Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
Is Anxiety The Language Of The Soul And If So How Can It Help You?
Have you ever considered that your anxiety isn't trying to hurt you, but actually trying to save you? This perspective-shifting conversation with author and pastor Cody Deese challenges everything we've been taught about anxiety and offers a revolutionary approach to healing.
Cody shares his remarkable 40-year journey with debilitating anxiety that began in childhood. From unexplained retching episodes at football games to panic attacks during everyday conversations, his condition remained misdiagnosed until age 40 when a therapist finally identified it as a panic disorder. This revelation marked the beginning of his healing journey and led to the insights he shares in his new book, "Discover Your Internal Universe."
The core message is both counterintuitive and liberating: anxiety is not our enemy. Rather than battling against anxiety or trying to eliminate it, Cody advocates for integration. "Anxiety can be a part of you without being all of you," he explains. By learning to observe our anxiety without identifying with it, we create space between who we are and what we're experiencing.
Throughout our conversation, Cody offers practical wisdom for those struggling with anxiety. Cody's contact details
https://www.codydeese.com
Ready to transform your relationship with anxiety? Listen now and discover how the path to healing might be found within anxiety itself.
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Hello everybody, I'm your host, the Gentle Yoga Warrior, and this is Awakened Conscious Conversations podcast, and this is the full-size first episode, and we've got a guest Joining us shortly, from the USA is Cody Dees, and I had the grace to read his book Discover your Internal Universe, which I'm about 60% way through at the time of recording this universe, which I'm about 60% way through at the time of recording this, and I felt this book really struck a chord with me because it, in many ways, I feel that it kind of inspires us to befriend our anxiety in a way that helps us to see where, where we may not be. I will just read what it says about his book on Amazon what if anxiety is not an enemy trying to destroy you? What if anxiety is an unexpected ally trying to save you? In Discover your Internal Universe, author and pastor, cody Dees invites readers into this counterintuitive shift on how they can understand anxiety, challenging the common assumption that anxiety is an illness that only ever undermines us. Dees demonstrates how anxiety can be helpful, guiding, pointing us towards things that need our attention. And when I had a look at Cody's biography on his website, I'll read you the first part out. I think it helps you understand Cody as an author, speaker and pastor, and it says you could think of me as a human guide for the spiritual experience. I am first and foremost a fellow participant in life Before anything else. I am first and foremost a fellow participant in life. Before anything else, I am human. I am deeply interested in what it means to be human and my work is centred around universal human flourishing.
Speaker 1:And Cody speaks very candidly about his own journey through anxiety, panic, fear, and what he learned along that way and we're going to talk today when he comes online about. Is anxiety the language of the soul and, if so, how can it help you? So I know so many of us suffer from anxiety today, so I really hope and feel that this conversation is going to be very important. It feels like it's going to be important because I feel slightly nervous and excited at the same time, and I tend to feel like that when it is going to be an important conversation. So, joining us shortly, we will discover what Cody Dees has to say upon the matter of anxiety, which I'm deeply grateful for. So, without further ado, please welcome Cody Dees to the show. Welcome, cody.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you so much for having me and I appreciate you all reaching out in your part of the world and being interested in this conversation.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited. I was telling my listeners before I came online. I felt a little bit nervous and a little bit excited, and when I feel like that, it makes me feel like it's going to be a good conversation.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it will be. I can tell by your tone we're about to have a good time, people.
Speaker 1:I can tell as well. I know anxiety is something that so many of us can suffer from, and you've got this wonderful book discover your internal universe, which you've just got. You just received the hard copies, today, or recently, and I thought what better person to speak to us today, then, about anxiety than yourself, cody, and we're going to look into how, instead of being our enemy, anxiety can offer us deep healing and a connection to our soul. Firstly, cody, would you mind explaining a bit about your journey and your life so far and your path?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a lot to say. That's a large question for me and there's a lot to say about that. But in the context of what we're talking about today, let me just start from the beginning. Beginning because I write a little bit about this in the book and obviously the tension here is I can't go through all the details of this, so I want to give you some of the highlights, and the peculiarity of the specifics of my anxiety is something that I really wanted to draw attention to in the book and it's something that I want to draw attention to in this conversation because, as you'll see, I think it will help people. I know that everybody deals with anxiety and they think they're the only person that's experiencing it in the form that they're experiencing it. So I preface everything I'm about to say with that Now.
Speaker 2:That said, I have had anxiety since my earliest memories. I remember sitting in a classroom. One of my earliest memories was sitting in a classroom. I had to be probably first grade and at the time I didn't know what was happening to me, but I had like a derealization. Things just didn't seem real around me and my heart was racing and I jumped up out of the classroom and ran down the hallway only to find my teacher running behind me and she kept screaming this question hallway, only to find my teacher running behind me and she kept screaming this question, cody, what's wrong, what's wrong? And I didn't have an answer for her. I just knew something wasn't right. Now fast forward.
Speaker 2:I had an experience at a football game as a nine-year-old. My father was a pastor, so I grew up in like a deeply spiritual, religious and most people would probably say like fundamental evangelical Christian type environment, and so my dad moved us around quite a bit, and one of the places that we land was in a little small town in Alabama called Webb, alabama, and while we were there, we did what we did almost in every town. We got involved in the local school. My mom was like a teacher's aid, and I decided to join the little sports team there, and it was like a little football team that I joined in, and one evening, on a Thursday, we played. On Thursdays I did what I do. I was like the running back. They tossed me the ball. I took off from these giant Goliath Alabama boys because I was tiny growing up.
Speaker 2:And something happened, though, in that game as I was being chased, which now, looking back, it all makes total sense to me, but at the moment it did not. But as I was being chased, I fell on my knees and I began to experience what I now know to be a panic attack. Now, at the time I did not have that language, but here's what it looked like for me. I began to have heart racing, feeling like I'm going into cardiac arrest. But something else happened. I began to have a retching episode. And when I say that phrase, retching episode, some people call it dry heaving, call it whatever you want, but it's kind of that moment where, like, if you've ever been sick and there's nothing left to come up, that happened and it kept happening over and over and over again, and so the people around me were just like, oh, he must not be well, he must be sick. And all that made sense until the next practice it happened again. And then I began to observe it happening almost every time. There was a football game. Then it began to expand. It was no longer a football game, it was school plays, it was church plays, it was visits to the dentist's office. I began to see a parallel between that and every major event in my life.
Speaker 2:I could almost be certain that if I had something to do, there was going to be moments or a moment where I would have that same feeling in that same like form of a retching episode and, as you can imagine, I mean as a nine-year-old that was really disturbing and perplexing. It's like, first of all, what is this, what's wrong with me and how do I stop it? And back then this would have been, like you know, mid 80s, early 90s, we didn't have like anxiety, wasn't you know? It wasn't a conversation, like people weren't really talking about it, and so my parents just did what probably any parents would do back then they just took me to the family practitioner and the practitioner took blood work and he said I don't see anything because I think about anxiety, it's invisible, you know what I mean. Like you can't, you can't see anything, because the thing about anxiety it's invisible, you know what I mean. Like you can't, you can't see it. And that's why it can be so maddening sometimes is because you're trying to explain something. That's, number one, really hard to explain. And then, number two, you are also trying to give language.
Speaker 2:I was as a child to something that a lot of people around me were questioning whether I was making it up for a school absence or whether I had some kind of a mental problem that they weren't aware of. So we saw all these doctors. I had some doctors tell me it was Tourette's. I had some doctors tell me that. I had one doctor told me I had a hypersensitive gag reflex, and that's what I decided to land on because it made sense to me, and so I thought okay, that makes total sense.
Speaker 2:But what began to happen over time is it began to invade every part of my life. It was no longer major events. I found myself in conversations like with you, and I would have to pause the conversation and I would just have a full retching episode. And so this, as you can imagine, can not only debilitate you, but it can also begin to mess up your life in many ways. How do you go to work? How do you carry on a conversation? How do you function like a normal human being? It began to take away from just basic, simple day-to-day what most people wouldn't even think about, which is, when my phone rang, do I pick it up because I might have a retching episode. I can't talk to anybody today because I might have a retching episode. I can't talk to anybody today because I might have a retching episode Now.
Speaker 2:I mentioned all of that to say this I was 40 years old.
Speaker 2:40 years old, that's a long time to live with that 40 years old, and for the first time a therapist said to me Cody, that's not a hypersensitive gag reflex, cody, that's not Tourette's, you have a panic disorder.
Speaker 2:And I can't tell you how liberating that moment was for me and I know that may sound strange maybe to some of your listeners, maybe not, but I was upset because I felt like I had spent the first 40 years of my life and if someone could have told me this earlier, we might could have began to deal with it. But this is the moment that kind of changed everything for me. And so what I've done the last four years of my life since being diagnosed with a panic disorder is I went to work to figure out, you know, can this be healed? And if it can, what's it going to require of me? And that's, by and large, what a good portion of this book is about is me showing you how I took a deep dive into this particular form of anxiety that I had and I was trying to figure out if there was a path to healing.
Speaker 1:Wow, what a story, cordy, and thank you for sharing that so honestly. And it must have been a lot on the shoulders of a nine-year-old child and then to take that into adult life. But the silver lining out of all of this which has been a difficult journey for yourself, but through your journey you've managed to put together this book, which will hopefully help other people. I can relate because I went through a stage when I had panic attacks and I wasn't even feeling anxious at the time and they would just come over me as waves, especially when I was about to teach a class. It went on for a few years and then it subsided. But that's why I feel it's so important for people to learn mechanisms, ways to kind of navigate through this, and so I thank you for speaking so kindly in your book about anxieties. If I'm a listener and I'm listening to you today, cody, and I'm thinking, oh yes, I'm listening to you today, cody, and I'm thinking, oh yes, I suffer from anxiety, what's the first steps they can take in their healing journey with this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question, Jane. I have thought a lot about that and, as you can imagine, I get that question quite a bit already, even though the book hasn't released yet. But here's what I would say First, find a therapist, and that's the most practical first step for me, and that's what I did. I called every person that I admired, that I felt like was living a life of peace, of bliss, living from a place of wholeness, because I was like, how are they living that way? And what I found was references to different therapists. And so I went to work and I, jane, have tried so many therapists.
Speaker 2:Now I want to say this to your listeners, because if you're listening and you have anxiety, you have panic disorder. If you're listening and you have anxiety, you have panic disorder. There are so many things that I tried along the way, and it's not that none of them worked. It's that all of them worked in their own way to lead me to certain understandings, perspectives and conclusions, and a couple of those conclusions was first, there is no simple solution, to quote healing anxiety, unquote. I wish I had a better good news for your listeners, but here's what I can tell you.
Speaker 2:I can't speak for your culture. But I can tell you, for our culture over here, we tend to want like an instant fix for everything. I mean we're a pill-popping society, right, like we're like oh you have a problem, just pop the pill, we're good. And what I can tell you is I tried so many things in hopes that it would like be the savior, like I tried religion. I did what. My one point one year I read almost 60 books on anxiety in one year because I thought, oh my God, these books are promising healing. I mean I read books that were like hey, I can guarantee you, if you read this and you apply these three steps, you know you'll be healed. You'll be healed.
Speaker 2:I have tried more ancient and modern modalities to heal anxiety than I could ever begin to tell you, and I write about a lot of them in the book. I'll give you one example. I sat down with a group of friends and they were all talking about we were all talking in this conversation about anxiety, and they were talking about how THC was like, their cure to anxiety, and many of them were just like oh, it brings you a calm, you should try it. Well, what you listeners need to know is I grew up in an austere, like Christian environment so I'd never been around any kind of like schedule, one drugs at all, like I. I I didn't really dabble in that growing up. But you know, when you have anxiety it doesn't matter, you'll try just about anything. And so I thought, okay, let's try it. And so we're sitting down with friends over chips and salsa and I said, what do I need to do? And they're like we got you.
Speaker 2:And the next day there was a little baggie dropped on my front doorstep with like edibles that had THC in them and it's one of my it's still to date one of the most hilarious moments in me trying all these substances to heal my anxiety, because I was such a rookie. I mean this is a rookie move, but I got the bag no one gave me any instructions, and I just looked at it and it looked like just like a regular little gummy. I thought this is great, I ate half of it. I did get enough instruction to eat half of it, so I ate half of it. Didn't like, like they said, eat half of it, wait like 45 minutes or an hour Didn't phase me, I ate the second half. Didn't phase me. And so I was like, well, I got to do something about this. So I not only ate the whole thing, but then I turned around and ate half of another one and I just thought you know what All these people talking about how this has helped them with their anxiety and I am, leave it to me I fell into my own melodrama, like, of course, this wouldn't work for me, because nothing's worked for me to heal this anxiety.
Speaker 2:And I went to bed and, oh my God, I woke up. At least I think I woke up. I'm still not certain if I was still in a dream or if I actually did wake up, and I had a moment that I write about in the book, but I cannot begin to explain to you how terrifying this was because I woke up and I don't know if your listeners have ever seen that movie called Monsters Inc, called Monsters Inc. Are you familiar with this? You have? Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. So there's this little guy on Monsters Inc called Mike Wazowski. Do you know Mike Wazowski? He's like the one-eyed monster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, people, you're going to think this is crazy. Maybe not. Your listeners may know exactly what I'm talking about. But I wake up after taking these gummies and I look and there's a chair in the corner of my room and Mike Wazowski was sitting in that chair, except he wasn't green, he was red. And I look over at him and immediately my heart starts racing. And then in like a split second he moves from the corner of the room straight to my face and he's like in my space and he's just staring at me with that one eye and I immediately fall into just a full blown panic attack.
Speaker 2:And if you know anything about THC, you know when you sign up for that meeting you can't get out of it. Like the door is locked behind you. It's not like you can go down and just, you know, eat a little food, drink a little water and you're good. You're in that spiral for about four hours. And so I had panic attack after panic attack, after panic attack, after panic attack, for about four hours straight.
Speaker 2:I finally drifted off to sleep in the early morning hours. I got up, picked up my bag of gummies, edibles, I walked downstairs, threw them away and vowed that I would never, ever, ever again experience something as awful as that. Now, I mentioned that story to you because that's one example of one thing I've tried of many to say this. It was really interesting because after this happened, I began to see like some symbolism in it and I thought, wow, maybe, maybe the cure to anxiety is inside the anxiety, and and maybe what I learned through that experience was that, instead of trying to eliminate anxiety, instead of trying to move further from anxiety, what if? What if I need to go the opposite anxiety? What if I need to go the opposite direction? What if I need to go further into the anxiety? And what if that Mike Wazowski monster guy, what if he was kind of like a symbol of my anxiety? And what you know about Mike Wazowski is that he's not actually a scary guy, he's not as scary as you think he is. And when you get to know him you begin to realize, oh, this guy isn't out to actually harm me, he's here for a good time. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And so in many ways, as awful as that experience was, it like helped me see something that is pivotal all throughout the book, which is healing anxiety, if there is such a thing and we can talk about it, but healing anxiety is an inside job, and what I mean by that is it will not come from without, it will come from within. I had been looking for an outside-in approach, and what I felt like I was being invited to is more of an inside-out approach, and what I would say to your listeners is it's fine, you know, read all the books, you can Go to all the therapists, you can Do whatever you need to do. I would just say this there are no quick fixes and healing is an inside job. So you have all you need within you right now to begin a conversation with your anxiety and to begin the first steps of actually healing your anxiety.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That's what I really like about your book. You show all the different stories and some of them you've managed to share with a bit of humour as well, which I like. That about it.
Speaker 1:And before I ask the next question, if I may, this really stuck and reminded me to do the work within was a quote from your book which you said you do not have to believe everything that you think, and you also said there's always space between who we are and what we are feeling and that For me, the healing was to find the space.
Speaker 1:And I think this is what your book offers in so many ways, because it shows you all the different things, the process you went through, some stories funny and some more challenging and I just think, for our listeners who are starting out, if they get a copy of your book and read through, I think what it shows to me is that we wrote we're all, we're all in need of healing and in some way and that's okay, and which leads me on to the next question is why do you think so many of us feel shameful? Anxious? Because I used to feel shame when I had the panic attacks and, um, I was. I was on the phone to my best friend saying, you know, not that they have made me feel shame, but if you wouldn't mind answering that question, that'd be fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, just a moment of solidarity to anyone who has anxiety and you feel shame. You're not alone in that. I think there's a good population of our world right now. First of all, the statistics alone of how many people write this. Second, the human species. That would say they don't just have anxiety, but they have, like what I talk about in the book. There's a difference between situational anxiety and chronic anxiety, and so many of us right now are living with chronic anxiety and almost being paralyzed. So when we use that word debilitating anxiety, that's not a stretch For a lot of people. You know they feel paralyzed by their anxiety, and so for many of them it becomes a part of their identity, of who they are. I mean, you even hear this language.
Speaker 2:I have a panic disorder, I am anxious. There is a subtle, subtle, but massive leap between I am anxious and I feel anxious, and I think that's in large part what I talk about in one of the chapters. And I think that's in large part what I talk about in one of the chapters, which is, I think, the reason people are feeling shame or even, for me, embarrassment. That was a big one because I was like how do I explain this to people? A retching episode, so weird, like it's so weird. I mean, even the doctors that I visited, many of them were perplexed Like well, this is different, and I think a part of where the shame come from is this, and this is the giant realization I came through on the other end of walking through my internal universe to try to get to the root causes of my anxiety. But I came to this conclusion I have misunderstood anxiety and that's the giant shift for me in the book, and I think that's in large part why a lot of people feel shame is because I think we feel shame, because our understanding of anxiety leads us to feel shame, and I think what I mean by that is.
Speaker 2:I know for me I can only speak from my own experience, but I was told many times that anxiety was an indication that something was wrong with me. I mean even the very phrase panic disorder. It's like, oh, something's out of order here and there's so much shame. There's pill shaming and there's so much shame. There's pill shaming, so many people on SSRIs right now that are shamed by lots of people where you shouldn't be on those. You should be on those temporarily and not at all. And I would just like to say to your listeners SSRIs for me was a giant help to get me to where I am, and I still take them today. I took one this morning when I got out of bed. I am a fan of it because it works for me, it helps me, it turns down the volume a little bit, and what I would say is I think people have been confused about medication and SSRIs and one of the ways they've been confused about it is because I, like many of them, like me probably I just thought that SSRIs were, you know, basically a Band-Aid for a larger problem.
Speaker 2:But what I realized is they're not a band-aid for a larger problem. They give you the energy and the wherewithal to actually remove the band-aid that's been on there for years. But there's so much shaming around pills, taking medication, anxiety, mental health as a whole. We're making great progress, but our world still very much so, centers a lot of shame around it, and my own religious upbringing wasn't any different. In fact it might have been worse For them. Anxiety was an indication that I had a weak faith, and I would just say I write this in the book, but I don't think it was an indication that I had a weak faith, and I would just say I write this in the book, but I don't think it was an indication of weak faith. In hindsight now I think it was an indication of toxic faith. I don't think, like I say, faith is not like the cure to anxiety, but it might very well be a cause for anxiety and it was for me and so I would say for many of us.
Speaker 2:A good place to start, if you feel shame for anxiety is step into this conversation with me of shifting how we understand it. And a part of that's going to be countercultural, because it's not just the church world, it's not just the faith world. We are conditioned in our cultures, from doctors below, to see anxiety in a particular way, and I love that. There is a movement happening right now where people are rethinking anxiety and they're realizing, oh, this isn't, you know, some assassin trying to kill me. Because if you see it that way, I want you to know you will experience it that way and that's the game changer. How you understand anxiety will determine how you experience that anxiety. And I had to, jane. I had to die to a particular relationship with anxiety and then resurrect like a brand new relationship to anxiety, and that's where I'm at now. I don't understand anxiety the way I used to. I don't see it as something that's trying to kill me. I see it actually as something that's trying to save me, trying to heal me, trying to guide me to what actually needs my attention. So the shame can be dropkicked right out of your headspace when you begin to shift just a little bit of anxiety is not some abnormality.
Speaker 2:Everybody has anxiety, everybody. The question is not do you have it? The question is, at what level is it at in your life? Everybody has it. This is what it means to be human. If you are a human, you have anxiety at some level, and so why would we be ashamed of that? This is a gift that we've been given and it's kept the human species alive to date, and we should probably be like whoever invented that anxiety, as crazy as it is and as wild as out of control it can get sometimes.
Speaker 1:Man, thank you for allowing me and you to be here today and keeping the evolution of the human species alive perfect, absolutely, and, as you were saying that was that was going off in my mind is where it's human to be anxious, and I think there's kind of life is presented, isn't it where we should be happy all the time and if we're not feeling like and then we failed in some way, but where life is feeling all the emotions and feelings, it's just when it gets to chronic. You do need like help, like the medication you take or speaking to a therapist, etc. But we are kind of conditioned to think that we've failed if we're anxious. But everyone gets anxious.
Speaker 1:I, I used to work, uh, teach, yoga to a person who worked with famous actors and they would get, they would be like thrown up sometimes before they came on stage. They were so anxious, so, and so it's a part of it's a part of being human. I totally agree, which leads me on I. I just want to quote another thing I read from your book. It says I try to use anxiety as an alarm clock for awareness, and I just love that I was just like yes, I'm going to put that on my sticky note and on my desk and remember that.
Speaker 1:So thank you for that.
Speaker 2:It's a really helpful, helpful phrase yeah, can I, can I say something about that? Yeah, that's probably one of my favorite chapters right now in the book. If I get as an author, I guess I can have a yes, that sounds so narcissistic, but yeah, I, I that, that's so it's. It was a game changer for me to realize that. You've probably heard this phrase, your listeners have probably heard this phrase. But awareness of a pattern breaks the pattern, and so I talk about in the book the art of future, tripping this idea that much of my anxiety was anticipatory anxiety. Much of my anxiety was anticipatory anxiety. So it was me playing out hypotheticals that was causing a lot of the rise within me, the elevated heart rate, even eventually to this form of the retching episodes. But I had a realization. You can even call it awareness. I mean, eckhart Tolle talks about the rising of consciousness, whatever language is helpful and you want to use. But a part of it for me was a realization that there was the anxiety attack. But then there was the me behind the anxiety attack, observing the anxiety attack, and this was a giant, giant shift for me in even how I experienced anxiety and it was detrimental in turning the knob down because what I began to realize is okay. The observer of the anxiety is not anxious. The observer of the panic attack is not panic.
Speaker 2:And then it kind of was a little bit of a mind game for me at first because I was like wait, hold on. Well, who is the observer? And here's the problem with the observer. The observer is really hard to pin down because the observer is formless. The observer doesn't have structure. The observer is not walking around in flesh and blood. The observer is like, it feels like it's layers, layers, layers deep within me. You can't see the observer, but everyone knows that they have an observer and or they are the observer, like maybe that's who we actually are.
Speaker 2:I hope this makes sense better. I think I do a much better job writing it out in the book, but I mentioned that to you to just say this anxiety is not who you are, it's what you're experiencing and there is a significant difference between the two. And so I would say now, when I have moments where, even when I have retching episodes, I still have them, they just don't control me like they used to, and a part of that is because when I'm in the middle of it I have these subtle moments going oh wait a minute. There's my body and me having this thing. But then this is really weird. If I just pause in the moment, I can subtly begin to realize. And then there's this me behind the me that is perfectly calm watching all this happen, and that is a beautiful thing to become aware of in the midst of a panic attack. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does, it does and it's so helpful and you do explain it really well in that chapter as well as you did now. And yeah, it's kind of we get attached to kind of labeling like this is how, how I am. But if we can be the observer observing, then it kind of gives us I don't know that space to kind of like get out, get out of just deciding that's how we are, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I've said a bit clunky in my response no, I think that's beautifully well, well said, yeah so I look, if our listeners are lost in anxieties and what is, could you give them a kind of tip that they could do? I guess you've just given them one, but maybe something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's what I would say For your listeners lost in anxiety. Step one feel it, just feel it. That is the easiest step to do and many of your listeners, if they have anxiety, they're like well, I already do that. Yeah, I know, don't resist that. Feel it, feel all of it, sit with it, find a space. If you feel anxious, find a space.
Speaker 2:I always like to put my hand on the parts of my body where I feel the anxiety the most. So for me, I have a spot it's kind of lower throat, right at the beginning of the chest, which makes sense, right, I'm having retching episodes. So sometimes I'll do this and then I'll put my hand over my throat as well and I will feel it, just feel it like. Feel it in your body and I let it do what it needs to do, what it wants to do. That old saying what you resist persist. The reason that's an old saying is because it's true. That's why all the war metaphors for anxiety oh God, like that's not helpful. At least it wasn't for me. Yeah, I'm not going to battle with my anxiety. You go to battle with your anxiety, and anxiety will win every time exactly every time.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to battle with it. Because why are you going to battle with it? Because it's not trying to hurt me. Anxiety is trying to protect me. Anxiety is trying to protect me, and so I approach it as someone that's not trying to harm me. I approach it as oh what if this isn't an enemy trying to kill me? What if this is the way my body speaks? What if this was the language of the soul? What if this is all that is within me? You call it whatever you want to. I call it the internal universe in my book, that being the psyche, the mind, the heart, gut, whatever unconscious, subconscious. What if this is one of the ways that it communicates to us? And so I would say to your listeners just feel it, find it in your body, put your hand on that spot, let yourself be anxious.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite quotes in the book is from Alan Watts. Alan Watts says one is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious. One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious. And so I would say start there. And then I would say feel it, then don't try to eliminate it. Integrate it, and that's a big shift that I write about in the book. I came to a place where I stopped trying to eliminate my anxiety and I started integrating it, and what I mean by that is anxiety has a role and function, and what you need to know is anxiety can be a part of you without being all of you, and what you need to know is anxiety can be a part of you without being all of you. Anxiety can be present within you and not actually overcome you, and so let it have a seat at the table it just doesn't have to control the entire meeting and so feel it, welcome it, and you may have to talk to it. I do that.
Speaker 2:What I realized as I got deeper into my anxiety and the roots underneath it is that in many ways, it was actually my own inner child screaming out for me. There's an old Cherokee proverb that I write in the book that sometimes the body whispers, and if you don't listen to the whisper, it will eventually scream. And, and I think that's a shift that a large part of our culture is going through right now. We're all, many of us, many of us not all of us, but many of us have been conditioned to live from our heads and I think maybe the reason the nervous system is throwing up signals and trying to get our attention is because I think it's a larger cultural shift in humanity that we are, as a society, moving gradually from our heads to our bodies and we're learning that a lot of what we were taught about our bodies just isn't true. It just isn't true. I know for me.
Speaker 2:My religious people told me God, I could not trust myself. You are a depraved, broken human. And that's 101.
Speaker 2:If your listeners don't know anything about, like American evangelicalism, 101 in American evangelicalism is you have to stand up and acknowledge you are a sinner, which just means, oh man, I was born broken. What kind of a message is that? How is that good news? It's not I was born broken and their good news is but I have the solution. No, and that's not even what. For your listeners that care about these things, that's not even what Jesus taught while he was here.
Speaker 2:If Jesus taught us anything, it's he came to reveal what has been true about humanity the whole time, which is we've always been one with the divine. It's always been good to be you. It's always been good to be me. It's always been good to be human. It's always been good to be here, present, right now, in all the quirkiness of you, and so you're not inherently broken and separated from the divine. We're not born that way. We aren't that way. We are born whole and united with the divine, made of the divine, and I think that's a shift that's happening in our culture right now is that we're all coming to this moment of epiphany, awareness arising of consciousness, going wow, look how sacred we are, look how sacred this is.
Speaker 2:And it's not just religion, our culture, I mean. You hear it all the time, you know a tragedy happens, you're like, well, he's just a human. What a low view of humanity. We need to counter that and elevate that. People aren't doing tragedies and atrocities because they're human. They're doing it because they forget that they're human. We have lost sight of the sacredness of what it means to be a human, and we've experienced that this week in America. For the listeners over there that don't know, you know there's a lot happening in our nation right now and I can tell you that the collective body, and I can tell you that the collective body, the collective nervous system, is screaming at us right now and I think it's an invitation, an invitation to listen, to go down in it, to feel it and to see what might be down there in the collective unconscious of our nation, of our world. And let's see what might be wanting to surface. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it's kind of I was going to ask you about this and this has been really helpful to listen to, because I feel my anxiety these days comes from what's happening in the world, like I know for things that have happened this week in America, but in the UK as well, and all different countries. There's different problems but lots of awful things happening. And it's sometimes it I'm thinking of, you know, kind of trying to help people and be the best version of myself, and then if I read something and it it's and I just see people in power kind of doing all these awful, awful things. It's sometimes hard, isn't it, to kind of step away from that kind of anxiety and which leads on from what you were saying, to do like the collective consciousness and it's screaming out for our help. How can we navigate through that?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, I think the easiest answer to that, or the quickest answer they get, would be to do our own personal work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we. This is this my hope is for the book is I think the collective is a mirror of the individual, so the collective is a bunch of individuals, and so if we can get more individuals doing their own personal internal work, then eventually it will show itself in the collective, and that's my hope for even why I write this. Discovering your internal universe that's the whole point. That's why I believe anxiety was there to begin with in me is to show me some things that, first of all, I didn't even know were inside of me and then, second things that just needed my attention wounds, relational wounds, unprocessed grief, fear-based religion that needed to be healed, so much within me that I didn't know resided, that sat right there on the surface of my unconscious and it needed attention. And I believe that's true for us as a collective right now. You know, in many ways, in many ways, I'm holding all the emotions I mean this week for your listeners that don't know. But you know, a far right political commentator was gunned down at a university.
Speaker 1:It's awful.
Speaker 2:We also have had multiple mass shootings, school shootings recently oh, I didn't know about that All at the same time, one in Colorado, one in Minnesota. We had, not that long ago, a politician and her husband gunned down in their own home. I mean, violence right now in America is just surfacing to levels that you know I'm unfamiliar with in my 44 years of being on this part of the world, and you know there's a lot of people living in fear, and rightfully so. Again, it's not trying to harm us, it's here to tell us something, it's here to protect us. It's here to tell us something, it's here to protect us. And so I would just say let's lean into this moment, let's do our own personal work and then I would say, let's begin to see collectively what might try to be surfacing. I know for America, I can only speak for us, but it's a scary time, not just for Americans but for a lot of us. I mean, there is a dozen or so world leaders right now that I don't even know how they got their positions, and it's terrifying because these are people that don't have. They have very little emotional maturity, if any, and they're navigating these countries and they have access to so much power, and and what I will tell you is, is that somehow I'm trusting and believing that.
Speaker 2:There's an old Eckhart Tolle quote that I love. He said life will give you whatever you need for the evolution of your consciousness. He goes on to say how do you know? This is what you need, because this is what you are experiencing. And so, like me and our little collective out here where I live in America, we're working hard for justice. We're working hard to expose the things that need to be exposed, and that's what I love about.
Speaker 2:I try to write about both that in the book, because I want your listeners to know you can do your own internal inner work, your own shadow work, and simultaneously, at the same time, call out the unconscious acts of other people who haven't done their own shadow work, and I think we have to do both. I think we have to do both, and so in America, right now, I will tell you our president and this is where I am he is the unedited version of who America really is. We've been denying it, we've been acting like we're God's greatest gift to the planet, and the reality is is that isn't true, and I know that because our history tells me that, and so what I believe is happening right now is to see. We're getting a flesh and blood visual of the collective unconscious of our nation, and what's rising to the surface is bigotry, racism. What's rising to the surface is misogyny, homophobic actions. All of this is rising to the surface and as hard as it is to see, I think if we're capable and able, we must not only see it, but we must acknowledge it.
Speaker 2:There's a great Franciscan priest out in New Mexico that I admire. His name is Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr said you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge. And I think, ever so gradually, we're seeing what we need to see so we can acknowledge what we need to acknowledge, so we can begin to heal what we need to heal oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:That's very moving, actually, very wise words. It kind of makes you feel it's different problems but also very similar, because the way the uk has been run at the moment it's it's just they just take, they're just squeezing everyone. So, financially, everyone's really really feeling it. There's a lot of like unrest and I really can't relate to our prime minister. That's just my personal view.
Speaker 1:Listeners, so is it? You know, the thing is, we're all. I think it's really important that people can have different opinions and just because we don't all agree like some listeners might listen and not agree with me and might not agree with yourself, or they might agree, and I think it's really important that people have discussions because I think that's what keeps us human and it's very, very important that happens. So, dear listeners, maybe you love the prime minister. That's great. This doesn't make you a bad person. In the same way, doesn't make me a bad person if I don't relate to him. So, cody, what do you mind? I'm a listener. I want to buy your book. Do you want to share a bit from your book?
Speaker 2:Would love to. There's like a couple of places. If I had time I'd be like oh man, let's read that section, let's read that section. But I'm going to read it's towards the end of the book two paragraphs.
Speaker 1:Thank you this is page 216.
Speaker 2:Think about the moments in your life you thought were going to end you. Yet you are still here. Look at you. Despite all the anxiety you have experienced, you keep getting out of bed in the morning and walking into your day. With each step, you are showing anxiety its proper place within you. Life is hard enough when things are going well, tag on debilitating moments of chronic anxiety and it can feel nearly impossible to survive. Yet you have. You are resilient, courageous and stronger than perhaps you realize. Give yourself credit. It's not easy being human. It's not easy being human. It's not easy being you. It's not easy being here. Yet you have survived, prevailed, conquered and on your best days you have even soared. You are trusting, one step at a time. I'm proud of you.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you, Cody. I felt quite emotional listening to that. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my hope. I read that for all of your listeners who have lived with anxiety for years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can relate to that. When I was listening to it it made me feel accepted. So thank you, I really appreciate that If I'm, if I am a listener and I feel like I want to get a copy of your book. It's on all the major platforms, isn't it? Not like Amazon's generally worldwide? But I think for those that I've got american listeners, well, barnes and noble and places like that and I guess, if, if, if you go to your bookstore and they haven't got it, they can order it in as well.
Speaker 1:But yes definitely on amazon worldwide, and it's out on the 9th of October called Discover your Internal Universe by Cody Dees. Just one final question Is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners today?
Speaker 2:I would point to. In the book at the very end I give a list of resources that have inspired a lot of my own thinking, and so I would encourage people, when they pick up the book, to go there and read some of those resources. One that I would just acknowledge right now for those that are listening. They're like oh, I want to hear more about this. I'm not a therapist. I need to be clear about that. I try to say it everywhere I go.
Speaker 2:It's my first line in the book. Actually, I say I'm not a therapist, and that's important because there's a lot of, like you know, tiktok influencers that are posing as therapists and that's not helpful and a lot of times it just creates more anxiety. So I want you to know that I'm not a therapist. I come and I write as a fellow participant in the human experience, someone that's lived with anxiety for a while Now. That said, I would encourage you to read a real doctor's explanation and understanding a lot of what I talked about today, and if you want to do that, dr Russell Kennedy's book Anxiety Rx is what I highly recommend. That book is essentially the mechanics behind what I'm working out in my book, and so save yourself a doctor's visit and grab that book, because it revolutionized a lot for me.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you, I'll put. I'll put. I'll include that in the show notes as well as a link to your, to your book, your church online as well, if you're in a different part of the world or do you have to be in your hometown to join.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, it's, it's all out there. Yeah, we didn't talk about that, which is fine. I'm totally happy with that. But for your listeners some call me a pastor, I call myself a teacher of an ever-evolving spiritual collective where we have this little community right outside of Atlanta, georgia, which is where I live and our little community is we always say we're just waking up to beauty, truth and goodness wherever it's found, and we have the conversations that we need to have. But people can go and check that out. Honestly, just the website, codydesecom and all the info's there. Yeah, and I'm doing a little book tour. It's coming up. So I don't think I'm overseas yet, but maybe soon. So, but I'm doing like an American little book tour, so that's coming up and all those details are on the site as well.
Speaker 1:Oh, perfect, because some of my listeners are in the US as well, so that would be brilliant. Oh, cody, it's been so great to talk to you and I feel like I've learned a lot. It's always my pleasure to have wonderful guests like yourself, but this felt really close to heart with the anxiety thing. So I just want to thank you for taking the time and your morning because I know it's morning over there to talk to us today, and I just want to say a big thank you from myself and my listeners awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, and thank you for the work you do in the world. It's making a difference and I'm grateful to be a part of it thank you very much, cody.
Speaker 1:Thank you, so do stay tuned, listeners.
Speaker 1:As always, there's a guided meditation inspired by today's show, but the one and only Cody Dees, thank you. Top tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross-legged on the floor with a nice straight back Always nice to sit on a block or a cushion, although that's not available for you, you sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching, and if you're doing something that requires your concentration, all you need to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you If you're doing the meditation. Let's begin In this guided meditation today.
Speaker 1:Imagine you're sitting in the most wonderful room, a room that you either from your imagination or room that you have been in before. But you imagine that you are in this room and it's a room that you find great comfort in. And as you sit in this room, you take in the colors of the walls, the textures of the fabric, how the light cascades into the room, and it's a place that you feel a deep sense of comfort. In many ways, the beauty of this room is a symbol of the self-love, the self-love that we so often forget, or the self-love that we have experienced before but forgotten Either way. This room symbolises the self-love that you so lovingly deserve and to help heal the world at the same time. So we heal ourselves and then we help send that healing to the world, knowing that you're perfect and beautiful just as you are. The refuge of this room offers great comfort and healing, and the more you just allow yourself and your imagination to sit in the room, the more the love builds so from your energetic heart center, which is known as the heart chakra in yoga, but in all different forms of beliefs, faiths and healing. Just imagine it is a kind of beautiful energy of love, this self-love.
Speaker 1:And as you sit softly in this room, you allow this self-love to begin to encircle your being in a gentle way. You feel as if it surrounds you and holds you, as if you're held by the most wonderful fabric that offers great comfort and joy to your being. And this fabric feels like it holds you so beautifully and you feel as if you are calm and relaxed in it. And as this self-love begins to grow, it reminds you of things about yourself that you like, things that you may or may not remember, for we all have this beautiful love within us. Just allow those things to be remembered. Even remember at a pace that is right for you, and don't worry if you don't remember. Just allow the feeling of love to grow.
Speaker 1:So all you're going to do for the, for the next few minutes, is just take some calm, deep breaths in this room and just imagine that love growing and growing. Thank you, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. So, from this beautiful place, can you imagine that the love that you receive from yourself you send out into the world, and then that love comes back to you. So you feel as if the love that you have generated by being still you receive, but you send it out into the world, and then the world remembers about love too and sends it back to you. And you can just continue this with slow, calm, deep breathing, and then slowly and calmly come back into the room, come back into the moment, remembering that you are the essence of love.
