Okay, here we are lesson number eight how we are programmed for anxiety. Now in the last lesson I posed the question do you think it's possible that you were programmed to feel anxiety? Well in this lesson, we're going to discuss exactly how you receive that programming. And if you understand how it was installed, we can use our intelligence, which I'm going to define as the ability to overcome obstacles to begin to erase the program for good and install a new program of your choice. Now, since we know that we think in pictures, let's go ahead and start there. I want you to close your eyes and think with me, when you think of anxiety like image or pitcher flashes onto the screen if your mind Do you pitch yourself bent over holding your tummy?

Do you picture yourself biting your fingernails? Do you picture yourself exhausted with bags into your eyes because you just can't sleep? Do you picture yourself with your your head on the desk and your hands holding your head? Okay, whatever you created, hold that image for just a second and know that whatever you pictured was and is the physical manifestation, what anxiety looks like for you. Now, I'm not asking you to feel anxiety, you already know what that feels like all too well. So just hold the picture.

Now, what is the opposite feeling of anxiety for you? Here's some common feelings people often expressed to me. Peace, calm tranquility, serenity. Quiet stillness. composed. So in your workbook, put a checkmark by the ones that you would like to feel are the ones that you do feel.

Or maybe there's some space in there where you could write out in your workbook what you would like to fill. Now just pick one of those feelings and hold on to that feeling for a few seconds, and just let it settle in. Now create a picture. Now for me, here's an example. The opposite of anxiety is peace. So I'm going to use peace as my example to explain this process.

And I want you to use the power of your imagination with me as I described my picture. When I close my eyes and I picked your piece, I picture the beach and the ocean. I picture a warm, breezy, sunny day, and I'm laying on a lounge chair just staring at the waves as it slowly kisses the beach, where the sand is the water meet. Now I have no plans except to Rest in that moment. Now this is my time to just be. Okay.

Now what I want you to do is I want you to hold that picture or whatever picture you came up with. And place these two pictures side by side and hold them in your imagination for just a couple of seconds. One of them is the pitcher of anxiety. The other one is the pitcher a piece that take a picture of anxiety and just make it black and gray in your mind. The one of peace, make it very colorful, very bright and beautiful. Now plays the colored picture of peace on top of the black and gray picture of anxiety so that you can't see it.

Now go ahead and file the two pictures away in a mental file somewhere where you can easily find them in your mind. All right now bringing your attention back here to to me to the story. Now we're going to completely change the picture. And so I really need you to open your mind to this next image. Now, I want you to imagine Baby still in the mother's womb just a few days away from birth. If you could communicate with the infant and ask him or her, what are they feeling?

And what are you hearing? What sensations Do you think that they would describe? Now with the baby say he feels loved and safe and secure? Yeah, I can imagine that type of communication very easily. In fact, even as I speak these words, I have a sense of calm and peace that's coming over me. And very similar to the feeling that I was describing when I was explaining the picture of the calm beach.

Now, don't worry, if you have a hard time creating this image, it's okay. With practice our imagination can blossom like crazy. So if you can't picture what I'm saying, just enjoy the feeling of wanting to want to picture what I'm saying. Now hold the image in your mind of the baby and let's fast forward to the desert. The baby has just been born, it's only been Second, the baby has not experienced any environment other than inside of his mother's woman. Now, and besides the massive stress on the baby and the mother, it's a shock to the system.

The baby's heart rate is elevated, blood sugars going crazy and breathing is rapid and the baby's skin is exposed to a much colder ambient temperature for the very first time. So much colder outside than it is inside. Do any of these sensations feel familiar? Do you recall the lesson on how the hypothalamus responds when we feel a threat? Wow, they are remarkably similar to the feeling many of us have when anxiety hits. So guess what was just recorded on the first empty pages of the baby's Book of Life.

Imagine that entry on day one of babies journal. First Five seconds into the stage of life anxiety attack. This sucks wondering if I can go back in Now, research now is overwhelming. This studies show that if the baby's placed immediately on mom's bare chest, extremely important health benefits happen for both baby and mom. The skin to skin contact is mostly important in the first two hours as they are the most critical. And this feeling of connection and contact calms the baby.

It's soothing. A baby is able to regulate his body temperature better than an incubator heart rate levels, though, blood sugar and breathing returned to normal and the baby even sleeps better and the chances of a successful trial breastfeeding it proves. Now for mom. She also receives lots of benefits from this connection. Mom's stress levels are even lowered. Mom's body has an innate program built into her to breastfeed and when her child is resting on her chest.

It's a signal to mom's body that she can now produce the much needed milk to begin the process of Nursing. I mean, think of that isn't the human body amazing? Now, in this first experience of separation, it's unavoidable. Of course, now the baby can't stay in mommy's womb forever. But the reality is, it is the first time that we feel disconnected or separated. The story that we just created was not only normal, but it ended in the best possible way, mom and baby are healthy and immediately Connect.

But this is not the case for everyone is it? Now, I'm not saying that if you currently suffer from anxiety, you didn't immediately get set upon mom's chest upon answering to the world, and that there's something wrong with you. But the reality is, the experience that we just described into the world is undeniable. And this is a separation experience. And all of us went through that experience. Now, consciously we can't remember that event, but it did happen.

And as we'll find out, and as we're learning, there is a part have us that stores and remembers everything. If you look at the image again of the newborn baby, and we talked about all those previous experiences which were labeled negative or positive, would you say that this first experience is a negative or a positive experience from the baby's perspective? Now for sure, I would classify it as probably a negative experience. So let's just put one negative experience in the unconscious mind to the baby. Now fast forward a little in time. My colleagues in the world of psychology classify another major first for many children, called separation anxiety.

Now, of course, many adults feel separation anxiety as well. But for the first two years of life, this is a real issue for toddlers. This would have been a very real issue for each of us, especially when a child has not had enough time to develop any sort of conscious mind and little children. Notice Two things basically. And that is the basic pain pleasure separation security known unknown, wet, dry, sleepy, not sleepy, you get the idea. Now, since infants and toddlers and young children live in an open stage of unconscious thought 100% of the time, they don't understand the difference between real and fake.

When little kids watch a scary movie on TV, for example, they don't realize it's just the movie. That is pretend. Now, children live in pretend land all the time, because their unconscious mind is completely wide open. And when they play dress up, they act out the part as if it's real to them, and there's no separation of reality and fantasy. It's all the same. Have you ever had a child under five living in your home watching adult zombie movie, for example, at the walking dead?

I mean, they become terrified because in their mind, zombies are real, and people die on TV. And they don't know what actors are. Now we understand that child and caregiver can't always be together and some forms of separation must take place. It's even considered normal. Whether it is or not is not the point. The point is for the purpose of understanding, it is how we are coded, and how are we encoded through experience.

Now, separation is very scary for the little Johnny's and Susie's of the world. It can be so terrifying to some children clean to their parents when they think that they're being left. I mean, being alone as a child is scary. And for some children, they are so afraid, and they feel fear so intensely, to the point where they can even go into the next room without somebody with them. I mean, I personally remember as a child sleeping in the basement with my brothers. I have six of them.

I'm the youngest of seven boys. Now, if I didn't go downstairs at the same time that they did. When I was a little I was scared to death. Just To walk down the stairs by myself. Now some children experience physical symptoms when they're separated from mom and dad. nausea, vomiting, and headaches are very common.

Does that sound familiar? Now these are experiences. Now if the child does not receive a balance of the feeling of safety and security, and then knowing that they're still loved when mom and dad come back, get them, do you think that there's going to be more experience in our book of life which are labeled positive or negative? All right? Well, it's going to certainly be in unbalanced if it's not regulated. Now, I think in most situations, especially those who I've worked with, in my own experience of anxiety, that it is going to be an unbalanced towards negative.

All right. Now, something very important, we could say that this feeling of the unknown this fear of separation Could be viewed as, say, rejection. But people feel rejected or simply not valued. Is that a good feeling positive or a bad feeling? Negative? Now I'm gonna bet this is a negative experience.

I'm not saying that it's normal or not, no, no, I'm just asking, Is it a feeling of negative or one of positive? A feeling of rejection feels an awful lot like a feeling of no worth of no value of not being loved. And whether that's the intent of the caregiver, again, is not the issue is the issue, however, of experience, and that's what we're talking about. So when we feel this way, what do we do child or adult, we feel withdrawn. We feel sad, and often, we experience the difficulty in concentrating and it doesn't matter if you're an adult, studying For a test or going to work and trying to get a promotion, I mean, it doesn't matter if you're a child, even if you're going next door to play with the neighbor's kids. Now, not to make it worse, but when we have one family member who is experiencing separation anxiety, it can frustrate the other members of the family.

And teasing by older siblings brings in more of a negative experience and the visible signs of that child experiencing separation that other members are frustrated with them can easily compound the negative experience even further. Now in the next lesson, we're going to talk about this feeling of rejection and its programming and how it begins to dramatically impact our lives. So go ahead