How I Built A Tolerance For Anxiety

I worked myself into disordered anxiety by avoiding discomfort and the feelings of anxiety at all costs. Real, lasting change started happening for me when I learned how to build up my tolerance for discomfort around anxiousness again. Today's episode is full of practical tips you can use to start building your tolerance for fear, anxiety, and discomfort, and start getting your life back. Enjoy! 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome back to the 18 Minutes Podcast. I'm Amanda, and today I'm going to share with you how I built my tolerance for anxiety. Before I get started, I want to thank you if you're a regular listener. Thank you so much for coming back to the show over and over again, being a part of this community, and really it helps a lot any way that you interact with anything that I do, whether it's downloading the podcast, listening to the podcast, signing up for my newsletter, getting the free guide, commenting on a TikTok post, whatever it is, when you engage, you help other anxious people find these free resources. And that's really important to me. I know it's important to you, the whole idea of people recovering from this awful pattern, these awful anxiety disorders. So when you interact, when you listen to the podcast, you are helping make that happen. So thank you so much for being here, for listening, for participating. I appreciate it so much. On that note, if you haven't gotten the free um fear to freedom guide that's on my website, go ahead and grab it. It's atamandacley.com. Um, there's several spots on the website, but there's um right on the homepage if you want to just put your email in. It sends it right to you. And it's totally free. Um, it's just a one-page guide that sort of summarizes how I overcame my fear problem in my life, and it lays it out really concisely. So um go grab that. That also signs you up for my weekly newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime if that's not your if you're if that's not your deal, but um you do get signed up for that. I send one email every Monday morning just with some encouragement or things I've been thinking about, um, current events sometimes that have to do with anxiety or fear. So those are both available to you if you want them. Okay, so I wanted to do another back to basics 101 how-to episode because my most popular episodes are um how to practice acceptance, and then some of the like deep dives on specific um disorders like agoraphobia or health anxiety, panic disorder, things like that. So this is going to be um another sort of core principle episode, and I'm going to walk you through how I built my tolerance for anxiety and what that means, why it's important, how it could benefit you. Um, and I'm really excited. So let's get into it. As always, I am not a therapist or a medical professional. Everything I share on this show comes from my own personal experience with disordered anxiety and fear, my journey through overcoming them, and any research that I do for the show. So this is not a replacement for therapy. And please only take what is helpful to you, leave what isn't, and listen to your medical and mental health professionals first. Building a tolerance for anxiety or fear or doing things scared, doing hard things, all of those apply in this episode, um, is a core and founding idea of overcoming disordered fear and anxiety, because what panic disorder, for example, is or was for me, um, is a lack of tolerance for discomfort. In my case, when I would have a heart palpitation, or my heart would start racing, or I would feel slightly dizzy, or I would get nervous being in a social situation, um, or have that like um instinct to run away if I was in a restaurant or something. Um I didn't have a tolerance for handling those things because I had avoided them for so long and gradually, right? It started with avoiding travel and then avoiding driving long distances and then avoiding the grocery store and then restaurants and then all the way down and down and down until I was stuck in my house. So the idea is that I and we, if you're part of this happy club too, is that um we decrease our tolerance for feeling uncomfortable at all by avoiding discomfort at all costs. And we can build that tolerance back up and work our way out of this dark hole that is panic disorder, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, etc., etc. So this is something that you absolutely can learn from if you have panic disorder or agoraphobia or other anxiety disorders, but also if you just have habits that you want to get out of or into, because it's the same kind of thing. Experiencing discomfort and not shying away from it expands our world, it expands what we're willing to do, and it expands our opportunities, which is sort of a spoiler alert for the end of this where I talk about the benefits of doing it. Um, but that's the idea. So this is super, super helpful if you have disordered anxiety, um, and something that was majorly helpful as I was learning how to undo some of these um loops that I had gotten myself stuck in and these cycles I was stuck in. Um, but also if you just want to create new habits or break new habits in general. I also lay all of this out in my ebook. The free guide that I mentioned is awesome. And if you have that and you want a longer version, I do have an ebook on my website as well that goes into basically what I'm talking about today in lots of detail and it's written out and it's in PDF form that you can just have. So it's $10. If you want to download it, you can go same place, write to my website, download the ebook if that's a format that works better for you. Otherwise, I'm going to basically talk through that in this episode for free. Okay, so the first step in the process for me was identifying the smallest triggers to making me feel uncomfortable. For me, being uncomfortable meant being anxious. I was anxious at my worst, I was anxious every day, most of the day, and having multiple panic attacks a day. So being uncomfortable meant being anxious. Identifying the smallest trigger was very, very helpful to me because I found that if I could do something that felt, I don't know, like pointless, like everyone else in the world would think this is a pointless thing to have to work through and practice being comfortable with. But if I could start with something tiny that I could actually do, then I could build on that and I could keep moving. It's very similar to exercise. I use the analogy of physical exercise all the time because it applies so perfectly to this work that we do to work back out of anxiety disorders. If you start lifting weights by putting three plates on a bar and do some bench presses, you're not gonna want to do that again because it's gonna be too hard for you. You're not gonna be able to do it and you're gonna be sore and exhausted and tired, you probably hurt yourself, to be honest. And so, with working through these mental exercises, it was really helpful for me to understand that that same idea applies. If we start by saying, I have to be able to go to the grocery store by myself and get a whole shopping cart full of stuff and wait in a checkout line, I have to be able to do that. So I'm just gonna force myself to do it. When you're not even leaving your house and like driving around the block by yourself, it's gonna be hard and you're not gonna want to do it again because it's gonna be so difficult. You're gonna be discouraged, you're gonna be tired, you're gonna be fried and burnt out if that's the approach you take. So the first step is identifying your smallest trigger, the smallest thing that makes you uncomfortable. Some examples of that for me were getting out of bed right when my alarm went off. Instead of laying around for hours trying to self-soothe just by thinking positive thoughts or hoping that I would feel better if I just laid in bed for a while. So getting out of bed right away, even though I was anxious, brushing my teeth, even though my heart was racing, and not pacing around or going to sit down for a second while I'm brushing my teeth. If this is not something you experience, it's gonna sound ridiculous. But if you know, you know, because that is a very real experience that a lot of us have. And we tend to, I mean, for good reason, we tend to want to avoid discomfort. And so we find very creative ways to avoid it at all costs. So instead of doing that, get out of bed right away, brush my teeth right away, and stay at the sink and not pace around and try to make myself feel better, even though my heart's racing. Also, I would avoid running back upstairs quick to grab something if I was leaving the house the one time a month that I would leave the house for something, and actually walk back up the steps without thinking twice about if my heart could handle it. If you're new to my content, I do not have a heart condition. I was terrified of having a heart condition and I had major health anxiety around my heart and my breathing. So that's where that stems from. But you get my point. Starting with something that is a very small trigger, not something that is going to immediately cause you to have a panic attack. Another reason I think this is so important is because if you don't actually think about, and maybe you can do it right now as you're listening, but if you don't think about and plan for the things that are causing you discomfort that you are actively avoiding, you can't decide how you're going to react before they happen. And that's a really important part of this process that I'll get to, is knowing what's going to happen and practicing responding differently. So if we don't come up with anything and we just let life keep happening to us, which is what we've been doing, life happens and we react and we avoid discomfort and we keep moving through life that way. Nothing is gonna change unless we do something different. And so planning for it really, really helps set us up well and helped set me up well to be able to actually move through those experiences in a way that moved me forward out of this cycle instead of making me feel defeated and causing me to need a break for days after forcing myself to do something that was way too intense. So the next step in this process for how to build tolerance is to decide to do whatever that thing is every single day. Consistency with practicing building tolerance is I found incredibly important. When I practiced exposing myself to fear and anxiety and accepting the feelings, and I and I only did it once a week or a couple times a week, um, because I went through phases where I wasn't as committed because that is just how it goes. Like we get tired, we get lazy, whatever, it's not a big deal. But it wasn't as effective because those other days I was avoiding discomfort. I was trying to just feel okay and not not experience anything negative, not feel anxious, like I didn't want to, obviously. But when I practiced something really small every single day, I found that I actually made progress and I could tell that I was making progress because my body and my mind started to actually respond differently to those situations. I stopped feeling anxious first thing in the morning every day. My heart wasn't racing when I was brushing my teeth at the sink. Like my body actually started to respond differently, and consistency was a big part of that. So um, step two is decide that you're going to do that thing every single day and make time and actually do it. That's step two. Decide you're gonna do it, follow through, be consistent. Okay. The third part is doing it. So exposing yourself to that trigger, that anxiety trigger. Um, facing your fear is more. I like that term better because that's essentially what I was doing in this process was just facing my fears and allowing myself to feel fear. And that is the important part. Allowing myself to feel afraid, to feel anxious, to feel uncomfortable without soothing myself, without trying to get the feelings to go away. So standing at the sink, brushing my teeth, my heart's racing, I have options. I can pace around, which will make me feel a little bit better. I can go sit down, which will make me feel better. I could stop brushing my teeth, get back into bed. That would make me feel better. All of those things would make me feel less anxiety in the short term, of course. I also have the choice to stand there as if I'm not anxious, to continue brushing my teeth, accept the fact that that's how I feel. Lean into it even. That's something that maybe comes down the road a little bit. But for me, feeling my heart racing and not moving a muscle, keep doing what I'm doing, tell myself it's okay, maybe once or twice. Like it's fine, I can handle this, and then allow myself to feel it. Like bring my awareness to that feeling. What does it feel like? What is my experience like right now? Okay, my heart's racing. I'm also noticing that my hands are kind of sweaty. This is what anxiety feels like. This is what fear feels like, and I don't like it. It's okay to tell yourself you don't like it, that you hate it, that you want it to stop. But also tell yourself you can handle it. The acceptance part and being willing, acceptance and willingness I talk about a lot. Accepting your feelings and being willing to feel them are of all the things that I talk about, the two most important ideas and practices I think anyone can do if they want to change their life. When I practiced learning to be willing to be afraid, literally my whole life changed. That's why I started a podcast because it was so eye-opening, um, so so life-changing. I don't know how else to describe it. It changed my life. Being willing to be uncomfortable opened up so much of the world to me, not only just like getting my life back to where it was, but things I had never done before. And you can do this too. So practicing acceptance, if you want to go even deeper on that concept, how to practice acceptance, I do have a podcast episode called How to Practice Acceptance that can be really helpful for you if that's something, if that's kind of the part of this process you're at. But that's essentially the third step. Showing up, doing the facing of fear that you had previously identified was the smallest thing causing you some fear and discomfort, and allowing yourself to feel whatever feelings come up for you during that without reacting to them. Then what worked really, really well for me in moving through this efficiently, and it took me a while to practice. So I'm hoping that telling you I can shorten this period of time for you. But moving on, like let's say it's brushing my teeth at the sink while my heart's racing, because that would happen every single day. So I get up, I brush my teeth, my heart's racing, I stand there, I accept that my heart's racing, I don't try to soothe myself, I'm willing to feel anxious and uncomfortable while this is happening. And I do that every single day. And after, I don't know, a few days, a week, something like that, I get up and I haven't added any other like facing fear plans into my routine. This is the only thing I'm actively working on. After a few days, I'm feeling like, oh, my heart's not racing as much. And then after a week, I get up and I brush my teeth, and I'm like, this is kind of boring, like I'm kind of over it now. That's exactly when I would move on to the next trigger. Once the experience is boring and doesn't bring up symptoms anymore, and it's like, okay, yes, I can do this, and do it the exact same every single day. The teeth brushing one is good because like I have an electric toothbrush with a two-minute timer. So it's literally the same thing every single day. I'm not trying to force myself to do more, I'm not um trying to add in a couple more exposures throughout the day. Like, that's my task. Brush my teeth without pacing around. And I just do that until my body doesn't react the way it used to, and I'm bored of it. And then I can move on to my next biggest fear. And maybe that would be I don't know, driving around the block once or sitting in my car or something like that. And then same process all over again. Identify what that thing is, decide when and how I'm gonna do it every single day, do it every day while accepting my feelings and practicing that willingness, being willing to feel those things and being consistent. And I would do that for the next fear and the next fear and the next fear. And in the therapy world, they call that essentially a fear ladder. It's like starting from the bottom, working your way up. And that's what I did. And what I was doing, and what you'll be doing if you're doing this, is building your tolerance for anxiety and for fear and for discomfort. I want to reiterate that I think consistency is super important. Also, reevaluate what you're working on if you need to. If it's not getting better, if it's not working, um, first of all, please work with a therapist if you can. Finding a therapist who specializes in exposure therapy is my number one recommendation for anybody dealing with panic disorder or other anxiety disorders. However, if this is something you're working on, reevaluate when it's not working. If you pick brushing your teeth at the sink and it's not getting better, it's getting worse, try something else. Or maybe it's too easy, like you're not really getting anxious and you don't feel like anything's changing, bump it up, bump it up a little bit. You can change your mind, and this is very much a trial and error process. It's not gonna go well every single time. You're going to have days when you're practicing, when you're actively practicing, facing fear, you're going to have days that are very hard, very depleting. That's part of the process. And another thing to keep in mind is that every time you have a really bad day and you can get up the next day and do anything productive or um move through any anxiety without reacting, like that is huge. That's huge progress, and you're going to keep moving forward. Bad days do not mean you're having a setback, they do not mean you have lost your progress that you're back at square one. You are not losing progress if you have a bad day. You're tired, or you're just having a bad day. It happens to all of us. And after a while of practicing these things, you can start to analyze yourself better. You'll become more self-aware, which is really fun and really cool and really exciting. You'll be able to tell more easily what you are avoiding and why. So as you move through these practices and you've built some tolerance for discomfort, and then maybe someone starts talking to you about like, oh, like I really want to go to dinner. At this new restaurant, and that's not something that you're doing yet, you will have more self-awareness to be able to decide is this something that I can use as an opportunity to overcome some of this anxiety and this fear? Or am I going to intentionally, thoughtfully say no so that I can keep building the incredible progress I've already been making? And you can make those decisions then without feeling like you failed or guilty or um being insecure that maybe this isn't going the way that you planned. And what's really cool is when you can start asking yourself in the moment, because you're noticing right away, okay, this is this is a fear of mine. And where am I at with this? And am I willing to feel that level of discomfort and move through it? Or am I going to move through a different level of fear that day? You know, you don't have to just um do nothing because eating at a restaurant is not um an option for you, not something you're willing to do right now. You can choose to do the thing that's going to give you the most progress. And I also want to mention, because I think it's important, that there are a lot of things in our lives that we have to do. I recognize that a lot of people with anxiety disorders also have children. And so there's getting kids to school, there's feeding your kids, there's spending time with your kids, there's taking them to play dates. Like there's all kinds of things that we have to do. Go going to work, um, running errands, like there's just there's a lot of triggers that happen to us that we don't necessarily choose. Maybe they're higher up on our list of fears than um the point we're at with working on things, and that's okay. What I will say about that situation, because of course I was there too, when I was just working on brushing my teeth, I had other responsibilities that made me very anxious that I had to do. And what I would practice telling myself is I did the thing I said I was gonna do, and that is my one chuck box for the day. And so if I have to go grocery shopping and I'm not ready to do that, and I'm gonna have a panic attack, and I don't want to, and I have my groceries delivered instead, it's okay. I already did my quote unquote workout for the day. I don't have to do another one. I also want you to think about whether or not you can actually handle that. And the more effective practice you can do, the better. So if it's something you can actually handle and work through and practice accepting while you do it, I think you should do it. It that is literally what's gonna move you from this cycle of fear to a perspective and a worldview of freedom, which is amazing. So be honest with yourself. If it's something you can handle, maybe try to do it. But if it's something you're not ready for and you need to use these workarounds, or you need to bring someone with you, or you need to use other safety behaviors, in my opinion, I think that's okay for most people. That worked for me. As long as I completed my one task that day and I was teaching my brain that I can handle discomfort and I was building my tolerance. Eventually I got to the point where now the thing on my fear ladder is going to the grocery store alone. So I made it there, and now that's the thing I'm working on. So it's okay, you don't have to do everything perfectly all the time. It's not realistic, it's not gonna happen. You are doing an incredible thing every time you do something, even though you're afraid of it. Truly incredible. And like I mentioned, this works for other habits too, not just building a tolerance for anxiety, but building a tolerance for discomfort in general. And at this point in my journey, there are not a lot of things, I mean, comparatively, that make me anxious anymore or uncomfortable. I do, I go to the grocery store, I go to restaurants, I travel, I speak in front of people. Like there's a lot of things that don't make me anxious that used to, but I still want to expand my comfort zone. And so everyone has a comfort zone. And I try to um somewhat regularly bump up against the edges of that comfort zone and practice accepting that discomfort in hopes that the next time I do that, it's a little bit easier. And I'm confident it will be because I've done this process for so long, and I'm really good at it now, and it really, really works. And that's why I'm sharing this with you because I hate the idea that there are people like you out there that are suffering with this. I know how debilitating it is, and you do not have to continue to suffer forever. I promise. And at some point, you'll send me an email about building your tolerance for discomfort, and your next thing on your fear ladder is a solo backpacking trip through the Alps. I mean, that's like that would never ever ever have crossed my mind that I would travel to a different country, let alone like leave the house by myself confidently. And now I'm doing that and I love it. So you can get there too. I'm not special, I'm not insanely hardworking or smart or disciplined or gritty. I'm a very regular girl. If I can practice these things and stay consistent and move through them and accept feeling uncomfortable, you can do it too. I promise. And I hope that you choose to do it. This is something you could literally start practicing today. Start with a teeny teeny tiny thing. Maybe even start with something that you're like, I don't know if this will actually make me anxious. And just see what happens when you go into something intentionally, planning to accept however you feel, even if it's just for like 30 seconds, like take it really, really small and just do a little something every single day and see how your body and your brain start to react differently. Because when we build tolerance for discomfort, our comfort zones expand. And the wider our comfort zones, the more opportunities we have to figure out what makes us thrive. And that is really, really exciting. And that's all I have today for how I built my tolerance for anxiety. Let me know what you're working on. Let me know what fears you have, where you're starting. I would love to chat with you about this. Seriously. You can contact me through email at Amanda at AmandaClay.com. My DMs are always open. TikTok, Instagram at Hey AmandaClay, or you can contact me at Amanda ClayClay. One more quick reminder about the free guide if you got video, that's available at amandaclay.com. And if you are enjoying the podcast and you found this podcast helpful, please consider leaving a rating or a review and hit subscribe wherever you're listening. Those things really help other people, other anxious people find it. Thank you so much for being here today, and I'll see you next time.