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From Reactive to Responsive: Changing Your Relationship with Anxiety · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is produced by my friends at Walk West.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: 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_00: 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_00: Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking your time out of your day to spend with me.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to be talking about a topic that is actually definitely near and dear to me because we're talking about anxiety.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: And for those people who have worked with me, I do not hide it from anybody that I am absolutely somebody who is an anxious person.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I deal with anxiety.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I am definitely a coach who works with my clients on renegotiating and reframing their relationship with anxiety rather than trying to get rid of anxiety.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because if we try to get rid of it, we're almost stepping into self-shame by saying that anxiety, there's something wrong with us.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: And also, to be fair, having some anxiety about certain things actually does keep us safe.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I believe that the key is actually changing the relationship with it and less focus on getting rid of it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that might sound weird, but I believe that anxiety is absolutely a natural human emotion.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it is about learning how we can live with it and we can utilize it to help just we can use it for our benefit rather than having it control us.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I really do mean this wholeheartedly because I've had to work on my relationship with anxiety.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Anxiety is something that would maybe create an over it would it would take over my mind, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Where I would start overthinking and over-ruminating.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: But when I started to really do my own work around it and and recognize I can learn from it and instead of shaming myself for the parts that feel anxious, but actually create a new relationship with the anxiety, uh it it shifted how I responded to it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just start with the beginning.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why is anxiety not the enemy?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because very the very first thing about anxiety to pay attention to is it actually can keep us safe, right?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: So when we first feel anxious, maybe your heart starts to race or your palms start to sweat.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I actually get really cold when I'm starting to feel really anxious.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And while it can feel overwhelming at first because those feelings are not something that I anticipated or wanted to have happen, it actually is a signal.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's my body signal.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And look when I get cold, I know it's my body signal to pay attention, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what anxiety's job is, it's to say, hey, pay attention, something is happening here.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what happens with anxiety is while you know it can tell us to hey, pay attention, for many of us who don't build a different relationship with it, then it starts to take over and it starts to dictate how we respond to a situation.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of utilizing, instead of having the anxiety almost cur be, um, instead of it just being like the smoke detector and we then have it then take over and become a for alarm fire, instead it's okay, I'm feeling a certain way and I not want to listen to it and get curious with it and ask like, what is coming up here?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it coming up?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: What is it maybe trying to tell me?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: My very favorite question to ask is just what do I need right now?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So when I notice that I'm feeling really cold and I can pay attention, like, wow, I'm feeling like, oh, this is anxiousness.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's something happening.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where is it coming from?
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  SPEAKER_01: Is it one question?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I I absolutely go to, okay, company, what do you need right now?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I'm able to name that, then I'm putting myself in a in an empowered place because now I can choose how I want to respond to it instead of staying in this reactive mode.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And changing the relationship with anxiety is about starting with how are you going to shift the mindset around it?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: So if we look at it as it's going to take over, now we're we are actually passive.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the passive, we're almost like a passenger on the on the bus, so to speak, instead of the driver of the bus.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: But if we change that mindset and we recognize, okay, this is part of the human experience, first of all.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, anxiety is part of the human experience.
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  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with me.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we stop and we we move away from resisting it and we get our allow ourselves to get more curious with it, and we allow ourselves to shift the mindset into uh, this is my invitation to respond to it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: So again, move away from reaction into responsiveness.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're moving away from passiveness into becoming generative.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're we're actually shifting the relationship that we have with anxiety.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So let's take an example of I give a lot of talks.
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  SPEAKER_01: So um, maybe I'm giving, like, for instance, recently I was giving a talk and there was a lot more people than I had anticipated that signed up for it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I recognize that my anxiety was absolutely starting to hit a crescendo about 20 to 30 minutes before I was supposed to go give the talk.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I'm I'm anxious.
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  SPEAKER_01: I just, I just need to calm down.
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  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's wrong with me?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right now I'm going into judgment.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I actually said, okay, there, I could recognize that my body was starting to tense up.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was my first indication.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: I also recognized my hands were freezing.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So again, for me, that's an indication that I'm stepping into anxiety.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then without judgment, I got curious with it and started asking those really empowering questions, like, what is what's going on for me here?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: What do I need?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, what I really just needed was a grounding mechanism.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: I just needed to be present and I was able to take those steps, which I utilized breath work for that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was able to step into, you know, presenting and stepping into that presenter mode.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's how I have shifted the relationship with anxiety.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I want to offer here is the opportunity or at least the invitation to say, can you change your relationship with anxiety?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you might be saying, okay, comedy, that sounds great, but what do I do?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the very first thing is to notice and name your anxiety when your anxiety comes up, but also not just when it comes up, pay attention to how your body responds.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are your body's signals?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes we don't know cognitively that we're feeling anxious until after it's kind of already taken hold.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So instead, I I offer the invitation to start dropping into your body and just noticing different sensations and when they when they pop up and seeing if you can relate, you know, those sensations to thoughts or feelings that you're having.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing to do is to is to see if you can practice some mindfulness, some grounding techniques, some opportunities to just be in the here and now.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it is to breathe through it.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it is to really just plant those feet on the floor and to pay attention to your breath, you know, uh, pay attention to maybe an inhale of four and an exhale of six or eight, you know, because if we inhale for a short amount of time and exhale for a longer amount of time, it's an opportunity to lean into regulating our nervous system as we we allow for our parasympathetic nervous system to kind of take over.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Then we can step into once we're grounded and we're in the present moment, we can start to ask those questions that I was mentioning before, you know, what is happening here?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Can I look at this differently?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm having the thought that, you know, fill in the blank.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is there another possible thought that I could access in this moment?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to do that when our nervous system is not in a regulated state.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then the final part of it is turning anxiety into a place of strength rather than something that's wrong with you.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it is about recognizing that your emotions that pop up are really there in service of you.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: They are there to communicate something that you need.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Anxiety is no different.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if it shows up, it's saying, hey, pay attention.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's how do I choose to work through it?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you're dealing with anxiety or you want to understand how maybe working with me or just coaching in general can help, help create this space of self-understanding so that then you can figure out what actions you want to take to move yourself forward.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely invite you to maybe book a time with me at coachwithcomedy.com.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And until next time, stay well.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: For more information, book a chat with comedy at www.chatwithcomedy.com.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or visit her website at www.comedywood.com.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find comedy on Facebook or Instagram.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Username It's Authentic Me.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.