PSP 30 | Understanding & Moving through Anxiety - Women & Mental Health Seminar Break-Out

Anxiety has a way of weaving itself into our daily lives, often feeling unavoidable or even normal. But what if life could be different? In this breakout session, you'll discover practical tools and meaningful insights to understand and manage the anxiety you experience. Led by Brad Aldrich—a licensed professional therapist and co-founder of Aldrich Ministries—this session will equip you with hope, courage, and a clear path toward peace. 

This episode was taken from a break-out session at our Women & Mental Health Seminar. While the seminar was for women, the content applies to all people - both men and women!

In this episode:

• Understanding and navigating anxiety
• Emotional components and manifestations of anxiety
• Differentiating between worry, dread, and fear
• The role of the brain in anxiety (prefrontal cortex vs. amygdala)
• Strategies for recognizing and managing anxiety
• Grounding techniques to alleviate anxiety symptoms
• The importance of self-affirmation and present-moment awareness
• When to seek professional help for anxiety
• The impact of anxiety on relationships and personal narratives

To find out more about Reality Church in Lancaster, PA go to: 
www.pursuereality.org

Transcript

Automatically Transcribed - Please Forgive Any Errors

Host 00:00:01  Welcome to the Pursuit Reality podcast. In this special series, we're sharing breakout sessions from the Women in Mental Health seminar held here at Reality Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While the event was designed for women, these conversations, led by mental health professionals, offer valuable insight for everyone. Let's get started.

Brad Aldrich 00:00:19  Thank you so much. Wow, thank you so much. I'm so blessed to be here and really, really excited just to share with all of you. I hope this is a great day. I got to sit in the back in the last session or the intro session, which was Marisol did amazing, so I hope that was a blessing to all of you. And I'm really excited to be here and just kind of sharing a little bit about understanding and moving through anxiety. And so we're going to talk a little bit today about Exploring some tools and insights and navigating through this thing called anxiety. We're going to look at how it works. What's going on? How it shows up. What we can do about it and when we need to know, hey, we need to get more help in all of this as well.

Brad Aldrich 00:01:17  So that's a little bit of what what we're going to be talking about. As Marybeth said, I'm a Pennsylvania licensed marriage and family therapist. I've been practicing now for 25 years, which is crazy. and now, I do a full time, ministry. it's called Aldridge Ministries that we have, coaches and counselors that work with people honestly, around the world. almost all of our sessions are through online at this point, and we work with people in a whole variety of different things. some of you may be attending my wife's session later. She's right now upstairs rooms speaking about doing story work, which is some of the things that we we do as well. You'll hear a little bit about that today too. so we have four kiddos at home and from 21 down to 17. so we are actively shooing them out the door as much as we can. and love, all of our kiddos. They've got all amazing, wonderful things about them and all have challenges about them too. Right? So, so we're going to talk a little bit about this thing of what is anxiety.

Brad Aldrich 00:02:42  And some of you I'm guessing, are really, really familiar with what is anxiety. It has been a constant companion you never wanted for a really long time. And others of you may be here going, how do I support somebody with anxiety? How do I how do I walk alongside a partner or a friend who has that? And so we're going to talk a lot about some of the different things that are anxiety, because it is a huge category that we've just kind of lumped into this one term, and it can look lots of different ways and lots of different things. So I love this quote. Brené Brown wrote the book Atlas of the heart, where she goes through, I think it's like 75 different emotions and just tries to define them and then compare and contrast some of the emotions that are similar. I find it immensely helpful to go, okay, what is that emotion mean right thing. So I went there when I was working on this and said, okay, let's see what Bernie says about what is anxiety.

Brad Aldrich 00:03:51  And she went for the feeling side of it, at least. First. I thought this description was really good just for me. Anxiety feels like what I lovingly call the Willy Wonka shit tunnel. There's a frightening scene in the original Willy Wonka film. It's a quote. I'm allowed to say it. There's there's a frightening scene in the original Willy Wonka film that starts out as a sweet boat ride, going through a magical land of super size candy that turns into an escalating scene of fear of loss of control. As the boat enters the dark tunnel and the mood turns, the boat starts going faster and faster while the terrible images flash on the wall. She goes on and keeps describing it. At the end, she says, this is what anxiety feels like to me escalating loss of control, worst case scenario thinking and imagery and total uncertainty. I think that's a really good definition. Loss of control, worst case scenario thinking and total uncertainty. That is a lot of what ends up happening internally. In our anxiety that we end up getting this whole group of emotions going on at once, and it feels overwhelming and we don't know how to make it stop.

Brad Aldrich 00:05:12  We don't know how to get off the ride, and that's the challenge of this. So we have worry, this emotion that is often a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen in the future. Right. So we keep this chain going and we think of worry as a coping mechanism. Right. For any of you who have little ones who start inside out too. They did a really good job of talking about anxiety, of worry, of it being a coping mechanism to help joy, to avoid the bad things that might happen. And they did a really great job of explaining that. The reality is anxieties. Often worry is not really a good coping mechanism. It doesn't actually help us avoid those things, right? It sometimes can warn us, but we'll get into that. So it doesn't really do a great job of actually predicting what the future is going to be like. Then there's dread. Right. This this feeling of anticipating negative events that grows even more as that event comes closer.

Brad Aldrich 00:06:23  And so if you've ever had something that you're really looking forward to, but like as it comes closer, you're almost dreading it happening, even if it's like going out with a friend or doing this thing. There's there's this piece of like, I'm going to have to talk about this or I'm going to have to. And it's like that feeling that just starts bubbling up and you don't even understand why. It just keeps growing. That's that dread. Anxiety. 80. Fear is a piece of anxiety, right? It is a very negative, short, lasting, high emotion about a threat, right? That we get that fear response and our bodies can feel fear very tangibly. I love kind of throwing in here anger. Anger is a very common blanket expression of the anxiety of all the rest of those emotions that we're feeling internally that what other people might see is us getting angry, but we're not actually angry. We're actually worried and dreading and fearing and anxious and all of those things. And so it's this, this eruption of all of that as coming out.

Brad Aldrich 00:07:37  So anxiety is both a state and a trait. And so that's where we're where some of this big blanket ends up happening. Why we use this big old term of anxiety, but there's so much within it. So it is a state, a temporary experience around a situation. I am anxious about doing x, y, z right. I'm anxious about having this happen or go to this place or whatever that is. And we get all of those feelings built up around that experience. It can also be a trait that it is part of our personality that impacts how we experience life. It is the lenses that we end up looking through. A lot of life on whether we recognize it or not. I've worn glasses since I was like 18, 19. And and the reality is, I don't most of the time even recognize that I'm looking through these lenses. But when I, you know, start looking for something and I don't have them on. I can't see a darn thing. Right? It corrects my vision enough that I can see.

Brad Aldrich 00:08:52  Well, that's what anxiety has a trait often does. It sits in front of our face and just filters all of our vision for life. And everything goes through this filter of worry and fear and dread and overwhelm. And it just, it builds all of that. So I like this kind of saying anxiety is a bad GPS system that's constantly rerouting us to the worst case scenarios, right? It's constantly going, oh wait, that that could happen. Oh wait, that could happen. And it constantly is getting that thing. But here's one of the challenges. We cannot live without anxiety. I would love to say we can get rid of it. But the reality is, all of us would have probably gotten run over in traffic if we didn't have anxiety. All of us would have had experiences where we didn't know what to do without anxiety. So there is this challenge that anxiety is a natural, God given response to perceived threats. It is something that is in us for a reason, and we do have to start there to recognize what it is.

Brad Aldrich 00:10:24  Because when, you know, David was a little boy and we see, you know, verses about him out in the pastures watching his sheep, this is what he saw. And yes, he was playing with his, you know, slingshot and learning those things that later helped him with David and Goliath. But what you don't recognize is that sitting there in that thing are two lines that are about to eat you. But anxiety would look at that picture and go, oh, wait, I've got to be careful here. That's what anxiety is there for. It is there to perceive threats and to help us make logical decisions about what do we need to do, because those threats are there. The problem is, so many of us sometimes don't see the real lions, because we're worried about all of the things that are potential threats, even when they aren't potential threats, that our anxiety knob has drawn up to 11, rather than just being there to help us with these natural things. But this is why it's there.

Brad Aldrich 00:11:33  It is there to protect you. It is there as a part of who we are to act a service. And this is going to be an important part as we try to figure out how do we bring it back to where it's supposed to go, because anxiety doesn't go to zero. Just it's not going to it's not designed to we can't get it to zero. We don't want it to get to zero, because then we're then not aware of what it is actually supposed to do. So it's one of those things just to keep in mind, there are constant our anxiety is constantly going. We need to recognize when the smoke detector is telling us, oh, there's a problem. And when the smoke detector is telling us somebody's burnt toast, right. And if if it's constantly going off, I don't know if any of you have any of those neighbors that have a car alarm that seems to go off anytime the wind blows, right? Oh, pretty soon all that that teaches you is like, oh, I guess the wind is blowing again.

Brad Aldrich 00:12:37  That is the problem with too much anxiety. It's actually not alerting you to when the car alarm is going off because somebody is trying to get in the car, right? We can't tell the difference between those two things. One is just ringing all the time. And that's our challenge, is how do we get to a place where we start to recognize that we do need some times, a need to have anxiety, but it is often way too excessive. It is so persistent that it's impacting our life that it gets so high that we need to figure out ways to take back our life. And to do that, we need to actually understand what's going on so anxiety can become persistent and excessive. And when it's excessive worry that significantly interferes with everyday life, it's disproportionate to the situation, right? We we are in a situation, we go. I don't need to feel this right now. I don't need to have that warning sign going off, but we don't know how to make it stop. Anxiety can be debilitating.

Brad Aldrich 00:13:49  It can certainly get to a place where it freezes us, stops us. We end up having panic attacks or any of those kind of things. That is a situation that's absolutely debilitating, and it can very easily cause us to avoid situations where we don't know how to manage that anxiety, and all of a sudden our world starts getting smaller and smaller because we don't want to do the things that might cause the anxiety. Now the anxiety is making decisions rather you than making decisions, right? And that's the consequence of anxiety that's out of control, is it starts to shrink us. We don't want to be shrunk. And nobody has this level of anxiety and goes, yay, I want that! Like, everyone feels this level of anxiety and goes. How do I get rid of make this stop? How do I get rid of this? And there are ways, but we need to understand what's happening in this anxiety. So I'm going to take a minute. Just a minute to give you a little bit about your brain.

Brad Aldrich 00:15:01  This is your brain. Welcome to your brain. So your brain is functioning in this way when when you are thinking, you're thinking part of your brain, your decision making part of your brain, your rational part of your brain is called the prefrontal cortex. It is the last part of your brain to develop. Ladies. Yours developed, finished developing by around 21. Most of us guys, we didn't get there until 2526. You can take that for what you want. so that is the part that is decision making, logical processing, moving through and going. This is what I'm going to choose and get to the end of this pattern or this this situation. Down deeper in your brain is the amygdala. The amygdala is the area of your brain that is the fight flight, freeze response, right? It is the part of your brain that is there to protect you. We need it when you. I hope nobody had this situation today, but if you were driving today and somebody pulled out in front of you, there is no part of your brain that went, oh, I need to emergency steer right now.

Brad Aldrich 00:16:20  Like that's how your that's how your prefrontal cortex works. It thinks about a problem. It comes up with solution. It executes the problem. Your amygdala goes whoops I got to do. And then you think about it afterwards. Right. That's how we react. And then go. Oh, wow. Thoughts? It's because of that lower part of our brain that is functioning to help us survive. So I'm going to show you a couple of pictures. This is oops. this is what's called a spec scan that is showing the activity of your brain. And it's showing how your brain is functioning and processing at the time. A healthy brain scan. You will see all of this activity in the prefrontal cortex that there is decision making there is that an anxiety brain? There is still decision making here. It's not like there your decision making completely goes offline. But there's definitely holes. And the amygdala is firing like crazy. It's Active overactive in this place of oh my gosh, what's going to happen next? Do I need to survive? How do I need to take care of myself? What do I need to do? That part of your brain is absolutely taking over and we are out of our window of tolerance in anxiety, which means your prefrontal cortex is not working very well right now.

Brad Aldrich 00:17:55  Your body is taking over to help you survive. We are so blessed that that is how God designed our brain. But when it's firing, when we don't need it to, we need to figure out how to take it back part. And I do mean this. Only part of the solution is to figure out how to get your prefrontal cortex back online. That is going to be part of what we talk about today. Right. And and what I want, like you, I'm guessing all of you have read the books on anxiety, all of you have done some of the YouTube videos, and they do a lot of teaching about some of the. Some of the things that we're going to talk about, about getting your prefrontal cortex online and then just period, stop. That's that's the end of the story. Some of those techniques are incredibly important to get us to think again, but then we need to use that thinking to figure out what are we going to do about the anxiety, because it doesn't make it go away.

Brad Aldrich 00:18:55  Right. And if all we do is the first level stuff, then we go, okay, I'm done, I'm going to go about my day. And then the anxiety goes, whoop, I'm coming with you. And it jumps right back in. And then we're back in that same cycle again because our thoughts start to trigger the anxiety again. And now we're back there. And some of you have probably felt that a million times. You've had therapists, you've had everyone kind of going, okay, let's do your breathing techniques and that and that's it. And that's fine. And we're going to talk about some of those because they are really important. But we can't stop there. They're right. Because all we're doing is bringing your brain back online so that then we can start thinking different, and so that we can start using that to help us to get through this in a different way. All right. I'm just checking my time here. Okay. So I'm going to tell you where we're going. And then we're going to backtrack on what are those things that we can do to get our, our thinking back online.

Brad Aldrich 00:20:00  This is the old cycle of anxiety. Appointment anxiety shows up uninvited. Usually it didn't make an appointment. It's like I'm just here. And what we try to do, most of us, right, try to at first go avoid it. No, I'm not even going to think about that. No it's fine. Right. And it's just okay, I'm going to try and block it out, but it doesn't go anywhere, right? And it gets stuck and we start to worry. We go, oh, what does this mean? What could this mean? I don't know if I need to worry about that. Oh. All right. yeah. There you go. Right. Yep. See, then we try to get rid of the negative thinking we like. Oh, that's probably not going to happen. No, no, I know that's probably not going to happen. And we just try and like. No, I know, I know, that's just my anxiety getting ahead of me. I don't need to worry about that.

Brad Aldrich 00:20:56  Right. And we just try to make it stop by just focusing on the negative things that he probably doesn't really like me. No, no, I know he does. I know no, but but this happens. So I'm going to try. Like we get stuck in this cycle where the more we try to throw away the anxiety, the more it comes back. And then we find ourselves stuck in this pattern that is like a train going that we don't really have any control over. It is going and we don't know how to stop it. And it's just going and it's going and our mind starts racing faster and faster and faster. And that can lead to us going, well, fine. I'm not going to do that. It can come out in that anger stuff. It can get to a place where we stop doing something. We're not going to do that so that we avoid this. It can lead to a panic attack. Right. So this is what our cycle often looks like in terms of anxiety.

Brad Aldrich 00:21:52  And so many of you are nodding. You're like, yeah, I already know this part. You've been here. Okay. So you're looking for the next part. Okay. Here is the new approach. Now mind you, we have to get your prefrontal cortex back online before any of this works. Right. So we're going to come back to that. But this is the new approach that we're going to get to once your prefrontal cortex is working is one we identify I'm feeling anxious right now. Oh man okay I can feel that. I can feel that in my stomach. I can feel that in my body. I can feel that. Where? What's it feeling like? I can feel I'm anxious now. Sometimes identifying it is super helpful. I'm going to go back to Brene Brown, who speaks all over the place in front of 20,000 people. She deals with anxiety all the time. She says one of the things that she has to do is recognize that her body's response to excitement and her body's response to anxiety is very similar.

Brad Aldrich 00:22:57  So sometimes just going, I'm feeling anxious. No, actually, I'm really excited about doing this. Helps to go, no, I'm actually not feeling anxious. I'm really just I'm pumped up. I'm ready. I'm, you know, and shifting that of what is it really. So I just want to throw that out like this first step of recognizing I'm feeling anxious. Take some time because. Right. That old approaches, we avoid it. No, no, I'm not feeling that. No, I'm trying to forget that. I'm just trying to block it out. We've done that for so long that stopping and going. Okay. I'm actually feeling anxious right now. Most of the time we haven't done that until like, way, way down here when somebody else finds us, like, what's going on? Right. Somebody who loves you finally sees something and goes, what are you doing? And then you might get to. I'm feeling anxious. So this is way back at the top of like, oh, I've got these butterflies in my stomach.

Brad Aldrich 00:23:58  Where's that coming from? Oh, my thoughts are starting to move faster. What is that. That's anxious okay. So we're going to try and identify it so much earlier. Here's the here's the trick. In the old one we start to worry and we start to try to get rid of the negative things that anxiety is feeding us. That might happen. That might happen. No no no no, I'm sure it won't happen. No, I'm sure it won't happen. And we fight against all these negative things that come. Here's the problem. Anxiety is always. Okay, let me back up that up. Almost always rooted in a little bit of truth. There is a seed of truth that is based in this anxious thought. And we have to start there. Right. And to be an example, I always kind of go to the some of the phobia anxieties because there's a little bit easier to see, but this works with any type of that. So. I hope this doesn't I'm not going to show any pictures if this is you, don't worry.

Brad Aldrich 00:25:16  there are people who have phobias about going over bridges Because their mind starts to tell them that bridge might fall down, right? Their mind starts to go. I don't care how many cars are going down, I know bridges fall. It's going to fall. And that can actually trap people to go. I can't go over that bridge, right? That's how strong that anxiety can get. It goes through this place of this negative thing. It doesn't matter how many times they look at the traffic going over and go, but see, they're fine. It doesn't matter because there's this piece of truth that they've seen videos of bridges falling down. It does happen. We just had one in Baltimore that got played on the news over and over and over again, and some people died. So there was this reality, this much truth that, yes, bridges do sometimes fall down. What we actually need to do is go, okay, what is the truth that this anxiety is telling me? Bridges do sometimes fall down.

Brad Aldrich 00:26:21  That's where we start. That's what we deal with, and that's what we end up trying to speak to. Then we can pick out the lies. If I step foot on this, it's going to fall down. We know that it has. We can dismiss that. That's not the truth. We know they do fall sometimes. You know, we can start to dismiss some of the lies because we're holding on to this truth for just a minute, and then we go, how do I want to deal with this truth that sometimes bridges fall down? That is true. So what am I going to do about that? Do I? Am I able to go? You know what? The likelihood of it happening right now is minimal. I don't see any boats coming. Like, there are things that we can do if we're dealing with that little bit of grain of truth that help us to make decisions about the real of the anxiety, Ity, and we start to break through some of the cloud of all of the other negative things.

Brad Aldrich 00:27:23  So this can work in so many other anxious places that if we start to have relationship anxiety, if we start to have, I have to go do something with somebody. I just can't can't figure out what it is. If I start to have worrying thoughts that are just disconnected from anything, it's just there. We can start to go. What's actually true here? What do I need to talk to? In talking to and holding on to that truth statement and start to plan for that and just that, right. Those other negative statements will keep creeping in, and we're going to try to dismiss them of like, okay, by holding on to what's true. And so what we're doing is actually flipping what our instinct is when it comes to anxiety, our instinct is we really start to work with all the wild things and try to get rid of them. And it's the true statement that just keeps keeps us hooked. And it keeps that train going. Because every time we get rid of one of the wild statements that anxiety speaks to us, it's.

Brad Aldrich 00:28:33  But but this truth keeps us hooked back. So we actually don't focus a whole lot on the lies. I mean, honestly, I have people often write out, okay, I'm feeling anxious, let's write out what is the truth about my anxiety. We can usually, once we work on it, put it in a sentence or two. I am worried about doing this event. I am worried about going here. I am worried that this person thinks this. I am like I am anxious that this might happen. I'm like, we can put it in a sentence or two of what's actually true about the anxiety. I'm worried about going to this new place. What will people think of me? Yes, there's a lot to worry there. I get that. So we start, we write out what is true. And then if you need to, you can write out what are the lies that that worry is telling you. What does that lie is that the anxiety is telling you. What are the things that you're worried could happen? And look, once you get good at this, you know, some of them are ridiculous.

Brad Aldrich 00:29:41  Anxiety teaches us a whole bunch of junk that is not true. And when we see it sometimes in black and white, we can go, I know it's not going to be that bad. I know I'm not going to walk into a room and strangers and everyone's going to turn and laugh at me. I know that's not going to happen. Anxiety tells me it's going to, but once we see it, we can then start to go, okay, I don't need to wrestle with that and release it. And then we start to make a plan of, okay, this is that true Statement. What do I need to do about that truth? Okay. Let's see if there's anything I didn't say yet. Okay. We're going to pair that with what are grounding techniques. And some of you, I hope many of you have heard about the idea of grounding techniques before. So grounding is what I was talking about before of how do we get our prefrontal cortex back online. Everything that I just talked about is happening up here.

Brad Aldrich 00:30:47  It is thinking through the anxiety. We can't do that while the train is going a million miles an hour and our amygdala is screaming, you're going to die, right? We can't. So we have to start here to bring our anxiety from a nine to an eight, maybe a seven, and then we can start thinking. And if it creeps back up to eight, then we got to go back here. Get it back to a seven and start thinking. Write it. These are designed to take us a step towards a little bit more peacefulness. Right. Our body's response of taking us out of that window of tolerance to fight flight, freeze or fawn is to keep us safe. We do those things very quickly to keep us safe. Grounding techniques start to communicate back to our body. I am safe so you can turn that off and go back to thinking that's the goal is just to communicate back to your body. My prefrontal cortex is offline. I need it to go back online. Please let's do this and let's work through just finding a little bit of peace.

Brad Aldrich 00:32:06  Just start thinking again. Right. So this is a piece. And I'm going to go through four different ways that you can do that. These are four pretty quick grounding techniques that you can use. And they're a little bit different each one. And so you take any of them. Take all of them. Find the one that works for you that you like the most. Right. Because all of them are doing the same thing of communicating to your brain. So the first one is called just 54321. It is a sensory grounding technique. It is pulling you into the moment. Remember the goal is I am safe. That's the goal we have to communicate to our body I am safe. So in this moment we need to figure out how that safety happens. So. 54321 is find five things you can see. This is pulling you back into the moment. Four things that you can touch. I feel my jeans. I can feel my chair. I can feel my feet on this floor. I can feel the air moving.

Brad Aldrich 00:33:17  Three things you can hear. Take a second. I can hear my breathing. I can hear that thing over there working. I can hear like, you know, it's like, what is my sensing actually saying two things that you can smell, and that can be also a very grounding thing. Smells are very connected to memory. This may be just a side note. This may be one of those things that you go, oh, right. My grandmother's perfume may have started some of this anxiety. Right. Like you may recognize like some smells that get very connected to memory. Smell and memory are are linked in our brain the way God designed it. So it's always a good thing to to double check on. And one things you can taste like and all this is, is to slow your body down. Right. Okay. So 54321. Great grounding method. box breathing is another one that I like. Because. breathing is one of the mechanisms that is both autonomic. In our body produced. It happens automatically.

Brad Aldrich 00:34:46  We don't have to think about breathing, but we can very easily think about breathing and take it over. So our brain has both of those processes going on. All of the things your amygdala is doing are the automatic processes, including breathing and heart rate and all of those things. So it's sending this message to the rest of your body, okay, we have to increase our respiration. We have to slow down our digestion. We have to, you know, get our heart rate up. We have to be ready to fight or flight by doing some box breathing. By by controlling your breathing, you are sending a message back to your brain to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system, which that's a big term that says it's the part of your nervous system that slows things down. Right? And you are sending a message back to your brain, okay, it's time to turn that that system back on. So breathing is a powerful way to kind of come back into into your body. So Brock's breathing is one.

Brad Aldrich 00:35:50  I always start this by saying that most people writing this say four seconds, if I did four seconds, I'd hyperventilate. For me, it's more like 5 or 6. You find the the rate that makes sense for you. in what your breathing is, but it is slowing and controlling your breathing. You inhale for four seconds. You hold that breath for four seconds, you exhale for four seconds, you hold that for four seconds, and you repeat and do that for just a minute. Two minutes you will be communicating to your brain, I'm safe because you can't do those things while you're running away from danger. You can't do that while you're in a place that you're not safe, right? So you are really taking over and communicating your body. I'm safe now. I need to start thinking again. Okay, so again, another very, very simple one. And this might be one that you start with. If things get really heightened in your anxiety, it is sitting square. Put your feet on the floor and pay attention to your body.

Brad Aldrich 00:37:06  Feel where you're sitting, where you're standing. Feel your body. And just say out loud to yourself, I'm safe. Let your body hear your voice say I'm safe. It's powerful. And it starts the process of just centering yourself and go. I'm here. I'm in a safe place. I'm safe. And I know that feels weird to say it to yourself, but it is much more powerful to say it out loud than to just think it and to hear your body. Hear, hear your voice say, that does bring some of that. Okay. I can start to relax just a little bit. Okay. this this is one I modified because of my wife. Because she would kill me if I didn't. I usually if you see this written, you'll see this as the IceCube trick. I kind of always will say this is the hot or cold trick you do. You. If I tell my wife to go get an ice cube, she would kill me. that just would not work for her.

Brad Aldrich 00:38:26  But there is a place that the external sensory of something hot or cold. So a hot water, a cup of tea or an ice cube, or taking a hot shower or something like that, that external sensory is again communicating to your body. I'm here, I'm safe. I can feel I can do this. So really with the ice cube technique, they say, get an ice cube and rub it on your inside of your wrist. It is actually activating again some of your your nerves that are right there that activate some of your parasympathetic nervous system. So like there is some science behind the cold, but grab a hot cup of tea. It's fun. It is. It is about grounding and going I'm safe right now. Right. And so temperature does act to activate that parasympathetic nervous system and helps to lower our stress response. So that is another one. So if anyone wants to take a picture of all four go for it if you haven't already. Okay. So going back here grounding does not remove all of the anxiety.

Brad Aldrich 00:39:48  It can't be even the goal is just to get rid of it all. I wish it was, but those anxious thoughts are there because they're trying to tell you something's going on. So don't expect the magic of grounding. Yes, you should feel better. But I have had clients tell me, man, I did that box breathing and I felt good for about two minutes. I'm like, fabulous. That's two minutes to start thinking. That's it. Right. It is this I'm going to bring my body down, and then I'm going to start to do something different with my thinking, to start a process of going through this. So again, it goes through the truth. What is this anxiety really telling me? Go through the lies. What's going on? And I do have people journal this to start to get used to it. Eventually you can get to a place of doing this in your head, but it does help to have it. There's even a slowing down process of making yourself writing it out, right? It's slowing the train down because you got to listen a little bit just to get it there.

Brad Aldrich 00:41:00  So write it out. What's what's true about this anxiety? Okay. What are the lies? And yes, as you're learning this, separating those two might be hard for a little while. Right. Anxiety feeds us lots of lies, but there is that little piece, right? And if you get stuck trying to figure out which ones which when you get when you throw out a lie, what comes back is the. But this. That's the truth. Usually, right? The lie can disappear. Yes. I know that bridge actually isn't going to fall. I know they probably built it really well. And look, all these I can, you know. But bridges fall, right? Like it's the like. That's what hooks it back into the loop and you just keep going again. So it may be a place to start doing that. one of the things that you can also add to this is a piece of what the lies are doing into your negative thinking. So often those lies will start saying negative things about you.

Brad Aldrich 00:42:12  So again, if I go to a social situation, I have to go to this conference today and everyone's going to see me and everyone's going to know that I'm walking into a mental health conference and come on, all of you probably had those thoughts, you know, somewhere in there. And so there's these things and there are some negative thoughts that that jump up and even negative self-talk of that means I'm this or I'm not good enough, or my things are too much for people to deal with, or I'm like, it gets this negative script that just kind of comes alongside that anxiety and the anxious thoughts still going. And now there's this negative script going If we can start to recognize those negative thoughts, they are often connected to trauma wounds that we've experienced somewhere along the way. Somebody somehow told you your stuff is too much for us to deal with. We need to deal with this over here. So you just deal with that on your own. And that then became a negative self belief that when I've got a lot of things to deal with and we try and think about getting some help.

Brad Aldrich 00:43:21  No, no, no, my stuff's too much. I have to deal with it on my own. Because of that, trauma response keeps us stuck as well, right? So sometimes we can recognize these negative thoughts that come up alongside the anxious thoughts. And we honestly need to deal with both, because those negative thoughts often keep us isolated and trapped and stuck in that. And then last but not least. like, okay, how am I going to deal with the one piece of truth about the anxiety? And this is where I come back to what we started with. Anxiety is here to keep me safe. Is that thought keeping me safe, really? Or is it keeping me stuck? Is it going to be hard? Maybe. Do I need to ask a friend to help me? Maybe. Right. Like. But if we are dealing with just that little piece of truth, there is more that we can do to plan how to deal with that. And that's one of those things to keep working on.

Brad Aldrich 00:44:23  Okay, so when is anxiety more than, quote, normal anxiety or if you will, when should I get some help? When do I get some help in working through this? And what does what does that look like. So, when it is constant and overwhelming, if you are like, oh, that glasses metaphor made a whole lot of sense to me. I think I see all of life through all of everything, all my interactions, through this kind of worry. It might be time to start talking to like, how do I how do I adjust some of those lenses? How do I start to bring it down to a level that it's not constantly going on? If you feel like anxiety is keeping you from something in your life, if it's if anxiety starts to go, I can't do X because of this anxiety, it's something to start looking at and start thinking about when is that happening and how much is that happening. And that could be a place to talk to somebody of, hey, I really want to do these things.

Brad Aldrich 00:45:32  I want to have a better relationship with my kids, but I get too anxious about X or whatever it is that your feeling is there. we didn't talk a lot about the physical symptoms of anxiety, but there are many, and certainly the more we get into what are considered panic attacks, there are more actual real physical symptoms. If those are happening frequently, then it is someone it's helpful to talk to somebody about. How do we deal with some of that on a regular basis in there? and right, the first symptom of our old way of doing it is trying to avoid this anxiety. And sometimes that avoidance means, well, I'm not going to do that. Right. If you find yourself opting out of life because anxiety is saying, I can't, it's time to talk to somebody about that. We don't want you to opt out of life. Like there's so much that we can do to help. And then last but not least, no two more panic attacks. So, a panic attack is a short, brief period of very intense physical symptom anxiety, where your heart rate is actually elevated, where your respirations are elevated, where it feels like the world is crashing down.

Brad Aldrich 00:46:53  It it is a real, actual thing. If those are happening on any regularity, they're going to become all of the rest of those things that we just talked about. And I think it's a time that, yes, we need to figure out how to get some help. It is not unusual. Right. So don't hear that any of those are unusual things. The statistics on this. It is one third of all adults will be affected by a diagnosable anxiety disorder at some time in their lifetime. Less than half will actually get help. Don't do that. This is not something that needs to be debilitating. This is something that with some help, you can figure out how to walk through in a different way. Now, there is one other piece of anxiety that I wanted to read because it's a little different. I wanted to read a story and this goes to that if blank, then blank thinking this is a story that was written, a part of a story. I only took a couple paragraphs of this story, by a client of mine.

Brad Aldrich 00:48:11  And this guy does something. We do something called story work. A lot of times that we help to understand trauma through our our stories. But you'll get why I'm reading this to you. Okay. This story is called Owen. Owen and I were introduced to each other at a rate at around age 11. I don't remember exactly where I met him, but I know that we quickly became inseparable. He came with me to everywhere, from school to church, even to family functions. Sometimes his presence was less noticeable, but he truly never left my side. On this specific day, I woke up to my alarm going off. It was time to get ready for school. However, I couldn't get out of bed quite yet. You see, Owen was very specific and made sure that I followed his rules. The clock didn't have a two in any position, so I wasn't allowed to leave bed yet. Stupid me. I thought, staring at the 635 alarm. I shouldn't have pressed snooze. Now I'm going to have to wait another seven minutes.

Brad Aldrich 00:49:19  I tried to reason with Owen telling him that I'll certainly be late for school. I'll have to skip breakfast just to make it to the bus. But Owen replied in one of his usual ways. Are you serious? Do you want to die today? Certainly. You wouldn't want to get out of this bed without a two. A tree will certainly fall on you the second you leave the house. I knew he was right. Resigned to lying in my bed, staring at the clock. Waiting for an opportunity to leap out of the bed and run to get changed. This was one of Owen's many rules. He cared about how I put on my clothes, the amount of milk in my cereal. Even the way I chose to leave my door. I wish I wasn't so anal about everything. As the. As the day progressed at school, I tried to stay focused and get my work done, however. Owen was being very loud today. I had a Spanish class and Owen reminded me that I wasn't allowed to answer certain questions because of their starting number.

Brad Aldrich 00:50:22  I tried to write down an answer anyway because I cared about my grades, but Owen reminded me that answering that particular question would give my mom cancer is 5% of the grade on this paper worth your mom's life? He whispered in my ear Yea, sadly, I knew he was right. I frantically erased the test answer, hoping the damage wasn't already done. Owen and I still talk fairly regularly. In fact, Owen is actually pretty popular guy. Today he talks to roughly 2.3% of Americans every day. You may have heard about him in recent years. However, most people know him only don't know him on a first name basis. They only know his full name, Owen Carter Davis, or OCD for short. So, OCD is a very specific type of anxiety that I thought reading that. And obviously he goes into a lot of other personal things that I took out of that story was a hugely powerful descriptor of what OCD is. it is that kind of if, if, then, then statements that end up happening and that is a specific type of anxiety that can really have a lot of help done, but need some external help in order to get through.

Brad Aldrich 00:51:44  Okay. a couple of last things here. So ways of getting help, the different types of of help that are out there and available. there is cognitive behavioral therapy. Most of the things that I'm talking about today fall in this line of cognitive behavioral therapy, addressing the negative thoughts. story work coaching helps to think through some of those negative connections and understanding how our story like a win story here, how that is impacting our life and really does do a lot to separate out, where some of the trauma and negative things in our story have impact us. there is a lot of times relational work that needs done because anxiety is not just individual. There are things that are happening in the individual that is happening that is impacting the relationship. And there are things that are happening in the relationship that are impacting the individual. So it goes together and we need to look at what those are. And there are medical interventions as well. And we need to be aware and sometimes address how our brain is processing things.

Brad Aldrich 00:53:01  A couple of resources that I threw out there for you. A couple of really good ones. Bernie Brown's Atlas of the heart is really great. doctor Daniel Almond is the one who did those, Pet scans or spec scans of your brain. he does a lot on how our brain functions and how we can help it function better. And recognizing some of anxiety. I really like this book of your brain is always listening. Try softer is a really great. One of trying some kindness into our anxiety because our anxious thoughts get really, really negative and really brutal and some kindness in there is super important. So just a couple of resources as well. So that's it for today. I think we're right about on time. I am more than happy to stay and answer questions. If you have any questions or thoughts, would love to to chat with any of you if you'd love to. Thank you so much for being here and pass it back to you.

Host 00:54:15  Thank you for joining us on the Pursuit Reality Podcast.

Host 00:54:18  We hope these episodes help you in your journey towards greater hope, healing, and growth. If you're interested in finding out more about Reality Church, you can find us online at Pursue Reality.