Ep99_Root
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] So I stopped biting my nails two years ago. I bit my nails until I was 48 years old. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't consistently use nail clippers until two years ago, and it was stress in my life. I cope with it by biting my nails. Sounds strange, but that's why I bit my nails. So welcome to the [00:01:00] episode, the 99th episode of the Decide Your Legacy podcast.

Today, I will be talking to you about getting to the root of your stress. So you can root it out and it doesn't hinder your life. I figured out the root cause of my, at least a root cause of my stress and fear that led to my nail biting a couple years ago and it was impactful. This This episode will help you do the same.

So if you found this podcast helpful, the Decide Your Legacy podcast, subscribe so you won't miss another episode. Give it a rating and review on Apple or Spotify, wherever you get your podcast content. It helps it to grow organically and reach more people. I'm Adam Gragg, your host. I've been a coach, writer, speaker, and licensed family therapist for over 20 years.

And my passion is to help people develop the self confidence and clarity to face their biggest fears. and live their desired legacy. I talk about stuff I struggle with myself. I don't have it all figured out. I'm a fellow traveler. I make this podcast for you and [00:02:00] for myself. Something uncomfortable I did recently is I sent an email to a friend from college that I've stayed in decent touch with, but I'd like to reconnect with more often. So I emailed him about planning a golf trip with buddies to go and play golf at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, near where I went to college. And his response to that was not exactly encouraging. He said that he doesn't stay in touch with a lot of the guys from college in the fraternity. And he'd love to do a tailgate or something like that.

I said, okay, it's great. Didn't push it. Didn't realize he wasn't that open to it. And it wasn't personal. I took a risk. I'm glad I reached out. I may bug him again. It'd be good and everything, but I knew the timing wasn't right. Who knows? I took a risk. And I tell you, about these risks that I've taken because nothing is more important to your mental health than defacing your fears and nothing is more damaging to your mental health than playing it safe.

This is the podcast that you do, you don't just actually listen to. You get uncomfortable just like I did too. So what's a social [00:03:00] situation or what's a situation in your life that tends to cause you stress? I want you to write that down or speak it into your phone. It's something that you know when you engage it.

Typically, it elevates your level of stress. So you get more tense. You start to worry. You start to feel afraid. So what might that be? Is it meeting new people? Or standing up for yourself? Or talking to somebody that you're attracted to? Or dealing with somebody that has... That is in authority, talking to a pastor, or talking to a professional, a doctor.

It may be different for you than it is for someone else, but write that down and think about it. I talk about the subject of stress and fear and worry often because it resonates with people. We all have it. It's universal. Problems are the great equalizer. We all have it. So there's five facts about fear that I want to tell you about.

So one is that it'll never go away as long as you're growing. Two is that hope overpowers fear, and that no matter your circumstances, you can choose hope. But, number [00:04:00] three, hope alone won't change your life. Habitually facing your fears will. Identifying them and facing them. And four, when you experience fear because you're facing something in your life, so is everyone else who is growing, too.

And five, facing your fears is much less frightening in the long term than living with regret later. I recently moved... started moving my office. I actually have two offices right now because I'm growing Decide Your Legacy. And this started to trigger some fear in me. Believe it or not, it is not that really, really that big of a deal, but I'm making some changes.

I'm leaving some people at least working on a day to day basis in an office area where I have a lot of friends. They're going to stay my friends, I'm sure, but it's triggering some fear. I remember when I moved offices the last time, it triggered massive fear. I made it a huge deal. But what I thought I was afraid of back then wasn't really what I was afraid of.

So like, a lot of things were gonna have a reaction and be stressed out about something and not actually understand what really is causing it. So I was [00:05:00] terrified by change, period, because I had so much change in my life. I didn't want anything that potentially could fall apart. That led me to staying stuck and immobilized and not growing.

And I eventually got over it, but it led to some challenges in my life. This is a big deal to deal with the root of your stress. We have Worry and anxiety is self protection. I talk to clients about this frequently. I say, you know, anxiety is like putting on an Iron Man suit. It's going to protect you.

People can't see you, and it's going to give you some armor. It's not going to make you very accessible to being hurt physically, yet. What we perceive as keeping us safe is not actually keeping us safe. We perceive that anxiety is keeping us safe because it's negativity, it's criticism, it's judgment. Yet it's precisely what you need to take off to be safe because then you can build trust and intuition and faith.

All those things take place. So you want to take off the costume. I like Iron Man. That's cool. I like wearing costumes, actually. I've done some crazy stuff with [00:06:00] costumes on. Hopefully, I'll never get shot, but I have done some old man pranks and things, and you can see those on my YouTube channel if you want, that we want to figure out a way to take off the Iron Man, the mask, the suit, and live in a way where we're more exposed, where we are exposed.

Sounds scary, but that's what we got to do. So most negativity in your life is connected to fear in some fashion. Fear of success, failure, rejection, embarrassment, fear of your health going bad, fear of your job not working out, fear of your company failing, fear of money dwindling, fear of change. And most positive emotion comes out of pursuing a worthwhile goal.

Actually, relationships, friendships, helping others, personal growth, challenging yourself. We're pursuing something that we want versus avoiding something that we actually don't want. You figure out the root of your stress and your fear and you fix it, you're going to start enjoying life, you're going to let go of that anxiety, you're going to start living the real you, let him come out, let her come out, you're going to recognize that it's not [00:07:00] actually connected to your current reality so you can change it, it's coming from your past, it's coming from things that have gone wrong in your life, you'll start to take its power away. That stress will no longer consume your life and suck the joy out of each day. So let's discuss six things you can do. So ways to find the root to your fear so you can change it. Recognize first, when does it come out? What situations happen that, as I mentioned in the journaling, Activity at the very beginning, that action you took, what are those situations?

Is it change? Like for me, is it money? Is it relationships? Is it romantic relationships? That's certainly triggered a lot of fear in my life. Is it rejection in situations that could cause you some rejection? Or is it like I did, reaching out to an old friend and really getting A comment that wasn't exactly rejection, but it was a little bit discouraging.

I thought he was going to be really excited about it, actually, so it wasn't what I was expecting, but expectations are inversely proportionate to our level of stress. I had too high of expectations. I let go of [00:08:00] it. I'll reach back out. It's not the end of the story. I'll reach out again. It's okay. It's not about me.

It was about his response in that situation. What situations trigger you? Is it people with more education? Is it people with higher paying jobs? Is it somebody that is in a higher perceived status than you. Is it people from different types of professions? Maybe it's intimidating to deal with attorneys and that triggers you, but it's not connected to that person.

It's actually connected to something deeper that we're going to get at today. A client was saying he was having trouble talking to his sister about a professional situation and asked him why, but he wanted to because she had a lot of knowledge in that area, but he wouldn't talk to her. It boiled down to that he felt that he would be discounted by his sister because of the position that she was in, and she was in a high status position, and he also felt like she looked down on him, which I don't know if she does or not, but that was how he was feeling and thinking at the time, but it was coming out.

Not only was it his sister, but it was a figure of authority in his [00:09:00] life. So an action you can take is to start to journal about it. Anything that starts to trigger stress in your life, write down what... You notice about the situation that's impacting you. You're going to probably have to guess describing the situation.

So I believe this is causing me stress. I'm not exactly sure, but right now going into this meeting or right now meeting this person or right now in this situation, I'm feeling some anxiety and it could be the other person. Actually, it could be that your central nervous system is It's picking up on a lack of trust that you have in that person, and it's doing its job.

It's actually recognizing something that's dangerous. That's a good thing. But when it perceives situations because of our thinking and our emotions, they're flawed because of hurt in the past. We want to recognize it and then give credence to the reality of the situation that we're actually in today, because it's probably not connected to this.

situation today. It's connected to something else, something deeper. So journal about it. Recognize when you're triggered. It's going to happen a couple times a day, most likely, but you'll start to see some patterns. You'll [00:10:00] start to notice certain situations and then you'll start to have and feel the power to change it and to rise above it.

But you'll notice that those situations impact you physically. And that's the second step here to root out. Your stress is to notice where do you feel it? People feel stress in their body in some fashion. They get headaches. They start breathing shallower. In fact, most people do when they're stressed or anxious or fearful.

Maybe your stomach hurts. Maybe your legs hurt. Maybe your shoulders get really tense. Maybe you start sweating. Not sure. Maybe your eyes twitch. People feel it in their body. You get a physical, you have a physical response, a physical reaction. People Always have an answer to that question when asked them, where do you feel that stress in your body?

They often ask and act like they don't know the answer. Then they start thinking about it and they pause and they realize, I feel it in my stomach, or I feel a sense of tightness in my chest. And then decide, what do you feel specifically? So start naming it when you're stressed. And it depends on the [00:11:00] situation, but in that situation, you can journal about, well, when I'm in these situations where I have to go interact with people that I believe are more educated than me.

I start feeling insecure or I interact with people who are, they're a couple that really get along and they seem to have a great marriage. I feel jealous and just name that and write about it or I feel unworthy. at church because people seem to have everything together and I don't and then you name it or you feel helpless or you feel a sense of rejection and then you can even name in your body where you feel that specific emotion.

Strange, but I can ask clients at times like where in your body do you feel jealousy? And they'll often tell me in their heart area, where do you feel fear? And they'll often tell me in their stomach area. Not always. It can be very different places on their body. But where do you feel it specifically?

It's strange. I get it. I mean, I'm not saying this is like questions you're going to hear a lot, but where do you feel emotions in your body? Although we have descriptors, like that [00:12:00] comes from our heart. So we have descriptors that point to us feeling emotions or that's a gut reaction. Telling us that our language has actually been geared around feeling emotions in our body.

Yet we can often discount that and not be aware of it in our own specific situations. So what you want to do is focus on a triggering situation. This is an action you can take. So focus on a triggering situation. You've identified one that in these situations, I feel triggered. I feel stress. So I'm getting ready to play golf with people who are better golfers, or I'm getting ready to go on a longer run than I normally go on with some people that run more often.

I'm feeling a sense of unworthiness and insecurity. And then you focus on that mentally, and I'll have people do this with me. Focus on it mentally and you breathe, and you talk about it. So while you're talking about this uncomfortable situation, breathe and relax, and notice the tension in your body, and can you release it?

And can you relax into it? That's a term from mindfulness. Can you even journal about it on your own at home, where you end up being triggered and intentionally triggering yourself? [00:13:00] Triggering yourself because you're writing a letter to somebody that's hurt you or you're writing about a situation that was painful in your past and what you learned about it.

And those kinds of things have helped me tremendously. I cannot emphasize that enough. I've sent these letters to people and friends, had them read them. They've helped me to release this anxiety because I've been able to see that it was not my fault. I've been able to see that. I don't have to give that thing power, that situation in my life power anymore.

So you journal and you breathe into it and you recognize it and you start to make, get space from it. That's rooting it out because you're starting to identify where it actually comes from. Your feelings impact your perspective. Sometimes your perspective causes your feelings. Sometimes your feelings cause your perspective.

Often with trauma, we start feeling things in our body, and then we start thinking. And that's called emotional reasoning. Because I feel a certain way, what I'm thinking about must be true. So I'm feeling really tense, so I must really be in a tense, dangerous situation. Yet, that's often not true. You feel something and you assume it's true, but it's not true.

So if you found this [00:14:00] podcast helpful, and that's what we're going to talk about next, your perspective. So if you found this podcast helpful though, hit the link to Shatterproof yourself. These are seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health. You're going to get information on what it takes to make a transformation in your life.

How to deal with triggering situations in a correct way. It's concise. It's Great material that I've put together over a long period of time from my own personal experience. You got a worksheet and a workbook and a video. You're not going to want to miss that and you get access to that through this link here.

So the third thing to root out your stress is figure out what thoughts you actually have that are contributory to the stress in your life. Some questions to ask when you are stressed and triggered is what are you afraid of happening? In this situation, maybe you're afraid of feeling left out or rejected or being alone.

Identify it. Ambiguity feeds anxiety. [00:15:00] What's the worst case scenario in this situation? Look at it on paper. Again, it's going to be clear. You can face it. Then you can create a plan. It's no longer this mysterious monster under the couch or in your closet or under your bed. It's something you can look at the worst case scenario, and it's probably not going to happen, but you're at least able to identify that something you're focusing on.

How will you avoid, how are you trying to avoid this situation? I find that helpful. Like what am I trying to do as a reaction to having these thoughts about the situation that I'm in? So for example, I feel jealous, and I believe I must do something about it now. So I see some people at church, and they seem so happy, and I start thinking about being single, and I want to be happy, and marry a great Christian woman, and whatever, and live happily ever after.

I start feeling this jealousy inside of me, and then I start thinking, I need to look on the dating apps more often. I need to update my profile. I need a new, need to use a new dating app like Hinge, or I need to use a new dating app like, you know, Christian [00:16:00] Mingle, or I need to start socializing more. But it's this urgency that starts happening in me because of the stressful situation and the focus that I have on it.

I'm never going to find somebody. It's never going to happen. Fix it now. If I don't fix it now, it'll never be fixed. But that's not functioning out of reality. It's not healthy. When I can recognize it as not being healthy, then I can do something about it. Then I don't make these mistakes that can be damaging because I'm being so reactive.

I mean, people, because they have this emotional reaction, they can buy things and make decisions and quit jobs and take jobs and move town and stay in town and whatever might be out of reactionary behavior because they're triggered by these thoughts and these feelings. So an action you can take to work on this, identifying your thoughts, is when was the last time that you personally did something reactive that was based out of stress and fear and not out of truth, and you did it, so you can identify, just think over the last week or two, you know, seriously, it's probably happened in the last week or two, [00:17:00] did you make a phone call that you wouldn't have made because You were triggered and it was stressful or you sent a text?

I mean, I almost sent a text today that was triggered by stress and then I decided not to send it. I waited. Can be a great action to take is just wait. If you recognize your body is telling you that you're, you're wound up and you recognize that your thinking is probably not really clear right now, just wait.

Don't send that email. Don't send that text. You'll be able to do it tomorrow. Don't move out. Don't buy that car. Wait, come on. So your thoughts. They are starting the process of showing you what the root is, as you identify them, so you're triggered in these situations where you could be embarrassed or rejected, which is a fear of mine.

And then you ask yourself, which is the fourth thing to do is, how is it connected to my past? Where does it come from? What I thought was causing me stress was not causing me stress. That's very common. We get distracted because we are focusing on things that we [00:18:00] think are the root cause of our stress. So we get distracted by getting caught up in drama.

We get distracted by getting caught up in fixing a situation when it's not actually dealing with the real. root issue. We want to be accepted and not rejected, and we don't want to be hurt. We don't want to have, we don't want to experience not having support from other people or seeing, being seen as broken in any way.

And we don't realize that in this situation. So we just say, Distract it and avoid it rather than engage people. I mean, that's a common scenario because we don't want to feel those strong emotions. But how do we get to this root? Well, besides that question, how is this connected to my past? When I'm in these stressful situations, how is it connected to my past?

How might it be connected to my past? I mean, maybe it's just watching a baseball game and you realize that this is triggering some anxiety in myself, in yourself. And you're realizing that it's related to some kind of rejection you had from a coach when you were a child that You didn't even realize had such a big impact on your life.[00:19:00]

You know, clients will tell me these things frequently. Like they'll remember an interaction where they went out and they did something destructive in their life that was triggered by an interaction that they had. And they did that destructive thing to avoid facing that person or that situation. That was really the core issue.

And now that lingers 10 years later or 20 years later, they're triggered in another situation. But you can only get to identifying these triggers when you do a life timeline. That's the best tool I know of because you're intentionally taking a couple hours and it really probably will take a couple hours to just do a timeline of your life from your first memory to the day to day and you are actually going to identify on there all the difficult situations you had to experience, all the transitions.

So you're looking at transitions, hardships, traumatic events that you've actually gone through and then good things as well. So things that were big major life changes like the birth of a child or getting married or getting a new Job that was like your dream job, if there is such a thing, but something happened in your life that changed and you're going to [00:20:00] identify it and start looking at how those things impacted you.

So what emotions did you feel at the time? What specifically happened? How did it go? You know, what happened afterwards? You're just writing things down freeform to start to get a feel. And then some of these things are going to jump out at you and say. to you really that you need to deal with me because this hasn't been faced.

And by facing it, I mean you're taking the fear out of it. You're learning to see that this is at the root of all this worry, of all this stress, of all these situations that really on a scale of 1 to 10 aren't that stressful, but they're triggering an 8 or a 9 as far as the stress scale, like 10 is like really super stressed when they really should be a 2 or a 3.

It's a dysphoria. It's something that you have. Some people have rejection sensitive dysphoria. So that means that on a scale of 1 to 10, when normally somebody, it'd be kind of like me with my buddy, that I emailed about playing golf at Bandon Dunes. I think I felt like a 3. You know, I saw it right after church and I responded.

I'm going to respond again, but it was like a 3. It wasn't like a 10. I mean, in the past, [00:21:00] especially right after I had gone through some difficult situations in my life, I mean, I was feeling rejection at an 8 or a 9. because I didn't want to get it rejected again because I had to deal with some of that.

And this situation, nah, it wasn't that big of a deal. But some of you listening, you're probably feeling rejection because of rejection sensitivity at a really high level. When in the reality, it's connected to this root issue that you're trying to get at right now. So, and this isn't easy. I mean, some actions you can take in addition to the timeline is you can start to talk about it.

Those things on the timeline that you know are triggering. And once you've figured out the root and you can talk to a friend, a counselor, a coach, you can talk to me. You can talk to Brian, the guy that does my podcast if you want. I'm sure I'll give him your number. If he wants to give it out, as I smile at him right now.

So, once you figure out the root, then you can start doing something about it. So here, you knew it was coming, you gotta face it. This is where the real change happens. I remember this clearly, and a client who said that he figured out the root cause of his passivity because he had been in relationships where he wouldn't face things.

And it had led [00:22:00] to some marriage issues, and it led to some work problems. And it led to some problems with his friends. And as I got to know him, he identified that the root cause was tremendous amount of conflict between his parents growing up. I mean, violence, I mean, bad stuff, you know, really bad. And so his thinking, he identified that in conflict, he starts feeling in his shoulders and in his stomach, this tremendous amount of tightness.

And he recognizes that his. And he did recognize that his thinking in that situation is conflict always goes bad and turns into violence. Conflict does not lead to anything good. And then he started to actually stand up to his spouse, really addressing things assertively because there wasn't a lot of pushback.

He had been very passive. And this led to a lot more conflict. Sorry to hear that, but it led to more conflict because she wasn't used to this. And it led to threats to leave. It led to actually moving out for a while, believe it or not. And, but. During that process, he started to believe in himself because what he was standing up for was right.

He didn't want to be mistreated. He wanted to get time with his person he loves. He didn't want [00:23:00] manipulation. He didn't want to be cussed at, in fact. And so he had to change his approach and it led to increased conflict. And then his expectations actually of his wife decreased. He wasn't expecting her. to respond to conflict in a really harsh way.

He was actually expecting it to cause change. Even though it wasn't causing change immediately, it was actually causing more conflict. It eventually led to more change. So an action you can take to start facing it is to identify in your journal or somewhere some way that Some action, a step in the right direction to get more information.

So it could be talking to somebody in your family about the traumatic event that occurred, asking questions, make a list of five to ten questions about that situation, that you can talk to somebody in your family. Hey, do you remember when, or can you tell me more about this, or help me understand what happened?

You were older then, you're five years older than me, this is a sibling, and can you give me more information? I really have wondered and tried to fill in the... Blanks here. And they may get defensive about that. They may not [00:24:00] want to answer that question, but it's for your own healing and it's the next right thing to do.

It's facing a fear. And so on the other side of fear is freedom and you're going to take that kind of step. So let's recap these ways to get at the root cause of your fear, because I want you to have freedom. So number one is you go ahead and you figure out when does it come out? Situations where it comes out.

You figure out what do you feel and where do you feel when it comes out, when you have this stress, getting at the root cause of the stress. What thoughts do you have? Identify those clearly. I'm afraid this is going to happen. I'm afraid that's going to happen. Number four is you start to identify where does it actually come from?

So where in the past does it come from? What's the root cause? It could be the recent past, like a bad relationship, a Divorce, or the death of somebody, a boss, could be in the far, far past, could be stuff that you've stuffed way down deep, and then you start facing it. So remember my world, 80 20 rule, 20 percent of [00:25:00] transformational change is insight.

You're getting insight from this podcast today. 80 percent of change is action. Insight is not... The key action is an okay plan that you take action on, not a horrible plan, but an okay plan is a hundred times better than one you never execute because you never do anything. It just stays stuck. What resonated with you most from the day?

By the end of the day today, in the next 12 hours, I want you to take an action on whatever it is that resonated with you, take an emotional risk based on the insight that you've gained. And if you want it to stick even deeper, talk to somebody about one of the concepts that you learned today. Just do it casually, don't have to say you learned anything.

You can just say, Hey, this is something that's been on my mind. If you love this episode, tell someone about the Decide Your Legacy podcast. It has been growing because of you. And I'm so grateful. Please spread the word and have me out to speak if you'd like to your team live or over zoom. I love to talk about.

Concepts and topics that I discuss in my podcast and some of my favorites are dealing with anxiety and fear, [00:26:00] making changes in your life, life transitions. Love to speak to your workplace team can help with the mental health. of your team. So hire me or one of my other legacy coaches. We'd love to engage with you.

I want to sign off the same way that I always do. Make it your mission to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. You decide your legacy, no one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.