How to Stop Worrying with Martha Beck

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Speaker 2 off

Speaker 3 welcome back to we can do hard things

Speaker 3 in the last episode if you have not listened yet we dove into anxiety culture with Dr. Martha Beck Beck.

Speaker 3 And Martha walked us through why it is that the things we do to try to help ourselves feel safer actually make us feel less safe and take us into anxiety spirals that we can't get out of. And

Speaker 3 she taught us how to get out of anxiety spirals with actual real skills and tricks.

Speaker 3 Today, she's going to walk my sister Amanda, my wife Abby, and me through

Speaker 3 particular issues that bring each of us great anxiety. She's going to show you, Pod Squad, how to stop that anxiety in its tracks and how to move into a place of peace and creativity.

Speaker 3 And it actually freaking works. Okay.
So just sit down, listen up, watch Martha work her magic on us, and you're going to learn how to work this magic on yourself.

Speaker 4 Welcome, Dr.

Speaker 3 Martha Beck. Martha, let's start with this.
And then you are going to go into an exercise with each of us to coach us through and out of an anxiety spiral is how we're thinking about this.

Speaker 3 And I'm hoping it will serve the entire pod squad and that they'll be able to recreate it in their own lives. But can you first just

Speaker 3 quote to us what Irma Bombeck said about how she keeps airplanes in the air? Because

Speaker 3 if not, I have it written down. But do you know that?

Speaker 4 She says people just falling asleep all around me while I alone am keeping the plane in the air by pulling upward on the arms of my seat.

Speaker 4 Yes, that is how we should live. Not

Speaker 3 so my beloved love bugs, pod squatters, you understand.

Speaker 3 We are not the pilot.

Speaker 3 We are literally sitting in seats with no control, watching people around us rest, feeling mad at them because we believe that we are running the world through the slight pressure we're putting on our armrests.

Speaker 3 So Martha's going to show us how we too could be the people that just take naps when our plane is in the air. Amanda, would you like to start?

Speaker 3 Sure. I love that.
quote because it just shows that a lot of anxiety is coming from a place of love and protection of people. Yes.
I mean, absolutely. We're not doing it to be the God in the sky.

Speaker 3 We're doing it because we really do believe that pulling up is keeping everyone on this plane safe. So it's just like all of that beautiful energy, but it's just going down the wrong tube.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 4 Isn't that adorable that we really, really are trying to control the world so no one ever has to suffer again? I know.

Speaker 3 And it's poison in a little bit, right, Martha? Like one of the things I've thought about so much over the last year is that the thing that I'm doing to help my people is in fact hurting my people.

Speaker 3 Because when you're on a plane, actually, let's just stick with that metaphor, and you see someone gripping the handles, what does that do?

Speaker 3 It makes you, whether you like it or not, viscerally have a reaction of maybe I should be doing that too. Like maybe she's on to something.

Speaker 3 Tish, one of my daughters, our daughters was going on a trip and I was dropping her off at her friend's house.

Speaker 3 And I said, okay, just make sure, like, when you're walking around the town, just, you know, keep your little voice inside your head that's like, watch out for danger, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 And she goes, Mom, I think you can officially rest that the voice, that voice you have in your head is in my body.

Speaker 4 I am always doing that. I love that.
But it's sad, Martha. I did that to her.
Oh, that's okay. Is it?

Speaker 4 Because, yeah, I mean, I remember when I was 13 and I read for the first time that the brain is fixed and rigid by the age of five. And I was like, fuck.

Speaker 4 She's 13 and it's over. I'm 13.

Speaker 3 And then I retire.

Speaker 4 I know. And then, you know, like three decades later, they figured out, ooh, oops, the brain is actually malleable and moving and rearranging itself all your life.
So all you have to do is say, oh.

Speaker 4 Let me fix the anxiety tendencies in my own brain. Then I'll be a touchstone for Tish about not only being calm, but getting there from the anxiety I gave to her.

Speaker 4 And you just have to live it in order for it to emanate out from you. You teach it.
You teach your own beliefs with every action, every choice, everything you say to anybody.

Speaker 4 So, if you can calm your own anxiety and live in a place of joy and creativity and connection, which I truly believe we all can, the people around you are going to be affected very powerfully, no matter how old they are.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's a good start. Okay, so there's so much hope.
It's not done by the time we're five. If you're 48, we can start right now if you're listening

Speaker 3 in this moment to figure out how to emanate calm and peace instead of terror. Sister, would you like to start? Sure.
It's a good segue segue.

Speaker 4 Seg you. Let's do a segue.

Speaker 3 So, Martha, what do you need to know from her to get started on this journey? Or do you already know enough? Martha, just do me without.

Speaker 4 Stop being anxious or I'll bury you alive in a box. Have you seen that? Bob Newhart thing? No.

Speaker 4 No, but it goes to a psychiatrist and she's had this terrible, terrible fear of being buried alive in a box. And he says, okay, I'll give you my cure.

Speaker 4 Stop it. Stop it or I'll bury you alive in a box, which is kind of what we do to ourselves.
Anyway, all I need to know is, like on a scale from one to 10, how anxious are you feeling today?

Speaker 3 I am not feeling anxious today. Talking to y'all makes me not feel anxious.
Maybe

Speaker 3 two or three today?

Speaker 4 Then my work here is done.

Speaker 4 Let's go to no.

Speaker 3 But as soon as we stop recording,

Speaker 4 as soon as we stop recording, then we're right back up.

Speaker 3 Is that true? All right.

Speaker 4 So, what has made you feel anxious today earlier in the before we started recording?

Speaker 3 I mean, this

Speaker 3 week, I'm splashing around in a little pool that I thought that I had made a bunch of progress with. So, I'm kind of revisiting in a way, but I have always had

Speaker 3 like a kind of existential anxiety about my daughter not having a sister.

Speaker 3 And because of just like the permanence of that, the kind of like your whole life, you know,

Speaker 3 you know, even if you weren't to be like best friends with your sister, you know, like that's a constant, that's a touch tree. That's like a

Speaker 3 forever there. And I don't know

Speaker 3 what it's like to not,

Speaker 3 especially she's about to get in like middle school times. And it's like, so how do you know who your person is?

Speaker 3 If your person changes, if it's just like a flow of people, I feel very fearful about it. And I don't know how to navigate that with her.
So I have like a big,

Speaker 3 and something happened last week where I, I see some dynamics and it gets triggered up. And I don't know how much I should do versus not do versus just let happen.

Speaker 4 Well, first of all, we need to not only just let things happen, but let's go inside your brain and find a calm, creative place where you can address the issues that you're afraid of. So

Speaker 4 to boil down this fear, what I'm hearing is this, and tell me where I'm wrong. It feels to me like you had a sister who she was your person and still is in many ways.

Speaker 4 And having her was an absolute lifeline for you. pretty much your whole life.
Tell me where I'm wrong. No, correct.
All right. So you then define

Speaker 4 an emotional lifeline as a sister.

Speaker 4 So everybody has to have a sister the way you had Glennon as a sister. Tell me where I'm wrong.

Speaker 3 Yes. It just kind of feels like a sheltering place from what I know what's coming of like it would

Speaker 3 kind of friend disappointments or friend betrayals or abandonments just feel

Speaker 3 like there's no shelter around that because that's you're just out in an open field taking those hits.

Speaker 3 That's how it feels.

Speaker 4 All right. So, sanctuary, safety, protection from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
That security for you came from a sister. True? Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 4 So then you have defined those feelings, sanctuary, protection, love, a person to go to, a person who understands you as sister.

Speaker 4 But I know many, many people who are terrified of their sisters they're terrible sisters

Speaker 4 do you have brothers no

Speaker 4 i know a brother sister pair who like could not live without each other they're both married everything it's a very healthy normal relationship but they grew up way out in the wilderness together they're both brilliant and

Speaker 4 The sister can only say, I cannot stand to think of people who don't have a brother because her brother was that for her and she was that that for him.

Speaker 4 But I've known people whose greatest fears and most devastating traumas came directly from their sisters. So sister is not necessarily the same as sanctuary.

Speaker 4 So what you're really saying, what's your daughter's name? Alice.

Speaker 4 So could we say that your real fear is that Alice has no sanctuary. Alice has no person.
Alice has no protection from slings and arrows. Alice is all alone out there.
Is that the biggest fear?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 4 Because she doesn't have

Speaker 4 Glennon.

Speaker 4 This is actually really specific.

Speaker 4 Does she not have Glennon?

Speaker 3 She sent me a pitch to be on the podcast last week.

Speaker 4 She definitely has me.

Speaker 4 Good segue there.

Speaker 4 Segue. See last episode.

Speaker 4 And Alice also has you, Amanda, whom Glennon calls sister in her books. You are that source of safety and protection.
It's not the sisterness of you, it's what you are.

Speaker 4 And Alice has you. She has Glennon, she has Abby.

Speaker 4 She will find other people in the same vein because she has been given the example of this patterning of choose people like these, not horrible backstabbing people, which is what people choose when their sisters have been backstabby to them.

Speaker 4 Am I making any headway here?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 4 Okay. So

Speaker 4 this is the calming part of addressing an anxiety. You just gently talk sense to the frightened little creature that conflates sister with safety so that you can say, there is safety.

Speaker 4 And that can happen with almost anyone.

Speaker 4 You know?

Speaker 4 And she has you and Glenn and the two sisters in this equation before Abby came along. She has both of you.
How cool is that? Double sisters.

Speaker 3 It's true. And she has a brother who's wonderful to her.

Speaker 4 Well, there you go.

Speaker 3 I think maybe it's like when I'm thinking about it, I'm like, is it that if

Speaker 3 she had a sister that was my daughter, then I would know that I had raised both of them to protect each other. And since her people are going to be people that just other people raised.

Speaker 3 And how vulnerable is that? IKAKI can't even, I have no control over those people.

Speaker 4 Those people are just out there running wild. Oh, sweetheart.
It's so funny that you think you have control over how your daughters grow up. That is hilarious.

Speaker 4 So much more nature than nurture. They're going to be who they're going to be and you can't control it.

Speaker 4 Basically, you're now in a story that says, be afraid and take control. Here's how to control it.
I need to control it. I got to control it.
That's the way.

Speaker 4 Now, this creates what we call an anxiety spiral. You have a bolt of fear that comes from the world is unsafe.
My daughter had a triggering incident. Oh, no.
Then immediately your brain tells a story.

Speaker 4 She has no sister. She's alone out there.
Then it goes to its favorite method of fixing things. I will control everything.

Speaker 4 I must have another child and raise it to be my sister's sister, no matter what it wants.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 so now

Speaker 4 it's anxiety spiral. And it is, and I love you so much, but it is fucking insane.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. When you put it like that, it is, Martha.

Speaker 4 I do put it like that. You put it like that.
So now,

Speaker 4 when you get to a space of laughter, you've shifted from the anxiety spiral. Remember, the right side of the brain, the only place it uses language are poems, jokes, and songs.

Speaker 4 So by joking, I call it a joy jolt. You go, you open up the right side of the brain.
You haven't lost sight of the fact that the world is hard and your daughter is vulnerable. You know that.

Speaker 4 But you can also look at the people around you. Glennon's here, Abby's here, I'm here.
The pod squad is here.

Speaker 4 There are so many people and so many forces surrounding Alice to make sure that it buoys her up. And yeah, she'll have difficult experiences.

Speaker 4 But you've heard about those trees that they grew in geodesic domes. Have you heard about this? They grew them inside these domes to try to simulate a little ecosystem.

Speaker 4 And all the trees fell down before they were mature. And what they realized is is the trees need the pressure of wind in order to become strong

Speaker 4 so yeah it's a windy world out there and sometimes the wind can be cold but it makes people strong i mean look at y'all you've been through some really dark stuff all of you right

Speaker 4 you're strong you're brave and right now you're creating

Speaker 4 You are creating connections between yourselves and millions of other people who are on the same wavelength who would love to help keep Alice safe.

Speaker 4 This is just a different story,

Speaker 4 but it feels to me when I tell it, my body relaxes. And that is my signal from nature, which runs my body, to say, oh, you've landed in the truth.

Speaker 4 Alice is okay.

Speaker 5 She's okay.

Speaker 4 And you're okay.

Speaker 4 The little scared girl inside you is who also really needs your care and compassion. The one who's afraid that Alice feels as scared as she did.

Speaker 4 I bet Alice never feels as scared as you did. I don't know.
No, I hope not. I don't think so.
With y'all as parents? No.

Speaker 4 But that's her story.

Speaker 4 And people can go through really hard things and it makes them very strong. And you three are a testament to that.

Speaker 4 And as long as we can laugh and love and tell stories about our adventures along the way, that's the fun of it.

Speaker 4 Like, would you go to a movie about some nice people who are born in very tidy circumstances, have nice lunches and dinners every day until they die at the age of 110 with no conflict? Let me out.

Speaker 4 My God, that's boring.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Why would you?

Speaker 3 It's true.

Speaker 4 It's true.

Speaker 3 Okay, so I'm just going to let everything happen, Martha.

Speaker 4 Guess what? There's no alternative, Amanda.

Speaker 3 The alternative is I could think of all the ways. That's right.
Figure it out and then still let everything happen.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because everything is just going to happen the way it's going to happen. And the more clenched up you are, the less influence you'll have.

Speaker 4 Because if we can unclench completely and go into a state of real present joy, what happens is that conditions tend to shift around us in favorable ways.

Speaker 4 And this is, I wrote three parts of this book on anxiety. First part is the creature, because that's the animal that gets anxious.
Then there's the creative who says, not, oh, the world is scary.

Speaker 4 What should I do now?

Speaker 5 But what should I make now?

Speaker 4 Which immediately takes you into creativity.

Speaker 4 And if you can go into the creative part of your brain, then the last third of the book is called the creation, because you stop when you're deep enough in joy and far enough away from anxiety.

Speaker 4 You start to feel yourself as kind of a field of compassion that is moving with your body and sometimes through your body, but there's no sense of effort. And it's not really known in our culture.

Speaker 4 In China and Japan, it's well known. People have been talking about it for thousands of years.

Speaker 4 But when you get to that state of transcendent happiness, you make everything around you better, but you don't have to do it. It just happens.

Speaker 3 I understand that because it feels like the inevitable outcome of that would be that you would become a sanctuary.

Speaker 4 Yes. Yeah, my My favorite poem from the poet Hafiz,

Speaker 4 who was a 13th-century Persian poet, there's a little bit of it that just goes, Troubled, then stay with me, for I am not.

Speaker 4 Thank God.

Speaker 4 All you have to have is someone like that.

Speaker 4 So why not be someone like that?

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Speaker 3 Do you want to go, love?

Speaker 4 Sure.

Speaker 4 Okay. Abby, you're up.
Go ahead.

Speaker 5 What's the game?

Speaker 4 What do I say? What are you most worried about? What are you most anxious about lately?

Speaker 5 See, I don't,

Speaker 5 I don't do anxiety. It's not something that I relate to because I think

Speaker 5 being an athlete for so long, I've learned to like use my body in a way to work through it.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 And so I have had anxious times in my life.

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 When the wheels fall off and people die, all of that. Those feel like real moments.
I'm not in an extraordinarily like anxious moment of my life, but I've had the worst year of my life.

Speaker 4 So, okay, first of all, let me just address what you just said because it is profoundly important. All the time you spent perfecting your skills.

Speaker 4 in athletics, soccer, of course, mostly, but everything you do really, as an athlete, you're grounded in your body and you're paying really close attention to things like the arc of the ball as it comes towards you.

Speaker 4 You're not thinking about what you're going to do with your friends next week. You're present.
You're physically grounded.

Speaker 4 Your senses are wide open and you've fired your brain in that direction so often that you don't wire for anxiety. You have wired yourself for no anxiety.

Speaker 5 So kudos.

Speaker 4 You thought you were just a world-class athlete. You were also a world-class brainiac.
Okay, now, why was it the worst year of your life?

Speaker 5 First time that's ever been said out loud.

Speaker 4 I'll take it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so my brother passed away at the end of December last year.

Speaker 4 Oh, sorry, honey. It has felt like the hits just have kept coming.

Speaker 5 Sister's cancer stuff that she went through.

Speaker 5 We've had some, you know, just like life was like really.

Speaker 5 I wasn't able to transcend is what I'm saying. I wasn't able.
And I think I've been grounded in so much grief over the last 12 months that that's kind of been my baseline. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And because of that, it's given me, I think, this like negative outlook.

Speaker 4 Sure.

Speaker 5 Because I keep saying like every month and I'm like, okay, that's done. We're moving.
We're moving on. But like, you know, grief is not something to just like chuck into the closet and be done with.

Speaker 5 It's something that keeps showing up. And so I've done quite a bit of like intense therapy around it.
And the moment I started to accept the fact that I was going to live with this grief forever,

Speaker 5 it will move in different ways and it'll show up differently. Then the light has kind of started to show back into my life, which is great.

Speaker 5 I think maybe there's an anxiety that now kind of lives in my body around,

Speaker 5 is it true? Like there's fear that I have that I will never be able to have access to pre

Speaker 5 Peter's life feeling of okayness.

Speaker 4 I was just going to ask you, are you afraid of feeling this way forever? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because that is a real thing.

Speaker 4 And it's really interesting because in our last episode, I talked about how with fear, the first thing you do is calm the animal of your body, and you know how to do that.

Speaker 4 But then you go into a place where you make something.

Speaker 4 And in your case, I say C-A-T for cat, C is for calm, A is for art. And your art, your primary art was soccer, is soccer.
So you've been doing art your whole life.

Speaker 4 In case people think I'm narrowly defining art, it's anything you make or do that you can master. So you've done that.

Speaker 4 As you continue to make things,

Speaker 4 you get to this point I just talked about called transcendence.

Speaker 4 And Abby, I think your life is bringing you an opportunity because you've already come so far on this path of evolution away from fear that it's asking you to transcend the deepest fears that a human being has.

Speaker 4 So you are in the black belt training right now.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 what we have to do with any of our fears, you saw how I sort of picked away at Amanda's saying, Are you sure this is true?

Speaker 4 So let's take your brother's death.

Speaker 4 What's the most painful thought you have around his being gone?

Speaker 5 That it's going to happen to me too.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 your body probably will eventually lie down and stop talking.

Speaker 5 Yep. I'm really scared to death.
That's part of what I'm like in active therapy around because this has really brought it to the surface.

Speaker 5 Obviously, I'm like devastated for his family and his children and him.

Speaker 5 He really liked living and he liked having a good time. He was total joy guy, but it stoked this real deep fear of the unknown, the thing that's really happening to all of us right now.

Speaker 4 And as I said in the last episode, all long-standing fears that aren't of something in the room, they come from stories. And culture tells us different stories.
And every culture tells...

Speaker 4 slightly different stories, sometimes very different stories about death and what it is.

Speaker 4 We live in a very left hemisphere dominated society and the left hemisphere only believes in material objects and it identifies itself as material objects and wants to grasp them and hold on to them.

Speaker 4 And the idea of losing the self and losing control

Speaker 4 are maxed out in the idea of death.

Speaker 4 Interestingly, when they test meditators, Tibetan meditators who are in complete bliss all the time, you know what's not working in their brains?

Speaker 4 The part that says, I am a self, and the part that says I am in control. Those two things are off.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 you know the materialist story of what death is.

Speaker 4 Our culture says you die, but you're gone. That's all there is.

Speaker 4 Does that bring peace to your body to think that story, to just have those thoughts?

Speaker 4 Does it bring a sense of freedom?

Speaker 5 That we die and we're gone and the material.

Speaker 4 And there's nothing else. No.

Speaker 4 So I may have told you this before. The Buddha used to say, wherever you find water, a body of water, you can know if it's the sea because the sea always tastes of salt.

Speaker 4 And wherever you find enlightenment, you can recognize it because enlightenment always tastes of freedom.

Speaker 4 So when we think thoughts that are deeply true to us, like the thought,

Speaker 4 think this thought, you three overachievers.

Speaker 4 At no time am I ever required to do more than I can do in peace.

Speaker 4 Give that one a trip around your brain.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 4 Does it make you feel freer? Yes.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 4 The reason it makes you feel freer is that it's true. That's my belief.

Speaker 4 Now, I have had a near-death experience or something very much like it.

Speaker 4 And after it, I became obsessed with near-death experiences because

Speaker 4 it was so exquisite, I just couldn't live without it.

Speaker 4 I just would read books, anything I could about people who had like gone through this transition because what they experienced, actually this painting, it's kind of blurry. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 This is a painting I did based on that experience.

Speaker 4 It's a man going through these sort of stained glass windows in a cathedral that's also a forest and he's going toward this light.

Speaker 4 So long story short, I was in surgery. I regained consciousness even though I wasn't feeling any pain and I could see even though my eyes were taped shut and this light appeared to me and it

Speaker 4 permeated me

Speaker 4 and it was the most exquisite feeling.

Speaker 4 Oh my God. And it was just laughing with me.
We were laughing together. We were like,

Speaker 4 oh my God, I forgot that I was this.

Speaker 4 And the light was saying, I know. We told you you'd forget.
And you said, no, no, I want. And then you totally forgot.
We were laughing and laughing. It was physically warm.
It was like liquid bliss.

Speaker 4 And I couldn't stand to live without it.

Speaker 4 And I had to find my way back to it. But I know that I probably am going to go through that when I die.
It's such an intensely real experience. It's so much more real than the physical universe.

Speaker 3 But, Abby,

Speaker 4 is there any way we could like chip away at the story of death that you've been taught by your culture or by your religion where God's really pissed off at you? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And where she's going straight to hell.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 She was taught that as a kid, that she was going to hell. Me too.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's the deal.

Speaker 4 I left Mormonism, not to mention being gay. That is the sin worse than murder.
I'm going to eternal darkness.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Except that is not what sets my soul free. And I refuse to believe things that are just told to me arbitrarily by my culture when they don't set me free.

Speaker 4 That, no, I'm not going to stop with their bullshit stories.

Speaker 4 I'm going to keep digging in.

Speaker 4 What's your brother's name?

Speaker 5 Peter.

Speaker 4 Peter's gone. Can you be sure that's true? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 Now ask it a second time, only this time. Drop it down into the deepest interior part of yourself.
Like if it's infinite out, there's also an infinite in.

Speaker 4 Drop that question in and wait for a response from the deepest part of yourself.

Speaker 4 Peter's gone. Can I absolutely know that that is true? No.

Speaker 4 It's not true.

Speaker 5 I know that.

Speaker 4 I just got me the chill of truth. Like,

Speaker 4 feel that?

Speaker 5 Yeah, but it's so difficult for me because, see, I feel so conflicted around even saying that out loud because it conflicts with not just the things that I was taught, but then I had to rebel against everything that I was taught in order to be in my body and to leave my home and to be able to live the life that I did.

Speaker 5 So, I went through atheism and then agnosticism, and then I met Glennon, who is like very, you know, Jesus-minded.

Speaker 5 minded and I'm just like all of it's so fucking confusing and the truth is we will never know what happens until it happens to us absolutely and so even like these stories that I make up even the positive stories I don't know if that's even true exactly we cannot know

Speaker 4 this guru I love who says the only true thing the mind can say is I do not know yeah But it's very different to live in what's called don't know mind, which is common in Asian philosophy, where you're not projecting stories.

Speaker 4 You're actually in the present moment and you're very, very sensitive to what's happening in and around you.

Speaker 4 When my father, I wrote a book about many things, leaving Mormonism, he sexually abused me, the whole thing.

Speaker 4 He was 95 when I published that book, and I couldn't understand why I felt I had to write it while he was still alive.

Speaker 4 But the day it came out, when the New York Times was doing a whole coverage on the art section,

Speaker 4 and I was getting like death threats and my family wanted to put me in prison and everything and i woke up at four in the morning with this overwhelming sense of my father's presence but it was beautiful it was like a symphony it was like i'd been hearing him through a staticky radio this beautiful song and it was just glorious and i sat there for two hours And then I got up and got ready for the day.

Speaker 4 And I thought, I guess it's because both of our truths are out there. And then as I was doing an interview, someone came in and said, your father died at four o'clock this morning.

Speaker 4 And I had no investment in, like, I, I loved him, I love him, but I didn't necessarily need him to be alive to be happy.

Speaker 4 So I didn't really have a dog in the race.

Speaker 4 So his, whatever it was, hit me so tangibly.

Speaker 4 And it stayed with me through this book tour where I had to have guards and people, you know, getting frisked for guns, coming into book readings and stuff.

Speaker 4 And I would hear him singing like songs from the carpenters, songs that he would never have sung. But it was his voice.
And

Speaker 4 he was there the whole time so powerfully. Like all the terrible fathering he did was kind of made up for in the month of great fathering he did once he died.
Wow.

Speaker 4 This is just another story.

Speaker 4 Was it really his? I don't know. Of course I don't know.
Is Is the religious story true? No.

Speaker 4 Anybody who says this is the way it is, fuck you.

Speaker 4 It is not.

Speaker 4 You do not know that. You're just a little monkey in shoes like me.
Stop pretending you know shit.

Speaker 4 But then live in the, I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And sometimes you feel him.

Speaker 4 And sometimes you feel that when you say we all just die and get buried, and that's the end. And it's like, oh, that doesn't set me free.

Speaker 4 Religion doesn't set me free. What if I just leave my mind wide open and walk into the mystery?

Speaker 4 That's what this guy behind me is doing. He's not walking into certainty.
He's walking into the mystery.

Speaker 5 Isn't maybe that like the most brave?

Speaker 4 I think you know, Abby. I think you just said the truth.

Speaker 5 Yeah, isn't that the right way?

Speaker 4 It's not the right way, but it is the brave way.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I don't mean to say right.

Speaker 4 It's the brave way.

Speaker 5 It's like, that's the thing. I just, I haven't known

Speaker 5 the direction to take the thought or the fear.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 This has been a huge suffering point for me throughout my entire life.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And it's like, I can attach myself to the brave way because that's the truest way.

Speaker 4 You're the hero in your story. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 4 And the heroic story is not to allow any religious dogma to determine what you think about death, and it is not to let atheistic science, which is just as dogmatic as religion, that's right, tell you what death is.

Speaker 4 Leave your mind and your senses open the way they are open when you're on the soccer field playing ball. Be present in that moment, and you will meet in their energy people that you've lost to death.

Speaker 4 What is it? I don't know, but it feels like freedom.

Speaker 4 All right. Well, this is good.

Speaker 4 Also, let me just say, in the words of my Australian wife, sucks, mate.

Speaker 4 Sucks.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

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Speaker 3 We were talking the other night in bed about this, which is an

Speaker 5 ongoing conversation.

Speaker 3 Forever, eternal conversation.

Speaker 3 Abby was saying we were discussing the possibility of an afterlife and like what it could be and what

Speaker 3 even existing even another place existing and how insane that is to think about right but then i was like whoa okay what makes me confused about people not even possibly believing there could be another existence is that we're in an existence right right now I'm doing it.

Speaker 4 It's like, exactly.

Speaker 3 I am having, how could there possibly be another place where there's beautiful rivers? I'm like, I'm looking outside right now. I see an ocean.
I am existing in this place.

Speaker 3 I feel like it's like a bunch of people at a party sitting around going, there's sure as hell is not another party.

Speaker 3 Like, what kind of idiot would believe another party exists?

Speaker 4 Yeah, every time you make me laugh, I cough, but I enjoy this so much. I'm willing to cough.
That is hilarious.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 People say,

Speaker 4 I think I can move things with my mind alone.

Speaker 4 Oh, look, I just did it.

Speaker 4 No one.

Speaker 3 How are you moving their hands up and down?

Speaker 4 You're moving their hands with your mind. And nobody, one philosopher says, nobody has any idea why consciousness can inhabit a physical form.

Speaker 4 And no one even has the slightest idea what it would be like to understand how consciousness can animate a physical being. Nobody knows it.
Science doesn't know. We don't understand a thing about it.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 one thing we do know, as you said, is here we are,

Speaker 4 or at least we're wondering where we are. So, and by the way, to Abby's situation, you know, Descartes, the great philosopher, he said,

Speaker 4 I think, therefore, I am. But that's not what he said.
He said, Dubito, Kojito Ergo Sum. He said, I don't know what's going on.
I don't have a clue.

Speaker 4 But that means something here is thinking, so I must exist. It was doubt.
It was an open mind, not a celebration of thinking,

Speaker 4 right?

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 yeah.

Speaker 4 And by the way, there are a lot of physicists right now who believe seven more dimensions are enfolded within every point of space-time, and we can't perceive them.

Speaker 4 There are levels and levels and levels of existence that are on planes of existence that we as monkeys in socks can't understand.

Speaker 4 We can't. So we make it.
It's like a location.

Speaker 4 Yes. And he wants to be able to do that.

Speaker 3 i'm like you're telling me a shark can tell the distance of its prey because there's some kind of electrical force field surrounding it yeah but we think we don't have gut instinct right that's right

Speaker 4 and actually people learn to echolocate blind people sometimes learn to echolocate by clicking and then the sound bounces off objects hey try this one on there is an artist named astraf armagun in turkey who was born with one eye the size of a lentil, which is totally non-functional.

Speaker 4 The other eye just isn't there. This person paints realistic portraits and landscapes.
He is an artist by trade. He has no eyes.
He was born without them. And all these different universities.

Speaker 4 Harvard went and did a study on him just to make sure he wasn't cheating. He's really doing it.
How the hell is that happening? And we think we understand the universe?

Speaker 4 It's the not understanding.

Speaker 3 No, listen, the pod squad does not need to.

Speaker 4 What is Glenn and anxious about? Oh, yes, we want to double double double double. I don't think we need to do it.

Speaker 3 I don't think we need to, but

Speaker 3 we can do one real quick if you want. But I just so love that thing about Descartes because it's what makes me feel like I exist is the doubting.

Speaker 3 It's like the existing in the most vibrant existence is at first always a rejection.

Speaker 3 It's like when you are just parroting, when a religious leader is just giving you dogma and you are just soaking it in

Speaker 3 and repeating it, to me, that's like not vibrant existence. No.
I love that that quote starts with the doubting is the beginning of existence.

Speaker 3 It proves that there's a chemical reaction happening between what you're saying to me and what is inside of me that is creating a third thing. And that is proof that I exist.

Speaker 3 It starts with my rejection of swallowing what you're saying. I am adding myself.
Exactly. It's the creativity.
It's the right brain stuff. Yes.
It's like, I see your things.

Speaker 4 I see your facts.

Speaker 3 And I'm adding this this like

Speaker 4 I will consider it in the field of not knowing where I live. There's a terrific neurological researcher named Andrew Newberg, who's written a lot about spirituality in the brain.

Speaker 4 And he himself had this experience. early in his life where he was in agony trying to figure out what was real.
And one day he found himself in what he calls the infinite sea of doubt.

Speaker 4 And it sounds odd, but he said it was warm, it was sweet, it was buoyant. It cared about me.
That was my experience with the white light that came to me in the surgery.

Speaker 4 And he just calls it the field of infinite doubt, but it's conscious and it loves us.

Speaker 4 Why not? That's a story. We might as well believe it.
It's just as good as, you know, you lie down, stop talking, and we bury you and walk away.

Speaker 3 It's a better story.

Speaker 4 So what are you worried about, Glennon?

Speaker 3 Well, I had a list, but

Speaker 3 I will bring one up and I think you could probably do it quickly because I've heard you talk about it as perhaps one of yours which is why I'm not too embarrassed to bring it up I will try to explain it as a

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 3 know how to be a peaceful vibrant goddess of a human being

Speaker 3 as long

Speaker 3 as 47 conditions are present to make me and they all are related to my body. I am

Speaker 3 so scared of

Speaker 3 not sleeping. So I have to have all of these things in mind.

Speaker 3 I am afraid of different, not having my specific foods, not having my specific whatever the hell it is that month that I believe like a magic potion is making me have

Speaker 3 aliveness.

Speaker 3 And so it narrows my life in terms of travel, in terms of new experiences, because I could live, Martha,

Speaker 3 I could live a solid month and be my version of peaceful and happy and never leave my house.

Speaker 4 Oh, me too. Okay.
Oh, lockdown was heaven for me. I'm an introvert and I don't like people.
But I love humanity and would die for any of you. Yes.

Speaker 4 But I'm just a paranoid introvert at heart.

Speaker 4 But I think this is really exciting because I think you're actually ready to experience, because you say that, but you've also, you know, the stuff that I'm telling you and you've talked to brilliant people from all over the world and everything and you're brilliant yourself and these guys are there to support you.

Speaker 4 So it's not a big deal, but

Speaker 4 if you can go into don't know mind, where it's peaceful and joyful,

Speaker 4 when you're in a sea of loving, compassionate, not knowing, but just going through it, like if you're present in your current space, that's the first thing.

Speaker 4 C-A-T, get calm and present in the current space, right?

Speaker 4 Nothing's going to attack you right in this very moment.

Speaker 4 When I talked to Jill Bolte Taylor about what the world was like when her left hemisphere was offline, this brain scientist who had a big left hemisphere stroke, she said there's no anxiety in the right hemisphere because there's no time.

Speaker 4 So we're just right here.

Speaker 4 So here we are. And there are all these conditions that you think are necessary to make your physical self vital and alive and feeling good.
Yeah?

Speaker 4 So I started doing this research and I came up with this idea that creativity is the opposite of anxiety and that if you go into creativity, you're going to leave your anxiety behind.

Speaker 4 And I experimented on myself and I did it religiously and I got to a place, I did a lot of arty things, then I started to experience transcendent things.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 the exact fears you're talking about, my deepest fears, were very much like these. And I started experiencing what felt and still feel like miracles.
Insomnia was my number one fear.

Speaker 4 Had it my whole damn life. I met these three Canadian women who run a thing called Sleep Underscore Works.
You can Google it. They said, we can fix your sleep cycle.
And I was like, no, you can't.

Speaker 4 I once took a drug that literally, they said, put yourself, empty your bladder and then arrange yourself exactly the way you want to sleep and then drink this liquid because you're not going to move for four hours and you will pee yourself if your bladder's full.

Speaker 4 And you won't record memories. I took the thing, I waited.
45 minutes later, I got up and started learning to play the ukulele so I could check whether I was putting it. Yes, I remember that night.

Speaker 4 It was horrible. I did not sleep at all.

Speaker 4 These Canadian women and

Speaker 4 dude. They did things, you know, that have to do with the way you're exposed to light and the way you're exposed to temperature.

Speaker 4 And after about two weeks, I felt melatonin come into my brain for the very first time. And I was like, oh my God, I'm going to fall asleep without meaning to.
I never felt that. Yeah.
Ever.

Speaker 4 I'm 62 fucking years old.

Speaker 4 You can learn to sleep. But that miracle came to me.
Okay, the same time. Then the next email said, you are invited to go on a seven-day walk in England.

Speaker 4 We will be walking 85 miles, 10 to 12 miles a day. Now, I have not walked for 10 years because I broke my foot, it healed badly, it was a mess.

Speaker 4 I couldn't walk for like five years, then I had surgery, then I couldn't walk for five more years. So I'm all atrophied and old and what the hell.

Speaker 4 The next email said, you have a free round trip ticket to London from British Airways. And I was like, I think I'm supposed to do this.

Speaker 4 And I started walking, even though I had all kinds of pain and all kinds of fear. And it brought up every anxiety anxiety I had about physical pain and they were many.

Speaker 4 And last October, I went to England. I had to skip a day because my son was sick, but I walked 75 miles in six days and loved

Speaker 4 it.

Speaker 4 Right. Like that wasn't supposed to happen in my 60s.

Speaker 4 Then it's like. I could go through a list of things.
Everything that I am most deeply afraid of was given to me and then healed. It just starts to be magic.

Speaker 4 Anxiety pulls us out of what we're meant to be, which is, let us face it, witches, right?

Speaker 4 Y'all know that's what we are. Yes.
Oh, now they're coming for us. That's all right.
They're coming for sociologists anyway.

Speaker 4 They are. They don't teach it in Florida anymore because it's too left-wing.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God. But Lenin, let's tell a few new stories about these fears.
So, the first, the biggest physical fear, what is it for you?

Speaker 3 Getting sick. Okay.
Or feeling bad, feeling tired, feeling off, not feeling right.

Speaker 4 Feeling bad, feeling off, not feeling right. All right.

Speaker 4 So there is a belief in the brain that says feeling bad is bad.

Speaker 4 Pretty solid story.

Speaker 4 But can you be sure it's true?

Speaker 4 Doing hard things often feels what we might see as bad.

Speaker 4 Like if you're climbing a mountain and you're at the very peak capacity and your muscles are straining and you're hanging on by your fingernails, you have bad feelings. There's pain.

Speaker 4 There's a rock under your fingernail. There's scratches on your knees.
Your shoulders feel like they're being ripped out of their sockets. And then you get up on a little ledge and you've done it.

Speaker 4 That is actually the condition for flow, which is the most, the greatest sense of bliss that humans can experience.

Speaker 4 Being at at the outside edge of capability where it is really uncomfortable and mastering it.

Speaker 4 And you happen to marry someone who's a master of it.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 feeling bad is always bad. Is that true?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 3 And how do you feel?

Speaker 4 And how do you react? And what happens when you think the thought, feeling bad is bad?

Speaker 3 It feels constricty.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's the anxiety spiral tightening on you. It does not feel like freedom.
It is not enlightenment.

Speaker 4 So who would you be if it were impossible? This is the Byron-Katie work, by the way. If it were impossible for you to think

Speaker 4 painful feelings, bad feelings are bad. You couldn't think that thought.
Animals don't think that thought.

Speaker 4 There is pain. and there is not pain.
They don't sit around thinking about how bad it is.

Speaker 4 They just are there.

Speaker 3 Well, I guess I would avoid less things.

Speaker 3 It feels like that's what animals don't do, right? They don't avoid based on beliefs they have about things.

Speaker 4 They don't have any beliefs, yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 My dog has a few, but so I guess I would not avoid things.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they don't avoid things they love.

Speaker 4 They avoid things that seem dangerous or unpleasant. Yeah, because they're not afraid of being shamed, humiliated, attacked if they don't do the thing.

Speaker 4 They're going to stay away from things they don't want, but they're going to really go toward things they love

Speaker 4 without any particular,

Speaker 4 they're just in the sea of unknowing about whether they're going to feel negative sensations or emotions or not. They're sort of up for it.
All right.

Speaker 4 I just remember what Jill told me, you know, when she was without that left hemisphere anxiety, she was in a state of perpetual awe and

Speaker 4 glory,

Speaker 4 like

Speaker 4 beauty, bliss.

Speaker 4 She said, They thought scientists say that left hemisphere strokes make people depressed because they cry a lot. She said, I wasn't crying because I was in pain or in depression.

Speaker 4 I was crying because I was in awe. Yeah.

Speaker 4 All the time.

Speaker 3 And Martha, was she in awe? She was in awe of just what was around her. See, this is my question.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Is it possible?

Speaker 3 I feel like I love my life

Speaker 3 in my house. Like I love my people.
I love my living room. I love doing little creative things at my table.
I love going for a walk.

Speaker 3 And I feel like I'm supposed to want when I travel, I'm like, I'm at this beautiful place. And I'm like, okay.

Speaker 4 Then why are you doing it?

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 4 Why are you doing it? I'm serious. Why the hell are you leaving when everything's so perfect at home? Why would you do that?

Speaker 5 Because experiences also expand.

Speaker 3 Nobody tells me I have to.

Speaker 4 Well, that's a story, isn't it?

Speaker 5 Well, it's a truth for me. It might not be a truth for you.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you down.
I respect your truth. And I have had voyages of discovery right in the chair where I'm sitting now.
Oh my God.

Speaker 4 It's already just as good as anything I've ever traveled.

Speaker 3 Oh, my. That is why sometimes I don't know I haven't left the house for a week.
Because I have had a week of great adventure.

Speaker 4 Why would you not? Every one of us is different.

Speaker 4 And yeah, we make compromises to be with each other and to learn each other's joys and share those things and if they're fun keep doing them but don't do them if you don't want to do them it's that simple that's that was the integrity thing know what you really know feel what you really feel say what you really mean and do what you really want

Speaker 3 so how do you know then martha if you're not

Speaker 3 doing

Speaker 3 something

Speaker 3 because you're deeply satisfied in what you're already doing yeah or you're not doing something because you are afraid of the friction it will cause you

Speaker 4 the difference is that when you're doing something out of deep satisfaction you feel deeply satisfied and when you're doing something out of fear you're afraid so if blood wants to go out but she's like no that's a fear reaction but if she's just like oh my god look at these i have made a table full of beads or whatever and i am just going to sit here making precious pointless things and it's joyful i did an experiment in january of lockdown year every day i just got up and i said what will happen if I only do right hemisphere things?

Speaker 4 So I would get up and start drawing. Hadn't drawn for a long, long time, drew a lot as a kid, all that.

Speaker 4 And I said, I'll start with drawing and move on from there. I never moved on from there.
I started drawing and then painting 20 hours a day. I was waking up at four in the morning to go paint.

Speaker 4 I got just high on it. I was so excited all the time.
I was like, this is so fun.

Speaker 4 And then I was supposed to stop and i could not i couldn't so i called my ifs therapist and i said to her i need you to stop me from painting all day and she said why

Speaker 4 and i said well because i have to do other things and she said why and i said because it's not normal to paint all day she said well go inside and find the true self and ask it what it thinks so i was like okay

Speaker 4 all right then i was like it's not working my true self doesn't think i should stop painting and she's like all right

Speaker 4 and then she said

Speaker 4 this very very brilliant professional woman she says full disclosure i am taking an oil painting class and i also cannot stop

Speaker 3 she's like i'm a bit conflicted out of this you're gonna do this

Speaker 4 how awesome is that and i have noticed this is why ro and i made our online community of creatives i have noticed creativity rising in the very people who are the opposite of the actors at the top of our government and so on that we're all a bit nervous about, right?

Speaker 4 And there are people who are going to fight them through politics, through policies. I have great honor and respect for those people.

Speaker 4 But to go into the other part of the brain and begin to create, like in your living room, is, I believe, a far more seditious act. It undermines the structures based on fear.

Speaker 4 Making art out of joy and celebrating it and making things with one another, it undermines the structures of white supremacist patriarchy. It is so many people from other cultures will tell us that.

Speaker 4 They've known it all along.

Speaker 4 Look, do

Speaker 4 whatever is making you happy in your house and get rid of the stupid story that says you should do anything except what makes you happy.

Speaker 4 That makes no sense to me.

Speaker 4 That's a wrap, y'all.

Speaker 4 Does that help?

Speaker 3 It helps so much. I can't wait to get up and be done with this podcast and go nowhere.
Yes, me too.

Speaker 4 I'm just going to literally pick up my palette and keep doing watercolors. Which is what I was doing when we got online.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Mythabec, I love you so much. I'm so grateful for you in the world.
Just so grateful. And just please give a hug to your entire family.
I love all of you. I think Rowan might be present there.

Speaker 3 I just feel her.

Speaker 4 She may be. Okay.
But there's a cat online that says, I love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love it. That's always how I feel when I see the three of you.

Speaker 3 And we're back to cat. Okay, one more time.

Speaker 4 Calm. Calm.

Speaker 4 Artistic. That is creative in any way.
And then transcendent. And this has been a lot of fun for me, but I also can feel the grief in Abby's heart.
And I'm surrounding that.

Speaker 4 in the gentlest, warmest, most loving

Speaker 4 energy I can send you. And I promise you, it gets transmuted into something beautiful.
There's an alchemy to this, and I know that you know how to use it.

Speaker 5 I'm getting there, I feel it's starting to happen.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 3 you know, you know, pod squad. You know, we'll see you next time.

Speaker 4 Go get Martha's book, Go Get Beyond Anxiety.

Speaker 3 We are all going to get beyond the anxiety together.

Speaker 3 If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

Speaker 3 Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode.

Speaker 3 To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click click on follow.

Speaker 4 This is the most important thing for the pod.

Speaker 3 While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much.

Speaker 3 We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Speaker 3 Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and this show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.