 Matt Diavella is an amazing, amazing filmmaker here on the YouTube platform. He also has a really awesome podcast. If you don't know who he is, he talks a lot about minimalism and just improving your life and everything like that. And recently he opened up about his struggles with anxiety and there is a ton that we can learn from it. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. If you're new to my channel, what I like to do is take different topics going on in the YouTube community, try to see what lessons we can pull from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And something that I am extremely, extremely passionate about is mental health, alright? I was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder and depression, I'm a recovering drug addict and all that. So by the way, before we get started, I am currently writing my book right now, Rewire Your Anxiety, which will be dropping on June 29th. So make sure you're following me over on Instagram and Twitter because I'm interacting with a lot of you and I'm doing a ton of giveaways to give out free copies of this book. So follow me over on social media. I'm getting suggestions from all of you about what you want to have covered in the book. And let me know down in the comments below, as we go through this video breaking down Matt Diavilla and what he was talking about in his video, like let me know down in the comments if you could relate to any of this stuff and what kind of anxiety issues you struggle with. This is a vulnerable moment for me. I think for me it's easy to open up my vulnerabilities about things that I've done in the past and I've fixed and now I'm standing on the mountain top looking over on my past failures. And now in a lot of ways I feel like I'm currently not at a moment of failure but just at a moment of weakness and vulnerability and I wanted to just talk about my experience, what I've been going through and how I've been coping and dealing with anxiety. So this first clip right here, this is something that I can relate to so, so, so much. And I think a lot of people who are, you know, kind of not even in the public spotlight, but when we're in a position to help people, we can relate to this. And it's, you know, sharing about struggles that we're currently going through. So those of you who have been subscribed to my channel for a while now, like, you know, like as, as somebody who talks about mental health all the time on my channel, like, it's something that I'm still working on. And it's something that you're coming along on this journey with me. And like, I try to give suggestions about what helps me, but like, I can relate to what Matt's talking about. Like, you know, I share a lot of my experience about what I've overcome and what I've done and hopefully some of those tips help you. But it's difficult when I'm currently struggling with something. And I'm always second guessing myself. I'm like, how much should I let the audience know about what's going on with me, right? Like, will it hurt my credibility by saying, like, I'm struggling? And the answer that I always come up with is no. Or it's really like, who cares, right? Because I want you guys to know, like, even though I've been sober and working on my mental health for about seven years now, like, life isn't always like unicorns and rainbows. Like sometimes depression hits me hard. Like I've been diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder. Sometimes it just flares up. And I want you guys to know, like, it happens, but here's what I'm doing to cope with it. You get nervous, you get overwhelmed. You start to really overthink what's going to happen in the future. You play through every scenario to the point where it feels uncontrollable. It feels like everything's going to fall apart. And even if you wanted to relax, you couldn't. I've felt like that oftentimes throughout my life. And for the most part, I've been able to work through it. Yes. Like, let me know down in the comments if you could relate to this, like racing thoughts about the future. Like this actually happens to me sometimes at night and I can't sleep. Like it might happen to you as well. Right. Like, um, if I'm being honest, it just happened last night. Like I was super tired and, you know, I went to go lay down in bed with my beautiful girlfriend, Tristan. And she, she calms out and I was just laying there in bed and like my mind was just going about the future. It was go, go, go, go, going. Right. And something that I practice a ton, which we're going to talk about more in a second is mindfulness and meditation. Like sometimes, like I've gotten to a point where sometimes I just let my mind go, I let it go and I just observe my thoughts. Like a lot of people think that meditation is about stopping your thoughts, but it's really about noticing your thoughts. So last night I was kind of running through different scenarios and problem solving. It wasn't like necessarily freaking out about the future, but just playing out different scenarios because that's one of the things that our mind is trying to do is trying to play out different scenarios to help us plan ahead for the future. And something that I talk about in my book, Rewire Your Anxiety, is how anxiety tries to keep us safe. And one of the reasons it does that, it tries to play out different scenarios to give us ideas of how to respond when things come up and things like that. So last night I kind of laid there for a while and I just let different scenarios play out, but eventually got to a point where I'm like, okay, it's time to go to bed. Right. So what I actually did is I have a meditation app and I turn on some, it's like some ambient, like kind of rain sounds and things like that. And by being able to just kind of focus on the sounds and doing like a little body scam like that, that makes me pass right out. But sometimes just so you know, like it's good to just kind of let your thoughts go. If it's not increasing your anxiety, it's kind of good because in the process, like sometimes you figure some things out, like I figured out some plans for the future that I wouldn't have realized if I didn't just take the time to kind of just notice what was going on in my brain. No, but I get nervous. I do my palms do get sweaty and I am just every time there's a sound on the plane, every time there's a bump, every time I hear a beep of the intercom, I'm like, this is it. The plane's going down. This is extremely common. All right. So not just for when you're on a plane, like Matt was talking about, but this is very common where like when when you're anxious, like you're on just like this heightened alert, right? And another chapter in rewire your anxiety is about the biology and I discussed like the evolutionary psychology behind it and why we've evolved and have anxiety and one of them is because back in the day, like we had to be worried about like lions and tigers or woolly mammoths or whatever, like attacking us. So when anxiety kicks in, we're on like high alert and we notice every single sound, like when he talks about his hands being sweaty and everything like that, like the body will make you start sweating because it's preparing to cool you down if you've got to run away because our brain thinks that maybe we're going to be attacked by something we've got to take off and that's why we might start breathing faster so we can get more oxygen in our bloodstream and everything like that. But we notice like a lot of things. It's almost like a superpower like when it goes into that mode, I sat down with Nat and it was kind of tough for me to even bring this up to her because I felt like I felt like an idiot. I felt like that I was this was all in my head and I felt embarrassed and ashamed to be having these feelings or these thoughts. And I told Nat and she helped to reassure me and calm me down and she told me that the apartment almost certainly was not killing me, although she would keep that option open if that was the case. So one thing I want to add right there, like, it's awesome. Like Matt Diavella talks about how he was able to talk to his partner about what was going on like absolutely. Like I am so grateful for my beautiful girlfriend Tristan and we're able to talk like she will listen to me and I can talk to her about what's going on in my mind and like it helps process things and get to the bottom of it. Right. But what I would suggest as well is therapy. If you have the resources for therapy, like one of the reasons I'm writing my book is because some people don't have the resources for therapy. Even though I'm not a therapist, the book is largely about things that I've learned, things that have helped me or things that have helped others. Right. But anyways, a therapist can really help you out if you're struggling with anxiety because sometimes we have different triggers that we're unaware of that might be stemming from something that happened in childhood. Right. Like I personally use therapy and being able to like talk through things and discuss like different patterns. Like all of a sudden you just kind of have what they call like a breakthrough and you're like, oh, when I was a kid, I always dealt with this and it made me really afraid. And now this is what it looks like as I'm an adult and that's why it's affecting me today. So yes, absolutely. How to support system who you can talk to, but just know that therapy is really there to help you get down to like the root of it. Right. Like once I figured out some things that stemmed from my childhood, I was able to acknowledge it a lot better and realize I'm in a new chapter of my life and cope with things and be like, OK, that was something I had to worry about as a child that kept me safe and protected. But now as an adult, it's not it's not as dangerous. I have better coping skills. It's still there. It's gotten more mild as the days have gone on. I've found ways that have helped me get through it, just rebuilding my routine, getting back to work has certainly helped. Now, if you struggle with anxiety, let me know if you can relate to this as well. But what Matt Diivello is talking about is like sometimes just our routine being thrown off. Right. So we talked about how he was recently on a trip. He just moved into a new place and everything like that. And he goes on to talk about how he had to start getting back in the routine. But when things are thrown off, like we get messed up like something that I asked all of you on Instagram and Twitter as I'm getting ideas for the book and topics that you want me to discuss, I asked the other day about do you have control issues? Because what I found personally with my anxiety and a lot of other people I talk to, it's about control. Right. So a lot of people who get anxious, we have certain routines. We have certain things that we do. Right. And then when that kind of gets thrown off, it can send us into a spiral. So what Matt Diivello like noticed was, oh, OK, I'm going through something else in my life. Maybe this is maybe this is causing it. So when this happens, it's good to kind of sit down when your mind isn't going a billion miles a minute when you're talking to somebody and recognize like, did anything change in your life? It's anything going on because sometimes we think something is very tiny and isn't really going to affect us. Right. But as we talk through it, we're like, wow, that actually impacted me a little bit more than I realized. And then it's going to the gym. It's finding the things every day that make me feel like my life is grounded and rooted meditation. All these things have really helped me, but I'm not totally through or out of the woods yet. Now, Matt talks about like all the different things that he did, like you started going, you know, back to the gym and meditating and everything like that. And this is important. Like this is so important. And it's one of the goals that I try to give to everybody, like just have a toolbox, like have a toolbox of all these different options to treat your mental health. One of my personal favorites is obviously like mindfulness and meditation. It helps a ton. Right. But if it's exercise or if it's like, you know, hell, I got like a coloring book one time and I was like feeling anxious and I just started coloring. It was a Bob's Burgers coloring book. It's pretty awesome. But anyways, like have different things that you can turn to because like what I always try to teach people is like we don't prepare for a fire during the fire, right? We have fire drills, right? So it's good to be proactive about your mental health. So when something happens, when you start to feel that panic or that anxiety, you have things that you can turn to that will help you. I am partially thankful for having this experience because it gives me a bit of empathy and compassion. Help a lot of compassion and empathy for other people who go through this, who go through it to a more severe extent than I have. And it also reassures me to know that if I'm able to get through this one time, I can do it again in the future. I can hopefully better learn to cope with these kinds of environmental changes. All right, right there. That's the last thing I want to talk about. Like that's so awesome. Like this is why Matt Diavila is the guy, all right? Like he talks about the gratitude for that experience in a couple of different ways. One of them, which I can relate to so, so, so much is the resilience, right? And what I mean by that is like once you get through something, you now have evidence, you have proof that you can get through it again. Like something that helps me so much whenever I'm going through it is looking back on my life and thinking about all the things that I've been through. And I'm like, OK, what I'm going through now is a cakewalk compared to that. Like seven years ago, I had a 10% chance of living because of my drug and alcohol addiction, right? Like I've been through a ton. I lost everything, you know? So today, like sometimes things feel huge, but I'm like, wait, I've been through works before. So one of the biggest suggestions I can give to all of you is just when you're going through it, like remember, and this is one of the reasons why journaling is great or even a mood tracker is great. There's a bunch of apps, like free apps that you can get to like to just log it because sometimes when our mind is racing, like we can't tap into those memories. Like we feel like we're always going to be anxious or we're always going to be depressed. Everything's always going to be terrible. But when you have like a journal or a mood tracking app or something like that, you can look back and say, oh, wait, this day I had this, right? And it was a great day. Or you can look back and say, OK, the last time this was happening, here's what helped me out. All right, like you kind of got to be your own little, like scientific researcher with your own mental health and see what works for you and go back through the data and see what works. But the second thing that he's talking about with that gratitude is empathy. All right. And like that's so, so, so huge, especially with the stigma about mental health issues, anxiety, depression, right? Like people with anxiety, like other people might tell them, like, oh, just calm down or you're depressed. Like, oh, just cheer up, right? And once you go through something, it opens up your eyes. And that's something that I'm very grateful for as well. Like all the struggles that I've been through, it allows me to help people because I know what it's like. You know what I mean? Like this is an issue that I've had. Some people tell me that they've had with therapists or psychologists, right? Like, although they are very well educated in techniques in different forms of therapy, like they've never personally been through it. So they don't have as much empathy as they could, right? But when I'm talking with somebody, when I'm having a one-on-one with somebody, like I can really, really relate to it. All right. And just know everything that you've been through and you've survived can then be used to help somebody else. And it's freaking awesome. But anyways, I'm so glad that Matt made this video, like, and go check out Matt Diavolo's channel. It is awesome. He is an amazing, amazing filmmaker. I absolutely love his stuff. But anyways, let me know down in the comments below, like, if you can relate to any of these topics when it comes to anxiety, what helps you cope? All those things, like, let's have a conversation down in the comments below. All right. But anyways, don't forget, follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at The Rewired Soul because Rewire Your Anxiety is coming out in just a couple of weeks. And I'm giving away a ton of free copies and getting ideas from you and all that good stuff. All right. But that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You're all amazing. And all of you beautiful patrons out there, don't forget that a lot of you do get free copies of the book already so you don't have to buy one, so don't worry. All right. If you want to become a patron, by the way, there's a link right there. All right. Thanks again so, so much for watching. I'll see you next time.