Do you know the difference between stress and anxiety? Listening to and understanding your body may be a helpful indicator of whether you are experiencing stress or anxiety. Those clues will help you determine your next steps toward helping yourself through this challenging time. Tune into Episode 8, Part 1 of 2 of Finding Your Balance: A Mental Health Podcast presented by Peace River Center and Southeastern University to learn tools and tips from Kirk and Tiffani on alleviating stress and de-escalating anxiety.

24/7 Local Crisis Phone Line: 863.519.3744

24/7 Local Crisis Text Line: Text “TALK” to 863.204.3443

24/7 National Crisis Line: 988

If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

00:00 Tiffani

Thank you for joining us today for part one of our two part series as we take a

00:04 Tiffani

deeper look at anxiety disorders. If you're listening now welcome my name is Tiffani

00:08 Tiffani

I am a licensed mental health counselor here with my friend Kirk. Hello Kirk

00:12 Kirk

Fasshauer, director of crisis response services at Peace River Center and a licensed

00:16 Kirk

clinical social worker. So Kirk and I get together and we talk about mental health

00:21 Tiffani

and stigma and all of the barriers and also resources to help our community feel

00:26 Tiffani

safer and have a better understanding of mental health. Today we're gonna talk a

00:30 Tiffani

little bit more about anxiety disorders and talking specifically about practical ways

00:35 Tiffani

to help support someone who might be experiencing high levels of anxiety.

00:41 Tiffani

So there's a lot of ways to maybe help someone who is experiencing anxiety but to

00:48 Tiffani

better understand how to start It's important to know what is the difference between

00:53 Tiffani

stress and anxiety. And I think that we've talked about this before in other

00:58 Tiffani

episodes, but it's one of those points where you can't really talk about it enough

01:03 Tiffani

because everyone experiences highs, everyone experiences lows, and it's important to

01:08 Tiffani

understand there's an element of normal to this, but then there's also a very clear

01:15 Tiffani

line where it becomes abnormal and even harmful. So when we think about stress,

01:21 Tiffani

Kirk,

01:22 Tiffani

what are some ways where you feel like you see something, you know, being, you

01:28 Tiffani

know, different, you know, stress versus anxiety? So the stress is those elements

01:36 Kirk

that move us forward. You can have good stress, and you can havebad stress, what's referred to

01:43 Kirk

as imagined stress, and that's sometimes I think that's worse because your imagination

01:48 Kirk

runs away with the whole topic, and sometimes we get into what is referred to as

01:55 Kirk

catastrophizing. We would think of the worst part, and then that leads to more

02:01 Kirk

irrational thought processes,

02:05 Kirk

more excessive guilt, more excessive worry, and that's where you start to get into

02:09 Tiffani

anxiety. - Well, and right there, I think it's important to understand, you know,

02:14 Tiffani

whenever I think of stress versus anxiety, what is the cause, what is the start of

02:20 Tiffani

it? And so what I typically see, when you're looking at stress, it's typically a

02:24 Tiffani

response to an external cause, right? So maybe there's a big test, or maybe you

02:30 Tiffani

have an argument with a friend, versus anxiety, where a lot of times it's an

02:35 Tiffani

internal response to whatever the stress is. So this is the stress,

02:42 Tiffani

the test, and anxiety is my internal response. And so there is stress,

02:50 Tiffani

but then anxiety is kind of what is, maybe sometimes the reaction of the stress.

02:55 Tiffani

- Yes, okay. - One of the things that I also notice sometimes is that just with

02:58 Tiffani

general stress, it tends to resolve when the situation resolves.

03:03 Tiffani

So when the test has concluded, okay, that anxiety related to the stress is gone.

03:08 Kirk

- Good point, yes. The stress is often very specific to a situation where the

03:13 Kirk

anxiety can be much more generalized. There are some parts of anxiety that can be

03:19 Kirk

situation specific and those are much more in the the phobia realm like we talked

03:23 Tiffani

about. And it tends to hover. It hovers. It stays. It's like that cloak you can't

03:30 Kirk

ever get rid of and it's a heavy cloak. It's weighted and can weigh you down.

03:36 Kirk

So, yeah, and it's even after the immediate situation has gone,

03:42 Kirk

it's still there. It's constant. It's constant. And so that excessive worry that

03:47 Kirk

uneasiness or tension, it's something that falls into the realm of both stress and

03:51 Kirk

anxiety. But you're right, it's much more, anxiety is much more of an internal

03:56 Kirk

process that lingers as a result. - And you say all the time, you know, live,

04:01 Tiffani

laugh, learn, and love, I think that one of the big things to understand, so you're

04:05 Tiffani

gonna have stress, that's just a part of life. But with anxiety, even with the

04:09 Tiffani

situation, you know tends to resolve it's still there it's still hovering it seems

04:15 Tiffani

to always be present but it's interfering with your everyday life in a way that

04:20 Tiffani

sometimes even causes you to avoid things that without that anxiety you might really

04:26 Tiffani

enjoy doing. Right exactly so something might start off as being stressful and it

04:31 Kirk

can depending on the outcome it can create that anxiety.

04:38 Kirk

So public speaking, for example, you may be excited, and it's the first time it's

04:43 Kirk

nerve -wracking, and it can raise a lot of stress, and you get out there and you

04:46 Kirk

do it,

04:49 Kirk

and then you have a moment where it's blocked. So then that turns into anxiety.

04:56 Kirk

So if you even think about the situation, all Those feelings come rushing back even

05:01 Kirk

when you're in a safe environment. You're asked to speak again publicly. All those

05:08 Kirk

emotions and feelings come back to you of being in that moment.

05:14 Kirk

So what was once something that was stressful, now has become something that's more

05:18 Kirk

anxious and anxiety -provoking. I remember pretty vividly learning to drive a Right

05:25 Tiffani

and so like there is a point in your life where you have never driven a car

05:29 Tiffani

before right like you don't know how and You learn and even though you've learned,

05:35 Tiffani

you know, maybe you've had your permit for a year or ever long You've had your

05:38 Tiffani

permit Even then I remember whenever I went to take my test, you know, I have the

05:42 Tiffani

person sitting in the car or in the seat next to me and I knew what to do.

05:48 Tiffani

I knew all of the things but I was So anxious and so nervous. I'm like, ah,

05:53 Tiffani

they're judging me. Like, they're going to know I'm nervous. And now I'll get in a

05:58 Tiffani

car and I'll drive. And I don't think anything of it. You don't think about it at

06:03 Tiffani

all, right? Even I can remember whenever vividly. So the DMV where I was,

06:09 Tiffani

it was off the beaten path. I come from the country. And you had to pull out of

06:15 Tiffani

the DMV parking lot onto a state road and then you know because there was one road

06:21 Tiffani

and you know you went down it for a little while and I remember sitting there

06:25 Tiffani

waiting to pull out and having a moment of okay how much pressure do I put on the

06:31 Tiffani

gas if I put too much she's gonna mark me wrong if I don't put enough it's gonna

06:35 Tiffani

be another situation and I remember just the panic of like how hard do I press it,

06:41 Tiffani

and I knew how hard, but I was over -analysing every moment,

06:47 Tiffani

every reaction, and now it's second nature, you know? And so I think sometimes with

06:52 Tiffani

stress, once the situation concludes, like, huh, I'm okay, but with anxiety,

06:59 Tiffani

it's harder to shake, and so I think for a lot of people, it would be so helpful

07:03 Tiffani

in those moments of I know I'm not okay, I know I need to somehow regulate,

07:09 Tiffani

but how do I? And so for a lot of people, what's really helpful is something

07:13 Tiffani

called self -monitoring. And when we think of self -monitoring, it's exactly what it

07:18 Tiffani

sounds like. It's monitoring yourself during the day, during a situation to where

07:23 Tiffani

you're in tune with, "Huh, I'm starting to feel a little jittery. I'm starting to

07:29 Tiffani

feel a little overwhelmed, and then you do kind of self -check -ins of, "Okay, did I

07:34 Tiffani

eat lunch today? Did I eat breakfast? You know, have I been sitting for too long?"

07:38 Tiffani

And so you kind of start to, you know, self, you know, monitor yourself. So with

07:43 Kirk

self-monitoring, when we've talked about this, and I talk with clients about it as

07:49 Kirk

well, one of the first things I like to do is, you know, people, not Everybody is

07:56 Kirk

very in tune with their body, so I like to talk to them about doing a body scan.

08:02 Kirk

It's something you have to practice. Stop for a moment, and you have to have some

08:08 Kirk

time set aside to do this, where you've got to stop for a moment, be some place

08:14 Kirk

where there's low stimuli, and just listen to your body, listen to listen to your

08:20 Kirk

heartbeat, you know, just kind of, where is that tension? Where is,

08:27 Kirk

just listen.

08:30 Kirk

Be still for a moment, you know, just to start to practice that process. And then

08:35 Kirk

something you have to practice if you're not used to it, because like I said, some

08:38 Kirk

people just are not that in tune. So you want them to take a moment and be in

08:47 Kirk

that be in that moment to think about okay not not so much thoughts it's right now

08:54 Kirk

we're not even dealing with the thoughts it's just being in tune with your body so

08:57 Kirk

that you can take that self-measure and start to understand okay I can put your

09:03 Kirk

hand down your heart and they just feel it beating for a few minutes

09:10 Kirk

Listen to your breathing and then start taking deep, slowly start to take some deep

09:13 Kirk

breaths so that you can even help yourself relax even more and just go down to

09:19 Kirk

your toes, you know, with muscle relaxation techniques that we talk about, it's some

09:25 Kirk

of that but it's not to that level yet, it's just a moment of, okay, where wiggle

09:31 Kirk

your toes a little bit, move your ankle, you know, move your legs, what does that

09:36 Kirk

feel? What's that like? Just to begin that process for somebody to do a self

09:41 Kirk

-monitoring so they can do a body check. Because once you know what your body does

09:47 Kirk

on a regular basis, now you can say, "Oh, that's not right. Something's not right

09:52 Kirk

here. I feel it right here in my shoulder. Oh, what is it?" And that's where the

09:55 Kirk

monitoring comes in. Well, and I think it's so interesting that you talk about kind

10:00 Tiffani

of being still, because so many times we're in a perpetual state of really over

10:05 Tiffani

-stimulation. I mean, I think about when I wake up in the morning, what's the first

10:09 Tiffani

thing I do? I grab my phone, I turn off my alarm, right? And if I'm being honest,

10:13 Tiffani

I check my email, right, before I even brush my teeth. And I'm going through the

10:18 Tiffani

day, and if I'm really being honest the entire day,

10:25 Tiffani

I'm constantly stimulated people are asking questions or I'm solving problems or I'm

10:29 Tiffani

dealing with technology or it's go go go go go And there is an adrenaline that's

10:34 Tiffani

associated with like helping you get through the day But it's really hard to think

10:39 Tiffani

okay. I'll I'll do that body scan I'll do that self-monitoring when I have a

10:45 Tiffani

minute. You're not gonna get a minute, right? You're constantly overstimulated And I

10:50 Tiffani

think sometimes we don't make it a priority to allow ourselves to not be

10:56 Tiffani

overstimulated because there's this sense that you have to be productive. You have to

11:00 Tiffani

get things done. Yes, yes. That is our society. If you're not go, go, going and

11:04 Kirk

feeling a lot of stress, you're not productive. It's like, whoa, time out, time out.

11:09 Tiffani

Well, and I think sometimes there's this sense of I'm going to

11:15 Tiffani

you know, I'm overwhelmed, so I have to accomplish this. And there's this priority

11:21 Tiffani

that's associated with like achieving something tangible, but there's not so much a

11:27 Tiffani

priority on regulating so you can maintain that productivity.

11:33 Tiffani

It's a balance, and I think we put so much emphasis on what have you achieved, but

11:39 Tiffani

not but what actually do you need to be able to achieve? You need to sleep.

11:44 Tiffani

- Right. - You need to eat. - You need to sleep, eat, and relationships.

11:51 Kirk

You know, what is a sacrifice? By that kind of mentality, what is the sacrifice?

11:56 Kirk

What have we lost as a result of having that mindset of go, go, go, you know?

12:03 Kirk

You know, it It's difficult to have a relationship if you've got that mindset of

12:08 Kirk

go, go, go, over-stimulation, gotta move, gotta move, gotta move, and I think you're

12:14 Kirk

right, what did it take to get that achievement? Yes, it's an accomplishment and you

12:19 Kirk

should feel good about it, don't mistake us trying to tell you, you should feel

12:25 Kirk

guilty about that, but take a step back because you want to replicate that. What do

12:29 Tiffani

you need to be in a state of balance and even you know so as a professional so

12:33 Tiffani

you know moving past college going into your career I think there's that level of

12:38 Tiffani

one of the things that you and I see a lie is this you know influx of people who

12:45 Tiffani

you know come into the field wanting to do the work and wanting to do things well

12:49 Tiffani

and to the best of their ability and all the compassion and all the good things

12:53 Tiffani

but then there's this Compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma and burnout that happens

13:00 Tiffani

and I think it's because There's so much emphasis even internally on what can I

13:06 Tiffani

achieve and not on what do I need to thrive? Right and there has to be a balance.

13:12 Tiffani

It's an equilibrium And so like sometimes we have these lofty ideas of oh, I need

13:17 Tiffani

to do all of these grounding techniques I know I need to do you do this and that,

13:21 Tiffani

you also need to sleep, you also need to eat a balanced meal,

13:26 Tiffani

you also need to be able to have conversations with people that bring you joy,

13:32 Tiffani

that fill you back up. So it's not necessarily all of these complex intricate

13:37 Tiffani

techniques, sometimes it's just giving yourself space to be a human.

13:42 Kirk

That moment, you know, one of the things, So we talk about achieving and all this,

13:47 Kirk

and it's good to have a career, nothing wrong with that. But one of the things you

13:52 Kirk

want to do is this is a marathon, it is not a sprint. So to do a marathon,

13:58 Kirk

you do have to pace out your strategy to finish the marathon to,

14:04 Kirk

especially if you want to be in the top area, you've got to take care of yourself

14:09 Kirk

in this process. So I do crisis work. I've been doing crisis work the majority of

14:14 Kirk

my career in a 35 -plus years of doing mental health work Been with Peace River

14:23 Kirk

Center for 23 years specifically doing crisis work. You can't do crisis work that

14:28 Kirk

long without doing something to take care of yourself, taking those moments to take

14:33 Kirk

a step back. I am totally honest here is not every day that you're able to take

14:40 Kirk

that step back do that self -scan And there are days where you miss those those

14:44 Kirk

moments of self -care and you get rar in somebody's face You know that happens that

14:50 Kirk

is hello being human. Welcome to the human condition so

14:55 Kirk

But to do it for the long term you do have to have those things where you take

15:00 Kirk

your breaks, you take moments, and even to this day I'm trying out different things

15:06 Kirk

to, you know, let's try something different because the old coping is,

15:12 Kirk

it's wearing out, it's not doing a thing anymore, so I try something different. And

15:16 Kirk

one of the things I did in the last

15:19 Kirk

yeah, 18 months it's been, last 18 months I started, I've always tested out

15:26 Kirk

journaling. I'm never, I wasn't really ever good at journaling, whatever that means,

15:32 Kirk

and it wasn't working for me for the longest time, and then recently it started to

15:37 Kirk

fall into place. So I got into bullet journaling, and there's a whole specific

15:44 Kirk

structure to bullet journals and all this, and

15:49 Kirk

bullet BulletJournal .com is out there is really good writer does a nice job of

15:54 Kirk

presenting his his whole process with this and for him It was about What it

16:00 Kirk

ultimately is for him was about centering and getting things in a very busy world

16:04 Kirk

under control And that is one of the things we do Encourage people who can and

16:09 Kirk

enjoy journaling is to is to journal to help a center yourself and kind of focus

16:18 Kirk

for the day. And that's what I do every morning. I'm not every morning, sorry. Let

16:23 Kirk

me take that generalization back. There are some mornings I miss that. And I can

16:26 Kirk

tell when I've missed that because I start to feel that rush of anxiety again.

16:32 Kirk

So how do I get that back under control? I take a moment and I create my journal.

16:37 Kirk

It's not a digital journal. It's an analog journal. And some people say,

16:42 Kirk

oh, you can do that on your outlook. You can do that on the computer. And I'm

16:46 Kirk

like, that's not the point. The point is the whole mechanism of stopping for a

16:51 Kirk

moment and taking the pen and writing out the lines and being methodical with that

16:58 Kirk

whole process is centering, is grounding. It's nice.

17:03 Tiffani

- Well, I think that the wisdom and what you just shared is that it's not even so

17:07 Tiffani

much about the end result, it's about the process. Correct. Right? It's about the

17:11 Tiffani

journey. And it sounds like cheesy even sometimes to say it that way, but it's

17:16 Tiffani

true. It's about finding a process to regulate, finding a process to manage your ups

17:23 Tiffani

and downs because you're going to have ups and downs. And I know with anxiety,

17:28 Tiffani

there's lots of sources, there's lots of different techniques, and the trick is

17:33 Tiffani

understanding that they're all not going to work for you, like some will, some

17:37 Tiffani

won't, and keeping on moving forward and trying until you find the ones that are

17:44 Tiffani

right for you. I'm terrible at journaling because it creates a domino effect of I

17:49 Tiffani

have the best intentions, right, I buy the prettiest journals, and then I will do

17:55 Tiffani

really good for a week, and then I will forget or get busy or be tired,

18:02 Tiffani

and then beat myself up in my mind for, "Man, I missed out." So then what was

18:08 Tiffani

meant to be helpful starts to become harmful. Exactly. And that's what it was like

18:12 Kirk

for me, too, for the longest time. Same thing. And you go on YouTube and you look

18:19 Kirk

at the different bullet journals bullet journals that people have. The real essence

18:23 Kirk

of bullet journaling is the simplicity of it, but people have made it complicated

18:27 Kirk

and they create of outlets and they do beautiful journals and you look at that and

18:31 Kirk

you go, "Man, that's just way too much." And it will scare you away.

18:37 Kirk

But if you go go to the essence, for me, the essence of what it was, it's real

18:43 Kirk

minimalist and it doesn't have to be super complicated. And what I like about

18:48 Kirk

writer, I forget writer's last name, but he's the gentleman that really moved bullet

18:54 Kirk

journaling. He, he stresses, this is your journal.

19:00 Kirk

It can be as complicated or as simple as you want. But here's a structure that

19:04 Kirk

worked for him. And he said, and he's found that that structure, that process has

19:10 Kirk

helped many others, and that's why it's become such a big thing. That's really good.

19:15 Tiffani

Going back to our stress versus anxiety, I think that's such a good mental picture

19:22 Tiffani

of, so with stress, you have a specific event that you do need to be productive in

19:29 Tiffani

order to accomplish whatever is in front of you, to have a conclusion to that

19:34 Tiffani

event, But there is such a thing as positive stress, that motivation to get the job

19:38 Tiffani

done, whereas with anxiety, I think it's not even so much about the productivity

19:44 Tiffani

because there's not going to be a line that you cross where I've done it. Right.

19:49 Tiffani

With anxiety, I think it's more of the process of how do I learn how to regulate

19:54 Tiffani

because of this marathon, that even if I do all of the things, if I'm not

19:59 Tiffani

regulating that weight that weight is still gonna be there. So I'm never gonna

20:02 Tiffani

outrun that weight until I learn how to process what's causing the weight to be

20:07 Tiffani

there in the first place. So moving on to different types of techniques. So we

20:11 Tiffani

talked about journaling, we talked about body ski -ins, we've talked about self

20:15 Tiffani

-monitoring. There are many, many, many. A couple that we're gonna focus on right now

20:21 Tiffani

is one, it's called stating your time zone. And so what that basically means is,

20:28 Tiffani

you know, there's a world of anxiety out there and you know We could really get

20:32 Tiffani

caught up in what's gonna happen tomorrow. What's gonna happen next year? What's

20:36 Tiffani

gonna happen ten years from now, but I think in this moment when we're experiencing

20:40 Tiffani

distress keeping ourselves in this moment of What is happening right now?

20:47 Tiffani

Right? Am I safe right now? Is There's something that I need to do right now

20:51 Tiffani

because, you know, the weight of the world is waiting for you tomorrow, but right

20:56 Tiffani

now, what do you have the power to do? And I think that gives you permission to

21:02 Tiffani

let go of future stress. Absolutely. Because we don't know what's coming in the

21:10 Kirk

future. We have ideas of what it might look like, There's just so many variables

21:16 Kirk

the past has already happened can't fix that. We don't have time machines to go

21:21 Kirk

back you know and But the the whole point of being present. That's why it's called

21:27 Kirk

the present is this is a gift to you at that moment so if you can Take that time

21:33 Kirk

to stay in your lane to stay in your time zone is where are you at right now

21:38 Kirk

this moment? Are you safe? What's happening at this point in time?

21:45 Kirk

And it begins to help center yourself for everything else and start to get in touch

21:51 Kirk

with those triggers that bring on the anxiety. Thank you for joining us.

21:58 Kirk

If you or someone you know is struggling with any anxiety disorders or any other

22:02 Kirk

22:10 Kirk

if you're listening to us from other areas in our nation, you can dial the national

22:14 Kirk

number 988.