Most Replayed Moment: Instantly Calm Your Anxiety - Dr. Martha Beck

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Steven Bartlett (0:33)

How would I go about switching into this right hemisphere? If I'm feeling anxious, what would you recommend that I do?

Martha Beck (0:40)

It's so easy. It's so amazingly easy. Now your brain naturally goes toward anxiety because of something called the negativity bias. And I always think of it as 15 puppies and a cobra. If I gave you a box and it had 15 puppies and a cobra in it, what would catch your attention? The snake. And that's because in evolutionary terms, paying attention to the snake is a good idea.

But we have such a strong negativity bias in our culture, and we have very little to pull us back into communion with oneness. We don't have nature around us anymore. So we have to do that. We can trick our brains into doing that. And if you want to play a little with this. Sure. Okay.

Steven Bartlett (1:28)

Tell me what to do.

Martha Beck (1:29)

First, I want you to think of something that makes you feel a bit anxious. Maybe not panicky, but anxious. Something you're willing to like, tell us what it is.

Steven Bartlett (1:39)

Okay. Something that makes me feel a little bit anxious. Yeah. This is an interesting one. Sounds like a strange thing to say, but when my partner is not happy, and I know she's not happy, but she's not telling me why, and I'm around her, and I can tell from her viper face, she's not happy about something, and I have no idea what it is. Okay.

Martha Beck (2:09)

I think there will be many people out there who know what this feels like. You are describing a tiny domestic nightmare that many of us feel. So, think about that. Think about what that feels like, and just notice what it does to your body and to your emotions.

What's happening in your body if you're in that situation with your partner?

Steven Bartlett (2:30)

My breath is short. Yeah. I just feel tense, and I become quite impatient because I just need the answer to alleviate the anxiety. Yeah.

Martha Beck (2:41)

So, you've gone to a fight or flight, nervous system, arousal state, okay, something's wrong.

Steven Bartlett (2:46)

I'm very focused.

Martha Beck (2:47)

Yeah. I'm very focused and I'm very anxious, but I'm also a little bit snappish because I'm fleeing on one side. I need to get out of this situation, but I'm fighting on the other side, like, tell me what's wrong. So, you've got a full fight or flight thing happening. So, you can get into that by imagining the situation. Now, I want you to imagine something else very vividly, and it would probably help if you close your eyes. Have you ever eaten an orange?

Steven Bartlett (3:16)

Yeah.

Martha Beck (3:17)

All right. So, imagine that you are holding an orange. It's a nice, ripe, heavy, delicious orange. At the peak of its ripeness, I can tell you, you've already smelled it. You can smell the citrus. You just take a bite of it to break the seal of the peeling, and just feel that little spray of citric acid that pops up when you bite the peel and then the bitterness of the rind. And then as you bite in, the juice gets in your mouth. It's sweet. It's a little bit tangy. You can feel the filaments of the skin and the stringiness of the insides, and you can pull it back. You pull back the peel. You can feel it under your fingernails. You can smell it.

Just put the broken part to your mouth and like squeeze the orange and let some juice get into your mouth and taste it completely and then swallow it and then enjoy the sensation of tasting, feeling, hearing even this experience. Okay. How's your anxiety?

Steven Bartlett (4:35)

My anxiety went away.

Martha Beck (4:36)

It's gone.

Steven Bartlett (4:37)

Yeah.

Martha Beck (4:38)

Because I asked you to use sensory imagination, and that's handled by the right hemisphere. It's not in the left. So instead of verbal imagination, which can create horror stories, you were in a sensory experience. And what I don't think people realize is that we're always imagining what's going to happen to us in the next few days, weeks, months, years. But we're imagining it based on what we think is real, which is all the horror stories we're hearing about. Oh, you know, I need to mind my health. I need to, there will be accidents. There will be, you know, my loved ones will die. We have all these stories that we haven't happened yet. They may, they're not lies. But that's in the mind as we make our choices. I need to get more money, that whole thing. When you imagine forward with your senses in a way that brings relaxation, how's your body when you're in the orange thing? You said it was tense when you were in anxiety. What happens to your physical body when you're completely connected to the experience of this imaginary orange?