Rowan Mangan:
And I’m Rowan Mangan and this is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people trying to figure it out. How are you doing, Marty?

Martha Beck:
I’m good. I have a little bit of a scratchy throat but nobody panic. It does just one of those things. And if I go ah-ah-ah during this podcast, don’t worry. I’m good. How are you?

Rowan Mangan:
I’m going to worry about it. I’m going to worry about it. What was that noise again?

Martha Beck:
Ah-ah-ah.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I’m having flashbacks to that show, The Last Of Us, but I won’t give any spoilers. I’ll just tell you.

Martha Beck:
I will give one spoiler. Ah-ah-ah. Yeah, there you go.

Rowan Mangan:
A very ambiguous spoiler.

Martha Beck:
Mm-hmm.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Now that you said you had a scratchy throat, now I’ve got a itchy everything, especially scalp.

Martha Beck:
Oh okay.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s like-

Is it one of those things where when you hear about itches, you get itchy.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Everyone gets itchy.

Martha Beck:
Yes. Absolutely. And God forbid you should think about itching while you’re meditating.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh God.

Martha Beck:
Six months of unbearable itching once. Oh.

Rowan Mangan:
Now my nostril’s itching.

Martha Beck:
You can’t not do it. Now you’re just going to be scratching like a monkey through the whole thing. That’s okay.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, well.

Martha Beck:
It’s okay, you’ll figure it out.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, what are you trying to figure out?

Martha Beck:
Oh, Lord. I am so codependent, Row. I am ridiculously codependent. And here’s why. Here’s for why this week. I just went to the dentist who replaced, I had a cracking molar in the very back of my face, and she put in a crown. I have been crowned on my molar and they make it at the dentist. They file your tooth down, then they make a new one and stick it in. And then they say, bite down, how does that feel?

And I bit down on what felt like the Rock of Gibraltar, like what did you jam into my gums, woman? That’s what I wanted to say, but I didn’t say that. I said, it feels little big. And she’s like, “no problem.” Brings out her drill. “How’s that?” Still kind of much. “How’s that?” It’s still too big. So 10 times this happened and the whole time I’m sitting thinking, how many times can I make this woman do the same job? Now she’s just thinking, I’m an excellent dentist, I like it to be perfect. I’m thinking, this is the 10th time, this can’t go on. So when it was still a little big, I just decided I can live with that. I told her to stop.

Rowan Mangan:
I’ll live with eternal discomfort rather than say it.

Martha Beck:
But I got used to it so easily, probably at the cost of throwing off my entire bite or something. And I just could not say one more time, go back into my tiny, tiny mouth. That they have to use pediatric instruments to work on and file down this normal-sized tooth until it is like my tiny, tiny head. Couldn’t.

Rowan Mangan:
That reminds me of that thing where, I’ve probably talked about it before, but where you’re talking to someone and you can’t understand what they’ve said.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
And you say, sorry, and then you still don’t understand it. And then you say sorry one more time. And then you’re in, you just up shit creek like this, what can you do? But guess whether it sounded like a question. Mm. Me too. Or, yeah. Or a complaint. Oh, did you? You know, like you don’t know.

Martha Beck:
Oh, I’m flashing back to meeting this Italian woman on the beach when I was like 12. And I told her I lived in Utah and she kept saying Utah lake, and I was like, Utah lake, I don’t understand. She was trying to say Utah Lake.

Rowan Mangan:
Utah Lake, yeah.

Martha Beck:
And that scarred me. I had never, I lived in Utah. I’d never met someone who didn’t speak English. Yeah, and yeah, now you’ve brought it back and I’m going to need some serious work on myself to get past that one.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, we’ll pick it up. We’ll pick it up after the podcast. How’s that?

Martha Beck:
What are you trying to figure out?

Rowan Mangan:
This is lame. I’ll just tell you, this is a bit lame, but sometimes those fun thoughts you have as a teenager. Oh, this is going to be one of those things you don’t relate to Marty. When you, oh, I’m just thinking of all the reasons this is so wrong. Sometimes I forget that I’m in a foreign culture. And anyway, just say someone as a teenager discovered weed and the kinds of thoughts that go along with smoking weed.

Martha Beck:
There were weeds in Utah. I don’t know what you mean.

Rowan Mangan:
Utah lake.

So last night I’m walking past our daughter’s bedroom door and she’s counting in there. And she counted, she counts to 10 brilliantly. I don’t want to brag too much but her one to 10 is superb.

Martha Beck:
Even if there are only three things, she will count them to 10.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, she will. But she was in her own space, in privacy, just pushing her limits a little bit. And after 10 immediately came, and I quote, LF teen. And which makes perfect sense.

Martha Beck:
Totally.

Rowan Mangan:
But it was like LF teen and I suddenly got transported back to those stoner days and stoner thoughts. And I was like, what if there could be extra numbers in between the numbers that we know about. And just no one’s thought of it yet. And what could we do with all those extra numbers, like if we knew about them and could harness them for good in the world.

Martha Beck:
Amazing.

Rowan Mangan:
We just have more.

Martha Beck:
We could make machines, we could make things.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
If we had those extra numbers in between the other numbers.

Rowan Mangan:
Whoa, man.

Martha Beck:
I thought you were going to say that she was counting like an Australian because I find this absolutely charming.

Rowan Mangan:
How dare you?

Martha Beck:
You all count to 10 and I think you say 11 in the normal way.

Rowan Mangan:
Then first of all, we don’t say you’ll, we say you’s.

Martha Beck:
You’s. Okay, then you’s go into this 13, 14, 50, 15 and then 16, 17, 18. And you’ve got three D sounds in the teen category. And I’ve heard other Australians do that. I find it charming and quaint in a very condescending kind of way.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, no, I can really feel that condescension coming through.

Martha Beck:
Could you count for us?

Rowan Mangan:
All right.

And I don’t see anything wrong with this by the way but interestingly I’d never noticed it before. You brought this up.

11.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
12.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
So far, so good, right?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Yeah I’m with you.

Rowan Mangan:
13.

14.

15.

Martha Beck:
Getting there.

Rowan Mangan:
16.

Martha Beck:
There you go.

Rowan Mangan:
17.

Martha Beck:
It actually the…

Rowan Mangan:
16, 17. I think the 16 got a bit of a D on it that time. 16, 17, 17, 17.

Martha Beck:
It’s like the D grows up into a T as you go forward.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh.

These things that happen when you’re down there in the Southern Hemisphere for many years.

Martha Beck:
It’s amazing. You just have to, they had to ship some of their consonants overboard. They’d throw consonants overboard during a sea crossing.

Rowan Mangan:
That must have been it. That must have been it. We’ll be right back with more bewildered.

I have a favor to ask. You might not know this but ratings and reviews are like gold in the podcasting universe. They get podcasts in front of more faces, more eyes, more ears. All the bits that you could have a podcast in front of, that’s what they do. So it would help us enormously if you would consider going over to your favorite podcasting app, especially if it’s Apple and giving us a few stars, maybe even five. Maybe even six, if you can find a way to hack the system, I wouldn’t complain. And a review would be also be wonderful. We read them all and love them. So thank you very much in advance. Let’s just go out there and bewilder the world.

Martha Beck:
Let’s get to our topic du jour.

Rowan Mangan:
Very good idea.

Martha Beck:
If you don’t mind.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, once again, we are doing a anxiety related topic, for good reason.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Because it’s bloody relevant to all of us, all the time. Because it’s freaking an anxious time.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
And I thought that what we might talk about today is anxiety in the culture and what’s going on there? Why is the culture so anxious? That’s my question. Now you get to answer it. Congratulations Martha Beck and take it away.

Martha Beck:
Well, the culture is anxious because individuals are anxious and we always try to control things when we get anxious. And so we create structures socially that are about controlling things. And basically all the structures, organizations and institutions of society sort of follow the anxiety that’s emerging in individuals.

Rowan Mangan:
Right? And when we feel anxious, we want to control something. We want to control everything.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
And so that’s what our culture is is comprised of anxious people wanting to control things.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, but the irony is it doesn’t work. The more you control and the more control based you are, the more you create things that cause anxiety. Let me give you an example. I had a client once who went to high school in an inner city school where it was very dangerous. A lot of the students, well he said everybody was so scared we all carried weapons because we didn’t know when we would have to defend ourselves. So then the school administrators, realizing that everybody had knives and things, said we’re going to make this so much safer. We’re going to control these students by putting in metal detectors and having armed guards at every door. And my client just kind of looked at me and goes, you know, funny thing that did not make me feel like I was in a safer place. It made me more anxious. So that’s the way the spiral goes. We try so hard to control everything. And in our very efforts to control, being controlled is scary. Having an armed guard looking at you is scary. So control itself.

Rowan Mangan:
Going to need some more weapons to feel safe again.

Martha Beck:
Exactly.

Rowan Mangan:
Which is to me such a great metaphor for America and how America, that this absolutely utterly bizarre culture of guns. And if the guns aren’t working, we need more guns.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And if people are still getting shot is because we don’t have enough guns. And we need more guns, guns in schools, let’s get put more guns in schools, that’ll solve it. It’s so weird. It’s like you are not safe. You don’t feel safe. So you add something that makes you less safe. Which makes you feel less safe. Which makes you add something that makes you less safe, that makes you feel.

Martha Beck:
Exactly. And it’s so interesting hearing non-Americans perspectives on this because America is such a gun culture that I kind of grew up being used to it. But then talking to people from other countries, they’re like, you people are crazy with the guns. What is it about you and guns? And we’re like, I don’t know. I’ve just watched 8,000 murders on TV by the time I’m 12, so I figure I need one.

Rowan Mangan:
Founding fathers.

Martha Beck:
Sorry. We maybe should get in trouble from pro-gun people out there.

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t think there’s too many in our listenership.

Martha Beck:
They could shoot us.

Rowan Mangan:
Not anymore. Bye, love you, bye.

Martha Beck:
So the whole thing, did you see how I just had a fear reaction?

Rowan Mangan:
Yep.

Martha Beck:
Oh my gosh, they are armed and they’re coming for us. What can we do? Oh, could I change the way I’m talking about this? Could we cut this out to control their effects, their reactions so they don’t hurt us. And now they’re controlling me and that is going to make me feel less safe ’cause I’ve always got a guard against them.

This is the way the brain works and then it goes out and it can swallow the whole world like it did in the arms race during, well, it’s ongoing arms race. But it really started right after World War II and going to elementary school, I was hiding under my desk to protect myself from an atomic bomb.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, and the amazing thing about that time is that both the United States and it’s friends, and the USSR and its friends were developed and made and hoarded enough nuclear weapons to completely destroy the entire planet so many times over. But they just kept adding them.

Martha Beck:
Because it makes us safer.

Rowan Mangan:
Which is the same sort of psychosis, yeah, oh no, we can only destroy the world 19 times with this stuff.

Martha Beck:
No, no, we can do it 25 times. We win, yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. I believe we can destroy this entire planet.

Martha Beck:
Oh, for sure.

Rowan Mangan:
25 times, yeah.

Martha Beck:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Just need the right attitude. It’s so funny because it’s like the way that there’s always this thread of maybe if we bought something.

Maybe. Any, I don’t care what’s wrong with you, scared, mad, happy, bored. Have you considered buying something? Have you considered buying a new shirt or a nuclear weapon? It’s the metal detectors in the school.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
We felt, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
We felt scared.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
So we bought things.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Right?

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
We bought another knife.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Because we felt scared.

Martha Beck:
A bigger knife.

I’ll show you a knife.

Rowan Mangan:
I was like you a knife because we don’t have any guts. We just got really big knives ’cause we are so different from Americans. Yeah, so then it’s like retail therapy, fear, anxiety but with assault weapons hate or nuclear weapons. It’s so funny but what’s fascinating to not to be always the one who goes capitalism, capitalism. But the war economy. So the second world war, the war economy was amazing. It’s what created the 1950s, was making a ton and the prosperity of the 1950s in the States and in the western world, if you want to use that. After the war was war economies are good. They make us rich.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Okay, so just the fact that we don’t actually technically have a war anymore, don’t worry about that. We have what this is it’s a cold, it’s a chilly war.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s like so don’t just buy weapons also buy a coat, buy a big hat. And it’s just, oh, it’s just so bonkers. It’s a war economy all the time.

Martha Beck:
It is and it’s primordial. I mean it obviously makes me think of squirrels.

Rowan Mangan:
Of course.

Martha Beck:
Because squirrels, part of the response to a fear thing for an animal that is a forager is to hoard.

Rowan Mangan:
Hoard, yeah.

Martha Beck:
So squirrels hoard huge amounts of acorns and they actually fail to rediscover a full 80% of the acorns they bury. But in so doing, they create forests.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, see? So we created a whole economy by buying more guns.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, and then we plant all our atomic weapons and so that it grows, oh no.

Martha Beck:
Grow up into mushroom clouds. Oh, this is depressing.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, God, there it goes.

Martha Beck:
It’s making me anxious.

Rowan Mangan:
So the kind of question that I always like to try and figure out when we have these conversations is how does an anxious populous, group of people, shore up or reinforce a culture? Why does the culture want us anxious, is what I’m trying to say.

Martha Beck:
It’s almost like there’s this little feedback loop because we’re anxious. One of the rules of anxiety is stay anxious or you won’t be safe. So if you’re not on guard all the time, you won’t be safe. So, in a weird way, that part of all our brains wants the culture to control everything. And then the culture becomes something that wants to control us. And anxious people willingly submit to control.

Rowan Mangan:
So the culture, as though it’s an entity, but it’s made up of all of us, we know this. But so the culture knows that if we individually feel anxious, we will more willingly let it control us.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
And then it can. Yeah, okay.

Martha Beck:
You trade autonomy for protection. I mean, if you look at the feudal system in Europe or the samurai system, even in Japan. There will be a Lord and he has swords and the right to kill everybody. And then below him are the people growing the rice or the barley or whatever. And the peasants, whatever they call that, they willingly support the guy in charge because he’s the one with the sword who’s going to fend off the enemies and keep everyone safe. But they are controlled by him and he’s at the top and he’s controlling everything. Then you get maniacs at the top.

Rowan Mangan:
They’re top also feeding him.

Martha Beck:
Exactly.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
They do everything for him. Everybody wants to be safe. And we try to do it by control. And we give control to the most controlling people who have the weapons of control. And then we feel safe for a minute. But not for very long because we’re got in the weird fear leads to control, leads to fear, leads to control upward spiral of anxiety on a societal level.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s so wild. So even if we are made more safe by this control, it doesn’t necessarily lead to us feeling more safe.

Martha Beck:
So true.

Rowan Mangan:
Right? Because of the way our brains are structured.

Martha Beck:
Yep.

Rowan Mangan:
So the feeling of safety doesn’t always follow the reality of safety. So then if we start to feel unsafe, we can be fur-… Oh, it’s just, it’s nuts.

So I am immediately reminded of an experience I once had in South Africa with you at Londolozi where there was someone there that we met who was, had come, she lived in LA. She’d come to South Africa for a safari and she couldn’t sleep at night because she was staying awake with her phone, checking her home security system in LA going from room to room to room, checking that no one was breaking into her house while she was away. And I’m saying there were lions walking by outside her room. Not that she was in danger from those.

Martha Beck:
No.

Rowan Mangan:
But like I’m saying, it’s so weird.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

She was both safe and in an environment where things could have. Like she needed to do things to remain safe in her environment but she wasn’t considering the environment she was in. The environment in her head was her house where the creatures and the villains were breaking in nonstop to the point where, and by watching it on her phone, she could fend this off, obviously.

Rowan Mangan:
Right.

Martha Beck:
Right.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s so weird but it’s such a great image of anxiety in the middle of the night, just watching, watching.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And also by the way, home security system app on your phone, video doorbells, alarm systems, security and retail therapy, secure security therapy,

Martha Beck:
Secure retail therapy and doom scrolling. Listen to this doom, it’ll keep you, we’ll all be safer if we all share this terrifying information about what might happen. Or it’s just this allegiance we have to the idea that fear is the root of safety. And fear…

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
…only creates more fear. I mean, wait, there’s a healthy fear. If she’d said, oh my goodness, there are lions and leopards out there, I’ll make sure that the that have closed my door.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
That’s healthy fear. But staying up all night, peering at your phone thinking you can chase burglars away like magic…

Rowan Mangan:
With your mind.

Martha Beck:
…is just anxiety. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
What was the thing, I always ask you to say this, and I never remember it myself. But about holding the plane in the air with your grip on the…

Martha Beck:
Oh, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
..arm.

Martha Beck:
Oh, yeah, it’s from Erma Bombeck. She said, I alone in a plane flow of sleeping passengers am keeping the jet in the air by pulling upward on the arms of my seat.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s so good. It’s so funny because the more we think we’re just rationally being…

Martha Beck:
Oh yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
..trying to, finding safety and securing safety, the more [inaudible 00:21:23] into magical thinking we get.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And the more we’re like, I’ll control it with the power of my mind. Meaning I’ll control the world with the power of my anxiety. When the reality is we are being controlled by the same anxiety all the time.

Martha Beck:
I’m sorry.

Rowan Mangan:
Or I sound like a conspiracy theorist.

Martha Beck:
No, you’re exactly right. And I’m going to put a tiny little bit of brain science in here. All of the anxiety stuff happens on the left side of the brain. And the right side of the brain puts it in a context that says, wait, let’s be here now. And it calms us down. But the left hemisphere has this weird quirk where it refuses to acknowledge the existence of anything outside itself. And as soon as it tells a story, it believes it without question regardless of the data. And that’s why we know people that we thought were really pretty stable, who do their own personal development work and everything, who ran off to bunkers to wait for the apocalypse. And they really, really believe it.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s so wild.

Martha Beck:
It feels so truthy.

Rowan Mangan:
It feels truthy. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
It has the vibe of truthiness?

Martha Beck:
So Row, where do you experience this in your own life?

Rowan Mangan:
Where, so what do I do to feel safe?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, where do you feel the spin of anxiety and how do you engage with the economic structures and things of the culture in that makes you feel safe?

Rowan Mangan:
I think what I…

Martha Beck:
That actually feeds into it.

Rowan Mangan:
…do is I do ultimately spend money. But in the actual thing of this is me being rational and rationally making myself safe is I do online research. I read reviews and I read consumer reports and all of that. And it’s all keeping anxiety at bay stuff.

Martha Beck:
And I’m so grateful because you always get the most safe things and they really are safer. But I just feel safe all the time while you’re going, oh boy, I know all the ways this could go wrong. So you, you’re the one doing the research. So you know all the dangers and I’m just like, what, that is safe. Thank you Rowy. That is good.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, that’s true. I’ve considered all the alternative possibilities.

Martha Beck:
And they’re always there for you.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. What about you? What do you do?

Martha Beck:
Oh, but you do not take large handfuls of supplements every single day.

Rowan Mangan:
Multiple times a day.

Martha Beck:
Hello, I’ve seen the headlines. Mugwort is good for you. Eat more turmeric. I buy turmeric pills. I literally take turmeric in pill form ’cause it’s supposed to be good for you. And that it adds up to literal handfuls of food items but in pill form.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. She has so many pills in her day.

Martha Beck:
And it’s going to keep me safe, man.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, absolutely.

Martha Beck:
Anybody who takes as much fish oil as I do, will live forever.

Rowan Mangan:
Do you remember when we were going to buy a car and the whole thing about, because obviously cars are such a big one…

Martha Beck:
Oh, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
…about safety in our society. And so we went to the showroom and this woman was explaining to us that this one car was so safe that if it got hit from the side it would, the way that it was structured on the inside, you know I didn’t… She sounded very truthy. It would actually make the car stronger if it actually got [inaudible 00:24:54].

Martha Beck:
If someone offended you in traffic, this car would personally mess with their heads.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
But hadn’t you done the research, and that’s why we were buying that car in the first place.

Rowan Mangan:
Of course I had.

Martha Beck:
Of course. Then we went to the insurance people and the insurance broker had a spiritual experience.

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t think it was a spiritual person.

Martha Beck:
I wasn’t going to go there.

Rowan Mangan:
It didn’t sound spiritual to me. He just says, soon as we started describing the car we’d bought, he, it’s just like that car it’s so safe. It’s so safe.

Martha Beck:
So safe. Oh, it’s so safe. He was very happy about that. And that’s not a bad, I mean it is, we bought the car.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
It’s good.

Rowan Mangan:
But I have to say, I don’t always feel, when I’m hurtling along the New Jersey turnpike, I don’t always, I’m aware of it.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m aware of being a little person in space and I’m aware that whatever car you’re in…

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
…it’s when you’re going fast and you hit something, it’s not good.

Martha Beck:
Wait, go back. Yeah, and we know that. It’s so funny that they used to think that human physiology could not tolerate speeds over 13 miles an hour because that was as fast as a sailing ship could move and nothing moved that fast. Yeah. Anyway, it’s great that as things get faster, we get more safety guidelines. And when the cars get safer and safer and it’s all wonderful. Until it turns your life into an obsession with controlling every variable of fear and you’re just live guided by this tiny crunch of fear in your bones, it makes your life horrible. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Guided by a tiny crunch of fear. So we are making all our decisions based on this one sensation.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And a small, tiny sensation in our bodies that’s like, oh.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And that becomes, huh.

Martha Beck:
It’s not so much a tiny sensation. It’s a such a massive sensation that it crunches us down into a tiny point that is only afraid. It winds us so tightly into our anxiety that we almost vanish from every other part of our lives.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, that’s interesting because that’s not how I understood you when you said a tiny crunch of fear.

Martha Beck:
Oh.

Rowan Mangan:
I thought you meant that we would allow our entire lives to be guided and these huge decisions to be guided on us wanting to alleviate even the tiniest little crunch.

Martha Beck:
You make a solid point.

Rowan Mangan:
Because it’s ultimately going to spiral into the big.

Martha Beck:
It works either way. We react to the tiniest fears with huge reactions. And then we have huge reactions that lead us to our tiniest decisions. And everything is just fear, fear, fear, fear, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety, broadcasting, replicating, fractaling itself into bigger and bigger societal institutions.

Rowan Mangan:
Right and then we aren’t ever making decisions for ourselves or our families or our communities or whatever that are based on anything but anxiety.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And also this desire to alleviate the anxiety that you currently feel in your body.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
If I can just make this feeling go away, I’ll sacrifice everything.

Martha Beck:
One more weird irony that’s, quickly, is I’ve worked with so many people who are in, they grew up in houses where there was an adult who was violent. And so they had a terror of the world being violent but they’ve chose partners or spouses who were violent because in a violent world you need a violent person to protect you. So then they’d be end up being the victims of violence in their homes. But they’d say, no, I’m going to stay with that person because that is the only way I can stay safe. It’s the same insane logic, circular logic at all levels.

Rowan Mangan:
It is, it’s absolutely fascinating and absolutely horrifying. So, all right, so I have a pretty good sense of that. How do we come to our senses in this insane system?

Martha Beck:
Well, obviously I have this completely figured out, not. But I do ponder about it and I have some thoughts and I’ll tell you about them and you’ll tell me about yours in a minute.

Rowan Mangan:
All right. How do we figure it out?

Martha Beck:
Figuring the culture of anxiety and how to do better? Not a problem. You kind of have to start on the inside. You have to begin by being the first one who’s willing to work with your whole brain instead of just the left side of your brain. Bringing in the right side, which is all about the present moment and feelings of connection and curiosity that is meant to balance the fear side of the brain. And the fear side of the brain doesn’t want to let go but if we say consciously, we’re going to go to a whole brain way of seeing. Then we’re off to a good start. Read Jill Bolte Taylor’s book.

Rowan Mangan:
Right. So it’s about we’re in this culture that’s so dominated by this one extreme sort of way of seeing things and you’re talking about sort of integrating it.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
So it seems like there’s two questions, to me anyway. And one is like there’s the moments where we personally are feeling anxious and how can we come to our senses in that sort of acute state of anxiety.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And then there’s that sort of more general sort of thing that we talk about. We are living in this culture, how do we live in this culture which is anxious? So I think we know a lot of the stuff about what to do when you’re in that heightened state.

Martha Beck:
The immediate things are physiological. You kind of fake the physiology of someone who’s not anxious. So you take low slow breaths, long slow breaths. You let your body shake or move because shaking is the way animals process adrenaline and cortisol that are secreted when we’re in a fight, flight state. The body wants to move and if we don’t let it move, and if we don’t let it shake, at least, that fear gets trapped in our bodies. And it exhibits as long-term anxiety often. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Dancing…

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
…is a huge one of that. I won’t dance in front of other people but I’ll dance by myself. And I’m just realizing that that’s the same sort of mechanism as shaking, right?

Martha Beck:
Oh, absolutely. And I remember I once had a client who was a professional athlete and he was also really brilliant and also very, very anxious. And he would work out all day long and then he would go to clubs that had the heaviest of heavy metal and he would do headbanging dances. And I just thought, oh my God, that must be just wearing you down. But it took that level of noise and shaking and bashing and thrashing on the dance floor for him to channel all the adrenaline and other stress hormones that were constantly filling his bloodstream. So there are ways, every culture does that, some kind of dancing and shaking.

Rowan Mangan:
Mm-hmm.

Martha Beck:
But people in offices don’t. Right?

Rowan Mangan:
Right.

Martha Beck:
We don’t go there.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, okay.

Martha Beck:
So once we’ve done those really immediate physiological things, you just drop into your sensory experience. That opens the right side of the brain, the whole brain, especially imaginative creativity that’s not about danger. It’s about maybe something fun in the future. And I’ve watched you do this, I’ve watched you use fun ideas about the future to sort of lighten a moment.

Rowan Mangan:
I didn’t even realize that that was an expression of creativity.

Martha Beck:
Oh, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s so amazing. So people who listen to this show a lot know I’m obsessed with van life and recently I’ve also added exotic train travel to my list of enthusiasms. And so I can will gladly go off into fantasies about buying and restoring a van.

Martha Beck:
She does. And the reason I’m laughing is that almost every day she’ll say something. We’ll just be sitting there and she’s like, Karen’s always the doom and gloom. She’s like, oh my God, do you know what’s happening in X, Y, Z, or Z? And then we all get nervous and then Row says, oh my gosh, this woman has the best van life. And she just goes off into this and we were sort of going through the ideas for the podcast and I said, well you do creative imagination with van life. And she just went, I want, and this is a quote, I want to talk about van life at some length.

Rowan Mangan:
And now I’m going to do so. I got so excited because just van life guys, van life, you know. You get in a van. It’s so cute and you can decorate it yourself. Some people decorate it with rocks and crystals that they’ve found along their journey in the van.

Martha Beck:
Well, okay, you’re talking me into this because…

Rowan Mangan:
What?

Martha Beck:
…visual arts, decorating your van with crystals and being in nature. We co-evolved with trees and other animals and our nervous systems really calm down there.

Rowan Mangan:
Sorry just one sec before you go onto the evolution thing.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
So some people decorate their vans with messages from people they’ve met on the road while they’ve been traveling in their van. Some have toilets, some don’t. Do you remember actually the other night, Marty, that we, I had to, I felt like I, because I’d had a night where I’d stayed up and watched quite a bit of YouTube into the night about van life. And I felt like I was at the point where I was almost cheating on Marty and Karen with van life.

And so I felt like the next day that when we had a sit down together, family time, I said, listen, I’ve got to tell you something. The whole van life thing, it’s like I really mean it.

Martha Beck:
She did.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m at a new phase with it and I just want you to know that at some point I see myself getting a van.

Martha Beck:
She had to make an announcement as if she hadn’t talked about it for an hour a day. You know what I think we should do, we should get a van. You can decorate it with all the crystals you want but then in the passenger seat in the front, I will of course be lying down on the bed, because that’s what I do all day. But in the passenger seat, we’ll be the insurance man from that insurance company going, oh my God, it’s so safe in here. It’s so safe.

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t like it to picture him in my van.

Martha Beck:
Okay, sorry.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I’m actually, I don’t think vans are for that. I don’t know how safe they are. Anyway, don’t worry, but Marty, just imagine if you could lie down on a bed.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
In a van going somewhere while lying down. It’s amazing.

Martha Beck:
And it sounds a lot like homelessness.

Rowan Mangan:
Say something about evolution or some shit.

Martha Beck:
Oh yeah, yeah. Anxiety, culture, evolution. Ah yes, you are going to be, did you see the Blair Witch movie? What was it called?

Rowan Mangan:
Yes. Oh my God yes.

Martha Beck:
Okay. That movie was made with two sticks and $8. And it was basically a bunch of teenagers holding cameras to their mouths where while they went [inaudible 00:36:39]. Oh I’m so scared, look at my stick. I got another stick.

Rowan Mangan:
There’s a stick tied to a stick tied to a stick.

Martha Beck:
[inaudible 00:36:49]. Okay. That’s what your society is doing to you all the time. It’s like I’ve got two sticks and I’m meant to be in terror. And you will feel, your nervous system will tell you to get involved. You must at that moment, at the moment you feel yourself sucked into mindless fear. You have to go, that is just a tiny crunch of fear and I’m not going to take the bait. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
That is so freaking funny because I genuinely thought when you started talking about Blair Witch that you were going to try and segue into how nature is really good for calming us down. And what we should really do if we’re in anxiety is to go out in the woods like the Blair Witch Project kids did. And I was so looking forward to seeing how you were going to spin that out. And I’m disappointed.

Martha Beck:
I’m just grateful that you didn’t immediately go to, I will drive a van into nature and I will stay there forever.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, I’ll tell you one thing. If they’d had a van…

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
…they would’ve been better off. They would’ve been fine.

Martha Beck:
No, it would’ve gotten to them in the van. It’s not safe.

Rowan Mangan:
They could’ve driven away, that’s the whole point.

Martha Beck:
Traffic accidents that is not as safe as our car.

Rowan Mangan:
Could bump into a witch.

Martha Beck:
But this is radically counter cultural to say everybody arounds me is nervous, I may choose not to join.

Rowan Mangan:
So we talked about a little acute anxiety and how to sort of manage that when we’re individually in that state. But then there’s the other question that I had for you was like, how can we resist anxiety culture generally and just the kind of return to our own nature as a way of life?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I think it begins with the sensation of being pulled off your own foundation by the anxiety around you. Because society is going to be the Blair Witch Project. It’s going to keep revving up your fear and it will feel very true to you in some moments that you should join in.

Rowan Mangan:
Because we can’t expect society to change. We can’t expect this perfect system to.

Martha Beck:
But if you can drop in like that woman in South Africa, if she just dropped in and said, okay, I’m in a room. It’s safe. There are wild animals outside, there’s nothing I can do about my house in LA. So I’m going to relax. That is the radically counter cultural thing to do.

Rowan Mangan:
I actually think that here, as in a lot of the stuff we talk about, is that most of the battle is actually getting to that point of recognizing where the culture is invisibly working on us.

Martha Beck:
Oh, absolutely.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s not even that there’s so much a process once you know. It’s more like it’s the process of learning to question the culture. That’s what we do on this podcast is trying to make the invisible visible.

Martha Beck:
Right.

Rowan Mangan:
When it comes to these kind of messages that we get. And so, in a way, as a of life, when you feel that tiny crunch of fear it’s like take a minute, question it. Am I sure that I’m not safe right now…

Martha Beck:
Right.

Rowan Mangan:
…from burglar’s in LA?

Martha Beck:
Exactly. And that’s so brilliant because the very part of the brain that goes into fear, if you take a left right turn. If you take a right turn, it goes into curiosity. So there’s this psychiatrist named Judson Brewer who wrote Unwinding Anxiety, really good book. And one thing that he describes doing is taking really anxious clients in groups out into the woods with one of his colleagues. And they would wait. They would wait and everybody was really anxious. And then he and his colleague would both just look in the same direction and say mm-hmm. All of these anxious people would be like, what, what do you, what? And they would just say mm-hmm and everybody would start going and looking and their anxiety would be gone.

Rowan Mangan:
Because curiosity can’t coexist with anxiety.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Curiosity steers you the other direction. So that, am I sure I’m not safe right now, is a perfect segue into a whole brain experience that’s more balanced.

Rowan Mangan:
So we just got to keep asking questions.

Martha Beck:
So say mm-hmm and?

Rowan Mangan:
Stay wild.

Martha Beck:
Stay wild.

Rowan Mangan: 
We hope you’re enjoying Bewildered. If you’re in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word ‘WILD’ to 570-873-0144.

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For more of us, Martha’s on Instagram, themarthabeck. She’s on Facebook, The Martha Beck, and she’s on Twitter, marthabeck. Her website is, MarthaBeck.com. And me, I too am on Instagram. Rowan_Mangan. I’m on Facebook as Rowan Mangan. And I’m on Twitter as RowanMangan. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at MBI.