Psych Bytes with CCS is a weekly podcast hosted by Student Life Counseling and Consultation Service. This show is dedicated to discussing a wide range of topics pertaining to mental health commonly experienced in the college setting. It is important to note that this podcast is not a substitute for therapy. All of the topics on this show, while discussed by professionals are strictly psycho educational, and meant to inform listeners on available resources, skills and support. Topics on this show can be sensitive in nature. And should you find yourself needing additional support or resources, please visit ccs.osu.edu or call us at 614-292-5766. With that in mind, enjoy the show. What is up everybody and welcome to Psych Bytes with CCS. My name is Josh and today we are joined by Sarah Peters, a senior staff therapist here also with Counseling and Consultation Service. Sarah, welcome.
Sarah Peters:Thank you. It's great to be here.
Josh Bailey:It is great to have you here. And today we are going to be talking about anxiety. Or maybe more specifically, how one beats anxiety.
Sarah Peters:Yeah, because that is the title of our CCS workshop. And I have good news and bad news on that.
Josh Bailey:What do we got?
Sarah Peters:Well, the bad news is, I don't know if we can necessarily 100% "beat" anxiety, but we can kind of join anxiety and get to sort of a sweet spot. So it's not quite so negatively impactful.
Josh Bailey:Okay, so I'm not gonna be able to beat it.
Sarah Peters:No.
Josh Bailey:So then what do I do, because I don't want to feel anxious.
Sarah Peters:I am very sorry. Unfortunately, anxiety is one of those universal experiences. Its a feeling that everybody is going to have at some point in their life, every human will experience anxiety. It is not usually pleasant. If you've had anxiety, which again, if you're human, you probably have, your experience might vary. But typically, folks will talk about like feeling tightness in their chest, or butterflies in their stomach. Feeling shaky. Sometimes folks will talk about overthinking or worrying about stuff that they can't control or just generally feeling like on edge or a sense of doom. And it's not a fun experience.
Josh Bailey:Not at all.
Sarah Peters:But it tells us to pay attention. Anxiety is sort of our body's response to change. And really just our way of dealing with things that potentially could be harmful. So like, think about what your life would look like if you literally never felt anxious.
Josh Bailey:I think that sounds heavenly.
Sarah Peters:But would you get anything done?
Josh Bailey:Well, why not? I wouldn't be crippled by anxiety, I'd be up and moving around, right?
Sarah Peters:Think about maybe some of the things that are anxiety provoking. So like I talked to a lot of students who mentioned like feeling very anxious about academic performance. And I'm a big fan of finding the sweet spot of anxiety. So if you didn't feel any anxiety about your academics, would you be motivated to study? Would you be motivated to attend class? Or would you just say, hey, you know, this isn't a big deal, and maybe go off and do something
Josh Bailey:I think I see where you're guiding me here. So when else instead.
my alarm goes off at 6:30 in the morning, massive crunch. That little tidbit of, "I have to get to work. If I don't get up now I'm going to be late." That's— that's the sweet spot: when I actually you know, sit up, put feet on the floor. That's what we're talking about.
Sarah Peters:Yeah. You say you're not so anxious that the thought of going to work keeps you paralyzed and staring at the ceiling. But you're not so, you know, laissez faire about it that you just hit the snooze button and roll over for another 10, 20, 40 minutes. So that's what we really like to talk about in
Josh Bailey:Right. that beating anxiety workshop is finding that sweet spot. So finding that level at which you're anxious enough that you are focusing on and attending to the things that are important to you and the things that you need to do, but not so anxious that again, you're paralyzed with it. And knowing that anxiety really thrives in uncertainty. We as human beings like to know things, we don't like unknowns. And so anytime we have a lot of unknowns or a lot of variables, we know that that anxiety tends to go up, and additionally, inaction or avoidance also really fuels anxiety. So it's kind of figuring out, "Okay, is there more information that I need?" Are there particular actions or steps that I can take to keep me in that sweet spot of anxiety so that I can continue to do what I need to do effectively? Okay, so the avoidance of makes it worse. So is it like a snowball effect? Like every time I duck it, it's going to roll back around?
Sarah Peters:Yep.
Josh Bailey:Gotcha.
Sarah Peters:And typically, the— the more you avoid it, you know, sometimes it's things like sort of practical consequences. If you think about I'm not going to do this week's homework. I'll wait till next week that then you have two weeks worth of homework to catch up on. And additionally, our brains tend to make things sound a lot scarier than they sometimes are in real life. So if you think of like your favorite horror movie, what's scarier? Like the fully realized and depicted scary monster? Or the monster that's like looming in the closet that you can't quite see?
Josh Bailey:Definitely the unknown, right? Like, I love horror films. So you're speaking my language. And I always find the movies where you don't know what the big bad is to be infinitely better than the one where we have Freddy Kruegar running around.
Sarah Peters:Yeah.
Josh Bailey:Okay.
Sarah Peters:Yeah, so just knowing that there are things that you can do, and again, you know, we know those general things like getting more information, taking action, reducing avoidance tends to be helpful for everyone. And there's a lot of different sort of small strategies that folks can put together to create kind of a tailored anxiety management package for themselves.
Josh Bailey:Before we get to that, could we maybe highlight how anxiety presents. Like, how does it show up? What might we see? Or what might we notice?
Sarah Peters:Again, it depends on the person. So like, for me, personally, I will get like a really big knot in my right shoulder. So I get a lot of muscle tension, I tend to get more headaches. And I get really irritable, like my fuse gets real short. Versus some folks might have primarily more cognitive, or kind of thought-associated symptoms. So it might be that constant chronic thought loop of "Hold on, let me overthink this and overthink this," and I never actually solve anything or get any new information. I just keep rolling the problem in my head over and over and over.
Josh Bailey:Right? Okay, so identifying the problem, and then re-identifying the problem, and then re-identifying it one more time, just to be sure that that is actually the problem.
Sarah Peters:You got it.
Josh Bailey:Okay. So let's talk about then how do I create this harmony, if you will, with my anxiety?
Sarah Peters:Well, my number one recommendation would be to come to our Beating Anxiety workshop. We host it at four o'clock on zoom on Thursday afternoons, I co facilitate that with Mary DeCenzo in the Fisher College of Business. And there's no registration required, you don't have to do any prep work, just go to our website, click the link, drop on in. We really kind of talk through specifically what folks anxiety looks like, what are things that they're currently doing to help, and then we literally come up with a whole list of different skills and resources and techniques that you can do that are going to be really personalized for your particular flavor of anxiety.
Josh Bailey:Okay, so not to give full spoilers for what to expect in the workshop, but could you give a bit of a sneak peek into maybe a couple of your favorite strategies or things that maybe one could do if they're just listening here and just want to get their toe wet?
Sarah Peters:Yes. I'd say number one, if you're going to be at our website already to look at the workshop options. We also have things like Dr. Patel's Emotional Fitness blog that I know he's got a couple on a couple of posts about anxiety. So if you're really somebody who loves to learn and loves to get cutting edge medical research, but in a very digestible format, that is a great option. We also have some links to some other resources on campus. So like the Student Wellness Center, offers meditation and then the Smart Lab they have some biofeedback which is super cool.
Josh Bailey:What's biofeedback?
Sarah Peters:Essentially, I think of it almost as like hacking your body. So getting in the moment feedback about what's going on with your heart rate and your respiration rate as you are engaging in different activities. Like if I think about this, I notice my heart rate kind of goes up versus if I think about this other thing, I noticed that comes down. If I set a specific way or breathe a specific way, it's kind of just like hitting the the pause button or turning the volume up. That's a better analogy— turning the volume up or down on your anxiety. Because it's still going to be there, but you can kind of attenuate it and make it a little bit less impactful using the biofeedback techniques.
Josh Bailey:Okay, very cool. So give me a skill, give me something that I can do that would effectively help me maybe turn the volume down on anxiety.
Sarah Peters:Okay, so here is my favorite. It's sort of a combination. Number one, identify maybe why you're anxious about this particular thing, because I find most of the time we're not anxious for no reason. It may be perhaps blown into a much bigger proportion than is helpful, but chances are, if you're anxious about something, it's because it's important to you. So identifying, like, what is that thing that that value or that really important goal? That's kind of the underlying reason why I'm anxious.
Josh Bailey:Okay?
Sarah Peters:And then identify what is the smallest step— doesn't matter how teeny tiny— the smallest step that you can take toward that thing that's important to you. Oh, and before you do all that, take a deep breath. I mean, like a deep breath, like the deepest breath you've taken all day.
Josh Bailey:Okay? So fill the lungs all the way up.
Sarah Peters:The lungs all the way up, expand into the belly. Nice, big breath, we're full. Blow it out slowly, like you're blowing out birthday candles.
Josh Bailey:Okay.
Sarah Peters:And then think about what's important to me? And what can I do to make progress toward that?
Josh Bailey:Okay, so the idea of identifying what the problem is. I like that. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed. It's like, everything is wrong, the world is on fire. I don't know what to do. Everywhere I look— if I watch the news, if I get on social media, if I just happen to be walking down the street, everything is terrible, horrible, awful, no good, very bad. How can I identify any one thing.
Sarah Peters:Write it down. We noticed that if thoughts are just rolling around in your head, they have a tendency to amplify and get bigger and kind of bounce off each other. If you write them down, it's visual. It's out of your head, it's on the page. And you can, from there, kind of take steps to see like, what do I need to do here? Also, this is going to be individual for each person, maybe when you're feeling really stressed out like that, you need to go for a walk and just get out in nature and forget about the fact that the world is on fire. Or maybe you're somebody that needs to talk to a friend or a loved one and get some reassurance or just some support. Maybe you're somebody that just needs a minute of distraction, so that you can kind of bring that, you know, anxiety temperature down, and then readdress when you're feeling a little bit calmer. So you know, watching a favorite show or movie, playing a game, just making sure that you're not doing that consistently over and over again, to the point that it becomes avoidance and procrastination, which then we know just fuels more anxiety.
Josh Bailey:Okay, so I can put the problem on the shelf, go play a video game for a little bit. But I need to be mindful about coming back and taking the thing off the shelf before it starts accumulating dust and I start stacking other things on top of it. And eventually the shelf breaks. And all the crap falls out on the floor. And I'm freaking out.
Sarah Peters:Exactly. That is a beautiful analogy. And I love it.
Josh Bailey:I try sometimes. Okay, so as we're kind of wrapping up here, are there any other things that you feel it'd be pertinent for us to know any skills, strategies, resources, anything that you would want to leave us with?
Sarah Peters:Oh, my gosh, there's so much. But that's literally why we have a 45 minute workshop on it.
Josh Bailey:Very true.
Sarah Peters:Yeah, I would say final thoughts just knowing that, again, anxiety is a normal human experience. If you think about what's working for you, if it's things that focus on thoughts on your body, on connecting with other people, and kind of piece things together, knowing that there's not going to be one sort of silver bullet that's going to cure it, but it's going to be a multi system approach.
Josh Bailey:Okay. Well, let's see how it goes. And you all can see how to do this and more by attending the workshop that again, meets every Thursday at what time?
Sarah Peters:Four o'clock.
Josh Bailey:Four o'clock, it is virtual. You can find that at www.ccs.osu.edu look under our"On demand workshops," you can find beating anxiety and more. Sarah, thank you very much for joining us today. I really appreciated it.
Sarah Peters:You are so welcome. This was by far the best part of my day.
Josh Bailey:Wonderful. And to our listeners: Thank you very much for joining us. Keep your eyes peeled for our next episode. Take care of yourselves and until next time. I'm Josh and this is Psych Bytes with CCS.