In my 30s and 40s...

• I made reckless choices.
• Anxiety trapped me for years.

Then I found Martin Heidegger.

He taught me how to stop living FALSELY.

Here’s his 4-step protocol for mental freedom: 🧵 Heidegger was a philosopher and when anxiety hit, his
Salience Network (SN) yelled: “Something is off.”

He also noticed he was spinning false stories:

“What does this mean about me?”
"Why am I a loser?"

(His DMN was activated)

But then he did something very different.

He observed his thoughts.

And, by observing, he came up with a cure for 21st century anxiety:
(I'll summarize below...)

The most influential psychologist of the 20th century wrote private letters to his children.

They weren’t about therapy.

They were about how to survive being human without losing your soul.

Here are 9 principles Carl Jung QUIETLY taught his children—that most people never hear about: 🧵 First, understand who Jung was:

• Medical doctor + psychiatrist
• Founder of analytical psychology
• Broke with Freud at the height of his career
• Studied myth, religion, alchemy, and dreams
• Treated world leaders, artists, and thinkers

But his most radical work wasn’t in books.

It was in how he taught his children to live.

The most powerful metaphor about the human mind:

Plato's Cave.

It explains why most people feel stressed, depressed, and trapped—without knowing why.

Here are 7 warning signs + the exit protocol 🧵 Plato imagined prisoners chained in a cave since birth, facing a blank wall.

Behind them: a fire casting shadows from puppets.

The prisoners believed these shadows were reality because it's all they've ever known.

This isn't ancient philosophy - it's your daily life--RIGHT NOW.

The hidden cause of chronic anxiety, people-pleasing, and “always on” stress:

Self-abandonment.

Warning signs appear long before panic attacks or burnout.

Here are 5 early signs to watch for (share this with someone you love) 🧵

Dread before social situations It’s not “introversion.”

It’s your nervous system running an old risk calculation:
“If I’m fully myself, I could lose connection.”

So your body goes into threat mode—before you even walk in.

Ignore this, and the next signs get harder to miss…

CO₂ sensitivity is one of the most powerful (and ignored) nervous-system interventions.

But, most people don’t know this system exists.

Here are 7 ways to calm your CO₂ alarm + lower your anxiety (in seconds).🧵
1. Stop “silent overbreathing.”
Most anxious people aren’t breathing too little.

They’re breathing TOO MUCH (fast, shallow, chest-only breathing).

That keeps your chemoreflex on a hair trigger.

Instead:

breathe quieter
breathe lower (belly/ribs)
slow your pace

Ernie Hudson is 80 years old.

And he looks stronger than most men half his age.

His secret?

No “get shredded in 30 days"...

Just repeatable systems he’s followed for years:
He basically treats physical fitness like mental fitness:

Small reps.
Daily repetition.
No drama.

And that’s why it lasts decades.

The lesson?

Anxiety isn’t overthinking.

It’s your brain reacting to uncertainty...
and your soul reaching for freedom.

I condensed Kierkegaard into 4 moves. Use this when anxiety spikes.🧵 At 21, Kierkegaard watched his 5th sibling die.

By 30, he was engaged, famous, and set for a conventional life—

Then he detonated it.

David Sinclair is a longevity expert.

But his most underrated “longevity protocol” isn’t supplements.

It’s how he keeps anxiety low in a high-pressure life.

Here's Sinclair's 6-rule system. (you don't want to miss this) 🧵
1. Choose stressors that make you stronger.

Stop lumping all “stress” together.

There are 2 kinds:

1. Biological stress (hormesis) that builds resilience.

2. Psychological stress that grinds you down.

They shouldn’t even share the same word.

Most people aren’t “burned out.”

They’re stuck in always-on stress.

Here are 7 ways to switch it off (without meds) 🧵

1. Stop putting your brain in scatterbrain mode. When your attention is constantly yanked around, your body stays keyed up.
Even “rest” doesn’t feel restful.

Try this:
Check social 2x/day + 30 minutes phone-free quiet or device-free walking.

5 personality traits that predict how you handle stress.

Find yours in 30 seconds (and how to work with it) 🧵
First: the Big 5 are not “labels.”

They’re your nervous system’s default strategy.

When you're aware of your default strategy, you can build on it and let it empower you.

High-functioning anxiety isn’t overthinking.

It’s a nervous system that won’t shut off.

Here are 7 ways to shut it down today (for real) 🧵

1. Stop treating your thoughts like truth. 1. Thoughts aren’t facts. They’re weather.

An anxious mind doesn’t “think.”

It scans like a radar system.

1. It predicts.
2. It rehearses.
3. It builds catastrophes.

So your next move is this:

Set a timer, "chimes", that ring random times of the day.
Check in with your body.

This helps you notice if you're calm or in the fight-or-flight response.

High performers don’t fail at psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy fails them.

Here’s why (7 reasons) and what actually works...🧵
1/ High-achievers learned to survive, not feel.

As children, we learn what brings success.

• Being impressive
• Being useful
• Being controlled

These personality performances work and we double down on them.
They kept us safe and allowed us to thrive.

Yet, later in life, we outgrow these performances.

But we don't know how to act any other way.

Anxiety isn’t just in your head.
It’s in your GUT too.

Here are 7 gut-based ways to calm anxiety, improve mood, and restore mental clarity (without meds)🧵

1. Your gut is your second brain. 1. Your gut has MORE neurons than your brain.

There are 100+ million neurons in your intestines.

This is more than your spinal cord.

This “enteric nervous system” talks directly to your brain

through the vagus nerve.

When your gut is stressed, your mind feels it.

Anxiety isn’t just in your head.

It’s stored in your nervous system.

Here are 9 body-based ways to release it (without medication) 🧵

1. Cold water on your face.
1. Cold water on your face activates the vagus nerve.

It triggers the mammalian diving reflex → increases parasympathetic (vagal) activity and slows your heart rate, which helps interrupt panic attacks.

Cold water also signals GABAergic release, giving you a quick, refreshing, invigorating feeling. It's a sure-fire way to interrupt negative thought loops.

Modern anxiety isn’t just stress.

It’s thought addiction.

And the most dangerous drug on earth is the one we call, “our mind.”

Byron Katie's 4-question turnaround can detox it. 🧵

In just 30 seconds, you can discover it yourself... Byron Katie's life was a nightmare.

She was clinically depressed, agoraphobic, and addicted to alcohol. For nearly 10 years, she could barely leave her bedroom.

Then, in 1986, watching a cockroach crawl across her foot, she recognized it wasn't the world that was imprisoning her; it was her own mind.

I’m American.

After my PhD, I went to India.

What I experienced dismantled my Western worldview.

Here are 8 lessons that permanently rewired how I see life:
1. Control is an illusion.

Arriving in India, I was shoved into a bus heading for Hardiwar and the Ganges.

My backpack was buried under a herd of goats and a pile of dead fish.

Nothing was “mine” anymore.

My Lesson:
Let go or suffer.

Modern therapy is built on an 18th-century mistake.

Descartes said: “I think, therefore I am.”
Vico said: “We create what we know.”

One built a culture of analysis.
The other understood imagination.

Western society chose the wrong one. 🧵
Here's the story no one is telling you... For 400 years, we’ve treated the mind like a machine.

1. Analyze the thought.
2. Reframe the belief.
3. Control the emotion.

But human wounds weren’t created through logic.

They were formed through images, feelings, and lived experience.
We understand our world through our imagination.

The most dangerous, oddly glorified, yet overlooked problem in the world:

Overthinking and underacting.

It's why you're stressed, depressed, and your immune system is always in chaos.

Here's Eckhart Tolle's 9-step protocol to escape the prison of overthinking: 🧵
Most people don't realize that unnecessary negative mind activity contributes significantly to their unhappiness.

Overthinking isn't just annoying - it's physically damaging your body...

When you think fearful thoughts, your body reacts as if you're in real danger.

Here's what's happening in the mind...

Nearly 100 years ago, a famous psychiatrist discovered a psychological shortcut that made desperate people believe almost anything.

It wasn’t about money.
It was about healing.

And it worked so well that even scientists stopped asking questions.

Here’s the forgotten story: 🧵 Wilhelm Reich wasn’t a fringe guru.

He was:
• a medical doctor
• a psychoanalyst
• Freud’s star student
• a rising force in European psychiatry

At first, everything he said made sense.

Then it crossed a line science couldn’t follow.

Here are 7 truths Freud revealed in private letters—
(They never made it into textbooks):🧵

1/ Freud wasn’t a “mental health advocate.” He was a neurologist who watched people lie to themselves for a living.

His cleanest ideas weren’t written for the public.

Truth #1: The biggest threat isn’t pain. It’s self-deception.

Pain is honest. Illusion is a drug.

And every drug charges interest.

Bottom line: Most people suffer from the stories they refuse to stop feeding themselves.

One of the most extreme psychological transformations ever recorded didn’t happen in therapy.

It didn’t happen in safety.
It didn’t happen with insight.

It happened inside a Nazi concentration camp.

And the mechanism still explains why most anxiety treatments FAIL today.

Here’s the story: 🧵 In 1942, a Viennese psychiatrist lost everything.

• His parents
• His wife
• His freedom
• His name

He was reduced to a number.

Most prisoners collapsed psychologically within weeks.

He didn’t.