More Than Anxiety

Ep 100 - From Overwhelmed to Calm and In Control: How To Retrain Your Brain

• Megan Devito • Episode 100

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In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How our caveman brain prioritizes threats
  • What the Reticular Activating System (RAS) is and how it works
  • Why you might feel overwhelmed by negative news
  • How to train your brain to focus on what matters
  • The power of visualization
  • How to embrace uncertainty

This episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast dives into why our brains crave certainty in an uncertain world. You'll learn about the Reticular Activating System (RAS) and how it filters information, and how it can sometimes focus on negativity.

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You know you're overwhelmed, burned out, sick to death of work but also trying to do everyting for everyone at home. TAKE THIS QUIZ to find out why you're so overwhelmed and what to do about it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety cycle that keeps them frustrated and stuck. Get ready for a lighthearted approach that will change what you think, how you feel and what you believe about yourself. This podcast is full of simple steps, a lot of truth, talk and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident, calm, and ready to live. Let's get to it. Before we get into this week's episode, I want to talk to you as a mom of teenagers and a former high school teacher.

Megan Devito:

I've seen firsthand the changes in how teenagers feel about going out, about having fun, taking risks, and how they feel about themselves and their futures. They are bombarded with information, from the news to what kid in their math class did on Snapchat or what was said about them in an Instagram post, the testing and the academic pressure and the athletics in school. It's all overwhelming, and they spend hour after hour face down on a phone to connect with their friends who only live a block away. It's a lot for most adults, so imagine doing it with a brain that isn't fully developed, a tidal wave of hormones and a camera in your face, which means what you might want to pass off as normal teenage stress or anxiety doesn't look or feel the same as it used to. The game has changed. The expectations are bigger and the information overload is real. As a mom or a dad, it's really heartbreaking and scary to watch your kids struggle. You do whatever it takes to let them see how smart and capable they are, to show them the potential they have. If they could just get out of their heads. But you're not sure how to do it.

Megan Devito:

I have some good news. Teenagers are still teenagers and they want to feel included, heard, confident and have crazy fun. They want to spend time with their friends and challenge themselves and you just to see what they can do. They just need to feel safe enough to go for it. Kids need connection to discover that they can do hard things, uncomfortable things, and grow from messing up. They need to learn, discover that they can do hard things, uncomfortable things, and grow from messing up. They need to learn to go big or go home and do it all again the next day, and they need to know that they're not the only one who's feeling overwhelmed and anxious and defeated, but they have to believe it's possible, and that starts with them believing in themselves. Wouldn't you agree that teenagers need support, encouragement and to learn how to feel confident and calm? Now more than ever, you can help them do this by enrolling them in my teen group coaching program that begins on August 12th this year, coming up in just a few weeks. It's super simple. All you have to do is message me. I am @CoachMeganDevito on Instagram and on Facebook and on threads. Let me know you're interested and I'll set up a time to talk with you, but for now, enjoy the episode.

Megan Devito:

Hey there, welcome to episode 100 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. I cannot believe that I made it to 100 episodes. Coming up with 100 different topics actually was going to be a big thing for me. Back when I first started, I thought there's no way that's going to happen. But here we are in the 100th episode and I'm so excited that you're here and that you could join me today. If this is your first time, welcome. It's always great to have new people. And if this is your 100th time, you guys, thank you so much for sticking with me and hanging out. I hope that you have enjoyed what you've heard so far and we're just going to get real into what we're talking about this week. I just want you to know that it is, what, four days after the president decided he was not going to run for reelection, we're a little over a week and a half out from an assassination attempt.

Megan Devito:

We've had a lot going on in the world and this didn't just start in the last couple of weeks. I mean, let's go back a little bit. We've been through a pandemic, we've been through all kinds of chaos over in Europe and in the Middle East. So, speaking mostly to my American listeners right now, it's been a ride, it's been crazy, and we've been through it recently and when I say recently, I really mean for the last five to 10 years. I mean from election stuff, political drama, all the things that are going on, and if you're listening to me, in Europe or the Middle East or anywhere else in the world, it's wild out there, you guys, it's crazy. So if you are feeling overwhelmed by the news and by constant change which, if you don't watch the news, just changes in your normal everyday behavior from being quarantined or being like going through social distancing, maybe you're going through layoffs at work, changes all around you and it's really part of life. So, yes, you're not alone. We hear that all the time and we could do that cheesy we're all in this together thing, which is only good with high school musical, but here we are. That's really what I want to talk to you about today.

Megan Devito:

Your brain, my brain, our brains crave certainty and really modern life doesn't allow a lot of that for us, partly because we have a 24-7 newsfeed going all the time on our phones or on our TVs or when you get in the car. We know what's going on here, like where I live, and you know what's going on where you live. But we also know what's happening in Afghanistan and in you know, like the subarctic and all these different places, and it's a lot. But your brain likes things to be certain. So that's really a mismatch that causes a lot of problems. It leads to a ton of anxiety, a lot of overwhelm and inability to think. You're constantly stressed. So what we want to do is we want to talk today about how you can retrain your brain to focus on what matters and to focus on what you want to see, even when everything around you is kind of going batshit crazy. So that's where we're going with this episode. You're going to want to stick with me through the episode because it's a big deal. I can't make the chaos stop, but I can help you get through it.

Megan Devito:

If we've not met before, my name is Megan. I'm a life coach and I help women and, oftentimes, teenagers. I have a group for teenagers coming up. I help them deal with how anxiety feels in their body and create an off ramp so they don't start thinking and going down rabbit holes of overthinking, making themselves feel more anxious, and then they feel you know, you feel more anxious, you start thinking more. So I really help them calm their bodies and think clearly and start taking action steps towards what it is they want. Coaches help people achieve their goals, and that's my job. So what I'm going to do today is help you guys create some security so that you can start to feel better and not overthink.

Megan Devito:

So let's talk about what's actually going on in your brain when all this is happening. Remember, we're going back to the idea that your brain craves certainty, but I want to go back way before the pandemic, way before all those other things that have happened, and I want to talk about your caveman aunt and uncle or your caveman grandparents for a minute. So if we can go back to caveman times, some people will call this your primitive brain, some people will call it your lizard brain, I call it the caveman brain. It doesn't matter, it's all the same thing.

Megan Devito:

What happens is this part of you that's still inside your brain that developed millions and millions of years ago, didn't really keep up with the times. It doesn't know it's 2024. It doesn't know that it's not dangerous to have a bonfire in your backyard, because back in the beginning, when they didn't know what bonfires were, they could maybe just go stick their head in a bonfire. They didn't know. It doesn't know that saber-toothed tigers are extinct and that you're not going to get eaten, and it doesn't know that you could just go to the grocery store to get food. It doesn't think. It doesn't keep up. All it does is react, and its job is to keep you safe and alive. This is also the fastest part of your brain, which means as soon as it detects any kind of threat, it makes you feel anxious, it tells a different part of your brain to pump you full of a bunch of hormones and then leaves you there trying to figure out what the heck is wrong there, trying to figure out what the heck is wrong. So part of the things that you experience when you're anxious is your brain reacting to things from a long time ago that it learned were dangerous. Now, obviously, this isn't true. If you've been through some big, like big, scary things in your life, if you've been through abusive situations, if you've been through something like a house fire, if you've been through a car accident, anything like that, your brain learned that in the present tense. But a lot of the things that make us feel anxious or that we're afraid of are prehistoric way, way back. So that's where that came from.

Megan Devito:

Another part of your brain that I really want to pay attention to today is called your reticular activating system, and its job is basically to be a giant fishing net for your brain. I first heard about this on Mel Robbins' YouTube channel or maybe it was on one of her podcasts, I'm not sure, but she talked about this. I don't think I'd ever heard of it before, but it makes total sense. So think about a net or a sieve, something like you would strain macaroni noodles out of when you were pouring the water out and holding the noodles. So if you think about a sieve or a net.

Megan Devito:

This is what your reticular activation system does. It uses that kind of a net filtration so that when you look around and you take in all of the stimuli through your five senses, you're not overwhelmed. I want you to picture it this way If I said, hey, go outside and look around. And then you came back in and I said what did you see? If you look to the upper right corner of your vision, in the tallest tree, what was up there, and describe it to me. Well, unless somebody told you to look for that to begin with, you're probably like I don't have any idea. Without your reticular activation system, or if you didn't have the reticular activation system, you would take in so much information. You would know where everything was, what it tasted like, smelled like, felt like, sounded like all of those different senses. You'd pull all of that in and your brain would not be able to process any information. It would be overwhelmed all the time.

Megan Devito:

So what this system does is it filters out the things that are important to you to keep you alive. So one of our primal needs is really safety, and this started again way back with our caveman ancestors. So one of the things for safety that it did was, it said, if you get too close to a cliff, you might fall off and die. You won't fall off and fly like that bird over there, you'll just fall off and land at the bottom. So you might notice that if you get too close to something that's really high up, your body starts to pull you backward. That's your reticular activation system saying hey, we already learned, this is a threat. We see the cliff, that's a threat, move back. Another thing that you can do that's more I mean. Another thing that it does that's more current is when, let's say, you're at a concert and there's tons and tons of people around and you're listening to music and all of a sudden you hear your name and you turn around. Maybe they were talking to you or maybe they weren't, but your brain knows that when you hear your name turn around. The same thing happens if you're a parent and somebody yells mom and you're like what? And then you realize that you didn't bring your kids with you. These are all ways that your reticular activation system works for you.

Megan Devito:

Now, another way that I was talking about with someone the other day was, let's say that you go out and you want to buy a Lexus GX. I actually had to Google what cars are really like popular right now, because I don't know much about cars. I'm just happy with one that gets good gas mileage. So I Googled it. It's an okay looking car. But let's say you want a green one, you want a green Lexus GX, and you're like that car is amazing. I saw it one time when I was in Chicago and I'm totally going to get that car. Nobody has one of these things. I just saw it that one time you go out, you buy the Lexus GX and all of a sudden you're driving down the road and they're everywhere and you're like what happened? I just bought this car, there was none, and now there's a ton. Oh, your reticular activation system just realized that was important to you. And now there's a ton.

Megan Devito:

Oh, your reticular activation system just realized that was important to you and so you could find your car. It started looking for them. So now your brain notices them. So sort of this idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy or finding what you're looking for. And this can work for you but it can also work against you. So when you have a day where you're like everything bad always happens to me. Your brain's like check, got it. Find all the bad things. We don't want it to do that. This is what's happening right now. When you're getting you know every time you go to work, you're like something happens, I'm positive, I'm going to get fired. So your brain just starts looking for evidence that you're going to get fired. Or every time I say something, people roll their eyes and think I'm an idiot. Your brain will literally look for people rolling their eyes, even if they're not listening to you. What we want to do is we want to change what it focuses on.

Megan Devito:

So if it's taking in all of this information, if it's taking in all of these things, it can become really overstimulated and overwhelmed. You feel more anxious, first of all because the news is sometimes scary. There are people being laid off from their jobs. You don't want to have people upset with you. This all goes back to that cave man need to stay in the group. If you get shut outside the cave, a million years ago you were going to freeze to death and starve. Well, now you might just get your feelings hurt. It's not the same thing. Your brain reacts and your body reacts the same way.

Megan Devito:

So I want to tell you a quick story about a client that I was working with last year, and one of the things that we talked about was her feeling really overwhelmed and anxious about the things going on in the world, and it's it's such a thing right now. I feel like almost every, at least once a week, I'm on a coaching call with someone and they're like but have you seen the news? Like, what are we going to do about this? It's really scary out there and right, I'm not going to tell you there's not things going on, but I was coaching this woman and one of the things that we talked about and that had really stressed her out and make her feel very anxious and like she had to solve a lot of problems in the past was from the previous election cycle, so the 2020 election. She felt like she had to read it to stay on top of things and, yes, be informed. But you don't have to binge politics. I mean, unless that's your game and I'll admit that sometimes I really like it but if it's making you feel anxious and stressed, you don't have to watch. But it can feel really necessary to watch if you feel anxious. So I'm coaching her and we're talking about.

Megan Devito:

All of this information is coming in, and especially the negative news. So every time she pulled up anything whether it was the news on TV, whether it was social media and in particular social media because the algorithm gets involved, that part of your brain, that RAS, starts to find everything that you don't want to see. So she was seeing more of the political garbage that she didn't want to see, partly because of the algorithm, but also a lot even when she wasn't on that, because it was all around her, because her brain was focused on it. So what we want to do is remember that we can choose our thoughts and when you're dealing with changing your reticular activation system or that RAS, you want to choose your thoughts and remember your brain doesn't know the difference between a thought and the fact.

Megan Devito:

So if you think something, your brain automatically believes that it's true. If it seems dangerous, it will tell you to go into fight or flight. It won't tell you, but it'll put you into fight or flight. Where it floods your body with all of those hormones, you know, you get a big shot of adrenaline, you get cortisol. Suddenly you're shaking and your heart's beating and you can't think clearly. That's just because your brain believed a thought.

Megan Devito:

But you get to choose what you believe based on the thoughts that you think. That doesn't mean that you can choose every thought that comes into your head. Your brain's gonna come up with some crazy stuff. You don't have to believe those thoughts. You can say well, that's one thing. I mean, that was one thought. It doesn't mean anything about you. It doesn't mean it's an omen. It doesn't even mean it's true. It just means that your brain offered up some random thing that it came up with.

Megan Devito:

So what we're going to do is we're going to retrain your brain, retrain your RAS, to feel calm or to notice things that feel good. And this is a super simple but also really super fun thing that I do with my coaching, because your brain doesn't know if you're thinking something and it's true, or you're thinking something and writing a really nice story. We're going to use that system error. I guess you could call it or brain problem or brain. I don't know if it's a problem, maybe it's a great thing. So we're going to use that part of your brain and we're going to think about what you do want instead of what you don't want. You spend a lot of time noticing what you don't want so you can stay safe. But when you teach your brain to think about what you do want, on purpose, through visualization, through journaling, through just daydreaming in general, your brain starts looking for more of it.

Megan Devito:

So one of the activities that I really like to do when I'm coaching someone who's feeling overwhelmed, who notices they think maybe they think they have terrible luck, maybe they think that everything, is everything is terrifying. The news is all bad. We start directing their brain in the direction that we want it to go. If you do not drive your brain where you want it to go, it will drive you right off of a cliff. So you have to choose those thoughts. So one of the ways that I do that is through visualization.

Megan Devito:

Sometimes I'll have my clients close their eyes and I'll say, okay, I want you to picture exactly what you want. Let's get really into it. Let's start seeing what it would look like, what would it smell like, and I guide them through that process until they're like, oh, that's nice. So then we say, okay, let's start finding evidence. Let's do an Easter egg hunt and start picking up that evidence, picking up those Easter eggs to see how we can find more of that in your life. When you tell your brain to look for it, it will look for it. So we focus on best case scenario instead of worst case scenario, without toxic positivity or living in la-la land where everything is pretend, because using your brain to find what you want doesn't mean it's not true. It just means you want to see it. We're not pretending like everything's great. There are some crappy things going out there. You're not going to positively think your way out of a war in Gaza. You're not going to positively think your way out of a war in Gaza. You're not going to positively think your way out of your grandmother passing. It doesn't happen. But you can find other good things that are happening at the same time. That's what we're going for, so what we want to do.

Megan Devito:

The final thing I want to talk about is talk about accepting uncertainty, because we know that part of what's happening with your brain here is that it wants to know exactly what happens next, and that's great. Except, do you actually want to know what happened next? What happens next, I think? Sometimes we think we want to know because we could be proactive and prevent it, and maybe that's true some of the time, but for me and I'm guessing maybe for some of you too that's true some of the time, but for me and I'm guessing maybe for some of you too that's not actually the case. Because do you really want to know what happens next? Because there are a lot of things you can't control. Another thing your brain really loves is control. So we want to get used to the idea of we don't know, but we can decide what we think about it. We can decide how we react to it. So I don't know about you, but if this sounds really good, like, wait a second, it's that easy. I literally can sit and think about other things and choose where my brain goes the answer is yes, if that sounds really good.

Megan Devito:

It's so simple to reach out to me. All you have to do is jump on social media. I am coach Megan DeVito on Facebook, in my Facebook group, on threads on Instagram and on LinkedIn, so you can find me in YouTube. You can find me anywhere on the internet at coach Megan DeVito, or you can just email me. It's Megan at Megan DeVitocom. I made this super simple for y'all, so reach out.

Megan Devito:

Let's talk about what you want to see in your life instead of what you don't want to see, so that we can get you out of that place of feeling overwhelmed by your life, by news, by all the things that are going on, and start to feel calmer, so that you notice your body relaxes, you start to feel more certain, that like no, you know what. I got this. I can totally get through this. You guys, it's been a wild ride for a few years and we're still here and you can focus on how bad it was and how scary it was and how you never want to do it again. Or you can focus on okay, I'm here, I get to move forward.

Megan Devito:

What did I learn? How do I want to feel about today? Not how do I want to feel about the past or how do I want to feel about the future. How do I want to feel about today? Drive your brain, tell it where you are going and if I don't talk to you beforehand, I will be back next week to talk to you more about how you can feel calm, how you can feel confident, how you can feel in control and love your life. All right, take care. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel calm, to stop overthinking and have a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. I'll talk to you soon.