your life, you'll be safe if you have love in your life. Like, that's legitimately how crazy it is that, like, you have to train the body. What safety actually really is, because in its mind, it's just saying, Well, you gotta be careful on what and what if and should've and could have, and maybes, you know, that's what it's built off of. And so you have to learn new call it, there's different tools that are out there for each person. There's so many different tools. So you just go start going through all the tools and find out which one hits for that person, and that sets them into truth. And that's the freedom that that whole quote of the truth sets you free. It is 1,000% correct.
Alyssa:
I love it. I love it. I'm so glad we're talking I feel like I found another neuro nerd, but also somebody who's really speaking the truth. So that's wonderful. So what we're gonna do is we just take a very quick break, give a little sponsor love. But I know that you have not just tools, but some methodologies and some tips. And I know people are thinking to myself, okay, this is great. I have some anxiety. What do I do next? So we're gonna address that in just a minute.
This podcast was sponsored by the American Confidence Institute. ACI uses basic brain science to teach you not what but how to think with more confidence. ACI is endorsed by top universities and business experts, and it is accredited by the Society for Human Resource Management and the international Coaching Federation. Learn more about ACI, uniquely empowering, keynotes, workshops, online training and coaching certification at www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com.
Alyssa:
