In this journey, as in my day-to-day life, I practice what I preach to my clients.  I know the dangers of staying too long in my cozy little comfort zone / safety bubble.  I know that bubble will shrink down until it risks killing me, a concept explained in this video we made.   So what happens when we DO push outside of our comfort zone?  Well, here’s what happened to me… I began this journey with anxiety levels so high that my guts were liquified.  I was legitimately afraid

I began my trip wearing a hat to hide my blue-and-pink hair at the airport.  Just as I can feel triggered when I see very-right-wing conservatives wearing red MAGA hats, I was afraid of triggering those same people with my blue-haired indicator of more liberal ideals.  I journeyed away from my “Us” territory into “Them” Land.   Those were biases I had to consciously work to balance as I traveled.  If I wanted better manage my anxieties, I needed to be more objective, and a

In my last entry, I wrote about the high-stress circumstances that plagued the first two days of my “Walkabout.”  I set the challenge to face fears, stress, anxiety, and isolation in a MAJOR WAY, all in one week.  Woof.   I did it, and I’m here to tell the story.  But HOW did I do it?  Let’s break it down: 1)      BREATHE! As in DEEP breaths! “Your first and foremost self-help tool is your breath.” ~ Yudit Maros   We all know it’s important to breathe.  No, not just what y

In the book The Tools (made famous by the Netflix special, and with references in the Apple+ series Shrinking), Phil Stutz discusses a technique in which one envisions one’s fear as a black cloud.  Stutz encourages his readers to silently scream in their minds “I love pain!  Pain sets me free!” as they run headfirst at the cloud.  This technique had worked for me in the past, especially when it came to entering cold water with my full body.  I had learned that running headfi

“ Are you really even considering this??  Flying to Ohio??  Briana, you are LITERALLY a ‘blue-haired liberal’- and a woman!  Flying alone to a RED state?!  Airports are federal space- and the federal government is doing some pretty scary things in that space.   People with a legally-recognized right to be here are being deported to overseas prisons .  People are being ‘violently interrogated’  at airports.   Yes, you’re white. You’re a US citizen… maybe you are ‘safe’… but w

Aboriginal Australians have a traditional coming of age ritual in which a young man (roughly age 12-13) is sent into the bush (wilderness) to wander and survive on their own for a period of time.  The youth spends a period of roughly 6 months, wandering around 1,000miles, surviving solely on their own. Successfully returning alive is rewarded with respect and admiration of older members of the tribe, not to mention a profound sense of independence and self-reliance in the in