Using Neuroplasticity to Manage Anxiety in Kids & Adults

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we’re revisiting the topic of anxiety because it’s something that has become so prevalent in all of our lives. Most kids and adults are experiencing higher than typical levels of anxiety these days for a lot of reasons. We’ve talked about anxiety in various ways on the show previously. But today, I want to take a bit of a different approach, and help normalize the experience of anxiety and the full realm of associated uncomfortable feelings that happen in our lives and in our kids’ lives, because believe it or not, anxiety is important for us to experience, and what we do with our anxiety and what we teach our kids to do can make the difference between progressing and thriving or getting stuck and feeling helpless. When working with patients, I find it helpful to not only normalize the experience of anxiety, but to look at it as a clue to what we maybe need more or less of to be our healthiest, best selves. And to explore this with us today I’ve invited world renowned neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki on the show. She’s the award-winning Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at New York University, where she studies the effects of physical activity and meditation on the brain. She’s also a TED speaker and bestselling author of the book Healthy Brain Happy Life that was recently made into a PBS special. Her second book Good Anxiety, Harnessing the Power of The Most Misunderstood Emotion was published in September of 2021. The paperback is available now. Wendy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

This is such a timely topic, we were chatting before we started recording, and it’s like could there have been a better topic to write about in the last couple of years? So we’re going to get into all the things about anxiety and what we can do. But I actually want to start with just a question to help our listeners get to know you a little bit: What drove you to get into the field of neuroscience more generally, or anxiety, the brain, movement, more specifically? Was there something that sort of led you down that path?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Yes, there was a very, very specific event that happened. It happened the very first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley. I walked into a freshman seminar class. I didn’t know the professor, I just chose the title, and the title of the course was “The Brain and its Potential”. Little did I know that this class is going to change my life. I walked into the classroom of a world renowned neuroscientist, researcher and incredible instructor. Imagine, if you will, the kind of energy of an academic Beyonce. That’s what it kind of felt like in the classroom. It’s like, oh, she has command of this classroom, I want to hear what she has to say. And she not only pulled out a real preserved human brain from a hatbox in a very dramatic portion that made all of fashion that made all of us freshmen go, “Oh, my God, is that a brain?” And then she went on to tell us that she studies brain plasticity, which is this ability of the human brain to actually change in response to the environment. It could change in a positive way, positive brand plasticity, it could give it good kinds of stimuli. Or it could actually change the negative if you give it bad experiences like chronic stress, chronic anxiety. It’s not too hard to guess what is positive and negative. And I just thought that was the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life. I want to be an academic Beyonce, just like her. And so I went to graduate school and I tried to do that. I focused on brain plasticity. Memory is a common thing and brain plasticity, so I started with memory. But then I got into the effects of physical activity, which is a wonderfully powerful way to give your entire brain positive brain plasticity. And that led me to my second book, Good Anxiety, because exercise is such a wonderful anxiety reliever. And the book isn’t only about exercise, but seeing how powerful exercise was to relieving both feelings of depression and anxiety, kind of got me into that topic.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love it. You stepped into class on the first day of freshman year and were like, “I know what I’m going to do. I want to be like her when I grow up.” I’ve had faculty members who have shaped me in a similar way, it’s such a powerful experience. And what I love about this is that neuroscience is a relatively new field, when we think about that, and even as you were talking about this idea of brain plasticity, even that is a fairly new phenomenon. This was not something that we were talking about 40-50 years ago, and yet, it’s such a powerful thing for us as just regular people. You don’t have to be an academician or a medical professional to understand this idea of neuroplasticity and how empowering that is for us, this idea that our brain can continue to grow and change. I think it’s so empowering for whatever issues we might be dealing with in our life.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

It is, and you start to realize that this isn’t like, “Buy my special pill to give you all the brain plasticity.” This is: You know what helps brain plasticity? Good sleep. You know what happens when you’re one of those flight attendants that goes over five time zones every once in a while? The brain actually responds to that. There are studies that show that there’s a shrinkage of the brain because of that sleep deprivation happening all the time, which means just go to sleep. All you have to do to get a big fat fluffy brain, as I like to call it, is sleep better, move your body, eat things that are good for not only your body, but your brain as well. These things are positive forces of positive brain plasticity. And you know what? You have the power to control all of that. And so this is like a totally empowering podcast moment here. It’s up to you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that. It’s really such a big part of my platform, helping parents and helping kids understand that, look, we all have challenges, we all have things that happen to us in life that we’d rather not have happen, right? We all have things that we struggle with, but we also all have the powers, as you’re talking about, to take certain actions, to understand these foundations, to improve things for ourselves. I find that so exciting. And let’s talk about it in the realm of anxiety. I want to back up a little bit before we get into what we can do about it, and just let’s frame this up a little bit for people, in terms of this idea of anxiety. Okay, I think we all sort of inherently know what that means and what that is, but it seems like it’s such a more prevalent issue. I look at stats coming out in the research and even in the popular media all the time now, X percentage increase in the number of people endorsing symptoms of anxiety. Why do you feel like anxiety has become sort of such a defining emotion or defining experience for adults and kids right now?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Well, if we just step back for a moment, and let’s look at the definition, the simple definition of anxiety, I think that really answers a lot of questions. So the simplest definition that I like to use of anxiety is “The feeling of fear or worry, associated with an uncertain situation.” Now, can you think of uncertain situations that you’ve lived through recently? Okay, global pandemic, anybody have experience with that? Huge uncertainty. But we forget, even before the start of the pandemic, environmental issues were still a huge issue, the social media that makes you feel like you’re not enough, that there’s something out there that’s uncertain that you’re never going to have that. That contributes to this basic definition of uncertainty. And that is what we’ve all experienced, not just in this country, but really all over the world. It is uncertainty that is disquieting, and part of the learning here is to learn how to live better with that feeling of uncertainty. But sometimes, just too much uncertainty everywhere we turn, it’s just hard. And that’s what we’re all dealing with.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think I was already seeing that in kids heading into the pandemic. As you said, social media. It seems like expectations increase for kids constantly. There’s so much more pressure and uncertainty, and then the pandemic hit on top of it. And so to me, it doesn’t surprise me that the phone rings all day long with parents saying, “I’ve got a problem with my kid”, and many of them saying, “I noticed some things prior, but boy, the last year or two has just put this on steroids, and we’re really having difficulty coping.” And to me, that just makes perfect sense in how you just described it, what anxiety is, this fear or this unsettledness around uncertainty around things we can’t control. It would kind of be weird if there was a human being not feeling a certain amount of anxiety at this point. Right?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Exactly. And that also brings up the point that anxiety is a normal human emotion. Don’t believe anybody that says “I’m going to cure and get rid of all your anxiety”, that is not possible. It’s like saying, “I’m going to get rid of all your happiness.” You would never say that. Well, you should never say that or believe anybody that says that about anxiety. It is part of our kaleidoscope of emotions. Because, as you mentioned earlier, it’s there for a reason, it is a warning system, it evolved to help warn us of danger. That is why it’s there. Now, of course, we live in huge times of uncertainty. It’s not surprising where we have higher levels of anxiety, but it is helpful to step back for a moment and say, “Okay, let me see if I could just use this as a warning”, it’s not the end of the world. It is a louder ringing bell because there is a lot of uncertainty. But it’s just a bell, saying, “Hey, there are perhaps health issues that I need to keep track of, there are issues about social interactions that are worrying me.” That’s a great solution to that. So it is a warning system, and I think that is a very healthy way to try and approach that both for yourself, and to model for your children. How you’re approaching it can be a huge lesson, a great lesson for your whole family. And I’m sure you talk to your patients about that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I think it’s interesting when you say don’t trust anybody who says they’re going to get rid of your anxiety. A lot of patients come in, and they’ll just say, “No, make my kids anxiety go away”, or the patient will say, “I just want to be not anxious.” And I say, “Well, that’s not what we’re going to do in our work together.” Because actually, the goal is to help keep anxiety in a range that’s manageable, it’s not to make it go away. One of my professors said a long time ago, “Look, if none of us had any anxiety, we’d never get anything done.”

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Exactly. Do you want to have the energy of laying on the couch watching Netflix for your whole life? Okay, a few days, I can do.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

May sound appealing short term. So I’m going to raise something here, just because it’s just coming to my mind as we’re talking, and I’m genuinely interested in your perspective on this. I read last week that new recommendations have come out medically for screening of children and adults related to anxiety. And the recommendation of this taskforce is that we start in a primary care setting, screening all children over the age of eight for anxiety. And I’m torn around this because I think it’s well intentioned. I understand the goal and the idea is to make sure that kids and adults aren’t suffering unnecessarily, to make sure that people are connected and have support, I get that. On the other hand, I have a concern that this really has the possibility of over pathologizing something that actually is fairly normal, and especially when we’re talking about a pediatric population, how kids experience and maybe fill out a checklist because let’s face it, in a primary care setting, this screening is going to be maybe five to eight checklist questions. I do have a concern that it might go the other direction too and lead practitioners or kids or parents to think that there’s a crisis or a pathology or something where there isn’t. And so I’m wrestling with this and I’m curious about your take on that.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

I am completely 100% with you on the wrestling. I think it could lead to stigmatization, that, “Oh my god, I now think of myself as a pathologically anxious person, there’s something wrong with me.” No, you just have maybe a little bit too high volume of a normal human emotion. And for all of that funding that’s going to go into that checklist that they all do, what if we just bring more activities that will turn the volume down, instead of now labeling more people, adults and children or families, “You’re an anxious family now”? I like to say that there are two cost-free go to’s I always use to turn the volume down on my anxiety. Number one, I always go there because it’s so easy, it is deep breathwork. Breathwork is the oldest form of meditation ever, in thousands of years, it is the very first form of meditation. And while those monks thousands of years ago did not know the term “parasympathetic nervous system”, they were activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our natural rest and digest, calming part of our nervous system. Did you even know that you had a part of your nervous system that naturally destresses you? And the best way to activate that consciously is to deep breathe slowly and deeply. That starts to activate the whole system, that calms down your heart rate, slows your respiration and starts to shut your blood from your muscles towards your digestion and reproductive organs, and it really does. These monks know “Oh, this is a great way to get me into meditation.” Well, guess what? It still works today, and it’s a great way to calm your nervous system down. I like to recommend a box breathing approach because it’s so easy. There’s four counts and four steps. Step one: inhale on a four count, step two, hold at the top for four counts, step three, exhale slowly on four counts, and step four, hold at the bottom four counts. So easy. Try it, you’ll start to feel like, “Oh, I’m already feeling just naturally more calm.” And again, you’re using the monk technique. I’m telling you the neuroscience of this; you’re activating your parasympathetic nervous system.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think that understanding why that’s helpful is so important, because I have patients, kids and adults who are like, “Oh, yeah, I tried breathing. It didn’t work.” And it’s like, okay, well, what did you actually do? You say to a kid, or even a lot of adults, “Okay, show me what a deep breath looks like.” It’s like okay, no, that’s not how we need to breathe. The understanding of why, as you just shared, why that helps, the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. And for those of you who are listening and you want to delve more into what Wendy is talking about, just for some breathing techniques for your kids, you can go back and listen to the episode of the show with Campbell Will where we talked about that, and also Jason Campbell, both of those episodes really cover just a lot of the techniques, there’s some pieces of those episodes that you can use yourself or with your kids, even as a model to do that. So I’m with you, I think that breathing piece is so powerful. And what I love about it is we always have it with us, the power, in any given moment to just drop in and focus on our breathing. It’s free, it doesn’t involve equipment, we don’t have to go somewhere special. And so what an empowering technique, really.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Yeah. I like to remind parents that this is something that you can do in the middle of an anxiety provoking conversation, because we all have it. They don’t even know. That anxiety provoking person is talking at you? All you have to do is just take a few breaths, let them talk, they can say whatever they want, and just calm yourself down. During that time, it is so powerful. You could practice it with your kids, send it to school with them, having a problem? Just go to some quiet place and just do that on your own. That will be an immediate relief to that feeling of anxiety.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Love it. So breathwork, deep breathing is one. What’s another tool that you love that we can all access and use to manage our anxiety?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

So my go to tool number two is physical activity. So moving your body, what it’s doing, let me go into the science, everybody knows why I’m saying this: Moving your body will release a whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain. You might not even know that, but what has been released? You’ve heard of these neurochemicals: Dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphins, and growth factors are being released. And I like to say that every single time you move your body, it’s like giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals, and these bubble baths of neurochemicals are making it feel good. This is what typical antidepressants are doing, without any of the withdrawal or any of the other bad symptoms that you can get with antidepressants. This is a natural antidepressant. And then the next question everybody always asks is “How little movement do I really have to do to get the bubble bath?” And the answer is, to get the dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline bubble bath, 10 minutes of walking. Can you walk for 10 minutes? You don’t even have to be in your Lululemon. 10 minutes of walking. So powerful.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that. I’m such a proponent of movement for kids and adults, and you know, that 10-minute walk? It’s something that families can do together. That’s what I say, everybody, after dinner get out there and just walk for 10 minutes. I think this is really interesting, too, as I’m hearing you talk about this bubble bath of neurochemicals and movement. I think there are some parents listening who have kids who move a lot, who often are told “Just sit down, be still, these are kids who get in trouble for moving, and yet, I think we need to really reframe that. As you’re talking, I’m thinking, okay, first of all, from an anxiety perspective, if movement is supportive of anxiety reduction, of giving us that good bath of neurochemicals, then we should encourage movement in kids when they’re feeling stressed or anxious. But also, I think our kids who maybe are neurodivergent or just struggle, whether it’s with focus and attention or memory or learning or whatever it might be, to be encouraging movement, as opposed to constantly looking at it as if movement is a problem. To realize that that’s an adaptation. They’ve realized in their little brains and bodies that that movement actually helps them, right?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

It does. And I think that’s such an important message. How can we help them? I mean, there’s certain moments where they need to sit still. But to treat that as a solution to the problem, which it really is. So how can we provide these opportunities to do that? And when you provide those opportunities, you’re going to come back with a kid that’s ready to sit there and ready to learn something and ready to fill their brain with something interesting.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It strikes me that this would probably be such a low hanging fruit intervention in our school settings, where educators are feeling the burden right now of having classrooms filled with kids who are stressed and anxious, overwhelmed, struggling. That boy, if we could support even some basic no cost movement interventions, what a great tool that would be!

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Yeah, that’s what I get to do as Dean of the College of Arts and Science at NYU. What can I recommend? We’re in walking city here in Manhattan. We didn’t even realize how powerful that is. Can we become, as a whole college, more intentional about when we use our walking, why we use our walking? Can we prepare for our exams with group walking or class group walking/breathwork/community and connection? Which is also so important, we are a social species as humans. That connection that has become a little bit broken with the pandemic and the isolation that so many students are feeling, and then add on to that, “Oh, this is my first time away from home ever in my life. I don’t know how to socialize. It’s challenging in a new way to do that. We know all about that. What are those programs that we could help bring some of the psychology, some of this neuroscience, to make everybody’s brain work better so that we do what we’re supposed to do to fill their brains with all this amazing information as their education here, or at any university or any college, middle school, wherever we are?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think as we’re talking through these things like breathwork, movement and walking, connection, social connection and relationships, I think that’s one of my concerns around the idea of “Let’s screen everybody to make sure we’re diagnosing anyone and everyone with anxiety”, because unfortunately, in the way our medical and mental health system works, that tends to be a linear process of “Okay, you’ve checked off these symptoms, now we’re giving you a diagnosis, and therefore now the solution comes in a pill bottle and/or go get some therapy.” And I’m not saying those things aren’t sometimes important, but what you’re talking about really should be the first line of recommendations. And my concern is that these generally are not. As a psychologist, I’m often the first one to tell a parent for themselves or their kid, “Okay, anxiety is an issue. Here are some things that we can do about that.” And I start talking about things like sleep, and movement, and food, and breath, and they’re going “Nobody’s ever talked to us about this before.” And that’s my concern is: How do we start to embed these things so that these really are the first level interventions that we’re giving to people?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Yeah, exactly. It’s too fast to just prescribe a pill. And some parents say, “Oh, don’t tell me about that. Just give me the pill, I need the pill to cure my child.” And I could understand why they might want that. It’s fast, and it’s easy to control. Whereas it’s harder to control your sleep. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes wading through both good and bad science that’s out there. But that long term knowledge that you will gain about yourself and what your timeframe is, that was one of my projects during the pandemic. I was like, “I’m home all the time, let me just see how long I really need to sleep to make my brain feel like it works better.” I wasn’t doing a clinical test on myself. I was just doing a check in: How do I feel? And I went from six and a half, seven hours a night, seven on a good night, to eight hours. And eight hours made me feel so much better! And this is simple. I don’t have children in the house so I had more freedom to do those kinds of experiments, but they are powerful. And even if you have children, you experiment on your children, with your children, it will change your life, I’m telling you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Absolutely. And I see there’s such an issue. So many parents and kids are under-slept. We think about the range for adults: Seven, eight hours for us. But kids, depending on their age range, may need many more than that, and they’re not getting it. And if you think about it, not sleeping enough, combined with not moving their bodies, combined with an overwhelming world and coming out of a pandemic, it’s like no wonder kids are so stressed, on social media all the time. And so to me, these are the foundations that I just find so many people are missing, not because they don’t want to do them, but because they just haven’t been aware that these are things that make a difference. And let’s touch on the sleep piece. Can you talk from a neuroscience standpoint again about the why? Because I think parents go, and even kids will go “Oh, yeah, yeah, sleep is important.” But why is sleep so important, especially as we think about anxiety and coping? Why is that so critical?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

So the kind of dramatic example that I like to give all of my students is: Do you realize that if you keep a subject from sleeping for too long, what happens? No, they don’t just get cranky. They die. Sleep is literally life affirming. It’s part of our survival. So if you think about it that way, think “Oh, those times, how many all-nighters did I do when I was in high school because I didn’t know any better?” That was taking a little bit off of our longevity, because what happens during sleep is something so, so powerful. You are literally recharging your brain to be able to work well. All of those metabolites that have built up, think of it as a garbage pail of buildup in your neurons, they get flushed out. So sleeping three or four hours a night, think of more and more garbage building up in your brain, night after night, day after day. And are you fresh? Are you able to get on top of things? Well, maybe with an espresso shot, but that is just masking the problem that you are getting duller and duller, because you have not allowed your brain to really refresh in this biologically relevant way. One of my best examples, my favorite example, comes from Matthew Walker, an expert on sleep from UC Berkeley, who did the all-nighter experiment. So he compared the brain performance and behavioral performance of a group of students who were determined to have slept for eight hours for sure. He didn’t cheat, he monitored them sleeping for eight hours. And then he monitored the other group staying up all night. The difference was that, for just a single night was between, the next day, learning for the group that slept for eight hours was on the A level. They were able to learn, to retain information so that the test, they got an A. The students that didn’t sleep for just one night, they learned 40% less. That earned them an F. So then went from an A to an F after a single all-nighter. So I think that always just motivates students who are trying to get the A with their staying up. They don’t realize that they are working against themselves.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And it’s a great example to use I think, even with older kids. It’s like, look, you want to do well in school, you want to do well in sports, you want to do well in your life. Sleep is an important piece of that. I am seeing more and more kids coming into the clinic who are getting less and less sleep. A big part of it is devices. It’s parents just not realizing that yeah, you actually need to have the devices out of their bedrooms at night. They’re kids, they’re not going to regulate that. Most adults don’t regulate that well, right? You can’t have them in there if you want them to be getting enough sleep. I mean, I have a lot of preteens and teens who will admit “You know, I get maybe three or four hours a night because I wake up to go to the bathroom, then I come back out, now I’m checking my notifications.” The devices need to not be there. I have seen that as a major driving factor in why even well-intentioned kids are getting less and less sleep today.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Yeah, that’s not surprising. I mean, there’s a double whammy there, because it’s not just them looking at their notifications, but the mere act of looking at a screen is activating a part of your visual system that naturally keeps you more awake. So by doing that, you’re disrupting your sleep even more beyond just the “Oh, I’m taking more time to look at my screen”, you are literally activating your brain to be like noon time, when it’s maybe 3am. And so people don’t realize that. And not to say there’s not a time to check your notifications, but do it in the morning. Don’t do it at night, getting ready for sleep, or absolutely not in the middle of the night. You’re going to just activate your brain, it’s going to be even harder to get back to sleep.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and I think that becomes this cycle that’s difficult to break then, especially for adults and kids who are like, “Oh, I have anxiety about sleeping. Okay, so I’m just going to scroll this now and look at this. Okay, now I’ve doubled down on that. Now I really can’t sleep. And now I’m like, oh, but I can’t fall asleep. I need….” and they just get into this cycle. And you’ve got to look for ways to break that because as you just shared, it’s such a problem. As we’re wrapping up here, I want to bring back this idea of neuroplasticity because I meet kids and adults, and most of the time, this messaging comes from adults to children, or adults tell themselves this: “Well, I’m just an anxious person. This is just who I am. This runs in my family. I’m just anxious, I’m neurotic, my kids are just over sensitive, over anxious. It’s just how it is.” I want to circle back to what we started with around this idea of neuroplasticity, and would love to have you just comment on that from the standpoint of the brain’s ability to change?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Yeah, I mean, I would say, for those people who label themselves as “I come from an anxious line of family,” I would say this is a great moment to bring in the idea of mindset, and how your own belief system can be so powerful for your brain, and it could be powerful in a positive way, and it could also be powerful in a negative way. If you label yourself as anxious, “There’s no way I can get out of this, this is just how the world is,” then that is how your world is going to be. However, if you open your mind to a different way of thought, a different way of believing, and opened your mind to the concept of brain plasticity that we know is a true kind of scientific phenomenon, you know that the brain is capable of lots and lots of amazing learning. It’s basically unencumbered, you can learn whatever you choose to learn. And what if you choose to learn the fact that you’re not anxious? You’re going to quell, and you’re not going to get rid of it, everybody’s going to be a little bit anxious because it’s part of our normal human emotions. But you are going to become the first in your family to master your anxiety. Maybe you’ll even be able to use that anxiety. Maybe anxiety isn’t the thing that pulls you down. Maybe you use the protective elements of your anxiety to create what I call in my book, “Superpowers of anxiety.” There is a mindset shift that I would like to share with the rest of the world. And that is such a powerful thing. It is, again, based on normal human learning, which is based on brain plasticity. That’s what learning is, is our ability to change and shift to something new. And you might say, “Well, what kind of superpower can come from my anxiety?” Let me just share with you my very favorite, there are 64 superpowers that I talk about in the book, but my very favorite is the superpower of empathy that comes from our own anxiety. And this is something I discovered on my own, exploring my own anxieties, which I did as I was writing this book. And I realized that growing up, my oldest form of anxiety is that form of social anxiety. I was a very shy young kid. Lots of children are shy. I was very, very shy, but I was always interested in school. And I always had the struggle. I was really interested in school, but I didn’t like to put my hand up and ask questions because of course, I was fearful of being told that I was stupid, I asked the wrong question, embarrassing myself. So I had to struggle for years, and years, and years, and years. But I went into academia, and I found myself at the front of the classroom one day, because I’m in academia. And I suddenly realized that I have this superpower, because I knew that I had my students that were raising their hands, but I knew that there were three or four times more students that had questions that were too scared to raise their hands, because that’s who I was. And so I ended up coming early, staying late, and making sure I would answer all those questions. I had discovered my own empathy superpower. That will be different for you because the form of anxiety that’s most common will be different from mine. But you will be able to know what it feels like, know what that looks like, and then turn it to the outside and simply help somebody else that you see in that same situation. You know what happens when you express empathy in the form of compassion? You get a hit of dopamine. So I like to say come for the empathy, stay for the dopamine. And that becomes your superpower of anxiety.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Oh, I love it. So great. And currently, the stats for kids with anxiety in particular tell us that with the standard treatment, which includes pharmaceuticals and cognitive behavior therapy, fewer than 50% of kids get to the point where they have symptom reduction. And then of that 50%, way fewer two years later are still experiencing symptom reduction. So that’s a depressing statistic, but what it says to me on the flip side is: What an opportunity we have to help reframe this, to help kids, parents, and adults understand how to approach this in a different way, and how to leverage all the important lifestyle things you’re talking about. Because whether you find therapy or medication beneficial or not, you still need these foundations. And I think this is what’s missing in the conversation, and you’ve done this in such a beautiful way by laying that out today. I just really appreciate you shining a spotlight on this because this is clearly so needed.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Absolutely. I totally agree. And still trying on my end to find, as you’re saying, creative ways to get this message out, because it’s one thing to talk about it on a podcast, and it’s another to really get the people that we want to, to really adopt it, to know what to do. What is that step one? Where do I start exactly? It seems so overwhelming sometimes. But that is what I think all of us, as a community, are working towards.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Absolutely. And to that, I want to make sure that people know where they can find your book. I know it came out last year, but the paperback is available now. So tell us where we can get that, and also, if people want to learn more about you and your work, where should they go?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Yeah, they should go to wendysuzuki.com. You can learn all about my research, see all my TED Talks, and videos, and podcasts. You could also go to goodanxiety.com where you can get links to both the hardback and the paperback, and it’s also available on all major outlets, the book, Good Anxiety.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Awesome. Love it. Wendy, if somebody’s listening and says “What’s one thing I should start, one thing I can do right now to support my anxiety?” What’s one thing would you have them do?

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

I would have them take an intentional 10-minute walk today, and ask yourself: How do I feel? Has this helped me, this 10-minute walk that I know is creating a bubble bath of neurochemicals in my brain? That awareness is the first step to getting to good anxiety.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love it. Dr. Wendy Suzuki, thank you so much for being here and sharing your work with us. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks as always to all of you for being here and for listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.