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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Sized Brilliance podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and today I'm gonna do something that I have never done before, and that is help you build your emergency stress kit filled with tools that will stop any ruminating thoughts, panic spirals, or extreme stress from getting going.
And we're gonna do that together so that by the end of this podcast you will have a jumpstart on building your very own stress relief toolkit. So let's dive right in. The reason I wanted to do this episode is because I'm seeing clients and friends that have a great history of emotional regulation.
They have done their tools, they have practiced those tools, they've built muscle memory. But for whatever reason, blame it on the astrology, or the collective, or the dumpster fire [00:01:00] assortment of things going on out in the world today, but they're no longer able to regulate with the same capacity that I've seen them do for years, and that was very interesting to me.
But equally as often, I have new clients coming in and they have no stress relief tools whatsoever, or the ones that they do have are pretty destructive and they want to let those go.
So together we're going to build a foundation for your toolkit. Now, every toolkit only works if you open it, take out the tools, and actually use them when you need to use them. Please remember that. You can have the prettiest, fanciest kit in the world, and it will do nothing but sit in the corner unless you do your part, which is to use them.
Most of us are familiar with the concept of emergency prep kits . If you grew up in a [00:02:00] snowy climate, then of course you have a wintertime prep kit in your car just in case you got stuck somewhere for a few hours or, worst case scenario, overnight.
And not only did you wanna put that in the trunk of your car, but you also wanna put a mini version on the floorboard next to you or in the backseat where it's easily accessible in case you are in the middle of a snowbank and you can't get to the big kit that's in your trunk. Emergency stress toolkits are a lot like that.
So you can have a big toolkit that you can do in private, but I also wanna make sure that you have a smaller toolkit that you will do in public no matter what so that you can't use being in public as an excuse to stop your spiral.
Your stress prep kit will need to have three components: a pattern interrupter, [00:03:00] which is something to stop these ruminating thoughts or stop that thought cascade that is keeping you sunk and stuck. You need to have a distractor, which is going to bring your focus to some other area. Magicians use that, right?
They'll have you focus over here when the trick is really over here. We have to do the same kind of trick for your brain. So you need a pattern interrupter, a distractor, and the third part is you need a soother. You need something to reinforce to your brain and your body that you are, in fact, okay, that you are physically safe, and it's just something going on in your mind with worst case scenarios or something that you're worried about, but your physical body in space and time at present is totally fine.
Those are the three parts, and if you choose your tools wisely, [00:04:00] then some of them will do double duty. All right, so let's talk about pattern interrupters first, and I'm gonna give you a couple of my favorite options. Number one is to treat your brain like it's a dog who is not doing what you would like it to do.
If you don't have dogs, but if you're a parent, it's the same thing. Pets and kids, you know, they have the same need to be trained about how you would like things to go. So when my brain starts doing fear-based thoughts, I do treat it like a dog who's jumping on me or is about to roll in something stinky.
If you have ever been a pet parent in that situation, you know that you have got to act fast. You've got to pull on their leash to make sure you don't let them roll in the stinky thing, and you've got to divert them away from the stinky thing so they don't roll in it. Because if you don't do that, [00:05:00] it's gonna make more work for you because whatever your day was from that point is completely sabotaged.
You're gonna have to take them home and give them a bath or head to the nearest groomer because they smell.
Same thing with your brain. You want to stop that cascade like it's a dog about to roll in something, or jump on you and it's gonna embarrass you, and you don't want your friend who doesn't like dogs to be all jumped on.
So I will treat it like a dog, and in my mind, if I'm in public, I will go, *"No,"* and I will imagine myself clapping. "No, no." If I'm alone, I will say it out loud, "No," and I will clap. We're not gonna do that. Just like I would speak to a dog or a child that's doing something naughty, _"No. No, ma'am. We're not gonna do that._ _We're gonna do something else instead."_
So that is one pattern interrupter, is the no. Some [00:06:00] people like to treat it like it's a VCR that you eject the tape from. If you are not Gen X or Boomer and you have no idea what a VCR was, it is this ancient machine we used to use pre-streaming. But there was a button on there, and the old VCRs, they would have that eject, or it would just pop out the front.
Some people I know tap their forehead and go_ _*_"eject"_*, just like it's a VCR button. They're hitting the button going, "Eject," meaning, _"I don't wanna play that tape anymore. I'm going to put something in instead." _But the pressing on your, or tapping yourself, is a pattern interrupter. . It makes the brain go, _"What is happening?"_
Because, , the sensation, the proprio receptors in the skin are picking up new data, and so sometimes that is enough to shock the thoughts momentarily [00:07:00] for you to disrupt or switch them. We're gonna get into distraction in a moment, but I will mention it here. The pattern interruption is not enough.
Pulling your dog away from the stinky thing it wants to roll in is not quite enough because it's going to fight to get back to that stinky thing. Your thoughts are the same way. So breaking the pattern isn't enough. You have to couple it with distraction.
Some people will sweep their hands and go, "No," like they're sweeping it away. Some people will tap on themselves and go eject. If you want something a little bit more intense, sour candy, like really sour, those Atomic Warhead kind of candy. That can jolt the system and force the vagus nerve to pay attention, and it can be enough to shock you out of a spiral.
The other thing that is particularly shocking is ice under your armpit. [00:08:00] Some people will tell you to put it on your wrist, but I guarantee you highest shock value is right under the armpit where it's nice and warm. You won't be thinking about whatever disaster scenario was playing in your head because your brain will immediately click into, "OMG, it is cold under my armpits and I don't like it."
So those are some quick, easy ways to do a pattern interruption. Old school used to be put a rubber band on your wrist and snap the rubber band. That can be used as well as a pattern interruption. We just have to jolt the spiral a little bit. Step one, that is jolt the spiral. Step two is now you must distract and replace.
So a distraction is anything pleasurable that is not the pain you just had. [00:09:00] So we wanna replace pain with pleasure a little bit. This is why some people will tell you to go watch a funny show, so laughing is a good distractor. And if you think about why we need distractors is if you're anxious, your nervous system has been put into sympathetic mode, which is fight or flight. We need to teach it that it doesn't have to be on alert, that the danger isn't necessarily a real external danger. It's just something in your mind.
So watching a comedy, putting on a song and dancing for three minutes. A happy song, not a rage-filled song. Remember, we are not adding more pain in, we are replacing with pleasure. Some people, after they go, "No, we are not doing this," they're going to talk about gratitude instead.
_"I'm _[00:10:00] _so grateful for my family. I'm so grateful for my dog. I'm so grateful that I can take a walk right now and let this go. I'm totally safe. I'm here in this moment." _Whatever you need to replace. Now, neuroscience has actually done some great research, and they find going to read a fiction book can be a great distractor.
And I love this for a couple of reasons. I am a huge reader, and if you read about the statistics of the decline of readers in this country, it is absolutely shocking. From just about 20 to 30 years ago as a country, we were about a 60% nation of readers, and now we are in the teens for people who regularly read on a daily basis.
It's really shocking. And we're losing connection and cognition . The attention span [00:11:00] is so low now that we have lost connection with long-form content. This is not good But reading a fiction book can help your brain imagine the story of whatever is playing out in that book instead of the fear-based scenarios that were playing in your head.
Also, your brain knows you're not going to be stopping to read a book if you're literally in a fight for your life or you're running for your life. That is something that's doing double duty between distract/replace and also soothe. Soothe is recovery mode that reinforces acts of safety to our external senses so that our body can continue to send signals to our brain that says,_ "You know what? We're really okay. You just need to stop the shenanigans up here."_
So distraction, reading a [00:12:00] fiction book, watching a comedy show, dancing to a happy song. Dancing to a happy song also does double duty, because the act of vigorous dancing is going to burn out adrenaline that your brain did what it was supposed to when you got anxious.
It pushed out adrenaline and glucose to the muscles and cells to prepare you to fight or flight. But because you're not running and because you're not fighting, there's nowhere for the body to disperse that adrenaline, so it's recycling, and we want to disperse that. Quick bursts of vigorous exercise, running in place, jumping jacks, doing quick sprints for just a few minutes is enough to burn through the adrenaline and also to distract the brain, because there will be a piece of it that's going, _"Oh, good. She's running. Oh, good. We have a chance to get away from this thing." _
And so it can be a pattern [00:13:00] interrupter so that you focus on the intensity of the exercise. It can be a replacement, because the vigorous activity is getting you out of your head, and it's a soother because it's dumping this adrenaline out instead of recycling it.
Exercise makes a great triple threat for helping you as a tool. It earns its place in your toolkit, and rightfully so. There's exercise, dancing it out, reading a fiction book, laughing with a show. I'm gonna mention this one here because it also does some triple duty as well, and that is emotional freedom technique, or tapping.
There are so many videos that you can learn to do this, but if you are listening to this as a podcast, I'm going to put a link to my YouTube channel in the show notes so that you can watch me do this in real time if you like. But just to quickly go over the points, [00:14:00] there is one on the top of the head above the eyebrow, underneath the eye, underneath the nose, underneath the bottom lip, on top of the collarbone, and what I call the monkey point.
It's at your bra line there. Those are the main points. What actually matters more is your intention, so don't try to be perfect. I'm gonna teach you a very quick and dirty way to do tapping as a point of pattern interruption, distraction, and soothing. My way is very different than what certified EFT practitioners would tell you, so don't come at me. I'm doing emergency tapping here, and it's going to be very different.
If I'm not comfortable doing all the points, I might just do a couple, and sometimes if I'm driving down the road and some anxiety hits me, I might just tap my collarbone and call it a day. Keep yourself [00:15:00] safe. Keep one hand on the wheel. Don't do this if you're highly distracted, but just pick a point. Any discrete point. Just do the ones that you're comfortable with.
The theories behind this are each of these points are acupuncture points, and there are meridians that run through there that correspond to the organs in your body. Every organ in your body corresponds to emotions according to traditional Chinese medicine. So it's helping you rebalance your nervous system and get some things out and moving with tapping.
Now, I do tapping a little bit different, because I also tell my clients that your survival brain is just trying to look out for you, and it wants to be heard. And when you're running these disastrous scenarios in your brain and your body, there is a piece of your brain that is very concerned that you're not paying attention. And because you're not paying attention, it's going to keep replaying these disasters until it thinks you get it. So [00:16:00] we're going to dump the disasters out first.
What I do is start tapping and then start talking out loud everything you do not want to happen, everything that is playing in your mind that is an absolute disaster. Every fear that you've got, we're gonna dump it. If you are going to a party, for example, and you're afraid that no one's gonna talk to you because you don't really know anyone, or maybe you only know one person at this party, we're gonna use that as an example.
I have clients that tell me they're afraid that they don't have anything to talk about, that they're not very interesting, that they're socially awkward. People are gonna think they're weird, et cetera. So we're gonna use those examples. And it could be, _"I'm about to go to this party. I only know my one friend, and my one friend really likes to ditch me, so then I'm gonna be completely on my own._
_I'm gonna be super _[00:17:00] _awkward. Everybody's gonna notice me. They're all gonna stare at me. None of them are gonna wanna talk to me, and even if they did come talk to me, I'm super boring and awkward, and I would totally do something to screw it up because I always do things to screw it up, which is why I don't have friends or I'm desperate to hang on to the friends I have, because I don't wanna be alone._
_And if I am alone, then I can't get friends because I'm awkward, and nobody's gonna like me, and everybody thinks I'm terrible, and I'm super boring." _So just get it all out. That piece of your brain is getting heard, and it's gonna go, _"All right. Okay, yeah"_ And it's better out than in. Say it out loud. Say all the fears.
Put all the painful stuff out there, but then we're gonna circle it back. When you have put all the fears out there and you've tapped, we're gonna bring it on home to something that is soothing and better. So then we're gonna go, _"Even though I only _[00:18:00] _know one person at this party, it's gonna be okay, and I deeply, completely love, honor, and accept myself._
_Even if my friend leaves me in the middle of the room, I can go talk to somebody on my own. And you know what? It's gonna be fine. Even if not every conversation is interesting, it's gonna be okay, 'cause I deeply and completely love, honor, and accept myself. I believe it's possible that I could have a good conversation here._
_I might even find someone that I like. You know what? And there might even be a dog that I could also pet, or I could even talk about my pets, because people love pets, and that's a good thing to talk about. So I at least have one thing that I feel good talking about. And I can do this, because I deeply and completely love, honor, and accept myself."_
This is a quick and dirty [00:19:00] way to get the pain out and then bring it back with some hope, some optimism, some self-love and self-compassion. That does triple duty for all the things that you want. Pattern interrupt through the tapping. Getting that pain out. You're gonna distract with the physical act of tapping, but talking out loud can help you get it out of your head and into the world, so we're gonna distract that brain a little bit, and then we're gonna soothe it, because we're telling it, _"You know what? I'm actually gonna be okay" _
And that piece of the brain can relax because it knows that you heard it. It's got a voice. It gives the illusion of choice to all your parts and pieces, and you spent some of that adrenaline, just really get into this tapping with all the stuff, so you do feel soothed by the end of that.
That's my quick and dirty way. Some of the things [00:20:00] to take in this toolkit, EFT you can take anywhere. You can do it in your mind or say it out loud. Candy, you can keep on you at all times. Sour candy. Chewing gum has some of the same effect, that it can reinforce soothing and safety by switching the vagus nerve over.
Laughing, keeping a book on you at all times, a Rubik's Cube or one of those worry stones. The physical things work when you control your thoughts. Don't forget to distract with pleasure, not with more pain.
Okay, my friends, I hope this gave you a jumpstart on at least thinking about some tools in your emergency stress prep kit.
We all need them, and they're all going to feel really awkward at first. So the example I use is if you decide to go to the gym, and if you've never been into a gym before, [00:21:00] everything looks weird. You will second-guess your decision like nobody's business. But you might hire a personal trainer to take you through all the equipment and show you how to use the equipment. And if I came back to you after a month in the gym, you're gonna know how every piece of equipment works because you kept at it, and you used those tools.
Mind-body techniques are the same way. You've gotta practice them with enough repetition that they become muscle memory so that you can use them to quickly get out of a spiral or stop a spiral from beginning in the first place.
Because if you listen to this podcast or worked with me, you know you've got two minutes to stop that spiral before it gets out of control and becomes a body-wide thing.
If you would like personalized coaching to help you develop a toolkit that works for you and [00:22:00] also help you understand why these patterns and spirals exist in the first place, why you may be holding onto them, and how to let them go in the best healthy way for you, then go to aprildarley.com and schedule a complimentary consultation with me.
I'm gonna find out what's going on in your world, and you're gonna learn about the rapid regulation method, three brain system, and how we can figure out what's going on in your world to make sure that these spirals are a thing in the past.
And you can keep your prep kit in the floorboard, backseat, or trunk of the car. You just gotta use it. All right, my friends, I will see you next week. Goodbye.
