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If you're tired of feeling never enough, of constantly being derailed by your own fears or the reactions of others, then you are in the right place. I'm Deb, a licensed psychologist, and this is Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to women who've spent their lives trying to stay within the lines of what's acceptable, who've never felt good enough and who are ready to break free and bloom. Let's talk about how you can build a solid foundation connected with your strength and your wisdom. Before we start, I need to make sure that you know that the information I share with you is just that. It's just information. It's not meant to be a prescription for what you should do or meant to replace the advice of any of your healthcare providers. It also doesn't mean that we have a professional client-therapist relationship.

Hi there and welcome. In this episode, I want to come back to the notion or the expectation that we should be calm. I included the link to that episode where I started to talk about this in the show notes. I'm referring to that set of lines that we're supposed to stay within in regard to being calm, that if we're doing things right, we will be calm and not anxious—that anxiety is bad and something to be avoided. 

Specifically, today or in this episode, I want to focus on my concern that our fears about anxiety are robbing us of our confidence. When I first started practicing as a therapist, I wanted nothing to do with helping people with anxiety.

I struggled with it myself and couldn't imagine how I could help anyone else with it. It was one of my hidden shames as a therapist, believing that if I were a competent therapist, I wouldn't get anxious. Don't you wish sometimes that you could put your arm around your younger self and let her know that she's okay just the way she is? Or share with her what you know now that she didn't know so that she might be able to relax and worry less. 

This is actually a topic for another episode and with what we know about the brain and how it changes with what we do, it really isn't too late to do that. And so if there are things that you wish that your younger self knew, be sure and let her know.

At that point in my life, I believed that there was something wrong with me, that I was anxious and that I couldn't control it. I'm curious if that rings true for you. If you struggle with anxiety, do you feel defective? Or maybe like your body is defective and that if you were capable, good enough, whatever, you would be able to do something about it.

 That's what most people have believed when they came to see me for help with their anxiety. Yes, I went from avoiding anyone wanting help with their anxiety to becoming a referral source in the community I lived in for those struggling with anxiety. 

And in fact, it became an area of my work that I really enjoyed because most often, there were some basic misconceptions about anxiety that were keeping people stuck. This wasn't always the case. And please know that I'm not intending to minimize the pain that accompanies an anxiety disorder or even to minimize how uncomfortable anxiety is. I've been there and I know.

And I do want to differentiate between an anxiety disorder and anxiety. What I'm referring to in this episode is anxiety. The racing heart, the queasy stomach, shallow breathing, or feeling like you can't catch your breath, maybe racing thoughts. Those symptoms are different than having an anxiety disorder.

In an anxiety disorder, those symptoms have started to significantly interfere with my ability to function in life. My worry is that there is so much talk about the importance of eliminating anxiety, of how to get rid of anxiety, of what to do if you're anxious, that we're actually creating more anxiety disorders rather than helping people to feel more confident.

Because that's what we really want, isn't it? To feel stronger and more confident. Believing that we are defective is not a very good strategy for getting there. And with anxiety, those beliefs about being defective are particularly counterproductive.

And here's the reason why those symptoms ⁓ of anxiety that I mentioned a moment ago, that rapid heart rate, the racing thoughts, the funny feeling in your stomach are actually signs that your body has geared up to help you navigate a challenge or to stay alive in facing a threat to your life. 

Believing that my body shouldn't respond that way, and that there's something wrong with me creates another threat or challenge. And as a result increases the very symptoms that I'm trying to get rid of.

The body is pretty amazing. It actually has different stress responses to help us with differing needs. There's a response designed to help us perform and one designed to help us survive. There are others and those are just a couple. Both of these are designed to help you. 

And if I don't realize that, or if I have triggered one of these responses, when I don't really need the body's help, like maybe when I'm worrying about something while I'm sitting on the couch, the symptoms can feel uncomfortable or like something is wrong. A rapid heart rate would feel totally expected if I was running. My shoulders and neck muscles are designed to get tight if I'm about to throw a punch or protect myself from a punch in a fight. And in either case, whether I was running or fighting, I probably wouldn't be paying attention to how my stomach was feeling. And my racing thoughts would likely be propelling me along, like, oh my gosh, this is bad, run, run. None of these changes feel normal sitting on the couch

And unfortunately, with all of the talk about the perils of anxiety, I don't think we ever see these symptoms as being normal. And that's problematic. If I'm viewing a normal, actually helpful response in my body as something to be feared, and I think, oh no, now I'm anxious, or what in the heck is wrong with me? or now I'm going to blow it, or I'm going to be sick. What is the nervous system going to detect? It's going to detect another threat, right? And it will try to help us face that additional threat by further mobilizing the body's defenses and increasing the symptoms we're trying to avoid.

If we fear our symptoms, the important thing to realize is that our nervous system is listening. It's listening and it's always ready to help mobilize our body's resources, which means that the very symptoms that have scared me are going to increase in intensity. If I'm afraid of my symptoms,

My nervous system is going to detect that fear and respond to help me face that threat. My heart's going to beat faster. My thoughts are going to race. My breathing will get shallow.

All of those dreaded signs of anxiety that I'm believing I'm not supposed to have are going to increase as the nervous system responds to my fear about having the symptoms and further mobilizes my defenses to support me.

So it's really important to know or to start to recognize is that those worrisome symptoms of anxiety are actually a sign that your body is trying to help you. And it will keep trying to help you as long as you keep giving it the message that you need help.

I want to come back for a moment to something that I mentioned earlier about the body has unique responses to support us in different needs. So for instance, it has a response to challenges that is different from the response to a threat to our life. The response to challenges can feel very much like the response to threat. Our heart will probably beat faster, we will probably feel keyed up. 

And there are some significant important differences. The challenge response is designed to help us perform. It helps us to be more focused. It helps our thinking to be clearer. Think of surgeons or performers. We tend to think of them as being calm and they are most likely highly activated—maybe in the zone with increased focus and concentration.

This is easier to see before an athletic event and for most of us easier to accept. I didn't catch the Olympics this year and if you watched them, I bet you didn't see totally calm athletes on the starting blocks. Their bodies were most likely revved up. I bet they might have been moving around or jumping. And we don't usually look at them, I don't think, and think, what is wrong with them? Or if we were about to run a race or participate in a physical event, we would most likely just see that keyed up feeling as normal. I think most of us would expect that. Except maybe if I am worried about my anxiety. And I'll come back to that in a moment. 

The same type of revving up that happens when we are facing a physical challenge is going to happen with any type of challenge, whether it's I'm giving a speech or taking a test or solving a difficult problem at work.

If I worry about anxiety, if I struggle with anxiety, I'm going to be particularly keyed in to those changes, right? Can you relate to that? If you struggle with anxiety, do you notice when your heart starts beating faster? Do you notice when your stomach starts to feel funny?

And if I notice them and I feel fear, my nervous system is going to detect that fear and switch the body's response from one of helping me to face the challenge that I'm facing, whether that's a test or a presentation, whatever, to a response that would help me to stay alive. 

And that state, that threat response state, is not a state we want to be in before or during a big presentation or a test because all of our higher cognitive abilities will have been inhibited by the stress hormones.

When our life is in immediate danger, those abilities could get us killed. And so the stress hormones inhibit them. They go offline. And if I'm giving a presentation, aren't those are the very qualities or capabilities that I need. 

So unfortunately, when I misinterpret the body's response to a challenge that keyed up that revving up as the body's trying to help me to focus better, to think better, if I misinterpret that and fear that response, the nervous system is likely to detect that and switch the body's response to a response that is not going to be helpful.

And this then often keeps me from performing in the way I want to because those cognitive abilities have gone offline. If I'm taking a test, I can't remember the answers. If I'm giving a speech, I can't remember what I was going to say. That's all perfectly normal in the threat response. We don't want those abilities online if our lives are in danger. 

What happens is this inability to perform then reinforces the idea that anxiety is bad and something that I need to control. When in fact the body was doing what it was supposed to do, it was gearing up to try to help to support me, to help me my thinking be clearer, to help me focus. 

It was my fear of the changes that I noticed as my body geared up that signal the nervous system to initiate the threat response, making performing well in a challenge impossible. 

So what we have in those moments when we feel paralyzed by anxiety is a mismatch between the message that I'm giving my body about what I need and what I actually need. My body is responding just as it's supposed to do. It's my appraisal of what's happening that is leading to a worsening of my symptoms and an inability to function. 

So it starts a vicious cycle where I start to become more more afraid of the very symptoms that are designed to help me. And when I become afraid of them, then I move into the threat response and then I lose the abilities that I need and I become more and more afraid of my anxiety.

And if this happens often enough, it can become an anxiety disorder where these episodes start to interfere with my functioning.

My concern and the reason I want to share this with you is that the more we hear about how bad anxiety is and that we should be calm, the more likely we are to become afraid of normal reactions in our body, the normal physiological responses to stressors that are designed to help us and that this fear will lead to more problems with anxiety rather than less. I don't think we can regain our confidence and have any chance of feeling calmer until we stop pathologizing a normal, necessary physiological function. Fearing a response triggered by fear is not going to lead to confidence or calm.

So what turned things around for me? How did I go from feeling defective and never wanting to work with someone who struggled with anxiety to feeling passionate about helping people with anxiety? What happened for me was that I discovered the work of Morita. Morita was a Japanese psychiatrist who published around 1919.

What I loved about his approach was that his approach normalized anxiety. It really might be seen as a very early version of the acceptance and commitment therapy that is around today.

What I've talked about for years was his idea that anxiety is the natural outflowing of two highly admirable qualities, a strong desire to do good work and a tendency towards introspection or a tendency to notice how I'm doing. And that anxiety is the natural outflowing or interaction of those qualities.

I did a quick search of Morita therapy since it's been years since I studied his work. And it was funny, interesting. I didn't see any mention of the terms, highly admirable qualities. I'm quite sure that those are terms I wouldn't have made up. So I'm not quite sure what to make of that. Maybe possibly that AI didn't pull it up, or that translations of his work have changed. I'm not sure it matters. And I will come back in a moment to what I did find because I think it's helpful and it's not really all that different.

What Morita said is that anxiety is the natural outflowing of having the combination of those two highly admirable qualities and that it's the focusing on that distress or anxiety that ends up causing problems, not the distress itself. The distress is a natural result of having those qualities. 

I remember the first time I shared these ideas. It was with a group of students struggling with social anxiety when I was working at a counseling center on a campus. And I remember how impactful it was for them to think of themselves as having highly admirable qualities versus being defective because of their anxiety, and to realize that the angst that they were experiencing would be expected in anyone who had that combination of qualities. 

I can still remember a young man coming up to me at the end of the group and telling me how much better he felt about himself. I can remember him looking me in the eye versus looking down as he shared this. 

And as often has happened in my journey through life and as a therapist, his experience reinforced my own sense of being okay with having these struggles. And it also inspired me to want to share this knowledge with more people. Since that time, so many people have had similar responses they felt so much better about themselves, which propelled me forward in wanting to do more of this work. 

They started to recognize that their symptoms were first of all, normal physiological responses that were becoming problematic, not because of a defect in their body. They were becoming problematic because of their reaction to them. And second, because they realized that experiencing this stress this distress would be expected. 

If you want to do well and you tend to notice how you're doing, of course there would be some distress in noticing the difference between how well I want to do and how I'm actually doing. And what they started to realize was that that distress wasn't the problem. It was the focusing on that distress. 

Of course the distress would be there. There's no need to focus on it or try to change it. That realization has been so freeing for people over the years. And I hope if you relate to those qualities that you'll find it helpful as well. 

These may not be Morita's exact words and what I remember from reading his work is the idea of accepting what is and focusing on what needs to be done. So not getting caught up in the distress we're feeling. Accepting it and bringing our attention back to the task at hand.

I do want to share with you what I found in my recent search on Morita therapy, because I think it broadens the scope of who would feel this distress into a more common human experience.

This is from the website of the Morita School of Japanese Psychology. Morita proposed that human motivation is influenced by opposing forces, the desire to live fully, and the desire to maintain safety and comfort, and that those two drives are inherently in opposition to one another, which results in uncomfortable feelings and distress. 

So distress is a natural result of those two opposing drives. And the more that people focus on their distress and the uncomfortable sensations, the more it starts to interfere with their functioning. So again, it wasn't the symptoms that were causing the problems. It was the focus on the symptoms.

I do think that people with those two qualities, a high drive to do things well and high introspection are just naturally more prone to anxiety. It would just naturally be a natural outflowing of this combination. And I've had clients say to me, those with those admirable qualities, those may be admirable qualities and why did I have to be born with them? Looking at it from this perspective of two opposing motivations that I just shared with you widens the scope and helps us to understand why almost everyone would struggle with anxiety. If there are two opposing motivations present in all of us, a desire to grow and live life to the fullest, in combination with a desire for safety and comfort, of course there would be distress. 

And I might add to that that if I'm trying something new or facing a challenge, my body is going to be right there with me trying to help me. The nervous system is going to trigger reactions in the body to help me think better, move faster, be more focused.

And those are not going to be the same sensations in my body that I'm going to experience when I'm sitting around having a good time with friends. They aren't supposed to feel the same. When I start to expect my body to feel the same all the time, that's when I'm going to start inadvertently giving a message of being in danger to my nervous system—a message that I'm in danger and please help. And thank goodness we have a system that listens and is poised to help us.

I hope what I shared with you has been helpful and has given you some new ideas in thinking about how you think about anxiety. Be on the lookout for my next episode in which I plan to talk about the benefits of embracing your anxiety and viewing it as a resource. And as I wind up, I'd like to leave you with this thought or suggestion. The next time you're about to have a negative reaction to what you perceive to be your problematic anxiety. I wonder what would happen if you took a moment to thank your body for supporting you, for the changes that it initiated to help you perform or to survive, and that if your life isn't in immediate danger, If you also considered giving your body the all clear signal.

Really, when we take a moment to thank our body, it does give the body the all-clear signal. Feeling gratitude helps alleviate fear. And so if we can connect with gratitude for our body and what it's doing for us, we really are giving our body the all-clear signal.

Okay, that's all I have for today. Until I talk to you again, take good care and bye-bye.

This has been Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to supporting you in blooming into all you are meant and wish to be. If you enjoyed it and gained value, please consider leaving a review, as it will help other women to find it and please share it with anyone who would benefit from it. And if you would like to be notified when new episodes become available, be sure and follow on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, how will you light a candle of self-acceptance? Because you deserve to be you, even if others disagree.