Trauma and Anxiety Spirals - How to Get Out of Them When They Strike at Night [Sleep 06]
When fear kicks in, every sense in your body turns up to high alert—ready to engage into fight or flight. We can’t help being triggered by fear, but we can help our response to that fear. This episode takes you through a routine Dr. Kimber uses as a trauma survivor when fear strikes at inopportune time, like out of a deep sleep.
This episode will help you -
Identify your thoughts that are fear-based.
Understand the power (and not in a good way) of visualizing the bad happening.
Identify helpful ways to frame your thoughts in situations where you know you’re prone to anxiety and fear.
How to identify confirmation bias so you can rest better.
Regulate quicker after anxiety or trauma reaction.
We can't control circumstances in our world, but what we can do is control ourselves — especially when there's nothing to be fearful of.
Science has proven that, "when we visualize things, it is just as powerful as imagining things."
Because our bodies are on high-alert, tense, and on-guard (as if our worst fears have dawned on us), this can lead to an interrupted sleep cycle. What’s even worse is that going back to sleep is a problem.
So, how do we comfort ourselves, ease our minds, and do a mindset shift to go back to sleep?
In this episode, Dr. Kimber shares her experiences, science-backed studies, and her tips on how you can get out of the anxiety spiral.
Though this episode tries to have very trauma-sensitive language, Dr. Kimber gives an example of her own life that may be triggering if you've had a similar situation. Be aware of what is happening in your body as you listen to this episode in order to be in a learning posture rather than a retriggered episode.
4:25 - Listen to what Dr. Kimber learned from practicing out of fight-or-flight situations for over 20 years
5:58 - The physiological effects of being disrupted by fear-based thoughts
6:53 - The science behind the impact of visualization to bodily functions
8:40 - How did Dr. Kimber dispel anxiety-inducing thoughts? By proving each theory wrong.
14:30 - An example of how your language dictates where your attention goes.
22:40 - What is confirmation bias? How do you eradicate confirmation bias to remove anxiety-inducing thoughts?
27:37 - Dr. Kimber's tips to put yourself at ease and eradicate anxiety before you sleep.
Resources Mentioned:
Snoring episode - https://www.ithoughtiwasoverthis.com/snoring-and-restlessness-sleeping-troubleshooting-with-a-partner-guest-dennis-del-valle-s1-e04/
Ethan Kross Chatter Tools - https://www.ethankross.com/chatter-toolbox/
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/313183/the-body-keeps-the-score-by-bessel-van-der-kolk-md/
Please remember that this podcast is not a replacement for treatment by a healthcare or mental health professional. This content is created for education and entertainment purposes only.
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This transcript has been created using A.I. please excuse any missed words or incorrect grammar.
00:00
Welcome to I thought I was over this. I'm your host, Dr. Kimber, a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma healer and fellow life journeyer. Every episode we dive into the science of human need, and whether you find yourself feeling like you've just hit an iceberg and don't know where help is coming from, or you're ready to trade in your raft for something bigger, you aren't alone, grab what you need, get comfortable. And let's do this. Thank you so much for joining me, I am so grateful you are here. I believe in us, we are going to tackle sleep, I want to let you know, this episode may cause some discomfort, some dysregulation, I am going to be using an example from my own life. And I'm going to be talking through how to get out of an anxiety spiral where you have had a trauma related to it. And so I want to give you that forewarning, so that you can choose whether or not you want to listen to this episode. I also want to remind you that even though I am a licensed clinical psychologist, I am not your licensed clinical psychologist. So what I am talking about here are reflections suggestions, but they are not given to you in the context of therapy. And if you find yourself in a place of these trauma, anxiety spirals, I do recommend seeking professional help from a licensed person who could help you.
01:59
And with that, I want to jump into what my night was a few nights ago, when I was in the depths of sleep. Probably in deep sleep stage three, I had been asleep a couple hours and was very disoriented. When I woke up by the house fire alarm in our home, the fire alarms are all connected together, we have a two story. And so all of the fire alarms were going off for about four counts, at least by the time I was woken up. And I had no idea. It just went off four times. And then it stopped. Dennis, who you met in the snoring episode, if you have listened to it. He and I looked at each other. And we're like what was that? He like he normally does just probably went back to sleep having no concerns whatsoever. But me on the other hand, I am in full detective mode, why did the fire alarm go off? Is there a fire? What is happening. And I will say as somebody who has had a situation where I have been robbed, which is a completely violating situation. And it did happen in a detached area of a former home. It triggers I all kinds of imagination, all kinds of fantasies all fear base that go off when things like this happened, things that are unusual that happen in my house. So what I have found when I'm in this fight or flight situation, which I have actually had plenty of time to get used to 21 years in fact, since 2000. I have learned that I need to take each thought and each worry and prove that it is wrong. And I want to say that again. I try to prove my thought wrong when I am in fight or flight because I know it's completely fear based. And I want to give you an example of doing the opposite. When I feel as if there is someone in my house, which is what I would have done in the past with this fire alarm. Oh my gosh, someone must be in Here, I was less concerned about a fire more concerned about a home invader, again, pass history. And so when you are proving to yourself and are going around, thinking that there is an intruder, what happens to your whole system is, it's as if there is somebody in your house. And so when you listen for sounds, you're listening for confirmation that there's someone there. And your ears in trauma in a fight or flight situation go on high, high intensity. So every sound that you hear that you're suddenly deeming, as unfamiliar is only confirmation that something unusual is happening. And when you are walking around, if you are in this fight or flight mode, your body is as tense and tight as if there is somebody who's going to jump out at you. And the reason why this is important, is because when you get up when I get up in this state of mind, my entire body feels tense. And it is it's actually living through the experience of someone being in my house. That's how alert our systems are. We know when we visualize things, that it is just as powerful as if it is really happening. And we have the science to prove this. An example of it is a lot of things in athletics. So one study, I was a former basketball college player. And so I greatly attuned at times, I thought that I wanted to go on and be a coach, I quickly determined that that was not my career path. And so in this study, there were three different groups. One group practiced, one group visualized, and the other group did nothing. So the first situation was they shot baskets. And then they did whatever their situation was. So if they practice, they practiced if they visualize they visualized, if they were to do nothing, in relation to shooting baskets, then they didn't do anything. And then they came back and retried and in this case, they were free throws. And what they found in the research is that the visualization, and the practicing group did equally well and improving. And those two groups significantly improved over the group that did nothing. So this is a confirmation that when we visualize things, I am going through my home as if there is an invader,
08:25
because I'm trying to prove to myself that there isn't. And instead, what we need to do is go through the home, as if there isn't, and that's what I had to take captive. In my mind. When I got woken up by this fire alarm, I had to take each theory I had and prove it wrong. And so this is what I did the first theory I had, oh my gosh, the fire alarm is going off because someone is outside and my electrical panel, and they're doing something wonky. And so it went off. And so what I did in order to prove this wrong, was I opened my window shades. And I see that I just What would initiated my neighbor's ring. I can immediately see it go into record, and I you know a delayed so that I could see that I did that. And what that helped me do was recognize, oh, there isn't somebody out there because if there was movement, my neighbor's ring would be already recording. At that moment. I also recognize that My motion light had not been triggered and was not on. And so what I also did to prove even more, is I asked my ears to notice all the sounds far away. And when we notice the sounds far away, what we're doing is we're expanding our ears, the audio, I don't even know what field I guess you would call it. And I'm asking myself to not be hyper vigilant with the noises that are right near me. So I go out, and I listen to what's going on, which for me, I can hear the traffic, I heard the train. And then I slowly asked my mind to notice things closer, which I don't know when the season is for mockingbirds to be completely active in the middle of the night. But this is one of the seasons. So as I brought my awareness closer, I noticed Oh, my gosh, the mockingbird is going off. And then as I brought it to the closest place, which is listening the outside, I noticed, there's nothing. I don't hear anything unusual. And so that helped me really recognize, okay, there can't be someone out at the electrical panel. I went on to what is the next thing. The next thing is that I'm imagining that someone is already in my house. And so we have a house alarm I got on my app, which can show me whether or not my alarm is still engaged. And in fact, like, Oh, my goodness, look at that. It's still engaged. There is no way that someone could be in my house, and my alarm is not going off. And it's actively engaged. And so as I realized this, I sit, I make myself pause in my room, I have done nothing. I have not walked out of my room. My room is upstairs. So I take a couple deep breaths. And I'm like, Okay, there's absolutely no way that anyone is in my house.
12:46
And now I have the question, I can finally go to the safer question, what feels like the safer question in my neurobiology is, is there actually a fire. And so now I'm going through the house, albeit slowly, because again, I know I want to go back to sleep. I want my neurobiology as regulated as I can get it. So I can go back to sleep. So I'm walking slowly through the house, mainly using my nose. But of course, also looking with my eyes. And because of the work that I do, I know I want to soften my gaze. Because when we are in fight or flight, our eyes get strained, we become very, very focused. And I want to help myself as if I'm casually going along. And so in this way, I'm looking around orienting, I'm using my nose. I go downstairs, like there's nothing that I smell. And I do my garage, I'm like, and there's creepy things in my garage. I don't know what they are. So like the good students that I am I you know, I grew up in a small town we I grew up in a place where there's wood fires. So one of the benefits of doing that is that we had a firefighter come to an elementary class, to talk about what we do if there's a fire in our house. Many of us in that community, or at least a good portion are going to have to face something like that, or have a higher percentage. And so I felt the door because I know how to do that. That's a long story of how to do that. Like no, no warm. I'm good to go. I don't need to look in the garage. And so then I go back upstairs. I start listening to my brother If and I fall asleep, and I cannot reiterate enough, that the story you tell yourself, the story that you form, immediately when getting woken up, is the story that can really capture your attention. And you need to be able to make sense of it with as many pieces of the story as possible. Because here's the thing, your body will go where your language goes where your story goes. I want to give you an example. I was running a group the other day for a group of leaders. And these are people that I didn't know, they didn't know me, and one person was late. And one of the participants in the group, we had the door open, she started telling herself. Wait a second, why is this person late. And group members were like, Oh, I saw this person downstairs by the vending machine. And she took hold of this story. And was like, well, she should be her by now. And you could see as the wheels were turning, her eyes got big, she started looking around a lot more. And suddenly, another idea and thought took hold that she thought to verbalize and that is she's got lost, she totally must have gotten lost she She should be here by now. And you could see her system working up and up and up. And you could feel her panic. And what didn't come online, is there are other possibilities here. And she could not pause to think of anything else. And the thing is, is that there was another part of her brain that could have remembered, oh, my goodness, this is the fourth day of this conference. Of course, she's even had groups here before. Of course, she didn't get lost. She knows how to read her schedule.
17:26
She knows how to get here. Her mind took off with the story. Her body reinforced that story by getting the elevated heart rate the eyes big. As she continued the story of she's lost, I need to go find her. So what we need to do is to realize what story we're telling ourselves. What is running away, that doesn't match the facts. And of course, what didn't match the facts is she's been here for four days. And the thing is, is when the person came into the room, there wasn't immediate relief. Because instead what was needed is the person who thought she was lost, needed reassurance. Oh, my goodness, I thought you were lost. You weren't here with everyone else. I thought you were lost, when suddenly instead of greeting the person with relief, and hello, I'm so glad you made it. Instead, the person who was late was left to soothe the person who thought she was lost. And that's what can happen. We lose sight of what is really happening when we become very fear based and anxiety based. And we are the ones who end up needing reassurance. And so we take up the space and we activate different parts of our brain that can't pause and can't take in all the information so that actually we can be available to sue the person coming in to the door all rushed and frantic because they know they're late. So I'm not saying that to make you feel bad if this happens to be you I'm I'm saying these things so that all of us can be aware and try to do something differently. And this is why regulation is so important. When fear and anxiety, worry are in the driver's seat, we want to do things like take a deep breath, maybe use a counting breath, where we take an inhale and count to four. an exhale, count to four. And it can be helpful to count because it again asks our mind to tap into our thinking brain. It takes us out of just the emotional center or limbic system, and it asks us to count, we can just count backwards if we want from 10 or from 20. But we want to ask our mind to get re integrated, in a way, because when fear and anxiety fight or flight take over, we lose that thinking part of our brain.
21:13
And so I hope that my story has given rise to the awareness of how we can shift our states of mind, which is really important when we try to sleep when racing thoughts are going on, when we can't seem to calm our mind. Even in the examples that I've given, during the day, when fear is in the proverbial driver's seat, it can take over everything. And when we go down that rabbit trail, it's like a tornado that takes everything every piece of evidence, and confirms that in fact, we are right, we need to be afraid. Because what our mind does is three different things at the same time. It remembers past events, it analyzes the current situation, trying to identify patterns and behaviors that possibly we've seen before. And we're trying to determine if they're happening now. And then it also tries to predict the future. So when we go into threats that are happening right now, what happens is we have this confirmation bias filter. An example of this could be when I opened my window shade, and I see that my neighbor's light isn't on. But the streetlight is I immediately confirm, oh, I know the electricity isn't off for the block. But I can tell myself a very convoluted story. The people that are breaking into my house, have also known to shut off my neighbor's porch light. And you can see I'm kind of Jacqueline, because the story is so grandiose, but yet, this is what we're doing. So they are waiting to break into my house. And they're waiting for they're trying to turn off my alarm. And they're gonna break in. And they knew that they needed to turn off my neighbor's light. And all of these things. I've even lost myself in the stories, I'm telling it it to you like, you get the idea. Everything goes into that confirmation bias, which is I'm confirming all of the evidence in that moment that someone is breaking in. And I raised my anxiety so much, because it's taking in all of this evidence, and it's going to be harder and harder. The more things that I'm putting together the the scarier I'm feeling, the more afraid I'm failing. You get the idea. My entire being every cell in my body is believing that I'm on safe. And so the solution in all of these things is to get to the pause. Where can you find the pause? The part of you inside of you that doubts? We wait, wait, hold up, hold up. It's telling you this isn't happening. Look, look, look, look around. Your neighbors turn their light off the porch light off every day. Hold on, you wouldn't be Good to hear them. You're right above the wall, from them. Sound travels through the woods, like, there's no way you couldn't hear them. Right, I need that part, I still have the question, Why did my fire alarm happen. And you know what I still don't know, it's like it was a rare event, I just have to kind of give it over to it was totally random, there was no reason for it to go off. And so when we don't have this pause, again, we get more and more dysregulated. And it will take much longer to calm ourselves down. So remember,
25:46
inside of us, if we can identify like I have learned to do because again, when I was robbed, I took me six months, six months to be able to really get to sleep. And then of course, sometimes I would wake up and not be able to but took a long time to get regulated again. So I've had lots of practice and through the years. I mean, I'm saying six months before I could finally fall asleep. But I mean, every I don't know, couple months, something triggers, I'm in danger in my own house. And I really have to walk through the process of reminding myself, I'm safe. And I've learned to take captive, every thought I'm having. And again, prove it wrong. I asked my mind to gather the evidence that disproves the theory, I do not let fear, get in the driver's seat to tell me all the evidence that supports it. It's way too easy to do it. So I want you to be asking yourself, what is the thought and the belief that's driving this proverbial car? What emotion is leading me right now? And what are the other parts of me that are questioning this emotion that are saying we we wait, hold on, there could be other things going on here? And what is your thinking part of your brain saying? What's the evidence? Pauses leave room for self reflection. In psychoanalysis, we used to call it the observing ego, that we can kind of watch ourselves from a distance. And in anxiety and fear, we kind of want to do that. We want to be like, hold on, how might someone else and I love this? I think I've mentioned this before, but Ethan Cross says, we can start talking to ourselves in third person. And that can give us some distance like, well, Kimber, what do you think here? What else could be going on, and that there's something that happens inside of our brain, when we start referring to ourselves in third person, that slows us up. That gives us just a little bit of distance. I want to remind you that I talked about in the first episode, the mental flexibility piece that we need for kind of maturing and our mental health. And it's from Dan Siegel. He talks about well, he's an acronym guy. So he gives us faces, flexibility, adaptability, we need coherence, we need energy, and stability. Those are signs that we are having a moment of good mental health. So in my story, I brought a mental team. And part of this is that I have had a lot of experience in regulating my nervous system. So I had to learn who could be part of my team and who could be part of my detectives. And because again, if I only have fear that's present, it's an internal signal that will just keep going and I won't be able to stop it. So for me the mental flexibility was the questioning Hold on, what are the voices saying? And I was able to identify what else could be going on. So I took some deep breaths. I counted backwards and I'm going to skip ahead To the s, those are practices that helped me find the stability.
30:06
I have methods that I use to get me back to a place where I can think. So moving back into adaptability in my story I had to reorient, I wasn't going to get a full night of uninterrupted sleep. That reality left when the fire alarm woke me up. And so I needed to be able to adapt and adjust and to ask myself, okay, I have now had interrupted sleep. So now what do I need to do to get back to sleep? So flexibility was, who are the voices in here that are in what are they saying? What's the emotion here? What else could be going on? The A is the adaptability, I have am leaning into the reality I now have had interrupted sleep. And the see here the coherence that I was looking for is in my story, I needed to look at all the pieces of evidence that I could identify that mainly led to no one is in my house. And the why, for the fire alarm. There, I just had to let it go. And as I thought about the energy required. Again, I think I mentioned this earlier, but I moved slowly through the house. Because I knew I didn't want to stay in a fight or flight state. I knew I needed to be regulated. And then I recognized the energy required for the next day. I use tips though, of navigating sleep deprivation that I shared earlier this season. I knew I would have moments of being kind of mentally fatigued, but I didn't worry about it, I was like, I'm going to be able to do this. And so I pulled out the flexibility, adaptability, creating this coherence that for me was part of the story, I trusted that I would have the energy I needed, and also was mindful of the energy that I wanted to move through the House in. And again, I have methods of getting me back to stability. So I hope that this has been helpful. I also deeply hope that it has not been too triggering for any of those people out there who have also experienced trauma, similar to me. And I just want to say we are going to get there. Mastering sleep at times can mean shifting mental states so that our physical states can follow. And if you've been following me, you know that in every episode, I want to ask you to reflect because the biggest thing for me is what can be identified and made aware and make you aware of you can change. And so what is the inside that you're taking away? What do you want to reflect more on? And when can you calendar to do it, preferably in the next couple of days. And finally, I want to remind you, you are a sacred bean. No matter where you find yourself. You matter. You belong here. At this time in history, you are not alone. You can do that next thing that will help you settle your nervous system. When as a result, move you out of a place where you feel like you're surviving in to thriving. And thriving is not a western idea of moving upward and upward and upward. It's not that at all. Thriving is being present. Thriving is being in awe of what's around you what's inside of you. It's joy filled, it's delight filled all those emotions inside of us that get blocked when we're in survival mode.
34:53
So may you be in your body. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It comes out twice a month, a moment of pause. You can sign up at www I thought I was over this.com Until next time, take up space. And I hope you sing in the shower sometime this week. Take care