Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello, everyone. And welcome to the spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today we are going to be talking about Facing anxiety and the thumbnail says, confronting the bully or standing up to the bully. And I'm going to call anxiety a bully. We're going to be looking at it that way today. We're also going to be looking at what is anxiety and get a little sense of what's going on about it and then how to stand up to anxiety. But before we get started, if you like this content and you enjoy it. Please consider like sharing and subscribing. I really appreciate everyone who's listening. I'm hopeful that this content makes a difference for others. So please consider also sharing with your family and friends as well. Thanks again for being with us. So anxiety, I have experience with this. I actually have had anxiety since I was a child, maybe like nine or 10 years old, had anxiety and I have, I'm going to be talking about it from my own experience. I'll tell a story about it too. So we're first going to talk about it from like the caring side and then we're going to talk about it. Like facing, standing up to a bully side. So from the caring side, first, I'll give a definition of how I understand anxiety to be. Anxiety is a, is a fear based experience, but it's not only in the mind, it's also in the body. So it has a mind body synergy. So for instance, If someone has anxiety, maybe you'll hear someone say, I can't exercise because even when I exercise, I having a panic attack or somebody might say, I'm, I feel like I'm having a heart attack. I have chest pain and they go to the hospital and they say, nope, there's nothing wrong with your heart. It's anxiety. Or I have, my arm is going numb. I must be having a stroke. No. they go to the hospital and there's nothing wrong. It's just anxiety or I'm sweating and I'm fainting and I'm, and they think, Oh, there must be something wrong. Maybe I have a tumor or something wrong with my brain. No, it's just anxiety. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't get checked. You actually should get checked because those, symptoms could also mean some of those critical issues like heart attack or stroke or something like that. If, if anyone has had anxiety, they understand what this feels like, it feels like you're not in control of your nervous system. So the, the body will be on fire of nerves, maybe chest for me, it was chest pain. Maybe some people get headaches. Maybe some people get shortness of breath or tremors or sleep disturbances or things like that. And then they go get, and then the doctor says, no, there's nothing wrong with you. It's just anxiety. So I'm talking about the physical part. Now let's talk about the mind. So what goes on in the mind when all this is going on in the body? Well, the mind usually starts creating some kind of thinking, some kind of fatalistic, scary, doom kind of thinking, worry about survival. So if you think about this, like fear, flooding of fear, not only mental, but also physical. And then there's this fear, like, am I going to survive? Something's wrong. I'm going to die. I'm going to have a heart attack. Okay. So I'm sharing that because maybe, some of you out there don't have anxiety and don't know what it's like, but you can imagine just from what I just described that it's a pretty disturbing, experience. Anxiety does run in families. So it's not like. You, you failed if you have anxiety, you know, some people, I don't know, any disease, people can have a negative attitude about it, right? Like looking at maybe somebody who's an alcoholic and seeing them as like having no willpower or something like that. There has to be an understanding that if anyone is in their power, they wouldn't ask for that disease. Right? So it's not like they're asking for it or they're, they don't care or something like that. So everyone I'm going to say who has anxiety doesn't want it, but they're dealing with it. It's kind of like diabetes, you know, diabetes, you get diabetes, it doesn't go away. Your body is predisposed for that imbalance and it stays there. So I wanted to say that because I feel a lot of compassion for people who have anxiety. It's a, it's not an easy thing to get over and I'm going to share now a scenario even to make it more, I hope I'm not to help if nobody's triggering, but for those of you who don't have anxiety or maybe. weren't able to talk about it or, you know, I'm trying to share my own experience. So I had an experience, um, maybe about seven or eight years ago. I was very close to my mom and I decided to set some boundaries. And if you've been watching the episode, you've been taught, I've been talking about boundaries and I set some boundaries with my mom, which I'd never did before. Nothing negative, but just a boundary. Like I'm going to give some, give myself some space. And just about at that time, I got on a plane to go to India for a meditation retreat in the headquarters of the Brahma Kumaris in India. And I was going by myself. Now I had traveled all over the world myself before, like it was no problem. I'm pretty worldly person. I can go on a trip by myself. I had never been on a 13 hour flight before, but I could, I've been to Hawaii and I've been all over. I'm like, I can do, I've been to Europe. I can do it. Right. So I get on the plane and I had anxiety before and I used to take medication for it, but I had done better. I had kind of been over it, you know, I've been, or been better. Like I didn't have any medication with me cause I was doing better and I wasn't taking it. So I was on the plane and I'm just about, we're on the 13 hour flight and I'm about an hour and a half into the 13 hour flight by myself. And I start having a massive panic attack, like a massive panic attack. So what does that look like? It looks like, uh, my, my energy is heightened. I, my mind is going very, very quickly, fearful thoughts. I feel very in danger. I feel out of control. I feel scared. I feel, and it was like a storm, a very powerful storm in my mind. Now, I had been meditating for years now and I, and this is what I'm going to talk about now about facing the bully. Because I had to make a choice. I was on a 13 hour flight. Where was I going? I didn't have anybody to talk to. I had to go through the different scenarios in my mind. Like, am I going to talk to the stewardess? What's she going to do? They're going to land the plane because of me? Like I'm a nurse. So like, I kind of know the scenarios. I know what they're going to do. And so I said, well, I don't want that and I don't want that, but what am I going to do? And then I said to myself, now I had been. practicing this meditation for several years, like I said, and I had also been practicing the idea that thoughts are just thoughts and emotions are just emotions. They're not me. Like they're not me. They're there, but they're not me. So I said, I said, and at that time I said to God, I'm going to do this and it's either going to work or it's not. And I started fighting in my mind. Now, nobody knew. I'm sitting in the seat or I'm in the seat on the plane and nobody knew, but I literally started standing up to all of those. I said, you're just a thought. You're just an emotion. You're not real. You're just a thought. You're just an emotion. You're not real. And what happened was I got through the flight. And I got off the flight, and I ended up on the phone with my friend, my good friend, and he stayed with me, and I, where am I going to go, I'm sitting in wherever, Abu Dhabi, and I'm sitting waiting for the connecting flight, nobody to talk to, nobody's there, and I just kept talking to my friend on the phone, and then I just somehow made it to the headquarters, and then I was in such a panic. Still, it lasted for like three more days, but I had a friend there that helped me there too. Like she helped me get up and help me like, get up, get dressed. You know, when you have anxiety, it wants to freeze you. It wants to stop you from moving. One of the things you can do is just keep moving, but, but this, in this case, I'm talking about like facing internally, I knew, I told myself if I get through this, it will never be this bad again. because I stood up to it. It will never be that bad again. And I can tell you that it would never was that bad again. Every one of us is different and every one of us is unique. That's my story. And the reason why I told the story about my mom was because I think that was a trigger for the panic attack. There could be plenty of triggers. It could be an emotional trigger. It could be a, uh, relationship trigger. It could be a physical trigger. I was talking to a therapist. One time she goes, you could change your diet and have a panic attack. I was like, are you kidding me? What it means is that my, my mind and my body, my system is very overstimulated and over sensitive. So as I continue to work on the, the, the kind, compassionate side of things, right, like I'm taking care of myself and I'm, Doing what I have to do or whatever, but then also I have to be able to set a boundary too and be able to show that the knowledge that I understand that the feeling is not me and the thoughts are not me and the body is doing what it's doing, but I am not going to be destroyed because of some thing that I have going on in my body and my mind. That's standing up to the bully. And I'm not saying we have to do that all the time, but there are times where it feels so helpless, right? Like anxiety can make, make you feel so helpless. And at those times, like, don't let it make you feel helpless. Get up and walk, do something, move. I had a situation that today that I started reacting to an interaction I had with someone and I started feeling bad inside. This wasn't really anxiety, but it was an emotional state, right? I started feeling a little bad about something about myself or about the situation. And then I started not wanting to do what I had to do today. Look at how it works. As soon as the anxiety gets in or the negative self feelings get in, all of a sudden I stopped wanting to do things. I say, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. It's like to go against that. Do it anyway. I remember many years I would hear psychologists say things like, take a walk, do this, do that. None of that ever worked because maybe I wasn't ready for it. Maybe it does help some people, but it didn't help me because it wasn't addressing for me what the problem was. And the problem was I felt helpless. and taking a walk didn't feel like it was going to make me not feel helpless. But I'm telling you all now who are listening to me, depending on the situation, sometimes we got to take care of ourselves, like being, like I said, like in the nice side of things. But sometimes we have to be on the firm side of things and don't be afraid to be firm. If you have a feeling of anxiety or whatever, I have another example. I have a friend who was supposed to go on a flight to Europe and she had an anxiety attack and she called me the next morning and said, I missed the flight and now I missed the flight yesterday. I rescheduled for today and now I have to be there in an hour and a half and I'm still in bed. I can't get out of bed. Now, for those of you who have anxiety or depression, maybe you can understand what this feels like. She was actually frozen in the bed. So I was firm with her. You have to know when to use the right tool, when to be nice and kind and calm and taking care like a mom. And when to be like, let's say like a dad or like the more firm. And I said to her, I said, get up, get dressed and go. Because if you don't go on this trip, this thing, one, don't let it win. You're going to be fine. Take your medicine. Like she had medicine. I said, take the medicine. Right now, get up, get dressed and call me back in 10 minutes. Call me back in 10 minutes. Like I stayed with her all the way to get her to the airport. See I'm getting emotional as I'm sharing this because there are going to be moments in life where we actually need help and anxiety is you need help. You need help. You either need to be cared for or you need firm assistance, companionship and guidance. But either way, take care of it and work with it. And for me, I guess after that six years of not having any anxiety, and then having it come back suddenly for no reason whatsoever, I mean it came out of the blue, I actually went to therapy a few times afterwards to check, because I wanted to know why it came back. And the therapist said to me, It can come back at any time. And for the first time I realized I had thought that it was gone for good. So I'm telling you what I told myself, I've accepted that this is a mind body potential that I have here, but I now have the tools and I know what I need to do. I need to take care, be kind or be firm and then take my medication if I need it. Right now I'm not taking any medication. That doesn't mean that I won't in the future, but I don't, I'm hoping that I won't because I'm doing meditation and I'm working on the spiritual side of it, which is continue to meditate and continue to realize that you're not your thoughts. You're not your emotions. That doesn't seem like a big deal as I'm saying it, but it's a huge deal in these moments when I practice meditation and I practice understanding and observing my thoughts and knowing that my thoughts are not me. Then I have the power to do what I did on that plane. For those of you who have anxiety, you know what a big deal that was and you know what a big deal it is when you can't get out of bed and can't and you, when you, when you've been defeated because you got stopped from doing something. So I hope this is encouraging to some of you who are out there. I try not to be overly clinical or overly psychological because I feel that knowledge is good. Like I said, I went out and got therapy because I wanted to know like what's going on. So science is good, but at the end of the day, I'm going to say the real triumph and the real victory is when you gain power in that scenario. And right now I can share with you that I have it. I know I have it. It's like any disease. I have it. I'm going to have it. It's fine. But I know now that it's okay that I have it. And I can manage it, you know, I know what to do and I have the tools. And then the more I meditate and the more I practice, the less frequent it shows up. It hardly ever happens anymore. Like I said, I went six years without any anxiety whatsoever and the relapse lasted like a month and now it's gone again. So that's okay. So I'm doing well. So I hope that that gives like maybe a little bit of a different perspective and also the idea that I can stand up to it. and confront the bully, right? When your mind is, is when you need that firm firmness. Okay, so I'll leave it there. And so thank you again for joining us. And our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And the reason why it's serve is because every time you get better, everyone around you gets better, including the whole world gets better. So until next time, take care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
