Hello!!

This was a really hard blog for me to write. It brings up so many fears – especially around my competence and whether you can trust me as a coach and “leader.” It was so hard to write, in fact, it took me THE WHOLE MONTH OF MAY to get this to you… (May was mental health month and I wanted to send a specific blog on that theme).

However, anxiety can be so insidious and affects too many of us. There is still a lot of shame and stigma around this topic… and it’s one that I didn’t speak about personally for a long time.

Anxiety, simply put, is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Anxiety is part of “normal” brain functioning and has a very important role – to keep us safe.

The part of our brain that controls feelings such as anxiety is called the amygdala, and it is the part that gets activated when there is a perceived threat. Imagine you are walking down a street at night and all of a sudden, one of the street lights goes off and everything becomes a bit darker. Almost simultaneously, you hear footsteps rapidly approaching behind you. Your breath quickens and your heart rate speeds up. This is your body preparing you for “fight or flight” – which might save your life. Granted, those footsteps could be an evening jogger, or a friend who saw you from a few blocks away and is sprinting trying to catch up with you. However, there is a moment when your brain doesn’t know the difference between a perceived or real threat – and its job is to do what it thinks is best in order to save your life.

Anxiety can be triggered by a number of factors associated with our modern societies and is so common now that it is an estimated 40 MILLION people in the USA who suffer from an anxiety disorder.

For a long time, I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was anxiety. I don’t remember feeling anxious as a child, or exactly when it started.

However, reflecting back… I see the layers of stress that started to pile high on top of each other.

The enormous pressure I piled on myself to be “okay” – after going from getting very good grades to almost failing grade 10 and 11, having tons of problems at home and eventually leaving for a time before I graduated high school.

The alcohol-induced blackouts that started around age 16, where I would wake up in a panic trying to fill in the blank around what happened to me… and lasted for another decade and a half until I got my alcohol use under control.

The sexual molestations and rape that started around the same age I left home, and the shame surrounding my inability to speak up or even really know what was happening to me, let alone do anything about it.

The high-performance coping mechanisms I developed after high school, where I over-achieved like my life depended on it, because it felt like it did.

The accumulation of days and weeks and months and YEARS without enough sleeping, pushing myself hard hard harder… or was it running, fast fast faster to stay as far away from the pain as I could.

(When praised for my accomplishments or asked the question “how have you accomplished so much at such a young age?” I would often answer “I don’t really sleep.”)

The excessive amount of pressure, stress and responsibility I felt at a young age led to some pretty unhealthy coping mechanisms and not surprisingly, panic attacks came with them.

I remember the first one so vividly, I was walking to the Commercial drive community clinic where I had to open up on a holiday Monday and supervise a group support meeting. I had been partying all weekend (my “coping” strategy for a very intense work environment and a ton of responsibility at a young age) and was very short on sleep. I started feeling anxious about the day ahead and realized I wasn’t breathing properly. Before I knew it, I was feeling like I was going to pass out and my hands cramped up so intensely they were paralyzed and I couldn’t even use my phone. I remember shaking uncontrollably and vomiting in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The attending paramedic had to hold the bowl in front of my face while lecturing me about the drugs I had told him I was taking. I was put under observation for a few hours and then sent home with some lorazapam. I had to call sick to work because I couldn’t get out of bed for 2 days… and I was too ashamed to talk about the reason why.

The crazy thing about anxiety is how quickly it tries to convince you that you’re going back to “that place.”

Like recently, while I was sitting on a comfy couch next to someone who cares about me, and I forgot to breathe because we were watching a scary movie, and I stood up to walk outside to get some fresh air and the bright light blinded me and I started to feel dizzy, my body and brain wanted to take me back to “that place” and within seconds I felt completely out of control and terrified.

For me, anxiety can both be a mental trigger or a physical experience that takes my whole body hostage at times.

It’s the shallow breath that seems to get stuck in my throat, no matter how hard I try to breathe deep into my chest.

It’s the dizziness and lightheadedness that follows the shortness of breath.

It’s the nausea that sets in along with the panicked fear that my body is taking me to a point of no return.

It can be triggered by external factors or seemingly “nbd” nuisances like get startled awake by shouting or dogs barking aggressively or any loud noise really… and it’s really hard to explain to anyone else who doesn’t have experience with this exactly how hard it is to climb back out of the spiral.

Or it can be triggered by legit fears or made up ones, and the pressures of being a good mother, coach, business owner, friend, partner, etc..

Sometimes it is literally paralyzing, like the inability to follow through on what should be a simple task or email.

I think I spent so many years running and performing and self-medicating that I am only just coming to terms with my anxiety.

Becoming a mother has brought it even closer to the surface on a daily basis, and becoming a single parent (and single person) brings me face to face with my fears, like, next level.

There are a variety of tools that I’ve been using to help me manage my anxiety. At this point, I’m not trying to be “anxiety-free” as that feels like a lot of pressure, but I am trying to get through the day without a meltdown. Some days that feels more doable than others, and I practice a whole heck of a lot of self-forgiveness on the days that fears and forgetting to breathe spiral into an uncontrollable attack.

REMEMBERING TO BREATHE

This might seem obvi but it’s actually something I have to remember to do. When I realize how shallow I’m breathing and that I haven’t taken a belly breath for a while, I stop what I’m doing (if possible) and place one hard on my heart and one hand on my belly and breath all the way into my lower abdomen. I often to this parked in front of my office, after I’ve dropped my daughter off at school and before I head upstairs to the office, or when I’ve escaped into the bathroom at home trying to get my emotions under control. I find counting my in and out breaths really helps, and gradually increasing the count. For example, if I’m feeling short of breath, I start with one count in and one count out. Then after several breaths, I increase to two, then to three.

GETTING UP EARLY + MORNING RITUAL

My mornings used to be super rushed and chaotic (before having a kid). As I started to redefine my relationship to alcohol, I realized how important it was to start the day calmly and in a way that nurtures my mind, body and spirit. Then I had a kid, and my morning routine went to shit for awhile. I’m now committed to waking up early, doing deep breathing while still in bed and listening to the birds and centering on a feeling of gratitude, drinking my water and lemon and taking my supplements, doing my Thrive Threesome journaling practice and prepping a smoothie because I wake my daughter up. This takes between 30-45 mins. I notice a huge difference on the days I have time to do this versus the days I wake up at the same time as she does or when she wakes up early and I’m immediately in “reactivity.”

RESTING

If I’ve been in a high state of anxiety or have experienced an “attack” – I often need to rest a lot afterwards. “Pushing through” is sometimes necessary (I do have responsibilities outside of myself) however I try to allow myself time to rest as soon as I can… sometimes that’s laying down on the sofa in my office or on the floor for 10 minutes (at this point I don’t really care what anyone else in my office thinks though I realize this might not be possible for everyone) and I plug in soothing, chakra balancing music. Or I simply try to get to bed earlier, especially as I’m prone to waking up a lot. Michelle Cady, a former client and author of the recently released “Self-Care in the City” talks about the importance of rest in our interview about alcohol and adrenal fatigue. Here’s her interview from the Redefining Sobriety summit. 

USING ESSENTIAL OILS and AROMATHERAPY

While I’ve used essential oils off and on for years, I really began to understand their power while I was hospitalized during my high-risk pregnancy, with haemorrhaging and the threat of a mid-term miscarriage. I used “tranquillity” and “serenity” blends pretty much non-stop… trying to calm my fears and adrenals so as to not put more stress on the little one who was fighting for her life inside. The oils used in the picture here are the ones I used most frequently now. I put cedarwood and vetiver on the soles of my feet and use a mantra that “I am grounded/rooted, I am centred, I am safe.” When I feel myself “spiralling” into what feels like an anxiety attack, I used Purify to bring me back to myself. Balance transports me into a feeling of being protected and in the forest, from which I draw strength.

TAPPING AND AFFIRMATIONS

Using “tapping” or emotional freedom technique (EFT) has done wonderings. There is something very powerful about acknowledging what I’m feeling and loving myself through it. Affirmations such as “Even though I’m feeling really anxious and fearful right now, I totally love and accept myself just the way I am” combined with tapping on the meridians that have been shown to help calm the amygdala and reduce cortisol has been super powerful. I’m also grateful to Jackie MacDonald for teaching me about “finger tapping” which you can do anywhere. Here is her interview from the Redefining Sobriety Summit where she shares several really practice tools and takes me through a tapping exercise to deal with overwhelm (aka anxiety trigger).

CHANGING HOW I TALK ABOUT MYSELF, TO MYSELF

I learned this technique from Tree Franklyn. Instead of saying, “I’m anxious” or “I’m stressed,” I try to shift the language to “I’m feeling anxious right now” which shifts the internal conversation from labelling myself to making a statement about how I’m feeling right now, which both separates my identity from the experience and helps remind me that it is not permanent. Another affirmation I use often is “I love you” on the inhale and “I am safe” on the exhale.
I’ve also included Tree’s interview from the Redefining Sobriety Summit.

SEEKING SUPPORT

I see a therapist twice a month who supports me with healing trauma (and who also works with tapping and other emotional freedom techniques and herbal/flower remedies), I have coaches who support me through the fears and pressures of being a healer and a coach, and running a business, and a small group of friends I can call on for support and who help remind me to breathe. I have colleagues who are also people who experience anxiety and can relate without minimizing or dismissing what I’m recalling or experiencing. I’m particularly grateful to Dr Perpetua Neo’s work and our many collaborations on this topic. Here’s an article she wrote that talks about the connection between alcohol and anxiety.  Dr Neo also has a lot of other great articles on anxiety so make sure to check out her profile on Mind Body Green.

I hope the videos and links I’ve included in this blog are helpful. If you’ve experienced anything like what I’ve described here, please know that you can reach out and that there are tools that can help. I’m happy to talk about this anytime. Here’s a link to my calendar to set up a time to chat.

If you want to hear from the other summit experts (several of whom talk about trauma and anxiety in different ways and share a variety of tools), you can purchase the entire summit for $47 and there’s a ton of value. Let me know if this interests you and we’ll send it your way!

xoxo