Why behavior change matters when healing (even if it’s not that cool to talk about)

Your habits matter, your lifestyle matters. Your overall health is the greatest contributor to your mental health. There’s no about of talk therapy or meds that can combat the natural stress load that gets put on your system by chronic sleep deprivation, sedentariness, dysfunctional breathing, too many inflammatory foods and too little nourishing ones.

AND YET... behavior change is hard, especially when struggling with anxiety & depression.

Today and in the next 8 episodes we’ll take a deep dive into talking all about habits that hurt versus habits that heal. This conversations paves the way for the Essential 8 series by helping you understand the neuroscience of behavior change, why it's hard and what can make it easier. Now let's dive in!

3 Takeaways:

1. Your habits shape your healing. If you’re not living well, your body and mind won’t feel well.
2. Stress makes it harder to change. Defaulting to old patterns under stress is normal. Offer yourself compassion and accountability.
3. Start small and strategic. Tiny habits, paired with a clear cue and meaningful reward, are more sustainable and less overwhelming.

CLICK HERE for the full show notes, resources, and 3 tangible takeaways!

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*Want me to talk about something specific on the podcast? Let me know HERE.

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Website: https://www.regulatedliving.com/podcast

Email: amanda@regulatedliving.com

Instagram: @amandaontherise

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Transcript

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0:00  
Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

0:27  
Hey, friends, today starts what will then be followed with an eight episode series covering what we call at Rise As We the essential eight. So these are eight research supported lifestyle habits that facilitate more regulated living. These are eight habits, things like movement, community support, vagal, toning nutrition, some of these things aren't new to you, almost all of us have heard that you need eight hours of sleep to be well, you need exercise to help decrease anxiety depression symptoms. And what I have found is that so often this advice is given in a really generic way that can feel more discouraging than helpful. And so my goal is number one today to talk about the neuroscience of behavior change, to really set you up for success. If you choose to step into regulated living by changing some of your habits, doing things a little bit differently. Today, I want to talk about how you can't just know better, but you actually have to start doing better and living better in a way that supports your mental and physical health. 

1:31  
And over the next eight weeks, my hope is to give you just enough science to give you buy into each of those different lifestyle habits, maybe provide a little bit of a different take than you have heard before. And then to really workshop with you in each of those conversations, ways that you might be able to step even just 1% in a helpful direction. And one of the things I want to say first today is that in your healing journey, it can be really, really empowering and helpful to link the ways that you're feeling to how you are living your life, to link the ways that you're feeling to your habits. So for example, last week, I had a couple days in a row where I was feeling more shut down. I felt exhausted. And at one point, I thought to myself like man, it's been a long time since you felt this low energy, like what's what's going on? And instead of thinking, you know, like, oh, what's going on with kind of that Sass and that attitude. And then just jumping into the next thing I had on my to do list. I really took a minute to actually sit with that question. Hey, like what, what is going on? My first thought went to Well, where are you in your menstrual cycle, because I know that that can drastically affect my mood and my energy levels. But I was actually at the part of my menstrual cycle where I should have been the most energized. So that was an IT. I had been eating pretty Normally, I'd been going outside for my daily walks like normal, so so that was an IT. And then it was like this light bulb, it was like oh, like you've ended the last few nights in bed scrolling on Instagram until 11pm. Like, bingo. 

3:15  
So two things here. Number one, this endless scrolling on social media leaves us dopamine deficient. So dopamine is the neurotransmitter or brain chemical that's linked to motivation. So this seemingly small thing, scrolling in bed was likely not only leaving me dopamine deficient, but it was also taking away hours of sleep. So this feeling of low energy of being shut down, burned out or depressed, whatever word you want to use for that experience. In that moment, I was like, Oh, this is not some like psychological disorder. This is a natural physiological response to me scrolling on my phone and cutting an hour or two from sleep for the last few nights. I share this kind of simple story to illustrate that your habits matter. Your daily habits might be the single most important thing influencing your mental health. There is no amount of talk therapy or meds that can combat the natural stress load that gets put on your system by chronic sleep deprivation, sedentary Ness, dysfunctional breathing too many inflammatory foods and too little nourishing ones. Yes, we need safe places to share our stories and to be witnessed and to be held to process that in our minds, but if our body isn't healthy, our brains aren't either. 

4:42  
And I wanted to share with you something that someone shared with me recently and they said quote, I've been struggling with anxiety and depression for a while not feeling great but getting by. But it's finally gotten bad enough. I know I have to do something about it. I was going to go with therapy and medication But I've decided I want to try General Health First, what a novel concept. When we aren't giving our mind and body their very most basic needs than activation or shutdown of your nervous system, the symptoms that we pathologize and label as anxiety and depression aren't these big mysteries. They are messages from our body saying, Hey, we're getting too much or too little of the things that we need have the habits that nurture our nature of being human. And this doesn't mean there isn't a time for talking or medication. There can be and there is for many, many people at points in their healing. But what would it look like to try Health First, this was a person who looked at her life and said, Oh, there are some glaring things off here. I'm not getting eight hours of sleep, I'm not moving my body every day. And there was a curiosity she was able to access that said, I wonder what might change for me if I did. 

6:01  
My goal today is to give you some insights into why changing our habits can be so hard to help invite some self compassion into this process. I also want to outline for you what components and things you can put into place that make habit change easier and more effective over time. So let's start with why they can be so hard. And why so often I hear from people that say they know better, but they can't get themselves to do better, they know they should be exercising, spending less time on their phone more time outside going to bed earlier. But knowing better and doing better are totally totally different things, especially if you're somebody struggling with anxiety or depression. And something I want to help you understand is that when you are in survival mode, when you're in a dysregulated nervous system state, you will always default to your most well worn patterns. When you are living in survival mode, that logical part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex that makes the rational, intentional decisions is not optimally online. And that makes taking new action really hard. 

7:16  
So your brain likes to be efficient. It wants to keep thinking what it's always thought and doing what it's always done. Because it's easier, that takes less energy. I remember I used to get in the groove with a new habit, I'd have something stressful happen. And I would quote like fall off the bandwagon. And I would feel so frustrated with myself, I would fall into this thought spiral of you know why when things get stressful, do I stop doing all the things that I know I need to do? All my self care habits go out the window, the things that helped me manage my stress are the things that I don't do, and it would just spiral in it would take this this disappointment and turn it into just awful, awful, awful self talk that didn't get me anywhere. And it was when I finally understood that Oh, like this makes sense. When my stress levels increase my capacity decreases, it makes sense that I'm going to default to old patterns versus new. And this is where this information can help you make space for a healthy balance of self compassion, and accountability. So just know this in times of stress, you will likely default to your most well worn patterns. So if your new habit of getting out for daily walk is less established than the habit of not walking, so that you can maybe cram in extra work, that it makes sense that when things get really stressful, you default back to that old pattern, because your capacity decreases that prefrontal cortex has less energy. And the accountability piece of this gets a whole lot easier when you understand the various components of behavior change, which we'll get to in a minute. And another reason why behavior change is so hard why our best laid intentions things like New Year's resolutions, often fall flat. And to illustrate that, I want to help you understand why so many people like the vast majority of people's New Year's resolutions do not last beyond the second week of January. And that's because we set the standard for this new behavior in a moment of high motivation.

9:32  
I don't know about you, but I don't live in a moment of high motivation every single day. And so when you come back from a retreat or a seminar or New Year's Eve, these moments where you're feeling highly supported, highly motivated. You set the standard for the new behavior and then you get into the day in and day out of your normal daily life. And in that comes the motivation of your average everyday life which is different than that of new New Year's Eve or any of those other high motivation experiences where you set that standard. So when we choose new habits, we need to choose a version or a standard of that habit that is going to match the motivation level of our current capacity of our average day or even slightly below our average day to help us step into that more successfully, and this will make a little bit more sense when we talk about this concept of tiny habits. 

10:30  
So quick review, what makes behavior change so hard is number one, especially when we're stressed, we default to our most well worn habits. And knowing this can hopefully help you find that right balance of self compassion and accountability. Number two is that too often we set our intentions or goals and moments of high motivation, setting a standard for new behavior that is beyond the capacity of us on an average day, which oftentimes leads into a spiral of negative self talk, low self trust, low confidence. And two other things I want to mention that can make behavior change hard things to consider is your environment and your community. If you want to exercise more regularly, but you don't have a place in your home, or a set gym, or a way to make that easy, it likely won't happen. So how can you change your environment to support the new behavior you want? Can you put a yoga mat in the corner? Can you get some dumbbells and set them out? If it's around sleep quality? And you know that scrolling on your phone keeps you from getting to bed? Can you change the environment? Can you move the charger that you plug your phone into at night into another room or away from the bed in a different place in your bedroom? What are the ways that you can change your environment to be more supportive of your new behavior? And then to consider community? Things like social support and accountability play a vital role in behavior change? Do you have friends who are going to laugh at you for going home early so that you can hit a gym class in the morning? Or do you have friends who are going to champion that? Do you have friends who are going to think it is silly that you are experimenting with new healthy recipes at home. 

12:17  
One of my favorite favorite things about our Rise Membership is that you are automatically put in community with other people who understand your struggle. And who are stepping into more regulated living together. One of the things that we do inside that membership is each month, we have a particular quote do so it might focus on optimizing our environment for a regulation, it could be establishing a habit of a daily walk or morning sunlight or focusing on sleep for a month. And it's this really fun shared experience that we have of stepping into these habits that heal in a really tangible, community based way. And so if you're in a place in your healing journey, where again, you know better but you're having a hard time getting yourself to do better. Being part of a community that stepping into that doing together might be might be something that helps and if so, the invitation is always open, I would love for you to join us in that space. 

13:15  
And the last thing I want to talk about in regards to whether behavior change is harder than it needs to be, or a little bit easier is dopamine. So dopamine is the neurotransmitter, it's our brain chemical that fuels motivation. Motivation is something that we need when trying to establish new habits. And many, many, many, many of us are engaging in things that deplete our dopamine, and we may not even be aware of it. So what I want to put on your radar are things that can cause dopamine depletion, things that can decrease motivation making, stepping into new, more healthful habits that support your healing more challenging. And some of the common things that deplete our dopamine are stress, poor diet, lack of sleep, drug use, alcohol consumption, sedentary living, lack of physical activity, chronic boredom, or feeling a lack of fulfillment and excessive screen time. 

14:16  
And it's that last one that I want to talk a little more about because there are some studies that have suggested that excessive use of social media may lead to desensitization of dopamine receptors over time. And this can potentially reduce the overall effectiveness of our dopamine signaling. And we'll have a more in depth conversation in the future around dopamine, we can talk about cheap dopamine versus high quality or low quality versus high quality dopamine and their sources. I also recommend in the meantime, if you're curious to check out a book titled dopamine nation, very, very interesting and eye opening book. But when it comes to dopamine, one thing that is going to be neat as we go through these esseintal eight is that building a little bit more movement into your life focusing on quality of sleep, quality of nourishment, all of those things are naturally going to give you greater access to healthy dopamine. Also to put on your radar, that social media scrolling time on our phone is a just dopamine drain it is cheap, quick hits of dopamine, that leave us feeling very dopamine deficient. Because the way that we establish new habits, the way that our brains lay down new neural pathways, is through repetition and reward. Repetition will come in, by choosing tiny habits to optimize again and again and again, choosing a level of a habit that meets your current capacity. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. And that reward piece is that dopamine, this is healthy dopamine, this is the dopamine that comes from, I did a new, healthy, helpful thing. And reinforcing that. And I'll put in a final thought here, one little extra dose of healthier, helpful dopamine that I like to give myself when I'm trying to establish a new habit is this little like, atta a girl, like atta girl you did it, if my goal is to get out on a walk every day, whether that walk is two minutes or 22 minutes, getting back and being like, Yeah, you did it. Like, you're gonna get that dopamine hit from going on the walk. But then you can get that extra healthy dopamine hit that reinforces to our brain, this is a good thing, this is a thing that we want to do. Again, we want to be more motivated to do this that like add a girl that's like me, I said I was going to do it. And I did it. Look at that. And oftentimes, what instead I used to do was, well, it was only two minutes. And I would be little. 

16:50  
Here's the thing, when it comes to this, we're starting small, we're starting easy, something is better than nothing, anything gets celebrated. Anything gets celebrated. And so that's a way that we can establish habits faster is also by understanding that it's not only repetition, but there is a reward system, we can reiterate the fact that this is something we want to do. And our brain remembers that of like, oh, okay, let's put up less of a fight, let's put up less resistance. The next time we want to step into this new behavior, because here's the thing, positive life changes lead to positive brain changes. And then those positive brain changes make it easier to engage in more positive life changes. And I know I know, I know, behavior change is not a very glamorous thing to talk about. So thank you for still being here. I'm sure I've lost a couple of listeners already by now. But it plays a vital role in healing. Because if these basic things like sleep and movement, stress management, community nutrition are not part of your life in an optimal way, you are going to suffer your body is going to manifest symptoms. And today is about how knowing better isn't enough. We have to commit to more regulated living, we have to commit to the habits that nurture our nature of being human. 

18:15  
And these next eight or so episodes are really going to take you on a journey with each of these foundational pillars of health and well being and regulation and hopefully support you in taking steps in a helpful direction. All right, we've talked about what makes changing our habits hard. Now I want to give you a few strategies to more successfully establish new habits. And number one is tiny habits. And here I want to point you to one of my favorite books on habits and it is called Tiny habits by BJ Fogg who is a behavior scientist. And in this book, he argues that significant transformation can occur by focusing on tiny habits rather than grand sweeping changes. And we've already talked a little bit today about why. And this also just is reinforced by our understanding of the nervous system, that our nervous system likes predictability, it likes stability, it doesn't care much for change. And when we understand that trauma is too much too soon to big. So many aspects of healing need to be the opposite of that. Small, slow, gentle and tiny. So if you have a goal of exercising more, what does it look like to approach that in a small, slow, gentle way? And that's not often the approach that we take when we set goals for ourself. So in this book, he breaks down his method into three components simplicity, which is synonymous with the word you'll hear in a minute ability. How simple is this new behavior? Do we feel very able to accomplish it? How easy is it It the behavior itself, and the immediate reward that we get from that. So often it's, well, I'm going to set this exercise goal because I want to be x weight. Well, that goal is far, far, far too in the future, for it to be motivating today. And again, we need motivation. So being able to pair a new behavior with what you get from that new behavior now, is so essential, how does it that I feel after this new behavior, maybe it's that that behavior makes you feel physiologically better. Or maybe it's just that you really reinforce that sense of accomplishment of feeling proud, because you said you were going to do something and you did it. He also presents a beautifully simple behavior change equation that I love. And we use often in our practice with clients. And it is b equals M A P behavior. So successful behavior change equals the right combination of motivation, times ability, times a prompt. 

21:11  
So motivation comes down to two things. Number one, why does it matter? That this thing that you're doing? Why is it important? Why is it important now, and reward that natural dopamine that comes from doing something good ability? So this also is synonymous with simplicity? So asking yourself, how hard does this seem? Again, circling back to tiny habits and make it small, tiny, we install tiny habits, and then optimize them over time? If you want to exercise every day, and you're not currently exercising? Well, what does it look like to start with a goal of putting on your shoes in the morning, putting on your shoes in the morning and walking to your porch and back. That's it. Because even on your worst days, even on your highest depression days, your brain isn't going to put up much of a fight, you're not asking yourself to go to the gym, you're not asking yourself to work out hard. It's like can I just put on my shoes and go to my porch and back. Okay. And when that becomes your new baseline, what's 1% More than that, 1% more than that. And then the P is the prompt, or sometimes this is called a cue. This is something that signals it's time to engage in that new behavior. So this could be habit stacking. Well, I already brush my teeth twice a day. And I want this new habit to be flossing. So I'm going to stack my new habit on an already automatic existing habit. The prompt could be an alarm, it could be a walking buddy, it can be a visual cue of putting clothes out or shoes out or a post it note up. And successful behavior happens when there is the right combination of motivation, ability and prompt. And so when things feel hard, you need a higher level of motivation or a stronger cue for accountability. And when motivation is low, it's okay that your expectations for change get smaller too. And I love understanding behavior change with this equation. And I love working it this way with clients. Because it's so easy for us to shift into the story of like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I just do it. And instead, when we understand this equation, when new behaviors aren't happening, the equation is the problem, not you. And we can always come together and rework the equation. 

23:35  
All right. To bring this all together, I actually want to read you a section from my new book healing through the vagus nerve, about more regulated living. So when you get my book, this is going to be page 94-95. And as I pause a few times to add commentary, but it starts: "Remember, the goal isn't to overhaul your life overnight. In fact, I strongly recommend that you focus on one, maybe two of these habits at a time. Also know that a lot of times you may need support in establishing sustainable behavior change. This is a huge part of the work I do with my clients. A good place to start is to decide which of these categories feels the easiest to shift, or which one has the biggest impact for you and start there. Make a small shift and a helpful direction. Repeat that long enough that it becomes your new baseline habit. And then either make another small shift in that same area, or move to a new habit to shift in a small way. The goal is to start small, collecting reps of the improved habit until it becomes your new baseline. Now here are some guiding questions on how you can figure out where to start. Ask yourself which of these habits makes the biggest difference for me."

24:54  
So I'll sidebar really quick. This is the inquiry I want to invite you into as you listen to the The next eight episodes here on the podcast, as we go into detail around things like interoceptive, awareness, vagal, toning, sleep movement, looking at each of those, not as I need to do better in all of them right now, but to look at those collective categories and ask yourself questions like this. So going back to reading:

25:24  
"Which of these habits make the biggest difference for me? I often ask clients, what's your number one proactive self care practice? Which one of these things when it happens consistently and with high quality makes the biggest difference in how you feel overall? Which one of these when done consistently makes it hard for you to have your worst day? Let's say for you, it's sleep. Now ask yourself, what do my current habits around sleep look like? What's stopping me from getting quality sleep? What is one small step I could take towards improving this? Now let's say you notice, you scroll on your phone for a while before bed. Maybe you start by plugging in your phone on your dresser instead of your nightstand. That way you aren't bringing it to bed with you. Maybe you set an alarm 10 minutes before you'd like to go to bed as a reminder to put your phone away and go brush your teeth. If 10 minutes feels too hard to start with five. If an alarm isn't working, then maybe choose a time in the day to delete the apps that are the most tempting for you. The goal with behavior change is to start small and have obvious cues for your new behavior. You want to make it as easy as possible to do the things you want to do. In this example, to get off your phone earlier, and add barriers that make it harder to do the things you don't want to do. Again with this example, that would be scrolling late into the night. When coaching clients, I help them walk back their behavior change until it feels almost laughably small. 

26:46  
For example, a client was struggling with morning anxiety and wanting to have a morning routine. She currently had none. They had set the goal to wake up 30 minutes earlier to meditate and go for a walk before getting ready for work. But they had set that goal over a month before and had only made it happen once. Setting a goal to go from no morning routine to a 30 minute multi step mourning process sounds nice. But it also sets you up for failure. So here's how the next part of our conversation went. me what's the tiniest step you can make towards this ideal morning routine? My client, I could just do the 10 Minute Meditation. My response was, though even tinier, my client, maybe I'll do just a five minute meditation. Me. Could you make that even tinier? My client responded, anything shorter than that feels like it doesn't even matter. To which I replied, What difference might just taking three deep breaths when you first wake up, make? My client paused and said, I guess it would be something more than I'm doing right now. To which I replied, exactly. And how confident do you feel that tomorrow morning before getting out of bed, you could take three deep breaths. My client said that feels easy. I'm totally confident I can do that. My reply was great. Let's start there. Bingo, here's the reality. This client had decided multiple times in the past few months to establish a more intentional mindful morning routine. But every time they only kept up that habit for a day or two, after two weeks of quote, all they have to do is take three deep breaths and anything else is a bonus and quote, they kept steadily layering on to their morning routine. This client eventually made it to where most days, they did automatically wake up and slip right into an intentional regulating 10 to 20 minutes, overtime, realizing that they didn't even need that full 30 minutes, they thought to create more regulation. to proactively shift in a more healthful and regulating direction, you must first install a tiny habit and then optimize it from there. 

29:03  
And I'll say this again, you must start laughably small, you need to choose a version of that new desired behavior that even on your worst days, when you feel like doing nothing, you can think, well, it's only three breaths, or all I have to do is take three breaths, nothing more if I don't want to. When it comes to changing habits, it's hard. In my practice, I often hear phrases like I know what I should be doing to feel better, but I can't get myself to do it. Then they assume it's because of lack of motivation or willpower. And I just don't believe that you do what you have the capacity to do. And you are hardwired to keep doing what you've been doing, especially when you're stressed out. The truth is that positive life changes lead to positive brain changes. And those positive brain changes support you in making more positive life changes. regulating your nervous system and healing your vagus nerve. It means changing the way you live your life in at least some way."

30:03  
And I'll wrap up reading there. So what I want to invite you to do is that as you listen to these following episodes, I'm not asking you to overhaul your life all at once. Please don't try to do that I am inviting you to better understand why each of these things matter. I'm inviting you into moments of self reflection, of seeing how they play an integral role in your healing. And then choosing one habit to work on. Maybe again, the one that feels the most impactful, or you choose the one that feels like the easiest place to start. And I'll end by explaining one final habit change tool that we use a lot with clients. And this is something called a habit ladder. And with each of the following episodes, I've actually also put together a PDF resource that includes an overview of what that episode talks about some suggestions for that behavior, change a notes page, in case you want to do any brainstorming, and it will include this blank habit ladder just before I offer a page with additional resources on those different topics. 

31:10  
So I want you to imagine I have a ladder at the bottom, it will say current habit. And at the top, it will say optimized or ideal habit. And then in between that, it'll say 1% habit, 2% habit, 3% habit. And so what this looks like, is in any area of your life, this gives you a really tangible way to get strategic, and to brainstorm what comes next for you. And if at any point any of you do actually use those habit ladder worksheets, or any part of those resources that I give you, I would love, love, love for you to take a picture and tag me in it, send it to me in a DM or email or carrier pigeon. I don't care. But I just love hearing from all of you and seeing the ways that you are taking this podcast and putting it into practice in your real life. All right. Bringing it all together. 

32:01  
Our three takeaways from today's conversation is number one, your daily habits have a big role to play in your healing journey. If you are not living well, you will not be mentally well. 

32:16  
Number two is a reminder that when you are stressed, it makes sense to default to your most well worn habits. And when you do, I invite you to offer yourself equal parts compassion and accountability. And then find a strategy for how to step back into your habits that heal. 

32:37  
And TAKEAWAY NUMBER THREE, is that when establishing new habits, start small laughably small, 1% small, install tiny habits, we can install tiny habits by giving them a cue, and purpose. And then once that tiny habit is your new baseline, optimize it over time. 

32:59  
And I'll add a final reminder that my book is available for preorder. So if you got anything out of what I read from those two pages today, just know that there is so much more hope and healing and strategic healing in those pages. And I will drop a link for that in the shownotes below. All right, thanks for being here. And I'll see you next week.

33:23  
Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rhys, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai