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How Can You Tell if This Is Stress And/Or Anxiety? · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is produced by my friends at Walk West.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: From emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness coach Comedy Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Through these small bites of self-visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hi there and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening, I just want to say thank you for taking some time out of your day to spend here with me and listening to this episode, which I hope you find helpful as you navigate this thing called life.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Today's topic is really diving into stress and anxiety.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to talk about just the difference between the two and how you can maybe understand or identify whether it is stress that you're feeling or anxiety.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it really is truly both.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is, stress and anxiety are not abnormal feelings.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us are going to face them and feel them, and we experience them at different times in our lives at varying degrees.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: A certain set of circumstances might cause stress for one person, but another person with those similar circumstances may not be stressed out.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some circumstances might cause anxiety for one person, but then again, not for another.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really, it's not about uh looking at a set of circumstances and deciding it, you know, black and white, that like this is this is anxiety producing and this is not.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's individualized for each individual person.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the most important thing is to note that when you are feeling anxiety on a routine basis, it could eventually become generalized anxiety disorder.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But just let's back up for a minute and talk about stress.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, what exactly is stress?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Stress is actually a normal response to a change or demand on your body, a change, demand, or threat on your body or your environment.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the response can have a physical, emotional, or a mental component to it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And most of us experience stress on different levels.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: There is the good type of stress, the use stress, which we will feel uh when we're in maybe a performance atmosphere.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of athletes are will end up feeling stress, but that's the stress as they're trying to perform.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, people do respond differently to different stressors.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some people will respond more intensely than others.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And stress can really come out of pressures that we're feeling in our home life or in our work life, in our school life.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Stress can come from financial pressures that we might be feeling.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of times the way that we identify stress is to look at it and ask is most of this feeling, does it come from this either a feeling of lack of time or a lack of resources?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: When when what we're feeling is identified with a lack of time and resources, that's usually an indication that that's more stress than anxiety.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, stress can be good because sometimes it can motivate us.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, in a performance role, like as an athlete or as a performer, my daughter's a ballerina.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when there is a stress felt at that time, it can motivate in order to perform in those, in those, um, at in those atmospheres and in those those areas of life.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: However, when we're dealing with overwhelming and chronic stress, that's when our physical and mental health can take a toll.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when we actually start to feel that we might have trouble sleeping, our digestive system takes takes a hit, um, we might end up seeing changes in our in our activity levels, in our diet, in our weight, and all of all of those different ways that our physical body uh will react to stress.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: But again, stress is really around the idea that there might be a lack of resources or a lack of time to get things done.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're dealing with stress, sometimes the real question is either what demands do I have on me that I could maybe delegate to somebody else, and or uh what other resources could I call in to help me, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because we can't really create more time, but maybe what we give ourselves more time by moving deadlines and things like that.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is anxiety?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I want to normalize and recognize that anxiety is it's not abnormal.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: We will have it.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And truthfully, anxiety can be tracked to fear, worry, or nervousness.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes we do have anxiety, and I and I when I'm working with my teens and my college students, we talk about anxiety around test taking, for instance, because there's a nervousness or a fear that will come up uh regarding how well they're gonna perform on the test.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Many adults will face anxiety around work performance, especially at this time of year.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I know many of my clients were facing reviews, and that caused a lot of anxiety because there's a fear around what's gonna happen.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, anxiety does become problematic when it starts to to blossom and become out of control, and it starts to impact many different areas of your life significantly.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you start to have excessive anxiety and that that chronic feeling of overwhelm, that's when you might start to see ways that you're starting to isolate yourself or shut down or not be able to move forward with different things.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like for instance, if you're having a lot of anxiety around whether or not you're gonna fail at at work, it might actually cause you to retract and not perform at all at work, um, which would become a big, a big issue.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we know really truly if we're experiencing stress or anxiety?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Again, stress is mostly external.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's when we are stressed from uh something external from ourselves.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's usually triggered by um, again, the lack of time, the lack of resources, uh, too many responsibilities.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so if we can remove one of those stressors, we might see that that starts to come down.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, anxiety uh isn't is it the result of a reaction to a given situation?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So when when, for instance, we are in a stressful situation, we might feel the lack of resources, the lack of time, it could turn into anxiety when we start to fear the result of what happens or what what occurs if we don't get all the things done.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, anxiety can truly cause you to be unable to function because when we are overwhelmed by anxiety, a lot of times we end up in the fight or flight state.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so most of our body shuts down.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's really about survival in that moment.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So other areas of our body might start to shut down.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I know I've talked about this before that when we're in the fight or flight stage, uh, you know, things like our digestive system completely shuts down because the truth is we don't need our digestive system to survive, our body just goes into survival mode.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, anxiety also does cause feelings of dread and uh just the worst, like fearing the worst thing.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, somebody once said that uh anxiety can be traced back most of the time to the fear that I'm not gonna be okay.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's really what it comes down to most of the time is that there's a fear that either I'm not gonna be okay or things are not gonna be okay.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's just important to recognize when you are in that chronic state of anxiety, it can turn into an actual generalized anxiety disorder, which could lead to panic attacks or a panic disorder.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's important to pay attention to both stress and anxiety because chronic, that chronicness of either one of those could be unhealthy.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's also important for us to give ourselves permission to acknowledge and allow what's coming up for us.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when we are, when we do feel stress, it's about naming it and allowing it and then deciding how we want to move forward from that place rather than trying to push it away.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we avoid stress or we avoid the anxiety and pretend it's not there, and we either numb it out or we distract ourselves from it or we avoid um we we don't acknowledge it, what we're doing is we're pushing it away and eventually it's gonna come back.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's about acknowledging, allowing, grounding yourself, and then deciding, you know, what's the aligned action you're gonna take to move forward.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of my clients and I work through this through coaching.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if this is something that you'd like to dive maybe deeper in about, I'm happy to have a conversation with you about it.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can absolutely book a time to talk with me at chatwithcomedy.com.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But above all else, I do suggest that taking some time if you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, or if you're feeling chronic anxiety, it is about slowing down, it's about getting into the present moment and truly figuring out what you need to help yourself.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay well.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: For more information, book a chat with comedy at www.chatwithcomedy.com or visit her website at www.comedywood.com.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can also find comedy on Facebook or Instagram.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Username it's authentic me.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.