Stop Running From Anxiety - How to Tell Normal Stress from Unhealthy Anxiety and Find Peace Over Panic
Episode Notes
Most of us think the goal is to get rid of anxiety.
But what if the key isn’t fighting it - it's understanding it?
This week, Dr. Alison talks with Dr. Bethany Teachman, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Virginia and director of the PACT Lab, about what healthy anxiety looks like, why it’s actually useful, and how to stop letting it run your life.
Dr. Teachman explains how to know when anxiety is becoming a problem and shares practical ways to calm anxious thoughts, build resilience, and approach your fears with curiosity instead of control. She says,
“Anxiety is uncomfortable, but it’s not dangerous, when you stop treating it like a threat, it loses its power over you.”
They also dive into how technology impacts anxiety - why doom-scrolling keeps us trapped in fear, and how digital tools, when used intentionally, can actually support mental health and resilience.
In this episode, we cover:
- The difference between healthy anxiety and unhealthy anxiety
- How to recognize when your threat response doesn’t match the situation
- Why trying to “get rid” of anxiety often makes it worse
- How reframing challenges as opportunities builds resilience
- Using technology intentionally to support your mental health
Resources Mentioned
- TYDE (Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment) — A University of Virginia initiative co-directed by Dr. Teachman focused on youth, technology, and mental health.
- MindTrails — A suite of digital and mobile interventions designed to help people manage anxiety and increase access to care, including.
I recently had the joy of joining my friend Steve Macchia from Leadership Transformations on The Discerning Leader Podcast. We talked about the deeper work of spiritual formation and what it means to lead from a centered and discerning heart. Leadership Transformations has been a shaping influence in my own journey—especially through their Emmaus program, a two-year cohort that deeply formed me in the practices of formational leadership. If you’d like to receive ongoing encouragement for your own soul—weekly reflections and practices for deepening your formation, discernment, and renewal—I recommend subscribing to their free weekly email, PATHWAYS, at leadershiptransformations.org/pathways.
📥 Grab your 3 free Boundaries For Your Soul resources here
📥 Download Alison’s free printable with the five boundary tools when you sign up for her weekly email.
If you liked this episode, you’ll love:
Episode 129: Understanding Your Anxiety
Episode 54: Can I Pray My Anxiety Away?
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT:
What is a healthy understanding of anxiety and at what point does anxiety become a
problem? Anxiety is uncomfortable but not dangerous. The level of danger is not
matching our threat response and our anxiety response. We can learn to recognize that
things can be challenges rather than threats. It completely shifts how we respond to
them.
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You. Today,
we have an incredible conversation with a renowned expert on anxiety, Dr.
Bethany Teachman. She's a leading researcher whose work sits right at the intersection
of psychology, technology, technology, and emotional health. She's a professor of
clinical psychology at the University of Virginia, where Bethany directs the program
for anxiety, cognition, and treatment. It's called the PACT Lab. And today,
you're going to hear just her take on what anxiety is, how it affects all of us,
how we learn to regulate anxiety and understand the difference between normal,
healthy anxiety, and the kind of anxiety that begins to debilitate us and take over
our lives. She talks about the thoughts and feelings that happen beneath our
conscious awareness and how we can begin to identify them and actually take control
or command of our anxiety instead of it taking control of us. At the PAC Lab,
Bethany and her team are asking some really interesting questions. Like, why do we
get stuck in patterns of anxious thinking or avoidance? How do these loops keep us
trapped in fear that is unnecessary? And most importantly, how can we learn to
change them? And what was so fascinating to me about this conversation is they're
not just studying these questions in a lab. They're using real life people, kids,
college students. They're in conversation with them and trying to figure out how to
pair good technology with real needs to help people understand their anxiety and take
charge of it in healthy ways. Their goal is to make evidence -based interventions
more accessible to anyone who needs them. And at the end of the episode, she's
going to share with us just where you can go to find some of these resources
yourself without the big barriers that we often find with things like cost and
accessibility and transportation or even the stigma that can come with seeking mental
health care. She has some really fascinating insights into doom scrolling and social
media and some of the compulsive poll we feel to keep reading the bad news or
staying online even when it's stressing us out. Her insights are really interesting,
reminding us that technology can be a big part of the problem, but it can also
become a part of the solution when we use it intentionally. She really gets into
how we can learn to not escape our anxiety. We wouldn't want to. We actually need
it to, but to better understand it, how to regulate, how to let it work for us
instead of against us. So please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Bethany Teachman.
Dr. Alison Cook (00:31.79)
Well, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your expertise. You've got such amazing expertise on anxiety, which is just so important for all of us. So just first, I'm so thrilled that you're here.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (00:48.134)
Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Dr. Alison Cook (00:50.25)
Yeah, thanks for your time. So I would love to start, Bethany, at a really high level. One of the things I really appreciate about your work is that you normalize anxiety, that anxiety itself is not the enemy, that there's in fact a healthy level of anxiety. Could you start by kind of orienting us to what is a healthy understanding of anxiety and at what point does anxiety become
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (01:07.154)
Right.
Dr. Alison Cook (01:17.198)
a problem, whether it's for me or for my kids or for a loved one.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (01:21.21)
No, absolutely. It's a great question because anxiety is actually a very adaptive emotion. some people look at me like I'm crazy when I initially say that, because of course it doesn't feel very good, but it is our body's danger signal. So if a bear was chasing us in the wood, it'd be really good to get anxious, right? So that we can get out of the way and not be in danger's way in that sense. And the same thing comes up in our daily life, right? So anxiety serves to tell us that something is threatening and we may need to like mobilize some
resources to manage that threat. The tricky part is that beautiful alarm system that our body has sometimes goes off too often and we start to have a false alarm system. So what happens is that the level of danger
is not matching our threat response and our anxiety response. So we're overreacting to the level of actual danger in the environment and we're thinking there's danger when it's not really such a serious situation. And so when we move into the like clinical level where somebody has an anxiety disorder, that's where people are regularly having this false alarm that's going off. And we're seeing that they have a pattern of high levels of anxiety that are occurring frequently.
and that are getting in the way of them meeting their life goals. So it's really when we start to see that impairment that we really start to worry.
Dr. Alison Cook (02:44.908)
That is so helpful. I love the idea of a bear. There are times where we want that signal. So I was thinking about this interview and I was at the gym and I started going to the gym again. I haven't gone in years. have always, much of my life struggled with a certain level of social anxiety. I wouldn't have known to call it that. And there was a particular person I kept running into and I was aware, I became aware, my nervous system, and this is where I'm curious, it the...
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (03:03.004)
Sure.
Dr. Alison Cook (03:14.168)
thoughts in my mind, is it the feeling? But whatever was happening in my body was registering, I have to stop going to the gym. And I knew that was irrational. I just had to work through the awkwardness of, I'm running into somebody I know. I have to figure out how to interact with them in this space where it's out of context and I don't know, do they wanna talk to me? Do I wanna, you know? And all of that kind of ratcheted up to an over.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (03:22.673)
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (03:31.836)
Right.
Dr. Alison Cook (03:41.185)
index on I can just never go to the gym again. And I know enough right now to know, well, that's silly. You know, I just have to figure this out. But it was, I was thinking about that. I thought that that can happen to people, right? Where that, that, so what is happening inside there? What piece of that is anxiety?
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (03:46.193)
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (03:57.976)
Yeah, it all is and it's a
Dr. Alison Cook (04:01.495)
Okay.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (04:03.42)
I love the example you gave and your initial questions was is that a thought, is that a feeling, what's going on there? And the answer is it's all of the above. So the model of therapy that I tend to work from is cognitive behavioral therapy. And it starts with this kind of silly idea of a triangle and at one point is thoughts and another point is feelings and another point is behavior. And the reason is that they're all very much interconnected. And so you described your reaction as silly and I would say instead it's not silly, it's that it's sensible given the way that
Dr. Alison Cook (04:07.533)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (04:33.364)
you are responding to the situation. So whether you were perfectly conscious of it or not, you had a reaction when you saw that person at the gym of, I'm not going to know what to say, they're not going to want to talk to me, I'm going to say something really awkward, that you know, I don't know what your particular version was, but there's a flood of thoughts that happen in those situations. Now, if you take as sort of fact this idea that this person's going to evaluate me negatively, I'm going to mess this up, I'm going to be really awkward,
then it makes perfect sense that your reaction was, gotta get out of here. I don't want to go to the gym and be in this situation. Imagine instead that your reaction was, it might be a little awkward, but like I'll say hi and if it goes badly, like who really cares? The sun will come up tomorrow. Like I've had plenty of awkward conversations, right? So if we can reduce the importance of that, the likelihood that it's going to be catastrophic.
Dr. Alison Cook (05:07.404)
Yeah, yeah, good point.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (05:26.5)
then you stay at the gym. So it's not that your reaction is crazy in some way or silly, it's that because you're interpreting the situation in a certain way, because you're interpreting that physiological activation that you're having when you feel anxious, it makes you feel like you have to leave. And so if we can shift that initial like sense making of the situation, then you don't have the same feeling that you have to leave. So it's the thoughts, it's the feelings and behaviors all connected.
Dr. Alison Cook (05:50.562)
Gotcha.
So what I think I hear you saying is it's that initial reactivity or reaction, whatever that is, is in and of itself not the problem, it's how we make sense of it.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (06:05.286)
Yeah, so there is nothing wrong with getting anxious. So I'm a person who has a huge startle response and you know, my kids love to tease me and like, you know, jump scare me or whatever and I will every time have a big reaction. That's not under my control. I just do. So it was very challenging when my youngest was learning to drive. She did not want to practice with me in the car because I would have barely big reactions, right? Can't help it. But...
Dr. Alison Cook (06:11.019)
Okay.
Dr. Alison Cook (06:29.067)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (06:31.376)
What I'm able to do is recognize like, yeah, that's Bethany's jump scare reaction. It's not a sign that something is actually dangerous or that I'm under threat. So I don't escalate that alarm response. So we can't fully control all the time whether we have some alarm response.
Dr. Alison Cook (06:38.958)
Interesting.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (06:48.198)
but we can decide what we make of it and which ones we decide are meaningful alarms we want to react to and which ones we just say, okay, this is my awkward feeling at the gym, that's what happens for me, but not the end of the world because you've probably felt awkward in lots of situations. I certainly have, right? And so it's only if we think that's a terrible thing to have that experience.
Dr. Alison Cook (07:10.35)
did you get there? What are the steps from going? How do you walk people through that discernment? There's a discernment in that, right? Because it presumes that I can trust myself to know what is actually worthy of my fear response. There's danger, stranger danger, whatever it is, or, my kid who's learning how to drive is about to hit someone where I need to have a big response. And this is me.
This is just me, my system is more this way. You know, it's one thing, I guess, when you're driving in a car, kind of the examples we're giving, but there are situations, I think, where people aren't sure how to understand and trust the wisdom of their body. How do we start to build that with ourselves and with this normal anxiety that we all have?
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (07:49.362)
100%.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (08:01.732)
It's a skill and it really is a practice thing. So I talk to people about like you're building a new muscle and it's not going to be like easy and natural and all those kinds of things. But I encourage a few different strategies for people. So when you're trying to figure it out, ask, know, look around. What are others doing in that situation? What would you say to a friend in that situation? So there's things that we can do to help us recognize like where does our reaction fall on the continuum? But I actually think there's like three buckets of reaction.
Dr. Alison Cook (08:28.834)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (08:31.686)
we can have there. And so you're not limited to one strategy. And you know happy to go in more detail but there's things you can do to shift the thoughts that you're having in the situation to make them less catastrophic and less threatening. There's things that you can actively do to help you accept those thoughts so that you observe them but don't have a big reaction to them. And then there's things that you can do that make those thoughts not mean as much. So it's not that you don't have them or that you think they're great it's just that you decide they're not that important. So for example,
I bet some of your listeners at some point already in our conversation have had a thought of what am I going to get for lunch? When am I going to pick up this thing from the grocery store? You know, whatever it happens to be. Our mind has lots of thoughts that come through it. But we decide which are the ones we need to respond to right now, which are the ones we think are really meaningful, which are consistent with our goals and our values. So there's skills that you can learn that can help you decide in the moment, do I want to think about this thought in a different way? Do I want to accept it?
reacting in a huge way or do I want to say it's just not that important and so the premise behind this is like you get to be a mini scientist. It's trial and error you get to make the choice of like here's what I think is going on how would I gather evidence how would I test that is this working for me or not working for me so it isn't one skill we get a battery or repertoire of options to try to manage those hard feelings and hard thoughts.
Dr. Alison Cook (09:58.029)
Yeah, I love that. And you talk a lot about that skill of becoming your own scientist, sort of a student of your own anxiety, really. A key feature of that is curiosity, not self-criticism. Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (10:05.127)
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (10:13.65)
Absolutely. Absolutely. So we want people to be curious about their own reactions and to figure out which of those reactions we really want to hang on to and which are ones that they want to shift. And also curious about others' reactions. So that can help us also when we're talking to someone who has a really different view than the view that we have. And so if we can approach it of trying to understand our and others' worldviews,
it becomes a lot less threatening, right? So if we look at thoughts as ideas to be played with rather than as like, if you have the thought, therefore it's true, therefore it's a fact, it takes some of the pressure off and bringing that viewpoint of curiosity is how we do that.
Dr. Alison Cook (10:58.712)
The thought is just neutral. It's just there. We get to assign meaning to it. I've heard you say, and I thought this was interesting, for folks who really, for whom their anxiety has escalated and they have panic attacks, they spiral into anxiety. I've heard you say, and I want to talk about that because number one, I think the skill takes time to develop.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (11:23.43)
Sure.
Dr. Alison Cook (11:26.498)
Well, I've got about three questions in this. I'm gonna give you a bunch of thoughts and let you break it down. Because immediately I went to, for folks who've dealt with anxiety for long time, it could feel like, can't do that. Like I'm too ratcheted up to be able to calmly observe my thought and understand what it is. So a couple of thoughts in that. One,
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (11:28.85)
You sure?
Dr. Alison Cook (11:49.325)
I've heard you say that when you've worked with people who have panic, they know they're getting to the point of probably not having panic attacks anymore when they realize the panic attack won't hurt them to some degree. Am I saying that correctly? How do you say that?
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (12:08.245)
absolutely. So what we teach people is anxiety is uncomfortable but not dangerous. And it's this idea and you know it's going to sound crazy but when I start doing a panic treatment for someone who comes in I say you're not going to believe me but
for this when this treatment is successful you're not going to care that much whether or not you have a panic attack because as soon as you don't care that much whether you have a panic attack you actually stop having them because you've taken away the control and the power because right now for people who have anxiety disorders often what's happening is that the fear of fear the fear of becoming anxious is a huge part of what's driving it and that means that you think anxiety is dangerous you have to make decisions based on anxiety it takes away your choice
Dr. Alison Cook (12:33.549)
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (12:43.51)
Yes. Yes.
Dr. Alison Cook (12:49.698)
Yes.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (12:53.044)
all of those kinds of things. And if you learn how to see anxiety is just like a wave of emotion, it's got uncomfortable parts but it won't stay that way. And for those who are having false alarms, it's not really reliably signaling danger for you, then it doesn't have the same power over you. So it's not that I say you're gonna love the feeling of anxiety, none of us like it. But when you realize it's uncomfortable but not dangerous, unless there actually is the bear chasing you, which is pretty rare, then it stops having the same power over
Dr. Alison Cook (13:19.95)
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (13:23.1)
you and then that is the best way for anxiety to come down. So when we actively say we must reduce anxiety, we have to get rid of this, it tends to actually fuel the anxiety because it's putting all this pressure on it and saying anxiety is this really bad dangerous thing that we can't handle and we teach people that you can actually tolerate anxiety and that's the best way to make it go down.
Dr. Alison Cook (13:46.777)
That's so good that it's uncomfortable, but not dangerous. And the fear of it, I'm thinking about kids, anxiety about school or making a new friend, or it is uncomfortable. It is, we are learning to tolerate the discomfort of it, which paradoxically begins to reduce the anxiety. That's so good.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (13:58.161)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (14:09.091)
Exactly.
And you know, one of the things that we do to help them, and we do a lot of different strategies, but one of the things we do, you talked about going to the gym. So I'm guessing your heart rate went up. I'm guessing you got sweaty at the gym. I'm guessing, you know, if you...
Dr. Alison Cook (14:21.866)
huh.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (14:25.83)
did a run you haven't done for a long time on the treadmill, your legs were a little bit shaky, right? So we're actually like pretty familiar with lots of the sensations that are associated with anxiety. So then we have to look at what meaning are you assigning to them? Because when you have those sensations at the gym or you get jittery after two cups of coffee or you know, whatever it happens to be,
Dr. Alison Cook (14:38.828)
Yes.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (14:46.98)
you have another explanation for the symptoms that you're feeling and so you don't panic about them. You don't escalate them. You're like, I'm feeling jittery because I had two cups of coffee. So if we can practice getting more comfortable with those sensations, not liking them, they still feel uncomfortable but realizing, this is my anxiety reaction but it's a false alarm, then it's not so different than the exercise leading to it, the coffee leading to it, or anything else.
Dr. Alison Cook (14:56.43)
Hmm.
Dr. Alison Cook (15:03.128)
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (15:09.612)
Right.
Dr. Alison Cook (15:13.344)
Yep. And it doesn't, it's not just because I have it doesn't mean I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing. And that's where it begins to drive our lives. I thought of another, I was thinking about you talk about it. There's a real parallel hood of resilience. It strikes me. You're learning. I was thinking that I just took the podcast to video. I've talked about this a little bit and you know, it's a whole new skill set. It's hard. My anxiety spiked. You know, I'm trying to figure it out. And I started thinking.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (15:19.566)
Exactly.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (15:27.154)
100%. 100%. Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (15:42.234)
I shouldn't do this. I've made a mistake, right? And then I have enough tools, I'm like, what if this is just hard? It's uncomfortable. It's a learning curve, which is such a powerful reframe.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (15:43.962)
Right. Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (15:52.252)
basically.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (15:58.034)
Absolutely, if we can learn to recognize that things can be challenges rather than threats, it completely shifts how we respond to them. I, you know, I do a lot of research and I teach and all those kinds of things and I half joke but I actually mean I'm in a job where I have the joy of feeling stupid every single day. I'm surrounded by people who are know things I don't know, they push me to like try things I don't know how to do, they ask hard questions, the work we do is
And I've learned to embrace that feeling of stupidity because it's a reminder to me that I am growing and learning and trying hard things. Because what's the alternative? If I feel comfortable all the time, it's probably not much change that's happening. There's probably not much growth that's happening, right? So that shift you made of going to video, like that's an example of like, you know, there's this really nice concept in psychology of desirable difficulty and it's this idea of like
Dr. Alison Cook (16:44.344)
Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Dr. Alison Cook (16:56.238)
Hmm.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (16:58.108)
there's a really beautiful sweet spot where we can take where we're at and move a level that feels hard for us to do but it's not wildly out of our skill set, right? So it's the like, I haven't been doing much running but I bet in like two months I could be ready to do a 5k.
Dr. Alison Cook (17:09.452)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (17:15.843)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (17:16.538)
If you haven't been doing running, don't say that in a month you're doing a marathon. Like that's a, you know, that's, that's not desirable difficulty. That's impossible. So, or pretty unrealistic at any rate. So it's that sweet spot of like challenging ourselves. And so that's what we do with folks is we help them realize like, what are the steps to keep adding to that desirable difficulty so that they learn? Cause I'm not going to convince them. There's no words I'm going to say that are going to magically make somebody believe they can do these things they didn't think they could do. But we introduce those
Dr. Alison Cook (17:20.856)
Yep.
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (17:46.404)
difficulty steps where they now start showing themselves that they are way more capable than they thought they were, that they could tolerate anxiety in ways that they didn't realize that they could and then that's what helps them decide maybe I'll take another step here.
Dr. Alison Cook (18:01.036)
love that.
I love that. It's a very much in motion and it makes sense because anxiety kind of keeps you stuck. And so it makes sense that the antidote would be small, calculated, smart, strategic steps through it. I want to ask you a couple of questions because you're in the research. You're right at the cutting edge of all of this. And there's so much about anxiety in the news on a couple of different fronts. Number one, I've heard you talk about this, but there's so much talk about sort of an anxiety epidemic.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (18:08.146)
100%.
Exactly.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (18:17.071)
Exactly.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (18:33.616)
Right.
Dr. Alison Cook (18:34.184)
so much of an uptick in anxiety, especially in our younger kids. What are your thoughts on that? Are we more anxious? Are we just naming our anxiety more? Are we diagnosing it more? What are your thoughts on that?
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (18:50.258)
think it's a really good and really tricky question. So my best guess is that we have a bit of both going on. So what I mean by that is there are some signals that suggest we are in fact having increases in anxiety in the last, you know, set of years, particularly among young people. And so that is a significant area for concern. Some portion of that increase appears to be actual increases in the prevalence rates. Some is likely also due to people being more open about talking about it. So that really
Dr. Alison Cook (18:56.993)
Okay.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (19:20.242)
positive side of reductions in stigma. We also have changes in our health care system that have led to more screening for anxiety and so we're more likely to catch those problems. From my perspective those are all really positive things that are leading to those numbers going up because we want to know that those challenges are there. We want to catch them early because we're better at treating if we catch things early. The other piece that I'm going to say is going to sound a bit contradictory which is that I have thought there was a
know, epidemic of mental health challenges for a really long time, not just since we've had the anxious generation come out or all the other things that have been in the conversation. Really, you COVID brought a lot of this conversation to light in ways that I think have been really helpful.
It's not actually a new problem. So yes, we have some increases, but it's not like it was okay before. For a very, very long time, we've had a mental health care system that hasn't been meeting the needs. In fact, we could literally double the number of mental health providers, double, and we still would not meet the mental health care needs.
Dr. Alison Cook (20:09.731)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (20:26.096)
Yeah, so again, you know, it's not that this is a brand new problem and we were doing super well before. So yes, there's an increase and I'm glad it's getting the attention that it's getting, but this conversation should have been happening for a very long time.
Dr. Alison Cook (20:33.037)
Right.
Dr. Alison Cook (20:42.24)
Yeah, that's so interesting because also when there's not, when you think about prevention, a lot of what you're describing is almost like when we don't have the basic tools, it also makes the problem worse, which makes the demand greater. Whereas you're right, it's not like so many of my listeners and I talk about this, we just didn't have any tools for emotional management or emotional regulation or anxiety regulation.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (21:05.884)
Right.
Dr. Alison Cook (21:10.042)
And it's not even that there needed to be a full-blown disorder. It's just, I didn't know how to manage basic. And so we're still missing, we're still barely catching up with basic education, let alone with where... So Bethany, when you say that, when you talk about this deficit of providers, it leads me into sort of the big thing of what you guys are doing there at UVA, is kind of trying to find, use technology to help people
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (21:16.017)
right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (21:21.625)
Exactly.
Dr. Alison Cook (21:40.225)
understand their anxiety, implement some of what we're talking about, get skills. So I want to ask you about that. And I also want to ask you, because you did a really interesting, there was, you've been quoted a lot on doom scrolling. And I'm very curious about that because, one of the things, so let's start there. One of the things, you know, we, you know, I think anecdotally tossed around, it's in the anxious generation is the intersection of technology and anxiety.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (21:53.894)
Yes.
Dr. Alison Cook (22:09.782)
Right? And this is why was so interested to talk with you because there's so much concern about whether it's social media, whether it's AI and our kids turning to chat bots or us people turning to chat bots in ways that aren't healthy, in ways that are spiking anxiety on one hand and then maybe not kind of caring for it on the other. And yet technology, just like with anything, can also be super helpful in
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (22:14.758)
Yeah, 100%.
Dr. Alison Cook (22:39.522)
filling in some of these gaps where we don't have enough providers. So talk to me a little bit, I just kind of threw all of that at you, but talk to me a little bit about, you're kind of on the cutting edge of the both and there, you what's not good about technology and what's really promising about it.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (22:46.768)
No, absolutely.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (22:52.401)
Yeah, thank you.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (22:56.315)
Yeah.
No, it's a great set of questions. So I'll start and then tell me if I'm not hitting on some of the pieces that you're interested in. So I have the great good fortune at University of Virginia to co-direct an initiative that's called Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment or TIDE. And it was started because of exactly the issues that you're talking about is that sometimes we sort of fall into camps of everything to do with technology is terrible and is destroying individual's brains or the category of, hey, if we just
Dr. Alison Cook (23:01.591)
Okay.
Dr. Alison Cook (23:21.719)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (23:27.124)
Digital technology is to solve all of humanity's problems and solve all of the mental health challenges. And I think that those conversations are not significantly nuanced and that actually we need to bring those two sides together and have a much deeper and more interesting conversation. And so Tide tries to look at two questions at the same time. The first is recognizing that youth in particular are spending so much of their time on screens and so we need to understand it better. And that means understanding the ways it harms us.
but also the ways that it helps us because it has been shown to also have benefits in addition to harms. And what is it actually just another developmental context and not, you know, having a huge impact. And then secondly, meet people where they are. So given people are using screens so much, can we leverage that as a way to increase access to evidence-based interventions that are going to help people? So with TIDE, we're really trying to do work on both of those sides and sometimes bringing them together. And a big part of what we do because we're
Dr. Alison Cook (24:18.326)
Interesting.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (24:26.93)
you know, we tend to focus on those teenage years, so adolescence and, you know, emerging adulthood, those challenging years where we know technology use is really high and it's the onset of lots of mental health challenges. And so we're trying to bring those together and really center youth's voice in figuring out what's going to work for them. So instead of, you know, having adults alone decide here's the way that social media should be regulated or here's what you need to do for your mental health, we're trying to partner
Dr. Alison Cook (24:40.674)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (24:56.98)
with teens to learn what do they think is actually going to work for them? What supports do they need? What will they actually use? And I'm happy to talk about different examples of how we're trying to do that. But again, you can take a problem like doom scrolling. That's a lovely example, right? Where people go down this rabbit hole and for readers who are less familiar with it, it's like you get you start on something negative and then you go story after story after story and it tends to really hurt your mood. It leads to us not sleeping well, all kinds of challenges and it kind of distorts
Dr. Alison Cook (25:19.96)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (25:26.92)
our sense of like how safe is the world, how much threat am I under, all those kinds of things. And so there are strategies, there's recent research that came out just in the last couple of weeks that shows that you can actually shift the algorithm and what your feed is by reliably starting out your day looking intentionally at some positive news articles, right? That hope scrolling idea. So there's things that you can do that may help in those ways. Tonight we are having our youth advisory board. So these are high schools
Dr. Alison Cook (25:29.571)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Alison Cook (25:45.974)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (25:56.612)
students who advise us on how we can do our work better in a way that will meet their needs. And we're developing with the youth an intervention that is designed to help youth make less negative social comparisons when they use social media. So one of the things that probably makes time spent on social media damaging when it does have those negative effects is when people do a lot of thinking, I'm not as attractive, I'm not as accomplished, I'm not as smart, I don't have
Dr. Alison Cook (25:58.424)
Mm.
Dr. Alison Cook (26:11.155)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Alison Cook (26:23.491)
Yep.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (26:26.536)
as many friends, don't, you know, all of those kinds of things. All the I'm not as good as.
Dr. Alison Cook (26:31.149)
Yep.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (26:31.812)
And so we've been working with teens and college students and they're actually developing a new intervention, a new app that's designed to actually help teens do less of that negative social comparison. So again, we're taking that same question of like, are the impacts of social media? When is it helpful? When is it harmful? And then how can we leverage that same time they're spending on screens to make it something that's more adaptive and helpful for them?
Dr. Alison Cook (26:43.31)
Hmm.
Dr. Alison Cook (26:51.022)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Alison Cook (26:59.342)
Hmm, wow, so kind of trying to work with the, yeah, rather than, yeah. How do, so that's a good question. How do you, like, how would I, you know, think I'll use myself as an example, you know, if I grew up in a social media area, I think I would have struggled. I would have struggled with it. What are,
ways if we're parenting kids or we ourselves are struggling with that loop of negative comparison, you the doom scrolling, you know, I'll know if I'm really tired, it's almost like I'll go look for something, you know, it's almost like it's a weird kind of thing that happens on there. What are some tools that I love what you're saying about kind of try to jimmy your algorithm and actually feed yourself toward hope but
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (27:41.927)
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (27:52.379)
Right, right.
Dr. Alison Cook (27:54.85)
But what are some other tools that you see working from that research?
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (27:58.834)
Yeah.
Absolutely, part of why we're doing this research is that we have a lot to figure out still, so I don't think we have the perfect answers. But I think, interestingly, some of the things that we do offline to kind of help with this can also help us online. So I had a graduate student, Alana Lattis, who did a project of trying to do an intervention of helping people to shift their thinking when they're doing those negative social comparisons online. So things that we do offline can also help us in those situations. But also, know, youth themselves are really good at thinking this through.
Dr. Alison Cook (28:02.39)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (28:20.276)
interesting. Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (28:29.188)
So, and it doesn't mean they don't need parental guidance and all those, you know, and regulations. They absolutely do. But, you know, my youngest daughter would say when she was with a group of friends and if they would sort of resort to like just sitting on their phones, one of them would say to the other like stop being a screen-ager and then they would kind of re-engage and you know, it's kind of cute or whatever and they don't do it reliably in all the best ways. But like they're figuring out also ways to increase what I call their digital literacy, right? Their ability to make tools work for them.
Dr. Alison Cook (28:32.366)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Alison Cook (28:48.994)
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (28:53.613)
Right.
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (28:59.028)
Students are also telling me about creative things they do using like the brick or other methods that help them turn on and off certain apps for like times they want to use them, times that they don't, lots of people set alarms, all those kinds of things. But it's also some trial and error. So whether it's frankly teens or adults, because it's not like this is actually just a teen issue, even though that's what's in the media. The truth is this is like a human issue, right?
Dr. Alison Cook (29:09.955)
Yep.
Dr. Alison Cook (29:19.17)
Yeah, totally.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (29:23.728)
So, you know, again, just like I talked about before, I encourage people to do trial and error. So maybe it's that, you know, if your use of screens is making really interrupting your sleep, then set a time after which you're not using the device and don't keep it in the bedroom. If on the other hand, that's not really where the issue is, is that you're doing doom scrolling in a different kind of way, then you might decide that like the way you're going to get news is to like look at trusted sources for a period of time in the morning and a period of time after work and other
Dr. Alison Cook (29:51.064)
Mm-hmm.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (29:53.604)
otherwise don't look at news sources that are like making you feel really miserable. Like find that balance where you stay informed but don't go down the rabbit hole. So it's not a single solution that's going to work for people. We have to look at what are your vulnerabilities, trial and error of what's working for you, and then recognize that again we need to empower people to figure out what's going to work for them. And so from a parenting strategy a big part of that is like keep it an open conversation. So is the only time is a
Dr. Alison Cook (29:56.109)
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (30:01.08)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (30:14.06)
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (30:21.464)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (30:23.708)
you communicate with your child about their screen use is yelling and saying this is destroying you. They're not going to tell you when they struggle. They're not going to tell you when they hit the hard parts. So make it an ongoing open conversation about how are you using your device and what ways does it make you happy and what ways does it not? How is it helping you with social connection? How is it hurting it, right?
Dr. Alison Cook (30:29.326)
get off. Right.
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (30:41.74)
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (30:46.604)
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (30:47.184)
normalize that conversation and you have to have it a bunch because as kids develop what they're doing on their devices is changing a lot.
Dr. Alison Cook (30:55.054)
Yeah, and it could be different for different kids to your point. It's not a one size fits all. And so you just have to really stay in conversation with them. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, okay, so just kind of as we're, you know, I love this theme, you know, I'm hearing, you know, first of all, there's not a one, knowing yourself, you have to know your own inner signal.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (31:18.738)
Absolutely.
Dr. Alison Cook (31:23.254)
that again, and it reminds me even with the doom scrolling or the technology, like this doesn't feel good. There's anxiety here, whether it's, whatever it is, that is not, and again, I'm not shaming myself for that, I'm noticing that. then how do I, then my sort of the skill is how do I reframe what's happening?
So maybe again, it's not, I'm such, what's wrong with me that I can't get off social media? It's, you know, I wonder what's going on here. You know, maybe I could set it aside and try to get curious, have a conversation with somebody in real life about, you know, why am I drawn to it? What's not good about it? is, you know, again, it strikes me that there's a real process of self-awareness of,
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (32:06.034)
Absolutely.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (32:13.232)
Right?
Dr. Alison Cook (32:18.31)
recognizing the cues. Anything else you would add to that just sort of from as someone listening, even, you know, driving in their car, you know, like a pause, you know, what, what, how can we, because all of this, it strikes me, it comes back to, I think of, I think of my listeners, I think we talk a lot about the fruit of the spirit, right? When you know, you're kind of living aligned, right? With that, you know, and I think about the fruit of the spirit of self-control, not in a controlling, rigid way, but in a, I can take command of myself.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (32:24.293)
Absolutely.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (32:37.159)
Mm-hmm.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (32:47.986)
Absolutely, and no, I think you're exactly right. And know, two things tied to that.
Dr. Alison Cook (32:48.236)
Right? Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (32:53.87)
I think of it as intentionality and I think we're talking about something very similar. instead of it being about this just happens to me, three hours go by and I realize like all I've done is swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, That's not using it as a tool to work for you. That's letting the tool drive you. Intentionality is about, and whether it's in the screen area or in lots of areas of our life, is about thinking about what are our goals? What do we want out of this? How do we want to engage? And monitoring, is it working for us?
Dr. Alison Cook (32:56.088)
Hmm.
Dr. Alison Cook (33:04.898)
Yeah
Dr. Alison Cook (33:10.595)
Yep.
Dr. Alison Cook (33:15.926)
Yep. Yep.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (33:23.814)
meet our goals or is it getting in the way of meeting our goals? So maybe I feel like you know what I just want to zone out for an hour. Fine, zone out for an hour. But at other times I'm like my gosh I have you know this project I have to do and need to you know make you know whatever else it is that I need to do. And so I want to think about
Dr. Alison Cook (33:25.826)
Yeah. Yep.
Dr. Alison Cook (33:32.406)
Yeah, sure.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (33:43.708)
What are my goals and the way I use technology like everything else, trying to think intentionally about how I want to do that. The other piece though that I think goes to the comments you were making about how we ask ourselves, how is this fitting in our life, right? Is it aligned with, you know, whether the spirit, the values, the goals, all of those pieces is, you know, one of the things we know is that it's not so much when we look at the technology space, it's not so much actually about like how many hours do you spend on a device.
Dr. Alison Cook (33:50.648)
Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (33:58.273)
Yeah.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (34:13.742)
It's about what are you not doing in the rest of your life because of the effects. So are you not, you mentioned like do you reach out to a friend in person. If you're not doing that, if you're not sleeping, if you're not exercising, if you're not in nature, if you're not relaxing, if you're not having fun, you know. So we need to look at do you have that balance of healthy activities in your life?
Dr. Alison Cook (34:16.674)
Right. Yeah.
Dr. Alison Cook (34:27.373)
Yep.
Dr. Alison Cook (34:34.894)
Yep.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (34:36.048)
Technology is one of the things that can interfere with that. It's not the only one, right? You'd say the same thing to someone who is working 18 hours a day of like, probably isn't healthy for you because look at, it's not that work is bad. It's look at all the things you're not having in your life that probably are needed for you to be a healthy, balanced person that feels like you're being fulfilled and living your purposeful life and all those things, right? So it's what's not happening is actually at least and probably more important than
sometimes what is happening.
Dr. Alison Cook (35:08.29)
Yeah, that's really helpful, both in our own lives. Am I at a balance? Like to your point, like if I'm scrolling for half an hour and it's kind of silly and laughing at funny TikTok videos and I'm living a balanced life, you know, who cares? Or our kids, you know, I could imagine, right? Again, to that point of just being really intentional. That's a great, a great word. How, know, Bethany, you guys are doing a lot of work to get in the PAC lab, I know is doing a lot of work to try to connect people.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (35:20.466)
Absolutely.
Dr. Alison Cook (35:37.785)
who can't get the care that they need for anxiety with web-based digital resources that are designed for this work. This is not just a shot in the dark. You're trying to get people really high level care when there is, when we can't get to a provider or a clinician, how could people connect to the work that you're doing or learn more about it?
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (35:46.865)
Right.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (36:06.544)
Yeah, so two things. I encourage people to go to Tide's website, is tide.virginia.edu. So it's T-Y-D-E. And you can see lots of information about some of the things that we work on there. And then they should feel free to reach out to me and I'm happy to share resources with them. We have a suite of digital interventions called MindTrails where we try to help people get connected and we're launching those at different times. We have previously had a website that, you know, we were fortunate, had a lot of folks visiting. It was used in
85 plus countries around the world of offering these anxiety interventions. We've now shifted to a suite of mobile apps so that we can actually personalize the interventions in different ways and we are developing different apps for different communities. So we have one for teens that's different than what we do for adults. We have one that's called MindTrails Espanol for those who are Spanish speaking. We're launching one for patients with Parkinson's and Huntington's disease who experience anxiety. So we're kind of developing these different digital
that can allow people to increase their access to care and get the sort of resources that they need in the moment that they need. And I should say I get to work with an amazing array of collaborators in engineering and computer science and education and nursing to help do this work and try to meet the needs of different communities.
Dr. Alison Cook (39:28.462)
I just love that you guys are working on that and trying to create something that is meaningful for people. And thank you so much just for sharing your time and the benefit of your wisdom with so many people and with us today.
Bethany Teachman (she/her) (39:44.084)
Thank you for the great discussion. appreciate it.
Dr. Alison Cook (39:46.274)
Yeah, thanks so much.
Dr. Alison Cook (39:53.999)
Well,