Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. So we are here in our month of Curiosity, which is our Element of Joy. And last episode we talked about uncertainty and Henry, you brought, you brought up anticipatory anxiety as well, and I think a bit of an undercurrent through all of that, which may have popped into everybody's head,
Aimee: it didn't mine, was, oh, this sounds like worry. Which yeah, uncertainty can certainly make us [00:01:00] worry. Um, worry,
Henry: Yeah, the term anxiety could just be shortened to worry.
Aimee Prasek: Worry. It sounded really cool though, so, yeah, so we'll just go with that theme. We'll, we'll shorten it. We'll go with worry. That's what we're getting into today. Really reasons why we worry and I think that matters a lot, to understand why we worry, because we can then set ourselves up to practice, some shifts, some strategies that can help us worry less in the long run.
Aimee Prasek: And so next episode also, we're gonna talk about kind of these shortcut, simple strategies to cut worry, or cut kind of a, uh, a worry spiral.And this one though is more on these long-term identifying why we worry and then a little bit more on the long-term strategies. And that's also what we do here at Joy Lab, a lot of the work.
Aimee Prasek: So let's get into it. I don't really think I need to define worry necessarily, [00:02:00] but I will.
Henry: Maybe there's people out there who have never experienced that.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. Right. All right. I don't think they're listening right now to us. But cheers to you, Give us your insights as well. I will give the APA definition 'cause I think it's actually a bit helpful. So they describe worry as: "a state of mental distress or agitation due to concern about an impending or anticipated event, threat or danger. Difficult to control, persistent, and excessive worry is a main symptom of generalized anxiety disorder." And then they say, see, also meta worry." Which is if worry can be worse, it's worrying about worrying, which is I totally get. So I think that's important to note as well. 'cause that can be the worst kind of worry in a lot of ways.
Aimee Prasek: I'll give an example of how worry took shape for [00:03:00] me. Um, actually I'm gonna, if anybody's on YouTube, or you could go over to YouTube, I'm going to pick up this little puppy
Henry: Oh gosh.
Aimee Prasek: that is sleeping on my lap.
Henry: Aww man.
Aimee Prasek: His name is T-Rex. Um, so, join us on YouTube everybody, if you want a, a picture of an adorable puppy. So we recently got, got T-Rex rescued T-Rex and he's on my lap 'cause I was worried he was gonna be yelping, yipping in his his crate.
Henry: We're not done yet.
Aimee Prasek: We'll see what happens. But yeah, so we wanted to take him to puppy school and I went down this parvo rabbit hole. So if anybody
Henry: Oh.
Aimee Prasek: has had a puppy, you'll hear about parvo, which is a really bad virus, super contagious, pretty deadly to puppies before they're vaccinated. And I [00:04:00] came out of the sort of Reddit threads and such with the conclusion that we had to wrap 'em in a HAZMAT suit and keep 'em in a like isolated sterilized room for four months.
Henry: Puppy in a bubble.
Aimee Prasek: Yes. Yes. And so I, I realized then that day went on and I was, you know, I had to take him out and all I could see was parvo around me, really sort of on high alert. And you get a puppy, you know, I'm not supposed to be amplifying my worries here. So, I found it surprisingly exhausting, actually. Sort of thinking about all the ways that he could contract parvo and all of the things we needed to do to keep him safe.
Aimee Prasek: I went to the vet the next day and essentially she said, just take him to puppy school and here are some, some very clear things you can do to reduce his risk, essentially. There is a risk, but it's worth it because he needs to be socialized. So be smart about it. And it really hit [00:05:00] me because I think what I sort of realized, we have just lost one of our cherished pups Baeken, and... two months ago, we didn't necessarily intend to rescue T-Rex, but we went to a rescue for puppy therapy and ended up taking him home a week later.
Henry: I think it's great that you got out of there with just one.
Aimee Prasek: Oh lord. There were four that I was pretty sure we were gonna take. But I realize that, you know, my worry certainly was amplified because of there is real risk in parvo, but I was really just feeling the, the loss of our last pup too, and this idea that, oh my God, I, I'm still grieving the loss of our last pup. I cannot imagine losing another one so soon. So, you know, I, I think I was able to soften up on my worry once I realized that. 'cause I realized that a lot of this amplified worry was actually a bit of [00:06:00] grief. And I think worry does that a lot to us. It kind of tricks us, to focus on future fears when it might be some past hurts
Aimee Prasek: that maybe need a little bit more care. So that, that's been my recent worry experience and we'll get into a little bit more of the layers here in this episode. Henry, do you wanna define it more, how worry takes shape for you?
Henry: Well, I'm gonna surprise you, Aimee. I'm actually not much of a worrier.
Aimee Prasek: Actually, I could see that.
Henry: I used to be a little bit more, but
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: I have found a replacement that I just like a lot better. Can you guess what that is?
Aimee Prasek: Mindfulness.
Henry: No, it's, it's called rumination.
Aimee Prasek: That makes perfect sense. Yes,
Henry: it just works better for me.
Aimee Prasek: Lord. Yeah.
Henry: it is no better than worrying, I can tell you. [00:07:00] And I think they're probably just flip sides
Henry: of the
Henry: same coin.
Aimee Prasek: yeah.
Henry: Both of them involve an overactive mind.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: So there's one place, maybe we could it as to tone down the activity of the mind. Both of those tend to focus on what's wrong or could be wrong.
Aimee Prasek: Right.
Henry: There's another possible place to intervene. The main difference, as I understand between worry and rumination is that worry focuses on the future, what could go wrong, and rumination then focuses on the past, what did go wrong or what do we think went wrong.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: Both of them can make you feel bad. Both of them can be hard to get out of, and it is a huge relief if you can learn how to get a little distance from either of those things.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. And you can, right, we know that. Yeah. I, [00:08:00] I think it's really helpful actually to buddy up rumination and worry 'cause you can just trade them. They love to work together.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, they both pull us outta the present moment, tricking us. So actually I'll link to a recent episode we did on rumination. So if worrying is not your style and you're a ruminator, we've got a great episode for that.
Aimee Prasek: I wanna say that worrying and ruminating are very common, there's some research that's found at least 40% of people feel worried every single day. Every single day feel worried. So not just that you're having a worry pop up, but that's kind of this little bit of this pervasive feeling. So given how common worrying is and as we all know how it doesn't seem to help us a whole lot, why do we worry?
Aimee Prasek: There seems to be a bit of a priming in our system for it, given how much we worry and how common it is. So [00:09:00] I'm gonna give an example of--hopefully this will help us to describe it a little bit more--how I think of worry. I think of worry as a playground inspector. My husband is a playground inspector and so that's probably why I linked this up.
Aimee Prasek: But his job is not to go to a playground and look for all of the fabulous, wonderful ways kids are gonna have fun. His job is to go to a playground and look for the things that can injure children. It's a very different way of seeing a playground. All the terrible things that can go wrong. He doesn't see monkey bars, he sees broken arms.
Aimee Prasek: So that's kind of how I see worry. It's like our playground inspector looking at the world, world for problems. How can this go wrong? How can this hurt me? How can this hurt someone I love and it wants to assess everything that can go wrong [00:10:00] with the intention, with the good idea that once assessed, then some harm can be prevented, which can be great.
Aimee Prasek: It can keep us safe in the right context. Like for me, "don't do a back flip off the monkey bars because you will get the wind knocked out of you," was my lesson. Which getting the wind, getting the wind knocked out of you, yes. Is the worst feeling I. So when I see monkey bars, I still get a little surge of worry, a little shortness of breath, and I think, all right, no monkey bar back flips, which is easier for me not to do anymore.
Aimee Prasek: I'll just do them normally, or at least one, maybe two if I'm feeling strong. But you know, my worry decreases. So, worry in its simplest sense, in its most effective sense, is a survival mechanism. "Stay off the monkey bars, Aimee," is the message for me. Easy. Thank you. We talked about this last episode as well with [00:11:00] uncertainty
Aimee Prasek: and something that we touched on then was volatility. I wanna get into that a bit. So, and specifically something called high meta volatility relates here. Last episode we noted volatility is a state that is unpredictable, unstable. So if we're falling into that sort of believing that the world is unstable, that all these things are coming for us at some time at some place, then it's probably no surprise that high meta volatility, seeing those threats everywhere, is associated with chronic stress, is associated with worry. That might sound extreme, high meta volatility, but I think this is very common. I, I think we get warned about threats constantly. Many that just won't touch us honestly. We get breaking news constantly or fear mongered [00:12:00] at, you know, that type of threat based messaging, it creates volatility. And if we hear it, we can't help but sort of take in some of that. And I think it's important to note that it's just not true. So often the world is not quite so unsafe as we might perceive it to be based on that messaging.
Aimee Prasek: There's a lot of room for improvement, but there is more goodness, there is more right than wrong, so to speak. And I think if that doesn't feel true for you, then I think it's important to remember that we can rebuild our trust in the world. I think it is essential actually, if we wanna live a good life, that we have to trust ourselves, we have to trust those around us, that is paramount to survival.
Aimee Prasek: It's paramount to flourishing. And we just talked about this kind of wiring for acute worry. But more than that, we are absolutely wired to connect- to those around us, to the world, around us, rather than be chronically [00:13:00] scared of it. And until we get outta that space, worry is the symptom.
Henry: Hmm. Well, Aimee, your example reminds me that I do, in fact still worry from time to time.
Aimee Prasek: Of course, you're wired for it.
Henry: So when I take my 3-year-old granddaughter to the park who is highly skilled at climbing and
Aimee Prasek: Oh
Henry: so into it.
Aimee Prasek: yeah.
Henry: I am looking around to see where she might lose her grip and fall. And if she does that, you know, maybe she'll break her arm and then maybe I won't be allowed to take her to the park
Aimee Prasek: Oh Lord. Right?
Henry: That's what worry does, right? Takes us down all these steps.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: but it also reminds me, your example reminds me, as you said, that anxiety is a built in survival skill. It, it's. But I think it's meant to be sort of a specialty [00:14:00] skill. There are some people that specialize in it, so to speak.
Henry: You know, our ancestors historically, if they lived in a tribe of, let's say, about 50 people, there might be only a handful, maybe or five of 'em who were anxiety specialists.
Henry: You know, their job would be to be a scout or a sentry. Because they were so attuned to signs of danger. They were the playground inspectors of their day. But not everyone needs to be a sentry the rest of the tribe could rest easier because there was someone there to do that.
Henry: So I am still going to spot my granddaughter when she's climbing up higher than I think a 3-year-old should go, at least for another year or two.
Henry: But I don't have to get caught up in the fear that something awful is going to happen. We don't all have to [00:15:00] obsess about danger in the playground because your husband is doing it
Aimee Prasek: That's right.
Henry: and people like him.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. This makes me think. We can outsource our worries. I know we, yeah. We so often say not to outsource our thinking, which, I think is true in a lot of ways. But when it comes to worrying, let the people who are paid to worry about this stuff take some burden off of you.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: Um, And if that seems impossible, like all those people must be terrible or
Aimee Prasek: jaded or out to get us, and I'll reference the last phenomenon. High meta volatility, right? We can rebuild our trust in the world so that we can outsource some of our worrying. We can trust that somebody has worried for us and we can move in the world feeling a little bit more connected and safe. I love that.
Aimee Prasek: So let's get into more reasons why we worry. This one I love because I [00:16:00] resonate with it as well. A big reason why we worry is that we think we are taking action.
Henry: Mm.
Aimee Prasek: And this comes back to our conversation on uncertainty from last time, I think too, and trying to get some control back. So when we worry and then we start this kind of endless cycle of pseudo problem solving in our brain when we're working on all the what ifs, the shoulds, the what could I do's, all these scenarios in our mind when we work these through, it can actually feel productive. Like in little bits. We get a moment of relief because we've created a sense of control. A sense of control. We've come to a possible solution in our mind. So worry a sneaky like that.
Aimee Prasek: The problem is that we rarely stop and say, great, I solved it, and then we, we just move out of it. Instead, we go down another what [00:17:00] if, what could I, what should I do that takes us down another worry spiral. And additionally, so often the things we worry about are not in our control. So no matter how much we run it through our head, that randomness, that uncertainty doesn't change,but worrying feels like it changes those calculations for enough little bursts of time that it can feel productive.
Henry: Yeah, and I, I think it, it actually can be productive sometimes, but in small bursts and not all the time.
Aimee Prasek: Right.
Henry: I'm, I'm thinking of an example here. A lot of us have experienceded something like this before taking a flight. Okay? So especially if we're going on a big, expensive trip, or if it's an early flight, we gotta get up and get to the airport. I mean, it's really common, right? To up maybe several times during the night or, and at least to wake up or early, you know? 'cause
Aimee Prasek: Oh [00:18:00] yeah.
Henry: so much, I, I gotta get there and I got so much I have to do. And then you're thinking of all the details, right? So if you're flying in a group, traveling in a group, there, it is important that at least one person worrying about some of this stuff.
Henry: Right.
Henry: You need to, to be about getting there in time to check in about having everybody's ID and boarding pass and all of that.
Aimee Prasek: Uhhuh.
Henry: so, so that is productive, I think. But if the worry expands much beyond that, let's say you start obsessing about the weather and or about the mechanical checkups that the crew has to do, or you know, how experienced and how skilled is this pilot that we have? I mean, all of those things are totally outside of our control. You know, there's part of the brain that might think if I check the weather app enough times, maybe the weather is going to [00:19:00] somehow go magically cooperate. Of course it doesn't. It makes zero difference, except that it makes us miserable. Now, we all know that it doesn't make sense to do this, but I think it gives us a little sense of comfort that if we worry about all this, you know, maybe the bad stuff won't happen.
Henry: Maybe there's some preemptive type thing. But in reality, I think it's just amping up this feeling of anxiety and, this uncomfortableness, which is not all at all productive.
Aimee Prasek: Hmm.
Henry: So that by the time we get on the plane and it gets in the air, we're just exhausted by it.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. I'll just say Henry. So I have, I have worked on my worry a lot. I have come a long way. I'm very proud of myself. There is one worry I cannot shake [00:20:00] and it's flying.
Henry: Oh, I
Aimee Prasek: So
Henry: I shouldn't have picked that example. It's a tough one. It is a tough
Aimee Prasek: one.
Aimee Prasek: I hate, I don't, putting a bunch of land dwelling mammals in a tin can, 40,000 feet in the sky rocketing at like 500 miles per hour. I mean, it's insanity. But you know, just thinking of short bursts or a little bit of the worry. I... so, one of my strategies to actually be able to fly, I don't know if this is true, but I've heard that if the plane is gonna crash, it's gonna crash mo most likely within the first five minutes or the last five minutes.
Henry: Oh, well, you got a couple hours in between where you can just
Henry: relax then.
Aimee Prasek: I chill out. Don't talk to me. The first five of the last five, I am in deep breath work like strategies. But
Aimee Prasek: that, that kinda works. Yeah,
Henry: It's uh, compressing it into a small time period, which is like not a bad strategy, [00:21:00] aimee.
Aimee Prasek: I thank you because I'm going with it. I worry for the first five minutes and then I worry at the last five minutes, but yeah, it does help. So I don't, I don't know if that's a strategy for anybody, but you know, there are some worries that are more difficult to shake than others and some that maybe you don't need to worry about.
Aimee Prasek: I don't fly enough. Maybe because I hate flying, but I don't fly enough to have it be such an issue. All right. I wanna get into I think, one more worry reason why we worry, that hopefully we bring more awareness to it, we can reduce it and it has to do with past experiences and modeling. So with past experiences like my monkey bars, I still get a little short of breath, as I said, when I see kids on monkey bars, 'cause I feel like they're gonna fall land on their backs.
Aimee Prasek: So that's a past experience that gives me a little bit of worry, which is completely logical, could be helpful as well as a safety tool. but if you had something that really shook your system or [00:22:00] something that begins to really impact your daily life in a negative way, then worry can start to make your world pretty small.
Aimee Prasek: And then here's where a generalized anxiety disorder I think really comes in. I referenced that with APA definition. And this is where therapy can really come in and do some powerful work. Different types of exposure therapy, DBT, CBT, there are lots of avenues to develop some skills to not let those worries be in charge of your world.
Aimee Prasek: And it doesn't have to stem from a past experience either to warrant therapy here. I should note that even if you're worried, doesn't have a clear line to anything, these strategies, these modalities can be super helpful. And then with modeling, it can be very helpful to take a compassionate glance back into your childhood and see if there was a worrier in your immediate circle. Was there an adult who [00:23:00] modeled worry as a way of handling a problem? Or just met a volatility, sort of worked in the world as a worrier?
Aimee Prasek: If so, you have probably adopted some of those strategies. That's just how it works. And as we've said today, they are not permanent. There is, there are many skills that you can build to reduce that.
Henry: Hmm. This might be a good time just to revisit the concept of neuroplasticity. And
Aimee Prasek: Oh yeah.
Henry: how we are creating or undoing the pathways in the brain. I like the metaphor of creating walking paths in a grassy meadow to talk about neuroplasticity. So if a pathway has been created, let's say, either because of a traumatic event or the modeling of a parent. If we have walked that path enough times, then we have created a [00:24:00] real path. It's so obviously a path that if somebody else who's never been here comes to this meadow, they're probably going to take that same path, right? Because it looks like a path. And I think that's how these worries tend to get generalized.
Henry: Something might come along that vaguely. Reminds you of that big thing from your past, and sure enough, it goes down that same old pathway and strengthens it further. And even if the event is completely unrelated, you can still go and go down that same well worn path of worry. And I think this is happening to most of us at a completely unconscious level.
Henry: I mean much of the time and we really don't want to keep walking these fear pathways 'cause we are reinforcing them and letting them get more generalized then to other things. That's why I think it's [00:25:00] so important to be doing some inner work like we do in the Joy Lab program, to be able to see what is happening inside of us in real time. Because that gives us a chance to step back and ask ourselves, do I really want to go down this pathway? And if the answer is no, it is possible to make a different choice in that moment.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, we can make a different choice. I think that's the biggest lesson here. Worrying can seem so overwhelming and out of our control, but we can change these paths. We, we really can I get on an airplane? I don't like it, but I get on it. We can do that in a million different ways. So I wanna just like maybe touch a moment,
Aimee Prasek: this is making me think a bit on maybe a last reason why we worry is that it has to do with having too high of expectations. And I [00:26:00] don't wanna dig into this a whole lot. Actually, you know what, I think I'm just gonna put a pin on it for now. I'll, I'll put a link into the show notes for an episode on imposter phenomenon that we got into a little bit that talks about this.
Aimee Prasek: But we're gonna talk about high expectations and, and how that can uh, show up in our world in ways that can be kind of harmful. We're gonna talk a lot about that in the next couple months in, our next batch of Elements. So I'm gonna save that for, for those episodes, but certainly that can be ignition for for worry.
Aimee Prasek: So head to the show notes for some episodes if you wanna follow up on that right now. But I hope just in this conversation you've got maybe a bit of a handle more on why we might worry, why you might worry. I hope you've felt some, some insight there, some self-compassion to approach your worry in a little bit of a different way.
Aimee Prasek: Understanding that we've got some wiring that primes us [00:27:00] to do this, sometimes it can go too far, and we can change that. So, make sure you join us for next episode, we'll talk about some more quick, fast acting strategies to stop a worry cycle. In the meantime, I'm going to leave us with a little bit of wisdom from Pema Chödrön.
Aimee Prasek: Here it is. "Everything that occurs is not only usable and workable, but is actually the path itself. We can use everything that happens to us as the means for waking up. We can use everything that occurs, whether it's our conflicting emotions and thoughts or our seemingly outer situation to show us where we are asleep and how we can wake up completely, utterly without reservations."
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