The Psychology of your 20s - 31. The Anxious Mind

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

On this episode we discuss anxiety in our 20’s. We talk about the body on anxiety, different anxiety disorders and the unique triggers in our 20’s.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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to the psychology of your 20s the podcast where we talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology welcome back everyone beautiful people hope we're all doing well and thanks for tuning into this episode you've read the title we're talking about the anxious mind anxiety in our 20s um a real psychological topic. I think we've kind of gone off the beaten track. We've been talking a lot about relationships and friendship and life changes recently, but we're going to jump into something a bit more clinical and a bit more biological for this week.

So let's not waste any time today. We're going to jump right into what we're discussing because she's a big episode and we have a lot of content to cover so that we as a collective, as an audience, as a listener, can understand anxiety and more generally the anxious mind. So, yeah, we are exploring every area of the psychology behind this topic today just in order to kind of get a good understanding of the landscape around anxiety and get to the bottom of why our brain can be really anxious at times. We're going to talk about anxiety and panic disorders, existential anxiety, social anxiety,

how we can calm our minds, the science of meditation. You know, it attracts almost religious and feverish support from those who practice it, but is it fact or fiction? And how does meditation actually affect anxiety from a physiological perspective? We're also going to talk about biofeedback and the brain-body loop between the mind and body surrounding worry and anxiety, but also how our overall physical health, is so much more important for our levels of stress and anxiety than we've probably been led to imagine or to believe in the past. So yes, like I said, absolutely jam-packed. As always,

before we get into it, if you do enjoy this episode and if you're called to do so, please consider leaving a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This is what allows this show to grow and reach new people. And it's a lovely feeling to do so. to know people are enjoying the pod. So if you feel called to do so, thank you very much. It's just me here. So all the reinforcement and affirmation is greatly appreciated. So yeah, let's jump right in, shall we? So why is the anxious mind or anxiety something I thought we should discuss on this podcast, a podcast about our 20s? Where does anxiety kind of sit? Where is its place in this decade of our lives. Well, I feel like it's no secret to anyone, really, that anxiety is a pretty common

experience, not just in our 20s, but an important caveat to that is that the vast majority of mental health disorders like anxiety disorder do emerge during, you know, early adolescence or, sorry, late adolescence or our early 20s. So if you are going to have an anxiety disorder as an adult in your 30s, in your 40s, there is about a 90% chance that you'll have had it in your 20s or in your late teens. Basically, you're not just going to develop an anxiety disorder as an adult. You're going to develop it when you're young and then it will carry through to later adulthood. And all this emerging research that's coming out suggests that this is because in adolescence and in our early 20s, it's the time when our brain is.

changing to a great degree. We once thought, I guess, that our brain didn't really change much after early childhood. There used to be this kind of consensus that, you know, once we reach the age of 12, all the neurons, all the structures were there, all the lobes were developed. But what we've seen is that the brain continues to undergo really profound changes up until your mid-20s, 25, if you're a guy, listening to this, which I'm not sure if you are. I know. that population of my audience is pretty low, but there you go. If you're under the age of 25, you've still got some growing to do. And your brain is quite malleable at this time.

So being exposed to different influences in your social and physical environment can really have a profound impact on the way that your brain is going to continue to develop and your experience with things like anxiety or even an anxiety disorder later in adulthood and into your late 20s. So anxiety means a few things as well. Let's just clarify what we're talking about here. There is a distinction that needs to be made and is often made in psychology between anxiety, which is a sensation, it's a feeling, and anxiety when we refer to it as a disorder. So an anxiety disorder is different from general feelings of anxiety that we're all going to get every now and again,

which we're going to discuss more later on. But it's really important to understand that distinction. I think they're often used interchangeably, which is kind of emerging in those discussions of how do we refer to mental health disorders in a way that's appropriate. You know what I mean? That being like, oh my gosh, I have anxiety when you're really just feeling, you know, maybe a bit socially awkward versus someone who has like a long term really debilitating experience with frequent panic. It's the same with like discussions around phobias as well, being like, oh my God, I have a massive phobia of that. You probably don't. Maybe you do.

But there is an important distinction between the feeling of anxiety and anxiety as a medical condition. But firstly, we're going to focus on anxiety, the specific feeling, in our 20s. So just to get the definitions out of the way, because I know that it helps structure these episodes a little bit more. Anxiety is your body's natural response to stress. It's a feeling of fear or apprehension about what's to come or what is in your environment. And it basically contains a series of physiological, so physical, and psychological feelings or symptoms that make you feel alert, often at a cost. Say, for example, you know, there's a social situation, you're feeling really out of place.

some of those feelings and symptoms that come along with that might be increased alertness because your heart rate's gone up. You might feel like a little bit dizzy. You might feel like your thoughts are running around your head. Maybe your palms are sweating. Those are all kind of, they kind of flow off of that need, your brain's perceived need in that situation to be more alert because it's sensing a threat in the environment. Now, because anxiety emerged as a response to something dangerous in the environment, it is a very, very, has a very long history. I'm sure you know this of, you know, it came from a very instinctual need back when we were running around the plains of the savannah or whatever to allow us to survive. And now it's kind of warped into something else because we no longer have those threats.

that's a wild animal or something immediately that's going to kill us. So it's become kind of no longer necessary to the extent that it used to be in our modern lives because it originally served as a trigger or a way for the body to push you to either fight, flee or freeze. So this is known as the fight or flight response. I'm sure you've heard about this. But let's just explain it just in case you only know it from kind of a very shallow perspective or just knowing that it exists. So the fight or flight response is your body's

reaction to a threat or a stressor in the environment. This is how it works. So our brains have evolved for, you know, ages for years and years and years, decades, centuries, all those time periods, to be really good at ensuring our survival and to be really good at identifying things that may hurt us or may cause us harm or harm to our community. So when your brain notices something in the environment that could potentially be a threat, it encodes that. It basically integrates that or interprets it more liberally. So our brains, they want us to be more alert than less alert. So if there's something in your environment that's a little bit ambiguous that could potentially hurt you, your brain's going to pick that up. And depending on your current kind of mental state,

either you process it and you, you know, disregard it, or you become attuned to it and you see it as something that, like, yeah, we should be worried about this. That sends a bunch of reactions through our body. It activates a part of our nervous system, so part of our, yeah, basically of our, like, central nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is part of our central nervous system.

and it's the part that wants us to be active. It's the part that responds to stress. So when stimulated, the nerves that form part of the sympathetic nervous system, they prepare you to either flee or to fight. So fight or flight, that's the response, right? So the things that you'll probably feel are, maybe you won't be able to feel this particularly, but the nervous system, it increases blood flow to your muscles, It decreases blood flow to things that probably won't help you in that situation, like your digestive system, like your skin.

And it basically activates all these other things that result in, you know, that feeling of like being sweaty and being anxious and feeling jittery. And it also triggers the release of norapinephrine, which is our stress hormone, which pushes us to be able to run faster, to be able to stay still if we're, you know, hiding. to be able to fight back. It's what is known as adrenaline. Adrenaline is a key feature of that stress response of anxiety. So then, you know, you felt anxious. You've either, you know, fought off this threat. And now your brain needs to calm you down. You know, you can't, you know, your body can't always be in a heightened state of alert. And there comes the parasympathetic nervous system. So this is kind of the sister to the sympathetic nervous system, but it does the opposite of what the sympathetic nervous system does. It's kind of like an ice bath for the body. It releases another

set of chemicals to tell your body to kind of chill, to release tension in your muscles, to restart that blood flow to less important features of your body and of your systems in a fight, but which we kind of need for everyday use, like your digestion. digestive system and those things like that. So this chemical reaction is what causes anxiety. Now, like I said, back in the past, that was super useful. But in the modern day, we tend to be triggered by many things that aren't even dangerous anymore. That's where a lot of social anxiety comes from, you know, small things that our brains, you know,

previously definitely did need to interpret as threats. But in the modern day, they really aren't that scary anymore. they're really not going to cause you severe harm or stress. So think about it like this. Think about you're walking down the street and you hear like a loud noise. You can feel really anxious about that, you know, despite the fact that it probably doesn't mean, you know, that a rival tribe is coming to get you or a dog,

like a dog barks at you or like a shadowy figure in the night. But we can also be scared of things like meeting you people. or having to go and do new things. And that's kind of where social anxiety comes from, which we'll talk about later, but it's kind of like our normal systems for anxiety have been hijacked and warped by our current modern day setting. So what are the downsides of that? Well, the downsides of that is that a system that previously was really important for keeping

us safe now is no longer operable in the same way. So it malfunctions and it creates anxiety about things that you don't really need to be anxious of. Now, importantly, there are individual differences in whether you're more likely to experience anxiety or less likely. So this is called the threshold for stress. So different people have different thresholds. Imagine it like those carnival games you kind of see in movies where people like bring down a hammer and something like, something like flies up in the air and you hit a certain target. So some people, just a small bump of that hammer, just a small threat or sense of unease will create massive feelings of anxiety

because their threshold is lower. So our brain only needs to reach a certain point for it to activate the sympathetic nervous system. Whereas I'm sure you know a lot of people, I'm sure you have a friend in your life who nothing stresses them out. Nothing. There is really not. nothing that freaks them out, nothing that scares them, they don't really feel anxious. And that's because their threshold is a lot higher. It means they're not as anxious about certain things. They're very lucky those people. And it probably causes less problems for them in some ways.

Well, I would definitely assume. Now, here's the thing. Where you sit on that threshold scale, so whether you have a low threshold or a high threshold, high threshold being you're less likely to experience anxiety. It's not a permanent state. You know, someone born with a low threshold or a high threshold of anxiety isn't always going to sit at that point for the rest of their life. It is mediated and moderated by other lifestyle factors.

Like whether you are just undergoing a period of, you know, intense stress at work, maybe you're going through a breakup, you haven't gotten enough sleep, illness, all of those kinds of things. But if you are at a low threshold for stress, so you feel anxiety more frequently, that can cause a lot of problems. A lot of problems for our body, a lot of problems for our brain, for our mental health, our social health, the full package. So when neuropinephrine and other stress hormones are frequently activated, they also activate in your brain this thing called cortisol. So cortisol is the long-term stress hormone. It sometimes helps you in those immediate fight or flight responses, but it's more so a chemical that's released to deal with long-term stressful situations.

That's great. It's really useful. It's really useful for keeping you alert, for keeping you focused, for keeping you active during periods of intense stress if they don't last for very long. But if you're frequently getting these bursts of cortisol in your brain and in your body, it will begin to build up and it triggers an immune response. So if your brain is repeatedly using that resource, it's taking away energy from your immune system. So that's why after periods of intense stress, you know, after you finish like exams or something like that,

you see a lot of people get sick because our brains have been so focused on that stressful event and that stressful period that it's taken energy away from other areas of our body such as fighting off disease or fighting off parasites and moved it towards what we need in the moment. And cortisol really causes that because it puts a lot of strain and stress on our body. And if you have periods of increased cortisol or heightened cortisol levels for a long time, you're going to experience a range of consequences, not just getting sick more often, but long-term stress responses, things like burnout, explosions of, anger and rage because your body, whoops, that was my email, because your body cannot handle the

constant pressure on your systems and on the rest of your body. And for the example of this, if you're working a really stressful job as like an investment banker or as a healthcare worker, as an emergency response worker, you're likely to have periods of heightened cortisol for extended periods of time, or back-to-back periods of time. And that has other health consequences that are longer term than, you know, burnout or explosions. You might have a high risk of cardiac issues because it's putting that increase in blood pressure caused by those neurotransmitters and those chemicals are putting increased pressure on your heart. You might have more problems with your muscles because stress increases kind of the activation of your muscles, so they

become increasingly under pressure and increasingly stress. So things like that. So anxiety as a reaction to an event or something external can be really stressful. And as we've talked about, over a long period of time, it can actually be quite dangerous. It can be dangerous to you. In our 20s, our experiences with anxiety and the sources of anxiety are going to be very different to where the source of that comes from in our teenage years. and later adulthood. So especially in our mid-20s, when, you know, we're probably finished with things like exams. We're finished with long-term study, which would probably cause a lot of stress in our teenage years. And we don't have those other commitments, you know, big financial commitments,

mortgages, children, marriages. It's kind of a pretty unique time. But there are also very big major milestones and transitions during this decade that are distinct and unique to our 20s. And further to that, there's a sense of novelty. We're going to be experiencing a lot of things for the first time that are going to become unique sources of stress and anxiety or be perceived as threats to our well-being by our body and by our mind and by our consciousness. So what are some of these unique experiences since I've hyped them up so much?

Well, the first thing is big life transitions like going to university and moving out of home. That is a major stress. for a lot of people. You have to adapt to a new kind of educational system, new support structures, new daily routines, new way of doing things. And you probably no longer have, if you're lucky, that stable support of your family that you used to have when you lived at home. That's compounded by new financial responsibilities like rent and paying for your utilities and learning how to feed yourself consistently and get yourself places.

and kind of adapt to these new circumstances that you're in. And for all those who have done uni, who have started uni, that first year, it can be quite stressful as you try and find your place in that new environment and you try and live on your own. But it also relates to a second thing, which is things like new relationships and new friendships. Even if you didn't go to uni, which is just my vantage point, but in your 20s, you begin to perhaps shift away from previously held. groups of friends, your high school friends, your neighborhood friends, and you start forming more serious relationships and shifting social groups. This can cause a lot of things. It can cause

things like FOMO, fear of missing out, which I did a whole episode back when I first started the podcast about how, if you've never experienced FOMO before, if you've always felt really content with your friendships, it can be a really stressful experience. There are also unique challenges that come with creating more serious relationships and friendships, like conflict, like misunderstandings. You know, like I said, like breakups, like friendship breakups, which is another episode that we talked about. Relationships and friendships are a huge source of joy and pleasure and enjoyment, but they're also a huge source of stress when they're not going right.

because they are so important to our well-being, we place a lot of pressure and emphasis on them. There are other things. First jobs. Jobs working full-time? That is stressful. And as someone who's gone through that recently, starting my first kind of 9-to-5 experience, it completely shifts the dynamics of your day and of your routine and of your life, you know, having to get up and go to work every morning, get there by 9, finish by 5 or 6, figuring out how to structure your hobbies and the things that you love and getting outdoors and seeing your friends around this new reality for yourself. And then perhaps things that are more person to person like new sleeping habits, socializing,

partying, drugs, using, starting to drink alcohol. Alcohol is a massive source of stress and it can create stressful situations. and in our 20s is probably, you know, late teens, early 20s is when we start drinking and when we start socializing and partying and being responsible for our own actions in that way. And, you know, there are a lot of other things. And in addition to that as well, like I said, alcohol is a massive one. Not knowing your boundaries in your 20s, that's when you really start to create an expectation for your relationship and relationships and your friendships and for your family and for yourself.

about how you want to be treated and how you show respect to yourself and respect to others, what you do to take care of yourself and things like that. There's also the experience of really not knowing where you are in the world. Quintessential, early 20s, late 20s, all 20s experience. I think this decade is often defined by major shifts in how we choose to live our lives, lives, major shifts in our values, in our daily routines, and alongside that, there's this pressure to kind of know what you're doing, to try and get ahead and achieve your goals. And that puts a lot of pressure on us, a lot of pressure on us in this decade, because here's

a secret. No one fucking knows. There is no playbook. And we can make a lot of mistakes, which cause stress. We can step out of line, do things we regret, be challenged by a lot of different situations. that we haven't yet been in, and if we have been, we've normally had the support of our family and close social circles that we no longer have. And this kind of relates to another point that I really like to discuss with my friends and with other people who are in this, you know,

this age with me. And that's around career anxiety. Career anxiety is like huge for people our age, for millennials, I guess is what we're called. I don't really know. But people in our 20s, because there is this pressure in society to be hustling and working to be, you know, the next Steve Jobs or whatever, you know, Elon Musk, someone popular, I'm obviously not in tune with that entrepreneurial side, but there's this sense that we need to, yeah, have it all figured out but be working really hard and have an idea of what we're working hard for and where we want to be in 10 years. But it's always going to leave us feeling less than if we're working, we were, you know, just focus more on personal development.

Not to mention, like, it's just a bit of a race. It's all a bit of a rat race of trying to be the best and the most inventive and the most successful. And there is this internal and external pressure to have things figured out immediately after you finish your trade or after you finish high school or after you finish your first job or union to be constantly reinventing the wheel that is your life. It's really exhausting. And it creates a lot of anxiety because it's a sense of threat. We have all this apprehension about the future, about if things are going to be okay. And the wonderful thing is that, you know, most of the time they do turn out to be that way. But in the moment, in those really tense and tough periods, there's no way to guarantee that.

And it links up to a lot of catastrophizing and a lot of unknowns that are a huge source of anxiety. I've heard it from so many friends, so many people I've talked to this about. And that alongside all those other shifts that we've talked about, what do we do about it? What do we do? If you're someone who has a low threshold for anxiety or who is prone to experiencing anxiety, perhaps more often than someone else, are there basic ways to kind of manage that feeling or are you just beholden to it? You don't have to wait very long for the answer.

There is definitely a way to manage feelings. of anxiety. And like I said, anxiety disorders a whole other can of worms, which we will crack open in a moment. But in terms of, you know, frequent feelings of just like apprehension and fear and worry, there are things that you can do to kind of make that better. Obviously, this isn't an exhaustive list. But just some things that I've done, friends have done, that I've heard about, researched. The first one being, and I will stick by this for as long as I live, cut out caffeine. If you are an anxious person, what are you doing? Why are you drinking three coffees a day?

You don't need that. Your body doesn't need that. You already have enough of that alertness running around your bloodstream. So I was really anxious at the start of my third year of uni and I just decided to go cut a cold turkey on the caffeine. just stop drinking it altogether. And let me tell you, I've been converted. I think it was one of the best decisions I made for my mental health ever. It was great because caffeine is a stimulant.

It causes your brain to be hyperactive. It causes you to have a stress reaction. And some people can, you know, manage that fine. But if you are in a period of heightened stress and anxiety, there's just like no reason to be drinking caffeine. Your body's already pumped with enough stuff to keep you focused. and yeah, decaf's always an option if you like the taste. I drink decaf, I think it's fabulous.

And when I stopped drinking caffeine, I remember there was like a period of two weeks where I was intensely tired, like intensely tired, could not focus because I was addicted. But after that like short period, it got so much better and now I don't think I've drunk, I'm like terrified of drinking caffeine. I haven't touched it for like two or three years.

Caffeine is one. but perhaps a more broad idea is just removing stresses out of your life or facing them. So anxiety, a big source of it is avoidance, is realizing something triggers you or upsets you, and then avoiding it for the rest of your life. And all that's going to do is lead to more apprehension and an increased stress reaction or stress response, anxiety response when you do encounter that stimulus. Maybe it's like a friend you have conflict with. Maybe it's like a situation that you're really uncomfortable with, like giving presentations or driving long distances.

I don't know, whatever your cup of tears, whatever you're, yeah, whatever you're facing. But you need to either choose to remove that stressor if it's a toxic friend or a bad living environment. Yeah, you get to create the life you want. So get rid of those bad relationships. Get rid of those bad living situation. Those bad jobs. We've all had them. it's just not worth the time.

And as we've talked about, there are long-term stress and health consequences to experiencing heightened periods of anxiety and cortisol release. You know, that's one option removing them. But like I also said, it's important to also face the stresses that you can't control, which are causing you anxiety, otherwise they begin to have power over you. It's all about having a sense of self-determination over your life, over what you choose to be beholden to what you choose to let you feel a certain way. There are other things as well, perhaps more practical, and I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, and if you've had

any experience with a therapist or a psychologist, I'm sure they have told you this again and again, so I'm so sorry. But meditation and mindfulness are so incredible. They are so incredible. They completely rewire your brain towards peace and towards being able to have a great biofeedback loop when you are experiencing anxiety. And I just really recommend it. It's really easy to do. Just download like a meditation app or go on Spotify where you're, I'm assuming, listening to this podcast. And you can find some incredible, incredible content to help you reduce feelings of anxiety, but also give you the resources. to deal with that feeling when it comes up in inappropriate times.

And it's all part of this broader idea, I think, of healthier practices. You know, boundaries, caffeine, removing stresses, meditation, mindfulness. Those are all things that you can choose to do for yourself. And it comes hand in hand with other more practical things like physical exercise, which helps release stress from your body, getting a good night's sleep, taking care of your health. it's all part of a holistic response, I think, to making sure that you can operate at your best and you're not experiencing those negative feelings of worry that are perhaps getting in the way

of you doing what you want to do with your life. So far, we've spent a lot of time talking about anxiety, the feeling, and how to kind of get through that, why it is experienced. Perhaps more in our 20s in response to different things that are going on. But now we're going to jump into the second half of the episode, the encore, which is about anxiety disorders, a whole other can of fish, a whole another conversation to be had. So I'm going to make a disclaimer here. I'm obviously not an expert. I'm not here to diagnose anyone. If you think that you have an anxiety disorder based on what

we talk about, go and see your psychologist, go and see your GP. If you're in Australia, you can get on your mental health care plan. That's 10 free or subsidized sessions through your GP. And they'll help you find someone within your kind of area, within your area of, you know, not just geographically, but what you want to kind of deal with. And they'll help you out. So if you do worry or think that this might relate to you, just take a leap and go and get it sorted or think about, you know, the process that or the steps you can take to start doing the right thing for yourself and taking care of yourself. But like I said, anxiety disorders, they need to be diagnosed by, you know, more of a professional and clinical system, a feeling of anxiety, a feeling of worry. You can kind of identify that yourself. But when that feeling becomes prolonged, when you can't control it, that's when a medical professional would probably start to think that your system of anxiety, your sympathetic nervous system has probably started to malfunction and operate in a way. that's a bit dangerous or, you know, counter to your health. So anxiety disorders, there are a group of mental health problems that include things like

generalized anxiety, social phobias, specific phobias, some of which you may have heard of, like agoraphobia and claustrophobia, and panic disorders. And bad news is that other issues like depression, they're often related to anxiety disorders. So these days, normally if you get a... diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, you're very likely to also have depression as a comorbid disorder alongside that, just because of the systems that they activate. So if you're up all the time and your body has to constantly be pushing you down and pushing your systems down, yeah, it's probably likely that you're also going to be feeling quite low and quite depressed. So anxiety disorders,

they're really common mental health problems that affect a lot of people. So I think estimates in Australia approximately 25% of the population will have an anxiety disorder that warrants treatment at some time in their life. And up to another 25% may also experience less severe anxieties around particular objects or situations like social situations or spiders or snakes or death or things like that. So one in four, that's a lot of people. That is a lot of people. And of course there's really no explanation as to why that's so high. Some people say it's because, you know, the modern world is created in a way that gives us such excess stimulation and additional things to stress about that these previous systems, which were more alert to very infrequent kind of threats and things in our environment and in our periphery. Now they're just like constantly activated by things going on in the world.

everyone like I said experiences anxiety and fear at times they are normal and helpful human emotions and reactions that do help us deal with danger and can probably save your life however some people experience excessive and irrational a rational being a critical world there irrational anxiety and worries that become ongoing and distressing and that interfere with their daily life. Kind of hand in hand with anxiety disorders alongside depression is this idea of intrusive thoughts, which are worrying thoughts that just like kind of pop into your head and you can't do anything to stop them. All of these things, this frequent, distressing sense of worry, this is indicative of an anxiety disorder. And often there doesn't really appear to be an obvious or logical

reason for the way that you might be feeling and that's what makes it kind of worse to the sufferer. It's really hard and researchers still struggle to understand why it is that some people develop anxiety disorders from general worry and some people don't. So these main features of an anxiety disorder are fears and thoughts that are chronic, so constant, and they're distressing. They're distressing. They're not a pleasant feeling and they will interfere with your daily living. Symptoms like panic or anxiety attacks or fear of these attacks in inappropriate situations, really intense physical reactions. actions like trembling and sweating, fainting, a rapid heartbreak, difficulty breathing, or nausea. And then finally, and this is one that I think a lot of people don't know in which we've kind of mentioned just before, but avoidance behavior.

Avoidance behavior is actually one of the key pillars of anxiety disorders. A person who's suffering from something like a social phobia or a specific phobia, they may go to extreme lengths to avoid a situation that they're not. they think could bring on anxiety or panic. And they're avoiding that specific trigger because of their fear of panic in uncomfortable situations, because of their fear of the sensation of anxiety. So let's just go through some of the types of anxiety disorders. We've got generalized anxiety. This is just like worrying about a lot of things like family, friends, health, work, money, all of those things for getting important things. And importantly, that anxiety,

it can't just be like during a heightened period of like a week where you have a lot of deadlines. It does have to be present most days over a six month period. And, you know, I think sometimes when you're worried you can go for a run and sort it all out. But in the situation of generalized anxiety, you'll find it really difficult to control this feeling. Then we have phobias. So social phobias are the first one. They have their own unique definition in the DSM and what their own, you know, clinical set of criteria and characteristics. but a social phobia comes to people who are afraid of being negatively judged or evaluated by others.

They have an extreme fear of social acceptance of wanting to be included in the group that they have a membership to. And we've talked about the idea of social anxiety a lot on the podcast and how it is an incredibly natural reaction to want to be accepted. But a social phobia in particular leads to the fear of doing something that may humiliate you and in public or that may cause you to be outcast. And eventually, like I said, the avoidance factor comes in and you might avoid things like public speaking or eating or drinking in public or any social encounters like parties or the workplace because you're so worried about a negative social experience that might cause you to be kind of exiled.

And some social phobia sufferers, they only feel one type of situation, whereas others may be concerned about several types of situation. And this can lead these people to avoid the feared situations, which is kind of a tragedy because it does create isolation and it does stop you from participating in the activities that you usually enjoy. So social phobia is its own. And then we have specific phobias. So a specific phobia, it's a persistent and irrational fear of a particular object or situation. So people with this may fear animals or places or people, really common ones are like dogs, blood, spiders, airplanes, and this fear is so severe that a person may experience physical symptoms and panic attacks and that anxiety becomes excessive and interfering.

Excessive and interfering unreasonable, those are the key words because you end up restricting your daily life because of fear of seeing these objects or experiencing these situations. And sometimes if you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, the way they get rid of this is kind of counterintuitive. In some ways, it is very logical, but they just like flood you with experiences. So if you've got a fear of planes, they make you build up and go on planes. Or if you have a fear of dogs, they'll like rapidly emerge you in a situation in which you're surrounded by dogs and you can't really do anything about it. But you're in a safe environment so that those close. consequences of what you think the dogs or the planes or the bloods is associated with, they don't come to be.

So you learn to remove that association between the thing that you have a specific phobia of and the negative outcome that you've learned to associate with it. And amongst all of these things is the idea of panic attacks. Panic attack disorders though, they're a lot less common. They affect, I think, about like 1 to 2% of the population. And if you want to be diagnosed with the panic disorder, you usually have to have had at least four panic attacks each month over an extended period of time and these panic attacks, they have to come about spontaneously. Panic disorder, it might be diagnosed if panic attacks are frequent

and if there is a strong and persistent fear of another attack occurring. And like with all of these, they are very separate from just the general feeling of anxiety and you need to go to a professional to have them diagnosed and there are heaps of different options after the fact for treatment. Things like medication really help people, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, immersion therapy, like with those phobias. And there'll probably be heaps of options and more options in the future about how do we actually help people with these disorders to overcome that debilitating sense of

interruption in their life and live full and fulfilling lives. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you're still here, congratulations, because it was a bit of a long one. But like I said, so much to talk about. There were so many things that I didn't include that I was like, this is so important. I should have included it. But maybe that just requires a part two. If you want me to go more into the science of things, I think I gave a bit of like a basic overview,

but there's definitely a lot more depth. Maybe that's some area for your own research. But thank you again for listening. And I really hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learnt something as always. And if you have any suggestions for future ideas, I've got a couple of things that I really want to do. But I feel like I've been kind of taking the reins

and just going a little bit wild and talking about a lot of random things recently. So if there is a specific topic, reach out. Let me know. Follow us on Instagram. Subscribe to us on Spotify. Just all those works. and thank you again for listening and if you're anxious right now

go and see your GP please do it for me I promise it will help you and stop drinking caffeine that's the only thing you've learned from this episode anyhow thank you again and we'll see you next time hey what's good y'all you're listening to learn

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