In this 29-minute video, we start to dig deeper into how anxiety works, how thoughts create our feelings and how (unknowingly) we may be exhausting our biology through thinking and worrying too much.
I will prove to you that our body responds to our thoughts (regardless of their truth) and show you the basics of ERP (Exposure & Response Prevention) fear desensitising techniques.
Goal of video
We are starting to dig deeper into how anxiety works, how thoughts create our feelings and how, unknowingly, we may have exhausted our biology through thinking and worrying too much.
We explore the fact that tonality and speed of thinking/talking/worrying affect our body far more than what we actually say.
Then, how to start calming ourselves down when anxiety strikes.
Key messages
After long periods of anxiety, peoples emotions become uncalibrated and numb.
When emotions aren’t working well, decision-making becomes impaired as we tend to make decisions unconsciously with our emotions.
Anxiety overwhelms us, depression underwhelms us, and stress is the difference between what is happening and what your mind wants to happen.
Vices are hard to stop when our emotions are not working well.
Just because your conscious mind knows something does not mean your unconscious mind knows it, too.
The unconscious mind is easily trickable, as is our body.
Our body responds to tonality and speed of thinking more than the actual words we think or say.
When anxious, talk softly and slowly and sag your body.
Why Does Our Body Treat Thoughts as Truth and React Automatically?
Our bodies are wired to interpret our thoughts as facts, which can sometimes lead to automatic responses, even if the thoughts aren’t accurate. This connection between the mind and body is deeply rooted in how we process emotions and perceive reality.
1. The Thought-Emotion Connection
When we think something, our brain often triggers an emotional response that we physically feel in our bodies. For example, a thought like “I’m in danger” can cause your heart to race or your muscles to tense, even if there’s no actual threat. This physical reaction reinforces the belief that the thought is real, creating a loop where the body and mind amplify each other.
2. Subconscious Thought Patterns
Most of our thoughts happen subconsciously, influenced by past experiences, cultural norms, and ingrained beliefs. Without taking time to critically evaluate these thoughts, the brain accepts them as truths. This can lead to automatic physical responses, like stress or anxiety, even when the situation doesn’t warrant them.
3. Survival Instincts at Work
Our brains are wired for survival, which means they often react to perceived dangers, even if they’re not real. For instance, thinking “I might fail” can activate your body’s stress response, flooding it with hormones like cortisol. This response was designed to protect us from physical threats, but in modern life, it often reacts to mental or emotional fears.
4. Cognitive Biases in Action
Cognitive biases, such as catastrophising or overgeneralising, can make negative or irrational thoughts seem true. When these thoughts go unchecked, the body responds accordingly—triggering behaviours like avoidance, defensiveness, or panic.
5. The Role of Habits
Repetitive thoughts create neural pathways that make certain reactions automatic. For example, if you frequently think, “I’m not good enough,” your body might subconsciously react by slouching, avoiding eye contact, or withdrawing socially, reinforcing the thought in a self-fulfilling cycle.
How to Break the Cycle and Regain Control
Understanding that thoughts aren’t always true is the first step toward breaking this automatic response pattern. Here’s how you can start:
Practice Mindfulness: Learn to observe your thoughts without judgment. This helps you separate them from reality and reduces automatic responses.
Challenge Your Thoughts: Use techniques like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to identify distorted thinking patterns and replace them with balanced, rational perspectives.
Calm Your Body: Incorporate grounding techniques, such as deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation, to interrupt the feedback loop between your thoughts and physical responses.
Reframe Negative Beliefs: Actively work on changing limiting beliefs by focusing on positive affirmations and evidence that contradicts your negative thoughts.
Develop New Habits: Build healthier thought patterns through repetition and conscious effort, rewiring your brain over time.
Final Thoughts
By understanding why our bodies treat thoughts as truths, we can take proactive steps to question our thinking, calm our physical responses, and create healthier patterns. Remember, not every thought deserves your trust, and learning to challenge them is a powerful way to regain control of your mental and emotional well-being.
I can teach you to optimise your mental health by recognising the connection between your thoughts and physical reactions—and empowering yourself to break free from automatic responses that no longer serve you.
I’m John Glanvill and welcome to The Calmness in Mind Process for overcoming anxiety, OCD and other emotional issues.
In this video, we will be exploring feelings and how our thoughts affect our emotions. So, a quick reminder from the last video – (use brain model here)
1. We are emotional creatures who learned to think
2. Careful what you think about – because your subconscious mind (which controls your body) responds to all of your thoughts, as if they were true, and gives you the corresponding emotions – regardless of what is happening in reality.
If you still don’t understand what I am saying here, please go back and rewatch the last video – and if you do know what I am pointing to, then let’s dig deeper – if you do know what I am saying, but don’t necessarily believe me, then this video, is where, I hope your mind can finally say – “Oh, I see where he is going with all of this!”
As I learned to let go of my own anxiety, one of the most profound realisations, I ever had, was that “Your body can’t heal your mind, but your mind can heal your body” – let me repeat that… “Your body can’t heal your mind, but your mind can heal your body.”
A worried feeling in your body, won’t stop the mind from worrying, however, by stopping the mind from worrying the anxiety in the body can be changed.
Therefore, if anxiety is in our body, we need to heal it from our mind, not by focussing on what our biology does, but by paying attention to what our brain is doing, and change, using every tool we can, the old programs that run in our heads.
For those people who are experiencing OCD – obsessive thoughts and compulsions, please be patient, even if I don’t talk about it for a while, I am not ignoring you; however, OCD sits on top of anxiety – and there is absolutely no way of getting around that fact.
You do your compulsions because you will get anxious if you don’t. For now, please trust me, I am going to go deeply into OCD, when the time is right, for now, let us learn more about anxiety.
For those of you experiencing depression, you may find that this too could stem from underlying anxiety, even if you are too numb to actually feel it.
The significant message, that I truly hope comes across here, is, the relationship between the mind and the body (via the central nervous system) can be compared to that between the conductor of an orchestra and the orchestra itself. Each section of the orchestra knows what to do and each individual knows what to do – and if the conductor wasn’t there it would probably be ok.
But if you can introduce a conductor who can keep everyone one in rhythm so they can focus on their own tasks and not worry about anybody else – exceptional things happen.
The body can’t heal the mind, but the mind can heal the body – and of course, if the mind can heal the body it can also bring disruption into the body if, as the conductor, it is reading from the wrong score!
This is why it is so important to calm your mind, as the body will also, then calm down – and once again, as we proceed through this course I will be teaching you how to do this.
Back in my thirties, when my own emotional overwhelm was at its worst, depression and anxiety had a firm hold on me, and I remember, on so many occasions being at fun events, or in enjoyable places, yet, not feeling happy, I suppose I was happy in my head, but I didn’t feel pleasant emotions in my body.
I would think “This is very nice” or “what a beautiful sunset” but rarely did I “feel it”, I seldom had wonderful visceral sensations or expressive feelings of joy or happiness.
Nowadays I do, I have pleasant feelings, emotions, joyful expressions from the smallest of happenings around me or from the activities I choose to engage with.
So, let’s explore some of the emotional differences between a person without anxiety and a person who has some form of anxiety disorder or depression.
And I think the best way to do this is to look at life from four differing perspectives.
Firstly, as I have no depression or anxiety, when I do something, it usually feels really good, and because things feel good to me, I enjoy planning them, I enjoy doing them, and I often think about nice things, just because the act of thinking about something nice (regardless of whether it is true or not) gives my body a nice feeling.
However, (and I am exaggerating a little), when your emotions are all mixed up through anxiety or depression – you may do something interesting, yet it doesn’t actually feel fun! You know what you are doing is good (in your head) but you don’t get that lovely warm feeling inside, it’s like fun things get numbed.
And often, if things don’t feel fun, you tend to go out less, plan fewer activities or need more and more exciting things to do to, to get even the simplest of pleasures.
Basically, good things don’t really feel that good.
So, that’s the first difference, the second difference is the opposite.
For a calm, happy person, bad things sometimes feel a little uncomfortable, not in an anxious way – more in a “this is disrupting my calmness kind of way.”
If something needs fixing, or a person is annoying me or a decision isn’t made – my emotions get a little irritated, and because I feel a little disturbed – I take action to fix the problem, or to remove myself from the annoying person or decide what I need to do, so that, the uncomfortable feeling goes away.
Now with an anxious person (and I’m not talking here about anxiety per se), I am talking about life in general, when something, needs fixing, or a person gets annoyed or a decision needs to be made – instead of an uncomfortable emotion, there is often just a feeling of numbness, or apathy, or detachment, like…. Ppfff, I suppose that needs sorting out, I’ll put that on the “things to do” pile, I might look at that next week. Or a friend calls and you agree to do something for them and as you put the phone down, you sigh and say “why did I say yes, I don’t want to do that….?”
Because your emotions are numbed (rather than irritating you, like with the happy person) there is no drive to fix things, or to say no, or to make decisions, so that the problems get sorted.
Therefore, procrastination and lack of decision making are prevalent in many people who experience anxiety and depression. Good things don’t feel good and bad things don’t feel bad, your emotions have been numbed – and because emotions are numbed – it often becomes hard for you to make decisions!
Remember what I taught you in the last video, we are emotional creatures who learned to think, we make decisions unconsciously with our emotions – and because your emotions are all out of whack, it is very hard to make decisions or find motivation.
So those are the first two differences, which are just simple life events, let me now go into more detail.
Let’s look at anxiety, depression and stress.
Anxiety is a repeated emotional overwhelm, where, you are having the right emotion, just at the wrong time and the wrong intensity. If you were standing on the edge of a cliff, that emotion would be acceptable, but because you are standing in Starbucks, it feels like it’s not.
Depression is underwhelming, an apathy, a heaviness, you wake up and say “Ppfff, what’s the point?”
And stress is a pain in the middle of your chest (which may kick off more anxiety) but can easily be defined as; the difference between what is happening right now, versus, what your mind wants to be happening right now. You are in location A but you want to be in location B, she is slow, when you want her to be quick, there are only 10 minutes left, when you need 35 – and so it goes on…..
For me, I don’t have any anxiety anymore, I don’t have any depression anymore, and by understanding what stress is, I minimise its effects on my life, by taking action, yet, not really worrying about outcomes, by letting go of the need for perfection or control, and by relinquishing my fear of being judged.
Good things feel good, so I do them, bad things feel bad, so I fix them or say no, there’s no anxiety, no depression, the simplest thing feels nice, (and, on the whole) there is only limited stress in my life, by my own definition.
Compare that with a person battling their emotions – good things, don’t feel good, so what’s the point doing them? Bad things don’t feel bad, just numbed, so procrastination and lack of decision making prevail.
Anxiety overwhelms you, depression underwhelms you and stress – well, stresses you out, which we could probably call another form of anxiety!
Of course, I am exaggerating a little here, to make a point, but, sadly, probably not that much!
Then we look at the fourth comparison- for this, we peer into vice land. For vice, read; smoking, shopping, drinking, drugs, computer games, affairs, sex, pornography, food – you know the list…
Generally, for a happy, calm, emotionally balanced individual it may be they don’t need to go there – or it may be fun to momentarily pop into that world, have a nice evening and then pop out again?
They enjoy it and don’t beat themselves up, they don’t need to live there every day.
However, for some people, after years of emotional turmoil, good things not feeling good, the numbeness of bad things, the overwhelm of anxiety, the under-whelm of depression and the exhaustion of stress (not even mentioning OCD) – sometimes the only time you get a fleeting feeling of emotional wellbeing is via food, shopping, drugs or booze?
Even then, for most people, that fleeting feeling is so quickly en-veloped by feelings of guilt and the self-abuse of beating yourself.
So, if you do have your own vice-land thing – recognise this; if it is the only aspect of your life that gives you some (even short-lived) emotional pleasure, it is going to be very hard to let go of until you have you got your other emotions under control.
Once I teach you how to lift depression and factor anxiety out of your life, your emotions will come back online, small things will start feeling good again, decision making will become possible again – then you can work on these behaviours (if you have any) knowing that you are now just changing a habit, rather than an emotional need.
I hope patterns are starting to emerge in your mind about how we humans think and feel and what huge roles emotions play in our lives?
Put simply, those people with anxiety, depression, OCD and stress become biologically exhausted. If you have been doing your homework and reading about the “fight or flight response” you will have become aware of how negatively the body responds to the continued release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisone and the effect they have on suppressing your immune system and overwhelming your chemistry and biology.
Therefore, if you are going to start the journey of recovery to find emotional calmness, a quiet mind and to become the real you – deeply understanding how you function and dispelling erroneous beliefs is a great starting point.
Personally, when I learn something new, I don’t necessarily just trust or believe what I learn, I like to test everything – two of the statements that I wanted to prove to myself were;
“Your body responds to your thoughts as if they are true” and “you can placebo your self”.
By placebo I mean the bodies ability to be tricked into fixing itself by thought alone.
We will talk a lot more about placebo in later videos, for now, I want to show you (as best I can) that both of those statements are true and (I hope) I can scare you a little (or at least get your full attention) with what you are about to learn.
————- Video part 1 – retrain camera Or second video on screen (perhaps iPhone) ——–
I am going to plug myself into this bio-feedback machine – it’s called a Galvanic Skin Response Meter, put simply it measures the conductivity of my skin and registers any fluctuations in sweat on my skin.
If the number goes up, it means my hand has sweated a little, and as the sweat evaporates, it goes back down.
For my hand to suddenly sweat, it means, it has responded to the release of chemicals from my Central Nervous System because it has been stimulated in some way – which we are going to call an emotion.
Now, we can’t define what that emotion is, love, fear, anxiety etc. However, we can see that an emotion has occurred, and we can see the intensity of that emotion, in response to what we are doing or thinking at that moment.
Usually, there is a lag of about one second between a thought from the conscious mind and the response within the body from commands sent by our subconscious mind.
So, let’s have a little fun and see what happens when we think in certain ways.
Now, there will be a little bit of noise on the system because I am talking to you, but I will try to keep as calm as I can in between the demonstrations.
So, let’s begin by me tricking myself, what I am going to do is invoke my own subconscious involuntary “startle response” it’s what naturally happens to you if something makes you jump, like a loud noise or a sudden movement around you, it primes you ready for the fight or flight response, so you can quickly respond to dangers around you.
Put basically, I am going to make myself jump – what invokes the startle response is a sudden movement, a sharp intake of breath and a fast internal or external dialogue.
So here we go I am going to make myself jump, even though I know I am going to do it!
“OMG!! What was that??”
You can clearly see how my subconscious mind thought a dangerous situation had occurred, it sent the alarm to my body via the central nervous system, which flooded me with stress chemicals – EVEN THOUGH IT WAS WRONG, I was pretending!
(pick up brain)
I consciously knew it was fake, but my subconscious mind did not. Remember how I keep reminding you they are on separate systems, they are not communicating clearly, or even with language.
So, let’s take another example; I am going to imagine that I will slap myself around the face (wait)
Comment —
Now I am going to pretend to slap myself around the face, but I will stop before I hit myself.
My body just responded as if it had been slapped!! Think about this – Just because I consciously knew I would stop – my subconscious mind DID NOT!
Because they are two separate systems – one knew I would stop, the other thought I was about to be slapped and prepared my body for contact.
Can you begin to glimpse how placebo may be operating – just because we might consciously know something isn’t true, it doesn’t mean our subconscious does!
I would like to now show you how this works within a person with OCD or anxiety – I am going to pretend to be anxious, I will be talking out loud; however, your inner dialogue will do the same thing.
Bear in mind I am pretending.
I’m sorry, I just can’t get on the aeroplane, I know it’s stupid, I know it’s safe, but I am freaking out on the inside, my heart is racing, I am all sweaty, I can’t go on holiday, you just go without me.
When those doors slam shut, I just feel so trapped and claustrophobic, the sound of the engines, the turbulence, I just can’t do it – you just go without me, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine!
Can you see how much stress hormones have been released in me – even though I am pretending! I actually feel quite pumped up.
My unconscious mind does not know that I am pretending. Two different systems – Are you seeing the patterns yet? Now, let’s try that again, but differently.
( Calmly )I’m sorry, I just can’t get on the aeroplane, I know it’s stupid, I know it’s safe, but I am freaking out on the inside, my heart is racing, I am all sweaty, I can’t go on holiday, you just go without me.
When those doors slam shut, I just feel so trapped and claustrophobic, the sound of the engines, the turbulence, I just can’t do it – you just go without me, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine!
What a difference – but I said the same words.
Your subconscious is not listening to your words, it mostly does not understand words, it is responding to your tonality, the speed of talking, your tense scared body movements and any images that it has logged away and erroneously marked as dangerous.
Therefore, you need to learn how to placebo, to trick, your own subconscious mind by talking softly, slowly and gently, all the time, and by keeping your movements gentle and slow. The Police and club doormen are trained to do this – it keeps them, and you, calm during times of stress or danger.
Imagine a Police Officer: Calm down sir, I know you are angry, take your time, let me know what happened, take a breath…. You’ll be fine, we are here now.
And, this is step one in addressing your anxiety.
Keep your body still. Let it just flop or sag, don’t move around, accept that hormones have been released into you – by mistake, the misunderstanding of your subconscious mind.
Stop talking to others or trying to control the situation – and consciously talk over all the unasked for chatter in your mind softly slowly and gently – what you actually say is quite irrelevant – Banana, banana, apple, apple, orange, orange, – Twinkle, twinkle little star…. All we are doing is gently calming (and tricking) our subconscious mind to turn off the anxiety signals.
Don’t worry about why the anxiety has happened, I will teach you that, plus I will be showing you many more techniques to interrupt anxiety and calm yourself down.
For now, this is all about understanding what you are actually dealing with.
Can you see that a person who can knowingly trick their mind and body into not being fired off, or even see when it is beginning to happen and then stop it, or even, get anxious but calm themselves quickly will be putting a much less strain on the biology of their own body?
It’s like a calm person is a car ticking over at 700 revs per minute, whereas a person with OCD or anxiety is revving up all day at 3000 revs, 4000, revs, 5000 revs – it is exhausting.
Anxiety and depression – are the chemical imbalance, the symptom, of having lived too long at an elevated level of biological distress – through thinking and worrying too much.
This may have come from the circumstances of your life, job relationships etc. from some form of emotional or physical trauma or just from being who you are – maybe you just worry or are fearful, once again, it does not matter.
If you are watching this video it means you are probably quite intelligent, you are a thinker, you probably have a complex personality, and it’s likely you worry what people think about you – basically, a nice person.
This is the perfect profile to fall into the anxiety and depression trap. I’m sorry, but it just is!
When the body has subconsciously had enough of revving the engine all day, it conspires to trap you – the only way it knows how.
With the logic of a child and the goal to try and make you stay at home.
It will do this by making you feel subconsciously worried and scared at certain things in your life and make you begin to doubt yourself – we call this anxiety.
Or turning the wick down on your thinking and emotions, so you feel crap and can’t make decisions – we call this depression.
Depression sometimes comes on its own or follows a period of anxiety.
OCD is the condition which anxiety sometimes morphs into within certain individuals who have intelligent subconscious minds that can spin them into control loops and who have usually suffered some additional trauma or had some very self-conscious periods of their life.
All these conditions are the symptoms of thinking and worrying too much, residual trauma, unresolved conflicts, poor lifestyle choices and an acceptance of who you are rather than who you could become.
We are going to change all of these!
Now, please do not think that I am dismissing the seriousness of how you feel, the severity of your thoughts or the intrusiveness of things that may have happened too you.
I am just pointing out that by focussing on your symptoms. anxiety and depression, we are missing changing the underlying cause – your emotional exhaustion, your subconscious sabotage to keep you at home, self-doubt, fear, the reduced ability to make decisions, a lack of a big dream for your life and confusion about who you really are.
We are now getting closer to understanding what you are dealing with; however, there are still a few more huge steps for you to understand about anxiety, OCD and depression and these will be explained in the next video.
So, a quick summary:
After long periods of anxiety, worry or depression peoples emotions become uncalibrated.
When emotions are not working – decision making becomes impaired – because we actually make decisions subconsciously with our gut and feel it through our emotions.
Anxiety overwhelms us, depression underwhelms us and stress is just the difference between what is happening and the story in your mind about what you would like to be happening!
Many of our bad habits like overeating & drinking are hard to stop if our emotions are not working well.
Just because we consciously know something does not mean our unconscious knows it – plus our unconscious is trickable.
Our body responds to the tonality and speed of our thinking rather than the actual words we use. Therefore, when we are nervous, we need to talk softly, slowly and gently to soothe our central nervous system.
And finally, your homework:
Go back to video 1, video 2 and this video 3 and keep watching them, this is about repetition, realisation and reprogramming your subconscious mind – these videos are priming your subconscious mind verbally, visually and metaphorically.
I know it can feel consciously dull, but your problem is in the communication between your conscious and your subconscious, so smile and keep watching – slowly your subconscious mind will update itself.
Anxiety, OCD and depression are addictions- what’s the definition of an addiction? Something you can’t consciously stop – therefore, your problem is held sub-conscious – and knowing the answer consciously is almost irrelevant – repetition reprograms the subconscious mind.
I would like you to practice making your conscious internal dialogue very slow and each time you are anxious or upset talk softly and gently while relaxing, sagging or slumping your body.
We will go deeply into anxiety interrupts in future videos – for now just focus on the basics.
And finally, I would like you to consider how you might use placebo to trick your own unconscious mind, so rather than thinking OMG this is so scary – you gently say “it’ll be fine – I can do this, we can let this go” – Even if it isn’t the truth, we are just soothing our own anxiety responses.
In the next video, I will be teaching you what happens when the biological exhaustion from worrying too much or traumatic events turns into anxiety and OCD.