I'm Dr. Adriana Jarvis Twitchell

I help people
master anxiety

Photo credit: Cami Nelson

Latest Episodes

June 29, 2026

What Would You Do If You Didn't Have to Do It Perfectly?

Episode 100 marks the end of the weekly run of Calm Your Caveman. In this milestone episode, I reflect on the journey of creating 100 episodes, the mistakes made along the way, and the surprising gift of imperfection. We'll explore exercises for uncovering buried goals, examine why perfectionism keeps us stuck, and look at a powerful framework for understanding the true risks of pursuing our dreams. What if the greatest failure isn't trying and failing? What if it's never trying at all? We'll talk about: • Lessons learned from creating 100 episodes • Why perfectionism creates anxiety and paralysis • An exercise for uncovering goals buried under your fears • The three possible outcomes of pursuing any dream • Why trying and failing can still be a success • The importance of sharing your imperfect gifts with the world Stay subscribed for future bonus episodes.

June 22, 2026

You Can't Change a Feeling You Can't Name

Have you ever known that you felt bad, but couldn't explain exactly what you were feeling? This difficulty identifying and describing emotions is known as alexithymia, and research has linked it to higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. In this episode, you'll learn why avoiding emotions keeps them vague and overwhelming, how self-criticism blocks emotional awareness, and a practical technique for uncovering what you're really feeling. We'll explore: ✔ Why emotions can be difficult to identify ✔ How self-judgment blocks emotional awareness ✔ A stream-of-consciousness technique for understanding emotions ✔ Why naming emotions often reduces their intensity ✔ How emotional awareness connects to emotion regulation

Red sad face and green happy face with meter switching between them.

June 15, 2026

Stop Letting Your Emotions Run Your Life

Many people believe they only have two choices when strong emotions show up: suppress them or act on them. But what if there's a third option? In this episode, we explore the science of emotion regulation and how you can change emotions at their source instead of hiding them or being controlled by them. Using the story of a personal trainer whose emotional reaction cost him a friendship and income, you'll discover why emotions often feel automatic—and how to reclaim influence over them. In This Episode ✔ Why emotions can make us feel like we're being pushed around by life ✔ Why "You made me angry" isn't actually how emotions work ✔ The difference between suppression and regulation ✔ A simple 3-step framework for changing emotional responses By understanding how emotions are generated, you can learn to influence the emotions themselves and create responses that better serve your long-term goals, relationships, and well-being.

Featured Episodes

Chemical structure of dopamine with the text dopamine on brown background.

December 9, 2024

Manage Your Dopamine Budget for Anxiety Relief

If your anxiety feels like it’s running the show, your dopamine budget might be maxed out. Our brains evolved to thrive on scarcity, but in today’s world of endless stimulation, we’re overspending dopamine like credit — leaving us anxious, restless, and unable to feel true joy. In this episode, we bring together insights from Dr. Daniel Z. Lieberman, Dr. Anna Lembke, and Dr. Andrew Huberman to show you how to balance your dopamine system and reclaim calm.

August 25, 2025

How to See More and Stress Less

Feeling stressed? What if the fastest way out was through your eyes? In this episode, I’ll teach you a quick 10-second exercise that uses your vision to flip bad stress into good stress. You’ll learn why when anxiety hits, your world shrinks -- your eyes go into tunnel vision and your mind locks into achieving awareness, obsessing over control and what you don’t have. But there’s another mode available. Awakened awareness—the mental counterpart to panoramic vision—that helps you regain perspective, spark insight, and stop anxiety from running the show. Discover how to toggle between these two modes so you can stay focused without getting stuck, and calm without losing your drive.

Hand controlling a wooden marionette puppet

December 22, 2025

When You Feel Powerless and Stuck in Victim-Anxiety

Many people with anxiety get stuck in a victim mindset — a way of seeing life where outside forces determine how things are. In this episode, we explore why that

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What Listeners Are Saying

Calm Your Caveman is worth listening to because it helps you understand the machinery underneath the worry. Twitchell translates complex research into approachable explanations that make anxiety feel less mysterious and more workable. The show is both reassuring and practical. A listener might learn why a particular stress response occurs and then leave with a breathing exercise or change in daily routine to try. Calm Your Caveman offers a thoughtful bridge between understanding anxiety and doing something constructive with that understanding.

- Tal Gur, Author of The Art of Fully Living

Read Full Review Here

Thank you for sharing your lessons on how to overcome limits and turn everyday challenges into strength and accomplishments. Finding a pattern in how our emotions work helps us to modulate, manage and master them. I love it! What an extraordinary podcast.

- Kelly B.

Adriana helped me train my brain in a way to be able to focus on the task at hand and make the connection that the demands are usually never as great as the resources. I highly recommend her for any type of anxiety, but especially performance anxiety!

- McKenna S.

Your podcast on managing memories to meet challenges was just what I needed this week. And your description of threat and challenge responses is broadly helpful, and I often consider that as I deal with multiple tasks.

- Don J.

Can I just say how much I enjoy listening to the Calm Your Caveman podcast! I am a faithful listener each week as I drive to work, and I thoroughly enjoy each episode. Thank you so much for your expertise. Thank you for the many tips I learned from you (I deal with social anxiety, which has been more manageable because of you!). Thank you for your calm and uplifting voice.

- Heather T.

Loved your episode on perfectionism and the insights your shared. I have struggled with perfectionism and, sadly, have missed out on multiple publication opportunities due to it. Gonna apply your mindset to wrap up a big one that has been hanging over my head for several years.

- James R.

New favorite channel! Loving the science and research based tips. Also, you have a wonderful (and calming) voice.

- L. S.

Thank you so much for your encouragement, sincerity and example. Learning that I can find joy in imperfect achievements is an incentive to get started.

- Regina L.

Adriana, I love this. It's super validating and uplifting. Many thanks!

-Marie M.

Thank you so much for the podcasts. I've really liked the idea of coming up with a life purpose or why you live. Thank you so much for what you're doing. It has changed the way I've thought about things. I feel even just the awareness that when I'm feeling stressed out, just knowing that that is what I'm feeling has helped a lot. And the advice you've given to kind of just let yourself feel that fear or feel that anxiety or feel that nervousness and to not shake away from it and to just kind of give yourself almost a hug and find the scared child in yourself and hug that part of yourself, that's really helped. Thanks so much for all you do Adriana.

-Solomon T.