Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. Oh, I'm just I'm just feeling it year
Speaker 1: three of this COVID pandemic. And I don't even know
Speaker 1: if what I'm feeling is anxiety. It's just it blocks
Speaker 1: is all the things, and and honestly, I'm not feeling
Speaker 1: it towards the virus. I'm feeling it towards people. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: the virus. Oh, I got my issues with this virus.
Speaker 1: If I see this virus, boy do I have a
Speaker 1: thing or two to say to it. But people are
Speaker 1: making me just I don't know, anxious man and nah,
Speaker 1: or maybe I'm blaming people when I'm really just not
Speaker 1: checking into my real deeper feelings about the lack of
Speaker 1: control that living through a global pandemic that keeps mutating
Speaker 1: makes us feel. You know, I I I started to
Speaker 1: I refused to say get back to normal, even though
Speaker 1: I say it a lot. But I don't even mean
Speaker 1: it when I say but I started to go back
Speaker 1: to doing things I used to do, enjoying myself at
Speaker 1: a restaurant. I vaccinated. I living in New York right now,
Speaker 1: and we had some of the lowest cases before oh, Macron.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, you would have had to really try
Speaker 1: to get COVID if you were vaccinated amboosted, which I
Speaker 1: was back in October and early November, and I was
Speaker 1: going to restaurants indoors, they check your vaccine card. It
Speaker 1: felt very safe, and it did something for the soul.
Speaker 1: And then here comes ome Acron and and I don't listen,
Speaker 1: My life's great. I don't mean to sound like a victim.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have it worked, so I certainly
Speaker 1: don't mean and me, me, me, But I found myself
Speaker 1: once again back in that familiar feeling of uh, stop
Speaker 1: the planet, I want to get off. These people here
Speaker 1: are making me crazy, you know, that was that was
Speaker 1: the first thing I said when I first first first
Speaker 1: went to therapy decades ago. I'm fine, it's everyone else
Speaker 1: and how they behave that's the problem. So if you
Speaker 1: could just give me some tips. Thinks when you say
Speaker 1: that to a therapist, boy or they just excited. They
Speaker 1: know you're a patient they will have for a long time.
Speaker 1: Because of course, of course, when we feel so many things,
Speaker 1: it's always good to look within and not just without
Speaker 1: or look out at other people and think, well, what
Speaker 1: are they doing wrong to make me feel this way?
Speaker 1: But whatever is causing it, I don't know. I can't
Speaker 1: put a name to what I feel. I talk about
Speaker 1: it with my guests today, the anxiety sisters. I call
Speaker 1: it going into some kind of like emotional shutdown. But
Speaker 1: just wake me when it's over. I'm irritable, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's what it is. My anxiety is posing
Speaker 1: as irritability. I'm irritable at well, we're all gonna get
Speaker 1: it anyway, so hope I just get it. I can't
Speaker 1: stand that attitude, especially. I mean, I'm talking about people
Speaker 1: who are vaccinated, who've been doing all the right things
Speaker 1: and then suddenly, well you know, I might get it,
Speaker 1: So hope I do, and I can just get it
Speaker 1: over with. Is though, what are you a scientist? Suddenly
Speaker 1: you can see into the future, so if you get
Speaker 1: this variant, it'll just be mild. And uh then what
Speaker 1: you you can't reinfect because you can. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get into this whole virology discussion. Is
Speaker 1: that a word. I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm just a
Speaker 1: human trying to get through this damn thing. And I
Speaker 1: get I can feel it in my body. It feels
Speaker 1: like someone put a weighted backpack on my shoulders when
Speaker 1: I even just read a tweet or something from somebody saying, well,
Speaker 1: we're all gonna get this someday. So I hope I
Speaker 1: get it soon. I want to get back out into
Speaker 1: my life. I'm like, why aren't you thinking of others? Why?
Speaker 1: Uh So that's where I'm at today and I listen.
Speaker 1: I tried to avoid talking about this pandemic as much
Speaker 1: as I could on this podcast because I know, if
Speaker 1: you're listening to a podcast about anxiety, you probably I
Speaker 1: don't want to think about that right now. And when
Speaker 1: I first started this podcast, we were again pre delta.
Speaker 1: That's how I think of my life now, what variant
Speaker 1: was going on then. I don't even think of what
Speaker 1: age I was or one month that was is well,
Speaker 1: this was post vaccine, pre delta. But that's when I
Speaker 1: started this podcast, and we interviewed a lot of people
Speaker 1: months and months and months in advance before their episodes
Speaker 1: came out, because I wanted to talk to them about
Speaker 1: very specific, timeless, evergreen anxiety topics, neuroscience and meditation. But
Speaker 1: a lot of times when people, you know, before we
Speaker 1: rolled the audio. I would say, let's let's not mention
Speaker 1: the pandemic because this might air in four to six months.
Speaker 1: I don't know where we'll be at that point. It
Speaker 1: might sound outdated, It might sound outdated in a good
Speaker 1: or a bad way where people are like, what, but
Speaker 1: oh my god, I forgot about the pandemic. It's totally
Speaker 1: over or it's fifty times as worse, and we're kind
Speaker 1: of not taking it seriously enough because we didn't know
Speaker 1: when when we recorded. So this week we're sort of
Speaker 1: more in the present of this. This episode was not
Speaker 1: filmed too long ago, filmed what can I speak? Recorded? Um,
Speaker 1: it was recorded last week. So I do ask the
Speaker 1: Anxiety Sisters what are they seeing out there? Because they
Speaker 1: have this giant community of people who have anxiety that
Speaker 1: they interact with, and so we do talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that, about how everybody is experiencing anxiety during
Speaker 1: this time and what we can do to take care
Speaker 1: of ourselves. And you know, it was interesting they caught
Speaker 1: me in a moment, the Anxiety Sisters, of beating myself up.
Speaker 1: I said something like, oh, I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: in a childish way, and they said, hey, don't talk
Speaker 1: bad about yourself like that. I love when people who
Speaker 1: are experts and anxiety can see me doing my unhelpful
Speaker 1: cognitive thinking in the moment. So let's introduce our guests.
Speaker 1: Enough of Me got enough of Me last week. My
Speaker 1: guests today are the Anxiety Sisters. No, they are not related,
Speaker 1: but they are soul sisters in having anxiety. They have
Speaker 1: been friends for decades and they have a great book
Speaker 1: that's out right now called The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide,
Speaker 1: How you can become more hopeful, connected, and happy. The
Speaker 1: Anxiety Sisters are Abby Greenberg and Maggie Sir Roger. Now,
Speaker 1: there is so much to tell you about them. They
Speaker 1: have a podcast called The spin Cycle, they have their book,
Speaker 1: The Anxiety Sisters, and I will link all of this
Speaker 1: in the show notes. But what is the most impressive
Speaker 1: is that Abby and Maggie have a community of over
Speaker 1: two thousand people that they talked to, as they put
Speaker 1: it constantly. You can go to their website Anxiety Sisters
Speaker 1: dot com, sign up for their newsletter and they'll send
Speaker 1: you a free progressive muscle relaxation. But their Facebook page
Speaker 1: has become really huge. They have forums on their web
Speaker 1: say but that was changed and now it's gone over
Speaker 1: to Facebook. So here finally a good Facebook story. So
Speaker 1: their Facebook page is extremely active. They do all of
Speaker 1: their own moderating, and they say they have one of
Speaker 1: the kindest, most supportive gentle groups going and if you
Speaker 1: send them a message, they will absolutely email you back
Speaker 1: and may take a little bit, but they will do it.
Speaker 1: They have a book group on Facebook Live on Tuesday
Speaker 1: nights at seven o'clock. They do a chapter from their
Speaker 1: book a week and they give a presentation based on
Speaker 1: that chapter. And they do a very private zoom group
Speaker 1: called the Coping Crew if you want a little more
Speaker 1: care and are able to pay for that. So I'm
Speaker 1: just so impressed that they take so much time out
Speaker 1: of their weeks and their days to help others, and
Speaker 1: they are in touch with people that that blows my mind.
Speaker 1: And it was great to talk to them because I
Speaker 1: always love talking to people who just like me, had
Speaker 1: anxiety before there was the internet and we didn't even
Speaker 1: know the words to use to try to get help.
Speaker 1: And what dawned on me while I was talking with
Speaker 1: the Anxiety Sisters is, in a way, I feel really
Speaker 1: grateful for that because when we talked about our anxiety
Speaker 1: to whomever we could talk to it about. Before the Internet,
Speaker 1: we would describe our physical symptoms, the sensations we were
Speaker 1: feeling to the best of our ability, and we really
Speaker 1: thought what was wrong with us was something physical, and
Speaker 1: so we didn't just say I'm having anxiety. We would
Speaker 1: say I'm driving and I feel like I can't breathe
Speaker 1: and I'm going to faint and I need to pull over.
Speaker 1: And so, in a weird way, all of this anxiety
Speaker 1: talk and labeling things anxiety is wonderful, but every once
Speaker 1: in a while, I do think we need to step
Speaker 1: back and talk about the hundreds of individual symptoms that
Speaker 1: anxiety can be, from an arm that feels numb, to
Speaker 1: chest pains, two feelings of unreality, to irritability, to even
Speaker 1: digestive issues. There is, as they say, if you have
Speaker 1: a body part, anxiety can somehow be involved in that.
Speaker 1: So enough of me, Let's take you to my chat
Speaker 1: with the anxiety sisters. Now, Am I allowed to say
Speaker 1: that I'm an anxiety sister too? Oh? We we hope
Speaker 1: you are, okay, I'm your I'm your sister and anxiety
Speaker 1: and uh, you know what I loved in you know,
Speaker 1: reading your bio is that you too were anxious kids,
Speaker 1: anxious teenagers, anxious young adults, anxious middle aged adults, and
Speaker 1: now we're all anxious middle aged adults. But at least
Speaker 1: now we've got some information and it's more normalized. We
Speaker 1: have the Internet. But just like me, you all were
Speaker 1: figuring this out in a world where I don't even
Speaker 1: know if the word anxiety was being used. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're anything like me, but I thought
Speaker 1: you were either normal or crazy, and crazy meant you
Speaker 1: live in a patent room for the rest of your
Speaker 1: life and your family visitsing once a year. And so
Speaker 1: I didn't want to tell anybody because I felt like
Speaker 1: it was like confessing to a murder, Like if I
Speaker 1: say something, then this whole thing is going down. You know,
Speaker 1: my life's changing forever. So can you take me through
Speaker 1: your lives together? And why this is um to me
Speaker 1: so unique is that you had each other and you
Speaker 1: know friendships grow apart all the time, and that you
Speaker 1: both stayed anxious together but helped each other through it.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me your story and your own words? Well,
Speaker 1: we we met in college in the late eighties, and
Speaker 1: uh so we say that we're Although we're not biological sisters,
Speaker 1: we are definitely soul sisters because after thirty four years
Speaker 1: of child raining each other, we definitely have earned that
Speaker 1: we're now linked forever um. But I think that what
Speaker 1: attracted us to each other initially was just sort of
Speaker 1: that panicked expression we both wore on our faces all
Speaker 1: the time, and I think we felt like kindred spirits,
Speaker 1: right Macus, I mean, this isn't that sort of I
Speaker 1: mean I looked at her, you know, I listened to
Speaker 1: sort of the things that she talked about, and I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: feeling that too, And she seems like the kind of
Speaker 1: person that I could could fide in and tell her that.
Speaker 1: You know, I did. You you know, I went to
Speaker 1: the counseling center and I laughed just because those are
Speaker 1: those were never helpful back then. No, I you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I felt, I felt like I didn't want
Speaker 1: to tell anyone. I went to the counseling center because
Speaker 1: some people are like, oh, why, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: So I didn't want to tell anyone. But I felt
Speaker 1: like Maggie was someone I could tell. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: She just looked like someone who either had been to
Speaker 1: the counseling center herself, or at least understood. And I
Speaker 1: said to her, have you gone to talk to anybody
Speaker 1: about this? And she was like, oh, yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: really help, thank goodness. So that's kind of how the
Speaker 1: conversation began. We lived in the same dorm and really
Speaker 1: ended up spending a lot of nights sitting together and
Speaker 1: talking about what ended up being our symptoms of anxiety
Speaker 1: and even some depression. We just didn't have the vocabulary
Speaker 1: for it. Back then. People weren't talking about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, I thought that there was just something physically
Speaker 1: wrong with me and that i'd probably die from it eventually.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know what it was. And now you
Speaker 1: thought you had some sort of stomach ailment that was
Speaker 1: most likely canceled or definitely fatal. And we kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, lamented the fact that we would have, you know,
Speaker 1: very anxious in short lives. You know, I have the
Speaker 1: same thing, and I I thought, as well, you're reminding
Speaker 1: me that I didn't just think something might psychologically be wrong.
Speaker 1: I had panic disorder on diagnosed, and so I thought
Speaker 1: I just have a heart condition or something that's that
Speaker 1: we don't know what it is yet. But if I
Speaker 1: feel like this ten times a day every day, I'm
Speaker 1: probably not live very long. It's probably gonna probably to
Speaker 1: kill me. We like to say that we had our
Speaker 1: twenties was our decade of the where you know, we
Speaker 1: still didn't really understand this idea of anxiety disorder um,
Speaker 1: and we each sort of decided, Okay, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: see what is actually wrong with us. So we went
Speaker 1: to the nutritionist and the cardiologist, and the hypnotist and
Speaker 1: the past life regressionists and the psychiatrist, the therapist, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever is there was, and whomever would take our money.
Speaker 1: We were there trying to find the reason why we
Speaker 1: felt like we felt we would go anywhere or do
Speaker 1: anything that offers some bope because we were both so
Speaker 1: even though we had each other, were very isolated and
Speaker 1: lonely because I think anxiety disorder does that. It makes
Speaker 1: you feel set apart from others, and we felt really alone,
Speaker 1: like we thought we were the only two people that
Speaker 1: were dealing with this. Yeah. Oh, and we didn't have
Speaker 1: the Internet back then, so we didn't have the access
Speaker 1: to other people saying yeah, I experienced this also, And
Speaker 1: you know, we tried to look for that, and we
Speaker 1: we couldn't find it. We went to the bookstore. You know,
Speaker 1: we're booked people, So to the bookstore. I thought, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll buy books about anxiety and that will make us
Speaker 1: feel better. And you know, I had a full blown
Speaker 1: panic attack at Barnes and Noble because the book that
Speaker 1: I pulled out it was some had panic in the title,
Speaker 1: and it was bright red. And remember that, Mags, Yes,
Speaker 1: I do remember it. I have to leave the store.
Speaker 1: I did because I was starting to shake. And some
Speaker 1: of the books that we were reading, I mean, they
Speaker 1: were really they were written by very respected experts who
Speaker 1: absolutely knew their stuff, but it was very clinical and
Speaker 1: very prescriptive, and all Mag's and I kept saying to
Speaker 1: each other's, I don't think we can do this. I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean one of the books that we read told
Speaker 1: me that I needed to do have the cardiovascular exercise
Speaker 1: thirty minutes a day. Well, I could tell you something.
Speaker 1: In my panic, my heart raced two ridiculous levels and
Speaker 1: I was already sweaty, and I thought, I can't make
Speaker 1: my heart go any higher than this. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: just get on the elliptical and blow up. Anxiety bites
Speaker 1: will be right back after a quick little message from
Speaker 1: one of our sponsors. So when you all are sitting
Speaker 1: around talking about your anxiety, and again there were aren't
Speaker 1: these words for work, for saying what? What kind of
Speaker 1: do you remember? What kind of things you're saying when
Speaker 1: you're talking about your symptoms with each other? Like what
Speaker 1: words were you using? Well, you know, at different times
Speaker 1: it was. It was different as we went along. But
Speaker 1: I think, you know, for us, there were some things
Speaker 1: happening in our lives that just um indicated a problem,
Speaker 1: but we didn't really connect the dots in our in
Speaker 1: each of us had that, you know, or we didn't
Speaker 1: even know that it wasn't quite um typical too. I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, So I I had developed at
Speaker 1: one point a lot of phobias. Um, I knew that
Speaker 1: wasn't typical. But um, I didn't know the word phobia
Speaker 1: or exposure therapy that type of thing. But I knew,
Speaker 1: Oh god, when I'm when I'm driving in a car,
Speaker 1: I'm getting more and more nervous and what and I
Speaker 1: can't drive in the rain. I have to pull over
Speaker 1: when it's raining. Yeah, Or I remember visiting Abby at
Speaker 1: her grandmother's we so we must have been, you know,
Speaker 1: in our early twenties. And she lived about an hour
Speaker 1: and a half away from where my parents lived, and
Speaker 1: I had taken their car and that trip took me
Speaker 1: six hours because I kept having to pull over. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of times, and Abby
Speaker 1: has her own version of that too, but I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times things were happening to us and
Speaker 1: we weren't quite connecting the dots. But you know, so
Speaker 1: it was more like, wait, why is that taking the
Speaker 1: six hours for me? The symptoms were so pronounced, and
Speaker 1: you know, in your twenties, you're just not expecting to
Speaker 1: have chest pain all the time. You're not expecting to
Speaker 1: be dizzy, and you're not expecting for your left arm
Speaker 1: to some suddenly go numb. You know. It's like I
Speaker 1: would watch these Bay or Ashburn commercials and be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm dying. Oh the beer aspens just totally.
Speaker 1: That was that was about the only thing that seemed
Speaker 1: close to what I was experiencing. So I remember buying
Speaker 1: Bear aspirin in my twenties. Yes, my conversations with Maggie
Speaker 1: would go something like this. She picked up the phone
Speaker 1: and she would say hello, and I would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's happening again. My arm is numb. What do you
Speaker 1: think that's what do you think that could mean? It
Speaker 1: has to be heart attack, right, it has to be
Speaker 1: a heart disease thing. And she would say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's been going on for so long it's probably
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, but what else could it be? And
Speaker 1: so a lot of our conversations were, well, what could
Speaker 1: this be? We don't get it. And then I went
Speaker 1: to the emergency room twice, not three times, but four times,
Speaker 1: and in the fourth time I actually said, haven't you
Speaker 1: seen house looked further? This is like a real it's
Speaker 1: a real problem. You guys are missing it. You don't
Speaker 1: And he said, well, we did the e k G twice,
Speaker 1: we we checked your enzymes, you've done a chest X ray.
Speaker 1: We really can't do anything else. Your heart is totally fine.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you people do not know what you're doing
Speaker 1: because I'm in here every week, and they didn't say
Speaker 1: anything like, gee, this could be anxiety. Well, on the
Speaker 1: fourth go around, he said to me, this is definitely anxiety,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to prove it to you. He said,
Speaker 1: I have here a shot of ad evan, he said,
Speaker 1: which is a sedative. If you're having a heart attack,
Speaker 1: it's not going to stop your heart a heart attack,
Speaker 1: he said, but if you're having anxiety, you should feel
Speaker 1: a little better. So he put it into my I V.
Speaker 1: And within ten minutes, I'm like, this stuff is great.
Speaker 1: How do I get in some of this? That is?
Speaker 1: You know, I've never heard anyone I've heard of people
Speaker 1: being told by their doctor you know, this is anxiety
Speaker 1: when it was. But wow, what an amazing actual procedure
Speaker 1: that he gave you, which is I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you an anxiety medication. You know. Uh, I mean, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it that happening to anybody. Well,
Speaker 1: he was the first person who made me think, all right,
Speaker 1: it's possible that sharp chest pains, at the shortness of breath,
Speaker 1: that all these things that that sounds me like a
Speaker 1: heart attack. Maybe it's possible that this is coming from
Speaker 1: a different place. Maybe this is this is something in
Speaker 1: my brain. It's interesting that because as women, as you know, um,
Speaker 1: it dates back to the beginning of medicine, we were
Speaker 1: called hysterical. If anything was ever wrong physically, you know,
Speaker 1: science still knows so little about women's bodies and women's
Speaker 1: health that it all boils down to, um, we're hysterical,
Speaker 1: we're crazy. And yet, weirdly, so many women I know
Speaker 1: when they have gone to get their heart to did
Speaker 1: or get a stress tester, or see a cardiologist that
Speaker 1: actually anxiety comes up on like the third visit. And
Speaker 1: it's like, of all the times that someone should be
Speaker 1: saying this actually is in your it sometimes doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to happen. And I know, for me, a doctor once
Speaker 1: said to me, I mean the therapist one said to me,
Speaker 1: for sure, go get all of your blood tests, go
Speaker 1: to the doctor and make sure nothing physical is wrong.
Speaker 1: And you know, we can assume as is anxiety, but
Speaker 1: let's just make sure. And so I think that's always
Speaker 1: the best way to go. So in a weird way, um,
Speaker 1: people with anxiety end up doing the right thing first.
Speaker 1: In a strange way, we tell everybody, if you are
Speaker 1: an anxiety sister, you've probably seen cardiologists, neurologists, gastro inturologists.
Speaker 1: You know, you've seen probably in some sense you've seen
Speaker 1: like so many doctors and gotten things checked out. And
Speaker 1: we always tell people to do that, you know, because
Speaker 1: that that is responsible. Yeah, because these symptoms are so
Speaker 1: physical called it's like people think, oh anxiety, Oh I
Speaker 1: feel a little anxious. No, it's not. You may not think,
Speaker 1: you know. I know. I never felt like, oh I'm anxious.
Speaker 1: I felt like, oh I'm nauseous all the time. Oh
Speaker 1: I can't eat? Oh nothing staying down? You know. So
Speaker 1: how is that anxiety? How is that not something wrong
Speaker 1: with my stomach? You know? And that's what so tricky
Speaker 1: about anxiety is it's not a feeling, it's it's physical
Speaker 1: symptoms often And yeah, Maggie, you're making me realize that,
Speaker 1: you know, in a weird way. You two were really
Speaker 1: lucky to not have language yet, because nowadays it can
Speaker 1: get so sanitized. So I'm thinking of your story. We're
Speaker 1: driving and it's raining, it takes you six hours, you
Speaker 1: have to pull over. You know. Nowadays you might say
Speaker 1: to someone I'm feeling some feelings like unreality, I'm having
Speaker 1: anxiety driving and it just sort of gets washed over.
Speaker 1: And so what I'm experiencing a lot doing this podcast
Speaker 1: is people are writing to me and saying, now I
Speaker 1: don't have anxiety, but I have, and then they list
Speaker 1: nine symptoms of anxiety, but none of the symptoms seem typical,
Speaker 1: so they don't think they have it. And so in
Speaker 1: a weird way, it's kind of a gift that we
Speaker 1: grew up learning to describe each and every symptom. My
Speaker 1: arm feels numb. I just have this feeling. I can't
Speaker 1: complete the drive. So in a way, we were all
Speaker 1: really lucky because we are experts in knowing that anxiety
Speaker 1: is one word for a billion different things, and we
Speaker 1: have an easy acceptance now that this could be anxiety.
Speaker 1: We don't question it and say, how could that be anxiety?
Speaker 1: We did it first. But a lot of people I
Speaker 1: know that are they're pretty savvy A but anxiety are
Speaker 1: kind of going backwards. They're still learning all of the symptoms,
Speaker 1: but they know the word. Anything your body can do,
Speaker 1: any sound it can make, and smell and he fluid,
Speaker 1: it can produce. Anything your body can do any organ
Speaker 1: that something can happen during anxiety with that particular body part.
Speaker 1: In other words, if if your body can do it,
Speaker 1: it can be a symptom of anxiety. D And you know,
Speaker 1: we have a really large virtual community and anxiety sisterhood,
Speaker 1: and a lot of our people are telling us all
Speaker 1: the time, really, this is really anxiety. So I think
Speaker 1: there's still quite a lot of people who don't believe
Speaker 1: their symptoms. Can I ask you, then, what was both
Speaker 1: of your first moments when you realize, oh, this is
Speaker 1: anxiety and anxiety disorder. Now I'm on the path. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing I have to say is that that is
Speaker 1: for many of us, and we, like Abby said, we
Speaker 1: have this community of over two hundred thousand people who
Speaker 1: talk to us constantly. And I have to say that
Speaker 1: that's usually a process, you know, of someone saying to
Speaker 1: you you have anxiety, and then you still can't really
Speaker 1: believe it, because who can believe these unbelievable physical symptoms,
Speaker 1: these debilitating symptoms. Yeah, so, but the first time, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, that I the uh. Um, I had
Speaker 1: a therapist telling me you have anxiety. But but I
Speaker 1: was like, she doesn't know what she's talking about, because
Speaker 1: these symptoms can't be anxiety. But I called. I was
Speaker 1: I was actually babysitting for my brother's son at the time,
Speaker 1: and um, someone and my sister in law sister called
Speaker 1: and I said, how are you? And I don't know
Speaker 1: why I didn't say fine, I said, well, actually, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm nauseous all the time, I can't eat. I'm I
Speaker 1: was living in New York City at the time. I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of the subway, I'm afraid of my elevator and
Speaker 1: my building. I can barely get to work. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I just like spit all this out right,
Speaker 1: and she said, yeah, I I had that when I
Speaker 1: had agoraphobia. You have anxiety. And when she said it
Speaker 1: to me, not a therapist, not a doctor, but appear
Speaker 1: said it to me. I was like, Oh, she's telling
Speaker 1: me how she too, And somehow that turned a light
Speaker 1: on for me. We hear from a lot of people
Speaker 1: with agoraphobia, and I certainly had a case of it.
Speaker 1: You know, an Abbey went through periods of time with it.
Speaker 1: But you know, people think it's like, oh, they're afraid
Speaker 1: to leave the house. That's not really agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is
Speaker 1: really um fear of having a panic attack when you're
Speaker 1: outside the house and not being able to get home,
Speaker 1: or fear of for some people, getting very sick outside
Speaker 1: the home and not being able to get home. So
Speaker 1: it really is a gooraphobia when they are all these places.
Speaker 1: It starts often with transportation. Um, but there are all
Speaker 1: these places that you can't go. And we have a
Speaker 1: term we like to use called shrinking world syndrome. So
Speaker 1: you like that. Yes, So even if it's not quite
Speaker 1: a or a phobia, even if you're sort of don't
Speaker 1: quite meet that diagnosis, as soon as we say, as
Speaker 1: soon as you're in the situation where your your anxiety
Speaker 1: is making decisions about where you go, what you do,
Speaker 1: who you see, rather than yourself, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: these are these are anxiety decisions, then you're starting to
Speaker 1: have this thing we call shrinking world syndrome. I think
Speaker 1: the misunderstood thing about agoraphobia and what you call shrinking
Speaker 1: world syndrome. It's not I'm an introvert or you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that. It's it's like desperately really wanting to
Speaker 1: do these things and really thinking you can't. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like if you thought you had a broken leg
Speaker 1: and you didn't. You know, that's a perfect example in
Speaker 1: that it. You know, one of the things we try
Speaker 1: to do. Abby really knows a ton about neuroscience and
Speaker 1: she's taught me a lot about it. But um, one
Speaker 1: of the things we really try to do is sort
Speaker 1: of break it down to the simplest neuroscience we could
Speaker 1: give people right because you start to realize it is
Speaker 1: like a broken leg, but it's happening. You know, you
Speaker 1: have this trigger happy a magdala. It is happening in
Speaker 1: a place in your body. It is something going going
Speaker 1: wonky or not working in a way that's going to
Speaker 1: benefit you. Yeah, it's real, and aban, what was your
Speaker 1: first Okay, this is anxiety. Now I'm on the path
Speaker 1: or I know it's hard to say because it is
Speaker 1: a series of moments, but I don't know if I
Speaker 1: ever got to that place because they're still lays, you know,
Speaker 1: even now after I'm a bona fide anxiety sister and
Speaker 1: we've made our life's work to help people manage their anxieties.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't manage them even at that point. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're still some days we're all call Maggs and also
Speaker 1: be sure this is anxiety. There was never one particular day.
Speaker 1: I certainly when that eer doc gave me the ada
Speaker 1: van Yeah that you know, I have a science mind,
Speaker 1: so that was fairly okay, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: That's logical, and I liked that and that helped, and
Speaker 1: that was when I went started to see my first psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: but then spent a lot of years grappling. You know. UM,
Speaker 1: and you know now I manage my anxiety really well
Speaker 1: and I and I think I I live a really
Speaker 1: full life despite having anxiety, but it still have it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. You guys mentioned your online community.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me, you know, in some detail, what
Speaker 1: exactly that entails? So are people able to, um, you know,
Speaker 1: talk with you or they are they is it a
Speaker 1: message board? What? What is this amazing community? Because I'm
Speaker 1: sure my listeners would like to be part of it.
Speaker 1: Well they can and it's totally free. UM. So they
Speaker 1: can come to our website, which is Anxiety Sisters dot
Speaker 1: com and they can just if you give us your
Speaker 1: email address, then you sign up for our newsletter and
Speaker 1: you get a free progressive muscle relaxation and it really
Speaker 1: connects you with the community. UM. And then also our
Speaker 1: Facebook page has become really we had forums on our
Speaker 1: website and those were fine and people were chatting, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly people were like, let's take this to FB
Speaker 1: and everyone would that be? And then before we knew it,
Speaker 1: everyone had kind of left the forums and gone to
Speaker 1: talk on Facebook. So our Facebook page is extremely active.
Speaker 1: I mean, Mag is on it all day long. We
Speaker 1: moderate everything and we have one of the kindest, most supportive,
Speaker 1: gentlest pages I've ever seen. We it's amazing thing to
Speaker 1: me how how little discord there is with so many followers.
Speaker 1: It's nice to hear a good Facebook story for once.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really active page and uh, and
Speaker 1: we ask Mag and I answer every private message and
Speaker 1: every email we get. So nowadays, with such big numbers,
Speaker 1: it takes a few days for us to get back
Speaker 1: to everybody. But we talked to hundreds of people a week.
Speaker 1: You're saints. Well, we have a book group on Facebook
Speaker 1: live on Tuesday nights UM at seven o'clock right now,
Speaker 1: from our book, which is The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide
Speaker 1: and UM. We do a chapter a week and we
Speaker 1: give a presentation basically based on that chapter. UM. And
Speaker 1: then we also have UM one thing which there is
Speaker 1: a small fee for it. But we have a six
Speaker 1: week very private, very closed group on zoom UM called
Speaker 1: the Coping Crew UM that has its its own Facebook page.
Speaker 1: So it's like most of our stuff is free. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of things that if you want sort of
Speaker 1: a higher level of interaction, but it's completely free to
Speaker 1: talk to us. That's so great. Well, it's it's a
Speaker 1: great way to to sort of learn so much, you know,
Speaker 1: from each other. And you know, we have a real
Speaker 1: sort of ethnography of the anxiety experience, everything from O
Speaker 1: c D, you know, to panic disorder and intrusive thoughts
Speaker 1: and anything anything you can imagine. We've we've heard about
Speaker 1: talk to someone with it. You mentioned progressive muscle relaxation,
Speaker 1: and I so rarely get to talk to people about this,
Speaker 1: so I'm so glad you mentioned it. It wasn't in
Speaker 1: my plan, but I would love to chat about it.
Speaker 1: I you know, my first foray into getting help was
Speaker 1: when I was twenty one, and I found progressive muscle
Speaker 1: relaxation to be the most incredible tool that I still
Speaker 1: use to this day. And it's really good for the
Speaker 1: person as well who doesn't want to meditate or doesn't
Speaker 1: even want to think too much about is this anxiety?
Speaker 1: Is this not? You know in quotes, normal people can
Speaker 1: do it. So this man in the thirties, when you know,
Speaker 1: culture was changing and people were becoming kind of work addicted,
Speaker 1: so life was just work and then you go drink
Speaker 1: after and that's how you blow off steam. Oh. Edmund
Speaker 1: Jacobson he's the father of progressive muscle relaxation, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a book in the thirties called You Must Relax
Speaker 1: Practical Methods for Reducing the Tensions of Modern Living. And
Speaker 1: in the thirties people kind of poo pooed him. Um.
Speaker 1: And obviously his work got validated, you know, later on,
Speaker 1: but he was they think of him as he said,
Speaker 1: it describes exercises for relieving the tensions that precipitate heart attacks,
Speaker 1: high blood pressure, in justestion, ulcers, and other disorders. And
Speaker 1: I'm not confident if he uses the word um anxiety.
Speaker 1: But he was a physician in internal medicine and he
Speaker 1: was also a psychiatrist. Oh wow, so he um. He's
Speaker 1: a hero to me because of that. But I love
Speaker 1: that you offer a free progressive muscle relaxation. Was that
Speaker 1: what that home monologue was about? But do is that
Speaker 1: a tool that you find helpful? Yes? Very and actually
Speaker 1: we uh, we do think of it as a form
Speaker 1: of meditation. So for people who don't want to sit
Speaker 1: in the lotus position, you know, sort of with the
Speaker 1: universal home. You know that that progressive muscle relaxation counts
Speaker 1: because you really are very mindful of your body. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're progressively relaxing each muscle in your whole body,
Speaker 1: that's that meets the criteria for meditation. You're really being
Speaker 1: mindful and in the present. That's true. I always I
Speaker 1: always saying it's different only to welcome in the people
Speaker 1: that don't want to sit with their thoughts or notice
Speaker 1: their thoughts and are like, you don't have to do do
Speaker 1: you just listen to someone and you follow their instructions,
Speaker 1: which I'm really what relaxes me is like list making
Speaker 1: and following instructions and okay, you're an abbey, You're an abbey.
Speaker 1: Yeah I'm a Maggie. I'm the opposite, but yes, and
Speaker 1: and so you know, yeah, just someone sitting there and
Speaker 1: saying tighten your arms and okay, now release, you know,
Speaker 1: and not to anyone listening. That's that's all it is,
Speaker 1: is someone taking you through a series of tightening certain
Speaker 1: muscles and then releasing them. And it's when I am done.
Speaker 1: I mean I literally can feel I don't know what
Speaker 1: the thing is going through my body, but the court
Speaker 1: is all releasing and I can feel actually like somebody
Speaker 1: put an out of van in my I V. You know,
Speaker 1: it actually feels amazing. Well, it's your body going from
Speaker 1: that fight or flight stress response and to the the
Speaker 1: rest and digest piece response. It's really you're you're going
Speaker 1: from your sympathetic nervous response to your paris sympathetic response.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing is when you do one, When you
Speaker 1: do a PMR, when you're not even having an anxiety
Speaker 1: or panic attack, you just feel like, oh, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: pretty status quo. The amount of relaxes that you can't
Speaker 1: believe what you felt before, like that was normal, you know,
Speaker 1: walking around like that. So in fact, that's the time
Speaker 1: to really do it as much as possible, because for
Speaker 1: a lot of us in that really anxious space, that
Speaker 1: becomes really difficult, you know, for some of us to
Speaker 1: do some some people can do that when they're really
Speaker 1: anxious and it really helps them, but a lot of us,
Speaker 1: um it's a practice. So so if you're if you're
Speaker 1: going to use an exercise like that, it's great to
Speaker 1: practice when you're not feeling so anxious. I guess that
Speaker 1: makes sense because if you're doing your progressive muscle relaxation
Speaker 1: when nothing's wrong. Um, Then when you call it up
Speaker 1: when something's wrong, you'r your muscle memory, right, it says, oh,
Speaker 1: I know how to do this yep. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: same thing with visualization. Teach people how to come up
Speaker 1: with a serene scene in their mind and they didn't
Speaker 1: when they're not feeling a lot of anxiety, when you
Speaker 1: know they're kind of at that stable anxiety place, and
Speaker 1: to come up with a place where you feel safe.
Speaker 1: It can be yours outdoors, it can be made up
Speaker 1: place could be your grandmother's living room morever. But we
Speaker 1: really encourage people to put in as much sensory detail
Speaker 1: as possible when the visual in this because the more
Speaker 1: sensory detail you put in, the more your brain feels
Speaker 1: like you're actually there. And we teach people to do
Speaker 1: this when, like I said, when they're not at the
Speaker 1: height of their anxiety, so that when they are experiencing
Speaker 1: acute anxiety they can call that up much quicker. I
Speaker 1: think that's the thing with a lot of our tools
Speaker 1: is that we we usually encourage like that preparation piece
Speaker 1: because you know, while you're in that fight or flight response, Um,
Speaker 1: what's happening is your frontal lobe. You really can't use
Speaker 1: your sort of executive functioning and decision making and reasoning
Speaker 1: skills very well that whole front the low part of
Speaker 1: your brain. So it's sort of like we we need
Speaker 1: to be prepared with what to do when we're in
Speaker 1: a situation where the anxiety is just getting getting really high. Um,
Speaker 1: and so whatever the technique is, we kind of encourage
Speaker 1: people to sort of be ready with different different techniques.
Speaker 1: That makes total sense. We'll continue the interview on the
Speaker 1: flip side of a quick message from our sponsors. So
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of my podcast has not dealt
Speaker 1: with the pandemic too much because I've recorded a lot
Speaker 1: of episodes in advance, and I also feel like it's
Speaker 1: in the back of our minds as yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: know it's going on. That's why I'm listening to an
Speaker 1: anxiety podcast. Do we have to directly talk about it,
Speaker 1: you know, but I kind of do want to directly
Speaker 1: talk about it because I am I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: I'm experiencing, but I'm mixed bariencing maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of a shutting down, which is one of my bad
Speaker 1: tools for anxiety. And you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm boosted,
Speaker 1: i'm masking up, I'm doing all the things. But I
Speaker 1: was enjoying myself for a bit before O Macron hit,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm living in New York and we
Speaker 1: had like the lowest cases ever anywhere, shown my vaccine
Speaker 1: card at the restaurant and going in without a mask,
Speaker 1: and I just I didn't even realize what I'd been missing.
Speaker 1: And then here comes O Macron. And I have a
Speaker 1: beautiful life and just like no complaints and of healthy
Speaker 1: and I have friends and job. But it's that little
Speaker 1: bit of freedom that was taken away. Um well, of
Speaker 1: course obviously I can go anywhere I want, but I'm
Speaker 1: a little concerned. I don't want to catch it, and
Speaker 1: I kind of go into this shutdown mode of like,
Speaker 1: you know what, wake me when it's all over. I
Speaker 1: don't even want to sit outside and see fronts, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's a in the childish black and right response.
Speaker 1: You know, I have friends and what why don't we
Speaker 1: take a walk, And I'm like no, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just I want to hibernate and what are you
Speaker 1: seeing with people with the kind of the resurgence of
Speaker 1: the intensity. I know, the pandemic never went away, but
Speaker 1: we're in a real back to you know, doing our
Speaker 1: own personal lockdowns. Are people more anxious? What are you seeing? Well, Jenn,
Speaker 1: First of all, I wanted to say that, um, don't
Speaker 1: call yourself childish, because you're protecting yourself. That's true. And
Speaker 1: and and we are seeing a ton of anxiety during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, And we keep reminding people that your brain
Speaker 1: is trying to do a good thing here. Your brain
Speaker 1: is trying to protect you from what it perceives as
Speaker 1: a huge danger. And certainly in the first two years
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, there was I mean, we were being
Speaker 1: told all the time, you know, if you take off
Speaker 1: your mask and you're not vaccinated, you could die. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty anxiety provoking. Yeah, so I think that
Speaker 1: you know that. But but I think that what we're
Speaker 1: seeing lately is that we did We got like this
Speaker 1: this break for a few months where we were all
Speaker 1: sort of stepping outside again, and we were all starting
Speaker 1: to go into restaurants again, and we were starting to
Speaker 1: see our friends and family, and I was on airplanes
Speaker 1: and Magis and I had we had actual events planned
Speaker 1: and workshops and got all exciting, like, oh, things are
Speaker 1: going to be normal again and we're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to go back to living and hugging and kissing each other.
Speaker 1: And then O Macron showed up and it was sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, you want to lick. Nope, you
Speaker 1: can't have it. Go back home, you know. And and
Speaker 1: I'm back in lockdown in my house. I'm not seeing
Speaker 1: my grandchildren, not seeing my kids, and it's really hard.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of anxiety around that because I was,
Speaker 1: you know, a month ago, I was in Colorado visiting
Speaker 1: my son. Yeah, and now you know, so, I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing a lot of that, a lot of people
Speaker 1: feeling that confusion too, because it's hard for your bringing
Speaker 1: to keep going long and off. You know, Should I
Speaker 1: be anxious? Should I not be anxious? I think that
Speaker 1: that's something that that we're experiencing now, particularly with the
Speaker 1: with the new variant. And I see a lot of
Speaker 1: people saying, oh, you know, it's mild. I don't you
Speaker 1: know what. I just want to get it and get
Speaker 1: it over. And to me, I'm thinking, you, I think
Speaker 1: I'm anxious because I'm asking up everywhere. I'm not going
Speaker 1: anywhere but you're anxious too. That's just a different anxiety response,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Like they're like they think they have this control, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll just get it, it will be mild, and then
Speaker 1: dot dot dot it will protect you from what future
Speaker 1: variants that we don't know about. This is an evolving
Speaker 1: son and so it's been interesting for me to look
Speaker 1: at everything through the anxiety lens. And people who seem
Speaker 1: not anxious because they're out and about, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: they're just as anxious as me. Does that do you
Speaker 1: think I'm onto something? You know, because it's an evolving
Speaker 1: science and you know, obviously we're getting so many different Um,
Speaker 1: we're hearing a lot of different voices right of like
Speaker 1: it's not very clear always exactly what to do or
Speaker 1: what not to do, right, So you know that's anxiety
Speaker 1: provoking for all of us because that's like this uncertainty. Um.
Speaker 1: And yes, some people sort of shut it out and
Speaker 1: just say, you know whatever, I'm just gonna do whatever,
Speaker 1: and some people locked down and people going between. But
Speaker 1: what we tell people is, um, I think we're all fatigued.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us are, you know, feeling
Speaker 1: lonely at this point in the pandemic or um just exhausted.
Speaker 1: And so we always say, you know, have a lot
Speaker 1: of compassion for yourself and for each other. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like coming back to that piece of like, I
Speaker 1: am doing the best I can in these circumstances that
Speaker 1: you know, we have no we've you know, we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of our lives and we've never seen this before,
Speaker 1: right you know, So I am doing the best I
Speaker 1: can in this like very chaotic world right now. And
Speaker 1: so what I need to do, I need to do,
Speaker 1: you know. And so that's just like having that self
Speaker 1: compassion because we know that when we start criticizing ourselves
Speaker 1: a lot, or start like yelling at ourselves, are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm childish, I'm this, and that we throw ourselves into
Speaker 1: the anxiety response. When you get yelled at, you go
Speaker 1: into that fight or flight often. So it's like the
Speaker 1: way that we can use our best thinking and planning
Speaker 1: and reasoning is to stay as much as possible and
Speaker 1: that rest and more closer to that rest and digest.
Speaker 1: And we think that starts with the self compassion peace.
Speaker 1: And another thing is, you know, we're talking to people
Speaker 1: every day who you know, are very anxious about going
Speaker 1: back to work during the pandemic. Now, you know, although
Speaker 1: now some places are going remote again, and like Maggie said,
Speaker 1: the golf post keep moving. It's hard to know should
Speaker 1: I be going to work ship and not be going
Speaker 1: to work. It's it's really hard to know what the
Speaker 1: right thing to do is. But one thing people are
Speaker 1: talking about a lot is how angry people are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so mag and I try to remind people that for
Speaker 1: some folks they express their anxiety through ankor mm hmm.
Speaker 1: You see that anxiety out there even in other responses,
Speaker 1: like if someone's like, all right, I'm just gonna get
Speaker 1: it and get it over with and that you're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: that absolutely is an anxiety response of its own. So
Speaker 1: is anger. Yeah. I had a therapist tell me, you
Speaker 1: know your anger is anxiety. So, um, you want to cry? Actually,
Speaker 1: you know that's you're you're covering up like the grief failing.
Speaker 1: You know, and and I know we're both familiar with
Speaker 1: Clara good Will Smith the missing stange of things of
Speaker 1: grief is anxiety. And I think that's right. You know,
Speaker 1: all these people that are being duct taped planes and
Speaker 1: you know, um, I don't think it's as much of
Speaker 1: a political I mean, I think this whole thing has
Speaker 1: been politicized, which is a whole other podcast. But I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily see someone who doesn't want to wear a
Speaker 1: mask as um in a certain political group, or even
Speaker 1: an anti backs are um. Even if they are, it's
Speaker 1: to me the bottom line, anxiety I've never you know,
Speaker 1: they're saying, I've never I've never had a lack of
Speaker 1: control over the universe affect me. It's much more obvious
Speaker 1: now how little control we actually have. And I think
Speaker 1: that a lot, like you said, it's a lot less
Speaker 1: political than some people may think. Loss of control living
Speaker 1: in an uncertain world, and some people's response to that
Speaker 1: is anger. And so when you were talking about self compassion,
Speaker 1: you brought me to my thesis that I have, which
Speaker 1: is there are a billion ways two well, there are
Speaker 1: million tools we can put in our anxiety to look at,
Speaker 1: whether it's progressive, mustere realization, therapy, cutting out, sungar, jumping
Speaker 1: up and down, breathing whatever. Everyone knows this. For me,
Speaker 1: I truly believe that what makes people not want to
Speaker 1: try is there's a little bit of a lack of
Speaker 1: self esteem there, like deep, deep down that's like I
Speaker 1: don't deserve to feel better, or it's to even know
Speaker 1: how to take care of oneself. And so when you're
Speaker 1: saying that, like the most important tool of anxiety relief
Speaker 1: in this re uppance of the pandemic is have compassion.
Speaker 1: Like you caught me saying, I'm thinking like a child.
Speaker 1: It's like it's so ingrained to just insult myself. And
Speaker 1: I think for other people that have never taken the
Speaker 1: first step to get to get any help, professional or otherwise,
Speaker 1: I think there's there's a little bit of like who
Speaker 1: am I to get home? Other people have it worse,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that self compassion is a
Speaker 1: really big part of Once we get our self esteem
Speaker 1: in place, then we can have compassion, then we can
Speaker 1: take the steps right along with that. Yes, self compassion
Speaker 1: sort of really um once you once you really start
Speaker 1: to practice self compassion, it can really like sort of
Speaker 1: change the lens. You see that we have seen a
Speaker 1: lot of things through We've done a lot of training,
Speaker 1: um with Kristin Neff, who is sort of the mother
Speaker 1: of the modern self compassion movement, and and it really
Speaker 1: changes the lens of how we experience a lot of
Speaker 1: things um. And and one of the things that we're
Speaker 1: really careful to do within that self compassion um and
Speaker 1: we're working on doing this better with ourselves too, is
Speaker 1: is not having a lot of should's um because so
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, one of the things that happened
Speaker 1: when when we were both really having terrible anxiety was
Speaker 1: people said, well, you should cut out sugar. Well, if
Speaker 1: I could cut out sugar, you know, like I mean,
Speaker 1: like that's the battle of my life. Okay, yes, or
Speaker 1: you should do this, or you should do that. And
Speaker 1: what we say is like you can take really small steps.
Speaker 1: You can find something that works for you right now,
Speaker 1: even just a little bit, and that is great, you know.
Speaker 1: So one of the things Abby and I always say,
Speaker 1: like something that helps us so much, both of us
Speaker 1: is being out in nature, which sounds very cliche, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't help you if you really can't leave your
Speaker 1: apartment right yeah, but we know even bringing a plant
Speaker 1: into your space is something. You know, having your cat
Speaker 1: or your dog to cuddle with or whatever whatever pieces
Speaker 1: you have, So there that part of the self compassion
Speaker 1: is thinking, like is sort of learning. They're really small pieces,
Speaker 1: really small steps you can take and everything counts. And
Speaker 1: you know, Mags and I, when we set out to
Speaker 1: write the book, we said that we wanted to write
Speaker 1: the book that we needed and what we needed. We
Speaker 1: didn't need anybody telling us what we should do, because
Speaker 1: that created a list of other things that we would
Speaker 1: fail at. Because our anxiety was allowing us two, you know,
Speaker 1: to function as well as we wanted to, and so
Speaker 1: we just didn't want to have to screw anything else up.
Speaker 1: And so we decided we would write a book that
Speaker 1: would not be prescriptive, that would sort of recognize that
Speaker 1: one size does not fit all. And you know, we
Speaker 1: always say to people, try this. If it doesn't work
Speaker 1: on Monday, you know, you could still try it Tuesday.
Speaker 1: It might work great on Tuesday. I mean, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: idea to have no should's right, don't shoot on yourself.
Speaker 1: And then also to to really expand your tool kit.
Speaker 1: You know, we call it a spin kit. You know,
Speaker 1: the things that you uh do to soothe yourself and
Speaker 1: and and get your anxiety out of the driver's seat.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's like not everything fits all at once,
Speaker 1: even for us, and and and to know to kind
Speaker 1: of be your own scientists and know this doesn't work
Speaker 1: for me today, or this works for me on airplanes,
Speaker 1: but doesn't work for me at the office. Um, well,
Speaker 1: we've come to the end of our session. I know
Speaker 1: I said I was going to ask some about children,
Speaker 1: but but we had such an organic time that it
Speaker 1: didn't come up. So that's fine. I was glad to
Speaker 1: talk to you about um everything that came up. You
Speaker 1: guys are so brilliant. Thank you so much. UM So
Speaker 1: I have to say good biding ladies, and I thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on. And I hope that everybody gets
Speaker 1: into your community. And of course you know in the
Speaker 1: intro I'll be promoting all of your your your podcast
Speaker 1: or book, your community, and all the links will be
Speaker 1: in the show notes. But thank you for chatting with me.
Speaker 1: It was such a great way to start my morning.
Speaker 1: I feel like I had a like an Anxiety Sisters
Speaker 1: meeting and everyone gets to listen to me. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed my chat with the Anxiety Sisters. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let you in on a little secret. We did actually
Speaker 1: talk a little bit longer than then you heard, because
Speaker 1: we started talking about Prince and you know what it was.
Speaker 1: It really wasn't related to the episode at all, and
Speaker 1: so I had them edited out. I had my producers
Speaker 1: edit that out because, you know, do you want to
Speaker 1: stay on topic? But man, we did have a fun
Speaker 1: conversation about Prince. It turns out that Abby and I
Speaker 1: have had a similar Prince dream before after he died,
Speaker 1: So who knows, Maybe he was visiting us in his dream.
Speaker 1: Maybe her dream was fake and he was really visiting me.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's probably what it is. Anyway, Why am
Speaker 1: I talking about a thing that you didn't hear, making
Speaker 1: feel like you missed out? You did miss out. But
Speaker 1: here are some takeaways from the episode that will probably
Speaker 1: help you with your anxiety more than hearing about a
Speaker 1: dream I had about Prince one time. These are takeaways
Speaker 1: from this episode the wisdom of the Anxiety Sisters. Number one,
Speaker 1: get everything checked out by a doctor so that you
Speaker 1: can rule out any physical issues when you're beginning to
Speaker 1: deal with your anxiety. Two. What's tricky about anxiety is
Speaker 1: it's not just an emotional feeling. It's often physical symptoms. Three.
Speaker 1: Anything your body can do, any sound or smell, It
Speaker 1: can produce any fluid, it can produce any organ you have,
Speaker 1: can do something that can be a symptom of anxiety. Four. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't get help for anxiety because
Speaker 1: they don't believe that their physical debilitating symptoms are anxiety. Five.
Speaker 1: Agoraphobia is really a fear of having a panic attack
Speaker 1: or getting sick away from your home and not being
Speaker 1: able to get back in time to get to safety. Six.
Speaker 1: As soon as your anxiety starts making decisions for you
Speaker 1: about where you go and who you see and how
Speaker 1: you see yourself, you're starting to have what the anxiety
Speaker 1: sisters call shrinking world syndrome. Seven. For people who don't
Speaker 1: want to sit in a lotus position and meditate, progressive
Speaker 1: muscle relaxation does count as a meditation. Eight. Progressive muscle
Speaker 1: relaxation helps your body go from the fight or flight
Speaker 1: response into the rest and digest peaceful response. Nine. When
Speaker 1: you're in fighter flight, the frontal lobe part of your
Speaker 1: brain is affected to where you can't use your executive functioning,
Speaker 1: decision making, or reasoning skills very well. Ten. Have a
Speaker 1: lot of compassion for yourself and for each other. Eleven.
Speaker 1: Don't criticize yourself right now. You're doing the best you
Speaker 1: can in this very chaotic world. Right now. Twelve. Try
Speaker 1: to avoid thinking in should like I should do this
Speaker 1: for my anxiety, or I should do that. Don't shoot
Speaker 1: on yourself. Part of self compassion is learning that there
Speaker 1: are small steps that you can take that can be transformative,
Speaker 1: like if you can't get out into nature, you could
Speaker 1: get a plant. And lastly, if one anxiety relief tool
Speaker 1: doesn't work one day, maybe it'll work another day again.
Speaker 1: How to get in touch with the anxiety sisters and
Speaker 1: enjoy everything they have to offer. Just go onto those
Speaker 1: links in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: just remember anxiety bites, but you're in control. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.