SMNTY Classics: Anxious Women

Why are women twice as likely to experience chronic anxiety? In this classic episode, Cristen and Caroline share their own experiences with long-term anxiety, whether female anxiety is more nature or nurture and how to manage its persistent symptoms.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Andy and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told your production of I Heart Radio A
lot of us might be experiencing some anxiety during this time,

(00:25):
this time that is changing very rapidly, with a lot
of uncertainty, a lot of us staying in for very
long periods of time. And I I've definitely felt it myself,
some some anxiety. And because of that, we thought we
would bring back classic episode on anxious women and why

(00:52):
they are twice as likely to experience chronic anxiety. And
I'll be interested when we fingers get out of this
if there's gonna be if we're gonna have data all
right on who has impacted the most um physically, mentally,
um economically, socially, all those things. I honestly don't know.

(01:16):
I don't write. There's a lot of things that we
are really kind of anxious. I guess this is the
best word for it. About as we are watching our
leaders and our government, we're just watching people hoping that
someone is going to get some enlightening answers and results
the time of frame, and especially for again, as you're

(01:37):
talking about the economy as well, and not only that,
for many people who have lost their jobs. And then
for many people who shouldn't have to work because they
don't have enough healthcare coverage, but they are having to work,
whether it's at the grocery store, whether it's being restocking
stuff or delivering things. That's just a lot of things
that are out there for sure. Yeah. And if you

(01:59):
if you feel like you're struggling and you have anxiety, Uh,
we were doing our best to help in any way
that we can by continuing to to put out episodes
and even more episodes even um. And then this one
interesting impact on me specifically is it made me face

(02:19):
something else that used to make me anxious, which is
social media. So if you want to check out I've
been posting a lot of goofy videos. I did a
tour of my apartment. You can do that. Like, UM,
I feel there are ways to make human connection virtually.
There's just a lot of I'm excited for the party

(02:41):
you watch on Netflix. I got friends on like Switch
that we're playing together. Um. People are really creative and
I know you listeners are as well. And will we
can find ways to to make this a less anxiety
inducing times. Um, and then sometimes it will abbs and flows,
but just remember we're here with you in this together.

(03:04):
We are in the meantime. Please enjoy this classic episode.
Welcome to Stuff. Mom never told you from how stuff
works not come hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're going to talk

(03:26):
about anxiety. Deep breath, yes, deep breath. Maybe close your
eyes if you need to yourself focus on a positive mantra. Yeah,
maybe lie down you need to, We won't judge. You.
Find a soft pillow and rest your head against it,
or squeeze it for dear life. Yeah, like Elmira and pets.
Just squeeze because you love it so much. Yeah, anxiety

(03:50):
is a topic near and dear to my brain. I
shouldn't say dear to my brain. My brain hates it
and it's constantly I like by it. I feel like
Carolina should go ahead and have a moment of transparency
and let people know I have generalized anxiety disorder. When
were you diagnosed with that? Probably last year when I

(04:14):
really got into therapy for real, zies, Because instead of
just to play poker with your therapy, yeah, instead of
just doing it just for the cachet of saying I
have a therapist look at me. Um. Yeah, I mean,
like things kind of hit a point where, especially with
I think turning thirty, getting engaged to be married, all

(04:37):
of these like big life things happening that made me
take a bit of a step back, and I want
to dig into patterns you know, that I didn't want
to carry with me into the rest of my thirties
and marriage sounds smart. Yeah, I mean, had you struggled
with anxiety your whole Oh yeah, definitely all my life. Um.

(05:03):
And the more I learned about it, the more astounding
it is how those patterns really took root at such
young ages, you know, just like coping mechanisms that you develop,
and how even though I feel like I am very
different than the person that I was obviously when I

(05:25):
was like ten or twelve or a teenager, even in
my early twenties, still those same patterns of just dealing
with day to day life. Um, they hang around. Yeah. Now,
I definitely struggle with anxiety. I haven't received any sort
of diagnosis. I'm also in therapy, but I do just
say it for the cachet. It's true. It's like my therapist,

(05:47):
this my therapist that she doesn't exist. I really just
go sit at a McDonald's for an hour a day.
Well now it's breakfast all day, so I never got
so many egg mcmuffins. But you know, um, you know,
in our couple Speak episode, we we touched on the
idea of peaks and valleys in a relationship. And when

(06:09):
my boyfriend and I were working on some issues in
our relationship together, UM, I started having uh like low
grade I wouldn't say that they were totally debilitating, but
like low grade panic attacks, if you want to call
them that. And I've noticed that ever since then. Even
basic stuff that stresses you out, like somebody cuts you

(06:31):
off in traffic, or like you're trying to prepare to
record two podcasts or something really basic things now lead
to like an elevated anxiety level. And I don't just
mean like you're stressed out, maybe you're sweating a little
the full on, like I can't get a deep breath,
I feel like my chest is caving in, there's so

(06:52):
much pressure on my head. Like all of these sort
of hallmark anxiety symptoms are more likely to crop up,
and I have a feeling it's so common for it
to take something like a panic attack, low grade, high
grade whatever, because that was a similar experience that I had.

(07:12):
Um something like that happened to me that really got
my attention, Like there were so many red flags. My
brain was just finally waving that get us to take
care of these things that we've just been managing in
our in our own you know, very bladed kinds of ways,
not that it's not okay to be flawed, but I

(07:33):
should say maybe dysfunctional kinds of ways. Yeah, And I
mean I think what keeps a lot of people not
being a psychologist, but I think in doing reading about
this topic, what stops a lot of people from getting
help for anxiety is that for a lot of people,
it's just a baseline state, like I'm just anxious and neurotic,
and I can play it off as funny and like

(07:55):
I'm a Woody Allen character or something, but it really
really can be debilitating. I mean, if you're having a
panic attack, like every time you burn dinner or something,
you know, like that's not exactly healthy. And so those
are some good red flags, like you said, to actually
talk to somebody, get help. Maybe you don't need medicine,
maybe you need therapy, maybe you do need medicine. There's

(08:17):
a whole range of things that that you can do
to help improve your life once you realize, like I
am super struggling with anxiety. Yeah, And I also feel
like it's something that we are talking about more and more,
not just you and me, but we do talk about
our respective anxieties together, which I think is really helpful.
But even just among other girlfriends of mine or just

(08:40):
the female conversations that are happening online, I feel like
I just see it more and more of women acknowledging
that this is something that they deal with, whether it
is a more clinical kind of thing or whether it
is just the general anxiousness, nervousness, however you want to
describe it. And I think it's it's really interesting that

(09:01):
this is happening. And some people think that there is
almost a millennial anxiety epidemic of foot, which is usually
blamed on technology, social media, um work life being completely
imbalanced because they are now blended and they are one
and the same and so forth. Yeah, we see a
lot of those environmental reasons bandied about when we talk

(09:24):
about why people seem to be struggling more with anxiety.
And then you see them magnified when people talk about women,
and they all always cite the wage gap, having to
look beautiful and young all the time, like all of
these things that are specific to women. But what we'll
get into more in this conversation is that it's that
could be a part of it, Like everybody's got pressures

(09:46):
in their life, but there's also a bit of of
nature to contend with. Two. Yeah, because a statistic that
we will repeat a number of times in this episode
is that women are twice as likely to report anxiety.
And we've talked about this before on the podcast. In fact,
I had even forgotten Caroline that we had done an

(10:09):
anxiety related episode a while back, because that's what happens
when you've made over seven podcasts, when you forget sometimes.
Um But it seems so so current and so relevant
to to right now, because there is still this question
mark of why are women in particular so anxious? And

(10:30):
are we really all that anxious? So first, let's just
do some anxiety one oh one. This is coming from
the National Institutes of Health UM and and it's important
to distinguish what's normal and what's abnormal, because temporary anxiety
hyper vigilance and even fear. It's completely normal. It's port

(10:54):
of just being a human. Yeah, But the thing that's
not normal is when all of that stuff sticks around,
so long term anxiety that looms and ends up diminishing
and interfering in your quality of life. So let's get
more specific than about that dysfunctional long term anxiety. It

(11:15):
has to do more with the inability to focus away
from concerns despite rationally understanding that your reaction to this
thing is way bigger than the thing itself. And Carolina's
vigorously nodding her head. For instance, So in Georgia, the
company that mails out your tag renewal stickers went bankrupt

(11:40):
and nobody told anyone. And so my birthday is coming
up at the end of November. You can send your
presence to just kidding, And so all of a sudden
last week I realized, wait, I never received the registration
renewal thing in the mail, and you know, with the
thing where you send in your emissions test and all
of this stuff. And so I start panicking this morning,
like literally to the point of pounding chest, pounding heart,

(12:02):
sweating red in the face, like panicking about what I
need to get my emissions tested. When am I going
to do that? Like, I've got to get that done. Um.
And then once I do that, like because they're not
mailing it out, I actually have to go to the
tag office, which that's anxiety and do thing. I've got
to bring all these forms, fill out all this stuff.
I've got to have my tag and title and blah
blah blah blah blah. And then I talked to my

(12:22):
boyfriend and he's like, no, no, no, no no, it's it
expires on your birthday. So your birthdays at the end
of November. You literally have like a month from now
to do this. And I was like, but now I
can't stop panicking. And so even though, like all morning,
I've been like, it's fine, even though I'm panicking about
this tag thing, which is really not a big deal
and I can handle it very easily. And oh but

(12:44):
now I need to read for the podcast. Oh my god,
how can I focus on reading for our podcast today
if I've got to worry about the tag thing? And
it's like, um, brain, uh, we don't have to worry
about these things. It's fine, But like it's physically just
took over it like didn't matter how much I rationalized it,
I still sitting there like, um, my whole life is
crashing down around me. Oh, this is unfortunate. Maybe I

(13:05):
should just drink some more water and less coffee. I mean,
to be fair, Caroline, the whole tag situation is a headache,
And the fact that they send it on your birthday
is like the rudest present ever, because like, oh, here
is a couple hundred dollars government. Of course I want
to go have an emissions test um. And also I

(13:26):
think it's maybe just a sign that you need an assistant.
You know you have a therapist, Now I need an assistance.
I've been I joked about this to my boyfriend the
other day because he is self employed in the music industry,
and I was like, Hey, wouldn't that be funny dot
dot dot if we shared a personal assistant. I don't
know how we would pay for one. So if anyone

(13:47):
wants to be an intern of girlfriend and boyfriend, inc.
That would be much appreciated, isn't it girlfriend dog, boyfriend dog, inc?
So correct? Are the couple speak? Yes? People low um?
Well in those kinds of experiences, regardless of whether it
is something that seems as minor as getting your tag

(14:09):
renewde or something that is some legitimately life altering event
can involve more symptoms of this cyclical long term anxiety,
like that unshakable sadness, which which will lead into depression.
And depression and anxiety often go hand in hand. You

(14:30):
can have all the difficulty just relaxing in general. This
is part of why um, I tend to watch My
Too Guiltiest Pleasures on television, Nashville and Scandal while cleaning. Wait,
so meaning you're like keyed up while you're cleaning, or
you're cleaning and watching these shows to relax. I'm cleaning

(14:52):
and watching the shows to relax. I would not be
able to just sit down on the couch and watch
an episode of Nashville because you're like, I have these
other things, and I would be like, there there is
dust on the floor, I must sweep it. I mean,
And it's also just a handy way of getting the
house clean while being entertained by Olivia, Pope and co Um.

(15:14):
But those physical symptoms, Caroline that you mentioned are also
a big part of this as well. Anxiety is a
very physiological kind of thing. It's not all just in
our heads. Because it can lead to fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, difficulties, swallowing, tuckling, twitching, sweating,
As you mentioned, nausea. I get a heat in my chest,

(15:35):
um having to go to the bathroom frequently, which will happen.
I mean, I think this is just like general nervousness
with a nervous peer. Yeah, I'm definitely a nervous peer.
In fact, I gotta go right now, um, feeling out
of breath, all of the things that you would expect. Yeah, no,
I absolutely get those things and deep breath. Um. I

(15:56):
also get I have a lot of trouble sleeping. Back
when I started doing the podcast with you, Kristen, like
because I had a day job and I was doing
the podcast with Kristen on the side. Um, the podcast
was my side piece, and I it was like a
shake up to my routine. I'm also a very routine
driven person, very regimented, and so here there's like a

(16:20):
little more work, a little routine shake up, and suddenly
I'm not sleeping. And it's interesting because I've talked about
this on the podcast before, but during that time, I
was at my kinnecologist and I was telling her. I
was like you know, I'm really anxious lately. I'm pretty
sure it's just like circumstantial. I'm having trouble sleeping or whatever,
and she's she just wrote me a prescription for an
anti anxiety medication. And I was like, you don't know

(16:43):
anything about anything that I'm dealing with right now. I'm
not going to fill this prescription. But yeah, luckily the sleeping,
the sleeping thing comes in waves, though, Like if I
am the tiniest bit anxious about anything. My dad's the
same way, Like I'll run into him. When I was
living at home, I'd run into my dad at three
in the morning. I'd be getting home from being out
with friends and he'd be up, like, yeah, I just

(17:07):
got up. I'm awake now, coffee. And so, I mean,
neither my dad nor I, like I said, have been
diagnosed with any type of specific anxiety disorder. I think
we're just like kind of nervous people. We've probably the
nervous servants, that's right, the nervous urbans. But there are

(17:28):
three primary types of anxiety disorder. We've got generalized anxiety disorder,
which is what Kristen mentioned, which is that persistent, unrealistic
worry that just sort of interferes with your functioning. It's fun,
it's so fun. You've got panic disorder and also social
anxiety disorder, which is actually the most common, and it's

(17:49):
that extreme fear of being judged. It's it's this feeling.
I don't get it all the time. It really depends
on I mean almost the day, but I'm I walk
in somewhere and just immediately get this full body pressure, dread,
feeling like I get hot all over, feeling like everyone

(18:09):
is looking at me, everyone is judging me, whether it's
what I'm wearing whatever. Uh, and that can be so
hard to break out of mentally. Yeah, I experienced a
lot of that, and listeners, you tell us, I think
that it's a topic that we should circle back to
and do our an entire episode on it, because it's
another one of those things where I'm hearing people talk

(18:32):
about it more than ever before, of saying, oh, I'm
so socially anxious, Oh my social anxiety, that, my social
anxiety that, and uh, this is actually something that especially
happens on YouTube and within the YouTube community, um, where
there's there's even some debate over real social anxiety versus

(18:54):
like legit sociophobia. These people cannot leave their homes, which
is part of why they're watching so many YouTube videos. Um. So,
I think that would be a great topic to revisit
because it's it's another thing that I also experience. Um
but I think that a lot of people confuse just
general social angst with the actual disorder. Yeah so, um

(19:15):
but when it comes to just anxiety disorders, this surprised me.
The average age of onset was thirty one. I got
to turn thirty two. Cool. Alright, well, Caroline, I'm thirty
so I'm a little ahead of the curve. You know,
my brain well done. And the primary treatments for anxiety
disorders are cognitive and behavior therapy exposure therapy, which is

(19:41):
when I think of exposure therapy, I parentulas No, I
think it's just being like thrown into a giant networking
mixer event where I know no one and there's no
alcohol being served. Like okay, yeah, no, let me add
to that. Okay, so we're being thrown into a networking
event with no alcohol. But also the room is hot,
so my hands are already sweaty from being nervous, but

(20:03):
then it's hot in there, and so then I'm just
sweaty all over in my hand, So then I what
I do, Um, this is real life. Like let's say
I am holding a drink and in this scenario it's
non alcoholic, so I'm holding my ice water and I
make sure to get my hand super wet and cold.
And then so when it comes to shaking somebody's hand,
I'm like, oh, sorry, hang on, let me wipe my
hand off, and then I go for the handshake because

(20:24):
it it's two birds with one stone, like, oh, her
hand is wet, and I'm just giving so much away.
People are never going to shake my hand. The great tips,
so Caroline, You're welcome. So yeah, once at least my
hand is cold. Then when I shake it and it's
been recently wiped off, so I'm like, and then if
you have a cold hand and you were to shake
my mother's hand, she was like, oh cold hands warm horror,
And then I would hug her. But if making your

(20:47):
hands wet and wiping them off slightly, it's not strong
enough therapy. Of course, there are antidepressants, anti anxiety medications
and also beta blockers. Yeah, and mean what I said
earlier about not filling the prescription for the anti anxiety
med that my kinnecologies prescribed. Is not to say that
that's not valid and not important for a lot of people.

(21:09):
I have several friends who are on these types of
medications and it saves them. I mean, it's critical to
their health. I'm just saying that for me, well, maybe
I'll need it in the future. Right then, I felt
very uncomfortable accepting a prescription from a health professional who
wasn't fully familiar with my mental health stuff. Yeah, that's
completely understandable. I would be nervous about getting on something

(21:33):
that a doctor who didn't know me very well, just
you know, quickly wrote she knows my vagina really well,
but not what's going on up here in the brain part.
It's like, well, your vagina is a little anxious, so
I'm sure it is all nervous. He and but who

(21:54):
is this happening to? Um? In the United States, a
commonly sided statistic is it seventeen percent of us we
are the seventeen percent well experience disordered anxiety at some
point during any given years, So it's very common. And
around the world I thought this was notable. Around seven

(22:15):
point three percent of the population live with generalized anxiety disorder.
There's so many people. That is so many people. I mean,
that's seventeen percent in the U s alone, equates to
forty million people. Yeah, that's a lot of computeople. It's
a lot of anxiety, a lot of nervous vaginas, and

(22:45):
it's definitely on the rise, at least the diagnosis of it.
For instance, in Reuters reported that anxiety disorders were up
twelve hundred percent since nineteen eighty. And this really isn't news.
I mean, we hear about it all the time, like, oh,
Americans are more depressed than ever before, were more anxious
than ever before. Other countries don't have these problems that

(23:06):
we're having. What's going on? So what is going on?
I mean? And and the thing is, that's a very
tough question to answer, because there's no one factor that
explains anxiety disorders. Or as psychiatrist George McCary put it
more poetically in The New York Times, he said, quote,

(23:26):
they implicate a possible symphonic interaction of DNA hormones, neurons,
anticipatory fantasies, memories and thoughts, as well as the constraints
and opportunities of our culture. So it's inescapable, is what
I'm and complex. Yeah, And so not only do we
want to talk about this because selfishly because we struggle

(23:48):
with anxiety, and also forty million Americans struggle with anxiety,
but also because, like Kristen said, it reportedly affects twice
as many women. But first, let's to a moment and
and look at the language of anxiety, because to me,
this is relevant to how we're how we're talking about

(24:10):
and considering anxiety today, because anxiety is such a catch
all term because it can mean something diagnostic, or it
can just mean feeling nervous about having to take a
test or record a podcast. Its very normal kinds of feelings.
And written descriptions of anxiety go back to ancient Greece

(24:31):
and Rome, but it's really not until the early nineteenth
century that closer medical examinations and descriptions of anxiety emerged.
And this was something that psychiatrist Makari was writing about
in the New York Times, and I really enjoyed him
laying out how it it takes on different meanings within

(24:51):
different languages. Yeah, in French, for instance, we have the
word anglass, which equates to tortured misery that sounds pleasant.
The German word angst, which that should sound familiar, is
that foreboding feeling in the pit of your stomach, like
when you're me and you walk into a room full
of people. The Spanish have the word angustia, which is

(25:15):
that breathless panic that I experienced all the time. And
in Britain the word panic derived from the Greek myth
of the god Pan whose woodzero revel rousing induced terror
and people. Pan was like the half goat, half man
guy who like messed with people. I was going to
say a bad word and then I remember where we were. Anyway,

(25:37):
he was a woodsy revel rouser. Sums it up well.
But it was actually Old Freud who was the first
to coin anxiety as we think of it today, and
he called it signal anxiety, and he was the first
to propose it being purely physiologically. And of course froy
to dam the anxiety just had to do with sex.

(25:58):
He thought that it was a result of essentially your
libido being all clogged up, and that if you just
needed to have more and better sex. I don't want
I clogged up. No, I reject that in my brain. Um, yeah,
He talked about signal anxiety as being that small amount

(26:19):
of anticipatory discomfort basically that leads you to like snowball
into an anxiety spiral. But in Freud's terms, could it
be like an anxious vagina? Yeah, I'm sure if he
didn't think that, I would be surprised. But even today,
some clinicians and anxiety sufferers worry that the way we

(26:42):
talk about anxiety is still too nebulous and casual, because
I mean, anxiety itself, especially like clinically, is already murky
and and the fact that we don't have more precise
language to define it is why some people think that
we still don't fully understand it, or maybe reflects how

(27:04):
we don't fully understand it, because like I said just
a minute ago, anxiety has multiple meanings, but when it
comes to this diagnostic criteria, anxiety is already murky territory.
So the fact that we don't have more precise language
maybe reflects how there are so many question marks when

(27:25):
it comes to what is causing this on an individual level,
because their theories about our autonomous nervous system acting past
trauma imprinted on the brain, cultural and technological forces making
life unbearable because seriously, Instagram makes everything looks so perfect.
Why can't we have Instagram filters for our lives? I

(27:47):
r l um. Then there are questions of genetic or
maybe it's just like a hodgepodge of all of these things.
So I mean, I guess in a way too, that's
an awful lot for one word to some up. Yeah,
that's why I like all those all those uh, foreign words.
That sounds like a really American thing to say, those

(28:07):
foreign words, all those foreign wars France fraz. I don't know.
I like the Spanish word better, just the idea of
breathless panic because I'm like, oh my god, a word
from my life, and honestly it just sounds, you know,
there's a little romance to it. I like it. Yeah,
A lot of anxiety is romantic. Like maybe if I
had a daughter, I could name her that, oh poor girl.

(28:29):
But personally I did like Patricia Pearson's definition of it.
In her anxiety memoir A Brief History of Anxiety. She
defined it as fear in search of a cause. That's
so perfect because I think she talks about as does
anyone who struggles with anxiety, and myself she talks about
how like, even when things are going great, your brain

(28:51):
still is in like seek and destroy mode in terms
of like I need to find something to be worried
about because it's again, like I was saying earlier, it's
like it's a baseline state for a lot of people.
So if something's going really well, and I mean this
is something that I've worked through with my therapist, I
have definitely gotten the stereotypical therapist question of like, are

(29:12):
you just causing trouble for yourself because things are going
really well in your life, and it's like, well, yeah, probably, August.
I know. I feel like if I were named that,
I would totally be in like Victorian Garb on a
fainting couches. That's how I just pictured myself with my

(29:34):
like my arm over my face. But you, as either
you or Victorian Augusta, you is the quintessential anxiety patient.
And that is another huge question mark that researchers and
doctors are still trying to figure out of this anxiety
gender gap, because across the board, it's not just anxiety.

(29:57):
Stress related diseases are are common among women hands down,
and some of it might be because men simply aren't
going to therapy, They aren't seeking out treatment for things
that might be going on in their minds and their brains.
Um Slate reported that men make up just thirty seven
per cent of therapy patients, for instance, And when it

(30:20):
comes to our physical doctors, men are less likely to
go as well. So if they're not going to see
their doctor, they're less likely to be having these issues
come up and having medications being written in, diagnoses being
handed out. Well, we also talked about language in the
way that we talk about anxiety and like, oh my god, what,

(30:40):
what's the cause? Is that? Nature and nurture blah blah
blah all this stuff. Well, part of the problem could
be also the way we talk about anxiety, not only
where it comes from, but the fact that we tend
to frame anxiety is a woman thing. I know plenty
of guys who struggle with some form of anxiety, and
maybe if something is framed as like the feminine problem,

(31:01):
the woman problem, maybe that could also put some men,
not all men, some men off of seeking help for
that particular problem. Yeah, and that whole issue is something
that will circle back around to when we're talking about
the nurture side of the anxiety nature nurture conversation. Um,
but if we look at kids up until eleven years old,

(31:25):
boys and girls are equally prone to anxiety disorders. And
this is something we've seen happen with so many issues
because once puberty hits, the girls change, our periods, change everything.
It seems like by fifteen years old, girls are six
times likelier to have an anxiety disorder. But it takes

(31:49):
an average of nine to twelve years between the onset
of these anxiety symptoms and getting a diagnosis. And this
is nothing new. If you've listened to other Sminty episodes
about women's health issues, this should not be a new concept.
And even once these women go get a diagnosis, even
then some people think that it's still underdiagnosed. And then

(32:11):
on top of that too, there's a question of getting
the right kind of treatment and sticking with that treatment
long enough for it to make a real difference. Because
here's the bonus information. I hear breathless pan, my AGS
is coming up. It doesn't get better with age. More
recent research is actually found that as we get older,

(32:33):
anxiety and depression worsens and becomes complicated by physical aches, pains,
and panics. Well, I'm sure it also worsens if you're
not if you're one of the people who considers it
such a baseline state that you're not doing anything to
counteract it, that you're not actively using those techniques of breathing,

(32:54):
maybe seeking cognitive behavioral therapy, seeking medication to help cope,
help deal with it. Well. And if we think that
women's reported self reported health care needs are often delegitimized,
think about it in terms of our senior population and
how you know they're often brushed to the side as well. Um.

(33:18):
But one thing I wanted to mention in terms of
getting older and anxiety, and something that jumped out to
me and my personal experience and something that I have
talked with other friends about because it's happened to them
as well, is that just in our late twenties, the
anxiety that happens after drinking alcohol is out of control,

(33:43):
the old anxiety hangover. And when I was looking for
sources on this, there really wasn't that much on it
outside of posts on like sobriety websites and like calumn
Clinic dot com. Um. But it's something that I know
so exists because I've talked to so many people about it,
where it's like, yeah, when we were in college, we
could drink all we wanted and we'd feel bad. We'd

(34:04):
have the headache and the physical symptoms the next day.
But hitting thirty, if I have a hangover, it is
not so much physical. It is one mental that's interesting.
So you feel, do you feel more anxious or do
you I mean, what's Yeah, I mean, that's it's an
anxiety hangover. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, and it's from maybe

(34:25):
I'm just staying out with a lot of alcoholics, but
I know a lot of people that it happens to,
and among my circle of friends, this was not something
that we talked about in our twenties. Yeah. No, I
know that because I drink so much, I drink far
less than I used to, far far, far far less
than I used to, And that does coincide with the

(34:46):
rise of my anxiety in my experience, because I was
always using it as a way to like get through
social engagements and be funny and let loose and not
be uptight and regimented. And so now that I'm like
dealing with life issues not by drinking them away or
literally like running away from them, I'm having all of

(35:07):
those panic symptoms because it's like, oh, I really have
to dig into this now. Well, and it's also worth
keeping in mind too that just physically, as we get older,
and by older, I mean just like out of our twenties,
our liver's capacity to process alcohol drastically slows down, so
our bodies are just getting old in general, we're just
breaking down and turning to dust. It's fine, it's fine,

(35:30):
But now it's really focused in on this gender gap question.
That statistic that women are twice as likely to have anxiety,
so our women wired to worry. It seems like so
much of the stuff that we read about anxiety points
to women as being the more anxious sex, the people

(35:52):
who are not only more likely to be anxious, but
more likely to seek help for anxiety. And in the
reading that we've done, it's clear that perhaps our brains
are a little bit more sensitive to certain stress hormones
and possibly less able to adapt to high levels of them. Yeah,
that was something that l magazine talked about with Dr

(36:16):
Rita Valentino because she's done some pretty groundbreaking research on
rats brains. Because a lot of what we know about
our own brains come from rats, which is funny, um,
and she found that female rats brains were more sensitive
to the stress neuropeptide corticotropin releasing factor or CRF, and

(36:40):
CRF essentially jilts your arousal vigilance and changes in attention.
It's that hyper vigilance that we think of and just average,
you know, the lower case a anxiety. So it's good
when a bear is chasing you, yeah, or a human
that wants to kill you because you're a rat and
you're running away with the cheese. I guess it would

(37:01):
be more a cat than a human. I'm thinking now
if Tom and Jerry and my mind has officially entered
tangent Land. But Valentino found that these female rat brains
are a more sensitive to it and less, like you said,
able to adapt when that CRF flooding happened. So it's
like we're already prone to experience these heightened feelings, and

(37:23):
when those heightened feelings happen, we're also prone for them
to handicap us. Yeah, so me getting stressed out about
my tag renewal and then once all of those stress
hormones just flood my brain, I think you need to
get that tag renewed as soon as we finish this podcast.
I think I'm a little worried about it. I just
need to like grab a sandwich and go handle this.

(37:45):
A sandwich could make the tag office better. I think, yeah, sandwich.
And speaking of drinking your anxiety way sandwich on a cocktail,
I'm fun to hang out with the d m V.
But speaking of these these chemicals in our brain, hormones
have also been implicated. And my assumption going into this

(38:06):
was like, oh, of course estrogen is to blame. It's
got to be estrogen. But estrogen, it turns out, correlates
to higher fear extinction capacity. What pretty cool estrogen. But
early in our menstrual cycles, when our estrogen is low,
we might be more anxiety prone, probably because estrogen is

(38:29):
lower and progesterone is all like, oh, hey guys, I'm
gonna hang out on your brain and making nervous. Yeah.
And research has found that women on birth control pills
when it comes to anxiety, act like the women who
have naturally low estrogen. And so it's important to note
that your hormones will likely influence how those anti anxiety

(38:49):
medications work. And in terms of dudes, because anecdotally, dudes
also have hormones. The enzyme aromatase converts testosterone into estrogen,
therefore giving them that same benefit that women have when
they have higher higher estrogen. Yeah, so testosterone definitely buffers

(39:12):
against you know that that that fear and anxiety as well.
And progesterone, though, is the real culprit. It seems like
hormonally speaking, as I just mentioned, because high levels of
progesterone have been linked to actually changing the shape of
our brain receptors that manage anxiety, and so for that reason,

(39:37):
some researchers think that progesterone might explain things like prenatal
and postpartum anxiety, considering that the body produces about a
thousand times the normal amount of progesterone just in the
third trimester of pregnancy, not to mention all of the
hormonal stuff going on as you are and right after
you give birth yea, And so it shoots up in

(39:58):
the third trimester and then or back down once the
baby pops out. So your hormones are doing all sorts
of crazy things to you, and then you have to breastfeed.
But not everyone is convinced with this idea that female
brains are just wired to be anxious. In fact, Taylor
Clark wrote a book partially about this called Nerve and

(40:23):
and one of the excerpts from Nerve Clark attempts to
debunk the nature argument and really places a lot of
the onus on nurture, saying that listen, this is all
about culture and parenting and how we raise girls different
from boys. Yeah, so he attributes a lot of the

(40:44):
gender gap to this thing. He calls the skinned knee
effect basically coddling girls when they are anxious, upset, afraid, hurt,
And he says that this predisposes them to react to
unpleasant situations by being more anxious getting that attention. And
I was reading this and I was like, oh crap,
I am totally like that. When I fight with my

(41:06):
boyfriend or when just like someone disagrees with me or
is like disapproving of me in some way, I totally
get a little too hurt and anxious about it. And
so the skinned knee effect is alive and well in
Caroline nervous servan you know what are you gonna do? Oh? Well?
And he calls women actually quote needlessly nervous adult, which

(41:30):
it is hard where I'm studying to not take a
little personally, So I'm like, I know, I'm needlessly nervous,
but I I and I rationally understand that. But turning
it off is where I don't necessarily by all of
the culture explanations. But also people just have different brains

(41:50):
because to Clark's point, a study found that we perceive
women to be more anxious and nervously emotional than men.
I mean, these are just qualities that we are likelier
to attribute to a group of women versus a group
of men. And this is also something that extends to
issues like doctor's reluctance to treat women who are in

(42:12):
pain reporting pain compared to men, because there's an assumption that, oh, well,
women are just over dramatizing things. She's just very nervous
and anxious. Just calmed down, Just relax, just relax, honey,
all right, I will um. Yeah. Speaking of that whole
perception thing, Clark talked about how we do have a

(42:33):
tendency to label women as anxious even when they aren't.
And there was one study that he talked about that
said that showed that even when men and women are
experiencing the same levels of an emotion of any given emotion,
Women are seen and feed themselves as being more emotional.

(43:06):
So I mean, I mean, there you've got a bias,
internal bias and an external bias toward women being like
the emotional anxious ones. And I wonder too, just considering
how much more people are talking about their anxiety, how
much more open women are about their patterns of anxiety
and their lives, I wonder if there is a limit

(43:28):
to how much that's healthy and how much that is
playing into that a little bit, almost like creating these
self fulfilling prophecies of like, oh, I'm just so anxious,
I'm just really really anxious. So of course when something happens,
it almost gives this permission to feel anxious and nervous
rather than trying to work through that anxiety. This also

(43:50):
is is a solely Christen conquer pet theory. I mean,
I think that's a that's a good point. I mean,
I know that, um, when I start to experience like
this physical anxiety, the debilitating physical anxiety feelings, you know,
my boyfriend tresed to talk me down, and he's like,
the listen, the more you focus on the fact that
you feel like something's sitting on your chest like the
worst it's going to be, like, we've got to distract you.

(44:12):
You know. My therapist just told me, like to start
looking around the room and play a game of I
Spy with myself basically, like just sound fun. I know,
I spy something gray. It's Kristen's shirt. Crap. I knew
the answer already. Um. But I also think that talking
about it helps. I know, like when you and I
discuss our anxiety, it actually kind of almost reduces mine.

(44:34):
Not because I'm like ha ha, she has it too,
but because it's like, oh, well, this is normal. Other
people struggle with this, and it sort of helps reduce
anecdotally in Christian and Caroline universe, helps reduce my feelings
of I am so weird and not special, but like
I I struggle with something that somebody else might not understand.

(44:56):
And then again, there's a whole thing of like with
a lot of their conditions, not just anxiety. The more
we talk about it and understand it, the more it's
inevitably going to be diagnosed in people, because diagnostic techniques
are going to be better and more people who are
educated about it or suspect they might struggle with it,
whatever that condition may be, will end up going to

(45:16):
the doctor and saying please help me. Yeah. I think
that that is absolutely a healthy side of talking about it.
I similarly feel less crazy when I talk about it
with you, because it's like, oh, here is a smart,
cool lady who also experiences similar patterns of irrational worry. Totally,
it's gonna be okay. And that impact of destigmatizing anxiety

(45:41):
is so important because while yes, it's so often framed
as a woman's issue, I know there are so many
guys out there who, because of how anxiety has talked about,
how it is considered kind of a weak sort of thing,
how it is something that's really more acceptable for women
to go to a therapist and get help for versus men,
and they're not getting to help that they really do need,

(46:03):
you know, And and that impacts your quality of life.
Um so what do we do though about this? Well,
start exercising, like right right now, right now. And it's
funny because this is something that of course we all
know right anecdotally and surface level, we all know that
a we should exercise because we'll be healthier. It will

(46:24):
improve bones, strength, heart health, all of that good stuff.
And yes, we even anecdotally know that exercise is best
to help with anxiety. It blows off steam. But but why, like,
what is the steam blowing off nous? There's actual science
behind that which I didn't realize, and it's that it
almost helps train your body to recognize those physical anxiety

(46:48):
symptoms the pounding heart, the chest pressure, the sweating and
nervousness and breathlessness as just like a normal like, oh,
we were just jogging. We're just jogging and at the
end of this, we're going to have a kill me
crazy smoothie Kristen, Okay, and we're gonna feel so much better.
And so it really is like kind of a tricking

(47:08):
of your physical being. Yes, Caroline, I can personally attest
to the life changing importance of exercise. I've always been
a bit of an exerciser, but once I in the past,
like five years, once I really started ingraining it into
my routine of biking, running, yoga, Like it is so different,

(47:35):
how ideal When I can feel the anxiety coming on,
if I'm able to go exercise, it's such a different
outcome than what I used to do of like, well,
I'm just gonna have a glass of wine and I'll
still have that glass of wine, but that not being
the go to, like alcohol is not a great is

(47:56):
really not a cure for that. It might dull it
for a moment, but exercise is such a good thing
that you can do for your body. Well yeah, and
beyond getting your heart rate up, it's also and I mean,
I know that the snarky side of me wants to
say that this is not true, but um, it's almost
a type of meditation. Like literally maybe you are doing

(48:17):
yoga and you're meditating as part of that, but I
mean getting into the groove of jogging and you're literally
just thinking about taking the next step, taking the next breath.
It does sort of take you out of that anxiety
spiral about renewing your tag. One thing that doesn't help, though,
which I am loath to give up, its caffeine. All

(48:38):
all the kind of lifestyle tips that you will read
about anxiety is give up the caffeine. I like, but no, no, no,
I so here I am. I'm gonna I'm telling you
listeners that other people say that this is good, and
I'm sure that it is good. But I love coffee.
There I said it. I love it. Too. We are Garfield.
Wait now Garfield's was on. Yeah, well we're Garfiel too,

(49:00):
But we're Kathy. Is Kathy a coffee person? I feel
like she drank coffee. We're every stereotypical cartoon We are
Nancy Botwin. She always had coffee. Yes, and perfect segue
to weed. Nancy Botwin, the leading character of the Gingi
Cohen Show weeds. UM. One thing I wanted to look
in was whether or not smoking pot is good for

(49:24):
anxiety A because pot is becoming more legalized, more women
are smoking pot than ever before. UM, women are getting
into the weed industry. There's a whole marijuana renaissance a foot,
especially for women. And one of the things that has
often talked about in terms of UM why marijuana should
be legalized. The way people get prescriptions for medical marijuana

(49:47):
is that, oh, it helps my anxiety, and you have
a skeptical look on your face a little bit. Well, yeah,
just because I was remembering the this guy that I
dated who was a jerk. And he wasn't a jerk
because of this, but he was just a jerk. But
I remember that he was constantly one of those unhelpful

(50:08):
people that all anxious people are familiar with in their lives.
He's just like, would you just relax? Would you just
chill out? Like I mean, I don't care who you are.
Like that gets real old hearing that. But his go
to thing was always like, we just need to get
you some weed. We just need to get you some weeds.
You'll relax well. And that's why I was curious to
look at the research on it, because paranoia is often

(50:31):
a side effect for many people if they smoke pot.
Not that I've ever ever never done that, um and
studies do find mixed results. So if you have a
panic disorder, research suggests weed, we'll probably amplify that. But

(50:53):
Vanderbilt study located a can of annoyed receptor in our amygdala,
which is sort of that the emotional seat of the brain,
and they think that it might be linked to anecdotal
reports of weed chilling us out. If we're really anxious,
then perhaps smoking pot can be a temporary fix. Now,

(51:13):
I will go on the record as saying I don't
think that there should be any substance, whether it's marijuana
or wine or chocolate, you know, anything like that that's
going to cure your anxiety. It needs to be part
of a whole lifestyle kind of thing. But I think
it's interesting to see how there is science is looking
into how pot can interact with our anxious or depressive symptoms.

(51:41):
So are you telling me that even my cannabinoid receptors
are anxious possibly, or maybe they're just judging because they're
not receptive. Well, I mean it could also it could
also shift depending on the kind of strain of marijuana
that you're smoking. Yeah, but we're now just getting into
a whole other podcast. Yeah, we'll podcast wait for letters
from people from listeners to tell us about that. Yeah,

(52:04):
I do. I would love to hear letters from listeners.
I know we've got a lot of letters out on
the West Coast, and we even have some weed farmers
who listen, so let us know. Yeah, let us know.
Another thing, So similarly to what I was saying about exercise,
of like, yes, we all know that it's good for
you and you need to do it for general health,
but also dealing with anxiety. It's the same thing with

(52:24):
diet and Kristen, this is something I had never heard
before in terms of shifting your diet in order to
deal with anxiety. Well, yeah, because think about it, Like,
I don't know if you ever have weeks like this, Caroline,
where you have no time and you're just eating out
and maybe you had cheese it's and diet coke for
lunch yesterday. Oh wait no, that was me And that's disgusting. Um.

(52:45):
And it will impact how you feel, it can. Food
definitely impacts our moods and so a really good article
on women in anxiety in Glamour magazine cited an Australian
study which found that women on whole foods diets that's
lowercase whole foods, not the store, but things like fruits, veggies,

(53:07):
whole grains, lean meats and fish were less likely to
experience anxiety, whereas women on high fattened processed food diets
were more prone to depression. That's that's do you hear that?
So the sound of my mind being blown not only
by those facts about eating better or whatever, but like
the persons, that's crazy. My boyfriend and I talk all

(53:30):
the time. So we're doing the Blue Apron meal delivery
service thing, which is great, which you should go to
blue Apron dot com slash mom stuff, right, let's true
to get your Blue Apron deal. But we've really been
enjoying it because it's really healthy food. It's easy to
cook all that good stuff. But when we're not doing that,
we do have a tendency to eat out and we
try not to do the pad tie all the time.

(53:51):
But we've been talking in that way that you do
when you're trying to do something healthy but you don't
have the time or the desire to get around to it,
where we're like, you know, we really should go back
to eating like fish and asparagus all the time. Are
we really should? Because we both struggle with anxiety. Well, Caroline,
I did not run across any studies on correlations between

(54:13):
asparagus consumption and anxiety, but you can give it a shot.
I will. I will report back on things besides how
my pea smells after I eat asparagus. Thank you. And
another thing that's important to keep in mind as you
might be integrating more exercise, healthier diet, yoga, weed brownings

(54:35):
into your lifestyle is really learning your anxiety triggers and
planning accordingly. That is one thing that my therapist is
pretty adamant about, is having a plan if there are
situations where I know that certain things tend to happen.
Then have a plan, and that can be very helpful.

(54:56):
That's your plans. Stop dropping roll, yes, because I'm always
terrified that everything is just going to burst into flames.
But also too, you have to give these management techniques
a genuine chance of working. If you go to yoga
twice and you're like, oh, I'm so feel awful, yeah,
of course you do. You know, like you you usually
need at least two months sticking with these kinds of

(55:18):
things to really start feeling a difference. And that is
the challenge of a lot of this mental health stuff
is that it is an everyday process and there's no
quick fix, and you have to be compassionate with yourself
and patient with yourself and give your self time. Yeah exactly, Yeah,

(55:39):
be practice self compassion. And also in terms of like
when I feel anxiety come on, it's a good time
to go for a jog. Also, my therapist recommended when
I do feel like when I get the type of
anxiety that's totally out of proportion to what's going on,
Like I literally feel like I'm about to be chased
by a lion or something, She's like, just drop and
give yourself twenty and I was what she literally said.

(56:02):
Your fight or flights kicking in, So give it something
to fight with and do push ups. It helps a little.
I have been known to, like, if I'm at home
and I start to feel anxious, I have been known
to drop down and start doing push up yeah, and
it kind of gets some of that energy out. Well, yeah,
because then by then I'm like, oh my god, I'm
so distracted by how I can't push my body off
the floor that it just turns into embarrassment and then like, hmm,

(56:25):
it's time for a snack. It's time for asparagus snack. Yeah. Well, listeners,
I hope this has been comforting and maybe enlightening for you.
I'm I'm really curious to hear from you. I'm sure
that there are people listening who have very similar mental

(56:45):
patterns that you deal with on a daily basis. And
I think it's also helpful for people who don't have
anxiety but no, people with anxiety in your life to
hear this as well, because it's so irrational and we
should be able to relax and just chill out. Stop
telling us to relax, but it's but it's hard to

(57:07):
and I think it's it's really, um, it's worthwhile to
take a moment and understand why just relaxing is sometimes
sometimes feels impossible. I don't want to say it is impossible,
but it feels impossible. It does just more asparagus, More asparagus. Please,
So with that, mom Stuff at house stuff works dot

(57:27):
com is our email address because we'd love to get
your letters. We want to know what kinds of things
you've experienced in regard to anxiety and any additional tips
that you have for managing it. Let us know Mom's
have at house stuff works dot com again is our
email address. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or message us on Facebook. And we've got a

(57:48):
couple of messages to share with you right now. And
both of these letters, Caroline are from our Couple Speak
episode be because it was adorable and people had so
many letters to send us, and Paige wrote, I'm a
longtime fan of your show and was listening to a
couple of speech and wanted to write in regard to

(58:11):
my different experiences with it. I've been dating my boyfriend
for close to two years now, and while we usually
refer to each other as baby or babe, we have
a couple other names. One of them actually came from
a typo I made. I was texting him and went
to call him baby and managed the type babo instead.
He thought it was hilarious. And now when we're feeling goofy,

(58:31):
we refer to each other as Babo. We also call
each other bab and I call him my night and
rusted armor because rusted armor shows that a night has
been in battle and is willing to fight. Thanks for
having such an entertaining show, You ladies make the workday
go buy so much faster. That just makes me think
of Babar the elephant. Uh huh yeah, And I might

(58:52):
be mispronouncing it. Perhaps it's baboo or baboo. I like baboo,
and our intrepid producer justin him to us that baboo
is a Charlie Brown reference. I knew it sounded familiar,
but I just thought it was because of Fabar, baboo, baboo,
Charlie Brown. Football's Well, I have a letter here from Cliff,

(59:14):
uh and I love it. Uh. Cliff said, I enjoyed
listening to your podcast about couple speak. My wife and
I do have pet names. I am the rooster and
she is the chicken, is I am the rooster? Knows
I'm the walrus? Okay, uh, he said. It's started after
we heard a funny commercial about egg whites, the chicken
and the stories and group in a group therapy session,
explaining that her eggs have changed. At the end, she says,

(59:37):
I'm gonna be okay because I'm a good chicken. Well,
the joke took, and from there on, when things get rough,
she states she is going to be okay because she's
a good chicken. Naturally, we started calling each other chicken
and rooster. Actually I call her my pretty little chicken.
Enjoy your perspective on various topics. Keep up the great
work and keep listening. Cliff, thank you and thanks everybody

(59:59):
who's written into to us Mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com is our email address and for links
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one with
links to all of our sources. So you can learn
more about anxiety, head on over to stuff Mom Never
Told You dot com for more on this and thousands

(01:00:23):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com