January 26, 2022 • 54 mins
Jen talks to Abbe Greenberg and Maggie Sarachek - aka "The Anxiety Sisters" about their decades long friendship, bonding over anxiety, helping a community of hundreds of thousands of anxious people, and some tips for surviving this third year of the pandemic.
To join the Anxiety Sisters community, get their book or podcast - go here: https://anxietysisters.com
For more information on Jen Kirkman, the host of Anxiety Bites, please go here: jenkirkman.bio.link
Anxiety Bites is distributed by the iHeartPodcast Network and co-produced by Dylan Fagan and JJ Posway.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Jen Kirkman. Oh, I'm just I'm just feeling it year
three of this COVID pandemic. And I don't even know
(00:31):
if what I'm feeling is anxiety. It's just it blocks
is all the things, and and honestly, I'm not feeling
it towards the virus. I'm feeling it towards people. I mean, yeah,
the virus. Oh, I got my issues with this virus.
If I see this virus, boy do I have a
(00:53):
thing or two to say to it. But people are
making me just I don't know, anxious man and nah,
or maybe I'm blaming people when I'm really just not
checking into my real deeper feelings about the lack of
control that living through a global pandemic that keeps mutating
(01:17):
makes us feel. You know, I I I started to
I refused to say get back to normal, even though
I say it a lot. But I don't even mean
it when I say but I started to go back
to doing things I used to do, enjoying myself at
a restaurant. I vaccinated. I living in New York right now,
(01:39):
and we had some of the lowest cases before oh, Macron.
I mean, honestly, you would have had to really try
to get COVID if you were vaccinated amboosted, which I
was back in October and early November, and I was
going to restaurants indoors, they check your vaccine card. It
felt very safe, and it did something for the soul.
(02:04):
And then here comes ome Acron and and I don't listen,
My life's great. I don't mean to sound like a victim.
A lot of people have it worked, so I certainly
don't mean and me, me, me, But I found myself
once again back in that familiar feeling of uh, stop
the planet, I want to get off. These people here
(02:25):
are making me crazy, you know, that was that was
the first thing I said when I first first first
went to therapy decades ago. I'm fine, it's everyone else
and how they behave that's the problem. So if you
could just give me some tips. Thinks when you say
that to a therapist, boy or they just excited. They
(02:46):
know you're a patient they will have for a long time.
Because of course, of course, when we feel so many things,
it's always good to look within and not just without
or look out at other people and think, well, what
are they doing wrong to make me feel this way?
But whatever is causing it, I don't know. I can't
put a name to what I feel. I talk about
(03:07):
it with my guests today, the anxiety sisters. I call
it going into some kind of like emotional shutdown. But
just wake me when it's over. I'm irritable, you know,
I think that's what it is. My anxiety is posing
as irritability. I'm irritable at well, we're all gonna get
it anyway, so hope I just get it. I can't
(03:28):
stand that attitude, especially. I mean, I'm talking about people
who are vaccinated, who've been doing all the right things
and then suddenly, well you know, I might get it,
So hope I do, and I can just get it
over with. Is though, what are you a scientist? Suddenly
you can see into the future, so if you get
this variant, it'll just be mild. And uh then what
(03:50):
you you can't reinfect because you can. I mean, I
don't want to get into this whole virology discussion. Is
that a word. I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm just a
human trying to get through this damn thing. And I
get I can feel it in my body. It feels
like someone put a weighted backpack on my shoulders when
I even just read a tweet or something from somebody saying, well,
(04:14):
we're all gonna get this someday. So I hope I
get it soon. I want to get back out into
my life. I'm like, why aren't you thinking of others? Why?
Uh So that's where I'm at today and I listen.
(04:35):
I tried to avoid talking about this pandemic as much
as I could on this podcast because I know, if
you're listening to a podcast about anxiety, you probably I
don't want to think about that right now. And when
I first started this podcast, we were again pre delta.
That's how I think of my life now, what variant
(04:56):
was going on then. I don't even think of what
age I was or one month that was is well,
this was post vaccine, pre delta. But that's when I
started this podcast, and we interviewed a lot of people
months and months and months in advance before their episodes
came out, because I wanted to talk to them about
very specific, timeless, evergreen anxiety topics, neuroscience and meditation. But
(05:23):
a lot of times when people, you know, before we
rolled the audio. I would say, let's let's not mention
the pandemic because this might air in four to six months.
I don't know where we'll be at that point. It
might sound outdated, It might sound outdated in a good
or a bad way where people are like, what, but
oh my god, I forgot about the pandemic. It's totally
(05:45):
over or it's fifty times as worse, and we're kind
of not taking it seriously enough because we didn't know
when when we recorded. So this week we're sort of
more in the present of this. This episode was not
filmed too long ago, filmed what can I speak? Recorded? Um,
(06:05):
it was recorded last week. So I do ask the
Anxiety Sisters what are they seeing out there? Because they
have this giant community of people who have anxiety that
they interact with, and so we do talk a little
bit about that, about how everybody is experiencing anxiety during
this time and what we can do to take care
of ourselves. And you know, it was interesting they caught
(06:27):
me in a moment, the Anxiety Sisters, of beating myself up.
I said something like, oh, I don't know, I think
in a childish way, and they said, hey, don't talk
bad about yourself like that. I love when people who
are experts and anxiety can see me doing my unhelpful
cognitive thinking in the moment. So let's introduce our guests.
(06:53):
Enough of Me got enough of Me last week. My
guests today are the Anxiety Sisters. No, they are not related,
but they are soul sisters in having anxiety. They have
been friends for decades and they have a great book
that's out right now called The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide,
How you can become more hopeful, connected, and happy. The
(07:14):
Anxiety Sisters are Abby Greenberg and Maggie Sir Roger. Now,
there is so much to tell you about them. They
have a podcast called The spin Cycle, they have their book,
The Anxiety Sisters, and I will link all of this
in the show notes. But what is the most impressive
(07:36):
is that Abby and Maggie have a community of over
two thousand people that they talked to, as they put
it constantly. You can go to their website Anxiety Sisters
dot com, sign up for their newsletter and they'll send
you a free progressive muscle relaxation. But their Facebook page
has become really huge. They have forums on their web
(08:00):
say but that was changed and now it's gone over
to Facebook. So here finally a good Facebook story. So
their Facebook page is extremely active. They do all of
their own moderating, and they say they have one of
the kindest, most supportive gentle groups going and if you
send them a message, they will absolutely email you back
(08:22):
and may take a little bit, but they will do it.
They have a book group on Facebook Live on Tuesday
nights at seven o'clock. They do a chapter from their
book a week and they give a presentation based on
that chapter. And they do a very private zoom group
called the Coping Crew if you want a little more
care and are able to pay for that. So I'm
(08:44):
just so impressed that they take so much time out
of their weeks and their days to help others, and
they are in touch with people that that blows my mind.
And it was great to talk to them because I
always love talking to people who just like me, had
anxiety before there was the internet and we didn't even
(09:06):
know the words to use to try to get help.
And what dawned on me while I was talking with
the Anxiety Sisters is, in a way, I feel really
grateful for that because when we talked about our anxiety
to whomever we could talk to it about. Before the Internet,
we would describe our physical symptoms, the sensations we were
feeling to the best of our ability, and we really
(09:29):
thought what was wrong with us was something physical, and
so we didn't just say I'm having anxiety. We would
say I'm driving and I feel like I can't breathe
and I'm going to faint and I need to pull over.
And so, in a weird way, all of this anxiety
talk and labeling things anxiety is wonderful, but every once
(09:51):
in a while, I do think we need to step
back and talk about the hundreds of individual symptoms that
anxiety can be, from an arm that feels numb, to
chest pains, two feelings of unreality, to irritability, to even
(10:12):
digestive issues. There is, as they say, if you have
a body part, anxiety can somehow be involved in that.
So enough of me, Let's take you to my chat
with the anxiety sisters. Now, Am I allowed to say
that I'm an anxiety sister too? Oh? We we hope
(10:36):
you are, okay, I'm your I'm your sister and anxiety
and uh, you know what I loved in you know,
reading your bio is that you too were anxious kids,
anxious teenagers, anxious young adults, anxious middle aged adults, and
now we're all anxious middle aged adults. But at least
(10:56):
now we've got some information and it's more normalized. We
have the Internet. But just like me, you all were
figuring this out in a world where I don't even
know if the word anxiety was being used. And I
don't know if you're anything like me, but I thought
you were either normal or crazy, and crazy meant you
live in a patent room for the rest of your
life and your family visitsing once a year. And so
(11:19):
I didn't want to tell anybody because I felt like
it was like confessing to a murder, Like if I
say something, then this whole thing is going down. You know,
my life's changing forever. So can you take me through
your lives together? And why this is um to me
so unique is that you had each other and you
know friendships grow apart all the time, and that you
(11:41):
both stayed anxious together but helped each other through it.
Can you tell me your story and your own words? Well,
we we met in college in the late eighties, and
uh so we say that we're Although we're not biological sisters,
we are definitely soul sisters because after thirty four years
of child raining each other, we definitely have earned that
(12:02):
we're now linked forever um. But I think that what
attracted us to each other initially was just sort of
that panicked expression we both wore on our faces all
the time, and I think we felt like kindred spirits,
right Macus, I mean, this isn't that sort of I
mean I looked at her, you know, I listened to
sort of the things that she talked about, and I thought, yeah,
(12:22):
feeling that too, And she seems like the kind of
person that I could could fide in and tell her that.
You know, I did. You you know, I went to
the counseling center and I laughed just because those are
those were never helpful back then. No, I you know,
it's like I felt, I felt like I didn't want
to tell anyone. I went to the counseling center because
some people are like, oh, why, what's wrong with you?
(12:43):
So I didn't want to tell anyone. But I felt
like Maggie was someone I could tell. I don't know why.
She just looked like someone who either had been to
the counseling center herself, or at least understood. And I
said to her, have you gone to talk to anybody
about this? And she was like, oh, yeah, I didn't
really help, thank goodness. So that's kind of how the
conversation began. We lived in the same dorm and really
(13:04):
ended up spending a lot of nights sitting together and
talking about what ended up being our symptoms of anxiety
and even some depression. We just didn't have the vocabulary
for it. Back then. People weren't talking about it. I mean,
I know, I thought that there was just something physically
wrong with me and that i'd probably die from it eventually.
I just didn't know what it was. And now you
(13:26):
thought you had some sort of stomach ailment that was
most likely canceled or definitely fatal. And we kind of,
you know, lamented the fact that we would have, you know,
very anxious in short lives. You know, I have the
same thing, and I I thought, as well, you're reminding
me that I didn't just think something might psychologically be wrong.
(13:46):
I had panic disorder on diagnosed, and so I thought
I just have a heart condition or something that's that
we don't know what it is yet. But if I
feel like this ten times a day every day, I'm
probably not live very long. It's probably gonna probably to
kill me. We like to say that we had our
twenties was our decade of the where you know, we
(14:08):
still didn't really understand this idea of anxiety disorder um,
and we each sort of decided, Okay, we're gonna go
see what is actually wrong with us. So we went
to the nutritionist and the cardiologist, and the hypnotist and
the past life regressionists and the psychiatrist, the therapist, you know,
(14:31):
whatever is there was, and whomever would take our money.
We were there trying to find the reason why we
felt like we felt we would go anywhere or do
anything that offers some bope because we were both so
even though we had each other, were very isolated and
lonely because I think anxiety disorder does that. It makes
(14:52):
you feel set apart from others, and we felt really alone,
like we thought we were the only two people that
were dealing with this. Yeah. Oh, and we didn't have
the Internet back then, so we didn't have the access
to other people saying yeah, I experienced this also, And
you know, we tried to look for that, and we
we couldn't find it. We went to the bookstore. You know,
we're booked people, So to the bookstore. I thought, all right,
(15:14):
we'll buy books about anxiety and that will make us
feel better. And you know, I had a full blown
panic attack at Barnes and Noble because the book that
I pulled out it was some had panic in the title,
and it was bright red. And remember that, Mags, Yes,
I do remember it. I have to leave the store.
I did because I was starting to shake. And some
(15:35):
of the books that we were reading, I mean, they
were really they were written by very respected experts who
absolutely knew their stuff, but it was very clinical and
very prescriptive, and all Mag's and I kept saying to
each other's, I don't think we can do this. I don't.
I mean one of the books that we read told
me that I needed to do have the cardiovascular exercise
thirty minutes a day. Well, I could tell you something.
(15:57):
In my panic, my heart raced two ridiculous levels and
I was already sweaty, and I thought, I can't make
my heart go any higher than this. You know, I'll
just get on the elliptical and blow up. Anxiety bites
will be right back after a quick little message from
one of our sponsors. So when you all are sitting
(16:24):
around talking about your anxiety, and again there were aren't
these words for work, for saying what? What kind of
do you remember? What kind of things you're saying when
you're talking about your symptoms with each other? Like what
words were you using? Well, you know, at different times
it was. It was different as we went along. But
I think, you know, for us, there were some things
(16:47):
happening in our lives that just um indicated a problem,
but we didn't really connect the dots in our in
each of us had that, you know, or we didn't
even know that it wasn't quite um typical too. I
don't know, you know, So I I had developed at
(17:09):
one point a lot of phobias. Um, I knew that
wasn't typical. But um, I didn't know the word phobia
or exposure therapy that type of thing. But I knew,
Oh god, when I'm when I'm driving in a car,
I'm getting more and more nervous and what and I
can't drive in the rain. I have to pull over
(17:31):
when it's raining. Yeah, Or I remember visiting Abby at
her grandmother's we so we must have been, you know,
in our early twenties. And she lived about an hour
and a half away from where my parents lived, and
I had taken their car and that trip took me
six hours because I kept having to pull over. And so,
(17:54):
you know, I think a lot of times, and Abby
has her own version of that too, but I think
a lot of times things were happening to us and
we weren't quite connecting the dots. But you know, so
it was more like, wait, why is that taking the
six hours for me? The symptoms were so pronounced, and
you know, in your twenties, you're just not expecting to
(18:15):
have chest pain all the time. You're not expecting to
be dizzy, and you're not expecting for your left arm
to some suddenly go numb. You know. It's like I
would watch these Bay or Ashburn commercials and be like,
oh my god, I'm dying. Oh the beer aspens just totally.
That was that was about the only thing that seemed
close to what I was experiencing. So I remember buying
Bear aspirin in my twenties. Yes, my conversations with Maggie
(18:39):
would go something like this. She picked up the phone
and she would say hello, and I would say, Okay,
it's happening again. My arm is numb. What do you
think that's what do you think that could mean? It
has to be heart attack, right, it has to be
a heart disease thing. And she would say, well, yeah,
but it's been going on for so long it's probably
I'm like, yeah, but what else could it be? And
so a lot of our conversations were, well, what could
this be? We don't get it. And then I went
(19:00):
to the emergency room twice, not three times, but four times,
and in the fourth time I actually said, haven't you
seen house looked further? This is like a real it's
a real problem. You guys are missing it. You don't
And he said, well, we did the e k G twice,
we we checked your enzymes, you've done a chest X ray.
(19:20):
We really can't do anything else. Your heart is totally fine.
I'm like, you people do not know what you're doing
because I'm in here every week, and they didn't say
anything like, gee, this could be anxiety. Well, on the
fourth go around, he said to me, this is definitely anxiety,
and I'm going to prove it to you. He said,
I have here a shot of ad evan, he said,
(19:41):
which is a sedative. If you're having a heart attack,
it's not going to stop your heart a heart attack,
he said, but if you're having anxiety, you should feel
a little better. So he put it into my I V.
And within ten minutes, I'm like, this stuff is great.
How do I get in some of this? That is?
You know, I've never heard anyone I've heard of people
(20:03):
being told by their doctor you know, this is anxiety
when it was. But wow, what an amazing actual procedure
that he gave you, which is I'm going to give
you an anxiety medication. You know. Uh, I mean, that's brilliant.
I've never heard of it that happening to anybody. Well,
he was the first person who made me think, all right,
(20:24):
it's possible that sharp chest pains, at the shortness of breath,
that all these things that that sounds me like a
heart attack. Maybe it's possible that this is coming from
a different place. Maybe this is this is something in
my brain. It's interesting that because as women, as you know, um,
it dates back to the beginning of medicine, we were
called hysterical. If anything was ever wrong physically, you know,
(20:47):
science still knows so little about women's bodies and women's
health that it all boils down to, um, we're hysterical,
we're crazy. And yet, weirdly, so many women I know
when they have gone to get their heart to did
or get a stress tester, or see a cardiologist that
actually anxiety comes up on like the third visit. And
it's like, of all the times that someone should be
(21:08):
saying this actually is in your it sometimes doesn't seem
to happen. And I know, for me, a doctor once
said to me, I mean the therapist one said to me,
for sure, go get all of your blood tests, go
to the doctor and make sure nothing physical is wrong.
And you know, we can assume as is anxiety, but
let's just make sure. And so I think that's always
(21:29):
the best way to go. So in a weird way, um,
people with anxiety end up doing the right thing first.
In a strange way, we tell everybody, if you are
an anxiety sister, you've probably seen cardiologists, neurologists, gastro inturologists.
You know, you've seen probably in some sense you've seen
(21:49):
like so many doctors and gotten things checked out. And
we always tell people to do that, you know, because
that that is responsible. Yeah, because these symptoms are so
physical called it's like people think, oh anxiety, Oh I
feel a little anxious. No, it's not. You may not think,
you know. I know. I never felt like, oh I'm anxious.
(22:11):
I felt like, oh I'm nauseous all the time. Oh
I can't eat? Oh nothing staying down? You know. So
how is that anxiety? How is that not something wrong
with my stomach? You know? And that's what so tricky
about anxiety is it's not a feeling, it's it's physical
(22:31):
symptoms often And yeah, Maggie, you're making me realize that,
you know, in a weird way. You two were really
lucky to not have language yet, because nowadays it can
get so sanitized. So I'm thinking of your story. We're
driving and it's raining, it takes you six hours, you
have to pull over. You know. Nowadays you might say
to someone I'm feeling some feelings like unreality, I'm having
(22:51):
anxiety driving and it just sort of gets washed over.
And so what I'm experiencing a lot doing this podcast
is people are writing to me and saying, now I
don't have anxiety, but I have, and then they list
nine symptoms of anxiety, but none of the symptoms seem typical,
so they don't think they have it. And so in
a weird way, it's kind of a gift that we
grew up learning to describe each and every symptom. My
(23:15):
arm feels numb. I just have this feeling. I can't
complete the drive. So in a way, we were all
really lucky because we are experts in knowing that anxiety
is one word for a billion different things, and we
have an easy acceptance now that this could be anxiety.
We don't question it and say, how could that be anxiety?
(23:35):
We did it first. But a lot of people I
know that are they're pretty savvy A but anxiety are
kind of going backwards. They're still learning all of the symptoms,
but they know the word. Anything your body can do,
any sound it can make, and smell and he fluid,
it can produce. Anything your body can do any organ
that something can happen during anxiety with that particular body part.
(23:57):
In other words, if if your body can do it,
it can be a symptom of anxiety. D And you know,
we have a really large virtual community and anxiety sisterhood,
and a lot of our people are telling us all
the time, really, this is really anxiety. So I think
there's still quite a lot of people who don't believe
their symptoms. Can I ask you, then, what was both
of your first moments when you realize, oh, this is
(24:24):
anxiety and anxiety disorder. Now I'm on the path. Well,
one thing I have to say is that that is
for many of us, and we, like Abby said, we
have this community of over two hundred thousand people who
talk to us constantly. And I have to say that
that's usually a process, you know, of someone saying to
(24:45):
you you have anxiety, and then you still can't really
believe it, because who can believe these unbelievable physical symptoms,
these debilitating symptoms. Yeah, so, but the first time, believe
it or not, that I the uh. Um, I had
a therapist telling me you have anxiety. But but I
was like, she doesn't know what she's talking about, because
(25:07):
these symptoms can't be anxiety. But I called. I was
I was actually babysitting for my brother's son at the time,
and um, someone and my sister in law sister called
and I said, how are you? And I don't know
why I didn't say fine, I said, well, actually, I'm
I'm nauseous all the time, I can't eat. I'm I
(25:28):
was living in New York City at the time. I'm
afraid of the subway, I'm afraid of my elevator and
my building. I can barely get to work. I don't
know why. I just like spit all this out right,
and she said, yeah, I I had that when I
had agoraphobia. You have anxiety. And when she said it
(25:50):
to me, not a therapist, not a doctor, but appear
said it to me. I was like, Oh, she's telling
me how she too, And somehow that turned a light
on for me. We hear from a lot of people
with agoraphobia, and I certainly had a case of it.
(26:13):
You know, an Abbey went through periods of time with it.
But you know, people think it's like, oh, they're afraid
to leave the house. That's not really agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is
really um fear of having a panic attack when you're
outside the house and not being able to get home,
or fear of for some people, getting very sick outside
(26:36):
the home and not being able to get home. So
it really is a gooraphobia when they are all these places.
It starts often with transportation. Um, but there are all
these places that you can't go. And we have a
term we like to use called shrinking world syndrome. So
you like that. Yes, So even if it's not quite
(26:59):
a or a phobia, even if you're sort of don't
quite meet that diagnosis, as soon as we say, as
soon as you're in the situation where your your anxiety
is making decisions about where you go, what you do,
who you see, rather than yourself, you know, it's like
these are these are anxiety decisions, then you're starting to
(27:23):
have this thing we call shrinking world syndrome. I think
the misunderstood thing about agoraphobia and what you call shrinking
world syndrome. It's not I'm an introvert or you know,
it's not that. It's it's like desperately really wanting to
do these things and really thinking you can't. It's like
it's like if you thought you had a broken leg
(27:46):
and you didn't. You know, that's a perfect example in
that it. You know, one of the things we try
to do. Abby really knows a ton about neuroscience and
she's taught me a lot about it. But um, one
of the things we really try to do is sort
of break it down to the simplest neuroscience we could
(28:07):
give people right because you start to realize it is
like a broken leg, but it's happening. You know, you
have this trigger happy a magdala. It is happening in
a place in your body. It is something going going
wonky or not working in a way that's going to
(28:28):
benefit you. Yeah, it's real, and aban, what was your
first Okay, this is anxiety. Now I'm on the path
or I know it's hard to say because it is
a series of moments, but I don't know if I
ever got to that place because they're still lays, you know,
even now after I'm a bona fide anxiety sister and
(28:50):
we've made our life's work to help people manage their anxieties.
So it doesn't manage them even at that point. Uh,
they're still some days we're all call Maggs and also
be sure this is anxiety. There was never one particular day.
I certainly when that eer doc gave me the ada
van Yeah that you know, I have a science mind,
(29:12):
so that was fairly okay, that makes sense to me.
That's logical, and I liked that and that helped, and
that was when I went started to see my first psychiatrist,
but then spent a lot of years grappling. You know. UM,
and you know now I manage my anxiety really well
(29:33):
and I and I think I I live a really
full life despite having anxiety, but it still have it.
We'll be right back. You guys mentioned your online community.
Can you tell me, you know, in some detail, what
(29:56):
exactly that entails? So are people able to, um, you know,
talk with you or they are they is it a
message board? What? What is this amazing community? Because I'm
sure my listeners would like to be part of it.
Well they can and it's totally free. UM. So they
can come to our website, which is Anxiety Sisters dot
com and they can just if you give us your
(30:16):
email address, then you sign up for our newsletter and
you get a free progressive muscle relaxation and it really
connects you with the community. UM. And then also our
Facebook page has become really we had forums on our
website and those were fine and people were chatting, and
(30:37):
then suddenly people were like, let's take this to FB
and everyone would that be? And then before we knew it,
everyone had kind of left the forums and gone to
talk on Facebook. So our Facebook page is extremely active.
I mean, Mag is on it all day long. We
moderate everything and we have one of the kindest, most supportive,
gentlest pages I've ever seen. We it's amazing thing to
(31:00):
me how how little discord there is with so many followers.
It's nice to hear a good Facebook story for once.
I mean, it's a really active page and uh, and
we ask Mag and I answer every private message and
every email we get. So nowadays, with such big numbers,
it takes a few days for us to get back
(31:21):
to everybody. But we talked to hundreds of people a week.
You're saints. Well, we have a book group on Facebook
live on Tuesday nights UM at seven o'clock right now,
from our book, which is The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide
and UM. We do a chapter a week and we
give a presentation basically based on that chapter. UM. And
(31:44):
then we also have UM one thing which there is
a small fee for it. But we have a six
week very private, very closed group on zoom UM called
the Coping Crew UM that has its its own Facebook page.
So it's like most of our stuff is free. There's
a couple of things that if you want sort of
a higher level of interaction, but it's completely free to
(32:10):
talk to us. That's so great. Well, it's it's a
great way to to sort of learn so much, you know,
from each other. And you know, we have a real
sort of ethnography of the anxiety experience, everything from O
c D, you know, to panic disorder and intrusive thoughts
(32:32):
and anything anything you can imagine. We've we've heard about
talk to someone with it. You mentioned progressive muscle relaxation,
and I so rarely get to talk to people about this,
so I'm so glad you mentioned it. It wasn't in
my plan, but I would love to chat about it.
I you know, my first foray into getting help was
(32:53):
when I was twenty one, and I found progressive muscle
relaxation to be the most incredible tool that I still
use to this day. And it's really good for the
person as well who doesn't want to meditate or doesn't
even want to think too much about is this anxiety?
Is this not? You know in quotes, normal people can
(33:14):
do it. So this man in the thirties, when you know,
culture was changing and people were becoming kind of work addicted,
so life was just work and then you go drink
after and that's how you blow off steam. Oh. Edmund
Jacobson he's the father of progressive muscle relaxation, and he
wrote a book in the thirties called You Must Relax
(33:36):
Practical Methods for Reducing the Tensions of Modern Living. And
in the thirties people kind of poo pooed him. Um.
And obviously his work got validated, you know, later on,
but he was they think of him as he said,
it describes exercises for relieving the tensions that precipitate heart attacks,
(33:59):
high blood pressure, in justestion, ulcers, and other disorders. And
I'm not confident if he uses the word um anxiety.
But he was a physician in internal medicine and he
was also a psychiatrist. Oh wow, so he um. He's
a hero to me because of that. But I love
that you offer a free progressive muscle relaxation. Was that
(34:20):
what that home monologue was about? But do is that
a tool that you find helpful? Yes? Very and actually
we uh, we do think of it as a form
of meditation. So for people who don't want to sit
in the lotus position, you know, sort of with the
universal home. You know that that progressive muscle relaxation counts
because you really are very mindful of your body. You know,
(34:42):
when you're progressively relaxing each muscle in your whole body,
that's that meets the criteria for meditation. You're really being
mindful and in the present. That's true. I always I
always saying it's different only to welcome in the people
that don't want to sit with their thoughts or notice
their thoughts and are like, you don't have to do do
you just listen to someone and you follow their instructions,
(35:03):
which I'm really what relaxes me is like list making
and following instructions and okay, you're an abbey, You're an abbey.
Yeah I'm a Maggie. I'm the opposite, but yes, and
and so you know, yeah, just someone sitting there and
saying tighten your arms and okay, now release, you know,
and not to anyone listening. That's that's all it is,
(35:24):
is someone taking you through a series of tightening certain
muscles and then releasing them. And it's when I am done.
I mean I literally can feel I don't know what
the thing is going through my body, but the court
is all releasing and I can feel actually like somebody
put an out of van in my I V. You know,
(35:45):
it actually feels amazing. Well, it's your body going from
that fight or flight stress response and to the the
rest and digest piece response. It's really you're you're going
from your sympathetic nervous response to your paris sympathetic response.
And it's amazing is when you do one, When you
do a PMR, when you're not even having an anxiety
(36:06):
or panic attack, you just feel like, oh, I'm I'm
pretty status quo. The amount of relaxes that you can't
believe what you felt before, like that was normal, you know,
walking around like that. So in fact, that's the time
to really do it as much as possible, because for
a lot of us in that really anxious space, that
becomes really difficult, you know, for some of us to
(36:30):
do some some people can do that when they're really
anxious and it really helps them, but a lot of us,
um it's a practice. So so if you're if you're
going to use an exercise like that, it's great to
practice when you're not feeling so anxious. I guess that
makes sense because if you're doing your progressive muscle relaxation
when nothing's wrong. Um, Then when you call it up
(36:51):
when something's wrong, you'r your muscle memory, right, it says, oh,
I know how to do this yep. Yeah. And the
same thing with visualization. Teach people how to come up
with a serene scene in their mind and they didn't
when they're not feeling a lot of anxiety, when you
know they're kind of at that stable anxiety place, and
to come up with a place where you feel safe.
(37:12):
It can be yours outdoors, it can be made up
place could be your grandmother's living room morever. But we
really encourage people to put in as much sensory detail
as possible when the visual in this because the more
sensory detail you put in, the more your brain feels
like you're actually there. And we teach people to do
this when, like I said, when they're not at the
height of their anxiety, so that when they are experiencing
(37:33):
acute anxiety they can call that up much quicker. I
think that's the thing with a lot of our tools
is that we we usually encourage like that preparation piece
because you know, while you're in that fight or flight response, Um,
what's happening is your frontal lobe. You really can't use
(37:54):
your sort of executive functioning and decision making and reasoning
skills very well that whole front the low part of
your brain. So it's sort of like we we need
to be prepared with what to do when we're in
a situation where the anxiety is just getting getting really high. Um,
and so whatever the technique is, we kind of encourage
(38:16):
people to sort of be ready with different different techniques.
That makes total sense. We'll continue the interview on the
flip side of a quick message from our sponsors. So
you know, a lot of my podcast has not dealt
(38:38):
with the pandemic too much because I've recorded a lot
of episodes in advance, and I also feel like it's
in the back of our minds as yeah, yeah, we
know it's going on. That's why I'm listening to an
anxiety podcast. Do we have to directly talk about it,
you know, but I kind of do want to directly
talk about it because I am I'm not sure what
I'm experiencing, but I'm mixed bariencing maybe a little bit
(39:01):
of a shutting down, which is one of my bad
tools for anxiety. And you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm boosted,
i'm masking up, I'm doing all the things. But I
was enjoying myself for a bit before O Macron hit,
you know. And I'm living in New York and we
had like the lowest cases ever anywhere, shown my vaccine
(39:22):
card at the restaurant and going in without a mask,
and I just I didn't even realize what I'd been missing.
And then here comes O Macron. And I have a
beautiful life and just like no complaints and of healthy
and I have friends and job. But it's that little
(39:43):
bit of freedom that was taken away. Um well, of
course obviously I can go anywhere I want, but I'm
a little concerned. I don't want to catch it, and
I kind of go into this shutdown mode of like,
you know what, wake me when it's all over. I
don't even want to sit outside and see fronts, you know,
And that's a in the childish black and right response.
You know, I have friends and what why don't we
take a walk, And I'm like no, you know, I'm
(40:05):
I'm just I want to hibernate and what are you
seeing with people with the kind of the resurgence of
the intensity. I know, the pandemic never went away, but
we're in a real back to you know, doing our
own personal lockdowns. Are people more anxious? What are you seeing? Well, Jenn,
First of all, I wanted to say that, um, don't
(40:27):
call yourself childish, because you're protecting yourself. That's true. And
and and we are seeing a ton of anxiety during
the pandemic, And we keep reminding people that your brain
is trying to do a good thing here. Your brain
is trying to protect you from what it perceives as
a huge danger. And certainly in the first two years
of the pandemic, there was I mean, we were being
(40:47):
told all the time, you know, if you take off
your mask and you're not vaccinated, you could die. I mean,
that's that's pretty anxiety provoking. Yeah, so I think that
you know that. But but I think that what we're
seeing lately is that we did We got like this
this break for a few months where we were all
sort of stepping outside again, and we were all starting
(41:08):
to go into restaurants again, and we were starting to
see our friends and family, and I was on airplanes
and Magis and I had we had actual events planned
and workshops and got all exciting, like, oh, things are
going to be normal again and we're gonna be able
to go back to living and hugging and kissing each other.
And then O Macron showed up and it was sort
of like, you know, you want to lick. Nope, you
(41:30):
can't have it. Go back home, you know. And and
I'm back in lockdown in my house. I'm not seeing
my grandchildren, not seeing my kids, and it's really hard.
I have a lot of anxiety around that because I was,
you know, a month ago, I was in Colorado visiting
my son. Yeah, and now you know, so, I think
we're seeing a lot of that, a lot of people
feeling that confusion too, because it's hard for your bringing
(41:54):
to keep going long and off. You know, Should I
be anxious? Should I not be anxious? I think that
that's something that that we're experiencing now, particularly with the
with the new variant. And I see a lot of
people saying, oh, you know, it's mild. I don't you
know what. I just want to get it and get
it over. And to me, I'm thinking, you, I think
I'm anxious because I'm asking up everywhere. I'm not going
(42:15):
anywhere but you're anxious too. That's just a different anxiety response,
isn't it. Like they're like they think they have this control, like, oh,
I'll just get it, it will be mild, and then
dot dot dot it will protect you from what future
variants that we don't know about. This is an evolving
son and so it's been interesting for me to look
at everything through the anxiety lens. And people who seem
not anxious because they're out and about, in my opinion,
(42:37):
they're just as anxious as me. Does that do you
think I'm onto something? You know, because it's an evolving
science and you know, obviously we're getting so many different Um,
we're hearing a lot of different voices right of like
it's not very clear always exactly what to do or
what not to do, right, So you know that's anxiety
(43:00):
provoking for all of us because that's like this uncertainty. Um.
And yes, some people sort of shut it out and
just say, you know whatever, I'm just gonna do whatever,
and some people locked down and people going between. But
what we tell people is, um, I think we're all fatigued.
I think a lot of us are, you know, feeling
(43:21):
lonely at this point in the pandemic or um just exhausted.
And so we always say, you know, have a lot
of compassion for yourself and for each other. You know,
it's like coming back to that piece of like, I
am doing the best I can in these circumstances that
(43:45):
you know, we have no we've you know, we're in
the middle of our lives and we've never seen this before,
right you know, So I am doing the best I
can in this like very chaotic world right now. And
so what I need to do, I need to do,
you know. And so that's just like having that self
compassion because we know that when we start criticizing ourselves
(44:10):
a lot, or start like yelling at ourselves, are saying, oh,
I'm childish, I'm this, and that we throw ourselves into
the anxiety response. When you get yelled at, you go
into that fight or flight often. So it's like the
way that we can use our best thinking and planning
and reasoning is to stay as much as possible and
(44:30):
that rest and more closer to that rest and digest.
And we think that starts with the self compassion peace.
And another thing is, you know, we're talking to people
every day who you know, are very anxious about going
back to work during the pandemic. Now, you know, although
now some places are going remote again, and like Maggie said,
the golf post keep moving. It's hard to know should
(44:51):
I be going to work ship and not be going
to work. It's it's really hard to know what the
right thing to do is. But one thing people are
talking about a lot is how angry people are. Yeah,
so mag and I try to remind people that for
some folks they express their anxiety through ankor mm hmm.
You see that anxiety out there even in other responses,
(45:12):
like if someone's like, all right, I'm just gonna get
it and get it over with and that you're absolutely right,
that absolutely is an anxiety response of its own. So
is anger. Yeah. I had a therapist tell me, you
know your anger is anxiety. So, um, you want to cry? Actually,
you know that's you're you're covering up like the grief failing.
You know, and and I know we're both familiar with
(45:32):
Clara good Will Smith the missing stange of things of
grief is anxiety. And I think that's right. You know,
all these people that are being duct taped planes and
you know, um, I don't think it's as much of
a political I mean, I think this whole thing has
been politicized, which is a whole other podcast. But I
don't necessarily see someone who doesn't want to wear a
mask as um in a certain political group, or even
(45:55):
an anti backs are um. Even if they are, it's
to me the bottom line, anxiety I've never you know,
they're saying, I've never I've never had a lack of
control over the universe affect me. It's much more obvious
now how little control we actually have. And I think
that a lot, like you said, it's a lot less
political than some people may think. Loss of control living
(46:18):
in an uncertain world, and some people's response to that
is anger. And so when you were talking about self compassion,
you brought me to my thesis that I have, which
is there are a billion ways two well, there are
million tools we can put in our anxiety to look at,
whether it's progressive, mustere realization, therapy, cutting out, sungar, jumping
(46:39):
up and down, breathing whatever. Everyone knows this. For me,
I truly believe that what makes people not want to
try is there's a little bit of a lack of
self esteem there, like deep, deep down that's like I
don't deserve to feel better, or it's to even know
(47:00):
how to take care of oneself. And so when you're
saying that, like the most important tool of anxiety relief
in this re uppance of the pandemic is have compassion.
Like you caught me saying, I'm thinking like a child.
It's like it's so ingrained to just insult myself. And
I think for other people that have never taken the
first step to get to get any help, professional or otherwise,
(47:21):
I think there's there's a little bit of like who
am I to get home? Other people have it worse,
you know. And I think that self compassion is a
really big part of Once we get our self esteem
in place, then we can have compassion, then we can
take the steps right along with that. Yes, self compassion
sort of really um once you once you really start
(47:42):
to practice self compassion, it can really like sort of
change the lens. You see that we have seen a
lot of things through We've done a lot of training,
um with Kristin Neff, who is sort of the mother
of the modern self compassion movement, and and it really
changes the lens of how we experience a lot of
things um. And and one of the things that we're
(48:05):
really careful to do within that self compassion um and
we're working on doing this better with ourselves too, is
is not having a lot of should's um because so
it's like, you know, one of the things that happened
when when we were both really having terrible anxiety was
people said, well, you should cut out sugar. Well, if
I could cut out sugar, you know, like I mean,
(48:29):
like that's the battle of my life. Okay, yes, or
you should do this, or you should do that. And
what we say is like you can take really small steps.
You can find something that works for you right now,
even just a little bit, and that is great, you know.
So one of the things Abby and I always say,
like something that helps us so much, both of us
(48:51):
is being out in nature, which sounds very cliche, but
that doesn't help you if you really can't leave your
apartment right yeah, but we know even bringing a plant
into your space is something. You know, having your cat
or your dog to cuddle with or whatever whatever pieces
you have, So there that part of the self compassion
(49:14):
is thinking, like is sort of learning. They're really small pieces,
really small steps you can take and everything counts. And
you know, Mags and I, when we set out to
write the book, we said that we wanted to write
the book that we needed and what we needed. We
didn't need anybody telling us what we should do, because
that created a list of other things that we would
(49:34):
fail at. Because our anxiety was allowing us two, you know,
to function as well as we wanted to, and so
we just didn't want to have to screw anything else up.
And so we decided we would write a book that
would not be prescriptive, that would sort of recognize that
one size does not fit all. And you know, we
always say to people, try this. If it doesn't work
(49:55):
on Monday, you know, you could still try it Tuesday.
It might work great on Tuesday. I mean, you know, yeah,
idea to have no should's right, don't shoot on yourself.
And then also to to really expand your tool kit.
You know, we call it a spin kit. You know,
the things that you uh do to soothe yourself and
(50:15):
and and get your anxiety out of the driver's seat.
But you know, it's like not everything fits all at once,
even for us, and and and to know to kind
of be your own scientists and know this doesn't work
for me today, or this works for me on airplanes,
but doesn't work for me at the office. Um, well,
we've come to the end of our session. I know
I said I was going to ask some about children,
but but we had such an organic time that it
(50:37):
didn't come up. So that's fine. I was glad to
talk to you about um everything that came up. You
guys are so brilliant. Thank you so much. UM So
I have to say good biding ladies, and I thank
you for coming on. And I hope that everybody gets
into your community. And of course you know in the
intro I'll be promoting all of your your your podcast
(51:00):
or book, your community, and all the links will be
in the show notes. But thank you for chatting with me.
It was such a great way to start my morning.
I feel like I had a like an Anxiety Sisters
meeting and everyone gets to listen to me. I hope
you enjoyed my chat with the Anxiety Sisters. I'm gonna
let you in on a little secret. We did actually
(51:21):
talk a little bit longer than then you heard, because
we started talking about Prince and you know what it was.
It really wasn't related to the episode at all, and
so I had them edited out. I had my producers
edit that out because, you know, do you want to
stay on topic? But man, we did have a fun
conversation about Prince. It turns out that Abby and I
(51:43):
have had a similar Prince dream before after he died,
So who knows, Maybe he was visiting us in his dream.
Maybe her dream was fake and he was really visiting me.
I mean, that's probably what it is. Anyway, Why am
I talking about a thing that you didn't hear, making
feel like you missed out? You did miss out. But
here are some takeaways from the episode that will probably
(52:06):
help you with your anxiety more than hearing about a
dream I had about Prince one time. These are takeaways
from this episode the wisdom of the Anxiety Sisters. Number one,
get everything checked out by a doctor so that you
can rule out any physical issues when you're beginning to
deal with your anxiety. Two. What's tricky about anxiety is
(52:26):
it's not just an emotional feeling. It's often physical symptoms. Three.
Anything your body can do, any sound or smell, It
can produce any fluid, it can produce any organ you have,
can do something that can be a symptom of anxiety. Four. Unfortunately,
a lot of people don't get help for anxiety because
(52:47):
they don't believe that their physical debilitating symptoms are anxiety. Five.
Agoraphobia is really a fear of having a panic attack
or getting sick away from your home and not being
able to get back in time to get to safety. Six.
As soon as your anxiety starts making decisions for you
(53:10):
about where you go and who you see and how
you see yourself, you're starting to have what the anxiety
sisters call shrinking world syndrome. Seven. For people who don't
want to sit in a lotus position and meditate, progressive
muscle relaxation does count as a meditation. Eight. Progressive muscle
(53:30):
relaxation helps your body go from the fight or flight
response into the rest and digest peaceful response. Nine. When
you're in fighter flight, the frontal lobe part of your
brain is affected to where you can't use your executive functioning,
decision making, or reasoning skills very well. Ten. Have a
(53:50):
lot of compassion for yourself and for each other. Eleven.
Don't criticize yourself right now. You're doing the best you
can in this very chaotic world. Right now. Twelve. Try
to avoid thinking in should like I should do this
for my anxiety, or I should do that. Don't shoot
on yourself. Part of self compassion is learning that there
(54:11):
are small steps that you can take that can be transformative,
like if you can't get out into nature, you could
get a plant. And lastly, if one anxiety relief tool
doesn't work one day, maybe it'll work another day again.
How to get in touch with the anxiety sisters and
enjoy everything they have to offer. Just go onto those
(54:31):
links in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and
just remember anxiety bites, but you're in control. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Jen Kirkman. Oh, I'm just I'm just feeling it year
three of this COVID pandemic. And I don't even know
(00:31):
if what I'm feeling is anxiety. It's just it blocks
is all the things, and and honestly, I'm not feeling
it towards the virus. I'm feeling it towards people. I mean, yeah,
the virus. Oh, I got my issues with this virus.
If I see this virus, boy do I have a
(00:53):
thing or two to say to it. But people are
making me just I don't know, anxious man and nah,
or maybe I'm blaming people when I'm really just not
checking into my real deeper feelings about the lack of
control that living through a global pandemic that keeps mutating
(01:17):
makes us feel. You know, I I I started to
I refused to say get back to normal, even though
I say it a lot. But I don't even mean
it when I say but I started to go back
to doing things I used to do, enjoying myself at
a restaurant. I vaccinated. I living in New York right now,
(01:39):
and we had some of the lowest cases before oh, Macron.
I mean, honestly, you would have had to really try
to get COVID if you were vaccinated amboosted, which I
was back in October and early November, and I was
going to restaurants indoors, they check your vaccine card. It
felt very safe, and it did something for the soul.
(02:04):
And then here comes ome Acron and and I don't listen,
My life's great. I don't mean to sound like a victim.
A lot of people have it worked, so I certainly
don't mean and me, me, me, But I found myself
once again back in that familiar feeling of uh, stop
the planet, I want to get off. These people here
(02:25):
are making me crazy, you know, that was that was
the first thing I said when I first first first
went to therapy decades ago. I'm fine, it's everyone else
and how they behave that's the problem. So if you
could just give me some tips. Thinks when you say
that to a therapist, boy or they just excited. They
(02:46):
know you're a patient they will have for a long time.
Because of course, of course, when we feel so many things,
it's always good to look within and not just without
or look out at other people and think, well, what
are they doing wrong to make me feel this way?
But whatever is causing it, I don't know. I can't
put a name to what I feel. I talk about
(03:07):
it with my guests today, the anxiety sisters. I call
it going into some kind of like emotional shutdown. But
just wake me when it's over. I'm irritable, you know,
I think that's what it is. My anxiety is posing
as irritability. I'm irritable at well, we're all gonna get
it anyway, so hope I just get it. I can't
(03:28):
stand that attitude, especially. I mean, I'm talking about people
who are vaccinated, who've been doing all the right things
and then suddenly, well you know, I might get it,
So hope I do, and I can just get it
over with. Is though, what are you a scientist? Suddenly
you can see into the future, so if you get
this variant, it'll just be mild. And uh then what
(03:50):
you you can't reinfect because you can. I mean, I
don't want to get into this whole virology discussion. Is
that a word. I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm just a
human trying to get through this damn thing. And I
get I can feel it in my body. It feels
like someone put a weighted backpack on my shoulders when
I even just read a tweet or something from somebody saying, well,
(04:14):
we're all gonna get this someday. So I hope I
get it soon. I want to get back out into
my life. I'm like, why aren't you thinking of others? Why?
Uh So that's where I'm at today and I listen.
(04:35):
I tried to avoid talking about this pandemic as much
as I could on this podcast because I know, if
you're listening to a podcast about anxiety, you probably I
don't want to think about that right now. And when
I first started this podcast, we were again pre delta.
That's how I think of my life now, what variant
(04:56):
was going on then. I don't even think of what
age I was or one month that was is well,
this was post vaccine, pre delta. But that's when I
started this podcast, and we interviewed a lot of people
months and months and months in advance before their episodes
came out, because I wanted to talk to them about
very specific, timeless, evergreen anxiety topics, neuroscience and meditation. But
(05:23):
a lot of times when people, you know, before we
rolled the audio. I would say, let's let's not mention
the pandemic because this might air in four to six months.
I don't know where we'll be at that point. It
might sound outdated, It might sound outdated in a good
or a bad way where people are like, what, but
oh my god, I forgot about the pandemic. It's totally
(05:45):
over or it's fifty times as worse, and we're kind
of not taking it seriously enough because we didn't know
when when we recorded. So this week we're sort of
more in the present of this. This episode was not
filmed too long ago, filmed what can I speak? Recorded? Um,
(06:05):
it was recorded last week. So I do ask the
Anxiety Sisters what are they seeing out there? Because they
have this giant community of people who have anxiety that
they interact with, and so we do talk a little
bit about that, about how everybody is experiencing anxiety during
this time and what we can do to take care
of ourselves. And you know, it was interesting they caught
(06:27):
me in a moment, the Anxiety Sisters, of beating myself up.
I said something like, oh, I don't know, I think
in a childish way, and they said, hey, don't talk
bad about yourself like that. I love when people who
are experts and anxiety can see me doing my unhelpful
cognitive thinking in the moment. So let's introduce our guests.
(06:53):
Enough of Me got enough of Me last week. My
guests today are the Anxiety Sisters. No, they are not related,
but they are soul sisters in having anxiety. They have
been friends for decades and they have a great book
that's out right now called The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide,
How you can become more hopeful, connected, and happy. The
(07:14):
Anxiety Sisters are Abby Greenberg and Maggie Sir Roger. Now,
there is so much to tell you about them. They
have a podcast called The spin Cycle, they have their book,
The Anxiety Sisters, and I will link all of this
in the show notes. But what is the most impressive
(07:36):
is that Abby and Maggie have a community of over
two thousand people that they talked to, as they put
it constantly. You can go to their website Anxiety Sisters
dot com, sign up for their newsletter and they'll send
you a free progressive muscle relaxation. But their Facebook page
has become really huge. They have forums on their web
(08:00):
say but that was changed and now it's gone over
to Facebook. So here finally a good Facebook story. So
their Facebook page is extremely active. They do all of
their own moderating, and they say they have one of
the kindest, most supportive gentle groups going and if you
send them a message, they will absolutely email you back
(08:22):
and may take a little bit, but they will do it.
They have a book group on Facebook Live on Tuesday
nights at seven o'clock. They do a chapter from their
book a week and they give a presentation based on
that chapter. And they do a very private zoom group
called the Coping Crew if you want a little more
care and are able to pay for that. So I'm
(08:44):
just so impressed that they take so much time out
of their weeks and their days to help others, and
they are in touch with people that that blows my mind.
And it was great to talk to them because I
always love talking to people who just like me, had
anxiety before there was the internet and we didn't even
(09:06):
know the words to use to try to get help.
And what dawned on me while I was talking with
the Anxiety Sisters is, in a way, I feel really
grateful for that because when we talked about our anxiety
to whomever we could talk to it about. Before the Internet,
we would describe our physical symptoms, the sensations we were
feeling to the best of our ability, and we really
(09:29):
thought what was wrong with us was something physical, and
so we didn't just say I'm having anxiety. We would
say I'm driving and I feel like I can't breathe
and I'm going to faint and I need to pull over.
And so, in a weird way, all of this anxiety
talk and labeling things anxiety is wonderful, but every once
(09:51):
in a while, I do think we need to step
back and talk about the hundreds of individual symptoms that
anxiety can be, from an arm that feels numb, to
chest pains, two feelings of unreality, to irritability, to even
(10:12):
digestive issues. There is, as they say, if you have
a body part, anxiety can somehow be involved in that.
So enough of me, Let's take you to my chat
with the anxiety sisters. Now, Am I allowed to say
that I'm an anxiety sister too? Oh? We we hope
(10:36):
you are, okay, I'm your I'm your sister and anxiety
and uh, you know what I loved in you know,
reading your bio is that you too were anxious kids,
anxious teenagers, anxious young adults, anxious middle aged adults, and
now we're all anxious middle aged adults. But at least
(10:56):
now we've got some information and it's more normalized. We
have the Internet. But just like me, you all were
figuring this out in a world where I don't even
know if the word anxiety was being used. And I
don't know if you're anything like me, but I thought
you were either normal or crazy, and crazy meant you
live in a patent room for the rest of your
life and your family visitsing once a year. And so
(11:19):
I didn't want to tell anybody because I felt like
it was like confessing to a murder, Like if I
say something, then this whole thing is going down. You know,
my life's changing forever. So can you take me through
your lives together? And why this is um to me
so unique is that you had each other and you
know friendships grow apart all the time, and that you
(11:41):
both stayed anxious together but helped each other through it.
Can you tell me your story and your own words? Well,
we we met in college in the late eighties, and
uh so we say that we're Although we're not biological sisters,
we are definitely soul sisters because after thirty four years
of child raining each other, we definitely have earned that
(12:02):
we're now linked forever um. But I think that what
attracted us to each other initially was just sort of
that panicked expression we both wore on our faces all
the time, and I think we felt like kindred spirits,
right Macus, I mean, this isn't that sort of I
mean I looked at her, you know, I listened to
sort of the things that she talked about, and I thought, yeah,
(12:22):
feeling that too, And she seems like the kind of
person that I could could fide in and tell her that.
You know, I did. You you know, I went to
the counseling center and I laughed just because those are
those were never helpful back then. No, I you know,
it's like I felt, I felt like I didn't want
to tell anyone. I went to the counseling center because
some people are like, oh, why, what's wrong with you?
(12:43):
So I didn't want to tell anyone. But I felt
like Maggie was someone I could tell. I don't know why.
She just looked like someone who either had been to
the counseling center herself, or at least understood. And I
said to her, have you gone to talk to anybody
about this? And she was like, oh, yeah, I didn't
really help, thank goodness. So that's kind of how the
conversation began. We lived in the same dorm and really
(13:04):
ended up spending a lot of nights sitting together and
talking about what ended up being our symptoms of anxiety
and even some depression. We just didn't have the vocabulary
for it. Back then. People weren't talking about it. I mean,
I know, I thought that there was just something physically
wrong with me and that i'd probably die from it eventually.
I just didn't know what it was. And now you
(13:26):
thought you had some sort of stomach ailment that was
most likely canceled or definitely fatal. And we kind of,
you know, lamented the fact that we would have, you know,
very anxious in short lives. You know, I have the
same thing, and I I thought, as well, you're reminding
me that I didn't just think something might psychologically be wrong.
(13:46):
I had panic disorder on diagnosed, and so I thought
I just have a heart condition or something that's that
we don't know what it is yet. But if I
feel like this ten times a day every day, I'm
probably not live very long. It's probably gonna probably to
kill me. We like to say that we had our
twenties was our decade of the where you know, we
(14:08):
still didn't really understand this idea of anxiety disorder um,
and we each sort of decided, Okay, we're gonna go
see what is actually wrong with us. So we went
to the nutritionist and the cardiologist, and the hypnotist and
the past life regressionists and the psychiatrist, the therapist, you know,
(14:31):
whatever is there was, and whomever would take our money.
We were there trying to find the reason why we
felt like we felt we would go anywhere or do
anything that offers some bope because we were both so
even though we had each other, were very isolated and
lonely because I think anxiety disorder does that. It makes
(14:52):
you feel set apart from others, and we felt really alone,
like we thought we were the only two people that
were dealing with this. Yeah. Oh, and we didn't have
the Internet back then, so we didn't have the access
to other people saying yeah, I experienced this also, And
you know, we tried to look for that, and we
we couldn't find it. We went to the bookstore. You know,
we're booked people, So to the bookstore. I thought, all right,
(15:14):
we'll buy books about anxiety and that will make us
feel better. And you know, I had a full blown
panic attack at Barnes and Noble because the book that
I pulled out it was some had panic in the title,
and it was bright red. And remember that, Mags, Yes,
I do remember it. I have to leave the store.
I did because I was starting to shake. And some
(15:35):
of the books that we were reading, I mean, they
were really they were written by very respected experts who
absolutely knew their stuff, but it was very clinical and
very prescriptive, and all Mag's and I kept saying to
each other's, I don't think we can do this. I don't.
I mean one of the books that we read told
me that I needed to do have the cardiovascular exercise
thirty minutes a day. Well, I could tell you something.
(15:57):
In my panic, my heart raced two ridiculous levels and
I was already sweaty, and I thought, I can't make
my heart go any higher than this. You know, I'll
just get on the elliptical and blow up. Anxiety bites
will be right back after a quick little message from
one of our sponsors. So when you all are sitting
(16:24):
around talking about your anxiety, and again there were aren't
these words for work, for saying what? What kind of
do you remember? What kind of things you're saying when
you're talking about your symptoms with each other? Like what
words were you using? Well, you know, at different times
it was. It was different as we went along. But
I think, you know, for us, there were some things
(16:47):
happening in our lives that just um indicated a problem,
but we didn't really connect the dots in our in
each of us had that, you know, or we didn't
even know that it wasn't quite um typical too. I
don't know, you know, So I I had developed at
(17:09):
one point a lot of phobias. Um, I knew that
wasn't typical. But um, I didn't know the word phobia
or exposure therapy that type of thing. But I knew,
Oh god, when I'm when I'm driving in a car,
I'm getting more and more nervous and what and I
can't drive in the rain. I have to pull over
(17:31):
when it's raining. Yeah, Or I remember visiting Abby at
her grandmother's we so we must have been, you know,
in our early twenties. And she lived about an hour
and a half away from where my parents lived, and
I had taken their car and that trip took me
six hours because I kept having to pull over. And so,
(17:54):
you know, I think a lot of times, and Abby
has her own version of that too, but I think
a lot of times things were happening to us and
we weren't quite connecting the dots. But you know, so
it was more like, wait, why is that taking the
six hours for me? The symptoms were so pronounced, and
you know, in your twenties, you're just not expecting to
(18:15):
have chest pain all the time. You're not expecting to
be dizzy, and you're not expecting for your left arm
to some suddenly go numb. You know. It's like I
would watch these Bay or Ashburn commercials and be like,
oh my god, I'm dying. Oh the beer aspens just totally.
That was that was about the only thing that seemed
close to what I was experiencing. So I remember buying
Bear aspirin in my twenties. Yes, my conversations with Maggie
(18:39):
would go something like this. She picked up the phone
and she would say hello, and I would say, Okay,
it's happening again. My arm is numb. What do you
think that's what do you think that could mean? It
has to be heart attack, right, it has to be
a heart disease thing. And she would say, well, yeah,
but it's been going on for so long it's probably
I'm like, yeah, but what else could it be? And
so a lot of our conversations were, well, what could
this be? We don't get it. And then I went
(19:00):
to the emergency room twice, not three times, but four times,
and in the fourth time I actually said, haven't you
seen house looked further? This is like a real it's
a real problem. You guys are missing it. You don't
And he said, well, we did the e k G twice,
we we checked your enzymes, you've done a chest X ray.
(19:20):
We really can't do anything else. Your heart is totally fine.
I'm like, you people do not know what you're doing
because I'm in here every week, and they didn't say
anything like, gee, this could be anxiety. Well, on the
fourth go around, he said to me, this is definitely anxiety,
and I'm going to prove it to you. He said,
I have here a shot of ad evan, he said,
(19:41):
which is a sedative. If you're having a heart attack,
it's not going to stop your heart a heart attack,
he said, but if you're having anxiety, you should feel
a little better. So he put it into my I V.
And within ten minutes, I'm like, this stuff is great.
How do I get in some of this? That is?
You know, I've never heard anyone I've heard of people
(20:03):
being told by their doctor you know, this is anxiety
when it was. But wow, what an amazing actual procedure
that he gave you, which is I'm going to give
you an anxiety medication. You know. Uh, I mean, that's brilliant.
I've never heard of it that happening to anybody. Well,
he was the first person who made me think, all right,
(20:24):
it's possible that sharp chest pains, at the shortness of breath,
that all these things that that sounds me like a
heart attack. Maybe it's possible that this is coming from
a different place. Maybe this is this is something in
my brain. It's interesting that because as women, as you know, um,
it dates back to the beginning of medicine, we were
called hysterical. If anything was ever wrong physically, you know,
(20:47):
science still knows so little about women's bodies and women's
health that it all boils down to, um, we're hysterical,
we're crazy. And yet, weirdly, so many women I know
when they have gone to get their heart to did
or get a stress tester, or see a cardiologist that
actually anxiety comes up on like the third visit. And
it's like, of all the times that someone should be
(21:08):
saying this actually is in your it sometimes doesn't seem
to happen. And I know, for me, a doctor once
said to me, I mean the therapist one said to me,
for sure, go get all of your blood tests, go
to the doctor and make sure nothing physical is wrong.
And you know, we can assume as is anxiety, but
let's just make sure. And so I think that's always
(21:29):
the best way to go. So in a weird way, um,
people with anxiety end up doing the right thing first.
In a strange way, we tell everybody, if you are
an anxiety sister, you've probably seen cardiologists, neurologists, gastro inturologists.
You know, you've seen probably in some sense you've seen
(21:49):
like so many doctors and gotten things checked out. And
we always tell people to do that, you know, because
that that is responsible. Yeah, because these symptoms are so
physical called it's like people think, oh anxiety, Oh I
feel a little anxious. No, it's not. You may not think,
you know. I know. I never felt like, oh I'm anxious.
(22:11):
I felt like, oh I'm nauseous all the time. Oh
I can't eat? Oh nothing staying down? You know. So
how is that anxiety? How is that not something wrong
with my stomach? You know? And that's what so tricky
about anxiety is it's not a feeling, it's it's physical
(22:31):
symptoms often And yeah, Maggie, you're making me realize that,
you know, in a weird way. You two were really
lucky to not have language yet, because nowadays it can
get so sanitized. So I'm thinking of your story. We're
driving and it's raining, it takes you six hours, you
have to pull over. You know. Nowadays you might say
to someone I'm feeling some feelings like unreality, I'm having
(22:51):
anxiety driving and it just sort of gets washed over.
And so what I'm experiencing a lot doing this podcast
is people are writing to me and saying, now I
don't have anxiety, but I have, and then they list
nine symptoms of anxiety, but none of the symptoms seem typical,
so they don't think they have it. And so in
a weird way, it's kind of a gift that we
grew up learning to describe each and every symptom. My
(23:15):
arm feels numb. I just have this feeling. I can't
complete the drive. So in a way, we were all
really lucky because we are experts in knowing that anxiety
is one word for a billion different things, and we
have an easy acceptance now that this could be anxiety.
We don't question it and say, how could that be anxiety?
(23:35):
We did it first. But a lot of people I
know that are they're pretty savvy A but anxiety are
kind of going backwards. They're still learning all of the symptoms,
but they know the word. Anything your body can do,
any sound it can make, and smell and he fluid,
it can produce. Anything your body can do any organ
that something can happen during anxiety with that particular body part.
(23:57):
In other words, if if your body can do it,
it can be a symptom of anxiety. D And you know,
we have a really large virtual community and anxiety sisterhood,
and a lot of our people are telling us all
the time, really, this is really anxiety. So I think
there's still quite a lot of people who don't believe
their symptoms. Can I ask you, then, what was both
of your first moments when you realize, oh, this is
(24:24):
anxiety and anxiety disorder. Now I'm on the path. Well,
one thing I have to say is that that is
for many of us, and we, like Abby said, we
have this community of over two hundred thousand people who
talk to us constantly. And I have to say that
that's usually a process, you know, of someone saying to
(24:45):
you you have anxiety, and then you still can't really
believe it, because who can believe these unbelievable physical symptoms,
these debilitating symptoms. Yeah, so, but the first time, believe
it or not, that I the uh. Um, I had
a therapist telling me you have anxiety. But but I
was like, she doesn't know what she's talking about, because
(25:07):
these symptoms can't be anxiety. But I called. I was
I was actually babysitting for my brother's son at the time,
and um, someone and my sister in law sister called
and I said, how are you? And I don't know
why I didn't say fine, I said, well, actually, I'm
I'm nauseous all the time, I can't eat. I'm I
(25:28):
was living in New York City at the time. I'm
afraid of the subway, I'm afraid of my elevator and
my building. I can barely get to work. I don't
know why. I just like spit all this out right,
and she said, yeah, I I had that when I
had agoraphobia. You have anxiety. And when she said it
(25:50):
to me, not a therapist, not a doctor, but appear
said it to me. I was like, Oh, she's telling
me how she too, And somehow that turned a light
on for me. We hear from a lot of people
with agoraphobia, and I certainly had a case of it.
(26:13):
You know, an Abbey went through periods of time with it.
But you know, people think it's like, oh, they're afraid
to leave the house. That's not really agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is
really um fear of having a panic attack when you're
outside the house and not being able to get home,
or fear of for some people, getting very sick outside
(26:36):
the home and not being able to get home. So
it really is a gooraphobia when they are all these places.
It starts often with transportation. Um, but there are all
these places that you can't go. And we have a
term we like to use called shrinking world syndrome. So
you like that. Yes, So even if it's not quite
(26:59):
a or a phobia, even if you're sort of don't
quite meet that diagnosis, as soon as we say, as
soon as you're in the situation where your your anxiety
is making decisions about where you go, what you do,
who you see, rather than yourself, you know, it's like
these are these are anxiety decisions, then you're starting to
(27:23):
have this thing we call shrinking world syndrome. I think
the misunderstood thing about agoraphobia and what you call shrinking
world syndrome. It's not I'm an introvert or you know,
it's not that. It's it's like desperately really wanting to
do these things and really thinking you can't. It's like
it's like if you thought you had a broken leg
(27:46):
and you didn't. You know, that's a perfect example in
that it. You know, one of the things we try
to do. Abby really knows a ton about neuroscience and
she's taught me a lot about it. But um, one
of the things we really try to do is sort
of break it down to the simplest neuroscience we could
(28:07):
give people right because you start to realize it is
like a broken leg, but it's happening. You know, you
have this trigger happy a magdala. It is happening in
a place in your body. It is something going going
wonky or not working in a way that's going to
(28:28):
benefit you. Yeah, it's real, and aban, what was your
first Okay, this is anxiety. Now I'm on the path
or I know it's hard to say because it is
a series of moments, but I don't know if I
ever got to that place because they're still lays, you know,
even now after I'm a bona fide anxiety sister and
(28:50):
we've made our life's work to help people manage their anxieties.
So it doesn't manage them even at that point. Uh,
they're still some days we're all call Maggs and also
be sure this is anxiety. There was never one particular day.
I certainly when that eer doc gave me the ada
van Yeah that you know, I have a science mind,
(29:12):
so that was fairly okay, that makes sense to me.
That's logical, and I liked that and that helped, and
that was when I went started to see my first psychiatrist,
but then spent a lot of years grappling. You know. UM,
and you know now I manage my anxiety really well
(29:33):
and I and I think I I live a really
full life despite having anxiety, but it still have it.
We'll be right back. You guys mentioned your online community.
Can you tell me, you know, in some detail, what
(29:56):
exactly that entails? So are people able to, um, you know,
talk with you or they are they is it a
message board? What? What is this amazing community? Because I'm
sure my listeners would like to be part of it.
Well they can and it's totally free. UM. So they
can come to our website, which is Anxiety Sisters dot
com and they can just if you give us your
(30:16):
email address, then you sign up for our newsletter and
you get a free progressive muscle relaxation and it really
connects you with the community. UM. And then also our
Facebook page has become really we had forums on our
website and those were fine and people were chatting, and
(30:37):
then suddenly people were like, let's take this to FB
and everyone would that be? And then before we knew it,
everyone had kind of left the forums and gone to
talk on Facebook. So our Facebook page is extremely active.
I mean, Mag is on it all day long. We
moderate everything and we have one of the kindest, most supportive,
gentlest pages I've ever seen. We it's amazing thing to
(31:00):
me how how little discord there is with so many followers.
It's nice to hear a good Facebook story for once.
I mean, it's a really active page and uh, and
we ask Mag and I answer every private message and
every email we get. So nowadays, with such big numbers,
it takes a few days for us to get back
(31:21):
to everybody. But we talked to hundreds of people a week.
You're saints. Well, we have a book group on Facebook
live on Tuesday nights UM at seven o'clock right now,
from our book, which is The Anxiety Sisters Survival Guide
and UM. We do a chapter a week and we
give a presentation basically based on that chapter. UM. And
(31:44):
then we also have UM one thing which there is
a small fee for it. But we have a six
week very private, very closed group on zoom UM called
the Coping Crew UM that has its its own Facebook page.
So it's like most of our stuff is free. There's
a couple of things that if you want sort of
a higher level of interaction, but it's completely free to
(32:10):
talk to us. That's so great. Well, it's it's a
great way to to sort of learn so much, you know,
from each other. And you know, we have a real
sort of ethnography of the anxiety experience, everything from O
c D, you know, to panic disorder and intrusive thoughts
(32:32):
and anything anything you can imagine. We've we've heard about
talk to someone with it. You mentioned progressive muscle relaxation,
and I so rarely get to talk to people about this,
so I'm so glad you mentioned it. It wasn't in
my plan, but I would love to chat about it.
I you know, my first foray into getting help was
(32:53):
when I was twenty one, and I found progressive muscle
relaxation to be the most incredible tool that I still
use to this day. And it's really good for the
person as well who doesn't want to meditate or doesn't
even want to think too much about is this anxiety?
Is this not? You know in quotes, normal people can
(33:14):
do it. So this man in the thirties, when you know,
culture was changing and people were becoming kind of work addicted,
so life was just work and then you go drink
after and that's how you blow off steam. Oh. Edmund
Jacobson he's the father of progressive muscle relaxation, and he
wrote a book in the thirties called You Must Relax
(33:36):
Practical Methods for Reducing the Tensions of Modern Living. And
in the thirties people kind of poo pooed him. Um.
And obviously his work got validated, you know, later on,
but he was they think of him as he said,
it describes exercises for relieving the tensions that precipitate heart attacks,
(33:59):
high blood pressure, in justestion, ulcers, and other disorders. And
I'm not confident if he uses the word um anxiety.
But he was a physician in internal medicine and he
was also a psychiatrist. Oh wow, so he um. He's
a hero to me because of that. But I love
that you offer a free progressive muscle relaxation. Was that
(34:20):
what that home monologue was about? But do is that
a tool that you find helpful? Yes? Very and actually
we uh, we do think of it as a form
of meditation. So for people who don't want to sit
in the lotus position, you know, sort of with the
universal home. You know that that progressive muscle relaxation counts
because you really are very mindful of your body. You know,
(34:42):
when you're progressively relaxing each muscle in your whole body,
that's that meets the criteria for meditation. You're really being
mindful and in the present. That's true. I always I
always saying it's different only to welcome in the people
that don't want to sit with their thoughts or notice
their thoughts and are like, you don't have to do do
you just listen to someone and you follow their instructions,
(35:03):
which I'm really what relaxes me is like list making
and following instructions and okay, you're an abbey, You're an abbey.
Yeah I'm a Maggie. I'm the opposite, but yes, and
and so you know, yeah, just someone sitting there and
saying tighten your arms and okay, now release, you know,
and not to anyone listening. That's that's all it is,
(35:24):
is someone taking you through a series of tightening certain
muscles and then releasing them. And it's when I am done.
I mean I literally can feel I don't know what
the thing is going through my body, but the court
is all releasing and I can feel actually like somebody
put an out of van in my I V. You know,
(35:45):
it actually feels amazing. Well, it's your body going from
that fight or flight stress response and to the the
rest and digest piece response. It's really you're you're going
from your sympathetic nervous response to your paris sympathetic response.
And it's amazing is when you do one, When you
do a PMR, when you're not even having an anxiety
(36:06):
or panic attack, you just feel like, oh, I'm I'm
pretty status quo. The amount of relaxes that you can't
believe what you felt before, like that was normal, you know,
walking around like that. So in fact, that's the time
to really do it as much as possible, because for
a lot of us in that really anxious space, that
becomes really difficult, you know, for some of us to
(36:30):
do some some people can do that when they're really
anxious and it really helps them, but a lot of us,
um it's a practice. So so if you're if you're
going to use an exercise like that, it's great to
practice when you're not feeling so anxious. I guess that
makes sense because if you're doing your progressive muscle relaxation
when nothing's wrong. Um, Then when you call it up
(36:51):
when something's wrong, you'r your muscle memory, right, it says, oh,
I know how to do this yep. Yeah. And the
same thing with visualization. Teach people how to come up
with a serene scene in their mind and they didn't
when they're not feeling a lot of anxiety, when you
know they're kind of at that stable anxiety place, and
to come up with a place where you feel safe.
(37:12):
It can be yours outdoors, it can be made up
place could be your grandmother's living room morever. But we
really encourage people to put in as much sensory detail
as possible when the visual in this because the more
sensory detail you put in, the more your brain feels
like you're actually there. And we teach people to do
this when, like I said, when they're not at the
height of their anxiety, so that when they are experiencing
(37:33):
acute anxiety they can call that up much quicker. I
think that's the thing with a lot of our tools
is that we we usually encourage like that preparation piece
because you know, while you're in that fight or flight response, Um,
what's happening is your frontal lobe. You really can't use
(37:54):
your sort of executive functioning and decision making and reasoning
skills very well that whole front the low part of
your brain. So it's sort of like we we need
to be prepared with what to do when we're in
a situation where the anxiety is just getting getting really high. Um,
and so whatever the technique is, we kind of encourage
(38:16):
people to sort of be ready with different different techniques.
That makes total sense. We'll continue the interview on the
flip side of a quick message from our sponsors. So
you know, a lot of my podcast has not dealt
(38:38):
with the pandemic too much because I've recorded a lot
of episodes in advance, and I also feel like it's
in the back of our minds as yeah, yeah, we
know it's going on. That's why I'm listening to an
anxiety podcast. Do we have to directly talk about it,
you know, but I kind of do want to directly
talk about it because I am I'm not sure what
I'm experiencing, but I'm mixed bariencing maybe a little bit
(39:01):
of a shutting down, which is one of my bad
tools for anxiety. And you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm boosted,
i'm masking up, I'm doing all the things. But I
was enjoying myself for a bit before O Macron hit,
you know. And I'm living in New York and we
had like the lowest cases ever anywhere, shown my vaccine
(39:22):
card at the restaurant and going in without a mask,
and I just I didn't even realize what I'd been missing.
And then here comes O Macron. And I have a
beautiful life and just like no complaints and of healthy
and I have friends and job. But it's that little
(39:43):
bit of freedom that was taken away. Um well, of
course obviously I can go anywhere I want, but I'm
a little concerned. I don't want to catch it, and
I kind of go into this shutdown mode of like,
you know what, wake me when it's all over. I
don't even want to sit outside and see fronts, you know,
And that's a in the childish black and right response.
You know, I have friends and what why don't we
take a walk, And I'm like no, you know, I'm
(40:05):
I'm just I want to hibernate and what are you
seeing with people with the kind of the resurgence of
the intensity. I know, the pandemic never went away, but
we're in a real back to you know, doing our
own personal lockdowns. Are people more anxious? What are you seeing? Well, Jenn,
First of all, I wanted to say that, um, don't
(40:27):
call yourself childish, because you're protecting yourself. That's true. And
and and we are seeing a ton of anxiety during
the pandemic, And we keep reminding people that your brain
is trying to do a good thing here. Your brain
is trying to protect you from what it perceives as
a huge danger. And certainly in the first two years
of the pandemic, there was I mean, we were being
(40:47):
told all the time, you know, if you take off
your mask and you're not vaccinated, you could die. I mean,
that's that's pretty anxiety provoking. Yeah, so I think that
you know that. But but I think that what we're
seeing lately is that we did We got like this
this break for a few months where we were all
sort of stepping outside again, and we were all starting
(41:08):
to go into restaurants again, and we were starting to
see our friends and family, and I was on airplanes
and Magis and I had we had actual events planned
and workshops and got all exciting, like, oh, things are
going to be normal again and we're gonna be able
to go back to living and hugging and kissing each other.
And then O Macron showed up and it was sort
of like, you know, you want to lick. Nope, you
(41:30):
can't have it. Go back home, you know. And and
I'm back in lockdown in my house. I'm not seeing
my grandchildren, not seeing my kids, and it's really hard.
I have a lot of anxiety around that because I was,
you know, a month ago, I was in Colorado visiting
my son. Yeah, and now you know, so, I think
we're seeing a lot of that, a lot of people
feeling that confusion too, because it's hard for your bringing
(41:54):
to keep going long and off. You know, Should I
be anxious? Should I not be anxious? I think that
that's something that that we're experiencing now, particularly with the
with the new variant. And I see a lot of
people saying, oh, you know, it's mild. I don't you
know what. I just want to get it and get
it over. And to me, I'm thinking, you, I think
I'm anxious because I'm asking up everywhere. I'm not going
(42:15):
anywhere but you're anxious too. That's just a different anxiety response,
isn't it. Like they're like they think they have this control, like, oh,
I'll just get it, it will be mild, and then
dot dot dot it will protect you from what future
variants that we don't know about. This is an evolving
son and so it's been interesting for me to look
at everything through the anxiety lens. And people who seem
not anxious because they're out and about, in my opinion,
(42:37):
they're just as anxious as me. Does that do you
think I'm onto something? You know, because it's an evolving
science and you know, obviously we're getting so many different Um,
we're hearing a lot of different voices right of like
it's not very clear always exactly what to do or
what not to do, right, So you know that's anxiety
(43:00):
provoking for all of us because that's like this uncertainty. Um.
And yes, some people sort of shut it out and
just say, you know whatever, I'm just gonna do whatever,
and some people locked down and people going between. But
what we tell people is, um, I think we're all fatigued.
I think a lot of us are, you know, feeling
(43:21):
lonely at this point in the pandemic or um just exhausted.
And so we always say, you know, have a lot
of compassion for yourself and for each other. You know,
it's like coming back to that piece of like, I
am doing the best I can in these circumstances that
(43:45):
you know, we have no we've you know, we're in
the middle of our lives and we've never seen this before,
right you know, So I am doing the best I
can in this like very chaotic world right now. And
so what I need to do, I need to do,
you know. And so that's just like having that self
compassion because we know that when we start criticizing ourselves
(44:10):
a lot, or start like yelling at ourselves, are saying, oh,
I'm childish, I'm this, and that we throw ourselves into
the anxiety response. When you get yelled at, you go
into that fight or flight often. So it's like the
way that we can use our best thinking and planning
and reasoning is to stay as much as possible and
(44:30):
that rest and more closer to that rest and digest.
And we think that starts with the self compassion peace.
And another thing is, you know, we're talking to people
every day who you know, are very anxious about going
back to work during the pandemic. Now, you know, although
now some places are going remote again, and like Maggie said,
the golf post keep moving. It's hard to know should
(44:51):
I be going to work ship and not be going
to work. It's it's really hard to know what the
right thing to do is. But one thing people are
talking about a lot is how angry people are. Yeah,
so mag and I try to remind people that for
some folks they express their anxiety through ankor mm hmm.
You see that anxiety out there even in other responses,
(45:12):
like if someone's like, all right, I'm just gonna get
it and get it over with and that you're absolutely right,
that absolutely is an anxiety response of its own. So
is anger. Yeah. I had a therapist tell me, you
know your anger is anxiety. So, um, you want to cry? Actually,
you know that's you're you're covering up like the grief failing.
You know, and and I know we're both familiar with
(45:32):
Clara good Will Smith the missing stange of things of
grief is anxiety. And I think that's right. You know,
all these people that are being duct taped planes and
you know, um, I don't think it's as much of
a political I mean, I think this whole thing has
been politicized, which is a whole other podcast. But I
don't necessarily see someone who doesn't want to wear a
mask as um in a certain political group, or even
(45:55):
an anti backs are um. Even if they are, it's
to me the bottom line, anxiety I've never you know,
they're saying, I've never I've never had a lack of
control over the universe affect me. It's much more obvious
now how little control we actually have. And I think
that a lot, like you said, it's a lot less
political than some people may think. Loss of control living
(46:18):
in an uncertain world, and some people's response to that
is anger. And so when you were talking about self compassion,
you brought me to my thesis that I have, which
is there are a billion ways two well, there are
million tools we can put in our anxiety to look at,
whether it's progressive, mustere realization, therapy, cutting out, sungar, jumping
(46:39):
up and down, breathing whatever. Everyone knows this. For me,
I truly believe that what makes people not want to
try is there's a little bit of a lack of
self esteem there, like deep, deep down that's like I
don't deserve to feel better, or it's to even know
(47:00):
how to take care of oneself. And so when you're
saying that, like the most important tool of anxiety relief
in this re uppance of the pandemic is have compassion.
Like you caught me saying, I'm thinking like a child.
It's like it's so ingrained to just insult myself. And
I think for other people that have never taken the
first step to get to get any help, professional or otherwise,
(47:21):
I think there's there's a little bit of like who
am I to get home? Other people have it worse,
you know. And I think that self compassion is a
really big part of Once we get our self esteem
in place, then we can have compassion, then we can
take the steps right along with that. Yes, self compassion
sort of really um once you once you really start
(47:42):
to practice self compassion, it can really like sort of
change the lens. You see that we have seen a
lot of things through We've done a lot of training,
um with Kristin Neff, who is sort of the mother
of the modern self compassion movement, and and it really
changes the lens of how we experience a lot of
things um. And and one of the things that we're
(48:05):
really careful to do within that self compassion um and
we're working on doing this better with ourselves too, is
is not having a lot of should's um because so
it's like, you know, one of the things that happened
when when we were both really having terrible anxiety was
people said, well, you should cut out sugar. Well, if
I could cut out sugar, you know, like I mean,
(48:29):
like that's the battle of my life. Okay, yes, or
you should do this, or you should do that. And
what we say is like you can take really small steps.
You can find something that works for you right now,
even just a little bit, and that is great, you know.
So one of the things Abby and I always say,
like something that helps us so much, both of us
(48:51):
is being out in nature, which sounds very cliche, but
that doesn't help you if you really can't leave your
apartment right yeah, but we know even bringing a plant
into your space is something. You know, having your cat
or your dog to cuddle with or whatever whatever pieces
you have, So there that part of the self compassion
(49:14):
is thinking, like is sort of learning. They're really small pieces,
really small steps you can take and everything counts. And
you know, Mags and I, when we set out to
write the book, we said that we wanted to write
the book that we needed and what we needed. We
didn't need anybody telling us what we should do, because
that created a list of other things that we would
(49:34):
fail at. Because our anxiety was allowing us two, you know,
to function as well as we wanted to, and so
we just didn't want to have to screw anything else up.
And so we decided we would write a book that
would not be prescriptive, that would sort of recognize that
one size does not fit all. And you know, we
always say to people, try this. If it doesn't work
(49:55):
on Monday, you know, you could still try it Tuesday.
It might work great on Tuesday. I mean, you know, yeah,
idea to have no should's right, don't shoot on yourself.
And then also to to really expand your tool kit.
You know, we call it a spin kit. You know,
the things that you uh do to soothe yourself and
(50:15):
and and get your anxiety out of the driver's seat.
But you know, it's like not everything fits all at once,
even for us, and and and to know to kind
of be your own scientists and know this doesn't work
for me today, or this works for me on airplanes,
but doesn't work for me at the office. Um, well,
we've come to the end of our session. I know
I said I was going to ask some about children,
but but we had such an organic time that it
(50:37):
didn't come up. So that's fine. I was glad to
talk to you about um everything that came up. You
guys are so brilliant. Thank you so much. UM So
I have to say good biding ladies, and I thank
you for coming on. And I hope that everybody gets
into your community. And of course you know in the
intro I'll be promoting all of your your your podcast
(51:00):
or book, your community, and all the links will be
in the show notes. But thank you for chatting with me.
It was such a great way to start my morning.
I feel like I had a like an Anxiety Sisters
meeting and everyone gets to listen to me. I hope
you enjoyed my chat with the Anxiety Sisters. I'm gonna
let you in on a little secret. We did actually
(51:21):
talk a little bit longer than then you heard, because
we started talking about Prince and you know what it was.
It really wasn't related to the episode at all, and
so I had them edited out. I had my producers
edit that out because, you know, do you want to
stay on topic? But man, we did have a fun
conversation about Prince. It turns out that Abby and I
(51:43):
have had a similar Prince dream before after he died,
So who knows, Maybe he was visiting us in his dream.
Maybe her dream was fake and he was really visiting me.
I mean, that's probably what it is. Anyway, Why am
I talking about a thing that you didn't hear, making
feel like you missed out? You did miss out. But
here are some takeaways from the episode that will probably
(52:06):
help you with your anxiety more than hearing about a
dream I had about Prince one time. These are takeaways
from this episode the wisdom of the Anxiety Sisters. Number one,
get everything checked out by a doctor so that you
can rule out any physical issues when you're beginning to
deal with your anxiety. Two. What's tricky about anxiety is
(52:26):
it's not just an emotional feeling. It's often physical symptoms. Three.
Anything your body can do, any sound or smell, It
can produce any fluid, it can produce any organ you have,
can do something that can be a symptom of anxiety. Four. Unfortunately,
a lot of people don't get help for anxiety because
(52:47):
they don't believe that their physical debilitating symptoms are anxiety. Five.
Agoraphobia is really a fear of having a panic attack
or getting sick away from your home and not being
able to get back in time to get to safety. Six.
As soon as your anxiety starts making decisions for you
(53:10):
about where you go and who you see and how
you see yourself, you're starting to have what the anxiety
sisters call shrinking world syndrome. Seven. For people who don't
want to sit in a lotus position and meditate, progressive
muscle relaxation does count as a meditation. Eight. Progressive muscle
(53:30):
relaxation helps your body go from the fight or flight
response into the rest and digest peaceful response. Nine. When
you're in fighter flight, the frontal lobe part of your
brain is affected to where you can't use your executive functioning,
decision making, or reasoning skills very well. Ten. Have a
(53:50):
lot of compassion for yourself and for each other. Eleven.
Don't criticize yourself right now. You're doing the best you
can in this very chaotic world. Right now. Twelve. Try
to avoid thinking in should like I should do this
for my anxiety, or I should do that. Don't shoot
on yourself. Part of self compassion is learning that there
(54:11):
are small steps that you can take that can be transformative,
like if you can't get out into nature, you could
get a plant. And lastly, if one anxiety relief tool
doesn't work one day, maybe it'll work another day again.
How to get in touch with the anxiety sisters and
enjoy everything they have to offer. Just go onto those
(54:31):
links in the show notes. Thank you for listening, and
just remember anxiety bites, but you're in control. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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