Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Now, when you actually listen to this thing and you hear my voice is better than yours, just know that you're going to want this mic.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: I don't know who does podcast where eventually there's just a mass takeover by their own brother who went and got a better microphone than the host of the podcast has. Ridiculous.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: It does.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: You see it in the back? Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Are we recording?
[00:00:25] Speaker A: We're ready.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: All right.
My anxiety sometimes is so bad that I just don't want to do anything. And that includes this podcast. There are times where I know I want to film, I know I have to film, and then it's like I am just paralyzed and I don't film. And then I have one amazing fan, MSK, who will regularly be like, where's the next episode? Where's the next episode? And thank goodness for listeners like him that continue to push me because I'm telling you, my anxiety sometimes is that bad. Hey, everyone, I'm Isabelle Estevis, and welcome to everyday above ground, where we're treating every single day like it's our last. And today we're wrestling with anxiety.
Anxiety is a killer for most people. I can't even begin to tell you some of the ways of my own anxiety. I literally, the other day, had a panic attack in my sleep so bad that it woke me up. But before it woke me up, I swear I heard one of my sons yell out for my name, like they did in that bird cage movie or what was it called? What was the name of that movie with the birds and the lady?
Turn your mic on.
Your brand new microphone.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: I have no idea.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: The one with Sandra Bullock.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Bird box.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Bird box.
My panic attack was so bad in my sleep, it was like a scene from Bird box where I heard my son yelling, ma. Because that's what my kids call me, ma. Like really loud. I woke up 04:00 in the morning like no one was there. I was just having a panic attack in my sleep. Why was I having a panic attack? Because there was a shooting at a church that I was just at a week ago, and that just caused me severe panic. Like, I couldn't believe for the first time ever I had went to this church after four years of living in Houston. In the week after I go, there's an attempted shooting or an actual shooting that happens there.
It's these types of things that sometimes very honestly keep me up at night. And it's not just issues when I'm trying to sleep. Sometimes I stutter. A lot of times I fumble over words because it's like my mouth cannot keep up with my brain and how fast it's processing everything. I have this whole thing where there's like family or friends outings. One of my first questions is who's going to be there? I need to know the guest list. I need to know if these are people I'm going to enjoy being around, or there's going to be people sometimes, my mom included, that are going to be a little challenging to be around because I need to mentally prepare and decide how bad I want to go to the event before I actually go. And then there's this anxiety that pairs with avoidance. And so what that leads to is unintentional ghosting where people send me a message where I can't just process with an easy yes or no, and I have to put thought behind it, and it overwhelms me so much to respond that I don't respond. And then I'm like, oh, my gosh, now this person is going to hate me because I didn't respond or I took longer than a date on what seems like a simple text message to respond. And then it just starts this vicious, vicious loop where it's caused me trouble in the past with relationships, with friendships, because I am just frankly, not always the best and unintentionally ghosting people when I don't mean to, and people who I consider to be phenomenal people. It's just in the moment. I'm so paralyzed with answering a text, I simply can't do it with some of the other ways that anxiety shows up in my life on a physical form. Shallow breathing. So if I am in some type of moment, like I was on a work call the other day where I was fumbling words because I wasn't totally practiced, and I started to just fumble everything and I just started shallow breathing. Very shallow breathing. Sometimes it's like heart palpitations.
And then I think a lot of times people are surprised that I deal with anxiety. But there will be signs. You may not see them, but when I'm on work calls, and maybe even sometimes when I'm filming this podcast, if I'm very nervous and I'm very anxious, I start bouncing my knee almost uncontrollably. So there will be signs, but you may not always see them. The fact of the matter is, we all struggle with some levels of stress and anxiety. I pulled recently on my TikTok. If you don't follow me yet on TikTok or Instagram or any of social media, most of my handle is at Ioit the number two, the letter U on TikTok, Instagram, and I believe, also YouTube. I film this on YouTube, by the way. So if you're a visual person, head on over to YouTube. You can always catch these episodes there. It's important right off of the bat to just define what anxiety is. And one of the things that I'd also like to do today as part of this episode is give you some takeaways that don't involve medication. And that, for me, is super big. I've never been a fan of taking medication unless I have to, even as a former chronic Tylenol taker. My aunt, who died a few years ago, one of the things that they said that damaged her liver was Tylenol. And the minute I heard that, I'm like, I haven't totally stopped taking it, but I don't take it near as much as I used to. So even the idea of treating anxiety with medication gives me anxiety. So I'm going to offer you some tips today that require no medication, just a little bit of time and a little bit of patience. But before we get into all of that, let's define what anxiety is. Anxiety is the feeling of being worried, nervous or uneasy about something without an immediate. Keep an eye on the word immediate. Clear reason. It can manifest as a physical symptom, like sweating or shaking or mental, which means trouble concentrating, making decision, or even irritability. There's this great quote that I literally just heard the other day by Dr. Gabor mate. Fear not dealt with, gets ingrained as anxiety. And I do think, before I go any further, I know I've given you the definition, but I do want to caution.
I am not a doctor.
I pay for therapy, I pay for coaching, and I pay for physical trainer. But I am not a doctor. I'm just a 42 year old single mom who has been through an awful lot in life and has learned a lot along the way. And so that's really my goal, is to kind of just share some of that with you today. Some of the differences between stress and anxiety. Let's say you're stressed, right? You're irritated, but you know why? Let's say you're very stressed out, but you're stressed because it is chaotic at work. There's piles of invoices or paperwork or digital copies. Who knows that need to be done. And you know, what is causing this stress? And, you know, it's a point in time. And kind of once you get through that task, it's done.
Anxiety, on the other hand, anxiety is I ain't doing shit. They think I ain't shit, and this life sucks. And in this moment, I'm having a straight up panic attack. You need to get away from me. It's something that is just going to come up on you. You're not necessarily in the moment going to know why. You just feel unsafe. I would say unsafe is the key word here. And you just want to get out ASAP. And I know everyone around you is going to be like, well, calm down.
You just need to relax. You just need to calm down.
That's great. How are we going to do that? Before we get into how with anxiety, I just want to call out something very important that I don't think I realized until recently. I know when so many people talk about anxiety, especially those who use medication, think that anxiety is something that you can eradicate. You do not get rid of anxiety, because the thing is, there's such thing as healthy anxiety, and anxiety actually serves a purpose. It's just somewhere along the way in civilization, we took it next level.
So anxiety is actually meant to keep you safe. If you want to think about shifting your mindset here, it's not totally to get rid of it, but let it serve its true intended purpose, which is a defense mechanism to keep you alert and safe from true and present danger. Now that we know what anxiety is, the fact that we don't want to get rid of it, we want to learn how to let it be in its natural state.
Then let's talk about some of the causes. And again, not a doctor, I hope this is not triggering. It's not meant to be triggering. As a matter of fact, it's meant to help you deal with the triggers and manage through them when they come. In terms of causes, there's three. But again, for like the million time, because I'm not a doctor, I'm not going to talk about one, which is neurochemical imbalances of serotonin and dopamine. I know these are two big buzwords within the social media community. It's not something that I feel comfortable relaying messages of anxiety about. So I'm going to stay away from that topic and just kind of focus on the other two, which are genetics and environmental stressors. If we talk about genetics, our family history, my brother sitting over here, he could tell you my family is flooded with anxiety. Like, everybody is just on pins and needles walking around. You can't say this around this person. You can't do that around this person. Like, everyone is on eggshells. So I know when we say genetic, I think so much of it is learned. Whether we recognize it or not, we begin to pick up the patterns of our family, in particular our parents, our siblings, the people you're around most in those formative years. It can oftentimes feel like a pressure cooker in the insist of my family. I love my family, by the way, but sometimes it's a straight up pressure cooker on either side of the family, depending on who's there. There are certain family members I straight up cannot even be around anymore that I choose to not be around. It's not that I can't be around them. I can, but I choose. I believe that everybody has energy, and I only have so much energy to give. And so at this point in my life, there's people that I choose not to be around. Although make no mistake, I can be around anyone at this point in my life. I don't have hate in my heart. I just have where I'm going to conserve my energy and give it to the people that I think are deserving. But I'm not going to spend a minute of my time of my life being around people who don't lift me up or cause me anxiety.
In terms of genetics, too, I think one of the other big thing to think about here are family trauma experiences. I know there can be many forms for me and my brother, who does sound, he does questions, he does everything. My brother's amazing. Our dad passing away had a profound effect on my anxiety growing up. I thought I was going to die young.
My dad died in part of complications.
He was in the process of losing weight, but he was still overweight. So then I developed a whole fear around my weight for a majority of my life, crash dieting for fear of being overweight. I have, which I don't share with anyone, but I recognize I have a trigger for me is if I see somebody fall. Because my dad, when he died, he just fell on his back. And so anytime I see people fall, there's this huge gasp. And just like a hit of panic and fear.
Even if it's like a simple kid trips, it's like over the top drama that just comes out of me because of that. And it's because of that experience.
It could be so many other things, though. Maybe you were bullied when you were young. Maybe you had a parent who battled with alcoholism or drugs or different abuse. It could be so many things, and it could be tiny little things that you don't even realize were a big deal until you really start to dig deep. So, for example, when I was like, nine, I had to do a presentation in front of the whole entire school. And my mom wrote the presentation for me. Mind you, I'm like, in fourth or fifth grade, she writes it and she writes it at adult level writing. And so I went up there and I stuttered, and I fumbled through this paper on words that I didn't write. And I just remember having so much panic about being up there. And it was probably a two minute speech that felt like 2 hours. And from then on, I had issues with speaking in public. And it wasn't until I dug really deep recently that I realized what a profound negative impact that that's had on my life in terms of speaking. Which is somewhat ironic, because now I have hopes and dreams of becoming a paid public speaker. But I think a huge part of that is acknowledging that event, forgiving myself, forgiving my mom, and pushing forward. And so we'll talk more about that later. Let's also dive into these environmental stressors, right? So if it isn't enough that we've got, like, family drama, family trauma, and just genetics playing a role, there's also these environmental stressors. These could be something like performance pressure. You're at the job. Guess what? I have a note. This is no joke at my desk that says, do not let their panic become yours. That is literally a note by my desk. Because there are some anxious people, and they will try to let their panic become yours. And their urgencies and their fires and everything. Because especially the place that I work at, it's global. So it's 24 hours. It's always running.
There can be a tremendous amount of pressure to continue to feed the beast, if you will, when it comes to work again, traumatic events. So I mentioned that church shooting that happened recently. Here's another little known fact. I did not go to the movies. I mean, it would take everything in the world, and I would sit and not pay attention for 2 hours. I would just be panicked in the chair if my kids really wanted to go. For years after a lot of those shootings were happening at movie theaters 1015 years ago, whatever that was. Now. For years, I struggled to go to the movies because of that. And I'm still not totally comfortable. I'm a little more comfortable now because I live in Texas. Most of these people are packing out here, so I'm a little less scared. But it still makes me nervous to this day. So it could be traumatic events like that. I imagine 911 for some people might also be an event that still makes people very nervous.
Financial stress. I hate to admit this one, but moons ago, I was not the best at paying bills. You all. And so what would happen was you would get the calls from the bill collectors. Just seeing those 808, my heart is starting to race right now just thinking about the phone call.
Or you're just like, you put them to voicemail, then you're all nervous listening to the voicemail because they're like, miss establish, we called you 20 times, we're going to pay your $20. Blah, blah.
Bill collectors. If you can't pay your rent or your bills, your water, your light, that's an incredible source of stress. And I think, not just stress, but when you think about it, I can afford to pay my bills now. Very comfortable. And I get an eight, eight eight number, and I'm like, my heart starts pounding. And I'm like, isabel, relax. You don't owe anybody.
Those days are done. But it is true. It still causes a little bit of anxiety to this day. So financial stress, a big one.
Comparison culture. I want to call this keeping up with the Kardashians. We see people all day long on social media projecting the perfect life. We see our neighbors with their kids dressed to the nines every single day. We see all these videos of social influencers talking about how easy it is to make money online. And they're million trillionaires and they drive fancy cars, and every time they do a video, they got the best lighting, the best hair, the best makeup, where it looks like they just have a team of people following them around all day. And you begin to compare yourself to them, especially if these influencers or people are your age, and you're just like, wait, why don't I have that? There is a lot of comparison. I think this one, interestingly, comparison culture I was somewhat shielded from by not having social media for, like, 15 years. Kind of glad, to be honest, because I think my anxiety not having kind of the mental state that I have now, I don't know that I would. To be honest, I don't know if I would be secure enough if I would have been secure enough to be online for all that time and just constantly seeing and focusing on what other people have a lifestyle that they have versus what I don't, and just focusing what I don't have and focusing on what others have. So I think the comparison culture is massive, massive these days. And then I think there's just general social expectations. So maybe I didn't see stuff online for 15 years, but man, you see people wanting myself included, too. I like walking around in nice clothes. I like having my makeup done. I'm more flexible the older I get. I'm starting to walk out of the house with the kids, crocs and junkie workout clothes and my hair all over the place. Yesterday's makeup just kind of smeared all over my face because I'm starting to care less and less. I'm just at that point in my life right now where I'm like, you take me like this, or don't take me at all. But I know that I'm not defined by my looks. That's not defining my worth. And it's not that I don't have upkeep. It's that I'm more accepting of myself to not have to present that upkeep. Twenty four seven. I think about this girl I used to work with all the time because it broke my heart. One time when she told me she was, like, in stage five panic because she didn't have time to put her makeup on before she came to work. And I'm like, you're a beautiful girl. What are you worried about? And she's like, my mom told me never, ever to leave that, and this is, like, a grown woman. My mom told me to never, ever leave the house without makeup on. And you have to present yourself a certain way. And I just remember feeling so bad because, first of all, she looked like a beautiful girl without a stitch of makeup on. And here she thought her worth was anchored to the amount of makeup that she was wearing. That that was going to be kind of like the selling point of her life. So I think makeup is a huge one. When you see on social media, like every other video is a makeup tutorial, or get ready with me and put on this whole face for the world, another massive social expectation weight. We see very fit people. And I think that's another thing, too, that ties into comparison culture. You have very fit people talking about, oh, just do this, this and that. Well, yeah, if you didn't wake up fit, it took you years to be able to do 50 pull ups, and you're kind of setting these unrealistic expectations for people to be able to do the same. And then when they're not able to live up to that expectation, they go back and cut themselves down because they're not able to do 50 pull ups. I think, wait, your house. One time, I was super embarrassed to have someone over. And by the way, this is not arrogance. I live in a beautiful house. It's just not well furnished.
I live kind of like a college student, but I remember being so embarrassed, like, defending my house to someone, inviting someone to my house and defending it about like, oh, I live like a college student and I don't have nice furniture like you have. And I wish that I wouldn't have done that because who cares? Who cares if you came to my house and I had blow up mattresses on my floor? What do I care? But these are some of the things that have just caused me massive, massive anxiety. And I'm willing to bet it's caused other the same. And then the last thing is negative self talk. Because you begin to say these things to yourself long enough, guess what happens? You begin to believe them. When someone doesn't text you back right away and you start saying that, oh, you're not worthy, this, that, and the third, or, oh, you didn't get this job, so you're not a smart person, or, oh, you messed this up. And so blah, blah, blah, blah, negative self talk will harbor and fester anxiety within you. So it's something you should definitely work on. If you have anxiety issues, you very likely also have confidence issues. I'm going to touch on confidence on the very next episode of this podcast. We're going to deep dive into confidence. Don't worry, I got you. Now, we know a little bit about causes, two in particular.
And I think now I just want to segue into, well, that's great. How do we manage it, and how are we doing this without medication? Well, my little lamb, I'll tell you, okay, I'll also tell you this. Of everything I'm going to share today, this right here will be your least favorite, because I'm going to tell you all these things, okay? But here's the thing.
Most people will not want to put in the work. But I'm telling you right now, okay, if you put in the work, change is possible.
It's not always going to be easy. You're probably not going to get it right away, because imagine genetics, social. This has been your whole life, this whole time, and now we're going to try to change that. That's a huge shift. But I am sitting before you today to tell you it is possible.
I know most of you will not want to put in the work. And I just say that because I was at a work event one time and I sat with a group of people, and two or three people at that table mentioned that they had sleep issues. Like, I had sleep issues. I was only getting maybe 4 hours of sleep for years. That's how bad my anxiety was. In particular at night when I tried to sleep and when they started talking about their sleep issues and they got to take melatonin and they got to take this antianxiety and they got to do this and that, all these different things to help them just to sleep at night. I said, guys, hear me out. Let me tell you what I did. And so I break down everything that I had been doing in recent that was helping me get more sleep without any medication, without any melatonin, without any drinking, without nothing.
And these people laughed at me and they're like, I'd rather take a pill. Here's my thing about the pill.
You can most certainly take a pill. And I don't judge anybody for taking a pill. But what I am saying is this, in my opinion, in my eyes, if I think that that pill is going to cause me more symptoms than it's worth or potentially shave years off of my life because I'm taking a pill every day, that's altering me in some way, I don't want it or at least want to exhaust every non medication option before I get to that point.
So most certainly do whatever it is that you want to do.
I'm just one person, but I'm one person.
Not taking medication has worked. And so this is what I'm going to share with you. Meditation.
And I know, listen, you see my eyes rolling right now. This is how when people would be like, meditate, meditate. I'm like, my God, meditate for what? What are we going to do? I can't focus for 5 seconds because I have adhd brain. It's not happening. I can't even close my eyes for like 2 seconds without my mind racing. It's not going to happen. And then I came across a guy's video on Instagram one day. He laid out this method about the power of meditation in silence. So not guided, not music playing, just straight up, sit there with your thoughts and be quiet and let them pass. And I was just like, this ain't going to work, but let me try because I don't want to take medication. First day, couldn't even close my eyes for 5 seconds. Like, literally, my mind was just like, couldn't do it. I was like, I'll give it a week.
Second day, I was just like, I kept saying to myself, still water, still water, still water. And just envisioning these thoughts and problems that I'm perceiving in my mind as I'm trying to meditate. Just floating down a river and not reacting to them. Because in his theory, like, the minute you react to them, you attach emotion and you attach feelings to them rather than just letting them be and pass like they're going down a river. Fine. Few more days pass by the fifth day, I know, and I'm looking at the spot where I was standing in my kitchen, where for the first time my life in over 30 years, my mind was silent. And this was after, like, five minutes of meditation, I heard silence. There was nothing. I heard nothing in my mind for, like, a split second.
And in that moment, I realized that it's possible. In the minute, I realized it was possible. I have been meditating every single day. I started out, I'm not even joking the first time, like, maybe a minute, up to five minutes, up to ten minutes. I'm up to 25 minutes a day.
In the morning that I meditate religiously. It's very serious. If my kids come knocking or barging in my room when I'm meditating, they know.
They see me meditating. You turn around and walk right back out, and I'll get to you when I'm done. But it's that critical.
It's that critical to my day. And I'll tell you why. That meditation in silence, learning how to let. You're not trying to get rid of your past experiences or any of that stuff that's going to come up or that call that you got later on, or the dishes you got to wash or the clothes you got to clean. You're not trying to get rid of any of it. You're just accepting it and just letting it flow without reacting to it. And I'll tell you what that does. I meditate in the morning, 25 minutes when I go to sleep at night, and I say, oh, it's 11:00 I want to go to sleep. I knock out and I go to sleep, and I don't give any of that other stuff that would be running through my mind at night a second thought, not a one.
So that's why I say there's absolute power, life changing power, in this type of meditation.
Tony Robbins has this quote that says, problems need energy to live, and I want that to marinate with you, especially with this idea of meditation. We make problems out of so many things that aren't really even problems. One of the other things that's helped me tremendously in terms of dealing with anxiety is if I look at anxiety as if it were on a pole, and there's a pole here, and on one end is the past and one end is the future. Anxiety tends to be anchored to one, the other, or both.
So past focus would be something rooted in judgment. Regret, guilt, shame, trauma. Okay. The times that I was feeling anxiety, getting up there to speak, it was based on a past event.
And then there's anxiety based on future event. Future meaning. Guess what? No matter how hard you try, you're not going to control the future. I got bad news for you. I've already tried future focus, uncertainty, doom, visions, fear of future. Ramifications, judgment.
Let me think of an example. Starting a new job. You could have anxiety about that future because you don't know what it's going to hold. Is it going to work out? Did you make the right decision? This idea of anxiety kind of being on the pole and tending to lean heavy one way or another, what I started to do was in that moment, recognize when my heart starts picking up the pace, when my breathing starts getting shallow, when my foot gets to tapping, okay, what am I feeling in this moment? What do I think is causing this feeling? If I can dig really deep, I'll dig really deep. If not, I'll just generalize it and say, what is causing this in this moment? Then taking a moment to just pause and say, Isabel, we can't do anything about the past. The past is dust. We can't do anything about the future. It's not in our control. Right in this present moment, right here, you are safe. And I just keep saying that over and over to myself, you are safe. You are safe. Don't worry about it. You're safe. That tends to stop so much of that anxiety in its tracks, because anxiety is meant to keep you safe. And if you believe and you start to tell yourself, I am safe, then your body begins to let go of those defenses. You don't have to be so tense in this moment. It's going to be okay. And guess what? Even if it's not going to be okay, you will figure it out.
You do have to have a little bit of confidence and belief in yourself. It's going to work out. One way or another, it's going to get figured out. I think there's this idea built around it where it's don't suffer before you need to.
Oftentimes, so much of the anxiety we have is suffering before we even really need to, before we even know that there's an outcome for us to get anxious about.
There is a Seneca quote for the stoic minds out there. A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.
So again, let that kind of marinate. So many times. Problems need energy to live. Don't suffer before you need to.
These are things to just kind of keep in mind when that anxiety starts to creep in. Even so simple as something like the bill collector phone calls, who cares?
Just let them call. Put them to voice. What are they going to do? You think they're going to come knock on your door? Sometimes I would feel like, oh my gosh, they have my address, they're not going to come knock on your door. Trust me, I've owed bill collectors a lot of money. Not a one has come to my door. So rest assured, take it down a notch. Be a little less anxious. They're not coming to your door. If you have to block the calls, just try to get the bills paid. Really. But if you can't, just block the calls. But don't worry. Don't let it be the worry of your day that paralyzes you for the rest of the day. I guess that kind of leads me into this idea of reframe, which is another way that you can work to begin to calm yourself in terms of anxiety. And what do I mean by reframe?
There is this saying that everything happens for me. I think it might be a little bit of a mantra, everything happens for me. And so I know people get super annoyed by this tactic, but it's kind of the silver lining approach to things. Okay, so I lost my job, not great, but now I'll be able to use my opportunities somewhere else, or I'll be able to do something new, or I'll be able to push forward on that dream that I wasn't pushing through before. If everything happens for a reason, even if we don't always know the reason, then we can believe that there is favor in that. And when we believe that there is favor in that, it once again tells our body that we're safe. Or that hey, we're going to be okay. One way or another, we are going to figure this out. You are fully capable. You are going to be okay.
So just like the other day on that phone call, I could be totally gutted and defeated and say, anytime I have to speak on a phone call or even during this podcast, I'm just not going to do it anymore because I'm going to trip over my words and whatever. First of all, I'm human, it's going to happen. Second of all, if I quit and start avoiding these things because I'm fearful of it happening again, then I am in actual fact, letting the anxiety win on something that it's not even worthy of winning. It's not life or death. And I think that's what happens so many times, especially to me, when there are these anxious moments. It's like they're life or death and they're not. We are just ingrained to think, like, worst, absolute worst case scenario on things that aren't even really worthy of it. There are times to be anxious and to be worried and to be panicked. Messing up on a phone call isn't one of them. The silver lining in that now I know to practice more next time. Now I can think of different ways to practice. I can think about where I got stuck and why I got stuck. Was I not confident enough about the information that I was sharing? Was I feeling the energy? What was it? I can sit and I can think about it, and I can find a solution. But I can tell you from experience, there is no benefit to admiring the problem. Figure out the solution on everything. Reframe is big. Find the silver lining. Everything happens for me, even if I don't always know the reason. If you believe it, this is just another way to disarm you. Another way is to create mantras.
Everything happens for me. Everything happens for a reason. Another way is to just be thankful. Especially like, when you think about the social culture, and it's easy to focus on what you don't have and totally forget about what you do. To be honest, I haven't even watched wrestling in so long. But I absolutely love this quote from roman reigns. He has this part in a video where he just says, as long as God wakes me up, I can handle anything.
And I know I didn't perform it as good as he did, but you get the point. You wake up every day above ground. Every single day above ground is a new opportunity, is a new chance. And so when you begin to look at the world that way, it doesn't seem that bad. And then last with the family, back to the genetics and the family, you're not going to like this one either. You got to establish boundaries with people and not just establish them, you got to stick to them yourself. So if you tell someone, look, I don't think this is good, and if you continue to bring this up, I won't come around, stand by it, establish boundaries, things that you are okay with, things you are not okay with, be very clear and be very firm. And that one also, if you don't have the confidence, is going to be very difficult. But we'll talk about that. On the next episode. So I know that was a lot we just covered. That might have been like 2 hours worth of information that I just gave you on ways to manage through anxiety. But I have asked one of the many brothers I have that I sometimes enjoy talking to, but if he does not respect my boundary of trying to take over my podcast with all his own equipment, I'm cutting him off.
But until that time, what questions do you have? Brother, brother, brother, please.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: There was a lot in there, but I think you could definitely tell your passion for it, because I think this was probably one of your longest running to where you're, like, opening up with the podcast yourself. Did you run across any big anxiety moments?
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Oh, that's actually a good point.
Having anxiety and then doing the action anyway, having that build up, having your heart race and your body and your mind is like, no, it's not safe. And then you're just like, you know what? Thank you, mine for telling me that this is not safe. However, I am safe in this moment, and pushing through and doing these things anyway is truly and really key.
So even today, it's not that I didn't want to film like I want to film, but I have so much passion behind the idea of a podcast and becoming a public speaker that I want to do everything perfect and right, and I don't want to fail, and I want to have meaningful content for people that they can actually take and use. And so sometimes something so good that creates anxiety because I don't want to mess it up for the listener.
The power behind all of that anxiousness is doing the action anyway. So is this perfectly set up? No. Is that exactly how I wanted to talk about things? No, but I'm still doing it anyway. And so immense amount of power behind having the anxiety and then pushing through anyway. And I say that because I know people who, and it depends on what it is that you're triggered about. But some people won't go to places where something happened and they feel very triggered. And I used to be just like that. And then I realized, like, isabelle, you cannot avoid all of Chicago because you had bad things happen.
No, you can't do that. You have to go on living your life. And so it's like, even in places that I've maybe had some not so good memories, it's accepting that working through issues by way of things like therapy and learning how to be in those spaces and creating new positive memories behind them, even with certain clothes, I could have anxiety with. Like, I wore this with so and so. And now I feel like I can never wear it again. No, you can. You just got to do it. You got to create the new memories behind it. If it's bad luck twice, though, throw that shit away.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: How do you see a good balance between doing therapy, your self care practices? Do you feel like you need to have that balance, or should there be?
[00:44:40] Speaker B: I'll tell you this, there's people who have been sitting in therapy. I personally, again, I am not a doctor. I'm just a lived human being.
I think if you're sitting in a therapy loop for years and years and years and you're not progressing, it's because you're not putting in the work outside of therapy. And just made me think of another big point. Journaling, writing. I know people think you got to be, I don't know, give me a famous Ernest Hemingway, like, you got to be some mega creative writer to journal. No, you just got to sit there and have a total brain dump.
I'm not going to discount my therapy for 1 second, but one thing that I did do in partnership with the therapy is I did the work outside of just going to the meeting. I would go to the meeting and then I would go home and I would journal. And sometimes one of the biggest things that helped me with my anxiety and my trauma was writing out letters to never send to certain people. Certain people, including my mom, including my dad, including other family members, including former relationships. Writing just literally was like a mind dump because at first I'd just be like, I don't know what to write. And then I'd be like, man, you freaking suck. I can't believe. And it can be as conversational and as loose and as vulgar and whatever it is that you need it to be, as long as you write it all out, you can cry through it. I cried in my closet, on the floor for like an hour one time after I was done writing. You cry about it in the note as you type it. At some point once, you're kind of at a point where you're like, all right, I really don't have anything else to say. You forgive that person, but more importantly than anything else, you forgive yourself.
You forgive yourself for whatever it is, for not knowing better, for getting that angry, for falling for the same tricks twice, for whatever it is that you're feeling, guilt and shame and kind of all these different emotions about.
You forgive yourself.
And I'll tell you, that exercise paired with the therapy, the meditation paired with the therapy, all of these self care, self help things that I've done outside of therapy. If my therapist brought up a terminology that I wanted to know more about, I wouldn't just wait until I saw her again. I go research that myself. I can research plane tickets to London. I can research the different topics that she's talking about in therapy and really think about what that means for me. So I was incredibly, and I still am very proactive in taking ownership of my own mind.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that.
Well, it's two things.
One is the family guy episode where I think therapist tells him to do that, and they're like, did you try the writing the letters and not sending them? And he's like, oh, you're not supposed to send them. And then you hear his family in the other room, oh, I got a letter from dad.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: Yes. Don't send the letters.
Don't be Peter Griffin. Do not send the letters.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: And I'm also thinking like, damn, I wonder how many letters I got.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: I didn't write you a letter yet.
[00:48:24] Speaker A: Because you get it out in this.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Wait until, if you keep using this microphone and somebody tells me, you got better sound, you're getting a letter, and I'm going to send it to you.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: How do you communicate with people? It might be easier to communicate with somebody that you're in a relationship with family members or anything like that, and be like, hey, I'm just under a lot of anxiety. I can't do it right now. Versus something like work, where it's more of a professional setting. Maybe you don't really want to talk about it with your coworkers. Maybe you are open, but how do you manage it?
[00:48:57] Speaker B: So I'm a little more head on than I think most people are willing to be. And I think a lot of that is now stemming from this level of confidence that I've built over the past year, where most of the time when I don't answer a text or I'm hesitant to answer a text is because I got to give an answer that I know someone is not going to want to hear, or I feel like I'm going to let someone down. So I'll give you a good example.
I love my aunt to absolute death. One time during busy season at work, she's like, hey, can I come by on Tuesday? And I was, like, having heart palpitations because I'm like, I would love to see my aunt. I'm trying to think of all these different ways to potentially make that happen, and then before I know it, half the day is gone. I haven't responded to her, and I was like, I can't do this. This is causing me anxiety. It's causing me stress. What can I do? So I just ended up texting her back and saying, hey, I would absolutely love to see you, but this next couple of weeks, it is not going to happen. I need to focus on work. I don't want to have that type of rushed energy. I want to be able to enjoy our visits, and I hope you'll understand, and I hope to see you soon. And that's what I sent to her, and she was fine. She understood. I think that goes back to the idea of us giving.
Creating these problems before they really exist is a huge piece of it. And so I find that just kind of hitting things head on at work sometimes I'll tell people, like, look, I don't have an answer for you right now. I need to think about this answer. Hey, maybe it's just a ping. Hopefully everybody knows what a ping is. Hey, it's just a ping. And it's like, hey, I saw your email. I don't have an answer for you. I'm going to try to get you an answer, but just bear with me. Rather than not saying anything and just kind of letting day or two pass, and then they're like, hey, just checking in. Rather than getting to that point, I'd rather tell you, hey, it's going to take me a day or two. I've got all these things, other pressing matters going on.
Can I get back to you in a day or two? And more often than not, it's not an issue. And if I do think it's a concern or issue, then I'll reach out to a teammate, which is something that, as a perfectionist, used to be very hard for me to do, to kind of ask other people for help. But I've gotten over that hurdle as well, to just say, hey, this person is looking for x, y, and z. I cannot right now. Can you help again? This kind of. This idea of it's uncomfortable, but if you just push through and do it, then let it be what it is, but don't just keep sitting there and agonizing over it. And then I'll give you one more example. The other day, you text me something, and I saw it. It was like, at dinner, and I saw it, and I was like, oh, I need to reply to my. Then I forgot because we were at the hot pot, and then it was like, the next day, you text me something else. I'm like, oh, shit. I didn't answer his other text. And so it's like just answering that text as soon as I see it and eating it, but hoping that, you know, it wasn't intentional. It's just like everything else. It slips my mind.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And just your reference for your reference for me, I'll never be like, okay, like, quadruple text.
In your opinion, if it is just a matter of understanding a little bit more about what people can have anxiety or what can trigger people, I think that's something that it's interesting.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: So I think a huge part of that comes down. I hate to be one of these people because I feel like mom is like this, but people are like the drug industry and stuff. And so rather than digging deep into our own psyche and our own issues, we would rather just to medicate things away. We want the fast solution. We want the quick pill. We don't want to think about things. We want to just continue to push everything down. But the problem is, and trust me, I've done it for many years, if you just keep trying to push things down, it's going to manifest. The body doesn't lie. The energy doesn't lie. So you can sit here and you can have your smile all day long, but if you're not dealing with the things deep down in your heart, they're going to come out in other ways. They're going to come out in anger. They're going to come out in panic attacks. They're going to come out in anxiety.
I think that there's just always this huge push to medicate everything away.
And so that's why I said in that section of kind of self help, like, forget about the therapist for a second. Those things that I mentioned earlier, if you really apply them, give it six months, give it a year, and what a change it will make. But the thing is, most people don't want to have to hear the answer is dealing with the demons in your closet. Most people just don't want that answer. They want an easier answer. They want the hack. There is no hack. But the more that you hack away at those issues and those traumas and those things that are holding you down and causing you this undue anxiety, the more your Life begins to change. And so I think from a societal standpoint, it really is just we're always looking for the quick fix. Always. And our mental Health is no exception. You have to be strong enough, though, to be with your feelings, because that's part of the reason, the struggle that I had with the meditation in the beginning, and I don't doubt that the other forms of meditation can help, like a guided or a music one. But to your point, even driving is a distraction. There's still an element of distraction. And so that's why I think there's so much power with your eyes closed, sitting in silence. It is just YOu and your ego and whatever else you believe in, and that's it. I mean, the things that would pass through my mind, but it's kind of like why you're not sleeping at night is BecAuSe you don't have peace during the day. And the meditation, particularly in the morning, sets the peace for the day so that you go to sleep with peace in your heart at night. Because kind of all of those racing thoughts, ideas and things that you could typically react to and give emotion to, you're just letting them pass and you're accepting them as like in this moment, they're just going to go. And I'm not going to give them any thought or any emotion. And I wish I could fully describe in words the amount of power that has.
I literally could not sleep for more than 4 hours. Sometimes I would wake up with like sleep paralysis, gasping for breath. It was horrific. And if I wanted to go to bed right now, I would go walk in my room and say, okay, it's time to go to bed. And I would fall asleep without any issue.
And again, not a single pill, not anything, just 25 minutes where I just sit with myself in that morning. And I'm thankful for every single breath that I take during that activity. And I feel, with deep exhale, weights being lifted off my shoulders.
It can be very life changing if you're willing to try it and you allow it.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: How have you recognized YOur own triggers of YOur Anxiety and then starting to manage it?
[00:57:23] Speaker B: If you think about the different ways that anxiety can manifest from a physical, physical is probably the easiest to spot and become aware of.
So shaking when your heart starts to race, these are very easy signs. We're just like, oh, shit, I'm about to have a panic attack about something. So in those moments, if your voice starts shaking, I saw someone the other day who's like, you could tell he was super nervous because his cheek was shaking. Easiest way, first, kind of start to see it in other people pick up. If somebody like me, you see me tapping my foot, I'm probably very nervous or very anxious underneath the surface.
But once you kind of know these different signals, then you can catch yourself, then you can start to catch yourself and say, oh, snap, why am I shaking right now? What is making me anxious? Is it the idea of speaking in front of people right now? Is it because I know I'm going to run into so and so? What is it that's causing me to be anxious in this moment? So I would say awareness.
Awareness of physical is probably easiest to pick up first, and then also awareness eventually of anger. And so when I start to feel myself get very defensive, that is telling me inside that you can't see it. But when I start to get defensive and I start to get very snippy in my answers, that's my anxiety gearing up and ready to go to war. So that's another way for me. I have to stop myself and say, isabel, what are you getting so angry for in this moment? You need to calm down and just kind of work to reground myself. Is it something that's upsetting me from the past? Is it something that's upsetting me from the future? And kind of just remember, in this present moment, I am safe. Awareness is key. Physical awareness, probably first, easiest to spot within yourself, and then mental.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: What do you think is your situation of, how would you deal with navigating through those kind of points where it's like you had a plan, you're not going to get the plan. You're now stressed because you're not hitting your plan. There's uncertainty. So what kind of advice do you think is for those kind of, like, high stress moments?
[01:00:08] Speaker B: Uncertainty is 100%.
And that's something that, that took me an incredibly long time to learn. In life, nothing is certain. Nothing is guaranteed, not a thing. And so it's this idea of letting go of expectations and outcomes, and I'm still working through it. That's why I said it's always like a work in progress, but letting go of expectations and outcomes so that when things don't, quote unquote, happen the way that you hoped they would or you thought they would or you expected they would, you don't have the same feeling. It's whatever happens, happens, and it is probably one of the more challenging things to let go of. But there is a lot of freedom and flexibility that comes with that. A few weeks ago or a few months ago, I talked about my solo travel and not having a hotel until I got on the plane. And that itself might cause people anxiety. Right? Because where am I staying? What am I doing? But again, there's freedom behind that as well. And so if you can work to start letting go of outcomes and expectations and realizing nothing in life is certain, your next breath isn't even guaranteed. And so it's like when you start to look at things that way, you can begin to be a little more freeing and a little more relaxed in any situation.
[01:01:51] Speaker A: For anybody that's watching or listening, what would you say to them as far as your recommendations for other help that you can get? What have you found is good resources for help?
[01:02:03] Speaker B: So one of the absolute game changers for me, I hope that I've talked about this book before because it really was life changing. Melody Beatty's book called Codependent no more. That is what led me down the journey.
Know, throughout the book, she talks about codependency. Even if you think you're not a codependent, read the damn book, because you probably are.
And then start to work on these different traits that you have as goals, as things, to work towards the embedment of yourself. So that is my number one book recommendation for everyone on Planet Earth should be required to read that book.
Podcast, I would say Andrew Huberman has a recent episode with David Goggins. It's 2 hours of David Goggins, just like laying his whole life out on the line.
I would highly recommend that because I think that is the true grit of someone who acknowledged their problems. Dug deep. He was like well over 300 pounds at one point in his life, and now is just like a superhuman in terms of exercises, really pushing through and digging deep on all of his past traumas that he's had in his life. And he details all of that in a two hour episode, which, I mean, had me eating up every word movie.
I'm going to go with two animated movies. So these are so easy. A kid could watch these movies. Okay. The first one is inside out, because that's going to tell you and explain to you why you need all of your emotions. And you can't just be joy, and you can't just be sadness, and you can't just be anger. Why? And how they all balance and hang and work together in a very digestible way. Very deep. The second movie is encanto. I watched that movie. I'm not even joking. I've probably seen that movie like a hundred times. What I love about that movie is this idea of like a generational. In this movie, it's not called a curse. It's like a miracle. But then you get to see how this miracle turns into somewhat of a curse because the family is just absolutely plagued with perfectionism and kind of how they all deal with it or don't deal with it in the ways that it manifests in their lives. It's actually an incredibly deep movie that I think so many people are sleeping on. All right, well, that was a lot to cover today, but I think an incredibly important topic, one I am most certainly passionate about. I hope that there's something in there that you can use. As I mentioned before, I would love to see you follow me on social media at iowito.
Or like I said, you can check out this podcast and all my other previous episodes of everyday above ground on YouTube at any time at Iowit to you. Until next time. Next time, we're covering confidence. I'm telling you, anxiety, confidence. We're turning into a brand new us this year. But until that time, remember, every day above ground is a great day. Bye.
