Don't Should On Yourself

thing or two to say to it. But people are making me just I don't know, anxious man and nah, or maybe I'm blaming people when I'm really just not checking into my real deeper feelings about the lack of control that living through a global pandemic that keeps mutating makes us feel. You know, I I I started to I refused to say get back to normal, even though I say it a lot. But I don't even mean it when I say but I started to go back to doing things I used to do, enjoying myself at

a restaurant. I vaccinated. I living in New York right now, and we had some of the lowest cases before oh, Macron. I mean, honestly, you would have had to really try to get COVID if you were vaccinated amboosted, which I was back in October and early November, and I was going to restaurants indoors, they check your vaccine card. It felt very safe, and it did something for the soul. And then here comes ome Acron and and I don't listen, My life's great. I don't mean to sound like a victim.

A lot of people have it worked, so I certainly don't mean and me, me, me, But I found myself once again back in that familiar feeling of uh, stop the planet, I want to get off. These people here are making me crazy, you know, that was that was the first thing I said when I first first first went to therapy decades ago. I'm fine, it's everyone else and how they behave that's the problem. So if you could just give me some tips. Thinks when you say

that to a therapist, boy or they just excited. They know you're a patient they will have for a long time. Because of course, of course, when we feel so many things, it's always good to look within and not just without or look out at other people and think, well, what are they doing wrong to make me feel this way? But whatever is causing it, I don't know. I can't put a name to what I feel. I talk about it with my guests today, the anxiety sisters. I call

it going into some kind of like emotional shutdown. But just wake me when it's over. I'm irritable, you know, I think that's what it is. My anxiety is posing as irritability. I'm irritable at well, we're all gonna get it anyway, so hope I just get it. I can't stand that attitude, especially. I mean, I'm talking about people who are vaccinated, who've been doing all the right things and then suddenly, well you know, I might get it, So hope I do, and I can just get it

over with. Is though, what are you a scientist? Suddenly you can see into the future, so if you get this variant, it'll just be mild. And uh then what you you can't reinfect because you can. I mean, I don't want to get into this whole virology discussion. Is that a word. I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm just a human trying to get through this damn thing. And I

get I can feel it in my body. It feels like someone put a weighted backpack on my shoulders when I even just read a tweet or something from somebody saying, well, we're all gonna get this someday. So I hope I get it soon. I want to get back out into my life. I'm like, why aren't you thinking of others? Why? Uh So that's where I'm at today and I listen.

I tried to avoid talking about this pandemic as much as I could on this podcast because I know, if you're listening to a podcast about anxiety, you probably I don't want to think about that right now. And when I first started this podcast, we were again pre delta. That's how I think of my life now, what variant was going on then. I don't even think of what age I was or one month that was is well,

this was post vaccine, pre delta. But that's when I started this podcast, and we interviewed a lot of people months and months and months in advance before their episodes came out, because I wanted to talk to them about very specific, timeless, evergreen anxiety topics, neuroscience and meditation. But a lot of times when people, you know, before we rolled the audio. I would say, let's let's not mention the pandemic because this might air in four to six months.

I don't know where we'll be at that point. It might sound outdated, It might sound outdated in a good or a bad way where people are like, what, but oh my god, I forgot about the pandemic. It's totally over or it's fifty times as worse, and we're kind of not taking it seriously enough because we didn't know when when we recorded. So this week we're sort of more in the present of this. This episode was not filmed too long ago, filmed what can I speak? Recorded? Um,

it was recorded last week. So I do ask the Anxiety Sisters what are they seeing out there? Because they have this giant community of people who have anxiety that they interact with, and so we do talk a little bit about that, about how everybody is experiencing anxiety during this time and what we can do to take care of ourselves. And you know, it was interesting they caught me in a moment, the Anxiety Sisters, of beating myself up.

I said something like, oh, I don't know, I think in a childish way, and they said, hey, don't talk bad about yourself like that. I love when people who are experts and anxiety can see me doing my unhelpful cognitive thinking in the moment. So let's introduce our guests. Enough of Me got enough of Me last week. My guests today are the Anxiety Sisters. No, they are not related,

but they are soul sisters in having anxiety. They have been friends for decades and they have a great book that's out right now called The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide, How you can become more hopeful, connected, and happy. The Anxiety Sisters are Abby Greenberg and Maggie Sir Roger. Now, there is so much to tell you about them. They have a podcast called The spin Cycle, they have their book, The Anxiety Sisters, and I will link all of this

in the show notes. But what is the most impressive is that Abby and Maggie have a community of over two thousand people that they talked to, as they put it constantly. You can go to their website Anxiety Sisters dot com, sign up for their newsletter and they'll send you a free progressive muscle relaxation. But their Facebook page has become really huge. They have forums on their web say but that was changed and now it's gone over to Facebook. So here finally a good Facebook story. So

their Facebook page is extremely active. They do all of their own moderating, and they say they have one of the kindest, most supportive gentle groups going and if you send them a message, they will absolutely email you back and may take a little bit, but they will do it. They have a book group on Facebook Live on Tuesday nights at seven o'clock. They do a chapter from their book a week and they give a presentation based on

that chapter. And they do a very private zoom group called the Coping Crew if you want a little more care and are able to pay for that. So I'm just so impressed that they take so much time out of their weeks and their days to help others, and they are in touch with people that that blows my mind. And it was great to talk to them because I always love talking to people who just like me, had anxiety before there was the internet and we didn't even know the words to use to try to get help.

And what dawned on me while I was talking with the Anxiety Sisters is, in a way, I feel really grateful for that because when we talked about our anxiety to whomever we could talk to it about. Before the Internet, we would describe our physical symptoms, the sensations we were feeling to the best of our ability, and we really thought what was wrong with us was something physical, and

so we didn't just say I'm having anxiety. We would say I'm driving and I feel like I can't breathe and I'm going to faint and I need to pull over. And so, in a weird way, all of this anxiety talk and labeling things anxiety is wonderful, but every once in a while, I do think we need to step back and talk about the hundreds of individual symptoms that anxiety can be, from an arm that feels numb, to chest pains, two feelings of unreality, to irritability, to even

digestive issues. There is, as they say, if you have a body part, anxiety can somehow be involved in that. So enough of me, Let's take you to my chat with the anxiety sisters. Now, Am I allowed to say that I'm an anxiety sister too? Oh? We we hope you are, okay, I'm your I'm your sister and anxiety and uh, you know what I loved in you know, reading your bio is that you too were anxious kids, anxious teenagers, anxious young adults, anxious middle aged adults, and

now we're all anxious middle aged adults. But at least now we've got some information and it's more normalized. We have the Internet. But just like me, you all were figuring this out in a world where I don't even know if the word anxiety was being used. And I don't know if you're anything like me, but I thought you were either normal or crazy, and crazy meant you live in a patent room for the rest of your

life and your family visitsing once a year. And so I didn't want to tell anybody because I felt like it was like confessing to a murder, Like if I say something, then this whole thing is going down. You know, my life's changing forever. So can you take me through your lives together? And why this is um to me so unique is that you had each other and you know friendships grow apart all the time, and that you both stayed anxious together but helped each other through it.

Can you tell me your story and your own words? Well, we we met in college in the late eighties, and uh so we say that we're Although we're not biological sisters, we are definitely soul sisters because after thirty four years of child raining each other, we definitely have earned that

we're now linked forever um. But I think that what attracted us to each other initially was just sort of that panicked expression we both wore on our faces all the time, and I think we felt like kindred spirits, right Macus, I mean, this isn't that sort of I mean I looked at her, you know, I listened to sort of the things that she talked about, and I thought, yeah, feeling that too, And she seems like the kind of person that I could could fide in and tell her that.

You know, I did. You you know, I went to the counseling center and I laughed just because those are those were never helpful back then. No, I you know, it's like I felt, I felt like I didn't want to tell anyone. I went to the counseling center because some people are like, oh, why, what's wrong with you? So I didn't want to tell anyone. But I felt like Maggie was someone I could tell. I don't know why. She just looked like someone who either had been to

the counseling center herself, or at least understood. And I said to her, have you gone to talk to anybody about this? And she was like, oh, yeah, I didn't really help, thank goodness. So that's kind of how the conversation began. We lived in the same dorm and really ended up spending a lot of nights sitting together and talking about what ended up being our symptoms of anxiety and even some depression. We just didn't have the vocabulary

for it. Back then. People weren't talking about it. I mean, I know, I thought that there was just something physically wrong with me and that i'd probably die from it eventually. I just didn't know what it was. And now you thought you had some sort of stomach ailment that was most likely canceled or definitely fatal. And we kind of, you know, lamented the fact that we would have, you know,

very anxious in short lives. You know, I have the same thing, and I I thought, as well, you're reminding me that I didn't just think something might psychologically be wrong. I had panic disorder on diagnosed, and so I thought I just have a heart condition or something that's that we don't know what it is yet. But if I feel like this ten times a day every day, I'm probably not live very long. It's probably gonna probably to

kill me. We like to say that we had our twenties was our decade of the where you know, we still didn't really understand this idea of anxiety disorder um, and we each sort of decided, Okay, we're gonna go see what is actually wrong with us. So we went to the nutritionist and the cardiologist, and the hypnotist and the past life regressionists and the psychiatrist, the therapist, you know, whatever is there was, and whomever would take our money.

We were there trying to find the reason why we felt like we felt we would go anywhere or do anything that offers some bope because we were both so even though we had each other, were very isolated and lonely because I think anxiety disorder does that. It makes you feel set apart from others, and we felt really alone, like we thought we were the only two people that

were dealing with this. Yeah. Oh, and we didn't have the Internet back then, so we didn't have the access to other people saying yeah, I experienced this also, And you know, we tried to look for that, and we we couldn't find it. We went to the bookstore. You know, we're booked people, So to the bookstore. I thought, all right, we'll buy books about anxiety and that will make us

feel better. And you know, I had a full blown panic attack at Barnes and Noble because the book that I pulled out it was some had panic in the title, and it was bright red. And remember that, Mags, Yes, I do remember it. I have to leave the store.

I did because I was starting to shake. And some of the books that we were reading, I mean, they were really they were written by very respected experts who absolutely knew their stuff, but it was very clinical and very prescriptive, and all Mag's and I kept saying to each other's, I don't think we can do this. I don't. I mean one of the books that we read told me that I needed to do have the cardiovascular exercise thirty minutes a day. Well, I could tell you something.

In my panic, my heart raced two ridiculous levels and I was already sweaty, and I thought, I can't make my heart go any higher than this. You know, I'll just get on the elliptical and blow up. Anxiety bites will be right back after a quick little message from one of our sponsors. So when you all are sitting around talking about your anxiety, and again there were aren't these words for work, for saying what? What kind of do you remember? What kind of things you're saying when

you're talking about your symptoms with each other? Like what words were you using? Well, you know, at different times it was. It was different as we went along. But I think, you know, for us, there were some things happening in our lives that just um indicated a problem, but we didn't really connect the dots in our in each of us had that, you know, or we didn't even know that it wasn't quite um typical too. I don't know, you know, So I I had developed at

one point a lot of phobias. Um, I knew that wasn't typical. But um, I didn't know the word phobia or exposure therapy that type of thing. But I knew, Oh god, when I'm when I'm driving in a car, I'm getting more and more nervous and what and I can't drive in the rain. I have to pull over when it's raining. Yeah, Or I remember visiting Abby at her grandmother's we so we must have been, you know,

in our early twenties. And she lived about an hour and a half away from where my parents lived, and I had taken their car and that trip took me six hours because I kept having to pull over. And so, you know, I think a lot of times, and Abby has her own version of that too, but I think a lot of times things were happening to us and we weren't quite connecting the dots. But you know, so it was more like, wait, why is that taking the

six hours for me? The symptoms were so pronounced, and you know, in your twenties, you're just not expecting to have chest pain all the time. You're not expecting to be dizzy, and you're not expecting for your left arm to some suddenly go numb. You know. It's like I would watch these Bay or Ashburn commercials and be like, oh my god, I'm dying. Oh the beer aspens just totally. That was that was about the only thing that seemed close to what I was experiencing. So I remember buying

Bear aspirin in my twenties. Yes, my conversations with Maggie would go something like this. She picked up the phone and she would say hello, and I would say, Okay, it's happening again. My arm is numb. What do you think that's what do you think that could mean? It has to be heart attack, right, it has to be a heart disease thing. And she would say, well, yeah, but it's been going on for so long it's probably

I'm like, yeah, but what else could it be? And so a lot of our conversations were, well, what could this be? We don't get it. And then I went to the emergency room twice, not three times, but four times, and in the fourth time I actually said, haven't you seen house looked further? This is like a real it's a real problem. You guys are missing it. You don't And he said, well, we did the e k G twice, we we checked your enzymes, you've done a chest X ray.

We really can't do anything else. Your heart is totally fine. I'm like, you people do not know what you're doing because I'm in here every week, and they didn't say anything like, gee, this could be anxiety. Well, on the fourth go around, he said to me, this is definitely anxiety, and I'm going to prove it to you. He said, I have here a shot of ad evan, he said,

which is a sedative. If you're having a heart attack, it's not going to stop your heart a heart attack, he said, but if you're having anxiety, you should feel a little better. So he put it into my I V. And within ten minutes, I'm like, this stuff is great. How do I get in some of this? That is? You know, I've never heard anyone I've heard of people being told by their doctor you know, this is anxiety

when it was. But wow, what an amazing actual procedure that he gave you, which is I'm going to give you an anxiety medication. You know. Uh, I mean, that's brilliant. I've never heard of it that happening to anybody. Well, he was the first person who made me think, all right, it's possible that sharp chest pains, at the shortness of breath, that all these things that that sounds me like a heart attack. Maybe it's possible that this is coming from

a different place. Maybe this is this is something in my brain. It's interesting that because as women, as you know, um, it dates back to the beginning of medicine, we were called hysterical. If anything was ever wrong physically, you know, science still knows so little about women's bodies and women's health that it all boils down to, um, we're hysterical,

we're crazy. And yet, weirdly, so many women I know when they have gone to get their heart to did or get a stress tester, or see a cardiologist that actually anxiety comes up on like the third visit. And it's like, of all the times that someone should be saying this actually is in your it sometimes doesn't seem

to happen. And I know, for me, a doctor once said to me, I mean the therapist one said to me, for sure, go get all of your blood tests, go to the doctor and make sure nothing physical is wrong. And you know, we can assume as is anxiety, but let's just make sure. And so I think that's always the best way to go. So in a weird way, um, people with anxiety end up doing the right thing first.

In a strange way, we tell everybody, if you are an anxiety sister, you've probably seen cardiologists, neurologists, gastro inturologists. You know, you've seen probably in some sense you've seen like so many doctors and gotten things checked out. And we always tell people to do that, you know, because that that is responsible. Yeah, because these symptoms are so physical called it's like people think, oh anxiety, Oh I feel a little anxious. No, it's not. You may not think,

you know. I know. I never felt like, oh I'm anxious. I felt like, oh I'm nauseous all the time. Oh I can't eat? Oh nothing staying down? You know. So how is that anxiety? How is that not something wrong with my stomach? You know? And that's what so tricky about anxiety is it's not a feeling, it's it's physical symptoms often And yeah, Maggie, you're making me realize that, you know, in a weird way. You two were really lucky to not have language yet, because nowadays it can

get so sanitized. So I'm thinking of your story. We're driving and it's raining, it takes you six hours, you have to pull over. You know. Nowadays you might say to someone I'm feeling some feelings like unreality, I'm having anxiety driving and it just sort of gets washed over. And so what I'm experiencing a lot doing this podcast is people are writing to me and saying, now I don't have anxiety, but I have, and then they list nine symptoms of anxiety, but none of the symptoms seem typical,

so they don't think they have it. And so in a weird way, it's kind of a gift that we grew up learning to describe each and every symptom. My arm feels numb. I just have this feeling. I can't complete the drive. So in a way, we were all really lucky because we are experts in knowing that anxiety is one word for a billion different things, and we have an easy acceptance now that this could be anxiety. We don't question it and say, how could that be anxiety?

We did it first. But a lot of people I know that are they're pretty savvy A but anxiety are kind of going backwards. They're still learning all of the symptoms, but they know the word. Anything your body can do, any sound it can make, and smell and he fluid, it can produce. Anything your body can do any organ that something can happen during anxiety with that particular body part. In other words, if if your body can do it,

it can be a symptom of anxiety. D And you know, we have a really large virtual community and anxiety sisterhood, and a lot of our people are telling us all the time, really, this is really anxiety. So I think there's still quite a lot of people who don't believe their symptoms. Can I ask you, then, what was both of your first moments when you realize, oh, this is

anxiety and anxiety disorder. Now I'm on the path. Well, one thing I have to say is that that is for many of us, and we, like Abby said, we have this community of over two hundred thousand people who talk to us constantly. And I have to say that that's usually a process, you know, of someone saying to you you have anxiety, and then you still can't really believe it, because who can believe these unbelievable physical symptoms, these debilitating symptoms. Yeah, so, but the first time, believe

it or not, that I the uh. Um, I had a therapist telling me you have anxiety. But but I was like, she doesn't know what she's talking about, because these symptoms can't be anxiety. But I called. I was I was actually babysitting for my brother's son at the time, and um, someone and my sister in law sister called and I said, how are you? And I don't know why I didn't say fine, I said, well, actually, I'm I'm nauseous all the time, I can't eat. I'm I

was living in New York City at the time. I'm afraid of the subway, I'm afraid of my elevator and my building. I can barely get to work. I don't know why. I just like spit all this out right, and she said, yeah, I I had that when I had agoraphobia. You have anxiety. And when she said it to me, not a therapist, not a doctor, but appear said it to me. I was like, Oh, she's telling me how she too, And somehow that turned a light

on for me. We hear from a lot of people with agoraphobia, and I certainly had a case of it. You know, an Abbey went through periods of time with it. But you know, people think it's like, oh, they're afraid to leave the house. That's not really agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is really um fear of having a panic attack when you're outside the house and not being able to get home, or fear of for some people, getting very sick outside

the home and not being able to get home. So it really is a gooraphobia when they are all these places. It starts often with transportation. Um, but there are all these places that you can't go. And we have a term we like to use called shrinking world syndrome. So

you like that. Yes, So even if it's not quite a or a phobia, even if you're sort of don't quite meet that diagnosis, as soon as we say, as soon as you're in the situation where your your anxiety is making decisions about where you go, what you do, who you see, rather than yourself, you know, it's like these are these are anxiety decisions, then you're starting to have this thing we call shrinking world syndrome. I think the misunderstood thing about agoraphobia and what you call shrinking

world syndrome. It's not I'm an introvert or you know, it's not that. It's it's like desperately really wanting to do these things and really thinking you can't. It's like it's like if you thought you had a broken leg and you didn't. You know, that's a perfect example in that it. You know, one of the things we try to do. Abby really knows a ton about neuroscience and

she's taught me a lot about it. But um, one of the things we really try to do is sort of break it down to the simplest neuroscience we could give people right because you start to realize it is like a broken leg, but it's happening. You know, you have this trigger happy a magdala. It is happening in a place in your body. It is something going going wonky or not working in a way that's going to benefit you. Yeah, it's real, and aban, what was your

first Okay, this is anxiety. Now I'm on the path or I know it's hard to say because it is a series of moments, but I don't know if I ever got to that place because they're still lays, you know, even now after I'm a bona fide anxiety sister and we've made our life's work to help people manage their anxieties. So it doesn't manage them even at that point. Uh, they're still some days we're all call Maggs and also be sure this is anxiety. There was never one particular day.

I certainly when that eer doc gave me the ada van Yeah that you know, I have a science mind, so that was fairly okay, that makes sense to me. That's logical, and I liked that and that helped, and that was when I went started to see my first psychiatrist, but then spent a lot of years grappling. You know. UM, and you know now I manage my anxiety really well and I and I think I I live a really full life despite having anxiety, but it still have it.

We'll be right back. You guys mentioned your online community. Can you tell me, you know, in some detail, what exactly that entails? So are people able to, um, you know, talk with you or they are they is it a message board? What? What is this amazing community? Because I'm sure my listeners would like to be part of it.

Well they can and it's totally free. UM. So they can come to our website, which is Anxiety Sisters dot com and they can just if you give us your email address, then you sign up for our newsletter and you get a free progressive muscle relaxation and it really connects you with the community. UM. And then also our Facebook page has become really we had forums on our website and those were fine and people were chatting, and then suddenly people were like, let's take this to FB

and everyone would that be? And then before we knew it, everyone had kind of left the forums and gone to talk on Facebook. So our Facebook page is extremely active. I mean, Mag is on it all day long. We moderate everything and we have one of the kindest, most supportive, gentlest pages I've ever seen. We it's amazing thing to me how how little discord there is with so many followers. It's nice to hear a good Facebook story for once.

I mean, it's a really active page and uh, and we ask Mag and I answer every private message and every email we get. So nowadays, with such big numbers, it takes a few days for us to get back to everybody. But we talked to hundreds of people a week. You're saints. Well, we have a book group on Facebook live on Tuesday nights UM at seven o'clock right now, from our book, which is The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide and UM. We do a chapter a week and we

give a presentation basically based on that chapter. UM. And then we also have UM one thing which there is a small fee for it. But we have a six week very private, very closed group on zoom UM called the Coping Crew UM that has its its own Facebook page. So it's like most of our stuff is free. There's a couple of things that if you want sort of a higher level of interaction, but it's completely free to

talk to us. That's so great. Well, it's it's a great way to to sort of learn so much, you know, from each other. And you know, we have a real sort of ethnography of the anxiety experience, everything from O c D, you know, to panic disorder and intrusive thoughts and anything anything you can imagine. We've we've heard about talk to someone with it. You mentioned progressive muscle relaxation, and I so rarely get to talk to people about this,

so I'm so glad you mentioned it. It wasn't in my plan, but I would love to chat about it. I you know, my first foray into getting help was when I was twenty one, and I found progressive muscle relaxation to be the most incredible tool that I still use to this day. And it's really good for the person as well who doesn't want to meditate or doesn't even want to think too much about is this anxiety? Is this not? You know in quotes, normal people can

do it. So this man in the thirties, when you know, culture was changing and people were becoming kind of work addicted, so life was just work and then you go drink after and that's how you blow off steam. Oh. Edmund Jacobson he's the father of progressive muscle relaxation, and he wrote a book in the thirties called You Must Relax Practical Methods for Reducing the Tensions of Modern Living. And

in the thirties people kind of poo pooed him. Um. And obviously his work got validated, you know, later on, but he was they think of him as he said, it describes exercises for relieving the tensions that precipitate heart attacks, high blood pressure, in justestion, ulcers, and other disorders. And I'm not confident if he uses the word um anxiety. But he was a physician in internal medicine and he was also a psychiatrist. Oh wow, so he um. He's a hero to me because of that. But I love

that you offer a free progressive muscle relaxation. Was that what that home monologue was about? But do is that a tool that you find helpful? Yes? Very and actually we uh, we do think of it as a form of meditation. So for people who don't want to sit in the lotus position, you know, sort of with the universal home. You know that that progressive muscle relaxation counts because you really are very mindful of your body. You know, when you're progressively relaxing each muscle in your whole body,

that's that meets the criteria for meditation. You're really being mindful and in the present. That's true. I always I always saying it's different only to welcome in the people that don't want to sit with their thoughts or notice their thoughts and are like, you don't have to do do you just listen to someone and you follow their instructions, which I'm really what relaxes me is like list making and following instructions and okay, you're an abbey, You're an abbey.

Yeah I'm a Maggie. I'm the opposite, but yes, and and so you know, yeah, just someone sitting there and saying tighten your arms and okay, now release, you know, and not to anyone listening. That's that's all it is, is someone taking you through a series of tightening certain muscles and then releasing them. And it's when I am done.

I mean I literally can feel I don't know what the thing is going through my body, but the court is all releasing and I can feel actually like somebody put an out of van in my I V. You know, it actually feels amazing. Well, it's your body going from that fight or flight stress response and to the the rest and digest piece response. It's really you're you're going from your sympathetic nervous response to your paris sympathetic response.

And it's amazing is when you do one, When you do a PMR, when you're not even having an anxiety or panic attack, you just feel like, oh, I'm I'm pretty status quo. The amount of relaxes that you can't believe what you felt before, like that was normal, you know,

walking around like that. So in fact, that's the time to really do it as much as possible, because for a lot of us in that really anxious space, that becomes really difficult, you know, for some of us to do some some people can do that when they're really anxious and it really helps them, but a lot of us, um it's a practice. So so if you're if you're going to use an exercise like that, it's great to

practice when you're not feeling so anxious. I guess that makes sense because if you're doing your progressive muscle relaxation when nothing's wrong. Um, Then when you call it up when something's wrong, you'r your muscle memory, right, it says, oh, I know how to do this yep. Yeah. And the

same thing with visualization. Teach people how to come up with a serene scene in their mind and they didn't when they're not feeling a lot of anxiety, when you know they're kind of at that stable anxiety place, and to come up with a place where you feel safe. It can be yours outdoors, it can be made up

place could be your grandmother's living room morever. But we really encourage people to put in as much sensory detail as possible when the visual in this because the more sensory detail you put in, the more your brain feels like you're actually there. And we teach people to do this when, like I said, when they're not at the height of their anxiety, so that when they are experiencing

acute anxiety they can call that up much quicker. I think that's the thing with a lot of our tools is that we we usually encourage like that preparation piece because you know, while you're in that fight or flight response, Um, what's happening is your frontal lobe. You really can't use your sort of executive functioning and decision making and reasoning skills very well that whole front the low part of your brain. So it's sort of like we we need to be prepared with what to do when we're in

a situation where the anxiety is just getting getting really high. Um, and so whatever the technique is, we kind of encourage people to sort of be ready with different different techniques. That makes total sense. We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a quick message from our sponsors. So you know, a lot of my podcast has not dealt with the pandemic too much because I've recorded a lot of episodes in advance, and I also feel like it's in the back of our minds as yeah, yeah, we

know it's going on. That's why I'm listening to an anxiety podcast. Do we have to directly talk about it, you know, but I kind of do want to directly talk about it because I am I'm not sure what I'm experiencing, but I'm mixed bariencing maybe a little bit of a shutting down, which is one of my bad tools for anxiety. And you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm boosted, i'm masking up, I'm doing all the things. But I was enjoying myself for a bit before O Macron hit,

you know. And I'm living in New York and we had like the lowest cases ever anywhere, shown my vaccine card at the restaurant and going in without a mask, and I just I didn't even realize what I'd been missing. And then here comes O Macron. And I have a beautiful life and just like no complaints and of healthy and I have friends and job. But it's that little bit of freedom that was taken away. Um well, of course obviously I can go anywhere I want, but I'm

a little concerned. I don't want to catch it, and I kind of go into this shutdown mode of like, you know what, wake me when it's all over. I don't even want to sit outside and see fronts, you know, And that's a in the childish black and right response. You know, I have friends and what why don't we take a walk, And I'm like no, you know, I'm I'm just I want to hibernate and what are you seeing with people with the kind of the resurgence of

the intensity. I know, the pandemic never went away, but we're in a real back to you know, doing our own personal lockdowns. Are people more anxious? What are you seeing? Well, Jenn, First of all, I wanted to say that, um, don't call yourself childish, because you're protecting yourself. That's true. And and and we are seeing a ton of anxiety during the pandemic, And we keep reminding people that your brain

is trying to do a good thing here. Your brain is trying to protect you from what it perceives as a huge danger. And certainly in the first two years of the pandemic, there was I mean, we were being told all the time, you know, if you take off your mask and you're not vaccinated, you could die. I mean, that's that's pretty anxiety provoking. Yeah, so I think that

you know that. But but I think that what we're seeing lately is that we did We got like this this break for a few months where we were all sort of stepping outside again, and we were all starting to go into restaurants again, and we were starting to see our friends and family, and I was on airplanes and Magis and I had we had actual events planned and workshops and got all exciting, like, oh, things are going to be normal again and we're gonna be able

to go back to living and hugging and kissing each other. And then O Macron showed up and it was sort of like, you know, you want to lick. Nope, you can't have it. Go back home, you know. And and I'm back in lockdown in my house. I'm not seeing my grandchildren, not seeing my kids, and it's really hard. I have a lot of anxiety around that because I was, you know, a month ago, I was in Colorado visiting

my son. Yeah, and now you know, so, I think we're seeing a lot of that, a lot of people feeling that confusion too, because it's hard for your bringing to keep going long and off. You know, Should I be anxious? Should I not be anxious? I think that that's something that that we're experiencing now, particularly with the with the new variant. And I see a lot of people saying, oh, you know, it's mild. I don't you know what. I just want to get it and get

it over. And to me, I'm thinking, you, I think I'm anxious because I'm asking up everywhere. I'm not going anywhere but you're anxious too. That's just a different anxiety response, isn't it. Like they're like they think they have this control, like, oh, I'll just get it, it will be mild, and then dot dot dot it will protect you from what future variants that we don't know about. This is an evolving son and so it's been interesting for me to look

at everything through the anxiety lens. And people who seem not anxious because they're out and about, in my opinion, they're just as anxious as me. Does that do you think I'm onto something? You know, because it's an evolving science and you know, obviously we're getting so many different Um, we're hearing a lot of different voices right of like it's not very clear always exactly what to do or what not to do, right, So you know that's anxiety

provoking for all of us because that's like this uncertainty. Um. And yes, some people sort of shut it out and just say, you know whatever, I'm just gonna do whatever, and some people locked down and people going between. But what we tell people is, um, I think we're all fatigued. I think a lot of us are, you know, feeling lonely at this point in the pandemic or um just exhausted. And so we always say, you know, have a lot

of compassion for yourself and for each other. You know, it's like coming back to that piece of like, I am doing the best I can in these circumstances that you know, we have no we've you know, we're in the middle of our lives and we've never seen this before, right you know, So I am doing the best I can in this like very chaotic world right now. And so what I need to do, I need to do,

you know. And so that's just like having that self compassion because we know that when we start criticizing ourselves a lot, or start like yelling at ourselves, are saying, oh, I'm childish, I'm this, and that we throw ourselves into the anxiety response. When you get yelled at, you go into that fight or flight often. So it's like the way that we can use our best thinking and planning and reasoning is to stay as much as possible and that rest and more closer to that rest and digest.

And we think that starts with the self compassion peace. And another thing is, you know, we're talking to people every day who you know, are very anxious about going back to work during the pandemic. Now, you know, although now some places are going remote again, and like Maggie said, the golf post keep moving. It's hard to know should I be going to work ship and not be going to work. It's it's really hard to know what the right thing to do is. But one thing people are

talking about a lot is how angry people are. Yeah, so mag and I try to remind people that for some folks they express their anxiety through ankor mm hmm. You see that anxiety out there even in other responses, like if someone's like, all right, I'm just gonna get it and get it over with and that you're absolutely right, that absolutely is an anxiety response of its own. So is anger. Yeah. I had a therapist tell me, you

know your anger is anxiety. So, um, you want to cry? Actually, you know that's you're you're covering up like the grief failing. You know, and and I know we're both familiar with Clara good Will Smith the missing stange of things of grief is anxiety. And I think that's right. You know, all these people that are being duct taped planes and you know, um, I don't think it's as much of a political I mean, I think this whole thing has

been politicized, which is a whole other podcast. But I don't necessarily see someone who doesn't want to wear a mask as um in a certain political group, or even an anti backs are um. Even if they are, it's to me the bottom line, anxiety I've never you know, they're saying, I've never I've never had a lack of control over the universe affect me. It's much more obvious now how little control we actually have. And I think that a lot, like you said, it's a lot less

political than some people may think. Loss of control living in an uncertain world, and some people's response to that is anger. And so when you were talking about self compassion, you brought me to my thesis that I have, which is there are a billion ways two well, there are million tools we can put in our anxiety to look at, whether it's progressive, mustere realization, therapy, cutting out, sungar, jumping

up and down, breathing whatever. Everyone knows this. For me, I truly believe that what makes people not want to try is there's a little bit of a lack of self esteem there, like deep, deep down that's like I don't deserve to feel better, or it's to even know how to take care of oneself. And so when you're saying that, like the most important tool of anxiety relief in this re uppance of the pandemic is have compassion. Like you caught me saying, I'm thinking like a child.

It's like it's so ingrained to just insult myself. And I think for other people that have never taken the first step to get to get any help, professional or otherwise, I think there's there's a little bit of like who am I to get home? Other people have it worse, you know. And I think that self compassion is a really big part of Once we get our self esteem in place, then we can have compassion, then we can

take the steps right along with that. Yes, self compassion sort of really um once you once you really start to practice self compassion, it can really like sort of change the lens. You see that we have seen a lot of things through We've done a lot of training, um with Kristin Neff, who is sort of the mother of the modern self compassion movement, and and it really changes the lens of how we experience a lot of

things um. And and one of the things that we're really careful to do within that self compassion um and we're working on doing this better with ourselves too, is is not having a lot of should's um because so it's like, you know, one of the things that happened when when we were both really having terrible anxiety was people said, well, you should cut out sugar. Well, if I could cut out sugar, you know, like I mean, like that's the battle of my life. Okay, yes, or

you should do this, or you should do that. And what we say is like you can take really small steps. You can find something that works for you right now, even just a little bit, and that is great, you know. So one of the things Abby and I always say, like something that helps us so much, both of us is being out in nature, which sounds very cliche, but that doesn't help you if you really can't leave your apartment right yeah, but we know even bringing a plant

into your space is something. You know, having your cat or your dog to cuddle with or whatever whatever pieces you have, So there that part of the self compassion is thinking, like is sort of learning. They're really small pieces, really small steps you can take and everything counts. And you know, Mags and I, when we set out to write the book, we said that we wanted to write

the book that we needed and what we needed. We didn't need anybody telling us what we should do, because that created a list of other things that we would fail at. Because our anxiety was allowing us two, you know, to function as well as we wanted to, and so we just didn't want to have to screw anything else up. And so we decided we would write a book that would not be prescriptive, that would sort of recognize that one size does not fit all. And you know, we

always say to people, try this. If it doesn't work on Monday, you know, you could still try it Tuesday. It might work great on Tuesday. I mean, you know, yeah, idea to have no should's right, don't shoot on yourself. And then also to to really expand your tool kit. You know, we call it a spin kit. You know, the things that you uh do to soothe yourself and and and get your anxiety out of the driver's seat.

But you know, it's like not everything fits all at once, even for us, and and and to know to kind of be your own scientists and know this doesn't work for me today, or this works for me on airplanes, but doesn't work for me at the office. Um, well, we've come to the end of our session. I know I said I was going to ask some about children, but but we had such an organic time that it didn't come up. So that's fine. I was glad to talk to you about um everything that came up. You

guys are so brilliant. Thank you so much. UM So I have to say good biding ladies, and I thank you for coming on. And I hope that everybody gets into your community. And of course you know in the intro I'll be promoting all of your your your podcast or book, your community, and all the links will be in the show notes. But thank you for chatting with me. It was such a great way to start my morning. I feel like I had a like an Anxiety Sisters meeting and everyone gets to listen to me. I hope

you enjoyed my chat with the Anxiety Sisters. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. We did actually talk a little bit longer than then you heard, because we started talking about Prince and you know what it was. It really wasn't related to the episode at all, and so I had them edited out. I had my producers edit that out because, you know, do you want to stay on topic? But man, we did have a fun

conversation about Prince. It turns out that Abby and I have had a similar Prince dream before after he died, So who knows, Maybe he was visiting us in his dream. Maybe her dream was fake and he was really visiting me. I mean, that's probably what it is. Anyway, Why am I talking about a thing that you didn't hear, making feel like you missed out? You did miss out. But here are some takeaways from the episode that will probably help you with your anxiety more than hearing about a

dream I had about Prince one time. These are takeaways from this episode the wisdom of the Anxiety Sisters. Number one, get everything checked out by a doctor so that you can rule out any physical issues when you're beginning to deal with your anxiety. Two. What's tricky about anxiety is it's not just an emotional feeling. It's often physical symptoms. Three. Anything your body can do, any sound or smell, It can produce any fluid, it can produce any organ you have,

can do something that can be a symptom of anxiety. Four. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't get help for anxiety because they don't believe that their physical debilitating symptoms are anxiety. Five. Agoraphobia is really a fear of having a panic attack or getting sick away from your home and not being able to get back in time to get to safety. Six.

As soon as your anxiety starts making decisions for you about where you go and who you see and how you see yourself, you're starting to have what the anxiety sisters call shrinking world syndrome. Seven. For people who don't want to sit in a lotus position and meditate, progressive muscle relaxation does count as a meditation. Eight. Progressive muscle relaxation helps your body go from the fight or flight

response into the rest and digest peaceful response. Nine. When you're in fighter flight, the frontal lobe part of your brain is affected to where you can't use your executive functioning, decision making, or reasoning skills very well. Ten. Have a lot of compassion for yourself and for each other. Eleven. Don't criticize yourself right now. You're doing the best you can in this very chaotic world. Right now. Twelve. Try to avoid thinking in should like I should do this

for my anxiety, or I should do that. Don't shoot on yourself. Part of self compassion is learning that there are small steps that you can take that can be transformative, like if you can't get out into nature, you could get a plant. And lastly, if one anxiety relief tool doesn't work one day, maybe it'll work another day again. How to get in touch with the anxiety sisters and enjoy everything they have to offer. Just go onto those links in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and

just remember anxiety bites, but you're in control. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.