In Episode 7, Part 1 of 2, Kirk and Tiffani explore a more in-depth look at anxiety from Episode 6 by discussing what our minds and bodies experience when we undergo stressful situations. From having brain fog to feeling aches and pains, anxiety shows up symptomatically sometimes before we realize we are experiencing a general anxiety disorder.

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Thank you for joining us today for part one of our two -part series on a deeper

look at anxiety. If you're listening for the first time, welcome. My name is

Tiffani. I'm a licensed mental health counselor here with my co -host Kirk. Hello,

Kirk Fasshauer, Director of Crisis Response Services, a Peace River Center. And Kirk

is a licensed clinical social worker. So we are here today to talk about mental

health. This is a time where Kirk and I get together, we hang out, we spend some

time together, and we talk about topics related to mental health and ways to reduce

stigma. So we are talking today about anxiety. For a long time, we have wanted to

dig into issues that are affecting our community and maybe people, they're

experiencing things and they don't know what they're experiencing and they don't know

how to move forward with feeling better. And so this is a time to learn. So today

we're digging a little bit deeper into anxiety. We've talked previously about anxiety

in general, but today we're going a little bit more in-depth. So Kirk, when we

think about anxiety to recap from previous podcasts, it is a feeling of overwhelming

nervousness and anxiousness. So of course there are moments where there might be a

life -threatening situation where anxiety would be absolutely appropriate in that

moment, right? And you need that, those endorphins to fuel your motivation to

survive. - Exactly. - But there are also moments where anxiety comes and it's not

life -threatening. And the impulses and feelings that your body experiences that fight,

flight, or freeze, they're not needed to that extent to survive and it becomes

problematic. - Correct. - And so we have this general idea of anxiety, but also

there's some very specific diagnoses that are within that anxiety family. So tell me

a little bit, go ahead. - Yeah, no, you're right. The mechanisms for preparing us

for the fight, flight, or freeze response is the same whether it's anxiety over

losing your car keys as it is for somebody who's about to hit you with their car.

I mean, the urgency is different, but the anxiety level can be similar

physiologically. And so, yeah, those endorphins, that chemistry that gets spewed into

your body helps you to prepare appropriately for whatever we come across.

Now, Everybody experiences anxiety. It can be a good thing as we mentioned before,

but we're getting more into the the deeper end kind of anxieties where it is now

debilitative and where you probably will need some professional assistance or

Guidance sometimes medication. You don't always need medications for some of these

disorders but Then the medication can help kind of take the edge off is how I like

to describe it. Some people don't want medication and that's fine. Some people do

want the medication, that's fine too. So some of the things that we talk about

symptomatically in the categories, we've got generalized anxiety disorder, which we'll

get into, panic disorders, I'm sure people have heard of panic attacks, well that's

part of the panic disorder setup, all right? Then we have social anxiety disorders.

It's a little bit different than the phobia, but there are phobia -related disorders

as well, and they get into, we get into a long list of the various specific types

of phobias, and we may hit on a few of those in our discussion today. - We're also

gonna dive into risk factors, treatments and therapies and ways that you can help

someone else around you, maybe, who's experiencing these symptoms. So starting off

with generalized anxiety disorder, I think that that's probably one of the ones that

people, when they think of anxiety, this might be the first that comes to mind.

Right, right. And it's called generalized anxiety because often it's not due to one

thing specifically, it is a result of that just a persistent feeling of dread and

it can interfere with one's daily life.

It's not from that same experience, it's just overall stress about everything.

People worry about stuff, that's going to happen. But this is, again, debilitating.

We talk about does it impact one's ability to live, love, laugh, and learn?

And if it does, then okay, let's take a hard look at what's going on here.

So there'll be that consistent feeling of being wound up on edge,

have to worry about everything continuously, and being easily fatigued,

which makes sense because if you're always wound up and worried about something, your

body's going to get tired and you're going to get worn down. So with that, the

ability to concentrate on something becomes even more difficult. And in some extreme

cases, the anxiety floods the system, the body system,

and your mind to the point where you can be very forgetful and even forget your

name, like my name is simple, Kirk, K -I -R -K, you know, it's like, you can have a

moment where you forget, what's your name?

Well, and I think for, especially with early adulthood, there's a lot of challenges

that you're facing for a lot of college students, they're living in a new

environment, they're experiencing new stressors that they've never had before because

of increased responsibilities and this is a very real thing because if you are

having difficulty staying focused if you're having difficulties with sleep abnormalities

you know if you're so hyper-focused for example on studying you can become you know

so easily fatigued if any even minor inconvenience happens or any minor problem

happens because that particular stressor that's kind of your fixated on is taking up

so much of your energy, anything else might seem overwhelming. Anything else might

even seem like impossible. And so it's very common to have what we call in the

field high levels of emotional reactivity. So really big reactions to something that

may not really, you know, justify such a big reaction because you're so tired from

just surviving. - Right, right, and people often would complain about some physical

ailments, like headaches. You know, headaches are a good symptom that there's some

extra anxiety there. Of course, you wanna rule out any physical ailments or physical

conditions that may be causing that. And in the absence of anything physical that's

happened to your body, then headaches, muscle aches, stomach aches, unexplained pains

and aches that somebody has, you see generalized anxiety disorder show itself in

children much more in physical complaints because they don't have the language to

describe what they're going through emotionally. So you'll hear, "Oh, I have a tummy

ache," or, "My head hurts. I have a boo -boo here in my elbow," those kinds of

complaints from young children. It doesn't necessarily go away when we become adults

or even in college years. It's there. We still get the headaches.

The aches could still be there in some physical worries. It can happen to anybody.

It's not just, "Oh, it's this particular group of people." This is some generalized

anxiety can impact anybody. Sleep is often a good indicator that something's going

on. The lack thereof is a good indicator. And also the over want of sleep,

wanting to have more and more sleep. So the two extremes, something to kind of

raise a red flag with. But to go back to what I was saying about,

you know, It can impact anybody. I remember going to Mississippi after Hurricane

Katrina and doing, I do some disaster behavioral health work. I go into places after

mass disaster like that. And this one person, the team that I went with,

we went to connect with another team. Well, that team leader seemed to be

struggling. Very competent person, knows their stuff, but something was off with this

person, and they had a heightened sense of restlessness, heightened sort of paranoia

sense about them, and they had been there for a while, so they should kind of know

the route back to their team, and they were driving around like they were lost.

So disoriented in some sense, but had a hard time even concentrating on what they

were doing. And so I remember we had the politics that were there too,

but we had to gently kind of present this as we're worried about this person

because there seems to be something going on. And she actually got some help and it

was beneficial because she was experiencing some overload in that situation. Now

that's an extreme case. Yeah, but I think it brings up such a good point of even

when you know, even when you know the criterion, all the diagnostic information,

sometimes when you're in it, you don't know you're in it. Exactly. And so when you

think about an average person who might not have extensive knowledge about diagnostic

criteria, what does that look like? I think that we all have stress, we all

probably carry carry more than we should. I think that we live in a very fast

-paced environment, especially acclimating to campus. If you're a freshman or even a

sophomore, you're surrounded by people who have a couple of years on you. And so

there's a part of wanting to prove yourself, a part of wanting to prove that you

belong or asking, do I belong? So there's this level of maybe feeling alone of,

maybe this is normal, maybe this is what everyone is experiencing because how do you

know it's not normal if you don't have a baseline? And so when you think about

generalized anxiety, you know, this is not just, I'm stressed about this one thing.

This is, I have this stress and it's not going away. And you know, typically what

we look for as clinicians is it's been going on for about six months and that's a

long time, you know, changes hard and change, you know, it takes time to learn

something new, to adjust to a new job, to adjust to a start or an end of a

relationship, you know, things take time. Yeah. Exactly. And that's why in the

diagnostic criteria to get a diagnosis, there are time frames in there. It doesn't

happen just overnight or just within a week in some cases. It's, okay,

let's give this some time because maybe you're trying to learn a new skill and

there's going to be anxiety around it and let's make sure, okay, it's not just

that, the struggle of learning something new or growing into something.

So yes, I'm glad you mentioned the time frame because the time frame is an

important factor here. So if it's not going away and it continues to impact those

abilities to live, love, laugh and learn, then, Six months down the road.

I I often think that might be a little bit long, but but it's what we've agreed

to as a mental health community that this is the the benchmark, but It's it's

important to start addressing those as soon as possible because it it helps rather

entrench some bad habits bad coping

maladaptive reactions it's better to catch it as soon as possible to start to

unravel some of that and hopefully guide somebody to better coping. - Sure, and if

you're a young adult, if you're a freshman or a sophomore, even coming back, if

you're just starting the semester, of course things are gonna be stressful.

But during midterms and even towards the close of your first semester, If things

don't feel a little more anchored, if things don't feel a little bit more stable,

absolutely, that might be a good indicator of, "Okay, maybe I can reach out for

support." And that's not to say, "Don't start earlier." I think prevention is key.

If you're struggling, why struggle alone, right? Reach out for support. There's help

always available. You just got to know where to look. Exactly. And I remember my

freshman year in undergrad. It was so overwhelming. I was very excited.

It's an exciting moment, so there's a different kind of anxiety there. But with the

excitement, there were choices that needed to be made because I got to pick my

classes and I was overwhelmed because there were so many classes to choose from.

Some that I wanted I couldn't have because they get filled up. You're a freshman.

You get what's left.

So I remember thinking to myself, "Oh my God, what am I going to do here? I'm

planning for my future. I want to take some of these, but I can't because they're

full." So one of the things I did,

I said, "Why don't I just copy what I did my senior year in high school as far

as coursework goes?" So I had a frame of reference to go back to, and so I

structured my freshman, my first semester of my freshman year, sort of that way as

a leapboard for the rest of my semester is like,

"Okay, I need something here, something here, something here," and it came pretty

close, but it gave me something that I had learned in high school, "Hey, this is

my coursework that was given to me," and now I had a choice to change it up and

did the best I could, but it helped kind of ease some of the Anxiety and it also

lessens the stress of overwhelming number of courses that were out there and

available Yeah, you found a way to anchor yourself. Yes, exactly anchor right so

then when we think about anxiety, right? So generalized anxiety, which we've talked

about then moving to the next category We have something called social anxiety

disorder now social anxiety disorder. It's this intense persistent fear persistent fear

of being judged by other people, being watched by other people, and this could

happen in a lot of different ways. Perhaps you have a fear of public speaking. When

you get up there, you know everyone's gonna tear you apart, or you have a fear of

raising your hand in class, or you have a fear of being in new places. So just

the feeling that you're being watched and you're being judged, and so being in these

social settings. So Kirk, whenever we think of social anxiety disorder, I mean the

symptoms are pretty similar, right? They are. Again, all the anxiety disorders are

going to have the general set

of symptoms, but then you start to get into more specifics. So where generalized

anxiety, there is nothing specific. Now we're starting to get a little bit more

specific as to what the diagnosis starts to target. And in this case, we're talking

about a social anxiety disorder. So it does. It has to do with that fear of being

watched, that fear of being judged by others. My clothes don't look right. Everyone's

looking at me. And a lot of people say, "Well, I don't care what people think."

You do. Even if you're being that rebel, there's that sense of you wanted to either

draw that attention to you or not. But for this situation, it's about that fear of

them making fun of you, you're not fitting in.

And it's so predominant when you go from a very comfort space of high school now

into college in those college years and wanting to be a part of. and having had

this vision or expectation of what college life is going to be and then actually

being there and it's not falling into place. Well, it's because we've got this image

of something a little bit further. Again, it's a new skill. You're not going to

have the mastery right away. You have to develop that and everyone starts somewhere

freshman year. There you Um, and what helps in a lot of cases and for my college

years, I did not have, uh, the opportunity to be part of a Greek life. I don't

know if you, if you were part of that or not, um, that's your fraternities, your

sororities. Uh, that helps with some of the transition because maybe you had a

family member go through that, or maybe you're the first one and you're trying to

figure it out too. But that it, They kind of have their own little way of setting

up things. Not everybody has the opportunity for those setups.

You still have the same kind of setups you would in high school, as far as, well,

we got the group that loves to be part of sports, and they're more sports -minded.

You've got those folks over here that are much more academic -minded and get into

technology and things like I think people that like to read and get into poetry and

theatrics and so you find your niche, you find what you're comfortable with.

Really that's what, you know, part of high school but definitely the first, I don't

want to say your freshman year is really exploring a lot of that and that

definitely happened for me. I didn't have social anxiety. I was more of a risk

-taker. I went out there and put myself out there, but as far as trying to figure

out what I wanted in life was more about, I started off as a computer science

major, so I wasn't anywhere near psychology at the time. - So big shift. - Big

shift, right? So that was a monumental change

because the anxiety that came out of that decision -making was I was disappointing a

lot of people because they were all rooting for me. I did a lot of computer work

in high school and a big focus. I was really thinking I was letting people down,

but it came down to if I stayed with it, I might be letting my own self down.

So that created the change with social anxiety, those other people looking at you.

It's the fact that And that thought in my head was, "Oh, someone's going to say,

'Oh, you chose a bad career or you made a bad choice here.'" It was enough to

make me worry.

So the anxiety was there around making that choice. Social anxiety,

it's watching those, having those people make, you're really fearing what everybody

else is going to tell you. So you're going to have, you're you're gonna hold

yourself differently, maybe even have some stomach aches. - Well, and even like that

rigid like body structure, you know, talking and you know, I can vividly remember my

sister sharing with me that you know, one of her speech classes felt like she had

cotton balls in her mouth because it's like her mouth was so dry and like it just,

you wanna talk, you have something to say, But you know, maybe an overly soft voice

you just can't get it out because of that fear, right? Or people have stomach aches

before speaking and they actually they actually, you know vomit, right?

You know and so I think that when we think about well, how does this impact us,

you know in a big picture way if You have the the fear Associated with talking in

front of people or putting yourself out there, you know, with big risk comes big

reward sometimes, right? How do you make yourself stand out? If you can't do that,

that fear gets in the way, it can get in the way of work. It can get in the way

of promotions. It can get in the way of, you know, school and getting that grade

or even, you know, putting yourself out there in sports or making friends or being

who in your heart and in your mind, you know you wanna be, but this invisible fence

is holding you back and it's hard to understand if you're not the one experiencing

it because it seems so easy sometimes for other people but none of us know the

internal struggles that someone else is going through.

If you enjoyed our show please hit that like and subscribe button. If you're

struggling with any issues regarding anxiety or any other mental health issues you

can reach us locally in central Florida at 863-519-3744.

Or if you're listening to us from another area, you can dial the national number

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