How to Deal with Emotional Overwhelm and Uncertainty – with Maria Dennis

Do you need a little help right now?

Maybe you just need a little boost. A reminder that life isn’t as bad as it seems.

Or maybe you need some hope. A ray of sunlight in the endless saga of bad news.

Or maybe you’re sliding down, day by day, to a dark place. You’re not yourself. You’ve lost that clear sense of direction you’ve always had.

Then this week’s YBTV interview is for you.

We talk to Zazegga founder Maria Dennis about how to deal with emotional overwhelm and uncertainty.

You’ll learn why you can’t think your way out of your problems, why mindfulness and meditation may not be enough, the exciting new science of integrated intelligence, and the power of the heart to help you feel whole again.

What You’ll Learn

Maria knows what it’s like to be overwhelmed.

To feel like you’ve got to put on an act just to get through the day.

To stuff your feelings down because you don’t have time for them.

To paste on a fake smile because no one wants to hear how you’re really doing.

Everyone saw Maria as a high-functioning organizational consultant who knew exactly what she was doing and never lost her cool.

What they didn’t know was that she was struggling to find a reason to go on.

Pretending Everything is Okay Doesn’t Make Everything Okay

Maria began experiencing panic attacks as a child.

She didn’t grow out of it. The anxiety only grew.

She learned to cope by burying her feelings and putting on an outer shell to face the world.

“We’re conditioned to think of, ‘Well, I’ve got to just get through this,’ and, ‘I’m going to think positive and be grateful for what I have,'” Maria says.

But positive thinking and soldiering on didn’t help Maria feel better. The depression and anxiety kept trying to resurface.

Finally, one day, she snapped.

She was in her car driving, and she felt that old familiar feeling of, “I simply don’t want to be here anymore.” She pushed her foot down hard on the accelerator…

And she crashed.

When she awoke in intensive care, with broken bones and a head injury, she was faced with a turning point.

Would she keep going the way she’d been going…

Or would she face what was going on inside her straight-on and start healing?

She chose to go straight back to work.

“I put my shell back on. I put my armor back on. Partly because I had to…. If I didn’t work and I didn’t bring work in, there was no income,” she says.

But Maria’s story wasn’t over…

Rock Bottom

Maybe you’ve hit rock bottom.

The pandemic has stripped away our protective layers.

Many of us have lost the jobs we identified with. Many of us have been isolated from friends and family. Many of us haven’t been able to engage in many of the activities we loved.

All our difficult emotions, which are normally kept in check, have come to the surface.

We want life to go back to normal. We want a moment of peace. We want the universe to give us a break.

But what we need is greater capacity.

That’s where Zazegga comes in.

Adapting to a pandemic isn’t just stress. This is a major shift: socially, culturally, psychologically. Zazegga is really about giving us the next generation of resources.”

There’s a Different Way

Zazegga is a program Maria developed after 10 solid years of research, reading, self-discovery, breaking down, and building herself back up.

No matter how bad life got for her, no matter how terrible she felt, she knew there was a different way to feel.

“That’s what drove me relentlessly to find this feeling from inside,” she says.

As she developed tools and techniques that worked to build up her own inner strength and reserves, she knew these were things that could help others.

And not just people struggling with depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues.

All of us in these psychologically demanding times need extra help.

“The challenges, the volatility, the uncertainty, the ambiguity of modern life is really unprecedented,” Maria says.

“We have gone through exponential change in the last 20 years, and that change is going to carry on at the same exponential rate. So it’s only going to feel  more uncertain, more changeable.”

Although mental health support and mindfulness/meditation have their place, what Maria envisioned was a program that could help anyone build what she calls “inner fitness.”

Inner fitness refers to the psychological capacity we have to cope with the demands of life.

As life gets more demanding, we need that capacity to increase.

But we can’t think our way to greater capacity.

We have to access the power of our integrated intelligence.

From the Head to the Heart

It took Maria two years to develop her inner fitness program.

“It’s some really cool science,” she says. “I’m just blown away. I get completely lost in in the discovery of what we now know about the human condition and how we experience life—and that is so much more than with the mind.”

The foundation of Zazegga is wholeness, bringing together the wisdom of your head, your heart, your gut, and your body.

“The whole reason we’re breaking down psychologically is because our minds are blowing fuses everywhere,” Maria says.

We try to think our way out of problems. We try to use the mind to solve emotional issues. We live in a head-centered world that prioritizes rationality and the power of the brain.

But research from the emerging sciences of neuroscience, neurocardiology, and neurogastroenterology, as well as anthroposophical medicine, reveal that wisdom and intelligence is spread throughout the body.

If we don’t cultivate the wisdom of our heart, gut, and body, then we’re limited to what our brains can achieve. As the saying goes, “The head knows what’s possible, but the heart decides what’s appropriate.”

Zazegga teaches you “to re-acquaint yourself [and] rediscover this incredible power of your integrated intelligence through the heart center,” Maria explains.

Want to experience it for yourself?

Then get your free heart-centering video practice, which will teach you how to engage your heart intelligence so you can quickly go from stressed to calm, ease anxiety, and escape negative thoughts.