Chat With A Friend - Episode 4- What About Anxiety?

As part of Nikhil's more comprehensive Podcast series titled "Me, My Shelf-Help & I", we explore the different facets of the Mind and body and the nature of being human. We explore this through a chat with a friend, diving deep into the various aspects of Wellness in the Modern world, especially for the working professional searching for something more. In this series, you will get to know us better and understand why it is OK to be exactly where you are in your journey.

The main thing that social anxiety sufferers need to overcome is fear of rejection. Anxiety is based on self-report and can be a challenging but normal emotion to feel. Living your life in a controlled way allows you to get over it.

Transcript

Hello hey how are you I'm good good morning how are things good Ilona I am good so what are we doing today what is the what is the order of the day I don't think we ever have order of the day it's more we don't we have a topic and then we just kind of flow into it so today we just kind of build on a different mental health I would say not condition but everyday probably mind state of being in a sense anxiety oh anxiety yeah anxiety the word you just like word itself just brings chills down my spine because as a person who thought he never had anxiety but actually has anxiety is is very difficult for me like to still process anxiety whenever I hear anxiety I'm like it's close to my it's a bit close to my soul so yeah so it's interesting that's in that sense okay well the thing is and this is where it's gonna be interesting because you have different levels and type of anxiety and the way we the way we actually think of it sometimes it just it makes it a negative thing because I know like personally I know like anxiety can be it is a challenging emotional to feel because you just it's affected performance you worry sense of it kind of brings it all the it can bring a lot of different things for different people so from oh I'm actually worried about this that's their anxiety or I'm super super they're really anxious and you think there's trust that's just felt like parts of anxiety or there's a thing they coming up the there's one thing they look they don't want to do and they just feel like this nervousness of think I'm about to come and then they start creating scenarios so and then at the same time I know I kind of try to look at anxiety as if in a way less kind of bad way by you feel anxious because you care that's a good way to look at it so you feel less no you feel anxious because you care about something yes and then it's actually talking to your mind understanding this is normal a I'm feeling this because I care about this or and then we're gonna go into this so that's my initial take of anxiety and then we've talked about previously like a high levels of anxiety that every basically I think every single adult at this point in life they felt anxiety of some source in their life or in their daily life correct yeah yeah that's interesting because for me I've been reading upon it and actually I've been working on it as well with people as well who are anxious and some of my clients I work with are anxious they work on anxiety a lot of people express what do I do with anxiety how do I work with it and in my in my understanding it's like anxiety is not an objective condition it is a it's it's based solely on self-report right it's no doctor can take a look at your brain and say you have anxiety no no no same doctor shall I say some doctors actually do that which is very strange even though I love doctors because my sister was a doctor I just say that because some doctors just look at the look at you and say you have anxiety and then prescribe you medicines and you're medicated for the rest of your life but anxiety is not an objective condition and I agree totally with you that when you feel anxious you are you care about something or if it can be used as a caring but it also can lead into a disorder which is the the end aspect of the anxiety so there is this natural shyness or you feel scared to speak in public for example there's a few things which you can do but then there's the other end of extra extreme where you are 100% non-stop eyes wide open anxious about every single thing every moment and there are many different disorders like GAD generalized anxiety disorder where people are they don't have anything specific to be anxious about but they're generally anxious about everything and then there's like many many different seasonal adjustment disorder social anxiety anxiety about a lot of things like there is a lot of things but the disorder level the spectrum goes from one end to the other so we are talking in the middle because I cannot diagnose anybody or like I cannot give any sort of prescriptive things here but what I can say is what has worked for me in my journey in anxiety and one of the one of the things I read about is people confuse sometimes they think I should be less anxious and then I can live my life but in my experience and from the literature as well it's better to be less anxious by living your life so what I mean by that is you can't just go into a shell or somewhere and then just sit there or like do some just sit there and like hoping your anxiety changes and then do things because you will get into that rut where you will probably not be able to come out of it but you can live your life in a controlled way and then get over your anxiety so by living your life so doing the things you which might scare you doing the things which might be causing a little bit of anxiety exposing yourself a little bit here less posing yourself with that all needs to be done in a safe environment so that's something which I was learning about which has helped me in my journey as well yeah so what do you think about that this is it is it is an interesting thought and I agree that you it's not personally the healthiest thing to shut off certain things in your life because that creates more of me create more rigidity a sense of whatever it is but I'm kind of a more interested in for example what do you do when you feel anxious let's say you what is the pattern you know you have but and how are you actually working around it I think this is where most people may be like more they may be more interested in to learn how we do this because it's one of those topics you can just like it's super broad and like you said there's like extensive extensive spectrum and then like if you are really on the high end and you constantly feel anxious about everything that means that your entire body is wired for anxiety and that's great a lot of different level of physical symptoms versus just a feeling yeah if anybody is listening here who is in that place I think I would advise like finding the right help speaking to the right people of course these these these podcast sessions are meant for awareness and understanding but these are not this is not the like it's not a solution yeah it's not therapy session it's a discussion it's yeah so please feel free to reach out if you need help we are here also also you can reach out to whoever can help you but yeah coming back to your point yeah this is a broad space so what I want to do what I'm going to do now is we're going to talk about social anxiety let's go specific on social anxiety which is very interesting for me because it's something which I have I have and I'm working on so if you are willing first question people will ask like okay what is social anxiety and how do I know if I have it so I'm gonna give you 25 questions and then each question you have to answer one mark if you think that is true and zero marks if you think that is false and half a mark if you are like yeah maybe maybe not okay so I've done this test I've done this test I know my score and let's see let's see your score and I have people listening you can also like join in see what you score is and this is a standardized test this is what I think a lot of the size of the psychologists and sorry before you what is this what is this supposed to show oh I will explain at the end okay ready let's go okay first question I get nervous when I have to speak with someone in authority second question I would say zero point I okay do I need to mark I mean no you do you don't have to show no do I need to mark them like hold on don't eat yeah yeah you need or I can do it for you you just say number if you want or or you can do it I would recommend you do it so first question you got it yeah I get nervous when I have to speak with someone in authority so you should mark one if you get nervous yeah you should mark zero if you don't if it does not a problem and a half a mark if you're like sometimes yes sometimes no second question I have difficulty making and maintaining eye contact with others okay three I become tense if I have to talk about my feelings number four I find it difficult to mix comfortably with people I work with oh I mean if it's a half whatever if you think number five I feel really awkward and tense if I am alone with just one other person okay six I worry about expressing myself in case I appear weird and awkward so I don't express myself okay then I get anxious returning an item to the store including online shopping hmm eight I find it difficult to disagree with someone else's point of view other than my mother's so I find it difficult to disagree with someone else's point of view yeah but I find it easy to challenge my mother that's just a funny thing okay sometime like people yeah I understood I was just like yeah that was just it that was just a part of the questionnaire please follow the questionnaire number nine I find it I find myself worrying I would not know what to say in social situations I am nervous mixing with people I don't know well 11 I fear I will say something embarrassing while talking 12 when in a group I find myself worrying that I will be ignored or talked over 13 I am unsure whether I should greet someone who I know only a little bit so if you if you know somebody a little bit do you feel unsure whether you should read someone 14 I feel uncomfortable making a phone call when others can hear me 15 I feel awkward and anxious when eating or drinking in public places 16 I feel anxious acting performing giving a talk doing a podcast etc just yes no or maybe 17 I feel really anxious when working calculating when others are watching me so if you're doing some work and somebody else is watching you I feel very anxious 18 I get anxious calling texting emailing someone random so cold emails or like someone you don't know 19 I have difficulty speaking up at a meeting or class 20 I feel anxious using public bathrooms 21 I have difficulty talking to people I find attractive 22 I feel anxious taking a test or an exam 23 I get stressed and anxious hosting a party or an event so you are creating party event 24 I feel difficult to resist a salesperson or someone just very loud and forceful so I cannot like yeah 25 I dislike being the center of attention cool excellent now add up the scores please so while you do that this is a standardized test for like understanding social anxiety it's not a it's not the holistic list but it's like it's a good way to test whether how far on the scale you are in terms of socialize it so if you've taken this and thinking what the hell we are doing this is what we're doing we'll I will let you know what my score is and then Ilona also hopefully will tell her score okay and then what is your score okay I will go first my score is 20 out of 25 that's the reaction I wanted to say but there's a forecast so nobody see that reaction Ilona was like surprised it's a surprising reaction it's like how did he say that yeah so what is your score seven seven see this is the difference so for me this is why I did this test a few years ago and at that time I scored very low and then so so I was basically saying like I denied some of those things so you are some some of the some of those questions I actually felt one way but I said the other way but in actual fact this is my score 20 out of 25 I feel I have social anxiety and it's surprising because of the way I have started to work around it so like some of the questions were very interesting I mean this is just a standardized question doesn't mean that you have it doesn't mean too much so please don't read into the questions it's just an understanding of where you feel anxious so some of the times when you feel like you are comfortable maybe you might be anxious but you are anxious for a reason and yeah understanding this like opened my eyes were like okay this is interesting now how do you feel about this I think those are some of the questions were like I could not say like yes or no it was really hard because like for yeah I get it so like I feel anxious taking a test or exam that's like okay that's like obviously yes but it's like oh that's it for you yes I was half for me it's like sometimes yes something yeah there's always like certain things that's it's not for say test but for me it's just like actually getting to the test etc like those things but I understand there's something about speaking presentations etc or saying no to people I'm like there's certain people hard to say no to I don't know just like kind of giving myself okay I could say like the score would be like all right if I give myself one everywhere I would be like hold on a second if I give myself one ever that my score would be like one everywhere if I do one everywhere I would be ten one everywhere you had a half yeah correct so you're you're so way down in the scale of social anxiety and social anxiety is not a big issue for you but from your surprising look at me that gave me the idea thinking you thought I didn't have that much social anxiety don't come across like that ah there you go that's it don't come across this is the like yeah this is the this is the crux of the issues like social anxiety is not as visible as you know a lot of things are not especially when it comes to this and for me some of these things were like really really difficult like yeah maintaining eye contact maintaining eye contact with others I have to actively like work on it because usually I go like anyway you guys can't see what I'm doing but I'm moving my eyes around so that's one big one can I just offer a tip instead of looking at the eyes look at the bridge of their nose maintain the thing that you were still looking at the eyes but if it is one of the things you're conscious of it's something different to focus on okay I can play that right and the reason why I'm different like quite different on social anxiety I'm I call I'm an extrovert introvert so I don't mind being around people talking to people but I do need my alone time so sometimes I generally avoid crowded places because they stress me out because it's too many people it's loud it's not that like I'm afraid to talk to someone I just like to hold the setting I'm just like but early in my career my first ever job I had was door-to-door sales in a foreign country in English so if you want to give yourself a challenge and make yourself uncomfortable that experience drove me like kind drilled me in different level of skills if that makes sense so I am NOT afraid of people in a sense talking to them now yes I feel bit nervous if I need to do in recruitment say someone asked me to do a recruitment call I get I needed someone who wants me to interview for a job or something that's like normal things anxiety obviously but I don't traditionally like everyone else does oh I'm afraid to go to the club I for me just I generally avoid places I don't feel comfortable in because like either it's let's say like bars if it is like already crowded you need to shout talk to someone I generally like you like my friends I will hang out with my friends can do that properly like kind of more freely the same goes I think I've been I did enough solo things to be comfortable with strangers if that makes sense mm-hmm yeah this comes back to the like what do we do about this is a lot of things we there's a lot of what you make what you said makes sense is the same things you did is what I need I have to do or I'm doing to get out of it so exposing myself slowly not overwhelming because I suddenly if I just go look at like people's eyes like that interesting might have different but so exposing slowly challenging places going slowly with with support and most important for me is is a social support so if people are there to if people know about this I'm not no not know that I have social anxiety or anything just knowing that my friends are aware of my social anxiety helps like and this is the first time I'm like actually talking about it so hopefully this can make me do things which I want to do in my life and I actually have a have a have fun doing it so like this is this is interesting because there are so many things here which resonated with me wow this is so so like me can I ask you which one is like what is the biggest thing you're trying to overcome like it's just because there was a lot of different questions and some of them related to like environments where generally are more stressful then yeah I mean there's no one question it's a what am I trying to overcome I think the main remain the main focus or main area of overcome is fear of rejection I think that's most important and that's a kind of the validation piece we were talking about last time it's how do we manage so like you said like you early on had a career which was door-to-door you have to work on rejection that was that was a rejection right that was complete rejection and you get one success or one you get success as well but you have to deal with rejection by doing another one so you have something to do keep doing keep doing keep doing so like for me when I have a rejection I take a hit and then I have to rebalance and then I have to do it again but with training and with practice you can have the time to switch over to next quicker and that's what I like I just I did you say like this was like a few months job during the summer between like when I was like off from school but that summer was brutal in a sense that I like you were saying like I felt all of those feelings like extreme anxiety or shelter but they in a way you kind of go with it and for me it was not per se that many like sales to do it I wanted to improve my English and become more calm because I was very shy and like heavily introverted at school so this was like the biggest I don't really recommend it but for me it was like complete opposite to my daily life so that shock I came like when I came back I was just like I made some money made some friends had fun finally like I felt like an adult I was just 18 year old and then I went back home to finish my high school and I was just like it didn't feel as scary anymore because I like you foreign country obviously you have to pay around you have to do your grocery so a lot of things that that came out but I can't totally relate to that because like when you go into different things those are like scary moments and at different stages in life I for example have anxiety on reaching out to studios because I do getting anxious about it's more social pressure not to not being certain certain body type certain certain age whatever time flexibility so I kind of don't do it because they will say no but again this is part of anxiety and avoiding and I understand that on a logical level but when you have to do that on emotional level it's completely different thing and for me the biggest thing is when I feel anxious coming into your point where I say you need to rebalance is accept that your feelings are valid and that's a feeling and that feeling will pass away so it doesn't last forever mm-hmm that is it so and obviously like I would get anxious every other day there are certain meetings I go I feel extremely anxious certain people talk to make me anxious or not I say further actually but they kind of a need to turn in into my social skills into more active listening to eating body language facial expressions my really being careful about the language because I know certain people get really triggered when you say use the wrong word from versus they would use mm-hmm and that's kind of comes in into work environment mm-hmm because it's not it in a way it's not that easy but in a way I feel I kind of have enough like fairly decent people understanding these skills I don't want to say communication skills but it's communication something still working on but people skills understanding and reading them yeah I think so too I think so I think you have that and like that's why like it's important to acknowledge that we both are on different ends of this spectrum and yet we can work together and we can share openly things about life and we can create this is the idea of these kind of sessions like okay just because you are on one end or you feel like you are on one end you feel like on the other is okay to be there and just start from there and if you want to work on something so for me another one big one is I find it difficult to disagree with someone else's point of view other than my mother's if my mother is listening she knows it but yeah it's it's because there is an innate tendency to prove my mother wrong or something and whenever I get rejection I take it personally or something along those lines so that's why I feel very difficult to disagree with someone but I'm working on it and I I do know I do a lot of disagreements but now I'm a bit more understanding accepting of my own feelings like yeah I don't like it so I don't do it or this is my point of view I'm not hurting you I've say it in a nice way this is it so that's the practice so yeah all of this is for everyone listening here is it's just to say that it's okay where you are and as Ilona said like it's accepting where you should be or where you are and then moving forward you will just just whenever if even if you do this test and then you feel like oh none of it matters for me that's okay too like yeah this is all good and also it's kind of one of those things the certain things you do the easier certain things become so let's say some things that are I may not be finding anxious you will be but like what you see maybe but at the same time things you don't find it like whatever getting you on edge etc that will put me on edge and that's yeah and that's life and actually and this is one of it I remember actually reading something out when I said you you are not in control of other people reaction you can understand try to understand that there's something going on behind them why they saying these things and try not to take it personal as hard as it sounds it's hard because you don't know if someone is being mean to you or something maybe they have really bad negative self-concept negative self-talk so if they talk to you like this way it's like maybe they are even meaner to themselves it's more like coming into compassion into every but it's not easy no yeah anxiety is not an easy subject it's not easy but it's I want this or we want it to be easy to talk about yeah and that's our aim like anxiety everyone's like even this little challenge for me like well one I did score zero or I this is another one good one I don't know what your score was the last one where I dislike being the center of attention or did you write you dislike no it's false so yeah you scored zero yeah I don't like it doesn't really affect me ah correct so for me yeah so yeah it's exactly so I like being the center of attention or I can be the center of attention yeah it's my point yes now mind you I don't like being the center of attention in public settings let's say if someone is look at me because of my looks if I go out certain outfits when I do this like I feel much more conscious because it's not my dated look so I know I don't like that but it relates to something different it's not anxiety it's more it's it's body it's like for me it's like a body image yeah but I'm I know that so there's like certain certain certain things but if certain of attention for like work environment conversations I didn't don't mind that but there's aspect of it I know I have but it doesn't I didn't give a score of one because that happens like one in six months one in three months if I have to really go all out and the girls will yeah yeah yeah yeah hmm interesting oh okay so we have 35 minutes again if you keep we keep knocking these out so well it's our like sweet spot so I think that this is it yeah it's time to wrap up yeah so thank you for listening in this session this time we talked about a little bit of anxiety social anxiety what it means to us please feel free to talk about it and share your thoughts you have been listening to chat with a friend follow for more episode about all things wellness

Reviews

Enlightening Nikhil/Ellana thank you and yes Nikhil mum always knows best 👌 Annette