Episode: 271
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
with Dr. Julie Smith, MD
This episode is your toolkit for life’s toughest moments.
In this powerful episode, Mel sits down with world-renowned psychologist Dr. Julie Smith to give you a practical, science-backed toolkit for navigating stress, anxiety, and emotional overwhelm.
You’ll learn how to stop overthinking, regulate your emotions, and build real mental strength.
If you're struggling, or supporting someone who is, this episode will help you get clarity, resilience, and see your next step forward.
Listen on:
Emotion is a normal human experience, and it's information. It's not something that's wrong with you.
Dr. Julie Smith, MD
Featured Clips
Transcript
Dr. Julie Smith (00:00:06):
You are not alone. There's nothing wrong with you just for having a hard time in life. Life is hard. This white rise represents the population of the world. Okay? So one in four people will experience a mental health problem at some point this year, right? And the wild rice represents that one in four. But when you mix them up like that, you realize even if you just take one little pinch of people, so let's say that's the people in your life, even if you are lucky enough not to be struggling at this moment, the chances are you're going to be rushing shoulders with someone who is so you are never alone. When you're struggling, someone else will be dealing with something. There is such power in being able to recognize that what you're experiencing is a normal human experience.
(00:00:57):
Even when you feel like you're the only one experiencing it at that moment. You don't have to judge yourself as not being enough or not getting this thing called life correct or right. When you are really struggling, the best thing you could possibly do is
Mel Robbins (00:01:12):
This is wild. We are so close to hitting 4 million subscribers on the Mel Robbins podcast. That number isn't just a milestone, it's a sign of how many of you show up every week ready to learn, grow, and take action. So if you've been listening and watching for a while and you haven't hit that subscribe button yet, now's the time. It's free. It helps us reach even more people, and I promise to keep making this show better for you every single week. Hey, it's your friend Mel. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so thrilled to be here with you today and it's always an honor, always to spend time with you, to be together. If you are a new listener, I also want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. And because you made the time and you decided to hit play on this particular episode, here's what I know about you.
(00:01:59):
You're the kind of person who values your time, and you're also someone who is committed to learning how to become the best version of yourself and getting better at navigating life's ups and downs. And we could all get better at that, myself included. And if you chose to listen to this because someone shared this with you, I think it's an important thing that I want to acknowledge and point out to you. It's really cool that you have people in your life that care enough about you to send this to you. And they sent this to you because they want you to have the experience of learning from the amazing Dr. Julie Smith, and they want you to have the toolkit that she's going to share with you.
Mel Robbins (00:02:38):
And I personally cannot be more excited to have Dr. Julie in person today. She's a world renowned clinical psychologist, a bestselling author of the mega Blockbuster bestseller. Why has nobody Told me this before, which has spent 109 weeks on the UK Sunday Times bestseller list. She has impacted millions of lives with the content she shares online. And now she's taken all of that wisdom and poured it into her new bestselling book Open when it's a book that you open when things are going wrong. It's a toolkit for life that will help you handle the ups, the downs, and everything in between, because when life feels chaotic, you deserve clarity. When emotions feel overwhelming, you deserve tools at work. And when you feel stuck, you deserve a way forward. And today you're going to get it. So without further ado, please help me welcome the incredible Dr. Julie Smith to the Mel Robbins podcast. Julie Smith is in the house. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:03:42):
Thank you. I can't tell you how excited I am to be here. I'm a massive fan, so thanks for having
Mel Robbins (00:03:47):
Me. Well, I'm a huge fan of yours and I am grateful that you hopped on a plane and you flew overseas to be here with us. And I want to start by telling you your new book Open when is absolutely extraordinary. I am so proud of you. I'm so excited for the world to have this book. Before we even dive in, I just want to read just even the Table of Contents because it is literally a guide to life. I mean, I want you to open this book when you compare yourself and come up short when your friends are not your friends, when you want to be less awkward around people. And these are all bite-sized chapters filled with things to do and ways to change how you think open when your inner voice is your own worst critic. When you doubt yourself and want to feel more confident open when you're overthinking everything, when you have done something you regret. I needed this book 30 years ago, Dr. Julie Open when your anger erupts Too often. I mean, who hasn't struggled with these things?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:05:04):
And that's really the main idea behind all of the chapter titles came to me in about 5:00 AM one morning when I was just churning all of this over, I was awake too early. And I thought there's just so many scenarios that we all face at some point that everybody goes through, but that none of it comes with any kind of manual or sense of what you should do about it. And all those situations leave you in turmoil sort of not knowing which way is up or often there's emotion to deal with and it's confusing and you're not sure which way is through. And really the whole idea for this book came from the first one. So why hasn't nobody told me this before was my first book, which was always kind of insights from therapy and things that you could spend time practicing to kind of build your resilience so that when stuff happens, you are better equipped.
(00:05:55):
And I had these lovely coming through some stories that were told to my mom actually saying, we find the book so helpful. We're keeping it with us so that when we're in a crisis or a panic, we can open the book and see what it says. And that was such a nice thing to hear, but I could not get it out of my head that I just didn't write it for those moments. If you are in the thick of it and you're in a crisis, the last thing you need to hear is, well, you probably should have started practicing mindfulness six months ago,
(00:06:23):
Then you'd be equipped. Now what you need is someone to grab you by the shoulders, look you in the eye and say, I know a way through. Follow me. And often that's just a shift of your attention, right? It's focusing on the direction that's going to see you through and out the other side. And for me, I guess the person that does that in my life for me is probably my husband Matt. He probably doesn't even realize he does it, but he says the don't tell him he said the right things that will just shift me back on track
(00:06:53):
And then I'm back on. But even for people that lots of people don't have that person in their life, but even for people that do, that person isn't always there at that time. And I was thinking about, gosh, when my kids grow up and they leave home and what could I send them off with that would see them through those difficult moments when I can't be there to give them a hug and say, I know the way through this. So yeah, it's the one I want to stick in the suitcases of my kids when they leave home or send off to family and friends when I can't be there for them.
Mel Robbins (00:07:25):
Well, I completely relate because when I read your book, I thought I have to give this to all three of my kids because it is a manual for life. And let's face it, life is very difficult.
Mel Robbins (00:07:39):
What I'm excited for us to do today is to unpack all these little nuggets of wisdom that are life skills, that are tools that you can assemble in a toolkit for life because life is stressful right now. If you're not feeling anxious, somebody that you love probably is if you're not overwhelmed, somebody else is that you care about. If you haven't lost a job or are stressed out about the headlines, somebody that you care about is and everything that you're about to share that you've also beautifully written about in this new bestselling book Open When are just tools. And I love that you said that it's the kind of thing that you wish everybody knew and that you almost wish people didn't have to pay for.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:08:26):
Yeah. Yeah.
Mel Robbins (00:08:27):
You have been in clinical practice for over a decade. You have millions of followers who hang on your videos and are so inspired and empowered by them. I would love for you to just tell the person listening, how do you think about what you're doing in your role as a clinical psychologist? If you just explained it in just plain speak, how would you describe what you do for people?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:08:53):
Well, I've definitely been swimming against Tide professionally. You've got the therapeutic stuff and the clinical work, but then moving that educational aspect of stuff out of the therapy room, because I recognized that it's not therapy skills, it's life skills, and it's stuff that I was finding helpful. My friends were finding helpful, my family were finding helpful. And a lot of these people that were coming along for therapy who perhaps weren't at that more severe end of the scale, they didn't have any sort of clinical diagnosis or they were just struggling to deal with whatever life threw at them because they didn't trust in their ability to be able to deal with the emotion that came along with it. And they didn't necessarily have some of the skills that you need to be able to move through that emotion or to deal with the relationships or moods or whatever it was.
(00:09:42):
And so once people had that information, they were just raring to go. And so I wanted to get that out there, make it more available to people. And so that's really what I'm doing is sharing the stuff that it is the juicy bits that have come out of all this great stuff that is used in clinical practice, but we should all be using it because whether your problems are big or small, it's still useful. And so I'm kind of making sure that everyone is armed up to the hill to deal with life because life is really tough.
Mel Robbins (00:10:17):
Dr. Julie, what would you tell someone who feels like they're the only person in their friend group or their family who's actually struggling?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:10:25):
Do you know what? We actually did a video on this quite a while ago, but we use lots, I'm just going to pull these over here. We use lots of rice just as this idea of representing the population of the world. So let's say the rice here, this white rice represents the population of the world. So you've got all of this, and one in four people will experience a mental health problem at some point this year, right? And the wild rice represents that one in four. But when you mix them up like that and you give it a little kind of mix, you realize that that one in four is huge number. And even if you just take one little pinch of people, so let's say that's the people in your life, even if you are lucky enough not to be struggling at this moment, the chances are you're going to be brushing shoulders with someone who is so you are never alone when you're struggling because even though people, you won't be able to see it in this visual way that you do with the rice because people don't often talk about it when they're struggling, but someone else will be dealing with something. And so recognizing that we need to be kind to each other all the time.
Mel Robbins (00:11:40):
Dr. Julie, why is it important for you to recognize that you're not the only one? What benefit does it have on you? If you are in a moment where you're struggling?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:11:50):
There is such power in being able to recognize that what you're experiencing is a normal human experience. Even when you feel like you're the only one experiencing it at that moment, knowing that that doesn't make you abnormal, that it's a normal part of the human experience that other people might have experienced at some point, even if they're not going through it now, means that you don't have to judge yourself as not being enough or not getting this thing called life correct or right. Normalizing something helps you to take the judgment out of it and start looking at it with curiosity.
Mel Robbins (00:12:27):
The other thing that I love about it, and this visual is so helpful, is that there are going to be times where I am the wild rice that's going through something, and then there'll be times that I'm the white rice and things are okay. And also understanding that we swap those positions in life I think gives you perspective that where you're at right now, if you're struggling isn't where you're always going to be.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:12:50):
Yeah, absolutely. It changes and it's temporary, and those thoughts are so simple and yet so powerful because if you know that something is changeable and that sometimes you're okay and sometimes you're not, and that's a normal human experience, then you're able to accept it and allow it to pass over you in that way.
Mel Robbins (00:13:09):
And it also gives you the motivation and hope that if you do use the tools that you share with us, that you'll pass through it a little quicker.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:13:17):
Yeah, there are absolutely there so many things you can do to help bring yourself back to baseline and to prevent it from happening so much of the time or to prevent those emotions from being so intense. Lots of skills you can do that you can learn and get better at that help you do that
Mel Robbins (00:13:37):
Well. That's why I'm so glad that you're here because I think that you hear the word mental health and you think something big and scary, but no, you can struggle with friendship. You can struggle with loneliness. You can struggle with not having a direction in your career. You can struggle with money. There's so many things in life that cause you to doubt or overthink or feel down about yourself. And I'm so excited to dig into the tools.
Mel Robbins (00:13:59):
Dr. Julie is a clinical psychologist. You say that everybody deserves to have an emotional toolkit. What does that mean?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:14:06):
There's loads to that depending on what you are facing at any given point. And I would kind of break it down into there are certain things where people struggle no matter what the details of your problem is and what life's throwing at you. A lot of people struggle with, okay, emotions. So people will often come into therapy, diagnosable or not, people will come into therapy and they'll say, I've got these feelings that I don't want to have. I'm having too much of those and I'm missing a lot of the nice pleasant ones that I used to have more. I would like some of those back please.
(00:14:36):
So a lot of it is sort of, there's some skills around emotion regulation. So there are things you can do to help you regulate the negative emotion, not make them disappear so that there's a learning about, okay, emotion is normal human experience and it's information. It's not something that's wrong with you. If you experience sadness or anger or anxiety, it doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with you. It's a normal part of human experience. So often what we do in therapy, we take the judgment out of it and we look at it with curiosity. Instead, all emotion is information. It has something to tell you usually about what you need or what's going on around you. So there's this kind of shift around emotion regulation and learning about emotion. But then there's also stuff about thoughts that people struggle with thoughts. So all this stuff online about only positive vibes and don't have negative thoughts, and that really sets people up to feel like they're failing because inevitably they have negative thoughts, they have judgments, they have self-critical thoughts, and when they have them, they then think they're failing at being a positive person.
(00:15:50):
Whereas often what you would use in therapy that's really, and I use this all the time, is the idea of thought diffusion, where you get yourself a bird's eye view of what's going on in your head, and you kind look at the pattern of, okay, these thoughts are coming in and those sorts are coming in and these are all possible perspectives that I can take on this, but I have the choice. So it's this idea that your attention is like a spotlight, and if all your kind of thoughts were actors on the stage, you've got control of the spotlight. So what most people try to do is scramble up onto the stage and pull actors off this. I don't want to think that, and I don't want to have that thought because horrible, and I just want to think this and you can't control it. But what you do have is the spotlight. So all these different thoughts will be coming into your mind and you can just choose what you are giving most of your time and attention to, and that will impact how you feel. You don't have to eradicate those other thoughts. There are other possible scripts that you could listen to, but you get to choose which ones you give the limelight to.
Mel Robbins (00:16:57):
Well, and what's great about the way that you're framing this, you're now talking about teaching us skills around managing emotions and feeling emotions and not being scared of emotions and processing them and tools around understanding the way that your thoughts are shaping your experience and learning the skill of choosing what you want to think about or how you want to think about things. And we're going to get into those. We're going to take the rice away right now through the magic of editing. And then I'm going to jump right into the next question.
Mel Robbins (00:17:28):
So Dr. Julie, you've been very open about your recent cancer diagnosis. Can you use that as an example of a situation where life sucks things happen, and how you were then using this toolkit that we're going to unpack for the person that's with us to navigate through that situation that just happened?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:17:52):
Yeah. Do you know what, and I'm generally not that public about my personal life a lot, but the reason I shared about that was because I knew there would be other busy moms and dads like me who were tempted to put their own health on the back burner. So that's just something I would say to anyone out there who is listening, who has any kind of health concern and is tempted to wait and put it off until they're less busy. I did, I was six weeks away from handing in the manuscript to open when and discover a lump in my breast, and I thought, should I just wait until I've got this book off my desk before I go? And I'd had lunch some months before. I knew it wasn't a great, nice process, and I thought, do I have the mental capacity for this right now?
(00:18:36):
And lots going on. But in the end gave myself a bit of a talking to and thought, that's a stupid idea. Went and got the tests and time was my greatest tool, so my greatest weapon against this thing, and now I'm fine. So anyone out there who has a kind of health concern and is tempted to put it off, don't just do it. So yeah, I got diagnosed then. So that was about six weeks before I handed the book in. Then I got diagnosed and I was about a week or two away from handing the book in. So I was at that stage where I was kind of reading through editing, polishing things up, ready for my editor to see it, and I just happened to be reading through the chapter on When Fear shows up, isn't it Life Funny? Oh my goodness. And I kind read it and I thought, this just isn't the kind of words I need to hear right now.
(00:19:27):
It was very gentle and a lot of people like that approach, but I just thought, I need something much stronger here. So I hit delete and I sat there and then rewrote the whole thing. It was very much a shift in language that when something like that happens and life throws you a massive curve ball like that, so you're faced with the prospects of your own mortality, the fear is just catastrophic, right? I was like a rabbit in headlights. That's what I felt like that I was just stunned. And you don't find out everything at once either. You don't sort of find out and then find out what the treatment plan is and what the prospects are. You find out in bits and pieces. So there was so much uncertainty, and I did not want to feel like the prey. I didn't want to feel like I was trying to work out which way to go.
(00:20:19):
And so I used the power of that language to write myself. Each chapter begins with a letter from me. So I wrote this letter to myself, and it's very much a sense of you cannot control the fact that fear is here, but it can help you to move through this thing. It's now your responsibility to cultivate that courage to move through and out the other side. And there was lots of language around becoming the predator instead of the prey. And there's this fundamental difference between those two, right? Yes. So that prey is darting around just avoiding threats and pitfalls and trying to survive it, whereas a predator has a goal, has something in its sight, and it's on the front foot and uses all that drive and that action to make something happen. And so I thought, right, yeah, this cancer isn't coming after me.
(00:21:13):
I'm coming after it. You better watch out. And I felt fundamentally the situation was the same, but I felt fundamentally different in terms of how I was dealing with that. I wanted to be on the front foot and I wanted to be, and actually the quote at the beginning of the book, it was never going to be in the book, but I had to put it in the end because it was so fundamental to my experience was get busy with life's purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue if you care for yourself at all and do it while you can. And it kind of makes me emotional just even saying it there, because it takes me back to that moment of I had it on a post-it note that was on my desk, and every time I read it, I felt that drive, that kind of fire in my belly to do something that was active in my own rescue.
(00:22:03):
And I feel like it reflects everything, this whole journey and all those people I was with in therapy who felt that they were at the mercy of their emotional experience, even it doesn't have to be those kind of extreme experiences, but normal emotional ups and downs, relationship ups and downs, they can feel so just chaotic, can't they? And often that chaos is, I don't trust myself to be able to cope with whatever comes up. And that's what fundamentally changes when you change the language and you choose to focus that spotlight of your attention where it is going to be most helpful to you so that you can have this vision of as I move through this and as I get out the other side, I want to look back and be so proud of how I dealt with it.
(00:22:53):
And have that as your vision for how you're going to be forward rather than the darting of the rabbit and the headlights are which way is left, which is right. I wanted to have that absolute focus and it really worked for me.
Mel Robbins (00:23:06):
Well, Dr. Julie, I think it's a unbelievably relatable story, and I'm thinking right now of friends of mine who are sitting in a hospital and they have a loved one who is waiting heart surgery, and it's just like every day holding onto hope and even thinking of friends who just lost their job. And that whole flip from feeling like the prey where something's coming after you and you have nothing that you can do versus that flip to, no, I'm going to be the predator. I'm going after it. That is an example of the kind of tools that you are so brilliant at giving to people in your private practice to giving to all of us online. And I can see how that's already going to help somebody, whether they're dealing with a breakup or they're dealing with just that sense of helplessness. No, that's what a prey feels like. We're going to think like a predator.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:24:07):
And I think the key there is that the fear is still there, right? We're not eradicating the fear, we're not making you feel like everything's fine, but it was a way that helped me to get through it. The idea that I could use fear to my advantage. I didn't have to make sure it had disappeared before I did something useful that could help me move forward. It just changed. It felt fundamentally different.
Mel Robbins (00:24:31):
Well, it is because I think we've all heard the fear and do it anyway, or let the fear fuel your, and what does that even mean? But if you then turn it into a tool and say, no, no, no, no, you're either the prey or the predator choose, and that helps you process the fear, which is a mentally healthy response to a cancer diagnosis or to a breakup or to a job loss, but it helps you process it and then use it to your advantage, which I just absolutely love.
Mel Robbins (00:25:02):
For somebody who's feeling extremely overwhelmed right now with a situation in life, or maybe they're grieving something, a relationship that's over or they've lost somebody, do you have any other tools that you would recommend for what processing those emotion mean in that context?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:25:18):
Yeah, yeah. I think it's key here that I've never wanted to give the impression that I then didn't have some really dark moments in that, right? That I'm a human just like everybody else. And so dealing with something in that way doesn't mean that you don't feel overwhelmed at times. So I had those moments and the way that I deal with those sort of big emotions and the overwhelm was to allow it to be there and to recognize I've sat in so many rooms with people and just helped contain those feelings and helped people through them, not to eradicate them, but to sort of hold their hand as they experience it. So I talk about that in the book actually, this idea that your inner world is a bit like a sauna. There are benefits to being there, but only if you don't stay too long.
(00:26:09):
So when you are really struggling, the best thing you could possibly do is reach out to a human being that you trust and connect in that moment because they will help you to regulate that emotion. But if you don't have someone there in that moment being in a position where you are not trying to numb it, you are not trying to push it away, you are just allowing it to wash over you, then that's exactly what it will do. And I did a video ages ago about the idea that if you stand in the ocean up to your waist and the waves are coming and when the wave comes, it lifts you off your feet a bit. So imagine if you try to hold back one of those waves, you are going to end up taking a tumble and mouthful of water and it's not going to be pretty.
(00:26:58):
But if you accept that those waves are coming and then you do something different, you say maybe you turn to the side or you brace yourself and bend your knees so that when you do come off your feet, you're going to land again. And in the acceptance of that sort of emotional wave coming, you are better prepared to then deal with what it does to you and it will naturally pass without causing you too many problems. And that's really what emotion does. If you can kind of soothe your way through it, knowing that it's temporary, knowing that it will, even if it goes away and it comes back again, you can do that again and again and on repeat and listen to what it says. At that point, when I felt that overwhelm, it was telling me I was shit scared about what was going to happen to my children and what was going to happen to me and what the future held and how sick I might become and all those kind of things. I didn't have the answers to those things in that moment. And so the fear was there and that was okay, and then we focused on, okay, what's the next step that I need to take in order to keep moving through it?
Mel Robbins (00:28:03):
So that's almost an example of another tool is visualizing yourself in an ocean and understanding that when the emotion rises of overwhelm or grief or anger or sadness or fear of whatever, just let it rise and visualize yourself kind of letting it fall.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:28:21):
Yeah.
Mel Robbins (00:28:22):
Another thing that you write about in open when is just kind of chronic comparison and how we look around at the world around us and then we tell ourselves, I'm less than. I'm never going to make that money. I'm never going to be this. I'm never going to be that. Nothing I ever do is right. And you're using comparison as a way to beat yourself down. And you have this quote in the book that I fricking love. Resentment is not a reflection of what the world owes you. It is a sign of what you need to work on. What does that mean?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:28:53):
So for a lot of people when they feel resentment, the tendency is to look at the person who you feel is making you feel that way that they're doing something wrong or they're overstepping the mark or they're breaching your boundaries. And again, for me, that's very prey rather than predator, right? That's the sense of it is being done to me and
(00:29:15):
Therefore I don't have control of that feeling. And resentment will just destroy your relationship if you allow it to continue. And the only real way to respond to resentment is looking at what it's telling you. And it's often that you've not been putting healthy boundaries in place to prevent that, or maybe it's a gratitude probably. So another sort of real great remedy for resentment is gratitude and looking at maybe you're being hard on the other person and maybe you are taking them for granted, and maybe there's other things to feel grateful for in that relationship. But often it's that sense of you've allowed certain barriers to be breached or certain healthy boundaries to be breached and walked over, and then you're going to be bitter about it as opposed to taking responsibility for holding them up and doing the really difficult thing. But the thing that's going to create that kind of healthy experience in your relationship, again
Mel Robbins (00:30:11):
Based on the millions of people that follow you and your own private practice. Can you give me an example of how that works? Something that people write in are really struggling about comparison or whether it's their body to somebody else or that they're not married yet, or just something that you're seeing a lot of so that we can ground that advice and example.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:30:33):
Do you know what something I see a lot of, not necessarily in therapy anymore, but just in real life is when people start to compare themselves to the wrong people. So when you start to compare yourself to your friends and it just destroys the friendship because you set yourself up where you could have been a team and two people that walk through life together and support each other,
(00:31:03):
Suddenly you put a scoreboard between you, which means that their victories mean some sort of loss for you and vice versa. Then you can't share your personal victories because they see it as a threat. And so then your conversations are censored between you. There's things you can't say, or even when you are telling them about something that's gone wrong for you or something hard that you're dealing with, they then that's a bit for connection, a bit for support. But they'll come back with, oh, well I have something worse. And so suddenly you're in this competition with the person who you are supposed to support and they're supposed to support you back. And so anytime that you compare yourself to someone that you're in a decent relationship with is bad news. And that's a lot. Often what I talk about in the book about the social comparison stuff is online people will tell you just stop comparing yourself to other people. And that is luck impossible because human beings often the problem is not that you are comparing, it's that you're making the wrong comparisons that's going to lead you down the wrong path.
Mel Robbins (00:32:13):
How do you stop yourself from doing it? So if comparison's normal and you say, because I was really intrigued when you're like you're making the wrong comparisons, who are the right comparisons to?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:32:23):
So let's say you want to get better at something, right? So let's say you want to do better at tennis, then comparing yourself to one of the greats is when you're just starting out, it's probably really, but also what you want to do is compare yourself to someone who is going to help you get to where you need to go. So let's say you want to improve your backhand and there's someone at the local club who does that really well, and there might be a few steps ahead of you in their journey, but what you can do there is you can look at that and learn from that what they do well. So you've got to be really concrete. It's got to be very separate. So not comparing personalities or types or self-worth, you are comparing something that is actually going to be helpful for you in your path with what you want to do well at. So you can see how that could be a great learning experience, right? Of
Mel Robbins (00:33:18):
Course. And I love that you said be specific because if you're saying who's somebody that's a couple steps ahead and there's a specific thing that I want to get better at, and when you compare yourself to somebody like that in that narrow framing, now it becomes a tool
Dr. Julie Smith (00:33:32):
Instead
Mel Robbins (00:33:33):
Of it becoming torturous to you.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:33:35):
When we can use that ability to compare in a way that's really constructive, then it can really go places and your life starts to shift in this really positive way.
Mel Robbins (00:33:47):
So Dr. Julie, when you have somebody come into your practice or right into you online and they're having trouble just being with other people, very shy, very introverted, feel very awkward around other people, what are some tools and strategies that you recommend?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:34:04):
This is kind of quite a personal one for me really, because I remember I was such a shy child. I said about I read a lot. It was basically because I was the shy, quiet one in the corner. Nobody would ever have dreamt that I would do stuff like this, including me. And I even remember when I got to clinical training and I'm sat in a room with someone and I'm being assessed doing an assessment of that person sounds horrible. And I remember thinking in that moment, why have I chosen this career? I hate talking to people. I hate being looked at by other people and here I am doing both at the same time. And then the idea of putting stuff out there publicly only started because it felt like a nice thing to do, never imagined it would turn into something where I was doing live TV or radio and I was terrified of doing that stuff.
(00:34:53):
And in all honesty, I had to keep doing it because I felt that I had to practice what I preach about how if you struggle with being around people or talking to people or public speaking or whatever it is, you have to spend time doing it. If you want your confidence to grow, you have to be able to go where you have none. And to be able to sit there for a while and be willing to be the beginner and stick with it and look after yourself when it doesn't go well, that was key. I think with the going on live TV and things like that. The only way I was really willing to do that was if I fully committed to myself that I would have my own back if it all went wrong, if I tripped over and flashed my underwear to the nation, whatever, I was not going to kick myself when I was down.
(00:35:41):
I was quite academically and things like that. I guess I was always quite hard on myself and that highly self-critical stuff was probably quite there when I was younger. But I had to say there was no way I can do this and be this vulnerable if I'm going to speak to myself like that. Just not a chance. So I had to be fully committed to being in my own head, being like a coach. So someone who would have the absolute my best interest at heart the whole time, not speak to me like I was a piece of shit and treat myself in a way that a coach would treat an elite athlete to say, when you're down, this is how we get back up and we move forward.
Mel Robbins (00:36:22):
You have this quote. It's not so much that the socially confident have worked out how to prevent awkward moments. It's simply that they barely focus on trying to avoid them at all. Sometimes focusing only on what you're trying to avoid leads you straight to it. And so if you have somebody that is listening right now, and this is really an issue, I feel awkward around other people. I'm not good in big groups, I don't like to put myself out there. What assignment or what would you tell them if they were sitting across from you? Because that person might be listening right now. What do they actually need to do?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:37:01):
Yeah. Well, I guess there's two things here. One is that you take your time, you don't start with the scariest thing, any type of fear that you are tackling.
(00:37:10):
What we would do in therapy is we create a scale. So we would list all the different situations that are scary with the least scary at the bottom. So maybe if it's a social anxiety thing, maybe the idea of saying hello to that person at the local store when I pick up my paper or whatever fills me with anxiety. But I know I could do it if I really tried. That would go at the bottom. And there may be a sort of a hundred percent worst case scenario is I've got a speak at a friend's wedding or something like that. And there's loads of scenarios in between that are all slightly tweaked and slightly different that you might think are more or less scary. And you don't start at the top, you start at the bottom. So you start with a thing that feels kind of manageable, but a challenge
(00:37:55):
And you repeat it as much as you possibly can because what you do is everything that's new and novel, you will get this hike in your stress response. So your brain is saying, we we're not sure about this, anything could happen. So we're going to increase your level of alertness so that you are ready for anything. And that's really what it is. That's what's happening. You're getting that level of alertness so that you can cope with it, but you experience that as stress. So it's uncomfortable. And so if you are tackling those scenarios, what we often get people to do when they're in it is focus on that idea that your attention is a spotlight and you have control of that.
Mel Robbins (00:38:33):
So I've now pushed myself to go to this networking meeting. I did not want to go, I hate small talk. I'm feeling awkward. I'm now standing in that semicircle with four people. I keep staring at people's shoes and I'm thinking, this is horrible. I dunno what to, so how do I use the spotlight tool right now?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:38:52):
So when you are socially anxious, your focus will be inward. It will be on how are other people perceiving me? Am I standing funny? Am I fidgeting? Am I saying stuff wrong? How am I coming across?
Mel Robbins (00:39:03):
And
Dr. Julie Smith (00:39:04):
It'll be all this kind of inner turmoil stuff that just keeps triggering more and more anxiety. Whereas someone who's confident and not socially anxious will not be focused inwards on themselves. They will be focused on the other person and trying to get to know them or find stuff out about them. And actually, I've sat in rooms with people who've really struggled with anxiety and paranoia and we've had to have big care meetings with all their different professionals. And I remember sitting with someone and getting them to take notes about what the plan was. And so all that was a focus of that spotlight of attention. So rather than thinking, who's looking at me? Who's thinking what it was, who's just said something that is part of the plan, let me write it down. And you just take control of that spotlight of attention. And then what you do is you get this experience that it can go well, it can go okay, and I can practice where I focus my attention and it influences how I feel.
(00:40:09):
And that is the superpower starting to really open up this idea that I can take control of this one thing in this scenario and it influences the feeling or it makes that feeling slightly more manageable so it doesn't take it away. It still might always be a little bit awkward, a little bit uncomfortable, that self-doubt might always be there in a little way, but you know what to do with it. And that's the key is you're not trying to take it all away. You're just showing yourself proving to yourself through action that you can do something with it.
Mel Robbins (00:40:41):
You know what I love about that reframe is that you literally just so skillfully said, if you're focused inward, you're going to feel anxious, but you can take the spotlight and focus on what are the other people saying? Am I listening? What are they wearing? Can I give a compliment? And now all of a sudden, you are using this tool to be able to navigate this situation. And when you end it, it might not be incredible, but you got yourself through it and that's the cool thing.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:41:11):
And every time you get yourself through it, your brain clocks another bit of evidence that you can, that even when it doesn't go really, really well, you survive it anyway. And that's what you need is your brain learns through evidence of actions that you've got to kind of build up as many of those experiences as you can. And then confidence is a sort of byproduct of doing that on repeat as much as possible.
Mel Robbins (00:41:34):
You know, one section of your book open when you're really hard on yourself and you've done things that you regret and we've all been there, but you cannot, you're really struggling to forgive yourself. What are some tools and strategies that you recommend when you're just really hard on yourself?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:41:56):
Yeah, I think looking at your relationship with failure is huge and a real game changer. Actually. When I talked about this idea of going on live TV and it being terrifying and that I needed to commit to looking after myself, it was really, that was a shift in my relationship with failure that I committed to looking after myself in the face of setbacks and humiliation and failure that might happen that if the inside of your head is not a safe place to be, how are you ever going to take risks? How are you ever going to move forward? One of the things I used to talk about in therapy when people were highly self-critical is this idea that imagine if I was going to lock you in a room for a whole year, so 24 7 for a whole year, you couldn't come out in there. I was going to put your high school bully, the worst person you can think of from your early days, and you're going to live with them 24 7 for a year. How might you feel when you came out?
Mel Robbins (00:43:04):
Horrid, beaten down, scared. My first thing that I thought was, my God, I guess I better figure out how to be friends with this person or else they're going to destroy me.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:43:13):
Yeah, so someone who just hammers you all the time, oh
Mel Robbins (00:43:17):
My God, yes,
Dr. Julie Smith (00:43:17):
All the time. You're never going to come out of that feeling at your best, but imagine now if I said, okay, I'm going to lock you in that room for the year, but you get to say your best friend. How would you feel different when you came out?
Mel Robbins (00:43:30):
I'd feel fantastic. I'm actually going away to camp
Dr. Julie Smith (00:43:34):
Like a holiday. You would have a great time and you would feel encouraged about whatever you're going to do next and happy. And really that idea of being in that room with a person is you inside your own head. The way that you speak to yourself can either be a really good friend or a bully. And because you are with yourself 24 7, it will have the same impact as that scenario of am I spending time with someone who's having a positive impact on me or someone who's having a negative impact on me? But the great news is that you have control of that and you can begin to shift how you speak to yourself.
Mel Robbins (00:44:19):
How do you begin to talk to yourself as a friend if you actually believe that you're a bad person or that you look in the past and you see lots of evidence of the mistakes that you've made?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:44:30):
Yeah. Well, I think if you are looking back and you are seeing how hard you are on yourself, the fact that you can recognize it
(00:44:38):
Is a sign of progress. When I look back on my early videos that I put out into the internet and I think, oh my goodness, I can barely watch it. I just can barely look. And my response then is always, that's a sign of progress. If we weren't doing better videos now, I wouldn't be so cringey when I watch the old ones. So it's a sign that you are learning and you're progressing. And so when you look back and there's something you regret or you think, how could I be so stupid? How could I get that so wrong?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:45:12):
That's the sign that you are not there now. And I love this idea of elite athletes employ coaches with so much thought and precision. They don't employ that high school bully to get them through really difficult competitions or help them improve their game or anything like that. They employ someone who has their back, has their best interest at heart, believes that they have huge potential and need to do some hard work to get there, and someone who's always going to be honest with them, but is going to bring that honesty with kindness and compassion and forward thinking. And so when we think of that kind of idea of people employ coaches like that because it works and because it helps them to bring their best, but you apply that to normal life and we all want to bring our best. We all want to keep progressing and learning and bringing out the best in ourselves.
(00:46:12):
And so what you need is to be the coach for yourself. No one else is there 24 7, not even our family. But if we can have that idea, it's not so much exactly what you say every time, what are the words I need to say to myself? It's an idea of what would a coach say to me right now? How would a coach help me to get back up when I've fallen down or I've really messed up? What would they be saying? They wouldn't be calling me names because that wouldn't help. They would. And so it's just giving yourself this idea of this concept of what is the voice that I need to hear right now that's going to help me through? And that's where the idea with the book came where each chapter begins with a letter from me. It's this idea that often in those moments, you just need someone to bring the right words that helps to shift your attention in the right direction and give you that sort of drive in your belly that's just going to get you back up and pushing through this difficult moment. So it is really hard to do that for ourselves in the moment. It takes time and training and practice. And I think often we learn that from hearing it. And so if we don't have anyone in our lives that seems to bring the right words that we need to hear, then we can get it from a book, right?
Mel Robbins (00:47:27):
Yes, you can. And you can get it from podcasts and from social media clips. And what I loved about what you just said though, I really want to highlight this, is that a recognizing that you kind of have engaged in regrettable or despicable or hurtful or painful behavior, even just recognizing it, I love this reframe that that's a really great sign of progress, that you have the ick factor with yourself, and that's different than holding it over your head. And so if you can recognize it, is there any trick to reframing than how you actually talk to yourself moving forward when you can't think of anything else? Is there something that you give to the clients that you work with that is kind of universal that helps 'em shake off the hold that being hard on yourself can have
Dr. Julie Smith (00:48:23):
A line that's often used in therapeutic work when we're helping someone build and train in self-compassion is I did the best that I knew how with what I had at the time, and I have new insight now and new skills now that I didn't have before.
(00:48:39):
And we were talking earlier about the kind of idea of where you focus your attention and what causes anxiety. If your attention is focused on the past too much, you will get depressed and you'll get miserable. If your attention is always focused on the future and things that might happen but haven't happened yet, you're going to get anxious. And if you're focused on the present moment, there's much less to be depressed or anxious about. It's just the present moment, it's just me and you and here. And that's mindfulness, really. That's the idea of choosing where you focus your attention. And so being able to like you say something like, I did the best I knew how with what I had at the time, even if I had very little at the time in terms of skill, and now I'm going to bring myself back to here
Mel Robbins (00:49:26):
And I can figure out how to do better. You mentioned the future, and Dr. Julie, I would love to know how you help a client who feels a lot of uncertainty about the future. And right now I think it's at an all time high. When you look at the headlines and when you look at the reports around the spike in anxiety and stress that people are feeling around the world. So what are tools that you can use to manage the uncertainty when you look out to the future?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:49:55):
Yeah, I think when everything's uncertain, a lot of the distress that that causes is when we're trying to control it. It's a bit like your book, isn't it, with the let them, right? It's the allow life to be uncertain. Every move in life is uncertain. Nothing is given, nothing is fully controllable. And so it's probably one of life's most important skills to be able to tolerate that uncertainty and to know that when everything becomes really stressful, I'm really uncertain. Narrowing your focus is probably the most helpful real time tool to just focus on the next couple of steps ahead. What am I doing that's keeping me moving forward? Even in times of great uncertainty or stress or all sorts of problems that might be up ahead. And certainly that was for me when I talk about the whole cancer experience, something that does to you, that takes I, I think everyone probably worries about will I get this or that when I'm older, and when will stuff like that happen? But when it does happen, you realize you had a certain degree of safety, this idea that happens to other people mostly,
(00:51:15):
Even if you're a bit worried about it, there's a kind of distance that you have. And I remember thinking, I don't want to be in this club. I don't want to be in this club. I did not sign up for this. And I think that was this sense of anything can happen right now, it feels more possible than it ever did. And so even once you are okay and out the other side of treatment and so many people survive it, and it's just fantastic that people are having successful treatments, but it leaves with you this sense of anything can happen. And probably the most fundamental way that I deal with that is saying yes, that's why I have to live as if I have a future, because otherwise I'm back to rabbit and headlights. Anything could happen. So I can't live. I can't carry on.
Mel Robbins (00:52:05):
I'm glad that you said that because I think when people hear, you have to allow the uncertainty. You have to allow the fact that there are things out of your control, whether it's the headlines or the fact that you're now single again
(00:52:15):
And you didn't want to be, or that you just had a miscarriage and you didn't want it, or you just got the cancer diagnosis or somebody that you love is going in for surgery and it's all uncertain, or AI feels like it's taking over the world and will it take over your job? And so that sense of like, oh my gosh, I just have to let them, I have to allow this because I can't control it. I'm so happy you reminded us that that's not where it ends because you brought it right back to the prey versus the predator, which is there are small things that I can do to put the foot forward and get ahead of this thing or just focus on what is important to me. And there was a tool in there which is believing that you have a future, believing that things are better. Why is that important?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:53:05):
Because if you don't, you have nothing, right? You have to live as if you have a future because otherwise you start dropping into this sense of doom that everything is pointless if you feel that you don't have a future. And so you have to live with that meaning and purpose because if you don't act as you have a future and then you do, then you mess up your future. So a lot of it is about bearing that suffering side of it and moving forward anyway. And then things, you get these little pockets of time where things feel a bit better or you open up the possibility of experiencing pleasure or meaning or purpose throughout, despite the fact that the world is often scary and uncertain and in some ways it's always been that way.
Mel Robbins (00:54:00):
It's true. It's true. So in your private practice and with your online audience, what are you seeing that people are struggling the most with right now?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:54:10):
I think there's this kind of mix between the emotional stuff, so understanding that there is a way to deal with emotion, and that when you experience a bunch of negative or painful emotions, that doesn't mean something is wrong with you, linked with relationships.
Mel Robbins (00:54:31):
What are the big struggles in relationships?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:54:32):
I think it's a mix of dealing with my emotion in the relationship and dealing with someone else's emotion in the relationship. And I think we are lied to, especially on social media now, about this idea that you hear all this stuff about you've got to be healed before you get into relationship. Oh my God, when are you healed? I mean, if I had followed that rule, I would never have married Matt. We've been together 20 years, and it's this idea that you've got to become this sort of perfect idea of human being and the other person's got to have done the same work so that when you get together you have this perfect fairytale relationship and it's never hard and it's just utter rubbish. It's just not true whatsoever. And so when people then struggle in relationships because you're both dealing with emotion and stress and all the ups and downs of life, people then think that it's not the right relationship where you're getting it wrong.
(00:55:27):
And actually that is the process of a relationship is building that together and going through those things and learning about each other in the process and forgiving each other for when you bring your worse to each other and you just build so much strength through that. So I think there's this combination of what on earth is emotional about and how do I deal with it? But also then what do I do with that in a relationship when the relationship shows me up to not be my perfect self and I'm not being my best self? What does that mean? So yeah, some sort of combination between those two, I think.
Mel Robbins (00:56:01):
And what's the most important thing that you think we need to know to make our relationships better?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:56:10):
No, relationship is perfect, but that doesn't mean you have to give up on it. That I think the strongest relationships have often been through the most together. You feel safety when you've been through stuff together and it's pulled you together and not apart. I think this whole misconception that everything's got to be perfect, otherwise it's not the right person or it's not the right relationship.
Mel Robbins (00:56:41):
So Dr. Julie, what if you're in a relationship with somebody who doesn't want to deal with their emotions, they don't want to look inward, they don't want to have these kinds of conversations with you. What advice do you give to your clients when they come in and they talk about the fact that I'm trying to connect, I'm trying to get them to process their emotion, they're not opening up.
Dr. Julie Smith (00:57:02):
In some ways I would ask why they're trying to get 'em to open up and what's going on there because we can only change ourselves and we can only improve ourselves. And again, it's that focus on what I bringing to the relationship because it's an okay way to be. If you're not a talker and you don't really talk about emotions that much, that's okay for some people that works. And we don't all have to be really insightful or psychologically minded or anything like that for stuff to work. And sometimes I think that's okay. I mean, Matt and I, for example, I'm well into this. I'm a full on psychology nerd, constantly reading about stuff. I'm therapist, so always reflecting on things, and he's probably the opposite to me in that sense. But that means we have different strengths and we even each other out, God, can you imagine how we'd talk for hours if we were both dreadful psychologists? You'd have no fun. Oh my God, it would be awful.
Mel Robbins (00:58:02):
I wouldn't want you at a dinner party. You're like, not those two,
Dr. Julie Smith (00:58:05):
God. And actually you look online about some of these sort of apparently ideal ways to repair an argument or those kinds of things. Actually for us, probably a lot of the time we just use humor and we know each other so well now that we can kind of go, oh, you're doing our thing again. And then we both have a laugh about it and then we're back in. And it's okay for it to be that way. We don't all have to be kind of therapists to have what could be an ideal relationship
Mel Robbins (00:58:34):
You know, since so many people are either struggling with anxiety or they have someone in their life is, what is the advice that you give your clients when you're working with them through a period where they feel anxious?
Dr. Julie Smith (00:58:46):
Yeah, I think probably one of the first bits is the idea that anxiety isn't something that's wrong in your brain. It's not a problem that is a fault of yours. It's not something that's wrong with you. It's an experience. And often what happens in therapy is this process of someone kind of says, I'm feeling this, or this is coming up for me. And then what follows is a judgment
(00:59:16):
That means I'm weak or I'm not coping and everyone else can do this. And what we do, we kind of go, okay, notice that judgment. Notice how you just judged yourself, how you're feeling right now, or comparing, apparently everyone else has it together, then no one else feels this way. And let's just drop the judgment and turn back to that feeling with curiosity. Isn't that interesting that you feel that way? What's going on that makes you vulnerable to that feeling? At this point, let's say, I don't know, a new mom, for example, who finds themselves totally isolated, has no idea what to do and how best to look after this baby and husband's gone back to work. And on the anxiety, it's just huge. And I remember thinking when I first had a baby, I don't know if I can handle this degree of fear about how am I going to get it right for this little human being forever more? I dunno if I can deal with. And so a lot of it is this idea that if you turn towards that feeling with curiosity, you can hear what it has to say
(01:00:18):
And often it has something to tell you about what you need at the time. And so for example, in that kind of new mum scenario, usually that's around, I need human connection. I need some reassurance. I need adult conversation, or I need to feel safe in this situation. And so the answers start to appear when you're just willing to look at the emotion and ask, what are you telling me? What is this? And sometimes it has a lot to say, and other times it might not have a lot to say. And that's okay too because what we teach in emotion regulation work is to feel an emotion, look at it and say, is this warranted? And is it proportionate to the situation? Sometimes if I haven't had enough sleep or I'm dehydrated or I've had too much coffee, or I might have a really extreme reaction to something that I would normally have a small reaction to, so that would be disproportionate to the situation because of those other factors that made me vulnerable to that. So if you're willing to look at, okay, what's going on here, then the answers start to appear. But because so many of us are not willing to look at it with curiosity, we just judge ourselves for the fact we've had the feeling and then we try to numb it and push it away, and then we're in a battle.
Mel Robbins (01:01:38):
That's something that I actually worry about because I feel like it's a super positive thing that there's so much conversation about mental health and about the things that people struggle with and normalizing it so you don't feel alone and so that you seek out support. But I do worry about how it's easy to opt out of the things that you need to do because it's bad for your mental health. How do you know the difference between whether or not it's actually really something you should opt out of or whether or not you just don't want to do the thing that you probably need to be doing, but it just feels hard.
Dr. Julie Smith (01:02:20):
And I think that probably brings us to the one tool that I probably use the most in the most formal way from therapy because it's just so helpful is the values stuff. So it is just working out what matters most to me at this point in my life because that changes and fluctuates, right?
(01:02:41):
And so every few months or sometimes when I just feel a bit out of sorts and I feel like life's upside down, I'll just get a piece of paper and I'll split it into different boxes and I'll have all the different aspects of my life. So there'll be parenting, marriage, friendships, health, education, career, whatever you name it, put them all out. And then in each box, I'll just ask myself what matters most to me in this area of my life? So not what I want to happen to me, but how I want to show up in good times and bad. So what I want to kind of represent in that part of my life. So I might have a few words or a few sentences, and then I'll rate that just a crudely out of 10, how important are those values to me
(01:03:25):
In this area of my life? So zero, not at all, 10 out of 10 is max. And then you rate it again. And this time how much I feel I'm living in line with these values in the last couple of weeks. So then what you get zero, not all, 10 out of 10 is definitely, and then you get all of these kind of different boxes and these different scores, and it's not a tool for self-criticism, it's a tool for finding where you need to focus your attention. Next, get this idea of, okay, well if something over here is 10 out of 10 important to me, but I've just rated it as two out of 10 in terms of how I'm living in line with that at the moment, then that deserves my attention. And it's not because you're failing, it's because life pulls us in different directions.
(01:04:13):
You can't fill all of those at the same time. So I might be busy with a project trying to finish a book or something. And so I haven't been taking the kids to their clubs recently, someone when else has done it for me. And I just noticed that pull that I'm not being the present parent I want to be. And so then I'll say no to a few things at work so that I can do that. And so there's this constant shifting and moving between things. But going back to your question, when you understand and you have that clarity in terms of what matters most to you at that point in your life, then it's much easier to make the decisions about what you should and shouldn't be doing.
(01:04:53):
Because our tendency is to go, okay, I'm only going to do the things that feel good and I'm not going to do the stuff that makes me feel bad or uncomfortable. But if you make decisions based on comfort and discomfort, it's not going to lead you anywhere meaningful. Your life's just going to shrink. Whereas if you make the choices based on your values and what matters to you, that will inevitably involve you doing things that make you feel terrible sometimes. So I know having children was really, really important to me, but my goodness, those night shifts where every cell in my body wanted to stay in bed and be comfortable and warm and not get up to the crying baby who was desperate for me at that point. But I did the uncomfortable thing because it mattered most to me at that point.
Mel Robbins (01:05:41):
Well, I asked you this because one of our producers just said, well, I used to have a lot of anxiety about flying, but I'm not anxious anymore. I don't fly.
Mel Robbins (01:05:50):
And it's kind of funny, but it made me wonder, Dr. Julie, what happens if you keep avoiding the things that make you anxious?
Dr. Julie Smith (01:05:59):
So avoidance of the thing that you fear, it lies to us. So it tells us that we are making everything better, but it makes fear worse over time. So I mean, I talked about this in one of my videos with this kind of rainbow thing.
Mel Robbins (01:06:16):
And let me explain. For the person who's not watching this on YouTube, she has this child's play toy, which is this big wooden rainbow in front of her, and it's got all the colors of the red, the orange, the yellow, the green, the blue, the purple, and it's about six inches high. Dr. Julie has a rainbow made of wood in front of her.
Dr. Julie Smith (01:06:35):
Well, I used to draw this out in therapy actually with rings, so I would have you in the center of the page and then lots of rings that represent the different layers of your life, of your life, but this is the rainbow represents the different layers of your life. So let's say suddenly something let's go rather than flying, let's go with something that kind of has that different layer. So maybe the social anxiety stuff again, right? So let's say suddenly going to really crowded places with lots of people you don't know starts to fill you with anxiety and you're not sure why, but it just does. It just doesn't feel comfortable anymore. So you decide, well, I'm not going to do that anymore, then I'm going to take that out of my life. So you now no longer go to any situations where there's big crowds, which means when your friend is getting married next week and they're having 200 people at the wedding, you are not going to go to that either.
(01:07:25):
So you take that bit out of your life and then being on a crowded train or bus or boat suddenly becomes anxiety provoking. So you take that out of your life so you can't travel. And then being in a crowded restaurant, even with friends suddenly becomes fearful. So you stop doing that too. And what happens is every time that something falls outside of your comfort zone and fills you with fear, the natural instinct is to avoid it. And even the moment you decide to avoid it, you get this relief, this, oh, phew, I don't have to deal with that today. So it's quite addictive. But what happens is over time when you keep doing that and when you live by that rule, your life shrinks and suddenly there's so much stuff that you can't do because your life is sort of focus on, and all of your decisions are based on that rule that I cannot do things that cause me anxiety or fear.
Mel Robbins (01:08:23):
And with each piece of the rainbow, Dr. Julie, that you remove, the actual arch is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And when anxiety or grief or nerves or depression or sadness or heartbreak starts to creep in, we do have the tendency to just
Dr. Julie Smith (01:08:43):
Withdraw. And so often when people, by the time people come to therapy, they've got rid of a lot of these layers and they feel that life is depressing because so much smaller than they ever imagined it would be. And a lot of those layers include things that mattered to them. So your best friend's wedding or traveling across the world to visit family or whatever. So it puts all of these different things out of bounds, so it becomes so difficult to live in line with your own values. It's so sad when
Mel Robbins (01:09:13):
You see how small it's gotten. And it actually reminds me of times in my life where either my anxiety was so bad or my postpartum depression was so bad, or one of my kids was struggling with anxiety and they just stopped doing things that they used to enjoy because they just felt like it was too hard. And as they stopped doing sleepovers or they stopped wanting to do fun things on the weekend, or they stopped wanting to try out for sports or they stopped wanting to go to the party, it's just like that rainbow, every single thing that they stopped doing or were scared to do was an example of the way that their life just got smaller and smaller and smaller. And it is so sad and it's easy for it to kind of creep up on you. I think the visual is so powerful because you actually see what's happening when in reality, when you're going through it, it just sort of slowly feels like it's happening until all of a sudden you're just in a really small life. Thank you for showing us this visual because as much as it's sad, there's also this flip side to it where it's really compelling because you actually see the solution. If your life feels very small, there are things that you can start adding back in, even if it feels overwhelming or scary to try to do it, that will actually immediately start to make your life feel bigger and fuller again. What is the first step other than recognizing this,
(01:10:50):
To start to put the pieces back in place that you didn't even realize that you took away?
Dr. Julie Smith (01:10:59):
I think the key is you don't have to do it all at once. I would get clarity, do that values exercise. I think it's in both my books actually, because it's so helpful with so many different scenarios. But really simple, do that pen and paper bit and look at what matters most to me at this point in my life, because that makes all the decisions about the direction you want to go in much easier, because why face your fears if it doesn't matter to you? And that's key. You don't have to, if you have no inclination to ever travel, then don't worry about going on planes.
Mel Robbins (01:11:31):
But I think most of the time you're silently giving up on a part of your life. I think most times I choose to believe that we all want to thrive, we all want to be happy, we all want to feel the full possibility of our lives, and that when we are self-sabotaging or avoiding or shrinking or holding ourselves back and limiting that we know. And how do you recognize though when you're doing that? You know what I'm saying? I think you can get so used to being small.
Dr. Julie Smith (01:12:09):
Well, I think sometimes it's triggered by things like having children or getting into relationship because then doing certain things matters to them. So I always had a fear of heights growing up, and I was totally just allowed to avoid that, but it was just something I was scared of. So Julia doesn't have to do that high ride or whatever it was. And once I had children and I knew all this kind of stuff from therapy that it was changeable. There's no way I want to pass this on because it holds you back. And so at no point do, I mean, we don't live in a big city, so I'm never really exposed to high buildings or balconies, that kind of thing. But every time we go away and we do stuff as a family, I will never allow myself to avoid doing something that is high based on that fear because I don't want the children. So the children then become the key to, I don't want them to suffer the consequences of this, even though I might have had consequences myself.
Mel Robbins (01:13:10):
So if you don't have kids, how do you find that anchor for yourself and could you build it back up since you've taken some of the rainbow stripes off to show us how you can, let's just say the person listening feels very small. Let's say they went through divorce and it was shattering and life-changing, and they're still alone and their partners moved on and the friend groups have changed, and you've had to reinvent yourself, and you recognize that there are just ways in which you're holding yourself back and you have justifiable and very normal fears about getting hurt again or putting yourself out there or the negativity that you tell yourself that nobody's going to find, whatever it may be. But you're now listening to you, Dr. Julie, and you're going, that's me, or you're listening or going, that's my mother. My mother is stuck like that, and her life has become very small. If you've had that epiphany, how do you start building back in those pieces of your life that you've been avoiding because it just feels new or uncomfortable, or I didn't sign up for this or it's going to be hard.
Dr. Julie Smith (01:14:20):
And I think if you imagine that kind of it's you stood on this little island that's surrounded by water, that's scary.
(01:14:27):
Then all you do, you just dip your toe in. So you are just stepping out of the comfort zone just enough that it creates a challenge for you, but one that's doable. So you're not diving in and then struggling to swim. You are dipping your toe in, you're paddling in the water, and then you're stepping back and you're repeating it, repeating it, and every time you repeat it, you gain a little bit of land back. So that's where these parts of the rainbow come back. So you work on one layer, just one thing that feels a challenge, and you repeat it as much as you possibly can. And what happens is when you do that and you spend time in that place, that feels a bit vulnerable, it starts to become your comfort zone. The thing that you do every day becomes your comfort zone. And so then your life expands a little bit, and then the trick here is to keep going. So you then have to dip your toe in again, I
Mel Robbins (01:15:24):
Remember, I'll share an example. I think it would be helpful, and then maybe you have one that you can share based on some issues that have come up with clients or that you're seeing online. I remember when we moved to a brand new place, and I was early fifties, and I felt like it was the biggest mistake in the world. I had no friends. I was super, super lonely, and I started to swirl in all the self-doubt and the sadness and the loneliness around this massive life transition moving from where we had been for 26 years. And I recognized after about six months of the wallowing that my life had gotten very small, and the very first step I took was I told myself I had to leave the house once a day, even just to go to the grocery store or to get a cup of coffee. And then the next thing became I had to go to the coffee shop and sit there for a half an hour and read a book. And then the next thing became I had to go to the coffee shop and sit there for a half an hour and read a book, and I had to actually talk to people.
(01:16:37):
That was an example of a period of my life where I was avoiding the very thing that would've solved the issue of loneliness and acclimating to a new community. But do you have another example that might give somebody an idea of what you're talking about? Let's use the issue of heartbreak. If somebody has had their heart broken and deep down they know that they would love to fall in love and have a partner and have a new chapter, but they've holding themselves back, what are some simple steps that feel like you may not even realize you've been avoiding it?
Dr. Julie Smith (01:17:17):
Yeah. So then it becomes, because on that first day, if you had said, I'm going to go out and talk to somebody, you wouldn't have done it.
(01:17:24):
So you've got to scale it right back to, you know what? I'm just going to go out with a friend, not even with the idea of meeting new people or anything like that. I'm just going to practice being out there. So that might be taking back another layer, practicing being out there even with the person you trust the most, the closest friends, not even trying to date again, and then maybe I'm going to allow myself to go out with friends when there are other people there that I don't know yet, and then maybe a few events in, maybe I'm going to speak to someone that I dunno, and I'm going to introduce myself. But it's really about doing it at your own pace. But when you do that, you are much less likely to give up
(01:18:06):
Because if you go for it and you expect too much of yourself in one go, then you're much might to just, if things go wrong, then you retreat again, and then you are having to start from scratch again. So it's making it manageable and not expecting it to be, oh gosh, nature takes its time, so why shouldn't we? Right? It still happens, but you have to give yourself that time to do it layer by layer. Go to the coffee shop first, then speak to someone when you are comfortable in the coffee shop, and then whatever comes next.
Mel Robbins (01:18:41):
So Dr. Julie, you have shared so much, and I think my kids are going to get so sick and tired of me telling them, are you the prey or are you the predator? Do you want to be the prey? You want to be the predator? If the person listening took just one lesson or tool away from this conversation, what do you think is the most important thing?
Dr. Julie Smith (01:19:03):
I think it has always been the knowledge that you do not have to be at the mercy of your own emotional experience,
(01:19:12):
That there are so many things you can do to influence it. And that's one of the first things I teach people in therapy is this idea that emotion is influenced by so many things. So we can't necessarily wake up and go, I want to choose to feel love and pleasure today. We can't kind of choose it and then make it happen, but we know that emotion and emotional experience is influenced by what we do, what we say, who we're around, what we eat, how we move, and whether we move and the work that we do, all of those things. So those are the things that we can influence and control, and when we do, our emotional experience starts to change as well. So that just knowing that I have a degree of agency and how I feel as I go forward, then that's everything. Because without that sense of having any kind of sense of agency, you just don't try
Mel Robbins (01:20:05):
Dr. Julie Smith. What are your parting words?
Dr. Julie Smith (01:20:10):
My parting words? Oh my goodness. That you're not alone. There's nothing wrong with you just for having a hard time in life. It is because life is hard and there's this arsenal of tools that are often hidden behind the therapy room door, but we're making them available. We're getting them out there. So just keep learning because they are so helpful and they are changing lives. So there's no reason why you can't learn a few yourself and change the game for yourself.
Mel Robbins (01:20:45):
Well, Dr. Julie Smith, you're changing lives. You are helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for showing up every day for the world online. Thank you for writing this incredible instant bestseller open when which is truly exactly as you envisioned. It is a guide to life because life is hard, but you don't have to be so hard on yourself, and there are simple things that you can do to put your arm around yourself and help you get yourself through it. So thank you.
Dr. Julie Smith (01:21:14):
Thanks for having me.
Mel Robbins (01:21:15):
Of course. And I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to something that will help you get yourself through the ups and downs in life. I am thrilled that you spent the time listening to this. I can't wait for you to share this with people that you love. And in case no one else tells you, I want to be sure to tell you that I love you. I believe in you. I believe in your ability to create a better life. And I know that everything that Dr. Julie shared with you today is going to help you do that. Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days. I'll be waiting to welcome you into the next episode. The moment you hit play, I'll see you there.
Key takeaways
Feeling like you’re struggling alone is a lie: One in four people are dealing with mental health issues right now, even if you can’t see it.
Your attention is a spotlight, and what you focus on will either make you anxious or help you thrive. You control the beam.
Avoiding hard things shrinks your life. Every time you step outside your comfort zone, you’re expanding your freedom and your future.
A bad moment doesn’t make you a bad person. It means you’re learning, you’re growing, and you’re being a fully normal human.
Failure isn’t proof you can’t do it. It’s just proof you’re trying, and the only way to build resilience is to keep getting back up.
Guests Appearing in this Episode
Dr. Julie Smith, MD
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Book: Open When
In this essential guide, Dr. Julie teaches her millions of readers and clients how to navigate life’s toughest occurrences while they’re happening, rather than moments or years after the fact. What if we can learn to harness our emotions and stay present so we can process and choose how to respond to a situation?
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