ReThinking Mental Wellbeing

Anxiety Myths Debunked: Setting the Record Straight

• Andre Jackson

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 We explore some of the most persistent and potentially harmful myths surrounding anxiety, replacing them with empowering truths to help manage mental wellbeing. This episode aims to set the record straight and provide useful information about anxiety management beyond the misleading myths.

• The "fake it till you make it" approach works for developing confidence but can be harmful when applied to anxiety management
• Anxiety is common - according to 2024 statistics, one in four people will experience anxiety in the next 12 months
• Avoiding anxiety-triggering situations actually reinforces anxiety rather than eliminating it
• Graded exposure is an effective technique for reprogramming our threat-detection system to be more accurate
• Medication may be helpful but shouldn't be viewed as the only solution for anxiety
• Building connections and support networks is crucial - anxiety thrives in isolation
• Changing our beliefs about anxiety is the first step toward authentic living and improved wellbeing 

 Email your questions for future episodes to rethinkingmentalwellbeing@gmail.com and join our community working toward authentic wellbeing.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Rethinking Mental Wellbeing. This is our community podcast where we can talk about everything related to depression and anxiety. So my name is Andre and I want to thank you for being with me over the next half an hour as we share this space of lived experience where we can talk about how to live the best version of our authentic life. So if you're ready, then I'm ready. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to Rethinking Mental Wellbeing. If you're here for the first time, then welcome to the space. If you've been here before, then welcome back to the space.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of information from a lot of different sources about our mental health. Thanks to the internet, social media, youtube, we are not short of information. So it's not about finding information that's going to be helpful and useful for us. It's about finding the right information that is helpful and useful for us, and one of the reasons why we find anxiety, in particular, so hard to beat or hard to manage is there are a lot of myths floating around telling us things about anxiety that are not only misleading but potentially harmful. Delivered by well-meaning intentions, the myths of anxiety gain more traction the more people believe them. So in today's episode we're going to explore some of the myths around particularly anxiety, to set the record straight, to give you the right information that is more useful for you. This will be part one of probably many episodes on the myths around mental health, so for this episode we're going to choose anxiety as our starting point. The first myth that we're going to address is the myth of faking it till you make it, and this myth, as it's been traveling around for quite a few years now, has started to change its meaning. So this is the belief that carries the idea whereby faking well-being we achieve well-being, that the acting of where we need to be can be achieved and be brought to life by the effort of pretense.

Speaker 1:

This saying fake it till you make it probably started its rounds from Aristotle, when he was quoted as saying to be a virtuous man, you must first act like a virtuous man, with the implication being that if you want to be something, then act like it first. There was another philosopher named William James who talked about if you want equality, act as if you already have it. And what they've been saying have got elements of truth within it, and this led into the business industry and it's been used for organizations like Amway, for instance, in particular around attitudes of visualization and sales, and even in self-improvement industries. The fake it till you make it slogan has wrapped itself around self-improvement industries. The fake it till you make it slogan has wrapped itself around self-improvement as a strategy to empower an action despite being nervous or being anxious. But this saying fake it till you make it was never designed from a mental health perspective.

Speaker 1:

The saying is true when it's wrapped around developing confidence, but it's not when it's wrapped around anxiety or depression, particularly those two. Because the problem is we are really good at pretending and our pretending comes at a price of the conditioned acceptance by other people as we lose ourselves within the pretense. And I've talked to people before who have used this phrase of fake it till you make it as permission to be fake or permission not to be true to themselves, permission to be something or someone that you're not. The world is full of people that pretend, so we don't need more people to pretend, we need more people to live to their truth. So the saying fake it till you make it has its origins in confidence, which works really well for developing confidence, but from a mental health perspective not so much. But there is a difference between faking it till you make it and showing up with your bravery. It means not letting our fear hold us back or limit us or reduce us, but we can hold hands with our courage. We face the fear and we can move forward with bravery. The fake it till you make it is pretending to have a trait like confidence and acting like it in your behavior. It is not about pretending to be someone that you're not. So let me give you an example of that.

Speaker 1:

When I first learnt how to public speak, I did a lot of faking it, pretending to be confident, always being terrified inside. The fake it till you make it slogan works really well as we master the art, in this case, of public speaking, by pretending to be confident, which in turn contributes to our confidence. But pretending not to have anxiety in a normal social situation is not going to stop me feeling anxious. It's going to suppress it. But if I learn to develop my bravery and my courage, stepping into uncomfortable situations, but not too much, where it becomes overwhelming at the speed and pace that is right for me, with plenty of opportunities to refuel and to look after myself and to get my needs met. That option is better for me when I'm dealing with anxiety. But pretending to not have anxiety, pretending to fake it, it is going to keep suppressing it.

Speaker 1:

So the second myth we're going to talk about with anxiety is one I've heard often oh, anxiety is not that common. So let me start off by telling you the latest statistics from 2024. According to StatsNZ, that one in four people will live with some form of anxiety within the next 12 months. That's one in four. That's a quarter of the population. So anxiety is not only common but, to our detriment, it is becoming normalized and there's multiple reasons for this. Now I'm not going to go into those reasons because it's beyond the scope of this episode.

Speaker 1:

What we need to know is anxiety is prevalent in society, that it's slowly starting to creep out of its secrecy and out of its hiding place of social discrimination, of not being accepted in society, where historically there's been a separation and a division, that society values people less with the mental health label of anxiety. And we now obviously have come a long way where we are normalizing healthier conversations around anxiety. And when we normalize our conversations so it doesn't become everybody's best kept secret, it's really healthy. But it's not healthy to normalize anxiety as a strategy to put up with it or to just accept it, or that we have to tolerate it with the belief that there's nothing we can do about it. The next myth I've heard over the years is that people with anxiety should avoid situations that cause them anxiety. So let's start this conversation off on the recap of what anxiety is in the first place.

Speaker 1:

Anxiety is the physiological state of what goes on inside your body when you feel unsafe. That feeling anxious is a normal state to feel in certain appropriate situations, because there are times in life that anxiety is going to serve you really well and there's times in life that you want to be able to feel anxious. And this is really important to know, because the feeling anxious is not the issue. It's the length of time we've had it and the context we have it in, it's how much it is affecting our quality of life. So there's something I'm always talking about as a priority of being human, and that is the constant lookout, the constant scanning of our environments, both internal and externally, to make sure that we are safe.

Speaker 1:

Our biology has given us things that we can scan our environment with to make sure that we're safe and to alert us to danger, and part of what we have to do that is our senses and our emotions and our thinking. All of these three things combined create a scanning system that tells us whether we are safe internally or in the world around us. This is happening 24, 7, 365 days a year. At all times. Our biology is looking out for us and trying to keep us safe. The problem, though, is that sometimes, our programming that tells us when we are safe becomes corrupt, and we get this programming from our past experiences, sometimes mixed with a genetic influence that gives us a specific code incorporating itself into our program of experience, and this leads to a mis-scanning of our environments as being unsafe, as being more dangerous, making things more threatening to our safety, and so, for a lot of us who live with some form of anxiety, the natural thing that we attempt to do if anything is threatening to you is you either are going to lean away from it and hide or avoid it, or we're going to lean into it and fight, and sometimes we won't do anything and freeze, and we will do whatever has worked for us in the past to keep us safe by the programming of our past experiences. So that's a really quick rundown about what anxiety is, and I've talked about anxiety in previous episodes and in particular episode one and episode two. So if you want a deep dive into those a bit more, then just go and hunt those out and have a listen.

Speaker 1:

But where we tie this into this question is that when we keep avoiding situations that cause anxiety, two things tend to happen. By avoiding things that cause anxiety which we already know is established by a mis-scanning of your environment and by a faulty programming upload of your past experiences we tend to not avoid anxiety. But we end up avoiding the situation and by doing that we tend to reinforce the programming by the continual worry and stress and anxiety that's continually replaying in our head. But now we're doing that in the place that we're meant to feel safe. And when we start avoiding things to the point where it interrupts your quality of life, we start to drown in our own suffering, as your authentic nature keeps pushing you to get your needs met, but you're unable to because of the program of fear that we've wrapped around our anxiety. That keeps us in a constant and perpetual state of anxiety. And it's also important to know that if we're trying to avoid the feelings of anxiety by not putting ourselves in those situations that give us the feeling of being anxious. We will then often avoid the situations that give us that feeling of excitement, because neurologically they feel almost exactly the same, but because it's the feeling we're trying to avoid. Sometimes we misread excitement for anxiety and so we need to do anything to stop that feeling.

Speaker 1:

According to that myth of avoiding things that cause us anxiety, one tool that people often use to deal with anxiety or fear is to do something called graded exposure. So let me explain how this works. So, first of all, the purpose of graded exposure is to change your programming. It's to change and correct your scanning system for safety, to make it more accurate. So let me give you an example of what this looks like.

Speaker 1:

I personally have a very strong dislike for spiders so I'm not arachnophobic which is categorized by a profound and overwhelming fear of spiders, disproportionate to the actual danger. That triggers anxiety or panic attacks and avoidant behaviors and therefore leads to an interference of daily activities and social interactions, which in turn leads to isolation and distress. So it's not that bad for me, I just don't like them. But I have no need to do anything about this dislike because it's not a phobia, it doesn't interfere with my quality of life. But if I was to start doing something about it, I would probably start by this thing called graded exposure.

Speaker 1:

Let's pretend, for instance, that I have an exposure limit of a picture of a spider on one side of the room when I'm standing on the other side of the room. And how do I know that's my exposure limit? Because I would feel really uncomfortable, I would be nervous, I would be slightly anxious, but it wouldn't be overwhelming, it wouldn't be crippling, I would still be able to tolerate that uncomfortableness. So we're both hanging out on separate sides of the room, but my tolerance limit is there and if I take two to three steps forward, that may be too much and I may start to feel panicked and overwhelmed. So I'm going to go back to where I was. That made me feel really uncomfortable and stressed.

Speaker 1:

But I'm going to stay there for a while and I'm going to internalize that process as a way to start the reprogramming from the program that I had before. And I do that by saying things like oh, I'm okay, I'm in no harm, I'm not being hurt, I have some control over this feeling and some autonomy. By the way that I breathe, I'm okay, I'm okay. Some autonomy by the way that I breathe, I'm okay, I'm okay. This simple internalization, combined with breathing strategies, starts to train you to know how to cope with being uncomfortable better. The beauty about this is that when you start to train yourself to manage your uncomfortable feelings, you can transpose that because you've found a technique that you can incorporate to any uncomfortable feeling that you feel, not just situational. So, as I repeat this, I'm going to feel more comfortable, and I'm starting to feel more comfortable because I'm starting to reprogram my scanning system and it's telling me that I'm not in the danger I thought I was, that I'm safe, and at this stage I'm going to move a couple of steps forward, or however many steps I need to take before I start to feel really uncomfortable again, and then I'm going to hang out at that space, internalizing the process, changing the program, and I'm going to repeat it and I'm going to get closer and I'm going to repeat it and I'm going to get closer.

Speaker 1:

Now, for those of you who are listening to this, who are starting to feel panicked or overwhelmed, or saying to yourself I would never do that, this is one of the cases that I'm making, because your mind will make you think that the situation you fear is about to happen and because I would repeat this over again until eventually I can hold the spider in my hand. And again, if you're listening to this, of course this is going to be anxiety provoking. You're probably saying to yourself oh God, I would never do that. But don't forget, you're saying that from the place you're at, without going through all of those steps that I've just talked about. So that's a really brief overview about graded exposure. There's a little bit more to it than that, but for the purpose of this episode, you get the idea You're reprogramming your scanning system and you're updating your program by changing the input to the up-to-date version of a more reliable program through this technique of graded exposure, and graded exposure for anxiety works exactly the same way. So let's put this into context a little bit.

Speaker 1:

There was someone I was working with years ago who came to me wanting help with their anxiety. His anxiety was so severe that he was afraid to even open his windows. So I asked him if you were about to open a window, at what stage would you get to when you would start to feel really uncomfortable? Is it when you think about it? Is it when you move to go and open a window? Is it when you put your hand on the latch to open it, which one of those would be really uncomfortable and which one of those would be intolerable? So, in this case, being uncomfortable was putting his hand on the latch. So that's what we got him to do, and as he put his hand on the latch, he felt all the feelings of being uncomfortable. His hand on the latch, he felt all the feelings of being uncomfortable, but he also had the reassurance as I was quite clear that he wasn't going to open the window. You were just going to put your hand on it, which gave him a little bit of sense of relief. But it also got him to repeat this, to stay this way, to repeat the process, to make the uncomfortable less uncomfortable. As he was able to learn that he had an element of control of feeling uncomfortable, I got him to internalize this process I'm safe, I'm okay, I'm in no danger and as he practiced this constantly and repetitively, he started to feel less uncomfortable and he was reprogramming his scanning system to become more reliable, and so he moved to the next stage, but he didn't open the window. The next uncomfortable stage for him was turning the latch as if he was about to, and he repeated the same process, internalizing the process, mastering his regulation skills. That was eight years ago. These days he's employed, socially active, participates in group sports, all of which are outside of his house, which all happened in part due to his graded exposure techniques.

Speaker 1:

So the statement of avoiding situations that cause anxiety doesn't avoid anxiety. It reinforces the program to continually stay anxious, to continually protect ourself from a danger that isn't real. The next myth that we're going to talk about and I'm not going to go into this one too deeply because I'm not a doctor or therapist is the myth that medication is the only way to manage anxiety. So let me start this by saying that in some cases, medication is an option for managing anxiety, and it can indeed be life-changing for some people. But the statement that medication is the only thing to manage anxiety is not only fundamentally wrong, but it can be potentially harmful.

Speaker 1:

In my opinion and this is just my opinion anxiety is not predominantly a mental health issue. It is a physiological issue and it's a nervous system issue. What this means? That our mental health, our physiological state and our nervous system are all intrinsically linked in together, and if we have a one-stop shop and one method that deals with anxiety, this reduces the amount of other options that need to be put in place that tackles anxiety from a holistic point of view. In other words, anxiety is dealt with by medication and when I say medication, I'm not just talking prescription, but what I'm talking about is also herbal and natural, and also the food that you eat, as this plays an enormous part in our well-being.

Speaker 1:

But learning to change our focus from managing anxiety to understand what we need to do to get our needs met, like our social needs, our safety needs, our meaning and purpose, our variety needs combined with our routine needs and our contribution needs. We can now focus on getting these needs met, replacing the attention of focus on the parts of our lifestyle that we need to incorporate into our life from a wellbeing perspective, rather than trying to manage anxiety from a deficit point of view, and instead of trying to manage the symptoms of something, particularly with anxiety, so we can create an environment that gets our needs met, that changes our programming and scanning systems that we talked about before, so we can improve our quality of life. So, in this case, lifestyle changes need to happen, maybe in conjunction with medication. So the tools that we develop when we're learning how to deal with anxiety, when we're getting our needs met specifically for us, needs to happen in conjunction with medication if it's needed. But in my opinion and again, only my opinion medication should not be the only way to deal with anxiety. This needs to be approached from a holistic, multi-dimensional approach that fits your lifestyle, that fits your personality and around your capabilities. So it's very contextual, very individual and something specific for you. So, yes, there will be times when medication is necessary to be able to help us to deal with the symptoms of anxiety, so we can be in a better place to make these lifestyle changes to our environment and to understand what our needs are and how to get them met individually, and how to learn to live authentically in conjunction with medication. How to learn to live authentically in conjunction with medication.

Speaker 1:

The next myth we're going to talk about is the myth of feeling like you have to do this alone, and for a lot of us, this myth may have started as a protection because we felt unsafe. Maybe we disclosed something about ourself that was vulnerable, that other people may have downplayed or made fun of or trivialized the importance of what we shared, often causing us to not want to be hurt anymore and, in doing that, to not ever be in a position to feel unsafe in our vulnerability again, and to that extent we will protect ourselves from possible harm and deny ourselves the connection that we need, because our safety is the top priority and when we're in this state of protection, we still have a need for connection because we are social creatures. But we now confuse popularity for connection and we may confuse being social for connection, and of course, we know that being popular or being social is not necessarily meaning that we're connecting. So when I talk about connection, I'm not talking about being soulmates with everyone you meet, because we will connect with different people in different ways, depending on the relationship we have with people and depending on where we are with our relationship with ourself. It changes the relationship we also have with other people, because one of the most important things that we can do is to develop a team around us, a team of people that is based on acceptance and compassion and strength focused that we can connect with. Having people around us does not, and should not mean that we're getting them to do the work for us. Having people around us provides a sense of connection, of community, of belonging where we are seen and heard authentically. That gives us strength to learn how to be autonomous and independent, but not solely dependent. We can have people all around us giving us advice, but we have the final say. But having the right people around us is critical for our well-being because then we can pick and choose the information that we're getting from the support that we have, from the information that is going to be healthy and helpful for us.

Speaker 1:

Anxiety works best in our isolation, reinforcing our fear, if we don't have connections as our emotions are pushed and pulled between the unsafety of people and the need to connect. These two are parallel opposites and they confuse us as we battle between what our biological nature is wanting us to do and what our psychological conditioning is wanting us to do. There's a quote that says the more helpless, the more hopeless we feel, the less options we think we have. So one of the reasons that we may feel there is nothing we can do about our anxiety is because we can't see any options to move from that place. Or, even worse, we can't see any options that lines up with our sense of self-worth or our sense of identity. So there is absolutely a lot of things we can do.

Speaker 1:

That deals with anxiety and everything that we've talked about in Rethinking Mental Wellbeing, and everything we're going to be talking about in Rethinking Mental Wellbeing and everything we're going to be talking about in Rethinking Mental Wellbeing is going to give you ideas on how to do that. So these are a few myths that we've tackled. We will tackle more as we go through the series, but my hope is that it has started to change a belief for you, because when we change our belief system, we can move towards our authentic self. So that's all I've got for this episode. Thank you for joining me today and I hope that you've got something useful from this discussion, and if you have any questions you would like us to discuss on future episodes, then please email me at rethinkingmentalwellbeing at gmailcom. I'd love to hear from you. So until then, go well, go in peace, have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye.