If you are an adult now and your child is upset that you did not cut the sandwich into fours in triangles, which I completely understand. We were sort of the, like, sticks with no crust at our house. How dare you do anything else and your child starts to get overwhelmed and stress. It then triggers this stored experience for you. So you are still in your 1976 body. Yeah. Are you now just repeating what you saw the adults do?

In a way. So I'm extremely inspired by internal family systems and Dick Schwartz way of understanding the mind and our body. And what he really explains so well is when we have an experience as a kid, and many not one, where we essentially learn this part of me, the part that gets overwhelmed and doesn't yet have the skills to manage those overwhelmed feelings so they just explode out as a volcano. If that part is really what I would say is non conducive with attachment, I don't get. It's not like I need my parent to say tantrum away, but I don't get presents. I don't get compassion. I just get yelled at. I need to develop, okay, and stay with me here. A different part of myself that shuts down that part. So I literally develop a different part that's like, Becky, you ungrateful kid, you are too much. Stop doing this. And that's actually called, in ifs language, a protector part. It sounds mean, but I think we all understand, like, its function early on is to protect me. Because at least if I do that to myself and almost shame myself, at least then I don't get the wrath of my parent or I don't get sent to my room, I don't get hit, or I don't get this awful punishment.

So it's helping me adapt, and so it's helping me shut down a part of you, a part of me. Now, fast forward to s gonna make the kids feel safe. And I actually think when you see your parents being human, it makes you know that you can count on them to be honest with you and that you can count on them to tell you.Totally.Yeah. What's going on?It's like honest feeling and communication.Yeah.All right, let's move on to the next question. But take away. Don't be a dictator. Just be vulnerable.Yeah.Connection over.Correction.The question was, what do you do when you wake up in the morning and you're having a panic attack? That is something I lived with for years. And it is terrifying. It's terrifying. I'm so sorry this is happening to you. And I want to tell you, you can actually get control of it. You ready? Yeah. So first things first. Let me explain what's happening when your body is in a state of panic. Okay. So that you understand what's going on. Have you ever been in a situation in your car where you almost get in an accident? Yes. And immediately, when that car almost sideswipes you, what happens in your body? You just. You tense up. You have a instant.What's the word?Adrenaline. Yes. Yes. Like, your heart's racing. Right. And your palm get sweaty. In the situation I just gave you, your brain has context for what the fuck is going on. So your brain goes, oh, my God, we almost just got hit by a car. As soon as the car leaves, your body starts to slow down, doesn't it? Right. What happens when you're having a panic attack is you wake up in the middle of the morning and your body's in a state of alert, just as if a car almost hit you. But the problem is your mind has no explanation for why it's happening. Yeah, that makes sense. That's hard. Yes. So your mind gets really scared because your body is now doing something that normally only happens when there's danger, but the problem. But there's no danger, but you don't know the difference. So you now wake up, up. And I would get in this cycle where I would literally have panic attack after panic attack. And then I'd be afraid of having a panic attack. Yeah. And then I'd have a panic attack. So you're gonna do this. When you wake up and you feel.That, do not lie in bed.Stand up immediately. Start your day then as if it's 02:00 in the morning. If it's 02:00 in the morning, yes. Because lying in bed with all of that and deep breathing, it's probably not gonna help if you actually get up and physically move. Your body now thinks, oh, she's getting away from the danger. What I want you to do is come up with an anchor thought. What is a thought? Give me. Give me a. Describe a place where you feel really happy and centered and grounded. Watching my grandkids. Great. You're gonna go 54321. And you're gonna have a particular vision of you and your grandchildren. Okay. Super specific. And then just say, I'm so excited to see them tomorrow. I'm so excited every day. All right. I'm so excited to see them in the morning. I'm so excited. And what's gonna happen is by saying you're excited and by counting backwards, 54321, you interrupt the patterns. You awaken this by saying, I'm excited to see my babies. And then you've got a picture of them. Your mind's going to start to go, oh, her heart's racing because she's excited to see her babies. Just keep saying that.You've got to give your mind an explanation to get it to calm your body down. In the car crash, your mind knows what's happening. You're gonna give it a reason. Do you understand?I do.The other thing I want you to know in the back of this book, last page right here. This is for everybody. The book comes with 31 days of video torture. Sign up for it. Because I go into panic and anxiety very deeply. All that's happened is for some reason, you started to worry, and that worry has become a habit. And now your body is worried, worrying, and that's now leading to panic. We can reverse it. Okay. These were super relatable examples. And again, because I know that what our listeners crave is, okay, so what do I do? Because these are so relatable, and I know so many people in our family and also friends whose we're going to start with the kind of rumination stuff. And I'm sure this goes for adults, too. You have those people in your life that can't let it go. They're still talking about the divorce and it's been final for three years. They're still complaining about the. What happened when mom died and who got what, and, like, just holding on to it. How do you approach that with somebody?I think that let me do the girl example version, and then let's go rumination. Let's just go right down the rumination road. So what I encourage parents and also peers to do, if they're caring for a teenager who is really spinning their wheels, spinning their wheels is to say to them, listen, talking about feelings usually helps, but what I'm noticing is the more we're talking, the worse you feel. So let's do this. Let's put a pin in this. Let's make a plan to talk about it tomorrow. What time do you have? What time do I have? We'll, like, schedule it. We're coming back to it. But between now and then, let's just do something else. Let's go think about something else. Let's just take a mental vacation from this situation. And what is extraordinary is it so often when you do that, when I've met with that kid the next day or talked to the person the next day, they're like, yeah, I don't know what I was so upset about. Like, just the space alone. The time alone brings it down to sighs. And they're no longer dumping stress hormones into their bloodstream, you know, for that 24 hours, they're not thinking about it.So it helps people to find their feet. So that's a short term, you know, something that just popped up. I think there's probably a different answer for those bigger questions around, you know, people who are struggling to let go of a painful divorce or struggling to let go of how things went down in the family. In the wake of a parent's death. And my hunch is for that. There's just a lot of meaning to what occurred that has not really been examined or resolved.Yeah. Yeah. What about with the boys? How do you approach that or any behavior of just distraction and kind of literally losing yourself in something so you don't have to face the pain of the situation and the emotions that you're feeling.So it's interesting. Distraction can end up as costly coping.Right.We can go right back to that category, which is so say a boy's had a really rough day, and his strategy is to play video games for 8 hours. Okay, well, he may have gotten past the rough day, but now he has a new problem because he hasn't done his homework and he needs to go to bed. It creates its own side effects. So one way to take it up is just from that side of saying, look, I get it, that you may have had a rough day, and playing somebody video games helps you get through it. You can't be doing this so much that you now have I going to pay that? All of a sudden, you get triggered by stress. Your brain goes into survival mode to protect you and you freeze. So without even thinking about it, you procrastinate on something. Why? Because you're trying to feel a little better right now. That's why you look at social media. That's why you blow off the 15 phone calls, because those feel hard.That's why you blow off the writing that you need to do or the video that you need to shoot or the thing that feels hard. And then what happens is because you've blown it off. In order to feel a little bit better right now, you get a little behind and guess what happens? You then feel more stressed. And this is exactly what Vidy is experiencing. And this is why you got to get in front of this procrastination habit because this will very quickly spiral out of control. And here she is talking about how she gets triggered, that when she sits down and she starts to worry about, and for how you could practice this. You just got what I would call the love sandwich. Hands on the heart, hands on the back. And just hold somebody.Yeah.When they are having an alarm go off in their body until you can feel them slowly start to have the alarm turn off. And the clinical word being their nervous system starts to regulate again. They're in their body. They're in their safe space. But you also talked about this second tool where you locate a safe place in your body. And for you, it was sort of right here alongside your nose. I was trying to think of another one other than the heart. Like, there have been times where I've, like, kind of. Of tucked my hands under my armpits. It's almost like a mini hug. Almost like, I don't knowworry about.Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe, because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.

s gonna make the kids feel safe. And I actually think when you see your parents being human, it makes you know that you can count on them to be honest with you and that you can count on them to tell you.

Totally.

Yeah. What's going on?

It's like honest feeling and communication.

Yeah.

All right, let's move on to the next question. But take away. Don't be a dictator. Just be vulnerable.

Yeah.

Connection over.

Correction.

The question was, what do you do when you wake up in the morning and you're having a panic attack? That is something I lived with for years. And it is terrifying. It's terrifying. I'm so sorry this is happening to you. And I want to tell you, you can actually get control of it. You ready? Yeah. So first things first. Let me explain what's happening when your body is in a state of panic. Okay. So that you understand what's going on. Have you ever been in a situation in your car where you almost get in an accident? Yes. And immediately, when that car almost sideswipes you, what happens in your body? You just. You tense up. You have a instant.

What's the word?

Adrenaline. Yes. Yes. Like, your heart's racing. Right. And your palm get sweaty. In the situation I just gave you, your brain has context for what the fuck is going on. So your brain goes, oh, my God, we almost just got hit by a car. As soon as the car leaves, your body starts to slow down, doesn't it? Right. What happens when you're having a panic attack is you wake up in the middle of the morning and your body's in a state of alert, just as if a car almost hit you. But the problem is your mind has no explanation for why it's happening. Yeah, that makes sense. That's hard. Yes. So your mind gets really scared because your body is now doing something that normally only happens when there's danger, but the problem. But there's no danger, but you don't know the difference. So you now wake up, up. And I would get in this cycle where I would literally have panic attack after panic attack. And then I'd be afraid of having a panic attack. Yeah. And then I'd have a panic attack. So you're gonna do this. When you wake up and you feel.

That, do not lie in bed.

Stand up immediately. Start your day then as if it's 02:00 in the morning. If it's 02:00 in the morning, yes. Because lying in bed with all of that and deep breathing, it's probably not gonna help if you actually get up and physically move. Your body now thinks, oh, she's getting away from the danger. What I want you to do is come up with an anchor thought. What is a thought? Give me. Give me a. Describe a place where you feel really happy and centered and grounded. Watching my grandkids. Great. You're gonna go 54321. And you're gonna have a particular vision of you and your grandchildren. Okay. Super specific. And then just say, I'm so excited to see them tomorrow. I'm so excited every day. All right. I'm so excited to see them in the morning. I'm so excited. And what's gonna happen is by saying you're excited and by counting backwards, 54321, you interrupt the patterns. You awaken this by saying, I'm excited to see my babies. And then you've got a picture of them. Your mind's going to start to go, oh, her heart's racing because she's excited to see her babies. Just keep saying that.

You've got to give your mind an explanation to get it to calm your body down. In the car crash, your mind knows what's happening. You're gonna give it a reason. Do you understand?

I do.

The other thing I want you to know in the back of this book, last page right here. This is for everybody. The book comes with 31 days of video torture. Sign up for it. Because I go into panic and anxiety very deeply. All that's happened is for some reason, you started to worry, and that worry has become a habit. And now your body is worried, worrying, and that's now leading to panic. We can reverse it. Okay. These were super relatable examples. And again, because I know that what our listeners crave is, okay, so what do I do? Because these are so relatable, and I know so many people in our family and also friends whose we're going to start with the kind of rumination stuff. And I'm sure this goes for adults, too. You have those people in your life that can't let it go. They're still talking about the divorce and it's been final for three years. They're still complaining about the. What happened when mom died and who got what, and, like, just holding on to it. How do you approach that with somebody?

I think that let me do the girl example version, and then let's go rumination. Let's just go right down the rumination road. So what I encourage parents and also peers to do, if they're caring for a teenager who is really spinning their wheels, spinning their wheels is to say to them, listen, talking about feelings usually helps, but what I'm noticing is the more we're talking, the worse you feel. So let's do this. Let's put a pin in this. Let's make a plan to talk about it tomorrow. What time do you have? What time do I have? We'll, like, schedule it. We're coming back to it. But between now and then, let's just do something else. Let's go think about something else. Let's just take a mental vacation from this situation. And what is extraordinary is it so often when you do that, when I've met with that kid the next day or talked to the person the next day, they're like, yeah, I don't know what I was so upset about. Like, just the space alone. The time alone brings it down to sighs. And they're no longer dumping stress hormones into their bloodstream, you know, for that 24 hours, they're not thinking about it.

So it helps people to find their feet. So that's a short term, you know, something that just popped up. I think there's probably a different answer for those bigger questions around, you know, people who are struggling to let go of a painful divorce or struggling to let go of how things went down in the family. In the wake of a parent's death. And my hunch is for that. There's just a lot of meaning to what occurred that has not really been examined or resolved.

Yeah. Yeah. What about with the boys? How do you approach that or any behavior of just distraction and kind of literally losing yourself in something so you don't have to face the pain of the situation and the emotions that you're feeling.

So it's interesting. Distraction can end up as costly coping.

Right.

We can go right back to that category, which is so say a boy's had a really rough day, and his strategy is to play video games for 8 hours. Okay, well, he may have gotten past the rough day, but now he has a new problem because he hasn't done his homework and he needs to go to bed. It creates its own side effects. So one way to take it up is just from that side of saying, look, I get it, that you may have had a rough day, and playing somebody video games helps you get through it. You can't be doing this so much that you now have I going to pay that? All of a sudden, you get triggered by stress. Your brain goes into survival mode to protect you and you freeze. So without even thinking about it, you procrastinate on something. Why? Because you're trying to feel a little better right now. That's why you look at social media. That's why you blow off the 15 phone calls, because those feel hard.That's why you blow off the writing that you need to do or the video that you need to shoot or the thing that feels hard. And then what happens is because you've blown it off. In order to feel a little bit better right now, you get a little behind and guess what happens? You then feel more stressed. And this is exactly what Vidy is experiencing. And this is why you got to get in front of this procrastination habit because this will very quickly spiral out of control. And here she is talking about how she gets triggered, that when she sits down and she starts to worry about, and for how you could practice this. You just got what I would call the love sandwich. Hands on the heart, hands on the back. And just hold somebody.Yeah.When they are having an alarm go off in their body until you can feel them slowly start to have the alarm turn off. And the clinical word being their nervous system starts to regulate again. They're in their body. They're in their safe space. But you also talked about this second tool where you locate a safe place in your body. And for you, it was sort of right here alongside your nose. I was trying to think of another one other than the heart. Like, there have been times where I've, like, kind of. Of tucked my hands under my armpits. It's almost like a mini hug. Almost like, I don't knowworry about.Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe, because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.

I going to pay that? All of a sudden, you get triggered by stress. Your brain goes into survival mode to protect you and you freeze. So without even thinking about it, you procrastinate on something. Why? Because you're trying to feel a little better right now. That's why you look at social media. That's why you blow off the 15 phone calls, because those feel hard.

That's why you blow off the writing that you need to do or the video that you need to shoot or the thing that feels hard. And then what happens is because you've blown it off. In order to feel a little bit better right now, you get a little behind and guess what happens? You then feel more stressed. And this is exactly what Vidy is experiencing. And this is why you got to get in front of this procrastination habit because this will very quickly spiral out of control. And here she is talking about how she gets triggered, that when she sits down and she starts to worry about, and for how you could practice this. You just got what I would call the love sandwich. Hands on the heart, hands on the back. And just hold somebody.Yeah.When they are having an alarm go off in their body until you can feel them slowly start to have the alarm turn off. And the clinical word being their nervous system starts to regulate again. They're in their body. They're in their safe space. But you also talked about this second tool where you locate a safe place in your body. And for you, it was sort of right here alongside your nose. I was trying to think of another one other than the heart. Like, there have been times where I've, like, kind of. Of tucked my hands under my armpits. It's almost like a mini hug. Almost like, I don't knowworry about.Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe, because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.

for how you could practice this. You just got what I would call the love sandwich. Hands on the heart, hands on the back. And just hold somebody.

Yeah.

When they are having an alarm go off in their body until you can feel them slowly start to have the alarm turn off. And the clinical word being their nervous system starts to regulate again. They're in their body. They're in their safe space. But you also talked about this second tool where you locate a safe place in your body. And for you, it was sort of right here alongside your nose. I was trying to think of another one other than the heart. Like, there have been times where I've, like, kind of. Of tucked my hands under my armpits. It's almost like a mini hug. Almost like, I don't knowworry about.Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe, because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.

worry about.

Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe, because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.