Anxiety is a puzzle we all piece together differently, and in our latest episode, we're joined by Ryan Luney a Vita Health Group, to help us fit those pieces in place. Ryan provides an enlightening tour of anxiety's evolutionary journey from life-saving alert system to the modern-day beast that can turn a job interview into a mental minefield. With his expertise, we peek behind the curtain of stress hormones and dissect how our body's ancient reactions are playing out in today's high-pressure environments.
We then layer on the intricate map of anxiety disorders, decoding the signs that signal when professional help might be the next step. Join us for a candid and compassionate exploration into the world of anxiety and arm yourself with the insights to better manage this universal aspect of the human experience.
Anxiety is a puzzle we all piece together differently, and in our latest episode, we're joined by Ryan Luney a Vita Health Group, to help us fit those pieces in place. Ryan provides an enlightening tour of anxiety's evolutionary journey from life-saving alert system to the modern-day beast that can turn a job interview into a mental minefield. With his expertise, we peek behind the curtain of stress hormones and dissect how our body's ancient reactions are playing out in today's high-pressure environments.
We then layer on the intricate map of anxiety disorders, decoding the signs that signal when professional help might be the next step. Join us for a candid and compassionate exploration into the world of anxiety and arm yourself with the insights to better manage this universal aspect of the human experience.
Hello and welcome to another In the Making People Better podcast from Vita Health Group. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Glenn Thompson and the aim of this series, of course, is to raise awareness of what Vita Health Group have to offer. To do that, I'm joined on each episode by various experts in their chosen field. This episode is all about mental health awareness, where the focus is very much on anxiety, and to help me tackle this, I'm joined by Ryan Loney. Loney Loney.
Speaker 1:Loney Like Loonie Jins.
Speaker 2:Okay, ryan is a senior psychological well-being practitioner on the corporate side at Vita Health Group and joins us from Sunny Ireland. Ryan, good to see you. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm doing good, glenn, I'm doing good. Thanks for inviting me on and yes, sunny is definitely the right term to use today.
Speaker 2:Good to see you. But let's talk about the mental health awareness. Of course there's a mental health awareness week, which we all know about, but of course, mental health is ongoing. It's very much an ongoing issue, one of the signs that someone might actually be suffering from anxiety, which, of course, is all part of the mental health awareness.
Speaker 1:One of the most common symptoms of anxiety as such is a lot of stress and worry. Now, the reason why I suppose we're talking about anxiety is because it's probably the, if not one of the most common mental health issues that people are facing. And what a lot of people feel to recognise is that anxiety is very much a natural phenomenon. You know, people will experience anxiety week by week, day by day. People do experience it by everything and anything, but the point of anxiety is that it's trying to protect you, it's your brain trying to protect itself. As such, when we were cavemen, you know, anxiety was very helpful for knowing whether to stay away from an animal that might cause us harm. Unfortunately, now we can't tell the difference between a lion and a tiger and maybe an interview or even doing a podcast or a video podcast that may cause us a bit of anxiety and worry Some is the second one doesn't really protect us if more causes us to avoid things. So what we find a lot of people with anxiety do is they have a lot of avoidance behaviours and that is kind of the fight or flight response. So it's essentially your body telling you whether I'm going to fight this situation or I'm going to run away with. Run away from it Now. How are you going to fight an interview? I'm going to end up punching the camera? Probably not. I'm going to end up running away from it and avoiding it. So that's usually.
Speaker 1:Probably one of the most common symptoms we see is some sort of avoidance behaviour of something that triggers them, something that causes a lot of stress, a lot of worry. Some other common symptoms could be particular stress and worry about specific aspects of their life, whether that's to do with their health, whether it's to do with intrusive thoughts about family members or friends getting in accidents or being ill. Lots of different worry and stress about lots of different aspects of your life. But the point of this, which I think I'll probably drill home in a lot of these questions, is that anxiety is subjective. It does not matter what you're worrying about, as long as you're worrying about something. So what maybe is almost like the one man's trash is another man's treasure. What one man seems is nothing. The other man seems as very anxiety provoking and stressful.
Speaker 2:So a lot of things can lead to anxiety, as you've highlighted there Ryan jobs, maybe school work. There are so many different factors involved in anxiety. My own particular experience at the moment is that my wife is suffering a lot of anxiety. She's going through not really enjoying her work. She won't mind me saying this. She's waking up in the middle of the night feeling anxious, her heart's racing. She's can't get back to sleep. This is quite a common factor, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, especially job, workplace stress at the moment because unfortunately, with the way the world is at the moment, people are pushed to the brink for very minimum reward at the end of the month or at the end of the week and unfortunately that just needs to burn out and no matter what job position you're in, I think everyone's starting to face these issues. So it is a very, very common and it's almost built a kind of community aspect with people where it's a case of everyone can kind of empathize with everyone else, you know, knowing they're going through what others are going through. But what is very important there, I suppose, is obviously your wife's getting very worried about her job and her workplace and, as you said, people may get worried about job. Other people may get worried about their school work and maybe exams coming up and things like that.
Speaker 1:Very interesting fact is they actually did a study and they found that the stress hormone, which is called cortisol, it releases when people are feeling anxious, people are feeling stressed, and they found that the amount of cortisol that was released whenever people are maybe in their teenage years and they couldn't find a date to like a disco or something like that, and as an adult when they couldn't really get a mortgage or they won't bankrupt or be it in fired or may be redundant. The amount of cortisol released was pretty much identical, showing that despite being very drastic different situations you know, I'd rather not have a date rather than lose a house, but because that's the most important thing to them at that given time, that thing causes, of course, a lot of worry and a lot of stress and anxiety, and the same amount is what other people may experience at different parts in their life. So there will be many, many times that people will say and maybe even your wife included it next year why was I worried about that? That was silly, that was stupid.
Speaker 2:Yeah you look back. You look back and you think what was that all about?
Speaker 1:Exactly, but in that moment, in this sort of situation, it is the most anxiety-provoking, worrisome thing that people can experience as such, because it's the most important thing to them right now.
Speaker 2:I'm guessing there are mild episodes of anxiety. There are severe episodes of anxiety in terms of anybody noticing any physical related problems with anxiety. What sort of things should we be looking out for?
Speaker 1:Yes. So with the physical signs of anxiety we're looking more things that if we were going very, very common characteristic symptoms you maybe see on TV all the time sweating, shaking. This could induce panic attacks, which are, of course, those sort of quite brief, episodic, overbearing feelings of terror where you're maybe sweating, shaking, crying, can't control your breathing at all. Unfortunately, you are unable to even think rationally, your mind's racing 100 miles an hour. So the physical signs of people experiencing a lot of anxiety would be the kind of fight-or-flight response. You need to maybe go to the bathroom. You may maybe need to. You're feeling a bit lightheaded, all your blood and all your energies going straight to your muscle groups to help you fight or flight the situation and unfortunately, because there's nothing to fight or flight, you do the third F, which is freeze. So a lot of people are very unable to control their own body that way and unable to really react the way they they know they should react.
Speaker 2:Presumably that's a severe case of anxiety, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1:of course, of course. So anxiety, as much as it is a very natural human emotion, everyone will experience it at some point in their life. If someone says they've never experienced anxiety in their life, they're probably lying. Everyone has experienced it. The problem is it becomes an anxiety disorder when it's overbearing severe and it basically intrudes most, if not every, aspect of your life. So when it becomes something severe, it affects your sleep, your appetite, day by day, your work, your job, your social life, your relationships, even just private activities. That's when it starts to become general anxiety, to more an anxiety disorder People say to you, don't they say you're looking anxious today.
Speaker 2:You know what's the problem, what's the matter. You know you might be biting your nails, you might be sort of fiddling with your fingers. That's all a sign of anxiety isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. I mean a lot of people see those as coping strategies and they're obviously going from mild to people picking, as you said picking their nails, biting fingers to more severe length, people pulling out their own hair, people and not even realizing they're doing it, you know, just like twiddling their fingers into their hair, pulling it out, all stress related things, fidgeting a lot of people I'm sure you've seen we're taking this the sort of a lot of people were getting the fidget cubes. They have like lots of different dials and stuff. They can help distract a lot of people from their fidgeting behaviors or at least give them a more adaptive way rather than picking and messing up their own skin. I mean, I'm a habit picker as well. If I'm sitting there and I'm working on stuff, I'll just end up picking away at my nails and I'm not even realizing doing it because it becomes so habitual.
Speaker 2:And you know severe anxiety. Just touching on this very quickly, ryan, it can be debilitating, can't it? It can really interfere with your, your lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, many, many people that are unfortunately subject to very severe forms of anxiety can not even leave the house, and that luckily in today's day and age. Obviously we can get things like you know, delivery to the house, whether it's food or any sort of necessities that people need, but it's still very debilitating. You can't see your friends, you can't see your family, can't go anywhere, anywhere you're going to go, even if you've maybe been there before, maybe met with a barrage of questions of well, what if this happens? What if that happens, if I go here and I see this person, or maybe people look at me like I'm stupid, all sorts of things like that. So you get a constant barrage in your head of all these intrusive worries about what could, may or hypothetically, you know, could potentially happen in the future.
Speaker 2:And what sort of resources, ryan, can you recommend? If anybody is under undergoing all this anxiety and this stress at the moment, what sort of things are out there to help us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. So the most prominent intervention is cognitive behavioral therapy, also known as CBT, which probably everyone's, or most people have heard of it. Maybe don't really know what it is, but I'm sure at some point or another they may have heard of CBT. And the idea behind CBT is basically looking at three main aspects of your life, and that's your thoughts, your feelings and your behaviors. And I like to look at this, if you want to imagine, like a triangle. So everyone, I'm sure at some point or another, has done the fire awareness training. You know you've got heat, oxygen and fuel keeps a fire going. I like to look at that as an issue in your brain. You know you've got your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They keep the fire going in the head.
Speaker 1:How do you get rid of the fire? You take away one of the elements, because what people don't take into consideration is that their thoughts, their feelings and their behaviors are all interlinked. If you have a negative, anxious thought, you know what? If I go here and someone calls me out and calls me stupid, it's obviously going to lead to a feeling of anxiety, maybe a bit of nervousness, maybe a bit of worry and stress. That then leads to a behavior and that behavior then becomes more so avoidance you know, I'm going to avoid any activity that causes a spike of anxiety. I'm going to avoid anything that makes me feel this way, because it's an uncomfortable feeling. People don't like it, so they avoid it. That then further reinforces those thoughts. There's no learning behavior there. You're just completely negating it, because then you're not learning from anything because you're avoiding it, reinforcing the thoughts, and the cycle keeps going. So we take it like the fire triangle the heat, fuel and oxygen. We take away either the thoughts, the feelings of the behaviors, the fire goes out. So that's kind of the the aim behind CBT as a course. Now there are a lot of self-help techniques that people can do themselves in their own house that don't require a professional, although I will advise, though, that if, of course, you're experiencing very severe anxiety or any sort of debilitating mental illness, to reach out to any professional, usually starting with your GP, obviously. We, you know, reach out to a specialized therapist and they can help sort with what you're doing With regards to anxiety. Different forms of anxiety require different interventions.
Speaker 1:Essentially, a lot of people, I'm sure, have heard the term general anxiety or generalized anxiety disorder. This is basically a worry about everything. You know everything and anything under the sun. It doesn't matter where you're going, doesn't matter what you're doing. It will cause a worry. Social anxiety, then another form, obviously more worry about what people are thinking about you in social situations, maybe more worry about what others are going to say about if you do something in public. So therefore, you may just avoid public spaces, or at least crowded spaces. All together Agrophobia, or agoraphobia, depending on how you want to pronounce it. Very similar to social, uh phobia, but it's more avoidance of situations that you can't feel you can easily escape from. So it could be things like supermarkets or, you know, even it could be a wide open field.
Speaker 2:I have a few of those supermarkets. I have a few of those supermarkets Just generally going in shopping, but I don't yes, I digress.
Speaker 1:I'll be honest, I'm exactly the same because, especially if you go to Tesco on a Sunday, yeah, you can clearly understand why someone might have agrophobia or even social phobia. Or you go to a shop during the Christmas rush, that's that. Anxiety is how people will feel on a general quiet day. You know, you can completely empathize with that.
Speaker 2:What top tips could you recommend, then, to both identify and manage anxiety? Ryan, what suggestions can you come up with?
Speaker 1:Yep. So with regards to identifying, obviously it's a lot easier with a professional. We look at things. We look at your thoughts, your feelings and your behaviors in what's called a formulation. So essentially what we do is we get all the information we can from yourself. We look at certain triggers, certain symptoms that you may be experiencing, and that kind of gives us a bit of an overview into what type of mental disorder, of course, is affecting yourself, but also then, specifically maybe what type of anxiety disorder, whether it's social phobia, a specific phobia, whether it's generalized anxiety disorder, health anxiety, ocd. We get all that information because a lot of the symptoms do overlap in a lot of disorders. A lot of the times, unfortunately, what happens is it's not a clear-cut answer, but the more information we delve from your issue, the more information we can kind of paste together. In this kind of network of information. It's almost like if you've ever seen those movies with a hub, of wire, threads and everything on a chalkboard. It feels like that at times where you're trying to connect the dots why are they doing this, why are they doing that? So that's kind of what we would do as professionals. Now, an individual themselves.
Speaker 1:It's very important to ask yourself why are you worrying about something? Now, anxiety is usually about worry. Of course, anxiety is more long-standing than worry. Worry is usually very episodic and brief. But it's very important for you to ask yourself why are you worrying about something? So I'm worried about leaving the iron on in the house, okay, but why?
Speaker 1:Very obvious, the house may burn down, but is that why you're worrying? Or you worried about what other people could say to you? Are you worried about how that looks from other people? Or you worried about yeah, exactly so. Is the worry that you're going to do something bad that's going to affect you, or is the worry that other people are going to look negatively on you, or is it an entirely separate worry? The type of worry that comes from that can kind of help indicate what anxiety disorder, if any, I mean. I'm not saying that people have to have an anxiety disorder to worry about these things, but obviously, if it's debilitating and severe, it seems more likely that it would be. So it is very important for us then to go okay, well, this seems like you're worrying about this, this, this, this and this. Why are you worrying about these things? Because I'm worried about what my neighbors might think of me. Okay, that seems more in line with social phobia than just a general worry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Hmm, If things have got not out of control. But you are worrying about all sorts of unnecessary things. You mentioned about the iron. Maybe have I locked the back door up before I go and watch the television in the evening. Silly things. You know just what I call silly anxiety triggers. Should you see somebody? Should you should afford first protocol, be your gp? Uh, then maybe come to somebody like yourself and what's, what's the process?
Speaker 1:so usually what people do, uh, is play. The easiest in today's day and age is to reach out to your gp. Understand, a lot of people maybe have private medical insurance for private health care and it could be reached out to them. Of course it's always important to ask yourself is this something that's just happens once in a blue moon, doesn't really affect me very much, doesn't impact my work, my relationships, is it even a problem then? In which case, if you can survive fine with it, or you have been so far, then that's grant. You know it is natural phenomenon to have anxiety. If it starts to impact and sort of integrate and dig its nails into every aspect of your life, that's when I suppose you should start to consider reaching out for for support. But everyone can always reach out for support anyway, even if it's not as debilitating as maybe maybe others.
Speaker 2:And just very quickly, right. Is it something that can be cured? If you have got anxiety, that's pretty bad. Is it something that maybe can be cured?
Speaker 1:yet. So with anxiety, as I mentioned before, it is not a phenomenon and when anyone comes in treating with anxiety, we make it very, very clear that the point of therapy is not to eradicate the anxiety, it's not to make your robot and not reactive to anything, because anxiety protection when you cross the road, it's anxiety that stops you and look left to right before you cross the road. What's very, very important is that you are very clear on understanding therapies about coping with the anxiety, giving you skills and techniques and abilities to be able to manage the anxiety appropriately and adaptively rather than, uh, just trying to live with it and, you know, obviously, experiencing these symptoms day by day. It's very, very important that we understand that it. There is definitely a fine line, definitive difference, between normal, everyday anxiety and debilitating anxiety. Everyone will always experience anxiety the rest of the life, but not that debilitating form.
Speaker 1:This you know coping techniques, and one of the very good ways of coping with anxiety I find, especially if you find yourself having lots of little small worries, is ask yourself is it hypothetical or is it a practical worry? What I mean by that is is it a worry? That is a what if worry? What if that happens? There's no evidence that's ever going to happen. There's uh. Even if it does happen, is it even within your ability to change anything about it? For instance, what if a comet hits the earth right now? Can I stop that? No, I'm not superman, so unfortunately, that that is just gonna happen. So me worrying about it is not going to have an effect on uh, that happened or not. Where it's practical maybe my car broke down this morning bit of a practical worry I can do something about it we've all been there, have we were?
Speaker 2:we thought and said to ourselves quietly in our mind why am I worrying about this? What is the problem? You know, just chill out, glenn, chill out, right. Why am I doing this? It's a fascinating subject and, uh, we've only just skim the surface, right?
Speaker 1:uh, if anybody wants more details about, maybe, what vita can do for them, I'm guessing head over to the website to get more information yes, of course, and head on the website, which I assume will be linked, I'm sure, somewhere in in this uh and, of course, uh, any sort of professional night. Be very careful when you google symptoms online. Of course, I'm sure that that is a little bit, but, uh, make sure if you are googling symptoms on the credit of website, you know even the nhs websites or any sort of uh government website that's linked to national health is very important, though, that we recognize that these difficulties can be debilitating for people. If it does become severe and debilitating and it isn't sort of something you can just shrug off, don't leave it, don't just pretend that it's not there.
Speaker 2:Uh, I remember, avoidance is a symptom of anxiety, even if that is avoiding, acknowledging the anxiety I guess I was talking to people, about talking to your family members, talking to friends about how you feeling is is important as well as that of course, being worried about something is a human experience.
Speaker 1:There will be things that you're worried about and things that other people aren't. I remember when I was a kid I was worried about getting on any and all roller coasters. That was a big fear of mine. Didn't like it at all. My family thought I was stupid and silly. What I was. Alone on that one? Yeah, but obviously not. Yeah, exactly so it is. It turns out that it was very common I I managed to get over my fear after a long, long time.
Speaker 1:To a lot of people, what may seem as a very stupid worry is a very uh, crucial, maybe part of of their everyday thinking, and it's important that, if someone does come to you with a worry, not to and I don't mean to yourself if someone else, like a family member, a friend, comes to you with a worry, it's making sure you don't neglect their worry, making sure you don't just go up at that stupid. You don't need to worry about that. Listen to them and understand why they're worrying about that thing. Maybe even just ask them the question well, why are you worrying about that? You know what is the? What is the reason for the behind the worry?
Speaker 2:everybody's anxiety, everybody's worry is important to them personally, isn't it so, absolutely. But good to talk about it, right? Great talk to you, fascinating conversation I say hopefully we can come back and uh do another more in depth look at anxiety I'd. I'd really like to know. I'm sure our viewers would as well right here on the veta health podcast series.
Speaker 1:But uh, right, luci, uh, senior psychological well-being practitioner on the corporate side at veta health group, thanks so much for joining us today yes, thank you, glenn, and I should say we only scratched the surface, but welcome to come back and talk about anything and more lovely. Okay, take care. Thank you, all the best.