3 Ways I Manage Anxiety (not breathing, diet or exercise)

hi there i'm kyle kittleson with med circle if this is your first time on our youtube channel typically it's not just me on camera most of our videos are in-depth interviews with psychologists psychiatrists mental health experts and people with lived experience if you want an in-depth education on mental health this is the right channel this may not be the right video but this is the right channel go ahead and browse some of our channels here on med circle i am confident you'll find at least one that resonates with you and maybe you'll find a few that even help change your life like i said my name's kyle i host here at med circle and two weeks ago i did a video on the three types of rigid there you go uh the three types uh or three ways that i manage my depression outside of therapy and medication that video had a strong reaction so this week i decided to share three things that i do to help ease my anxiety manage and combat my anxiety that aren't the typical things that you hear when you look up ways to manage your anxiety i'm not going to tell you to get sleep watch caffeine go to therapy make sure you exercise and eat you know right have a support system breathing exercises we all know these things they all are fabulous and i probably do all of them at some point throughout the month but here are three things that you may not have thought of two of which i've learned from med circle doctors and one of which i use for myself just um over time i've i've felt that it it works i'm not saying this is gonna work for you i hope it does but this does work for me and maybe it will inspire some thoughts on what can work for you so let's go into the first tip this one i learned from clinical psychologists one of our popular doctors here at med circle dr romini and it is incorporating let me finish this before you click away it is incorporating mindfulness moments throughout the day independent of your anxiety level and during a co-occurring activity so let me explain i i have for as long as i remember i've been depressed but only in the last year have i felt anxious and i bet that's due to kovid and the changes in our world and our life and now i live and work at home and it's probably not that great for my mental health but it's what we have to do right now and i was talking to dr romney about this and she said every time you wash your hands throughout the day and especially during covet everyone's hand washing went up take that 20 to 30 seconds of hand washing to be completely mindful and what mindful means at least to me is being 100 as much as possible in that moment so typically when you're not mindful and you go to wash your hands you're like i gotta wash my hands and you're not thinking about washing your hands you're thinking about what i have to do after this or what the next thing is on my to-do list or you know what you're thinking about the future your life whatever you're not thinking about washing your hands well if you change that to this 20 to 30 second practice of going up to the sink and turning on the faucet and feeling the temperature of the water and putting the soap in your hands and smelling the scent of the soap and then moving like really washing your hands and feeling the muscles in your hands and if you feel your mind start to go oh my gosh i need to hurry up because i have to be at that meet just recenter and go no i'm just washing my hands right now and you can really get in tune with the all of your senses from sight smell i don't need to list the senses you guys get that dr romney told me to do this and i kind of had an internal eye roll i was like uh whatever i'll wash my hands and be mindful i don't think it's gonna help my anxiety at all and it had very profound effects so much so that it's something that i still do today and this was more than a year ago she recommended this uh activity and the key is to do it independent if you're having anxious thoughts or not so on days where you have anxiety you might think oh man i gotta really i'm feeling really anxious i wonder why this is you know i'm gonna have a moment of mindfulness to try to get myself centered and and back to one so to speak but on the days you're not having anxiety you might not think of that you're like oh gosh i'm just washing my hands things are going good every day do that and what happens is when you are consistent on the anxious days the not so anxious days etc your body starts to at least minded starts to go oh yeah you're doing kyle you're doing that thing where you get mindful and you get centered with yourself we can we can snap into that place and you start to be able to get to calm quicker now it doesn't have to be hand washing i think it can be something that you do every day if it's brushing your teeth fine just really brush your teeth no music really focus on all of those senses maybe when you drive to work maybe you have to do it there and back but on one of those drives no radio no phone calls no thinking about the meeting that you have nothing about the errands nothing about that stupid thing your partner just said to you that really bothers you when an idiot don't think about any of that just think about your hands on the steering wheel and all of the sounds from the honking and the tires and maybe music from another car the feeling of your seat in your back all of those things be a hundred percent in that moment and you can do it for as long as you want or as little as you want my recommendation is just to do it can as consistently as possible so even if it is just when you brush your teeth in the morning but you do it five out of seven days a week i imagine that you will feel a a larger sense of calm throughout your day and when you do get anxious you'll be able to get to that calm faster now i say this with a caveat that i don't necessarily think anxiety is bad generalized anxiety disorder certainly has symptoms that cause people distress but anxiety typically tells us that there's something we need to get done i was a little anxious this morning because i had a meeting that i forgot about on friday and we rescheduled it to this morning so i was like i gotta make sure i'm at this meeting monday morning because i bailed on it on friday i felt so bad so i had a little anxiety around that this morning but to me i consider that the quote good anxiety so i don't want to stigmatize all stigmatize yeah all anxiety here i just want to give some tools so that's the first one the hand washing the mindfulness moments consistently throughout the day let's move into the second one this one i learned from triple board certified clinical and forensic neuropsychologist dr judy ho dr judy explained this concept to me from acceptance and commitment therapy and if you are an avid watcher of med circle you've probably heard me mention this before but excitement acceptance and commitment therapy is an offshoot for lack of a better term from cognitive behavioral therapy and it incorporates a lot of these mindfulness ideas that i just spoke about and some eastern philosophy along with the traditional thoughts and theories behind cbt and one of these thoughts excuse me with act is that you are not your thoughts and this has been really profound for me as well when we have a thought when i'll speak for me when i have a thought my default reaction is to believe that thought to be true for exit i'll go back to my example on friday i had a meeting at 4 30. i just didn't show up y'all no excuse i thought my day was over i was like whatever it was on my calendar just didn't look at my calendar didn't show up for the meeting the gentleman i had the meeting with calls me at 4 45 hey are we meeting i apologize profusely it goes no big deal we'll we'll beat on monday i had the initial thought god this guy must be pissed this guy must be angry with me and i have no idea if he was or wasn't and he might be but i don't know i don't know that that's just the thought i'm having and so when i have that thought of course my anxiety goes up because i don't want people to be angry with me i don't like that feeling but when i reconstruct the thought from this guy's angry with me to i am having the thought that this guy is angry with me it creates that little bit of space between me and the thought my brain is having i am having the thought that this guy is angry with me he may or may not be who knows we have no way of knowing well we i guess we could go ask him but even then he might say oh no no it's cool and he still might be angry we've all done that i'm having the thought that now so think about how many times you can use this oh my gosh i just showed up to the office and rebecca looked at me sideways she must be angry i she just me she must be she must not like me maybe i'm having the thought that rebecca doesn't like me i'm having the thought to that we did a fabulous live class on acceptance and commitment therapy where dr judy really walked us through all of the layers of this process and it continues on because after that and i'm not a doctor so i'm not qualified to go into all the specifics there but we'll link below to some of those act series that i'm not having a thought just start using it just start right there and if you start to feel a little comfort a little piece perhaps a little insight into yourself and i strongly encourage you to check out some of our classes or series on acceptance and commitment therapy act to me is i mean all therapy to some degree is for everybody i think you know there are therapies like that are very specific that might not be for everybody but act has such big nice umbrella helpful strategies and theories that i think no matter why you watch mental health educational content it helps you whether you're a professional a patient a supporter or anywhere in between this mindset that act uncovers for you is really impactful check it out using the links below this video now i'm going to go into this third thing that helps me this is not backed by science i've never had a doctor tell me this works and in fact maybe this isn't a great strategy or great tool but it is something that i have found myself doing and i'm going to share it when i have uh i i typically get anxiety around um situational events i uh may i i hosted this or i co-hosted this event a few weeks ago and i screwed up during it was a minor screw-up but i still screwed up and the amount of anxiety i had after that was way too much for what had happened i mean you would have thought the embarrassment i felt and how much i was beating myself up you would have thought i had done something really disastrous and i had just made a little error in my presentation not a big deal but it felt like a big deal at the time and i remember going all the way back to my freshman year in college i was at the university of alabama i was brand new on the speech and debate team i mean brand new i didn't even know my teammates okay i don't know anybody and i'm on this at this competition and the the context doesn't really matter but i had to go up and give a speech not for the competition obviously speak to the debate i was ready for that but i had to go give up another speech because the person who was going to do it couldn't do it so i had to go do it and i was brand new and i didn't know the thing so it was about as it was about this other guy on our team and i had to basically pitch this other guy on our team and say he would be great for whatever this position was i don't really remember all the details and i had no idea who this guy was so i i uh i i start like talking about him but i don't know who he is and i'm trying to think of things that are good about him because that was the whole point and i had just met him a few days ago and i remember when i shook his hand he gave a really strong handshake so in the speech i said and so and so is blah blah blah and you know he when you when you shake his hand he gives a really strong handshake and the whole crowd laughed and they weren't laughing with me it was a laughing at situation you know and i remember being really embarrassed in that moment and years went by where i would be about to fall asleep and that moment would come back in my head and i would be flooded with a racing heart and sweating and all the anxiousness anxiety over this moment that had happened when i was 18 years old i promise you i'm going to bring this back around and eventually it took years years maybe 10 years less than 10 years but years eventually i got over that eventually i could recall that embarrassing event and have no physiological reaction no sweating no heart racing not even looking at it as an event that was embarrassing looking at it a thing that happened when i was 18 and nothing more than that and it just was evidence to me and i used that as evidence that even something that i'm really anxious about that has haunted me for years i can still get over that eventually and i can eventually get to the point where i look back at that and don't hold anxiety so i use that as evidence that i can get over things and so when i'm harping on something like this event three weeks ago that i made a flub on that i've been had been experiencing anxiety over i remember other points in my life that i also was embarrassed by or had anxiety over and then i see the evidence that i got over that and i can tell myself logically well if i got over that then i'm gonna get over this and even though right now i feel not over it and even though i right now i feel anxious and i feel frustrated i know history tells me my behavior tells me my past tells me that i can get over that and i probably will if i just give it a little bit of time and so to reflect on all the things that i have overcome allows me to see that the challenges i face today i can overcome and that decreases my anxiety i would love to hear in the comment section below if there's anything you do that you would like to share that you think could help other people manage or get in tune with themselves to better manage their anxiety or at least be aware of those anxious thoughts and those feelings and yeah i get exercise diet breathing sleep all these things are great do it love it but i would love to hear if there's anything i don't know outside the box so to speak that maybe you haven't heard maybe it's a little secret you have that really works um this is not a great example but i remember someone telling me or maybe i read it in a book maybe because i have speeches on the mind it's another speech example but this person who gave public presentations would get so nervous they were behind a podium and they would take a paper clip and put it in their pocket and during the whole speech they would you know play with the paperclip and by the time the speech was over the paperclip was just destroyed because they were putting all their anxious energy into the paperclip now granted we could say well why are they so nervous and they should treat the anxiety over and be able to give a presentation without having to uh you know finagle the paper clip but sometimes we're in a paper clip situation sometimes we just need a paper clip because we got to do a speech right now we can't go back and resolve a whole bunch of decades of anxiety so we're going to just do the paper clip and get to the speech i like those little tips i think they're okay to use as long as we're aware of of it thanks for letting me come on today it's always so fun to speak directly to the members and um if you need anything at all regarding med circle or med circle memberships you can reach out to us directly through our website on medcircle.com we have a lot of great videos coming out for you this week i'm excited for you to see them and of course remember whatever you're going through you got this

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 558,602

Keywords: anxiety, medcircle, anxiety disorder, social anxiety, social anxiety disorder, anxiety relief, anxiety attack, anxiety symptoms, mental health, how to overcome social anxiety, what is anxiety, stress, depression, mental illness, health, panic attack, panic attacks, psychology, therapy, living with anxiety, how to manage anxiety, how to deal with anxiety, depression and anxiety, high functioning anxiety, how to stop anxiety, kyle kittleson, generalized anxiety disorder

Id: xjdTMNqRMxw

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021