Understanding Anxiety's Hidden Story and Fear

Transcript

 This is episode 10 of In The Messy Podcast. I'm your host Jan, a registered psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada. And this podcast exists because we envision a future where every relationship, no matter how messy it may seem, has the potential to evolve into something beautiful and thriving.

And if you like this podcast, I love it if you could hit the subscribe button and if you want to make my day, please leave a review. It's one of the only ways I can interact with you all. So today we're going to talk about how to understand your anxiety and the story that it's trying to say to you. So when you're ready, let's begin.

Last time we were focused on how do we handle our anxiety with the triggers. Some of the techniques that I shared was the S-T-O-P stop technique as well as the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 technique. Okay? If you have any questions, you can always drop me a note at Jan at Janette chu dot ca, that's my personal email. You can feel free to email me at any point.

Today is such an important topic is because a lot of the times we tend to focus on our anxieties rather than the origins of our anxieties. So our fears often have a personal history, and exploring that story helps us understand and bring the prefrontal cortex back online. Helping us to bring in the logic and the understanding to balance our emotions around the anxiety.

So I wanna start off with sharing a little embarrassing story about my childhood when I was younger, I had a traumatic encounter with Canadian geese. It was springtime, I was six years old and my dad took myself and my middle brother to see the little baby geese cause they just hatched and they were super cute. So we drove there and we got onto the field. And the closer that we got, the more the mommy and the daddy geese became aggressive. They started flapping their wings. They started honking and being very loud. And I was quite scared actually. And I said, "dad, let's turn around, you know, maybe it's not a good idea." And my dad was like, "it's okay. They're just birds." And so the adult geese became so aggressive that they started chasing us down. And while they were chasing us down, one of them started to attack my younger brother. So my dad punched that geese, in order to protect his son. And then another one bit my hand, and I still remember what it felt like to experience the beak and the tongue and I remember which hand it was. It was my right hand. I remember. What I was wearing, which was my yellow shirt, red overalls with my red hat. I remember everything and that experience left a deep impression and unfortunately it created a lifelong fear of not just Canadian geese, but all birds in general. We got out of there safely. There was nothing bad that actually happened other than us running away from the geese. I think what was the hardest thing about that was that fear of birds that stuck with me. So years later. I went through psychology classes and finally understood why I was so afraid of geese because my amygdala remembered that early experience and my hippocampus stored it as a danger memory.

And so every time I saw geese, my body reacted as though that childhood threat was happening again. Even though I'm much more older, I'm much more stronger. I can run faster and I would not approach the geese like I would usually do. So how do we understand anxiety and fear, and specifically what is the source of anxiety?

So when you're feeling anxious or triggered, it's important to understand where your anxiety is coming from. It could be related to work, relationships, friendships, or even fierce like height. Or failure. Failure is a huge one nowadays. So what I want you to ask yourself is what is this fear really about? Is it about survival? Is it about something else? Is it the fear of being seen, judged, misunderstood? Is it about performing a certain way and not making a fool out of yourself? Ultimately, the key question is what's at stake right now?

I just wanna let you know that. There is a role of fear in human experience. There are such things as normal and natural fears. Fear is a natural and instinctive human response. It can help us pause and assess potential threats. It's a biological mechanism for survival. When we go up on a cliff and look down, sometimes we get a little bit woozy. Because there's a biological survival mechanism that says, okay, if you drop, you're going to die or you might die. So common instinctual fears include, snakes, spiders, heights, the fear of dying, the fear of the unknown, the fear of making wrong choices and et cetera, et cetera.

These fears are rooted in survival instincts and are often biological responses rather than psychological ones. Okay, so while some fears are what we call in psychology, adaptive and protective, based on survival instinct, others can be really debilitating. And the term that we call it in psychology is called rational versus irrational fear.

When fear becomes very hard to cope with on your day to day life. So some examples could be checking your locks or checking your appliances excessively. So not just once or twice, but 10, 20, 30 times because of the fear of something bad happening, obsessive cleaning or brushing or anything obsessive because of the fear of contamination or imperfection. Those are some things that we can identify as, there must be a story behind this anxiety. It's not just survival instinct. A lot of these fears, phobias, anxiety disorders, can be seen in the DSM five. So the DSM five is a diagnostic and statistic manual, and there have been, so far, five versions of it and it's, it helps us as clinicians to understand what is specifically happening or what could be a trend. So if you have those things, a lot of those times it is irrational, but your brain doesn't know that it's irrational. It feels a lot of things, and that's why we need to understand what is exactly the story.

Many fears are based on anticipation rather than reality, such as fear of failure, rejection, or not meeting expectations. So I'd love it if you can even ask yourself, or even pause this podcast and ask, is this helping or hindering my life? Is focusing on a future reality going to help, or is this preventing me from doing the things that I want to do right here, right now?

So let's talk about the neuroscience of fear and anxiety. Initially, I talked about the amygdala and the hippocampus, so I'll go more into detail about that. So the amygdala is part of the brain's response for triggering the fight, flight, freeze, fawn response. When it's activated, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for reasoning, logic, and decision making becomes less active. This means our fears can override rational thinking. That's why I ask you is this fear, rational or irrational. Another structure that helps this amygdala to figure out, okay, what is it that I need to do right now? Do I have to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn is the hippocampus. The hippocampus stores memories and interacts with the amygdala.

When fear is triggered or stimulus is triggered, then the amygdala asks, have we seen this before? What's happened last time? And this connection explains why past experiences can intensify present anxiety. Your brain recalls old memories that resemble the current threat. So in my situation, when I would go to the park and I would see the robins, right? common sparrows. I would start having the fear, the tingling sensation in my hands. Sometimes I would forget to breathe or hyperventilate, and my mind would just go blank. So that is the amygdala and the hippocampus saying to each other, Hey, we've seen this before. Something with wings that has feathers and a beak, that means danger.

Okay, we have to go away, we have to avoid the park, we have to avoid outside, we have to. And it can tend to spiral, so how do we overcome our fears? So with my husband's support, I began to gradually expose myself to all birds, including geese. So I would walk near the geese while my husband was holding my hand.

It was really hard initially. I would keep on looking at the ground but eventually I made eye contact with these geese while staying calm. And so over time my brain learned that geese were not a real threat and that the fear faded. And this process is called exposure therapy. It helps retrain the amygdala to recognize safety.

And I realized because these birds were actually really scared of us, that's why they reacted in such a protective way to protect their little babies. So in the same way, if I don't bother them, they won't bother me. And now I can go to the park and enjoy.

So as we wrap up our 10th episode, we went on a journey of understanding the story behind your anxiety. So the key takeaways here are label your fear. Understand what it's about and what's truly at stake. Distinguish your rational versus irrational fears. Not all fears are dangerous. And thirdly, recognize your brain's role. Your amygdala and your hippocampus influence how fear is stored and is triggered. Fourthly, explore the story behind your anxiety. And it often stems from past experiences, and you can talk to your therapist. You can, even if there's a lot of trauma, you can even do what I recommend, EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, which will help you bring your prefrontal cortex back online and help you desensitize yourself and expose yourself to the stimuli over and over and over again. And then lastly, use gentle exposure. I don't want you to force yourself to, if you're scared of swimming, dunk your head in water. No, no, no, repeated safe experiences can rewire your fear of response. So even going into your bathtub and putting on the water so that it is. Just an inch or two above the ground. Right? And just stepping into that and just breathing. Gentle exposure. Okay, so those are the few takeaways from this podcast episode. And if you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, share, or leave a review. And I love to hear your thoughts and any questions that you might have. And if you'd really like to work with me and you're in the province of Ontario, you can book a free consultation at janettechu.ca.

That's J-A-N-E-T-T-E-C-H-U.ca. And if no one has told you yet, I believe in you and I'm here for you in the messy.