Unpacking Anxiety (Part 1)

Key Takeaways

• Anxiety defined: an intense, excessive, and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations.
• The feeling of anxiety is very common and natural and shows up in stressful situations – such as public speaking or taking a test. 
• Anxiety or panic attacks can include physical symptoms such as a racing heart, rapid breathing, sweating, blurred vision, sometimes even feeling like an out of body experience. 
• Anxiety, in Sarah’s research and experience, is directly rooted in FEAR. We are afraid of the unknown, the future, what’s to come, judgment, embarrassment, failure, unmet expectations, rejection, not performing well, looking stupid, being unlovable, or unwanted.
• Sarah has found that people may have present-day anxieties, but those anxieties are often triggered by unprocessed fears or other emotions from their pasts.
• When she works with clients, Sarah often asks specific questions to help peel back layers and connect to the feelings that lead to their anxiety:
  • Do you not trust yourself? 
  • Do you look outside yourself for answers? 
  • Do you ever wish you didn’t care what other people think? 
  • Were you ever told to not say anything, be quiet or stop taking?  Just shake it off? Just keep it between us? 
• Often those questions lead back to a time in the person’s life when they heard the same fear-based messages that triggered the anxiety they’re feeling now. By doing this work, people begin to process traumas or inner child wounds that have been buried and are trying to erupt like a volcano.
• Body sensations give our brains information for us to tend to it. 
• Unprocessed trauma (emotional neglect, mental, emotional, physical, sexual abuse, abandonment, rejection, moves, divorce, breakups) – If you don’t go back and process those things, your body actually holds on to those experiences and sends messages to our brain which then are associated and “reborn” during situations that are happening in real-time. 
• Vulnerability:
  • Often, in working with couples, Sarah finds that they don’t communicate openly and honestly about their feelings. They’re afraid to be vulnerable with each other. And when couples are not vulnerable with each other, they lack connection.
  • Researcher Brene Brown (considered THE expert in vulnerability) says “vulnerability is not winning or losing. It is having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.”
  • We as humans are deeply scared to be vulnerable, we lack that connection piece which is imperative for us to accept all our feelings without judgment – so when we aren’t allowing ourselves to go to that place or we weren’t taught that, it leads to our anxiety. 
• Boundaries:
  • If you say yes to something but you really mean no, it triggers “anxiety” because you did something that was out of alignment with your true self. It manifests itself as “anxiety” because it’s our body’s natural way of saying “pump the brakes, there’s something here that needs to be processed.”
  • Healthy relationships allow for saying say no and setting boundaries without an explanation.

Resources & Recommendations

• Brene Brown’s TEDx Talk – “The Power of Vulnerability”
• Brene Brown’s Podcast – Unlocking Us

Credits and Thanks

• Special thanks to Reanna Karousis of Collective Reach and the Social Distance Happy Hour, who inspired and challenged us to start this podcast and helped us produce our first episode.
• Thanks also to our families and friends for all their encouragement and support, and to you, our listeners, for joining us on this adventure.
• That’s a Hard No is a joint production of Clever Girl Marketing and Purposeful Growth & Wellness.
• Logo design by Angela Giaco of A Pink Sunset. You can find her at apinksunset.com.
• Music: “Whiskey for Lunch” by GG Rigs. (Don’t judge us, you guys. We just like the song.)