Ep 30 - How To Listen to Anxiety and Let Go

Whenever anyone asks me why they should listen to anxiety and tells me it only makes anxiety worse, I know they are listening to the thoughts and not the feeling. 

Since anxiety is a thinking problem about how your body feels, and since 99% of your thoughts aren't true, it makes sense that listening to them will make you feel worse.

In Episode 30, I'm sharing what that means to listen to anxiety, what it doesn’t mean, and  how to do it.

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Transcript

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I am a life coach for stressed out and anxious women living with anxiety, who want more out of life. I'm here to help you create a life you love to live, where anxiety Isn't holding you back, get ready for a light hearted approach to managing anxiety through actionable steps, a lot of truth talk and inspiration to take action so you walk away feeling confident in your ability to have more of what you want without anxiety holding you back. Let's do this. 

Welcome to Episode 30 Of the More than Anxiety Podcast. This episode is being recorded in March of 2023 and it is airing the first week of April while I am on spring break with my family and we're headed back to my home base beach area. I kind of grew up on these beaches during spring break with my grandparents and my cousins. and I haven't been there since COVID, so I'm super excited to be there. So wherever you are, or whenever you're listening to this episode, I hope you are feeling as good as I am expecting to be feeling when this episode actually releases. You get to choose to feel good. and no matter where you are or what you're doing, It's possible. So let's go ahead and talk about that. 
In this episode, I want to talk about listening to anxiety and what that means, what it doesn't mean, and answer some questions that I get about how you can do it. This is a big part of what I do when I help people who are dealing with anxious thoughts, or anxious feelings in their bodies, who are trying to find the truth when their thoughts are scary or negative, and trying to figure out what's going on in their bodies because anxiety feels so incredibly powerful, and believable. I was there, I remember. It's horrible. So let's start with the basics. I always start here because simply knowing what's going on in your body is powerful information is the one thing I remember learning that absolutely made a difference when I started my recovery and I think it will definitely help you as well. So let's remember that anxiety is just a feeling inside your body, the thoughts you have are symptoms of anxiety, but anxiety itself is just the feeling. There's no right or wrong way for you to feel anxious. So whatever you feel is normal for you. and that is perfectly great and also perfectly awful too, right? But that feeling might feel like tense muscles or headaches. It might feel like shaking internally or externally. It might make you nauseous or dizzy, you might have brain fog or trouble swallowing or even feel like you can't get a good breath of air; some people call that being air thirsty. All of those feelings in your body come from just adrenaline and cortisol and other chemicals that your body produces when your brain detects what it thinks is a danger to you. And the danger might be something that your brain thought was physical danger. Like you might be about to get hit by a bus. Or it could be emotional danger, like being embarrassed or thinking that somebody doesn't like you, or whatever you think is going on that might hurt you emotionally, or mentally no matter what it is. And remember that this is just a thought, it's not an actual danger. Your brain reacts in this fraction of a second so that you can fight off whatever's dangerous, like run away from it. Freeze and hide. or fawn; fawn just means to people please. Whatever you have to do to survive and if you get caught up in the feelings, your brain is going to come up with all the reasons in the world, why your body feels anxious and it's going to start problem solving by thinking. I never knew this stuff when I was growing up with disordered health anxiet.  I just thought however I felt was the truth, whatever I thought was the truth or that I was clairvoyant or something and it was all insane.  I felt incredibly alone. So I just want you guys to know that I'm telling you this because I get it. This is what happens every single time you start to feel anxious, which is why I always go back to what I would call this is just Anxious Body 101. 
Since the reaction is always the same, you can learn how to predict the reactions, which means you can unlearn the habits that you have now, because anxiety is just biology, right? We just said your brain perceives a threat your body fills it with chemicals. So your body feels anxious, and your brain tries to solve for it and even though that process is programmed into you, your reaction to those feelings are learned and they just become bad habits. It takes a little bit of time and it takes some practice but It's actually simple. I don't mean it's easy. It's not easy, but it is simple and I do this all the time myself, because anxiety is normal. And yes, I still feel anxious sometimes; I am human. And when I'm coaching people, I teach them how to do this the same way I do it myself. What you have to do is create habits that let the feeling be there without meaning something. You can do this. As you practice learning how your body reacts and how you feel, you can start listening to those anxious feelings, and this is the good stuff. Because listening to your anxiety, which just means listening to how your body actually feels, instead of trying to stop the feelings lets you figure out what you're actually worried about and what you're actually afraid of, it takes the heaviness or that feeling of impending doom that your brain tries to use to solve for how you feel, and chops it off. It just knocks it down to a manageable size that you can deal with. You don't have to have that feeling of everything being out of control and when nothing feels out of control, your brain doesn't have to find ways to fix it. 
So when I'm talking to people who are feeling anxious and I say you have to listen to your anxiety, the question I get so often is, "How am I supposed to do that when I'm not supposed to pay attention to it," and that's true. That's totally true. Nine times out of 10, the thoughts that you're having about how you feel are not true and you don't want to pay attention to those thoughts. The less energy you give them, the better. I sometimes struggle with how to best explain this process because the process is easy but when I put it into words, it starts to sound kind of woo so stick with me here. I'm going to give you some examples to help it make sense. The process just requires you to slow down and let yourself feel anxious then really to describe what you feel, how it feels and what comes to mind. This is why It's so important not to push anxiety away, because when you refuse to feel it, when you do everything you can to make your body not feel anxious, you're actually making it worse. Your body starts to hold on tighter to the feelings, and your brain thinks it's an actual threat, otherwise, you wouldn't be fighting it off so much. You start to think more and feel less. But anxiety is really a thinking problem about how you feel, so if you don't really understand what's going on inside your body, how it feels for you, and learn what your body is trying to tell you by listening to it, your brain can't ever solve for the suppose that problem that it's creating. Your brain will just keep thinking and it will keep coming up with all the reasons why you feel anxious that our total random thoughts, never the truth or hardly ever the truth, and you'll just keep feeling anxious because you're not actually getting to the root of the problem. When you can let yourself feel anxious without dreaming up scary situations about why your body feels the way it does and you start to listen to what it's saying, instead, you're getting to the real problem. And this is the key!
So if you asked me why you should actually listen to your anxiety, and you tell me it only makes it worse than I know that you're not listening to your body and I learned this the hard way. It took me a very long time to learn this. You don't have to wait or suffer as long as I did. I will help you do it, and much, much faster and more efficiently than I did. But I know that when you say when I listen to my anxiety, it makes it worse, that's because you're listening to your thoughts. You're listening to your brain and not to your body. This is a really easy habit to slip into. It happens because anxiety feels dangerous. and your thoughts feel true. You feel your thoughts. Does that make sense? You take everything that it is that your brain thinks up, and you feel it in your body and this is why the more you think the more you feel, and the more you think the more you feel. It's just the cycle. I've talked about this in the past. 
So to break this cycle of thinking and feeling you have a few options. None of them are bad. In fact, as you learn to let anxiety be in your body and not make it a problem, I'd actually recommend that you do anything that works right now. Anything that's not reinforcing the thoughts or making the feeling mean more than you feel anxious. If you're not sure what's reinforcing these thoughts, go back to Episode 27 and I share five things you're doing that are making your anxiety worse. Don't do those things, but if you are breathing, or meditating or doing something to make yourself feel better to bring that anxiety level down, keep it up, because anxiety is just a feeling. It's just the adrenaline and the cortisol. If you can calm your body down, then you can start to think clearly. and It's a really, really great start to know that you already have something that's helping you get to a place where you know that you're ready for the next step and this is the next step. 
Once you're out of fight or flight mode, then you can start listening and thinking clearer. Really, your brain can't think clearly when you're in fight or flight, it just doesn't work, so let's not try that. You have to get your nervous system in check first, then you can start listening. That's why I said, go ahead and do the things that are working now. Take the walk, do the meditating, calm your body and realize what's going on, then we start to think. I also said a minute ago, when somebody asks me about listening to anxiety, it can feel a little woo and this is what I mean by that. It's not a problem to hear your anxious thoughts, they're going to come through loud and clear, you hear them all the time, you're probably paying attention to your thoughts right now. But when you listen to anxiety, you're letting your body talk instead of your mind. So you drop into that feeling inside your body; that really crappy feeling that I'm sure you already know really, really well, but you're just taking the wrong way right now and I say that with love because I did it too. Wherever you feel it in your body, and however you feel it, this is where we start, and you feel your way to the truth. It's this process of knowing where anxiety is centered for you, which might be someplace entirely different than it is for someone else who's anxious. So I see a lot of times where someone says, "I don't know, when I'm anxious, my hands feel really tingly or my throat feels really tight." Then they ask "Does anyone else feel this too," and if they don't get back up, that someone else's anxiety is exactly like theirs, they think it makes it wrong and it doesn't. You just need to know how it feels in your body. So when I'm coaching someone, that's where we start. I'm going to ask, where do you feel it? What does it feel like? I keep saying this, because It's so incredibly important. One person can hold it in their shoulder and someone else can hold it in their chest. Your spot is your spot. That's all that matters. So we talk about what your anxious brain is saying and we kind of go into that area where you're going to pay attention to your brain, but kind of as an audience. Kind of from a distance, it's a more of a detached place.  It's almost like we're looking at it from the outside. You already know this anxiety story really well so it's easy for you to tell me what your anxious thoughts are when you're not letting the anxious thoughts run wild. and we can bring that feeling back to your body. And you probably just said, "No, thank you! I'm not going there! I do not want to bring that feeling back, I'm actually trying to make it go away." I know, I know I do. But you have to be willing to feel it if you want to be able to process through it. and we do it in a way where you're outside of it so it's safe. We stay right where we are in the present. It's actually perfect because you're not going through the roof anxious but It's just enough to know where it goes in your body and to start looking at it from a different angle. Normally, I'll have your put your hand on the spot, tell me all the ways that you feel it. For me, when I first did this, I started to notice the anxiety felt really sharp and hot. and I would describe it as a ball with these purple spikes. Another woman that I'm coaching right now describes it as Green Smoke with fingers that squeezed her stomach. She said like wispy smoke. And I worked with another woman who described it as a black space with eyes and the black space would change shapes. And this kind of stuff is really cool and really fun to me because as you describe it, when you're willing to feel it, you can start to see what it looks like. and it starts to lose a little bit of power when It's not such a mystery. It's amazing. Once you really can describe the feeling much easier to pay attention to the thoughts that come up for you. Your brain quiets down, and you don't try to stop the feeling because suddenly, It's not some mystery that you have to solve.  Your body's always talking to you and telling you what it needs. Feeling anxious is no different. But you have to stop pushing it away first. This is going to be the best way for me to explain how to listen to your anxiety. I'm going to give you some examples. 
So I had one clients a while back who had heart anxiety, and she was afraid she was going to have a heart attack or that she was actually having a heart attack. She didn't want to go places very far from a hospital or from someplace where she felt like she could get help if she needed it. By the end of our time together she discovered that she was taking on all this responsibility for some really scary stuff that happened in her past and also taking on the responsibility of her kids reaction to what happened. Except the kids didn't even know the entire situation! They didn't know what happened to her or with her at all. She was feeling guilty and responsible for things that happened. I remember asking her when we go back to that feeling when you're anxious, what are you hiding from them? And she was telling me about what had happened with her and I said, "Do your kids know all of that?" and she said, "No, they don't know any of it. Wait, they don't know!" She discovered that she was holding on to some big time self judgment, and guilt and responsibility. We coached through this and she was able to let those feelings go. When she found the truth, she stopped feeling the heart attack sensation, it just didn't become a problem anymore. 
So I'm working with another woman right now, who always had this story that she was both too much, and not enough at the exact same time and she is learning to let go of thinking that she has to be everything for everyone in her house. 24/7 by always doing more. And she knows that her kids are growing up and her relationship with her family is changing. She's kind of going into that empty nest, stage of life. And she's really learning that the anxiety she feels about slowing down and letting her husband and her kids navigate their lives, comes from how she feels about herself and believing she's enough without constant control. She's finding out this isn't true. She's learning these new ways to love herself without having to do everything and she's finally starting to see that all the things that she's doing for everyone else, and that she's trying to hold together is not what makes her amazing. It's actually her anxiety about not being enough. Her anxiety response is to do more. It's how she feels safe and she's done it her entire life. So listen to this, she told me last week that she finally feels like she's enough without having to be up and fighting all the time. This is huge! And she said that her husband said, "I don't know what this thing is that you've been invested in but in the past month, It's been better than the past five years!? And oh my gosh, I seriously kind of cried on our call a little bit. I got all teared up and a little mushy because I'm always so proud when someone I'm working with is willing to go into that feeling of anxiousness and to get what the real problem is. They're digging it out and yes, it can feel heavy, and it can feel uncomfortable, but the reason that my clients are feeling fantastic, and not experiencing anxiety the same way anymore, is because they're willing to go there. Both of these women are willing to think new thoughts and feel uncomfortable to find out what they were pushing away and they were willing to get dirty and find the truth about who they are, and what they needed to let go of in their lives. That is what listening to your anxiety is. It's the best way for me to describe it without getting to the exact questions that I asked people because the questions aren't the same for everybody I work with. It all depends on what somebody's anxiety story is and how it feels and what they're telling me. It's the questions that you start answering about yourself that gets you there. That's how we take it from woo to real. It's just that quiet, calm voice that has these really uncomfortable feelings attached to it that you might not want to ever feel again but the only way to the other side is to let yourself feel everything; the good, the bad and the ugly, just to find out why you're afraid to feel it again to begin with, what the feeling means and then time travel to the past or to the future. Because your brain always thinks that whatever it's thinking is happening right now -it's very real time. So you can travel, you can time travel anytime you want. Every time you focus on the past or the future, you're in the past or the future. That's why it makes you anxious, by the way,
We just go there. We let go of the feelings and the stories behind them. This is why coaching creates these incredibly powerful changes and I won't tell you it's quick or that it's one and done. It's not. You've probably been like this for a while, so it's going to take a minute, That's Okay. You do the work and you find the answers. And you have times where the answers are going to feel stuck and you just can't think of them. They don't want to come out because they've been tucked away for so long to try and keep you safe, but they're in there and the truth is, you are safe. Once you do this, you're going to feel less anxious, and it's not going to leave you stuck spinning in those scary thoughts. There's this space that opens up inside of you and it is mind blowing. It's this incredible release and this understanding that shuts off the thoughts. When that happens, you can feel anxious and let it go so that you get on with all the things that you want to do or that you need to do. 
How many times have you had to put off going out with friends or family because you were just too anxious or how many times if you spaced out in the middle of a conversation that was really important because you were focused on how your body felt? For me, I have patches of time in my life that I have very little recollection of. I only know that during that period of time or portion of time I was super anxious I just can't remember because it was I was so inside myself, feeling all of the scary stuff and trying to figure out why. You don't have to do that. You've been anxious long enough and you can just decide right now to do what it takes to stop feeling anxious all the time. It really is just a decision. 
You can talk with me about how I can help you. All you have to do is go to the show notes and click the link to schedule a call. Or you can go to megandevito.com/workwithme. This call is called a Consultation call. It's going to give you tons of insight into why you're actually anxious, what you can do about it, and you'll know whether coaching with me is the next best step or not. I know your brain might be freaking out a little bit right now and that's okay. that is totally normal. Go ahead and schedule the call, call me at the time you chose, and if I don't talk to you on the phone sooner, I will catch you back here next week. Take care.
 I hope you've enjoyed this episode of The more than anxiety podcast. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. and of course when you're ready to explore coaching with me, jump to the show notes. Click the link and schedule a time for us to talk. See you soon.