Embracing Anxiety: 3 Tips from a Licensed Therapist

Have you recently worked with a therapist? Each year, therapists help people with high anxiety find calm, stability, and relief. Anxiety affects millions of people, especially since 2020 when mass amounts of our population accumulated added stress from COVID-19 and increased uncertainty in their future.

Luckily, therapists at North American Health Services can offer tangible ways to embrace anxiety and work with it so you can continue living a balanced life.

Tips for Recognizing and Embracing Anxiety, from NAMHS LMFT Simeon Jones

Living with anxiety requires recognition of certain thought patterns, as well as lots of compassion for yourself. Think back to the early days, when surviving the initial COVID-19 lockdown seemed impossible, but you adapted. Living with high anxiety also requires adaptation.

Simeon Jones is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in working with adults experiencing anxiety, depression, and relationship difficulties. Here are his three tips for reducing high anxiety.

1. Remember that “Your Feelings are Valid” 
Some situations call for anxiety, such as concern for a sick loved one or uncertainty over one’s job or housing. However, constant levels of anxiety can be annoying to experience, at best, and devastating at worst.

Many people with anxiety often recognize when they feel anxious. This recognition is a worthy tip in itself. When you can label your state as “anxious,” the amygdala calms down in a process called affective labeling.

If your anxiety is producing emotional variations of fear (ranging from cautious to panicked), remember that your emotional experience is real. Your feelings are valid; however, the thoughts influencing these feelings may not be.

As Simeon Jones, LMFT described in Healing Modern Anxieties in a Shifting World, persistent feelings of fear and worry are not always helpful. That’s why additional self-inquiry, relational healing, and professional support can help you move through your emotions without getting “stuck.”

2. Recognize and Label Thought Distortions 
When feeling anxious, many people experience common thought distortions such as rumination and catastrophizing. These thought patterns might influence how you feel and perhaps, make you even more anxious. That feeling of anxiety is real, even if the thoughts influencing it may not necessarily reflect the truth.

For example, imagine that you messed up a presentation at work. You stumbled over your introductory slides, mispronounced a few words, and forgot to leave time for questions at the end. None of these mistakes are life-threatening, but all you can think is, “I ruined that presentation. My boss was not impressed. I might get fired. I’m going to get fired. If I get fired, I won’t be able to pay rent and support my family.”

This is a classic example of catastrophizing when after an initial stressful event, you’re experiencing a seemingly endless loop of “worst case scenarios.” When you find yourself caught in the whirlpool of catastrophizing, find ways to pause this line of thought and give your mind and body a break. The first step is to recognize and label the thought distortions, if and when they occur.

3. Connect with People 
This last tip requires a bit of vulnerability because it involves being honest with people about your experience with anxiety. Connecting with someone about mental health can mean different actions, depending on your needs.

One way to connect with people might mean calling a good friend who you always feel supported by, and letting them know you had a rough day with anxiety. Or maybe during a “high anxiety” moment, you can call them or even send them a quick text, expressing that you’re having a high anxiety day. Some friends—even good friends who mean well—may need you to tell them what you need to feel supported. Maybe all you want is a simple text back that is as simple as a heart emoji, to feel seen and loved. Maybe you just want someone to laugh with you about an awkward exchange, so you can find humor amidst the anxiety.

Another way to connect with people is to find a therapist who makes you feel seen and also has the professional tools to help you grow. This also requires vulnerability and trust, as you share your story with “a stranger.” But this stranger has one job: to support you. Plus, unlike a friend, they carry less bias and understand the complexity of mental health. You also don’t need to worry about “burdening” a therapist the way you might worry about “burdening” a friend. That said, a world where people talk more openly with friends and colleagues about mental health is a beautiful thing.

If you or someone you care about struggles with high anxiety, various types of therapy can also provide relief.

Find the Right Therapist For You
Anxiety is common: we live in a world with constant change, uncertainty, and challenges. At North American Mental Health Services, we believe that feeling better starts with finding someone to listen to your experiences.

NAMHS has in-person therapy in Redding, Eureka, Fairfield, Monterey, Salinas, Red Bluff and Hollister as well as online therapy care available via HomePsych.

Healing Modern Anxieties in a Shifting World

There is a lot of anxiety in the world right now. We are in the middle of an election year, and things like threats of pandemic and global warming bring about feelings of fear in many people. No matter where you fall on these issues, many people are worried.

Social media, politics, and the fast-paced nature of modern life have divided us. We love our fences. We live in our “house bubbles,” and we drive in our “car bubbles,” and a large portion of our day we sit in our “office bubbles.” I even see some of my patients via Telehealth from my office—I can “virtually” go anywhere in the world from my office. Because of our modern conveniences, there is less and less of a need to venture out into the world. But what are the ramifications of this trend toward isolation? For one, people can feel unmoored and disconnected. Another effect is further isolation: we easily retreat into echo chambers where we only hear thoughts and opinions that are just like our own.

I recently heard about an amazing way that doctors are treating severe stutterers. It’s called “delayed auditory feedback.” The way it works is that the doctor places a device resembling a hearing aid into the ears of the stutterer. When the person speaks, the device picks up the sound of their voice and plays it back in their ear simultaneously and at a slightly different frequency and tone. According to the researchers, this creates what they call “the choral effect.” The brain is tricked into thinking that the person is speaking along with someone else. Research has shown that when people who stutter sing or speak in unison with others, their speech is more fluid and in some cases the stammering goes away completely.

The stigma of a speech impediment can be crippling for those that suffer from it and alters the way they go about their normal lives. Many are isolated and choose careers that don’t require them to interact with others. It is exhausting and frustrating to get stuck on a syllable and not be able to get past it.

In an article in USA Today they reported that Cris Muirhead of Searcy, Ark. (who suffers from severe stuttering) would try and tell the waiter at a restaurant his order, but after several minutes of trying to get his order from his mind to his lips, he would often give up and end up eating something he did not want to eat. He now wears a hearing aide, and his stuttering has virtually disappeared.

It is not fun to feel stuck. We get trapped in our own minds and are unable to break through. Human beings can talk themselves into anything. Without other voices in our lives, it becomes easy to stutter through life. I think that is why it is so important to stay connected with others. Hearing voices that are tuned to a slightly different frequency gives perspective and at times can make your own voice more fluid.

It’s not necessary to be swept up in fear and worry. The “choral effect” can help us feel anchored even in a world that’s unpredictable and shifting. We need each other. I need your voice in my life, and you need mine. The “choral effect” that will be created by our interaction may help us feel less alone with our stuttering lives.

In order to heal, we have to find ways to reconnect with people. One of the benefits of therapy is that it is a relationship that is nonjudgmental. It’s a caring environment and a space where people can come into healing, find peace with themselves, hear another’s voice, and have their voice be heard.