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Hi, and welcome to another episode of Calm Your Caveman. Last week we were talking about anxiety master key concepts, part three. Today we're actually going to get into foundational strategies for your anxiety management. But just to review a little bit, last time we talked about the Process Model, which gives you an overview of your emotion generation process: how it happens, and these four different points in that generation process where you can interfere if you want to regulate your emotions. You can interfere at the level of the situation, you can interfere in your attention, you can interfere in your appraisal, and you can interfere in your emotional response. And interfering at any one of these four points will influence the cycle from there on out. And so we talked about how there are these four different families of regulation strategies. There is the family of situation selection and modification there is the family of attentional deployment strategies, that influence how you use your attention in the situation. There is the family of reappraisal strategies that work directly on your appraisal. And there is the family of response modification strategies. So we have these four different families of strategies and it's helpful to organize them into these four families and understand where exactly they interfere in this emotion generation process. But that still leaves us with the question, when we actually are getting into emotion regulation, how are we going to choose which strategies to use?

We've got all these different families. How do we know which family of strategies, which category of strategies is going to be best fitted for the situation that we're in. And so today we're going to talk about foundational strategies that can help you with two different things. They'll help you to know which family of strategies to choose. They'll help orient all of your strategy selection. And they will also help reduce your anxiety on a general level, on a general scale in your life overall. And that's why I call them foundational strategies because they need to come first. They're going to change everything that comes after.
Choosing which strategies are best in a particular situation will really depend on the details of the person and the situation, and the goals that that person has in the situation. And there are kind of two different parts of choosing, The first is perceiving what your options are, looking inside your toolbox and seeing what tools there are in there. And the second is evaluating which of those tools is going to be best for this particular situation. And the way that you evaluate that is kind of based on two different things. It's based on what is important to me in this situation, or in other words, what my goals are. And the other is what is my context? What are my limitations within this context? Because not every single tool can be used in every situation. There are some situations where the context limits the tools that we can use. So we have to be aware of these two things. What is important to me or what are my goals, and what is my context? What are the limitations and the possibilities that my context allows. And so these two foundational strategies: one relates to figuring out what's important to me. And I call that find your why. And the other is learning to choose within your contextual limitations. And I call that know your context. So the two foundational strategies that help us, that guide us to know how to proceed in all strategy selection from that point, are find your why and know your context.

And today we are going to talk about find your why. This is a foundational strategy because it will help you to reduce anxiety levels in your life in a general way, across the board. Now, what do I mean by finding your why? I borrowed this terminology from Susan David, a psychologist that wrote a book called Emotional Agility, which I recommend, it's a good book. She talks about walking your why. But I want to talk about finding your why first. What do I mean by your why? Your why is the reason that you are doing things in your life. It's your purpose, your life purpose. Having a commitment to an ultimate life goal or an overarching life aim. You can think of it as a supra ordinate goal manager, something that offers direction to your choices and decisions, the way that a compass offers direction to a navigator. Now, let me give you an example of what I mean by a purpose. Something that I have chosen as my life purpose is that I want to contribute to world peace. And so this purpose, this overarching purpose organizes a lot of smaller level goals because I can work toward world peace on the level of my family, doing things within my family. Doing things within my neighborhood. Doing things within my community. And that's also why I decided I wanted to start this podcast, to help anxiety suffers to have greater control over their anxiety and more peace on a personal scale. And so individual goals within the way that I treat my family, the way that I behave in my family, may have ends, they may be concrete. But my purpose of contributing toward world peace helps me to organize the next goal once one goal has been accomplished. And so in that way, you can think of it as a goal manager, a supraordinate goal manager that offers direction like a compass. And purpose is really important for anxiety management for a couple of different reasons, but the one, the one that we're going to focus on today is that purpose changes your brain's perception of the balance between demands and resources. Remember that a couple of episodes ago, and I'll put a link to this episode in the show notes for those of you who missed it, but a couple of episodes ago, we talked about how, when our brains are evaluating stressful situations, when our brains are appraising stressful situations, what they are appraising is the balance between the demands in this situation and our resources. And we talked about the difference between a challenge appraisal, where our brain decides that our demands, the demands in the situation are not greater than our resources. Our resources are as good as the demands. They are up to the demands. We have what it takes to meet the demands of this situation. Then that will produce in our bodies a challenge response where our body is motivated with hormones and with different autonomic reactions to help us to actually meet the challenge and rise to the occasion to meet the demands of the situation. On the other hand, we can have a threat appraisal where our brain decides that the demands of the situation are greater than our resources. That it's too much, that we don't have what it takes to meet these demands. And so it will produce a threat response. And that is very different internally, biologically. Inside of our bodies, that response is different. It produces different hormones. It produces different autonomic reactions. And it basically turns off resources to our brains, turns down, I should say resources to our brains. And so we don't have access to as many cognitive resources. And we're basically motivated to avoid or defend ourselves from the stressor rather than approaching the stressor. So two different responses. Now having a sense of purpose can really tip your appraisals toward that challenge response, because it can change your brain's perception of the demand resource balance. And it actually diminishes the demands. It makes the demand seem less terrible and it augments your sense of your available resources.

Let me explain how this works. One way that a sense of purpose does this is that it helps to augment your sense of autonomy, your sense of choice in the situation. It moves you away from feeling like your actions are simply a consequence of external forces, and instead it helps you to feel like your actions are a consequence of your choices. Dr. Alex Korb wrote a book called the upward spiral where he talks about reversing the course of depression. And he talked about. The importance of exercising the power of choice, rather than focusing on aspects of life that we don't control, because that changes neurochemically inside of us, the effect that the same situation will have, and he suggested it's, it's a result of ancient instincts. The difference between running because you are hunting something and running because you are being hunted. And so when we understand what we want in the big picture, we are actually finding what it is that we desire, what it is that we want to approach. And instead of seeing everything in our lives as a result of just obligation, of outside forces, forcing us controlling us. And finding that sense of purpose helps us shift from that sense, that circumstances are controlling you to being, toward being sensitive to ways that you have control in your circumstances. Let me illustrate. How this works a little bit by telling you about an interesting study that was done on mice. In this study we had three groups of mice. All three groups of mice were going to be basically be subjected to some kind of brain damage. Forced to brain damage. But before the brain damage, These three different groups of mice were going to be treated differently. The first group of mice was going to be in a cage where there's no treadmill. So they were just going to be sedentary. The second and third groups of mice were going to exercise before they had this forced brain damage. But the second group of mice was going to be forced to run on treadmills. The third group of mice was going to be able to run on treadmills when they wanted to. So it was voluntary. so the three groups were sedentary mice, forced running and voluntary running. And then they studied how these three groups of mice, how they fared after this sort of enforced brain damage that they went through. And to their surprise, they found that the mice who were forced to run on a treadmill, that this induced a stress response in the mice which led to increased anxiety. They could track this through these different tests, like the open field test, and they could see different behaviors, which indicated increased anxiety. And they also had increased levels of stress hormones in their blood and in their brain. And what happened when these three groups were subjected to their brain damage was that those who were forced to run on treadmills had more brain damage. They showed higher levels of the stress hormones in their blood, and this led to more neuronal damage. Those who had the voluntary running, did not have this problem. And those who were sedentary to not have this problem. Now, this is really interesting because other studies had shown that exercise was protective against increased damage after these particular procedures. But in this case where the exercise was forced, the stress response that was induced from forcing the mice to run, created a lot of problems that exceeded the benefits of their exercise. And so this is an illustration of how being forced, that feeling of being hunted of being the victim of having your choices controlled by outside forces can induce this stress response in the brain, which leads to greater anxiety, which then can have health outcomes. So this study is interesting because it shows the difference between for mice anyway, when they have choice and when they don't have choice. And that exercise is beneficial. But when we don't have choice and it's forced that actually the downsides, the bad effects of that forcing outweigh the benefits of the exercise, because the stress response is so strong. The levels of stress hormones, hormones, and the increased anxiety that are experienced as a result of feeling forced. And so that is one reason why increasing your sense of autonomy in your life can really be beneficial for your anxiety levels. Because if you feel like your choices are controlled by outside events that are beyond your control, then you're going to have that feeling of the hunted, of the victim, of the forced treadmill running mice. But if you feel like you have control over your choices, then you don't have that detrimental stress response. Because focusing on what we want to accomplish overall in life, regardless of challenging circumstances, defining these overarching goals, moves us away from fixating on the things that we can't control and toward a focus on what we can create, what we do have choice over. And so maybe because of the way that purpose shifts this focus from that makes people feel like instead of being hunted, that they are the hunter. That shifts from the victim to the agent. Maybe because of this, purpose has been associated in studies, it has been shown associated with lowered levels of perceived stress and also less anxiety in real world situations that tend to stress others. So a sense of purpose lowering the overall amount of anxiety experienced and levels of perceived stress.

So a sense of purpose can also, this is another interesting effect of a sense of purpose, it can motivate people to persist, rather than quit in the face of difficulties. What does this indicate? It indicates that it makes those demands seem less terrible. It makes people feel like their resources are on par with the demands, because it makes them persist. It makes them keep going. It makes them feel like they can approach this stressor. Because it influences the appraisals. It alters their perception of the situation as being more actionable. Something that we can change, something that we can influence. Even when those actions are going to require a lot of effort.

And this was shown in an interesting way in a study by Burrow et al. And I'll put a link to this paper in the show notes if you're interested. But where they studied subjects, and they gave them uh, a hill to look at and the subjects had to estimate how steep this hill was. But there were two different groups of subjects. One group of subjects was given a clear purpose and meaning for why they needed to, to go up this hill. And the other group of people did not have any particular purpose for going up this hill. And what they found was that the group of people that had a clear purpose and meaning for ascending the hill, they actually estimated that the hill was less steep then the other group of people who didn't have a purpose. And the hill to them looked steeper. So it actually changed the way that the people perceived the steepness of the hill. For those who had a sense of why it was important for them to go up this hill, the hill didn't look quite as steep and as daunting. But for those who didn't feel that there was any particular compelling reason to go up the hill, the hill looked a lot more steep. So this is an illustration of how purpose can change our perception of the demands in a situation.

Another thing that a sense of purpose can give is it can foster this perception that you can find multiple ways to deal with an obstacle. It helps you to see that you have many different resources for approaching this obstacle, not just one way, but many different ways that you can solve this problem. It helps you to seek alternative means. And to maintain focus on that goal in spite of changing environmental conditions. So it really generates those approach motivated behaviors, where you want to approach the challenge, because you feel like you can do this, and there are many ways to solve and approach this problem. And this is important because if you think about it, there's not really any way to avoid stress entirely in our lives, unless you're dead. If you're dead, then you don't have any more stressors. But as long as we're alive, there are going to be some stressors in our lives. And so it's important to be able to optimize our stress responses. If we're always trying to avoid or minimize stress in our lives, then that can lead us to miss opportunities for performance and for growth.

Viktor Frankl, who's someone that many people have heard of, he's a psychologist that was in a concentration camp in world war II. And he wrote a book called man's search for meaning. And he talked about the importance of finding meaning and purpose in your life. And this is what he said about it. He said "there is nothing in the world that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one's life." And then he quoted Nietzsche, who said "he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." So a sense of purpose can really turn those potentially threatening aspects of your experience into an opportunity, into a challenge in which you can engage to fulfill your overall life aims. It really optimizes that stress response and gives you the sense that you can do this.
Psychologists have talked about many different ways that you can cultivate a sense of purpose in your life. It can be difficult when you really sit down to figure it out, to answer that question, what is it that is most important to me in my life? What is it that I want to do with my life? What do I want my life to be about? What is the meaning that I want my life to have? That can be a tricky question to answer if you just try to approach it in that way. But different psychologists have suggested various exercises and questions that you can engage in that can help you to identify and develop your own sense of purpose. And I'm going to read through a list of these. There will also be a PDF of these different questions and exercises in the show notes on my website for this episode, so that if you miss them and you want to go back and review them, you can look at them there. But I'm just going to read them to you and I want you to let them kind of wash over you. Listen to the questions. And there will be one or two, maybe that really stick out to you and invite you to think about them some more. Not all of the questions will really feel fertile to you, will really feel like you have a lot of answers for them, but there might be a couple of questions or a handful of questions that you feel like you could really explore. So I just want you to listen to the list. And then when a particular question or exercise really seems to light up and call to you as having a lot of personal answers, then I would suggest that you take that question or exercise, and you journal about it.

So, let me read these questions now. The first several questions come from Susan David's book, emotional agility. So these are the questions that she suggests: deep down, what matters most to me? What relationships do I want to build? What do I want my life to be about? What kinds of situations make me feel most vital? If a miracle occurred, and all the anxiety and stress in my life where suddenly gone, what would my life look like, and what new things would I pursue? Another question. As I look back on today, what did I do that was actually worth my time? And last one, if this were my last day on earth, how would I act to make it a great final day? So those are a group of questions from Susan David. The next exercise is one from Victor Frankl. He proposes an exercise of imagining that you've already lived your life once. And the first time you lived it, you made a whole bunch of mistakes, but you're on your second time through now. And you get the exact same situations and circumstances, but you get a second chance to do it in a different way. And on this second time, you get to ask yourself, what would I prioritize this time? How would I do better or differently than I did the first time? So that's Victor Frankel's exercise for identifying the meaning or the purpose that you want in your life. Here's another exercise from Gelder, Hirschfield and Nordgren. Again, this article will be in the show notes if you want to look at it. They investigated the exercise of writing a letter to your distant self. So you think of yourself two decades from now, and you write a letter to that self. And you tell that self about what is important to you right now. And what you think will be important to you in two decades. So writing this letter to your distant self, creating the sense of continuity of self. That's their, exercise. Here are a couple of questions from an article by Forsyth and Eifert where you can use your goals to figure out your overall purpose in life. So look at your goals that you have presently in your life, and you ask yourself, why am I doing this? What am I trying to accomplish in my life with this goal? And where am I heading with this? Because sometimes our local goals can help us to figure out what our global meaning is because it's kind of contained in them, even though we haven't become conscious of it. Stephen Covey advocates an exercise where you visualize your own funeral three years from now. And you write about how you would like to be remembered, what you would like people to say about you in that future funeral. And Arthur Brooks, who's a social scientist, talks about an exercise of picturing yourself in 10 years, 10 years from now, happy. What does your life look like? What are the different elements of your life? What's your professional activity. What are your relationships look like? What do you do with your time and energy? This exercise of course is not done so that you will feel like if you don't reach that in 10 years, you have failed, but instead it's to help you to identify what is your priority. Because as you think about what you need in 10 years in order to be happy, you start to be able to see what it is that is most important to you, and that can help you toward this cultivation of a sense of purpose, or overall life aims. And the last one, which I've used with my own coaching clients, which is kind of a hybrid of several of these is, entails picturing yourself in 10 or 20 years, and looking back on your present circumstances right now. And asking yourself, how will I want myself to have behaved during this particular circumstance right now? And this exercise can kind of give you that longterm view of what it is that's really important to you in the longterm. What we're trying to locate through these exercises, are your most enduring concerns. We all have goals and needs and desires and concerns that are happening all the time. But some of them are very short term. They might have to do with simply what you're going to eat today and what you might wear. But there are concerns that are going to outlast all of those short-term concerns. And these are your most enduring concerns. And so these exercises are calculated to help you to be able to identify what is most important to you.

So just to go over again, why is it so important that you figure out what your purpose and your meaning and your overarching life aim is? Well, it's because it will increase your sense of autonomy. It will shift your mindset from feeling like you are hunted, to feeling like you are the hunter. You will not feel like the victim anymore. You will feel like the agent. And that really reduces stress and anxiety when you feel like you have choice in your life. That instead of concentrating on what you can't control, you're concentrating on those aspects of your life over which you do have agency. Another way that it helps you is that it changes your perception of the demands in your life and it makes them seem less terrible. It makes them seem more approachable and makes them seem less bad, less overwhelming. And it also fosters a perception that there's multiple ways that you can deal with any problem. There's more than one way to solve the problem. And it helps you to maintain your focus on your goals despite changing conditions. And just returning to that quote by Nietzsche, "he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

So that's our introduction to why finding your why is a foundational strategy that will reduce your anxiety levels generally in your life, and make your brain perceive your own resources in a different way, and the demands that you face in your life in a different way. And it will make that balance between demands and resources more tipped toward I've got what it takes. It will help you to feel like I can handle what is going on in my life. I can handle whatever comes. I've got the resources to meet the demands. So that is a foundational, powerful strategy for you to use in a general scale in your anxiety management.
And next week, we'll talk about how finding a sense of purpose actually helps you helps guide you in your selection of which strategies to use when you want to regulate an emotion. So we'll continue our discussion of finding your why next week and how that helps us to select strategies. But that's it for today. Thanks for joining me. See you next week