Show notes
September 21, 2023 / Mom &… Podcast Episode 131 / Guest: Dr. Lauren Cook Subscribe and Review wherever you listen to podcasts! Show Summary: When was the last time you felt anxious? Did just reading that question bring up some uncomfortable feelings? For many of us, anxiety is more than just a buzzword. This week, we are talking with Dr. Lauren Cook, a clinical psychologist and the author of GENERATION ANXIETY (available now!), about anxiety and mental health. Dr. Lauren’s expertise lies in helping people understand what anxiety is, where it lives in our bodies, and how we can manage it. Topics From This Episode: Book – GENERATION ANXIETY The perfect time to become a parent (spoiler: there isn’t one) Career pivots Feeling anxious vs. anxiety disorder The Four Ds: Distressed, Deviance, Dysfunction, Danger Confirmation bias Normalizing anxiety without minimizing it The biology behind anxiety Alex Honnold, Free Climber Brain-gut connection Inflammation Bloodwork to identify deficiencies Accessibility to healthcare Base for lab work Raising kids with healthy brains and bodies Empowering our children to take action The negative side of “positive thinking” Changing behavior The power of community Having real conversations with friends Reframing the “what ifs” Discomfort is okay Setting boundaries Ghosting creates anxiety Kristen van Ogtrop in Episode 15 of the Mom &… Podcast Brene Brown on the opposite of play (Missy butchered the quote and only loosely explained the concept in the show, so go listen to Brene!) Look, Listen, Learns Susanne Vintage Framing Studio THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese Seattle summer > Austin summer (duh) Lauren The Bear on Hulu THE POWER OF FUN by Catherine Price Learning about the importance of creating family traditions Missy THERE’S NO COMING BACK FROM THIS by Ann Garvin After the Bite on Max Learning Photoshop More About Dr. Lauren Cook: Dr. Lauren Cook is a licensed Clinical Psychologist, company consultant, author, and speaker. With a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and her Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy, Dr. Lauren appears frequently in the media to provide commentary while also working with companies as well as individual adults, couples, families, and teens to help reduce anxiety and improve personal and professional outcomes. She integrates evidence-based tools from a systems lens and she speaks internationally, both in-person and virtually. Dr. Lauren owns a private practice, Heartship Psychological Services, serving all clients residing in California. Dr. Lauren’s latest book, GENERATION ANXIETY, hits the shelves in September 2023. Connect with Dr. Lauren Cook: TikTok Instagram Website Heartship Psychological Services Book: GENERATION ANXIETY Connect With the Mom &… Podcast Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts! If you’re so inclined to give us a 5-star rating, we’ll love you forever. Who couldn’t use a little extra love? Leave us a message – via voicemail or use our form – with your questions for experts, or suggestions for future episodes. Check out our website, where you can find links to all the things! Follow our Facebook Page Join our private Facebook Group (All you have to do is ask to join, and then be nice once you’re in. So easy!) Follow us on Instagram Become a patron – check us out on Patreon! Watch this episode on our YouTube Channel! Musical Notes Our delightfully happy intro and outro theme music, “We Will Get Through This” is performed by Young Presidents, and used under license from Shutterstock. Transcript is auto-generated by a robot. Apologies in advance for misspellings or errors. [00:00:00] Susanne: Welcome to the MomAnne dot dot dot podcast, the podcast that helps you make your ellipses count. You know, all the little dot dot dots that come after I’m a mom and, and I’m Susanne Kerns a mom and dot dot dot writer, LGBTQ and sex ed advocate, and this week I am soaking in every minute of the last week with our daughter living under our roof. We drive off in a week and. [00:00:29] Missy: I just can’t even believe it. By the time this Episode is on, she’ll be like settled in. [00:00:34] Susanne: I know. I know. And I think this may be a really smart thing to do. Uh, we’re going to be driving with her across the entire country for three days, which after that, we may just have had all enough of each other that we’re ready to say goodbye. We’ll see. Or it’s just so amazing that it makes it even harder. So we will see. But she’ll be back for ACL. Like, yeah, it’s [00:00:58] Missy: Oh, soon. [00:00:59] Susanne: Yeah, she’ll be back soon, so that’s good. [00:01:02] Lauren: where’s she headed? [00:01:03] Susanne: is heading to Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, so pretty far from Texas. [00:01:10] Lauren: Oh, that’s amazing. That’s a big milestone moment. [00:01:13] Susanne: Yes, we’re excited. [00:01:15] Missy: Well, it’s hard to follow that, but I’m Missy Stevens, mom, and dot, dot, dot, writer, foster child advocate, and this week I’m just in post vacation recovery and am a hot mess. But we’re getting it all together. Our guest this week is Dr. Lauren Cooke. Lauren is a licensed clinical psychologist, company consultant, author, and speaker with a doctorate in clinical psychology and her master’s in marriage and family therapy. Dr. Lauren appears frequently in the media to provide commentary while also working with companies as well as individual adults, couples, families, and teens to help reduce anxiety and improve personal and professional outcomes. Dr. Lauren owns a private practice, HeartShip Psychological Services, serving all clients residing in California. You can connect with Dr. Lauren through TikTok, Instagram, where we met her, her brain health book club, and through her podcast, The Boardroom Brain. And of course, stay tuned for her latest book, Generation Anxiety. It’s back there behind Suzanne set to hit the shelves in September, 2023, which I think this will be airing in September, 2023. [00:02:20] Susanne: Yes, but we got a sneak peek, yay! [00:02:23] Lauren: Well, thank you. I feel like this is gonna be a fun conversation. I like the two of you. This is fun. [00:02:29] Missy: Thank [00:02:29] Susanne: We like you too! [00:02:30] Missy: Thank you. We’re so looking forward to it and we’re going to jump right in. We got a picture of what you’re doing in your bio, but we’d love if we could get like a Dr. Lauren one on one to give a snapshot of your career in life. And especially if you had any pivots, like maybe motherhood. [00:02:47] Lauren: Yeah, [00:02:47] Missy: Yeah. [00:02:48] Lauren: like 10 weeks ago, . [00:02:50] Missy: Oh my gosh. [00:02:51] Susanne: Oh my goodness! [00:02:53] Lauren: I know I have a little two month old in the other room and I’m like low key sweating, hoping we. It’s recording without some big tears, but yeah, so I’m a very new mom and, uh, author, psychologist, speaker, and navigating all of those changes happening right now. But, but honestly, it’s been really good. And I was just posting about that the other day of like, I feel like everybody tells you all the, like, really hard parts about being a parent. And it wasn’t until I got pregnant that people started saying, like, how amazing it was. And it, and, you know, now that I’m in it, I’m like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Like, this is pretty amazing. I’m glad I did this. And regrets. Um, [00:03:37] Susanne: I have a friend who’s due soon, so I’m going to play that clip for her over and over. I’m glad I did this. I’m glad I did this. [00:03:45] Lauren: it’ll be [00:03:45] Missy: Yeah. [00:03:46] Lauren: So, and I write about that in Generation Anxiety, like, There’s no perfect time to do a lot of things, especially becoming a parent. Uh, and so I’m glad I took the plunge, even if I had a book coming out four months later, like that’s, you know, that’s just the [00:04:01] Missy: That’s some timing. [00:04:03] Lauren: isn’t it? [00:04:03] Missy: You had all your babies at once. [00:04:05] Lauren: Yes, I had twins this year, like human baby, book baby, you know, [00:04:10] Susanne: Oh my gosh. And now, was that a straight line for you then? It sounds like your career has been your path, you know, since college. Is that true? Or have there been any pivots in your career as well? [00:04:22] Lauren: well, I’d say my pivot was more in college. You know, I went in as a biz econ major at UCLA and quickly saw the calculus courses and said, Okay, that’s maybe not for me. And then I got into journalism, actually, like I spent some time at NBC News and E News and thought maybe I wanted to be a journalist. but, you know, there was a part of me that was really wanting to have that like one on one experience with people and also not travel quite so much at that time. I mean, new journalists, you got to be ready to move wherever they’re going to send you. [00:04:56] Missy: Right. [00:04:57] Lauren: So, you know, I thought, Okay, I feel like psychology really marries all those components that I want to have that you. There’s still that storytelling and that narrative piece in psychology for sure, but, you know, really helping people build on their future and how they want to grow in their lives. And so that’s what really pulled me into psychology. and I love it. It’s been a really, really great path. I, I haven’t met many psychologists that say they regret this career and I’m included in that. [00:05:24] Susanne: And now, okay, so we want to jump to your new book, which, baby number two, Generation Anxiety, which, I mean, I think every generation has their own anxiety, and we’re going to get to that in a little bit. But before we I think you addressed very early on in the book something that probably a lot of our listeners may be feeling is it feels like sometimes that everybody has anxiety now. It’s just, it used to be so taboo and no one would ever talk about it, but now it’s like hashtag anxiety for pretty much everything that’s going on in anybody’s life. So how do people differentiate if they are just Feeling anxious about a particular thing, or if they truly have an anxiety disorder, or they are just a human that is living in 2023. Like how, how can you tell the difference between these things? [00:06:20] Lauren: Yeah. No, I’m so glad you bring that up because I was just having a conversation about this the other day with someone that it, the term almost is getting overused. You know, everything is anxiety. Is it really though, you know, and we talk about what we call the four D’s. And I think this is a really helpful way to differentiate. you feeling stressed, worried, which is pretty normal from time to time, or is it something like a generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, OCD, something like that. So four D’s, here we go. [00:06:49] Susanne: Mm [00:06:50] Lauren: One, if you yourself are feeling distressed by your experience, if you’re worrying about how much you’re worrying, right, we call that meta worrying, there’s one for you. If you’re noticing a deviance, and what I mean by that is if we’re looking at a bell shaped curve, a deviance from the norm, so a norm in your own life, for example, where you’re like, ooh, this isn’t how I normally operate day to day, I’m noticing like a real increased reaction here, or deviance in terms of when you’re looking at your peers and people around you. Ooh, I’m not noticing that everybody else is having a panic attack when we’re out to dinner. For example, [00:07:23] Susanne: hmm. [00:07:24] Missy: Yeah. [00:07:24] Lauren: dysfunction. And I think this one’s really, really key to note here. Are you not able to keep up with the obligations in your life? Are you not able to achieve and work towards the goals that you want to do if there’s dysfunction happening? And the last we’ve got to normalize this is if there’s any sense of danger, if you yourself are feeling unsafe, if you’re waking up saying. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow. Or if you’re having thoughts of hurting someone else, those four D’s components of them are present, that’s when we may be meeting more criteria. But I think that’s something that is really important for us to talk about because yeah, everybody says, Oh, I’m anxious. But do we really understand what that means [00:08:04] Missy: It is such a buzzword now that I, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t said they are anxious and especially in the last, I don’t know, five years or so. Um, and particularly in the last three. And, You know, I think, I think it’s so great to give that framework to walk through like what is this really doing to your life, [00:08:24] Lauren: Yeah. And it’s, it’s hard, right? Because I mean, I’m on TikTok myself. I love a good psychology TikTok. It’s hard because we see these 30 second soundbites, right? Of like, here’s [00:08:35] Missy: right? [00:08:36] Lauren: of anxiety. And it’s like confirmation bias. Well, I have that. I don’t always sleep through the night. So I must have anxiety, [00:08:44] Missy: Hmm. [00:08:45] Lauren: And on the one hand, it’s so great. We’re normalizing it. But we also don’t want to minimize it either, because for folks living with anxiety, it can be really debilitating. [00:08:55] Missy: Yeah. [00:08:56] Lauren: something I write in the book that, you know, it’s not just some casual thing. It can really cause a lot of distress for someone who’s experiencing it. And so, it’s great. We’re normalizing it, but we also don’t want to minimize it at the same time. [00:09:10] Missy: No. And you talk a lot about the key to starting to get a grip on all of this is really understanding it and understanding the biology behind it, which I found really, really fascinating. And I’m wondering if you can take a few minutes to talk to our listeners about that because I was eyeopening to look at it from a truly like, this is a biological thing, not all just our world around us. [00:09:33] Lauren: No, 100%. And there’s two kind of key components of this. So one is that amygdala part of the brain, right? It’s almond shaped, very small. It’s how so, so deep in our brain at the real kind of instinctual level. know, folks who experience anxiety tend to have an overactive amygdala. [00:09:50] Missy: Hmm. [00:09:51] Lauren: there are a lot of different things in the environment that may cause some stress for some, but if you’re experiencing anxiety, it’s going to be level 10 for you. It’s going to be much more intense. On the flip side, you have people who have underactive amygdalas, right? They might be the person like Alex Honnold who free climbs, you know, Yosemite, right? [00:10:09] Susanne: love that example. That is, that spoke to me in a deep way. [00:10:13] Missy: I have a couple people in my life who I think maybe don’t have an amygdala, like they just aren’t worried about anything. It’s all mine. I’m like, how? [00:10:23] Lauren: Total chillers, right? I know. Yeah. And that really can be on a neurological level. You know, the other side of this, and this is something I get so excited about, because we often talk about anxiety from such a heady space. Anxiety is so physical, like it is so housed in our entire body. And we’re really starting to have cool conversations about this gut brain access connection. of our serotonin is housed in our gut. So it’s not surprising when you hear 60% of folks with IBS also have an anxiety disorder. It’s very closely connected. So it’s interesting as we’re starting to talk about even the foods we eat, the things we drink, how that affects our, body chemistry and in turn our experience of anxiety. I know for myself, like, healing my gut, that actually healed my panic attacks, more than cognitive work ever did. And obviously, I love some good cognitive work, I’m a therapist, but we gotta look at the whole body when we’re looking at healing anxiety. [00:11:24] Susanne: Ooh, okay, let’s, let’s tangent there because I find that fascinating a…
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