Ep 11: Changing your relationship with anxiety

Hi, my beautiful introvert friend. Welcome to the Empowered Introvert Podcast, and this is gonna be a little bit of a casual one. If you are watching via video, you can see that I am in actually in a treehouse right now. It's a beautiful. Space here, I'm surrounded by green. Lots of lovely windows and cushy a bunch of cushions here and the sound's probably a little funky. There's a bit of an echo, so I apologize for that. But I thought this would be a fun space. To to get together here on this holiday. So it's Memorial Day, a day off and the sun is coming out and, and also going away and feeling very cold cuz it's been quite cold here. But today I wanna talk about anxiety and just briefly, I think this will be a short, short episode. You know, one of the thoughts that I've been working with lately around this and, and it really ties into my general approach of, of anxiety which is one of creating acceptance of it. So the thought is that anxiety is. A built-in safety system designed to keep me safe. And what I love about this is that it, it changes the relationship that you might have with anxiety, cuz most of the time, We want it to go away, right? We just don't wanna feel anxious. It feels terrible. It shows up in. Lots of different ways, like overwhelm or worry. It shows up physically. There's the man, you know, it manifests as digestive problems, as difficulty sleeping, all of these uncomfortable symptoms. And as introverts, as a highly sensitive person, you end up feeling it quite a lot. So when we're in a relationship where we're. Pushing it away where we wanna make it go away, we wanna fix it. That sets up this tension, this extra tension on top of the anxiety and it. In. It increases our emotions, it increases the intensity and the exhaustion that we feel when we experience it, and so much so that we end up creating our own. For lack of a better word, like PTs d where say we come out of the anxiety and then we start to feel it creeping up. Then all of a sudden we're like, oh shit. It's coming back. And we start to bring in those layers, that tension again before anything has really happened. And then that of course, you know, often triggers the anxiety even more. So. And I hope you can see in this. Like this undercurrent of the relationship of re rejection and that when we can see that and. Then we can lovingly redirect it. And the way that we do that is by, you know, by seeing anxiety from a, a bigger lens. And, and it really, I mean, if you think about just the basic biology fear is, Is built into us to keep us safe. Anxiety is a flavor of fear and there really is a purpose to it. And you know, we often kind of dismiss it these days, say like, you know, that it's not actually a sabertooth tiger after us. It's stress, but. But actually there is, I mean, there is something there, like our anxiety is trying to point out to us that there is something of concern that it is important to pay attention. You know, I often feel anxiety around finances and it is important to pay attention to finances. Because if I don't have any money, we, you know, we see what happens to people who don't have money. Is that gonna happen to me? Am I gonna end up on the streets? You know, probably not, but still it is something like real, right? It is meaningful. And as such, when we can look at our anxiety and, and see that, like, it is, it's like a dog. That is barking. Your sweet little dog is barking. Every time you know, someone walks by the house, you know, they are like, they're not badly intentioned. They're not trying to make you annoyed like they are identifying something that could be a sh strut. And so, If we say that like we want, like we don't wanna like eradicate the dog, right? But instead we wanna soothe it, we wanna accept it, we wanna redirect it. So this idea that it is, you know, it is a built-in alarm system designed to keep me safe. You know, when you can kind of sit with that and. Appreciate the, the love and care behind it, right? That self-preservation, that, that you know, l love of life there. Then sometimes just that will start to decrease. The tension doesn't necessarily make the anxiety go away, but it decreases that tension that comes from rejection, right? And that can really change your experience. It, it starts to open it up so that instead of like pushing, pushing, forcing, forcing you release and then. There can be a glimmer of haze. I'm actually safe of safety coming up. You might start to breathe a little better, and then from there maybe the anxiety starts to lessen, you know, or maybe you gain access to a little bit more higher thinking and then you can take action steps to help your body can dissipate the excess tension and anxiety, you know? So you can. And then from there you can reflect on the purpose that anxiety plays in your life. You know, like you might ask, how is this trying to keep me safe? What is the larger message here? And. You might, you know, you might discover that there is information there that is asking for you to respond to, that is asking for you to find a grounded solution to, like, if you're always worrying and anxious about work, then there's probably something that is out of balance there. You know, it, it could, you know, it could be that. Maybe it's just personally, you're not getting enough sleep and so your, your stress system is is, is is a little bit over, over responsive. Or it could be that it's signaling that it's a time to move on, right? That it's a time, it's time for you to look to the next thing. Like there's all kinds of information that could be in there when you. Are in a place where you can lovingly reflect and grounded reflect and aren't just like, I'm anxious, I need to get rid of this right now. And this just go zone out on tv. Right? So that's what I have for you today. You know, really wherever you're at with anxiety, I, there's, there's so much more to say about it. So many, like, you know, ways to look at and things to do and whatnot, but I think that this is, it's, it's such a powerful, easy and, and like gentle way, you know, to. To, to be conscious in your relationship with anxiety. That I think can be really empowering. I know it's helping me a lot and, and I see acceptance really in my clients as such a powerful pathway to, to change, to, to healing. So, Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you're enjoying Summer. I am offering a special summer coaching offering that is really designed to meet you in the middle of a busy. Busy time where you might be traveling or taking, you know, taking time off or extra busy with, with work, but you still want coaching support. Like you still have transformation that you are working on. You want a relationship to help you end this like, Help you come out of the summer, like really making the changes that you know that you want to make and. When we're in summer or in vacation mode and things are already kind of stirred up or, or changed, it can be a really nice time to introduce some of the be bigger, deeper changes that you wanna make in your life. So I'm offering the summer integration session where we have a, an in-depth initial coaching conversation and then we're, we're, we work together for two months. With with Voxer support where we can just kind of do one off coaching as you need it and really support you wherever you're at without needing much time, or you need to be anywhere specific. It's very Accustomed to where you're at in your schedule and what you need, what you're trying to do in your life. So if you're interested in that, please send me a message. I'll get a page up on my website here soon. It's also summer and I'm trying to enjoy the brief moments of of sun that just went away. So with that, I am gonna go taste down the sun and wish you a beautiful week. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next time.