Anxiety-Proof HER Podcast with Jennifer Bronsnick, MSW
Anxiety-Proof HER Podcast with Jennifer Bronsnick, MSW
Anxiety-Proof Her Interview with Kate Sonnenberg
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Kate Sonnenberg is a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Law School. Her mission is to support families to navigate the college admissions process with a clear head and focus purpose. Instead of feeling stress and worry. She has worked at Princeton admissions and she brings her laywerly attention to detail to that process along with her own experience as a mother with two kids who are in college.
You can learn more about Kate and her work at https://kscollegesuccess.com/.
Thank you so much for tuning in!
If you are looking for solutions that will allow you to break free from negative thought patterns, worrying, and the uncomfortable symptoms that are caused by anxiety check out Jennifer's website at www.jenniferbronsnick.com or join the Anxiety-Proof Her Facebook Community HERE: https://www.facebook.com/groups/anxietyproofher
00:03
Welcome to the anxiety proof her Podcast, where amazing women come for education, inspiration and hope around healing from anxiety. Each month, you're going to hear from other women who took control of their mental health by using outside the box holistic strategies to cope with their anxiety and to ultimately thrive. You will also learn from experts in the health and wellness industry, about the tools they use every day to help their patients reclaim their well being. We hope this information allows you to see that there are many different paths to healing. I'm your host, Jennifer Bronsnick. And I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and anxiety treatment professional. I help women and teen girls who struggle with anxiety, self doubt, and perfectionism to tap into their innate resilience, get to the root of their fears, and implement custom healing strategies so that they can experience peace of mind, more self confidence and be liberated from the suffering that living with anxiety causes. I have lived with anxiety my whole life, and know how hard it can be. I also know that there is hope. And it's 100% treatable with the right information and support. Thank you so much for showing up for yourself and taking the first step to reclaiming your well being and resilience.
01:34
Welcome to the anxiety prepper podcast. As always, we get started by centering into our heart. So take a moment if you can to put everything down. But if you can't, you could just keep on moving about your day. And just set this intention to become fully present no matter what you're feeling or doing in this moment. And begin to bring your attention to the area of your heart center. And allow your breath to get a little slower and deeper. And imagine that the breath is actually flowing in and out from your heart center or chest area. And just allow yourself to breathe deeply. Maybe even feeling some pleasure of enjoying all the oxygen that you are bringing in to improve your vitality.
02:44
And as you breathe, you can try to bring in just to your best the feeling of ease. So I like to imagine that I'm swimming in a beautiful lake, it's mid August, so the water is warm, the air is warm, and it's perfect temperature. And I'm pretty much weightless because I'm in the water. And so I'm inviting you to access this feeling of ease, ease that you can take with you throughout your day. And just allowing that to move into every single cell in your body. And then setting the intention to anchor in this feeling of ease. So as you go about your day as you listen to this podcast, just allow that state of ease to be ever present in your heart and your mind. So today on the podcast, I am really excited to have my guest, Kate Sonnenberg and Kate and I met through this amazing women's group called the CoCo which is a co working and networking space in New Jersey. And I've met some fantastic women. And you know Kate is right up there at the top of the list. She's a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Law School. And her mission is to support families to navigate the college admissions process with a clear head and focus purpose. Instead of feeling stress and worry, she has worked at Princeton admissions and she brings her loyally attention to detail to that process along with her own experience as a mother with two kids who are in college. So Welcome, Kate, I am so happy that you were willing to share your experiences. I know there's a lot of anxiety around the college admissions process.
05:11
There is and thanks so much, Jennifer, for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. Did
05:15
I miss anything in your bio?
05:17
You were fantastic. Okay, one child might be offended excuse graduated from college, I would not want that taken away from him. The other one is still? Well, you've got them, you know,
05:28
they both got it. All right,
05:32
not just getting in, because getting in is, is the first step of the process. But since getting into the right school, so that you graduate, and that you could potentially graduate, or hopefully graduate in four years, because college is expensive. And so it's always wonderful. When they take the four years rather than the six year plan,
05:52
wow, I hadn't thought of that.
05:54
Yeah. And that actually starts
05:55
with with the process of applying, because if you apply properly or pry wisely, you're going to more likely end up at a college where you're going to be happy. And if you're happy, then you're going to succeed academically and otherwise, and then you can graduate on time. Yeah, all connected.
06:17
So
06:18
I'm imagining right now there is tons of anxiety for graduating seniors, maybe even juniors that, you know, have this idea of like, Did I miss something? Because of what we all went through this year? Is that something that you were seeing in your work?
06:41
Yes, I'm seeing it and, and to some degree, that's a fact, they did miss things. So the first thing that I think as adults, when I'm talking to either the parents or the students, I acknowledge that they lost something. And whether it's the leadership role that they were expecting in an activity, or whether if they're interested in doing research, a lab experience, they lost something. And, you know, we all lost things, but it has a greater impact when you've been alive 15 1617 years, because you have no perspective, that or you have a different perspective, than when you've been alive for 3050 years. And you know, that they'll there'll be other opportunities, these feel very zero sum to students. So I acknowledged that there was a loss. And then I, I tried to get them to think of a way to innovate, I tried not to use the word pivot, because they do not like that word, but to innovate and to take an experience that they weren't expecting to have, and find something useful from it. So, for example, I worked with a wonderful young man this year, and he was a science person. And he was so upset because he was supposed to be in a lab in the summer of 2020. And that got taken away. And so I said, Okay, what else can you do? And he made a blog for his friends, and high school and middle school kids on biology and lifestyle. And he wrote about sleep patterns, and all kinds of things that really were fun. And so No, it wasn't the lab experience, but it was a different experience. And that's what I try and get the students to do to think outside the box and to innovate, and to sort of take a bad situation, which I acknowledge and and do with it what they can.
08:35
Yeah, I love that sort of like that idea of post traumatic growth, exactly. Being able to say, acknowledge the feelings and the grief and all of that, and then still be able to say, and still, I can do these things and sort of, you know, think outside the box with, you know, what they missed out upon,
08:56
right? I think the problem is that a lot of people want the students to just, you know, sort of pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And I take a different approach, because I think you have to do exactly what you've said, acknowledge, acknowledge the loss, have some empathy. And from there, you can find a place to sort of inspire kids to think and grow.
09:17
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the parents going through this process. Do you
09:25
notice whether their stress is increased? Or is it really just among the kids?
09:31
So this is always a stressful process, right? In the best of all possible worlds and the Garden of Eden. This is a stressful process. And part of it is parents stress that that and parent stress gets placed on to the students and it interacts. So this year, it's it's definitely worse. But parents stress is is just something that I've always dealing with and that's one of the reasons why people sometimes return to someone like Because then they can, well, they can have a sounding board. But they can also be more of a parent and not academically, involved in nitty gritty involved in the college application process. And that can help to sort of alleviate some stress and make family dynamics healthier. But what I try and do with birth moms and dads is give them a job to do. So they can take all of their stress and focus it on the job. And the job that I give them, whether we're in the virtual world or non virtual world, is to do the college research, because the students are going to do college research, right? They have to, they have to like the campus. But parents are going to give a different kind of research IQ to looking at a college. So I always say to the moms and dads, they should just research their heart's content, because they're going to add to the story, they're going to help their student understand the school. But when they have something to do, it's a way to sort of focus the anxiety and not let the anxiety control that it control the anxiety and the college research. So I have a whole parent curriculum that's designed to alleviate the anxiety to get the parents into the process productively and to not add to the students stress.
11:13
Yeah, cuz I imagine that they probably the root of their fears are different. You know, with the kids versus the parents,
11:24
I think the root of their fears is that they want their kids to be happy. And that this is a, I always talk about applying to college as the first step toward adulting. Kind of a bridge between childhood and high school and young adulthood. And so that alone is scary. Because while we want our children to grow up, it's also a daunting thought, yeah, oh, my goodness, my, I remember once, many, many years ago, when I was 18, I was out till two in the morning, and my mom was furious when I got home. And she was screaming. And she said, I didn't know where you were. And I said, well, Mom, in two months, I'm going to be in college. And I could be out until two in the morning, and you won't know where I am. And she said, Yes, I will enroll you're in college. I always share that story with families, because this is that moment of you know, of them. Have you seen your your child as a more grown up version of themselves? And so that I think is a part of the parent anxiety? Sure, there's the anxiety on the outcome? Is my kids going to get into x school? Is my kid going to get into high school? I think a lot of the focus on the outcome is just a way to take the other anxiety and externalize it because I think it's more about my kids growing up, have I bought them well, are they going to be able to do the things that they need to do manage their time, manage their finances? do their laundry, make friends? So I think that's where the real parents anxiety is? And it gets focused on are they going to get into x college?
13:08
Yeah, that makes total sense. Do you think the kids have the awareness that that's maybe some of their fears too? Or are they also focused on the outcome of like, Oh, this is my top school. You know, sometimes it feels like there's this like one place that they really want to get in. And so my experience was I grew up in a college town. And I knew I would go to the college and my job. even think about it, it was like I applied early decision. Like there was no second thought about it. But with grad school, it was a little bit different. There. Were you know, more I knew I wanted New York. But it was, you know, I was a little bit older, and it was less of that anxiety provoking, but for those kids that have all their eggs in one basket. Yes.
13:58
Do you see that?
13:59
Yes. So I say it. In my practice with students that dream school is a four letter word. So we don't have a dream school. We have a kind of school that you like, whether it's a big rah rah school, or a small school where you're really going to no vast majority, if not everybody in your year. I don't care what kind of school it is. I just want to I want to sort of a group of schools, but it can't be one school. Because within that type of school, there's all different levels of admission selectivity. There's all different levels of academic rigor. And so we focus on a type of school because there is a lot of pressure, especially among high school students who've done well in school to get into quote, unquote, their dream school and I just tried to take that out of the story. I think that students are not aware of the I think they sometimes girls especially will worry about making new friends. But I don't think that they're thinking about the leaving home part as an anxiety issue it is, if they have the perspective, I think they're just excited. And so they don't think about it consciously.
15:14
But I'm sure it's there. I
15:15
mean, that's human development, right? It's gotta be there. But they I very rarely get a student who comes in and says, I'm really nervous about whether I'll be able to live without my, the guidance that my family or the support that my family provides. Usually, they're just like, can't wait. any longer. But that's, that's not really if you peel the onion, and that's not really what Yeah,
15:38
not everybody freedom, they want to launch into the world and have it have their own experiences, which is wonderful.
15:47
what they should be doing.
15:48
Yeah, that's
15:49
our so what's so sad about this year for so many college freshmen, or first year students? Is we like to call them who didn't get to go to college? To do it in their bedroom? from their parents. Oh,
16:00
that was very, very Yeah.
16:03
Yeah. I mean, these poor kids they've been through so much, it's so hard. So a question that just came up for me, as I'm wondering, how will you know that school would be a good fit? Like, what is someone looking for maybe like, on the inside, you know, just looking at our emotions, our feelings.
16:26
So I do a lot of pre work with the students who come to me, and the first part of my sort of process, if you want to call it that, is knowing yourself, because you cannot know, you can't, I cannot advise students on a good fit until they know themselves. And I sort of say, what are your values? And what are your interests? And what are your priorities, and a lot of 17 year olds, I would say most 17 year olds really haven't thought about that. They may know their family's values and priorities and interests, but thinking about it, and owning them themselves. And I have a lot of different ways that I help students do this, some we just have journaling exercises for them. Some students, that's that's not a productive, they're just not ready to do it with journaling. And I have some questionnaires that they can fill out and we talked about. And some time, sometimes, I will use a tool called use science, which is a Myers Briggs index, that it helps students with interest, and it has some sort of college and career, college majors and career probability indexes. And sometimes I will refer students to someone who can administer a Highlands interests assessment, that's something that you have to be trained to administer. And sometimes I will send them to someone like you, because it's not really about college, that they need some deeper reflection on who they are. And that's the first thing we do. And that that can take a couple months of getting, I mean, I don't think you ever fully get to know yourself, it's always a work in progress, but for the purposes of college admissions, and I'm not a therapist, so that's not you know, I don't pretend to be that, but we do the knowing yourself. So that's sort of standard one, that that is step one, finding a good fit college, and then you have to align who you are with, with the college's priorities and ambition. So you could have two kids who have very similar values and very similar interests, but they might want a different kind of college experience, one might want a very small school, one might want an urban school. And so you have to just because you know yourself doesn't mean that every college is going to be the right fit. So then you'd have this like jigsaw puzzle. And you take knowing yourself and knowing the college, and you mash it together, and you find your fit. And then once we've sort of found the profile of a college, we make really a vertical list of places that are appropriate schools with differing levels of difficulty getting into because you want to have a few schools where you have a high likelihood of getting in, you want to have a few schools where you have a decent chance, but I would call it, you know, medium probability. And then you want to have those that have a low chance of disability, but you never know. And those are schools, sometimes I call them wildcards. It doesn't matter what your grades are, doesn't matter what your involvement in activities have been. It's just unpredictable. And that's part of the problem in this process. It's just always unpredictable. I mean, there's some some areas that are more predictable, but at the end of the day, we never really know to go back to your question what colleges are looking for, because that changes every year. That's known as institutional priorities. So institutional priorities at college x in one year could be, we want to feel a great new jazz band. So we need to bring in students who are really talented in that, you know, who could contribute to this new jazz band. Or it could be, we're losing 50% of our soccer team. And we need to bring in a whole new grade group of soccer recruits, and we get from the outside, you'll never know what those institutional priorities are. And you can't you can't predict them and you can't play to them. That's one of the reasons why it's so unpredictable, uncertain, and why you can only focus on what you can control. And you have to let go of the part that you know, you can't control.
20:43
Yeah, and I love that, because that's a perfect conversation to have with kids. Because I find in my work, anxiety, one certainty and comfort. And there's nothing that is certain or comfortable about this process that you just you have to be able to sit with the I don't know, right. And I just have to, you know, sometimes I find it's just you have to listen to your gut. You know, there isn't there's, you have all the information, but it's like, what does your heart say? Like, just like we started this episode with is, you know, connecting with your heart. And, you know, where is it being called to and most often not that there is an ever hardship, when we listen to our heart, that is not the point, its growth is the point. And so sometimes we just need these experiences to grow. So, okay. Sometimes there is a reason we feel stressed and anxious. And it's because there's something that we need to do that we haven't taken action on. And so there's this, like, you know, it sort of pushes us It can propel us. So I don't look at anxiety as this like terrible thing we want to get rid of I look at it as we want to look at it and see what's going on here. So looking at what you do, when should families start to get a little anxious about this process?
22:13
So right, I guess you need a certain amount of anxiety to get you through this. Yeah, yeah.
22:18
You just don't want it to become overwhelming and stifling. Exactly. Get the balance, right balance. So
22:24
I think that to balance it the best, you really, you want to start definitely in the fall of junior year, but I'm even beginning because of the pandemic to push this back a little bit and say, even the this time the spring of sophomore year, and I'll tell you why. Students right now are choosing their classes for next year. And they're deciding whether if their sophomore whether they should take the PSAT for example, next year. And if you don't have somebody advising you, you may not get the detailed attention from your guidance counselor, your school based guidance counselor. So I've already worked with a number of sophomores, planning their junior year curriculum and planning their senior your curriculum, and that has helped them not feel anxious about the classes they're taking. And one young woman, she's terrific. And she said, You know, I really don't think I can take precalculus honors, I just think it's gonna make me to stress. And I said, you know yourself better. In fact, you're the only person who can make a decision when don't do it. But it was a conversation. And it wasn't just sort of a random thing where the anxiety was propelling the decisions. She was aware of what was making her nervous and worried, and she addressed it, and she took responsibility in charge of it. And that was so much better. If she had come to me, let's say in January of her junior year, and she had not had that conversation, maybe she would be in this advanced calculus class, and she wouldn't be doing well. And it would have been too late to have undone. The process. Or another thing I find is that, especially boys, they love to drop their foreign languages. Especially, that is not a good thing to do. I have a constant fight with them because College has won four years of all core subjects. I say no, no, I'm gonna substitute foreign language for an exercise. I'm like, No, no, no, no, no. So when you start as a sophomore, you can make a curriculum plan and an extra curricular plan so that when you get deep and dirty and down and dirty into the actual weeds of applying to college, you've made good decisions to set yourself up. So definitely no later than the fall of senior year, but even theoretically, in the spring of sophomore year, just to make sure you've made good decisions for junior year.
24:49
Yeah, I think that sounds like a great idea to have, you know, it's a balance of having a little bit of control so that you can feel grounded. Did in your decision making?
25:03
Exactly right?
25:05
When would someone decide because I've heard of people saying, like, I'm going to do a gap here.
25:10
I love them. Okay. So, you know, in Europe, it's very common. Okay. And one of the reasons why it's particularly common in Europe is that you don't go to college the way we do where you can sort of have a general education for a couple years and then specialize in Europe, you tend to go right into whatever you're going to study. So I think that there's some feeling that you, you want a breather between high school and really going to what a sort of a hybrid college graduate school experience, but just new experiences help you grow as a human being. And so I'm a huge fan of gap years, I wanted my own daughter to do a gap year, my son couldn't, he was an athlete. And so as an athlete, he had to really, you know, stay in his sport. But I really wanted my daughter to do it. And and if she just, she didn't want to, but I'm sort of glad that she didn't, because then I think the pandemic might have been the sequencing of her academic experience, whether they've even been worse with the pandemic, although I don't know what what's worse due to having last year this year, whatever. But I think they're great. And I also, I don't, I think a lot of people think a gap year means that you, you go on an expensive program, it doesn't have to mean that it can mean getting a job. I think anything that a student does to exercise their mind in a different way, is fantastic. So I'm a big believer in that. It's a hard sell, because you feel like all my friends are going to graduate ahead of me, and I'm going to be off the sequence. But I wish that it were more common. And actually, there's a new sort of effort to not call it a gap here, but to call it a year of purpose. And to sort of make it feel like there's a reason to do it, then it's not because a gap, right, you know, is an abyss that you fall into. And it's sort of the wrong connotation. Because you want it to be you want it to be get your purpose and, and maybe it includes burning some money so that you can fund some travel, and then volunteer and go, whatever you can do, but I see no downside to anyone doing it.
27:26
So that's awesome.
27:28
I love that perspective that, you know, there isn't just this one way we have to get our higher education. You know, and even, you know, some people are just not even into college, and they'd rather you know, have a different type of education and training and, you know, a trade So I love that it's allowing for everyone to follow their heart, you know, understand their strengths, follow their uniqueness, because, you know, sometimes college I know for me like it was a lot of partying.
28:02
Yeah, which is fun. You know, thankfully, I was always a good student.
28:09
Life work? Exactly. I'd
28:11
have to study first, I
28:12
couldn't not do the study.
28:16
Yeah. So I would love to hear any messages of hope that you can share to both parents and students that might be starting or struggling with this process.
28:29
So I know that this might sound cliche, but cliches are really grounded in a reality, right? That's how they become cliches. And I can tell you that if you do this process, well, it doesn't necessarily mean with me, with your school based guidance counselor, it can mean just with your mom or dad. But if you do this process, well, you take the time to get to know yourself. You think carefully about where you want to go to college, you find what I call an academic, and a social and a financial fit, because I don't want kids going to college and incurring a lot of debt. And that's an extra layer of anxiety. It works out. It's just putting the work in being intentional from the beginning. Students can find colleges where they are going to be happy, when you're happy, where you are going to learn and make friends. And I know that sounds like a cliche, but it really is true. And I'm actually very I pride myself that my students, they stay where they started. And that's what you want. It's financially expensive to transfer colleges. It's disruptive. You've just make new friends learn a whole new campus culture and bureaucratic culture. So do it right from the beginning. be intentional, and you will find your place and you will be happy.
29:56
I love that. So Kate, where can people find you if they want to learn more about you or how to work with you.
30:03
So I have a website, it's chaos, college success, calm. I also can be reached via email, which is Kate at chaos, college success, calm. And I'm also on social media, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. And I post pretty regularly. I also have a for people who are in the New Jersey area. I have a Facebook group. that's largely for my town. But I do welcome people from from the tri state area. It's Montclair high schools with an S at the end, college admissions and I post pretty regularly their articles and just reminders about certain important dates for tests. So those those are all the ways to find me. Awesome.
30:54
Thank you so much for coming on. And I can't wait to continue this conversation in a couple years when I'm getting my daughter ready for college.
31:01
Sorry to that. I really do. And thanks for having you.
31:07
Thank you so much for taking the time to invest in your well being. I hope you learned at least one new idea or technique that you might want to implement into your own life. Remember, you're not alone, there is hope and with the right information and support you can thrive. If you're dealing with panic are looking for a step by step process that will allow you to break free from this crippling fear state. I want to invite you to check out my panic attack Survival Guide, you can grab your free copy at www dot Jennifer bronsnick.com Thanks for listening