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The Most Common Mental Health Disorder in America- Anxiety · Millennial Mental Health Channel

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Welcome back to MMHC. Eddie, what gives You Anxiety? This is Millennial
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Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin Romano, a child adolescent psychiatry fellow,
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and I'm Medikoreo, a licensed clinical therapist. Our podcast is here because we
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wanted to start a much newer conversation about mental health. Our goal is to
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teach you as much as we can by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts
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in the mental health field. We will discuss topics like mood disorders, psychotic
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disorders, substance use, personality disorders, and many more. Millennial Mental Health
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Channel buy Millennials for everyone. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. MMHC is
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a production of Speaker from iHeartMedia. I Heart Everything. No, but seriously,
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on a more serious note, probably everything. I have nothing better to
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nothing to add on that. No, no, no, okay, So
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like whenever I don't know they answered or something, or like if I'm waiting
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for like a loop to be closed. You know what really sucks If someone
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like texts you or message, like you get an email work, that's like
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can we talk, Like oh yeah, I don't want to talk to you
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now, I'll tell you about it later, like, no, I need
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to know right now, Like, why would you do that to me?
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If people do that to me at work, they're like, hey, can
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we talk later. I'll always one times. What's it about? Like,
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tell me so I don't worry, Yeah, because if not, I'm going
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to make up a thousand things and then by the time you tell me,
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it's not going to be any of them, and then I just wasted a
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lot of time and brain energy exactly. Yeah. It's nice to know what
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you're going to face, right Yeah. Yeah, Well, speaking of anxiety,
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yeah, take it away. We're here. We are talking about anxiety.
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This is a bread and butter mental health topic because you know, last
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week we did our episode on music, which was a lot of fun.
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It was a little avant garde, a little abstract, if you will.
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So now we're getting back to the basics here because we did an episode on
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anxiety in the past, but it was over four whole years ago, so
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it's time to come back and talk about it again. That shit was episode
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like two. Yeah, Tack the Anxieties super long ago. Again. If
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you've been here the whole time, my microphone sucked. I didn't even have
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a desk. I was just recording on my computer with this little like lap
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desk, and I would just sit in my bed and do it that way.
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So we've come a long way. We're hoping we can bring back some
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good information for you all about anxiety, and we can just share some information
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and maybe you'll learn something new today, or maybe we'll just reinforce stuff that
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you already knew. And that's good too, because repetition is the key to
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learning and memorization. So story time and Eddie hit me with a story about
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anxiety. Dude, I feel like I can just tell you like my whole
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experience of being a therapist, or I can just talk to like being a
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teenager. I don't know. Anxiety is one of those things where sometimes I
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wish I knew it was a thing when I was younger, because I think
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there were definitely times where I would just like get this like existential dread or
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get like worried about something and I'd have no I wouldn't know why. Like
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I can think of specific times where it would be like a Sunday night,
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and maybe it's just the Sunday scariest, but I'd be like a Sunday night,
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I'm in like elementary middle school, and I just did not want to
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go to school next day. I'd have no reason, I'd have no nothing
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happened. I would just now looking back, would just get this anxious feeling
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of like I just feel on edge, I feel irritable. I feel like
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something bad's gonna happen, but I couldn't explain it, so I'd end up
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having to go to school anyway. So it's just one of those things that
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like I wish I knew back in the day. Now I know. I
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see it every single day at work. A lot of our kids struggle with
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anxiety. A lot of teens struggle with anxiety. Adults do too. I
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think it's really common. I think it's one of those things that people will
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like argue or be upset about and say like, oh everybody has anxiety,
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Like oh now everyone's anxious, and it's like, yeah, maybe everyone is
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anxious. We just went through a real fucked up four years in twenty twenty,
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Like that's really messed up a lot of people, So yeah, maybe
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everyone is anxious. So really, I don't have a story time, I
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just have a reflection of life. My story kind of builds on that where
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I do actually have a lot of young people these days who come in on
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their first visits and they say, I have anxiety. I want help with
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my anxiety. Where parents come in and say, hey, I've got an
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anxious kid, like what can we do? What are the next steps?
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And this shows that people are really talking about this more. It's becoming more
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mainstream because I'm guessing thirty years ago that wasn't a very common thing where people
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walked into the psychiatrist already having an idea of what the diagnosis was. And
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there are still a lot of kids these days who don't quite know how to
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put words to it, or you know, the really young kids. So
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you know, you ask them, hey, are you nervous? Are you
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worried about anything? Like what's what makes you scared? And they're like nothing,
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I'm fine because in the moment there's nothing really bothering them. But then
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you talk to the parents and they say, oh, they really worry about
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car rides, Oh they really worry about going to school. For example.
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I've known a lot of kids who worry a lot, who'd worry to the
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point of it getting in the way of their life and they haven't put it
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together yet that it is anxiety. So I'm glad that the knowledge is increasing
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on this because it needed to. I see a lot of TikTok and Instagram
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and social media therapists. I think it comes up like it's got to be
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like every other week on Reddit in the therapist sub reddit of like the self
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diagnosing or people just being more knowledgeable about mental health disorders. Yeah, and
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it's like there's there's both sides of it, like oh, everyone's over diagnosing
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or self diagnosing, but now you have people that are better informed consumers because
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when you do go into a doctor's office, see a therapist, whatever it
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is, you are a consumer. You're getting a service or a product.
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If you're a better consumer, it means you're more likely to get better help
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and to be able to direct the person in the right direction that is helping
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you. So I think that's really positive. I think it's good that more
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people feel comfortable sharing it, feel like they know how to describe it.
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I think that helps out a ton. And I've don some psychiatrists who don't
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like to engage in that conversation. Oh you that's doctor Google talking. But
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I always try and talk through what my thought process is, what the DSM
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criteria is. If people come in with their own diagnoses and not just dispel
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that kind of stuff and say like, oh, you're not the doctor,
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you don't know what you're talking about. Like, I think it's important to
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meet people where they are and try and say why or why not that their
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diagnosis is what they think it is. It's there for a reason, they're
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worried about it for a reason. They looked it up for a reason.
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Like if we're just going to shit on someone when they're coming to ask for
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help and they might be at their lowest, that's not It's not the best
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thing to do. We're all about openness, honesty, inclusion here at MMHC.
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That's right. We're going to give you a definition of anxiety, and
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this is according to the American Psychological Association, and anxiety is an emotion characterized
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by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure.
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Anxiety is not the same as fear, but they are often used interchangeably.
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Anxiety is considered a future oriented, long acting response broadly focused on a
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diffuse threat or Fear is an appropriate present oriented and shortly response to a clearly
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identified and specific thread. WHOA that was needlessly complicated and hard to say.
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I did a really good job, though I was reading it like making mistakes
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and like wha, my gosh, thanks Apa. We promised the rest will
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be easier to understand. Typically, what I tell people is that worrying is
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a normal part of human life. But if you're worrying so much that it's
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getting in the way of you living your life, that's anxiety. And a
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lot of times with anxiety. And I know I use this phrase a lot,
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but back in Caveman times, there were very immediate threats, like if
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there was an animal that was trying to hurt you in front of you,
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if you needed to if you're hungry and needed to get food. Now today's
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world has shifted into so much future oriented threats like oh, I might lose
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my job, I might lose my insurance, I might get more bills,
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and that focus on the future and word worrying about the endless possibilities in the
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future is one of the reasons why I think just anxiety is so common in
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our society. Our brains weren't wired biologically and from an evolutionary standpoint for all
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these constant potential threats in the future. Yeah, too many possibilities. I'm
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going to go back to the APA definition and try to make it easier to
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understand. Basically, anxiety is either a sore. It's basically trying to define
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it in two ways. The first way is it's either future oriented. You're
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thinking into the future. It's like a generalized fear, a spread out concern
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about something. You're worried about something that's not very immediate. It's somewhere in
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the semi distant future, or it's something that's kind of right in front of
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you. You're worried about it, and your response and your anxiousness and anxiety
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about it makes sense. I guess the two things. Let me let's talk
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this out in real time. The long one, like the spread out one.
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The general one is I'm anxious, and I'm just thinking of high school
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students right now, because that's that's my population. I'm anxious about the future
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because if I don't if I don't do well in school right now, I'm
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gonna go to a bad college and then I'm just gonna be poor for the
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rest of my life. Because I don't. I just won't excel that.
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That's like a longer term anxiety. A short term one is I'm gonna fail
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this test that I have tomorrow morning, and I'm worried about it, and
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if I do end up failing the test, then my future is ruined.
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I think that kind of fits with the APA is trying to say, I
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like it. I like it. We have lots of different types of anxiety.
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Here are the major ones. There's generalized anxiety, where you just worry
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about everything, worry all the time. I often hear people with generalized anxiety
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disorder say like, I'm worrying about my family, my friendship, safety finances.
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It's just worrying about like everything. I feel like generalized anxiety is.
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I'm not saying it's overdiagnosed, but I feel it's the one that a lot
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of people will start with and then eventually as it gets teased out a little
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more, like in therapy or meeting with your psychiatrist, that you can get
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a little more specific. One thing that's a little more specific is social anxiety.
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So it's something that seems to be on the rise, probably related to
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COVID in the last four years. And another piece of it might be social
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media. Just constantly feeling judged and critiqued online by other people, feeling like
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you have to be a certain version of yourself or us you won't be accepted
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by others. There's a lot of pressures that people are feeling today, and
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the best of my knowledge, I don't think anyone's ever really studied the link
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between social anxiety and social media. So stuff in the future that I hope
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gets studied, because boy, I'm curious to see what the impacts of social
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media are going to be on social health once we start really diving in and
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studying that stuff. Another really common type of anxiety is panic disorder. We're
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having panic attacks so bad that it prevents you from leaving the house or makes
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you feel like you're gonna die when you have one. And then there's a
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little bit of a difference between panic attacks versus anxiety attacks. It's important to
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know that the term anxiety attack is not actually recognized as a term by the
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DSM five, and panic attacks are sudden and extreme. Like with panic attacks,
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you have chest pain, increased heart rate, shaking, feeling disconnected from
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yourself or surroundings, which is like a depersonalization and derealization and shortness of breath.
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A lot of times people with panic attacks end up in the emergency room
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because they're so bad they think they are going to die. With anxiety attacks,
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it's more of a gradual build up. So there's things like disturbed sleep,
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muscle tension, irritability. There are some crossover and I think that's why
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a lot of people end up using the terms interchangeably, so like the increased
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heart rate, shortness of breath. But I do see it a lot,
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and I think I commend our teens for doing their best to describe what's going
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on, but I oftentimes they will They will say I'm having a pan attack,
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when really it's probably more of an anxiety attack or an increase in anxiety,
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because they're not really having the chest pain, shaking, feeling disconnected from
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yourself for surroundings. They're more having that gradual build up of irritability, increase
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heart rate, you, disturbed sleep, muscle tension like that one. So
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I heard a lot, and I think it's just important to help kind of
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have the two definitions. They're similar, not exactly the same, So just
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important to remember that we also have things like specific phobia's heights, spiders,
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fucking hate spiders, the dark. That got me a lot when I was
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younger, and probably still now. You could do the next one. Just
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we talked about this on a past episode, but apparently the actor Billy Bob
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Thornton is afraid, like has a phobia of antique furniture, Like he was
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on set once with some antique furniture and he like wouldn't go. He's like,
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no, I'm just he had some bad experiences or something as a kid
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around antique furniture and just wouldn't do it. I always like the names of
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specific phobias too, like they're all Latin rooted names, like fear of heights
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is acrophobia, spiders are rack noophobia, and the dark is one of my
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favorite words of scotophobia, which was the one when it's is it crowded places
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or just like out in public agoraphobia. Yeah, agoraphobia. Yeah, that's
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one that I feel like doesn't match, but it's Latin, so that's why
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I don't fully like agoraphobia makes me think of something else. Yeah, yeah,
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it sounds like it could be something related to like golory movies or something.
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And then another one that we see in the anxiety section is separation anxiety.
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So we see a lot of this with teens. I know Justin sees
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a lot of it in his clinic, and we just kind of makes us
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wonder if this is something that COVID has made worse. And I think I
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think COVID, we can just say, has made a lot of things worse.
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I think that's totally fine to say it. Really as we're gonna it's
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gonna take long time, I urge, I guess, especially because I work
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in a school setting. But like anyone that works specifically with teens in a
15:07
school setting or whatever, you do, like please hang on, Like our
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kids are still they're building up their resilience, they're they're trying to get there.
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It's gonna take time, even if it's been four years since everything started,
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Like we're gonna need some more time before kids kind of get back to
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where they were before. And that's okay. I got a lot of families
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coming in to my office and saying, like, over COVID, we were
15:37
scared, but we were all in the house together because I was working from
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home. And then when we had to return back to school, that's where
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we really saw a lot of the issues at school. A lot of the
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separation anxiety. Kid has started to have nightmares about losing family, separate or
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dropping off at school became a nightmare, and the patient was having my full
15:56
blown panic attack. So, yeah, it seemed like this stuff all got
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worse for waiting on the numbers to fully roll in to see how bad things
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really got after the pandemic, but definitely from just a clinical perspective, it
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seems like it. Yeah, some fun stats and facts, and these are
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according to the CDC. So anxiety disorders are the most common mental health disorders
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in America, and in twenty nineteen the numbers were mild anxiety nine point five
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percent of Americans had mild anxiety, Moderate anxiety was three point four percent,
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and severe was two point seven So about fifteen percent of Americans in total had
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something on the spectrum of mild, moderate to severe anxiety. Something else you've
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seen through the research is that women are more likely to have anxiety than men,
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and anxiety is most common between the ages of eighteen and twenty nine.
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I wouldn't be surprised to see that age range extended a little bit, like
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maybe yeah, over thirteen to twenty nine post pandemic. There actually was a
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good article that tracked some anxiety rates after from pre to post pandemic. So
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this is an article from plus one in twenty twenty one, free Worth at
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All. And I kind of wanted edy to and tackle saying that one because
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I always loved to take on naming these scientific What was the one from two
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weeks ago? Uhay, shout out my dog day. I loved your spin.
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But freue Worth at All found that anxiety rates did go up from about
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eighteen percent in the general population to twenty five point three percent, and depression
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went up about ten percent from twenty one point five to thirty one point seven.
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I got to update my stats. I give a presentation in the health
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class that talks about I think the most I think at the time when I
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made the presentation, like three years ago, it was I think the best
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I could find was stats from like twenty seventeen twenty eighteen. It was about
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like seventeen ish eighteen percent of teens get diagnosed with anxiety depression right around there.
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But obviously it's increased a lot recently. Yeah, especially almost a third
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of Americans had depression after the pandemic or post pandemic era. That's scary,
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that's really scary. Often the most comorbid mental health diagnosis that goes along with
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anxiety is another anxiety disorder. Depression also goes with anxiety quite frequently. I
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think it's about sixty percent of the time. So if you think about it,
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being anxious is just really hard on your brain. If you're constantly in
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a fight or flight response, it can make you feel drained and exhausted.
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And then being anxious also releases a lot of stress hormones, so cortisol and
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prolonged corrisal exposure puts people at a high risk for depression. And I see
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this all the time, where kids are super anxious and they also have mild
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to moderate depression. Where kids are super depressed and they also have mild anxiety,
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So they just tend to go together quite frequently. Even back in twenty
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eighteen, seventeen twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, when I was doing more diagnosing
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in the clinic I worked at, it was pretty common that if I was
19:22
working with somebody or I was doing their intake and they seem to meet the
19:25
criteria for depression, that there would be the specifier added on of with anxious
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distress. Yeah, just a lot of crossover. Ton of crossover. So
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how can you test? I know we talked about like self diagnosing and all
19:38
this stuff, So how can you test if you really have generalized anxiety or
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in anxiety in general? So you can always talk to a healthcare professional.
19:47
You can talk to a therapist, a counselor a psychologist, a psychiatrist.
19:52
You can talk to your primary care doctor. There's also a really cool tool
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that I use online called the GAD seven or Generalized Anxiety Disorder seven questions,
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that gives you a specific score for your anxiety and it can put you in
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a mild, moderate, severe category. And it's a very objective, very
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scientifically tested, accurate, precise measurement tool. So if you are really curious
20:17
about, like, okay, how bad is my anxiety? Look up a
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GAD seven and fill it out. Usually you can find them free online.
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For children, parents can fill it a scared Child assessment. I've never heard
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of this before, so justin if you know more, please tell me yes.
20:30
So it is an assessment that is used for children before they can really
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do it themselves. Usually up to around age twelve, and it actually breaks
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it down into multiple types. So you get like somatic symptoms, you get
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a score for that, you get a score for generalized separation, social anxiety,
20:52
and even school avoidance. So it's a really really useful tool for trying
20:56
to sess out what specific type of anxiety you're dealing with in young people.
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Oh, that's interesting. You're probably wondering if you, if you haven't thought
21:06
already, how do we treat anxiety. There's a ton of different ways.
21:08
There's a ton of different ideas and methods, and we want to share those
21:14
with you today. So from from a medical standpoint, it looks like the
21:17
most effective way to treat is to have a combination of medication and therapy.
21:22
I don't think we've ever come on here and say only do one, so
21:26
it's I think it's also it's important to to try to consider both and see
21:30
what what the best options are. But yeah, I don't think we're of
21:33
the mindset of like only do this or only do that. Sometimes the combination
21:38
is of being a a better fit, and for most people, I really
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do recommend starting with therapy first because it's safe, there are no side effects,
21:48
and if we're looking at it like a mild moderate anxiety picture. Usually
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therapy is effective, it works, gives insight, helps you build insight into
22:00
why you got anxious, What are some of your tendencies and how to fix
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them and work on them so that you can fix your anxiety and not have
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it linger into the future. Well, since there is a medication component,
22:12
can you tell me about it, doctor justin Yeah. So, Usually medicines
22:17
for anxiety are very similar to the ones that we use for depression too.
22:22
These are called SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These are our first
22:27
line medications and they increase serotonin in your body and your brain. They usually
22:33
take about four to six weeks to really kick in. And this is something
22:37
I communicate with patients often because in the past I had people taking it like,
22:41
oh I took it two or three times, it wasn't really helping that
22:45
much, and so I stopped it, like oh shoot, I should have
22:47
explained it better. This isn't something that you take and the next day you
22:49
think, oh my gosh, I'm so much better. It's something that you
22:52
take consistently for four to six weeks and then you look back on the last
22:57
month and go, you know what, I am feeling a little bit better,
23:00
I'm a little less sad, I'm not worrying as much. I'm able
23:03
to live my life a little bit more. Medicines can help get the anxiety
23:10
fixed faster, but I always recommend doing the therapy side of things to also
23:15
figure out why you got anxious, to learn some coping mechanisms, to learn
23:18
how to deal with it and prevent it from the future. The medicines do
23:22
have a lot of side effects, and most people start medicines without any major
23:27
side effects. It goes pretty well, but the most common ones is it
23:32
messes with your stomach. It can cause some nausea, some vomiting, some
23:34
headaches, some diarrhea, and one of the most common causes why adults in
23:38
particular stop is because it actually actually can cause some pretty significant sexual side effects
23:45
where it can lower your libido your sexual drive, but it can also increase
23:51
or prolong your time to orgasm, which may be the first time we've mentioned
23:55
that word on our show. So sometimes which word, you know the one?
24:04
Sometimes people start taking SSRIs and they notice that they just cannot climax,
24:10
they just cannot have an orgasm, or it just takes so long that just
24:15
sex is too hard. Sometimes people like that because it take it makes them
24:19
last a little bit longer, which can be a desired outcome too. Sometimes
24:25
people will even take these medications specifically for that side effect, for premature ejaculation.
24:32
But I like to tell you about the side effects, just kind of
24:34
give you an idea of what to expect. I think I've done this before,
24:38
but I want to do it again because repetition is a great way to
24:41
remember something. Remember we said that earlier. Okay, SSRIs serotonin selective serotonin
24:47
re uptake inhibitors. I think the way this works, if I remember from
24:52
biological basis of behavior in grad school, is that the serotonin that our body
24:59
creates, sometimes we just don't create that much, so it kind of comes
25:02
and goes and we just don't have enough. When you take an SSRI,
25:07
it makes it so that when your body is like removing the serotonin from the
25:11
neurotransmitters or whatever, it stops that from happening, so that there is leftover
25:18
serotonin, so that you have more than you've previously had before. And that's
25:23
the part that helps. Does that sound okay? That was pretty dang good.
25:27
Yeah. The magic area in your brain is in between your neurons.
25:34
We call that the synapse, and so the medicines help to keep that serotonin
25:38
in the synapse instead of getting recycled and repackaged. So serotonin sometimes people call
25:45
it like a happy hormone, it's kind of more of a balance hormone where
25:51
it doesn't like make you feel happy, but it creates balance. It makes
25:56
you more in the middle than too high and too low. And so one
26:00
thing I always like to make a point of is that ninety percent of the
26:06
serotonin that your body makes naturally on its own come from your intestines. So
26:11
that is why your diet and the food you eat is such an important piece
26:17
of maintaining your mental health too, is because your digestive tract actually make serotonin
26:26
from the food that you eat, and usually it needs fiber to make that.
26:30
Okay, So we talked about medicine, but what about non medical ways
26:33
to treat anxiety. There are four evidence based and this is coming out of
26:40
I read the book Lifestyle Psychiatry in the past. It's like four evidence based
26:45
lifestyle ways to improve your physical and mental health, and that is diet,
26:49
exercising, sleeping well, and reducing your stress. I know those aren't like
26:55
groundbreaking things like oh my god, are you sure, but those are things
27:00
that if you do make an improvement, it's more likely to improve your mental
27:04
health. A couple things that are more on the therapy side or therapy focused,
27:10
things like art and expression. Art therapy is one of those things.
27:14
You don't have to be great at art to be good at art therapy and
27:17
to get the benefits from it. So if that's something you're interested in and
27:19
you feel like you've held back because you feel like you're not a great artist,
27:22
that is okay. Your art therapist is trained to help you work through
27:26
it. It's not about making the next great painting and the next great drawing.
27:32
Exposure therapy is another thing really getting you to if your anxiety is related
27:37
to worry or you're not sure how something is going to go, You're worried
27:40
about this thing happening. When you go do this, the exposure of having
27:44
the experience and then afterwards debriefing and seeing that you're still okay can be a
27:48
lot in helping you kind of make that pathway in your brain of like,
27:52
if I do this, I will be safe, I will survive, I
27:56
will be okay. Meditation is also popular and can be how I know for
28:00
me, I suck at meditation. I can't turn my brain off. But
28:03
some people are really good at it, and for some people it's really helpful,
28:06
and that's great. Good for you. I am jealous other things that
28:11
are a little more social, or things like talking to your family, talking
28:14
to loved ones, talking two people that are your support people, and then
28:18
things like social groups, getting that experience of being around people that may also
28:22
struggle with something similar to you, seeing that you're not alone and dealing with
28:26
this and seeing that there are people who live through what you deal with and
28:32
are okay, and then you can be okay too. One last point on
28:34
that is I always try and emphasize that I can give recommendations, I can
28:40
give evidence based like I know that this works for most people, but it's
28:45
okay to do it your own way too, as long as it's like a
28:49
healthy thing and you're not just like railing a bunch of cocaine or something like.
28:55
If you have something that you like to do that isn't bad for you,
28:59
isn't bad for anyone else, and you feel like it helps with your
29:02
anxiety. It's okay, try and do that. Prioritize it, make it
29:06
a point, try and use it therapeutically. So much of the time mental
29:11
health treatment is just doctors and therapists telling you what to do. But if
29:15
it comes from you, it's more impactful, it's more likely to be meaningful
29:19
to you. I like that we got some celebrities and you know, you
29:25
look up this kind of stuff and this is from prevention dot com that I
29:27
got a couple of these, and it's always kind of the same people on
29:30
the list. There's your Selena Gomez, is your Lady Gagas. But two
29:36
people that I thought were really interesting. And I try and have like diversity,
29:40
but I put two white guys on there, because you know, Stephen
29:45
Colbert, he had actually come out in an interview and in the past said
29:48
that, especially right after he got married, that he really started having bad
29:52
panic attacks and anxiety and he actually found it really soothing to walk in circles
29:59
around his couch, just over and over and over again, which sounds a
30:03
little bit like obsessive compulsive disorder to me. Like you've gotten anxiety, you've
30:07
got something that makes you feel uncomfortable and you have a compulsion and action that
30:11
helps you feel less anxious when you do it. So luckily he was able
30:15
to work on it and get it better. But I thought that was an
30:18
interesting one. The other white man that Justin has found is Ryan Reynolds.
30:23
You've probably seen him a ton on TV. He's got mint Mobile now,
30:27
he's obviously Deadpool. He's done a bunch of other stuff, but Ryan Reynolds
30:32
is one and from Prevention dot Com. One thing that impacted him a lot
30:36
was that growing up his father was really hard on him and that had long
30:38
lasting impacts on him. Okay, discussion time. We have some questions and
30:42
the first one is for doctor Justin, what are your thoughts on as needed
30:48
or PRN and anxiety and medications. PRN stands for something I never remember it,
30:53
but I know it stands for basically as needed. What are your thoughts
30:57
on that? It stands for pro rate not more Lab's right, ye's,
31:04
which means as the event is birth, so essentially as needed. But I
31:11
personally I don't like anxiety medications for as needed PRN stuff because, especially in
31:17
kids, it teaches them to just pop pills if they're feeling anxious or anxious
31:22
take a pill, like fix their problems with pills instead of working through it
31:26
building the skills. Sometimes they're needed, like some kids with bad panic attacks.
31:33
Yeah, okay, you need them from time to time, but unless
31:36
it's like a severe case, I try and really avoid them as much as
31:38
I can. We have some kids that have over the years that they have
31:42
pr ns, and it's like, yeah, I see that too. It
31:45
is kind of hard to if we want to build some resiliency and coping skills
31:49
and having that as like a fallback has his pluses or mind. This is
31:53
yeah, for sure. What makes you anxious? I would say for me,
31:59
like feeling behind, especially like as a doctor having a clinic, having
32:07
to get people in and out keep a schedule. Like if I feel like
32:09
I'm getting behind and things really start piling up, I can start to get
32:14
really overwhelmed. I can feel my heart racing a little bit. I feel
32:17
like I've just got to push and go and go. And then sometimes I
32:22
even like shut my brain off and stop listening to patients because I feel so
32:28
overwhelmed and out of time, like I'm like especially sometimes gosh, sometimes patients
32:34
can really talk and talk and talk and that's what they're there for. But
32:37
in my mind, I'm like, oh my gosh, you like, we
32:40
got to get going. I got to interrupt you. And I hate interrupting
32:44
people, but I gotta do it up. So sorry, I'm so behind,
32:45
I'm so overwhelmed. So that's what I get. How about yourself?
32:50
What makes you the most anxious? Well, we've always showed that. I
32:52
think I appreciate you sharing that part because I think it's it's nice to hear
32:58
like real human reaction from the expert or from the doctor in charge. And
33:02
yeah, I think that's super real and honest. I think for me,
33:07
like not knowing worried about how something's going to turn out, I definitely get
33:10
anxious. Yeah, just waiting on results of things or if someone if someone
33:16
mentioned something and then doesn't give me all the information right then and there,
33:22
I start to just my mind racis and I just like make up a thousand
33:25
different things to fill the empty space. Yeah, how do you deal with
33:32
your worry and your stress? What coping mechanisms do you have? I think
33:36
the biggest one my therapists taught me years ago was the checking the facts,
33:39
so reminding myself of like, if I take the motion out of this,
33:44
if I take the worry and I just look at the factual information, what
33:46
does that leave we leave me with? And I think that's been really helpful
33:50
for me. And it took some practice, and I feel a lot better
33:53
at it. But yeah, just trying to stop remind myself that I'm probably
33:59
just dealing with outmatic negative thoughts and I just have to look at the factual
34:01
information and that should help. I like it. I do a lot.
34:07
I do a lot of deep breathing in the moment, just like really getting
34:10
a whole lungfull in and out. That helps me calm down. But it's
34:15
weird because when I talk to kids about that and young people, I ask
34:19
them like, you tried deep breathing you, and most of them like,
34:22
I don't know if I've ever actually had one of them that actually say they
34:25
like it and it works. Yeah. I don't know why. Yeah,
34:30
because I know a lot of adults who really like it and it feels like
34:34
it works. But for kids, I don't know. I just haven't really
34:36
ever met any kid who feels like, oh, yeah, I'm really anxious
34:38
when to take a deep breath. I think a lot of our kids have
34:40
a hard time with things taking a while or like not having media results.
34:45
So like having if I'm already on edge and anxious and then having to go
34:49
through the effort of like deep breathe and be mindful and do all that,
34:52
Like I just want something to fix it right now, go through that.
34:58
So maybe that's what it is. Yeah, some common things we hear from
35:02
kids school related, for sure, relationships, family stress, and maybe like
35:12
extracurricular stress or time management with the extracurriculars. Yeah. Same most of the
35:17
time when I ask kids about what's stressing about the most, they say school,
35:22
and then it's like friends, family stuff, social groups, that kind
35:27
of thing. But most of the time it's school, and it's academic testing,
35:31
it's homework. It's just it's a major stressor for kids. And I
35:37
wonder if it's worse than in the past because school has changed so much,
35:40
But it just seems like school is really tough on kids these days. It's
35:45
amazing how much, especially if you're like working on like a clinic or if
35:47
you're private practice, like the slow periods of the summer, how much removing
35:52
a big stressor for kids just does wonders on their life and their well being.
35:59
Oh yeah, I got summer coming up, and I'm just if kids'
36:01
anxiety is high, I say, let's wait until summer. Let's wait until
36:07
finals are over. I'm not just going to crank up on that medicine right
36:09
now, because I think it's going to get a lot better for you.
36:14
And yeah, you would hope we would take that information be like, oh,
36:17
maybe we should change something with the way schools are. But we have
36:21
not, okay, anyway too deep into that. We've made it to the
36:27
end. Thank you all for listening. If I have any take home point
36:30
is just to normalize feeling anxious and anxiety. Those things happen and it's okay.
36:37
Stress is a normal part of life. If you feel like that stress
36:42
is a getting in the way of you living your life, it may be
36:45
time to talk to someone about it. A lot of people do, a
36:49
lot of people feel like that stress of today's world is getting in the way
36:52
of their life. It's almost like a fifth of people total. So it
36:57
doesn't make you weird, it doesn't make you abnormal, it just makes you
37:00
a human being. Well, thank you guys for listening. You know where
37:02
to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you get wherever else you
37:07
get your podcasts. If you feel so inclined to do so, please feel
37:09
free to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and
37:14
you can leave a comment too. We'd love to read it on Instagram,
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TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube at Millennial MHC, and you can visit us
37:22
on our website millennialimac dot com. Thank you all for listening. Make sure
37:27
you take care of whatever anxious thoughts you're having, make sure you check the
37:30
facts, and don't forget to take care of y'all mentals.