← Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression
Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression
Bonus Episode: The Two Things Anxious People Do That Makes Everything Worse
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There are two mistakes that anxious people do that makes everything worse, and I'm willing to bet that you are doing both of them. The reason I wanted to record this is recently I was working at a bake sale. Yes, you heard that correct. I was at a bake sale, and I found myself engaging in these two mistakes. And I knew it was a sign that I needed to talk to you about these two things. Hello, my name is Kimberly Quindlen. I'm an OCD and anxiety specialist, and I am on a mission to help 10 million people suffer less from anxiety. I know that's a hefty goal, but I think that it's a very important one because we are suffering enough. Am I right? And there are all kinds of horrible advice out there on what you can do to manage anxiety. So I made it my goal to help 10 million of you so that we do suffer less. Anxiety is running rampant, and I want us to cut back on these two mistakes that we are making, myself included. Okay. I'm at the bake sale. All of a sudden, I'm noticing that my anxiety is rising, and it is rising fast. And wait a second. I'm at a bake sale. I'm volunteering at a high school bake sale. Why would I start to notice that I'm anxious? Well, what I realized is I'm making two mistakes that you're probably making. The first one was, I'm acting urgently. And the second was I was acting as if everything was oh, so important. Does that resonate with you? Because if so, you're definitely not al. These are the two mistakes that I see my clients make all the time, my students make all the time. And I fell into the trap, too. And so what I wanted to do in this episode was to go over these two specific mistakes that we make, and these show up in many different anxiety conditions. And at the end, I'm going to explain to you what I specifically did at the bake sale to stop engaging in these two behaviors that were only making anxiety worse. Okay, so let's first talk about urgency. If you are responding to your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, your urges, or your images with urgency, you can guarantee you are reinforcing anxiety. So let's take a look at what I mean by that. When you are in any setting, it doesn't matter. It could be as simple as you being at church, being at a bake sale. Like, you can't get more relaxed than being at the bake sale. Right. It shouldn't be something that is highly stressful. And anxiety provoking. But if you are at the equivalent of a bake sale and you're acting urgently, something is wrong. Now, I understand there will be certain situations where maybe, like, you've completely ran out of something. But again, in that moment, what is the actual urgency? We have to slow down and identify how we are interpreting this event. Now, in this case, I was at the bake sale, running around, rushing, opening up the donated muffins, packing the candy bars and rushing around. We had plenty of time and I had to check in and go, wait, why am I responding like, this is urgent. This is not an airplane that's about to take off and I'm going to miss it. What am I doing wrong here? And I caught myself in one of the biggest errors in thinking, which is I need to. This has to happen. Like, I have to show everybody that I can do this. Well, I caught that there was an underlying anxiety. And when I had that. That thought that I had to perform well and get everyone to like me, all the other moms and dads, then I responded to that with urgency. Now, remember, the thought itself is not the problem. The thought that I had to perform at the bake sale is not the problem. And I want to reinforce to you the thoughts that you're having of all the catastrophes that are going to happen. They are not the problem. How we respond to those thoughts is the problem. Now, if you're having sensations of anxiety and you respond to those as if they are a problem again, and then you have to try and urgently run away from them again, the urgency to run away from them is the problem, not the physical discomfort that we feel. So once I slowed down and I paused long enough to go, okay, Kimberly, what's happening here? Oh, you're afraid of them judging you. You want to please them. You want their approval. And once I identified that I could see I was moving into urgency, then I could take a moment and change how I responded. Now we're going to move over to the second thing that anxious people do that is making your anxiety worse, which is we treat the initial experience, whether it be a thought or a feeling or a sensation or urge or an image as important. And that again, the thought and the feeling is not the problem. The importance we place on it is the problem. Now, some people might argue that getting other people to like them might feel very important. But remember, just because you think something doesn't mean it's true. And just because you feel something doesn't mean it's true either. So we want to catch when you have that intrusive thought or that scary thought or that scary feeling, we want to make sure we catch, am I responding to it with urgency and am I responding to it as if it's oh so important? Now let's use me as an example. The bake sale is important. It's raising money for my daughter's school so that they can have the music department and the athletic department. I don't want to minimize importance of the goal we were setting forward with, with raising money by selling baked goods. That, yeah, that's important. But in that moment, the degree of importance I was placing on it was disproportionate to, to the actual real event. Now, as you know, I have a private practice. I have six amazing therapists in Calabasas, California. However, we do not take insurance. Now, if you are looking for insurance covered OCD or BFRB treatment, I want to let you know about nocd. NOCD provides face to face live video sessions with specialized licensed OCD therapists. Now, their therapists use exposure and response prevention. We know this is the gold standard for ocd. So you can be absolutely confirmed that you're in the right place there. And they have a clinically proven app that helps you stay connected to your therapist and others who have OCD between sessions so you'll always feel supported. Now, the cool thing is NOCD is available in all 50 US states and even internationally and they accept most insurance plans, making it affordable and accessible. We love that. Now if you think you might have OCD or you're struggling to manage your symptoms, you can book a free call. Just click the link in the show notes@nocd.com I am honored to partner with NOCD. I want to remind you that recovery is possible. Please do not forget that. Now, big hugs and let's get back to the show. In my body, if you videoed me while I was scurrying around laying out skittles, we could all agree that the urgency and the importance that I placed on this was massively disproportionate to the actual urgency and importance of this event. Now what I want you to think about here is, are you doing the same thing? Are you having a what if thought? What if bad things happen? What if I make a mistake? What if I'm responsible for harm? What if they leave me and abandon me? Are you responding to that thought with urgency and with more importance than is necessary? Now often what my clients say is, yeah, Kimberly, I know this already. I already know that the way I'm responding is a problem, but what can I do? It feels automatic. It feels so important. It feels so urgent. And I get it. That's the way anxious brains work. But this is what I did in the bake sale to help. The first step is acknowledging. Yeah, it feels uncomfortable, it feels urgent. It feels like getting these cupcakes out before the show starts is potentially dangerous. That's how it felt in my body. It felt like almost like a dangerous thing. And we could all agree there's absolutely no danger. Danger to putting cupcakes out before a show. No one's going to yell and punch me in the face or, you know, kill me if. Or completely abandon me if I don't get the coffee mugs and the napkins out in time for the bake sales. Right. But in the moment, my job was first to acknowledge that I'm responding with urgency over importance. And number two, slow it down in that moment while it felt urgent and important. Again, I'm not going to sell you on fake tools where I say, oh, just tell yourself it's not important. Tell yourself it's not urgent and you'll be fine. No, for us urgent folks, you could tell me that all day, every day, and it would not change my body's response. You could have said, listen, there's nothing to be worried about here, and I'd get maybe like a 5% relief, but I'm still going to have that feeling in my body. So my job is to slow down and act out as if it's not urgent and important. While. And I place the emphasis on the while, while my body still feels like it's urgent and important. Those two things can occur at the same time. It is a skill you are going to have to master if you want to change your cycle of anxiety. The best thing I did in that moment at the bake sale. Wait, wait a second. Hold up. I'm feeling the tension in my body. I'm feeling the stress. What is going wrong here? Oh, I see. I've caught myself in this cycle where just because things feel important and urgent, I'm responding as if they are. So I'm going to change how I'm showing up physically and physiologically and, you know, actually, like, fake it till you make it. I had to slow down. I had to take a breath, and I had to start to slowly place the cupcakes on the silver tray, very slowly. So I'm showing my brain it's not urgent and it's not important, and I'm still letting my brain feel like. It's almost like I'm saying to a child, I know that you feel like this is important and urgent, but we're going to go slowly moving forward. But I know you still feel that way and that's okay. There's nothing wrong. You're not an idiot for feeling this. There's nothing wrong with your brain. You're not broken. But in this case, your brain got fed a cycle that this is important, urgent, and you started to reinforce that by acting it out. And we're not going to do that anymore. Okay, so those are the two things. And I can probably say I'm very certain I could almost fully guarantee that those are two mistakes that you're making often in your day, really, really often in many little subtle ways. Some of your homework is to catch it. You might even want to put it on your phone, document it on a, write it down on a notepad. The times that you catch yourself treating things like they're urgent and important, even when they're not, even when they feel like they are, and even if they are important, this is the. At the end of the day, even if, let's say there really is a situation that is urgent and important, we actually want to work at slowing down as well. That's important for us so that we're not reinforcing anxiety even if it does super. You know, something is you're actually something really is important to you. Like you've got to get to the test or you've got to get to school or you've got to get to your job. Things are important to you. Even then, we still don't want to be acting from a place of urgency and important because it does reinforce anxiety. Now as always, please do share this with anybody you think would be helpful. Again, my goal is to make this super accessible for you. I do not expect even though we have online courses for you@cbt school.com I don't expect you to buy those courses if you cannot afford it. They're there if you want step by step plans and, and procedures and strategies. But my hope is that every single episode of your anxiety toolkit, you are taking away valuable skills that you can put into place in your day to day life. Okay, as always, we always say it is a beautiful day to do hard things. I hope that that is what you're planning on doing today and I will see you in the next episode. Please note that this podcast or any other resources from CBTSchool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting CBTSchool.com.