Episode 267: Anxiety in Sheep’s Clothing
Join Kelli and Erica as they chat about the tricky nature of anxiety and how they recently got bamboozled by it, as well as helpful reminders and more!
To tune into the episode, listen on iTunes or Spotify.
Show Notes
Kelli and Erica chat about how everyone can get bamboozled by anxiety. Recently, Kelli slipped from being excited about a job offer for an exciting nurse coaching position, to obsessing over how she could make this opportunity work with her schedule and her family’s schedule. She was rutted before she even knew it… anxiety in sheep’s clothing.
How and why do we get rutted?
Sometimes it starts when we just want to "think things through" in order to make a decision.
But when we respond to a sense of urgency with more urgency we're actually innocently perpetuating the anxiety cycle. Frenzy feeds more frenzy!
Decisions made from scarcity breed more scarcity.
Biologically, some behaviors (e.g. avoidance, suppression, frenzy) send danger signals to our brains and bodies, which cues the fight or flight response.
As we react with more urgency, we cue more danger, more anxious thoughts, more physical anxiety symptoms, which we then react to with more urgency, cuing more danger, more anxious thoughts, etc.
We're not wired to solve anything from a place of do or die; our cognitive processing, emotional regulation, and perspective are disrupted. Stress hormones have a clear and measurable impact on our cognitive abilities. The only thing we're wired to be from a do or die place is react, in order to survive.
A solution…
Slow down; give yourself some breathing room by putting the decision on a shelf, and even stepping back and asking the bigger questions.
Recent research highlighted in an interesting webinar from Harvard's Institute of Coaching about effective problem solving indicates that most of us jump straight into analyzing and solving, but this is often ineffective and eats up precious mental bandwidth.
The most effective problem solvers slow down and step back; they step out of the details and reframe the problem by asking questions like “Am I even solving the right problem?” or "Is there a different way to look at this problem?"
It can be hard to see the value in slowing down and stepping back, especially when we're feeling urgency, but there’s truth to the expression "muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone."
Can you think of a time, however seemingly small or insignificant, when taking a step back was of value? Even when urgency, doubt, or distress were present?
