Transform your understanding of anxiety and reclaim your creativity with insights from Dr. Peters’ book, “A Path Through the Jungle.” In this mini-series, we’ll unlock the secrets of the impulsive chimp mind and explore how our subconscious beliefs shape our responses. Discover practical tools to develop positive helpful autopilots that reinforce empowering beliefs, and reduce anxiety over time.

“Helpful Autopilots” phrases are given throughout this episode.

“A Path through the Jungle” can be purchased on Amazon:  https://a.co/d/4hx7M7M

See more about Dr. Peters at https://chimpmanagement.com

 

About Dr. Liz

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

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Do you have Chronic Insomnia? Find out more about Dr. Liz’s Better Sleep Program at https://bit.ly/sleepbetterfeelbetter

Search episodes at the Podcast Page http://bit.ly/HM-podcast

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A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work

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Transcript

Hey, hey everyone. Dr Liz, here we are continuing a little mini-series maybe bigger than that, but we’ll see Based on the book A Path Through the Jungle by Dr Peters, with an S, p-e-t-e-r-s. Now, the first episode I did this is hm 313 313. So if you haven’t heard that one and you went more in the background, go back and listen to that one. But I’m going to give you the brief overview here so that you’re not completely lost.

If you’re like I don’t know, dr liz, okay, we have a chimp and we have a human. The chimp is the monkey mind in and it just throws around a lot of shit at us and it signals when there’s a problem. It basically tells our human solve it, solve it, solve it. It continues to send the message in not-so-pleasant ways. It’ll send us negative emotions until we solve it. The human is informed by two things the chimp sending the message as well as our programming, and our programming is our beliefs, our subconscious beliefs, and we have three different types. We have helpful autopilots that help us out. So these are good, positive thoughts. Like you can handle this, you can adapt, you’ve done amazing things in your life. That’s a good autopilot. So let’s just pause here.

If you’re not keeping a success journal, I highly suggest one, either electronic, although I suggest like a nice little notebook that’s actually paper where you write down successes nice little notebook that’s actually paper where you write down successes. One that I wrote down recently was when my Cuban friend told me that this was the best vaca frita he had ever had and I had made it. Okay, vaca frita is like this beef dish that’s a Cuban dish I don’t make mine with a tomato base, just in case you know what that is. And he said actually I usually avoid vaca frita because I don’t typically like it, but this is delicious, it is the best I’ve ever had. And I was like I am totally writing that down in my success journal. That is huge.

When I first married my Cuban ex-husband, I didn’t even like to cook really. So that’s huge. I made it for my daughter, my 19 year old, because it’s one of the few things that she could eat without getting really sick and nauseous. So anyway, success journal, helpful autopilots. They often will come from your success journal If you’re tracking them, if you’re paying attention to them.

Two other subconscious beliefs are unhelpful gremlins and unhelpful goblins. The goblins are worse than the gremlins. The goblins are these deeper subconscious beliefs that say I’m a loser, I’m worthless, I’ll never get anywhere in my life. I’m a loser, I’m worthless, I’ll never get anywhere in my life. Gremlins are not so bad. They’re like okay, I did awful.

Or you know people say I’m an idiot all the time. But they’ll add a bet to it. But at least I did the best I could. But that’s still a gremlin. I’m an idiot, it’s still a gremlin. Like, I say that all the time to myself and sometimes it’s true Okay, like I went to go buy something.

And everyone knows, measure twice, measure three times. Right, that’s more from like construction before you cut, measure, measure twice, cut once. But still, when you’re buying stuff, you got to measure too. And I did not measure and I got home and it didn’t fit and I was like I’m a total idiot. But the helpful autopilot kicked in. But it’s okay, you’re handling a lot of things now and you can return this and buy the right size. Great, that’s the helpful autopilot.

All right, I think many, many years passed that would not have happened. That second part. I would have just felt stupid and believed I was stupid too, maybe believed I can’t get anything right. I would say that’s probably a unhelpful gremlin that I had in my past that is no longer active. Hasn’t been for a long time. Okay, so that’s the very brief summary of the whole last episode.

We try to change those negative beliefs into helpful autopilots and then those inform our human and the human solves the problem that the chimp is throwing at it In a positive way. The chimp always wants to solve in a negative way. Actually, it doesn’t really solve at all, it really can’t but it starts to act out and do things that it thinks is solving. But really that negative behavior is simply just to get the attention of our human, who can then go in and make a reasonable decision for us. That has some positive outcomes. It doesn’t sabotage ourself.

Okay, so we’re going to talk more about anxiety this week because I said we would at the end of that episode Anxiety what is helpful? All right, let’s do a little background on anxiety here. We know from brain studies that your brain becomes sensitized to anxiety over time. If it’s not handled, anxiety gets progressively worse. Or if it’s not treated, it gets progressively worse and your brain starts to set it off more and more frequently in reaction to smaller and smaller things, something that looks like nothing to someone without anxiety will look huge to someone with anxiety.

That’s where you sometimes get this disconnect, where they’re like what, what are you anxious about? Like a disbelief kind of voice, because they don’t understand that your brain is truly being affected by the anxiety. Mainly it affects the hippocampus, which is emotional processing, the anterior cingulate, which is affect regulation, that’s, the ability to control and manage uncomfortable emotions. So our actual emotional regulation decreases if we don’t handle anxiety and the amygdala, which is that fight or flight freeze, the fear and anger creativity center. It affects all of that.

So when it’s getting progressively worse, we’re getting less creative. Literally we can come up with less solutions. And when it’s treated, it gets progressively better. You become more creative, more courageous, more confident, more able to handle whatever the temp is throwing your way without setting off anxiety. So these are pretty incredible brain studies that they do regarding anxiety and I think it’s so interesting because I see it. I see it in my practice all the time, being an anxiety specialist.

People at the beginning cannot come up with solutions, helpful autopilots, they just feel stuck. They really do and they are. Their brain is stuck. But when they begin to get better, then they start to come up with creative solutions, creative thoughts, creative statements to say to themselves, support statements, helpful autopilots to say themselves. So that’s, it’s an immediate and concrete evidence of creativity returning.

Now according to A Path Through the Jungle if there’s not an immediate danger, anxiety is not dangerous. It’s just unpleasant and inconvenient. And we have to ask what gremlin or goblin is active? So we ask that, okay, is there an immediate danger? Am I in danger here? If not, then this is not dangerous. But it’s really unpleasant.

And again, our brains try to trick us and make us think that something that’s not dangerous is dangerous. So we have to talk back to our brain. If we always believed our brains like 100% of the time, we would be in some deep doo-doo. Okay, my brain is not accurate, all the time is not accurate. So we learn over time. Okay, those thoughts aren’t always accurate. Let’s choose the ones that are more helpful to us. Let’s choose the ones that are going to help me in this situation. Let’s choose the thoughts that can soothe the chimp, that can make friends with the chimp, that can reassure the chimp, because the chimp needs some attention here.

Because, remember, the chimp doesn’t look for solutions, it just tries to tell you about the problem or uses avoidance okay, to escape the situation, to get away from the problem.

Don’t include avoidance as part of your plan. If there’s not an immediate danger, okay. I’m not talking about domestic violence here. Avoidance is the primary thing you should do. With domestic violence, we’re a dangerous situation. We’re not stepping into dangerous situations here. We are using avoidance. We try to avoid dangerous situations whenever we can. Why? Because we have a survival drive, a safety drive. So we’re not talking about that. We’re just simply talking about things that are not so dangerous. But we have stop avoiding, like lizards.

I know you probably weren’t expecting me to say lizards. At one point, my niece from Texas came to visit me and she was a teenager at the time and she was terrified of lizards. Now there are lizards all over South Florida. We are warm okay, lizards love us. You can literally go weeks, months seeing a lizard almost every day. Okay, they’re in the house, they’re on the walls, they’re in the sidewalks. The cats bring them in Okay, they are everywhere. These are little lizards about the size of your finger, you know, and I’m including people who have all kinds of different size hands here. Okay, but really that’s the variation. We’re talking about small lizards, and so she was terrified of them and so we had to walk through this process of like these are not an immediate danger to you. Your brain is lying to you about this and we’re going to have to do something more helpful for you. We’re going to ignore the lizards or we’re going to tell ourselves something different about the lizards. Okay, so that’s what I’m talking about. No immediate danger. There’s no lizards attacking her, all right.

And we’re not talking about iguanas. That’s a whole different thing, although I had multiple iguanas come into my house over the years to get warm when it, when the temperature would drop and, believe me, I do not like iguanas in my house they were always met with the scream in the broom. Anyway, talking about lizards here. Now, what’s helpful for anxiety? We’re getting closer to the helpful stuff here.

We recognize anxiety as a message that isn’t always accurate. Sometimes it is ghost messages is what we call that sometimes so they’re no longer relevant. Maybe at some point they were relevant to us to keep us safe, but they aren’t anymore.

We manage the physical symptoms.

We change our language and how we talk to ourselves, and we work on thought switching by choosing a support statement or two. Again, I talked about the support statements in the last episode. We’re going to review some more in this episode.

So, ideas for managing physical symptoms there’s the less active ones and then there’s the more active ones. Less active is often what the internet recommends for anxiety Meditation, slow breathing, journaling, progressive muscle relaxation. Hypnosis is often a less active one. You’re just lying there listening to stuff. Sometimes that’s what’s needed and you have to figure that out for yourself. Sometimes finding someplace quiet is needed. Other times you need something more active. That depends on the energy of the anxiety. More active is some active yoga, not like yoga nidra, where you’re just laying there. Okay, foam rolling exercise, music, dancing, distracting yourself with social media, fun videos, movies. Sometimes making a list or writing it out is something more active. Often. That can go on either side of it. Don’t think about just the more meditative ones. Also think about is something active needed here? That’s how we manage physical symptoms.

Sometimes you know we’re too anxious to do some kind of breathing exercise. It’s just not going to work. You have to bring your anxiety down enough to be able to of breathing exercise. It’s just not going to work. You have to bring your anxiety down enough to be able to even do that.

All right, we change our language and how we talk to ourself and our chimp. We keep our chimp front and center here. The chimp is throwing the anxiety at us and we have to decide. Is this message accurate? Are they sending me an accurate message? And we have to decide is this message accurate? Are they sending me an accurate message? We’re not. If not, if there’s no immediate danger here, then we decide to stop the anxiety producing thoughts or images and we give ourselves positive statements.

We can even say them out loud, or what they call sub vocalize, or just say them really quietly to yourself. I won’t give the example on the podcast because you won’t hear me. You’ll like turn down your volume and be like what happened to the volume? Just say it really quietly to yourself. You can look at handouts that you gather. There’s all kinds of worksheets you can do that. You can find online even.

Obviously, if you’re working with me or you’re working with a therapist, then probably you have some worksheets or some handouts that they’ve given you, although that’s not always the case. Sometimes people will come to me and they’ve been through many therapists and I always ask did you just talk or did they do any handouts or worksheets with you? And more times than I can count they say no, we just talked and it wasn’t very helpful. I was like okay, in my practice we talk and we do handouts and worksheets because sometimes you really need something to look at and hold when you’re anxious, because your mind just sort of goes out, it goes out the window, it leaves the bus and then you’re like okay, what do I do now? Pull out your worksheets, you pull out a handout, you pull out the statement, the support statement that you wrote down during session to help yourself, and you put it somewhere that’s handy for you so that when you’re anxious you could know what to do.

All right, we choose support statements, like I just said, and these support statements become helpful autopilots instead of gremlins or goblins. The gremlins and goblins will pop up and be like oh my god, you’re such a basket case. That’s a gremlin. Oh my god, you’re never going to get it together. You’re such a loser. That’s a goblin. It’s a little bit deeper right. It’s attacking you as a person. You had an awful day and you’re gonna get fired at work and you’re never gonna hold a job. I could be either one in gremlin or goblin. So you Recognize these and you combat them now. You can combat them various ways, but support statements are a good way to combat them.

When you’re talking about deeper beliefs, like I said on the previous episode, often hypnosis helps heal and change those deeper beliefs. So if you find that the cognitive stuff isn’t working, the thought switching isn’t working for you, find someone in your area that does hypnosis or reach out to me if that’s appropriate. I work mostly in the US, europe, canada, some South America, mostly in those areas. But honestly, anyone trained who’s a good practitioner of hypnosis will totally want to help you. If you’re like I’d like to change some deeper beliefs, believe me, it’s a dream statement for a hypnotherapist to hear You’re like, yeah, we’re on it. Okay, great, that’s all what we’re all about. Deeper beliefs Okay.

So common support statements.

That thought isn’t helpful right now. It’s a really good one for anxiety. Now is not the time to think about it. I can think about it later. Sometimes that’s possible, sometimes it’s not. So you don’t want to pick that one if you feel like that’s not possible. This feels threatening and urgent, but it really isn’t.

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that I recently moved from South Florida. I’ve been living over 30 years up to North Florida. This created some conflict in my marriage. Just because you’re dealing with a lot of things Packing, movers, selling a house, finding a new place to live Like it’s a lot to deal with and my husband had driven the truck up the day before with all this stuff and then I and my 19-year-old had come in the car the following day with the two cats. It’s about a five to six hour drive from South florida, north florida, where we’re going jacksonville, and so I’d been in the car for you know, quite a while with the two cats and the anxious teenager and not listening to music because that would hurt the cat’s ears.

Okay, I pull up, we unload the car, we are talking about whether we should return the truck or not and finally we decide to go ahead and return the truck that day instead of the next day and I drive him to drop off the truck and then, of course, I’m going to drive him home and in the car he brings up a conflict that we’ve been having and I looked at him and was like this is not the time, like I have been here a couple of hours, I just drove the entire day with two cats and an anxious teenager. Like I can’t do this right now. But I knew in his mind it felt urgent, what would have really really helped him the support statement that says this feels threatening and urgent, but it really isn’t. This can wait. And later he apologized and said his timing was really bad and I said, uh, yeah, really bad.

Okay, the gotmans um are very famous couples therapists who train therapists to do couples therapy and have for like 30 years or something and they talk about timing all the time how timing can be really bad and then create a whole different argument in a couple than the one they’re really trying to solve. This was definitely a case of that. But I’ve worked really hard on my own emotional regulation and I think in the past, meaning like 10 or 15 years ago, I would have reacted very poorly to that. I would have gotten really upset and angry, maybe even started crying or yelling or something like that. But that’s no longer me, hasn’t been for a very long time. So I just said this really isn’t the time for that. I really can’t talk about that right now. I am exhausted. You know I’m sorry. It feels urgent to you but it’s going to have to wait. That’s an example of that.

Right, I know the anxiety going off in someone’s head often and what they’re thinking, but it’s like all right, let’s find a supportive statement for you. Let’s find a helpful autopilot Another one it’s good practice to let go of this worry. I want to practice Every single moment. I am getting better and better. You can go to the spiritual. I’m living this life and I’m on a journey and this is part of my journey. That’s a spiritual statement. Maybe I don’t like this part of my journey, but I am working through this. I’m finding some help for this. Just listening to this podcast is finding some help for this. I am finding my help. I am learning as I go. I’m getting better each and every day. I learn different things all the time to help me reduce anxiety in my life. I’m creating rapid positive results that magically defy anyone else’s limitations of me and my healing. That’s actually on my list.

I like that one a lot. You can imagine not a whole lot of people do, but I like it. I am more than this body. I’m an eternal being, perfect and whole. I’m more than this physical experience. I can change this physical experience meaning like I can go for a walk, I can do some breathing. I can change this physical experience meaning like I can go for a walk, I can do some breathing, I can go for a run, like whatever you need to do to change that physical experience. So these are just some.

People come up with their own all the time. It has to be something you believe, that is believable to you. So maybe you don’t believe it a hundred percent, maybe it’s step by step, but you believe it enough that when you say it you’re like okay, I think that’s true. I think that may be true. It’s not an outright rejection, like that’s not true and it’s never going to be true. We don’t want that. We want one that you think you can believe.

When you handle a difficult situation, give your chimp a banana, because chimps love bananas. When you find yourself in a very anxious state and you work through some worksheets and you identify the thoughts and you identify the gremlins, maybe a goblin, and then you go to a supportive statement and you find that you have changed your state. The anxiety did come down. Maybe it didn’t, but you did everything you could to try to help yourself. Give your chimp a banana, a small reward, whatever that is for you or can be in the moment. Maybe you plan the reward for the next day or later. Try to give your chimp a small reward even in the moment. Maybe you plan the reward for the next day or later. Try to give your your chimp a small reward even in the moment.

Speaking of moving, I had made these plans in my planner and set the goal last year and I have a note to self in here for the emotional, because I knew this move was not just practical, it’s going to be very emotional. So I have a note to self and it says remember to ask what’s my plan and what’s my plan to help my chimp. That’s a really important one. What’s my plan to help my chimp? What’s my plan to help that part of my brain that wants to freak out? So I wrote down a couple of items to help my chimp. Okay, so this is not just stuff I teach, this is stuff I apply to my own life. Like I said in the other podcast, this book has been life-changing, and that starts with me. If I feel like, oh, it’s life-changing, then I’m going to share the information, not just with my clients, but on my podcast as well. All right, people, I’m going to wrap it up here. I hope you are healthy and safe. I hope some of this has been helpful and I’m going to give you a helpful autopilot right here.

I can’t guarantee that it was helpful to anyone, but I tried to make my best effort and organize it and present it in a way that makes sense from an audio perspective. I really do wish you could see the handout and the visuals. I happen to be very visual, so that’s helpful for me, but I made my best attempt with the audio. You know, when I first started recording the podcast, I used to record the episodes like multiple, multiple times because I just felt like ugh, I didn’t get them right. I got to redo this and then, as I’ve been going, I’m coming up on nine years now or something. I started it in 2016 and this is 2025. Yeah, nine years.

Sometimes I do re-record them if they’re really disorganized, because sometimes I have to speak it out loud to get the organization down. I’ve just learned that’s my process over time, but these days. I don’t do the like five recordings anymore, it’s one to two and then I think that’s good enough. It’s not perfect. I probably missed some things in there. I sometimes wish it was better, but it’s good enough for this week and I hope it helps somebody. This may sound different, because I’m recording this a little bit later. I realized I didn’t tell you that we are going to cover panic attacks as well in this series. This one was on anxiety, but panic attacks are a different level of anxiety, so that’s coming up. All right, everyone, I hope you’re healthy and safe Peace.

Transcribed by https://podium.page