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Let’s break the rules here. The first 5 of these Podcasts get right into practical help. Only after that I get around the long boring, but important stuff on what Anxiety is and does to your body. If you are suffering from anxiety-YOU DAMN WELL KNOW WHAT IT IS!
Let’s fix it!
I created this series as a reaction to all the pop-psychology and pseudo-science advice on the Internet. Patients mentioning these posts make me tired and grouchy.
I am a noted and accomplished clinical psychologist, a scientist and a clinician. These podcasts cut through those weeds of bad advice and give you very usable, practical approaches to calm your ANXIETY. If you want to quickly calm your stress and anxiety, listen in.
The techniques and approaches here are solidly based on the best practices and research in mental health and on the analysis of 6200 successful cases of coping with anxiety. Each episode gives doable techniques to help you NOW! These easy-to-listen podcasts are reassuringly life changing!
00;00;06;09 - 00;00;27;22
Dr. John Mayer
Welcome to these podcasts. I'm doctor John Mayer. And my first episode, I'm going to lay out my successful approach to helping people with their anxiety. You get to know me, my experience and my techniques. So here goes. I'm John Mayer. No, not that John Mayer. You don't want to hear me sing, and I can't play a single musical instrument.
00;00;27;24 - 00;00;46;11
Dr. John Mayer
That's why I do this. And this is all I've done in my professional life. Back to playing an instrument. Something I absolutely have no talent in. Along with I can't fix your car. Build you a deck. Figure out electricity or 100 other vital jobs in our world. Hell, I couldn't even figure out how
00;00;46;11 - 00;00;50;02
Dr. John Mayer
do these podcasts. I had to hire someone to do that.
00;00;50;05 - 00;01;14;14
Dr. John Mayer
But I'm a practicing clinical psychologist. And I am very good at that. In case you're interested. I grew up in the inner city of Chicago. Had great stable parents that were lower middle class. I wasn't a troubled kid. Sure, I had tough times growing up in a major urban community. But I've been blessed with excellent mental health my entire life.
00;01;14;16 - 00;01;21;19
Dr. John Mayer
Maybe all of this is why my patients praised me for my blunt, straightforward approach. I am
00;01;21;19 - 00;01;42;01
Dr. John Mayer
as passionate about mental health as I was in my days of getting my doctorate at Northwestern University Medical School. I haven't lost that passion, energy or idealism in all these years. That zeal led me to create this podcast. I see things in my work each day that make me cringe.
00;01;42;03 - 00;01;45;00
Dr. John Mayer
This sea of weak advice floating around causes
00;01;45;00 - 00;02;06;05
Dr. John Mayer
me to be on fire, to give people useful tools to help them with their anxiety. If you want someone to hold your hand, recommend some coloring book. Or sing Kumbaya with you. Then please go somewhere else. But if you want to hear from someone that solves problems and helps people attain a happy and healthy life.
00;02;06;07 - 00;02;36;03
Dr. John Mayer
Stick around and I'll be tackling the wide range of aspects of anxiety on these podcasts. That's what I'm noted for taking complex problems and breaking them down to fundamental solutions. Now let me begin to explain my approach. I will start with something we all know. Anxiety sucks. It's a bitch. But guess what? It's not going anywhere. Life will always have stresses.
00;02;36;06 - 00;03;04;04
Dr. John Mayer
You may have been fooled by social media babble that you can eliminate anxiety, but that's wrong. Stress is a fact of life, and all forms of life experience stress. Picture a tiny seed in the ground, the nutrients of the soil. Coddle it, protected feed it, and then it begins to grow. It's life. While under the nurturing blanket of the earth is pretty good.
00;03;04;06 - 00;03;34;20
Dr. John Mayer
And it grows and grows. As it gets bigger, it faces its destiny and breaks through the topsoil, and almost instantly, the stresses of being above ground. Work to destroy this tiny plant. Imagine in your mind's eye this tiny green sprout, just millimeters big, peeking through the ground. What happens? Rain. Wind. Animals. Humans trample it, smashing it back underneath the surface.
00;03;34;23 - 00;04;02;19
Dr. John Mayer
But in spite of these stresses or hardships, the little plant persists and becomes a stark still facing these same stresses constantly. But new resources like the sun and even now the rain, help it to withstand the stresses. And that stock keeps growing and getting stronger. Sure, it could be destroyed from one great trauma, but it struggles to grow and it gets stronger.
00;04;02;22 - 00;04;31;17
Dr. John Mayer
It has good days and bad days. Its stock can now bend in high winds, and it may even withstand a shoe or two. Biologists will tell you that those stressors had a positive effect. They made our growing plants strong, strong enough for something miraculous to happen. It grows buds, and those buds face their own hardships, but they persevere because the stock is strong and will support the buds.
00;04;31;19 - 00;05;00;16
Dr. John Mayer
Then, most miraculous of all, the buds become beautiful flowers and their beauty, fragrance and nectar into our world. And even then, those darn bees come along and steal our treasures to serve their own needs. Now, before I get emails from people blasting me for dissing the wonderful bees that we are losing in droves and in so important in our ecosystem, it was a metaphor.
00;05;00;18 - 00;05;25;09
Dr. John Mayer
I love those little bastards. As long as they keep those stingers away from my skin. Now wasp, on the other hand, do they serve any greater good? Human life is no different from the time we struggle to wiggle out of the birth canal. We face a similar journey of coping with stresses until we become beautiful flowers. Okay, back on topic.
00;05;25;12 - 00;05;52;00
Dr. John Mayer
The point I'm making here is a very important one about stressing and anxiety. It's part of life. And to think you can live a life totally stress or anxiety free is b s any book or program that states you can live anxiety free is also be an ass. And if you see something like that, run for the hills.
00;05;52;03 - 00;06;26;11
Dr. John Mayer
And like my little story about flower anxiety and stress has some positive benefits, it can signal that something is wrong. This reminds me of my first lecture at northwestern. It was given by the dean of the med school, and he stunned all us idealistic, fresh faced students by starting the lecture with the shocking statement. Pain is good. We all looked at each other bewildered because we are all here to learn how to end people's pain.
00;06;26;13 - 00;06;51;15
Dr. John Mayer
He went on to tease us by exaggerating his point of how pain is so useful. And as future doctors, pain is such a great tool for us. Pain, he insisted, helps us care for whatever is wrong. The pain of anxiety is the same. It tells us something is wrong and his presence is the first step in taking care of what is wrong.
00;06;51;18 - 00;07;26;17
Dr. John Mayer
Make no mistake, there's something wrong is a condition we can end, fix or eliminate. That leads me to all my basic principles. Basic principle number one. Anxiety is a part of life. Which leads me to principle number two. Don't fight anxiety. Surrender. And let me throw in principle number three, as I was just talking about so strongly, we can fix whatever is wrong or broken in our lives.
00;07;26;20 - 00;07;51;29
Dr. John Mayer
Think about this common reaction to feeling anxiety. I'm anxious, so I'm going to grit my teeth, fight this and get rid of it. Wrong. I tell people I'm anxious. I know what this is, and I'm going to take care of myself. This is kind of what led me to this podcast. There are lots of wrong self-help messages out there that doubt and anxiety for good.
00;07;52;06 - 00;08;17;28
Dr. John Mayer
You can live stress free and so on and so on. And yet they get the big B s from me. Okay, so we can't end stress. So what can we do? We can avoid it. And I can't wait for you to hear in an upcoming podcast what I have to say about how avoidance gets such a bad rap in our world.
00;08;18;00 - 00;08;51;11
Dr. John Mayer
We can divert it. We can contain it, eliminates triggers and otherwise keep it from dominating our lives. I'll talk about this throughout these podcasts. Finally, let me talk about where anxiety comes from. All anxiety comes from one source and one source only the unknown. Everything else that gets associated with anxiety are all subcategories of the unknown. Think about it.
00;08;51;13 - 00;09;22;09
Dr. John Mayer
Fears. We fear what we don't know or don't understand. Threats the same. What will happen to us or the unknown? Performance anxiety or public speaking? The unknown of whether we'll fail. Okay. Failure. Yep. The unknown. Death. We fear. What's next? If anything, you're again the unknown. And on and on. All are based on the fear of the unknown.
00;09;22;12 - 00;10;20;13
Dr. John Mayer
Proof. What are the scariest horror movies? Not the slasher movies. Those are crime stories with jump scares. The most frightening horror movies scare us with fears of things we don't understand, or we can't see. I know I write screenplays and consult on films. Now that leads me to a fundamental key to handling anxiety. As much as you can make the unknowns in your life known, and I will maintain to you that you have the intelligence, education, life experience, including negative experiences, resources including me, and imagination and creativity to handle anything life throws at you.
00;10;20;16 - 00;10;48;16
Dr. John Mayer
These are tools that make the unknown known my job. Whether on these podcasts or in therapy, is to help you draw upon all these resources to make the unknown. No. In the next episode, I'm going to defy all savvy marketing strategy and give you specific ways you can handle your anxiety. Instead of waiting until episode nine and keep you coming back.
00;10;48;18 - 00;10;59;24
Dr. John Mayer
See you then.