Podcast: E33 - Are You Anxious?
Listen to E33: Are You Anxious? here - https://apple.co/3FMhsG7
Hey there, it's Dr. Tiffany with Integrative Mental Health Therapy with Dr. Tiffany, and this is episode 33, and it's Are You Anxious? I've been talking a lot recently about anxiety, and I can't help but think this has to do a lot with just, gosh, there have been so many changes this year around us.
And even last year, you know, there's just been a lot of just things going on. don't want this episode to be a rehash of all the things that are going on, whether it's, you know, weather events or whether it's losses, whether it's, you know, what's going on with the economy, the government and all the things. I don't have to say what the stressors are. You know what they are. And I just want you to know that as a result, I'm hearing about anxiety a lot more in my practice and I am talking about anxiety a lot on social media a lot in my emails and I wanted to bring the focus here a bit more to just talking about anxiety and looking at it from the brain body mind perspective so as we
We go into May. It's a new month. I wanted to have a new episode and I wanted to ask you, are you anxious? And if you are, want you to reply to this podcast and we have an easy to navigate checklist and then I even have an ebook. So if you're really wanting to do a deep dive in all my natural health approaches to anxiety. I do have a small ebook, but if you'd like a checklist, please just reply and I will send you the link to download the checklist. And then in this episode, I want to give you just, you know, just some visibility. I want to give you some suggestions and I want to tell you that you're not alone, you know, and I also want to point out some different perspectives on anxiety.
So here's what I have found most of the people that I work with that are coming to me with a health issue struggle with some degree of anxiety stress overwhelm, okay, so anxiety stress overwhelm and They will have symptoms because they have health issues That increase that anxiety that stress and that overwhelm and it seems to be a co-equal co-occurring diagnosis. So if you go a couple episodes back, I was talking to Dr. Evan, the energy MD about chronic health issues. And what I have found is that in that community, is typically a part in the patient client that is struggling with fear and anxiety. And it's because within the body, There are symptoms that don't make sense. There's an autoimmune threat that is putting the system in fight, flight, freeze. And so when I'm working with my clients and patients that have chronic health issues, I do a lot of work, a lot of parts work around the anxious part, around the afraid part, around the hypervigilant part. And I want you, if you are a listener who has a health issue, who has an autoimmune disorder, to just take stock and see if that part also exists for you and to make connection with that part as well as continue, I mean, continue or consider the last episode and the work that we talked about there, which is having boundaries with parts. Now, my chronic illness clients know that they're gonna have symptoms like dizziness or nausea or racing heart or lightheadedness or some ring game, but what if you don't have an autoimmune disorder? What if you don't have a chronic illness? What if chronic fatigue is not your challenge, but you know you have anxiety and you also have those symptoms a lot of times that will happen with People who are struggling with just generalized anxiety and overwhelmed as they will have pain that they cannot explain. will have, you know, find themselves in the emergency room with some sort of issue with a limb that just all of a sudden is not functioning properly or has a lot of pain. They will report, you know, like something that must be like a panic attack because their heart is racing, their chest is tight, and they have, you know, sweat profusely through their clothes.
They will be surprised that they have all of these issues, dizziness, ringing in the ears, body pain, frequent urination. They can even experience just a sudden weight loss and not recognize that this is coming from the anxiety. So I want you to pay attention to the physical symptoms.
Brains out, feeling like you could be falling, cold chills. These are all anxiety symptoms that people will oftentimes not even register as that and not realize that they're dealing with anxiety. And sometimes people will come in to me and they'll say, well, I don't know what I was thinking or I don't know, I don't know why. And I swear to you, why is like my least favorite word. I don't like why it's just, it's so not helpful. Um, most people, even if they figure out why it's just something they made up anyway, you know what I mean? It's a very, um, cortex brain, um, over logical, um, over analytical part of them that has come up with why it's usually not accurate. Um, it's more like, you know, what was that? Where did I experience it in my body? What did I notice in my body? Right? How did that show up? And how can I be there for that part of me? Sometimes our parts, our anxious parts are purely somatic, purely physical. They can be like pre-verbal anxiety. They can be exiled deep deep in the system anxiety that you cannot make any sense of so this idea of trying to figure out why you feel that way isn't as helpful as just noticing and being with the fact that your system is revved activated and is absolutely experiencing this it needs your support right and so from an anxious perspective, I just want you to take a beat. don't want this, um, this recording to make you more anxious. I want you to just notice is there tension in your jaw? Is there tension in your neck or shoulders? Is there pressure in your chest? Do you feel like your heart is racing? Um, are you noticing that you are more activated for a variety of reasons, experiences than you used to be. And can you just be with that part of you, be aware of it, listen, and not try to talk it out of this experience, but try to be there for it in its experience. IFS is about self to part relationship. And I want to encourage you to think about this part of you that's experiencing anxiety as one of your children or one of the children in your life who is exhibiting, um, dysregulation, who, who might not have words for what that's about and how you would show up with them. And it wouldn't be in a lot of fact finding, questioning, inquisition. Um, you don't have to make this stuff make sense. That's not what the listening ear is supposed to do the listening ear is supposed to validate have compassion for support Be with the distressed individual child part the most annoying thing you can do as a supporting Ear is to try to make it make sense.
That is not what you do, you just bear witness to. Validation doesn't mean you agree. It doesn't even mean you understand. It just means that what that individual is experiencing is what they are experiencing and you bear witness to it. And you can do that with the anxious, fearful, hypervigilant parts of your system. And I promise you that will bring you home.
Now for more of my physical recommendations, health brain recommendations, please reply to the, I guess this is gonna show up for you maybe in an email, maybe on a post. If you do not know how to reach us, my website, one of my many websites is docbrownbush.com. send an email, ask for the guide. If you go to that website and you go to the anxiety page, there is a request for the guide. That's the ebook. We're gonna make sure the checklist is uploaded because we've been told that the ebook is a little overwhelming. So we're gonna make sure that the checklist is there. But if you get this before we've updated that. Definitely just request on the site the checklist and then we can get you just all of the techniques that you can use to calm your system down.
When I first had my brain scanned at the Amen Clinic, I was in just gripping anxiety, overwhelm and at times even rage because my system was dysregulated so much that I had a bit of a hair trigger. And I did a lot of the physical brain-based interventions and then later found IFS in parts work. And that has really been a calming, just full circle approach to dealing with anxiety. And so you can feel better. It's not just my story. It's the story of so many people. You know, my husband struggles with anxiety and ADHD and he has figured out how to do this without medication, do it without alcohol. Not that he ever drank, but he didn't have to just start exploring all the options out in the world. And a lot of my clients who have ADHD and anxiety will explore THC. It is doable without any of those things, but it does require a brain, body, mind approach. I hope this is helpful. I hope you reach out and until next time, be well.