Let's go waaaay back to the basics today. I want to pause for a moment and consider what anxiety in your body looks like and feels like...and how you can approach it.
We are taught to fight against, avoid, and try to route around most of our emotions. There's the relentless pursuit of happiness...and anything less is to be dodged at all costs...
...and it does cost us.
For this conversation today, I invite you to lean towards anxiety a bit and consider how this emotion works FOR you and how you can work WITH it...instead of telling such scary stories about it and trying to "fix" it.
Let's talk about anxiety on this week's episode of The Transforming Anxiety Podcast. And how anxiety looks in your body...
Text PODCAST to (816) 354-1279 and I’ll send mindfulness reminders, anxiety hacks, and little love notes your way from time-to-time…
The Transforming Anxiety Podcast is available for free on:
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Find out more about DJ Sol Rising here. His music is the beautiful intro / outro for the podcast and he has a prolific catalog of offerings for meditation, yoga, and generally relaxing and chilling out.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there, welcome in today. Ok, so, it feels like we’re really into things now…school doesn’t feel NEW anymore, it feels like we’re into the school year. Halloween decorations and candy and costumes are out and it doesn’t feel totally weird, it’s starting to feel seasonally appropriate. My kids are wanting to go to the Halloween stores and shop for all the masks and fake blood and crazy stuff, haha. And I’m FULLY into things here - class starts next week, Be Mindful, Not Anxious - the 6-week mindfulness class so that we can feel better this fall. That’s starting Monday September 16th; so visit www.kellyhanlinmccormick.com/bemindfulnotanxious to find out more and get signed up for that. And I have some GREAT author interviews lined up for the next few months…psychologists, and New York Times bestsellers and oh I’m SO excited to bring these conversations to you. So, next week the first one will be here on the podcast…and then a few more this fall and winter. It’s gonna be good.
Alright, let’s get into this today…anxiety in your body.
You remember those commercials in the 90’s, I think it was the early nineties, that showed an egg in a frying pan, sizzling away, like: this is your brain on drugs. If you’re too young for that, then, well, yeah, hi. It was like this public service announcement trying to give a really solid visual of how drugs fry your brains. And I guess, well, now that I’m saying it this is a terrible intro and analogy, haha, but I want to do a much softer, way better thing here today, haha. In talking about what it is like to have your body on anxiety. Brain on drugs, body on anxiety, see what I mean? Ok, let’s move on from that…I don’t think that landed where I thought it would go. Haha…
Anyway, point is: I want to explore what anxiety in your body looks like, feels like, and IS like. And per usual, this is one of those things where you have to try it on and see what fits and chuck the rest. Some of this you may really resonate with and relate to, you may feel it and get it, like a full YES. And some of it you may never have experienced or thought of or heard of, and that’s ok.
First, let’s talk about a definition for anxiety. And this is kinda tricky. Most of the dictionary definitions or things you can find online are fine, those work well enough. The dictionary says that anxiety is, “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.” And that tracks. Sure. Definitions usually contain an element of fear, an element of future-focused thinking, and a level of uncertainty or a lack of control. I think we can mostly relate to that, it feels about right.
But when you REALLY think about anxiety and are seeking to fully understand it, we need more than a textbook definition. We need something that also integrates experience and what it’s like to FEEL anxiety, to live with anxiety as a somewhat constant companion. A way of understanding it past an intellectual understanding of the word and how it could be used in a sentence.
This is where we start pulling in ideas of feeling dysregulated, or having our stress response activated, whether that’s out of necessity or completely disproportionately. This is where we start considering motivations and energy and wiring. Anxiety is also very future-focused; you live in a body that is only ever HERE, in the present moment. Your mind can time-travel back to the past and remember things, replaying situations, conversations, and memories on that internal movie screen. And anxiety is an emotion that forces your mind into the future, where you try to anticipate and plan and, let’s be honest, control the events and conversations and situations that aren’t here yet.
So, see, we start to put together a picture of anxiety. A more complete understanding of the experience of anxiety, not just making it synonymous with fear or dread or uncertainty about the future. That’s too simplistic for what we’re up to. For what we need here.
Anxiety can feel overwhelming, for sure. It can flood us with discomfort, physical symptoms, and it seems like anxiety-inducing thoughts breed MORE anxiety-inducing thoughts and MORE anxiety and it’s just like a rabbit’s den when anxiety catches. It has a LOT of energy to it; this is one of the gifts of anxiety, if we can see it that way. Is that there is a lot of energy behind it, so if channeled the right way, anxiety can be a motivating and momentum-building FORCE. I know I have gotten a lot of deep cleaning, long walks, and work done because anxiety has mobilized me to keep moving and get things done.
That said, it can also be really destabilizing because there can be a strong sense of negativity and almost pain associated with it. So, energizing, yes…but also, that energy doesn’t always FEEL like the best energy, the kind that is easily harnessed and funneled towards good. So sometimes we can wind up using that energy for evil instead of for good, haha…not really evil, but I mean we spin or we obsess or we ruminate or we use that energy towards an unhealthy coping mechanism or we splay that energy all over the place in an effort to just. feel. better…and when we’re IN IT, it can be really tricky to reframe the anxiety as something we could use and put towards something purposeful or inspiring, or even simply restful or GOOD. This isn’t always about being productive. I’m going to keep trying to pry productivity out of your hands…that’s not all we’re up to here. The point of transforming anxiety is NOT so that we can get more done. Nope. Transforming anxiety is about living the life you WANT…and finding out what you want is far more and deeper and more meaningful than your to-do lists. Promise.
Karla McLaren says this in her book, Embracing Anxiety, she wrote, “...if you can welcome your emotions as vital parts of your intelligence and know that they’re always trying to help you and bring you specific skills, then you can shift your attitude and pay loving attention to them. When you can work with your emotions as your friends and allies, even when they’re intense, you can change every part of your life and discover the emotional genius that has been working inside you your entire life. One of the genius aspects of anxiety is that it scans your interior life and your emotional health in order to assess your readiness for upcoming tasks and challenges. Anxiety works not just to complete our exterior tasks, but also to complete our interior tasks. We begin to see that anxiety helps us attend to the depression we’re ignoring, feel the sadness or grief we push aside, work with the traumatic memories that affect our current decisions, or make amends for something we’ve done wrong, and so forth. This may be one of the reasons that anxiety is mistaken for panic and other emotions; our anxiety may be focusing our attention on suppressed emotions or painful experiences because allowing them to fester or be ignored is inefficient and will likely reduce our effectiveness in the future.”
Ok, phew that was a lot…but I LOVE this idea. Of seeing how anxiety is working FOR us, if we can work WITH it. One of the genius aspects of anxiety is that it scans your interior life and your emotional health in order to assess your readiness…YES. There are genius aspects to this whole thing. It doesn’t have to be a BAD thing. We just need to view it and see it and USE it in a way that is a gift, not a weapon against ourselves.
So, along those lines, it can also be helpful to discern between what anxiety is and what anxiety is NOT. One thing anxiety is NOT is: panic. These are 2 words that we like to use interchangeably, like they’re one and the same. And I get it, they’re related. But they are NOT the same. And those of us who feel anxious and who sometimes panic, well for this conversation and to gain real understanding of anxiety, I think it’s important to draw this line and get clear on what’s what here. And listen, there are a few ways to suss this out. I’m not here to tell you I’m RIGHT about this. I have found this way of thinking about anxiety and panic has been helpful to me, and I’ve taught this to students and clients over the years and it’s deeply resonated with them, too. So try it on. You don’t need to take my word for it, do your own “mesearch” which is where you take something and research it on YOURSELF. Mesearch. See if this feels right to you. But…I find it helpful to use panic to describe that intense fight-or-flight feeling that comes with ALL of the physical sensations: sweaty palms, racing heart, really shallow, quick breathing…of that that signals your body is armed and ready to either fight or flee. This is the kind of stuff that can cause you to hyperventilate or make people think they’re having a heart attack. Panic attack is a term that I understand and have experienced and resonate with. It does, indeed, feel like I’m being attacked with panic. That said, I do think panic is one of the most miraculous and ingenious features of the human body; it arms us instantaneously to fight for our lives, or run for our lives. It’s freakin’ magic.
Anxiety is also not fear…sometimes we’re scared or fearful or even terrified of something. A conversation we need to have, a presentation we are going to give, a change we’re making in our lives. And it’s SO scary. But that is different than anxiety. There’s a different energy to it, a different motivating force behind it. Fear sometimes includes anxiety, but fear keeps us safe, fear hones our instincts and intuition. Fear is the emotion that has the job of challenging risky behavior and making sure we’re taking care of ourselves. Anxiety is more future-focused than fear; it’s about uncertainty down the road. Getting things done now so that we’re in some control of the future.
Anger and confusion and worry and overwhelm…these are all things that get conflated with anxiety, too, I’ve found. If you Google “feelings wheel” or look at Karla McLaren’s work, The Language of Emotions, you’ll see that words MATTER. Finding the right word and using the right vocabulary around our emotional experiences matters enormously. So, much more on that in a future episode, but I want you to know and understand and really feel how it feels to FEEL. That was a lot of feeling. But - we don’t know how to do this. We bat our emotions away, we try and route around them, we try and resist them or avoid them. We use coping mechanisms to deal with them. But we don’t really allow ourselves to open UP to them. It’s counterintuitive, I know. We are hesitant to fully feel things because we think we may get stuck there, or wind up feeling something really awful or scary. When we start to understand that our feelings are messengers, that they work with our minds and our bodies and we are ALL a team, then we start to view them differently. And we bring understanding to anxiety, and all of our other emotions, instead of dread or resistance.
Ok, one last thing for today. I think this is a really good way to get to know yourself, understand yourself, and this is a mindfulness practice for building awareness and emotional intelligence about yourself. Put your nervous system in different situations. Meaning: watch how your body and your emotions respond in different environments, with different people, with different levels of stimulation. If you’ve ever walked into a room and felt your body contract, or if you’ve ever sat next to someone and felt like you were going to come out of your skin, or if you’ve ever been in a crowd and felt the energy just washing over you, you know what it means to tune into your nervous system in that way and see what’s coming up. It can be good, too; if you’ve ever felt yourself just melt when you listen to someone talk, or if you’ve felt completely comfortable in a certain home or city, or if you’ve ever felt just invigorated working on a specific task, you have felt what it’s like to have your nervous system click with your surroundings. Also: if you’ve ever removed your nervous system from a situation: maybe you go on vacation or leave a job or move out of a place, living with certain people, you know what it feels like to let your nervous system recalibrate and quiet down into your own set point.
This is GOOD information to have. We have to get still enough and tune in to that inner experience in order to really read the information that’s coming in, it can take a while to really learn what’s there. But it’s SUCH good information. To watch your nervous system come alive, or shut down, or light on fire, or be in flow…it’s really good to just SEE yourself this way.
And this is another way that we come to understand what anxiety can be like in the body. Those of us who tend towards anxiety, who can feel anxious easily, if we can be willing to sit with ourselves in a situation long enough to gather data through our nervous system…then we’re really in tune with what’s what in a truer sense than we can find through our minds. Our minds apply so much logic and reasoning to things. We try to suss things out and figure it all out all the time. Our bodies are a little more honest and transparent.
This is ongoing work, an ongoing practice for sure…learning how anxiety shows up for you, how it feels in your body, what it presents as when it’s quiet, when it’s getting louder, and when it’s really intense. Reframing it to see it as something that you can work WITH, instead of against. It’s helpful. Try it out. See how anxiety shows up for you. But also the other emotions: panic, confusion, worry, stress, overwhelm, anger, sadness…and happiness, joy, curiosity. The whole family of emotions.
Alright, that’s it for today. But…before I leave you, I want to remind you that my fall mindfulness class, it’s called Be Mindful, Not Anxious, that class is open for enrollment NOW and we start on Monday, September 16th…so if you’re listening to this in somewhat real-time, that’s this coming Monday. We’ll be together for 6 weeks, it’s only $59 for the 6 weeks, and you’ll have practices and meditations you’ll get to keep and work with forever. Be Mindful, Not Anxious. Be sure to visit www.kellyhanlinmccormick.com/bemindfulnotanxious for more info and to get signed up for that. I’d LOVE to work more closely with you and support you through that class. I will see you next week at the same time, same place for more transforming anxiety. And until then, please, take care.