MedLink Health Connections Podcast

The Purple Monster on My Shoulder: A Candid Talk About Anxiety with Patricia Whatley, LCSW

• MedLink Georgia • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Ever felt like you're the only one overthinking every social interaction while everyone else navigates life effortlessly? Our conversation with Patricia Watley, a licensed clinical social worker at MedLink, reveals the truth: we're all just trying to keep our heads above water.

Patricia breaks down anxiety with refreshing clarity, describing it as "an unhealthy hyper-awareness" that creates "uncomfortable urgency" in our lives. From the person rehearsing their restaurant order multiple times to the musician apologizing for mistakes the audience never noticed, anxiety tricks us into believing our minor stumbles are catastrophic failures. But as Patricia reminds us, most people either genuinely care about us or aren't paying attention to our perceived missteps at all.

Drawing from her own journey from being "terrified of everything" to becoming a therapist who helps others, Patricia shares practical, sometimes unconventional coping strategies that actually work. Her approach combines sensory grounding techniques (comfortable clothes, calming music, familiar surroundings) with psychological reframing. Perhaps most memorably, she describes visualizing her anxiety as "a little purple girl monster" sitting on her shoulder – a technique that allows her to externalize and even speak to her anxiety when it threatens to derail her day.

The conversation offers both validation and hope, acknowledging that managing anxiety is "a daily fight, multiple times during the day" while providing actionable tools to make that fight more winnable. Whether you're dealing with social anxiety, generalized anxiety, or simply want to understand someone who does, this episode delivers practical wisdom from someone who's walked the path herself. Listen now and discover how naming your anxiety monsters might just help you reclaim your peace of mind.

Speaker 1:

Today, I'm joined by Patricia Watley, a licensed clinical social worker at our Athens and Oglethorpe offices. Patricia is a graduate at the University of Georgia and has been with MedLink since 2022, providing counseling and behavioral health services for patients ages 5 through 99. With her experience supporting individuals through life's changes, with her experience supporting individuals through life's changes, she's here to talk with us about anxiety and share practical coping skills that we can all use in our everyday lives. Patricia, to start us off, can you?

Speaker 2:

define anxiety, I guess I'd have to say in general.

Speaker 2:

In general, anxiety is kind of an unhealthy hyper awareness of everything around you that makes you feel uncomfortable, um, that has a sense of like uncomfortable urgency to it, um, a feeling of not not being in control of how you are able to handle whatever it is the stimuli I guess that's coming at you.

Speaker 2:

For example, social anxiety would basically be like you know, you go out, you want to be with your friends, and so you make plans to go out to dinner with them, but then you spend your time worrying about what's it going to be like, who's going to be there, what am I going to act like? Are they going to like me? You know, and then let's say, you do go out with that with those people. Um, sometimes it can, social anxiety can present and you are unable to carry on a natural kind of conversation with the people or your, your thoughts, trying to I just want to go away, I want to leave, and you're basically not having fun. Anxiety in general is like a fight, flight or freeze response, where you cannot just carry out the natural feelings that are associated with what you're trying to do.

Speaker 1:

And I can definitely relate to social anxiety on a personal level. For example, with something as simple as going out to eat, I often find myself overthinking it on the way there, practicing what I'm going to order, how I'm going to say it, running through the whole interaction in my head. And while that kind of practice helps a little, when it's finally my turn to order, I sometimes feel like I said it wrong and then I end up replaying that moment over and over again. What are some coping mechanisms you recommend for situations like that?

Speaker 2:

It's always a good idea to, like you kind of said, to prepare. If let's go back to social anxiety, I just feel like it's a good example that a lot of people deal with um bringing along. You know when they made fidget spinners and what 2010 or whatever it was whenever those kind of came about um or bringing um, there's sensory things that you can do, so um, using your five senses. So, before you go, picking out an outfit that would be comfortable on you, something that you feel comfortable in because of the fabric or because you think it looks nice on you, so that's a visual um auditory. You know, I personally love to jam out to music and so that's my way of getting in the zone and talking myself into whatever it is I have to do. Um. So listening to music, finding like a calm down song, something that you can listen to and breathe and regulate your breath and just kind of let it, you know, flow through you and bring you comfort.

Speaker 2:

Going to a place, maybe, where you can, familiar with your surroundings, get to a place early and you need to figure out what your surroundings are. I always like to find out where the exit door is, in case I have to make an excuse to go, and I can just bolt. I think it's really, really important whether this is true or not. It's all about what. The games that you play in your mind and our minds do a lot to trick us and can be mean to us. But if we can play games with ourselves, pretend that everybody else at the table is going through something like this too, then it kind of helps the idea that maybe they're not judging you.

Speaker 2:

You know if that's part of your anxiety, that's that people are judging you. They're going to look at me because, like they're all dressed up in this certain way and I'm dressed in this certain way, our minds tend to, for some reason, be very mean and unkind to us sometimes and make us believe that we're not as worthy as we are. But sometimes, when it's all said and done, I think we're just all feeling some form of that and trying to get through the day and keep our heads above water. So for some reason and I'm not saying you know, other people's struggles are comforting, but it is kind of helpful, it kind of helps say, okay, I bet you they're not judging me, they're just trying to survive too.

Speaker 1:

For me it helps to remind myself that most people aren't actually focused on what I'm saying the way I think they are. I'll sometimes replay a conversation in my head and think why did I say it like that? But chances are no one else even noticed. It's usually just me overanalyzing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the truth is, is that most likely than not? When it comes to other people, they either care about you and want the best for you, or they don't care at all, and either way is fine.

Speaker 1:

My fiance often points out when he stutters and makes a big deal about it, but most of the time I don't even notice. I honestly don't care if he stutters or how he says something. It just doesn't matter to me. He's so self-aware of it, but from my perspective it's barely noticeable. I think a lot of people probably feel that way about things that we stress over ourselves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, self-awareness is very important, I do believe. However, we tend to go way too far in that direction and become hyper self-aware and we are the ones that are tripping ourselves up and giving us our own anxiety. Good example of this is that, um so I play music occasionally in a band that I was in for like 10 years, the lead singer would get. He got in this habit of doing this thing where if missed lyrics or said lyrics wrong or fumbled on his guitar or something after the song, he would apologize to the audience audience had no idea, no idea.

Speaker 2:

So in that case, he then has created that problem. You know, ignorance is bliss, silence is golden. You know, just smile your way through stuff and uh, yeah, and then the other.

Speaker 2:

So then when we're talking more about generalized anxiety, it's just a kind of being on that edge, more so. So let's say that a normal place to be internally would be at like a level five, so halfway between depression and anxiety. So just feeling good, feeling calm, you know every time is being your friend, you know every time as being your friend. Um, but being on edge means that that you're above a five. So you're, you know, like six to ten and you, you do, you feel like you're on edge or you feel like you're worried about multiple things at once, um and um.

Speaker 2:

It causes like a lot of feelings of being overwhelmed and and anxiety and depression are kind of like best friends and royal enemies at the same time, because they can both easily each other. And sometimes anxiety can be about the way people think about things, and sometimes it can be a feeling, you know, and, and it's, it looks different, it feels different for everybody, right, and there are different levels of it, and then there's different things that trigger anxiety. So, for example, while you know, this is a podcast about this, but I think it does help to go ahead and say I had anxiety about this podcast and I could feel it, you know, pretty much in my stomach and my stomach felt tight and I noticed that before I got on I was fidgeting more and then what I did was I said okay, trish, you know, this is all anticipation of this, this isn't real, it's going to be fine, angela's not going to come after me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, hr is not going to show up, you know. So then, what I did was I just took a couple of slow, deep breaths and drank water, walked around the office for a minute and tried to settle myself before the interview that sounds like such a simple coping skill.

Speaker 1:

That was really effective. I love it. I can definitely relate, because I had some anxiety myself about recording this episode. I kept telling myself it's going to be fine, Patricia is great to talk to, the conversation will flow and even if I stumble over my words, it's okay. Your energy really has this calming, reassuring vibe and it made me feel like this would be a comfortable and easy conversation. That calming energy you bring really does make it easy to open up and I think that's such a gift for your patients. But I imagine you didn't just wake up one day with that kind of confidence and perspective. Can you share a little bit about your own journey? What led you to seek therapy yourself and eventually become a therapist?

Speaker 2:

you know, before I kind of became self-aware, started this process of going to school for therapy and going to a therapist myself and getting getting treatment for my own mental mental health stuff. I had no confidence, none, and I was almost terrified of everything. But I tell you, the most freeing thing in the world for me was realizing that I could only be exactly who I felt like I was on the inside and everybody else was just going to have to deal with it. And once I had that realization, you know, I started seeking therapy and then decided to become a therapist. I've, I have become this person that you're talking about.

Speaker 2:

I can, you know, surface it. I fake it a lot, but there's nothing wrong with faking it. You have to. You have to fight every day, multiple times a day, when you have anxiety and truth be told. Listeners out there, if you didn't already know, I have anxiety, know I have anxiety, um, and it is a daily fight, it's a multiple times during the day struggle, um, and you know not, not everybody is always in the position to be able to be themselves, but that you know.

Speaker 2:

For me that was something I had to teach myself how to do. And, as they say, let my freak flag fly and the more that I can do that and just try myself, try to be myself and realize that I, along with everybody else, makes a million and a half mistakes a day. You just try to do your best and really listen in to yourself and your inner voice and your inner kid and just try to like. The most important thing for me actually was being able to practice controlled breathing and so, naturally, when I know I'm seconds away from this physiological response of getting anxious, something has clicked in my body where I can automatically take that first deep breath and I think that that is huge. That's huge. Four patient comes in to get a couple of those. You know whatever kind of again, every, every situation to me every day is pretty stressful, can't relate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, waking up in the morning, um, going to work, it's hard to do. It's hard especially when one of the one you know, your depression monster or your anxiety monster decides it wants to show up that day and and talk you out of doing everything. You know, I I one thing I've told my, my patients is to put a visual or a name or a face to your anxiety. What does it look like? You know, mine's this little purple little girl monster that sits on my shoulder and whenever she's trying to come in and get in my business for the day, I just kind of tell her to get out of the way and I kind of it's almost like turning, turning my anxiety into a physical being so that I can it's almost comical I can physically tell her to shut up. Yeah, I like that not coming today.

Speaker 2:

Same thing with a little depression guy over here he's on my other shoulder and, uh, I'm usually talking to them all day long. It's definitely, and um, again, this is another thing that sounds crazy and weird. But the more you can get comfortable with being crazy and weird and doing extreme things that are healthy, because I will create 20 anxiety monsters and depression monsters before I ever think about drinking my anxiety away or engaging in other unhealthy behaviors that can hurt me. This doesn't hurt anybody, I agree with that.

Speaker 1:

It's definitely better, I think, even if you're a child like to kind of learn those things like it might be a monster, but it can't be scary and you have more control over it. Yeah, you create it yourself. Thank you for tuning in to the MedLink Health Connections podcast. We hope you found today's episode informative and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Remember, the information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not replace professional medical advice. Always consult with your healthcare provider for any medical concerns. Stay connected with us on social media and visit our website at medlinkgaorg for more resources and updates. Until next time, stay healthy and take care.