What dog trainers know about leadership and anxiety

Anxiety & Panic Attacks Series: Part 1 Training the Amygdala

Sit, Stay! What dog trainers know about leadership and anxiety…

Have you ever tried to train a dog? Not that easy huh!? I remember my first dog Sandy, a cocker spaniel. Now spaniels are not generally known as the smartest dogs in the fold and Sandy fitted that stereotype quite well. It took years to train him, and even then he was a naughty dog, but there are a few things that may have made life a lot easier, if I had just applied them from the beginning. The trick? Calm assertive energy, positive reinforcement, pulling in the reigns, consistency & repetition.

But what does dog training and anxiety have to do with panic attacks and anxiety? Maybe more than you first thought…

Calm-Assertive Energy

Domestic dogs were originally bred from wild wolves. They lived in packs, there was a clear leader and they relied on each other for survival. We have bred dogs to rely on us, there is no pack but we are the pack leader, therefore, we have to act like one.

When we have anxiety and panic attacks, it is the amygdala in our brain that takes over our autonomic nervous system, kicking the sympathetic fight-fright-flight-freeze system into gear. However, I have to say, freeze is the most common of these related to anxiety; I mean, who feels like fighting when they have a panic attack!?

When a panic attack kicks in it is generally too late to apply logic, reasoning and assertive measures; what we are looking at here is regulating our nervous system to do the job it’s meant to do, and train it’s calm nature to avoid over thinking and negative patterns.

So how do we become calm and assertive with our brain? We can apply logic, compassion and Socratic questioning to our negative thoughts. For example; ‘I’m no good at doing this, I always stuff things up’ may become ‘Is it really a mistake? By who’s measures? If I did stuff it up, am I the first person in history to make a mistake? I am willing to work on myself in a positive way. Do I treat other people as harshly as I judge and treat myself? Why should I keep being so harsh on myself? Does that achieve anything? I’m not a great friend to myself, maybe it’s time to move forward in a positive, compassionate and constructive way’. As someone once said to me, ‘If you are brave enough to make friends with yourself, at least you have one friend in the world’.

So what exactly are we being calm and assertive with?

The answer is ourselves. This concept runs deep but the basics lye in our positive inner voice being louder than our negative inner voice. We are probably so used to the negative dialogue that runs a million miles an hour that we don’t know how to switch it off, but we must. We must become hyper vigilant to our negativities rather than the physical, emotional and external signs that may trigger a panic attack or anxiety. We have to be a watcher and assert the thoughts. We can catch the thought and stop it, question it and assert positivity. Like training a dog, the older the dog, the longer it takes to train it. But it is possible, you need patience, diligence, awareness, endurance and of course compassion.

Positive Reinforcement

Victoria Stilwell, from it’s me or the dog is a British actress-turned-dog-trainer. She believes that most dog behavioural problems “stem from insecurity and/or a desire to seek and maintain safety and comfort.” Therefore, instead of punishing the dog when it does something naughty alone is not as effective as redirection towards rewarded appropriate behaviour.

My dad always said ‘you catch more flies with honey than vinegar’, and I believe the same is with behaviours. The problem is with anxiety and panic that we are rewarding the wrong behaviours. We have become very good at rewarding avoidance behaviour, for example; a person with a fear of public speaking or closed spaces. When the opportunity comes up to public speak, they avoid it or make excuses or take a sick day from work. The claustrophobic person may avoid aeroplanes or elevators by travelling by car or taking the stairs. By doing this they are positively reinforcing that, for example, inside the lift is bad, outside the lift is good. When you are forced to get in a lift, the whole experience is horrible and panicky, it’s very negative. As soon as you get out of the lift you think ‘ah! What a relief!’ By doing this we are positively reinforcing the wrong things. This happens over and over and it’s not our fault, we just got really good at doing something but it’s just not a beneficial thing for us.    

So what should we positively reinforce?

This is where exposure comes in. We have to work up to facing the phobia or feared situation and positively in gentle, safe steps. Then each time we challenge ourselves a little more, called graded exposure, we positively reinforce that we made it, we are safe and we did a good job and that we are working hard and getting better every day. The hard work must be rewarded and the avoidance must be avoided.

Pulling in the reigns

‘Walkies!’ Barbara Woodhouse, the famous dog trainer from the 70’s and 80’s, most famous for her saying: “There’s no such thing as a difficult dog-only an inexperienced owner,” reflects that it’s not so much that we’re hopeless and unchangeable, but that we don’t have the will or know what to do to improve ourselves or our situation. One of these techniques requires training your mind like it is a wild dog or a chattering monkey. The nature of the beast is to go off on wild tangents and spiralling thoughts, thus we need to pull in the reigns sometimes to control it properly. Two great men come to mind when I think of this concept, one is Buddha.

2,500 years ago when Buddha was alive, he was sitting next to the river meditating for a long time. He had given up everything and had become what is called an ‘ascetic’. This is a very rigid path and he was trying to gain enlightenment this way, but it was proving very harsh on his body, all he wanted to do was eat and drink to nourish his body, but he denied himself and pleasure or indulgence. While he was sitting there a man came by on a boat  teaching his student to play guitar, he said ‘when tuning the guitar, if you tighten the string too tight, it will snap, if you let it go too loose, it will slack.’ The Buddha immediately realized he was on the wrong path. Too much rigidity is no good, you will have a nervous breakdown, but too lazy will not achieve anything’.

The other man is Georges Gurdjieff, a spiritual teacher of the 20^th century. He said that life is like a horse and carriage. The horse is the crazy mind that wanders and runs after anything you put in front of it, it needs to be tamed and steered. The problem is the driver is in the bar drunk most of the time and the wild horse, our mind, is pulling the carriage, our body. But who is it that is sitting in the carriage? Did anyone ask them where they wish to travel? This is our heart and soul, this is who should be driving, who we should be asking ‘what is the true destination we wish to seek?’

Meditation can assist to train our mind. It is a mental exercise and mental training. It is not something we do to think of happier places or block thoughts to ignore reality. It is where we train to not follow the lies and discursive thoughts, but to pull the reigns on our negative downward spiralling thoughts and focus on a positive, relaxed, centred, calm, present and mindful state.

Consistency & Repetition

When you are training a dog, you have to do it as early and as often as possible. You need to be consistent and the process needs to be repeated over and over until the neurons in the brain change into positive habits and behaviours.

The same goes with the brain. The less often we avoid anxious, panicky and phobic situations and repeatedly challenge ourselves with positive reinforcement that we survived and can do it, the easier it gets and the neurons in the brain change into positive habits.

All said and done it is certainly not just that easy. It sometimes takes years and years, but if you practice consistently and diligently with the right approach, anything is possible.