Tired of Getting Triggered? Try This. | Mel Robbins

Anxiety always begins with a worry. Always. It begins with a thought that is triggered by something. So if you suffer from anxiety, you wake up in the morning and your mind spins, you lay in bed at night and your mind spins, you walk into work and you feel anxious in your body. Interestingly, another major trigger is being home or going home and that moment right before your partner walks in the door. If you feel anxious when your partner's about to walk in or you're about to walk into your own home, that is a major signal that you're in the wrong relationship. That there is something incredibly off and you either need to get into counseling, but that is one that we hear a lot about. Because you're walking into a situation that feels uncertain. A lot of people, by the way, had parents that were abusive or parents that were yellers. So they also are experiencing ghosts from the childhood of it's five o'clock, dad's about to come home and pour a drink and everybody's on edge. So write down the triggers, okay? Because having the triggers ahead of time will help you come up with a plan for how you're going to catch yourself when your mind defaults to the automatic ways that it thinks. Then what I want you to write down next to the trigger is what exactly are you worried about? So having the trigger and then that what do I worry about? I worry that my boss is going to yell. I worry that my partner's going to yell. I worry that I'm going to get in trouble. I worry that my friends are going to laugh at me. I worry that I'm going to be a... whatever the f*** it may be. Then what you're going to do is you're going to write down what I call an anchor thought. An anchor thought is something that weighs you down and it makes you excited. And so here's how the strategy works with the five-second rule. The next time you're in a situation, and let's just use the example of pulling into your own driveway or your own apartment and maybe you've got issues with your boyfriend or girlfriend or your roommate and that makes you unsettled. The second you pull in and you feel the trigger, you're gonna go five four three two one because I want to interrupt your mind from going into the f***. And then you're gonna drop in the anchor thought of the last time that you and your roommate really got along well. Or the last time that you stood up for yourself and it went fine. Or your puppy. Yeah, or a puppy or whatever. You're gonna say I'm so excited to deal with this. And then you're going to get out of your car even though your body is gonna feel a little unsettled and your mind's gonna race. Go five four three two one if you start to be like... and then walk in the door. And what I'm teaching you to do is to not let your mind hijack you. And it's very important because there's a very tight nexus between your habit of worrying and spiraling your thoughts and the way your body starts to amp up. And so we want to settle your mind so we don't agitate your body. You got it? Yeah. And so if you start to practice that over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And for you 18 year olds that are watching this, use this with the nerves that you have about what you're gonna do with your life. Use this when you catch yourself worrying about college applications. Because worrying about the applications won't get them done. Worrying about what your friends are doing won't make it happen. Worrying about what you're gonna be doing when you're 25 or how you're gonna make money, it's not gonna help you make money right now. It's only gonna make you miserable. So five four three two one. Cut off that habit. Yeah. That'll stabilize your body and then go to a vision of you at the age of 25 driving a car that you think is cool and hanging out with a friend that's cool and saying yourself I'm so excited because I know I'm gonna figure it out. Because you don't need to worry about that right now. Yeah. But it becomes a habit that destroys your year this year. Hey it's Mel. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you haven't already subscribed, please please please subscribe to my YouTube channel. And if you like this video, I have a suspicion you're gonna like these two next.