Your Teen’s Anxiety: How Chores, Community, and Connection Could Help with guest Dr. Jodi Aman

About this Episode

Worried about your teen’s anxiety? Dr. Jodi Aman, renowned psychotherapist and TEDx speaker, joins Dr. Amy and Sandy on this episode of the Brainy Moms podcast to uncover the root causes behind the escalating anxiety epidemic among teenagers. It’s a bold statement, but modern conveniences might be making things worse. Dr. Aman suggests that the reduction in problem-solving opportunities due to cultural shifts has led to increased negativity and entitlement among teens. She argues that chores, often seen as mundane, are vital in alleviating teen anxiety, instilling resilience, and combating negative thought patterns. By categorizing chores into tedious, challenging, and generous, we examine how each type plays a crucial role in developing essential life skills and when tying chores to allowances might be appropriate.

Teen anxiety, often misunderstood as mere fear, is redefined in our conversation as a spectrum of discomfort triggered by stress hormones. Dr. Aman challenges the misconception of anxiety as a chemical imbalance and talks about the stigma that idea creates. Our discussion also touches on the historical context of anxiety, examining how our biological instincts have evolved to manage stress.

In the final segment, we explore the power of community, activities, and genuine human connections in fostering social engagement and mental well-being. Whether through family involvement in communal activities or even community theater, these experiences are pivotal in building a sense of belonging. We also offer actionable tips to guide teenagers towards a path of self-acceptance and agency. To enhance your understanding further, we present a concise guide, accessible on the author’s website, filled with practical advice for supporting the teens in your life. 

About Dr. Jodi Aman

Dr. Jodi is a psychotherapist, author, and TEDx speaker. A doctor of social work with 28 years of experience in clinical practice, Dr. Jodi helps her clients heal from trauma, read the world, and reclaim self-acceptance and joy. She’s the creator of COMPASS, an emotional wellness curriculum for middle and high school students to help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. Her talk show, Ask Dr. Jodi, is live-streamed weekly on her YouTube channel @doctorjodi, where she shares mental health and relationship advice. She’s the author of several books including Anxiety…I’m So Done with You: A Teen’s Guide to Ditching Toxic Stress and Hardwiring Your Brain for Happiness”. She’s helped over 2 million people understand and reverse the current mental health crisis. 

Connect with Dr. Jodi

Website: https://jodiaman.com/

IG: @doctorjodiaman

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Read the transcript for this episode:

Dr. Amy Moore: 0:30

Hi, smart moms and dads. We are so happy to have you join us for another episode of the Brainy Moms podcast brought to you today by LearningRx Brain Training Centers. I’m your host, Dr Amy Moore. I’m joined by my co-host, Sandy Zamalis, and Sandy and I are excited to bring you a conversation with our guest, Dr Jodi Aman.

Dr. Amy Moore: 0:50

Dr Jodi is a psychotherapist, an author, tedx speaker and a doctor of social work with 28 years of experience in clinical practice. Dr Jodi helps her clients heal from trauma, read the world and reclaim self-acceptance and joy. She’s the creator of Compass, an emotional wellness curriculum for middle and high school students to help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression students to help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. Her talk show Ask Dr Jodi is live streamed weekly on her YouTube channel At Dr Jodi, where she shares mental health and relationship advice. She’s the author of several books, including Anxiety I’m so Done With you, a Teen’s Guide to Ditching Toxic Stress and Hardwiring your brain for happiness. She’s helped over 2 million people understand and reverse the current mental health crisis.

Dr. Amy Moore: 1:42

Let’s welcome Dr Jodi Aman. Hi, Dr Jodi! Hello, good to see you. Good to see you too. So I listened to your TED Talk this morning. I really liked your take on what is causing this rise right in teen mental health problems, and actually I think you refer to it as an epidemic Like why is that anxiety rising? And I love how you broke it down into those three different areas. And I was super intrigued by this idea of chores helping calm anxiety. Would you share this idea with us, because how easy would that be to implement?

Dr. Jodi Aman: 2:29

Yeah, you know, when somebody has anxiety, when your child has anxiety, you try to take things off their plate. You know you try to take things off their plate. You know you’re kind of. Our mentality is like ease them, let them relax a little bit, but it’s actually counterproductive because we’re really telling them you can’t handle stuff With the modern conveniences.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 2:48

With the rise of modern conveniences and with us having less things to do, our brain has developed for two million years to solve problems all day so we could survive. We don’t need to do that as much anymore. You know we don’t need to solve problems all day, but that capability is still there and because that capability is still there, we replace it Like our mind is like we might not be safe, find a problem, so it’s replaced with negativity, unless we’re like creative and we’re doing something else. That could be a chore too, but that. So with the decrease in us having to do all these things to survive, we’re actually creating all this mind space for us to go into the negative, and so I could see that getting worse and worse and worse and you could see this generation having less and less work ethic and some of that’s good, because our work ethic was kind of put onto us with the industrial revolution to try to get us to work, except for it’s like there’s this entitlement not to have to. You know that they’re being taught. It’s not them, it’s not the young people that are the problem, it’s culturally put on them.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 3:58

I think that’s where that marketing piece comes in, is where we have messages constantly accessible to us 24 hours a day. These marketers could access us and telling us that we should just get stuff, just because it’s cool, we should just get stuff. So those two things combined having less to do to survive, being able to just go and get some food out of our cupboard and eat it instead of making it or whatever else we had to do to contribute to our family we don’t have to do any of that anymore, and so there’s a lot of space. It’s almost like a luxury problem. When people have more and more luxury, they have this different kind of anxiety. If you have trauma and you have a lot of difficulty, you have one kind of anxiety, but you are efforting and you’re overcoming it and you’re building resilience. If you have a lot of luxury and you have that kind of anxiety, it just grows, because the more anxiety you have the more frozen you are. You know it’s not a building resilience kind of anxiety. So this is what we’re facing, yeah.

Dr. Amy Moore: 5:07

So do you think that we instinctively try to fill that space Right? Instinctively try to fill that space right when? If we aren’t, if we aren’t having to run from the tiger in the bush behind us anymore, right? If we’re not having to solve big problems all day, every day anymore, because we don’t even have to remember phone numbers anymore, right and so. But do you think that we instinctively fight against that idea of just being, of just sitting in that space, of just appreciating some downtime? Do you think we-.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 5:48

I think when you say instinctually, I think that’s true. But when you say we instinctually try, that means it’s intentional or that we’re doing something. I think that’s true. But when you say we instinctually try, that means it’s intentional or that we’re doing something. I think that happens really subconsciously, that when there’s no problem, our mind has been trained to try to find one. So it’s kind of happening outside of our awareness though, because when we get the information, the mind’s saying, like when we hear those thoughts or when we have awareness of what those thoughts are, then we put meaning around those thoughts. So that’s our participation in it. But first they come because our mind’s just going to do that on its own. And, yes, it also of course depends on our experiences in life. If we’ve had a lot of chaos in our life, then that’s going to come. You know our amygdala is going to work really harder to keep us safe, you know, because it’s had so much experience of unsafety and insecurity.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 6:45

But when we do have those thoughts, then we put meaning around the thoughts, like something’s wrong with me. All I think is negative, I’m tired all the time. Something’s wrong with me, like I’m lazy, why can’t I do stuff? And you get this like us versus them mentality. Everyone else is fine but me, because mental low self-esteem is totally invisible. We’re all walking around with it, especially in Western culture. We’re all walking around with low self-esteem. But when you look at people you can’t see that right away. But you could see yourself, you could feel yourself, you could feel how bad you feel and you feel like you’re the only one. And then you’re like what’s wrong? Why do I have this problem? It’s hard to separate that from our sense of worth. If we feel we’re not happy, we just correlate it and connect it with our sense of worth, which obviously makes us feel worse, and then it kind of snowballs.

Sandy Zamalis: 7:41

So that must be why you know the chore piece is really a key piece for you, because it helps instill that pride and accomplishment, right? So your book is really geared towards teens. It’s not geared towards parents. So how do you encourage kids to? Yeah, anxiety? I’m so done with you. I love the title of it as well. A listener, she held up the book, so if you’re watching you’ll see it. But that is the title of her book. She’s written it with teens in mind, so it’s written to them. And because we want them to have that value of accomplishment, how do you encourage them to take on problems or challenges?

Dr. Jodi Aman: 8:23

That is a great question because the book actually many parents and educators and counselors are reading the book too because they want to know how to help. But I also have. Let me just do another plug Also, if you’re watching the video, you can see this. I also have another download, free download on my website. That’s a Generation Z Mental Health Survival Guide and it explains that in this I give a lot of activities that you could do in the home and in the classroom to build some of these skills up, to counter, to decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression by doing these activities.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 8:57

So we really want to engage in creative things. We want to engage in problem solving, but like not problem solving like a problem, but creative problem solving. If we’re going to make this wooden box, what kind of hinges do we want on it? Do we want the hinges hidden? Do we want them on the outside? Are we going to paint it? Is it going to be big? Is it going to be a flat lid? How are people going to open it? How do we want to decorate it? Is it functional or is it pretty? Those decision-making, that kind of problem-solving, is really good for building up and stimulating the prefrontal cortex. And when we build up and stimulate that prefrontal cortex then it has a lot more power over the anxiety. Like your anxiety goes down the more you build up and stimulate your prefrontal cortex.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 9:42

So people who are engaged in creative activity are engaged in problem solving, challenging themselves, learning something new, doing chores. It helps them in several ways. One, yes, it builds confidence, but and it does it biologically, like neurologically, it helps. But also it’s like we see ourself as skilled. Right now, the younger generation, and I have to say adults too, because we’re getting the same messages that they’re getting right we see ourself as unable, we see ourself as unadaptable, we think that we can’t handle stuff we don. We see ourself as unable, we see ourself as unadaptable, we think that we can’t handle stuff. We don’t see ourself as skilled. We live in this deficit mentality and we’re just seeing all the things that we can’t do, all things we haven’t gotten to yet. You know, we just have this really negative view of ourself.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 10:28

And so if you engage in things, then you’d start to relate to yourself and know yourself as someone who has skills. You have skills, everybody has skills, because the skills came even from evolution. Right, our skills and adaptability are there for everybody already, and so we have them. And obviously nobody could get to the age they are If you’re 13, if you’re 15, if you’re 17, if you had no skills, you wouldn’t be here. So we know that they have them and I think that’s a message us adults have to give is, like you have skills, we’re going to show you that you have them. I do give tips on how to do that too. So that’s jodiaymondcom slash guide. Jodiaymondcom slash guide Get the Generation Z Mental Health Resource Guide. Very comprehensive download for you.

Dr. Amy Moore: 11:17

Yeah, I like that. So you actually break down chores into three different types, right? So the tedious ones that nobody ever wants to do, right, taking out the trash, vacuuming things like that. I think what you were talking about a second ago is what you would call a challenging chore, right, like we have to fix this or build this or create something. Yeah, make something, something that requires those critical thinking skills.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 11:42

Sure, let me review all three of those. So there’s three kinds of chores that I delineated in my TEDx Wilmington talk, and one was tedious chores, and I’m going to tell you the importance of those. And then one’s challenging chores, and then the last one’s generous chores. So the first one, tedious it’s because you know, our brain has two functions One is to survive and thrive, and the other is to conserve calories, because for so long in our evolution we didn’t have access to food. We had to find our own food or hunt our own food, and so we really wanted to conserve calories. It was very important for survival. We don’t need to do that anymore, but that capability is there. So when we’re faced with tasks, our mind is like is this for survival? No, is it for pleasure or thriving? No, and it puts this biological resistance to try to keep us safe and keep us alive. But we don’t need that anymore.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 12:36

But what happens is young people and people my age, all ages right are feeling that resistance and saying something’s wrong. I don’t understand why. I don’t want to do this. They feel that resistance and it becomes. We put a lot of meaning around it. Something’s wrong with us or why am I so tired all the time? Why am I so tired all the time? And then you probably hear young people say that. Probably all of you are hearing young people say that I’m so tired, I’m so tired. That’s this biological resistance that comes up. We could definitely override it and if we continuously do these more tedious chores, like we sweep every day, it’s not so hard. If we’ve never sweep, they never sweep. And you ask your kids to sweep, it is a song and a dance, right, it is. So there’s so much resistance.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 13:21

And when, when they start the resistance, then they really feel like you know you’re oppressing them by asking them to do this and they’re really rebelling. You know so it builds up because you, they make meaning around it and they’re like this isn’t fair. You know so it builds up because they make meaning around it. They’re like this isn’t fair. You know all of that comes out. So we don’t understand this natural resistance that we have to doing chores and if we did things every day, some of you have kids who you have them do the same thing every day and they don’t complain as much, they just get it done.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 13:54

But if they haven’t done it in a really long time and they do it it’s a problem. That’s because if they’re continuously doing these tedious chores, they’re integrated. They know it’s easy that when the resistance comes up they’re like I’m better off getting on the other side of it, right? They see that it’s thriving to be on the other side of it because it’s got to be done, even if you don’t care about it. It’s got to be done to participate in the family, whatever right. So we want them to continuously do tedious chores. We want kids to do hard things. You know we need to do hard things. So that gets to the second one, the challenge. We want to do hard things. I want to stop.

Dr. Amy Moore: 14:31

Yeah, I have a question about that. Great, I want to stop. Yeah, I have a question about that. So I’m sitting here thinking, okay, so that creates like these automatic behaviors right, this muscle memory for okay, we’re done with dinner, it’s time to do the dishes. Right, Like so. It is a routine, it’s just something that you have to do, so it makes it a little bit easier because you’re just used to doing it. So if we take that idea and I think about how many parents alternate chores with their kids right so like. Today it’s, you know, Christopher’s day to do to sweep, and right, Like so they alternate them but if we apply that idea, then I would think maybe you should do them for a month at a time before you switch.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 15:18

Or I don’t know, maybe it depends. Are you switching and the other one has something else? Or if there’s three kids and three little jobs and they rotate, that would be okay. That’s often enough. But you know, if they have a sports right, so they’re in a sport, so for the two months they’re at sports practice, so they don’t do any chores around the house. This is what we do as parents. We don’t give them the chores during that time and then the sports season ended and then you have them do the chores. It’s different. But when they see their siblings do it and it’s part of the routine, if it’s every three days or something, that would be okay. That’s frequent enough. But they might have something else during that time because they have to make their bed every day or something like that would be fine, that’s fine, great, yeah, so challenging.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 16:06

Challenging is our mind loves to be challenged, right? It’s like our soul wants to be challenged because it’s constantly looking for how to survive, like how to survive better, how to thrive better, and so we have this drive for challenge and it lights us up. We don’t want a bad challenge, obviously, but we’re going to have some, and so if we’re constantly challenging ourself in smaller ways. The bigger ones are going to be a lot easier to handle. You’re going to have a lot of skills connecting with people. You’re going to have skills in knowing where to find help, time management all of those things that really help us help life be better. Right, if you have some challenging chores, or kids have some challenging chores, it’s helpful. It sparks us. It creates the dopamine when we get it. It builds our confidence in ourself that we can figure something out that’s hard.

Dr. Amy Moore: 17:02

Yeah, that sense of accomplishment, Exactly, and that you’re bringing value to something, yeah, right.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 17:07

There’s a sense of purpose as well. You see yourself as skilled. You build that confidence up. Usually with challenging chores there’s other people involved not always, but sometimes and so there’s a bonding that’s happening which is very important for our well-being. And then the last one I delineated was generous chores, because I like when kids do things for other people. If you’re helping somebody or volunteering in the neighborhood or with the church or something, or just with the grandparents, helping other people and getting that integrated into their life, that we do stuff and we help other people, that’s also really good for a sense of purpose. It’s also really good for relationships, but it teaches them how to be, you know, civil, civic-minded, and we need more civic mind. I think we really lost a lot of civic mindedness in this world in this generation. So we really, you know, with people on their phones or not in person, and so we lost a lot of that and right now we need to get that back.

Dr. Amy Moore: 18:05

I would think that would build empathy as well. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course, yeah, and I mean an empathy is one of the last skills that we develop between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, and so to start nurturing that early on and kind of create that schema of empathy early on, I think what a neat way to do that too. I mean you’re accomplishing multiple things at one time.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 18:32

Exactly exactly. Yeah, empathy is teachable and we have to teach it. From age two you could start teaching empathy.

Sandy Zamalis: 18:43

Yeah, obviously it goes much smoother when it’s been your family culture from the beginning, right? So how? How would you encourage a parent who, if they’re listening to our podcast today and wanting to try to implement, they’re seeing what you’re saying, that they’re understanding the argument and they really want to try to implement this in their home, but it has not been the norm in their home and their kids are older. There’s going to be some pushback. How do you recommend having that conversation with your family to make a change like that, where you’re wanting to encourage them to practice challenges at home?

Dr. Jodi Aman: 19:21

Yeah, I think somehow make it fun. Make it little, little challenges at first, smaller chores at first, chores that maybe you all do together. So if it’s like just doing the driveway or the walkway, but you’re all doing it together, it’s really quick. Then you have so much gratitude. It makes it so much easier. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Oh, I’m so glad you helped with it because that went so fast.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 19:46

Whatever, something little and a positive experience, and then you could gradually get bigger. You could also have conversations. This might be hard, but this is really good for all of us or I need it because of this or that and the other thing. And then stay consistent, know that there’ll be pushback and don’t take it personally. That’s what’s so hard.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 20:09

As parents, we take all that personally, we think we’ve done something wrong or we look at oh, if I did this the whole time, they wouldn’t be doing this. But it’s not necessarily helpful to go down that path. You did it because there was other things going on, maybe a divorce or very busy, or you were taking care of your parents or something like that, and it was just easier to do things yourself instead of fighting with them all the time. Don’t blame yourself. It happens, it happens. It’s so easy to happen with all of the rapidness of things and the screens and pressure on us. So don’t beat yourself up and just like be gentle. Be gentle with yourself and be gentle with them. Start small, try to make it fun.

Sandy Zamalis: 20:57

I like that incorporation from that relational aspect too, of you know doing something together or maybe starting off with a project that you do as a family. My kids will call me out, you learn hard things. So you’re going to, you know, clean out.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 21:12

Yeah.

Sandy Zamalis: 21:12

Build that wall.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 21:14

We yeah. So I always have like I always thought let’s put music on and clean. And they just were like you think that music helps? You know they’ll do whatever they can to get out of it. So music doesn’t help make it fun. I’m like yes, it does.

Dr. Amy Moore: 21:33

My mom used to tell me that chores are required because that means you are a contributing member of the family, and so it was a non-negotiable kind of conversation, right? That’s what it means to be a contributing member of the family. And so it was a non-negotiable kind of conversation, right? That’s what it means to be a contributing member of the family. And it drove me crazy, right, when she would say those words. But I catch myself thinking that at the same time, like why am I the only one doing this? Right Now? My kids I’m a brand new empty nester. My youngest just left for college last week but I would catch myself thinking that, okay, why are they not being contributing members of the family?

Dr. Jodi Aman: 22:14

Because you have to teach them to be. They’re not going to do it right. You know parenting, we’re the frontal lobe. We’re like the frontal lobe for our kids for a long time. They’re not developing until 25. And so when their brain is like, is this for survival and thriving, or should I conserve calories? They’re going to get resistance and we have to override, because we know doing the things that we want them to do whether it’s chores or getting that essay done or whatever is for their thriving right there’s results that they want or that are positive for them in their life. But it’s hard to relate it to this essay, and so we as parents have to be that prefrontal lobe for them and say, yes, you have to get it done, it’ll feel good to get on the other side.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 22:58

Whatever trick you could say, I know you don’t want to do it, you know your brain. I tell people, I tell young people, you know your brain is trying to conserve calories, but you’re fine, you could override it. Our mammalian brain could override that and say I’m safe, I can do it, I have enough food. So once I override it, instead of being like something’s wrong, somebody’s forcing me and I got to protest, they could override it with their brain and makes life a lot easier. So you have to train them to do that slowly. But yeah, I mean they get a sense of belonging.

Dr. Amy Moore: 23:35

That is true, yeah, what do you think about connecting chores with allowance, for example? We don’t work for free for the most part in the adult world, right, typically our careers.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 23:54

But we do run the house.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 23:56

We do our survival skills, all of our personal. You know, we pay our bills. No one pays us to pay our bills. There is a lot of those things that we do do we have to, you know, organize somebody’s birthday party or something. No one pays us for those things. Yeah, some of it are our choice. It’s our choice, except for there’s results that we do want from them.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 24:21

If our fridge is broken, we got to get it fixed, or we’re not going to have a fridge right. So there is a lot of things that we do that aren’t so some. You know, I think that parents could make their own decisions about this, what they want to do. So there might be chores that everyone has to do. And then there’s these extra things that they could earn money for if they want to, and that, I think, is maybe the best of both worlds that everybody helps with the dishes, or helps with the dinner, sets the table, or makes their bed or whatever, or laundry when they get old enough. But in addition, if they want money, they could weed the garden or those kind of things that maybe are kind of above and beyond those daily tasks that we have to do every day just to run the house.

Dr. Amy Moore: 25:07

I really like that explanation because it answers an argument, right yeah.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 25:13

They need to know why. Yeah, Really, and we have the answers you know. So I think that’s what’s important. If they really understand, it’s harder to argue against it.

Sandy Zamalis: 25:24

Yeah.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 25:25

They will, they will though.

Dr. Amy Moore: 25:27

Well, absolutely Right. Like, if there’s something to challenge, they will challenge it.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 25:32

Yeah, that’s what they’re developmentally. That’s exactly what they’re supposed to be doing, so.

Dr. Amy Moore: 25:37

For sure.

Dr. Amy Moore: 25:37

OK, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about some concepts from your book that were intriguing, and I just loved how you explained them. And so the book is about anxiety. Right and okay, these are the steps that, as a teenager, you get to take to minimize the anxiety that you’re experiencing, and so I love that you talk about how there’s this misconception that anxiety is just fear. Right, that it’s just this either this irrational fear or this nervousness, but you actually say that anxiety is anything that makes you bothered. I really liked that word. So it’s not just fear, but it could be frustration, or being annoyed, or being sad, or upset, or confused. I don’t know what to do next. And so talk a little bit about how anxiety is not always what we say it is.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 26:42

Well, there’s a lot of words for anxiety, but this is what helps you understand when we’re upset, when we’re angry, when we’re nervous, when we’re anxious, when things are weird, when we’re confused, the hormone is the same. It’s all adrenaline or cortisol. And adrenaline and cortisol works in the body very similar ways. They’re stress hormones and so cortisol is a little bit longer lasting and adrenaline is like immediate up and down. So when we have any of these upset feelings, there’s not different hormones for every feeling. It’s the same hormone, it’s all adrenaline. And if you think that it’s all adrenaline, you realize that adrenaline comes when you’re bothered, when you’re afraid, whatever. That adrenaline comes when you’re bothered, when you’re afraid, whatever you know.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 27:29

But there’s a originally, when we were evolving. You know we have to keep going back to the brain because this helps people understand. We need to take the mystery out of anxiety, and then people are like oh, because the mystery is what perpetuates it in a big way. Right? So originally, if somebody looked at us weird, we could be thrown out of the community and that would mean death. You know in hunter-gatherer times, like we needed a community. We couldn’t survive on our own as humans. And so if you weren’t sure about something. Yes, you did need the adrenaline, so our brain was developed to release adrenaline at those times. If you got angry, it meant someone could beat you up or hurt you or whatever. So of course, the adrenaline’s going to come because you need to have that superhuman strength right. The whole point of adrenaline is to call your attention and decide to act to survive, to flee or fight or freeze. If that’s the last resort, we freeze, but any time we’re bothered at all could have meant risk. It doesn’t always mean risk, but it could, and so our bodies needed that hormone to be released. So we were prepared in case it meant danger, in case it did. So yes, I used to think of anxiety as just like fear when you’re afraid. But I understand that the adrenaline is all these things, but I like to define anxiety as the leftover fear response when you’re not in danger. So the leftover sympathetic nervous system, the leftover symptoms of adrenaline, the feelings that adrenaline brings to your body mentally, physically, when you’re not in danger.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 29:08

When you are in danger, you’re doing something to survive, you’re taking action and you’re running back to the village maybe. And when you get to the village you’re like huffing and puffing, like, oh my gosh, guess what happened. The big animal and I survived. And everyone’s like thank goodness you survived. They’re hugging you right. You’re decompressing all of that right. Your adrenaline’s going down and being processed in this retelling of what happened and the thankfulness of surviving.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 29:36

We don’t have that kind of thing right now. We have the fear response and it comes to our prefrontal cortex and it’s like look around, if there’s danger, tell me what to do. And the prefrontal cortex says I don’t see anything, but I feel it. Keep pumping the hormones because I feel it. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, but that’s how it works nowadays. So, yeah, so it’s important for us to understand that we have this adrenaline.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 30:02

It’s usually we’re safe, but we put meaning around that feeling that we might not be, and so it perpetuates. That’s why I like to call it the leftover fear response when you’re not in danger, because I don’t want people. People are like sometimes anxiety is good, it tells you to wear a helmet. Well, that’s common sense. Let’s call it something positive. So then, because people are like you need some anxiety, it protects me and I wanted to separate that out, because it’s hard to get rid of anxiety if it protects you. But if we understood anxiety to be something that you do not need and there’s smartness or common sense or skills that you have that help you survive, and we divide it up like that, it really helps people. Let it go if they need to, if they want to, and people want to because it’s awful.

Dr. Amy Moore: 30:49

Sure, and I love how you know you point out that when we put meaning to our thoughts, right then, when we attach feelings to that thought that oh, I’m in danger, right, that’s when we perpetuate the anxiety, right, Like it’s our relationship with language. So this is the analogy that I use in counseling. It’s like you know how, as women, a lot of us have this emotional response to the number on the scale. When we step on it, that’s how much we weigh. Well, that’s just our relationship with gravity. And so if we think about the number on the scale as just this metric that defines our relationship with gravity, the same way we can think about how, when we language is just words, it’s just words. And so when those thoughts pop in, we’re the ones that say that’s a big deal, that’s a thought I should be upset about that thought. Right, it’s really just language.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 31:50

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Sandy Zamalis: 31:53

That’s such a great way to explain it and, dr Jodi, in your book you even talk about how the use of the term chemical imbalance has really kind of skewed our understanding of this topic. So let’s dive in there a little bit, because I do think that is a misnomer. It is causing us to have poor conversations about this, because we think of it as something is out of balance or out of whack.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 32:18

Yeah, we think about something’s wrong with us, and I think practitioners continue to use this metaphor or this way of thinking about it because they think it decreases stigma. You know, they think that people blame themselves less if they think of it as a chemical imbalance, and so their intentions are good, except for it does not actually work like that. It makes people think that they’re different. Some people are balanced, but I’m not balanced. Also, using the word chemical, I mean this is a pharmaceutical marketing tactic. To use the word chemical instead of hormone. Hormone doesn’t sound as threatening. Chemicals sound more threatening, and so that’s why that term is being used. We’re just talking about hormones. Adrenaline goes up and down all day. Serotonin could go up and down all day and we could actually affect it. We could actually do meditation and make our serotonin come up and go down it. We could actually do meditation and make our serotonin come up and go down, and so I’m not against medicine.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 33:11

I think it’s a tool and it saves people’s lives, but the marketing of it makes us think about these problems in a way that really stall us in order to make us dependent on them, but really stall us from thinking that we could get better, that it’s a regular human response to our world Right. Anxiety, depression, lack of motivation, feeling stuck, feeling resistance, feeling angry these are responses to our context. They’re not mental illnesses, and so when we understand it that way and we understand where they’re coming from, then we could do something about it. We could change that relationship with gravity not with gravity, but with all of these problems, right. So the chemical imbalance, it’s constantly changing. Our hormones are changing every minute, so there’s never a balance. Actually we don’t need to strive for that.

Dr. Amy Moore: 34:10

Well, and you mentioned in your book, it’s not like you can put the amount of serotonin in your brain is on this side of the scale, which makes it imbalanced. I mean you can’t measure serotonin that way.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 34:27

Right, it’s not even a real metaphor. I mean we yeah like we don’t know how much serotonin we have and what it is if we don’t, if we’re depressed, if that is actually less like we’re not measuring it. You know, we’re not. It’s not a blood test and we’re saying your chemicals are imbalanced. We don’t have that capability. People are just going from what your symptoms are and saying you might, it’s, it’s a metaphor, it’s not real.

Dr. Amy Moore: 34:49

Well, and it’s a big one, it’s a dangerous one, it’s one that’s common, that drives the thinking that, okay, if I have depression, then I need something to increase the serotonin in my brain because I’m chemically imbalanced.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 35:04

Yeah, but we’re having, I think with which that’s you’re bringing up a good point dopamine. You know we’re really interrupting your dopamine cycle with our screens and is that what you’re going to say next? You know we’re really interrupting that. Yeah, we’re not measuring it and it’s not balanced or not balanced, but we definitely are struggling with being disinterested in stuff, not caring about things and not being interested in stuff, not getting excited about anything. You know, when somebody before COVID. It’s even worse now because even in the last five years our screen time skyrocketed. It was bad before COVID but it’s been even worse since because there’s more apps, there’s more stuff to do. It’s just constant, but it’s interrupting our dopamine cycle, so we’re seeing the problems even more. I forgot what I was going to say about it, but it’s like oh, I know before that when somebody came into my office and was like I don’t know, I don’t really care if I get better. I don’t think I will get better, but I don’t really care.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 36:05

I know that they’re isolated. I know that that’s a dopamine issue. That’s not a depression issue. It’s a symptom of them being isolated. They’re so isolated that their dopamine hasn’t hit. They haven’t had dopamine in a long time they haven’t done anything interesting. They’re probably sleeping all day and up alone all night and this is why they’re not interested in anything. It’s a dopamine issue. But people look at that and say, well, you’re severely depressed. Yes, it causes the depression. It’s not the depression that causes that, it’s the isolation or the dopamine that causes that. And now we’re seeing it with the screen time interrupting our dopamine cycle. We’re seeing it even though people aren’t isolated, but also they’re isolated. Mm-hmm Screen.

Dr. Amy Moore: 36:50

Yeah Right, you can look at a family and they’re all on their screens as opposed to being connected, so they are isolating themselves, even if you’re in proximity to another person. Exactly.

Sandy Zamalis: 37:02

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Dr. Amy Moore: 37:58

So, speaking of connectedness, you do talk about that and why teens need connectedness, and you even give some tips on how we can increase that. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Jodi Aman: 38:23

for 2025 in my platform is telling people to get together in person. That’s the best thing that you can do is get together in person, but have conversations with young people. If you have consistent conversations with young people, they’re going to start to tell you more and more about their life, obviously, if those interactions are positive. But for teachers, have a space where you could tell kids. They could come talk to you. You know, parents, if you have places where you’re talking to your kids about concepts of the world or their own things or their friends, those kind of things build rapport and build bonding and help them feel connected. They want to belong to something.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 38:57

So this goes the same as doing a tour. Get them involved in a club, get them involved in doing something. This usually is a family culture. If a parent goes to work and comes home and watches TV all night and doesn’t do anything, usually the kids aren’t participating in stuff. It’s part of the culture of a family. If the parents are doing this and that and the other thing, they’re very involved, they have a lot of friends then the kids are doing that too, because that’s part of the family culture. So you have to model that.

Dr. Amy Moore: 39:24

So you’re showing this is what we value.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 39:27

Yes, but you’re also making it. You’re normalizing being with people. You’re normalizing doing things. You’re normalizing volunteering. You know for the club and you know helping with the logistics. You know, yeah, if you belong to a club, you have a sense of belonging, but there’s also like an event, and so you’re bringing cookies, or you know you’re doing something also, so there’s like the work, but there’s a sense of belonging. That’s so important, that connectedness, and that’s what your mom was saying when she was saying you’re participating in a family. You know, there’s a sense of belonging in that. So when kids who do tours, they have a higher sense of belonging in the family system as well.

Sandy Zamalis: 40:08

So I think that’s why video gaming anymore is so addictive for our boys, because it is community building, it is connection building for them, along with all of the other pieces that come with video gaming. So with that in mind, because that connection piece is really key, do you encourage teens to? You know, find a sport, try a sport, get into? You know, clubs are hard to find other than in school, right In colleges, you know, and then as adults we struggle to find these communities. So, in a world that’s so much more digital than it is in person, how do we encourage them to get out and make those connections?

Dr. Amy Moore: 40:52

And recognize that a large portion of our audience are homeschool parents.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 40:58

Yeah, well, a lot of homeschool parents I know they do have activities with other homeschooling families and so they do once or twice a week they’re doing an activity or a field trip or something, a dance class or something with other people, or robotics class, something. There’s classes in the community. There’s sports that are club sports. There’s things that are at school. There’s things that we don’t even know about. I had a client I was encouraging, or she was really isolated, and I was like fine, even sit and knit, but she found bells. You know those big bells Church bells and bells.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 41:37

Or a choir For adults. Maybe we need to just join a choir and once a week you’re with a choir, like for adults. Like maybe we need to just join a choir and once a week you’re with a choir and then you sing on the weekend, or something like that. There are things, actually. You know, If you do belong to a church, you might volunteer for the welcoming committee, or might volunteer for one of the missions that you know help in hospice, or you know volunteer at the hospice center near you. There are unlimited things that you could do. Um, yeah and it, and we can’t think of them and so we kind of think there isn’t any, but there are and these are needed. Get, get involved in your local theater yeah, that’s always stuff to do.

Dr. Amy Moore: 42:19

That was what I did my whole childhood.

Sandy Zamalis: 42:21

Yeah, me too, yeah well, there’s always ways, like all of the things you’ve talked about today are included in community theater, which is really funny because, like you know, there are chores involved in being in theater. If you don’t make the cast, you know there’s set design.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 42:38

There’s so much other things that you can do to build skill and grow and it’s that camaraderie that you yeah, homeschool parents should look into something like that, some kind of a theater, because you could do tech if they don’t want to perform. There’s other jobs there, yeah.

Sandy Zamalis: 42:56

Lighting so many skills, costumes.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 42:58

Yeah, yeah.

Sandy Zamalis: 43:00

For sure yeah.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 43:01

And great stuff that’ll help you in life too. So I’m on a board in my local children’s theater. So my daughter grew up in theater and still is an actress, so I’m a theater mom.

Dr. Amy Moore: 43:15

Yeah, I take so much pride in telling people that I was a child actress because I spent my entire childhood on stage, and so it was the way I connected with others. It was the way that I felt like I brought value to the world.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 43:37

Yeah, we need that right. We need entertainment to get through our hard times. Think about time immemorial. There was always some performance, I don’t know. Always in human history there was some kind of a ceremony performance and then it turned into more of a play and you know, I mean just like forever, yeah.

Sandy Zamalis: 43:57

Before. I know we’re getting late in our talk and I want to make sure we talk about it because this particular issue is fascinating to me. But you have a stance on scary movies. Let’s talk about that as someone who is perpetually fearful of scary movies Me too. Why are they important for our teens?

Dr. Jodi Aman: 44:17

I think that everyone’s a little bit different. So you’re saying this, andrew, because I had an episode of my live show on Monday nights my daughter’s on with me sometimes and we did an episode on scary movies. But really we started to talk about how stories and how performances really help us heal, have the potential to help us heal, and so if you have anxiety, some people with anxiety love scary movies. Some people with anxiety won’t watch scary movies. So it depends on the person.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 44:49

Some people who’ve experienced trauma like scary movies because it seems like a way they could release some of the tension that they feel or some of the things, because they could relate to the characters. So it doesn’t have to be a horror movie. It could be a emotionally sad movie or something like that. There’s a catharsis that happens, that we’re able to process some of our history and our self via the movie. So if it’s anxiety over someone killing us, some of that gets processed during the movie. Then for the other person that could be stimulating. You know someone like me. I watch a movie like that and then I’m scared. I’m scared or more scared, but some people it was relieving them. So interesting how anxiety affects people in completely different ways and I think part of that episode was acknowledging that. You know, stories in general have the potential to heal, but people could. In terms of scary movies, people do respond to them differently.

Sandy Zamalis: 45:47

But my kids think they’re hilarious.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 45:50

I know I wish I felt like that. I do not. Yet I’d be like, no, I’m not watching that. But they, you know, they just they know it’s fiction right, so they just, yeah, they’re looking for all the errors they they’re.

Sandy Zamalis: 46:02

They are totally watching it with an eye of um. I mean, that’s good too yeah, trying to catch the mistakes that were made, like, if you think about it, that’s problem solving.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 46:12

Yeah, right, so they’re. They’re, they’re in the critique of the movie. I also like learning concepts through it’s. You know, we’re all watching tv and we’re all watching things together. But thinking about empathy when you’re talking about the show afterwards and thinking about the characters or why they decide to do what they did, why did they make this? Why did they decide the negative thing? Why did they decide the positive thing at the end, you know, talking about that because there’s a distance, right, they’re not emotionally involved that because there’s a distance, right, they’re not emotionally involved they could develop their concepts through that. Seeing that from that distance, that’s going to help them in their life. Yeah, so I love critiquing shows afterwards.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 46:54

My daughter had a friend that came to the movies with us and she was like flabbergasted because on the way home we’re like analyzing this movie and we’re trying all the things and all the parts and her family didn’t do that, you know, and she loved it. It was so stimulating to like think about not only the characters but like, yeah, if there’s mistakes in there or holes in the plot, and all of that, we love to analyze that all because it like stimulates the mind, it gets us, it’s bonding and it gets us thinking about stuff. We want to teach our kids how to read the world. You know how to understand different things.

Sandy Zamalis: 47:31

You know my daughter and I were just having this conversation just last week. Actually she, she’s moving. She lives in Austin right now and she’s moving back to Virginia and when Wicked came out I was like, oh, you need to go see Wicked because she was having a hard time just at work and just a lot of other things. I’m like you need to go. She loves movies anyway, so I didn’t take much prodding, but she has been addicted to that movie since she went to see it. I think she’s seen it like three or four times. So good, they did a great job they did.

Sandy Zamalis: 48:06

And she’s listened to the music like on repeat, over and over and over. And I asked her, you know, kind of in line with what you were saying, I asked her why she was just feeling such kinship with this movie and she was just like it’s just all of it. It’s the being misunderstood and being alone and you know friendships and like because she’s getting ready to move the friendship pieces. So she’s like it’s just, it feels like it encapsulates my whole life right now. Yeah, you see the development of the characters.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 48:37

Yeah, no way that we. You know, sometimes things are so fast we don’t see that development. But they really develop because they have the ability to do it through song. We did an episode on that too, lily and I did an episode on the.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 48:48

Wicked. Yeah, it was really fun. We watched the movie and then we then we talked about all those themes around friendship and how you know at first like you’re afraid and you don’t want to associate, and then you know when you get, when you you see the what’s right and those kinds of things and being brave and lots of good things in there.

Dr. Amy Moore: 49:10

Have you read the book? Yes, yeah, I mean, the book is so much richer. I think the cinematography in that movie was phenomenal, and I of course saw the stage production too.

Dr. Jodi Aman: 49:46

The choreography in that movie was phenomenal, and I, of course, saw the stage production too. But the book you really see the angst, you really get into the angst of the characters, and I’ve always been fascinated by what makes someone evil. We’re typically not born that way and so you really build empathy for the wicked witch of the West when you read the book. Exactly, exactly, so yeah, that’s really great.

Dr. Amy Moore: 49:56

It’s really great. I think they did such a great job.

Sandy Zamalis: 49:57

Can’t wait to the second one, I know right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 49:58

I did not realize the movie was just the first half, so at the end, when it stopped, I went what?

Sandy Zamalis: 50:07

What Intermission my daughter’s mad at me that I haven’t dug deeper to figure out what happens next, because I don’t know I’m going to watch it on stage somewhere, oh it’s so good, she’s just got to find it and watch it on stage we tried to go. I actually had tickets to go. I bought tickets for my mom and then my husband and I were going to take my mom for her birthday and then COVID hit. So wah, wah, All right.

Dr. Amy Moore: 50:35

So Dr Jodi how can our listeners find more of you? How can they work with you?

Dr. Jodi Aman: 50:42

How can they work with you? How can they reach you? Tell us where you are? My website is JodiAman.com J-O-D-I-A-M-A-N.com. You go, slash and live hear about my live show. It’s Monday nights at 8 pm. I have a call-in guest who I do live coaching right on the show, live counseling, so you can find my books on there, hundreds of videos. I’ve done hundreds of videos for over 10 years and so you can find my books on there. And the guide. Get the guide. You know, get that guide and download it and read it. You could read it in like 20 minutes and get so much information about how to help the young people in your life.

Dr. Amy Moore: 51:17

Yeah, I loved it and it was so organized, and each area that you talked about about mattering, about agency all of that was so clearly delineated and with actionable tips. That’s what we really love to offer our listeners is actionable tips, and so, listeners, you get it instantly when you go to her website to download it. You don’t have to wait. Yeah, all right. Well, we are out of time, so we need to say goodbye to everybody. Thank you so much for listening today. If you like us, please follow us on Instagram and Facebook at the Brainy Moms. If you would rather see our faces, you can find us on YouTube at the Brainy Moms. We would love it if you would leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you think we’re awesome. But that is all the smart stuff that we have for you today. We hope you feel a little bit smarter. Catch you next time.