Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking

by Caroline Leaf

4. The Multiple Perspective Advantage (MPA)

Superposition is the ability to focus on incoming information: the external (what others are saying or doing; what you read, hear, or listen to; actions or events you witness; and so on) and the internal (upcoming thoughts from your nonconscious mind, your existing memories of all your life experiences, what you have learned, your nonconscious belief systems, your assumptions, and so on).

Essentially, when you use your MPA, your senses can tune in to the detail of the now moment—an enriching experience that will help you feel happier and more at peace. And, as you get into superposition using your MPA, you can choose to accept or override a thought.

5. Boxes, Windows, Rewinding, and Suits of Armor

a. The Box Technique. When people are really upsetting you, are toxic, or aren’t respecting your boundaries, imagine putting them in a box. When they’re in this box, you can’t see or hear them, even though you might be looking at them or sitting next to them. This gives you the mental space to disconnect from their toxicity or emotional demands for a few moments while you catch your breath and decide how to respond.

b. The Windows Technique. Imagine a big building with lots of windows that are mostly sealed up. Put the toxic thought you’re working on into one of the windows. Imagine you’re on the outside of this window looking in. You can’t climb into the window because it’s inaccessible, but you have power over whatever is in that window. You are always safe where you’re standing on the outside of the window—whatever is in that window cannot hurt you. You can embrace, process, and reconceptualize it whenever you’re ready. Using the 5 Steps, you can visualize the scene in the window changing as you reimagine it from a safe distance.

c. The Rewinding Technique. This technique involves imagining that you’re watching yourself in a movie. You have control over each and every one of the scenes in this movie. You can rewind and edit each scene using the 5 Steps. When you pause, you embrace your issue; when you rewind, you process...

d. The Suit of Armor Technique. This visualization technique is great for blocking toxic words coming at you from negative people. It helps to create a mental boundary to keep your mental space safe. You do this by imagining you’re wearing a suit of armor. As the words hit you, they bounce off you and back at the person...

6. Closing Your Eyes and Focusing on the Big Picture First

Look at the impact of what you have already achieved and ask yourself questions like, What is the overarching purpose of what I choose to do next? How can I do this in a scalable way to make an impact? How hard am I prepared to work to make this happen? What do I want to happen?

Emotions activate bursts of high beta and gamma energy in the brain, as well as the release of serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine, which strengthen the load of the memory if you focus on the detail first. This is good if it’s a healthy thought, but not so good if it’s a toxic thought.

The Discomfort Zones

There are four types of discomfort zones: The just aware zone: prompts from the nonconscious to the subconscious mind, when you’re just becoming aware of the physical sensations, feelings, and information of a thought. This is the I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something is worrying me zone. The stress reaction zone: physical warning signals from our body that something in our life needs to be addressed. When we make our stress work for us as a springboard into action, the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system and HPA axis are in balance. When we feel overwhelmed by our stress, these are out of balance and can make us feel physically ill. This is the I feel a rush of adrenaline and my heart is really beating fast; something is really not right zone. The emotional attitudes of the thought zone: feelings of the thought that tell you something is off about a situation. This is the I feel very wary and pushed in a corner; I am not comfortable zone. The about-to-choose zone: in superposition, holding multiple points of view in mind simultaneously as you consider the information in the thought. In this zone, you’re thinking, Okay, this situation needs to be analyzed carefully. I need to stop and take some time to think it through. This is my decision for now that I am comfortable choosing, and I won’t proceed until I am comfortable and have peace.

Emotional Warning Signals

Emotional Warning Signal Guide As you begin at day 1, step 1, you can do a quick level check on your emotions, note it in your diary, and track it as you begin to work through the 5 Steps each day. We all experience emotions and feelings in different ways under different circumstances—they can keep changing even in the space of one day or hour. Remember, there’s nothing wrong with you if you feel you’re at 7–10; you’re simply experiencing something that needs attention. Today, I feel . . . 1⁠–⁠3 Average. I have normal ups and downs as I go through life with all its challenges as a human in a complex world. 4⁠–⁠6 A hovering or floating anxiety and/or depression, worry, frustration, or toxic stress. I have that nagging angst that something is wrong but haven’t quite pinpointed what yet. I understand it is more persistent because it often comes from stuff I have been suppressing just below the surface of my conscious awareness. 7⁠–⁠10 An increasing anxiety and/or depression that comes with not facing and dealing with stuff. I recognize this often explodes in different areas of life.

Building useful long-term thoughts into habits and detoxing toxic thoughts and traumas through directed neuroplasticity requires time and hard work and needs to be done regularly, as an ongoing process. When you finish working on one issue, you will begin working on the next issue—detoxing your mind is a lifestyle.

Limit the time you spend detoxing toxic habits and trauma to around seven to thirty minutes a day because of the toll this process can have on you emotionally, mentally, and physically.

be really effective in creating change, do the Active Reach at least seven times each day until day 63. For the first twenty-one days, I recommend taking around seven to thirty minutes total per day for all of the 5 Steps, or around one and a half to five minutes per step. This is what it looks like: Day 1 Gather: 1.5–5 minutes Reflect: 1.5–5 minutes Write: 1.5–5 minutes Recheck: 1.5–5 minutes Active Reach: 1.5–5 minutes Day 2–21: same timing as day 1 Day 22–63: about 1–7 minutes a day

Some helpful tips to keep you motivated through the sixty-three days: Always remember there is a defined and finite time period: seven to thirty minutes per day at most. Find an accountability partner. Practice self-compassion and patience. Don’t try to do too much in one day! Make it fun. Tie in little rewards each day. Remind yourself of the physical benefits from doing the mental work. Look back at the review of my clinical trial to remind yourself of all the benefits of the 5 Steps. This may be a good tool to use with your therapist if you have one.

Benchmark Days in the 63-Day Cycle As you go through this 63-day process, there are benchmark days that can motivate you and help you get through the thought you’re detoxing or building. These specific benchmarks are at days 7, 14, 21, and 63. Knowing a little about the timing of these benchmarks and what’s happening in your brain at each one can help you push through the hard times and achieve true and lasting change in your life as you use the 5 Steps, just as seeing the difference in your body after a hard training regimen can motivate you to continue on. On day 1, you’ll experience a type of apprehensive excitement as conscious awareness builds with self-regulation and awareness. At first, the prefrontal cortex (executive function) has controlled high-beta bursts of energy as you begin to focus and a nice pattern of low-beta as your awareness increases. The amygdala (emotional perceptions) and hippocampus (memory conversion) have a lot of low-beta energy and coherent bursts of high-beta, theta, and gamma as thoughts with embedded memories are being recalled—even delta is high as suppressed thoughts are being activated. Then, as processing takes place, gamma increases and peaks, which means learning begins taking place a little each day (the neuroplastic changes happening in the brain). You’re starting to positively affect the architecture of the brain—you’re starting to push the structural changes in your brain in the direction you want them to go. By day 4, the increa...

Remember, neuroplastic change, whether in a negative or a positive direction, also follows a definitive time line. I can’t say this often enough: it takes twenty-one days to build a long-term thought and then another forty-two days to automatize that thought. An automatized thought is one that impacts your behavior, and therefore we can say it’s a habit. That is why it takes sixty-three days to form a habit.

Again, for twenty-one days you build a new thought, then for another forty-two days you practice using what you have built.

So, what is forgetting? Forgetting can happen anywhere along the 63-day cycle. If you don’t think as deeply or regularly about something, or if you stop thinking about it completely, the synapse will lose energy and strength.

It’s incredibly important to remember that whether information gets stored in the dendrites or not depends on how intentionally you think about something; that is, how much time and effort you expend thinking about it.

The mind is just like a muscle—the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand. IDOWU KOYENIKAN

In fact, brain-building is so important that it’s one of the first things I would train my patients to do, whatever their specific need was. It’s a powerful tool; my early research showed up to 75 percent improvement in academic, cognitive, social, emotional, and intellectual function when people were taught how to build their brain and harness deep, intellectual thought.

When feeling stuck, try the following brain-building boosters: Question how high your bar for originality is. Keep in mind there is nothing new, just new ways of saying things. As you read and learn more, you’ll realize there are common messages throughout; people just say them in different and unique ways. Have an experimental mindset, which means to explore, test, analyze results, pivot if it doesn’t work, and repeat. Be an infinite learner always. Read fiction and nonfiction (fiction is especially great for boosting creativity and problem-solving abilities), listen to podcasts, engage in tough conversations, travel. Be open to any and all opportunities. Be open to the yes. If something sounds remotely interesting, pursue it. Don’t fall into the trap of having to be great at something to try it. Embrace the opportunity to learn. Remember: every great athlete was not great in the beginning and had to learn. Be prepared to have those difficult conversations—you can learn so much from these. Get comfortable agreeing to disagree.

When you find yourself becoming defensive or trying to distract away the awareness, lean in to what you may be trying to avoid. It will be ugly and messy, but if you don’t address it, it will just stay ugly and messy.

Trauma comes in three forms: acute trauma, big “T” trauma, and little “t” trauma.

You could also try this helpful grounding technique exercise, which will help center your mind when things feel overwhelming and stressful: Acknowledge five things you see around you. Acknowledge four things you can you touch around you. Acknowledge three things you can hear. Acknowledge two things you can smell. Acknowledge one thing you can taste.

Facing the pain and pushing through it with people we love and trust is the only way to get through—we aren’t meant to do it alone!

Secondary trauma often produces compassion fatigue.

I want to stress that any type of trauma or adverse experience is something that needs to be addressed, not suppressed. Do not let shame or guilt keep you from healing.

The important thing to remember is that a suppressed trauma in the nonconscious mind can cause mental damage to your psyche and damage to your brain.

Four Helpful Techniques for Active Reaches to Process Trauma As you progress forward in time through the shock of acute trauma—one hour later, one day later, and so on—here are four useful techniques you can practice as Active Reaches:

Adopt a possibilities mindset.

A Neurocycle Life Hack to End a Worry Spiral Trauma that is not dealt with can lead to a worry spiral. If you have experienced something traumatic, such as a car accident, every time you get in a car you may find yourself worrying it may happen again; terrible events can shape how we see and interact with the world. This is part of the whole post-traumatic stress cycle, so here’s a quick 5-Step hack to get the worry under control in the moment so you can focus on dealing with the root thought. 1. Gather. Gather awareness of what you are worrying about. Get into MPA mode as you look for the physical, emotional, and informational warning signals of your thoughts. As you observe the emotional and physical feelings from the worry, acknowledge them and start becoming aware of how you feel objectively, as if the emotions are in a box or behind a window in a building (see chapter 9). 2. Reflect. Imagine getting the emotional and informational memories of the worries out of your head and putting them into a box. The idea is to put the toxic worry into the box or window; you are on the outside looking in. You can’t climb into the window or box—it’s completely inaccessible—but you have power over whatever is in that window or box. Now, ask, answer, and discuss with yourself whether what you’re worrying about will really happen. Is this worry based on fact or on assumptions? What can you control in this situation? Can you make some kind of plan to work on this worry later on? In the ...

Practice temporal distancing.

Put the situation in a historical context.

Think of a movie or show you have seen or book you have read that may remind you of your situation.

It’s not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it. HANS SELYE

If you’re constantly stressed during the day, and you don’t take the time to organize your thinking and reboot the brain, this can affect your sleeping patterns at night.

Exercise can improve all areas of cognitive function, including mood, thinking, learning, and memory, especially with age.

A thought that’s established is a thought that’s gone through the cycle of being built into long-term memory and automatized over time, which happens over a period of around sixty-three days. Most of the time we aren’t even consciously aware that we’re building toxic thoughts into toxic habits—until we start acting on them on a regular basis and find they’re affecting our mental health, physical health, and relationships.

Here are some helpful tips to alert you to a toxic habit: You repeatedly hear the same critique from those closest to you. You find yourself needing to be extra defensive about a certain thing you did or said. You resonate with an insecurity you’ve noticed in someone else and have tried to fix it in them. As you develop your self-regulatory skills through using the 5 Steps, you become aware of toxic habits you have developed. You notice a pattern of people reacting negatively to something you’ve said or done. You notice a pattern as you start keeping a journal or thought diary.

Belly breathing is easy to do and very relaxing. Try this basic exercise anytime you need to relax or relieve stress. Sit or lie flat in a comfortable position. Put one hand on your belly, just below your ribs, and the other hand on your chest. Take a deep breath in through your nose and let your belly push your hand out. Your chest should not move. Breathe out through pursed lips as if you were whistling. Feel the hand on your belly go in and use it to press all the air out. Do this breathing three to ten times. Take your time with each breath. Notice how you feel at the end of the exercise.

no toxic habit is harmless.

Prioritize your toxic habits and select the most dominant one to work on first.

When I experience the physical trigger of ___________, I will tell myself ___________ and choose to feel ___________.