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Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I wanna talk today about how to reduce anxiety in moments of really big life transition that involve loss. You might encounter these types of difficult life transitions, for example, when you graduate from school and you're doing that transition into adulthood, or when you retire, Or when you're empty nesting, when you're transitioning from being a parent to being an empty nester, when you lose a job, when you lose that, that identity associated with that job, or when you lose a capacity because of some kind of traumatic event, and so your identities has to change in a way. Or when you lose someone that you love because a relationship ends or because someone passes away. These are all different types of situations that can really significantly disturb your basic beliefs about your life, about yourself, about how the world works, it can impede your main goals. And so it, it causes a lot of difficult emotions. I just wanna help you to not have extra anxiety on top of that because a lot of times on top of everything else that you're going through, all of the sadness, all of the grief, all of the adjusting that you have to go through, a lot of times there's, there's also anxiety on top of it. And so I wanna just tell you about a couple ways that you can reduce your anxiety when you are going through these types of difficult life moments.

First of all, I think that it's, it can be helpful to be aware of what to expect about what's happening in your brain when you go through a really traumatic loss like this, in the same way that it can be helpful to know what's happening when you go to the dentist, for example. My favorite dentist in my life was somebody who every single thing that he did, he always told me ahead of time, "You're gonna feel a pinch. You're gonna feel this. First you're gonna feel this, and then you're gonna feel this. It's gonna feel cold now." He would just walk me through what to expect every moment. And it didn't take away from the fact that the dental work was unpleasant and really uncomfortable and sometimes painful. But it made me feel less anxious while I was in the dental chair because I understood what was happening, I understood what he was doing, and I knew what to expect as far as how it would make me feel, and so it was a lot less unpleasant. So in the same way, I think it can be helpful to understand what's going on in your brain when you go through these types of events. So when you go through some traumatic loss that involves changing your identity, changing the way that you saw things, letting go of your old self because the way that you used to see things doesn't fit anymore with this new information that you have about things that can happen in your life, it involves a lot of brain rewiring because your brain needs to update its model of reality. So for example, when I was sick with long COVID for three years, that was something that had never happened to me before. I had always thought of myself as a healthy person. Whenever I'd gotten sick, I'd been able to recover quickly. I'd never had anything so devastating happen to me before. And so besides all the physical symptoms that I went through, I went through a lot of mental remapping because I had to make sense of the fact that this is something that can happen in my life. This is something that I Can have to go through. This is something that happens in the world, and how do I make sense of that? What does this mean about me? What does this mean about my future? What does this mean about my choices? And it led to me really revising the way that I saw myself, the way that I saw the future, the way that I saw my own values. Different things became important to me. Other things that used to be important to me weren't so important to me anymore. It, it, it led to me really avi- revising my goals in my life. And for example, when you lose a person that you love because they pass away, you know, your brain has to rewire to learn a new reality. Your brain is wired to expect a certain person to be present in your world, and they're not anymore. So it's not just something that happens in your feelings, it's something that physically happens in your brain. It has to do with cellular remodeling. Your brain has to prune old pathways, weaken old pathways, ways of seeing things and different things that, you used to expect, and build new pathways and strengthen new synapses. And this can... This is a process because it's, it's really energy intensive, it's important to realize that it takes a lot of your energy. When you first start doing it, it's... it feels like walking through really deep sand because it takes a lot of energy. But later, as those new pathways get beaten down and the old ones get pruned off, it transitions from being a sand, a deep sand walkway into a road, and it's not gonna be as Hard later. So that's another thing to know about what to expect is that it's gonna be really exhausting, it's gonna be really difficult, physically difficult for your brain to reorganize and readjust to this new reality. But later, it will be less difficult. So I had a, a friend, a wise friend tell me once after I had lost someone, she said, "You, you have to just let it happen. There's no shortcut to get through the process, the grief. You have to just let it happen. It's something that takes time. It's a process." And understanding a little bit about what's physically happening in your brain can help you to be less anxious while that process is taking place, and understand why you feel so exhausted and why it feels so overwhelming, and why you can't focus, and why you can't concentrate. It's 'cause your brain is really occupied doing other things That are foundational for you being able to function in what for you is a new reality, in a sense. So that's the first thing that I wanted to suggest is that it, it, to just, it's a process, let it happen. Understand what's happening in your brain, and that can make you feel a little bit less anxious , in regards to it, .. and able to relax a little bit more through this difficult process, knowing that it won't always be the same level of hard as it is at the beginning.

The second thing that I wanna suggest that can help is to put yourself in situations where you can feel the emotion of awe. We had an episode a while ago, which I'll link in the show notes, where we talked about the emotion of awe and all the different ways that you can feel awe. First of all, what awe is. Awe is when you're in the presence of something vast that you don't totally understand, and yet you feel safe. You feel like you're in the presence of something greater than yourself. So for example, I felt awe when I hiked the Grand Canyon, and I feel awe when I look out at the vastness of the ocean. You can feel awe in natural settings, like these examples that I just gave. A lot of people feel awe in religious experiences. You can feel awe through music. You can feel awe through art. Being part of group experiences where you're moving in unison with a lot of people or singing in unison with a lot of people. All these different things are things that can help you to feel awe. And awe can be really helpful in relation to making this transition through some kind of traumatic loss because it, it helps your brain to accommodate to a new reality. And the research that I've read about awe, they haven't really been able to explain why. I don't think that researchers know why it is that awe helps with this. But what they have found is that people who experience awe on a regular basis, that they actually have a much greater level of comfort with revising their mental maps than people who don't experience awe a lot. So it seems to help people with this process of revision, this physical process of revision that we just talked about, where you're rebuilding on a cellular level in your brain. It makes it easier somehow, this accommodation that you have to make to a new reality. And maybe part of the reason why is it because when you're in awe, you disengage from being aware of yourself, and you, you just feel the smallness of yourself in the presence of something greater than yourself. But this, this greater something Gives you the feeling that you're a part of a greater whole. It de-emphasizes the individual self, but it sort of enfolds you in this greater whole, and, and maybe that's why, maybe that's why it makes it easier. Again, we don't know why. But I know from my own experience that when I am going through these types of transitions, that it does really help me to spend time doing things that help me to feel the emotion of awe, and that this makes the transition less difficult. It streamlines it. It facilitates it. It makes it easier somehow.

And the third thing that you can do to reduce your anxiety around these difficult transitions is to learn to identify yourself with the sky. We've talked several times before about learning to, instead of seeing yourself as the cloud, seeing yourself as a sky that watches clouds pass through you. So identifying with that part of yourself that is more enduring than whatever emotion or whatever experience you're going through right now. That part of you that can think about your thoughts, that can think about your emotions, that, that gathers all of your experience and is able to convert it into understanding, into meaning. This is a part of you that is bigger and broader than any particular thing that you're going through right now. Identifying with this part of you helps you to recognize that you can fit into all kinds of shapes and twists and turns, that you are made of more malleable stuff than you realize. You can be four years old, and you can be fifty years old. All of that can happen in the same lifetime. You can be a dependent, totally dependent on someone, and you can be a caretaker. And then you start to realize that this that you're going through right now is not the end of the shapes that you can take, that your life is a journey through many different shapes, and that there's a part of you that remains through all of those experiences, and that can think about all of those experiences. Sometimes psychologists call this the third personal dimension. You can think of it as your consciousness, your ability to think about your thoughts, or you can call it your soul. It doesn't really matter what you call it, but it is that part of you that can think about the you that has gone through so many different things and that has been so many different things and is able to process it on some level, understand it, make meaning out of it. Identifying with this part of you helps you to realize that, you know, I, I am this person that went through being four years old, but I am also this person who can be fifty years old. I am this and I am that. It's kind of this yes and feeling that, yes, I am all of, all that I have been through, but, and I am also more. And I can also be something I've never been before. It helps you to be more comfortable with the shifting self-concept because you feel that there is something stable to stand on. That's that part of you that can reflect on all of this and think about your own thoughts, your own emotions.

So just to summarize, these are three different ideas that can help you to reduce the anxiety when you go through traumatic loss or traumatic shifting of identity for one reason or another. Because we don't wanna have to feel anxiety on top of all of the other difficulties, the difficult emotions that we have to feel, sadness and mourning and grief and all of that. So first of all, to just recognize that it's a process, that it has a physical component, you know, that your brain is rebuilding new pathways and that it's gonna inc-include a lot of energy consumption and fatigue, but that it is a process that will become less hard over time and just to relax in a sense and let it happen. Not resisting it helps you to feel less anxiety over it and helps it to not last longer than it needs to last. And then the second thing is to Try and seek out awe experiences because the emotion of awe, where you're in the presence of something much greater than yourself, and you feel absorbed into it in some way, that helps you, helps your brain to reorganize. It facilitates somehow this physical process of having to build, construct new pathways in your brain, new understanding, new beliefs, new expectations in your brain. It makes it easier. It makes it less uncomfortable. It makes it happen in a more streamlined, efficient way. It facilitates it. So in a way, it's the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. And the last thing that I recommend is that you try and work on identifying yourself with the part of you that is more enduring than anything that you experience. The part of you that is able to think about all that you have experienced, think about your thoughts, think about your emotions. That part of you that is able to try and understand what it means and make new meaning. This is the part of you that will remain even after this difficult time has passed, and that will be able to look back on it and see something that you learned, something that you gained.

So those are some suggestions that I have for you to help to reduce anxiety during difficult, painful, traumatic transitions. And thanks for listening today, and join me again next week