The Therapy Edit - On a gamechanging thought about anxiety

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

In this episode of The Therapy Edit Anna shares her thoughts about anxiety and about how those who are living in fear that the worst might just happen, can confidently free themselves of that feeling. And if you're living through a curveball, trauma or tragedy, know that you have the power to find gems in the rubble and one day you can thrive again.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hi everyone, it's a solo episode, just me chatting to you today for the next 10 minutes and I'm really excited to share with you this little light bulb moment that I had and excited because I love thinking about thinking. I wish my brain didn't do it so much, but I'm often thinking and then I'm thinking about my thinking and I'm observing it with my psychotherapist head on and every now and again I come to this fresh realization or awareness or just acknowledgement and I love sharing it with you. So this is all about a new way I looked at anxiety this one day.

I was walking along. We have had bugs in our house recently. So I think it was one of these walks. I'd actually felt like I was breaking out of my own home. I felt like we were back into a mini lockdown with all of these 48-hour house arrests, different gastro symptoms. So I was just loving walking in the sunshine and I was thinking about anxiety. I'd also been discussing it with my intensive group coaching course, and we'd been talking about anxiety that day. So I realized that so often the anxiety I feel has been sparked by maybe a scroll on social media. I recently received a message about someone whose partner had sadly died. We often receive messages like that. We often see stories like that shared. And as I know, many people do. I plonked myself right smack pang into the

story. I imagine the heartache and the fear and it began to feed my own anxiety. Often these moments can sweep us off our feet a little bit, can't they? We just get a bit of data and we find ourselves going down that road of rumination. So I was thinking about anxiety and I pondered on these two things I'm going to share with you. Number one, there are people literally living my worst nightmare right now. Think about the world. worst nightmares that you've had. One way, I don't want to stir them up for you, but in another way I know that they probably run through your mind enough that they're accessible just to know the themes of your worst nightmares. For me, it is losing my children. It is losing my partner,

that sense of safety. There are people living those worst nightmares right now, walking through the fires of your darkest fears. They are walking through it, moving through it day by day. Perhaps You know someone who is literally day by day, hour by hour moving through the things that haunt your sleep, the circumstances that you think, oh my gosh, I literally can never go through that. That is my deepest, biggest fear. And you know that there are people walking through that right now. We see it.

We see it in our lives. We see it on social media. We see it in the news. So this acknowledgement, the first acknowledgement for me was that there are people literally living my worst nightmares right now. And I am not. I'm not currently living my nightmare. I'm not currently experiencing trauma or processing one of those curveball phone calls. And I know that some people are. And I think that's helpful because we know that anxiety has us projecting into a future that has not. And let's face it, may never happen to us. So this acknowledgement is that

there are people walking through my worst nightmare right now, but in this moment, in this day, I am not. And it brings us right back to the present and the truth. And the second realization that I had was that there are people who are thriving after living through my worst nightmare. As I said, one of my biggest fears is my children getting sick and losing. losing them. And I look at my mom who as a parent, as a mother, lived through the subject of many of my anxieties, the loss of a child. My mom has journeyed through the grief and the darkness and the pain and the wondering if it will ever end. And she is thriving. She is thriving in many areas of her life. She is thriving. There are people thriving after relationships.

break downs, illnesses, loss, the grip of addiction after surviving the worst times and they are to varying degrees of course depending on where they're at in their journey. They are okay. They are okay. There are people who are thriving after living through my worst nightmares. For example, my mom, she lost a child and she is okay. Took a while but she is okay. because I think this is also what anxiety does is we put ourselves in a position in our situation, our heart goes through the ringer as we imagine feeling and experiencing and living through that situation. But then also we imagine that that's it for us. If we go through that pain, if we go through that loss, if we go through that curve,

when we experience that kind of living nightmare in a way, that life will never, ever, ever, couldn't comprehensively ever potentially possibly ever be okay again we cannot come out of the other end it would break us we would be broken yeah there are people who have been through our worst nightmares and they have been broken but they are okay maybe some people even thriving to follow up from the message that I'd received about someone whose partner sadly died I also a few days later stumbled across someone on social media who was a widow and she was thriving and living her life and passionate about encouraging and supporting other women walking through that dark time. She wanted to stick a stake in the ground and say, yes, horrendous, yes, broken.

But there is a way to build differently. There is hope. There is life beyond going through that process of losing. losing someone that you love and I just found these things so anchoring so grounding number one there are literally people living my worst nightmare right now and I am not right now I am not living that nightmare there are people who are thriving after living through my worst nightmare people that we know people whose lives we catch glimpses of and this also works for phobia I talk about metaphobia as I just kind of opened with the alluding to that in this podcast.

I often speak about this one as I know people don't realize quite how common the fear of vomiting other people being sick is. And recently I've been sharing stories, nothing graphic or anything, nothing, no details, but just sharing that, you know, we've got this bug in our house and I got a message this morning from someone saying, Anna, just seeing you go through that knowing how intense your phobia and fear, was for you. Seeing you calm, seeing you joking, seeing you happy is so hopeful for me because I can't believe that that might exist for me too. Isn't that wonderful that sometimes looking to people who are thriving after living through the things that we worry about, the things maybe that you're even walking through now, perhaps you're listening to that and you're saying Anna, I am living my worth nightmare right now. I am in the thick of it. I am. walking through the fire of my darkest fears, you're moving through it.

See if you can find someone who's further down the line, who can give you that sense of hope. So yeah, my little light bulb moment that I was really excited to share with you. And I hope that's helpful. Don't forget, please, please do hit subscribe and maybe write a little review. And just send it on, send it on to someone if you think that, this will be helpful for them. I loved. I think it was like at Christmas, Spotify gave me this like email and they were like, look at your statistics. So I like clicked on to it because I love statistics. I get, yeah, I love it. And it said how I can't remember like a massive percentage of

podcast episodes are shared via WhatsApp. And I absolutely love that because I love the fact that you're thinking, oh, these words, my friend needs to hear these words. I really want to encourage my friend with these words. So if there's any topics, don't forget to drop me in email because, you know, if you need some words of encouragement in a certain area, the chances are that there will be other people who will benefit from those as well. So keep sharing and also keep sharing your topic requests of me. And don't forget to pre-order raising a happier mother, which is coming out really, really soon. And all of this stuff is addressed in that book because the bar that we often set for our children's mental health and well-being tends to be so much higher than the

one that we set for ourselves. And I get a lot of people saying, Anna, how do I not pass my anxiety onto my child or my people-pleasing on my perfectionism? I say, you know what, the most powerful thing that you can do for yourself, because you deserve to address that for you, and for your children is to address it for yourself. And they will benefit as a result, as a by-product. There's an amazing side effect. So that's there for you coming up soon. Anyway, Thanks for listening and you're amazing. Thank you so much for listening. Please do take a moment to subscribe, rate and review as it really helps get these words out

to benefit more juggling parents like us. And head to anamatha.com to find my resources on everything from health anxiety to people pleasing starting at only £20. And finally, don't forget to pre-order my new book, Raising a Happier Mother, How to Find Balance, feel good and see your children flourish as a result. I can't wait for you to have that. Take care and we'll chat soon.