“If you are taking care of you and truly looking to overcome anxiety, then I think we are willing to try whatever is available that will work and support us. It's a good thing to be able to have that bucket of tools, that tool set to be able to go to and know that some of them are going to operate really well.” - Dawn Calvinisti

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Ways to Ease Anxiety with Dawn Calvinisti

Today I’m continuing the story of my anxiety journey that I started two episodes ago. I’m Dawn Calvinisti, the host of Imperfection in Progress and I’m sharing more about the tools and strategies that I used when I started to take control of my thoughts and the anxious patterns I had developed.

Check out my website www.pursueprogress.com to learn more about how you can work with me and to grab my free clarity workbook.

I hope that hearing how I have overcome anxiety will encourage you or someone you know to take back your mind and find ways that support you to overcome anxiety. Please share this episode with others you know need to hear it.

Now onto the episode.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Dawn Calvinisti: Welcome back to imperfection in progress. I am so glad you're here with me today. We are doing kind of a part two from a couple of weeks back when I shared my journey with anxiety. That is our focus for this month. As we have an expert on mental health, we have another lady who shares her journey on anxiety.

And I love that we get to talk about this in this day and age. I know that there's still a stigma there. I hope that this podcast will help to take off some of the blinders, take off some of the stigma remove some of the feelings of shame or guilt around the idea of mental health. I mentioned this before, but I want to say it again, that anxiety really is the most common mental disorder.

There's about 301 million people in the world that deal with anxiety disorder. And women in general about 23. 4 percent of females and 14. 3 percent males deal with it. So there are a lot more females than males that deal with this. And there's a large population of adolescents that also about a third of them that deal with anxiety disorders.

So this is not something that should be buried or hidden or that we should be embarrassed about. It should be something that we are compassionate towards each other and ourselves if we're dealing with this. And it's something that I think as we recognize it, and we recognize the tools and the strategies that there are out there to support us in managing anxiety and overcoming anxiety.

I think that should excite us that we don't have to stay stuck here. I also think that as a parent myself, it's great that we have resources if we're noticing these things in our own children. And as a mom, man, it is hard to parent, right? Like it's, I think the hardest thing I've done in my life is parenting.

But when you have a child that also suffers with a mental disorder it just makes it that much harder. And to have resources at your fingertips, to have ways of supporting and loving and caring for others, again, whether it's your child or your sister or your best friend or your spouse or whatever, it just helps to feel empowered that there is something you can do, even if it's just being a listening ear.

And understanding as best you can, if this isn't something that you deal with, but again, having those tools and resources, or even somewhere to point somebody else that's dealing with this is fantastic. Welcome to the podcast. I am so glad that you are listening, that you're willing to learn and be open minded in these areas.

I know that this isn't an easy conversation. So if you deal with anxiety. I know this can bring up anxiety. That was one of the things that really was a problem for me is I would worry listening to things that were about anxiety would make me anxious or would bring on anxiety. And now I realized that, it's in our brain, it's in our mind.

Anxiety is something that our brain creates and in some silly way, right? It's still trying to keep us safe by keeping us from doing something or seeing something or even acting in some way that we think will come back on us. And so by keeping us anxious, it keeps us from stepping out. And so that can become a huge issue, right?

Starting to into agoraphobia, where you stay home and you're not willing to go out and do anything or social anxiety, right? Where things might not go right. But on this podcast, we often talk about people pleasing and perfectionism and procrastination. And in all of that, there is often a need to control and a need to be right, I think in some ways too, and do it right, right based on either your own expectations or expectations of others.

And it's usually something that we have learned through our life, maybe in very early childhood. And so we believe that we need to be just Right. Just perfect. And when that doesn't happen, it can start that spiral of anxiety of feeling not good enough or guilty or ashamed or unworthy. And all of this can contribute to this anxiety.

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And again, not everybody has anxiety disorder, but many people do go to a more worried or anxious state if you are more of a perfectionist personality. So I do want you to recognize that the tools and, and skills and techniques that we're talking about can also be very useful, even if you don't have a clinical diagnosis.

And again, as a disclaimer, I am not a mental health professional. I am not here in place of a doctor. I am just sharing my journey and some skills and tools and techniques that worked for me that I hope will support and help you on your journey or whoever it is that you love that is dealing with this as well.

One of the things I do want to say is as I came out of my, my, my real intense anxiety. And if you didn't hear my journey, you can go back a couple episodes and listen to that. But as I was starting to come out of that and recognizing that anxiety, anxiety was being ramped up and increased and intensified when I tried to stop it from happening. And it actually was much more mild and much less intense and much less often as far as panic and anxiety went. When I started to tell myself you know what? It's just anxiety. It's not going to hurt me. I'm here physically safe, it's okay, it's just thoughts in my head and talking myself down was one of the very first things that changed my relationship with anxiety.

And I used to wake often in the night in full panic attacks. And again, not knowing I would have people who would say, well, what's the thought that happens before? What's the thing that you're thinking about? And I had no idea because I was waking up out of sleep. Sometimes I knew if it was during the day, but not always.

But I did recognize that no matter whether I knew the original thought that set me there or not, the bottom line was, anxiety comes and goes. It's worse some days, it's better other days, but the bottom line is it never stays at exactly the same pace or intensity as it maybe is in that moment that I'm, actually ramped up about it.

So knowing that and being able to say, it's just anxiety, it'll go away, it'll come again, you can't control it. Just let it go. And that was my, almost my mantra as I would go through the days. And most days I had generalized anxiety, just a feeling of anxiousness. For me, it was in the pit of my stomach, just kind of making me feel antsy in my body, a little restless, a little foggy in my brain.

So that was kind of the thing that started to relax the, the panic attacks that would spike throughout the day. And then the second thing that I recognized was moving seemed to be really useful for me. And it makes sense because when we go into this panic, right, we're going to almost a fight or flight mode, really, where we're trying to escape and our adrenaline kicks in.

And that rush of hormones kicks off and our body has all of this extra energy that it doesn't know what to do, because you're not going anywhere. You're just sitting in it in your head. And And so recognizing that I started to go to the gym and I wasn't doing anything major. I think looking back now I could have just went for walks more often during the day even.

But I think it depends on you for some people really intense exercise like HIIT, something that's more serious. Might be more useful for me. I started actually running and I started indoors and then I eventually went outdoors and started doing some 5k races and things like that. And it was something that for me was almost miraculous.

Like, it was just such a great tool to keep things at a lower level when it came to my brain racing, the thoughts racing. The negative negative saying in my head, even the intensity of my body being restless, all of that seemed to be a little more level when I was active. So for me, I know that that is a huge difference.

And if I'm not active, I can see anxiety kind of in the background a little bit, even now in my life. If I'm to sedentary I rarely am because I actually really enjoy now moving but it's a lot more relaxed than it used to be. And I know that that's one of the suggestions that is made when it comes to anxiety is to move your body.

For some people, it will be something like yoga. And that was another thing that I started during this time when it was very intense, because it was the only time when I was so busy having to pay attention to my breathing in order to manage the intensity of the postures that I couldn't think about anything else. And that was such a feeling of relief for that hour class that anxiety just didn't exist for that hour. And so that started to become something that I wanted to know more about. And so as I researched a bit more on anxiety, I learned about breathing techniques and ways that you can calm the parasympathetic nervous system, just allowing the body to rest and digest.

And so breathing techniques are something that I use regularly. It's my actual first go to for some people that might not be the first go to maybe need to get out and move first. And then your breathing comes under control, but that was really important for me. And it's something that you can look into.

It's something that I work with people on all the time as I teach yoga here in Guatemala. The other thing that it was really important to me was being in the moment. So the yoga classes taught me that when I connected my breathing to my body and my brain was so focused on making that connection so that I could actually do the class, that means that if I'm really focused intently on something, It doesn't allow for the anxiety to have space in my brain and in my body.

And recognizing that was a big light bulb moment. So things like starting to be in the moment, in the present. I had young kids at the time and I felt like I was missing their life because my head was so busy in the anxiety that I wasn't really paying attention to them. So as I started to recognize this need to be in the moment, even as my kids were playing, I would start to pay attention to the sounds they were making, the colors in the room, what the, if I was down on the floor playing with them, what the carpet felt like underneath my hands what, what I could smell in the air.

If I was eating with them, right, the flavors and the tastes, and just really being there present using all five senses to almost take a snapshot, I would say, of that moment so that I would not forget it. And that helped to bring me into the present moment, to be in that intentional space and to enjoy the moment.

Right then and there that took a lot of practice because my mind would go off into but what if but what if but What if? Or it would just generally just feel anxious and I would go there worrying about the fact that I was feeling anxious and was it Gonna get worse Instead of being present, but if I could pull myself back, which I'd have to constantly catch myself Pull myself back and look at those things around me.

Listen to the things around me touch the things around me Smell the things around me everything and be in that moment that really started to put me fully centered and, and balanced in my life. And so that was another technique that I used a lot of the time. And so meditation, mindfulness practices using the five senses, staying active.

Some of the other things just about staying active is, and maybe you don't know this, but when we're. active, right? And this doesn't mean, like I said, it doesn't mean you have to be out running. Like I was at the time, it could be just taking a walk. It could be yoga. It could be other things, but it changes the anti anxiety neurotransmitters in the brain.

Like serotonin and GABA and BDNF and the endocannabinoids. And so it does change the brain chemistry. So again, this can be really useful in settling the mind. And I think it's important for people who think, Yeah, I don't do, I just don't do exercise. Well, you don't have to do anything formal, right?

Go out for a walk and, and see if it makes a difference. If you're regularly taking some time each day to do that, or even in the moment when you're feeling more anxious, just to get up and start moving your body. I remember at one point when I woke up in the night and I was anxious, I just went into my closet and started cleaning my closet out just to be moving and distracting myself.

And that is the other thing that I started to realize is distraction. was really useful. So getting out, having to be out with a friend or going and cleaning out a junk drawer or having to do something again, that was a little bit mindless because I couldn't fully focus and, make a list or, write something.

I'm not going to be doing anything that's going to be coherent, but doing something that just kind of got me out doing something simple, but that I did have to focus to sort things or decide what to throw out or keep or whatever. That also was really, really useful.

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The other thing that became an important part was my diet. I started to understand that having sugar. So, and this is actually, this is what I started to see, is that having alcohol affected me when it came to anxiety. I also realized that having caffeine affected me when it came to anxiety and alcohol affected me when it came to anxiety. So knowing that and now we know that there are actual links to some of this.

We know that with alcohol, there's actually a link to anxiety. As well as the fact that it disrupts your sleep. We know that with smoking, there's a link to anxiety. And we know that caffeine can, Increase anxiety. So there are things that we, we absolutely know. And then the other thing that we started to, I started to be very aware of is my sleep.

So when I had nights where I wasn't sleeping well, or when I was waking up with anxiety, it was important for me to make sure I got good sleep the next evening or to take a short nap in the day in order to function and not go further into anxiety. And that again, to this day is something that I'm very aware of.

If I have. too many nights where sleep is disrupted or a kid's sick and I'm up in the night, whatever it is, if it, if it's going to limit my sleep from number of days, I need to take time to get that sleep back in some form, in order to function without having just a bit of an anxious edge to my, to my day and to my mind, because that's where I will go.

And hydration was important as well. Just making sure that I was drinking enough water. And again, especially if I was moving my body. I also found aromatherapy kind of at the end point of this. So between the supplementation just specific vitamins and minerals and using some specific essential oils, I really found for me that that was very supportive.

And again this is things that I work on with clients, but These are things that can be very supportive to you. If you have essential oils, awesome. I personally love Bergamot and Lavender, Ylang Ylang, Clary Sage, Grapefruit. I have some blends that I absolutely adore and they help me both with relaxing my body.

It helps me with my sleep. It helps to improve mood. It helps to slow my heart rate and my blood pressure and just Keep me in balance. Right. So, I think all of those things, because they work for me, they're things that are tools that can be tried. And if they don't work for you, then they don't work for you.

If they work for you, great. Then you have something else that can support you. Another thing that's been shown to help is chamomile tea because it has a flavonoid called epigenin and that engages the GABA receptors. So that can be something that's also useful for some people, again, for other people, no.

I also love chamomile essential oil, so it just depends what you're, what you're looking at. So there's a lot of options out there for places to start, for ways to support yourself. And like I said last time, if you need to talk to a therapist, if you need to go to a mental health professional, speak to your doctor, do it, do it and, and have support.

There are so many options, including medication that are available. And if you are not functioning, If you are not living life, if you're not enjoying life, if you don't see a way out of the, the panic and anxiety, then find people that can help support you and point you in the right direction and give you more options than even, than what I'm mentioning today.

I think the other thing that we need to be aware of is. If you are taking care of you and truly looking to overcome anxiety, then I think we, we kind of are willing to try whatever is available that will work and support us. And yeah. It's a good thing to be able to have that, that bucket of tools and that, that tool set to be able to go to and know that some of them, are going to operate really well.

Other ones are not going to operate so well. Some days are going to be harder because you're feeling more anxious. Other days are going to be easier because it's more minimal. But as you start to recognize that this is something going on in our own brain, That our own brain is creating. It's not something out there, right?

Somebody else isn't going to keep you safe from anxiety. And I, I didn't mention much about this, but often I felt like if I was with my husband, then I'd be safe. Right? So I need him with me all the time. But I eventually recognized that whether he was with me or not didn't stop the anxiety from coming or being there or getting worse.

And so recognizing that this is you, this is a part of you, and it's a part that many people deal with. You're not alone in this at all. The symptoms might be different for you than what I'm describing. The experience might be different for you. We're all individual and that's okay, but you do have options.

You are not without any ability to deal with this. And I think sometimes because it can feel so out of control and if you're somebody who loves to have control, recognizing that you still can choose what you want to do with it, how you want to handle it, which tools you want to pull out of your toolbox, who you want to speak to as your safe people so that you can have conversations and let them know when you're having off days all of that is within your control.

And I think as we navigate the feelings of anxiety and the, both the, the mental symptoms and the body symptoms, it's a good idea to jot things down. It's a good idea to keep track of, how often, how intense was their thoughts around it? Is there something going on in life that is, as kicking it off or making it feel worse.

If there's something that maybe is hanging out there, I know for me, even now, if there's a lot of stress coming from multiple areas and there's it's incomplete, like there's things, there's, That need to get done that are unfinished, that I can't finish, maybe it's because it relies on somebody else, or it's a time thing that I have to wait a certain time that can set me into a feeling of anxiety a little, and that's probably the only time where I would say it's, it's a similar feeling and being able to, again, talk myself off by saying, you've done what you can.

This is going to be over at some point. Yeah. You need to let it go. You're totally fine. It's not going to hurt you. It's just how it is right now. Right? So again, having those conversations with yourself that can soothe your brain, like you would, if it was a child in front of you, what would you say to make them feel better?

What would you say to calm them? What would you say to, to help them to relax? Things would you implement? Would you put them in a bathtub and let them play in the tub? Would you sit and rub their back and rub their arms? Because we can do that for ourselves, right? We can, we can actually rub and stroke our arms and cause that soothing sensation to kick in through the body.

Would you have a cup of tea? Would you like, what are the things that you would implement? Would you go for a walk? Would you go look at the sky and the grass and enjoy the outside? Would you go for a walk on the beach? But what are the things that would help to distract, allow your body to soothe? What are the things you need to say in order to calm the mental state?

And so I encourage you. So I'm going to take some of these ideas and just try them for a little while, jot down what seems to work for you, what doesn't seem to work for you, what you liked, what you didn't like, and then build on that as you go along. And like I said, find resources, find people who are supportive or professionals if you need help in order to, to move forward and out of this.

I hope that you feel hope. I want you to know that today, like I said, I rarely experience anxiety, other than if there's a super, maybe like multiple stressful situations going on with no no, and something hanging out there, then I might occasionally experience some anxiety, but again, not to that degree.

I would say from going from a point where. daily panic attacks, sometimes two to three a day to, I might have a couple in a year. And again, usually it's, I wake up with them. That just seems to be my MO. So that is the difference for me now going from pretty much every day, generalized anxiety, never really ending to I don't really experience anxiety other than if there's something to actually be anxious for, because something happens that anybody would be anxious about it. I just don't really deal with that to that degree anymore. And I'm not saying that I never will. There may be times where it creeps back in, but I know the tools and I know the language.

And I know that when I'm not treating myself well, when I'm not rested, when I'm not eating well, when I'm having too many stimulants, when When I don't speak nicely to myself, those are things that are going to start to set off the feelings of anxiety and now I know when my thoughts start to go that way it's time to pull back. It's time to reassess. It's time to implement some of those tools, some of that self care in order to make sure that I'm really getting the resources and the care that I need in order not to go back to that place, because I don't need to. I don't need to anymore. And I'm so happy that I learned that.

And I'm so happy and grateful for That I had supportive people around me, that I had supportive healthcare team, all of that, that helped move me into awareness, first of all, and then to implement. So, as a wrap up, just remember these things. First of all, you might want to figure out the thoughts that are going on.

And if you don't know the thoughts that happened first, what are the thoughts that you say to yourself continues the anxiety to move forward and move on? Second, what are your body symptoms? And In what way can you start to soothe and calm those? Third, choose a skill or tool or a few that you would like to implement and try to support yourself.

Fourth, take care of you. Take care of your mind, your body, by your, your actions, by your movement, by your your food choices, by the way that you're speaking yourself, the way that you need self care. And five, seek help. Share with other people that are supportive of you to reduce guilt and shame around this.

We don't need to be embarrassed of this. It's a very common mental disorder. And I hope as you're listening to this that you recognize whether you deal with this or someone else, deals with this, but I hope you recognize you are not alone. You are not alone. If you want to reach out to me, you can send me an email.

You can reach out to me at pursue progress with Don on Instagram. I would love to hear what's going on with you. I'd love to hear your takeaways from this episode and all the episodes really in this month around anxiety. I'd love to hear if you're stuck somewhere. If I can support you in any way, I, I don't wish what I was experienced in the beginning on anyone.

And I know that it can be managed. I know that it can be overcome. I know that you can live a very different life than maybe you're currently experiencing if you're in the throes of real deep anxiety. And so I want you to know that there is hope, and there is help, and there is support, and there are people who understand.

And I wish that you would just love on you, have compassion for you, and get the help and resources that you need. Please reach out if you need anything. For all of you that are listening, thank you so much for taking this in. If you're somebody who doesn't deal with anxiety, and people who do I hope that you will show such great compassion and support and even just a listening ear.

I loved the listening ears back in the day. So thank you for being that support person for other people around you. And I hope that you continue to enjoy the episodes that are coming out this month. We will talk soon.

[DAWN CALVINISTI]

Thanks for listening to today's show. If you found value in what you heard, please share it with a friend and rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on. It really helps get us out to other women who could benefit from listening. Check out our show notes for details from the show and to connect with me or our guests. Want to continue the conversation? My website is www.pursueprogress.com or DM me @pursueprogresswithdawn on Instagram. 

Until next week, pursue progress no matter how imperfectly.

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