Harvard Professor Says THIS Is the Secret to Success (It’s Not What You Think) | Mel Robbins Podcast

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  The problem isn't anxiety, it's avoiding

  Dr. Luana Marques, a Harvard associate professor of psychiatry who has worked at Mass General for over a decade and wrote Bold Moves, compares anxiety to a fever and avoidance to the infection that keeps it going. Patients ask her to get rid of their anxiety, but she says what keeps them stuck is what they do when they feel it. 'We can't get rid of anxiety. What we can get rid of is avoidance.'

• 02

  Avoidance means lowering discomfort fast at the cost of staying stuck

  She defines it as anything you do or don't do in response to a perceived threat that brings your discomfort down quickly but keeps you stuck long term. The brain is wired to predict and protect, and it can't tell real threats from imagined ones, so an email or a work meeting can register like a lion. She says she has never met anyone whose struggle didn't involve avoidance, including her own hardest moments.

• 03

  The three Rs: retreat, react, remain

  Retreat is moving away: not opening the email (her husband moves unwanted emails to another screen), skipping hard conversations, ruminating. React is lunging at the discomfort to make it stop: firing off an angry email, yelling at a barking dog (Dan Harris's example), grabbing a drink or a vape. Remain is freezing in place, staying in a job or relationship you know doesn't work. She says they mirror fight, flight or freeze, triggered by perceived rather than real threats.

• 04

  Staying home to avoid a panic attack trains the brain to fear work

  Mel describes a family member who took a week off after anxiety spiked. Marques explains that panic attacks come out of the blue, but avoiding work links work to panic in the brain. Your baseline anxiety rises, which makes an attack at work more likely when you return. Rather than 'just do it,' she suggests a partial approach, like driving toward work.

• 05

  Pause and write out the thoughts–emotions–behaviors cycle

  Marques's own example from that morning: the thought 'What if Mel Robbins doesn't like me?' brought anxiety and a pounding heart, then the urge to stay in bed. Those three ping-pong and snowball fast. Her research-based tip is to write down your thoughts, feelings and urges. She says writing engages the prefrontal cortex, which competes for energy with the amygdala, and that she has seen hundreds of patients stop the spiral this way.

• 06

  Cross-examine the thought; you don't have to believe the new one yet

  She walks Mel through a feared sales meeting. Messed up 2 times out of 100? That's a 2% chance. Worst case, you'll be embarrassed, which you've survived before; firing on the spot has never happened. The new line, 'I've been nervous before and done a good job,' won't feel true at first. She says positive thinking alone doesn't work: you reframe, repeat it, and then show up.

• 07

  Aim for 'comfortably uncomfortable' in small, repeated doses

  Total comfort holds nothing meaningful, and total discomfort triggers fight-or-flight, so she aims for the middle. For a listener who always wants to leave the room, she suggests staying one extra minute (or 30 seconds), and if you walk out, coming back within a minute, then building to 3 and 5 minutes on a timer. She has never had a patient who couldn't tolerate a minute.

• 08

  Not all avoidance is bad: safety and strategy are different

  In situations like domestic violence, stepping back to get safe is necessary. A patient staying six more months in a job she disliked to collect a bonus that would pay bills was using strategy, not avoiding. Marques says avoidance is a reflex with a 'price tag' that keeps you stuck, while strategy is something you can explain calmly and rationally.