Unlearning My Anxiety
I want to share a story that happened to me recently. I’ll set the stage…
I was in a room with over 300 people, none of which I knew. Not a single soul. I was at training in downtown San Diego, on Servant Leadership, listening to some of the top leading influencers share their stories, their successes and their struggles. During the middle of the presenters, they had a stand-up comedian come in to try and” livin” up the crowd. During one of his routines, he asked the audience if there were any single ladies in the room and to raise their hands. I raised my hand just to go along and participate. Not thinking much about it, especially because I was sitting at the last table in the room, farthest from the stage. What I didn’t expect was that in a room over 300+ people I was going to be the ONLY person to raise their hand. THE. ONLY. PERSON. What transpired from this was him jumping off the stage, running all the way to the back of the room (microphone in hand) and calling me out in front of everyone; what my name was, what I did for a living and what I was looking for in a guy. He then went on for about five minutes trying to find ONE single guy in the room. Not one guy raised his hand and out of the 10 or so guys he walked up to, they were all married.
Rewind about 30 minutes before this whole situation took place. One of the presenters had us doing an exercise with a total stranger, where we had to answer questions and share our answers with each other; intimate, authentic and transparent answers. The last two questions we had to answer and share were “what is one thing that you would never tell a complete stranger about you” and “what is one thing you are afraid of?” My answers: That I suffer from an internal battle with anxiety and that one of my fears is being in a large group, not knowing anyone and having to talk with people (that would be the introvert in me).
Can you say that God has a funny sense of humor?!
For those who know me, they know that my anxiety is always with me – but for those who don’t know me, or don’t know me well, you would never be able to tell. I’ve been able to manage my anxiety internally (like a duck in the water; still on the surface but feet pedaling feverishly under the surface). I go about life just as anyone else and have been in multiple, every day, situations of being completely uncomfortable; professionally and personally. It has been somewhat of my alter-ego over these years; one in which I felt that as long as I contained it to the confines of my internal self, then it was fine. The problem is that confining it within me all of these years has created an all-consuming monster. It’s like those fish that grow to the size of the tanks they are in - that has been my anxiety. It was contained, but it has grown to the size of my soul’s tank; taking over my thoughts, my heart, my joy, my light.
A few months ago I decided that it had gotten too big and that it was time for it to move out! But how do you say good-bye to a long-time friend? As annoying as the friend may be, it’s still hard to just let go. Everything in life serves some purpose, even if it isn’t a healthy purpose. We keep, hold and grasp onto some of the unhealthiest behaviors, because sometimes that is all we know. That is what my anxiety was for me. A tactic that my body originally used to survive but had somehow moved from surviving to all-encompassing and it was time to start letting go of it.
My journey the past 25+ years has taught me how to be anxious and I knew that if I wanted to overcome it, I had to unlearn everything. Medication wasn’t an option for me, as I knew that my anxiety was a product of my life, and not a product of me. Please let me say that I know that there are many people on medication for anxiety, who are dealing with a much more debilitating form of anxiety than what I am talking about and/or my own experience. This is by no means underplaying those who suffer from anxiety where medication is/may be the best form of relief. For me, my anxiety was created and became learned behavior from my story; therefore I have chosen to treat my symptoms by unlearning and undoing the last 25+ years.
Multiple Faces of my Anxiety:
We all walk out into the world wearing certain masks, certain facades that we want the world to see us by. And over the years, my anxiety has taken on few different masks of their own (aka: coping mechanisms). I call them “Jedi Master,” “Turtle Shell,” and “Hamster Wheel.” In order to ‘unlearn’ them, I needed to fully embrace and understand them.
The Jedi Master: Because of all of the loss in my life, I became a worst case scenario Jedi master! It was much worse when my son was younger, but it’s still present. I would literally come up with the craziest scenarios in my head and get to a point where I would convince my body as if it was actually happening; all usually including my son and something tragic happening to him. I usually only shared my craziness with my sister, because I knew she understood and wouldn’t call in a 5150 on me. :)) It was my body’s way to prepare, handle, and cope with the fear of losing the one person that would completely devastate me because I had become so accustomed to people in my life leaving me in one way or another. It was my minds way of trying to survive and prepare for a situation, but it would always take on a role that became completely unhealthy.
Turtle Shell: Nature or nurture (or both), I am a people pleaser to my core. I have a deep sense of need to help others and a sometimes annoying personality to always do the right thing. After my parent’s death, my sister and I jumped from place to place, never really able to have a voice in the homes that we were living in. Not that we were perfect (we were teenagers & teenagers who were still figuring out life without parents), but we learned that having a voice usually meant consequences (aka: being kicked out). Later on in my marriage, having a voice and sticking up for myself, when my female intuition was in full effect meant being told that I was “crazy, emotional, insecure….” The events in my life, along with my personality built this wall (turtle shell) of protection around me, where I started to instinctively just retreat behind, the minute I had to confront a situation or a person. Overtime, it became hard to come out of. People in my life were accustomed to me bending over backwards, for going along with the flow, for not having a voice and I kept finding myself in situations where I was sacrificing myself and my needs for others. I was afraid to stand up for what I wanted/needed and because of that, I taught those in my life how to treat me.
The Hamster Wheel: This mask has been the WORST. Ugh! Life is a complex dynamic of wanting to plan for the unknowns, while also knowing that no matter how prepared you are, life usually has a way to throw a curve ball. I work well with black & white, regardless of what the situation might be because with black & white, my brain has a beginning and an end. I can work with the facts and plan accordingly. What I don’t do well with is the ‘gray area.’ My mind has nowhere to go with it – it’s an endless loop of thoughts. I just run and run on that litter hamster wheel wasting a lot of energy and time, but going nowhere. It’s exhausting! Life has taught me how to survive and because of that, my brain has developed the ability to think, plan, and assume every possibility available. The problem is there are endless possibilities. If I know what is in front of me, I can plan accordingly, create my little checklist and march forward. The unfortunate thing is life doesn’t work that way. You have to learn to live in the gray area, the unknown, because that is all that we are guaranteed.
Unlearning Tools:
Knowing what the faces of my anxiety look like has helped me to recognize and be mindful when they c0me to the surface and also come up with some tools on how to take them head on. Here are a couple of my recent tools I’ve used to help me unlearn my anxiety.
Unlearning Tool #1: Improv
They say that the greatest rewards in life come with the greatest risks. Well, this was one of those risks! It was the ‘go big’ or ‘go home’ move I had to take if I really wanted to take back control of feelings. This idea of needing to take an improv class was a God thing. He planted the seed months ago and it just kept growing to the point where I finally just took the leap. I knew I needed to do it for so many reasons. 1. Because it scared the crap out of me. 2. Because I needed to feel comfortable coming out of my turtle shell and 3. Because I just needed to lighten up and learn to be a little silly. You know how I also knew that it was the right decision? Is because everyone I told that I was doing the class asked me “why” or “what made you want to do that?” It was so out the ordinary from what people have come to expect of me, or know of me – that people literally had a hard time understanding why I would do it. If you are looking for a way to feel comfortable in front of people, want to learn to react more and think less, or just something fun to do, I highly suggest you look at taking an intro class.
The major lessons that I gained from my 6 week journey was learning to celebrate failure and how to be in the moment. Everything we were taught centered around these two concepts. Our instructor did a wonderful job setting the stage to celebrate when we messed up and also encouraged it. Whenever you said or did the wrong thing, you were cheered, recognized and redirected. It allowed everyone to feel comfortable to take a chance, put themselves out there and laugh at themselves when they messed up. What a beautiful world we would live in if we took that approach to every area of our life; at work, with our kids, with our spouse, with each other. We also learned how to be in the moment by playing games where we had to react quickly and with the first thing that came to our head. One of the main things in improve is trying to keep the story, scene or dialog simple, that the comedy comes from the simplicity and when you try to overthink or make up crazy scenarios it tends to lose the audience and the humor. So much of my life has been lost in the crazy scenarios I’ve made up in my head or from overthinking situations to the point of exhaustion. I lost the humor in my life because of it. I’m learning to find it again.
Unlearning Tool #2: Re-framing
One of the tools I’ve been using is the power of my thoughts! Our thoughts, beliefs, and focus are probably some of the most powerful resources we have. What I’ve learned about anxiety is that the same biological functions that occur when we are anxious also tend to be the same biological functions that occur when we are excited. When I’ve been finding myself in moments where my anxiety is high, I have been re-framing my thoughts and feelings about what I am experiencing. Instead of focusing on being anxious, I re-frame the feelings to feelings of excitement and re-frame my thoughts from being afraid to thoughts that my body is preparing me to take on whatever it is that is in front of me; known or unknown. When you can recognize that anxiety is also adrenaline, then you can use it to trick your body into thinking that something exciting is about to happen – or that your body is getting prepared for the challenge ahead. It becomes less of a wild beast and more of a trained animal. You can harness it to serve you, instead of debilitate you. There is a great TED talk about how you can use stress/anxiety as a way to be your friend and not your enemy. https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend (totally worth watching).
So, how’s it working?
In the situation I talked about at the beginning of this post, if it hadn’t been for my improv class I probably would have died a slow, painful death inside, FOR WEEKS. I would have been traumatized and played over the event about 1,000 times in my head; replaying everything I said, everything I didn’t say and everything I should have said (that’s the hamster wheel I was talking about). Instead, I was able to enjoy the moment, enjoy the humor in the situation and enjoy people coming up to me all afternoon asking me if I was “the single girl who raised their hand?”
Regardless of how I’ve felt on the inside for the last couple of decades of my life, I’ve always known that I needed to put myself in uncomfortable situations, to do the things that scared me the most (maybe one day I’ll face my fear of the ocean) and to not let this part of my life take over my life. What I’m learning now is not just how to cope with my anxiety but how to undo my anxiety. It will take time, it will be a process – but by being mindful of the coping mechanism my body came up with to try to protect me, identifying the masks it wears and little by little reprogramming my thoughts – I know that I can unlearn what I’ve learned all these years and have already been reaping the rewards.
I hope that my journey/story will reach someone today and help them realize that you don’t have to just suffer through anxiety – or life. There are tools, resources and techniques that you can use to transform your life. It just takes one daily step and one mindful, intentional action towards the life you know is on the other side of fear, anxiety, doubt, worry and unknown. It is within not only the realm of possibility, but you are more than powerful and capable to reach out and grab it. Xo
<3,
Kris
