Oprah’s life coach revealed a solution for dealing with anxiety.
Dr. Martha Beck, a Harvard-educated sociologist and founder of the Wayfinder Life Coach Training platform, joined Steven Bartlett on The diary of a CEO podcast to discuss anxiety.
Marta first appeared on the Oprah Winfrey TV show in 2000 and became a regular on the daytime show between 2001 and 2020. She was also a columnist for O magazine, which in its heyday had a print circulation of 2.5 million.
The doctor claimed there was an easy trick to avoid feeling anxious, which could also get you out of the fight or flight response.
She first asked Steven to imagine a situation that made him anxious and then asked him to visualize himself eating an orange.
She said: ‘Imagine you are holding an orange, it is a beautiful ripe, heavy, delicious orange at the peak of its ripeness… you smell the citrus, you just take a bite of it to seal the peel to break it, and just feel that little trickle of citric acid that comes up when you bite.
‘The bitterness of the peel and when you bite into it the juice comes into your mouth, it’s sweet, it’s a little spicy, you can feel the filaments of the skin and the fibrousness of the inside, and you pull back the peel .
Dr. Martha Beck, a Harvard-trained sociologist and founder of the Wayfinder Life Coach Training platform, unveiled a solution to dealing with anxiety and claimed there is a trick to reducing it
She continued, “You feel it on your fingernails, you smell it, bring the broken part to your mouth and squeeze the orange and let some juice come into your mouth and taste it completely and then swallow it.’
Martha claimed this The sensory experience of pretending to eat an orange should ease anxiety and calm the nervous system.
She asked Stephen, “How is your anxiety now?” The host replied, “My the fear disappeared, it’s gone, yes.’
The expert revealed that taking your mind off what’s worrying you and using your sensory imagination is the perfect way to relax your mind and body.
She explained, “You start breathing more deeply, you stop producing all the cortisol, the glucocorticoids and the adrenaline that you had in the fight or flight state, and now you start producing serotonin and dopamine.”
However, Martha said there are many tricks to help yourself out of an anxious state, including focusing on writing your name on a piece of paper and then writing its reflection in the mirror.
Dr. Martha joined Steven Bartlett (pictured) on The Diary of a CEO podcast to discuss childhood anxiety and trauma.
She said: ‘Your brain is creating new neuron synapses that have never existed before. You’ve never done this before, so you’re fundamentally changing your brain and teaching a skill it’s never had before.”
The doctor revealed that there is a three-step process to relieve anxiety on a daily basis, which she calls CAT, Calm, Art and Transcendence.
She said our brains are biologically hardwired to be anxious, so we need to calm them down.
She explained: “Most people will say, ‘I want to fight my anxiety, I want to get it, I want to end it, I want to bring it down, I want it gone,’ because they think that it’s a broken machine. but it’s not, it’s a scared animal.
“If you came in and I said to you, ‘Okay, I want to end you, I want to take you down, I’m going to fight you until you’re gone,’ would you be less afraid or more afraid?
“So they attack the part of themselves that is anxious and it makes it even more anxious, and that’s what we’re taught to do to force it to calm down.”
Martha said that we should be gentle with ourselves, just as we would be gentle with a scared puppy.
She added, “We were taught to be violent to ourselves, to biohack this, to make yourself eat this and do that.
Martha said that once you calm down, turn to the arts and get creative.
She explained, “YYou need art, and I don’t mean drawing, I mean making things, making things in three dimensions, making events happen, making a podcast.
‘If people have experienced trauma and are allowed to draw about it, even if they cannot draw professionally, they are 80 percent less likely to develop PTSD.
“There’s something about making things and it can be a business, or it can be spray paint on cardboard.
‘There seems to be a switching effect that fear and creativity can’t work at the same time, so as soon as you start creating fear it goes away.
The doctor said the final stage is what is also called “transcendence or awakening.” Flo.
She explained, “MeIt’s a state of creating and performing at a level so difficult that we almost can’t do it, but if you get it, it’s like flying, it’s heaven and there’s a time in the creation process in which self-esteem disappears and the feeling of control is not necessary.
‘What you feel is that creation itself moves with you and moves through you. It is blissful, and I believe this is the state in which we must spend almost all our time.”