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Welcome to Episode 149 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get into today's episode, I want to give you one more chance to let me know what your favorite episode or episodes are. Or, as one listener did, give me your top ten. A friend of mine had suggested that since we are coming up on 150 episodes, it might be a good thing to have a list curated for a new listeners so they didn't have to go searching through all the back episodes.

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And that's what I'd like to do when I dropped episode 150 is also drop a list of the ten must listen episodes for a new listener. You can do that by either sending me an email or using the contact form on thenonanxiousleader. com. And now without further Ado, here is Episode 149, More Tools to Help You Self Regulate.

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In his article, How to Be Happier Without Really Trying, Eric Barker recounts an incident that happened two years ago. I'm going to read it verbatim because his writing is so good.

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"The meeting was supposed to be boring. In 2019, a bunch of academics and think tank policy folks were gathered for what should have been an uneventful conference of long winded PowerPoint and bad coffee. Sadly, it would not stay that dull and predictable. The presenter finishes his talk. A colleague comments that due to how close the presenter was to the issues he was describing, there would be a lot of extra scrutiny and challenges ahead, and the presenter totally flips out.

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He felt this was insulting. Now he's yelling, demanding an apology. But now the colleague is offended. He was just making a point, and now he feels attacked, so he refuses to apologize. The presenter starts packing up his things in a Huff, ready to leave the conference.

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The other attendees try to calm the two down but are utterly ineffective. The two men both storm out, shouting the whole way. Now it isn't too surprising that something like this could happen at a conference. But this was a meeting of global experts on conflict resolution, UN envoys and high level peace treaty specialists. As Columbia University Professor Peter Coleman recounts, one beautiful bit of irony is that an hour earlier, one of the participants had presented an excellent paper on the power of identity issues causing stalemates in Middle East conflicts.

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And here we all were in the midst of one unfolding, and we were helpless. It was amazing. All of our inspired attempts at resolution fell flat". The more I study family systems theory, the more I realize that self regulation is the key to applying this in real situations. In Barker's story, we have conflict resolution specialists who cannot self regulate and who end up getting into a conflict of Wills that has them both stomping off in a Huff.

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I remember listening to a woman who was saying that she had done her own work to understand her family of origin and what was behind her own reactivity. Even so, after all that effort, she was still triggered by her teenage children and could not self regulate. It's great to understand what's going on inside of us, but it's only helpful if we can apply that in anxious moments. What I have found helpful is knowing that the most important thing I can do in that moment is to stop the amygdala hijack to allow my thinking brain, my neocortex to actually intervene.

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This can only happen when we pause and create space so that we can think we can be self aware of what's happening in the situation and inside of us as well, so that then we can be intentional in our response.

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In his article, Barker describes this as emotional efficacy. That is, the ability to have real and full emotions, even strong ones, without them running the show without them taking over us. It's self awareness at its best. It's understanding what's going on inside of us in that anxious moment.

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One way I like to think of this is what Steven calls integrity in the moment of choice. If self differentiation is about knowing your goals and values and being able to express them in healthy ways, even in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure, then that is also the definition of integrity. It's being able to act in accordance with our own values in the most anxious moments. When we react emotionally, that is usually not the result. It's also important to note that adaptivity is a form of reactivity that is, when we are adaptive when we give in to others without expressing what we feel, what we believe when we give into the surrounding togetherness pressure, we are also not acting in accordance with our values.

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We may be avoiding a conflict of Wills, but we are not expressing ourselves in healthy ways. In his article, Barker describes processes or techniques that we can use to self regulate in anxious moments. He is referring to both those that occur in interactions with others and those that occur simply in our minds. I'm going to focus more on the former, but I think it's also helpful to use when we get stuck inside of our minds and we can't escape the anxious thoughts that bounce around.

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The first suggestion that Barker has is radical acceptance. I think of this as mindfulness, which is accepting the present without judgment. The most important thing that this does is it reduces the chance that we are going to react with denial or blame. When we are triggered by an anxious situation, we tend to focus on the stimulus that is what the other has done to trigger us, but that tends to keep us focusing on the other instead of looking inward to understand what is going on inside of us, it keeps us from self awareness.

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This will more naturally lead to blaming the other for starting things in the first place.

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Accepting the present without judgment. Accepting what is going on helps us to be more self aware and intentional, as well as enabling us to avoid reacting immediately. Barker suggests memorizing one of these phrases. I can't change what's already happened. Fighting the past only blinds me to my present.

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The present is the only moment I have control over. For me, it's been more like just pausing and asking myself what's going on here. That helps me to focus on what's going on inside of me and perhaps what's really going on inside of the other. Regardless, this radical acceptance of the presence is the key to self regulating and then responding in a healthy way.

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The second technique you can use to self regulate is what Parker calls controlled relaxation, and this is from a technique called Progressive Muscle Relaxation, or PMR. The idea here is to start by clenching your fist for 5 seconds and then releasing them quickly and that quickly part is important so you can feel the contrast between what it means to clench them, what tight means and what it means to feel loose or relaxed. Then take 15 seconds to focus on the difference. You'll want to choose a quote unquote magic word to be the cue for this form of relaxation.

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So then you use your magic word and then you repeat this process of clenching and unclenching your fist.

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Your magic word can be anything that works for you, something like relax or breathe or pause or Jesus. You then want to repeat this process for all the major muscle groups in your body noticing the contrast between tight and tense and loose and relaxed. The idea here is to develop a habit where you can relax yourself in an anxious moment on queue. If you find yourself having great difficulty relaxing and anxious moments, this is well worth practicing.

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Practice may not make perfect, but practice will help you do better in the moment. If you were to do this daily, it would become a habit. The next technique that Barker recommends is to focus on the present, again, I think of this in terms of mindfulness. This is the next logical step after radical acceptance.

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Parker notes that one of the things we tend to do in anxious moments is leave the present. We're either focusing on a disastrous future that is experiencing failure in advance or we're going back to a past that can't be changed but remains unresolved in our minds those unforgiven hurts or those regrets that we might have. One thing I find helpful in an anxious moment is to just look at the other person and try to do so by understanding what's going on with them while I might not be able to do this, it helps get the focus off myself and helps me to accept the present without judgment.

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Barker quotes the book Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance.

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" Am I time traveling in the future, worrying about something that might happen or planning something that might happen? Am I time traveling in the past, reviewing mistakes, reliving bad experiences, or thinking about how my life could have been under different circumstances? Or am I in the present really paying attention to what I'm doing, thinking, and feeling?" Parker suggests, when you are in this situation trying to focus on the present, you can ask yourself, Where am I right now? Whether you are reactive or adaptive, this form of mindfulness will help you think more clearly.

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It will enable you to think through how you want to respond. This is just as important when you're adaptive because you are likely to just give in. It may end the conflict at the moment, but you will feel bad about yourself later, so you want to be intentional. You want to respond in a healthy way, whether you're feeling highly emotional and want to react or you're feeling highly emotional and want to give in. Another suggestion that Barker has is distraction.

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While this is a temporary measure, it may be helpful in the moment. If you're ruminating about something and you can't get your mind off it, try to do something that will distract you. Take a walk, read a story, watch a funny show. It's not always possible to do this when you are in an anxious moment with another person, but you always have the option to say I need a moment to be by myself. Sometimes you are not able to do this, but if you can and if you need that time to avoid reactivity, just do it.

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So now that we have these different suggestions, different techniques from Barker, how do we put it all together?

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Here is a four step process that you can use to respond in a healthy way in the moment. And it uses the acronym REST that stands for Relax, evaluate, set an intention and take action. The first two are about progressive muscle relaxation or PMR and mindfulness, and the second two are about responding in a healthy way. Of course, this is easier to do when you are by yourself and you're caught up in your own anxieties. But I also believe you can do this in an anxious moment with another person.

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The relaxed part comes when we are able to stop and allow our thinking mind. Allow our neocortex to engage so that we don't just respond with our emotions. It's the way to avoid the amygdala hijack using that technique of progressive muscle relaxation. If you have trained yourself, then you are able to say your magic word, and then you can relax and think. You can relax and be self aware and intentional.

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If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that the way I do that is to breathe deeply by just breathing deeply. It helps me to engage my parasympathetic nervous system, my rest and digest system while simultaneously dampening my fight or flight response. That sympathetic nervous system. Whatever you use, it is that pause that makes the biggest difference if you are able to pause and not react at all. If you get in the habit of not responding immediately to anxious moments, you give yourself a chance.

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The second step is evaluate, and this is the mindfulness part. It's accepting the present without judgment. It's having some measure of objectivity as much as it is possible to try to understand what's being said, what's being asked for, and maybe perhaps what is going on with the other person. Setting an intention is just what it says. It's the intentionality part of self awareness and intentionality.

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I start going through what I might possibly say that takes responsibility for self and expresses it in a healthy way while giving others emotional space to be themselves. Sometimes this takes a while, but give yourself time. Don't feel rushed into a response. Allow yourself to really think this through to say what you believe, to say what you feel. If you need to say it out loud.

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I need a moment to think about this before I respond. It's okay to do that, and then finally, the last is to actually take action, to say what you believe while giving the other emotional space to be different, to say things in a healthy way. It doesn't mean that you're always going to get the outcome you want, but the chances are things will go better than if you just reacted or adapted. And one final note about something that I have found invaluable, and that is to go through interactions after the fact, especially when things didn't go well.

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Remember that even when you are working regularly on self differentiation, you're likely to only do well about half the time in anxious moments. I have found it really helpful to go through those times when I didn't respond, the way I wanted to, to think about what I might have said differently, how I might have responded differently, and even when I have responded well, it's good to think about what was different. What enabled me to do this. In the sports world, they call this watching the game film.

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In the medical world, they call this a post mortem.

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In the business world, they call this a debrief. But if you take the time to reflect on how you respond in your most anxious moments, you will do better over time and you will grow as a non anxious leader. That's it for episode 149. Don't forget to let me know what your favorite episode or episodes are, and you can find the show notes at thenonanxiousleader.com/149.

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Until next time thanks and goodbye.