You Are Not Anxiety

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You don’t need to be anxiety-free to live fully. You just need the right process, and a bit of patience with yourself.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker (00:00):
Happy Friday everybody.
At least I hope it's a happyFriday for you rather than a
grumpy Friday or an anxiousFriday.
I mean, can a whole Friday beanything anyway?
Isn't it always gonna be alittle bit of this, a little bit
of that?
Yeah, probably.
And so were we as humans, alittle bit happy, a little bit

(00:22):
grumpy, maybe a little bitanxious.
But of course you are notactually those things at all.
They're not you.
Anxiety is not who you are.
It's just something youexperience, and that's where
recovery from it really starts.
With a small shift in ourlanguage.

(00:42):
When we say I am anxious, itsounds fixed, but if we say, I
feel anxious, it becomestemporary.
It's an emotion, not anidentity, a pattern, not a
personality trait.
I do a lot of amateur dramatics,and in the days coming up to a
performance, I'll admit, I feelanxious about it.

(01:04):
I've learned the lines andrehearsed the scenes, and I love
rehearsing.
It's fun, it's exciting, butwhen I think about the audience
that doesn't feel so exciting,that starts to feel scary.
But that extra adrenaline, it'snot a weakness.
It's biology.
Anxiety isn't a thought process,it's an automatic process.

(01:27):
Your unconscious mind believesit's keeping you safe.
Problem is sometimes itoverreacts like an oversensitive
smoke alarm going off'causeyou've made toast.
But we don't throw the alarmaway, do we?
We just learn to manage it.
That's recovery.
Not a straight line ofimprovement, but this messy,

(01:50):
jagged process.
It goes up and down, but overallit moves forward.
If you zoom out, you'll seeprogress.
And that's why I tell people tonot measure their progress day
by day, but compare this monthto last month, this year to last
year.
'cause expecting every day tofeel better than the one before

(02:11):
just feeds disappointment.
And disappointment can feedanxiety.
If you want to see proof thatyou're improving, write it down,
even once a fortnight.
Moments when you coped betterthan before.
A situation that felt a littleeasier, a time when anxiety

(02:32):
didn't stop you doing something.
Those small signs, they matter.
Progress hides when you onlylook close up.
And please stop calling yourselfan anxious person.
You're not.
You're a person feeling anxiety.
There's a big difference.
When you separate anxiety fromyour identity, you take away

(02:55):
some of its power, you see?
Importantly though, we don'tactually want to get rid of
anxiety completely.
We need it.
Anxiety, like pain, protects us.
It's part of survival.
Without it, we'd walk intotraffic or ignore real danger.
So the goal isn't no anxiety,it's balanced anxiety.

(03:17):
When you feel it recognise, thisis what excitement feels like as
well.
'cause physically anxiety andexcitement feel almost
identical.
The difference is in the storyyour brain tells you about it.
And actually you can train thatstory to change.
When you notice thosesensations, see if you can link

(03:39):
them to something positive.
A concert you went to, aholiday, something exciting.
Over time, your brain's gonnalearn that those feelings don't
always mean danger.
And then when anxiety does showup, do some deep breathing.
Do some grounding exercises.
I talk about them in enough inother episodes, so I'm not going

(04:01):
to do that now.
Go and listen to previous onesif you need to.
This episode is just a shortbonus version of my Patreon one,
anyway.
Go and listen to that.
There's a seven day free trialanyway, so you've got nothing to
lose.
And if your anxiety tells you toavoid something, deliberately do
the opposite, but gently.

(04:24):
Avoidance feeds the anxiety, butfacing small fears that's gonna
retrain your brain.
If anxiety says, Don't go in,maybe you stand by the door.
If it says, don't go to theparty.
Maybe you pop in for 10 minutesand then do an Irish exit.
Start small, that's how recoveryhappens.

(04:46):
Gradually, consistently withcompassion.
If this sounds like you askyourself.
If anxiety wasn't in the way,what would life look like?
And write down three answers,then take some very small steps
towards it.
So even if anxiety is hangingaround, it doesn't matter.

(05:11):
Learn to live fully even when itis there.
And I'll speak to you next week.
Take care.