Do you feel stressed and anxious more often than not? Could mindfulness be the key to feeling better? Do you wish you could find a few simple strategies to help you get off the hamster wheel of anxiety and find greater ease, balance, and joy? Dr. Carla Manly has found that many people feel chronically overwhelmed by the internal and external pressures–and expectations–that have become part of today’s busy world. And she’s here to let you know that a few simple, mindful changes can help shift your life for the better. Positive changes are waiting for you in this life-changing episode with Dr. Carla and Dr. Pete Economou, psychologist, renowned Rutgers University professor, author, and performance consultant. Topics discussed include mindfulness, acceptance, imperfection, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), attachment theory, EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), relationships, stress, anxiety, stress reduction, Zen, meditation, change, neurobiology, balance, well-being, and journaling.
Please note that this episode may contain sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.
Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline). Additional links are in the show notes.
Books by Dr. Carla Manly:
Joy from Fear: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Fear-Carla-Marie-Manly/dp/1641701218
Date Smart: https://www.amazon.com/Date-Smart-Transform-Relationships-Fearlessly/dp/1641704675
Aging Joyfully: https://www.amazon.com/Aging-Joyfully-Optimal-Relationships-Fulfillment/dp/1641701412
The Joy of Imperfect Love: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Imperfect-Love-Creating-Relationships/dp/1641709057
Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:
Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1757477615/imperfect-love-reflection-oracle-cards
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Imperfect-Love-Reflection-Oracle-Cards/dp/B0D1Z5M4YK
Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:
Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly
Books by Dr. Pete Economou:
Meditation Journal for Anxiety: Daily Meditations, Prompts, and Practices for Finding Calm
Connect with Dr. Pete Economou:
Website: https://officialdrpete.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialdrpete
Twitter: https://x.com/officialdrpete
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-j-economou-4b4000a
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCttLuWm8DMiD8Vt–lOPhZg/featured
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@officialdr.pete
Podcast: https://wheneastmeetswest.us
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Free Yourself from Chronic Anxiety and Stress with Top Mindfulness Tips from Expert Dr. Pete Economou
Simple Mindfulness Strategies to Help You Live Your Best Life!
Do you feel stressed and anxious more often than not? Do you wish you could find a few simple strategies to help you get off the hamster wheel of anxiety and find greater ease, balance, and joy? I’ve found that many people feel chronically overwhelmed by the internal and external pressures and expectations that have become part of this busy world. I’m here to let you know that a few simple, mindful changes can help you shift your life for the better.
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Pete Economou, who is an esteemed Rutgers professor and psychologist. He’s also an author and performance consultant. He will help us embrace some positive changes that will help you change your life for the better. We’ll focus on this audience’s real-life question. “I get anxious and stressed a lot. My parents always told me I’m high-strung. I’ve tried meditation and yoga but they don’t calm me down. I’m a little ADD. I want to know if you have strategies to help me focus and get a handle on my anxiety.” With that issue as the focus, please note that this episode contains sensitive information. Audience discretion is advised. If you need support, see the special links.
I am thrilled to be joined by a tremendous guest, Dr. Pete Economou, who is a psychologist, professor at the esteemed Rutgers University, author, and performance consultant. Welcome to the show, Dr. Pete. It’s such a pleasure to have you with us.
Thanks for having me, Carla. I already feel more calm with your introduction. I love it.
The Contrast of Zen Philosophy with Modern Life
We aim to be a calming force in this topsy-turvy world. Before we launch into the bread of this episode, do you mind telling our audience a little bit about what makes you, you?
I finished a two-day retreat in my Zen world. I’m nobody. That’s a lot of what we do in Zen meditation. After sitting for two days, you realize you’re nobody. I have many identities. I’m a psychologist, professor, and performance consultant. My vocation is to help people contact life in the fullest way and then reach the zone that they want to get to. We’re all striving for something different. That’s what I love about it because that’s the art of what I do. There’s no one-size-fits-all all. I’m trying to find that thing that somebody needs to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
I also appreciate that you said we’re all striving for something different. Isn’t that the opposite of what Zen is all about?
Yeah, because you’re striving for nothing in the Zen world. Most of the audience probably won’t understand that unless you have a ton of Zen Buddhist practitioners reading.
Probably not. Most of us are striving for something, whether it’s a better relationship or not get stuck in that hamster wheel. I thought it was funny because I have a she-shed in my backyard and she’s called Zazen. When I think of how my life is often very different from Zen, it is trying to be in that place of nothingness, going with that flow, and being yet our daily lives tend to call us to do something far different from that.
I’m in New York. One of the things you said struck me because a lot of the clients I work with are always striving for the next thing. In terms of relationships, it’s hard because they may have a great relationship but they’re like, “I might have a better one that I’m missing.” It’s that much of an achievement gap. That’s why I say to people that I coach in the New York area, “Dating’s hard in New York because you have these high-achieving people with this large pool.” The pool might be a little distorted but there is a large number of people who are always looking for the next best thing. That is also the antithesis of Zen.
The Impact of the Paradox of Choice
Even though we’re not addressing the audience’s question, you reminded me of the paradox of choice and that whole issue that we have too many choices, whether it’s people to date, houses to buy, study, or choices of jams in the supermarket. The idea of the paradox of choice is that when we have too many choices, not only do we tend to be less satisfied with the one we take home or choose but we also tend to make fewer choices.
I love that study because when you set up the audience, I’m describing the paradox of choice study where there was jam put in the supermarket. One stand had a few samples of jam and the other had many samples of jam. In the one where there were many samples, people tended to buy less and be less satisfied. What we’re talking about here, whether it’s dating or any other choices in life, is when we flood ourselves with too many things to strive for and choices, that can be part of the anxiety and the overwhelm that happens.
That study is wonderful. I changed the metaphor to jeans. If you’re going to buy jeans, you choose a color and it’s the same thing. People don’t like the way they look and like the way they look. It’s a metaphor for life. I thank you for sharing that study.
I appreciate that you have switched it to jeans. When you are in a store and there are too many jeans or you order them by mail and you’re looking at all the images, you end up clicking away and not doing anything or getting all of them and doing a massive return. It’s a bit of a waste of energy.
If we link it back to your audience’s question about the hamster wheel and anxiety, anxiety paralyzes our ability to make decisions. All of us have difficulty with decisions in 2024 but when anxiety is driving your bus, you will be paralyzed by making decisions. You think, “If I choose that color for the wall, it is permanent. Which color do I choose for the floor?” It feels like it’s a lose-lose and you do feel like you’re on a hamster wheel.
Anxiety debilitates or paralyzes our ability to make decisions. Share on XThank you for mentioning that because in my clinical work as a psychologist and I have a client who’s stuck in anxiety, I often help them see that that anxiety puts them on a ledge so to speak. They have a choice and this is with only two choices, choice A on one side of the ledge and choice B. When you’re looking, “If I make a choice, I’m going to make a mistake. I’ll get something wrong. It won’t be the best,” the sheer amount of energy it takes to balance on that little ledge and be in that place of indecisiveness creates so much anxiety.
You’re the mindfulness expert. You’re trained in cognitive behavioral therapy. We often hear that as CBT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If Dr. Pete doesn’t mind, I’ll ask him to explain a little bit more about that because it is one of the most well-researched and highly effective forms of therapy, especially for treating anxiety. If we look at that image of being on this balance beam and not choosing A or B, one on the other side, imagine and feel in your body how much effort it takes to stay there. Realize that if you choose A, it might not be the best choice but you’ll manage it. If you choose B, it might not be the best choice but you’ll learn from it.
The Importance of CBT in Managing Anxiety and Stress
Learn to be that mindful about our choices. Most of the choices we make on a daily basis aren’t life-threatening. We make so much out of them because we’re these imperfect humans who are trying to do the best. We let go of that ideal of needing to make that perfect choice. You’re right. If we choose a wall color that’s not perfect, that’s an opportunity to paint over it next year and live with it for a year. We might learn that we love it. When we realize that things don’t have to be perfect, it’s okay. We have so much more grace and spaciousness in our lives. Before we go any further, could you tell our audience a little bit about CBT and why that’s so important for mindfulness, anxiety reduction, and stress reduction?
CBT is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Sometimes, we’re called the cognitive cult by some other practitioners. To your point, it is the most researched and evidence-based practice. That’s why we get a bad name compared to some other interventions because we can manualize and operationalize what we’re doing. It’s very science-based. In a very simple way, it’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
There’s a triad between them. I always have arrows going from one to the next and they all relate to each other. I have a thought that impacts how I feel and behave, and vice versa. Usually, we find cycles. If you’re talking about anxiety and dating, you’re going to find this cycle of, “What’s the thought about the person that maybe I went on a date with? What’s the judgment around it? How does it make me feel? I feel a little insecure. I ghost the person. I don’t give it a chance to maybe get to know someone.” That’s CBT as basic as possible. It is the most studied and evidence-based practice.
In terms of anxiety, it’s like if you go to the doctor and you have strep throat, if they don’t give you an antibiotic or a throat swab, then what are they doing? That would be seen as a negative treatment. What I will say is anxiety is normal. When clients come into my office and they say, “I have anxiety,” I say, “Good.” They look at me like, “What?” I say, “It’s adaptive. You need it. It’s kept us alive as a species. Maybe you’ve developed a negative relationship with your anxiety. What we’re going to do is build a healthier relationship with it.” CBT is the umbrella and mindfulness is one of the interventions that’s underneath that umbrella. I can go into that if you’d like and how I got into that mindfulness world too.
I am such a believer in mindfulness besides being a psychologist, yoga teacher, meditation leader, and all of those things that play a part in keeping us regulated and balanced. You were talking about that inner play with cognitive behavioral therapy. I agree with you. Anxiety is so important. We have optimal anxiety and then we have anxiety that’s working against us. Optimal anxiety is that low-level anxiety that pushes us forward, makes us get out of bed, makes us go to the bathroom, and does all of these necessary things.
Sometimes it gets so ratcheted up because we’re on that hamster wheel and we don’t realize it but by using that simple practice, whether it’s taking a deep breath in, deep breath out, and saying, “How am I feeling? What are my thoughts?” I’m leaning into one of the first big easy tips that you’ve given to the audience of slowing down and noticing what your feelings and thoughts are.
It’s interesting. I created these reflection cards that are based on a feeling, thought, mindset, energy, and action paradigm. I call them the Imperfect Love Reflection and Oracle Cards. They help you realize that you stop that sequence anywhere along the way. Let’s say you’re having an argument with someone. You stop and go, “Wait a second. What am I feeling? What are the thoughts that led me to feel that way?”
As an aside, my husband and I had a little issue, you would call it, where I said, “Honey, that made me feel hurt.” He went straight to the cognitive place instead of saying, “Wait a second. I hear that you are hurt.” When we can stop right there, lean in, and use that iMessage to say, “I feel hurt, sad, or scared,” we first need to be able to slow it down and say, “I’m feeling stressed or anxious.” Communicate that to either the other person or if we’re alone, we’re then able to communicate it to ourselves so that’s slowing down. Is that the mindfulness piece you’re talking about that’s slowing down to take a pulse of your feelings and thoughts?
Yeah. Take a pulse of that and take inventory. Notice what your role is in something. What you made me think of was Sue Johnson’s emotionally focused therapy with couples. I’ll use a tap-out word a lot because what we’re trying to do is break the cycle. It’s a word that’s not related to anything else. Neurologically, you’re not thinking of love or basketball but rather you’re thinking of something obscure like a dinosaur to help couples get out and be like, “Let me pause for a second. You said dinosaur. What’s going on? Let’s label and name it.” We got to have the conversation rather than the dance that’s usually created in couples. In that example, your husband could have escalated because he went to the cognitive, and then you would escalate it because you’re like, “No, you’re not hearing me.” We break the dance.
We break the dance, which also breaks the anxiety. Taking it to our audience’s issue, we don’t know if this is affecting romantic relationships, friendships, or daily life. Generally, anxiety affects everything because it permeates one’s life. You’ve given us a second tool. Thank you very much. See and create an image that is yours and yours alone or one that you co-create with your partner or friend. You might say elephant, bluebird, or whatever it is that helps you. Neurobiologically, when we’re on that fear highway that’s taken us to fight, flight, and sometimes freeze, appease, we need to stop but we need to learn a stop sign that helps us slow down, take that deep breath in, deep breath out, and reset. Thank you. You’ve already given us two fabulous tips.
Hopefully, there are more.
Resources to Help with Anxiety and Mindfulness
We will find more because Dr. Pete also has some amazing resources. If we can talk for a second about the two resources that you created to help with anxiety and mindfulness, maybe we can refer to those now and again.
To your audience’s point about trying to become calm, one of the things about third-wave cognitive behavioral therapy, which is where mindfulness and meditation live, is there’s no goal. That is so hard for anybody to embrace, especially high performers I work with because we all have goals but the goal is to be. To be means sometimes you’re going to be dysregulated and regulated. Sometimes you’re going to be happy and sad.
With Mindfulness Workbook for Beginners, it is weird because the publishers said this and I was like, “I don’t like that kind of talk.” Everything in the world of sports is like, “This is the best.” It’s not the best book but it’s one of the only books that’s general mindfulness. Most of the books that are out there are mindfulness for eating disorders, anxiety, and a specific kind of challenge that somebody has. This workbook is global for anybody who’s trying to integrate a practice into their life.
It doesn’t have to be spiritual, religious, or formal. In the book, I write a lot about how you can do this informally. Brushing your teeth could be mindfulness if you do that with intention at the moment without judgment. Our brain wants to judge everything. That’s anxiety. It’s wired to do that. It needs to judge the person that’s in front of them, everyone that’s around them, and their environment.
With your audience who’s trying to seek calm, you want to let that go. Practice mindfulness, meditation, yoga, or whatever it is that you find. It could be any of the things that you said. It could be therapy, yoga, meditation, hiking, or sport. It’s lots of different things but you don’t want to have this seeking of calm. You just want to be.
You’re making me smile very much because I’m thinking of my yoga mat. I painted on it. It’s this great Manduka mat. I love Manduka mats. I painted on it, “Be here. Be now. Be love.” It is to remind me that even when we’re doing yoga, we don’t want to be in a place of thought. There can be so much judgment or moving like, “When I’m done with yoga, I need to go do XYZ.” When we practice being here, being now, we do that piece you’re talking about where we’re not striving. We are appreciating being in that space.
I love that you pointed to the audience’s question where there’s the idea of helping me be calm. We’ve automatically created more of a striving mindset. If we’re going to give her another tip and our audiences other tips, I love using mindfulness in daily activities to slow down, as you were saying, brushing your teeth or washing the dishes. For me, it’s vacuuming or sweeping the floor. I love to clean. Also, going for a walk or a hike.
My brain can stop and I can enjoy that repetitive movement of sweeping or folding clothes and all of those basic things our ancestors did for thousands and thousands of years. They weren’t constantly striving. They were in this place of flow. Our systems miss that very much because, on some level, we carry our ancestors with us. Especially those of us who are Luddites at heart, we know that there was a lifetime in the not-too-distant past where there weren’t all of these forces of do and be.
They were striving, if anything, for a meal and safety in a meal. That’s it. It was simple. That simplicity is going to come up a bunch of times as we talk about mindfulness. Starting back with the study of the jams, we complicate things and the audiences are not going to like to hear that. Humans in this life make it more difficult than it needs to be. I’m not invalidating or negating that it’s difficult.
With social media and the internet, things have evolved and it’s made it more difficult. Our internal approach to it has made it more complicated so if we can just simplify. I heard a thing in my retreat. It was something along the lines of you get to a place of simplicity and peace when you are working not on addition but subtraction or you’re done with it. The addition is like you’re adding more stuff to your house or the things that you’ve achieved but when you’re done with subtraction, that’s when you’ve arrived and achieved.
I hear you. Readers, it sounds like we’re going down the path of minimalism. The truth is most of us know that sense of joy and ease when we clean out a closet. There’s less there. We clean off the desk or clear out cupboards and donate what we don’t need anymore. The psyche does take a deep breath in and the body does as well like, “This is good.” That’s why it’s called too much. Too much doesn’t feel good. It’s more to clean and take care of. For most people, it’s more to pay for, which can add stress. You’re giving us so many beautiful gems to look at, Dr. Pete. Please, continue.
On your mat was, “Be here. Be now. Be loved.” I love that too. The thing that came to mind for me was how most of the people I work with are competing with the person next to them because that’s what we do. “She looks good. She got into that pose well.” I love it when my brain does that because I smile in the middle of class. It’s that reminder to be there on my mat. That’s what I heard with the Be Here. You got to be on your mat.
It’s such a good visual and metaphor for life in general because most of my yoga practice is done with my eyes shut for that very reason. When I shut my eyes, I’m turning inward. I’m not looking at the mirrors or saying, “How cute or not cute is my outfit? How good or not good is my body or my pose?” We do that and social media fosters that. We need to look like this or that person. It’s amazing to me after so many yoga classes that people have come up and said, “I love your format. I love this.” I’m thinking, “I’m not even looking.
“I don’t even know what I look like.”
That’s a beautiful way for us to look at life. When we turn inward, not in a selfish way but in a self-full way, listening to the body, “Does this pose feel right? Do the clothes on my body feel good? Does the mat under my feet earthen?” That is so much. Whether it’s yoga, walking, or being at a desk, if we tune into the body, the body will tell us when we are in flow and good form. It will tell us if we’re listening, whether we’re eating something, dating the wrong person, or in a job that’s not good for us.
If we turn off that outside world, which is rife with expectations and comparisons, turn off that judgment in the self that needs after bracket. You talked about judgment, which is so important on an evolutionary level because it allows us to differentiate between good berries and poisonous berries, good animals, and animals that want to eat us but we’ve put it on steroids in this world where we use judgment to judge self and others.
Using Mindfulness and Zen Practices to Turn Inward
When we use mindfulness and that idea of Zen or being, use it to turn inward. It’s not a perfect practice. It is so imperfect because we’re all human and we all get into that space of, “I don’t look like this. I’m not doing that.” We can turn it back inward to catch ourselves doing that with empathy and kindness and reorient toward that gentler self. Do you have tips on how to do that?
Yes, I do. This is that Zen stuff. Empathy with boundaries is compassion. You have to have both, self-compassion and compassion for others whether it’s on the mat or whatever you’re doing. Judgment is going to be there. In mindfulness, some non-judgment is from Kabat-Zinn. It’s one of the three main parts of the definition. It’s impossible to not judge. You want to get to a neutral judgment.
The example I give is, “This is the best episode ever. This is the worst episode ever. This is an episode of imperfect love.” Getting to that last stage of neutral observation, a lot of high performers or people think, “I’m not going to find joy.” You find that you have more joy when you’re able to experience that neutral area. The brain can’t choose what to feel. A lot of us want to hold on.
The brain can’t choose what to feel. You have to let go of the good just as much as the bad. Share on XI had somebody who had a good performance. I knew and was, “Okay, but you can’t hold on to that either.” He tilted his head and was like, “What?” It then clicked. As much as you were letting go of your bad performances, you have to also do that same thing for good performances because your brain cannot choose what it wants to pick. You like that one.
I remember the first time many years ago. I heard that you can’t hold on to joy. My instant reaction was, “No. I’ll let go of anger and sadness but I want to hold on to joy.” They’re all part of our core emotions, joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and all of the thousands of feelings that come off of that. When I was working on my first book, Joy from Fear, which is why it’s fleeting, I realized that joy like our other emotions is always in us.
I like to see it as a little candle in a votive. As we move through life, it gets cloudy. That little life makes it cloudy and smoke gets on it. We don’t process our situations so it builds up and it gets dark. We’ve lost some joy. If we do that work to keep cleaning it off, then our joy, because it’s in there like all of our other emotions, flickers and glows more. We can find more joy by learning to do those practices of wiping off that soot that builds up the anger, resentment, and all that stuff that works against us. It doesn’t mean anger won’t come back but it means if we’re used to using mindfulness to wipe it off and tend to it or be with it, then it doesn’t have quite the hold on us.
That’s the present moment living. Each moment is an opportunity to reset. You have to reset. I work from a mind-body-spirit perspective, which is not nuanced. Everyone knows that but having done that for years in the sports world is where it’s a little unique because I don’t know that many athletes have thought about their spirit. They might be religious or do some gesture that’s religious to thank them for their performance. To connect with their deeper meaning is the gift and beauty of what I get to do. The body part is taken care of. You’ve talked a lot about the body. They’re in tune with it. That came up in my retreat as well.
One of my teachers was like, “It makes so much sense because a lot of the people in your Sangha,” my athletes, “They’re attuned with their bodies. They know what they feel.” They’re attuned to it in a certain way but getting the connection between that and your mind and spirit is probably one of the hardest things when you can listen to your gut with that whole enteric nervous system and understand how much data is there but we are so either afraid of it or we haven’t built yet a relationship with it.
Connecting the mind, body, and spirit is one of the hardest things. Share on XThe Connection Among the Gut, Brain, and Overall Well-Being
Readers, Dr. Pete keeps using lovely words that take us in another direction so we have two definitions to give you. The enteric nervous system is the system in your gut. We tend to think that the brain is king or queen but the brain sends 10% of signals to the gut and the gut sends about 90% of signals to the brain. That’s the beauty of your enteric nervous system. It’s this very wise center in your gut. In this world, we have learned to discount the gut and go with left brain or prefrontal cortex thinking. We’ve put gut instinct in not even second place. Let’s go to the definition then of body, mind, and spirit. I’m a body, mind, and spirit practitioner as well.
I’ve heard. I know your work.
Give the definition for the audience who might not be aware of that beautiful inner play between those three parts of who we are.
I don’t know if I can, to be honest. I’d probably rather hear yours. The one thing I will say is, A) I know that about you, but B) You use the word energy so much and I love that as a psychologist. I don’t know if we do enough of that as psychologists. Some of what we were built upon, many of our ancestors in psychology were very cerebral and intellectual. That’s the art of what I feel like I do, which is all energy-based. That’s the most powerful. The cleansing piece is the spirit that people have to work on. It has to grow.
Say more, please.
The spirit doesn’t have to grow but to live fully, connect, and contact life, spirit is going to drive people there. The spirit can be whatever you want. I work with a lot of religious folks who come in a very Southern Christian way. We have organizations that are very focused on Jesus or a lot of Jewish folks and all different walks of life. Spirit crosses across all of those, no matter what somebody is practicing or what they believe. Spirit is a thing that is abstract.
I love that you said that it’s mind, body, spirit, and maybe others. One of the things I like to make people think about is where’s your mind. You talk about enteric and your definition. I’m like, “Your mind could be in your toe.” We don’t have any evidence that the mind or consciousness is in the brain. It’s scientifically might make sense but it’s so nuanced. That energy piece says it could be anywhere. In physics, if we know that energy is not destroyed, then it’s probably going to keep going.
Sometimes people will use their minds and brains. I’ve caught myself doing that and using it synonymously. You’re right. We don’t know where the mind is. It could be on the moon or way beyond. Who knows where it is? We don’t know. It’s beautiful when you’re talking about some of these pieces because we realize that this thing we call body, mind, and spirit have definitions. We like the definition so we can pin things down. Much of what we’re talking about, you can’t pin down.
You’re talking about one of my favorite things. I believe in something far beyond us. People will say, “There’s nothing beyond us.” I’m like, “Do you believe in physics and conservation of matter?” “Absolutely. I’m a scientist.” I’m like, “If you believe in the conservation of matter, what happens to the mind and that sense of you being you when you die? If it gets conserved, where does it go?” I haven’t had anybody give me a very good answer to that.
If they do, they’ll probably get a Nobel Peace Prize or something once they figure that out.
Readers, if you know someone who can answer that one and appease me, then that would be fabulous. Please, send them my way. I’ll interview them and see if we can go toe to toe. You’re giving us so much richness, depth, and ways of looking at anxiety and stress. We don’t have to be run by it. We can use some of these very simple, practical tools to catch ourselves in non-judgmental ways, being on this hamster wheel or whatever you want to call it, and coming to the place of, “Maybe I can look at my feelings, listen to what my gut is telling, or stop striving at this moment and just be, sit, and see what comes up with that.” Oftentimes, at first is a lot of discomfort.
That’s the thing. It’s not always meant to feel good. Every time you get on your yoga mat, it doesn’t always feel good. Standing in line, being in traffic, and being delayed five hours for a flight doesn’t feel good. That’s letting go of the goal, the striving piece. It’s just being. I know that’s hard for people. It’s hard for me from time to time, even though I’ve studied Zen for almost twenty years. With all of that, none of that matters because you still struggle at times to times where people can frustrate you. In the end, we’re all human. That’s it. We’re all a bunch of protons and electrons.
We are certainly imperfect beings. I like the idea for our audience and the individual who wrote in. We can reframe things to see that we are imperfect but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep polishing our hard edges so that life feels more joy-filled, balanced, and at ease. I was at the dentist and he said, “You’re the best patient ever. There are no painkillers. You’re breathing and so calm.”
In that place, I can go into this floating place where I feel and notice nothing. Yet if you get me in a long line and my flight is delayed, you might find me pacing. I’ll be trying to breathe. Especially if I’m hungry, I might not be my best self. The reason I use that example is clearly the dentist’s office isn’t a trigger for me. I’ve learned to be able to be in that space but an airport and missing a flight, not so much so there’s a trigger there.
Learn what our triggers are, which is what causes the person to write. Look at what’s triggering you. Look at what those underlying feelings and thoughts are that are causing you unrest, not judging them. I imagine that your mindfulness workbook is going to help with this. You have resources to help people get more in touch with what’s triggering them.
There’s Meditation Journal for Anxiety. To build a relationship with it, most people come into our office and they’re trying to get rid of it. I’m like, “You don’t want to feel uncomfortable.” We all want to do that. What we have to do is build a relationship with it. One of the things I picked up as you were talking is I knew this about you with all the work that you’ve done. Imperfect is a good word. It’s not a bad word. Radical acceptance of imperfection is what we’re trying to do. There is nothing perfect. I found zero things.
It’s why I wrote my fourth book, The Joy of Imperfect Love. We can come to terms with the fact that we are imperfect. Our partners, kids, and friends are imperfect. Some people will say, “You’re giving people excuses to behave badly or be their worst selves.” Not at all. It’s the acceptance of, “I’m not perfect. I apologize that I hurt your feelings. I see I could do something differently. Let me shift.” Maybe it’s something with yourself like the audience who wrote in.
Developing a Relationship with Anxiety
The imperfection might be that this individual is feeling so saddled by the anxiety and stress. Let’s work to evolve and manage it. You don’t have to get to a perfect place but let’s get you to a workable place where you feel more at ease in your life. As you say, we will never be free of anxiety. We wouldn’t want to be because it’s there as a helper. Let me pivot to a question for you. You said, “Let’s develop a relationship with anxiety.” Our audience might want to know a little bit more about why you want to have a relationship with anxiety. Many people want to banish it with anti-anxiety meds or practices and you’re saying to have a relationship with it. Could you say more?
There might be a place for someone to have an anti-anxiety medication so I’m not going to say that that’s never going to be something that’s a part of us but to build a relationship with it, that’s what the meditation journal is trying to do. Every night, you might think about some aspects of it or whatever it is that’s been affecting you at that moment.
Anxiety and fear keep us alive. We want to be fearful. We don’t want to be but if I’m getting close to the edge of a mountain, I want to have some fear because if I slip, I’m dead. I like animals. If I go outside and there are three saber-toothed tigers out there who haven’t eaten in two weeks, I want to fear because I don’t want to go up to them and pet them.
The relationship is understanding thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When the train stops underground in New York, it’s okay to be uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the world and you’re never going to get out. That’s what your thought creates and then your feeling starts to escalate. Try to build a relationship with the fact, “This is the person I am when I’m on this mechanism.” Understand who you are. “I’m giving a talk to 1,000 investors and it’s my biggest talk of the year.” Cool.
Most performers have anxiety before they get on stage. You want to have some of that but you don’t want that to debilitate you. Some of the athletes I work with might not like flying. They probably can’t take an anti-anxiety medication because when they land, they might have to compete. They might not have so much time. The benzodiazepine might impact their performance. Trying to understand who I am in certain areas of my life allows me to prepare. The more prepared I can be, the less anxious I need to be.
The more prepared you are, the less anxious you need to be. Share on XIt’s beautifully put. You’re making me think of my research, which led to my first book, Joy from Fear. The realistic fear would be the saber-toothed tiger. “I won’t be perfect. I’ll be stuck in this subway and I will never get out of here,” that’s more unrealistic. “My friends won’t love me if I don’t show up to the party. Everybody will hate me if I don’t look perfect,” whatever it might be.
When we learn to differentiate between unrealistic fears and realistic fears, that’s mindfulness that’s slowing us down. We’ll realize more often than not that most of our fears are unrealistic. The huge, vast majority end up in that unrealistic camp. If we pause to do that differentiation, not that we’ll always find some sense of ease. Having a speech with 1,000 investors and you’re feeling stressed like, “I’ll bomb it. It’ll be the worst ever. Everybody will hate me,” that’s generally an unrealistic fear but let’s lean into it.
Let’s say you bomb it. Let’s say you fall as you’re walking out and your suit tears. You spill coffee on yourself and you freeze. It’s exactly what you did. People start laughing because they realize that worst fear. Even when they imagine it, it’s very unlikely it’s going to happen. It’s funny to imagine all of those things happening. It allows you to go, “I’ll probably do something imperfect or a little wonky.” It might endear people to me because they’ll see I’m a human.
That’s the anticipatory anxiety. That’s what we build a relationship with. In social science, nothing’s 100% but almost 100% of the time, the anticipatory anxiety is worse than the event. If it’s not a hundred, it’s 95%. This is from that world. What we do also from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the conceptualization. We’ll do a behavioral analysis and help people realize. “People won’t like me. They’ll think I’m not smart.” We have to get to the core beliefs in all of us.
That is the depth of CBT. If there are practitioners reading, they might do journaling, cognitive distortions from David Burns, and some cute CBT stuff but some of the deep CBT work is core beliefs, assumptions, rules, and worry. You are allowed five minutes in the morning to worry out loud in front of the mirror. In the morning of your talk, say all those things out loud because you recognize that your worry does not impact the outcome.
The Impact of Core Beliefs on Personal Well-Being
Thank you. Core belief is such an important topic. We all have certain core beliefs that work against us and work for us. Could you give our audience an explanation of what you mean by a core belief and an example of a healthy, positive one and one that might be a big stumbling block?
I like that you’re trying to put them in the different boxes. Seventy percent of our thoughts are negative. I’ve rarely found positive core beliefs. That might be hard for people to hear but it’s because we’re so attached and we cling to damage and pain. We are more driven by these negative core beliefs. Internally, we tend to be so much more negative. I’m going to start with those first because that is predominantly where people arrive in our office from.
The core belief comes from schema therapy. It’s a deeper process-oriented CBT work that helps people identify where they’re having their most challenges. A common one is, “I’m not lovable.” That’s one you see a lot. Especially in the work that you do with this show and thinking about relationships, you might have had different attachment styles. If you bring in Sue Johnson’s EFT work, it’s important to look at how you attach with your predominant caregivers. No one’s perfect. Parents have done something that made you feel unwell or unsafe.
It’s the truth.
There’s no book on how to do it. I was in and out of the hospital from 0 to 14 all the time. I was the third of three boys so I had burns, stitches, and broken bones but all of that stuff could impact me because it’s trauma. I had to spend some of these early times in the hospital but it’s made me who I am. It’s created resilience. It has also allowed me to build and understand some of that stuff. That’s where the core belief comes in.
Somewhere in there, it may have been, “I’m not lovable or I’m damaged,” which is another common one. “With these experiences, I’m damaged.” I always see that people over-identify with a diagnosis or their emotions and try to radically accept that they are who they are and that those experiences have brought them there. We break down from core beliefs and how they create all these rules in our heads. “Because of this, I can’t do this, go there, or do that.”
Radically accept that you are who you are, and that your experiences have brought you here. Share on XWe make assumptions about the world. That always impacts our behavior. We go deep into cycling all this out. I’m confident there would be a positive core belief. It’s interesting that I chose that one because confidence, I always like to say, is like grabbing water in the pool. It ebbs and flows. You can’t measure it and you don’t know what it is.
That’s why I like it for a potentially positive core belief. You might hold on to that as part of who you are but no matter if it’s positive or negative, our goal is to acknowledge and observe without judgment and then move on to the next moment and commit to your behaviors without allowing those things driving your behavior.
Beautifully said. I could keep dismantling this with you for ages. You referred to attachment theory. Readers, this is such a beautiful piece because attachment theory, which came from Winnicott and Bowlby in the 1950s, puts us in a place of accepting imperfection because they break attachment style down into secure, insecure, and several types within the insecure style.
The beautiful piece is that even if your caregivers did not attune to you in ways that gave you a secure sense of attachment and you ended up in a more or less insecure realm, you can earn secure attachment by doing work, whether it’s in a healthy relationship, a psychotherapist, or group. Somebody attunes to you and you learn to tune into yourself.
The parents of a kiddo don’t look at them with loving eyes and say, “I see you. You’re worthy and good,” and give those messages. A lot of times a kid grows up thinking, “I’m not worthy and lovable. I’m rejected and unsafe.” That is where those core beliefs come from. It’s not something you did. This happened to you before you could even speak in those pre-verbal worlds.
The beauty is you can do the work using tools like the ones Dr. Pete is offering or working with a therapist to create. I’m also certified in EMDR. Where I was coming from the core beliefs that are negative in EMDR are one of the tools in my toolkit. We can create positive cognitions and beliefs and strive toward those who say, “I am worthy, lovable, and safe.”
How Simplifying Life Can Reduce Stress
That is such a work in progress. None of this is a quick fix. As Dr. Pete was saying early on, he’s working on it in his life. I surely work on it every day in my life because it’s a journey and practice. It’s not one-and-done. You’re such a beautiful soul. You have given us so many gifts. Are there any other pieces that you’d like to point out? There’s so much more. We’ve just touched the tip of it. Any other big pieces before I ask where our audience can find you?
I love the EMDR stuff. Maybe you’ll come to my show. We’ll talk about that because that’s what I’m always curious about. I’d say one thing for the audience. Think about how you can simplify your life. Notice when things are complicated. Whenever there’s clutter in a very metaphoric and physical manner, that’s what we experience internally. Can you declutter and start with your environment but also your mind, body, and spirit? Uncertainty. Everything’s uncertain and that’s okay. Embrace, accept, and love that. This is all we got. Be where you are and be okay with the fact that we don’t know where we are going.
Everything's uncertain, and that's okay. Embrace, accept, and love that because that is all we got. Share on XThat’s the truth. We can set a guiding light but it might not be a very linear journey toward that light. I love that you’re bringing us to a close on simplicity. Readers, if you’re setting goals for yourself, be gentle. Have simple, steady goals. You can get Dr. Pete’s workbooks and journals. When you keep it simple, you are far more likely to succeed.
One of the things we tend to do, I’ll raise my hand, is sometimes make things a little bit too complex and then we get stressed. Have one tiny goal or one big goal with lots of little micro goals underneath. You get to massage that and make it work for you. If one of those goals is simply being more in touch with how you’re feeling. The thought is creating a feeling or the feeling is creating a thought. Noticing that is a wonderful goal. What do you think, Dr. Pete?
Just notice. In this present moment, do it on purpose and without judgment.
Thank you. Where can our readers find you?
Everything is at OfficialDrPete.com. All the social handles are @OfficialDrPete.
Easy peasy. Thank you so much.
It’s simple. I have to practice what I preach.
Thank you again for joining us. It has been such a pleasure to spend time with you.
It has. Thanks for having me.
You’re welcome. Thank you, readers, for joining us. It is always such a joy to share time.
Important Links
- Dr. Pete Economou
- Mindfulness Workbook for Beginners
- Joy from Fear
- Meditation Journal for Anxiety
- The Joy of Imperfect Love
- @OfficialDrPete – Instagram
- https://TheCWCNJ.com/Peter-J-Economou-Ph-D
- https://GSApp.Rutgers.edu/Peter-Economou
- https://ScarletKnights.com/staff-directory/Dr-Peter-Economou/3759
- https://WhenEastMeetsWest.us/
- https://www.YouTube.com/channel/UCttLuWm8DMiD8Vt–lOPhZg/featured
- https://www.NAMI.org/support-education/NAMI-Helpline/
About Peter J. Economou
Peter J. Economou, Ph.D., ABPP earned a Ph.D. in counseling psychology and is Board Certified in Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy (CBT). He completed his post-doctorate clinical training in neuropsychology and sport psychology before entering academia for the last 15 years.
Dr. Pete joined the esteemed faculty at Rutgers University- Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology as an Associate Professor and serves as the Director of the Master of Applied Psychology program. He is a certified mental performance consultant (CMPC) from the Association of Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) and is licensed by the state of New Jersey & New York to practice psychology. Dr. Pete has worked with elite and professional athletes utilizing the four pillars: Behaviorism, Holistic, Strength-based, and Wellness.
Dr. Pete has been a leader in program development, mindfulness coaching, mental health advocacy, personal relationships, and has provided executive coaching for business professionals across many disciplines. Dr. Pete has a unique background in having studied eastern philosophy including Buddhism and Yoga which lead to his interest in the third wave cognitive and behavioral therapies. Dr. Pete is also a Zen teacher in the White Plum lineage installed by Robert Kennedy, Roshi.
Dr. Pete has completed a myriad of research projects presenting at both national & international conferences. He has published many peer-reviewed journal articles with research interests including performance psychology, substance use, mindfulness, meditation, & multicultural psychology. Dr. Pete keeps current as an active member of several professional organizations, he is the co-host of the podcast When East Meets West, and is the author of two mindfulness books, Mindfulness Workbook for Beginners and Meditation Journal for Anxiety.