#098 - Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary - The Mind-Bending Truth About Your Anxiety

Stop fighting your anxiety. It's not the enemy. My guest, Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, explains the mind-bending truth that anxiety is a powerful evolutionary tool for focus and growth.

She details the critical difference between a feeling of anxiety and a clinical disorder. We discuss how to develop 'anti-fragility' by embracing discomfort and leveraging it for personal progress. You'll learn science-backed frameworks, including the 'Three L's' (Listen, Leverage, Let Go) and a simple worry-scheduling technique to regain control of your emotions.

This conversation will fundamentally change the way you view your emotions and provide actionable tools to transform your relationship with anxiety. Listen now to discover how to turn your biggest fear into your greatest tool.

ℹ️ About the Guest

Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary is a renowned neuroscientist, psychologist, and the co-founder of Arcade Therapeutics, a company that creates game-based mental health interventions. She is the author of the groundbreaking book Future Tense: Why Anxiety is Good for You (Even Though it Feels Bad), which argues for the radical idea that anxiety is a functional human emotion that can be leveraged as a tool for personal growth. In addition to her extensive research and publications, she is a sought-after expert for media commentary and public speaking.

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👨‍💻 People & Other Mentions

• David Goggins - Former Navy SEAL known for extreme physical and mental challenges
• Viktor Frankl - Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who wrote "Man's Search for Meaning"
• Søren Kierkegaard - Danish philosopher who wrote extensively about anxiety
• Wendell Berry - Author of "Life is a Miracle" and essayist on technology's impact on humanity
• Tim Ferriss - Author of "The Four Hour Workweek" and lifestyle design pioneer
• Chris Beavers - UT Austin researcher studying depression interventions
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Introduced concept of "anti-fragility"
• Charles Darwin - Evolutionary theorist who wrote about emotions in humans and animals

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Anxiety: A Dual Perspective
• 6:54 The Role of Control in Managing Anxiety
• 13:57 Riding the Waves of Emotion: Embracing Anxiety
• 22:02 The Three L's: Listen, Leverage, Let Go
• 29:53 Distinguishing Anxiety from Anxiety Disorders
• 38:33 The Medicalization of Anxiety: A Cultural Shift
• 49:54 Technology's Role in Amplifying Anxiety
• 55:26 Finding Hope and Meaning in Anxiety
• 1:00:39 Innovative Tools for Managing Anxiety

Transcript

Tracy (00:00)
Now anxiety, it makes us mental time travelers into the future, right? So anxiety, it feels a lot like fear, but anxiety is about the uncertain future, knowing that something bad could happen, but something good is still possible. And this exactly mapped on to what I was experiencing with my son. He could have died, right, on the surgery table, but we knew that there was a very good chance that he would also survive and-

be, you know, and really thrive afterwards. So when you're anxious, you're holding those two possibilities in mind at the same time.

Cody (00:35)
Mindhack is a podcast about the psychology behind performance, behavior change, and self-optimization. Each episode explores how to think clearly, work smarter, and live intentionally through insightful conversations with leading entrepreneurs, scientists, and experts in human behavior.

Hello and welcome to the Mindhack Podcast, the show where we explore performance, mindset, and personal growth. I'm your host, Cody McLain, and today we're exploring how anxiety works and why it's not always the villain it's made out to be. Because you know that feeling before a big meeting, a first date, or a major life decision? The racing thoughts that churn in your stomach. That's what we're digging into. And my guest today, Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary.

says it can actually be one of your greatest tools. Tracy is a psychology professor at Hunter College, the director of emotional regulation lab at the City University of New York and the author of Future Tense, Why Anxiety is Good for You Even Though It Feels Bad. She's also the founder of Arcade Therapeutics, where she has created some amazing apps that actually help retrain your brain. And in her new book, Future Tense,

She shares stories and research that will completely change how you think about anxiety. So whether anxiety is something that you deal with every day or you're curious about how your mind works, Tracy has insights that will stick with you long after this episode ends. So without further ado, please welcome Dr. Tracy Dennis-Tiwary. Tracy.

Tracy (02:13)
Thank you,

Cody (02:16)
So Tracy, you've challenged the idea that anxiety is a disease that we need to cure. And I know that we were talking before the interview that you shared that your son had open heart surgery at just four months old. And that is honestly a parent's worst nightmare. And I know that you've been studying anxiety for a good part of your life. I'm wondering, how did that experience change you? were you able to bring your own

understanding of how anxiety works into helping yourself process that situation.

Tracy (02:50)
Yes, it's such a great example to start with because it's those really tough, pivotal moments in our life that make us question, all this stuff I'm writing about or reading in books, is all this book learning, it actually mean anything ⁓ for real life? And what I found in that situation, and I'll also say my son ⁓ got through the surgery great, he's 16 years old now and his health is wonderful. So we were very blessed. ⁓ But at the time,

⁓ As someone who studied anxiety, I knew that there was ⁓ sometimes this thin line between overwhelming anxiety that started to feel like it takes over your life and an anxiety disorder. And I can talk about those differences a little later, but when my son was born, we knew that he was sick, so we had a head start on that. But we also knew that he would need that open heart surgery at four months. that first four months or five months,

It was getting him ready for the surgery and ⁓ then having to know that we were gonna come to that day and handing him over to the surgeon. And ⁓ it was a pretty frightening thing. And so as the months went by and we were anticipating this event, knowing it was going to happen, I found that there was this double-edged sword of anxiety that I was really experiencing. Now anxiety, it makes us mental time travelers into the future.

Right? So anxiety, it feels a lot like fear. ⁓ But anxiety is about the uncertain future, knowing that something bad could happen, but something good is still possible. And this exactly mapped on to what I was experiencing with my son. He could have died, right, on the surgery table. But we knew that there was a very good chance that he would also survive and be, you know, and really thrive afterwards.

So when you're anxious, you're holding those two possibilities in mind at the same time. And so there were moments when it crushed me. I remember when I first found out I was still pregnant. Actually, we knew he was going to be born with this condition. And I just crawled into bed, had a good cry. then, of course, being a scientist and being someone who likes to do something, take action, I got right onto PubMed and I started learning everything I could.

So what anxiety actually allowed me to do was to dig, I channeled that energy, That foreseeing the future and knowing that this can be an energizing emotion. It can help me work hard to avert disaster, which is to have an unsuccessful surgery and to make this outcome possible. That means I have to get the best doctors I can. I have to prepare ourselves. I have to do research. So anxiety in this sense really focused all of my energy.

on achieving those goals and really finding and creating a really, ⁓ I would say, a really excellent medical situation so that when my son was born and when we were moving towards surgery, things were in place. Now, if I hadn't been anxious, as impossible as that would have been, I think I would have been less focused, less hardworking. I would have maybe succumbed to despair.

a little more easily, but in some ways this anxiety, you know, which exists in that place between where we are now and where we want to be, hope is also there. So when you're anxious, you are still hopeful. And so the hope that anxiety gave me in that really pivotal moment in our family's life, that hope was absolutely essential for me being able to get through this tough event, do the right things for my son, and then come out the other side. So.

So everything that I believed about emotions, that they can be functional, we evolved to have even the negative emotions, ⁓ it really was born out. That's not to say it didn't crush me sometimes because emotions are not easy. ⁓ But it really, ⁓ I think that my mindset about emotions was part of what helped those emotions serve me at one of the most difficult times of my life.

Cody (07:01)
Hmm. That's really powerful. ⁓ especially knowing that, that he was going to have this heart condition and him not even being born yet. And then having to go those four months that that seems like it's goes from that idea of acute anxiety that we get from having, having a date or having a job interview to more or less something. I don't know how you would define chronic anxiety. And, and I'm not sure how, how would, how did you not let it consume you? Because so often we have these.

these long-term environmental anxieties about worrying about our future, our kids, and they kind of stay with us, right? We wake up and they're kind of there in the background. We might not always be thinking about them, but they come up in little bursts. And I'm wondering, how did you not let it consume you? Do you have any advice for somebody who has this kind of environmental or chronic thing that they should be or feel like they're worried about?

Tracy (07:55)
And you know, well, that brings that question, which is such a good one. It brings to mind two things. One is whether it's anxiety or stress, the controllability of a situation adds to the ⁓ development of hopelessness, right, and overwhelm. So it was out of my control that my son had this condition, right? But what was not out of my control was that I could learn about it. I could work the...

I mean, my darndest to get the best doctors possible. ⁓ I could prepare our family and I could lay the groundwork. So all of a sudden amidst an uncontrollable situation, I found places to take action, to have some control and to have hope. So for me, was that the holding onto that hope and being able to ⁓ affect positive change and positive steps. That was definitely what protected me from it being overwhelming. ⁓

I also, I think, accepted that I was going to suffer. I know that sounds funny, but I didn't think this was going to be a walk in the park. I didn't think this was going to be easy, but I accepted that. And I remember also finding ways to feel lucky because at every step of the way, we saw children and families who were much worse off than we were. ⁓ We saw families that didn't have the benefit of knowing like I did.

that my son was going to be born with this condition and not be able to prepare. They all of a sudden just discovered that their child's heart was failing. I had months to figure this out. So when you have ⁓ this view of anxiety that ⁓ it can be a tool, that it can be your ally, and that the suffering that it brings, as much as it sucks, I don't want to pretend that anxiety is great in how it feels.

But ⁓ because I had the belief that it was also pointing me in the right direction, I think it allowed me to weather some of that overwhelm, find hope, and actually see places where it helped me take more effective action. Again, it wasn't always perfect. If we hold ourselves to this robotic, like, I'm going to hack anxiety and figure it all out and do it perfectly, that tends to make us take the setbacks much more hard.

than to be able to persist in the patience that it sometimes takes for hope. So I think all those things were important to me.

Cody (10:26)
And so the positive thing about anxiety is that if there is a future situation in which there might be something to fear, it can propel you into action to reduce the chance, the likelihood that that future thing is going to happen. And then in the process, I think we often try to suppress that, that anxiety, right? Or most people will try to numb that anxiety because they, it worries them so much. They don't want to feel it.

And I know from speaking with previous guests, especially when we've talked about parts therapy, is that's the exact opposite thing that you want to do. Is that in one particular therapy, you might actually try to experience that anxiety as much and as intensely as you can for maybe even just a minute, but to have some form of a release. But then at some point when you've done everything that you can do to prevent that or to prepare for that future situation,

then there isn't anything else that you can do other than to try to drop the anxiety, right? Or to try to tell your subconscious that, hey, I got you, bro. You don't need to hold onto this any longer. But that can often be one of the hardest things to do. Do you have any thoughts or ways that we can help deal with these types of anxieties?

Tracy (11:43)
You put it so beautifully really, and what I was thinking as you were speaking was that it's like riding a wave, right? ⁓ That there's an ebb and flow to anxiety. We, as you said, ⁓ avoidance and numbing is not a long-term successful strategy, and it is exactly a recipe for making anxiety worse, actually. And so some of our most effective treatments for anxiety help us, know, exposure therapies, things like that, they help us learn to

the distress, learn to tolerate this discomfort, little by little, and kind of build the muscles for it, right, the emotional muscles. ⁓ So I think the very first step, I mean, there's a million strategies out there, right? They don't need to, like, no one needs to read a book, listen to a podcast, no offense, you have a wonderful podcast, but no one needs self-help to know at least a few things they can do about their anxiety, right?

Because the information is all there, but it's not about information. I really think it's this belief system, these mindsets we have about anxiety that are the biggest ⁓ stumbling block. And you described one of them, this meta-anxiety, that we're so frightened that we're anxious about anxiety. We fear that it's a sign that we're broken, that it's a sign that we'll spiral, and that it's a sign that we're weak and aren't resilient. Whereas what's actually true is the opposite.

that when we learn to ride these waves of emotion, we become anti-fragile. And I think your listeners will probably know this term, anti-fragility. Resilience is bouncing back, sort of to where you started, right, after a disruption or a trauma. Anti-fragility is the fact that so many aspects of our humanity require strain, disorder, and distress to reach our full capacity. So the immune system is anti-fragile.

We actually require germs being thrown at us bacteria so that our immune system can learn to mount an immune response. It's otherwise where the boy in the plastic bubble. ⁓ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who coined that term antifragility, he compares antifragility to resilience like you would compare the hydra to the phoenix. The hydra, every time you cut off one head, two grow in its place.

⁓ And whereas the, you know, the, Phoenix, burns, you know, it burns up, but it kind of comes back to just where it started. So, so anti-fragility, this ability to feel and abide with these feelings and realize that we can survive them and go through them and grow stronger. I think just this belief, this mindset that allows you to then have those experiences of exactly that experience. I think that's just a very fundamental first step.

that we often forget about because we're so busy trying to do our checklist of ⁓ strategies and self-help tips and positive affirmations of the day or whatever it is. And it's just really this first step that I think is the most important.

Cody (14:50)
Yeah. And anxiety itself, I believe it's the narrowing of attention. So in some cases when we're experiencing some form of anxiety, whether chronic or acute, it tends to, to, to hyper, we tend to hyper-focus on that anxiety and we can kind of spiral into like worry loops, right? And it seems that the, the, the, the more we struggle, it's like quicksand in a way that we can't get out of it. ⁓

But I believe you say that when we work with uncertainty instead of against it, we can actually turn that energy into kind of preparation and progress. So how can we make that shift?

Tracy (15:28)
There's a little ⁓ framework that I like to talk about that I call the three L's. And then I'll give a concrete example of this with worry. And there's some really great worry ⁓ exercises that illustrate this. So the three L's I talk about is that when anxiety shows up, ⁓ we always want to get rid of it. But the very first thing we have to do to it is listen. That's the first L, which means to sit with it, engage with it like we're talking about.

And then once you actually listen to it, once you abide with it, that's when you can start to figure out the ways you can leverage it. For example, with my son when he was sick, I realized that all this energy and worry and folk, I could leverage that to do research, find the best doctors, prepare in an incredibly powerful way. So that's the leveraging. ⁓ You have to be willing to make mistakes. You have to be willing to fall down and fail when you're leveraging. And that's very hard with anxiety. But that's sort of part of this. ⁓

this anti-fragility you can build up. So that's the second L, listen, leverage. And then the third step is to let go. And that's usually where we start. We want to just like numb it, avoid it. But letting go that's really constructive means that we're giving ourselves a break, right? As you said, you know, sometimes if it's really narrowing our attention or it's, ⁓ you know, it's chronic and it's just popping up every day, every day, we need to find those ways.

that we all have, it's not rocket science actually, to kind of release that emotion, to figure out what we can control and what we can't, and really try to let go of the things we can't control. This can be, I like to think about letting go as being especially those things that allow us to find flow in life. Like a great way to let go is to, if you're an artist, to do your art, whether it's music, poetry, whatever, you know, don't even have to be a good artist. I'm a very bad poet, but I love to write poetry.

And it sort of snaps my mind in this different way of thinking. So when I wanna let go, I often will just grab a journal and start writing poetry. Nature is an incredible way to let go. Sports, we know this. mean, sports is an incredible way to get in the flow, reconnect with your body, take care of yourself. These are things that everyone from like the smallest child to the oldest adult, they can find these things in their life. So it's listen, leverage and let go. That's a framework. And every time anxiety sort of knocks at our door,

And we're like, what do we do? And this is overwhelming and I'm gonna spiral. I like this kind of maybe over simplistic, but I think really grounded in science, this framework because it just lets you pause for a moment and say, okay, what do I have to do right now? You know, I just got fired from my job. What do I do? And the first thing you need to do is not to, I mean, listen, maybe you'll go get a drink or you'll do whatever you need to do. But when you get up the next morning,

You're like, okay, what do I do now in my life? You really have to suffer a little bit. And no one, it's a very weird thing to say to most people's ears, to say, allow yourself to suffer. But when you listen to what your anxiety is actually telling you, what is it telling you about the future? You know, what is it telling you about what you can still hope for? What is it telling you about what matters to you? Because you're only anxious when you care, right? ⁓

So you have to give it that, know, so having this 3L framework kind of allows you to have that space to then start figuring out, do I, how do I channel this anxiety, this wave that I have to ride? How do I go from drowning in it to, you know, surfing it, to sailing in it, like to actually riding it? I can give an example for worry. That's a really, it's actually a cognitive behavioral therapy worry technique that if you think people might like to hear about it, I can share that.

Does that sound good? Okay. So this is about scheduling worries. if you see a therapist, for example, and you're really struggling with worries and some anxiety disorders, which I should take a moment after I share this exercise, I'll share the difference between anxiety and an anxiety disorder. But when you go to a therapist, you have an anxiety disorder. And if worries are really troubling you, they'll often tell you to do this thing.

one of the problems with worry, it's not that you're worrying, it's that you're trying to control the worry too much. And so as we try to like stop the worry, it always bounces back stronger. So what we do instead is we schedule worry time every day. And so you pick about, you know, 20, 30 minutes, you just set it aside every day and you either type it up or you literally take something or a physical journal and you write down,

absolutely everything that's in your mind that you're worrying about. But the trick is that you have to actually get detailed. So you can't just say, I'm worried about life or the environment is terrible. You have to say, I'm worried that when I get up in the morning, I'm going to walk out the door and my best friend is going to call me on the phone and say that they hate me. you know, and, it could, but it has to be specific. ⁓ And it has to be absolutely everything in your mind. Like don't filter, just write it all down.

write down the bad, but also write down the good because as you might be thinking, I just lost my job and I'm really afraid I'm never gonna find a job again. But I'm also starting to think about the things I really love to do in life. And I wonder if I could get a job in this new area, but that would take going back to school. But you can see the mind goes, you write it all down, you write it all down. You will find after 15 or 20 minutes, you'll think that worries go on forever. After 15 or 20 minutes, there will be nothing left in that brain.

You will, it's very hard to worry straight for a half an hour once you really make it concrete. So, so then, so then what happens is you have this, this list of your worries and you realize there's an end to worries, which is very incredible. You've also scheduled worry and told yourself, this is the time I'm allowed to worry during the day. And what happens very quickly is the worries save themselves for that time. So you learn and you train yourself to not let worry impinge on the rest of your day. And then if you.

have that list in front of you and if you walk away even for five minutes and then come back and read the list, you'll look at it and you'll be like, huh, about 50 % of those things don't even make sense, right? And 25%, I'm not even worried about that anymore. And then you're actually left over with concerns that are real concerns. And then you can start to dig in. So this very simple exercise makes worries concrete. When they're vague, that's when they really get you. ⁓

helps you start to limit your worry time so it doesn't start to impinge on your day and become disruptive. ⁓ And then it starts to help you realize, wait a second, there are things I can control here and I can make an action plan and do something about it. So that's just a very small example, but a good generalizable one about how we can, after we listen to anxiety or our worries, how we can then leverage it.

Cody (22:39)
I love that. think everybody should have some form of an exercise that they can resort to when they inevitably have these types of chronic anxieties that can kind of stem up from nowhere. And we often, you know, we're not taught how to deal with our anxieties in school. And I know in the book you have a distinction between a useful anxiety that's pointing to kind of concrete steps that we can actually follow.

versus this kind of free-floating anxiety where there's really no actionable signal. It just kind of sits there. It's parked there and it just kind of sprouts up. But by giving it a time of day, just like letting it all come out, it's kind of exhausting itself in a way. Now, is that exercise something that you can also use as a form of preparation and helping you to like ⁓ minimize the amount of anxiety later on in life? ⁓

Tracy (23:32)
I think yes, in a sense, yes, because it becomes this habit of thinking. I mean, this is why mindsets are so powerful, because mindsets aren't just beliefs. They're perceptions, right? They're what we perceive and believe about ourselves in the world. So if we have a mindset that worries are not these things to just push down, right, and get rid of as soon as possible, the problem isn't worrying too much. It's that we don't worry well. And as soon as you come in with this sort of mindset and then you practice it, put it into practice, like with this

scheduling exercise and then see the difference. You're doing your own little mini experiment here. It will start to become a habit of mind. You'll start to do what I sometimes call future tense thinking also as you think about future anxieties, you'll start to immediately parse them. Like you'll remember, wait, when I'm anxious, I care and I have hope. So that means there's something good I'm working towards. So all this energy you can start to say, well, wait a second, I can actually, you know,

let me build the sort of distress tolerance to feel these feelings, but then let me build these habits of thinking that allow me to do something with them. So yeah, I think that doing this kind of exercise over time can really help prevent things, you know, kind of be a helpful strategy for the future.

Cody (24:49)
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sure you're familiar with the book, the body keeps score, which really indicates that anxiety or trauma is something that can be held not within the mind, but also the body. And I'm wondering, is there a distinction? Can you have anxiety without like the, proof on our cortex, like the thoughts can, can you have anxiety that isn't your mind going in loops, but is somewhere within your body? I mean, how do you, how do you.

rectify that? Is that something that ever comes up? Can you have anxiety without... ⁓

Tracy (25:20)
All

emotions involve the body. you know, there are a I I'm not an expert on critiquing The Body Keeps the Score, but a lot of people hate that book. And actually, even the author is like, people misconstrue this book. So I'm a little cautious to, so I'm not referencing that book because I think there's a lot of useful debate about that book. But what's very clear as an emotion scientist, which is how I was trained from a functional emotion theory perspective, because we evolved to be emotional,

it has to exist in our bodies. And there are wonderful emotion theories about how in some ways the reason that, ⁓ for example, a non-biological being, a reason they could never actually be conscious, that, know, this is getting into a huge debate right now, is because there's no embodied experience and that part of consciousness has to be embodied. And certainly we would say that goes for emotions. So... ⁓

It might interest your listeners that Darwin's a third of evolutionary theory is about emotions. So the first book, Origin of Species, then The Descent of Man, the third book of his trilogy that laid out all of evolutionary theory was called The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. And in it, he talks about these bodily anchors that allow us to feel emotion. so I think when we're experiencing anxiety,

⁓ is a physical, in its physical aspects of which it almost always is, the more that we actually anchor ourselves and allow ourselves to feel that physicality, that's what allows us to pass through it instead of, of course, if you're suppressing it. That's one thing. Another thing I think that's really interesting is to distinguish anxiety from stress. So stress is not an emotion. Stress is a calculation that it's our calculation.

both conscious and unconscious, that the resources we have in a given moment are not adequate to meet the demands of the environment. Right? So people talk about stress and eustress, which is good stress, right? Because stress can be helpful. ⁓ But what happens with allostatic load, which is the bad stress over time that's causing wear and tear on us, is that we repeatedly are having this experience

that our resources are not meeting the demands of the chronically stressful environment that we're facing. So that's sort of the calculation of stress and how it can have negative effects. Under that umbrella of stress, you can have all the emotions. I mean, I could be stressed out about my upcoming wedding, even though I'm mostly happy, right? But I could also be anxious. ⁓ I could be angry that the florist messed up the flowers. I don't know. But under the stress of any given event, you can feel all the feelings.

So I think it's important to make that distinction. ⁓ I also just quickly want to distinguish anxiety, the emotion, which is, it's the emotional output of uncertainty. So you're thinking of the future. You know that something bad is possible, but something good is still on the table. You have the emotion of anxiety. And it activates us, narrows our attention, gets our blood pumping, sends oxygen to our brain. ⁓

has all these physiological effects. It also can make us more creative and fast thinking under some circumstances. So it does all these bio-behavioral cognitive things. ⁓ And it can feel even really overwhelming. We could have a panic attack even, right, under certain circumstances. But we do not have an anxiety disorder unless over a period of time our experience of anxiety is that it lasts too long, it's too strong, it doesn't fit circumstances, and it's

blocking us from good things in our life. Right? So that means I could have a panic attack, but it's not going to be a panic disorder unless this is a repeated experience. ⁓ I'm starting to become agoraphobic or like refuse to go out of the house because I'm so afraid of panic attacks happening. ⁓ It's just so, you know, it's just so overwhelming and distressing and it's just not getting better and weeks and months have gone by. ⁓ And it's also, ⁓ you know, it's...

And it's causing, you know, other things in my life to fall apart. So now that I'm overwhelmed with this, I don't have a way of coping with it. ⁓ I'm starting to miss days at work and I, you know, and I might get fired if I don't do something about it. So, so it's when anxiety is really getting in your way in this chronic way that it becomes that we would diagnose it as a disorder. Just having really strong anxiety does not mean you have a disorder. And I think that's something that's really hard ⁓ to parse for people sometimes because

We speak about anxiety so casually now. It's like the new stress, right? It used to be when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, know, every bad feeling was stress. And now it's almost like every bad feeling is anxiety a little bit, also stress. so I think it's become this unhelpful placeholder. And then we start to believe that anytime we feel anxiety, there's something wrong with us. And I think it's important to shift that attitude.

Cody (30:31)
Yeah. And so as you say, in a few short decades, mean, our culture has really under underwent this, this change in its definition of anxiety by kind of treating it as a problem. I kind of is, is, is, and I think what you argue though, is that anxiety is a part of being human and that we really need to label our thoughts. so kind of what happened to medicine and society that made us kind of. ⁓

medicinalize something so universal.

Tracy (31:03)
Yeah, boy, I mean, that's exactly the question. I think you talking about medicalizing is an important part of that because, ⁓ I mean, listen, I'm a scientist. ⁓ I believe in science. I think that we, over the past three, four, five decades, have developed an incredible body of scientific knowledge about mental health and illness. We have great therapies for you. We have drugs for people who need it. We have science. We have all of it.

so much so that we should be living in a mental health utopia, right? And the opposite is true. It's almost as if, and I do think we've advanced and we've helped people, but we've reached this tipping point where it's almost as if the more we medicalize and throw, you know, kind of just keep on trying to like figure it out through science only and forget the human factor, I feel like we're almost getting worse. So I think what's

So I think what happens when we medicalize something is we treat it like any physical illness. And the metaphor is not great for mental illness because if you have cancer, what is it that you need to do? You need to diagnose it very clearly. You need to understand the causal factors, the pathology of the disease, and how to cure it. And then you need to eradicate it. You need to destroy it.

When we treat all of our mental health struggles like cancer, what do we do? Let's just take anxiety, which is the most common mental health diagnosis. If we treat anxiety as something to eradicate like a cancer, we're going to get into an avoidant mode, which we know makes anxiety worse. So we're in this very strange situation where we, in psychology and psychiatry, we know that you have to actually suffer to be mentally healthy. Mental health has nothing to do with happiness, I hate to report.

Happiness is just a readout that lets you know you're on the right track. It's not a goal. It doesn't tell you you're mentally healthy. Mental health is the ability to feel all the feelings, to struggle, to fall down and to get back up again. That's it. So when we medicalize mental health struggles and always treat them as something to eradicate or to just, you know, pop a pill for, right? Instead of thinking about what it really means

to struggle, to heal, and to build a good life. I just think we actually start causing some harm. Again, I do want to be clear. I think that anxiety disorders exist, mental health illnesses exist. I think that for some people, temporary medication and sometimes more long-term is helpful. But in most cases, we over-medicate, we over-medicalize, and we forget that ⁓ sometimes we don't have to be like perfectly performing machines.

to have a good life. So I think that's part of the problem.

Cody (34:00)
I think you bring up an important point and that when we often go through life, think we idealize a certain life in which we don't have certain worries or fears and that we're going to be happy. And I think that that equates to the idea of say retiring and then just going and golfing, know, for the rest of your life.

Tracy (34:22)
I don't know what you do. ⁓

Cody (34:24)
And you think, you you're going to be happy and that you're not going to have anxieties and that perhaps the goal I know, the goal that I thought I used to have is that as I progress through life, I want to make myself more comfortable because then I'm going to be happier. And yet I've actually found the opposite. And I think David Goggins, if you've heard of him, is kind of like this prime example of somebody who pushes his body and his mind to an extreme end. know it's more extreme than we probably should push ourselves.

But he shows that, you know, he says that he wakes up and he runs not because he loves running, but because if he can run, then everything else in the day is going to be a lot easier. And when we see anxiety as kind of a mountain rather than a barrier, then I think that that just adds to our internal strength and our will to go on. Because as you said early on with, with your son is that the thing that kind of kept you going was hope.

And I think that's the most important thing we can have because we're always going to have anxiety. I think of Victor Frankel and the man searched for meaning, right? You know, he was able to survive Auschwitz by having hope and by, defining meaning behind the suffering that he was undergoing. So I think from understanding that the anxiety is only only temporary or assigning meaning to it. There are so many important ways that we can view anxiety as something that can be beneficial to us.

rather than just something that's going to detract from our overall quality of life.

Tracy (35:52)
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. know, ⁓ I think part of it that I think a lot about too, I mean, it does have to do with this concept of happiness. I think it's a very destructive concept ⁓ because, you know, mean, happiness, and from an, even from an emotion science perspective, it's never been something, no emotions last. So why are we chasing this fundamentally transient state as a goal? It makes no sense. It's a signal.

that something is going right. And you don't approach it directly most of the time with happiness. It's sort of like a wild beast in the forest, best approached, kind of like sideways. You don't look it in the eye. You know what I mean? But this gets to something a little deeper for me as I was thinking about it as you were speaking, which is ⁓ what this all reflects about our fundamental values. And ⁓ I think that we've started to model the good life

and what it means to be human, too much after technology and machines. I think we've started to actually model ourselves. And what I mean by that, and this is what reminded me when you said, you know, I used to think that, you know, a good life was one that was easier, that felt frictionless, right? That there was ease in, and then you realized that wasn't the case for you. But if you think about that, isn't that just...

sort of this bill of sales we've been sold about optimization and what it means to have a good life. So there's this great writer, essayist and farmer actually Wendell Berry. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He wrote a beautiful book of essays called Life is a Miracle. And he has this famous quote that you might've come across and he said, I can easily imagine a world in which ⁓ that there are two kinds of people, people who wish to live their lives.

as machines and people who wish to live their lives as creatures, as beings, right? And right now, if you think about the kinds of values that we see in the self-help world, in the biohacking world, in the optimization world, it's about having a frictionless life, about being always productive, always, right, always kind of linear productivity. It's up, up, up, up, up, it's scaling, it's perfection, it's longevity, it's all of this stuff.

But those are machine values. There's not, I mean, humans ebb and flow with productivity. We're animals, right? We, ⁓ some of the best things in life are full of friction. Dinner with friends, taking a walk in the park, losing your way and finding an even cooler, know, cafe on the street in, you know, in the Amalfi Coast. I don't know. It's like the best things in life have a lot of friction, but we're so used to training ourselves to reduce all that and to become seamless.

You know, even perfectionism, which is such a loser's game. mean, perfectionism, I mean, it just blocks you from being excellent because it's a binary proposition. It's like you're all or none. And that blocks you. And the other thing it blocks you from realizing is that a good life is not about you and how perfect you are. It's other people. A good life is other people. That's it. There's nothing else. And I don't know, these biohackers.

They should listen, they get joy out of that. They do what they want. But I think if they become our archetypes of what a good life is for 99.9 % of people, that is a bad archetype because that is not what the good life is for most people. So I don't know. I think happiness like that's right at the crux of a lot of how we think about all our emotions and mental health in general.

Cody (39:36)
Yeah, inevitably I was ⁓ guilty of that. I know in our early email conversations you had a problem with the name Mindhack and it was-

Tracy (39:47)
I

no, I won't come on. Maybe it's not that, maybe I shouldn't come on. But you were, I was so impressed by the way that you wanted to come on and like engage in that. So anyway, sorry to interrupt you.

Cody (39:57)
Yeah, no, and I agree is that, you know, I think it gives, it can give the wrong impression and that you really can't just hack your way out of something. And you're, you're, it's, it's important to consider the human element. And I know myself, um, I've, I'm obsessed with, with optimization. I love biohacking and I've been asked about that because, know, in some sense, you know, you can, you can biohack yourself like all the time, but then, you know, if you're consistently focused on optimizing.

and trying to be happy, then it's unlikely you're ever going to experience that. know, and it's like, when do you start living your life? And I've understood that and I've started to kind of roll back my focus on it as much and trying to enjoy life for what it is. Because inevitably, you know, as Buddha would say, like life is suffering and suffering is always going to be a part of life. And if we're consistently trying to push negative emotions outside of ourselves, then, you know, we're trying to redefine what it means to be human.

And until we become these cybernetic beings with AI and body parts, which is a whole different conversation than I think it's important to consider these things.

Tracy (41:08)
Do

you find that balance, if I may ask? I'm really curious. Like, how did you find that balance, or as you're starting to kind of adjust a little, or what do you...

Cody (41:17)
It was going into a relationship actually and realizing that, well, like now I'm an uncle and I see the joy and these two-year-old and four-year-old that they're able to experience life for the first time. I think there's this idea of, ⁓ you know, what's the point in having a bunch of money and success if you don't have anybody to share it with.

And life is about sharing experiences with others and contributing back to a community and just being solely focused on work. You know, it's never gonna make me happy. I think it's an important part of my own being and it's an important part of many people's purpose. But, you know, ultimately if you don't have anybody to share that with or the ability to experience joy through the eyes of others, then it kind of, it's depressing in a way. So I think that realization that...

Work shouldn't be the most important thing, but being able to step back and realize that I'm here for a reason and I can give back and there's so much joy that can be experienced in the world. It's so crazy that at any moment you can stop and think that you could be happy right now. just sometimes throughout the day I'll have this little sense of gratitude. I'll even want to meditate, having that loving kindness meditation. And sometimes I feel chills and I can start crying just from the gratitude that I'm able to experience.

And I think, you know, if we, more of us had that, the anxiety would have less of a control or a reign on our lives as much as it does.

Tracy (42:52)
Right, it's such a buffer and it's so simple. I mean, it's hard, but it's simple too, right? Have you gotten low back for that? Meaning if you're finding more balance, do you feel like sometimes there can be communities or networks of people who would give you a hard time about that or have you not experienced that?

Cody (43:11)
No, not really. I think it's hard to argue against the idea of not working as hard or being able to just enjoy life. that's kind of also like what fellow kind of biohacker like Tim Ferriss, who came out with his Four Hour Work Week book many years ago, in recent years, he's kind of stepped back and realized that he's working himself to no end. And he was always burnt out, always anxious, went through periods of depression.

and then realize, you know, what's the point in all of this? And trying to then appreciate life for the life that he has. And that's really at end of day, all we can do.

Tracy (43:50)
It takes a lot of courage for people to be big proponents of one way of being and then to come back and say, hey, wait a second, there's another side to this. So that's really good to hear.

Cody (44:01)
And on the point of technology, I know that there's been all this discussion around skyrocketing rates of anxiety, especially among younger generations. And there's this aspect or thought that technology is the reason behind this increased anxiety. But I believe the science point's kind of a more nuanced picture of this. So does tech cause anxiety, or is it more about how we use it?

Tracy (44:28)
I think tech is an amplifier of everything we bring to the table, and it's been designed to amplify the negative. So I never think of technology as a single causal factor of anxiety, but I think for some people, it definitely, you know, for almost boring reasons that I could name now, because we know that tech, I mean, we know, I mean, everyone's like, technology causes mental illness. Like, no, but it can make us feel a lot worse, and it can give us habits of mind.

that get in our way. There's no magic bullet cause of mental illness ever. There's never one thing anyway. So everyone knows that, but to be kind of demagoguing about it and like to convince people you have to like scream and like make these ridiculous headlines. And so yes, the science is not black and white. It's nuanced, but science is always nuanced. My feeling is that we're at a good place now where sort of the techno-optimism has been

I think tempered for a lot of people, for your average person. Maybe the hyper AI community is a little different, but on average, most of us are like, wait a second, maybe we shouldn't be living our lives on screens. And now we don't trust the tech companies, which is a good thing, because they've always been rotten from the beginning. So that's good. We don't trust them. And we start to think about what does it feel like to live life mediating our lives through screens as much as we do?

And if we realize it's making us lonely, it's making us ⁓ more self-conscious, it's exposing me to ugly, like whatever, ugly thoughts, opinions, people that I don't want to be exposed to, then you have to make some choices. So I think we should, for example, the big debate now about should kids, should we just ban, you know, screens for kids until they're in college. I don't think that's helpful because any sort of... ⁓

anytime you, any public health problem where you just try to ban something or become an absolutist. It's like, just say no to drugs in the eighties, you know, you won't remember that, but you might know that it didn't work at all. It was like absolutely a disaster. AIDS crisis back in the day when public health officials were pushing for abstinence as the solution to HIV AIDS, people actually had more unsafe sex and got AIDS more frequently. So

So all of these absolutists, like, don't do it stances just don't work either. So if we really want to find solutions, acknowledging that mediating our lives digitally more than face to face is a problem, then we have to become good digital citizens. We have to teach our kids to think smartly about technology. We have to make sure that it's not imbalanced and then it's not an opportunity cost for real things. And we have to see how it's distorting our habits of mind because it does. If we only read, ⁓ you know,

tweets or whatever the heck they call them now, ⁓ then we're going to think in more shallow ways because that's what social media do. I think we just have to have common sense about it and talk about that and teach our kids.

Cody (47:37)
And unfortunately, seems like politicians are pushing the other way, especially with a lot of recent attention and focus on ⁓ requiring like age restriction, at least for pornography websites, which can be argued can be a good thing. But then everybody just going to, it's going to make kids, think, want it more because they're being denied it more. And they're just going to use a VPN and access the

Tracy (48:02)
I know it's so easy for them to get around it, it's laughable.

Cody (48:05)
Yeah. And in Europe, you know, they have a much lower drinking age. And I know like in France, as long as you're with your parents, you're allowed to drink alcohol. And so it kind of removes the taboo element from it. And when we're denying things for kids, I think that that kind of amplifies their own desire, right? When you say, I can't have something, I want it even more.

Tracy (48:26)
It's tough needle to thread though, because I'm also, think the consumption of pornography, just like the consumption of gambling is off the charts and it's not healthy. It's just not. It's like we're being trained to be consumers in every single aspect of our lives. And that's another part of what I think is more problematic about technology, that we are so absorbed in this consumer mentality that we are either consuming content, which is the word, by the way, we call our own creativity content, which is disgusting.

I can think about it, like I'm creating content. Am I a product to be bought and sold? No, thank you. Like we're buying into this mentality because it's just, it's just, it's just runs our life. So I think that outright banning and doing it in such stupid ways where people can use VPNs to get around things, it's not the solution. But I also think that we've allowed these digital environments to really, they didn't have to be this way.

You know, we didn't have to live in an advertisement-fueled social media environment or digital environment. But that's how these companies made their trillions. So we just have to see it for what it is with very clear eyes. And then seek, as you said, with kids, are we just going to ban everything and think they're not going to get around it? And actually start to trust kids more and educate them. And maybe...

You know, maybe they shouldn't be alone in their room for like five hours when maybe they're just like on porn sites and not doing their homework. So maybe we should be parents, you know, not that it's easy. It's not easy, but it just, it just calls us to stop just only blaming technology and trying to let ourselves off the hook. But also technology and these companies suck. I can, ⁓ I can hold both ideas in my mind at the same time that they've done things very poorly yet. have a technology company and I see, I see that there can be.

extremely wonderful benefits to technology. It is not all that. So it's hard to be nuanced in this very black and white age, I think.

Cody (50:24)
I'm curious, how does technology impact or create anxiety? I know that we have social media apps that can be like slot machines and we have the endless scrolling. And in some ways, a lot of us, use these devices, our phones, as kind of a chemical column or an adult pacifier to avoid short-term feelings. I know that you can browse a social media app, you can feel envy.

you can see somebody else's body and desire it and then that creates an anxiety within yourself of you have to to be like that. ⁓ What kinds of like how does technology itself or apps kind of create this kind of ongoing amplifying level of technology in our lives.

Tracy (51:03)
You've named them all really well. Like, ba-ba-ba. I mean, so, for me, in addition to things like social comparison or, you ⁓ know, ⁓ feeling, ⁓ you know, being bullied online, like, all those things can be anxiety-provoking, right? But I think what you said about this almost, like, digital chemical calm, this sort of, this attempt we make, you know, we go down the rabbit hole of our social media feed or whatever.

to feel numb a lot of the time. We have these escape machines, where we can enter a universe and escape into it and try not to feel anything, right, in the palm of our hand. And I think what's happened is that we have started to feel so uncomfortable with discomfort, so uncomfortable with boredom, so uncomfortable with any of these, you know, with social confrontations that don't have a digital, you know, kind of, ⁓

like barrier or buffer, right? That we just lost practice in being able to cope with those anxious, worried feelings. And so I think the biggest thing we can all do for ourselves, and because I think a lot about young people and kids too, is to say, listen, if I'm using this device, which is about right here, ⁓ to escape every time I feel bad or bored,

then I'm actually, it's like atrophying your muscles. Like I'm not building the kinds of abilities that I could have to experience emotions, experience distress, and actually come out the other side stronger. So we just have to literally say, let's be Borg. Let's not, when we feel really bad, let's try to talk to someone instead of like get on TikTok for two hours. Let's, you know, so it's again, it's about habits of mind and catching ourselves. And I really think it's that escape machine

function of digital technology that is one of the biggest drivers of anxiety. Because it's the avoidance cycle that, as we know, makes anxiety stronger.

Cody (53:12)
Yeah. And that's something that I think we've all been stuck in where we tend to procrastinate. It took me maybe a year before I realized I was constantly getting up to grab a snack from my kitchen. And it was actually when I was, didn't realize it took me a year to have to consciously realize that it was when I encountered an email that I felt anxious about and I would instinctively get up and go grab a snack. And I had to eventually have the awareness to catch that habit and then allow myself to sit there.

with the anxiety. And I think that's going to be one of the, emanating themes. And that's, that's one that I see recommended most, most often is when we, tend to have an increase in avoidance and the key, what you want to do is just sit there, sit there with that feeling. And I know that there's been writers in history where they would sit there and they, they would try to write for an hour, but they didn't have to write, but they couldn't do anything else. And I think when you create guidelines or when you say,

I say even having a practice, sometimes I'll try this, where I'll sit there and I try to allow myself to be bored because it's the opposite of craving that stimulation and that dopamine hit. Because when we get that instant dopamine hit, it makes the harder things that are actually meaningful to us so much more difficult. So I think boredom is honestly, unfortunately, I think one of the keys to helping us transition through this new age of technology.

Tracy (54:34)
And it's all in us. It's right there. It's no, we don't have to buy any equipment. We don't, we just have to be good and get into a practice. And you know what else I realize there are times in my life when I get too sucked into screens and not, but when I have my best ideas is when I go, go for a nice long walk and I don't have my phone and I'm not listening to a podcast. I'm not listening to even music. And when my mind is allowed to make all these incredible connections that all of our minds make.

You realize things, you see things, you have great ideas, you find joy. And we're constantly cutting ourselves off from this very natural fountain, right, of all these incredible experiences. That all it takes us is to take away something. You we don't have to add anything. If anything, we're in a time of incredible excess. So really, I think the more we think about wisely subtracting.

just all the great human things will start to increase in our life. So I really, I really love what you said about that realization you have. think that's amazing.

Cody (55:35)
And so you're right about being anxious in the right way. So a mindset that can actually make us more creative, resilient and connected. So what does that look like in real life?

Tracy (55:46)
It really looks, it starts with that acceptance, being anxious in the right way. And I'm quoting, I'm actually taking a quote from the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, who wrote a whole book about anxiety 180 years ago. And his quote was, whosoever learns to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. And notice that he doesn't say whosoever learned not to be anxious. And his whole book is about what the right way is.

I'm not sure I completely understand what he thinks the right way is. ⁓ But I believe that right way really does start with acceptance. It's that being in the basement, as we've been talking about, with those feelings. And by the way, doing that for other people too. Like when someone that we love or care about is struggling, just to sit there and not try to fix it for them and just abide in their darkest moments.

with them not needing to perform anything for you, just to really be there. When we can do that for others and for ourselves, it's transformative. And again, it's the absence of doing things, right? So I think being anxious in the right way starts with that. And it starts with developing a habit of seeing the hope and anxiety. Knowing that every time you're anxious, you care. And in the future, you know that something good is still possible. Because otherwise you'd be despairing. Anxiety is not despair, is when you look into the future.

and everything you can't see any ray of light. But that's not anxiety. Anxiety, you're in it to win it when you're anxious. So I think being anxious in the right way, even when we sometimes it kind of crushes us, know, even if it crushes us, when you know that it's this ebb and flow and that there's always hope that's driving anxiety, I think that's the right way.

Cody (57:35)
Right. And I think the important part or component is to assign meaning behind that anxiety, because that can help get us through it and come out stronger on the other end. maintaining that sense of hope is probably one of the most important things that we can do as human beings is to always have a sense of hope, know that there is hope at the end of that tunnel. ⁓ And I know that you've gone to develop some apps. I'm wondering if you can talk about them.

Tracy (58:02)
Sure, yeah. So my company Arcade Therapeutics, we develop game-based interventions. And so they're ⁓ based on this technique called attention bias modification. It's a terrible name. ⁓ That's psychology for you. But what the idea is is that in many mental health problems like anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, and more, ⁓ we have these unconscious habits of paying attention to the world.

that can drive the disorder. So in anxiety, we have this bias called the threat bias, which people may be familiar with. And it's this unconscious habit. It's like a filter, really, where you're filtering in negative information and filtering out positive information. So if I were giving a public speech in front of 100 people and I had a strong threat bias, I would see that one guy in the back row falling asleep. But I'd ignore the rest of the audience who was so excited about what I was saying.

But my bias would be like an attentional spotlight on that negative information. And when you perceive the world that way, it drives the vicious cycle of anxiety. So you start to think about that and you get nervous, your heart races, and then maybe you stumble over your words. And then you start thinking, see, I'm giving a terrible talk. That's why that guy is falling asleep. And then you can just imagine how this cascades, right? So in the apps, in the game-based ⁓ apps that we've developed, ⁓

We activate this bias in very simple ways, just with human faces that makes your brain actually create ⁓ this sort of threat bias ⁓ activation pattern. ⁓ You activate the threat bias quickly, and then through the game mechanics, through the actual game, ⁓ you retrain people to pay attention to the positive. So we have a space-themed game so that you kind of have this negative and positive information flash up, but then the game itself is all about ⁓

about like shooting a spaceship and gaining points across the board. It's kind of like a, it's like a fling that you get to do and it's relaxing. It's a brief intervention. So we're not getting people stuck on screens because that's, don't want to do that. So it's a, it's digital native. So all of these interventions were meant to be administered on screens briefly. And we just simply made them engaging fun games. And then I did a bunch of science for 15 years on them to make sure that they worked and it wasn't snake oil.

Cody (1:00:26)
Is that for kids or can adults use this too?

Tracy (1:00:29)
Actually, the median, these are, it's a casual game. So like that category, like, know, like Candy Crush and those kinds of games are called casual games. The median kind of user of casual games is a 50 year old woman. So definitely it's not just for kids, it's for everyone. Yeah. And we have a, we also have an app for depression under development. It's being tested actually at UT Austin right now, our colleague, Chris Beavers and his colleagues are testing.

that out in random, an NIH-funded randomized clinical trial right now.

Cody (1:01:03)
Well, you've convinced me I'm definitely going to download the app after this interview. good. Well, I know that we've only scratched the surface of what you cover in your book. So for anyone who wants to go deeper or learn more about you, should they go to learn that?

Tracy (1:01:07)
Give it a try. That's great. Thank you.

You know, I have a Substack, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary. It's actually called Life Is Not a Problem to Solve. The Substack itself, so I'm on Substack. And then I have a website, tracydennistiwary.com. I know that's a long name, but people can probably find it.

Cody (1:01:38)
Well, Tracy, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here. And I think a lot of people are going to walk away with a clearer picture about what anxiety really is and how to work with it. And if you're listening and you haven't read Future Tense, definitely go get it. It's grounded in science and full of real stories and tools you can use right away. And of course, we'll have links to the book and Tracy's site and her sub stack.

So thanks again for tuning in to the MindHack podcast. I'm Cody McLain. Remember, anxiety can be a guide, not just a hurdle. Keep creating, keep growing, and I'll catch you in the next episode.